A manuscript from Maqdala now at the British Library. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
LONDON, Apr 23 2018 (IPS)

A new exhibition that opened April 5 at London’s famous Victoria and Albert museum of ancient treasures looted from Ethiopia has revived debate about where such artifacts should reside, highlighting the tensions in putting Western imperialism in Africa and the past to rest.

The exhibit comprises 20 royal and religious artifacts plundered during the Battle of Maqdala in 1868, when a British force laid siege to the mountain fortress of Ethiopian Emperor Tewodros.  “We have both a growing opportunity and growing responsibility to use the potential of digital to increase access for people across the world to the intellectual heritage that we safeguard.” -- Luisa Mengoni, head of Asian and African collections at the British Library

After their victory, the British force was at liberty to take what it wanted. The scale of the treasures stolen by the army isn’t widely known—inside the British Library are hundreds of beautiful Ethiopian manuscripts taken too.

While the argument for returning such artifacts appears strong, and perhaps obvious to most, legal issues surrounding a museum’s responsibility as a global custodian, as well as how best to make items available to the public, make the matter more nuanced than it seems.

“Museums have a global responsibility to better understand their collections, to more fully uncover the histories and the stories behind their objects, and to reveal the people and societies that shaped their journeys,” says Tristram Hunt, the Victoria and Albert museum’s director. “To this end, we want to better reflect on the history of these artifacts in our collection – tracing their origins and then confronting the difficult and complex issues which arise.”

The V&A website describes the museum’s collection of Ethiopian treasures as an “unsettling reminder of the imperial processes which enabled British museums to acquire the cultural assets of others.”

Hence efforts over the years by those like Richard Pankhurst, recognised as arguably the most prolific scholar in the field of Ethiopian studies, who helped found the Association for the Return of the Ethiopian Maqdala Treasures (AFROMET), and focused his efforts on the roughly 350 Maqdala manuscripts that ended up in the British Library.

“It is not widely known what happened,” said Pankhurst before his death in 2017. “The soldiers were able to pick the best of the best that Ethiopia had to offer. Most Ethiopians have never seen manuscripts of that quality.”

Tewodros had the country scoured for the finest manuscripts and collected in Maqdala for a grand church and library he planned to build.

“They are so lavish as they were made for kings,” says Ilana Tahan, lead curator of Hebrew and Christian Orient studies at the British Library, whose staff take their duties of guardianship as seriously as those trying to get the manuscripts returned to Ethiopia.

The front page of one of the Makdala manuscripts given to the British Library, on which is written: Pres. [Presented] by H. M. the Queen [Queen Victoria] 21 Jan. 1869. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Tewodros had actually admired Britain, even hoping they would help develop his country. But a perceived snub when Queen Victoria didn’t reply to a letter of his, led to him imprisoning a small group of British diplomats, resulting in General Robert Napier mounting a rescue mission with a force of 32,000.

On Easter Monday, 13 April 1868, with the British victorious in the valleys surrounding his mountaintop redoubt Maqdala and about to launch a final assault, Tewodros bit down on a pistol—a previous present from Queen Victoria—and pulled the trigger.

In Ethiopia today, Tewodros remains revered by many for his unwavering belief in his country’s potential, while the looting of Maqdala continues to spur the efforts of AFROMET and others continuing the activism of Richard Pankhurst.

“Though Richard was unsuccessful with the British Library manuscripts, there was the return of a number of crosses, manuscripts from private collections,” says his son, Alula Pankhurst, himself a historian and author.

Alula Pankhurst notes that the family of General Napier recently returned a necklace and a parchment scroll to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies.

“My father would have argued that the items should be returned as they were wrongly looted,” Alula Pankhurst says. “There is now the technology available to make copies [of the manuscripts] that are indistinguishable from the originals and microfilms mean that copies could be retained.”

But such technology is also seen by those at the British Library as a reason why the manuscripts can remain where they are.

“We have both a growing opportunity and growing responsibility to use the potential of digital to increase access for people across the world to the intellectual heritage that we safeguard,” says Luisa Mengoni, head of Asian and African collections at the British Library.

One of the items in the V&A exhibit: a gold and gilded copper crown with glass beads, pigment and fabric, made in Ethiopia, 1600-1850. Photo courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

The British Library is continuing its efforts to make the manuscripts accessible to the public through new exhibits. And during the next two years the library plans to digitise some 250 manuscripts from the Ethiopian collection, with 25 manuscripts already available online in full for the first time through its Digitised Manuscripts website.

“The artwork suffers when it is digitalised, plus many of the manuscripts have detailed comments in the margins—there are many reasons scholars need to attend to the originals and which are not met by digital copies,” Andreas says.

But the return of the manuscripts is actually out of the library’s hands. New legislation would have to be passed by the British Parliament for the manuscripts, or any artefacts held in British museums, to be returned.

“While some restitutionists may grumble that the majority of items have not been returned, much has been done to spread knowledge of their existence – and great artistry – to Ethiopian scholars, and to the world at large,” says Alexander Herman, assistant director of the Institute of Art and Law,  an educational organisation focused on law relating to cultural heritage. “This has been made possible by the willingness of the British Library to invest in this once-overlooked part of its collection.”

The complex issue of repatriating looted objects has rumbled on in Europe and the United States for years without much resolution, though now there appears an increasing openness to engage with the issue, both on the part of major Western museums and governments.

President Emmanuel Macron of France said in November that the restoration of African artefacts was a “top priority” for his country, and at a speech in Burkina Faso said that “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums.”

In the meantime, other options treading a middle ground are beginning to be talked about more openly. Hunt says he is “open to the idea” of a long-term loan of the objects to Ethiopia, a move Alula Pankhurst says “would be a step in the right direction.”

But that’s still not good enough for others.

“The restitution of Ethiopian property is a matter of respecting Ethiopia’s dignity and fundamental rights,” says Kidane Alemayehu, one of the founders of the Horn of Africa Peace and Development Center, and executive director of the Global Alliance for Justice: The Ethiopian Cause.

“Looting another country’s property and offering it on loan to the rightful owner should evoke the deepest shame on any self-respecting country.”

“When I was a boy we thought these pictures had some sort of devilish connection,” says 57-year-old Musa Abdi, who has spent his whole life around Las Geel and these days helps look after the site. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

By James Jeffrey
BERBERA, Oct 26 2017 (IPS)

The name alone—Berbera—ripples with exotic resonance, conjuring images of tropical quays, swarthy traders and fiery sunsets imbued with smells of spices, incense and palm oil.

Lying on the Gulf of Aden opposite Yemen, this ancient trading port’s sun-baked streets and waterline are steeped in history. The town’s old quarter is a wealth of pre-20th century Ottoman architectural gems and old neighbourhoods where Arab, Indian and Jewish trading communities once thrived.“We have to act very soon if we are to save it from disappearing.” --Jama Musse, Director of the Red Sea Culture Centre

It would be a shoo-in candidate for becoming a UNESCO World Heritage Site, some say, were it not for Somaliland’s political limbo that means it is still viewed as part of Somalia—which hasn’t ratified the 1972 World Heritage Convention—and the fact that many of the buildings are crumbling at such a rate that soon there may be nothing for UNESCO to consider.

“Neglect and lack of awareness among Somalilanders is making the problem worse,” says Jama Musse, director of the Red Sea Culture Centre in Hargeisa. “I have not heard of any restoration schemes, and unfortunately we have to act very soon if we are to save it from disappearing.”

Berbera’s old quarter isn’t the only site under threat. About 100 kilometres to the west, deep in the Somaliland scrub-land, are the caves of Las Geel.

“This is one of the most important rock art sites in eastern Africa for at least two reasons,” says Xavier Gutherz, who led the team of French archaeologists that in 2002 discovered Las Geel. “The high number and quality of execution of the panels of rock art, and the originality of the representations of cattle and characters.”

But some of the 5,000- to 10,000-year-old renditions of primordial life are now unrecognizable smears due to lack of protection from the elements and animal activity.

“There isn’t money to look after the site better, our tourism department is tiny,” says Abdisalam Mohamed who works in the few ramshackle offices belonging to Somaliland’s ministry of tourism in the centre of Somaliland’s capital, Hargeisa.

Images of human figures among animals, some depicted drinking from udders, illustrate people living off herds. Hence Las Geel demonstrates, experts say, how the pastoralist lifestyle existed in the Horn of Africa region thousands of years before it reached Western Europe. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Still unrecognized by the international community since declaring independence more than 25 years ago after a civil war when part of Somalia, Somaliland’s government has a tiny budget. It is unable to access global finance or loans, instead relying on diaspora remittances to bolster the economy.

Supporting tourism infrastructure simply isn’t a priority in such circumstances. Hence many of Somaliland’s historical highlights could be lost—and with them the very basis of a potential tourism industry that could help boost the livestock exporting-dependent economy and change global perspectives about this wannabe nation state.

In addition to inadequate maintenance of historical sites, lack of funding means another of Somaliland’s potential tourism assets barely registers on the radar: its beaches, stretching for about 850 kilometres, which are almost entirely undeveloped.

“There’s very little at the beaches in terms of infrastructure—there needs to be more,” says Georgina Jamieson with tourism consultancy service Dunira Strategy, which conducted a feasibility study of heritage tourism as a driver of sustainable economic growth in Somaliland.  “We concluded that over the short term that Somaliland’s historical sites are its strongest assets.”

Las Geel draws foreign tourists and the Somaliland diaspora alike. There are hopes the site can one day be part of an expansive tourism industry in Somaliland. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS

Somaliland can also offer tourists exposure to nomadic and pastoralist traditions; Islamic history, such as the Masjid al-Qiblatayn ruins at the seaside village of Zeila, one of the few ancient mosques featuring two mihrabs indicating the direction of Mecca; and the likes of the camel market in Hargeisa, and further afield the escarpment around the Daallo Forest, home to magnificent birdlife and hallucinogenic panoramas.

But even with so much to offer, attracting Western tourists is a tall order when their governments have travel advisories in place warning about Somaliland.

“Poor old Somaliland is placed with Syria and Yemen, and that means you won’t get hotel groups interested or foreign investment in infrastructure either,” says Jim Louth with adventure travel company Undiscovered Destinations that sends groups of tourists to Somaliland.

As with many of the country’s burdens, Somaliland’s image problem that impedes its tourism comes down to its continuing lack of statehood.

“The only way we can sell the country’s assets is to have international recognition,” Musse says. “Tourism will not grow without that recognition. It’s a simple fact. The world does not know about us.”

The upshot, Musse explains, is that foreigners don’t know who to contact, no one takes responsibility, and the types of institutions normally operating abroad to protect tourists’ interests don’t exist, which presents the danger of anyone offering advice without accountability.

There is, however, one potential tourist boost for Somaliland less dependent on Western travel advisories reforming.

“Ethiopia is our neighbour and with its large population offers a big market,” Mohammed Abdirizak, who runs Hargeisa-based Safari Travel Tour and Culture travel agency, says of the country with one of the world’s fastest developing economies and a population set to hit around 127 million by 2037, according to current estimates. “Many of its middleclass are going to Kenya and Djibouti for holidays when they could be coming here.”

Somaliland could also benefit from becoming an onward destination for the increasing numbers of foreign tourists lured to Ethiopia as its tourism industry takes off, says Mark Rowlatt, a 56-year-old habitual traveller planning his Somaliland itinerary from Hargeisa’s Oriental Hotel after visiting Ethiopia.

Around him on the walls of Hargeisa’s oldest hotel are posters depicting Somaliland’s beaches and historic sites under the hopeful banner of what might be: “Wonderful Somaliland—The Newest Tourist Destination in Africa.”

Some of those rooting for Somaliland tourism say the government isn’t doing enough, using its constrained budget as an excuse not to be more proactive while failing to appreciate how tourism is a means to tackle poverty and chronic unemployment rates that leave swathes of young men lounging on streets.

Despite all the challenges facing Somaliland, however, crime is rare, with the last terrorist attack in 2008. An armed escort is often mandated for travel outside the capital, but most say that has more to do with the government fearing how even one tourist-related incident would undermine efforts toward international recognition than with actual threat.

Foreign tourists choosing to take their governments’ travel advisories with a pinch of salt can visit in relative safety, usually reporting incident-free and enjoyable adventures.

The main challenge for most tends to be the midday heat, especially at Berbera simmering away at sea level. But relief is at hand at Baathela Beach on the outskirts of town.

“With its small waves it reminds me of the Mediterranean,” says Xavier Vallès, an NGO health consultant in Somaliland who grew up next to the beach in Barcelona, before wading into the cooling waters, utterly alone—other than the bored-looking armed guards beside his vehicle.

Meanwhile, back in the old quarter, goats opted to rest in the shade of the crumbling walls.

Shanty town near Cape Town, South Africa. Credit: Chell Hill(CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

By Busani Bafana
LUANDA, Sep 3 2015 (IPS)

Slums are a curse and blessing in fast urbanising Africa. They have challenged Africa’s progress towards better living and working spaces but they also provide shelter for the swelling populations seeking a life in cities.

Rural Africans are pouring into towns and cities in search of jobs and other opportunities, but African cities – 25 of which are among the 100 fastest growing cities in the world – are not delivering the much needed support services, including housing, at the same rate as people are demanding them.

The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) projects that nearly 1.3 billion people – more than the current population of China – will be living in cities in Africa in the next 15 years."We must encourage, identify ‎and celebrate the continent. Our schools need to train architects and city planners in no other way than to appreciate and promote African architectural culture" – Tokunbo Omisore, past president of the African Architects Association

Africa’s urbanisation rate of four percent a year is already over-stretching the capacity of its cities to provide adequate shelter, water, sanitation, energy and even food for its growing population.

Safe and resilient cities and human settlements is one of the aims of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be agreed on in New York next month. As the SDGs replace the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) launched in September 2000, UN-Habitat has largely succeeded in meeting the target of taking 100 million people out of slums by the time the MDGs expired in Asia, China and part of India … but not in Africa.

However, Tokunbo Omisore, past president of the African Architects Association, believes that Africa can solve its slums situation by planning and developing towns and cities that strike a balance in the provision of housing, water sanitation, energy and transport while luring investments to create jobs.

According to Omisore, the problem lies in the fact that so far settlements have been developed for people but not with people, and he asks if Africa wants the humane aspects of its cultural values and heritage reflected in its cities or has to replicate the cities of developed nations to become classified as developed.

“Slums and sprawls demand understanding the reasons and problems resulting in their existence and identifying the class of people living there,” says Omisore.

“African governments focus on the infrastructural development of developed nations without consideration for the human development of our different communities and ensuring creation of employment opportunities which is key to the sustainability of our cities. People make the cities, not the other way around.”

By redefining slums, policy-makers in Africa can work more on understanding the rural-urban links to arrive at African solutions for African problems, he argues, calling for a “campaign of marketing Africa and appreciating what is African.”

Aisa Kirabo Kacyira, Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Executive Director of UN-Habitat. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

“We must encourage, identify ‎and celebrate the continent. Our schools need to train architects and city planners in no other way than to appreciate and promote African architectural culture.”

At a time Africa is grappling with the issue of land tenure, particularly in agriculture, limited and often expensive land in urban settlements is posing the question of whether Africa should build up or build across, and there are those who argue that densification is the answer to Africa’s housing woes.

At the 2nd Africa Urban Infrastructure Investment Forum hosted by United Cities and Local Government-Africa (UCLG-A) and the government of Angola in Luanda in April,  Aisa Kirabo Kacyira, Assistant Secretary General and Deputy Executive Director of UN-Habitat argued that densification is an avenue for the transformation of Africa and its cities.

“If urbanisation should be possible and if we are going to build landed housing without going up, it simply means it will be expensive, but if we have to densify then we need to go up,” said Kacyira.

“Yes, let us stick to our identity and culture, but let us stick to principles that make economic sense. We are not going to have vibrant cities by running away from the problem and spreading and sprawling.”

Kacyira also argued that by planning, reducing desertification and recycling waste, African cities can help reduce their carbon footprint, a key issue on the post-MDG agenda.

Meanwhile, a Kenya housing project could represent a model for the future of

Housing in Africa. Muungano Wa Wanavijiji, a federation of slum dwellers, has partnered with Shack/Slum Dwellers International to provide decent shelter for people living in slums by creating a low cost three-level house called  ‘The Footprint’, which costs 1,000 dollars.

The project has built 300 houses in two settlements this year. Dwellers pay 20 percent towards the structure and are given support to access a microloan covering 80 percent of the cost.

The UCLG-A network which represents over 1,000 cities in Africa, estimates that Africa needs to mobilise investments of 80 billion dollars a year for upgrading urban infrastructure to meet the needs of urban residents.

Edited by Phil Harris   

Women sport their national pride at the annual Somaliland Independence Day celebration on May 18 in Hargeisa. Advocates argue that a political quota would give women a greater say in their country's policy-making. Credit: Adrian Leversby/IPS

By Katie Riordan
HARGEISA, Aug 27 2015 (IPS)

Bar Seed is the only female member in Somaliland’s 82-person Parliament, but activists hope upcoming national elections may end her isolation.

Gender equality advocates in the self-declared nation are currently renewing a push for a quota for women in government that has been over a decade in the making.

“The public’s opinion is changing,” says Seed hopefully.

Somaliland, internationally recognised as a region of Somalia and not as an autonomous nation, nonetheless hosts its own elections and has its own president.  It is often hailed as a burgeoning democracy that circumvented Somalia’s fate as a failed state. But noticeably absent from the decision-making process – to the detriment of the country’s development, activists argue – are women. [Somaliland] is often hailed as a burgeoning democracy that circumvented Somalia’s fate as a failed state. But noticeably absent from the decision-making process are women

With only Seed in Parliament, no women in the House of Elders known as the Guurti, and two female ministers and two deputies, supporters argue that a political quota enshrined in law is necessary to correct this gender imbalance.

“Nobody is going to take a silver platter and present it to women. We aren’t being shy anymore, we are saying: you want my vote? Then earn it,” says Edna Adan, a former foreign minister in Somaliland and founder of the Edna Anan University Hospital, a facility dedicated to addressing gender issues such as female genital mutation (FGM).

Adan has witnessed the debate about women in government evolve over the years, playing out as a political game often filled with empty promises to appoint more women in positions of power.  A measure to enact a political quota has twice failed to pass Somaliland’s legislature, once shot down by Parliament and once stymied by the Guurti.

But Adan believes conditions have ripened for women to make a final push for a quota as they have become more organised and strategic in their lobbying efforts.

While some accuse advocates of “settling” for their current demand of a reserved 10 percent of seats – meaning women would only run against women for eight spots in Parliament – Adan counters that setting the bar higher at the moment is unrealistic.

In addition to pushing for this 10 percent clause in an election law that Parliament is slated to review and debate in the coming months, advocates are also lobbying political parties to have voluntary quotas for their list of parliamentary candidates for seats outside those exclusively reserved for women.

A disputed extension decision made in May that postponed Somaliland’s elections for president, parliament and local councils until at least the end of 2016 and as late as spring 2017 drew the ire of the international community and much of civil society including organisations backing a women’s political quota.  Critics say the extension calls into question Somaliland’s commitment to a democratic process.

But the extra time may prove to be a silver lining for quota lobbyists. It could give them leverage to force politicians to prove their adherence to building an inclusive government in order to appear favourable to their constituents and the international community by pushing for more women in government.

“Women have threatened the parties that if they don’t support us, then we will not support them,” says Seed, who is a member of the Waddani Party, one of Somaliland’s two current opposition parties.

However, she explains that parties often publicly support ideas and mechanisms that push for gender parity but have a poor track record of following through with them. In many ways they have not been obliged to because, historically, women have not voted for other women in meaningful numbers.

“So they know it’s a bit of any empty threat but some are frightened [they could lose female votes],” Seed adds.

Also standing in the way of women is Somaliland’s deeply entrenched tribal and clan system that overshadows politics. In order to win elections, individuals need the support of clan leaders who sway the vote of members of their tribe, explains Seed. But since men are viewed as the stronger candidate, women rarely received clan endorsement.

A woman’s position is also unique in that she often has claims to two clans, the one she is born into and the one that she marries into, though this rarely works to her advantage.

“If a woman goes on to become a minister, both clans would claim her, but if she asks for help, they both tell her to go to the other clan,” said Nura Jamal Hussein, a women’s advocate who is contemplating running for political office.

The Nagaad Network, a local NGO dedicated to the political, economic and social empowerment of women, has been the buttress of the push for a quota. Its current director, Nafisa Mohamed, says that convincing women – who, according to some estimates, are about 60 percent of the voting bloc – to vote for women will be crucial to defying the status quo.

Given the cultural and religious barriers that women contend with, that status quo will be incredibly difficult to change, she says. Mohamed counts small victories like a change in hard-line religious preaching that denounced women’s presence in politics. She says approaching spiritual leaders on an individual basis to garner their support has proved fruitful and that they are generally warming to the idea of women in government.

But the power of religion in shaping public opinion is still palpable.

Mohamed Ali has served in Parliament since it was last elected in 2005. He backs legislation for a quota for women in government.  But asked if a woman could be president, he says it would be contrary to the teachings of the Quran, a view shared by many that IPS talked to.

While he hesitantly admits that he may one day change his views, he says others would accuse him of “not knowing one’s religion” if he advocated a woman for president.

Critics have brushed the quota off as an import from the West and an unnecessary measure that is pushing for change that a country may not be ready to undertake. Some also question if it will genuinely result in its desired effect that political empowerment for women will trickle down to other aspects of life.

Amina Farah Arshe, an entrepreneur, believes that if there was greater focus on economic empowerment for women, more political representation would naturally follow.

“I hate quotas. I want women to vote for themselves without it,” she says.  “But the current situation will not allow for that so we still need it.”

Edited by Phil Harris   

Scene from Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village in Bafut in Cameroon’s Northwest Region, the country’s first and only eco-village which is based on the principle that the answer to food insecurity lies in sustainable and organic methods of farming. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

By Mbom Sixtus
YAOUNDE, Aug 2 2015 (IPS)

Marking a shift away from the growing trend of abandoning sustainable life styles and drifting from traditional customs and routines, Joshua Konkankoh is a Cameroonian farmer with a vision – that the answer to food insecurity lies in sustainable and organic methods of farming.

Konkankoh, who left a job with the government to pursue that vision, founded Better World Cameroon, which works to develop local sustainable agricultural strategies that utilise indigenous knowledge systems for mitigating food crises and extreme poverty, and is now running Cameroon’s first and only eco-village – the Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village in Bafut in Cameroon’s Northwest Region.

“Biodiversity was protected by traditional beliefs. Felling of some trees and killing of certain animal species in certain forests were prohibited. They were protected by gods and ancestors. We want to protect such heritage” – Joshua Konkankoh
Talking with IPS, Konkankoh explained how the eco-village organically fertilises soil through the planting and pruning of nitrogen-fixing trees planted on farms where mixed cropping is practised. When the trees mature, the middles are cut out and the leaves used as compost. The trees are then left to regenerate and the same procedure is repeated the following season.

“Here we train youths and farmers on permanent agriculture or permaculture,” he said. “I call it ‘permaculture the African way’ because the concept was coined by scientists and we are adapting it to our old ways of farming and protecting the environment.”

While government is keeping its distance from the project, Konkankoh said that local councils and traditional rulers are encouraging people to embrace the initiative, which is said to be ecologically, socially, economically and spiritually friendly.

“I was active during the U.N. Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. In studying the reason why many countries failed to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), we realised that there were some gaps but we also found out that permaculture was a solution to sustainability, especially in Africa. So I felt we could contextualize the concept – think globally and act locally.”

The permaculture used at the eco-village makes maximum use of limited agricultural land, and villagers are taught how to plant more than one crop on the same piece of land, use a common organic fertiliser and obtain high yields.

Farmers, said Konkankoh, are encouraged to trade and not seek aid, to benefit from their investment and prevent middlemen and multinationals from scooping up a large share of their earnings. The organic agriculture practised and taught in the eco-village is a blend of culture and fair trade initiatives.

Joshua Konkankoh, founder of Cameroon’s first and only eco-village, shows off some nitrogen-fixing trees. Credit: Mbom Sixtus/IPS

“We encourage rural farmers to guarantee food sovereignty by producing what they also consume directly and not cash crops like cocoa and coffee.”

Farmers are trained in the importance of manure, of producing it and selling it to other farmers, as well in innovative techniques of erosion control, water management, windbreaks, inter-cropping and food foresting.

Konkankoh also told IPS that it was a mistake to have left the spiritual principle out of the MDG programme. “Biodiversity was protected by traditional beliefs.  Felling of some trees and killing of certain animal species in certain forests were prohibited. They were protected by gods and ancestors. We want to protect such heritage.”

The eco-village has started a project to replant spiritual forests with 4,000 medicinal and fruit trees in a bid to reduce CO2 emissions.

Fon Abumbi II, traditional ruler of Bafut, the village which hosts the Ndanifor Permaculture Eco-village, believes that the type of cultivation of fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants used by the eco-village will improve the health of local people.

He is also convinced that with many firms around the world producing health care products with natural herbs, the demand for the products of the eco-village is high, guaranteeing a promising future for the villagers who cultivate them.

Houses in the eco-village are constructed with local materials such as earth bags and mud bricks, and grass for the roofs. Domestic appliances such as ovens and stoves are earthen and homemade.

Sonita Mbah Neh, project administrator at eco-village’s demonstration centre, said that the earthen stoves bit not only reduce the impact of climate change by minimising the use of wood for combustion but the local women who make then also earn a living by selling them.

Lanci Abel, mayor of the Bafut municipality, told IPS that his council is mobilising citizens to embrace permaculture. “You know, when an idea is new, people only embrace it when it is recommended by authorities. We are carrying out communication and sensitisation of the population to return to traditional methods of farming as taught at the eco-village.”

Abel also had something to say about the performance of genetically modified plantain seedlings planted by the Ministry of Agriculture at the start of the 2015 farming season in Cameroon’s Southwest Region, which recorded a miserable 30 percent yield.

The issue had been raised by Mbanya Bolevie, a member of parliament from the region who asked Minister of Agriculture Essimi Menye about the failure of the modern seeds during the June session of parliament.

Julbert Konango, Littoral Regional Delegate for the Chamber of Agriculture, said the failure was due the fact that seeds are often old because “there is inadequate finance for agricultural research organisations in Cameroon as well as a shortage of engineers in the sector,” a sign that the country not fully prepared for second-generation agriculture.

Commenting on the incident, Abel said that citizens using natural seeds and compost would not have faced these problems, adding that “besides the possibility of failure of chemical fertilisers, they also pollute the soil.”

The eco-village, which would like to become a model for Cameroon and West Africa, is a member of the Global Ecovillage Network.

Edited by Phil Harris   

(From left to right) Fatima, Aza and Rabab, three Sahrawi women activists, pose from an undisclosed location in Laayoune, the capital of occupied Western Sahara. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS

By Karlos Zurutuza
LAAYOUNE, Occupied Western Sahara, Jul 17 2015 (IPS)

Ten women are gathered to discuss how to transmit Sahrawi culture and tradition to the younger generations. As usual, it´s a secret meeting. There is no other way in the capital of Western Sahara.

Rabab Lamin chose the place and the date for this latest meeting of the Forum for the Future of Sahrawi Women, an underground organisation yet seemingly far from being disorganised.

“We set up the committee in 2009 and today we rely on 60 active members, an executive committee of 16 and hundreds of collaborators,” Lamin, the mother of a political prisoner, tells IPS.

“Here you´ll hardly come across any Sahrawi who has not been mistreated by the police, nor a family who has not lost one of their own" – Aza Amidan, sister of a Sahrawi political prisoner
“Our goal is to fight for the fundamental rights of the Sahrawi people through peaceful struggle,” adds the 54 year-old woman, before noting that she was born “when the Spaniards were here.”

This year will mark four decades since Spain pulled out of Western Sahara, its last colony, leaving the territory in the hands of Morocco and Mauritania. While Rabat claims that this vast swathe of land – the size of Britain – is its southernmost province, the United Nations labels it as a “territory under an unfinished process of decolonisation.”

Since the ceasefire signed in 1991 between Morocco and the Polisario Front – the authority that the United Nations recognises as a legitimate representative of the Sahrawi people – Rabat controls almost the whole territory, including the entire Atlantic coast.

Only a tiny desert strip on the other side of the wall built by Morocco remains under Sahrawi control. That´s where the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) was announced in 1976, a political entity today recognised by 82 countries.

The most immediate consequence of Sahara´s frozen conflict was the displacement of almost the entire Sahrawi people to the desert of Algeria. Those who dared to stay still suffer the consequences of their decision:

“Since the Moroccans took over our land we have only faced brutality,” laments Aza Amidan, the sister of a political prisoner. “We are constantly harassed and beaten; they raid our houses, they arrest our men and women, even kids under 15.

“Here you´ll hardly come across any Sahrawi who has not been mistreated by the police, nor a family who has not lost one of their own,” says Amidan. The 34-year-old activist stresses that the founder and current leader of the Forum, Zukeine Ijdelu, spent 12 years in prison.

Sahrawi women activists who have taken to the streets in Laayoune, capital of occupied Western Sahara, are often forcibly dispersed. Credit: Mohamed Salem

In a report issued two months ago, Amnesty International labels the practice of torture in Morocco as “endemic” while underlining that Sahrawi political dissidents are among the main targets. The NGO also accused the Moroccan government of “protecting the torturers, and not the tortured.”

Sahrawi activists claim that one of the main tasks of this women´s organisation is to support, “both morally and economically”, those who have suffered prison or their relatives. Amidan gives the details:

“We gather money among the community for those women as they are always the ones who suffer most. Whether it´s them who are arrested or their husbands, it´s them who have to sustain their families.”

Despite several phone calls and e-mails, the Moroccan authorities refused to speak to IPS on these and other human rights violations allegedly committed in Western Sahara.

Assimilation

At 62, Fatima Hamimid is one of the senior veteran activists of the Forum. She says torture is “something that can one can cope with.” But there are other grievances that are seemingly “irreparable”.

“Today’s workshop sought to raise awareness among the new generations over the cultural assimilation we´re being subjected to at the hands of Rabat. Morocco seeks to deny our mere existence by either erasing our history or including it into their own.”

The most eloquent proof of such policies may be the total absence of Hassaniya –the Arabic dialect spoken by Sahrawis – in the education system or the administration.

However, Hamimid also points to other issues such the explicit ban over the Sahrawi traditional tent, the harassment  women wearing their distinctively colourful garb often have to face, or the prohibition of giving names that recall historical Sahrawi dissidents to their children.

“This is yet another reason that drags us to the streets to organise and take part in demonstrations,” notes Hamimid. Peaceful protests, she adds, are another important axis of action of this group.

But it is neither easy nor free of risks. In its World Report 2015, Human Rights Watch denounces that Rabat has “prohibited all public gatherings deemed hostile to Morocco’s contested rule.”

The New York-based NGO also points to the “large numbers of police who blocked access to demonstration venues and often forcibly dispersed Sahrawis seeking to assemble.”

Under such circumstances, Takbar Haddi chose to conduct a hunger strike for 36 days in front of the Moroccan consulate in Gran Canaria (Spain), which ended with her hospitalisation in June.

Haddi is still asking the Moroccan authorities to deliver the body of her son, Mohamed Lamin Haidala, stabbed in February in Laayoune, and that both the circumstances of the crime and the alleged lack of an adequate health assistance be investigated.

The activist´s close relatives in Laayoune told IPS that the family had rejected an economic compensation from Rabat in exchange for their silence.

“Some people think that being free is just not languishing in prison, or not suffering torture,” explains Hamimid, while she serves the last of the three cups of tea marking Sahrawi tradition. “We, Sahrawi women, understand freedom in its full meaning.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Bienvienue Taguieke, now 15, who refused to be sold into marriage when she was 12 for the equivalent of 8.5 dollars. Credit: Ngala Killian Chimtom/IPS

By Ngala Killian Chimtom
MAROUA, Cameroon, Jun 10 2015 (IPS)

Twelve-year-old Bienvienue Taguieke was expected to obey her parents and marry a man 40 years her senior, but an association of women in Cameroon’s Far North Region, where child marriages are rife, put a stop to it in a sign that women are starting to speaking out against the practice.

“I was a pupil at a government school in Guidimdaz, a village in the Mokolo area of the Far North Region when a man offered 5,000 CFA francs (around 8.50 dollars) to my mother for my hand in marriage. I refused and alerted some people including the headmistress of my school,” Bienvienue, now 15, told IPS.

Bienvienue believes her mother had considered the offer for economic reasons. “I think my mother wanted to sell me because of poverty. My father had died and there was nobody to pay my school fees and take care of us,” she says.“My daughter will not suffer like me. I will do everything to keep her in school. I am appealing to government to outlaw early marriages, so that girls can go to school, and get married only after their studies” – 15-year-old Nabila who succeeded in escaping from her marital home

However, the school’s headmistress, Asta Djarmi, begged Bienvienue’s mother not to give her daughter away to a much older man. “The headmistress stopped the marriage arrangement my mother had initiated, then the people of ALDEPA, a local civic group campaigning against child marriages, intervened and repaid the 5,000 CFA franc “dowry” to this man. They are also the ones paying my school fees today,” says the grateful schoolgirl.

The 15-year-old says she dreamt of becoming a teacher, and that getting married as a child could have ended that dream. Now that she not had to do so has revived that dream.

Hers is not an isolated case of resistance in the region. Across the Far North Region, teenage girls are resisting what they consider a hurtful culture.  In neighbouring Zilling village, for example, 15-year-old Nabila succeeded in escaping from her marital home.

“I was forced by my parents into marrying an elderly man two years ago when I was only 13. I lived in the man’s house for 14 painful days. I felt as if an evil spirit was haunting me and I decided to run away,” the young girl recalled.

But those 14 days left her pregnant, and the teenager now raises the child by herself. Ironically, the man she was coerced to marry has now filed a court case against her, demanding that Nabila return to her marital home.

“I can’t do that,” she insists. “Not for anything in the world.” The premature marriage spoiled her chances of becoming the nurse she had wanted to be and now Nabila insists that she will never let her daughter go through the same trauma.

“My daughter will not suffer like me. I will do everything to keep her in school. I am appealing to government to outlaw early marriages, so that girls can go to school, and get married only after their studies.”

ALDEPA is now providing legal assistance to the teenage mother, and a senior official of the association, Henri Adjini, told IPS that it is currently paying the school fees of 87 teenagers rescued from early marriages.

Adjini said that forced marriages were part of the culture of the local Mafa and the Kapsiki tribes, explaining that parents marry off their daughters in exchange for dowry payments in the form of money, livestock or goods.

“The wish to strengthen family ties and friendships is very important for people here and they believe marrying off their daughters could do just that. Some other parents simply use their daughters to pay off their debts … the young woman’s choice hardly counts here,” he told IPS.

Marrying daughters off is an income-generating strategy in Cameroon, where almost one-third of the country’s 22 million people are poor, according to the United Nations.

In fact, according to the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), there is a relationship between early marriage and poverty in the Central African country, with 71 percent of child brides coming from poor households. Figures from the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF) for 2014 show that 31 percent of teenage girls in the Far North Region fall prey to early marriages.

Cameroon’s Minister of Women’s Empowerment and the Family, Marie Therese Abena Ondoa has publicly condemned these marriages, saying that it is “immoral to sell out girls as if they were property.”

Child marriage is not unique to Cameroon, however. Many countries in the region and in the world face similar, or even worse case scenarios.

According to a 2013 UNFPA report, two out of five girls under the age of 18 are married in West and Central Africa. The worst culprit is Niger with 75 percent of child marriages – the highest rate in the world – followed by Chad with 72 percent and Guinea with 63 percent.

Like most governments in the region, Cameroon does little to protect these girls. The legal minimum age of marriage in Cameroon is only 15 years for girls, and 18 years for boys.  Even then, the legal requirement that marriage should only be contracted between two consenting partners is hardly enforced.

Minister Ondoua has helped launch advocacy campaigns and collaborated with NGOs, community and religious leaders in rural areas to educate the population, but she has not been able to convince government to raise the legal marriage age.

Nevertheless, the campaigns have been bearing fruit, with many girls saying “no” to family attempts to sell them off.

Girls like Abba Mairamou who resisted her father’s attempt to sell her off at the age of 12, are a living testimony to this success.

“I was only 12-years-old when my father pulled me out of primary school in 2004 to offer me to his friend as a wife. I refused and my father got angry and wanted to send me away from the house. I was desperate until I was, introduced to the association that fights against violence towards women in Maroua,” Abba says.

“Later, my father was invited to a meeting and he was persuaded to be opposed to early and involuntary marriage .This completely changed my father and me. I not only refused to be a victim of involuntary marriage, but today, I am a fighter against it.”

Abba formed the Association for the Autonomy and the Rights of Girls, known by its French acronym ‘APAD’, to sensitise teenage girls and parents in her Zokkok neighbourhood in Maroua against early marriages.

“We now offer shelter to many victims of forced marriages, and many girls are now standing up to that hurtful custom,” she beams.

Edited by Lisa Vives/Phil Harris

Prize-winning writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is hoping to break down some stereotypes at the upcoming World Voices Festival sponsored by the PEN America free expression group.

Chimamanda is the co-curator in the festival which starts from May 4. The author of Purple Hisbiscus, her first book, Half of a Yellow Sun (2006) and Americanah (2013), she warns of the “danger of a single story” – the idea that people living in certain areas of the world all have one kind of experience.

In the hopes of winning a wider audience for African writers, she’s chosen Nigerian-American author Teju Cole, author of The White Savior Industrial Complex, and Cameroonian writer Achille Mbembe, among others.

“It was important to get people who actually live on the continent, along with those who have left,” she told the Wall Street Journal from her part-time home in Columbia, Maryland.

A roster of 100 writers from 30 countries will take part in this year’s Africa programme. Other authors at this year’s festival themed “On Africa” include Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Ghanaian-born Jamaican poet Kwame Dawes, Senegalese screenwriter Boubacar Boris Diop, and South African visual activist Zanele Muholi.

World Voices was launched 11 years ago in the wake of 9/11 to combat “American cultural isolationism.” The annual literary extravaganza adopted a new curatorial approach for its 2015 edition which is taking place under the theme “On Africa.”

This year’s event spotlights the new and old schools of creative writing arising from across the continent with a lineup of workshops, readings, and conversations focusing on migration, memory and imagination, the importance of bearing witness, the role of literature in Africa’s gay rights movement and the future of queer creative communities across Africa and its diaspora.

“Focusing on the African continent is an ambitious undertaking,” said Laszlo Jakab Orsós, festival director. “We cannot, in one week-long Festival, even come close to presenting the entirety of the riveting literary landscapes throughout Africa, but we’re excited to present a select group of writers and artists who, I believe, will inspire New York audiences with their uncompromising and brilliant work.

“It’s our privilege to put the spotlight on these writers, and it is my hope that they will challenge all of us to create art that is bravely subversive and relevant to our time.”

The 11th annual PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature will take place in various locations throughout New York City  from May 4-10. Visit the official PEN World Voices Festival website for more information on the schedule of events and the full list of festival participants.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

“Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it”. Photo credit: UN Photo/Tim McKulka

By Dipti Bhatnagar and Susann Scherbarth
BRUSSELS/MAPUTO, Apr 1 2015 (IPS)

World governments expect to agree to a new global treaty to combat climate change in Paris in December. As the catastrophic impacts of climate change become more evident, so too escalates the urgency to act.

Mar. 31 should have marked a major milestone on the road to Paris, yet only a handful of countries acted on it. Unfortunately, the few plans that were announced before that date show that our leaders lack the ambition to do what it takes to tackle the climate crisis.

National plans for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions will most likely form the basis of the Paris agreement. These plans – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – are meant to indicate a government’s self-stated commitment to solve the global climate crisis through domestic emission reductions as well as through support for the poorest and most vulnerable countries.“People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture”

This architecture will result in an agreement that is weaker than each country being legally mandated to reduce emissions based on their fair share, determined through science and equity.

Yet, even with this architecture, the idea was that national governments would declare these plans by the end of March so that they could then be scrutinised.

Only six pledges had been received by the United Nations by the deadline – from the European Union, the United States, Norway, Mexico, Russia and Switzerland. These nations, with the notable exception of Mexico, are among the worst historical carbon emitters, yet these pledges do not reflect that immense historical responsibility and do not show any real willingness to address the scale of the climate crisis.

The commitments are well below what science and climate justice principles tell us is urgently needed to avoid hitting climate tipping points. The European Union announced target to cut emissions by ”at least 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030” is merely re-hashed from last year’s announcement.

The United States has cobbled together a plan for a meagre reduction of 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels, by 2025. If these insignificant pledges are an indication of what is to come, we are on track to a world which will be 4-6°C warmer on average. To put this into context, the climate impacts we are facing today are the consequence of a planet which is only 0.8°C warmer than it was.

So far, none of these countries’ announcements would contribute their ‘fair share’ according to science and equity. All parties are capable of much greater ambition, and it is high time to bring it to the table.

The deadlines that matter most are not set by governments, but by our planet and its natural boundaries, which have already been stretched considerably by the impacts of the climate crisis, for instance by the lethal and extreme weather events from Vanuatu to the Balkans to the Sahel.

Climate change is already happening now, bringing more floods, storms, droughts, rising seas and more devastating typhoons and hurricanes.

The mockery made of this latest Mar. 31 deadline is just another revelation of our governments’ inaction – under the influence of powerful polluting corporations – in the face of impending disaster.

People on the frontline of climate impacts are burning while governments fiddle. People are paying and will pay for the devastation of climate change with their lives, livelihoods, wellbeing, communities and culture.

Poor and rural communities are disproportionately affected by the climate crisis. It is them – who did the least to create this problem – who are suffering the most from it.

We need a just and drastic transformation of our societies, our energy and food systems, and our economies. Proven and workable alternatives exist and are already being implemented.

Key decisions about our energy systems are made regularly, and will of course be made long after the Paris summit. Take for instance U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision on the controversial Keystone XL pipeline, which would bring planet-wrecking tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico.

A decision is expected soon and a rejection of the pipeline project would send a strong signal that our long-term future is not founded on the exploitation and burning of more and more fossil fuels.

European Union governments announced their INDCs back in February with their new ‘Energy Union’ vision for meeting the region’s energy needs. The bloc has recognised the need to reduce energy consumption and help citizens take control of clean, local renewable sources. But these moves towards the good must not be negated with new investments in the bad – new gas pipelines are also on the menu.

Throughout 2015, Friends of the Earth International and others will be bringing more and more people together to fight against the power of the polluters and make sure politicians hear the voices of the voiceless and take real action.

In the run-up to Paris, and along the road beyond, we, together with thousands of others, will be promoting the wealth of real solutions and proven ideas that are already delivering transformation around the world.

We will be on the streets throughout 2015, in 2016, and as long as it takes to realise community-owned renewable energy solutions that benefit ordinary people, not multinational corporations.

The Paris deadline will come and go, like others before. But the energy transformation is under way and, whatever our governments will pledge or not pledge at the climate summit in Paris, the transformation will not be stopped.

Edited by Phil Harris

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, IPS – Inter Press Service. 

* Dipti Bhatnagar is Climate Justice & Energy Co-coordinator for Friends of the Earth International, based in Maputo.

* Susann Scherbarth is Climate Justice & Energy Campaigner for Friends of the Earth Europe, based in Brussels.

Excerpt:

A scene from ‘The Incredible Adventures of Border Crossers’ by Singaporean artist Ong Keng Sen at the ‘Singapour en France - le festival’ arts fest, which aims to highlight the power of culture and its “ability to bring people together and to cross boundaries”. Credit A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
PARIS, Mar 29 2015 (IPS)

As Singapore mourns the passing of Lee Kuan Yew, the late former prime minister’s vision of a dynamic and vibrant state is being reflected in a major arts festival in France.

‘Singapour en France – le festival’ was launched Mar. 26 in Paris, against the backdrop of a massive out-pouring of grief in Lee’s homeland, following his death three days earlier.

“As Singaporeans grieve and reflect on our loss, we continue to honour Mr. Lee’s vision of establishing Singapore on the international stage,” said Rosa Daniel, deputy secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth, who delivered a speech on behalf of her chief Lawrence Wong at the opening of the festival.“We used to be derided as just clean, green, safe and orderly, but dull and antiseptic. Now we have a lively city with the arts, culture, museums, art galleries, the Esplanade Theatre by the Bay, a Western orchestra, a Chinese orchestra ... And we have resident writers and artists” – Lee Kuan Yew, late former Prime Minister of Singapore

The event, which will run until Jun. 30, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Asian city state’s independence, as well as 50 years of diplomatic ties between Singapore and France. It aims to showcase the art, culture and heritage of Singapore through more than 70 activities in cities throughout France.

“We’re a young nation … but we’re bold, modern and willing to experiment,” said Daniel, adding that the festival would also highlight the power of culture and its “ability to bring people together and to cross boundaries.”

Lee himself recognised that Singapore had made its “share of mistakes” in the cultural heritage area by destroying buildings in its rush to modernise, but in his later political years he emphasised the importance of safeguarding this heritage and of having a “top-class” arts and entertainment sector.

“We used to be derided as just clean, green, safe and orderly, but dull and antiseptic,” he said in 2010. “Now we have a lively city with the arts, culture, museums, art galleries, the Esplanade Theatre by the Bay, a Western orchestra, a Chinese orchestra … And we have resident writers and artists.”

Some of those artists travelled to France for the opening of the festival and gave a view of the changing art scene in Singapore, pushing the boundaries in a region noted for traditional values and not particularly famous for freedom of expression.

In ‘Secret Archipelago’ at Paris’ Palais de Tokyo modern art museum, visitors can view a range of experimental and contemporary work, created by Singaporeans and artists from other Southeast Asian nations such as Malaysia, Vietnam and Myanmar.

“Their works represent a bridging of the gap between past and future and the creative tension between memory and tradition on the one hand and contemporary Western influences on the other, while bringing their own particular languages to modern art,” say the curators.

“I don’t consider myself a strong person, but art gives me a way to express myself” – AnGie seah, one of the Singaporean artists exhibiting at the ‘Singapour en France – le festival’ arts fest in Paris, March 2015. Credit A.D. McKenzie/IPS

AnGie seah, an artist who includes performance in her work, embodies these concerns – literally – in her presentation titled ‘Howl of the Hallows’ in the Palais de Tokyo’s huge basement gallery.

Here visitors can listen to the screams of various people through a headphone while watching seah (who prefers her name to be lower-cased) perform the screams on video.

“I think the human voice is powerful and I like to use it in my art,” said the artist, who has travelled around France asking people to scream for her, and taping the results.

Her installation included “mini shrines” with pottery or terra cotta representations of body parts such as a hand, with the middle finger sticking up. The shrines give the installation a traditional yet avant-garde feel, inviting visitors to question the symbolism.

“I don’t consider myself a strong person, but art gives me a way to express myself,” seah told IPS.

Not far from her exposition, Vietnamese artists and twin brothers Le Ngoc Thanh and Le Duc Hai, who go by the name of Le Brothers, showed a long rectangle of video screens with military-clad characters in a variety of activities. They told IPS that their work is a call for peace through the depiction of war and soldiers in their self-performed films.

Describing their art further, Singaporean curator Khairuddin Hori said it dissects and questions post-war consciousness of North and South Vietnam, as the brothers “exploit their twin identity as mirror and metaphor.”

Other artists incorporated everyday items such as plates and household figurines to question identity while also re-affirming their history and culture. An artist from Malaysia said he had listened to senior citizens and used their stories to create his installation, which covered a large part of one wall.

Alongside the ‘Secret Archipelago’ exhibition, the opening of the festival included a five hour-long multi-media performance titled ‘The Incredible Adventures of Border Crossers’, with sound, dance, film, fashion and photography.

Specially commissioned for the festival, this ultra-modern work by Singaporean artist Ong Keng Sen features huge video screens, music technicians and live performances in a kind of visual and acoustic cacophony that still transmits harmony.

“Real-life border crossers who have never acted before are invited to be performers in this piece,” said the creator. “Sharing their everyday stories as incredible adventures, they inhabit the installation as singing, dancing and re-performing pioneer travellers.”

The “show” is described as an artwork that “envisions communications in a not-so-distant future megapolis.”

The visitor cannot help thinking that it captures something essential about Singapore, with its multi-ethnic population, its vibrant history as a trading post and its sometimes controversial efforts to build a cohesive, economically strong nation. The show also seems to evoke the late Lee’s vision of his homeland.

Edited by Phil Harris   

By Arsenio Rodriguez
MYRTLE BEACH, South Carolina, Jan 10 2015 (IPS)

Globalisation is an integral feature of modernity. It already has significantly advanced to transform local experiences into global ones, to unify the disparate villages of the world into a global community, and to integrate national economies into an international economy.

At the same time, however, the process of globalisation brings about the loss of cultural identity.

Arsenio Rodriguez

Many young people today grow up and live in a consolidating global world and define themselves as people not belonging to any particular culture. In 2013, 232 million people, or 3.2 per cent of the world’s population, were legal international migrants, compared with 175 million in 2000 and 154 million in 1990.

To these figures one must add at least an estimated 30 million undocumented migrants.

As a result, more people in the world are intermarrying across cultural, ethnic and religious groupings. In Europe, for example, in the period 2008-10, on average one in 12 married persons was in a mixed marriage. Their children are exposed to hybrid cultural settings plus sometimes the host country setting if both parents are immigrants.

In 2013, more than one billion traveled internationally as tourists, thus increasing their firsthand knowledge of the world beyond their own borders. On the other hand, there are nearly three billion Internet users in the world today. More than a billion are connected in social networks across the planet.For many now, home is not bound to a specific location, but rather to a conscious experience of culture.

The interconnectedness of people today is beyond anything that has happened before in history. And to this one must add the ecological, cosmological and modern physics concepts that emphasise interconnectedness in the world at large and our appreciation of being on the same planet, the global village.

For many now, home is not bound to a specific location, but rather to a conscious experience of culture. People living between cultures feel more “natural” in a globalised world because it reflects the combination of different cultures, views and social belongings.

There is, however, as part of the global synthesis and interconnectedness process, a socio-cultural energy of resistance, acting as a counterforce. And although many people define and identify themselves as global citizens, the cultures and societies in which they live do not easily accept their status, and constantly try to place and categorise them.

Wherever they feel at home, they are simultaneously perceived as outsiders, tourists, and as members of a foreign culture. Simultaneously, as the world integration persists, cultural entrenchments, ethnic, religious and parochial groups resist, fearing the dissolving forces of globalisation, manifesting the resistance in fundamentalism, violence and tribal and ethnic wars.

Culture and globalisation have come to be understood as mutually exclusive and antithetical; the former is typically associated with one specific culture while the latter signifies the homogenisation of all cultures into one.

For the global citizen, self-understanding and cultural identity are defined by the lack of belonging to a specific culture. Global citizens lose their sense of belonging and become strangers to society, but in return they gain the freedom of self-expression and self-definition since they are unfettered by the normative constraints of culture and society.

The world is in the midst of a great transition. Prevailing business as usual models are not going to work for a nine billion, highly consumptive society. Scientific, business and government authorities throughout the world agree that we need to align our production and consumption cycles, our markets, with the natural cycles of our life support systems.

And our fragmented approaches are not efficient or effective enough to accomplish this. We need a global consciousness and a global citizenship.

Not a global government but a federated international system based on collaboration and cooperation, rather than competition and hegemony, linking citizenry in their respective communities and countries on issues of common interest and with respect for the cultural diversity.

And it cannot be not just be governments participating in this concerted effort of international cooperation. Private business stands today as the most powerful sector in the planet. However, it has yet to assume a corresponding responsibility in shaping the future of the societal context in which it is embedded and on which it ultimately depends.

A new world-culture is emerging through an integral vision, which is independent of existing traditions and conserved values. It is initiating a new way of thinking in terms of an indivisible totality, and it discards the relative values of comparison in favour of the recognition of the intrinsic worth of everything and everyone.

Increasing numbers of people, communities, even corporate enterprises are increasingly understanding this interconnectedness and the advantage of cooperation and collaboration as a business model.

The movement to global citizenship should be to connect people committed to create a just, peaceful, and sustainable world, to accelerate a cohesive global movement of personal and social transformation, reflecting the unity of humanity.

True global citizens aim to connect caring communities, groups, and individuals at a global level, to promote understanding of humanity’s underlying unity and advance its expression through peace, social justice and ecological balance.

Anyone who transforms his/her perception of the world from one of me against “the other”, of “us” versus “them”, into a unified perception that recognises the interconnectedness of life starts to belong to the global citizenship movement.

This emergence is already happening everywhere as people are becoming conscious at many levels of political organisation, that the functioning of the life support systems that underwrite the well-being and prosperity of humanity is at risk.

There is broad consensus amongst the world’s scientific, business, intergovernmental and non-governmental communities that: (a) we need to align our production and consumption cycles and our markets with the natural regenerative cycles of nature; (b) prevailing business-as-usual models based on intense and wasteful consumption are not going to work for the expected nine billion inhabitants; (c) there is an urgency to change our ways; and (d) piecemeal approaches are not effective or scalable enough.

Sustainable solutions are there, people are already making a difference, making things happen. All we need to do is a wide-range scaling up and a fast acceleration of this process.

We have a systems problem, so we need a systemic solution. There is only one force on earth that is powerful enough to fix this – all of us. We need to collaborate consciously in the largest enterprise, ever to be set in motion; one that contains all others –a truly global citizenry and for this we need a massive cultural change in our consciousness.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

Excerpt:

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury chaired the Forum on Nov. 18, 2014 in New York at the Permanent Mission of Sri Lanka to the United Nations. Credit: Roger Hamilton-Martin/IPS

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 29 2014 (IPS)

As politics, economies, conflicts and cultures become increasingly intertwined, will individual identities also begin to transcend national boundaries?

The elusive nature of “global citizenship” was noted by Sri Lanka’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Dr. Palitha Kohona, at an IPS Forum on Global Citizenship last week at the Sri Lankan Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York."We should come out of our narrow boundaries, not only of ourselves but of our communities." -- Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

“The concept of global citizenship has challenged the minds of humans for a very long time although its exact definition has never really crystallised,” Kohona said.

The idea was famously put forth by Tony Blair during a speech in Chicago in 1999. “We are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not. We cannot refuse to participate in global markets if we want to prosper. We cannot ignore new political ideas in other countries if we want to innovate,” Blair said.

Ambassador Kohona said that even after the collapse of the empires spawned by the Westphalian system, the growth of powerful individual states has not encouraged the development of a genuinely global system.

Kohona stressed the importance of the United Nations as an institution in which to hold up the principle of global citizenship.

“The establishment of the United Nations has created the forum for humanity to make an effort to address common issues together from a global perspective. It is the most effective forum available to all nation states. The United Nations and its agencies have been successful in generating sympathy for the usefulness of approaching many of today’s challenges together.”

The Forum was chaired by Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former representative for Bangladesh and the prime mover of the 1999 General Assembly resolution that adopted the U.N. Declaration and the Programme of Action (PoA) on the Culture of Peace.

“When we speak of global citizenship, certain thoughts come to mind,” he said. “The first thing to understand is spirituality. What are our values, what are our commitments as human beings? The second is the belief in the oneness of humanity. We should come out of our narrow boundaries, not only of ourselves but of our communities.”

Despite challenges, many of the panellists agreed that the promotion of global citizenship is advancing against the headwinds of the purported clash of civilisations, declining resources, and cultural cynicism.

IPS Chair Ambassador Walther Lichem noted that, “Almost to the day 200 years after the initiation of multilateral diplomacy at the Congress of Vienna, we become aware that multilateral diplomacy is increasingly giving way to global governance.”

Lichem noted that global citizenship needs to be seen in the context of a system that espouses norms such as the “responsibility to protect,” a principle that puts the international community above the nation state when it comes to protecting its own citizens.

“Global citizenship is to be understood as a citizenship with human rights as a way of life,” Lichem said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has identified global citizenship as the third priority area in his Global Education First initiative, seeing it as important that students don’t simply learn how to pass exams and get jobs in their own countries, but are instilled with an understanding of the importance of respect and responsibility across cultures, countries and regions.

“Global citizenship is a fight against limbo,” said Erol Avdovic, vice president of the United Nations Correspondents Association. “It is the fight against misconception and against ignoring – or even worse, manipulating – simple facts.”

The United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, an entity that explores the roots of polarisation between societies and cultures was in attendance at the Forum, with spokesperson for the High Representative Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, Nihal Saad noting that education for global citizenship “has the power to shape a sustainable future and better world.

“Educational policies should promote peace, mutual respect and environmental care. It does not suffice for education to produce individuals who can read, write and count. Education should and must bring shared values to life.”

Saad’s sentiments were shared by Monte Joffee, Soka Gakkai International’s USA representative, who said, “Our curriculum needs to include more topics of a global nature so our students can develop empathetic resonance with ‘the other’.

“This does not reach to the core of today’s educational crisis. Speaking only of American education, I must say that the inequalities of educational funding, the levels of despair and hopelessness in too many of our communities… are numbing realities and ‘add-ons’ to the curriculum about global citizenship are not the solution.”

Joffee related the story of Anand Kumar, an Indian mathematician who is well known for his “Super 30” programme in Patna, Bihar. It prepares economically disadvantaged students for the entrance examination for the renowned Indian Institutes of Technology (ITT) engineering schools, with great success.

His programme selects 30 talented candidates from disadvantaged, tutors them, and provides study materials and lodging for a year.

Joffee noted that this story provides a great model for Global Citizenship Education. “Educators must say, ‘I will start right here, with the student right in front of me.'”

Ramu Damodaran from United Nations Department of Public Information Outreach Division also spoke of the importance of academics being given more opportunities to have a voice at the United Nations.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

By Roberto Savio
ROME, Oct 22 2014 (IPS)

The new European Commission looks more like an experiment in balancing opposite forces than an institution that is run by some kind of governance. It will probably end up being paralysed by internal conflicts, which is the last thing it needs.

During the Commission presided over by José Manuel Barroso (2004-2014), Europe has become more and more marginal in the international arena, bogged down by the internal division between the North and the South of Europe.

Roberto Savio

We are going back to a new Thirty Years’ War – which took place nearly five centuries ago – between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics are considered profligate spenders, and there is a moral approach to economics from the Protestant side.

The Germans, for example, have transformed debt into a financial “sin”.  The large majority of Germans support the stern position of their government that fiscal sacrifice is the only way to salvation, and the looming economic slowdown will only strengthen that feeling. As a result, the handling of Europe’s internal governance crisis has largely pushed Europe to the side lines of the world.

It is a mystery why it is in the interests of Europe to push Russia into a structural alliance with China and, in such a fragile moment, inflict on itself losses of trade and investment with Russia which could reach 40 billion euro next year.“We are going back to a new Thirty Years’ War – which took place nearly five centuries ago – between Catholics and Protestants. Catholics are considered profligate spenders, and there is a moral approach to economics from the Protestant side.”

The latest issue of the prestigious Foreign Affairs magazine – the bible of the U.S. elite – carries a long and detailed article on “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault” by Chicago academic John J. Mearsheimer, who documents how the offer to Ukraine to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) was the last of a number of hostile steps that pushed Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop a clear process of encroachment.

Mearsheimer wonders how all this was in the long term interests of the United States, beyond some small circles, and why Europe followed. But politics now has only a short-term horizon, and priorities are becoming conditioned by that approach.

A good example is how European states (with the exception of the Nordic states), have been slashing their international cooperation budgets. Not only have Spain, Italy and Portugal – and of course Greece – practically eliminated their official development assistance (ODA) budgets, but France, Belgium and Austria have also been following suit. Meanwhile China has been investing heavily in Africa, Latin America and, of course, Asia where the term ‘cooperation’ would not be the most appropriate.

But the best example of Europe’s inability to be in sync with reality is the last cut in the Erasmus programme, which sends tens of thousands of students every year to another European country. Has it been overlooked that one million babies have been born to couples who met during their Erasmus scholarships, and that this programme is being cut at a moment when anti-Europe parties are sprouting everywhere?

In fact, education – and especially culture (and medical assistance) – are under a continuous reduction in spending. As Giulio Tremonti, Finance Minister under Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, famously said, “you don’t eat with culture”.

The per capita budget for culture in southern Europe is now one-seventh that of northern Europe. Italy, which according to UNESCO holds 50 percent of Europe’s cultural heritage, has just decided in its latest budget to open up 100 jobs in the archaeological field with a gross monthly salary of 430 euro. In today’s market, this is half what a maid receives for 20 hours of work a week.

Italian politicians do not say so explicitly, but they believe that there is already such rich heritage that there is no need for further investment and, anyhow, the tourists continue to arrive. The budget for all Italian museums is close to the budget of the New York Metropolitan Museum … in the real world, this is like somebody who wants to live by showing the mummified body of his great grandmother for the price of a ticket!

It can be said that, in a moment of crisis, the budget for culture can be frozen because there are more urgent needs. But no need is more urgent than to keep Europe running in the international competition in order to ensure a future for its citizens. And yet, the budget for research and development, which is essential for staying in the race, is also being cut year by year.

Let us look at the situation since 2009. Spain has reduced investment in R&D by 40 percent, which has led to a 40 percent cut in financing for projects and a 30 percent cut in human resources. Italian universities have witnessed a total cut of 20 percent in spending which has meant a reduction of 80 percent in hiring and 100% in projects, while 40 percent of PhD courses have disappeared.

France has cut hiring in centres of research by 25 percent and in universities by 20 percent. Less than 10 percent of demand for projects receives financing because funds are no longer available.

Greece has cut budget for centres of research and universities by 50 percent since 2011, and has frozen the hiring of any new researchers.

In the same period in Portugal, universities and research centres have suffered a cut of 50 percent, the number of scholarships for PhDs has been cut by 40 percent and post-doctoral courses by 65 percent.

It is important to recall that the Lisbon Strategy, the action programme for jobs and growth adopted in 2000,  aimed to  make the European Union “the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion” by 2010. Not only were most of its objectives not achieved in 2010, but Europe continues to slide backwards. The Lisbon Strategy had set 3 percent of GNP for R&D, but southern Europe is now below 1.5 percent.

A notable exception is the United Kingdom. The current government, which works in strong synchronicity with the City and its industrial constituency, has funded a 6 billion euro “Innovation and Research Strategy for Growth” plan to the applause of the private sector.

China is steadily increasing steadily its R&D budget, which is now 3 percent (what the Lisbon Strategy had set for Europe), but it aims to reach 6 percent of GNP by 2020 and, in just seven years, China has become the largest producer of solar energy, bankrupting several U.S. and European companies.

Is cutting Europe’s future in international competition really in the interests of Germany? Or it is that politics are losing the view of the forest while they discuss how many trees to cut, to reach a compromise between the Catholics and the Protestants?

We are now making of economics a moral science, which makes of Europe an unusual world. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

(Edited by Phil Harris)

Excerpt:

Putting the spotlight on culture. Credit: A.D. McKenzie/IPS

By A. D. McKenzie
FLORENCE, Oct 4 2014 (IPS)

International experts working in the creative sector are calling for governments to recognise the integral role that culture plays in development and to ensure that culture is a part of the post-2015 United Nations development goals, to be discussed next year.

At UNESCO’s Third World Forum on Culture and Cultural Industries, which took place Oct. 2-4 in Florence, Italy, representatives from a range of countries discussed the contributions that culture can make to a “sustainable future” through stimulating employment, economic growth and innovation.

The United Nations cultural agency pointed out that the global trade in cultural goods and services has doubled over the past decade and is now valued at more than 620 billion dollars, although there is some disagreement on this figure.

But, apart from the financial aspects, culture also contributes to social inclusion and justice, according to UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, who inaugurated the forum at Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio.“Countries must invest in culture with the same determination they bring to investing in energy resources, in new technologies … In a difficult economic environment, we must look for activities that reinforce social cohesion, and culture offers solutions in this regard” – UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova

“I believe countries must invest in culture with the same determination they bring to investing in energy resources, in new technologies,” she said. “In a difficult economic environment, we must look for activities that reinforce social cohesion, and culture offers solutions in this regard.”

Bokova told IPS that the forum wanted to show that culture contributes to the “attainment” of the various development goals, which include ending extreme poverty, achieving universal primary education and gender equality, and ensuring environmental sustainability.

Many governments, however, are not investing enough in the cultural or creative sectors even when these industries have proven their worth. Some states prefer to build sports stadiums that are rarely used rather than to support the arts, said Lloyd Stanbury, a Jamaican lawyer in the music business who participated in the forum.

“In the case of Jamaica, we’ve shown that we can compete and win globally at the highest levels in culture,” he told IPS. “Reggae and Rastafari have put Jamaica on the world map and the debate is happening right now about what the government can do to invest more in culture.”

Stanbury said that arts education should have the same status as traditional curricula. “Students are sometimes told, ‘oh, you can’t do maths? Go and draw something’ but their drawings aren’t considered valuable,” he said.

In some developing countries, the arts are seen as a peripheral sector, not a “real” industry and that must change, he argued.

In addition, Stanbury said in his presentation to the forum, in many developing countries, “segments of the music and entertainment community do not enjoy harmonious relationships with government and government institutions, particularly where there is evidence of government corruption that artists speak out against in the creation and presentations of their work.”

For many governments, meanwhile, investing in culture naturally comes a long way behind providing proper health, sanitation and electricity services and developing transportation infrastructure. Yet, culture can help in poverty alleviation, job creation and peace building, experts said.

Peter N. Ives, Mayor pro tem of the U.S. city of Santa Fe, New Mexico, detailed how the city had invested in the arts, through allocating one percent of hotel-bed taxes (or lodger taxes) for cultural activities, among other measures.

“Santa Fe now has more cultural assets per capita than any other city in the United States,” he said, adding that “inclusion” of all groups was a key element of the policy, in which “everyone brings their creative gifts to the table”.

The city has an Arts Commission, appointed by the mayor, that “recommends programmes and policies to develop and promote artistic excellence in the community” and it has followed a multi-cultural route.

The result is that Santa Fe has increasingly drawn writers and visual artists, as well as tourists, because of its growing number of museums, performances and outdoor sculptures – also one of the reasons behind its designation as a UNESCO Creative City.

Such “success stories” may seem far-fetched for many poor or middle-income countries, faced with a variety of crises including conflict. But experts at the conference described grassroots schemes where intra-community violence, for instance, decreased when community members were actively encouraged to produce art about their lives.

Other representatives examined how creating film and literary festivals had contributed to a sense of national pride and cohesion. In the Caribbean and in parts of Africa and Asia, for example, the growth of festivals and cultural prizes has given a general boost to the arts in some countries, reflecting what wealthy countries have known for some time.

The forum, jointly organized by UNESCO, the Italian government, the Tuscany region and the Municipality of Florence, also examined how culture can be preserved in war-affected regions, with a focus on recent UNESCO cultural heritage preservation projects (funded by Italy) in Afghanistan, Mali and other states.

Denmark and Belgium, meanwhile, provided a look at how overseas development aid to cultural activities can promote employment, training and youth involvement in society, especially within a human rights context.

“We’re living in a very hostile environment for development cooperation and also for culture and development, but I’m launching an appeal for more cooperation in this area,” said Frédéric Jacquemin, director of Africalia, a Belgian organisation that sees culture as “a motor for sustainable human development”.

Participants in the forum produced a ‘Florence Declaration’ calling for the “full integration of culture into sustainable development policies and strategies at the international, regional and local levels.”

The Declaration said that this should be based on standards that “recognise fundamental principles of human rights, freedom of expression, cultural diversity, gender equality, environmental sustainability, and openness and balance to other cultures and expressions of the world.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

By Ignacio Ramonet
VALENCIA, Spain, Aug 11 2014 (Columnist Service)

I had been told he was in Havana but that, because he was sick, he didn’t want to see anyone. I knew where he usually stayed: in a magnificent country house far from the city centre. I called on the phone and Mercedes, his wife, eased my doubts. She said, warmly: “Not at all, that’s to keep the pests away. Come over, ‘Gabo’ will be happy to see you.”

The next morning, in the humid heat, I climbed a palm tree-lined drive and knocked on the door of the tropical villa.

I knew he was suffering from lymphatic cancer and that he was undergoing exhausting chemotherapy. They said his health was delicate, and there was even talk of a heart-wrenching “farewell letter” to his friends and to life…I was afraid I would encounter a dying man.

Mercedes came to open the door, and to my surprise she said with a smile: “Come in. Gabo’s coming…He’s just finishing his tennis match.”

A little while later, sitting on a white sofa in the dim living room, I watched him come in, certainly looking fit, with his curly hair still wet from the shower, and his thick moustache. He was wearing a yellow guayabera shirt, wide white pants and canvas shoes. A character right out of a Visconti film.

Drinking a glass of ice coffee, he said he felt “like a wild bird that has escaped from its cage. In any case, much younger than I look.” And he added that “with age, I find that the body isn’t made to last as long as we would like to live.”

He then suggested that we “do like the English, who never talk about health problems. It’s impolite.”

A stiff breeze lifted the curtains on the huge windows up high and the living room started to feel like a flying ship. I told him how much I liked the first volume of his autobiography, ’Living to Tell the Tale’. “It’s your best novel,” I said.

García Márquez in 1984. Credit: F3rn4nd0, edited by Mangostar C BY-SA 3.

He smiled and adjusted his thick-framed glasses. “Without a little imagination it’s impossible to reconstruct my parents’ incredible love story. Or my memories as a baby…Don’t forget that only the imagination is clairvoyant. Sometimes it is truer than the truth. Just think of Kafka or Faulkner, or simply Cervantes.”

In the background the notes of Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony flooded the room, creating an atmosphere at once joyous and dramatic.

I had met Gabriel García Márquez some 40 years earlier, in 1979, in Paris, with my friend Ramón Chao. Gabo, as he was affectionately known, had been invited by UNESCO, and along with Hubert Beuve-Méry, the founder of Le Monde Diplomatique, formed part of a panel chaired by Nobel Peace Prize-winner Sean MacBride, which was charged with producing a report on the north-south imbalance in the global media.

Back then, he had stopped writing novels, as part of a self-imposed ban that was supposed to last as long as General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) was in power in Chile. He had not yet received the Nobel Literature Prize, but he was already immensely famous. The success of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) had made him the most widely read Spanish-language author since Cervantes.

I remember being surprised at his short stature and struck by his gravity and his serious demeanor. He lived like a recluse, only leaving his room, which had become a kind of cell where he did his work, only to go to UNESCO.

With respect to journalism, his other great passion, he had just published an account of the seizure by a Sandinista commando of the National Palace in Managua, Nicaragua, which had triggered the downfall of dictator Anastasio Somoza. He furnished a wealth of details that gave the impression that he himself took part in the event. I wanted to know how he had managed to do that.

He told me: “I was in Bogotá at the time of the assault. I called General Omar Torrijos, the president of Panama. The commando had just been given refuge in his country and still hadn’t talked to the media. I asked him to tell the guys to be wary of the press, because their words could be distorted. He responded: ‘Come. They’ll only talk to you.” I went and the leaders of the commando – Edén Pastora, Dora María and Hugo Torres – and I shut ourselves in a room in an army garrison.

“We reconstructed the event minute by minute, from the planning stage to the final outcome. We spent the night there. Exhausted, Pastora and Torres fell asleep. Dora María and I continued till dawn. I returned to the hotel to write up the report. Later, I went back to read it to them. They corrected a few technical terms, the names of weapons, the structure of the groups, etc. The report was published less than a week after the assault. It drew the world’s attention to the Sandinista cause.”

I saw Gabo many times after that – in Paris, Havana, Mexico. We had an ongoing disagreement over Hugo Chávez. He didn’t believe in Venezuela’s comandante. I, on the other hand, thought he was the man who was going to usher Latin America into a new historical period. Apart from that, our conversations were always very (too?) serious: the future of the world, the future of Latin America, Cuba…

However, I remember that once I laughed till I cried. I was coming back from Cartagena de Indias, a sumptuous colonial city in Colombia; I had glimpsed his house behind its high walls, and I mentioned it to him. He asked me: “You know how I got that house?” No idea. “Since I was very young, I wanted to live in Cartagena,” he said. “And when I had money, I started looking for a house there. But it was always too expensive. A lawyer friend explained to me: ‘They think you’re a millionaire and they jack up the price. Let me look for one for you.’ A few months later, he finds this house, which at the time was an old print shop, nearly in ruins. He talks to the owner, who was blind, and they agree on a price.

“But the old man sets a condition: he wants to meet the buyer. My friend comes and tells me: ‘We have to go see him, but you mustn’t talk. Otherwise, as soon as he recognises your voice, he’ll triple the price…He’s blind, you’ll be mute.’ The day of the meeting arrives. The blind guy starts asking me questions. I answer in indecipherable grunts….But at one point, I make the mistake of saying ‘yes’ loud and clear. ‘Ah!’ says the old man, ‘I know that voice! You’re Gabriel García Márquez!’ He had figured out who I was.

“He immediately adds ‘We’re going to have to reconsider the price. Everything’s different now.’ My friend tries to negotiate. But the blind guy says again ‘No. It can’t be the same price. No way.’ ‘Ok, how much then?’ we ask him, resigned. The old man thinks for a minute and says ‘Half.’ We didn’t understand a thing…So he explains: ‘You know I have a print shop. What do you think I made a living from up to now? Printing pirate editions of García Márquez’s novels!’”

That fit of laughter still resonated in my memory when, in the house in Havana, I continued my conversation with a Gabo who was much older, although intellectually as quick as ever. I talked about my book of interviews with Fidel Castro. ‘I’m really jealous,’ he said, laughing, ‘you had the luck of spending over 100 hours with him.’

“‘I’m the one who is impatient to read the second part of your memoir,’ I responded. ‘At last you’re going to talk about your meetings with Fidel, who you’ve known much longer. You and he are like two giants in the Hispanic world. If you compare it to France, it would be like Victor Hugo meeting Napoleon…’ He roared with laughter, while smoothing back his bushy eyebrows. ‘You have too much imagination…But I’m going to disappoint you: there will be no second part…I know that many people, friends and adversaries are waiting for ‘my historic verdict’ on Fidel. It’s absurd. I’ve already written what I had to write about him. Fidel is my friend and he always will be. To the grave.”

The sky had gone dark, and the living room, even though it was the middle of the day, was very dim. The conversation was slowing down, and had become less lively. Gabo was gazing out into space, and I wondered: “Could it be possible that he won’t leave any written testimony of so many confidential things shared in friendly complicity with Fidel? Will he have left it for a posthumous publication, when neither of them are in this world anymore?”

Outside, torrential rain was pouring down from the sky with the force of a tropical storm. The music had gone silent. A heavy fragrance of orchids invaded the room. I glanced over at Gabo. He had the tired look of an old Colombian leopard. He was sitting there, silent and meditative, staring at the endless rain, the constant companion through all his solitudes. I slipped out quietly. Without knowing I was seeing him for the last time.

Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Excerpt:

Drag Queen Mojito, one of the drinks on the menu at the La Vaca Rosada bar in Varadero, Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Jun 21 2014 (IPS)

Two men kiss each other while two women dance together without making other clients feel uncomfortable at the prívate club Humboldt 67, one of the venues seeking to cash in on an untapped market by fulfilling the unmet demand for bas, restaurants and other recreational spaces for the LGBTI community in the Cuban capital.

“Gay fiestas”, which until just a few years ago were illegal and generally ended in police raids, are now scheduled regularly at both state-run and prívate establishments that form part of the flourishing night life in this Caribbean island nation.

But activists warn of the danger that the LGBTI (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersexual) community’s newfound freedom to gather could bring segregation of non-heterosexuals and the formation of ghettos within this diverse collective.

“Olaces where LGBTI people can express themselves freely and without pressure are necessary,” Isbel Díaz, an activist with Proyecto Arcoíris (Rainbow Project), which defends sexual rights, told IPS.

Bt she said these venues aren’t likely to help combat homophobia because they are recreational spaces, rather than platforms for activism.

“They don’t arise autonomously from the LGBTI community but are an attempt to cash in on the legend that the ‘pink market’ is prosperous,” Yasmín Portales, another member of Proyecto Arcoiris, told IPS.

Portales said the police harassment has been reduced. But she added that there is a growing public backlash against clubs that some people feel are “indecent.”

“We went from repression in the name of illegality to legalisation and visibility, but without a broad public debate or discussion,” the activist said.

Independent cultural projects like El Divino and Los Dioses del Olimpo organise shows and performances targeting the LGBTI community in different state-run cabarets in the capital.

The shows draw a diverse public. But what they have in common is that they can afford the entrance price of beween three and five CUCs (a currency equivalent to one dollar) in a country where the average monthly salary of a public employee is 20 dollars and the government employs over 80 percent of the workforce.

Almost till dawn, the audience enjoys the shows with DJs, popular singers, drag artists and erotic dancers.

Because of the lack of spaces for promoting and publicising the shows, the organisers rely on text messages, flyers handed out on the streets, or word of mouth advertising.

Other bars, discotheques and restaurants declare themselves “gay friendly”.

The state-run Escaleras al Cielo is one of the most popular lesbian bars, while the prívate Le Chansonier and Esencia Habana have special “sexual diversity” nights.

Options are opening up, although fewer, even outside of the capital.“We went from repression in the name of illegality to legalisation and visibility, but without a broad public debate or discussion.” – Cuban activist Yasmín Portales

For example, La Vaca Rosada is a very popular prívate bar-restaurant in the coastal tourist resort of Varadero, 150 km east of Havana.

“Although it is a tourist area, this is still basically a rural town and there aren’t as many gay venues as in Havana,” Ever Cano, the owner of the bar-restaurant, told IPS. He explained that he had to start out by sensitising his 14 employees with regard to respecting all different kinds of people and couples.

Cano describes his locale, which operates on the rooftop terrace of his home, as gay friendly. The pop decor is clearly gay-themed, with coasters printed with messages against homophobia and a menu offering drinks with names like “Drag Queen Mojito” and “Vodka Travesti”.

“I come from a generation that suffered a lot because of the many ways gays were mistreated in Cuba,” said the 52-year-old businessman, who is also a tour operator in a state agency. “I was fired from my job and kicked out of high school because of my sexual orientation. Today I’m happy to be able to talk openly about what used to be a taboo issue.”

Cuban culture is heavily machista, sexist and homophobic, and verbal and even physical attacks against LGBTI people were common in public in the first decades after the 1959 revolution.

Institutionalised discrimination has been gradually phased out since the early 1990s, when homosexuality was decriminalised. But activists say the police still frequently fine non-heterosexuals under the charge of “public scandal” if they are effusive when out in public.

A study on Cuban cross-dressers, published in 2011 by journalist Marta María Ramírez, says the first wave of “gay fiestas” occurred between 1994 and 1997, when they were organised as clandestine affairs in open spaces, fields or car parks on the outskirts of Havana. The police were always on the lookout, she reported.

“Although they were not exactly illegal, different pretexts were used to clamp down on them. But they emerged again around 2004 and 2005, very sporadically and isolated both in time and space,” the reporter wrote in the blog TransCuba.

A campaign in favour of respect for freedom of sexual orientation and gender identity carried out since 2007 by the governmental National Sex Education Centre (CENESEX) brought greater visibility to the LGBTI community and gave a boost to some demands.

In 2010, CENESEX reached an agreement with the Ministry of Culture for regular performances by drag artists in the Las Vegas cabaret in the capital, which promote safe sex and prevention of sexually transmitted infections.

Las Vegas hostesses Margot and Imperio – the stage names of cross-dressers Riuber Alarcón and Abraham Bueno – sprinkle messages on condom use in the shows they present.

Statistics on the LGBTI community in Cuba are scarce. But in a 2011 survey on HIV/AIDS prevention conducted by the national statistics office, ONEI, 6.3 percent of male respondents between the ages of 12 and 49 said they had had sex with other men. Of them, 49.6 percent reported that they had a stable partner.

The survey also indicated that 80 percent of those living with HIV in Cuba are men, and that 86 percent of HIV-positive men have sex with other men.

Male and transgender prostitution are common in these venues, where sex tourism is also growing, catering to mainly older gay foreign men who come to this country to have sex with other men.

Alberto Roque, a medical doctor and gay activist, identified other kinds of latent discrimination in the growing number of gathering places for the LGBTI community, which he said were frequented by predominantly white gay men of means, while lesbians and transsexuals were less visible.

Black feminist Anabelle Mitjans created the Project Motivito, for lesbians and transgender persons who can’t afford to go to night clubs. The initiative organises parties and events for non-heterosexuals in prívate homes and public spaces, which are free of charge.

“The gay world is becoming a hard to afford space of capitalist consumption, like a ghetto where lesbians aren’t a source of profit,” Mitjans, a university professor who identified herself as “queer”, told IPS.

Mitijans defends the need for LGBTI venues, but she also hopes for a society where she and her partner can go out and have a good time, without suffering discrimination, anywhere they please.

The fans of the Brazilian team Fluminense during an exhibition game with the Italian team on the eve of the FIFA World Cup. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO , Jun 14 2014 (IPS)

The seven-year-old got bored after running here and there for five minutes, amidst a group of a dozen classmates. He eventually stomped off the field because he hadn’t managed to kick the ball even once.

“Football is like that, you have to be patient,” he was told by the phys ed teacher who was introducing the group of young students to the sport. Although it might not seem like the most necessary character trait for practicing sports.

So how to explain the passion ignited by football in the most varied regions and cultures of the world? Why does the FIFA World Cup, which opened Thursday in Brazil, awaken so much enthusiasm on all of the world’s continents?

Romario de Souza Faria, one of the greatest Brazilian footballers, whose five goals in the 1994 World Cup in the United States ensured Brazil’s victory, actually spent very little time with the ball in any particular 90-minute game. He became a national hero with his lightning fast strikes.

In 2007, when he tried to convert the thousandth goal of his career, a reporter noted that Romario held the ball for only 16 seconds in the entire game. At one point he went 30 minutes without touching it.

The few goals in any given football match – there are even games that end 0-0 – are tedious for many who prefer the faster pace of basketball or volleyball, where games end with dozens, and generally more than 100, points.

Other people think some of football’s rules are irrational, such as offside, which interrupts the play at a peak moment, when the forward is in an ideal position to score – and drive the fans wild.

There are others who complain that football is too violent. Broken bones and other injuries are all too common as players kick and elbow and crash into each other – sometimes without even being penalised. The opposite of volleyball, where excessive physical contact is avoided.

But despite everything, football has won over huge majorities of the population in much of the world, and is still growing in popularity, overcoming traditional preferences and resistance, like in the United States and Japan.

Still, it can’t be described as a completely universal sport, because it has yet to win significant support in some large countries like China and India.

The secret of football’s overwhelming popularity and consequent success on the business front does not appear to lie in the fields, the players or the ball, but in the minds of the spectators. It is as a show, more than as a sport to be practiced, that it became the champion.

Many sports, especially team sports, have managed to draw enormous audiences in person and on TV. For example, there is baseball in the United States and Japan, basketball in many countries, or cricket in India, Australia and other former British colonies.

But football has singular aspects that make it the most popular sport, capable of attracting an estimated 3.6 million stadium-goers during the 20th World Cup, which is being hosted by 12 Brazilian cities from Jun. 12 through Jul. 13.

Several children, one of them wearing the Brazilian team’s colours, in the street where football legend and now legislator Romario was born in Jacarezinho, a poor neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro. All three boys were sure Brazil would win the 2014 World Cup being hosted by their country. Credit: Fabiana Frayssinet/IPS

One fundamental element is that fans feel powerful, by supporting their team or analysing the players’ moves.

More than spectators, fans feel like participants and designers of alternatives in the games, because football is an open work of art, a stimulus for creativity. Their collective support tends to influence the results more than in any other sport.

The fans have a big picture of the game; they can see the entire field and follow all the moves, unlike the players, who are in the thick of things, surrounded – and harassed – by their rivals, and have a more narrow view of what is going on.

As the saying goes, every Brazilian is a coach. Fans reach their own conclusions about tactics, plays, the best use and combination of the players’ skills – infinite details that can be decisive.

The discussions and arguments are endless, as is news about the sport. Perhaps there is no journalism so exhaustive and widely read as football coverage.

Two decades ago, Brazilian João Havelange, former president of FIFA (1974-1998), said offside should not be eliminated since the “imperfection” of football is one of the reasons it is so popular, because it generates so much debate.

Football in its extreme complexity makes it possible for anyone to feel expert or knowledgeable enough to evaluate, analyse, have their own ideas about games, teams, referees, coaches and players.

The fact that it basically involves the feet, running counter to human evolution that concentrated people’s skills in their hands, adds uncertainties that bring it close to chaos theory. Secondary factors can be decisive, all of the actors count, and – another essential aspect – it is a team game.

The best teams tend to win more, but every king has his plebeian days; no one is invincible. Because of all this, the support of the fans has a much greater influence than in other sports – which is recognised in many tournaments, where a goal scored on the rival’s field is worth more than one in their own stadium.

The frequency with which fortuitous events end up determining an outcome encourages fans as well as the practice of football. The most mediocre players, no matter how few chances they get, can score a goal at some point or make a good play. Like in the lottery, that hope or faith moves athletes and fans.

The success of football as a spectacle grows with each World Cup and is reflected in the more than 18,000 journalists accredited for the current edition in Brazil as well as the thousands of non-accredited reporters.

The result is excessive commercialisation, according to many Brazilians who have complained about and protested the concessions that the Brazilian government made to FIFA as conditions for hosting the World Cup, including nearly 12 billion dollars in investment in stadiums, airports and urban infrastructure.

The hero of 1994, Romario, now a Socialist Party legislator, said in January that FIFA is “the real president of the country” until the Cup ends. Brazil has become the “slave” of an institution that is “100 percent corrupt,” he said on another occasion.

The suspicions grew in the last week, after the British press alleged that corrupt payments were made to Asian and African officials with influence in FIFA to secure the choice of Qatar as host of the 2022 tournament.

What sporting or market criteria would justify that choice? That question is hanging in the air as the world’s largest sporting event is in full stride.

A crowd outside the Fábrica de Arte, a cultural centre that is managed by singer X-Alfonso and self-financed through its ticket sales, although a large part of the initial investment came from Cuba’s Ministry of Sports. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
HAVANA, Apr 23 2014 (IPS)

Standing in line for a concert at the Centro Cultural Fábrica de Arte, a cultural centre in the Cuban capital, Alexis Cruz anxiously checks his billfold, where he has the price of the ticket – 50 Cuban pesos (two dollars) – and three CUCs (equivalent to one dollar each) to buy something to drink.

“I can rarely attend these things, because they cost one-quarter of my monthly salary of 450 pesos [19 dollars],” the 26-year-old lawyer tells IPS. “But all prices are this high or higher, and at least here I can hear good music.”

The shortage of attractive, affordable entertainment and cultural events is becoming a problem in Cuba, where 20 dollars is the average monthly salary paid by the state – which still employs about 80 percent of the workforce, despite efforts to pare down the government payroll.

As family budgets have shrunk in a crisis that has dragged on for over two decades, it is nearly impossible for most to afford the steep entrance price at the new discotheques and clubs that have begun to liven up Cuba’s nightlife since economic reforms began to be introduced in 2008, opening up more space for private enterprise.

Since then, differences in socioeconomic levels have become more pronounced.

While Havana’s emerging elite are entertained in the glamorous private bars of upscale neighbourhoods like Vedado, Miramar and Playa, there are few options for the rest of society.

Although Cuba has nearly 300 cinemas, 361 theatres, 267 museums and 118 art galleries where programming is financed by the state and ticket prices are subsidised, the installations are increasingly run-down, the quality is irregular, the schedules are inflexible and the publicity is inadequate.

“If I want to go out and dance at a nice place, I save up for a month or two, which I am able to do thanks to my mom, who brings in almost all of the income in our household from cooking sweets for a private cafeteria,” says Jorge Mario Rodríguez, 24, who lives in the poor suburb of El Palmar.

Like other young people, Rodríguez, who works as a bill collector for the state-run Empresa Eléctrica power company, likes reggaeton, pop and salsa. But he does not frequently go to concerts, the theatre or the movies.

“Those places are downtown, and transportation is really bad,” he says. “When there isn’t a party at some friend’s house, I try to stay home watching series or movies on DVDs.”

Besides the programming of the five government TV channels, there is an informal alternative network that offers the latest international series and movies.

The network includes shops where people can rent and copy movies, TV series and music, and stalls that sell pirate copies of albums – businesses that have been legal since 2010, when the government expanded the number of areas where private enterprise is allowed.

Very popular is what is known as “the package of the week”, which weighs one terabyte and includes the latest series, soap operas, movies, documentaries, cartoons, videoclips, reality shows, music, software, antivirus updates, language courses, magazines and many other things – all for 50 pesos (two dollars).

Every Tuesday, Laudelina Rodríguez’s living room is packed with people copying portions of the “package” onto USB drives. Paying between five and 20 Cuban pesos, customers take home up to eight gigabytes of widely varying content.

Rodríguez, an officially registered “cuentapropista” or self-employed worker, distributes some 600 gigabytes and three or four complete “packages” a week to her roughly 300 clients in the Cerro neighbourhood. She says 65 percent of her customers are under 30 years of age.

“Most in demand are the ‘narconovelas’ [soap operas about the world of drug trafficking] and Mexican ‘telenovelas’ [soap operas], followed by series from the United States and reality talent shows like ‘La Voz Kids’ and ‘Nuestra Belleza Latina’,” Rodríguez tells IPS.

“They also like Cuban films and comedy shows. But national programming is almost never included, maybe because no one wants to have copyright problems,” she says.

Intellectuals are scandalised by this kind of cultural consumption in Cuba, whose socialist government has tried for 50 years to build “the new man”, guided by values that differ from those of Western capitalism.

The Apr. 11-12 congress of the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists (UNEAC) called for efforts to combat the increasingly banal tastes of the population.

Havana’s International Book Fair is one of the most popular, and lucrative, cultural events in Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

“We have to analyse the ‘package’ so people will understand that they are being cheated,” writer Abel Prieto, a former culture minister, said at one of the televised sessions of the UNEAC congress.

In an interview in the online magazine OnCuba, Prieto, who is now a presidential adviser, acknowledged the state’s responsibility with respect to what he considered the deformation of popular tastes.

He added that the production of entertaining national cultural programming was urgently needed – content that could draw in young people but wasn’t “empty of meaning.”

Those meeting at the congress also called for an easing of longstanding tensions between art and the market, in this socialist country where mass access to culture has been subsidised for decades.

The economic reforms, which reached the world of culture in 2010, eliminated the subsidies, and now artists and institutions have to find ways to become self-financing.

In 2013, the budget for culture, art and sports was reduced by 172 million dollars with respect to the 2012 budget. And only one percent of public spending went to that sector, according to official statistics.

The UNEAC congress proposed evaluating non-state management of cultural projects, such as cooperatives.

But the government tends to react to independent initiatives by adopting restrictions, as illustrated by the closure of privately run film parlours on Nov. 2, on the argument that they had never been authorised.

Although they cost more than the state-run cinemas, in just over a year the film salons had become increasingly popular, offering a broader menu of options in suburban areas.

Ulises Aquino, director of the Ópera de la Calle, which brings together 120 artistes, tried to make the company self-financing with shows in his private restaurant El Cabildo. But the government closed down his restaurant in 2012 over alleged management irregularities.

“We covered our personal expenses and financed our artistic productions,” Aquino tells IPS. “But [the authorities] got scared when international media outlets said I had built an ‘empire’ by improving the living standards of our artistes.”

Without the restaurant, Ópera de la Calle now depends on the budget assigned by the National Council for Performing Arts, which does not cover reparations of equipment, or musical instruments or costumes, and does not cover the cost of lunches and community work.

“Subsidised creations and creators must continue to exist – not due to tradition or name, but because they truly contribute to the spiritual and cultural welfare of the nation,” wrote Elena Estévez in the interactive section of the IPS Cuba website.

Economist Tania García, an expert on culture, tells IPS that subsidising ticket prices to cultural events is an investment in human growth.

In the last five years, the arts accounted for between 4.3 and 4.7 percent of GDP. But to that must be added, according to García, the value of cultural exports as well as taxes on the personal incomes of artists.

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

By Diana Cariboni
MONTEVIDEO, Apr 18 2014 (IPS)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diana Cariboni is Co-Editor in Chief of IPS.

Literature has a role to play in our discussions about global warming impacts worldwide. Credit: Karoly Czifra/cc by 2.0

By Dan Bloom
TAIWAN, Apr 4 2014 (IPS)

When we read novels or short fiction in any language, we read to understand the story. We read to learn something new, and hopefully to get some kind of emotional uplift through the words on the page and the skills of the storyteller.

So how to tell the “story” of climate change and global warming?The more we embrace the science behind climate change at a cultural level, the more effectively we can join together to avert the worst.

A new literary genre dubbed “cli-fi” has been evolving over the past few years, and while its name is a takeoff on sci-fi, this new genre is focused on stories that relate to climate change and how it impacts human life now and in the future.

Some insist that cli-fi is a just subgenre of sci-fi, and that makes sense on one level. But in other ways, cli-fi is a genre of its own, and it’s gaining momentum around the world not merely as escapism or entertainment – although it often has those elements – but also as a serious way of addressing the myriad complex, universal issues surrounding climate change.

I know a little about cli-fi because I have been working for the past few years to popularise it, not only in the English-speaking world but also among the billions of people who read in Spanish, Chinese, German or French, to name but a few. Cli-fi, as I see it, is a genre that should be tackled by writers in any nation in any language. It’s an international genre with an international readership.

A growing number of cli-fi novels are targeting a youthful audience – what’s called the YA (young adult) category – such as Mindy McGinnis’ “Not a Drop to Drink,” “The Carbon Diaries 2015” by Saci Lloyd, and “Floodland” by Marcus Sedgewick. For indeed, it is children and teenagers who will suffer the consequences of previous generations’ lifestyle choices.

In a world facing potentially catastrophic impacts from climate change, this new literary genre is now becoming part of our communal storytelling culture, imparting new ideas and insights about the future humanity might face, not only in 10 years, but in 100 or 500 years as well.

This is where cli-fi comes in. It can play an important role in bringing the emotions and feelings of characters in a well-written story or novel to the awareness of readers worldwide. Imagine a cli-fi novel that not only reached thousands of readers, but also touched them, and perhaps motivated them to become a louder voice in the raging international policy debate over carbon emissions.

That’s the potential of cli-fi.

One U.S. university is now offering a literature course on cli-fi novels and movies for graduate students working on degrees in environmental studies and literature. For Stephanie LeMenager, who is leading the class at the University of Oregon this year, the course gives her and her students a chance to explore the power of literature and film as writers and directors grapple with some of the difficult issues facing humankind as the 21st century unfolds.

LeMenager’s class is called “The Cultures of Climate Change.” It’s the first in North America, even the world, to focus on the arts and climate change this way. And I am sure that other universities around the world will follow this pioneering effort by adding new courses on climate fiction for their students as well.

Nathaniel Rich is a 34-year-old author who wrote the widely acclaimed novel “Odds Against Tomorrow,” a story set in near-future Manhattan which delves into the “mathematics of catastrophe”. A resident of New Orleans, he believes that more books like his will be published – not just in English, and not just from the perspective of Western writers in wealthy nations.

Writers from around the world also need to be encouraged to dip their toes into the cli-fi genre and use the literature of their own cultures to try to wake people up about the future that might await us all on a slowly-warming planet with no end in sight.

The plots can be scary, but cli-fi novels offer a chance to explore these issues with emotion and prose. Books matter. Literature has a role to play in our discussions about global warming impacts worldwide.

You might say that the climate-change canon dates back as far as a novel titled ”The Drowned World’. written in 1962 by British writer JG Ballard. Another early book about climate change was written in 1987 by Australian George Turner, titled “The Sea and Summer.”

Barbara Kingsolver, a U.S. novelist, published a very powerful cli-fi novel a few years ago titled “Flight Behavior.” It made a big impression on me when I read it last summer, and I recommend to readers here, too.

Canadian Mary Woodbury has created the webzine Cli-Fi Books that lists cli-fi novels past and present.

How do I see the future? I envision a world where humans cling to hope and optimism. I am an optimist. And I believe that the more we embrace the science behind climate change at a cultural level, the more effectively we can join together to avert the worst.

Dan Bloom is a freelance writer from Boston based in Taiwan. A 1971 graduate of Tufts University where he majored in French literature, he has been working as a climate activist and a literary activist since 2006. He can be found on Twitter @polarcityman

The village of Hampi located in India’s southern state of Karnataka has long been an attraction for tourists from all over the world.

Visitors at the Virupaksha Temple in Hampi. Credit: Arian Zwegers/cc by 2.0

Modern-day Hampi is now home to the ruins of what was the last capital of the Vijayanagar kingdom.

The Group of Monuments in Hampi has been declared a World Heritage site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO). But a recent road-widening project carried out by the state’s Public Works Department (PWD) in Hampi has drawn flak from UNESCO, activists and experts from all over the world.

The Hampi World Heritage Area Management Authority (HWHAMA), which is in charge of protecting the site, has sought an explanation from the PWD, according to various media reports.

Built by a local king in 1860, Dadapeer Chatra, the 153-year-old structure that served as a resting place for visitors was bulldozed by the PWD to widen a road.

And, in spite of it being a World Heritage structure, UNESCO was not informed before the construction work began.

According to the operational guidelines for the implementation of the World Heritage Convention, the country has to notify UNESCO of any project that it wishes to undertake that might have an impact on the outstanding universal value of the World Heritage site concerned, Kishore Rao, director of the World Heritage Centre at UNESCO, told IPS.

And in Hampi’s case, “No permission was granted by UNESCO for this project and we have also learnt about the destruction of the building from news reports,” Rao said.

UNESCO has now taken up the matter with the Indian authorities to seek details of the incident and the action that they propose to take in this regard, Rao added. There are no penalties involved if the guidelines are violated as the World Heritage system is one of international cooperation, he told IPS.

When the threats are very serious or recommended measures are not implemented, the World Heritage Committee adds the site to the World Heritage Danger List, with a view to draw greater international attention to the threats and mobilise a greater level of support, Rao added.

But this approach is “certainly ineffective”, said John Fritz, co-director of the Vijayanagara Research Project.

“It is bureaucracy to bureaucracy,” Fritz told IPS, adding that UNESCO did not lodge any objections when heritage buildings in Hampi were tampered with earlier.

On the current construction work in the area, Fritz said there is a lack of will and effort to protect the history of the place. “They could have widened the structure and worked in a manner to avoid tearing down a heritage structure to widen a road,” he added.

Abha Narain Lamba, a conservation architect from India, believes that in an area like Hampi, “road-widening to my mind is rather unnecessary”.

Road-widening projects in historic areas of the neighbouring city of Hyderabad have already resulted in many historic facades being lost forever, she added. “ I wonder what road-widening can achieve in Hampi, given it is not a metropolitan area prone to traffic jams,” Lamba told IPS.

However, Vikas Dilawari, another conservation architect in India, believes that Hampi is just a case in point. “The concept of cultural investment is not known in our country as there are no immediate tangible benefits seen,” Dilawari said.

The problem is amplified by the lack of government support and failure on the part of the central government, the state government and the local bodies to arrive at a consensus when it comes to protecting heritage structures, he added.

Kathleen D. Morrison, director of the South Asia Language and Area Centre, University of Chicago, seconds that. There is a distressing lack of communication between departments and agencies when it comes to managing India’s cultural heritage, she said.

“This incident also points to the need for better education about and pride in India’s rich cultural heritage,” Morrison said.

In India, there are centrally protected monuments and those protected by state governments. But in case of Hampi, there are various parties involved who are responsible for taking care of the monuments.

The Archaeological Survey of India under the Ministry of Culture looks after the centrally protected monuments at Hampi, while the State Department of Archaeology takes care of its listed monuments, said Himanshu Prabha Ray, chairperson of National Monuments Authority (NMA) in India.

At Hampi, where monuments are found over a very large area and belong to several different periods of history, a local authority has also been constituted for the protection of monuments and a management plan has been worked out, Ray added.

While sustainable development and preservation of history continue to be a challenge in this day and age, the problem when it comes to protecting heritage structures is further compounded by the widespread belief among opinion leaders that money spent on protection of heritage is a drain on resources and that the same expenditure could be better utilised for development projects, experts say.

In the long run, the apathy towards Hampi might make it difficult for the 33 other properties in India that that are seeking World Heritage status from UNESCO, said Dan Thomspon, director of the Global Projects and Global Heritage Network (GHN).

And when it comes to protecting Hampi’s heritage, there are currently 44 sites all over the world that are on the List of World Heritage in danger. Hampi might soon be simply the most recent addition to it.

By Lydia Lim
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 12 2013 (IPS)

Apart from being an actress, film producer and writer, Geena Davis is a leading advocate of equal gender portrayal in the entertainment media.

Courtesy of Geena Davis

In 2007, Davis launched the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, which has sponsored the largest research project to date on gender in children’s entertainment. Now, the Geena Davis Institute has partnered with UN Women, with support from the Rockefeller Foundation, to undertake its first-ever global study to analyse the depiction of female characters in family films.

Davis believes that the media industry remains discriminatory in its portrayal of women simply because these stereotypes have remained the status quo for a very long time. After playing a power role as the first female U.S. president in “Commander in Chief” and seeing enthusiastic public reactions to the TV series, Davis is convinced that media’s limited portrayal of women can and must change.

IPS correspondent Lydia Lim spoke to Davis about the gender disparity in media images, as well as the entertainment media’s potential to better depict women’s empowerment.

Q: Women and girls are often depicted negatively on-screen due to gender stereotypes in the media. We’re now in the 21^st century: why is the media industry so behind on portraying gender equality?

A: My non-profit has looked at television and family films made in the United States, covering a 20-year span, and unfortunately, the percentage of female characters only went up 0.7 percent during those 20 years. That would mean we’d achieve [gender] parity in around 700 years.

So clearly, we need to become very proactive about improving the quantity and quality of female characters, especially in what children see. I had assumed that in the 21^st century, surely we were showing kids boys and girls sharing the sandbox equally.

My theory is that since the ratio of male to female characters has been exactly the same since 1946, pretty much everyone was raised seeing fictitious worlds with far fewer female characters than male characters, so much that it started to look normal. I think that’s probably why universally, people seem not to notice that there are far fewer female characters unless you point it out.

Q: What kind of effect does this negative depiction of women on-screen have on young girls?

A: We’re training children to see girls and women as not taking up half the space in the world, if this is the image that is reflected to them. And also, with the limited and negative portrayals of the female characters that are there, we’re teaching them that women and girls are not as important as men and boys.

They don’t do the important things; they don’t hold the important jobs; and very often, they’re not integral to the plot. We also found that the function of a female character in a film or a children’s television show is to serve as eye-candy, rather than having an occupation or aspiration.

Q: Does this gender disparity have to do with few women holding positions of power behind the scenes, such as in the roles of directors and screenwriters?

A: Definitely. Currently, female directors are at about seven percent, writers at about 13 percent and producers, 20 percent – which are all very low numbers. And we know from our research that if there’s a woman director, producer or writer, the percentage of female characters on screen goes up. So another way we can attack the problem is to increase the number of women behind the camera as well.

Q: In “Commander in Chief” (a U.S. television series in 2005), you portrayed the first female president of the United States. Were you satisfied that your character depicted women’s empowerment?

A: I was thrilled to do it. My first thought when I was offered the job was, what could be more iconic than that? And I had already been fortunate to play some parts that really resonated with women, so I relished the opportunity.

Unfortunately, my administration was very short – we only had one season of the show – but a group called Kaplan Thaler did a study after the show was on the air and found that people were 68 percent more likely to say they’d vote for a female candidate for president if they were familiar with the show.

Just by seeing my character behind the desk 19 times, it was enough to profoundly change a lot of people’s minds about the possibility of a female president.

Q: Are you confident that this global study under the partnership with UN Women will change the way people around the world perceive women?

A: I’m very excited about this first-ever global study of the depictions of female characters around the world. [By examining] the 10 top box-office grossing countries, we’ll look at character representations, what role they’re playing, and their physical depictions.

And we’re able to do this broad-reaching study because of the participation of UN Women and the Rockefeller Foundation. We think it will be very impactful, and I think this will be very valuable information for everyone and also critical to any NGOs conducting global programmes because of the profound influence media images and messages have on civic, cultural beliefs and behaviours.

Excerpt:

Even as Istanbul residents celebrated the reopening of Gezi Park, the small green space in the centre of this city that sparked anti-government protests throughout Turkey last month, another demolition and another demonstration were busy getting underway.

This time, gardens inside Istanbul’s old city walls that date back to the sixth century are the target. But will Gezi Park provide a lesson to shape both officials’ and protesters’ response?"The authorities are destroying the city's cultural heritage." -- Italian archeologist Alessandra Ricci

After being closed by authorities for weeks, the park, fresh with new flowers, was briefly reopened to the public on Jul. 8. An Istanbul court ruled in June that a government-proposed renovation of Gezi did not serve the public good, though an appeal is expected.

But the park did not stay open for long. After three hours, police shut it down again ahead of an evening demonstration by the Taksim Solidarity Platform, the umbrella protest group that formerly occupied the park.

Hundreds of anti-government protesters tried to reach the site and adjoining Taksim Square, but were foiled by riot police who blocked Taksim off from all sides and used tear gas to scatter protesters into side streets.

Ordinary citizens trying to walk home from work were dispersed along with them. Often frazzled, they consulted among each other, trying to find routes home that avoided Taksim and the police. At least one elderly lady was nearly in tears as she was helped into a taxi.

But neither the protesters nor the police, who feel they have the government’s backing, appear willing to give up, making tear gas and panic the new normal for this Istanbul neighbourhood.

That resolution already appears to be having some effect on a far smaller, though no less determined, group. On the morning of Jul. 8, about 50 protesters gathered to defend the Yedikule gardens, a sprawling area of vegetable plots alongside the city’s Byzantine-era walls, which are a UNESCO-protected site.

The local Fatih Municipality, which owns the gardens, plans to build a park over at least four of the approximately 10 plots inside the walls. The extent of the project, which was approved on Jul. 5, is not clear.

Critics claim that the gardens’ demolition, coming on the heels of the Gezi Park protests, are another example of the primacy of government construction schemes over all other considerations.

“When you do something like this, it’s like cutting [down] the trees in Gezi Park. It’s the same concept,” said Alessandra Ricci, an Italian archeologist who studied the site and criticised UNESCO for not speaking out about the gardens’ destruction. “The authorities are destroying the city’s cultural heritage.”

“Overall, the municipality are project-oriented people, but they don’t really care about what is lost,” agreed Gunhan Borekci, an assistant professor of history at Istanbul’s Sehir University who attended the Yedikule demonstration. At least one garden was already partially covered in dirt.

The construction sector is a key part of Turkey’s economic growth and also helps expand its regional influence. Turkish construction companies operate in some 100 countries worldwide, building everything from white-marble buildings in Ashgabat, the Turkmen capital, to airports in multiple Balkan capitals.

At home, Istanbul, the country’s most famous city, is witnessing the bulk of the construction.

Bahçeşehir University political scientist Cengiz Aktar believes that the Turkish government has not yet been able to strike the right balance between new construction, renovation and preserving the city’s past.

Instead, emphasis is given to short-term profits, Acktar charged. “There is not a city plan. There is no urban planning. Every single space that exists is good for building [in the eyes of the government],” he said. “It’s an appetite for quick money.”

However, at the same time, policymakers believe they are making Istanbul a better place, Aktar said. “They have a very particular understanding of urban modernity. They are imitating what was done probably 100 years ago in the United States . . . This is an understanding which is completely outdated.”

Mustafa Demir, the mayor of Fatih municipality, gave the impression of an official who truly believed in his renovation project when he met those protesting the destruction of the Yedikule gardens. Amidst an argument among local residents over the project, he arrived with an entourage holding placards that show an artificial river and green spaces in place of the gardens.

Residents that supported the renovation believe the makeover will increase security and property valuations in the impoverished neighbourhood. Dissenters fear for their incomes, which come from selling vegetables raised in the gardens. When an argument and small scuffle broke out, the protesters walked off.

The crowd gradually dissipated as an old municipality bus full of police drove through a dusty lot toward the garden. One resident repeated the name of the area several times, and then shrugged his shoulders in a gesture of futility.

Caroline Finkel, an Istanbul-based Ottoman-historian, said that Byzantine records showed the gardens dated back to the sixth century and should be preserved not only for their historic value, but also because they provide local livelihoods.

“[The municipality] is throwing people off their land in a very cruel way without providing for them…” she fumed. At least one garden tenant already has paid rent for the year.

Whether or not the municipality will consider compensation for affected residents is not known. Representatives of Fatih Municipality could not be reached for comment.

Such projects have been underway for years, political scientist Aktar noted, but the Gezi Park movement has changed how the public perceives these “gentrification” initiatives.

“The awareness triggered by Gezi certainly helped a consciousness about the potential destructiveness of these huge construction and building projects,” he said.

*Editor’s note: Justin Vela is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org

The global economic crisis has not hit Serbia for the first time, but this year it has bitten into Serbian culture. State subsidies for theatres, festivals, films and exhibitions have almost hit the bottom. State support for films is down to zero.

The Belgrade Philharmonic Orchestra has under the circumstances made an unprecedented move. Since last month it has been organising donation concerts and dinners in an aim to collect the 1.5 million dollars it needs for a planned first tour of the United States next year.

“The result was spectacular,” director of the philharmonic Ivan Tasovac told IPS in an interview. “We collected 599,860 dollars from major Serbian private companies, international companies with offices here, hundreds of friends abroad and at home, foreign diplomats, as well as ordinary people – students, pensioners. No matter how big or small the sums, they are all so worthy for us.”

The national 11.4-billion-dollar budget provisioned only 0.62 percent this year for some 10,650 institutions of culture.

Culture has traditionally been co-financed by many sponsors such as public enterprises, large companies, big businesses and individual investors. But such investments have been declining over the past few years.

The Belgrade Philharmonic faced cuts in state funds in its 90th year of existence. The ensemble includes 98 musicians, with an average age of 35.

“We then ‘found’ a dusty book on the shelf called ‘Serbian philanthropy’ and used it,” Tasovac said, referring to an old tradition of donations.

A concert on Jun. 7 was conducted by the celebrated Zubin Mehta (77). The Belgrade Philharmonic was one of the first Mehta played with, back in 1956. Mehta helped the philharmonic establish a foundation in the U.S. that will co-finance the tour in 2014, with support also from contributors outside the Balkans.

The concert and another that followed a week later were followed by donors’ dinners in a posh Belgrade restaurant, at 325 dollars a guest. Guests were also invited to make further donations.

“This is the first time in the region that anyone has taken to this form of financing,” Tasovac said. “Most of serious institutions of culture all over the Balkans are in the same situation as we are. We hope we can inspire them to do the same.”

The Serbian Ministry of Culture has faced harsh criticism for weeks now, after it announced its final budgetary allocations.

All funding was withdrawn for the Nishville international jazz festival in the southern Serbian town Nis. The festival has hosted some of the most famous jazz artists for years. The October Salon of Painting dating from early 1960s also failed to get any funding. The international Belgrade theatre festival Bitef saw its funds sliced to half.

“We’ll see theatres closing down, as we saw cinemas die, we’ll have exhibitions in the dark, our museums are on the road to death,” theatre director Milica Kralj told IPS. “We must ask ourselves what our country will look like for our children tomorrow.”

October Salon manager Mia David objected to the criterion the Ministry of Culture adopted for cuts. “Modern creativity is not a priority in Serbia,” she said. “My guess is that the so-called ‘patriotic projects’ have eaten the funds.”

Expensive projects are under way to mark a thousand years of the historic Edict of Milan, when Roman Emperor Constantine I endorsed Christianity as the official religion of the state. The emperor was born in Naissus, today’s city of Nis in Serbia.

“We are a poor country, but we’ll become a country without culture if things continue like this,” film critic Milan Vlajcic told IPS. “Our ministers – except for a handful of them – are completely uncivilised people and go to theatres only if the TV cameras will catch them. Culture means nothing to them.”

Increasing U.S.-Iran cultural exchanges could lay the groundwork for better relations between the two countries, believes a prominent think tank here, despite the prevalence of stereotypical memes of the United States as the “Great Satan” and Iran as part of the “Axis of Evil”.

According to an issue brief released today by the Washington-based Atlantic Council, the United States should reach out to Iran’s people through a variety of cultural exchanges, even as the Jun. 14 election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s next president may present an opportunity for the United States and Iran to mend their decades-long cold war.

Experts suggest that cultural exchanges could help improve U.S.-Iranian relations. Above, members of Kiosk, one of Iran’s underground rock bands. Credit: Credit: Shoja Lak/IPS

“Cultural and academic exchanges between the U.S. and Iran are a low-cost, high-yield investment in a future normal relationship between the two countries,” said the brief, authored by the council’s bipartisan Iran Task Force.

Recommendations from the task force, comprised of an array of U.S. national security experts, included creating a non- or quasi-official working group “comprised of bilateral representatives from academia, the arts, athletics, the professions, and science and technology” and an U.S. Interests Section in Tehran.

“When it comes to countries that have no diplomatic channels like the U.S. and Iran, people-to-people diplomacy is the only route available to us,” Reza Aslan, an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told IPS.

Scepticism towards cultural diplomacy

Major roadblocks stand in the way of the kind of diplomacy that led to improved U.S.-Soviet relations during the Cold War.

“Yes, cultural diplomacy is good and has been tried before with decent results during the Khatami presidency,” Farideh Farhi, an independent scholar at the University of Hawaii, told IPS.

“But note that the context was different. The United States had not yet fully embarked on its ferocious sanctions regime which makes cultural exchanges quite difficult and reliant on the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control granting exceptions to literally every exchange,” she said."People-to-people diplomacy is the only route available to us.”
-- Reza Aslan

The council conceded that conducting U.S.-Iran exchange programs between nations without bilateral diplomatic channels is “challenging”.

It also stressed that “selling such programming as a means to drive a wedge between the Iranian government and people makes any successful execution problematic”.

But the “goodwill of the Iranian people is ultimately the biggest U.S. asset in changing the direction of the Islamic Republic” and “maintaining active people-to-people linkages during periods of strained bilateral relations has many benefits for U.S. national security, particularly over the long term”, according to the brief.

Addressing animosity

Even so, decades of mutual mistrust between U.S. and Iranian governments, fuelled by what both consider consistent acts of hostility from the other side, has also filtered into the media of both nations.

“The media in Iran is obviously state media which just espouses the propaganda of regime and that’s not going to change,” Aslan told IPS.

“On the U.S. side, the media is a commercial enterprise…As with any soap opera, the only thing the media cares about is eyeballs, which are attracted by sex, violence, fear and terror, and right now, the biggest boogie man is Iran and nothing change is going to change that,” he said.

“While public diplomacy is absolutely vital and really the only outlet we have, the question of whether it’s going to change the larger media perception in the two countries of each other remains a complex one,” said Aslan.

In his first press conference as Iran’s president-elect, the reformist-backed Rouhani appeared as a stark contrast to Iran’s current controversial president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

“Our main policy will be to have constructive interaction with the world,” Rouhani, Iran’s nuclear negotiator during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami, during a televised broadcast on Jun. 17.

“We will not pursue adding to tensions. It would be wise for the two nations and countries to think more of the future. They should find a solution to the past issues and resolve them,” said Rouhani said regarding future U.S.-Iran relations.

Rouhani, who served on Iran’s Supreme National Security Council for 16 years and is known as the “diplomatic sheik”, has elicited much commentary in the United States about his possible impact on Iran’s nuclear negotiating stance.

How his new position will affect Iran’s interactions on the world stage, including its controversial nuclear program and its backing of the Assad regime in Syria, remains to be seen.

On Jul. 1, tough new sanctions to which President Barak Obama has already committed will also take effect. Among other provisions, they will penalise companies that deal in Iran’s currency or with Iran’s automotive sector.

The Republican-led House is expected to pass legislation by the end of next month (on the eve of Rouhani’s inauguration) that would sharply curb or eliminate the president’s authority to waive sanctions on countries and companies doing any business with Iran, thus imposing a virtual trade embargo on Iran.

Other sanctions measures, including an expected effort by Republican Senator Lindsay Graham to get an Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) resolution passed by the Senate after the August recess, are lined up.

“Unless there is a change in the overall frame of Washington’s approach to Iran, cultural exchanges will be perceived with suspicion in Tehran and effectively undercut by powerful supporters of the sanctions regime in Washington,” Farhi told IPS.

By Silvia Romanelli
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2013 (IPS)

Women around the world are exposed to domestic violence, sexual and economic exploitation, gender-based violence, female genital mutilation and child marriage. For indigenous women and girls, however, the risk of being victims of such issues is especially high.

In light of this fact, the Philippines-based Tebtebba Foundation advocates for indigenous peoples’ rights, working to ensure that the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) is properly implemented.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director of the Tebtebba Foundation for indigenous rights. Photo credit of Victoria Taul-Corpuz.

In an interview with IPS, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, executive director of the Tebtebba Foundation and chair of the Asia Indigenous Women’s Network, discussed how indigenous women and girls can confront discriminatory practises and how the international community can support them in doing so.

Tauli-Corpuz also worked as lead consultant on the report “Breaking the Silence on Violence Against Indigenous Girls, Adolescents and Young Women“, a joint effort of different U.N. agencies aiming at addressing “the ‘statistical silence’ around violence against indigenous girls and women”.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: In some cultures, women’s submission to men and acts of violence against women and girls are seen as part of the cultural tradition. How can this idea be addressed?

A: Violence against women and girls is a violation of human rights and should not be tolerated in any way, even through qualifying it as “part of local tradition” or as something “cultural”.

Violence is experienced by individual women, although there are situations which make women that belong to a particular group, such as an indigenous people, who are at higher risk of suffering from violence because of historical and current situations of colonisation, domination, racism and discrimination.

If there are cultural practises that promote violence against indigenous women and girls, these should be severely criticised and changed."If there are cultural practises that promote violence against indigenous women and girls, these should be severely criticised and changed."
-- Victoria Tauli-Corpuz

Q: How can effective measures against violence be implemented in indigenous groups in which the internal hierarchy of family and social obligations are particularly important?

A: Measures to address violence against indigenous women and girls can be effectively implemented if state agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) take certain steps.

They can help strengthen indigenous women’s organisations to address this issue, document and monitor this phenomenon, and help local governments to implement gender and culturally sensitive ways of handling this issue and to develop programs with budgets.

They can also help raise awareness among indigenous peoples (traditional authorities, indigenous organisations, including women’s organisations) of women and children’s rights and of violence against women and girls.

Q: Colonialism has led some indigenous peoples to internalise racism and indigenous women to accept violence. Could you discuss the relationship between colonialism and violence against indigenous women?

A: Colonialism, which is linked with patriarchy, has deprived indigenous women of their basic human rights to own and control their own lands, territories and resources. It has perpetuated racism and discrimination against indigenous women to the point where some of them deny their indigenous identities and try to emulate the colonisers’ ways.

This is just one way women internalise their oppression, which makes them highly vulnerable to trafficking and prostitution.

Alcoholism and drug dependence have also been used by colonisers to dehumanise indigenous men, and colonial patriarchy has reinforced or promoted machismo among the men. These are factors that lead to violence against indigenous women and girls.

Colonisers’ efforts to extract minerals, oil and gas from indigenous territories also led them to build enclaves where male workers live and prostituted women are brought in.

Q: Sometimes the state exacerbates factors that lead to violence against women and girls and can even perpetrate some forms of violence itself, such as with discriminatory policies or culturally insensitive education and health services. In these cases, what can bodies of the United Nations do?

A: The United Nations can help facilitate possibilities and opportunities for indigenous women to use U.N. treaty bodies, like the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) or the Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), or the Human Rights Committee, to file complaints against discriminatory policies and programmes of states.

The special representative of the secretary-general on violence against women and children can also visit countries where cases of violence against indigenous women and girls are reported.

U.N. agencies and funds like the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), U.N. Women and United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), should allot more technical and financial assistance to address this issue at the country, regional and global levels.

Q: The U.N. report “Breaking the Silence” is based on the assumption that violence against indigenous girls and women should be addressed as a specific problem, within but distinct from the phenomenon of violence against women in general. Does this approach risk putting a label on these women? How can it help tackle the problem?

A: Asking that violence against indigenous women and girls be addressed as a specific problem is just stating the fact that if there are few services to address this issue for women and girls in general, this is even more so for indigenous women and girls. It does not risk labelling them. It is just naming the problem so that this can be addressed more appropriately, adequately and effectively.

It is also to clarify that indigenous women generally do not agree that culture or tradition should be used to justify the violence they suffer from and to highlight that the people who are most effective in dealing with this issue are indigenous women and girls who are empowered to assert their rights as women and as indigenous persons.

Excerpt:

By Rural Women Peace Link
Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

Some girls among the Pokot community in western Kenya are bravely defying what is considered cultural and traditional by refusing to be circumcised. More and more mothers, fathers and the women whose job is to do the cutting are beginning to support these girls’ right to bodily integrity.

Girls Take Charge in the Fight to End Female Genital Mutilation

Native American youth working for change. Top, from left to right: Joaquin Gallegos, Vance Home Gun and Dahkota Brown. Bottom, left to right: Sarah Schilling and Cierra Fields. Credit: Center for Native American Youth and Vincent Schilling

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
UNITED NATIONS, May 31 2013 (IPS)

It’s Sarah Schilling’s usual manner of greeting when she meets other members of her tribe: “Aanii Sarah Schilling n’diznakaas, which translates to ‘Hello, Sarah is my name’ in English,” she said.

“The language is called Anishnaabemowin, the Odawa native language,” Schilling explained.

She belongs to Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, a Native American tribe. It was in 2009 that she and her peers decided to come up with the tribe’s first youth council.

And it’s no child’s play. Schilling and other members of the council created their own constitution, bylaws and code of conduct. Schilling organises conferences and retreats to address issues that teenagers like her are grappling with, such as drinking and suicide prevention.

“I guess young people from the tribe are confused as to what their role is as Native Americans,” Schilling told IPS.

While she acknowledges that straddling two worlds can be a challenge, she also thinks that the U.S. educational system often depicts Native Americans as “aggressive and bad guys”.

There’s more to Native Americans than beads and feathers, but in an urban setting Native teens have a hard time fitting in, said Schilling, who chose home schooling over public school after sixth grade.

She is one of the “2013 class of Champions for Change”, a new programme run by the Center for Native American Youth, a non-profit organisation in Washington.

Native Americans make up about one and a half percent of the total U.S. population, but 12 percent of the homeless population, said Erin Bailey, the centre’s director.

“Through this programme we wanted to create a narrative about what was really working within the community, and share inspirational stories that are impacting people’s lives,” Bailey said.

The programme honoured five young Native Americans for their services to the community. From healthcare to education, these “champions” range from 14 to 22 years old.

Like Schilling, Cierra Fields is a “champion”. A brave heart, who conquered cancer when she was barely five years old, Fields says she “was actually born with melanoma”.

Fields, who is 14, belongs to the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma. Through her personal story, she encourages people to talk about cancer. She also shares tips on preventing cancer.

For the audience, Fields’ story is a huge wake-up call.

“Some of the young people are shocked when I tell them that I had melanoma,” Fields said. “When I share my story they realise that one could get melanoma even when they are really young.”

Fields is also part of the Cherokee Nation Youth Choir and can speak conversational Cherokee.

While Fields tries to spread awareness about cancer, 19-year-old Vance Home Gun from Arlee, Montana tries to spread awareness about the Salish language, which he says is dying.

Gun belongs to the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes. Every Sunday for four hours, Gun teaches the Salish language to a motley group of students interested in learning it.

Gun also helps make Salish language curriculum available in public schools.

He believes that language is more than a mere medium of communication but an integral part of culture.

“Salish is spoken by 40 to 50 people. Therefore, it is very important to keep our culture alive through our language,” said Gun, who intends to major in linguistics and anthropology in college.

Some of these “champions” have already charted out their career path in their heads.

For 14-year-old Dahkota Brown from Jackson, California, aspirations extend beyond going to a law school. “I want to be a tribal judge, possibly the first United States Supreme Court judge who is a Native American,” said Brown, who belongs to the Wilton Miwok tribe.

Brown started a study group called Native Education Raising Dedicated Students (NERDS). NERD helps Native American students with their grades in schools. Browns’ aim is to “instill confidence” among students who approach the group for help.

A magazine article on high suicide and dropout rates among Native American youth triggered the idea to come up with a project to help such students, Brown said. “Also, I noticed that Native American students around me weren’t doing well in school,” Brown said.

The reasons could be many, but “Bullying and criticism could kill their self-confidence,” he said.

Brown himself has been a victim of bullying. He was teased as “a girl” for his long hair.

“There is a custom in my family according to which I cannot cut my hair until someone in my family dies. Other students did not understand this when I tried to explain,” he said.

His peers also did not approve of his dress. “I love wearing feathers on my hat and Native American shirts. Therefore I stood out because of my traditional regalia and people would make fun of me,” Brown said.

But that did not stop him from identifying himself as a Native American or emerging as one of the winners in the “champions for change” programme, thus adding another feather in his cap.

But some are quick to point out the United States’ government’s failure to address Indigenous issues.

Joaquin Gallegos from Denver, Colorado doesn’t mince words. The United States has not done justice to internationally recognised treaties it has made with these Indigenous sovereign Nations, he said.

“Since the U.S. has not fulfilled these obligations, negative outcomes are seen in virtually all sectors of these populations including education, economic conditions, and health status,” said Gallegos, who belongs to the Jicarilla Apache Nation and Pueblo of Santa Ana. “This is the legal and political reasoning behind the conditions present in the U.S. indigenous population.”

One of the “champions” awarded for his work, Gallegos is part of a project that aims at improving the oral health status of Indian Tribes in the Southwest United States.

This 22-year-old also wants to work toward providing Native Americans with improved healthcare facilities.

By Sudeshna Chowdhury
NEW YORK, May 24 2013 (IPS)

Say “Africa” and myriad images flood our minds. Like its landscape and peoples, the continent’s history is rich and diverse. While numerous books have been written and films made on the African slave trade in the West, a lesser-known aspect of the continent’s history lies in India.

Courtesy of Sylviane Diouf.

On the occasion of Africa Day and the Asian-Pacific American heritage month of May, IPS correspondent Sudeshna Chowdhury interviewed Sylviane A. Diouf, a renowned historian who studies the African diaspora, about the presence of Africans in India and the rest of Asia.

Diouf is also one of the curators of an exhibition called “Africans In India: From Slaves to Generals and Rulers” which is on display at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York City.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How different is the story of Asian Africans from the African diaspora in the rest of the world, such as in America or Europe?

A: Not all Africans arrived in Asia as slaves. Some were traders, artisans, and religious leaders. India had an abundance of local slaves to perform hard labour, so the Africans and foreign slaves were mostly employed in specialised jobs as domestics in wealthy households, in the royal courts, and in the armed forces.

Africans were regarded as exceptional warriors and they fought in armies all over India, alongside Arabs, Turks, Indians and Afghans. They could rise through the ranks and become “elite slaves”, amassing wealth and power and even becoming rulers in their own right.

Elite slavery was often a frontier phenomenon, often found in areas that underwent instability due to struggles between factions and where hereditary authority was weak. Rulers considered Africans reliable because they were outsiders with no family, clan or caste connections to the indigenous populations, so they promoted them as court officials, administrators, and army commanders."Elite slaves were frequently at the centre of court disputes and sometimes seized power for themselves." -- Sylviane A. Diouf

These elite slaves were frequently at the centre of court disputes and sometimes seized power for themselves. Slave soldiers, guards, and bodyguards were routinely freed after a few years of service, often married local women, and were integrated into the larger society.

Q: Why do you think Africans were able to distinguish themselves so easily in countries like India, unlike say in Western countries? Is there a greater story of assimilation here that made it possible for Africans to rise from slaves to generals and then rulers?

A: Due to Islamic laws, enslaved Africans tended to have much greater social mobility than West Africans did in the Americas. One distinctive trait of slavery in the Islamic world was that, contrary to what happened in the West, bondage and “race” were not linked. Instead, factors such as religion, ethnicity, and caste were often more influential than colour.

The Africans’ success in India was theirs but it is also a strong testimony to the open-mindedness of a society in which they were a small religious and ethnic minority, originally of low status. As foreigners and Muslims, Africans ruled over indigenous Hindu, Muslim and Jewish populations. It would have been unthinkable in the West.

Today, in a country of 1.2 billion people, there are about 50,000 to 70,000 African descendants. It is thus not surprising that most Indians have never heard of them. Many people know of the famous 16th century Malik Ambar, a former Ethiopian slave who became a prime minister and regent and was a bitter foe of the Moghuls, but some are not aware he was African.

Our exhibition will travel to India and this will help put the Africans’ place in India history in more people’s consciousness.

Q: What is the current state of these Africans in India? In most cases, why do you think they continue to live in poverty?

A: A majority of Sidis (Africans in India are called Sidis) live in poverty or are part of the working class: drivers, domestics, security guards, etc. Others are farmers and some belong to the middle class. According to their own organisations, the lack of education and of strong leadership is an impediment.

Some Sidis are recognised as “scheduled tribes” and benefit from affirmative action programmes, but others are denied the status or are not given the opportunity to make use of it.

Q: Any interesting observations during your visit to India? Was the African community in India aware of their roots and identity? Did they care?

A: It’s a diverse community. Some people are aware and do care, others are not and perhaps would not care. The people I met were very conscious of their identity as descendants of Africans and as Muslims. They were also very conscious of being Indians.

For the past several years, Western and Indian scholars have been doing research on the communities for books, photographs, articles, exhibitions, and documentaries and that has led some Sidis to learn about and value their own past and history.

Q: Do you see the image of Africa changing in today’s world? Has it managed to move beyond its stereotypical image of poverty, hunger and deprivation?

A: I think the image has already changed positively in some circles: the arts world, among younger generations, for instance, thanks to the extraordinary crop of writers, painters, musicians, designers, architects, and other artists who are producing wonderful work.

Excerpt:

South Africa is a country rich in culture and diversity but its Africa Day awareness seems to be lagging behind.

By Siphosethu Stuurman
May 22 2013 (IPS)

As the continent prepares to celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) on Africa Day, 25^th of May, IPS Africa speaks to ordinary South Africans to hear how they plan to celebrate this important day.

However the responses we received were rather disappointing.

Africa Day is an annual commemoration of the historic 1963 meeting of leaders of 32 independent African states to form the OAU, now simply known as African Union (AU).

[podcast]http://traffic.libsyn.com/ipsaudio/SA_Africa_Day_Awareness_Lagging_Behind.mp3[/podcast]

A Venezuelan movie about a young deaf woman who is sexually abused by her stepfather, “Brecha en el silencio” (Breach in the Silence), took top prize at the second Colombia-Venezuela film festival.

Twelve feature-length and 10 short films were screened at the May 13-16 festival, held in the border cities of Cúcuta in northeastern Colombia and San Cristóbal in western Venezuela.

The festival is aimed at promoting each nation’s films in the neighbouring country, especially in border areas, and at getting nationally-made films to focus more on Latin American audiences and matters of interest to them.

The binational jury gave first prize to the film by brothers Luis and Andrés Rodríguez because it was “the best film presented, area by area, due to…the original approach to the subject, the screenplay, and the noteworthy acting,” one of the jury members, Venezuelan filmmaker Rodolfo Cova, told IPS.

In the first edition of the festival held in 2012 in this border area crossed by the Andes mountains, first prize went to the Colombian film “Todos tus muertos” (All Your Dead Ones) by Carlos Moreno, about the political violence plaguing the poor rural population in the civil war-torn country.

This time, the prize went to a Venezuelan film, “not because of a principle of rotation, but because the jury analysed what it found to be the best film, just like a festival on music would select a bolero regardless of whether it came from Puerto Rico or Cuba,” another of the jury members, Colombian director and screenwriter Jorge Navas, told IPS.

While their film was winning the prize in San Cristóbal, the Rodríguez brothers, prolific documentary-makers who made their first incursion into the world of fiction with Brecha en el silencio, working as a team filming and directing, were presenting the movie at the Latin American Film Festival in Utrecht, Netherlands.

The film has won nearly a dozen prizes so far, in festivals in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay, and Egypt, and is showing at the Seattle International Film Festival, which kicked off Thursday May 16.

The Rodríguez brothers, “by combining a social focus with filmmaking, show the question of sexual abuse as part of the reality of Latin American poverty, and as something that should be talked about so the victims can find a way to free themselves,” Rafael Pinto, one of the film’s screenwriters along with the two brothers, commented to IPS.

In the film, 19-year-old Ana (Vanessa Di Quattro), who is deaf, takes care of her younger sister and brother in one of Caracas’s poor barrios. She does not know how to read or write, and creates her own language to communicate. She hands her weekly earnings as a textile worker over to her mother Julia, who works with her.

When Julia’s violent machista husband, who works off and on as a mechanic, tries to continue the saga of abuse against his younger stepchildren, Ana makes a decision that changes the lives of the entire family.

Di Quattro, born to a Colombian mother and an Italian father in a poor Caracas neighbourhood 26 years ago, was awarded the prize for best actress at the Colombia-Venezuela festival.

Best actor went to Gustavo Angarita for his performance in the Colombian film “Sofía y el terco” (Sofía and the Stubborn Man) by Andrés Burgos – the film that won the audience award in the Colombia-Venezuela festival, just as it had at the Biarritz International Festival of Latin American Cinema in September 2012 in southern France.

In “Sofía y el terco”, Spanish actress Carmen Maura plays a 75-year-old woman who lives in a small mountain village in Colombia and whose husband’s promise to take her to the Caribbean Sea has been postponed over and over again. Finally, she decides to make her dream of seeing the sea come true on her own, and life takes on a whole new dimension along the way.

The film is “about the struggle of women to be heard,” Burgos, who adapted a novel he was writing to a screenplay, told IPS. “It’s not your traditional film, which is why we weren’t interested in sticking to the realism of a concrete Colombian town or landscape.”

The prizes for best debut film and best screenplay went to “La Playa D.C.” by Colombian filmmaker Juan Andrés Arango, with the story of Tomás (Luis Carlos Guevara), a young black man who leaves his hometown on the Pacific coast to forge a new life for himself in Bogotá.

“Like in the case of ‘Sofía y el Terco’, ‘La Playa D.C.’ uses short, unconventional, innovative scripts that are very different from commercial films, but with strongly expressive story lines,” Nava said.

The jury also chose a Colombian film to recommend for exhibition in commercial theatres in Venezuela and a Venezuelan film to be shown in Colombia.

These were the thriller “La cara oculta” (The Hidden Face) by Colombian filmmaker Andrés Baiz, the top box-office earning nationally-produced film in Colombia last year, and “El rumor de las piedras” (Rumble of the Stones) a portrait of poverty and violence in Caracas, by Venezuelan filmmaker Alejandro Bellame.

An average of 15 to 20 films are produced every year in both Colombia and Venezuela. But regardless of the commercial success achieved by some films, they are practically unknown in the neighbouring country – something the festival was set up to counteract.

It is difficult for films from either country to recoup their production costs. In Venezuela, a country of 29 million people, ”making a film can cost nine or 10 million bolivars (1.5 million dollars), and to recover that amount it would have to be seen by 12 million people, which isn’t feasible,” Cova said.

In Colombia, according to Burgos, “there are two tendencies: making commercial films, like in the case of ‘El Cartel de los Sapos’ (The Snitch Cartel – a narco crime film that followed a popular TV series and was also seen at this week’s festival), or scrambling to find the funds for making films in genres with a poor box-office performance.”

Both countries have laws to bolster national filmmaking by committing state resources to supporting the industry and ensuring that commercial theatres show local productions as well as the standard Hollywood fare.

In Venezuela, the state provides most of the funds that national filmmakers need to produce a feature-length film. And the Villa del Cine and Amazonia, a state-owned film studio and distributor, respectively, were created in 2006.

In Colombia, the state holds open competitions that award up to 400,000 dollars in funds for film production, and grants tax exemptions to encourage the participation of private companies or foment co-productions like ‘Sofia y el terco’, which also involved Peru.

A group of villagers is held in thrall by omnipotent rulers, who warn that misfortune will befall the inhabitants if they defy authorities. And then, one day, the emperor is revealed to have no clothes.

On a recent Friday evening in Kazakhstan’s cultural capital, Almaty, a small audience was transfixed by the story unfolding on the stage in Avalanche, a play by Turkish playwright Tuncer Cücenoğlu.

Avalanche is a tale of a village whose inhabitants walk on eggshells because their rulers have convinced them that if they flout strict rules governing their everyday lives, they will spark an avalanche that will engulf them.

A childbirth breaks the spell: as the rulers order a woman buried alive for going into labour without authorisation, the child is born. The commotion fails to bring down a disastrous avalanche, and the leaders are revealed to have lied and manipulated to keep the people in check.

The political parallels with Kazakhstan are unmistakable. A country led by an authoritarian president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has retained power for over two decades through methods that his critics say include sham elections, restrictions on political freedoms, and the silencing of dissent.

Airing this tale about the subjugation of personal and political freedoms to the whims of powerful rulers is provocative, and the Aksaray theatre troupe performing the play has left no doubt that it is sending a political message.

This is a play about how “fear does not let people fight for their rights,” Gulnar Amanzhanova, the troupe’s director, told the audience before the performance. “Maybe it’s necessary to get rid of that fear and fight for justice.”

Last spring the theatre performed Avalanche to raise money for the victims of social unrest in the town of Zhanaozen in December 2011, when 15 people died after police opened fire on protestors in violence that shook Kazakhstan to the core.

Last summer the troupe performed Avalanche again to draw attention to the plight of its founder, 61-year-old Bolat Atabayev, then jailed on suspicion of helping to orchestrate the Zhanaozen violence.

Atabayev is now free, absolved of charges soon after Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience – but others, including opposition leader Vladimir Kozlov and dozens of inhabitants of Zhanaozen, are serving prison sentences on what their supporters maintain are politically motivated charges.

Aksaray – which is mainly a musical theatre troupe – did not initially have a political message in mind when it staged Avalanche, which it performs in Kazakh, long before the Zhanaozen turmoil. After the violence, the play assumed a new significance, the performers say.

“Why did the show change after Zhanaozen? We started to perform it differently. The show took on an edge,” actor Asan Kirkabakov told EurasiaNet.org after a recent performance. “I feel that this is my civic position. I have to perform this; I have to get this across to my audience.”

By a quirk of fate, Avalanche was first staged using a state grant allocated to Aksaray. At that time, Amanzhanova said, the troupe’s main source of funding came from the financial patronage of Kazakh oligarch Mukhtar Ablyazov, a political foe of Nazarbayev’s who lives outside Kazakhstan.

That funding has now dried up. Ablyazov is currently on the run from British justice, his whereabouts unknown since he fled the UK last year after a British court ordered him jailed for concealing his assets in a fraud case.

Ablyazov has also become tied up with the real-life drama played out in Kazakhstan over the Zhanaozen turmoil: Astana has accused him of bankrolling the unrest in a bid to overthrow the state, a charge he denies.

Using the arts to send political messages is nothing new, but in Kazakhstan the theatre has more usually been utilised as a platform for promoting messages favourable to Astana than as a forum for airing messages critical of the Nazarbayev administration.

Productions at state-funded theatres, which receive generous arts subsidies, are often lavish affairs that – whether by accident or by design – feed subtly into Astana’s nation-building efforts, such as the popular showpiece opera about national hero Abylay Khan, the 18th-century warrior revered as the founder of Kazakh statehood.

Shows like this use feel-good historical stories to boost patriotic sentiments, but the theatre has also been overtly used to foster loyalty to the modern-day politician who towers over Kazakhstan’s political stage: Two years ago a play called Deep Roots that lionised Nazarbayev in a mythologised version of his life was staged in Astana.

After the recent performance of Avalanche, the Aksaray actors held a question and answer session with the fascinated audience. They explained how they feel driven to perform a play.

“Our job is to have an impact on [public] consciousness,” Almas Azhabayev explained.

In the aftermath of the Zhanaozen rioting, authorities have cracked down on dissent, resulting in the closure of Kazakhstan’s most vocal opposition party, Alga! and the shuttering of independent media outlets.

Are the actors not afraid of suffering retribution from the authorities, one member of the audience asked – a pertinent question given that many who voiced solidarity with the protestors in Zhanaozen later faced unpleasant consequences.

“We have nothing to fear,” Kirkabakov replied. “We’ve done nothing illegal. We’ve done nothing against our authorities.”

*Editor’s note: Joanna Lillis is a freelance writer who specialises in Central Asia.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Visitors to Sound Central, Central Asia's Modern Music Festival, held at the French Cultural Centre in Kabul. Credit: Giuliano Battiston/IPS

By Giuliano Battiston
KABUL, May 9 2013 (IPS)

Another kind of war, less explosive than bombs and more subtle than night raids, is taking place in the Central Asian country of Afghanistan: a war of cultural influence. Its means are financial sponsorships and other support for cultural and artistic events.

Last summer, when the Queen’s Palace of the Bagh-e-Babur (the Garden of Babur) housed the Afghan branch of Documenta 13, many in Kabul asked themselves what role art and culture play in a war-torn country. They stated that artistic products could help justify the military occupation or reflect an image of Afghanistan far from its unstable and chaotic reality.

“Culture has become an essential tool to influence the perception about Afghanistan,” Aman Mojaddedi, an American artist of Afghan descent who with the Italian curator Andrea Viliani managed the Afghan section of Documenta 13, told IPS last July.

Mojaddedi pointed to France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States as countries that “are investing more and more money in the cultural field”. Their support “is aimed at demonstrating that the international presence in Afghanistan has been successful and that Afghans now do live normally”, he added."Culture has become an essential tool to influence the perception about Afghanistan."
--Aman Mojaddedi

“There’s no doubt, it’s a sort of manipulation,” he said.

Some disagree. Zabi Siddiq, a teenager whose family comes from the Panjshjr Valley, did not consider himself manipulated. “I am interested in new forms of arts, as they show that a better future is possible, even in a country like Afghanistan,” he told IPS.

Siddiq is among hundreds of young Afghans who attended the third “Sound Central“, Central Asia’s Modern Music Festival, held at Kabul’s French Cultural Centre from Apr. 30 to May 4.

The festival began several years ago, when Trevis Beard, a photojournalist and the founder and primary organiser of Sound Central, and his friends “felt unsatisfied with the music and cultural landscapes” in Kabul. “In 2011, we [held] the first big modern music event in Kabul. It lasted one day, hosting eight rock bands,” he described to IPS.

Since then, the festival has grown, along with the number of its sponsorships. The largest and most generous sponsor is the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, but many other embassies and international public donors are involved, with few private ones.

The third edition of Sound Central hosted a range of events, from rock and heavy-metal concerts and rap performances to a photo exhibition and a show from Parwaz, a puppet theatre ensemble.

The audience was mainly comprised of expatriates – many of them journalists, photographers and employees of non-governmental organisations – and young Afghan boys wearing t-shirts, jeans and colourful sneakers.

In one open space covered with a purple tent, artists produced works of graffiti. One of them, Reza Amiri, about 20 years old, began to create graffiti a year ago, after participating in a workshop at Kabul University. He claimed to be a follower of Shamsia Hassani, a 24-year-old girl acclaimed by international media as the first serious female graffiti artist in Afghanistan.

Amiri realised he loved this new form of art because “through it you can address hot topics in a direct and effective way”, he said, showing a work depicting a female face next to the words “let me breathe”. “It shows the search for freedom of the Afghan women,” Amiri explained to IPS.

Twenty-seven-year-old Folad Anzurgar has pursued a more orthodox style of art. An oil painter, he told IPS that he enjoys subjects expressing the pain of war, “the beauty of peace” and “the Afghan traditional way of life”. “Things like graffiti and rock-music are for the youngest people and cannot replace our cultural heritage, which is much more rooted,” he noted.

Indeed, in Afghanistan, especially in rural areas where 75 percent of the population still lives, many believe that contemporary artists are introducing external values into local culture. Many have never heard of rock music.

Sulyman Qardash is the singer and leader of the rock band Kabul Dreams. “We now have a lot of followers within the country, as well as [outside],” he told IPS. Most of the band’s followers are from Kabul, and while Qardash has played in Turkey, Iran, India and Uzbekistan, within his own country, he has never played outside the capital city.

“It is undeniable that with our festival we introduce new cultural items,” said Beard. “But we do that without any imposition,” he explained to IPS. “We just provide Afghans a new platform they can choose to use.” Still, he is aware that in a war-torn country, such work has many implications and inevitably becomes part of the battle for “winning the hearts and minds” of Afghans and internationals.

“Despite the money we get from international donors, we are completely free of any political influence,” Beard added.

Mojaddedi approached the issue of traditional and modern culture in a more nuanced manner, underscoring the mutual enrichment of every cultural exchange. “Any culture is hybrid, and hybridisation is…in every place at every time,” he told IPS. “New tendencies are also creating the opposite effect here, with some Afghan artists trying to preserve their own, more specific culture.”

The push and pull of this hybridisation is an old story. As Gilles Dorronsoro, a prominent expert on Afghanistan, wrote in a recent paper, both the Soviets several decades ago and the West today “attempt to impose a social model of modernisation that is not acceptable to the local population, apart from the urbanised elites”.

Ricardo Bharath-Hernandez, like most citizens of Trinidad and Tobago, has probably lost count of the millions of dollars being spent to renovate the Greek revival style “Red House” that serves as the parliament building in the oil-rich twin island republic.

In fact, renovation work began more than a decade ago on the building, constructed in 1907 to replace the one destroyed in the 1903 water riots. Recent government estimates put the cost of restoring the original architectural design at 100 million dollars by the time the work is completed in 2015."We have for too long paid only lip service to our multiculturalism." -- Dr. Kris Rampersad

But a few weeks ago, Bharath-Hernandez, who is the head of the Santa Rosa First Peoples Community and can trace his ancestry to the first inhabitants of the Caribbean – the Caribs and the Arawaks – took a renewed interest when workers discovered pottery artefacts and bone fragments possibly linked to the Amerindian heritage dating back to AD 0-350.

Bharath-Hernandez, whose community is 600 strong, has already visited the renovation site in the heart of the capital, Port of Spain, and told IPS he is “prepared to perform the necessary ancestral rituals once it is confirmed that the fragments are indeed Amerindian”.

The discovery has come at a time when the Carib community here is moving to construct a modern indigenous Amerindian Village at Santa Rosa, east of the capital, on the 25 acres of land provided by the government.

“We want to keep the village as authentic and traditional as possible but with all modern day amenities,” Bharath-Hernandez said.

“It will comprise a main centre to be used as a meeting and cultural space which will be located in the centre of the village. Spiritual rituals will also be conducted there. There will also be an official residence for the Carib Queen, Jennifer Cassar,” he added.

Arrangements are now being made to send the bones to France for further analysis.

Last week, the Carib chief and representatives from other indigenous groups here met with officials from Parliament and the Urban Development Corporation of Trinidad and Tobago (UdeCOTT), which is carrying out the renovation work.

“We were told that as soon as the results are in we would be called back for another meeting and they will wait on our proposal on how to proceed,” Barath-Hernandez told IPS following the meeting that was also attended by archaeologist Dr. Peter Harris, who had earlier told a local newspaper that the receptacles found in the pits are similar to those used by the Amerindians.

Heritage consultant Dr. Kris Rampersad said the recent finds of skeletal remains and artefacts point to the need for a comprehensive archaeological survey of Trinidad and Tobago.

She is hoping that universities here take the lead to establish an “all-encompassing programme in heritage studies that incorporate research, scientific, conservation, restoration, curatorial and forensic study among other fields that would advance the knowledge and understanding of Trinidad and Tobago’s prehistory and multicultural heritage.

“This also has value to the region and the world. We have for too long paid only lip service to our multiculturalism. The find under the Red House of bones potentially dating to the beginning of this epoch points to the significant need for a proper survey and actions to secure and protect zones that are of significant historical and prehistoric importance,” she told IPS.

Rampersad referred to the neglect by the authorities of another famed Banwari historical site south of here, and hoped that in the case of the discovery at the Red House, history does not repeat itself.

The Banwari Site is said to have been the home of the Banwari man, whose remains date back 7,000 years and which is considered one of the most significant and well-known archaeological treasures of the region.

Discovered some 40 years ago, little has been done to preserve and promote the site.

The Archaeology Centre at the University of the West Indies (UWI) said that in November 1969, the Trinidad and Tobago Historical Society discovered the remains of a human skeleton at Banwari Trace.

“Lying on its left-hand side, in a typical Amerindian ‘crouched’ burial position along a northwest axis Banwari Man was found 20-cm below the surface. Only two items were associated with the burial, a round pebble by the skull and needlepoint by the hip. Banwari Man was apparently interred in a shell midden and subsequently covered by shell refuse.

“Based on its stratigraphic location in the site’s archaeological deposits, the burial can be dated to the period shortly before the end of occupation, approximately 3,400 BC or 5,400 years old,” the UWI noted.

In 1978, Harris hailed the Banwari man as the oldest resident of Trinidad and an important icon of the country’s early antiquity.

“Why, 40 years later, as one of the richest countries in the region, must we be looking to other universities from which to draw expertise when by now we should have full-fledged – not only archaeological, but also conservation, restoration and other related programmes that explore the significance of our heritage beyond the current focus on song and dance mode?” Rampersad asked.

“While scholarly collaborations are important, certainly we could be more advanced, and a leader rather than a follower in these fields in which several other less-resourced Caribbean countries are significantly more advanced,” said Rampersad, who has been conducting trainings across the Caribbean on available mechanisms for safeguarding its heritage.

The discovery at the Red House coincides with recent findings by the U.S.-based National Geographic Genographic Project that the indigenous people may have had strong ancestral links to Africa and to Native American Indians.

Utilising DNA, the U.S.-based organisation tested 25 members of the community in July last year. Bharath-Hernandez says the results will hopefully put to rest questions that have been raised regarding the community’s identity in the past.

The results of the project were released to Bharath-Hernandez late last month by Dr.Jada BennTorres from the University of Pennsylvania.

“We have completed preliminary analysis of the mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome (NRY markers). These analyses will tell us about the maternal and paternal lineages of the community members,” wrote BennTorres in her letter thanking the Santa Rosa Karina community for its participation.

She said the findings of the genetic ancestry of community “indicate a complex ancestry that includes Africans, in addition to a very strong Native American ancestral component” and that all of the 25 individuals tested would receive their information at a later date.