The Maipo River, where the Alto Maipo hydroelectric project is being built, flows down from the Andes range to Santiago and is vital to supply drinking water to the Chilean capital, a city of seven million people. Credit: Orlando Milesi / IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jan 9 2018 (IPS)

A 75 percent drop in electricity rates, thanks to a quadrupled clean generation capacity, is one of the legacies to be left in Chile by the administration of Michelle Bachelet, who steps down on Mar. 11.

In December 2013, the electricity supply tender for families, companies and small businesses was awarded at a price of 128 dollars per megawatt hour, compared to just 32.5 dollars in the last tender of 2017.

“An important regulatory change was carried out with the passage of seven laws on energy that gave a greater and more active role to the State as a planner. This generated the conditions for more competition in the market,” Energy Minister Andrés Rebolledo told IPS."According to the projections, from here to 2021 there is a portfolio of projects totaling 11 billion dollars in different tenders on energy, generation and electricity transmission. The interesting thing is that 80 percent are NCRE projects." -- Andrés Rebolledo

Four years ago, large companies were concerned over the rise in electricity rates in Chile, and several mining companies stated that due to the high price of energy they were considering moving their operations to other countries. Currently, big industrialists have access to lower prices because they renegotiate their contracts with the generating companies.

The new regulatory framework changed things and allowed many actors, Chilean or foreign, to enter the industry, thanks to bidding rules that gave more room to bids for generating electricity from non-conventional renewable energies (NCRE), mainly photovoltaic and wind, the most efficient sources in the country.

“This happened at a time when a very important technological shift regarding these very technologies was happening in the world. We carried out this change at the right time and we took advantage of the significant decline in cost of these technologies, especially in the case of solar and wind energy,” the minister said.

Eighty companies submitted to the tender for electricity supply and distribution in 2016, and 15 submitted to the next distribution tender, “in a phenomenon very different from what was typical in the Chilean energy sector, which was very concentrated, with only a few players,” he added.

Manuel Baquedano, president of the Chilean non-governmental Institute of Political Ecology, believes that there was “a turning point in the Chilean energy mix, with a shift towards renewable energy.”

This change occurred, Baquedano told IPS, “because people didn’t want more megaprojects like the Hydroaysén hydroelectric plant in the south, and Punta de Choros in the north (both widely rejected for environmental reasons), and that curbed the growth of the oligopolies.”

The Atacama desert in northern Chile has the highest solar radiation on the planet, one of this country’s advantages when it comes to developing solar energy. Credit: Marianela Jarroud / IPS

“Globally, solar and wind energy are much more competitive than even fossil fuels. Today solar energy is being produced at a lower cost than even coal. That has led to the creation of a new scenario, thanks to this new regulation policy,” he added.

In addition, said the expert in geopolitics of energy, “that change was approved by the community and environmentalists who have raised no objections to the wind and solar projects.”

“In the past four years, the government enjoyed a fairly free situation to develop projects (of those energy sources) that some have qualms about from an environmental perspective,” he said.

“It is not a process that any future government can stop. It is a global process into which Chile has already entered and is being rewarded for that choice. There is no longer a possibility of returning to fossil fuels, as is happening in the United States where there is an authoritarian government like that of Donald Trump,” Baquedano added.

The environmental leader warned that although “there is a margin for the rates and costs to decrease, it will not last forever.” For that reason, he proposed “continuing to raise public awareness of NCRE.”

The energy sector was a leader in investments in the last two years in Chile, surpassing mining, the pillar of the local economy.

Rebolledo said: “During the government of President Bachelet, 17 billion dollars have been invested (in the energy industry). In Chile today there are some 250 power generation plants, half of which were built under this government. And half of that half are solar plants.”

In May 2014, just two months after starting her second term, after governing the country between 2006 and 2010, Bachelet – a socialist – launched the “Energy Agenda, a challenge for the entire country, progress for all“.

“According to the projections, from here to 2021 there is a portfolio of projects totaling 11 billion dollars in different tenders on energy, generation and electricity transmission. The interesting thing is that 80 percent are NCRE projects,” he said.

Currently there are 40 electrical projects under construction, almost all of them involving NCRE.

Another result is that Chile now has a surplus in electricity and the large increase in solar power is expected to continue as the country takes advantage of the enormous possibilities presented by the north, which includes the Atacama desert, with its merciless sun.

Chile’s power grid, previously dependent on oil, coal and large hydroelectric dams, changed radically, which led to a drop of around 20 percent in fossil fuel imports between 2016 and 2017. In addition, it no longer depends on Argentine gas, which plunged the country into crisis when supply was abruptly cut off in 2007.

“In March 2014, when Bachelet’s term began, the installed capacity in Chile of NCRE, mainly solar and wind, was five percent. This changed significantly, and by November of this year it had reached 19 percent,” said Rebolledo.

The minister pointed out that if solar and wind generation is added to the large-scale hydropower plants, “almost 50 percent of everything we generate today is renewable energy. The rest is still thermal energy, which uses gas, diesel and coal.”

In the Energy Agenda, as in the nationally determined contribution (NDC), the commitment assumed under the Paris Agreement on climate change, Chile set goal for 20 percent of its energy to come from NCRE by 2025 – a target that the country already reached in October.

“We have set ourselves the goal that by 2050, 70 percent of all electricity generated will be renewable, and this no longer includes only the NCRE but also hydro,” Rebolledo said.

For the minister, a key aspect was that these goals were agreed by all the actors in the sector.

“Because this change happened so rapidly, that 70 percent could be 90 percent by 2050, and within that 90 percent, solar energy will probably be the most important,” he said.

Baquedano, for his part, argues that now “comes the second stage, which is to democratise the use of energy by allowing solar energy and renewables to reach citizens and small and medium industries directly, therefore modifying distribution.”

“”Democratisation means that we are going to demand that all NCRE projects have environmental impact studies and not just declarations (of environmental impact),” he said.

“Democratisation means that every person who has resources or who can acquire them, becomes a generator of energy for their own consumption and that of their neighbours. Let new actors come in, but also citizens. These new actors are the indigenous communities, the community sector and the municipalities, which are not after profits,” he asserted.

Representatives of the Mapuche, Lonko and Machi people attend the raising of the flag in the Plaza de Armas in Vilcún, 700 km south of Santiago, one of the numerous ceremonies held in Chile on Jun. 24, declared a national holiday as We Tripantu, the Mapuche new year. Credit: Mirna Concha/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jun 29 2017 (IPS)

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet’s formal apology to the country’s Mapuche Indians, for the “mistakes and atrocities” committed against them by the Chilean state, is seen by indigenous and social activists in the central region of Araucanía – the heartland of the Mapuche people – as falling short.

Native leaders in that region are calling for concrete actions and policies with regard to key questions such as their demands for self-determination, respect for their rights to their ancestral land, water use rights, and an end to violence against indigenous people.

The latest incident took place on Jun. 14, when members of the carabineros militarised police used tear gas during a raid in a school in the town of Temucuicui, which affected a number of schoolchildren and local residents.

On Jun. 27, lawyers at the government’s National Human Rights Institute filed legal action on behalf of the schoolchildren in that Mapuche town of 120 families, in the region of Araucanía.“While the question of relations between the state and indigenous people is fundamentally political, any kind of self-determination must necessarily be accompanied by management of and access to economic resources. These are the most marginalised parts of the country, and are also paradoxically where the most profitable industries operate. That is immoral.” -- Carlos Bresciani

“This apology and acknowledgment that mistakes, and especially atrocities, have been committed is important,” said Adolfo Millabur, mayor of the town of Tirúa, the hub of the Mapuche people’s ancestral territory, with respect to the Jun. 23 request for forgiveness by the socialist president, during the launch of a Plan for Recognition and Development of Araucanía.

“I think it is positive that a president of Chile has recognised mistakes and above all atrocities committed after the Chilean state’s invasion of Mapuche territory started in 1860, in the misnamed ‘Pacification of Araucanía’,” he said.

The “Pacification of Araucanía” was a brutal military campaign by the Chilean army and settlers that ended in 1881 with the defeat of the Mapuche people, leaving tens of thousands of indigenous people dead and leading to the reduction of Mapuche territory from 10 million to just half a million hectares.

But Millabur called for “concrete measures to repair the damage caused” and said “the demilitarisation of the area would be a good gesture.”

“Children are suffering, there are victims of all kinds, Mapuche people have died, and there is no indication of how the state is going to act in the immediate future, if it is going to continue to militarise the area as it is doing now,” he added.

The Association of Municipalities with Mapuche Mayors acknowledged in a communiqué that Bachelet’s apology “is aimed at gaining a better understanding between the Mapuche people and the state.”

But it also said “this gesture must be accompanied by concrete developments such as new forms and methods of dialogue, a different approach by the police in our communities…fair trials for our brothers and sisters, and the non-application of the anti-terrorism law.”

The mayors were referring to the prosecution of Mapuche activists accused of setting trucks on fire, and the continuous raids on Mapuche homes and buildings, such as the one in the school in Temucuicui.

Mapuche activists have been arrested and prosecuted under the 1984 anti-terrorism law, put in place by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) and still in force, which allows witnesses to conceal their identity while testifying, and provides for longer periods of arrest on remand and extremely heavy sentences.

According to the last census, from 2012, 11 percent of Chile’s population of 17.7 million people identify themselves as indigenous.

Of the country’s 1.9 million indigenous people, 84 percent are Mapuche. Smaller native communities in Chile include the Aymara, Atacameño, Pehuenche and Pascuense people.

Catholic priest Carlos Bresciani, the head of the Jesuit mission in Tirúa, told IPS that “it is laudable that the president apologised, but asking for forgiveness is not enough if it is not accompanied by fair reparations.”

During the launch of a new plan for the region of Araucania, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet apologised to the Mapuche people on Jun. 23 in the name of the Chilean state, for the “mistakes and atrocities” committed against them. Credit: Chilean Presidency

Bresciani also believes greater dialogue with the Mapuche people will be possible “if more political questions such as self-determination or autonomy are put on the table, and if the dialogue includes all sectors, no matter how radical they might be.”

The priest was referring to the low level of representation of Mapuche leaders on the Araucania Presidential Advisory Commission, appointed by Bachelet in January 2015, which wrapped up its work in January with a package of proposals that included a suggested apology by the president.

“If she wants to talk about collective rights, (Bachelet) should be reminded of the treaties signed by Chile, such as convention 169 of the ILO (International Labour Organisation) and the United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous people which, among other things, declares their right to self-determination or autonomy, terms that are absent from her plan for Araucanía,” Bresciani said.

Jorge Pinto, a history professor at the Universidad de La Frontera, a university in Temuco, the capital of Araucanía, who sat on the commission set up by Bachelet, told IPS that the government’s new plan for that region is “sound and complete” and interpreted the apology as a gesture aimed at reactivating dialogue.

“We need more dialogue,” said Pinto. “I agree with the president’s call for more dialogue, without repression, because repression brings more violence.”

But the academic urged “talks with the different actors from the region who have been left out so far.”

He also said “it is not enough to guarantee rights to land ownership and water use. Control over their land by indigenous people and autonomy in managing resources are also necessary.”

“No one is proposing that the forestry and hydroelectric companies pull out of the region,” said Pinto. “What we are saying is that agreements must be reached with the local communities affected by hydropower dams, logging companies and mines, and not with the authorities.”

Jesuit missionary Bresciani said “the main issue is not poverty or marginalisation; it’s political.”

“The proposals talk about economic or development policies,” the priest said. “While the question of relations between the state and indigenous people is fundamentally political, any kind of self-determination must necessarily be accompanied by management of and access to economic resources. These are the most marginalised parts of the country, and are also paradoxically where the most profitable industries operate. That is immoral.”

According to Bresciani, the extreme poverty in Araucanía “is the result of a systematic and planned policy to appropriate resources, under an unsustainable extractivist model. The measures proposed are not aimed at modifying these structural policies, but at continuing to offer money to turn the communities into clients of the existing system.”

Social activists and indigenous leaders admit the value of some of the initiatives included in Bachelet’s plans, such as the official declaration of Jun. 24 – We Xipantu, the Mapuche new year – as a national holiday, and a stronger effort to teach Mapuzungún, the Mapuche language, in schools in their communities.

They also applaud the proposal to explicitly recognise native communities in the projected new constitution, which would replace the current one, which dates back to 1980 and is a legacy of the Pinochet dictatorship which successive democratic governments have failed to replace, implementing limited reforms instead.

Activists say however, that the measures taken so far have been inadequate, and point out that Bachelet’s term ends in just nine months.

That will make it difficult to bring about real actions in areas such as land ownership and water use rights, which are key to a regional economy dominated by the interests of large logging, hydropower and mining companies.

Former right-wing president Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014), who is the favorite in the opinion polls for the November elections as the likely candidate for the Chile Vamos alliance, supports Bachelet’s apology to the Mapuche people.

“I agree with the apology because I believe that throughout history, many injustices have been committed against the Mapuche people,” said Piñera. He added, however, that “the apology is just a gesture, and does not solve any problem.”

Small-scale farmers from Samo Alto, in northern Chile, are forced to share the scarce water of the Hurtado River with large agro-exporters, who benefit from a dam built downstream. In this country, water is a private good, granted in perpetuity to the concessionaires. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, May 18 2017 (IPS)

Water at high prices, sold as a market good, and small farmers almost a species in extinction, replaced by seasonal workers, are the visible effects of the crisis in rural Chile, 50 years after a land reform which postulated that “the land is for those who work it.”

To tackle the crisis, environmental and social activists are proposing a new land reform to reclaim water as a public good, at a time when a persistent drought is affecting much of Chile, making it necessary to use tanker trucks to distribute water in some low-income neighbourhoods in cities around the country.

Last year the number of villages, small towns and neighbourhoods that were left without water and were supplied by tanker trucks also doubled in relation to 2015, said water department director Carlos Estévez.

“In Chile, water has become a capital good, left to the discretion of speculators and separated from the land, while international jurisprudence indicates that it should be available for the preservation of life and food production, and only after that, for other economic activities,” expert and activist Rodrigo Mundaca told IPS.“The green revolution is a model that does not preserve natural assets. Our export model is associated with monoculture and we need to promote a new development paradigm based on a harmonious relationship with nature.” -- Rodrigo Mundaca

Mundaca, the secretary-general of the Movement for the Defense of Access to Water, Land and the Protection of the Environment (Modatima), said that “a second land reform is key to recovering water,” after the one carried out in the 1970s.
“The green revolution is a model that does not preserve natural assets. Our export model is associated with monoculture and we need to promote a new development paradigm based on a harmonious relationship with nature,” he said.

This South American country is a major producer and exporter of food products, thanks to the production of major companies and consortiums that own the land and water.

The mining industry still accounts for half of Chile’s exports, which amounted to over 60 billion dollars in 2016. But this is also one of the 10 top countries in the world in food exports, ranking first for several products. The food industry represents a total of 20 billion dollars in exports.

Meanwhile, the current regulation of the right to water in Chile, after it was privatised in 1981 during the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, is threatening small-scale family farmers, who are fighting for at least partial restoration of public control.

The 1980 constitution states that water is a private good. The use of hydric resources, according to the laws of the market, is regulated by the Water Code, which gives the state the power to grant usage rights to companies free of charge and in perpetuity.

It also allows water usage rights to be bought, sold or leased without taking into consideration priorities of use. In Chile, there are 110,000 water-use rights contracts in force under the Water Code.

The government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet introduced a proposed amendment to the Code in Congress, although its final approval will take several months.

The amendment would make water usage rights temporary rather than perpetual. But it would only apply to future concessions, and would not be retroactive, which has drawn criticism from environmentalists and social activists in rural areas.

Fifty years after the land reform launched by the Christian Democrat government of Eduardo Frei (1964-1970) and expanded by socialist president Salvador Allende (1970-1973), support for a second land reform plan that would make water a social good once again is growing.

A group of young people who attended the release this month in Santiago of the study “The grandchildren of the land reform: employment, reality and dreams of rural youth in Chile,” by FAO consultant Sergio Faiguenbaum, who found that young people in rural areas in the country have three times as much formal schooling as their parents. Credit: INDAP

Between the cities of Petorca and Antofagasta, in arid northern Chile, 200 and 1,340 km from the country’s capital Santiago, respectively, the prices for a year’s water rights for a liter of water per second – the amount needed to irrigate one hectare of vineyard – range from 7,670 dollars to 76,700 dollars, said Mundaca, referring to cases that make the reform necessary.

The rest of Latin America

Luiz Beduschi, a Territorial Development Policies officer at the Santiago-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) regional office for Latin America and the Caribbean, told IPS that “historically, Latin America has been one of the regions with the highest levels of inequality in the distribution and use of natural resources.”

“This phenomenon has among its causes an increasing concentration in the value chains, the establishment and growth of companies that exploit resources at an industrial scale, backed by public policy approaches that foster an increase in the participation of these countries in export markets,” he said.

Beduschi stressed that “the expansion of investment in the region through sowing pools (speculative investment funds), annual leases or purchases of large extensions of land, among others, has contributed to a higher concentration of land than before the land reforms that were carried out in several countries in the region.”

“Conflicts over access to natural resources have been on the rise around the world and the situation is no different in this region,” said the FAO expert.

“The historical processes of agricultural reform, strongly promoted in different countries in the region, which in the case of Mexico was carried out 100 years ago, and 50 years ago in Chile, allow us today to once again discuss the widespread question of inequality, which arises from the global concentration of the ownership and use of natural resources, historically reflected in land ownership,” he said.

Impacts of the model to be reformed

Agronomist Jacques Chonchol, minister of agriculture during Allende’s government and a promoter of the land reform process, told IPS that the new reform made sense because the counter-reform carried out by the dictatorship “practically privatized water, an increasingly scarce resource.”

“We have very little arable land: less than ten per cent of Chile’s 757 million square kilometres, and part of that is being lost” to the phenomenon of the selling off of parcels of land in rural areas as second properties of city dwellers, he warned.

Chonchol also expressed the need for “a forestry policy that excludes agricultural lands. That was prohibited, but during the dictatorship, it began to happen again. Forestry plantations should be banned on farmland, and these companies should plant native trees, since pines and eucalyptus absorb a lot of water.”

He believes that the counter-reform “gave rise to a new capitalist agriculture, much more efficient from an economic point of view, although not always in social terms,” in a model that “perpetuates inequality”, which the democratic governments have maintained.

On the social level, historian José Bengoa told IPS that until the land reform, there were three kinds of farmers in Chile: “small landholders grouped in towns and villages; tenant farmers and their families, on the big estates; and ‘outsiders’ who wandered between the towns and estates.”

“That structure changed dramatically and today a great majority are non-permanent agricultural workers, who live in towns and cities near agricultural areas,” Bengoa said.

“There is a small sector of small-scale farmers, who could be called peasants, who are the majority in some regions and sectors, and then there is an increasing proportion of seasonal workers,” he said.

For Bengoa, “Chilean agriculture is nowadays, due to the land reform carried out 50 years ago, a highly capitalist and productive sector.”

“This activity, without any controls, leads to an unprecedented level of exploitation of human resources, workers and natural resources, such as water. In the next few years there will be serious problems, both in terms of the need for manpower and of the need for resources such as water and land, as well as environmental problems,” he predicted.

According to Bengoa, these problems cannot be easily solved, because “the agricultural sector will pressure the state to increase the flow of migrant workers, and for more infrastructure works, in particular in water reserves.”

Members of the Mapuche people during one of their demonstrations defending their rights, in particular their claim to theirancestral lands, in the region of La Araucanía, Chile. Credit: Fernando Fiedler/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Jan 26 2017 (IPS)

The lands where the Mapuche indigenous people live in southern Chile are caught up in a spiral of violence, which a presidential commission is setting out to stop with 50 proposals, such as the constitutional recognition of indigenous people and their representation in parliament, in a first shift in the government´s treatment of native peoples.

President Michelle Bachelet received on Monday Jan. 23 the recommendations from the Presidential Advisory Commission to address the conflict in the La Araucanía region, home to most of the country’s Mapuche people, who make up nearly five percent of Chile’s population of just under 18 million people.

The Mapuche leaders and their supporters accuse the police deployed to the region of being “agitators” and of militarising the area, while logging companies and landowners call the local indigenous people “terrorists” and demand a heavy-handed approach towards them.

Among the proposals of the Commission, created in July 2016, are the creation of a national registry of victims of violence and compensation for them, support for the economic development of the Mapuche people – the largest native group in Chile – and solutions to return native land to the Mapuche people, in land disputes.“A historical debt is recognised with respect to the Mapuche people, but there is no analysis of what this debt consists of, let alone the deep current and historical causes of this now existing violence in La Araucanía” -- Jorge Aylwin

In addition, the Commission recommended that the president “publicly apologise, in representation of the Chilean government, for the consequences this conflict has had for the Mapuche people and any other victims of the violence in the region.”

The package of proposed measures comes in the wake of a dozen arson attacks early this year in rural areas of La Araucanía against logging company trucks and storehouses by unidentified perpetrators, who in some cases left pamphlets with demands by the Mapuche movement.

The attacks reached their peak around Jan. 3-4, dates marked in the indigenous struggle for their rights, in memory of Matías Catrileo (2008), a young Mapuche victim of a gunshot from the police, and of the elderly Luchsinger Mackay couple (2013), who died in their house when it was burnt down by unidentified assailants.

Chile´s manufacturers´ association, SOFOFA, to which the two main logging companies that extract timber in La Araucanía belong, said the region “is no longer governed by the rule of law” and that “the incapacity of the powers of government to respond and fulfill their functions of law enforcement and punishment of crimes is evident.”

“It is not an absence of the rule of law, it is a lack of respect and infringement of the human rights of these people. That is a serious thing. It is the government that undermines their rights. Talking of an absence of the rule of law is just an excuse to put the military in the territory,” Carlos Bresciani, a Jesuit priest who lives in the Tirúa village, in the area of conflict, told IPS.

“Here everything works fine, people live normally, they plant, they harvest, they run their errands, they work. The people who talk about an absence of the rule of law have never lived here. We are not at war. There are no bullets whizzing by or bombs destroying cities,” he said by telephone.

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet receives the final report to address the urgent problems that face the Mapuche people, drafted by the Presidential Advisory Commission for La Araucanía, in a ceremony on Jan. 23, at the La Moneda Palace. Credit: Presidency of Chile

Upon presenting the conclusions of the 20-member Commission, their leader, Catholic Bishop Héctor Vargas, said La Araucanía is a “wounded and fragmented region” that is facing a “gradual intensification of its problems.”

These problems, explained the bishop of Temuco, capital of La Araucanía, “involve a historical debt to the Mapuche people, the dramatic situation of the victims of rural violence, and the very worrying indicators which rank us as the poorest region in the country.”

“The government has neglected this land and its people,” said Vargas, who added that these issues are difficult to address because “they generate contradictory positions and views and deep feelings of grief, impotence and resentment.”

The bishop called for an end to the violence “before hatred puts an end to us… If we want to disarm our hands, we have to first disarm our hearts.”

For José Aylwin, head of the non-governmental Citizen Observatory, the proposals of the Commission lack “a rights-based approach,” for example with respect to the occupied ancestral lands.

“A historical debt is recognised with respect to the Mapuche people, but there is no analysis of what this debt consists of, let alone the deep current and historical causes of this now existing violence in La Araucanía,” he told IPS.

”There is no reference to the violence carried out by the police against the Mapuche people or the promotion of the forestry industry which has resulted in the consolidation of a 1.5-million-hectare forest property to the south of the Bío Bío river,” said Aylwin.

The Commission´s proposal, he said, “acknowledges the existing political exclusion and proposes special forms of representation for indigenous people, but does not set forth other options such as autonomy and self-determination in areas of high indigenous density.”

“The bias towards productive development is clear, it refers to new productive activities, such as fruit orchards, but it includes wood pulp,” which is of interest to forestry companies, said the head of the Observatory.

Interior Minister Mario Fernández admitted during a parliamentary inquiry on Monday Jan. 23 that in La Araucanía “there is terrorism, but there is also an atmosphere of violence that has other roots.”

“We will not solve with repression or simple solutions a problem that has been going on for centuries. Rule of law doesn’t mean a right to repress, it means respecting the rights of people,” he said.

Bresciani stressed that the use of the word violence in La Araucanía “is tendentious and seeks to create a strained and clearly discriminatory climate around the social demands of the Mapuche people.”

“The term violence has been co-opted by right-wing business interests who want to create that scenario in order to justify further judicialisation and militarisation of the territory…therefore, measures of repression,” he said.

According to the priest, the violence in La Araucanía “is exercises by the political and extractionist neo-liberal economic model” and “there is an older cause which has to do with the usurpation of the lands that the Mapuche people used to have, which reduced them to poverty and humiliation.”

Bresciani considers that a solution will be found “when this conflict is seen as a political conflict, and not judicial or having to do with the police or with poverty. And from there, measures have to be taken to ensure the recognition of native peoples and return to them their lands.”

“They used to have 10 million hectares when they were invaded and now they have between 500,000 and 900,000,” he said.

Isolde Reuque Paillalef, one of the three women on the Commission and the only indigenous social leader, said “there is a new and knowledgeable vision,” after listening to the victims of violence on both sides.

But “it will also depend on who is supporting the most violent groups, because the violence is not just violence… there must be other interests involved,” she told IPS.

About 20,000 people a year visit the Villa Grimaldi Park for Peace, built in the foothills of the Andes mountains, where the city of Santiago lies, from the ruins of what was the biggest torture centre during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Credit: Orlando Milesi/IPS

By Orlando Milesi
SANTIAGO, Dec 8 2016 (IPS)

After 26 years of democratic governments, Chile has finally passed a law that defines torture as a criminal act, but which is still not sufficient to guarantee that the abuses will never again happen, according to human rights experts.

On Nov. 11, President Michelle Bachelet enacted a law that typifies torture, cruel, degrading and inhuman treatment as crimes, in what she described as “a decisive step in the prevention and total eradication of torture” in Chile.

“It is good that this law has been enacted and that torture can be prevented at a national level, which is what the United Nations demands. But for us this doesn’t mean anything,” Luzmila Ortiz told IPS.

Ortiz’s husband, sociologist Jorge Fuentes, was a leader of the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). He was detained in Paraguay in May 1975 and handed over in September of that year to the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), the Augusto Pinochet military dictatorship’s (1973-1990) secret police."To fully recognise the phenomenon of torture as a serious crime to be eradicated and punished with sentences proportionate to its gravity is part of the state’s obligation to not repeat these acts in the future." -- Nelson Caucoto

DINA repatriated him to Chile, where he was tortured and later “disappeared” in January 1976 under Operation Condor, a plan involving the coordination between the military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay to track down, kidnap, torture, transfer across borders, disappear and kill opponents of the regimes such as guerrilla fighters, political activists, trade unionists, students, priests or journalists.

“They destroyed our lives, because this is a wound that will not close until we know what happened to him. This is terrible, and it not only hangs over me but over my son as well,” Ortiz said.

She recalled with sorrow that in Villa Grimaldi, a notorious torture centre, “they subjected him to atrocities. He was confined to a dog house. It is a pain so profound that you can’t get over it.”

For Cath Collins, director of the Diego Portales University’s Transitional Justice Observatory, the new law is welcome, but “no law can, by itself, guarantee that these things will never again happen.”

“To that end, efforts are needed in many areas, including a change in the institutional culture and day-to-day practices of the armed forces, police, prison guards and other state entities,” she said.

“Never again” was a demand set forth by groups of victims of human rights violations in the “Truth and Reconciliation” report drafted in 1991, a year after Chile’s return to democracy.

The report stated that reconciliation is impossible unless the truth comes out about every case, in order to avoid a repeat of human rights abuses.

Approximately 2,000 people were tortured in Londres 38 between October 1973 and January 1975. In the building, there are plaques with the names of the 98 people murdered and disappeared there. Credit: Courtesy of Memory Space Londres 38

Collins said that, to make progress towards the eradication of torture, “we have to eliminate every vestige of tolerance or normalisationof actions of brutality, incidental or systematic, and break the culture of denial and impunity.”

However, she cautioned, “institutional interventions are not enough.”

“The authorities as well as civil society also have to educate and educate ourselves, in favour of ethics and respect, and against authoritarianism, arrogance, verbal and physical violence that often invades our
social interactions and day-to-day relationships,” said the expert.

Despite its limitations, the law enables Chile to present itself as a country that has accomplished this task, on Dec. 10 when Human Rights Day is celebrated. This year’s theme is “Stand up for someone’s rights today” – a reference to the need for everyone to play an active role in defending the rights of others – part of the new ethics that have to be promoted in this country, said Collins.

Nelson Caucoto, a human rights lawyer who has defended many victims of the dictatorship, says the new law that typifies torture “provides better protection for fundamental rights.”

“Every measure that entails the advancement, recognition, protection and guarantee of human rights helps build the edifice of ‘nunca mas’ (‘never again)’ To fully recognise the phenomenon of torture as a serious crime to be eradicated and punished with sentences proportionate to its gravity is part of the state’s obligation to not repeat these acts in the future,” he told IPS.

He added that “the issue of torture and its victims in Chile has been one of the poor cousins in the struggle to enforce human rights with respect to the dictatorship. Pinochet was arrested in London for (cases linked to) torture, but in Chile there were no legal proceedings against him for torture,” he said.

In 2004, the National Commission on Political Imprisonment and Torture classified more than 40,000 Chileans as victims of this crime.

But human rights organisations say the figure is much higher. They estimate that half a million Chileans were victims of torture during the dictatorship, Caucoto said.

According to official figures, 2,920 people were killed in the political violence during the military dictatorship, including 1,193 who were “disappeared”, while 40,280 were tortured and one million fled into exile. Of the disappeared, the remains of 167 have been identified, according to the forensic medicine institute.

For Leopoldo Montenegro, member of the Londres 38 Memory Space, which was another major detention and torture centre, the new legislation is of utmost importance.

But in his opinion, “the state has failed to take strong decisions with respect to issues such as justice, restitution, compensation and measures to ensure non-repetition.”

Montenegro told IPS that while the new law has a preventive effect, in order to guarantee that the abuses will never again be committed, the most important element is justice. This means “that the courts must admit the charges of torture filed by the victims and punish the perpetrators. In that sense, there have only been symbolic rulings,” he said.

Two verdicts that stand out were handed down by Judge Alejandro Solís in cases involving 23 survivors of Villa Grimaldi, which has been turned into a Park for Peace and Memory, and 19 survivors of Tejas Verde, another illegal detention centre.

Caucoto hailed Bachelet’s announcement of the creation of a National Mechanism for Prevention of Torture, “which is required by the Optional Protocol to the Convention against torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading treatments or punishment.”

“Its creation is important because in Chile there is no body with the necessary powers to prevent torture. It has to be noted as a great advance,” he said.

Montenegro, meanwhile, advocated the adoption of measures to create the conditions to ensure that the abuses will never again occur, and complained about the state’s lack of will “to carry out public policies of justice with respect to crimes committed during the dictatorship.”

Collins said that what is needed is “a cultural shift and a change of mindset with respect to eliminating the acceptance of inflicting violence or tolerating passively that it be inflicted on our behalf. It doesn’t matter whether it is the political opponent of the past or the alleged ‘criminal’ of today.”

An annual report by the Ministry of the Interior’s Human Rights Programme pointed out that as of Dec. 1, 2015 there were 1,048 human rights cases in the courts.

Of the 1,373 former agents of the dictatorship facing prosecution, 344 have been convicted, 177 are serving prison sentences – 58 with benefits – and six are on parole.

Meanwhile, Luzmila Ortiz continues to face the trauma of her past and to deal with the psychological problems suffered by her son, who is now 45. “He was two and a half years old when he witnessed my detention (when agents of the regimebroke into their house searching for her husband) after being separated from his father. He has been affected since then,” she said.

Her case, dismissed by the Chilean justice system, is now pending in the Inter American Court of Human Rights “where there are many other legal proceedings and there is practically no hope.”

“There are always legal mechanisms to protect the perpetrators,” she lamented, arguing that “the crucial thing is to do away with the protection that the torturers still enjoy.”

Excerpt:

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet during an exlusive interview with IPS in the Blue Room in the Moneda Palace, the seat of government, in Santiago, before flying to Paris to participate in the Nov. 30 inauguration of the climate summit, to be hosted by the French capital until Dec. 11. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Nov 27 2015 (IPS)

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet says the climate summit in Paris “is not the end of a process but a beginning,” and that it will produce “an agreement that, although insufficient with respect to the original goal, shows that people believe it is better to move ahead than to stand still.”

In this exclusive interview with IPS, held shortly before Bachelet headed to the capital of France, the president reflected on the global impacts of climate change and stressed several times that the accords reached at the summit “must be binding,” as well as universal.

On Monday Nov. 30 Bachelet will take part in the inauguration of the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which will run through Dec. 11. At the summit, the 196 countries that are parties to the treaty are to agree on a new climate accord aimed at curbing global warming.

The president also said the Paris summit will have a different kind of symbolism in the wake of the terrorist attacks that claimed 130 lives: “It sends out an extremely clear signal that we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated,” she said.

Q: Latin America is a region where the countries face similar impacts from climate change. But it is negotiating with a fragmented voice. Has the region missed a chance for a leadership role and for a better defence of its joint interests?

A: Sometimes it is very difficult to achieve a unified position, because even though there are situations that are similar, decisions must be taken that governments are not always able to adopt, or because they find themselves in very different circumstances.

We belong to the Independent Association of Latin America and the Caribbean (AILAC) in the negotiations on climate change, along with Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. All of these countries did manage to work together, and we have a similar outlook on the question of climate change.

The countries in this region are not the ones that generate the most emissions at a global level. And above and beyond the differences we may have, the important thing is that we will all make significant efforts to reduce emissions and boost clean energies and other mechanisms and initiatives.

Q: Will the COP21 manage to approve a new universal climate treaty?

A: COP21 is not the end but a beginning of a process where the countries will turn in their national commitments [Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCS)]. After that will come the mechanisms to assess the implementation of these contributions, and, from time to time, propose other targets, which would be more ambitious in some cases.

This will be the first climate change summit, after the Copenhagen conference [in 2009] where no accord was reached even though the Kyoto Protocol was coming to an end, where we will be able to reach some level of agreement.

It might not be the optimal level; apparently the contributions so far publicly submitted by the states parties would not achieve the objective of keeping global warming down to two degrees Celsius. Nevertheless, it is a major advance, when you look at what has happened in the past.

That said, what Chile maintains is that the contributions should be binding, and we are going to back that position which is clearly not supported by everyone.

Q: So you include yourself among those who believe Paris will mark a positive turning point in the fight against climate change?

A: Yes, in the sense that a concrete, definitive agreement will be reached.

But it is, I insist, the start of a path. Later other, more ambitious, measures will have to be adopted, to further reduce global temperatures.

Q: Will the treaty currently being debated include the financing that the Global South and Latin America in particular will need in order to help prevent the planet from reaching a situation that is irreversible for human life?

A: I have a hope that the Green Climate Fund will grow and give more countries access to technology and resources. In this region we will always have the contradiction that we are considered middle-income countries, and thus we are not given priority when it comes to funding, while at the same time our economies are often unable to foot greater costs. And on the other hand, we are the smallest emitters [of greenhouse gases].

This is why in Chile we have set two targets, one without external support and the other with external financing, to reduce emissions by 45 percent. But there is also a possibility of financing through cooperation programmes for the introduction and transfer of new technologies to our countries, which will allow us to live up to the commitments.

Q: As the first executive director of U.N.-Women [2010-2013], you helped establish the idea that women must be taken into account in climate negotiations and actions, because they bear the impacts on a day-to-day basis and are decisive in adapting to and mitigating global warming. What is the central role that women should have in the new treaty?

A: There are a number of day-to-day decisions made by women, which have an influence. For example, energy efficiency is essential when it comes to reducing emissions, and it is often a domestic issue, in questions such as turning off lights, for example.

But in many parts of the world women are also the ones hauling water or cooking with firewood, especially in the most vulnerable areas.

So the importance of women ranges from these aspects to their contribution as citizens committed to the fight against climate change, with the conviction that a green, inclusive and sustainable economy is possible, and to the political role of women at the parliamentary and municipal level, where they are working hard for the adoption of measures and to ensure a livable planet.

Q: As president, and as a Chilean, what worries you most about the current climate situation? What would you see as the highest priority?

A: There are many things that worry me about climate change, ranging from severe drought and flooding to islands that could disappear under water – in other words, how natural events linked to climate change affect the lives of people.

I’m also concerned about two things that are essential for people: clean drinking water and food, two elements that can be profoundly affected by climate change. We have seen that there are areas of the country where people depend on rationed water from tanker trucks.

This not only affects the daily lives of people but also, in agricultural areas, it affects production and incomes. And think about the marvelous variety of fish and seafood that we have in our country, which depends on the temperatures in our oceans.

All of this could be modified. It is all very important, and ends up affecting people’s lives.

Q: Paris was the victim of a Jihadist terrorist attack on Nov. 13, which left 130 people dead. Did these attacks affect the climate surrounding the summit? Will the participation by the heads of state and government also serve as a response to the terrorism?

A: More than 160 heads of state and government have confirmed their attendance at the Paris conference, which sends out an extremely clear signal that we will not allow ourselves to be intimidated.

We are going to Paris first, because the issue to be addressed and discussed is important, but also because we are sending a message that we will not tolerate this kind of action and that we will continue moving forward in the defence of the values that we believe are essential. And we will give a hug of solidarity to our sister republic, France, to President François Hollande and to the French people.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Excerpt:

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry addressing the second international Our Ocean conference, held in the Chilean port of Valparaíso. Sitting next to him are Chilean Foreign Minister Heraldo Muñoz and President Michelle Bachelet. Credit: Foreign Ministry of Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
VALPARAÍSO, Chile, Oct 8 2015 (IPS)

Seafood offers a large amount of animal protein in diets around the world, and the livelihoods of 12 percent of the global population depend directly or indirectly on fisheries and aquaculture.

However, the impacts of climate change, plastic waste pollution, illegal fishing, and acidification threaten the oceans and their biodiversity, said experts at the second international Our Ocean conference, held Oct. 5-6 in the Chilean port of Valparaíso, 120 km northwest of Santiago.

The more than 500 participants from 56 countries taking part in the gathering committed to some 80 marine conservation and protection initiatives for over 2.1 billion dollars, covering more than 1.9 billion km of ocean, said Chile’s foreign minister, Heraldo Muñoz.

Muñoz and his U.S. counterpart, Secretary of State John Kerry, hosted the conference, whose first edition took place in 2014 in Washington, D.C.

In one of the keynote speeches, the director general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, said keeping the oceans healthy and productive was key to eradicating hunger and reaching the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development adopted by the international community during a Sept. 25-27 U.N. summit in New York.

“We cannot continue to use water resources as if they were infinite,” said Graziano da Silva, who pointed out that nearly one-third of the world’s fish stocks are overfished.

The U.N. official said oceans do not have an infinite capacity to withstand the threats they face: over-exploitation of marine resources, climate change, pollution and loss of habitat.

“The health of our own planet and our food security depends on how we treat the blue world,” he stated.

FAO emphasises that fish is a highly nutritious complement to diets lacking in essential vitamins and minerals.

According to FAO, about one billion people – largely in developing countries – rely on fish as their primary source of animal protein. And in 2010, “fish provided more than 2.9 billion people with almost 20 percent of their intake of animal protein, and 4.3 billion people with about 15 percent of such protein.”

And in some countries, especially small island states, fish accounts for over 25 percent of animal protein intake, the U.N. agency reports.

Besides offering a staple element in diets worldwide, fishing and aquaculture provide jobs and incomes to millions of people across the planet.

“Fishing is part of the oldest, most remote history of the American continent,” social anthropologist Juan Carlos Skewes told IPS. “In the interior of the continent as well as along the coasts and rivers it provided sustenance for dozens of native peoples, especially groups whose nomadic way of life depended on the sea.”

And that is still true: 12 percent of the global population – or 875,000,000 people – depend directly or indirectly on fishing and aquaculture.

“The sea is so important for us because it not only feeds us, but gives us life,” said Petero Edmunds, mayor of Rapa Nui, better known as Easter Island, located 3,700 km off the coast of Chile in the Pacific ocean.

Oceans cover over 70 percent of the planet’s surface and 97 percent of all water on earth is salty, but only one percent is protected. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

“For Polynesians, the sea is our source of life,” he said in an interview with IPS. “It is so important that in our mythology we have Tangaloa, the God of the Sea, and in Rapa Nui’s ancient traditions, when a baby is born, the first thing the father must do is dip it into the sea, to return it to its natural state.”

In Latin America and the Caribbean there are over two million small-scale fisherpersons who generate some three billion dollars a year in revenues, according to the Latin American Organisation for Fisheries Development (OLDEPESCA).

Three of the world’s large marine ecosystems are found along South America’s coasts.

The main one is the Humboldt Current, in the Pacific ocean. It flows north along the west coast of South America, from the southern tip of Chile, past Ecuador, to northern Peru, creating one of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems with approximately 20 percent of the world’s fish catch, according to FAO.

Other important ecosystems in the region, in the Atlantic ocean, are the Patagonian Shelf along the coasts of Argentina and Uruguay, and the South Brazil Shelf.

But these ecosystems are in serious danger: Around eight million tons of plastic bottles, bags, toys and other plastic waste is dumped into the oceans every year, killing innumerable marine animals and sea birds.

In addition, nearly one-third of global fish stocks are overfished.

Of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) approved at the late September global summit in New York, number 14 is to “conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources.”

But the interdependence of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the vital role played by oceans which, for example, absorb more than 30 percent of carbon dioxide emissions, mean the SDGs are impossible to achieve without healthy and resilient oceans.

“Today we know there is a much closer relationship between oceans and climate change,” EU Commissioner for Environment, Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Karmenu Vella told IPS.

He added that the protection of oceans should be a central focus of the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP21) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to be held in Paris from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11.

Foreign Minister Muñoz, meanwhile, said the government leaders taking part in the conference in Chile, who will also attend COP21, “have promised that protection of the oceans will be included in the documents and commitments that emerge from the summit.”

Muñoz stressed the importance of the announcements made by a number of countries at the Valparaíso conference.

He emphasised Chile’s pledge to protect more than one million sq km of sea, which will be one of the largest protected marine areas in the world.

As part of that initiative, the country announced the creation of 720,000 sq km of protected areas in Rapa Nui, as demanded by the island’s slightly over 5,000 inhabitants, who are seeking to protect the biodiversity of the surrounding waters, which are home to 142 endemic species, 27 of which are endangered or threatened.

The measure will also make it possible for them to continue their ancestral practice of subsistence fishing in the island’s 50 nautical mile zone.

“Artisanal fishing is still practiced according to our ancestral traditions in Rapa Nui,” Edmunds said. “Rocks are used as weights for the hooks, so we can catch tuna or other big fish.”

He said the creation of the marine protected area, announced by President Michelle Bachelet at the opening of the conference, would help combat illegal fishing in the waters surrounding the island.

“For decades we have seen ‘ghost’ ships that appear in the early hours of morning as lights on the horizon, which take our fish,” the mayor said.

“With the help of NGOs (non-governmental organisations), it has been shown that an average of 20 illegal vessels a day fish in our waters, which are taking our resources, and we don’t want them to be exhausted,” he added.

Bachelet also announced the creation of the Nazca-Desventuradas Marine Park covering 297,518 sq km, which will be the biggest such protected area in the Americas.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Chilean President Michelle Bachelet during the closing ceremony of the international meeting “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”. On the podium, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.N. Women Executive Director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka. Credit: Government of Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 3 2015 (IPS)

Women leaders from every continent, brought together by U.N. Women and the Chilean government, demanded that gender equality be a cross-cutting target in the post-2015 development agenda. Only that way, they say, can the enormous inequality gap that still affects women and children around the world be closed.

“We celebrate that there has been progress in these last twenty years (since the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing) in this area…and the evidence is all the people around who came, shared their experiences, the good, the bad, the struggle ahead, the challenges ahead,” U.N. Women Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri told IPS.

And while “some countries have made no progress at all, some countries, some progress, and some countries better progress, no country has reached what we should need to reach,” she added.“At the current pace of change, it will take 81 years to achieve gender parity in the workplace, more than 75 years to reach equal remuneration between men and women for work of equal value, and more than 30 years to reach gender balance in decision-making.” – Santiago Call to Action

“If you’re talking about poverty, you need voice, participation and leadership for women, if you’re talking about economy, you need voice and participation, if you’re talking education, you need women – both education for voice, participation and leadership, capacity-building, and you need them to be leaders in education,” she said.

“Similarly health: you want women leaders in the health sector. Just as they need to have a voice in the design of the health sector and services,” said Puri, from India. “Women in the media is another critical area – you need voice, participation and leadership for women in the media, otherwise you will never get past the inequality and the negative stereotyping of women and their role in the media.”

The high-level event, “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”, held Feb.27-28 in the Chilean capital, assessed the advances made towards gender equality in the last 20 years and what still needs to be done.

One example raised at the meeting was the failure to reach the goal on gender balance in leadership positions.

The participants also discussed the route forward, towards the Sustainable Development Goals, for the period 2015-2030, designed to close gaps, build more resilient societies, and move towards sustainable prosperity for all.

The SDGs will replace the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which set out the international community’s collective development and anti-poverty targets for the 2000-2015 period.

The women leaders meeting in Santiago demanded that gender equality be mainstreamed into the 17 projected SDGs to prevent the progress from being slow and uneven, as it has been in the last 20 years in the case of the Beijing Platform for Action agreed at the Fourth World Conference on Women in September 1995.

U.N. Women Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri at the high-level international event “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”, held Feb. 27-28 in Santiago, Chile. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

“At the current pace of change, it will take 81 years to achieve gender parity in the workplace, more than 75 years to reach equal remuneration between men and women for work of equal value, and more than 30 years to reach gender balance in decision-making,” reads the Call to Action document produced by the conference in Santiago, part of the activities marking the 20 years since Beijing.

Puri pointed out that in the future SDGs, number five will promote “gender equality and empowerment of women and girls.”

But she said it is equally important for “the other SDGS to have gender-sensitive targets and indicators that capture on one hand the impacts and needs of women, and that also capture the agency of women,” she said.

“How can you get health for all without health for women and by women and for women; similarly how can you get education for all, and sustainable energy for all. So all of those SDGs are intimately related to this, to the realisation and achievement of the gender equality goal.”

“I was looking at an IPS article about the gender goal which said it is not a wish-list but a to-do list, so then I used it for the call to action (in Santiago),” she said.

The Santiago call to action calls for a renewed political commitment to close remaining gaps and to guarantee full implementation of the 12 critical areas of the Beijing Platform for Action by 2020.

This includes balanced representation of women and men in all international decision-making processes, including the Post-2015 Development Agenda, the SDGs, financing for development and climate change processes.

It also includes the empowerment of women, the realisation of human rights of women and girls, and an end to gender inequality by 2030 and to the funding gap on gender equality, as well as the matching of commitments with means of implementation.

The executive director of Oxfam International, Winnie Byanyima of Uganda, told IPS that in the post-2015 agenda, “gender equality should be measured in all the goals, in other words, each goal must be measured for how it is achieved for men and for women, in different ethnic groups, in cities, in rural areas….so that we will know that each sustainable development goal has been achieved not only for men but also for women, not only for boys but also for girls, rather than averages.”

She stressed that “the technical groups working within…the United Nations must make sure that they select standards and indicators that are going to be measurable in a gender disaggregated way so that all countries are able to collect gender disaggregated data to enable monitoring progress for men and women.”

In the conference’s closing event, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet said that “for those of us who have taken part in this gathering, it is not possible to think of a successful development agenda that does not have at its heart the central aim of achieving equality between boys and girls, and men and women.”

“We need the banner of equality to wave soon in all nations, and we must be optimistic, because we have a real possibility to make every place on earth more humane, more just, more dignified, for each person who lives there,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Group photo at the high-level international meeting on Women in Power held Feb. 27-28 in Santiago, Chile, which analysed the human rights of women, as part of the major events held worldwide 20 years after the World Conference on Women in Beijing. Credit: Ximena Castro/Government of Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 2 2015 (IPS)

Women’s participation in decision-making is highly beneficial and their role in designing and applying public policies has a positive impact on people’s lives, women leaders and experts from around the world stressed at a high-level meeting in the capital of Chile.

“It is not about men against women, but there is evidence to show through research that when you have more women in public decision-making, you get policies that benefit women, children and families in general,” Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, told IPS.

“So women tend, when they’re in parliament, for example, to promote women’s rights legislation. When women are in sufficient numbers in parliaments they also promote children’s rights and they tend to speak up more for the interests of communities, local communities, because of their close involvement in community life,” she added.

Byanyima, from Uganda, is one of the more than 60 women leaders and government officials who met Friday Feb. 27 and Saturday Feb. 28 at the meeting “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”, organised by U.N. Women and the Chilean government in Santiago.“There is already enough evidence in the world to show the positive impact of women's leadership. Women have successfully built and run countries and cities, economies and formidable institutions.” -- Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka

The conference was led by Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, who was the first executive director of U.N. Women (2010-2013), and her successor, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka of South Africa. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon also took part in the inauguration of the event.

The meeting kicked off the activities marking the 20th anniversary of the Fourth World Conference on Women, held in September 1995 in the Chinese capital, where 189 governments signed the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, which contained a package of measures to bolster gender equity and women’s empowerment.

Two decades later, defenders of the human rights of women recognise that progress has been made, although they say it has been slower and more limited than what was promised in the action plan.

In terms of women’s access to decision-making, representation remains low.

In 1995, women accounted for 11.3 percent of the world’s legislators, and only the parliaments of Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden had more than 30 percent women. And only three women were heads of state and seven were heads of government.

Today, women represent 21.9 percent of parliamentarians globally, and 39 lower houses of Congress around the world are made up of at least 30 percent women. In addition, 10 women are heads of state and 15 are heads of government.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, one of every four legislators is a woman, and in the last 23 years, six women were elected president of their countries, four of them in the last decade. And three of them were reelected.

In March 2014 Bachelet took office for a second time, after her first term of president of Chile in 2006-2010. In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff began her second consecutive term on Jan. 1. And in Argentina, Cristina Fernández has been president since 2007, and was reelected in 2011.

Winnie Byanyima, executive director of Oxfam International, during her participation in the high-level event “Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world”,in Santiago, Chile. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

“Women in power and decision-making: Building a different world” was attended by a number of high-level women leaders, such as Lithuanian President Dalia Grybauskaité, First Deputy Prime Minister of Croatia Vesna Pusic, several vice presidents, and ministers from around the world.

Speakers mentioned achievements as well as multiple political, cultural, social and economic barriers that continue to stand in the way of women’s access to positions of power.

There are still countries that have not made progress, said Byanyima, of Oxfam, one of the world’s leading humanitarian organisations.

Tarcila Rivera, a Peruvian journalist and activist for the rights of indigenous women, told IPS that when assessing the progress made in the last two decades, “it should be made clear that we have advanced but have only closed some gaps.”

Rivera, the founder of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Cultures of Peru, said the progress made has been uneven for native and non-native women, while there are continuing gaps in education, participation, violence and economic empowerment.

According to the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), one of every two women in the region is outside the labour market, and one of every three does not have her own income, while only one of every 10 men is in that position.

Another study by the United Nations regional body concluded that if women had the same access to employment as men, poverty would shrink between one and 14 percentage points in the countries of Latin America.

“There is already enough evidence in the world to show the positive impact of women’s leadership,” said Mlambo-Ngcuka, who prior to heading U.N. Women served as South Africa’s first female vice president (2005-2008).

“Women have successfully built and run countries and cities, economies and formidable institutions,” she added.

But she said “We know that this is not happening enough, and we know that there can be both overt and subtle resistance to women’s leadership. We also know the devastating impact of leaving things as they are. We know that for women’s leadership to thrive, and for change to happen, all of us need greater courage and decisiveness.

“According to available data, it will be some 50 years before gender parity is reached in politics. Unless political parties take bolder steps,” she said.

Mlambo-Ngcuka recounted that during a Thursday Feb. 26 meeting with Chilean civil society representatives she called on a pregnant woman set to give birth in six weeks.

“I reminded everyone that her unborn daughter will be 50 before her world offers equal political opportunity. And that baby will be 80 before she has equal economic opportunity.”

According to the female leaders and experts meeting in Santiago, change cannot continue to be the sole responsibility of civil society groups that defend the rights of women, but requires action by the authorities and those in power – both men and women.

“The heirs of Beijing are the heirs of voices that call on us and urge us to put equality on the political agenda,” said Alicia Bárcena of Mexico, the executive secretary of ECLAC.

“Twenty years after the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, women know what is needed to reach gender equality. Now it is time to act,” she said.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

A women-led village council in rural Bangladesh prepares a “social map” of the local community. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka
SANTIAGO, Feb 27 2015 (IPS)

This weekend, at the invitation of President Michelle Bachelet and myself, women leaders from across the world are meeting in Santiago de Chile. We will applaud their achievements. We will remind ourselves of their contributions. And we will chart a way forward to correct the historical record. History has not been fair to women – but then, women usually didn’t write it.

This meeting will be an opportunity to take a hard look at the world that is, and the world that will be. The case is urgent, not only for individual women and their human right to equality, but for everyone. The “perfect storm of crises” as one expert has called it, threatens food, energy and water supplies. It threatens political and economic stability in all our countries. It could upend any prospects for balanced and sustainable development.

On the other hand, mobilising the potential of women and maximising their contribution will turn aside some of the worst effects of climate change and help ensure food and water supply; will help correct massive economic inequality between the few and the many; will mitigate conflict and political instability, and help to build lasting peace. Women’s rights are human necessities.

At the heart of our discussion is how to put more women in positions of power. Across the 192 U.N. member countries:

• Only 19 women are heads of state or government;
• One in five parliamentarians are women;
• One in 20 city mayors are women;
• One in four judges and prosecutors, and
• Fewer than one in 10 police officers are women.

Women leaders are just as hard to find in economic life – only one in five board seats in major companies are held by women. And this is despite evidence of increased company earnings when women are on the board!

So how do we get there from here? We already have a road map. It was agreed by 189 world leaders back in 1995, at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Countries have made a good start with better overall education and health care for women; but they haven’t followed through on the rest of the package, especially political participation and economic empowerment. At the present rate of progress, it will take 81 years for women to achieve parity in employment. Women, and their countries, can’t wait that long.

This year, the 20th anniversary of the Beijing conference, the year when the U.N. will adopt sustainable development goals for the next 15 years, offers a unique opportunity to make a new start.

First of all, today’s leaders must make a personal commitment to increase women’s presence in decision-making – not just in their numbers, but in their contributions. There are many ways to do this – quotas and numerical targets for women’s participation; training and mentorship to boost women’s confidence and capacity; private-sector engagement matching public-sector initiatives. Countries will find their own ways, if the will is there.

Employers must ensure equal hiring, payment and promotion policies; support to balance work-life conditions, and give women the opportunity to lead. Managers must learn to welcome women’s input and contribution.

Leaders who lead by example in their daily lives will win allies in every aspect of their work for gender equality. They can win allies in the media too – at least to avoid reflexive disparagement, negative stereotyping and casual sexism; and at best to celebrate the positive and constructive contribution of women leaders, even in the toughest environments.

Then there are many women who struggle and suffer every day. They are the everyday heroines of our age, and their fight for equality deserves a wider audience. We shouldn’t have to wait for another vicious attack or another assassination before we learn their names.

These measures sound ambitious, but they are fully realistic. We know from our own experience in leadership, that we can achieve them all. The 1995 Beijing platform for action is not a “wish list”; it’s a “to do list.” If today’s leaders front-load gender equality, if they start now to make good on those 20-year-old promises, we can look forward to serious progress by 2020, and gender equality by 2030.

“The arc of the moral universe is long,” said Martin Luther King, “but it bends toward justice.” Where women are concerned, we have to bend that arc a lot faster now, to make up for all the years it didn’t bend at all. At stake are not only justice and human rights but also perhaps survival itself.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Excerpt:

Michele Bachelet (left) and student leader Camilla Vallejo. Credit: Wikipedia

By Sebastian Rosemont
SANTIAGO, Dec 6 2014 (IPS)

In 2011, students in Chile made headlines when they launched a nationwide strike lasting almost eight months.

The trigger was high tuition costs that drove students and their families into debt. There were coordinated marches in all major cities. At some universities students took over buildings. The marches took on almost a carnival atmosphere with students engaging in “kiss-ins” and pillow fights.More than two thirds of the population supported the student movement and its demands for education reform. The students consistently rejected the government’s attempts to appease the protesters as grossly insufficient.

Before long, the marches became multifaceted. Opponents of the massive HidroAysén dam project in Patagonia joined in. Students and trade unions joined forces when workers staged strikes and marched in Santiago and other major cities.

Tasha Fairfield, an assistant professor for the London School of Economics’ Department of International Development, said the strikes were pivotal. “The student movement played a critical role in creating political space,” Fairfield said. It “dramatically changed the political context in Chile and helped to place the issues of Chile’s extreme inequalities centrally on the national agenda.”

Although most of the demonstrations were peaceful, some protestors wanted more direct confrontation with the police. Masked protesters armed with stones clashed with police forces equipped with riot gear, tear gas, and armoured vehicles with water cannons. The harshness of the government crackdown drew international criticism.

More than two thirds of the population supported the student movement and its demands for education reform. The students consistently rejected the government’s attempts to appease the protesters as grossly insufficient. Their goal was free university tuition.

President Sebastian Piñera, the first conservative president since the 1988 plebiscite that ended General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, saw his ratings plummet to the lowest of any leader in the post-authoritarian era. Ordinary Chileans had made clear that they wanted to see changes in their society.

This set the stage for Michelle Bachelet to run for election in 2013. She was previously president from 2006-2010, but Chile’s laws prevented her from running for a second consecutive term.

This time around, her platform was much more radical. Bachelet pledged to reform the tax system and, with the increased revenue, reform the education system. She won the election and immediately took the first step. She raised the corporate tax rate and closed significant loopholes.

The 2013 elections

Bachelet was backed by the Nueva Mayoria (New Majority), a center-left coalition made up of her own Socialist Party, the Christian Democratic Party, and the Party for Democracy, among others. After falling just short of an absolute majority in the first round of elections, Bachelet won handily in the runoff, taking home over 62 percent of the vote.

The elections remade the legislature. Isabel Allende (from the Socialist Party), daughter of Salvador Allende, became the first woman president of the senate. Several student leaders, including Camila Vallejo (of the Communist Party) and Gabriel Boric (an Independent), launched political careers by winning their bids to join the Chamber of Deputies. The left was swept into power by a wave of public support and gained strong majorities in both houses of the National Congress.

Bachelet had been given a clear mandate. The government put together a package that would raise corporate income taxes from 20 percent to at least 25 percent and close tax loopholes for companies and wealthy business owners. The changes promised to bring in an estimated 8.3 billion dollars each year.

The government pledged to put half of these funds toward providing free education for all Chileans by the year 2020 and to roll back the for-profit schools that emerged during Pinochet’s dictatorship. The remainder would be used to improve the health care system and other social programs.

The bill easily passed through the Chamber of Deputies. When it moved over to the senate it ultimately secured a 33-1 victory, although some changes were made to placate some of the more moderate and conservative doubters of the reform.

“The government negotiated various compromises on the bill in the Senate in order to secure votes from the Christian Democrats,” Fairfield said.

On Sep. 28, Bachelet signed the bill into law.

Debate over tax reform

In a key tactical move, the corporate tax hikes touched only the largest firms. An estimated 95.5 percent of businesses will not face higher taxes. This expanded the measure’s base of support and somewhat insulated the reformers against the charge that the bill was anti-business.

Beyond raising the corporate tax rate, the reform targets the profits of large businesses and their owners in other ways. The law eliminates the FUT (Taxable Profit Fund), a provision that allowed businesses to set profits aside without paying taxes on them— funds that at last count held 270 billion dollars.

The reform also addresses the owners of these businesses. In years past, wealthy business owners enjoyed incentives to avoid withdrawing all of their income from the company’s profits so that they would pay the more favourable corporate tax rate of 17-20 percent compared to nearly 40 percent, the highest personal income tax bracket.

However, the owners would then find ways for the profits to make their way back into their own pockets, either legally or illegally. The tax reform therefore opened up a new range of taxable income, money previously out of the government’s reach.

There is some concern that the tax reform will drag down the already faltering Chilean economy. Opposition groups claim the new rules will hurt future investments, and this seems to resonate with the public — Bachelet’s approval rating has dipped below 50 percent.

However, Justice Minister José Antonio Gómez insists that on the contrary, with more than 50 percent of the 8.3 billion dollars going toward implementing free, quality education, it will in turn result in increased productivity.

Even if productivity fails to rise immediately, the political support of thousands of households with college students who see their tuition bills cut in half or more is likely to create a broad constituency to keep core elements of the tax and spending package in place.

It is unlikely that any significant changes will be made affecting the new law before the next presidential election in 2018 because senators are elected for eight-year terms and deputies serve four years (half the Senate and the entire Chamber of Deputies are selected every presidential election). This allows time for the law to be fully integrated into the system without being derailed by detractors focusing on immediate concerns.

Although many of the protests of 2011 — the year of Occupy Wall Street — have faded, Chilean students and workers managed to win many of their demands. This experience offers important lessons for popular movements struggling for similar goals around the world. By focusing on tangible demands, making broad partnerships, and linking to the larger platform of economic inequality, Chilean protesters changed the rules of the game.

Edited by Kitty Stapp. This story originally appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus.

Excerpt:

Alicia is one of the millions of Chilean women who have had an illegal, unsafe abortion because in their country terminating a pregnancy is punishable with up to five years in prison, regardless of the circumstances. Now the country is moving towards legalising therapeutic abortion. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Sep 24 2014 (IPS)

Chile, one of the most conservative countries in Latin America, is getting ready for an unprecedented debate on the legalisation of therapeutic abortion, which is expected to be approved this year.

In Chile, more than 300,000 illegal abortions are practiced annually – a scourge that is both cause and effect of many other social problems.

“Abortion in Chile is like the drug trade – surrounded by illegality and precariousness,” 27-year-old Alicia, who had an abortion five years ago, told IPS.

“A friend told me about a gynecologist, I went to see him and he told me the date, time and place to meet him,” Alicia said. “My mom came with me. A van picked me up on a random street corner in the city and I had no idea where we were going. I still remember my mother’s face, the anxiety of not knowing if I would come back, and in what condition.

“In a house a doctor and a woman, I don’t know if she was a midwife or a nurse, were waiting for me. They doped me up. When I woke up it was done. They put me in the van and took me back to my mother. We never talked about it again,” she said sadly.

The legalisation of abortion is one of the Chilean state’s big debts to women, Carolina Carrera, the president of Corporación Humanas, told IPS.

“Chile’s highly punitive legislation is a violation of the human rights of women because this level of penalisation means that women who abort do so in unsafe conditions, with physical and psychological risks,” she added.

In addition, smuggling has increased of Misoprostol, also known as RU486 or medication abortion. The medicine is sold at exorbitantly high prices, without clear medical indications, she added.

Claudia, 24, had to go to a house on one of the hills in the port city of Valparaíso, 140 km northwest of Santiago, to buy the drug to interrupt an unwanted pregnancy.

“It was a dangerous place,” she said. “I had to pay more than 600 dollars. I looked around and thought: and if something happens to me, who do I call? An ambulance, the police? No, I’d be put in prison!”

In Latin America, where the Catholic Church still has an enormous influence, abortion is illegal everywhere except Cuba, Uruguay and Mexico City. However, most countries allow therapeutic abortion in circumstances suggested by the United Nations: rape, risk to the mother’s life, or severe birth defects.

Chile is one of only seven countries in the world that ban abortion under any circumstance. Four others are in Latin America – the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua – and two are in Europe – Malta and the Vatican.

Therapeutic abortion was legal in Chile from 1931 to 1989, when it was banned by the government of late dictator General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990). None of the democratic administrations that have governed the country since then have touched the issue until now.

Since then, women who undergo an abortion have faced a possible prison sentence of up to five years.

“The frequency of abortion has remained steady in the last 10 years in Chile,” Dr. Ramiro Molina with the Centre on Reproductive Medicine and Integral Development of the Adolescent at the University of Chile told IPS. “The number of cases has not gone down, nor have there been major changes in the ages: the highest rates of abortion are still found among women between the ages of 25 and 34.”

He said there are only records of some 33,500 women a year who are treated for abortion-related complications – a figure he described as “very misleading” because it only takes into account those who go to a public health centre for emergency treatment.

Molina explained that the real total is estimated by multiplying that number by 10, which would indicate that 335,000 women a year undergo illegal abortions in Chile.

In the Latin American countries with the strictest legislation, abortions are practiced in conditions that pose a high risk to women, making it a public health problem as well as a reflection of inequality.

“Abortion is a socioeconomic indicator of poverty,” Molina said.

According to the World Health Organisation, an estimated 21.6 million unsafe abortions took place worldwide in 2008. The estimated annual total in Latin America is 4.4 million, 95 percent of which are clandestine. And 12 percent of maternal deaths in the region are the result of unsafe abortion.

Molina, one of the region’s leading experts in his field, said that while progress has been made in the last two decades, it has been very slow because “a religious-based philosophical vision” continues to prevail and stands in the way of further advances.

In Chile, the government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet, in office since March, is preparing to launch a debate on the legalisation of therapeutic abortion in case of rape, risk to the mother’s life, or severe birth defects.

She has stated on several occasions that abortion will be decriminalised this year in Chile.

During her first term (2006-2010), Bachelet authorised the free distribution of Levonorgestrel, better known as the morning after pill, by government health centres to all girls and women over the age of 14 who requested it. But its actual distribution still depends on the ideology of mayors, who are responsible for public health centres in their jurisdictions.

The morning after pill came too late for Francisco and Daniela. When she enrolled in the university, “we got pregnant,” she told IPS. The couple thought about it long and hard, but they lived with her parents and Francisco only worked part-time.

“I felt like it was cutting her life short, her dreams, her prospects,” said Francisco, who somehow managed to scrape together the 600 dollars for the abortion.

Now, at the age of 35, they have a little girl. But they remember it as a traumatic incident, “because it was clandestine, unsafe and unjust.”

Although the legalisation of therapeutic abortion was one of Bachelet’s campaign pledges, abortion remains a taboo subject in Chile. Many are afraid of the political consequences in this country of 17.8 million people, where more than 65 percent of the population is Catholic.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Aerial view of the Mejillones Liquefied Natural Gas (GNLM) regasification terminal in northern Chile, the biggest of its kind in Latin America and one of the biggest in the world. Credit: Courtesy of GNLM

By Marianela Jarroud
MEJILLONES, Chile , Jun 16 2014 (IPS)

In April 2004, Argentina began to steadily cut natural gas exports to neighbouring Chile, triggering a major energy crisis and revealing structural problems in this vital sector.

Ten years later, a regasification plant which converts liquefied natural gas (LNG) back to natural gas in the port of Mejillones, 1,400 km north of Santiago, apparently goes a long way towards solving the energy problems in the north of the country, where water is scarce and where the mining industry is concentrated.

President Michelle Bachelet has expressed confidence that, along with renewable energies, natural gas will contribute to the diversification of Chile’s energy mix, and emphasised that “what we do or fail to do now will have consequences in the future.”

On May 14, Bachelet inaugurated an onshore storage tank at the Mejillones Liquefied Natural Gas (GNLM) regasification terminal, the biggest in Latin America and one of the biggest in the world.

French-Belgian power company GDF Suez holds a 63 percent share in the terminal and the rest is owned by the state-owned Corporación del Cobre de Chile (Codelco).

It was Bachelet , during her first term (2006-2010), who laid the first stone for the plant. And in February 2010 she was present to welcome the arrival of the first methane tanker.

Bachelet now inaugurated the huge storage tank with a gross capacity of 187,000 m3. It is a full containment tank with a nickel steel inner tank inside a pre-stressed concrete outer tank.

The CEO of GDF Suez, Gerard Mestrallet, said it was built to the highest safety standards, to withstand seismic activity and tsunamis.

The tank’s 501 elastomeric isolators enable it to withstand the stresses caused by a major earthquake, as well as sophisticated seismic monitoring and protection systems.

The expansion of GNLM involved an additional 200 million dollars, on top of the initial investment of 550 million dollars.

For four years, in the first stage of the project, the BW GDF Suez Brussels was moored on one side of the jetty in the bay and used as a floating storage unit when gas shipments came in.

The land tank’s capacity is equivalent to approximately 110 million m3 of standard natural gas after the regasification process. This is transported to clients, mainly mining companies, through the Nor Andino and GasAtacama pipelines.

It is the company’s clients that pay for importing the gas. The corporations that have signed contracts so far are the Anglo-Australian multinational BHP Billiton, Codelco and Generadora E-CL, a Chilean power company controlled by GDF Suez.

The natural gas storage tank inaugurated by President Michelle Bachelet May 14, to complete the natural gas terminal at Mejillones. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

On May 15, Bachelet – who took office in March – presented her government’s energy agenda, which focuses heavily on clean energy sources as well as the use of LNG to replace diesel fuel and for industrial and household use as well.

The agenda proposes short-term measures to maximise the use of the country’s current electric power generation infrastructure and LNG terminals.

It also includes medium to long-term initiatives aimed at boosting LNG capacity and installing new combined cycle plants fueled with natural gas, “as far as possible with new actors.”

Besides Mejillones, Chile has another LNG terminal, in Quintero bay 154 km north of Santiago, which is owned by London-based BG Group PLC and Chile’s state oil and gas company Empresa Nacional del Petroleo (ENAP).

But the head of the Latin American Observatory on Environmental Conflicts (OLCA), Lucia Cuenca, said the government’s proposal should be looked at with a critical eye.

The country is making the mistake, she told Tierramérica, of not thinking about the high quality natural gas that Bolivia or Argentina could provide, but only about unconventional sources of natural gas. She was referring, for example, to shale gas, which is extracted from underground rocks by hydraulic fracturing or fracking.

“ Chile is preparing to incorporate this kind of gas and that has to be evaluated in a much broader manner,” Cuenca said.

Chile currently imports gas mainly from Trinidad and Tobago and Qatar. But the government will reportedly negotiate supplies of shale gas from the United States.

Cuenca added that, even though LNG emits fewer greenhouse gas emissions, “it’s still a fossil fuel, which means it does produce emissions.”

“LNG is considered a transitional fuel; in other words, it is a little better than coal, but it is not exactly the best option from the standpoint of clean energy,” he added.

In Chile, thermoelectric plants are run on three kinds of fuel: diesel, the most expensive and dirtiest; coal, which is also highly polluting, but abundant and cheap; and gas, which is the least polluting, but costs around 30 percent more than coal.

In 1991, a year after this country returned to democracy after the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, the governments of Argentina and Chile signed an economic agreement that established the foundations for gas interconnection between the two countries.

But the late Néstor Kirchner, when he took office as president of Argentina in 2003, prioritised domestic supplies in the face of internal shortages of natural gas, which at the time only covered national demand.

The cuts in exports had a tremendous economic impact on Chile, because power companies were forced to use oil instead, whose international market price had soared.

At the time Argentina cut its gas exports, nearly 90 percent of industries in Santiago were using natural gas from Argentina, which also supplied much of the country’s natural gas pipeline network that serves households.

“The decision reached by Kirchner (2003-2007) was in line with Argentina’s political approach, which will always favour national interests; regardless of who is governing, they are prepared to assume the costs from the standpoint of the international cooperation agenda,” political scientist Francisca Quiroga told Tierramérica.

She said that after Argentina reduced its gas exports to Chile, a debate broke out in which many argued that Chile should not trust Argentina because it was a country that did not live up to its promises. But the political dividends Kirchner reaped outweighed any criticism from abroad, she added.

Quiroga said the question of energy “is a very touchy ideological and strategic issue and is important in debates on domestic policy.”

And in the current regional context, she added, “is it one of the most important issues on the multilateral agenda to address in terms of the challenges of the 21st century.”

In the meantime, Chile is planning the construction of a third LNG terminal in the south-central part of the country, with the participation of the state energy company ENAP.

Cuenca said it is a strategy that serves the large mining corporations that need cheap, abundant energy, because the aim is to offer lower prices on the domestic market.

Patagonia Without Dams activists broke out in cheers when they heard the decision reached by a ministerial committee to reject the HidroAysén dam project on Tuesday Jun. 10. Credit: Courtesy of Greenpeace Chile

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO , Jun 11 2014 (IPS)

The Chilean government rejected Tuesday the controversial HidroAysén project for the construction of five hydroelectric dams on rivers in the south of the country. The decision came after years of struggle by environmental groups and local communities, who warned the world of the destruction the dams would wreak on the Patagonian wilderness.

“This is a historic day,” Juan Pablo Orrego, the international coordinator of the Patagonia Without Dams campaign, told IPS after the decision was announced.

“I am moved that the citizens – because this was a victory by the citizens – managed to finally inspire a government to do the right thing in the face of a mega-project,” he added.

The decision was reached after a three-hour meeting by a committee of ministers of the government of socialist President Michelle Bachelet, who took office for a second term in March.

The committee, made up of the ministers of environment, energy, agriculture, mining, economy and health, unanimously accepted the 35 complaints presented against the project, 34 of which were introduced by communities and others opposed to the initiative and the last of which was presented by the company itself.

The decision took six years to arrive, after a number of legal battles. And in response to the announcement people took to the streets in Patagonia, a wilderness region in southern Chile, to celebrate.

“This ministerial committee has decided to accept the complaints presented by the community, by the citizens, and annul the environmental permit for the HidroAysén project,” Environment Minister Pablo Badenier told reporters, declaring that the dam had been rejected by the government.

The company, owned by Italian firm Endesa-Enel (which holds a 51 percent share) and Chile’s Colbún, has 30 days to appeal the resolution in an environmental court in Valdivia, in southern Chile.

During the election campaign, President Bachelet had stated that the dams were not viable.

In May, when her administration unveiled its energy agenda, she said she would promote renewable unconventional energy sources and the use of natural gas, in contrast with the plan of her predecessor, Sebastián Piñera (2010-2014), which favoured hydropower.

The HidroAysén project, presented in August 2007, was to involve the construction of five large hydroelectric dams on the Baker and Pascua rivers in Patagonia. But the following year, 32 of the 34 public agencies called on to pronounce themselves did so against the project.

Environmental groups, with the support of some government officials, have proposed UNESCO world heritage site status for the southern region of Aysén, where the dams were to be built some 1,600 km south of Santiago. Patagonia is not only biodiverse but is also one of the biggest reserves of freshwater in the world.

The dams would have flooded a total of 5,910 hectares of wilderness, for a total capacity of 2,750 MW for the national grid (SIC).

Chile has a total installed capacity of 17,000 MW: 74 percent in SIC, 25 percent in the great northern grid (SING), and the rest in medium-sized grids in the southern regions of Aysén and Magallanes.

The project also included a 1,912-km power line, the longest in the world, which was to run through nine of the 15 regions of this long narrow South American country.

Energy Minister Máximo Pacheco said the HidroAysén project “suffers from serious problems in its execution because it did not treat aspects related to the people who live there with due care and attention.”

He added that as energy minister “I have voted with complete peace and clarity of mind with respect to this project.”

Pacheco also said “the decision that was reached today does not compromise in the least the energy policy that we have designed in the energy agenda, but specifically refers to one project.”

Orrego, the environmentalist, said the decision against the construction of the HidroAysén dams “points to the end of the era of the thermoelectric and hydroelectric energy mega-projects – an era that in the developed countries ended a long time ago.”

Chile imports 97 percent of its fossil fuels and its energy mix is made up of 40 percent hydropower and the rest of polluting fossil fuels, used in thermoelectric plants.

The fact that Chile lacks domestic oil and natural gas means the cost of producing electricity per MW-hour is among the highest in Latin America – over 160 dollars, compared to 55 dollars in Peru, 40 in Colombia and 10 in Argentina.

The executive director of the association of electric companies (ASEL), Rodrigo Castillo, said on Tuesday that the resolution “refers to one project in particular and does not make it impossible to use hydrological resources in southern Chile in the future.”

But René Muga, the head of the association of power plants (AGG), said HidroAysén represented 40 percent of the energy needed by the country in the next 10 years, equivalent, according to his figures, to what seven or eight coal-fired plants would produce. “That energy is really necessary,” he argued.

Orrego said the Bachelet administration’s decision could bring it “very powerful political consequences.”

“It is a brave move,” the environmentalist said. “But it was inspired by the citizens, of that we have no doubt.”

“These many years of struggle have culminated in this resounding victory for the citizens,” Orrego added.

The Patagonia Without Dams campaign waged by a coalition of environmental and citizen groups and led by Orrego and prominent environmentalist Sara Larraín managed to mobilise the entire country against the HidroAysén project and drew international attention to the planned wilderness dams.

In opinion polls, three-quarters of respondents have said they were opposed to the dams. And in early 2011, more than 100,000 people took to the streets against HidroAysén.

Orrego, who won the Right Livelihood Award in 1998, expressed his gratitude to Chile, “because this campaign was carried out by the entire country.”

He also acknowledged the participation of “allies” in other countries, such as Argentina, Belgium, Italy and Spain.

In the Aysén región, critics of the project waited in a local cinema for the announcement of the ministerial committee’s decision, before marching through the streets of Coyhaique, the regional capital, to celebrate.

Patricio Segura of the Citizen Coalition for the Aysen Life Reserve told IPS that the government’s decision “was the right thing in terms of sustainability and the construction of the energy mix that we as a country deserve.”

“We hoped President Michelle Bachelet’s political commitment would be fulfilled, as well as the duty to set aside an irregular project that advanced due to lobbying and pressure,” he added.

Segura said the project “generated tremendous polarisation in the Aysén region,” and he complained that “they managed to divide the people of Aysén without even laying one brick.”

As a result, he said, this decision lays the foundation “for us to sit down in Aysén and discuss what really matters, which is the Aysén Life Reserve.”

“Now we have to discuss a sovereign and sustainable energy mix for the Aysén region, including our region’s abundant water resources and wind energy,” he added.

President Michelle Bachelet visiting a shelter on Apr. 3 in Camarones, one of the areas worst-hit by the quake, 2,000 km north of Santiago. Credit: Office of the Chilean President

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Apr 5 2014 (IPS)

Chile appears to have learned a few lessons from the 2010 earthquake and tsunami, and it successfully drew on them the night of Apr. 1, when another quake struck, this time in the extreme north of the country.

Frightened by the intensification of seismic activity in the last few years, local residents fled for the hills, two km away from the Pacific ocean, after a tsunami alert was issued by the Chilean Navy’s Hydrographic and Oceanographic Service.

But despite the fear, nearly one million people participated efficiently in a mass evacuation, and the six people who were killed died of heart attacks or falling debris.

The 8.2-magnitude temblor occurred at GMT 23:46 and was the strongest in a series of quakes that have hit northern Chile since Jan. 1.

“We were in our apartment, which is on the third floor of a building. My daughter and my husband and I all held onto each other. Suddenly, the windows burst and glass started to fall on our backs. It was horrible,” a woman who lives in the northern city of Iquique, and had later evacuated to higher ground away from the coast, told Tierramérica.

“We have learned a lot, and many of the elements that didn’t work right in 2010 functioned perfectly now,” the director of the National Seismological Centre, Sergio Barrientos, told Tierramérica.

Four years ago, “the seismological monitoring system broke down and we were only able to provide information on the earthquake a couple of hours later,” he said.

“On this occasion, even though it was a much smaller earthquake, we managed to deliver the necessary information just a few minutes after it occurred,” he added.

President Michelle Bachelet flew over the most heavily affected areas, Iquique and Arica, 1,800 and 2,000 km north of Santiago, respectively, to view the destruction.

“There has been an exemplary evacuation process, with strong solidarity that has made this a process without major setbacks, which has protected people from a tsunami or other serious problems linked to the quake,” she said.

Tuesday’s earthquake was also a trial by fire.for Bachelet, who took office as president for the second time, on Mar. 11.

The president ended her first term just 12 days after the 8.8-magnitude quake and tsunami that devastated vast areas in central and southern Chile on Feb. 27, 2010.

That time the emergency preparedness protocols didn’t work, and a tardy tsunami alert was blamed for some 500 deaths, added to the destruction of over 200,000 housing units. Bachelet faced legal action, and several members of her first administration are still under investigation.

Four years later, the president decreed a timely state of emergency for the affected regions and called out the armed forces and the security forces to keep public order.

The tsunami warning sirens sounded early enough to allow thousands of people to begin evacuating calmly.

Significant investment in economic and human resources lies behind these changes. In 2012, the National Seismological Centre signed an agreement with the Interior Ministry to strengthen the network of sensors and set up new stations, while creating a robust communications system.

The ongoing investment of nearly seven million dollars has included the installation of 10 new monitoring stations, the purchase of satellite equipment, and training for the staff at the National Seismological Centre and the National Emergency Office.

The disaster preparedness and mitigation strategies are bearing fruit not only in Chile, but in the rest of Latin America as well, according to the regional office of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO).

Earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and hurricanes are common in different parts of the region, often associated with conditions of vulnerability, poverty and insecurity.

However, local populations are better prepared today, regional cooperation is effective, and warning and response systems are efficient, UNESCO reports.

“The situation has improved greatly since the 27 February 2010 tsunami that impacted Chile,” said UNESCO which, in alliance with the authorities, is involved in work on education for tsunami preparedness in Chile, Peru and Ecuador.

In Chile, the work has been carried out in 144 schools in areas at risk of flooding – lower than 30 metres above sea level.

“Citizen education is essential in these situations, especially in a country like Chile, where a tsunami can occur 15 or 20 minutes after an earthquake and it takes 10 minutes to analyse the information,” hydraulic engineer Rodrigo Cienfuegos of the National Research Centre for Integrated Natural Disaster Management (CIGIDEN) told Tierramérica.

“People have to react in an autonomous manner; they have to know where to evacuate to immediately after an earthquake of the characteristics of the one we had on Tuesday,” added Cienfuegos, an expert on tsunamis.

One of the biggest challenges now is for people to be prepared to deal with the impacts that follow the quake itself: living in evacuation centres, and putting up with the lack of food, water and electricity.

“The idea is that, once the emergency is over, people will be more ready to live through that complex period,” he said.

According to Cienfuegos, an academic at the Catholic University, this South American country, one of the world’s most earthquake-prone, with more than 4,000 km of coastline, should rethink human settlements in the future.

“We have to be aware of the threat that living so close to the coast means,” he said. “It’s hard to move people away who for years have been living close to the sea, but measures have to be taken when the construction of new human settlements is being studied.”

For now, the people of northern Chile should be ready, seismologists warn. It has been 137 years since the last major quake in the north of the country and the energy that has accumulated is greater than what was released on Tuesday.

*Originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Michelle Bachelet speaking to international media correspondents. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Mar 11 2014 (IPS)

For the past four years, the foreign policy of Chile, South America’s “miracle”, has focused more on economic  than political issues.

Socialist Michelle Bachelet, sworn in this Tuesday Mar. 11 for her second (but not consecutive) term as president, must now recalibrate those policies, which have scored some successes but have also sparked tensions and conflicts.

During her election campaign, Bachelet said the foreign policy of the outgoing president, rightwing Sebastián Piñera, had a “mercantile emphasis,” and promised she would employ a more political approach.

Her government programme contains a harsh critique.

“Chile has lost presence in the region, its relations with its neighbours are problematic, a commercial vision has been imposed on our Latin American links, and external integration options have been ideologised,” the programme says.

During the Piñera government, “which had less political talent and lacked a narrative,”  discourse on Chile as an economically and commercially successful country was emphasised, something that had been present in its foreign policy since 25 years ago, Quiroga, a professor at the Diplomatic Academy, told IPS.

Bachelet (2006-2010) has ample political capital in the region and in the world, which was enhanced by her role as executive director of U.N. Women.

In her last international appearance as the president of Chile, at the 21st Rio Group Summit in Mexico in 2010, Bachelet’s leadership qualities were evident in her speech, which received an enthusiastic ovation.

“You can count on Chile, today and tomorrow, to work for our continent and for our Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). You can always count  on today’s president of Chile, who will always be a woman of Chile,” she said.

Bachelet has a close relationship with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, who said she looks forward to deepening ties with Chile and affirmed that they both have “a clear understanding of the role of integration in South America.”

She is also close to Argentine President Cristina Fernández, who calls her a “dear friend,” and is on good terms with Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.

Piñera, in contrast, was closer to Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, and promoted the Pacific Alliance which also includes Mexico and Peru, seeking to create a free trade area, boost economic competitiveness and become a platform for exercising influence, especially in the Asia Pacific region.

Fundamental aspects of Piñera’s foreign policy “were subordinated to certain commercial and economic interests,” political scientist Fabián Pressacco, of the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, told IPS.

However, Piñera denies that his government neglected regional political, social and cultural issues. “That does not correspond with reality,” he told IPS during a press conference with foreign journalists.

The emphasis on the Pacific Alliance, created in 2011, “did not mean that we neglected the continent,” Piñera said.

His government worked for global integration and promoted “wider strategies that included political, social and cultural aspects,” he added.

And it participated actively in mechanisms like CELAC and the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), among others, Piñera said.

But according to Quiroga, his handling of foreign policy has created some urgent challenges.

The first of these is strengthening relations with Argentina, Bolivia and Peru, the countries with which Chile shares borders.

Next, “a long-term working agenda should be established, to strengthen Latin American integration, in which relations with Brazil, Ecuador and Mexico should be secured by means of a strategy of public policies and not only commercially motivated actions,” said Quiroga.

Bachelet has nominated distinguished diplomat Heraldo Muñoz, a former ambassador of Chile to the United Nations and a high official of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as her foreign minister.

Muñoz will have to address the ongoing conflicts with Peru, which Piñera dealt with by a policy known as “cuerdas separadas” (separating commercial issues and territorial disputes as “separate strings”), maintaining relations almost entirely on the commercial plane, while the International Court of Justice (ICJ) debated a bilateral maritime dispute.

The new foreign minister will also have to face problems with Bolivia, a country with which Chile broke off diplomatic relations in 1978. Bolivia took its claim for a sovereign outlet to the sea to the ICJ in The Hague in 2013.

In spite of the tensions and exchanges of words with Piñera, Bolivian President Evo Morales decided to attend the handover ceremony, and his vice president, Álvaro García Linera, announced he would visit Chile at the end of March as a gesture of “rapprochement,” his advisers told IPS.

With Bachelet as president, relations with Argentina will also be smoother, analysts say.

Ties with Argentina have been strained by the political asylum granted by Buenos Aires to Galvarino Apablaza, a former guerrilla prosecuted in Chile for the 1991 murder of rightwing senator Jaime Guzmán, and by a dispute between the Chilean airline LAN and Argentine airport authorities.

“UNASUR should become a point of convergence for integration initiatives in South America, while CELAC should be a platform for political coordination in the region,” says Bachelet’s government programme.

“In the Bachelet government, Latin America is going to be more important in a wide sense, and not just in the commercial-ideological dimension given it by the Piñera government,” Pressacco said.

An expert analyst of Latin American affairs, he predicted that the outlook of the new  team “will be more comprehensive, broader, more aware that international relations, as well as politics in general, do not work solely on the basis of economic agreements.”

Delegates from more than 20 countries will be attending Bachelet’s investiture, including nearly all the region’s presidents.

High school students attend classes and talks to get a look inside a higher education centre, at the Alberto Hurtado University in Santiago. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Jan 30 2014 (IPS)

For 14-year-old Isadora Riquelme and thousands of other Chilean teenagers, the chance of getting the university education they want depends on the reforms that Michelle Bachelet has promised to undertake when she takes office as president again in March.

Education will also be the measure of Bachelet’s relationship with the country’s social base. Experts and those with a role in education say that it will not be sufficient to establish free higher education; the deep divisions in the system, from pre-school onward, need to be tackled.

Students have already convened a march demanding reform for Mar. 22, 11 days after Bachelet takes the oath of office for her second four-year term, indicating the intense pressure they will be putting on the socialist president from the outset.Bachelet promised that by the end of her four-year term, the poorest 70 percent of Chilean students would have free access to higher education.

Riquelme starts in high school at the end of February 2014. She wants to study languages or music at university, and she thinks that education should be free for all students, but she is sceptical that this will be achieved and that she will benefit from it.

“I don’t think [the authorities] will be able to carry it off,” she told IPS.

“Ideally, universities would be completely free because then we would have easier access to studying. At present there are a lot of kids who aren’t studying because they lack money,” she said. For her part, she says, she hopes to “get a scholarship.”

Under the present system, her parents, both professionals but neither of whom have steady jobs, would have to pay at least 1,200 dollars a month for their daughter’s university fees.

Education protests in Chile began in 2006, at the start of Bachelet’s first term (2006-2010). It was called the “Penguin Revolution” because of the black-and-white uniforms of the high school students who were demanding better primary and secondary education and recentralisation of the public school system.

Five years later, university students demanded quality, free, public higher education in a wide-ranging movement that brought nearly a million people out on to the streets.

The protest showed the true face of this country of 17 million people, where the economy has grown at an annual rate of six percent in recent years, yet is at the same time one of the most unequal nations in the world.

Nearly three million Chileans have to live on less than two dollars a day, and another million have incomes of less than one dollar a day. In contrast, the richest one percent collect close to 30.5 percent of the country’s total income, according to figures from Fundación Sol, a think tank.

In 1981, the military dictatorship of the late Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990) cut state education and handed control of schools to the municipalities. That year, 78 percent of enrolment was in public schools, and the rest in the private sector.

In 1990, when democracy returned, municipal enrolments were down to 57.8 percent, and in 2012 they were 38 percent. The cause was the rapid deterioration of the quality of public education, which led to the establishment of a mixed system, with contributions from the municipalities and from parents, creating what are known as private subsidised schools.

The urgent need to reduce the enormous inequality promoted by the dictatorship’s education system and the pressure from students led Bachelet to establish education reform as the key tenet of her government programme, in order to end excessive profit, improve quality, stop social segregation in schools and make substantial progress towards universal free education.

The estimated cost of the reform will be between 3.9 and 5.2 billion dollars, equivalent to 1.5 to two percent of GDP, and its goal is to advance gradually towards universally free higher education over six years.

Bachelet promised that by the end of her four-year term, the poorest 70 percent of Chilean students would have free access to higher education.

Eduardo García Huidobro, who chaired the Presidential Advisory Committee for the Quality of Education that delivered its final report in 2006, told IPS that the new government will face “two pressing needs.”

“There are ‘political-political’ needs, and the educational field may turn ungovernable if it is not resolved rapidly, and ‘political-technical’ needs, which may be less high profile, but are of substantial importance,” he said.

García Huidobro, an academic at Alberto Hurtado University, said that among the predominantly political issues is free higher education, “which is important because of its democratising effect, but is also a key to the credibility of the new government among social movements.”

Among the “political-technical” issues, “the most important is the teaching profession, because talk about improving the quality of education is not credible without substantial improvement in pay and working conditions for teachers.”

According to García Huidobro, these needs are followed by “demunicipalisation” and regulation of private subsidised schools, so that students have the same opportunities, whether they live in a poor municipality or neighbourhood, or in a well-off one.

In Chile there are 25 traditional universities, both public and prívate, that belong to the Council of Rectors of Chilean Universities (CRUCH), as well as 31 other private higher education facilities.

In order to attend a CRUCH university, students must pass a selection test on knowledge acquired in secondary school.

“This is where the essence of segregation in Chile rears its head. What use is a free university if you can’t get into it?” asked Mauricio Weibel, a journalist and expert on education.

Weibel, who is the head of the Escuela Latinoamericana de Estudios de Postgrado (Latin American Postgraduate School) at ARCIS University, said the greatest challenge is to improve the quality of primary and secondary education, where inequality begins.

“Nowadays in Chile there are poor schools for the poor and rich schools for the rich. And the difference between them is not just infrastructure, but above all the quality of the teachers and of the education given,” he said.

A study by the University of Valparaíso showed that traditional universities recruited 71 percent of students with the highest scores in the selection test for 2014 admissions. Only 12 public high schools achieved an average of over 600 points, the minimum score required for entrance to some universities.

García Huidobro admitted that the reforms in higher education are insufficient, “but they are very important,” he said.

“It is true that basic and middle education also need to be improved a great deal, especially in the public sector, but it is also true that many talented young people today are discouraged (from going to university) by the fees and the debts they incur,” he said.

In Weibel’s view, a recently implemented system of grade ranking as a measure of quality, equity and inclusion in university access, is a major step forward that allows the best students from every school to attend university.

The future education minister, Nicolás Eyzaguirre, who was a finance minister in the government of socialist president Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006) and a former head of the International Monetary Fund’s Western Hemisphere Department (2008-2012), will now have to take up this challenge.

Eyzaguirre has said that he will dialogue with all the sectors involved, because “that is where the destiny of Chile lies,” but he has already come under fire for his previous insistence on the primacy of economic factors.

Michelle Bachelet in a meeting with the representatives of the Nueva Mayoría coalition the day after her victory. Credit: Michellebachelet.cl

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Dec 16 2013 (IPS)

The promised structural reforms to modify the political system inherited from Chile’s 1973-1990 dictatorship and reduce the severe social inequalities in the country propelled Michelle Bachelet to a resounding triumph in the Sunday Dec. 15 runoff election.

But the 62-year-old pediatrician and public health expert, who governed the country from 2006 to 2010, will not only have to respond to the demands that the people have been voicing in nationwide demonstrations over the past few years, but will have to overcome enormous differences in her centre-left coalition.

The Nueva Mayoría (New Majority), the new coalition that Bachelet represented in the elections, added the Communist Party (PC) and other smaller groups to the centre-left Concertación or coalition for democracy that governed Chile between 1990 and 2010.

The main parties in the Concertación, which started to govern after the 17-year dictatorship of the late Gen. Augusto Pinochet came to an end, were the Christian Democracy Party and the president-elect’s Socialist Party.

Highly ideological campaign promises, such as the decriminalisation of therapeutic abortion – Chile is one of the few countries in the world where abortion is illegal under all circumstances – will force her to negotiate heavily among her allies.

Bachelet won a landslide victory over right-wing candidate Evelyn Matthei,with 62.15 percent of the vote against her rival’s 37.84 percent.

The socialist leader, the first president reelected by popular vote in Chile since 1932, also won the highest proportion of votes since the restoration of democracy.

In her campaign Bachelet promised to reform the constitution put into effect by Pinochet in 1981 – a longstanding demand of many Chileans. She also promised tuition-free quality higher education for all, like in the rest of South America, and tax reforms based on raising corporate taxes.

Bachelet will have to meet the expectations for change expressed by massive student protests since 2011, which put the government of right-wing President Sebastián Piñera up against the wall, before the demonstrations extended to other sectors of society.

Chile’s strong economic performance – annual GDP growth of 5.5 percent and unemployment under six percent – conceals a high level of inequality.

In this country of 17 million people known as Latin America’s tiger, two out of three households have incomes of less than 1,200 dollars a month and are deep in debt. And half of all workers earn less than 500 dollars a month, whereas the basket of essential items costs 250 dollars according to unofficial estimates.

By contrast, the 4,500 richest families have monthly incomes of over 40,000 dollars.

Chileans have become increasingly fed up with the abyss between rich and poor, a sentiment that led to Bachelet’s massive win, according to analysts.

But turnout was low. In the first round on Nov. 17, it stood at 50 percent, and went down to 41 percent in the second round. (Chile dropped compulsory voting in late 2012.)

The president elect, who will begin her second term on Mar. 11, 2014, will have an absolute majority in both houses of Congress, because in the November elections her coalition won 21 of the 38 seats in the Senate and 67 of the 120 seats in the lower house.

But contradictory positions in her coalition indicate that some reforms face an uphill battle. To that is added the fact that constitutional amendments require a 67 percent majority.

Analyst Guillermo Holzmann told IPS that “Bachelet will have to define what relationship she will have with the political parties and how much room she is going to give each one, and that will be reflected in the makeup of her cabinet.”

With respect to the differences, Holzmann said Bachelet will be able to play the role of mediator within the Nueva Mayoría or “exercise a kind of leadership that would force the parties to submit themselves to what she decides, leaving the responsibility of mediation in the hands of the parties” in her coalition.

This will form part of her government strategy, he added, which is why it is so important to see who she names to her first cabinet.

According to Holzmann, “if the president chooses independent people and sets up a cross-cutting government, her message will seek to connect with the many people who didn’t vote.”

In that scenario, “inside the Nueva Mayoría we would see a greater willingness to generate a consensus or cohesion, where the most likely thing is that the PC won’t want to be part of the problem but of the solution instead.”

He predicted that “the PC will tend to win lower-profile posts in the government, which will not be so visible even if they have a strong influence.”

Analyst Domingo Namuncura, with the Barómetro de Equidad, said the leftist and centre-left parties of the Nueva Mayoría “have come together around a common programme.” That means, he told IPS, that “there has been a first signal of adhesion to the principles on the programme.”

He added that the differences over how to move forward on the points of the agreed programmewould be resolved by means of internal debate within the coalition.

Namuncura said one of the key differences could arise when it comes to deciding how to push the constitutional reforms forward, given that wide sectors of the PC want a constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution – an option to which the Christian Democrats are opposed.

Above and beyond the differences within the future governing coalition, Bachelet will have to deal with the pressure from the social movements, which will be pressing for quick responses to their demands.

On Monday Dec. 16, the Confederation of Chilean Students (CONFECH) warned that it would not support in any educational reforms during the next administration if they were not drawn up with the participation of the social movements.

While Bachelet’s supporters were still celebrating, CONFECH announced new demonstrations, with the aim of maintaining the pressure. It also said it would hold former leaders of the student movement, like Camila Vallejo who was elected to the lower house of Congress for the PC, accountable.

“The new government will have to seek mechanisms to reflect and address that broad range of demands that are not being channeled by the system, to provide responses within a reasonable timeframe, because society does not appear to be willing to wait,” said Holzmann.

Like many Chileans, Alejandro, who owns a small supermarket, hopes the next government will curb social inequality. Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Nov 15 2013 (IPS)

Voters fed up with the extremely unequal distribution of wealth and power in Chile are expected once again to elect a centre-left government Sunday.
According to the latest poll by the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), a local think tank, former socialist president Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010) is set to win outright in the first round of voting, with an at-least 30 percent lead over Evelyn Matthei, the candidate for the governing right-wing alliance.

Bachelet needs 50 percent plus one vote to avoid a run-off – which only occurred once, in 1993, since democracy was restored after the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

But CEP also projected a low turnout, as did the Latinobarómetro Report 2013, which found that Chileans were highly critical of the system because the economic prosperity of the last 20 years has only been enjoyed by a minority of the population.

According to the World Bank, per capita income in Chile is 21,500 dollars a year.

But in this South American country of 17 million, two out of three households have incomes of less than 1,200 dollars a month and are heavily in debt, according to the Fundación Sol, a non-profit organisation that focuses on labour and social issues.

And over half of all workers earn less than 500 dollars a month.

By contrast, the wealthiest 4,500 families have an average monthly income of over 40,000 dollars.

Poverty is measured by the “national socioeconomic survey”, which estimated the poverty rate at 14.5 percent of the population in its latest edition, in 2011.

But to gauge poverty, Chile only takes into account the monetary aspect. A person is categorised as poor if they earn less than 144 dollars a month in urban areas or less than 100 dollars a month in rural areas.

This cut-off line is based on the cost of the basic basket of foods – which was constructed in 1987 with products that Chileans no longer even consume, such as cooking oil sold in bulk.

Experts agree that if the methodology for estimating poverty were updated, the rate could climb as high as 28 percent.

That explains the roots of the discontent that has fuelled a wave of protests and demonstrations since 2011 and threatens to pose a major challenge to the government that takes office in March 2014, if the profound changes demanded by Chileans are not forthcoming.

Economist Gonzalo Durán at Fundación Sol told IPS that “many indicators depict the country in a very positive light,” but that access to the trappings of development was limited.

He stressed that inequality is so marked that the richest five percent of the population have incomes 270 times those of the poorest five percent.

And he said that gap doubled between 1990 and 2011, which meant that “according to this indicator, inequality in Chile has increased 100 percent in the last 20 years.”

Durán cited a University of Chile study which shows that the wealthiest one percent accounts for 30 percent of all income – compared to just under 22 percent in the United States, for example.

Sociologist Alberto Mayol told IPS that “poverty is definitely a very urgent issue. But inequality is not the same thing as poverty, and in Chile it has never been addressed by public policies.”

In societies in general, he said, a not insignificant portion of the population tends to be left out of benefits and bears the brunt of the policies dictated by the country’s social model.

“That proportion is generally around 30 percent. But in Chile, for example, 60 percent of workers suffer from precarious employment.”

Chileans, who are generally not familiar with these hard-hitting statistics, live with them nonetheless day to day. Many people in this country cannot afford a decent diet, and millions rack up credit card debt just to buy their groceries.

Alejandro, 62, and Juanita, 56, a couple who worked hard to have their own small supermarket on the south side of Santiago, hope the next government will finally address the needs of people like them.

At great sacrifice, they managed to send their two children to university. Their daughter still lives at home, and they give their son help when he needs it. “Both of them went to the university, thanks to our blood, sweat and tears,” Alejandro says with emotion.

“I don’t care who governs; work is my government,” he adds, before stating that “people have to take to the streets to protest because being able to do that is one of the important things about democracy, and because there are many reasons to do so.”

His wife, however, says it is very important that the right does not govern, because when it does, “the rich continue to call the shots, and the middle and lower classes continue to sink further and further.”

Mayol said Chile is reaching Sunday’s elections “at a time of acute protests challenging the fundamental values and cultural conditions of this model of society.”

The election of multimillionaire business tycoon Sebastián Piñera as president in 2010 “was the cultural triumph of profit as a form of social relations, as a political mechanism.” But as the right-wing president’s four-year term is coming to an end, “profit is akin to Satan in Chile,” he said.

The analyst said “the economic, political and institutional model is suffering a crisis of legitimacy, and in politics, legitimacy is like motor oil – it prevents friction.”

Once Bachelet wins the elections, he said, she will have to defend her new coalition, Nueva Mayoría (New Majority), which represents “a confluence with the social movements of the old Concertación,” the centre-left coalition that governed the country from 1990 to 2010.

To do that, he said, she will have to govern together with representatives of social movements, like two former student leaders – Camila Vallejo of the Communist Party, and Giorgio Jackson, an independent – both of whom have a strong chance of being elected to Congress.

On Sunday, voters will also elect the 120 members of the lower house, and 20 of the 38 members of the Senate. In addition, regional advisers, who will act as liaisons between the citizens and the government, will also be elected for the first time.

Bachelet will have to live up to her main campaign pledges: tuition-free higher education for all within the next six years; a tax reform making it possible to finance this; and the most strongly-voiced demand – a reform of the constitution left in place by former dictator Pinochet, which is still in force.

Michelle Bachelet: "This is not about two similar women standing for the presidency." Credit: Marianela Jarroud/IPS

By Marianela Jarroud
SANTIAGO, Aug 20 2013 (IPS)

“There’s something sexist about saying that the candidates are two women. Has anyone ever remarked on it when the candidates are two men?” former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet complained about comparisons between herself and her main rival in the presidential elections, rightwing candidate Evelyn Matthei.

The Nov. 17 elections are the first electoral race in Latin America in which the two main presidential candidates are women.

Chile does not have a quota law to facilitate women’s access to elected posts. During the Bachelet administration (2006-2010) the political parties rejected a bill she sponsored that would have not only created quotas for women, but economic benefits for female candidates as well.

The race between two women for the country’s presidency appears to be a “definite” advance on the road to gender equality, Maricel Sauterel, head of projects for Comunidad Mujer, an organisation that advocates women’s participation in the workplace and politics, told IPS.

It also “shows that Chile is evolving. Twenty years ago, it would have been impossible to have even a single woman candidate,” she said.

Bachelet, a 61-year-old socialist paediatrician who headed the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (U.N. Women) until March, is the candidate of the Nueva Mayoría (New Majority) coalition.

The centre-left coalition brings together the Coalition of Parties for Democracy (Socialist Party, Christian Democracy Party, Party for Democracy and Social Democrat Radical Party) and the Communist Party, Citizen Left, Broad Social Movement and independent parties.

The former president, the front-runner in the polls, was elected as her coalition’s candidate with 73 percent of the vote in the Jun. 30 primaries.

Her rival Matthei is a 59-year-old economist belonging to the rightwing Independent Democratic Union (UDI). Until July she was labour minister in the government of conservative President Sebastián Piñera.

“When the candidates are men, important issues are discussed rather than circumstantial details,” Bachelet said in response to a question from IPS at a press conference for foreign journalists. “I am delighted that women are participating in politics and I will continue to promote this, but make no mistake, this campaign is about two very different visions of this country.”

Chilean women were not able to vote in presidential elections until 1952, three years after they won the right to vote.

It took a further 50 years for the first female president to be elected, although women make up 53 percent of voters and 43 percent of the workforce in this country of 17.5 million people.

But women hold only 12.7 percent of the seats in the lower house of Congress and just five percent in the Senate.

According to a report by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), in 2005 women’s representation in the lower house of the Chilean legislature was 14.2 percent, compared to a regional average of 22.4 percent.

According to economist Gloria Maira, deputy editor of the feminist online newspaper La MansaGuman, while the women’s candidacies “are a milestone showing we can reach these positions in politics, at the same time they do not imply major transformations for women’s needs and concerns.”

The present contest has other facets beyond the demand for gender equality, involving the candidates’ personal lives: Bachelet and Matthei were childhood playmates when their fathers were both air force generals and close friends, until they were torn apart by the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet.

The coup that overthrew the government of socialist president Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973 left an indelible mark on both families.

General Fernando Matthei became a member of the military junta that acted as the country’s legislature, while Alberto Bachelet, who cooperated with food distribution during the Allende government, was arrested by his comrades-in-arms for “treason,” and was tortured to death.

Michelle Bachelet has told how she watched from the roof of the medical school where she was a student as air force planes bombed the government palace, with Allende inside, where he met his death during the coup.

At the time, Evelyn Matthei was in the United Kingdom, studying to become a concert pianist.

Matthei helped the Chilean military government’s embassy in London with translations, while Bachelet joined the resistance in Chile and helped hide dissidents until she too was arrested, in 1975. With her mother, Angela Jeria, she was held in an illegal detention centre and they were both tortured.

“This is not about two similar women standing for the Chilean presidency,” Bachelet said on Aug. 13.

“There is one vision of the country that wants to continue with what the present government has been doing, and there is another, which I represent, that wants structural changes to mount a decisive challenge against inequality,” she said.

“And I want this to be an element of a more harmonious, comprehensive development project appropriate for the entire country,” she said.

Maira, of La MansaGuman, said it was significant that one of the candidates is Bachelet, “a woman who broke with tradition by becoming Chile’s first woman president and the first head of U.N. Women, and who supports women’s participation in politics.”

She added that “Matthei, although she has a good track record and has worked hard in politics, is not a person who supports women’s rights; she never has.”

As a senator, Matthei had “a more or less liberal attitude on therapeutic abortion,” Maira said, even presenting a bill to decriminalise abortion under certain circumstances. However, when she became a candidate, her position changed radically, she added.

“It’s a complex issue and I am not going to propose it because the majority of my political sector do not support it,” Matthei said recently.

Chile’s abortion laws are extremely restrictive, with abortion regarded as a crime even when the mother’s life is at risk or when the pregnancy is the result of rape or incest.

In Maira’s view, this shows that Matthei “is willing to keep silent on issues that are of prime importance to women.”

Comunidad Mujer’s Sauterel said that in spite of the progress represented by the campaign, it is vital not to forget the pending debts to women.

“People often say, ‘What more do they want, if they have a woman president?’ We have to be careful about this,” she concluded.

Diversifying the energy mix and the spectre of energy shortages in Chile are central issues in the campaign for the primary elections this Sunday Jun. 30, when presidential candidates will be nominated for the Nov. 17 elections.

Particularly controversial is the HidroAysén project, which aims to build five large hydropower plants on the Baker and Pascua rivers, 1,600 kilometres south of Santiago, in Chile’s Patagonia wilderness region.

River in Chilean Patagonia. Credit:John Spooner/CC BY 2.0

This is the most controversial project in recent years, raising hackles among local people and environmental activists on the one hand, while being presented as a concrete solution to the energy crisis forecast for the coming decade by its proponents, on the other.

Centre-left presidential hopeful and former president Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), who is in the lead in voter intention polls, said on Jun. 23 that “HidroAysén is not viable, so in my view it should not go forward.”

Potential centre-right presidential candidate Andrés Allamand, of National Renewal (RN – Renovación Nacional), agreed that the project “is dead.”

HidroAysén, owned by Colbún, a company controlled by the Chilean consortium Matte and the European firm Endesa-Enel, is designed to occupy an area of 5,910 hectares.

Its power plants would have a planned total capacity of 2,750 MW for the country’s central grid, which supplies electricity to 90 percent of the country’s 17 million people.

The proposed investment is about 3.2 billion dollars and includes a transmission line 1,912 km long – the longest in the world – from the city of Cochrane in Patagonia to Santiago.

According to environmentalists, the area where the HidroAysén complex is to be built is a natural heritage of humanity site because of its wealth of biodiversity, and it is one of the greatest fresh water reserves on the planet.

“We oppose the hydropower megaprojects, not only for numerous environmental reasons, but also because of the tremendous social harm they will do,” activist Patricio Rodrigo, executive secretary of the Patagonia Defence Council, a coalition of community groups which mobilised 120,000 people in a march against HidroAysén in 2011, told IPS.

“Chile and the world are changing,” Rodrigo said. “We see what is happening in Brazil. The companies will have to adjust to developing projects that are consistent with society’s goals, and not impose aims that the citizens do not agree with.”

But Daniel Fernández, the executive vicepresident of HidroAysén, warned that the country was courting an energy crisis in the future on a scale “much greater” than this project.

Chile has an installed capacity of 17,000 MW, 74 percent in the central grid, 25 percent in the northern grid, and the rest in medium-sized grids in the southern regions of Aysén and Magallanes.

There are nearly 40 hydropower stations in the country, and 10 projects are in the stage of environmental assessment.

However, only 40 percent of the energy mix is provided by hydropower. The rest is supplied by thermal power stations burning polluting fossil fuels, 97 percent of which have to be imported.

Due to the shortage of energy sources, the cost of production per MW/hour in Chile is one of the highest in Latin America, at over 160 dollars, compared to 55 dollars in Peru, 40 dollars in Colombia and 10 dollars in Argentina, Fernández said.

According to the National Energy Commission, an additional 7,000 to 8,000 MW need to be generated over the next few years, and by around 2030, demand will have tripled, Fernández said.

The HidroAysén project was approved in May 2011, and is awaiting a decision about its future by the Council of Ministers for Sustainability, which is reviewing 38 appeals received by the Environmental Assessment Service.

Fernández said: “No human intervention, least of all an energy project, can avoid some environmental impact.” He added that at the moment there is no other project that will produce as much energy as HidroAysén, with less impact.

He told IPS that the delay by the Council of Ministers in deciding the future of the project was “a blow to the country’s environmental institutions,” and he called on the political system to establish a “state energy policy” so that investors can “know what to expect.”

“If the message Chile sends is that there is uncertainty over project approval, a risk of getting endlessly bogged down in the courts, and un-met deadlines, then we are not attractive to investors,” Fernández said.

“There are already some investors who no longer want to invest in Chile,” he said, adding that “it is a legal and administrative obligation” for the government of rightwing President Sebastián Piñera to make its position clear on the future of HidroAysén.

In Rodrigo’s view, the threats of an energy crisis and investor flight are part of “a terror campaign on the part of the electricity monopoly,” made up of Endesa, Colbún and Gener.

He maintained that in this South American country “there are enough energy projects to avert any crisis.”

Morevoer, he repudiated the bill on electricity concessions presently before parliament, which it is said will grant concessions in perpetuity to the electricity companies.

When it comes to the positions of Bachelet and other candidates, Rodrigo said: “the former president is listening to the voice of the people.”

“There is consensus among political leaders that Patagonia is more valuable, from the environmental, social and economic point of view, as natural heritage than if it is filled with dams,” he said.

Fernández, on the other hand, believes that Chile’s energy problem is so vast “that to oppose Hidroaysén is a reductionist stance.”

Michelle Bachelet, who hopes to win a second presidential term in Chile, will have to win over the growing social movement that has been heavily critical of the current right-wing administration and disillusioned with 20 years of government by the centre-left coalition.

Bachelet returned this week to a country that is markedly different than the one she left after the end of her four-year term, in March 2010. In the last two years, student organisations, trade unions and other civil society groups have held the largest protests since the resistance to the 1973-1990 military dictatorship of the late General Augusto Pinochet.

Michelle Bachelet will seek a second presidential term in Chile. Credit: Sriyantha Walpola/IPS

“She is now finding a large and significant part of society that wants change, and not merely improvements of the current model,” anthropologist Mauricio Rojas, a professor at the Alberto Hurtado University, told IPS.

“It is a group that was culturally, socially and politically invisible for 30 years, but has now woken up,” he said.

After the 1988 plebiscite that paved the way for the return to democracy, “there was strong criticism of the (economic, financial and political) model, which waned after democracy was restored.”

But the arrival of the right to power, with President Sebastián Piñera, “released a force that was repressed or self-contained, and that wants change.”

On Wednesday, Mar. 27 Bachelet officially announced that she intended to run for president again, in the Nov. 17 elections. The announcement came just 12 hours after she landed in Santiago, returning from New York, where she spent the last three years as the head of the U.N. women’s agency.

In her first public statements, the former president said the fight against inequality would be the central focus of her campaign; acknowledged, in frank terms, the errors committed by the successive administrations of the centre-left Concertación or coalition of Parties for Democracy (1990-2010); and called for “in-depth reforms” of the current political and economic model.

“Chile has changed,” she said. “It is a much more active country, more conscious of its rights, whose people are tired of the abuse of power and are fed up with their needs not being taken into account.”

“The citizens today are more mature and empowered,” added Bachelet, who was one of Chile’s most popular presidents.

Iván Fuentes, the leader of the small-scale fishers of the remote southern region of Aysén, agreed that Chilean society today is “less conformist and wants far-reaching changes.”

Fuentes is also the head of the Aysén social movement that began to hold protests in early 2012 over a range of issues. The unrest in his region, which forms part of the wilderness area of Patagonia, is basically the result of people there feeling ignored by the central government.

“It is a non-conformist but constructive society, which means this is a good opportunity to work together as a country, because people want to set forth ideas, to be listened to; they don’t want policies in which others decide for them,” Fuentes said.

In an interview with IPS, the head of the Aysén social movement said that despite the challenges, “politics today has the opportunity to get on the good side of Chilean society.”

In her first speech on the campaign trail, Bachelet mentioned social inequality, the student protest movement demanding free quality public education, the demonstrations in the regions, sexual and reproductive rights, and the inclusion of the country’s indigenous minority, among other issues. She also promised to listen to society’s demands.

A source close to the former president told IPS that a team of experts was already drawing up a proposal for tuition-free education for segments of the population who have not been eligible for school vouchers or other state subsidies.

The idea, the source said, is to implement measures that would gradually move the country towards public education completely free of cost, like in neighbouring Argentina.

Political scientist Guillermo Holzmann said one of the biggest challenges for Bachelet, a 62-year-old pediatrician-turned-politician, will be winning over segments of society that do not see her as someone who represents them. “Solving that problem should be a priority,” he told IPS.

Holzmann pointed out that the change in Chile’s legislation that made voting non-compulsory affected all political forces as a result of low turnout in the October 2012 municipal elections, when it went into force. (Only 42 percent of the 13.4 million people of voting age – of a total population of 16.5 million – came out for the elections.)

In polls, Bachelet has ratings of more than 50 percent – the proportion needed to avoid a runoff.

She has had time to prepare her return. And the political leaders of the centre-left coalition, whose reputations have taken a beating, not only did not accompany her physically in her first public appearance, but were not even mentioned in her speech.

In the latest survey by the Centro de Estudios Públicos (CEP), 57 percent of respondents said they did not feel represented by any political party or coalition.

Holzmann said: “What Bachelet says or does will be key for the unity of the Concertación,” which is made up of the For Democracy, Christian Democrat, Socialist and Social Democrat Radical parties, and is experiencing a severe internal crisis.

Bachelet said she would run in the primary elections for the candidate of a new opposition coalition that represents a much broader social and political majority than the Concertación. The new coalition is to include the Communist Party.

In the primaries, the former president will run against lawmaker Claudio Orrego, the Christian Democrat candidate; independent candidate Andrés Velasco, who served as her finance minister; and Senator José Antonio Gómez of the Social Democrat Radical party.

If she overcomes that first hurdle, Bachelet will face off with the candidate of President Piñera’s rightwing Coalition for Change. Competing for the candidacy are former defence minister Andrés Allamand of the National Renewal party and former public works minister Laurence Golborne of the Independent Democratic Union.

The candidate of the small Progressive Party, former socialist Marco Enríquez-Ominami, who took 20 percent of the vote in 2009, also formally announced that he would run for president.

Holzmann said Bachelet would have to live up to the high expectations surrounding her return, “especially among the factions in the Concertación who see her as a real alternative capable of winning the presidential elections.”

The former president’s popularity has remained high despite her nearly three-year stint abroad. She finished her four-year presidential term with 80 percent popularity ratings. And 53 percent of respondents, according to the CEP, believe she will be the next president.

In her speech, delivered in the southern Santiago district of El Bosque, Bachelet was given an enthusiastic welcome. “I love her, I love her, and she loves me too, I’m happy!” shouted one local woman who managed to exchange a few words with the former president and give her a kiss.

But that makes the challenge even greater, because if an eventual Bachelet administration fails to bring about the changes that society is demanding, the Concertación will be unable to contain the growing social movement, Rojas said.

“The social movement is now totally autonomous from the political structures, and if in-depth changes are not forthcoming, it will continue pressuring for them to happen,” he said.

Michele Bachelet (left), Executive Director of UN Women, addresses a press conference on the fifty-seventh session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), taking place at UN Headquarters in New York, Mar 4-15 2013. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

By George Gao
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 17 2013 (IPS)

In her opening speech for the world’s largest conference on ending violence against women and girls, Michelle Bachelet summoned the spirit of 15-year old Malala Yousafzai, who’s skull was shattered on Oct. 9, 2012 by a Taliban bullet.

“It is for Malala – and for every girl and woman, and every human being – that we must come to a strong action-oriented agreement to prevent and end violence against girls and women,” said Bachelet, executive director of U.N. Women.

The Taliban singled out Yousafzai for advocating girls’ education. She miraculously survived the attack, as surgeons fitted her skull with a titanium plate.

The atrocity highlights a fact many diplomats and civil society members have taken to heart: that violence against women and girls undermines international development goals and U.N. values.

The 57th session of the Committee on the Status of Women (CSW57) took place at U.N. headquarters from Mar. 4-15 and addressed this issue. It resulted in an outcome document, adopted with consensus by member states.

On the heels of CSW57 is another series of diplomatic negotiations, for an international Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). The U.N. has allotted 11 days from Mar. 18-28 for delegates to reach an agreement. Here, too, the issue of gender-based violence is on the table.

A sigh of relief, but the fight continues

Civil society organisations and U.N. member states were largely relieved that a document of “Agreed Conclusions” came through this year, after last year’s CSW session failed to produce one.

“It was a very difficult process because of the broad range of political interests and agendas that member states represent,” said Mavic Cabrera-Balleza, international coordinator for the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP).

This year, “we (successfully) lobbied for language on the link between violence against women and peace and security, women human rights defenders, sexual and reproductive health, small arms and light weapons,” she told IPS.

“(But) the final document was not as strong as we want it to be,“ she said.

Cabrera-Balleza noted that member states failed to “reaffirm” – and only “recalls” – Security Council resolutions 1325, 1820, 1888, 1889, and 1960 on women, peace and security.

“However, in negotiations with member states, you cannot play an ‘all or nothing’ game,” she explained.

Radhika Balakrishnan, executive director of the Center for Women’s Global Leadership (CWGL) at Rutgers University, told IPS, “There were quite a few things we gained in this new document… which we might have lost if negotiations continued.”

“One of the successes was that (member states) weren’t able to invoke (traditional values and morals),” she said, noting that some governments had been trying to use “traditional values” – as well as “state sovereignty” – as a trump card against women’s human rights.

“But many issues that women’s groups have been fighting for, (such as) sexual orientation (and) gender identity, were lost in the document,” she noted.

Daniela Rosche, a policy and advocacy adviser in gender justice for Oxfam, told IPS that CSW57 established new norms, but did not address how to implement them.

“If you really want to do something to fight the surge of violence and take concrete steps to solve it, you need to also develop an ‘international action plan’, basically to operationalise the standards that are there,” she said.

“We couldn’t convince governments to commit to this,” she added.

“What would ensure accountability is (if they) set concrete targets,” she said, citing the annual Millennium Development Goals reports as an example.

Linking arms with gender justice

“The relationship between small arms trade and violence against women is in the (CSW57) document, and I think that’s very important,” said Balakrishnan of CWGL, who’s 16 Days Campaign highlighted the issue.

Widney Brown, senior director of international law and policy at Amnesty International, explained to IPS that while the CSW57 outcome document is not legally binding, it can be a powerful instrument for activists to pressure their governments.

On the other hand, “the Arms Trade Treaty will be law” if it goes through, said Brown. “But in terms of enforcement– it’s mostly a peer pressure mechanism.”

She noted, “In the Jul. 27, 2012 draft of the Arms Trade Treaty, there’s a reference to gender-based violence and violence against children.”

However, some governments will likely use the issue of gender-based violence as a bargaining chip.

“Anytime you have references to things like gender-based violence in international negotiations, there’s a group of states who are always going to be willing to say, ‘We’ll give you this, on the condition that you take (that) off’,” she explained.

“I think it will be in play again, and we’re going to have to be very vigilant against that,” she added.

Brown explained that Russia, Syria, Iran and Egypt have often impeded member states negotiations for women’s rights and gender equality – and may also act as barriers during ATT negotiations.

At CSW57, for example, the Vatican worked with Syria and some other member states to strip out any reference to gender identity. “This battle has been going on for years now,” she said.

“Fortunately, the NGO community is holding very strongly on why it’s important to talk about gender-based violence,” she stated.

Statement on CSW57 from the SGs office

On Mar.15, the spokesperson for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued a statement welcoming the conclusions of CSW57:

“No matter where she lives, no matter what her culture, no matter what her society, every woman and girl is entitled to live free of fear. She has the universal human right to be free from all forms of violence so as to fulfil her full potential and dreams for the future.”

By Mathieu Vaas
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 6 2013 (IPS)

On Sunday,  Mar. 3, nongovernmental organisations working on women’s rights gathered in New York City for the annual meeting of the NGO Committee on the Status of Women.

In line with the theme of the 57th Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) that will take place Mar. 4-15 at the United Nations, the central focus of this year’s NGO Committee was strategies to address violence against women.

Nearly 20 speakers, including civil society, diplomats and high-level representatives of UN Women, discussed trafficking of women and girls, the role of men, the best practices for prevention and the use of social media to spread campaigns and fight violence against women.

There is no city or country in the world where women and girls live free of the fear of violence. No leader can claim: This is not happening in my backyard.

Michelle Bachelet. Credit: UN Photo/Jean-Marc Ferré

In 2012, two high-profile cases ignited public outrage in their nations, which spread around the world: the shooting of Pakistani schoolgirl and girls’ education activist Malala, and the gang-rape on a bus and tragic death of a 23-year-old student in New Delhi. In every region around the world, countless other cases occurred that did not make global headlines.

Whether walking city streets, riding public transportation, going to school, or selling goods at the marketplace, women and girls are subject to the threat of sexual harassment and violence. This reality of daily life limits women’s freedom to get an education, to work, to participate in politics – or to simply enjoy their own neighbourhoods.

Yet despite its prevalence, violence and harassment against women and girls in public spaces remains a largely neglected issue, with few laws or policies in place to address it.

This week in Dublin, some 600 delegates – from mayors to leaders from the private sector and civil society – are gathered for the 8th Forum of the World Alliance of Cities Against Poverty. They have come from all over the world to discuss innovative approaches to make cities smart, safe and sustainable.

One innovative approach is the Safe Cities Global initiative. This partnership of municipal governments, local communities and organisations, and the United Nations, is working to make urban environments safer for women and girls.

Initially launched by UN Women and Habitat with five pilot cities – Cairo, Egypt; Kigali, Rwanda; New Delhi, India, Quito, Ecuador, and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, the initiative has expanded to more than 20 cities and continues to grow.

One of the most important lessons we have learned is that each city is unique and requires a local response. This can only be achieved by conducting a diagnostic study with data and evidence, and engaging community members. Cities have taken actions to improving the lighting and design of streets and buildings, training and sensitizing police, and hiring more women police officers. These practical responses can make a world of difference.

A diagnostic study in New Delhi, for instance, revealed that a common strategy against harassment was to simply keep girls and women at home.

One girl explained: “If we tell our parents about boys harassing us, they would blame us only and say that it is our fault…Our parents might even stop us going out of the house.”

Findings like this spur action since keeping women and girls home is not a solution. Residents organised community collectives to build awareness, report crimes, and work with authorities to improve public safety and justice.

In Quito, women were encouraged to break the silence about their experiences through the Cartas de Mujeres (“Letters from Women”) campaign and a study was undertaken. The city government amended the ordinance on eliminating violence against women to include violence in public spaces. The government received some 10,000 letters.

In Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, 55 percent of women market vendors reported experiencing violence in the previous year. In response, local authorities are working with a women’s market vendors association to take cooperative action.

In Cairo, the national government adopted women’s safety audits whereby local women identify safety and security conditions in their neighbourhoods, which are incorporated into urban planning.

In Rio de Janeiro, communities are identifying safety risks in 10 of the cities’ high-risk slums, or favelas. Trained women and adolescent girls used their smartphones to map safety risks such as faulty infrastructure or services, obscured walking routes, and lack of lighting. These initial findings were presented to local authorities, and are currently being used to develop solutions.

UN Women is partnering with Microsoft to find ways to use mobile technology to stop sexual harassment and violence in public spaces.

Further efforts are expected to develop through a partnership between UN Women and the United Cities and Local Governments. Efforts will focus on collecting local data on female political participation, and expanding successful Safe Cities activities.

Here in Dublin, I am pleased to hear that Lord Mayor Naoise O Muiri has expressed interest in partnering with the Safe City Initiative, and Dublin will be the first city in Western Europe to join us.

As more and more women, men and young people raise their voices and become active in local government, and more local leaders take action for the safety of women and girls, change happens.

The meeting this week recognises that making cities smarter, safer and more sustainable requires partnership and collaboration – between residents, government, the private sector and civil society. By including women in decision-making, city governments will be in a better position to fulfill their responsibility to ensure the safety of their residents, especially women and girls.

*Michelle Bachelet is the Executive Director of UN Women and former President of Chile.

In 2007, Angeline Mwarusena, who lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was repeatedly raped by soldiers from Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

At a high-level event at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, U.N. Women, the United Nations body for female empowerment and gender equality, called for stronger action from world leaders to prevent and punish sexual violence in conflict.

“The fact remains that women’s bodies remain a battleground, and impunity remains the norm rather than the exception,” said Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile and the current executive director of U.N. Women. “The experience of women during and after conflict continues to be one of violence and insecurity.”

According to Bachelet, an individual’s access to justice after a conflict is highly dependent upon that person’s gender. Compared to male victims, female victims of war crimes are less likely to see their cases taken to court and are less likely to receive reparations.

Bachelet suggested three strategies that could help begin to tackle the problem.

The first, expanding women’s participation in post-conflict recovery, “provides an opportunity for women to ensure that peace agreements, new laws and new constitutions do not reinforce the pre-existing status quo and that they advance equality and justice”, Bachelet said.

Underscoring her point is the fact that according to U.N. Women, in recent peace negotiations, women have represented less than eight percent of participants. Less than three percent of signatories to peace agreements have been women, and no woman has ever been appointed chief or lead mediator in U.N.-sponsored peace talks.

Bachelet also said that women’s organisations must be supported by the world’s governments in order to take on and address gender inequalities that “make women more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based crimes during and after conflicts”.

Finally, Bachelet said, the international community, national governments, civil society and individual actors must cooperate to secure accountability for conflict-related, gender-based crimes.

As part of an effort to tackle the issue of and reduce gender-based crimes in times of conflict, U.N. Women and the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations together have initiated “the first ever scenario-based training for military peacekeepers” to prevent sexual violence, Bachelet announced at the meeting.

“We are currently testing this training in major troop contributing countries,” Bachelet said. “Earlier this month, a first training took place in The Hague on investigating cases of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.”

Zainab Bangura, recently appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, added at the meeting that “for too long, conflict-related sexual violence has been largely cost-free for those who rape women, children and men, whereas the costs have been borne by the victims”.

“Even as we ensure that survivors receive the care and services they require, we must insist that sexual violence in conflict is not inevitable, but that the consequences for the perpetrators are,” Bangura stated.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague elaborated on what victims endure in bearing the costs of the crime, emphasising that the silence surrounding sexual assault often is even harder to break when it comes to crimes committed against men and children.

“We must break the silence if we are to achieve sustainable peace and prosperity,” Hague said. “The UK stands ready to put its full weight this agenda, as a catalyst for others to take action.”

Renowned American peace activist and feminist Jody Williams, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work on banning antipersonnel landmines, agreed with Hague.

“Survivors of sexual violence are brutalised twice – first by the perpetrators of the crimes against them, and the second time by governments that fail to apply the rule of law and ensure justice for survivors,” Williams concluded.

The side event to the 67th U.N. General Assembly was arranged by U.N. Women in cooperation with the UK Foreign Secretary, the Office of the Special-Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, and the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict.

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2012 (IPS)

Unlocking women’s energies and allowing them to become drivers of change could fuel the motor of sustainable development.

The question is whether world leaders meeting at the Rio+20 summit in Brazil will squander or seize this tremendous opportunity to harness women’s full potential.

Michelle Bachelet. Credit: Courtesy of UN Women

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Isabelle de Grave ahead of Rio+20, Michelle Bachelet, head of U.N. Women, explains the vital link between gender equality and the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development.

Q: How does gender and women’s empowerment relate to sustainable development?

A: Twenty years ago, at the (first) Rio Summit, there was a unanimous agreement that sustainable development would never be realised without gender equality and that holds true today.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment are integral to the achievement of sustainable development. Gender equality is the factor which brings together the three dimensions. It determines the access that men and women have to productive resources such as land, finance, and technology, it determines the ability of individuals to take advantage of opportunities such as education and employment, and it circumscribes access to social protection and basic services.

Women farmers make up 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries and 80 percent in some parts of Africa. If women had the same access as men to agricultural resources, production would increase by 20 to 30 percent, and has the potential to reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 percent.

In terms of the everyday lives of women and girls, the provision of basic services, clean water, energy, housing and transportation can reduce the intense labour of women, promote dignity and enhance quality of life.

Rio+20 provides an enormous opportunity to move forward to a new development paradigm, which appreciates the integral human value of gender equality and women’s empowerment to the achievement of sustainable development.

Q: Participation and leadership is one of the key themes of the UN Women mandate. Will women’s participation in discussions held at Rio+20 be a reflection of progress in this regard?

A: We are advocating for women’s leadership and participation because we know that when you do have women discussing things and when you allow women a strong voice, this frees up space for change.

At this year’s summit there will be a high-level forum of women leaders, and a high-level event for women leaders on the subject famine. The participation of a group of female heads of state and heads of government will bring attention to the relationship between gender equality, women’s empowerment and sustainable development. In this regard we are seeing progress.

But it’s not only about participation in one particular conference that is key, it is about women’s’ participation and leadership in diverse areas, and how we are able to link this to an action plan. That action plan will be the outcome document to be agreed upon by member states at the Rio +20 summit.

Q: Debates and discussions that have taken place ahead of Rio+20 have greatly emphasised the need to streamline the development agenda, by determining the “must haves” that governments will sign up to. In this regard, what challenges do you anticipate for the promotion of gender equality, and women’s rights ahead of the summit?

A: We’ve seen very promising developments in the past few weeks of negotiations, and I’m very pleased that gender equality and women’s empowerment is reflected throughout the text to be agreed upon by member states.

There have been calls from member states to gain greater recognition of women’s rights in relation to water as well as a section on women’s health and sexual and reproductive rights. I hope these will continue and prevail so as to feature alongside women’s right to land and property.

In relation to women’s sexual and reproductive rights, there are always debates in this area. Some countries have different positions on the issue of women’s reproductive rights and health and services.

We believe you can’t isolate one part of the world’s female population. You need to include all the aspects that are essential in terms of achieving gender equality, you cannot ensure the right to participate and be an economic agent and not consider sexual and reproductive health to be important as well. We will continue working to ensure that we get out of the document the best and most comprehensive response to women’s needs.

It is also important that after Rio, when governments will be discussing a new development framework beyond 2015 and the MDGs that women are fully integrated.

I would really like to see a comprehensive sustainable development goal on gender empowerment and the inclusion of gender targets and indicators in all other goals. We believe gender equality has to be mainstreamed – taken into consideration in all areas of development – and recognised as a concrete goal in itself.

Excerpt:

Hillary Clinton at Busan Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
BUSAN, South Korea, Nov 30 2011 (IPS)

Women toil in the fields for most of their lives producing food and strengthening the largely agricultural economy of African countries, but when their fathers, husbands or older sons die, they are no longer welcome on land they may have tended for years.

This observation was made by Hillary Rodham Clinton, United States secretary of state, at a special session on the status of women at the ongoing Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF4) in thi sSouth Korean port city.

Some 2,500 delegates, including members of ministerial teams from 160 countries, civil society leaders, experts from multilateral organisations and academics are attending the HLF4 to discuss international principles and rules to improve development co-operation.

Many agreed with Clinton’s observation that created a strong image of the status of women in Africa and Asia who earn their livelihoods from natural resources.

“Many years ago I travelled to Africa and everywhere I went there were women working in the fields, gathering firewood and in market stalls, and so I asked an economic analyst, how do you account for these contributions by women? And, he said that they didn’t. Because it wasn’t in the formal sector.

“If these women could stop working, even for a day, that would have a huge impact on the economy.”

The situation has not changed significantly for many women in Africa and Asia.

“Women still account for at least 70 percent of the 1.3 billion people living in abject poverty. Women work two-thirds of world working hours, produce at least half of the food. Yet, they only earn a paltry 10 percent of world income and own a negligible one percent of world property,” said Michelle Bachelet, executive director of U.N. Women, an entity concerned with gender equality and women’s empowerment.

Despite statistics showing that countries that engage women and recognise their contribution achieve greater growth, many African countries are only too willing to offer lip service to the course of gender equality to improve their image at global conferences such as in Busan.

Said Bachelet: “We are saying that this is the time to move from speech line to budget line.”

“I can sense the same frustration in Bachelet’s voice as she made a case for gender equality. The same frustration that I feel. I ask myself, how much longer do we have to make this case?” Clinton said.

Clinton said this is in spite of the fact that credible sources such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have shown that the gross domestic product and per capita income could be higher if women were recognised and integrated into development.

From Clinton’s passionate plea for more commitment to gender equality in relation to better implementation of aid, she made it clear that discriminating against women hurts the economy.

“In Asia, statistics show that the economy loses about 89 billion dollars every year because of discriminating against women within the labour force. Sadly, this is a region with countries working hard to emerge as leading economies,” Bachelet said.

Leading champions of gender equality said women are empowered when they are given an opportunity to go to school, their children are better fed and they too stand a better chance of accessing a good education.

A majority of women remain poor with few opportunities to access work that is remunerated, little or no money and little chance to give their children a decent meal. During the recent drought in the Horn of Africa, U.N. statistics showed that of the four million people on the brink of death, two million were children.

But this could change. The Busan forum, that ends Thursday, can take this chance to redeem itself with a new and practical solution towards improving the lives of millions of women.

What is measured gets noticed, Clinton said. “We are now working on developing data on whose basis gender status can be improved. Today, I am pleased to announce a new initiative, the Evidence and Data for Gender Equality (EDGE).

“EDGE is a new initiative to improve the availability and use of statistics that capture gender gaps in economic activity. It capitalises on the United States’ call to action at the May 2011 OECD ministerial session on gender and development and builds on recommendations of the U.N. International Agency and Expert Group on Gender and Statistics.”

Often, Clinton said, loans are given to small business enterprises without assessing how many of these are owned or run by women. “Consequently, she said, “women continue to face difficulties in accessing credit.

“In many countries, a man and a woman can go to the same lender for credit and even have similar collateral, but a woman will be treated differently. We can reform credit policies that discriminate and disadvantage women.”

Clinton lauded the Busan forum saying that it created an opportunity for new initiatives and partnerships critical to advancing the struggle for gender equality and the empowerment of women.