H.E. Abdulla Shahid (left), former President of the UN General Assembly, and Collen Kelapile (center), former UN ambassador to Botswana and former vice-president of the UN Economic and Social Council, speak as panelists at the launch event of ICO's flagship report. Credit: John Okyo Nyaku/UN

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 9 2025 (IPS)

More than one year since its adoption, the UN Pact for the Future is held up as a critical framework for countries to address today’s issues through global cooperation. Its agenda for global governance and sustainable development is ambitious, and it is for this reason the Pact poses implementation challenges when it comes to the direct impact on local communities. It will require the joint efforts of governments, civil society and international organizations to achieve the goals laid out in the Pact.

The efforts of the International Communities Organisation (ICO), a UK-based international NGO, demonstrate what implementing the Pact would look like. Since 2016, ICO has worked to empower minority communities in conflict-affected areas through education and capacity-building opportunities. ICO focuses on directly supporting efforts to build up underrepresented groups’ involvement in community initiatives and diplomatic dialogue and address systemic, societal inequalities.

On December 3, ICO launched its flagship report, For Our Future: Best Practice for the Implementation of the UN Pact for the Future, at the UN Headquarters in New York, presenting a practical framework to support UN member states in advancing the objectives outlined in the Pact for the Future. Several Permanent Missions to the UN, including Bahrain, Guyana, Hungary, Kuwait, Samoa, Singapore, Tajikistan, Tonga, and Uganda, co-sponsored the event.

The UN Pact for the Future represents a shared set of global commitments to sustainable development, peace and security, and redefining global governance for member states. While its adoption marks a decisive moment of global consensus, there remains the challenge of translating the Pact’s guiding principles into meaningful action at the national and regional levels.  Through its ‘Best Practices’ blueprint, the ICO report distills their findings into an adaptable methodology designed to equip policymakers with the tools they need to implement the Pact’s goals effectively.

James Holmes, ICO founder and Secretary General, said, “The Pact reminds us that the strength of nations is measured not only by the power of their armies or the size of their economies, but also by the inclusiveness of their societies and the recognition of all who live within.” “How we treat minority peoples, those who are few in number, vulnerable, or historically marginal, is the true test of our progress and the true test of whether the fact for the future is being successful.”

H.E. Abdulla Shahid, ICO International Ambassador and former President of the 76th United Nations General Assembly, said it was crucial for the world to unite.

“The UN Pact for the Future calls for renewed unity in tackling humanity’s greatest challenges. This report demonstrates that lasting peace is built not only at negotiation tables but also through empowering communities themselves, ensuring that no group is left behind.”

“As UN Secretary-General António Guterres noted at the opening of the ‘Summit of the Future’ in September 2024, ‘21st-century challenges require 21st-century solutions: frameworks that are networked and inclusive and that draw on the expertise of all humanity.’

He added that the ICO’s report embodies this principle, showing how global aspirations can intersect with local action.

Prominent UN diplomats and civil society members were present at the launch event, demonstrating and remarking on their commitment to the Pact for the Future, and specifically to ICO’s work on the ground. Current and former high-ranking UN officials were also in attendance.

“One year after the adoption of the Pact, this discussion is timely,” said Themba Kalua, the UN Director, Pact for the Future Implementation Kalua remarked during the event. “While the world has grown more complex since the adoption of the Pact for the Future, the Pact continues to be central in realizing multilateralism, navigating the current geopolitical complexities and shaping our collective action on the global agenda.”

Kalua noted the efforts made by the UN system towards the Pact, including global panels on the governance of artificial intelligence (AI) and the political declarations that emerged from UN conferences on social development in Qatar and financing for development in Spain. He expressed that the Pact was a “strategic priority” for the UN and its Secretary-General, António Guterres.

“From our side in the UN system and the Secretariat, we are committed to doing our part in supporting the implementation of the Pact,” Kalua told IPS.

Presenting the report, ICO’s UN Programme Manager Mia Sawjani broke down its findings and recommendations. She emphasized that countries would need to empower and promote the agency of local actors. This includes building up their capacity and skills to enact positive change in their communities. Countries must recognize adaptability in assessing situations on the ground, particularly in conflict settings that transform institutions and structures.

“The implementation of the Pact can be tangibly realized for all, but particularly to serve marginalized communities. It’s a transformative opportunity and it is our collective responsibility to follow through,” said Sawjani.

After the event, Holmes was heartened by the outpouring of support for ICO’s work, noting that many more countries had agreed to partner with them for future projects. By maintaining their focus on working with minority communities, ICO can “play a major global role” in implementing the Pact for Future.

“I have a big vision, and I have a lot of ambition for ICO,” Holmes told IPS. “We already have a global team, and I see that growing, and I see us having a bigger and bigger role in helping to implement the Pact.”

The launch event of ICO’s flagship report on the UN Pact for the Future at UNHQ in New York. The event was attended by high-ranking UN diplomats. Credit: John Okyo Nyaku/UN

Local actors and stakeholders, namely governments, academia, the private sector and civil society, would play a key role in implementing the Pact’s agenda. Organizations like ICO could serve as a bridge to translate the issues to the national context.

“The more we are able to bridge communities, the more successful it will be for states to deal with Track I diplomacy,” Shahid said to IPS, referencing the formal channel of diplomacy between governments on international issues.

Implementing the Pact for the Future must also mean recognizing the specific needs and challenges that these countries face. Island states like Samoa and Tonga, for example, are uniquely impacted by climate change, energy, and the global financial structures that need to better serve developing countries.

“For us in the Pacific, progress is measured not by rhetoric, but by real improvements that are felt in our villages, outer islands and vulnerable communities,” said Viliami Va’inga Tōnē, the Permanent Representative of Tonga.

Accountability and transparency will also be crucial to ensure countries follow through on the promises of the Pact. This must be present at all levels. Participants at the event emphasized the need for monitoring mechanisms that would measure progress.

The timing of the report coincides with the ongoing reform negotiations under the UN80 Initiative introduced this year. Discussions around the Pact went hand in hand with recognizing the critical step toward reforming the UN system that will optimize its ability to live up to its founding principles and the Pact’s promises.

If the Pact represents ‘what’ the UN and member states need to achieve in the global agenda, then UN80 represents ‘how’ the UN can implement the agenda.

“The UN80 initiative is really part of the UN response to how it can deliver on the ground,” said Fatumanava-o-Upolu III Dr. Pa’olelei Luteru, the Permanent Representative of Samoa. He said to IPS, “When you look at all the individual actions that need to be taken, these are at the global level, the UN [level], regional level, and national level. They’re all important, because we can’t continue to work in silence. Everything is interconnected now. So we need to make those connections and work together, and you don’t want duplication.”

While New York hosts reform discussions around the UN and its mandates, the organization’s impact will ultimately be felt by local communities across the world.

Dr. Agnes Mary Chimbiri-Molande, Permanent Representative of Malawi, told IPS that the people who serve in multilateral systems like the UN need to “renew or even rebuild trust” with local communities. At a time when people are questioning the UN’s relevance, she said, these discussions must be held and all perspectives need to be respected.

“We need to hear the voices of the local people. Because here we are working for them. We are not working for ourselves,” Chimbiri-Molande said. “So in fact, to be hearing the voices of those peoples, it’s very, very important to inform our work here, whether we are making an impact or we are making differences in the lives of the people in the community.”

Shahid reiterated that the decisions made in the halls of UN Headquarters will affect local communities, adding that the UN’s success is also contingent on its partnerships with civil society and how important it is for civil society to recognize the UN’s relevance.

During his time as President of the General Assembly from 2021-2022, the world was in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. His ‘presidency of hope’ championed the progress made by the international system despite the challenges brought on by the pandemic. He also made efforts to promote inclusivity by opening the General Assembly to more participants, including civil society groups.

Shahid invited young diplomats from underrepresented member states to the President’s office to witness international diplomacy firsthand.

Even after his presidency ended, he told IPS, he wanted to continue to deliver on the ideals that defined his tenure.

“I thought that there’s no need to end the presidency of hope after one year. Let us keep delivering the message of hope through other platforms. And ICO provides me the platform, because it is a platform through which I can actually reach out to communities at [the] household level and inspire them not to give up. Keep working, keep aiming to change the status.”

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TreeDots founders Tylor Jong(left), Nicholas Lim (centre), and Lau Jia Cai (right) say they are Asia's first wholesale supplier of unsold food supplies. Courtesy: TreeDots

By Kelly Ng
SINGAPORE, Aug 27 2018 (IPS)

To tackle food waste, Nicholas Lim did not simply spread the word among his friends and family.

In an experiment to see if he could make a viable business out of the problem, he co-founded an online platform that allows individuals, eateries and voluntary welfare organisations to order discounted groceries that would otherwise be thrown away.

TreeDots began operations six months ago and now has about 180 business partners, which obtain discounted groceries from about 30 suppliers.

The items may be slightly defective or approaching their expiry dates, but prices are hugely marked down. For instance, 12 one-litre bottles of olive oil cost USD8, compared with about USD12 per bottle at a supermarket, while a kilogramme of Cavendish bananas can be bought for about USD 1, about a third of the price it is usually sold for elsewhere.

TreeDots offers free delivery and takes a 10 percent cut for every successful transaction, said Lim, 26, who co-founded the platform with fellow Singapore Management University graduates Tylor Jong and Lau Jiacai.

About 10 people order TreeDots’ weekly “vege boxes”, which contain up to 14kg of fruits and vegetables that may look “ugly” or are blemished. The boxes’ content varies according to what the suppliers are looking to let go of. Each box costs USD30 and three boxes cost USD84.

Lim said the start-up has generated enough revenue to cover its overhead costs, which includes a refrigerator truck, but the founders are still working unpaid.

“Response has been growing over the months, but still mostly on the business-to-business level…Despite growing interest in the issue of food waste, we still feel the majority of people here are not willing to accept such products,” said Lim.

While eco-businesses selling items such as upcycled bags or bamboo and stainless steel straws are not new to Singapore, the experiences and ability of two fledgling ventures that deal in perishable food items could signal if a broader swathe of local consumers are ready to adopt low-waste habits in a bigger way.

In May, a 1,200 sq ft grocery store opened in Sembawang Hills estate, targeting patrons keen to shop for daily necessities stripped of the usual packaging. Inspired by a video of a provision shop with the same concept operating somewhere in Europe, UnPackt’s co-founder Florence Tay, 36, is looking to help the average shopper to take small steps to reduce waste in everyday life.

For a start, the store has stocked about 70 types of toiletries, cleaning agents and dried foodstuff like cereal that are stored in self-service dispensers and priced according to weight.

Patrons are free to buy only the amount they want, and the items are a shade cheaper than what they would cost in a supermarket. For instance, UnPackt is selling 100g of raw sugar for USD0.10, the same amount of organic pasta for USD0.50 and, almonds, for USD3.20.

Customers bring their own receptacles or use the jars and containers that Tay has collected, cleaned and sterilised.

UnPackt’s co-founder Jeff Lam, 38, who lives alone, said he used to throw out a lot of unfinished food that had expired and hopes to “debunk the myth that eco-friendly habits are expensive and unsustainable”.

The duo have pumped in about USD 73,000 to get the business going and while they see it also playing an advocacy role, they stress the need to be financially sustainable.

“Profitability still has to come in, in order for us to keep running (the store) and prove to the man in the street that this is the one-stop shop for their low-waste lifestyle habits,” said Tay.

Good cause but will customers bite?

The efforts by TreeDots’ and UnPackt’s founders come amid the growing amount of food and plastic waste generated in Singapore. A waste audit by the National Environment Agency found that over half of food waste generated by households here would not have been trashed had consumers bought the quantities they needed or cooked the right portions.

Meanwhile, packaging waste made up a third of the 1.7 million tonnes of domestic waste generated here last year. About 15 percent of the packaging waste – or about 83,550 tonnes – is made up of plastic and paper disposables such as single-use plates and take-away food containers.

But the key ingredient determining the reach and sustainability of businesses such as TreeDots and UnPackt could ultimately be their prices, said business experts and observers.

The majority of consumers in Singapore still make their purchases based on prices, they said.

Associate professor Lawrence Loh from the National University of Singapore’s School of Business said: “At this juncture, consumers are still very sensitive to what hits their pockets. We have not achieved a concerted vision and effort to cut waste. Economics still takes precedence.”

Loh, who directs the school’s Centre for Governance, Institutions and Organisations, said consumers also want to be assured that going “packaging-free” does not compromise hygiene.

Ang Huan Ting, who has ordered six of TreeDots’ vegetable boxes since the start of the year, said she finds their price “pretty reasonable considering the quality of the products and door to door delivery”.

The 27-year-old civil servant and her husband takes up to two weeks to consume the vegetables.

“The offerings are different each time, and I like the element of surprise… Another reason why I keep subscribing (to the vegetable boxes) is because I find the founders very passionate about their vision to reduce food waste,” said Ang.

Dumpster diver Daniel Tay, who leads outings to “rescue” discarded edible produce and started the Freegan in Singapore Facebook page said it may be more difficult for such businesses to stay afloat here, given the cost of rentals and transport.

Jeff Cheong, president of advertising agency Tribal Worldwide Asia, said brands that championing the zero waste culture must be “actively involved in education and outreach to share ideas that ‘normal people’ can do right from their home”.

“From producing content, to holding public talks, to interacting with patrons at their stores, these advocates-cum-businessmen need to invest time to build up the community from the heartlands. Working with young children is key in shaping their minds towards responsible living in the future,” said Cheong.

Other smaller outfits that operate online or as pop-up stores said challenges lie in reaching out to a wider segment of Singaporeans.

Danielle Champagne, who co-founded the Green Collective, a three-month pop-up store in Paya Lebar, said: “We might feel like there is a growth (of people reducing waste) but it could be because of the circles we are in… We don’t want to just be preaching to the converted.”

Champagne owns Zhai Eco, which sells clothing made of natural fibres like bamboo and linen. Zhai Eco is one of 15 brands found at the pop-up, which offers customers recycled bags only when they request for one.

The Green Collective also holds do-it-yourself workshops, talks and “plant swaps” (sessions to exchange seedlings, seeds or gardening tips).

Others, like online shop The Sustainability Project and pop-up store The Zero Ways hope their wares — which include beeswax wraps and straws made of bamboo or stainless steel — can help Singaporeans adopt more eco-friendly behaviour.

Said Lily Khairunnisa, who started The Zero Ways in January with her family members: “More Singaporeans, especially of the younger generation, are getting more conscious of the waste we produce. We are still quite far from having these practices ingrained in our everyday lives, but it is picking up traction.”

The 30-year-old also believes there is strength in numbers. “It takes time… We have seen many other green businesses come up in the last few months. We see one another as collaborators, and I think that would make it easier to spur the movement,” she said.

Volunteers taking on fires at Garung village in Pulang Pisau district, Central Kalimantan, Indonesia. Credit: Ministry of Environment and Forestry, Indonesia

By Kanis Dursin
JAKARTA, Oct 10 2015 (IPS)

A regional agreement on managing transboundary haze caused by fires raging in Indonesia’s forests and peatlands appears all but buried in the embers of frustration of its neighbouring countries.

Nearby Singapore and Malaysia, apart from eastern Indonesia, have been hardest hit by the haze, which has been sending air pollution indices soaring to unhealthy levels for more than a month now. In recent days, the winds have blown the haze to southern Thailand as well.

In parts of Southeast Asia, a pall of grey hangs over the skies from morning until dusk, and scenes of residents walking around with masks have become common.

Over the past month or so, schools have been closed at some point, flights delayed or outdoor activities cancelled or limited, with warnings about the risks to children and the elderly, as countries asked Indonesia, with whom they are members in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), to address the burning of forests and land in eastern Indonesia.

After months of digging in its heels and saying it can manage on its own, the Indonesian government was quoted as saying this week it believes foreign help would be needed to put out the fires.

“This has proven quite a challenge for us, so we see it as a necessity to work together with countries that have the available resources to extinguish the fires,” foreign ministry spokesman Arrmanatha Nasir said on Oct. 8. He said Indonesia’s foreign minister, Retno LP Marsud, had talked to Singapore, Malaysia, Russia, China and Australia “to discuss cooperation initiatives to overcome fire hotspots.”

But in these discussions about the fires there has hardly been any mention of the 1997 ASEAN Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution, a legally binding agreement among the 10 member countries of the organisation. These are Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

In truth, activists say, they did not have much hope in the ASEAN haze agreement and ASEAN’s ability – or will – to hold its members to its own commitments.

“The agreement is said to be legally binding, but ASEAN has no court to try offenders,” said Nur Hidayati, head of the advocacy department of the Indonesian Forum for Environment, known by its Indonesian acronym WALHI. She added that the haze accord would likely meet the same fate as the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights, which activists see as weak.

Yet this year would have been an opportunity to show the teeth of the haze agreement, which ASEAN has long held up as an example of successful regional cooperation. The haze agreement was the world’s first regional arrangement that binds a group of states to tackle transboundary pollution from land and forest fires.

After years of resistance, Indonesia – whose inability to control the fires for nearly two decades has been an irritant in its ties with its neighbours – finally ratified the haze agreement in September 2014 and became legally bound by it. That is 12 years after Indonesia signed it with other ASEAN countries in 2002, a fact that has raised doubts about ASEAN’s ability to enforce its own decisions.

ASEAN countries are also moving toward deeper economic integration and launching the ASEAN Community in December 2015, but addressing transboundary tensions continue to challenge the 48-year-old organisation.

“If the most powerful three members of ASEAN (Indonesia, Singapore and Malaysia) are not able to address a recurring and predictable problem (haze), what hope does the region have for economic integration with the ASEAN Economic Community that is going to be finalized end of this year?” asked a September commentary in the Jakarta Post newspaper by Joseph Cherian of the Centre for Asset Management Research and Investments, Jack Loo of Think Business and Ang Swee Hoon of the National University of Singapore Business School.

Singapore and Malaysia have repeatedly offered assistance to put out the raging fires, but Indonesia’s officials until recently said they could manage on their own.

“For the time being, we are only thinking of exhausting all of our internal resources before seeking external assistance,” J S George Lantu, director of ASEAN functional cooperation of the Indonesian foreign ministry said in an interview earlier in October. “We really appreciate their offers of help, but as a sovereign state we don’t want to seek to external help without trying hard enough to put out the fires. We can handle the fires ourselves,” the diplomat said.

But Indonesia is showing “complete disregard for our people, and their own,” Singapore Foreign Minister K Shanmugan told the British Broadcasting Corporation earlier in October.

The head of the environment division of the Jakarta-based ASEAN secretariat, which oversees the implementation of the ASEAN haze agreement, said Indonesia’s responses to the fires were in line with the accord. “Obviously, Indonesia can deal with the fires with its own resources,” division head Ampai Harakunarak said. “All member states are standing by, ready to receive requests from Indonesia.”

The accord aims to “prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollution as a result of land and/or forest fires which should be mitigated, through concerted national efforts and intensified regional and international cooperation.” It requires parties to “cooperate in developing and implementing measures to prevent and monitor transboundary haze pollutions as a result of land and/or forest fires” and “to control sources of fires.”

In truth, “Indonesia ratified the agreement under strong protest from Singapore and Malaysia over haze pollution. It (the ratification) was more as a political gesture than a statement of intent,” said WALHI’s Hidayati.

Significantly, Article 12.2 of the agreement says that external assistance “can only be employed at the request of and with the consent of the requesting party, or when offered by another party or parties, with the consent of the receiving party.”

President Joko Widodo had instructed government agencies to handle the fires in peatlands and forest being cleared by plantations for products like palm oil or paper. Foreign companies run many of them, prompting Singapore’s National Environmental Agency to name five companies with Indonesian concessions suspected to be contributing to the haze.

The Singapore Environment Council and Consumers Association of Singapore have urged consumers to use only products of companies that do not use burning practices in Indonesia.

Satellite images show that 70 per cent of hotspots in Sumatera and Borneo islands in Indonesia are in local plantations. Some 1.7 million hectares of land, more than a third of which are on peatland in Sumatra and Kalimantan, have been burned, Widodo said.

Clearly, Indonesia has a lot of cleaning up to do of the concessions it gives to plantation companies and enforcing of local laws, critics say.

Land and/or forest fires have plagued Indonesia annually over the past 18 years due to unprecedented expansion of pulp and paper companies and oil palm plantations and their conversion into easy-to-burn peatlands, according to WALHI.

“By nature, tropical rain forests are impossible to burn due to high humidity. However, when trees are felled and a monoculture system is introduced in oil palm and rubber plantations or forest estates, their humidity disappears and they become vulnerable to fires,” Hidayati said.

Government officials say they have frozen some oil palm and forest concessions, adding that they have fined some companies and that others are awaiting trial. “Previously, we only charged individuals or corporates violating the 2009 environmental law in criminal and civil courts. Since January 2015, however, we also impose administrative sanctions on them by either freezing or revoking their concessions,” said Muhammad Yunus, director of the criminal law enforcement division of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry.

But the government must review all forest and plantation concessions to determine whether companies can handle fires, Hidayati said. “A fire that breaks out in a plantation or forest estate should been seen as a concession holder’s inability to manage the land and thus serve as a ground to revoke the concession, regardless who sets it or whether or not it’s deliberate.”

Untung Suprapto, head of the land and forest fire control sub-directorate of the Ministry of Environment and Forestry, said his office is drafting a regulation that would require plantation and forest concession holders to have own firefighter teams, trucks and equipment.
(End)

Excerpt:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Edited by Phil Harris   

Slum populations in the developing world have increased from 650 million in 1990 to 863 million in 2012. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE, Jun 5 2014 (IPS)

With over 20,000 international participants, a triple summit wrapping up today in Singapore is generating an abundance of ideas on sustainable cities.

Combining the World City Summit, Singapore Water Week and the CleanEnviro Summit into one mega-event (at one venue), the country has brought together urban policy-makers, environmentalists, water experts and business people to discuss the future of urban planning, even as U.N.-Habitat warns that the number of city dwellers could double by 2050 to nearly 6.5 billion people.

“Unless we make a concerted effort to change the way we live and operate, the world is on course to enter uncharted, potentially dangerous territory,” warned Choi Shing Kwok, permanent secretary of Singapore’s ministry of the environment and water resources, addressing a Business Forum at the World Cities Summit here this week.

One of the major themes on the table has been the issue of environmental sustainability and the urgent need for better communication between local government authorities and community members to create more transparent and participatory governance at the grassroots level.

“Unless we make a concerted effort to change the way we live and operate, the world is on course to enter uncharted, potentially dangerous territory." -- Choi Shing Kwok, permanent secretary of Singapore’s ministry of the environment and water resources
Few can miss the significance of Singapore as a location for the triple-header: an island nation of four million people, it is now among the world’s top three richest countries in terms of gross domestic product (GDP), clocking roughly 274.7 billion dollars in 2012, according to the World Bank.

A highly advanced developed nation with sound environmental policies, the Southeast Asian country is always proud to showcase its journey from a third world to a first world country within a single generation as a model for others to emulate.

In a nod to his government’s decision to host the gathering for the second year running, Kwok told the 130 mayors present at the conference, “Governments have an important role to play in steering national development through good public policies and by working with people and private sectors to shape their countries’ future.”

The U.N. estimates that 96 percent of urban growth in the next three decades will take place in developing countries, many of which are already straining to effectively manage their bulging metropolises.

Slum populations in the developing world have increased in number from 650 million in 1990 to 863 million in 2012. More than half of these slum dwellers reside in Asia.

Asia is also expected to shoulder the lion’s share of the burden of city planning, being home to 56 percent of the world’s largest cities, including seven of the top 10 megacities (with populations of over 10 million people).

Most officials are agreed that tackling the challenge of urban growth will require a multi-sector approach that mobilises electronics and technology in the service of poverty reduction and environmental sustainability.

Bindu Lohani, vice president of knowledge management and sustainable development at the Asian Development Bank (ADB) believes that, in order to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), emphasis must be placed on developing “local governments as the delivery agents of basic services.”

He added that municipal governments in the developing world face enormous challenges due to a lack of autonomy in urban planning, and limited avenues through which to raise financial resources.

China has made strides in overcoming these obstacles, according to Qiu Aijun, deputy director-general of China’s Center for Urban Development.

She drew attention to three rural towns – Longgang, Baigou and Huixian – that have developed into cities in the past 10 to 20 years because the Chinese authorities eliminated multi-tiered approval systems and adopted one localised system for processing community development projects and businesses.

“As grassroots governments did not have approval rights, we reformed laws to give them those rights. Instead of needing eight different chops [approval stamps] to start a business, you now need just one,” she explained.

Several of the mayors in attendance at the summit advocated using social media as a tool in building a sustainable future.

Among them was Ridwan Kamil, mayor of Bandung, Indonesia’s third largest city, who interacts with the community through Twitter, where he currently has 545,000 followers; he has also convinced city officials and other departments to create their own social media accounts.

“In future, a majority of the city’s programmes will be run collaboratively, where citizens participate in improving the quality of public services,” Kamil stressed during a forum discussion earlier this week.

Clover Moore, lord mayor of Sydney, echoed his sentiment, arguing that mainstream media’s focus on negatives could be easily overcome by embarking on smart social media campaigns.

“People don’t want change, [so] we need to take people through change,” argued Moore at a panel discussion entitled ‘Way Forward’. Her campaign to make Sydney a more bike-friendly and pedestrian-friendly city, she said, took years of communicating with the community before people changed their ways.

Others stressed that new forms of communication must be deployed in tandem with the building of solid infrastructure.

As Anibal Gaviria Correa, mayor of Colombia’s second-largest city, Medellin, pointed out, extending public transport systems to the most marginalised suburbs helped to reduce the soaring crime rate in what was once considered the world’s most violent urban center, with a homicide rate of 380 per 100,000 in 1991.

“This allowed the city’s poorest residents to access education, jobs and public spaces, helping in social upliftment, and building a more inclusive society,” he noted. Though still high, homicide rates in Medellin fell by 50 percent between 1990 and 2000.

Waste management was another major issue under the microscope here this week, particularly for the governments of Asian countries, many of which lack effective recycling, treatment and disposal systems.

For instance, only 14 percent of Indonesia’s wastewater is treated, while that number falls to 10 percent in the Philippines, nine percent in India and just four percent in Vietnam.

According to the Asian Development Bank, 23 percent of the population (roughly 850 million people) in the Asia-Pacific Region practice open defecation, causing water and ground pollution and leading to the outbreak of diarrhoeal diseases.

A mere 10 percent of solid waste generated in Asian towns and cities winds up in poorly managed landfill sites.

In an interview with the conference newspaper ‘Solutions’, Chen Hung-Yi, of the Environmental Protection Administration of Taiwan, said that governments should introduce financial incentives for people to generate less waste and thus reduce reliance on landfills.

“In Taiwan, households and businesses are charged for garbage collection, while recycling is free,” Chen said, arguing that such a system will soon prompt people to take more responsibility for their solid waste.

South Korea and Japan have adopted a similar system, though China is yet to follow suit, even though the country is the world’s leading generator of municipal solid waste, creating 150 million tons annually.

The United Nations estimates that cities will generate more than half the rise in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 20 years, highlighting the urgent need for communication and action on smart urban planning.

(END)

USS Ronald Reagan and other ships from RIMPAC 2010 transit the Pacific. The United States, a Pacific power whose military spending is not included in the Asia figures, has also played an important role in driving up the expenditures in the region. Credit: U.S. Navy photo

By John Feffer
WASHINGTON, Apr 14 2014 (IPS)

For the second year in a row, the world is spending a little less on the military. Asia, however, has failed to get the memo. The region is spending more at a time when many others are spending less.

Last year, Asia saw a 3.6 percent increase in military spending, according to figures just released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The region — which includes East Asia, South Asia, Central Asia and Oceania — posted topping off a 62 percent increase over the last decade.To a certain extent, the arms race in Asia is connected not to the vast expansion of the Pentagon since 2001 but rather to the relative decline of Asia in U.S. priorities over much of that period.

In 2012, for the first time Asia outpaced Europe in its military spending. That year, the world’s top five importers of armaments all came from Asia: India, China, Pakistan, South Korea, and (incredibly) the city-state of Singapore.

China is responsible for the lion’s share of the increases in East Asia, having increased its spending by 170 percent over the last decade. It has also announced a 12.2 percent increase for 2014.

But China is not the only driver of regional military spending. South Asia – specifically the confrontation between India and Pakistan – is responsible for a large chunk of the military spending in the region. Rival territorial claims over tiny islands  — and the vast resources that lie beneath and around them — in both Northeast and Southeast Asia are pushing the claimants to boost their maritime capabilities.

Even Japan, which has traditionally kept its military spending to under one percent of GDP, is getting into the act. Tokyo has promised of a 2.8 percent increase in 2014-15.

The United States, a Pacific power whose military spending is not included in the Asia figures, has also played an important role in driving up the expenditures in the region. The Barack Obama administration’s “Pacific pivot” is designed to reboot the U.S. security presence in this strategically critical part of the world.

To a certain extent, the arms race in Asia is connected not to the vast expansion of the Pentagon since 2001 but rather to the relative decline of Asia in U.S. priorities over much of that period.

As U.S. allies, South Korea and Japan were expected to shoulder more of the security burden in the region while the United States pursued national security objects in the Middle East and Central Asia.

China, meanwhile, pursued a “peaceful rise” that also involved an attempt to acquire a military strength comparable to its economic strength. At the same time, China more vigorously advanced its claims in the South China Sea even as other parties to the conflict put forward their counter claims.

The Pacific pivot has been billed as a way to halt the relative decline of U.S. influence in Asia. So far, however, this highly touted “rebalancing” has largely been a shifting around of U.S. forces in the region.

The fulcrum of the pivot is Okinawa, where the United States and Japan have been negotiating for nearly two decades to close an outdated Marine Air Force base in Okinawa and transfer those Marines to existing, expanding, and proposed facilities elsewhere.

Aside from this complex operation, a few Littoral Combat Ships have gone to Singapore. The Pentagon has proposed putting slightly more of its overall fleet in the Pacific (a 60-40 split compared to the current 50-50). And Washington has welcomed closer coordination with partners like the Philippines and Vietnam.

Instead of a significant upgrade to U.S. capabilities in the region, the pivot is largely a signal to Washington’s allies that the partnerships remain strong and a warning to Washington’s adversaries that, even if U.S. military spending is on a slight downward tilt, the Pentagon possesses more than enough firepower to deter their power projection.

This signaling function of the pivot dovetails with another facet of U.S. security policy: arms exports. The growth of the Pentagon over the last 10 years has been accompanied by a growth in U.S. military exports, which more than doubled during the period 2002 to 2012 from 8.3 to 18.8 billion dollars.

The modest reduction in Pentagon spending will not necessarily lead to a corresponding decline in exports. In fact, the opposite is likely to be true, as was the case during the last Pentagon slowdown in the 1990s. The Obama administration has pushed through a streamlining of the licensing process in order to facilitate an increase in military exports – in part to compensate U.S. arms manufacturers for a decline in orders from the Pentagon.

Asia and Oceania represent the primary target for U.S. military exports, absorbing nearly half of all shipments. Of that number, East Asia represents approximately one-quarter (South Asia accounts for nearly half).

The biggest-ticket item is the F-35 fighter jet, which Washington has already sold to Japan, South Korea, and Australia. Long-range missile defence systems have been sold to Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Overall between 2009 and 2013, Australia and South Korea have been the top U.S. clients. With its projected increase in military spending, Japan will also likely rise much higher on the list.

The more advanced weaponry U.S. allies purchase, the more they are locked into future acquisitions. The United States emphasises “interoperability” among its allies. Not only are purchasers dependent on the United States for spare parts and upgrades, but they must consider the overall system of command and control (which is now C5I — Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat systems and Intelligence).

Although a French fighter jet or a Russian naval vessel might be a cheaper option in a competitive bid, the purchasing country must also consider how the item integrates with the rest of its hardware and software.

The United States has argued that its overwhelming military presence in the region and lack of interest in territorial gain have dampened conflict in Asia. But the security environment has changed dramatically since the United States first presented itself as a guarantor of regional stability.

Japan no longer abides by a strict interpretation of its “peace constitution.” North Korea has developed nuclear weapons. China has dramatically increased its capabilities. South Korea has created its own indigenous military manufacturing sector and greatly expanded its exports. Territorial disputes in the South China, Yellow, and East China Seas have sharpened. The only flashpoint that has become more peaceful in the last few years has been the Taiwan Strait.

The continued increase in military spending by countries in East Asia and the massive influx of arms into the region are both symptoms and drivers of conflict. Until and unless the region restrains its appetite for military upgrades, the risk of clashes and even all-out war will remain high.

In such an increasingly volatile environment, regional security agreements – on North Korea’s nuclear programme, the several territorial disputes, or new technological threats like cyberwarfare – will be even more difficult to achieve.

Most importantly, because of these budget priorities, the region will have fewer resources and less political will to address other pressing threats, such as climate change, which cannot be defeated with fighter jets or the latest generation of battle ship.

An open drainage ditch in Madagascar. Credit: Lova Rabary-Rakontondravony/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 16 2013 (IPS)

The United Nations has a longstanding tradition of commemorating political milestones – like the abolition of the slave trade – or sustaining day-long vigils on controversial issues such as a ban on nuclear tests.

The annual events have covered a wide range of political, social and economic issues on a 24-hour timeline, including World Cancer Day, World Press Freedom Day, World Refugee Day, World AIDS Day, World Population Day and World Water Day."An environment that lacks sanitation and clean water is an environment where achieving other development goals is an impossible dream." -- Dr. Chris Williams

But for some unaccountable reason, the United Nations continued to sidestep a growing problem facing over 2.5 billion people: lack of adequate sanitation.

So last July, the 193-member U.N. General Assemby (UNGA) adopted a resolution, initiated by Singapore, to declare Nov. 19 “World Toilet Day,” the first-ever in the 68-year history of the United Nations.

“The name is catchy and humourous,” says the statement by Singapore, “But it serves to capture the public’s attention, and focus on the challenges of sanitation and toilets.”

The resolution, which was co-sponsored by 121 member states, calls for greater attention to the global sanitation crisis through the commemoration of World Toilet Day next week.

Asked why sanitation has remained a neglected goal in the U.N.’s development agenda, Mark Neo, deputy permanent represent of Singapore to the United Nations, told IPS sanitation was not originally included in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and was agreed upon in the 2002 Rio+10 conference in Johannesburg, for inclusion.

“More importantly, sanitation is not just about toilets and infrastructure, it is about social and behavioural changes which cannot be achieved overnight and will take time,” he said.

Despite these obstacles, much progress has been made. Since 1990, 1.8 billion people have gained access to improved sanitation, and the number of people who practice open defecation has been reduced by 272 million, he pointed out.

“However, the sad reality is that one billion people still practice open defecation and 2.5 billion do not have adequate sanitation facilities,” Neo said.

Against this backdrop, Deputy Secretary-General Jan Eliasson’s recent “Call to Action on Sanitation” and the consensus adoption of the resolution on World Toilet Day” are timely and useful in highlighting the need to make progress on the continuing challenge of sanitation,” he added.

Dr. Chris Williams, executive director of the Geneva-based Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), told IPS sanitation and hygiene are motors which drive health, social and economic development around the world.

“An environment that lacks sanitation and clean water is an environment where achieving other development goals is an impossible dream. The time to act is now,” he added.

In its campaign to help resolve the world’s sanitation crisis, the government of Singapore is partnering with the World Toilet Organisation (WTO), a Singapore-based NGO, founded in 2001, with 534 members, who are mostly local toilet associations.

WTO founder Jack Sim (known affectionately as “Mr Toilet”) will be at the United Nations to take part in the commemoration.

“When we were children, our parents told not to talk about (poo),” Sim told IPS. “This is a really serious problem. What you don’t talk about, you cannot improve.”

Fleur Anderson, head of campaigns at the London-based WaterAid, told IPS next week’s commemoration is not just the creation of yet another “U.N. Day”, but a strong sign that governments recognise that toilets-for-all is essential for saving children’s lives.

“We’ll certainly be working with others to use World Toilet Day to draw the attention of governments to the enormous scale of the problem,” Anderson said.

WaterAid will also be launching a report next week, jointly with the WSSCC and Unilever, highlighting the huge impact sanitation has on women’s lives and calling for a collaborative approach between governments, civil society and business to get the MDG sanitation target – halving the number of people without adequate sanitation – back on track.

Emma Pfister, manager of social media and partnerships at Water for People, told IPS it is not enough to keep throwing money at the problem and building more toilets.

“We’ve seen that this approach doesn’t work, resulting in wasted investment and greater challenges for the world’s poorest,” she said. “Our goal at Water for People is to ensure every family, school and clinic has sustainable access to an adequate toilet – and that means a toilet that continues to work.”

Officially observing World Toilet Day is a great step toward making sanitation a priority on the global agenda, Pfister noted.

“And while it helps to raise awareness and funds, we must also demand more effective solutions that result in lasting impact,” she said. “We must change the way aid is spent and hold U.N. agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and governments accountable for their work intervening in people’s lives.”

Projecting into the future, Neo told IPS there is insufficient time left to achieve the MDG target on sanitation by 2015. At the current rate of progress, he pointed out, there will still be 936 million people practicising open defecation in 2015.

“Therefore it is important that sanitation features prominently in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the post-2015 development agenda that follows MDGs.”

Economically, Neo said, poor sanitation costs countries 0.5 to 7.0 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP), while the gains globally from investing in sanitation amount to about 260 billion dollars annually.

WaterAid Chief Executive Barbara Frost told IPS that at the turn of the millennium, world leaders promised to halve the proportion of people living without access to a basic toilet by 2015. At current rates of progress, around half a billion people will have to wait another decade before they get this basic service they were promised.

“We can and should be doing better [because] it is basic services we are talking about that can transform lives,” she said.

By Lusha Chen
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 14 2013 (IPS)

In June, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia were enveloped in haze as hundreds of forest fires burned across the island of Sumatra, in the worst pollution crisis to hit Southeast Asia in more than a decade.

Dr. Nigel Sizer, Courtesy of the World Resources Institute

An analysis by the U.S.-based World Resources Institute (WRI) determined that 150,000 square kilometres burned – more than twice the size of Singapore. Worse, nearly three-quarters of the fires in the study area burned on peatland (a soil layer composed of partly decomposed organic material,  often several metres deep), which acts as a sink to absorb planet-heating carbon dioxide.

Dr. Nigel Sizer, the director of WRI’s Global Forest Initiative, spoke with IPS correspondent Lusha Chen about the obstacles they confronted in investigating the fires, and what countries in the regional Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) can do to prevent this recurring environmental catastrophe.

Q: Regarding the most recent fires across Sumatra, what efforts are being undertaken and what efforts should be taken to investigate the cause of the fire and potential culprits?

A: Achieving full accountability for the fires in Sumatra is important, but it will not be easy. Officials in Indonesia, Singapore, and elsewhere are currently investigating who started the fires and who is legally responsible. Several companies that operate palm oil and pulpwood concessions, as well as a few individuals, have already been implicated.

Still, it remains to be seen exactly who will be officially prosecuted and what the penalty will be. Knowing who is legally responsible can be determined only after careful collection of evidence and proper due process.

A major hurdle is that land ownership information in Indonesia is complex, difficult to obtain and opaque. Analysis from the World Resources Institute found that determining who is legally responsible managing the land where fires occurred is a huge challenge.

For example, although many fires were concentrated in company concession lands set aside for palm oil or pulpwood development, simply identifying which companies manage the land proves very difficult. The company concession data are inconsistent between the Ministry of Forestry, the provincial and district governments, and even more so with the self-reported data from the companies.

Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia should work together to try and unravel the complex ownership structures of the companies, and their subsidiaries, to understand who manages the land where fires may have occurred.

Q: In the report, you called on ASEAN leaders to act together to stop the pollution. Did this happen at the recent meeting in Brunei?

A: In October the heads of state from the ASEAN countries took some positive steps towards combatting the illegal and harmful fires that cause the haze. Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, and Thailand agreed to adopt a joint “haze monitoring system” and share digital land-use and concession maps on a government-to-government basis. These are good steps towards transparency and accountability.

But much more progress needs to be made. The governments stopped short of making concession and land use data entirely public, which would allow for independent monitoring of fire-prone areas by civil society. The ASEAN governments can also do more to ensure that companies operating in multiple countries in the region are held to responsible for their operations in Sumatra.

Ultimately, enforcement on the ground in Indonesia remains the most important thing. The risk of further fires will remain high unless the no-burn policies as strictly enforced at a local level. This will require support from national and local governments, as well as corporate buyers and consumers who purchase commodities produced in the area.

Q: How seriously are the fires contributing to Indonesia’s GHG emissions, and what are the long-term consequences if the problem is not addressed?

A: The fires are an enormous contributor to Indonesia’s Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions, and will have profound impacts on the country’s climate strategies.

Calculating the emissions from the fires is be extremely difficult, due to uncertainly in the depth and quantity peat, a soil layer of partly-decomposed organic material that can emit large amounts of gas when burned. According to estimates from Indonesia’s national office on climate change*, changes in land use (including fires) and the effects on peatland account for 79 percent of Indonesia’s total emissions. This is globally significant, as Indonesia is, by some accounts, the third largest emitter in the world.

The Indonesian government has pledged to cut emissions 26 percent (or 41 percent with international assistance) by 2020 compared to business-as-usual. It will be very difficult for them to meet this ambitious goal without addressing the issue of fires on forest and peatland.

Q: Slash-and-burn is a very traditional way to clear the land for planting. What efforts should be taken at the grassroots level?

A: We need greater awareness and political will from the leaders on the ground. Elected officials, local governments, and local communities need to take strong action to ensure that illegal burning is controlled. Local farmers should be given alternatives to burning, such as access to mechanised equipment that can make clearing and planting easier.

It is also vital that major plantation companies prohibit their local company operators and suppliers from burning land. Similarly, corporate buyers of commodities like palm oil and pulp and paper should ensure that their supply chains are not linked to companies suspected of burning.

Getting the markets to send the right message will help ensure that local farmers and company operators understand the damage that the fires cause.

Change on the ground cannot happen without them.

(*Citation: DNPI (2010) Indonesia’s Greenhouse Gas Abatement Cost Curve. Dewan Nasional Perubahan Iklim, Jakarta, Indonesia.)

Excerpt:

Thai laws ban transgender women from changing their names and gender on their identity cards. Credit: Sutthida Malikaew/IPS

By Simba Shani Kamaria Russeau
BANGKOK, Jul 24 2013 (IPS)

A draft law being readied for parliament that seeks to offer lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer (LGBTIQ) couples the same legal rights as heterosexual couples could make Thailand the first country in Southeast Asia to legalise gay marriage.

Last year, Nathee Theeraronjanapong (55) and his partner Atthapon Janthawee (38) decided to make their 20-year relationship legal.

Citing section 1448 of Thailand’s Civil and Commercial Code, which deems same-sex marriage unlawful, the head of registrations in Thailand’s northern city of Chiang Mai handed the couple a letter of denial.

“The LGBTIQ community really struggles with the issue of acceptance from our parents. There is a lot of pressure to conform to traditional beliefs of what a family unit is comprised of." -- Anjana Suvarnananda, co-founder of Anjaree Group.
In response, the couple filed a complaint with the Parliamentary Human Rights Commission, the Administrative Court and the National Human Rights Commission insisting that Thailand’s constitution guarantees them equal protection under the law.

The political storm following that incident, which generated considerable media buzz, prompted a member of parliament to gather a committee of parliamentarians, 15 scholars and LGBTIQ activists to draft the country’s first civil union bill, to legalise same-sex marriage.

Presenting the draft law on same-sex unions to Thailand’s parliament is Wiratana Kalayasiri, Democrat parliamentarian from the southern Thai city of Songkhla, who is also the chairman of the Legal Justice Human Rights committee.

He says most legislators in Thailand are over 47, which partially explains the staunch opposition to the law in its early stages.

“At first, there was a negative impression and people were wondering why I was doing this but as this process went on people started to understand that this is a human right of the Thai people, guaranteed under the constitution. Since then minds have changed,” Kalayasiri told IPS.

“We have held five hearings on the bill at several universities throughout Thailand and in parliament as well. A survey of 200-300 people showed that 78 percent are in favour of allowing same-sex marriage and 10.3 percent are against it.

“I was particularly surprised when we went to Songkhla [a city of roughly 75,000 people] for a public meeting and 87 percent of Muslims in attendance were in favour [of gay marriage].”

Still, leading activists in Thailand’s LGBTIQ movement like Anjana Suvarnananda, who co-founded Anjaree Group in 1987 – the first organisation to raise the issue of LGBTIQ rights here – believes that the bill could facilitate the process of moving public attitudes from opposition to acceptance.

“The LGBTIQ community really struggles with the issue of acceptance from our parents. There is a lot of pressure to conform to traditional beliefs of what a family unit is comprised of,” she told IPS.

“This is why it is important that the language of the bill transcends defining marriage as being solely between a man and a woman. If we can put forth the idea that the family structure is based on the union of two loving and consenting individuals then…society and our parents would be more willing to accept our way of life.”

Under the current Civil and Commercial Code, same-sex families are not afforded the same legal protections as heterosexual couples such as medical coverage or recognition as being the sole caretaker of their spouse.

Suvarnananda believes the law will be particularly useful during times of emergency. “If there is a severe accident or health issue, like if my partner becomes ill, then in the eyes of the law I am no one other than just a friend. This forces us [the LGBTIQ community] to struggle by ourselves…We want more security,” she added.

In 1956, provisions making sodomy a punishable offense were repealed and consensual sex between same-sex couples became lawful, making Thailand one of Asia’s most progressive countries regarding gay rights.

Anti-discrimination laws protecting members of the LGBTIQ community are non-existent in the region. Sodomy is criminalised in six member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – namely, Brunei, Burma, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as  Marawi City in the Philippines and the South Sumatra Province of Indonesia.

Thus Danai Linjongrat, executive director of the Rainbow Sky Association, has been urging caution in the drafting of the civil union bill, so that it will not inadvertently fan the flames of intolerance and heighten regional stigmatisation of the LGBTIQ community.

“We are looking for a bill that equalises all relationships,” he told IPS. “For example, the current marriage law grants heterosexual couples the right to marry once they reach the legal age of 17, but for LGBTIQ people the legal marriage age would be 20 years old.”

“When we put forth language like this in a bill it merely reinforces discrimination against a certain segment of society when it comes to marriage,” says Linjongrat.

The situation is particularly complicated for transgender individuals, who confront a range of attitudes and biases across the region. Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore, for example, all have laws targeting and criminalising transgender women for “cross-dressing”.

Even in Thailand, where gender non-conformity receives a high degree of social acceptance, there has been little progress in formally recognising the rights of transgender people.

Thailand’s first sex change surgery was performed in 1972 and there are an estimated 180,000 Thai people who identify as transgender, including a number of pop singers, television personalities and movie stars.

In addition, a transgender beauty pageant, the Miss Tiffany’s Universe, is televised annually on a national scale from the eastern city of Pattaya.

Yet Thai law does not allow trans-people to change their gender or their names on ID cards, birth certificates or passports, leading to complications in finding employment and harassment at border crossings or immigration checkpoints.

Even with a university degree, transgender people have difficulty finding a decent job. To support themselves, many turn to the entertainment or sex industry.

Experts hope “this civil union bill will slightly reduce heteronormativity in Thai society, which could improve…health issues by reducing the likelihood of unsafe sexual practices [among the LGBTIQ community],” Prempreeda Pramoj Na Ayutthaya, an HIV and AIDS national programme officer for UNESCO in Bangkok, told IPS.

Thailand has the highest adult HIV rate in Southeast Asia, with nearly 520,000 people between the ages of 15 and 49 living with HIV/AIDS; a 2010 survey in Bangkok found that 31 percent of gay men and transgendered people are HIV-positive.

“In order for the transgender community to fully support this bill, it must ensure that we are granted the right to legally change our name titles,” Na Ayutthaya stressed.

Recently deforested peat land intended for oil palm plantations in Borneo, Indonesia. Credit: glennhurowitz/CC-BY-2.0

By Baradan Kuppusamy
KUALA LUMPUR, Jul 22 2013 (IPS)

With a propensity to devour everything in their path and spiral quickly out of control, leaving behind swathes of scorched earth, forest fires are considered a hazard in most parts of the world. In Indonesia, however, fires are the preferred method for clearing large areas of land for massive plantations of commercial crops.

In the first half of 2013, research studies have already recorded 8,343 forest fires, a higher number than has been recorded in preceding years.

While some blazes occurred naturally, igniting in the country’s vast rainforests that are transformed in the dry summer months into an expanse of kindling, experts say that many fires were created by plantation companies and, to a lesser extent, by local communities, to clear millions of hectares of jungle land needed for oil palm plantations.

According to the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), oil palm plantations “covered 7.8 million hectares in Indonesia” in 2011, and produced roughly 23.5 million tonnes of crude palm oil that year.

The cheapest and easiest way to clear enough land to yield these huge quantities of oil is to set fire to acre upon acre of rainforest and let the wind and the flames do the work, including reducing the acidity of peat soil.

This soggy, organic matter is anathema to palm trees, which explains why about two-thirds of forest fires in Indonesia occur on peat lands.

Unfortunately, peat soil becomes extremely toxic at high temperatures, emitting greenhouse gases and creating haze and smog. Peat fires can burn on for weeks, even months, endangering wildlife and human communities far from the site of the actual fire.

For years, palm oil-producing companies in Indonesia and Malaysia, which together account for 85 percent of the world’s palm oil production every year, have come under fire from activists and scientists who say the ‘forest fire method’ poses serious environmental and health risks for the entire region.

While most of these fires originate in Sumatra, changes in wind direction mean that smoke travels to nearby countries.

Last month, for instance, the international community pilloried Indonesia for fires that choked parts of neighbouring Singapore and Malaysia.

The haze that enveloped the latter was so bad that the government in Kuala Lumpur declared a state of emergency in parts of the country where air pollution index readings reached a critical 750 on Jun. 23, well above the “hazardous” level of 300.

Malaysian citizens were advised to stay indoors, while Singaporean authorities cancelled outdoor summer activities as panicked residents emptied stores of their supply of protective masks.

The average air pollution index rating in both Malaysia and Singapore now hovers at over 100, a dramatic increase from the preceding decade, which “could contribute to climate change and is seriously detrimental to the health of people in the region,” Gurmit Singh, a renowned Malaysian environmentalist, told IPS.

Blame has been bandied about, with governments, corporations and even local communities named as culprits, but public censure has failed to prompt concrete action.

Environment ministers representing five members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) flew to Malaysia’s capital last week in search of a lasting solution to what has become a predictable, annual crisis, but the talks concluded on Jul. 17 with no firm agreement on the table.

All that officials from Singapore, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand approved was a plan for Indonesia to refer ASEAN’s 2002 Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution to its parliament by 2014 – hardly a promising solution, since the accord appeared before Indonesia’s legislature in 2009 but was not mentioned once during the entire session.

The outcome of the high-level meeting comes as no surprise to T. Jayabalan, a public health consultant and adviser to Friends of the Earth-Malaysia.

“For almost 20 years these governments have adopted a lackadaisical attitude towards resolving the problem (of forest fires),” he told IPS.

“No concrete measures have been taken because any measure imposed will impact the profits of palm oil companies,” he added.

A quick look at the stakes involved in palm oil production support Jayabalan’s claim: according to CIFOR, crude palm oil brought in 12.4 billion dollars in foreign exchange in 2008, while the government bagged another billion dollars in export taxes alone that same year.

The sector employs some 3.2 million people every year – no mean feat in a country where 30 million people live below the poverty line.

Earlier this year, the Indonesian Palm Oil Producers Association unveiled an ambitious plan to grow the sector by 5.4 percent by the year 2020, adding another four million hectares to existing plantations around the country.

With such zealous plans in the pipeline, a solution is urgently needed, “rather than more talk and postponement of key decisions,” Jayabalan stressed.

He and other experts believe the first step must entail recognising the role palm oil companies play in creating fires.

Data published last month by the Washington-based World Research Institute (WRI) shows that the number of fires per hectare is “three to four times higher within…oil palm concession boundaries than outside of them.”

The research also suggests that there are significant discrepancies between maps issued by the ministry of forestry and those being used by oil palm companies.

According to WRI, “Company ‘Business Land Use Rights’ licence boundaries (in Indonesian, Hak Guna Usaha or HGU)…are generally nested within, and are smaller than, the concession boundaries the government is using. This is creating confusion about responsibility for fires found on land thought to be within concessions but outside areas the companies fully control and are directly developing.”

With more fires expected in the months between August and October, environmentalists are urging governments to “come to terms with the haze and its root causes because people in the region suffer from the pollutants,” Singh said. Various studies have shown that haze pollution leads to an increase in the number of people suffering from upper respiratory tract infections, asthma and rhinitis.

Countries in the region are also being called upon to cooperate in the development and implementation of prevention mechanisms, monitoring and early warning systems, information-sharing networks and other channels for providing mutual assistance.

But these steps have currently been stalled by Indonesia’s refusal to ratify the ASEAN Haze Pollution Agreement.

Working Singaporean women are forced to conform to strict gender roles, taking care of children and household chores on top of their 9-5 jobs. Credit: epSos.de/CC-BY-2.0

By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE, Jul 17 2013 (IPS)

The play opens with a man and his mother waiting impatiently at the dining table in the family home. A woman rushes in after a busy day at the office with takeaway dinner packets, followed by her son and daughter who walk in expecting their mother to serve them a meal.

The scene continues with the grandmother chastising her daughter-in-law for coming home late and failing to prepare the meal herself, a refrain quickly taken up by the husband. The young daughter is meanwhile pulled up for wearing a short skirt, though she is quick to retort that the grandmother is simply “old-fashioned”.

An undercurrent of tension that threatens to give way to violence runs through the play, which is exactly what the writers and producers intended.

‘Just a Bad Day’, a forum theatre piece designed to explore the struggles of ordinary Singaporean women against stereotyping and gender violence, is quickly making the rounds of this affluent Southeast Asian city-state, highlighting the hunger for dialogue around an issue that often gets swept under the rug.

As Director Li Xie told IPS, “Physical violence is very visible but subtle violence is hard to detect.” Yet it is exactly this latter form of violence that women in Singapore confront on a daily basis.

The 2013 Human Development Report, published annually by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), puts Singapore at 13^th place in the gender development index, above Western countries such as the U.S., UK, Ireland and Austria, and fellow neighbours Japan, South Korea and Australia.

Over 71 percent of women in Singapore have at least a secondary education and 57 percent participate in the labour force.

With such an impressive track record, one would believe that women here enjoy a high social status, but the reality is very different.

Entering the labour force has been both a blessing and a curse, as women are now expected to play the dual role of working mother and traditional housewife, who must cook the family meal and attend to all the domestic chores after putting in long hours on the job.

“We wanted to address these gender stereotypes, prejudices and biases [because] that’s where change starts,” argues Kokila Annamalai, communications executive at the Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE), the co-producer of the play.

She added that social conditioning of both men and women must be stopped at “an early stage” so as to prevent psychological violence in the future.

AWARE, the leading women’s lobby group in Singapore, has fought for over three decades for equal rights for women in the workplace and at home.

Now, the NGO is taking its campaign to a new level through the use of community forum theatre, a form that allows the audience to actively participate in the outcome of the play.

“Through this intimate performance, we hope to provoke thought and discussion on the less tangible forms of violence against women that continue to be a reality in Singapore,” Annamalai told IPS.

‘Just A Bad Day’, produced in collaboration with the community theatre company Drama Box, is a flagship project of the ‘We Can’ campaign, a global initiative involving 3.9 million people who have pledged not to “tolerate violence against women”.

As the 16^th country to join the movement, Singapore has adopted the mantra “Change starts with me”, and hopes to reach 10,000 people by the end of the year.

A crucial tool in that plan is the performance piece, devised by a team of “change makers” who will spend the rest of this year taking the play to community centres, schools and universities around the country.

First staged on Jun. 26, the play was recently presented at a youth festival called Scape where over 100 youth between the ages of 16 and 25 attended the show and participated actively in formulating a new outcome.

One audience member intervened in the first scene and got into the role of the working mother-housewife by explaining to the grandmother that women today have to work to maintain a family’s standard of living.

The original actress had portrayed a subdued and frustrated character, but the young girl in the audience injected a more aggressive quality into the mother’s role, pushing the grandmother to take a different view of the situation.

Rachel Chung, who originally played the role of the mother, told IPS after the show that she herself has experienced the kind of psychological violence depicted in the scene.

“Violence in my life started with verbal tirades, insults and put-downs from my partner,” Chung said in a recent interview. “He then assaulted me with profanities. Soon, he started shoving me when I ‘stepped out of line’ and this escalated into more physical abuse like slapping and punching.”

Stressing that violence is not “always black and blue”, Chung insisted that the “damage to my morale and self worth caused by the emotional abuse was no less than the physical injuries.”

She pointed out that one in 10 women in Singapore have experienced psychological abuse, and surveys have shown that eight in 10 Singaporeans will not interfere in domestic disputes, even if they know that a friend, relative or neighbour is being abused.

Chung called the campaign a “movement to make change” and invited men and boys to join in, citing their support as crucial for success.

Lupin Tan, who acted as the father in ‘Just a Bad Day’, told IPS that he joined the cast because of a personal connection to the role, having been what he called a “male chauvinistic father”.

He was one among 70 people who responded to a Facebook post calling for volunteers. Twenty were eventually chosen to go through a month-long exercise with Drama Theatre and come up with three scenes that would then be incorporated into the final play.

“It was important for me to reach out to people with [similar] experiences, who are unaware of this type of violence towards women,” Tan told IPS.

According to Xie, the point of the play is to force audience members to ask themselves: “What would I have done?”

Provoking spontaneity and action is important in a society where many perceive calls for help as women “making mountains out of molehills.”

In fact, a survey of over 655 men, conducted by the Ngee Ann Polytechnic School of Business and Accountancy, found that 13 percent of respondents believe women who are raped “asked for it”, while 29 percent of men believe that most women make “false” claims of rape.

It is for this very reason that Annamalai believes theatre can be useful, since it offers a non-threatening opening to a conversation and “shows rather than tells” a way forward, to a more equitable society.

A Wyoming Air National Guard C-130 Hercules equipped with a Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System drops a water and fire retardant slurry on a fire on the Indonesian island of Sumatra on Nov. 17, 1997. Credit: U.S. Air Force

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 10 2013 (IPS)

Indonesia’s forest fires, a predictable annual ritual, will continue to have serious implications for health and the environment in Southeast Asia unless the government strengthens forest protection, warn environmental groups.

The government claims it is doing its best, including implementation of existing protection measures against recurring forest fires. But environmental groups say Indonesia’s best is not good enough."There is need for a more active exchange of experiences, good practices and knowledge between the different regions of Kalimantan and Sumatra ." -- FAO's Pieter van Lierop

Last month’s forest fires in Indonesia, which literally choked parts of Singapore and Malaysia, have revived a longstanding debate on one of the key environmental issues troubling Southeast Asia.

The Malaysian government declared a state of emergency in areas where the haze triggered “one of the country’s worst pollution levels”, even as Singapore urged people to stay indoors.

Conscious of the ecological implications, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono formally apologised to Singapore and Malaysia for the widespread pollution caused by the forest fires in his country.

“For what is happening, as the president, I apologise to our brothers in Singapore and Malaysia,” Yudhoyono said.

Indonesia has been working hard to fight the fires, which are mostly set by farmers to clear fields.

Ironically, the Indonesian president is one of three world leaders – along with Britain’s David Cameron and Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – chairing a high-level panel on the U.N.’s post-2015 development agenda, which places high priority on the environment, and specifically on a set of future sustainable development goals.

As a result, says one Asian diplomat, neither the United Nations nor Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon are likely to take a critical stand on Indonesia’s continuing forest fires.

“It’s a politically sensitive issue,” he told IPS, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Asked for a response, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters Tuesday: “Well, as I understand it, the countries in the region are closely coordinating and cooperating on this particular matter. And I think I would leave it at that.

“Should I have further information, particularly from my colleagues from the Economic and Social Commission for Asia Pacific (ESCAP), then I’d let you know,” he added.

But at this point, “I think it is being handled between those countries in the region.”

Asked about the implications of the recurring forest fires, Yuyun Indradi, forests campaigner at Greenpeace Southeast Asia, told IPS, “Basically this demonstrates that the government of Indonesia is less serious in dealing and improving forest governance, despite their previous commitments to do so.”

Their commitment to cut greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions up to 41 percent will be a mission impossible (most of the carbon emission is contribution of deforestation and land use change in the forestry sector which contributes up to 80 percent of Indonesia’s emission), he said.

“Forest governance, which includes law enforcement, is very weak. Even Indonesia has adopted zero burning policy (under the Forestry Act, Plantation Act and Environmental Protection and Management Act) but it is clearly still occurring on a widespread scale,” he added.

He also said investment in forest protection itself is also very low in terms of human resources – forest firefighters, forest fire investigators, equipment, early warning system – and it means that this environmental crime is allowed to occur.

Corruption also part of the problem in the land-based extractives industry, such as plantations, forestry and mining, he added.

Pieter van Lierop, Forestry Officer (fire management) at the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), told IPS it is important to recognise that fire is used as a land management tool.

However, fires that get out of control on drained peatlands frequently cause significant damage to human health, human assets and biodiversity and create large amounts of greenhouse gasses contributing to climate change.

The risk of such fires and their emissions are very high as dried peat becomes extremely inflammable and fires can remain underground in the peat for some time and then rise to the surface at a considerable distance from the original outbreak, he said.

Nazir Foead, conservation director at the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) Indonesia, told IPS the implications for Indonesia would be on several fronts. Public health is certainly one of them, mostly for those living in provinces heavily affected by haze, he said.

Foead said the state may have to bear some of the costs to improve public health.

As the fires burnt either crop or timber plantations, companies and farmers will endure economic losses.

“We hope the [Indonesian] government would seriously enforce the zero burning laws on companies, and provide assistance to farmers who would eventually use fires to clear land every year,” he said.

If farmers are not provided with technical and financial assistance, they will start the fires again next year, he warned.

FAO’s Van Lierop told IPS that commercial enterprises involved in oil palm and other plantations should avoid the use of fire in the establishment and maintenance of plantations. At the same time, he said, small farmers should receive more support to use fires in a controllable and efficient manner and, where possible, to apply alternatives to the use of fire as an agricultural tool.

“There is need for a more active exchange of experiences, good practices and knowledge between the different regions of Kalimantan and Sumatra (where forest fires occur),” he said.

Governments at all levels should play an important role in this. International research projects could also contribute more to the exchange of good practices and the results of research, he added.

FAO has been providing support to countries to develop an integrated approach to fire management, from prevention and preparedness to suppression and restoration for many years, he said.

Greenpeace’s Indradi told IPS the forest fire problem is part of the wider problem Indonesia has with managing its natural resources, “especially when we continue to put political and financial interests first rather than the environment”.

Twenty-five-year-old Razia is one of 2,500 survivors of the factory collapse in Bangladesh. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, May 31 2013 (IPS)

Top U.S. companies are now in negotiations to agree on new safety standards for their clothing-producing contractors in Bangladesh, a month after a garment factory’s collapse in Dhaka killed more than 1,100 workers.

The move comes after these companies, most prominently including Walmart and Gap, refused to sign on to a fire and safety standards agreement, announced weeks ago, that has received wide backing among European companies. Yet labour advocates are disparaging the new talks, suggesting the results will likely not be binding and thus will not be able to ensure worker safety."They are still looking for political cover so they can preserve the very lucrative status quo.” -- Scott Nova of the Worker Rights Consortium

“Walmart is … undermining the constructive efforts of other companies,” Jyrki Raina, general-secretary for IndustriALL Global Union, an umbrella of unions with 50 million worldwide members that has led the European agreement process, said Friday. “The kind of voluntary initiative being put forward by Walmart and Gap has failed in the past and will again fail to protect Bangladeshi garment workers.”

The new discussions, announced Thursday, are being sponsored by the BipartisanPolicyCenter, a Washington think tank, and being co-chaired by two respected former U.S. senators, George Mitchell and Olympia Snowe. The negotiations also include several U.S. and Canadian trade associations.

“Over the next several weeks, we look forward to building on [past] efforts … and seeking input from key stakeholders to forge an effective response,” Jason Grumet, president of the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC), said Thursday.

Currently, the process is aiming to come up with a final agreement on new standards for Bangladeshi contractor factories by July. (BPC did not respond to a request for comment for this story.)

“We are hopeful that … these discussions will result in a plan for long-lasting change for the garment industry in Bangladesh,” Bill Chandler, vice-president of global corporate affairs for Gap, Inc. told IPS. “We believe the American alliance can be a powerful path forward to achieve lasting change in Bangladesh, and will build upon the work that is already underway.”

A spokesperson for Target also confirmed the company’s involvement in the BPC-facilitated talks process.

Contacted by IPS, a Walmart spokesperson emphasised that the company has already taken “a number of actions that meet or exceed other factory safety proposals”. But he also noted Walmart’s belief that “there is a need to partner with other stakeholders to improve the standards for workers across the industry”.

Nonbinding “not good enough”

This interest in entering into the new negotiations appears to be motivated particularly by public pressure following the companies’ refusal to sign on to the European Union accord, which now has more than 40 corporate backers, including three U.S. companies.

That agreement would include financing to upgrade factories as well as independent inspections. In addition to concerns over potential costs and the prospect of court litigation, a key sticking point for U.S. companies over the E.U. proposal has been that the agreement would be legally binding.

According to documents on Gap’s corporate website, for instance, in mid-May the company was “ready to sign on today with a modification to a single area – how disputes are resolved … With this single change, this global, historic agreement can move forward with a group of all retailers, not just those based in Europe.”

Yet it is because of this stance – reportedly repeated at a Gap shareholder meeting on May 21 – that observers are now sceptical that a company-led negotiations process will be able to result in strong, and legally enforceable, agreement.

“Forty retailers from all over the world … have agreed to a binding comprehensive safety plan for Bangladesh,” the AFL-CIO, one of the largest labour unions in the United States, said Friday, noting its “deep concern” about the new BPC-led talks.

“No amount of bipartisan window dressing can change the fact that Walmart and the Gap have refused to take this important step. This is a matter of life or death. Quite simply, nonbinding is just not good enough.”

Such concerns are heightened by the fact that, currently, no worker-rights organisation is included in the talks.

“This is the latest, and probably most sophisticated, in a series of industry public relations gambits designed to deflect attention from the real issue: the refusal of these companies to make a binding commitment to clean up their factories in Bangladesh,” Scott Nova, executive director of the Worker Rights Consortium, an advocacy group, told IPS in an e-mail.

“This shows the pressure these corporations are under and their recognition that the failed inspection schemes they have been touting no longer have any public credibility. Unfortunately, their goal has not changed: they are still looking for political cover so they can preserve the very lucrative status quo.”

Corporate-led process

Concerns over corporate-led international labour and safety programmes have received boosts from U.S. lawmakers in recent days, as well. Last week, Representative Sander Levin warned that the oversight process has “been left up to the retailers, suppliers and government all these years, and that hasn’t worked.”

On May 15, Levin and two dozen members of Congress wrote to Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, urging that her government put “the highest priority on aggressively enacting and enforcing comprehensive reforms … including the right to organize and form unions”. The lawmakers also noted, “it is critical that all key stakeholders take action”.

Reports in recent days have suggested that the U.S. State and Labour Departments are currently arguing over how hard to push the Bangladeshi government on these issues. Unions and some advocacy groups are pressuring the U.S. to revoke certain bilateral trade concessions given to Bangladesh, though critics say doing so would give up important leverage for change.

For now, Washington, seemingly led by the embassy in Dhaka, has chosen not to back the E.U. accord, although the U.S. State department says it is urging Bangladeshi officials to institute a suite of labour reforms.

“We need a lot more from the U.S. government – why the embassy has decided not to endorse the E.U. standards is beyond me,” Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights, a watchdog group, told IPS.

“Of course, we have to remember that even the E.U. accord hasn’t put any emphasis on workers’ right to organise. It’s only workers themselves that can win their rights, and they can do so only once they have the right to organise and bargain collectively. The U.S. government needs to do far more on two issues: binding agreements on safety codes and the right to organise.”

The first workers strike in 26 years in this affluent Southeast Asian city-state has triggered some soul-searching about the treatment of migrant labour and the low wages they are paid.

There are some 1.3 million foreign workers in a population of four million people in this small island state, which was recently ranked as the world’s richest country, with a per capita income of 56,532 dollars a year, by the World Wealth Report 2012 by Knight Frank and Citi Private Bank.

But most of the foreign workers – in fact some 931,000 of them according to figures as of June 2012 – are low-paid unskilled labour from neighbouring Asian countries, who earn nowhere near that figure.

The 171 bus drivers from China who went on strike by taking medical leave at the same time on Nov. 26 and Nov. 27 were earning about 980 dollars a month. They were complaining about receiving lower pay than Malaysian and Singaporean drivers, inadequate rest days and poor dormitory accommodation.

The government, well known for its pro-business policies and tough attitudes towards labour protests, acted swiftly by charging five of the drivers for breaking local “no-strike” laws and cancelling the work permits of and deporting 29 of the drivers who went on strike.

Since then, one of them has been sentenced to six weeks in jail, while four others are out on bail and appeared in court Wednesday for a pre-trial conference.

“We cannot let these Chinese workers take the rap for asking only for fair employment. And we cannot agree to their punishment when all the processes that exist in our name denied them the basic right to have their grievances heard,” wrote Vincent Wijeysinghe, an opposition Singapore Democratic Party member and a labour rights activist, in a blog posting which went viral here.

Acting Manpower Minister Tan Chuan Jin said in the immediate aftermath of the strike that “by taking matters into their own hands, the drivers have clearly crossed the line.”

He declared the strike illegal, because public transport is an essential service where an employer needs to give 14 days’ notice of the intent to go on strike. Under this argument, the strikers’ ring leaders were arrested and charged for breaking Singaporean laws.

Economics lecturer Walter Edgar Theseira of Nanyang Technological University argued in an interview with Yahoo Singapore that the strike and its aftermath had demonstrated “potentially serious vulnerabilities” that arise from Singapore’s significant reliance on low-cost foreign labour.

He also added that rather than provide high enough salaries to lure Singaporean workers to unskilled jobs, they offer just enough wages to attract people from countries like China, Myanmar, Bangladesh and the Philippines, thus creating labour conditions almost similar to the conditions in those countries.

John Gee, president of the migrant workers rights group Transient Workers Count Too, told IPS in an interview that the dispute between the Chinese migrant bus drivers and the partly government-owned SMRT bus company has been going on for at least six months. “Though workers may have broken the law, it needs to be taken into account that they may have been provoked,” he added.

Two main issues have come to the limelight as a result of the strike. One is the different wages paid to workers from different countries who do the same type of work, and the other is the hefty job placement fees that agents charge the workers for finding them jobs in Singapore.

A number of drivers told a Straits Times reporter that they paid more than 25,000 yuan (4,000 dollars) to Chinese agents to secure a job in Singapore.

Businesswoman Elsie Kwok defended the Singaporean employers’ policy of discriminating on the basis of nationality in their pay scales. “I have employed many girls from the Philippines, Indonesia, Myanmar and China as sales assistants. There are differences in their knowledge levels and attitude to the job. So it’s fair to pay some lower than the others,” she told IPS.

Gee disagrees. “Government has always said that they leave determination of salaries to market forces. Employers always argue on these grounds (to discriminate on pay scales). But it has to do with national stereotypes,” he argued.

When IPS asked the National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) about the fairness of such wage disparities, a spokeswoman said: “Migrant labour should be paid fair and reasonable wages according to the work they do which commensurate their relevant skills and experience level. A more sustainable way is to enhance the quality of foreign labour so that this can better meet both supply and demand as well as cause our businesses to remain competitive.”

Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam warned this month that Singapore was facing a “permanently tight labour market” and business must look to increase productivity to boost business growth. Singapore’s jobless rate at 1.9 percent is one of the lowest in the world.

In an interview with IPS, Wijeysinghe argued that the NTUC, because of its close association with the government, “appears to advocate more for government and corporations than for workers.”

He also said that although the government had recently pushed through legislation to put a cap on the placement fees agents could charge workers, the problem could not be solved without bilateral initiatives, and the “government has systematically refused to work bilaterally, blaming the agency system in sender countries.”

Many labour rights advocates here argue that it is the hefty placement fees charged by the agency system, where agents in both sender and receiver countries are involved, that creates apathy among migrant workers when it comes to discrimination and unfair treatment.

“When workers are sent back home prematurely, we have found many cases where they return worse off than they were before (because of these fees paid to agents),” Gee said. “A regional compact which is enforceable is needed on fees and charges,” he argued, adding that migrant workers also needed to be unionised in independent unions.

“If they (Chinese bus drivers) were unionised, the union worker could go to the boss and discuss complaints without naming the worker – so he couldn’t be sent home,” he said. Under Singapore law, an employer can unilaterally cancel a work permit and send the worker home within 48 hours.

Workers harvesting vegetables from one of Sky Green’s vertical towers. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

By Kalinga Seneviratne
SINGAPORE, Dec 8 2012 (IPS)

With a population of five million crammed on a landmass of just 715 square kilometres, the tiny republic of Singapore has been forced to expand upwards, building high-rise residential complexes to house the country’s many inhabitants.

Now, Singapore is applying the vertical model to urban agriculture, experimenting with rooftop gardens and vertical farms in order to feed its many residents.

Currently only seven percent of Singapore’s food is grown locally. The country imports most of its fresh vegetables and fruits daily from neighbouring countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, as well as from more distant trading partners like Australia, New Zealand, Israel and Chile.

An influx of immigrants has resulted in a rapid crowding of Singapore’s skyline, as more and more towering apartment buildings shoot up. And meanwhile, what little land was available for farming is disappearing fast.

The solution to the problem came in the form of a public-private partnership, with the launch of what has been hailed as the “world’s first low carbon, water-driven rotating vertical farm” for growing tropical vegetables in an urban environment.

The result of a collaborative agreement between the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority of Singapore (AVA) and a local firm, Sky Green, this venture aims to popularise urban farming techniques that are also environmentally friendly.

With a robust economy that boasts a gross domestic product of 239.7 billion dollars, Singapore has plenty of money. “But money (is) worthless without food,” according to Sky Green Director Jack Ng.

“That’s why I wanted to use my engineering skills to help Singapore farmers to produce more food,” Ng told IPS.

A vertical vegetable tower using the hydraulic rotating system. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

An engineer by training, Ng created the vertical farming system, which he nicknamed ‘A Go-Grow’. It consists of a series of aluminium towers, some of them up to nine metres high, each containing 38 tiers equipped with troughs for the vegetables.

In keeping with Sky Green’s focus on environmental sustainability, the water used to power the rotating towers is recycled within the system and eventually used to water the vegetables. Each tower consumes only 60 watts of power daily – about the same amount as a single light bulb.

Ng knew that if the system was too expensive or complicated, urban farmers would not be able to survive. And given that he designed the project with retirees and other housebound farmers in mind, he tried to create a situation in which “the plant comes to you, rather than you going to the plant.”

The multi-layered vegetable tower rotates very slowly, taking some eight hours to complete a full circle. As the plant travels to the top it absorbs ample sunlight and when it comes back down it is watered from a tray that is fed by the hydraulic system that drives the rotation of the tower.

This closed cycle system is easy to maintain and doesn’t release any exhaust.

Ng says that such towers, if set up on roofs of the many multi-storey residential blocs that house most of Singapore’s population, could provide livelihoods for retirees and housewives, who would only need to spend a few hours up on the roof to attend to the system.

Sky Green towers currently produce three vegetables popular with locals – nai bai, xiao bai cai and Chinese cabbage, which can be harvested every 28 days.

They already supply NTUC FairPrice, Singapore’s largest grocery retailer that has a network of over 230 outlets and supermarkets. The urban-grown vegetables cost roughly 20 cents more per kilogramme than the imported varieties.

The group’s purchasing manager, Tng Ah Yiam, recently told a Straits Times reporter that these ‘sky farms’ are now able to offer their customers quality, locally-grown vegetables “that are fresher because they travel a shorter distance from farm to shelf”.

Sky Green plans to supply two tonnes a day to NTUC by the middle of next year when they expand their farm towers.

Coordinated efforts

A Sky Green farm tower. Credit: Kalinga Seneviratne/IPS

The Sky Green project feeds into a trend that has been underway in Singapore for several decades.

Since the urban expansion of the 1990s Singapore has attempted to respond to the scarcity of land available for traditional cultivation by promoting rooftop vegetable gardens.

A number of local institutions developed hydroponic and aeroponic cultivation systems but none ever took off. “There was always concern over whether or not the rooftops could take the weight of these structures,” Shih Yong Goh, former head of public affairs at AVA, told IPS.

Experts like Lee Sing Kong, director of the National Institute of Education and a long-time advocate of the use of ‘sky farms’, believe there is an urgent need for Singapore to become less dependent on food imports.

Given the increasing frequency of extreme weather events, including “natural disasters such as flooding, which could impact food production, it may be necessary for Singapore to look at producing some of its own vegetables from the food security point of view”, he told IPS.

Kong said that he is currently involved in the development of ‘vegetable factories’, whole buildings designed to grow fresh produce.

“We have (begun) developing a 6-tiered aeroponic system to grow vegetables with the help of LED lights,” he said, adding, “this is in the experimental stage. If the model proves to be successful, then the multi-tiered system can be installed within enclosed buildings for producing vegetables. This will certainly enhance the opportunities for urban agriculture.”

Since 2005, the government has shed some of its reservations about rooftop production. The National Parks Board recently converted the rooftop of a multi-storey residential building in the densely populated Upper Serangoon Road into an educational farm to promote urban agriculture among school children.

Meanwhile, Sky Green has signed an MOU with Singapore’s Temasek Polytechnic technical college. Dr. Lee Chee Wee, director of the School of Applied Science, believes that partnering with Sky Green will expose his students to how technology is used in vegetable farming and make “modern farming so much more attractive as a career choice for our graduates”.

(END)

The crash of a million-dollar Ferrari driven at high speed by a wealthy Chinese expatriate in the early hours of a weekend morning earlier this month has reignited the stormy immigration debate here, highlighting many Singaporeans’ resentment towards foreigners living and working in this small island nation.  

The deadly accident opened an old wound. The spate of online comments and media reports expressing anger towards Chinese residents was so extreme it prompted the Chinese embassy, in a rare move, to issue a letter – subsequently released to the Straits Times – urging its citizens in Singapore to be conscious of their conduct and abide by local laws.

In February, Forbes Magazine ranked Singapore the third richest country in the world with a per capita income of 56,700 dollars. This affluent island republic, covering just 640 square kilometres, is home to four million inhabitants, of which about 25 percent are foreign workers.

As a result, immigration has become a hot topic in Singapore, with increasing coverage in the local media since last year’s election, where the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) saw its share of the vote drop to its lowest level since independence, largely due to local opposition to the government’s liberal immigration policies.

“Central to the feeling of antipathy (towards foreigners) has been the issue of fairness (towards locals),” said former minister of parliament Viswa Sadasivan.

Local journalist Jaya Prakash argued that the number of foreigners in Singapore has reached an “unacceptable” level. He believes that the government is biased towards foreigners, allowing them to sweep up jobs that should be given to locals and fill places in schools meant for Singaporeans.

As a result, he said, the latter are forced to accept lower pay, for less desirable work, which ultimately results in a lower quality of life for many locals.

In an interview with IPS Sadasivan explained that the two most incendiary issues surrounding immigration are education and military service.

While all young Singaporean men past the age of 17 are required to spend two and a half years in the armed forces, foreign nationals are only obliged to send their sons, while the principal immigration applicant is exempt from compulsory military service.

Meanwhile, a growing number of Chinese and Indian nationals are being admitted to Singaporean universities while many eligible Singaporean students are denied access to higher learning institutions, a situation that has fueled widespread discontent.

“Singaporeans feel shortchanged,” Sadasivan noted, adding, “In many other countries such issues could become emotionally charged enough to topple governments.”

Tang Li, principal consultant of Tang-Asia Consultancy, argues that the root cause of ‘anti-foreigner’ sentiment can be traced back to 2004, when the government opened its doors to immigrants before putting in place the necessary infrastructure to efficiently handle the situation.

“Suddenly you had people competing for the same spaces in buses and trains, for housing and places in schools. When things started to get more crowded and less comfortable, frustrations turned onto the most visible target – the new arrivals,” he told IPS.

The number of foreigners surged after the government relaxed immigration rules in 2004, allowing thousands of people, mainly from places like China, India and the Philippines, to work in professional jobs while over 250,000 workers from other Asian countries entered ‘unskilled’ labour markets such as construction and domestic work.

Prakash pointed out that much of the local resentment stems from the S-pass scheme, a government programme that allows foreign diploma and degree holders to work jobs that pay a fixed monthly salary of at least 1,800 Singapore dollars (about 1,450 U.S. dollars). The minimum salary for a local graduate is usually 1,900 U.S. dollars a month.

The Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices, a labour watchdog, said in its annual report released last month that complaints about employers preferring foreigners over locals have, for the first time, topped Singaporeans’ list of grievances over unfair employment practices.

Singapore has a multiracial community that includes Chinese, Indians and Malays that have lived here for generations.

Sadasivan, who is an outspoken advocate of multiculturalism, said about the prevailing tension in the country, “Essentially what we are witnessing is a cumulative response to a pent up emotion of citizens feeling that their rights have not matched responsibilities; that their government has ignored their reasonable appeal for (a more) paced inflow of foreigners.”

(END)