Early Warning System Inadequate in Horn of Africa Famine (NEWS BRIEF)

Josette Sheeran of WFP Visits Horn Of Africa, CREDIT: WFP(HN, October 3, 2011) - The tardiness of news organization to put the ongoing Horn of Africa crisis on their story agendas is among the reasons cited for the disaster getting out of control.

The observation was made by a panelist at a Red Cross panel discussion over the weekend at the Commonwealth Club in London.

Even though organizations such as the World Food Programme (WFP) - led by the very media savvy chief Josette Sheeran - sounded the alarm early on, it was observed that media organizations were slow to pick up on the rapidly growing crisis - which is shaping up to be on of the worst humanitarian disasters in a generation, impacting more than 13 million people in several countries in East Africa.

Aid agencies too were described as being too slow to mobilize on the Horn. Part of the problem was the complexity of the crisis - brought on by what some have described as a "perfect storm" of lack of rains, spiralling food prices and insecurity in Somalia - ground zero of the crisis.

"The early warning system was very effective, but the drought response was not adequate," said David Peppiatt, head of humanitarian policy at the British Red Cross.

If something positive has emerged from the crisis, it was that more attention has been placed on food insecurity and especially the need to invest in agriculture and particularly small farmers, who produce 90% of Africa's food, Peppiatt said.

Mike Wooldridge, the BBC's veteran world affairs correspondent, who has covered past famines, echoed the need for better management of agriculture in the region. "There has never been a greater time of opportunity for agriculture," 

On the media's handling of the crisis, Woolridge said first-hand reporting was crucial. Indeed, some large US media organizations, such as CNN and the three large networks, sent some of their top talent to the region during its early stages.

Woolridge cited an interview with Valerie Amos, the UN's head of humanitarian affairs, on the BBC programme The World This Weekend on 3 July, for galvanising media interest in the story.

During a question and answer session, a participant criticized the African Union and its member countries for their slow response.

To be sure, the response of donors to the crisis has been woefully inadequate - nearly three months after the first declaration of a famine.

According to data collected by The Guardian newspaper, the crisis faces a $671m shortfall. The UN has estimated that $2.5bn in aid is needed for the humanitarian response.

A big reason for the lack of funding may be scepticism among the general public in the developed world.

According to a poll on how aid mney is spent and released late last month by the British Red Cross, more than 70 percent of Britons say they are not well-informed about how humanitarian aid is managed and spent. And only 4 percent of the British public feel very well-informed and 20 percent quite well-informed. A large majority - 71 percent - say they do not know much about how aid is used.

"This is extremely worrying," Peppiatt said in a statement. "It is essential that those who give so generously understand how money is being spent and that lives are being saved as a result of the work of aid agencies."

- HUMNEWS staff, agencies

Africa's Famine: Seeing is Believing (REPORT)

By Peter Greste in Africa

Dadaab Refugee Camp, KENYA - As with most natural disasters, numbers swirl around the drought on the Horn of Africa like so many dust particles. 

They float up from the tyres of aid agency Land Cruisers in great billowing clouds; they blow in from donor conferences like a sandstorm sweeping in from the east; they get in your eyes, and cloud the air making it almost impossible to see through the statistics and understand what is really going on.

Consider a few of the big ones: in Somalia alone, four million people are still starving nationwide; three million of those live in the South. Of these, 750,000 people risk death in the next four months if they do not get aid immediately. 

According to the United Nations agency responsible for monitoring food supplies in Somalia, almost half a million children are suffering from "severe acute malnutrition". About 75 per cent of those are also in the south. 

More than 900,000 Somalis are seeking refuge in neighbouring countries - 90 per cent of them in Kenya, Yemen, Ethiopia and Djibouti. The Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya - already the biggest in the world - has 450,000 of them, and will almost certainly reach half a million by the end of the year. In Ethiopia, the camp in Dolo Ado has taken in 83,000 refugees in the last nine months. 

UN-estimated mortality rates among children under five are alarmingly high, with an average of 15.43 deaths per 10,000 individuals daily, well above the famine threshold of two deaths per 10,000 people per day.

The numbers are of course vital in describing the vast scale of this crisis. Without them, the logisticians trying to deal with it would never be able to get a handle on their jobs. 

But once you get on the ground and start seeing those towering numbers in terms of real people with tragic stories, the fog starts to clear a little, and you begin to get a sense of what it means in human terms.

'Tragedy and loss'

Think a bit more about those last set of figures. If you were in southern Somalia, and your five-year-old child was in a school of a thousand other children, malnutrition would be killing one or two of their classmates every single day. It would probably be only a matter of days before a friend of your child's would be among the dead. 

In just two months, 90 would have died, and at that rate there is a one-in-ten chance that your own child would have been among them. And that is just amongst the under-fives. When you consider the impact of this famine on the old and the frail; on illnesses attacking those with immune systems already weak with hunger; on the consequences of exhausting treks through the desert, death comes to almost every family in one way or another; often many times over.

This is not hypothetical. It is true of almost every one of the thousand people who walk into Dadaab every single day. 

Each has a name and a face and a chilling story of tragedy and loss.

Consider 70-year-old Rahma Ali Hussein and her sister Fatuma Mursal, who thinks she is 90. They lived with their extended family in Dinsor in the Bay region of southern Somalia. Like farmers everywhere, they hung on to the land, hoping they would be able to survive until the drought broke. 

But the al-Shabab fighters, who still govern over much of southern Somalia, kept out most donors and kept in civilians who wanted to flee. One by one, Rahma's and Fatuma's relatives died, until all that remained were the two resilient old sisters, their granddaughter, her child, and a couple of goats.

'Colossal' price

That was when they decided they had no choice but to risk al-Shabab's checkpoints and walk with the goats to Dadaab in neighbouring Kenya. Neither knew how far it was, but it would be two and a half months on foot before they would reach the refugee camp.

Once they arrived, they joined a queue, registered their presence, received a package of food and added their names to the refugee statistics.

I met them as another group of local refugees who had formed their own aid agency, replaced the tattered rags they arrived in with a new set of clothes and a few shreds of dignity. They told their story matter-of-factly, with flat unemotional voices as though it was not unusual; and in a way they were right. 

Their tale - or variations of it - has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times across the region, and so because of that, outsiders tend to see each one as nothing remarkable.

That seems to miss the point completely; the extraordinary thing is just how many of those tales are piled one on top of the other in a heap so big that it becomes impossible to see the detail. In the end, our eyes glaze over, we lose sight of what it all means and wind up looking only at colossal numbers again.

Of course, sometimes the numbers do reveal something important, and here is one set we ought to consider. In the summary of the same UN report that detailed the statistics I began with, there is a graph that compares the amount of money the UN reckons it needs for a particular part of the crisis, with the amount actually donated.

The numbers show that international donors have promised 119 per cent of the amount they need for food assistance - a lot more than is actually needed.

Almost all of the emergency food goes to distribution points in centres like Mogadishu and Daddab - places that draw people away from their homes and their fields, into huge camps where they are easy to reach. But food aid is high profile; it looks good on television news programmes at home, and often the money gets spent in the donors' own country buying food from farmers with their own powerful domestic lobbies.

But for less visible things like assistance for agriculture or education in Somalia that would actually encourage people to stay in their homes and so recover once the crisis has passed, the UN has received 29 per cent and 18 per cent respectively. 

For once, the numbers appear to speak for themselves.

Originally published by Al Jazeera under Creative Commons Licensing  

Malaria, Guns and Jungle Beer (BLOG/REPORT)

By Imran Garda in Asia 

Adivasi man displaced from his home to make way for a steel plant in Orissa, India [Al Jazeera/Imran Garda]These are segments from my notebook, while filming India’s Silent War between the Maoists and the government - a battle that affects many of India’s almost 90 million "Aboriginals" or Adivasis - the original inhabitants of the land Indians who live deep in the jungles of the east and central parts of the country. 

Over 10,000 people have been killed over the past 3 decades alone. Adivasis have faced brutality from both sides and millions of them have been displaced to make way for mining projects and factories on their fertile, mineral-rich land in an area the government calls "The Red Corridor". This is one of the world’s forgotten stories.

Adivasi woman, Orissa State, India. [Imran Garda]

Jamshedpur’s Adivasi villages are no further than an hours’ drive from the city. The roads seemed decent, forcing me to question the claim that the government doesn't invest in infrastructure here. Our local fixer said, where there are Maoists, the government ensures the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) has good roads to get to them. I was unconvinced.

The first village we visited, was called Sabar Basti. We met a family whose story was far too prevalent in these rural outposts. A father, begrudgingly showing us his daughter, tossing and turning on a cot that was placed in one of the few shady corners of the village; sweating profusely, teeth clenched and irritable while he patted her with a damp cloth. 

“Malaria,” he said - “She has Malaria.” The closest clinic was 30km’s away, and in walking terms, a half-day’s journey away. 

He didn’t know who Manmohan Singh was, but was adamant that it’s necessary to vote in local elections; and he made his way to the markets of Jharkhand each week to sell vegetables. This kept them alive. 

Barely.

When Maoists are seen in there area, often asking villagers for their food and water, the hapless Adevasis oblige them. The CRPF is usually next to visit, imposing a lockdown, and lockdowns mean hunger.

A short, bumpier drive further, we encountered the Sabar caste. Even among the Adevasis, at the bottom of the social ladder, they had (perhaps less rigid) divisions and subdivisions, higher and lower castes.

The Sabar were called the “criminal” caste. The simple village real estate looked worse here. Drunken adults roamed and smiled, fell and cursed as we drove in. Children, with the bloated bellies which signpost chronic malnutrition were dotted all over. The reek of Mahua, the local brew, was everywhere.

We visited the “brewery”. The fumes stung my eyes, I needed to puke but couldn't. A stray dog dived in, then splashed around in the half-complete brew. This is the drink that numbs their pain. A young couple sang a delightful, if poignant, song of their plight.

These people knew little of ideology; of the left or right, of capitalism or communism - but they do know suffering, and this is fertile recruitment ground for the Maoists.

One of them, a young woman, was recruited. We were told it was a love story - not only is she a cadre, but now a companion of a Maoist leader.

We pressed on to meet Saakree Banda. The heat was unbearable. 

The Maoists burnt this man’s home down and beat his brother to death. Four of them attacked the village with guns during one frightening day a year ago.

“They kept asking us, ‘why do you talk to everyone?’, but we didn't,” he said. Tears were flooding down now, like a torrent.

“They also accused us of poisoning a Maoist who came here for food. We didn't poison anyone. They killed my brother, he was an old man, and they beat me up so badly, I was in the hospital. I had to pay for my own bill.”

Adivasi man, Jharkhand State, India. [Imran Garda]

Competing symphonies of birds and insects opened another muggy, sticky sunrise.

My body was running out of real-estate for mosquitos to attack next. I kept agitatedly murmuring to myself, “Don’t ever buy anti-insect spray again, waste of time, it doesn't work.”

Sickly sweet Indian tea kick-started another day, grinding towards another village - Chaati Jarna.

“Be Alert. Be Alive. Not Alert. Not Alive” - Signs, broadcast from the simplicity of the military camp, reminding young paramilitaries about their duties, beaming out as we drove past, as superfluous as those signs you see at restaurants that remind kitchen staff to wash their hands.

The message in both instances, for the outsider. Indirect, direct marketing. “If only the CRPF gave interviews,” I thought. Filming with small DSLR cameras was a blessing here. We needn't hide our equipment when we drove by any structures that whisper “police” to us.

We’re inconspicuous, under the radar. We could easily be Arundhati Roy-reading internal Indian tourists trying to visit and make a connection with the locals, understand the war within; we could be the tolerable intolerables, the inside outsiders.

I told a half-lie on my visa application too. Officially, no Indian authorities knew we were doing a film on this subject. A McCarthyesque storm tended to brew near anyone, Indian or non-Indian, who dared tackle this story.

The words “terrorist-sympathizer”; “sedition”; “radical” - crept up on these journalists like a virus. We had to keep a low profile at the slightest hint of authority, and we’d been successful so far.

The red sand beneath us, was acned with bumps and potholes to prevent any dosing South African journalists from drifting away. Today would be the day of surprises.

We passed bamboo scaffolding, innovative and well formed, at the head of an open, dirty, littered field. 

“Probably a wedding or some celebration for the locals,” said my colleague Kamal. We climbed the hills, more bumps, revving towards Chaati Jarna.

Swarms, swarms of people surrounded us when we got there. “We only got electricity last year,” said one Adivasi agitating for our attention.

“Police beat up the villagers when they are looking for Maoists,” said another. “The district commissioner doesn’t even visit,” complained another.

“Our village head office, our panchayat, was here, and they’ve moved it elsewhere, we wrote to the government head office and they haven’t responded so we are angry...”

It was Bahadur Singh’s voice which drowned out the rest. He emerged from the crowd as their leader, the village chief. Or was he?

“Let me bring you our political head, my daughter Permilah Singh.”

A girl, no more than 20, dressed far too formally for the setting, was nudged forward by the crowd, next to her father. She pulled out a piece of paper, crumpled, housing Sanskrit script. Permilah began reading out the demands of the people. Shyly avoiding eye contact with the crowd, and tangibly, nervously conscious of our camera.

She would read, and then look to daddy for approval. He’d correct her when necessary.

It felt like a post-colonial, feminist, Gandhian, window-dressing gone wrong. 

The crowd stuck to us, and Permilah and daddy expressed their gripes. Were they awaiting us or is this the routine drill anytime an outsider comes to visit - signaling an opportunity to help, to hear, to listen?

I’m struggling to keep up as my southpaw hurriedly scribbles in my notebook:

We have a school - but only two teachers. We have a hospital - but the doctor only comes once a week. We have 10 water wells - but 5 don’t work. We don’t own the land - we pay rent to the government. 

I asked, “don’t you want to own the land?”

Bahadur Singh’s honesty was lucid: “We are not educated. We don’t know how to administer...” but every time I asked about the Maoists, that honesty, I felt, was questionable. Was it due to trepidation? Fear? 

“What the Maoists are doing is not right, we want to live by the law,” he declared.

“3, or 4 years ago we kicked them out. They demand our boys and children, wanted to recruit them, we are poor, we can’t feed ourselves, so sometimes our boys went..."

Cue the men with submachine guns.

THA-THUMP. THA-THUMP. THA-THUMP. My heartbeat is into overdrive.

Who were these men? They looked taller than the villagers, lighter skinned...they’re in the distance, maybe 300 metres away, getting closer, 250 metres, plain-clothed. Ten, fifteen of them maybe?

I’m a little scared, but am scanning through every corner of my intellect to figure them out as they get closer, are we in danger? Even if we are, what the hell can I do? My fear evaporates as the villagers scamper towards them, rather than away. 

These are the CRPF, from the nearby camp. 

I took a deep breath, and walked towards them too, all the while sharpening my diplomatic skills - one of the more absurd passages of the journey was about to get started...

Originally published by Al Jazeera under Creative Commons Licensing 

The film India’s Silent War will be aired as part of Al Jazeera’s Correspondent Series from October 20.

UN, Children's Group Slams Italy Decision to Close Migrant Port (NEWS BRIEF)

(HN, September 30, 2011) - Using strong language somewhat uncharacteristic of the United Nations, the world body joined with the respected Save the Children to slam an Italian Government decision to close a port that has become a crucial transit point for refugees fleeing the violence and unrest in North Africa.

Lampedusa was declared an unsafe port by the Italians yesterday, meaning that aid groups are unable to transport refugees there.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Save the Children have been working together since 2006 at the Reception and Rescue Centre of Lampedusa.

The three groups said in a news release Friday: "This decision could undermine the entire rescue at sea system for migrants and asylum seekers and at the same time could make rescue operations much  more hazardous and complex.

"Since it is no longer  possible to dock in Lampedusa, the ability of the Coast Guard and the "Guardia di Finanza" to carry out rescue at sea will be compromised by the distance they will have to travel to reach the next safe port, e.g Porto Empedocle, 120 nautical miles away. This would have severe implications on rescue operations when the weather is bad, or when it involves transporting people in need of urgent medical assistance, minors and other vulnerable individuals."
 
Aid groups say that migrants are hosted in the centre only for a minimum period of time to allow for assistance and identification before being transferred to appropriate facilities elsewhere in Italy.
 
"It is important that Lampedusa remains a safe harbour in order to save lives," the release said.

For its part, Italy says it cannot cope with the high numbers of migrants ending up on its shores. More than 48,000 have reached the shores of southern Italy since the start of the year.

Recently, 11 people were injured after refugees clashed with riot police on Lampedusa after hundreds of protesters -trying to resist repatriation - burned the reception centre down.

The organizations are also expressing their concern over the recent de facto detention of migrants on ships and question its legal basis and the conditions under which the migrants are kept.  The groups said they want the practice stopped, that "appropriate solutions" are found as soon as possible in line with existing provisions in Italian and  international law.

- HUMNEWS staff, UN

The World Economy: They've Tried Everything: What Now? (PERSPECTIVE)

Protesters taking to Wall Street last week after being evicted from a temporary camp by New York City police. CREDIT: HUMNEWS

By Leonard Gentle

The world is tipping over into unknown territory. All the pundits are now starting to agree with US economist, Nouriel Roubini, famous for his prediction of the 2008 financial crash, that a second recession is inevitable.

South Africa’s Reserve Bank governor Gill Marcus has also added her voice to the chorus warning of another “Lehman type event.”Since the last one the major governments have spent in excess of $24 trillion bailing out the banks, dwarfing the money spent on rebuilding Europe under the Marshall Plan. And yet despite all the talk of recovery these measures have only taken us back to where we were in 2008...only with apparently no further options available.

Meanwhile the call from economists is for the politicians in the US and the EU to get their act together, to “act decisively,” to “satisfy the jittery markets.” It’s now all the fault of the politicians.

Yet what every politician has been doing is precisely what has been asked of them: showing decisive leadership to satisfy the markets - but it isn’t working, and its time to confront the need for alternatives to capitalism!

September 21 heralded the spring equinox in the Southern hemisphere but a dark foreboding autumn in the financial capitals of the world. When the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) announced another bail out – this time a $400b bond-buying scheme called Operation Twist - the event precipitated more market chaos. This bailout is about the Fed buying US$400bn worth of long-term Treasury bonds and selling shorter-term bonds. The measure is aimed at driving down long-term interest rates in an attempt to reduce the cost of borrowing.

Once again the thinking is “let’s give the banks cheaper money so that they will lend to firms who will restore productive economic activity and produce jobs and growth.”But with profitability levels in long term decline in productive economic activity and stagnation in global markets for real goods and services, there is no incentive to invest in expanded production of real physical goods. So the cheaper money just fuels the frenzy of financial speculation and the trading in debt further.

In Europe, Italy and Spain have joined Ireland and Greece in the debt crisis. In Greece unemployment is approaching 900,000 and is projected to exceed 1.2 million, in a population of 11 million. GDP fell by a further 7.3% in the second quarter of 2011.

In early 2010 Greece was effectively bankrupt. In its wisdom, the European Central Bank and the IMF underwrote Greece’s debt and then imposed policies of severe austerity and deregulation consistent with the neoliberal ideology of the EU. Quite predictably, demand collapsed and banking credit became scarce, with the result that the core of the Greek economy was crushed.

The rest of the world has its problems as well. New IMF leader, Christine Lagarde, noted that the repair job to the global economy, after the 2008 recession, was supposed to involve two rebalancing acts: 1) a shift of demand from the public to the private sector, and 2) stronger domestic demand from surplus countries such as Germany and China to allow deficit nations like the US to export more.

Neither is happening.

The truth is that the political choices made by politicians to promote, or comply with financialisation has delivered us all into the hands of the speculators, the financialised corporations and the private equity holders who have made debt tradable and money chase money – taking private profits to enrich themselves in the good times and foisting their debts onto all of us in the bad times.

 All that has happened is that we have swapped a private debt crisis in 2008 with a sovereign debt crisis in 2011. Rather than let the banks and the speculators carry the can for their impropriety, they were deemed to be “too big to fall” and governments spent trillions of dollars bailing them out.

 This was not a Keynesian or “New Deal” style spending programme on full employment and stimulating demand to boost economic activity. This was a bail out of the banks, re-directing state spending away from full employment, public services and stimulating demand.

But a much deeper understanding of the current crisis would be to trace its origins to the events of the 1960s, a time of the Vietnam War and the US in trouble. This is when capitalism started experiencing dramatic drop-offs in the high growth and profit rates that the major industrialised countries had experienced after World War II.

Fuelled by the rebuilding of Europe and the Far East as well as the expansion of global demand with welfare states ensuring near full employment and public services – and operating within the Bretton Woods regime of regulated financial markets and fixed exchange rates, the capitalist world recovered from the Great Depression of the 1930s. At the epicentre stood the US as the imperial hegemon with its currency - the dollar - the global means of exchange and the world’s reserve currency.

But the combined effects of the US’ expensive adventure in Vietnam, the resurgence of Germany and Japan as competitors, the holding of dollar reserves outside the US and the stagnation of global markets saw corporate profit rates decline. By the early 1970s, the US sank into recession. With the additional shock of the oil crisis, the US devalued the dollar, tore up the Bretton Woods Agreement and began to wage war on the welfare state and Keynesian perspectives of capitalist growth.

By the end of the 1970s a new strategy was unleashed on the world, called variously neo-liberalism or globalisation, which has as its figureheads politicians such as Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan and economists like Milton Friedman, but which has also become the biggest restructuring of social relations, tearing up the Keynesian consensus and taking us back to the 19th century idea of dog-eat-dog.

Neo-liberalism is often falsely understood as mere “market liberalisation” or taking the state out of the economy. In fact it has been little more than a new form of capitalism – one that has altered our lives way beyond what people understand to be economics. Stretching from the deeply personal sense that we are all just private predatory beings with no social solidarity (seen in the way middles class houses have high walls with privatised “home entertainment”) to the way our children are indoctrinated to hero-worship “entrepreneurship” at school, all the way to Greece shutting down hospitals and schools because a rating agency has junked its bonds.

It’s a world of casual labour, outsourcing, cost centres, denuded media rooms and billions being made (or lost) in a day because of the behaviour of derivatives. Far from the state having withdrawn from markets and the economy it is a world in which the states act against their own democratic mandate, taking public money to bail out banks and arresting people who protest against such corruption.

It is this neo-liberal world, which has now dragged us all to the brink of the abyss.

Of course the economic crisis may be global, but its causes and effects are manifested differently across the world. Temporarily some countries were favourably positioned, including South Africa. Gold reached record levels of more than $1600 dollars an ounce benefitting South African corporations. Likewise SA’s bond markets boomed in the midst of the crisis as investors switched to emerging markets and drove up the value of the rand.

But, as every priest intones at funerals: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.” A further intensification of the crisis has seen investors pull their money out of developing country bonds and move back into US Treasury bonds and the dollar - the very sites that were deserted yesterday in favour of the “emerging markets.”

From being the flavour of the year in 2011, the rand has become the worst performing of 18 emerging market currencies against the dollar this past week. Nearly R14bn left South Africa in the first few days of September – R6.3bn due to equity sales and R7.7b from bonds.

Net portfolio investment in South Africa for 2011 fell from R35.4bn to R25.5bn in a matter of days. This compares with cumulative portfolio investments of nearly R56bn at the end of the second quarter, according to the Reserve Bank’s quarterly bulletin.

South Africa is now showing signs of reaping the same whirlwind sweeping over other countries. A recent small news item - that the Mandela-Rhodes development in the Cape Town city centre was a victim of the Irish meltdown - has given these events some local poignancy.It is therefore inappropriate that all this bad news is seen as an economic problem – something of interest to business people only and economists. The choice of language for characterising this is also so modest - “recession.”

“Recessions,” in the language of economists, are little more than two successive quarters of decline in GDP. Recessions do happen, they’re inconvenient, somebody loses (most of us) but the system is, according to the economists, self-correcting so the pundits normally predict a new return to growth in the near future.

None of this can compete with Malema or the Springbok Rugby team in the battle for news. So while everyone had an opinion on the choice of Chief Justice and the long-term consequences for human rights of selecting the wrong guy to head up the Constitutional Court, in stark contrast there is absolute silence on our privatised Reserve Bank, the selection of interest rate economic policies and the people who make these choices on our behalf. 

And then there are the economists, ostensibly specialists who are the only ones who can really tell us what’s going on.  By way of sustaining this power the language of economic analysis is buried in dense impenetrable jargon - quantitative easing, the markets, investor confidence, etc. - which hide the very human guesswork, the decision-making and the choices that shape our world – and which on the basis of all the available evidence out there, shows that we’re on the edge of an abyss.

And, while the world order of the last 30 years is collapsing around our ears, the economists largely have no idea what’s going on and how to do anything different.

In Britain Observer journalist, Will Hutton, has come up with the most honest assessment of a mainstream economist:

“Eighty years ago, faced with today's economic events, nobody would have been in any doubt: we would obviously be living through a crisis in capitalism. Instead, there is a collective unwillingness to call a spade a spade. This is variously a crisis of the European Union, a crisis of the euro, a debt crisis or a crisis of political will. It is all those things, but they are subplots of a much bigger story: the way capitalism has been conceived and practised for the last 30 years has hit the buffers. Unless and until that is recognised, western economies will be locked in stagnation which could even transmute into a major economic disaster.”

Of course a crisis of capitalism does not mean that socialism is on the horizon. The 1930s crisis strengthened the calls for socialism, but also gave rise to fascism in Europe as sections of capital sought “final solutions.”

 Unless the left is organised as a popular social force the fallout of crises can produce the opposite - the victims fall prey to internecine battles, seeking scapegoats for their declining living standards. The same Greek streets that are home to the protests of the “indignant” and debates about democracy are also roamed by gangs attacking immigrants. Right wing sentiments and xenophobia are on the rise throughout Europe and the crisis sees centre left parties disgracing themselves by using their electoral credibility to carry out the austerity cuts demanded by the “markets.”

Thirty years of neo-liberal capitalism have produced levels of inequality unprecedented in modern history. The mighty citadels of power are cracking whilst millions of people all over the world are beginning to express their anger and disgust in various ways. Keynesian economic policies saved capitalism before…only to be replaced by the disaster that is neo-liberal globalisation. What’s left in the kitty for capitalism?  

 Gentle is Director of the International Labour and Research Information Group. This article first appeared on the website of the South African Civil Society Information Service (SACSIS)

China's land grabs: A case study (BLOG/REPORT)

By Melissa Chan in Asia 

As the autumn harvest draws ever nearer, villagers in Liuxiazhuang have found themselves, quite suddenly, landless.

Documents provided to Al Jazeera by township-level officials showed contracts the government entered into on September 10 - less than two weeks ago.  

Four days later, villagers at Liuxiazhuang received notices of the confiscation of parts of their farmland and the bulldozers promptly rolled in.  

This took place just weeks ahead of the autumn harvest, and the farmers could hardly believe they had not only lost their land, but their last season of crops.

It did not appear that the new developers could wait a single moment for work on their latest project - a series of industrial and manufacturing parks - to begin.

Deputy Party Secretary Li Xiaofei, who is in charge of Liuxiazhuang, explained, "everyone" had been aware of this project and the plans to convert the land into a large-scale industrial and commercial park.

"During this entire land dispute, we have followed the laws. Everything we have done us is legal. Of course, what has happened is unfortunate," said Li.

But I also want you to understand that the villagers are looking out for their own interests, and will push for as much as they can get out of this."

By Li's own admission, he has personally handled this entire land redistribution case and says the township-level has accepted full responsibility for the deal.  

What has incensed farmers have been the details of the agreement between the government and the property developers: rental for each mu (the Chinese calculation for a unit of land) went for about $100 (about 700 yuan) with a 15-year lease.  

Considering the region is one of the wealthiest parts of China, the developers had received a windfall. The market rate for a mu of land typically runs at $42,000 (270,000 yuan). The discrepancy between the two figures is striking.

Other details and documents Al Jazeera English examined only served to confuse the situation even more.

 More than $6,000 (40,000 yuan) have been pledged by the government to the village collective for each unit of land taken.  

Yet, none of the villagers we spoke to appeared aware of the existence of this money set aside ostensibly for them.

According to villagers, they have not received a penny from the deal so far.  

That raises questions about who that money has gone to, with suspicions from locals falling on the village chief: a colourful character who showed up drunk for an interview with Al Jazeera.

Quite aside from the financial confusion, there has been a brutal side to this episode, too. 

On September 16, hired hooligans appeared at the village with metal pipes in hand to give dissenters a beating. Young and old alike were brutally beaten.  

Elderly women showed me bruises on their arms, a man showed me a welt on his back, and at least one local ended up in the hospital, currently linked to an intravenous drip and moaning in a semi-conscious state.

We asked about the violence in our interview with Li, the deputy party secretary.

"The matter is under investigation and will be taken very seriously," he said.

He went on to say that he had been present on September 16, the day of the alleged attacks. 

If true, that matches with statements by villagers that men beat them as party cadres and police officers looked on.  

But Li's version of the day did not include attacks against residents, and he was non-committal about these accusations, only repeating that matters were under investigation.

We did the math with the numbers provided by the government.  

Not all villagers will be affected by the land seizure. Officials told us about 300-400 people will be affected of the 1,700 villagers in this tiny mountain hamlet.  

With 400 mu of land converted, and $6,000 (40,000 yuan) per mu for the village, that comes to about $6,800 (43,000 yuan) per affected villager.  

Without any other means of income, the $10,000 can stretch for a few years based on the cost of living in that area, in exchange for the loss of land that may have been occupied by a farming family for generations.

"What will they do after the money runs out?" I asked.

"Well. They do receive social insurance," one of the officials piped up. "The elderly receive 100 yuan [$15] a month!"

Originally published by Al Jazeera under Creative Commons Licensing 

Drug War: Faster and More Furious (COMMENTARY)

By Tania Arroyo

Jean Baptiste KingeryIn early September, Mexican authorities arrested a U.S. citizen, Jean Batiste Kingery, for smuggling grenades across the border for the Sinaloa cartel. Astonishingly, U.S. agents had released Kingery a year before when he was captured for the same offense. U.S. law enforcement officials reportedly wanted to use him in a sting operation.

The Kingery case is only the most recent scandal involving the flow of weapons from the United States to Mexico. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) recently sent a letter asking the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee for a hearing on the controversial federal operation “Fast and Furious,” which in 2009 allowed 2,000 high-powered weapons from the United States to reach Mexico as part of an alleged effort to go after drug cartel leaders. According to McCain, the hearing's purpose is to “ensure further damage from this operation does not persist.”

But the real problem at the border goes beyond the Kingery case and the Fast and Furious fiasco, which are just one small part of the flow of arms into Mexico for use in drug war that has claimed more than 50,000 victims during the tenure of Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Although Calderon will leave the presidency next year, the war will not likely end with his term of office.

The Merida Frame

On September 6, diplomat John Wayne formally assumed the post of U.S. ambassador to Mexico, replacing former Ambassador Carlos Pascual. In March, Pascual resigned after the Mexican government expressed its concern over the ambassador's doubts, revealed in WikiLeaks cables, about Mexico’s capacity to conduct the fight against drug trafficking.

This replacement, however, doesn’t bring anything new to the bilateral relationship between Mexico and the United States. In his statement to Congressin July, Wayne said, referring to the Merida Initiative, “one of my principal objectives, if confirmed, will be to work with my Mexican and U.S. colleagues to accelerate the implementation of the activities and to assure that we are achieving our Merida objectives.”

The Obama administration has done a great deal to support Calderon’s fight against Mexican drug trafficking through the Merida Initiative, the 2008 bilateral agreement of cooperation between Mexico and the United States to combat drug trafficking, organized crime, and money laundering. Yet Obama has done little to strengthen arms control on the U.S. side of the border. In March, during a joint press conference with President Calderon, Obama stated that "I believe in the Second Amendment. It does provide for Americans the right to bear arms for their protection, for their safety, for hunting, for a wide range of uses.” Although he went on to state that “that does not mean that we cannot constrain gun runners from shipping guns into Mexico,” he has not managed to reduce the arms trade.

On the other side, President Calderon demands more funds from the United States and insists that the war on drug mafias is a shared responsibility that must continue. Following the Zetas’ attack on a casino in the northern city of Monterrey last August, which claimed at least 52 lives, Calderon said that “the economic power and firepower of the criminal organizations operating in Mexico and Latin America come from this endless demand for drugs in the United States.” He stressed the need to continue this fight against “criminals” and “terrorists.”

Although the two governments disagree on small details, like the performance of former Ambassador Carlos Pascual, they are of one mind on the importance of the “war on drugs” and the Merida Initiative, which has proven to be a profitable business for arms manufacturers and dealers.

Good for the Arms Business

The Merida Initiative has been roundly criticized, even by those affiliated with the U.S. military. Paul Rexton, associate professor of national security studies at the U.S. Army War College, has suggested that this initiative has not led to substantial reductions in violence in Mexico or in drug smuggling to the United States. “In fact,” he writes, “the current policy has led to what can be described, at best, as a stalemate between Mexican state authorities and the cartels”.

The U.S. government has provided nearly $1.3 billion to the Mexican government to confront the drug cartels. Meanwhile with operations like Fast and Furious, it has fed weapons to the narcotraffickers. This apparent paradox can be explained by the different objectives of the state and the market, the former focused on security and the latter fixated on profit.

For the arms lobby, operations like Fast and Furious are always welcome: the more weapons that can be purchased, the more money arm dealers will get. There are cases in which one person has come to buy up to 190 guns a month in armories near the border, supposedly to ensure his personal safety under the Second Amendment. According to the owner of one of these stores: "In Arizona it is more difficult to get credit for a car than to buy 10 rifles. My business is the sale of weapons and to sell them under the law. Honestly, I don’t care where they will end up.”

Members of the arms lobby want Mexicans, too, to arm themselves in response to violence by drug cartels. More armed Mexicans translates into more arms sales. Drug cartels already get their supplies of lethal weapons manufactured and distributed by the U.S. arms industry through an “ant trail” across the border, like the one that Kingery followed.

Recent revelations of money laundering suggest that the United States is not really serious about the fight against drug trafficking. According to The Observer, banking giant Wachovia "paid federal authorities $110 million in forfeiture for allowing transactions later proved to be connected to drug smuggling, and incurred a $50 million fine for failing to monitor cash used to ship 22 tons of cocaine." The sum that Wachovia paid for these omissions, $160 million, pales in comparison to the overall volume of money, $378.4 billion, to which the bank failed to apply proper anti-laundering regulations. In a real war on drugs this should have been a sufficient reason to close that bank. However, Wachovia continues to operate normally (now as part of Wells Fargo) and may be able to continue laundering money, since the sanctions are affordable in relation to the gains.

Finally, Mexicans have been privatizing the drug war in Mexico much as Colombia has already done. The United States spends nearly $550 million per year on Plan Colombia (and spent an average of $700 million per year before 2009), and more than 50 percent of that sum has reached private contractors operating as mercenaries in the South American country. According to the State Department, since 2007 Lockheed Martin, DynCorp International, and ARINC, Inc., among other companies in the industry, have been the major beneficiaries of Plan Colombia.

Mexico is not far behind. According to one of the representatives on the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, Jose Gomez del Prado, in 2006 instructors from the company Global Risk Solutions Inc. trained Mexican federal agents in torture techniques. Once the drug war becomes a lucrative business, the conflict becomes potentially endless.

For the two governments, the Kingery case and Fast Furious represent only small miscalculations in the grand strategy of the Merida Initiative, which continues unabated. The Secretary of Defense in Mexico (SEDENA) recently purchased $4 billion worth of weapons for "operations of internal order and national security contingent emergency" through the Trust for Military Equipment.

A Bleak Balance

The Mexican and U.S. governments are duty-bound to guarantee human rights and preserve the lives of their citizens. The actions of organized crime, from the distribution of arms and drugs to kidnapping, murder, and human trafficking, are reprehensible. But so is the double standard of the Mexican and U.S. governments, which have been jointly responsible for the escalation of violence on both sides of the border in their effort to defeat the mafias.

For President Calderon this is even more outrageous because, under the Merida Initiative, he has given Washington the authorization to act with the freedom and discretion it wants, further undermining Mexico’s national sovereignty. But the actions taken by U.S. law enforcement in connection with arms trafficking and the failed Fast and Furious operation are only partially responsible for the escalation of violence in Mexico. The real culprits are the Mexican and U.S. governments and their bilateral agreements concerning the war against drugs.

It’s long past time to look at the failures of the overall war and not just the debacles of particular battles.

- Tania Arroyo is a contributor to Foreign Policy In Focus a project of the Institute for Policy Studies. 

Commentary originally published by the Institute for Policy Studies is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 United States License.

Commentrary published and distributed by HUMNEWS represents the views of the author(s) and does not necessarily represent the views of the board members or staff of HUMNEWS or of the HUMNEWS editors.

The Annual Clinton Lovefest: A Disconnect Between Rich and Poor? (PERSPECTIVE)

by Themrise Khan

President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton at CGI 2011. CREDIT: CGI/Paul Morse

(HN, September 26, 2011) - It was three days of self-praise, self-glorification and self-affirmation. The outlying message at the end was, “we are good people doing good for others, but we need more money to do it”.

This was the seventh annual Clinton Global Initiative, aka CGI, in New York -  a collection of many men in suits and some women in heels. A globally respected event, which has also recognized Pakistani social entrepreneurs in the past, the theme of this years gathering was, “The World at Seven Billion”.

It was an astonishingly busy week in New York, with the CGI sharing limited Manhattan space with the opening of the UN General Assembly, where Palestinian statehood took a rude beating, as expected. Mid-town Manhattan was in lock-down and gridlock as heads of state moved between one glorified political event to another, followed by a slew of black SUV’s containing a frightening number of some very mean looking people. For five days, the apocalypse had come to visit New York City. Manhattan looked like a showroom for GMC Suburban SUVs.

And an apocalypse of sorts it was, as political royalty rubbed shoulders with aristocratic royalty. There were strategically placed Saudi princes and princesses, talking about ending violence against women and global poverty. The Arab presence was not complete without a fleeting appearance by the stately Queen Rania of Jordan, at the special session on Change in the Middle-East and North Africa.

One of the highlights of the forum this year, was Burma’s very own Aung San Suu Kyi speaking live via satellite from Rangoon, to a completely smitten Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. We suspect Clinton must have pulled some strings to convince the Burmese generals to allow Suu Kyi to go live on air.

Gridlock in Manhattan during the opening of the UNGA. CREDIT: HUMNEWSPresident Barack Obama dropped by as well, to embrace his dear friend President Bill Clinton on stage, while subtly trying to woe the uber-rich audience towards his looming but not so booming election campaign. Speaking about America’s creaking infrastructure, including the ageing LaGuardia Airport in New York City, Obama said that the chief of the discount carrier, Southwest Airlines, told him that fuel bills could be cut drastically if only modern GPS were installed at US airports. “Maybe they will start serving peanuts on flights again.”.

There were also other presidents, former and current, prime ministers, ministers, corporate CEO’s, media moguls, New York’s rich and famous who realistically came to life off the pages of Vanity Fair and Vogue, fashion statements, furs and all. However, it seemed that the hotel lobby and bar were the real action was though, as deals were made, partnerships discovered and just plain old people watching gave the likes of the mere mortals like myself, an adrenaline high.

But despite the heady attendance of global heavy weights, it was hard to put a finger on exactly what this year’s conference had set out to achieve. For one, the sessions had nothing to do with the title. It was supposedly an ode to improving the lives of women and girls in the developing world, as a laudable initiative on eliminating child-brides was launched. But there was also a hint of the prevention of non-communicable diseases, a smattering of climate change and food security and a very, very, heavy dose of the connection of corporate philanthropy as a solution to all of this and more.

Members of organizations working with the help of CGI funds, such as the Desert Research Foundation in Namibia, shared the stage with the CEOs of PepsiCo and Unilever, who strenuously explained how their companies were helping the impoverished with food security issues around the developing world.  PepsiCo, for example, explained how it was sharing excess food products, such as high-protein chickpeas, with the World Food Programme (WFP).

In another session, the Dreamers for Tomorrow Association in Egypt, the poster-child nation of the Arab Spring, who laid bare their hope for peace in the Arab world, alongside a the diamond encrusted Princess Ameerah of the Al-Waleed Foundation and the CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, who are apparently the ones to watch out for where ‘doing good” is concerned.

Clinton himself, freshly trim from a non-meat diet, showed some very visible signs of a disconnect with his supposed “target audience”, was the most baffling outcome of this forum.

Case in point. In allowing young girls to access education and schools, what attempts can be a made to prevent their harassment and sexual molestation as they walk the long distances to schools in Africa. Clinton’s response; more law-enforcement along those paths and more street lights to that fewer girls are raped in the evening hours. A surprising declaration from a man who makes it his business to spend as much time as possible in the field.

It didn’t help that this year, the press (of which this scribe was a member), were kept sequestered in a basement with no access to any of the small group discussions or breakout sessions, save a few “by permission only” sessions. Frankly, one may as well have stayed home and watched it all on YouTube.

To me, CGI 2011 was a stark reminder to most of us from the marginalized world that we are still - and will be for many decades to come - mere pawns in the games of the rich and famous for greater wealth and power (CGI members and corporate participants pay up to US$20,000 to attend the event). The solutions to global poverty and security are mostly the result of political and corporate misgivings. As such, might the CGI is simply a way to absolve any pangs of guilt the well heeled in the western world may have about it?

The Clinton Global Initiative is an annual conference that brings together philanthropists and world leaders to inspire, connect and forge solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. Since it was established in 2005, nearly 150 current and former heads of state, 18 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of CEOs, heads of foundations, nonprofits and major philanthropists have made nearly 2,000 commitments impacting over 180 countries, the lives of over 300 million people, and commitments upwards of $60 billion.

Women & Girls Economic Empowerment Gets Attention at Clinton Summit (REPORT)

By Pilar Stella Ingargiola

Geena Davis speaking at the CGI panel. Credit: Adam Schultz / Clinton Global Initiative

As part of the recently Clinton Global Initiative summit in New York, there was a heavy focus was on empowering women and girls through economic empowerment, violence reduction, health and environmental equity.

A session on Day Three on Designing Technologies for Economic Empowerment of Women and Girls featured panelists including Geena Davis who recently founded The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, Neil Bellefeuille of The Paradigm Project , Toshi Nakamura of The Kopernik and Dr. Angel Cabrera, President of Thunderbird School of Global Management with Chelsea Clinton as the moderator.

Davis’s research with The Institute is the only of its kind exploring gender inequality in portrayals by the media and may serve as a “a wake-up call” to educate Hollywood on the negative images and stereotypes that media promotes of women and girls.

Research found that there is only one female for every three males portrayed in the media and crowd scenes include only 17% women as compared with 83% men.

Not only is the representation of women imbalanced, but their portrayal as Davis noted is “sidelined and hypersexualized.” The study found that there is the same percentage of nakedness portrayed in G rated shows as R rated shows.

There are few to no women portrayed in jobs, with over 81% of jobs held by men in the media. “Women serve as eye candy,” said Davis, rather than being portrayed in business, law, medicine and other professions. She explained that for women and girls, “If they can see it, they can be it.” So if there are more positive images and role models of women in media, then more women can see themselves in those roles and the more “acceptable” it can be to men as well. If not, then it leaves few to no models of what is possible.

With 80% of the media consumed worldwide created in the U.S., there is a need to shift this “narrow stereotyping and hyper sexualization.” As Davis emphasized, “We can use media to cure media.” That is, media from this narrow perspective limits the ways in which the public – both men and women – see women. The more TV girls watch the more they think they can’t achieve what they want and the more boys watch, the more likely they are to be sexist. Davis’ institute seeks to raise awareness for Hollywood and beyond to help make the case for a shift in the portrayal of women and girls.

Cabrera from Thunderbird highlighted the nuance of the power of narratives. That is, that not only the images we project, but the language we use furthers the pervasive stereotypes.

For example, Cabrera explained that even terminology such as ‘microentrepreneurs,’ being used predominantly for women entrepreneurs is “condescending.” “In the U.S. we would call these start ups,” but with women and global entrepreneurs we call them “microentrepreneurs.” Cabrera reiterated the need to be conscientious not only in our images but also in our language and education of entrepreneurs.

Davis further emphasized the critical opportunity that this research provides to educate and empower Hollywood and the media to turn the corner in shifting the images and opportunities for women that can truly translate to economic empowerment.

The Clinton Global Initiative is an annual conference that brings together philanthropists and world leaders to inspire, connect and forge solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges. Since it was established in 2005, nearly 150 current and former heads of state, 18 Nobel Prize laureates, and hundreds of CEOs, heads of foundations, nonprofits and major philanthropists have made nearly 2,000 commitments impacting over 180 countries, the lives of over 300 million people, and commitments upwards of $60 billion.

---The author, Pilar Stella Ingargiola, MPH, is the CEO & Founder of OneGiving (www.onegiving.com), a global organization that empowers, inspires and connects people in giving to create change on the planet. Pilar is an author, speaker and social entrepreneur who has been working towards social change and making a difference on the planet through every endeavor she has embarked on over the past 15 years.

Obama at the UN: What a difference one year makes (BLOG/ REPORT)

By Gregg Carlstrom in the Middle East

Palestinians marching in Ramallah on Wednesday in support of the PLO's statehood bid. [Gregg Carlstrom/Al Jazeera]

The reaction in the West Bank to US President Barack Obama's speech at the United Nations has been, as you might expect, frustrated. Frustrated - but not surprised.

The frustration was mostly with the tone of the speech, rather than its substance. The most offensive line to many, at least in interviews this morning, was Obama's declaration that "there are no shortcuts"; as several Ramallah residents reminded me, the Palestinian people have been dispossessed for 63 years already.

But the speech did not surprise anyone; it has been clear for months, after all, that Obama planned to veto the Palestine Liberation Organisation's bid for full membership at the UN. Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian politician and activist, called Obama's position "disappointing" in an interview before the president's speech.

I think it is very strange that Obama will veto a bid for Palestinian statehood, when a year ago at the UN General Assembly he supported the idea," Barghouti said. "The US talks about freedom and democracy, but Palestine is excluded."

Interestingly, many people I've spoken with in Ramallah believe Obama wants to support Palestinian membership at the UN, and that his promise to veto the bid is simply election-year politics.

Obama wants the Jewish vote, because he is going to elections," said Jamal Mansour, an employee at the ministry of youth and sports. "If it was at another time, we would get more, but right now, the Israelis will press Obama.

"He's not doing what he promised, because he has the Israeli lobby in the United States, and because an election is coming up," said Jacob Awad, a student holding a sign with a rather coarse message for the American president.

I can't guess at Obama's core convictions, of course. Many US commentators have argued that Obama needs to veto the bid to help his electoral odds. Then again, if Obama did support the PLO's bid, would he lose the Jewish vote to, say, Rick Perry?

It's worth noting that George W Bush, a vocally "pro-Israel" president, never won more than 24 per cent of the Jewish vote; American Jews are not the one-issue voters they're often made out to be. (Obamacontinues to poll better among Jewish voters than any other group.)

In any event, the reaction from Israel - or the Israeli press, at least - has been mostly enthusiastic. Ma'arivdescribed it as an "American embrace". Eitan Haber, a columnist for the popular daily Yediot Aharonot, quipped that the only thing missing from Obama's speech was "a nice photograph of Theodor Herzl", the father of modern-day Zionism.

It was as if he lifted words and entire sections out of [Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin] Netanyahu's planned address," Haber wrote.

There were a few dissenting views, the most pointed from Ha'aretz's Akiva Eldar, who criticised Obama for his "graceless courting of the Israeli government".

We'll see if Haber's assessment was true on Friday, when Netanyahu is scheduled to address the General Assembly. Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will also speak, and then submit the PLO's formal request for full membership.

Originally published by Al Jazeera under Creative Commons Licensing 

Nourishing the Future (OPINION)

By Beverley J. Oda, Jan O'Sullivan T.D. and Dr. Raj Shah

An acutely malnourished child at a community-based treatment centre in northern Nigeria CREDIT: HUMNEWSAbsent from most of today’s headlines is the fact that more than 13 million people are currently threatened by the worst humanitarian crisis in the world. In the Horn of Africa the worst drought in 60 years has devastated farmlands, uprooted thousands of desperate families who are migrating in search of help and led to the outbreak of a massive famine in southern Somalia. 

As the world comes together in response, there is one underlying fact that—as long as it is ignored—could allow crises like these to reoccur. Emergency assistance is not a long-term solution.  In order to mitigate and prevent future tragedies, we must develop long-term, sustainable approaches to food security.

The problem of hunger and undernutrition is not limited to the Horn. In nations and regions throughout the world, one poor growing season can devastate the livelihoods of millions. Even when rains come do come and harvests are strong, too many families are forced to live on the edge, one meal away from hunger or suffering silently from undernutrition. Too many children grow up lacking the nutrients needed to fend off disease or develop their bodies and brains fully.

Globally, 200 million children suffer from undernutrition and each year it contributes to more than three million child deaths. Countries and aid organizations have long attempted to tackle the problem of undernutrition, but as with many of the important problems we face, it cannot not be solved without a unified response.

Fortunately, we now have the knowledge, tools and coordination necessary to institute both short-term emergency responses and long-term preventive strategies.  Critically, we also have the political will.  

In 2009, the leaders of the G8 joined at the L’Aquila summit to call for increased investment in agriculture and rural development to strengthen food security and economic growth. President Obama then launched an international effort called Feed the Future that brought more than 20 countries together to invest in food security throughout sub-Saharan Africa.

And last year, more than 100 organizations and entities joined together to launch Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN): A Framework for Action. Critically, this coalition realized that nutrition is woven into almost every meaningful issue of equity both between and within countries – from health to agriculture to social protection and stability.

No infant or child can have a fair chance at life when they are denied the vitamins and nutrients that are the building blocks for healthy growth. Accordingly, SUN proposed three scientifically backed recommendations: promoting breastfeeding, increasing the intake of vitamins and minerals, and employing therapeutic feeding to prevent moderate and severe malnutrition.

Each recommendation was designed with the potential of every child in mind; it is crucial that a child receives critical nutrients during the “1,000 day” window of opportunity between a mother’s pregnancy and until her child’s second birthday. Children given those nutrients during that window have the best chance to fulfill their intellectual potential and contribute to the economic development of their societies.

In the Horn of Africa, we are seeing the full spectrum of undernutrition’s impact, as children weakened by drought, hunger and disease suffer, while thousands of refugees desperate for their next meal show up every day on regional borders. Undernutrition and hunger exacerbate every major health threat–from birth and pregnancy complications to diarrheal diseases to living with HIV/AIDS to pneumonia. They also threaten economic growth, political stability and invite regional conflict.  

To truly invest in the potential of individuals, the stability of borders and the prevention of future disasters, we must focus on sustainably improving the nutrition of children, societies and the global community.

Beverley J. Oda, Minister of International Cooperation, Canadian International Development Agency

Jan O'Sullivan T.D., Minister of State for Trade and Development, Ireland

Dr. Raj Shah, Administrator, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Reform in Myanmar (INTERVIEW / PERSPECTIVE)

International Crisis Group

(September 22, 2011) Jim Della-Giacoma, Crisis Group's Southeast Asia Project Director, speaks about changes on the ground in Myanmar as President Thein Sein pursues a reform agenda and how Western nations can encourage further change. 

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Myanmar’s President Thein Sein has pursued a reform agenda since assuming office in March 2011, relaxing some restrictions on speech and political organizing and meeting with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet some critics denounce these moves as mere window dressing for a fundamentally unchanged military dictatorship. To discuss whether conditions are actually changing on the ground, I’m joined by Jim Della-Giacoma, Crisis Group’s Southeast Asia Project Director. Jim joined me on the line from Jakarta.

Jim, give us a sense of some of the concrete reforms underway since President Thein Sein assumed office in March.

The most significant political reforms or signs of political reconciliation have really taken place since the middle of July. Since that time, we’ve seen President Thein Sein reach out to Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy, and try and win her over, along with others, to his reform agenda. He invited her and her followers--3,000 of them--to Martyr’s Day in the middle of July. The pace of meetings between Aung Kyi, the Labor Minister, and Aung San Suu Kyi has increased. We have most significantly seen a meeting with the president and Aung San Suu Kyi herself, and that is a very dramatic development because they were photographed under the portrait of her late father, and this was something that the previous government had very deliberately expunged from the public view.

Do you have a sense that the impetus for reform is flowing directly from the president and, if so, what opposition does he face within the military or the economic elite?

Reforms are definitely coming from the president himself. He is very personally involved and invested in convincing people from outside--Burmese who have lived overseas for many years--to come back and to help him with his reforms. His meeting Aung San Suu Kyi is one example of where he made a personal approach to bring her in and onto his side. And she has described that the changes as being very positive.

What are some of the obstacles Myanmar faces at this point to further reform?

It’s clear that the president has the military on his side. Recently, the parliament passed a motion on the release of prisoners, and the military faction voted in favor of that motion. And we, analyze that this may be because the head of the military may himself be considering running for office in five years time. There are people who have vested interests in the status-quo and who will try to stop these reforms or could stop these reforms. There is a lot fear about change, and the bureaucracy is very under-equipped to deal with this rapid change and reforms.  So, there’s a lot of things that could go wrong and the agenda of the president is very ambitious. But we feel it’s not the time to wait for it to fail. Particularly for western countries that have been disengaged from Myanmar in recent years, now is the time to try and support these reforms, which will have positive effects for the people of Myanmar.

So can you give me some specifics then about how Western nations can best engage and respond?

One example has been that people are very concerned overseas about the ongoing human rights abuses, which continue to this day as the military in Myanmar fights against ethic insurgents. It’s undeniable that human rights abuses are continuing, but the government has recently set up a human rights commission. This commission is a very new body. It’s lacking experience and skills and resources. There have been a number of nations in the past that have engaged with Myanmar on human rights, and here’s an opportunity for international assistance to help promote greater domestic accountability for human rights abuses in the country.

Many international observers have argued that the government’s reforms have been really paper thin and that the best way to achieve change is with new sanctions. What would you say in response to that line of thinking?

There’s a lot of differences everyday that we’re seeing in the way the country is governed. These are more than just words, but there’s still many concrete actions to be taken. To stay at the sidelines at this point is to deny the significance of the changes that are happening. Those people who’ve met Aung San Suu Kyi in recent weeks have found her very cogent, engaged, aware that she’s balancing complex and difficult issues, but also very optimistic. One visitor who we spoke to recently quoted her as saying, “those people who say there’s no change are not here.”

Would sanctions then be counterproductive at this point?

Crisis Group has long held the view that sanctions on Myanmar, targeted or non-targeted, are counterproductive. They encourage a siege mentality among its leadership, and they are harmful for the poor population of this country. The greater the pace of change, the weaker the rational becomes for continuing or adding more.

And what about some kind of international investigation?

There remains ample evidence that the army continues to employ brutal counterinsurgency strategies, and in the absence of domestic accountability, calls for an international commission will remain. But it is far from clear that an international commission, even if one could be established, is the most effective way to address the abuses at this time or whether its impact would be to cause backsliding or retrenchment in Myanmar.   There are already indications that the key benchmarks that many in the West have been insisting on for so long may soon be reached, such as the release of political prisoners. If there’s internal progress in human rights and significant economic reforms that benefit the country’s citizens, these should be acknowledged and the international community should be supporting these changes and encouraging more.

- Edited for print

Also from ICG, Myanmar: Major Reform Underway - The International Crisis Group is an independent, non-profit, non-governmental organisation committed to preventing and resolving deadly conflict. 

Aung San Suu Kyi: "The World Needs to Know What is Going on in Burma" (NEWS BRIEF)

By Themrise Khan in New York

(

Aung San Suu Kyi, General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, Addresses the Clinton Global Initiative in New York today, live via satellite from Yangon. CREDIT: CGI

(HN, September 21, 2011) - Two of the world's famous freedom fighters sat face-to-face this morning in New York City - or as was as close as possible under the circumstances.

Live on stage in New York,  in front of a packed plenary on the second day of the Clinton Global Summit, was Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa.

A world away, via satellite and sitting comfortably in her home on the banks of Inya Lake in Yangon (formerly Rangoon) was the renowned opposition leader in Myanmar (formerly Burma), Aung San Suu Kyi.

The fact that technology could link these two Nobel Peace Prize winners is, in these times, unremarkable. What was astonishing was that the Burmese military regime allowed Suu Kyi's conversation to take place, uncensored.

It's not clear what type of diplomatic handywork or meaneuvering went on behind closed doors by former US President Clinton, the host of the meeting, to get the Burmese generals to agree to the broadcast. But for a man who has rescued stranded celebrity journalists from North Korea, and has accomplished other seemingly impossible feats, this may have been received as just another challenge.

The broadcast was billed as Suu Kyi's first live conversation since her release in 2009.

Little wonder the atmosphere in the hall was nothing less than euphoric. Tutu, who made no secret of his admiration for his colleague a world away, appeared smitten and almost child-like at her elegant and articulate responses.

It was a rare site.

As moderator Charlie Rose pointed out more than once, audience members were witness to “something going on here, mutual admiration society and more”.

But the humorous banter did not hide the seriousness of the issue at hand. At issues was the struggle for freedom of a nation, a topic which very few around the world seem to know very little about.

Despite her long and painful incarceration, Suu Kyi sounded very optimistic about Myanmar’s future, especially that of its youth. She was confident of the possibility of change, citing that when she was freed in 2009, there were many, many more youth out to greet her than at any of the previous times, she had seen. “That showed me that some change was going on within the people”, she said.

To Suu Kyi, awareness of the situation for the Myanmar people, and for the whole world, was one of the most important elements of bringing change. “If the world wants to help Burma, the world needs to know what is going on in Burma”, she said. “ We would like the world to keep an eye on what is happening here”.

Responding to a question on whether neighbours, India and China. can do more to help the political situation in Myanmar, Suu Kyi was adamant that people must first listen to the voices of ordinary Burmese, to what the people want. Then they can help Burma.

“We have always been good neighbors, but times have changed and to continue to be good neighbors certain policies will have to change”, she said.

Unfortunately, Myanmar is still far away from uprisings like the Arab Spring. In answering Rose’s question about the use of social media, Suu Kyi pointed out that Myanmar has no where near the media access that participants in the Arab Spring had. Young people in Myanmar need to be better prepared to face the modern world starting with education.

“I could never have been speaking to you like this seven years ago”, she said. Not letting fear sap her energy all these years, Suu Kyi has remained a controlled and passionate fighter for the cause. A fighter, that fellow fighter Tutu, looks forward to seeing inaugurated as head of the government, when he visits Myanmar in the future.

When you stand out in a crowd it is only because you are standing on the shoulders of others," said Tutu.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chairman of The Elders, could hardly hide his excitement sharing the stage today with Aung San Suu Kyi. CREDIT: CGI

Campaign Against Girl Brides Gains New Advocates (NEWS BRIEF)

By Themrise Khan in New York

Mary Robinson (L) and Desmond Tutu at the Clinton Summit in New York. CREDIT: HUMNEWS(HN, September 20, 2011) - Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chair of the Elders was one of the driving forces behind the official launch of the Girls Not Brides campaign, here at the Clinton Global Initiative today.

Supported by the Ford Foundation and the Novo Foundation, among others, the multi-funded collaboration with the Elders Group, seeks to end the centuries old practice of child marriages, affecting almost 3 million young girls around the developing world.

The initiative is committing a start-up of $2 million to partner with almost 150 organizations already involved with the cause and demanding that this practice be ended.

Tutu, along with Mary Robinson, the former President of Ireland, are lobbying donors, NGOs and cultural and faith-based groups to come together to do more to raise awareness on issues that include lobbying to increase the legal age of marriage to 18 years, so that young girls have the opportunity to attend and complete school.

As passionate and engaging as ever, Tutu urged the audience to look beyond the statistics and put a human face to turn the numbers into flesh and blood, to be able to understand why this ghastly system has to be ended. His appeal was to the men of this world who have to be the ones to change this tradition by saying that they do not want to marry children. “If the men aren’t on the right side, we are in trouble”, he said.

Following on the success of the Burhani Huwan initiative in Ethiopia which assisted in allowing 11,000 girls to complete their schooling and delay child marriage, this global partnership aims to allow young girls the opportunity to be educated and economically independent.

However, the causes contributing to child marriages go beyond just tradition and cross into economic depravation and poverty which forces parents to take such actions.

With multiple challenges facing this commitment, Tutu is one of the key strengths of the initiative declaring that “I am committed to this like I was committed to ending apartheid”.

Does the US Have Leverage Over the PLO? (BLOG/REPORT)

By Gregg Carlstrom in the Middle East

Mahmoud Abbas (photo credit: Olivier Pacteau via flicker) The Palestine Liberation Organisation seems to have passed the point of no return in its bid for full membership at the United Nations. Mahmoud Abbas could still abandon the bid - he will not formally submit the PLO's request until later this week - but that would be a politically ruinous move after his speech on Friday night.

Nonetheless, the United States and the European Union are still trying to convince Abbas to back down. There will be a few frantic meetings in New York this week ahead of Abbas' speech to the UN General Assembly on Friday.

The carrot they are offering him is the prospect of renewed negotiations with Israel, possibly with a timer attached: If talks do not go anywhere after, say, six months, the so-called Quartet would then endorse the PLO's bid for UN membership.

Abbas does not seem interested. As we reported on Saturday, it was one of these US proposals for renewed talks (which Nabil Shaath described as "useless") that convinced Abbas he needed to go to the Security Council.

That leaves sticks. The most compelling one, you would think, is the possibility that US lawmakers will slash aid to the Palestinian Authority, which depends heavily on foreign aid.

The US gave the PA roughly $470m last year, more than 10 per cent of the authority's budget. Various lawmakers, Republican and Democrat, have suggested cutting that aid after the UN vote. At a congressional hearing last week, Steve Chabot, a Republican congressman from Ohio, said "the question before this Congress will not be what portion of our aid will be cut, but rather what portion will remain".

But would Washington follow through on that threat?

Israel, after all, does not really want to undermine the Palestinian Authority, which provides security and basic services in the Palestinian-controlled parts of the occupied West Bank. If the sulta (as it is known) went bankrupt, the Israeli government would be responsible for those functions, something it cannot afford - especially now with hundreds of thousands of Israelis protesting in the streets over socioeconomic problems.

Indeed, a number of high-ranking Israeli ministers, including defence minister Ehud Barak, have warned against punitive measures for exactly that reason. As Ha'aretz reported yesterday:

[Barak and others] warn that it could lead to violence and the cessation of security cooperation between the PA and Israel, and could, under certain circumstances, lead to the total collapse of the PA, throwing responsibility for all of the West Bank's inhabitants back on Israel.

Congress is usually quite responsive to Israeli concerns (to say the least). And even if Congress cuts aid to the PA, US President Barack Obama could reinstate it with an executive order.

So cutting aid to the PA seems like an empty threat. What does that leave? Not much, according to a summary of last week's congressional hearing, which was dominated by conservative and "pro-Israel" witnesses.

The most popular ideas were shutting the PLO's mission in Washington and auditing Abbas' personal finances, neither of which seems very compelling.

Abbas could still back down at the 11th hour. I have spoken with quite a few Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip who expect that he will. But - in the absence of any compelling proposals from the Quartet and any real pressure from the US - it is hard to see why he would.

Originally published by Al Jazeera under Creative Commons Licensing