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LDCs: Favourable Economic Conditions Didn’t Translate into Development
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Credit: UN Photo
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The unprecedented high prices reached by the Least Developed Countries’ (LDCs) export products during the first years of this century did not translate into development, because the rich nations did not keep their promises to facilitate an enabling international trade system, technology transfer, long term solutions to the debt problems and more and better aid, all of them part of Goal 8 of the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs), warned Social Watch at the United Nations General Assembly interactive hearings with civil society on the LDCs, this Friday in New York. Read more
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“Least developed condition has tended to generate less development”
A group of nine “eminent persons” said in a report to the United Nations about the LDCs that “the 'least developed' condition has tended to generate 'less' development”. Part of the responsibility lays with the LDCs themselves, they argue, but aid and market access are also "fundamental ingredients," according to the panel.
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Philippines: Briones Awarded as Exemplary Woman in Governance
Social Watch Philippines lead convenor and former National Treasurer Leonor Magtolis Briones, who was awarded this Thursday with the BAYI Citation Award for Exemplary Women Leadership in Politics and Governance, called on President Benigno Aquino III, Senators and Congressmen to work first on reforming the Philippine budget system so that the new administration can correct inequality and chronic poverty.
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The criminalization of protest in Brazil
Thirteen people who protested peacefully outside the United States consulate in Brasilia were detained for three days while President Barack Obama visited the country. Dida Figueiredo, a researcher at the Ibase network, the focal point of Social Watch in Brazil, asked “Why didn’t the police go after the people who were really guilty? Why did they arrest peaceful protesters who were just carrying signs?”
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Human Rights in Argentina: 34 years after the coup the trials are still going on.
Last Thursday marked 34 years since the coup d’etat that in 1976 opened the way for the last military dictatorship in Argentina. The Centre for Legal and Social Studies (CELS, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales) says there have been 1,706 accusations against civilians and military and police personnel for offences against human rights, but only 167 of these people have been found guilty.
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Libya and nuclear crises deepen
Two major crises dominate the world – the Western-led coalition’s bombing of Libya and the spreading effects of Japan’s nuclear problem. Both crises have deepened rather than receded, according to Martin Khor, Executive Director of South Centre.
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LDCs: Developed Countries Didn’t Keep their Promises
“It is with great sadness that we have to report today that in relation with the 48 countries listed as LDCs the commitments included in the Millennium Declaration and the Brussels Program of Action (BPoA) are not being met,” said Roberto Bissio on behalf of Social Watch, at the United Nations General Assembly interactive hearings with civil society on the Least Developed Countries (LDCs), in New York, April 1.
“Not only are most LDCs not on track to achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the target year of 2015, but on a careful look at the three most essential social indicators --infant mortality, maternal health and primary school enrolment and survival-- over half of the LDCs for which there are indicators available are either regressing or making no progress at all,” added Bissio.
“In three decades since the UN established the focus on the Least Developed Countries the group has doubled from the 24 countries originally identified rather than disappeared” commented Arjun Karki, coordinator of LDC Watch at the opening of the hearing. “This is an indictment of failure”.
According to Social Watch, out of 40 LDCs for which there are data available, 31 did better in reducing infant mortality in the last decade of the 20th century than in the first of the new millennium, in spite of the unprecedented high prices for the commodities and agricultural products exported by the LDCs before the global financial and economic crisis that erupted in September 2008. Those favourable circumstances did not translate into development, even less so social development, because the developed partners did not keep their promises of an enabling international trade system, technology transfer, long term solutions to the debt problems and more and better aid, all of those part of Goal 8 of the MDGs, argued Bissio.
The crisis worsened the situation, not just because of the recession in the countries that used to be the locomotive of the world economy, “but also because of ‘collateral damage’ created by the anti-crisis measures, with unfavorable conditions for migrants, cuts in the aid budgets and a return to tied aid, subsidies to industries and services that are ‘too big to fail’ without a corresponding compensation for those that are ‘too poor to fail’,” expressed the coordinator of Social Watch.
“Women usually suffer the impact of the crisis more, in their effort to substitute with unpaid work the absence or deterioration of social services. Children deprived now of adequate nourishment and attention will never recover completely later,” he stated.
“Good governance, democracy, and the right to associate and to express opinions freely, including by gathering in public squares is essential in all countries, irrespective of their level of development. Social Watch was created, precisely, to promote the accountability of governments without which there is no meaningful citizenship. But such accountability and good governance is to be demanded also of the powerful,” he told the audience.
“The ease with which trillions of dollars were mobilized to rescue the financial sector that ignited the global crisis with irresponsible behavior contrasts with the thrift and sluggishness in assisting the vulnerable. Few people can grasp what a trillion is, so in our popular education we say that if one second is a dollar, one million is 12 days, one billion is more than 30 years and a trillion brings us back to the times of the Pharaohs in Egypt. ‘If the poor were a bank, we would have been rescued,’ concluded one participant,” Bissio said.
“In practice, the rescue efforts go the other way around. Talking with a high ranking official of the finance ministry of an LDC country a few days ago, I learned how after much sacrifice the country had resumed growth and has now accumulated a solid 1.5 billion dollars in reserves. Those reserves are needed because the world finances are volatile and countries that opened their borders to financial flows need to defend themselves from speculative attacks. Which means that a major proportion of the sacrifice of low paid workers and the devastation of natural resources, instead of resulting in investments or social services, is piled up in unused reserves. The poorest countries accumulate treasury bonds of the richest countries, which is a form of providing them with soft loans that in turn create the financial bubbles that might lead to the next crisis and the unsustainable consumption patterns that are disrupting the global climate,” he added.
“In addressing the global crises and their impact over those countries and peoples that did the least to create them, the Istanbul conference provides an opportunity to reaffirm the responsibility of States and international institutions over those issues where the markets failed to correct themselves and made the problems worse. Reducing volatility and unpredictability in financial markets and addressing climate change with responsibility and a sense of historic justice will simultaneously free domestic resources, reduce risks and allow to mobilize new energies in such a way that no country and no vulnerable person needs to be left behind,” concluded Bissio.
“So what do we expect from this conference?” asked Dr. Karki. “Certainly not an outcome that rolls over the programmes of action of past decades, re-iterates commitments already made and yet again urges renewed efforts for their implementation. We have heard all this before and seen the results that are dismal”.
“We are calling for a world withut LDCs”, he emphasized. “We must mobilize all our energy and will to lift the poorest citizens of the world out of their misery, and collectively wipe the curse of being least developed off the face of the world.”
Source: Social Watch
Gap widening between LDCs and other countries
The wealth gap between the 48 least developed countries (LDCs) and the rest of the nations has widened in recent decades and will go on doing so unless their basic weaknesses are tackled, a report for the United Nations said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.
"In short, the 'least developed' condition has tended to generate 'less' development," even though most of the countries concerned had registered some economic growth, said the report by a group of nine "eminent persons."
The panel, headed by former Malian President Alpha Oumar Konare and former World Bank President James Wolfensohn, said part of the responsibility for improving the situation lay with the LDCs themselves, which should negotiate better prices for their raw materials, fight corruption and seek the return of stolen assets.
But it also said foreign aid was a "fundamental ingredient." Donor countries should scale up their aid to the LDCs to 0.15 percent of their gross national income by 2013 and to 0.2 percent by 2015.
Among other goals should be to grant duty- and quota-free access for LDC exports, further reduce the countries' official bilateral and multilateral debt, and double their farm productivity and school enrollment.
The United Nations has already said it wants to halve the number of LDCs by 2021. Since 1970, only three countries have made it out of the group -- Botswana, Cape Verde and the Maldives.
The panel studied the impact of an action program on LDCs launched at a U.N. conference in Brussels in 2001 for the ensuing decade.
Its recommendations are to be considered by a new conference in Istanbul from May 9-13, which will adopt a new program for the next 10 years.
Source: Reuters
Read the complete story by Patrick Worsnipat http://ca.reuters.com/articlePrint?articleId=CATRE72S5M620110329
Read the complete Eminent Persons Group report at º
“Public administration is about delivery of services to those who need it most”
“I realized that the budget is the most powerful instrument of the state to correct imbalances; but it is not being used for this purpose. The budget is looked at by the unscrupulous as an opportunity to share public resources,” said Social Watch Philippines convenor Leonor Magtolis Briones, who has served as the Treasurer of her country and as Secretary to the Commission on Audit, awarded this Thursday with the BAYI Citation for Government Service.
Conferred biennially by the Institute of Politics and Governance (IPG) and the Barangay Bayan Governance Consortium (BBGC), the BAYI Citation is given to women leaders who consistently and selflessly work to empower women and to inspire more women and girls to take leadership roles.
Briones’ capability as a woman leader has also been proven in her untainted work as former Vice-President of the University of the Philippines, chair of the Board of Siliman University, lead convenor of Social Watch Philippines, and as Philippine ambassador to the W8 which is a group of women leaders talking to heads of the richest countries to live up to their promises to help poor nations finance social development programs. Her book, titled “Philippine Public Fiscal Administration”, is used in all schools of public administration in the country. Her papers on corruption continue to be used in the John F. Kennedy School of Government in Harvard University and other schools.
“Public administration is about delivery of services to those who need it most. The people should be made aware that the budget, composed of revenues and expenditures, belongs to them and that they should have a say,” said Briones.
“An equally important part of the budget is the revenue side,” continued Briones. “The citizens are interested in the tax policy of the government and the tax collection preference of BIR, BOC and other revenue generation agencies.”
With budget reforms in place and people’s participation in budgeting institutionalized in this Government, more women can be involved in delivering education, economic opportunities, reproductive health care and in fighting for equality and human rights,” Briones said.
“My hope is that the laws which are proposed to correct the budget system in the Philippines will be passed immediately within the new Aquino administration. My hope is that the bills on citizens’ participation, not only in formulation, but also in monitoring and evaluation of the budget and sources of funding, will be immediately passed in Senate and the House of Representatives,” Briones said.
Source: Social Watch Philippines
Brazilians arrested for protesting against Obama
According to researcher Dida Figueredo, writing on the Ibase network web site, “The criminalization of social movements by the police and the endorsement of this by the judges has caused great concern among all humanitarian activists in this country”. Some other passages from the same source are given below.
“Thirteen demonstrators including an adolescent were detained on Friday 18 March for taking part in a protest in front of the United States consulate in Brasilia but there was no evidence that any of them had committed an offence. To make matters worse, the application for habeas corpus whereby the 13 were set free was delayed for three days, until after President Barack Obama had left the country.
“The demonstrators were freed, but this does not wipe out the fact that they were the victims of human rights violations. In the three days, the authorities were unable to prove they had been involved in an incident when a Molotov cocktail was thrown at the consulate.
“Why didn’t the police go after the people who were really guilty? Why did they arrest peaceful protesters who were just carrying signs? And why did the police show these signs to journalists as if they had been weapons?
“The criminalization of social movements by the police and the endorsement of this by the judges has caused great concern among all humanitarian activists in this country. The State itself recognizes how serious the situation is, and in 2007 it enacted a National Programme for Defenders of Human Rights. Two outstanding cases are those of Irmã Dorothy, an activist in the movement for the right to land who was murdered in 2005, and Luiz Gonzaga da Sivla, leader of the Movimiento de Moradia de Centro, who is in jail for a crime he did not commit. Things like this are happening every day…
“There is a long way to go before new violations can be prevented. Periodic elections on their own are not enough to make a democracy, it also has to be constructed and legitimized every day by what the public powers do. It is essential, if democracy is to be effective, that social movements and human rights organizations be allowed to play a critical role.”
Source: Ibase
Read the complete report in Portuguese at www.ibase.br/modules.php?name=Conteudo&file=index&pa=showpage&pid=3019
Argentina: 9.8% of those accused have been found guilty
According to the records of the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS, the focal point of Social Watch in Argentina), up to March 2011 a total of 1,706 people – civilians as well as armed forces and security personnel, had been accused of offences linked to State terrorism.
However, so far only 182 cases have been brought to trial; 167 resulted in verdicts of guilty, which is 9.8% of the total, and 15 ended in acquittals.
The CELS records show that 273 of those accused had died, 39 were fugitives, 15 were declared incapable, 435 have been sentenced to prison terms, 329 were found guilty but did not go to prison, 262 of the cases got no further than the initial accusation and in 105 instances a case could not be made.
The Centre has set up a blog at http://www.cels.org.ar/wpblogs/ to provide up to date information about the cases the organization has been involved in that have to do with human rights violations during the dictatorship (1976-1983).
It has also made a video about the trials of those responsible for human rights violations. This is available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2tiU-NL5oQ.
Source: CELS
Global Concerns Focus on Japan and Libya
By Martin Khor
Last week, global concerns continued to focus on two major events – the nuclear disaster in Japan and the Western allied bombing in Libya.
The effects of the nuclear problem at Fukushima have worsened, intensifying worldwide concerns about the safety of nuclear power.
Meanwhile, there was continued confusion over the aims and the exit policy of the Western strikes in Libya, as the allies themselves seemed deeply divided, while many around the world worried whether this had created a new precedent of foreign military intervention that might spread to other countries in the future.
The Japanese nuclear crisis worsened last week. Last Saturday, the radioactivity levels had soared 1,250 times above normal levels in sea water off the nuclear plant, giving rise to questions as to whether there had been a crack in a reactor’s core building.
The radioactive effects spread to food items, causing countries to act against Japanese imports.
The tap water in Tokyo had exceeded the government standard for infants who are especially vulnerable to cancer-causing radioactive iodine.
Hopes that the situation could now be brought under control were dashed. A new problem has emerged. Experts have yet to determine where to put the contaminated water, according to the nuclear company Tepco.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, declared last Saturday that “this is a very serious accident by all standards” and the crisis could go on for months.
Each day the crisis continues and the effects become more evident as radioactivity in air, food and water adds to the intensity of worldwide concern over the safety of nuclear power.
It had been touted as a key component of the future energy mix to replace fossil fuels. But it is now unlikely to be included in the ranks of “renewable energy” that are promoted to counter climate change and energy insecurity.
Another crisis last week was generated by the Western allied airstrikes on Libya.
When the UN Security Council passed a resolution to apply a “no fly zone” over Libya to protect civilians, many around the world thought the term implied no planes would be allowed over the country.
It soon turned out that this permitted, indeed facilitated, planes belonging to Allied countries to fly over Libya to bomb targets inside the country.
A controversy is raging whether the UN resolution allows only military aircraft and anti-aircraft facilities to be targeted or whether, as has happened, other targets are allowed, such as forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
Even the compound of Gaddafi’s house has been bombed.
The immediate aim of the allies, to stop the rout of the rebels, has been fulfilled, and the town of Benghazi remains under rebel control. But the civil war in Libya continues to rage.
The international anti-Gaddafi forces are deeply divided on goals and preferred methods.
The secretary-general of the Arab League, the organisation of Arab states whose call for a no-fly zone had been cited as a major rationale for the Security Council resolution, was the first to criticise the Western air strikes for harming civilians.
The African Union has called for a ceasefire by all sides.
Many developing countries are criticising the military campaign for going far beyond the UN mandate.
Among the Western countries, Germany has refused to be part of the military actions, whilst France has taken the lead.
The US has relinquished its initial military leadership role, to Nato.
It has a seemingly ambivalent position on Gaddafi – calling for his overthrow from within while insisting this is not the objective of the bombing.
The US is evidently uneasy over the Libyan affair.
“We should never begin an operation without knowing how we stand down,” said Joseph Ralston, a retired general who served as Nato commander.
While France seems to have recognised the Libyan rebels as the country’s legitimate representatives, others have not gone that far.
What happens if Gaddafi is able to retain power? Do some of the Western countries want to send in troops to remove him, Iraq style? Or negotiate a settlement with him still in power? What if (and this is a very big if) Gaddafi is removed?
Besides the obvious criticism that this whole campaign was done in a hurry with each Western country taking its own actions and having its own goals, the larger issue is whether the Security Council resolution has been abused as a fig leaf for military actions and goals that are beyond or different from the protection of citizens.
The China Daily, a state-run newspaper, in an editorial, severely criticised the Western military intervention for creating more uncertainties and worsening the humanitarian crisis in Libya and the region.
It cites criticisms from many countries against the coalition for abusing the UN mandate and demands for an immediate end to military intervention in Libya.
“Recent years have seen the West intervening in many countries,” the editorial said last Saturday.
“Western powers do not think twice before using force against a sovereign state on the pretext of humanitarianism. The Libyan crisis marks the pinnacle of such interventionism.”
* Martin Khor is the Executive Director of South Centre, an intergovernmental policy think-tank of developing countries.
Source: The Star of Malaysia
