Category Archives: Latest Developments

A daily summary of news and analysis pertaining to global inequality.

Latest Developments, December 4

Posted on by
Reply

In the latest news and analysis…

Subsidizing Walmart
A new World Development Movement report alleges that so-called climate aid is being used to provide subsidized power to the world’s largest retailer.
“The report, ‘Power to the people?’, details how money taken from the UK aid budget has been used by the World Bank to finance wind farms in the Mexican state of Oaxaca, built without the consent of the indigenous people who own the land. The project produces enough electricity to power 160,000 homes, but is instead being sold at a discounted rate to Walmart. The project is 99 per cent controlled by French electricity giant EDF.”

Disagreement over cluster munitions
The Economist reports on the recent failure of US-led efforts to negotiate a new agreement on cluster munitions that would be less restrictive than the current ban that has been signed by 109 countries and, therefore, more acceptable to the countries that account for 85 percent of the world’s stocks of such weapons.
“The 50-plus countries that opposed the draft protocol, and the campaigners who egged them on, complained that the text still allowed the use of cluster munitions known to cause unacceptable harm. The International Committee of the Red Cross said the American proposal would simply stimulate the development of devices that met the new standards but might still be lethally unreliable; and backsliding from the Oslo rules would set a bad precedent.
The big countries were cross. America (which has argued that a total ban on cluster munitions would make life impossible for NATO) expressed “deep disappointment”. Russia grumbled that opponents were “irrational” and China said they would bear indirect responsibility for future cluster-bomb casualties.”

Outsourcing military missions
Researcher/journalist Jody Ray Bennett argues that the US State Deparment’s awarding of a contract to the controversial DynCorp private security company in the Democratic Republic of Congo is very much in keeping with recent American foreign policy.
“When asked why DynCorp had been awarded a contract back in 2004 to operate in the Sudan, an anonymous US government official told CorpWatch: ‘The answer is simple. We are not allowed to fund a political party or agenda under United States law, so by using private contractors, we can get around those provisions. Think of this as somewhere between a covert program run by the CIA and an overt program run by the United States Agency for International Development. It is a way to avoid oversight by Congress.’”

Blue Helmet mercenaries
Daivd Isenberg, author of Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq, looks into the pros and cons of using private military contractors for UN interventions and uses a Stephen Wittels quote to support his point that such troops are only as good as their contract.
“Because the State Department failed to build into Blackwater’s contract strong incentives to treat Iraqis respectfully, the company did not. Indeed, Blackwater had every reason to shoot first and ask questions later with regards to Iraqis since any civilian could, in theory, have been an assassin, and contractors were, for the first few years of the war, immune to prosecution. It should also come as no surprise that in this consequence-free environment, Blackwater employees adopted excessive aggression as their default disposition, even when it served no apparent purpose. Had their assignment and their conduct been properly engineered in their contract from the outset, a strong argument can be made that Blackwater would not today be known as a collection of ‘cowboys.’”

African leadership
Voice of America reports that African leaders are calling for changes in the global fight against HIV/AIDS.
“African Union Social Affairs Commissioner Bience Gawanas says it is time the continent has a greater say in how the fight against sexually-transmitted diseases is fought. Gawanas told a World AIDS Day observance at AU headquarters that the continent most affected by the epidemic must take ownership of the battle to eradicate it.”

African generosity
Globe and Mail columnist Gerald Caplan writes about how much of the West’s wealth has come at the expense of Africa.
“There is not a single African nation that does not suffer from a dearth of trained teachers, health workers and public servants. Meanwhile there are hundreds of thousands of highly trained Africans now working in the West and more are coming as rich countries increasingly demand well-trained immigrants. Like that of other rich countries, the Canadian immigration model, as The Globe’s editorial puts it, “aims to attract the best and brightest from around the globe.” So while International Co-operation Minister Bev Oda announces “new CIDA initiatives for Africa … focused on helping Africa fulfill its future potential,” Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is wooing Africans who could make Africa’s potential a reality.
Is this bureaucratic carelessness or rank hypocrisy? Canada’s case is typical of most rich countries. African governments spend preposterously large sums hiring foreign consultants on short costly contracts to perform the work that could have been done by their own lost experts. Is it necessary to point out that those sums often come out of the foreign aid that we, the so-called “donor” countries, provide? So a nice chunk of our aid goes to pay our own citizens to do work in Africa that Africans are doing in our own countries.”

Manifesto of the appalled economists
The Inter Press Service reports on the growing number of “appalled economists” who are calling on world leaders to change course in the current battle against sovereign debt.
“Although the ‘manifesto of the appalled economists’ was first intended to serve as a basis for debate amongst economists on European economic policies, it has rapidly become a manifesto for thousands who have signed it, not just in Europe, but also across continents and countries from Australia to Brazil. The manifesto is also being discussed in numerous forums.
In the paper, [André] Orléan and his co-authors complain that ‘the neoliberal paradigm is still the only one that is acknowledged as legitimate, despite its obvious failures.’”

Capitalism’s future
Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff asks if capitalism is sustainable and how it can be improved.
“It is ironic that modern capitalist societies engage in public campaigns to urge individuals to be more attentive to their health, while fostering an economic ecosystem that seduces many consumers into an extremely unhealthy diet. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, 34% of Americans are obese. Clearly, conventionally measured economic growth – which implies higher consumption – cannot be an end in itself.”

Latest Developments, December 1

Posted on by
Reply

In the latest news and analysis…

Climate fund row
The World Development Movement’s Murray Worthy writes about civil society opposition to perceived attempts by the US and UK to turn the Green Climate Fund into a “Greedy Corporate Fund” at the Durban climate talks.
“The role of private investment in financing climate activities must be decided at the national and sub-national levels in line with countries’ priorities, not corporate bottom lines. The move to allow the private sector to go directly to the Green Climate Fund for money undermines the possibility of a democratic, participatory process for meeting the needs of communities struggling to fight climate change,” according to Lidy Nacpil of Jubilee South Asia/Pacific Movement on Debt and Development.

Durban deadlock
Columbia University economist Jagdish Bhagwati argues there is little hope of a meaningful agreement at the Durban climate talks due in large part to a growing “What’s in it for me?” attitude from the US in global affairs.
“Moreover, abandoning the Kyoto Protocol’s exemption of developing countries from obligations for current emissions, the US has insisted on obligations from China and India that reflect a common form of ‘taxation’ of emissions. But there are persuasive reasons why these countries insist that the obligations must instead reflect per capita emissions, a criterion that would require far greater emission cuts by the US than its leaders now contemplate.”

Big decision
The Tico Times reports Costa Rica’s top court has annulled a Canadian mining company’s concession for the controversial Las Crucitas open-pit gold mine and suggested the project’s approval may have involved corruption at the highest level.
“The court’s ruling is the latest in a long-running battle between opponents of the mine and Industrias Infinto, which is a subsidiary of the Canadian company Infinito Gold. The company was awarded a mining concession by then-president Óscar Arias in 2006, but lawsuits by environmental groups kept the project hobbled through November of 2010 when the Sala I struck down the project. Industrias Infinito appealed that decision.
Wednesday’s ruling, however, dismissed the mining company’s appeals. The court also asked Costa Rica’s public prosecutor to initiate proceedings to see if criminal investigations are warranted for individuals in the Costa Rican government involved in the mining saga, including former President Arias. The project was first proposed in 1993.”

Public-private police
An Atlantic article by Samantha Michaels looks into allegations that American mining giant Freeport-McMoRan is bankrolling the violent repression of an ongoing labour dispute at its Grasberg facility in Indonesia and, indirectly, the fight against Papuan separatists.
“Freeport has given $79.1 million to police and military forces in the past 10 years, according to a group called Indonesian Corruption Watch.  Most of that funding has been through in-kind contributions such as food, housing, fuel, and travel costs, but officers have also received direct payments. A report by the NGO Global Witness shows that, between 2001 and 2003, Freeport gave nearly $250,000 to a controversial commander who in 1999 led military action in East Timor, where soldiers killed more than a thousand people.
Since then, the security funding has grown: Freeport’s financial documents show that the company paid $14 million to support government security forces in 2010, up from $10 million in 2009 and $8 million in 2008.”

Giving with one hand…
The Guardian reports that Norway is facing accusations of hypocrisy for funding forest protection in Indonesia while its state pension fund invests in commercial projects that aggravate deforestation in the Southeast Asian nation.
“The UK-based Environmental Investigation Agency wrote in October to the country’s prime minister, Jens Stoltenberg to call for a new approach. The NGO said Norway’s financial involvement in Indonesia was a net negative for the environment. It said that the $30m (£19m) that Norway provided for Redd projects in 2010 is just of the fifth of the profits and a third of the investment value in companies involved in ‘logging, plantations, and mining companies currently deforesting large areas of Indonesia.’”

Bush in Africa
Amnesty International is calling on the governments of Ethiopia, Tanzania and Zambia to arrest former US president George W. Bush during this week’s visit over his alleged authorization of torture during his time in the White House.
“Amnesty International recognizes the value of raising awareness about cervical and breast cancer in Africa, the stated aim of the visit, but this cannot lessen the damage to the fight against torture caused by allowing someone who has admitted to authorizing water-boarding to travel without facing the consequences prescribed by law.”

Hunger crimes
Picking up on the recent claim by a UN official that the famine in Somalia is the result of crimes against humanity committed by the Transitional Federal Government and the militant group al-Shabaab, the University of Minnesota’s Abdi Ismail Samatar argues the accuser must also share in the blame.
“[W]hile the coordinator [of the UN’s Monitoring Group for Somalia] has blamed al-Shabaab for denying access to agencies like [the World Food Programme], the timeline of events appear to point the blame on the Monitoring Group’s tabloid-like research and report writing. We think that al-Shabaab is guilty of condemning people to starvation, but those who used the United Nations Monitoring Group as the vehicle to deliver unfounded half-truths also played a vital role in inducing the calamity by illegitimately damaging the credibility of WFP, which directly contributed to the dearth of food deliveries to the population.
The gossip-based report also indirectly precipitated al-Shabaab’s cruel decision and appears to coincide with the US’ decision to withdraw support for WFP.”

Philanthropic racism
The University of St. Gallen’s Martin Herrndorf argues the message of an ad intended to draw attention to global poverty – “Millions die, no one cries” – was undermined by its ethnocentric wording.
“Yet – ‘no one cries’ means ‘no one who is white and lives in places with fancy bus stops.’ Apparently, black people in poor countries crying don’t count. The poster thus is at least Eurocentric, if not outright racist.”

Latest Developments, November 30

Posted on by
Reply

In the latest news and analysis…

Aid’s latest agenda
The Busan aid effectiveness summit has produced the final version of its outcome document which is chock-full of general promises on the future of “development co-operation.”
“We can and must improve and accelerate our efforts. We commit to modernise, deepen and broaden our co‐operation, involving state and non‐state actors that wish to shape an agenda that has until recently been dominated by a narrower group of development actors. In Busan, we forge a new global development partnership that embraces diversity and recognises the distinct roles that all stakeholders in co‐operation can play to support development.”

Perceived corruption
Transparency International has released the 2011 edition of its Corruption Perceptions Index, a ranking of 183 country/territory public sectors which places New Zealand at the top and Somalia and North Korea tied at the bottom.
“This year we have seen corruption on protestors’ banners be they rich or poor. Whether in a Europe hit by debt crisis or an Arab world starting a new political era, leaders must heed the demands for better government,” according to Transparency International’s Huguette Labelle.

Justice over reconciliation
Al Jazeera reports the International Criminal Court’s planned prosecution of former Ivorian president Laurent Gbagbo is doing little to promote reconciliation in the troubled West African nation.
“As both camps [in Cote d’Ivoire’s recent conflict] traded blame, global human rights groups have warned that any prosecution focused solely on Gbagbo and not those of his rival, Ouattara, could threaten national stability.
Francis Dako, the African co-ordinator at the Coalition for the ICC, urged the court to prosecute both.
‘A decision to go after the defeated president alone at this point is likely to be explosive on the ground,’ he said.”

Development priorities
Bloomberg reports that US-based Newmont Mining has halted construction at a Peruvian gold deposit in response to violence between police and farmers worried the project will threaten their water supply.
“‘We can’t allow Peruvians to be taken hostage by groups that just preach violence,’ Pedro Martinez, president of the National Society of Mining, Petroleum & Energy, told reporters in Lima today. ‘Without peace there will be no development.’
Deputy Environment Minister Jose de Echave resigned yesterday to protest the government’s backing for the project, which seeks to produce 680,000 ounces of gold and 235 million pounds of copper annually.”

Bad faith
The Wall Street Journal reports on a UK parliamentary committee’s condemnation of defense contractor BAE Systems for its behaviour following a $400 million settlement reached over foreign bribery charges.
“BAE settled with the [UK’s Serious Fraud Office] in February 2010 over allegations that it concealed bribes paid in connection with a contract for an air-traffic control system in Tanzania. The defense contractor agreed to give GBP29.5 million back to the Tanzanian people as a part of the settlement, but failed to make payments to the country months after the deal was finalized. The delay prompted the hearing.
…
‘The way that BAE has handled this whole process has been quite shoddy,’ Committee Chairman Malcolm Bruce said in a news release. ‘Dragging it out this way has needlessly created the impression that BAE was acting in bad faith. The company should have paid up much sooner.’”

Inter-generational thinking
Archbishop Emeritus of Cape Town Desmond Tutu and former Irish president Mary Robinson call on international leaders to begin negotiating a legal agreement on climate change that would go further than the soon-to-be-expired Kyoto Protocol.
“Climate change is a matter of justice. The richest countries caused the problem, but it is the world’s poorest who are already suffering from its effects. In Durban, the international community must commit to righting that wrong.
Political leaders must think inter-generationally. They need to imagine the world of 2050, with its nine billion people, and take the right decisions now to ensure that our children and grandchildren inherit a liveable world.”

Aid power
The International NGO Forum on Indonesian Development’s Don Marut writes about aid dependence and lists some of the pressures he believes underlie its perpetuation in Southeast Asia’s most populous country.
“Second, foreign aid is a way and tool for the developed countries and international financial institutions to control the recipient countries. The House of Representatives heard that there were 63 laws that had been drafted by foreign consultants.
These works are part of foreign aid in the form of technical cooperation or program support, whether they are in the form of loans or grants.
Indonesia is a country with an abundance of natural resources and has a strategic position in terms of global geopolitics.
Developed countries cannot just allow Indonesia to freely use up its resources. Aid is a soft way of controlling the policies of recipient countries, including Indonesia. The more the aid flows, the greater the control the foreign power has.”

Fighting fair
Embassy magazine’s Scott Taylor argues there is a point at which technological inequality in a military context becomes a question of morality.
“Responding to the question of whether NATO could be implicated for potential war crimes in Libya, [Lt.-Gen. Charles] Bouchard insisted his pilots had taken all possible precautions to avoid hitting civilians.
The example he provided was an incident whereby two NATO warplanes circled a Gaddafi loyalist anti-aircraft site for two hours, waiting for a nearby soccer game to end before they attacked.
If your technological advantage over the enemy allows you to hover for two hours with impunity over an air defence system before destroying it at your leisure, that is not really war, it’s murder. If a world champion boxer climbed into the ring against a blind paraplegic in a wheelchair and proceeded to pound the hapless victim to death, we would not consider it a sport.”

Latest Developments, November 29

Posted on by
Reply

In the latest news and analysis…

Global inequality
The Overseas Development Institute’s Jonathan Glennie points out that many of Europe’s and America’s Occupy demonstrators are actually part of the global 1% and that the inequality between countries is worse than it is within countries.
“If redistribution at a national level requires a strongly interventionist state, doesn’t that imply that something similar is required globally if we hope to contain global inequality? Such a plan would be laughed at by those who know the inner workings of the UN, and who recognise the nationalist instinct of politicians and voters. It is ironic that as knowledge about and empathy with the rest of the world has increased in the 20th century, through a revolution in communications, so has global inequality. One might have hoped for the opposite.
It is hard to see how global inequality can be contained without a shift in the mindset, cemented by centuries of traditional politics and nationalism, that favours the state you are born in over the world you want to live in.”

Bush and Blair on trial
Princeton University’s Richard Falk writes about a Malaysian tribunal’s non-enforceable conviction of former US president George W. Bush and former British prime minister Tony Blair for crimes against humanity and genocide during the Iraq War.
“The world system of states and institutions was unwilling to look a particular set of facts in the eye, and respond effectively to what many qualified and concerned persons believed to be a gross injustice. In this regard, there was an intense ethical and political motivation behind these civil society initiatives that invoked the authority of law. But do these initiatives really qualify as ‘law’? A response to such a question depends on whether the formal procedures of sovereign states, and their indirect progeny – international institutions – are given a monopoly over the legal administration of justice. I would side with those that believe that people are the ultimate source of legal authority, and have the right to act on their own when governmental procedures, as in these situations, are so inhibited by geopolitics that they fail to address severe violations of international law.”

A human approach to asylum-seekers
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has praised Australia for announcing it will no longer send all undocumented migrants arriving by boat to mandatory detention centres.
“I am pleased to see this latest shift in policy, bringing in individual assessments of asylum seekers for release into the community,” she said. “I welcome these steps towards a more human approach to asylum-seekers in Australia which can only help to strengthen the tolerance and understanding necessary in a modern multicultural society.”

Doing the cartels’ laundry
The Los Angeles Times reports on the virtual impunity with which international banks have helped Mexican drug cartels launder billions of dollars.
“‘Wachovia’s blatant disregard for our banking laws gave international cocaine cartels a virtual carte blanche to finance their operations,” U.S. Atty. Jeffrey H. Sloman said in announcing the case last year, hailed at the time by authorities as one of the most significant in stopping dirty money from contaminating the U.S. financial system.
Wachovia paid the $160 million in what is called a deferred-prosecution agreement; no one went to prison, and the fines represented a tiny fraction of the [$420 billion] the bank had filtered. In court documents cited by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Wachovia acknowledged serious lapses.”

There will be blood
The Inter Press Service reports on an unfolding investigation in Sweden over allegations petroleum giant Lundin Oil was involved in human rights violations committed in South Sudan during the civil war that preceded independence.
“[Reverend James] Ninrew said the brutal and systematic nature of the government’s operations in advance of the oil industry was obvious to anyone in the area. The government would begin by indiscriminant bombing, driving many from their homes. This would be followed by helicopter gunships flying low in order to attack those that remained.
‘The third step was sending ground troops coming in vehicles and coming on foot to make sure no more people were there,’ said Ninrew.
Soldiers would then establish posts just beyond the area they wanted to control, he said. After that, the machinery and the surveyors would arrive. Once they were done their work, the pattern would be repeated as the oil company expanded into territory falling under its concession.”

The Millennium Villages don’t work
The Center for Global Development’s Michael Clemens writes about a new independent assessment – the first of its kind – of the Millennium Villages Project, which suggests the much-hyped experiment has had little impact on household income despite spending nearly 100 percent of local income per capita.
“While [Tilburg University’s Bernadette] Wanjala and [Radboud University’s Roldan] Muradian find that the project caused a 70% increase in agricultural productivity among the treated households, tending to increase household income, it also caused less diversification of household economic activity into profitable non-farm employment, tending to decrease household income. These countervailing effects are precisely what one might expect from a large and intensive subsidy to agricultural activity. On balance, households that received this large and intensive intervention have no more income today than households that did not receive the intervention.”

Or do they?
Yale University’s Chris Blattman takes issue with many of the statistical methods of the new study and thinks the evidence presented may in fact suggest increases in income, though he is careful to add he does not necessarily buy into the Millennium Villages Project’s basic assumption that “the whole of poverty alleviation is greater than the sum of its parts.”
“My own theory of poverty is actually the opposite: there are diminishing marginal returns to aid in a single village. I believe in the possibility of increasing returns and complementarities, but mainly through broad, national institutional and technological change. I’m personally not convinced real poverty traps exist, or can be overcome, at the household or village level.”

Latest Developments, November 24

Posted on by
Reply

In the latest news and analysis…

Water grab
The International Institute for Environment and Development has released a new report warning that the African “land grab” phenomenon also involves water rights, with implications extending far beyond the land being sold.
“‘Companies that acquire land for irrigated farming will want secure water rights, but long-term contractual commitments can jeopardise water access for local farmers,’ says co-author Lorenzo Cotula. ‘This affects not only the people who have customarily used the land that is being leased, but also distant downstream users who can be hundreds of kilometres away and even across an international border.’
The Gibe III dam in Ethiopia will enable irrigation on 150,000 [hectares] of land the Ethiopian government has allocated to investors, but studies suggest this project would lower the level of Kenya’s Lake Turkana – on which half a million Kenyans depend — by eight metres by 2024.”

Intellectual property and health
Intellectual Property Watch reports on a high-level World Trade Organization meeting on how best to balance the demands of trade, intellectual property and public health.
“There were variations in views of the issues of the health, trade and IP officials that echo differences typical across national governments. [World Health Organization head Margaret] Chan was more outspoken about putting health matters ahead of commercial interests, using especially strong language against the tobacco industry, which is lobbying intensively in trade arenas like the WTO to stop national governments from taking actions against tobacco packaging aimed at discouraging smoking. Chan also said that an “elephant in the room” is policy incoherence within governments, where different agencies are working in different directions, and then they expect the international organisations to solve their internal issues.”

Intellectual property and poverty
United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development Jomo Kwame Sundaram argues stronger intellectual property rules have “ominous implications” for the world’s poor.
“Affordable and equitable access to existing and new technologies is crucial for human progress and sustainable development in many areas, including food security and climate-change mitigation and adaptation.
The same is true of affordable access to essential medicines, on which progress has been modest. By 2009, such medicines were available in just 42% of poor countries’ public facilities and 64% of private-sector facilities. Meanwhile, median prices in the public sector were 2.7 times the international reference prices and 6.1 times higher in the private sector!”

The price of secrecy
Le Monde reports on Switzerland’s growing success at getting cash-strapped countries to sign agreements that preserve bank secrecy despite G20 pledges to tackle tax havens.
“A number of countries in financial difficulty are in fact negotiating similar deals [to those recently signed by Germany and the UK] with Bern or are preparing to do so, such as Italy and Greece, according to several sources. But the Rubik accords are highly problematic, says a chorus of officials and NGOs. For starters, according to a source that is well acquainted with the file, ‘the text is a way for Switzerland to snuff out European efforts to obtain automatic exchange of financial information, which it absolutely does not want.’ ‘Morally, these deals are tough to swallow because they maintain the anonymity of account holders,’ adds the French government’s point man on the fight against tax havens, François d’Aubert.” [Translated from the French.]

Phoned-in CSR reports
The Guardian reports on a study that suggests companies are not taking environmental reporting seriously.
“The examination of more than 4,000 corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports and company surveys by a team at Leeds University found ‘irrelevant data, unsubstantiated claims, gaps in data and inaccurate figures’ – a finding that will cast serious doubt over the burgeoning sector.
Among the most colourful mistakes and omissions made by some of the world’s biggest corporations were a company whose carbon footprint was four times that for the whole world, and a carmaker and power group which both, entirely legally, managed to excise a huge coal plant from their pollution record.”

Chevron’s rights suspended
Reuters reports Brazil has suspended Chevron’s drilling rights following an offshore spill earlier this month.
“Chevron initially attributed the ‘sheen’ on the sea surface to naturally occurring seepage from the seabed. The company is being investigated by the Federal Police, which noted discrepancies between Chevron’s account of the spill and the government’s.
The Frade leak, while small, is likely to provide more ammunition for the growing worldwide opposition to offshore drilling in the wake of the estimated 4-million-barrel BP Deepwater Horizon spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.”

Nuclear weapons-free zones
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor emeritus Noam Chomsky argues that despite President Obama’s “rhetorical commitment” to nuclear non-proliferation, America’s actions “are in direct contradiction” to this posture.
“Parenthetically, we may add that US insistence on maintaining nuclear facilities in Diego Garcia undermines the [nuclear weapons-free zone] established by the African Union, just as Washington continues to block a Pacific NWFZ by excluding its Pacific dependencies.”

Linking transparency and procurement
Tax Justice Network guest blogger Matti Ylönen writes about a proposal in Helsinki to link corporate transparency and public procurement, an idea he hopes will spread beyond northern Europe.
“While discussions on binding Country-by-Country reporting standards are steadily gaining momentum in international fora, the city board of Helsinki has decided that it’s time to open another track. After returning the initiative earlier for further preparation, the board is now ready for Helsinki to start the background work on how the City of Helsinki could positively favour companies that report their key financial information openly and on country-by-country basis in public procurement.”

Republic of Lakotah
Al Jazeera asks if Native Americans could have their own country within US borders.
“In 2007, the Lakotah Freedom Delegation – a group of Native Americans led by activist Russell Means – declared sovereignty from the United States and proposed the founding of a new country known as the Republic of Lakotah.
The proposed nation would be based on territory demarcated by an 1851 land agreement made between the U.S. government and Lakotah tribal leaders. The Republic of Lakotah would cover a 200,000-square-kilometre space that is currently claimed by the states of North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana and Wyoming.
The U.S. government does not recognise Lakotah or its representatives, stating that its leaders were not democratically-elected and that members are still subject to U.S. law. Lakotah would be a federation of semi-autonomous tribal groups, and governance would be based on an interpretation of a pre-European indigenous political format.”