Latest Developments, November 8

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Cholera compensation
Al Jazeera reports a US-based human rights group is seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in reparations from the UN for those affected by a deadly cholera outbreak in Haiti.
“‘The cholera outbreak is directly attributable to the negligence, gross negligence, recklessness and deliberate indifference for the health and lives of Haiti’s citizens by the United Nations and its subsidiary, the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH),’ the petition said.
It said numerous studies, including those by the UN, traced the virus to UN personnel from Nepal.
‘Until MINUSTAH’s actions incited the cholera outbreak, Haiti had not reported a single case of cholera for over 50 years,’ the petition said.”

Development as right
The UN News Centre reports that on the 25th anniversary of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development, some of the organization’s top officials conceded the principle had “languished” in practice.
“‘The fact that almost three billion people live in poverty and that 20 per cent of the world’s people hold 70 per cent of its total income means that we have not kept our promises,’ said High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay.”

R2P’s uncertain future
Embassy Magazine reports that, while a number of Responsibility to Protect proponents have pointed to the NATO intervention in Libya as a successful implementation of the doctrine, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan argues the “jury is still out.”
“When the council voted to effectively unleash the air power of western countries like the United States, France and Britain against Libyan military infrastructure and equipment, Brazil, China, India and Russia all abstained, sending a “powerful message” that the UN’s top body was divided, said Mr. Annan.
‘Therefore, when you go to implement that resolution, you have to be very careful to stick to that resolution,’ he said.
That powerful message is reverberating in another failed council effort. An Oct. 5 resolution, that would have condemned Syria for the killing of thousands of people the UN says was at the hands of Syrian government authorities, was vetoed by China and Russia under the auspices that it didn’t explicitly rule out another foreign military intervention.”

Open-pit ban
MiningWatch Canada reports the government of a Philippine province has issued a ban on open-pit mining over the objections of Canadian mining company TVI Pacific, which has vowed to take legal action.
“‘The destruction of our land and natural resources through open pit mining is irreversible and the forced displacement of communities contradicts the real meaning of development, or should we ask “development for whom?”’ says Daniel Castillo, Director of the Dipolog Committee on Mining Initiatives, a Church-based support group in Zamboanga del Norte.”

Benefits of conservation
The UN Environment Program’s Achim Steiner makes the economic case for protecting animal species from extinction, using the example of Palau which recently became the first country to declare its waters a shark sanctuary and now earns an estimated eight percent of its GDP through shark-diving tours.
“Nature should never be prized merely for its economic value. But, in a world of competing demands and limited resources, economic considerations can help to tip decisions in favor of conservation rather than degradation. This kind of strategic thinking can help to ensure that the world’s 10,000 migratory species continue their journeys, so that future generations can also marvel at these nomads of the natural world.”

Learning from others
The University of Cambridge’s Tarak Barkawi argues that because we live in “a jingoistic age, when Westerners, Asians and Muslims are all convinced of their own superiority,” new ideas and solutions are impeded by a reluctance to learn from and co-operate with others.
“And so, when we look upon the Arab Spring, we should not interpret it as a matter of Arabs having finally read John Locke and Thomas Jefferson and applied Western ideas. We should look instead for the new ideas, the new possibilities, the new politics created up by the protesters, activists and ordinary people who have made revolution.
We should be cognizant too that the Arab Winter will be a university of counter-revolution, as new forms of repression, of neo-imperialism and of exploitation are developed in response to novel circumstances.”

Othering and torture
The University of Edinburgh’s Tobias Kelly writes about the long-standing Western tradition of viewing torture as something that is only committed by uncivilized “others”, with the result that no British citizen has ever stood trial for the crime of torture.
“The problem is that too much is at stake for the British government to admit its complicity in torture. They will always try and find other words to describe the brutal ill-treatment of detainees. Assault, disobeying orders, dereliction of duty, even murder, but not torture.
Once torture has been used to make the distinction between the civilised and the barbarous, it is just too difficult for the British government to imagine that it stands on the wrong side of that line.”

Durban showdown looming
Democratic Republic of Congo negotiator Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu tells the Independent Online what he is expecting from rich countries at the upcoming climate change conference in Durban, South Africa.
“They seek to tear down the Kyoto Protocol, now or later, and to replace it with a different architecture.
A few have said they will not participate in a second commitment period, despite their legal obligations under the Kyoto Protocol, while others have said the next commitment period should be ‘transitional’ to a new regime.
In other words, they seek to ‘transition’ out of their legally binding obligations under the Kyoto Protocol into a new regime we have not designed yet.
One country seems to prefer an altogether weaker system via a ‘pledge-based’ rather than ‘science-based’ system of emission reductions that applies ‘symmetrically’ to rich and poor countries.
So it is not merely a question of who will remain inside or outside the multilateral process, but, more fundamentally, what that process will be. This is the big question for Durban.”

Latest Developments, November 7

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Energy governance
Former NATO secretary general Javier Solana and the ESADE Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics’ Ángel Saz-Carranza make the case for a system of global energy governance, arguing that neither an unregulated market nor current multilateral institutions are up to the task.
“Owing mainly to its environmentally negative externalities, an unregulated energy market is not a useful governing mechanism, because it is unable to internalize the environmental costs. It has been calculated that the most contaminating energy sources would have to pay a 70% tax to reflect their negative externalities.
A substantial lack of information in this field is another reason why the free market doesn’t work. Often, as with the properties of a gas reserve, for example, information is technically difficult to obtain. In addition, governments consider natural resources to be strategic and don’t release information about them. Finally, time frames related to energy are usually long: centuries for environmental effects or decades for investments to pay off. Thus, energy must be governed through a system of cooperation and regulation.”

Covert war
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Pratap Chatterjee argues the CIA must prove that two Pakistani boys, aged 12 and 16, who were killed last week in a drone strike posed an imminent threat to US security or else it is guilty of murder.
“Over 2,300 people in Pakistan have been killed by such missiles carried by drone aircraft such as the Predator and the Reaper, and launched by remote control from Langley, Virginia. Tariq and Waheed brought the known total of children killed in this way to 175, according to statistics maintained by the organisation I work for, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism.”

First, do no harm
The University of London’s Donna Dickenson writes about the recent discovery that American researchers intentionally infected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis in the 1940s, and she warns against ethical complacency today as more and more clinical drug trials are conducted in poor countries.
“In fact, one should view the Guatemalan study, with its incontrovertible horrors, as an extreme example of the biggest ethical problems in research today. Now, as then, richer developed countries are able to put pressure on weaker, poorer ones.
A report in 2010 revealed that foreign citizens made up more than three-quarters of all the subjects in clinical trials conducted by US firms and researchers. The US Food and Drug Administration inspected only 45 of these sites, about 0.7 per cent. There is no suggestion that Third World patients are deliberately being made ill when research is outsourced – unlike in the Guatemalan case – but that does not attenuate the inherent vulnerability of populations lacking basic medical care or experiencing epidemics.”

Investment agreements
The Guardian reports on bilateral investment treaties and how their investor-state dispute mechanism is a powerful and increasingly popular tool for transnational corporations to sue governments whose policies threaten their profits.
“There is growing concern among legal experts and the countries hit by these legal cases that the investment regime, made up of a patchwork of bilateral investment treaties and multilateral agreements, favours corporations over the public interest, puts sovereignty at stake, is chronically lacking in transparency and accountability and has been mis-sold to many developing countries that only realise exactly what they have signed up for when they get sued.
…
In the last 15 years multinational corporations have increasingly recognised the potential of the ISDM, and this area of law – in which lawyers and arbitrators can command fees of $500 an hour and more – has seen a rapid expansion. A UN report in 2010 noted that 57% of all known cases have been brought in the last five years, with growing numbers of law firms opening large, dedicated sections.”

Affordable medicine
Intellectual Property Watch reports the Medicines Patent Pool, whose goal is to improve access to effective HIV/AIDS treatments in poor countries, has responded to criticism of a deal it signed with a major pharmaceutical company earlier this year.
“The Pool said in its response that the Gilead deal is not a template for the future, and that it includes more countries in its scope than any other HIV licence to date. The response also details how the licence does not undermine flexibilities contained within the World Trade Organization Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). It also seeks to address concerns related to production of generic products in India and elsewhere.”

Ethical oil
Nobel laureates Jody Williams and Desmond Tutu argue one of their own, US President Barack Obama, will take “one of the single most disastrous decisions of his presidency concerning climate change and the very future of our planet” if he approves construction of the Keystone XL pipeline that would transport oil from Canada’s controversial “tar sands” to the Gulf of Mexico.
“The claim that Alberta’s fossil fuels are “ethical” because Canada is a friend is a specious ploy aimed at perpetuating the world’s addiction to fossil fuels. There is no such thing as ethical fossil fuel, regardless of geographical origin. The ethical choice is to move as quickly as possible away from fossil fuels, period.”

Roadmap for sustainable development
The UNDiplomatic Times’s Bhaskar Menon calls for a specific course of action to be mapped out at next year’s Rio+20 summit in order to actually undertake the radical changes needed to achieve sustainable development.
“The [UN] secretary-general’s report submitted earlier this year to the committee preparing for the [Rio+20] conference noted that to succeed in ‘fundamentally shifting consumption and production patterns onto a more sustainable path’, public policy would have to extend ‘well beyond “getting prices right”’.
However, it did not say what specific policy measures would be necessary. Indeed, nowhere in the massive body of documentation the United Nations has produced since it convened the first Environment Conference in 1972 can we find a single analysis of that issue.”

Latest Developments, November 3

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G20 futility
The Res Publica Foundation’s Julien Landfried argues that despite the apparent multilateralism of G20 summits, competing interests stand in the way of actual progress.
“Everything is happening as though it were inconceivable to neutralize the predations of the financial system on the economy. US President Obama has disappointed his most devoted supporters with his concessions to American financial lobbyists. Financial institutions are calling the shots and dictating the terms, for the most part, of bank bailout plans past and future. They have not just escaped the costs of the crisis, but have taken the ascendancy over states thanks to the public debt crisis, even though its causes lie in the private debt crisis. Nothing will be possible as long as a dismantling of the “financial complex” has not been undertaken. Let’s wager a government that summoned the courage to stand up to financial interests would retrieve not only its own dignity but the respect of the people as well. (Translated from the French.)

Bill Gates & Robin Hood
The Guardian reports Bill Gates has thrown his weight behind a proposed EU financial transaction tax – the so-called Robin Hood tax – despite concerns, particularly in London’s financial sector, that the tax would be bad for business.
“The City has been lobbying the government hard to resist an FTT but Gates said he hoped the prime minister would allow other members of the G20 to press ahead even if Britain remained opposed. ‘It doesn’t seem that the UK should have an objection when it has a settlement tax of its own,’ Gates said, referring to stamp duty levied on share deals. He added: ‘Hong Kong and the UK, which are both big financial centres, have settlement taxes. At the same rate levels it could be adopted by more countries and raise a fair amount of revenue.’”

Amazonas 2030
The Inter Press Service reports on the Colombian government’s decision to reconsider mining titles in its Amazon region, as well as the release of a new index that attempts to measure “the quality of life of ecosystems.”
“The Ministry of Mines and Energy’s announcement that it is studying the cancellation of mining concessions was made on Oct. 26 at the presentation of the Amazonas 2030 Index, developed by an alliance of the same name which collects social, environmental and economic data on the Colombian portion of this rainforest that constitutes the heart of South America.
The study is innovative in that it grants the same importance to the dimensions of the environment and indigenous communities as it does to economic, social and institutional dimensions. Each has a weight of 20 percent.”

Limited protectionism
The Fondation Jean-Jaurès’s Gérard Fuchs has some suggestions – involving land title, agricultural imports and market speculation – that he believes the G20 should adopt to tackle world hunger without having to promise new funds.
“The other threat to food production is the importation of agricultural products which countries in the South have been compelled to accept. Local agriculture has suffered as a result, leading to an uncontrolled rural exodus and mushrooming slums, and when the prices of imported products skyrocket, food riots erupt. It is necessary then to regulate food imports to provide local farmers with the protection they still need to improve productivity, but this position runs counter to free trade. A second proposal, therefore, should be debated within the World Trade Organization to allow regional groupings like ECOWAS [the Economic Community of West African States] or the EU to adopt protective measures aimed at maintaining as much food self-sufficiency as possible. (Translated from the French.)

Fair trade caution
The Landless Workers Movement’s Janaina Stronzake makes the case against treating food as a commodity and argues that fair trade is not automatically a good thing.
“Fair trade is one of the components that can help cure the world’s hunger. Nevertheless, some data from 2009 pointed to a large concentration of commerce in cacao, coffee and tea, so seeing fair trade without seeing food sovereignty in these countries can also bring a problem of monocultures and the concentration of leadership of one or a few NGOs that rule over these fair trades.
Relationships between people in this fight to end hunger cannot be based purely on commerce.”

The nature of foreign policy
The University of Texas, Austin’s Robert Jensen calls for the US to “shift to policies designed not to allow us to run the world but to help us become part of the world.”
“Whether it was Latin America, southern Africa, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia, the central goal of US foreign policy has been consistent: to make sure that an independent course of development did not succeed anywhere. The ‘virus’ of independent development could not be allowed to take root in any country out of a fear that it might infect the rest of the developing world.”

Paying the piper
The Broker provides a mid-point roundup of the Busan debate it is hosting in the run-up to this month’s aid effectiveness conference, in which it highlights, among other things, the power imbalance inherent in the aid industry.
“Touching on the conversation about new donors, Akemi Yonemura also argues that national development plans and local priorities need to be given top priority. Both traditional and new approaches, she argues, are not necessarily needs-based. Ideas often come from donors. Recipients provide the information that donors want to hear and implement projects that donors recommend (or exclusively fund) until the donor money is exhausted. Thus some local concerns remain neglected, a sentiment echoed by Sundar Kumar Sharma. Both the donors and recipients are uncomfortable with the extent to which development is donor-driven, but phasing out this relationship is remarkably difficult once it has been established.”

Latest Developments, November 2

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Equity and sustainability
The UN Development Programme has released its new Human Development Report, in which it links the dual goals of global equity and sustainability – not for the first time, as illustrated by its quoting of another UN report from 1987.
“Many problems of resource depletion and environmental stress arise from disparities in economic and political power. An industry may get away with unacceptable levels of water pollution because the people who bear the brunt of it are poor and unable to complain effectively. A forest may be destroyed by excessive felling because the people living there have no alternatives or because timber contractors generally have more influence than forest dwellers. Globally, wealthier nations are better placed financially and technologically to cope with the effects of climatic change. Hence, our inability to promote the common interest in sustainable development is often a product of the relative neglect of economic and social justice within and amongst nations.” (emphasis in original)

A step backward
A group of NGOs is warning that international negotiations set for later this month in Geneva threaten to undo much of the progress to date on banning cluster munitions.
“Over the last few months, under pressure from several military powers that are opposed to the [Convention on Cluster Munitions], such as the United States, France has thrown it support behind a proposed international agreement, known as “Protocol VI” that would once again authorize the use of cluster munitions produced after 1980. A step backward, contradicting the norm established by the Convention, that would be unprecedented in international humanitarian law.
From Novermber 14th to 25th, country representatives will meet in Geneva to discuss the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) and will decide on the adoption of this new text. If it is passed, these barbaric weapons would once again be considered legitimate by certain states.” (Translated from the French.)

Corruption’s supply side
Transparency International has released a new Bribe Payers Index, which examines the “supply side of bribery” – the likelihood that companies from a given country or sector will offer bribes when operating abroad – and for the first time includes bribes paid between companies, rather than simply to the public sector.
“While this particular form of bribery remains largely overlooked by researchers and policy-makers, its impact is likely to be significant. Its effects can be felt through the entire supply chain, distorting markets and competition, increasing costs to firms, penalising the smaller companies that cannot afford to compete on these terms and those firms with high integrity that refuse to do so. This not only prevents a fair and efficient private sector but also reduces the quality of products and services to the consumer.”

Human trade
The Inter Press Service reports on the complex human trafficking networks that are flourishing in the Horn of Africa’s context of conflict, drought and hunger.
“According to one Kenyan human trafficking agent, the networks have links to politicians, senior police officers, non-governmental organisations, senior immigration officials, airline officers and resettlement officials in various countries.
‘These powerful people, including foreign diplomats and ministers in Kenya, have transformed access to foreign visas into a growth industry matched possibly only by piracy, selling visas for 10,000 to 15,000 dollars each to leaders of the networks,’ the agent says.”

EU reform fallout
The Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (SOMO) has released a report suggesting the EU is undertaking financial reforms without regard for sustainability or their impact on poor countries.
“The new SOMO report provides some concrete recommendations on how the EU’s financial reforms need to be improved. All financial services, products and derivative trading need to be assessed for their risks and usefulness to society and the environment, as well as for financial stability. The supervisors and regulators of developing countries should have a say in the supervision and decisions concerning European banks that are operating in their country. Overall, speculative banking and financial markets need to be separated from retail banking and basic financial services, and that also means preventing financial links (e.g. loans) between banks and hedge funds.”

Due diligence
Following last month’s collapse of a French-owned hydroelectric plant in Panama, Counter Balance is calling on the European Investment Bank to investigate the troubled project for which it provided $220 million in loans.
“This is not the first problem with this project. In August 2010 a nearby village was flooded after the company opened a sluice. Other damage to private property was caused by detonations in the early stages of the construction. Additionally the Counter Balance report [published in the spring] lists a number of problems related to the project such as the excessive cost of the project (3 times higher than average for these projects), the alleged speculation on land which the company could buy below marked prices and the failure by the project promoters to properly consult local communities.”

There will be blood
The Courthouse News Service reports California-based Occidental Petroleum has been accused in a federal complaint of giving millions of dollars to a Colombian army unit whose alleged misdeeds included the killings of three union activists.
“The Colombian army provided security to an ‘association’ made up of [Colombia’s state oil company] Ecopetrol, Occidental and Spanish oil company Repsol, the plaintiffs say. Occidental’s Colombian subsidiary, Oxy Colombia, committed roughly $3 million to the army under the agreement, an amount ‘so large that Occidental’s U.S.-based leadership must have approved the 2004 Security Agreement,’ the complaint states.”

Enforcing transparency
The Taskforce on Financial Integrity and Economic Development has issued a statement ahead of the G20 summit in Cannes, in which it suggests concrete ways that world leaders can “focus on the underlying, systemic causes of the current financial crisis.”
“A free-market cannot flourish when rules of fair play are perverted by the corruption and legally-condoned tax cheating that has resulted from 30 years of de-regulation, liberalization and increasing financial secrecy provided by tax havens.
As the living standards and job prospects of billions of people suffer, the fundamental injustice of the current financial system has led to the groundswell of anger represented by the ‘Occupy’ movements around the world. Many of the ill effects currently suffered by ‘rich country’ economies have been endured by the developing world for decades.”

Latest Developments, November 1

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Commitment to development
The Center for Global Development’s David Roodman presents his organization’s latest Commitment to Development Index which assesses donor countries based on policies that go beyond aid levels, but he expresses concern over the US’s skyrocketing ranking as a result of its increased number of troops in Afghanistan.
“The approach in the security component to military activities is shaped by three ideas: some interventions, such as the NATO-led war to stop the serves from potentially committing genocide in Bosnia, seem like contributions to development; other interventions are much harder to defend; and the rule used to distinguish between the two kinds should be mechanical, to limit bias—”objective,” if you will. It was Michael O’Hanlon who years ago suggested the presence-of-an-international-mandate criterion. (As mentioned, the Afghanistan war has such a mandate.) But even O’Hanlon argued for exceptions, at the time having Iraq in mind. The Security Council did not sanction the invasion of Iraq, but it did sanction post-invasion activities, so a strict implementation of the criterion would have rewarded the latter. O’Hanlon argued against rewarding the occupation of Iraq since it was so thoroughly motivated by national security rationales, not ‘commitment to development.’”

Private police
The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Indonesian police have admitted to receiving money from US mining giant Freeport-McMoRan to protect the world’s most profitable gold and copper mine in the face of labour unrest.
“Accusing the workers of ‘anarchy’ and threatening a national asset, local police chief Deny Edward Siregar warned the police would take ‘stern action’ if the site of the picket line wasn’t moved by today. Union officials responded by saying they were going nowhere, setting the scene for possibly more violence.
Police spokesman Wachyono defined the foreshadowed ‘stern action’ as ‘opening further negotiations with union management’. However, five striking workers have already been shot dead by police, raising accusations of a heavy-handed and hostile attitude of security personnel towards workers exercising their legal rights to industrial action.
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‘How can they enforce the law [impartially] if they receive bribes?’ said Samsul Alam Agus, [human rights group] Kontras deputy co-ordinator.”

Private soldiers
The UN News Centre reports that an expert panel is calling for the regulation of the “ever expanding” activities of private military and security companies.
“‘And it is not just governments who take advantage of their services, but also NGOs [non-governmental organizations], private companies and the United Nations,” [Faiza Patel, the current head of the Working Group on the use of mercenaries] added.
For the Working Group, ‘the potential impact of the widespread activities of private military and security companies on human rights means that they cannot be allowed to continue to operate without adequate regulation and mechanisms to ensure accountability.’”

Record deportations
The Inter Press Service reports on the increasingly hostile environment for immigrants in the US, where a million people have been deported since the start of Barack Obama’s presidency.
“The Alabama law [House Bill 56], passed by the state legislature in June 2011, is described as one of the country’s harshest anti-immigrant bills. It requires that police demand identity documents of anyone who they have “reasonable suspicion” to believe is in the country unlawfully, and requires public schools to determine the immigration status of primary and secondary school students, while authorising school officials to report children or parents who may be in the country illegally.
It also establishes penalties, even jail time, for people who hire, rent to or even assist undocumented immigrants, by giving a ride to a neighbour, for instance.”

Toothless watchdog
The CBC reports on the record to date of Canada’s mining watchdog, a position which one critic has described as “a bogus PR job, as a cover for business as usual.”
“In October 2009, the federal government appointed a corporate social responsibility counsellor to probe complaints about Canadian companies committing abuses in developing countries.
The Toronto-based office, however, has only received two complaints in the past two years — one of which was recently dropped because the mining corporation chose not to undergo the voluntary investigation.”

Super companies
Oxfam’s Duncan Green blogs about a new scientific analysis of 43,000 transnational corporations that suggests a group of 147 interconnected companies was “able to control 40 per cent of the entire network.”
“The idea that a few bankers control a large chunk of the global economy might not seem like news to New York’s Occupy Wall Street movement and protesters elsewhere. But the study, by a trio of complex systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, is the first to go beyond ideology to empirically identify such a network of power. It combines the mathematics long used to model natural systems with comprehensive corporate data to map ownership among the world’s transnational corporations (TNCs).”

Global tax rules
ActionAid’s Martin Hearson calls on the G20 to deal with tax havens which cost poor countries three times as much in lost tax revenues as they receive through international assistance.
“ActionAid’s report, Calling Time: Why SABMiller should stop dodging taxes in Africa, demonstrated how one multinational beer company shifts £100 million of profits per year – the taxes on which could educate 250,000 children – out of Africa and into the tax havens of Mauritius, Switzerland and the Netherlands. Capacity building in African tax authorities is important, but without more fundamental reforms to increase transparency and change global tax rules, it will never be enough to prevent this kind of tax dodging.”

Helpful aid
Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo has called on G20 leaders to help Africa improve its infrastructure while making it clear not all assistance is necessarily helpful.
“The pressure is on how to translate the plan into purposeful action for November and avoid the pitfalls of past efforts – including short-term thinking, destabilizing capital surges, and carbon-heavy construction. Success will be measured by the amount of capital generated, and the number of projects realized, as well as by the extent to which G20 activities complement and synergize existing efforts without supplanting or fragmenting them.”