Latest Developments, October 31

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New nuclear age
The Guardian reports on a new study suggesting countries that already possess nuclear arms are planning to spend large sums of money to upgrade their capabilities over the coming years.
“Despite government budget pressures and international rhetoric about disarmament, evidence points to a new and dangerous ‘era of nuclear weapons’, the report for the British American Security Information Council (Basic) warns. It says the US will spend $700bn (£434bn) on the nuclear weapons industry over the next decade, while Russia will spend at least $70bn on delivery systems alone. Other countries including China, India, Israel, France and Pakistan are expected to devote formidable sums on tactical and strategic missile systems.
For several countries, including Russia, Pakistan, Israel and France, nuclear weapons are being assigned roles that go well beyond deterrence, says the report. In Russia and Pakistan, it warns, nuclear weapons are assigned ‘war-fighting roles in military planning’.”

Dictator savings
Global Witness has welcomed a resolution adopted at last week’s UN anti-corruption conference that calls for national governments to enforce laws that forbid banks to accept money looted from the coffers of other states.
“Corruption on the scale that causes revolutions cannot happen without a bank to take the money. The very fact that some states are trying to get stolen money returned makes it clear that something has gone very wrong; these funds, which belong to the people of Egypt and Tunisia, should not be in foreign bank accounts in the first place,” said Global Witness’s George Boden.

Seal of approval
A new report by the Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations detailing labour rights violations on tea plantations owned by British-Dutch company Unilever raises “doubts regarding the reliability of Rainforest Alliance certification.”
“Civil society organisations have been urging tea companies for many years to address the precarious working conditions of millions of tea workers worldwide. In response, there is a clear trend of multinational tea packers indeed stepping up their efforts to address sustainability issues in this sector. To this end tea companies are increasingly making use of independent and more rigorous multi-stakeholder sustainability standard systems, such as Rainforest Alliance (RA), Utz Certified and Fairtrade, which are generally seen as best industry practice. As a consequence the share of world tea exports certified by global standard systems grew by 2000% in the period from 2004 to 2009 alone. It is estimated that roughly 15% of tea exported worldwide will have been certified in 2011. Now several years later this study is assessing whether there is evidence of improvement of the working conditions on tea estates that have achieved RA certification, the most important sustainability certification in the tea sector in terms of volume.”

Biopiracy
Al Jazeera reports on allegations that a subsidiary of US biotech giant Monsanto genetically modified Indian eggplant seeds without obtaining prior authorization.
“In response, the national biodiversity authority has announced its plans to prosecute Monsanto for carrying out this research without seeking its permission and the consent of hundreds of thousands of farmers who have cultivated these varieties for generations. Officials at the authority say that, by failing to consult with farmers and the national biodiversity authority, the multinational firm has run foul of India’s Biological Diversity Act 2002. The law states that, if companies want to genetically modify indigenous varieties of seeds and plants – for research or commercialisation purposes – they must obtain prior consent of the authority. That never happened, the national biodiversity authority says, so now Monsanto and Mahyco look set to face charges of biopiracy – a fancy word for theft. It will be the first criminal prosecution under the act if it goes ahead. Though brinjal is a vegetable that is now widely eaten and grown around the world, it is native to south Asia with more than 2,500 varieties.”

Colonization through investment
The Observer reports on the fallout of a biofuel bust in Tanzania, where a village leader speaks of “colonialism in the form of investment.”
“A quarter of the village’s land in Kisarawe district was acquired by a British biofuels company in 2008, with the promise of financial compensation, 700 jobs, water wells, improved schools, health clinics and roads. But the company has gone bust, leaving villagers not just jobless but landless as well. The same story is playing out across Africa, as foreign investors buy up land but leave some of the poorest people on Earth worse off when their plans fail.”

The right to food
A UN food expert is urging world leaders to put the right to food ahead of commercial interests at this week’s G-20 summit.
“The G-20 made an important statement of intent by placing food security at the top of its agenda. But agreeing on a food security action plan without addressing biofuels and speculation would be like running a bath without putting in the plug. All of the good ideas simply drain away,” according to UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food Olivier De Schutter.

Development 3.0
The World Bank’s Justin Yifu Lin argues for a third way in development thinking – in the wake of “structuralist, state-led” policies on the one hand, and “largely neo-liberal” ones on the other – and addresses critiques from three eminent economists.
“The credibility argument [that policies were not reversible] was used to support the shock therapy in the East European and Formal Soviet Union’s transition in the early 1990s. However, to ward off large unemployment and subsequent social/political instability, governments in transition economies were very often forced to provide other disguised and less efficient forms of subsidies and protection to firms in the old priority sectors even though those firms were privatized. As a result most transition economies encountered the awkward situation of ‘shock without therapy’.”

Business and human rights
In an interview with Business Ethics Magazine, John Ruggie talks about the voluntary guiding principles he formulated over his six years as UN special representative for business and human rights and the inevitable evolution towards legal accountability.
“Finally, judicial remedy will continue to evolve. Judicial reform in countries where the rule of law is weak and governments are corrupt is a slow process, but it is happening. And the web of legal liability for corporate involvement in egregious violations is expanding in the home countries of multinational corporations—a trajectory that will continue no matter how the U.S. Supreme Court rules on the applicability of the Alien Tort Statute to legal persons, such as corporations.”

Latest Developments, October 28

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Land rights as human rights
An international human rights hearing could mark a fundamental change in the relationship between Canada’s aboriginal peoples and its federal and provincial governments.
“[University of Victoria anthropologist Prof. Brian Thom] said he believes it signalled the moment where B.C. First Nations may turn away from the treaty negotiation process and move towards settling their issues as human rights abuses.
‘They’re reframing the whole discourse today,’ said Thom. ‘The decisions of this commission could be crucial in reframing the next generation of aboriginal leadership. We’ve just had 20 years of that process and the current generation, I think, is tired of that discussion.’
‘The next generation may be thinking about human rights for a good long time.’”

The price of justice
The Bureau of Investigative Journalism’s Nick Mathiason writes that the British coalition government’s proposed legal aid amendments could have serious consequences well beyond the UK’s borders.
“One major lesson from cases such as this [against UK-based miner Monterrico over alleged abuses in Peru] is that transnational companies can no longer operate in poorer countries thinking they can’t be pursued. But will similar claims be pursued in the future if the coalition government’s bill becomes law?
[Human rights law firm] Leigh Day, which also successfully fought Trafigura on behalf of more than 30,000 Ivorian victims allegedly poisoned from toxic waste, thinks not. It believes that it will now be much harder for indigenous communities and others living in poorer countries to get legal redress for human rights violations associated with the activities of multinational companies based in the UK.
This is because under sections 41–43 of the proposed reforms are three clauses that will make it all but impossible to pursue claims in British courts.”

Empty words
Jack Ucciferri of Harrington Investments calls the UN’s framework for business and human rights a “patently worthless document” and asks if “we really think that the best way to regulate corporate behavior is engage them in “Multi-Stakeholder Processes.”
“I searched the Document-Whose-Name-is-Too-Uppity-to-be-Uttered [Protect, Respect and Remedy] for a few terms. Ready?:
Variations of the word ‘responsible’ appear 14 times in 7 pages
Variations of the word ‘liable’ – 0 times.
Variations of the word ‘accountable’ – 0 times.
Variations of the word ‘culpable’ – 0 times.”

Sacred and valuable land
Al Jazeera reports on a dispute over land in Central Mexico that is sacred to the local Wixarika people but potentially lucrative for a pair of Canadian mining companies.
“‘It’s as if they wanted to put a gas station in the middle of the Basilica,’ said Santos de la Cruz, referring to the most sacred shrine of Mexican Catholics, the Basilica of Guadalupe. De la Cruz is a traditional authority in his community of Bancos San Hipólito and also an attorney engaged in the legal battle to defend his people’s lands and traditions.
In a press conference flanked by a cadre of grim-faced Wixarika men and women who had travelled for days from their communities in the western Sierra Madre, De la Cruz grew visibly emotional. ‘What they want to do is to rip out the vein of the heart of Wirikuta – and that’s why we’re here… We’re not interested in gold and silver; what interests us is life.’”

Mining for Development
Pro Bono News reports the Australian government’s new Mining for Development Initiative, which includes $22 million in funding for NGOs, is getting mixed reviews from civil society groups, with Oxfam enthusiastically endorsing it and ActionAid expressing serious reservations.
“[ActionAid’s Florence Apuri] said, ‘Our experience shows mining often brings more hardship than benefits to poor communities. Land grabs and the destruction of local ecosystems as a result of mining often makes it more difficult for poor communities to earn a living from the land and to feed their families.’
ActionAid said it applauds the idea of supporting developing countries to maximise the social return on mining, however the Government must recognise that the benefits of mining are not always equally spread.”

New Green Revolution
Macalester College geographer William G. Moseley argues the lessons of China’s Green Revolution are being misapplied by those pushing for greater use of genetically modified seeds and chemical fertilizers in Africa.
“While China and the West benefit from this New Green Revolution strategy, it is not clear if the same is true for small farmers and poor households in sub-Saharan Africa. For most food-insecure households on the continent, there are at least two problems with this strategy. First, such an approach to farming is energy-intensive, as most fertilisers and pesticides are petroleum based. Inducing poor farmers to adopt energy-intensive farming methods is short-sighted, if not unethical, if experts know that global energy prices are likely to rise. Second, irrespective of energy prices, the “New Green Revolution” approach requires farmers to purchase seeds and inputs, which means that it will be inaccessible to the poorest of the poor, who are the most likely to suffer from periods of hunger.”

Creating wealth
Columbia University’s Jagdish Bhagwati argues that economic growth, rather than redistribution of existing wealth, is still the best tool for tackling poverty in poor countries.
“In impoverished countries where the poor exceed the rich by a huge margin, redistribution would increase the consumption of the poor only minimally – by, say, a chapati a day – and the increase would not be sustainable in a context of low income and high population growth. In short, for most developing countries, growth is the principal strategy for inclusive development – that is, development that consciously includes the marginal and poorest members of a society.”

The age of responsibility
Former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans argues the international community’s handling of the Libyan conflict was the moment the Responsibility to Protect “really came of age.”
“Other developments, both before and since, have reinforced and embedded the RtoP norm. Even as the NATO-led intervention in Libya was being widely criticized for overreaching its narrow mandate, a major General Assembly debate in July 2011 reaffirmed overwhelming support among UN member states for the RtoP concept, in all of its dimensions. The arguments now are not about the principle, but about how to apply it.”

Latest Developments, October 27

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French weapons
Jeune Afrique reports that the French defence ministry has released its annual report to parliament on arms exports and while undemocratic Morocco was the top African importer, Arab Spring heavyweights Libya and Egypt were second and fourth, respectively.
“Forces loyal to Moammar Gadhafi fought the rebels with new French weapons: 88.4 million euros worth of military equipment was shipped to Libya last year (the most in five years), according to a report to parliament for 2010 published on Oct. 26. While Paris insists arms exports are conditional on the “respect for human rights” of the buyers, that criterion was not applied to the Jamahiriya… But ministry of defence spokesman General Philippe Pontiès said “as soon as the Arab revolutions began, all authorizations were frozen.” (Translated from the French)

Corporate warlords
A Nigerian foreign affairs official has called for a crackdown on the illegal importation of small arms into West Africa by “corporate warlords” from rich countries, according to the Africa Report.
“[Lawrence Olefumi Obisakin] said small arms and light weapons were the “weapons of mass destruction” in West Africa, in view of the devastation witnessed from their misuse and the destabilising effects they had on the region’s socio-economic development, including the Niger Delta.
Nigeria had spent more than $10 billion in the last two decades to stem the tide of recurrent conflicts caused by the circulation of an estimated eight million small arms, he said.”

Canadian expropriation
A coalition of human rights and indigenous peoples’ groups has released a statement welcoming the start of an international hearing into land rights in Canada.
“The case before Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) concerns the 1884 expropriation of over 237,000 hectares of resource-rich land from the traditional territories of the Hul’qumi’num peoples on Vancouver Island. The Hul’qumi’num Treaty Group (HTG) alleges that Canada has violated international human rights norms by refusing to negotiate for any form of redress for the expropriated lands, which are now mostly in the hands of large forestry companies, and by failing to protect Hul’qumi’num interests while the dispute remains unresolved.”

Consumers of war
In an interview with the Calgary Herald, physician and humanitarian Samantha Nutt discusses her new book Damned Nations: Greed, Guns, Armies and Aid and the ways in which rich countries help perpetuate conflict around the world.
“We think these conflicts around the world have nothing to do with us,” she says, adding, “We are, literally, consumers of war,” through everything from our pension funds to the purchasing of cellphones, diamond rings and gasoline.
“The Canada Pension Plan has investments in arms manufacturers,” she says, noting in her book she provides advice to average Canadians on how to keep closer tabs on where their investments, and charity dollars, go.”

Tanzanian taxman
Reuters reports South African mining giant AngloGold Ashanti has started paying a 30 percent corporate tax rate to Tanzania after more than a decade of commercial production in the country.
“The government began negotiations with mining companies to pay the tax after drafting a new mining policy in 2009 and the subsequent passing of new mining legislation last year.
‘This is the first time that AngloGold will start paying corporate tax since it entered the Tanzanian market,’ said the presidency.
Australian gold miner Resolute Mining was the first mining company to start paying corporate tax in Tanzania, according to the African country’s minerals ministry.
Mining officials said the government was also in talks with African Barrick Gold , which has four gold mines in Tanzania, on payment of the tax.”

Social protection floor
A new UN report calls for the worldwide establishment of a “social protection floor” that would guarantee a basic, livable income for all through transfers in cash or in kind.
“This report…shows that the extension of social protection, drawing on social protection floors, can play a pivotal role in relieving people of poverty and deprivation. It can in addition help people adapt their skills to overcome the constraints that block their full participation in a changing economic and social environment, contributing to improved human capital development and stimulating greater productive activity. The report also shows how social protection has helped to stabilize aggregate demand in times of crisis and to increase resilience against economic shocks, contributing to accelerate recovery towards more inclusive and sustainable development paths.”

Mandatory harmonization
The European Network on Debt and Development’s Alex Marriage argues proposed EU corporate tax harmonization is a nice idea but may do more harm than good unless it establishes a compulsory minimum rate.
“The [European] Commission’s proposal is commendable for introducing a form of formulary apportionment which seeks to establish where real economic activity takes place by looking at staffing levels, sales, assets, etc. meaning that companies cannot simply cherry pick the location where rates are lowest. This would be a crucial step forward in the fight against transfer pricing abuse by companies that use subsidiaries in low tax jurisdictions in order to minimise their tax bills. Secondly this is a move towards increased tax cooperation.”

The failure fad
Bottom Up Thinking’s MJ argues that the development industry’s growing penchant for admitting failure is a good thing but is unconvinced that this newfound humility has so far actually led to any fundamental questioning of assumptions.
“It’s hard enough to admit failure in the first place. It’s even harder to admit that you might actually be the problem. And what matter most is what you do after you’ve admitted failure.”

Latest Developments, October 26

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License to bribe
Main Justice reports that a co-author of a US Chamber of Commerce proposal to water down the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has just become the FBI’s general counsel.
“In its report ‘Restoring Balance: Proposed Amendments to the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act’ the Chamber said that the FCPA is a costly burden to business and ‘there is also reason to believe that the FCPA has made U.S. businesses less competitive than their foreign counterparts who do not have significant FCPA exposure.’ The paper called for five specific reforms including limiting a company’s ‘successor liability’ for the prior actions of a firm it has acquired and giving a clear definition of ‘foreign official’ under the statute.
The Open Society Foundation, a George Soros-funded organization issued a report, charging that [Andrew] Weissmann’s plan would ‘significantly reduce the scope and efficacy of the FCPA while substantially undermining more than 30 years of successful U.S. leadership in promoting global anti-corruption standards.’ ‘[T]he Chamber’s proposal looks more like a license to commit pervasive and intentional bribery than a modest attempt to eliminate the risk of prosecutorial over-reach,’ the report said.”

Proposed EU legislation I: A victory for transparency
Tearfund’s Jonathan Spencer welcomes proposed EU legislation that would require extractive industry companies listed in Europe and operating abroad to disclose what they pay to host governments on a project-by-project basis.
“[This information] will play a key role in releasing resources for development, improving transparency and engaging citizens with their governments. Evidence from other countries has shown that where details of budgets and projected expenditure is published, the money is much more likely to reach its intended destination and support development.”

Proposed EU legislation II: Bad for business
But a number of the companies – including Anglo American, Rio Tinto, Shell and Total – that would be subject to the proposed legislation have argued in a letter to the European Commission that such regulations are misguided and would be bad for business.
“One example is oil or gas fields which cross borders, where governments are understandably careful to safeguard the confidentiality of the terms they offer to investors,” said the letter.
“Further damage to competitiveness will be caused by the additional cost and administrative burden of project-level reporting.”

Proposed EU legislation III: No legal teeth
On the other hand, France’s Citizen Forum for Social and Environmental Responsibility argues the European Commission’s proposal lacks legal teeth.
“In fact, notwithstanding progress in certain areas such as reporting obligation, the [European Commission’s] statement on social and environmental responsibility does not address other crucial questions. The proposal lacks concrete measures to improve the legal responsibility between the parent company and its subsidiaries: companies based in Europe cannot, therefore, be considered responsible for violations perpetrated by their subsidiaries and subcontractors in the South. Nor does the statement spell out the legal avenues that would guarantee real access to justice for all victims of violations.” (Translated from the French.)

South-South cooperation
The Guardian has reproduced part of an IRIN series on how countries like Brazil, India, China and South Africa are changing the world of aid as they become increasingly significant donors.
“Many are not new at all – India, Brazil and China have been giving aid for decades – but what is new is that a group of non-western donors is giving more humanitarian and development aid year on year, and reporting it more consistently to official trackers, such as the UN’s Financial Tracking System (127 donors reported aid in 2010).
As they “emerge”, the traditional hegemony held by western donors over how and where aid is dispersed is starting to be dismantled.”

South-South colonization
While many within the development industry speak of the growing importance of South-South cooperation, Al Jazeera uses the issue of African land grabs to raise the question of possible South-South colonization.
“What would Gandhi say today were he to know that Indians, who were only freed from the shackles of colonialism in recent history, were now at the forefront of this “land-grabbing” as part of the race for foreign control over African land and resources; currently being called the Neo-Colonialism of Africa?,” ask the Ethiopian authors of an open letter to the people of India.

One-step solutions
The University of Ottawa’s Rita Abrahamsen argues that attempts to rein in trading of “conflict minerals” are well-intentioned but may not be particularly helpful for ending African conflicts.
“The danger is that by making illegal mining the only story about the conflict in eastern Congo, other causes—requiring more complex solutions—will be ignored. Meanwhile, the international community will invest vast sums in cumbersome tracking procedures that may be easily avoided in an environment of weak institutional capacities and porous borders.
Ultimately, then, the campaign against conflict minerals might do more to restore Canada’s image abroad and make Canadians feel like ‘good global citizens’ than it does to bring peace to the DRC.”

Size doesn’t matter
The UN Population Fund has released its annual State of World Population just as the number of Earth’s inhabitants is set to hit 7 billion, but its authors are more concerned with how people live than with raw numbers.
“Environmental journalist Fred Pearce echoes the view that a small proportion of the world’s population takes the majority of resources and produces the majority of its pollution.
The world’s richest half billion people— about 7 per cent of the global population— are responsible for about 50 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, a surrogate measure of fossil fuel consumption. Meanwhile, the poorest 50 per cent are responsible for just 7 per cent of emissions, Pearce wrote in an article for Yale University’s “Environment 360” website. ‘It’s overconsumption, not population growth, that is the fundamental problem,’ Pearce argued”

Latest Developments, October 25

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Water grab
Corporate Accountability International argues a newly launched water-governance partnership between the World Bank and major corporations, such as Nestlé and Coca-Cola, amounts to an attempt at water grabbing.
“The Water Resources Group aims to “develop new normative approaches to water management,” paving the way for an expanded private sector role into best and common practices, worldwide. In order to be eligible for support from this new fund, all projects must “provide for at least one partner from the private sector,” not simply as a charitable funder, but “as part of its operations.” The group’s strategy is to insert the private sector into water management one country at a time, through a combination of industry-funded research and direct partnerships with government agencies.”

Puzzling growth
The Center for Global Development’s Charles Kenny looks at the 19 countries – nine of which are located in Sub-Saharan Africa – whose economies more than doubled in size over the last decade and concludes business-friendly regulations may not be as important as many believe.
“Whatever the secret, it doesn’t appear that it was simply a case of creating nirvana for private sector growth. The average 2010 ranking among the world’s 19 fastest-growing countries on the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business index, which measures the conduciveness of a country’s regulatory environment to starting a new firm, was 114 out of 183. Even among those nine countries that don’t owe their growth to extractive industries, five — including India and Ethiopia — had a ranking below 100. That result echoes the conclusions of economists Dani Rodrik, Ricardo Hausmann, and Lant Pritchett. They looked at 80 periods of “growth acceleration” where an economy increased its growth rate by 2 percent or more for at least seven years. Nearly all were unrelated to economic reforms including liberalization of trade and prices.”

Swiss secrecy
A Bloomberg editorial calls Switzerland’s history of banking secrecy “shameful” and dismisses recent tax agreements with the UK and Germany, which allow holders of Swiss bank accounts to remain anonymous.
“Unfortunately, Switzerland has cooperated only grudgingly in meeting international banking standards, agreeing to do so in 2009 under threat of sanctions and being named as a tax haven by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Even so, the country this month was ranked at the top of a financial secrecy index developed by the London-based Tax Justice Network.
Switzerland should do itself a favor and abandon the financial opacity that has made it the world’s No. 1 destination for offshore wealth. It has no place in a globalized world where money can be electronically whisked from one place to another, except as a cloak for financial wrongdoing.”

Where dirty money goes
The UN News Centre reports on a new study that suggests 70 percent of the proceeds of international organized crime – about $1.6 trillion – were laundered through the world’s financial system, whereas less than one percent was seized or frozen.
“The findings suggest that most cocaine-related profits are laundered in North America and in Europe. The main destination to process cocaine money from other subregions is probably the Caribbean.”

EU extractive industry rules
Tax Research UK’s Richard Murphy is “delighted” that the European Commission has proposed requirements that EU-based extractive and forestry industries disclose their payments to foreign governments on a country and project basis.
“Now we have to get it through the Parliament.
And then make it global.
And apply it to all sectors.”

Hold the applause
But Christian Aid argues the proposal would address corruption but not the tax avoidance that costs poor countries billions each year.
“This information will help people hold their governments to account about what they are doing with the money they are receiving from multinational companies – and that is important,” according to Christian Aid’s Joseph Stead.
“However, corporate accountability is equally important. Unless these proposals are expanded to cover firms in all industries and to require greater financial detail than the Commission is currently suggesting, then companies will be able to keep siphoning profits out of developing countries on a massive scale.”

Letter from Ban
The UN has released a letter sent by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to G-20 leaders ahead of next month’s summit, in which he reminds them of their responsibilities to the planet and its most vulnerable people.
“New sustainable development goals should build on the [Millennium Development Goals] and bring the needs of the planet and those of the poor into a single and mutually reinforcing framework.”

Nobel laureate
Politico reports that the Obama administration is facing opposition from both Democrats and Republicans over the decision to send US troops to central Africa – ostensibly to provide “information, advice and assistance to partner nation forces” in the fight against the Lord’s Resistance Army – just as missions in Iraq and Libya are winding down.
“What is the strategic interest of the United States in doing this? I mean, there are lots of unpleasant people in the world. There are lots of insurgencies and terrorist movements in the world. The United States obviously cannot try to dethrone every one of them,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said at a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the deployment.