Latest Developments, July 15

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In today’s news and analysis…

The pre-negotiations for the proposed international Arms Trade Treaty have come to an end. In theory, the real negotiations will take place next year, culminating in a legally binding global compact. The Control Arms Coaltion says it is pleased with how the week went, particularly a joint statement of support for the process by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, who together account for 88% of the global arms trade. But while there appears to be broad support for some kind of treaty, there is much disagreement on details, reportedly prompting Russia to say consensus is “very, very unlikely.”

After the latest Mumbai bombings, Ramesh Thakur, one of the formulators of the Responsibility to Protect doctrine, says India, a country where over half the population lives on less than $2 a day, “must invest all means necessary” to acquire the capabilities to take “the fight to neighbouring territory from where terror attacks originate through strikes and targeted killings of terrorists.” He concedes that such a policy would risk destabilizing India’s already fragile, nuclear-armed rival but concludes that “is no longer an unacceptable risk.” A quick reminder: The three bombs detonated in Mumbai this week killed 18 people, while the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in August, 1945 killed an estimated 150,000-250,000 people.

A Reuters piece looks at the rise of the drone as America tries to extricate itself from its wars and avoid getting embroiled in new ones, while targeting perceived threats in an ever growing list countries. The EU, meanwhile, is looking to come up with a drone strategy within the next 12 months.

Canadian immigration authorities have denied internationally acclaimed Tinariwen visas to play this weekend’s Vancouver Folk Festival. A festival organizer, pointing out that the Malian band were in Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics and are touring in the US right now, said the decision made no sense. Could it be the Canadian government, which is trying to toughen up its immigration laws, mistook a group originally formed in Libyan refugee camps three decades ago as current refugee claimants? An internal government report indicates a third of all such cases are refused because an officer does not believe the refugee’s story.

Writing about oil and corruption, Global Witness’s Brendan O’Donnell puts much of the blame on the likes of Muammar Gadhafi and other autocratic rulers, but not all of it. “Essentially, because oil companies do not currently have to disclose what they pay to foreign governments for resource deals, and banks do not have to report on their financial dealings with sovereign funds, it’s very hard for citizens to know how their leaders are using their countries’ natural resource wealth.”

According to Transparency International, the phone hacking scandal “shows that even in a well-functioning democracy where corruption levels are perceived to be low, weaknesses in institutions considered pillars of integrity can lead to breaches of trust if there is insufficient vigilance.”

In a Guardian piece about the post-2015 development agenda, the author reports Allister McGregor as telling the British Parliament the MDGs are outdated and a more nuanced view of the world is necessary: “It’s basically about inequality, how we live well together and how we share wealth.” The trick, according to Jack McConnell who was quoted in the same piece, will be to keep the new goals tangible and verifiable: “If you want to pin governments down, you need precise targets.”

A piece in the Globe and Mail points out “the microfinance revolution that rippled around the world focused squarely on the lending side of the ledger – largely overlooking microsaving.” As a result, poor people had nowhere secure to store their small savings. But that is now changing.

A new Institute of Development Studies bulletin on seed politics and the push for an African Green Revolution asks “who wins, who loses, and whose interests are being served?”

Latest Developments, July 14

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In today’s news and analysis…

South Sudan has become the UN’s 193rd member amid much hope and apprehension about its future prospects.

Canada is complicating preliminary negotiations for a multilateral treaty regulating the sale and transfer of conventional weapons by insisting on a number of exemptions. The Canadian delegation proposed the following addition to the draft accord: “Reaffirming that small arms have certain legitimate civilian uses, including sporting, hunting and collecting purposes.” To which Mexico reportedly replied that “victims don’t make that difference and neither should we.” Canada, whose Conservative government has scored considerable points with its base by promising to scrap the federal long-gun registry established by its Liberal predecessor, also proposed exemptions for ammunition and other “high volume items.”

Britain has suspended budgetary support to Malawi due to concerns over diminishing democracy and economic mismanagement. In making the announcement, the UK’s Department for International Development pointed to a number of indications of poor economic stewardship, including its assessment that “tobacco exports have deteriorated.” Given the fact that the UK trains and equips the counternarcotics police in Afghanistan, the British government apparently believes Malawian tobacco is good but Afghan poppies are bad.

Jayati Ghosh, warning of India’s “jobless growth” and increases in “fragile and unprotected” casual contracts, calls on the government to embrace employment creation for the young and educated in order to avoid “larger gaps between aspiration and reality in India’s labour markets.” To which, Bill Easterly tweets “Scary “jobless growth”! Wait, isn’t output growth > labor growth called “productivity growth” AKA “development”?”

The US is defending the CIA’s use of a fake vaccination campaign in Pakistan to obtain the DNA of some of Osama bin Laden’s relatives. “People need to put this into some perspective,” a U.S. official said. “The vaccination campaign was part of the hunt for the world’s top terrorist, and nothing else.” Meanwhile, the CIA is allegedly using a secret prison and rendition to buttress its counterterrorism efforts in Somalia. And Yemeni journalist Khaled al-Hammadi has tweeted today’s CIA drone strike in the south of the country was a “clear message that #US administration is supporting #Saleh’s regime & his family against pro-democracy” forces.

A new poll suggests the US is losing Arab public opinion, as data from Morocco, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates give America a lower approval rating than it had in the last year of the Bush Administration. And President Obama scored worse than the leaders of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, France and Iran. “We are talking about expectations raised and expectations dashed,” according to James Zogby, the president of the Arab American Institute, which commissioned the poll.  “Obama didn’t create the problem [of anger at US policies]. He created the expectations that the problem will be solved.”

In a new report on tax havens, Richard Murphy argues “whilst eliminating tax haven abuse is the right thing to do, such a policy must take into consideration the local populations of those places that have been tax havens, many of whom have worked in the financial services sector as it has been the only source of employment available to them.” And so, Murphy proposes “those locations willing to reform their tax haven practices should be given support to protect jobs and livelihoods as they pass through a period of transition in their economies.

Rupert Murdoch may be behind lobbying efforts to weaken the US anti-bribery legislation under which some would now like to see him prosecuted, and a pair of American telecom companies have been accused of involvement in a Haitian bribery scheme.

Saleem Ali makes a mining-free argument for returning to the gold standard. In his view, gold could restore a measure of financial discipline to the global economic system without sacrificing ecological considerations if “a nation’s gold reserves could remain “stored” in their natural underground state, rather than being mined, purified, and deposited in a Fort Knox–like vault.”

A new documentary chronicling a UN resettlement program in Nairobi’s biggest slum illustrates the distance that can separate international development workers from those they propose to help. And Hand Relief International’s Dr. Alden Kurtz has a similar, if decidedly cheekier, message  as Engineers Without Borders: the development industry would benefit from admitting to its failures.

Latest Developments, July 13

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In today’s news and analysis…

South Sudan looks set to join the UN, as the Security Council has recommended the world’s newest country for membership. According to the UN charter, the primary requirement is to be a “peace-loving” state.

Human Rights Watch has released a new report on abuses committed by Libya’s rebel troops. “Whatever happens, they couldn’t be any worse than Col. Gadhafi,” Canadian foreign minister John Baird said while officially recognizing Libya’s National Transitional Council last month. Only time will tell.

The EU is trying to fix its own fish stocks. But what about Africa’s?

Insurance broker Marsh has launched a policy to cover corporate corruption investigations under US and UK anti-bribery laws.

The New York Times explores the tortuous route to US legislation regarding conflict minerals, as companies hold their breath in anticipation of tangible rules from the Securities and Exchange Commission. Tiffany & Company, the self-proclaimed “world’s premier jeweler,” reportedly thinks gold should not be subject to the legislation and mandatory disclosure on use of conflict minerals “would violate the First Amendment.”

Jonathan Glennie believes we should recognize the limits of corporate social responsibility and move toward global regulation. “The point is to change incentives, and voluntary measures don’t do that,” he writes in the Guardian. “Only legal sanction or consumer action is strong enough, and consumer action is too erratic to rely upon.”

There is more to cracking down on tax havens than simply recovering revenue, according to Richard Murphy who argues the fight is necessary for the functioning of modern capitalism. “Tax havens are important with regard to tax. But their pernicious impact is much more significant than that. Their use to create opacity, to undermine the effectiveness of regulation and to ensure that owners are unaccountable corrodes all faith in the market itself.”

When it comes to recent food crises, price volatility is not the main problem, according to a new Foreign Affairs article. High prices are the real danger. “Food price levels are at historic highs, but food price volatility, although high these past few years, is not out of line with historical experience and is generally lower than it was in the 1970s.” The authors argue that high prices hurt consumers, while high volatility hurts producers, and that there is a positive correlation between high prices and political unrest but a negative one between volatility and unrest. As a result, they believe world leaders should focus on lowering trade barriers, increasing yields and reducing waste rather than imposing export controls and giving subsidies.

Of course, not everyone agrees. Nick Cullather argues food prices are actually too low and leading to the ruin of farmers and the agricultural sector more generally. “The global economy includes the global countryside, and the return of prosperity will have to begin there,” he writes. Vandana Shiva, for her part, sees high-tech solutions as part of the problem. She decries the hunger and desperation among India’s food producers and attributes their difficulties to “the capital and chemical-intensive, high external input systems of food production introduced as the Green Revolution.”

A Wellcome Trust blog post asks if global health inequalities represent the biggest bioethical challenge of our time. The author provides a summary of a recent conference on the subject, during which a number of global health programs were deemed “highly unsuitable for developing countries, focussing on the introduction of new technologies or disease-specific programmes, rather than on strengthening local efforts to secure effective, high-quality, inclusive health systems.”

A new study out of the Netherlands suggests there is little truth to the common perception that immigrants take advantage of the welfare state in rich countries. Instead, they tend to return to their country of origin if they lose their job.

 

Latest Developments, July 12

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In today’s news and analysis…

There was a big step forward in the global fight against HIV/AIDS, as US-based Gilead Sciences became the first pharmaceutical company to agree to place the intellectual property rights for some of its products in the Medicines Patent Pool that will allow generic drug makers to copy them on the cheap. “This is not just a one-off. The whole field is changing … there will be more to follow,” according to Ellen ‘t Hoen, the pool’s executive director.

Unfortunately, the pool only works for drugs that have already been developed, leaving the problem of incentivizing research into illnesses that do not significantly affect wealthy markets. Not to mention the fact that tobacco remains by far the biggest killer worldwide and the possibility that CIA dodginess in Pakistan could fuel the kinds of rumours that hampered polio eradication efforts a few years ago.

US Senator Carl Levin has introduced the “Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act” in the upper house. The proposed law includes a country-by-country reporting provision that would “help anti-corruption and economic development efforts in developing countries by creating more transparency and accountability in the business dealings between multinational companies and governments,” according to Global Financial Integrity director Raymond Baker.

Senator Levin’s proposal follows in the tradition of the Dodd-Frank Act which passed into law last year and is now in the hands of the Securities and Exchange Commission for the formulation of compliance enforcement rules. “In the ongoing rule-making process, the SEC has an opportunity to demonstrate that the United States takes transparency and accountability seriously and intends to act as a global leader in fostering secure, equitable, long-term resource partnerships with developing nations,” according to Oxfam’s Kathryn Martorana.

Speaking at the Open Government Partnership high-level meeting, US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton declared: “I think we can say without fear of contradiction that there is an undeniable connection between how a government operates and whether its people flourish. When a government invites its people to participate, when it is open as to how it makes decisions and allocates resources, when it administers justice equally and transparently, and when it takes a firm stance against corruption of all kinds, that government is, in the modern world, far more likely to succeed in designing and implementing effective policies and services.” Meanwhile, the UN special rapporteur on torture has complained US authorities refuse to grant him unmonitored access to alleged WikiLeaker Bradley Manning.

UK International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell told a London School of Economics audience “this Coalition Government is working to make it easier for companies to do business in Africa – so creating more opportunities for poor people. We are absolutely determined to make this the defining message of the Coalition Government in this area.” With Africa’s share of global manufacturing currently sitting at one percent, there is undoubtedly room for growth.

A Guardian piece celebrates the promotion of a handful of countries from the World Bank’s low-income to lower middle-income designation as evidence it is possible to escape the poverty trap. At the same time, the authors recognize the contribution of cyclical commodity prices to recent income increases in certain African countries, the fact that the African graduates are offtrack on their MDG commitments, and the limitations of a ranking based solely on gross national income (GNI). In fact, one of the promoted countries, Zambia, still sits 153rd out of 172 countries on the UN’s more nuanced Human Development Index, five places behind Haiti.

For those countries that manage to escape the aforementioned poverty trap, a World Bank VP has advice on avoiding “middle-income trap” and “maintaining high growth in developing countries.” Whereas a new World Bank blog post waxes enthusiastic about car-sharing’s potential to take advantage of excess capacity and avoid unnecessary use of non-renewable resources. What the author neglects to consider is that such enterprises are bad for growth and GNI.

The UN Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution to protect schools and hospitals from becoming military targets. UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake welcomed the news but stressed monitoring, denunciation and sanctions were insufficient to bring about real change. “We also have to find practical new ways to prevent these acts from occurring,” he said.

Transparency International’s Tobias Bock issues a plea for the Arms Trade Treaty currently under negotiation to include anti-corruption provisions, arguing that the massive corruption of the weapons trade can have a major impact on sustainable development. He also points out that while “there are international treaties to control the sale of many goods, from dinosaur bones to postage stamps, there is no such treaty to control the trade in weapons worldwide.”

And for the second straight year, Luanda, Angola and N’Djamena, Chad sit first and third respectively atop the list of the most expensive cities for expatriate workers. Tokyo sits in second spot, sandwiched between the capitals of two of the world’s poorest countries.

Latest Developments, July 11

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Flying and a wedding made last weekend another long one for Beyond Aid, so we have some catching up to do on the latest news and analysis…

The biggest news of the last few days was of course the birth of a new country. All may not be well between the Sudan Armed Forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, but South Sudan officially came into being on Saturday, even if maps may take a little time to catch up with the new reality. Map aficionados will appreciate the Guardian’s interactive political map of Africa, which shows the continent’s shifting borders since 1900. Its creators, however, apparently forgot about Ceuta and Melilla, the final European possessions on the African mainland, which may be too small for the map’s scale but deserved a mention in the accompanying text.

The UN declared in its annual progress report on the Millennium Development Goals that the objectives set over a decade ago are still attainable by the 2015 deadline. While there has been progress in many parts of the world, much of the reduction in those living in poverty has occurred in East Asia. So, even though there has been some good news out of India, 54 percent of its people still live on under $2 a day.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon marked World Population Day with a call for an end to global poverty and inequality: “We have enough food for everyone, yet nearly a billion go hungry. We have the means to eradicate many diseases, yet they continue to spread. We have the gift of a rich natural environment, yet it remains subject to daily assault and exploitation. All people of conscience dream of peace, yet too much of the world is in conflict and steeped in armaments.” The UN press release also points out that many wealthier countries are worried about low fertility and aging in a world where the population has doubled since 1968.

Joseph Stiglitz touches on the problems posed by this apparent lack of solidarity when he argues for an overhaul of the global financial system, which he says is bad for rich and poor, but especially the poor: “If you just focus on nationalities, you cannot be self-regulated. This kind of valuation focuses on individual units, but not the whole system.” Similarly, George Soros argues the eurozone’s biggest problem is trying to find national solutions to continental problems.

The US has announced it will withhold $800 million in military assistance to Pakistan, while it has delivered only two percent of the agricultural aid it pledged at the 2009 G8 summit in L’Aquila, according to a new report by anti-poverty group ONE.

Senegal announced it would extradite former Chadian president Hissène Habré, who is accused of being responsible for at least 40,000 deaths during his reign in the 1980s, back to his native country. But the Senegalese government had a change of heart after the UN expressed concerns the man who once enjoyed French and US backing in a war with Gadhafi’s Libya could be subjected to torture upon his return. The case has long been controversial in Senegal, as many there feel the pressure to try Habré comes from outside the continent, thereby fuelling the perception that African rulers are held to account far more than their counterparts from wealthier countries.

Such objections might be calmed by the release of a new Human Rights Watch report – authored by none other than Reed Brody who has played a lead role in the campaign to try Habré – calling for former US president George W. Bush to be investigated over the use of torture during his administration. The report also names his vice-president Dick Cheney, former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and ex-CIA director George Tenet. “The US has a legal obligation to investigate these crimes,” according to Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth. “If the US doesn’t act on them, other countries should.” Roth added: “When the US government shields its own officials from investigation and prosecution, it makes it easier for others to dismiss global efforts to bring violators of serious crimes to justice.”

Also, following the European court of human rights rulings against Britain in a pair of cases involving UK abuses in Iraq, Human Rights Watch’s Clive Baldwin says an independent body, rather than the military itself, should investigate allegations of serious wrongdoing.

Canada has announced it will boycott the UN Conference on Disarmament until North Korea’s chairmanship ends next month, at which point it will push for changes that go beyond the rotating presidency. The US, on the other hand, does not believe a controversial chair can cause much damage in a consensus-based organization. The requirement of a consensus is one of the aspects Canada would like to see changed.

In a Guardian piece on the UK’s Department for International Development’s newfound enthusiasm for turning to the private sector to help reduce world poverty, a department official opines: “We suspect that the development community as a whole hasn’t looked hard enough at non-state provision of services.” The author characterizes the comment as “quite bold given that developing countries were very much forced to look at “non-state provision of services” in the 1980s when the World Bank and the IMF introduced its structural adjustment programme, which actually reversed development progress in some countries.” It is, however, more difficult to dispute the DFID official’s assertion that NGOs are not accountable to the public either.