Eradicate poverty? 0.7 would be a good start

Today was the United Nations International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

In fact, it's the 20th anniversary of the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

It's interesting that 20 years on half the world's population lives on less than two United States dollars a day. As horrible as that sounds (and $2 doesn't buy you much anywhere in the world), it's actually worse. That $2 is actually based on the theory of purchasing power parity and often matched to the local equivalent of what $2 would have bought you in New York City in 1990.

So, we have half the world unable to afford a decent meal in New York and several hundred million living (more like slowly dying on) half that again.

That I can sit here on the carpet (choosing not to sit on the couch) in a warm room, with a pleasently full tummy and slightly cold feet (through the sheer laziness of not wanting to get up and find socks), and type on a laptop connected to the world via wireless broadband, makes me one of the richest people in the world.

I may not feel like it (and there are certainly a whole lot of people with vastly more money and wealth), but I'm living in absolute luxury by pretty much anyone's standards (or at least the standards of the 90% of the world's population not as well off as me).

If you are reading this, it's highly likely you aren't much different - perhaps you are even luckier than me, or perhaps somewhat less so (financially at least). But either way, you are one of the lucky ones. This isn't to say you don't work hard for your money, or that you shouldn't enjoy the fruits of your labours. But it is to say that you should feel some sense of obligation to those people who don't have the ability to enjoy the rewards of their labour - the unlucky majority.

Peter Singer wrote a powerful essay in 1977. The drowning child and the expanding circle is as relevant today as it was 30 years ago. It's available here.

There is much that we can do, but perhaps the single most important thing is to put pressure on donor governments around the world to meet their commitments under the Millennium Development Goals and the Monterrey Consensus and give 0.7% of GDP in official development assistance.

Australia currently gives 0.3%, which is very middle of the road.

Obviously increasing the volume of aid alone is not enough. We are getting much better in the ways we spend aid money and some ODA does huge amounts of good. The trick is to ensure that the most possible aid is being spent in the best possible way, and we're still some way from getting to that point.

Still, a committment is a committment and we need to live up to it. To be held to account. To follow through on our promises (something the Howard government has not been very good at doing to date).

One can only hope that in another 20 years, we'll be celebrating the International Day of Remembering When People Lived in Poverty.

US files WTO case against Chinese industrial subsidies

The US has commenced WTO dispute settlement proceedings against China. The US government alleges that a range of subsidy programmes "illegally support the export of manufactured goods as well as discriminate against imports".

Umm, am I missing something here?

The International Center for Trade and Sustainable Development notes that "Both domestic manufacturing groups and the Democratic-led Congress have been putting pressure on the Bush administration to take sterner action on trade with China. They blame unfair Chinese competition for industrial job losses and the US' yawning trade deficit".

US Trade Representative, Susan Schwab, had this to say:

The United States believes that China uses its basic tax laws and other tools to encourage exports and to discriminate against imports of a variety of American manufactured goods … China's subsidies can particularly distort trade conditions for small- and medium-sized American enterprises and their workers.

Umm, has Schwab, or anyone in the US government, stopped for one second and thought about what the US’ agricultural subsidies are doing to "small- and medium-sized" enterprises (and micro one especially) in the global south?


The US government’s rhetoric about the damage China is doing to "free trade" – through, among other things, a devalued Yuan, dumping cheap textiles and shoes into US and EU markets and these industrial subsidies – is ridiculous in the face of continuing (with no sign of anything but the most tokenistic of gestures of reduction) and massively trade distorting agricultural subsidies.

The Chinese subsidies, particularly those in the industrial realm, might well have an impact on some US firms, the numbers of people affected by US agricultural subsidies (particularly those on corn, soybeans and cotton) world-over is significantly more substantial. Not that the US government has a habit of giving more than a passing acknowledgement to the plight of anyone outside the States (and, so might argue, to more than a few inside the country).

When close to half the world’s population live on less than US$2 per day (purchasing power parity) and the majority of them live in rural areas (though urban poverty is an increasing trend) and survive on subsistence (or close to it) agriculture, how are people to sell what little agricultural produce they have left after family consumption, when imported US and EU crops sell in markets for less than poor rural farmers can grow them?

And the US feels it has the right to whinge about Chinese trade distorting subsidies?

I think I’m going to be sick.

Think this isn’t a big issue? Then try it for yourself (or an approximation of it anyway) by taking the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s $2 a day challenge. It won’t give you any sense of how hard life is for the rural poor and, now that I think about it, you are likely to find it much easier to live on $2 a day due to US and EU trade policy, so perhaps that’s a bad idea.

A much better idea is to stop supporting the status quo and look at where the produce you buy in the supermarket is actually coming from. If there’s a farmer’s market near by try shopping there instead (in Canberra there are at least 4 that I know of – C and I head out to the one at Exhibition Park most Saturdays, the food is of a much higher standard than that at the supermarkets and significantly cheaper – thanks to cutting out the corporate greed). If you do have to buy produce at supermarkets try to get organic wherever possible, as chances are it has been produced in a much more sustainable manner (environmentally as well as economically).

End of rant.

Some disasters are more equal than others

The International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies released its annual World Disasters report yesterday.

It's called Living and dying in the shadows and has some good things to say about the level of level of emergency humanitarian aid the world allocated to disasters in 2005 - it hit USD 17 billion, more than any other year on record.

That's all well and good, but things start to come apart at the seams a little when one pokes a stick under the rock of where the money actually went and who benefitted most.

Desipite the record sums allocated to disasters, the IFRC says "millions still missed out on vital, potentially life-saving aid because funds were directed at high-profile disasters, while countless other crises were neglected."

The list below (from Reuters Alertnet) shows the break down of the aid per person as it was disbursed in 2005.

Aid per person in 2005 crises

Indian Ocean Tsunami - $1241 (Up to 230,000 dead, 2.1 mln uprooted)

Darfur, Sudan - $431 (Conflict has displaced at least 2 mln)

South Asia quake - $310 (Kashmir quake kills 75,000 in Oct 2005)

Chechnya - $281 (Rebels have been struggling for autonomy from Russia since 1991)

Hurricane Stan, Guatemala - $224 (Hundreds die in mudslides in Oct 2005, crops destroyed)

Democratic Republic Congo - $213 (Some 1,200 people die each day)

Northern Uganda - $86 (1.7 mln uprooted by 20-year insurgency)

Somalia - $53 (Years of anarchy compounded by drought)

West Africa - $50 (Locust plague contributes to new hunger crisis)

Ivory Coast - $27 (Country is split between rebels and govt)

While no one is saying that people affected by the tsunami didn't deserve every cent of that $1241, what makes people suffering from a protracted conflict in west Africa any less deserving?
The table above doesn't include the US's Hurricane Katrina, which generated donations only slightly lower than the tsunami.

The IFRC argues that governments and private donors should allow aid agencies to use money as they see fit. In other words they should end the practice of earmarking funds for particular regions or disasters. This will be a difficult process and the IFRC faces an uphill battle.

Donor governments like to be able to politicise the funds they give to multilateral agencies and international NGOs, and announcing publicly that you are giving $1 billion to tsunami victims generates more and better publicity (and potentially votes) than annoucing you are giving that same amount to several humanitarian agencies for their critical work around the world.

The same issue is faced for private donations. People are often moved to give money by the images they see on television news. This means that in the aftermath of a large disaster more money flows in than at other times. The American Red Cross' experience after the 11 September 2001 attacks is illustrative.

As the donations rolled in the ARC discovered it had more money than it could sensibly to address the needs of the victims (over USD 500 million) and decided to use the left over funds for other (equally worthy) causes. Their plan to do so was greeted with massive public outrage and a reversal was speedily issued and all the money went to victims' families, who received about USD 18,000 each (which makes the tsunami amounts look piddling). See here, here and here, for example.

This highlights the difficulties faced by humanitarian organisations which would prefer to have the flexibility to maintain ongoing support to ongoing issues (Congo and Ivory Coast are just two examples) and respond to other disasters as they emerge.

That people are willing to give their time and money when big disasters occur is laudable, but until people realise that the daily cumulative total of death and destruction from ongoing humanitarian situations is far in excess of any single disaster and that supporting the organisations that are working to assist those in need who don't make the 6 o'clock news on an ongoing basis is far more effective than making a one off donation in the aftermath of a sensational (and frequently sensationalised) disaster.

Just life's essentials: water, electricity, the net...

Apparently the internet is now as important to business as water and electricity. It's great that the primacy of information (and access to it) is beginning to be more widely recognised as essential to business development as other infrastructure needs.

Still have a ways to go on convincing most people that it's also an essential part of human development. Small steps I guess.

Focus on your world

I've just stumbled across this, and it's made me wonder what I'm doing working in an office when I'd rather be out making amazing pictures of incredible things - and helping others to record the details of their daily lives and communities on film.

Ah, the pleasures of dreaming away a slow office afternoon.

One of these days it'll all come together.

IMF reforms: nothing changes

The International Monetary Fund is reforming itself, or so we are being told. Rodrigo de Rato, the IMF's Managing Director made a statement yesterday that said, among other things:

"...the changed distribution of economic weight in the world demands that we reform our governance structure... I see a clear need for a rebalancing of quotas to reflect changed economic realities, especially the increased economic weight of major emerging markets... I also see a need to protect the voice and representation of low-income countries. Their voting power has been eroded over time... This gives rise to concerns about the adequacy of voice and representation for a number of countries that continue to borrow from the Fund but that have only a limited share in Fund voting... Why are these issues important? The Fund has a global membership and a global scope of responsibilities. It is the most important and sometimes the only forum for collective action on complex economic problems."

Interesting, if only it were true. The IMF certainly isn't the "most important and sometimes the only forum for collective action on complex economic problems" at all. Well, it wasn't supposed to be when it was created, but mandate creep has created a monster that needs to be tamed.

In today's Guardian there is a piece by George Monbiot which is well worth the read. It begins like this:

"The glacier has begun to creak. In the world's most powerful dictatorship we detect the merest hint of a thaw. I am not talking about China or Uzbekistan, Burma or North Korea. This state runs no torture chambers or labour camps. No one is executed, though plenty starve to death as a result of its policies. The unhurried perestroika is taking place in Washington, in the offices of the International Monetary Fund."

And goes on to detail the hypocrisy surrounding the much self-praised governance reforms the Fund is undertaking. Monbiot goes on to discuss the mandate creep I mentioned above, far more eloquently than I could:

"None of this would matter so much if it had stuck to its original mandate of stabilising the international monetary system. But after the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971 the IMF more or less lost its mission to maintain exchange rates, and began to look for a new role... [w]hen it amended its articles of association in 1978 they were so loosely drafted as to grant the IMF permission to interfere in almost any aspect of a country's governance. It lost its influence over the economic policies of the G7 and became instead the rich world's viceroy, controlling the poorer nations at its behest. It began to micro-manage their economies without reference to the people or even their governments. Since then, no rich country has required its services, and few poor countries have been able to shake it off."

And concludes with the following statement, which just about sums up my thoughts too:

"I am among those who believe that the IMF is, and always will be, the wrong body - inherently flawed and constitutionally unjust. But if its leaders and supporters are to persuade us that it might, one day, have a legitimate role in running the world's financial systems, they will have to do a hell of a lot better than this."

For more info on the IMF and it's supposed reforms check out the Bretton Woods Project.

five days in a sweatshop killed me

NOW, a Nottingham-based art group, has developed an online game that attempts to mimic life for the millions of sweatshop workers struggling to surive all over the global south.

Sim Sweatshop that was aptly described by Mark Oliver, a Guardian journalist, the other day:

Players have to frantically put together trainers as the clock runs down, using a pathetic wage to buy drink and food to stop their energy bar from disappearing... There is a daily quota of shoes to hit, with wages being docked if it is missed... If money runs low, it is a struggle to buy food, and the shoes become blurry as tiredness sets in.

Oliver says he lasted three days before expiring from lack of food and over work. I managed slightly better at five, but never made my full shoe quota (and consequently had my pay docked every day), couldn't afford to buy my child new shoes and my shoes were constantly blurry from lack of energy.

It's hard not to feel the sense of dread and urgency as you attempt to drag the pieces of the sneakers together as quickly as possible, attempting to stay ahead of the clock, while knowing full well that even if you do manage to make your shoe quota for the day, there is a good chance you won't make it tomorrow and, even if you do, you still won't have enough money to feed and your family and pay the rent.

More distressing than the game itself was the statistic quoted by Oliver in his article, citing a report that found more than half of under 25's in the UK have no idea where or how their clothes are produced, nor do they care.

This comment, left on the article the day it was published, just about says it all:

Is it the responsibility of the consumer to know where and how their items are made? Get a bloody grip, do not have a go at under 25s who understandably do not know where their clothes come from it is manafacturers and manafacturers alone who can stop this. Or yes we could boycott all products not made in the West and then watch how the dreadfull wages of sweatshop workers disappears into nothing as they lose their job? The consumer is not at fault here, and it should not be the consumers responsibility to find out.

Notwithstanding the horror inspired by Svenny's ignorance of simple grammatical rules and English spelling, the attitude espoused, seems to me, to neatly sum up the major problem in the world today. Most people in the global north simply do not care about anything beyond their self defined borders. For some that stops with themselves and for many more it expands to encompass family and friends, even as far as most members of their particular nation state (the ones that are of the same colour and religious beliefs at least), but no further.

Thinking about this reminded me of an article written by (one of my favourite philosophers) Peter Singer in 1971. The article Famine, Affluence, and Morality argues compellingly that we not only have the moral obligation to assist others in need, but that this obligation extends to the ends of the earth. The article is definitely worth the read, but, even more deserving is a piece from 1997, The Drowning Child and the Expanding Circle, in which Singer postulates that few people would hesitate to save a child drowning in a shallow pond, even if doing so inconvenienced them in some small way:

To challenge my students to think about the ethics of what we owe to people in need, I ask them to imagine that their route to the university takes them past a shallow pond. One morning, I say to them, you notice a child has fallen in and appears to be drowning. To wade in and pull the child out would be easy but it will mean that you get your clothes wet and muddy, and by the time you go home and change you will have missed your first class.

Singer then asks "would it make any difference if the child were far away, in another country perhaps, but similarly in danger of death, and equally within your means to save, at no great cost – and absolutely no danger – to yourself?" and systematically destroys the various arguments that can be raised in favour of doing nothing in the face of millions of people living precariously, day by day.

Singer's conclusion is worth quoting in full:

In a society in which the narrow pursuit of material self-interest is the norm, the shift to an ethical stance is more radical than many people realize. In comparison with the needs of people going short of food in Rwanda, the desire to sample the wines of Australia’s best vineyards pales into insignificance. An ethical approach to life does not forbid having fun or enjoying food and wine; but it changes our sense of priorities. The effort and expense put into fashion, the endless search for more and more refined gastronomic pleasures, the added expense that marks out the luxury-car market – all these become disproportionate to people who can shift perspective long enough to put themselves in the position of others affected by their actions. If the circle of ethics really does expand, and a higher ethical consciousness spreads, it will fundamentally change the society in which we live.

While the crisis of 1997 in Rwanda may have abated to a certain extent, there are plenty of other examples (Zimbabwe, Sudan, Burma, the Congo and DRC, Afghanistan and Lebanon to name but a few) if you really need persuading, but many others (1.8 billion at last count) around the world are living on the equivalent of US$2 a day or less - the World Bank's poverty line, below which life becomes very percarious indeed. Close to a billion are living on less than US$1 a day, at which point life becomes next to impossible.

As Singer argues, it doesn't cost much to make a difference. There are plenty of organisations who would be grateful to receive some of your spare cash on a regualr basis (Oxfam, Medecins Sans Frontiers, Baptist World Aid, CARE, ActionAid, the ICRC, Save the Children, World Development Movement, UNICEF, again, just to name the first few that spring to mind), there are also ways you can get involved yourself if you have the time and inclination. Volunteer somewhere in your spare time, for example.

But more than this, the single most important contribution you can make is simply to consume less and consume wisely. Know where you clothes are made, buy organic food, recycle and try to live more simply. You'll find you have more time to spare, and more money to spare too (which you really should flick towards an organisation you identify with, if you ask me).

*The anti-Nike ad above is courtesy of AdBusters

Overweight 'top world's hungry'

You’ll hopefully be as alarmed as I was to know that there are now more overweight people across the world than hungry ones.

The BBC has reported the statement made by Professor Barry Popkin from the University of North Carolina at an agricultural economists’ conference at, of all places, Australia’s Gold Coast, where one can see whale-like people from many nations lazing in the sun. Perhaps the economists thought a field trip to the second fattest nation on earth might be fun.

According to his data, there are now 1 billion overweight people compared to 800 million undernourished.

But how to combat this spreading epidemic (no pun intended)? Professor Popkin says manipulating global food prices could be an answer:

For instance, if we charge money for every calorie of soft drink and fruit drink that was consumed, people would consume less of it. If we subsidise fruit and vegetable production, people would consume more of it and we would have a healthier diet.

But isn’t that what we have the WTO for? Don’t they specialise in letting countries subsidise some foods at the expense of others, or am I just cynical?

I know that obesity is an increasing problem, and not just in the north, but I’m concerned that a conference of development-oriented agricultural economists was focusing on it, rather than the persistent issue of world hunger. In Laos for example, close to 40% of the population is undernourished.

1 billion people may well be overweight, but the percentage of them that are morbidly obese would pale in comparison to the percentage of the 800 million people going hungry who are in dire straights. We can do so much, so easily, to prevent people from slipping below the WHO’s 2100 calorie a day threshold for food poverty line. But the invisibility of poverty in our so-called ‘developed’ country, shields us from our moral responsibilities, which, personally, I find disgusting.

"Today there are only losers" - except for all the people in developing countries, but they don't count, do they?

I just had to blog about this. It was on the news last night and C and I did a little dance.

I always find it so interesting that the mainstream media (on our tv at least) lays the blame for these repeatedly stalled trade talks on developing countries’ shoulders. The US and EU are pushing so-called developing nations to cut tariffs on imports, while at the same time refusing to cut their own, significantly more trade distorting, subsidies.

Pascal Lamy, the director general of the WTO, was quoted in the NY Times as saying: “There are no winners or losers in this assembly,” he said. “Today, there are only losers.” I beg to differ. Our tv news said much the same thing, emphasising, however that out of all the losers developing countries would be the biggest.

But have developing economies really lost anything?

I know that trade is more important in the fight against poverty than aid ever will be and that developing economies have much to gain from an end to developed economy subsidies, BUT they also had a hell of a lot to lose, particularly in the GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) negotiations that were happening on the sidelines of the Hong Kong ministerial.

Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch says the GATS covers "everything that you cannot drop on your foot” (including banking, telecommunications, postal services, tourism, transportation, waste disposal, oil and gas production and electricity). Most importantly for developing country citizens, GATS also seeks to widen the scope for privatising public goods essential for life, like healthcare, education and drinking water. This is a disturbing trend, and while developing countries may have lost an opportunity to gain a slightly larger toe hold in developed country markets (something that’s very much debatable) they have gained a reprieve from the inherent nastiness of GATS.

Peter Hardstaff, Head of Policy at the World Development Movement, said: “Ever since the start of this so-called development round, the EU and USA have consistently opposed, sidelined and ignored a string of development friendly proposals made by poor countries. After the WTO’s Hong Kong Ministerial Conference it was clear that there would not be a development outcome. In that context, the collapse of the talks is positive.”

Hear, hear.

In all of this, I think my favourite thing is how well the WTO’s “consensus” model (which is generally enforced through coercion and scare tactics) really works. As it turns out vast majority of members weren’t even a party to the decision to suspend the Doha round. The WTO even admits as much:

Mr Lamy reached the conclusion to suspend the negotiations after talks among six major members broke down on Sunday 23 July. Ministers from Australia, Brazil, the European Union, India, Japan and the United States had met in Geneva to try to follow up on instructions from the St Petersburg Summit on 17 July.

So much for consensus.

And yay, for once, for developed country pig headedness.

New straw to kill disease as you drink

Was just browsing on the BBC website and came across this article.

In a world where one person in six in the South does not have access to drinking water, and 6,000 people a day die from water-borne diseases, something like this could make a huge difference. Or could it? Wateraid say that at US$3.50 a day the device is actually quite expensive, especially for families earning less than a dollar a day. Additionally, the straw won’t lessen the hours of walking that people all over the South have to do every day in order to collect less water than they actually need.

Food for thought (bad pun, I know).

Back on the (high) horse

I know I've been quiet for a while. The whole new full-time job thing
has been taking some getting used to, but when I saw this I had to get
on my high horse.

What a great idea! Let's take a (mostly) decentralised, freely
accessible (for a price), open sourced information network and create
differential levels of speed and access depending on socio-economic
status and willingness to pay.

That's bound to close the digital divide. Good thinking big business.
Good thinking.

Africa: '2006 must be year of action'

Jeffery Sachs, director of the UN's Millennium Project and celebrity development economist, recently called 2005 "the year of promises", referring to rich nations' promise to double aid to Africa, but said that 2006 must be the year of action or "donors will condemn millions to death if they again fail to deliver on their aid pledges".

While I don't agree with everything Sachs advocates and have a few issues with the conclusions of his latest book, The End of Poverty, I think that his methods really resonate with a particular, and sadly dominant, mindset, and therefore play an important role in the fight against poverty.

The book is worth the read, but a little fat, so if you'd like the abridged version as it was published in Time, you can download it from the Millennium Project site.

When he says things like:

"If we take a proper, hard-headed and businesslike approach to the issues of disease, poverty and hunger, there are practical solutions," Sachs said. "They don't involve blank cheques coming from donor countries to poor countries; they don't involve the other side haranguing poor countries about their poverty."

People who might not normally credit the idea that their "hard earned tax dollars" should be spent on development, tend to actually sit up and listen.

So, maybe, with Sachs teaming up with Bono and the Gateses (Time's Persons of the Year for 2005), development might become a sexy topic at last.

It might already be heading that way, at least in the eyes of the Hollywood machine. There have been a raft of films in the last year or so with development themes as either the central or a side plot line. I'm thinking of last year's Beyond Borders (a less than satisfactory love story set in multiple development contexts and dodging tons of ethical dilemmas along the way) and The Constant Gardner (which we watched the other night and is well worth seeing). I'm sure there have been others, but I just had lunch by the Mekong and my brain is a little droopy.

WTO MC6 Day Five: Annex C

I haven’t been blogging very much since I got to Hong Kong, because I have been running around like a mad thing instead – trying to attend as many sessions (and protests) as possible. However, today I am feeling too exhausted to keep running around so much and so I thought that I would do a quick update.

The biggest news for the week is the proposed Annex C of GATS (the General Agreement on Trade in Services). Annex C was drafted during the last two months by countries and large corporations who stand to benefit the most from the liberalization of services (e.g. the EU, US, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Vivendi, Suez, etc.). Disappointed in the low number of bilateral request-offers under the current GATS agreement (ie the number of services sectors that countries have been willing to autonomously liberalise under GATS), these countries and corporations have written this text in an attempt to ensure that liberalization happens rapidly and across many sectors at once.

The main sections of this annex that are really scary are paragraphs 2 and 7. Together these paragraphs introduce plurilateral and sectorial negotiations on services (ie, a group of countries could approach a small country are ask them to open up negotiations on liberalizing their education or water system). The other thing that is included in paragraph 7(b) is a mandatory element to these requests. The paragraph states that when requested, parties “shall” negotiate – meaning that a country would not be allowed to refuse a request to negotiate over the liberalization of their services. This is significant, because whenever these negotiations have gone ahead, most countries have ended up being pressured into liberalization – and this would be compounded when the negotiations become plurilateral rather than bilateral.



Now, despite the fact that only a small group of countries had drafted this text, and the fact that the rest of the member states of the WTO had been very clear that they did not agree with the text, it was brought to the Ministerials as the ONLY text to be discussed during negotiations. The only concession that was made to this fact was that the text was placed in brackets, to indicate that there was no consensus on it as yet.

An alternative text was then written by the ASEAN countries and another by the ACP countries that both clearly rejected the text of Annex C. However, during the first few days of negotiations, these countries were placed under enormous pressure from the US and the EU (and others) not to table these alternative texts or they would not receive other “concessions” (including the so-called development package or the so-called aid for trade package – both of which are seriously problematic in themselves). For a while things looked very bad and there has been a lot of campaigning in the NGO rooms to support these countries to defend their own positions on Annex C.

The good news is that yesterday, despite massive pressure from the EU and the US, the G90 tabled an alternative text to the GATS, while another group of countries (including Cuba, Indonesia, Philippines, South Africa and Venezuela) issued a letter stating that Annex C, having not been agreed by members, is not an appropriate basis for negotiations.

However, the really bad news is that the GATS facilitator, Korean Minister Kim has tried to sum up negotiations by saying that only 15 countries had concerns with the text of Annex C (apparently counting the G90 as only one country!), while 26 wanted Annex C maintained (as though it was a legitimate text in the first place, which is simply false). His suggested resolution was that if there was no consensus by today, he would simply remove the brackets from Annex C and that the text will remain as it is. This would mean that he would be indicated consensus on this text that has been written SOLELY in the interests of Northern countries to open up and exploit the public services of the rest of the world in the global south.

We are now waiting to see how this situation will be resolved. If Annex C is pushed through it will not only be a devastating result for the people of the global south in respect to maintaining their public services, but it will also indicate a new and even more anti-democratic process is being introduced into WTO negotiations.

I was going to go Christmas shopping this afternoon, but I think that I may have to stick around instead…

WTO: Day One

Today was the first official day of the WTO Ministerials and security was certainly a lot different from yesterday! There were police everywhere when we entered the Convention Centre to attend a debate between Walden Bello from Focus on the Global South and Alejandro Jara, one of the four Deputy Director-Generals of the WTO.

The debate was interesting, although both sides really pulled their punches and Jara was incredibly evasive in response to any questions that were critical of the WTO. At the end of the day, Bello’s main message was that the ‘Development Package’ being offered at this Ministerial was just a way of getting developing countries not to walk away from negotiations in order to try to maintain the legitimacy of the institution and that additionally they were a bad deal for developing countries anyway – the ‘Aid for Trade’ is money that has already been committed elsewhere and a lot of it is in the form of loans, which will only increase indebtedness.

Jara just kept repeating that he thought that the Ministerial would be successful, because they would be able to agree on a position from which to continue negotiations next year, and that they would be able to conclude the Doha round by the end of the year. (Funny how he is defining success as a postponement of any real outcomes.) I asked him if he thought that it was problematic that decisions were being postponed to be made in Geneva by the Secretariat and smaller groups of governments (as had been done in the July Framework in 2004) and whether this was essentially eroding the claim that the WTO is a consensus-based institution. He just said that the decision to do this would be made by everyone – i.e., he just totally evaded the question.



The next event that I attended was a briefing on the “Key Issues” by the Third World Network. Martin Khor spoke first and he was excellent (as promised). It was interesting to see that around a third of the people in the room (and it was quite a big room) were delegates from developing countries – clearly they were there to hear from someone who is very informed about what is really at stake in this round in order to form their own positions.

Like Bello, Martin Khor was very critical of this so-called ‘development package’ being offered; basically saying that it has nothing to do with development at all. In his view, only the large agricultural exporters have anything to gain in this round of talks, because although they feel cheated by the way that the US and EU simply shifted the way they give their farmers subsidies (from one ‘box’ to another), instead of actually reducing them as they committed to in the Uruguay round, they are still willing to give up something in order to increase their market access in agriculture. However, other than the big agricultural exporters, Martin Khor argued that small developing nations have absolutely nothing to gain in this round and that they have no reason to agree to any deal that is being offered – since their 150 demands for reforming the trading system (the so-called “implementation issues” that include things like by making TRIPS more flexible), which they tabled in 2000, have still not been met and have now even been taken off the agenda.

From the TWN briefing I caught the MRT to Victoria Park to attend the protest rally. It was just so cool to see people from all over the world assembling for the rally. Most of the people were from developing countries, particularly Asia, but also Latin America and Africa. In particular, there were heaps of farmers – all wearing matching hats and drumming together. There was also a big memorial to the Korean farmer who committed suicide at Cancun in protest again the impact of trade liberalization on farmers in Korea and around the world. Just looking at it made me cry.

We ended up marching with the people from Oxfam, because we were with the young people from the Oxfam youth exchange for trade justice. Behind us was a fantastic group of students from the Hong Kong Baptist University – the ‘Sociology Students WTO Concern Unit’ who danced along with their whistles. Behind them were people from Jubilee South who were drumming amazing rhythms. Along the way we realized that Gael García Bernal was marching with us (in the Oxfam group), and (this is perhaps the dorkiest thing I have ever done) I got my photo with him. He was very sweet and busy filming the protest with a massive video camera.

When we got to the protest end point, right near the Convention Centre, we all sat down. Some sex workers from Cambodia got up a danced with NO WTO attached to their rear-ends – they were tops. Then the Korean farmers came through the crowd singing and carrying a large funeral pier. A whole group of them jumped into the water (it must have been Freezing!) and started swimming towards the Convention Centre. They explained that they were trying to show the pain that the WTO caused them. As the funeral match moved forward, they matched towards the police line and suddenly used the pier as a ram with which to break their way through to the Convention Centre. That is when the tear gas was used and we decided it was time to leave.

After the rally I had arranged to interview Alberto Villarreal from FOE Uruguay about the struggle to protect public water in Uruguay. I was supposed to meet him in the NGO Centre in the Convention Centre, but had to postpone when I was met with a wall of riot police blocking my entrance. Once I weaved my way back in, I met Alberto and interviewed him for 25 minutes, ‘recording it’ (I thought) on my new MP3 player/recorder (my ‘Shuangsang’ – yes, I thought it was a Samsung until I turned it on…). The interview went great, until I tried to replay it and discovered that I had recorded nothing – I had instead just been replaying a recording that I made earlier in the day (the display for voice record and voice play is identical, of course!).

Anyway, I spend the last half hour trying to remember what Alberto said and typing up a “transcript” that I will email him for comment. I hate technology!

Now, I must get some dinner and recharge for tomorrow. There is a briefing by Tony Clarke on GATS from 8:00am-1:00pm and it should be good. I will ensure that I understand this bloody MP3 thing a bit better by then…

WTO: Day One - Hong Kong: The Free-est Economy in the World

The Sixth Ministerial of the WTO officially begins tomorrow in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. However, unofficially things have already begun. On Saturday there were several protests and actions around Hong Kong, including the Oxfam Big Noise action that was colourful enough to be splashed all over the local papers (under the heading: "The War has Started"). The next day was the big people's rally, which was amazing. Activists from all over the world marched the streets of Hong Kong and then danced the night away in Victoria Park. The papers the next day begrudgingly admitted that it was more of a carnival than a riot, but maintained their warnings that essentially we are all trouble makers.

On Saturday a group of us went to pick up our accreditation passes so that we can get into the official venue, and we were presented with a WTO welcome pack in a brief case. Inside were information booklets on such relevant NGO topics as: "A Business Traveller's Guide to Hong Kong" and shopping guides. The best part, though, was the cover of the info folder: "Hong Kong - The Free-est Economy in the World". The WTO must be patting themselves on the back for their choice of venue. You could not have found a more supportive local climate.

I have been running around attending NGO events and strategy meetings, while trying to meet people to interview for my PhD. Its been hectic already, but I think that the real craziness is going to begin tomorrow. At some point, I'll try to post some actual information and photos. For now, I think I am going to get some sleep.

WSIS does little, pats own back for it

The World Summit on the Information Society wrapped up today in sunny Tunisia, that bastion of information freedom, and predictably, not a lot happened.

The US still has control over the management of the net, which (and I'm surprised I actually agreed with The Economist) might not be such a bad thing.

Interestingly, everyone at the conference seems to think that maintaining the status quo was a coup and everyone is now sitting around heartily congratulating them selves on a job well done. What job?

The Digital Solidarity Fund, agreed to in a very watered down form at the first phase of the Summit a year ago, has so far managed to raise just over 6 million dollars with which to close the digital divide. So much for digital solidarity.

The one interesting thing to come out of the Summit was an announcement that MIT's Media Lab is intending to put $100 lap tops into production which will be distributed to children in developing countries around the world. I have a few issues with the idea but, all in all, its pretty nifty. They even have a hand crank for emergency battery recharge - I wish my lap top had a hand crank.

The machines will run as well as the $2-3,000 we all love, but won't have as much storage space. They will even form their own wireless network when two or more of them are in the same vicinity.

So WSIS, as a process, seems to have been a tremendous waste of time, but provided a good launching pad for the $100 lap top (which will apparently cost about $110 to manufacture, but let's not quibble) and several other interesting innovations looking to connect the poor world to the digital age.

On Being Privileged

There seems to have been a rash of posts about being poor since Hurricane Katrina, and many of the comments in response have turned into a debate about how best to help poor people, and whose responsibility this might be.

What has disturbed me about these debates is the dominance of the view that somehow individuals are responsible for their own poverty (or conversely their own wealth), and that any assistance is more of an act of charity than an obligation.

Rather than attempt to write on behalf of people whose experiences I have not shared, I thought that I would attempt to contribute to this debate, by adding my own experience of being privileged:

I was born into a family that:
• was not only middle class, but also highly educated;
• believed that girls should have a decent education and genuine career aspirations; and
• made me believe that I could do anything – and that I was entitled to be able to.

I was born into a country where:
• the public education and healthcare system is of a high standard and is accessible to me;
• I am a member of the privileged group – the original colonisers, not the colonised or more recent arrivals; and
• my average income enables me to live comfortably and to afford running water, food, shelter, clothing and even international travel.

I was born into a world where:
• my nationality allows me to gain visas to travel, live and to work internationally;
• I can purchase natural resources from all over the world for a fraction of my
income – and consume more in a day than many people can in a year;
• if everyone consumed as much as me, we would need a couple more planets;
• 46% of humankind live on less than $2 per day in PPP terms (or roughly $241 per
year in 2001*) for working long hours in often dangerous conditions, while I get
more than 50 times this amount to research my PhD; and
• the rules of the international system (such as WTO treaties) are written and
enforced by my government and its allies to continue to maintain our privileged
position, by:
-- selectively opening up markets in the Global South while protecting our own;
-- by enforcing the intellectual property rights of our corporations, even when
they have stolen knowledge from others or have invented nothing (but merely
identified a gene that already existed);
-- by granting the power to corrupt elites to sell off their countries’ natural
resources in a manner that does not benefit their people; and
-- by allowing those same elites to borrow in the name of their people without
ensuring that those same people actually benefit from the funds – and still
insisting that they pay back the debt (with interest).

For most people who are poor, you could simply reverse this list. They are not poor by choice, or even by random chance. They are poor so that I (and people like me) can be rich. Without their poverty we would not be so privileged, and (more importantly) without our privilege many of them would not be so poor.

Poverty and privilege are systemic, not serendipitous, and the solution to poverty is justice not charity.


* Thomas Pogge, World Poverty and Human Rights, 2002, Polity Press, Cambridge, p.97.

MDGs - Eight Ways to Change the World

While they are nowhere near good enough, the MDGs are at least a bare minimum.

This photo exhibit on the Millennium Development Goals by Panos Pictures, in association with ActionAid, Concern Worldwide, Interact Worldwide, Panos Institute, Plan International, VSO and WaterAid is worth a look.

I especially like the section on Goal 7 - To ensure environmental sustainability, which includes a target to halve the proportion of people with no access to safe drinking water and sanitation by 2015.

When Dieter Telemans told the people in these photographs that in the west each of us uses 135 litres of water every day, they didn't believe him. They're lucky to get 10.

One billion people in the world don't have clean water to drink. Far from needing water to "detox" their bodies or "rehydrate" their skin, they just need clean water to survive.

Is that too much to ask?

BBC World also did a special on this issue the other day - focusing on Angola. I can't find anything about it on their website though...

irony is always a beautiful thing

Just as Richard Butler, Australia's former ambassador to the UN, let fly with vitriol against John Bolton and the US for attempting to destabilise the Millennium Development Goals by trying to remove all reference to them from the outcomes document to be signed at the UN World Summit next week, Bolton and the US showed some signs of relenting, a little.

Butler called the US "terrorists" for their underhanded actions over the last few weeks. Bolton has proposed no less than 750 amendments to the document in the lead up to the summit, leading many people to wonder whether it will be possible for world leaders to reach a consensus in the short time left before the meeting.

Ten years ago I chaired the 50th anniversary of the UN and the Syrians were the terrorists, they tried to destroy the document.This time, the 60th anniversary, the terrorists seeking to destroy a declaration of all countries agreeing with each other is the United States.

Bolton's offer of a compromise was that the US was ready to accept the use of the phase "Millennium development Goals" throughout the text "provided it can be properly defined."

Whatever that means. He went on to say:

The new U.S. language would "ensure the timely and full realization of the development goals and objectives that emerged from the major United nations conference and summits, including those agreed at the Millennium Summit that have been known as the Millennium Development Goals..."

The US has also relented a little on mentions of the Kyoto Protocol, saying that "The United States understands that many countries are committed to the Kyoto Protocol and desire to have that commitment reflected in the document."

One of the major remaining sticking points is America's refusal to commit to the 0.7 GDP aid target agreed to by, well basically everyone. Europe has committed itself to meeting the goal by 2015, and three or four European nations has already either met or surpassed it.

The US has stated that it would rather that the focus be placed on the agreements made at Monterrey in 2000, that focus more on recipient countries' governance than donor country targets. But, and correct me if I'm wrong, the outcomes document agreed to at Monterrey included the 0.7 GDP target. Again, irony is a beautiful thing.

The United Nations Development Programme has also just released the 2005 Human Development Report, which says that the poorest countries in the world are worse off now than they were in 1990. Now that's progress.

The report says that 460 million people who live in 18 of the poorest countries were better off 15 years ago.

Hopefully the world leaders who are about to meet in New York will have a long hard think about that before they begin the final phase of negotiations.

Geldof bashing

Love him or hate him, it has been difficult to ignore Bob Geldof in the last few months. He (along with Bono and a junket of their celebrity friends) have been pounding the streets selling "the end of poverty."

Geldof has never been one of my heroes, I always thought he seemed a little too self-righteous and self-serving, but as long as he was doing good things then it wasn't worth taking the time to think to long about it.

That may have been a mistake.

George Monbiot has published a damning critique of Geldof's words and actions in the wake of the disastrous G8 Summit.

Bob Geldof, who organised the Live8 events, announced that "a great justice has been done. .. On aid, 10 out of 10; on debt, eight out of 10 … Mission accomplished frankly."

  Oops. I wonder if he actually listened to the statement our so-called world leaders made. I also wonder if he's noticed they have rescinded on basically every meagre promise they made?

Maybe he should stick to what he knows, whatever that is.