Will the MDG targets be met if current development trends continue? Not according to the 2005 Human Development Report (HDR), which cites inequality as the issue of prime concern in the fight against poverty. The report argues that economic development alone will fail to produce sustained poverty reduction. The focus needs to be redirected towards improving equality - narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, men and women and eliminating regional disparities.

Governors and other top public officials who may have large sums of money stashed are running scared as Interpol’s dragnet widens. This is coming on the heels of moves by President Olusegun Obasanjo’s economic team who may have seized the initiative to push aside corrupt members of the political elite in the battle for 2007 presidential succession.

As crucial World Trade Organisation (WTO) talks approach in December, concerned citizens are invited to join a mass lobby in London on 2 November 2005 to demand that the UK government supports the call to make poverty history by delivering trade justice. The lobby is being organised by the Trade Justice Movement (TJM), in partnership with the Co-operative Bank. Another mass rally is planned for Brussels on 21 November 2005.

A Nigerian governor from oil-producing Bayelsa state was charged in London on Wednesday with laundering £1,82m, a court official said. Diepreye Alamieyeseigha was arrested on September 15 by London's Metropolitan Police. The police later found £1m in cash in the governor's London house. He was charged at Bow Street magistrate's court with laundering money on three occasions: £420000 in September 2001, £475724 in March 2002 and £920000 in September this year, court documents showed.

The Western Regional Minister, Mr. Joseph Boahen Aidoo, has given conflicting accounts about the exact amount spent for the renovation and refurbishment of his brother-in-law's private bungalow at Wassa Akropong, to serve as residence for the DCE for Amenfi East. Besides a whopping ¢830million that was used to refurbish the DCE's residence, another issue that has raised eyebrows in the area is a ¢920million that was also spent and captured as amount used to refurbish the District Coordinating Director (DCD) bungalow.

The Special Investigations Unit (SIU) has prevented government from losing an estimated R3.527 billion through corruption. The unit also recovered R12 million government could have lost in this regard, this financial year, unit head Willie Hofmeyr said. Addressing the Pretoria Press Club this morning, Mr Hofmeyr said through their investigations, they were able to ensure 45 civil proceedings, 165 criminal proceedings and 207 disciplinary proceedings. "We aim to work more with government departments to assist them to fight corruption more effectively," he said.

Following the G8 Summit, Global Campaign for Education campaigners turned their attention to the Millennium +5 World Summit in New York . It was originally conceived as an opportunity for Heads of State to review progress in meeting the Millennium Declaration of 2000, strengthen the UN and commit countries to peace-building measures. During 2005 the Summit became a major campaigning moment for anti-poverty activists, especially the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, demanding that governments of rich and poor countries deliver on past promises to end the scandal of global poverty. Following hard on the heels of the G8 Summit, hopes were originally high that it would be an opportunity for world leaders to spell out real action on aid, trade, debt and poverty reduction strategies. Sadly, these aspirations were dashed as Summit negotiations descended into farce following a last-minute intervention by the US.

An African Development Bank (ADB) loan to the tune of US $34 million has given Namibia's 'Green Scheme Project' a major boost. The ADB said the cash injection would provide a vital lifeline to the agricultural sector and assist in making the arid country "greener" through irrigation and crop development initiatives targeting the 70 percent of the country that relies on agriculture.

The purpose of this course is to ensure that planners and managers from different kinds of organisations and project teams are exposed to and engage with a wide range of participatory planning tools and methods, which could be applied at a national, provincial, district and local levels of society.

Pambazuka News has helped to update my knowledge on current issues in Africa and in my work on issue of health like HIV/AIDS.

This is a well-written piece of work (See Congratulations.

However the following points are missing:

1. The few permanent staff who are lucky enough to have remained in those privatised firms are turned into casual labourers with very little salaries.

2. Some of the loans given to new investors are a kind of a gift because the lack of transparency makes it difficult to know if they will ever pay back.

3. The removal and exporting of the machineries in such industries has been alarming and shocking.

4. The involvement of the "honorables" as in the case of Longuza Forests makes it difficult for local people to object.

5. The high speeds that such exercises take also raises doubts.

In the G8 debate which was aired live on BBC, it emerged that that there are conditions attached to the loans and debt cancellation. How true is that?

"As the UN Heads of State and Government gather in New York for the UN Millennium +5 Summit key issues of concern to civil society organizations working in Africa continue to emerge. The Global Call to Action Against Poverty (GCAP) in Africa is deeply concerned that the draft outcome document is a betrayal of the world’s poor, particularly those in Africa. The declaration neither reviews progress nor addresses the challenges faced by governments in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. It does not make any clear commitment to accelerating flow of resources neither does it demonstrate the political commitment that is required to do this."

The four parties that make up Ethiopia's largest opposition alliance, the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) have merged to form one party, an official of the coalition said last Thursday. The All Ethiopia Unity Party, the Union of Ethiopia Democracy Party, Rainbow Ethiopia and the Ethiopian Democratic League announced their unification on Saturday. It elected Hailu Shawel to continue as chairperson of the new party and Birtukan Mideksa to serve as vice-chair.

Hello, I work on gender, Pambazuka News is great for me as a speaker of English, but we are very short of information in French on gender. We have created a Francophone network (www.genreenaction.net) to try and remedy this. Could you say something about it in your newsletter/site?

Pambazuka News replies: Thanks for your email. Readers of Pambazuka News - especially French readers - will be pleased to know that we have plans for a French edition of the newsletter in the near future. Watch Pambazuka News for details in the coming weeks.

Two weeks ago in Pambazuka News 221, Mukoma Wa Ngugi expressed disappointment with the constant comparison of New Orleans to the Third World in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. In a compliment to that article Khalil Tian Shahyd argues that the application of human rights standards in relation to the debate over the terms ‘refugees’ and ‘internally displaced persons’ could help America deal with the crisis.

Listening to the many news reports and coverage of the disaster left by Hurricane Katrina, it is easy to get frustrated from the lack of depth of discussion. The absence of intelligent debate can be witnessed particularly around the latest hot bed issue, the use of the term, 'refugees'.

Many African-American leaders quickly responded to its use in denunciation. Charging that it devalued a people who are 'American' citizens and taxpayers to the national economy, these leaders demanded the survivors be referred to as 'victims' or simply 'survivors'. The cries from Black leadership grew so loud that President Bush himself had to clearly state in a recent interview his opinion that in fact we are citizens, not refugees.

While being trained academically in the field of International development, the word refugee is one we discussed and used very often, without negative connotation or stereotype. This personal background led me to ask the question as to whether all the fuss against the use of the term was actually motivated by a latent 'American exceptionalism' whereby 'refugee' was a label unfit for people of such high international social status as American citizens. Perhaps the term, although widely used around the world, was meant to be reserved for the 'unfortunate' global majority born in the Global South, sometimes called the Third or Developing World. If this were the case then the advocacy against use of the term can only be termed as some form of humanitarian snobbery.

However, what the discussion on the subject shows in a less evident way, is the overall lack of interaction and integration of international human rights standards, tools and methodology into the repertoire of American civil society, political leadership, media and intellectuals.

While it is hard to say which came first, what should be noted however, is the existence of a circular cause-effect relationship between the lack of involvement of US based civil society and advocates in international rights discussions, and the US refusal to sign even the most basic commitments to human rights such as the CEDAW treaty on women's rights and the Child Rights treaty among others. Our continued lack of involvement plays into the interest of US foreign policy nationalists who continue strong arm tactics at the UN to achieve the interest of a narrow fundamentalist nationalism over internationally agreed mandates. Our isolation from international discussion has left us unaware into the happenings and possibilities for change that exist at the international level.

Not once since the controversy arose have I heard anyone -whether in the media or on internet blogs - use the internationally recognized standard label and definition of 'Internally Displaced Persons'. In fact the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has an entire agency, the Inter-Agency Internal Displacement Division (IAIDD), whose mission it is to:

"…coordinate an effective response to the needs of the internally displaced people worldwide." (http://www.reliefweb.int/idp/)

The IAIDD bases its work on the UN Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights', Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement. (http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/7/b/principles.htm)

Although not legally binding, these principles are increasingly recognized as international standards by which all Internally Displaced People can measure and judge the effectiveness and extent of governmental response to their circumstances. This makes the principles a useful frame of analysis for advocates and defenders of the rights of the internally displaced from the Gulf Coast. As in all human rights legislation, which exists with little capacity for or assurance of implementation, the international pressure of shame is the best way to get governments who otherwise wouldn't, to implement their obligations.

A brief summary of some of the most relevant articles in the guidelines follows.

The first section covers principles 1-4 and gives a basic overview of the rights of IDPs to protection, and sets forth to identify the national government as obligated to positively enforce these rights. What this means simply is that realization of these rights requires government action, while inaction is tantamount to a denial of rights. Now perhaps it will become clear to advocates how these standards and language can be used. The section also explicitly warns against discrimination in the guarantee of these rights, and speaks to the special needs of women, children and the elderly for protection.

Section two, which covers principles 5-9 highlights, the obligation of the national government and international authorities to prevent circumstances that would require displacement. Principle 7 Article 2 states that authorities have an obligation to ensure adequate accommodation for those displaced, such that:

"…such displacements are effected in satisfactory conditions of safety, nutrition, health and hygiene, and that members of the same family are not separated."

Further, if displacement occurs in an emergency as is the case in the Gulf Coast, the authorities are responsible to ensure all people full disclosure of information as to where they will be relocated and about the extent of compensation. We have all heard and read accounts of people forced to board busses with no prior knowledge of where they are going and not being allowed to leave after finding out.

Principle 9 outlines the special obligations states have to minority groups and indigenous people who hold 'special' dependency to their native land base. The uniqueness of New Orleans' Afro-Creole culture, nurtured by the streets and climate of the city, can meet the status of 'special' dependency.

Section 3 deals extensively with the obligations of authorities to protect those displaced from violence and harm. Although primarily written with the context of a war situation in mind, it is easily transferable to the context found in the Gulf, particularly New Orleans, where the lack of response and deficit of organized community institutions opened an opportunity for the breakdown of civility in some cases. Principle 16 in this section proclaims the right of IDPs to know the whereabouts of family and obligates authorities to gathering and relaying this information. It appears through news reports that this is one area of some success so far, within obvious limits.

Again, principle 17 declares the obligation of authorities to reunite separated families, which from what I can tell from news reports is happening fairly consistently.

Principle 18 regards the rights of IDPs to adequate standards of living, food, water, clothing and shelter, medicines and sanitation. All these completely broke down for about six days into the aftermath. Attached to this principle is the special emphasis on the involvement of women in the planning and distribution of these basic needs, which makes sense being that it is women who are overwhelmingly responsible for meeting these needs for families. The positive psychological effect of having control over redistribution could be important as well.

Further principles deal with rights to education, and possessions.

Section 5, the final section, deals explicitly with the rights to return, and the conditions upon return to their homes. It sets forth the obligations of authorities to create the conditions that will be necessary for this return, which has been proposed in some instances. Principle 28 Article 2 states clearly that:

"Special efforts should be made to ensure the full participation of internally displaced persons in the planning and management of their return or resettlement and reintegration."

This statement I feel marks the major battle to be fought in the coming months and years as the business elites, real estate developers and local chambers of commerce will move to solidify their advantage within the redevelopment process. This section also calls on the authorities to commit to full compensation for those returning or those choosing to resettle in another area.

I hope this outline of the International Human Rights Standards on IDPs might deepen the stagnant debate and ranting over the right legal definition for the people of the Gulf Coast affected by Hurricane Katrina. It could in fact be that the reluctance of the administration to use the term is precisely for fear of being bound or called into account based on these very standards. How and if they are to be used in the debates to come will need to be decided by civil society and supporters in the Gulf region. What I hope will be gained from this is that people will realize the possibility and existence of rights beyond the narrow base upon which American constitutional rights are based.

I hope I have been able to contribute to making advocates aware of tools they may not otherwise have thought to consider.

* Khalil Tian Shahyd is from New Orleans, a community activist and graduate student of Sustainable International Development with a focus on Poverty Alleviation and Sustainable Community Development in the Lower Mississippi Basin Region. He is currently in New Delhi with the UNDP working on state-level Human Development Reports. He plans to return to New Orleans and organize an HDR on the Lower Mississippi Basin region. He can be reached at: [email][email protected]

* Please send comments to [email protected]

“You have to be a genius to make a loss in a beer business,” writes Issa Shivji as he critiques the false logic behind privatization on the African continent. The first entities to face privatization were those that were most successful, he notes, with the subsequent argument for further privatization pushing the line that privatization led to a quick turnaround in the fortunes of ailing state enterprises.

The privatisation mania has gripped us like an unpreventable plague. The privatisation list is being expanded inexorably. Whether we admit it or not, and whatever the language we may use to rationalise it, the fact remains that privatisation is thrust down the throats of African governments by the BWIs (Bretton Woods Institutions) and the dominant Western powers. Even the so-called debt relief by the G8 is predicated on privatisation as one of the conditionalities. And the BWIs have a peculiar way of arguing.

The failures of privatisation are used to argue for more privatisation of more resources. The argument goes, “if you don’t privatise enough, you cannot reap its benefits”. And, of course, the success of privatisation per force calls for more privatisation. Either way, the argument is self-fulfilling.

The first rationale was that loss-making parastatals were a burden on the taxpayer. Privatisation would ensure that they were turned into efficient, tax paying enterprises. Yet, of course, the first parastatals to be privatised, like the breweries, were not loss making. You have to be a genius to make a loss in a beer business. Their “quick successes” in terms of turnover and tax revenues were used to justify other privatisations.

Obviously, no private investor would want to buy a loss making enterprise. So they have to be sold at dirt-cheap prices without liabilities and losses. Liabilities have to be taken over by the state, which means the very taxpayer who was supposed to be rescued from the loss making parastatal in the first place. Invariably, one of the first casualties of privatisation is workers, thousands of whom are made redundant. The new owners refuse to pay retrenchment benefits. The government has to do it, if at all. So the taxpayer assumes another liability while at the same time some of the tax payers fall out of the tax payers list as they join the queues of job-seekers.

No private profiteer would want to put in his capital unless he makes profit, and, not just profits, but high rates of profit. Africa today offers very high rates of return on capital, what with its rich resources and dependent governments. As Mwalimu (Julius Nyere) once said, Africa attracts only missionaries and mercenaries: missionaries to console its poor, and mercenaries to oversee its pillage.

But profit-making assumes certain minimum conditions. It is the state which has to take on the burden of creating the enabling environment for capital to make profits: build the infrastructure and supply water and electricity and telecommunications at cheap rates; control recalcitrant workers; maintain law and order and facilitate various service providers - from the entertainment industry to catering to security companies - to service the new “community of expatriates”. It is believed that Africa today has more expatriates than at the time of independence.

But then our water and electricity and telephone parastatals are not efficient. Their tariffs are high. Our markets are below standard; our meat is not hygienic and our tomatoes and onions and oranges do not meet the minimum size. So utilities too have to be denationalized, if not by outright sale, then via leasing and management contracts. Squatters have to be cleared to make way for supermarkets and expatriate villages to supply roasted meat from South Africa and cereals from Switzerland.

But it is not easy to turn around utilities into profit making ventures. Their plants and machinery are outdated. Their billing systems have lots of leakages. Since profits or commissions depend on revenue, more efficient water meters and electric meters have to be imported. Once again the state is called upon to provide enabling finance for rehabilitation. It is obliged to take loans from the World Bank and elsewhere to help the investor to import the necessary machinery. Of course, the loans have to be serviced and repaid from the taxpayer’s money – whether the existent or yet-to-be-born. While public debts mount private profits rocket, all in the name of development.

But corporate profit making has to look for new terrains constantly. From producing commodities to turning pubic goods into commodities, the corporate capital moves from manufacturing to public services, education and health and water and energy and from commoditizing land to privatising forests.

Privatisation and commercialisation of forest products is the new trend. A recent story in Tanzanian newspapers reported the deal to lease out the Longuza Teak Plantation to Kilombero Valley Teak Company (KVTC) and is only a tip of the iceberg. Forests have become important to corporate capital not only for timber resources but for bio-resources. By the same token, the implication of delivering forests to corporate capital go beyond the issues of deforestation, as corporate capital turns them into producers of raw material for their veritable workshops of genetic engineering.

Privatisation of forests and forest products has elicited a lot of resistance in Latin America and Asia and even some developed countries including Canada and the United States. The implication and effects of privatising forests are far reaching. These have been debated and discussed in other countries.

We need to learn from the experience of others and re-assess our own. Let the Longuza incidence open up a wide ranging debate on the issues of privatisation generally, but more particularly, the implications of privatising – in whatever form – one of the most important resource and heritage, our forests.

Let us not deliver our future livelihoods into the hands of corporate pirates.

©Issa Shivji. Shivji is Professor of Law at the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

* Please send comments to

In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) SMS is being used to monitor child rights violations. In Argentina indigenous communities are using SMS to halt the bulldozers that destroy their forest livelihoods. And in the Philippines, angry activists have used SMS to hold government to account. The power of cellular technology is no longer up for debate; what remains to be discussed is how to maximize it for social good. Mobile Active Convergence, held recently in Canada, did just this.

The goal of the first ever conference on using cell phones and SMS in campaign, human rights, and political work was to “help speed the dissemination of innovative practices and technology by skill and knowledge-sharing among participants”.

What came out of the three-day event, held in Toronto, Canada between 22-25 September, went far beyond this expectation, as a diverse group of people from around the world banged their heads together, mixed their ideas and thrashed out a vision for just how far cellular technology can go in creating a better world. The end result was new ideas, the formation of a lasting network and the production of a body of knowledge available to many beyond the confines of the conference.

Organised by Green Media Toolshed (http://www.greenmediatoolshed.org/) and Aspiration (http://www.aspirationtech.org/), 40-odd participants from North America, South America, Europe, Africa and Asia explored strategies and tactics for the use of cell phones as an organizing tool towards the end of helping civil society activists capitalize on the global wireless phone infrastructure for advocacy communications and organizing.

Key areas addressed by the conference included tactics, networking and funding. The conference produced guides on how to use SMS in organizing work, discussed organizing challenges in the South and addressed issues of language and access. (Read the full conference proceedings by visiting http://www.mobileactive.org/wiki/index.php?title=Proceedings) The conference produced a declaration on the use of mobile phones entitled “Without the people mobile tech means nothing”, which can be read at (http://www.mobileactive.org/wiki/index.php?title=Without_the_people_mob…)

The stories told below were related to Pambazuka News by three participants at the conference, each of whom are using cellular technology in their work to confront power and create change.

* Bukeni, Ajedi-Ka-Child Soldier Project, DRC

“My name is Bukeni and I am from the eastern part of the DRC, South Kivu Province, Uvira. I am a director of a local NGO called Ajedi-Ka-Child Soldier Project and am also a filmmaker. I make films on child soldiers in the DRC and started working on this issue in 1998.

In my town many children were abducted by the RCD-Goma during the conflict in the DRC. There was a militia called the Mai-Mai which was recruiting children by force. At that stage I was a student in Bukavu in 1998. Parents began to send me letters asking me to advocate for information about their children.

I went to the chief commander to talk to him. It was hard to reach him but eventually I got an audience. The list of children that I got from parents contained 22 names and I showed him the list. After discussion he agreed to do what he could and we agreed to meet in a week. When I returned I had to give the bodyguards cigarettes to be able to get an audience with the commander, who provided a list of 11 children who had been found. They said they could not do anything else and warned me not to insist - they threatened they would shoot me. I asked what message I should take to the parents and they told me to tell them that I had found nothing. I sent a letter to the parents telling them what I had found out.

By that time it was Christmas holidays and some parents came to thank me when I returned home. After that I tried to contact some friends to see what could be done to advocate. But the problem was that in the villages there is still a great deal of insecurity. However, we knew relatives in these villages and so we went to them to find out from other parents who had the same problem. We met again after 10 days and in that time had collected the names of 110 names of children who had disappeared. We decided to set up an NGO. Our primary goal was to advocate for these children and to monitor abuses.

In 2 000, I established a transit centre to accommodate children being demobilised from camps. In the training camps I would find hundreds of children and would speak to the commanders to get 3,4,5, or 6 children back. Up to last year we have been able to demobilise 310 children. Primarily we are doing demobilisiation and reintegration by uniting the children with their parents. We also do advocacy to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers.

Advocating in the camps is not without risk. I have been arrested four times and beaten twice.

In 2003 I introduced the use of video as a tool of advocacy. Some parents have encouraged their children to join militia because they believe that it will help to protect them. I began to try to go into the camps to make footage and in 2003 made my first film. The quality was not good, but in 2004 I found a partner in Witness, who specialise in using videos as a tool of advocacy. The video I made had the goal of sensitising the local community to prevent the recruitment of child soldiers. Since June 2005 the video has been screened in villages and sometimes 1000 people come to watch it.

In the villages people often don’t have access to TV. They are sometimes just fascinated to see the images so we often screen it twice so that the message sinks in the second time. The video has been a huge success.

This year in May I also made a video focusing on girl soldiers. The real reason for their recruitment is sexual exploitation. I addressed it to the international community because we need international action because our courts are not effective. Last year the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) said the DRC would be the first country investigated before the ICC. The video called on the ICC to take into consideration the recruitment and use of child soldiers because that is a war crime under the ICC. The video raised the necessity of prosecuting those responsible.

In our activities we also do reporting and monitoring activities on child rights. In 2000 we implemented village committees for child protection whose role is in reporting and monitoring on child rights violations. Each committee has five members and are established in each village and are known by the community. Usually when there is a situation they compile a report and send it by mail to our office, but this can take 4-5 days.

During May I got a small grant from a New York based organisation called Watchlist on Children and Armed Conflict. I submitted a small proposal that asked if they could provide us with cellphones so that the village could provide reports. We now have 15 committees in 22 villages. They report by cellphone and SMS about abductions and maiming, who is responsible and who the victims are.

For example in a village called Akwe, there was a girl who was shot by militia. Information was collected about who shot her and it was reported to our office. We alerted the local authorities and asked them for quick intervention to make sure that an arrest was made and an investigation done. This was all through SMS and cellphones. It was very fast. Unfortunately, the authorities could not arrest those responsible because in our area there is impunity. We collect about two reports a week, but also do verification.

I have a passion for working on this issue. I am working voluntarily. These children are our children. Let us do something to solve the problem – what we can do is advocate for a cessation of impunity and of violations of child rights and maybe then these children can build a better future for the whole nation.”

* Trixie, TXTPower, The Philippines

“We were initially a consumer advocacy group formed in 2001. This was the year that President Estrade was ousted and one of the tools that we used was SMS. It took SMS to mobilise people to go out on the streets and vent their frustration.

During that time if you were a mobile phone subscriber you received 100 free SMS messages. When companies saw how much people were texting, they looked at decreasing the amount and in August 2001 this is what they proposed. Activists felt that something had to be done.

We formed TXTPower and one of the ways in which we fought against this was through a text boycott. At that time 100 million messages were being sent a day. One text message equals one peso so that was a loss of $2m a day for the companies. Almost immediately the companies made a public announcement saying they would not remove the text allocation.

The next major thing we did was in 2003 when the country was in the middle of a financial crisis. An IMF suggestion was to tax text messages. We said that this was really not going to happen. If something is already free, how are you going to tax it?

This led on to August 2004 when we picketed congress and sent messages out saying ‘Texters Revolt! Say no to text tax!’ We got the cellphone number of the speaker of the parliament and told people to text messages to that number. We also had overseas workers join in the campaign. It became front page headlines in the newspapers in September and it forced the speaker to declare that he would not tax text messages. There are still proposals to tax messaging but we are monitoring it closely. We had some complaints from the speaker because he could not use his cellphone for some time!

Last year we extended our engagement to the May 2004 national elections where we supported progressive party list groups. Cheating and vote-buying were common place. We therefore focused our activities on monitoring and had a central area where we set up a computer to receive messages from people in the regions telling us if there were problems or vote buying. A quick reaction team would be composed of a lawyer, a human rights worker and representatives from different parties.

Our most notorious activity was a few months ago. In the elections there were allegations of cheating. There were wiretaps of the president speaking to an election official. The Department of Justice declared that anyone in possession of wiretap recordings could be arrested at any time. A few days later people made a ring tone out of the tapes and were playing it on their phones. We had the idea of loading the ring tone up onto our website. We had to consult on the legal implications, but eventually we went ahead with it. There was an overwhelming response – we had 300 000 hits on our website in two days. Others emailed us different versions of the ring tone. Sometime later the president apologised for talking to the official.

Anger motivates me. We are an angry bunch of people. The economy is bad – the government does not care about the people. The cellphone is a way for people to express how they feel. Our government hides a whole lot of truth from its people – we have a right to know the truth and advocate to get the government to act in the interests of the people. For this we have been called cyber-terrorists.

We are just a loose group of people. We have no money and no offices. It’s just a group of really angry activists.”

* Oscar, Greenpeace, Argentina

“One of the many campaigns is against forest destruction and we work very closely with indigenous people. In this area the indigenous communities are fighting for the right to their land and are facing trouble because land owners buy up land to cultivate Soya, which is 99% genetically modified. These communities have a long history of resistance to eviction and the destruction of the forests.

One of the problems we detect is that there are no landlines to stay in contact if landowners are trying to destroy homes and forest. We gave mobile phones to different leaders in the communities and are using them to get messages from people.

When we get warnings that the forest is being destroyed we go into action with motorbikes to stop the bulldozers. We blockade the bulldozers with chains and demobilise them. SMS is also used to network and for organising protests. It is a good tool for remaining in close contact with local communities because one of the problems is that the communities are remote and don’t know each other. We now have around 50 leaders with mobile phones and they represent around 10 000 people.

Sometimes the bulldozer operators transmit that we are in action and they call the police, who wait for us at the entrance to the forests. Sometimes we take videos to show the media what is happening. We also have a helicopter which we sometimes use for escape. The Plan B is that we are arrested and one person escapes with the footage in order to get it to the media. Sometimes the police are violent and don’t respect the laws.

The circumstances of these people is that they are very poor and have no access to water or energy. They live in small communities of 5-10 families inside the forest. The forest is very important to them because it is a source of water and food.

According to legislation, the indigenous people have the right to their land but the problem is that they don’t have papers to show that the property belongs to them. Actually the government is selling the land to big landowners who have 10 or 50 000 hectares of land. In some cases it is difficult to know how many hectares of land they own. Once it is sold the bulldozers build routes and then deforest the area and grow Soya. The soil is very fragile and after a few years it becomes a desert.

Soya is a big international business and one of the reasons for the recovery of the economy is the export of Soya. Indigenous people are being evicted and end up on the borders of the big cities to live in very poor areas.

We are winning the local fights. We have stopped the sale of forests in a legal way and stopped the bulldozers with strong local resistance. We are now in a deadlock – they are not going ahead but they are not surrendering. This is the situation now. But Soya expansion means money and a ‘good’ economy.”

* Patrick Burnett works for Fahamu.

* Please send comments to [email protected]

Compared to the verbal commitment of world leaders to human rights issues, the amount of money actually allocated to human rights within the United Nations system is pitiful. “If the role of the United Nations, through the work of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, cannot be sustained, then any other system is also doomed to failure, irrespective of what form the ‘new and improved’ UN is going to take,” writes Vinodh Jaichand.

The United Nations has often been criticised as being an ineffective body. The Secretary General, Kofi Annan, called for a debate on the possible reform of the United Nations in September 2003 due to the deep divisions among member states on the use of force in response to security threats. During this past week there have been major discussions on reforming the United Nations so that it might be better equipped to deal with the larger challenges, including the Millennium Development Goals. The UN is often portrayed as an independent institution with regard to peace and security when, in fact, it is an instrument of its collective membership [Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, The Role of the United Nations in International Peace and Security 841 at 842]. While it operates under the rules of diplomacy, the UN has been expected to be the defender of human rights in the world.

With a membership of 191 states under its Charter, the United Nations is the main international institution tasked with protecting and promoting human rights. Within the United Nations system the office assigned the main responsibility for human rights activities is the High Commissioner for Human Rights who is expected to engage with governments on human rights issues nationally and internationally with the aim of improving their respect and practice.

In a report undertaken by the Joint Inspection Unit of the United Nations [Management Review of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (JIU/REP/2003/6) prepared by Armando Duque Gonzalez ], it revealed that despite the strategic importance of human rights for the United Nations system, which has been highlighted in numerous documents, the resources allocated through regular budget appropriations have not reflected such strategic importance.

Indeed, the resources assigned decreased in percentage and absolute terms from 1996 to 2001 and increased in absolute terms in the 2002-2003 biennium. In the latter period the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights budget amounted to 1.75 per cent of the United Nations total budget. From 1996 at no stage did the amount received ever rise above 1.79 per cent of the United Nations total budget. At the same time the lack of regular resources has been compounded by an increase in the number of activities undertaken by the Office which require special representatives, special rapporteurs and independent experts. Therefore the Office is heavily dependent on voluntary contributions from states to fund core and mandated activities that should remain within the regular budget.

As a result, any disruption in the voluntary contributions received has impacted negatively on the core, the mandated activities and the extra-budgetary ones. The General Accounting Office of the United States Congress criticized the trend, preferred by the wealthier countries including the United States, towards voluntary contributions from Member States to fund human rights and other United Nations programmes. It said that the practice had left UN agencies lacking in stability for long term planning and has harmed the morale of staff [UN Changes Get Blocked by Rifts, a Congressional Report Finds by Jess Bravin, Wall Street Journal].

Does the Income Match the Ambition?

Under the Charter of the United Nations all Member States have an obligation, arising from the international treaty they ratified, to pay a portion of the budget for the functioning of the organisation. Each State’s contribution is calculated on the basis of its share of the world economy according to an assessment formula which is reviewed on a regular basis. Once a budget is finalized all Member States review and approve the budget in the General Assembly which, since 1988, has been approved by consensus [Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights website].

The five largest contributors to the UN regular budget are USA ($341,4m or 22% of the total), Japan ($263,5m or 19,5%of the total), Germany ($131,9m or 9,8% of the total), France ($87,3m or 6,5% of the total) and the United Kingdom ($74,7m or 5,5% of the total.

The United Nations regular budget for 2002-2003 amounted to $2.6 billion and for 2004-2005 an amount of $3 billion has been proposed as a preliminary regular budget. [Poor Nations First to Pay Up Dues for 2003 by Thalif Deen, Inter Press Service, January 2, 2003]

The payment of the contributions, both regular and voluntary, to the UN has sometimes been treated by Member States as an undue burden for membership, or as a donation for which there must be some gratitude or leverage due, despite the transparency in the process under a treaty obligation. There are many reported instances of this type of reaction. A few examples, which are not intended to be exhaustive, will be raised at this point to illustrate this.

As a result of the last review of the budgetary allocations in December 2003 Japan had to pay 19.5 percent of the UN budget although it accounts for 13 per cent of the global economy, while the United States paid only 22 percent for 30 percent of the world gross domestic product. Japan was reported to have been angry and frustrated because it does not get enough “bang for its buck” compared to other contributors to the UN budget and expected a seat on the Security Council for its higher contribution [Squeezed Japan Threatens Cuts to UN Agencies by Thalif Deen, Inter Press, January 7, 2004].

The United States withdrew from UNESCO for nearly twenty years when the Reagan administration pulled out as a result of the then director-general alleged anti-US stance because he proposed a more balanced flow in the content of news between developed and developing countries. In early January 2004 Congress approved the payment of $71 million for the United States contribution to UNESCO. It is believed that UNESCO can be used effectively to promote more pro-western values in the educational systems of Arab countries [Foreign Aid Bill to Fund Controversial UN Agencies, OneWorld US, January 27,2004].

The lead writer of a UN report on freedom and governance is reported to have said that the United States threatened to cut off funds to the UNDP to the value of $100 million because it was unhappy with sections of the report which refer to the occupation of Iraq and the activities of Israel in the Occupied Territories [US Threatens UN Agency Funds Over Report-Writer by Jonathan Wright, Reuters, December 18, 2004].

The focus on UN funding sharpens when we consider what payments are owed to the organisation by major debtor countries. The United Nations and all its agencies and funds spend about $10 billion each year or about $1.70 for each of the world's inhabitants. Many Member States have not paid their full contributions and have cut their contributions to the UN's voluntary funds. As of November 30, 2004, Members arrears to the regular budget topped $695 million, of which the United States alone owed $530 million, which amounts to 76 percent of the regular budget [Global Policy Forum]. The other Member States who owe money in the top five include Japan, Ukraine, Brazil and Argentina.

Are There Sufficient Resources?

To place these figures in some kind of context the regular budget of the United Nations in 2005 is the same as the largest single donation by the United States in 2004 to Israel for $3 billion in mostly military assistance [Foreign Aid Bill to Fund Controversial UN Agencies”, OneWorld US, 27 January 2004]. There have been numerous proposals for alternative ways to fund the work of the United Nations. Proposals include instituting a global tax on currency transactions, while others propose environmental taxes and taxes on the arms-trade. However, Member States responsible for the highest contributions are reluctant to reform the system, fearing they would lose political leverage [Global Policy Forum].

For the cost of the invasion of Iraq and the subsequent attempts to rebuild that society, calculated at $150 billion and rising each day, the United Nations could have fully funded global anti-hunger efforts for 6 years or a world-wide AIDS programme for 15 years, or ensured that every child in the world was given basic immunization for 50 years [National Priorities Project]. Certainly, that amount of money could assist numerous countries, including the countries in South East Asia affected by the Tsunami where the UN has called for some $950 million in short term-aid for the purpose of rehabilitation [Officials gather in Jakarta for tsunami aid talks, International Herald Tribune, 6 January 2005] Indeed, based on the current operations of all the work of the United Nations from regular and voluntary contributions, the amount being spent on the invasion of Iraq would operate all the United Nations programmes for at least 14 years.

Aid Relief in Focus

How does one measure the cost, in actual dollar terms, of one life whether that person is the United Nations High Commissioner on Human Rights in Iraq or a child born in a tree during the floods in Mozambique? The loss of one is impossible to quantify, yet the rescue of the other can be measured in the cost of fuel and operation for the helicopter and personnel involved in the mission. Human rights and humanitarian action are often intertwined because if the victims do not survive the right to life or the right to food, as components of individual human rights, is meaningless. Both lives are equally valuable, no doubt, and are invaluable in dollar terms. Perhaps my inquiry is misdirected because the more appropriate question in many of these cases would be: What is the cost of not intervening? Should the cost be measured only in terms of a reaction to things gone wrong or should they be gauged by proactive measures which can prove too costly later?

We often calculate the cost of remedial action in the aftermath of one or other humanitarian intervention. Hurricane Katrina reversed the trend of the United States as an aid receiving country from the perceived view of an aid dispensing one when it received offers of aid in cash and kind valued at one billion dollars from about 100 countries and international organisations. Amongst them was Sri Lanka with a donation of $25 000 and $1 million cash offers from Bangladesh. The recent South East Asia Tsunami disaster saw an outpouring of public assistance through record public donations which have forced many governments to revise their aid packages. The British government found itself playing catch-up with public sentiment. The public donated more than 100 million pounds. According to John Pilger, in the New Statesman of 6 January 2005, both Bush and Blair increased their “first driblets of “aid” only when it became clear that people all over the world were spontaneously giving millions and a public relations problem beckoned.

The three states which provided the highest aid for South East Asian Tsunami victims were Australia ($765 million), Germany ($ 665 million) and Japan with $500 million. The United States government came in fourth with $350 million with the American public reported to have raised over $200million. The complete rebuilding of the South East Asian countries is projected at around $200 billion. Journalist John Pilger observed that the United States and Britain were giving less to the Tsunami victims than the cost of a Stealth bomber, or a week’s occupation of Iraq. The bill for George Bush’s presidential inauguration party would rebuild much of the coastline of Sri Lanka [The Other, Man-Made Tsunami by John Pilger, New Statesman, 6 January, 2005 ].

It appears that the United States is sometimes of the view that it carries the major portion of the burden without the credit for doing so. In January 2000, Senator Helms in an address to the UN Security Council argued that: “The UN lives and breathes on the hard-earned money of American taxpayers,” and he resented the “lack of gratitude” shown to the United States [Chantal de Jonge Oudraat, The Role of the United Nations in International Peace and Security, 841 at 850] The objective facts however do not sustain that view based on Gross Domestic Production (GDP). The European Union provides over 36 percent to the United Nations budgets. Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom contribute nearly as much as the United States, $910 million against the $920 of the United States. The combined GDP of these countries is 21 per cent of the world total as opposed to 30 per cent of the United States. If the formula for burden sharing at the United Nations, which we observed earlier has been voted on by consensus and reviewed regularly, is skewed, then the affected countries ought to propose another which is more equitable.

The facts cited do not support the view that the promotion and protection of human rights is as important for Member States because the practice of payments of contributions to the United Nations does not match the ambition or the rhetoric of protecting human rights. If the role of the United Nations, through the work of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, cannot be sustained then any other system is also doomed to failure, irrespective of what form the “new and improved” UN is going to take. No amount of diplomatic practice can rescue it either. No system for the protection of human rights can function without a minimum of resources. Compared with the resources for other concerns, the resources needed for enabling an international mechanism for the protection of human rights to function are less than minimal at 1.79 per cent of the total regular budget. Even then, the minimum is not made available for expenditure [Marc Bossuyt, International Human Rights Systems: Strengths and Weaknesses, 47 at 5]. That is a very high price to pay for human rights.

* Vinodh Jaichand is from the Irish Centre for Human Rights, National University of Ireland, Galway

* Please send comments to [email protected]

To all at Pambazuka - most definitely well deserved for winning the non-profit category of the sixth annual Highway Africa awards.

An effort to rid Uganda of some 50,000 small arms began on Monday with the burning of about 3,000 weapons at a ceremony in the capital, Kampala. Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda said: "Weapons destruction is intended to ensure that weapons seized, collected or deemed excess to national security requirements do not find their way back into illegal circulation or recycled into neighbouring conflict areas," Rugunda told the audience of mainly government officials and diplomats. The UN Development Programme funded the arms destruction.