Tajik NGOs Feeling Heat in Winter

November 21, 2012 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

EurasiaNet Correspondents

DUSHANBE, Nov 20 (EurasiaNet) – As the leader of a civil rights-related non-governmental organisation, Dilrabo Samadova said she was used to getting hassled by authorities about her group’s activities. But recent government actions to put the clamps on civil society groups like hers in Tajikistan took her by surprise.Despite the fact that Tajikistan is one of Central Asia’s poorest countries, Tajiks used to consider themselves as better off than their neighbours because they had comparatively more room to operate and pursue their ambitions, Samadova explained.

“We used to be … more free than in neighbouring countries,” said Samadova, the chair of the young lawyers association, Amparo, which was shut down following a late October Tajik court ruling. “Now we’re going backwards.”

A few weeks before Amparo’s closure, instructions were sent to university heads by the Education Ministry, informing them that “conducting any kind of conferences, seminars, other gatherings, or meetings with students through international organisations is against the law.”

In short, students can no longer participate in events sponsored by international NGOs, according to a copy of the order obtained by EurasiaNet.org. It is unclear what law the directive is in accordance with.

The head of the Education Ministry’s international relations department refused to discuss the matter, instead passing the phone to education finance specialist Tagoymurod Davlatov. “It’s not true, there is no document,” he said. “Nothing has changed.”

But in a follow-up email Davlatov altered his tone. “The decision of the ministry is to work closely with NGOs. The main thing is (for students) to attend lessons on time,” he wrote.

The Education Ministry directive already has had a significant ripple-effect. Since the announcement, some NGOs, including London-based International Alert, have been pressured to cancel youth camps, while the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) saw upcoming language testing for international student exchanges nixed.

“It’s really useful for students to participate in this kind of training,” said Samadova of Amparo, which also operated youth camps. “But the government wants to be so bureaucratic and control everything.”

Tajikistan’s government – which relies heavily on donor assistance in a variety of areas, everything from electrical transformer repairs to food security and land mine clearance – is rankling the very international constituency that it needs to have on its side. Western diplomats say they are keeping a close eye on Dushanbe’s actions.

“We and other donor countries will continue to look to support projects that help Tajikistan in economic terms, as well as spread ideas, expertise and knowledge,” said a senior Western diplomat from a major donor nation. “But if this proves to be a concerted effort to shut down NGOs, it will certainly have an impact on international funding.”

It’s unclear who’s behind the recent crackdown, added the diplomat. “It could be someone at the top saying, ‘NGOs are problematic with their Western ideas.’ The sad thing for Tajikistan, as they try to become more developed, is that they need greater access, not less, to international ideas and to organisations, like NGOs that can bring in expertise and help train youth,” he said.

The government ruling will force NGOs to alter their goals and objectives in Tajikistan, said the director of an international NGO that has been working on economic development, health and infrastructure in the country for more than a decade.

“It’s pretty shocking,” he said. “And it makes our work almost impossible.”

Students are the main target audience for most NGOs, said the director, who asked not to be named for fear of government reprisals. “We want to expand young peoples’ capacity both economically and socially, so they can lead their communities into the future.”

Tajikistan’s substandard education system, which is rife with corruption, sees students and parents pay for everything from test results to university degrees. “It would be better if the Ministry of Education actually stuck to its core role and focused on mending an education system that is fundamentally broken and certainly worse than it was under the Soviets,” added the Western diplomat.

The education system has “a lot of problems", said a law professor who spoke on condition of anonymity. The ruling stopping students from participating in NGO-sponsored initiatives and that “is a problem for students", the academic added.

Samadova of Amparo suspects the presidential election next year has a lot to do with the recent ruling. The government sees NGOs as conduits for the dissemination of information on issues in which official policy has glaring shortcomings, including public health, the environment and education.

“And with the election next year the government is trying to stop this activity,” she said. Tajikistan has never held an election deemed free and fair by outside observers. Young people are “easier to control if they don’t know anything", she added.

Others believe President Imomali Rahmon’s administration is merely trying to emulate Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has steadily tightened the screws on civil society groups since protests against his rule erupted last winter.

The government’s attempt to control civil society during the run-up to the 2013 election “is something we will have to pay close attention to,” said the Western diplomat. “Especially post-Khorog, there has been a general lack of freedom of information,” he said, referring to violence this summer between government troops and local warlords.

Adding to concerns, plans surfaced early in November for a new government project to monitor all Internet providers operating in Tajikistan. This comes after months of on-again, off-again blocks of critical news sites.

Once again, the head of the government communications service – which reportedly sent out a letter describing the functions of the new center to relevant government agencies – publicly denied his office was seeking expansive snooping powers.

But other government officials told local media that just such a plan, which they say is in the interests of security, is in the works.

It’s all part of the reelection game, said the Western NGO director.

“In this country it’s not about transparency and accountability, it’s about the oppression of everything,” the NGO representative added.

*This story originally appeared on Eurasianet.org.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2012.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Asia, Featured, Human Rights Tagged With: ,

NGOs Call for IMF Gold Profits to Cancel Debts of Poorest Countries

April 5, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 4, 2011 (IPS) – Nearly 60 international civil society organisations urged the executive board of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Monday to earmark some 2.8 billion dollars in profits from the agency’s gold sales for cancelling the debts of the world’s poorest nations.

In a joint statement, the groups, which included ActionAid International, Oxfam International, the International Trade Union Confederation, and the global Jubilee networks, said the profits should be used to help poor indebted countries weather external shocks, including the 2008-2009 financial crisis and, more recently, the sharp rise in global food and fuel prices.

"We urge the IMF Executive Board to expand the criteria for the Fund’s new Post-Catastrophe Debt Relief Trust Fund to provide debt relief without harmful conditions to countries in crisis, and use the gold sales proceeds to fund it," according to the statement, which was also signed by the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (AFNDD), the Bretton Woods Project, and the Latin American Network on Debt and Development.

The Trust Fund, which was launched last June to help Haiti recover from its devastating earthquake in January 2010, provides for a two-year moratorium on debt service payments owed to the IMF. It also authorises the cancellation of all IMF debt stock for poor countries that face catastrophic disasters.

The groups called for the IMF’s governing board to broaden the eligibility for countries to tap the Trust Fund’s resources to include crises created by other external shocks, such as the financial crisis, over which poor countries have very little or no control.

The appeal, which comes as the IMF’s executive board is due to take up the disposition of the gold sales profits here this week, also comes just 10 days before the annual spring meetings of the IMF’s and World Bank’s governing boards.

Speaking Monday in advance of the meeting, IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said policymakers must pay more attention to inequality and social cohesion and that the so-called "Washington consensus" that favoured free- market principles was "now behind us".

"The benefits of growth must be broadly shared, not just captured by a privileged few," he told an audience at nearby George Washington University. "While the market must stay centre-stage, the invisible hand must not become the invisible fist," he added.

Despite his key role in promoting the creation of the Debt Relief Trust Fund, Strauss-Kahn did not address the civil society organisations’ (CSOs) appeal to use the proceeds from the gold sales to increase its resources and broaden the ability of poor countries to use it.

Due to the historically high price of gold, the IMF has realised at least 3.5 billion dollars more than it had projected in 2008 when it began selling 403.3 tonnes of gold.

In 2009, the IMF agreed to use 900 million dollars of those profits to increase the amount of low-interest lending to poor countries.

Since then, the price of gold has continued to climb. The CSOs now estimate that the IMF will eventually gain an additional 2.5 billion dollars at least in windfall profits from the sales.

The executive board will consider several options for using the profits, according to both the CSOs and IMF officials.

The first would be to use the profits to help cover the IMF’s operating expenses, which have historically relied on income from its lending operations. Three years ago, the IMF created an endowment for that purpose out of the initial gold sales of some seven billion dollars.

The other main options include adding the excess profits to precautionary reserves for potential future use, such as dealing with a new crisis similar to the 2008 meltdown that was particularly damaging to middle-income countries, or using it to help low-income countries recover from multiple crises and reduce or eliminate their debt.

The activist groups favour the last option, noting that, with projected profits from its lending operations projected to reach 500 million dollars this year, the IMF finds itself in a particularly strong financial position.

"The IMF’s finances are in much better shape than when they agreed to sell this gold, with their profits from lending and the price of gold now both sky-high," said Melinda St. Louis, the deputy director of Jubilee USA.

"Yet the world’s poorest countries aren’t faring quite so well. They face potential starvation with food prices spiking again, plus mounting debts due to natural disasters or financial crises caused by Western banks," she added.

Jubilee USA is part of a global network that has campaigned for comprehensive debt relief for the world’s poorest countries for more than a decade.

"The moral choice is clear: the IMF should use its excess money for debt cancellation and non-debt-creating assistance for the poorest," she added.

Indeed, some of the world’s poorest countries have seen their debts increase due to the global economic downturn. Sierra Leone’s debt has actually doubled over the past two and a half years, and its government currently spends more on debt repayments than on health care, according to the CSOs.

"This is a long-awaited opportunity for the IMF to cancel poor countries’ debts," said Collins Magalsi, AFNDD’s Zimbabwe-based director. "The IMF has always said it lacks the money to be able to write off the debts of these poor countries. Now that there is an excess, it is only logical to use this money to cancel debts that are further crippling poor economies."

"For most African countries, total foreign debt is a third of earnings from exports," he added.

The CSOs are particularly eager to see the profits ploughed into the Post-Catastrophe Debt Relief Trust Fund, which was used to cancel all of Haiti’s debt stock to the Fund after the earthquake.

Currently, however, the Trust Fund coffers contain only 154 million dollars, and its mandate permits only very small countries faced with a catastrophe on the scale of that disaster to apply for help.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Budget, Development, Economic Policy, Report, Social Justice Tagged With: ,

HAITI: Seeding Reconstruction or Destruction?

April 1, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Correspondents*

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Apr 1, 2011 (IPS/Haiti Grassroots Watch) – Last year, tens of thousands of tonnes of tools, seeds and plant cuttings were distributed to almost 400,000 Haitian farming families, perhaps one-third to one-half of the country’s farming population.

The 20-million-dollar programme – spearheaded by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and carried out by the FAO and large international non-governmental organisations or "INGOs" like Oxfam, USAID, Catholic Relief Services, as well as the Ministry of Agriculture – was kicked into action in the weeks following the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake.

Warning of a looming "food crisis", the FAO and large INGOs urged funders to help them buy seed and tools to help the families hosting the over 500,000 refugees who had streamed out of the capital and other destroyed cities.

"The logic behind [the distribution] is that in the zones directly affected by the earthquake and in the zones that received a great number of displaced people, the peasants were decapitalised," according to the FAO’s Francesco Del Re. "It wasn’t a general distribution. It was a well- targeted distribution, for the most vulnerable."

Agribusiness behemoth Monsanto also offered 475 tonnes of hybrid maize and vegetable seeds to be distributed mostly by USAID’s flagship agriculture programme, WINNER (Watershed Initiative for National Environmental Resources).

(Despite repeated requests to WINNER, Haiti Grassroots Watch was denied an interview. It is unclear whether the entire 475 tonnes made it into Haiti, nor is it clear which communities received the seeds).

Most actors agree that in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, the emergency distributions had some beneficial aspects, but Haiti Grassroots Watch decided to take a closer look.

During its three-month investigation, the Haiti Grassroots Watch partnership of community radio journalists and reporters from the Society for the Animation of Social Communications (SAKS) and the online news agency AlterPresse discovered environmental and health risks, failed harvests, the threat of dependency and other controversial aspects.

The findings were released in a nine-part series on Mar. 30. They are available in full at http://www.haitigrassrootswatch.org.

Independent study faults distribution strategy

Contrary to the cries of alarm over "farmers eating their seed", a multi-agency seed security study shepherded by researcher Louise Sperling of the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) determined that "[u]nlike nearly everywhere else in the world, ‘eating and selling one’s seed’ are not distress signals in Haiti: They are normal practices."

The study said there was "no seed emergency" in Haiti and recommended, in June 2010, against distributions, saying that instead host families should have been given cash to buy local seed and take care of other urgent needs.

Even though the seed study also warned that "one should never introduce varieties in an emergency context which have not been tested in the given agro-ecological site and under farmers’ management conditions" – and in direct contradiction with Haitian law and international conventions which aim to protect the gene pool and the ecosystem in general – the Ministry of Agriculture approved Monsanto’s donation of 475 tonnes of hybrid seed varieties.

Although USAID/WINNER attempted to conceal its work behind contractual gag rules imposed on all staff, Haiti Grassroots Watch found out that at least 60 tonnes of Monsanto, Pioneer and other hybrid maize and vegetable seed varieties were distributed and were actively promoted.

In an internal report leaked to the investigating team, USAID/WINNER staff wrote: "Despite a whole media campaign against hybrids under the cover of GMO/Agent Orange/Round Up, the seeds were used almost everywhere, the true message got through, although not at the level hoped for," and "[W]e are in the process of working as quickly as possible with farmers to increase as much as possible the use of hybrid seeds."

Hooked on hybrids?

At least some of the peasant farmer groups receiving Monsanto and other hybrid maize and other cereal seeds have little understanding of the implications of getting "hooked" on hybrid seeds, since most Haitian farmers select seeds from their own harvests.

One of the USAID/WINNER trained extension agents told Haiti Grassroots Watch that in his region, farmers won’t need to save seeds anymore: "They don’t have to kill themselves like before. They can plant, harvest, sell or eat. They don’t have to save seeds anymore because they know they will get seeds from the [WINNER-subsidised] store."

When it was pointed out that WINNER’s subsidies end when the project ends in four years, he had no logical response.

At least some of the farmer groups interviewed also don’t appear to understand the health and environmental risks involved with the fungicide- and herbicide-coated hybrids. In at least one location, farmers were planting seed without the use of recommended gloves, masks and other protections, and – until Haiti Grassroots Watch intervened – they were planning to grind up the toxic seed to use as chicken feed.

Fostering dependency

Even though most of the internally displaced people – 66 percent – had returned to cities by mid-June, seed distributions continued throughout 2010 and into 2011.

When CIAT researcher Sperling learned of this, she told Haiti Grassroots Watch, "Direct seed aid – when not needed , and given repetitively – does real harm. It undermines local systems, creates dependencies and stifles real commercial sector development."

She added that some humanitarian actors "seem to see delivering seed aid as easy and they welcome the overhead (money) – even if their actions may hurt poor farmers."

In at least several places around the country, donated seeds produced no or little yield.

"What I would like to tell the NGOs it that, just because we are the poorest country doesn’t mean they should give us whatever, whenever," disgruntled Bainet farmer Jean Robert Cadichon told Haiti Grassroots Watch.

While projects attempting to improve Haiti’s seed system have been ongoing for at least the last few years, to date the Ministry of Agriculture’s National Seed Service (SNS) consists of only two staffers.

Most seed improvement projects, and the repeated seed distributions – which started after Haiti’s hurricane disasters in 2008 – are funded principally through, and carried out by, the FAO and INGOs rather than the Ministry of Agriculture.

SNS Director Emmanuel Prophete told Haiti Grassroots Watch that when peasants get improved seed varieties, production rises, but it also creates dependency.

"The system is based on a subsidy," Prophete said. "You have to ask yourself about the sustainability because if the policy changes one day, where will peasants get seeds?… We’ll get to a point where, one day, we have a lot of seeds, and then suddenly, when all the NGOs are gone, we won’t have any."

*To read the multi-article series in English and French, to watch an accompanying video or listen to the audio programme in Haitian Creole, visit http://www.haitigrassrootswatch.org.

The Haiti Grassroots Watch (Ayiti Kale Je) is a partnership of community radio journalists and reporters from the Society for the Animation of Social Communications (SAKS) and the AlterPresse online news agency.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Development, Environment, Latin America, Politics, Report Tagged With: , , , ,

PAKISTAN: Citizens and NGOs Step Forward to End Illiteracy

March 24, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Zofeen Ebrahim

KARACHI, Mar 23, 2011 (IPS) – The man known as ‘Master Ayub’ holds classes for free, between three and seven o’clock. His classroom is a public park, and his students are street children six to 16 years of age who otherwise would be picking trash, begging, or slowly becoming petty thieves.

Thanks to Master Ayub, these children have an education, and a future. All across Islamabad, Ayub bumps into young men and women – former pupils who greet him with reverence.

"It is the highest form of gratification. My former students have become nurses; hold positions in government offices like police, and even in the armed forces. There is one who is now the editor of a newspaper!" Ayub told IPS.

Ayub, who holds a day job as a fire fighter, has been helping to educate poor Pakistanis for more than 26 years. He has taught some 4,000 students, and has a current batch of 280. But he manages to cover only a fraction of the seven million out-of-school children the educational system here has been unable to reach.

Pakistan may need thousands more like Master Ayub to provide citizens quality education – an obligation that is now falling on private individuals and non-government organisations.

The task ahead is huge. Early this month, the Pakistan Education Task Force came out with a report called ‘Education Emergency – Pakistan’ that is to be the basis of a new national policy on education. The report makes for compelling but grim reading. "One in 10 of the world’s children not in primary school live in Pakistan," according to the report. "At least seven million children are not in primary school."

The report estimates that 26 countries poorer than Pakistan are able to send more children to primary school. If the pace persists, the report warned, "full primary enrolment may not be achieved before mid-century."

Although the grim statistics demand urgent measures, some educators question why yet another new education policy is being drawn up, when previous ones have been designed, but remained mostly unfulfilled.

There have been as many as 13 grand schemes to address Pakistan’s education problem, all coming to naught, said Pervez Hoodbhoy, an educator who has been part of numerous education committees and has even headed a few over the past 20 years.

Hoodbhoy called it a waste of time. "Nothing that was agreed upon was ever implemented," he said, with every new government putting out its own policy and throwing out the old one without reading it. "There is no credible implementation mechanism, no financial planning, and no attempt to understand why the previous policy failed," Hoodbhoy explained.

A.H. Nayyar, an academic who wrote a 2003 report entitled ‘The Subtle Subversion: The State of Curricula and Textbooks’, said the reason officials at the top are not bothered by public education is that they send their children to expensive private schools in Pakistan or abroad. "How much does it take for them to pass a law that the children of government servants must all attend public schools? This single step will change the nature of public education dramatically," Nayyar said.

Neelam Habib, spokesperson of The Citizens Foundation (TCF), is offering government a solution. Habib is urging government to replicate TCF’s model to boost school enrolment.

Some 15 years ago, disillusioned by the government’s inaction, a group of influential, educated and concerned citizens decided to put their money where their mouths were.

They created TCF, which has taken the sector by the horns – building entire schools in areas where there were none, training teachers, and even setting up their own teacher training system.

So far, TCF has been able to provide quality education to over 92,000 students – in 68 cities.

In the process, TCF learned some valuable lessons. "Parents are ready to pay for education and send their kids to schools if the latter are safe, effective, affordable and in the neighbourhood," Habib said.

"The poor know very well that educating their children will get them better jobs," said Hoodbhoy. While the demand for education is high, the supply of reasonable quality education is low. "Kids who go to public schools learn so little. They encounter poor facilities, ill-trained teachers who often do not turn up for work, and frequent beatings."

And that is why TCF schools are different. "We have given our kids all the facilities a child in any private school would expect," Habib said.

A TCF education is heavily subsidised by the foundation. In some of its schools, 90 percent of parents can afford to pay only 10 rupees (12 U.S. cents) per child. The amount is less than what a private school – even in squatter settlements – would charge, which would be a minimum of 350 rupees (4.11 dollars) per child.

Like TCF, Master Ayub is putting forth his own resources and efforts to help solve the country’s illiteracy problem. He started teaching working children in an open market place, but after the number increased to over 200 15 years ago, he decided to shift his pupils to a public park.

Part of Ayub’s income as a fire fighter goes toward buying his students books and stationery and an even more essential ingredient – candy – which he says works like magic. Today six of his former students, now in college, assist him. "In return I pay for their college tuitions," he says.

Ayub’s own three children pay for their own college tuitions by working as tutors. Ayub said, "If each one of us teaches another citizen, we can come out of the illiteracy conundrum."

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Asia, Report Tagged With: , ,

Q&A: "Women Must Be Part of the Peace Equation"

March 21, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

Rousbeh Legatis interviews MAVIC CABRERA-BALLEZA, Global Network of Women Peacebuilders

UNITED NATIONS, Mar 21, 2011 (IPS) – Eleven years ago, 192 countries – all the United Nations member states – agreed to step up the integration of women in international peacebuilding and security processes, a promise that has remained largely unmet.

Mavic Cabrera-Balleza notes that by having specific provisions compelling their members to implement and report progress, regional organisations like the European Union and the African Union "are a step ahead" of the United Nations, which lacks a regular accountability mechanism.

As international coordinator of the Global Network of Women Peacebuilders (GNWP), consisting of 50 women’s and non- governmental organisations (NGOs) from Africa, Asia and the Pacific, Europe and Latin America, Cabrera-Balleza spoke to IPS about developments and challenges in supporting women around the world.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Recently you conducted a stock-taking study to look at the progress made in 11 countries in terms of women’s involvement in national efforts to prevent war and build peace. What did you find?

A: One of the biggest problems is what we refer to as the ‘accountability gap’. There is nothing that compels U.N. member states to report on what they are doing to put resolution 1325 [on women, peace and security] into practice, apart from the beautiful statements that they all say during the open debate in the U. N. Security Council every October. But that is not an accurate reporting.

A second finding of our report is the enduring lack of women ‘s participation in decision-making, which is also related to an absence of women in official peace negotiations. When negotiations are informal then women are there and recognised, when they become official and national they disappear. The reason is that in these peace negations a bigger premium is put into parties who had guns or who were engaged in actual combat. So it is not because women do not have anything to contribute, but there are structural barriers to their participation and that has to be changed.

We have also found that women’s participation in the justice and security sector is still very low, in general, across the 11 countries. There has been a change in the judiciary, but not in critical mass, meaning at least 30 percent. The security sector – police and military – is still very male in all the analysed countries. Women’s participation in the military, for example, was less than nine percent in eight of the nine countries for which data were provided.

Q: Did you find ways to confront these problems?

A: To begin to fill the ‘accountability gap’ we have been advocating for the adoption of a general recommendation on armed conflict for the U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). The general recommendation is the CEDAW Committee’s interpretation of state obligations under international laws.

So what will happen if a general recommendation on women and armed conflicts gets adopted is that member states who have ratified the CEDAW – there are around 186 of them – will be obliged to include in their regular compliance report to the Committee how they are actually implementing resolution 1325. And NGOs which are providing or presenting on their own shadow reports to CEDAW will also more consciously integrate 1325 implementation, even when they are already do it. It will raise their awareness.

Q: Some critics say that NGOs and U.N. agencies are competing for visibility and resources instead of working together.

A: This happens a lot, I cannot believe how much it happens. We [women's groups, civil society organisations and U.N. agencies] go to the same donors. What we are encouraging the U.N. is that they should not duplicate what NGOs or other agencies are already doing, but provide the models or catalytic examples, meaning examples that one can replicate in other areas. The world is big, there are many problems. We should not try all of us working in the Democratic Republic of Congo or Afghanistan. There are many places which need attention.

The existing lack of appreciation and the competition is in some ways driven by the need for visibility and the need to attract donor’s attention to our individual work and not to our collective work. And here I would really challenge the donor community to encourage collective work, partnership and not just to put their stake on the bigger and more visible agencies or organisations. They are accountable to their constituencies, to their parliaments and to their congresses, but they should also educate their constituencies and not just work on one priority country when there is already presence there.

Q: GNWP was part of the NGO executive committee at the 55th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), which just held two weeks of meetings in New York. What do you see as the greatest challenges yet to overcome?

A: The CSW remains the only regular global policy discussion space dedicated to women, there is nothing else. It brings in a very good number of participants together, no matter what the theme is. I want for the CSW and UN Women, which serves as a secretariat to the Commission, to realise the convening and mobilising power of this event.

Unfortunately, there is a persistent procedural or you may say structural problem with the CSW. It is not clear where do the agreed conclusions – which is the main outcome document at the end of the two-week meeting – actually go to, how are they influencing other U.N. policy discussions.

Another persistent problem is the refusal by some U.N. member states to recognise that gender equality is upfront and central in any policy discussion. There is no escaping it, women are totally part of the equation. When you are talking about peace, human rights and development – which are the major areas of U.N. work – gender is an integral component. There is no meaningful, substantive discussion that could happen in this policies if do not integrate that.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Conflict, Gender, Interview, Peace Tagged With: , , ,

LATIN AMERICA: Fighting Rise in Non-Communicable Diseases

March 9, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 9, 2011 (IPS) – Some 50 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in Latin America have formed a coalition to fight cardiovascular and respiratory diseases, diabetes and cancer, which have become the main causes of death and disability for people in the region.

Representatives of the NGOs, which are mostly made up of health professionals, announced Mar. 4 in Buenos Aires that they had decided to create the Coalición Latinoamérica Saludable (Healthy Latin America Coalition, CLAS).

The main risk factors for these chronic non-communicable diseases (CNCDs) are smoking, a diet with insufficient fruit and vegetables, and a sedentary lifestyle, among other unhealthy behaviours.

According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), CNCDs cause 60 percent of deaths worldwide and 44 percent of early deaths. Furthermore, 80 percent of these deaths occur in developing countries.

"It’s wrong to believe these are just diseases that affect the elderly," Dr. Jesús González Roldán, head of the Mexican Public Health Association and a representative of the International Union against Tuberculosis and Lung Diseases, told IPS.

"In Mexico, life expectancy is 75 years, but three out of five deaths occur before that, when people are still at a productive age, due to non-communicable diseases," he said.

In his country these illnesses cause eight out of 10 fatalities, González Roldán said. While 50 years ago the main cause of death was infectious diseases, nowadays the CNCDs have displaced them, he pointed out.

Concern over the increased prevalence and mortality of these diseases was discussed in Mexico in February, at a meeting of health ministers of the Americas, convened to analyse the new challenges.

Mexican Health Minister José Córdova Villalobos noted that in 1960, CNCDs were responsible for seven percent of deaths in the Americas, compared to over 70 percent today.

Moreover diabetes, associated with obesity, is today the leading cause of death in Mexico. In second place are cardiovascular illnesses, associated with bad habits and inactivity, he said.

The ministers agreed to work on a common position in preparation for the United Nations summit on prevention and control of CNCDs, to be held in September in New York. Civil society organisations are doing the same.

The summit meeting was called by the U.N., at the initiative of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), a region suffering the worst indicators of mortality from CNCDs.

In an interview with IPS, Eduardo Cazap, president of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), said the incidence of cancer is on the rise. There are 12 million new cases a year worldwide, and 1.2 million in Latin America.

"For the decade 2020-2030, in the most advanced countries the number of cancer cases will stabilise with only a slight increase, but in Latin America, Asia, Africa and some Middle Eastern countries the number of cases is going to increase threefold," Cazap said.

Developing regions will bear a heavier burden of the disease, added to health problems typical of poor countries.

Cazap said genetic factors explain only eight percent of cancer cases. The principal causes are related to tobacco use, exposure to sun, obesity, sedentary lifestyles and pollution.

However, "the cure rate for cancer is rising," he said. In 1950, only 20 percent of cases of cancer were cured, but now the proportion has risen to 50 percent. The problem, he said, "is not one of public health, but of human development."

To fight cancer, Cazap recommended putting a priority on education and awareness-raising, prevention, and early diagnosis.

People should lead "a healthy lifestyle," meaning keeping close to their ideal body weight, eating more fruit, vegetables and fish, taking exercise, limiting sun exposure and — definitely — no smoking, he said.

Dr. Verónica Schoj, of the InterAmerican Heart Foundation, told IPS that tobacco consumption is very high in Latin America. In some countries, like Argentina, Chile or Cuba, it is "among the highest in the world," she said.

Within this already serious epidemic, there are worrying new trends, like increased smoking among women and children. "In some countries the average starting age for smoking is 12, and in others it is eight," Schoj said.

She said that in Argentina, lung cancer in women has doubled in the last 20 years because of smoking, and that if the regional trend is maintained, soon cases of lung cancer in women will outnumber breast cancer cases.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Development, Health, Latin America, Report Tagged With:

MALAWI: In Praise of Dry Sanitation

March 9, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Claire Ngozo

LILONGWE, Mar 9, 2011 (IPS) – At its best it is waterless, odorless, eminently affordable and has a rich fertiliser as byproduct, yet for residents of Malawi’s informal settlements, dry sanitation retains a whiff of the unwanted.

As much as two-thirds of Malawi’s two-million strong urban population live in slum conditions without proper toilets. In densely-crowded Lilongwe townships like Mtsiriza, Mgona, or Senti, dozens of people often share a single convenience.

Alex Makande of Mgona township lives in a compound with 83 people. "It is a terrible situation. Mornings are even worse. People queue up to go to the toilet and sometimes we have to ask to use toilets in nearby compounds which are not as crowded."

Access to pipe-borne water is limited in areas like this; sewerage mainlines generally non-existent.

Monalissa Nkhonjera, a communications and learning officer for international NGO WaterAid, explains that an average compound in the shanty townships has eight households, but there is usually only one pit latrine.

WaterAid is working in Lilongwe’s slums, implementing an appropriate, water-sensible solution. "We are promoting the construction of eco-san latrines with slabs as a cover for the pit and with either a tin or grass-thatched roof. The walls are made of baked or unbaked bricks."

The eco-sanitation latrines have two pits. Household ash is scattered into the latrine after every visit to the toilet to minimise smell and speed up decomposition. After one pit fills, use switches to the other, and the waste in the full pit is given time to fully decompose into a rich, safe manure.

Unloved facilities

But Manesi Phiri of Senti, another informal settlement on the outskirts of Lilongwe where WaterAid is promoting them, remains unsatisfied.

"Flush toilets are more convenient. All you need is to flush out the excreta after a visit to the toilet. Pit latrines compound the low status of us poor people. They are very demeaning," she told IPS.

Pit latrines, she said, are a marker of poverty, whereas flush toilets are a status symbol. Phiri also said communities in urban townships do not have much use for the fertiliser that is produced in the eco-sanitation latrines.

"We do not have gardens in our communities and we do not cultivate any crops so we do not need the fertiliser. We cannot sell this kind of fertiliser to city dwellers; they use chemical fertiliser for their kitchen gardens as they find the fertiliser from the latrines disgusting."

Phiri concedes the fertiliser from the eco-san toilets is free of any odor and looks like any other compost; but she insists that people are put off just thinking of where it comes from.

In Lilongwe’s informal settlements, people are certainly not rejecting eco-sanitation out of hand, though Makande would also prefer a flush toilet: "But this is just a dream for now. We have to continue to use the pit latrines at our disposal and the eco-san latrines are better than the conventional latrines so we must adopt them," said the man, who works as a night guard in Area 10, one of Lilongwe’s affluent areas.

Should anyone flush?

The poor have limited choice. But with climate change threatening the water supplies of cities not only in Malawi but across the Southern Africa region, a comprehensive plan for urban areas might need to see wealthy people adopt composting toilets.

A toilet uses anywhere from six to 11 litres per flush – the fortunate 640,000 who have access to flush toilets in Malawi each represent a much greater strain on aging water systems than their counterparts in the slums. Millions – hundreds of millions of litres of water are effectively squandered flushing waste into a sewage network, at the end of which it needs further treatment before it can be safely released into the country’s waterways.

In Area 43, one of Lilongwe’s most affluent neighbourhoods, IPS found Richard Gulumba has an eco-san latrine in his backyard. He had it constructed for use during Lilongwe’s frequent water outages.

"But my family and I still find it hard to use a latrine. It reminds me of life in the village and that is not desirable. I grew up poor and I do not want to be reminded the experiences I went through and using a pit latrine is one thing I do not want to do now that I can afford better things like a flush toilet," said Gulumba.

Like his wealthy counterparts across Africa, perhaps even the world, Gulumba is likely unaware of the many fancier cousins to the twin-chambered latrines being built in the slums. Though prejudice against dry sanitation is pretty widespread, more upmarket waterless toilets can be found from Mexico to Canada to Sweden to Australia.

Stylish latrines

The South African company ECOSAN manufactures a self-contained dry sanitation unit that cleverly uses the action of opening and closing the lid to drive a screw that moves waste into a cleverly ventilated chamber where it turns into compost without further ado. Australia’s Nature Loo provides a system with exchangeable composting chambers and a fan that ensures proper oxygen flow to speed the breakdown.

Inside the house: a "warm white" pedestal with a "honey oak" seat… even the fussiest guests won’t panic until they can’t find a handle to flush.

WaterAid’s Nkhonjera says composting latrines, which prevent pollution of groundwater, are the best option for slum dwellers and rural communities. "These areas are informal settlements and they do not have access to running water. Putting up flush toilets will not be realistic."

If Southern Africa’s wealthier city dwellers also considered the best use of available water, dry sanitation could take up a more exalted place as a solution to growing water stress.

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2011.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Development, Environment, Health Tagged With: , ,

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: Fisheries Need Transparent Regulation

February 11, 2011 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Isolda Agazzi

DAKAR, Feb 11, 2011 (IPS) – Senegalese fishers participating in the 2011 World Social Forum (WSF) warned governments to "wake up to the ethical and transparent regulation of access to fisheries" to halt the overexploitation of this increasingly scarce resource.

Charles Bakundakwita, executive secretary of the West African Association for the Development of Artisan Fishing (known by its French acronym ADEPA), told IPS at the WSF that, "we ask African states and the European Union to consider this danger and limit the depletion of fish stocks, both by large and small fishers".

Fishing officially supplies work to 600,000 people in Senegal, or 17 percent of the active working population. 400,000 tons are caught every year, contributing 2,3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) and 30 percent of exports. But the scarcity of fish is a major problem. During the "soudure" – the rainy season when there is no fish – people fall into debt.

Since 2007, Senegal has not renewed the fishing agreements with the European Union (EU) that gave large European trawlers access to its national waters. The National Federation of Fishers Associations (known by its French acronym FENAGIE) has been key in the opposition to these fishing licences.

The licences meant insufficient financial compensation that did not benefit communities.

"Senegal received between 21 and 23 million dollars per year from these fishing agreements," Papa Gora Ndiaye, executive secretary of the fishing division of Enda Tiers Monde, known by its French acronym REPAO, told IPS in an interview. Enda Tiers Monde is an international non-governmental organisation based in Dakar, working on development issues.

"But, compared to the export earnings of 165 to 207 million dollars, the financial compensation of the fishing agreements was ridiculous, if not more so considering the potential benefits of equitable trade. If market access to the EU was improved, Senegal could earn much more."

Even though Senegal, like all other least developed countries, can export duty-free and quota-free to the EU under the Everything but Arms initiative, other technical barriers to trade such as rules of origin and sanitary and phyto-sanitary measures make it hard for local fish to reach the European market.

The fishing agreements with the EU largely contributed to the depletion of resources, though FENAGIE recognises that the bad practices of Senegalese fishers are to blame too.

Even though the licences have been suspended, fishers fear the existence of secret agreements with other foreign ship owners.

"Our main recommendation is to have transparent and ethical governance of fishing resources in West Africa," urged Ndiaye. "The WSF provides momentum for mobilisation and awareness-raising of stakeholders. It is a window of opportunity for us."

Bakundakwita added that, "while fishing was a prosperous activity some years ago, small fishers are now getting poorer and poorer. Artisan fishing has deteriorated. There are too many fishers: foreign trawlers, but also local industrial and artisan fishers".

He explained that artisan fishermen do not only fish for their own consumption anymore but to sell their product on the local market. The best catch goes to foreign, more lucrative markets. The depletion of stocks makes fish more and more expensive and many people cannot afford to buy it any more.

This decrease in the availability of fish hits mainly women, who process and dry the fish. "If there is no more fish, they will be jobless and it will be a catastrophe," Bakundakwita believes.

The authorities are afraid to regulate, according to him. "Fishing licences bring money in. To limit the access of small fishers to the sea there need to be alternative activities for them, and there is none."

Ndiaye also expressed concern about the economic partnership agreements (EPAs) currently being negotiated with the EU. The African market will be open to European products, like tuna that will come in at a lower cost than the local tuna.

"But even before the EPAs are adopted, there has been progressive erosion of commercial preferences. Senegalese tuna is hardly competitive on the European market when compared to Asian tuna that is grown in aquaculture with huge government support."

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2010.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Africa, Development, Environment, Report Tagged With: , ,

Slow Food Picks Up Steadily

October 29, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IPS

By Claudia Ciobanu

TORINO, Italy, Oct 29, 2010 (IPS) – It’s been a steady, even if slow growth for the Slow Food movement around the world.

Founded 22 years ago in Italy, the Slow Food movement tackles issues as diverse as basic survival of farmers, land-grabbing, biodiversity protection, school lunches and consumer awareness.

Slow Food was created in 1989 by Italian Carlo Petrini as a non-profit eco- gastronomic organisation to counteract fast food and the disappearance of local food traditions.

In 2004, Slow Food created the Terra Madre global network of small farmers, cooks, academics, NGOs and consumers, meant to connect people around the world interested in implementing the Slow Food concept: producing quality, natural food to be commercialised at prices fair to the farmers. The network now boasts over 100,000 members in 153 countries.

More than 5,000 participants attended this year’s Terra Madre reunion Oct. 21-25 in Torino, Italy. More than 150,000 people visited Salone del Gusto, a producers’ market taking place by the side of the reunion.

The majority of farmers exhibiting were Italian, testifying to the popularity of Slow Food in its country of birth. Out of Slow Food’s 1,300 convivia (local chapters of Slow Food), 291 are in Italy.

But over the last decade, the movement has acquired increased popularity worldwide.

In Western Europe, where food production has been shaped for decades by the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy with its focus on industrial agriculture, an increasing number of middle class consumers are now seeking alternatives.

Since its founding in 2005, Slow Food UK has opened more than 40 local chapters. Forty-one chapters are active in France and 31 in Spain. The convivia organise periodic markets for local producers and events to make consumers aware of the economic, environmental and health impacts of choosing between sustainable and industrial food.

Over the past couple of years, Slow Food has grown in former communist Eastern Europe as well, with the most numerous local chapters in Romania and Bulgaria. Here, following the dismantling of state-run collective farms after 1989, governments have strongly pushed for the aggregation of small plots of land, to make farming more efficient.

Nevertheless, up to three-quarters of farms in countries like Romania and Bulgaria continue to be subsistence or semi-subsistence ones. While many of these farms are likely to exit the food production system, some are strengthened through Slow Food, and its periodic local markets for farmers.

In the United States, where agriculture is highly concentrated – the biggest four firms control over 50 percent of the market in sectors as diverse as beef and pork packing or corn seed and ethanol production – Slow Food has grown to over 25,000 members and 250 local chapters since its founding in 2000.

Last year, the movement concentrated on improving the quality of school lunches. High obesity rates among U.S. children have been linked to poor nutrition. Over 30 million kids in the U.S. eat subsidised lunches at school, with authorities allocating less than one dollar per meal.

In September 2009, Slow Food mobilised over 20,000 people to participate in ‘Eat-Ins’ at schools all over the country, serving food from local farms. Participants asked legislators to allow locally produced fresh food in school canteens and to improve school food standards.

Slow Food has also developed branches in Latin America, where it works on safeguarding traditional production techniques of indigenous communities and fighting biodiversity loss.

In Asia Japan, one of the earliest countries outside Europe to join the movement, has over 40 local chapters of Slow Food. India has only two convivia and China, three.

Each year, new farmer groups join the Terra Madre network. Most new participants at this year’s meeting (from outside of Europe) were from Africa, where Slow Food is developing particularly in the central and western parts of the continent. Most local chapters are in Kenya (12) and Senegal (8).

One of the new entrants was Gnima Dieng from the Saloum delta, Senegal, a producer of wild fruit juices. Traditionally, women living on the Saloum islands have made a living out of gathering and processing molluscs, but overfishing by foreign fleets has made it increasingly difficult for them to continue this trade. Women have turned to producing juices from local fruit, such as karkade, ginger, or tamarind, explains Dieng.

"We sell our juices in local markets and we are now working (with Slow Food) on opening a laboratory to produce the drinks," she explains. "Customers will have more confidence in our products if they are produced in this way."

Kenyan Liose Chepkinyeny, also new at Terra Madre, is a producer of ash yogurt from the district of West Pokot. The yogurt is produced from cow or goat milk mixed with ash of the native cromwo tree. "It helps us, women and children, survive in the period when men are away with the animals," explains Chepkinyeny.

"Being here at Terra Madre gives us hope. It helps us to continue the struggle to bring added value to our products. We are making progress, but we still have miles to go." Chepkinyeny said that there are now over 500 members in the Kenyan network, which is growing.

In addition to fighting for survival, African farmers in the Terra Madre network are also addressing larger issues of the continent. Following the 2009 famine in Uganda, Edward Mukiibi – the Slow Food convivium leader in Mukuno, central Uganda – has developed a programme to create school gardens where kids can grow their own vegetables. This year, over 1,000 students participate in this project in 31 schools.

At this year’s Terra Madre, Slow Food announced its commitment to a global campaign against land grabbing. According to the organisation, 50 million hectares of arable land in Africa, South America, Asia and Eastern Europe have been or are in the process of being bought or leased by foreign governments or corporations. On these lands, monocultures, particularly for biofuels, are replacing small-scale farming.

"Slow Food is a small entity," Carlo Petrini said in Torino, "but this is not a time for parochialism. We want to strengthen rapports with all organisations and movements that work for food sovereignty, that fight against food being considered a commodity."

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2010.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.


Filed Under: Agriculture, Development, Environment, Politics, Report Tagged With: ,

Pan-African Voices Called Pambazuka

October 25, 2010 by

Global Geopolitics & Political Economy / IDN

Pan-African Voices Called Pambazuka By Jutta Wolf

IDN-InDepth NewsInterview 

BERLIN/OXFORD (IDN) – Pambazuka News, symbolizing "the awakening on a new era in which the people of Africa will once again assert their determination to control their own destiny", is proudly celebrating its tenth anniversary, looking forward to new initiatives that may contribute to the sustainability of the project — in times that are littered with multiple hurdles for the media.

"The ten years have been characterised by the growth and spread of Pambazuka News well beyond our imagination," says Firoze Manji, editor-in-chief of the prize-winning pan-African social justice newsletter and website Pambazuka News (www.pambazuka.org), produced by a pan-African community of more than 2500 citizens and organisations — academics, policy makers, social activists, women’s organisations, civil society organisations, writers, artists, poets, bloggers, and commentators, with a readership estimated at around 660,000.

Manji, who is also founder and editor-in-chief of Pambazuka Press, the progressive pan-African publisher of voices from Africa and the global south, is a Kenyan activist with more than 40 years experience in international development, health and human rights. He is founder and former executive director (1997-2010) of Fahamu — Networks for Social Justice, a pan African organisation with bases in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa and Britain.

Following are excerpts from an E-Mail interview IDN-InDepthNews conducted with Firoze Manji during his stay in Oxford (Britain). Manji is Visiting Fellow in International Human Rights at Kellogg College, University of Oxford.

IDN: Who pioneered the idea of Pambuzuka? What motivated them?

Firoze Manji: The idea of Pambazuka News came out of surveys in 1998 that Fahamu carried out of some 120 organisations in eight African countries in which we looked at the training and information needs of human rights and activist organisations. It became clear that while many had email addresses, access to the internet via the worldwide web was slow, frustrating and expensive in most African countries.

There was an appeal from a number of organisations wanting help in obtaining up-to-date information from the internet as well as a demand for help with disseminating information about their own work. We began by doing regular online searches on specific topics and compiling short summaries for these organisations.

But rather than just disseminate information, we thought it would be good to provoke reflections and discussion on critical issues concerning the continent. We saw this an opportunity to use the internet to contribute to the building of a progressive pan-African movement that could challenge those who sought to exploit the continent, its people and its resources, both internationally and locally.

Pambazuka News itself was born in December 2000, initially with an uneasy alliance of other organisations, but political differences soon manifested themselves, leaving Fahamu the task of both raising the resources and managing the e-newsletter. It was only four years later that we established a website. Until then, it was merely an e-newsletter.

IDN: What does the word Fahamu signify?

FM: The word Fahamu means ‘understanding’ or ‘consciousness’ in Kiswahili. Fahamu has a vision of the world where people organise to emancipate themselves from all forms of oppression, recognise their social responsibilities, respect each other’s differences, and realise their full potential.

The word Pambazuka means ‘awaken’ or the dawn. Pambazuka News is the awakening on a new era in which the people of Africa will once again assert their determination to control their own destiny.

IDN: Have the ten years been characterized more by success rather than hurdles in achieving your objectives? What would you describe your best achievement?

FM: The ten years have been characterised by the growth and spread of Pambazuka News well beyond our imagination. Today we have . . . over 26,000 and more than 600,000 unique visitors to the website. There are more than 70,000 news items and articles on the website. We have more than 2,500 authors who contribute to Pambazuka News, and we publish every week some 20-30 articles, and some 100 or so links to other websites that carry relevant content.

In ten years we have published 500 issues of the English edition. And more recently we began publishing French and Portuguese language editions. The enthusiasm of the Pambazuka News community has been extraordinary, and it grows constantly.

I think one of the key reasons for our success has been that we have put Pambazuka News at the service of social movements and others bringing about change. Perhaps the best example of this was the support provided by Pambazuka News to the pan-African coalition Solidarity for African Women’s Rights (SOAWR – www.soawr.org) who campaigned for the ratification and implementation of the African Union (AU) Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa.

Pambazuka News contributed effectively to a campaign that led to more than 25 countries ratifying the Protocol and for the Protocol coming into force. Similarly, we have provided a platform for shackdweller movements, LBGTI groups, women farmers struggling to ensure sustainable agricultural production and biodiversity against the attempts of the international agribusiness attempts to take control of their lives.

IDN: Do your funders leave you a free hand?

FM: We have a very small number of funders — most of whom are supportive and provide us with the flexibility and creativity that is needed to support social movements.

IDN: Any figure of total revenues? What’s the ratio between grants/donations and sales revenues?

FM: Currently we raise about £160,000 a year in grants, about £60,000 from the sale of books, and a smaller amount from donations. Other funds come occasionally in the form of project grants for special initiatives. We are implementing a plan to expand our book publishing programme — Pambazuka Press (www.pambazukapress.org) — and other initiatives that will contribute to the sustainability of the Pambazuka project.

IDN: What’s the strength of your working journalists? How many employed? How many freelancers?

FM: The vast majority of our articles come from 2,500 writers, academics, bloggers, activists, organisations and movements. In that sense, Pambazuka News is probably the most well established, yet completely unacknowledged, example of citizen journalism — and the newsletter came into being well before that jargon passed into common usage. Yet it is more than just a site for citizen journalism. Our staff writes only a limited number of articles. The English edition of Pambazuka News is produced by the equivalent of 2.5 full-time equivalent, the French by one full-time equivalent, and the Portuguese edition by 0.5 staff. We simply don’t have the funds to employ more staff, nor are we able to pay our contributors.

Editor’s Note: Firoze Manji has previously worked as Africa Programme Director for Amnesty International; Chief Executive of the Aga Khan Foundation (UK); and Regional Representative for Health Sciences in Eastern and Southern Africa for the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC). He is a former Managing Director of TWIN and TWIN Trading, and served on the Board of TWIN for two years.

He has published widely on health, social policy, human rights and political sciences, and authored a wide range of books on social justice in Africa, including on women’s rights, trade and on China’s role in Africa. He was a member of the editorial board of ‘Development in Practice’, a founding member of the steering group on the campaign for the ratification of the protocol on the rights of women in Africa (Solidarity for African Women’s Rights), and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy, Goldsmiths College, University of London. He is Visiting Fellow in International Human Rights at Kellogg College, University of Oxford. He holds a PhD and MSc from the University of London, and a BDS from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. (IDN-InDepthNews/25.10.2010)

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission the original author or copyright holder.


Filed Under: Africa, Development, Diplomacy, Justice, Politics Tagged With: , ,
«Older Posts