Africa

Amnesty International calls for the release of 10 men detained after an alleged gay celebration in Zanzibar.

Ilhan Omar's Minnesota election victory makes her the first Somali-American to reach US Congress.

Benin call-up Hansa Rostock's German-born Cebio Soukou for the first time for their Africa Cup of Nations qualifier with The Gambia.

Cameroon persuade European Under-19 Championship winner Jeando Fuchs to commit his international future to the Indomitable Lions.

Fiorentina's Bryan Dabo is left out of the Burkina Faso squad for their Africa Cup of Nations qualifier against Angola.

The presidential election comes months after the army threatened to take over amid huge street protests.

Opening day of the Annual Conference of the European Center for Peace and Development, City Hall, Belgrade, 26 October 2018

By Boudewijn Mohr
BEAUNE, Burgundy, France, Nov 7 2018 (IPS)

Some 30 years ago, the international banks were afloat with petrodollars, deposited by the oil exporting countries. The banks in turn stepped up lending to Latin America, in a big way. The new branch of Société Générale in New York where I was working at the time followed suit rapidly building up its portfolio, as the bank needed to make loans to get its branch off the ground.

Latin America was not my territory; my clients were French companies establishing subsidiaries in the United States. But when in 1982 I witnessed the panic in New York surrounding the implosion of Mexico’s debt, I wondered; and then began to write about it in a renowned Dutch newspaper in Holland, also offering ideas for solving the debt overhang.

I simply failed to grasp why commercial banks, in their eagerness to make loans, would lend so excessively, as they themselves must have known that such loans carried great risks. The banks probably did so willy-nilly, following in the footsteps of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

At that time, the IMF was trying to help redress large balance of payment deficits of countries in Latin America through imposing stiff austerity measures, curbing inflation and trying to rekindle growth.

Today the IMF does not wince pumping 57 billion dollars into Argentina, a questionable step, and if only for weakening its own capital base in exchange for an excessive sovereign loan.

Given Argentina’s history, a portion of the loan unlikely may never be repaid, would need to be re-phased or simply forgiven. Their president says that chance is “zero”. The IMF now needs a major capital injection that may not be so easy to negotiate this time around, according to the Financial Times.

Has then nothing changed since the 1980s?

Not a whole lot in any case. But in my mind something important did change compared to 30 years ago: the world’s money supply today is unimaginably massive. You could call it a bubble of money in circulation; and that means that all that floating money, like the petrodollars of the past, needs to find a home, ergo loans to those countries that have less of it.

Poverty the ultimate threat facing humanity

Most researchers now agree that poverty is the ultimate threat facing humanity, and not only in the developing world. Everything bad emanates from it. Today poverty has increased to unbearable levels for many, a result of conflicts, climate change and rising food prices.

Today’s poverty reduction strategies now include provisions for the poor. This approach is rooted in UNICEF’s tireless campaign for economic adjustment with a human face in the ‘80s under the leadership of UNICEF’s Richard Jolly and his team of economists, and was enthusiastically endorsed by Jim Grant.

The proposal was to shield the poor and vulnerable from the worst effects of the austerity measures through strong social protection and safety nets. It is encouraging to note that Christine Lagarde pledged for more flexible measures in IMF lending that would include strong provisions to protect the most vulnerable.

This intention should be properly institutionalised and respected by her successors. For now, inequality in every aspect of life continues unabated; you are all familiar with the statistics.

Sovereign debt as a threat to peace

In 2012 the Max Planck Research Institute published a discussion paper with the most telling title “Sovereign debt crises as threats to the peace nations”. Its author, Matthias Goldmann, a senior research fellow, found that more reliable data than before enable researchers to point to a correlation between sovereign debt and the risk of armed conflict or even civil war. I have seen this in West and Southern Africa.

Sovereign debt reduces the ability of the state to adequately provide basic services to the most vulnerable, such as health and education services. I have witnessed in Africa that countries in pre-conflict situations have had declining budget allocations for health and education, far below internationally established norms (10% for health and 25% for education).

Beginning in the 1980s, poverty increased steadily in Côte d’Ivoire. World prices of cacao were steadily declining; and conflict in the form of protests and strikes began to rear its ugly head.

I was stationed in Abidjan when it got worse, with demonstrating university students, the university closed, burnt-out cars and soldiers roaming the streets in hijacked vehicles. It took 10 years for the civil conflict to end. In the end the country was exhausted and essentially bankrupt.

After the peace accords of 1992 Mozambique had no trouble finding loans and grants. At the 1995 Consultative Group Meeting in Paris, over 1 billion dollars was raised, a huge sum for its time. In the late 1990s Mozambique’s south developed fast with several huge investments from South Africa, for example a gigantic aluminum smelter near Maputo and upgrading of road and rail network. It was double-digit growth.

But the north, traditionally marginalised, stayed further behind. Not surprisingly, many years later the conflict flared up again between Frelimo and Renamo in the centre and north of the country.

In Rwanda, sovereign debt increased massively in the early 1990s. A structural adjustment programme imposed harsh austerity measures, but military expenditures were exempted. Public services collapsed with cuts in health and education expenditures. Development aid and foreign loans were channelled towards financing the military.

The army swelled to 40,000 troops. Clearly something bad was at hand. But nobody wanted to know. Ethnic tensions, already high in this small and overpopulated country, rose significantly, and then imploded into genocide. Rwanda’s sovereign debt was the worst debt trap the world had ever seen.

When Michel Camdessus retired from the IMF, he warned that poverty would “undermine societies through confrontation, violence and civil disorder”. This, I believe has always been so throughout history, but we paid lip service to change.

With all the problems our planet faces, inequality and poverty should not be the most difficult problems to solve once and for all. After all, states have the responsibility to protect its citizens in a human way, as adopted in 2006 in a unanimous resolution, R2P for short.

To note that R2P does not deny the right to use the military option as a last resort. What is new though is that the UN Security Council in case of a grave violation of this responsibility to protect its citizens, for example genocide, may decide to move into a sovereign nation.

Now if a sovereign debt crisis can be proven to threaten essential social and economic rights of populations and thus might constitute a threat to peace in that country and the sub-region, can the Security Council intervene on the basis of R2P?

What is the correct point to intervene? When there are signs that excessive debt is threatening peace, could the Security Council intervene pre-emptively? Goldmann argues that the Security Council might decide to intervene if there are additional factors, such as ethnical, racial, or structural inequality. These factors usually deteriorate as a result of economic hardship.

And lastly, how would the Security Council relate to and work with the major sovereign debt lender, the IMF, in pre-empting these threats to peace? Intriguing questions which beg for urgent answers.

*Prior to his stint with UNICEF, Boudewijn Mohr was a senior international corporate banker in New York, first with Chase Manhattan Bank in Wall Street and later at Societe Generale branch in New York City. This article is based on an address to the annual conference of the European Centre for Peace & Development in Belgrade last month. The theme of the conference was “A New Concept of Human Security.”

The post Is Excessive Sovereign Debt a Threat to Peace? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

Excerpt:

Boudewijn Mohr* is a former UNICEF country programme and operational management specialist who travelled across 36 countries on the African continent. He is also a former senior international corporate banker in New York, and author of the recently-released “A Destiny in the Making: From Wall Street to UNICEF in Africa”.

The post Is Excessive Sovereign Debt a Threat to Peace? appeared first on Inter Press Service.

South Africa captain Janine van Wyk targets a 'last chance' to qualify for the World Cup as she is named in the squad for the Women's Africa Cup of Nations in Ghana.

Democratic candidate Ilhan Omar wins the Minnesota House race to become one of the first Muslim women in Congress.

The students were among 82 people kidnapped on Sunday in the restive Anglophone region.

A new study raises hopes of saving one of the last animals of its kind - the northern white rhino.

Ghanaian journalist Elizabeth Ohene reflects on Prince Charles' visit to Ghana.

Taiwo Abiri is a successful mechanic who learnt his trade from YouTube videos.

Mariano Barraza (L), a member of the Wichi indigenous people, and Enzo Romero, a technician with the Fundapaz organisation, stand next to the rainwater storage tank built in the indigenous community of Lote 6 to supply the local families during the six-month dry season in this part of the province of Salta, in northern Argentina's Chaco region. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

By Daniel Gutman
LOS BLANCOS, Argentina, Nov 6 2018 (IPS)

“I’ve been used to hauling water since I was eight years old. Today, at 63, I still do it,” says Antolín Soraire, a tall peasant farmer with a face ravaged by the sun who lives in Los Blancos, a town of a few dozen houses and wide dirt roads in the province of Salta, in northern Argentina.

In this part of the Chaco, the tropical plain stretching over more than one million square kilometres shared with Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, living conditions are not easy."I wish the entire Chaco region could be sown with water tanks and we wouldn't have to cry about the lack of water anymore. We don't want 500-meter deep wells or other large projects. We trust local solutions." -- Enzo Romero

For about six months a year, between May and October, it does not rain. And in the southern hemisphere summer, temperatures can climb to 50 degrees Celsius.

Most of the homes in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte, where Los Blancos is located, and in neighbouring municipalities are scattered around rural areas, which are cut off and isolated when it rains. Half of the households cannot afford to meet their basic needs, according to official data, and access to water is still a privilege, especially since there are no rivers in the area.

Drilling wells has rarely provided a solution. “The groundwater is salty and naturally contains arsenic. You have to go more than 450 meters deep to get good water,” Soraire told IPS during a visit to this town of about 1,100 people.

In the last three years, an innovative self-managed system has brought hope to many families in this area, one of the poorest in Argentina: the construction of rooftops made of rainwater collector sheets, which is piped into cement tanks buried in the ground.

Each of these hermetically sealed tanks stores 16,000 litres of rainwater – what is needed by a family of five for drinking and cooking during the six-month dry season.

“When I was a kid, the train would come once a week, bringing us water. Then the train stopped coming and things got really difficult,” recalls Soraire, who is what is known here as a criollo: a descendant of the white men and women who came to the Argentine Chaco since the late 19th century in search of land to raise their animals, following the military expeditions that subjugated the indigenous people of the region.

Today, although many years have passed and the criollos and indigenous people in most cases live in the same poverty, there is still latent tension with the native people who live in isolated rural communities such as Los Blancos or in the slums ringing the larger towns and cities.

Since the early 20th century, the railway mentioned by Soraire linked the 700 kilometres separating the cities of Formosa and Embarcación, and was practically the only means of communication in this area of the Chaco, which until just 10 years ago had no paved roads.

Dorita, a local indigenous woman, stands in front of a “represa” or pond dug near her home, in Lote 6, a Wichí community a few kilometres from the town of Los Blancos, in Argentina’s Chaco region. The ponds accumulate rainwater and are used to provide drinking water for both animals and local families, posing serious health risks. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The trains stopped coming to this area in the 1990s, during the wave of privatisations and spending cuts imposed by neoliberal President Carlos Menem (1989-1999).

Although there have been promises to get the trains running again, in the Chaco villages of Salta today there are only a few memories of the railway: overgrown tracks and rundown brick railway stations that for years have housed homeless families.

Soraire, who raises cows, pigs and goats, is part of one of six teams – three criollo and three indigenous – that the Foundation for Development in Peace and Justice (Fundapaz) trained to build rainwater tanks in the area around Los Blancos.

“Everyone here wants their own tank,” Enzo Romero, a technician with Fundapaz, a non-governmental organisation that has been working for more than 40 years in rural development in indigenous and criollo settlements of Argentina’s Chaco region, told IPS in Los Blancos. “So we carry out surveys to see which families have the greatest needs.”

The director of Fundapaz, Gabriel Seghezzo, explains that “the beneficiary family must dig a hole five metres deep by 1.20 in diameter, in which the tank is buried. In addition, they have to provide lodging and meals to the builders during the week it takes to build it.”

“It’s very important for the family to work hard for this. In order for this to work out well, it is essential for the beneficiaries to feel they are involved,” Seghezzo told IPS in Salta, the provincial capital.

Fundapaz “imported” the rainwater tank system from Brazil, thanks to its many contacts with social organisations in that country, especially groups working for solutions to the chronic drought in the Northeast region.

Antolín Soraire, a “criollo” farmer from the Chaco region of Salta, stands in front of one of the tanks he built in Los Blancos to collect rainwater, which provides families with drinking water for their needs during the six-month dry season in northern Argentina. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Romero points out that so far some 40 rooftops and water tanks have been built – at a cost of about 1,000 dollars each – in the municipality of Rivadavia Banda Norte, which is 12,000 square kilometres in size and has some 10,000 inhabitants. This number of tanks is, of course, a very small part of what is needed, he added.

“I wish the entire Chaco region could be sown with water tanks and we wouldn’t have to cry about the lack of water anymore. We don’t want 500-meter deep wells or other large projects. We trust local solutions,” says Romero, who studied environmental engineering at the National University of Salta and moved several years ago to Morillo, the capital of the municipality, 1,600 kilometres north of Buenos Aires.

On National Route 81, the only paved road in the area, it is advisable to travel slowly: as there are no fences, pigs, goats, chickens and other animals raised by indigenous and criollo families constantly wander across the road.

Near the road, in the mountains, live indigenous communities, such as those known as Lote 6 and Lote 8, which occupy former public land now recognised as belonging to members of the Wichí ethnic group, one of the largest native communities in Argentina, made up of around 51,000 people, according to official figures that are considered an under-registration.

In Lote 6, Dorita, a mother of seven, lives with her husband Mariano Barraza in a brick house with a tin roof, surrounded by free-ranging goats and chickens. The children and their families return seasonally from Los Blancos, where the grandchildren go to school, which like transportation is not available in the community.

Three children play under a roof next to goats in Lote 6, an indigenous community in the province of Salta in northern Argentina. It is one of the poorest areas in the country, with half of the population having unmet basic needs, and where the shortage of drinking water is the most serious problem. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

About 100 metres from the house, Dorita, who preferred not to give her last name, shows IPS a small pond with greenish water. In the region of Salta families dig these “represas” to store rainwater.

The families of Lot 6 today have a rooftop that collects rainwater and storage tank, but they used to use water from the “represas” – the same water that the animals drank, and often soiled.

“The kids get sick. But the families often consume the contaminated water from the ‘represas’ because they have no alternative,” Silvia Reynoso, a Catholic nun who works for Fundapaz in the area, told IPS.

In neighboring Lote 8, Anacleto Montes, a Wichi indigenous man who has an 80-square-metre rooftop that collects rainwater, explains: “This was a solution. Because we ask the municipality to bring us water, but there are times when the truck is not available and the water doesn’t arrive.”

What Montes doesn’t say is that water in the Chaco has also been used to buy political support in a patronage-based system.

Lalo Bertea, who heads the Tepeyac Foundation, an organisation linked to the Catholic Church that has been working in the area for 20 years, told IPS: “Usually in times of drought, the municipality distributes water. And it chooses where to bring water based on political reasons. The people in the area are so used to this that they consider it normal.”

“Water scarcity is the most serious social problem in this part of the Chaco,” says Bertea, who maintains that rainwater collection also has its limits and is experimenting with the purchase of Mexican pumps to extract groundwater when it can be found at a reasonable depth.

“The incredible thing about all this is that the Chaco is not the Sahara desert. There is water, but the big question is how to access it,” he says.

Related Articles

• Even Rocks Harvest Water in Brazil’s Semi-Arid Northeast
• Prickly Pears Drive Local Development in Northern Argentina

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Iran's President Hassan Rouhani remained defiant after the US re-imposed sanctions on Iran. In a nationally televised address, the president said the Islamic republic will “proudly bypass the sanctions.” PHOTO: AFP

By Syed Mansur Hashim
Nov 6 2018 (The Daily Star, Bangladesh)

Last month, a flotilla of ships carrying more than 20 million barrels of Iranian oil headed off to China’s north-eastern Dalian port in a bid to stave off the impending US sanctions that just came into effect on November 4. According to Russian media, the Iranians were quite confident that the country would be able to sell its oil bypassing the latest round of sanctions. Obviously, a deal has been reached with China because the port of Dalian typically saw shipments of oil between 3 and 4 million barrels a day. So, a jump of this magnitude can only mean one thing.

Despite much bluster, things have not gone exactly the way the US had envisaged. Increasingly, more and more nations have called US’s bluff on its threat that individuals and institutions in foreign countries would be penalised if they broke the Iran oil sanctions. This is reflected in the dampening of international prices of crude oil when the US stance was softened by waivers that allow for major players like China, India, Japan and some other countries to buy Iranian crude. We now know that the US administration has stated that it will “temporarily” allow eight importers to keep on buying Iranian oil. The top importers for Iranian oil have been China, India, South Korea, Turkey, Italy, the United Arab Emirates and Japan. India has already stated that its policy on oil import is not going to change. The fact that the US has already softened its stance is hardly a major “success” for that country’s foreign policy.

Senior members of the US administration have been stung by fellow party members for the lacklustre nature of sanctions against Iran. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been under pressure from some Republican senators to take a harder line against Iran. Indeed, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has apparently hinted that institutions and individuals that use SWIFT, the financial messaging service to do business with Iranian entities, could face repercussions. This could perhaps explain why India and Iran are finalising steps that would allow New Delhi to pay for oil imports in Indian rupees (INR). From what has been reported in The Times of India, India is taking steps to make payments via an account in UCO bank (in India), which has no international exposure and is not connected to SWIFT. According to that report, 45 percent of Indian oil payments were made in INR from the UCO account and 55 percent paid in euros. Given the threat of US sanctions that have just taken hold, the new arrangement could mean that the entire payment will now be made in INR.

Now, where does that leave US foreign policy? Beyond statements by the Secretary of State like “we strongly encourage those nations to ensure that Iran spends that money on humanitarian purchases to benefit the Iranian people,” what can the administration do to stop other nations from doing business with Iran? Some of its staunchest allies, like South Korea, have received waivers (according to Bloomberg and Reuters) to continue to import Iranian oil, which means it is pretty much business-as-usual because with China, Japan and India exempted, these sanctions are not all that serious but in an election year, it makes the administration look good that it’s doing something to contain the so-called Iranian threat.

Mr Pompeo has released a list of 12 demands that Iran must comply with if it wants the sanctions lifted. These are: stopping “support for terrorism,” withdrawing from the Syrian conflict, halting all nuclear and ballistic missile development, etc. There is zero possibility of Iran withdrawing from the Syrian conflict without a comprehensive peace treaty coming into effect (that will be overseen by the big powers). Iran has invested much in the Syrian conflict and this goes far beyond man and material. This conflict is what propelled Iran into a rising regional power and it will take more than sanctions to change Iranian foreign policy.

In fact, Iran has been living with one form of sanction or another for decades now and the only thing these sanctions have achieved is driving millions of people into poverty. Iranians are a proud people. The country fought a bitter war with Iraq for about a decade, suffered a great deal and continued to suffer under sanctions brought against it over the years. Things are not going to change because of the latest round of sanctions because today, Iran has a lot more friends than it did yesterday. Friends who are going to circumvent policies that are meant to limit the presence of Iranian oil in the international market.

Syed Mansur Hashim is Assistant Editor, The Daily Star.

This story was originally published by The Daily Star, Bangladesh

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By FR. RANHILIO CALLANGAN AQUINO
Nov 6 2018 (Manila Times)

THAT the State must make available a complete, adequate and integrated system of education is not debated.

That everyone who desires to should be admitted to universities or colleges of their choice is not only debatable, it is false! More perverse yet is the proposition that when the State grants students the benefits of free tertiary education, the beneficiaries owe the State no service at all!

Access is an issue especially for state universities and colleges because that is their raison d’être: to make available the benefit of higher education to as many as qualify for it. True, every Filipino enjoys the right to education but that does not fling the doors of higher education institutions wide open to every bum who loiters in, takes a leisurely stroll through different subjects on the curriculum until he decides he has had enough, and then wanders out, as senselessly and as cluelessly as when he came in.

Teachers with PhDs after their names are not necessarily effective or even competent teachers. After all, there are many graduate schools in the Philippines that churn out PhDs each year in whom there is not the least philosophical thought nor any genuine doctoral stature. Just the title, nothing more. But experts in their disciplines who can teach effectively — that is a rare breed, and it costs a lot to engage their services. And books are expensive, no matter that the Philippines will soon be the copyright infringement capital of the world. A motley collection of disparate volumes will not meet the requirements of regulatory, much less accrediting agencies. And so a well-stocked library with recently published volumes by acknowledged authorities is a treasure trove, and only institutions with well-packed treasure chests can establish such libraries. Laboratories are another matter, for while one has only admiration for the ingenuity by which teachers in far-flung barangays make do with whatever they have for contraptions in place of proper laboratory equipment, this cannot be for the laboratories of higher education institutions of which very high levels of research are demanded.

Given the scarcity of resources for tertiary education, right reason dictates that the slots available be distributed to those with the best chance of making optimal use of them. Access to university then cannot be access for all — but access for those best able to benefit themselves and their communities from university or collegiate education. This is not being unfair. This is simply the acceptance of a fundamental human phenomenon: capacities and the possibilities they offer are never the same for different individuals, and the formation of the human spirit does not take place only within universities under the tutelage of professors. Artists of the highest caliber are trained, their artistry honed, in conservatories, in art galleries and even the homes of masters of the arts and of the crafts. And they have gifted the world with many of its inestimable treasures, compared to the trash that many term papers or supposed researches turned in to despairing and despondent professors indeed are!

No, it is not a universal right to be admitted to university. If it were so, then every applicant could bind the university to accept her — a position as impracticable as it is legally bereft of warrant. If anything at all, it is every higher education institution that enjoys the right to determine, on academic grounds, who it will accept — and this includes the right to choose the more capable students through stringent admission requirements and screening tests. Sadly, of course, those who come from secondary schools with better prepared teachers and more helpful facilities have the better chance at garnering the available slots. But well-conceived and fairly implemented affirmative action should be able to address this systemic bias in some significant way. Quality schools do not only produce quality graduates. They also need quality students — where quality is not necessarily defined by economic indices.

What should be demanded is that the selection mechanisms be fair — that they project capacity for university education rather than the effectiveness or insouciance of learning in basic education. If it is possible to do this with children before school age, I do not see why this should be any problem at all for high school graduates.

And that is why universities and colleges that routinely reject letters of recommendation in behalf of students who do not meet the mark are correct. This snobbishness is healthy and helpful. It turns its back on the habitual importuning of politicians for whom quality is not necessarily the priority, but patronage. It is as bad to deny access to those to whom it should be granted as it is to grant it to the undeserving only because of the bellowing of well-placed patrons!

rannie_aquino@csu.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@sanbeda.edu.ph
rannie_aquino@outlook.com

This story was originally published by The Manila Times, Philippines

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By Niaz Murtaza
Nov 6 2018 (Dawn, Pakistan)

How do major messes get created? The genesis of some messes reflects the decisions of elites over a small period of time, eg, the Rwanda genocide. But other messes emerge gradually, with various elite groups adding different, mutually reinforcing, layers of the mess over time to produce an intractable situation.

Dr Niaz Murtaza

Today, we face one of these complex messes with high ethnic and class tensions, extremism, political instability, economic stagnancy, corruption, civil-military imbalance and poor social indicators. South Asia is a poor region. But even within it, our problems are more acute. Others are gradually shedding such problems. We seem stuck with them and are ahead today only of Afghanistan and perhaps Nepal.

How did we get here and who added which layer of the mess? The path dependency idea suggests that a state’s initial inheritance limits its development trajectory for long. But external factors and how the nation deals with them and its inheritance via national will also matter. For a state divided horizontally (ethnicity, faith etc) and vertically (caste and class), one must also review internal struggles over the national will and whose will usually won.

Our inheritance included divisions, and low income, literacy and industrial levels. There was a tiny educated but elitist middle class. The nation lacked precious natural resources and its agrarian base was controlled by large landowners. It had to establish governance quickly to deal with the large inflow of refugees that gave it an initial welfare bias. The logic for freedom invoked faith, but didn’t clarify whether the aim was securing Muslim rights or having a faith-driven state. Many say this freedom rationale was the root cause of the current mess, but this view needs more analysis.

The will of elites and unelected forces has remained dominant.

Faced with big challenges and internal divides, the middle class in charge centralised power rather than mobilising and empowering all identity groups. The Kashmir issue was the first major external factor, which turned the welfare bias into a security one, heightened centralisation and empowered unelected forces. The Korean War provided a windfall. But it accrued to a tiny group of traders and made them into industrialists as the state marginalised farmers to benefit traders.

The Cold War alliance with the US exacerbated existing fault lines. Power shifted from elite politicians to bureaucrats and then to generals, the centralisation and elitist biases were strengthened and ethnic demands further marginalised. High-level corruption emerged. All this ultimately led to the ’71 division. But curiously, despite other issues, faith issues then were relatively muted, challenging the thesis that extremism today is the inevitable result of the faith-based freedom logic.

The ’71 tragedy nonetheless made us geographically and ethnically more cohesive and this and the marginalisation of unelected forces gave a fresh chance to build an egalitarian state. The PPP’s initial politics raised hope, but it was dashed as earlier biases re-emerged soon. The Gulf bonanza and the huge out-migration gave limited prosperity to the masses. But it also pushed us under the sway of the theocratic Saudi state, with its impact on state policies evident even under Bhutto.

These trends intensified under Zia, coupled with the Soviet Afghan invasion. The use of Saudi Salafist ideas by the state gave rise to faith-based politics. It is doubtful that sans the Saudi links, extremism would have become so embedded in Pakistan despite the faith-based freedom logic. Drugs, arms, mass corruption, sectarianism and ethnic conflicts reached new heights. Under the Musharraf era and a new US alliance, extremism crystallised into terrorism. Two fair polls invoked hope of democratic consolidation but governance remained abysmal and the dubious 2018 polls dashed hopes further. Thus, today, the burden of the initial inheritance remains largely intact. Furthermore, external factors coming our way have done more damage than good and have exacerbated the burden of the initial inheritance. The will of elites and unelected forces has remained dominant.

Generals, bureaucrats, landlords, industrialists and the middle class have all contributed to the mess, each ruling group blinded by their immediate interests. We share many of the same limitations of other larger Saarc states. But commitment to people’s welfare seems higher in Sri Lanka, India and Bangladesh.

The defining difference seems to be the presence in Pakistan of a deep state that is more immune to popular pressures than even corrupt politicians, that freely uses faith to strengthen its own hand and often has entered into harmful alliances with the US. Thus, while there are many offenders in the Pakistani story, the biggest external one has been the US and the biggest internal ones its client generals.

The writer is a Senior Fellow with UC Berkeley and heads INSPIRING Pakistan, a progressive policy unit.
murtazaniaz@yahoo.com
www.inspiring.pk

This story was originally published by Dawn, Pakistan

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By Editor, Sunday Times, Sri Lanka
Nov 6 2018 (The Sunday Times - Sri Lanka)

Musical chairs is a party game but what we see today is a cacophony of voices between supporters of competing political parties egging on two leaders trying to sit in one seat to the derision of the world.

This is no fun time in Sri Lanka. The country has been turned topsy-turvy by President Maithripala Sirisena’s impulsive decision on October 26 through sheer political expediency to sack the Prime Minister and appoint a new one without recourse to Parliament.

Many feel he could have done better than to throw the country into a state of limbo and confusion worse confounded. It has split the country and its people whose sovereignty, which includes their franchise, he undertook to protect.

This brings to focus the question of the office of the Executive Presidency, an issue that was in the forefront among other issues that brought President Sirisena to where he is with the solemn pledge to abolish the system that breeds autocracy. Now lost in the fog of the ongoing political turmoil, the issue in fact ought to emerge once the perplexity and confusion of the day clears.

Very clearly, Sri Lankan politicians have grappled with handling the wide powers vested in an Executive President. In countries that have a Presidential system, most notably the United States, or a hybrid system of government like in France, the separation of powers and the institutions as well as the democratic political culture act as a safety net from a President acting as an autocrat.

There is no gainsaying that a parliamentary dictatorship is no different to a presidential dictatorship. A new word in the political lexicon has emerged; “Democratorship”.

When J.R. Jayewardene introduced the Executive Presidential system, he cited the instability that existed in the country in 1960 when two Parliamentary elections had to be held within three months, and in 1964 when a government fell by one vote in Parliament. He argued that a strong Executive President would hold the country together when the vagaries of political winds destabilise Parliament and the country. Such a President was to be not only the Head of State, but also the Head of Government.

The October 26 decision of President Sirisena, however, did just the opposite. The Executive President himself destabilised Parliament by sacking the incumbent Prime Minister without notice. Whether Sri Lanka should revert to having a non-political Head of State purely to ensure the country remains stable in the midst of political headwinds and tailwinds has been the subject of public agitation for some time.

The then Minister of Justice and Constitutional Affairs and now the de facto leader of the party headed by the newly elected Prime Minister wrote to this newspaper in its issue of November 20, 1994; “Today, sixteen years after its introduction, a consensus is emerging across the political spectrum that the parliamentary executive model must be re-introduced”. Since 1994, all parties have ridden to office with the solemn pledge to the voters that they would do away with the Executive Presidency because, while in Opposition they have had a taste of its repressive nature – only to give that pledge short shrift when ensconced in that same seat. President Sirisena has been no exception.

Learned and not-so-learned pundits can argue till the cows come home on the provisions of the Constitution. But there is no better way to interpret the Constitution other than to honour it in spirit rather than in letter.

This is the first time in the country’s 70 years since Independence that a new Government has been installed overnight without an election. In 1952 and 1959, when Prime Ministers died in office, the same Government continued under new leaders, but they soon went for elections to get fresh mandates. Governments have been brought down by Parliamentary votes (1964 and 2001) and by premature dissolutions (2004), but never has a Government been replaced overnight invoking questionable provisions of the Constitution and had Opposition party supporters march into state institutions like Adolf Hitler’s brown shirts (the Sturmabteilung – the Storm Detachment) did in Nazi Germany during the power grab of that era. A dangerous precedent has been set in motion and Sri Lanka is fortunate that the military top brass maintained in this situation that they will follow legal orders and not entertain ideas of exploiting the political situation in the country.

Palace coups and the change of guard in a country’s leadership happen in Saudi Arabia, but never before in Sri Lanka. We have said it before (beginning in our issue of November 23, 2014) that given the fickleness of politics and the impatience of Opposition parties to bring down Governments – always scheming, bribing and promising — that elections should be on fixed dates. This does not leave out the excitement of Democracy and Elections, but it leaves out the uncertainty and the volatility that a country and its economy can ill afford.

The United States is a good example to follow. They have given their electoral process some stability. Take this coming Tuesday when they will be having mid-term elections for their Parliament (Congress). All elections are fixed for the first Tuesday of November. Every US citizen knows the exact date of even the next US Presidential election, four years to the date of the previous election. There is no Constitutional punditry involved in trying to interpret the US Constitution on the matter. No throwing the people into a frenzied pastime of guessing when the next election is or what the stars of political leaders portend.

The question here is not whether the country is in an economic mess. The country has always been in an economic mess. Or whether the President’s alleged assassination inquiry was not moving fast enough. Those are shallow arguments to justify the steps that were taken on October 26. The only question is whether the President respected the Sovereignty of the People (Article 3 of the Constitution) – which includes the Franchise of the People and which he undertook to protect when he took his oath of office as President on January 9, 2015.

As of this day, some may well say that Sri Lanka has a de facto Prime Minister and de jure Prime Minister, yet another world record. Those who say that the new Government is legal can be asked if it is legal but illegitimate until it has proved it commands the majority of Parliament. If the new Prime Minister fails to get the majority support of Parliament, the country goes into bigger turmoil. The President has said he will resign in that case, but taking his word at face value has not been easy. If the new Prime Minister cannot legitimise his appointment through a Parliamentary confidence vote, by hook or by crook, this is only the beginning of a bigger Constitutional crisis to come.

This story was originally published by The Sunday Times, Sri Lanka

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Somali refugee Nimo Hassan's family has lived without her husband in the US since his visa process stalled.

IOM’s Missing Migrants Project attend the Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos (Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants). Credit: IOM

By International Organization for Migration
Mexico City, Nov 6 2018 (IOM)

Each year, the Caravana de Madres de Migrantes Desaparecidos (Caravan of Mothers of Missing Migrants) crosses Mexican territory in search of their children who went missing trying to reach the United States.

For the first time, the Mothers’ Caravan was joined in Mexico City by mothers from other continents, with the aim of building a transnational movement to remind the international community that one disappearance, one death, is one too many.

Over 40 mothers and other family members searching for missing migrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Senegal, Mauritania, Tunisia and Algeria came together to share their stories, to build ties, and to exchange experiences of searching for information on the whereabouts of their children.

IOM’s Missing Migrants Project attended this historical event as an observer.

The summit was convened by the Movimiento Migrante Mesoamericano and the Italian Carovani Migranti, two NGOs which assist mothers and families of missing migrants in Central America and Italy, respectively. Associations representing families of the missing sent delegations to the Summit, including the Tunisian Association Mères des Disparus, the Algerian Collectif de Familles des Harraga d’Annaba, the Mauritanian Association des Femmes Chefs de Famille, the Salvadoran Comité de Migrantes Desparecidos, the Honduran Comité de Familiares de Migrantes Desaparecidos del Progreso and the Mexican Red de Enlaces Nacionales.

Rosa Idalia Jiménez has been looking for her son, Roberto Adonai Bardales Jiménez, since 28 May 2013. He disappeared when he was 14, as he fled poverty and violence in his home country towards the US border. He wanted a safer, better life. The last time Rosa heard from him, he was preparing to cross the US-Mexico border into Texas from Reynosa, Mexico.

Rosa shared her story this weekend at the first-ever Global Summit of Mothers of Missing Migrants. The Summit took place in Mexico City 2–4 November 2018 as part of the 8th World Social Forum on Migration.

It is not only mothers who participated in the Summit, but also sisters, brothers, fathers, grandmothers. They wear photos of the missing around their necks, in the hope that someone will recognize their loved ones and be able to help find them. They vow not to rest until their searches are over.

The disappearance of a loved one, no matter the context, leaves a family mourning their loss, or waiting for news of a missing father, husband, wife, mother, son or daughter. Caught between grief and hope, families begin a search for information about their loved ones that can take years or a lifetime. Coming together around such tragic circumstances, the mothers can share their stories of pain, grief, and, above all, endless love for their missing children.

Over the course of three days, mothers and family members at the Summit discussed the many obstacles they face in their search for their missing relatives. Without national or international search mechanisms, families are left to navigate a confusing web of institutions and bureaucracy with little state support.

Nonetheless, they persist: the mothers’ caravan has organized annual marches through Mexico to raise awareness and search for lost loved ones since 2005. By the end of this first Global Summit of Mothers of Missing Migrants, participants mapped out a plan to globalize the struggle of families searching for missing migrants. A manifesto was collaboratively drafted on the final day of the Summit, setting out the mothers’ demands for truth and justice for their missing sons and daughters.

As the way forward, the mothers agreed on a list of actions, which include joint advocacy campaigns around key events, supporting regional initiatives put forward by each association, and creating an online platform to coordinate their efforts.

The Summit thus marks the beginning of a global movement of mothers and families of the missing: there is an urgent need to raise awareness about deaths and disappearances during migration and to combat indifference towards these global tragedies.

For further information please contact Marta Sanchez Donis, IOM Global Migration Data Analysis Centre, Tel: +49 1511 0001 187, Email: msanchez@iom.int

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