Category: Development

The UN Arms Trade Treaty is not perfect

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By Jonathan Power

US presidential candidate Jimmy Carter described arms sales as a “cancer”. But once in office Carter achieved little in controlling them.

In President Bill Clinton’s first term Amnesty International questioned the US government about the use of American military helicopters and armoured vehicles involved in human rights abuses in Turkey. Under pressure from Congress the State Department compiled a report on human rights violations by the Turkish armed forces. It concluded there was “highly credible” evidence that US-supplied arms and jet fighters had been used to subdue Kurdish villages.

Later, in 1996, the US temporarily suspended the sale of advanced attack helicopters. But two years later there were fresh reports that hundreds more armoured vehicles had been sold. The US Defence Secretary visited Turkey and reportedly lobbied on behalf of American companies wishing to co-produce advanced helicopters there. In that same year an American company sold 10,000 electric shock weapons to the Turkish police.
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Middle East economies are unable to shift into top gear

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By Jonathan Power

Dateline: Doha, Qatar.

It has always been one of the mysteries of history why it is that the Muslim world of the Middle East was once so far ahead of Europe in science, medicine, astronomy and mathematics yet by the 16th century started to fall behind.

Not only did most of it never industrialize, if it hadn’t been for nearly all its countries having oil in abundance they would still be living in the poverty and torpor that was their lot at the beginning of the twentieth century. Even today as modernism takes over and cities are built like this one and its neighbours, reaching for the sky, the foundations are industries of the newer kind – tourism and banking. According to the UN’s annual Human Development Report most of them, Abu Dhabi apart, compared with countries of equal income per head, are low down in the world rankings on education, health, scientific prowess and the status of women.

But why did the Muslim world lose its momentum? If it had kept going at the pace it did in the first millennium after Mohammed it would now be one of the world’s leaders.Read More »

Hugo Chavez: A maker of history

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By Johan Galtung

That his life and his deeds had black dots is part of the story; but that should not block seeing the greatness of a maker of history.

First, in his own society, Venezuela, he lifted the bottom people up from misery, into economic wellness, political participation, cultural pride (of their often African, or Indian, blood), social dignity; much beyond Gini coefficients to measure increasing equality. Even the rich human rights language is too bland to reflect all that.

Second, he did the same for Latin America; he helped lift the bottom countries up, also under the name of the iconic Simón Bolívar: Cuba and Nicaragua, Ecuador and Bolivia, Brazil to mention some.

Of course the two policies are related. Colombia with its immense record of violence 1948-2013, is a pariah country and can only be lifted up by lifting its bottom up, attacking flagrant inequality. Chávez and his fellow leaders Castro and Ortega, Correa and Moráles, Lula, are on line. The leadership of the continent, with Kirchner from Argentina, and the Salvador Allende icon from Chile! A formidable team; well beyond the European leaders trying to manage their crises.Read More »

China’s growing presence in Africa

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By Jonathan Power
Writing from Dar es Salaam

Go Into the casino in Tanzania’s capital, Dar Es Salaam and what strikes you? The overwhelming number of players is Chinese. If the Chinese are not quite everywhere in Africa their numbers, their investments and their trade has mushroomed over the last ten years. If one compares Chinese and US investment in Tanzania there is no contest despite Tanzania being one of the US’s favourites.

Overlooked is that China has been in Africa twice before. Read More »

Change happens – But How, Why, When and Where?

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By Johan Galtung

A century ago humanity, particularly in the West, was at the beginning of a major revolution, from horse culture to car culture. Today there are still (FAO-UN Food and Agriculture Organization, 2008) 59 million horses, but (2010) more than 1 billion cars (in 1986 only half of that). In other parts of the world, like Japan and China, there was a revolution to cars, but from bicycles–Beijing went from 6 million bicycles to 4 million cars over a period of 20 years, only from 1990. Japan had an intermediate scooter stage–like in India, Southeast Asia–less so in China.

Imagine 19th century in the West: horses everywhere. Read More »

Against world revolution – constructively!

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By Johan Galtung

From Alicante, Spain

“Unemployment in Spain Tops 6.1M” – Unemployment rate is 26.6 percent; for those under the age of 25, 56.5 percent; all growing, all EU records. “Bank of Spain inspectors pen damning report about wrongdoing in Spanish banks: look the other way” was the reaction, while the government spends billions of Euros to bail out those banks. (El País, early January 2013).

And this: “300 Madrid health chiefs resign over privatization”; “Locksmiths in Pamplona refuse taking part in evictions involving families with young children”; “Theater chief sells carrots at 13 Euro as entrance ticket” – value-added tax down from 21 to 4 percent for food; “Mothers strip for erotic calendar to drum up funds for canceled school buses”.

A country rapidly de-developing, into low Third World levels, even in health. A country not only saving banks rather than people but also letting the banks get away with crimes. A country reacting with mini-revolutions, nonviolence, civil disobedience against such glaring injustices. A country where the class war is over for the time being; capitalism won and more particularly the bankers and their servants, the politicians, and even more particularly the finance-speculation capital.

And this in a Spain close to 40 years into democracy after 40 years of Franco dictatorship. Constitution + democracy + elections + human rights (also to property) + parliament vs finance capitalism. Weak vs strong.

What is Spain, and EU heading for? What will be fund further down this road?Read More »

A stunning African success

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By Jonathan Power in Dar es Salaam

In an article last week, published in The Citizen of Tanzania, Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, observed that “in the last decade after emerging Asia Africa recorded the world’s strongest growth rates. “In some cases”, she wrote, “the African lions outpaced the Asian tigers in their first two decades.”

The American and European economic crisis has had only a modest impact on those African economies doing well. “Resilience is home grown”, she says. African countries have been able to take advantage of the strong foundations they have built in the years leading up to the crisis. Since 2000 debt levels fell from over 100% to under 40% of GDP, foreign exchange reserves more than doubled and inflation was halved.

Two thirds of them, including Tanzania, have been able to pursue expansionary policies during the crisis – Keynesian policies of not slamming on the brakes as in Europe and the US – increasing spending on health and education and drawing a circle of protection around the most vulnerable people.

Judging from the substantial spending of the US’s Millennium Challenge Corporation Tanzania is the most successful lion of them all. This aid program is contingent not just on economic and social policies but also on the degree of political freedom and the pursuit of justice.

The US ambassador heaps accolades on Tanzania. The World Bank says Tanzania is “a top performer” and in economic terms has been “a rock of stability”.Read More »

Structural violence, peace and the handicapped

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By Johan Galtung

From Frankfurt am Main, Caritas

How do social structures and handicaps–mental or physical, spiritual or material–relate to each other?

Answer: about the same way as social structures relate to other marginalized, even stigmatized, groups: women and non-whites, younger and older, workers, the physically and mentally ill, the handicapped, and other “deviants”. And at the world level the colonized and the imperialized, the less and the least developed countries, the pariahs.

What do they have in common? That somebody is on top of them in a hierarchy. They are different, hierarchies make them unequal, and hierarchies are strong and tend to be reborn. Those on top exclude those lower down as “deviant” from “normal”, included, society. They may even exploit them economically, use force militarily, decide over them politically, imprint their way of thinking on them culturally. Four types of power, four ways of exercising structural violence in hierarchies. Not strangely, we have had amazing revolts against such hierarchies in the last centuries under the banner of the human right to be different, yet equal. From the American revolution leaving clergy and aristocracy behind and the French beheading them via working class struggle for decent livelihood, colonies for freedom, countries to shake off capitalist or communist imperial yokes to poor countries for their share, women for parity, younger people to be taken seriously.

And age: it carries stigma as in white/gray hair, care when walking. 15 years beyond retirement age, I should be in Ruhestand, quietude, on a side-track, Abstellgleis; materially well but spiritually limited to hobbies like children to playing, excluded from the challenges of real work, for individual and social development, for new syntheses. Next stop: the cemetery. So I refused to retire, to become re-tired, tired again and again for lack of challenge; like exploring how concepts close to me may explain the hindrances, Behinderung, for handicapped.Read More »

Peace, human rights and development in multi-polar and evolving world

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By Johan Galtung

Keynote Speech at the UN Human Rights Council SOCIAL FORUM – Oct 1, 2012

Your Excellencies!

The title for this Sixth Social Forum – in the context of the 10 Articles of the UN Declaration on the Right to Development of 4 December 1986 – is very well chosen. The focus is on people-centered development – as opposed to system – centered economic growth. And on globalization, a challenging process involving all states and regions, nations and civilizations, humans and nature – as opposed to a globalized market with only three free flows, of capital, goods and services, not labor; increasing the global economic gap.

And this in the context of rampant poverty, widening domestic inequalities, economic crises due to the disconnect between real and finance economies and greedy speculation, rising unemployment and popular unrest. Yesterday’s map dividing the world in developed and developing countries makes little sense when many of the developed are de-developing, declining, and many of the developing, emerging, on the way up–like BRICS–pass them on their way down. A new world.

Permit me Twelve Theses addressing this serious situation.Read More »

Notes from three weeks in China

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By Richard Falk

After three weeks in China I have returned to the United States yesterday before departing for Turkey and Rhodes later today. I mention this to explain my failure to post during this period or to comment or monitor comments on the blog.

This failure was not due to a lack of access to the Internet or even finding time during a busy travel schedule. It was due to my lack of skill in circumventing what is known as ‘The Great Firewall of China’ that blocks entry to most blogs, Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, as well as assorted other sites. Sophisticated Chinese know how to circumvent, and the authorities do not seem to mind, as the blockade is apparently intended to limit access on the part of ordinary Chinese. This is true of the Chinese media generally, which is highly regulated, especially TV, giving only official views, although the English language dailies, which are quite informative are more objective, and do not read as propaganda.Read More »