Intriguing triads: The story of the three boys

I was once working on conflict prevention with a small research team – four African, two British members - somewhere in West Africa. I’ll just share two in-jokes among people working in international development:

1.Before you start the research you know that the conflict has been caused by a World Bank project
2.Those who style themselves experts in conflict prevention seem to be expert at creating conflict themselves – self-generating work, I suppose.

Both these applied in the case I am telling you about. Our team leader was not an easy person to work with and there were already tensions in the team because of this. We had travelled through the heat of the day on a dirt-track road to arrive at a small provincial centre - where we were welcomed by local officials and then shown to a modest hostelry. Very basic rooms where nothing really worked, not even the television - and no catering facilities. Our host had said something about offering us an evening meal, but nothing materialised. By this time our leader had become extremely tetchy because, for health reasons, he really did need regular meals. So in the end we walked down the road to find a local restaurant.

The team occupied two contiguous tables. As you will find in establishments all over West Africa, there were a number of young men sitting around - presumably, but not necessarily, actually employed there. There was very little on the menu but we gave our choices to the first waiter. Another young man came to lay the covers. A third came out to bring drinks. Someone changed their order at this stage. When the food finally arrived, the kitchen had got it wrong. Our leader completely lost his temper and shouted at the whole restaurant. For the Africans this was incredibly embarrassing: you just don’t do that in Africa. For me being British, well, I felt the same. And everyone was afraid that I too was going to explode.

Just sometimes in a tight situation, inspiration can strike. “There are too many boys,” I explained. And then told them the story of the three boys, which was coined by a good friend’s grandfather, Will Franks, during his time as a transport manager:

“One boy’s a boy. Two boys are half a boy. And three boys is no boy at all.”

This went down extremely well with the three African men and their female colleague. They laughed and retold the story and laughed some more. And somehow the whole situation was lightened, we all managed to eat something and went back to the guest house to sleep.

At the time I was just happy that I had somehow come up with the right thing to say. Our team leader had to leave soon after this incident, I took over and it goes without saying the rest of the research trip became a much more positive experience. But the story of the three boys had really captured the imagination of my African male colleagues. From time to time they would recycle the story. And at the end of the trip, when we had become a small family and found it hard to say goodbye, they brought it up again. I was expressing the feeling that we had done a really tough job really well and one of them said:

“Yes, we’ve been worriedly discussing how it could be so successful when we are three boys. But then we decided to count in Patrick the driver, which makes four, so maybe that takes us back round to the one boy.”


Female triads

It’s heart-warming to think that the story, which originates from the east end of London, has probably circulated all over that particular west African country. Clearly humour, like the truth, knows no borders. And what makes something funny is the recognition of a kernel of truth.

As it’s the festive season, I’m not going to turn the story into some sophisticated allegory of patriarchal global politics: readers are welcome to do that themselves. But I don’t want you to think I’m in any way biased, so I have racked my brains to find an equivalent story about three women.

King Lear’s three daughters chose not to work together, so I’m claiming that doesn’t count. But what about Macbeth’s three witches: good on futures. The three furies: on target. Does this mean female triads are always negative? Hardly. What about the three graces? According to Seneca they represent the cycle of giving, accepting and returning: the chief bond of humanity. They were also good at organising parties.

Then there are the three muses: inspiring. Faith hope and charity: always in demand. The three little maids from school: in harmony. Not to mention the Supremes: still famous after all these years.

I’d like to invite readers to ponder on this conundrum – and to respond with a similar light-hearted touch.

o If you can’t think of any female triads that don’t work effectively, what does that tell us?

o If you can you think of any male triads that are effective, what are the circumstances?

Please note, I’m not accepting the three wise men. I’ll admit they did manage to get to Bethlehem but as the old feminist joke goes: three wise women would have arrived on time, helped to deliver the baby, cooked a hot meal and brought more useful gifts.



The Three Graces from Primavera by Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Uffizi Gallery, Florence


Read and hear more

Faith Hope and Charity
Note: to stop the music on this link, press Escape on your keyboard when the music starts – or before you leave the link webpage.

Three Little Maids from School

Logic dictates…

Participation in decision-making is key to equality for women, as frequently pointed out by various United Nations agencies. It also has an important correlation with conflict prevention and the reduction of violence in society, according to UN Security Council Resolution 1325 (see an earlier blog )

I was recently invited to take part in the women in leadership roles online forum hosted by Women Watch on the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs website. At the moment it is still a closed debate but the results will be available shortly.

Over four weeks, there was widespread participation in this well-structured discussion, covering issues such as: the impact of women leaders; the present situation of women in the public and private sectors and in civil society (academia, media etc); the constraints against greater involvement of women in leadership positions; and the strategies that can most effectively be used to counteract those constraints.

In the final week, the moderator asked for more analysis on institutional barriers. And you know, I thought I ought to contribute, since I’ve worked (and become frustrated) in a number of different sectors myself - as well as being employed as an external consultant to carry out organisational audits, workforce training and develop strategy on gender equity.

Unfortunately I found myself unable to join the debate. Nobody was actually stopping me. It just seems that my lifetime experience, both personal and professional, has taught me nothing but this: within the prevailing paradigm, there will always be discrimination (and hence violence) against women.

Former head of the Equal Opportunities Commission in Wales, Prof Theresa Rees, once analysed remedial measures for gender equality as follows: tinkering, tailoring or transformation and concluded that only the third option will do. But how can we imagine it? Although Doris Lessing (The Guardian 08/12/07) has not yet had the time to discover the joys of blogging, she has often resorted to science fiction, futurism, dystopia and myth in her ground-breaking attempts to illuminate gender within the human condition.

Star Trek fans will recognise the language of Vulcans and androids alike: “logic dictates” that the only solution – scary to women and men alike – is to find a new paradigm: this one isn’t working.


Read more

16 days against violence blog


Doris Lessing

For peace in the Middle East… lose yourself in the dance

It’s a Thursday evening in dark damp British autumn. I roll up at the drafty church hall in Llanfairfechan - a village on the wild north Wales coast – to meet a group of women I may not associate with in the daytime. I ask myself: what am I doing here? I should be blogging about world peace, the Israeli roadblocks and electricity cuts in Palestine or the crisis in Pakistan, the poppy harvest in Afghanistan, nuclear power in Iran, Iraqi factions and back again to Annapolis.

But as soon as Julia our teacher puts on the music, we are transported there, to what is known as the cradle of civilisation - the valley of the Euphrates or the banks of the upper Nile. For this is our weekly belly dancing class and for one short hour we bask in an oasis of female power.

They say that the art of raqs sharqi comes from the worship of Isis - the magical goddess of ancient Egypt whose healing ensures everlasting life. As one famous modern day practitioner Jasmin explains: “Isis is the universal mother who guides women in childbirth and comforts them in bereavement, a reminder to women of their connection to the all-goddess and to each other.”

Another story is that learning the technique of undulating the belly was a preparation for natural childbirth. And then there is the hafla or gathering of different dance groups, to perform for each other - not as a competition but in enjoyment of female beauty and self-expression. Along with massage, foot-baths, sweetmeats… It may be a throwback to the harem or have since degenerated into exotic dancing. But it originates in the time when women as priestesses were free to hold their own celebrations and had control over their own mysteries.

That was before goddess worship was desecrated by the priests of patriarchal religion and the practitioners of manmade medicine, one by one seeking to possess the powers of woman which will always be denied to men: conception in the womb, gestation, parturition and lactation. At the same time they try their best to emphasise the redemptive power of the Madonna, the virgin mother (as Marina Warner tells the story) in some warped logic that somehow, by denying woman’s sexuality, men can redeem their own sins.

In the name of god

Last month it seemed that absolutely everyone was an expert on abortion and human rights. Many missed the point that Polly Toynbee raised but did not unpack: the debate is still about the control of women and their fertility. Because men don’t have that life force, they resort to the opposite: oppression, violence, rape and war. And this is always played out across the female body. Danish artist Jens Galschiot launched his sculpture of a pregnant crucified teenager last December as “an outcry against the crusade against contraception and sexual education orchestrated by Christian fundamentalists with President Bush and the Pope in the lead”.

Fortunately not all men are moralists of the abstract, hypocrites, control freaks or fundamentalists looking “to compete with you / Beat or cheat or mistreat you / Simplify you, classify you / Deny, defy or crucify you” (Bob Dylan).

David Grieg recently wrote about the need for men to get in touch with their feminine side with reference to his updated production of Euripides’ play The Bacchae:

“For me, these concerns remain as relevant as they were 2000 years ago. There are still men who would control women in order to boost their shaky sense of self. There are still men who are lost because they refuse to lose themselves in the dance. And so we still live with the psychotic and uncontrolled violence that will appear whenever a repressed Dionysian force reasserts itself – as it always will.”





World peace and thin thighs

Sometimes I have to wait and wait until the right metaphor comes along. Y’alaouni! As we practice our moves, it all makes sense. After all, I never thought I’d get thin thighs again: world peace cannot be far behind. It may sound frivolous but I’m seriously trying to find a radical alternative to the same old tired performances.

In fact, another definition of hafla is a peace festival, which the eponymous London-based group is planning for 2008: I don’t mind that somebody got the idea before me, as it reinforces my position.

“The word 'HAFLA' is common to both Arabic and Hebrew meaning 'celebration' or 'party', and it has a particular connotation as being the third stage of the peace process that comes after the stages of truce and reconciliation. We bring together Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Arabs and Jews and all people who are committed to creating peace in this part of the world. As a group HAFLA asks you to imagine such a celebration.”

So back to Annapolis: boys, please clear the stage, your second-rate snake-charming act is over. And let’s axe the conjuror’s patter. Bring on the dancing girls!

Afterword

HAFLA is also a make of grenade launcher. Go figure.

Read more

The Rise and Rise of the Queen of Heaven

Gender and Trade or Call your bluff

“Critics of the EU’s trade agreements are gambling with livelihoods in the developing world.”

This claim was made last week by Peter Mandelson (EU trade commissioner) and Louis Michel (EU development commissioner) in The Guardian with reference to the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) now under discussion in Brussels. Furthermore, the critics “undermine those in Africa and other ACP countries who are seeking to work constructively for economic reform and a new trade and development relationship with Europe.”

But who are these critics? Clearly not willing to be taken in by a little masculine rhetoric, many of them are representatives of regional and international women’s advocacy groups. They have brought out their own analyses on the likely impact of EPAs, which they believe could blight the future of yet another generation, pushing the dispossessed further to the periphery (Lebohang Pheko’s voice)

Research carried out for the Central American Women’s Network

on the recently launched EU-CA negotiations predicts that women’s working conditions in the ‘free-trade zones’ will get worse, women farmer small-holders will be harder hit by competition and in general “women are likely to be further marginalized, uninformed about their rights and less able to organize to defend them”. Women in Costa Rica are already struggling against the US imposed Central America Trade Agreements (CAFTA).

The International Gender and Trade Network have also published a paper discussing the policy linkage between aid and trade under the Doha Development Agenda. This puts trade at the center of growth promotion and poverty reduction strategies at the national, regional and multilateral level. “This political shift affects the way development policies and technical cooperation (including gender-related activities) are to be designed and implemented in the future and will not go without implications for funding provided for other sectors.”

The paper argues that Aid for Trade should go beyond the general policy declarations related to ‘gender-sensitivity’ and ‘sustainable development’. “It should be part of a specific global plan aimed at improving female employment, ensuring higher employment standards and more stable and sustainable income.”

At the World Social Forum in Nairobi at the beginning of the year, EPAs were top of the agenda, seen as a mechanism for compromising national and regional autonomy (and more: an end to sovereignty in Africa) The organisers of the discussion theme on ‘women farmers cultivating local markets and defending food sovereignty’ talked to me about the importance of the united south-south struggle for fair trade. “Asian women are looking to the African social movements to win over EPAs this year - because we know that Europe will soon be coming after South Asia.”

Sure enough, bilateral EU-India free-trade negotiations are now underway. And the Brussels-based organisation Women in Development Europe have a new report out looking at the implications of EU-India trade for social development and gender equality . The paper questions the main interests behind these free trade agreements on both sides - looking at who is actually going to benefit. It points out that, while Indian economic growth rates now rank second in the world behind China, UNDP ranked India's human development at 126 (out of 177) and gender-related development at 96. One quarter of the population of India lives below the poverty line and female foeticide is systematic.

Since bilateral trade negotiations are held in great secrecy, the paper aims “to provide civil society actors in the EU and India with background information and to build their capacity to engage critically in policy-making on trade and development and in trans-regional networking.” Sounds reasonable in a global democracy?

Speaking out

While I’m on the subject, here’s a plug for another international publication: Unpacking globalisation: markets, gender, work. Edited by Linda E. Lucas this reprints papers from the Women’s Worlds Congress (Kampala, 2002) providing a range of case studies on and by women workers from Mexico through Tanzania to India to exemplify what Saskia Sassen calls the feminisation of survival.

If anyone has real authority to speak about the impact of the current trade system on livelihoods in the south, it has to be the women who live there. And there is plenty of research from women north and south to back them up. In fact, you could say that women have a vested interest in becoming experts on globalisation since they bear the brunt of its effects. And yet it’s still so difficult to be taken seriously.

In December last year Lebohang Pheko took part in a round table on EPAs organised by the European Commission in Brussels where she was due to present a paper giving the gender perspective. What was the response of the EU? She told me:

‘Oh, they said, “let’s stay with the real discussion and look at the gender aspect at the end.” It’s the usual response. But we need to be at the centre of discussions. It’s a question of social inclusion - otherwise, women, men, children, all those who are marginalized, are just taken out of the game. There’s got to be a humanity to these trade agreements.’

As I’ve written before,

it’s easy for western politicians to gamble when someone else is paying for their habit. But if this is a game of poker, the cards are stacked in Europe’s favour. Not a gamble at all then, just a con trick.

Read more

Justice, not globalisation: Lebohang Pheko’s voice

A-Genda. Gender and Trade in Central America. October 2007


The Doha Development Agenda and Aid for Trade: Finding The Policy Link


Economic growth without social justice: EU–India trade negotiations andtheir implications for social development and gender justice

Christian Aid’s campaign for trade justice

Unpacking globalisation: markets, gender, work

Spotlight on the Cuban experience

Sometimes I have good news to report. On 20th October – which is Cuba’s national day - I attended a prestigious event at Clwyd Theatre in Flintshire celebrating 25 years of solidarity between Cuba and Wales (Cymru Cuba).

“We’re proud that the Welsh Assembly has official government links with Cuba,” emphasised MP Elfyn Llwyd, highlighting the memorandum of understanding for cooperation in higher education, which has been developed by Welsh Minister for Education Jane Davidson in collaboration with Silvia Nogales, First Secretary of the Cuban embassy.

In contrast, explained Rob Miller, Director of the Cuba Solidarity Campaign, our UK central government still does not have normalised relations with Cuba. Trade amounts to less than £4 million a year, despite assurances of “supporting open communications with Cuba rather than using an isolationist approach to influencing change” (Angela Smith). The impact on the Cuban people of the 40-year old US economic blockade continues to be officially ignored. In addition, international banks and other companies operating in Britain have been forced by the US to stop trading with Cuba – an act which both contravenes UK law and compromises our own sovereignty.

In spite of negative images of Cuba in the media, over 100,000 British tourists visit the island annually - not counting exchange visits, study tours and delegations of parliamentarians, trade unionists, academics and others. What do they find there? “People like us,” says Tyrone O’Sullivan, ex-miner chair of the worker-owned Tower Colliery in south Wales, “hard-working, good-natured, good at fixing things. Cuba still remains the example of what can be achieved by putting people first, of how ordinary people can change their own destiny.”

In summer of 2006 I got a little frustrated with the press coverage about Castro and wrote an article, archived on the Cynefin Y Werin (Wales Common Ground) website, called Cuba Sí: Let’s dream the impossible which began:

‘Cuba seems to be easy target practice for journalists these days: Fidel is dying, the revolutionary ideal is dead, communism is rotten and the vultures are circling. Soon the US will overrun the island, capitalism will be reinstated and the paradox which is Cuba will finally be resolved.’

Well, according to the speakers at Theatr Clwyd - and as I predicted - none of that has happened yet.



But what do the rest of us have to learn from the Cuban experience?

On October 10th London Metropolitan University saw the successful launch of the new International Institute for the Study of Cuba (IISC). At a time when Cuba is certainly facing a period of change, the IISC aims to provide an in-depth objective appraisal of the ‘social experience’ and to examine its holistic approach to development, particularly in the fields of education and health. IISC executive director, Professor Patrick Pietroni, former Dean of General Practice, who started mobilising resources for the institute just over a year ago, describes to me how ‘academics, managers and scientists in Cuba all seem to have an understanding of the social dimension of their work; an ability to link the macro to the micro and vice versa.’



The online, open-access International Journal of Cuban Studies - first issue due out in spring 2008 - will publish scholarly work on Cuba (and related topics) in all disciplines including science and medicine. So here’s the opportunity to develop some interesting ideas, for example: If the Cuban approach to development had been used in Africa rather than the World Bank model, would the continent be in much better shape? How is a caring holistic approach to housekeeping feasible when prevailing wisdom tells us that only market-oriented policies can bring prosperity? And how to explain the apparent contradiction that women are highly educated, economically independent and equally involved in community decision-making in Cuba, but not in so-called democracies like Mali?

His Excellency René Mujica Cantelar, Cuban ambassador to Britain, concluded his speech at Theatr Clwyd:

'We all need to address the issues of war, poverty, ecological disaster facing the world today, but it is not through weapons or market forces that we will overcome these challenges: it is through cooperation and solidarity.'

Read Cuba Sí. Let’s dream the impossible

Also read about the Caring Economy in Venezuela



human rights

Military recruitment or What's education for anyway?

I’d like to put the record straight for those readers who have the impression I’m not concerned about boys’ poor communication skills and under-performance at school. I am, because we all know what happens to some of those boys: they join the army.

And as the UK armed forces are currently operating below full strength according to statistics from the Defence Analytical Service Agency, there’s a new vigorous recruitment campaign encouraging 17s year olds to fly apache helicopters instead of going to university.

The case is especially relevant to the wild Welsh highlands of Gwynedd where the city of Bangor’s recruiting office has the second highest recruitment rate in the whole of the UK. I don’t think it’s anything to with the persuasion skills of the recruiting officers – it’s because there’s not much else on offer in the way of youth employment opportunities, as I’ve blogged elsewhere. So, despite parental opposition (particularly since the invasion of Iraq) the youth of the area depart, telling themselves as they’ve been told, that they have the chance to learn a trade and ignoring the fact that it may involve killing or getting killed. The news still makes it clear that it’s a man’s job and, in fact, this is one area of life where sex discrimination does work in women’s favour: it is still boys who are wanted as cannon fodder. On the other hand, it is the wives and mothers of soldiers who have been campaigning to bring troops home.



As I’m recounting this to my daughter who’s studying in England, she informs me of something I should have known about a long time ago: the university officer training corps (UOTC). Operational since the beginning of the 20th century, this programme currently comprises 19 units across the UK and aims:

To develop the leadership potential of selected university students through enjoyable training in order to communicate the values, ethos and career opportunities of the British Army.

It recruits students into weekend boot camp activities and offers the perk of free holidays abroad (or as it is stated: ‘we learn to plan and carry out expeditions overseas’). The purpose is not to persuade them to join the armed forces per se but to foster pro-army attitudes among the middle-class, according to one student’s analysis, “so that the future captains of industry will encourage their less well-educated workers to join up if there’s a war.”

The Khaki Dragon

This kind if inequality is particularly striking in Wales, which, as one of the poorest areas of the UK, seems to have become central government’s backyard for military developments, increasingly dependent on the British war machine for economic survival.

It was Plaid Cymru who late last year blew one whistle, providing figures to show that the army recruitment division visited schools in deprived areas of Wales twice as often as those in wealthy areas and thus highlighting the trend across Britain - which led to the MoD curtailing its practice of school visits (although the Welsh Assembly itself refused to take action).

However, cadet training, which takes place outside schools, is still booming in Wales: there are an estimated 7000 young people between 12 and 18 in over 100 cadet units and up to 4000 17- 32 year olds trained as Territorial Army soldiers in 23 TA units. Such enlightening statistics can be found in comprehensive research commissioned by Wales CND into the militarisation of the region. Their report entitled The Khaki Dragon - which is available to download here - also provides a full listing of sites in Wales that are used by arms related industries (at least 35 involved in military contracts) and military-sponsored education and research (Defence Technology Centres at Cardiff and Swansea universities).

And as Ray Davies, chair of Cardiff UNA, blogs:

Between 2001 and 2004 the Ministry of Defence provided military training for over 12,000 personnel from 137 countries, many with poor human rights records. All of this raises the prospect of Wales being used as a training ground for any corrupt dictator who happens to have a million pounds to spare.

What’s education for anyway?

I wrote an earlier post on the St Athans military academy and the involvement of the Open University there. But I’m pleased to see that there are some instances in Britain where higher education questions its own role in contemporary society. Prior to the No Border camp, London academics ran a 2-day free open access event at Goldsmiths University entitled The migrating university: No detention, no deportation, no borders in education where one of the panels discussed the following:

Does a university education offer a passport to a world of opportunity? Are the old exclusions of race, class, gender and ability fully redeemed by our policies and ‘inclusive’ programs? Or is the new hierarchy a filtering mechanism which promises precarious labour for some, security and success for others? While some may never question their right to access, do some have to fight to move at all and others struggle daily simply to pass or fail? Is education really a social good, a pass to freedom; or is it rather a ticket to a new set of subjugations?

There’s not much sense of autonomy here in north Wales. Along with RAF Valley (which trains fighter pilots from all over the world) the picturesque Isle of Anglesey also houses Britain’s largest magnox type nuclear power station at Wylfa. This is likely to be replaced soon by Wylfa ‘B’ if the latest 'consultation’ gives the government the go-ahead to build a new generation of power stations across the UK.



Though I’ve returned home from my travels, I still seem to be living in a developing country which has been forced to sell out under external pressures, is subject to cynical class-based control and where political leaders like to take the name of the Lord in vain as they make empty promises of peace and security for everyone. Our elitist society where intellectuals criticise exceptions like President Chavez - for closing down private schools in Venezuela and daring to say that capitalist ideology destroys the values of cooperation and egalitarianism.



Read The Khaki Dragon: download the Wales CND report here



human rights

The People v The World Bank

Star Trek fans will remember that episode back in 1993 where Q puts Captain Jean-Luc Picard on trial for crimes committed by the human race. Unless the captain can convince the court of humankind’s basic goodness, the entire race – past, present and future - will be wiped out. With his Shakespearean eloquence, of course, the actor Patrick Stewart pleads his defence successfully.

It’s only a story, but the dramatic conceit of this scenario is tremendously powerful. That is, if one honest citizen is prepared to stand up and speak from the heart, he or she can save humanity.

Multiply that by thousands and perhaps the concept is not too far-fetched. What we’ve seen increasingly since the 1960s, especially in the last decade, is the incidence of the people’s tribunal, which, conversely, puts the state or international institutions on trial for crimes against humanity - and where honest citizens are invited to bear witness for the prosecution, again emphasizing the power of personal testimony.

Not surprisingly, argues the Center for Women’s Global Leadership feminist organizers were among the first to see the potential of popular tribunals as a way to claim the “public” space of a tribunal to expose previously “private” violations. The first international tribunal on Crimes against Women was held in Brussels in March 1976. A more recent landmark in 2000 was the international women’s War Crimes Tribunal on Japan’s military sexual slavery.


The 2004 Brussels Tribunal against the war on Iraq

One of the people’s favourite criminals in the dock is the World Bank - along with the neo-liberal capitalist ‘democracy’ it represents. In January 2006 during the polycentric World Social Forum, a session of the World Court of Women sat to hear women bear witness on ‘wars of globalisation, wars against women’.

In early 2007 the film Bamako was shown widely in the US and Europe and promoted by Christian Aid as part of its trade justice campaign. In the film, a trial takes place in a typical African courtyard, where the World Bank and IMF are found guilty of crimes against humanity. Some Western film critics suggested the film lacked concrete proposals for change, but it had enormous impact in Africa, being the first time that this testimony had been raised in public by ordinary Africans for a worldwide audience.



In September 2007 a four-day tribunal was held in India,
where a large number of civil society organisations gathered , yes, as in Africa, accusing the World Bank of influencing national policies to the detriment of the poor. The Bank promised to make a deposition but no-one showed up.

Next up in the middle of October is the polycentric International Women’s Tribunal on Poverty, which will be held in Peru, India, Egypt and at the UN in New York. Given that 70% of the world’s poor are women, these tribunals aim to influence governments by collecting testimony to present to officials on the worsening conditions of women.

Can honest citizens really save humanity? Well, as Captain Picard would say, let’s make it so!



Stop Press: WORLD vs BANK

Also check out this Public Hearing on the World Bank to be held on 15th October in The Hague, organised by The World Bank Campaign Europe in cooperation with the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal. It will be streamed live on http://www.worldbankcampaigneurope.org/ just five days before the World Bank's 2007 annual meetings in Washington DC.

Witnesses from Peru, Nigeria, Malawi, Mali, Nicaragua and Kazakhstan will bring forward cases relating to the effects of the World Bank's push for privatisation and liberalisation of basic services as well as its involvement in fossil fuel projects in developing countries.



human rights

Global politics and confidence building measures

At the All Wales Peace Festival on 22nd September there was an inspiring talk by Professor Nick Wheeler from Aberystwyth, on the concept of trust-building in world politics - the topic of his latest book . I remain firmly sceptical about the trustworthiness of many world leaders. However, I’m able to relate the concept to a concrete example from my experience of the UK Government’s confidence-building strategy for Guatemala and Belize

This programme was funded under the Global Conflict Prevention Pool, itself a three-way cooperation between the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Office and the Department for International Development - the so-called 3-D model (diplomacy, defence and development) now popular for working with other countries. I’ve criticised this model elsewhere, in Mali , arguing that its use by western governments tends to be motivated by the thought of their own economic and political gain rather than being of any real benefit to the developing countries in question. However, due perhaps to particular personalities involved in the Guatemala-Belize strategy, there was observable confidence-building over the two years that I acted as independent evaluator against identified objectives

The strategy aimed to help resolve the longstanding border dispute. Since 1939 when Belize was declared a separate state, Guatemala has refused to recognize its status, claiming the territory is still part of Guatemala. Thus the Organisation of American States , acting as mediator, coined the terms ‘territorial differendum’ (for the dispute itself) and ‘adjacency zone’ (AZ) to designate the disputed border region. The term ‘confidence-building measures’ (CBMs) was substituted for ‘conflict prevention’ because the Guatemalans maintained there was no conflict to prevent. It may sound simply like playing with words. In fact people found the use of the term highly significant - not only in maintaining non-violent relationships at state level but also in influencing the attitudes of other actors from each side of the border.

One of the notable aspects of the programme was that, as it evolved, it included an increasing number of different sectors and levels of Guatemalan and Belizean society: government officials, non-governmental organisations, the media, academia, environmental and human rights groups, communities on either side of the border and the private sector. Similarly it involved a range of cross-border activities: training workshops, exchange visits, study tours, trade fairs, cultural celebrations, civic action and community mobilisation (clearing the river, HIV awareness), mapping, educational materials – and positive media coverage.



Bi-national committees were also set up to develop and move forward joint plans, especially for the economic and social development of the adjacency zone, far from the capital, marginalized, impoverished and neglected. Through working together, representatives from both sides recognised the importance of this as the root cause of conflict. Illegal incursions into Belize’s nature reserves by Guatemalans were driven by the need to forage for food, firewood and also what they might sell to middlemen for export (for example, ornamental ferns) despite the threat of arrest and imprisonment by the Belizean security forces. So, community-based enterprises, facilitating legal cross-border commerce, boosting basic health and education services were all initiatives identified for addressing these problems.

Workshops were held for the various partners, from top to bottom, to share experiences and review progress: here, perhaps for the first time, diplomats heard what civil society had to say about the issue of conflict. In particular, it was clear the strategy had helped to change negative stereotypes and perceptions of ‘the other’. Overall there was an increase in bi-national cooperation and a capacity for joint initiatives. This created a more conducive atmosphere - resulting in reduced tensions at the border and more positive attitudes towards a final settlement. Local ownership of the OAS confidence building process also developed. As one steering committee member put it:

‘

The key lesson to pass on to others in similar situations is the promotion of dialogue at all levels, enabling different people to see the problem differently – not in terms of conflict or illegal incursions but, for example, in terms of shared economic and health needs – and to do things differently. It takes time, it’s an ongoing process (and other problems can be created along the way) but bringing people together to dialogue is a first step. This process, this approach to solving problems, wasn’t there at the outset. For example, the Health Commission for the AZ, this happened because both governments have commitment to working together in this area. We have tried various ways to reach a final settlement through OAS mediation, now maybe it’s time for us to work things out directly government to government.’

The OAS representative was based at the main border crossing (Melchor-Benque) in a small prefabricated office - a humble place where diplomats and high level foreign office personnel, among others, could meet informally to try and resolve border incidents peacefully. In 2005 a new agreement was signed here, a positive step which the then OAS representative attributed to the work of the UK’s confidence-building strategy. The office is still used for meetings.

One innovative initiative, which is ongoing, was the inoffensively named Language Exchange (LX) Project - developed (perhaps surprisingly) by the then Military Attaché to Guatemala when bi-national relationships proved too sensitive to go ahead with original plans for joint military training. Working with other ministries on exchange visits and training, developing goodwill and a high profile, the project was eventually joined by both the police and the military – and joint activities by security forces in the adjacency zone were recognised by all as a key factor in reducing tensions.

The LX project was thus an excellent example of the elements contributing to success in confidence-building: flexibility, creativity, persistence, commitment, allowing enough time for things to develop… as well as language skills, of course.




As regards trade collaboration between the two chambers of commerce under the strategy, I had some reservations, mainly because of the US-imposed Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA)and its potential effects on poor farmers in the AZ. Doubtless the UK had its own economic agenda too. However, the stakeholders I spoke to emphasised that there were already long-standing, though informal, relationships in trade– as indeed there were close social, ethnic, cultural and linguistic links between families in border communities. As happens in many other parts of the world, the real conflicts - which were played out in the everyday lives of the people - were created by their own leaders.




If Guatemala did decide to use force to take back the disputed territory, the UK government would feel obliged to provide military assistance to its former colony Belize – and that’s not a desirable scenario. However, the potential conflict between Guatemala and Belize is low priority in comparison with the ever-escalating crisis in the Middle East. I understand the Oxford Research Group have attempted to apply a confidence-building approach there but have not been able to find ‘high enough people on either side who are willing to dialogue.’

Nevertheless, the event planned for October 18th - when hopefully One Million Voices will be heard in parallel gatherings in Jericho, Tel Aviv, London, Washington and Ottowa - suggests that there are many people who do want to work together: OneVoice counts over 25,000 Israelis and more than 25,000 Palestinians calling for ‘concrete confidence-building measures to improve the lives of the Israeli and Palestinian people.’ As Nick Wheeler pointed out in his talk, the impact of grassroots movements on leaders (and vice versa) shouldn’t be overlooked. In other words, we shouldn’t just focus on summit diplomacy but on all stakeholders. As was observed in Guatemala-Belize, the more people at different levels became involved in confidence-building, the less easy it was for each leader to maintain an overtly aggressive public stance.


Read more

One Million Voices

DDMI blog (The David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies / Department of International Politics, University of Wales Aberystwyth)

Archived material on Guatemala-Belize Confidence-Building

Language Exchange Project

Boys may under-perform but it is women who are under-paid

“Girls outperformed boys by 11% in Key Stage 1 (seven year-olds) writing this year.”

It’s that time of year - results from school examinations and other national assessments have been published and newspapers herald the poor communication skills of boys as a national crisis. The Guardian is even hosting a major event this month for secondary headteachers ‘to identify barriers that impede boys’ learning, to work on practical solutions and set future goals to raise attainment.’ My intention is not to dismiss this as a valid topic for discussion. I’m simply saying it isn’t news.

Let’s go back to the dark ages of the 11 plus examination (established by the Butler Act in 1944). That national assessment test was used in the last year of primary education, allegedly to separate out children with academic potential, placing them in grammar schools, while the future hewers of wood and drawers of water were sent to ‘secondary modern’ schools. Because it was well-known even in those days that boys under-performed in the 11-plus, a special quota system for them was established, to ensure that grammar schools were not predominantly populated by girls. In other words, a percentage of the boys who went to grammar school did not merit their place. And a certain percentage of girls who went to secondary modern school were too bright to be there.

The practice was discontinued at a national level by the Labour government in 1974 (although it is still used in a few education authorities today) partly on the grounds that age 11 was too early to determine an individual’s future and that the exam favoured middle class children. The introduction of the comprehensive system also eliminated this 30 year-old practice of discrimination against girls at age 11 – a fact that has largely been overlooked in discussions about education in today’s ‘meritocracy’.

Of course, there is still a tendency for girls to have to teach themselves, especially at secondary school, while their teachers’ attention is taken up by boys’ bad behaviour. And unfortunately in many co-educational classrooms boys tend to undermine the confidence of teenage girls and inhibit them from showing how bright they really are. So girls sit and listen, take note, do their homework, help each other out and apply themselves consistently to coursework tasks throughout the year - rather than taking a mad dash to revise one week before the exams - behaviour which often earns them the epithet of being intellectually unadventurous and ‘not as naturally bright as boys’.



But in all this, the obvious answer to the conundrum of boys’ under-achievement seems to have been ignored. If, for the 60+ post-war years of co-educational statistics, boys continue to under-perform in comparison with girls, could the reason perhaps simply be that boys are not as bright?

‘News’ reports last week on another well-known fact suggest that we don’t need to worry about this because it doesn’t affect their achievement in later life. 30 years on from the Equal Pay Act, women may climb the career ladder faster than men – but are paid nationally 17% less for doing the same job, according to the latest National Management Salary Survey. Frances Gibb and Marcus Leroux in The Times, 5th September disingenuously reveal that 75% of women in the survey viewed qualifications as benefiting their career prospects compared with 66% of men. Of course: women know they have to work harder to get on and even when they are successful, are still under-paid.

So why should we bother about boys’ under-attainment at school when our ‘meritocratic’ society is still stacked in favour of men’s achievement at work?



The Equal Opportunities Commission, in its final report before being merged with other watchdogs into the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights on 1st October, has laid out its gender agenda: all those aspects of continuing sex discrimination in Britain which still require action by the new body.
The integrated human rights commission has potentially the advantage of being able to address the kind of connections between gender, race, class and ability that are not always made by the news reporting of the day.

But the newspaper advertisement I read for three key directors for the commission doesn’t bode well. Even as a linguist and an institutional development consultant, I couldn’t quite decipher the job description for ‘stakeholder relationships’ although I’m perfectly familiar with the concept. Perhaps it was written by one of those men whose communication skills are 11% poorer than mine but whose salary is 17% more.

Read more about the EOC gender agenda.



human rights

Out of Basra

Preparing them for a future they cannot yet imagine…

No, really, how could I make it up? I found this slogan accompanying the photograph above on the home page of Metrix - the private consortium which - I have just learned - won the British government contract earlier this year to develop and run a mega military academy in St Athan, south Wales, as part of streamlining UK’s armed services. The consortium includes a subsidiary of the US company Raytheon(‘customer success is our mission’) which makes cluster bombs and depleted uranium munitions, supplies electronic guidance equipment for the British nuclear weapons system Trident and is a favoured US government supplier of arms to Israel.

No surprises there, perhaps, but another long-term partner in the consortium is the Open University (‘study with us and fulfil your potential’) as Brenda Gourley Vice-chancellor proudly announced when opening the new Cardiff office in March as part of the Wales’ assembly government mission for a ‘learning nation'. Gourley also spoke at the OUSA conference 14 April on ‘learning from the past – embracing the future’: ‘Lastly let us not forget our social justice agenda – if we join hands together, we can change the world.’

As the report from a meeting of activists at the Temple of Peace with Cardiff university researcher Stuart Tannock points out: ‘Young people will be trained to in a craft which murders people, destroys environments, has no respect for communities and can lay waste huge areas forever. You have to blink hard to make certain this is actually Wales and not Wonderland.’

While Gordon Brown brings the British soldiers home from Basra it’s clear that no lessons have been learned about how best to prevent conflict, as I predicted when he first took office. Peter Beaumont highlights in The Guardian that youth training opportunities in Iraq, especially in Basra, are now largely provided (for men) courtesy of the Mahdi army of Moqtada al-Sadr and restrictions (which didn’t existed before 2003) are placed on women university students regarding dress and behaviour.

Meanwhile, despite Tony Blair’s appointment as special Middle East envoy, his support and influence have been conspicuously lacking in the case of the under 19s Palestine National Youth Football Team. Due to tour the UK for 3 weeks over the British summer and play 3 matches in the north-west of the country as part of a youth project – a visionary educational and bridge-building initiative of benefit to all involved – the team were banned from entry at the last minute by UK government visa restrictions.



Several reasons have been given. The official one from UKvisas (‘making travel and migration work for Britain’) with reference to the British Consulate in Jerusalem ‘which continues to provide a service in Gaza’ explains that some of the team from the Gaza strip did not meet the visa criteria. In fact the authorities were afraid that some of the players would seek asylum in Britain: in other words, ‘they were too poor to come’. Journalist Mark Steel ironically suggests the government were afraid the young people were part of a terrorist plot . Check them out.



As is reflected in the film Goal Dreams, to be screened at the All Wales Peace Festival this month, it’s actually quite difficult to put a national football team together ‘without a recognized homeland, no permanent domestic league, no place to train, Israel air strikes on the Palestine stadium…’

But, never mind, the Israeli football team will be playing at Wembley this weekend 8th September although a vigil against the government’s hypocrisy is being organised and the self-styled ‘world’s greatest football blog’ (edited by an Israeli football fan) doesn’t mention the Palestine team at all.


The United Nations resolution 58/5 entitled ‘Sport as a means to promote education, health, development and peace’ recognizes the power of sport to contribute to human development, touching the individual, community, national and global levels. In particular sports programmes are regarded as a key strategy for addressing the social alienation of disadvantaged youth and helping to fulfil their potential.

As we all know from Hollywood films, sporting activities, like the Open University partnership, can mean working together to change the world. But whatever else young people may learn at St Athan, we can be sure it’s not cricket.

Read the full report on St Athan’s military academy from UK Indymedia here

Women, socialism and language

“ Taking part is not enough, you have to express your opinion.”

I found this quote on a card from Puntos de Encuentros
the leading women’s advocacy organisation in Nicaragua. What they say is true, but I know it’s not easy because it took me a long time to find my own voice as a writer. And like many other women I have found blogging a creative and empowering means of expressing my opinions and at the same time helping to raise other women’s voices.

I blogged live from the World Social Forum in Nairobi in January, and from the G8 alternative summit in Rostock in June. Now I’m grounded for a while in north Wales experiencing withdrawal symptoms. But fortunately the world keeps on spinning and the social movement keeps on moving. So in August musicians and political activists from the Americas and Europe descended on the tiny Welsh town of Machynlleth, home to the Centre for Alternative Technology for a Latino-Welsh extravaganza. They came to celebrate the living inspiration of the Chilean musician Victor Jara and discuss common environmental concerns – thus proving yet again that the sweet old-fashioned dream of socialism succeeds in eluding eradication and can be found bringing people together happily in what may seem the most unlikely of locations.

In fact, for me, the event is not surprising because there is a tradition of connection between Wales and Latin America which goes back to the first Welsh settlers to Patagonia in Argentina in 1865. More recently, solidarity groups in Wales have regularly exchanged visitors with Nicaragua and organised bilateral conferences on Cuba . This is the second Victor Jara festival in Machynlleth, and now links are being developed with Venezuela, since Cesar Aponte from the ministry for the environment was at the festival to talk about oil, equity and biosphere.



The reason for today’s connections, of course, is the common experience of oppression: Wales by the English kings, landlords, law, church and language; Latin American countries by dictators at home supported by successive greedy US regimes equally violating human rights including the right of free expression. The connection means that both Welsh civil society and politicians are active in LA solidarity: Jane Davidson, minister for education in the Wales Assembly, has visited Cuba on official business and Eluned Morgan (now Labour MEP) worked on the Nicaraguan coffee harvest. LA links are particularly strong among members of the Welsh Language Society : poets, musicians, writers like Angharad Tomos or educationalists like Branwen Niclas who have in their time been held in English prisons over Welsh language rights.

Mother tongue

Language was one of several themes of commonality in a cross-cultural initiative between women in Wales and women in Nicaragua last century (1995-6). This was a particular link with the multilingual Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, where, as in Wales, it is women who have been instrumental in maintaining indigenous language in the face of oppression by conquistadores, government, society or husbands. They have kept the mother tongue alive at home, in community life (especially Sunday school) in bringing up their own children, through stories, oral history, shared childcare and the development of a bilingual education programme.

At the conference in Bangor we discussed the paradox that while women are keepers of the language we are not always encouraged to use it ourselves in public. For this reason some researchers suggest that women’s speech is associated with powerlessness and can be characterised by over-politeness, hedging and hyper-correct grammar. Jennifer Coates has argued that these features do not actually correlate with the sex of the speaker but with social status, linked to previous experience and confidence in the context. “Powerless language has been confused with women’s language because in societies like ours women are usually less powerful than men.”

In mixed communication men are observed to interrupt three times as often as women, thus violating the rules of turn-taking. Conversely, women tend to act as facilitators, doing more of the interactive work and respecting others’ turns. Coates points out that “both men and women are disadvantaged by the existence of these two different models of conversation: women because their style leads to their being dominated (by men) in mixed groups and men because they lack competence in co-operative interaction.”

Angelica Brown, then councillor for the southern Atlantic coast region of Nicaragua highlighted: “Problems arise when it is a question of women taking on a public role because we underestimate our abilities of management and communication. For women in bilingual communities there is the additional worry of having to speak in public in your second or even third language.”


I have to keep on fighting

“Pay attention to the way you construct the present. It should look like the future that you dream of” (Alice Walker) is the message on another card from Puntos de Encuentro. Although the socialist experiment hasn’t always been so good for women, it has only been made possible by their active participation. While the reality may not live up to the dream, socialism in different Latin American contexts has opened up a space where women can raise their voice, take part in decision-making and are able to move, influence or inspire others. And, as Amanda Hopkinson says, ‘If you want to make a protest in Central America, you write a poem.’ The following two poems are not new but their writers’ dreams live on.

Firstly, the Creole painter Joan Beer, who died in 1984 not long after writing Love Poem, talks about the reality of personal relationships at a time when the Sandinistas (named after the anti-US-imperialism fighter, Sandino) were working for a greater love - for the sunrise, as the liberation of Nicaragua was called. The poignancy of ‘trying to keep back the night from falling’ is even greater in retrospect, given the World Bank’s dismantling of developments in health, education and equality during the 1990s.

Oscar, yuh surprise me
assin for a love poem

Ah sing a song a love fa meh contry
small contry, big lite
Hope for de po’, big headache fa de rich
Mo’ po’ dan rich in de worl
mo’ people love fah meh contry

Fa meh contry name Nicaragua
Fa meh people ah love dem all
Black, Miskito, Sumo, Rama, Mestizo
So yuh see fa me, love poem complete
‘cause ah love you too.

Dat no mek me erase de moon
an de star fran de firmament.

Only somehow wen ah rememba
how you bussin yo ass
To defend dis sunrise, an keep back
de night fran falling
Ah know dat tomara we will have time
fa walk under de moon an stars
Dignify an free, sovereign
children a Sandino.

In the conclusion of the second poem, the recently deceased Claribel Alegria expresses her choice more starkly:

Because I want peace and not war
I want to keep on fighting.
Because there are liberated territories
Where people learn to read
And the sick are cured
And the fruits of the earth belong to all,
I have to keep on fighting.

Note:
Creole is one of the languages used in Bluefields on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua. As a community they were socialised to believe that Creole is just ‘bad’ English, not a real language, especially by the powerful Moravian church and its schools. Comments from afro-caribbean activists:

“The church teaches us women to be humble – that is, stupid!” Marjorie McKenzie.

‘When my husband is at home, we all speak Spanish. When he’s away, we speak bad Creole.’ Shorlaine Howard.


Further links

OpenDreams live on blog

El sueno existe

History is a weapon, Joan Jara (downloadable)

Lovers and Comrades, Women’s resistance poetry, edited by Amanda Hopkinson, The Women’s Press, 1989
Welsh Writing 1960-1985, Ned Thomas, 1996

We share the same struggle, edited by Patricia Daniel, 1996 (downloadable)

Climate change: sustainability, socialism and music

My latest blog for openDemocracy.net covers El Sueno existe the Victor Jara festival in Machynlleth, mid-Wales, which brought together environmentalists, musicians, academics and political activists from Latin America (Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Cuba..) and Europe (Wales, England, Italy, Finland...)to discuss practical solutions to climate change actually working today, as well as socio-economic scenarios for the future. I interviewed both women and men on a range of issues and came away inspired by seeds of hope, including the example of political and economic empowerment of women in Venezuela.

Please check out the blog here openDreams live on

Democracy in Mali: the president and the prostitute

The second round of parliamentary elections in Mali was completed at the weekend (22nd July 2007). The ADP coalition supporting Amadou Toumani Touré (ATT) was always the favourite to win and in the end they took 128 seats out of 147 in the national assembly. Since ATT was re-elected president for a second five-year term in May, the casual observer may be forgiven for assuming that the Malian population are happy with his style of leadership and that, clearly, he has their support to go forward with the neo-liberal programme of economic reform imposed by western donors.

Let’s look beneath the surface, because this also occurs in other countries. While Mali is perceived to be one of the most stable democracies in the African continent, it is also right at the bottom of the UN’s human development index. Despite a raft of donor-driven institutional reforms, life has not improved for the majority of her citizens. This is one good reason why the turnout for the national elections was low - as in bye-elections over the last year or so - indicating disillusionment with politics in general. Overall the turnout was estimated at 33% but this figure hides the disastrous lack of engagement of citizens in the capital (12%) and the relatively high engagement in some rural areas (up to 50% or more in a country where the literacy rate is around 25%).

Gender equality has made no progress whatsoever in the past 5 years. In fact, it looks as if it might be reversed. In the outgoing assembly, women deputies counted for a bare 10% or 14 out of 147 seats with 5 women ministers (18%). This year for the first time there was a woman presidential candidate Aminata Sidibé who entered the race late and was only able to draw on the support of a network of Malian women working in the non-governmental sector. In the parliamentary elections there were 227 women candidates out of 1,408 and none of them were elected in the first round, leaving only 26 to save Mali’s honour in the second round. Predictions that the number of female deputies would be halved in the new assembly were found to be too pessimistic: 14 women were finally elected.

This is not because women don’t want to be involved in politics. They have campaigned vigorously, in a cross-party coalition for the introduction of 30% quotas on the candidate lists (which are put forward by the different political parties) and even managed to get a bill discussed in the national assembly last August, in preparation for this year’s elections. After a stormy debate, the bill was thrown out by a majority of the legislature – but as they are almost all men, this is hardly surprising.

And while male commentators continue to claim that women are not politically competent or confident enough to run a successful campaign, women themselves complain that the main factor is economic inequality. Those candidates that have money to bribe the electorate will win. The vast majority of women in Mali are economically dependent and anyway women don’t play that game. Possibly one reason why men are against more women in government is that “their presence would bring scruples back into public life and rehabilitate politics in the eyes of citizens for whom ‘democracy’ has become devalued.” (Bintou Sanankoua secretary general of the network of African women ministers and parliamentarians and former deputy in Mali). Indeed, the ombudsman’s report for 2006 revealed that 103 billion West African francs (more than £103 billion) had been ‘lost’ that year through government corruption in Mali.

Coalition politics

The problem is that Mali exemplifies open democracy gone wild, but only for men of course. There was a total of 154 political parties contesting the 2007 elections, the same scenario as in 2002, when ATT formed a coalition government. For the 2007 elections, the ADP (the alliance for development and progress) comprised over thirty political parties and numerous other civil society organisations. In different constituencies different coalitions joined together to form other coalitions as seemed expedient in order to present the most attractive lists. This form of coalition politics is entirely cynical and has nothing to with political principle, according to Nina Walet Intalou, councillor in the northern-most constituency of Kidal and deputy chair of the independent state watchdog for local government.



In other words there is no viable opposition. As another friend there commented, the strongest candidate standing against ATT was Ibrahim Boubacar Keita - who had just been working with ATT as a minister for 5 years in government (sound familiar to British readers?): how can he be seen as a serious political opponent? Although I’m not generally in favour of the combative male two-party oppositional political paradigm, I have to agree with Nina Walet that it at least means representatives attempt to have some kind of position. The situation is also a disadvantage for ATT, because as leader he has to please everyone in the coalition. Realistically, he has to go along with corruption. And as for social justice, well, for example, he allegedly supported the women’s quota bill himself but was not able to push it through. Yet it seems he certainly had all the civil servants in his pocket come election time.

So, the long and the short of it is that the citizens of Mali don’t bother voting because – despite the plethora of apparent options - there isn’t really any choice. And, in the same vein, journalists are free to say what they like about ATT and the government because that’s not going to make any difference either.

Freedom of the press

However, there was a little fuss in June when a secondary school teacher was arrested for disrespect to the president, along with five journalists - which led Reporters without Borders to query Mali’s status as one of the few African countries to field a free press. Believe it or not I actually met this young man who used to drive up on a moped to visit his cousin Mboye, the housekeeper in the Bamako courtyard where I lived for 3 months. In his first year of teaching, Bassirou Minta had taken advice from an older colleague on essay themes that had been used before. He then gave his students an assignment to write on moral corruption in relation to an imaginary president and his mistress. The press got hold of this, thanks to a helpful parent. Minta was fined, jailed and barred from teaching; the journalists were also fined and had suspended sentences for publishing articles on the matter. The public were barred from the trial on the grounds it was a ‘sex case’.

On 21 June, a crowd of around 200 journalists marched in the capital in front of the office of the Justice Minister to demand the release of their colleagues (as reported by the International Federation of Journalists) Security forces violently broke up the protest and fired tear gas at the journalists, badly injuring Ibrahim Famakan Coulibaly, the president of the Malian Journalists' Association and the West African Journalists' Association.

But the story was nothing to do with politics - or was it? Firstly, the woman in the story was ‘a student and economic prostitute’. It is so much taken for granted in Mali that young women will sell their favours to older wealthy and more powerful men. It is only when the girl falls pregnant, as here, that there is an issue to debate - one of the dilemmas being should the president marry his mistress and recognise his child - which in fact he is forced to do when the girl comes into a cabinet meeting to plead her case.

Apparently ATT is well known for his extra-marital liaisons and his long line of natural-born children. A lot of people think ‘a big man’ like him should have disregarded the story in the press instead of over-reacting. As the journalist who first published the story puts it: “the link is clear between moral corruption at the grassroots and the role model at the very top which has created it.” Seydina Oumar Diarra continues: “We allow young girls from our own families and villages to be pimped - in a society where money has become the only sign of success.”

Meanwhile Mali’s new poverty reduction strategy depends on money from the US-based Millennium Challenge Corporation. The MCC currently uses 16 objective indicators of social, political, and economic performance to determine a country’s eligibility for support – including combating corruption. The aid invested is expected to deliver a return, namely, improvements in the lives of the poor. Mali’s plans are to upgrade the airport at Bamako which will advantage private and foreign companies. In addition, rural development will include parcelling out land to what another journalist (Ousmane Sow, writing in Les Echos 22 November 2006) calls ‘Sunday farmers from Bamako.’ Instead of the people benefiting from the great green river Niger, their water and electricity supplies are controlled by outside entreprise - and GM crops are being introduced by the US under a new agricultural project.

So, that’s democracy in Mali. Who’s the prostitute in the story? And where’s the moral outrage? A government committee is complaining that not enough people went online to cast their vote for Timbouctou to become classed as one of the seven wonders of the world. Never mind, two young Maliennes have been voted in to the final round of the regonal Miss Sahel competition. Let’s get things in proportion.



Afterthought: The women’s platform

The women’s cross-party coalition in Mali held a round-table in January 2007 to develop a women’s platform for future increase in political participation . I hope they get the support they need to move this forward for the 2009 local elections. At that level, another women’s platform already exists : the labour-saving multi-purpose machine run on battery power which performs a range of tasks normally allotted to women, lightening their physical load and freeing up time – to become involved in politics. If every community in Mali had one of these, we might begin to see real progress in democracy and development.



Read more

See an earlier post on the same theme: The Boys Club Rules OK

Pamela Mhlanga discusses the 50.50 gender protocol in southern Africa

My original essay on Mali: everyone's favourite destination, 2006