Brazil’s Environmental Expedition to Africa: A Green Paradox

By Sara de Melo Rocha

Image by http://www.strata-africa.com

Passport: check! Visa valid for 90 days: check! Invitation to the People’s Summit in Rio+20: check! Mozambican environmental activist and journalist Jeremias Vunjanhe had all of this as he travelled from Maputo to Johannesburg and, finally, to São Paulo, Brazil.  From São Paulo, Vunjanhe expected to take another flight to Rio de Janeiro, to participate in the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). Instead, he was intercepted by the Brazilian Federal Police and sent back to Mozambique “without explanation”.

Last June, Brazil hosted Rio+20. Rio de Janeiro received over 100 heads of state and government representatives, changing the routine of the city. Twenty years ago, the same city held the same event, the Rio Summit. Since then, the most significant difference was in the way Brazil faced environmental challenges. 

“In ‘92, Brazil was regarded as not respecting environmental laws, unable to protect its forest, only making its first steps in environmental issues”. Flávio Miragaia Perri was the coordinator of Rio 92, later becoming Minister of the Environment.  “The conference was the turning point for Brazil in terms of environmental attention”, he explains. Today, by contrast, Brazil has a say about environmental issues. This became clearer during COP15 – the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference -, where Brazilian President Lula da Silva gave a speech criticizing industrialised countries’ attitude towards climate change, adding that “Brazil [had] not come [there] to bargain. (…). We spent one century without growing, while others grew a lot. Now that we started to grow, it is not fair to make sacrifices again”.  


Jeremias Vunjanhe was going to Rio to discuss the effect the presence of Vale - a Brazilian mining company - is having on Mozambique. “The organization I work in – Justiça Ambiental – published important information about a protest by 350 families that were displaced so Vale could continue mining the area. We have pictures of police repression during a demonstration in January. I know that did not please Vale and some important sectors of the Mozambican government. If this is in any way related to my deportation from Brazil, I cannot say.”

Jeremias Vunjanhe, 
Mozambican environmental activist 
(personal archive)

Vale - investing around $1.6 billion and producing 11 million tons of coal each year - is just one example of Brazil’s presence in Africa. In 2008, the Brazilian Agency for Cooperation (ABC) approved the implementation of 236 projects in South-South cooperation. The same agency spends 55% of its resources in African countries. In environmental matters, Brazil cooperates with 12 countries on 29 projects. However, Brazil’s outreach to Africa is recent: it started with the election of Lula da Silva as president of Brazil in 2003.

Priority Mission: Africa

To explain Brazil’s interest in Africa, Miguel Silva - a researcher in the Centre of African Studies in Porto University - goes back to the time of colonization, when millions of Africans slaves were brought to Brazil by the Portuguese to work in coffee plantations. “Brazil is starting to somewhat compensate their descendants - or Afro-Brazilians. Universities have quotas for students of African descent and Brazilians are more aware and proud of their origins”.  When Lula was elected, he made cooperation with Africa a priority. Since then, 19 new embassies have opened across Africa and Lula became the Brazilian president that visited that continent the most. His handpicked successor, Dilma Rousseff, has followed Lula’s footsteps in this respect. 

Along with private investment, the Brazilian state has set up several projects in Africa: these mainly include sectors such as agriculture, biofuel, health and environment. From technical cooperation to financial investments, Brazil is building an influence network both in Portuguese speaking countries and the rest of the continent.

REDD+ is not ready

Brazil’s shine is so strong that some nations strive to emulate its most notorious developmental projects. In Africa, Mozambique has voiced its admiration for Bolsa Floresta, the first international program that pays populations to preserve the Amazon forest and avoid deforestation and carbon emissions. Mozambique is currently working on a decree that will officially create a technical group for REDD+ - acronym for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. Mozambique wants to start its own carbon market, since 70 per cent of the country is covered in forest and vegetation and 80 per cent of the population lives in rural areas and relies on forests to survive. Close to 85 per cent of the rural energy consumption comes from wood and charcoal, which consumes roughly 20 million cubic meters of wood a year. Brazil gave the know-how, Norway supplied funds and Mozambique provided the area.

Yet Brazil’s very own Bolsa Floresta is flawed. The sums offered to rural dwellers are not attractive enough to convince them to give up their use of the forest. Mozambique did not fare any better. The crux of the program lies in the payment to the populations to help keep the trees standing. Yet, according to Isilda Nhantumbo, a senior researcher at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) - a non-profit institution behind the project -, there are reasons to question the sustainability of this measure. “What is the source of the payments?”, she wonders, “What is the compromise between beneficiary and payments? How can we measure and monitor the project?” The program is only at its first steps. Brazilian technicians were in Mozambique to instruct the African team leading the program, which is due to be implemented in 2015.  Mozambique will get $3.8 million to set up the plan, which includes studies about carbon stocks and examination of the benefit-sharing mechanism.

However, REDD+ in Mozambique is far from being ready. The IIED researcher admitted that cooperation with Brazil created some tension, due to the paradox between Brazilian investments and their posture towards the environment. “On the one hand Brazil intended to give some lessons and replicate its model in a copy/paste mode, on the other the hand it is channelling large investments in agriculture through a program called Prosavana that will occupy 6 million hectares of forest for agriculture. It is a threat, and a contradiction between the ‘green’ of the money and the ‘green’ of the environment. One cancels the other”, Isilda Nhamtumbo points out.

For the Brazilian Ministry of the Environment (MMA), REDD+ is not an official, state-run cooperation project. “It involves a Brazilian institution – Fundação Amazónia Sustentável – but it is important to point out that Brazil was invited to participate in this project and not the other way around”, clarifies Natalie Unterstell, manager of forest and climate change at the MMA.

Prosavana, a 6-hands play

Japan, Brazil and Mozambique partnered in a tripartite initiative aiming to “promote socio-economic development in an environmentally sustainable way through the development of agriculture”. This description can be read in several Mozambican newspapers outlining the project in which Mozambique lends 6,000 square kilometres for the plantation of corn, soya, rice and cotton for 50 years, renewable for another 50 years. Japan and Brazil invest $1 billion each, the latter provides technical support, since the area is very similar to Brazilian soil. According to the Mozambican Minister of Agriculture, 90% of the workforce will be Mozambican.

Jeremias Vunjanhe doubts whether the program will truly benefit Mozambique’s population or trade balance. He is equally concerned with the “secrecy” of Prosavana. “The program was announced in Brazil before even being publicly discussed in Mozambique. They say that there will be a transfer of technology and assistance to farmers in Mozambique, but this is not clear. Farmers are not being told how they will be integrated in the project”, he worries. 

The project will be implemented in 12 districts in the provinces of Nampula, Cabo Delgado and Zambézia. According to Vunjanhe, the north of the country is one of its most populated and fertile areas, “feeding a big part of the population”. Mônica Martins, a professor at the State University of Ceará, Brazil, and expert in the environment, is concerned with the future effects that this kind of plantations might have on Mozambican soil. “Despite the continuous optimistic statements from leaders about the outcome of this project, our experience with the monoculture of soybeans proved to be disastrous in the Brazilian soil”. 

A year ago, when the Brazilian delegation visited Mozambique to scout the area of the Prosavana project, the head of the delegation admitted that Brazilian investors chose Mozambique for the cheap land and flexible laws. In an article published in Folha de São Paulo, Carlos Ernesto Augustin stated “Mozambique is a Mato Grosso [a rural region in western Brazil] in the middle of Africa, with free land, without environmental impediments and with much cheaper shipping for China”. He continues affirming that "today, the land is expensive in Mato Grosso and it is impossible to obtain a license for deforestation”. 

Jeremias Vunjanhe concludes that these are the “real reasons for investing in Mozambique, it has nothing to do with increasing productivity and agriculture as the government now wants to justify”.

Nonetheless, MMA is pleased with Prosavana and believes that growth and sustainability are both met in the program. “It is fully compatible with the objective of sustainable development in a balanced environment”, Natalie Unterstell insists.

Brazilian green strategy

Natalie Unterstell just returned from Congo, where Brazil started an environmental monitoring project to mitigate the damages caused by greenhouse gases. “We have many requests for cooperation from several countries. We don’t go to a country because we want to, but because there is an interest from them”, she says, adamantly. Besides the funds from the ABC, the MMA also benefits from a Norwegian subsidy of $1billion, of which up to 20% of the resources can be used to support projects abroad.

For the MMA, the current priority is the South-South cooperation. “This dialogue with African countries is a partnership between equals. We are talking about countries that want to exchange technology and, in the environmental area, it is very important because we ourselves are still learning. Brazil does not stand as an example”, Natalie Unterstell adds. 
Jeremias Vunjanhe looks at the Brazilian cooperation from a different perspective. “Brazilian environmental projects in Africa work as a ‘business card’ for all the other investments that Brazils wants to do here”. He goes further saying that “when Brazil sees itself as a country that makes South-South cooperation, very often it claims leadership in poor countries. Brazilians criticize the way developed countries deal with them, but they are exporting the exact same model to African countries”.

Researcher Miguel Silva agrees and explains that “in economic terms, Brazil intends to access vital raw materials that can continue feeding the Brazilian economy”. Mônica Martins argues that the official Brazilian rhetoric describes South-South cooperation as a contribution for the Brazilian-African development. However, the real reasons differ, she reckons : “Brazil needs this alliance for its international perspective, to be able to enter into the United Nations Security Council, to sell products and technologies and to buy raw materials.”

A green paradox or a genuine interest?

“Of course there is a paradox when pursuing economic growth is connected with environmental preservation”, Martins promptly answers. She further explains that the image of Brazil-saving-the-environment and Brazil-projecting-an-international-positive-image walk hand-in-hand and are present in the actions of governments, NGOs and environmental movements. But no country will leave behind growth goals in order to pursue environmental objectives.

And some among Brazilian authorities are well aware of these contradictions. Speaking to the Brasileiros magazine, Nei Bitencourt, the Brazilian ambassador in the Republic of Cameroon spelled out the dilemma: “is our role focusing on cooperation and acting as a partner amongst equals, or is it to simply be investors focused on economic and commercial results?  If Brazil chooses to focus on profitability, is there a risk that we will be viewed as egotistical?  If cooperation is the route to be taken, will our own development interests be fulfilled? It is difficult to say what will happen but it is certain that these decisions will have to be mad”.

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Chunchi, the town of suicidal kids

The scourge of emigration for those who are left behind

By Sara de Melo Rocha   

In the remote region of Chimborazo, a central-Andean province of Ecuador, the town of Chunchi has one of the world’s highest suicide rates among kids and teenagers; Chunchi is known as the ‘village of the suicidal children’. In five years, 63 young people ended their lives. Many others tried it unsuccessfully.  The common denominator: all of them grew up without their parents, who emigrated to the United States or Spain.

Chunchi, has no more than twelve thousand inhabitants, a decreasing number due to the migration flow to the U.S. or to Spain. Known as “Ecuador’s Andean chair”, Chunchi provides a watercolor landscape due to the red sunset, especially during the summer. But if the Andes give Chunchi beautiful sunsets during the warm months, the winter mist is dense and the mountains isolate the town and its people. Chunchi has one hospital, three schools and the 30 rooms available in the Hotel Chunci Imperial are more than enough to receive the town’s visitors. There are more leaving than coming.

Everyone has one or more relatives that have emigrated, and the story repeats itself: a young couple - or at least one of them - decides to look for a better life in the United States or in Europe, leaving their children behind and entrusting them to relatives, godparents, neighbors or to sometimes hastily appointed legal custodians. Besides sending money for their offspring’s education, they promise they will - one day - come back to pick them up. Most of the times, the return is delayed or never happens.

Wagner Sárez, a psychologist in the hospital of Chunchi, believes that emigration is the main explanation for the suicides. “This leaves the emigrant’s son or daughter feeling lonely and lacking affection, which in turn leads them to stress, then depression because he or she is not getting any moral support from anyone. It sometimes leads these children to start drinking at an early age, which leads to further loneliness and makes them contemplate the worst. It is a tremendous and shameful situation”, he regrets.

In Chunchi, close to 41% of youths have a least one relative living in the U.S. or Spain. These numbers, provided by national census statistics, do not get better: between 1980 and 2010, 20% of the city’s population has emigrated. It is a town of grandparents and grandchildren, but the generation in the middle is gone. According to Eduardo Espinoza, the coordinator of Chunchi’s Communitarian Development Office, emigration leads to a process of disintegration among the affected families. “The man or woman that leaves makes a new home for him or herself upon arrival and simply forgets about his previous life. Close to 75 % of those who leave don’t come back. [The man or woman] who stays behind eventually looks for another partner and ends up abandoning his or her previous children, which are left with no parental and emotional point of reference and no motivation. They feel rejected” he adds.

 Desperation or heroism?

“There used to be, on average, six suicide attempts every month until recent times”, says Wagner Sárez adding that, recently, the number has gone down to roughly one or two. He remembers an extreme case that occurred in 2009: a ten-year-old boy who committed suicide. His parents were living in Spain and left him and other two sisters living with the grand-mother. He preferred to stay at home on the uncle’s wedding day and hang himself in one of the many trees around his grand-mother’s house.

Eduardo Espinoza finds another reason: “They look up to those who have committed suicide in the past. They see this as a form of heroic gesture, which they decide to emulate”, Espinoza explains.

Welcome to Europe. No children allowed

In 2003, a migration agreement between Spain and Ecuador permitted to legalize the stay of Ecuadorians interested in working in the country. A bilateral commission was created to submit job offers by Spanish businessmen to Ecuadorians. It was expected to deliver about 30 000 work visas each year. The U.S. remains the ‘promised land’ but many Ecuadorians started seeing Spain and Italy as a better and easier option.

The working fathers and the mothers were more than welcome. Children, not really.  “Many people from rural areas went to Spain to work in the fields. There was a big European demand for care services so women could start working. In Spain, there is a small birth rate because the state gives little support to working mothers. So, Ecuadorian women could not emigrate with their children”, explains Rosalia Cortes, an Argentinian researcher at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO).  From the 441 thousand Ecuadorians living in Spain, 41,4% left at least one child behind.

Mi querida mamita

According to a UNICEF’s study about children and migration in Ecuador, female migration exceeded that of males in 1999. The researcher, Gloria Camacho,  explains that “when  the  father  has  migrated,  the  family  is  not  quite  affected  since,  from  a  cultural point  of  view,  the  mother  has  always  been  responsible  for  the  household. On the contrary, when the mother has migrated, the family is strongly affected and its vulnerability levels depend on whether the father directly takes over the care of their children, or he has the support from other women in his family.”

The role of mothers in Latin American households is particularly important and, with the migration of the female figure, the lack of attention and the feeling of rejection can be even bigger. Besides that, there are other risks involved, says Gloria Camacho: “Many  of  these  children  and  adolescents  are  subject  to  physical  and  sexual hazards. On this regard, the Special Rapporteur of the United Nations’ Human Rights Commission, observed during his visits of Ecuador that  “girls  are  exposed to physical,  psychological  and  sexual  maltreatment  by  their  relatives  or  neighbors in charge of them”.

Rosalia Cortes disagrees with the sexual abuse hypothesis. She states that “in the remote areas of Ecuador, with no good schools, no good education and health, what do you do with the money from remittances? These kids do have money so they can spend it on drugs. They get money but they have to face several problems. Money does not replace family guidance. It is only in theory that these remittances will help to develop the kid.  But receiving money with no familiar and cultural environment, these kids go a straight.  The risks are connected with the belief that money brings development to a family. How? ”, she emphatically asks.

Suicides are going down

In 2006, the town set up a program to fight malnutrition and to help inculcate the values of education. The center was partly funded by UNICEF and the European Union. Eduardo Espinoza gladly informs that the numbers of suicides among young people are going down in Chunchi. The program might be partly responsible: “We also want to help compensate for the lack of recreational activities in Chunchi. We do this through the Appropriate Use of Spare Time Program. We want to give these youngsters a healthy hobby, like learning a new dance or doing sports. We want to give them a greater sense of belonging to their community, which is crucial to fend off the feeling of loneliness that has driven some youngsters to commit suicide.” The program works with 180 children aged between 6 and 17 and also aims to fight malnutrition, as well as, inculcate the values of education and help them these kids with their studies and encourage them to go as far as university. The problem is that the employment prospects for those who do not migrate are scarce. Most of the population in the rural areas works in agriculture. 

It might be the efforts of the city council helping, but the decrease of emigration, itself a consequence of the current economic crisis, plays a role too. “Families living in the U.S. are returning because of the dire economic situation in America, and the Ecuadorian government is now helping with that process. The government created the National Office for Emigration, which is helping to finance the return of those who wish to come home and even granting cheap loans to help them start new business when they return”, Espinoza explains.

Rosalia Cortes sighs of relief when the words “migration flow is decreasing” come across during the skype conversation. For the researcher, migration is never an answer: “In general, NGOs want to be politically correct and they do not want to say that migration is bad but migration can be very bad for children. I see migrants’ household’s workers here in Argentina who did not bring their kids. They send money back home, they speak on the phone. Maybe they will bring the children to live with them in 8 or in 10 years and these kids are strangers.” Some Latin American researchers prefer to study the positive aspects of migration. It is not Rosalía Cortes case who points out two negative ones: “First, the cultural impact of migration - what happens to kids and teenagers that remain in an empty place? – and second the psychologist level - what happens to the family? Migration is never a solution. Migration does not bring improvement in living standards for a better family life. It destroys everything.”

Even with the decrease of the migration flow, the American and the European dream still exists among Latin Americans. Rosalía Cortes asks: “How do you stop what is in the imagination of the people? Migration is part of our culture and history. Migration responds not only to money, jobs but also to the demands of the society that those people come from”.

The last suicide case with a link to emigration in Chunchi occurred in 2010. A girl aged 18, whose parents were living abroad. In 2011, a 17 year old girl living with her parents killed herself; she was exploited by them, and forced to do several chores. “This year, fortunately, we have not yet seen a case”, Espinoza concludes.

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Would the legalization of drugs end the violence in Mexico?

By Virginia Kirst
 

With over 60,000 dead in Mexico since the beginning of Felipe Calderón´s presidency, the time has come to declare that the war on drugs has failed. This article assesses the debate about the legalization of narcotics in the Americas and alternative approaches to the problem shortly before a new president will take office in Mexico.
 

Saúl Reyes is a victim of the narcoviolencia – the violence linked to the drug trade – in Mexico. He lost six members of his family: Four siblings, a nephew and his sister-in-law. Reyes is one of the very few Mexicans that have been granted political asylum in the U.S.A. Now he is trying to make sure that nobody in the United States forgets the war that is ravaging in his country: The war on drugs.

A lost war against drugs

Reyes is one of the many victims of the drug related violence in Mexico. In 2012, the violence in the country seems to have stabilized for the first time since President Felipe Calderón declared war to the drug traffickers in his counter roughly five years ago. But stabilized at what numbers? Mexico saw about 22,000 annual murders in 2011, “only” 1,000 more than the previous year but twice as many as in 2007. In 2006, Calderón vowed to use all the powers of the state to take down the drug lords – since then over 60,000 people have died.
 

The roots of Calderón´s approach go back to 1969, when Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the United States launched a set of policies for dealing with illegal substances: The aim of the latter was to discourage the production, distribution and consumption of drugs by repressing and criminalizing producers, traffickers and consumers. Since then, drug war strategies in Latin America were clearly “made in the U.S.A.”, says Coletta Youngers, Senior Fellow at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). This applies to Mexico´s current approach as well.
 

Today, more than ever, the effects of these repressive policies are visible in Central America. And with thousands dead in Latin America and no sign of declining numbers of drug consumers (the United Nations actually estimate that the consumption of cocaine rose by 27% between 1998 and 2008), the war on drugs has to be declared lost. Today, besides Mexico, many other countries are trapped in the spiral of crime and violence.

Speaking the “L”-word

But something has changed: Little by little, Latin American leaders are starting a debate about the current drug policies. They speak of the need for change, for alternative approaches to the problem of drugs and the related violence. One of them, however, even goes a step further: Otto Pérez Molina, the newly elected president of Guatemala, openly argues for legal, highly regulated market for narcotics in order to change the situation in the Americas.
 

Just before the Americas summit in Cartagena in April 2012, Pérez advocated this idea in an article in The Observer: “When we analyse drug markets through realistic lenses (not ideological ones as is pretty much customary in most government circles these days), we realise that drug consumption is a public health issues that, awkwardly, has been transformed into a criminal justice problem.” In order to deal with this problem adequately, a step towards legalization has to be taken he writes.
Pérez Molina’s strong position for the legalization of drugs, emphasizing a more humane approach is surprising, considering his past as a Guatemalan military general during which he was accused of very serious human rights violations.
 

Also Youngers admits to being surprised when Pérez Molinas´ advocacy for this topic grew stronger and stronger. She supposes that he partially put it on the table because he was frustrated that the US-government had announced to cut the amount of counter-drug aid for his country in 2013. Furthermore, he received a very positive response from the international community for his approach to the issue. All of the sudden, he was not the ultra-conservative anymore, but progressive: His image improved. “Another part is that people say Pérez Molina is very scared that Guatemala could become another Mexico. He probably thinks twice about implementing the same strategies that Calderón adopted, seeing what the results of that have been” Youngers adds.

Calderón’s approach

But what about Calderón himself? He seems not to be able to see the disastrous results of his policy. Nevertheless, it is impossible for him to do a complete turnaround now, after having pushed his strategy throughout his term. What he can do, however, is looking at all the variables in the equation: Mexico does not bear the sole responsibility for the situation it is in now. Youngers reports that “Calderón and many others in the Mexican government find very frustrating that there is a free flow of arms into their country from the US and a free cash-flow that goes back and forth”, while the flow of illegal drugs shows its horrid effects almost exclusively in Mexico.
 

With no turnaround possible for Calderón, the hopes are high that his successor, to be elected on July 1st 2012, will stop the violence. And the candidates are exploiting these hopes to the fullest, promising their own, new approaches to the issues.
 

Experts however doubt that any of the candidates will make a substantial difference. Youngers predicts that Enrique Peña Nieto, the candidate currently leading the polls, will not do anything very different to what Calderón did. Annette von Schönfeld, Latin America council of the German Heinrich Böll foundation, is also very clear in her expectations: “It does not matter which candidate wins – the violence will continue.”

A case for legal drugs

Regardless of these predictions, Froylán Enciso thinks that Mexico would benefit greatly from legal, regulated drug markets. Enciso is currently a PhD-student at Stony Brooks University in New York, writing his dissertation on contested drug-commodities markets in his home state of Sinaloa, Mexico.
“We have to learn how to live with drugs. We have to stop fighting against the symptoms and start looking at the true causes. Rationally, it would even be a good decision to introduce legal, regulated markets – it would be a good business for Mexico” Enciso believes. But he also knows that these dreams are farfetched considering the political reality in the international system.
Three years back, Mexico already took steps towards the decriminalization of drug consumers. In 2009 a law was passed that allows the ownership of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine, heroin and LSD for self-consumption. Many critics say that the law did not really bring any change because the legalized quantities are by far too small. And because only possession was decriminalized, but not the production, trafficking or retail.
 

Others criticize the law for the opposite reason: For them, the decriminalization of consumers is already one step too far – not even to mention the legalization of drugs. They fear rising numbers of drug consumers and related crime. But there are facts to prove that is actually not the case. The Netherlands is populated by marijuana-addicts just because the drug is legal there. And the report of the Global Commission on drug policies from June 2011, advocates a new approach towards worldwide drug policies employing the example of Portugal to show that decriminalizing consumption does not increase the drug use and the problems associated with it: In July 2001, Portugal became the first European country to decriminalize the use and possession of all illicit drugs – not just marijuana as the Netherlands. A study about the effects concludes that “the removal of criminal penalties, combined with the use of alternative therapeutic responses to people struggling with drug dependence, has reduced the burden of drug law enforcement on the criminal justice system and the overall level of problematic drug use.”
 

Enciso´s ideas aim at a similar direction: To him, money is what matters; money could both be saved by removing criminal penalties, and earned from possible taxes on drugs. He suggests using it for health and development programs in affected regions of Mexico. Regions, for example, where the high unemployment rates make the cultivation of poppy seeds and marijuana seem like the only way out of misery.
 

“Such development programs would surely reduce the violence. Of course not immediately but in the long run for sure” Enciso affirms. Nevertheless, he remains realistic and adds that changes in the drug policy will not happen in the near future. The adamant opposition of the United States makes it particularly difficult for Mexico to even imagine legalization. Mexico is however not as dependent on the US in terms of aid as it used to be: American grants to Mexico for international narcotics control and law enforcement have continually gone down and reached a new low since 2008 at about 55,000,000 US-Dollar in 2012.

But drugs are not the only problem…

Von Schönfeld, like others, sees the legalization of drugs as only one step towards the end of the violence in Mexico. The criminal organizations that are responsible for the vicious circle of violence are also engaged in other criminal activities like money laundering, human trafficking and kidnappings. All of which involve just as much violence as drug business does. Von Schönfeld points out that the radical legalization of drugs would even incorporate the risk of an increase in other criminal activities in other fields in order to balance out the loss of income.
Furthermore, von Schönfeld adds, in Mexico, organized crime is present in all branches of the government. The democratic institutions in Mexico are not yet strong enough to deal with the infiltration of the government by organized criminality. In fact, about 70% of the regional governments in Mexico are estimated to be infiltrated by “narcos”.

Something has to change

The legalization of drugs would not eliminate all violence in Latin America at once but something has to change. At the Americas Summit in Cartagena in April, the debate about international drug control policies was on the agenda for the first time. And Barack Obama still attended the conference. In a closed-door meeting the issue was discussed with the results that the Organization of American States (OAS) was tasked with analyzing the results of present policies and the exploration of alternative approaches that could possibly be more effective. At the end of the summit, Obama did not forget to assure that he does not “mind a debate around issues like decriminalization” but personally does not think that the legalization of drugs is going to be the answer.
 

Even with Obama´s skeptical comments in the end, the summit in Cartagena still marks a milestone – for the first time ever the US war on drugs is being questioned seriously and openly even by administrative officials.

Real alternatives

Youngers suggests that more humane and more effective approaches that could be implemented in the near future should focus on the harm that drug policies themselves are causing right now. Firstly, consumption should be decriminalized and treated as a public health issue. New laws need to be passed that legalize the ownership of “reasonable” amounts of narcotics and do not give policemen and judges too much liberty to interpret the legislation in a way that convenes them in a particular situation.
 

Secondly, sentencing policies have to be changed. Currently jails across the region are filled with low-level, nonviolent drug offenders, just like they are in the United States because their model was exported to Latin America. Youngers explains that “there are horrific problems within the prisons – for example a horribly inadequate infrastructure – and jails function as schools of crime”. The problem is that once somebody goes to a prison, even if they were only small drug offenders beforehand, after they come out, they are completely tied into criminal organizations or – in Central America – gangs, or maras. “This policy is completely counterproductive. There need to be alternatives to incarceration for low-level, non-violent drug offenders, particularly women,” says Youngers.

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Germany suffering cardiac arrest: The issue of organ donations

Germany is infamously known to be Europe’s forerunner. That may well be true for trying to manage the Euro-crisis, technological quality products, and a well-doing economy in times of general trouble. But when it comes to the sensitive topic of organ donations, the picture is actually reversed: Germany is struggling with a lack of donations and therefore the World Health Organisation’s criteria of self-sufficiency since years. A current law reform tries to challenge this. But there is more controversy behind the debate than just the question how to approach the people with this sensitive topic.

By Frederic van Triel 

Around 12.000 seriously ill Germans are on waiting lists for life-saving organ donations, at the moment. Every day three of them die, because of a lack of suitable organs. “We need to approach the people, by asking and double-checking”, as former foreign minister and living kidney-donor Dr. Frank-Walter Steinmeier emphasises, “there is no inviolable right of the people to be undisturbed by this topic.” But is that really the case and what is behind the allegedly insufficient German willingness to donate?

On first glance, the situation seems to be a dilemma: As the number of patients waiting for a liver, a kidney, pancreas, duodenum, lungs or a heart is constantly rising and reached a peak of 2.778 council enquiries in 2011, the number of donors is stagnating since years. 

In 2011 it reached a level of 1200 donors in total which displays a decline of 100 donors in comparison to the previous year. On second glance instead, the situation resembles more a paradox: Whilst 74% of German men and women are potentially willing to donate an organ, only 25% of these people possess an organ donor card. There seems to be a need to bridge a divide between the German aspiration to be Europe’s forerunning country and its empirical truth, when it comes to this controversial topic. 

Mind the Gap:Willingness vs. Reality 

For Birgit Blome, spokeswoman of the German Organ Transplantation Foundation (DSO), which is responsible for the coordination of organ donations in Germany, it is clear, that “it is not the missing will to donate. The problem is the lack of information and the realisation in the hospitals.” To understand what Mrs. Blome means, one has to have some knowledge about the previous and the present German legislation. Before the reform, the so called ‘extended consent solution’ was prevailing law. Meaning that potential donors either had to fill in an organ donor card voluntarily during lifetime, or relatives had to decide about a potential organ donation. In case of an accident, for example, they had to base their decision on the presumed will of their kinsman. A difficult situation for the relatives, as one can imagine. 

The newly passed act changes the legislation towards a ‘decision solution’. Meaning that, by the help of the public and private health insurances, every citizen aged 16 plus gets informed about organ donations and asked about his or her personal will to donate, frequently. The answer however, still remains voluntarily. In situations of uncertainty, the decision is still in the hands of relatives. By implementing the ‘decision solution’ the government expects “an increase in the willingness to donate, because of better informed citizens”, as Daniel Bahr, Federal Minister of Health puts it. A solution not without dispute, as Dr. Paolo Bavastro, cardiologist and holder of the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, remarks: “Pushing people for a decision with the help of periodic mails is an act of coercion. The law is a purely utilitarian act to get more donations, justice or ethics of the individual are completely left out. It is impossible to ask 16-60 year-olds about this complex issue.” 

Another major point of the reform is the implementation of transplant coordinators, mandatory for every hospital with an intensive care unit. The devil was not exactly in detail but rather structural, as Mrs. Blome reports: “due to staff shortage in the intensive care units potential donors were often not reported to us. The possibility of an organ donation was treated as an additional burden and consequently neglected. Therefore the DSO welcomes the installation of transplant coordinators as the most important improvement of the reform.” With this change the Federal German government follows an allegedly success story: Widening the view to an international perspective, appointed transplant coordinators are effectively pre-existent in other European countries, such as Spain where donation rates are the highest in the world with 32 donors per one million inhabitants. However, there is doubt about a successful implementation in the German case: “staff and expenses are kept at a minimum in modern hospitals there will be a high pressure from the business executives to keep this enormous extra effort at the lowest level possible”, Dr. Bavastro remarks. On a site note it is remarkable that due to its federal system, transplant coordinators were already appointed in eight out of 16 states. A real turning point might look different. 

A lack of Unity in Organ Unity 

The current reform did not come voluntarily into existence: Germany was actually forced to readjust its transplantation laws, by standards set at EU-level, to assure consistent quality criteria. In addition to that, Germany is a member state of the Dutch-based International Foundation Eurotransplant (ET) responsible for the distribution of organs within eight countries, which are Benelux, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Austria, and a preliminary cooperation with Hungary. Focusing on the ET-countries, the statistics speak a very clear language: While donations per one million citizens are are considerably higher as often per million capita as Germany. ET is allocating the organs by medical criteria of expected outcome and urgency, however there is a national organ balance involved, trying to keep a reasonable exchange balance. From an ethical point of view there is no difference where the organs derived from ‘dissent solutions’ originate from, Germany’s ET-import-export balance will never be in balance, Dr. Bavastro forecasts: “waiting lists will become longer, no matter which solution is enshrined in law, because the number of people suffering brain breakdown is naturally limited.” 

Another Bone of Contention: Brain Death equals Death? 

There are more disputes than the question of dissent or consent solution, another focal point is the medically and ethically complex issue of death. For years, brain death is used as indispensible prerequisite criteria for an organ donation. From a medical perspective, brain death implies the breakdown of cerebrum, cerebellum and brain stem. In Germany, the German Medical Association derived the prerogative of interpretation when it comes to this sensitive issue, defining a three step model to declare brain death: First the type of brain damage has to be tested, than coma, areflexia (non-existence of reflexes) and apnoea have to be assured. At last the irreversibility of the brain damage has to be proven, by twelve to 72 hours of observation time. Dr. Bavastro hereby dislikes the strong ties between the DSO and the German Medical Association: “DSO, Eurotransplant and the German Medical Foundation have reached monopoly status to set the rules. These institutions must be absolutely independent, to avoid any conflicts of interest.”

An additional point of criticism is the lack of additional instrument-based diagnostic investigation. The phenomena of brain deaths giving birth and reactions physical of brain deaths during organ removal shed a critical light on the criteria. Dr. Bavastro states: “The equalisation of brain death and death is a severe lie. Why else should organs be extracted under anaesthesia?” Pastor Lauterjung adds: “we accurately have to account for the process of dying. In case of uncertainty we have to state that the process is over when all organs stopped working irreversibly – even if that contradicts a potential donation.” There are counter-arguments to these accusations, neurologist Dr. Stephanie Förderreuther, for example defines brain death as “clinically definite and reliable proof of death”, and ongoing she concludes that “without brain function, the unity of a person both physically and spiritually is no longer existent.” However, these contradictory opinions show how sensitive the topic is, in medical and in ethical views. When there is a vital dispute among experts, how can ordinary people be self-confident with their individual decision then? Not to mention taking over the decision for a relative. 

Suppression: A German Speciality 

There seems to be a high level of uncertainty in German society: 82% of Germans do not possess an organ donor card, although they are for free and distributed in multiple ways. 32% of these people feel insufficiently informed, as the Techniker health insurance found out in 2012, whereas only 6% oppose organ donations completely. “Germans have trouble dealing with the topic of death. The possibility of organ donations does not enjoy enough public awareness. As long as one did not get personally in touch with the topic through their family or friends, it has little relevance during lifetime. We tend to ignore this part of life”, Birgit Blome concludes in a disillusioning way. Pastor Lauterjung proves her point: “it is good that the ‘decision solution’ forces people to think. However, I’m afraid that many are overwhelmed with the issue and its medical processes. The distress which is to be relieved is a great unknown for most of the people.” A completely reversed effect could come into place too, as Dr. Bavastro inverts: “There is no public enlightenment by medical standards, there is effect-driven propaganda. Germans tend to react towards obtrusive pressure with skepticism and distrust. There will be no increase in donation numbers following this new law.” 

Which effect will come into place is not to be predicted, yet. An increase of potential donors may well happen, as public awareness will rise. However, as long as there is no consensus in EU-legislation and no consensus in medical criteria for transplantations, it remains doubtable, whether public trust will rise significantly. For the German case that may entail that the World Health Organisation’s goal of self-sufficiency will not be reached in the near future.

Sources:
http://www.bpb.de/shop/zeitschriften/apuz/33307/organspende-und-selbstbestimmung 

http://www.dso.de/medien-und-presse/pressebilder-und-grafiken.html
http://www.tk.de/centaurus/servlet/contentblob/140390/Datei/60610/Organspende.jpg
http://www.bzga.de/forschung/studien-untersuchungen/studien/organ-und-gewebespende/

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“Maintaining stability” in China

“Everything we do is to make people’s lives happier, more dignified, so that society is more just and more harmonious.” - Premier Wen Jiabao

By Hui Gu

The word harmony is the key word now in China under the Chinese leader Hu Jintao's signature ideology of the Scientific Development Concept. It seems that the Chinese government will pay more attention to social and civil life development to resolve the imbalance of whole society. Since tian’an men square event 1989, Chinese leadership has been extremely sensitive about maintaining stability, so the ideology of harmony is the result of this anxiety. It has been six years since 2006 when the slogan “harmony society” first came out, then how Chinese society goes so far, does it keep stability as a harmony society.

Stability maintenance budget is rising - where has the money gone

According to caijing, which is one of the famous magazine in China, the spending on “stability maintenance” (Chinese weiwen) even surpasses the national defense budget. In 2011, the expense on national defense which is 601.156 billion yuan, in contrast, the expenditure on stability maintenance is 624.421 billion yuan, which is larger by almost 10 billion yuan than the national defense budget. This year 2012, accordingly, the stability maintenance expense is rising to 701.763 billion by 11.5 percent compared to the figure last year. Some foreign media even called China as “police country” .it shows that the social stability is getting more and more serious otherwise why the Chinese government spends such large amount of money on the stability maintenance.

Some citizens in China are also shocked by the news when they heard it, the questions are where does the money go and how do they use the money. According to wuyuesanren the freelance journalist, on one hand, the stability maintenance spending includes rigid expense such as police, jails which are the violence agencies established to deal with large-scale disturbances, besides, Chinese government imposes pressures on local authorities to use police and jails to crack down citizen discontent and petitions (Chinese shangfang) at all costs. One another hand, it also includes the soft expense such as the compensation to the death or the trouble-making groups and an industrial complex of paid informants and contractors. This has also created markets for people capable of filling this role – the hiring of informally recruited security forces (or more simply - “goons”) by some local authorities being one example according to southern weekend in China.

This is the overall category of the expense of stability maintenance, then how is this expense operated in the basic level. Take one of the small countryside in Guangdong province for example, the GDP of 2009 was 4.032 billion yuan, the local general budget revenue is 199 million yuan, and each year the local government will get 510 million yuan from the superior financial provision. In addition to this, there is also the special funding for the local stability maintenance, In 2010, the local town got 28.8million dollars stability funding for the small village, there is fixed asset investment for the stability maintenance, for example, one-time investment of the stability funding is 100,000 yuan including purchase of computers, motorcycles, cars and office furniture etc for 8 towns. In addition, there is the generally recognized local government policy that if the stability workstation can deal with one protest or so called trouble makers and groups, they will be rewarded 50-300 yuan each, and if there are no disturbance for the whole year they will be rewarded more.

They adopt the practice of “many against one” and carry out 24-hour surveillance of some “troublemakers.” Local governments mobilize large numbers of volunteers who will get paid by the government from time to time to coordinate with relevant agencies. In recent years, due to the increase of the dissident issues and human rights defenders, the government spent more money on the surveillance; a lot of dissidents in China have suffered torture, surveillance, disappearance and detention. The hot issue in China is the case of the blind lawyer chenguangcheng who helps the citizens fight against one-Child policy, according to chen, the government spends more than 600 million yuan on controlling him every year.

With the development of internet, the government also felt the threat from the open platform and space for freedom speech, so the media censorship accounts for large amount of money spent on the stability maintenance. The government spent billions of dollars to build Golden Shield Project which is so called Great fire wall to block and filter the information, besides, a lot of people have been employed and paid by the government to be the “internet police”. The money spent on media censorship is huge and the number is increasing year by year.

“Spend money to buy peace” could bring troubles or stability

Furthermore, if the government contributes such large sum of stability maintenance budget to make great efforts to maintain stability in China, then whether the social stability is moving forward and changing for the better in that sense.

The truth is that according to the statistics released from social blue book, the large-scale disturbances in mainland China have increased from 100, 00 to 600, 00 during the year 1993 to 2003.there are 87,000 cases in 2005, and it rises to 900, 00 cases in 2006 and since 2008, the number of mass disturbances is going up dramatically, on average, there is 1 case in every six minutes. Some researchers said that during the transition period, China is stepping into the “risky society”. In terms of 2005 statistics, among the human rights defense issues, farmers rights accounted for 35%, labour rights accounted for 36%, civil rights was 15%, social disputes and social disorder accounted for 10% and 5% respectively. These are the main causes of the mass incidents happening in China.

To be specific, firstly take farmers’ rights for example, because Chinese government is in blind pursuit of economic benefits, Rapid growth has transformed China’s party-state into the world’s wealthiest regime, the obvious case is the housing estate, Land grabs have become an explosive issue in China as officials seeking to cash in on a property boom increasingly force farmers off their land to make way for construction - an issue repeatedly condemned by Premier Wen Jiabao. This forced demolition is not only happening in the rural areas but also in the city. According to the study, nearly a quarter of farmers did not receive any compensation for their land. 

Therefore, The expropriation and demolition caused many complaints and mass disturbances, in 2006, there are more than 385, 000 farmer petitions .Xinhua News agency reported that the Mass disturbance in rural areas accounted for more than 65% among the all disturbance events in China. Secondly, the labor disputes issues are rising during these years, in 2005, there were 314,000 labor disputes cases compared with the figure of 2004, it’s increased by 20%, in 2009 that number rose to 318,000 and only in the first eight months of 2010 there were 207,400. 45% of the workers are forced to work overtime; the workers are fighting for their own rights to obtain back payment or better working conditions. Some of them are dismissed for no reason and some are even commit suicide.

Chinese economy has developed so fast in recent years but it makes the government become the wealthiest regime, the benefit which the development brings doesn’t go to the citizens and social wellbeing. The gap between the rich and poor is huge which causes a lot of social conflicts and hatred ,as what is mentioned above, farmer’s land has been robbed and people’s house has been demolished by force, many farmers lost the source of income ,what’s more, they don’t have social welfare ,which is making the poor people become more and more poor, in contrast, business men ,government officials for example are quite profited from the housing economic boom which makes them become more and more rich ,the huge gap is leading to the serious social unrest in China. According to the investigation, the income gap ratio per capita between Urban and rural areas rising from 1 .8:1 in 1979 to 3.33:1 in 2007.

How to invest the stability maintenence budget properly -  “Social stability” via guaranteeing rights

Now this leaves us a question to consider: The government spent so much money on the stability maintenance, however, Chinese social human rights defenders are increasing, and large scale disturbances are everywhere, large groups of people are fighting for basic human rights and better living condition and social welfare. In order to cease the social unrest and crack down the social disturbance, the Chinese government thereby providing endless funds for “maintaining stability”. Then the more stability maintenance money we spent, the more instability issues happening in China. However, what if they use this “stability funding “in another way, will China be more stable and harmony?

China’s public stability maintenance expenditure increase is due to the growth in financial revenue, not due to increased social instability. chen zhi feng points out that if China’s fiscal revenue increases, there are many areas needing the money. China’s national fiscal revenue was 1.04 trillion dollars in 2009, but the spending on health, education, social security and employment accounted for only 14.7% of the whole national fiscal revenue compared with US which spent 61% on people’s live hood.

The main causes of conflict in recent years have been land requisition, demolition, wages owed to migrant workers and labor rights. According to a recent study by the prestigious China Labor Bulletin, based on official data on a sample of 350 workers in Hainan about one sixth of migrant workers earn less than 500 Yuan a month (less than 50 Euro), far less than the minimum wage required by law., however, in comparison, the stability maintenance expense is 1500 yuan(188 Euro)person, if the money is used to improve the workers’ living condition and minimum wage, there may be less mass incidents according to kong xiangdong who is the writer in China.

What’s more, China’s health care spending is only 2% of the entire world’s public healthcare spending, in China to achieve public free healthcare needs 26.3 billion dollars each year, however, it’s only 25% of the stability maintenance budget every year. The medical expense for 2010 were only 1.2% of GDP and public education expenditure accounted for only 3.1% of GDP compared to the stability maintenance expense which is more than 4.3%of GDP in 2010.all in all, it’s shown that the investment on social welfare would be far lower than that on stability maintenance.

Generally, according to Andrew one of the political professor in Columbium university, if we invest the 624.421 billion on Children who drop out school, all children can have access to school to receive free education, if the money is used to improve farmer and worker’s living condition, create more job opportunities and offer job training, all the petitioners’ problem will be resolved.

The current massive investment in maintaining stability indicates that something more than mere rhetoric is at stake. In contrast, the public health care is not implemented all over the country, especially in the rural area, there are millions of people whose yearly income is less than 2000yuan. If the government can invest it on the live hood project and social welfare improvement, many tough issues can be resolved at a minimum cost rather than that the whole society has to pay such a high price to maintain the stability to resolve the issues.

In light of the report from a team of sociologists at Tsinghua University, it warns that “if the existing way of working is not changed, stability maintenance costs will become an increasingly heavy burden. More ominously, a number of reforms that are important for the improvement of the social welfare, people’s living standards and building a real harmonious and stable society may be delayed.”

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When Business Overruled Human Rights

Text and Photography by Liselott Lindström
 

The exact amount is unknown. But thousands, if not millions of people are yearly forced to leave their homes to make way for multinational corporations who bought their land to grow crops for export.  Since the food crisis in 2008, the need for land has increased enormously. International law makes it easy to grab land in Africa – and very difficult for the evicted people to get justice. 

Two big yellow eyes look up at me when I enter the small mud hut. Malitini Sheni rises from his chair with great agony and limps over to the door to greet me. Two of his children are chasing each other in the yard; the third, youngest one is chasing a hen, imitating its clucking. The small ones seem to be unbothered by the situation, or maybe unknowing. Within a month, they will have to leave their home. Where to go, they have no idea.

Food Security – For Whom? 

Since 2000, more than 1200 agricultural land deals have reportedly been made in developing countries, covering nearly 84 million hectares of land. The area that has been worst affected is Africa. The reported land deals on the continent cover nearly 5 percent of the agricultural area, which roughly equals the size of Kenya. In reality, the number can be much higher, leaving us with the question: what happened to the people who lived on this land? 

The targeted countries are typically Sub-Saharan, poor, hungry, poorly integrated in the world economy, have weak land institutions and high levels of investor protection. Most of the investors come from China followed by Saudi-Arabia, with also the US, the UK and Sweden making it to the top ten.  

"There’s nothing bad per se in providing protection to investors, but the problem is that so much less progress has been made in developing protection for people who might be affected by the investment,” says Lorenzo Cotula, Senior Researcher in Law and Sustainable Development at the International Institute for Environment and Development.
 

Development versus Devastation 

To reach Malitini’s home we drove for two hours along something that can barely be called a road. His village Kikundi lies in the Uluguru Mountains, outside of the city of Morogoro in Southern Tanzania.  As far as the eye can see there are dry mountain landscapes with banana and papaya trees scattered here and there. For generations, Malitini’s family has been living in this area, growing food for their living. But about a year ago, their lives turned to hell. Lack of investment in agriculture has caused the average yield per hectare in Africa to be more than three times lower than in East Asia. Investors often claim that they are enhancing development by leasing land that isn’t utilized. 

The reports on land deals however tell a very different story, a story about a fight for land between African farmers and multinational investors. Nearly half of the reported land deals target cropland, and more than 60 percent target areas with high population densities, which means good accessibility to near cities and already existing infrastructure. Due to the enormous lack of transparency, it is uncertain how many people have been evicted due to land deals. When it comes to compensation, the African Charter on Human and Peoples Rights affirms the human right to property. In principle this protects the farmer’s right to his land. “The problem is that the charter doesn’t require the government to pay any compensation if the land is taken. Development is very unlikely to happen in a situation where the law is so skewed,” Cotula says.
 
When compensation is paid, it often goes to local authorities, who put the money in their own pocket. “The whole development discourse around large land deals saying it will bring infrastructure, jobs and lead to food security is nothing but myths,” says Anuradha Mittal, founder and executive director for the Oakland Institute, an American think tank investigating land deals in Africa.
 

In the Footsteps of the East India Trading Company 

The ground to the problems for the villagers of Kikundi started already in the 1960’s when Tanzania became independent. The land where the village of Kikundi lies was given to an external cooperative under the condition that they should cultivate the land. None of this involved the today 1000 inhabitants of Kikundi, and they were able to continue their small scale agriculture as before. Recently it turned out the government had threatened to take the land back from the cooperative, since they had not fulfilled their promise of cultivation. In fear of losing their land, the cooperative sold it to a professor from Rwanda. He wanted the villagers out. 

The reason all this has been possible lies in the colonial heritage. Land in Africa is most often owned by the state or government, and the people living on the land are not the ones who own it. Anuradha Mittal says the engine driving this trend of land grabbing has been the World Bank, encouraging countries to loosen regulations to become attractive to investors.
“Look at the manifestos of the Tanzanian Investment Centre, Zambian Development Agency or the CPI in Mozambique [land investment agencies]. They are identical word by word, written by the World Bank.” 

What would be needed is investment in the smallholders. The same things being offered to foreign investors should also be offered to them: water, infrastructure, market, cheap land and tax benefits. “If you’re looking for 18-20 percent return, do it in your own country. Going into Africa and looking for such profit, that is old fashioned colonialism,” Mittal says. 

International Law Supports Companies 

“The professor came to my home one day, telling me I should go with him. I refused. Two days later, he came back with two men. They beat me up with wooden sticks,” Malitini says, and lifts his white t-shirt to reveal two big lumps on his back. He can no longer walk properly, which makes working difficult. After buying the land the professor put out guards in the village. People’s houses have been burned down and crops destroyed. 

There are currently nearly 3000 bilateral investment treaties in the world granting investors strong protection of their property rights. Arrangements for claiming and enforcing human rights treaties are nowhere nearly as effective.  

Whereas a company can go straight to international arbitraries and get a binding judgment in a dispute with a government, the road for an African villager is very different. Accessing international remedies can take years, because the farmer has to go through all the levels of the national courts first. 

“When you have done that you can go to the African Commission on Human and People’s Rights, leading to a non-binding recommendation. The commission can then decide on taking the case to the African Court on Human and People’s Rights, at which point you can get a binding judgment,” says Cotula. In other words, those already enjoying access to capital and influence, also have stronger rights. “The situation is very dire,” Mittal says. “We need research and advocacy leading to naming and shaming people involved in this trend. Local and national capacity has to be strengthened.” 

Also the public awareness of the peasants has to become stronger; they need to know their rights and how they can take action. Mittal says many investors involve pension funds and private equity funds, as well as universities such as Harvard. One example where media attention led to the cancellation of a deal happened in February this year. The State University of Iowa withdrew from a deal that a company called AgriSol was planning in Tanzania. The deal would have lead to more than 160 000 people being evicted from their land. The company says it is only a question of moving a Burundian refugee camp. A camp that has been the home of these Burundians for more than forty years.
 

Toothless Regulations

Next to the door, a small children’s shoe hangs, moving slightly in the wind. It is to remind of Malitini’s and his wife’s fourth child, who died as an infant. His wife, a small, slender woman, sits in the corner, looking anxious. 

”When our land was seized, we went to the regional representative, and even to the district representative. But they had been bribed by the professor. Even our own chief had taken money from him”, Malitini says. The villagers have now taken the case to lawyers in Dar es Salaam, thanks to the help from Mviwata, a farmer’s organization uniting smallholders to have a common voice in the fight for their interests. They are now awaiting trial.
In many countries there are provisions requiring investors to consult local communities before getting a land lease, but they are hardly followed. 

“We both need to change the law and make existing law work better,” Lorenzo Cotula says.
In May 2012 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations FAO published guidelines on governance of tenure to improve the situation. The guidelines are a result of three years of work, and they are – voluntary. “Nice effort, they have no teeth. Given what is at stake and the consequences it is ridiculous,” Mittal says. 

Tuomo Heinonen, Land Tenure Officer at the FAO, says a large group of representatives from different countries have been involved in creating them. “We are trying to make the guidelines largely known, from which we hope a collective supervision will follow and wrongdoings will more easily become known to the large public.” 

Land grabbing is almost directly correlating with land tenure and ownership. The stronger and more developed a country is in this sense, the less land grabbing occurs. Tuomo Heinonen has worked with land registration in Africa, Eastern Europe and Palestine, and believes registration of land is one way to make land grabbing harder. ”The rush for natural resources creates great temptation for the leaders in developing countries to sell state land and take the revenue.” 

A paper showing that you own the land can be a guarantee that gives you a bank loan, but when hunger or drought strikes, the temptation to sell the land without understanding the real value of it can become too big, Mittal explains.

Unprecedented Consequences

 “This model is so incredibly unsustainable that it won’t last,” Mittal says. “Are we going to do nothing and then pay the huge price humanity will have to pay: human rights violations, complete degradation of our environment, loss of virgin lands and forests.”
The list of consequences from Tuomo Heinonen is no bedtime story. “Increasing poverty, hunger, malnutrition, diseases, loss of biodiversity and natural resources, increasing amounts of refugees, crime and conflicts.” 

Moving large amounts of people might also escalate the urbanization process, making the slums in big cities ever bigger and poorer. Mittal is concerned, especially after ten people were killed in South Sudan in May due to land disputes. “I don’t think the world can afford conflict in Africa anymore. That continent has been ravaged way too far.” 

I walk from Malitini’s house towards the car. The villagers have assembled outside a worn down house, the centre of the village. In front of it a homemade flagpole with the yellow and green flag of the ruling party lazily moving in the mountain breeze. The children give me pieces of sugarcane “specially prepared for you madam”, and all the sweetness makes me sick. It is August 2010, and elections are coming up in Tanzania. There is still hope in the eyes of the villagers. Since the land in Tanzania is vested in the president, he could claim the land back on behalf of the villagers. Not a completely vain hope, the current president Jakaya Kikwete spares no efforts to keep the throne. However, it is very unlikely that another car than the professor’s will make it through the rough landscape up to Kikundi. I leave. Two years later I try to contact Mviwata to get to know what happened to the villagers. Ten e-mails - no answer.


Links to sources used for background information:

1. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-17099348
2. /http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/05/30/the-landgrabbers-who-owns-the-planet/
3. http://www.randomhouse.co.uk/editions/9781905811731
4. http://www.grain.org/article/entries/4021-world-bank-report-on-land-grabbing-beyond-the-smoke-and-mirrors
5. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTARD/Resources/ESW_Sept7_final_final.pdf
6. http://formin.finland.fi/public/default.aspx?contentId=219703&nodeId=23&contentlan=1&culture=fi-FI
7. http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/sites/oaklandinstitute.org/files/OI_FAQsjune5.pdf
8. http://www.fian-nederland.nl/home/208-land-grabbing-breaches-international-human-rights-law.html
9. http://fian.org/news/press-releases/fao-tenure-guidelines-a-modest-step-governments-must-commit-to-implementation
10. http://www.evidensresearch.dk/media/1242/land%20grab.pdf

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The story of the Erased - people who die twice

European Union and Human Rights

by Karmen Resman, written in May 2012

It was the summer of 1991. Katarina Stojanović was 20 years old and was just finishing the first year of her bachelor studies in Ljubljana, Slovenia. She was taking driver’s lessons for a few weeks already and her 10‐year‐old brother couldn’t wait for his sister to finally get a license and take him to the seaside. Katarina was madly in love with her boyfriend and they just started planning a trip with their friends. It was going to be a wonderful summer. But then her country became independent and everything changed. In a few months Katarina lost her home, family and friends. And her identity. She was erased.

Photo by www.siol.net

What happened in Slovenia 20 years ago is still a painful evidence of how a young government violated human rights. 25 670 people in the new country shared Katarina’s destiny. They were unlawfully deprived of their legal status after Slovenia declared independence from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (SFRY).

While Slovenian citizens became citizens of the new country automatically, those, who were citizens of the former SFRY or another Yugoslavian republic and had permanent addresses in Slovenia had to apply for it. 

There was around 130 000 people like that – mainly from Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and also Slovenia. The majority got the citizenship, but almost 26 000 of them did not. They either failed to apply, or their application was refused or discarded. In some cases the procedure was even terminated.

On February 26th 1992 those people lost their permanent residence status in Slovenia and by that all the economic and social rights tied to it. They lost their jobs, medical benefits, pensions. They did not exist “on paper” anymore. What happened that winter was “administrative ethnic cleansing”, it was “civil death”.
 

Katarina’s story

Katarina’s parents were Serbs, so when the war started and the tensions between nationalities rose, they decided to go back to Serbia. Katarina, who was born in Slovenia, insisted she wanted to stay in the country she was brought up in and start a life there.
“It was Friday,” she remembers, “when I went from Ljubljana, where I studied, to my home town Maribor for the weekend. I tried to unlock the door to our apartment, the same apartment I was raised in, and the key did not fit. I tried again and again, until a tall man opened the door and started yelling at me. He told me I was the enemy’s daughter and that I should be deported. As he threatened to call the police, I ran out of the building, in utmost and complete shock.”

Katarina had nowhere to go. All she had left was a little suitcase full of clothes and a note stand. After a few days of panic and thinking about what she should do, she decided to fight for her home. She first wanted to renew her identity card, but what followed then was beyond her understanding. The municipality official in Maribor simply took her identity card and cut it in half, saying “you are not from here, go back to Serbia!” As the lady threatened to call the police, Katarina, once again, ran away.

For the next six years this was her life - running away from everything. She was secretly living in a basement of a student dorm. Every day she had to take a shower in another floor, so people would not notice she lives there. For a few years she almost did not have any warm food. To earn at least some money she was working illegally. She had false ID’s and false student cards; when she had to go to the doctor, she used another name. She travelled with a false passport, and when they did not let her cross the Slovenian border with Croatia once, she crossed it illegally.

For years Katarina knew she was a criminal just by existing in Slovenia. Whenever she saw a policeman on the street, she turned around and went another way. A day did not go by without her looking over her shoulder.

Everybody knew about the “murders on paper”, even Europe. But it did nothing to bring 25 671 people back to life.
Slovenian Constitutional Court declared the act of erasing as illegal and unconstitutional and demanded from a country to provide redress for these violations. Twice. But Slovenia did not fully fulfill the demands; some of the people are still erased today. European Union had the chance to demand from the social state that was preparing to join the family of European Union states in 2004, to truly exercise the third article of its constitution and guarantee the protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms to all persons irrespective of their national origin. But it did not. Why was the European Union looking away then and why is it looking away now?

The timing was right, but...

From the day Slovenia applied for the membership in the EU in 1996 and until it actually joined 8 years later, the issue of the Erased has been debated upon largely in the national politics and media. This is why it is even more surprising that in years of negotiations the Erased were never properly addressed by the European institutions. Was it that the Union did not want to raise the question of neglecting human rights because its motive was to get Slovenia to join as soon as possible and without any major problems?

Slovenia was always the most liberal of the republics in former Yugoslavia. After it established a stable democracy and moved easily to a market economy, it became clear to Brussels that this young country could quickly integrate into the European family. That would be Union’s first step towards the Balkan countries – then already it was clear that the EU’s goals for the future are to expand to the east.

In the late 90’ the Commission no longer needed to be wooed. With Slovenia’s GDP higher than Greece’s and close to Portugal’s and the unemployment rate lower than in Germany or France, the Commission was hooked. The negotiation period went by smoothly, Slovenia requested and was granted a very limited number of transitional periods, which, according to the Commission, only proved how well prepared for implementing the acquis the country was.

However, the Commission at that time already knew about the issue of the Erased. In a report about Slovenia in 1997, before the negotiations officially started, it first stated “no cases of inhuman and degrading treatment have been reported”. Then it mentioned the Erased, claiming there is “a group of around 5000 people who for various reasons have neither asked for Slovenian nationality nor claimed refugee status after the erasure”. The Commission proposed no remedy then, except of that about the government “taking the appropriate steps to resolve this problem”. However, no obligations for Slovenia because the Commission claimed it had “no jurisdiction” over the matter.
 

No jurisdiction – no problem!

The negotiations started a year later without even mentioning the human rights matters in Slovenia, not even in the chapter about home affairs. “The reason for that lies in the fact that the European Union was founded for economic reasons and economic reasons only, without any regard to the human rights,” says Neža Kogovšek Šalamon, a researcher at the Peace Institute in Ljubljana. Only later the Union developed other aspects of governing, among which there was the promotion of human rights, too.

Another reason for the Erased not being mentioned in the negotiations talks is that the negotiations were not individual; there were six countries in the so‐called Luxembourg group that were aiming to join EU at the same time. Since all of them had quite similar predispositions, the negotiations were executed in a group. “It was negotiation for “a package of countries”, we could say. The same frameworks were prepared for all of the six countries, which is why Slovenia’s “personal” issues were not as precisely debated,” Boštjan Udovič, a professor of EU Enlargement at the Faculty of Social Sciences in Ljubljana is convinced.

Photo by www.siol.net

There is no doubt about the fact weather it was a political decision to include Slovenia in the Luxembourg “package”, according to Udovič. European enlargement is a matter of great political manipulations and not all countries in the accession process are treated the same. European Union had much greater demands from Croatia, for example. “After the incidents at the gay pride parade in Split last year, they sent a clear message to them how that cannot be a part of Europe,” says Udovič.
 

The first and last step towards the solution

It’s been 20 years from the erasure and some of the Erased, they estimate there is a few thousand of them today, still do not have their citizenship or residency. Slovenia has in the meantime enforced two laws and countless acts in order to solve the issue, which has been spiced up with a number of national disputes over it. That is also why most of the laws and acts are inadequate and require further thought and the adoption of additional measures. The first law (Act on Regularizing the Status of Citizens of Other State Successors of the Former SFRY in the Republic of Slovenia), which came in force after the Constitutional Court declared the erasure as illegal and unconstitutional in 1999, at least partially solved the issue. Some 12,000 people took advantage of the new law; 7,000 received citizenship, and 4,800 obtained permanent or temporary residency.

The Act was, even though not adequate for all of the Erased, an important milestone, giving back the status to some of them. Some credit for that goes to the European Commission, which in 1997 advised the government to take appropriate measures, says Neža Kogovšek Šalamon: “The combination of both international and national pressures on the government processed this act in 1999. As it showed later, in 2003, when the Constitutional Court for the second time declared the erasure illegal and unconstitutional, only the national pressure was not enough: the government did not act as the court ordered it. Why? Maybe because the pressure from the European Commission was gone by then. Slovenia already closed all the chapters of negotiations and was only waiting for the formal accession. The Slovenian government itself just did not have the interest to solve the matter.”

Katarina Stojanović got her citizenship back in 1999 with the “naturalization law”. She was erased for 7 years. Today she is Katarina Keček, a married woman and a mother of two. And a successful journalist. She’s working at a private TV station in Ljubljana, preparing short documentaries about people’s lives and struggles they have to go through. For years she has been reporting about the Erased, telling sad stories of how they were left without their jobs, homes, insurance, loved ones, but kept quiet about her own. Only this year, 20 winters after the one that turned her life upside down, Katarina decided to reveal hers.
International institutions still looking away

The lives of the Erased have been out there for a long time already. They appealed to the European Court of Human Rights and to many other international bodies for human rights in the last twenty years. Some of them decided to step up and help, most of them did not.

The European Union had the power to force the Slovenian government to stop ignoring the issue and to find a solution during the negotiation period for Slovenia’s accession to the EU. The effects of Commission’s opinion, which resulted in a naturalization law, proved that Slovenia cared about what Europe thought and it would easily enforce demands in-lined with the European aspect of human rights. Sadly, the Union was focusing too much on economic gain only.

Finding a remedy for the Erased would also be an important precedent for other countries that have pursued policies of mass denationalization: Cambodia with ethnic Vietnamese, Myanmar with Rohingya Arakanese, Syria with Kurds, Ethiopia with persons with Eritrean affiliation, Bhutan with ethnic Nepalese, Vietnam with ethnic Chinese 'boat people' and France with ethnic Germans.

But now it is too late. The Erased have become a Slovenian “internal issue”. It is also clear that the European Union is only a collection of national states that follow the logic of “mind your own business”. Which is why Slovenia and its politicians who would need a kick from the outside, cannot bring the Erased back to life for twenty years already.
“One of the most difficult things for me after I got my citizenship back, was to realize I don’t have to hide anymore,” says Katarina. “The need of looking over my shoulder... It will probably never go away.”

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