global

politics
CORE CONCEPT READINGS

www.glopoib.wordpress.com
contents
Introduction 1

Power 2

Sovereignty 22

Legitimacy 33

Interdependence 45

Human rights 52

Justice 64

Liberty 74

Equality 83

Development 93

Globalisation 106

Inequality 122

Sustainability 130

Peace 143

Conflict 156

Violence 178

Non-violence 195
introduction
The IB Subject Guide for Global Politics identifies 16 key concepts that 'weave a
conceptual thread through the course'. The aim behind identifying these core concepts is to
enable provide a conceptual framework that helps you to access and understand the
political issues encoutered through the two years of the course.

There are four concepts attached to each of the four core units but it is important to
remember that each concept can be related to any area of the course. The attachment of
concepts to units simply indicates where the links between the two are most obvious.

Power, Sovereignty and While definitions of each of these concepts

International Relations are provided in the subject guide, the IB
Power acknowledge that 'a few sentences could
Sovereignty never capture the different and contested
Legitimacy interpretations of these big, important and
Interdependence organizing ideas of the theory and practice of
politics'. The aim of this resource is to
Human Rights provide a starting point for you to explore
Human rights these concepts from multiple approaches and
Justice perspectives in a variety of contexts.
Liberty
Equality It may be helpful to see this booklet as a
collection of stimulus material, organised
Development around the 16 key concepts, that provides a
Development starting point for your own further reading
Globalisation and exploration of these core concepts that
Inequality are so essential to success in the IB Global
Sustainability Politics course.

Peace and Conflict Each section begins with the definition of

Peace each concept provided in the subject guide
Conflict but remember the caveat given above.
Violence
Non-violence

1
power
Power is a central concept in the study of global politics and a key focus of the
course. Power can be seen as ability to effect change and, rather than being
viewed as a unitary or independent force, is as an aspect of relations among
people functioning within a social organization. Contested relationships
between people and groups of people dominate politics, particularly in this
era of increased globalization, and so understanding the dynamics of power
plays a prominent role in understanding global politics.

The Continued Power of Militaries in an Increasingly 3

Autocratic World

The Rise and Fall of Soft Power 5

Offensive Realism in Brief 9

The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power 11

in Asia

North Korea’s Power Structure 19

2
The Continued Power of Militaries in an Increasingly
Autocratic World
Three events this week served as a reminder that, in
a world where democracy is buffeted on many fronts
—the rise of populists who often undermine the rule
of law, a growing disinterest in democracy promotion
from leaders of the United States and other states,
and the influence of major authoritarian powers—
armed forces remain political actors in many
countries, despite an overall reduction in coups since
the days of the Cold War. In Thailand, ruled by a
military junta since 2014, the military’s favored party
won the largest share of the popular vote in elections
last month, but a group of anti-junta parties appear,
overall, to have garnered the biggest number of seats
in the lower house of parliament. So, the Thai military
appears to be maneuvering to ensure that the
second-biggest party in the anti-junta alliance is
defanged, and to use a range of inducements to
convince smaller political parties to join the pro-
military alliance in parliament. No matter what
happens, it is almost certain that Thailand’s military
will remain in control of government, resisting
attempts at real civilian oversight of the armed forces.
Meanwhile, in Indonesia, which holds presidential
elections next week, the military is steadily regaining
much of the power it lost in the period after the fall of
Suharto, as Indonesian democracy emerged. As
Evan Laksmana notes in the New York Times, both
candidates in the Indonesian elections, incumbent
Joko Widodo (known as Jokowi) and challenger
Prabowo Subianto, have helped the military regain
power, or will likely do so if elected. If Prabowo, a
retired former lieutenant general, were to win (which
still seems unlikely given polls of the race) there is a
possibility that he would reduce limits on the central
government and undermine democratic checks and
norms—and potentially allow the military and other
security forces far greater rein domestically. Jokowi,
though not as openly disdainful of democratic norms
and institutions as Prabowo, has surrounded himself
with military men. He has allowed the armed forces to
reassert their influence over domestic issues
including counterterrorism and counternarcotics,
among other areas. This is a worrying trend in a
country where, for decades, the armed forces were
known for dominating politics and committing rights
abuses.
3
In other parts of Southeast Asia, militaries retain
significant political leverage, though outright coups
have declined since the Cold War, as they have in
regions like Africa as well. In Myanmar, the military,
still by far the most powerful actor in the country
despite a technically civilian government, appear to
be extending their new battle in Rakhine State. There,
fighting has intensified in recent weeks between the
military and the insurgent Arakan Army. The military
retains near-total control over internal security, and it
is unclear whether operations, like the one ramping
up against the Arakan Army, are taken solely on the
military’s initiative, or whether the armed forces even
really consult with the civilian government before
acting.
But Southeast Asia is not unique. In Sudan this week,
the armed forces indeed launched a coup, removing
longtime leader Omar al-Bashir. To be sure, Bashir
was one of the most repressive rulers in the world,
and came to power three decades ago in a coup as
well. But the military takeover could neuter the
massive protest movement in Sudan, prevent a real
transition to a freer form of government, and install
just as repressive a regime in Khartoum as Bashir’s
government.
Just as other types of autocratic regimes have freer
rein today than they did in the 1990s and early 2000s,
militaries also face fewer constraints on their power.
Democratic powers are distracted by their own deep
political problems, populations in some states have
soured on democracy and looked to other
alternatives, and the U.S. government views regions
like Southeast Asia as places home to a growing
contest for influence with China—and thus requiring
closer ties with almost any government willing to align
with Washington. The U.S. government appeared
ready to completely normalize military-to-military
relations with Bangkok, before the election last
month, even though the election process was unfair.
 With Egypt, the White House has lavished fulsome
praise on autocratic leader Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, a
military man who took power in a coup six years ago
and now has indicated he wants to stay in office
another fifteen years. The Indonesian military’s
creeping re-emergence in Indonesian domestic
politics has had little impact on U.S.-Indonesia
security ties, or Indonesia’s security links with other
regional democracies.

Meanwhile, in a world increasingly looking for

strongman rule as an alternative to democracy, to
solve crises of graft and a lack of political
accountability by elected leaders, military men have
become more attractive. In some countries, like
Thailand, where populists already have ruled,
populations have looked to the military as means of
ousting populist leaders—though in reality military
governments only further erode democratic norms
and institutions.

In places like Egypt, Indonesia, Myanmar, Thailand,

or even Brazil, armed forces, too, are again
embedding within their military cultures a resistance
to civilian oversight—or refusing to change their
cultures to embrace civilian oversight. For a time in
Thailand in the late 1990s and early 2000s, for
instance, it appeared that the Thai armed forces were
beginning to shift, with younger officers at least
considering an end to the kingdom’s cycle of coups
and military meddling in politics. Whatever glimmer of
hope there was for a civilianization of the Thai military
now has vanished. The country has had two coups in
the past fifteen years, and both older and younger
generations of Thai officers seem committed to the
continuation of the Royal Thai Army as the dominant
political actor.

Kurlantzick, J "The Continued Power of Militaries in an Increasingly Autocratic World", Council on Foreign
Relations, 12/4/19, www.cfr.org/blog/continued-power-militaries-increasingly-autocratic-world

4
The Rise and Fall of Soft Power
Nearly three decades ago, American political scientist
and former Clinton administration official Joseph Nye
put forth an idea in the pages of Foreign Policy. He
called it soft power, a concept that caught fire and
went on to define the post-Cold War era.
Nye argued that, although the United States seemed
relatively weaker than it had been at the end of World
War II, the country still had a unique source of power
to bring to bear. Beyond using military power “to do
things and control others,” Nye later explained, “to get
others to do what they otherwise would not,” the
United States could draw on its soft power—its
noncoercive power—to cement its leadership position
in the world.
Hard power was easy to measure, of course. We can
count the number of missiles and tanks and troops.
(As Soviet leader Joseph Stalin is famously said to
have asked, “How many divisions does the Pope
have?”) But what was the content of America’s soft
power? Nye put it into three categories: cultural,
ideological, and institutional. In these areas, the world
would want to be like the United States. And that pull,
in turn, would help the nation shape the world. “If a
state can make its power seem legitimate in the eyes
of others, it will encounter less resistance to its
wishes.” That is, he argued, “if its culture and
ideology are attractive, others will more willingly
follow.” For Nye, the basis of U.S. soft power was
liberal democratic politics, free market economics,
and fundamental values such as human rights—in
essence, liberalism.
In the quarter-century that followed Nye’s conception
of soft power, world affairs played out within the
broad contours of his predictions. After the United
States won the Cold War, American liberalism had
unparalleled appeal around the world. Everyone
wanted to vote, everyone wanted jeans, and
everyone wanted free speech—so much so that the
political theorist Francis Fukuyama coined the phrase
“the end of history” to capture the idea that whole
world was careening toward a political endpoint
already reached by the West.
5
In the decades between the 1980s and 2010s, the
number of liberal democracies (as defined by
Freedom House) grew from around 100 to close to
150. The number of free market capitalist economies,
based on rankings published by the Wall Street
Journal and the Heritage Foundation, grew from over
40 to close to 100. Never before in human history had
so many countries given up so many old political and
economic arrangements for one new system.
Nye might have called it soft power. I call it the great
conversion.
In the realm of international relations, just as Nye
advocated, the United States led a drive to establish
and enlarge international institutions that would
support its new order, such as the World Trade
Organization, the World Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund. It also expanded its system of
alliances to bring former competitors further into the
fold.
Things played out similarly in Europe, where the
European Union played a role similar to that of the
United States. For an entire generation, the world
watched in astonishment as scores of countries
voluntarily gave up increasingly large portions of their
sovereignty to subject themselves to shared sets of
rules based on the same liberal values. Brussels’s
proposition dovetailed perfectly with Nye’s; all
member states and potential member states wanted
what the Western European core wanted. In fact, at
one point, it seemed as though everyone wanted
what Western Europe wanted: even Turkey, a large
Muslim country with a very different culture and set of
values, and Ukraine, which risked war with Russia in
its attempt to join.
Until recently, in other words, it really did look as if the
21st century would belong to the United States, the
West, and their global soft power empire. But it was
not to be so.
Several things went wrong. For one, the products
didn’t really suit the customers. From the “third wave”
democracies of the 1970s and 1980s to the Eastern
European states that rushed to join the EU and NATO
after the Cold War to, most recently, the countries
that weathered the Arab Spring, liberal democracy
has had a hard time sticking. In many cases,
moreover, it brought about rather catastrophic
outcomes for the people involved.
One theory for why is that the neoliberal economic
revolution, which was part and parcel of the soft
power era, weakened states instead of strengthening
them. The market was never a uniting force—the idea
that it could be an all-encompassing mechanism to
provide growth, good governance, and societal well-
being was an illusion to begin with. The German
sociologist Wolfgang Streeck elaborated on this idea
at a conference in Taiwan this summer. Soft power
globalization, he warned, is simply “outpacing the
capacity of national societies and international
organizations to build effective institutions of
economic and political governance.” In turn,
“increasing debt, rising inequality, and unstable
growth” is leading to “a general crisis of political-
economic governability.” That crisis has resulted in
internal revolts on soft power’s home turf. Streeck
calls it “taking back control.” You might call it the rise
of America’s Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orban,
or Italy’s Five Star Movement and the League.
So far, such revolts have resulted in anti-liberal
governing majorities in Austria, the Czech Republic,
Hungary, Italy, Poland, and the United States—and
that is just among developed countries. Such is the
sorry state of soft power liberalism that it has had
trouble holding on even in places where it should
have had the best chances of surviving.
Second, the United States, and by extension Europe,
grew so confident in the potency of their soft power
that they went into overdrive converting the rest of the
world to their systems. As Anthony Lake—who
served as national security advisor to the United
States’ first post-Cold War president, Bill Clinton—
said, America’s future prosperity relied on
“promot[ing] democracy abroad.”
6
Such a policy of enlargement would succeed the Cold
War doctrine of containment. That idea became even
more extreme when President George W. Bush
famously proclaimed the United States “a moral
nation” and said that “moral truth is the same in every
culture, in every time, and in every place.” This was
soft power on steroids!
In his recent book, Has the West Lost It?, Kishore
Mahbubani, a Singaporean academic and former
diplomat, calls all this Western hubris. Indeed, hubris
may be the only appropriate word for what transpired.
Confidence in the potency and legitimacy of soft
power was so great that tremendous hard power was
deployed in its name.
The Iraq War was the most prominent example. And
the intervention in Libya, with European support, was
the most recent. In both cases, the United States and
Europe were left worse off.
Third, the hubris of soft power led to the illusion that
soft power could somehow exist on its own. But even
Nye never said that. In reality, soft power is and
always will be an extension of hard power. Imagine if
the United States had become poor, destitute, and
weak like many of the new democracies around the
world but had retained its liberal values and
institutions. Few other countries would continue to
want to be like it. The idea that soft power could
perhaps be effective on its own perhaps underpinned
the fatally mistaken belief that Iraq would
automatically become a liberal democracy after
Saddam Hussein was toppled.
The European project, perhaps even more so, was
built on a false understanding of soft power. For many
decades, Europe was essentially a free rider in the
soft power game; the United States guaranteed its
security, and its economic well-being was reliant on
the U.S.-led global economic order. With the United
States now less interested in providing either—and
focusing more on hard power—Europe is facing real
challenges.
The fourth problem is that soft power is actually very
fragile and easily turned. For a good couple of
decades, soft power, compounded by the internet and
social media, really seemed unstoppable. It was
behind numerous color revolutions that overthrew
governments and dismembered states. The West
cheered when Facebook and Google spread the fire
of revolution in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and Kiev’s
Maidan, but it wasn’t so happy when Russia used the
same in a bid to subvert politics in the West.
When the West was confident of its soft power, it
cherished the belief that the more open a society, the
better. But now, calls for censorship of parts of
internet are heard routinely in the media and in
legislative chambers. Internet giants are under
tremendous political and social pressure to self-
censor their content. And many, including Facebook,
YouTube, and Apple, are doing so. And so, one of the
bedrocks of liberalism’s soft power—free speech—
has fallen from favor.
Now, hard power is everywhere. The United States is
no doubt the biggest player in this game: Fire and
fury to North Korea, trade wars on everyone, gutting
the WTO, and using domestic laws to punish foreign
companies for doing business with a third country.
The list goes on. For its part, Europe looks like a deer
in headlights. As some, including German Chancellor
Angela Merkel, call for standing firm against Trump,
others, including French President Emmanuel
Macron, are looking for peace.
And, of course, there is Russia. By adroitly using its
limited but still considerable hard power, Russia
achieved the most significant territorial gain by force
since the end of World War II, taking Crimea from
Ukraine. Meanwhile, Moscow’s forceful actions in
Syria changed the course of the civil war there to its
favor.
There are also small hard powers. The most
significant is North Korea, whose leader, Kim Jong
Un, after being vilified by the Western world for so
long, met Trump as an equal this summer. It is
unlikely that he would have accomplished such a feat
had he not built nuclear weapons. So far, Kim’s hard
power play is paying off handsomely.
7
There is little doubt, in other words, that the era of
soft power has given way to an era of hard power—
and that is dangerous.
For centuries, hard power politics resulted in
immeasurable human suffering. Just in the 20th
century alone, hard power drove two world wars and
a long Cold War that threatened to annihilate
mankind.
It is possible to aspire to something better this time.
And this is where China may come in. In Nye’s
original soft power article, China rarely came up. And
when it did, it was either lumped in with the Soviet
Union or brushed off as a country lacking any ability,
hard or soft, to challenge Western dominance.
Thirty years later, Nye’s omission seems strange. In
the era of soft power, China was the only major
country that bucked the trend. It integrated itself into
the post-World War II international order by
expanding deep and broad cultural and economic ties
with virtually all countries in the world. It is now the
largest trading nation in the world and in history. But it
steadfastly refused to become a customer of Western
soft power. It engineered its own highly complex
transition from a centrally planned economy to a
market economy, yet it refused to allow the market to
rise above the state. It rejected Western definitions of
democracy, freedom, and human rights, and it
retained and strengthened its one-party political
system. In soft power terms, China did not agree to
want what the West wanted—culturally, ideologically,
or institutionally.
The result? Contrary to most of the countries that
went through the great conversion, China succeeded
at a speed and scale unprecedented in human
history. The country turned from a poor agrarian
backwater into the largest industrial economy in the
world by purchasing power parity. In the process of
doing so, it lifted 700 million people out of poverty.
Harvard University’s Graham Allison calls this miracle
the “pyramid of poverty.” Forty years ago, nine out 10
Chinese lived under the “extreme poverty line” set by
the World Bank. Today, the pyramid has been flipped,
with only around 10 percent of Chinese living under
that line. Without that reversal, global poverty would
likely have increased rather than decreased over the
last several decades.
 Such achievements could be the content of a new
kind of soft power.
Nearly two decades ago, Chinese grand strategist
Zheng Bijian coined the term “peaceful rise” to
articulate China’s aspirations for itself. Over the
years, the notion of peaceful rise has encountered
much suspicion. Critics, for example, point to tensions
in the South China Sea to show that China’s
intentions are not, in fact, peaceful. And Allison has
warned that, whatever their intentions, the United
States and China could still fall into a Thucydides
trap, in which the strength of a rising power (China)
strikes fear in the incumbent power (the United
States), resulting in war. In his recent book, Destined
for War, Allison pointed out that most of the 16 such
cases of a rising power in history resulted in
bloodshed.
However, stepping back, it is plain to see that China’s
peaceful rise has already happened. It is a fact on the
ground, as evidenced by the enormity of its economy,
its trading volume, and, yes, its increasing military
strength. Compared to the rise of other great powers
in history—the Athenian Empire, the Roman Empire,
the British Empire, America’s manifest destiny,
modern Germany, France, and Japan, all of which
were accompanied by tremendous violence—China’s
rise so far has been bigger and faster than them all.
And yet, it has happened peacefully. No invasion of
any other country, no colonization, no war. Yes,
Allison may be right that the psychology of the
Thucydides trap is still true. But in substance, the
world has already passed the point at which such a
conflict could be contemplated responsibly.
Li, E "The Rise and Fall of Soft Power", Foreign Policy, 20/8/18, www.foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/20/the-rise-
and-fall-of-soft-power/
8
And that is perhaps why China is now refocusing from
hard power to soft, even as the rest of the world has
seemed to go in the opposite direction. President Xi
Jinping, for example, has called for “a community of
shared destiny,” in which nations are allowed their
own development paths while working to increase
interconnectedness. In the policy arena, such soft
power mostly takes the form of the Belt and Road
Initiative, which leverages China’s massive capital
and capacity to drive infrastructure-led development
in other countries to spur economic growth that would
ultimately benefit China itself.
It is a new potential soft power proposition: “You don’t
have to want to be like us, you don’t have to want
what we want; you can participate in a new form of
globalization while retaining your own culture,
ideology, and institutions.” This is, in many ways, the
opposite of Nye’s formulation, with all the downfalls
that approach entails: overreach, the illusion of
universal appeals, and internal and external
backlashes
In the post-Cold War era, the West linked soft power
and liberalism, but that coupling was never
necessary. In the next century, it may well be soft
power decoupled from ideology that could rule the
day. There is no illusion, not least in Beijing, that any
kind of soft power can exist and succeed without hard
power. But China’s proposition is more
accommodating of difference. By not forcing other
countries into its own mold, China’s new form of soft
power can mean a more peaceful 21st century. The
world should embrace it.
This article is adapted from a lecture given at the
University of Bologna in June 2018. An Italian
translation of the lecture was published in the
Italian journal Limes.
Offensive Realism in Brief
In its simplest form, my theory maintains that the
basic structure of the international system forces
states concerned about their security to compete with
each other for power. The ultimate goal of every great
power is to maximize its share of world power and
eventually dominate the system. In practical terms,
this means that the most powerful states seek to
establish hegemony in their region of the world while
also ensuring that no rival great power dominates
another area.
The theory begins with five assumptions about the
world, which are all reasonable approximations of
reality. First of all, states are the key actors in
international politics, and no higher authority stands
above them. There is no ultimate arbiter or leviathan
in the system that states can turn to if they get into
trouble and need help. This is called an anarchic
system, as opposed to a hierarchic one.
The next two assumptions deal with capabilities and
intentions, respectively. All states have offensive
military capabilities, although some have more than
others, indeed sometimes many more than others.
Capabilities are reasonably easy to measure because
they are largely composed of material objects that
can be seen, assessed, and counted.
Intentions are a different matter. States can never be
certain about the intentions of other states, because
intentions are inside the heads of leaders and thus
virtually impossible to see and difficult to measure. In
particular, states can never know with complete
confidence whether another state might have its gun
sights on them for one reason or another. The
problem of discerning states’ intentions is especially
acute when one ponders their future intentions, since
it is almost impossible to know who the leaders of any
country will be five or more years from now, much
less what they will think about foreign policy.
9
The theory also assumes that states rank survival as
their most important goal. This is not to say it is their
only goal, for states invariably have numerous
ambitions. However, when push comes to shove,
survival trumps all other goals, basically because if a
state does not survive, it cannot pursue those other
goals. Survival means more than merely maintaining
a state’s territorial integrity, although that goal is of
fundamental importance; it also means preserving the
autonomy of a state’s policymaking process. Finally,
states are assumed to be rational actors, which is to
say they are reasonably effective at designing
strategies that maximize their chances of survival.
These assumptions, when combined, cause states to
behave in particular ways. Specifically, in a world
where there is some chance—even just a small one
—that other states might have malign intentions as
well as formidable offensive military capabilities,
states tend to fear each other. That fear is
compounded by what I call the “9-1-1” problem—the
fact that there is no night watchman in an anarchic
system whom states can call if trouble comes
knocking at their door. Accordingly, they recognize
they must look out for their own survival, and the best
way to do that is to be especially powerful.
The logic here is straightforward: the more powerful a
state is relative to its competitors, the less likely its
survival will be at risk. No country in the Western
Hemisphere, for example, would dare attack the
United States, because it is so much stronger than
any of its neighbors. This reasoning drives great
powers to look for opportunities to move the balance
of power in their favor, as well as to prevent other
states from gaining power at their expense. The
ultimate aim is to be the hegemon: that is, the only
great power in the system.
When people talk about hegemony today, they are
usually referring to the United States, which is often
described as a global hegemon. However, I do not
believe it is possible for any country—including the
United States—to achieve global hegemony. One
obstacle to world domination is that it is very difficult
to conquer and subdue distant great powers, because
of the problems associated with projecting and
sustaining power over huge distances, especially
across enormous bodies of water like the Atlantic and
Pacific Oceans. This problem is less acute when
dealing with minor powers, but even so, the power of
nationalism makes it extremely difficult to occupy and
rule a hostile country. The paramount goal a great
power can attain is regional hegemony, which means
dominating one’s surrounding neighborhood. The
United States, for example, is a regional hegemon in
the Western Hemisphere. Although it is plainly the
most powerful state on the planet by far, it is not a
global hegemon.
Most Americans never think about it, but one of the
main reasons the United States is able to station
military forces all around the globe and intrude in the
politics of virtually every region is that it faces no
serious threats in the Western Hemisphere. If the
United States had dangerous foes in its own
backyard, it would be much less capable of roaming
into distant regions.
But if a rival state achieves regional dominance, the
goal will be to end its hegemony as expeditiously as
possible. The reason is simple: it is much more
propitious to have two or more great powers in all the
other key areas of the world, so that the great powers
there will have to worry about each other and thus be
less able to interfere in the distant hegemon’s own
backyard. In sum, the best way to survive in
international anarchy is to be the sole regional
hegemon.

Once a state achieves regional hegemony, it has a

further aim: to prevent other great powers from
dominating their geographical regions. In other words,
no regional hegemon wants a peer competitor. The
main reason is that regional hegemons—because
they are so dominant in their neighborhood—are free
to roam around the globe and interfere in other
regions of the world. This situation implies that
regional hegemons are likely to try to cause trouble in
each other’s backyard. Thus, any state that achieves
regional hegemony will want to make sure that no
other great power achieves a similar position, freeing
that counterpart to roam into its neighborhood.

Mearsheimer, J "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics", Genius, Accessed 17/5/19, www.genius.com/John-
mearsheimer-offensive-realism-in-brief-annotated

10
The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to US Power in
Asia
t is a pleasure and an honor to be here at the
University of Sydney to give the annual Michael
Hintze Lecture in International Security. I would like to
thank Alan Dupont for inviting me, and all of you for
coming out this evening to hear me talk. The United
States has been the most powerful state on the
planet for many decades, and has deployed robust
military forces in the Asia-Pacific region since the
early years of World War II. America’s presence in
your neighborhood has had significant consequences
for Australia and for the wider region. This is how the
Australian government sees it, at least according to
the 2009 Defence White Paper: “Australia has been a
very secure country for many decades, in large
measure because the wider Asia-Pacific region has
enjoyed an unprecedented era of peace and stability
underwritten by US strategic primacy.” The United
States, in other words, has acted as a pacifier in this
part of the world. However, according to the very next
sentence in the White Paper, “That order is being
transformed as economic changes start to bring
about changes in the distribution of strategic power.”
The argument here, of course, is that the rise of
China is having a significant effect on the global
balance of power. In particular, the power gap
between China and the United States is shrinking and
in all likelihood “US strategic primacy” in this region
will be no more. This is not to say that the United
States will disappear; in fact, its presence here is
likely to grow in response to China’s rise. But the
United States will no longer be the preponderant
power in your neighborhood, as it has been since
1945.The most important question that flows from this
discussion is whether China can rise peacefully. It is
clear from the Defence White Paper—which is tasked
with assessing Australia’s strategic situation -
that policymakers here are worried about the
changing balance of power in the Asia-Pacific region.
Consider these comments from that document: “As
other powers rise, and the primacy of the United
States is increasingly tested, power relations will
inevitably change. When this happens there will be
the possibility of miscalculation. There is a small but
still concerning possibility of growing confrontation
between some of these powers.” At another point in
the White Paper, we read that, “Risks resulting from
escalating strategic competition could emerge quite
unpredictably, and is a factor to be considered in our
defence planning.”
11
In short, the Australian government seems to sense
that the shifting balance of power between China and
the United States may not be good for peace in the
neighborhood.
I would like to argue tonight that Australians should
be worried about China’s rise, because it is likely to
lead to an intense security competition between
China and the United States, with considerable
potential for war. Moreover, most of China’s
neighbors, to include India, Japan, Singapore, South
Korea, Russia, Vietnam, and yes Australia, will join
with the United States to contain China’s power. To
put it bluntly: China cannot rise peacefully.
It is important to emphasize, however, that I am not
arguing that Chinese behavior alone will drive the
security competition that lies ahead. The United
States is also likely to behave in aggressive ways,
thus further increasing the prospects for trouble here
in the Asia-Pacific region
Naturally, not everyone will agree with my
assessment of the situation. Many believe that China
can rise peacefully, that it is not inevitable that the
United States and a powerful China will have
confrontational relations. Of course, they assume that
China will have peaceful intentions and that welcome
fact of life can help facilitate stability in this region,
even though the underlying balance of power is
expected to change dramatically.
I would like to examine three key arguments that are
often employed to support this optimistic prognosis
First, some claim that China can allay any fears about
its rise by making it clear to its neighbors and the
United States that it has peaceful intentions, that it
will not use force to change the balance of power.
This perspective can be found in the Defence White
Paper, which states: “The pace, scope and structure
of China’s military modernization have the potential to
give its neighbors cause for concern if not carefully
explained, and if China does not reach out to others
to build confidence regarding its military plans.” In
essence, the belief here is that Beijing has the ability
to signal its present and future intentions to Australia
and other countries in compelling ways.
Unfortunately, states can never be certain about each
other’s intentions. They cannot know with a high
degree of certainty whether they are dealing with a
revisionist state or a status quo power. For example,
there is still no consensus among experts as to
whether the Soviet Union was bent on dominating
Eurasia during the Cold War. Nor is there a
consensus on whether Imperial Germany was a
highly aggressive state that was principally
responsible for causing World War I. The root of the
problem is that unlike military capabilities, which we
can see and count, intentions cannot be empirically
verified. Intentions are in the minds of decision-
makers and they are especially difficult to discern.
You might say that Chinese leaders can use words to
explain their intentions. But talk is cheap and leaders
have been known to lie to foreign audiences. Thus, it
is hard to know the intentions of China’s present
leaders, which is not to say that they are necessarily
revisionist.
But even if one could determine China’s intentions
today, there is no way to know what they will be in the
future. After all, it is impossible to identify who will be
running the foreign policy of any countryfive or ten
years from now, much less whether they will have
aggressive intentions. It cannot be emphasized
enough that we face radical uncertainty when it
comes to determining the future intentions of any
country, China included.A second line of argument is
that a benign China can avoid confrontation by
building defensive rather than offensive military
forces. In other words, Beijing can signal that it is a
status quo power by denying itself the capability to
use force to alter the balance of power. After all, a
country that hashardly any offensive capability cannot
be a revisionist state, because it does not have the
means to act aggressively. Not surprisingly, Chinese
leaders often claim that their military is designed
solelyfor defensive purposes. For example, the New
York Times recently reported in an important article
on the Chinese navy that its leaders maintain that it is
“purely a self-defense force.”
12
One problem with this approach is that it is difficult to
distinguish between offensive and defensive military
capabilities. Negotiators at the 1932 Disarmament
Conference tried to make these distinctions and
found themselves tied in knots trying to determine
whether particular weapons like tanks and aircraft
carriers are offensive or defensive in nature. The
basic problem is that the capabilities that states
develop simply to defend themselves often have
significant offensive potential.
Consider what China is doing today. It is building
military forces that have significant power projection
capability, and as the Defence White Paper tells us,
China’s “military modernization will be increasingly
characterized by the development of power projection
capabilities.” For example, the Chinese are building
naval forces that can project power out to the so-
called “Second Island Chain” in the Western Pacific.
And they also say that they are planning to build a
“blue water navy” that can operate in the Arabian Sea
and the Indian Ocean. For understandable reasons,
they want to be able to protect their sea-lanes and not
have to depend on the American navy to handle that
mission. Although they do not have that capability yet,
as Robert Kaplan points out in a recent article in
Foreign Affairs, “China’s naval leaders are displaying
the aggressive philosophy of the turn-of-the-
twentieth-century U.S. naval strategist Alfred Thayer
Mahan, who argued for sea control and the decisive
battle.”
Of course, most Chinese leaders think that their navy
is defensively oriented, even though it has
considerable offensive capability and will have much
more in the future. Indeed, they refer to theirnaval
strategy as “Far Sea Defense.” As Kaplan’s
comments indicate, it seems almost certain that as
the Chinese navy grows in size and capability, none
of China’s neighbors, including Australia, will consider
it to be defensively oriented. They will instead view it
as a formidable offensive force. Thus, anyone looking
to determine China’s future intentions by observing its
military is likely to conclude that Beijing is bent on
aggression.
Finally, some maintain that China’s recent behavior
toward its neighbors, which has not been aggressive
in any meaningful way, is a reliable indicator of how
China will act in the decades ahead. The central
problem with this argument is that past behavior is
usually not a reliable indicator of future behavior,
because leaders come and go and some are more
hawkish than others. Plus circumstances at home
and abroad can change in ways that make the use of
military force more or less attractive.
The Chinese case is illustrative in this regard. Beijing
does not possess a formidable military todayand it is
certainly in no position to pick a fight with the United
States. This is not to say that China isa paper tiger,
but it does not have the capability to cause much
trouble in this region. However, that situation is
expected to change markedly over time, in which
case China will have significant offensive capability.
Then, we will see how committed it is to the status
quo. But right now we cannot tell much about China’s
future behavior, because it has such limited capability
to act aggressively.
What all of this tells us is that there is no good way to
divine what China’s intentions will be down the road
or to predict its future behavior based on its recent
foreign policies. It does seem clear, however, that
China will eventually have a military with significant
offensive potential.
Up to now, I have been concerned with how an
American or an Australian might assess China’s
future behavior. But to fully understand how China’s
rise will affect stability in the Asia-Pacific region, we
must also consider what Chinese leaders can divine
about future American behavior, by looking at its
intentions, capabilities, and present behavior.
There is obviously no way China’s leaders can know
who will be in charge of American foreign policy in the
years ahead, much less what their intentions toward
China will be. But they do know that all of America’s
post-Cold War presidents, including Barack Obama,
have stated that they are committed to maintaining
American primacy. And that means Washington is
likely to go to considerable lengths to prevent China
from becoming too powerful.
13
Regarding capabilities, the United States spends
more money on defense than all the other countries
in the world combined. Moreover, because the
American military is designed to fight all around the
globe, it has abundant power projection assets. Much
of that capability is either located in the Asia-Pacific
region or can be moved there quickly should the need
arise. China cannot help but see that the United
States has formidable military forces in its
neighborhood that are designed in good part for
offensive purposes. Surely, when Washington moves
aircraft carriers into the Taiwan Straits—as it did in
1996—or when it redeploys submarines to the
Western Pacific, China sees these naval assets as
offensive, not defensive in nature.
This is not to deny that most Americans, like most
Chinese, think that their military is a defensive
instrument; but that is not the way it looks when you
are at the other end of the rifle barrel. Thus, anyone
in China seeking to gauge American intentions by
assessing its military capabilities is likely to think it is
a revisionist state, not a status quo power. Lastly,
there is the matter of America’s recent behavior and
what that might tell us about future U.S. actions. As I
said earlier, past actions are usually not a reliable
indicator of future behavior, because circumstances
change and new leaders sometimes think differently
about foreign policy than their predecessors. But if
Chinese leaders try to gauge how the United States is
likely to act down the road by looking at its recent
foreign policy, they will almost certainly conclude that
it is a war-like and dangerous country. After all,
America has been at war for 14 of the 21 years since
the Cold War ended. That is 2 out of every 3 years.
And remember that the Obama administration is
apparently contemplating a new war against Iran.
One might argue that this is all true, but the United
States has not threatened to attack China. The
problem with this argument is that American leaders
from both the Democratic and Republican parties
have made it clear that they believe the United
States, to quote Madeleine Albright, is the
“indispensable nation” and therefore it has both the
right and the responsibility to police the entire globe.
Furthermore, most Chinese are well aware of how the
United States took advantage of a weak China by
pushing forward the infamous “Open Door” policy in
the early 20th century. Chinese officials also know
that the United States and China fought a bloody war
in Korea between 1950 and 1953. It is not surprising
that the Economist recently reported that, “A retired
Chinese admiral likened the American navy to a man
with a criminal record ‘wandering just outside the gate
of a family home’.” It seems that this is a case where
we should be thankful that countries usually don’t pay
much attention to a potential rival’s past behavior
when trying to determine its future intentions.
What all of this tells us is that the future security
environment in the Asia-Pacific region will revolve
around China and the United States, and each of
those great powers will have a military with significant
offensive capability and unknowable intentions.
There is one other factor that matters greatly for
future Sino-American relations. There is no
centralized authority that states can turn to for help if
a dangerous aggressor threatens them. There is no
night watchman in the international system, which
means that states have to rely mainly on themselves
to ensure their survival. Thus, the core question that
any leader has to ask him or herself is this: what is
the best way to maximize my country’s security in a
world where another state might have significant
offensive military capability as well as offensive
intentions, and where there is no higher body I can
turn to for help if that other state threatens my
country? This question—more than any other—will
motivate American as well as Chinese leaders in the
years ahead, as it has in the past.
I believe there is a straightforward answer to this
question and that all great powers know it and act
accordingly. The best way for any state to ensure its
survival is to be much more powerful than all the
other states in the system, because the weaker states
are unlikely to attack it for fear they will be soundly
defeated. No country in the Western Hemisphere, for
example, would dare strike the United States
because it is so powerful relative to all its neighbors
14
To be more specific, the ideal situation for any great
power is to be the hegemon in the system, because
then its survival would almost be guaranteed. A
hegemon is a country that is so powerful that it
dominates all the other states. In other words, no
other state has the military wherewithal to put up a
serious fight against it. In essence, a hegemon is the
only great power in the system.
When people talk about hegemony these days, they
are usually referring to the United States, which they
describe as a global hegemon. I do not like this
terminology, however, because it is virtually
impossible for any state—including the United States
—to achieve global hegemony. The main obstacle to
world domination is the difficulty of projecting power
over huge distances, especially across enormous
bodies of water like the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The best outcome that a great power can hope for is
to achieve regional hegemony, and possibly control
another region that is close by and easily accessible
over land. The United States, which dominates the
Western Hemisphere, is the only regional hegemon in
modern history. Five other great powers have tried to
dominate their region—Napoleonic France, Imperial
Germany, Imperial Japan, Nazi Germany, and the
Soviet Union—but none succeeded.
The United States, it should be emphasized, did not
become a hegemon in the Western Hemisphere by
accident. When it gained its independence in 1783, it
was a weak country comprised of 13 states running
up and down the Atlantic seaboard. Over the course
of the next 115 years, American policymakers worked
unrelentingly in pursuit of regional hegemony. They
expanded America’s boundaries from the Atlantic to
the Pacific Oceans as part of a policy commonly
referred to as “Manifest Destiny.” Indeed, the United
States was an expansionist power of the first order.
Henry Cabot Lodge put the point well when he noted
that the United States had a “record of conquest,
colonization, and territorial expansion unequalled by
any people in the nineteenth century.” Or I might add
the twentieth century.
But America’s leaders in the nineteenth century were
not just concerned with turning the United States into
a powerful territorial state. They were also determined
to push the European great powers out of the
Western Hemisphere, and make it clear to them that
they were not welcome back. This policy, which is still
in effect today, is known as the "Monroe Doctrine.” By
1898, the last European empire in the Americas had
collapsed and the United States had become a
regional hegemon.
States that achieve regional hegemony have a further
aim: they seek to prevent great powers in other
geographical regions from duplicating their feat. A
regional hegemon, in other words, does not want
peer competitors. The United States, for example,
played a key role in preventing Imperial Japan,
Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet
Union from gaining regional supremacy. Regional
hegemons attempt to check aspiring hegemons in
other regions, because they fear that a rival great
power that dominates its own region will be an
especially powerful foe that is essentially free to roam
around the globe and cause trouble in their backyard.
Regional hegemons prefer that there be at least two
great powers located together in other regions,
because their proximity will force them to concentrate
their attention on each other rather than the distant
hegemon. Furthermore, if a potential hegemon
emerges among them, the other great powers in that
region might be able to contain it by themselves,
allowing the distant hegemon to remain safely on the
sidelines.
The bottom line is that for sound strategic reasons the
United States labored for more than a century to gain
regional hegemony, and after achieving that goal, it
has made sure that no other great power dominated
either Asia or Europe the way it dominates the
Western Hemisphere.
What does America’s past behavior tell us about the
rise of China? In particular, how should we expect
China to conduct itself as it grows more powerful?
And how should we expect the United States and
China’s neighbors to react to a strong China?
15
I expect China to act the way the United States has
acted over its long history. Specifically, I believe that
China will try to dominate the Asia-Pacific region
much as the United States dominates the Western
Hemisphere. For good strategic reasons, China will
seek to maximize the power gap between itself and
potentially dangerous neighbors like India, Japan and
Russia. China will want to make sure that it is so
powerful that no state in Asia has the wherewithal to
threaten it. It is unlikely that China will pursue military
superiority so that it can go on the warpath and
conquer other countries in the region, although that is
always a possibility. Instead, it is more likely that
Beijing will want to dictate the boundaries of
acceptable behavior to neighboring countries, much
the way the United States makes it clear to other
states in the Americas that it is the boss. Gaining
regional hegemony, I might add, is probably the only
way that China will get Taiwan back.
A much more powerful China can also be expected to
try to push the United States out of the Pacific-Asia
region, much the way the United States pushed the
European great powers out of the Western
Hemisphere in the nineteenth century. We should
expect China to come up with its own version of the
Monroe Doctrine, as Imperial Japan did in the 1930s.
In fact, we are already seeing inklings of that policy.
Consider that in March, Chinese officials told two
high-ranking American policymakers that the United
States was no longer allowed to interfere in the South
China Sea, which China views as a “core interest” like
Taiwan and Tibet. And it seems that China feels the
same way about the Yellow Sea. Last week the U.S.
and South Korean navies conducted joint naval
exercises in response to North Korea’s alleged
sinking of a South Korean naval vessel. Those naval
maneuvers were originally planned to take place in
the Yellow Sea, which is adjacent to the Chinese
coastline, but vigorous protests from China forced the
Obama administration to move them further east into
the Sea of Japan.
These ambitious goals make good strategic sense for
China. Beijing should want a militarily weak Japan
and Russia as its neighbors, just as the United States
prefers a militarily weak Canada and Mexico on its
borders. No state in its right mind should want other
powerful states located in itsregion? All Chinese
surely remember what happened in the last century
when Japan was powerful and China was weak.
Furthermore, why would a powerful China accept
U.S. military forces operating in its backyard?
American policymakers, after all, express outrage
whenever distant great powers send military forces
into the Western Hemisphere. Those foreign forces
are invariably seen as a potential threat to American
security. The same logic should apply to China. Why
would China feel safe with U.S. forces deployed on its
doorstep? Following the logic of the Monroe Doctrine,
would not China’s security be better served by
pushing the American military out of the Asia-Pacific
region?
Why should we expect China to act any differently
than the United States has over the course of its
history? Are they more principled than Americans
are? More ethical? Are they less nationalisticthan
Americans? Less concerned about their survival?
They are none of these things, of course, which is
why China is likely to imitate the United States and
attempt to become a regional hegemon.
And what is the likely American response if China
attempts to dominate Asia? It is crystal clear from the
historical record that the United States does not
tolerate peer competitors. As it demonstrated over the
course of the twentieth century, it is determined to
remain the world’s only regional hegemon. Therefore,
the United States can be expected to go to great
lengths to contain China and ultimately weaken it to
the point where it is no longer a threat to rule the
roost in Asia. In essence, the United States is likely to
act toward China similar to the way it behaved toward
the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
16
China’s neighbors in the Asia-Pacific region are
certain to fear its rise as well, and they too will do
whatever they can to prevent it from achieving
regional hegemony. Indeed, there is already
substantial evidence that countries like India, Japan,
and Russia, as well as smaller powers like Singapore,
South Korea, and Vietnam, are worried about China’s
ascendancy and are looking for ways to contain it.
India and Japan, for example, signed a “Joint Security
Declaration” in October 2008, in good part because
they are worried about China’s growing power. India
and the United States, which had testy relations at
best during the Cold War, have become good friends
over the past decade, in large part because they both
fear China. Just last month, the Obama
administration, which is filled with people who preach
to the world about the importance of human rights,
announced that it was resuming relations with
Indonesia’s elite special forces, despite their rich
history of human rights abuses. The reason for this
shift was that Washington wants Indonesia on its side
as China grows more powerful, and as the New York
Times reported, Indonesian officials “dropped hints
that the group might explore building ties with the
Chinese military if the ban remained.”
Singapore, which sits astride the critically important
Straits of Malacca and worries about China’s growing
power, badly wants to upgrade its already close ties
with the United States. Toward that end, it built the
Changi Naval Base in the late 1990s so that the U.S.
Navy could operate an aircraft carrier out of
Singapore if the need arose. And the recent decision
by Japan to allow the U.S. Marines to remain on
Okinawa was driven in part by Tokyo’s concerns
about China’s growing assertiveness in the region
and the related need to keep the American security
umbrella firmly in place over Japan. Most of China’s
neighbors will eventually join an American-led
balancing coalition designed to check China’s rise,
much the way Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan,
and even China, joined forces with the United States
to contain the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
I would like to discuss in more detail how I think
China’s rise will affect Australia in particular. There is
no question that geography works to Australia’s
advantage; it is located far away from China and
there are large bodies of water separating the two
countries. Australia, of course, faced a similar
situation with regard to Imperial Japan, which helps
explain why the Japanese military did not invade
Australia when it went on a rampage across the
Asian-Pacific region in December 1941
One might be tempted to think that Australia’s
location means that it has little to fear from China and
therefore it can stay on the sidelines as the balancing
coalition to contain China comes together. Indeed,
the 2009 White Paper raises the possibility that “an
Australian government might take the view that
armed neutrality was the best approach in terms of
securing its territory and people.” This is not going to
happen, however, because China—should it continue
its rapid rise—will eventually present a serious
enough threat to Australia that it will have no choice
but to join the American-led alliance to contain China.
I would like to make three points to support this claim.
First, please remember that we are not talking about
the threat posed by today’s Chinese military, which
does not have a lot of power projection capability and
is not much of a danger to its neighbors. We are
talking about how Australians will think about China
after it has undergone two more decades of
impressive economic growth and has used its
abundant wealth to build a military that is filled with
highly sophisticated weaponry. We are talking about
a Chinese military that comes close to rivaling the
U.S. military in terms of the quality of its weaponry.
That Chinese military, however, should have two
important advantages over its American counterpart.
It should be larger, maybe even much larger, since
China’s population will be at least three times bigger
than the U.S. population by the middle of this century.
Furthermore, the United States will be at a significant
disadvantage in its competition with China, because
the American military will be projecting its power
across 6,000 miles of ocean, while the Chinese
military will be operating in its own backyard. In short,
China is likely to have far more offensive military
power in 2030 than it has in 2010.
17
Second, although Imperial Japan did not launch an
amphibious assault against Australia in 1942, it
seriously contemplated that option, and decided
against it not only because of the difficulty of the
operation, but also because Japan thought that it had
an alternative strategy for dealing with Australia.
Specifically, it felt that it could use its control of the
Western Pacific to effectively blockade Australia and
neutralize it. Although that strategy failed, we should
not lose sight of the fact that Imperial Japan was a
grave threat to Australia, which is why Australia
enthusiastically fought alongside the United States in
World War II.
Third, Chinese strategist are going to pay serious
attention to Australia in the years ahead, mainly
because of oil. China’s dependence on imported oil,
which is already substantial, is going to increase
markedly over the next few decades. Much of that
imported oil will come out of the Middle East and
most of it will be transported to China by ship. For all
the talk about moving oil by pipelines and railroads
through Burma and Pakistan, the fact is that maritime
transport is a much easier and cheaper option. The
Chinese, of course, know this and it is one reason
why they are planning to build a blue water navy.
They want to be able to protect their sea-lanes that
run to and from the Middle East.
China, however, faces a major geographical problem
in securing those sea-lanes, which has significant
implications for Australia. Specifically, there are three
major water passages that connect the South China
Sea and the Indian Ocean. Otherwise, various
Southeast Asian countries separate those two large
bodies of water. That means China must have access
to at least one of those passages at all times if it
hopes to be able to control its sea-lanes to and from
the oil-rich Middle East
Chinese ships can go through the Straits of Malacca,
which are surrounded by Indonesia, Malaysia, and
Singapore, or they can go further south and traverse
either the Lombok Strait or the Sunda Strait, both of
which cut through Indonesia, and both of which bring
you out into the open waters of the Indian Ocean just
to the northwest of Australia.
China, however, is not likely to be able to get through The picture I have painted this evening of what is
the Straits of Malacca in a conflict with the United likely to happen if China continues its
States, because Singapore, which is closely allied impressiveeconomic growth is not a pretty one.
with Washington, sits astride that passageway. This Indeed, it is downright depressing. I wish that I could
is what Chinese strategists call “the Malacca tell a more optimistic story about the prospects for
dilemma.” Therefore, China has a powerful incentive peace in the Asia-Pacific region. But the fact is that
to make sure its ships can move through the two international politics is a nasty and dangerous
main openings that run through Indonesia. business and no amount of good will can ameliorate
the intense security competition that sets in when an
his situation almost certainly means that China will aspiring hegemon appears in Eurasia. And there is
maintain a significant military presence in the waters little doubt that there is one on the horizon. Thank
off the northern coast of Australia and maybe even on you.
Indonesian territory. China will for sure be deeply
concerned about Australia’s power projection
capabilities, and will work to make sure that they
cannot be used to shut down either the Lombok or
Sunda Straits or threaten China shipping in the Indian
Ocean. The steps that China takes to neutralize the
threat that Australia poses to its sea-lanes—and
remember, we are talking about a much more
powerful China than exists today—will surely push
Canberra to work closely with Washington to contain
China. In short, there are serious limits to how much
geography can shield Australia from an expansive
China.

Mearsheimer, J "The Gathering Storm: China’s Challenge to U.S. Power in Asia", University of Chicago,
4/8/10, www.mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/T0008.pdf

18
North Korea’s Power Structure
Introduction
North Korea has been ruled by one of the world’s
longest-running dynastic dictatorships. Three
generations of the Kim family have ruled with
absolute authority, using heavy repression and a
system of patronage that ensures support from elites
and the military. The latest supreme leader, Kim
Jong-un, appears to have deftly handled his early
years at the top through reshuffling party and military
structures and accelerating a buildup of nuclear and
missile capabilities. As North Korea seeks to grow its
economy and open up to the outside world, experts
say Kim’s relationship with elites could be tested and
will be crucial to the regime’s survival.
The Kim Dynasty
Three generations of Kims have held the position of
supreme leader in North Korea since the end of
World War II and Korea’s liberation from Japanese
colonial rule. Kim Il-sung was the founding father of
North Korea, where he ruled from 1948 until his death
in 1994. He was succeeded by his son, Kim Jong-il,
who served for seventeen years until a fatal heart
attack in late 2011. Leadership then passed to Kim
Jong-il’s twenty-eight-year-old son, Kim Jong-un, in
2012, and while there was speculation over his ability
to maintain regime stability, he has swiftly
consolidated his power. He has installed his own top
personnel, reinvigorated the Worker’s Party of Korea
(WPK) as the core political organ, and reclaimed
power from elite factions that had been delegated
authority in Kim Jong-il’s later years.
Periodic purges of leadership are not out of the norm
for North Korean leaders. Some have been brutal,
such as the executions of Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang
Song-thaek and Minister of Defense Hyon Yong-chol.
Scores of other top officials have been retired,
demoted, or otherwise shuffled out of positions of
authority under Kim. In an opaque information
climate, disappearances from public view should not
always be considered punitive or fatal; some officials
transition from public positions to cushy behind-the-
scenes roles or resurface months or years later. .
19
Nevertheless, “investigations and purges create
upheaval in the system,” says Michael Madden, the
founder of North Korea Leadership Watch, a blog
focused on leadership and political culture in North
Korea. Creating this sense of instability and
unpredictability for elites is one of the levers that
allows Kim Jong-un to maintain his hold on power.
Kim Jong-un is believed to have at least two children
with his wife, Ri Sol-ju. While their names are not
publicly known, the oldest child is reported to be a
daughter. He is alleged to suffer from a range of
medical problems, some stemming from obesity and
smoking, including high blood pressure, diabetes, and
gout. Both his father and grandfather died of
suspected heart attacks. Experts say that in the event
of his death or serious illness, the next leader would
undoubtedly be a direct Kim family member. The
promotion of his younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, and the
development of her public profile have raised
speculation that she could be in line to be the
successor. Other close relatives who could also be
involved in a power transition are Kim Sol-song, an
older half sister, or Kim’s older brother, Kim Jong-
chul. Some family members, however, have fallen out
of favor, including Kim’s uncle Jang, who was married
to Kim Kyong-hui, the daughter of Kim Il-sung. Kim
Jong-nam, Kim’s half brother, was assassinated in
February 2017 in Malaysia in an attack suspected to
have been carried out by North Korea.
Party Above All
Chief policymaking comes from the WPK’s Central
Committee and three subordinate institutions: the
Political Bureau, or Politburo; the Control
Commission; and the Executive Policy Bureau, which
also controls surveillance and appoints top personnel
across the party, cabinet, and military. The Central
Committee’s Organization Guidance Department
(OGD) and Propaganda and Agitation Department
are among the most influential party agencies. The
Central Committee is made up of around twenty
departments, ranging from the sciences to
agriculture, that link to civilian state and military
bodies.
The governmental departments submit policy ideas to
the respective entities of the party’s Central
Committee, who then deliberate, tweak, and approve
initiatives. The party exercises policy control through
this process. Decisions on matters such as North
Korea’s recent summits with South Korea and the
United States have likely followed consultation
between Kim and close aides, all of whom hold high
positions within the party.
The party, first founded in the late 1940s, initially had
strong ties to the Soviet and Chinese ruling
Communist Parties, but as Kim Il-sung consolidated
his position in the aftermath of the Korean War
(1950–1953), the juche state philosophy came to
dominate North Korean politics. Juche, translated as
self-reliance, emphasizes independence and
sovereignty as principles to guide the nation’s politics,
economy, and defenses. In North Korea, the military,
the internal security apparatus, and the cabinet all
play a supporting role to enact the party’s vision, says
Ken Gause, an expert on North Korean leadership at
the Virginia-based research organization CNA,
adding that “the military and the party are fused very
closely.”
A Military Rebalance?
Another ideological tenet, songun, or military first,
was embedded as a guiding political philosophy in the
1990s, elevating the military above other elements in
society. The military is made up of an estimated 1.2
million active personnel, including two hundred
thousand special operations forces, as well as
millions more in reserves and paramilitary personnel.
From the outset, the military operated under the
direction of the WPK. The military itself has a general
political bureau staffed by political commissars who
receive instructions from the party’s OGD, which are
then distributed among the branches of the Korean
People’s Army (KPA); state security and the national
police also have their own political directors. Under
Kim Jong-il, the military, or at least individual
members of the military, amassed increasing
decision-making power, gaining the upper hand over
the party. Analysts have described Kim Jong-il’s reign
as more informal, relying on personal relationships
and bypassing the formal bureaucracy.
20
The transition to Kim Jong-un’s rule has rebalanced
the military-party dynamic again, with the
authoritarian leader favoring the regularization and
formal institutionalization of the party’s levers of
power to bring influential factions to heel, particularly
within the military. For example, in June 2018, Kim
replaced three top military generals: the chief of the
military’s general staff, Ri Myong-su; the director of
the military’s political bureau, Kim Jong-gak; and the
defense chief, Pak Yong-sik. Analysts say the move
reflects Kim Jong-un’s push to put in place leaders
who are directly loyal to him while removing regents
and confidants of his father, such as Ri, tighten the
party’s hold on the military, and root out corruption.
In a country where rhetoric is significant, Madden
says there has been a recent shift in references to
North Korea’s sources of power: where it used to be
“party, army, state,” it has become “party, state,
army,” reflecting a reimagining of priorities. The
military’s primary responsibility remains safeguarding
the security of the nation; yet, the KPA owns a few
dozen trading companies and economic sites and is
therefore involved in a good portion of the country’s
economic activity. Kim, like his father before him,
wants to use military personnel to carry out civilian
construction and critical infrastructure projects. At the
same time, experts say that Kim is also redistributing
valuable economic real estate, such as transferring
control of facilities in some sectors, such as fisheries
and manufacturing, from the military to civilian and
government departments and reducing the proportion
of revenue or goods that the military siphons off itself.
The Economy and the Elite
North Korea is among the world’s poorest nations,
with widespread malnutrition. Its economic activity
centers on mining and manufacturing, as well as
agriculture, forestry, and fishing. While heavy
international sanctions have intensified North Korea’s
isolation, the economy still appeared to be registering
modest growth through 2016, according to South
Korea’s central bank. Kim has instituted slight
changes and relaxed rules, including the liberalization
of domestic markets, which have spawned growth,
says a report by Daily NK, a South Korea–based
online newspaper.
In his first years in power, Kim Jong-un developed the
byungjin policy, or “parallel development” of the
country’s nuclear capabilities and its economy. To do
so, Kim has rolled out policy modifications, shifting
away from a centrally planned economy to one that is
more incentive-based and allows for greater
autonomy at the county and provincial levels.
Industries such as shellfish and generic
pharmaceuticals remain under tight control, but there
are some sectors where opening up is taking place,
such as agriculture. Still, North Korea’s coterie of
elites, which experts estimate totals about fifty
families and up to two thousand people, exerts heavy
influence over the state’s economic functioning. They
are said to hold important roles in which they facilitate
or execute policy, as well as control hard currency
operations, resources, or information.
Even before Kim Jong-un came to power, there was
increasing room for these moneyed elites. This group,
known as the donju—money masters or lords—
started making fortunes by facilitating trade in black
markets that emerged at a time when the government
was unable to provide sufficient food and services, in
the late 1990s. Restrictions on these markets have
eased over time, and in some circumstances market
activity is even sanctioned without reprisal. For
example, agricultural collectives are allowed to
privately sell their surplus crops. Still, personal
connections run deep across the economy: many
children or other family members of high-powered
party, military, and civilian officials run foreign trading
companies that fuel the country’s economic
development.
In recent years, there are anecdotal accounts from
journalists, researchers, and visitors of the
construction or opening of ski resorts, theme parks,
and a new airport—signs of an economic uptick and
interest in infrastructure for potential tourism.
Albert, E "North Korea's Power Structure", Council on Foreign Relations, 19/7/18,
www.cfr.org/backgrounder/north-koreas-power-structure
21
All this, despite stringent international economic
sanctions that have crippled formal trade and normal
economic ties with dynamic regional actors such as
China, Russia, and South Korea. If sanctions relief
materializes and North Korea seeks to diversify its
business relations with the outside world, experts say
that all moves to grow the economy will have to be
delicately calibrated by the leadership to ensure
political stability inside the regime.
The Future of the Regime
Experts say Kim Jong-un has deftly navigated his rise
to power. While drawing on nostalgia for his
grandfather’s era and grandiose persona, “Kim Jong-
un is also determined to be seen as a ‘modern leader’
of a ‘modern North Korea,’” writes the Brookings
Institution’s Jung H. Pak. Economic development is
fashioned as the vehicle for this modernization. In
Kim’s 2018 New Year’s speech, he emphasized using
the acquisition of nuclear weapons as a springboard
for progress and prosperity, stating that “the central
task facing socialist economic construction this year
is to enhance the independence and Juche character
of the national economy and improve the people’s
standard of living.” CNA’s Gause says “the economy
is Kim Jong-un’s strategy,” adding that all of his
recent efforts at diplomacy are “designed to hook into
the South Korean economic engine” and solidify his
legacy.
Experts say North Korea is entering a critical period
of change under a regime that has by and large
resisted rapid change and outside influence. Even as
the ultimate authority, they say, Kim will need to
cultivate the support of enough elites and
successfully manage the pace of change to meet his
goal of making North Korea a strong and prosperous
nation.
sovereignty
Sovereignty characterizes a state’s independence, its control over territory
and its ability to govern itself. How states use their sovereign power is at the
heart of many important issues in global politics. Some theorists argue that
sovereign power is increasingly being eroded by aspects of globalization such
as global communication and trade, which states cannot always fully control.
Others argue that sovereign states exercise a great deal of power when acting
in their national interest and that this is unlikely to change.

What Brexit Means 23

Is State Sovereignty At Risk In Our Modern Society? 28

Article 50 ruling shows the ECJ respects sovereignty 30

more than UK govt does

China's 'Sovereign Internet' 31

22
What Brexit Means
Introduction
For decades, the United Kingdom has had an
ambivalent and sometimes contentious relationship
with the European Union. London has kept its
distance from EU authority by negotiating opt-outs
from some of its central policies, including the
common euro currency and the border-free Schengen
Area. Advocates of a British exit, or Brexit, from the
union argued that by reclaiming its national
sovereignty, the UK would be better able to manage
immigration, free itself from onerous regulations, and
spark more dynamic growth.
The victory of the Leave campaign in a June 2016
referendum on the UK’s future in the bloc led to the
resignation of Prime Minister David Cameron. Under
his successor, Prime Minister Theresa May, the UK
has spent years negotiating a new relationship with
the EU. With May committing to leave the EU Single
Market by March 2019, the UK could face the loss of
preferential access to its largest trading partner, the
disruption of its large financial sector, and even the
breakup of the UK itself. May’s razor-thin majority in
Parliament and deep divisions within her own
Conservative Party have repeatedly raised the
specter that negotiations with the EU could fail.
Meanwhile, some fear the Brexit process could
accelerate nationalist movements from Scotland to
Hungary, which would have unpredictable
consequences for the EU.
What is the history of the UK’s membership in the
EU?
The UK remained aloof from the continent’s first
postwar efforts toward integration, the European Coal
and Steel Community (ECSC) and the the European
Economic Community (EEC), formed in the hopes of
avoiding another devastating war. “We did not enter
the EU with the same political imperatives [as France
and Germany],” Robin Niblett, head of the London-
based think tank Chatham House, has argued. “We
had not been invaded, we did not lose the war, and
we have historical connections to all sorts of other
parts of the world from our empire and
commonwealth.”
23
The UK didn’t join the EEC until 1973. The British
people approved membership in a 1975 referendum,
but suspicion of political union with the rest of Europe
remained strong. Critics argued that the European
project was already moving beyond mere economic
integration and toward a European “superstate.”
As integration deepened throughout the 1980s and
1990s, the UK’s leaders pushed for opt-outs. The UK
didn’t join the single currency or the border-
free Schengen area, and it negotiated a reduced
budget contribution. Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher declared in 1988, “We have not successfully
rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain only to
see them reimposed at a European level.”
Why did Prime Minister David Cameron try to
change the terms of membership?
Many conservatives never reconciled with
membership in the EU, and discontent rose in
particular over immigration. The issue of migration
from within the EU is fraught, as the UK is currently
required to accept the free movement of EU citizens.
Economic migration from eastern Europe spiked after
the EU expansions of 2004 and 2007, pushing net
migration to the UK to more than three hundred
thousand people a year by 2015. Cameron called the
situation unsustainable. “It was never envisaged that
free movement would trigger quite such vast numbers
of people moving across our continent,” he said in
2015. Drawing on this anger, in 2014, the anti-EU UK
Independence Party (UKIP) surged, winning the most
votes in the UK’s elections to the European Union
parliament with an anti-immigration platform.
A wave of asylum seekers arriving from beyond the
bloc’s borders has also driven tensions. The UK is
exempt from the EU’s 2015 plans to resettle
hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees from
the Middle East and Africa, thanks to opt-outs from
EU immigration policy. But for Euroskeptics,
Brussels’s faltering response has highlighted the EU’s
dysfunction, and UK policymakers have bristled at
suggestions that EU asylum policy might be altered to
make it harder to deport migrants to other EU
countries. (Under the current system, non-EU asylum
seekers are supposed to remain in the first EU
country they enter.)
The eurozone crisis also created strains after the EU
proposed an unprecedented “fiscal compact” to
coordinate budget policy. Cameron rejected the idea
in 2012 as harmful to the UK’s financial sector and
chafed at the possibility of an additional treaty
change.
In a 2013 speech, Cameron attacked flaws in the
eurozone and what he called the EU’s excessive
bureaucracy and lack of democratic accountability.
He also promised to hold a referendum on the UK’s
EU membership if his Conservative Party won the
2015 elections, which it subsequently did.
In November 2015, Cameron announced that before
holding a referendum, he would seek EU reform in
four major areas: national sovereignty, immigration
policy, financial and economic regulation, and
competitiveness. In February 2016, EU leaders
agreed to a number of changes, including protections
for non-euro currencies within the EU, new limits on
migrants’ benefits, a commitment to reducing EU
regulation, and official recognition that the push for
“ever closer union” does not apply to the UK.
With these reforms, Cameron hoped to quell the
country’s Euroskepticism, but the specter of mass
migration, combined with several major terrorist
attacks in Europe, gave the Leave camp new
ammunition. “What he didn’t bargain for was that the
migration crisis would get very bad,” says CFR Senior
Fellow Sebastian Mallaby. EU leaders have made
clear that the subsequent Leave win invalidated the
reforms.
What happens now that the British people have
voted Leave?
The UK’s situation is unprecedented; no full member
of the EU has ever left. (Greenland, a territory of
Denmark, left in 1982.)
Under the terms of Article 50 of the 2009 Lisbon
Treaty, beginning the process of leaving the EU
required an official notification from the UK
government. This led to debate over when, or even if,
the article should be invoked, and whether the UK
Parliament could block it.
24
Prime Minister May, who won the Conservative Party
leadership race to succeed Cameron in July 2016,
made clear that “Brexit means Brexit.” However, the
British high court ruled that invoking Article 50 did
require the support of Parliament, which subsequently
voted affirmatively. May triggered Article 50 on March
29, 2017.
The treaty gives the UK a two-year window to
negotiate the terms of its withdrawal, meaning that
unless the EU were to approve an extension, the UK
will exit in March 2019, with or without a deal.
Negotiations have been extremely complex. The UK
needs to determine numerous transitional
procedures for disentangling itself from EU
regulations, settling the status of the millions of UK
citizens residing in the EU and non-UK EU citizens in
the UK, and deciding the future of UK-EU security
cooperation. The final withdrawal deal must be
approved by a supermajority of EU countries, as well
as by a majority in the European Parliament.
Separately but simultaneously, the UK is negotiating
the terms of its future association with the EU. It’s
unclear what such a relationship would look like, but
several non-EU countries offer potential models
Norway, for instance, is a part of the European
Economic Area (EEA), which gives it partial access to
the Single Market in goods and services. However, it
has no say in making EU law even though it has to
contribute to the EU budget and abide by EU
regulations. Switzerland is not part of the EEA, but it
has partial access to the Single Market through a web
of bilateral agreements that cover goods but not
services, which comprise almost 80 percent of the UK
economy. Turkey has only a customs union, meaning
a free market of goods but not services as well.
However, both Norway and Switzerland must also
accept the free movement of people from anywhere
in the EU, one of the Leave campaign’s primary
complaints.
In January 2017, May confirmed that the UK will not
remain in the Single Market or EU customs union
after Brexit. Instead, the government will pursue a
new trade agreement with the EU. May called snap
elections for June 2017 with the goal of strengthening
her parliamentary majority, and the campaign focused
heavily on the parties’ competing visions for Brexit.
The Conservatives’ platform called for withdrawing
from EU institutions, drastically reducing immigration,
and accepting that “no deal is better than a bad deal.”
The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn espoused a
more pro-EU vision for Brexit talks, remaining open to
the free movement of EU citizens and ruling out
leaving the union without first reaching a framework
agreement on the future of EU-UK relations. Corbyn
performed well enough to deny the Conservatives a
majority, weakening May’s hand in subsequent
negotiations with the EU.
By November 2018, May had reached a deal with her
EU counterparts, but it led to defections of prominent
ministers from her government and divisions among
Conservatives, who feared that the proposal
conceded too much. Prominent among their
complaints was the plan for a “backstop” that could
keep the UK in the EU customs union indefinitely,
until a solution to the Northern Ireland border issue
could be found. In January 2019, May lost a
parliamentary vote on her plan by the largest margin
of any prime minister in history. This defeat has left
several scenarios still in play: a hard, no-deal Brexit;
a renegotiated plan that could win the support of
Parliament; or, as some have proposed, a second
referendum, to avoid Brexit altogether.
What were the arguments for leaving the EU?
Reclaiming sovereignty was at the forefront of the
Leave campaign. For Leave supporters, European
institutions have changed beyond recognition since
1973, and they accuse the EU of becoming a
suffocating bureaucracy with ever-expanding
regulations. “Laws which govern citizens in this
country are decided by politicians from other nations
who we never elected and can’t throw out,” argued
Justice Minister Michael Gove.
25
Immigration was the leading complaint. The number
of EU migrants in the UK nearly tripled between 2004
and 2015, from about one million to over three million,
almost totally due to an influx of citizens from newer
members including Poland, Bulgaria, and Romania.
At the same time, terror attacks in Paris and Brussels
involving EU citizens raised fears that the free
movement of people leaves the UK vulnerable. With
over three thousand EU nationals having traveled to
Syria to fight with the self-proclaimed Islamic State,
the former head of UK intelligence, Richard Dearlove,
argued that controlling immigration would be the
primary security benefit of a Brexit. (On the contrary,
critics said Brexit would hurt intelligence cooperation.)
The immigration issue powerfully combines anxieties
over identity, economic security, and terrorism, says
Matthew Goodwin, an expert on UK politics at the
University of Kent. “The referendum is as much about
immigration as it is about Britain’s relationship with
Europe,” he says.
For some analysts, European institutions are ill-
equipped to address the economic challenges of the
modern world. Economist Roger Bootle, author of
The Trouble With Europe, argues that the EU’s focus
on “harmonization”—the continent-wide
standardization of everything from labor regulations to
the size of olive oil containers—threatens Europe with
persistent low growth and high unemployment.
Leaving will spark economic dynamism, according to
Dominic Cummings, director of the Vote Leave
campaign. The EU is “extraordinarily opaque,
extraordinarily slow, extraordinarily bureaucratic,” he
says. Leave supporters believes that without that
burden, the UK can reduce regulation, improve
competitiveness, and forge trade deals with fast-
growing emerging economies. To Cummings, the
reforms Cameron negotiated were trivial, leaving the
UK no choice but to eject from a dysfunctional union.
How has the UK benefited from membership, and
what are the risks of leaving?
The UK is highly integrated with the rest of the EU in
terms of trade, investment, migration, and financial
services (see graphic). The Remain side cautioned
against risking that relationship: Cameron warned
about a “leap into the dark,” while Finance Minister
George Osborne foresaw a “convulsive shock.”
In the days after the Brexit vote, global markets
shook. The British pound fell sharply, reaching a low
not seen in more than a century. In response, the UK
central bank unveiled a large package of stimulus
measures, including its first cut in interest rates in
more than seven years.
The long-term outlook is still uncertain. For Adam
Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for
International Economics and former voting member of
the Bank of England, the pro-Brexit camp’s economic
arguments were a “fantasy.” He argues that
immigration from the EU has driven growth and that
belonging to the EU has allowed the UK to “punch
above its weight” in trade, since the larger bloc can
negotiate more favorable market-access deals with
outside countries.
Other U.S. observers have warned that a Brexit
would damage the UK’s special relationship with the
United States. On an April 2016 state visit, President
Barack Obama argued that membership in the EU
enhances the UK’s global influence and aids U.S.
interests. But President Donald J. Trump has praised
the Brexit vote and promised a rapid start to new
trade talks between the UK and the United States.
Much will depend on the UK’s post-Brexit relationship
with the EU. Losing barrier-free access to the Single
Market, with its more than five hundred million
consumers and over $18 trillion worth of GDP, places
more pressure on UK policymakers to strike a trade
deal with the EU. Without it, UK exports would be
subject to the union’s external tariff starting in 2019.
26
Trade would suffer and some foreign investors would
likely pull out of major industries, such as the thriving
automotive sector. The UK would also be shut out of
any EU-U.S. free-trade deal (known as TTIP) and
would need to renegotiate trade access with the fifty-
three countries with which the EU currently has trade
agreements.
Particularly hard hit, argues founder of the pro-
Remain website InFacts, Hugo Dixon, will be financial
services. They currently enjoy “passporting,” meaning
UK-based financial institutions can operate freely
anywhere in the EU. If that is lost, many firms are
likely to move their offices—and jobs—out of the UK
to elsewhere in Europe.
How could the Leave vote affect the rest of
Europe?
The most immediate consequence could be the
breakup of the UK itself. Scotland, which held an
unsuccessful independence referendum in 2014,
voted to remain in the EU. In March 2017, Scotland’s
first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, proposed a new
referendum, arguing that the largely pro-Remain
citizens of Scotland deserve a choice over whether to
remain in the EU by leaving the UK. However, Prime
Minister May rejected such a vote, which must be
approved by London.
Ireland, too, will face a dilemma; it is strongly
committed to the EU but economically intertwined
with the UK. Ireland’s government has also warned
that a Brexit could upend Northern Ireland’s peace
settlement and complicate border between Ireland
and Northern Ireland. Some analysts say that the
potential Conservative coalition with the Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP), a party from Northern Ireland
devoted to maintaining union with the United
Kingdom, could push the issue of the Irish land
border to the forefront of negotiations.
Elsewhere, Brexit may embolden Euroskeptics by
providing a “template” for leaving, says CFR’s
Mallaby. “The younger generation of Italians,
Portuguese, and Greeks associate membership of
the eurozone, and, by extension, the European
Union, with a terrible depression,” he says. That has
translated into electoral gains for anti-EU parties,
such as France’s National Front, Germany’s
Alternative für Deutschland, and Hungary’s Jobbik.
Polling has repeatedly found that a majority of French
citizens want their own EU referendum, though the
May 2017 French presidential elections gave the pro-
EU Emmanuel Macron a resounding victory over
Euroskeptic Marine Le Pen.
McBride, J "What Brexit Means", Council for Foreign Relations, Accessed 11/1/19,
www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-brexit-means
27
The ultimate fear around the continent is that Brexit
could unravel the rest of the EU, especially if the UK
economy performs well in its aftermath. Even barring
that, Brexit will be a heavy blow to a union that has
struggled to maintain a united front maintaining
sanctions on Russia and managing the
unprecedented wave of migrants. And, in the wake of
2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, when France invoked
the EU’s mutual defense clause for the first time,
Brexit threatens to end Europe’s hopes for a truly
common security and defense policy once and for all.
Is State Sovereignty At Risk In Our Modern Society?
The signing of the treaties of Westphalia in 1648
significantly changed the nature of international
relations since it illustrated the beginning of two
important principles: state sovereignty as well as the
notion of non-interference. The treaties built on the
1933 Montevideo Convention, which had suggested
these principles, mainly through its definition of the
state, a territory that is defined by its undisputable
sovereignty. That same point was also built into the
United Nations’ (UN) charter which says that “the
Organization’s foundation depends on the equal
sovereignty of all its members.” As such, state
sovereignty has been an undeniable pillar of
international relations for decades and it is still
essential the international community nowadays.
But it is becoming more and more common to find
limitations to state sovereignty in the contemporary
world, in part due to globalization. This phenomenon
has now reached all four corners of the globe, which
leads to the interconnection of international actors
compared to the Westphalian era. Consequently,
interstate relations alone are not enough to
characterize international relations anymore.
Unprecedented links between citizens of all over the
world are developing and adding itself to the layers of
interstate relations in the sense that nations’ citizens
can communicate and share information like never
before — mainly through the use of the Internet but
additionally fueled by an incessant global media
coverage.
We are also witnessing an outbreak of Non-
Governmental Organizations (NGOs) taking over
state responsibilities and acting as international
organizations much like the UN or the International
Court of Justice attempted to do in the 20th century,
mainly through their desire and ability to ensure
fundamental rights within countries. And finally,
international corporations see their power grow
through offering services until now reserved to nation-
states such as health services and communications.
These three points can lead to the following question:
to what extent international private actors such as
NGOs, medias and corporations put state sovereignty
at risk?
28
In Ted Levitt’s 1983 essay entitled The Globalization
of Markets, the author explains that — in the context
of globalization — companies are moving away from
offering personalized goods and are now
manufacturing “(…) globally standardized products
that are advanced, functional, reliable—and low
priced.” That mass production state of mind leads to
Levitt’s notion that “(…) only global companies will
achieve long-term success by concentrating on what
everyone wants (…)”, hence the necessity of a mass
production chain. To Levitt’s mind, companies will
also use technology as a means to efficiently
penetrate globalized markets. By securing their place
within globalization, it will enable companies to
provide the optimal standardized products, “(…)
achieving for itself vastly expanded markets and
profits.” Although Levitt published his essay 35 years
ago, his ideas apply almost eerily to our consumerist
and globalized societies across the world. Global
companies’ marketing strategy as developed by Levitt
can be applied aptly to international companies such
as Facebook and Google and their way of penetrating
the Indian market.
According to the Courrier International’s article The
Silicon Valley Is Taking Over the World[1], Google
and Facebook’s directors expressed their willingness
to offer Internet to the Indian people for seemingly
selfless reasons: “to reduce poverty, to improve
education and to create jobs”. Insuring decent access
to education and employment represent fields
traditionally guaranteed by the state, but are here
used by both multinationals in order to legitimize their
will of penetrating the Indian market. They are thus
infringing upon state responsibilities, which perhaps
represents a threat to the Indian government. Indeed,
if private companies can offer job growth and a better
education, what core missions are left to the state?
How can its sovereignty stand if it cannot solve
problems inherent to all nation-states? Indeed, the
“GAFA” companies (Google, Apple, Facebook and
Amazon) are overstepping on the goals of even the
UN as the organization wishes to achieve a global
access to the Internet here by 2030.
 In spite Facebook’s efforts, the Indian government
didn’t agree to the company’s offer since it didn’t,
according to several NGOs, follow the principle of
Internet neutrality. The company wished to implant a
Free Basics Internet plan that would grant free
Internet access to the Indian population but for
preselected websites only; NGOs concluded that the
offer did not respect the notion of Internet neutrality,
where the Internet is fully accessible in its entirety
and under the same conditions for all people. In
response, Facebook put in place a marketing
campaign in India in order to sway popular opinion
against the decision of the Indian government.
Billboards were put up across the country and the
company started a petition. Mark Zuckergburg even
wrote a compelling piece published in Times of India
asserting that “In every society, there are certain
basic services that are so important for people’s
wellbeing that we expect everyone to be able to
access them freely.”
If the government is not capable of offering basic
services to its population, shouldn’t it accept the help
of external actors? To insure the comfort of its
population and the growth of its country, it should.
Even though the traditional definition of state
sovereignty does not completely apply to the modern
world we live in, it gives us a chance to redefine it.
Moreover, states should accept working with outside
partners in order to implement new ways of offering
services to its population if needs be. It can be a first
step to creating a more relevant form of government
suited to twenty-first century politics.

Valentin, M "Is State Sovereignty At Risk In Our Modern Society?", International Association for Political
Science Students, Accessed 17/5/19, www.iapss.org/2018/02/28/is-state-sovereignty-at-risk-in-our-modern-
society/

29
Article 50 ruling shows the ECJ respects sovereignty more
than UK govt does
Today's ruling by the European Court of Justice (ECJ)
found that the UK could unilaterally decide to revoke
Article 50 if it wanted to. It is a game-changing
moment. It means we can stay in the EU on our
current terms - including the rebate and guarantees
against the euro. It means that we do not need the
agreement of other member states. We can make the
decision on our own. We are, even now, in charge of
our own destiny.
The ruling provides a moment of decisive political
drama which could sharpen the minds of MPs as they
come to vote on Theresa May's deal tomorrow and
then, more importantly, decide what to do in the wake
of its seemingly inevitable defeat. But it does
something else too. It shows that EU legal decisions
take firm account of sovereignty, in a manner which
the UK government often ignores.
The British government fought this case tooth-and-
nail. First it tried to appeal at the Supreme Court, then
it was fighting it in Europe. While it has been careful
not to mention the case in public, in private it has
deploying a frenzied and panicked legal attack.
It is a quite extraordinary thing for them to have done.
This was a British government spending British
taxpayers' cash on trying to limit our own national
sovereignty. They were trying to escape a clear
statement about the powers held by the British
parliament, simply because that power happened to
entail unilateral revocation of Article 50.
We don't often see such mountainous levels of self-
harm from a national government. In any normal
scenario we'd expect them to direct legal funds into
expanding British sovereignty, not trying to limit it. But
these are not normal times. Everything is framed
through the spectrum of the people's will. Everything
is culture war, at any cost, even if it involves limiting
your own room to manoeuvre in high-stakes
negotiations.
Dunt, I, "Article 50 ruling shows the ECJ respects sovereignty more than UK govt does", Politics.co.uk,
10/12/18, www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2018/12/10/article-50-ruling-shows-the-ecj-respects-sovereignty-more-th
30
Instead, it is left to the hated ECJ, whose removal
from British political life is considered a sacrosanct
red line in Brexit negotiations, to stand up for the UK's
freedom.
This decision is framed by concerns about British
sovereignty. It is baked-in to the argument. If the
Brexiters cared about the rhetoric they espoused at
the referendum they would pay careful attention to it.
But they don't. So they won't.
As the advocate general argued last week, the case
is basically about deciding something which has not
yet been written into law. Article 50 said how a state
could leave the EU, but there was no following article
stating what happened if they changed their mind.
So they looked at what Article 50 intended to do and
decided to answer the question by following those
same principles. They concluded it did two things.
Firstly, it allowed states the sovereign right to leave
the EU if they wished. And second it created the
conditions for that withdrawal to be orderly. This
meant that any decision to cancel Article 50 should
follow the same principles.
"The sovereign nature of the right of withdrawal…
supports the conclusion that the member state
concerned has a right to revoke the notification of its
intention to withdraw," the ruling reads.
"Given that a state cannot be forced to accede to the
European Union against its will, neither can it be
forced to withdraw from the European Union against
its will."
The European Council and Commission had been
wary of this judgement. They felt troublesome
member states, like Hungary, would be able to use it
to knock the system about, by first triggering Article
50 and then revoking it, then perhaps doing so again.
They wanted the Council to have to give unanimous
approval to a British request for cancellation.
China's 'Sovereign Internet'
A new report in People’s Daily interviewed five
Chinese experts on Internet security and political
thought, including Fang Binxing (credited with
creating China’s “Great Firewall”). The report focuses
on the idea of “Internet sovereignty” — the idea that
each country has the right to control its domestic
internet space. Yet by moving from a discussion of
China’s rights to talk of international law, the report
moves beyond a defense of China’s internet
censorship to outlining China’s vision for global
internet governance.
The idea of China’s “Internet sovereignty” is a high-
profile resurrection of a concept first rolled out in a
2010 white paper called “The Internet in China.” The
white paper explained the “Internet sovereignty of
China” as meaning that “within Chinese territory the
Internet is under the jurisdiction of Chinese
sovereignty.” All persons and organizations operating
within Chinese territory are expected to follow China’s
Internet laws and regulations, the white paper said.
In an interview with New Yorker’s Evan Osnos at the
time, Columbia University professor Tim Wu noted
that China’s idea of “Internet sovereignty” was simply
“a statement of private international law as typically
practiced.” Most countries, Wu noted, have decided
that the Internet is subject to national laws. The
difference between China and the rest of the world,
according to Wu, was simply one of scale: “Other
countries, if they don’t consider the Internet
sovereign, have a certain respect for the network as a
platform for free speech … Again this varies from
place to place, but China is unique in its lack of
respect for the idea of an open Internet.”
Thus, among China’s rules and regulations for the
Internet are typical prohibitions against “divulging
state secrets” and “subverting state power” as well as
more unique bans on “damaging state honor,”
“propagating heretical or superstitious ideas,”
“spreading rumors [and] disrupting social order and
stability.” These rules were lumped into the category
of “internet security,” equating these actions to
hacking and other forms of cyber crime.
31
The People’s Daily article seeks to argue not only that
China has the right to set up its own rules and
regulations for the Internet, but that an international
consensus should be reached to recognize this right.
The article begins by noting that, in the Internet age,
China now has “information borders” in addition to
traditional sovereignty over land, air, and sea. The
report argues that each country has a right to
strengthen control over its own domestic Internet, and
that such actions will help safeguard order and
stability on the global Internet system.
In the interview with People’s Daily, Fang Binxing
pointed to a 2013 report from a UN-commissioned
group of experts on information security. That report
noted that “state sovereignty and international norms
and principles that flow from sovereignty apply to
State conduct of ICT [information and communication
technologies]-related activities, and to their
jurisdiction over ICT infrastructure within their
territory.” Fang argued that this statement proves the
UN has already accepted China’s idea of “Internet
sovereignty.”
Fang made no mention of the next item in the UN
report, which requires that “state efforts to address
the security of ICTs must go hand-in-hand with
respect for human rights and fundamental freedom
set forth in the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.” The juxtaposition of these two points in the
UN report outlines the basic difference between
China’s concept of the Internet and the Western
concept: is cyberspace entirely made up of domestic
spheres, each under a different country’s sovereign
rule, or is the Internet as a whole subject to
international rule in the name of “universal values”?
People’s Daily argues for the former approach.
Thus Wang suggests that each country can control
these physical aspects of cyber space and “other
countries have no right to interfere.”

Yet even while holding that “Internet sovereignty” is

immune to external interference, the People’s Daily
article acknowledged the importance of international
consensus on defining cyberspace boundaries and
rules of conduct. Currently, disagreements between
countries are a major barrier to defining boundaries
and implementing control of cyberspace, Wang
Xiaofeng of Fudan University’s Center for America
Studies said. Lang Ping of the Chinese Academy of
Social Sciences noted that no country can
independently face the challenges posed by
cyberspace.

Tiezzi, S, "China's 'Sovereign Internet'", The Diplomat, 24/6/14, www.thediplomat.com/2014/06/chinas-

sovereign-internet/

32
legitimacy
Legitimacy refers to an actor or an action being commonly considered
acceptable and provides the fundamental basis or rationale for all forms of
governance and other ways of exercising power over others. The most
accepted contemporary source of legitimacy in a state is some form of
democracy or constitutionalism whereby the governed have a defined and
periodical opportunity to choose who they wish to exercise power over them.
Other sources of legitimacy are suggested in states in which such an
opportunity does not exist. Within any proposed overall framework of
legitimacy, individual actions by a state can be considered more or less
legitimate. Other actors of global politics and their actions can also be
evaluated from the perspective of legitimacy.

Africa’s ‘Leaders for Life’ 34

Who Is Venezuela’s Legitimate President? A Messy 38

Dispute, Explained

The Chinese Communist Party and Legitimacy 41

The EU’s ‘legitimacy deficit’ 43

33
Africa’s ‘Leaders for Life’
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to many of the world’s
longest-ruling heads of state. Some postcolonial
leaders in the 1960s and 1970s sought to become
“president for life,” with several managing to remain in
power for three or more terms. By the turn of the
twenty-first century, the trend of entrenched
leadership had spread across the region, spurring
corruption, instability, societal fractures, and
economic stagnation. But the trend may be reversing,
in part due to sustained pressure by civil society
groups and regional blocs.
How prevalent is this trend?
Many African countries struggled with transfers of
power in their first half century after independence.
Leaders who gained recognition during national
movements for independence consolidated power
and bound their own positions in office with their
countries’ national identities. By early 2019, three
African heads of state had been in power for more
than three decades each: Teodoro Obiang Nguema
Mbasogo in Equatorial Guinea, Paul Biya in
Cameroon, and Yoweri Museveni in Uganda. More
than a dozen other African heads of state have been
in power for at least ten years. In August 2017,
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos stepped
down after thirty-eight years in office, and in
November of that year, Zimbabwean President
Robert Mugabe was forced from office after thirty-
seven years by a military coup. In 2019, Sudan’s
Omar al-Bashir was ousted after three decades in
power.
Military coups were once common as a means to
seize power, with both Mbasogo and Museveni
entering their presidencies this way. They have
declined during the last two decades; there were
twenty-seven successful coups from 1970 to 1982,
but only twelve from 2000 to 2012.
What has been its impact on growth and stability?
Strong correlations exist between sub-Saharan
Africa’s entrenched leadership and its developmental
and security challenges, including conflict or
instability, stagnant or declining economies, and
democratic backsliding. The Economist’s 2018
Democracy Index finds that more than twenty
countries in sub-Saharan Africa have authoritarian
governments. Prominent examples include:
34
Zimbabwe. Once one of the continent’s richest
nations, Zimbabwe tumbled under Mugabe to a place
of chronic underdevelopment with a long-struggling
economy. Mugabe’s alleged misuse of federal
funds has been linked to underfunded and
dysfunctional government departments and
programs. In the wake of a slew of constitutional
amendments granting Mugabe broad power, the
country experienced drops [PDF] in life expectancy
and per capita income between 1990 and 2005.
Economic instability has continued under Mugabe’s
successor, Emmerson Mnangagwa, with a severe
currency crisis prompting widespread protests in early
2018.
Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Under the
three-decade-long dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko,
the DRC suffered from gross corruption,
embezzlement, and neglect of public infrastructure.
An economy based almost exclusively on mineral
extraction deteriorated as Mobutu forced out foreign-
owned companies and embezzled government funds.
Laurent Kabila overthrew Mobutu in 1997 but was
assassinated in 2001; his son, Joseph, succeeded
him, amassing a fortune by stealing state funds and
effectively disregarding the provision of public
services. A war in the country’s east, considered the
world’s deadliest conflict since World War II,
continued under his presidency. Kabila stepped down
after a December 2018 election, two years after his
mandate was set to end, though election observers
and many opposition leaders questioned the vote’s
legitimacy.
Sudan. Omar al-Bashir came to power in a 1989
military coup that ousted the democratically elected
prime minister. He remained in office despite
allegations by international and domestic observers of
widespread electoral irregularities and fraud. He
presided over a decades-long civil war that ended
with the south seceding to become the new state of
South Sudan in 2011. Bashir was indicted by the
International Criminal Court in 2009 on charges of
war crimes and crimes against humanity for
involvement in attacks on civilians in Darfur.
Following months of protests sparked by the rising
price of bread, the armed forces pushed Bashir out in
April 2019 and established a transitional military
council.
Rights abuses in the countries with the longest-
serving leaders have included secret or arbitrary
arrests and detentions, tight restrictions on freedom
of expression, and police brutality, according to
monitoring groups. Human Rights Watch reported
that the humanitarian situation in Burundi “remains
dire” nearly four years after President Pierre
Nkurunziza’s decision to run for a third term sparked
mass protests. It accused the security services and
the ruling party’s youth league of widespread abuses
ahead of a May 2018 referendum to lengthen
presidential terms.
Why has the problem persisted?
Leaders are increasingly securing longer terms
through “constitutional coups,” proposing
amendments for approval by the legislature or
judiciary, or in national referenda, that allow for
additional terms in office. This practice grew more
frequent after 2000, when many postcolonial leaders
were nearing the ends of their constitutional term
limits.
Since then, at least seventeen heads of state have
tried to remain in power by tweaking their countries’
constitutions. Namibian President Sam Nujoma did so
in 1998, followed by Gnassingbe Eyadema, the
president of Togo, in 2002. One year later, the
Gabonese parliament voted to remove term limits
from its constitution, allowing President Omar Bongo
to run for a sixth term. Following these initial
instances, attempts to extend terms became fairly
regular occurrences, popping up every one to two
years on the continent in countries including Angola,
Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Chad, Djibouti,
Equatorial Guinea, Guinea, Niger, Nigeria, the
Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Senegal, Sudan, and
Uganda.
Angola’s dos Santos and former Senegalese
President Abdoulaye Wade, among others, claimed
they were eligible to run for additional terms because
the constitutions containing term limits were passed
during their mandates; they argued the limits should
only apply to future presidential terms.
35
Angola’s dos Santos and former Senegalese
President Abdoulaye Wade, among others, claimed
they were eligible to run for additional terms because
the constitutions containing term limits were passed
during their mandates; they argued the limits should
only apply to future presidential terms.
Many experts say that countries lacking an effective
political opposition are vulnerable to constitutional
coups. Though several countries across sub-Saharan
Africa tout themselves as multiparty states, some,
including Cameroon and Rwanda, remain de facto
one-party states. Rwanda’s Paul Kagame, who has
effectively been the country’s leader since
1994, secured another seven-year term in August
2017, with the electoral commission reporting he had
the support of almost 99 percent of voters.
“Executives are able to act with impunity because
there is no strong, organized opposition to challenge
entrenched incumbents and push them toward a
genuine political opening,” American University’s
Adrienne LeBas writes of these countries.
Kleptocratic incumbents have even more incentives
to stay in office; they could lose their wealth if they
were to lose power and potentially face prosecution.
The network of businesses that Kabila and his family
have built in and beyond the DRC has brought them
hundreds of millions of dollars. Angola’s dos Santos
was long accused of funneling government funds to a
small group of elites, as well as to his own family. His
daughter Isabel, the wealthiest woman on the
continent, was named head of the state oil company
by her father in late 2016.
“Very few African countries—in fact almost none—
have any kind of pension or security scheme for
former presidents or heads of state. So out of power
means out of money,” Anneke Van Woudenberg,
then Human Rights Watch’s deputy director for
Africa, told Newsweek. Dos Santos’s successor,
former Defense Minister Joao Lourenco, pledged
to crack down on corruption; he removed Isabel dos
Santos from the national oil company, and her
brother, Jose Filomeno dos Santos, as chair of the
country’s sovereign wealth fund.
Mugabe has called the push for term limits a Western
attempt to “place a yoke around the necks of African
leaders,” and some politicians who concur with him
point to Western democracies, including the United
Kingdom and Canada, that have no such provisions.
When have leaders failed to extend their rule?
Zambian President Frederick Chiluba’s and Malawian
President Bakili Muluzi’s proposals to raise
presidential term limits in 2001 and 2003,
respectively, were stopped after opposition and civil
society groups formed alliances with lawmakers from
the countries’ ruling parties. In 2006, Nigeria’s senate
rejected an amendment put forth by President
Olusegun Obasanjo that would have allowed him to
serve a third term.
Citizens have often opposed constitutional coup
attempts through protest, at times successfully
blocking them. In 2012, large protests in Senegal led
to an electoral defeat for Wade, who was running for
a disputed third term. After weeks of demonstrations
in October 2014, Burkinabe citizens stopped Blaise
Compaore from repealing the constitutional provision
on term limits and forced his resignation. Polling by
Afrobarometer found that roughly 75 percent of
citizens surveyed in thirty-four African countries
between 2011 and 2013 believed leaders should be
limited to two terms in office.
Gambia’s small size and geography conspired
against former President Yahya Jammeh, who ruled
from 1994 until his ouster in 2017, argues Virginia
Comolli, a senior fellow at the International Institute
for Strategic Studies. The country is surrounded by
Senegal, which supported opposition candidate and
election winner Adama Barrow.
How have regional and international actors
responded?
The African Union (AU), which has prevented some
military coups by threatening countries with
suspension, sanctions, or military intervention, has
been criticized for not taking similar actions against
attempts at extending presidential terms.
36
In 2012, the AU ratified the African Charter on
Democracy, Elections and Governance [PDF], which
calls on its member states to identify illegal means of
accessing power or staying in office, including
refusals “to relinquish power after free, fair, and
transparent elections” and constitutional amendments
that infringe upon “the principles of democratic
changes of power,” and sanction those responsible.
In January 2017, the AU stated it would not recognize
Jammeh, who lost the 2016 election but nonetheless
attempted to stay on.
The West African bloc ECOWAS has also become
active in some cases. A military offensive by
ECOWAS troops forced Jammeh to step down and
leave the country. The body often deploys observers
to help ensure free and fair elections in the region; in
2019 it sent observers to Nigeria and Senegal.
ECOWAS leaders discussed a proposal to ban
presidents from seeking third terms at a 2015
regional summit, but the bloc postponed a
decision due to opposition from Togo and Gambia.
The United Nations and European Union have
imposed sanctions on several African countries,
including Burundi, the DRC, and Zimbabwe, in
response to impeded political transitions or fair
elections. The United Nations endorsed ECOWAS
military action in Gambia and threatened sanctions if
Jammeh refused to leave. Millions in EU development
aid to Gambia was frozen in December 2014 due to
human rights concerns under Jammeh; following
Jammeh’s departure, the bloc released the funds.
What is U.S. policy toward extended mandates?
Democracy promotion has long been a U.S. priority in
the region. President Barack Obama said in a 2012
brief on U.S. strategy in sub-Saharan Africa that the
United States would “not stand idly by when actors
threaten legitimately elected governments or
manipulate the fairness and integrity of democratic
processes.” In an address to AU leaders three years
later, Obama urged the body to ensure that heads of
state comply with term limits.
It remains to be seen how closely President Donald J. At the same time, analysts contend that the United
Trump will adhere to that precedent. His States has often prioritized security interests over
administration has said it will not “subsidize corrupt concerns about prolonged rule. Washington has
leaders and abusers of human rights” on the chosen not to penalize long-serving leaders of
continent, but a new Africa strategy outlined in late partners, such as Cameroon, Chad, and Uganda.
2018 marked a shift in priority from democracy And in the DRC, CFR’s Michelle D. Gavin points out,
advancement to countering China and Russia in the Washington accepted disputed 2018 election results
region. to avoid further instability. The U.S. military trains
partner nations’ military forces, shares intelligence
The United States has imposed economic sanctions, with them, and helps their troops combat Islamist
including bans on travel to the United States and rebel groups on the continent, including al-Shabab in
business transactions with U.S. nationals, on Kenya and Somalia and Boko Haram in Nigeria.
individuals who “undermine democratic processes.”
The United States issued sanctions against Mugabe
and other Zimbabwean officials in 2003. The Obama
and Trump administrations have sanctioned top
officials from the DRC since Kabila refused to
schedule an election in late 2016. Ahead of Nigeria’s
2019 election, the United States and United Kingdom
jointly announced they would deny visas to Nigerians
involved in vote rigging or electoral violence.

Felter, C "Africa's Leaders for Life", Council for Foreign Relations, 29/4/19, www.cfr.org/backgrounder/africas-
leaders-life

37
Who Is Venezuela’s Legitimate President? A Messy Dispute,
Explained
Venezuela’s crisis has raised questions that could
determine the country’s future — and that a far-off
news reader could be forgiven for finding confusing.
Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader, has declared that
President Nicolás Maduro is illegitimate and has
asserted himself as Venezuela’s interim president.
So who is the legitimate leader, how can we tell and
who gets to decide?
The United States and several countries in Latin
America and Europe have recognized Mr. Guaidó as
the rightful leader, and he has called on the military to
withdraw its support for Mr. Maduro.
But would elevating Mr. Guaidó constitute a
democratic transition or a coup?
The answers to these questions, though urgently
important, are not at all straightforward. Here is some
help in trying to think them through.
Who is more legitimate, Mr. Maduro or Mr.
Guaidó?
There is no one litmus test for political legitimacy,
which can come from a few different sources. Both
Mr. Maduro and Mr. Guaidó have debatable claims to
legitimacy, which is part of what makes this so
messy.
Calling a leader “legitimate” does not mean that he or
she is popular, successful or morally upstanding. It
simply means that citizens, political elites and foreign
governments recognize the leader’s rightful authority.
So when a leader takes power and is initially treated
as legitimate — and Mr. Maduro was generally
accepted when he took office in 2013 — it’s very
difficult for him or her to lose it.
But Mr. Maduro has seen his sources of legitimacy
weaken.
38
Protesters filled the streets of Caracas, the
Venezuelan capital, last week to denounce him as
illegitimate. Still, even 300,000 protesters would
constitute only about 1 percent of the population. Mr.
Maduro is thought to retain some support, particularly
among the poor.
Many of Venezuela’s neighbors have dropped their
recognition of Mr. Maduro, as have the United States
and Britain, Canada, France, Germany and Spain,
among other nations. If Mr. Maduro cannot represent
himself as legitimate abroad, then he will look less
legitimate at home, which invites citizens and political
officials to reject him as well.
The weakest point in Mr. Maduro’s popular legitimacy
may be his 2018 re-election victory, which was widely
disputed amid fraud allegations that suggest he might
not actually have the popular support to act as
president.
But plenty of world leaders steal elections and are still
treated by their citizens, however grudgingly, as
legitimate.
So whether or not the allegations of a rigged election
render Mr. Maduro illegitimate is not ultimately up to
election monitors. It’s up to Venezuelan citizens and
political officials, who collectively confer legitimacy on
Mr. Maduro by continuing to treat him as president —
or not.
Mr. Maduro’s legitimacy has another weak point: the
political institutions that hold him in power. After the
opposition won the legislature in 2015, Mr. Maduro’s
allies stacked the Supreme Court with loyalists. In
2017, Mr. Maduro created a second legislature, which
was filled with loyalists in elections widely condemned
as fraudulent. The new, loyalist-controlled legislature
then stripped the opposition-controlled legislature of
its powers.
If Venezuelan citizens and political elites come to
treat those Maduro-allied institutions as illegitimate,
then his own legitimacy suffers.
Mr. Guaidó’s claims to legitimacy are imperfect as
well.
He has argued that Mr. Maduro’s disputed re-election
victory left the presidency technically empty,
triggering a rule that allows for Mr. Guaidó, as head of
the National Assembly, to be sworn in as interim
leader.
That only makes Mr. Guaidó legitimate if he can
convince enough citizens, political elites and foreign
governments to treat him as such.
It’s not the world’s easiest sell. Mr. Guaidó’s claim
derives from a creative interpretation of a
constitutional provision, rather than from popular will
or the due process of the law. It’s mostly a claim
about the weakness of Mr. Maduro’s legitimacy rather
than the strength of his own.
Mr. Guaidó’s apparent hope is that he can rally
enough protesters — and win over enough political
elites and foreign governments — to convince the
country’s military, or even Mr. Maduro’s own
government, that they will all be better off installing
Mr. Guaidó.
That is why Mr. Guaidó is so focused on the issue of
legitimacy. Not as a way to appeal to the democratic
ideals of Venezuelan generals and elites. But as a
way to convince those power brokers that, if they put
him in office, he would be accepted at home and
abroad — and finally return stability.
Would Mr. Guaidó taking power constitute a
coup?
In practice, the answer largely depends on whether or
not Venezuelans and foreign governments choose to
see Mr. Guaidó’s ascent as legitimate.
Think about the 2011 Egyptian revolution, which was
widely accepted as a legitimate change of
government. Though protesters initiated the
movement calling for President Hosni Mubarak to
step down, it was the generals who removed him and
installed themselves as interim leaders.
39
Coup leaders, who tend to strike amid unrest, almost
always claim to be serving the will of the people. That
doesn’t make Egypt’s generals wrong about having
popular support. But it exposes an uncomfortable
truth: the line between coups and revolutions is often
a matter of perception.
This doesn’t make the distinction meaningless, just
subjective, determined by whether citizens and
governments see the change in power as reflecting
their wishes.
If Venezuelans believe that Mr. Guaidó does not have
a popular mandate to take power, his installation
would be seen as subverting popular will and
therefore a coup.
But if they believe Mr. Guaidó has a popular
mandate, then even if he is installed by a handful of
generals, his ascent would likely be seen as reflecting
popular will and therefore legitimate.
If that feels like a low bar for legitimizing a coup, then
Mr. Maduro has only himself to blame.
If Venezuela’s elections were seen as free and fair,
then that would be the only legitimate way to change
the government. It’s only because their legitimacy has
been widely questioned in recent years that Mr.
Guaidó and his foreign backers can claim that forcing
out Mr. Maduro would serve democracy.
Does the United States recognizing Mr. Guaidó
constitute a coup?
Countries will sometimes revoke their recognition of a
leader who loses an election but refuses to step
down. Or a leader who loses the ability to govern.
After Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian leader, massacred
protesters and lost control of much of the military,
many foreign leaders declared him no longer
legitimate.
This sort of revocation is usually couched as
reflecting the will of the people. But it is often also
intended to help push that leader out.
It’s a signal to the leader and his or her supporters: If
you stay in office, we won’t deal with you, making it
harder for you to rule. It’s also a signal to the
country’s citizens, political elites and its military: If you
push out this leader, we won’t object.
If that helps to take down a despot who is widely seen
as illegitimate and helps create the conditions for
democracy, it can serve legitimate democratic rule.
But if it promotes American interests at the cost of
popular will — as the United States did in supporting
coups in Iran in 1953 and Chile in 1973 — then it is
tantamount to participating in an illegitimate coup.
Venezuela is a difficult case because Mr. Maduro’s
legitimacy is contested within his country. If you see
him as illegitimate, then the American policy seems to
advance Venezuelans’ democratic rights to elect their
own leader. If you see him as still legitimate, then the
United States is arguably subverting Venezuelan
democracy.
Fisher, M, "Who Is Venezuela’s Legitimate President? A Messy Dispute, Explained", New York Times,,
4/2/19, www.nytimes.com/2019/02/04/world/americas/venezuela-maduro-guaido-legitimate.html
40
The Trump administration’s record hurts its claims to
be acting in support of Venezuelan democracy. It has
been so vehement in its opposition to Mr. Maduro’s
government, and so bellicose about supporting
regime change in Venezuela and elsewhere, that its
motives are not seen as particularly benign or
democratic.
And the United States has a long history of
encouraging or conducting coups in Latin America.
This does not mean that any political transition
endorsed by the Trump administration is necessarily
a coup. Nor does it make Mr. Guaidó an American
puppet.
But keep in mind that the legitimacy of any transition
is a matter of perception, and that perceptions in
Venezuela right now are divided. The Trump
administration’s eagerness to remove Mr. Maduro
could hurt the legitimacy of any new Venezuelan
government, regardless of how it comes about.
The Chinese Communist Party and Legitimacy
Earlier in September, Wang Qishan, Chinese
President Xi Jinping’s de facto right hand man, openly
discussed the question of the Chinese Communist
Party’s (CCP) legitimacy at the “Party and the World
Dialogue 2015” conference in Beijing, China’s capital.
“The CCP’s legitimacy lies in history and popular
support from the people. The Party is the choice by
the people,” Wang said to more than 60 politicians
and academics from home and abroad, including
former South African President Thabo Mbeki and
former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Chinese senior cadres have long blocked public
mention of the party’s legitimacy, especially by high-
ranking officials. Yet, private discussion and
academic studies on this subject have actually
intensified in recent years among scholars and
policymakers. Why the sudden mention of legitimacy
in public? How is the issue of legitimacy laid out in
Chinese official discourse?
The most obvious and perhaps oxymoronic
explanation why someone like Wang, a member of
the CCP’s Politburo, would raise the topic in public is
that they have to. Sixty-six years after it came into
power, the CCP is no longer a revolutionary party (ge
ming dang) but a governing party (zhi zheng dang).
German sociologist Max Weber concluded that
political legitimacy may derive from tradition,
charisma, and legality or rationality. Although these
are simplified ideal types, Weber’s theory of
legitimacy nonetheless provides a useful framework
within which to answer why the CCP has decided to
bring up its legitimacy issue in a seemingly sudden
way.
For a long time before and after it became the ruling
party of the People’s Republic of China, the CCP did
not need to and in fact could not talk about seeking
legitimacy from the people because of Marxist
ideology that emphasized the centrality and vitality of
class struggle. Its legitimacy was thus ratified not by
ballot but by people’s voluntary cooperation and
participation in massive political and social
movements.
41
As a revolutionary party, the CCP only claimed to be
the party of the workers and peasants. Its basis for
legitimacy came from a system of majority tyranny
supported by these social classes, or, as Mao
Zedong famously put it, “Political power grows out of
the barrel of a gun.” While Mao is still frequently
brought up and worshipped by the Party as a “great
patriot and national hero,” his influence is and
probably will not ever be as large as that before 1978,
when the Party’s legitimacy was, consciously or
unconsciously, based on the charisma of the leader.
Not only was Mao seen as the one man who
possessed the right to lead by virtue of power and
heroism, his thoughts were considered as “invincible.”
The appeal to class struggle and ideology, however,
soon failed as a source of legitimacy and led to the
chaotic Cultural Revolution. It was then that Deng
Xiaoping and his successors began to put seeking
legitimacy from a wider social base on the party
agenda. The Party has used two main sources to
claim its legitimacy: history, or what Max Weber
defined as “traditional authority,” and
developmentalism, or as some refer to as the so-
called “East Asian Model.” Wang’s speech, though a
rare public mention of legitimacy, resonates with the
official Party rhetoric; that is, the CCP is legitimate
because it has always existed. In addition,
authoritarian regimes are usually headed by a strong
man who is determined and able to justify most
political repression by promises of economic success
that benefits a majority of the dominated.
Take South Korea. While many criticize the late
President Park Chung-hee as dictator, Park turns out
to be South Koreans’ most popular president ever.
Under his rule, South Korea, once occupied by Japan
during World World II and devastated by the Korean
War in the 1950s, was transformed into one of the
most developed countries in East Asia and the world.
Or a more recent case: Singapore, whose 2015
general elections came just two days after Wang
Qishan’s speech.
 Contrary to what most Western scholars and media
predicted, Singaporeans handed the ruling People’s
Action Party (PAP) a sweeping victory, with 83 of the
89 seats in parliament, while the opposition Workers’
Party winning just six seats. Some analysis
suggested one reason for the surprise result were
Singaporeans’ feelings of nostalgia for Lee Kuan
Yew, Singapore’s founding father who died earlier
this year. Lee’s iron-fisted political rule, pro-business,
anti-corruption approach to government helped
transform Singapore into one of the wealthiest
countries it is today. Chinese analysts and party
schools have long looked to Singapore’s governance
and political model to justify authoritarianism and the
CCP’s one-party rule. One of the frequent references
they turn to is Singapore. Soon The Beijing-based
newspaper Global Times, one of the CCP’s
mouthpieces, was quick to describe the Singaporean
election as a robust victory for the PAP after the
passing of Lee Kuan Yew, citing PAP’s economic
success.
This is not to say authoritarian regimes boasting
strong leadership traditions and economic success
are immune to legitimacy issues. In fact, legitimacy
crises is more evident than ever in most authoritarian
countries. With the death of Lee Kuan Yew, the
apogee of strong-man politics that began in the 1960s
has passed. Facing a more confident and contentious
public, these regimes had only economic
performance to justify their authorities. And when the
“economic miracle” gradually loses its magic power,
accompanied by growing social inequality, that
legitimacy weakens. The PAP in Singapore may have
won a resounding victory in the recent elections, but it
has had to move rapidly to respond to growing
complaints from Singaporeans.
This potential legitimacy crisis also explains why the
CCP would rather take the risk of raising its
legitimacy in public than passively wait for others to
define for it.
Ruan, L, "The Chinese Communist Party and Legitimacy", The Diplomat, 30/9/15,
www.thediplomat.com/2015/09/the-chinese-communist-party-and-legitimacy/
42
The “Theory of Three Represents” proposed by
former President Jiang Zemin, the “Scientific Outlook
on Development” offered by former President Hu
Jintao, and the “Chinese Dream” introduced by
President Xi Jinping are the latest efforts by the CCP
to address its concerns over the these ideological
crisis of its legitimacy. If we were to sum up these
official discourses, they all emphasize the Party’s
legitimacy not with reference to the CCP’s
revolutionary past, but to the vitality of the CCP
resulting from its ability to adapt to an ever-changing
environment and to reform itself from within. Unlike
the PAP, however, the CCP’s claims to legitimacy
seems to be much less persuasive, even among its
own members.
In recent years, the PAP in Singapore has adjusted
and appealed to the rationality embedded in the
constitutional and legal system; popular support
manifest in the votes won through open and
competitive elections becomes the new source of
legitimacy. While Singaporeans can express their
dissatisfaction by voting for the Worker’s Party, the
complaints in China are reflected in the fact that
people, some of them CCP members, are divided into
those in favor of free markets and developmentalism,
and those who want to return to the Mao era, and
others. In the face of such public doubts, the CCP
has chosen to cling to the economic miracle and
resort to costly repressions, as sources of legitimacy.
Even in Wang’s recent speech, there is no actual
substance suggesting the Party will try to seek
rationality or other news sources for its legitimacy.
In sum, while it may be a first for a CCP’s high-
ranking official to publicly discuss the legitimacy
issue, there is no reason to become excited about
any hidden meanings behind Wang’s move. And as
much as authoritarian states like China and
Singapore share traits, such as an emphasis on
developmentalism, analysts should not be overly
optimistic about China’s chances of replicating the
PAP’s success. The PAP has actively established its
legal and rational authority in Singapore. The CCP
has far more work to do in that regard.
The EU’s ‘legitimacy deficit’
Legal scholar and former German Constitutional
Court judge, Dieter Grimm, diagnosed the source
of the European Union’s current ‘legitimacy
deficit’ and offered some solutions for moving
beyond the current crisis in a talk on 7 February
at the Hertie School of Governance.
‘There is little doubt the European Union suffers from
a lack of acceptance by its citizens. It is likewise
undisputed that this lack endangers the project of
European integration,’ Grimm told an audience at the
joint invitation of the Hertie School and the German-
British Society. ‘It is less clear what sources of this
weakness are and consequently it is less clear what
the adequate remedy might be.’
Grimm traced the historical origins of this Achilles
heel, beginning with two seminal EU Court of Justice
decisions in the 1960s, to the signing of the
Maastricht Treaty that laid the basis for the EU, the
failure of European integrationists to recognise
waning public support, and consequently, Great
Britain’s decision to leave the union.
‘Under the cloak of economic integration, changes
took place that went far beyond a common market,’
Grimm said. These did not become the subject of
political debate, but their consequences unfolded
over time. Grimm sees the Treaty of Maastricht in
1992 as a turning point for the high level of support
the EU had until then largely taken for granted. In
terms of integration it was a ‘step forward’, but in
terms of acceptance among the population, ‘it was a
step backward,’ he said.
As nationalist voices began to rise in the European
Parliament, the EU sought a constitutional treaty in
2003. The idea was to have ‘more Europe,’ but it
turned out that this objective was not shared by all:
‘The constitution failed precisely in those countries
where it was submitted to a referendum,’ Grimm said.
43
One reason was a disconnect between citizens and
their representatives in the European Parliament,
which is built into the legislative system, Grimm said.
Electorates vote for national parties, but their
Europeanisation in the form of faction-building occurs
only after elections. This means national parties run
on programmes that may not even be represented in
parliament. Nevertheless, Grimm said he doubts that
Europeanising elections alone would solve the
legitimacy problem.
The decisive flaw is the ‘growing autonomy of the
EU’s executive and judicial organs’ from democratic
processes in the EU and at the national level. Grimm
outlined several events that have led to this. For one,
the shift from unanimity in favour of qualified majority
voting in the EU Council helped smoothe political
processes, but has meant member states are now
subject to laws they may not have approved.
But the most far-reaching consequence arose from
two European Court of Justice judgements in 1963
and 1964, Grimm said. Judging European law to be
directly applicable in the member states, the court
paved the way for European law to take precedence
over national law – including national constitutional
law. ‘From that moment on, the European Court of
Justice could take integration into its own hands. The
member states were no longer needed,’ Grimm said.
The court didn’t interpret the law as it would a treaty
between states, but rather, as it would a national
constitution, ‘relying on an objective purpose and
detached from the intent of the member states.’ The
consequence was ‘constitutionalisation’, said Grimm.
‘The treaties have not become a constitution,’ he
said, ‘but they function like a constitution.’
Through these mechanisms, member states first
transferred powers to the EU and then the EU took
powers from the member states, according to Grimm.
“The European Court of Justice pursued this second
path with missionary zeal,” he said, while politicians,
the public and media took little notice. In terms of
economic integration, this was a success story, but it
eroded the project’s legitimacy by “reducing the realm
of national law – areas the member states had
actually reserved for themselves.”
Grimm argues that ‘over-constitutionalisation’ of the
EU treaties prevents states from resisting this trend.
Constitutions usually regulate how political decisions
are produced, but leave those decisions to
institutions, which make policies based on electoral
preferences. But the by far greatest part of the
treaties is comprised of norms that are not of
constitutional nature, and would usually fall under
‘ordinary law’ in the member states. Thus, “decisions
of an enormous political impact come about through
administrative and judicial channels – through non-
political mechanisms and hence outside the
democratic process,” Grimm said. The only way to
change this is to amend the treaties, which is very
difficult.
Some have suggested that the EU’s legitimacy deficit
could be solved by reforms that would strengthen the
power of the European Parliament and place it at the
centre of the EU. But Grimm does not believe this
would be a panacea, as the EU would then be even
more dependent on its own, internal legitimacy
derived from the parliamentary election. “Put simply:
the EU cannot do without the legitimacy that
emanates from the member states,” he said.
Finally, the treaties should be reduced to a clearly
constitutional nature, in order to ‘repoliticise’ decision-
making, which has been eroded by the growing
autonomy of the judiciary and executive in democratic
processes. This would require limiting the treaties to
provisions on the goals of the EU, the powers of its
institutions and their procedures and rights. All other
provisions would be removed and relegated to
ordinary law.
While politically difficult, this solution is legally easy,
Grimm asserted.
The event was co-hosted by the German-British
Society and the Dahrendorf Forum. Helmut Anheier,
President of the Hertie School of Governance,
chaired the discussion. Rupert Graf Strachwitz, Vice
Chair of the Deutsch-Britische Gesellschaft, served
as discussant.

Grimm proffered several solutions to the current

crisis. First, ‘internal legitimation’ must be restored.
The European Parliament elections must be brought
closer to the public through a Europeanisation that
would allow national interests to be balanced before
the election, rather than after. Next, safeguards are
needed for the ‘creeping erosion’ of member states’
powers. Communalisation must be limited and there
should be a division of powers in the legislative
branch according to subject matters, like in every
federal polity.

"The EU’s ‘legitimacy deficit’ Dahrendorf Forum, accessed on 17/5/19, www.dahrendorf-forum.eu/news/the-

eus-legitimacy-deficit/

44
interdependence
In global politics, the concept of interdependence most often refers to the
mutual reliance between and among groups, organizations, geographic areas
and/or states for access to resources that sustain living arrangements. Often,
this mutual reliance is economic (such as trade), but can also have a security
dimension (such as defence arrangements) and, increasingly, a sustainability
dimension (such as environmental treaties). Globalization has increased
interdependence, while often changing the relationships of power among the
various actors engaged in global politics.

The Complex Interdependence of China’s Belt and 46

Road Initiative in the Philippines

Human society is totally interdependent—that’s a 48

huge advantage, but also a huge survival risk

Energy independence in an interdependent world 50

45
The Complex Interdependence of China’s Belt and Road
Initiative in the Philippines
In international relations, “complex interdependence”
refers to the multiple channels of interaction and
agendas in interstate relations, which involve
domestic stakeholders—public and private—on
nonmilitary issues. Since the Belt and Road Initiative
came into being, most analyses have largely focused
on infrastructure development. The BRI not only has
the potential to impact a host government’s
socioeconomic agenda, but also its overall bilateral
relationship with China.
The case of the Philippines demonstrates that to
examine the progress of the BRI, it is imperative that
it not only be measured through hard infrastructure,
but also against the four other major areas of
cooperation—policy coordination, trade and
investment facilitation, financial coordination and
integration, and people‐to‐people ties and
connectivity.
Beyond Infrastructure
The 2017 Belt and Road Big Data Report clearly
emphasizes on the non-hard infrastructure
achievements of the BRI in terms of the following:
signed cooperation agreements, established direct air
routes, number of trains put into service, investments
of Chinese enterprises in BRI countries (and vice‐
versa), economic and trade zones setup, signed
bilateral currency swap deals, availability of the China
Unionpay, sister‐cities forged, increase in tourist
exchanges, number of enrolled foreign students in
China and implemented visa‐free policies toward
China.
Against this backdrop, the BRI should not be
interpreted as an initiative that only involves the
Chinese government or its state‐owned enterprises,
but also private Chinese companies. In the Belt and
Road Big Data Report, of the top 50 most involved
and influential Chinese enterprises, 42 percent are
private, 56 percent are SOEs, and 2 percent are joint
ventures. Apart from manufacturing and construction,
these companies also operate in the areas of
financing and IT, for example, Alibaba, Huawei,
Lenovo, Tencent and JD. The report also mentions
that the “participation [of private enterprises] into the
initiative enhances the reputation and influence of the
Chinese brands and products.”
46
Five Key Areas of Cooperation
Policy coordination: Beijing and Manila signed a
Six‐Year Development Program for Trade and
Economic Cooperation in March 2017, which aims to
gradually harmonize mutual development goals and
interests within the BRI framework. This move is also
indicative that China will increase its meager
investments in the Philippines, which lags behind the
U.S. and Japan. Complementing the program is the
agreement of the Board of Investments and the Bank
of China on the 2017-2019 Investment Priorities Plan
for Chinese Companies, which is meant to facilitate
business‐matching activities and industrial linkages.
Infrastructure development and connectivity: In
this second area of cooperation, China has pledged
$7.34 billion in soft loans or official development
assistance and grants for large‐scale Philippine
infrastructure projects and flagship programs. This
amount forms part of $24 billion worth of agreements
Beijing committed to President Rodrigo Duterte on his
first visit to China in 2016. Interestingly, from 2016,
when President Duterte took office, to 2017, loans
and grants from China registered an astronomical
5,862 percent increase, according to Bloomberg. The
basket of loans through official development
assistance programs in two tranches ($7.19 billion)
includes dam and irrigation, railways, expressways
and bridge projects, among others.
Trade and investment: China became the
Philippines’ largest trading partner in early 2017,
marking an increase of $15.04 billion (16 percent)
from 2016. Furthermore, investments approved by
the Philippine Economic Zone Authority and the
Board of Investments more than tripled for the first
three quarters of 2017 to around $40 million (from
$10.9 million in 2016). Remarkably, private Chinese
firms are also making headways in penetrating the
Philippine consumer market through mobile firms
such as Huawei, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo—
enterprises that last year ranked among the top 10
selling brands in the world, according to the World
Intellectual Property Organization.
Even Alibaba Group is making its presence felt in
promoting financial inclusion and digital payment
services through strategic partnerships with local
firms, such as Globe Fintech Innovations Inc. or Mint.
Moreover, Alibaba’s Alipay and Tencent’s WeChat
Pay have also signed licensing agreements with Asia
United Bank, which favorably enables Chinese
tourists to drive the growth of cashless payment
systems in the Philippines. In the area of
telecommunications, President Duterte even
endorsed the participation of a Chinese state-run
company to be the third telecom carrier in the country
in order to break the long‐standing duopoly and
improve the quality of Internet service in the
Philippines.
Financial integration and connectivity: The
Philippine Central Bank last year officially added the
renminbi as part of its international reserves, joining
more than half of BRI countries that have already
done so. Early this year, the Central Bank additionally
approved the Peso-Yuan spot market, which will
lower the transaction costs for Philippine and Chinese
banks and businesses by reducing reliance on the
dollar as the intermediate peg. Around the same time,
the issuance of “panda bonds” or renminbi‐
denominated bonds worth $200 million began, which
could pave the way for more access to Chinese
assistance in Philippine financial requirements.
Furthermore, the Philippine government has
announced plans of partnering with the Alibaba
Group to create a more inclusive financial system to
help rural communities and SMEs. Their plans would
also cut transaction costs for overseas Filipino
workers when remitting money to the Philippines
through online banking services.
47
People–to–people exchanges and
connectivity: China has become the Philippines’
second-largest tourism market. As of November
2017, 14 new flights connect China and the
Philippines, and the Philippine Bureau of Immigration
initiated a Visa Upon Arrival scheme for Chinese
tourists. Separately, in the area of media and
communications, China Central Television and the
Presidential Communications Operations Office have
signed an MOU for the rebroadcasting of China
Global Television Network programs, which are part
of the Belt and Road News Alliance of China Central
Television.
The significant progress in the BRI’s five key areas of
cooperation in the Philippines underscores the rising
stakes in and deepening complex interdependence of
Sino-Philippine relations.
The BRI in the Philippines is also indicative that the
China-led regime is not only a government venture,
but is a “whole‐of‐country” approach, which includes
the active participation of China’s private sector.
While it is true that the success of China’s BRI would
depend on the political environment in each country,
China may err on the side of caution by ensuring that
proposed projects are transparent, commercially
viable, and that participating companies are of good
standing. Should Chinese projects flounder, there is a
risk of legal action and nationalist backlash, and
China, the BRI, and President Duterte would all
accrue reputational costs.
Going forward, deepened Sino-Philippine economic
cooperation will shift the bilateral dynamics from
confrontation to cooperation and create an
environment conducive to advancing the overall ties.
But sustaining the BRI momentum, apart from risk
mitigation strategies, policy guidance or
institutionalization—just as what China has done with
other countries—may be done through an MOU on
Belt and Road cooperation. A joint BRI working
committee or BRI action plan may also be formed so
that planned projects can outlive brief six-year stints
of Philippine presidencies.
Human society is totally interdependent—that’s a huge
advantage, but also a huge survival risk
A few years ago, a man named Mike Vilhauer was
fishing near Sunset Lake, in California’s Sierra
Nevada mountains. He wandered into the woods to
look for bait, and promptly got lost. For the next five
days, he lived off the land—drinking from a stream,
sleeping in a rocky cave, eating the occasional
dandelion. After Vilhauer’s rescue, national and
international news outlets breathlessly described his
“fight for survival,” “against the odds.”
Vilhauer’s survival seems like an impressive
achievement, until you stop to consider that he was
simply doing what humans did, day in and day out, for
most of the last 200,000 years. Of necessity, our
distant ancestors had wide-ranging survival skills:
they foraged, hunted, herded, and built shelters. It’s
only in the last few millennia that we have taken on
increasingly specialized roles. Today, we are fry
cooks and nuclear physicists, bloggers and plumbers
—but few of us retain the general skills that were
once a prerequisite for survival.
This is interdependence, which now defines us—as
individuals, communities, and nations—as never
before. Interdependence means that we don’t all have
to farm, or build houses, or make semiconductors.
Instead, our complex social systems rely on the
division of labor and exchange of goods and services
to meet human needs. When people concentrate their
labors on what each does best, all of society benefits
—or so said Adam Smith in 1776 at the dawn of
modern economic thinking.
A few years later David Ricardo extended this idea to
nations, claiming that if each country focuses its
production capacity on what it does better than
anyone else—exploiting their comparative advantage
—all nations will be better off. Later, this thinking
became a pillar of the post-World War II international
order. Interdependence theory—which holds that
nations that depend on each other economically are
more likely to work harmoniously together—has
shaped thinking in Washington for almost three-
quarters of a century.
48
Interdependence has obvious upsides. It is
wondrously efficient, as it removes the redundancies
of effort involved when everyone has to, say, can
their own fruit—or when every nation has to grow its
own rice or mill its own steel. And interdependence
has coincided with an extraordinary period of peace
and prosperity in the industrialized world.
But there are downsides as well. As a society’s efforts
are divided into ever more discrete tasks, each
member of that society becomes ever more
dependent on others for the production of social
goods and, ultimately, for survival—as Mike Villhauer
learned on his ill-fated fishing trip.
Interdependent societies are more connected and
integrated, but they are also more fragile, more brittle,
and more vulnerable to cascading failures. So while
highly integrated societies can accomplish feats that
no group of unspecialized laborers could dream of,
they do not do so well when subjected to shocks such
as earthquakes, epidemics, financial crises, and
political conflict. A generation ago, such shocks
generally had only local effects. But in today’s hyper-
connected world, a disruption in one place can swiftly
cascade across the entire planet, threatening global
supplies of goods and information. That’s what
happened after the Tohoku disaster in Japan in 2011,
the Wall Street crash of 2008, and the SARS
epidemic of 2002. Accordingly, the World Economic
Forum has warned of “the prospect of rapid contagion
through increasingly interconnected systems and the
threat of disastrous impacts.”
If your community is tightly entwined with global
markets, it is vulnerable to impacts from distant
disasters. In one recent study, researchers measured
the economic interdependence of 364 US
metropolitan areas; they then looked at how those
cities fared during the Great Recession. The
researchers found that the most integrated,
interdependent cities (typically also the largest cities)
suffered greater drops in economic performance and
took longer to recover than their less-integrated
counterparts.
 Interdependence can pose geopolitical threats, as
well. Our economic ties to other nations expose us to
potential acts of coercion and extortion by key trading
partners. Two decades ago, no nation had the
capacity to cut off the flow of critical materials or
information to the US population. Today, a simple
embargo or blockade could halt the supply of vital
drugs, electronics, and financial information.
That danger is real and present. A recent RAND
Corporation report, prepared for the National
Intelligence Council, found that China has quietly
cornered the market on raw materials that lay at the
base of most high-tech manufacturing supply chains.
For example, China now controls 97% of the world’s
supply of rare earth elements, which are essential to
manufacturing everything from iPhones to advanced
military technology. That gives China extraordinary
leverage over the US economy and national security.
It is not difficult to imagine a scenario (a trade war;
escalating tensions in the South China Sea) where
such leverage would come in handy.
These dangers do not, however, warrant a wholesale
retreat from interdependence. This is not an
endorsement of Trumpist “build the wall” isolationism
and nationalism. It would not serve us as individuals,
or as a nation, to wall ourselves off from the rest of
humanity in pursuit of self-sufficiency. That path could
leave us isolated and friendless in a dangerous world.
And it would dampen the dynamism that comes with
global trade in goods and ideas.
As with any set of trade-offs, there is a sweet spot to
be found—somewhere between hyper-
connectedness and rigorous self-sufficiency. What
might that look like?
Shutters, S "Human society is totally interdependent—that’s a huge advantage, but also a huge survival risk ",
Quartz, 2/5/17, www.qz.com/960232/human-society-is-totally-interdependent-thats-a-huge-advantage-but-
also-a-huge-survival-risk/
49
For individuals and families, it could mean planning
for inevitable disruptions—natural, social, and
economic. Not by moving to a survivalist compound,
but by developing small-scale, local backups for the
globe-spanning systems that supply essential goods
and services. Begin by considering how you would
obtain the essentials—food, water, and power—if
supply chains are cut off.
Often, solutions are best generated at the community
level. For example, small-scale “microgrids,” powered
by renewable energy, offer an increasingly viable
alternative to the huge but fragile mega-grid that
supplies most Americans with energy. That’s how Co-
op City, a housing complex in the Bronx, kept the
lights on during Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Similarly, robust local food networks can keep food
on the table in times of crisis. Though local food now
accounts for a small share of American agricultural
markets, that can change quickly: During World War
II, Americans planted “Victory Gardens” to help the
war effort and produced 40 percent of the vegetables
grown in the US.
At the national level, we can work to decrease
dependence on China and others for raw materials.
And we can place limits on the outsourcing of key
industries, while nurturing a diverse industrial base in
the US. Some industries already enjoy protection
from global competition; for example, the American
shipbuilding industry is propped up by legislation that
prevents naval warships from being built outside the
US. In this and similar cases, costs to efficiency may
be counterbalanced by gains in national security and
economic resilience.
It won’t be easy to strike the right balance between of
self-sufficiency and interdependence. But it is
important to get it right. Otherwise, like Mike Vilhauer,
we may find ourselves wandering in the woods,
fighting for survival against the odds.
Energy independence in an interdependent world
When President Richard Nixon proclaimed in the
early 1970s that he wanted to secure national energy
independence, the United States imported a quarter
of its oil. By the decade’s end, after an Arab oil
embargo and the Iranian Revolution, domestic
production was in decline, Americans were importing
half their petroleum needs at 15 times the price, and it
was widely believed that the country was running out
of natural gas.
Energy shocks contributed to a lethal combination of
stagnant economic growth and inflation, and every
US president since Nixon likewise has proclaimed
energy independence as a goal. But few people took
those promises seriously.
Today, energy experts no longer scoff. By the end of
this decade, according to the US Energy Information
Administration, nearly half of the crude oil that
America consumes will be produced at home, while
82 per cent will come from the US side of the Atlantic.
Philip Verleger, a respected energy analyst, argues
that, by 2023, the 50th anniversary of Nixon’s “Project
Independence”, the US will be energy independent in
the sense that it will export more energy than it
imports.
Verleger argues that energy independence “could
make this the New American Century by creating an
economic environment where the United States
enjoys access to energy supplies at much lower cost
than other parts of the world”. Already, Europeans
and Asians pay 4-6 times more for their natural gas
than Americans do.
What happened? The technology of horizontal drilling
and hydraulic fracturing, by which shale and other
tight rock formations at great depths are bombarded
with water and chemicals, has released major new
supplies of both natural gas and oil. The US’ shale-
gas industry grew by 45 per cent annually from 2005
to 2010 and the share of shale gas in the US’ overall
gas production grew from 4 per cent to 24 per cent.
50
The US is estimated to have enough gas to sustain
its current rate of production for more than a century.
While many other countries also have considerable
shale-gas potential, problems abound, including
water scarcity in China, investment security in
Argentina, and environmental restrictions in several
European countries.
The American economy will benefit in myriad ways
from its change in energy supply. Hundreds of
thousands of jobs are already being created, some in
remote, previously stagnating regions. This additional
economic activity will boost overall GDP growth,
yielding significant new fiscal revenues. In addition,
the lower energy-import bill will cause the US’ trade
deficit to narrow and its balance-of-payments position
to improve. Some US industries, such as chemicals
and plastics, will gain a significant comparative
advantage in production costs.
Indeed, the International Energy Agency estimates
that the additional precautions needed to ensure
shale-gas wells’ environmental safety - including
careful attention to seismic conditions, properly
sealed shafts, and appropriate waste-water
management - add only about 7 per cent to the cost.
With respect to climate change, however, the effects
of greater reliance on shale gas are mixed. Because
natural-gas combustion produces fewer greenhouse
gases than other hydrocarbons, such as coal or oil, it
can be a bridge to a less carbon-intensive future. But
the low price of gas will impede the development of
renewable energy sources unless accompanied by
subsidies or carbon taxes.
At this stage, one can only speculate about the
geopolitical effects. Clearly, the strengthening of the
US economy would enhance American economic
power - a scenario that runs counter to the current
fashion of portraying the US as being in decline.
But one should not jump to conclusions. A balance of
energy imports and exports is only a first
approximation of independence. As I argue in my
book The Future of Power, global interdependence
involves both sensitivity and vulnerability. The US
may be less vulnerable in the long run if it imports
less energy, but oil is a fungible commodity, and the
US economy will remain sensitive to shocks from
sudden changes in world prices.
In other words, a revolution in Saudi Arabia or a
blockade of the Strait of Hormuz could still inflict
damage on the US and its allies. So, even if America
had no other interests in the Middle East, such as
Israel or nuclear non-proliferation, a balance of
energy imports and exports would be unlikely to free
the US from military expenditures - which some
experts estimate run to $50 billion per year - to
protect oil routes in the region.
At the same time, the US’ bargaining position in world
politics should be enhanced. Power arises from
asymmetries in interdependence. You and I may
depend on each other, but if I depend on you less
than you do on me, my bargaining power is
increased.
Nye, J "Energy independence in an interdependent world", Al Jazeera, 15/7/12,
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/201271211394189679.html
51
For decades, the US and Saudi Arabia have had a
balance of asymmetries in which we depended on
them as the swing producer of oil, and they depended
on us for ultimate military security. Now the bargains
will be struck on somewhat better terms from the US’
point of view.
Likewise, Russia has enjoyed leverage over Europe
and its small neighbors through its control of natural
gas supplies and pipelines. As North America
becomes self-sufficient in gas, more from various
other regions will be freed up to provide alternative
sources for Europe, thereby diminishing Russia’s
leverage.
In East Asia, which has become the focus of US
foreign policy, China will find itself increasingly
dependent on Middle Eastern oil. American efforts to
persuade China to play a greater role in regional
security arrangements may be strengthened, and
China’s awareness of the vulnerability of its supply
routes to US naval disruption in the unlikely event of
conflict could also have a subtle effect on each side’s
bargaining power.
A balance of energy imports and exports does not
produce pure independence, but it does alter the
power relations involved in energy interdependence.
Nixon got that right
human rights
Human rights are basic claims and entitlements that, many argue, one should
be able to exercise simply by virtue of being a human being. Many
contemporary thinkers argue they are essential for living a life of dignity, are
inalienable, and should be accepted as universal. The Universal Declaration of
Human Rights adopted by the UN in 1948 is recognized as the beginning of the
formal discussion of human rights around the world. Critics argue that human
rights are a Western, or at least culturally relative, concept.

Why climate change is a threat to human rights? 53

Business and human rights | Why businesses are 56

nothing without strong human rights

Human rights in Iran 59

The North Korea Nuclear Agreement and Human 62

Rights

52
Why climate change is a threat to human rights?
A question I'm often asked is, where did I get my
passion for human rights and justice? It started
early. I grew up in the west of Ireland, wedged
between four brothers, two older than me and two
younger than me. So of course I had to be interested
in human rights, and equality and justice, and using
my elbows!
And those issues stayed with me and guided me, and
in particular, when I was elected the first woman
President of Ireland, from 1990 to 1997. I dedicated
my presidency to having a space for those who felt
marginalized on the island of Ireland, and bringing
together communities from Northern Ireland with
those from the Republic, trying to build peace. And I
went as the first Irish president to the United
Kingdom and met with Queen Elizabeth II, and also
welcomed to my official residence -- which we call
"Áras an Uachtaráin," the house of the president -
- members of the royal family, including, notably, the
Prince of Wales. And I was aware that at the time of
my presidency, Ireland was a country beginning a
rapid economic progress. We were a country that was
benefiting from the solidarity of the European
Union. Indeed, when Ireland first joined the European
Union in 1973, there were parts of the country that
were considered developing, including my own
beloved native county, County Mayo. I led trade
delegations here to the United States, to Japan, to
India, to encourage investment, to help to create
jobs, to build up our economy, to build up our health
system, our education -- our development.
What I didn't have to do as president was buy land on
mainland Europe, so that Irish citizens could go there
because our island was going underwater. What I
didn't have to think about, either as president or as a
constitutional lawyer, was the implications for the
sovereignty of the territory because of the impact of
climate change. But that is what President Tong, of
the Republic of Kiribati, has to wake up every
morning thinking about.
53
He has bought land in Fiji as an insurance
policy, what he calls, "migration with dignity," because
he knows that his people may have to leave their
islands. As I listened to President Tong describing the
situation, I really felt that this was a problem that no
leader should have to face. And as I heard him speak
about the pain of his problems, I thought about
Eleanor Roosevelt. I thought about her and those
who worked with her on the Commission on Human
Rights, which she chaired in 1948, and drew up the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For them, it
would have been unimaginable that a whole country
could go out of existence because of human-induced
climate change.
I came to climate change not as a scientist or an
environmental lawyer, and I wasn't really impressed
by the images of polar bears or melting glaciers. It
was because of the impact on people, and the impact
on their rights -- their rights to food and safe water,
health, education and shelter. And I say this with
humility, because I came late to the issue of climate
change. When I served as UN High Commissioner for
Human Rights from 1997 to 2002, climate change
wasn't at the front of my mind. I don't remember
making a single speech on climate change. I knew
that there was another part of the United Nations -
- the UN Convention on Climate Change -- that was
dealing with the issue of climate change. It was later
when I started to work in African countries on issues
of development and human rights. And I kept hearing
this pervasive sentence: "Oh, but things are so much
worse now, things are so much worse." And then I
explored what was behind that; it was about changes
in the climate -- climate shocks, changes in the
weather.
I met Constance Okollet, who had formed a women's
group in Eastern Uganda, and she told me that when
she was growing up, she had a very normal life in her
village and they didn't go hungry, they knew that the
seasons would come as they were predicted to
come, they knew when to sow and they knew when to
harvest, and so they had enough food.
But, in recent years, at the time of this
conversation, they had nothing but long periods of
drought, and then flash flooding, and then more
drought. The school had been destroyed, livelihoods
had been destroyed, their harvest had been
destroyed. She forms this women's group to try to
keep her community together. And this was a reality
that really struck me, because of course, Constance
Okollet wasn't responsible for the greenhouse gas
emissions that were causing this problem.
Indeed, I was very struck about the situation in
Malawi in January of this year. There was an
unprecedented flooding in the country, it covered
about a third of the country, over 300 people were
killed, and hundreds of thousands lost their
livelihoods. And the average person in Malawi emits
about 80 kg of CO2 a year. The average US citizen
emits about 17.5 metric tons. So those who are
suffering disproportionately don't drive cars, don't
have electricity, don't consume very significantly, and
yet they are feeling more and more the impacts of the
changes in the climate, the changes that are
preventing them from knowing how to grow food
properly, and knowing how to look after their future. I
think it was really the importance of the injustice that
really struck me very forcibly.
And I know that we're not able to address some of
that injustice because we're not on course for a safe
world. Governments around the world agreed at the
conference in Copenhagen, and have repeated it at
every conference on climate, that we have to stay
below two degrees Celsius of warming above pre-
Industrial standards. But we're on course for about
four degrees. So we face an existential threat to the
future of our planet. And that made me realize that
climate change is the greatest threat to human rights
in the 21st century.
54
And that brought me then to climate justice. Climate
justice responds to the moral argument -- both sides
of the moral argument -- to address climate
change. First of all, to be on the side of those who are
suffering most and are most effected. And
secondly, to make sure that they're not left behind
again, when we start to move and start to address
climate change with climate action, as we are doing.
In our very unequal world today, it's very striking how
many people are left behind. In our world of 7.2 billion
people, about 3 billion are left behind. 1.3 billion don't
have access to electricity, and they light their homes
with kerosene and candles, both of which are
dangerous. And in fact they spend a lot of their tiny
income on that form of lighting. 2.6 billion people cook
on open fires -- on coal, wood and animal dung. And
this causes about 4 million deaths a year from indoor
smoke inhalation, and of course, most of those who
die are women. So we have a very unequal
world, and we need to change from "business as
usual." And we shouldn't underestimate the scale and
the transformative nature of the change which will be
needed, because we have to go to zero carbon
emissions by about 2050, if we're going to stay below
two degrees Celsius of warming. And that means we
have to leave about two-thirds of the known
resources of fossil fuels in the ground.
It's a very big change, and it means that
obviously, industrialized countries must cut their
emissions, must become much more energy-
efficient, and must move as quickly as possible to
renewable energy. For developing countries and
emerging economies, the problem and the challenge
is to grow without emissions, because they must
develop; they have very poor populations. So they
must develop without emissions, and that is a
different kind of problem. Indeed, no country in the
world has actually grown without emissions. All the
countries have developed with fossil fuels, and then
may be moving to renewable energy.
So it is a very big challenge, and it requires the total
support of the international community, with the
necessary finance and technology, and systems and
support, because no country can make itself safe
from the dangers of climate change. This is an issue
that requires complete human solidarity. Human
solidarity, if you like, based on self-interest -- because
we are all in this together, and we have to work
together to ensure that we reach zero carbon by
2050.
The good news is that change is happening, and it's
happening very fast. Here in California, there's a very
ambitious emissions target to cut emissions. In
Hawaii, they're passing legislation to have 100
percent renewable energy by 2045. And governments
are very ambitious around the world. In Costa Rica,
they have committed to being carbon-neutral by
2021. In Ethiopia, the commitment is to be carbon-
neutral by 2027. Apple have pledged that their
factories in China will use renewable energy. And
there is a race on at the moment to convert electricity
from tidal and wave power, in order that we can leave
the coal in the ground. And that change is both
welcome and is happening very rapidly. But it's still
not enough, and the political will is still not enough.
Let me come back to President Tong and his people
in Kiribati. They actually could be able to live on their
island and have a solution, but it would take a lot of
political will. President Tong told me about his
ambitious idea to either build up or even float the little
islands where his people live. This, of course, is
beyond the resources of Kiribati itself. It would require
great solidarity and support from other countries, and
it would require the kind of imaginative idea that we
bring together when we want to have a space station
in the air. But wouldn't it be wonderful to have this
engineering wonder and to allow a people to remain
in their sovereign territory, and be part of the
community of nations? That is the kind of idea that we
should be thinking about. Yes, the challenges of the
transformation we need are big, but they can be
solved. We are actually, as a people, very capable of
coming together to solve problems.
Robinson, M
"Why climate change is a threat to human rights",TED, May 2015,
https://www.ted.com/talks/mary_robinson_why_climate_change_is_a_threat_to_human_rights?
language=en
55
I was very conscious of this as I took part this year in
commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of
the Second World War in 1945. 1945 was an
extraordinary year. It was a year when the world
faced what must have seemed almost insoluble
problems -- the devastation of the world wars,
particularly the Second World War; the fragile peace
that had been brought about; the need for a whole
economic regeneration. But the leaders of that time
didn't flinch from this. They had the capacity, they had
a sense of being driven by never again must the
world have this kind of problem. And they had to build
structures for peace and security. And what did we
get? What did they achieve? The Charter of the
United Nations, the Bretton Woods institutions, as
they're called, The World Bank, and the International
Monetary Fund. A Marshall Plan for Europe, a
devastated Europe, to reconstruct it. And indeed a
few years later, the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights.
2015 is a year that is similar in its importance to 1945,
with similar challenges and similar potential. There
will be two big summits this year: the first one, in
September in New York, is the summit for the
sustainable development goals. And then the summit
in Paris in December, to give us a climate
agreement. The sustainable development goals are
intended to help countries to live sustainably, in tune
with Mother Earth, not to take out of Mother Earth and
destroy ecosystems, but rather, to live in harmony
with Mother Earth, by living under sustainable
development. And the sustainable development
goals will come into operation for all countries on
January 1, 2016. The climate agreement -- a binding
climate agreement -- is needed because of the
scientific evidence that we're on a trajectory for about
a four-degree world and we have to change course to
stay below two degrees. So we need to take steps
that will be monitored and reviewed, so that we can
keep increasing the ambition of how we cut
emissions, and how we move more rapidly to
renewable energy, so that we have a safe world.
The reality is that this issue is much too important to
be left to politicians and to the United Nations.
Business and human rights | Why businesses are nothing
without strong human rights
Let’s start with a seemingly unconventional
proposition: civil society and business share the
same space, and therefore should share an
interest in defending what unites them. How
controversial is that proposition, really?
This “shared space” is anchored in accountable
governance. Civil society actors and companies both
depend on the same legal and institutional
frameworks that define the shared space to operate.
Civil society cannot flourish, and business will
struggle to thrive, without the rules and standards that
hold public and private powers accountable.
Civic freedoms – freedoms of expression,
association, information and assembly – allow
citizens to expose abuses related to corruption,
workplace safety, public health, toxic pollution and
gender discrimination. These rights support stable,
predictable legal and regulatory environments. At the
same time, they enable the free flow of information,
investment and entrepreneurial innovation. When
these civic freedoms are undermined, business and
civil society alike are subject to the law of the jungle
instead of the rule of law.
'Human rights are the foundation of a healthy society
and sustainable business' – Paul Polman, Unilever
CEO
Companies should recognize the positive role that
civil society organizations and human rights
defenders play in protecting this space. Moreover,
where reasonably possible, they have a responsibility
to support these crucial actors when under pressure
or threat.
From the murder of the Honduran environmentalist
Berta Cáceres and the Saudi journalist Jamal
Khashoggi to politically motivated charges
against Cambodian trade unionists, attacks on human
rights defenders and civic freedoms around the
world should and do concern the business
community.
56
These freedoms are being eroded as authoritarian
governments act with impunity and democracies
embrace illiberal populism and nationalism. Nearly six
in 10 countries are seriously restricting people’s
fundamental freedoms of association, peaceful
assembly and expression, according to the global civil
society alliance CIVICUS. Sometimes, companies are
complicit in this repression. Since 2015, there have
been close to 1,400 recorded attacks against citizens
and organizations working on human rights issues
related to business.
Multinational corporations and their investors can no
longer afford to be bystanders with so much at stake.
All too often, companies take the rule of law,
accountable governance and stable environments for
granted. Recent research by the B Team, a leading
non-profit initiative formed by a global group of
business leaders, has found clear evidence that limits
on important civic freedoms may produce negative
economic outcomes. Countries with higher degrees of
respect for civic rights experience higher economic
growth rates and higher levels of human
development.
Issues and incidents in and out of the headlines are
presenting inescapable challenges to business
leaders. A growing number of corporate leaders are
recognizing that they must defend the interests and
values that they share with civil society around the
world. Some are making public statements; others
are registering their concerns privately. Increasing
awareness of the “shared space” in which companies
and civil society operate, and expectations of the
responsibilities of businesses, are compelling
shareholders and employees to take sides and
pressure companies, however difficult the choices
and trade-offs may be.
The rise of corporate activism
Five prominent examples from 2018 demonstrate this
trend:
• Eight multinational corporations and investors
issued a call to protect civic freedoms, human rights
defenders and rule of law in a landmark joint
statement developed through the Business Network
on Civic Freedoms and Human Rights Defenders.
The statement is the first of its kind, with supporters
ranging across the consumer goods, mining, apparel,
banking, jewellery and footwear sectors, and stresses
that when human rights defenders are under attack,
so is sustainable and profitable business.
• Adidas and Nike were among global apparel brands
that urged the Cambodian government to drop
politically motivated criminal charges against labour
rights activist Tola Moeun and others – and have
publicly supported freedom of association.
• In the US, companies have spoken out in
unprecedented tone and numbers against the current
administration’s immigration policies: Microsoft,
Cisco, Airbnb, Apple, Salesforce, and the US
Chamber of Commerce, among others, challengedthe
travel ban imposed on citizens from half a dozen
Muslim-majority countries and opposed the
separation of migrant families at the US-Mexico
border.
• In Germany, BMW and Daimler engaged with their
employees to combat xenophobia and racism
following far-right riots against
immigrants; Siemens even urged employees to speak
out and emphasized that tolerance and respect are
important business values (as its CEO, Joe Kaeser,
has made explicitly clear in public statements).
• A group of 14 human rights organizations and more
than 1,400 Google employees called on Google to
refrain from launching a censored search engine in
China (known as "Project Dragonfly"), and partly as a
result, the company has discontinued the project.
These advocacy efforts illustrate that employees too
are leading movements within companies, especially
within the tech sector, to respect human rights.
Companies will need to be mindful of rising employee
expectations, or risk reputational damage and the
loss of valuable talent, as younger workers seek to
align their values with those of their employers.
57
Inescapable challenges
“Corporate activism” – whether reluctant or deliberate
– is not easy. New guidance published by the
Business and Human Rights Resource Centre and
the International Service for Human Rights
anticipates these inescapable challenges for
companies and their leaders. The guidance,
titled Shared Space Under Pressure: Business
Support for Civic Freedoms and Human Rights
Defenders, provides an analytical and operational
framework, with specific examples from different
countries, sectors and initiatives, to inform companies
as they decide whether and how to act. It highlights
five specific decision factors that companies should
consider:
1. Whether the company has a normative
responsibility to act, based on the UN Guiding
Principles for Business and Human Rights. All
companies must ensure – through the application of
the UN Guiding Principles – that their operations do
not cause, contribute and are not linked to attacks on
activists and civic freedoms. If they do, they must
address the causes and consequences.
2. Whether the company has a discretionary
opportunity to act. If so, whether there is a compelling
business case to support civic freedoms and human
rights defenders and/or a willingness to make a moral
choice to do so. Besides defending the core elements
of the shared space, the business case rests on
managing operational and repetitional risks; building
competitive advantage; and overcoming mistrust and
securing the social licence to operate. Companies
can also make a moral choice to act, both to do no
harm anywhere and to do good where possible.
3. How the company will act in a particular situation or
on a certain issue. There is no one type of action that
applies to all circumstances: a spectrum of actions
(individual and collective, public and private) may be
combined to address an issue or situation.
In some situations, such as the increasing restrictions These decision factors provide practical steps that
on Hungarian civil society, companies prefer to raise companies can and should take to be allies of civil
concerns individually and privately with the society and not just bystanders – or worse, casualties
government. In others, such as Cambodia’s – in the global crackdown against the “shared space”.
crackdown on striking workers, companies choose to It is not the business of companies to pick fights, but
make collective and public statements. Companies fights are already coming to companies that could
should be guided by pragmatic flexibility as they make or break them. Companies should engage
consider circumstances, relationships and carefully but deliberately – in their own interest – to
opportunities to make a positive difference. support and defend this invaluable but fragile shared
space.
4. Who within the organization decides whether and
how, a company will act. it is essential that these
decisions are involving corporate headquarters and
in-country executives and staff. It is important to
integrate legal counsel, human rights and corporate
responsibility experts, government, public affairs and
(in certain circumstances) security and human
resources staff into the deliberative process. Equally,
local civil society and other stakeholders with which
the company should maintain steady engagement
should be consulted. CEO-level decisions are
essential when a company’s core values, reputation,
operations and relationships are at stake.

5. Whether the risks of inaction outweigh the risks of

action. Responsible companies should evaluate both
the risks of action and inaction. Companies may
perceive that taking critical positions, especially in
public, may put relationships with host country
governments at stake. But often companies will
conclude that the risks and potential costs of inaction
are more difficult to anticipate, mitigate and manage
over the long-term than the risks of action. It is
unwise to be on the wrong side of history based on a
shortsighted cost-benefit analysis.

Freeman, B et al. "Business and human rights | Why businesses are nothing without strong human
rights", 17/1/19, International Service for Human Rights www.ishr.ch/news/business-and-human-rights-
why-businesses-are-nothing-without-strong-human-rights

58
Human Rights in Iran
Global monitors say Iran’s human rights situation
is poor and unlikely to improve amid a climate of
political uncertainty and growing external
pressures. But activists urge continued
international scrutiny of Iran’s violations.
Introduction
The human rights situation in Iran continues to arouse
concern from the world’s leading watchdog groups,
with reports of ongoing abuses since the disputed
2009 presidential election provoked mass protests. A
March 2013 report by a UN Special Rapporteur cites
"widespread and systemic" torture, harassment,
arrest, and attacks against human rights defenders,
lawyers, and journalists. Under an increasingly
repressive regime focused on survival amid internal
strife and external pressures, experts say prospects
for reform are bleak, and urge the international
community to keep the spotlight on Iran’s human
rights violations.
Structural Obstacles
Iran has ratified the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights and the International Covenant on
Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights without
reservations, committing itself to the protection and
promotion of civil, political, economic, and social
rights including freedom of expression, assembly,
association, and religion. The Iranian Constitution
also guarantees these freedoms.
But Iranian lawyer and human rights activist
Mehrangiz Kar says several articles of the
constitution guaranteeing specific liberties suffer from
ambiguity and are often restricted by various
conditions and provisions. For instance, Article 24 on
press freedom states: "publications and the press are
free to express their ideas unless these contravene
the precepts of Islam or harm public rights. These
conditions will be defined by laws."
Since the precepts of Islam and public rights are not
clearly defined by legislated laws, Kar writes, the
authorities are free to interpret the "article in support
of their own political and factional interests."
59
International organizations have accused several
branches of the Iranian government of human rights
abuses, particularly security forces like the elite
Revolutionary Guards and the volunteer paramilitary
force the Basij, as well as the judiciary. Hadi Ghaemi,
executive director of International Campaign for
Human Rights in Iran, writes that after the 2009
protests following the disputed presidential election,
the "judiciary has emerged as a key instrument to
intimidate protestors and remove many leading
activists and opinion makers, steps that were both
critical to the regime’s survival." The judiciary, he
notes, also implements the Islamic penal code,
including stoning, amputations and flogging, all
considered torture under international law. Plus, Iran
has separate Islamic revolutionary courts whose legal
standing has been repeatedly questioned by rights
groups. Formed after the 1979 revolution to
prosecute government officials of the previous
regime, they are primarily charged with trying
offenses involving acts against national security, drug
smuggling, and espionage.
A Failing Grade
Recent reports from international organizations and
Western governments have slammed Iran’s rights
record. The 2012 U.S. State Department report (PDF)
notes the role of Iran’s regular and paramilitary
security forces in cracking down on protestors and
how they have committed serious human rights
abuses, including torture and murders, with impunity.
Tehran rejects these claims. Rights groups point to
some particular issues of concern:
Arbitrary arrest and detention: More than four
thousand people were arrested in connection with
protests over the disputed 2009 elections. Hundreds
more have been arrested since then in connection
with protests. Rights groups say the government
denies due process and fair trials to detainees and
uses systematic torture in its prisons and detention
facilities. Kouhyar Goudarzi, an Iranian human rights
activist who fled the country in 2013 after his own
repeated detentions for speaking out on abuses, told
RFE/RL in an interview that Iranian "civil society is in
a state of desperation and that the establishment has
managed to instill fear and silence dissent."
Capital punishment: Rights groups accuse the
Iranian authorities of imposing the death penalty and
using execution as a political tool. A 2013 report by
the UN Special Rapporteur (PDF) notes an increase
in executions, both official and secret. It says 297
executions were officially announced by the
government and about 200 secret executions were
confirmed by family members, prison officials and
members of the judiciary in 2012.
Women’s rights: The Iranian constitution allows
equal rights for men and women "in conformity with
Islamic criteria." One of the few positive notes in the
UN rapporteur’s 2013 report related to advances in
literacy, access to education for women, and
women’s health during the past 30 years. For
instance, literary and primary school enrollment rates
for women and girls were estimated at near 100
percent. According to the World Economic Forum’s
2010 Gender Gap report (PDF)--which compared
disparity between men and women on economic
participation, access to education, health, and
political empowerment--Iran ranked 123 out of 134
countries. This was better than most countries in the
region, ahead of Egypt, Morocco, Syria, Saudi Arabia,
and even Turkey. However, the UN report notes that
the application of certain laws is a barrier to gender
equality in Iran. For instance, a woman’s worth and
testimony in a court of law is regarded as half that of
a man’s.
Religious, ethnic, and other minorities: There are
widespread abuses against members of recognized
and unrecognized religious and ethnic minorities such
as Arabs, Azeris, Baloch, Kurds, Namatullahi Sufi
Muslims, Sunnis, Baha’is, and Christians. Iran’s
largest non-Muslim religious minority, the Baha’i, has
historically been discriminated against and continues
to be denied jobs and educational opportunities, and
face arbitrary detention and unfair trials. There are
rising reports of such abuses committed against other
religious minorities, reported the U.S. State
Department in May 2013 as part of its annual report
on international religious freedoms. Human Rights
Watch says Iran also engages in systematic
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and
gender identity. "Iran is one of only seven countries
with laws allowing executions for consensual same-
sex conduct," it says.
60
Prospects for Reform
Most human rights abuses are political in nature and
closely linked with establishing the regime’s control
over its population. The regime’s crackdown since the
2009 protests and its growing insecurities in the wake
of the Arab uprisings have made many experts
skeptical of prospects for reform within the current
political system. "The government realizes the
potential for such uprisings in Iran" says Ghaemi,
"and it has made the regime and the security
apparatus even more repressive and intolerant."
"I don’t see a kinder, gentler Islamic republic
happening anytime soon," says CFR’s Isobel
Coleman. Iran experienced a period of reforms and
relative improvement in human rights under President
Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2004. But
Coleman says she is doubtful of another period of
reforms under an elected official, saying the human
rights situation will remain "grim" unless there is a
fundamental change in the regime. Kar says there
must be separation between the state and Islam in
politics and governance
The ongoing power struggle between Supreme
Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad has made prospects for reform even
more uncertain. Speaking at an academic gathering
in October 2011, Khamenei went as far as proposing
the possibility of eliminating the position of the
president (NYT) and moving toward a parliamentary
system. Eliminating the presidency will enhance the
powers of the supreme leader, but either way,
Khamenei will seek to ensure that the next president
or prime minister is under his control, experts say.
The tipping point, Ghaemi says, could be the 2013
presidential elections, which may allow Khamenei to
reshape the political landscape in his vision or he
may face greater resistance from competing centers
of power in Tehran. "It is a nasty squabble without
any heroes and regardless of who wins, the real loser
will be democracy in Iran," wrote dissident Akbar
Ganji in Foreign Affairs in April 2013.
"Many Iranians would like a more progressive and
democratic government," says Iranian-American
journalist Roxana Saberi, who spent four months in
the notorious Evin prison in Iran in 2009. But she
says it is not clear how many of them prefer an
Islamic or a secular government. A March 2011 paper
in Political Research Quarterly based on a 2005 and
a 2008 survey in Iran argued that popular discontent
with the regime’s performance had a strong and
positive correlation to greater support for democracy.
Kar says for any meaningful change, there must be
reforms in election laws that grant the Guardian
Council of twelve Islamic jurists, six of them
appointed by the supreme leader, the right to veto
parliamentary and presidential candidates. Ghaemi
calls for reform of the judiciary and greater
accountability for the country’s security forces.
Policy Options
Rights activists in and outside Iran have repeatedly
said the international focus on Iran’s nuclear
program--which many Western states believe is cover
for a weapons program-- has hampered efforts to
advance human rights reforms. Iranian human rights
activist Shirin Ebadi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate,
says "unfortunately, the nuclear energy issue has
stalemated many issues in Iran, the most important
being the issue of human rights."
But global attention to Iranian human rights has been
on the rise. In March 2011, the UN Human Rights
Council appointed a special rapporteur for Iran to
investigate the country’s human rights violations, the
first since 2002
. education and their work, and lead by example by
The United States imposed the first sanctions on Iran
for human rights abuses in September 2010. Ten
Iranian officials were initially barred from travel to the
United States, and financial restrictions were
imposed. Scores of Iranian individuals have since
been added to sanctions lists for rights abuses. The
European Union also sanctioned thirty-two Iranian
officials in April 2011 and another twenty-nine in
October. By early 2013 the EU had sanctioned almost
90 individuals because of rights violations. These
include senior members of security forces and the
judiciary.
Bajoria, J et.al, "Human Rights in Iran", Council for Foreign Relations, 4/6/13,
61
While the impact of sanctions remain uncertain,
experts say targeted sanctions are effective tools for
naming and shaming Iranian authorities and keeping
the spotlight on human rights abuses. "It’s the best
way to show that the international community cares,"
says Ghaemi, urging for sanctions that target private
sector and government companies that enable
repression, such as those that censor mobile,
satellite, and Internet communications. Coleman says
the United States must be more consistent on human
rights in Iran.
Some experts have also called for the United States
to support greater openness in Iran by providing
Iranians with improved access to technology. On May
30, 2013, the U.S. departments of State and Treasury
announced the lifting of sanctions on companies that
seek to sell cell phones, laptops, encryption
technology, and other equipment to Iranians who
want to circumvent government media controls.
Some Iranians have also questioned what they see
as lack of adequate U.S. support for the Green
Movement in 2009. Others caution any direct U.S.
involvement, arguing it would delegitimize the
opposition movement. In an October 2011 interview
with BBC Persia, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
said if the Green Movement or some other opposition
movement gained strength and decided that they
wanted U.S. support, they should ask for it more
directly.
Saberi says the international community should also
find a way to "help exiled journalists and human rights
defenders who have fled Iran to continue their
observing human rights ourselves."
www.cfr.org/backgrounder/human-rights-iran
The North Korea Nuclear Agreement and Human Rights
The agreement between President Trump and Kim
Jong Un may be the start of denuclearization, or
another failed effort brought down by North Korean
cheating. But if the United States and North Korea
are to have a new relationship, it must include the
human rights dimension.
There’s no reason to rehearse here in detail the
astonishing nature of the regime’s tyranny. The size
and vicious nature of its prison camp system, the
punishment of family members for what the regime
appears to believe is a blood taint, the number of
deaths, the murder of Otto Warmbier—all are well
known. It is the most brutal regime on Earth.
The first point to make is that raising human rights
issues will not destroy the effort to change North
Korea’s nuclear conduct. President George W. Bush
raised freedom of religion repeatedly with Chinese
leaders and that did not prevent a working
relationship. President Reagan put human rights
issues at the center of his relations with the Soviets,
and that did not prevent remarkable progress in the
relationship. As George Shultz wrote in his memoir
Turmoil and Triumph,
"Ronald Reagan and I both gave pride of place to
human rights. He took up the subject at each of his
meetings with Gorbachev and with most visitors from
the Soviet Union to the Oval Office. I pounded on the
subject at every opportunity....”
Indeed he did, making it the first subject at meetings
rather than a throwaway in the final minutes. Yet
relations with the Soviets prospered.
The second point to make is that the only possible
guarantee that a nuclear deal with North Korea will
last over the years is some change in that society. As
long as there is brutal one-man rule, the only thing
needed to destroy any progress that has been made
is a whim by that man. If and when there are others
with influence—some day, one can dream, a
journalist or legislator or mayor or clergyman—there
can be something called “public opinion.”
62
It exists even in dictatorships. Shultz described
Reagan’s approach to the Soviets this way: “I’m not
playing games. I’m not trying to push you into a
corner publicly. I understand politicians even in your
circumstances have to worry about how they look and
don’t want to be pushed around in public."
So pressing for change in North Korea is not utopian
and foolish idealism. Shultz noted that he and
Reagan “increasingly emphasi[zed] to the Soviets the
advantages to them, in the emerging knowledge and
information age, of changing the way they dealt with
their own people.” That is the kind of argument worth
making, and to some extent the Trump administration
has been making it to North Korea.
The third point is that how we act toward North Korea
must reflect who we are as Americans, even if the
impact over there is slight. That regime killed an
American named Otto Warmbier, and not in the
distant and murky past: next week is the first
anniversary of his death. The Trump administration
must recognize that among our nation’s greatest
assets is our association with the cause of liberty.
Working for the peaceful expansion of the frontiers of
liberty is not a sucker’s game, or a disadvantage or
liability, or a waste of resources. It is in very concrete
ways one of the greatest advantages of the United
States in world politics. It is ultimately what ties allies
like Australia, South Korea, and Japan to us: the
knowledge that what we seek for them is what we
seek for ourselves—peace, security, and liberty.
The alternative is to leave those allies, and others,
with the sense that our relations with North Korea
exclude them and their interests, which we have
forgotten. That is what happened in the Obama
administration's nuclear agreement with Iran: close
allies situated near Iran, such as Saudi Arabia, the
UAE, and Israel, came to believe their own interests
were simply being forgotten. We saw in 2009 that the
Obama administration viewed protests in Iran
askance, not as the people's call for freedom but as
an inconvenience to negotiations with the regime.
Japan and other allies in Asia have critical security
interests at stake in our relations with North Korea,
and we should always give maintaining close and
longstanding alliances pride of place as we undertake
to open new relationships with hostile powers.
This is not to say that the President should return to
Washington and suddenly blast human rights abuses
in North Korea. That should be a steady, constant
theme in American diplomacy, never abandoned and
never diminished. When we did the nuclear deal with
Libya in 2003, we did not take Qadhafi’s weapons
and then turn around and commence a human rights
onslaught meant to weaken or to bring down his
regime. I believe we bit our tongues and actually said
less than we should, but one can understand why: we
were starting a relationship with Libya that we thought
would lead in the medium run to a political opening
there as the economy and society changed and
pariah status was replaced by international
engagement.
But the goals and the American standards of conduct
must be clear and our disgust at the Kim regime’s
treatment of its people should always be equally
clear. As in the Soviet case, that will not destroy our
bilateral relationship; instead it will push the regime
toward change and in any event will remind the
regime who we are and what we believe. To put it
another way, a nuclear agreement with North Korea
is not a single transaction--or if it is, it will fail. It must
be the start of an effort to change relations between
our two countries, and to change the relationship
between the regime in North Korea and both the
international system and its own people. In that effort,
a constant assertion of our belief in human rights is
essential to success and to our own self-respect.

Abrams, E, "The North Korea Nuclear Agreement and Human Rights", 12/6/18, Council for Foreign Affairs,
www.cfr.org/blog/north-korea-nuclear-agreement-and-human-rights

63
justice
There are a number of different interpretations of the concept of justice. It is
often closely associated with the idea of fairness and with individuals getting
what they deserve, although what is meant by desert is also contested. One
avenue is to approach justice through the idea of rights, and what individuals
can legitimately expect of one another or of their government. Some theorists
also argue that equality not only in the institutions and procedures of a society
but also in capabilities or well-being outcomes is required for justice to be
realized.

Treatment of Terrorists: How Does Gender Affect 65

Justice?

What is Extradition? 67

By not investigating the U.S. for war crimes, the 70

International Criminal Court shows colonialism still
thrives in international law

Why memories of the Truth and Reconciliation 72

Commission still ache

64
Treatment of Terrorists: How Does Gender Affect Justice?
From arrest to sentencing to post-conflict
reintegration and disarmament programming,
evidence suggests that governments tend to be
less responsive to women in terrorism compared
to their male counterparts. Such disparities in
treatment have numerous consequences for
justice, security, and the prevention of violent
extremism and subsequent conflict.
“I am not an evil or malicious person,” Keonna
Thomas reportedly explained to the judge at her
sentencing hearing in September 2017, months after
she pleaded guilty to attempting to provide material
support to the Islamic State, “I was, I guess at one
point, impressionable.” Though undoubtedly
grounded in some truth, Thomas’ explanation mimics
the language surrounding most women charged with
Islamic State-related criminal offenses in the United
States. From news media to defense attorneys,
commentators regularly cast female terrorism
offenders as naïve, gullible, susceptible targets of
violent extremism, even when they admit their
culpability by pleading guilty. While unsurprising,
given that portrayals of women in terrorism tend to be
misleading, it is crucial to examine the effects such
rhetoric has on confronting women’s participation in
the myriad manifestations of violent extremism. While
the data suggests that women often receive
differential treatment within the criminal justice
system, this discussion explores the disparate
treatment of terrorist offenders as it pertains to
gender, both inside and outside of conventional legal
frameworks.
Although defendants in terrorism cases are not
immune to the broader effects of discrimination within
the criminal justice system, discrepancies in the
punishment of women compared to men in these
cases appear consistent with differences in
sentencing for non-terrorism-related criminal
offenders. In the United States, formal sentencing
guidelines are designed to achieve fair outcomes and
prevent unnecessary disparities by keeping
characteristics about a defendant, like gender, race,
ethnicity, and socioeconomic status, out of
sentencing considerations.
65
Despite this safeguard, evidence suggests that the
federal court system in the United States is broadly
more lenient on female defendants than their male
counterparts, even when controlling for legal
characteristics like criminal history. A 2015 study of
felony cases found that women were 58 percent less
likely to be sentenced to prison than men, and posits
that judges were inclined to treat female defendants
differently when they conformed to traditional gender
roles. A few years earlier, a 2012 review of a swath of
federal criminal cases discovered a considerable
gender gap in sentence length distribution, which the
author ascribes to a “winnowing” of defendants
created by discretionary decisions at each procedural
stage.Both patterns of judicial discretion and the
process of sifting out women offenders at each
encounter with the criminal justice process mirror the
terrorism cases reviewed in this article. The following
data and analysis indicate that women involved in
crimes motivated by violent extremism are less likely
to be arrested, less likely to be convicted, and finally
sentenced at unequal rates. The abovementioned
case of Keonna Thomas, among others, shows how
gender dimensions become a part of legal
proceedings.
Evidence presented in court filings shows that
Thomas, a Philadelphia woman, was a vocal
advocate for the Islamic State online for more than a
year before her April 2015 arrest, using platforms like
Twitter and Skype to advance its agenda.8 As early
as August 2013, prior to the Islamic State’s official
declaration of its caliphate, Thomas shared a picture
of a child clad in camouflage wearing tactical gear
and firearm magazine holsters with the caption, “Ask
yourselves, while this young man is holding
magazines for the Islamic state, what are you doing
for it? #ISIS.” In private communications with three
alleged separate co-conspirators, Thomas expressed
her resounding support of the group and desire to
travel to the region, as well as articulating her interest
in becoming a martyr.An affidavit reveals authorities
knew of Thomas’ electronic communications with a
known “Somalia-based violent jihadi fighter originally
from Minnesota,” a known “overseas [Islamic State]
fighter,” and a “radical Islamic cleric located in
Jamaica.”
News reports and a legal document identified these
co-conspirators as Mohamed Abdullahi Hassan
(“Miski”), Abu Khalid Al-Amriki, and Sheikh Abdullah
Faisal, respectively, three alleged established players
in the Islamic State’s extensive virtual networks. As a
testament to her support for the Islamic State and its
fighters, Thomas married Abu Khalid al-Amriki online
and arranged plans to meet the alleged Islamic State
fighter Shawn Parson, who was believed to be a
Trinidadian, in Syria.In electronic communications,
after Parson said, “u probably want to do Istishadee
(martyrdom operations) with me,” Thomas
responded, “that would be amazing … a girl can only
wish.”
Between February and March 2015, Thomas
prepared for her journey to Syria: she obtained a
passport, researched indirect routes to Syria by way
of Spain and Turkey, acquired a Turkish visa, and
purchased plane tickets to fly from Philadelphia
International Airport to Barcelona, Spain, on March
29, 2015. A mix of court documents shows that
authorities derailed Thomas’ travel plans by
conducting a search warrant of her belongings two
days before her scheduled departure, seizing her
passport and other relevant possessions.Following
her arrest, Thomas initially pleaded not guilty. Months
later, however, she admitted her culpability with one
count of attempting to provide material support to a
terrorist organization. For this offense, Thomas faced
up to 15 years in prison. At the time, one of her
defense attorneys said Thomas “look[ed] forward to
putting this behind her and being a mother to her two
young children.” Their specific mention of her children
is interesting given that a review of literature
regarding the sentencing of federal offenders notes
that “having dependents (more specifically,
dependent children) creates leniency at sentencing,
especially for women.”
By September 2017, U.S. District Judge Michael
Baylson sentenced her to eight years, crediting the
time she served while the justice system processed
her case. In media coverage of her hearing, it is easy
to find instances where news producers ruminate
over Thomas’ gender and contextualize her case with
clichés about women in terrorism.
Alexander, A et.al.,"Treatment of Terrorists: How Does Gender Affect Justice?", Combating Terrorism Center
West Point, 9/18, www./ctc.usma.edu/treatment-terrorists-gender-affect-justice/
66
Anecdotally, reports most often cast Thomas as
naïve, misled, and out-of-touch with reality. They also
suggest that her desire for love and romance drove
her to extremism. While problematic, these framing
patterns are not wholly surprising as gender-related
biases in media coverage of women in terrorism is an
established phenomenon.
Arguably more concerning are instances where
Thomas’ defense drew on similarly biased tropes
about women in extremism to obtain a reduced
sentence for their client. Specifically, one article
quotes a sentencing memo to the U.S. District Judge
by Thomas’ lawyers, Elizabeth Toplin and Kathleen
Gaughan, who advocated for a reduced sentence by
explaining, “Ms. Thomas was a lonely, depressed,
anxiety-ridden mother who spent too much time on
the internet … By attempting to relocate to [Islamic
State]-held territory and marry an [Islamic State]
fighter, she never gave [the Islamic State] anything of
value – except her love.” While considering the job of
defense attorneys and federal defenders—to fight for
the best interests of their client—it is crucial to
examine the extent to which gender-linked biases
might intentionally or inadvertently seep into the logic
and outcome of legal decisions for terrorism-related
crimes. Although sentencing guidelines are designed
to act as a safeguard against unwarranted
considerations regarding a defendant’s personal
characteristics, it is fair to question the efficacy of
such measures when Thomas’ defense rhetorically
instrumentalized her gender.
What Is Extradition?
Introduction
Building on a practice dating back to antiquity, states
forge extradition treaties so they can pursue fugitives
and other wanted individuals in faraway jurisdictions.
Extradition has become ever more important given
the spread of transnational criminal organizations,
including those involved in terrorism, drug trafficking,
counterfeiting, and cybercrime.
The United States has extradition treaties with more
than a hundred countries. But even with treaties in
place, extraditions are often contentious and
sometimes become embroiled in geopolitical friction,
as with a recent case involving a Turkish cleric,
Fethullah Gulen, living in the United States. Instances
in which countries have no extradition treaty often stir
the most public interest, as was the case with former
U.S. security contractor Edward Snowden, who fled
to Russia to avoid prosecution.
The recent arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange in the United Kingdom thrust the
international extradition process back into the
spotlight. Assange, who was evicted from Ecuador’s
London embassy after living there for years, is
wanted by U.S. authorities on hacking-related
charges.
What is extradition?
Extradition is the formal process of one state
surrendering an individual to another state for
prosecution or punishment for crimes committed in
the requesting country’s jurisdiction. It typically is
enabled by a bilateral or multilateral treaty. Some
states will extradite without a treaty, but those cases
are rare.
67
What is in an extradition treaty?
Treaties signed in recent decades tend to take a “dual
criminality” approach, classifying as extraditable all
crimes that are punishable in both jurisdictions. Older
extradition treaties, by contrast, tend to list covered
offenses. For instance, the treaty between Albania
and the United States, signed in 1933, includes an
inventory of more than two dozen crimes, including
murder, rape, arson, and burglary. Many extradition
treaties only allow extradition for crimes that carry a
punishment of more than one year.
Treaties also define instances when extradition is to
be denied. For instance, authorities generally cannot
extradite individuals for military or political offenses,
with exceptions for terrorism and other violent acts.
Some states will not extradite to jurisdictions with
capital punishment or life imprisonment under any
circumstances, or unless the requesting authority
pledges not to impose those penalties.
Other common provisions deal with nationality (many
states will not extradite their own citizens, or will only
do so on a limited basis), double jeopardy, statutes of
limitations, administrative expenses, legal
representation, and transfer of evidence.
How does the U.S. extradition process work?
Extraditions from the United States. The process
generally begins with a foreign government making a
request to the U.S. State Department with treaty-
required paperwork, which often includes details on
the person sought, the offenses alleged, charging
documents, arrest warrants, and evidence. When
foreign authorities believe there is a flight risk, they
can request a provisional arrest and detention while
they assemble the required material. From there, the
secretary of state decides whether to pass the
request on to the Justice Department, which reviews
the case for treaty compliance, obtains an arrest
warrant, and arrests the fugitive, who then goes
before a federal judge or magistrate.
The court then decides whether there is probable
cause to believe the person committed the offense
covered by the applicable treaty. (An individual’s
rights in these hearings are more limited than in
regular trials. They cannot appeal the court’s ruling,
but they may contest the court’s jurisdiction.) If the
court finds probable cause, it certifies the extradition
and passes the case back to the secretary of state,
who has final say on the matter. This certification
procedure is not a fact-finding endeavor or an
independent evaluation of the evidence, as would be
done in a trial; rather, it determines whether the facts
alleged constitute a crime in the prosecuting country.
Extraditions to the United States. A state or federal
prosecutor meets with the relevant law enforcement
agency to learn about the crime and decide whether
an extradition is worth the significant costs. (The
requesting state or federal attorney’s office covers
translation costs.) Prosecutors then prepare an
application to the Justice Department, which reviews
it for sufficiency. If approved, Justice forwards it to the
State Department. Upon its approval, the State
Department sends the request to the relevant U.S.
embassy, which forwards it to authorities in the
country of refuge. From there, the process varies by
country, but it tends to follow a path similar to that in
the United States. Suspects are able to contest or
appeal extradition in many countries. Upon the
approval of the country of refuge, the U.S. Marshals
Service will most often escort the fugitive to the
United States.
Interpol red notice. Any of the international police
organization’s nearly two hundred member countries
can, with a valid arrest warrant or court order, request
what is known as a red notice for a wanted individual.
This notice serves as an alert to police and border
agents worldwide. Member countries may, at their
discretion, arrest the subject of the notice and initiate
legal proceedings over extradition.
68
How long does the process take?
Timing varies widely from case to case, but the
average extradition involving the United States takes
more than a year from request to surrender. Some
have taken more than a dozen years, while many
cases are closed without a fugitive’s capture
Which countries have extradition treaties with the
United States?
The United States has extradition treaties with more
than one hundred countries, some dating back more
than a century. It does not have treaties with dozens
of others, including China, Iran, North Korea, and
Russia, as well as many African, Middle Eastern, and
formerly Soviet countries.
However, the United States does collaborate with
some of these countries on law enforcement matters,
including on transfers of persons in custody, on a
case-by-case basis. For instance, the United States
returned two corruption suspects to China ahead of a
high-profile summit between Presidents Barack
Obama and Xi Jinping in 2014.
How many people are extradited to the United
States annually?
It is difficult to obtain complete data on extraditions,
because different agencies have different reporting
standards. Additionally, law enforcement or political
sensitivities preclude many extraditions from being
recorded. Analysts estimate that the U.S. Marshals
Service, which handles the great majority of
international extraditions, have managed between
350 and 600 extraditions to the United States each
year for the past dozen or so years.
Do political considerations play a role?
Even when a treaty is in place, many factors influence
bilateral cooperation on extraditions, including law
enforcement priorities, bureaucratic resources, and
commercial and political relations between countries.
For instance, despite signing an extradition treaty in
1978, Mexico and the United States quarreled over
extraditions for more than a decade after, culminating
in the Camarena affair in the late 1980s, when
American bounty hunters abducted a Mexican
physician suspected of aiding in the torture and
murder of a U.S. drug enforcement agent. The
episode poisoned extradition cooperation between
the two countries for several years.
“Mexico has been historically reluctant to extradite its
citizens to the United States, particularly in the face of
several perceived trespasses on Mexican sovereignty
by U.S. law enforcement in the pursuit of suspects,”
wrote Emily Edmonds-Poli and David Shirk in a 2018
law journal article
Extraditions from Mexico to the United States then
surged in the early 2000s, from just twelve in 2000 to
more than one hundred in 2009. Analysts attribute the
uptick to warming ties and counternarcotics
cooperation between the administrations of
Presidents Felipe Calderon and George W. Bush,
and later, Barack Obama.
What are some recent high-profile extradition
cases?
Julian Assange. Acting on a U.S. extradition
request, British authorities arrested the WikiLeaks
founder after he was evicted from the Ecuadorian
embassy in London in April 2019. Ecuador had
granted Assange asylum in 2012 and allowed him to
reside at its embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden,
where he faced charges of rape and other
allegations. However, Ecuador withdrew its
protection, citing grievances against Assange and
WikiLeaks. U.S. authorities have charged Assange
with conspiracy to hack into U.S. government
computers and release hundreds of thousands of
classified documents between 2010 and 2011.
Relations, 11/4/19, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-
69
Meng Wanzhou. Canadian authorities arrested
Meng, an executive of the Chinese telecom giant
Huawei, in December 2018 at the request of the
United States. U.S. prosecutors have charged her
with bank and wire fraud related to Huawei’s business
with Iran. The extradition proceedings have garnered
significant media attention given the status of the
suspect and the backdrop of delicate U.S.-China
trade talks. In the days following Meng’s arrest, China
detained two Canadians in what many commentators
characterized as political retaliation.
Fethullah Gulen. In 2016, Turkish prosecutors filed
an extradition request for the cleric, who has lived in
the United States for more than fifteen years. Ankara
alleges that Gulen leads a terrorist organization that
was behind the 2016 coup attempt against President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Justice Department
rejected Turkey’s request, saying it failed to meet “the
legal standards for extradition.” However, Presidents
Trump and Erdogan reportedly discussed the
extradition question in late 2018, raising questions
about Gulen’s fate.
Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman Loera. The Mexican
government extradited Guzman, the former kingpin of
the Sinaloa Cartel, to the United States in 2017 to
face multiple drug-related charges. Prior to his
transfer, he twice escaped maximum-security prisons
in Mexico, prompting concerns about the integrity of
the Mexican judicial system. In February 2019, he
was convicted in a New York federal court after a
three-month trial that provided deep insights into the
workings of one of the most lucrative transnational
criminal enterprises in history.
Masters, J, "What is Extradition?", Council for Foreign
extradition
By not investigating the U.S. for war crimes, the
International Criminal Court shows colonialism still thrives
in international law
On April 5, the United States revoked the visa of the
International Criminal Court’s (ICC) chief prosecutor,
Fatou Bensouda, for her attempts to open an
investigation into alleged war crimes committed by
the U.S. in Afghanistan. A week later, judges at the
ICC rejected Bensouda’s request to open a probe into
U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
While rights advocates condemned this move as
amounting to U.S. interference in the workings of the
ICC, it’s more alarming than mere obstruction — and
is rooted in the pre-existing hierarchy and embedded
colonial structures in international legal order.
Bensouda’s visa revocation underscores the existing
systematic inequality in international legal order. This
is rooted in the presumed hierarchy by a group of
elite nations that have dominated international order
from a position of assumed racial, cultural, political,
historical, material, economic and legal superiority.
These developments come in light of comments
made by the Trump administration’s national security
advisor, John Bolton, who delegitimized the role of
the ICC in a speech he delivered in September 2018.
He said that “the U.S. will take any means necessary”
to overcome “unjust prosecution by this illegitimate
Court.”
Countries like the U.S. have always enjoyed
dominance through this presumed superiority,
enabling them to suggest other nations are like-
minded when it comes to the international legal order.
The U.S. and other powerful nations have not only
been successful in maintaining the status quo of
imbalance inherent in international law, but have also
been instrumental in establishing the rules governing
that legal order.
With tectonic political shifts across the world, the
ICC’s representatives — and jurists like Bensouda —
represent some of the last vestiges of resisting the
dominant global legal order by attempting to hold the
West accountable for their transgressions in the
global South.
70
Unfortunately, however, the Court’s unwillingness to
move beyond its imperial roots is evident from the
decision to reject Bensouda’s request. The ICC has
blatantly redefined the notion of “justice” and has
been preoccupied with African states while turning a
blind eye to equally serious crimes committed by the
U.S.
Meddling is routine
Needless to say, U.S. interference and intervention in
dozens of sovereign nation states is commonplace.
Meddling with the functioning of one of the highest
judicial bodies in the world is therefore a familiar
pattern of American supremacy in the international
legal order.
The move by the U.S. to revoke Bensouda’s visa is
an expression of that supremacy through intimidation
and bullying of representatives of international
institutions. However, it also points to the U.S.
wielding power in the age of its new-found sense of
self-alienation, which manifests into ongoing
imperialist tendencies that influence the decisions
made by international institutions.
This perpetuates the West’s practice and tendency to
use global legal institutions such as the International
Criminal Court to continuously persecute and
demonize the global South.
Bensouda’s efforts have certainly not been halted by
the U.S. government’s move against her. However,
the revocation of her visa and the Court’s validation of
such a move by rejecting Bensouda’s request raises
questions on broader justice issues, what is being
considered within the purview of the ICC, and the
legitimacy of international law.
Such tactics should not come as a surprise. The U.S.
has had a long history of supposed “exceptionalism”
facilitated by international law when it comes to its
participation in the global legal order and its violations
of international humanitarian and human rights law
with impunity.
For instance, the U.S. Supreme Court in 2006
qualified the so-called war on terror as a form of
armed conflict. However, as Jeremy Waldron, a
professor at New York University School of Law,
pointed out, the U.S. consistently violated the Geneva
Conventions during the war through extraordinary
rendition techniques and unlawful detention. This was
done under the pretext that the particular category of
armed conflict that the U.S. was involved in lacked
explicit mention in the Geneva Conventions.
Disregarding international law
Bensouda’s role in investigating these alleged war
crimes has the potential to shine a spotlight on the
historical American practice of disregarding
international law.
By engaging in bullying tactics, the U.S. is now
reaching a new level of abrogation of international
legal order. This could not only prevent the Court
from being able to investigate the alleged violations,
but also has the potential to reinforce its hegemonic
selective power when it comes to the implementation
of international criminal law.
The U.S. and Israel have been particularly effective in
resisting the legitimacy of the global legal order. By
recognizing Israel’s illegal annexation of Golan
Heights, the U.S. administration under President
Donald Trump is legitimizing contempt towards
international legal principles.
At the heart of this lies international law’s deep
connections to structures of power and inequality.
Thankfully, international legal order is a contested
space in which committed jurists like Bensouda are
still fighting oppression through their unapologetic
acts of resistance.
It is now up to the ICC to change its role from a
mechanism that facilitates inequality in international
law to one that perpetuates and supports resistance
for justice.

U.S. dominance in the global legal order does not

stop at its borders. It has a ripple effect, compelling
other major powers with military, economic and
political clout to follow suit.

We’ve witnessed similar practices by Israel as it

denies United Nations Human Rights Council
investigators entry to the occupied territories of
Palestine as they investigate alleged war crimes and
crimes against humanity in Gaza. And in some cases
there has been systematic pressure from the highest
offices in the UN pushing for withdrawal of scholarly
reports on the situation in the Middle East.

While past incidents have often resulted in the

resignation of the individuals who have been blocked
by these forces, it’s refreshing to see Bensouda’s
resistance “without fear or favour.”

Doutaghi, H et.al.,"By not investigating the U.S. for war crimes, the International Criminal Court shows
colonialism still thrives in international law", The Conversation, 15/4/19, www.theconversation.com/by-not-
investigating-the-u-s-for-war-crimes-the-international-criminal-court-shows-colonialism-still-thrives-in-
international-law-115269

71
Why memories of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
still ache
It’s 20 years since the submission of the report of
South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission
(TRC), which was a court-like restorative justice body
that sought to reveal human rights abuses under
apartheid. When Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who
chaired the TRC process, handed over the report to
then President Nelson Mandela in October 1998, he
was handing over more than a physical archive of
memory of the past.
Tutu aptly called the TRC “the third way”. It lifted the
veil of lies perpetuated under apartheid, offering
victims, perpetrators and “implicated others”. To
borrow American academic Michael Rothberg’s term,
it was a horizon moment pregnant with possibility that
oriented the country toward a hopeful (if
unpredictable) future.
Here was a chance for South Africans to begin anew.
But, two decades later and after almost 25 years of
post-apartheid democracy, the hope that was
envisioned then – and the racial reconciliation these
historical moments of 1994 and 1998 promised – are
only barely visible.
What remains are the memories of the stories told at
the TRC and their history-making impetus. All that
remains, as Chief Justice Ismail Mohamed then said,
"is the truth of wounded memories of loved ones"
It’s a deep and traumatic memory that could be
shared, but is impossible to translate, into objective
and corroborative evidence which could survive the
rigours of the law.
Some of the cases that came before the TRC had
already been tried and tested in a case of law and the
courts had found “no one to blame”. It’s a refrain at
the end of many inquests, which became the title of a
book by George Bizos, the South African human
rights lawyer who represented anti-apartheid activists,
including Mandela and Walter Sisulu.
72
She was bearing witness to the shards of her
brokenness after the murder of her husband, Fort
Calata. She recalled the painful details of the day she
received the news that his charred remains had been
found with the burnt-out wreck of the car in which he
was travelling with his comrades. At the time she was
a 26-year-old mother of two, and expecting her third
child.
Even the memory of this moment was too much to
bear. Mrs Calata’s “iconic” scream didn’t just mark the
opening of the TRC. Hers was the voice of a “second
wounding”; an expression of anger and pain,
screamed at a past that goes back several
generations, calling up deeply buried emotions that
reverberated over several generations.
There was a sense that Mrs Calata was at last
reclaiming her agency, with the violent movement of
her body thrown back as she let out her wailing cry.
She was confronting this violent history told on the
stage of the TRC, exposing those responsible for her
irreparable loss.
American social activist bell hooks writes that black
subjectivity is not a standpoint that exists only to
oppose dehumanisation,
'but as that movement which enables… self-
actualisation.'
Objectified in so many ways as the racial and sexual
“other” to legitimise the colonial and apartheid order,
Calata’s TRC testimony shifted the gaze from the
object of oppression to shine the light on the
perpetrators’ depravity. This powerful stance
unsettles the view of a world that associates
goodness with all things white and savagery with
black people.
The TRC laid bare the savagery of apartheid. No
longer would it be possible to deny the barbarism of
the apartheid state and the men and women who
were its executioners.
A similar move is reflected in the exposure of white
America’s vicious terrorism of the lynching of black
people in the artist Ken Gonzales Day’s project
“Erased Lynchings”.
In a series of photographs, Gonzales Day shows
lynchings of black bodies with the images of the
ropes and bodies removed from the scene of the
crime, leaving the white spectators in the
photographs. The series invites the viewer to cast the
gaze not on the victims of the lynchings, but rather on
the spectators to this crime, gleefully standing by to
witness this atrocity to its conclusion.
This forces us to reflect on the extreme depravity of
these spectators, and to ponder about the conditions
of a society that perpetuates such acts of
dehumanisation. Far from denial of history, inviting
the imaginary at these sites of the crime presents the
viewer with potent evidence of who the doer of the
evil deed is.
Gobodo-Madikizela, P, "Why memories of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission still ache", The
Conversation, 29/11/18, www.theconversation.com/why-memories-of-the-truth-and-reconciliation-commission-
still-ache-107721
73
Who are these people, and what stories did or do
they tell their children about this shameful history?
How are the memories of this shame passed down?
Through its silencing and denial? Most importantly,
how does it play out in societies where perpetrators
and victims live in the same country in the aftermath
of violent pasts?
These are some of the most urgent questions of our
time. Few topics stake a more compelling claim on
humanities research than the legacies of historical
trauma. Apartheid, colonialism, slavery and other
watershed moments of crimes against humanity in
the 20th century are not events in “the past”. They are
a history whose traumatic repercussions reverberates
across multiple generations.
We should receive the cry of Nomonde Calata as a
call to arms; to rethink our notions of “reconciliation”,
“forgiveness” and other concepts that imply a goal, an
accomplishment. Dealing with the past will always
remain “unfinished business”, because I think that
much of what happens in the afterlife of historical
trauma is enigmatic, muddy, elusive, and
unpredictable. The words “forgiveness” or
“reconciliation” fall short of adequately capturing this
complexity.
liberty
The concept of liberty refers to having freedom and autonomy. It is often
divided into positive and negative liberty, with negative liberty defined as
individuals having the freedom from external coercion and positive liberty
defined as individuals having the autonomy to carry out their own rational
will. Some scholars reject this distinction and argue that in practice, one form
of liberty cannot exist without the other. It is also questioned if such an
understanding of liberty is sufficient for an interdependent world, in which the
seeming freedom and autonomy of some may depend on lack of some forms of
liberty for others. Hence, debates on equality inform our understanding of
liberty as well.

The messy reality of religious liberty in America 75

The Human Freedom Index provides a snapshot of 77

global liberty

Atlantic Charter 2.0: A “Declaration of Principles for 78

Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace”

Why the Press Is Less Free Today 81

74
The messy reality of religious liberty in America
On Tuesday, Dec. 5, a visibly divided U.S. Supreme
Court tackled the contentious issue of religious
freedom when it heard oral arguments in
“Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights
Commission.” The arguments appeared to evenly
split the four conservative justices from the four
liberals. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who is often a
swing vote, seemed to side with the baker.
The case involves a Denver bakery owner who
refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple,
citing his religious belief that marriage can be
between only a man and woman. The couple sued,
and a lower court ruled the baker violated Colorado’s
public accommodations law. The statute forbids
discrimination by businesses serving the public,
including on the basis of sexual orientation.
In their appeal to the Supreme Court, the bakery’s
lawyers have emphasized free speech issues by
presenting the baker as an artist who has a right to
choose how he expresses himself. But religious
freedom remains central to the case. A key question
is whether a business owner must provide services
that conflict with his or her religious beliefs.
This divisive case highlights the vast difference
between the reality and the rhetoric of religious
freedom, which is often considered to be the ideal
that promotes harmony and equality. But, history
suggests that it does lead to more conflict.
The rhetoric: Equality and goodwill
It is true that throughout U.S. history, Americans have
idealized religious freedom and imagined that it
brings harmony.
The First Amendment’s clauses guaranteeing
religious free exercise and preventing establishment
of an official church seemed to promise less discord
to the Founding Fathers. In an 1802 letter, Thomas
Jefferson, for example, wrote that “religion is a matter
which lies solely between Man & his God.” As the
nation’s third president, he argued that a “wall of
separation between Church & State” would give all
people equally the right to free conscience.
75
Later presidents echoed the view that religious
freedom brings equality and unity by preventing
government from favoring particular faiths.
Before his election in 1960, John F. Kennedy tried to
ease fears about his Catholicism by affirming
religious liberty. Kennedy believed this freedom kept
one group from oppressing another. It formed the
basis of a society, he declared, where people would
“refrain from those attitudes of disdain and division
which have so often marred their works in the past,
and promote instead the American ideal of
brotherhood.”
In the early 1990s, George H.W. Bush identified
religious liberty as the basis for other rights. He
credited it as a major reason for the vibrancy of
American society.
The reality: Conflict and debate
But, the promised harmony has proved elusive.
Scholars such as Steven K. Green and Tisa Wenger
have documented arguments about religious freedom
throughout U.S. history.
Minority communities, ranging from Catholics to
Mormons, have fought to have their traditions and
customs recognized as religious. As I show in my
work on pluralism, Americans have debated what
constitutes a religious expression rather than a
cultural practice. People have also argued whether
religious expression can extend into political, social
and business interactions.
These debates have required the intervention of the
courts and have often ended at the Supreme Court.
Thus, a right intended to free Americans from
government has instead necessitated frequent
involvement of a major government institution.
Further complicating matters, the Supreme Court has
changed its position over time. Its evolving
interpretations show how religious freedom debates
create shifting categories of winners and losers.
To the courts
Like Masterpiece Cakeshop, one of the Supreme
Court’s first religious liberty cases involved marriage.
In 1878, a Mormon resident of the Utah territory sued
the federal government after he was charged with
bigamy. He argued that the law violated his religious
liberty by criminalizing his polygamous marriage. The
Supreme Court disagreed. In Reynolds v. United
States, the court ruled that the First Amendment
guaranteed only freedom of belief, not freedom of
practice.
In the 20th century, the Supreme Court showed
greater sympathy to religious liberty claims. In several
cases – including one brought by Jehovah’s
Witnesses challenging a statute requiring a permit for
public evangelizing and another by an Amish
community that objected to Wisconsin’s compulsory
public school law – justices sided with those who
claimed their freedom was violated.
That changed in 1990. The court ruled against two
men who lost their jobs after using peyote, the cactus,
which has hallucinogenic properties and has long
been used in Native American religious practices.
Because they were fired for drug use, the men were
denied unemployment benefits. They claimed that as
members of a Native American church, they used the
drug for religious purposes.
Moving away from earlier decisions, justices ruled
that religious belief was not a ground for refusing to
obey laws “prohibiting conduct that the State is free to
regulate.”
Mislin, D, "The messy reality of religious liberty in America", The Conversation, 28/11/17,
www.theconversation.com/the-messy-reality-of-religious-liberty-in-america-85963
76
New century, new conflicts
The peyote case set the stage for Masterpiece
Cakeshop. It was in response to the case that
Congress passed the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act (RFRA) of 1993. It required that laws restricting
religious expression must show that they serve a
compelling need.
RFRA was central in the Supreme Court’s 2014
decision in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby. That contentious
split ruling allowed small, closely held companies the
right to deny contraceptive benefits mandated by the
Affordable Care Act on the grounds of protecting their
owners’ religious liberty.
Similarly, in October 2017, the Trump administration
invoked freedom of religion when it allowed all
employers a religious exemption to the contraception
coverage requirement in the Affordable Care Act.
Critics saw that policy change as an attack on
women’s rights. Reaction to it on both sides again
showed that government involvement in debates
about religious freedom invariably produces winners
and losers.
Given our polarized society and the division among
the Supreme Court justices today, this pattern will
continue, whatever the verdict is.
The Human Freedom Index provides a snapshot of global
liberty
As a new year begins, it is important to pause and Publications such as the Human Freedom Index,
take a look at the state of global liberty. The Human provide the foundational information from which to
Freedom Index makes it possible to do just that. craft policy that can increase human flourishing.
Through a holistic range of categories, the Human While almost half of the population currently lives with
Freedom Index measures aspects of human freedom low levels of freedom, indexes such as these provide
including the size of government, freedom of the groundwork needed to change that and increase
movement, identity, and relationships, as well as human flourishing.
security and safety among others. A total of 76
individual indicators from these categories are used
to paint a picture of the overall state of human
freedom across the globe. New Zealand, Switzerland, CLICK HERE TO READ THE
and Hong Kong rank the highest. While the Republic LATEST VERSION OF THE
of Yemen, Venezuela, and Syria, bottomed out the
2019 Human Freedom Index. HUMAN FREEDOM INDEX
The state of global liberty declined slightly in 2018.
“Of the 12 major categories that make up the index,
all except 3 saw some deterioration since 2008,” says
the report. On the whole, there was an improvement
in economic freedom. However, this was overcome
by a greater decline in personal freedom, which
dropped the global average, albeit all movement was
marginal.

High levels of human freedom are associated with

higher levels of prosperity. This is shown by the freest
quarter of the countries having an average per capita
income that is more than 3 times the income of those
who live in countries in the least free quarter. Despite
the benefits of freedom, most of the global population
has been excluded. According to the 2018 report,
less than 15 percent of the world’s population lives in
these top countries. Meanwhile, almost half of the
world’s population — 42 percent — lives in countries
that fall into the bottom quarter on the index.

"The Human Freedom Index provides a snapshot of global liberty", Atlas Network, 10/1/19,
www.atlasnetwork.org/news/article/the-human-freedom-index-provides-a-snapshot-of-global-liberty

77
Atlantic Charter 2.0: A “Declaration of Principles for
Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace”
In August 1941, four months before the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor drew the United States into
World War II, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston
Churchill held a secret rendezvous off the coast of
Newfoundland, Canada. Much of continental Europe,
including France, had fallen to Nazi Germany, and
imperial Japan was on the march in Asia. At this dark
moment, the U.S. president and British prime minister
sought to give hope to oppressed peoples, by
outlining their vision for an open, just, and stable
postwar world. Their handiwork was the Atlantic
Charter, the founding document of what today we call
the “liberal international order.”
After a seven-decade run, that world order is under
grave assault. Many people, including citizens in free
societies, have grown skeptical of democracy, open
markets, and international institutions. Globally,
nationalism, populism, and protectionism are
ascendant. Authoritarian powers, China and Russia
foremost among them, seek to weaken Western
solidarity and liberal values. Meanwhile, the United
States, the former champion of an open world, has
abdicated global leadership. Under President Donald
J. Trump, it has embraced an amoral, transactional,
and insular foreign policy, contributing to the sense of
a world adrift.
Fortunately, not everyone is taking this lying down. At
this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, a group
of international statesmen and women released a
“Declaration of Principles for Freedom, Prosperity,
and Peace.” This document advances seven
principles for a free, fair, and sustainable international
order, consistent with the Atlantic Charter but updated
for today’s circumstances. Call it Atlantic Charter 2.0.
The co-chairs of this effort are Madeleine Albright,
Stephen Hadley, Carl Bildt, and Yoriko Kawaguchi,
who formerly served as U.S. secretary of state, U.S.
national security advisor, and Swedish and Japanese
prime ministers, respectively.
78
Although sponsored by the Atlantic Council and the
Centre for International Governance Innovation, this
initiative is not simply a transatlantic or even Western
endeavor. Its global task force includes luminaries
from democracies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America,
as well as Europe and North America.
The original Atlantic Charter had eight principles. This
Declaration offers “seven statements,” on topics
ranging from international peace to the world
economy to the global commons. Each enunciates a
basic human right and outlines the obligations of
states (and, where appropriate, private entities and
individuals) in promoting and defending it.
Collectively, these principles offer a hopeful vision of
the future, with potentially global appeal.
Let’s take a closer look at the seven statements.
Freedom and Justice: The Declaration’s point of
departure is “the right of all people to live in free and
just societies, where fundamental rights are protected
under the rule of law.” Beyond repeating well-
established liberties like freedom of expression and
assembly (already enumerated in the UN Covenant
on Civil and Political Rights), the text adds some
contemporary wrinkles. In promoting the “free flow of
information,” for example, governments are expected
to protect personal information and individual privacy.
They are also obliged to “combat corruption,” and to
ensure equal protection under the law, regardless of
“gender, disability, and sexual identity,” among other
factors.
Democracy and Self-Determination: The authors
unequivocally agree that all just governments derive
their legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and
that citizens have a right to “choose their own leaders
through a free, fair, and competitive democratic
process,” without meddling, threats or intimidation, or
“foreign interference.” These principles are all
unassailable. But they merit constant repetition, given
a global retreat of democracy that (according to
Freedom House) has entered its thirteenth year.
Peace and Security: All peoples, the document
continues, have a right “to live in peace, free from
threats of aggression, terrorism, oppression, crimes
against humanity, and the proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction.” Accordingly, governments must
avoid endangering the peace or allowing such
violence to occur on their territories. In the real world,
of course, things are not always so black or white.
Nuclear deterrence, for instance, is based on the
implicit threat of annihilation. The document also
fudges on its call for states to “refrain from the use of
force,” adding the qualifier: “except as just and
necessary to advance these principles.” Who gets to
make that decision remains ambiguous.
Free Markets and Equal Opportunity: The greatest
criticism of the liberal international order is that it no
longer delivers shared prosperity. Aware of this, the
authors temper their neoliberal instincts with
recognition that restoring confidence in globalization
requires addressing surging inequality and
strengthening social safety nets. “We affirm the right
of all people to engage in economic activity based on
free market principles,” they write, but add that
citizens must have “equal opportunity to contribute to
and the ability to share in the benefits of national
prosperity.” To this end, governments have an
obligation to “protect the rights of workers, including
the right to seek gainful employment; seek to mitigate
the adverse impacts of global trade; and encourage
inclusive, equitable, and well-regulated economies.”
The drafters clearly hope that such measures will de-
fang economic populism.
An Open and Healthy Planet: Like the Atlantic
Charter, the Declaration insists on the freedom of the
seas, a core tenet of U.S. foreign policy since 1776
and an increasing concern given Chinese behavior in
the South and East China Seas. But its support for
“free and open access to the global commons” goes
well beyond the oceans. The document calls on all
states to “refrain from undue interference with
freedom of navigation in the air, seas, and outer
space, or with access to cyberspace.” Even more
significant, the same statement affirms the right of all
people to “a safe and healthy planet.” Back in 1941,
few imagined that human activities might someday
jeopardize life on Earth. Today, few outside the White
House and other conservative circles ignore the
reality of global warming and its catastrophic
potential.
79
The Right of Assistance: Any effort to revitalize the
liberal international order must counter a powerful
sovereigntist mindset that is skeptical of international
commitments and rejects external concerns about
internal conduct. The Declaration tackles this
dilemma head on, by framing sovereignty in terms not
simply of rights but of responsibilities. “We affirm the
right of national sovereignty, while recognizing that
sovereignty obligates governments to uphold these
principles.” This will be the Declaration’s most
controversial statement. The authors posit that
citizens in all countries (“including in non-free
societies”) have the right to receive outside aid to
realize their rights. Moreover, where governments
“are unwilling or unable to cease and remedy flagrant
or systemic violations,” other states may “take such
actions just and necessary to prevent them.” It is
unclear how many sovereignty-minded states will sign
onto this broad and potentially interventionist
principle.
Collective Action: The Declaration closes by
“affirm[ing] the right of all people to cooperate in
support of these principles and to work together to
advance them.” Whether governments will avail
themselves of this “right” is an open question. The
world is confronting a crisis of multilateralism, as
many legacy institutions—some dating from the
1940s—struggle to adapt to emerging threats, shifting
power dynamics, and demands for accountability.
The authors provide some grounds for hope, by
advocating cooperation not only within formal bodies
like the United Nations but also within more flexible
“partnerships, coalitions, and alliances that bring
together likeminded governments,” as well as
multistakeholder arrangements that unite
governments with private actors in resolving complex
global challenges. Multilateralism, the authors are
saying, comes in many forms.
Skeptics may well discount this weekend’s
Declaration as a “high-minded” exercise divorced
from the ugly realities of world politics. They would be
wrong. The success of the liberal world order has
always rested on a combination of power and
idealism.
This was something that Roosevelt realized
instinctively in 1941. Questioned by reporters, the
president conceded that the Atlantic Charter did “not
provide rules of easy application.” Nevertheless, he
insisted, “it was a good thing to have principles,” so
that humanity has something to aim for. He hoped
that the charter would take its place beside the
Magna Carta and Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points,
“as a step toward a better life of the people of the
world.”
In the same vein, the authors of this weekend’s
Declaration acknowledge that “principles are not self-
executing.” Accordingly, they propose to “develop a
plan of action to implement these principles and
advance our common goals.” The ultimate goal is to
“create a more effective and responsive set of global
rules” tailored to modern realities and grounded in
international law. This will be a difficult journey. But
the authors of the Declaration have taken the
essential first step, by delimiting the destination.

Patrick, S,"Atlantic Charter 2.0: A “Declaration of Principles for Freedom, Prosperity, and Peace”, Council for
Foreign Relations, 16/2/19, www.cfr.org/blog/atlantic-charter-20-declaration-principles-freedom-prosperity-
and-peace

80
Why the Press Is Less Free Today
In the worldwide movement away from democracy,
perhaps the most vulnerable institution is the free
press, and the most disposable people are
journalists. If they’re doing their job right, they can
have few friends in powerful places. Journalists
become reliably useful to governments, corporations,
or armed groups only when they betray their calling.
They seldom even have a base of support within the
general public. In some places, it’s impossible to
report the truth without making oneself an object of
hatred and a target of violence for one sector of
society or another.
In recent years, reporting the news has become an
ever more dangerous activity. Between 2002 and
2012, according to the Committee to Protect
Journalists (C.P.J.), five hundred and six journalists
were killed worldwide, as opposed to three hundred
and ninety in the previous decade. Even in the most
violent war zones, such as Iraq and Syria, the cause
of death is most often simple murder, rather than
being killed while covering combat. One major shift in
the years since September 11, 2001, has been the
erosion of a commonly accepted idea of press
neutrality. Journalists are now seen by many
combatants, especially jihadis, as legitimate targets
and valuable propaganda tools, alive or dead. The
best-known cases involve Western reporters, from
Daniel Pearl to James Foley, but the most
endangered journalists are ones you’ve probably
never heard of—the newspaper reporter in Tijuana,
the cameraman in Karachi, the blogger in Tehran.
Joel Simon, the executive director of C.P.J, has just
published a book called “The New Censorship: Inside
the Global Battle for Media Freedom.” It seems
strange to speak of growing censorship in an era
when elections are common around the world, private
freedoms have expanded even in repressive
countries like China, the Internet and social media
swamp our brains with indiscriminate information
every nanosecond, and anyone with a Twitter
account or a Facebook page can be a journalist.
81
But Simon makes a persuasive case that the global
trend is toward less, not greater, freedom of the
press. “Deluged with data, we are blind to the larger
reality,” he writes. “Around the world new systems of
control are taking hold. They are stifling the global
conversation and impeding the development of
policies and solutions based on an informed
understanding of the local realities. Repression and
violence against journalists is at record levels, and
press freedom is in decline.”
“The New Censorship” outlines four main reasons
why this is so. The first is the rise of elected leaders,
such as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s Recep
Tayyip Erdoğan, and the leftist Presidents of
Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia, who use their
power to intimidate independent journalists and make
it nearly impossible for them to function. They exploit
their democratic mandates to govern as dictators
—“democratators,” as Simon calls them. They do this
not only by manipulating, denouncing, and jailing
critical reporters but by creating an atmosphere in
which a free press is considered a kind of fifth column
in the body politic, an import from the West that at
best serves as a propaganda tool for outside interests
—introducing alien values and stoking chaos—and at
worst actively undermines national security and pride.
Demagogues like Putin and Erdoğan create tyrannies
of the majority, so that the dissenting stance that’s the
normal position of an independent press is easily
isolated, tainted with foreign associations, and
blamed for social ills. The idea that freedom of
expression, along with other public liberties, is a
specifically Western ideology, rather than a universal
right, is increasingly common, from Caracas to
Beijing. Because they have popular support, these
leaders enjoy a certain protection against the familiar
campaigns of denunciation that are directed at the
world’s more straightforward dictators, such as North
Korea’s Kim Jong-un or Saudi Arabia’s King
Abdullah.
The second source of censorship, according to
Simon, is terrorism. The beheading of Daniel Pearl in
Karachi began the trend of turning journalists into
specific high-value targets. The Iraq War—the
deadliest in history for journalists, with a hundred and
fifty killed, eighty-five per cent of them Iraqis, most of
whom were murdered—worsened it, making the
capture and execution of reporters a normal part of
the media landscape. (For me, there was a turning
point when I was reporting in Iraq in early 2004, and
realized that the press sign in my car windshield
offered no protection and perhaps invited trouble; I
asked my Iraqi driver to take it down.) In Syria, where
many foreign reporters and many more Syrian ones
have been kidnapped or killed, the basic functions of
journalism have all but ceased.
The extreme violence of conflict today is actually
amplified by technological progress. Armed groups no
longer need to keep journalists alive, because they
have their own means of—in the terrible cliché
—“telling their story”: they can post their own videos,
publish their own online reports, and tweet to their
own followers, knowing that the international press
will pick up the most sensational stories anyway. “The
direct links created between content producers and
consumers make it possible for violent groups to
bypass the traditional media and reach the public via
chat rooms and websites,” Simon writes. “Journalists
have become less essential and therefore more
vulnerable as a result.”
Packer, G, "Why the Press Is Less Free Today", The New Yorker, 13/11/14, www.newyorker.com/news/daily-
comment/press-freedom-new-censorship
82
Another casualty of technological change is the
foreign news bureau—the presence of large numbers
of correspondents in places like Sao Paolo, Nairobi,
and Jakarta. Simon got his start as a stringer in
Mexico City in the early nineties. The system was
obviously inefficient, with a dozen or two Americans
all reporting the same thing for papers up north, and
therefore doomed to “disruption.” But as the decline
of traditional media closed foreign bureaus all over
the world, critical reporting has been left to local
reporters. Many of them are talented, enterprising,
and courageous, and often more able than their
Western counterparts to work up sources and get to
the heart of the story. But their position is also far
more precarious. They have no wealthy foreign news
organization or influential foreign government to back
them. The only government around, their own, might
want them dead. In countries like Mexico, the
Philippines, and Pakistan, local journalists are the
target of brutal campaigns of intimidation and murder
by shadowy secret services or armed groups, from
narco-traffickers to Islamists.
equality
Egalitarian theories are based on a concept of equality that all people, or
groups of people, are seen as having the same intrinsic value. Equality is
therefore closely linked to justice and fairness, as egalitarians argue that
justice can only exist if there is equality. Increasingly, with growing
polarization within societies, equality is also linked to liberty, as different
people have differing possibilities to be free and autonomous.

We Finally Won the Right to Drive in Saudi Arabia. 83

But the Kingdom's War on Women Is Only Getting
Worse

Why Africa is the most homophobic continent 86

#MeToo has skipped Indonesia — here’s why 89

7 surprising and outrageous stats about gender 91

inequality

83
We Finally Won the Right to Drive in Saudi Arabia. But the
Kingdom's War on Women Is Only Getting Worse
Al-Sharif is a Saudi Arabian women's rights
activist and the author of Daring to Drive: A Saudi
Woman's Awakening. In 2011, she was detained
after filming herself driving through the Saudi city
Khobar, an act that was prohibited at the time.
Manal al-Sharif co-founded the Women2Drive
movement in Saudi Arabia in 2011, campaigning
for the right of women to drive in the kingdom. In
June 2018, the Saudi monarchy eventually lifted a
long-term ban on women driving. Al-Sharif, 39,
has lived in Sydney, Australia with her four-year-
old son for the past two years, and has been
unable to return to her homeland after the arrest
of fellow women’s rights activists in the country
last year. Her 13-year-old son still lives in the
Kingdom with his grandmother; al-Sharif has not
seen him for over a year. From April 10, al-Sharif
is driving across the United States in partnership
with Human Rights Foundation to raise
awareness of ongoing human rights abuses in
Saudi Arabia. Shortly before she embarked on
this journey, al-Sharif spoke with TIME about the
future of women’s rights in her home country.
Originally, I was planning to go back to Saudi Arabia
when the ban on women driving was lifted. I wanted
to drive coast-to-coast with my eldest son, to
celebrate. If you are a Saudi and you marry a non-
Saudi, you need a special permission from the
government to marry. I was never granted that
permission and so my son is not recognized by the
Saudi government. That means they will not issue
him a visa to enter the country. So my younger son
lives with me in Australia and can’t go back home
with me. I have two sons who have never met, who I
have never held in my arms at the same time. The
only way to be with one is to leave the other.
The only charges the women in jail today are facing
are contacting foreign organizations. Those foreign
organizations are human rights organizations.
84
The way they have been tortured, put in solitary
confinement and have been subject to a smear
campaign and character assassination by the pro-
government media shows how scared the authorities
are of these women, and how powerful and effective
they are. These women were hunted down and taken
from their homes. Women living abroad were flown
back to Saudi Arabia and literally kidnapped —
women like Loujain al-Hathloul, a vocal advocate for
women’s rights who was abducted while driving in the
United Arab Emirates in March 2018. She was
brought back to Saudi Arabia on a private jet, where
she is still in jail.
The activists were put in a secret prison, where they
were tortured and sexually assaulted. This
information has even been confirmed by their
families. Although in late March, some of the activists
were temporarily released, the brutal way these
women were treated shows that this government is
not supportive of women’s rights or reforms.
The government doesn’t understand that they need
us. Activists are the most patriotic people, because
they are fighting for a better country; they are not
traitors.
What happened the last two years is a huge
crackdown on activists, especially peaceful activists
who used social media. Social media was the place
where where we could talk, where we could discuss
— it was our virtual parliament. As a citizen of Saudi
Arabia, you live in one of the richest countries in the
world, but you don’t own your own life, you don’t own
your own decisions.
There were a lot of red flags on the outside, like with
the war in Yemen and the brutal Qatar embargo, but
then the war moved inside Saudi Arabia. It started as
a war against people who joined terrorist groups, but
it has now morphed into a war targeting activists and
the social media influencers — many of whom are in
jail today.
There have been huge efforts from the government to
propagate its agenda on social media and to
influence the discourse in an unprecedented way.
The Saudi regime now has a kind of power over their
citizens in a way that they didn’t even dream of ten
years ago. It is really painful for us to see. The same
tools we use to push for social change are being used
to undermine us and put our lives in danger.
We won’t be anonymous or silent anymore. We will
keep speaking up in the face of tyranny and injustice.
Those regimes should be the ones who are afraid,
not us. I call for a Global Magnitsky Act targeting
regimes like Saudi Arabia, legislation that will
sanction individuals who commit human rights
abuses. It’s time democracies put the values they
believe into action.

The second part of the story is the reaction of My drive is a call to act. I couldn’t do the drive cross-
democracies around the world to the assassination of country in my own homeland, so I’m doing it in the
Jamal Khashoggi, which is an assault on freedom of U.S., moving between cities like Washington, D.C.
expression, and the indifference of the world to the and Birmingham, Alabama, where American civil
imprisonment and the torture of these women. rights movements took place. It’s a reminder to revisit
Countries can talk about all the values of democracy, these values that humans around the globe were
but these values should not just be for one set of fighting for and are still fighting for. Are we still
citizens. If these countries become allied with standing up for these democratic values or not?
dictatorships that violate the same values that those Martin Luther King Jr. once said “Injustice anywhere
democracies call for, this is hypocrisy. This is a is a threat to justice everywhere.” And the fight for
double standard. women’s rights anywhere contributes to the fight for
women’s rights everywhere.
The assassination of Khashoggi, which took place in
Turkey just over six months ago now, cannot be
dismissed as an internal issue for Saudi Arabia. You
cannot say that when you buy our oil, when you send
your companies to develop huge projects and when
you accept investments from Saudi money. This is
why we have to question the influence of Saudi
money on think tanks and policy makers in the U.S.
Instead of driving in Saudi Arabia, I moved the drive
campaign to the U.S., because Washington and
Riyadh are close allies. Ever since President Donald
Trump came to the White House, it’s been a green
light for the Saudis to get away with human rights
violations.

Al-Sharif, M, "We Finally Won the Right to Drive in Saudi Arabia. But the Kingdom's War on Women Is Only
Getting Worse" 10/4/19, TIME, www.time.com/5567330/saudi-arabia-women-rights-drive/

85
Why Africa is the most homophobic continent
Simon Lokodo cannot imagine kissing a man. "I think
I shall die," he said last week. "I would not exist. It is
inhuman. I would be mad. Just imagine eating your
faeces."
Lokodo is "ethics and integrity" minister in Uganda
and a champion of the country's swingeing anti-
homosexuality bill, which looked set to become law
on Sunday until President Yoweri Museveni halted it,
pending scientific advice. The delay was a small
victory for activists dismayed a week ago when
Museveni insisted that he would approve the
legislation. That news prompted Kenneth Roth,
executive director of Human Rights Watch, to tweet:
"In name of Africa culture Uganda Pres will sign anti-
gay law pushed by US evangelists toughening British
colonial ban."
In 140 characters, Roth encapsulated a broad sweep
of history and geography and one of the central
paradoxes of Africa's new war on gay and lesbian
people. It is a war marked by political opportunism,
biblical fundamentalism and a clash between cultural
relativism and universal human rights. But it is also a
measure of conservatives' anxiety that every day
more and more African homosexuals are coming out
and losing their fear. Western liberals eager to see
the best in Africa must face an inconvenient truth: this
is the most homophobic continent on Earth. Same-
sex relations are illegal in 36 of Africa's 55 countries,
according to Amnesty International, and punishable
by death in some states. Now a fresh crackdown is
under way.
In January, Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan
signed into law a bill criminalising same-sex "amorous
relationships" and membership of LGBT rights
groups. Last week Gambian president Yahya
Jammeh declared: "We will fight these vermins called
homosexuals or gays the same way we are fighting
malaria-causing mosquitoes, if not more
aggressively."
86
This is not, however, merely the hate-filled bile of
politicians. They make such statements because they
know they will strike a popular chord in swaths of
Africa. Anyone who has spent a fair amount of time
on the continent is likely to encounter a warm,
friendly, decent human being who will stop them short
with an outburst of homophobic prejudice.
Newspapers, TV and radio often fan the flames.
So it is in Uganda, where a tabloid once published
photographs of dozens of gay people under the
words: "Hang them." Homosexuality was already a
crime there, but the new legislation, rushed through
parliament in December, broadens the scope of life
imprisonment for a range of "offences" including
suggestive touching in public. Museveni has until
Sunday to sign, veto or amend the bill, and at first he
indicated that he would knock it back.
On 18 January, the Associated Press (AP) reported,
he held a meeting with US-based rights activists and,
on the phone, South African retired archbishop
Desmond Tutu, who drew a comparison between the
legislation and racist laws under apartheid. Museveni
"specifically said this bill is a fascist bill," Santiago
Canton of the Robert F Kennedy Centre for Justice
and Human Rights told AP. "Those were the first
words that came out of his mouth."
Something changed his mind. A month later the
president, under domestic pressure, announced that
he would sign the bill after receiving a report on
homosexuality from a team of "medical experts". But
the Observer has obtained the report, entitled
"Scientific statement from the ministry of health on
homosexuality"; it is far from the bigots' charter that
might be expected. "Homosexuality existed in Africa
way before the coming of the white man," it states.
"There are a spectrum of sexual behaviours. Some
people are less fixed in one form of sexuality than
others. Thus sexuality is a far more flexible human
quality than used to be assumed in the past.
Homosexuality has no clear cut cause; several
factors are involved which differ from individual to
individual. It is not a disease that has a treatment."
But Simon Lokodo argues that the most important
conclusion is that there is no definitive gene for
homosexuality. "It is a social style of life that is
acquired," he said by phone from Uganda. "They
chose to be homosexual and are trying to recruit
others. The commercialisation of homosexuality is
unacceptable. If they were doing it in their own rooms
we wouldn't mind, but when they go for children,
that's not fair. They are beasts of the forest."
With chilling conviction, Lokodo, a former Catholic
priest, set out why he believes the state should
interfere in the choices of consenting adults in private.
"Homosexuality is unnatural, abnormal and strange to
our cultures," he said. "It has no output whatsoever; it
only does damage and destruction. You cannot have
a right to be a sick human being. There is no right in
homosexuality. It must be cured."
The minister has also considered the anatomical
implications. "Excretion is through the anus, like the
exhaust of an engine. The human body receives what
it takes from the mouth. They're twisting nature the
wrong way. Homosexuality will destroy humanity
because there is no procreation; it will destroy health
because the backsides will not hold."
After the bill drew criticism from Barack Obama,
Lokodo accused the west of trying to "blackmail"
Uganda. "When I heard the US saying they will cut
aid, we said fine. Will they be comfortable if we come
to America and started practising polygamy?
Homosexuality is strange to us and polygamy is
strange to you. We have divergent views."
Promoters of the bill in Uganda, which gained
independence from Britain in 1962, appealed to
populist notions of culture that frame homosexuality
as an "un-African", alien behaviour foisted on the
continent by western imperialists. Seen through this
prism, a strike against gay and lesbian people is a
strike against colonialism and in favour of African
nationalism and self-worth.
87
Yet as the scientists' report noted, homosexuality has
existed throughout human history. Anthropologists
found an ethnic group in central Africa where it was
customary for a male warrior to marry a teenage boy
and celebrate victory in battle by having sexual
intercourse. In many cases, the very laws being
imposed so zealously were introduced by the
European empires that carved up and plundered
Africa.
"Prior to western colonisation, there are no records of
any African laws against homosexuality," said Peter
Tatchell, the veteran human rights and gay rights
campaigner. "The real import into Africa was not
homosexuality but homophobia."
It was enforced legally by colonial administrators and
ideologically by Christian missionaries. Tatchell, who
twice tried to arrest Zimbabwean president Robert
Mugabe over human rights abuses, added: "The
colonial narratives of racism and homophobia are
very closely intertwined. It's one of the great tragedies
of Africa that so many people have internalised the
homophobia of that colonial oppression and now
proclaim it as their own authentic African tradition."
Defence of "tradition" can be a sleight of hand to
trade on cultural relativism and exploit postcolonial
guilt. Some in the west may be reluctant to criticise
African attitudes, lest they be accused of racism. But
activists counter that they are appealing to human
rights, such as the right not to be tortured, that apply
everywhere at all times. A minority has an absolute
right to be protected from violations by a majority,
they argue.
This counts for little at the altar of political
expediency, however, according to Kapya Kaoma, an
Episcopal priest from Zambia, and religion and
sexuality researcher at the US-based thinktank
Political Research Associates. Politicians tend to
"blame the gays" to distract attention from their own
failings, he says, casting them as the enemy within.
Mugabe peppered his speeches with praise of Adam
and Eve and denunciations of homosexuals as
animals while electioneering last year.
The share of the sub-Saharan Africa population that
is Christian climbed from 9% in 1910 to 63% in 2010,
says the Pew Research Centre. Kaoma said:
"Religious fundamentalism is strong in these
countries. That provides the militant reaction to LGBT
rights. One of the fears for fundamentalists is losing
grip of the country; they are told they have lost grip
because of the gays. They say, 'We don't want to lose
Nigeria or Uganda just as our brothers lost America to
the gays. If it means killing, we will kill.'" He said
homosexuality is a rare point of convergence for
Christian and Islamic hardliners.
US evangelicals have been accused of turning their
attention to Africa and whipping up homophobia with
lurid stories about child molestation, bestiality, rape
and deadly diseases. Kaoma reflected: "In America
the conservatives are losing. In Africa they are
winning and the progressives are on the retreat.
People are not paying attention to how world religions
are taking advantage of globalisation. Those opposed
to gay rights can connect very easily with African
groups opposed to gay rights. In the past they had to
travel; now they send an email and share tactics.
Conservatives argue that gays are out to destroy
'traditional family values'; as Africans encounter fast-
changing values, this language sounds very
attractive."
Anyone who attended the recent opening of the
Queer and Trans Art-iculations: Collaborative Art for
Social Change, an exhibition at the Wits Art Museum
in Johannesburg, could not help but feel hopeful.
Many among the spectacular first-night crowd were
confidently gay, lesbian, transgender and, in the word
of one guest, "performative". Despite the works'
reminder of the deadly hate crimes that persist in
South Africa, the event's celebratory, out-and-proud
atmosphere offered a glimpse of another possible
future.
Last week, Edwin Cameron, a South African
constitutional court judge, and one of the first public
figures in Africa to come out as gay and HIV-positive,
reflected: "The most interesting thing going on here is
what I call an 'unstable transition'. It explains the force
of the backlash just as African gays and lesbians are
starting to come out. It releases hatred and rage, but
what is happening is irreversible. Gays and lesbians
are coming to consciousness, organising themselves
and speaking out."

There is, however, a paradox in the wave of

oppression: the harsh laws being enacted may be a
measure not of failure but of success, a reaction to
gay and lesbians asserting their political identity and
rights as never before. Graeme Reid, director of the
lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights
programme at Human Rights Watch, said: "I do see it
as a backlash against the increasing visibility. Over
the last 25 years there's been an unprecedented
growth of LGBT movements across sub-Saharan
Africa. Clearly, this is an indigenous African
phenomenon. There are various reasons: one is the
HIV/Aids epidemic and the funding that became
available for men who have sex with men. There was
a more open discussion around sexuality."

Smith, D, "Why Africa is the most homophobic continent", The Guardian, 23/2/14,
www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/africa-homophobia-uganda-anti-gay-law

88
#MeToo has skipped Indonesia — here’s why
“I won’t give up, I’ll keep my fire up.”
That’s what rape survivor Agni said last year after
administrators at Indonesia’s Gadjah Mada
University, one of Indonesia’s top schools, ignored
her report that she had been sexually assaulted by a
friend during a residential community service program
in a remote area of the archipelagic country.
According to Agni (not her real name), the university
seemed more interested in protecting its good image
than in pursuing justice.
But after the student newspaper, Balairung, exposed
Agni’s plight, the campus rape case became national
news. A hashtag went viral on social media:
#SaveAgni.
Many Indonesians hoped that this controversy would
kickstart their #MeToo moment. Starting in the United
States, the movement to expose and punish sexual
assault has spread internationally over the last 18
months, but it has not yet reached the world’s largest
Muslim population.
Indonesia’s weak #MeToo movement
Agni’s case is one of many unresolved sexual
violence cases in Indonesia exposed during the
#MeToo era.
While women in other countries are bringing down the
powerful men who assaulted and harassed them, in
Indonesia assault victims are still struggling to find
justice.
Indonesian feminist Tunggal Pawestri coined
#SayaJuga – a direct translation of #MeToo – to
encourage more public discussion of sexual assault.
Still, in Indonesia, #MeToo remains limited to the
social media savvy and middle-upper class women.
The latest Indonesian National Women’s Life
Experience Survey shows that one in three
Indonesian women has suffered physical and/or
sexual violence, which is similar to the global
average, according to the World Health Organization
and the World Bank.
89
I study gender issues in Indonesia, where I was once
a researcher for the National Commission on
Violence against Women.
In my assessment, a combination of a deep-rooted
patriarchal culture, conservative religious values and
gender-insensitive law enforcement practices are to
blame why #MeToo is not happening in Indonesia.
Patriarchal culture
One shared feature of countries that have developed
their own powerful #MeToo movement – such as
China, South Korea, and India – is the strong support
of the government, legal system and public to take
action against sexual violence.
In Indonesia, these institutions have the opposite
effect.
The country’s strong patriarchal culture – reinforced
by the government and religious leaders – has
prevented women from speaking up about sex, let
alone sexual violence.
Under the 32-year authoritarian rule of New Order
regime, which ended in 1998, women were barred
from entering politics. Their roles were mainly limited
to being mothers and wives.
Hence, discussions of women’s issues have for
decades revolved around domestic duties. Gender
equality and protection from sexual violence simply
weren’t part of Indonesia’s public debate.
Any effort to create more gender-balanced policies
gets a powerful pushback from Indonesia’s
conservative Muslim leaders, who believe women
should be pious, obedient, and able to uphold their
morality. That includes wearing modest fashion and a
veil to avoid arousing men.
Of course, women in hijab also experience sexual
assault. Rape is about power, not attraction.
The media advances Indonesia’s victim-blaming
culture, too. Stories about sexual harassment often
portray women as responsible for stoking male
desire.
Bad regulations and poor law enforcement
This strong patriarchal culture has contributed to legal
protections so weak that women may even be
criminalised for reporting rape.
That’s what happened to Baiq Nuril, a teacher in
Lombok, in the West Nusa Tenggara province of
Indonesia. Last year, she reported her boss for
harassment and she was jailed for defamation under
Indonesia’s controversial Electronic and Information
System Law.
Activists are fighting for the approval of a
comprehensive anti-sexual violence bill currently
undergoing legislative debate. If passed, the law
would broaden the definition of sexual violence to
include rape, sexual harassment, and harmful
customary practices like female genital mutilation.
The bill would also require that schools teach their
students about sexual violence, ensure that women
receive mental health assistance after experiencing
sexual trauma, and provide safe facilities for women
in public places.
The legalisation of the anti-sexual violence bill could
be a light in the Indonesian darkness, protecting Agni
and other victims. But conservative Islamic groups
have challenged the bill, arguing that it promotes free
sex and deviant sexual behaviour.
Indonesian women may also feel discouraged from
reporting rape to law enforcement.
Although Indonesian police protocols encourage
officers to gain victims’ trust – including by assigning
more female police officers and psychologists to
sexual violence cases – these guidelines have not
eliminated a strong victim-blaming culture in law
enforcement.
Kartika, D, "#MeToo has skipped Indonesia — here’s why", The Conversation, 8/3/19,
www.theconversation.com/metoo-has-skipped-indonesia-heres-why-112530
90
Police often interrogate victims, asking victims to
provide eyewitnesses to their sexual assault and
share extremely detailed accounts of their rape.
In November 2017, Indonesia’s National Police Chief,
Gen. Tito Karnavian, said investigators should ask a
woman who reports sexual violence whether “she
was comfortable during the rape.”
The shocking statement left victims feeling hopeless.
If Indonesia’s police chief, the embodiment of legal
protection, thinks rape can be gentle – that a woman
can be “comfortable” – how can survivors ever
believe that the police are on their side?
What’s next?
The global #MeToo movement has roused more
people worldwide to speak up about sexual assault
and raised public sympathy – just not in Indonesia.
Most Indonesian women are silent, or silenced, within
a deeply entrenched patriarchal culture intertwined
with and reinforced by religious conservatism. This
puts the one in three women who’ve experience
sexual violence here in an extremely difficult position,
in an environment permeated by victim-blaming.
Many women, bound within a system that prevents
them from fighting back or speaking up, pass these
attitudes on to younger generations.
Despite these systematic problems, one Indonesian
sexual assault victim refuses to give up. Agni has
promised to continue her fight for justice at Gadjah
Mada University.
Hopefully, there will be a time when other
Indonesians can speak #MeToo out loud, without fear
or doubt.
7 surprising and outrageous stats about gender inequality
Around the world, the achievements of women are
being celebrated on International Women’s Day,
which began back in 1911. But the day also highlights
the work that remains to be done in order to achieve
gender parity.
The theme for this year is #BalanceforBetter -
encapsulating the idea that a gender-balanced world
benefits everyone, economically and socially. And it’s
up to everyone, men and women, to make it happen.
As the following statistics show, there are huge
differences in the types of inequality faced by women
in different parts of the world - from cultural
representation, to domestic burdens and child
marriage. But through collective action and shared
ownership, change is possible.
1. Women are 47% more likely to suffer severe
injuries in car crashes because safety features
are designed for men
In their 2011 study of more than 45,000 crash victims
over 11 years, researchers from the University of
Virginia found women drivers were much more likely
to be injured in a crash than men.
They said this was because car safety features had
been designed for men. The positioning of head
restraints, as well as women’s shorter height, different
neck strength and musculature, as well as their
preferred seating position, meant they were more
susceptible to injury.
2. 33,000 girls become child brides every day
Globally, 12 million girls each year get married before
the age of 18 - roughly 33,000 every day, or one
every two seconds. There are some 650 million
women alive today who were child brides.
The reasons behind it vary between communities, but
it’s often because girls are not valued as highly as
boys and marrying them off at a young age transfers
the ‘economic burden’ to another family.
91
3. Women in rural parts of Africa spend 40 billion
hours a year collecting water
In rural parts of sub-Saharan Africa, a lack of services
and infrastructure, combined with an expectation of
household duties and limited employment
opportunities for women, means they shoulder an
unequal burden of gathering water and wood for their
families.
4. According to the UN, collectively these women
spend 40 billion hours a year collecting water.
At the current rate of progress, it will take another 108
years to reach gender parity, according to the World
Economic Forum’s most recent Global Gender Gap
report.
Across the 106 countries covered since the first
edition of the report, the biggest gaps to close are in
the economic and political empowerment dimensions,
which will take 202 and 107 years to close,
respectively.
5. Only 6 countries give women equal legal work
rights as men
The World Bank’s recent Women, Business and the
Law report measured gender discrimination in 187
countries.
It found that only Belgium, Denmark, France, Latvia,
Luxembourg and Sweden scored full marks on eight
indicators - from receiving a pension to freedom of
movement - influencing economic decisions women
make during their careers.
A typical economy only gives women three-quarters
the rights of men in the measured areas.
6. 22% of AI professionals are women - and it
could be down to lack of confidence

According to the Forum’s Global Gender Gap report,

only 22% of the world's AI professionals are female,
compared with 78% who are male. This accounts for
a gender gap of 72% yet to close - and reflects the
broader STEM skills gap.

In 2012, just 14% of women starting university in

OECD countries chose science-related subjects,
compared with 39% of men.

A 2015 PISA report found even high-achieving girls

underachieved when they were asked to ‘think like
scientists’. Girls were less confident at solving
science and maths problems and reported higher
levels of anxiety towards maths.

In a study of students at Cornell University in 2003,

psychologists found that women rated their scientific
abilities lower than men, even though they performed
roughly the same in a quiz.

The researchers said: “Women might

disproportionately avoid scientific pursuits because
their self-views lead them to mischaracterize how well
they are objectively doing on any given scientific
task.”

7. For every female film character, there are 2.24

men

The Geena Davis Institute analysed 120 theatrical

releases between 2010 and 2013 in 10 countries -
and found that of the 5,799 speaking or named
characters, less than a third (30.9%) were female and
more than a third (69.1%) were male.

Whiting, K, "7 surprising and outrageous stats about gender inequality", World Economic Forum, 8/3/19,
/www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/03/surprising-stats-about-gender-inequality/

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development
Development is a sustained increase in the standard of living and well-being of
a level of social organization. Many consider it to involve increased income;
better access to basic goods and services; improvements in education,
healthcare and public health; well-functioning institutions; decreased
inequality; reduced poverty and unemployment; and more sustainable
production and consumption patterns. The focus of development debates in
contemporary global politics is on issues faced by developing countries, and
on the imperative of shifting the focus from modernization (seen as
Westernization). However, all societies and communities face questions about
how to best promote well-being and reduce ill-being.

The World Bank Group’s Role in Global Development 93

What Does it Take to Empower Ultra-Poor Women? 98

Why Costa Rica tops the Happy Planet Index 100

A Short History of Sustainable Development

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The World Bank Group’s Role in Global Development
The World Bank Group is a family of five multilateral
institutions focused on economic development whose
overarching mission is global poverty reduction.
Established by Western powers in 1944, the World
Bank was originally tasked with rebuilding the
economies of postwar Europe. More than seventy
years later, it has expanded its reach into nearly all of
the world’s developing countries. Today the bank
maintains more than 2,600 projects.
Since April 2019, the bank has been led by former
U.S. Treasury Department official and Wall Street
economist David Malpass. A longtime critic of the
bank, Malpass took over after the previous president,
American public health expert Jim Yong Kim,
unexpectedly stepped down. By tradition, an
American has always led the bank, leading some
observers to argue that the institution, which largely
serves the developing world, is too dominated by the
West. Others, including Malpass himself at times,
suggest the bank has outlived its usefulness
altogether, citing the increase in private capital flows
available to developing countries. Supporters of the
bank contend that it contributes to global economic
development as an arbiter of best practices.
Bretton Woods
The World Bank, along with its sister organization,
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), was created
at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire
in 1944. The Allied powers, led by the United States
and the United Kingdom, sought to restore European
prosperity and prevent a recurrence of the economic
malaise of the 1920s and 1930s, which helped fuel
the rise of totalitarianism. The IMF, which by tacit
agreement would be led by a European, was charged
with managing the global regime of exchange rates
and balance of payments. The World Bank, to be led
by an American, would provide member countries
with postwar reconstruction loans. While the IMF
would focus on “firefighting” immediate
macroeconomic problems, the World Bank would
concentrate on the longer task of development.
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In recent decades, the bank’s primary focus has
shifted from partnering with middle-income nations on
growth-related programs and trade liberalization
toward global poverty alleviation. These efforts take
place in the world’s poorest countries—particularly
those in Africa—and in middle-income countries, such
as China and India, where many of the world’s poor
reside. In 2013, the bank set a goal to end extreme
poverty, experienced by people living on $1.25 or less
per day, by 2030. Other priorities for the bank include
reconstruction in postconflict nations and
transnational issues, including public health and
environmental concerns.
Organization and Operations
The World Bank Group is composed of five separate
institutions: the International Bank for Reconstruction
and Development (IBRD), the International
Development Association (IDA), the International
Finance Corporation, the Multilateral Investment
Guarantee Agency, and the International Center for
Settlement of Investment Disputes. Each of these
agencies is owned and operated as a cooperative by
its member countries.
Together, the IBRD and the IDA are commonly
referred to as the World Bank. The bank’s six largest
shareholders—out of its 189 members—were the
United States, Japan, China, Germany, France, and
the United Kingdom.
Ultimate policymaking authority at the bank rests with
the board of governors, mostly made up of senior
finance or development officials from member
countries. The board of governors, in turn, delegates
certain powers to the board of directors, which is
composed of twenty-five executives and the World
Bank’s president.
The International Bank for Reconstruction and
Development. The IBRD was established in 1944 as
the World Bank’s charter institution.
Through loans, guarantees, and other services, the
IBRD works with middle-income and creditworthy low-
income nations to fight poverty. Projects span the
globe and vary from digitizing health systems in
Belarus to reducing air pollution in Colombia to
generating solar power in Pakistan.
The International Development Association. As a
complement to the IBRD, the IDA was established in
1960 to promote broad-based development work in
the world’s poorest countries by offering interest-free
credits and grants. The IDA currently has programs in
sixty-nine countries, of which thirty-seven are in
Africa, with a focus on education, health, and
sustainable environmental practices.
Criticism of the ‘Washington Consensus’
The World Bank, like the IMF, has been the subject of
much criticism over the years. In his 2006 book, The
White Man’s Burden, former World Bank economist
William Easterly delivers a broad indictment of
Western efforts at poverty reduction. “The plan to end
world poverty shows all the pretensions of utopian
social engineering,” he writes. The bank’s attempts to
rapidly impose free markets on developing countries
in the 1980s and 1990s, known as economic “shock
therapy,” produced a “record of failure” in Latin
America, Africa, and former Soviet countries, Easterly
writes, saying client nations would be better served
by homegrown, piecemeal reforms.
Joseph Stiglitz, one of the most vocal critics of the
World Bank, resigned from his position as the
institution’s chief economist in 1999, criticizing the
bank’s advocacy of what he calls free-market
fundamentalism for many developing countries.
Stiglitz argued the economic reforms the IMF and
World Bank often required as conditions for their
lending—the so-called Washington Consensus of
fiscal austerity, high interest rates, trade liberalization,
privatization, and open capital markets—have often
been counterproductive for target economies and
devastating for their populations. In particular, he
links indiscriminate lending conditionality to the onset
of financial crises in East Asia in 1997 and Argentina
in 1999.
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Postconflict Success Stories
The World Bank is, at the same time, revered by
many as the preeminent brain trust in development
economics. “You could certainly find brilliant
development economists outside the Bank,” writes
CFR’s Sebastian Mallaby in his book The World’s
Banker, but “nobody could match the Bank’s
concentration of talent.” As a result, he says, the
bank’s annual World Development Report often
establishes the accepted wisdom on any given
development topic.
The World Bank has had several successful
interventions, in the estimation of many observers.
For Mallaby, the 1995 experience in Bosnia was a
particular victory for the bank, which demonstrated its
ability to move quickly into postcrisis reconstruction.
He writes, “Bosnia came to suggest a route out of the
Bank’s deepest long-term difficulty”: that its slow-
moving bureaucracy might alienate big clients—
namely China, India, Brazil, and South Africa—that
increasingly have access to private capital markets.
In The World Bank: Its First Half Century, Mahn-Je
Kim offers the bank’s multidecade involvement
in South Korea as another triumph. The World Bank
provided almost half of South Korea’s public funding
in the high-growth years of the 1970s and 1980s.
“Among the institutions and nations that provided
public loans to Korea,” he writes, “the Bank was the
most important.” He adds that the bank helped
transfer valuable management techniques and was
“critical” in the country’s ability to access other
sources of foreign financing.
The Rise of Alternatives
Some critics question whether there is still a niche for
the World Bank in the modern architecture of global
finance, particularly given the increasingly global
nature of private capital flows and the ascendance of
large emerging economies such as the BRICS—
Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
“The financial markets of today bear virtually no
similarity to those of 1944,” writes Jessica
Einhorn in Foreign Affairs. “The [World Bank] was
created to provide credit to its member countries, and
in those days, that credit was often the only kind
available to them. Those days are over.”
This financial reality has led some to recommend that
the bank narrow its focus to countries that lack
access to private markets. “If the World Bank wants
to have a significant role on the lending side, it’s
going to have to be in the poorest of the poor
countries or war-torn countries where the private
sector has been effectively scared off,” said CFR’s
Benn Steil.
Former World Bank President Robert Zoellick has
offered a different take. “There is a view in some
quarters in developed countries that the Bank should
work with the poorest countries and not with
developing countries. I’m an adamant opponent of
that view,” Zoellick told the Telegraph in 2012. “If you
believe in a multilateral system then India and Brazil
are going to become more important over time and
we need to draw from their knowledge and, in time,
their finances.”
Nevertheless, the subsequent creation of the
BRICS’s New Development Bank and the China-led
Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) have
presented developing countries with alternatives to
the Bretton Woods institutions. Rebecca Liao, a
China analyst, writes that the AIIB “was born out of
two main grievances about the World Bank” that
developing nations shared. First, developing
countries have long complained about the
conditionality of World Bank loans and have cast their
terms as onerous. Second, emerging markets—China
in particular—have been frustrated with their relative
lack of influence at the World Bank and the IMF. Liao
writes, “As the economies of these countries grew in
the last 30 years, their voting powers within both
organizations remained flat.”
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Jim Yong Kim’s 2012 election as World Bank
president exemplified this second complaint. Kim
defeated candidates from Colombia and Nigeria—it
was the first time that the board of governors even
considered more than one candidate—despite his
comparatively thin background in economics. At the
time, the Economist wrote that the tradition of having
an American lead the World Bank and a European
the IMF “has persisted because it has not been worth
picking a fight over,” but that Kim’s relative
inexperience “gives others the chance to insist on the
best candidate, not simply the American one.”
Despite pointed complaints from many within the
bank [PDF], the board unanimously appointed Kim to
a second term in September 2016.
Kim’s sudden resignation in January 2019, nearly
three years before the end of his term, and President
Donald J. Trump’s subsequent nomination of U.S.
Treasury undersecretary David Malpass to lead the
bank, again highlighted these tensions. Malpass,
formerly chief economist for the now-defunct Bear
Stearns investment bank, had been a critic of the
World Bank. He had argued that it has grown too
large and redundant, since it continues to lend to
countries with access to plenty of other lending
resources, such as China and Brazil. Nevertheless,
no challengers to Malpass’s candidacy emerged, and
he was unanimously approved by the board. Malpass
began his tenure as the thirteenth World Bank
president on April 9, 2019.
To increase its legitimacy, the bank should reform
its voting structure and adopt a competitive election
process, CFR’s Thomas Bollyky argues. “Having an
American at the helm of the bank partly served to
reassure Wall Street, originally the main supplier of
the bank’s capital,” he says. “With the globalization of
capital markets, this justification . . . is long outdated.”
Bollyky recommends a voting system that requires
leaders to win over a majority of countries, not simply
the votes of the primary shareholders.
An Ideas Bank
The World Bank argues that it has a number of
comparative advantages over other institutions: a
global presence, a repository of best practices,
financial acumen, leadership in global public goods,
and an established role as an international
development catalyst. According to Vikram Nehru, a
former World Bank chief economist for East Asia,
while the bank has always represented a tiny share of
public investment in most countries, its strength
comes from leveraging its lending with ideas. For
instance, he says, China has used the bank to
finance a host of small projects with the sole intention
of learning best practices.
Still, CFR’s Steil says that the middle-income
countries, such as China, where many of the world’s
poor live “at some point will need to assume
responsibility for their own people, given their
economic growth.” He echoes some of Malpass’s
criticisms, noting that China’s more than $3 trillion in
reserves “dwarfs anything the World Bank could ever
bring to bear.” Instead of direct funding, he says, the
bank’s future value could lie in the advisory
assistance it provides, based on its long experience
of successes, as well as failures.

Masters, J et.al., "The World Bank Group’s Role in Global Development" , Council for Foreign Relations,
9/4/19, /www.cfr.org/backgrounder/world-bank-groups-role-global-development

97
What Does it Take to Empower Ultra-Poor Women?
There is no more urgent and fundamental problem in
development than finding effective ways to help the
ultra-poor improve their economic and social
condition. But most interventions don’t reach the
poorest of the poor. In fact, a CGD study found that
only 24 percent of studies on women’s economic
empowerment targeted the extreme poor and 10
percent didn’t specify their target group’s income at
all. For projects to work, researchers need to
understand what works and for whom. A stellar panel
cohosted by CGD and Women for Women
International recently came together to discuss the
challenges in addressing the needs of the poorest
women and to explore how graduation programs
perform in addressing them. Here are some key
takeaways from the discussion:
Who are the ultra-poor?
If you’re wondering if there is a difference between
the “extreme poor” and “ultra-poor,” there is. An
estimated 767 million people live in extreme poverty,
earning around $1.90 or less a day. About 400 million
of these people are ultra-poor, meaning they earn
significantly less than this threshold. Ultra-poor
households face the worst forms of poverty. They are
food- and housing-insecure and have few or no
assets. They lack skills and education, are often
isolated, and are vulnerable to natural disasters and
climate change. The ultra-poor are disconnected from
government services and markets, and they are often
in poor health.
Why focus on ultra-poor women?
Most ultra-poor households are headed by women.
They often live in communities that pose strict
restrictions on opportunities for women. Globally,
women aged 25–34 are 22 percent more likely than
men to be extremely poor.
What are graduation programs and why should
we focus on them?
Graduation programs bundle social and economic
interventions to help women overcome their unique
constraints. These programs generally offer
participants a productive asset like something to sell,
an initial sum of money, vocational training, and
healthcare. They are multifaceted solutions for
multifaceted problems.
98
Through randomized control trials (RCTs),
Innovations for Poverty Action has studied the effects
of a bundled graduation program in six countries on
almost 20,000 people in 10,000 households as
measured by 10 indices: consumption, food security,
productive and household assets, financial inclusion,
time use, income and revenues, physical health,
mental health, political involvement, and women’s
empowerment. At the end of the program, all 10
indices showed statistically significant improvement,
and one year post-intervention, 8 out of the 10 indices
remained significantly improved. Notably, physical
health and women’s empowerment were the two
measurements that did not have the longevity
researchers hoped for. And measurement of
empowerment—agency, decision-making authority,
confidence, aspirations—remains a challenge.
Evidence from Women for Women International
shows that interventions cannot empower women if
they are not holistic and designed specifically for
women. Most aid projects operate in silos, and most
only focus on improving incomes. Women for Women
International combines economic empowerment with
psycho-social support. Lifting women out of ultra-poor
conditions requires building a supportive community
so women feel socially empowered and reclaim a
sense of agency alongside economic interventions.
So how can we best reach women in the most
vulnerable households? As the panel noted, a good
place to start is by recognizing three important facts:
1. Violence is the elephant in the room—and it’s
not only war and conflict
Ultra-poor women experience high rates of intimate
partner violence. Physical and emotional abuse is
common but forced economic dependence can
cripple the entire household. An abusive partner can
withhold cash, assets, and even access to food to
control household decision-making power. The good
news is that the evidence generally does not support
the concern that boosting ultra-poor women’s income
raises intimate partner violence—though it does not
decrease it either.
2. Women’s mental health and psycho-social
development matter
Improving women’s mental health and psychosocial
development should be integrated within programs’
theories of change. Many interventions measure
women’s agency and mental health but only
implement an economic-focused intervention (e.g.,
business trainings and direct cash transfers). These
don’t automatically result in social and psychological
improvements—and we should stop assuming that
they do. Specifically, including program measures
that address positive mental health practices can help
women develop longer-term aspirations and take
control over their own lives.
Francis, J et.al.,"What Does it Take to Empower Ultra-Poor Women?", Center for Global Development, 8/4/19,
www.cgdev.org/blog/what-does-it-take-empower-ultra-poor-women
99
3. Gender dynamics in the household need to
change, with the support of men
Both men and women are trapped by discriminatory
social norms. Surveys show that many women
(especially in fragile states) agree that violence
against women in certain contexts is permissible.
Graduation programs should promote collaborative
and mutually beneficial household dynamics. This
requires men’s participation—rising out of ultra-
poverty is an endeavor that requires all hands on
deck. Practitioners are finding that working at the
community level—with both women and men—to
promote a sense of the possibilities for shared gains
is essential to change gender norms.
When women are left outside economic and political
opportunity, it is no surprise that poverty and conflict
persist. As Women for Women International CEO
Laurie Adams (one of the authors of this post) put it,
“We need to invest in women to build peace,
prosperity, and democracy from the bottom up.”
Why Costa Rica tops the Happy Planet Index
A child growing up in the Costa Rican countryside is
surrounded by some of the most beautiful and
biodiverse landscapes in the world. The government
of this tiny Central American country aims to keep it
that way. But preserving this land of tropical
rainforests isn’t Costa Rica’s only accomplishment.
The government ensures all citizens have access to
health care and education, and the country actively
promotes peace around the world. So when the New
Economics Foundation released its second Happy
Planet Index, a ranking of countries based on their
environmental impact and the health and happiness
of their citizens, the No. 1 spot went to Costa Rica,
population 4 million.
The United States’ ranking: No. 108 in 2016.
What can our neighbor to the south teach us about
happiness, longevity, and environmental
sustainability?
“Costa Rica enjoys a privileged position as a mid-
income country where citizens have sufficient spare
time and abundant interpersonal relations,” says
Costa Rican economics professor Mariano Rojas. “A
mid-income level allows most citizens to satisfy their
basic needs. Government intervention in the
economy assures that all Costa Ricans have access
to education, health, and nutrition services.” Costa
Ricans, he added, have not entered the “race for
status and conspicuous consumption.”
Created in 2008, the Happy Planet Index examines
sustainable happiness on a national level, ranking
143 countries according to three measurements: how
happy its citizens are, how long they live, and how
much of the planet’s resources they each consume.
The HPI multiplies years of life expectancy by life
satisfaction (as measured by the Gallup Poll and the
World Values Survey), to obtain “Happy Life Years,”
which are then divided by pressure on ecosystems,
as measured by the ecological footprint. (The
ecological footprint, in turn, measures how much land
and water it takes to provide for each person.)
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The Happy Planet Index “strips down the economy to
what really matters,” says New Economics
Foundation researcher Saamah Abdallah. It
measures “what goes in, in terms of resource use,
and the outcomes that are important, which are
happy and healthy lives for us all. In this way, it
reminds us that the economy is there for a purpose -
and that is to improve our lives.”
Abdallah calls the importance of family, friends, and
community “social capital.” People who live in
countries with higher levels of material wealth often
report less happiness than people in countries with
less wealth but stronger social networks. According to
the HPI, a Costa Rican has an ecological footprint
one-fourth that of the average person in the United
States.
The United States is one country where social capital
is falling, according to a study conducted by the
economist Stefano Bartolini.
“It is not surprising that social capital should be falling
in the U.S.,” Abdallah says. “Americans work the
longest hours in the Western world and have the
shortest holidays. All their time is spent making
money, rather than building social bonds, which are
just as important to well-being.”
The importance of peace.
Domestic and international peace has long been a
priority in Costa Rica. In 1948, the country abolished
its military, allowing it to spend more on health and
education. Its University of Peace, established in
1980, offers a master’s degree in peace and conflict
studies as well as ongoing workshops - like a recent
one on corporate responsibility offered to international
business executives.
In September 2009, the Costa Rican
legislature created a Ministry of Justice and Peace ,
emphasizing the role of peace promotion and conflict
resolution in preventing violent crime. Shortly
afterward, the country hosted the 2009 Global
Alliance Summit for Ministries and Departments of
Peace, where representatives of 40 countries
gathered to work on developing peace infrastructure
in their own governments.
Central to Costa Rica’s promotion of peace is the
Rasur Foundation, which organized the summit and
lobbied for the creation of the Ministry of Justice and
Peace. Rasur is a teacher in a Costa Rican poem
who tells a group of children, “Before directing the
lightning in the sky, we must first harness the storms
in our own hearts.” Through its Peace Academy, the
Rasur Foundation works with the Costa Rican
Ministry of Education to introduce techniques of
conflict resolution and “being peace” in Costa Rican
schools.
Costa Rica’s Nobel Prize-winning president, Oscar
Arias Sanchez, who attended the Summit, is quoted
on the Foundation’s website:
“Peace is not a dream. It’s an arduous task. We must
start by finding peaceful solutions to everyday
conflicts with the people around us. Peace does not
begin with the other person; it begins with each and
every one of us.”
Costa Ricans are not only reporting happy lives, they
are living long ones. In the second measurement of
the Happy Planet Index, longevity, Costa Rica scored
an average of 78.5 life years, compared with 77.9 for
the United States. Some studies have suggested that
Costa Rican men live longer than men anywhere else
in the world. There is little difference in life
expectancy across income levels, unlike in the United
States. Researchers from the Harvard School of
Public Health have found an “enormous gap” in U.S.
life expectancy, depending on race, income, location,
and other factors.
Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula is one of the world’s
“Blue Zones” - places where the inhabitants
frequently live to be over 100 years old. The residents
of these zones generally eat well, get plenty of
exercise, and have a genetic predisposition to
longevity. Nationwide, Costa Ricans benefit from a
combination of government-run and private insurance
options. Costa Rica promotes good health among its
citizens even before they are born, sending doctors
and nurses out into the countryside to provide
prenatal care and teach parents how to raise healthy
children.
101
Protecting the landscape.
The Costa Rican government’s promotion of peace
and health for its citizens extends to a peaceful and
healthy relationship to the planet. The size of its
ecological footprint indicates that “the country only
narrowly fails to achieve the goal of...consuming its
fair share of the Earth’s natural resources,” according
to the Happy Planet Index.
Costa Rica has pioneered techniques of land
management, reforestation, and alternatives to fossil
fuels.
Spurred by rapid deforestation of its pristine
rainforests due to logging and agriculture, the country
began converting parts of its territory to national parks
in the 1970s and prohibited the export of certain
trees. Even so, by 1987, illegal logging, cattle
ranching, and development had reduced the country’s
rainforest from 73 to 21 percent of the landscape. So
in 1996 Costa Rica introduced the Payment for
Environmental Services Program (PES). Oil importers
and water-bottling and sewage-treatment plants now
have to pay a special tax to do business in the
country, while other businesses contribute via a
voluntary carbon-offset fee. The money is used to pay
local people to protect the trees, water, and soil in
their surrounding environment by abstaining from
cattle ranching and illegal logging.
The PES program has had mixed results. In some
areas, cattle ranching and illegal logging remain more
profitable, and the government has had to scramble
to raise enough money to finance the program. But
overall, because of the country’s new environmental
policies, including a massive UN-sponsored tree-
planting program begun in 2007, more than half of
Costa Rica’s territory is once again covered with
rainforest.
In a further effort to go green, the country has banned
oil drilling within its borders and invests heavily in
renewable energy sources like hydroelectric, wind,
and geothermal power, which now provide 95 percent
of its energy. In the capital, San Jose, vehicles are
permitted downtown only on certain days, depending
on the license-plate number. A planned commuter
train will also cut down on automobile pollution. The
country has pledged to go carbon neutral by 2021,
the year of its bicentennial.
“The position of Costa Rica is that we all have to
make ourselves present on the issue of climate
change,” said Gerardo Mondragón in a telephone
interview with YES! Magazine. He is with Paz con La
Naturaleza (Peace with Nature), an advisory agency
to President Arias on ecological planning. “We want
to get the message out that all countries have to
support one another in this , and in particular,
industrialized countries should support those
countries who have clear initiatives.”
Critics of Costa Rica’s green policy, like Rachel
Godfrey Wood of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs,
have pointed out that no amount of tree planting can
completely undo the damage done by fossil fuels.
The Costa Rican conservation organization FECON
posts regularly on its website about continuing
ecological problems in Costa Rica: deforestation by
landowners, pineapple plantations that cause soil
erosion and pollute community drinking water with
pesticides, and a new mining development in Las
Crucitas that has local residents worried about
cyanide poisoning in the region. Another controversy
recently erupted in a region called Las Baulas, where
environmentalists fear development will threaten the
turtle population.
“We have to go slow,” Mondragón said of the
environmental challenges still facing Costa Rica. “But
we still have to let people know what’s happening.”
He blamed the Las Crucitas mining project on
antiquated laws that don’t give Costa Rica enough
protection from environmental damage by companies
working within its borders. “We need to change these
laws so that development can proceed in a balanced
way.”
Garrigues, L, "Why Costa Rica tops the Happy Planet Index", Open Democracy,28/2/19,
www.opendemocracy.net/en/transformation/why-costa-rica-tops-happy-planet-index/
102
As a stable democracy for the past century, Costa
Rica has been considered a “business-friendly”
country. Though large banana, pineapple, and coffee
plantations have not disappeared, ecotourism and
high-tech companies have increasingly invested in
Costa Rica.
But a recent struggle between proponents and
opponents of CAFTA, the Central American Free
Trade Agreement that passed last year, highlighted
divisions over the issue of liberalizing trade laws. In
one camp are those such as President Arias, who
support CAFTA because they believe it will bring
additional foreign investment; in the other camp are
those who fear trade liberalization and privatization
will allow businesses to be unaccountable to Costa
Rica’s labor or environmental regulations. The
controversy over CAFTA illustrates an innate
dilemma in Costa Rica’s green strategy: How can a
country that relies on corporate investment for its
economic survival demand that those same
corporations abide by the country’s ecological
guidelines? And what clout does it have in enforcing
those guidelines?
No country, not even Costa Rica with its No.1
ranking, has reached the goal of “one planet living”
that the creators of the Happy Planet Index believe
we should all aspire to: consuming our fair share of
the Earth’s resources. “We want nations, regions, and
cities to assess how well they are doing based on
well-being and environmental impact,” says Abdallah
of the New Economics Foundation. “We would like to
highlight the message that good lives need not cost
the Earth and that ‘one planet living’ can actually
mean a better life.”
A Short History of Sustainable Development
A short history of the concept of sustainable
development could begin with the US government’s
National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 1969.
This act came largely in response to the 1969 Santa
Barbara oil spill, which had a devastating impact on
wildlife and the natural environment in the area. But it
was also the product of greater societal attention to
the consequences of industrial pollution, awareness
of which was promoted by the 1962 publication Silent
Spring by Rachael Carson. Around the same time,
and as a result of the same push towards great
concern for the environment, arrived the Clean Water
Act, the Water Quality Act, the push to ban DDT, and
the institution of the National Wilderness Preservation
System.
Shortly after the passage of NEPA, the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) opened its doors in 1970,
promoting protection of the environment through
research, standard-setting, and monitoring. The goals
of the EPA concerned both human health as well as
natural resource protection.
The next step in the growth of sustainable
development as a mainstream concept and practice
was the 1972 United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment, in Stockholm, Sweden. This
conference “brought the industrialized and developing
nations together to delineate the ‘rights’ of the human
family to a healthy and productive environment. A
series of such meetings followed, e.g. on the rights of
people to adequate food, to sound housing, to safe
water, to access to means of family planning. The
recognition to revitalize humanity’s connection with
Nature, led to the creation of global institutions within
the UN system.” Here, we have a transition from a
national focus to an international one.
At this point, the term ‘sustainable’ had yet to really
take off. The United National Conference on
Sustainable Development provides an excellent,
condensed history of the term, which I will quote at
length:
103
'The concept of sustainable development was
originally synonymous with that of sustainability and
is often still used in that way. Both terms derive from
the older forestry term “sustained yield”, which in turn
a translation of the German term “nachhaltiger Ertrag”
is dating from 1713. According to different sources,
the concept of sustainability in the sense of a balance
between resource consumption and reproduction was
however applied to forestry already in the 12th to 16th
century.
The history of the concept of sustainability is however
much older. Already in 400 BCE, Aristotle referred to
a Greek concept in talking about household
economics. This Greek household concept differed
from modern ones in that the household had to be
self-sustaining at least to a certain extent and could
not just be consumption oriented.'
The first time the term ‘sustainable’ was used “in the
modern sense” was as part of the Club of Rome, in
1972. This came to the fore as a part of the
publication of Limits to Growth, a report that
described a particular state in which the global
population would achieve balance or equilibrium.
“Describing the desirable “state of global equilibrium”,
the authors used the word “sustainable”: “We are
searching for a model output that represents a world
system that is: 1. sustainable without sudden and
uncontrolled collapse; and 2. capable of satisfying the
basic material requirements of all of its people."
About fifteen years after the Club of Rome’s
publication came another large step forward in this
movement, at least according to most mainstream
sources. The World Commission on Environment and
Development (WCED) was tasked by the Secretary
General of the UN, in 1983, to “re-examine critical
environmental and development problems around the
world and formulate realistic proposals to address
them.”[7] This culminated in the 1987 Bruntland
Report’s publication of “Our Common Future”, which
established a suggested path for sustainable
development on a global level and served to bring the
concept of sustainability into the foreground on an
international level.
A ground-breaking step came in 1992 with the first
UN Conference on Environment and Development
(UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro. At this conference, an
agenda called Agenda 21 was adopted, which
“recognized each nation’s right to pursue social and
economic progress and assigned to States the
responsibility of adopting a model of sustainable
development.” The Secretary Genearl of UNCED
regarded Agenda 21 as a “program of action for a
tolerable future for the human family and an initial
step toward making sure the world will change into a
more just, secure and wealthy habitat for all
humanity.” The focus, then, had become broader than
when the EPA was first established. The emphasis
was much more clearly on working towards a world
where all peoples had access to the natural
resources they needed to thrive.
Another notable international protocol designed to
guide the international community towards
sustainable development, in this case particularly
environmental, was the Kyoto Climate Agreement in
1997. Its goal was to reduce the emissions of its
signatories, with more emphasis placed on those
developed countries which were responsible for most
of the air pollution and its subsequent consequences.
It might be noted that the US is the only developed
country and one of the only two in general (the other
being South Sudan) that has not ratified this protocol.
Complications and Criticisms of the Sustainable
Movement
Though the notion of sustainable development
typically enjoys positive attention on a global level,
there have been various points of criticism and some
complications that have developed over time. I will
describe a few below.
Environmental
One point of contention has arisen as a result of the
differences in power and responsibility between some
developing and developed countries. For instance,
developed countries are most often the ones pushing
for particular types of sustainable development,
whether that means a cap in emissions from power
plants or a transition towards more sustainable forms
of energy such as wind and solar.
104
However, developed countries are often the ones
who have already benefitted from the exploitation of
environmental resources employing these less-
sustainable methods for many decades, whereas
many developing countries are just now beginning to
have access to these technologies. At the same time,
these new sustainable technologies entail more
costs, which may be possible for developed
countries, but not for many developing countries. In
other words, one criticism is that developed countries
have long benefitted from unsustainable practices
and are now imposing their new-found sustainable
values upon developing countries, for whom this
transition is much more difficult and costly
Economic
The previous point was mostly focused on natural,
environmental concerns (e.g., how we might reduce
emissions). Another large focus in the sustainable
development movement has been on freeing peoples
in parts of the developing world from the bonds of
poverty and starvation. In essence, this is a focus on
the economics of sustainable development.
Perhaps the biggest conflict seen regarding
sustainable development is economic in nature.
Broadly speaking, the global economy has a
neoliberal bent to it. With regard to sustainable
development, “ the tenets of neoliberal economic
agenda such as commodification, deregulation,
privatisation and cuts in government expenditure may
in some context undermine the attainment of
sustainable development by increasing poverty and
inequality. This in turn increases the exploitation of
environmental resources, such as forests, as a result
of poverty-induced constraints. Additionally, the
regulatory capacity of environmental management
provided by the state has been reduced mainly due to
budgetary constraints imposed by the adoption of
neoliberalism…” In other words, the properties of the
neoliberal economic system run counter to what
many consider to be the goals of sustainable
development. Neoliberal economics can be harmful to
the environment, and to the standard of living for
various groups of people – particularly the poor.
Indian economist Amartya Sen is famous for his work
on the relationship between economics and social
justice, particularly in relation to famine and starvation
as a result of faulty economic policies. One of his
most profound arguments, that of ‘capability’, argues
that the rights provided by governments (such as the
right to vote, freedom of speech, etc.) are empty
benefits, not of much use unless the society provides
its citizens “functionings,” such as education,
transportation to voting locations, access to food,
etc.Therefore, in order to promote sustainable
development with the lives of people in mind, we
must focus on economic policies that may hinder or
promote well-being.
Further to the political left of Amartya Sen’s work lies
the opinion of many NGOs and academics who view
the world system of capitalism to be incompatible with
sustainable development progress.
…there is an unspoken (and largely untested)
assumption that there need be no fundamental
contradiction between sustainable development and
capitalism. That assumption stands in stark contrast
to the prevailing view of many radical academics and
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that there
are profound (and possibly unmanageable)
contradictions which demand a completely different
world order.
A similar concern is addressed by the UN’s
Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform:
Despite the growing international interest in green
economy, negotiations between Member States on
the concept in the lead up to Rio+20 were
challenging. This was partly due to the lack of an
internationally agreed definition or universal principles
for green economy, the emergence of interrelated but
different terminology and concepts over recent years
(such as green growth, low carbon development,
sustainable economy, steady-state economy etc.), a
lack of clarity around what green economy policy
measures encompass and how they integrate with
national priorities and objectives relating to economic
growth and poverty eradication, as well as a
perceived lack of experience in designing,
implementing and reviewing the costs and benefits of
green economy policies.
In sum, the lack of clarity and cohesion regarding
these terms and their implications seems to be
causing some internal discord within organizations
working towards sustainable development. It also is
preventing large-scale action internationally.

Though, what this new world order would look like is

up for speculation.

Confusions over Terminology

There seems to be some confusion in this camp,
around expectations as well as around the
terminology used and definitions understood. For
example, some go as far as to suggest that “A green
economy cannot be a wasteful economy since we
must reduce our consumption of the earth’s
resources and so have to ensure that those we use
are used efficiently,” which seems to be a rather
simplistic, vague understanding of what a “green”
future would look like.

Stofleth, D, "A Short History of Sustainable Development", Rethinking Prosperity, 23/2/17,

www.rethinkingprosperity.org/a-short-history-of-sustainable-development/

105
globalisation
Globalization is a process by which the world’s local, national and regional
economies, societies and cultures are becoming increasingly integrated and
connected. The term refers to the reduction of barriers and borders, as people,
goods, services and ideas flow more freely between different parts of the
world. Globalization is a process that has been taking place for centuries but
the pace has quickened in recent decades, facilitated by developments in
transportation and communication technology, and powered by cheap
energy. It is now widely acknowledged that globalization has both benefits
and drawbacks and that its benefits are not evenly distributed.

Runaway World: Globalisation 107

Globalisation has made the world a better place 112

The political threats to globalisation 114

The Globalization of Politics: American Foreign Policy 116

for a New Century

106
Runaway World: Globalisation
Recorded at The Royal Institution of Great Britain,
London, for BBC Radio 4 (1999)
A friend of mine studies village life in central Africa. A
few years ago, she paid her first visit to a remote area
where she was to carry out her fieldwork. The
evening she got there, she was invited to a local
home for an evening's entertainment. She expected
to find out about the traditional pastimes of this
isolated community. Instead, the evening turned out
to be a viewing of Basic Instinct on video. The film at
that point hadn't even reached the cinemas in
London. Such vignettes reveal something about our
world. And what they reveal isn't trivial. It isn't just a
matter of people adding modern paraphernalia -
videos, TVs, personal computers and so forth - to
their traditional ways of life. We live in a world of
transformations, affecting almost every aspect of
what we do. For better or worse, we are being
propelled into a global order that no one fully
understands, but which is making its effects felt upon
all of us.
Globalisation is the main theme of my lecture tonight,
and of the lectures as a whole. The term may not be -
it isn't - a particularly attractive or elegant one. But
absolutely no-one who wants to understand our
prospects and possibilities at century's end can
ignore it. I travel a lot to speak abroad. I haven't been
to a single country recently where globalisation isn't
being intensively discussed. In France, the word is
mondialisation. In Spain and Latin America, it is
globalization. The Germans say globalisierung.
The global spread of the term is evidence of the very
developments to which it refers. Every business guru
talks about it. No political speech is complete without
reference to it. Yet as little as 10 years ago the term
was hardly used, either in the academic literature or
in everyday language. It has come from nowhere to
be almost everywhere. Given its sudden popularity,
we shouldn't be surprised that the meaning of the
notion isn't always clear, or that an intellectual
reaction has set in against it. Globalisation has
something to do with the thesis that we now all live in
one world - but in what ways exactly, and is the idea
really valid?
107
Different thinkers have taken almost completely
opposite views about globalisation in debates that
have sprung up over the past few years. Some
dispute the whole thing. I'll call them the sceptics.
According to the sceptics, all the talk about
globalisation is only that - just talk. Whatever its
benefits, its trials and tribulations, the global
economy isn't especially different from that which
existed at previous periods. The world carries on
much the same as it has done for many years.
Most countries, the sceptics argue, only gain a small
amount of their income from external trade.
Moreover, a good deal of economic exchange is
between regions, rather than being truly world-wide.
The countries of the European Union, for example,
mostly trade among themselves. The same is true of
the other main trading blocs, such as those of the
Asia Pacific or North America.
Others, however, take a very different position. I'll
label them the radicals. The radicals argue that not
only is globalisation very real, but that its
consequences can be felt everywhere. The global
marketplace, they say, is much more developed than
even two or three decades ago, and is indifferent to
national borders. Nations have lost most of the
sovereignty they once had, and politicians have lost
most of their capability to influence events. It isn't
surprising that no one respects political leaders any
more, or has much interest in what they have to say.
The era of the nation state is over. Nations, as the
Japanese business writer Keniche Ohmae puts it,
have become mere 'fictions'. Authors like Ohmae see
the economic difficulties of last year and this as
demonstrating the reality of globalisation, albeit seen
from its disruptive side.
Well, who is right in this debate? I think it is the
radicals. The level of world trade today is much
higher than it ever was before, and involves a much
wider range of goods and services. But the biggest
difference is in the level of finance and capital flows.
Geared as it is to electronic money - money that
exists only as digits in computers - the current world
economy has no parallels in earlier times. In the new
global electronic economy, fund managers, banks,
corporations, as well as millions of individual
investors, can transfer vast amounts of capital from
one side of the world to another at the click of a
mouse. As they do so, they can destabilise what
might have seemed rock-solid economies - as
happened in East Asia.
The volume of world financial transactions is usually
measured in US dollars. A million dollars is a lot of
money for most people. Measured as a stack of
thousand dollar notes, it would be eight inches high.
A billion dollars - in other words, a million million -
would be over 120 miles high, 20 times higher than
Mount Everest. Yet far more than a trillion dollars is
now turned over each day on global currency
markets, a massive increase from only 10 years ago,
let alone the more distant past. The value of whatever
money we may have in our pockets, or our bank
accounts, shifts from moment to moment according to
fluctuations in such markets. I would have no
hesitation, therefore, in saying that globalisation, as
we are experiencing it, is in many respects not only
new, but revolutionary.
However, I don't believe either the sceptics or the
radicals have properly understood either what it is or
its implications for us. Both groups see the
phenomenon almost solely in economic terms. This is
a mistake. Globalisation is political, technological and
cultural, as well as economic. It has been influenced
above all by developments in systems of
communication, dating back only to the late 1960's.
In the mid-19th Century, a Massachusetts portrait
painter, Samuel Morse, transmitted the first message,
"What hath god wrought?", by electric telegraph. In so
doing, he initiated a new phase in world history.
Never before could a message be sent without
someone going somewhere to carry it. Yet the advent
of satellite communications marks every bit as
dramatic a break with the past
108
The first communications satellite was launched only
just over 30 years ago. Now there are more than 200
such satellites above the earth, each carrying a vast
range of information. For the first time ever,
instantaneous communication is possible from one
side of the world to the other. Other types of
electronic communication, more and more integrated
with satellite transmission, have also accelerated over
the past few years. No dedicated transatlantic or
transpacific cables existed at all until the late 1950's.
The first held less than 100 voice paths. Those of
today carry more than a million.
On the first of February 1999, about 150 years after
Morse invented his system of dots and dashes,
Morse code finally disappeared from the world stage,
discontinued as a means of communication for the
sea. In its place has come a system using satellite
technology, whereby any ship in distress can be
pinpointed immediately. Most countries prepared for
the transition some while before. The French, for
example, stopped using Morse as a distress code in
their local waters two years ago, signing off with a
Gallic flourish: 'Calling all. This is our last cry before
our eternal silence'. Instantaneous electronic
communication isn't just a way in which news or
information is conveyed more quickly. Its existence
alters the very texture of our lives, rich and poor alike.
When the image of Nelson Mandela maybe is more
familiar to us than the face of our next door
neighbour, something has changed in the nature of
our everyday experience
Nelson Mandela is a global celebrity, and celebrity
itself is largely a product of new communications
technology. The reach of media technologies is
growing with each wave of innovation. It took 40
years for radio in the United States to gain an
audience of 50 million. The same number were using
personal computers only 15 years after the PC was
introduced. It needed a mere four years, after it was
made available for 50 million Americans to be
regularly using the Internet.
It is wrong to think of globalisation as just concerning
the big systems, like the world financial order.
Globalisation isn't only about what is 'out there',
remote and far away from the individual. It is an 'in
here' phenomenon too, influencing intimate and
personal aspects of our lives. The debate about
family values, for example, that is going on in many
countries, might seem far removed from globalising
influences. It isn't. Traditional family systems are
becoming transformed, or are under strain, in many
parts of the world, particularly as women stake claim
to greater equality. There has never before been a
society, so far as we know from the historical record,
in which women have been even approximately equal
to men. This is a truly global revolution in everyday
life, whose consequences are being felt around the
world in spheres from work to politics.
Globalisation thus is a complex set of processes, not
a single one. And these operate in a contradictory or
oppositional fashion. Most people think of it as simply
'pulling away' power or influence from local
communities and nations into the global arena. And
indeed this is one of its consequences. Nations do
lose some of the economic power they once had.
However, it also has an opposite effect. Globalisation
not only pulls upwards, it pushes downwards,
creating new pressures for local autonomy. The
American sociologist Daniel Bell expresses this very
well when he says that the nation becomes too small
to solve the big problems, but also too large to solve
the small ones.
Globalisation is the reason for the revival of local
cultural identities in different parts of the world. If one
asks, for example, why the Scots want more
independence in the UK, or why there is a strong
separatist movement in Quebec, the answer is not to
be found only in their cultural history. Local
nationalisms spring up as a response to globalising
tendencies, as the hold of older nation-states
weakens.
Globalisation also squeezes sideways. It creates new
economic and cultural zones within and across
nations. Examples are the Hong Kong region,
northern Italy, or Silicon Valley in California.
109
The area around Barcelona in northern Spain extends
over into France. Catalonia, where Barcelona is
located, is closely integrated into the European
Union. It is part of Spain, yet also looks outwards.
The changes are being propelled by a range of
factors, some structural, others more specific and
historical. Economic influences are certainly among
the driving forces, especially the global financial
system. Yet they aren't like forces of nature. They
have been shaped by technology, and cultural
diffusion, as well as by the decisions of governments
to liberalise and deregulate their national economies.
The collapse of Soviet communism has added further
weight to such developments, since no significant
group of countries any longer stands outside. That
collapse wasn't just something that happened to
occur. Globalisation explains both why and how
Soviet communism met its end. The Soviet Union and
the East European countries were comparable to the
West in terms of growth rates until somewhere
around the early 1970s. After that point, they fell
rapidly behind. Soviet communism, with its emphasis
upon state-run enterprise and heavy industry, could
not compete in the global electronic economy. The
ideological and cultural control upon which
communist political authority was based similarly
could not survive in an era of global media.
The Soviet and the East European regimes were
unable to prevent the reception of western radio and
TV broadcasts. Television played a direct role in the
1989 revolutions, which have rightly been called the
first "television revolutions". Street protests taking
place in one country were watched by the audiences
in others, large numbers of whom then took to the
streets themselves.
Globalisation, of course, isn't developing in an even-
handed way, and is by no means wholly benign in its
consequences. To many living outside Europe and
North America, it looks uncomfortably like
Westernisation - or, perhaps, Americanisation,
since the US is now the sole superpower, with a
dominant economic, cultural and military position in
the global order. Many of the most visible cultural
expressions of globalisation are American - Coca-
Cola, McDonald's.
It would see it as destroying local cultures, widening
world inequalities and worsening the lot of the
impoverished. Globalisation, some argue, creates a
world of winners and losers, a few on the fast track to
prosperity, the majority condemned to a life of misery
and despair. And indeed the statistics are daunting.
The share of the poorest fifth of the world's population
in global income has dropped from 2.3% to 1.4% over
the past 10 years. The proportion taken by the richest
fifth, on the other hand, has risen from 70% to 85%.
In Sub Saharan Africa, 20 countries have lower
incomes per head in real terms than they did two
decades ago. In many less developed countries,
safety and environmental regulations are low or
virtually non existent. Some trans-national companies
sell goods there that are controlled or banned in the
industrial countries - poor quality medical drugs,
destructive pesticides or high tar and nicotine content
cigarettes. As one writer put it recently, rather than a
global village, this is more like global pillage.
Along with ecological risk, to which it is related,
expanding inequality is the most serious problem
facing world society. It will not do, however, merely to
blame it on the wealthy. It is fundamental to my
argument that globalisation today is only partly
Westernisation. Of course the western nations, and
more generally the industrial countries, still have far
more influence over world affairs than do the poorer
states. But globalisation is becoming increasingly de
centred - not under the control of any group of
nations, and still less of the large corporations. Its
effects are felt just as much in the western countries
as elsewhere
This is true of the global financial system,
communications and media, and of changes affecting
the nature of government itself. Examples of 'reverse
colonisation' are becoming more and more common.
Reverse colonisation means that non-western
countries influence developments in the west.
Examples abound - such as the Latinising of Los
Angeles, the emergence of a globally-oriented high
tech sector in India, or the selling of Brazilian TV
programmes to Portugal.
110
Is globalisation a force promoting the general good?
The question can't be answered in simple way, given
the complexity of the phenomenon. People who ask
it, and who blame globalisation for deepening world
inequalities, usually have in mind economic
globalisation, and within that, free trade. Now it is
surely obvious that free trade is not an unalloyed
benefit. This is especially so as concerns the less
developed countries. Opening up a country, or
regions within it, to free trade can undermine a local
subsistence economy. An area that becomes
dependent upon a few products sold on world
markets is very vulnerable to shifts in prices as well
as to technological change. Trade always needs a
framework of institutions, as do other forms of
economic development. Markets cannot be created
by purely economic means, and how far a given
economy should be exposed to the world
marketplace must depend upon a range of criteria.
Yet to oppose economic globalisation, and to opt for
economic protectionism, would be a misplaced tactic
for rich and poor nations alike. Protectionism may be
a necessary strategy at some times and in some
countries. In my view, for example, Malaysia was
correct to introduce controls in 1998, to stem the
flood of capital from the country. But more permanent
forms of protectionism will not help the development
of the poor countries, and among the rich would lead
to warring trade blocs.
The debates about globalisation I mentioned at the
beginning have concentrated mainly upon its
implications for the nation-state. Are nation-states,
and hence national political leaders, still powerful, or
are they becoming largely irrelevant to the forces
shaping the world? Nation-states are indeed still
powerful and political leaders have a large role to play
in the world. Yet at the same time the nation-state is
being reshaped before our eyes. National economic
policy can't be as effective as it once was. More
importantly, nations have to rethink their identities
now the older forms of geopolitics are becoming
obsolete. Although this is a contentious point, I would
say that, following the dissolving of the cold war,
nations no longer have enemies. Who are the
enemies of Britain, or France, or Japan? Nations
today face risks and dangers rather than enemies, a
massive shift in their very nature.
It isn't only of the nation that such comments could be It is not settled or secure, but fraught with anxieties,
made. Everywhere we look, we see institutions that as well as scarred by deep divisions. Many of us feel
appear the same as they used to be from the outside, in the grip of forces over which we have no control.
and carry the same names, but inside have become Can we re-impose our will upon them? I believe we
quite different. We continue to talk of the nation, the can. The powerlessness we experience
family, work, tradition, nature, as if they were all the is not a sign of personal failings, but reflects the
same as in the past. They are not. The outer shell incapacities of our institutions. We need to
remains, but inside all is different - and this is reconstruct those we have, or create new ones, in
happening not only in the US, Britain, or France, but ways appropriate to the global age.
almost everywhere. They are what I call shell
institutions, and I shall talk about them quite a bit in We should and we can look to achieve greater control
the lectures to come. They are institutions that have over our runaway world. We shan't be able to do so if
become inadequate to the tasks they are called upon we shirk the challenges, or pretend that all can go on
to perform. as before. For globalisation is not incidental to our
lives today. It is a shift in our very life circumstances.
As the changes I have described in this lecture gather It is the way we now live.
weight, they are creating something that has never
existed before, a global cosmopolitan society. We are
the first generation to live in this society, whose
contours we can as yet only dimly see. It is shaking
up our existing ways of life, no matter where we
happen to be. This is not - at least at the moment - a
global order driven by collective human will. Instead,
it is emerging in an anarchic, haphazard, fashion,
carried along by a mixture of economic, technological
and cultural imperatives.

Giddens, A, "Runaway World: The Reith Lectures", BBC, 1999, www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-reith-

lectures/transcripts/1990/

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Globalisation has made the world a better place
I was recently in beautiful Chile for a Futures
Congress, and I had a chance to travel south to the
very tip of Latin America. I also recently made a BBC
radio documentary called Fixing Globalisation, in
which I criss-crossed the UK in search of ideas for
improving certain aspects of it and discussed topical
issues with well-known experts. In both cases, I saw
things that convinced me that it is past time for
someone to come to globalisation’s defence.
Chile today is Latin America’s richest country, with
per capita GDP of about $23,000 – similar to that of
central European countries. This is quite an
achievement for a country that depends so heavily on
copper production, and it sets Chile apart from many
of its neighbours. Like many other countries, Chile is
facing economic challenges, and its growth rate
leaves something to be desired; but it also has many
promising opportunities beyond its borders.
For example, when I led a review on antimicrobial
resistance, I learned that copper has powerful
antibacterial properties and is an ideal material for
use in healthcare facilities where bacteria often
spread. This means that copper producers such as
Chile, Australia, and Canada can improve global
health – and boost exports – by introducing affordable
copper infrastructure into hospitals and other clinical
settings around the world.
Chile is also a storehouse of knowledge for managing
earthquakes and tsunamis. While I was there, I
visited La Serena, which in 2015 experienced the
sixth strongest earthquake ever recorded. But the
ensuing tsunami killed only 11 people, though it
surely would have killed far more in many other
places. Chilean officials’ advanced preparation and
rapid response seems to have made the difference.
With so much institutional experience, Chile can be a
valuable resource for other countries threatened by
seismic events.
112
La Serena is also near one of the world’s best
stargazing sites, which attracts leading astronomers
from around the globe. In fact, Chile hosts much
remarkable collaboration among the world’s
scientists, in part because it is just north of the
Antarctic – long a site for scientific and environmental
cooperation.
Beyond Chile, it is interesting that the Chinese
president, Xi Jinping, is attending the World
Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos this
year. Now that Donald Trump has been elected
president of the US, and the UK is withdrawing from
the EU, I had assumed that such an elitist event’s
glory days were behind it. Xi’s presence suggests that
China is exploring where it can position itself on the
world stage, and which elements of globalisation it
can harness to its advantage, now that western
powers are turning inward.
Indeed, as the Chinese ambassador to the UK
pointed out on my radio programme, China is already
the largest importer – yes, importer – for at least 70
countries, and accounts for about 10% to 11% of all
imports globally. Despite its supposed economic
challenges, China will likely be a bigger importer than
the EU before this decade is over, and it will probably
surpass the US soon thereafter.
This will not happen without globalisation. African
countries, in particular, will need to trade more with
one another, and there is talk of creating an African
free-trade area. But this could prove difficult now that
anti-trade sentiment is on the rise. Are globalisation’s
critics – those who wrongly consider it a zero-sum
game – against eradicating global poverty?
Policymakers can take action to alleviate anxieties
about globalisation. For starters, the seemingly
endless growth of profits as a share of global GDP
must stop. Anyone who thinks this sounds radical
needs to brush up on economics. Higher profits
should attract new market entrants, which would then
erode incumbents’ profits through competition. The
fact that this isn’t happening suggests that some
markets have been rigged, or have simply failed.
Policymakers need to address this with stronger
regulation in some areas. For example, as I have
previously argued, the current climate is far too
permissive of share-repurchase programmes.
At the same time, policymakers need to pursue
measures to increase wages for the lowest earners,
which could actually help boost productivity as capital
becomes less expensive relative to labour. And, as
the World Bank president, Jim Yong Kim, recently
pointed out to me, we need to strengthen
enforcement of laws governing trade deals, and do
more to help challenged domestic sectors that lose
out as a result of those deals.
O'Neill, J, "Globalisation has made the world a better place", The Guardian (originally Project Syndicate),
18/1/17, www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jan/18/globalisation-world-trade-asia-global-poverty
113
This reminds me of a sad story I heard from some
laid-off Goodyear workers in Wolverhampton, in
England’s West Midlands. They told me that job
listings for their lost positions were posted on a notice
board, and they could reapply for them if they wanted
to move to Mexico. The workers surmised that it was
easier for the company to close its factory in the UK
than to close even less productive factories in France
or Germany. Surely changes like this can be handled
better.
Lastly, policymakers need to prioritise development
projects such as the UK’s “northern powerhouse” and
“Midlands engine”. And more such initiatives should
be launched elsewhere.
Despite the many challenges it has created,
globalisation has made the world a better place than
it otherwise would have been. And we still need it to
eradicate poverty and generate higher living
standards for all.
The political threats to globalisation
If you had to define “globalisation” with an image,
what would it be? A container ship from China stuffed
with toys and T-shirts? A programmer tapping at a
keyboard in Bangalore? A plane circling gloomily over
Heathrow airport? Most people’s pictures of
globalisation are to do with economics, technology
and business. But before markets, modems and
manufacturers could do their work, political changes
had to take place. The foundations of the globalised
business world are political – and so are the biggest
threats to the system. The challenge to the
globalisation consensus comes from below. Political
elites in the US, Asia and Europe are struggling to
convince citizens that globalisation is not just a game
that benefits the rich. If the argument is lost in any of
the major world economies, the political consensus
that underpins globalisation could unravel.
That consensus is a recent creation. The political
changes that made globalisation possible took place
in a remarkably short period of time – from 1978 to
1991 to be precise. The first and most important
development was China’s decision to turn from
Maoism to the market, with the reforms initiated by
Deng Xiaoping in 1978. A year later, Margaret
Thatcher came to power in Britain. One of her first
acts was the abolition of foreign exchange controls,
easing London’s rise as a global financial centre and
setting an example that was emulated internationally.
Then, in 1980, Ronald Reagan took power in the US
on a platform of deregulation and tax cuts – giving a
huge boost to market ideology around the world. In
the mid-1980s, the European Union committed itself
to creating a single market.
In 1989, the collapse of the Berlin wall allowed
eastern Europe – and Russia itself – to join the
globalisation game. The 1980s also saw the
discrediting of protectionist populists in the largest
countries of Latin America. Finally, in 1991, came
another huge change: the decision by Indian leaders
to move away from the regulation and protectionism
that had hobbled the Indian economy since
independence.
114
So, in less than 15 years, the political elites in the
power centres of the world had come to broadly
similar conclusions. They embraced global business
and market economics.
The result is a world in which it now feels as natural
to do business in Beijing, Moscow and Delhi as in
London and New York. But this world has been with
us for less than 20 years. Previous eras of
globalisation were ended by political upheaval – the
outbreak of war in 1914 and the rise of fascism in the
1930s. So could the same thing happen again?
The most obvious threat is a crisis in the most
important political and economic relationship in the
world – that between the US and China. The Bush
administration, despite its bellicose reputation, has
been assiduous in avoiding confrontation with China;
and the Chinese similarly have no desire for a clash
with America – at least, not now. Globalisation has
created a web of mutual interests. The real risk in
Chinese-American relations is of miscalculation: a
clash – whether over trade or Tibet or Taiwan – that
escalates into something that does real damage.
Combine a looming recession in America, a
presidential election and the Beijing Olympics and
you have a formula for potential trouble.
Over the longer-term, terrorism and climate change
also pose risks to the system. Globalisation depends
on ease of travel. But, in different ways, both global
warming and global terrorism threaten the ability to
hop on a plane at a moment’s notice.
But the biggest risk is that politicians simply begin to
lose the argument for globalisation. A recent opinion
poll showed that 58 per cent of Americans think
globalisation is bad for the US and just 28 per cent
think it has helped America. Ten years ago there was
a narrow majority in favour of globalisation. Politicians
are reacting to this shift. Democratic presidential
candidates are taking an increasingly sceptical line on
free trade. Republicans rail against illegal
immigration.
In Europe, Nicolas Sarkozy, French president, has The sense that the poor have lost out as a result of
been arguing for protectionism on a European level. globalisation has grown with the rise in world food
He wants to re-establish “community preference” – prices. Hunger – that most traditional threat to ruling
essentially higher tariffs against goods from outside elites – is returning to many countries that have
the European Union. Mr Sarkozy does not have many embraced globalisation. Political leaders around the
EU allies yet. But the re-election of Silvio Berlusconi world are struggling to contain all these pressures
in Italy could change that. and maintain the consensus that has made
globalisation possible. But their task is getting harder.
Outsiders see the Indians and the Chinese as the Globalisation was made possible by political change.
greatest beneficiaries of globalisation. But the last But what politics made, politics can take away.
Indian government lost a general election, largely
because poor, rural voters felt left out by the boom.
With another election in the offing, India’s politicians
are not rushing to sign a new world trade deal. The
political climate in a one-party state such as China is
harder to gauge. But the authorities’ evident anxiety
about rural unemployment, environmental protests
and the wealth gap between the rich coasts and the
poorer inland regions suggests that global capitalism
can be a tough sell – even in China.

Rachman, G, "The political threats to globalisation", FT,7/4/08, www.ft.com/content/e6d8281c-04af-11dd-a2f0-

000077b07658

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The Globalization of Politics: American Foreign Policy for a
New Century
September 11 signaled the end of the age of
geopolitics and the advent of a new age—the era of
global politics. The challenge U.S. policymakers face
today is to recognize that fundamental change in
world politics and to use America’s unrivaled military,
economic, and political power to fashion an
international environment conducive to its interests
and values.
For much of the 20th century, geopolitics drove
American foreign policy. Successive presidents
sought to prevent any single country from dominating
the centers of strategic power in Europe and Asia. To
that end the United States fought two world wars and
carried on its four-decade-long Cold War with the
Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet empire
ended the last serious challenge for territorial
dominion over Eurasia. The primary goal of American
foreign policy was achieved.
During the 1990s, American foreign policy focused on
consolidating its success. Together with its European
allies, the United States set out to create, for the first
time in history, a peaceful, undivided, and democratic
Europe. That effort is now all but complete. The
European Union—which will encompass most of
Europe with the expected accession of 10 new
members in 2004—has become the focal point for
European policy on a wide range of issues. The North
Atlantic Treaty Organization has evolved from a
collective defense alliance into Europe’s main
security institution. A new relationship with Russia is
being forged.
Progress has been slower, though still significant, in
Asia. U.S. relations with its two key regional partners,
Japan and South Korea, remain the foundation of
regional stability. Democracy is taking root in South
Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Taiwan. U.S.
engagement with China is slowly tying an
economically surging Beijing into the global economy.
116
The success of American policy over the past decade
means that no power—not Russia, not Germany, not
a united Europe, and not China or Japan—today
poses a hegemonic threat to Eurasia. In this new era,
American foreign policy will no longer pivot on
geography. Instead, it will be defined by the
combination of America’s unrivaled power in world
affairs and the extensive and growing globalization of
world politics.
The United States is today the only truly global
power. Its military reach—whether on land, at sea, or
in the air—extends to every point on the globe. Its
economic prowess fuels world trade and industry. Its
political and cultural appeal—what Joseph Nye has
called soft power—is so extensive that most
international institutions reflect American interests.
America’s position in the world is unique—no other
country in history has ever come close.
But is America’s exalted position sustainable?
Militarily, the vast gap between the United States and
everyone else is growing. Whereas defense spending
in most other countries is falling, U.S. defense
spending is rising rapidly. This year’s requested
increase in defense spending is greater than the
entire Chinese defense budget. Most remarkably,
America can afford to spend more. Defense spending
takes a smaller share of the U.S. gross domestic
product than it did a decade ago—and even the Bush
administration’s projected increases will produce an
overall budget equal to only about 3.5 percent of
GDP, about half of Cold War highs. There is little
prospect of any country or group of countries
devoting the resources necessary to begin competing
with the United States militarily, let alone surpassing
it.
Economically, the United States may not widen its
edge over its competitors, but neither is it likely to fall
behind. The U.S. economy has proven itself at least
as adept as its major competitors in realizing the
productivity gains made possible by information
technology.
Europe and Japan face severe demographic
challenges as their populations rapidly age, creating
likely labor shortages and severe budgetary
pressures. China is modernizing rapidly, and Russia
may have turned the corner, but their economies
today are comparable in output to those of Italy and
Belgium—and they have yet to develop a political
infrastructure that can support sustained economic
growth.
Which brings us to the issue of how to transform this
unquestioned power into influence. Unless employed
deftly, America’s military and economic superiority
can breed resentment, even among its friends. A
growing perception that Washington cares only about
its own interests and is willing to use its muscle to get
its way has fueled a worrisome gap between U.S. and
European attitudes. European elites increasingly
criticize the United States as being morally, socially,
and culturally retrograde—especially in its perceived
embrace of the death penalty, predatory capitalism,
and fast food and mass entertainment. Europe has
also begun to exercise diplomatic muscle in
international institutions and other arenas, seeking to
create new international regimes designed to limit
America’s recourse to its hard power.
The sustainability of American power ultimately
depends on the extent to which others believe it is
employed not just in U.S. interests but in their
interests as well. Following its victory in World War II,
the United States led the effort to create not only new
security institutions, such as the United Nations and
NATO, but also new regimes to promote economic
recovery, development, and prosperity, such as the
Marshall Plan, the Bretton Woods monetary system,
and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs to
promote free trade. These institutions and
agreements preserved and extended American power
—but in a way that benefited all who participated. The
challenge for the United States is to do the same
today.
117
Globalization is not just an economic phenomenon,
but a political, cultural, military, and environmental
one as well. Nor is globalization new; networks of
interdependence spanning continents were
increasing rapidly in the decades before the First
World War as the steam engine and the telegraph
reduced the cost of transportation and information.
What distinguishes globalization today is the speed
and volume of cross-border contacts.
The prophets of globalization have trumpeted its
benefits, particularly how the increased flow of goods,
services, and capital across borders can boost
economic activity and enhance prosperity. During the
1990s the more globalized economies grew an
average of 5 percent a year, while the less globalized
economies contracted by an average of 1 percent a
year. The spread of ideas and information across the
Internet and other global media has broadened
cultural horizons and empowered people around the
world to challenge autocratic rulers and advance the
cause of human rights and democracy. Globalization
can even lessen the chance of war. Fearing that war
with Pakistan would disrupt their ties to U.S.-based
multinationals, India’s powerful electronic sector
successfully pressed New Delhi in mid-2002 to
deescalate its conflict with Pakistan.
But globalization also brings terrible new perils. A
handful of men from halfway across the globe can
hijack four commercial airliners and slam them into
key symbols of American power, killing thousands. A
computer hacker in the Philippines can shut down the
Internet and disrupt e-commerce thousands of miles
away. Speculators can produce a run on the Thai
currency, plunging Russia and Brazil into recession,
robbing American exporters of markets, and costing
American jobs. Greenhouse gases accumulating in
the atmosphere in newly booming economies can
raise global temperatures, possibly flooding coastal
plains and turning mountain meadows into deserts.
Worse, for the United States, is that its power makes
it a magnet for terrorism. As Richard Betts has
argued, America’s power “animates both the
terrorists’ purposes and their choice of tactics….
Political and cultural power makes the United States
a target for those who blame it for their problems. At
the same time, American economic and military
power prevents them from resisting or retaliating
against the United States on its own terms. To smite
the only superpower requires unconventional modes
of force and tactics [which] offer hope to the weak
that they can work their will despite their overall deficit
in power.” Worse still, other weak countries might
decide to buy their security by turning a blind eye to
terrorist activities on their soil, thereby increasing the
risk to the United States.
Much of the foreign policy debate in the United States
today revolves around assessments of the
fundamental importance of American primacy and
globalization. Americanists, so called because they
emphasize American primacy, see a world in which
the United States can use its predominant power to
get its way, regardless of what others want. They
believe the United States must summon the will to go
it alone if necessary. Globalists emphasize
globalization. They see a world that defies unilateral
U.S. solutions and instead requires international
cooperation. They warn against thinking that America
can go it alone.
Americanists see two great virtues in America’s
primacy. First, it enables the United States to set its
own foreign policy objectives and to achieve them
without relying on others. The result is a preference
for unilateral action, unbound by international
agreements or institutions that would otherwise
constrain America’s ability to act. As Charles
Krauthammer puts it, “An unprecedentedly dominant
United States…is in the unique position of being able
to fashion its own foreign policy. After a decade of
Prometheus playing pygmy, the first task of the new
[Bush] administration is precisely to reassert
American freedom of action.” The views, preferences,
and interests of allies, friends, or anyone else should
therefore have no influence on American action.
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Second, because American power enables the United
States to pursue its interests as it pleases, American
foreign policy should seek to maintain, extend, and
strengthen that relative position of power. As
President Bush told graduating West Point cadets last
June, “America has, and intends to keep, military
strength beyond challenge, thereby making the
destabilizing arms races of other eras pointless, and
limiting rivalries to trade and other pursuits of peace.”
In other words, the United States can achieve its
policy objectives best if it can prevent others from
acquiring the power necessary to oppose it effectively
when interests clash. It is as good a definition of what
would constitute an American empire as one can get.
In contrast, Globalists stress how globalization both
limits and transforms America’s capacity to use its
power to influence events overseas. At bottom, the
challenges and opportunities created by the forces of
globalization are not susceptible to America acting on
its own. Combating the spread of infectious diseases,
preventing the spread of weapons of mass
destruction, defeating terrorism, securing access to
open markets, protecting human rights, promoting
democracy, and preserving the environment all
require the cooperation of other countries. As British
Prime Minister Tony Blair put it succinctly following
the September 11 attacks, “we are all internationalists
now.”
But, Globalists argue, it is not simply that the nature
of the issues arising from globalization limits the
reach of American power and compels international
cooperation. Globalization transforms the nature of
power itself. No one has grappled with this problem
more thoughtfully than Joseph Nye in his latest book,
The Paradox of American Power. As Nye explains,
“power today is distributed among countries in a
pattern that resembles a complex three-dimensional
chess game.” One dimension is military power, where
the United States enjoys an unrivaled advantage, and
the power distribution is therefore unipolar. The
second dimension is economic, where power among
the United States, Europe, and Japan is distributed
more equally.
The third dimension is transnational relations, where
power is widely dispersed and essentially beyond
government control. This is the realm of nonstate
actors—from multinational companies and money
managers to terrorist organizations and crime
syndicates to nongovernmental organizations and the
international media. “Those who recommend a
hegemonic [or power-based] American foreign
policy,” Nye concludes, “are relying on woefully
inadequate analysis. When you are in a three-
dimensional game, you will lose if you focus on the
interstate military board and fail to notice the other
boards and the vertical connections among them.”
Both Americanists and Globalists are right in
important ways. Take the Americanists first. Despite
globalization, power remains the coin of the realm in
international politics. Five decades of concerted U.S.
and allied efforts may have transformed Europe into a
Kantian zone of perpetual peace where the rule of
law has triumphed, but in much of the rest of the
world military might continues to hold sway. True, no
country, not even China, poses the geostrategic
threat to the United States that first Germany and
then the Soviet Union did in the previous century.
Still, lesser- order threats abound, from Pyongyang to
Teheran to Baghdad, and U.S. military and economic
power will be needed to contain, if not extinguish,
them. More broadly, the rule of law demands more
than simply codifying rules of behavior. It also
requires the willingness and ability to enforce them.
But that requirement, as Mancur Olson demonstrated
years ago, runs into a fundamental collective-action
problem—if the potential costs of action are great and
the benefits widely shared, few will be willing to incur
the costs. That is where overwhelming power, and
the concomitant willingness and ability to provide for
global public goods, makes a crucial difference. So,
without American primacy—or something like it—it is
doubtful that the rule of law can be sustained.
The wise application of American primacy can further
U.S. values and interests. The use (or threat) of
American military might evicted Iraqi troops from
Kuwait, convinced Haiti’s military junta to relinquish
power, ended Serbian atrocities in Kosovo, and broke
al- Qaida’s hold over Afghanistan.
119
Nor does American primacy advance only U.S.
interests and values. As the one country willing and
able to break deadlocks and stalemates preventing
progress on issues from promoting peace in the
Balkans, Northern Ireland, and the Middle East to
preserving financial stability around the world, the
United States frequently advances the interests of
most other democratic states as well. Often, the
United States is exactly what Madeleine Albright said
it was—the indispensable nation that makes it
possible to mobilize the world into effective action.
And the United States does differ from other
countries. Unique among past hegemons in not
seeking to expand its power through territorial gains,
it is also unique among its contemporaries. Its
primacy and global interests prompt others both to
seek its assistance in addressing their problems and
to resent it for meddling in their affairs. The
ambivalence the world feels about American
engagement—as well as the unique nature of that
engagement—makes it imperative that the United
States not mistake the conduct of foreign policy for a
popularity contest. Doing the right thing may not
always be popular—but it is vitally important
nevertheless.
But Globalists are right that while America is
powerful, it is not omnipotent. Far more able than
most countries to protect itself against the pernicious
consequences of globalization, it is by no means
invulnerable. Some crucial problems do defy
unilateral solutions. Global warming is perhaps the
most obvious case, but others include stopping the
spread of weapons of mass destruction and fighting
global terrorism. In other cases, such as protecting
the American homeland from terrorist attack,
unilateral action can reduce but not eliminate risks.
Similarly, unilateral American power may not be
enough to sustain the benefits of globalization.
Globalization is not irreversible. World War I, the
Russian Revolution, and the Great Depression
combined to strangle the economic and social
interactions that emerged early in the 20th century.
Economic globalization today rests on an intricate
web of international trade and financial institutions.
Extending, developing, and improving these
institutions requires the cooperation of others.
Without it, the benefits of globalization, which help to
underwrite American power, could erode.
Globalization has greatly broadened America’s
foreign policy agenda. Infectious diseases, poverty,
and poor governance not only offend our moral
sensibilities but also represent potential new security
threats. Failed and failing states endanger not just
their own citizens but Americans as well. If the United
States cannot find ways to encourage prosperity and
good governance, it runs the risk of seeing threats to
its security multiply. It could eventually find itself
harmed not by bears in the woods but by swarms of
tiny pests.
Finally, cooperation can extend the life of American
primacy. Working with others can spread the costs of
action over a wider array of actors, enabling the
United States to do more with less. By creating
international regimes and organizations Washington
can imbed its interests and values in institutions that
will shape and constrain countries for decades,
regardless of the vicissitudes of American power. And
cooperation can build bonds with other countries,
lessening the chances of cultural and political tactics
that can over the years sap U.S. power.
Both Americanists and Globalists understand
essential truths about the world today. Power
continues to matter, but power alone will often not be
enough to achieve our goals. A pragmatic American
internationalism would recognize that we do not need
to pick between these two truths. Both should guide
American foreign policy.
But what should America seek to accomplish abroad?
The indisputable first objective must be to safeguard
and enhance our liberty, security, and prosperity. The
question is how. In the new age of global politics, the
best way to accomplish these goals is to promote an
international order based on democracy, human
rights, and free enterprise—to extend the zone of
peace and prosperity that the United States helped
establish in Europe to every other region of the world.
120
Put differently, the United States needs to integrate
the world’s have-nots into the globalized West.
Pursuing that goal is not charity. Creating an
international order in which more people are free and
prosperous is profoundly in America’s self-interest. In
a world of market democracies, America and
Americans are likely to be both more prosperous and
more secure. In such a world we are most likely to
realize the promise of globalization while minimizing
its dangers.
Ensuring that a commitment to democracy and open
markets triumphs on a global scale entails four broad
strategies. First, it is necessary to sustain and
strengthen the bases of American power. This, most
of all, requires ensuring that the fundamentals of the
nation’s economy remain sound. It is important not to
spend today what the country may need tomorrow. It
also requires maintaining America’s military edge,
both technologically and in terms of the overall
capacity to bring force to bear at a time and place of
America’s own choosing. And it requires persistent
diplomatic engagement on Washington’s part to
demonstrate awareness that what happens abroad
and matters to others can also have a profound
impact on security and prosperity at home.
Second, U.S. policy should seek to extend and adapt
proven international institutions and arrangements.
NATO’s recent transformation is a prime example.
During the 1990s, the collective defense organization
that had safeguarded the territorial integrity of its
members against the Soviet Union for four decades
gradually took on a new role: providing security for
every state and its citizens in an ever enlarging north
Atlantic area. By taking the lead in stabilizing conflict-
ridden regions like the Balkans, as well as by opening
its doors to new members, NATO began to do for
Europe’s east what it had done for Europe’s west.
The world trading system is also ripe for change.
Barriers to the free flow of goods, capital, and
services have steadily fallen over the years, and more
and more countries have joined the free trading
regime. Now it is time to lower the most pernicious
barriers, especially those for agricultural goods, and
bring poor countries into the global economic system.
Third, U.S. policy should enforce compliance with
existing international agreements and strengthen the
ability of institutions to monitor and compel
compliance. Too many favor the negotiation of new
sets of rules or new institutions for their own sake,
and too few pay attention to making sure new rules
are upheld and new institutions function effectively.
Iraq is a case in point. Even if one believes that Iraq
can be contained and deterred and that therefore
forcible regime change is neither necessary nor
advisable, Baghdad’s refusal to comply with UN
Security Council resolutions (including the critical
terms of the Gulf War cease-fire resolution) means
that the threat and possible use of force must be in
play. A willingness to use force is no doubt necessary
(though by no means sufficient) to persuade Saddam
Hussein to allow UN inspectors to reenter Iraq and
permit them to carry out the mandate of the
international community. If he refuses, the United
States must be prepared to use force, preferably with
others but alone if necessary, to compel compliance.
Bad behavior that produces no consequences gets
emulated.
Finally, U.S. policy must take the lead in creating
effective international institutions and arrangements
to handle new challenges, especially those arising
from the downside of globalization. The United States
must lead not only because it alone can help the
international community overcome its collective-
action problems, but because it is most likely to be
hurt by inaction. Just as one example, an
international system for reporting and monitoring
research in dangerous pathogens could provide early
warning if biotechnologists create such pathogens
either deliberately or inadvertently.
Dalder, I et.al., "The Globalization of Politics: American Foreign Policy for a New Century", Brookings Institute,
1/1/3, www.brookings.edu/articles/the-globalization-of-politics-american-foreign-policy-for-a-new-century/
121
As these strategies make clear, promoting an
international order based on market democracies will
require the United States to lead as well as listen, to
give as well as take. Arguing that American foreign
policy should be either unilateral or multilateral is to
posit a false choice as well as to confuse means with
ends. Unilateralism can be put to good or bad uses.
The flaw in the Bush administration’s decision to
withdraw the United States from the Kyoto Treaty was
not so much that Washington went its own way—
though the peremptory manner of the withdrawal
maximized bad feelings—but that it has failed to
propose a better strategy for dealing with a rise in
global temperatures that its own EPA scientists
acknowledge. In this case, what is needed is not
more multilateralism, but more unilateral action on the
part of the United States to curtail its greenhouse gas
emissions. Likewise, multilateralism can produce a
modern day Kellogg-Briand Treaty just as easily as it
produces a Gulf War coalition or a World Trade
Organization.
Can U.S. foreign policy promote a liberal world order
in the new age of global politics? In many ways it has
no other choice. The pernicious effects of
globalization, which empower tiny groups of people to
inflict grievous harm, make it essential to create a
world community that shares American values. But
there is also good reason to believe that the United
States can succeed in integrating the rest of the world
into the western world order. Immediately after World
War II, the United States forged a series of bold
political, economic, and military arrangements that
made allies of former enemies and set the stage for
victory in the age of geopolitics. U.S. policymakers at
the time took a broad view of American interests and
understood that their efforts would be for naught if
America’s partners did not see them as being in the
interest of all. U.S. policymakers in the age of global
politics must do likewise.
inequality
Inequality refers to a state of affairs where equality between people or groups
of people is not realized and the consequent potential compromises of justice
and liberty. Inequality often manifests itself through unequal access to
resources that are needed to sustain life and develop individuals and
communities. Consequently, the concept is closely connected to discussions of
power and of who holds the rights to these resources and their proceeds.
Inequality can be examined both as a phenomenon within and between
societies.

The Inequality Report:The Palestinian Arab Minority 123

in Israel

Is income inequality rising around the world? 124

10 Important Examples of Gender Inequality 126

Happening Today

A marriage to celebrate: that of gender equality and 128

economic development

122
 The Inequality Report:The Palestinian Arab Minority in
Israel
Inequality in Israel takes many forms. Some of the
major fault-lines that divide Israeli society, creating
relatively privileged and deprived groups, are
(Ashkenazim) versus (Mizrahim); men versus women;
Israel-born Jews (Sabar)versus new immigrants
(Olim); Orthodox versus secular Jews; rural versus
urban dwellers; rich versus poor; left-wing versus
right-wing supporters; and gay versus straight people.
This report focuses on inequalities between Jewish
citizens of Israel—the majority—and Palestinian Arab
citizens of Israel, a national, non-immigrant minority
living in its historical homeland
Today, Palestinian citizens of the state comprise 20%
of the total population, numbering almost 1.2 million
people. They remained in their homeland following
the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948,
becoming an involuntary minority. A part of the
Palestinian people who currently live in the West
Bank, the Gaza Strip and the Diaspora, they belong
to three religious communities: Muslim (82%),
Christian (9.5%) and Druze (8.5%). Their status
under international human rights instruments to which
Israel is a State party is that of a national, ethnic,
linguistic and religious minority.
However, despite this status, the Palestinian minority
is not declared as a national minority in the Basic
Laws of Israel. In 1948, Israel was established as a
Jewish state. The definition of Israel as “the Jewish
State” or “the State of the Jewish People” makes
inequality a practical, political and ideological reality
for Palestinian citizens of Israel, who are marginalized
and discriminated against by the state on the basis of
their national belonging and religious affiliation as
non-Jews. They are frequently and increasingly
viewed as a “fifth column” as a result of their
Palestinian identity and national, religious, ethnic and
cultural ties to their fellow Palestinians in the
Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT) and
surrounding Arab and Muslim states, a number of
which are considered “enemy states” by
Israel.Furthermore, this perception is not restricted to
the state authorities: according to the Israel
Democracy Institute, in 2010 53% of the Jewish
public maintained that the state was entitled to
encourage Arabs to emigrate from Israel.
Hesketh, K, et.al.,"The Inequality Report:The Palestinian Arab Minority in Israel",
Adalah The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, March 2011,
https://www.adalah.org/uploads/oldfiles/upfiles/2011/Adalah_The_Inequality_Rep
ort_March_2011.pdf
Numerous groups of Palestinian citizens of Israel face
“compound discrimination” or multiple forms of
discrimination on the basis of both their national
belonging and their membership in one or more
distinct subgroups. For instance, Arab women in
Israel face discrimination as members of the Arab
minority and as women, and Arab Bedouin face an
additional layer of institutional and social
discrimination. Some individuals are subjected to
multiple forms of discrimination, for instance disabled
female Arab Bedouin children living in the
unrecognized villages in the Naqab (Negev), referred
to by the state as “illegally constructed villages” or
“illegal settlements”. With regard to certain
marginalized groups, Israel has some of the world’s
most forward-thinking and progressive laws and
policies. Israel’s Knesset, for example, has legislated
strong anti-discrimination legislation and legal
protections for women and disabled persons.
However, the same has not been done for the
Palestinian minority in Israel. As a result, Palestinians
who are also members of other marginalized groups
do not receive the full benefit of such protections.
Moreover, according to a recent poll, just 51% of
Jewish citizens of Israel support full equality in rights
between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel. The
same attitude prevails among Jewish youth, with
49.5% of Jewish 15- to 18-year-olds responding
negatively, in a poll carried out in 2010, to the
question of whether Arab citizens should be granted
rights equal to those of Jews.
This report details some of the main legal, political
and policy structures that institutionalize
discrimination against the Palestinian minority in
Israel, and entrench inequalities between Palestinian
and Jewish citizens. It provides indicators of
inequalities, including official state data, and explains
how specific laws and policies work to exclude the
Palestinian minority from state resources and
services, as well as the structures of power. It further
demonstrates how the State of Israel, as an
ethnocracy or “ethnic nation-state”, is systematically
failing to adopt effective measures to redress the
gaps that exist between the Palestinian minority and
the Jewish majority and, moreover, how, by
privileging Jewish citizens in many fields, the state
actively preserves and even widens these gaps.
123 Click here to read the full report
Is income inequality rising around the world?
Rising levels of inequality has become a key political
issue in recent years; "the defining issue of our time,"
as Barack Obama described it back in 2013. It was at
the heart of the Occupy movement protests, and has
received a huge amount of attention in the media and
in policy circles. But much of this discussion has
focussed on what's been happening in rich countries,
in particular upon trends seen in the US. We tend to
hear less about inequality in the rest of the world.
How has income inequality within countries been
changing around the world more generally?
To answer this question, we brought together
estimates of income inequality for two points in time:
today and a generation ago in 1990. Our metric of
income inequality is the Gini index which is higher in
a country with higher inequality.
124
We rely on estimates from two online databases:
PovcalNet, run by the World Bank, and the Chartbook
of Economic Inequality, which I published together
with Tony Atkinson, Salvatore Morelli, and Max Roser
This gave us a sample of 83 countries, covering
around 85% of the world's population
The chart below compares levels of inequality today
with those one generation ago. If you've not seen this
sort of chart before, it may take a moment to
understand what's going on. How high a country is in
the chart shows you the level of inequality in 2015.
How far to the right shows you the level of inequality
in 1990.3 In addition, a 45 degree line is plotted.
Countries below this line saw a fall in the Gini index
between the two dates; countries above saw an
increase.
Four observations on inequality across the globe
So what does the chart tell us about inequality within
countries across the world?
1. No general trend to higher inequality: It's a
mistake to think that inequality is rising
everywhere. Over the last 25 years, inequality has
gone up in many countries and has fallen in many
others. It's important to know this. It shows that rising
inequality is not ubiquitous, nor inevitable in the face
of globalisation, and suggests that politics and policy
at the level of individual countries can make a
difference.
2. Note the diversity between countries: As well as
there being different trends, notice how very different
the level of inequality is across countries. The spread
you see – from the highest inequality countries in
Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, to the lowest-
inequality countries in Scandinavia – is much larger
than the changes in individual countries over this
period.
3. There are clear regional patterns:
- Almost all Latin American and Caribbean countries
show very high levels of inequality, but considerable
declines from 1990 to 2015.
-Conversely, advanced industrial economies show
lower levels of inequality, but rises in most, though
not all, instances.
-A number of Eastern European countries
experienced rising inequality as they transitioned from
socialist regimes.
-Across the six countries in our sample from the
Middle East and North Africa region, we mostly see
falls. In Sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia and
Pacific, the trends are more mixed.
4. Across countries, the average level of
inequality has not changed:
- The rises and falls seen in the Gini index in different
countries more or less cancel out, the average Gini
across countries fell marginally from 39.6 to 38.6.
-There were rises in inequality in some of the world
most populous countries, including China, India, the
US and Indonesia (together accounting for around
45% of world population). As a result, if we weight
countries according to the size of their population we
see that this weighted average Gini index increased
by four percentage points, from 36.7 to 40.8.
125
-This means that, whilst in terms of the average
country the Gini index stayed roughly constant across
the two periods, the average person lived in a country
that saw rising inequality.
5. Levels of inequality are converging:
Interestingly, the chart shows that there was some
convergence in inequality levels across countries
over the last 25 years. Amongst those countries with
a Gini index below 40 in 1990 (left half of the chart),
hardly any saw substantial falls to 2015. Amongst
those with a Gini index above 40 in 1990 (right half of
the chart), hardly any saw substantial rises. As
already pointed out, this apparent convergence works
largely through regional dynamics. That said, those
countries in our sample from the Sub-Saharan Africa
and East Asia and Pacific regions are more evenly
split between rising and falling levels of inequality, but
still roughly fit this convergent pattern.
Conclusion
The Gini index is just one of the many ways we can
measure inequality, each with their own pros and
cons. You can read more about this in the 'Further
notes' section below, as well as in our entry on
Income Inequality.
Nevertheless, it is clear from the chart we cannot
make generalisations about inequality across the
globe based on what we see in rich countries. Nor
should we limit ourselves to thinking inequality must
either be going up or going down, full stop. Posing the
question in such a polarised way precludes a
meaningful answer. Whether inequality is rising or
falling depends on where, when and what aspect of
inequality we have in mind.
But this is very important to know in itself. It shows us
that rising inequality is not just an inevitable outcome
of global economic forces, completely beyond our
control. National institutions, politics and policy play a
key role in shaping how these forces impact incomes
across the distribution. Being attentive to the
differences between countries is an important step in
knowing what can be done to reduce inequality.
Hassel, J, "Is income inequality rising around the world?", Our
World in Data, 19/11/18,www.ourworldindata.org/income-
inequality-since-1990
10 Important Examples of Gender Inequality Happening
Today
The fight for gender equality is an ongoing struggle
for men and women throughout the world. Many
aspects of gender inequality are events that men will
never face, but that constantly shape women’s mental
health and opportunities. Listed here are the top 10
examples of gender inequality found in the daily lives
of women across the globe.
Infant Life Expectancy: In India and China, the two
most populous nations in the world, there is
significant data that shows a survival disadvantage
for girls under five years of age. In China, girls have
a seven percent higher infant mortality rate than boys,
and in India, a study conducted in the first decade of
the 2000s found that the risk of death between the
ages of one and five was 75 percent higher for girls
than for boys.
Access to Prenatal Care and Maternal Mortality:
As of 2017, there are 1.6 billion women of
reproductive age in the developing world. Of the 127
million women who gave birth in 2017, just 63 percent
received a minimum of four antenatal care visits and
only 72 percent gave birth in a health facility. Among
women who experienced medical complications
during pregnancy or delivery, only one in three
received the care they or their newborns needed.
In 2017, an estimated 308,000 women in developing
nations died from pregnancy-related causes and 2.7
million babies died in their first month of life. Many of
these deaths could have been prevented with full
access to healthcare.
Education: Less than 40 percent of countries offer
girls and boys equal access to education and only 39
percent of countries have equal proportions of the
sexes enrolled in secondary education. By achieving
universal primary and secondary education
attainability in the adult population, it could be
possible to lift more than 420 million people out of
poverty. This would have its greatest effect on women
and girls who are the most likely to never have
stepped foot inside a school.
126
Even once girls are attending school, discrimination
follows. One in four girls states that they never feel
comfortable using school latrines. Girls are at greater
risk of sexual violence, harassment and exploitation
in school. School-related gender-based violence is
another major obstacle to universal schooling and the
right to education for girls.
Illiteracy: There are approximately 774 million
illiterate adults in the world and two-thirds of them are
women. There are approximately 123 million illiterate
youths and 61 percent of them are girls. Women’s
share in the illiterate population has not budged in 20
years. These facts not only affect women but their
children as well. A child born to a mother with the
ability to read is 50 percent more likely to survive past
age five.
Economic Independence: Increases in female labor
force participation result in faster economic growth,
but women continue to participate in labor markets on
an unequal basis with men. In 2013, the male
employment-to-population ratio was 72.2 percent
compared to 47.1 percent for women, and women
continue to earn only 60-75 percent of men’s wages
globally. It is estimated that women’s income could
increase globally up to 76 percent if the employment
participation gap between men and women was
closed, which could have a global value of $17 trillion.
Women also carry a disproportionate amount of
responsibility for unpaid care work. Women devote
one to three hours more a day to housework than
men, two to 10 times the amount of time a day to care
(for children, elderly and the sick) and one to four
hours less a day to income-based activities. The time
given to these unpaid tasks directly and negatively
impacts women’s participation in the workforce and
their ability to foster economic independence.
Violence Against Women, Sexual Assault and
Rape: The mental health effects of sexual assault
and rape can have jarring results on women’s stability
and livelihoods. Women who have experienced
sexual or physical abuse at the hands of their
partners are twice as likely to have an abortion,
almost twice as likely to have depression and, in
some regions, 1.5 times more likely to acquire HIV
compared with women who have not experienced
partner violence.
The prevalence of sexual assault and violence
against women is deep and systemic, making it one
of the most important examples of gender inequality.
Worldwide, around 120 million girls, a number which
represents slightly more than one in 10, have
experienced forced intercourse or another forced
sexual act in their lifetime.
Human Trafficking: Adult women and girls account
for 71 percent of all human trafficking victims
detected globally. Girls alone represent nearly three
out of every four children trafficked. Women and girls
are clearly the disproportionate victims of human
trafficking with 75 percent trafficked for the purpose of
sexual exploitation.

Female Genital Mutilation: At least 200 million
women and girls alive today have undergone female
genital mutilation. In most of these cases, the majority
of girls were cut before age five. In these instances,
proper anesthesia is rarely used or is ineffective,
causing severe pain. Excessive bleeding is also
possible, resulting from the accidental cutting of the
clitoral artery or other blood vessels during the
procedure. Chronic genital infections, reproductive
tract infections and urinary tract infections are
common.Female genital mutilation is also associated
with an increased risk of Caesarean section,
postpartum hemorrhage and extended maternal
hospital stay. All of these subsequent complications
along with the shock and use of physical force during
the procedure are some of the many reasons why
survivors describe the experience as an extremely
traumatic event.
Representation in Government: As of June 2016,
only 22.8 percent of all national parliamentarians
were women. There is growing evidence that women
in positions of leadership and political decision-
making improve the systems in which they work.
These are 10 of the countless ways in which women
are oppressed, abused and neglected. These top ten
examples of gender inequality cannot begin to do
justice to the discrimination and obstacles that
women around the world face each day. Women’s
rights are human rights and affect every person in
every community.

Child Marriage: Globally, almost 750 million women

and girls alive today married before their eighteenth
birthday. Those who suffer from child marriage often
experience early pregnancy which is a key factor in
the premature end of education. As mothers and
wives, girls become socially isolated and are at an
increased risk for domestic violence. Child marriage
is one the most devastating examples of gender
inequality, as it limits women’s opportunities and their
ability to reach their full individual potential.

Sherwood Bigelow, C, "10 Important Examples of Gender Inequality Happening Today", The Borgen Project,
11/7/18, www.borgenproject.org/examples-of-gender-inequality/

127
A marriage to celebrate: that of gender equality and
economic development
At the start of 2015, I spent several months
volunteering in Bangladesh with Voluntary Service
Overseas (VSO) and International Citizen Service
(ICS), working with a very poor and socially
conservative community in the northwest of the
country.
The community, Pairabondh, faces many challenges,
not least significant gender inequality. The bazaar
and teashops were dominated by men, while women
worked all day collecting the potato harvest in the
fields, preparing food, doing laundry and tending to
the animals. Sixty-five percent of women are
unemployed and nearly half the female population
cannot read or write.
While I was there, my colleagues and I were invited to
the wedding of the eldest daughter of one of the host-
families I had grown close to. The female volunteers
were invited to participate in a pre-wedding ceremony
that involves painting your body with turmeric.
This should have been a cause of excitement and
happiness for us all. However, at 15 years old, the
bride, Mukhti, was under-age. The legal age for
marriage in Bangladesh is 18 for girls and 21 for
boys. Despite our affection for the family, none of us
wanted to condone an illegal marriage and,
ultimately, we turned down the invitation. The
marriage went against the very goals of our project,
which sought to empower women by building
handicrafts cooperatives to provide them with
employment opportunities.
Bangladesh holds the world’s worst record on child
marriage, and the problem is widespread: according
to UNICEF, nearly two-thirds of girls are married
before the age of 18. More than a quarter of girls are
married before they reach 15.
Poverty and a traditional patriarchal society combine,
particularly in rural areas, to keep the rate of child
marriage elevated despite national legislation. Young
girls are often considered an economic burden to
their families; prevailing cultural attitudes mean that it
is still difficult for girls to work and earn an income.
For families, marrying their daughters to older men in
different families is often a survival strategy.
128
Dowry payments, which are a relatively new but
growing phenomenon in Bangladesh, are lower when
girls are younger, acting as another incentive for
families to marry their daughters at a young age.
Such marriages are also a way for families to build
their social status and to protect girls' sexuality in an
environment that is perceived to be unsafe — sexual
harassment and assault are all too common and even
the rumour of an inappropriate relationship can
permanently damage a girl's reputation, that of her
family, and her future prospects.
Early marriage has serious consequences for girls. It
significantly increases the chances of dropping out of
school, limiting their future choices. Of 28 pupils who
had gone on to a local high school the previous year,
a local primary school teacher told me, 14 had
dropped out within a year: seven girls, all due to early
marriage, and seven boys, who had gone to find work
in the garment factories.
Girls who marry young face intense pressure to
become pregnant; in Bangladesh, it is estimated that
a third of girls aged between 15 and 19 are mothers
or are pregnant. Pregnancy at this age carries
significant health risks, including higher maternal and
infant mortality. Teenage mothers are twice as likely
to die in childbirth, and babies born to mothers under
14 are 50 percent more likely to die than those born
to mothers aged over 20, a situation compounded by
the poor levels of health care in the country, where
less than a quarter of births are attended by a
medical professional. In all, around 12,000 women
die every year here simply trying to bring life into this
world.
Eliminating early marriage in such communities
presents a real challenge to the Bangladeshi
authorities and to the numerous development
organizations operating in the country. Legislation
has been an important step — although there is now
alarming pressure to lower the legal age for girls —
but it has not changed social attitudes. Even in
middle class and educated families, it is highly
unusual for people of either sex to remain unmarried
after the age of 25.
The successful eradication of early marriage will
require a grassroots approach, working community by
community. From my own experience, parents are
desperately trying to do the best thing for their
daughters. It is only by educating parents across a
community about the implications of marrying so
young that we will start to see a shift in attitudes.
Bangladesh is, however, making progress, and
gender equality is a national priority alongside
economic development. Girls now outnumber boys in
primary and secondary schools. Women are also
making gains in the formal labour market, thanks to
participation in the garment industry and the micro-
credit revolution that was started right here in
Bangladesh. Twenty percent of seats in the national
parliament are reserved for women, which is below
the global average of 25 percent but higher than the
regional average of 18 percent, according to UN
Women. Women lead both of Bangladesh’s two main
political parties, and the country has had a female
leader since the early 1990s.
Romana was a young girl when her family told her
she was getting married. However, she managed to
resist the pressure and convince her family to allow
her to continue her education. It took great courage
to stand up to her family and defend her right to
education. She is now in her early twenties and
married to a man who is very proud and supportive of
her. She is a quiet and unassuming woman when
you first meet her, but I was continually impressed by
her confidence and determination. Her business will
help provide employment to a dozen marginalized
women and young people, hopefully giving them the
opportunity to improve their lives.
The path to gender equality is a long and slow one
but putting incomes into the hands of women is one
step on that journey; it results in better nutrition and
education for their children, and gives them more
social capital and decision-making power in their
families and communities.

I met so many wonderful women during my time in

Bangladesh. From the young women who
volunteered at a community health clinic to the old
lady who owned a small tea shack to prevent her
daughters-in-law from neglecting her to point of
starvation, they were a constant reminder of both the
strength of women struggling against poverty and the
entrenched gender inequality in Bangladesh — none
more so than Romana, one of the entrepreneurs our
project was supporting.

Anderton, V, "A marriage to celebrate: that of gender equality and economic development", Open Canada,
29/10/15, www.opencanada.org/features/marriage-celebrate-gender-equality-and-economic-development/

129
sustainability
Definitions of sustainability begin with the idea that development should meet
the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their needs. Sustainability today has three fields of
debate—environmental, sociopolitical and economic. In global politics,
mechanisms and incentives required for political institutions, economic actors
and individuals to take a longer term and more inclusive well-being
perspective in their decision-making are particularly important.

The Inevitability of Sustainability Politics, Technology 131

and Management

Sustainable development goals: all you need to know 133

Big Holes in the UN Development Goals Are Exposed 135

by New Studies

Paris Climate Agreement: Everything You Need to 137

Know

130
The Inevitability of Sustainability Politics, Technology and
Management
What are the sustainable development goals?
The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are a
new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators that
UN member states will be expected to use to frame
their agendas and political policies over the next 15
years.
The SDGs follow and expand on the millennium
development goals (MDGs), which were agreed by
governments in 2001 and are due to expire at the end
of this year.
Why do we need another set of goals?
There is broad agreement that, while the MDGs
provided a focal point for governments – a framework
around which they could develop policies and
overseas aid programmes designed to end poverty
and improve the lives of poor people – as well as a
rallying point for NGOs to hold them to account, they
were too narrow.
The eight MDGs – reduce poverty and hunger;
achieve universal education; promote gender
equality; reduce child and maternal deaths; combat
HIV, malaria and other diseases; ensure
environmental sustainability; develop global
partnerships – failed to consider the root causes of
poverty and overlooked gender inequality as well as
the holistic nature of development. The goals made
no mention of human rights and did not specifically
address economic development. While the MDGs, in
theory, applied to all countries, in reality they were
considered targets for poor countries to achieve, with
finance from wealthy states. Conversely, every
country will be expected to work towards achieving
the SDGs.
As the MDG deadline approaches, about 1 billion
people still live on less than $1.25 a day – the World
Bank measure on poverty – and more than 800
million people do not have enough food to eat.
Women are still fighting hard for their rights, and
millions of women still die in childbirth.
131
What are the proposed 17 goals?
1) End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2) End hunger, achieve food security and improved
nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
3) Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all
at all ages
4) Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education
and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
5) Achieve gender equality and empower all women
and girls
6) Ensure availability and sustainable management of
water and sanitation for all
7) Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable
and modern energy for all
8) Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable
economic growth, full and productive employment,
and decent work for all
9) Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and
sustainable industrialisation, and foster innovation
10) Reduce inequality within and among countries
11) Make cities and human settlements inclusive,
safe, resilient and sustainable
12) Ensure sustainable consumption and production
patterns
13) Take urgent action to combat climate change and
its impacts (taking note of agreements made by the
UNFCCC forum)
14) Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas
and marine resources for sustainable development
15) Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of
terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests,
combat desertification and halt and reverse land
degradation, and halt biodiversity loss
16) Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for
sustainable development, provide access to justice
for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive
institutions at all levels
17) Strengthen the means of implementation and
revitalise the global partnership for sustainable
development
Within the goals are 169 targets, to put a bit of meat
on the bones. Targets under goal one, for example,
include reducing by at least half the number of people
living in poverty by 2030, and eradicating extreme
poverty (people living on less than $1.25 a day).
Under goal five, there’s a target on eliminating
violence against women, while goal 16 has a target to
promote the rule of law and equal access to justice.
Public policy and law can help prevent serious
damage from these impulses. But the general point is
that the best, most effective managers will be
sustainability managers and the best run
organizations will adhere to these principles because
they lead to long-term profitability. A sustainability
perspective would lead a CEO to question an entire
production process and to see if there was some way
to manufacture the same good without generating
pollution and waste in the first place.
The sustainability perspective is an effort to use
design, engineering and public policy to make
economic production and consumption efficient and
effective. Pollution and poisoning people or the planet
may provide some short-term benefits, but our
experience with environmental remediation and
restoration tells us that these short-term benefits are
consumed quite rapidly, and are soon replaced by
longer term costs. We might make $50 million selling
the good that resulted in pollution, but the pollution
might well cost $500 million to clean up. If you are in
doubt, ask BP about the costs of clean-up. The
sustainability perspective asks if there is a way to
keep making the $50 million without needing to pay
the $500 million in clean-up costs. The clean-up costs
may seem optional, but if the alternative is to allow a
key resource to be destroyed, it must be paid. Since
1980 and for the foreseeable future, America’s
military, industry and citizens will be paying hundreds
of billions of dollars to clean up the toxic wastes
dumped during the middle of the 20th century. China
will soon be facing a similar clean-up bill.
In sustainability management, environmental
protection and efficient use of resources is not added
to a production process but is central to that process.
The best run organizations try to minimize their use of
non-renewable resources and try to reduce their
environmental and carbon foot-print. Companies like
Walmart don’t do this because they love nature, but
because they see it as a way to make money. It
becomes yet another cost advantage a company
uses to beat the competition.The issue of the
environment still has a regulatory dimension, because
valuable and vulnerable natural resources must be
protected from evil and stupid people. Not all
companies are managed as well as Walmart,
Pepisco, Starbucks and the many other companies
that are working to adopt sustainability management.
132
Cohen, SThe Inevitability of Sustainability Politics, Technology and Management, Huffpost, 24/11/12,
www.huffpost.com/entry/sustainability-politics_b_1908969
But more and more are. And these companies need
government to provide reasonable rules as well as
incentives for the development of renewable energy,
smart grids, and other forms of sustainability
technology and infrastructure.
The environmental issue is now part of the overall
issue of economic development and economic
growth. Logic tells us that non-sustainable economic
growth leads to economic shrinkage. The politics of
sustainability is about protecting the planet so we can
continue to benefit from the resources and wealth it
provides for us. The evolution of the sustainability
issue is not well understood by many in the political
world, but that is starting to change. Climate change
is only one element of this issue. In many respects
global warming must be seen as an impact of the lack
of sufficient renewable energy. Ecosystem and ocean
preservation are required to ensure high quality food
and water. Careful development of land is required to
protect ecosystems and a community’s sense of well-
being.
Sustainability politics is often most visible at the local
level as communities work to preserve the quality of
their water supply, air, and way of life. The force of
this political current should not be underestimated. It
combines the political salience of economic growth
with the emotional power of parents protecting their
children’s future. Sustainability politics is not going
away, in some ways it has just begun, in many ways
it has been with us for a very long time. It was
certainly on John F. Kennedy’s mind almost a half
century ago, in June, 1963 when he spoke about the
urgency of preventing nuclear war and observed that
“Total war ... makes no sense in an age when the
deadly poisons produced by a nuclear exchange
would be carried by wind and water and soil and seed
to the far corners of the globe and to generations yet
unborn... For in the final analysis, our most basic
common link is that we all inhabit this small planet.
We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our
children’s future. And we are all mortal.” Seven years
before the EPA was established, Kennedy
understood the importance of an interconnected
biosphere. This awareness has formed the
conceptual base for sustainability politics and needs
to be understood as a long-term, continuously
growing force in our political world.
How were the goals chosen?
Unlike the MDGs, which were drawn up by a group of
men in the basement of UN headquarters (or so the
legend goes), the UN has conducted the largest
consultation programme in its history to gauge
opinion on what the SDGs should include.
Establishing post-2015 goals was an outcome of the
Rio+20 summit in 2012, which mandated the creation
of an open working group to come up with a draft
agenda.
The open working group, with representatives from
70 countries, had its first meeting in March 2013 and
published its final draft, with its 17 suggestions, in
July 2014. The draft was presented to the UN general
assembly in September last year. Member state
negotiations followed, and the final wording of the
goals and targets, and the preamble and declaration
that comes with them, were agreed in August 2015.
Alongside the open working group discussions, the
UN conducted a series of “global conversations”.
These included 11 thematic and 83 national
consultations, and door-to-door surveys. The UN also
launched an online My World survey asking people to
prioritise the areas they’d like to see addressed in the
goals. The results of the consultations were fed into
the the working group’s discussions.
Are governments happy about the proposed 17
goals?
The majority seem to be, but a handful of member
states, including the UK and Japan, aren’t so keen.
Some countries feel that an agenda consisting of 17
goals is too unwieldy to implement or sell to the
public, and would prefer a narrower brief. Or so they
say. Some believe the underlying reason is to get rid
of some of the more uncomfortable goals, such as
those relating to the environment. Britain’s prime
minister, David Cameron, has publicly said he wants
12 goals at the most, preferably 10. It’s not clear,
though, which goals the UK government would like
taken out if they had the choice.
133
Amina Mohammed, the UN secretary general’s
special adviser on post-2015 development planning,
said it had been a hard fight to get the number of
goals down to 17, so there would be strong
resistance to reducing them further.
Some NGOs also believe there are too many goals,
but there is a general consensus that it is better to
have 17 goals that include targets on women’s
empowerment, good governance, and peace and
security, for example, than fewer goals that don’t
address these issues.
How will the goals be measured?
The indicators are still being thrashed out by an
expert group. Each indicator is being assessed for its
feasibility, suitability and relevance, and roughly two
for each target are expected. The indicators are due
to be finalised in March 2016.
How will the goals be funded?
That’s the trillion-dollar question. Rough calculations
from the intergovernmental committee of experts on
sustainable development financing have put the cost
of providing a social safety net to eradicate extreme
poverty at about $66bn (£43bn) a year, while annual
investments in improving infrastructure (water,
agriculture, transport, power) could be up to a total of
$7tn globally.
In its report last year, the committee said public
finance and aid would be central to support the
implementation of the SDGs. But it insisted that
money generated from the private sector, through tax
reforms, and through a crackdown on illicit financial
flows and corruption, was also vital.
It included a recommitment to the UN target on aid
spending – 0.7% of GNI – set more than 40 years
ago and pledges to collect more taxes and fight tax
evasion. But civil society groups were less impressed,
saying the summit had failed to produce new money
to fund the goals, or offer ways to transform the
international finance system. Calls for a new
international tax body fell on deaf ears.
When will the new goals come into force?
The SDGs will be officially adopted at a UN summit in
New York in September, and will become applicable
from January 2016. The deadline for the SDGS is
2030.

A major conference on financing for the SDGs, held

in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in July, failed to
ease concerns that there will not be enough cash to
meet the aspirational nature of the goals. The UN
said the Addis Ababa action agenda (AAAA for short)
contained “bold measures to overhaul global finance
practices and generate investment” for tackling the
challenges of sustainable development.

Ford, l, "Sustainable development goals: all you need to know", Guardian, 19/1/15,
www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jan/19/sustainable-development-goals-united-nations

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Big Holes in the UN Development Goals Are Exposed by
New Studies
The sustainable development goals (SDGs) are a
new, universal set of goals, targets and indicators that
UN member states will be expected to use to frame
their agendas and political policies over the next 15
years.
The SDGs follow and expand on the millennium
development goals (MDGs), which were agreed by
governments in 2001 and are due to expire at the end
of this year.
They are finding that the lofty visions that produced
the SDGs, now in their fourth year of implementation,
have from the start been undercut and tarnished by
political manipulation and a simplistic reliance on
metrics — numbers — based often on dubious or
unrealistic data.
After years of public commitments in the United
Nations to human rights and the centrality of women
in development, gender-specific promises have been
watered down by the SDGs. Human-rights issues are
barely mentioned as well, especially those applying to
women, both in the home and in the community,
experts found.
The specialists, from academia as well as a few UN
agencies, have raised fundamental questions about
how the SDGs, also known in their entirety as the
2030 Agenda, deal with a range of contemporary
issues, among them gender equality, access to
justice, definitions of quality education and the
growing phenomenon of extreme inequality.
The analyses were first published in late January in a
special issue of the scholarly Global Policy Journal,
titled “Knowledge and Politics in Setting and
Measuring the SDGs.” On March 8, the research was
highlighted at a panel discussion held at the UN,
which brought together some contributors to the
publication.
The SDGs were not a remake or a sequel to the
Millennium Development Goals. They were a whole
new idea, a framework to be created and monitored
not by UN specialists but by governments around the
world, with no North-South divide. The goals were
designed to be much more than a plan to end
poverty, as they are often wrongly described.
135
The ambitious 17 goals and 169 targets were
adopted in 2015 by the UN’s 193 member nations
after intense, sometimes stormy negotiations. But real
trouble exploded when an expert group appointed by
governments devised indicators to track the
commitments. They adopted 230 markers.
Serge Kapto, a specialist on data for development at
the UN Development Program, recalled in a
commentary on the newly published findings how
fireworks erupted at the first meeting of the expert
group at the UN, which could have been a
monumental occasion.
“But from the beginning,” he wrote, “sparks flew, and
the meeting descended into a shouting match,
chaotic at times, between technically minded
statisticians eager to get started and political minded
diplomats just emerging from a bruising though
ultimately successful negotiation of the 2030
Agenda.”
It was an ominous beginning. Since then, Kapto
added, the expert group “has carefully avoided
meeting in New York.”
Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, the director and a professor at
the Julien J. Studley Graduate Programs in
International Affairs at The New School in New York,
and Desmond McNeill, director of the Center for
Development and the Environment at the University
of Oslo, organized the special Global Policy project
and the UN event on March 8 with the Friedrich Ebert
Stiftung’s New York office.
The two scholars wrote a comprehensive introduction
to the findings, touching on the major issues involved
in the broad research.
Fukuda-Parr, the primary author of the UNDP Human
Development Reports from 1995 to 2004, is a leading
researcher and author on human rights and
development, global health and global goal setting.
“Until the SDGs, development agendas were
qualitative statements of important social and political
priorities,” she and McNeill wrote. “Quantitative
targets were often included in these agendas, but
only selectively on a few actionable priorities.
“The SDGs were the first to use goal setting as a
process for elaborating and negotiating a UN
development agenda, and deliberately adopting the
language of numbers to articulate global norms. . . .
But the reliance on targets and indicators can distort
the meaning of social norms, create perverse
incentives, frame hegemonic discourses and disrupt
power structures,” the authors said, adding that
indicators, “unwittingly or not,” can lead to
misinterpretation and modification of a goal’s intent.
Other examples of flaws cited in Global Policy
include:
• Margaret Satterthwaite, a professor of clinical law
and director of the Center for Human Rights and
Global Justice at New York University School of Law,
and Sukti Dhital, deputy director of the Robert L.
Bernstein Institute for Human Rights at the law
school, wrote:
“The choice of SDG indicators has important
signaling, knowledge and governance effects. These
effects may be especially pronounced for issues that
are newly on the global monitoring agenda. This is
especially true for the core human rights issue of
access to justice set out in SDG 16.3. While the
official indicators for this target capture essential
criminal justice phenomena, the exclusion of access
to civil justice is so severe that it must be corrected.
“What’s needed is the adoption of an indicator for
which data can be gathered through a well designed,
inclusive survey module that assesses the ability of
ordinary citizens to obtain resolutions to their
everyday justice problems. . . . Only once those
challenges are targeted and measured will we be
able to build equitable and dignified justice systems
for all.”
• Shahra Razavi, the chief of research and data at UN
Women, commenting on the Global Policy papers
from her perspective, wrote that the “slippage in
ambition” in the SDGs “certainly applies to in the case
of women’s rights, with the ambition to have gender
equality as a cross-cutting issue sometimes
evaporating as the targets were set and the indicators
selected.”
136
The goals most relevant to women, Razavi added,
were often “gender sparse” or “gender blind.” She
cited Goal 6 as an example. It covers ensuring water
and sanitation for all.
“Not only are safe drinking water and sanitation
essential for the full enjoyment of life and human
rights, they are particularly important for women and
girls who most often are the primary users, providers
and managers of water in their households,” she
wrote. “When safe drinking water is not available at
home, women and girls are the ones who are forced
to travel long distances to fetch the water.”
• Sara Burke, the senior expert on global economic
policies at the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung in New York,
and Bettina Luise Rürup, executive director of the
FES office at the UN, provided an overview of the
Global Policy Journal. They wrote that the publication
of the collected research papers shows how the
SDGs have been “consistently watered down and
even distorted in the power struggle over who defines
development.
“The roots of the power struggle over global goals lie
in conflicting theories of economic and social change
embraced by different development actors: national
governments, civil society groups, multilateral
agencies and the private sector. . . . Like a Trojan
horse, each indicator conceals the theories of change
and development that lie within, exerting their
interpretive influence,” the authors wrote.
“While we all enjoy a good mystery, we are not
detectives and cannot yet know the overall impact
this power struggle over indicators is having now on
the SDGs. However, this special ‘political thriller’
issue of Global Policy Journal reveals the dark
underbelly of competing interests in the 2030 Agenda
and their sometimes mysterious unintended
consequences.”
Crossette, B, "Big Holes in the UN Development Goals
Are Exposed by New Studies", PassBlue, 18/3/19,
www.passblue.com/2019/03/18/big-holes-in-the-un-
development-goals-are-exposed-by-new-studies/
Paris Climate Agreement: Everything You Need to Know
What Is the Paris Agreement?
The Paris Agreement is a landmark environmental
accord that was adopted by nearly every nation in
2015 to address climate change and its negative
impacts. The deal aims to substantially reduce global
greenhouse gas emissions in an effort to limit the
global temperature increase in this century to 2
degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels, while
pursuing means to limit the increase to 1.5 degrees.
The agreement includes commitments from all major
emitting countries to cut their climate-altering pollution
and to strengthen those commitments over time. The
pact provides a pathway for developed nations to
assist developing nations in their climate mitigation
and adaptation efforts, and it creates a framework for
the transparent monitoring, reporting, and ratcheting
up of countries’ individual and collective climate
goals.
History of the Paris Agreement
Hammered out over two weeks in Paris during the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change’s (UNFCCC) 21st Conference of Parties
(COP21) and adopted on December 12, 2015, the
Paris Agreement marked an historic turning point for
global climate action, as world leaders representing
195 nations came to a consensus on an accord that
has commitments from all countries aimed at
combating climate change and adapting to its
impacts.
President Obama was able to formally enter the
United States into the agreement under international
law through executive action, since it imposed no new
legal obligations on the country. The United States
has a number of tools already on the books, under
laws already passed by Congress, to cut carbon
pollution. The country formally joined the agreement
in September 2016 after submitting its proposal for
participation. The Paris Agreement could not take
effect until at least 55 nations representing at least 55
percent of global emissions had formally joined. This
happened on October 5, 2016, and the agreement
went into force 30 days later on November 4, 2016.
137
How Many Countries Are in the Paris Agreement?
At present, 197 countries—every nation on earth, with
the last signatory being war-torn Syria—have adopted
the Paris Agreement. Of those, 179 have solidified
their climate proposals with formal approval—
including the United States, for now. The only major
emitting countries that have yet to formally join the
agreement are Russia, Turkey, and Iran.
The Paris Agreement and Trump
Following through on a campaign promise, Trump—a
climate denier who has claimed climate change is a
“hoax” perpetuated by China—announced in June
2017 his intent to withdraw the United States from the
Paris Agreement. Yet notwithstanding the president’s
declaration from the Rose Garden that “We’re getting
out,” it’s not quite that easy. The process for
withdrawing requires that the agreement be in force
for three years before any country can formally
announce its intention to drop out. Then it has to wait
a year before actually leaving the pact. This means
the earliest the United States could officially exit is
November 4, 2020—a day after the presidential
election. Even a formal withdrawal wouldn’t
necessarily be permanent, experts say; a future
president could rejoin in as short as a month’s time.
Since Trump’s announcement, U.S. envoys have
continued to participate—as mandated—in U.N.
climate negotiations to solidify details of the
agreement. Meanwhile, thousands of leaders
nationwide have stepped in to fill the void created by
the lack of federal climate leadership, reflecting the
will of the vast majority of Americans who support the
Paris Agreement. Among city and state officials,
businesses leaders, universities, and private citizens,
there has been a groundswell of participation in
initiatives such as America’s Pledge, the United
States Climate Alliance, We Are Still In, and the
American Cities Climate Challenge. The
complementary and sometimes overlapping
movements aim to deepen and accelerate efforts to
tackle climate change at the local, regional, and
national levels. Each of these efforts is focused on
keeping the United States working toward the goals
of the Paris Agreement despite the attempts by
Trump to take the country in the opposite direction.
Paris Agreement Summary
The 32-page document establishes a framework for
global climate action, including the mitigation of and
adaptation to climate change, support for developing
nations, and the transparent reporting and
strengthening of climate goals. Here’s what it aims to
do:
Limit global temperature rise by reducing
greenhouse gas emissions.
In an effort to “significantly reduce the risks and
impacts of climate change,” the accord calls for
limiting the global average temperature rise in this
century to well below 2 degrees Celsius, while
pursuing efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5
degrees. It also asks countries to work to achieve a
leveling-off of global greenhouse gas emissions as
soon as possible and to become carbon neutral no
later than the second half of this century. To achieve
these objectives, 186 countries—responsible for more
than 90 percent of global emissions—submitted
carbon reduction targets, known as “intended
nationally determined contributions” (INDCs), prior to
the Paris conference. These targets outlined each
country’s commitments for curbing emissions
(including through the preservation of carbon sinks)
through 2025 or 2030, including both economy-wide
carbon-cutting goals and the individual commitments
of some 2,250 cities and 2,025 companies.
INDCs turn into NDCs—nationally determined
contributions—once a country formally joins the
agreement. There are no specific requirements about
how or how much countries should cut emissions, but
there have been political expectations about the type
and stringency of targets by various countries. As a
result, national plans vary greatly in scope and
ambition, largely reflecting each country’s capabilities,
its level of development, and its contribution to
emissions over time. China, for example, committed
to leveling off its carbon emissions no later than 2030
and reducing carbon emissions per unit of gross
domestic product (GDP) by 60 to 65 percent from
2005 levels by 2030. India set its sights on cutting
emissions intensity by 33 to 35 percent below 2005
levels and generating 40 percent of its electricity from
non-fossil-fuel sources by 2030.
138
The United States—the world’s largest historical
emitter and the second-biggest current carbon emitter
after China—committed to cutting overall greenhouse
gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels
by 2025. U.S. initiatives to achieve the target include
the Clean Power Plan (a state-by-state program to
cut carbon pollution from the power sector) and the
tightening of automotive fuel economy standards to
reduce transportation emissions—both policies the
Trump administration is working hard to roll back.
Provide a framework for transparency,
accountability, and the achievement of more
ambitious targets.
The Paris Agreement includes a series of mandatory
measures for the monitoring, verification, and public
reporting of progress toward a country’s emissions-
reduction targets. The enhanced transparency rules
apply common frameworks for all countries, with
accommodations and support provided for nations
that currently lack the capacity to enable them to
strengthen their systems over time.
Among other requirements, countries must report
their greenhouse gas inventories and progress
relative to their targets, allowing outside experts to
evaluate their success. Countries are also expected
to revisit their pledges by 2020 and put forward new
targets every five years, with the goal of further
driving down emissions. They must participate in a
“global stocktake” to measure collective efforts toward
meeting the Paris Agreement’s long-term goals as
well. Meanwhile, developed countries also have to
estimate how much financial assistance they’ll
allocate to developing nations to help them reduce
emissions and adapt to the impacts of climate
change.
These transparency and accountability provisions are
similar to those in the frameworks of other
international agreements. While the system doesn’t
include financial penalties, the requirements are
aimed at making the progress of individual nations
easy to track and fostering a sense of global peer
pressure, discouraging any dragging of feet among
countries that may consider doing so.
Mobilize support for climate change mitigation
and adaptation in developing nations.
Recognizing that many developing countries and
small island nations that have contributed the least to
climate change could suffer the most from its
consequences, the Paris Agreement includes a plan
for developed countries—and others “in a position to
do so”—to continue to provide financial resources to
help developing countries mitigate and increase
resilience to climate change. The agreement builds
on the financial commitments of the 2009
Copenhagen Accord, which aimed to scale up public
and private climate finance for developing nations to
$100 billion a year by 2020. (To put that into
perspective, global military spending in 2017 alone
was about $1.7 trillion, more than a third of which
came from the United States.) The Copenhagen pact
also created the Green Climate Fund to help mobilize
transformational finance using targeted public dollars.
The Paris Agreement established the expectation that
the world would set a higher annual goal by 2025 to
build on the $100 billion target for 2020 and would put
mechanisms in place to achieve that scaling up.
While developed nations are not legally bound to
contribute a specific amount to the mitigation and
adaptation efforts of developing countries, they are
encouraged to provide financial support and are
required to report on the financing they supply or will
mobilize.
Why Is the Paris Agreement Important?
Rarely is there consensus among nearly all nations
on a single topic. But with the Paris accord, leaders
from around the world collectively agreed that climate
change is driven by human behavior, that it’s a threat
to the environment and all of humanity, and that
global action is needed to stop it. It also created a
clear framework for all countries to make emissions
reduction commitments and strengthen those actions
over time. Here are some key reasons why the
agreement is so important:
139
Human-generated emissions cause global
warming.
Carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, and methane are
gases that collect in the atmosphere and prevent heat
from radiating from earth’s surface into space,
creating what’s known as the greenhouse effect.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change (IPCC), the leading international scientific
body studying the subject, the concentration of these
heat-trapping gases has increased substantially since
preindustrial times to levels not seen in at least
800,000 years. Carbon dioxide (the chief contributor
to climate change) is up by 40 percent, nitrous oxide
by 20 percent, and methane by a whopping 150
percent since 1750—mainly from the burning of dirty
fossil fuels. The IPCC says it’s “extremely likely” that
these emissions are mostly to blame for the rise in
global temperatures since the 1950s. Meanwhile,
deforestation and forest degradation have contributed
their fair share of global carbon emissions as well.
Global warming threatens climate systems.
Hotter temperatures—both on land and at sea—alter
global weather patterns and change how and where
precipitation falls. Those shifting patterns exacerbate
dangerous and deadly drought, heat waves, floods,
wildfires, and storms, including hurricanes. They also
melt ice caps, glaciers, and layers of permafrost,
which can lead to rising sea levels and coastal
erosion. Warmer temperatures impact whole
ecosystems as well, throwing migration patterns and
life cycles out of whack. For example, an early spring
can induce trees and plants to flower before bees and
other pollinators have emerged. While global warming
may equate to longer growing seasons and higher
food production in some regions, areas already
coping with water scarcity are expected to become
drier, creating the potential for drought, failed crops,
or wildfires.
Climate change endangers human health.
As climate change fuels temperature increases and
extreme weather events, it jeopardizes our air, water,
and food; spreads disease; and imperils our homes
and safety. We are confronting a growing public
health crisis.
 - Extreme heat contributes directly to cardiovascular
deaths and respiratory disease. In the Indian city of
Ahmedabad, for example, more than 1,300 excess
deaths were recorded during a heat wave in May
2010. High temperatures also reduce air quality by
creating more smog, pollen, and other air-borne
allergens—all of which can trigger asthma, which
afflicts 235 million people around the world. Extreme
heat can also exacerbate drought, leading to
malnutrition and famine.
- Changing weather patterns can impact sources of
fresh water and food. While drought creates water
scarcity, floods can contaminate drinking water
supplies, increasing the risk of water-borne diseases
and illnesses spread by disease-carrying insects,
such as mosquitoes. Unpredictable weather patterns
and water supplies can also wreak havoc on
agriculture and food supplies, particularly in regions
of the world that are less climate-resilient and where
staple food crops are critical for survival.
- Extreme weather and rising seas can destroy
homes, public infrastructure, and entire ways of life—
forcing people to move or migrate, displacing whole
populations, and increasing the threat of civil unrest.
Indeed, the World Economic Forum ranks extreme
weather, natural disasters, and our collective failure
to mitigate and adapt to climate change as among the
greatest threats facing humanity in the coming
decade. We’re already experiencing some of those
dangers. In the United States, six recent natural
disasters equated to tens of thousands of
hospitalizations and ER and doctor visits, as well as
more than 1,600 premature deaths. In 2017 alone, 16
extreme weather–related disasters cost the country a
record-breaking $306 billion in damages.
The countries hardest hit by the impact of climate
change will be low-lying nations uniquely vulnerable
to sea level rise and developing countries that lack
the resources to adapt to temperature and
precipitation changes. But wealthy nations such as
the United States are increasingly vulnerable as well.
Indeed, many millions of Americans—particularly
children, the elderly, and the impoverished—are
already suffering climate change’s wrath.
140
Global warming can be mitigated only with global
action.
The IPCC notes that climate change will be limited
only by “substantial and sustained reductions in
greenhouse gas emissions.” While one can debate
the merits of using a single global temperature
threshold to represent dangerous climate change, the
general scientific view is that any rise in global
temperatures of more than 2 degrees Celsius would
be an unacceptable risk—potentially resulting in mass
extinctions, more severe droughts and hurricanes,
and a watery Arctic. Furthermore, as the IPCC notes,
while it remains uncertain precisely how much global
warming will “trigger abrupt and irreversible changes”
in the earth’s systems, the risk of crossing the
threshold only increases as temperatures rise.
To avoid major changes to life as we know it, global
action must be taken. Hence, the Paris Agreement,
which sets the ultimate goal of capping global
warming rise this century to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
Indeed, the seemingly small difference between 1.5
and 2 degrees could have a dramatic impact on low-
lying nations and coral reefs.
What Are the Paris Agreement's Costs?
There’s a lot of misinformation out there about the
Paris Agreement, including the idea that it will hurt the
U.S. economy. That was among a number of
unfounded claims Trump repeated in his 2017 Rose
Garden address, arguing that the accord would cost
the U.S. economy $3 trillion by 2040 and $2.7 million
jobs by 2025, making us less competitive against
China and India. But as fact checkers noted, these
statistics originated from a debunked March 2017
study that exaggerated the future costs of emissions
reductions, underestimated advances in energy
efficiency and clean energy technologies, and outright
ignored the huge health and economic costs of
climate change itself.
In fact, research makes clear that the cost of climate
inaction far outweighs the cost of reducing carbon
pollution. One recent study suggests that if the United
States failed to meet its Paris climate goals, it could
cost the economy as much as $6 trillion in the coming
decades. A worldwide failure to meet the NDCs
currently laid out in the agreement could reduce
global GDP more than 25 percent by century’s end.
Meanwhile, another study estimates that meeting—or
even exceeding—the Paris goals via infrastructure
investments in both clean energy and energy
efficiency could have major global rewards—to the
tune of some $19 trillion.
In terms of employment, the clean energy sector
already employs more than 3 million Americans—
about 14 times the number of coal, gas, oil, and other
fossil fuel industry workers—and has the potential to
employ many more with further investments in energy
efficiency, renewable energy, and electric grid
modernization to replace the aging coal-powered
infrastructure. Indeed, moving forward with the Clean
Power Plan alone could deliver more than a half-
million new jobs by 2030. Meanwhile, coal jobs aren’t
so much being transferred “out of America”—another
Trump claim—as they are falling victim to market
forces as renewable and natural gas prices decline.
Finally, rather than giving China and India a pass to
pollute, as Trump claims, the pact represents the first
time those two major developing economies have
agreed to concrete and ambitious climate
commitments. Both countries, which are already
poised to lead the world in renewable energy, have
made significant progress to meet their Paris goals.
And since Trump announced his intent to withdraw
the United States from the accord, the leaders of
China and India have reaffirmed their commitment
and continued to implement domestic measures
toward achieving their targets.
141
International Agreements on Climate Change
The Paris Agreement is the culmination of decades of
international efforts to combat climate change. Here
is a brief history.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate
Change
In 1992, President George H.W. Bush joined 107
other heads of state at the Rio Earth Summit in Brazil
to adopt a series of environmental agreements,
including the UNFCCC framework that remains in
effect today. The international treaty aims to prevent
dangerous human interference with earth’s climate
systems over the long term. The pact sets no limits
on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries
and contains no enforcement mechanisms, but
instead establishes a framework for international
negotiations of future agreements, or protocols, to set
binding emissions targets. Participating countries
meet annually at a Conference of the Parties (COP)
to assess their progress and continue talks on how to
best tackle climate change.
Kyoto Protocol
The Kyoto Protocol, a landmark environmental treaty
that was adopted in 1997 at the COP3 in Japan,
represents the first time nations agreed to legally
mandated, country-specific emissions reduction
targets. The protocol, which didn’t go into effect until
2005, set binding emissions reduction targets for
developed countries only, on the premise that they
were responsible for most of the earth’s high levels of
greenhouse gas emissions. The United States initially
signed the agreement but never ratified it; President
George W. Bush argued that the deal would hurt the
U.S. economy since developing nations such as
China and India were not included. Without the
participation of those three countries, the treaty’s
effectiveness proved limited, with its targets covering
only a small fraction of total global emissions.
The Kyoto Protocol’s initial commitment period
extended through 2012. That year, at the COP18 in
Doha, Qatar, delegates agreed to extend the accord
until 2020 (without some developed nations that had
dropped out).
They also reaffirmed their 2011 pledge from the
COP17 in Durban, South Africa, to create a new,
comprehensive climate treaty by 2015 that would
require all big emitters not included in the Kyoto
Protocol—such as China, India, and the United
States—to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.
The new treaty—what would become the Paris
Agreement—was to fully replace the Kyoto Protocol
by 2020. However, the Paris accord went into effect
earlier than expected, in November 2016.
Kyoto Protocol Versus the Paris Agreement
While the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement both
set out to address climate change, there are some
key differences between them.
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which established legally
binding emissions reduction targets (as well as
penalties for noncompliance) for developed nations
only, the Paris Agreement requires that all countries
—rich, poor, developed, and developing—do their
part and slash greenhouse gas emissions. To that
end, greater flexibility is built into the Paris
Agreement: No language is included on the
commitments countries should make, nations can
voluntarily set their emissions targets (NDCs), and
countries incur no penalties for falling short of their
proposed targets. What the Paris Agreement does
require, however, is the monitoring, reporting, and
reassessing of individual and collective country
targets over time in an effort to move the world closer
to the broader objectives of the deal. And the
agreement sets forth a requirement for countries to
announce their next round of targets every five years
—unlike the Kyoto Protocol, which aimed for that
objective but didn’t include a specific requirement to
achieve it.
Meanwhile, current evaluations of how countries are
performing in the context of their Paris climate goals
indicate some nations are already falling short of their
commitments
However, it’s important to remember the Paris
Agreement isn’t static. Instead, it’s designed to boost
countries’ national efforts over time—meaning that
current commitments represent the floor, not the
ceiling, of climate change ambition. The heavy lifting
—reining in emissions even further by 2030 and 2050
—still needs to be done, and the accord provides the
tools to ensure that happens.
Reflecting the collective belief of nearly every nation
on earth that climate change is humanity’s war to
fight, the Paris Agreement exposes America’s climate
skeptics—including Trump—as global outliers. In fact,
the mobilization of support for climate action across
the country and the world provides hope that the
Paris Agreement marked a turning point in the fight
against climate change. We can all contribute to the
cause by seeking opportunities to slash global
warming contributions—at the individual, local, and
national levels. The effort will be well worth the
reward of a safer, cleaner world for future
generations.

Beyond Paris
While the Paris Agreement ultimately aims to cap
global temperature rise at 1.5 degrees Celsius in this
century, many studies evaluating the voluntary
pledges individual countries made in Paris show that
the cumulative effect of those emissions reductions
won’t be large enough to keep temperatures under
that cap. Indeed, the targets countries laid out are
expected to limit future temperature rise to between
Denchak, M, "Paris Climate Agreement:
2.7 and 3.7 degrees Celsius.
Everything You Need to Know", NRDC, 12/12/18,
https://www.nrdc.org/stories/paris-climate-
agreement-everything-you-need-know

142
peace
Peace is often defined as both the absence of conflict and violence as well as a
state of harmonious relations. Many also refer to peace as a personal state of
non-conflict, particularly with oneself and with one’s relationship to others.
Peace is the ultimate goal of many organizations that monitor and regulate
social relationships.

Peacemaking Is More Complicated Than Ever. The 144

Paris Peace Forum Shows Why

The Northern Ireland Peace Process 146

No enlightenment yet: affirmative Nonkilling for 150

Positive Peace

Why Syrian Women Could Be the Key to Successful 154

Peace Talks

143
Peacemaking Is More Complicated Than Ever. The Paris
Peace Forum Shows Why
Peace is complicated.
That is the overriding, if unintended, message of this
week’s Paris Peace Forum, a new multilateral
conclave initiated by the French government to
commemorate the end of World War I
The organizers claim that the event is based on the
“simple idea” that “international cooperation is key to
tackling global challenges and ensuring durable
peace.” That is pretty much where the simplicity ends,
however. Over 100 groups from around the world are
in Paris to present their ideas about peace to 2,500
participants. Their approaches to the issue are, to put
it mildly, eclectic.
One organization hopes to promote harmony
between Israelis and Palestinians through projects to
protect barn owls. Another wants an international
village on the moon. Nobody seems to favor breeding
owls in space. But the forum will be an annual event,
so this idea may yet emerge.
The discussions in Paris will range from cybersecurity
and financial transparency to safeguarding
communities in poor countries. If this sounds a bit
diffuse, it reflects the state of international debates
about peace and security today. Violence is taking
increasingly complex forms in different societies. The
threats arising from new technologies like artificial
intelligence are mind-bogglingly difficult to grasp.
Trying to have a focused chat about “peace” is now
almost impossible.
This is hardly unprecedented. It has been a long time
since international relations theorists thought peace
and conflict was a simple matter of fights and deals
between sovereign states. Since the 19th century,
successive advocates of peace have worked up ever
more ambitious visions of international law,
humanitarian aid, arms control, human rights and
peacekeeping.
Today’s policymakers are simultaneously the
inheritors, beneficiaries and victims of this long
process.
144
The idea of peace as a noble, cosmopolitan goal is
now baked into many political cultures, especially in
Europe. The last weekend has shown that
commemorations of World War I can still strike a
powerful chord with the public, even if the
conflagration is now distant history.
For believers in international cooperation, such as
French President Emmanuel Macron, this heritage is
a source of enduring political leverage. There is
nothing quite like a solemn memorial to past wars to
get foreign leaders to gather and talk more or less
constructively. More substantively, supporters of
international peace and security have managed to
construct an unprecedentedly dense network of
international and regional organizations to handle
conflicts.
This institutional legacy is also on display in Paris.
The Peace Forum’s institutional partners include
United Nations agencies, numerous European
institutions, the Red Cross and philanthropic bodies
like the U.S.-based Ford Foundation, which has a
long history of backing peace projects. Foreign policy
analysts often lament the political and operational
flaws of these bodies. Yet the capacity of this
multiplicity of actors to mitigate today’s conflicts
should not be underrated.
It is easier to grasp this by looking at a specific crisis
than a grand meeting like the Paris forum. Take
Somalia. The African Union, European Union and
U.N. all have missions on the ground working to
stand up a new state in one of the world’s weakest
countries. A plethora of international NGOs and aid
bodies are also on board. It is a messy setup with
many inefficiencies. But the number of institutional
players involved is a testament to how the global
conflict management system has grown, creating a
framework to make peace in very hard cases.
The legacy of peacebuilding efforts since World War I
may ultimately be a global system that is too
cumbersome to function.
And yet the transaction costs of this growth are also
high. The international peace industry has evolved
erratically and is struggling to cope with new threats.
The secretariats of multilateral bodies like the U.N.
are locked in interminable turf wars over who “owns”
each particular crisis. The governance structures of
these organizations, such as the U.N. Security
Council, look creaky. In a new era of competitive
multipolarity, established powers like the U.S. and
France find themselves trapped in destructive battles
over multilateral rules and norms with rivals like
China.
The legacy of a century of earnest, and often
productive, efforts at international peacebuilding since
World War I may ultimately be a global system that is
too cumbersome to function.
Facing these constraints, advocates for peace are
casting about for new ways to fix the world’s
problems. There are three broad trends in these
efforts, all on display in the Paris Peace Forum.
These could be dubbed the globalist, entrepreneurial
and localist strands of peacemaking.
The globalists hanker after an overarching strategic
narrative about the need for global harmony. They
link maintaining international peace and security to
the fight against climate change and fulfilling the
U.N.’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has,
unsurprisingly, emerged as a leading voice for this
sort of interconnected thinking.
The entrepreneurs may buy this logic, but their basic
instinct is to assume that nonstate actors, like cities
and corporations, can fix problems that governments
can’t tackle alone. Champions of this school include
billionaires-turned-activists like former Microsoft chief
Bill Gates and former New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg.
Gowan, R, "Peacemaking Is More Complicated Than Ever. The Paris Peace Forum Shows Why", World
Politics Review, 12/11/18, https://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/articles/26722/peacemaking-is-more-
complicated-than-ever-the-paris-peace-forum-shows-why
145
By contrast, localists tend to distrust grand strategic
logics of peace altogether and emphasize the need to
look at grassroots tensions in specific communities to
understand conflict. This approach, with its embrace
of complexity, seems especially attractive to
academic experts with time to explore the nuances of
conflict zones, such as Columbia University’s
Severine Autesserre and American University’s
Susanna Campbell. Thoughtful experts in
organizations like the U.N. are also increasingly
convinced of the need for a deeper understanding of,
and involvement in, such ground-level tensions and
fights.
All these approaches have real value. Smart
policymakers can mix and match them to address
specific crises. If you want to tackle violence in the
Sahel, for example, you need to grasp both the
impact of climate change on the region and highly
localized farmer-herder security dynamics.
Nonetheless, there is a risk that debates over how we
make and maintain peace will become even more
diffuse moving forward, making it harder to shape
coherent responses to future threats.
This risk is only compounded by the proliferation of
new technologies that could cause disruption in the
future, each involving specific and often rather
hermetic expert communities. The variety and
intricacy of threats to international peace and security
are expanding. The organizers of the Paris Peace
Forum deserve huge credit for aiming to capture all of
them in their event.
With luck, the forum will identify answers to some of
the threats we face. They won’t be simple.
The Northern Ireland Peace Process
Introduction
Northern Ireland, a long-contested region of the
United Kingdom, experienced decades of conflict
between the late 1960s and the late 1990s that
claimed more than thirty-five hundred lives. The era,
known as the Troubles, largely pitted the historically
dominant Protestants against the Catholic minority. A
peace deal struck in April 1998 created a power-
sharing government that included political forces
aligned with armed groups.
Twenty years later, most of the Belfast Agreement—
usually called the Good Friday Agreement—has been
implemented. Although paramilitary groups still exist,
they have mostly disarmed, and to a large extent
violence has ceased. However, with Belfast’s main
political institutions suspended and Brexit throwing
long-standing assumptions into doubt, Northern
Ireland’s future is far from assured
146
What has driven the conflict in Northern Ireland?
Northern Ireland’s modern period of conflict started in
the late 1960s and lasted more than three decades.
What started as a civil rights movement—Catholics
protesting what they saw as discrimination by
Northern Ireland’s Protestant-dominated government
—deteriorated into violence, with the involvement of
paramilitary groups on both sides and the arrival in
1969 of the British Army.
The conflict involved mostly Protestant loyalists, who
wanted to remain part of the United Kingdom, against
mostly Catholic republicans, who wished to unite with
the Republic of Ireland. Protestant unionists and
Catholic nationalists shared their respective
communities’ goals but tended to eschew violence.
What is the Good Friday Agreement?
Reached in 1998, the Good Friday
Agreement provided a framework for political
settlement in Northern Ireland centered on power-
sharing between unionists and nationalists. It was
signed by the British and Irish governments, as well
as four of the major political parties in Northern
Ireland: Sinn Fein, the Ulster Unionist Party, the
Social Democratic and Labour Party, and the Alliance
Party. Among major parties, only the Democratic
Unionist Party (DUP) abstained. While the agreement
confirmed that Northern Ireland is a part of the United
Kingdom, it stipulates that Ireland could be united if
that was supported in a vote by majorities in both
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
The agreement called for the devolution of authority
over certain policy areas from the UK Parliament to a
newly created assembly in Belfast, and it paved the
way for paramilitary groups to abandon their weapons
and join the political process. It has contributed to a
sharp reduction in violence, and the annual conflict-
related death toll, which peaked at 480 in 1972, has
dropped to the single digits in recent years.
What is the governing structure of Northern
Ireland?
The government in Northern Ireland is composed of
two main bodies, both based at the Stormont Estate
in Belfast. A popularly elected, ninety-member
assembly legislates on matters such as trade, health,
education, and agriculture. The assembly requires
support from both unionists and nationalists to make
important decisions, ensuring that neither can
dominate. A cabinet-like executive administers the
government. It is chaired by a first minister and a
deputy first minister, one from each main tradition. So
far, the first minister has always been a unionist and
the deputy first minister a nationalist or republican.
Has the Good Friday Agreement been
successful?
Distrust among the factions persisted for years after
the accord. Political jockeying over devolution—the
transfer of police, judicial, and other powers from
London to Belfast—and the decommissioning of
paramilitary groups’ weapons hindered
implementation of the Good Friday Agreement.
147
While London devolved local powers in late 1999,
political turmoil in Northern Ireland prompted it to
reimpose direct rule in 2000 and again in 2002.
London only restored the devolved government in
2007, with the breakthrough St. Andrews Agreement,
signed by the UK and Irish governments and
Northern Ireland’s main parties. By then, the DUP
was the largest unionist party and Sinn Fein the
largest among nationalists and republicans.
Another milestone came in 2010, with the
Hillsborough Agreement, in which Sinn Fein and the
DUP finally agreed on terms for the devolution of
policing and justice functions, as well as a roadmap
for managing sectarian parades. By the mid-2010s,
the political institutions envisioned in the Good Friday
Agreement were generally functioning well, as parties
with starkly differing views served together in
government.
What is the status of Northern Ireland’s
government?
The relative political stability in Belfast began to
unravel in 2017, when an energy scandal precipitated
the resignation of Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness as
deputy first minister. This caused the executive’s
collapse and led to fresh elections for the assembly in
March 2017. However, more than two years after the
vote, the two largest parties remain unable to resolve
their differences, and Northern Ireland remains
without a government.
Faced with this impasse, London could call new
elections or resume direct rule. It has so far avoided
either option, preferring to encourage continued
negotiations, though in 2017 and 2018 it set Northern
Ireland’s budget, tax rates, and related provisions.
What were the results of the 2017 elections?
Though the 2017 vote did not lead to a restored
assembly, Sinn Fein was largely seen as the winner.
While the DUP remained the single largest party, the
two largest nationalist parties, including Sinn Fein,
won thirty-nine seats versus the two largest unionist
parties, which won thirty-eight.
This ended the unionist parties’ long-standing plurality
in the assembly, a result indicative of Northern
Ireland’s demographic shifts. As of the last census,
the minority Catholic population has increased to 45
percent of Northern Ireland’s 1.8 million people, while
Protestants, no longer a majority, now make up just
48 percent.
Despite this electoral setback, the DUP gained
influence in London in June 2017, when UK Prime
Minister Theresa May lost her Conservative Party’s
majority in parliament and allied with the DUP to
remain in power. May promised some $1.4 billion in
new funding for Northern Ireland, but Sinn Fein
leaders criticized the deal as imperiling the UK
government’s impartiality and its commitment to the
Good Friday Agreement.
What are the outstanding challenges?
Recent disagreements have centered on language
and culture. Sinn Fein seeks legislation to promote
the Irish language, while the DUP insists on a similar
measure for Ulster Scots, which is traditionally
spoken by the descendants of Protestants who came
to Northern Ireland from Scotland. Sinn Fein,
meanwhile, has undergone a generational shift in
leadership, with the 2017 death of McGuinness and
the retirement of long-time republican leader Gerry
Adams as party president.
Other issues also continue to cause friction. Parades
and marches—held mainly but not exclusively by
Protestant groups—can have heavily sectarian
undertones. The same is true of flags and emblems,
displayed by all sides on lampposts and buildings.
Moreover, Northern Ireland’s leaders have never
developed a comprehensive approach to the legacy
of past violence, as some other postconflict societies
have. Efforts to prosecute those responsible for
killings and to pursue other initiatives have been
uneven, something analysts say has hindered
reconciliation.
148
These issues—parades, flags, and the legacy of the
past—were the subject of 2013 negotiations chaired
by Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on
Foreign Relations, and Meghan L. O’Sullivan, an
adjunct senior fellow at CFR. The talks, which
involved the five main political parties, did not
produce an agreement, though many of the proposals
—including establishing a historical investigations unit
to look into unsolved deaths during the conflict and a
commission to help victims get information about
relatives’ deaths—formed a large part of the Stormont
House Agreement, reached in 2014. Implementation
of that agreement has lagged, however.
How will Brexit affect Northern Ireland’s
economy?
A majority of Northern Ireland’s people—almost 56
percent—voted for the UK to remain in the EU. The
DUP was alone among Northern Ireland’s main
parties in supporting Brexit. A significant amount of
direct funding is at stake: the EU provides Northern
Ireland with nearly a billion euros a year for
agriculture, employment, and projects related to the
peace process.
But the most contentious issue is Northern Ireland’s
border with the Republic of Ireland. The border, which
was heavily militarized during the conflict, has since
become essentially invisible, with people and goods
crossing freely. The UK’s only land border, it is set to
become an external EU border when the UK
withdraws from the bloc.
This poses a fundamental challenge to Prime Minister
May, who has insisted that the UK will leave the EU’s
single market, the arrangement that allows tariff-free
trade and the free movement of services, people, and
money. May has also pledged to leave the EU’s
customs union, whose members apply common tariffs
to goods coming from outside the bloc. Instead, she
is seeking a trade agreement with the EU that has yet
to be defined.
It is not clear whether leaving the single market and
customs union can be reconciled with avoiding a so-
called hard border subject to customs and
immigration checks. While people might continue to
travel freely thanks to a separate UK-Ireland
agreement, the Common Travel Area, goods are
another matter. One possibility is that Northern
Ireland could keep its customs rules aligned with
those of the EU, eliminating the need for border
checks. This is the idea behind the so-called Irish
backstop, a part of the deal May has sought with the
EU that would maintain Northern Ireland as part of
the EU customs union and single market until a
permanent trade deal is worked out. But that has
become a sticking point for hard-line Brexiteers in
May’s party who reject any measure that would keep
any part of the UK tied to EU regulations.
Could Brexit threaten the peace process?
Some observers fear that the UK’s impending
departure from the EU threatens the Good Friday
Agreement; they include Tony Blair, the UK prime
minister who presided over the accord. Ireland’s
prime minister, Leo Varadkar, echoed this point in
March 2018, arguing that Brexit “threatens to drive a
wedge between Britain and Ireland, between
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and
potentially between the two communities in Northern
Ireland.” Sinn Fein leaders have called Brexit “the
most serious threat in the history of the peace
process.”
Landow, C, et.al., "The Northern Ireland Peace Process", Council for Foreign Relations, 12/3/19,
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/northern-ireland-peace-process
149
That is because the agreement established intricate
arrangements among the various parties. The Three
Strands of the pact created a web of institutions to
govern Northern Ireland (Strand One), bring together
leaders in Northern Ireland with those in Ireland
(Strand Two, or North-South cooperation), and bring
together leaders from throughout the UK and Ireland
(Strand Three, or East-West cooperation). There are
currently more than 140 areas of Northern Ireland–
Republic of Ireland cross-border cooperation, ranging
from health-care services to energy infrastructure to
policing. Many experts and political leaders fear that
any disruption to this cooperation could undermine
trust in the agreement and thus the basis of peace in
Northern Ireland.
The reimposition of a hard border between Northern
Ireland and Ireland could cause instability in its own
right. Some security officials worry that the
resumption of customs checks and other border
infrastructure would revive lingering tensions between
communities and even provide targets for the last
remaining paramilitary groups.
Prime Minister May and Irish leaders have pledged to
protect the arrangements set out in the Good Friday
Agreement. However, some Brexit supporters have
criticized the deal’s power-sharing institutions and
called the pact outdated. Some in the DUP, which
opposed the agreement in 1998, have also
questioned the arrangements it established.
Perhaps the ultimate question is whether Brexit could
lead Northern Ireland’s people to vote to leave the UK
and join a united Ireland, as the Good Friday
Agreement allows. Since the 2016 Brexit vote,
nationalist and republican leaders have called for a
referendum, which would require London’s approval,
though none is imminent.
No enlightenment yet: affirmative Nonkilling for Positive
Peace
Opinion: Economists on Peace contributor Dr
Anoop Swarup on the influence of faith on
enlightenment and why we need a Global Non-
killing Index.
In these times of disruption, delusion and darkness in
a globalised world, human dignity and life appear to
be the foremost calamity as human trafficking,
exploitation, terrorism and wars take the front seat in
our struggle for existence in the 21st century. Steven
Pinker in his book ‘Enlightenment Now’ toys with the
idea, though not in as many words, that people are
not “individuals,” but are “the expendable cells of a
superorganism”. Though he rightly states that life
expectancy is up, but prefers to give all the credit to
reason and science at the expense of spirituality and
religion, for human progress. Treating karma as
unscientific reflects little knowledge and
understanding of the role religion has played over the
centuries in bringing about trust, morality and
discipline amongst humans in the path of civilisational
ascent. Incidentally enough, his term “romantic green
movement”, does subordinate human interests to a
transcendent entity, the ecosystem and his usage of
the term diclinism – the idea that civilisation is
assumed to be in steady decline and on the verge of
collapse – too, is preposterous.
Enlightenment ideals and religion
The assumption that life is best endowed with
meaning if only we remember our enlightenment
ideals as products of human reason and its
refinement along with science, hinges on too myopic
an outlook, for Pinker as a professor of cognitive
science. Trashing the role of religion and spirituality
that have brought discipline, trust and hope and to my
mind have indeed been the pillars on which the
edifice of humanism, science and reason have been
built, is not at all good reasoning. What Pinker
characterises as manifestations of delusional
thinking, including religious faith, have been the
human footprints, as also the threats and acts such
as environmental degradation, climate change and
the quest for weapons of mass destruction that
endangers life on planet earth have been checked.
Perhaps it is due to reason and science gone horribly
wrong, that the threats, scope and the total number of
killings are on the rise in the 21st century attributable
to industrial accidents, drug abuse, and pollutants, as
also genocides, terror and weapons of mass
destruction.
150
Affirmation for a nonkilling society
Terrorism, violence and brutality related incidents are
on the increase as such mindsets are cultivated
attacks are due to the threatened or actual use of
force and violence by a state or even non-state actors
to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal
through fear, coercion, or intimidation by its
perpetrators. It is in this context that political scientists
and philosophers both past and present who raise the
question about the possibility of a nonkilling and
nonviolent society become ever so relevant, and it is
the affirmative nonkilling approach to Positive Peace,
that can make a real world difference in these difficult
times. Here it is worth a reflection that in the past
such a possibility has been consistently answered in
negative by political scientists on the basis of three
grounds: first, humans are killers by nature, second,
competition for scarce resources makes people
kill,and third, the possibility of rape requires the
readiness of men to kill to defend related females.
Also, Paige emphasised upon our traditional political
thoughts conditioning and approach both from east
and west which has had often supported lethality and
violence for maintaining the integrity of the state and
the security of individuals. During the course of a
research undertaken by us, this question was put up
to peace researchers and the general public. We
were confronted by a diverse array of opinion that we
discovered, that revealed one common denominator:
the end howsoever good should invariably be justified
by the means. We do have the earlier reported fact
that even those who killed, believed in the possibility
of a “nonkilling society”. Therefore, it is our
submission that the end we envisage for ourselves,
be it justice, equality or peace should be
commensurate with the right approach, means and
methods. In order to foster a nonkilling society, our
findings brought us to the most imperative conclusion:
that peace needs to be cultivated and nurtured in the
human mind. As was stated in the Seville Statement:
“human culture gives us the ability to shape and
change our nature from one generation to another”.
So, by evolving our own upbringing, learning, ethos
and the cultural values, we indeed have great
chances of turning our civilisation into a nonkilling
one.
The case for a universal nonkilling index
Thus, on the basis of the survey and to gauge human
advancement after due deliberation, a very important
indicator was conceived, that is, a country wise index
of human nonkilling. This could be a great measure of
not only the level of societal development, but also of
human consciousness and enlightenment, critical to a
future positive. It is my argument that this would
prove to be a better indicator of humanity’s wellbeing
on virtually all parameters, since life, as we know in
our contemporary world is held in utmost reverence in
almost all human cultures and societies. Indeed, such
an indicator, the Global Nonkilling Index (GNI) would
indeed also be a good reflection of a society’s well
being, as the what, why and how, as also the ways,
nature and numbers that the killings occur would also
be a measure of human progress. The variables
taken up in our study for the preparation of the index
include war deaths, domestic armed conflict related
deaths, death penalty, homicide and suicide. Here it
may be important to draw a distinction with the Global
Peace Index (GPI) that contains 23 parameters, the
Happiness Index (HI) with seven parameters and the
Global Terrorism Index (GTI), which focuses just on
terror.
It may also be pointed out that the Global Peace
Index (GPI) of the Institute for Economics and Peace
(IEP), divides peace into Negative Peace and
Positive Peace, as the IEP framework posits Negative
Peace as absence of violence, or fear of violence,
while Positive Peace is identified as the “attitudes,
institutions and structures,” for creating and
perpetuating a peaceful society. Such a definition
does overlook the bulls’ eye and the stark reality of
quantifying and preserving human life through
‘affirmative nonkilling approach’ as the actual
measure of human progress and enlightenment.
These are broad indices that aim to measure terror,
peace and happiness on a large scale without any
reference to the loss of human lives due to other
causes that have a bearing on individual’s threat
perception as also overall society’s good.
151
Since the 1990s, the Human Development Indices
(HDI) and the report primarily focuses on reductions
or otherwise in human development achievements in
the distribution of health, education, and income
within countries, and does proclaim to provide a
complete, multidimensional view of human
development, but does not give adequate weightage
to human killings.
Globally speaking, though life expectancy ratios have
gone up over the past century, when accounting for
inequalities, the 2017 HDI value of 0.728 falls to
0.582, a year later thus, reveals an average loss of
about 20 percent. Also, the report delves deeper to
look into data unravelling the overall (percentage)
loss in HDI that ranges from 3.6 percent in Japan to
45.3 per cent in Comoros, and the composition is
vastly different amongst countries. On exploration of
the interactive visualisation to see country-level
composition, we merely focus on just three
dimensions: health and longevity, knowledge and
standard of living, overlooking poverty which is one of
the root causes of deaths and killings as also human
security with weightage on homicides, suicides, wars,
armed conflicts, terror, genocides and even death
penalty. Such a nonkilling index and country wise
comparison, will ultimately lead humanity to think of
universally acceptable and affirmative approaches to
stop killings worldwide and eventually to a
developmental paradigm for the whole world.
Thus, it is reiterated, that nonkilling is more focused
and can be a better and direct measure of societal
well being and progress, as it is measurable and
achievable. Once available country wise, to the
policymakers and the public at large, it can be the first
step or rather the foundational step
towards measuring human progress, peace and
happiness, as one cannot overlook the same while
talking about development, peace and happiness.
The variables taken up in our study for the
preparation of the index were based on verifiable
World Health Organisation (WHO) data on war
deaths, armed conflict deaths (internal), death
penalty, homicide and suicide.
In the GNI, the killing of not just others, but also of the
self due to suicide, is observed as an important
parameter for the wellbeing of a society. The index is
built on quiet simplistic calculations. Each of the five
variables has been assigned the value of five, just like
the GPI, making the total score to 25. The GPI has
given different weightage to different variables after
holding a robust discussion on it. Internal peace was
given more weightage, as it was argued that internal
peace also affects external peace. But here each of
the five variables is given equal weightage.
The homicide and suicide rates are taken from the
website of the WHO. The war deaths and internal
armed conflict deaths are taken from the Uppsala
Conflict Data Programme and the Global Peace
Index, respectively. The death penalty is taken from
Amnesty International. The period of the data
collection is for the whole year of 2015, the reason
being suicide rates are collected by the WHO every
five years. The homicide and suicide rates are
calculated as the number of deaths divided by the
total population, the result multiplied by one
hundred thousand. The scoring rate of death penalty
is the number of executions divided by the population
of that state, and multiplied by one hundred thousand.
Weightage of these five indicators is allotted in terms
of the highest and lowest range. The rankings are
allotted according to the band prepared for each
variable and the rate bands are prepared according to
the highest and lowest rate of that particular variable.
152
Thus, the more the score is, the more would be the
killing. The average score of all 172 countries is taken
out to benchmark the score as to which country is
performing better and which worse. The average that
came out is 5.8. Countries that have a killing rate
above 5.8 reflect a poor score.
Top 20 nations with high killing score
The chart below portrays the score of the top 20
countries where the killing rate is the highest. There
are different reasons for the high killing rates in these
countries. Some are affected by war and terrorism,
while few others are facing internal disturbances that
lead the people to kill. The internal disturbances and
war, however, are not prevalent all around the world.
The suicides and homicides which are universally
found all over the globe are also matter of great
concern. An honourable example of a nonkilling state
to be cited, though tiny, is the state of San Marino; a
country where no killing, no traffic fatality and no
homicides or suicides have been reported since
2013, an exemplary achievement. Sadly enough, the
governments of the day have only been taking
negative steps to curb violence and killings, also
when perhaps it is too late. There are always the laws
against those who commit homicides and in most
countries against those who commit suicide, not to
speak of terror and violence, but nothing is done by
the state and the society to cultivate affirmative
nonkilling through cultivating a healthy mind to bring
about Positive Peace.
The government and the law as a last recourse end Enlightenment now
up with a deterrent law and force in this regard. The Of course, enlightenment that is, as yet not there, is
task of the creation of a healthy and nonkilling and an unfinished task to be accomplished through
nonviolent society through structures and affirmative affirmative nonkilling approaches for Positive Peace.
approaches rests primarily with the state, the The ideals of human past, more particularly from the
educational institutions and the society. outlook of religion, spirituality and faith, rather than
reason and science alone, have given us hope for our
A different take for a future positive humanism and future. Yes, optimism over pessimism
In this era of war and menace of terror and conflict, it of the past should be the order of the day. There is,
has become difficult to establish peace. Time and as yet no ground for complacency as we do pay a
again, history reveals that no war in the name of price for the uncertainty of freedom and progress.
religion, god or peace has been successful in bringing There is work to be done in bringing about
about perpetual peace. States may exist without transformational structures and changes in our
crimes being committed by individuals, but where societal upbringing and thought, through affirmative
there exists practices of discrimination, humiliation and positive approaches to non-killing peace which
and suppression of any section of society, peace is will prove to be a critical development paradigm.
only a farce there. Moreover, if the state actors are
themselves committing crimes and even legalising
them, then the danger of the eruption of violence and
killings leading the state into anarchy becomes all the
more imminent. The art and literature of any society
are helpful in comprehending the mindset of that
society at large, not only the freedom given to them,
but also the message given by them should be
understood. The nonkilling index is a critical measure
for human development, progress and enlightenment
and hence its inclusion is proposed in the GPI, HDI,
HI, as well as in the reports. As discussed earlier,
though Pinker’s rationalisation is boldly different,
these are arguably untenable particularly, his atheism
for an apostate.

Swarup, A, "No enlightenment yet: affirmative Nonkilling for Positive Peace", Vision of Humanity, 2017,
www.visionofhumanity.org/news/no-enlightenment-yet-affirmative-non-killing-for-positive-peace/

153
Why Syrian Women Could Be the Key to Successful Peace
Talks
Since the start of the Syrian war in 2011, Syrian
women have been involved in all aspects of the
conflict: from fighting, demonstrating and
documenting war crimes to providing humanitarian
relief and local politics.
Syrian women, who make up more than 50 percent of
the Syrian population, are also taking on a more
active role in local negotiations to end the conflict that
has killed more than half a million people and
displaced millions more, including tens of thousands
of females. However, women remain grossly
underrepresented in international peace negotiations.
Women are disproportionately impacted by armed
conflict, and thus are typically viewed as victims
rather than actors with agency in peace processes
and negotiations.
Early Syrian peace talks did not include women, or
only included a select few. In 2016, U.N. special
envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura initiated a
Women’s Advisory Board consisting of 12 Syrian
women who serve as third-party observers to talks.
He also pushed for increased female participation in
2017 peace talks, where women comprised nearly 20
percent of negotiators.
But recent Moscow-backed peace talks held in the
Russian city of Sochi in early 2018 were sorely
missing any representation of Syrian women.
Around 1,500 delegates attended the Sochi meeting,
officially known as the Syrian Congress of National
Dialogue, which aimed to diversify the range of Syrian
voices at the table and jump-start a dialogue between
Syrian government figures and opposition forces.
While sources reporting on the event broke down the
different ethnicities and political affiliations
represented in Sochi, not one article referenced
whether Syrian women participated.
The fact that the Sochi negotiations aimed to include
a wide range of Syrian voices, but still excluded
women, means the talks had failed right from the
start.
154
Evidence shows that the inclusion of women in peace
processes is essential to establishing lasting peace. A
study from the Council on Foreign Relations found
that including women in negotiations makes the
agreement 64 percent less likely to fail. The same
report showed that women’s participation in peace
processes makes long-term agreements 35 percent
more likely to last for at least 15 years.
Colombia provides an illustrative example. Women
comprised one-third of the total number of negotiators
and played an essential role in talks that led to a
peace agreement between the Colombian
government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia (FARC) after more than 50 years of conflict.
Women have also been proven to be significantly
capable at bridging divides within highly polarized
conflicts similar to Syria. In Liberia, for instance,
Christian and Muslim women worked together to push
differing parties to negotiate the end to the bloody
civil war.
Syrian women have also played a vital and influential
role in leading local peace and negotiation efforts.
Successful local efforts led by women include
monitoring and documenting human rights abuses,
establishing cease-fires, creating local political
councils and distributing humanitarian aid. In the
Damascus suburb of Zabadani, Syrian women were
instrumental in pressuring a militia to adopt a
temporary cease-fire with government forces.
Syrian women also have been highly involved in
initiating locally led relief and development work
within the country. Women Now for Development is
an organization led by Syrian women that empowers
women to push Syria toward peace by promoting
democratic values and resilience at the local level.
The impact and effectiveness of such initiatives at the
local level has proven women’s ability as community
peacemakers and further justifies the need for
international stakeholders to guarantee Syrian
women a place in international negotiating arenas.
The international community, including the United
Nations, must elevate Syrian women’s voices by
directly supporting their local peace initiatives, which
span ethnic and political backgrounds.
Establishing the Women’s Advisory Board was a step
in the right direction by the U.N., but the peace
process needs more substantial female participation
before a solution to the conflict is foreseeable. U.N.
Security Council Resolution 2254 (2015) states that
the political process and constitution must be Syrian-
led, and Syrian women must be counted among the
peacebuilders. It is not only important to give women
a place at the table, but it is also important to protect
the voices of women peacemakers to ensure that
they are heard and respected.
A January report from the Inclusive Peace &
Transition Initiative recommended achieving broader
inclusion through direct representation in
negotiations, the roles of impartial observers or
consultants, involvement in commissions and
workshops, and soliciting contributions to public
decision-making and civic action.
For Syria peace talks, this also means having female
representatives from all ethnicities and political
backgrounds represented in the Syrian constitutional
committee. In post-Arab Spring Tunisia, the inclusion
of women in the young democracy’s constitution-
drafting process led to a more legitimate,
representative constitution.
Women are an untapped source of potential and may
be the answer for a peaceful outcome to one of
history’s most polarizing conflicts. Women’s inclusion
in today’s peace processes could spell equality in a
future Syria, but peace will likely remain elusive if
women continue to be sidelined.

Coulouris, R, "Why Syrian Women Could Be the Key to Successful Peace Talks", NewsDeeply, 19/6/18,
www.newsdeeply.com/peacebuilding/articles/2018/06/19/why-syrian-women-could-be-the-key-to-successful-
peace-talks
155
conflict
Conflict is the dynamic process of actual or perceived opposition between
individuals or groups. This could be opposition over positions, interests or
values. Most theorists would distinguish between non-violent and violent
conflict. In this distinction, non-violent conflict can be a useful mechanism for
social change and transformation, while violent conflict is harmful and
requires conflict resolution.

The Lingering Specter of Nuclear War'' 157

Could climate change worsen global conflict? 161

Threading on thin ice? Conflict dynamics on the 163

Korean Peninsula

Conflict dynamics in the Bidibidi refugee settlement in 172

Uganda

156
The Lingering Specter of Nuclear War
A mushroom-shaped plume of fire and smoke
towered over the New Mexico desert in the early
hours of July 16, 1945. The Trinity nuclear test, the
first of its kind, signaled the successful culmination of
the Manhattan Project and the beginning of the
Atomic Age. The United States had gained the means
to level cities in a single blast, a capability it employed
to devastating effect the next month in the skies over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the subsequent Cold
War arms race, the United States and Soviet Union
generated immense thermonuclear arsenals of
almost unimaginable destructive power.
Thanks to the logic of deterrence and plain dumb luck
—the relative contribution of each up for debate—no
country has used a nuclear weapon against another
since 1945. Russia and the United States, the leading
nuclear powers, have reduced their arsenals from
Cold War highs by 89 percent and 87 percent,
respectively. That is the good news.
The bad news is that the nuclear nonproliferation and
arms control regimes are fraying badly, as newer
nuclear powers expand their arsenals, as non-nuclear
nations reconsider whether to acquire such weapons,
and as uneven technological advances, including in
the domains of cyberspace and outer space,
undermine the calculus of deterrence. After seven
and a half decades of uneasy nuclear peace, an
increasingly crowded and complex international
landscape has renewed the specter of catastrophic
nuclear war.
Nuclear anxieties have returned in force. They have
been front and center in media coverage of, among
other things: the recent armed confrontation between
India and Pakistan, President Trump’s negotiations
with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, the U.S.
repudiation of the Iran nuclear deal, Washington’s
intention to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range
Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, and U.S.
plans to modernize its nuclear arsenal. If a nuclear
sword of Damocles continues to hang over
humanity’s collective head, it is now joined by a
proverbial axe, mace, and spear.
157
Gambling With the Globe
In 2018, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved
the hands on its Doomsday Clock, created in 1947 to
symbolize the risk of nuclear Armageddon, to two
minutes to midnight—a proximity matched only once
before, in 1953. Last month, the Bulletin chose to
keep the hands there. Humanity has traipsed into a
“new abnormal,” its editors lamented: Awash in
disinformation and riven by geopolitical fault lines, the
world teeters on the brink of catastrophe.
Some critics find admonishments of this sort alarmist
and unhelpful. Nuclear weapons have fueled
apocalyptic anxieties for decades, as Cato Institute
Senior Fellow John Mueller recently noted in Foreign
Affairs. An unhealthy obsession with their risks, he
suggests, detracts from sensible decision-making.
However, the historical record provides ample
grounds for concern, given how close nuclear powers
have come to using these weapons against one
another, both intentionally and inadvertently. The
litany of near-misses and false alarms makes for
sobering reading. During the 1962 Cuban Missile
Crisis, U.S. President John F. Kennedy assessed the
likelihood of nuclear war to be more or less a coin flip.
In 1995, Russia misinterpreted a Norwegian rocket
launch as a possible attack. And just last year, the
State of Hawaii’s Emergency Management Agency
erroneously issued an incoming ballistic missile alert.
Seth Baum, executive director of the Global
Catastrophic Risk Institute, estimates the rate of such
incidents at one per year.
Magnifying the risk of accidental or unauthorized
nuclear war is uncertainty over the security of
command and control structures to manage and use
these weapons. In his harrowing 2017 tell-all, The
Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War
Planner, Daniel Ellsberg (of Pentagon Papers fame)
chronicles the pathologies of the early U.S. nuclear
apparatus. These included strong incentives to
subordinate safety to offensive readiness, as well as
“safeguards” against unauthorized use that consisted
of little more than a sealed envelope. The same
vulnerabilities may afflict more recent nuclear powers,
not least Pakistan and North Korea.
Meanwhile, nuclear proliferation and technological
innovation are undermining much of the game
theoretic logic of deterrence, which has long been
central to nuclear strategy. In its most basic form,
deterrence relies on the threat of retaliation to
discourage adversaries from striking. The logic works
best in a simple bilateral contest between rational,
unitary actors. It begins to falter in a messier world of
multiple countries, fragmented national authorities,
and irrational leaders. Technological innovation also
complicates nuclear deterrence. Cyberweapons,
antisatellite weapons, hypersonic missiles, artificial
intelligence, and other innovations are challenging
longstanding assumptions, blurring distinctions
between conventional and nuclear war, and
exacerbating ambiguities in the international balance
of power. Deterrence, in sum, is becoming a riskier
bet.
The failure of nuclear deterrence could precipitate
global catastrophe. How big a catastrophe would
depend on multiple factors, including the number and
destructive power of the weapons used and their
targets. A significant exchange could kill tens and
even hundreds of millions of people in the initial
blasts and ensuing firestorms, as well as from
dispersed radiation, which is indifferent to national
borders. Groundwater contamination, “black rain,”
and other localized hazards would add to the
devastation. Disruptions to global supply chains
would forestall recovery in affected areas and could
threaten access to food, medicine, fertilizer, and other
essential goods elsewhere. Starvation and exposure
to radiation would weaken immune systems and
increase susceptibility to disease. All of this would
occur in a context of degraded communication
networks, hair-trigger military force postures, and
rampant fear and uncertainty. The aftermath would be
nightmarish by almost any measure.
Beyond its devastating short-term impact, a large-
scale nuclear exchange could cause significant long-
term damage to Earth’s environment, with risks
increasing with the number and yields of nuclear
weapons used.
158
In 1982, future Nobel laureate Paul J. Crutzen and
John W. Birks published a seminal paper, “The
Atmosphere After a Nuclear War: Twilight at Noon,”
examining potential climatic effects from the
atmospheric smoke and dust generated by a nuclear
war and its associated conflagrations. The following
year, a group of scientists that included astronomer
Carl Sagan determined [PDF] that a major U.S.-
Soviet exchange could cause midsummer continental
land temperatures in the northern hemisphere to
plunge below freezing, and dramatically change local
weather and precipitation. The effects would persist
for months and threaten global crop yields, producing
a “nuclear winter.”
The scientific jury on nuclear winter and its more mild
form, nuclear autumn, is still out. Recent studies
[PDF] suggest that nuclear war would indeed have
significant environmental effects. What remains
disputed is how widespread and enduring these
would be. In 2007 [PDF], some of the same
atmospheric scientists who had popularized the
nuclear winter scenario found that a regional nuclear
exchange between India and Pakistan involving 100
Hiroshima-scale blasts would be sufficient to trigger
cooling exceeding that of the “Little Ice Age,” which
lasted from the early 14th century to the mid 19th
century and saw a 0.6 degrees Celsius decline in
mean annual temperatures across the northern
hemisphere. The resulting decrease in agricultural
productivity, which might take up to a decade to
attenuate, would put two to three billion people [PDF]
at risk of starvation. These findings, however, remain
contested, dependent on assumptions about the
flammability of modern cities and the amount of soot
that would reach the upper atmosphere. A study from
2018 casts doubt on the magnitude of climatic effects
from a regional nuclear war.
With luck—or, preferably, smart policymaking—
humanity will never need to find out which side of this
argument has it right.
The Frazzled International Nuclear Regime
With no nuclear weapons having been used in conflict
in seventy-four years, it is tempting to conclude that
nuclear war is an improbable contingency. It is
comforting to believe that regardless of geopolitical
crises or false alarms, the political and ethical bar to
using nuclear weapons remains high. This mindset
suggests that escalation ladders are difficult to climb,
at least in normal times.
Ours, however, are not “normal” times, if such times
exist at all. In a recent issue of Foreign Affairs,
Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr. argues that we should no
longer think in terms of escalatory “ladders,” as has
long been the norm, but instead in terms of a “web,”
thanks to the complex linkages between multipolar
nuclear competition, advanced weaponry, and new
understandings of the psychology of decision-making.
This web suggests more complicated dynamics of
deterrence and an increased number of potential
failure points.
Worse, perhaps, the longstanding taboo against the
use of nuclear weapons may be at risk of vanishing,
particularly when it comes to growing interest by
some nations in tactical nuclear weapons and
maintaining a capability for waging “limited” nuclear
war. The world’s nine nuclear powers are expanding
and modernizing their arsenals, spending trillions of
dollars collectively to produce atomic munitions and
upgrade delivery systems. At the same time, strategic
competition in Asia and the Middle East is increasing
incentives for countries to go nuclear, raising the
danger of a nuclear cascade.
Reducing the specter of catastrophic nuclear war
requires first of all strengthening existing arms control
and nonproliferation regimes, to reduce the number
and salience of nuclear weapons, as well as their
spread to new state and nonstate actors.
159
Pressing multilateral priorities include ratifying the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which
would prohibit nuclear explosions; bringing into force
the Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), which
would prohibit the further production of nuclear
weapons material; achieving universal adherence to
the Additional Protocol of the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA), which would enhance the
agency’s ability to detect declared and undeclared
nuclear programs; amending the Treaty on the
Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to make
it illegal for parties to withdraw from it (as North Korea
did); preventing North Korea’s production of
additional nuclear weapons; keeping united pressure
on Iran, ideally with the United States rejoining the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA or Iran
nuclear deal); accelerating progress by
acknowledged nuclear weapons states in meeting
their disarmament obligations under Article 6 of the
NPT, consistent with minimum requirements for
deterrence; moving forward on negotiations to extend
the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New
START), which is slated to expire in 2021; and
bringing India, Pakistan, and Israel into the NPT.
Achieving progress on this extensive agenda will
require modifications of existing U.S. policy. For
instance, the Trump administration would need to
reverse its opposition (made explicit in the 2018 U.S.
Nuclear Posture Review) to the CTBT. It would need
to negotiate a replacement for the INF Treaty with
Russia, which the administration repudiated, ideally
one that expands its provisions to new signatories,
notably China. Third and perhaps most important, the
United States needs to beware lowering the threshold
for the use of nuclear weapons. In its 2018 nuclear
posture review, for example, the Trump
administration suggests that it reserves the right to
counter catastrophic cyberattacks with nuclear
weapons, a position that could help deter
cyberattacks but might contribute to nuclear
instability.
These steps are necessary but not sufficient. Any
efforts to govern new and potentially transformative
technologies must take account of the possibility of
those technologies exacerbating risks in the nuclear
realm. Governments will also need to develop
international regimes that reduce the likelihood of
cyber-intrusions threatening nuclear weapons
infrastructure, as well as cogent cyber deterrence
strategies and broader norms against devastating
cyberattacks from state and nonstate actors alike.
Nuclear powers also need to build more robust
systems of command and control to prevent
accidental nuclear war. In 1979, a watch officer
awakened then-U.S. Undersecretary of Defense
William J. Perry to inform him that 200 Soviet
intercontinental ballistic missiles were inbound to the
United States. “For one heart-stopping second I
thought my worst nuclear nightmare had come true,”
he later recalled. It turned out that somebody had
inserted a training tape into an early warning system
computer. Perry himself has proposed one potential
reform to reduce the chance that false alarm leads to
Armageddon: Shift the United States—and in
principle other nuclear powers—away from reliance
on vulnerable land-based ICBMs for deterrence, and
focus primarily on sea and air-based weapons. While
hardly failsafe, this would reduce some of the time
pressure of having to launch within minutes due to
the “use it or lose it” dynamic at play. In addition, the
United States will need to work with other nuclear
powers—not just Russia—to ensure that nuclear
weapons are kept off so-called “hair trigger” alert.
But other reforms are also needed, to insert greater
checks and balances into nuclear attack decisions.
Structures of command and control, after all, are only
as good as their commander and controller. U.S.
nuclear doctrine is particularly problematic in this
respect. It places extraordinary authority in the hands
of a single person to decide the fate of millions,
potentially billions, in a single moment of crisis.
Whatever his or her judgment, temperament, state of
mind, senility, or sobriety at that instant, the President
of the United States has the power to order a nuclear
attack, with no more than a few minutes of
consideration in the case of a retaliatory strike.
Today, that person is Donald J. Trump.
160
Reliance on any one individual to take the most
fateful decision in human history is deeply
problematic. While this may be inevitable in a
totalitarian state like North Korea, it collides with
democratic principles in a nation like the United
States. In an effort to introduce some Constitutional
checks and balances into such decisions,
Congressman Ted Lieu (D-CA) two years ago
introduced the “Restricting First Use of Nuclear
Weapons Act of 2017,” which would require a
congressional declaration of war before the President
could order a (non-retaliatory) nuclear strike. Others
have forwarded alternative proposals.
Humanity’s ultimate objective should be to rid the
world of these destructive devices. That has been the
animating vision of the Global Zero campaign and the
motivation behind the Treaty on the Prohibition of
Nuclear Weapons. Negotiated in 2017 with strong
support from transnational civil society, that
convention prohibits states parties from developing,
testing, producing, manufacturing, acquiring,
possessing, or stockpiling nuclear weapons or other
nuclear explosive devices. It will enter into force
ninety days after the fiftieth nation has ratified it.
As President Barack Obama recognized in his
celebrated Prague speech of spring 2009, complete
nuclear disarmament is unrealistic in the near or even
medium term. It remains a goal for a distant horizon.
However, that should not leave the United States and
other nuclear weapons states off the hook. It is
incumbent on all of them to adopt policies that reduce
the value of nuclear weapons as a currency of power
in world politics; to consider how innovations in
artificial intelligence, cyberspace, outer space, and
other arenas might undermine the dynamics of
deterrence; and to avoid escalatory rhetoric and
policies that risk spiraling out of control and imperiling
millions.
Patrick, S, "The Lingering Specter of Nuclear
War", Council for International Relations,
7/3/19, www.cfr.org/blog/lingering-specter-
nuclear-war
Could climate change worsen global conflict?
There is a region in the Middle East known as the
Fertile Crescent. It includes parts of what are now
Turkey, Iraq and Syria. In ancient times, it was known
as a birthplace of farming. But the area is not so
fertile anymore. Marshlands that covered much of the
area have largely dried up. Between 2007 and 2010,
the region saw very little rain. It suffered the worst
drought seen since scientists began keeping records
here.
Climate change didn't cause the drought, but it
probably made it worse. Crops failed. People went
hungry. Many people moved from rural areas to
cities, crowding the urban areas.
A year later, civil war broke out in Syria. That war is
still being waged today. Was climate change to blame
for the conflict? Scientists do not all agree. But plenty
of studies have suggested that such conflicts could
become more likely in communities stressed by the
weather extremes that are expected to emerge in a
warming world.
Climate change is already affecting human
communities in many ways. It's been crowding out
some regions as sea-level rise shrinks the size of
islands and wipes away some coastal towns. It’s
bashed and destroyed towns and cities with severe
weather or mega-wildfires. It’s started bringing
disease and job-robbing heat to some regions. It's
even changing what foods are available to eat.
Sherri Goodman is a security expert and board
member with the Center for Climate and Security in
Washington, D.C. “Climate change is a threat
multiplier,” she says. “It aggravates existing tensions
around the world,” she explains. “And makes existing
threats worse."
What about Syria?
Goodman points to Syria as a good example. When
farmers and herders moved to the cities, there wasn’t
enough food, water and housing for everyone. This
added to the existing political problems. And that
stressed people, making them angry, scared and
tense.
161
“There were a lot of forces in the mix,” she says. “But
it’s been well documented now that the climate-
aggravated drought was one of the factors that led to
the unrest we’ve seen in that country.”
By causing people to move within their home
countries or to new ones, extreme weather and sea-
level rise can be climate triggers of conflict. And in
regions such as the Arctic, melting sea ice can lead to
global powers competing for control of waterways and
natural resources, Goodman adds.
But we shouldn’t be too quick to assume that climate
change is causing war, some experts caution. People
often exaggerate the link between climate and
conflict, says Jan Selby. He’s a professor of
international relations at the University of Sussex, in
England.
Selby investigated claims that climate change had led
to the Syrian civil war. Many studies had over-
simplified the situation, he found. They assumed that
drought was the biggest reason people moved to
cities. In fact, his team found that bigger causes were
poverty, the depletion of groundwater resources and
conflict on Syria's borders. Nor was that all. Certain
government policies expanded the agricultural
industry beyond its capacity. For example, he notes,
government-funded projects to build massive
agricultural infrastructure created pressure to
increase wheat production beyond what was
sustainable.
That’s true, too, for other studies of climate and
conflict, Selby says. Changes in weather, especially
drought, often get blamed for migration and social
unrest. "This is wrong,” he says.
In fact, even in rural, developing areas, global
economic factors play a role. What types of economic
factors? He’s referring to changes in fuel and fertilizer
prices, for instance. Those can hurt a farmer’s
income. So can higher costs of transporting farm
goods to market. And taxes imposed by local
governments or militias can push farmers over the
edge. “Too often,” he says, “analysts ignore this and
mistakenly treat drought as the main variable.”
Colin Kelley tends to agree. He’s a climate scientist at
the International Research Institute for Climate and
Society. It’s at Columbia University in New York City.
Kelley also is an author of a key study on the role of
climate-related drought in Syria’s civil war.
Focusing only on violent areas can make the
connection between climate and violence seem
stronger, he argues. If the goal is to learn how to
successfully adapt to climate change, scientists
should look at a broad range of examples, he says.

“There are a lot of ways conflict can occur. And all of

that was true for Syria,” he notes. But, he adds, in this Ide is now focusing his research on efforts at
case, it's clear that environmental stress added to environmental peace-building. These are programs in
other pressures. which shared environmental challenges actually bring
countries together. In these places, people cooperate
Kelley’s study found clear signs in Syria that climate to solve their problems.“
change had worsened the region’s drought. He also
found that the agricultural crisis this caused added to Even under pressure and environmental stress,” he
the pressures on an already unstable country. “All of notes, “there are cases where people, or groups or
these things are related,” he says. If you look at only communities, which have been in conflict in the past,
one of them, "you’re only getting part of the picture.” team up and manage these challenges
cooperatively.”
There may be bias, too
There’s still a lot people don’t know about how
climate may be linked to conflict, says Tobias Ide. He
works at the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig,
Germany. There, he studies issues that play a role in
peace and conflict.

Ide reviewed 124 studies that looked at possible links

between climate and conflict. All had been published
between 1998 and 2017. And in them, he found what
he terms a sampling bias. By that, he means, the
researchers were more likely to study areas that were
already violent, that were easy to visit or both. Most
studies focused on Africa and the Middle East. Other
areas of the world, like South America and Oceania,
were hardly studied at all.

Loomis, I, "Could climate change worsen global conflict?", Science News for Students, 23/5/19,
https://www.sciencenewsforstudents.org/article/could-climate-change-worsen-global-conflict

162
Threading on thin ice? Conflict dynamics on the Korean
Peninsula
In 2018, both the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will
mark the 70th anniversary of the establishment of
their separate governments. This is a sad reminder
that much remains frozen on the Korean Peninsula.
For one, families have been separated and
communication channels between the two Korean
populations are almost non-existent. Yet, stability is
precariously established by an Armistice that was
signed in 1953 and that was never replaced by a
permanent peace mechanism. Moreover, North
Korea’s rapid nuclear development has contributed to
tensions and uncertainties, and the Six-Party Talks,
originally designed to ensure the denuclearisation of
the peninsula, has been at a standstill for almost
10 years. The Korean story is thus a prime case to
study the dynamics of a frozen conflict and this article
contributes to the existing literature and analysis of
frozen conflicts by suggesting looking at peaceful and
violent thawing, as well as conflict withering. In order
to so, the paper focuses on three crucial levels: (1)
the micro level, the impact of the Armistice in light of
today’s Koreas as opposed to their status and
standing at the end of the Korean War in 1953, (2)
the meso level with geostrategic concerns
concentrated over sectorial policies surrounding the
Korean Peninsula in a globalised world, and (3) the
macro level with the changing nature of security
governance. It is argued that in a catch-22 motion,
the thread of violent thawing maintains the conflict in
its frozen state.
Few places on earth remain as sensitive, exciting,
dangerous, and contested as the Korean Peninsula.
For the layperson, the news coming from politicians,
the media, and increasingly exponentially from social
media can be troubling: one hears of nuclear
weapons, of dictators’ ego, of sanctions, of blackmail,
of human rights abuses, and of the imminence of war.
For the political scientist, the Korean Peninsula is a
fascinating experiment: Korean people have always
had a unified history and longstanding monarchy with
little political variation. Then, they were annexed and
colonised by Japan and later liberated at the end of
the Second World War. Finally, they were separated
into two zones of influence that would eventually
develop along different economic, political, and
ideological trajectories.
163
There is thus little doubt that the Korean Peninsula is
an important case in history, but it also is one that is
deeply frustrating to many observers, as it remains
impermeable to most knowledge and theories about
people, governments, and conflicts. In 2003, the year
the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)
decided to withdraw from the Non-Proliferation
Treaty, former US Secretary of Defence William J.
Perry noted that though there were clear
disagreements on thematic in both the literature and
within policy circles, it was not possible to avoid
talking about the notion of crisis when referring to the
Korean situation. This was then, when the DPRK had
yet to test its first nuclear weapons. This was then,
when both Koreas had organised family reunions to
reconnect some of their oldest people, under the
guidance of Republic of Korea (ROK)’s president and
Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae Jung, the artisan
of the Sunshine Policy that was meant to connect and
support the DPRK to aid its development and
eventually facilitate reunification. This was then, when
no one expected the DPRK to survive its devastating
famine, a precarious political system, and a
collapsing economy.
But this is now, seven decades after the Korean
partition, three decades after the end of the Cold War,
and a decade after Pyongyang’s first nuclear test.
The scholarship devoted to understanding the Korean
Peninsula, its partition, its dynamics, its problems,
and its future has extensive breadth and depth. It
covers amongst others the legacy of the Korean War
(Cumings 1989; Holmes 2006), comparisons between
the two Koreas’ political systems (Armstrong 2005;
Park 2011; Kim 2004), the question of Korean
national identity and its future (Bleiker 2001;
Grzelczyk 2014; Yim 2002), patterns of interaction
and negotiations over the peninsula(Cha and Kang
2003; Snyder 1999), security partnerships and the
balance of power (Smith 2007; Dong 2000), foreign
relations between the Koreas and great powers (Cha
1997), and scenarios for the future of the peninsula
and how to avoid a nuclear holocaust (Bennett 2013;
Grinker 1998; Kwak and Joo 2010).
The DPRK’s obvious endurance and survival have
now prompted a change in scholarship: it is no longer
appropriate to speak of an imminent North Korean
collapse as was the case after the end of the Cold
War (Harrison 2003; Ford and Kwon 2007). It also is
no longer enough to attribute the Korean crisis to
single factors such as the North Korean leadership,
the US’s influence over the region, or China’s quest
for rebalancing. Instead, theoretical creativity is
favoured since traditional approaches have not been
able to solve Korean tensions and achieve peace
over the peninsula.
It is in this particular direction that this article
considers the concept of frozen conflict as a
framework and applies it to the Korean situation. In
order to proceed, conflict, conflict cycles, and rivalries
are revisited and applied to the Korean Peninsula
traditionally. Then, it becomes possible to define how
frozen conflict is envisioned as an analytical tool.
Finally, the article considers three avenues for
analysis: the Korean Armistice (micro level),
geostrategic changes over the peninsula (meso
level), and evolving security governance
commitments and mechanisms affecting actors within
the region (macro level). Thus, this article goes
beyond the concepts of peaceful thawing, violent
thawing, and conflict withering presented in the
“Introduction” to this special issue by suggesting that
a vertical read is necessary: while some layers might
indeed thaw as a result of political change, diplomatic
overtures, or even economic pressures, some layers
are not only resistant to change but might even
harden and thicken further. At times, a thaw can also
have an unwanted effect as melting ice does not
always freeze back in its previous shape: the recent
thaw the world witnessed during the 2018
PyeongChang Olympics games in South Korea with
the visit of the North Korean delegation led by Kim
Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong might have renewed
hopes of talks, but it has also raised expectations
regarding North Korea’s leadership, thus changing
the original frozen ground parties will most likely
return to once the Games are over.
164
In the context of the Korean Peninsula, we thus
suggest that any move toward more positive
transformative scenarios (peaceful thawing or conflict
withering) will be curtailed by the possibility of violent
thawing, which in this case is the usage of nuclear
weapons over the peninsula. Yet, the threat of
nuclear use is also the very reason why military
intervention on the peninsula has yet to take place.
Intractability and instability on the Korean
Peninsula
The roots of instability and conflict on the Korean
Peninsula are usually traced to the Korean division in
1945. They have also been cemented by a bitter war
following the North’s invasion of its southern brother
in 1950. When looking at the peninsula under this
particular light, the story of the Korean conflict is one
of a common people divided into two states. It is, in
essence, the story of inter-Korean relations and how
the two countries have grown apart from one another,
politically, and economically but especially as people,
because of the inability to find a permanent peace
solution to replace the 1953 Armistice. Yet, this only
represents a very small part of the Korean story: just
as an iceberg, the roots of instability and conflict on
the Korean Peninsula are not about the Korean
division, because this division occurred because of
external pressures and not because of the initial need
of a particular group within Korea to secede, for
example. Indeed, the Koreas had always, before their
division, existed as one since the Kingdom of Silla
unified the peninsula through its conquest of Baekje
and Goguryeo in the seventh century (Kim 2012).
The Kingdom of Korea’s own history is calm, as only
a handful of dynasties succeeded one another, with
its last dynasty, Choseon, in place from 1392 until
1910. Choseon could have remained a rather
anonymous part of the world if not for geopolitics:
trapped between a powerful Chinese empire and a
belligerent and modernising Japan, Korea was a
prime location for ship layovers.
Foreign interference from neighbours looking to
expand their power forced Choseon to question its
own policies as elites teetered between orthodox
voices committed to preserve Korean customs and
traditions and heterodox voices calling for
modernization and especially engagement via open
borders (Oberdorfer 2002). But ultimately, Choseon
decided to close itself to foreign influence and this
meant that Korea had little opportunities to learn to
understand the international modern world in the
twentieth century. When Tokyo annexed Seoul in
1910, Korea had thus few if any foreign allies to count
on for support or to ask for help (Choi 1967). The
situation was very different at the end of World War II:
the newly created United Nations was ready to
spread its wings, and Allied powers wanted to make
sure Japan would not rise again over Asia. As a
result, Korea was now seen as a geopolitical asset
that needed to be defended. So, when the DPRK
invaded the ROK in 1950, the United Nations voted to
intervene, a first in its history and only one of two
cases of military retaliation with the 1991 Iraqi
invasion of Kuwait. Two years of combat devastated
both Koreas and created an international relations
conundrum that still remains nowadays: though it is
often assumed that the Korean War was a conflict
between the two Koreas, it was hardly the case since
the United Nations’ forces, while led by the USA and
vastly supplied by American soldiers, were manned
by 20 other nations. The Armistice that was signed on
27 July 1953 was thus not a bilateral agreement
between the two Koreas. It was instead signed by the
USA on behalf of the United Nations Command, by
the Chinese People’s Volunteer Army and North, and
by the DPRK’s own Korean People’s Army. The ROK
is thus only a party to the Armistice by virtue of its
participation to the United Nations Command troop
contingent.
The Korean War is an important event in the
peninsula’s history since it solidified the schism that
had already started to develop between the two
Korean states as they each elected their own leaders
in 1947 and developed their discrete constitutions.
Both countries received extensive help before, during,
and after the Korean War, thus making the Korean
conflict an international entanglement.
165
Down south, the USA became Seoul’s most important
economic, political, and military support, as Korea
turned into one of the spokes within the military hub
Washington had started to develop in Asia (Cha
2010). Up north, both the People’s Republic of China
(PRC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
(USSR) furnished the DPRK with military equipment
and preferred access to their own economic systems
(Ji 2001; Szalontai 2005). Political shifts during the
Cold War and changing military postures and
positions meant that any development on the Korean
Peninsula would resonate beyond its borders:
tensions between Pyongyang and Seoul would
irremediably involve the USA, often the United
Nations, and quite consistently other regional powers
such as Russia, Japan, and China. By the end of the
Cold War, the Korean state of affairs no longer
involved finding a permanent solution to the Armistice
since many other crisis erupted in the Armistice’s
wake: these included tensions between Japan and
the DPRK (Japanese citizens had been abducted by
Pyongyang in the 1960s and 1970s to serve as
language instructors), terrorist acts committed by
Pyongyang onto Seoul (the 1983 Rangoon bombing
during a South Korea visit, the destruction of South
Korean flight KAL858 by a North Korean agent),
tensions and confrontations around the Demilitarized
Zone (DMZ) (the 1976 Axe murder attack by North
Korean soldiers), or heavy systems confrontations
(1996 submarine incident when North Korean
intruded into South Korean waters). There are plenty
of conflicting elements present on the Korean
Peninsula nowadays, with North Korea’s
development as weapons producer to many countries
in the Middle East with ballistic missiles in the 1980s
and 1990s, or Pyongyang’s own nuclear programme
growth, adding even more salt to an already long-
seeping wound. What we see through this brief
history overview is a tangled web of events that
operate as nested relationship: according to Michael
Howlett (2009), policy elements usually fall within a
micro, meso, and macro level. This framework will be
adapted later in the paper to conduct an analysis of
historical engagements.
But to understand and analyse the Korean Peninsula,
both Korean affairs specialists and the conflict
resolution literature are also a cornerstone to
understand the Korean Peninsula. Yet, using the term
conflict, or crisis, or tension is far from
straightforward, especially within the Korean context.
Charles Hermann (1950) talked about a crisis
requiring elements of threat as well as an element of
surprise, along with the fact that parties only have a
short window of opportunity to make a decision about
their own reaction. In that sense, the definition can
apply to the Korean Peninsula but there is not just
one crisis in the region. Instead, there are many past,
ongoing, and burgeoning crises. For Ted Robert Gurr
(1980), a conflict is different than a crisis as it is
composed of “overt, coercive interactions of
contenting collectivities”. This surely fit the two
Koreas’ state of tensions too, but over time, direct
military confrontations have been rare between the
two. Thus, work done on rivalries is particularly
useful, especially those with a dyadic focus: while it is
true that the DPRK and the ROK form the most
pertinent dyads on the peninsula because of their
history, the DPRK and the US’s contention over the
usage of nuclear energy is a form of dyad and so is
the DPRK and Japan’s contention over the issues of
abductees. Diehl and Goertz (2000) have told us that
such rivalries, which they call “enduring” take time to
develop, are linked with history between the parties
and are extremely sensitive to misperceptions, thus
easily fuelling small crises bursts. Some have also
suggested the term “strategic rivalries” which also
involves states that usually regard each other as
competitors (Colaresi and Thompson 2002). This
does appear useful when considering the two Koreas,
especially during the 1950–1970 period when
economic competition was fierce between the two
Koreas. Nowadays, it is easy to recognise that
capitalism in the South had enabled Seoul to grow
and modernise exponentially. Yet, the DPRK’s
development of nuclear weapons has dealt an
unmistakable blow to the ROK, almost rendering its
conventional weapons irrelevant in light of such a
potential for fire and fury.
166
But strategic rivalries usually do not need to
experience direct warfare, which appears unsuitable
when considering the devastations that occurred
during the Korean War. In that sense, the absence of
open bouts of warfare on the Korean Peninsula
creates a puzzle for the conflict literature since
protracted conflict usually requires some period of
warfare. Essentially, the Korean Peninsula might best
be described as a region besieged by non-protracted
rivalries.
The Conflict Resolution literature is helpful when it
comes to understand how a conflict or situation such
as that of the Korean Peninsula exist and can be
dealt with. In theory, Snyder and Diesing (1977) have
suggested that any crisis or conflict can resemble a
form of coercive or accommodative diplomacy that
will be influenced by the fear of potential war. For
Charles McClelland (1961), acute international crises
could also be dealt with by seeking outside help such
to mediate or broker parties to de-escalate. In the
case of the Korean Peninsula, any resolution would
also mean accepting to engage with the DPRK as a
real and legitimate actor. For Fisher et al. (1991),
talking to dangerous actors or “villains” should be
done not because it is ethical but because it is the
only way to shift a potential status quo. In practice,
many have suggested that the Korean situation is
complex, and that this very complexity leads to
suboptimal results: military, ideological, and economic
issues have all mixed to create a heady and
explosive cocktail that lacks a conflict resolution
mechanism that can be enacted and enforced (Smith
2000). Three directions have particularly been
investigated: negotiation strategies, goal divergence,
and evolving environment.
Negotiation strategies are problematic, especially
when it comes to dealing with Pyongyang as the
DPRK has had the habit, ever since the Armistice
negotiations, to practice agenda meddling and has
often reinterpreted agreements after their signature
(Joy 1955; Downs 1999).
When the two Koreas talked to one another, they
often have done so away from the negotiation table
where the DPRK also tend to purse a different
agenda than what is expected during formal rounds
(do Kim and Hoon 1995). Parties also have divergent
goals, with one of the main issues surrounding what
the international community wants the DPRK to
become or not to become. Giving Pyongyang survival
assurances has thus not been a priority and has
largely contributed to insecurity over the peninsula
(Kleiner 2005). A large focus has also been to sort
problems (such as nuclear proliferation) but at the
same time re-creating diplomatic ties between the
DPRK and the USA, Japan, and the ROK especially
(Yun 2005). Yet, these approaches have often been
considered in a vacuum, away from the changing
realities of the Korean Peninsula. Some noted for
many years that North Korean provocations were
often short of war, and that Pyongyang had shifted
from a wish to unify the Korean Peninsula under its
leadership to a strategy of economic survival away
from the South (Cha and Kang 2003). While on the
one hand the DPRK has been noted as reverting to a
military-first policy (French 2005), nuclear proliferation
has on the other hand clearly been noted as a way to
survive and not a suicide mission (Sagan 1996). This
means, essentially, that the ice is changing: while
there is no war, the peninsula grounds are different
every time the DPRK test a weapon, and it is
unhelpful to pigeonhole the DPRK in a specific role,
as they evolve as well (Smith 2000). Is there anything
to be gained by applying this analytical lens to the
Korean situation?
Frozen conflict lens: questioning the Korean
situation
A frozen conflict starts with an actual war and results
in a situation that is neither war nor peace. Frozen
conflicts are usually understood within a post-Soviet
context and thus often centre on Eurasian countries.
Frozen conflicts often involved great powers. Though
frozenness conjures images of immobility, this
actually might be a misnomer: events do occur, and
dynamic interactions are possible, even though no
permanent peaceful solution has been found after
fighting has subsided (Lynch 2005).
167
This also means a strong potential for violence
resurgence as according to for Valery Perry, violence
might have indeed stopped, but “the underlying
interests of the formerly warring parties have neither
been abated nor addressed” (Perry 2009, p. 36).
Within the framework of this Special Issue, frozen
conflict is defined as a protracted and post-war
conflict process that has failed to reach a peaceful
and stable stage between contending actors. Jan
Ludvik and Michal Smetana particularly focus on
three transformative scenarios, peaceful thwarting,
violent thawing, and conflict withering, but they stress
that conflict transformation is very elusive: more often
than not, parties return to a state of frozen affairs.
The Korean Peninsula is a particularly salient case
study for the furthering of the frozen conflict field.
Indeed, though frozen conflicts have usually been
understood within European and Eurasian contexts,
the post-Soviet paradigm is central to the Korean
division and current difficulties. Soviet influence over
the Korean Peninsula both in terms of Soviet
influence onto the DPRK as early as the 1950s and
the ensuing Cold War context that framed more of the
geopolitical context up to the Cold War’s end is
important. The role great powers take within a
particular conflict and whether or not they are aiding
or trying to prevent conflict transformation is also a
crucial point to consider. Moreover, the Armistice
embodies a halted conflict, a temporary measure
meant to allow for space and appropriate time to
reconcile both Koreas to the reality of their division
and find a permanent solution to accommodate their
divergences. What the Armistice has done, however,
is stop violence, at least temporarily. The frozen
conflict lens is also useful to consider in the Korean
case because of the notion of the underlying
interests: as mentioned earlier, though the Koreas
exist today in separate states because of the initial
Korean Peninsula division to remove the remnants of
Japanese colonial endeavours at the end of World
War II, their separation is far from being the only
issue that needs to be resolved. Hence, questions of
human rights, regional stability, and potential
presence of nuclear weapons that could lead to new
warfare all simmer in the background.
How can frozen conflicts evolve? This article focuses
on three transformative scenarios: peaceful thawing,
violent thawing, and conflict withering. The first one,
(1) peaceful thawing, suggests that it is possible for a
conflict to evolve so that only a stable peace remains.
In order to do so, diplomacy and negotiations are
usually favoured, with parties engaging in discussions
about what has made them at odds with one another.
There also is scope for non-state actors such as
NGOs and IGOs to assist in conflict transformation.
The second one, (2) violent thawing, sees the
opposite motion, one where a frozen conflict to return
to a state of violent and major warfare. The third one,
(3) conflict withering, sees the conflict disappear not
because of conscious efforts to manage it and find a
peaceful solution through negotiated efforts but rather
because of changing circumstances such as
economic upturns or downturns, for example. All
three options are highly relevant to the Korean
Peninsula. When considered alongside events that
have shaped the direction of Korean affairs since, in
1945, they allow for a new and different
understanding and interpretation of conflict in the
Korean context:
1. With regard to peaceful thawing, one of the root
causes to the current situation is the Armistice: the
negotiation of a peaceful military settlement would
remove an important hurdle to the normalisation of
the situation in the region. Security governance
changes, however, could also be considered under
this particular outlook, with negotiated solutions
brokered within bespoke endeavours such as the Six-
Party Talks.
2. Violent thawing is the option that is currently the
most feared, especially in light of the DPRK’s military
arsenal. Yet, the very presence of nuclear weapons
on the Korean Peninsula acts as a potential deterrent.
Thus, violent thawing within the Korean context would
most likely lead to questions regarding security
governance. This mostly means shifting alliances and
defence commitments in light of military development.
168
3. Conflict withering would occur within the context of
gains derived from interdependence for example and
would thus largely rely on the nature of the North
Korean regime to change fundamentally, yet
gradually so as not lead to violent thawing. Thus,
conflict withering within the Korean context would
most likely involve a change from a totalitarian North
Korean state to one that opens up because of the
imperatives of economic factors and one that allows
for changes to happen.
Moving past frozen land: what matters on the
peninsula?
While the Korean Peninsula has been under scrutiny
for many years by researchers and policy-makers,
and a multitude of angles and lenses have been
applied to understand mechanisms, patterns,
approaches, and prospects, the starting point to much
of the contemporary study of the Koreas is about the
very existence of the Armistice and its legal
implications. The Armistice is contentious because of
who is a party to it: the actual signatories are the
United Nations Command, the DPRK, and the PRC,
which means that neither the ROK nor the USA are
directly involved, though their engagement is obvious
given the US’s military situation and South Korea’s
location (Yong-Joong 2002). Despite these issues, it
is undeniable that had a peaceful and permanent
solution be found to end the Korean War, a number of
security conundrums would have also been resolved.
For one, the two Koreas would not have had to
defend their own existences as legitimate entities in
the region as well as within the international
community. Their own security needs might not have
involved and entangled as many large powers as they
did within the Cold War context.
Yet, most of the Korean Peninsula’s issues now
involve security needs, which have been greatly
accelerated by the DPRK’s development of nuclear
energy and its attempts to secure a nuclear weapons
arsenal that could act as a deterrent to what
Pyongyang perceives is belligerent posturing from the
USA. In parallel to these issues, most of the
peninsula has slowly entered interdependent patterns
via the Koreas’ 1991 memberships to the United
Nations and their participation in a number of
international organisations.
The Korean conflict has also been transformed from
mostly bilateral engagements to engagements via
multilateral frameworks, a change that has simply
followed most of the negotiation development
because of globalisation forces, actor diversification,
and the need to manage complexity via plural
processes. Though Northeast Asia has often suffered
from an “organisational gap” and has lagged behind
other parts of the world, including Europe when it
comes to multilateral processes (Calder and Ye
2004), the Korean conundrum has led to the
development of bespoke processes as well as the
Four-Party Talks (ROK, DPRK, PRC, and USA to
attempt to replace the Armistice), the 1994 Agreed
Framework (an international consortium to replace
the DPRK’s nuclear reactors with light-water reactors
and to prevent dual-use and nuclear proliferation), the
Six-Party Talks (ROK, DPRK, PRC, USA, Japan, and
Russia to achieve the denuclearisation of the Korean
Peninsula), as well as other dialogues such as via the
Red Cross to deal with the issues of Japanese
citizens abducted by the DPRK. To make sense of
these historic events, we go back to Howlett’s three
policy levels and adapt here to essential time markers
on the Korean Peninsula. The timeline compiled here
is made of data reporting the major clashes, events,
overtures, and policy decisions that have shaped the
Korean conflict. Hence, it is possible to present a
reading of the Korean Peninsula’s major events since
the Korean War until contemporary times, organised
chronologically but also thematically along three
levers:
- The micro level, which focuses on policy actors’
behaviour, finds its start with the political situation set
up by the Armistice. Events tagged into this category
pertain to clashes between the two Koreas and policy
decisions geared toward this significant other.
- The meso level, which focuses on sectorial policy
regimes. Events tagged into this category pertain to
specific geostrategic consideration involving the
Korean Peninsula and outside actors but mostly in a
bilateral capability.
- The macro level, which focuses on global security
governance. Events tagged into this category pertain
to non-proliferation regimes such as the International
Atomic Energy Agency’s efforts toward non-
proliferation on the peninsula or other United Nations’
vehicles including sanctions.
169
This analysis has the advantage of considering
several levels of interaction instead of focusing on
more isolated and increasingly contested
explanations to the Korean conflict lasting this long,
such as the fact that the DPRK is about to collapse,
the fact that China is the only power enabling the
DPRK’s survival, or the fact that the DPRK is a clear,
present, and imminent danger to the USA
Even though the Korean War and the subsequent
Armistice have left the Korean Peninsula in a relative
state of tension, a number of other factors, such as
North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the
entanglement of foreign powers such as the USA in
bilateral Korean affairs (at times at the request of both
Korean states, however), means that the types of
conflict and crisis we see are of a “multidimensional
nature” and have, as Hazel Smith (2005) has
mentioned, numerous times, short, medium, and
long-term regional stability issues.
The frozen conflict lens is useful here to chisel a
reading that concentrates on how core issues
between opposing sides might remain unresolved. It
allows for contentious dyads of a wide range of
issues, such as inter-Korean relation problems, or the
US-DPRK rhetoric and sanction relationship. The
expectation to move beyond the frozen state would
be that peaceful thawing, through a mix of negotiated
compromises between parties (sometimes even third
parties such as states, IGOs, and NGOs), would have
been successful by now. Issues centred on at the
micro, as showed in the table, were particularly
concentrated in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. They
have shifted to be encompassed in geopolitical layers
as time went on, and issues were often packaged
together to try to find a potential solution. However,
with the development of North Korea’s missile
programme, and the start of its nuclear tests, most of
the interactions that we now see are about the meso
level and involves infighting and instability with
countries and entities beyond the peninsula. The
uncertainty surrounding North Korea’s missile and
nuclear tests and capabilities also creates
opportunities for violent thawing: The USA has
considered pre-emptive strikes and military actions
over the peninsula should Pyongyang decide to
further its capabilities or even launch an actual bomb.
Violent thawing is a very unlikely option on the
Korean Peninsula given some of the geostrategic
changes that have occurred over the past decades:
the ROK has become a very strong and courted
economy, and the USA is also extremely reliant on
the PRC for its own economic consumption and
growth, and global governance as the macro level, as
shown in the table, is very present on the questions of
sanctioning the DPRK or considering ways to restart
negotiations.. But change in the arrangements we
see in Northeast Asia could potentially be devastating
for world economic balance, while a war would of
course have an even more tragic human impact. In a
catch-22 situation, it is the DPRK’s development of
nuclear weapons and its persistence in testing them
that create the possibility and the need for violent
thawing via either foreign military action or potential
misunderstanding and miscommunication between
various actors. Yet, it is the very fact that the DPRK
has managed to develop nuclear weapons that
prevents other countries from launching a military
action on the North. Violent thawing is to be seen
here as a by-product of geostrategic Cold War
rivalries.
As for conflict withering, there are very few avenues
for this to be realised: it would take specific changes
such as the DPRK slowly opening its economy up to
a point where it is no longer seeking drastic measures
to survive. Thus, another catch-22 is unveiled here: it
is the potentiality of a violent thawing via military
conflict that prevents avenues for conflict withering
from materialising. Hence, at the macro level, the
international sanctions directed at the DPRK have
slowly curtailed not only North Korean revenue
streams but also potential development and
opportunities for in-depth change. For example,
sanctions now severely impact education in the
DPRK, especially foreign endeavours to teach
business practices and rudimentary capitalism in
North Korea. Without a possibility to potential wither,
there is little hope for change on the peninsula.
170
Conclusion
There is no shortage of analysis, explanations, and
opinions about the Korean Peninsula. Yet, decades of
scholarship and political practice have not managed
to curtail uncertainties in the region. If anything, we
now live in more dangerous times as the DPRK has
managed to develop nuclear weapons, thus
becoming one more country in the international
community that has the possibility to destroy a large
part of humanity. Despite this pessimistic approach,
many remain confident that a peaceful transformative
scenario can be found on the peninsula. But perhaps,
the best sign that the world is not on the brink of war
is that as long as both Koreas have existed in their
modern forms, the international community and
especially large powers have taken an interest in
making sure a stalemate is achieved. Whether or not
such as interest is motivated by personal greed or
personal empathy is not what is at stake here. What
is crucial, however, is that there has been much
investment in making sure the Korean Peninsula can
growth and prosper, at least South of the DMZ.
Applying the concept of frozen conflict to the Korean
conundrum, and indeed presenting such a
conundrum as being rightfully part of the corpus of
frozen conflict case, is useful, as it allows to read
conflict on the peninsula in a different light, once that
allows less focus on one particular actor or theme but
more of a layered approach to difficult positions and
propositions.
This article has focused on reading the Korean
conflict through three layers: conditions that pertain to
the Armistice, changes within the geostrategic nature
of the Korean Peninsula especially in light of
globalisation and interdependence, and Defence
matters especially given the DPRK’s nuclear
development and accelerated missile development
programme.
This was then coupled with three potential
transformation scenarios: peaceful thawing that would
occur through mediation, negotiation, and multilateral
channels, violent thawing that would lead to change
but via the devastating restart of open warfare, and
conflict withering that would see change because it is
unavoidable and inherent after an appropriate amount
of time. The frozen conflict lens is particularly
appropriate to the Korean case since it is largely
composed of rivalries and contentious sides (between
countries for example), and it also allows for the
involvement of many types of actors. What we find to
be most salient here is that at this point, the situation
has reached a “precarious instability” by which the
fear of use of nuclear weapons and the restart of a
war actually paralyses much of the situation from
thawing peacefully.
171
So, there might be some thawing, but it does not
always mean that the situation returns to what it was
before the layer of ice was created, since countries
and situations remain dynamic. This is exemplified by
the fact that if a peace treaty were to be signed
between the Koreas, this would most likely mean that
both Koreas would still exist as separate and not
return to a unified pre-World War II Korea situation.
Moreover, it is quite likely that the DPRK would have
more of a military might than the ROK. What, then,
can we expect to see, and what would be most
advisable? In a perfect world, conflict withering would
eventually occur and the reasons why belligerence
was so deeply rooted would just erode. In a more
realistic world, peaceful thawing would need to be
pursued with the caveat that both Koreas’ grievances
and needs must be met however difficult this might be
given domestic regime constraints.
Conflict dynamics in the Bidibidi refugee settlement in
Uganda
Introduction
This article presents the results of a study conducted
in the Bidibidi Refugee Settlement in the Yumbe
District of Uganda between June and August 2018. It
examines the conflict trends between refugees and
host communities. The aim was to understand the
drivers and dynamics of conflicts in the settlement.
This article highlights the key findings of the study
and some suggestions for conflict transformation for
better relationships. The data collection process took
20 days. The methodology used for this research was
based on qualitative study design.
172
Qualitative data collection was done through focus
group discussions using interview guides, direct
observation, and structured and semi-structured
interviews with different community-level committees,
such as refugee welfare committees (RWCs) and the
host population. Non-structured interviews and
informal meetings were also held to collect
complementary information, especially with the
various stakeholders, such as local government
officials, the Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), the
Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for
Refugees (UNHCR) and other implementing partners.
Direct observation was used to confirm conflict
dynamics reported during interviews, for validity and
reliability. This study was inspired by the conflict
transformation theory of Lederach. According to
Lederach, conflict is normal and dynamic within
human relationships and can be seen as a catalyst
for growth.
Violent conflict in South Sudan from 2013 to 2016
forced over 977 746 refugees to flee to Uganda,
according to statics from the UNHCR. Some 86% of
those who fled were women and children, with
children making up more than 60% of all refugees.
The majority of these refugees were settled in the
West Nile region of Northern Uganda.
Uganda is a landlocked country located in East Africa
and the Great Lakes Region. It is bordered to the east
by Kenya, to the north by South Sudan, to the west
by the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), to
the south-west by Rwanda, and to the south by
Tanzania. It covers an area of 241 038 square
kilometres. The population is estimated to be 34.6
million inhabitants, with farming as the main
economic activity. The country is also home to 56
tribes, all speaking different languages and with
different cultural practices. Uganda’s refugee policy is
one of the world’s most progressive, promoting
refugee integration rather than confinement, and
directing aid resources to the host as well as the
refugee population.
Refugees and Uganda
Uganda ratified the Convention Relating to the Status
of Refugees in 1987. According to Muluba, the
presence of refugees in Uganda dates back to the
1940s with the hosting of Polish refugees at
Nyabyeya and Koja in Masindi Mukono. However, in
1955, Uganda became involved in a serious situation
when some 78 000 refugees from southern DRC,
Sudan and Kenya entered its borders. In 2017, World
Vision Uganda estimated that 1 064 043 refugees
and asylum-seekers lived in Uganda. World Vision
Uganda also estimated that 68% of this number –
equivalent to 723 550 refugees – were from South
Sudan alone. Refugees from Rwanda and Burundi
have also fled to Uganda. By late 2017, Uganda had
the highest refugee/asylum-seeker population in
Africa.
The West Nile region is located in the north-west
corner of Uganda. It borders South Sudan to the
north and the DRC to the east.
173
The region’s ethnic groups include the Lugbara, Alur,
Kakwa and Madi. Political instability in the DRC and
South Sudan has a direct impact on the region. The
multi-ethnic profile of the area creates conflict in
terms of cultural difference, intermarriages and
migration to urban satellite towns. For over 20 years,
West Nile was cut off from the rest of Uganda, due to
the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) insurgency in
Northern Uganda and the Uganda National Rescue
Front II (UNRF II), which ended with the signing of a
peace treaty between UNRF II and the Government
of Uganda in 2002. The conflict mainly affected the
districts of Yumbe, Koboko Arua and Moyo.8 Until
late 2000, West Nile was home to thousands of South
Sudanese refugees, who returned after the signing of
the comprehensive peace agreement between Sudan
and South Sudan in 2005.
South Sudan become independent in 2011. In 2013,
the internal power struggle within the ruling party, the
Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM),
resulted in clashes in the capital city, Juba. These
clashes quickly turned into targeted killings against
Nuer, the ethnic group of South Sudan’s vice
president, Riek Machar, who fled into hiding and later
became the leader of a rebellion against President
Salva Kiir, an ethnic Dinka. Civilians were regularly
and deliberately targeted in the conflict, leading to
large-scale displacements.
Unfortunately, violence continued in South Sudan.
According to the Inter-Agency Regional Analysts
Network,9 350 000 refugees from South Sudan
crossed to the West Nile region between January and
October 2017. Because of the high influx, nine new
settlements were opened, with Bidibidi as the largest,
sheltering over 285 000 South Sudanese refugees,
predominantly from the Equatoria region. Most of the
refugees were women. In 2017, Bidibidi was
described as the largest refugee settlement in the
world.
Conflict Dynamics in the Bidibidi Refugee
Settlement
The Bidibidi settlement covers an area of 250 square
kilometres. It is composed primarily of underutilised
“hunting grounds”, considered by the host
communities as unsuitable for agriculture.
The area consists of low, rolling hills and mostly rocky
soil. Bidibidi is divided into five zones, and each of
these zones is divided into clusters, which are further
divided into individual villages surrounded by host
community settlements. Refugee leadership
structures parallel Uganda’s own local governance
model, which is composed of ascending levels of
local councils. At the village level, there is an RWC1;
at the cluster level, RWC2; and for each zone,
RWC3. These are decided by elections overseen by
the OPM. The RWC at each level is headed by a
chairperson.
Firewood and Environmental Challenges
The conflict issue that is most significant between the
host communities and the refugee population is the
issue of firewood. Collection of firewood around
Bidibidi is ad hoc, with undefined access rights to
both communities. The daily negotiation triggers
hostilities, tensions and perceptions of insecurity.
Refugees must negotiate daily for access to gather
firewood and biomass in the surrounding land. There
are no formal land rights granted to the refugees, so
there is a constant risk of violence, assault and
extortion on an already traumatised population.
This firewood problem is multilayered. First, there is
no designated area for the refugee community to
access firewood. According to interviews, the problem
is complicated by refugee women’s fear of the Aringa
men from the host communities, accusing them of
gender-based violence. During interviews, Aringa
representatives claim their intentions are often
misjudged, due to language barriers – for example,
men often need the gathering area for charcoal
production. While there have been consistent efforts
to mitigate this problem, the issue appears unsolvable
until land is clearly designated for firewood collection
and/or cooking fuel is provided to the refugees.
Second, environmental degradation continues as
biomass is cleared in the vicinities of the refugee
settlements. Refugees are considered by the host
communities to be temporary visitors, who do not
respect the land or care about sustainability. Some
host community members call the refugees
“insensitive”.
174
A non-governmental organisation (NGO) official
explained during interviews that environmental
degradation is a very big problem and a key way to
solve it is to plant more trees. They have been trying
to work on the problem, but need much intervention in
terms of planting more trees. While members of the
host communities do not relay belligerent complaints
with regard to land-sharing, questions about
environmental degradation prompt angry replies.
Officials in the district confirmed during interviews that
the refugee presence has increased Yumbe’s
population by 50%. This is a sudden and monumental
strain on resources. The host communities are also
concerned about the grass, which is needed to feed
livestock. Refugees, however, cut grass for their own
use to thatch houses – or, sometimes, they burn
grass in accordance with traditional customs. A senior
Ugandan official remarked during an interview:12
"The environment has been degraded. It’s been
massive. The community needs mitigation measures
to rehabilitate the environment, which is now out of
control. It will cause a lot of problems. Environment
has many components. There were issues of bush
burning. It can destroy grass, and destroy trees. It
can also cause pollution in the atmosphere. We want
a comprehensive approach to be taken to mitigate
issues related to the environment"
During interviews, an OPM official confirmed these
challenges, suggesting that agencies should consider
providing efficient cooking stoves to refugees and
step up efforts to plant trees. He indicated that
intervention was minimal and that the conflict
between the refugees and the hosts over firewood will
not stop unless an alternative is found.
Grievances over promises made by the OPM are
imperative as to whether the host communities
choose to be cooperative. Host representatives stress
that unresolved issues between the host communities
and the OPM over land use have produced a
backlash against the refugee presence within the host
communities. Host communities were promised
livelihood programmes that are yet to arrive. T
his adds to the resentment towards Ugandan
administrators, which negatively influences host-
refugee relations. Local officials, in particular, note
that the infrastructure of the area was already
severely underdeveloped before the settlements were
established.
Internal Politics and Dynamics
The population of Bidibidi is relatively peaceful,
despite the diversity of its inhabitants. Nevertheless,
there have been isolated cases of ethnic conflict in
the settlement, related to the war in South Sudan.
Low-level interpersonal conflict is also widely
reported, due to the trauma and hardship of
resettlement.
The politicisation of ethnicity has been a defining
characteristic of the war in South Sudan, and this
ethnic conflict has been mirrored in the settlement.
Most of the settlement residents perceive their
communities to be on the same “side” of the war,
against the South Sudanese government. However,
this is not necessarily always the case.
One major flashpoint in the refugee settlement is
centred on a small population of Dinkas. Most
refugees associate ethnic Dinka groups with the
government of President Kiir, the leadership of the
SPLA, and the ethnic Dinka Mathiang Anyoor military
force deployed in parts of Equatoria in 2016. Many
refugees blame these groups for numerous atrocities.
As a result, Dinkas have been singled out and
isolated from the rest of the South Sudanese refugee
community. During interviews, it was clear that
tensions over the Dinka presence have occasionally
resulted in direct violence – not only in Bidibidi, but
also in the Rhino camp settlement, as was the case in
June 2018.
The gender disparity in Bidibidi influences both
refugee interactions and domestic conflict. There are
many women living in the settlement without their
husbands, which often leads to personal challenges.
175
. Men come to Bidibidi to find their wives, and instead
discover infidelity. War brings poverty, which often
forces women into sexual exploitation to survive and
support their families. Adultery also leads to conflicts
among women and affects family dynamics.
According to interviews with women and refugee
leaders, significant interpersonal conflicts and
domestic abuse ensue. Depression and anxiety
caused by earlier traumatic events in South Sudan,
as well as alcoholism and financial stress, are serious
problems in the refugee settlement.
Land disputes
Land is an emotional and contentious topic, and
issues relating to resource-sharing causes feelings of
bitterness and insecurity. The host communities have
deep cultural and emotional ties to their land, which
extends beyond the issue of resources. They focus
their conversations on Ugandan actors. The
government and interlocutors do not seem directly
concerned about the refugees and the land given to
them. In contrast, the refugees interviewed are more
concerned about sharing the land with the host
communities. Refugees argue that the land is
impossible to cultivate, either because it is too rocky
or too close to livestock or too far from their home.
This is not an issue between the refugees and host
communities, but rather one between the host
communities and Ugandan authorities,16 because
the Ugandan authorities have not kept their promise
of compensating the host communities for the land
that was given to the refugees. As indicated
previously, host communities were promised
livelihood programmes that are yet to arrive. This
creates further resentment and negatively affects
host-refugee relations. The presence of the refugees
and the issue of land is the catalyst for tensions
between the Ugandan state and its citizens.
The Bidibidi settlement is located on the communal
land of the Aringa people, who are governed by
customary laws.
In general, communal land falls under the control of
the specific clan with historical claim to the area.
Under this system, each clan has a designated “land
chief” responsible for speaking on behalf of the
community. Most of Bidibidi is on land that was not
used prior to the refugees’ arrival, as it was
considered unsuitable for agriculture. But this land
supported hunting, livestock grazing and charcoal
production critical to the livelihood of the host
population.
The customary nature of land rights resulted in
adjudication on an “as needed” basis, since land
rights have not officially been designated. The land
that forms the Bidibidi settlement was unsettled on by
the host population; consequently, the refugee
situation stirred underlying disputes between
individuals and sub-clans over the use and
boundaries of the area. These manifested in two
forms of conflict:
(1) the perceived monetary benefit of land claims
near the refugee sites; and (2) the negative effects on
those previously using the land for livelihood
purposes, primarily charcoal production, grazing and
hunting. Several interviewees brought up boundary
disputes between the sub-clans of Odravu and
Kululu, specifically who has the authority to make
decisions. These disputes have compromised relief
programmes, including the building of a health facility.
Claims to land rights are being waged not only by
land chiefs, but also by citizens and agencies who
falsely assert ownership.
Host representatives gave different responses about
whether or not they were promised anything in
exchange for their land. Many were frustrated,
because they were not provided with “appreciation”
for their generosity. The repeated use of the word
“appreciation”, rather than compensation, indicated
that an in-kind payment for the land was not
expected. One OPM official explained that his office
was constrained in its ability to fulfil all of its
commitments, due to resource deficits and ambiguity
over land rights. Some respondents believed that
local politicians and elites were agitating the Aringa
elders and land chiefs against the OPM, for their own
benefit.
176
Competition for Resources
There is a low-intensity disagreement among the
levels of local government over control of anticipated
and actual aid resources that the host communities
are to get 30%. The UN and OPM had set a condition
that all implementing partners had to allocate 30% of
all aid resources (training opportunities, livelihoods,
and so on) to benefit the host communities.
Representatives of all levels of local councils
interviewed in Yumbe district all argued that the
“30%” of aid projects destined for the host
communities should be targeted to, and controlled by,
the hosting village, sub-county and district
respectively. The ambiguity of, and lack of
transparency in, the “30% rule” has created more
overt conflict over these resources. There needs to
be clarification on who is entitled to what at all levels
of implementation, to avoid the escalation of conflicts.
Conclusion
In general, conflict transformation focuses on
relationships between parties. To achieve this, there
is a need for a clear mechanism for conflict
transformation – such as dialogue focusing on shared
interests and resources, since the conflict seems to
be focused mostly on resources such as land use and
access to firewood collection. The aid resources
serve to bridge, but also divide, the host and refugee
populations. There are also widening gaps around the
politics and grievances of hosting refugees, which
could widen if left unaddressed. However, these
challenges could also be an opportunity to lay the
groundwork for longer-term stability and peaceful
relations, with a view towards a likely long-term
refugee presence in Yumbe district. The government
and implementing partners should focus on clarifying
their position with the host communities on land use,
to avoid the host communities blaming the refugees.
There is also a need to train refugees on Ugandan
laws governing land and conflict management.
Special attention must be paid to women – most of
the refugees are women, and issues that affect their
daily lives must be prioritised.
There are some significant positive findings from the
Bidibidi settlement. The Ugandan government and aid
agencies responded to an emergency crisis of
unprecedented scale, all the while negotiating local
politics and mobilising emergency relief. The South
Sudan refugees, with some notable exceptions, have
integrated relatively peaceably. There are a number
of local and international NGOs working side by side
to support both the refugees and host communities to
cope with daily challenges. This is a window of
opportunity for collaboration between relevant
stakeholders involved in education, livelihoods and
conflict management. There is a small-scale butter
trade going on between the refugees and host
communities, especially between the women.
Refugee women exchange food for charcoal or
firewood from the host community women. This
creates a sense of common need for women, which
can further improve relationships.
Some recommendations to improve stability and
relations between all communities, and to prevent
further conflict in Bidibidi and its surrounds, are:
OPM should engage in talks with landowners and
clan chiefs over land rights and The chiefs and
landowners are so powerful that they can be spoilers
of peace. The community listens to them and trusts
them. Government officials and partners should use
these local leaders as connectors of peace to build
relationships between the host communities and
refugees.
Due to the scarcity of natural resources and its impact
on the environment, the Ugandan government and
partners should advocate to donors to scale up
existing projects for alternative energy. The firewood
issue needs to be resolved to avoid ongoing conflict
and intimidation, by providing alternative cooking
fuels that can replace wood fuel and charcoal, as well
as developing skills for the construction of Three
types of cooking fuel that can be explored are
briquettes, pellets and ethanol.
Dawa, I, "Conflict dynamics in the Bidibidi refugee settlement in Uganda", African Centre for the Constructive
Resolution of Disputes, 11/2/19, https://www.accord.org.za/conflict-trends/conflict-dynamics-in-the-bidibidi-
refugee-settlement-in-uganda/
177
There should be more capacity building for RWCs
and local committees to hold local courts for matters
between hosts and refugees in terms of alternative
dispute mechanisms and legal However, there is also
a need for awareness campaigns to ensure that the
local courts avoid adjudicating beyond their
jurisdiction.
Implementing partners should use the “Do No Harm”
conflict-sensitive approach, which focuses on
reducing the negative effects of aid on war and
conflict17 so as to minimise the drivers of conflict and
focus on connectors of peace.
Communal land ownership between chiefs and sub-
clan members should not be These are elders elected
by the community to be the custodians of community
properties, and the government needs to work with
them for access to any community resources.
Importantly, refugees need to be provided with land
for cultivation and resources for education on land
use.
Many refugees are still living with the effects of the
traumatic experience of war, which can be triggered
at any time. It is important to allocate resources such
as counselling services to respond to the trauma of
the refugee population. Médecins Sans
Frontières/Doctors Without Borders has already
phased out its emergency response in Yumbe, but
there is still the need for such services.
violence
Violence is often defined as physical or psychological force afflicted upon
another being. In the context of global politics, it could be seen as anything
someone does that prevents others from reaching their full potential. This
broader definition would encompass unequal distribution of power that
excludes entire groups from accessing resources essential for improved living
standards or well-being, and discriminatory practices that exclude entire
groups of people from accessing certain resources.

How Oil Companies Help Fund Violence in South 179

Sudan

Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Myth of 180

Monstrosity

Surviving structural violence in Zimbabwe : The case 184

study of a family coping with Violence

178
How Oil Companies Help Fund Violence in South Sudan
On February 20, the UN Commission on Human
Rights in South Sudan issued its third report. Despite
the peace deal signed six months ago in September,
it documented an increase in cases of rape and
sexual violence over the past year, concluding that
the crimes had “become quite normalized” in South
Sudan. Driving much of this is oil.
According to the report, the state-owned oil company,
Nile Petroleum Corporation (Nilepet), has
demonstrated a “total lack of transparency and
independent oversight” in its diversion of oil revenues
into the hands of government elites. The structure of
the company is deliberately designed to allow for
autocratic control: it is run by a managing director
who is accountable to a board of directors whose
members are appointed by the president. To the
board, the government has appointed loyalists,
particularly individuals from the National Security
Services (NSS), which has been accused [PDF] of
human rights abuses.
This process has allowed Nilepet‘s oil revenue to be
diverted to the security services, who in turn purchase
weapons and other military equipment. In fact, a
majority of Nilepet’s revenues in 2015 were used to
fund over two hundred thousand soldiers stationed in
conflict areas near oil fields. Further, Nilepet received
a letter from government elites asking for $1.5 million
for military expenses in 2016.
South Sudan produces around ninety million barrels
of oil a year and the vast majority of the revenue finds
its way back to political and economic elites, while,
according to 2016 data from the World Bank, the
poverty rate stands at 82 percent. With oil income
accounting for about 98 percent of the government’s
budget, the parties in conflict have targeted oil-
producing states and facilities in efforts to gain money
and power.
Munn, E, "How Oil Companies Help Fund Violence in South Sudan", Council for Foreign Relations, 14/3/19,
https://www.cfr.org/blog/how-oil-companies-help-fund-violence-south-sudan
179
The struggle has entirely neglected the needs of the
average citizen. A report by Global Witness
documented how some South Sudanese must resort
to the black market to obtain fuel, where prices can
reach 300 South Sudanese pounds ($2.30) just to fill
a one-liter plastic bottle, equivalent to almost $9 a
gallon.
Although Nilepet is under the complete control of the
government, it is considered a private company,
meaning it is not subject to the same oversight as a
government agency. The UN Commission on Human
Rights in South Sudan advocated for increased
accountability and transparency in oil companies,
such as Nilepet, to overcome deeply-rooted
corruption in oil-rich nations. This likely requires
international support against corrupt practices.
The U.S. Commerce Department has designated
foreign and domestic oil entities operating in South
Sudan as threats to U.S. national security because of
their role in the conflict. These other state-owned
companies, which dominate oil production in South
Sudan alongside Nilepet, are the Chinese National
Petroleum Company, Petronas of Malaysia, and the
Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporation. Unlike those
of China, Malaysia, and India, many other
international companies have abandoned oil
production in South Sudan altogether.
South Sudan is home to one of the worst
humanitarian crises in the world. International efforts,
such as those of the U.S. Department of Commerce,
are needed to call attention to the severity of the
issue and push South Sudan to implement
accountability and transparency in the oil industry and
among the security services.
Violence, Mass Incarceration, and the Myth of Monstrosity
Arthur Longworth is currently serving life without the
possibility of parole in Washington State. Art
committed murder at the age of 20. Now 51, Art has
become a teacher, an activist, and an award-winning
writer. Several years ago, he had the opportunity to
have his clemency petition considered. Art’s lawyer
offered two main arguments. The first had to do with
Art’s remarkable growth since his conviction. The
second concerned the horrific abuse Art experienced
as a child at the hands of his parents—and again
after the state placed him in a group home for boys.
During the hearing, Art’s sister Dawn described the
abuse they experienced as children: “My brother and
I were tied up, locked up, stripped of our clothes,
beaten till we would bleed and pass out. This was
normal life for us.” She went on to recount a
stunningly sadistic pattern of starvation and abuse
that persisted for years, despite the fact that she and
Art routinely arrived at school malnourished and
visibly injured.
Later, when Art was 11 and Dawn was 9, their
parents abandoned them. The state took custody of,
and immediately separated, the two children.
Eventually, state officials placed Dawn in a home with
a relatively stable and caring family. But they placed
Art in a group home where residents suffered regular
physical and sexual abuse. By age 16, Art had been
discharged from state custody and was living on the
streets. Tragically, Art’s downward spiral eventually
culminated in his murder of a 25-year-old female
acquaintance, Cynthia Nelson, and his sentence to
life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In most countries, such sentences do not exist or are
imposed exceedingly rarely. This is not the case in
the United States, where nearly 50,000 people have
been condemned to die in prison on the premise that
they are beyond redemption. But the impact of this
myth of monstrosity extends far beyond the prison
walls, limiting our ability to develop an effective and
humane solution to the problem of violence as well as
meaningful alternatives to the policies that made the
U.S. the world leader in incarceration.
180
For those of us who have been studying and
lamenting the state of the U.S. criminal justice system
for decades, the recent bipartisan embrace of criminal
justice reform is a welcome development.
Unfortunately, calls for reform remain highly limited
and often reinforce unhelpful ways of addressing
violence. As Senator Ted Cruz explained when
announcing his (initial) support for the Smart
Sentencing Act, his support for drug reform was not
indicative of a new way of responding to violence: “All
of us agree, if you have violent criminals, if you have
criminals who are using guns, who are using
violence, who are dealing drugs to children, the
criminal justice system should come down on them
like a ton of bricks.”
In “pro-reform” statements like these, the current
approach to violence is reinforced, and people who
are convicted of violent acts are more demonized
than ever. But the apparently stark division between
nonviolent drug offenders and people convicted of
violent crimes is largely mythical. Many of the people
who have been ensnared by the war on drugs have
lengthy rap sheets and have long lived in close
proximity to violence, often as its victims and
witnesses, sometimes as its perpetrators. Meanwhile,
people convicted of sex offenses and homicide, the
most serious violent crimes, are least likely to have
criminal records and have some of the lowest rates of
recidivism upon their release.
Recent calls for criminal justice reform rest on the
demonstrably false idea that people who have contact
with the criminal justice system can be neatly divided
into two distinct categories, and that only those in the
comparatively innocent (nonviolent) category deserve
reform. Drug policy reform is clearly needed and
important. But the United States would continue to
boast the largest prison population and one of the
highest incarceration rates in the world even if all of
prisoners serving time for a drug crime were released
tomorrow.
Observers on both the left and the right increasingly
use the term “mass incarceration” to call attention to
the unprecedented scale of imprisonment in the
United States. The U.S. is now home to 2.3 million
incarcerated people, 4.7 million people on probation
or parole, and tens of millions who have completed
their criminal sentence yet remain saddled with
incapacitating criminal records and oppressive legal
debt. But the problem is not only a matter of scale. At
its core, mass incarceration reflects the tenuousness
of our commitment to human rights, racial equity, and
social justice. Even more, it is a testament to our
reluctance to recognize the innumerable ways that
violence has shaped our country, our people, and our
way of doing “justice.”
Currently, fewer than one in six state prison inmates
is behind bars as a result of a drug crime, and only
one in 26 is serving time for drug possession. By
contrast, more than half of all state prisoners are
locked up because they were convicted of a violent
offense, and the already-long sentences imposed on
people convicted of violent crimes in the United
States have become significantly harsher. One in
nine U.S. prisoners are now serving a life sentence.
These facts are not widely appreciated. When asked
to explain our exceptionally high incarceration rates,
most Americans identify elevated crime rates as the
culprit. But U.S. crime rates have been dropping for
decades and are similar to those found in other
industrialized democracies.
There is, of course, one important exception to this
generalization: homicide. Even after falling
precipitously, the U.S. murder rate remains three to
ten times higher than those in comparable countries,
although it varies dramatically by geography and
demography. The homicide rate in Chicago’s
predominantly black West Garfield Park
neighborhood, for example, is more than 25 times
higher than the national average.
181
But our relatively high murder rate does not explain
mass incarceration: Only a very small proportion of
people living behind bars were convicted of homicide.
Instead, as a 2014 National Research Council report
shows, the unparalleled rise in the U.S. incarceration
rate is mainly the result of policies and practices that
send more people to prison and jail, and for longer
periods of time. As prison and jail populations have
grown, conditions of confinement have too often
deteriorated, and overcrowding, violence, inadequate
medical care, and the use of solitary confinement are
increasingly widespread.
The need to meaningfully address the problem of
violence and the criminal justice response to it is
clear. Too many people living in disadvantaged
neighborhoods face the threat of violence daily.
Incarcerating people who commit acts of violence—
people who are often from the same disadvantaged
neighborhoods, and have often also been the victim
of violence in the past—for extended periods in
inhumane conditions is not an effective response to
this problem.
Recent research shows that crime survivors agree
that current policies exacerbate rather than alleviate
the problem of violence. Reducing violence and truly
addressing survivors’ needs will require developing a
more thoughtful, preventative, and service-oriented
approach in which long-term incarceration is the
exception rather than the rule. Illuminating the
centrality of violence in our collective past and
present is a necessary step in this re-thinking, for it is
only by doing so that we can challenge the myth of
monstrosity upon which our current criminal justice
policies rest.
The vigor with which we demonize and penalize
people convicted of violent crimes stands in sharp
contrast to our collective failure to acknowledge the
violence upon which our nation was founded.
In his introduction to American Violence: A
Documentary History, historian Richard Hofstader
wrote, “What is impressive to one who begins to learn
about American violence is its extraordinary
frequency, its sheer commonplaceness in our history,
its persistence into very recent and contemporary
times, and its rather abrupt contrast with our
pretensions to singular national virtue.”
American violence has included everything from the
forceful subjugation of indigenous peoples, racial
violence, imperial wars, lynchings and mob violence
to innumerable forms of interpersonal violence. Of
these, war has been the preferred focus of historians,
many of whom have focused narrowly on battlefield
tactics, strategies, and so forth, often valorizing and
sanitizing the use of lethal violence in the process.
But it is not just historians who have been reluctant to
draw attention to the centrality of violence in U.S.
history. There is little public recognition of trans-
Atlantic trade in human beings that led to the
enslavement of 12 million Africans. The legacy of
racial violence that characterized slavery and Jim
Crow also lingers, while calls for reparations, continue
to be unanswered. Awareness and recognition of the
genocide of Native Americans also remains
inadequate.
At first glance, it appears that society has been
comparatively willing to acknowledge and address
family violence. The laws governing domestic tyranny
have evolved considerably: Violence directed at
partners and children is now statutorily recognized as
serious criminal behavior in all 50 states. Yet intimate
partner violence (experienced by 22 percent of
women and 7 percent of men) and child physical and
sexual abuse (which touches one in five children)
remain pervasive.
Sadly, the state’s failure to provide safe haven for
adults and children living in abusive situations often
compounds the injuries associated with family
violence. Tens of thousands of people (mostly
women) contending with domestic violence need, but
are unable to secure, safe temporary housing each
day, and their requests for services often go unmet.
182
Similarly, the abject failure of the U.S. foster care
system to provide safe and nurturing environments
for children—more than half of whom are children of
color—arguably constitutes a form of violence itself.
Indeed, truly reckoning with violence in the United
States requires considering structural as well as
interpersonal forms of violence. Popularized by health
activist and author Paul Farmer, the term “structural
violence” refers to the harm and suffering that occurs
when social structures and institutions prevent people
from meeting their basic needs. The U.S. has been,
and continues to be, an outlier among modern
democratic nations in terms of the degree of
structural violence it enacts. Inequality, poverty, and
lethal violence remain notably more pronounced in
the United States than in comparable countries. And
as Ta-Nehisi Coates notes, racism shapes not only
the distribution of poverty, but also its consequences:
Highly segregated urban neighborhoods with
concentrated poverty, overwhelmingly inhabited by
black people, are uniquely damaging.
In short, our enthusiasm for getting “justice” for violent
acts by punishing people convicted of them is not
matched by a passion for making amends for, or even
acknowledging, the centuries of lethal racial violence
that pervades our national history. Nor is our
collective desire to condemn those convicted of
violent crimes accompanied by an equally zealous
effort to address the interpersonal and structural
violence that so frequently precipitate the crimes we
rush to denounce. No one did anything to stop the
violence that was unleashed on Art for two decades,
but when he committed a serious act of violence, the
state’s response was swift, strong, and certain.
The erasure of the violence that so often foreshadows
criminal conviction is a remarkable feat. Researchers
have amassed a mountain of evidence showing that
people convicted of violent crimes, and prisoners in
general, are the targets of assaults, often throughout
their entire lives. Indeed, chronic deprivation and
long-term abuse is the norm in the biographies of
those serving time.
Not surprisingly, research also shows that children
who repeatedly experience trauma and abuse are far
more likely to end up incarcerated than children who
do not. In Just Mercy, attorney Bryan Stevenson
shows how the violence visited upon young people
who become justice-involved is so handily erased
when prosecutors, judges, and juries hold children as
young as 13 criminally responsible for their harmful
acts. In such cases, the child is deemed solely
responsible for his or her violent behavior, while the
rest of society is found innocent.
With all complicating realities erased, the idea that
violence is a consequence of the monstrosity of the
condemned lives on. The alternative view that
interpersonal violence is the expression of the
historical, structural, and social violence that
permeates society, and of our collective failure to
ensure equality and protect the vulnerable—recedes
with each condemnation of the “monsters” who fill our
prisons.
IT DID NOT TAKE LONG for the Washington state
clemency and pardons board to unanimously deny
Art’s clemency petition. As one board member
explained, “Some people grow up in similar
circumstances but don’t grow up in a life of crime. …
You make your choice and pay the price.” Dawn’s
suggestion that her parents and the state that failed
to protect Art also bear some responsibility for his
crime fell on deaf ears. Evidence regarding Art’s
dramatic maturation in recent decades was similarly
dismissed as irrelevant.
Beckett, K, Violence, "Mass Incarceration, and the Myth of Monstrosity", The American Prospect, 18/8/16,
www.prospect.org/article/violence-mass-incarceration-and-myth-monstrosity
183
We can never know what would have happened if the
board had actually considered these points. But the
board’s refusal to deeply reflect on them is indicative
of our impoverished way of thinking about violence.
As long as we continue to ignore the historical and
structural violence that has shaped, and continues to
plague, our country, to deny our collective
responsibility for it, and to insist that the sole cause of
violence is the monstrosity of the convicted, we will
never develop a more capacious, humane, and
effective approach to violence.
Developing policies that allow us to move away from
mass incarceration will also require re-evaluating our
assumptions about people who have been convicted
of a violent crime. Tinkering with the line that
separates comparatively innocent drug law violators
from the allegedly monstrous will do little to address
this problem. Neither will coming down on people
convicted of violent crimes “like a ton of bricks.”
Instead, a comprehensive re-examination of our
history, our penal system, and our collective response
to violence is in order.
Surviving structural violence in Zimbabwe : The case study
of a family coping with Violence
Research on violence in Zimbabwe has been limited
despite the visibility of state violence against citizens
that has been broadcast by the international media
since 2000 (Chitiyo 2000). Zimbabwe has a history of
violence both in the public and private spheres
(Sokwanele 2006). In the public arena, pre‑colonial
narratives speak of ethnic rivalry but it is the legacy of
the violence that was ushered in by colonial
occupation that has been instrumental in the
structural violence expressed and experienced within
the public and private spheres that has marred
Zimbabwe’s post‑independence experience.
What is violence ? This article addresses this
question by providing a situated answer. In an edited
discussion of international perspectives on family
violence, Malley‑Morrison (2004) suggests that we all
have implicit theories about the meanings of social
phenomenon, like violence. By implicit theory,
Malley‑Morrison refers to the notion of personal
constructs of meaning about a phenomenon.
According to this social constructivist view, people
actively construct understandings about themselves,
others and relationships. We are not just passive
learners of facts about the social world
(Malley‑Morrison 2004). As such, implicit theories
about violence develop through one’s experience of
their social environment and the stories unfolding
there.
In this chapter, I argue that family violence is a
manifestation of structural violence, associated with a
political economy that has sacrificed many of its
citizen’s livelihoods. Life in Zimbabwe has historically
been lived through structural violence and the nature
and consequences of this violence are visible in all
aspects of the social life of Zimbabweans. Using the
social constructivist perspective where implicit theory
informs what I view as violence, I argue that
Zimbabwe’s heritage of violence in the political
economy creates a breeding ground for family
violence. Within the private sphere of home, role,
expectation, status incongruency and competition
between family members for limited resources all put
pressure on family life (Goode 1971, Campbell 1992)
and this creates an environment in which family
violence is likely to erupt.
184
Given the socio‑historical context of the political
economy in Zimbabwe, I argue that the family is a
power system of unequal members like any other but,
in an environment of inherited violence and when an
individual within that system does not have
resources, he or she is more likely to use violence to
get what they want. The connection of the
socio‑historical context of structural violence helps to
explain the correlation between material deprivation
and family violence in the case presented in this
discussion. After the European invasion and
occupation of Zimbabwe, violence became an active
instrument to entrench coercive settler power and
rule. But violence also became the instrument for
dislodging settler power and rule and achieving
Zimbabwe’s political liberation (Sokwanele, 2006).
The tentacles of violence reach far and wide.
Financial hardship and poverty have historically been
the most interfering and destabilizing factors for the
vast majority of the population in Zimbabwe and have
contributed to an elevation of violence on and within
the family and at a macro level, which I call ‛structural
violence’.
I begin the chapter with the socio‑historical context of
the political economy of Zimbabwe, which provides a
summary of major issues related to the country’s
structural violence. This is followed by a family
vignette in which experience and voice reveal
conceptions of family violence as embedded in a
structurally violent environment. The family whose
experience is shared here was encountered in my
earlier work relating to an understanding of families,
their work and livelihoods in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe
(Moyo 2001). However, this work did not directly
research violence per se but family well‑being. The
entrenchment of violence in Zimbabwean society and
an encounter with a family of older adults living with
an adult son who was ‛troubled and troubling’ led me
to consider sharing their experiences to show the
nature of structural violence as it is experienced in
family interactions. What forms does structural
violence take within the family ? What do elders who
are experiencing violence say about it ? What does
the child who is perpetuating the violence feel ?
Using a case example, I recount a historicized story
of the experiences of structural violence in one family.
The narrative is mainly told from the vantage point of
three family members, the fifty‑six‑year‑old mother,
the father who is in his late sixties and their
twenty‑six‑year‑old son. The issues that are
perceived to have precipitated the violence and the
different forms of violence provide texture to the
complexity of violence as a social phenomenon. The
experience of this family is situated in the
socio‑historical context of Zimbabwe to connect
interpersonal violence to structural violence. The
intention is not to generalize the experience of a
single family but to highlight the particular experience
of one family in understanding violence, a visible but
hidden social problem in Zimbabwe. I have used a
broad definition of structural violence to avoid a priori
normed naming of family violence but through the
vignette we glean a complex understanding of what is
considered family violence, in this context. Violence is
inherited when the perpetrators are excused and the
victims are blamed for not avoiding violence
(Sokwanele, 2006). Violence can also be silent and
loud ; silent violence refers to the threats, the
coercion, the insults and the deep scaring that has no
physical marks, and the loud violence refers to the
physical harm to people, to their property (Chitiyo
2000) and their environment including the social
environment of the community.
Like any social phenomena, family violence must be
understood within the socio‑cultural context in which it
occurs. Interpersonal and intrapersonal violence in
Zimbabwe takes place within a context of structural
violence. Structural violence refers to a mode of
human relations involving the domination and
exploitation in economic, social, political and
psychological terms between individuals, between
social groups and classes within and beyond
societies, and globally, between entire societies (Gil
1998). Examples of structural violence experienced
as personal violations and interpersonal violence are
numerous in Zimbabwe. Consider the visibly
segregated residential spaces that once entrenched
the divide between the Africans and the whites. Now,
the divide marks the material‑rich from the poor.
185
The organization of living space in Zimbabwe speaks
to the profound consequences of the racialization of
the political economy, meaning the use of race as a
means to foster unequal development at all levels of
society (Moyo 2001). The history of the racialization
of Zimbabwe’s political economy gave ‛white’
privileges of power in controlling the economy and
polity from colonial occupation in the 1890s until
Zimbabwe’s independence in 1980. The
consequences of this control led to devastating
socio‑economic conditions for the African population
that suffered massive poverty, high unemployment,
poor housing and a lack of access to health care
(Mandaza 1986, Moyo 2001). Unfavourable
socio‑economic conditions have a tendency to put
pressure on personal and intrapersonal relations
leading to tensions and high crime rates involving
forms of physical, psychological, social,
environmental, political and economic violence.
In a country marred by poverty, it is not uncommon
for a person to be attacked by another on the streets.
People endure insults of all sorts and pickpocketing
occurs during the constant body searches that people
are forced to go through by state functionaries i.e. the
police and the army and by private security guards
supposedly protecting individuals. Imagine a knife
being held to your throat as you are ordered by
assailants to hand over your purse and even the
clothes you are wearing. In the privacy of one’s
home, thieves working in gangs and those who make
a living by hassling (otsotsi) threaten families by
breaking and entering the sanctuary of their homes.
Burglaries are the order of the day. When using
public transportation a person’s dignity is threatened
as people are packed into vehicles like sardines.
Family members, neighbours and friends accuse
each other of witchcraft, and public brawls are not a
rarity. In social care and public life shaming is used
as a way of care. At home and at school children are
beaten into submission. Children learn young “that it
is acceptable ; it is the privilege of the perpetrator and
must be suffered and tolerated by victims. Not
because the perpetrator is right, but because they
have power … children learn to become victims of
superior force backed by the authority of a revered
institution” (Sokwanele 2006).
In schools, a few select children learn how to be in
charge of and discipline other children through the
prefect system, which has been passed down from
the English public school system and is the moulder
of colonial officials (Ibid.). These children are
permitted to exert considerable brutality through
physical punishment, exertion and psychological
punishment that often entails shaming and
humiliation. If you are the victim, you are supposed to
endure such treatment as perhaps one day you will
be able to get back at those who tortured you by
torturing others. This is the inherited violence that is
structurally entrenched and carried over to the public
and private spheres so that everyday lives are
characterized by structural violence and a mode of
human relations involving domination and exploitation
in economic, social, political and psychological terms
in everyday situations. This is not to say that this is
the norm but people have become accustomed to
violence. Outbursts of violence from the state, fellow
citizens and institutions of public life have become
part of everyday life. However, no social violence is
as humiliating as that perpetuated by family
members, particularly one’s own children and
grandchildren. In the privacy of family life, scars of
structural violence are more visible in interpersonal
and intrapersonal familial relations. Concha‑Eastman
(2001) and Okulate (2005) point out that the
intentional use of force against another person in
close relationships or otherwise is now acknowledged
as a universal public‑health problem. The connectivity
of structural violence and personal violence often gets
missed.
Family violence in Zimbabwe must be located and
analysed within the wider context of the political
economy of Zimbabwean society to understand the
structural and personal expressions of violence. The
Republic of Zimbabwe came into existence in 1980
out of the struggle for African rule that spanned over
a century against white settler governments whose
roots were entwined in European imperialism and
British colonialism. In this case, the use of physical
violence was historic. The scramble for Africa by
Europeans, the use of force, the expropriation of
African lands and the massive relocations of African
peoples to create «white territory» illustrate the
horrific physical violence of occupation.
186
The psychological, social, political, environmental and
economic nature of structural violence is exemplified
by the racialization of the political economy of
Zimbabwe. For the most part African families and
their livelihoods occurred within the context of a
racialized society, with racialization defining the
emergence of racism as a tool to exclude (Moyo
2001). This became embedded in social practices
and institutions throughout Zimbabwean society for at
least a hundred years of colonial rule until
independence in 1980. Racialization was a
state‑sponsored strategy of exclusion in which the
overarching ideology was racial supremacy, where
what was white, urban, educated and modern was
supported while that which was African, rural and
illiterate was underdeveloped. Through this ideology,
most Africans were considered backward, ignorant
and passive and were often treated in a
condescending, paternalistic manner and were
marginalized in all spheres of social life. The lifestyles
of Africans and their (distorted) culture were
considered inferior and given no recognition or space.
A lopsided political economy resulted and with it
came massive resource inequality, the cultural
denigration of African ways of life, and ideas about
femininity and masculinity would also change to
accommodate the changes in social structure.
This racialization has not been a constant ; it changes
with changing environments to safeguard the
interests of the dominant group (Moyo & Kawewe
2002) and intersects with other categorizations of
people, i.e. gender, ethnicity, class, region, marital
status and age. It is important to note that, through
oppressive relations with people of European descent
in Zimbabwe, African ethnic groups generally lost
authority to explicitly define their values, their
traditions and customs and therefore to maintain
societal sanctions against inter and intrapersonal
violence. Historically, since the national policing
system in Zimbabwe was developed in a racialized
environment to control and police Africans, there is a
general lack of trust in these systems when it comes
to curbing violence, and often Africans as individuals
confronting interpersonal and intrapersonal violence
have to take individual and/or group actions to protect
themselves.
African ethnic groups in Zimbabwe are largely seen in
the social sciences literature as patrilineal and
collectivist in their family ideological outlook (Parpart
1995, Riphenburg 1997). Gendered role expectation
is part of the expressions of family ideology, for males
the breadwinner role is emphasized and for females
the responsibilities are related to care even though
women are expected to be economic providers too,
and gender dynamics have evolved with the
institutionalization of westernity. Elders in families are
supposed to receive acts of deference. Prior to
colonization, gender roles had been fluid but the
collision of African collectivist arrangements and the
ideology of domesticity created different experiences
(Gaidzanwa 1996). For example, during colonial
governments, African men were forced to work for
wages in the white cities, while their wives, daughters
and sisters were required to stay home, illustrating
the domestication of African women (Moyo &
Kawewe 2002). The settler economy catered mostly
to the minority white population in Zimbabwe and the
majority of the population, which is African,
experienced dispossession. Because of the
racialization of the economy, social care at state level
was preserved for the few, African families have thus
evolved as the social security for their members,
providing the indirect sanctions and support of
members but also providing a variety of necessities,
for example, jobs, credit, capital, care for the sick and
the elderly, emotional support, and companionship.
Ideally, the interdependence of family members is
emphasized and family members are expected to
take care of each other. Remnants of reciprocal
obligations of family members remain visible in the
pooling of resources, with adults supporting the
young in the expectation that the young will take care
of the old (Moyo 2001). However, these relations are
also marred in disagreement and conflict. Obligations
are not only confined to parents but to siblings and
extended family members and if one is perceived as
successful, children may be fostered with relatives to
allow opportunities for education and work. Family
members working far away from home are expected
to send remittances (Moyo 2001), but financial
dependency in a collapsed economy traps some
family members in violence.
187
Societal changes resulting from colonialism,
urbanization, wage employment, migration, wars and
political destabilization, economic restructuring, and
the speed of globalization have created different
environments according to people’s expectations of
one another. Many families with few economic and
social resources reproduce their livelihoods in
extreme indigence resulting in a strain in familial
relations, particularly if members are not able to
positively adapt to the normed cultural and gender
role expectations. Instead of banding together,
conflict in families may cause the separation and
isolation of its members. For example, where the
male’s role was to protect family members, if this role
is undermined men respond by using violence against
family members to get whatever they want as is the
case at micro level with the vignette shared here.
Similar threads are observable at macro level with the
current administration at state level.
The changes that occurred post independence were
particularly related to policies of economic
restructuring and present different sets of dynamics
for families. At independence in 1980, radical policies
were made by the new African government to counter
the effects of colonialism in most areas of social life
and blatant racism became intolerable (Bond 1999). It
was clear that colonial capitalism had not served the
majority of the people well, considering all the
socio‑economic imbalances during the colonial
period. Expansion of governmental support in basic
necessities including education, housing, health care,
sanitation and water became increasingly noticeable
in post‑independent Zimbabwe. Direct investments in
people were seen to be essential for the social
development of the economy. Generally, there was
improvement in the quality of life for many after
independence, a situation that would be reversed in
the 1990s with the institutionalization of structural
adjustment programmes that pushed for privatization
and market‑based solutions in all areas that were
subsidized by government. The decommodification of
some basic necessities had ensured improvement in
the quality of life, for example, in education, health
care, housing and prospects for social mobility by
removing subsidies, but poverty escalated (Bond
1999).
While concerns were about growth, equity issues and
nation building, the ZANU‑PF led government
sponsored atrocities along ethnic lines, attacking the
Ndebele as a minority ethnic group in Zimbabwe. In
the international arena, problems of state violence,
like the Gukurahundi atrocities, were not a topic of
public discussion as the international community
busied itself with shaping Zimbabwe as a model of
smooth transitioning from white settler rule to
independence. The extent and consequences of this
violence remain a major public health issue.
Political economic changes in the 1990s, particularly
the restructuring of the economy in an attempt to
align the Zimbabwean political economy to
westernity, also brought concerns that impact all
levels of Zimbabwean society economically, politically
and socially. The push for privatization saw the
dismantling of many state‑owned businesses. The
process of privatization occurred within a stagnating
economic environment that resulted in a dramatic
reduction in the quality of life for many. In the process
of restructuring, public companies were privately
transferred to individuals as private properties and the
capital was siphoned off. Bankruptcies followed and
many people lost their jobs and subsequently their
personal dignity as employment disappeared and
incomes fell dramatically (Bond 1999). The resulting
massive unemployment and increases in the prices of
basic commodities led to protests and sometimes
violent confrontations between the state, workers and
students. The unemployment situation has been
depressing for youths who have just completed high
school and college through expanded education
opportunities : this population, although educated, still
cannot find employment. Shattered expectations are
a form of violence as they undermine a person’s
physical, psychological and social health.
Increasingly, Zimbabwean youth were entering a job
market that only offered positions as informal
workers, if they could get the capital to start even that
kind of work. Many migrated to countries where
capital was seen to be concentrated.
188
But even there jobs available to non‑citizens are often
at the bottom end of the service sector, and as such
the generation that came to adulthood in
post‑independent Zimbabwe has not been able to
realize the value of its education and has experienced
an assault on their human dignity.
Men and women sought jobs outside Zimbabwe but
the service economy in areas where capital is
concentrated usually prefers women migrants. Men’s
insecurities have mounted as they were expecting to
find employment. In the lopsided economy, gender
discrimination favoured males while women had
cultivated self‑employment, and with the contracting
economy were able to provide their own work (Moyo
2001). Even though such work is confined to the
lower rungs of the economy, it has provided a means
of survival. Male workers suffered most in the
economic restructuring because of their reliance on
paid work (Moyo 2001). Massive unemployment and
shattered expectations have resulted in frustrations
and powerlessness which have been translated into
emasculation (Fourie 2004), and led to a rise in
self‑destructive behaviour (such as alcoholism) and
violence against elders to prove their masculinity
where they have failed to meet familial expectations.
With the breakdown of the economy, older adults are
the ones with some assets and resources, and have
at least had jobs and managed to accrue resources
that can be translated into money. However, younger
adults are the ones who are being heavily victimized
by the collapse of the economy. They have no jobs
and few sources of income and have to rely on older
adults in the community. This has created massive
familial tensions and interpersonal violence, where
culturally, care was expected by older adults from the
younger generation. The burden of care today is
falling heavily on aging parents. Added to this is the
AIDS/HIV pandemic that is killing the younger adults,
and care for them is also increasingly falling on the
older adults. When they die, orphaned children often
remain in the care of older adults who will probably
not have anticipated outliving their own children let
alone grandchildren. Because of the absence of any
public support, older adults are the only safety net for
their families. People’s scarce financial resources are
being used up to cover basic necessities and this
means that money tensions have also mounted as
family members compete for scarce resources.
These problems have largely been played out as
individual private problems because community
protest has been met with an unsympathetic
response from government officials who have used
coercive strategies to redistribute land, as is seen in
the government‑sponsored commercial farm
invasions (Chitiyo 2000). The current dynamics of the
Zimbabwean political economy reflect and entrench
structural violence, which is expressed in some
situations as family violence, taking the form of
violence against the elderly and family members.
Sometimes the violence is « silent », at other times it
is “loud” (Ibid.). Violence against elders as part of
family violence is a subject that is rarely talked about
in public. There has been considerable discussion
and efforts to stop domestic violence, particularly
violence by domestic partners be they married or in
live‑in partnerships. Extensive efforts have been
mounted to stop violence against children but
violence against elders remains a silent subject.
Hidden from the public is the violence against men,
particularly in terms of material deprivation within a
patriarchal‑dominated society.
MaMlilo had been married to Moyo for forty‑five
years. At the time of the interviews Moyo was in his
mid‑sixties and was retired from the Zimbabwe
national army and owned a small construction
business. Like many of his generation, he had been
forced to take up arms in the liberation war in an
attempt to dismantle the racialized political economy.
Moyo talks about a political economy that greatly
disadvantaged Africans. In his younger adult life he
had been a labour organizer and attempted to
politically engage the settler governments into
realizing the sculpturing of inequality but since the
inherited Zimbabwean solution has never been to
seek justice, to instil respect for dignity and protect
those who were vulnerable, he had been tortured and
imprisoned for organizing for change. Moyo and his
family had survived the structural violence in silence
but the forcible removal of their lands to make way for
white farms left his family with limited means to earn
a living and was done with such brutal force that the
violence had moved him to join the struggle for
independence. It is under these conditions that Moyo
joined the liberation struggle to dislodge coercive
settler rule. State‑perpetrated violence has been
Zimbabwe’s heritage (Sokwanele 2006).
189
Talking about the effect of this violence, Moyo
describes the separation from his family as a bad
time in his life because he was not part of his
children’s lives as they were growing up, an issue
now being raised by his son. A difficulty for Moyo was
going against what he perceived as the norm, «a man
takes care of his family and ‛trains’ the sons to take
care of themselves. Instead of engaging in the
personal development of his family he had to make
sacrifices (of which he is proud) to become a freedom
fighter. Being in the army Moyo learnt that power is
gained and retained by the use of brute force. After
independence, he stayed in the army as he had no
other means of earning a living, but being stationed in
another part of the country was devastating for him.
In his words : « I had to leave the army as soon as I
could get a reasonable pension and I wanted to
become a family again. » This conversation highlights
that the expectation was that both parents would help
with parenting but because of employment
opportunities families ended up divided, with
husbands rarely sharing in the raising of their
children. Apparently, families experience silent
violence when spouses are not able to share
parenting. This would be a point of contention in
Moyo’s family as husband and wife MaMlilo perceived
the difficulties with their son Dingi as emanating from
the absence of male authority in the home.
MaMlilo, a feisty 56‑year‑old woman, raised her five
adult children : three girls are living and working in
South Africa, one older boy who still lives at home, as
do a younger boy of ten and several grandchildren.
We started the conversation about the well‑being of
children. Moyo’s family was raising four grandchildren
and a “troubled and troubling adult son” was living
with them. “Troubled and troubling” were Moyo’s
words to describe their son, Dingi, who was 26 at the
time of the interviews and living with his parents, and
had a girlfriend and a two‑month‑old baby. Three of
the grandchildren belonged to the daughters who
were working in Johannesburg and providing well for
their children and Moyo and his wife. In MaMlilo’s
words : “my girl children were born with free spirits
and it helped that they matured at a time that the
government was promoting women’s liberation… I
rely on those girls as if they were men.
That is what I keep telling Moyo that today it is not the
male children who make homes it is women. It is
better to have daughters : they work for their children
and support them. I can never go hungry as I eat with
the grandchildren. But with the boys it is different they
never go anyway instead they bring trouble to us”.
The trouble referred to here is the silent family
violence because the son is unable to meet family
expectations. The question that is raised here is that
male children have been unable to figure out ways of
engaging in government‑sponsored women’s
liberation. As the vignette unfolds we learn that
MaMlilo’s definition of family violence largely hinges
on the son not following expected family roles. In this
case, unlike the daughters who have managed to
take care of their parents, the son was shaming the
family by not adopting the role of “helpful” son. We
see violence as expressed in the inability of the son
to follow family roles, a definition of violence that is
often hidden when the focus is only on physical and
visible violence.
MaMlilo extended the definition of violence to include
physical and psychological abuse they as adults had
endured. MaMlilo in her spirited manner began to tell
her story of coping with abuse from their son.
Evidently, Dingi is the older boy in the family and as
such had been the favoured child, a son who would
carry the family name. MaMlilo explained : “Perhaps I
treated him differently because I was proud to have a
boy. It used to be that boys where the ones who
would take care of us older parents. It used to be
boys marry and their wives take care of us because
girl children join other families. The saying was that
boys build a home. This is how I treated my boy
Dingi. I had expected him to be that home builder. I
protected Dingi even in school when he got into
trouble and was beaten, I would argue for him”.
Clearly, the expectation in this family was that male
children were supposed to care for the family and
aging parents, but this expectation is undermined in
MaMlilo’s family, as their older son Dingi is seen as
irresponsible. However, the blatant preference for
female children as models of success and
responsibility means a revision in family ideology. But
this revision does not appear to be going smoothly as
it presents familial problems that intensify the silent
violence.
190
In MaMlilo’s family the male child is no longer seen as
an asset because he is unable to secure economic
advantages and become a future provider. This
gender role incongruence acts as an underlying factor
in the violence between an adult male son who
perceives emasculation and is unable to fulfil the
expectation of the continuity of patrilinity. Instead,
female children have become a family asset, and
bearing children out of wedlock is no longer a shame
but offers continuity of families by providing
grandparents with grandchildren who can look after
them in their old age. In the case of MaMlilo, her
daughters’ marriage and/or attachment to a male
without secure economic standing was seen as a
liability. The unkind treatment of Dingi’s girlfriend by
MaMlilo, as an elder, may exemplify the revisions in
gender expectations.
Apparently both Moyo and MaMlilo had come to the
conclusion that raising boys was a challenge after the
frustrations they felt with Dingi. He had completed his
high‑school education and passed only a single
subject although five passes are usually required for
any further training. He had repeated his O level
exams twice and had done poorly each time. In
school he had been a boy who was often humiliated
and in his younger years his mother had been his
protector. Seeing that he was not gifted academically,
his parents tried to push him towards being a
mechanic’s apprentice. Evidently, Dingi had the
support of his parents who tried to help him become a
successful child by supporting his education. Besides
his personal difficulties in school Dingi is among the
many graduates who perceive themselves as the
“sacrificed generation” who lost out on employment
opportunities and whose education could not be
translated into jobs and earnings because of the
collapse of the economy. The only jobs available to
Dingi and many youths were in the informal sector
and were unappealing because of the precarious
nature of the work and the low wages they offered.
Shattered job expectations have left Dingi confused
about his purpose in life.
However, Moyo, as part of the cohort of older adults
who had secured resources before the collapse of the
economy, managed to run his one‑man construction
company and had even tried to entice Dingi into
becoming part of the company. To this, Dingi was
reported to have explained to his parents that he was
not interested in becoming a dagga boy meaning the
one who lifts the brick‑layering mortar. Evidently,
Dingi had anticipated an office job and not manual
labour. His parents were troubled by his lack of job
and income so they tried to find him work. His mother
had provided money for him to try his luck in South
Africa as his three sisters had found employment
there and were able to send remittances. Job
prospects were perceived as better but Dingi was
unlucky as he got deported several times. He
suffered the humiliation of being rounded up, beaten
and tortured by the authorities, so that he would
never think of returning.
Apparently, the violence and humiliation had not been
a deterrent as Dingi tried to re‑enter South Africa
several times before he gave up and came back
home. On his return his father managed to find him a
job through his contacts as a general hand in a small
company making plastic products. At the time of the
interviews (1999‑2000), both his parents were afraid
that Dingi would not keep his job because he had
problems interacting with people and was drinking
and gambling a lot. On one of my visits to Moyo’s
house I experienced firsthand the contempt Dingi had
for people around him. He had airs of
self‑importance, and one Saturday morning that I
visited his family he was still asleep around 11 :00
a.m. His ten‑year‑old brother explained that he had
come home drunk at 3 :00 a.m., not caring that he
had a small child. When he got home he had started
fighting with his girlfriend. It had been quite difficult to
quieten Dingi down. MaMlilo complained “you have
seen with your own eyes this is what he does, wakes
up late and eats, gets cleaned up and is out again
until midnight or the early hours of the morning. He
comes home when we are all asleep and expects us
– his old parents – to get out of bed, unlock the doors
for him and serve him hot food. If we don’t, he starts
his routine of insults and threatens to beat us”
191
This is the silent violence that the family has endured.
Dingi seemed grouchy and never seemed to have
any sustained interaction with his family. The son’s
behaviour troubled the father who blames the
inherited violence that forced him to leave his family.
Moyo shared that at some point Dingi had begun to
harass his mother for money, this was called “loud
violence”. When this happened Moyo had confronted
Dingi who began to threaten his father with gangs.
The father would not be a physical match for his
younger son so they conceded and gave him the
money he needed to avoid insults and threats, the
“silent violence”. At the time of the interviews Moyo
was anxious and afraid that somebody was going to
get hurt one of these days because Dingi was out of
control. In Moyo’s words, “it has been troubling and
troubled moments raising boys”.
Dingi's young brother related another incident.
MaMlilo had been born into a large family and her
extended family supports each other. One of her
sisters had an adult child who has been in and out of
the hospital because of AIDS. In the ten‑year‑old’s
words : “Our mother had not been to the hospital to
visit our cousin because she was not feeling well
herself … every adult has to visit those who are ill.”
Dingi’s younger brother explained that one day he
was in the city centre with his mother and they met
the relative who had been hospitalized. “It was the
three of us, our mother, Dingi and me. I remember
now he had to help with finding mealie meal and carry
groceries that is why Dingi was with us. On that trip
we met our sick cousin and our mother gave him
some money excusing herself that she was not able
to visit him in hospital. After leaving the sick cousin,
Dingi jumped on our mother with words demanding
why she had given money to the sick cousin yet she
had never given him anything. That afternoon mother
avoided what would have been a potential
confrontation in public with Dingi by just brushing his
complaints off”. In the younger brother’s words : “I
was afraid that if she tried to reason with him he
would start beating our mother right there on the
street.
Although we are born and raised by the same mother
and father and we have been taught the same lesson
to respect our elders, Dingi is different. He is my older
brother but I am afraid of him now. He was not always
like this”. The silent violence is mainly psychological
abuse and the fear that familial role incongruence
would be replaced by loud violence, the actual
physical beating of the elderly mother. Seeing the
boy’s distress, Moyo injected, “you see even his
young brother is now afraid of him. He used to be an
aloof child growing up. Always punished in school,
humiliated by other children but we never thought it
would come to this. His girlfriend has been hit several
times. I am sure that child is asking herself many
times why she attached herself to him. As we said, he
works but we have never seen a cent from him. After
he gets paid he goes out drinking in pubs and clubs.
We don’t know what is going on with him because
now even the cries of his baby make him angry. Can
you imagine even the cries of his own child make him
all mean ?» Moyo continued to describe the efforts
they had made to help their son «MaMlilo and I have
tried to take him to traditional healers (kubosiyazi) to
understand what is going on with him. When we give
him the medicines to cleanse him, he has attacked us
for bewitching him. However, we know that the
bewitching thing here is alcohol and it is shattered
dreams that are destroying our son”.
Clearly these parents were distressed by the actions
of their adult son. MaMlilo and Moyo in their narrative
gave an impression that they were interested in
protecting their children. They had wanted the best
for their children and were now frustrated about a son
who had not embraced their efforts. Because he was
no longer a child the parents had indicated that they
had reported him to the police on several times when
he had physically assaulted them. MaMlilo’s words,
“we report him to the police so that they could help us
by talking sense to him because he does not listen to
us anymore but we are afraid to let him go to prison.
So, we are forced to find the police when things get
out of hand, then he promises to listen and not repeat
his deeds. We accept his apologizes and then he
goes drinking and it starts all over again”. The police
are used to finding ways to punish people but in
prison there is no way of undoing the embedded
structural violence.
192
At the time of the interviews Dingi’s parents were
hoping that he would move out of their house and the
situation with his girlfriend having a baby seemed to
suggest that perhaps he would move on. At the same
time, his drinking and reliance on his parents
suggested that he was home to stay. In his parents’
home Dingi was demanding money not only for his
upkeep but often for his drinking. Abuse of one’s
elders in the form of financial abuse is apparent in
MaMlilo’s words : “he comes at one o’clock in the
morning and he will knock and demand that we get
up and open the door. He knows that it is not safe
around here and we are elderly and afraid of tsotsi
(gangs of thieves) but still he does not take this into
account. When he comes in the middle of the night he
demands food. And when there is no food for him he
becomes very aggressive. First it was banging of
doors, then throwing things around, then it came to
be targeted at me as the person who keeps the
house. He does not wake up until noon. And when he
is up, all of us and the younger children have to be
walking on egg shells fearing that our moves will
anger him”.
Apparently, Dingi had physically pushed his father
and threatened the younger children as well. MaMlilo
explained that to try to keep the peace in their house
they had tried giving him what he wanted – usually
money. But whenever they were unable to, he would
become verbally abusive particularly towards his
mother who after trying to cleanse his spirit was
accused of bewitching him, and this was why he was
experiencing problems. The mother, in addition to
keeping house and providing food, is also expected to
have positive aura to enable children to be come
successful. Yet when she tries to rely on traditional
healing, these activities are perceived as bewitching
and the violence escalates. MaMlilo explained that
relations with her son became tense after his
girlfriend got pregnant and moved into MaMlilo’s
home. In MaMlilo’s version of things, the son and his
girlfriend were not helping with the household chores
or with the care of the grandchildren but expected her
to work for them. MaMlilo felt that this was offensive
because younger adult children were supposed to
revere older people.
MaMlilo explained that whenever she demanded that
the daughter‑in‑law help, Dingi would be offended
and to show his disapproval of his mother would
shove her and shower her with insults. Sometimes
the tensions escalated into violence, with the son
using physical force against his mother and she, in
turn, using objects to fight back. Again, MaMlilo
explained that it was on these occasions that they
reported him to the police but for fear of him ending
up into prison, she had often dropped the charges.
She explained that her son had pushed her too far
and after the next incident she would be likely to have
him arrested. It turned out that MaMlilo feared her
daughters’ disapproval if her own son were sent to
prison as a result of her actions. In her words : “I am
afraid of sending him to prison, I am afraid that the
other children would not understand why his mother
sent their brother to jail”.
Dingi complained that he did not have a secure job
and this was frustrating. Casual employment meant
that he was not able to meet his financial needs and
those of his new family. In his words, “one feels
hopeless, you work but the pay is little, things are
expensive, prices of things go up everyday and then
you come home and parents are at you for being a
failure it gets difficult to handle. I know I have done
wrong with the loud violence, fights and insults“.
While the precipitating factors for violence against his
parents related to money matters, Dingi apparently
felt that parental stress about being a failure resulted
in arguments that escalated into violence. He
recognized that his response was wrong but his
alcohol consumption, which he did not see as a
problem, usually led to the verbal and physical
violence.
Because of his lack of resources and his continued
reliance on his parents, Dingi felt that his mother was
discriminatory against his girlfriend and that she had
favourites among her daughters. He said, the care is
with those who bring in hard currencies at the end of
the month. Those of us without rands become nothing
in this home.» The tensions of resources and status
inconsistencies are poignantly highlighted in
MaMlilo’s son.
193
When Dingi does not have rands (foreign currency) to
contribute to his parent’s house, he uses violence to
assert the resource power that he does not have.
Dingi justified his ‛temper’ as he described his
behaviour towards his mother and related an incident
that touches on status inconsistency and silent
violence. “One day I was coming from town and I met
mother with a neighbour and they were clearly talking
about us children and mother boosting how her girls
had been successful and when I approached them,
mother did not even introduce me as her son, which
shows that she does not like me but likes her girls. To
be unacknowledged by your own parent as part of her
family is humiliating.
To complicate the situation, I later learnt that Dingi
had been coping with the realization that he was HIV
positive. The unsettling issue was that his private
troubles created havoc in the family and family
members were only addressing the presenting
violence. Dingi survived by acting tough and drowning
his sorrows in alcohol but in the process has become
a menace to everyone in his family.
Violence has to be understood within the context in
which it unfolds. In this case, the family is a power
system embedded in the constellation of an inherited
history of violence – the context of the political
economy of Zimbabwe. – and structural violence
becomes entwined in familial relations. When a family
member does not have resources, or their status is
undermined, they will use violence to assert power.
The absence of resource ownership among young
adults, as illustrated in the example, means that
young adults like Dingi turn to their parents for
support while the expectation is that older adults
would turn to younger adults for support and
protection. If Dingi’s drinking and gambling habits are
not satisfied, violence and threats are used to exhort
money from those who are perceived as having it.
Family violence is expressed in silent violence in the
form of threats, shaming and humiliation but this can
escalate into loud physical violence.
The case here not only explains conflict in family
ideology where a son – because of the privilege of
being male in a gendered society – is supposed to
provide honour to the family by showing responsibility
and protection for parents and females but also the
fact that Zimbabwean society is plagued by violence.
At both the micro familial level and governmental
level, the use of violence is apparent. The son suffers
status inconsistency as a result of widespread
unemployment and low wages and this leads to the
use of violence to assert the authority of maleness in
the family. Yet because of societal changes, the son
finds that the family ideology is revised and he has
difficulties coping with the new expectations. His
mother – as the family protector – does not make it
easy, and so the violence escalates.
The revision of family ideology within a social
environment marred by violence and poverty is felt
negatively by the son, who sees himself as losing
ground as a result of the changes : a young adult
male is no longer sure what his role is since male
authority is challenged by female resource ownership.
MaMlilo, the older woman, does not hide the failings
of her son and even discusses the situation with
neighbours. The silent violence goes both ways. The
older parent preferred her daughters to her male child
who was seen as “being a trouble and creating
troubles” instead of contributing to family well‑being.
Failure to fulfil his manly role is not only a family issue
but is shared in the community, leading to the son’s
loss of standing in his immediate family but also in the
extended family and among neighbours. The loss of
this power is compensated for by the use of violence
to assert power and get the resources he needs.
194
The decrease in opportunity and resource availability
in the Zimbabwean political economy has resulted in
rampant social violence as people try to survive the
brute of indigence. The link between familial violence
and poverty is shown in this case. While poverty is
extreme, societal change has meant that traditional
gendered mores are also being challenged. Although
the situation of the daughters in the family narrative
presented here is not elaborated on, the mother’s fear
of sending her son to prison speaks to further
psychological abuse of elderly parents who fear a
loss of familyhood if the son is incarcerated. The
threat of losing that family – particularly her
daughters’ material support in an environment where
there is hardly any social care system for the elderly –
leads elderly parents to suffer abuse in silence. Both
parents were resourceful in trying to find ways to
support their son and to understand his problems but
given the social environment that has a history of
violence and no visible means of containing the
violence, it is difficult to extricate oneself from
self‑destructive habits. We conclude that the lack of
sanctions against structural violence in Zimbabwe’s
political economy highlights a defect in society’s
mechanisms to address social justice.
non-violence
Non-violence is the practice of advocating one’s own or others’ rights without
physically harming the opponent. It often involves actively opposing the
system that is deemed to be unjust, through for example boycotts,
demonstrations and civil disobedience. Theorists argue that non-violence can
often draw attention to a conflict situation and that it could provide a fertile
basis for post-conflict transformation.

Violence v Non Violence: which is more effective as a 196

driver of change?

Nonviolence – More than absence of violence 198

195
Violence v Non Violence: which is more effective as a
driver of change?
One of the perennial themes of this blog is the idea
that crises may provide an opportunity for progressive
change. True. But I’ve always been nervous that such
hopes can forget that most conflicts cause far more
human misery than any good that may come.
This is something that Duncan and I have (non-
violently) tussled about over the years. So imagine
my delight when I saw a recent report that seems to
back up my caution. The International Center on
Nonviolent Conflict’s paper on Nonviolent Resistance
and Prevention of Mass Killings looked at 308 popular
uprisings up to 2013. It found that “nonviolent
uprisings are almost three times less likely than
violent rebellions to encounter mass killings,” which
faced such brutal repression nearly 68% of the time.
The authors, Erica Chenoweth and Evan Perkoski,
think this is because violent campaigns threaten
leaders and security forces alike, encouraging them
to “hold on to power at any cost, even ordering or
carrying out a mass atrocity in an attempt to survive.”
196
There is a positive lesson here, that nonviolence
works – at least better than violence. This builds on
Chenoweth’s earlier study, which suggested that
between 2000 and 2006, 70% of nonviolent
campaigns succeeded, five times the success rate for
violent ones. Looking back over the 20th century, she
found that non-violent campaigns succeeded 53% of
the time, compared with 26% for violent resistance.
Again, there is a positive lesson – though it’d be
interesting to know the figures since 2006, when the
world appears to have become more repressive and
violent. 2017 was the 12th year, according to the
US-based Freedom House, “of decline in global
freedom [as] seventy-one countries suffered net
declines in political rights and civil liberties.” As the
Uppsala Conflict Data Program shows, these years of
pressure on rights have coincided with sharp rises in
conflicts since the start of this decade. And according
to the 2018 Global Peace Index, just out this month,
“peacefulness has declined year on year for eight of
the last ten years.” This seems to suggest that in our
violent and challenging decade, nonviolent
campaigns have found it tough in many countries too.
Tragically, this may breed a climate of desperation. In
another recent article, Robin Luckham wrote that “the
temptations of violence… are even stronger when
authoritarian regimes violently crush non-violent
protests…The turn from non-violent to violent
resistance can easily open the way for more ruthless
and better armed groups to step into the political
spaces initially opened up by peaceful protests, as in
Syria and Libya.”
This brings us perhaps to a less positive lesson – that
living under tyrannies may be less worse than violent
campaigns to change them. Chenoweth and Perkoski
argue that “popular uprisings are not all alike. Some,
like those in Libya (2011) and eventually Syria (2011),
are predominantly violent, wherein the opposition
chooses to take up arms to challenge the status quo.
Others, like Tunisia (2010), Egypt (2011), and
Burkina Faso (2014), eschew violence altogether.”
“Choose to take up arms”? That’s a harsh way to
describe the situation at least some armed groups
have faced. We should never forget that state
repression often drives uprisings to become more
violent. But looking at the historical evidence in these
articles – and at almost every conflict now – it’s
difficult to escape the conclusion that armed
resistance is seldom successful, often
counterproductive, and therefore rarely justifiable.
This begs one final question which Chenoweth and
Perkoski can help with. Few would now argue that
foreign countries should intervene to change regimes.
But the UK Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee
is conducting an enquiry on the prospect of military
interventions for a different purpose – to stop mass
killings. Its chair, Thomas Tugendhat, suggested that
‘The Cost of Doing Nothing’ in Syria had been
thousands and thousands of lives.
I’ve never been convinced of that case in Syria,
though the world’s failure to stop the genocides in
Rwanda and Bosnia in the 1990s was among the
most shameful events of our times. But Chenoweth
and Perkoski highlight the danger of any kind of
foreign intervention.
Cairns, E, "Violence v Non Violence: which is more effective as a driver of change?", Oxfam Blogs, 12/6/18,
https://oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/give-peace-a-chance-because-violent-change-doesnt-have-one/
197
The likelihood of mass killings increases, they
conclude, both “when foreign states provide material
aid to dissidents… [and] to the governments the
movements oppose.” In the first case, that’s because
foreign support to oppositions encourages states to
perceive them “as an existential threat.”
We shouldn’t conclude that military action will never
ever be justified to prevent mass killings. But we
know more reasons for caution than we once did.
Every foreign action needs to be carried out with the
best possible knowledge of its consequences.
That’s a harder thing to do than in the 1990s, when
this debate first forced its way onto humanitarian
agendas. According to a UN/World Bank study, there
were eight armed groups in an average civil war in
the 1950s. By 2010, there were fourteen. In Syria in
2014, there were more than a thousand. While more
local parties are fighting within borders, regional
powers – like Saudi Arabia and Iran – as well as
Russia and the US are more willing to contemplate
war, in what Robert Malley of Crisis Group calls the
world’s “growing militarization of foreign policy.” It is in
this dangerous world that the risks of military action
are higher than when the ideas of “humanitarian
intervention” and Responsibility to Protect were
developed.
I’ve never believed that pacifism is an adequate
answer to a world of atrocities that – in truly
exceptional cases – call out for an armed response.
But there’s an awful lot of evidence for caution – and
reason to give peace a chance.
Nonviolence – More than absence of violence
Introduction
Research on nonviolence has never dominated the
academic field of Peace Research. Compared to the
focus on violent conflicts, peaceful ones have always
been a minor sideline. The practice of nonviolence
has on the other hand developed a lot the last
hundred years. In the following we will introduce the
two main forms of nonviolence and then go deeper
into the more nuanced views and advanced
discussions in each of these fields. The most
influential use of Nonviolence in recent decades has
been in political revolutions. This chapter will go
through the waves of nonviolent revolutions that have
washed over the world since the 1980s. At the end
we will try to look into the crystal ball and see what
the future can bring.
The word
Nonviolence is a word we can find in very many
contexts. It is often used as a specifier for other topics
and hence followed by another word – Nonviolent
action, Nonviolent philosophy, Nonviolent
communication, Nonviolent defence and many more.
In itself it is almost impossible to define. It consists of
two words most people regard as negative: No and
Violence. In most languages it has the same
construction. Among the European languages
German stands out as a little different: Gewaltfrei
(free from violence). None of them have a completely
positive connotation. In recent years some have done
their best to introduce new concepts with a more
attractive meaning. The German Gütekraft (Good-
Power) is one example.
Introduction
The history of nonviolence has two traditions with
some connecting points: The pacifistic and the
pragmatic traditions. In the pacifist tradition we
include nonviolent ideas, aspects, views and visions
from religions, philosophies, ethics, and lifestyles. For
pacifists no goal justifies killing other human beings.
Many pacifists are against all forms of harming
humans and other living beings. The pragmatic
school regards nonviolent actions as being important
and effective as political tools, a collection of
techniques, and as means for communication, for
revolutions, for a social movement, and as a system
of defence.
198
Many within the pacifist school actively use the
methods within the pragmatic tradition, but the
majority of those using the nonviolent skills do not
share the pacifist views.
In the past the pacifist traditions were larger. Pacifism
has never been a majority view, but historically
pacifist practitioners of nonviolence used to
outnumber pragmatists. In modern times we have the
opposite situation. Those using active nonviolence for
pragmatic reasons now outnumber pacifists.
In the following we shall tell the story of both these
traditions and distinguish the characteristics of each
of them. Then we will see where there are overlaps
and describe the latest development within the
research on and practice of nonviolence.
Pacifist tradition
Religious traditions tend to dominate the history of
pacifist nonviolence. Inspired by holy scriptures,
gurus, gods, imams, priests and other leading
persons from different religions there have probably
always been groups of religious believers who were
committed to nonviolence. Theistic pacifists believed
that acts of violence were against the will of God and
hence sinful. Some authors argue that prior to the rise
of the leading religions of today, other faith systems
with female goddesses rather than male gods were
more peaceful than those now prevalent.
Within all religions you will find representatives who
do not find any justifications for the use of violence in
their respective scriptures and oral traditions. But
these are usually exceptions: most religious believers
justify the use of violence as a means of defence in
conflict situations, be that defence of attacked
individuals, groups or states. There is no one
“correct” interpretation of holy books, but nearly all of
them tell stories where the god(s) goes to war for a
good cause and use extreme violent means against
the enemies. Holy texts, such as The Lun Yu, Wu
Ching, Bhagavad Gita, Koran, New Testament,
Tanakh, Talmud, Tao-te-ching, Guru Granth Sahib,
and Veda are all interpreted in many different ways
on the question of justification of violence.
For many followers it is just as easy to find quotations
in these texts which give good reason for the use of
violence as it is for others to find guidance for a
pacifistic conviction.
Within every religion we find sects that are more
consistent pacifists than the mainstream followers.
Within Christianity so-called “peace churches” such
as the Brethren, the Mennonites and the Quakers,
are examples of such sects. Two religions, Jainism
and Bahá’í, are very firm in their nonviolent views
and practice. For them the philosophy of Nonviolence
is the core of their religions.
The central part of a nonviolent philosophy is that the
use of violence is morally wrong; that the aims do not
justify the means. The most widespread
understanding of nonviolence is the rejection to kill
human beings. But most nonviolent philosophies
have a much more nuanced view than this. They
regard all sorts of physical and psychological harm
against human beings as violations of the nonviolent
norm. And many expand the scope to include not only
human beings, but all sorts of living creatures. Some
will include the whole global ecosystem as well as
material objects.
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi used the concept
Ahimsa in his philosophy. Ahimsa occurs in
Bhagavad-Gita and is normally translated as
“nonviolence” or “non-harm”. In the Bhagavad Gita
the concept is used narrowly, with other terms
describing many other forms of “no injury” or “no
harm”. Gandhi expands the use of it to include a
number of different injuries. In the Gandhian
philosophy it is not only a question of physical actions
but he argued that ahimsa should be a principle
guiding humans in their thoughts, word and deeds.
Well aware of human nature he was clear about the
impossibility to completely fulfil such a norm, but that
does not make it impossible to make every effort to
reduce the injury on other living creatures to an
absolute minimum.
199
Gandhi has wrongly been criticised for promoting
passivity, whereas he in reality he argued that
passivity itself could be violence: “every act of injury
to a living creature and endorsement of such an act
by refraining from non-violent effort, whenever
possible, to prevent it, is a breach of ahimsa.” This
attitude so widens the concept as to make it an act of
violence to abstain from efforts to prevent injurious
acts, for instance suppression, manipulation,
exploitation.(Næss 1974, p 48)
It can be useful to add a few questions to this view.
The first one is if it is universal? Shall the norm guide
us in all situations and is it applicable for all human
beings? Gandhi himself was not always clear on this
point. There are situations in his text where he argues
in favour of putting an end to life of a living being.
One example is euthanasia. He describes a situation
with a sick calf and the only way the end the terrible
suffering is by giving the calf a deadly dose of poison.
He adds: “It was a surgical operation, and I should do
exactly the same thing with my child, if he were in the
same predicament”.(Galtung and Næss 1955, Ch 3)
This is a side of the Gandhian view on nonviolence
not widely known or accepted today.
What about other exceptional cases? What if
someone falls in the river and cannot swim? When a
brave swimmer tries to help, if the person in danger
panics, the only way to rescue him is to knock him
unconscious. Is that a violation of the ahimsa norm?
Even if it includes physical violence most people
would easily justify such an act of unselfish and brave
action. There are similarities in some of the common
arguments for a national military defence and the
situation with someone trying to save the life of others
by inflicting some pain on them. The moral
justification for military defence includes the idea that
it can be right to sacrifice a few to save many. Few
wars have been started without someone trying to
justify them with arguments that they are carried out
to defend higher values.
The pacifist traditions do not accept such justifications
of the use of violence in war situations. Neither do
they justify slavery, colonialism, patriarchy or
imperialism. These are all violent institutions justified
by the majority just a few generations ago. Moral
norms are seldom static. They change over time and
differ from context to context.
For pacifists, it is more complicated to judge actions
which include the harming of oneself. Many persons
within the nonviolent traditions have of their own free
will done harm to their own bodies. Fasts and hunger
strikes are two well known types of actions. Prisoners
all over the world have used hunger strikes as a
means to get attentions for their demands. Gandhi
went on open ended hunger-strikes on several
occasions. In June 11 1963 the Buddhist monk Thich
Quang Duc, burn himself to death in protest against
the war. Thich Quang Du was protesting against the
way the administration of the Vietnamese Prime
Minister Ngo Dình Diệm was oppressing the Buddhist
religion during the war. Several monks and nuns
followed him. Four US-citizens also self-immolated in
protest against the US attack on Vietnam. These
extreme painful forms of suicides are controversial in
many respects. Within most religions actions like
these have relatively few supporters even if there is a
deep respect for those who do end their lives in this
way. Many believe that such actions will be rewarded
after they pass away.
It is important to understand the variations among
different religious contexts when it comes to judging
actions like these. For some, like most Christians, the
death is much more definite, than for others. For a
Hindu, with thousands more lives on Earth, the
passing away is much less dramatic. For Gandhi the
hunger-strike was an action to show how much he is
willing to suffer for the cause he was struggling with.
He was solely responsible for the action and possible
death. When political prisoners in Christian cultures
are close to dying in hunger-strikes the media and
public opinion often blame others (for instance
political leaders) for the possible death of a prisoner.
To die is very different processes in different
religions.
200
Another factor of differences when it comes to the
use of violence is whether or not ethical normals are
seen as universal. Do they apply to all human
beings? In the western traditions there are
widespread views that norms are valid for all or none.
In for instance the Hindi tradition there are different
norms depending on your karma and cast. For a
Sadhu it is a norm to avoid the use of violence in
every situation, while someone from the warrior
caste, the Kshatriyas, has a duty to use violent
means to defend his people. Gier characterizes
Hinduism as “relative nonviolence” and gives several
reasons for this: “(1) the prohibition against killing is
relative to the person, yogis and Brahmins taking the
vow most strictly; (2) it is also relative to the occasion,
such as killing in war, in self-defence, and in sacrifice;
and (3) it is relative to individual self-interest.” (Gier
2004, p 34)
Gandhi was not advocating a traditional Hindu view
on these matters. He argued that the norm of Ahimsa
was universal and he opposed the common view
among Hindus that a military defence is a necessity.
Gandhi was often in doubt and experimented with
different activities. He tested a number of diets,
political actions and views on political and moral
questions. Most of his writings are dated. The reason
is that he was always prepared to change his mind
when he learned new things. He told his readers that,
if in his writings they found several opinions on the
same subject, they should trust the latest. This option
for changing even your core values is important to
remember when reading texts by or on Gandhi.
Gandhi grew up in a home with very strong relations
to his deeply religious mother. She belonged to a sect
that combined Hindu and Muslim beliefs and she
welcomed Christians and Jains in their house. One of
the great Jain saints of modern India, Shrimad
Rajchandra, settled many of Gandhi’s spiritual doubts
and was a significant personal inspiration for him:
local people referred to Rajchandra as “Gandhi’s
Guru”. (Hunter 2003)
For Gandhi philosophy was not enough. His vision
was to develop and build a whole lifestyle based on
nonviolent principles. He used the terms
“Nonviolence for the Weak” about the pragmatic use
of nonviolent techniques and “Nonviolence of the
Strong” for those who committed themselves to a
nonviolent lifestyle. That lifestyle was a totality of self
discipline, undemanding lifestyle, an inner search for
truth, the use of non-cooperation against unjust laws
and decisions, constructive work, and civil courage to
confront the opponent.
Among the famous advocates of nonviolence based
on a religious belief we find Leo Tolstoy, Martin
Luther King and Gandhi. For them the human life had
an ultimate value, higher than everything else.
Nothing was important enough to sacrifice human
lives. This faith led them to a pacifist position and
guided their activities in life. For many nonviolence
became part of their lifestyle and influenced all parts
of their life. In the daily life it could decide what to eat,
how to travel, what to consume, how to relate to other
human beings (and nature), how to act in order to
take responsibility for your local community, and what
to do for leisure. People who lived with Gandhi, like
Jayaprakash “JP” Narayan (Narain 1978) and
Narayan Desai (Desai 1980), use the term “Total
Revolution” to describe the extensive implications of a
nonviolent lifestyle. Political and social revolution are
not enough; in addition there must be an inner
revolution in each individual. And both JP and
Narayan Desai are clear that the change within every
individual is by far the most difficult one.
Within this lifestyle-orientation we find the most
obvious overlap between the pacifist tradition and the
pragmatic tradition. Many, although not all, of those
committed to a nonviolent lifestyle also tends to be
engaged in nonviolent actions of different sorts. They
include in their lifestyle a societal engagement and
takes part in civil society activities against what they
regard as unjust, immoral or simply wrong policies
and decisions.
201
The pragmatic tradition
The pragmatic tradition of nonviolence has its roots in
those parts of the society which has fought with
peaceful means for freedom, democracy and respect
for human rights. These tools are used by
stakeholders to influence a conflict situation. They
have adopted different nonviolent strategies and
techniques and used them in their struggle against
inhuman ideologies, policies, systems, decisions, and
laws. Their choice of means have been more based
on what is effective than of ethical guidelines and
moral values. Even if we can trace their history back
further, it is fair to say that they have developed and
been used more in the last hundred years. Today the
majority of those who deal with nonviolence, whether
they use the term or not, belong to the pragmatic
tradition.
Nonviolent techniques are frequently used in most
modern social and political movements. Within
women’s networks, trade unions, environmental
groups, solidarity movements, peace organisations,
and other parts of the civil society nonviolent actions
are used regularly to promote their ideas and struggle
for their causes. Nonviolent actions are used either
to create wider support for their goals, to directly
reach their aims or in order to prevent their opponents
from achieving theirs.
What is meant by “nonviolence” in the pragmatic
school? It is obvious that there are diverse definitions
used by different authors and activists. Many
practitioners have never needed or wanted to
propose a full and distinct definition, but when asked
have said that they “don’t use serious physical
violence against other human beings”. Others have
wider definitions. Some will exclude all forms of
psychological violence as well. At one extreme of a
spectrum we find people who merely “try to avoid
killing humans”, while at the other there are those
who will avoid “all disturbance of the harmony in life”.
The latter ones you will find among those who use
nonviolent actions as a part of their lifestyle. The
majority of nonviolent activists belonging some place
in the middle, but closer to “not killing” than “perfect
harmony”.
Whatever definition is used there is one more aspect
of these actions we need to clarify. Is it a nonviolent
action just because it avoids the use of violence? In
the early phase of his writing Gandhi used the term
“passive resistance”. That could be interpreted as
nonviolence being some form passivity; not doing
anything. This is a misunderstanding we still find used
in present discussions and in media coverage of
nonviolent actions and movements. Gandhi changed
the term to “ahimsa” and the English interpretation;
nonviolence. Later he used Satyagraha, with literally
means “to keep to the truth”. The point here is that we
need to make clear what we mean by nonviolence.
Vinthagen (Vinthagen 2005 p. 136-146) has
developed and clarified the definition the concept. He
argues that in addition to be “without violence” it must
also be “against violence”. It is not enough that an
activity is carried out without the use of violence. To
fulfil the criteria of being labelled nonviolence it must
in addition be done with the aim of reducing or
eliminating violence.
Nonviolent actions can be categorized in three broad
groups: Protests, noncooperation and interventions.
Nonviolent protests
Nonviolent protests are actions of peaceful opposition
but not going as far as refusing to cooperate or
directly intervene in the situation. The use of symbols,
marches, picket-lines and protest meetings are typical
examples of nonviolent protests. A wide variety of
actors are using such techniques on a regular basis.
For more examples see chapter three in The Politics
of Nonviolent Action (Sharp 1973). A frequent goal for
nonviolent protests is to communicate a message of
opposition. It can be seen as a voice against the
establishment when the formal political channels do
not give them a say in the decision-making. The
protests themselves are visual means of
communication, but often they are combined with
slogans, symbols or catchphrases which explain the
message.
202
Protests are normally just one step in a chain of
activities which leads to more communications
between representatives from the opposition and
delegates from those in position. “Opposition” and
“position” shall in this context be seen in a very broad
context. It includes those in power and the opposition
in a state, but many protests are used in entities other
than the state. Thousands of protests take place on
the local, regional and global arena every day.
Noncooperation
Noncooperation is well known from trade unions and
their use of strikes. They put pressure on their
employers by refusing to fulfil their role as producers.
But these same methods are used by many other
actors and in many different contexts.
To decrease or withdraw completely the normal level
of cooperation changes the power relation between
the actors. The main idea behind such actions is that
political, social or economical power depends on
some level of cooperation. These types of power can
be influenced by changing the level of cooperation.
The level of cooperation is based on several factors.
Cooperation may exist because it benefits the
involved actors or it can be based on fear of the
consequences of refusing to cooperate. The fear is
normally based on knowledge about possible forms of
punishments. States are well known for threats of
penalties like trials, fines, imprisonments, tortures,
and death penalty. Other actors can force people to
be obedient by threats of social exclusion, withdrawal
of support and – as for state actors – physical or
psychological punishment. The most frequent
reasons for people’s cooperation, in addition to the
self-benefit, are ignorance and unawareness. The
norm is to obey, follow orders and regulations and not
behave differently from others. For noncooperation to
take place it is necessary, but not sufficient, to
remove, fear, ignorance and obedience.
Nonviolent interventions
Nonviolent intervention is the last of the three
categories of nonviolent actions. These are actions in
which some form of direct involvement in a conflict
situation takes place.
By directly intervening in situations the persons taking
part in it often expose themselves to higher risks and
the consequences can be both more immediate and
more serious. Nonviolent interventions take place in
many contexts. Someone intervening when a single
person is attacked on the street is a small scale
example. When members of Shanti Sena
interpositioned themselves between fighting Muslims
and Hindus in Indian cities is an example on group
level. In the last two decades we have seen people
from the peace movement act not just in their home
country but by going to war zones. During the
Vietnam War most activists demonstrated in their own
cities or gathered outside US-embassies around the
world. With the wars in the Balkans we saw the first
massive wave of activists moving into the battle field.
It had been done earlier, but only in small numbers. In
the present wars in Palestine, Colombia, Sri Lanka,
and Iraq the nonviolent actions inside the countries at
war are substantially bigger than in any previous war.
Some of these actions are there to support the local
civil society; others are carried out as “third” parties
acting with their own agendas. Still it is important to
recognize that for most wars there are no strong
movements, neither inside nor outside the combat
zone. For the majority of wars the nonviolent
initiatives are still to be born.
Civil Disobedience
Civil disobedience is one traditional form of
intervention which deserves some extra attention. It is
a form of action that often triggers strong reactions
and it is used in all cultures, many contexts and by all
sorts of actors. The definition of civil disobedience is
an action which fulfils the following four criteria:
1. A violation of a law or generally accepted norm
2. It is done without the use of violence
3. It is done in full openness
4. It is done with a serious commitment
A few words of explanation for each of these four
points will make it easier to grasp this form of
nonviolent intervention. The first one just says that
the action is illegal or contradicts generally accepted
norms in the society. This makes it controversial and
provokes reactions from several actors.
203
The second criterion is the one which specifies that
civil disobedience is a nonviolent action. Exactly what
is meant by nonviolence is debated. That no humans
shall be physically hurt is commonly accepted, but
many will accept some degree of psychological
aggression and symbolic sabotage of material
objects. The third criterion is the one which makes
these illegal actions unique. Here there is a
requirement that the people using this form of action
shall face the consequences of their activities. The
implications of that are that the activists shall not try
to avoid being arrested or stay away from coming
trials. A public “confession” of what they have done is
often included in these actions. The last criterion is
included in order to separate these actions from
“funny” or pure spectacular activities.
That the action by definition is illegal makes it very
controversial. No establishment can ever support
such actions and they frequently condemn them as
“anti-democratic” and dangerous. From history we
know that such actions have been used by most
movements that have worked for more and better
democracy. Well known are the actions of civil
disobedience used by the Abolitionist Movement in
US against slavery, the suffragists in their struggle for
the universal right to vote, the Civil Rights Movement
for equal rights for all citizens, the workers
movements for their right to organise themselves in
unions, the Anti-conscription movements for their
rights to conscientious objection, and the
environmental movement for the rights to a safe
environment. Looking back it is obvious that the use
of civil disobedience have been to the benefit of a
democratic development.
Nonviolence as antithesis of violence
Violence has been defined and categorized by Johan
Galtung (Galtung 1969; Galtung 1990; Galtung 1996).
His concepts of direct violence, structural violence
and cultural violence have their antithesis in the
context of nonviolence.
Direct Nonviolence
Direct nonviolence is the use of nonviolent techniques
to influence conflicts without the use of violence. The
full scale of pragmatic nonviolent methods and
strategies are integrated parts of direct nonviolence.
Direct nonviolence is used to directly confront those
decisions, laws and systems that do not treat all
humans equally. The struggle for abolition of slavery,
decolonialisation, removal of patriarchal structures,
resistance against wars and imperialistic policies are
all full of direct nonviolence. People have used direct
nonviolence against illegitimate power holders and
faced armed police and military forces for hundreds of
years. Many of them with successful results.
Structural Nonviolence
Structural nonviolence consists of those structures in
our society that promote cooperation, reconciliation,
openness, equality and peaceful actions in conflict
situations. Democratic institutions and systems are
examples of such structures. Democracy is here
meant as something much more than the
parliamentarian state systems we find in many
western states today. Consensus, inclusiveness,
transparency, and accountability are important
elements in a real democracy. And these are all
elements in many traditional communities. A
nonviolent societal structure will to a large degree be
the result if political, economical, cultural, and social
human rights are fulfilled. More specifically structural
nonviolence is those parts of a society which open up
for nonviolent handling of conflicts regarding human
rights. When there is unequal distribution of basic
needs, resources, freedoms, and rights a nonviolent
structure gives people the possibility to handle such
conflicts with peaceful means. In this case, “peaceful”
involves more than the tools of direct nonviolence. It
includes many sorts of mediation, conflict
transformation, and reconciliation as well.
Johansen,J, "Nonviolence – More than absence of violence", Jørgen Johansen, 1/1/14,
www.jjohansen.net/2014/01/05/nonviolence-more-than-absence-of-violence/
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Cultural Nonviolence
Cultural nonviolence includes those parts of our
culture that transmit traditions of nonviolent behavior
and which commemorate and honor nonviolent
values and qualities. We can find nonviolent traditions
in most cultures, religions and philosophies. While
rarely the dominant tendency, they still formed
important parts of norms and systems of behaviour in
relation to other human beings and/or nature. The
nonviolent ways of handling conflicts can be traced
far back in history. Even in times of instability and in
the midst of violent conflicts we find individuals and
groups who have approached the situation with the
use of nonviolent techniques. We have in mind here
not those who avoided conflict, but rather those who
actively took part, but with peaceful means. Often
they have been regarded as wise and sensible
women and men. Among indigenous people many of
these nonviolent values, techniques and ethics are
still ruling their communities. Within movements,
organizations, and networks many of these qualities
are integrated and important elements.
The Culture of Nonviolence has deep roots in human
history. Just as in today’s media, so too our written
history is dominated by actions of violence. But
despite violent clashes the capabilities to cooperate
have characterised human life since early days.
Individual humans have sacrificed their lives for the
community on many occasions in our history.
Altruistic behavior has always been regarded as a
respected virtue. Human societies could not have
developed without a strong force of cooperation and
the capacity to solve conflicts without the use of
violence.
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