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Grappling with unease – together: collective reflections on Migration Studies and Colonialism by Mayblin and Turner

By ISS Blog Bliss 26 May 202326 December 2024 3439 views

How can scholars tackle the legacy of colonialism in migration studies? Last year, a small group of critical development studies scholars at ISS sought to reflect on this challenge by collectively reading and discussing the book Migration Studies and Colonialism that explores exactly this issue. In this article, we share our observations and discuss two things that we consider vital in meaningful discussions on the topic: the need to move beyond simplistic notions of European colonialism and the importance of meaningful engagement with scholars from the ‘Global South’.

While it is difficult to make generalizing claims about the broad field of migration studies that attracts scholars from various disciplines, one can confidently state that we have not yet adequately addressed the colonial legacies that continue to colour research and discussions on migration. It is in light of this that a group of scholars from the ISS got together in November last year to discuss a book that critically explores the issue. We hoped that in discussing colonial histories and migration studies, we could better understand our collective unease with the way in which we may reproduce colonialist harms through our work.

The book we discussed, ‘Migration Studies and Colonialism’ by Lucy Mayblin and Joe Turner (2021), is written as an intervention that is meant to place colonialism and its critique at the centre of discussions in migration studies. Moving beyond a critique of migration studies, the authors echo the call for action to dismantle the field’s contribution to the reproduction of coloniality – one that has been growing louder thanks to contributions by migration scholars engaging with postcolonial and decolonial thought.[1]

Instead of reviewing the book,[2] we chose to highlight our collective reflections on the unease many of us face in trying to engage with decolonial ideals, aspirations, and/or commitments as early-career researchers working on highly polarizing topics. Most of us identify as women of colour who come from the so-called ‘Global South’; we research migration, child sex tourism, or humanitarian intervention within academic institutional structures in the Global North. Coming from these diverse backgrounds, we offer input for the discussion on how to grapple with colonial legacies at the university and beyond through deep, collective, and horizontally organized reading, which is important in itself as a counter-current against fast academia.

These are our insights stemming from our discussions:

We need to acknowledge non-European experiences and legacies of colonialism

Mayblin and Turner argue in their book that colonial histories should be central to understanding migration praxis. They warn against what they call “sanctioned ignorance of histories of colonialism”, which leaves scholars and practitioners with theories that are inadequate in explaining the present state of migration regimes and moreover normalize the use of dehumanizing terms (such as ‘illegals’) that appear to be objective rather than historically and culturally emergent (p.3).

As they attempt to frame their discussions[3] in a global manner, the authors rely on intellectual legacies from the Americas (North and South) and engagement with scholars from Asian and African traditions (p.4). They acknowledge that as ‘white’ academics working in British higher education institutions, they write from particular perspectives that may result in readers spotting limitations and omissions.

And we did. In our discussions, the tension between appreciating the thematic discussion of colonial histories and the wide brush used to portray international migration studies was consistently present. As we delved into each chapter, we found that the telling of specific colonial histories still placed Europe at the centre of the discussion. One participant for instance remarked during our conversation about Chapter 3 that “[the authors] make a solid case for why race and colonialism are intertwined with and shape migration. I do, however, feel the perspective adopted is still Eurocentric. It’s important to note that colonialism is not only European.”

We concluded that by emphasizing their critique of Eurocentrism reproduced through coloniality, the book showcased not only a tendency to limit and equate colonialism to Europe but also a limited take on Europe as a monolith. Another participant observed, “One Europe – as if there is one Europe, one type of colonialism, no differentiation.”

While we acknowledged the inclusion of geographical contexts and topics that are not commonly discussed in the historicizing of colonialism and migration, such as the mentioning of former colonized nations in the construction of international refugee regimes (Ch. 5), Mayblin and Turner’s focus on Europe’s colonial history reinforces a lack of acknowledgement of non-European experiences and legacies of colonialism.

To offer a more balanced picture, we feel the need to highlight topics important to the diverse contexts we come from or work with. These include South-South migration, indentured labour, and transnational solidarities that were instrumental in the independence of many formerly colonized nations. Otherwise, by limiting ourselves to a critique on a seemingly monolithic Europe and its (lasting) systems of categorization, the ‘Global South’ continues to be present as an ‘object’ in the retelling of the colonial histories (Quijano 2007). Interestingly, this discussion forced participants to reflect on our roles and commitment as researchers to actively unlearn and challenge the ‘subject-object’ relations between the ‘Global North’ and ‘Global South’ prevalent in knowledge production. By centring colonial histories within migration studies, both the authors and the readers should reflect on their positionality, roles, and choices in the retelling of histories.

We need to be transparent about our inclusion of ‘voices from the Global South’

Mayblin and Turner acknowledge that literatures problematizing mainstream migration studies exist but are often still inaccessible or unaccounted for, partly due to structural inequalities within higher academic institutions. They write on pages 4 and 5: “This book seeks to showcase some of this work for people who research migration yet never encounter such perspectives… Our aim is not that you cite this book, but that in the future you cite some of the scholars discussed within it.”

We followed their sound advice. The references to perspectives, approaches, and concepts developed mainly by scholars from the Global South required the reading group participants to read and reflect beyond what was presented in the book. For example, in Chapter 5, Mayblin and Turner’s critical discussion on forced migration brought readers’ attention to Vergara-Figueroa’s (2018) elaboration to the notion of ‘deracination’. While the concept of ‘deracination’ has been widely adopted by scholars and activists in the Latin American and the Caribbean contexts, particularly in Colombia in relation to land dispossession, forced migration, violence, and rupture of communal ties caused by the prolonged armed conflict, it was still unfamiliar to most of the participants.

As an Ecuadorian researcher who was very familiar with the Colombian context was able discuss ‘deracination’ in more detail, the collective reading evolved into a space where thought processes and conversations moved from Mayblin and Turner to concepts and ideas developed in particular localities and historical contexts and their potential applicability elsewhere to reflections by participants on their own identities, voices, and research. Reflecting on these discussions, one participant said: “I’m not doing research at the moment, but this book and discussion has made me more aware about my own internalized Eurocentric ideas, being more conscious about the spaces I am in and realize how we represent ‘the Global South’.”

However, one question remained after completing the collective reading: how did Mayblin and Turner choose what to include and exclude in the book? While the referencing of scholars from the Global South is important and welcomed by group participants, there is a lack of explanation on how they chose whose work to include.

In addition, Mayblin and Turner’s choice to reference these scholars as opposed to inviting them to contribute directly through an edited volume is also worth noting. While they state early on that they hope the book will lead migration researchers to reference some of the work they included, these decisions still positioned them as gatekeepers of knowledge production. Being more transparent about these choices would have allowed more open accountability towards the power hierarchies in knowledge production that they are critical of.

A way forward: the value of collective reading and reflections

We (try to) engage with ‘decoloniality’ and the responsibility to acknowledge the legacies of colonialism in our research to different degrees and in different ways. Most participants are used to applying a critical and historical lens towards the themes raised in the book but are less certain about taking up the responsibility of ‘doing decoloniality’. One participant for example stated that “I often encounter this question [of centring colonialism] in my field when working on development aid. I think we are aware of many of the problems mentioned, such as the topic of race, inequality, etc., but we don’t necessarily know what to do.”

This tension between recognizing ‘problems’ and feeling unsure of what to do and how to position ourselves as researchers from diverse backgrounds is at the heart of our ambivalence and unease when engaging with the book. This tension is also recognized by Mayblin and Turner, who decided against calling their book “Decolonizing Migration Studies”. Instead, they positioned it more broadly to support decolonization agendas within academic institutions. But as we show, tension, ambivalence, and unease can drive critical reflection and prompt change in practice.

While we did not start or end with a common commitment to decolonizing knowledges, there was a general agreement among us, as one participant stated, “… to actively participate and also to allow yourself to listen with discomfort.” Grappling with unease was the starting point for our collective reflections, and we left with concrete clues for conscious historicization and contextualization to avoid the broad brushstrokes that overlook other experiences and legacies.

[1] E.g. Mains et al. 2013; Achiumi 2019; Samaddar 2020; Fiddien-Qasmiyeh 2020

[2] For reviews, see e.g. Favell 2021; Stallone 2022

[3] Mayblin and Turner’s historizing of colonialism provides the starting point to their discussion of migration studies and the thematic exploration of modernity and development (Chapter 2), race and racism (Chapter 3), state sovereignty and citizenship (Chapter 4), asylum seekers and refugee regimes (Chapter 5), national and border security (Chapter 6), and gender and sexuality (Chapter 7).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Mahardhika Sjamsoe’oed Sadjad is an interdisciplinary scholar in the field of international development and migration. Her research focuses on discursive and affective constructions of identities and belonging in The Netherlands, Indonesia, and broader region of Southeast Asia.

Zeynep Kaşlı is Assistant Professor in Migration and Development at ISS, affiliated with the Governance, Law and Social Justice Research Group. Her research interests include mobility, citizenship, borders, transnationalism, power and sovereignty with regional expertise in Turkey, Middle East and Europe.

Nanneke Winters is an assistant professor in Migration and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her research interests include im/mobility, migrant trajectories, and translocal livelihoods in Central America and beyond.

Haya Alfarra is a PhD researcher at ISS-EUR. Her research explores the role of diaspora as non-traditional humanitarian actors in protracted humanitarian situations, looking specifically at the role of Palestinian-German diaspora in humanitarian responses in the Gaza Strip, occupied Palestinian territory.

Mausumi Chetia is a PhD researcher at ISS-EUR. She researches on meanings of home and lived human (in)securities in context of disaster-related displacements in India. Her research is part of the Erasmus Initiative called Vital Cities and Citizens (VCC), under the theme of Resilient Cities.

Xander Creed is a PhD researcher at the ISS. Their work explores migration and asylum governance with a particular focus on the human dimension of (im)mobility, for instance through the lens of human security and feminisms.

Vanessa Ntinu is the Jr. Executive Manager of the Leiden-Delft-Erasmus Centre for Governance of Migration and Diversity. She is interested in notions surrounding race, anti-Blackness, diversity, and migration laws and institutions.

Gabriela Villacis Izquierdo is a Ph.D researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in the field of development and humanitarian studies. Her current research is based in Colombia and focuses on the contributions of feminism(s) to humanitarian governance, with an emphasis on the potential of collective action and humanitarian advocacy.

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Contract farming is everywhere, but how does it affect agrarian relations in the Global South?

By ISS Blog Bliss 19 May 202326 December 2024 2416 views

Contemporary debates in agrarian studies have been predominantly focused on land and property issues, at times to the detriment of questions about production and exchange. The large and expanding footprint of contract farming is one example of a relatively neglected – yet significant – dimension of contemporary agricultural systems in the Global South. Farming contracts are one of many forms of coordinating production and exchange that seek to avoid the uncertainty for producers and buyers of finding each other more spontaneously in open markets. Contract farming involves a non-transferable agreement between farmers and buyers that specifies the terms of production and marketing, typically relating to the price, quantity, quality and delivery of the product.

Decades of research and case studies suggest that contract farming is widespread in local, domestic and export-oriented agricultural commodity markets, both linked to large multinational corporate buyers, as well as within the informal networks of small-scale traders. Research on contract farming in the Global South consistently attributes this expansion to two intertwined effects: one is the liberalization of agriculture due to structural adjustments that stripped states from their coordinating roles in production. The other is the active promotion of contract farming by multilateral development agencies, who proposed it as a win-win alternative after the demise of state-led coordination.

International organizations, governments and agribusinesses have promoted contract farming as key tool to integrate smallholders into markets and modernize agricultural sectors. Contract farming is hailed as a source of jobs, income and stable markets for smallholders, and for providing a stable supply base and profits to agribusiness. However, whether contract farming actually does lead to win-win outcomes remains highly contested. Political economy studies reveal that unequal power relationships are inherent to contract farming arrangements, demonstrating that (i) buyers tend to benefit more than smallholders, (ii) not all producers benefit equally (small producers are highly differentiated and many hire labor), and (iii) many smallholders actually lose out from these schemes as they bear the brunt of production risks and enter vicious cycles of indebtedness. As a result, we often see a mosaic of winners and losers.

Contract farming, an avenue for rural development?

Since the 1990s, international organizations such as the FAO and the World Bank have been promoting contract farming as a tool for inclusive growth in rural areas. Responding to criticisms that these arrangements tend to disproportionately benefit buyers and may expose small producers to indebtedness and impoverishment, international organizations have put their weight behind the promotion of “fair contracts” and better governance and transparency in contractual arrangements. However, political economy studies still question this rebranding of contract farming as an inclusive business model by showing how “fair contracts” focus solely on the unequal power relations between small producers and agribusinesses, while missing the range of inequalities that exist among and between farmers, agricultural workers, unpaid household labor and those who provide ancillary services to small-scale producers. Moreover, many contract farming schemes rely on monopsony power, often leaving producers unable to renegotiate or withdraw from contracts, let alone benefit from price spikes. The monopsony position of the contracting firm refers to a situation where it is the only buyer of the crops produced by the contract farmers. This gives the contracting company exclusive access to the crops of the contract farmers.

Supermarkets, food multinationals and small traders: the new cast of actors in contract farming

With the ongoing restructuring of the global food system, contract farming and a cast of new actors have come to the fore. On the one hand, corporate buyers are expanding their customer base and sourcing geographies. For these actors, contract farming arrangements are a way to ensure standardized and steady supply of agricultural commodities in globalized markets. Most notably, supermarkets make use of contract farming arrangements to supply high quality and standardized vegetables and fruits to consumers around the world. Even though smallholders who are able to comply with the standards set by supermarkets tend to benefit from supermarket contracts, poorer farming households tend to benefit less and may even be excluded from such arrangements altogether.

On the other hand, specialist traders and local procurers increasingly use contract farming (both formally and informally, i.e. with and without written contracts) to source directly from smallholders or act on commission as intermediaries between smallholders and agribusinesses. In the absence of government support, these intermediaries may take on a seemingly developmental role by offering informal extension services, providing road infrastructure and loading necessary materials and machineries to smallholders.

Agency and resistance

Despite the uneven contribution of contract farming to rural development and productive upgrading for small scale producers and agricultural sectors of the Global South, political economy studies highlight that smallholders are not passive victims of corporate buyers and merchants (whether large or small), but often resist and challenge the contract farming relation. This may take the form of overt resistance through protests and strikes, but also of informal and often hidden strategies that take the form of everyday struggles. For example, oil palm contract farmers in the Philippines have reacted to a lopsided contract, unsustainable levels of indebtedness, and the risk of losing their land by side-selling their produce to other agribusinesses, refusing to harvest, or burning oil palm trees. Tobacco contract farmers in Zimbabwe have responded by switching to other crops or diversifying their sources of finance. However, both cases show that contract farmers’ agency and resistance is limited by available resources and alternatives.

Towards a new research agenda

Over the past three decades, political economy studies have contributed to a much better understanding of the differentiated impact of contract farming in the Global South. Yet, important questions remain. For example about the interface of contract farming and changes in land tenure; the prevalence of unpaid household labor and the exploitation of hired labor among small-scale producers; contract farming as a form of extractivism (of the resources and labor contained in the commodity); and the ecological burden of the expansion and intensification of agriculture associated with contract farming. To move towards this new contract farming research agenda, we have founded the Contract Farming Initiative, a network that brings together a diverse group of critical contract farming scholars and activists. The initiative is geared to support cross-country analyses of contract farming schemes. As one of our first tasks, we are mapping contract farming arrangements in the Global South to get an overview of where contract farming scholarship is concentrated and where more research is needed. We warmly invite other scholars to contribute to this project.

As part of our activities this year, we will host a panel at the EADI CEsA General Conference 2023 to bring together scholars from different geographies and critical perspectives to discuss contract farming’s potential for rural development by focusing on dynamics of financialization, resistance from smallholders, social differentiation as both a cause and outcome, and labor exploitation dynamics.

This article was first published on EADI’s blog, Debating Development Research.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Caroline Hambloch (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin), Mark Vicol (Assistant Professor, Rural Sociology Group, Wageningen University) and Helena Pérez Niño (Assistant Professor, International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague) are co-editors of the recent special issue in the Journal of Agrarian Change The Political Economy of Contract Farming: Emerging Insights and Changing Dynamics (January, 2022), and co-founders of the Contract Farming Initiative research network.

The dangerously optimistic global climate finance agenda: why blended financing and domestic resource mobilization won’t help close the climate finance gap

By ISS Blog Bliss 11 May 202326 December 2024 5268 views

The global climate finance agenda in its current form is insufficient for tackling climate change and fostering a green transition across the globe. Calls to close the massive climate finance gap that prevents developing countries from accessing much-needed funds often rely on the expectation that domestic resource mobilization and blended finance can help close the gap. In this article, we demonstrate why this expectation seems wildly optimistic and argue that instead of relying on insecure trends, global policy makers should take action by developing policies that grant a bigger role for public money and innovative monetary solutions.

Source: Asian Development Bank is licensed under CC BY 2.0

Many emerging economies are having a tough time – they are still struggling to recover from the pandemic and simultaneously suffer from unprecedented debt levels and cost-of-living crises. What’s more, the climate crisis is manifesting itself more than ever, and international financial promises to enable a just energy transition across the globe continue to be broken. Meanwhile, the costs of climate mitigation, adaptation, and loss and damage are soaring, which makes it even less likely that these countries will get the climate funding needed to respond adequately to the crisis. As a result, the climate financing gap is widening.

In a response to these developments, the COP26 and COP27 presidencies some months before last year’s November COP27 summit launched an Independent High-Level Expert Group equipped with the task of “scaling up investment and finance to deliver on climate ambition and development goals”. This distinguished group of experts launched their report in November, calling for a “rapid and sustained investment push […] to drive a strong and sustainable recovery out of current and recent crises […] and to deliver on shared development and climate goals.”

The investment push that’s needed relies on domestic resource mobilization and blended finance that together with other financial levers form part of the so-called Grand Match financing strategy. This strategy was proposed by Amar Bhattacharya, Meagan Dooley, Homi Kharas, Charlotte Taylor and Nicholas Stern in a bid to foster a big investment push for emerging markets and developing economies. However, both the total amounts assumed for blended finance (USD 395 billion) and domestic resource mobilization (USD 653 billion) are unlikely to materialize and are unlikely to close the climate finance gap, as we will show.

Blended financing and domestic resource mobilization failing to deliver

As early as 2016, the rising popularity of blended finance as a way to close the global climate finance gap could be observed; in April that year, British weekly newspaper The Economist ran an article called “Trending: blending” that examined “[t]he fad for mixing public, charitable and private money”. In the past few years, the concept of blended finance has gained further traction; key global financial institutions such as the World Bank, IMF, and the G20 have pointed to blended finance as a solution to close the global climate investment gap. For example, during its last spring meeting, the IMF emphasized that its members should “recognize the importance of stepping up climate finance from all sources, including by mobilizing private investment”. Similarly, domestic resource mobilization (DRM), whereby governments channel their own resources towards public goods and services, such as by raising taxes or by improving auditing processes, is viewed as an important climate financing tool.

However, blended finance has not delivered on its promise. Back then, The Economist observed that “few data exist on the scale and success of blended finance”. Now, with more data available, it’s becoming clear that private investments made in low- and middle-income countries through blended finance actually have decreased from USD 150 billion to 100 billion, and between 2019 and 2021, only USD 14 billion was pledged to poor countries through private channels. Similarly, the mobilization of domestic resources has not held up to its promises — its potential has been overestimated.

These tools are therefore unlikely to sufficiently help close the finance gap that has arisen. And with the current grim global economic outlook, an increasing number of low-income countries are already in debt distress and are increasingly impacted by the loss and damage of climate change itself, thus decreasing their ability to use these tools even more.

In fact, the reliance on these financing mechanisms is dangerously optimistic, as this prevents us from considering the additional sources of finance that are needed to provide climate investments at the scale and time needed. Here’s why:

1. There is a huge climate finance gap, especially in low-income countries, and it’s becoming bigger, not smaller.

By 2025, if no measures to increase climate funds are taken, the amount of money needed by emerging economies (excluding China) to address the effects of climate change – generally referred to as the climate finance gap – would amount to USD 1 trillion (as estimated in 2022). Lower-income regions such as South Asia and Africa have the largest investment needs (7-14 times and 5-12 times more investment, respectively), but these are not being met. While most of the money needed to close the gap is supposed to be sourced through domestic resource mobilization (USD 653 billion) and private investment, supported by public funding through blended finance (USD 395 billion), in reality, this is not happening.

And the finance gap might be even bigger than we think. For example, in a recent report Oxfam estimates that the annual shortfall for necessary investments in health, education, social protection and tackling climate change in low- and middle-income countries could be as high as USD 3.9 trillion.

Advanced economies are not keeping their promises

Meanwhile, public finance is not contributing sufficiently. In 2009, high-income countries pledged to help fund the energy transition in developing countries by promising to commit USD 100 billion annually. But in 2020, only USD 83 billion had been pledged. What’s worse, to get to this figure, existing development assistance (ODA) money was relabelled as climate finance for developing countries. And only one-third of the funds that have been committed are in the form of grants, which means that debts continue to accumulate due to loans.

Blended finance should be helping funnel private funds to low-income countries, but it’s still mostly public money

Blended finance[1] has gained the status of a silver bullet. The assumption underlying the belief in the effectiveness of this tool is that public capital investments would lever private investments according to a certain ratio of the ‘blend’. If done properly, investing by blending different financial sources indeed could result in a multiplied number of private investments that could be used to finance climate action.

However, the amount of private money available to match each public dollar is overestimated – in reality, much less private money is invested, while public funds continue to form the largest share of the total amount. In one report, the IMF for instance expects the ratio of private to public money to be 9:1. In 2020 however, private finance constituted only around 50% of global climate finance, with the rest being public finance. And in low-income regions where climate investments need to increase most strongly, even a public-private ratio of 1:1 is often not tenable. In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, around 90% of climate finance comes from public sources.

Mobilizing domestic resources requires challenging reforms

The IMF anticipated that emerging economies could raise as much as USD 236 billion in additional taxes by 2025 through domestic resource mobilization. To do this, they would have to implement relevant tax and administrative reforms to tackle their sometimes very low tax rates and high levels of tax exemptions.[2] However, implementing and enforcing these kinds of reforms is challenging. Emerging economies are renowned for administrative capacity constraints that prevent them from addressing tax evasion and keeping avoidance under control. Studies on the projected development of tax-to-GDP ratios in emerging economies show that their tax revenues are expected to only slightly, but not significantly, increase.

Moreover, some international support initiatives have already been in place, such as the Tax Inspectors Without Borders (TIWB) assistance programmes between 2012 and 2020. This has helped raise the tax revenues of these countries by a mere USD 537 million – a figure far below the necessary additional USD 417 billion in domestic resource mobilization estimated in the IHLEG’s report.

Countries are holding on to their money – tightly

Lastly, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the subsequent spike in inflation levels, a global monetary tightening cycle has begun. This has resulted in capital outflows by the private sector from emerging economies, which is bound to substantially hinder these countries’ economic growth. It has already been shown that the simultaneous monetary and fiscal tightening policies across the globe impact developing countries and emerging economies disproportionately.

This makes efforts to close the climate finance gap seem even more unrealistic, especially given the high value of the dollar and the outstanding dollar-denominated debt in the Global South. Of the low-income countries eligible for special IMF support, as of 2023, nine are currently in debt distress, while 27 are at a high risk, 26 countries at a moderate risk, and seven countries at low risk of debt distress.

More realism needed if we want to close the gap

The global climate finance gap (excluding China) currently amounts to a stunning 1 trillion until 2025 under the business-as-usual scenario. Promises of the past have not been lived up to while the climate crisis and green energy transition are becoming more urgent every day. Global policy makers seem to rely on domestic resource mobilization and blended finance to close the gap.

However, as this blog post has shown, the empirical success of blended finance remains very limited, while the challenges to boost domestic resource mobilization remain huge. Time is, however, very limited. Instead of relying on insecure trends, global policy makers should act by developing policies that grant a bigger role for public money and innovative monetary solutions.

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Tett, G. (2022). The flood of green finance must be diverted from the west. Financial Times. https://www.ft.com/content/95c28b9e-7844-4ab7-8401-42d1cca133a8

The Economist (2016). Trending: blending. The Economist. https://www-economist-com.proxy.library.uu.nl/finance-and-economics/2016/04/23/trending-blendingg

UNCTAD (2022). Trade and Development Report 2022. Development prospects in a fractured world. UNCTAD. https://unctad.org/tdr2022

World Bank (2023). Global Economic Prospects. The World Bank Group. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/254aba87-dfeb-5b5c-b00a-727d04ade275/content

[1] According to the OECD, blended finance is “‘the strategic use of development finance for the mobilization of additional finance towards sustainable development in developing countries’, with ‘additional finance’ referring primarily to commercial finance’” (OECD 2018).

[2] In this context, the IHLEG recommends an incremental tax effort of at least 2.7% of EMDEs’ GDP, equal to USD 650 billion, so an additional USD 417 billion by 2025 on top of IMF projections (Bhattacharya et al., 2022).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Sara Murawski is a policy advisor and researcher in the field of international trade and investment, finance and European integration. She has worked in the world of journalism, think tanks, NGOs, the Dutch and European Parliament as well as with many activist groups. At Sustainable Finance Lab, Sara is project leader on the project “Changing ‘Fiscal Rules’ and reforming the EU fiscal framework” that tries to shift the debate in the Netherlands from frugal to forward looking. The continuous dialogue with experts, policy officials and local actors in developing her thoughts, output and activities is crucial for her.

Rens van Tilburg is director of the Sustainable Finance Lab at Utrecht University. Rens has experience working in the European and Dutch parliament and as an advisor on innovation policies for the Dutch government. With the academic think tank the Sustainable Finance Lab Rens has worked extensively on banking, asset management, supervision, public finance and monetary policies. Focusing on financial stability issues and the impact of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Anna Ghilardi is a research intern at Sustainable Finance Lab. She attained her bachelor’s degree in Economics and Business Economics at Utrecht University, where she wrote her thesis about the impact of previous monetary policy on European house price growth before and during the Covid-19 pandemic. She is now completing a double degree master’s programme in European Governance, a two-year curriculum attended both at University College Dublin, Ireland and Utrecht University. Therefore, she is currently writing her master’s thesis at Sustainable Finance Lab on Poland and Bulgaria’s capacity to single-handedly fund their climate finance gap in view of the European Union’s climate neutrality ambitions.

Development Studies cannot become an apology for the status quo

By ISS Blog Bliss 4 May 202326 December 2024 2299 views

We live in times of converging crises, across the economy, democracy, health, the environment and more, with sprawling implications for ways of living around the globe. These crises and their mutual relationships offer the opportunity for new understandings of the problems of development and possible ways forward, which will inevitably be contested. These debates can be examined historically, focusing on the implications for our discipline.

An overview can start from the period before the Washington Consensus. Politically, it was marked by a strong anti-communism, with the Soviet model offering a plausible alternative to developing countries going through a rapid process of decolonisation and intense left activity. Economically, the dominant notion of development in the West was related to the idea of modernisation as the pathway to an ideal-type advanced capitalism, illustrated by the USA. In turn, economic policy referred to state intervention to provide the economic infrastructure for industrialisation, including public ownership of key industries, substantial aid distributed according to Western policy imperatives and commercial interests, and support for authoritarian regimes aligned with the West. Although the pre-Washington Consensus would now appear extraordinarily progressive, it was heavily contested by scholarship, with Latin American structuralism and dependency theory figuring prominently, and highlighting the inequitable economic structures, social relations and processes that systematically disadvantaged countries in the Global South.

The Washington Consensus emerged in the late 1970s as a dramatic right-wing reaction against the perceived economic and political weaknesses of the previous Keynesian-developmentalist consensus. The Washington Consensus included three main elements. First, the hegemony of mainstream economics within development theory. Second, the hegemony of the World Bank and the IMF setting the agenda for the study of development and the implementation of development policy and, third, ideologically, the attachment of the Washington Consensus to neoliberalism, including the commitment to a notion of ‘free markets’ standing inconsistently between Hayek and Friedman, but unified in claiming that governments were the source of both inefficiency and corruption. While the Washington Consensus claimed to be leaving as much as possible to the market, what it really did was to rebuild the state to intervene on a discretionary basis to promote a globalising and financialised capitalism.

The Washington Consensus was followed, in the 1990s, by the post-Washington Consensus, which was more sensitive to the non-economic domain, and rationalised the ongoing transitions to political democracy in the Global South through appeals to institution-building and the imperative of good governance to limit corruption. Presumably, these goals would be better achieved in a democracy, leading to the conclusion that democracy was good for growth. The promotion of democracy in the South was supported by a development industry parasitic on the poor countries which, suddenly, found reasons to support the World Bank and the IMF, instead of criticising them from financially parched margins.

Financialisation and the degradation of state capacity

Retrospectively, it appears that, from a mainstream perspective, the Washington institutions had stumbled upon the best of all possible worlds: the neoliberal reforms transferred the power to allocate resources to a globalised financial market, while political democracy legitimised the neoliberal state. At the same time, the neoliberal reforms degraded state capacity; multiparty legislatures weakened the Executive; and a supposedly independent judiciary ensured that the neoliberal reforms, an independent central bank, inflation targeting regimes and the conditionalities imposed in return for aid were locked in – all in the name of “democracy” and the “rule of law”.

This arrangement was criticised heavily within Development Studies. The first criticism came through the notion of the developmental state, that was shown to have violated Washington’s prescriptions across the board, for example, through protectionism, directed finance, price and wage controls, and so on. The second criticism focused on the notion of adjustment with a human face, and the impact of the neoliberal reforms on the poor. The third criticism came through the notion of post-development, which highlighted the value and agency of the subaltern.

The field of development has now been transformed again, by the ongoing slowdown in the advanced economies, with global repercussions: even former star performers have been affected, especially since their own transitions to neoliberalism. In parallel, we notice the degradation of neoliberal democracies. They were already circumscribed by an institutional apparatus to insulate economic policy from any form of “interference” by the majority, which dramatically reduced the policy space available to nominally democratic states. The consequence in practice was that those who lost out the most under neoliberalism also tended to be ignored by its institutions.

With the destruction of the left in the previous period, these tensions opened spaces for anti-systemic forces polarised by what may be called ‘spectacular’ authoritarian leaders. These are supposedly ‘strong’ people, that cultivate a politics of resentment, appeal to common sense, claim to be able to ‘get things done’ by force of will, and promise to confront the outsiders who undermine ‘our’ nation and harm ‘our’ people. But, when they reach power, those spectacular leaders always impose policies intensifying neoliberalism, under the veil of nationalism and a more or less explicit racism, and they are often shadowed by the rise of neo-fascist movements. This was the situation until early 2020, and the pandemic only intensified those tensions. Economies imploded, and authoritarian neoliberal systems became catastrophically perverse, often imposing health policies that killed millions and entrenched Covid-19 so it will never be eliminated.

Authoritarianism and Environmental Collapse call for a Transformation of Development Studies

Contemporary economic and political systems are being slowly but relentlessly overwhelmed by the environmental crisis. This crisis relates, fundamentally, to the contradiction between the limitless search for profits and the limited capacity of the Earth to sustain a climate compatible with the continuation of life as we know it. In turn, the search for solutions is limited by tensions between the accumulated emissions by leading Western economies and the rising emissions in developing countries claiming the right to development today, and by the structure of the global economy, in which several countries are invested in the production of fossil fuels even though this is unsustainable, but they refuse to exit. These tensions have been intensified by financialisation, that tends to raise emissions and block mitigation because financialisation feeds procyclical behaviours that reinforce existing economic structures, increase volatility, and concentrate income, wealth and power. This is incompatible with climate adaptation, strategic industrial policy, or redistribution.

Development Studies must always be critical, or it becomes just an apology for the status quo, for exploitation, for the reproduction of inequality within and between nations, and for the destruction of the conditions of life on Earth. Today, Development Studies faces a neoliberal modality of capitalism whose prosperity relies on speculation, despoliation, extraction and fraud, and which may be sliding into permanent economic underperformance, new forms of fascism and environmental collapse. It is urgent to advance a transformative agenda from within Development Studies. These crises ought to be confronted together for reasons of practicality and legitimacy, through a democratic economic strategy, including political democracy, focusing on the restoration of a collective sphere of citizenship, the expansion of rights, the distribution of income, wealth and power (focusing on the decommodification and definancialisation of social reproduction, starting with universal public services), and a green transition in the economy.

The difficulty is that those alternatives must be underpinned by new social movements and new structures of representation, from political parties to trade unions to community associations, corresponding to the current mode of existence of a society that has been extensively decomposed domestically, imperfectly integrated globally, that has distinct cultures but is connected through internet-based tools. There is nothing more important for Development Studies, today, than to support these critiques of neoliberalism, and support the new movements to reshape our mode of existence.

This blog was first published by EADI.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Alfredo Saad-Filho is Professor of Political Economy and International Development at the Department of International Development, King’s College London.

Earth Day Series | How spending time in urban green spaces can counter our children’s biophobia and improve the wellbeing of older adults

By ISS Blog Bliss 27 April 202326 December 2024 3358 views

In a recent BLISS blog, we argued that outdoor nature education programmes in primary schools can help combat eco-anxiety among children. As young people have fewer and fewer direct encounters with nature, they come to fear or misunderstand it. Spending time learning through nature outdoors can help prevent this from happening. But adults can also benefit from being outside: an ongoing project shows that spending time in urban green spaces can enhance the well-being of older adults. To ensure that urban green spaces are suited for intergenerational use, they may need to be adapted.

Sir David Attenborough famously stated that “no–one will protect what they don’t care about, and no-one will care about what they have never experienced”. This is certainly the case for how we experience and relate to nature: nurturing curiosity and a sense of wonder for the living world is not (only) about experiencing the remote wilderness and having sufficient expertise to know enough about it – it is much more about becoming comfortable with, becoming aware of, and developing a sense of unity with nature in our daily lives and through our daily practices.

However, our experiences teaching and raising children have shown us that there is quite a long way to go. The ‘environment’ we aim to save has been reduced to a set of outside factors we can ignore; our walls and virtual reality keep us separated and ‘safe’ from it. When adults have a rare contact with it; the same applies to children.

And so, on a daily basis, we meet children and young people who claim with all their heart that they love trees and that they want to plant new ones “because they allow us to breathe”. But do they care about the old tree in the square which they never climbed, hugged, or raced around? And can they help understand their deep value for human beings and solve environmental problems without having the intimate experience of the living world? In other words, is experiencing nature instead of reading about it in books or learning from others how to protect it necessary for children to truly understand it, love it and act for it?

Good intentions, but too little interaction

Experience Aurélia has had with primary students show that the same who proclaim that they want to save Planet Earth, are also afraid to walk through ivy leaves because they believe they are dangerous, or cannot touch earth with their bare hands (“too dirty”). They want to “fight for the climate”, but freeze in the face of the weather variations of a temperate climate (“it’s rainy”). They want to save pollinators, but run away from each striped insect, winged or not. They dream of saving biodiversity, but want to “kill” weeds and fungi, as they might be dangerous. They are passionate about fighting plastic pollution, but offer plastic goodies at every occasion.

These children are simply scared because the reality of nature is different from what they see trough television or on the internet. They are scared of nature because it provides them with sensations that have become unusual. Their exposure to weather variations, unexpected events, or different subtle sensations has dramatically decreased with the limited ecosystems they actually access, which leads to disgust and fear. This phenomenon is called biophobia, and it is now deeply anchored in the minds of adults and educators alike,[1] who spend 93% of their lives inside buildings or vehicles, and is so well reproduced by the younger generations we raise indoors. They think love and they feel repulsion.

But this can be countered: research shows that children engaged in outdoor activities on a daily basis develop more pro-environmental behaviours, with positive effects on attitudes towards biodiversity and natural ecosystems.[2] Aurélia’s experience working in nature education in Amsterdam confirms this: by developing programmes of regular experience of nature, a virtuous loop in the relationship between humans and living things is quickly established. Children wonder about the old tree that was cut down and the woodpeckers that used to nest there. With students regularly learning outdoors, the green area next to the school has become part of their daily life and identity. The school organises regular clean-up actions to preserve the outdoor learning opportunities.

This committed attitude towards nature then spreads from the children to their families and to the wider community. One community for example is now fiercely trying to protect a neighbouring park from further land artificialization projects, thereby affirming that the patch of nature they enjoy should not serve as a dumping ground for waste or a place for drug addicts – they see it as a place for families, children, and teachers to enjoy. Hence, when we invest in outdoor education – when we foster authentic human-nature connections in our daily urban lives – we show the city’s policy-makers that we value the ecosystem we belong to.

Young and old alike can reconnect

This observation stretches beyond the biophobia of children: we believe that not only children need to reconnect with urban nature, but also (older) adults. A desk review carried out as part of the ongoing AFECO project in which Sylvia is involved shows how urban green spaces benefit older adults. The project aims to empower older adults to apply affordable, age-friendly, and eco-friendly solutions to their own living environments to help them ‘age in place’, i.e. to keep living in their own homes and in their own local environment and community. The project will develop an open e-learning platform aiming to raise awareness and educate older people, (in)formal caregivers and social workers on the practical adjustments and subsidies that exist (e.g. to install a stair-lift, insulate the home to save energy), and the benefits of and ways of caring for the natural environment, for example by having the tiles removed in their gardens, or getting involved in community gardens.

The benefits are shown to be multiple: urban green spaces yield many health benefits, including a longer life expectancy, fewer mental health problems, improved cognitive functioning, and a better mood.[3] Studies have shown that such benefits are particularly important for older adults who often do not have satisfactory alternatives to exercise, socialize, or enjoy nature.

However, the design of parks have long neglected the needs and preferences of older adults.[4] Barriers that prevent older people from using green spaces include poor maintenance, littering, and perceived safety issues. They may also have concerns about inadequate toilet facilities, a lack of seating, and shelter from weather conditions.[5] We believe that these concerns can be addressed by adopting intergenerational design features in which both children and older adults at the very least can enjoy green spaces – preferably together.[6]

To conclude, during this Earth Week 2023, let’s reflect on how each of us can help to ‘invest in our planet’, this year’s theme, by advocating for more and better urban green spaces, especially for children and older adults.

References

Bixler, R. D., Floyd, M. F., & Hammitt, W. E. (2002). Environmental socialization: Quantitative tests of the childhood play hypothesis. Environment and Behavior, 34(6), 795-818.

Bjerke, T., & Østdahl, T. (2004). Animal-related attitudes and activities in an urban population. Anthrozoös, 17(2), 109-129.

Eagles, P. F., & Muffitt, S. (1990). An analysis of children’s attitudes toward animals. The Journal of Environmental Education, 21(3), 41-44.

Loukaitou-Sideris, A., Brozen, M., & Levy-Storms, L. (2014). Placemaking for an Aging Population: Guidelines for Senior-Friendly Parks. UCLA: The Ralph and Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Retrieved from https://escholarship.org/uc/item/450871hz

Nieuwenhuijsen, M. J. (2021). New urban models for more sustainable, liveable and healthier cities post covid19; reducing air pollution, noise and heat island effects and increasing green space and physical activity. Environment International, 157, 106850. Doi:10.1016/j.envint.2021.106850

Soga, M., Gaston, K. J., Yamaura, Y., Kurisu, K., & Hanaki, K. (2016). Both direct and vicarious experiences of nature affect children’s willingness to conserve biodiversity. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 13(6), 529.

Soga, M., Evans, M.J., Yamanoi, T., Fukano, Y., Tsuchiya, K., Koyanagi, T.F. and Kanai, T. (2020). How can we mitigate against increasing biophobia among children during the extinction of experience? Biological Conservation, 242, 108420.

Zhang, W., Goodale, E., & Chen, J. (2014). How contact with nature affects children’s biophilia, biophobia and conservation attitude in China. Biological Conservation, 177, 109-116.

van Hoof, J., Marston, H. R., Kazak, J. K., & Buffel, T. (2021). Ten questions concerning age-friendly cities and communities and the built environment. Building and Environment, 199, 107922. Doi:10.1016/j.buildenv.2021.107922

[1] See Soga et al. (2020).

[2] See Bixler et al. (2002), Bjerke & Østdahl (2004), Eagles & Muffitt (1990), Soga et al. (2016), and Zhang & Chen (2014).

[3] see Nieuwenhuijsen (2021) for an extensive review.

[4] See Loukaitou-Sideris et al. (2014).

[5] van Hoof et al (2021).

[6] See Loukaitou-Sideris et al. (2014).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Aurélia Chevreul-Gaud develops change management strategies to implement outdoor learning on a daily basis. She is a mentor in nature-based education, creator of the 7 Connection Gateways Pedagogy© and holds a master’s degree in change management. She is also a public speaker – see her TEDx performance. Her current project based in The Netherlands, focuses on integrating outdoor learning into urban teachers’ practices and linking it with the International Baccalaureate Primary Year Programme.

Sylvia I. Bergh is Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher at the Centre of Expertise on Global and Inclusive Learning and the Research Group on Multilevel Regulation at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). Some of her current research focuses on the governance of heatwaves, and from her position at THUAS and with the Research Group on Urban Ageing, she is currently involved in the EU-funded AFECO project.

Earth Day Series / Honour thy financial commitments: climate funds promised at COP27 won’t reach vulnerable countries unless these things are done

By ISS Blog Bliss 24 April 202326 December 2024 2319 views

When the COP27 summit was kicked off in Egypt in November last year, there was hope that some progress would finally be made in financing climate action. But Hao Zhang, who attended the summit, observes that although efforts seem to have been stepped up, there is not yet reason for optimism. In fact, COP27 was marked by the failure of government leaders to truly commit financially to meeting climate goals. While the past year has witnessed devastating disasters, a potential economic downturn and energy crisis, the war in Ukraine, geopolitical unrest, and the aftermath of Covid pandemic, this is not enough to justify the lack of commitment, she writes.

While countries have increasingly prioritized the financing of climate action in the last years, talks at recent COP summits seem to indicate that an even greater financial commitment was made to mitigate the effects of climate change. This also seemed to be the case for the recent COP27 summit that took place in Egypt at the end of last year, and which I attended. For example, on November 9 last year, the COP27 presidency explicitly scheduled a Financing Day to emphasize finance as the key to achieving climate policies and increasing climate ambition.[i]

And at the summit, attention was draw to the huge gap between climate adaptation financing and loss and damage commitments, the latter referring to the negative consequences of climate change risks that cannot be or are not mitigated in time.[ii] Thus, at the summit, developing nations banded together to urge wealthy nations to increase their financial commitment to addressing these urgent problems. The somewhat positive news is that parties at the summit in the end agreed to create a specific fund on loss and damage that aims to provide financial assistance to countries most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

However, even if the issue of loss and damage is now being added to the official agenda and for the first time has explicitly been discussed at a COP meeting,[iii] there is still a long way to go in enacting the commitments. Here are some of the things I have observed while at the COP27 summit showing that at present, it’s still all talk and no trousers when it comes to implementing climate funds:

It has not yet been decided exactly “who should pay into the fund, where this money will come from, and which countries will benefit”. [iv] This may raise concerns that negotiations around specific issues related to how the fund will operate are likely to go on for years, with no concrete investments being made. Another central question in the funding of climate action is linked to the allocation of funds: which issues or activities should be allocated funds first, and by whom? Apart from scale-up commitments, national governments should also consider the strategic allocation of funds for climate action. An effective strategy is needed to assess and prioritize different agendas and issues and distribute funds among those countries requiring financial resources.

Previous commitments first need to be honoured. It is reasonable to have to somewhat curb our optimism about getting something done when we recall that the financial commitment wealthy countries made in 2009 to mobilize USD 100 billion a year by 2020 for climate adaptation still hasn’t been fully honoured. In fact, COP27 opened with a rallying call for countries who’d previously committed money to pay up.

The discussion on climate financing also revolves around how much money we will need to keep global warming within the 1.5°C limit and how countries and people who need the money most can get access to it. On one hand, climate operations seem not to be receiving nearly enough funding. Although at COP27, we witnessed nations constantly announcing new finance plans to close the funding gap, including 10 million euro from the Netherlands for the Africa Adaptation Acceleration Plan upstream financing facility, a USD 150-million package from the US for adaptative measures, 11.6 billion pounds from the UK for international climate finance, and an increase by Germany of its climate contribution to USD 6 billion a year by 2025,[v] to name a few, these are by no means sufficient to keep us on the 1.5°C

On the other hand, it appears that access to climate funding remains a problem for those in need all around the world. There are certainly a variety of financial and technical resources floating around in the system given that party representatives from wealthy and developing countries alike have pledged to allocate even more funds. However, how to locate and access funds can be tricky. At the summit, civil society leaders from the developing world pushed for more streamlined access to financial resources. Representatives of NGOs from China, Angola, Bangladesh, and India for example stated at a side event that it is crucial to ensure and provide better access to NGOs and other entities who fully comprehend local needs and priorities and who closely collaborate with the local communities who suffer the most from the climate crisis.

What can we learn from this? Although there is increasing pressure on parties to scale up their ambitions, the execution thereof may actually be the bigger problem, as leaders of developing nations have stated that keeping existing promises is more vital than making more pledges. Despite the fact that the Egyptian presidency defined this meeting as the “Together for Implementation” COP,[vi] there are still more promises than a clear implementation strategy for financing aid initiatives.

To this end, I have made a number of suggestions based on my observations, which are detailed below.

The private sector should be encouraged to invest

First, it has become strikingly clear that public funds from national governments cannot be the sole source of climate financing, first of all because of their hesitance or inability to commit sufficient funds. Here, the private sector can play a significant role. Governments must develop policies to encourage private sector investment in addition to increasing their own investments in various initiatives. One of the most crucial things governments can do according to Mark Carney, UN special envoy for climate change and finance, is to “provide clear signals on where they want to go in key industries” and supplement these with “targeted and effective incentives”.[vii]

Local realities need to be heeded and technical support provided

Second, whether funds for climate action are international, national, regional, or local, it is essential to maintain a flow of information, provide clear application guidelines, and support staff capacity building. However, as the representatives pointed out during the side event, those who engage with local stakeholders targeted by climate action lack clear instructions on how to access these resources, and those negotiating financial packages, are likely to have little understanding of local requirements. It appears that the top politics may already be detached from the bottom-up realities.

The climate crisis should not be used as a geopolitical bargaining chip

Lastly, certain issues such as the level of mitigation efforts and NDCs appear still to be overlooked by the parties. Talks on finance cannot dictate the narrative at the negotiations. Moreover, the disconnected offers and needs may serve as a wake-up call for all parties that the multilateral talks are not and cannot be the sole solution to our climate catastrophe. Parties cannot use the climate crisis as a geopolitical bargaining chip; civil society and business actors may not be best served by sitting at the table and talk or shouting some slogans outside the meeting rooms.

[i] Refer to the COP27 website

[ii] Refer to UN Environment Programme

[iii] Refer to the UNFCCC website

[iv] Refer to UNEP’s website

[v] Refer to the Global Center on Adaptation

[vi] Refer to the UNFCCC Climate Champions website

[vii] Refer to Mckinsey Insights

[vii] Watch the recording on YouTube

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Hao Zhang is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Before joining ISS, she was a master’s student majoring in international affairs at School of Global Policy and Strategy at University of California, San Diego. Her current research focuses on policy advocacy of Chinese NGOs in global climate governance. Her research interests lie in global climate politics and diplomacy, and NGO development in China.

Myanmar’s Resilient Revolution: How non-state welfare is sustaining democratic struggle

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 April 202326 December 2024 3528 views

Myanmar’s Spring Revolution is now in its third year since the February 2021 military coup. Despite facing brutal repression including arson attacks and aerial bombardment by Myanmar’s state security personnel, ordinary people across the country are continuing to resist the return to dictatorship. What explains the extraordinary resilience of their civil disobedience and armed resistance efforts?

Roots of resilience

Many in Myanmar are furious about the return to tyranny and the bleak implications for them, their children and their country. These grievances have been channelled into revolutionary struggle over the past two years which has been sustained by a deeply-ingrained culture of reciprocity, charity and philanthropy that has developed over decades. Indeed, many of the ideas and practices of self-reliance, reciprocity and moral citizenship now at the core of the Spring Revolution have roots in the fitful post-socialist market reforms of the 1990s and 2000s.

In my book, ‘Outsourcing the Polity: Non-State Welfare, Inequality and Resistance in Myanmar’, I draw on extensive fieldwork to explore the origins of Myanmar’s vibrant non-state welfare sector. Examining the political economy of provincial economic liberalisation after the collapse of the Burma Socialist Programme Party in 1988, I uncover how state officials encouraged provision of social aid and public goods by non-state actors. Sub-national military commanders suppressed anti-junta and democratic party activity but permitted ostensibly ‘apolitical’ welfare-oriented village and neighborhood groups to flourish. Meanwhile, regional junta officials issued commercial licenses and tax exemptions to businesspeople who assumed roles as informal civilian administrators and often became patrons of both government-sponsored and grassroots welfare groups.

Outsourcing enabled dire state social austerity; the 1990s junta slashed social expenditure and used the funds to instead double the size of the armed forces. Alongside often fragile commercial ceasefires reached with ethnic armed elites, transferring social responsibility to the non-state sector allowed Myanmar’s military to focus instead on forcefully expanding the central state into restive borderland regions.

Democratic outsourcing

The legacies of post-1988 social outsourcing continued to shape the character of politics after the military initiated partial civilian rule in 2011. Both the Thein Sein (2011-2016) and Aung San Suu Kyi (2016-2021) administrations continued to encourage charities, philanthropists, the private sector and religious communities to perform social welfare and development roles, often in exchange for tax deductions. Rather than turn to the state to deliver social development, communities were told by their elected representatives to rely on each other and the ‘free-market’ to solve social problems. Community groups even ran quarantine facilities and fundraised for the government’s vaccination procurement programme amid the COVID-19 pandemic, at the encouragement of Suu Kyi herself. Meanwhile, after 2010 tycoons sought to remake their public reputations and protect their questionably accrued assets from taxation or redistribution by helping to fill the gaps in social provisioning left by decades of austerity.

Post-coup resistance

The military’s February 2021 ousting of elected civilian leaders has spawned thousands of new groups in neighbourhoods and villages across the country. These networks are helping to support the needy, resource pro-democracy militias, provide education to children fleeing violence and deliver social governance in large areas of the country that are no longer military controlled. They are also at the vanguard of imagining and enacting alternative social ideals and models to dictatorship which reject the militarisation and economic exploitation of the so-called ‘democratic decade’ (2011-2021).

Yet few of these groups receive any funds from the international community – even though they are playing crucial humanitarian and social roles. In one township in Sagaing Region, for instance, an alliance of local social actors including welfare groups, militias, traders and striking teachers are helping to resource and run a network of more than a dozen schools educating thousands of young people. Initiatives like theirs currently receive almost no foreign aid but are delivering essential social governance functions in the wake of what even the junta acknowledges is its administrative collapse in most rural and borderland areas of the country. Foreign governments and humanitarian actors must ensure local networks are far better resourced as the dictatorship continues to cling to power.

The remarkable role of non-state welfare actors and ideals in sustaining Myanmar’s democratic struggle has implications for understanding distributive politics, autocratic legacies and civil resistance elsewhere. For now though it is clear that a new wave of social outsourcing is underway in Myanmar – one that is simultaneously deepening communal self-reliance while also sustaining the fight for a more inclusive and democratic future.

*Featured image: A group of teachers stage a sit-in protest against military dictatorship in Shwedaung township in Sagaing Region, Myanmar (Photo: Visual Rebellion SSR 104).

Video interview courtesy of International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague and photos courtesy of Visual Rebellion (https://visualrebellion.org/).

Tax deductible donations to non-state welfare organisations can be made via Mutual Aid Myanmar: https://www.mutualaidmyanmar.org// Burmese-subtitled version of the attached video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Soz46aqzKuI&t=1s

This article has been originally published by the Centre for International Studies at Cornell University and The Diplomat.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr Gerard McCarthy is Assistant Professor of Social Policy and Development at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague (part of Erasmus University of Rotterdam). He specializes in the politics of inequality and development in Southeast Asia, especially Myanmar where he has researched democracy, welfare and authoritarian legacies since 2013.

Mujeres Indígenas Profesionistas Trabajando para Transformar las Ciudades en México: Reflexiones Metodológicas

By ISS Blog Bliss 13 April 202326 December 2024 2591 views

Las prácticas de investigación continúan sin reconocer la multiplicidad de puntos de vista, experiencias y conocimientos de las diversas personas involucradas en los procesos investigativos, pasando muchas veces por alto los significados que las personas dan a sus propias vidas y a la realidad, y silenciando así las interpretaciones subjetivas. En este blog compartimos algunas reflexiones sobre la metodología desarrollada en el marco de un proyecto sobre el Derecho a la Ciudad con mujeres indígenas en Guadalajara, México. Pensar la investigación como un sistema vivo, compuesto por numerosos engranajes movilizados por el trabajo colaborativo, puede ayudarnos a investigar de forma más consciente y responsable, escriben Azucena Gollaz y Marina Cadaval.

En 2022, iniciamos un proyecto de investigación enfocado en comprender las principales barreras que enfrentan las mujeres indígenas profesionistas para acceder a los bienes y servicios en las ciudades, especialmente aquéllos relacionados con la educación superior, el trabajo y la movilidad. Nuestro punto de partida fue la exclusión sistémica por razones de género que existe en las metrópolis latinoamericanas, y en particular la discriminación por cuestiones de raza que se vive en Guadalajara, Jalisco, México. El proyecto fue financiado por el International Institute of Social Studies – Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR).

En el marco del proyecto, trabajamos con cinco mujeres indígenas profesionistas: E.B. (Rarámuri) del estado de Chihuahua, A.G. y S.G. (Ñoo da´vi) y N.O. (Zapoteca) del estado Oaxaca, y D.E. (Totonaca) del estado de Veracruz. Todas nacieron o se mudaron a Guadalajara en donde se han involucrado en acciones específicas para construir espacios urbanos diversos y equitativos. En nuestros diálogos, individuales y colectivos, problematizamos el concepto del “Derecho a la Ciudad”. Desde una perspectiva feminista interseccional, buscamos comprender y cuestionar las limitaciones que enfrentan las mujeres mientras viven y se mueven en las ciudades, en especial con relación a las estructuras de poder de género, de raza y de clase social. Juntas buscamos nuevas formas de entender y transformar tales realidades. Uno de nuestros acuerdos comunes fue la pertinencia de resaltar los aportes que las mujeres indígenas profesionistas realizan para la transformación de los espacios urbanos como participantes activas, en lugar de mirar exclusivamente las barreras que enfrentan.

Esto nos llevó a reflexionar sobre nuestro proceso metodológico de manera más amplia, y pensamos en el concepto de “engranajes colaborativos” como una analogía de un mecanismo que pone en marcha formas innovadoras de hacer investigación mientras se actúa frente a los problemas sociales. En nuestro proyecto, esta premisa se materializó trabajando con mujeres comprometidas a pensar críticamente sobre cómo crear espacios urbanos culturalmente diversos y equitativos. Los diferentes contextos, profesiones, posiciones y entendimientos sobre el Derecho a la Ciudad de cada una de nosotras, fueron los puntos de partida y fortalezas para construir nuestros argumentos y propuestas comunes. Este enfoque es lo que consideramos una metodología transformadora, que también se puede utilizar para revelar los aportes de las personas que son menos reconocidas, tanto en las redes colaborativas como en los procesos de investigación. Para nosotras, el reconocimiento, el cuidado y el respeto fueron factores esenciales para movilizar un sistema vivo de producción de conocimiento.

Engranajes transformadores

El engranaje inicial fue nuestra conexión como dos mexicanas haciendo doctorado en el ISS-EUR en los Países Bajos. Como colegas y amigas pudimos compartir y discutir nuestros proyectos académicos en múltiples ocasiones. Las dos hemos trabajado con metodologías feministas. La investigación de Marina se basa en la colaboración, el respeto y el cuidado y la de Azucena en el valor de las experiencias encarnadas de las mujeres para transformar los espacios y las movilidades urbanas. Nuestros intereses comunes nos llevaron a desarrollar el proyecto “El Derecho a la Ciudad y las Mujeres Indígenas: Mapeando el Racismo”.

Posteriormente, el engranaje siguió avanzando con el apoyo de la Prof. Karin Arts (ISS-EUR) quien se unió y nos ayudó a materializar la iniciativa. La experiencia de la Prof. Arts como investigadora y su asesoramiento puntual guiaron nuestras reflexiones generales y ayudaron a consolidar el marco conceptual. Su asistencia en la navegación de los procesos institucionales (administrativos) también fue importante.

Al mismo tiempo, las trayectorias, conocimientos y perspectivas de cada una de las cinco mujeres indígenas profesionistas con las que interactuamos constituyeron bases invaluables para dar forma y re-direccionar la investigación. E.B. es estudiante de la licenciatura en Diseño Urbano y forma parte de NUCU (Nuestras Culturas), un colectivo de estudiantes universitarios de comunidades indígenas y afromexicanas. A.G. obtuvo una licenciatura en Ciencias de la Educación y S.G. tiene una licenciatura en Administración de Empresas. Ambas forman parte de los colectivos JIU (Jóvenes Indígena Urbanos) y ÑOI, Cultura en tus Manos, un colectivo de mujeres indígenas. N.O. cursó la licenciatura en Historia y la maestría en Género y Desarrollo; trabaja como bibliotecaria en la universidad estatal. D. E. es licenciada en Pedagogía y tiene una maestría en Investigación Educativa; trabaja en una entidad pública que coordina y promueve políticas públicas para el desarrollo sostenible de los pueblos indígenas de Jalisco.

Transformar también significa actuar

El movimiento de los engranajes ha sido sostenido por los aportes y esfuerzos conjuntos de todas las colaboradoras del proyecto. Cuatro acciones y productos específicos resultaron del proceso metodológico. 1.- Un artículo colectivo para el blog Resistencias y Mujeres Profesionistas Indígenas con propuestas concretas para construir ciudades inclusivas y diversas. 2.- La creación y publicación de los mapas de movilidad urbana y experiencias de cada participante en Carftofem 3.- Este texto que todas revisamos y acordamos todas, y 4.- Un artículo académico coescrito.

Elementos que seguir reflexionando

Identificamos varias complejidades en el proceso de llevar a cabo una investigación colaborativa y contextual. La academia en general no considera suficiente tiempo, materiales y recursos financieros para desarrollar prácticas basadas en las experiencias de las comunidades indígenas. Por ejemplo, tejer redes, iniciar y mantener diálogos, reflexionar, repensar los matices derivados de escuchar y colaborar con las participantes de la investigación; escribir, validar borradores con cada participante, traducir entre diferentes idiomas y considerar las zonas horarias. Todo ello requiere mucha atención, tiempo y recursos económicos que no corresponden a los plazos y a los presupuestos académicos.

Sin embargo, si bien es un desafío, la colaboración desde y a través de la diversidad también es un proceso de aprendizaje y una contribución a las metodologías feministas y transformadoras. Las metodologías transformadoras deben implicar una forma respetuosa y solidaria de producir conocimiento que asegure que los contextos y las realidades se representen desde múltiples perspectivas. Es por ello que todas las participantes y colaboradoras fueron reconocidas y tuvieron injerencia en los procesos y resultados de la investigación. Para nosotras, este es solo el primero de una serie de engranajes necesarios para generar una forma alternativa y necesaria de realizar investigaciones y transformar las prácticas académicas actuales.

The translation of this article has not been checked by ISS Blog Bliss; it is therefore not responsible for factual or other errors that may occur in the translation process.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Azucena Gollaz Morán is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam and an Associate Professor at ITESO University. Her research interests focus on gendered embodied experiences, gendered mobilities and sustainable cities. She has specialized in mobile feminist mapping methods to understand gendered and intersectional geographies of exclusion. Azucena is currently conducting research about Gendered and Intersectional Embodied Daily Urban Mobilities Experiences in Guadalajara, Mexico. More information about the project can be found at: https://cartofem.com/en_us/.

Marina Cadaval Narezo is a Mexican PhD candidate in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies -Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR) in The Netherlands where she also completed a master’s degree in Social Policies for Development. Her action-research passion around the tensions of gender, race and class in education policies derive from her involvement in the first graduate scholarship programs in Mexico aimed at indigenous people. She is interested in producing knowledge from a collaborative and feminist perspective considering diversity and care as main values (https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-82654-3_7). She has also participated in several selection committees in higher education and advised educational policies.

Scholars at risk: why the Dutch system for protecting persecuted scholars is failing and why the government urgently needs to get involved

By ISS Blog Bliss 11 April 202326 December 2024 4502 views

In the past, scholars facing persecution have regularly been received by Dutch universities, which have provided them with a safe space to continue conducting their research in times of adversity. In 2019, the Dutch system for providing a safe haven for such scholars collapsed – an event that went largely unnoticed at the time. Ever since, efforts to help scholars have been mostly futile, largely because the bureaucratic hurdles to providing a safe space are more or less insurmountable. In this article, Linda Johnson explains how and why the Dutch system for supporting refugee scholars has become ineffective and suggests what should be done about it.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine early last year galvanized universities in the Netherlands into a brief flurry of solidarity and a frantic but largely ineffectual effort to provide a safe space for Ukrainian researchers to continue their work. Working parties were set up, web pages were designed and countless meetings were held. The consternation was immense. Sadly, none of this led to much concrete assistance for imperilled scholars and students. There was simply no system in place that would allow grants to be paid out to those in dire need. It became abundantly clear that the infrastructure for supporting scholars at risk is inadequate.

The lack of an infrastructure for organizing meaningful support was systematically exposed in January this year in a report issued by a prestigious group of critical scholars (The Young Academy), who for the first time showed the deficiencies of the current system in a rigorous report that describes and analyses the situation as it is today. They have made clear that the infrastructure for supporting scholars at risk from all over the globe (Ukraine, Afghanistan, Syria, Turkey, Iran and the list goes on…) is woefully inadequate. But how could this have happened and what needs to be done to remedy the situation?

The early days of Scholars At Risk NL

To answer this question, it is important to first take a look at what has happened in the past few years. In around 2010, the American organization Scholars at Risk (SAR) started approaching universities in Europe with a view to expanding global provision for at-risk scholars. I had been active in university internationalization circles globally for several decades; hence, I was one of the individuals approached for initial discussions on setting up a SAR provision in The Netherlands.

I was enthusiastic about the proposal and felt that the Netherlands should get involved in this important work. The aims of SAR and the mission of ISS were in alignment and it was not difficult to gain the approval of the then ISS rector (Professor Leo de Haan) to begin receiving students at ISS. Many ISS colleagues were in favour of creating a structural provision for scholars under threat. I set up an infrastructure and little by little extended the pilot so that the whole of the Erasmus University could participate.

We managed to place one or two scholars a year at ISS and occasional placements were found in other parts of the university. Mentoring a scholar who has had to flee for his/ her life is not easy work, but there were enough excellent colleagues willing to go above and beyond the call of duty to make the system work. Similar efforts took place at most universities in the Netherlands, largely based on solidarity and relying on colleagues who were willing to spend time and effort over and above their working hours to keep the system afloat.

Between 2010 and 2015, most European countries, including the Netherlands, set up programmes to help scholars at risk. The Dutch support organization for refugee students, the UAF, coordinated Dutch efforts and fulfilled the important task of disbursing the grants made available to scholars at risk. These grants came from a variety of sources (universities, private donations, local councils, SAR and others). For some time, things went well enough.

A turn for the worse

Sadly, in 2019 the UAF decided to end its partnership with the Dutch arm of Scholars at Risk. Worries had begun to surface about possible fines being imposed by the Dutch tax authorities because of the UAF’s role in the distribution of grants. The Dutch tax authorities had indicated that the modest bursaries could be construed as salary and would hence fall under the category of ‘notional’ employment on which the recipient would need to pay tax, and over which the employer would need to pay social insurance. This would multiply the costs involved and reduce the grants to a size too small to meet living costs for the scholar in question.

The financial risk was deemed too great by the UAF – in 2020, it withdrew entirely, effectively making it impossible for Dutch universities to offer financial assistance to at-risk scholars and also bringing to an end any structured coordination of support to at-risk scholars. Expertise on how best to support scholars at risk could no longer be shared and data could no longer be collected and collated on the numbers and origins of scholars seeking assistance from Dutch universities.

In short, since 2020, Dutch universities have no longer been able to make any provision to assist scholars at risk. This situation is in sharp contrast to the generous and well-organized support structures available in many European counties, such as Poland, Germany, the UK, and others.

Ripples of concern, but no comprehensive effort

In 2021, the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan led to a modest ripple of concern among Dutch universities. Small, but uncoordinated and largely unsuccessful efforts were made to offer a safe haven to a few Afghani scholars and their families. This proved to be impossible because of the lack of a grant distribution system. Very quickly, the concern ebbed away without any scholars being placed. A year later, in 2022, the onset of the war on Ukraine led to another ripple of concern within Dutch academia. The problem was closer to home this time. Most Dutch universities felt a moral imperative to get involved and to do something constructive to assist scholars and students from Ukraine. Nothing very concrete was achieved, in spite of the best efforts of some individuals.

Attempts to restart the system

A group of concerned university administrators from Dutch universities met several times throughout 2020-2022 to try finding a way to improve matters. I convened and chaired these meetings. It was agreed that Nuffic, the Dutch organization for internationalization and education, could perhaps take on the role previously fulfilled by the UAF. This seemed to be a good choice, as Nuffic has an extensive network within the Dutch higher education sector, is used to administering grants, and has considerable expertise that would be handy in helping to ensure that at risk scholars are placed in settings appropriate to their field of research.

Nuffic was keen to get involved but at the eleventh hour felt obliged to decline further involvement because of the risks involved in relation to tax authorities and the labour inspectorate. Back to square one…

An opportunity to turn the tide

At this point, the Dutch Young Academy decided to get involved. On 23 January of this year, the Young Academy’s report called ‘Support for at risk scholars in the Netherlands’ was launched. This was a tremendously important step: for the first time, a measured and reflective analysis of the support system was committed to paper in the form of a well-researched report. It showed that at-risk scholars are woefully underserved in the Netherlands. The main conclusion of the report is crystal clear: “There is currently no national infrastructure in the Netherlands for the registration and reception of at-risk scholars.”

The exposure of this embarrassing gap in provision for scholars at risk is important: it gives Dutch universities who wish to host scholars at risk the opportunity to do some repair work on a broken system. They need the assistance of the Dutch government in this endeavour. The question is whether this opportunity will be recognized and acted upon. The Young Academy has laid bare an uncomfortable truth. It is surely impossible for the government to ignore their plea for action……

I believe that the only way forward is for politicians to enter the arena to resolve the impasse. The tax authorities and the labour inspectorate understandably have little interest in ensuring that scholars at risk are supported within Dutch universities. It is hardly their core business. The ministers involved (Education, Culture & Science, and Finance) thus need to take the political initiative to remove the obstacles around the tax and labour regulations and to provide guarantees that will allow the universities in collaboration with Nuffic and UAF to fulfil their moral duty to support scholars who cannot practise their profession in freedom and/or whose very life is threatened.

“It is precisely scholars who are often the first people to pose a threat to repressive regimes, and they are therefore often among the first group who must take flight.’’ – ‘Support for scholars at risk in the Netherlands’, January 2023.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Linda Johnson was the executive secretary of ISS, but has now retired. She is particularly interested in the societal relevance of research. In addition, she has done recent work on the safety and security of researchers and co-developed a course on literature as a lens on development.

The Global South and the return of geopolitics

By ISS Blog Bliss 6 April 202326 December 2024 3497 views

A rise in the number and scale of political tensions between countries in the Global North clearly signal the return of geopolitics; the war waged by Russia on Ukraine is a key example. But while such conflicts are widely reported on, a new geopolitics emerging in the Global South, while equally significant, is often overlooked and should be receiving more attention, writes Wil Hout, ISS Professor of Governance and International Political Economy.

Students of international relations are typically familiarised with the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan and Halford Mackinder, who both stressed the relevance of geographical dominance for great power status. Mahan focused on the role of sea power, while Mackinder’s notion of the ‘heartland’ (which referred to Eastern Europe) stressed control of land masses as a central factor for great power status. Mahan and Mackinder’s work is usually discussed to illustrate the popularity of geopolitical thinking at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.

When opening a newspaper or looking at news websites in early 2023, it is obvious that we are witnessing the return of geopolitics. In Europe, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has spurred transformations that were unimaginable since the end of the Cold War, leading amongst others to a spike in military spending, the application for NATO membership by Sweden and Finland and the granting of EU candidate status to Ukraine and Moldova. Relations between the US and China have soured and led to a so-called ‘chip war’. Apprehension about China’s expansion in the South China Sea and the Indo-Pacific, as well as about its claims to Taiwan, resulted in the completion of a US-led defensive ‘arc’ in East Asia and the establishment of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States Partnership (AUKUS) in 2021. Vulnerabilities related to the sourcing of rare earths elements have led to increased activities on the part of the US and the European Union to strengthen their position in regional value chains related to these metals.

Geopolitics and the Global South

While current news reports pay much attention to the geopolitical dimensions of great power interactions, the return of geopolitics is certainly as relevant for countries across the Global South as for those in the Global North. In many cases, the manifestations of geopolitics will differ in the Global South, and that is why it is relevant to pay specific attention to them. For reasons of space, the following paragraphs will mainly focus on Africa.

One of the most important – and by now quite well documented – developments has been the challenge to the post-World War II international or ‘liberal’ order posed by the so-called rising powers. Currently, China is seen as one of the key challengers of the principles of the liberal, multilateral order: the creation of so-called parallel institutions such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the Chang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is often seen as an attempt to provide alternative mechanisms for Western-dominated, multilateral organisations as the World Bank, IMF and NATO. Further, the Belt and Road Initiative is a Chinese attempt to forge stronger ties with countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, importantly through increased investment and the extension of loans. The rhetoric of South-South Cooperation is applied quite regularly to emphasise China’s solidarity with countries in the Global South, but many scholars have voiced criticism of China’s claim to position itself within the developing world.

Africa is an obvious target of the new geopolitics. A first sign of this is the increased diplomatic activity targeting the continent that has been visible in recent months. In December 2022, delegations from 49 African countries and the African Union were hosted by President Biden at the US-Africa Leaders Summit, at the occasion of which US Secretary of State Blinken emphasised that ‘Africa is a major geopolitical force’. In the first two months of 2023, representatives of most major powers toured the continent, with the foreign ministers of China, Russia, Germany and France, the US treasury secretary and the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy visiting fourteen African countries.

Will Africa benefit from the increased attention?

While former colonial powers such as France and Britain remain involved in Africa for economic and security considerations and the EU recently concluded, together with the African Union, a Joint Vision for 2030 as part of the Africa-EU Partnership, some of the rising powers have also made deliberate attempts to strengthen their foothold in the continent. With the vast majority of countries in Africa having signed a memorandum of understanding with China on the Belt and Road Initiative, China has expanded its investment in infrastructure across the continent. The Kampala-Entebbe and Nairobi Expressways, together with the Mombasa-Nairobi Standard Gauge Railway, are the most visible signs of Chinese investment in Africa. Critical voices have meanwhile criticised the Chinese presence in Africa because it has led to a new form of dependency by luring countries into a ‘debt trap’. Through the activities of the notorious Wagner Group, Russia has also been active militarily in the Central African Republic, Mali, Libya, Sudan, Mozambique and Madagascar, where they supported the incumbent regime or particular groups in exchange for mining concessions. India, as one of the champions of the Non-aligned Movement, is picturing itself as an alternative to Western and Chinese involvement and has supported, for instance, Africa’s call for a permanent seat on the UN’s Security Council, which is also referred to as the Ezulwini consensus.

External involvement in Africa is undoubtedly important, but developments in the continent also have important geopolitical dimensions. A recent report of the European Union Institute for Security Studies discusses the ‘new geopolitical frontlines’ in terms of four geographical spaces (sands, oceans, cities and peripheries) and four functional domains (trade, digital, jobs and information). It is obvious that Africa currently faces a broad array of geopolitical opportunities and challenges. Driven by Africa’s economic dynamism, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is an obvious opportunity to redraw the (regional) economic boundaries that are dividing the continent. The agreement could be a motor for economic development, by creating a larger intra-African market, and could reduce economic dependence on other parts of the world. The AfCFTA not only aims to liberalise continent-wide trade, but is also intent on establishing the free movement of persons, capital and services.

The various geopolitical spaces contain noticeable centripetal forces that may have a positive influence in the African geopolitical landscape, while certain centrifugal developments could lead to more adverse outcomes. The Sahara is both the area that connects the countries of North and sub-Saharan Africa, and a fertile ground for criminal activity, including human and drug trafficking, and the rise of transnational terrorist networks. Likewise, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea are areas of trade and military activity while they also attract groups involved in piracy and armed robbery. African cities are the hotbed of growing middle classes and economic dynamism, but they also contain the potential for political mobilisation and resistance to the dominance of political and economic elites. Finally, peripheral areas, which are distant from the political centre of the state, are vulnerable to the rise of extremist, jihadist groups.

The upcoming panel at the EADI CEsA 2023 General Conference will be a place to assess and discuss the extent to which geopolitics has returned in the Global South and what are the implications of this return. Important questions are: does heightened geopolitical struggle offer opportunities for the countries in the Global South to maintain or strengthen their political and/or economic position, are there any obvious allies for addressing geopolitical challenges, how do the countries in the Global South define their own geopolitical position, and is regional cooperation a viable instrument to counter geopolitical fallout?

This blog was first published in EADI blog.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Wil Hout is Professor of Governance and International Political Economy at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

I know what you did last summer: are destination conferences a problem?

By ISS Blog Bliss 4 April 202326 December 2024 3001 views

Year in and year out, academics send themselves halfway across the world to attend conferences. In an age in which flying for leisure is fast becoming a taboo, are such conferences in which academics and their universities pay large sums of money to converge for brief moments to present their research and to network also becoming impermissible? And are they even more concerning when they take place in ‘exotic’ places at convenient moments – are destination conferences a thing, and are they a problem?

Most of us have been invited to a destination wedding – one where you travel to an unusual location where your friends/colleagues/family members choose to get married. At a safari lodge, in a forest, on an island, on a holiday farm, in the snow, or even in a different country – Thailand, Scotland, Finland, the Maldives. Anywhere that seems romantic, really.

If you’re anything like me, such invitations make you grind your teeth: you would love to go, because the locations are often idyllic and a wedding will make them even more so, but the costs of attending a wedding half the world away are astronomical. It’s not just about a plane ticket and the accommodation: meals, excursions, wedding gifts, and outfits add up to make it an expensive few hours of celebrating someone’s matrimony. And then there’s the emissions – in an age where flying is the new smoking, we’re thinking twice before hopping on a plane to visit a friend, watch a concert, or explore a new city.

Over the years, I’ve missed quite a few weddings in the country in which I was born and raised because I simply couldn’t justify flying there just for that. These weren’t even destination weddings to the couples who organised them, but to me, living at least twelve hours away by plane, they were. Those weddings that I did manage to attend took place when I was home visiting my family – over the Christmas period mostly. But I don’t fly somewhere just to attend a wedding. No matter how close I am to the couple to be wed.

This brings me to the idea of a destination conference and whether this is a thing. Are academic conferences organised in far-away places to lure academics into attending? And should we be saying no to this form of external validation?

Two things made me ponder this. First, I recall a conversation I had with a colleague some years back. We were discussing the conferences that we’d like to attend that year. Our university makes available money so that we (PhD researchers) can travel to and present our research at one or two conferences per year. My colleague suggested attending a conference in Hawaii. I was enthusiastic, of course, because who doesn’t want the chance to explore a major travel destination, mixing business with pleasure? When I asked him what the conference was on, he told me, and I realised that I in no way could attend. My research was in a totally different field and I could not adjust my proposal to fit the conference theme.

That got me thinking about why we as academics attend academic conferences and which of them are actually directly relevant to our research. If we present our work at these conferences, is it because it is good practice for becoming future academics? Are we presenting our research in area-specific sessions attended by peers that we respect and possibly want to collaborate with? Or are we presenting something vague in panels with general titles without the aim of actually using the conference to put forth new ideas and start with ground-breaking interdisciplinary work?

The second occurrence is more recent. I recently decided not to attend a large biennial conference set to take place in Portugal during this year’s summer holidays in person, even though I am co-convening a panel with a senior researcher. Fortunately, the conference is hybrid, which gives participants the option of attending online. Before the covid pandemic, this was not even an option, so we have come a long way. Meeting online is now just as acceptable, although not quite as desirable, as meeting in person. But hundreds, if not thousands, of conference participants will flock to the southern European country in July for the conference, which takes place over the course of a few days.

The decision not to attend the conference is based on the unwillingness both to fly within Europe, for whatever reason, and to attend a conference in an ‘exotic’ location just for the sake of doing so. I’d already sworn off flying within Europe for leisure – my partner and I had driven 2,000 kilometres over two days during the December holidays to visit his parents in Italy and had returned in the same way – and now I was doing the same for work. I’d always disliked conferences because of the massive expenses that have to be incurred to deliver half-hour presentations (registration fees, accommodation, travelling) and the purpose, which I sometimes feel is seldom more than ‘showing face’ and trying to remain relevant in a certain academic field.

Nevertheless, you’d think that I’d be attending a conference where I was co-convening a panel. My hesitance to do so, even with funding available to send me there, is interesting to me. It makes me wonder whether my aversion for academic conferences in general has turned into an aversion for ‘destination conferences’. Would I be just as hesitant if the conference were to take place in Portugal in the middle of the winter, or if it were to take place in a cold and dreary country, for example Ireland or Germany?

And is there anything wrong with academics going places for conferences? Is it still an unfortunate necessity if you as academic want to make your voice heard or make it in this cut-throat academic world?

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Lize Swartz is a PhD researcher studying how changes in urban water availability affect human-water relations. She has co-authored a book called Bron on how residents of Cape Town navigated the near-collapse of the city’s water system. She has been editor of Bliss since 2017.

Why and how the City of Amsterdam should be opposing Israel’s apartheid regime

By ISS Blog Bliss 28 March 202328 October 2024 9150 views

Numerous Palestinian, Israeli, international and UN organizations as well as scholars have called Israel an apartheid and settler-colonial regime. The City of Amsterdam has historically acted against South Africa’s apartheid regime, yet the same is not happening now in relation to Israel’s apartheid regime. At a recent panel discussion on anti-racism, Jeff Handmaker talked to renowned anti-apartheid activists about the role the city could and should play in condemning Israel’s oppressive and racist actions. It is important that Amsterdam affirm its cultural heritage as a space for solidarity anti-racism, he writes.

Since 2005, several discussions, films and solidarity events have been organized globally and annually around the theme ‘Israeli Apartheid Week’. Eighteen years ago, it was a lot more difficult to argue that Israel’s regime should be called racist, apartheid and settler-colonial, even though Palestinian organizations for years had been showing this was the case. At present, owing to years of discussions on the topic, there is greater agreement on the nature and consequences of Israel’s human rights transgressions and forceful oppression of the Palestinian people.

But there is still a long way to go in getting countries and organizations to condemn Israel as it did South Africa. And so, last week, as part of Israeli Apartheid Week activities, I participated in a panel at an anti-racism conference in Amsterdam at Pakhuis De Zwijger to dialogue about the involvement of the City of Amsterdam during the South African anti-apartheid movement back in the 1970s and 1980s and whether it should be doing the same at present in relation to Israel’s apartheid regime.

Together with Layla Katterman, renowned German-Palestinian student activist and founder of Students for Palestine, veteran anti-apartheid activists Corrie Roeper (formerly of the Holland Committee for Southern Africa) and Bart Luirink (formerly of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in the Netherlands), as well as veteran Palestinian solidarity activist and writer Robert Soeterik, we reflected on the city of Amsterdam’s stance on apartheid dating back several decades. This stance featured solidarity linkages and concrete projects between the municipality and anti-apartheid groups in South Africa. In reflecting on this history, we hoped to understand the dynamics of the anti-apartheid movement initiated by the city and to contemplate what scope there was for the formation of a similar anti-apartheid movement in respect of Israel’s racist, brutal, and colonial treatment of Palestinians. Here are some thoughts that were shared during the panel discussion.

Dutch and South African resistance movements had different roles

In the first part of the panel, the panellists reflected on the Netherlands’ role in the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. I emphasised that black liberation groups led the movement, while others, including white liberal organizations such as lawyers’ groups, student groups and women’s groups supported it. Eventually, many of these groups came together during the establishment of the United Democratic Front in 1983, led by anti-apartheid activists Yusuf Dadoo, Allan Boesak and others.

Accordingly, white liberal groups in South Africa such as Lawyers for Human Rights, the women’s-led group Black Sash and others, as well as groups from the global anti-apartheid movement, trade unions and others played key roles in helping to liberate South Africa. However, these roles were very different from those of the African National Congress and Pan-African Congress and black consciousness groups (though they were banned and operated underground) and eventually the United Democratic Front. Black consciousness leader Steve Biko articulated this clearly in 1970:

The South African white community is a homogeneous community. It is a community of people who sit to enjoy a privileged position that they do not deserve, are aware of this, and therefore spend their time trying to justify why they are doing so. Where differences in political opinion exist, they are in the process of trying to justify their position of privilege and their usurpation of power.

Each group must be able to attain its style of existence without encroaching on or being thwarted by another. Out of this mutual respect for each other and complete freedom of self-determination … (there will arise) a true integration.

In other words, white liberal groups needed to understand the perspective of black liberation groups; the possibility for unity existed, although the former needed to learn how to listen. A similar dynamic exists in relation to liberal Israeli groups.

Both Palestinians and South Africans have experienced oppression

As a crucial point of comparison, Palestinians, like black South Africans, have been engaged in a longstanding struggle for self-determination against oppressive regimes. A further comparison to be made is that both in Palestine and in South Africa, there has been considerable fragmentation of the land, of political systems, and of the people themselves. In Israel-Palestine, a so-called “two-state solution”, which has been the official, albeit naïve position of most states to resolve the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, is truly an illusion.

Both systems of apartheid have involved layers of racial(ized) and legalized discrimination, undermining one’s access to equal / equitable education, health care, jobs, and livelihoods, as well as access to justice.

Yet, there are also key distinctions to be made; in particular, there is no such thing as Israeli nationality. By contrast, South Africa never imposed different nationalities; it did, however, classify and treat people differently based on racial(ized) legal categories.

The City of Amsterdam hasn’t (yet) declared Israel an apartheid state

We then sought to understand the current partnership between the cities of Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the City of Amsterdam explicitly opposed South Africa’s apartheid regime by severing former linkages with South African institutions and supporting anti-apartheid groups, both financially and politically. However, the same is not happening in the case of Israel. Despite Amnesty’s 2022 report, another by the Israeli NGO B’tselem and numerous others, including the most recent by Al Haq all declaring Israel to be an apartheid state, the mayor of Amsterdam and the Dutch government have considered the declaration of Israeli apartheid to be invalid. Moreover, both city and national government officials feel that such a matter should be decided by the court; there thus has been no official recognition by the city administration of Israel’s status as apartheid regime.

However, this is a blatantly incorrect position. The matter has in fact already been decided by several international courts, including the International Court of Justice in 2004 that affirmed Israel was violating international human rights.^[1] This was followed by the opening of an international criminal investigation by the International Criminal Court following a decision by the Pre-Trial Chamber in 2021. [2] Thus, as an integral organ of the Dutch state, the municipality of Amsterdam is obliged to act in accordance with international law, including the outcomes of these two courts.

Amsterdam should formally sever its relationship with Tel Aviv

Lastly, we explored what could be done about this dismal situation. It was clear to most in the room that as long as there were not consequences for Israel’s criminal behaviour (as there frequently have been for Palestinians), there would be continued impunity. Consequences for state and individual violations are an essential feature of both state and individual accountability – this indeed is one of the principal reasons why treaties were concluded to establish the Geneva Conventions, the UN and more recently the ICC.

Hence, the speakers on the panel felt it was important to affirm, on the basis of both moral and legal obligations, that the City of Amsterdam is obliged to respect international law and not to assist an illegal situation. Accordingly, we felt it should sever its formal relationship with the city of Tel Aviv. In other words, beyond being a matter of legal obligation, in accordance with both the United Nations Charter and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, it is important that Amsterdam affirm its cultural heritage as a space for solidarity anti-racism.

At a broader level, we found that it is crucial to unpack what the role of settler-colonialism has been as a historical force, including how spatial segregation has occurred on the basis of race and ethnicity. In Israel-Palestine, certainly, this has principally been marked by the well-planned and systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

The latest event taking place on 24 March 2023 at the ISS sought to address how one can legitimately resist this regime. A report of this event is forthcoming.

[1] The International Court of Justice affirmed in its 2004 Advisory Opinion that: (1) there is a Palestinian people with a right to self-determination; (2) the West Bank and Gaza, including E. Jerusalem, are occupied territories under international law, and Israel is an occupying power with legal obligations towards all civilians in the territory (i.e. PRINCIPAL obligations are aimed at Israel); (3) Israeli settlements violate international law and Wall is illegally constructed; (4) Conventions of International Humanitarian Law are fully binding on Israel, and must govern all Israeli actions in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and (5) Israel’s occupation practices (associated regime) violate both international humanitarian law and human rights.

[2] On 3 March 2021, the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court announced it was opening an investigation into the Situation in the State of Palestine. This followed a decision on 5 February 2021 by the Pre-Trial Chamber of the Court that the ICC could exercise its criminal jurisdiction in the Situation, including alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity (which includes the crime of apartheid).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor of Legal Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies and, together with Margarethe Wewerinke-Singh at the University of Amsterdam Law School, a member of the Steering Group of the Legal Mobilization Platform

Addressing eco-anxiety among children – from environmental education to outdoor learning

By ISS Blog Bliss 21 March 2023 13325 views

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Concerned about the long-term effects of environmental degradation and climate change, young climate activists such as Greta Thunberg are in the frontline of climate protests currently sweeping the globe. While children of all ages, not just adolescents, are becoming increasingly concerned with environmental change, environmental education programmes in schools, combined with the limited time children spend outdoors, may not be so helpful. In this article, Aurélia Chevreul-Gaud and Sylvia I. Bergh argue that outdoor education can play an important role in helping children reconnect with nature to ease their eco-anxiety.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”23809″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]From an early age, children are exposed to a wealth of information on environmental degradation and disasters featured in the media and in conversations among adults. Indeed, their approach to the world around them is mainly – if not only – shaped by this information. Environmental education programmes provided to children by primary schools are based on the idea that broadening the scope of the information children receive can help ensure an understanding of how human action impacts the environment and can foster their desire to act.

Raising children’s awareness of environmental risks and of the need to save the planet at first sight seems to be a good idea, as it can theoretically help them become responsible, problem-solving adults that can shape the world they want to live in. But what if it’s not that simple in case of children? With one of us being an outdoor learning specialist for primary schools, and with both of us having school-age children, we observe a large gap between the theory taught at schools and what happens once children step outside the classroom. Children seem to be out of touch with nature and don’t know how to interact with it, having internalized the discourse that they are harming instead of healing the natural world.

The question then arises: Are standard educational programmes centred on environmental disasters as effective as they seem, or are they simply engaging in fearmongering in a way that paralyses instead of inspires children to act?

Environmental education in its current form often leads to eco-anxiety among children. Why do we say this? We have observed that through environmental education programmes in primary schools, children between the ages of 4 and 12 learn that the environment is being threatened because of human action and that they have an important role in addressing this. They are taught about threats that include climate change, deforestation, drought, biodiversity loss, and plastic in the oceans. And they are taught that they have to act.

But how can they respond to such big and often-distant disasters? These are serious, anxiety-provoking questions whose solutions are far beyond their reach. The burdens are too heavy for their young shoulders to bear and not appropriate for their age and emotional development; their inability to act while watching the world around them crumble leads to eco-anxiety. Australian research shows that 44% of children are worried about how climate change will affect them in the future, and one-quarter of children believe that the world will end before they reach old age.[1]

And their responses to environmental harm can be inappropriate. We meet many primary-school students who react strongly to environmental harm, showing their love for nature and passion for saving the planet (listen to a podcast on this here). Sometimes with tears in their eyes, they vehemently warn others to tread lightly, using expressions such as “You are hurting the tree!” when a friend scratches an elm or a beech tree or “You are killing nature” when someone is walking in a field of daisies.

Such severe and inappropriate reactions reveal not only a misunderstanding among children about the resilience of nature and how humans harm the natural world rooted in limited interaction with it but also the intensity of the anxiety younger children have about their relationship with the environment. Eco-anxiety among young children not only leads to critical mental health impacts such as depression, anger and fear but also to inappropriate coping mechanisms such as denial and cognitive dissonance.[2] Indeed, “they are indifferent or afraid,” a secondary school teacher remarked when we asked him how his students react when he teaches on the environment.

Why and how is environmental education giving rise to eco-anxiety?

Most so-called environmental education programmes, meant to be inspiring and playful, are designed to be delivered in the classroom, often involving brand-new plastic toys, computers, or even virtual reality components. Children are asked to consider how to solve ‘environmental’ problems from behind computers and use these gadgets, but seldom go outdoors to observe what’s actually happening.

But a transition to outdoor learning programmes can help foster deeper connections between children and the natural world.

Outdoor nature education programmes in primary schools nurtures love for and a feeling of being one with nature, as well as long-lasting pro-environmental behaviours.[3] It gives children a solid – and joyful – base to develop a balanced set of problem-solving skills which involves emotions, thinking, and action. It fosters holistic thinking. When we provide regular education in nature, children become sufficiently comfortable with and curious about the living world. When day-to-day learning happens in nature, then the outdoors is not a place or resource anymore; the living world becomes their home.

In addition, spending time in nature offers children essential conditions to heal from depression and anxiety, especially eco-anxiety. An extensive body of research[4] shows that nature-based education is absolutely essential for developing a holistic understanding of and a strong, positive connection with nature. This is echoed in observations made by some of the 10-year-old pupils that participated in a dance lesson we organised outdoors. “I feel freer,” one exclaimed, while another believed that “we feel more inspired”.

What does this mean for primary school teachers and curricula?

Outdoor learning should not be the privilege of a few forest schools located far from the cities in which we live. It is possible in many traditional urban schools. But to integrate it more widely, we need teachers trained to deliver a substantial part of their curriculum through nature: we need to teach them how to design an outdoor lesson plan that meets their objectives, how to manage risk and safety wisely, how to take advantage of small local urban nature islands, and how to deal with bio-phobia (their own and that of their pupils). We need teachers to be equipped with environmental programmes promoting connections with nature and to be supported and appreciated by their schools and the parents.

And the payoffs are substantial. When we see pupils learning outdoors with a teacher who took the plunge, we see joyful children who are able to focus on their learning and who also develop an authentic connection with nature – children who have an idea of the smell of a slug (“like the rain”), who are curious and know what to expect when digging into the soil, or who respect fungi and pass on a wise approach toward them. We see knowledgeable students who are getting prepared to act wisely and in harmony with nature.

[1] Tucci, J., Mitchell, J., & Goddard, C. (2007). Children’s fears, hopes and heroes:
Modern childhood in Australia. Australian Childhood Foundation and National Research Centre for the Prevention of Child Abuse, Monash University, Ringwood, Victoria.

[2] Léger-Goodes, T., Malboeuf-Hurtubise, C., Mastine, T., Généreux, M., Paradis, P., & Camden, C. (2022). Eco-anxiety in children: A scoping review of the mental health impacts of the awareness of climate change. Frontiers in Psychology, 13 Retrieved from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.872544.

[3] Liefländer, A. K., Fröhlich, G., Bogner, F. X., & Schultz, P. W. (2013). Promoting connectedness with nature through environmental education. Environmental Education Research, 19(3), 370-384. doi:10.1080/13504622.2012.697545

[4] See for example Bola et al. 2022; Hosaka et al. 2017; Rosa et al 2018; Sugiyama et al. 2021.

[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1679389692184{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the authors:

Sylvia I. Bergh, is Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher in the Research group Multilevel Regulation, part of the Centre of Expertise on Global and Inclusive Learning, The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS). Her recent research focuses on the governance of heatwaves, and she is currently starting up a new research project on the Inner Development Goals and how to foster the required skills in future global governance professionals.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1596795191151{margin-top: 5% !important;}”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

[/vc_column_text][vc_column_text][newsletter][/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

Women’s Week 2023 | From young girls to “bush wives”: Armed conflicts are traumatising girl soldiers in Africa, and post-conflict peacebuilding and rehabilitation efforts could be making it worse

By ISS Blog Bliss 16 March 202326 December 2024 4577 views

As armed conflicts persist across the world, children are repeatedly recruited into armed groups as soldiers, robbing them of their childhood. While some estimates reveal that girls comprise almost half of all child soldiers, they feature less prominently in post-conflict peacebuilding and rehabilitation efforts. Esther Beckley in her research explores the disproportionate impacts of war on girl soldiers, exposes the gender blindness of post-conflict peacebuilding efforts, and calls into question the legitimacy of peacebuilding programmes.

I joined the army by force in 2004. I was still a minor and married. I was harassed by the chief and it traumatised me a lot. I have a 7-year-old daughter who was born from this harassment.”

These are the words of Charlene Kahrikalembu, a young woman from Goma in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) who shared her experience with my co-researcher and I[1] about how she was forcefully recruited into the Patriotes Résistants Congolais (PARECO) armed group as a child soldier. Charlene’s narrative echoes that of the thousands of girls who are recruited across the world as fighters, chefs, sex slaves, brides, messengers, spies, and for other reasons in armed conflicts, yet remain unaccounted for during the post-conflict peacebuilding period.

Armed conflicts, wherever they occur, severely affect both people and material resources. Regrettably, the conscription of children, some as young as seven years old, into warring factions is a recurring tendency in armed conflicts, which affects their physical, mental, spiritual, emotional, and material well-being. In most situations, children are recruited to replace adults because they are vulnerable, subservient, and easily controlled.

Nonetheless, when the problem of child soldiers is examined, it is often depicted as a masculine phenomenon, i.e. the enlistment of boys. In researching this topic, I have found that this action is mostly influenced by mainstream perceptions of armed conflict as a phenomenon occurring between males who are ‘naturally’ strong and warrior-like. As Tickner (1992:2) puts it, “International Relations is a man’s world where war and power politics are special positions reserved for men”. This perception is further reinforced in the media with popular images of boys holding rifles, whereas girls are frequently deemed insignificant and rendered invisible within fighting forces. However, studies have shown that in contemporary wars, girls comprise 40% of children associated with fighting factions (Haer 2017).

More so, compared to girls not associated with fighting factions, girl soldiers are disproportionately affected by war. This is due to the lengthy period girl soldiers spend in the captivity of their respective armed groups, making them susceptible to persistent sexual violence, torture, drug use and abuse, and illness (Beckley 2021). For example, in Sierra Leone, the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) led by notorious rebel leader Foday Sankoh used the taboo on women’s nakedness as a weapon of war. This was done by parading naked girls on the frontlines in an attempt to nullify the traditional ‘juju’ (voodoo) used by the Civil Defence Forces (CDF), also known as ‘Kamajors’, who should not see naked women on the frontlines (Oluwaniyi 2019).

From my conversations with female ex-combatants in Goma, eastern DRC, I learnt that girl soldiers were distributed amongst commanders of armed groups to serve as wives, which entailed constant sexual violence and forced pregnancies. This was also the case for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) led by rebel leader Joseph Kony in northern Uganda, which I studied as part of my Master’s research. In the north-eastern part of Nigeria, girls constitute most of the suicide bombers, performing a strategic role for Boko Haram terrorists (Oluwaniyi 2019).

Despite these prominent roles played by girl soldiers in various armed conflicts, they remain marginalised in peacebuilding efforts. Peacebuilding typically comes as a disappointment to most girl soldiers, since they are faced with an identity crisis of whether they should be considered soldiers or mere sex slaves and wives of commanders. This bolsters their exclusion from peace processes like the United Nations’ Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programmes. DDR is the very first stage of the peacebuilding process, aimed at dissolving warring factions, retrieving weapons from ex-combatants, and providing trauma healing and socio-economic opportunities to ex-soldiers to facilitate their reintegration into civilian life.

Rhetorically, gender issues are pertinent to these tasks, but in reality, this is not always the case. First, the design of DDR programmes in most countries requires ex-soldiers to present a weapon to prove their participation in the conflict before they are eligible for DDR benefits. Now,

how does a girl soldier whose body was used as a weapon of war ‘prove’ that she was a soldier?

In Liberia, for instance, commanders had to testify to a girl soldier’s participation in their armed group before she could benefit from the DDR programme.

Consequently, most girl soldiers do not benefit from the DDR procedure due to its masculinist design. They are forced to self-reintegrate into their communities with no physical, mental, social, or economic support. They return to communities where they previously killed their neighbours and relatives with no form of community reintegration, which is included in the DDR package. Hence, they are stigmatised and labelled as ‘damaged goods’, ‘bush wives’, ‘unmarriageable’, etc. It is much worse for girl mothers who return with children labelled ‘bush babies’ and are rejected by their community members.

All in all, peacebuilding efforts remain gender-blind, and one must consider whether the end goal of so-called peacebuilding ventures like the DDR is long-term peace. This raises critical unanswered questions, such as: What are the underlying knowledge and principles used to address gender issues in peacebuilding? How are the categories of difference constructed? By whom and for what purpose? What are the implications of these on girl soldiers and sustainable peace in general? Such questions need to be urgently addressed in studies aimed at investigating gender imbalances in post-conflict peacebuilding.

References

Beckley, E.M and Oluwaniyi O.O (Forthcoming). ‘The Rhetorics of Education for Girl Ex-Combatants in Sierra Leone’s DDR Programme’. Africa Spectrum: SAGE.

Beckley, E.M. 2021, “DDR and the Education of Ex-Combatant Girls in Africa” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies, eds. O. Yacob-Haliso & T. Falola, 1st edn, Springer Nature, Switzerland, pp. 178.

Haer, R. 2017, “The study of child soldiering: issues and consequences for DDR implementation”, Third World Quarterly, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 450-466.

Oluwaniyi, O. 2019, “Women’s Roles and Positions in African Wars” in The Palgrave Handbook of African Women’s Studies, eds. O. Yacob-Haliso & T. Falola, First edn, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switzerland, pp. 85-105.

Tickner, J.A. 1992, Gender in International Relations: Feminist Perspectives on Achieving Global Security, Columbia University Press, United States of America.

[1] This blog article is based on research I conducted for my Master’s degree five years ago, on further research I am conducting in pursuit of a PhD on gender, conflict, and peacebuilding, as well as that of other researchers in this field.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Esther M. Beckley is a final-year PhD researcher at the University of Malta. She is also a visiting Research Fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS). Her areas of expertise include gender, conflict, child soldiers, postconflict peacebuilding and development, international interventions in conflict contexts, etc., with a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa.

Women’s Week 2023 |“I am a girl, not a woman”: how recognizing diverse girlhoods can foster the inclusion of young mothers in debates on womanhood and girlhood.

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 March 202326 December 2024 1981 views

In Uganda, young mothers are predominantly called women, although some young mothers contest that representation and prefer to be called girls. The normative insistence on categorizing young mothers as women despite girlhood being a transitional phase locks young mothers in an in-between category, a space in which they can be neither girls, nor children, nor women. International Women’s Day celebrations further risk widening the gap between such girls whose daily realities centre on survival, writes Annah Kamusiime. The need to recognize diverse girlhoods is a first step in ensuring that girls are included in discussions on womanhood and girlhood.

During one of the interviews I conducted in 2021 for my PhD research on representations of young motherhood, Nandi, a 16-year-old Ugandan mother, told me, “Even though I am a mother, I am a girl, not a woman”. Her statement is an example of the agentic manoeuvres of girls whose voice remains silenced and their existence pushed to the liminal space – liminal because as mothers, they are in an in-between category where they are not girls anymore, nor children, and nor women, especially when they are not married.

Being a parent is the main marker of transition to adulthood/womanhood; in most of Uganda others also include menarche, a sexual debut, and wifehood. But the young mothers I spoke to did not consider themselves to be adults – women – despite having borne children. And, having borne children, they were no longer children themselves. As a result, their needs as young mothers may not be adequately addressed by efforts that separately target girls, children, or women. Young mothers who fall into none of the marked categories of girl, child, or woman thus face marginalization and exclusion. In this article, I discuss why the recognition of a distinct category of diverse girlhoods is necessary to further their inclusion – also in celebrating International Women’s Day.

‘Girl’ or ‘woman’? How words make worlds

The terms we use are not neutral – the way in which words are combined allows for certain meanings to flourish and for others to be minimized. For instance, consider these two statements: “The girl-child is pregnant” versus “The girl is pregnant”. Both can be used to describe an adolescent mother. But an emphasis on a pregnant girl as a child (as the first statement does) may elicit a different interpretation and response when compared to using only the word ‘girl’. And often such word choices are deliberate. Words make worlds; struggles over meaning are not just about semantics – they are strategic, they have an effect, they shape discourses, actions and rhetoric, and they are contested. Thus, there is a need to be reflexive on how we frame different categories of persons because conceptions shape engagement.

Another example that shows how words matter for girls: While I was writing this article, my 18-year-old daughter read it and told me that at school, their teacher told them that a girl becomes a woman on the day of her sexual debut. I asked her whether that mattered and whether it would make a difference if a girl would be referred to as a woman or a girl. Yes, she said, ‘girl’ and ‘woman’ mean different things, and it matters which is used. As in the case of Nandi, the labels ‘woman’ placed on a ‘girl’ has specific connotations – it means she engaged in sexual intercourse yet she is expected to be asexual, she is a mother at the wrong time, and she has ruptured normative notions of conceptions of ideal childhood and youth because she is expected to be innocent. As a result, young mothers are stigmatized and are seen as a threat to the social morals and social order, which fuels their exclusion.

These two examples show that yes, the label of a woman that is placed on girls who are young mothers matter to them even when everyone else may not acknowledge it. Many of the young mothers I have spoken to choose to be called girls, not children, or girl-children, or women. The failure to consider the desire for this distinct categorization means that these young mothers’ voices remain unheard. I therefore argue that we need to reimagine and reconstruct girlhood as diverse and distinct in policy, practice, and debates at different levels-national and international.

Girls just wanna be girls

Several renowned scholars studying girlhood, including those highlighted by Claudia Mitchell, have advocated for what they have referred to as the girl-method. Rather than continue to lump girls under either the categories ‘children’, ‘young women’, or ‘women’, they argue that it is vital to add ‘girls’ as a distinct category. This would remove girls from the shadows and place them in the centre of the discussion on diverse girlhoods, including those of young mothers.

My argument above does not mean that we should dismiss distinct moments like the UN Decade of the Girl Child (1991-2001) and International Day of the Girl Child. Indeed, such moments have been and continue to be an open platform for considering and rethinking issues girls face. However, a merger of ‘girl’ with ‘child’ in what is celebrated as the day of the ‘girl-child’ has been problematized as being passive, essentialist, and homogenizing. My sentiments of the ‘girl-child’ label are that it emphasizes their innocence, vulnerability, and dependency and brings out connotations of powerlessness while also infantilizing girls.

It also poses a risk of illuminating the ‘child’ and marginalizing the ‘girl’ because the ‘child’ may take precedence over the ‘girl’. There are words which are nice sounding, such as ‘girl-child’, and the nicer they sound, the more useful they are for those seeking to establish their moral authority. To counter the risk of applying labels to exclude and marginalize girls, the category ‘girl’ ought to be conceptualized, deconstructed, and reconstructed from their perspective.

How International Women’s Day can exclude girls

This is my first ever blog article. I decided to write it because I wanted to reflect on how International Women’s Day (IWD) celebrations relate to the experiences of young mothers in urban poor locales, such as those that I have continued to engage with as part of my PhD research. In rethinking this year’s IWD theme (‘DigitALL: innovation and technology for gender equality’), several questions came to mind. For example, are girls considered in this debate on gender equality? How relevant is this debate on the role of technology and innovation for young mothers living in poor locales in Uganda where only 9% of the populations aged 15 years and above own a smart phone? Moreover, where only 8% of females use internet? And why should young mothers care about such discussions? How will tech-driven developments benefit them?

Unable to answer these questions, I decided to read up on International Women’s Day. What initially sparked IWD were spontaneous demonstrations to protest inhumane working conditions women faced and to press for improved working conditions. Other issues, such as the right of women to vote, were consequently included, and today IWD marks efforts to enact gender equality more broadly.

What is interesting is that International Women’s Day is assumed to be for everyone, everywhere, and is intended to celebrate and encourage collective action in pursuit of gender equality and extended rights for women. However, discussions about women’s suffrage, gender equality and parity are often far removed from the daily realities of many girls and women, including the young mothers in impoverished areas that I worked with – those who are primarily concerned with meeting their survival needs. In this way, specific categories of girls, or even women, including young mothers, may find themselves being excluded from efforts to enact gender equality and from celebrations of these.

International Women’s Day was initiated by working-class women and while it has since significantly highlighted the plight of women and efforts to close the gender gap, it is at a risk of becoming too universalized and corporatized to include women who face a range of intersecting struggles that stretch beyond voting rights and workplace equity. In celebrating International Women’s Day, it is important to remember those girls and women whose voices still go unheard, who move around in the shadows, and whose intersecting struggles leave them far behind.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Annah Kamusiime is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS-EUR). Her research interests are in gender and adolescent and youth sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR). She is also a Director of Programmes at Nascent Research and Development Organization Uganda.

To celebrate International Women’s Day 2023, here’s a list of articles we’ve published on women’s struggles for gender equality

By ISS Blog Bliss 8 March 202326 December 2024 1387 views

Today, International Women’s Day is celebrated globally. To mark the occasion, we’re showcasing the blog articles on women’s struggles for gender equality that we’ve published on Bliss over the past five years. We hope that the articles inspire further action and discussion. Happy International Women’s Day!

Seed keepers, memory keepers: native women and food sovereignty | Leila Rezvani | March 8, 2019

When North America was colonised, the relationship of indigenous people with food was also colonised. But a group of women acting as seed keepers for their communities are fighting back, practicing decolonisation in their daily work and addressing the legacy of food colonisation through the reclamation of seeds and the traditions, practices, and affective relations that nurture human-plant-environment relationships and keep Native communities thriving, healthy, and connected.

Dilemmas for aid agencies working in Afghanistan under Taliban’s gender apartheid rule | Dorothea Hilhorst | January 12, 2023

In late December 2022, the Taliban announced that aid organizations would no longer be allowed to employ women. It was the next step in a series of measures that make it increasingly impossible for Afghan women to study, live or think independently. In response, many aid organizations have stopped their work, others are continuing. What will be the effect of all this and where are the boundaries for continuing assistance?

Why gender matters to social movements | Stacey Scriver and G. Honor Fagan | January 20, 2020

There are right and left, radical and conservative social movements at work in today’s volatile and unequal world. Whether directed towards a transformative social justice agenda or not, social movements themselves do not exist outside of the structures of power. Even among social movements directed towards deep social justice, gender inequality remains a key concern, since gender-related inequalities persist, both within the movements themselves, as well as in their recognition, support and the response to them.

Morocco’s ‘ninjas’: The hidden figures of agricultural growth | Lisa Bossenbroek and Margreet Zwarteveen | December 6, 2018

In Morocco’s Saïss region an agricultural boom is unfolding, premised on a process of labour hierarchisation shaped along gender lines. Female wageworkers find themselves at the lowest strata and take little pride in their work and are stigmatised. In such a context, how are rural women able to engage in agricultural wage work without losing their dignity and without being stigmatised? What can we learn from their daily working experiences?

Professional indigenous women acting to transform urban spaces in Mexico: methodological reflections | Azucena Gollaz and Marina Cadaval | March 7, 2023

Research practices often still do not adequately recognize the multiple points of views, experiences, and knowledges of those we work with. In the process, the meanings that people give to their own lives and to reality are often overlooked, which silences subjective interpretations. In this blog, we share some reflections on the methodological process developed while carrying out a project about the right to the city with indigenous women in Guadalajara, Mexico. Thinking of research as a living system comprising numerous collaborative gears turned and interlocked by different types of support can help us do research more mindfully and responsibly.

‘Empty’ laws and Peruvian women’s ongoing struggle for therapeutic abortion | Zoya Waheed and Romina Manga Cambria | March 15, 2019

Laws and regulations are policy tools that are seen as strong and effective in securing rights, but should we assume that this is always the case? Looking at therapeutic abortion, evidence from Peru leads us to believe otherwise. Legislation of protection laws often fails to be translated into practice.

Moving beyond women as victims in post-conflict peacebuilding efforts in Liberia | Christo Gorpudolo | January 27, 2020

Liberia, a war-torn country for much of the 1990s, initiated several post-conflict peacebuilding programmes with the hope of building sustainable peace. But a study of the Palava Hut Program as a transitional justice mechanism showed that such efforts can be thwarted by the reduction of women to victims of war. The opportunity to rebuild gender relations damaged during wars can be missed in the process. Besides rethinking the link between women and victimhood, women’s inclusion in peacebuilding programmes based on lived experiences can help to equalize men and women in the peacebuilding process, argues Christo Gorpudolo.

Reclaiming the space for feminism in development practice: the role of ‘femocrats’ | Clara Mi Young Park | July 1, 2019

In spite of international pledges to gender equality and development that leaves no one behind, the current wave of populism and autarchy is materializing in the form of resurging patriarchy, oppression and exclusion. This has spurred a counter movement of feminist activism across the globe. At this juncture, this article discusses the role of feminists in development organizations that can and must also do their part to promote change that is premised on gender and social justice.

‘EleNão!’ ‘NotHim!’ Women’s resistance to ‘the Brazilian Donald Trump’ | Marina Graciolli de Paiva | October 2, 2018

The run-up to the Brazilian presidential election to be held on 7 October reminds spectators of the coming to power of Donald Trump two years ago. Jair Bolsonaro, a right-wing politician, is running for the election, and while many are cheering him on, others are watching aghast as he heads the polls. In this article, Marina Graciolli de Paiva looks at the implications of the election of Bolsonaro and shows how the Brazilian women’s resistance movement is countering the rise of a fascist government.

Why should there be spaces for queer women, led by queer women? | Heather Tucker | November 17, 2017

NGO’s which receive funding from HIV interventions as well as international LGBT donors are interested in expanding their diversity efforts, for instance by including queer women in their training on human rights. However, NGOs underestimate the working of intersectionality and fail to grasp why it is important for queer women to be understood on their own terms, recognizing their specific problems and enabling their separate organizations.

#MeToo and the need for safe spaces in academia | Brenda Rodríguez, Bruna Martinez and Vira Mistry | June 2, 2020

Initiated back in 2006 by African-American civil rights activist Tarana Burke, the #MeToo movement exploded in 2017 during the sexual misconduct scandal of Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein when actress Alyssa Milano asked her Twitter followers from across the world to share their experiences of sexual harassment. As the hashtag went viral, a number of others also emerged, shedding light on sexual harassment in specific sectors. This included the #MeTooAcademia and #ScienceToo hashtags that highlighted the prevalence of sexual harassment in academic spaces and the need for change.

The power and limits of women’s collective agency in fragile contexts: from pastoralist communities to refugee environments | Holly A Ritchie |March 6, 2018

Women’s groups and networks have been cited as key instruments for fostering women’s pathways of social and economic empowerment. Yet, with limits to collective agency, Holly Ritchie argues that the emergence of broader women’s movements and struggles remains cautious and constrained in a context of fragility.

Bewitched, bothered and bewildered: a study of witchcraft accusation in Northern Ghana | Issah Wumbla | January 14, 2019

Witchcraft accusation and consequent banishment that still persists globally can be viewed as a form of violence against women and children. While it is believed that women are accused of witchcraft mainly due to their socio-economic status, an intersectional analysis of witchcraft accusation in Northern Ghana shows that other factors also contribute.

Revolution and music: women singing out in Sudan | Katarzyna Grabska and Azza Ahmed A. Aziz | August 12, 2019

With the attention to Sudanese women musicians actively participating in the current uprising in Sudan, this article reflects on the history of women’s involvement in music and how their performances have acquired political claims over time.

When children have children: Can postponing early motherhood help children survive longer? | Sofia K. Trommlerová | September 21, 2020

In 2010, approximately 34% of young women in developing countries – some 67 million – married before reaching 18 years of age. An additional 14-15 million women will marry as children or adolescents every year in the coming decades. Child marriages lead to pregnancies and childbirths at an early age, which can have negative consequences for the health of both mother and child. Does the age at which motherhood takes place matter, and can postponing motherhood into adulthood help increase the chances of children surviving beyond five years of age? My study of teen pregnancies amongst Bangladeshi girls shows that age does matter, and it matters quite a lot.

There’s no stopping feminist struggles in Latin America during the COVID-19 pandemic | Agustina Solera and Brenda Rodríguez Cortés | December 10, 2020

As the 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence campaign draws to a close today, Agustina Solera and Brenda Rodríguez Cortés reflect on the challenges women in Latin America have faced over the past year and how, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, they have stood strong as ever, braving the particularly difficult conditions that they have had to face this year.

Challenging humanitarianism beyond gender as women and women as victims | Dorothea Hilhorst, Holly Porter and Rachel Gordon | March 7, 2018

Problematic assumptions related to women’s position and role in humanitarian crises are unpacked in a special issue of the journal Disasters on gender, sexuality and violence. The main lesson drawn from the special issue is that aid actors should tread carefully and seriously invest in their capacity to carefully monitor the intended and unintended effects of programming on gender relations.

Feminist political ecology in research and action | Wendy Harcourt | March 8, 2018

On 8 March 2018, Professor Wendy Harcourt will be inaugurated at the International Institute of Social Studies, becoming one of the few female professors at the Erasmus University. This blog is a reflection of her personal journey to professorship and on the ‘Well-being, Ecology, Gender and Community’ (WEGO-ITN) project that she heads, which will be launched on the same day at the ISS.

Menstruation: from concealed topic to part of the public agenda | Jacqueline Gaybor | March 5, 2018

Menstruation and its multiple social, economic, environmental, health and technological dimensions surprisingly is starting to be discussed globally, in multiple arenas and under very different and sometimes opposing frameworks. But how is this issue positioned at this early stage of an emerging research agenda? Which actions have been implemented? This blog is a reflection on the importance of thinking outside the box.

There’s so much we still have to do to address gender injustices once and for all | Lize Swartz | March 8, 2021

Today we celebrate International Women’s Day, but as always, there are some positive developments we can commend and others that we should be horrified about. The COVID-19 pandemic has strongly exacerbated gender injustices and created new gender inequalities. At the same time we can fortunately witness the strengthening of discussions on gender relations and things we’re still doing wrong (and those things we’re setting right). We’ve reached the tip of the iceberg and the rest – the assumptions and silences that perpetuate gender injustices – lurk beneath the surface, a silent colossus standing between us and real progress. In this post, we celebrate attempts to chip away at those parts of gender relations that are less visible, but just as crucial to address.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Bliss, the blog of ISS on global development and social justice, aims to provide a space where research ideas and findings are brought to the development community in a timely way. With the blog, ISS will address different audiences in policy, practice and the public at large. The blogs are grounded in ongoing research and speak to broader implications for current development trends and issues. Most importantly, the blogs will continue to uphold the best of ISS traditions: to (re)present the voices of people and communities that are marginalized in development.

Transformative Methodologies | Professional indigenous women acting to transform urban spaces in Mexico: methodological reflections

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 March 202326 December 2024 2018 views

In 2022, we started a research project focused on understanding the main barriers professional indigenous women face in accessing goods and services in cities, especially relating to higher education, work, and mobility. Our point of departure was the systemic gender-based exclusion that exists in Latin American metropolises, and more in particular the gender-based discrimination experienced in Guadalajara in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. The project was financed by ISS-EUR.

We interacted with five professional indigenous women: E.B. (Rarámuri) from the state of Chihuahua, A.G. and S.G. (Ñoo da´vi) and N.O. (Zapoteca) from Oaxaca, and D.E. (Totonaca) from Veracruz. They either moved to or were born in Guadalajara. All of them have been involved in specific projects to build diverse and gender-equal urban spaces. In both individual and collective encounters, we jointly problematized the concept of the ‘Right to the City’.[1] We did this from a feminist intersectional perspective to understand and question the constraints women face while living and moving around in cities, particularly in relation to gender, social class, and race power structures. Together, we looked for new ways of understanding and transforming such realities. One of our common agreements was the relevance of highlighting the contributions that professional indigenous women as active participants make to modifying urban spaces, instead of exclusively looking at the barriers faced.

This triggered us to reflect on our methodological process more broadly, and we came across the concept of ‘collaborative gears’ as an analogy for a mechanism that sets in motion innovative ways of doing research while acting towards addressing social problems. In our project, this premise was materialized by working with women who engaged in critically thinking about how to create culturally diverse and equitable urban spaces. Our different contexts, professions, positions, and understandings about the Right to the City were the points of departure and strengths from which we built our common arguments and proposals.

This approach is what we consider a transformative methodology – one that can also be used to reveal the role of those who are less recognized, both in collaborative networks and in research processes. For us, recognition, care, and respect were essential factors to mobilize a living system of knowledge production.

Transformative Gears

The initial gear we identified was our connection as two Mexicans doing PhD research at ISS-EUR in The Netherlands to each other. As colleagues and friends, we were able to share and discuss our academic projects on multiple occasions. We have both worked using feminist methodologies – Marina’s research is based on collaboration, respect, and care and Azucena’s on the value of the embodied experiences of women to transform urban spaces and mobilities. Our common interests led us to develop ‘The Right to the City and Indigenous Women: Mapping Racism’.

Then, the gears kept moving with the support of Prof. Karin Arts (ISS-EUR) who joined and helped us to materialize the initiative. The experience of Prof. Arts as a researcher and her punctual advice guided our general reflections and helped us to consolidate the conceptual framework of the project. Her assistance in navigating institutional (administrative) processes was important, too.

At the same time, the trajectories, knowledges, and perspectives of every one of the five professional indigenous women with whom we interacted constituted invaluable bases for shaping and shifting the research. E.B. is a bachelor student in Urban Design and is part of NUCU (Our Cultures), a collective of college students from indigenous and Afro-Mexican communities. A.G. obtained a BA degree in Educational Sciences and S.G. has a BA in Business Administration. Both A.G. and S.G. are part of the collectives JIU (Indigenous Urban Youth) and ÑOI, Cultura en tus Manos (Culture in your Hands), a collective of indigenous women. N.O. has a BA in History and an MA in Gender and Development. She works as a librarian at the state university. And D.E. has a BA in Pedagogy and an MA in Educational Research. She works in a public entity that coordinates and promotes public policies for the sustainable development of indigenous peoples in Jalisco.

The motion of the gears has been sustained by the joint inputs and efforts of every collaborator in this project.

‘Transformative’ also means action

Four concrete actions and outputs resulted from the methodological process:

a collective article for the blog Resistencias y Mujeres Profesionistas Indígenas (Resistances and Professional Indigenous Women) with concrete proposals to build inclusive and diverse cities.
the creation and publication of the maps of urban mobility and experiences of each participant in Cartofem.
this text which all revised and agreed with, and
a co-written academic article.

To think further… things to consider

We identified several complexities in the process of carrying out collaborative and contextual research. Academia in general does not provide sufficient time, material, and financial resources for developing practices grounded in the experiences of marginalized communities such as indigenous women. For instance, the weaving of networks, initiation and maintenance of dialogues, reflection, rethinking nuances derived from listening to and collaborating with research participants, writing, validating drafts with every participant, translating between different languages, and considering time zones all require a lot of time and economic resources that do not correspond to academic deadlines and budgets.

Yet, while being a challenge, collaboration from and through diversity is also a learning process and a contribution to feminist and transformative methodologies. Transformative methodologies should entail a respectful and caring way of producing knowledge that ensures that contexts and realities are represented from multiple perspectives. That is why we organized our project in such a way that all the participants and collaborators were recognized and had a say in what the research was about, how it was carried out, and why it took place. For us, this is just the first of many (sets of) gears necessary for a very much-needed alternative way of conducting research and transforming current academic practices.

[1] We understand the Right to the City as the entitlement to access, inhabit, transit, and to participate in urban settlements.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

In praise of flatness. On campus protest and academic community

By ISS Blog Bliss 2 March 202326 December 2024 2122 views

[The response to the OccupyEUR protest and an invitation to a survey on the university as a ‘brand’ are provocations, writes professor of Social Theory; Willem Schinkel. They flatten what a university actually is.

Two recent events afford a clear view of what the administrative leadership of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) thinks a university really is. More precisely, these were two provocations. They made me think of Edwin Abbott’s novella Flatland. A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), that tells the story of A. Square, who lives in Flatland, a world in 2D in which he can only experience a 3D-shape like a sphere as circle. Analogously, at this university the capacity to see in more dimensions seems missing, and everything that does not fit in the ‘strategy’ of administrators and their bureaucratic squares is rendered flat.

First provocation: protest versus ‘academic community’

First there was the response of the university board to the occupation of the space in front of the university’s auditorium by students of OccupyEUR on February 7 and 8. They demanded an end to the university’s ties with the fossil fuel industry, to precarious labour, to student debt, and to the lack of campus accessibility. During a previous occupation in November 2022 the board immediately called the police. This time they did so after one day. This response testifies to an utter incomprehension of campus protest, and to a kind of housekeeping reflex, a neurosis of security and hygiene. When students were unwilling to, on day one, dilute their protest to a ‘dialogue’ on the administrators’ terms, the administrators’ response was, entirely in keeping with the corporate identity of the university: get the fuck out of hEUR with your attempts to make of this place something more than a factory for credentialization and a lobby lounge for suits and ties intent on doing what their daddies did before them: cashing on the planetary plunder called capitalism.

This response testifies to an utter incomprehension of campus protest, and to a kind of housekeeping reflex, a neurosis of security and hygiene

Whoever seeks to return to normal this quickly, rests on shaky foundations. In a decretal dripping with childish frustration, the occupation was dubbed ‘illegal’, and not a protest. What is more, it was declared not befitting an ‘academic community’, which, after all, cannot be disturbed ‘just because a small group has a certain opinion’. As the board said: “In no way have you shown an openness to dialogue. This attitude does not suit an academic community and Erasmian values, nor does it contribute to real solutions.” What a spoiled habituation to being found important. And what a pathetic impatience when, for once, you don’t immediately get your way. Apparently, administrators fail to recognize protest unless it is flattened to ‘having a certain opinion’ and expressing it in a format they determine (a ‘dialogue’). And with a historical and political-theoretical amateurism that is almost touching, they believe a protest is something that doesn’t disturb anything. Finally, and this is an important yield, it turns out they cannot conceive of the climate catastrophe in anything but technocratic terms, as if it were a ‘problem’ requiring a ‘solution’. Of course, that solution could never be anything that changes existing relations of power. Anything else would be ‘a certain opinion’. ‘Leadership’ is a generous concept if all roads automatically lead to the same order-hugging technocracy.

Second provocation: the university as ‘brand’

And then came the question, by email, to partake in a ‘reputation survey’. That went as follows:

Give your opinion on Erasmus University Rotterdam

What is already going well? What could be better? We are curious about your vision. This will help us further develop our brand and better meet the wishes and needs of future and current students and staff.”

Right. So this is the kind of opinion about the university we are encouraged to express: what do we think of the university as ‘brand’? There’s a flattening going on here as well. As a brand the university is reduced to an image of the university, a marketing image, flat like a 2D-picture. Despite the anti-intellectual stink such invitations give off, here too there is a housekeeping neurosis at work. In replacing the university by a branding image, the university in all its complexity, multiplicity and beautiful messiness is ironed out, whitewashed like so often. And nobody seems to have figured out that such a message – the university as brand – is a provocation and an insult to anyone with some inkling of the history of universities.

These two provocations – the reduction to ‘opinion’ and to ‘brand’ – deserve an answer. Actually, they really don’t, but there is a certain need to answer them for whoever advocates another idea of the university. Or rather for whoever has an idea of the university at all. How to understand the buzz about ‘Erasmian values’ and ‘positive societal impact’ in light of these two provocations? If administrators feel free to unload their anti-intellectual bullshit on students and staff, then it is time to face the flatness of their favorite kind of newspeak.

‘Erasmian values’ and the academic community

Let’s first note that the history of academic communities is not written by vice-deans coordinating a new procedure for exam evaluation with program directors and exam administration. That history is written by precisely the thing administrators think is incompatible with it: protest. Feel free to mail me if you want reading tips (but not for a ‘dialogue’!).

The history of academic communities is written by precisely the thing administrators think is incompatible with it: protest.

The values a university has are better uncovered by looking at its actions than at what it decides to print in glossy magazines and flyers. And it would seem that Erasmus University’s actions bespeak the following ‘Erasmian value’: whatever isn’t recognized as ‘academic community’ in the anti-intellectual and ahistorical narrow-mindedness of the administrative frames is repressed by police violence.

In terms of its intellectual contribution to the history of campus protest and the conceptual development of the concept of ‘academic community’, this administrative Flatland reflex has the quality of a fart. The scattered whining that the students did something illegal because university buildings are ‘private property’ is part of one and the same genre of anti-intellectual ghastliness. But that is saying too little. For this anti-intellectualism has a reason, and it produces something. In We Demand. The University and Student Protests (2017), the American scholar Roderick Ferguson illustrates that universities have been a crucial site for social struggle and change throughout the 20th century, and that university administrators have simultaneously worked hard to trivialize and securitize student protests, and to surround them with suspicion rather than to see them as chances for change. As he says:

“(…) anti-intellectualism, not an accident but the intention of certain social projects, is the mature and defensive expression of dominant institutions, one that retaliates against past and present political and intellectual uprisings.” (p. 87)

Historian Howard Zinn already spoke of the ‘danger’ of students for university administrators: students disturb things and make connections that cannot be registered as valuable in bureaucratic academic accounting logics. This, in the case of Erasmus University, despite the Erasmian value ‘connecting’ (marketing icon in the Strategy 2024 document: four puzzle pieces).

What happens in Rotterdam is thus not at all unique, and its predictability makes it exhausting, but also makes it possible to differentiate between person and position, between the administrator and the academic that can be more than administrative executive of a script elaborately recorded in research on campus protest.

Meanwhile, there appear to be suggestions of making it mandatory to announce campus protest, and to then allocate a designated room for it, rendering it part of the logistics of the academic business corporation rather than a disruption and an actual protest. Protest then becomes flattened to every other lecture on ‘fiscal economics’, ‘law and finance’ or ‘art and market’. I suggest the Erasmian value of ‘no protest’ here (icon: muzzle).

Erasmian values appear to be the latest form of flattening the university. Last year I and many others were asked to participate in the process of drafting a new ‘educational strategy’. The idea was that the previous one was not yet informed by ‘Erasmian values’, as it was five years old and the world has changed, according to Creating the Education vision 2023. Working together on world-class education. Makes sense to then takes one’s cue from the ‘values’ of someone who lived five hundred years ago. By the way, in what relevant respects had the world changed in the last five years? Well, the document makes clear that that change mainly lies in the normalization of ‘online education’ (posh name for bullshit on a screen that is conveniently cheap, flexible and – not unimportant – hygienic). Teaching on a screen, nicely flat. Let’s no longer talk about ‘online’ and ‘on campus’ education, but about 2D and 3D. To miss an entire dimension and call it teaching; you don’t survive in the university without a heavy dose of resistance to the absurd.

Talk of ‘values’ is, in fact, always a poor substitute for something substantial, at most it’s the pinning of marketing labels after the fact. The real question is what happens in the case of value conflict. Erasmian value ‘engaged with society’ (icon: three people with their heads in the clouds) doesn’t necessarily go well with ‘entrepreneurial’ (icon: light bulb). Read: OccupyEUR doesn’t go together with Shell. And that was precisely the point. And don’t be fooled by the board’s claim that its ideas aren’t that far apart from those of OccupyEUR. The strategy documents for the ‘convergence’ with the Technical University Delft mention as first future corporate connection (icon: four puzzle pieces): Shell.

Thankfully, the values of the antisemite Desiderius Erasmus were never the reason this university got ‘Erasmus’ as semiofficial name. How that did go about is recounted in the book Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam 1973-1993 [Erasmus University Rotterdam 1973-1993] (1993) by the historians Davids and van Herwaarden. If you open it, you will see in the colophon on page IV a brand logo at least as strong as that of the university, namely a shell, with the caption: “This publication is made possible in part by the financial support of Shell Netherlands Ltd.” Two years later financial support by Shell helped make the hanging of the Nigerian activist Ken Saro-Wiwa possible. He led the nonviolent ‘Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People’ (MOSOP), but his protest disrupted the Erasmian value ‘entrepreneurial’ (icon: light bulb).

‘Positive societal impact’

It is clear that university administrators want the university to be an integral part of the contemporary order, the order of the planetary plunder euphemistically called ‘climate change’ – indeed, that euphemism, which comes out of the climate skeptical lobby, issues from the infrastructure of that plunder. ‘Positive societal impact’ is a name for the compulsive desire to do whatever the established order expects and deems proper. The yardstick for ‘positive’ lies with that order. The possibility that this established order itself – including the university – is a case of catastrophic impact cannot be registered in the repertoire of ‘positive societal impact’. But whoever sends the police to students connecting their engagement with the earth with their bodies, makes clear that ‘positive societal impact’ is an all-too fluffy name for nihilism.

The possibility that the established order itself – including the university – is a case of catastrophic impact cannot be registered in the repertoire of ‘positive societal impact’.

Strategies such as Creating Positive Societal Impact: The Erasmian Way assume consensus about the state of the world – there are ‘complex challenges’ – but they forego the fact that ideally, as Julia Schleck writes in Dirty Knowledge. Academic Freedom in the Age of Neoliberalism (2022), universities themselves are arenas of struggle. Struggle over what the world looks like, and struggle about change and about the language we use to position ourselves. That struggle is hygienically removed in flattened notions of ‘positive societal impact, the Erasmian way’. The fancy flyer of that strategy can sell this with a picture of – oh, the irony – a climate protest, but the entire thing is an exercise in anti-intellectualism exemplary for the structure of complicity that the university is for its administrators.

Someone taking a critical look at EUR might just surmise that it is an institution in which young people are mostly taught to manage, pathologize, and exploit other people. A production machine with minds as raw material, graduates as semi-finished products and as end product their participation in a thanatological order. Thank god for activist students falsifying such a horrendous image of the university!

The hollow phrase ‘impact’ appears by now to have replaced the tautologous ‘excellence’. Last year an invitation came to take part in ‘A dialogue on a vision of impact learning’. Another dialogue. This time, significantly, at the Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (icon: light bulb). Those who wanted to go there from campus could take the ‘Impact Tour Bus’. You would have to go to the ‘Student Wellbeing Tent’ to assemble under the banner ‘World Class Education’. I heard afterwards that you could have speed date conversations with an ‘impact coach’ on board the bus (they wore vests saying so). But if it looks like satire, sounds like satire, and behaves like satire, it’s got to be satire, right? Yet as the Strategy 2024 document mentions: “Dialogue at all levels will be a vital part of measuring our success.” Vertical measurement dialogues is one I’m throwing in for free for the consideration of the strategic strategy strategists.

Hierarchy

In at least one respect the university cannot be reproached for its flatness: it is indeed a vertically oriented organization. An extremely hierarchical bureaucracy, based largely on autocratic government, delegated or not, in which self-government by students and staff is a joke no one finds funny. The Dutch university is archaically hierarchical, were it not for the fact that the differentiation in assistant professors, associate professors and professors in the Netherlands dates back to the early 1960s. What was then a temporary measure to deal with rising student numbers became permanent, and is taken seriously down to the most ridiculous details by means of what is fittingly called ‘UFO profiles’: detailed descriptions (in fact mostly lists) of what professors can do more than assistant and associate professors. Of course it is clear to anyone that’s been in a room with a professor for more than a few minutes that this is a fiction (UFO’s: these professors fly so high it cannot be identified what makes them so brilliant). This was the reason for a recent plea to abolish this hierarchy by the dean of law in Maastricht.

Once more, rising student numbers have been the reason for creating a new category of laborer at the bottom of the hierarchy: tutors and other flexible staff in precarious positions

But what happened in the sixties is being repeated. Once more, rising student numbers have been the reason for creating a new category of laborer at the bottom of the hierarchy: tutors and other flexible staff in precarious positions. A reserve army of academic laborers has been created to lower the production costs of teaching even further by way of exploitation and an even more uneven distribution of protections and privileges. As serious scholars in the field of academic freedom show (mail for references, not for dialogue), this Uberfication of teaching is the greatest threat to academic freedom.

Guess who are the only ones in this university, apart from tutors themselves, to have recently spoken up for this cause? The activists of OccupyEUR, who demanded abolishment of precarious positions. The fact that their protest was thus also a fundamental defense of academic freedom is entirely lost on the bureaucratic squares who believe the university is first and foremost a ‘brand’. Yet that protest can be of peripheral interest to no one who thinks academic freedom matters. Next time, look up from your tenth paper this year, walk out on your meeting.

Walking tall

On the second day of the occupation by OccupyEUR I read an article by Nobel prize winner Annie Ernaux in Le Monde diplomatique, titled ‘Walking tall again’. She describes how the French 1995 strikes and protests against neoliberalization ignited her enthusiasm and made her proud, despite her working-class background, to walk tall again. I envisage the administrators of Erasmus University Rotterdam writing her a letter to teach her that such protest is illegal because it disrupts things, and that she’d be better off engaging in a ‘dialogue’. Walking tall? Flatten it down, madame Ernaux!

Thankfully the university still provides space for much more than the square suits and ties on its boards would have us believe. Space for activist students, for instance, despite everything. If you weren’t there: you should have seen the books they brought with them. Inspiration is what you get from students that refuse to waste time in chatter sessions with university power a brand. I am thankful to these students for the reminder that the knowledge we produce and the relations we engage in are inseparable from the struggle for our lives. They may be, in the words of the university board, ‘a small group’, but they are walking tall. And they lead the way in the experimentation with what an ‘academic community’ can be beyond the brand of an anti-intellectual impact rental shack.

This article was first published in Erasmus Magazine.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Willem Schinkel is Professor of Social Theory at Erasmus University Rotterdam and a member of the Young Academy of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW).

Sri Lanka’s Disastrous 2022 Ends With A Sliver Of Optimism – Analysis

By ISS Blog Bliss 23 February 2023 1473 views

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Last year, Sri Lanka faced its worst economic crisis to date, accompanied by political upheaval that left its population reeling as they struggled to make ends meet. In this article, Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits briefly outlines how things played out in 2022, showing that while the crisis has had a devastating impact on the country’s stability and prosperity, 2023 signals a time for action – and change.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”23631″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Sri Lanka entered 2022 beset by economic crisis and political upheaval. The economic crisis culminated in Sri Lanka defaulting on payment for the first time. This led to the government being completely cut off from most sources of international funding, including from official multilateral and international commercial sources.

The government’s effort to blame its debt default on the lost revenue from tourism due to the COVID-19 pandemic and increased fuel prices resulting from the war in Ukraine did not carry much weight. One analyst stated that ‘this is the most man-made and voluntary economic crisis of which I know’.

Although many Sri Lankans did not understand what default meant, the effects of the crisis were keenly felt. The foreign currency crunch that followed progressively restricted imports of food, fuel, fertiliser, medicine and other essentials. By August 2022, the annual inflation rate had reached nearly 70 per cent and inflation of food prices had reached nearly 85 per cent — the sixth highest food inflation in the world. 750,000 people have already fallen into poverty. One UNICEF report shows that the food crisis has already taken its toll on young mothers and newborn babies.

The economic crisis has also hit the previously well-off middle class, who now struggle to eat their usual three meals a day. In rural areas, heartbreaking stories have emerged of children fainting at schools because they have not had breakfast. The emergency aid, including food and fertiliser, received from the World Bank, UN World Food Program, Australia and India, was not enough to feed everyone. Food shortages were exacerbated by declining local agricultural output.

Urban Sri Lanka became plagued by lengthy queues for fuel and food, with Sri Lankans waiting under the scorching sun and in torrential downpours. The crisis triggered mass protests by thousands of people from all walks of life. The main protest slogan, GotaGoGama (Gota go home), pointed toward former president Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s personal responsibility for governing Sri Lanka directly into a crisis and demanded his resignation.

The mass resignation of cabinet ministers jeopardised the former president’s attempt to cling on to power. As a last resort, he formed an all-party government, but this lacked support from other politicians who were aware of the political costs of taking part. Still, the former president showed no sign of stepping down and instead made his brother, prime minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, resign.

Before resigning in May, former prime minister Rajapaksa wasted no time mobilising his political supporters to attack peaceful protesters outside his home and at the main protest site, Galle Face Green. The anti-government protesters retaliated by targeting the Rajapaksa supporters’ properties and businesses. Some went even further by burning down the Rajapaksa family’s ancestral home and a museum honouring their parents. In response the state rolled out a variety of repressive measures, including Sunday curfews, social media blackouts, tear gas and water cannons. Presidential orders prohibited any public gathering and protest leaders were arrested.

The peak period of protests from March to July was followed by a massive anti-government march held at Galle Face Green in Colombo on 9 July. Gotabaya Rajapaksa finally fled the country and sent his resignation from Singapore via email on 14 July. As the former president fled his residence, people flocked to occupy it. Some even had a dip in the presidential swimming pool and took selfies while relaxing in the president’s bed.

In the absence of the president, the perpetually unpopular Ranil Wickremesinghe was appointed acting president, under Article 37 (1) of the Constitution. This was announced via an extraordinary gazette notification. Sometimes nicknamed ‘the Eel’ (Aanda) for his ability to glide through any political trap, Wickremesinghe’s dream of becoming president finally came true amid Sri Lanka’s worst nightmare.

The public legitimacy of Wickremesinghe’s rule was immediately clouded. While Wickremesinghe was appointed via a parliamentary process according to Articles 40(1) (a) and 40(1) (c) of the Constitution, there have been allegations that the exiting president paid bribes to lawmakers to secure parliamentary approval for Wickremesinghe’s appointment.

Wickremesinghe has managed to bring slight relief to the people as fuel, electricity, medicine and food items have slowly begun to be replenished. Wickremesinghe’s poor reputation among conservative voters, who widely considered him to be an elitist, Western-style cosmopolitan, was dropped — at least for now — when he secured a bailout package from the IMF by flaunting his liberal sensibilities. Wickremesinghe secured a commitment from Japan to lead the debt restructuring talks with Sri Lanka’s creditors, which are essential to secure a US$2.9 billion bailout package from the IMF. Even a subtle attempt to push Wickremesinghe under the bus any time soon will likely provoke a relapse toward another crisis.

2023 comes with some concerns over the conditions on government spending that an IMF bailout will entail, as well as hope for the opportunities it will provide to promote financial stability. One can expect fewer angry protests in 2023, as the cross-class spirit of Aragalaya (Revolution) has already begun to wane since Wickremesinghe started laying the ground work for rescuing the economy and disciplining society.

As global calls for ‘debt justice’ continue to gather momentum, there is an opportunity for Sri Lankans to take the lead in this emerging movement by rekindling their past ‘Aragalaya’ spirit and channelling it towards the global political arena.

This blog was first published in East Asia Forum.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1677161292458{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the author:

Shyamika Jayasundara-Smits is an Assistant Professor in conflict and peace studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1596795191151{margin-top: 5% !important;}”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

The politics of ethnicity: are political elites in Bolivia using indigenous discourses to win elections?

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 February 202326 December 2024 3878 views

In Bolivia and elsewhere in Latin America, indigenous peoples have sought greater inclusion and more rights and freedoms for many decades. While it appears that they have been somewhat successful in doing so, in reality, their lives have not changed much. Political promises to act on their behalf have not been honoured and they remain excluded and marginalized. The link between poverty and being indigenous persists. In this article, Alvaro Deuer Cenzano, ISS 2018-2019 Alumni, shows why it’s important to study the role of elites in perpetuating these social injustices, arguing that the instrumental use of ethnic discourses to win elections may be strongly contributing.

In the past few decades, more attention has been paid to the plight of Bolivia’s indigenous peoples, which form a significant part of its total population.[1] This emerged following several global developments, including the United Nations’ approval in 1989 of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples under the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention (no. 169). And so, after years of discussing the rights of indigenous people, in 1995, the Bolivian Congress approved a Constitutional reform that redefined its state as a “pluricultural and multi-ethnic republic”. At that time, the country’s Constitution was considered progressive in that it recognized the importance of the indigenous population, and other countries in Latin America such as Ecuador followed suit.

While this Constitution meant the official recognition of Bolivia’s multi-ethnic and pluricultural society and the expansion of indigenous people rights, it did not make provision for territorial self-government, however. In other words, government policies in the 1990s failed to enact the territorial autonomy that was desired.

This observation prompted me to ask why proposed policies and the realities of indigenous peoples remain misaligned. As a Bolivian, I have witnessed promises being made by political elites while campaigning,[2] their coming to power by claiming to represent the indigenous population, and their failure to act on their promises once they assumed office. Yet they retain power despite not delivering on their promises.

The need to understand how and why this is happening prompted me to register for a PhD study at the Graduate School of International Development at Nagoya University. Last month, I managed to successfully present my research proposal titled ‘The instrumentalization of indigenous discourse as a political strategy to win elections’. Through my PhD research, I want to explain how the discourses that political elites use in representing indigenous populations help maintain their power. The study will focus on Bolivia, but its theoretical framework can be applied to other Latin-American countries where significant segments of the population self-identify as indigenous (e.g. Guatemala, Chile, Colombia, and Peru), as well as to European countries that have undergone ethnic wars linked to nationalist sentiments driven by the discourses of political elites.

Several people tried to convince me to choose a different topic, one linked to my work experience, for example in the fields of territorial planning, health governance, or even decentralized governance. In this article, I will explain why I decided to stick to this topic and what I’m planning to do.

Discourses, discrepancies, and disillusionment

For most of the 197 years since its independence from Spain, Bolivia has been governed mainly by political parties comprising representatives drawn from white or mestizo (mixed) ethnic groups. In this period, the rights of indigenous people were neither recognized, nor assured.[3]

Things seemed to improve when the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS – Movement for Socialism) came to power in 2005 with the support of social movements and the votes of indigenous people.[4] Among its first measures was to convene a Constitutional Assembly that dealt with the indigenous demand for autonomy, self-determination, and self-government. And thus, in 2009, the new Constitution granted indigenous people territorial self-government rights. They were also assigned a number of other political, economic, linguistic, and democratic rights.[5]

Moreover, to keep the support of social movements, it combined indigenous and peasant identity categories, giving rise to the Autonomias Indigena Originario Campesinas (AIOC – Native Indigenous Peasant Autonomies), the second layer of Bolivian local governments. This would allow indigenous communities to become autonomous governments given the fulfillment of requisites overseen by the Bolivian Electoral Court and the Vice Ministry of Autonomies.

However, despite the government’s acknowledgment of indigenous people’s desire to rule their own territories, at present, only six indigenous territories have become AIOCs. Given that indigenous self-government constitutes the core of indigenous movements’ demands made to the Constitutional Assembly, a faster implementation of it would have been envisioned, which goes hand in hand with MAS power consolidation. This has raised questions about MAS’s commitment to indigenous struggles and principles despite its strong claims to represent the country’s indigenous population.

Conceptually linking ethnic and populist discourses

I therefore seek to analyze how marginalized groups’ demands for self-government, specifically the demands of indigenous peoples, are used by political elites to consolidate their hegemony and as a strategy to obtain electoral success. I believe that this results in societal polarization based on a process of ethnic identification (‘us’ vs. ‘the others’). While indigenous discourses allow so-called ethnic parties to succeed in the electoral arena, it likely also leads to the appearance (or deepening) of populist leadership traits, which represents a hazard to the consolidation of democracy. All in all, I hope to identify the mechanisms that enable ethnic parties to swing toward the populist side of an ethno-populist pendulum and its effect on the consolidation of democratic institutions.

[1] In 2021, Bolivia ranked second in Latin America when it comes to the percentage of people who claimed to be indigenous, with 41% of the total population self-identifying as such (Statista, 2022). The two biggest indigenous groups, the Quechuas and Aymaras, together represent just under 82% of the country’s indigenous population, comprising together 34% – or around one-third – of Bolivia’s total population.

[2] In the last years, Bolivia’s corruption perception index has worsened despite every candidate’s promise to fight corruption (Fides, 2022).

[3] Indigenous groups started to develop their own current of thought in Bolivia in the early 1970s when they realized that mainstream politics of the time used them and that Marxist parties were factually rendering them invisible. Thus, in the late 1980s, the first indigenous political parties were formed and started to participate in national elections, obtaining minor victories (Madrid, 2012)

[4] MAS was created in 1995 as a political instrument of different indigenous and peasants’ organizations, the latter with a strong union tradition, to access spaces of political power, initially at the local level and later, given its electoral success, on a national scale. (Valdivia, 2016, pág. 24).

[5] See Articles 30 – 32 of the current Constitution (Plurinational Legislative Assembly of Bolivia, 2009).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Alvaro Deuer Cenzano is a Business Administrator and Political Scientist with 10 + years of professional experience in public policy implementation in local development, territorial and institutional planning, and comparative research in decentralization, public finance, education, and ethnic politics. Currently, pursuing a Ph.D. in Development Studies at Nagoya University and looking for opportunities to expand his networks and join Think Tanks or NGO industries in the development and public policy-related areas.

Mobilising for a Just World: Legal Mobilization for Whom?

By ISS Blog Bliss 31 January 202326 December 2024 2590 views

Both scholars and practitioners engaged in either researching or advancing legal mobilization recognize that law can be used to guide legal interventions seeking to trigger transformative justice. A persistent question faced by legal mobilization practitioners and researchers alike is: who are we mobilizing for, and with whom? As a member of the Legal Mobilization Platform (LMP), I sought to answer this question during the platform’s launch on 12 January 2023 in The Hague.

Who takes the lead in legal mobilization claims?

It should be a standard response that any legal mobilization claim should be led by individuals and organizations who experience violations. However, this is not always the case. The structure of the legal profession often obscures the agency of those whose rights have been violated. Contradicting the approach of Systemic Justice, those who are centred in strategic litigation are often the NGOs and law firms – however well-intended – that are officially presenting a particular claim, rather than the communities and individuals affected by violations.

As a researcher wanting to understand these dynamics better, but also as someone with a long history of advocacy in my earlier career as a human rights lawyer, it has always been important for me to understand the objective of a legal mobilization claim and to critically reflect on my role in it.

The Legal Mobilization Platform (LMP) is a large and broad platform of researchers and practitioners, where legal mobilization researchers and practitioners can interact with each other in a dynamic and reflective shared space. From the overwhelming responses we have received thus far, there appears to be a very strong interest in better understanding and reflecting upon which forms of legal mobilization work and which don’t to trigger transformative change. To give an example, LMP-member Systemic Justice orient their work around “community-driven litigation”. Their goal is

…to radically transform how the law works for communities fighting for racial, social, and economic justice. Centring affected communities in joint litigation, Systemic Justice will help broaden access to judicial remedies for those fighting for justice and equality. This will help dismantle the power structures that underpin and fuel racial, social, and economic injustice.

People can certainly be both a researcher and advocate. However, these roles are different: what researchers aim for are solid arguments based on a convincing methodology; for practitioners, the aim is for transformative change. Without being clear what one’s role is, one can end up being of little use to either scholars or to activists. Nevertheless, for both researchers and practitioners, being a critically reflexive researcher or a conscientious advocate may involve standing up for cause, just as much as it may be necessary to step back, allowing others to take up the research or advocacy space and above all supporting others, or what Aminata Cairo refers to as “holding space”.

Recognizing one’s privilege

The questioning of who represents what goes even further than this. Before deciding whether one has the legitimacy to either research or represent a cause, it is critical for one to recognize one’s privilege. Critical scholars problematize this from the fields of critical race studies, critical feminist studies and critical legal studies, such as TWAIL. From a methodological standpoint, it is critical to recognize one’s positionality in relation to both the issues and people that are the focus of research, as well as the importance of praxis.

However, even more crucially, social justice activists frequently insist on questioning who, and in what manner, individuals can credibly speak out on issues such as the Dutch slavery and colonial heritage, which is currently a topic of much debate in the Netherlands and a focus of the LMP.

The challenges of patriarchy, racism, elitism, and anthropocentrism

Apart from crucial matters of ownership and positionality, there are myriad institutional structures and systems that can pose challenges for legal mobilization practitioners to navigate. To begin with, the patriarchal character of law, legal process and systems, including universities and the legal profession, structurally privileges men. But this is not the only problem. Patriarchy also corrodes the way institutions operate, with a tendency towards non-collaboration, individualism, and a high level of competitiveness. Similarly, the racialized character of law, legal processes, and systems structurally privilege white people. We see this problem in efforts to accomplish gender diversity and inclusion, within the public sector, courts, and universities where racist stereotypes persist, and even within NGOs, as Doctors Without Borders has acknowledged.

Alongside patriarchy and racism is the elitist character of the law and legal process that systemically protects the interests of a handful of affluent people, the so-called 1%, allowing some individuals to acquire massive opulence that can eclipse the GDP of entire nations, while allowing ample opportunities to avoid the payment of tax, hindering the equitable distribution of wealth.

And finally, the law and legal process tend to be highly anthropocentric, which means that they structurally privilege humans and disregard non-human interests. Here we are talking about the rights of nature, which researchers such as Dr. Daphina Misiedjan focuses much of her research on.

All of this involves (or at least it should) a great deal of legal learning, which Karim Knio and Bob Jessop recognize are part and parcel of a pedagogical approach to understanding how crises, whether they be of a financial, social, or political nature, are construed and managed.

More than litigation

Finally, legal mobilization is much more than litigation alone. As Eva Rieter and I have argued, it is about many different uses of law, incorporating other confrontational forms, including, but not limited to, litigation, e.g. protests, corporate shaming, civic boycotts. But legal mobilization can also adopt cooperative forms, such as participation in policy-making processes, training courses on systemic racism awareness, and partnerships with municipal and national government actors and law enforcement officials to develop, monitor, and implement policies for tackling systemic racism.

In all respects, solidarity is key. Solidarity involves first and foremost, listening to those affected by racial, climate, and socio-economic injustice, which is not always easy for researchers and practitioners alike as systemic justice involves one fundamentally questioning liberal values that are dominant both in systems of law and governance, not to mention economic relations.

The future of legal mobilization

So how should one take these reflections forward in practice? A key strategy for tackling all of these dilemmas in legal mobilization practice has been demonstrated by Amsterdam-based member of the Platform Public Interest Litigation Project or PILP, which applies a broad understanding of strategic litigation and asks, “Where does it hurt?”.

Another example of going beyond litigation is De Zwart Manifest (“Black Manifesto”), which recognises that, according to the Dutch Constitution, “everyone in the NL is treated equally in equal circumstances”. However, “the reality is different. In the NL there is a racialized order”. In other words, the claim of the manifesto is not to champion equality, but rather to redress systemic inequalities, or what Gloria Wekker, a member of the Legal Mobilizational Platform, refers to as “radical equality”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

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Is the legacy of the Arab Spring greater oppression? Twelve years after the Egyptian Revolution, Egypt’s civil society has been all but nationalized

By ISS Blog Bliss 25 January 202326 December 2024 3271 views

The popular uprising that swept across Egypt exactly twelve years ago was supposed to herald a new era marked by greater political freedom and the end of state oppression. But optimism that things would change for the better quickly evaporated after the resurgence of authoritarian practices. In this blog article, we argue that ever since the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, the Egyptian government has taken steps to nationalize civil society, turning it into yet another administrative machinery under its direct control.

From hope to horror

This week marks the 12^th anniversary of 2011 Egyptian Revolution, or the 25 January Revolution – the popular uprising that led to the fall of President Hosni Mubarak and ended his 30-year period of rule. In the aftermath of the Arab Spring that took place in the 2010s in the wider MENA region, hopes were high that civil society would be able to play a stronger role in the socio-political realm; the same was hoped for Egypt’s civil society.

And for a moment it did seem that this could be happening: the number of NGOs in Egypt increased from 42,000 in 2013 to 52,000 in 2022. But this optimism quickly evaporated with the resurgence of authoritarianism in the country and continued efforts by successive governments to control and stifle activities in the civic space. Notable measures the Egyptian government has taken are:

The controversial civil society law no. 149, introduced in 2017 and replaced in 2019;
Legal charges against civil society activists, which include travel bans; and
An assets freeze as part of the everlasting court case no.173, known as the foreign funding case, and the increasingly strict government monitoring and hijacking of national donations for charities and foreign aid.

Such measures have led to the prohibition of all efforts of civil society actors independent of the state to mobilize collectively. Thus, since the 2011 uprising, the Egyptian government has actually successfully consolidated its authoritarian control over the operation of the civil society sector, making it hard to identify any independent NGO activity.

In the past decade, as development practitioners and scholars[1], we have been closely monitoring the status of state-civil society relations in Egypt. The revolution was supposed to change state-civil society relations for the better, but during this period, we have witnessed increasing state control of the independence of NGOs through its bureaucratic apparatus and attempts to nationalize the efforts of civil society and place it under strict oversight by the government. We argue that the Egyptian government has been able to do this by:

blurring the state-civil society divide
controlling foreign and domestic funds, and
demonizing independent civil society organizations.

Blurring the state-civil society divide

On 9 January, just two weeks ago, current Egyptian President El Sisi launched the first conference of the so-called National Alliance for Civil Development Work (NACDW) after his announcement in September 2021 that 2022 would be “the year of civil society”. The alliance was founded in March 2022, comprising 30 local NGOs – mostly relief organizations – that are closely linked to the state. Since its establishment, the NACDW has been mostly working under the umbrella of the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MoSS) to support the implementation of two flagship social protection programs, the ‘Takaful’ and ‘Karama’ (‘Solidarity’ and ‘Dignity’) Cash Transfer Programs, as well as the presidential initiative ‘Haya Karima’ (‘Dignified Life’).

Over the years, it has become near impossible to distinguish between the efforts of the MoSS and NGOs cooperating with the state in implementing such programs. Overall, the MoSS has succeeded in co-opting the sector by engaging certain organizations in their programs that have the state blessing and operate as the ministry implementation machinery. Since 2011, the ministry also has the upper hand in deciding how national or foreign aid should be spent and which priorities they see as more viable. Mostly, it has been able to expand its territory of controlling funds allocated for NGO activities and has the ultimate say on what NGOs can do or not, leaving most of the sector paralyzed if they don’t agree to collaborate with the state or abide by its narratives. This control has had negative implications for the freedom of association for the broader sector, especially organizations whose activities are oriented towards policy, advocacy, and human rights.

Closing the money tap: foreign and domestic funding struggles

In an attempt to hijack funding traditionally earmarked for NGOs, on 1 May last year, the Egyptian Cabinet on its official Facebook page published an announcement forbidding the collection of donations on social media without a permit. The post stated the need to apply for a license three days before the collection of donations, whether financial or material. It also threatened legal consequences for anyone who collected such donations without a license.

Similarly, as part of the increasingly restrictive environment and state control over NGO activities, the MoSS recently launched a new campaign that limits any collective donation through social media channels or any other online platform unless approved by the ministry. The campaign emphasized that in case of breaking the law, organizations or individuals would be legally investigated for violating article 26 of the civil society law no. 149 of 2019.

The government’s ongoing efforts to control the funding of NGOs can be traced back to 2011, when previous Minister of International Cooperation Faiza Abu El Naga emphasized the need for the government to be the gatekeeper of foreign funding; she argued that the state should allocate this funding according to its vision and national interest.

While these narratives primarily targeted foreign funding at the time, the current decisions of MoSS to control domestic sources of funding and how it should be spent forms part of the state’s strategy to control both domestic and foreign sources of funding for NGOs and other civil society groups. This increasing control of MoSS on both the domestic and foreign sources of funding has placed civil society groups under ongoing pressure by the ministry to continuously align civil society efforts to the interests of the ministry and the current political regime.

Demonizing independent civil society organizations

In our previous book chapter titled ‘Reinvention of nationalism and the moral panic against foreign aid in Egypt’ in the book Barriers to Effective Civil Society Organizations, we argue that the Egyptian state and its successive military regimes have tried over time to act as moral entrepreneur in society in an attempt to control narratives of patriotism, which in turn have shaped state discourses and policies towards civil society and foreign aid. Since the birth of the post-colonial Egyptian state, the reception of foreign funds, in particular by civil society organizations in Egypt, has always been presented as an act akin to treason, demonstrating a lack of patriotism and a threat to national unity.

New tactics, same objectives

The state’s recent focus on controlling how civil society groups organize themselves and domestically try to collect money for collective action is worrying. In light of the criticism of foreign aid in supporting local NGOs, domestic fundraising for civil society efforts provides a viable alternative to fill the gap produced by the government’s failure to provide quality public services for its citizens. The government’s determination to continue stifling any innovative ways of financing civil society initiatives poses a great risk to the existence of independent civil society organizations.

To conclude, the state in Egypt is dominating civil society by means of its direct control and is co-opting it while controlling money flows to NGOs and vilifying whoever seeks independence. This control will have a lasting effect on the structure of civil society in Egypt and will greatly reduce citizen participation in public affairs. Thus, 12 years after the revolution, we are witnessing a civil society sector that is under siege and has been nationalized by the government. The case of Egypt presents a vivid example of how authoritarian regimes evolve their tactics to clamp down on civil society spaces through various formal and informal practices.

[1] Over the past decade, we have been working with number of local and international development and human rights organizations in Egypt and across the MENA region. We have reflected on this experience in various publications on how CSOs navigate the restrictive environment in Egypt.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Ahmed El Assal is a PhD Candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies. His current research focuses on governance, political economy of aid assistance, and accountability of public service provision.

Amr Marzouk is a PhD Candidate at the Erasmus School of Law.

Knowledge is power: how ‘infomediaries’ are helping marginalized communities in Bangladesh claim access to information

By ISS Blog Bliss 24 January 202326 December 2024 2175 views

South Asian countries have made remarkable progress in adopting laws that provide citizens with the right to information. Yet in many instances, information still cannot be accessed, or differentiated access to information can be observed. ‘Infomediaries’ introduced in Bangladesh through a community empowerment programme have played an essential role in helping marginalized people access information by mediating between communities as information seekers and local governments as information providers. Such actors may assist marginalized communities in South Asia and beyond in claiming their right to information, writes Sujoy Dutta.

Legislation guaranteeing access to information has been globally recognized as a fundamental human right. Such legislation can empower citizens in urban and rural spaces, including women, by allowing them unrestricted access to information. This helps to promote transparency and accountability, for example by facilitating the review of government policies and programmes to prevent the misuse of government resources by officials.

However, the implementation of such acts does not always take place in ways that benefit all citizens equally. Studies indicate that merely creating a legal space is not enough to ensure that poor people can access information. Neuman and Calland argue that ensuring citizens’ right to information is a three-phased process that involves the introduction of law, its implementation, and, finally, its enactment. All the elements of this ‘transparency triangle’ are crucial and interrelated; however, the implementation phase is of paramount importance and serves as the base of the triangle.

In South Asian countries, the enactment of such laws occurred in the wake of political reform and the deepening of democracy. Pakistan was the first country to introduce a Right of Access to Information Act in 2002, followed by India (in 2005), Nepal (in 2007) and Bangladesh (in 2009). All these countries introduced this law after years of lobbying by civil society groups. While the laws are key for holding governments accountable, their use by poor communities in this region remains restricted.

What’s happening in India?

India’s Right To Information Act is considered to be one of the most robust laws in South Asia, yet it remains untapped by the poor and marginalized communities, who have limited means of access. In five Indian states (Goa, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Delhi), citizens are more likely to access this law, as requests for information prompt officials to act “almost like magic”. This is because, once an application for accessing information has been submitted, the government is expected to produce results.

But in states that are considered less progressive, like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, where incomes and literacy rates are lower and corruption is rampant due to poor governance, awareness this law is limited. In these states, government officials undermine transparency norms, refuse to provide the requested information, and reject appeals to access information on spurious grounds. These practices mock transparency laws, as the poor have a hard time dealing with inflexible bureaucratic officials and procedures.

Experiences from Mexico suggest that expanding the use of right to information to disadvantaged communities requires trustworthy intermediaries. In many countries, this role has been entrusted to NGOs, as well as community and youth groups, who enable the poor to submit their information requests without delay. This helps everyone not only to access information, but also to interrogate anti-democratic practices. A community empowerment programme of Bangladesh has shown how intermediaries can make an impact. Such configurations can be replicated in parts of South Asia and in other parts of the world where information has not reached disadvantaged sections of the population.

How ‘infomediaries’ are helping marginalized people

India’s more restrictive states could take cues from the Community Empowerment Programme (CEP) of Bangladesh. Introduced in 2011 and supported by the World Bank and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), the programme is empowering the poor (especially women) to overcome difficulties they face while obtaining information. The activities of the programme include the identification, training, and assignment of ‘informediaries’– a cadre of information intermediaries who have a basic understanding of the law and are chosen from within the community to motivate villagers to access information. These informediaries hold information clinics aimed at developing better-informed citizens as they link the marginalized sections with state machinery.

In Bangladesh, these informediaries were selected from Polli Samaj, a popular theatre group who are accepted by villagers. Their role is to gather information queries from the community and submit applications of right to information to the relevant government or NGO offices on their behalf. When answers to the relevant information are received, they are passed on to the applicants.

Based on their popularity, these infomediaries are able to establish a close rapport with public officials through their repeated visits. This allows them access to information with relatively greater success. In many instances, they have been effective in assisting marginalized groups (including women) to access information by overcoming multiple barriers. These include communication, infrastructure, and unpaved roads and inadequate public transportation systems that have made it difficult and time-consuming for the women to travel to lodge their application for information.

However, if this concept is to be implemented in India’s less prosperous states, it has to move a step forward by ensuring that all marginalized groups have access to public offices. Infomediaries should also motivate women to demand information. This will eventually enable these groups to access information without the help of infomediaries.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Sujoy Dutta teaches at Tata Institute of Social Sciences in India. His research publications integrate disciplinary tools from political economy, sociology, and public policy, much of which is based on fieldwork-based empirical analysis (in Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and some parts of Maharashtra, India). He holds a doctorate degree from the National University of Singapore and a Master’s degree from the ISS. Currently, he is undertaking extensive fieldwork in India and Bangladesh to examine the impact of the Right to Information Act on poor households.

Brazilian democracy – an aberration or a challenge?

By ISS Blog Bliss 19 January 202326 December 2024 2359 views

The invasion of government offices in Brasília on 8 January by mobs of protestors and vandals forces us to revisit a fundamental question: is Brazil’s relatively recent move to democracy too fragile, or is this just part of its evolution? The protestors’ support for a far-right politician who would prefer to see the demise of the country’s indigenous peoples (and others marginalized groups) points to their lack of understanding of democratic processes. The country’s hierarchical and exclusionary social structures and political processes also play a significant role in how and why things played out as they did. Can these change?

Brazil’s transition in the mid-1980s from an authoritarian regime to an aspiring democracy was a slow process marked by lumps and bumps, for instance the death of a leader and installation of caretaker ex-military regime supporters. The year 1988 saw the presentation of a new Brazilian Constitution, one marked by significant civil society participation and a swathe of proposed clauses and provisions that were quite progressive and socially inclusive. The early 1990s, on the other hand, saw a national referendum on the desired form of state (including a monarchy option!) and the effective impeachment of Brazil’s most recent democratically elected president, Fernando Collor de Mello.

All in all, this suggests that the road to democracy has been one of turmoil and questioning. When I interviewed workers in the 1990s, they even questioned what democracy meant. Would it bring better times for them and their families compared to the earlier period of military rule? The answer wasn’t so obvious to them.

The most recent rise and level of popularity of former president Jair Bolsonaro suggests that many are still not so sure what value there is to a social democratic model. Are people blinded or ignorant to the benefits of a thriving social democracy, or is a view that democracy represents the undeniable centre ground upon which society must be based in fact misfounded? Both presidents of the post-Labour Party era (Temer and Bolsonaro) consistently questioned the appropriateness of the 1988 Constitution given “Brazilian realities”. Certainly, if income distribution figures, the level of genocides/ imprisonment of blacks and domestic violence are noted, Brazil is still not doing so well in the racial/ social equity and social ‘voice’ departments. What this may underline is why the Bolsonaro movement has managed to sway a large number of people to support its idea of a ‘democracy’.

What, then, do we make of Bolsonaro’s continued popularity and the latest attacks on the country’s democratic institutions? This does not seem to be a call for democracy – it seems to be more like a call for “the way things were” before the (still very moderate) social welfare/social justice advances of the Labour Party (PT) presidencies of Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. The question is whether there is enough groundswell out there to say, “No, this is not the way. Let’s move forward in a different way!” Much will be seen in coming weeks pro-democracy protests (already starting) and from (anticipated) further local or national-level protests/espionage by the so-called ‘Bolsominions’.

It was always risky putting Lula (PT) up for another try at president – Brazil is very divided. Yet it probably had to be done as a high-level sign of resistance, as both he and Dilma had been slandered and dismissed (effectively removed from public affairs) by a network of conservative forces. While strong grassroots and broad-based factions and members of the population no doubt exist who are strongly committed to democracy and social justice reform, it takes massive force to fight against such embedded hierarchies and authoritarian, elitist views. Even if the Brazilian state apparatus, e.g. Itarmarty (the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) or the Supreme Federal Court (SFT) has sometimes shown its fighting spirit, it is not just the ‘foot soldiers’, but also important elements of the state and military who have offered support to the right, for example by stopping voters or letting protesters get past security barriers .

Arguments emerging are that key promoters of the riots should be identified and charged, but also that Bolsonaro should be deported from the USA, charged with inciting violence in Brazil, and then sent to The Hague to face charges for crimes against humanity for his response to the COVID pandemic.

Yet we will have to see how the many wheels of protest and politics turn, as has been the case many times before. Moving towards greater social healing and a more solidified democratic outcome may require considerable compromise and will only be brought about by those with great political skills.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Lee Pegler currently works as Assistant Professor (Work, Organisation and Labour Rights) at the ISS. He spent his early career working as an economist with the Australian Labour Movement. More recent times have seen him researching the labour implications of “new” management strategies of TNCs in Brazil/ Latin America. This interest expanded to a focus on the implications of value chain insertion on labour, both for formal and informal workers.

Amid increasing disinformation and the silencing of speech, scholars must strive towards speaking truth

By ISS Blog Bliss 17 January 202326 December 2024 2234 views

With the rising assault on free speech and with disinformation being used as an instrument by states to undermine dissent, the role of researchers has become pivotal. Scholars need to transcend their role of complicit impartiality and should seek to reveal and tell the truth as cognisant political agents, writes Haris Zargar.

Last year, the Israeli government formally labelled several Palestinian rights outfits “terrorist organizations”. These Palestinian human rights organizations, including the prominent rights outfit Al-Haq, have been working in the West Bank. Many who have closely worked with Al-Haq believed that the banning of the Palestinian rights groups occurred not only because of their credible work on documenting the rights violations in the occupied Palestinian territories, but also for setting an impeccable standard in research, documentation, and advocacy.

Weeks after the ban, I happened to speak to a Palestinian friend and former colleague at SOAS who works at Al-Haq – a word which in Arabic literally means ‘the truth’. I wanted to enquire about his wellbeing and how the ban was impacting their work. “We are terrorists for them, you know, for speaking the truth,” he told me, and added: “They are all afraid of the truth. Speaking the truth is now terrorism.” For us, the ‘they’ and ‘them’, left unidentified by my friend, explicitly meant the Israeli government in his context, and in a not so obvious way in my context the Indian government that has likewise criminalized all forms of dissent and have jailed human rights defenders, scholars, and journalists on terrorism charges.

My friend’s ‘metaphorical’ words arguably echoed a larger reality and perhaps the peril of our times – an era of disinformation, a period in which documenting and speaking truth is equated with terrorism. And this criminalization of truth is done not just by authoritarian regimes, but even by those states who project themselves as custodians of free speech and freedom of expression. We live in an era where misinformation and fake news is pursued as state policy to cripple people’s perceptions of reality and truth. Twitter’s takeover by a billionaire represents just another example of that reality in which the ruling political and corporate elites are seeking to choke perhaps the few remaining alternatives spaces that have provided a platform for ground-up perspectives on events in real time.

Having said that, I do not want to claim that social media platforms have safeguarded free speech or absolve them of responsibility for the dissemination of disinformation. In fact, these platforms have been at the forefront of censoring political dissidents and have worked closely with authoritarian regimes to polarize societies and push right-wing narratives, conspiracy theories, and misinformation.

Over the past decade, we have witnessed a growing assault on civil rights groups, human rights defenders, academicians, scholars, journalists, artists, whistle-blowers, and those who have merely sought to speak the truth. These assaults include direct attacks ranging from assassinations, incarceration, criminal and terrorism charges to physical assaults, exiles, and indirect threats/intimidations including travel bans, cyber bullying, etc. There is an apparent concerted effort to criminalize all legitimate forms of dissent and expression.

Scholars, activists, and journalists everywhere are facing violence. The case of British-Egyptian activist Alaa Abd el-Fattah, who has been in Egyptian prison on spurious charges of spreading false news, is one glaring example. Similarly, a prominent Kashmiri human rights defender, Khurram Pervaiz, has been in prison under a draconian anti-terror law. Khurram is the chairperson of the Asian Federation Against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), a rights organization that investigates forced disappearances in Asia. He also leads the Jammu Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society (JKCCS), a group that has published scathing reports on rights violations committed by armed forces in Kashmir.

In India, authorities have illegally detained and prosecuted scholars and students under anti-terrorism laws for simply expressing views that contradict those of the current ruling party. Last year, Iranian authorities arrested three professors from Poland on charges of espionage. The state in Hong Kong has used its , leading to prosecutions and dismantling of student unions from various universities. There has been an intensifying crackdown on free speech in Turkey. Central Asian states are often not spoken about and the situation in these places remains gloomy.

This is not a phenomenon restricted to rest of the world – Western Europe and America remain complicit and guilty of the same infringements. In fact, Western Europe and America are culpable of not only enabling and emboldening these authoritarian regimes in Asia, Africa, and Latin America but remain the main precursor in censoring civil rights activists. In recent times, we are seeing the silencing of Palestinian voices in Germany and the UK. The Goethe-Institute decision to de-platform Palestinian activist Mohammed el-Kurd or Berlin’s police banning several Nakba Day protests are just a few examples.

In the US, many states have introduced bills that would direct what students can and cannot be taught about the role of slavery in American history and the ongoing effects of racism in America today. France has doubled down on their perpetual smear campaign against French Muslims and migrants. Italy’s new regime is doubling down its attack on migrants coming from Africa and elsewhere as well as criminalising NGOs. We witnessed police brutality directed at migrants and non-Europeans even during the emergency times like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Ukrainian conflict. The chargesheet is long and exhaustive.

What I am alluding to and what I want to highlight is that our job and responsibility in these bleak times as scholars has become even more important, especially in holding up the mirror to those in positions of power and upholding the truth – which is often subjective. Truth is unlike a bare fact, which, devoid of context, is often used in disinformation campaigns. Most of us are engaged in work that we are passionate about, be that issues of women’s and gender rights like the ongoing women’s protests in Iran or struggles for abortion rights in the US, Poland, or labour rights in China, West Asia, Africa, the imminent environmental and climate change crisis that is impacting the poorest of the world, rising authoritarianism and ultra-right-wing populism, and the stifling of people’s self-determination movements, be that in Palestine, Western Sahara, West Papua, or Kashmir.

We are not just academics but citizens and an integral part of global political and social systems. It is imperative that we work towards the betterment of this world. As states pursue their direct assault on civil rights groups and launch disinformation campaigns to discredit activism and those who strive for justice, we must carry the responsibility of upholding truth and preserving it. I must emphasize, as I often tell myself this as well, that different forms of oppression are interlinked and therefore the resistance to these oppressive systems must be collaborative. We must stand in solidarity with each other to preserve, uphold, or speak the truth in whichever way we can. There can be no selective resistance or single cause to fight for.

The world we knew is fading and the new emerging world must be built on the foundations of freedom, justice, and egalitarianism – not in a Western neoliberal framework. We must envision a world where there is no place for racism, xenophobia, homophobia, antisemitism, islamophobia, or misogyny. That new world cannot be a reality if our hearts are not stirred by the torrents of revolution in which truth and justice is the central motif. My speech this evening reads like a political manifesto, and it should be taken as such, for our responsibility to uphold al-haq (the truth) is not just a moral obligation but should be our political stance as scholars.

I conclude with the words of poet-Philosopher Allama Iqbal, also known as the poet of the East, who wrote:

Does your heart tremble from the fear of the impending storm? Know that you are the sailor, you are the ocean, you are the boat, and the destination.

This article was first presented in the form of a speech and is posted here with the permission of the author.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Haris Zargar is doctoral candidate at ISS focusing on political Islam, social movements and agrarian change. He has worked as a journalist for over a decade writing on the intersection of politics, conflict and human security and has degrees in Journalism and Development Studies.

Dilemmas for aid agencies working in Afghanistan under Taliban’s gender apartheid rule.

By ISS Blog Bliss 12 January 202326 December 2024 2605 views

The consequences of the ban are disastrous. After the takeover of power by the Taliban in 2021, the economy of Afghanistan collapsed, the government currently hardly functions and health services have disappeared except for aid-managed programmes. Drought, floods and last summer’s big earthquake all made matters worse. Current estimates are that 20 million people depend on humanitarian assistance and the ban on women’s employment will certainly cost lives. In addition, jobs are very rare in today’s Afghanistan. Many women who work for aid organizations are the sole breadwinner in their family. These families will face poverty if these women resign from their jobs.

UN diplomats and aid organizations are on high alert and they are feverishly meeting to seek strategies that enable them to stand up for human rights and yet maintain aid as much as possible. The UN Security Council, as well as many countries, has also condemned the ban. Global humanitarian aid coordinator, Martin Griffiths, will be travelling to Afghanistan in the coming weeks in an attempt to persuade the government to change its mind. For the time being, however, the Taliban do not seem sensitive to outside pressure.

There are currently about a hundred aid organizations that have stopped their work. Some agencies take a principled approach: they condemn excluding female employees as a gross violation of human rights and are reluctant to strike deals with the Taliban about the provision of aid. Other organizations emphasize the logistical implications of the ban: aid is not possible in Afghanistan without women, because only women can reach the vulnerable women and children who need it most.

There are some organizations that can continue their work without disruption, including Médecins sans Frontières (MSF). Their employees are not yet affected by the new measure. The Taliban appear to be divided over the matter. The ban was issued by the Afghan Ministry of Economic Affairs, which is under the influence of the hardliner Taliban. Most national aid organizations are registered under this ministry. This implies that the ban also affects the programmes of foreign aid organizations that work through local partners. On the other hand, foreign organizations that implement their own programmes, such as MSF, fall under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has not adopted the measure. The Ministry of Health is also holding off the ban for the time being.

There are voices advocating that the aid organizations should draw a line and stop talking to the Taliban. However, many organizations will continue to look for a humanitarian space to uphold assistance in order not to let the population down. They are prepared to negotiate at a local level, where it is expected that some rulers may apply the ban more leniently. This is a common humanitarian strategy: negotiate where necessary and continue to look for ways to continue to provide aid. A disadvantage of this strategy may be that the Taliban can play off aid organizations against each other.

The ban is still fresh and evolving – new announcements are expected soon. As far as I am concerned, there is one red line: organizations cannot agree to provide assistance when women are excluded from their services. Aid agencies, the UN and international governments should convey a common message: Aid that is reserved for men only is a no-go as this would contribute to the system of gender apartheid that prevails under the Taliban.

This blog is based on research that was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Horizon 2020 programme [Advance grant number 884139].

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

The East African Community’s regional economic integration efforts are starting to pay off – here’s why to take note

By ISS Blog Bliss 12 December 202226 December 2024 2539 views

Good news about Africa always seems to travel slowly. The East African Community has successfully been pushing for regional economic integration in East Africa, but not everyone has gotten wind of it. ISS researchers Peter van Bergeijk and Binyam Demena in their recently published book called ‘Trade and Investment in East Africa’ show how the EAC’s many successes and failures can provide several opportunities – and lessons – for the Netherlands and other countries seeking to further strengthen regional economic integration.

For the past few years, the seven member states of the East African Community (EAC) – the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Uganda, and Tanzania – have been working hard on furthering regional economic integration. The group of countries recognize the importance of foreign trade and investment (FTI) for their economic development and have started to reap the benefits: Kenya and Tanzania have already been reclassified as Middle Income Countries (MICs) by the World Bank.

Yet not much is known about these efforts in the Netherlands. Our recently published book, Trade and Investment in East Africa, is an attempt to showcase the EAC’s efforts by analysing these developments, identifying possible bottlenecks, and thereby also outlining perspectives that are important for the Dutch trade and development policy. We summarise some of book’s the key takeaways below to show why countries seeking to improve their regional economic integration should take note of the book.

Increased trade bring benefits, but it’s no free lunch

Economically, the EAC is a remarkable success. Africa is a patchwork of overlapping regional organizations that are all working towards economic integration, which is somewhat inevitable (just as the Netherlands is a member both of the EU and the Benelux). This leads to inconsistency and inefficiency in trade between countries but, as one of the studies in the book shows, the EAC suffers relatively little from this.

One possible reason for its success could be its sectoral productivity. In the book chapter, the authors using microdata on firms show that sectoral productivity patterns differ between EAC members: the countries differ in their strengths and weaknesses (what economists call their comparative advantage). Because of the different comparative advantages, it pays to specialize in what you are good at, also to increase intra-regional trade. Uganda can specialize in food where it has a comparative advantage and in the same vein we find different candidates for different countries: Kenya can specialize in furniture, Rwanda in non-metallic manufacturing, and Tanzania in printing and publishing.

That fertile base for specialization and increased trade is good news because the export premium (the higher productivity of internationally operating firms) is substantial for EAC member states and greater than the average for sub-Saharan countries. Higher productivity can be translated into higher per capita income, which is considered necessary for economic growth. Incidentally, this is not a free lunch and requires related policies (training, income support), because amongst the high-productivity winners there are also clear losers in low-productivity sectors.

More investment, less bureaucratic red tape needed

Beyond dealing with those sectors that are lagging, the area faces several policy challenges. The book contains some five case studies[1] that reveal some of the main challenges, which include a lack of institutional support and private sector investments. Many sectors, such as rice farming, seaweed fishing and leather production, lack investments by firms that can help these countries position themselves higher up in international value chains. State institutions on the other hand are important both for ensuring the quality of export products and for funding research and development into product-specific improvements.

Another challenge relates to a lack of investment by firms in primary sectors. For example, while Tanzania is one of the largest regional exporters of live cattle, its lack of formal slaughterhouses and leather processing facilities prevents it from expanding its leather production sector. As a result, it needs to import shoes and other simple leather products, and the upscaling of the sector is hardly possible.

When it comes to trade with the EAC region, the main bottlenecks are related to difficulties getting import and export products across borders without delay. One study contained in the book reveals bottlenecks that impede trade both within and outside of the EAC. The challenges include inadequate (air)port management and excessive bureaucratic red tape, which are compounded by the lack of a one-stop-shop approach; in principle, these are factors that could be resolved without having to make major financial investments but require a change in practices and training to implement newly developed systems.

Offering aid in addition to trade

The Dutch Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation can learn several things from the EAC in doing trade and investment better. One important finding that can be considered in the Netherlands is that trade cannot work without a certain amount of aid. An empirical study by Sylvanus Afesorgbor of European trade with the African, Caribbean and Pacific countries with which Europe has a special development aid relationship shows that trade promotion appears to lead to economic development only if it is complemented by development aid. One reason is that additional policies are necessary to help individuals that work in sectors with low productivity that lose due to international specialization.

However, the similarities have been somewhat overlooked. From this perspective alone, it is unfortunate that the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation’s new strategic policy paper, ‘Doen waar Nederland goed is in’ (‘Do what the Netherlands does best’), does not consider the EAC as an economic community of nations. While some individual EAC countries are mentioned, the emphasis is on the Netherlands’ long-standing foreign policy strategy focused on the Horn of Africa.

This leaves the opportunities that lie in the EAC out of the policy picture. For example, the Netherlands can play an important role in helping the EAC address the logistical challenges hampering trade, in particular with regard to (air)port management. It also has much to offer African policy makers through its own regional economic integration experiences, from Benelux to the EU. Moreover, several large Dutch companies also have a foothold in Tanzania, which illustrates that this is already recognized as an interesting market.

Our book brings together economists from the Global South that provide a relevant multidimensional analysis of how sensible policies can be designed that move trade and development in the same direction.

[1] The case studies are a comparative analysis of the leather industry by Fauzul Muna, a survey of common bean smallholder farmers in Arusha by Eliaza Mkuna, an econometric analysis of Tanzanian horticultural export by William Georde, a survey of the seaweed sector in Zanzibar by Wahida Makame, and a structured review of cross-border cooperatives in the EAC by Gerard Dushimimana.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Peter van Bergeijk is Professor of International Economic Relations and Macroeconomics at the Hague-based Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University (ISS); one of the leading educational and research institutes in the field of development cooperation in Europe.

Binyam Afewerk Demena is an empirical economist with expertise across economic disciplines focusing on the area of development, environment, and health. He is an Assistant professor the Hague-based Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University (ISS).

How can heatwaves be governed more effectively? A look at the Middle East and North Africa

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 December 202226 December 2024 2246 views

As the FIFA World Cup in Qatar is well under way, the controversy around the exact number of migrant workers’ deaths continues. There is little doubt that illnesses related to the physical and mental strain of working long hours in extreme heat played a significant role in the surge in untimely deaths. How heat is governed in the Middle East and North Africa strongly influences its effects on public health, writes Sylvia I. Bergh, who argues that heat plans and traditional adaptations can help overcome governance deficiencies.

For centuries, badgirs (wind catchers) have helped Yazd residents stay cool despite desert temperatures that can reach 40 C in summertime (Credit: Shervin Abdolhamidi)

Rising temperatures in the MENA region present serious threats to human health

Heatwaves are a ‘silent killer’ around the globe, and the MENA region is no exception. Since the 1970s, warm days and nights have almost doubled in frequency.[1] Many cities already experience temperature and humidity maximums that make it difficult to find acceptable levels of comfort outdoors during most of the day in summer, and midday in temperate seasons.[2] Temperatures across the Middle East region are predicted to increase by 3°C by 2050,[3] while the number of people experiencing major heatwaves is predicted to quadruple between 2010 and 2050.[4] Indeed, peak temperatures during future heatwaves could exceed 56°C in some locations in the Middle East.[5]

Urban areas are climate vulnerable hotspots in Middle East and North Africa (MENA) countries, and urban dwellers are expected to make up 68% of populations in Arab countries by 2050.[6] Warming will be felt more in cities because of the urban heat island (UHI) effect that makes cities 2-6°C warmer than their surroundings.[7] The increase of UHI will cause heat-related health problems, including mental and physical fatigue, an increased likelihood of exhaustion, heart attacks, and more deaths.[8] As the immune system weakens due to heat stress, susceptibility to disease will also further increase.[9] Indeed, heat stress from more severe and longer-lasting heatwaves may be the most serious threat to human health caused by climate change in the MENA region.[10]

The most vulnerable population groups in cities include the elderly, people with chronic conditions such as cardio-vascular diseases and disabilities, those working outdoors (construction workers, street vendors, etc), homeless people, and refugees and IDPs living in camps. On top of that are those who cannot afford air conditioning or any other form of protection.[11] Due to the economic disparities between richer and poorer people, as well as peaceful and conflict-affected MENA countries, there is an ‘adaptation divide’ in which there is a disproportionate impact on vulnerable countries as well as on vulnerable populations within many MENA countries.[12]

Weak policy responses and unhelpful governance practices

While climate awareness and action are increasing across the MENA region, a lack of specific legislation on climate change has been observed. According to Olawuyi,[13] there is no coherent development of climate change principles, norms, and standards across the region. UN-Habitat has drawn particular attention to the potential role of ‘urban law’, whether national laws or local regulations. Unfortunately, city planning and management regimes are still often disconnected from disaster risk and resilience building, while countries lack legislation to integrate city resilience into broader development planning.[14]

Some cities’ Strategic Development Plans do link development, urban renewal and resilience plans under a broader vision. But to implement these plans successfully there is a need for improved coordination between central and local levels and more devolution of responsibilities to local authorities and local budgets for implementation.[15] Indeed, in practice we see overlapping mandates along with limited exchange of information across institutions within and beyond government, hampering multi-hazard risk analysis and forecasting.[16] This also undermines the effectiveness of early warning systems (to the extent that the latter exist at all).[17] As Peters et al. argue,[18] enhancing forecasting (including of heatwaves) to enable timely action is relevant for the MENA region and should be part of an agenda that accelerates and scales up anticipatory action.

It seems so far that cities in the MENA region have failed to respond effectively to the huge challenges posed by heatwaves. Apart from some research and development (R&D) in alternative sources to carbon-based energy, investment has concentrated in high-income real estate and global business competitiveness. In Dubai, for example, one of the hottest climates on the planet, the construction of many high-rise structures of concrete and glass, and black-top roads and car-parks has darkened what was near-white sand, thus absorbing and releasing more heat.[19] Similar trends are visible in Casablanca and Mecca.[20] Yet increasing temperatures mean more demand for air conditioning and cooling systems. For example, due to unbearable heat, Qatar has already begun to air-condition the outdoors.[21]

Possible solutions: traditional building and urban design adaptations

Green Building Councils across the MENA region provide reports and best practices that support informed policy making on low-carbon, energy-efficient, and environmentally sustainable practices in building design and construction.[22] Scholars and experts also recommend retrofitting buildings by installing reflective and green roofs, window shading, and solar cooling. Jordan is reported to be the first developing country to use solar thermal energy to cool buildings and to reduce cooling power consumption.[23]

Other commonly proposed interventions include both planning and architectural solutions such as tree planting and increases in green or blue spaces,[24] green roofs, window treatments and window placement, architectural materials which are thermally responsive,[25] and lightening roads, roofs, and buildings to increase light reflection.[26]

In this respect, the MENA societies’ centuries-old traditional adaptations to deal with water scarcity and hot climate offer a valuable repository of human knowledge. Examples include the wind catcher or wind tower (known as malqaf in the Arab Gulf countries). These passive cooling towers capture cooler winds aloft, directing them into the living space and displacing warm air. Where possible, these were used in conjunction with the falaj irrigation tunnels, providing an exceptionally effective air conditioning system. Another example is the carved mashrabiya screen. Carved from wood or stone or cast in plaster, often with Islamic geometric patterns, these block and diffuse sunlight, allow fresh air to pass into living space, and provide privacy.[27]

Some of these vernacular bioclimatic designs have been used in contemporary sites, such as Abu Dhabi’s ambitious urban project Masdar City, which started in 2007. Its compact design was inspired by traditional Islamic architecture to maximise passive shading and air circulation in the extreme dry, hot, and windy desert conditions. Short (no longer than 70 m) and narrow streets are blocked off at the end by a building, creating turbulence and a flushing effect. As a result, the temperature in the streets is as low as 20°C, whereas just meters away in the desert sand, the temperature is as high as 35°C.[28] These examples show that if buildings are adapted to the local climate and use passive cooling techniques, they can keep cool naturally. Policies to curb cooling demand often concentrate on promoting the use of efficient cooling technologies and appliances. This is not enough. There is a need to foster (and enforce) improved building designs which take into account the climatic and cultural context.[29]

Policy recommendation: develop comprehensive Local Heat Plans

Although national Heat Health Action Plans (HHAPs) are important frameworks that can guide local action,[30] it is at the local level that such plans can really make a difference for particular vulnerable population groups. A Local Heat Plan is first and foremost a communication plan that activates an early warning system about an impending heatwave. It is directed towards vulnerable population groups and coordinates the actions of various local stakeholders.

As part of a recent research project on the effects of heatwaves on vulnerable populations in The Hague,[31] we developed some policy recommendations that are relevant also for local governments in the MENA region. For example, local governments and their non-governmental partners should run community-awareness campaigns about the heat-related health risks, as well as about low-cost solutions such as cooling scarves. Local governments should amend building regulations that prohibit the installation of awnings for aesthetic reasons (especially in social housing estates), and give subsidies to install such awnings or sunscreens to improve temperature regulation in private residences and care or elderly people’s homes. During a heatwave, they should provide cooling centres (in malls, libraries, and community centers) and telephone helplines for vulnerable people in need of help, treatment and support.[32]

For the cities in the MENA region, stronger national and regional networks of local authorities are key in order to exchange experiences with local adaptation planning and implementation.[33] There is a huge untapped potential for knowledge exchange here to improve the governance of heatwaves in the region.

This piece was originally published by Alternative Policy Solutions (APS), a non-partisan, public policy research project at the American University in Cairo. The original article is available here (English and Arabic).

This research was further presented during the #COP27 during an interview: https://www.climate-change.tv/12095, and a roundtable: https://www.climate-change.tv/12064

[1] Lelieveld, J., Proestos, Y., Hadjinicolaou, P., Tanarhte, M., Tyrlis, E., & Zittis, G. (2016). Strongly increasing heat extremes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the 21st century. Climatic Change, 137(1), 245-260. doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1665-6

[2] Skelhorn, C. (2019). Planning and design for sustainable cities in the MENA region. Smart and Sustainable Built Environment, 8(2), 98-102. doi:10.1108/SASBE-05-2019-071

[3] Lelieveld, J., Proestos, Y., Hadjinicolaou, P., Tanarhte, M., Tyrlis, E., & Zittis, G. (2016). Strongly increasing heat extremes in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the 21st century. Climatic Change, 137(1), 245-260. doi:10.1007/s10584-016-1665-6

[4] See Lahn and Shapland, 2022 and Varela et al., 2020; see also Namdar et al., 2021.

[5] Zittis, G., Hadjinicolaou, P., Almazroui, M., Bucchignani, E., Driouech, F., El Rhaz, K., . . . Lelieveld, J. (2021). Business-as-usual will lead to super and ultra-extreme heatwaves in the Middle East and North Africa. Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 4(1), 20. doi:10.1038/s41612-021-00178-7

[6] Saghir, J. (2021). Adaptation to climate change in the Middle East and North Africa , Joint Commentary Series: Viewpoint.The Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines and the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.

[7] United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Arab States, (UNDP). (2018). The Arab cities resilience report. Retrieved from https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/arab-cities-resilience-report

[8] (Kjellstrom et al., 2016; Loughnan et al., 2010; Ross et al., 2018; all cited in Ahmadalipour and Moradkhani, 2018, p. 215)

[9] United Nations Development Programme Regional Bureau for Arab States, (UNDP). (2018). The Arab cities resilience report. Retrieved from https://www.undp.org/arab-states/publications/arab-cities-resilience-report

[10] Zittis, G., Hadjinicolaou, P., Almazroui, M., Bucchignani, E., Driouech, F., El Rhaz, K., . . . Lelieveld, J. (2021). Business-as-usual will lead to super and ultra-extreme heatwaves in the Middle East and North Africa. Npj Climate and Atmospheric Science, 4(1), 20. doi:10.1038/s41612-021-00178-7

[11] See Al-Bouwarthan et al., 2019; Benzie, Davis and Hoff, 2012; Waha et al 2017.

[12] Rabinowitz, 2020, p. 5; Sowers et al., 2011; Sowers, 2019; all cited in Daoudy et al, 2022, p. 7.

[13] Olawuyi, D. S. (2022). Nature and sources of climate change law and policy in the MENA region. In D. S. Olawuyi (Ed.), Climate change law and policy in the Middle East and North Africa region (pp. 3-20). Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.

[14] Home, R. (2022). Urban law and resilience challenges of climate change for the MENA region. In D. S. Olawuyi (Ed.), Climate change law and policy in the Middle East and North Africa region (pp. 153-168). Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.

[15] Saghir, J. (2019). Urban resilience: The case of the Middle East and North Africa region, Payne Institute Commentary Series: Viewpoint.The Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.

[16] See also Zea-Reyes et al., 2021 for the case of failing climate change adaptation in Beirut.

[17] Peters, K., Weingärtner, L., Mall, P., Balcou, C., & Overseas Development Institute. (2022). Anticipatory action in the MENA region: State of play and accelerating action.World Food Programme Regional Bureau for the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Eastern Europe; Overseas Development Institute. Retrieved from https://www.wfp.org/publications/anticipatory-action-mena-region-state-play-and-accelerating-action

[18] Peters, K., Weingärtner, L., Mall, P., Balcou, C., & Overseas Development Institute. (2022). Anticipatory action in the MENA region: State of play and accelerating action.World Food Programme Regional Bureau for the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Eastern Europe; Overseas Development Institute. Retrieved from https://www.wfp.org/publications/anticipatory-action-mena-region-state-play-and-accelerating-action

[19] Home, R. (2022). Urban law and resilience challenges of climate change for the MENA region. In D. S. Olawuyi (Ed.), Climate change law and policy in the Middle East and North Africa region (pp. 153-168). Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.

[20] Home, R. (2022). Urban law and resilience challenges of climate change for the MENA region. In D. S. Olawuyi (Ed.), Climate change law and policy in the Middle East and North Africa region (pp. 153-168). Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.

[21] Mufson, S. (2019). Facing Unbearable Heat, Qatar Has Begun to Air-Condition the Outdoors, Washington Post, October 16, Retrieved from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/world/climate-environment/climate-change-qatar-air-conditioning-outdoors/

[22] Olawuyi, D. S. (2022). Nature and sources of climate change law and policy in the MENA region. In D. S. Olawuyi (Ed.), Climate change law and policy in the Middle East and North Africa region (pp. 3-20). Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.

[23] Duygu Sever, S. (2022). Climate change and the energy transition in the MENA region. In D. S. Olawuyi (Ed.), Climate change law and policy in the Middle East and North Africa region (pp. 82-105). Milton Park, Abingdon: Routledge.

[24] See for example Oliveira et al., 2011, Qiu et al., 2017, Upreti et al., 2017.

[25] Santamouris, M., Synnefa, A., & Karlessi, T. (2011). Using advanced cool materials in the urban built environment to mitigate heat islands and improve thermal comfort conditions. Solar Energy, 85(12), 3085-3102. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.solener.2010.12.023

[26] Radhi et al., 2017; Kyriakodis and Santamouris, 2018; all cited in Skelhorn, 2019, p. 99.

[27] Hobbs, 2017, pp. 58-59; Home, 2022, p. 154, see also PEEB, 2020, p. 21.

[28] Home, 2022, p. 159 and UNDP, 2018, p. 78.

[29] Programme for Energy Efficiency in Buildings, (PEEB). (2020). Better design for cool buildings: How improved building design can reduce the massive need for space cooling in hot climates. PEEB Working Paper.

[30] See WHO, 2008.

[31] Bergh, S. I., Longman, A. R., & van Tujil, E. (2022). Heatwaves and vulnerable populations: Mapping their needs in The Hague. Final Report, February 2022. The Hague: Centre of Expertise on Global Governance, The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Retrieved from https://www.thehagueuniversity.com/research/centre-of-expertise/projectdetails/project-launch-understanding-the-effects-of-heatwaves-on-vulnerable-population-groups-in-the-municipality-of-the-hague

[32] See also van Loenhout et al., 2021, p. 11.

[33] Bergh, S. I. (2020). Building a Euro-Mediterranean partnership with, not for, cities. CIDOB briefings nº 24. Barcelona: Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB). Retrieved from https://www.cidob.org/en/publications/publication_series/cidob_policy_brief/building_a_euro_mediterranean_partnership_with_not_for_cities

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Sylvia I. Bergh, Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher, Centre of Expertise on Global Governance, The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS).

Fashion and Beauty in the Tower of Babel: how Brazilian companies made sustainability a common language at COP27

By ISS Blog Bliss 1 December 202226 December 2024 2986 views

Fashion is one of the most polluting industries in the world, plagued by sky-high greenhouse gas emissions, mountains of excess clothing manufactured and cast away each year, and the widespread use of fossil fuels in producing synthetic fabrics. A roundtable organized at COP27 drew together Brazilian companies who are leading the pack when it comes to sustainable fashion and beauty. Panel conveners Luciana dos Santos Duarte and Sylvia Bergh summarize the main takeaways and what it implies for the role these industries can play in helping address the challenges posed by climate change.

Tower of Babel. Source of image: Ancient Origins

The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) can be compared to the biblical Tower of Babel. Stretching into the sky, in the tower thousands of people suddenly had their speech confused by God and could no longer understand each other. But still they continued to talk. COP can be seen as a metaphorical Tower of Babel, convening thousands of people from different contexts who speak different political and economic languages to continue talking about climate change, a phenomenon that is as contested as it is complex.

COP represents the most ambitious event in the world to deal with the challenges posed by climate change. Most recently, COP27 brought 35,000 people to Sharm El-Sheikh in Egypt. The private sector was well represented, with a range of companies sharing their diverse approaches to pursuing sustainability and demonstrating their commitment to corporate social (and environmental) responsibility and their adherence to one or several Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In attending the conference, on the one hand they were able to position the discourse on sustainable business practices at the UN level, while on the other, no references were made to unsustainable practices. In the end, obscuring these seemed to point to greenwashing. In other words, the myriad approaches to and vocabularies around private sector sustainability make it difficult to separate fact from fiction.

The fashion industry alone is responsible for 10% of annual global carbon emissions – more than that of all international flights and maritime shipping journeys combined. Yet this is often obscured, with the responsibility to reduce, reuse, and recycle placed on individual consumers instead. In light of this, we hosted a roundtable on fashion and beauty at COP27. The aim of the ‘Sustainable Fashion Made in Brazil’ roundtable, one of just three main events on fashion at the conference, was to critically understand how companies approach sustainability.

We chose to focus on Brazil, as it is one of the main producers of fibers, textiles, leather, and apparel in the world. While the country is still trying to regulate the fashion sector towards sustainable practices, its biggest corporations are adapting to international requirements and to what they believe is sustainable. We believed that the discussions could help the companies learn from each other while perhaps also helping ignite similar discussions in other contexts.

Roundtable about fashion and beauty at the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 hosted by Luciana Dos Santos Duarte. Source image: Sylvia Bergh

In partnership with the NGO Responding to Climate Change, the Ethical Fashion Brazil agency, and the Civic Innovation research group of ISS,[1] the roundtable brought together fashion corporations Grupo SOMA, Lojas Renner, and Malwee, as well as beauty companies Laces and Hair and Simple Organic to talk about efforts to make fashion sustainable in Brazil. Okeanos, a Miami-based supplier of plastic made from Brazilian stones that is producing sustainable hangers for the fashion industry, was also present.

Here’s what the companies who participated in the roundtable have been doing:

Grupo SOMA has a market value of close to 1,8 billion Euro. Although it owns several brands which are not known to be sustainable,[2] at COP27 it showcased a project by one of its brands, Farm Rio, which produces jewelry made by the Yawanawá indigenous women in the Amazon rainforest.

Like Grupo SOMA, Lojas Renner is one of the 150 companies in the world to have signed the Fashion Industry Charter for Climate Action, an initiative[3] of the UFCCC through which fashion companies pledge to achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

Malwee is one of the biggest fashion companies in Brazil. With “six brands [4],” it manufactures 45 million pieces of clothing each year. It is moving toward sustainability through textile engineering, and the company is carbon neutral (due to the 1,5 million square meters of preserved nature of its own Malwee Park, which is open to the public).

Beauty companies Laces and Hair and Simple Organic are two cases of sustainable entrepreneurship focused on innovation. At the conference, Laces and Hair referred to nature to describe their business practices, for example their goal to “repair damaged hair with nature”. Simple Organic was a beauty startup until it was bought by Hypera Pharma so it could scale up its production of organic skincare and make-up. The product communication expresses values of diversity and gender neutrality. Among its innovations, it developed biodegradable plastic bags that will become fish food if they end up in the ocean, and they are launching a sunscreen that is reef friendly.

After a round of presentations, there was time for discussing problems companies face and ways of overcoming these. Based on a fashion report compiled by high-school students for the Model United Nations educational simulation (MUNISH 2022), we developed some questions to guide the discussion. Why? Because high-school students represent the generation who is (and will be) most affected by climate change, and who should have the right to dialogue with the big players. Two solutions they suggested and that we then discussed were 1) taxing fast fashion, and 2) identifying products that are not sustainable (like the letter T for Transgenics on food packaging in Brazil).

The roundtable participants believed that before taxing companies that are not engaging in sustainable production practices, the government should do more for those companies that are sustainable. “We need more regulation, inspection, control, and certification,” said Malwee’s representative, in addition to “investing not only in buying carbon (credits) but reducing the environmental impact of the production processes”. Lojas Renner’s representative said that “almost all regulations come from Europe and North America” and acknowledged the efforts of the Brazilian Textile Retail Association (ABVTEX) to regulate the fashion retail chain in Brazil. She also said that her company is trying to comply with the new requirements before they become a regulation.

When asked about the National Policy for Solid Waste, a policy enacted by the Brazilian government in 2010 that criminalizes the disposal of textile waste as ordinary waste despite lacking enforcement, participants argued that the companies should be responsible for their own environmental impact. For instance, they could choose not to work with suppliers who are not certified according to the regulations.

Most participants agreed that they need to educate their consumer about what is sustainable. In this sense, they are selling not only products, but also creating a service to raise awareness on sustainability. Social media is a vector for education, but at the same time, it is a tool to create desire, which in turn creates revenue. In this sense, growth and degrowth are related to the consumer acceptance of the brand and to business as usual, not to an environmental movement.

When asked about the paradigm that 90% of the consumers buy a product because it is trendy, and only 10% because it is sustainable, they agreed that sustainability should become an intrinsic motivation. They need to change the way in which they produce, but not the product, or at least not the product aesthetic, in order to engage in the ethics of sustainability.

“We don’t need to make sustainable fashion, but fashion sustainable” – Malwee representative

Roundtable Sustainable Fashion made in Brazil at COP27. Source image: Greg Reis for Harper’s Bazaar Brazil

Although the presentations and the discussion during the roundtable showed different approaches to sustainability, the companies’ representatives converged on some topics like taking responsibility for the climate impacts of the fashion value chain and not expecting the government or consumers to lead the transition to sustainability. From a single project of jewelry in the Amazon to neutralizing the carbon footprint of the whole value chain, their different strategies serve as inspiration for our understanding of the role of fashion and beauty industries in addressing the challenges of climate change.

Please see this page for a longer version of this article.

[1] The event along with a social media campaign forms part of the activities of our research project ‘Transmedia Sustainable Fashion made in Brazil – Documenting the Roundtable at COP27 UN Climate Change Conference and exploring creative strategies to communicate scientific research’, sponsored by the Civic Innovation research group of the International Institute of Social Studies (Erasmus University Rotterdam).

[2] Grupo SOMA includes the following Brazilian brands: Farm, Farm Global, Fabula, Animale, Cris Barros, Foxton, NV, Maria Filó, Off Premium, Hering, Hering Kids, Hering Intimates, and Dzarm.

^[3] It is not clear whether the initiative fosters genuine dialogue among companies, and whether it undergoes any external (independent) evaluations.

^[4] Malwee, Enfim, Malwee Kids, Carinhoso, basico.com, basicamente.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Luciana dos Santos Duarte is doing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies, ISS/EUR). She holds a master’s degree in Production Engineering, and a Bachelor degree in Product Design. She is also a lecturer in Industrial Design Engineering at The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS).

Connecting academic (air) mobility with carbon inequality: Perspectives from a Global South scholar

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 November 20224 January 2025 1605 views

As citizens of the Global South, now immigrants in the Global North, which narrative of climate action should we uphold: the one that we know is unfair back home, or the one that puts the responsibility of action on us because of where we reside now? Are our Western contemporaries aware of these dilemmas that we face? A Nepali scholar now residing in Norway reflects on these questions.

Growing up in a middle-income household in Nepal, I was part of a population that was allured to all things western. I distinctly recall how the elementary school curriculum entrenched the notion that Nepal could reach the stature of Switzerland someday – that’s how enticing the western notion was. That we could try to be like them was perpetuated as the goal. And thus, I was introduced to the distinct dichotomy of the spheres of we and they.

I pursued my higher studies in climate change and sustainable development, where I first came across the principle of “Common but Differentiated Responsibilities” (CBDR) that underscored climate change negotiations over a decade ago. This further deepened the we and they dichotomy for me: that those states which have the highest responsibility in the current levels of greenhouse gas emissions should bear the bigger share in curbing emissions is of course sensible! I have always understood that they equated with the Global North (whose historical emissions are the root of the climate problem) while we meant the Global South (who have historically faced the greater impacts of climate change). And of course, in this phenomenon, I was a part of the we. I had learned that we must adapt (because there is no other choice), and they must curb emissions (because they are responsible for the problem). I have had abundant discussions with teachers and friends alike, about how they are responsible for the climate crisis, and how it is unfair that we have to bear the repercussions of it. These discussions resonate with the current global negotiations as well as social movements which are premised upon climate (in)justice.

About a year ago, I moved to Europe for my PhD and was beyond elated! Omar El Akkad has said on flight patterns: “Westerners don’t tend to think this way, but in the part of the world I’m from, we talk about passports in terms of their power…”, and I couldn’t agree more. My green passport is limiting in every manner and form, at the bottom of the passport tier, and requires me to get a visa to most countries. My global citizenry aspirations are curtailed by the power that my passport lacks. And this new job offered me the opportunity to live the western dream, in terms of work, travel and to some degree, privilege!

A month into my PhD, I began to realize that I was struggling to fit in because the discussions centered around how ‘we’ need to do more, cut down emissions radically because ‘they’ suffer the impacts. This reversal of ‘we’ and ‘they’ in my workplace left me stunned, to say the least, and I began questioning: in my current situation, which ‘we’ do I belong in?

Art by Jacob V Joyce and Rudy Loewe at the Back to Earth exhibition at Serpentine North Gallery London

Many of my colleagues argue for degrowth in order to reduce emissions and live within planetary boundaries, which a growing body of scholarly literature also points to. Degrowth, after all, is not universal and is applied to “specifically high-income countries that need to degrow”. I understand the science behind degrowth but struggle with it, especially when it is voiced that ‘we’ must degrow. This becomes apparent, for example, when we discuss low carbon travel in my workplace. As colleagues of mine suggest that we ought to fly as little as we can, for both work and leisure, and then some colleagues go on to say how they have adopted a low-flight lifestyle, I can’t add anything but a few nods because of course, what they say is true. It is both refreshing and inspiring to work with people who walk the talk about individual climate action. But soon after, the question “how is this fair?” sinks in.

There is no denying that flying jeopardizes the climate, and the less we fly the better. But there is little acknowledgement that flying is linked with stark global carbon inequalities. What my colleagues pay no heed to is that I have not had the same experiences as they have. Studies show that air travel is in fact an economic privilege. While the top 10% of the income quartile consume 75% of all the energy from air-travel, the majority of the global population “are almost or entirely excluded from aviation”.

Most of my colleagues have travelled around the world, not just Europe. Their passports are inherently more powerful than mine – they don’t need a visa to visit Europe, nor for many other parts of the world. When they speak about the trips they took a lifetime ago to another country, or continent for that matter, for work or otherwise, I have no similar experiences to draw on. Back home, flying is the exception whereas here it’s the norm. I have had more opportunities to fly in the past year while working in Norway than throughout my entire life spent in Asia.

What is the basic standard for most of my colleagues is, in fact, a luxury for me. I’m not sure they’re aware of this. My version of we is fundamentally different from theirs. My colleagues and I view the world through our respective colored lenses. At least some part of their higher education has been in the Global North (Europe, the US, Canada or Australia) whereas mine has been grounded in Nepal and Thailand.

When I think rationally, I know, understand, and even agree that my individual choices, regardless of which part of the globe I live in, are mine. I can be a part of the climate crisis (should I choose to hop around Europe in cheap budget airlines for work and/or leisure) or be a part of the solution (plan the same travels by land). But it is difficult to be rational all the time, especially when my experiences, contexts and perspectives are so different, and even more so, when what I think of luxury (being in Europe) are just everyday things for others.

I focus here mostly on flying because my work encourages a low-carbon travel policy, including to avoid flying for work to the largest extent possible. While it is a sensible climate action for an institute, I do think there are nuances that need further unpacking.

Image of the University of Bergen’s Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) low-carbon travel policy. Source: https://www.uib.no/en/cet/120490/cet-low-carbon-travel-policy

Firstly, our travel budget does not allow for a low-carbon travel policy because it is fixed. The more we choose trains and stopovers in different cities, travelling for work, be it a conference, networking events or even courses, becomes more and more expensive. The choice of transport mode is therefore a matter of economic privilege, which most of us unfortunately do not possess.

Secondly, the low-carbon travel policy does not account for the carbon inequality linked with flying. How is it fair that I feel guilty for flying to conferences (which are important for networking as an early career researcher) while there are plenty of more established, senior researchers (including those working on sustainability and/ or climate change) who choose to fly between continents for a 2-day conference, even though they may not need to network any further? I am aware of my own privilege when I discuss my choice to attend such events in person. More often than not I am reminded about how many such in-person events are inaccessible to a lot of my peers, both financially and geographically. This contributes further to my own guilt, and also to the debate about how (un)sustainable current academic practices really are.

That everyone in the room shares similar beliefs because we work at the same center and are passionate about similar things is not a given. My personal conflicts of treading this ‘we’ and ‘they’ have resulted in numerous venting sessions. Because it is sometimes both frustrating and exhausting to not be able to find another person with similar lived experiences to connect with, in a foreign land.

A friend of mine who is now in the UK advised me that I must simply unlearn things to cope with this reversal. And I can’t help but ask if it is fair that they talk about radical lifestyle transformations, when we have always aspired to look upon their everyday? Or do I feel guilty for having to ask it at all, because I know the science behind it, and need to stop viewing the world through the colored lens of we as equating with the Global South? I have also come to the glaring realisation that these ‘uncomfortable’ talks need to happen more – because they open avenues to thinking in a different manner. And that is a critical first step to instigate action.

I recently flew to two conferences, one in which a session was on making meaningful connections between the Global North and South, and the other focused on energy and climate justice. It was a meeting point for over a hundred young researchers working around the world, trying to solve world problems, one research project at a time. Could such events create ‘safe spaces’ where we can have meaningful conversations about the reversal of we and they, and develop genuine connections between the Global North and Global South? Could such conversations lead to perhaps blurring the dichotomies? Would these broaden perspectives by forcing us to think outside of the box that we’ve been trained to think in?

Reflecting on both these events, I do think that they offered the space and the connections to confront the dichotomies of we and they. I had the chance to discuss with researchers, both early career and established ones, about my dilemma with air travel as an early career researcher. Three important points have come up. Firstly, we need to question who has to reduce air travel – is it up and coming researchers who really need networking opportunities, or established ones who comprise the privileged ones? Secondly, we need to acknowledge the carbon inequality associated with flying and incentivize travel by land. We live in a system that inherently disincentivizes low-carbon travel options, as air travel is heavily subsidized while train travel is not. So, if we, as an academic community preach the shift from air to land travel, it is the community’s responsibility to incentivize the low-carbon options, especially to those from the Global South, to attend such events. Finally, the geography and accessibility to these events matter: they can be organized in places that have good connections by land and in hybrid formats (as were events during the COVID pandemic). This feeds into a larger debate of how (un)sustainable and (un)just current academic practices are- especially in terms of accessibility and inclusion of those from the Global South.

This blog was first published in Undisciplined Environments.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Subina Shrestha is a PhD Candidate, Centre for climate and energy transformation (CET).

Limits to learning: when climate action contributes to social conflict

By ISS Blog Bliss 11 November 20224 January 2025 1235 views

REDD+, or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation, has been one of the holy grails of international efforts to combat climate change for the past 10 years: over 10 billion dollars have been pledged to this cause by donor countries. Although REDD+ aims to reduce deforestation rates while increasing the welfare of landowners, research has shown that it also negatively impacts indigenous communities and has contributed to conflict. While hard work has been done to improve REDD+ programs, there are serious unintended effects of this much needed climate change action program. We wondered if organizations will do something about these unintended effects and would like to stimulate debate on that. We found that there are limits to what they learn: some unintended effects are likely to persist.

The REDD+ programmes, developed by the United Nations, use a payment for environmental services (PES) approach to support developing countries in creating more sustainable land use models. The idea behind this is that landowners move away from traditional land use methods that deplete forests and hence exhaust their capacity to absorb CO2. In turn, they receive monetary and other incentives that make up for loss of income and enable them to work towards more sustainable land use.

However, a disturbing number of “unintended consequences” results from these programmes. Such consequences do not necessarily relate to the initial goals of the programme: it can for example achieve great results in forest preservation and poverty alleviation; yet be only accessible to those who officially own the land. Thereby it excludes the poor residents for whom the programme was initially intended. Importantly, because these effects fall outside the scope of the programmes, they are not always taken into consideration when it comes to measuring impact.

In the past years, researchers found such effects on both the forest preservation and social impact fronts. Now, determining that some bear the brunt of well-intended efforts to tackle climate change is one thing. The next question, however, is crucial: will implementers be able to learn from their mistakes? Are the unintended consequences that have been seen in the past years avoidable, and does REDD+ hence have the potential to be for instance truly inclusive and conflict-sensitive?

Will programme implementers learn from their mistakes?

The answer is, as always: it depends. Reasons for not learning from unintended effects are partly technical: for example, the difficulty to measure the actual deforestation rates or the forests that are “saved” as a direct result from the project (the so-called displacement effect). With better measurement techniques, experts expect that these issues can be overcome in the near future.

However, the unintended consequences of REDD+ that are social in nature are a completely different ball game. These include for example the discrimination of indigenous peoples and their ancestral ways of living and working the land; the exclusion of many rural poor because they do not have official land titles; the exclusion of women for the same reason; or the rising of social tensions in communities, or between communities and authorities.

Organizations which implement REDD+, such as the World Bank and the Green Climate Fund, are aware of these unintended consequences and have put measures in place to anticipate and regulate them. These “social and environmental safeguards” should prevent discrimination as a result from the programmes. Moreover, grievance redress and dispute settlement mechanisms are in place to serve justice to those who have been harmed or disadvantaged regardless.

Despite these systems and regulations, World Bank and GCF employees explain that they are struggling with managing these unintended consequences, and that it is difficult to satisfy everyone’s needs while still achieving results on the deforestation front. The dilemma they face is clear: the more time, effort and money is spent to anticipate all possible unintended consequences, the less money and time is left to use for the implement the climate change programming, and time is ticking.

Ideological limits to learning

Donors who fund the programmes appear sometimes more concerned by just increasing disbursement rates, to show they are active in the fight against climate change, than fully taking note and acting on the collateral social damage. With more pressure from civil society, donors and organizations are likely to also take more of the social factors on board, for example through the safeguard system. However, there appears to be one major blind spot, on which little learning is taking place.

To our surprise, the most encountered unintended effects are the so-called motivational crowding out effects. Time and again, it was found that, while people were initially quite concerned about the forest and finding ways to preserve it, their intrinsic motivation to do so declined when monetary rewards were offered. The neo-liberal model of putting a price on everything might work on the short run, but appears to contribute to an erosion of conservation values in the long run. So, taking stock of collateral damage, this might be one of the most unexpected ones we encountered. And unfortunately, it goes against the very ideological basis of the PES approach. Currently, we also found little action by organizations and donors to deal with this unintended effect. An ideological limit to learning appears to be in place here.

Yet, we are still hoping that climate justice can be achieved. That green objectives can be combined with social justice objectives. We invite you to share your abstracts with us for the panel we are organizing at the EADI conference in 2020. The deadline is on December 15. If you would like to read more background information on this topic, you are welcome to consult our working paper.

About the authors:

pasfoto DJ Koch

Dirk-Jan Koch is Professor (special appointment) in International Trade and Development Cooperation at the Radboud University in Nijmegen, and Chief Science Officer of the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His latest publications include Is it time to ‘decolonise’ the fungibility debate? (2019, Third World Quarterly, with Zunera Rana) and Exaggerating unintended effects? Competing narratives on the impact of conflict minerals regulation (2018, Resources Policy, with Sara Kinsbergen).

Marloes Verholt is researcher at the Radboud University Nijmegen. She researches the unintended effects of international climate policy. With a background in conflict analysis and human rights work, she views the climate change debate through these lenses.

Whose climate security? Or why we should worry about security language in climate action

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 November 20224 January 2025 1275 views

The climate crisis is becoming an international focal point, and budgets for climate change mitigation and adaptation are getting larger. At the same time, debates on ‘climate security’ involving some of the most powerful actors globally can be discerned. We need to ask ourselves, our governments, and corporations some difficult and counterintuitive questions: does much-needed action on climate change have harmful environmental and social effects, especially for marginalised groups living in and of water, land and forests?

Questions of environmental and social justice around climate action are not new: we know that climate mitigation and adaptation measures are not benefiting everyone equally[1]. Essentially, this is caused by climate interventions being built on growth imperatives, assigning (monetary) value to nature, and thereby including it in the neoliberal economic system. This approach overlooks the complex relations that humans have with nature, including spiritual and social bonds, and how nature is linked to livelihoods.

Matters get even more complicated when we add ‘climate security’ to the equation. In recent decades this frame has gained ground among some of the most powerful persons and institutions globally, for example the US Defence Force and Shell. The idea they promote is pretty straightforward: climate change causes erratic weather patterns, making areas less inhabitable due to scarcity of resources that in turn leads to conflict and migration. This would lead to instability locally, at the state level or even internationally, and as such poses security threats – to humans, but also to nation-states and even the international order.

But this premise of climate security, which has recently been placed on the agenda of the UN Security Council, is highly contested. From a political ecology perspective, it is regarded as Malthusian in the sense that the political choices related to natural resources are ignored. By asking key questions such as who owns what, who does what, and who gets what, the power dynamics around natural resources are thrown into sharp relief. Researchers and activists argue that there is need to be more concerned with how ‘policies to deal with the effects of climate change’ lead to conflict, rather than the effects of climate change itself.

And this climate security framing could mean that security actors – the military or security corporations – also get involved in formulating those policies. That for example may just lead to the militarisation of hydropower dams and forest management. This has also been observed within nature conservation around poaching, now referred to as ‘green wars’. Several authors have warned these matters need much more attention.

The various understandings of conflict

I became engaged in these topics through my professional position at the Dutch Research Council (NWO). I am working on research programmes funded by some of the larger development donors in northwestern Europe, such as one that was indeed concerned with the impact of climate policies on conflict. This programme sought to enhance an understanding of how climate policies may incite conflicts, such that the knowledge could add to more ‘conflict-sensitive climate action’. Seven research projects were funded that focused on conflicts around water, land and forests that were part of climate policies.

The launch of the programme had brought me to a seminar at the Circle National des Armées in Paris, where military actors that focused on security formed the majority. And I was asked to engage with the Planetary Security Initiative, launched by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, also populated with military and governmental actors and security think tanks who in turn engage with corporations that are seeking stable contexts. These actors tend to see conflicts as (sudden) eruptions of violence that lead to death and injury, and possibly even war.

Throughout the process of implementing the programme, it occurred to me that those actors that I was engaging with had a different understanding of ‘conflict’. The donor representatives were impatient that the research did not seem to contain their idea of what a ‘conflict analysis’ should be and that typically results in a conflict typology to help categorize different conflicts.

The researchers in the programme, however, were speaking of conflicts as elements inherent to society, shaped by dynamics of power – as politics. Conflicts thus are not considered as ‘events’, but rather as a ‘process’ through which conflicting interests occur. According to such an understanding, conflicts are not the domain of the military or security actors, but are rather ‘a clash of interests, values and norms among individuals or groups that leads to antagonism and a struggle for power’.

Militarisation of climate action?

It is evident that these different readings of conflict may have implications for how, and by whom, climate responses are formulated.

When considering climate as a security threat, military and security actors could well become part of the formulation of responses to climate change, which would have major implications on the power dynamics around the natural resources involved.

It could, for example, lead to militarisation of hydropower dams, wind turbine parks or forest protection.

And that gives us reason to be worried. Experience with militarisation of anti-poaching efforts as part of nature conservation shows that this may lead to the normalisation of violence and has devastating consequences for people living with wildlife. As such, it could become possible for vested interests to dominate, while the interests of marginalised groups living in and of water, land and forests could be sidelined.

This blog thus calls on researchers and activists to increase understanding of these matters in the hope and anticipation that collectively we may gain greater understanding of these matters and as such contribute to more environmentally and socially just climate action. Because acting on the climate we must, but not at the cost of marginalised natures and humans.

Footnotes

[1] Already in 2012 the term ‘green grabbing’ was coined: appropriation in the name of the environment, including effects of climate interventions. Numerous examples are available, for example on the shift to renewable energies. Windmills, solar panel fields and hydropower dams that were erected have led to land and ocean grabs, with resource users being expelled. In fact, for those energy sources it is not always clear that they are ‘green’ to begin with. Their negative impact on the environment and ecosystems are widely recorded for instance in the Environmental Justice Atlas. In addition, conservation and regeneration of forests is a common mitigation and adaptation strategy. And it does feel good and tangible to plant or preserve a tree to compensate our consumption-guilt, no? That is essentially the starting point of the UNFCCC’s REDD+ programme. But vast amounts of research document the natural as well as social damage caused by REDD+. It has, for example, led to exclusion of forest dwellers in decisions on how to manage the forest, that are the provision of their livelihoods. They have also often not shared in the benefits that REDD+ projects should bring them. And in some instances areas have actually been deforested, precisely because climate funding has assigned monetary value to the trees and land.

About the author:

Corinne Lamain is a part-time PhD Candidate at ISS, where she studies the interrelations between climate finance mechanisms, climate securities and socio-ecological conflicts in the Eastern Himalayas.

On the Racist Humanism of Climate Action

By ISS Blog Bliss 8 November 20224 January 2025 1623 views

Mainstream climate change mitigation and adaptation policies are imbued with neocolonial discursive constructions of the “other”. Understanding how such constructions work has important implications for how we think about emancipatory and socially-just responses to the climate crisis.

In her 2016 “Edward Said Lecture”, Naomi Klein made the case that “othering” is intimately linked to the production of the climate crisis. Borrowing from Said’s Orientalism, Klein defines othering as the “disregarding, essentialising, [and] denuding the humanity of another culture, people or geographical region”. She argues that this is much needed for justifying the sacrifice zones necessary for fossil fuel exploitation, and for refusing to protect climate refugees.

In these ways, othering permits letting off the hook the neoliberal and neocolonial structures of domination that are largely responsible for climate injustice.

Constructing people as not-fully-human, not part of “us”, or as threats—internal enemies, foreign agents, terrorists, obstacles to development, and the like—is a common strategy for legitimising repression against those who resist extractivism and dispossession. Indeed, compartmentalising populations into those who need protection and support, and those who can be sacrificed for the sake of the “greater good”, is what theorists from Michel Foucault to Achille Mbembe saw as the fundamental function of racism, originating in European colonialism. Similarly, Frantz Fanon defined racism as a global hierarchy based on the “line of the human”, which created a distinction between the zone of being (the human) and the zone of not being (the sub- or non-human).

At the same time, the workings and reach of othering go beyond what Naomi Klein suggests. Discursive constructions of populations or territories as “other” are also mobilised to include them within the reach of government action and control. This is typically the case with populations or territories that are constructed as “in need of improving” that, as anthropologist Tania Murray Li has shown, have long underpinned colonial and development interventions. These constructions are no less racist and colonial than those justifying the “need to sacrifice”, yet they are intermeshed with a humanitarian or humanist “will to improve” the other, a reactivation of the imperial discourse of the “white man’s burden”.

Image 1. Mural dedicated to Edward Said, Palestine, 2016. Unknown author. Source. Wikimedia Commons

Climate Action and Othering

We claim that this ambivalent mobilisation of othering—oscillating between improvement and sacrifice—also characterises mainstream responses to the climate crisis, imbuing them with a neo-colonial and, at heart, racist ethos. Policies for mitigating climatic changes, adapting to them, or governing climate-induced migration, require prior discursive work to frame targeted populations or territories as problematic or deficient, through narratives that stress vulnerability, underdevelopment, and victimhood. At the same time, these interventions are associated with effects of dispossession, environmental destruction and the production of surplus populations and sacrifice zones, and must therefore rely on othering to justify letting such populations die.

Mitigation and green extractivism

Think of climate change mitigation, and its purported goal of shifting away from fossil fuels by aggressively expanding industrial-scale renewable energies and electric automobility. Environmental movements and researchers have demonstrated abundantly that this strategy is problematic. They denounced the dispossession effects of “transition mineral” extraction and large hydropower projects, and the “land grabbing” associated with wind and solar energy generation and biofuel plantations. Such industrial-scale solutions follow a “green extractivist” logic that aims to appropriate as much resources, energy and profits as fast as possible from a territory, irrespective of the social and ecological impacts. As such, they produce dispossession and sacrifice outcomes similar to those of fossil fuel extraction (and don’t fare a lot better in terms of CO2 emissions, as Alexander Dunlap has shown).

Compared to the old, “grey” extractivism of dirty coal and oil, such projects are cast as necessary not only for the improvement of otherwise “underdeveloped” territories and peoples, but also for saving the planet from catastrophic climate change—as research by activist and writer Daniel Voskoboynik demonstrates in the case of lithium. The more urgent and necessary the improvement, the more acceptable the sacrifice, and the more “selfish and irrational” the resistance.

Adaptation and vulnerability

Climate change adaptation is another case in point. While emanating from ostensibly disinterested concerns with the adverse effects of climatic changes upon “vulnerable” groups, it draws upon and reinforces images of the other as both in danger and potentially dangerous. This manifests itself in adaptation policy documents—for instance, by the EU—which construct Africa as a climatic “heart of darkness” of unruly environments, failed institutions, and backwards populations, ready to flood European borders with unwanted migrants.

This type of representations depoliticise vulnerability. They separate it from colonial histories and previous rounds of capitalist dispossession and neoliberal restructuring that created or exacerbated people’s “lack of adaptive capacities” in the first place; and obfuscate the historical responsibility of colonial states and capitalists in the global North for generating the majority of greenhouse gas emissions. Moreover, adaptation interventions seek to make “target” populations responsible for managing the adverse effects of climatic changes, receiving limited assistance (in the form of debt and corporate investments) conditional on their willingness to go along with a pre-packaged plan.

The “improvement” of populations and territories targeted by adaptation programmes has no room for redressing development-induced dispossession; rather, it is expected to work through the dispossession itself. As Markus Taylor shows in the case of adaptation policies in Mongolia and South Asia, urbanization and proletarianization of rural populations, which result in poverty, indebtedness and loss of access to their means of production and livelihood, are framed by the institutions like the World Bank precisely as a way of reducing small farmers’ vulnerability to climate change, while also freeing up rural space for more mechanised and capital-intensive agriculture.

Climate-Induced Migration

Discursive constructions of the climate migrant exemplify how the two forms of othering (to “sacrifice” and to “improve”) are deployed in overlapping and contradictory ways. A common way in which othering operates in this context involves the separation between “good” and “bad” migrants. For instance, Andrew Telford has shown how EU and US policy reports on climate-induced migration often represent Muslim and African migrant populations as threats, as racialised others with a potential for radicalization and terrorism.

At the opposite end of the “migrant-as-threat” trope stands the image of climate migrants as victims, which is apparently benign but nonetheless problematic. Victimisation involves representing those vulnerable to the effects of climatic change as powerless and resource-less. This disempowers communities by obscuring the adaptation strategies they already practice. At the same time, it bolsters neo-colonial imaginaries of a silenced other with no agency who, driven by desperation, “easily becomes the unpredictable, wild ‘other’ that threatens ‘us’”—in the words of geographer Kate Manzo.

Image 2. Global Climate Strike in Melbourne, Australia. September 2019. Credit: John Englart. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Othering and the Adaptation of Capital

Despite their stated aim to mitigate and adapt to disastrous climatic changes, mainstream climate policies are explicitly envisioned as avenues for furthering capital accumulation.

This is obvious in the case of industrial-scale renewables, dominated by transnational energy corporations seeking to expand their markets and diversify their production. But it also applies to the increasingly privatised and financialised business of adaptation, presented as creating opportunities for profit-making and rent extraction. For instance, a report released in September 2019 by the Global Commission on Adaptation—a private-public partnership led by the UN, World Bank and Gates Foundation—calculated that “investing $1.8 trillion globally” in climate change adaption until 2030 “could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits”.

What’s more, climate policies are motivated by a geostrategic concern with security. This points to a continuation of the post-WWII “development project”, which was motivated by the threat that newly decolonised populations might turn to communism or Third World anti-imperialism. While the political coordinates have changed, “climate-related development” functions to a large extent as a way of containing the “excess freedom” of surplus populations: stopping them from becoming unruly, or migrating to rich countries (in larger numbers than capital needs).

Taken together, the current choreography of policies and interventions that make up the “climate action” framework can be seen as a way to preserve global capitalist class power in the face of the ongoing climate catastrophe. Othering in this sense is central to the “post-political” governmentality of climate change, a key tenet of which is, for Erik Swyngedouw, “the perceived inevitability of capitalism and a market economy as the basic organizational structure of the social and economic order, for which there is no alternative.”

Alternatives

A central implication of all this is that plans for radical socio-ecological transformation—including Just Transition or Green New Deal frameworks—should not reproduce a colonial logic whereby peripheries (primarily) in the global South are treated as pools for resource grabbing and carbon dumping, or as sites for salvation-type interventions that dismiss frontline community action and priorities. As climate justice activists advocate, there can be no decarbonisation without decolonization.

Challenging the neocolonial and neoliberal government of climate change entails affirming the ability of the subaltern to “speak”: recognising and reasserting the “pluriversality” of “non-Western” socio-environmental knowledges and praxes should be foundational to climate justice. We must be mindful, however, that—as the Aymara theorist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui has argued—there is more to decolonization than discursive emancipation.

Recognising ontological multiplicity must go hand in hand with the critique of material power asymmetries and global unequal (ecological) relations. Decolonizing means, primarily, giving back the land to indigenous communities and reasserting the sovereignty of formerly colonized peoples, including access to and control over natural resources and other means of production and reproduction—as part of globally connected struggles attacking the material and ideological bases of racial-patriarchal capitalism and imperialism.

This blog was originally published in Undisciplined Environments, and is based on a longer, open access article published in the journal Political Geography. The article first appeared on Bliss on 13 October 2021.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

Diego Andreucci is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Juan de la Cierva Social and Political Sciences Department at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Christos Zografos is a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Political and Social Sciences at the Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona.

Lessons from the COVID-19 crisis for climate change politics

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 November 20224 January 2025 1099 views

COVID-19 and climate change bear striking – and worrying – similarities and differences. Both are characterized by high uncertainty, but while COVID-19 has been identified as an immediate threat and action has been taken despite the absence of comprehensive knowledge, uncertainty has been touted as impeding concerted efforts to transform energy systems to combat climate change. The global economic system has strongly contributed to our failure to make radical changes. A different system – one that is not so fundamentally focused on maximizing profits over all other concerns – could have been better placed to make the undeniably painful economic adjustments we are forced to make, both before the emergence of COVID-19 and to prevent a catastrophe arising due to climate change. While both crises require dramatic societal transformations, we need to be aware of the potential negative political consequences of declaring them as emergencies.

One thing is certain about COVID-19: we simply do not know enough. Some aspects about it are simply unknown, on others we have conflicting information. Scientists are asked to take shortcuts from their rigorous methods and to offer their ‘best guess’ on hugely consequential questions. Policy makers then take decisions within a fog of uncertainty since experts have also argued that doing nothing is the absolute worst option. This is a terrifying situation for us all, but it is not entirely without precedent.

While the threat of COVID-19 might seem unique, there are some interesting parallels between this threat and that of climate change. At a general level, neither is simply a ‘natural’ phenomenon. This is not to suggest – as some have – that they are a ‘hoax’. Viruses exist, mutate, and infect ‘naturally’. Similarly, the climate of the earth shows variation due to various factors outside of human influence. But what imbues both COVID-19 and contemporary climate change with a catastrophic potential is the political economic context in which they are developing.

More specifically, it is global capitalism that takes what is ‘natural’ and weaponizes it against humanity.

In the case of climate change, the problem is not that humans are extracting natural resources in order to secure their livelihoods. The manner in which this extraction is carried out, its continuous intensification and, most importantly, the extraction of resources not necessarily to meet the human need to exist and to thrive, but rather to fulfil the need of capitalism to continuously expand, is what transforms extraction into a planet-altering force captured in the concept of the Anthropocene.

Similarly, the astonishing spread of COVID-19 could not have been possible without the incredible powers of global capitalism. The virus has spread so quickly and so effectively on the back of a global structure that transports goods, humans and – let us not forget – ideas at almost magical speeds. But it is important to not fall into the trap of blaming connectivity and mobility for the spread of the virus but the underlying economic structures that made combatting it so difficult and painful.

While such a pandemic could also occur under a different global economic order, the precarity of not just individuals or classes but even some of the richest and technologically sophisticated economies is what makes COVID-19 so dangerous. A different system – one that is not so fundamentally focused on maximizing profits over all other concerns – could have been better placed to make the undeniably painful economic adjustments we are forced to make.

The parallels between climate change and coronavirus do not end there. Climate scientists – those in the natural as well as the social sciences – have long been arguing that if drastic changes are not made to the way we produce and consume, in other words to the way we live, we can expect apocalyptic changes to global ecosystems. When these materialize, their impacts are likely to be just as and probably even more colossal than the toll that COVID-19 will have exacted.

Yet scientists’ pleas for radical action have been rebuffed on two grounds – we do not know enough, and dramatic curbs to economic activities are fundamentally against public interest. The effectiveness of these arguments has been far greater in the case of climate change than in COVID-19! As the COVID-19 crisis shows, these two grounds have not prevented governments across the world from acting in response to the COVID-19 threat.

Can we expect a change in attitude to climate change politics once the COVID-19 crisis is over? That is certain though it is possible to expect two dramatically different responses which will depend on how, in the aftermath of COVID-19, societies around the world come to understand the now evolving response. If the response to COVID-19 comes to be seen as an overreaction or a form of mass delusion, this would have massively negative effects on ongoing efforts to respond to climate change.

That would mean not only that scientific authorities – not just the epidemiologists or immunologists but the entire enterprise itself – will be discredited, opening the door to an ever-intensifying challenge that will dwarf the anti-vaccination movement. Worse still, such an impression will embolden the Trumps and Bolsanaros of the world (unfortunately not a rare breed!) to challenge and pull back all too necessary measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

However, if the experts as well as politicians and policy makers who follow them are vindicated in making draconian changes (and if those who do not do so are vilified), we can expect a new era in which scientific authority is once again celebrated and valorised (rather than challenged by baseless arguments as has been the case with the anti-vaccination movement). It can also be expected that the spectre of an ecological apocalypse will be taken more seriously, bringing it with it meaningful socio-economic and cultural transformations to adapt to and mitigate climate change.

Authoritarianism creeping in through the back door

Implementation of dramatic societal transformation in response to anticipated catastrophes might at first be seen as an entirely positive outcome. But it is important to remember that all appeals to emergency, such as the declaration of a state of emergency, regardless of how justified they are, contain within them the seed of authoritarianism.

A call to urgent action is almost by definition a call to silence dissent, to short-circuit deliberative democracy and to privilege the opinion of a select few over all others.

While rare, the climate movement has long had an authoritarian streak as demonstrated by this statement by no less than the developer of the Gaia hypothesis, James Lovelock:

“We need a more authoritative world. We’ve become a sort of cheeky, egalitarian world where everyone can have their say. It’s all very well, but there are certain circumstances – a war is a typical example – where you can’t do that. You’ve got to have a few people with authority who you trust who are running it”[1].

A few years ago, such statements could have been considered fringe opinions intended more for provocation than for actual implementation. With countless leaders and scientists comparing COVID-19 to a war, there is genuine reason to be actively worried about ending up in a situation where climate change too becomes securitized in this manner.

This brings us back to the question of uncertainty and authority. While our knowledge of climate change – how it works, what its impacts are and how we can reverse it – are incomparably better than what we know about COVID-19, the socio-economic and ecological decisions that need to be taken are far from obvious if we are to avoid an economic crisis similar to the one brewing at the moment. How can we transition towards a carbon neutral economy? Which fossil fuel reserves need to be designated as ‘unburnable’? Where do we restore ecosystems and to what state? How, if at all, do we prevent flooding of cities and towns? What are the ecological tipping points and how can we prevent them if they remain largely unseen? These and countless other questions require not only authoritative scientific input but genuine deliberative discussion as well.

No society – regardless of how extensive its education and research attainment – is ready for this challenge. This is because the model of economic development that has dominated since World War II has created a relationship with science that Ulrich Beck has brilliantly described as “organized irresponsibility”[2], in which global capitalism has powerfully capitalized on the explosion of productivity enabled by modern science and technology while brushing under the metaphorical carpet its risks and uncertainties. Debates about the safety of genetically modified foods and nuclear power were harbingers of a brewing crisis of how science and technology can be socialized. COVID-19 is a stark reminder that the challenge remains great. If it is not addressed, we can expect many more war-like situations, not least in relation to climate change.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/mar/29/james-lovelock

[2] https://www.theguardian.com/education/2015/jan/06/ulrich-beck

About the author:

Murat Arsel is Professor of Political Economy of Sustainable Development. His research and teaching focus on the tensions between nature, capitalism, and emancipatory socio-economic development. Additional details of his work can be found at www.marsel.me

How combatting illicit financial flows can prevent remittances from helping people during humanitarian crises: a closer look at Afghanistan

By ISS Blog Bliss 1 November 20224 January 2025 3030 views

Remittances are a lifeline for many people in low- and middle-income countries, playing a particularly important role during conflict-related humanitarian crises by helping those affected by conflict stay on their feet. However, laws countering money laundering and the financing of terrorism during such crises can prevent remittances from reaching those that need them. Using the case of Afghanistan, Mohamed Muse and Rodrigo Mena in this article discuss the links between remittances and such laws and propose a critical research agenda focused on remittances as an important part of humanitarian crisis responses.

Humanitarian crises affect people’s lives in many ways, often leading to abrupt change that can shatter lives and livelihoods due to increased economic disruption, poverty, unemployment, and the reduced provision of services by the state resulting from them (see here, here, and here). In such situations, humanitarian aid is essential for supporting affected people. The assistance of relatives and friends is vital, especially when support networks and humanitarian agencies are not present in those places affected or where their support is limited in terms of coverage, access, or funds.

During crises, it is common to see diaspora mobilising to provide assistance to people living in crises by means of remittances – the transfer of money and other valuable resources to family or friends in crisis-affected contexts. However, laws that prevent money laundering and terrorism financing can prevent remittances from being used effectively as a response mechanism, particularly by forcing banks and other financial entities to stop money transfers to conflict-affected places.

Remittances are an important income for many. When viewing remittances as single transfers made from person to person, they might not seem to have much impact. By considering remittances in their totality, however, a completely different picture emerges. To begin with, they are an important financial inflow in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), second only to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI).[1] According to the World Bank, total remittances to LMICs in 2021 surpassed USD 600 billion and the forecasted figure for 2023 is even higher. What’s more, these figures only reflect money sent through ‘formally’ regulated systems such as Western Union and MoneyGram. In fact, most remittances travel through informal and group-specific remittance systems such as Hawala,[2] the most known and researched informal remittance system used by Middle Eastern and African communities.

Remittances make a big difference. Remittance-based financial flows contribute to multiple social and economic practices, from national to household levels and processes. For example, through remittances, Somali diaspora have contributed to the “peace reconciliation process” in Somalia by financially supporting conflict resolution processes, for example peace dialogues among the conflicting parties. Remittances also help sustain the livelihoods of recipients in conflict- and crisis-affected regions and can positively improve health, education, and the housing situation of poor people who receive them. They also help “boost the economy” after periods of crisis.

Remittances play an important role before, during, and after humanitarian crises. Importantly, remittances play a crucial role in supporting responses to humanitarian crises in general, including pre-disaster preparedness and post-disaster recovery efforts. Yet despite their importance, multiple regulations and policies limit, constrain, and shape the extent to which remittances can be resorted to during crises.

Laws combatting money laundering and terrorist financing (AML/CTF) are meant to protect illicit financial flows. According to the Financial Action Task Force (FAFT),[3] countries and their financial entities are required to implement and strictly follow AML/CTF regulations. ‘Know your customer’ (KYC) and de-risking practices are two such regulations that directly impact diaspora and their remittances. KYC requires banks and other financial entities to know about their customers before engaging in any financial transactions with them.

De-risking is another approach that banks have to comply with as part of AML/CTF regulations. De-risking requires banks and other financial entities to not engage with ‘high risk and sanctioned destinations’. The former refers to places in which terrorist groups operate, the latter to entities that are subjected to sanctions mostly by the United States’ Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).[4]

Such regulations are curtailing remittances to Afghanistan. Here, they have created extra layers of challenges for Afghan diaspora and international humanitarian organizations. After the Taliban assumed power in Afghanistan in August 2021, it tumbled deeper into a financial and humanitarian crisis. With the ‘Fall of Kabul’, the country, which had already suffered a range of blows due to the conflict, poverty, and the COVID-19 pandemic, saw its reserves worth USD 7 billion being frozen by OFAC. Similarly, USD 400 million in Afghanistan emergency funds were blocked by the International Monetary Fund, which claimed that it could end up in the hands of Taliban.

Diaspora and their remittances came under global scrutiny as well. With an estimated number of 5.8 million Afghans living abroad, residents of the country received USD 788.9 million in remittances in 2020. This amount only accounts for money transferred via formally recorded channels like Western Union and excludes remittances sent to people in Afghanistan via trust-based channels like Hawala. After the Taliban takeover, many institutions followed a de-risking principle and AML/CTF policies, as a result of which both Western Union and MoneyGram suspended their operations in the country, which made remittances to Afghanistan through formal channels almost impossible. Thus, the trust-based Hawala system, already popular in the country before the current crisis, was increasingly used.[5]

However, Hawala and similar systems have been criticized and are feared to facilitate illicit streams of money, mostly because the transactions cannot be traced, and accountability practices are difficulty to have when the actors involved in the transactions cannot always be identified. Therefore, the enforcement of these global regulatory and supervisory frameworks seeks to protect such systems from harm. Because Afghanistan is on OFAC’s sanctioned countries list, remittances and other financial inflows have become impossible after the ‘Fall of Kabul’ because both humanitarian organizations and financial entities needed to adhere to AML/CTF regulations.

However, to limit and perhaps avoid any further catastrophic humanitarian situation in Afghanistan, OFAC started issuing General Licenses (GL). These licenses made possible humanitarian assistance (GL14) and inflows of personal remittances (GL 16). In this way, innocent Afghans have been able to get much-needed support from their family and friends abroad, as well as from international humanitarian organizations.

There is a need for a critical research agenda on remittances during humanitarian crises. As the case of Afghanistan shows, beyond the well-studied socio-economic role of remittances (see here, here, and here) and their (claimed) use for terrorism and crime, contribution to development, or as an obstacle to integration, they can also play an important role in responding to unfolding humanitarian crises. However, several important knowledge puzzles remain unaddressed and invite the development of a research agenda that can shed light on them, with possible research foci including:

The role and integration of remittances in formal humanitarian responses.
The impact of sanctions on societies affected by humanitarian crises and the challenges that these measures can create.
How remittances link with inequality, either reducing them, considering that not everyone has equal access to remittances or networks of people that has migrate and can send money, or their impact in local economies, from inflation or foster businesses.
How international humanitarian organizations navigate or address AML/CTF regulations when responding to different humanitarian crises.
How remittances are linked to or use cryptocurrencies or blockchain technology, and the implication of this, for example, in terms of the traceability of remittances, speed of the transfers.

[1] All LMICs including China. When excluding China, remittances form the highest financial inflow to LMICs.

[2] Hawala is an informal value transfer system that is commonly used in the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. This transfer system operates outside or in parallel with traditional banking systems and is based on “trust” between those who move value (hawaladars), since no money is involved. Simply put, the sender contacts the hawala agent or hawaladar (Hawaladar A); then, Hawaladar A contacts a local hawaladar agent at the location where the money is to be sent (Hawaladar B) and asks him/her to deliver money to the final recipient. Hawaladar A and B then settle their accounts.

[3] FAFT is inter-governmental agency established in 1898 by group of G7 countries that fights money laundering and terrorism financing through the creation of regulations.

[4] OFAC is part of Treasury Department of US Government. OFAC administers economic sanctions to entities and individuals that are seen to be national security threats.

[5] A report by think tank Samuel Hall for example quips, “Afghan diaspora has been using Hawala extensively for remittances since the first waves of immigration, as most Afghan migrants in Iran and Pakistan did not have access to the banking system”.

This blog post and research was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) Horizon 2020 programme [Advance grant number 884139].

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Rodrigo Mena is an Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Studies. He has studied and worked in humanitarian assistance/aid, disaster governance, and environmental sociology for almost twenty years, especially in conflict-affected and vulnerable settings. He lectures on humanitarian action, disaster risk reduction, methodology, and safety and security for in-situ/fieldwork research.

Mohamed Abdiaziz Muse is PhD Researcher at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, Leiden University. Mohamed’s research focuses on global remittance regulations and state-diaspora politics in Sub Sahara Africa. Mohamed’s other areas of focus include international humanitarian aid, diaspora humanitarianism and economic development in Middle East and Africa. Email: musegeelle@yahoo.com twitter: @musegeellejr

Pakistan floods show why adaptation alone won’t help prevent climate disasters

By ISS Blog Bliss 25 October 20224 January 2025 2460 views

Despite Pakistan’s growing number of adaptive measures, mostly in the form of foreign investments in its water and agriculture sector, recent floods all but destroyed this South Asian country. In light of this, we should critically discuss whether taking adaptative measures can really help Pakistan (or any country) prepare itself for climate change-related disasters that are becoming increasingly unprecedented in magnitude and scale. Radical climate action that moves beyond adaptation is needed to truly protect vulnerable regions and communities from catastrophic events, writes Isbah Hameed.

Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/08/30/1119979965/pakistan-floods-monsoon-climate

“A catastrophe of epic scale”

The enormity of the floods that recently swept across Pakistan as a result of abnormally heavy monsoon rains has left the country baffled. Vast swathes of land were submerged, millions of people were displaced, and their belongings and property were destroyed. The devastating floods affected over 33 million people, displaced over half a million people, and claimed a thousand lives, with losses estimated at more than 40 billion euro according to the government of Pakistan. In the wake of the disaster, a state of emergency was declared, and Pakistan’s national climate change minister called the floods “a catastrophe of epic scale“. Right now, massive relief work is being carried out by government organizations, national and international NGOs, and private institutions to help this flood-stricken country recover.

No-one can tell exactly how long it would take for the millions of displaced people to go back to their homes and how long it will take the country to get back on its feet following the social, ecological, and economic losses that it has suffered. Much uncertainty remains, also about what to do next. What’s clear is that any optimism that might have existed about the effectiveness of adaptive measures to increase the country’s resilience to the effects of climate change was swept away by the floods. The sheer magnitude of the floods, which simply washed out the country from Kashmir in the north to Kotri in the south and even beyond, leaving one-third of the country under water, made it clear that adapting was simply not enough to protect it from the floods. So what can be done to better protect it from future climate change-related disasters?

Swept away by the floods

As one of countries most at risk of climate change and its effects, dozens of adaptation strategies have been identified by Pakistan in its Nationally Determined Contributions¹ (NDCs) that form part of the Paris Agreement. Most of the adaptation strategies are in the water and agriculture sectors and include water conservation measures, improvements to irrigation systems, the strengthening of risk management systems for agriculture, a move toward climate-smart agriculture, and the improvement of emergency response systems as adaptation measures. In addition, Pakistan’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which focuses on “building resilience to climate change”, is already in the making with the support of UNEP. These plans are helping identify technical, institutional, and financial needs of the country in integrating climate change adaptation into its medium- and long-term national planning and financing.

The measures taken by Pakistan hinge on international investments and funding because it is already facing many challenges on economic and political fronts; climate adaptation is an additional task to comply with along with already existing developmental constraints. But measures taken or promoted so far to help increase its resilience to floods and climate change in general seem ineffective as the recent massive floods engulfed the country and, with it, all efforts to prevent this from occurring. It simply implies that no adaptative measure at all would practically be commensurate with disasters of this scale, at least in developing countries.

Asking the right questions

Adaptation is widely promoted by international institutions as a way in which to mitigate the effects of climate change, and the call for more adaptive measures to be taken has been strengthened in the wake of Pakistan’s recent floods. However, floods in general and these floods in particular due to their destructive potential can lead us to ask whether adaptation alone can really help countries minimize the damage caused by such disasters. The question is not which specific measures should be taken, which sector should be targeted first and most intensely, or in which ways international donors should be persuaded to pledge money for these measures. Rather, it is more plausible to ask to which degree, at which scale, and for how long the undertaken adaptation measures can help climate change-affected countries to remain unyielding in light of extreme weather events that may come to challenge even the most resilient environments.

Unsurprisingly, the idea of adaptation can thus be misleading given the enormity of such disasters, because it’s simply not enough. This suggests us to ask why adaptation is being promoted, if proven to be ineffective, and by whom. Indeed, adaptation and its technical underpinnings have already been criticized by academic scholars² for being apolitical and for being unable to address the root cause of the climate problem. But the focus here is on what can be done if adaptation doesn’t work, especially given the inherent unpredictability of the scale of future events taking into account the complex feedbacks of the climate system. Is it wise to invest in and engage human and global capital in designing and implementing adaptation strategies that won’t be effective? I don’t seek to answer these questions in this article, but wish to show that we need to start talking about this both as scholars and as policymakers.

A wake-up call

In light of the recent events in Pakistan, one should ask whether adaptation should be considered a way forward at all. The case can help us shift our attention to what international institutions are and should be doing to address the root causes of the problem instead of advocating adaptation. These disasters are a wake-up call to the world that more radical measures are needed; reducing greenhouse gas emission and adapting to soften the blow of climate change is not enough. COP27 is set to take place in Egypt in November in parallel with Pakistan’s post-disaster recovery efforts. It will be significant to see what will be discussed and what future line of action will be proposed at the conference following this devastating event.

A Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) is a climate action plan to cut emissions and adapt to climate impacts. NDCs are at the heart of the Paris Agreement which aims to hold the global average rise in temperature to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, preferably limiting the increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius; thus avoiding the projected rise from 2.9 to 3.4 degrees Celsius by the year 2100. Signatories to the Paris Agreement are required to establish NDCs and update these every five years.
Adaptation strategy as a response to climate change is being criticized by many academic scholars for example, Siri Eriksen et al (2021), Aaron Atteridge &Elise Remling (2018) have discussed that adaptation strategies tend to reinforce existing causes of vulnerability, and also redistribute and create new sources of vulnerability rather than reducing them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Isbah Hameed is a doctoral candidate in the Political Ecology Research Group at ISS. Her research is focused on studying the socio-political implications of embracing Climate-smart agriculture as an adaptation strategy in Pakistan.

Food saving: too good not to commodify

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 October 20224 January 2025 2331 views

Food saving apps like “Karma” and “Too Good to Go” promise to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing affordable take-out meals – but what does the commodification of food saving really entail?

As a university student living in a country with high living costs such as Sweden, where even a conventional cucumber can cost you 2 Euros, you have to figure out how to get your hands on cheap or free food pretty quickly. For me, dumpster diving, as well as taking home the left-overs of the local student pub where I volunteer as a cook, does the trick. Friends unwilling to climb into dumpsters prefer food-saving apps like “Too Good To Go” (TGTG) or “Karma”.

These apps promise a win-win-win-win situation: restaurants can make money off food they would normally have not been able to sell, customers get good food at a discount price, the apps take a percentage of the revenue, and lastly, food waste and its negative effects on the climate are reduced.

“Radical Slacktivism” marketing campaign by for-profit food saving app Karma. Source: karma.life.

These apps never captured my interest – after all, I already have my bases covered, and really do not need another app to clutter my home screen and divert my attention. Yet that changed when a fellow climate activist drew my attention to Karma’s “radical slacktivist” marketing campaign.

The campaign accuses the climate movement of being judgemental and engaging in “doomsday storytelling”. Instead – they argued – by using Karma you can save the world in a fun way, simply by downloading an app and eating food: how cool is that?

Reducing food waste clearly is an important step in achieving climate goals: the Karma company itself mentions that food waste is responsible for 6% of global greenhouse emissions. But food waste is generated at every stage of the supply chain, from agricultural production to domestic consumption, and it is not entirely clear what share food waste from restaurants makes up. Karma suggesting that combating food waste in restaurants will “save the world” is therefore not only wrong, but also obscures the wider parts of the problem.

It may very well be that “Karma” is simply using this offensive campaign to generate controversy, hoping to achieve more publicity and recognition this way. However, the campaign’s message – just use our app, and don’t bother with the climate movement – reveals a deeper problem: Karma proposes a technological fix to food waste, and ultimately becomes invested in upholding the status quo in order to keep profiting off the overproduction of food. This eco-modernist narrative not only shifts the focus from systemic change (which the “judgmental” climate activists demand) to individual consumption under a “green growth” capitalism – it also appropriates the ideas of pleasure activism, which is an emerging strategy pioneered by black and brown peoples. Pleasure activism seeks to make the struggle for justice and liberation a pleasurable experience, and connecting through food is an important part of it.

The idea to work with businesses to prevent food waste is not new either, however until the emergence of apps like TGTG and Karma, this took place largely outside the capitalist system. Volunteers would pick up food from individuals, retailers and producers, and distribute it for free, or use it themselves. A platform for facilitating this, foodsharing.de, was founded in 2012, and nowadays is also organized through an app. However, by selling food that would otherwise end up in the trash, the for-profit apps have commodified food saving, assigning an exchange value to food that would have otherwise been considered waste.

Interestingly, it is the CEO of Karma, Hjalmar Ståhlberg Nordegren himself who has called into question the business model of its competitors, by criticizing them for incentivising overproduction. TGTG, which sells mystery bags that can be bought days in advance, has admitted to calling businesses informing that any left-overs they have at a specific time, would be very likely to sell via the app. This may very well tempt businesses to produce a surplus to be sold at discounted, but still profitable prices.

Karma meanwhile requires businesses to upload the exact products that they have left over, which they hope will allow them to devise an algorithm that can alert businesses ahead of time when they are likely to overproduce. By preventing surplus food from even being produced, the businesses will not have to sell it at a discount price, thereby improving their bottom line even more – in theory. In practise, businesses still stand to make a profit from selling discounted food, if at a lower profit margin: as long as they sell them for more than production cost and provided this doesn’t reduce the amount of food that is sold at a normal price.

Too good to go bags in a supermarket dumpster. Source: @anurbanharvester on instagram.

This is the issue for supermarkets: buying discounted food from supermarkets will cause consumers to buy less food at a normal price. That is why supermarkets often put a cap on the amount of bags they sell via TGTG. For restaurants meanwhile, selling discounted food is likely to win them new customers, who would not have purchased products from them in the first place. Aside from selling food at full price to regular customers, they now have an additional revenue stream from eco-conscious and price-savvy customers that want to save money and/or help the environment.

Political Ecology teaches us to be wary of “win-win” narratives. While Karma and TGTG may make quality food available for people who would otherwise be unable to afford it, there are “losers” in this situation too: while these apps are commodifying food that would otherwise have been thrown away, they can also end up commodifying food that would have been recovered by non-profit food-saving organisations.

Food saved by the non-profit organization Food Saving Lund. Source: @foodsavinglund on instagram.

A friend of mine, who is active in our local food-saving community, confirmed that businesses are already declining cooperation with non-profit food-saving efforts on the grounds that they have already partnered with Karma or TGTG.

So what’s the bottom line? For-profit food saving apps are unable to fully tackle the problem of food waste of supermarkets, and are likely to merely establish an additional revenue stream for restaurants to broaden their customer base. While they may be able to establish partnerships with businesses that would be unwilling to give away their food to non-profit food saving, the for-profit apps also encroach on the already limited spaces that have been established around decommodified food. At the same time, dumpster diving remains on the verge of illegality. While the spots I frequent don’t engage in actions of deterrence such as locking gates or pouring chemicals on the food, more high-end expensive foods like vegan meat-substitutes sometimes have their packaging intentionally slashed to make them unattractive to dumpster divers.

Legalizing dumpster diving could be a start to make sure more food is diverted from the waste stream, but actually eliminating food waste will require far broader action. There is not only a need to reshape our collective consumption habits –for instance, not expecting all our apples to be without blemishes, and all our bananas without a single black spot?– but we also need to dismantle the economic system that incentivizes food overproduction and that maintains a highly unequal access to food and nutrition.

As long as food is treated as a commodity, it has a market value that is dissociated from its value of feeding people. This makes it more profitable for a supermarket to throw away food rather than give it away for free, and risk “losing” a paying customer; and to keep shelvesf fully stocked until the evening and throw out the excess, rather than risk running out of stock in the evening and having to turn away customers. Decommodifying food however will require a climate movement committed to naming the capitalist system as the culprit behind food waste – “radical slacktivism”, as suggested by Karma, is just not going to cut it.

This blog was first published in Undisciplined Environments.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Juliane Miller is interested in imagining better futures. She recently graduated from the Masters programme in Environmental Studies and Sustainability Science at Lund University, Sweden with a thesis on the contributions of German energy cooperatives to energy justice.

From balloons to masks: the surprising results of doing research during the COVID-19 pandemic

By ISS Blog Bliss 18 October 20224 January 2025 1729 views

The COVID-19 pandemic and the lockdown that ensued caused disruption in every possible dimension of life, including the way in which academic research projects were conducted. In this article Wendy Harcourt, who led the recently completed EU-funded WEGO project, reflects on the effect the pandemic had on the project, showing how its network of researchers had to think and work together creatively and innovatively to keep the project going.

In March 2018, I was proud to launch the EU-funded WEGO (Well-being, Ecology, Gender and cOmmunity Innovation Training Network) project – my dream project. I had been awarded 4 million euro to set up this innovative training network with a group of dynamic feminist political ecologists and had the chance to select 15 talented young people from around the world to do their PhDs with us. As we celebrated with balloons and cake on Women’s Day at the ISS, what we couldn’t have foreseen is that the COVID-19 pandemic would appear smack bang in the middle of our four years together. The pandemic scattered the dreams we had but, as I suggest here, it also offered surprising insights into how to do research differently. The project was recently concluded, which allows me to reflect on what happened during the past four years – the good and the bad.

WEGO’s research focus was the hugely challenging idea to investigate how communities were building resilience strategies to cope with environmental, political, and economic change in Europe, Latin America, Asia, and Africa by learning from the ground up. WEGO PhD projects were designed as intimate studies on communities’ resistance to extractivism, embodied experiences of ageing and care, community economies, emotional engagements with water, and contested academic debates around and political protests.

The PhD researchers, supported by a network of nearly 30 academic mentors from around the world, headed out in 2019 to record and analyze the dynamic everyday experiences of damaged and contested environments, collaborating with women and men in communities who are rarely visible in political ecology research. The network used participatory action methods along with self-reflective and non-extractive feminist research approaches to engage with individuals, local communities, and social movements.

Then COVID-19 hit in early 2020, and all PhDs had to close down their research projects and literally flee to places where they had permission to reside. For some, that meant going home; for others it meant moving back to the place of their university. For all of them, it meant major adjustments to their research plans. The network as a whole was thrown into the unknown – could we continue to do research as the world was shutting down? Would we continue to be funded? We worried that it seemed we had to break every rule in the EU book. But, like everywhere else in the world, the EU had to adjust – and so did we.

And, to our surprise, we survived and even, in an odd way, became stronger. The two-and-a-half years of the pandemic meant moving from individual research projects with rigid expectations of what were to be the results to learning to work collectively, connecting online, opening up conversations about how we dealt with our emotions, as well as our concerns about how the (often very vulnerable) communities with whom the PhDs were doing research were coping with pandemic restrictions and lockdowns.

The pandemic changed the nature and focus of WEGO’s research in creative and unexpected ways. Going online meant opening up new questions about embodied and in-place convergences and between the personal and political space. This posed a challenge in the implementation of feminist methodologies engaged with participatory action research techniques, but it also allowed for creativity to transform how we harnessed digital spaces to reach faraway voices in the places the research was situated.

Doing research during the pandemic allowed the network to raise diverse questions around languages of care in feminist and environmental justice research, and politics. The encounters with the virus, and our isolation, reinforced conversations about how to include more-than-human actors to think together with non-western epistemologies, natures, and voices.

Moving from a research project that was designed for face-to-face connections to going online, forced us to respond and adapt to disruptions. We realized it was important to make visible the troubles of doing politically engaged research, learning from the pandemic restrictions on mobility, lack of face-to-face engagement, as well as the possibilities of using the technical openings in digital space. We created new methodological, theoretical, and epistemological ways of doing research across geographical arenas, breaking down some older barriers around needing to travel and be in-place. As a result, WEGO produced writing that is collaborative and fluid (Harcourt et al. 2022) allowing for reflective, emotional, and creative responses to the thorny questions we found ourselves asking about power, resistance, and pain, using art, photos, drawings, and storytelling.

The experience of WEGO during the pandemic illustrates the importance of innovation and adaptation in research. It is crucial to be experimental, creative, and flexible in order to deal with individual, institutional and global uncertainties. And, in this way, we learn to cope with disruption as the new normal.

Reference

Harcourt, W., K. van den Berg, C. Dupuis and J. Gaybor (2022) Feminist Methodologies: Experiments, Collaborations and Reflections

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Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr Wendy Harcourt was appointed full Professor and a Westerdijk Professor together with an endowed Chair of Gender, Diversity and Sustainable Development at the International Institute of Social Studies of the Erasmus University Rotterdam in The Hague in October 2017. She was Coordinator of the EU H2020-MSCA-ITN-2017 Marie Sklodowska-Curie WEGO-ITN from 2018-2022. From 1988-2011 she was editor and director of programmes at the Society for International Development in Rome, Italy. She has published 12 monographs and edited books and over 100 articles in critical development theory, gender and diversity and feminist political ecology.

Do we ever learn? Collective memory as a blind spot in KNAW report on pandemics

By ISS Blog Bliss 13 October 20224 January 2025 1701 views

In its latest advisory report ‘Met de kennis van straks’ (‘With the knowledge of later’), the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) maps out what Dutch science and society need to do in order to be well prepared – and thus ready – for future pandemics. However, the report pays scant attention to macro(economic) issues, which doesn’t do justice to this societal-medical problem, writes Peter van Bergeijk.

Introduction

If we have learned anything from the COVID-19 pandemic in the Netherlands, it is that it is almost impossible for economists to make clear what our field is about. In fact, debates on economics all but stopped in my home country (Van Bergeijk 2022) [1]. Important insights from economics therefore did not sufficiently feed into other fields of science and policy.

From an economic point of view, the most important question is how to deal with the scarcity that arises during a pandemic. This requires insight into the effects and effectiveness of measures that have been considered and taken. I want to illustrate this with three topics that also provide concrete recommendations for improvement.

Be transparent about intended measures

A macroeconomic analysis is indispensable both because of the pandemic, which involves a simultaneous loss of a large part of the labour force, and because of measures including business closures and restrictions on gathering and movement. That up-to-date analyses of a flu pandemic were not ready in the Netherlands is an omission of the major policy institutions (CPB Netherlands Bureau of Economic Analysis and the Dutch Central Bank DNB), because the risk was known. On the eve of the COVID-19 outbreak, the ‘Geïntegreerde risicoanalyse Nationale Veiligheid’ (‘Integrated National Security Risk Analysis’ – ANV 2019) for example reported that a flu pandemic in the near future was both likely (5-50%) and a major threat for society with a significant impact on population and the economy at large.

However, the econometricians at CPB and DNB cannot be blamed for not foreseeing the lockdowns that were suddenly conjured out of the medical top hat in 2020. None of the national and international roadmaps anticipated lockdowns (van Bergeijk 2021a). As a result, not only policy analysts, but also scientists could not anticipate that lockdown instruments would be used. A first important conclusion is therefore that realistic roadmaps should be drawn up – and published – as early on as possible so that analyses of concretely considered (combinations of) instruments can be made in advance without the time pressure of an unfolding pandemic.

International comparative macro-research is needed

The KNAW report focuses mainly on improved accessibility of micro data (for example health status and socio-economic characteristics of large groups of individuals). This requires linking medical data files with data on socio-economic characteristics, either by means of long-term panels or through CBS Statistics Netherlands. At face value, this focus on micro and the Netherlands is understandable, but at the same time, one might argue that this focus is too narrow. After all, a pandemic is not a national problem, the micro-macro paradox can lead to bias, and a third relevant problem is whether the vulnerable are (or will be) adequately represented in the data. A very obvious problem with Internet panels, for example, is the under-representation of both the elderly and the disadvantaged and marginally poor, who are both more vulnerable and inherently more difficult to survey.

It is unfortunate that the KNAW focuses so much on the Dutch context. Every national context is unique and findings are therefore strongly determined by the conditions of time and place. ‘Met de kennis van straks’ uses these differences in context to justify an essentially national research strategy. Learning, however, actually requires making to make good use of differences in national contexts. Where regional policy in the Netherlands has proved to be impossible, researchers will have to look beyond national borders for differences in policies, institutions, and behaviour. National navel-gazing can be expected to lead to opportunities and threats being overlooked. It is important to start asking what the optimal design of our society would be from the perspective of pandemic resilience, lest the costs become too high. The second conclusion is therefore that building resilience in an evidence-based way requires extensive investments and structural change, which in turns requires research on the influence of differences between national contexts.

Final research findings do not exist

The economic view of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will continue to change significantly in coming years. After all, definitive research findings do not exist. Consider, for example, the estimate for the growth rate of world GDP in the year 2020 provided by the IMF in its World Economic Outlook [2]. Figure 1 shows that successive estimates for 2021 and 2022 became slightly less negative each time. 2020 will never be a good year, of course, but the adjustments made to the historical data are not insignificant. It amounts to 0.3 percentage points, or 10 percent of the first estimate. The adjustments themselves moreover come as no surprise at all (van Bergeijk 2021b).

Figure 1. Adjustments made in four instances by the IMF to the 2020 world production growth estimates provided in its World Economic Outlook.

Source: IMF website, accessed 11 October 2022.

The medical impact of the pandemic will also take time to become clear. We know the number of people that got COVID-19 and whether they recovered or died due to infection, but we know neither the impact on the long run of the lockdowns on the health status of the population, nor the long-term effects of COVID-19 itself. This uncertainty does not mean that no general policy recommendations can be made. Cost-benefit analyses, for example, have shown that while short lockdowns may make a rational and cost-effective contribution during pandemic outbreaks, the same cannot be said of long-term lockdown policies. This is basically because at its core, a human life can only be saved once, while longer lockdowns continuously increase economic costs. So, whether such an insight is valid for the next pandemic is not the question. However, what is ‘short’ cannot be answered in advance. The third conclusion is that economics can play an important role in helping design macro trade-off frameworks to best fill in and adjust the parameters in the event of a breakout as soon as new insights become available.

Conclusion

Science pretends to know a lot and to be able to contribute much. In this regard, it is probably too big for its boots. Vaccines have been important, but if we can actually put the COVID-19 crisis behind us, it will be mostly thanks to the gift Mother Nature gave us, namely a less severe, more infectious variant that makes COVID-19 better socially manageable. It is human nature to draw some lessons after a pandemic has died out and then to forget them. It is remarkable that all the issues that came up during the previous pandemic, the Mexican Flu pandemic, remained unresolved and came back again during the COVID-19 pandemic. Science could and should play a much more important role here, not so much in research, but in education. It is actually strange that the report does not pay attention to the core task of science. Providing the knowledge about the previous pandemic requires a better place in the curricula of all fields of science. If not, our students, who will probably experience four to five more pandemics in their lifetime, will be not be prepared for the next one.

Footnotes

[1] Dutch readers may want to consult van Bergeijk 2021b.

[2] Another example is the resurgence of research on the economic impact of the Spanish Flu.

References

ANV, 2019, Geïntegreerde risicoanalyse Nationale Veiligheid, ANV Netherlands Network of Safety and Security Analysts http://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-10/Geintegreerde%20risicoanalyse%20Nationale%20Veiligheid%202019.pdfhttp://www.rivm.nl/sites/default/files/2019-10/Geintegreerde%20risicoanalyse%20Nationale%20Veiligheid%202019.pdf

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2021a, Pandemic Economics, Edward Elgar 2021.

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2021b, De volgende pandemie: een deltaplan voor overleving, Walburg, 2021.

Bergeijk, P.A.G. van, 2022, The Political Economy of the Next Pandemic, Review of Economic Analysis, 14 (1), 27-49

KNAW, 2022, Met de Kennis van straks: De wetenschap goed voorbereid op pandemieën.

This article was originally published on MeJudice and has been republished with permission of the author and editors.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

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From sacred to clinical: how the lack of proper burials during the Covid-19 pandemic affected communities in Uganda

By ISS Blog Bliss 6 October 20224 January 2025 2511 views

When Covid-19 started spreading across the globe, the World Health Organization issued strict burial guidelines in a bid to curb the spread of the virus. In Uganda, the national health department took over the burial of Covid-19 victims, interring them quickly and without adhering to proper cultural and religious procedures. In a country where death rituals form a central part of the grieving process, the undignified burials that took place during the pandemic have had severe psychological consequences for bereaved families and communities.

In the Global South and in Africa particularly, most development studies research concentrates on survival issues; economic needs and death/loss are generally discussed in relation to poverty or AIDS, while the few available bereavement studies focus on the grieving experiences of individuals or groups.[1] However, injustices are also apparent in processes of grieving; unpacking the way in which grief is collectively and individually experienced is a necessary first step in addressing these injustices. Here, I show how the strict burial guidelines imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic were received in Uganda and why we should take note.

The many facets of death rituals

Death rituals, defined as “forms of expressions and connections performed by individuals, groups of people or communities in communication with the living-dead and the Supreme Being”[2], connect the dead and living in Africa. These rituals serve to mediate between the physical and spiritual worlds as the spirit of the deceased crosses between worlds. Many African families for example have a graveyard within the compound they live in because they believe that the dead remains part of the living family.[3]

During death rituals, the bereaved family plays a direct role in preparing the body, washing the body and shaving the deceased’s head; domestic animals are also slaughtered for ritual purposes. Slaughtering a sheep, for example, is meant to please the ancestors so that they do not demand another death.[4] And a death is communicated to the entire community as part of the ritual. A study of death rituals in Bugumba in Uganda shows how community members participate in death rituals once a large bonfire has been lit in the compound of the deceased to communicate bereavement to everyone in the community.[5]

Other death-related rites and beliefs include a belief among the Ethur of northeastern Uganda in life after death, with the spirit of the dead person travelling to the realm of ‘Obanga’, as well as the common belief that the dead are spirits that can send curses if disturbed.[6] Not performing death rituals would be considered one way of disturbing the dead. Similarly, in northern Uganda, a harmonious relationship between the living and dead is maintained to avoid ‘cen’, or vengeful spirits, by performing rituals.[7]

Death rituals are considered so important that in cases where a bereaved family lacks adequate resources to perform crucial rituals, community members may contribute the required resources – something that is reciprocal. In studying bereavement, the concept of Ubuntu[8] helps us to understand how cohesion and solidarity are maintained during and after burial through communal rituals and mourning. People travel from far away to participate in death rituals or attend funerals because death comes with misfortune for those who don’t participate in rituals. Paying close attention to the rituals while maintaining solidarity is a key healing factor from loss due to death.[9]

The inability to say goodbye properly

Limitations on death rituals during the Covid-19 pandemic and the interment of Covid-19 victims by health authorities thus caused great distress in Uganda and beyond. During the pandemic, following protocols issued by the World Health Organization (WHO) to curb the spread of the virus, strict guidelines for burials were issued by the government of Uganda under its Ministry of Health. They included limiting the handling of the deceased body to health/burial teams only, wrapping the body in waterproof plastic bags before handing it over for burial, and preventing the public from seeing the body. Family members and other mourners had to stay two meters away from the body.

Many district governments came up with further burial guidelines that included the time at which the burial was to take place, the prohibition of death announcements over radios to prevent the burials from attracting crowds, and ensuring a burial would take no more than two hours. The burial team, dressed in white wellington boots, full plastic protective suits, goggles, face shields, and gloves besides preparing the body secured the burial sites, dug the graves, and conducted the burials. They were nicknamed ‘Angels’ because they appeared mystical to the community members.

Indignation and defiance

Besides leading to personal suffering, these clinical burials also led to political dissatisfaction. The burial teams were heckled and some attacked for not following burial traditions. This is because in Uganda, a dead person is very special to the community and must be treated with full respect during the entire burial process. Burials were considered undignified because of the rough handling of the dead and the mourning of those close to the deceased in isolation, when this would usually take place as part of the burial process.[10] The departure from the traditional rituals led to psychosocial suffering (distress for bereaved families) that affecting healing, since no space was provided to express grief.

The community felt that the creation of distance between the deceased person and mourners, the wrapping of the body in artificial materials, and the handling of the body by seemingly alien entities did not ensure sufficient respect. The mystery and criticism was inspired by a deep distrust of the government during the pandemic, leading to allegations such as government’s burying of empty coffins and speculation that Covid-19 deaths concealed the trafficking of individuals.

“How could the spirit of the dead be reached and engaged when it is so trapped? Can the spirit be able to escape its ‘plastic prison’ and join the ancestors, or remain locked in captivity?” asks Brian Mukalazi in the Daily Monitor newspaper, describing how the burial of Covid-19 victims in a ‘scientific’ way angered the communities and led them to defying the burial guidelines by secretly exhuming the bodies to conduct decent burials. Communities such as the Budaka in eastern Uganda, the Buikwe, and the Palissa who resorted to this claimed they needed to ensure decent burials for their departed kin since their spirits had started disturbing their living relatives and some community members.

Conclusion

It is clear from the above that the suffering stemming from the loss of a loved one can be compounded by the lack of proper treatment of the deceased, in this case by the absence of proper burial rituals. However, these emotional impacts of injustices linked to bereavement processes on those close to the deceased and their communities are not yet sufficiently understood. It is crucial to address the psychosocial needs of those that lost loved ones to the pandemic. To prevent recurrence, and to help the bereaved find closure, academic research should focus more deliberately on cultural and psychological needs that arise during bereavement processes.

[1] McCarthy, J. R., Evans, R., Bowlby, S., & Wouango, J. (2020). Making sense of family deaths in urban Senegal: Diversities, contexts, and comparisons. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 82(2), 230-260.

[2] Baloyi, L., & Makobe-Rabothata, M. (2014). The African conception of death: A cultural implication.

[3] Umoh, D. S. (2012). Death is not natural: The African story.

[4] Haram, L. (2021). Bodily grief work meets Christian interiority: The Meru case. Death studies, 45(1), 51-60.

[5] Vokes, R. (2018). Before the call: Mobile phones, exchange relations, and social change in south-western Uganda. Ethnos, 83(2), 274-290.

[6] Wayland, E. J. (1931). Preliminary studies of the tribes of Karamoja. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 61, 187-230.

[7] Kembel, A. S. (2015). When the Dead Are Not Silent: The Investigation of Cultural Perspectives Concerning Improper Burials in Northern Uganda.

[8] As a theoretical perspective, Ubuntu is expressed in many languages in African communities but with the same meaning (Mugumbate and Chereni, 2020). Ubuntu caring solidarity translates to Uganda’s context through a saying which literally means “today it’s me, tomorrow someone else”.

[9] Lee, R., & Vaughan, M. (2008). Death and dying in the history of Africa since 1800. The Journal of African History, 49(3), 341-359.

[10] Lubega, M., Nakamya, C. S., Namugumya, E., & Najjemba, J. (2022). The effect of COVID-19 public health guidelines on the funeral traditions and burial rituals among the Baganda, a tribe in Central Uganda. PAMJ-One Health, 7(7).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Henry Okidi Okoth holds a MA Development Studies degree from the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Currently, he is a researcher and consultant with Collaborative Social Change. His research interests are death and bereavement studies from a decolonial perspective, marginalization and poverty, gender, conflict, and human rights.

How recognizing the Amazon rainforest as non-human helps counter human-driven ‘sustainable development’ interventions

By ISS Blog Bliss 30 September 20224 January 2025 3875 views

Projects introduced in the Amazon rainforest to ‘protect’ it from harm hardly ever follow this objective; instead, they represent human interests while negating the interests of non-humans. But the rainforest as non-human also deserves the right to be represented. Luciana dos Santos Duarte in this article draws on developments in three academic fields to show how non-humans can become recognized in such projects.

Known as the Green Hell , the western part of the Amazon rainforest stretching across Brazil has been a stage for many projects that claim to save the world in the name of ‘sustainable development’. These projects are often conceived using the problematic paradigms of ‘new’ and ‘modern’ (for example introducing ‘new ways to…’), and other buzzwords like ‘Forest 4.0’, where technology is always the presumed answer to sustainable development issues because it ensures the making of profits while saving the forest.

Although we are living in the Anthropocene[1], slowly pushing the button of self-destruction, entrepreneurs motivated to ‘save the world’ are not an endangered species. They create projects connecting a company (buyer), an NGO (to provide technical assistance and credibility in the forest), some cooperatives (workforce of rural farmers), multilateral banks (investors), and the Brazilian government (subsidies). All these actors (called stakeholders) are humans, as are their creations (e.g. corporations). They constitute culture and are Culture.

Dichotomous thinking

But what about the Amazon rainforest? The forest, or the ‘stage’ that these actors occupy, is seen as ‘just Nature’, assumed to be separate from ‘Culture’ – something we can literally step on, extract, and reshape based on our will. These binaries – culture/nature, human/non-human – feed the paradigms mentioned above, allowing them to permanently exist in the forest and enabling them to come and go. Like waves, the projects go to the Amazon in accordance with anticipated opportunities for profit. Then, they go away. They incorporate ‘new’ ideas, but do not maintain previous ideas.

There is a key difference between humans and non-humans according to French anthropologist Philippe Descola (author of Beyond Nature and Culture, 2005), “Humans are subjects who have rights on account of their condition as men, while nonhumans are natural or artificial objects that do not have rights in their own right”. Therefore, exercising authority over a certain domain of affairs is considered exclusively human. We humans think from the top down, representing our Culture, and are not so diplomatic with Nature.

Diplomacy for non-humans

As part of Culture – because it is a human invention – diplomacy mediates between different interests, traditionally benefiting humans, but not non-humans[2]. However, the complexity of this mediation between the interests of hundreds of cultures and nations around the world, which we can see on daily news (wars, terrorism, etc.) becomes overshadowed by the need to mediate between human interference in nature and the right of existence of the thousands of animal and plant species (to highlight just two categories of non-humans) that are dying due to deforestation, pollution, etc.. Due to humans, non-humans are disappearing.

The lack of representation of Nature in ‘sustainable development’ projects leads to the core question: How can we think about diplomacy for non-humans in Nature?

My positionality allows me to answer this question not as a diplomat, but as a product designer pursuing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering and Development Studies, inspired by the outputs of my research in the Amazon. In saying that, and recalling a famous quote on creativity by Albert Einstein, “we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them”, I offer three different paths that could possibly inspire a more concrete answer to diplomacy for non-humans: Law, Anthropology, and Industrial Design.

The right to representation

In 1972, Christopher D. Stone wrote the breakthrough article; “Should trees have standing?”, launching a worldwide debate on the basic nature of legal rights that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. He based his argument on the reasons why nature should be represented in court, for instance remembering that children in the past were seen as objects without rights or just an extension of their parents until their rights became recognized. Also, if non-humans like corporations can be represented by lawyers, why not trees and rivers?

Indeed, half a century after this seminal article was published, Whanganui River in New Zealand became the first river in the world to finally be represented in court [4]. The Maori people had been fighting for over 160 years to get it recognized as a legal entity. The river’s interest is now represented by one member from the Maori tribe and one from the government.

Regarding the field of anthropology, some scholars have been placing non-humans at the same epistemological level as humans, for instance, making science from what is the form of life of indigenous peoples, creating ideas like pluriverse[6]. However, our indigenous brothers and sisters do not know that their thinking-feeling can be framed in such fragmented terms. They do not see or live the Nature/Culture division. They are Nature.

Likewise, we as humans can be Nature, too, in our rational thinking and our creation of science and projects. As a lecturer in the field of Design, I am teaching my students to represent the voices of non-humans in their designs and to consider their positionalities in the design process. I believe that the agency of a lawyer should start at the embryonic stage of a project, amplifying the agency of the designer. In other words, the designer can represent Nature and non-humans through design inasmuch as they can do this for humans, mediating between the two as diplomats do. We become Nature by allying with Nature in our human activities.

The way forward

Once a project is in the Amazon, where we find thousands of non-human species (animals, plants, spirits), there is a lot of work to do – for anyone who can recreate their agency and their positionalities in projects, either for an entrepreneur, a scientist, a policy maker, or a designer – before we can go to court or march on to the apocalypse.

References

DESCOLA, Philippe. Beyond Nature and Culture. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2013, p. 488.

ESCOBAR, Arturo. Sustainability: Design for the Pluriverse. Development, 2011, 54(2), pp. 137-140.

LATOUR, Bruno. Telling Friends from Foes in the Time of the Anthropocene. In Clive Hamilton, Christophe Bonneuil & François Gemenne (editors). The Anthropocene and the Global Environment Crisis – Rethinking Modernity in a New Epoch, London, Routledge, 2015, pp.145-155.

HARAWAY, Donna. Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantatiocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, vol. 6, 2015, pp. 159-165.

HUTCHISON, Abigail. The Whanganui River as Legal Person. Alternative Law Journal, vol 39, 3 2014, pp. 179-182.

ROBINSON, Kim Stanley. The Ministry for the Future. London: Orbit, 2020, p. 576.

STONE, Christopher D. Should Trees Have Standing?–Towards Legal Rights for Natural Objects. Southern California Law Review 45, 1972, pp. 450-501.

STONE, Christopher D. Should Trees Have Standing? Law, Morality, and the Environment. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, p. 264.

VIVEIROS DE CASTRO, Eduardo. From the Enemy’s Point of View: Humanity and Aivinity in an Amazonian Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992, p. 428.

WALSH, Catherine. Development as Buen Vivir: Institutional Arrangements and (De)colonial Entanglements. Development, 53(1), 2010, pp. 15-21.

[1] The Anthropocene is a concept proposed as a geological epoch to mark the impact of humans on Earth, like changing the climate and causing irreversible damage. According to Latour (2015, p. 2), the Anthropocene is “the best alternative we have to usher us out of the notion of modernization. […] Like the concept of Gaia, the risk of using such an unstable notion is worth taking. […] The use of this hybrid term made up of geology, philosophy, theology and social science is a wakeup call. What I want to do is to probe here in what sort of time and in what sort of space we do find ourselves when we accept the idea of living in the Anthropocene.”

[2] The recent launched science fiction, or climate fiction, book ‘The Ministry for the Future’ (ROBINSON, 2020) provides some insights in breaking this tradition. In the plot, a body stablished in the Paris Agreement acts as an advocate for the world’s future generations of citizens as if their rights were as valid as the present generation’s – humans considering their own non-humans.

[3] The status of legal personhood has been broadened in the course of history. For instance, slaves were once treated as property; however, with the abolition of slavery – a process, not a single event, in many countries – slaves were no longer regarded as property but as legal persons (HUTCHISON, 2014). Likewise, the status of legal personhood for nature – Stone’s idea – has been impacting courts, the academe, and society, which can be read in his book launched almost fifty years after the original article (STONE, 2010).

[4] In practical terms, it means the river can be represented at legal proceedings with two lawyers protecting its interests – one from the Maori, the other from the government. The Maori also received a NZD 80 million (USD 56 million) settlement from the government after their marathon legal battle, as well as NZD 30 million to improve the river’s health.

[5] Viveiros de Castro (1992) had proposed the term ‘perspectivism’ for a mode that could not possibly hold inside the narrow structures of nature versus culture. By studying indigenous people in Brazil and their shamanic practices, he saw that “human culture is what binds all beings together – animals and plants included – whereas they are divided by their different natures, that is, their bodies” (Latour, 2009, p. 1).

^[6] According to Escobar (2011, p. 139) “the modern ontology presumes the existence of One World – a universe. This assumption is undermined by discussions in transition discourses, like the buen vivir” (in Spanish, or suma qamaña, a concept from the indigenous people Aymara, in South America), and the rights of Nature. For Walsh (2010, p. 18), the concept of buen vivir “denotes, organizes, and constructs a system of knowledge and living based on the communion of humans and nature and on the spatial-temporal-harmonious totality of existence”. Coming back to Escobar (idem), “in emphasizing the profound relationality of all life, these newer tendencies show that there are indeed relational worldviews or ontologies for which the world is always multiple – a pluriverse”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Luciana dos Santos Duarte is doing a double-degree PhD in Production Engineering (Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil) and Development Studies (International Institute of Social Studies). She holds a master’s degree in Production Engineering, and a Bachelor degree in Product Design. She is a lecturer in Industrial Design Engineering at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. Part of her research is shared on her website ethicalfashionbrazil.com

From corporate greed to sustainable business practices: how slow and steady wins the race

By ISS Blog Bliss 23 September 20224 January 2025 2936 views

So often we think that ethics and business do not blend, and too often we are proven right. But what if this is not always the case? What if there were a way for profit to be generated and for companies to grow, with the only compromise being the time taken to do so? In this article, Niyati Pingali argues that companies do not have to forgo their profit objective – adopting a more-is-more mindset that entails engaging in a slow process of forging and consolidating ethical and sustainable business practices can drive immediate change in the sector, an intervention that can sit well alongside larger degrowth agendas.

Hamstrung by corporate interest

About halfway through the 2015 movie The Big Short about the 2008 financial crisis instigated by a crash on Wall Street, investor Mark Baum and his band of cynical, dogmatic investors take a trip to Moody’s, the reputed financial ratings agency, to ask them why they were actively assigning AA and AAA ratings to housing mortgage bonds (these being two of the highest ratings a bond can receive, representing a bond comprising sound mortgages that are assigned to people with good credit scores and a history of repaying debts) when the bonds should have been rated lower. One Moody’s employee replied in a straightforward manner: if she and her colleagues didn’t rate these bonds AA at least, banks would go down the road to S&P or any other established ratings agency to get themselves rated “appropriately”. This confession stuns Baum and his colleagues: the system is rigged, and those who could be fixing it are themselves hamstrung by corporate interest.

Which is why it was fascinating to me to learn that in 2019, Vigeo Eiris, an established independent environmental, social and governance (ESG) research and consultancy services company, was bought over by Moody’s and rebranded. Eiris was originally founded in 1983 and dedicated itself to equipping businesses to help manage risks and increase their social impact. It came up with a global ratings system that ranks companies based on their efforts, involvement and long-term practices in good governance and sustainable business (Vigeo Eiris, 2019).[1]

Immediately upon reading about the acquisition, alarm bells started ringing in my head. However noble the goal of a ratings agency to start accounting for the value of a stock or company based on its commitment to protecting the environment and society, if a company like Moody’s has found itself behaving unethically on the ground not even 20 years ago, what’s to say that an ‘independent’ research agency under the Moody’s umbrella would be given the autonomy to act ethically and by extension have the authority to publish unimpaired, unbiased, verifiable facts even if they disparage their ‘mother’?

While no empirical evidence (beyond anecdotal) exists to prove that this will be the case, it’s clear that potential censorship, should Moody’s not uphold its end of the bargain, would lead to fallout, resignation and, as experience indicates, the start of a slippery slope from ‘ethical’ to ‘convenient’.

Sidelining ethics in the name of profit

Sadly, this is not the first time a company has lost its ethical backbone. Think for example of the of Timnit Gebru, the Ethiopian-American AI researcher working in the ethical AI research team of Google who parted ways with the company because of ‘irreconcilable differences’. While now universally acknowledged to be a consequence of machine learning based primarily on easily accessed data (usually from the internet, which in and of itself is a biased source), the issue Gebru and her colleagues tried to make Google see (and by extension help amend in its products) was that its existing AI-powered products were foundationally flawed and required a series of very different datasets and priorities to redress the balance. She and a number of colleagues were eventually driven out of Google for their criticism.

In doing this, Google has shown that, like many other companies, it is focused on building harmony (and, obviously, its bottom line). To anyone following what’s going on around the world, this is hardly breaking news. Indeed, my own experience in corporate social responsibility (CSR) for a multi-national corporation proved the degree to which my efforts at protecting and promoting the company’s good potential and community-relevant ties were deprioritized.

While indeed the revelation made here that companies (particularly larger ones) prioritize profit over society is not a new one, it is important to consider the impact the concept of ethical business can have. In this, I do not refer to social enterprises (although they are highly beneficial), or even the established Creating Shared Value (CSV) business strategy that companies like Friesland Campina have successfully adopted. Instead, I am talking about a more-is-more mindset: electing to grow slowly but consciously – keeping profit at the fore but being more selective and long-term about the partners one chooses to work with.

More is more: how partnering mindfully can pay off

The good news is there are companies who are doing this. Take Jeevanti, a now non-operational for-profit healthcare company in western India whose aim to build world-class healthcare facilities in small Indian towns. Their business approach was to lease existing hospitals and nursing homes, and work with local medical professionals, staff and support services such as catering and cleaning services within said towns, and source locally manufactured medical technology, thus creating locally rooted value chains with the hospital at the centre. Ironically, the business closed due to the high demands and questionable practices on the ground by a member of the (systemically corrupt) Indian medical fraternity involved in the project, not because the vision or business function itself proved unviable.

Or consider abillion, an upcoming social media platform catering to vegans and sustainable consumption. When I asked the founder about the issues around discrimination in AI, and the effect that automatised feedback could have on the system, he said it was about feeding their system the right kinds of information – echoing Gebru’s crusade to include a wider variety of data into the existing data universe. In this case it is about training the system to recognise vegan versus non-vegan content and believing in the users of the platform to be ethical in their buying, selling, and sharing practices. It sounds idealistic and I was initially sceptical, but his argument about the majority of people wanting to actively protect the integrity of the platform convinced me.

Both companies grew (one continues to grow!) despite this ‘counterintuitive’ business logic. These examples make it clear that the socio-economic impact of slow, steady, community-AND-profit-centric growth cannot be underestimated.

Putting mind over money

At ISS we often talk about the concept of degrowth. This topic is hotly debated in class and over drinks, its merits and flaws laid out and sliced up a thousand different ways until, inevitably, we come to the (in)conclusion: in today’s day and age, an inaccessibly inordinate number of things in our socio-politico-economic psychology will need to shift to make happen even a tenth of what degrowth asks for. In essence, in today’s day and age, degrowth is an impossibility, available only to those privileged enough to know the concept, or to afford surviving in it.

Which leads us to what is left that perhaps can actually be done to get out of this quagmire and what it will take for companies like Google and Moody’s to dig us out. It’s a simple matter of putting mind over money, taking the long route and, like the turtle, winning the race based on resilience, stability, and keen determination.

[1] Moody’s, on the other hand, was established in 1900 by John Moody with “a vision to widen access to information and establish a global language of credit” (Moody’s, 2022). They have achieved this and more by incorporating research and risk assessment services into their consultancy repertoire, becoming one of the leading risk assessment and ratings services in the financial world. Their website states upfront their commitment to “bring transparency, expertise and trust to bond transactions”, all key buzzwords that customers, and importantly, the average street consumer, genuinely seek.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Niyati Pingali is currently completing her MA in Development Studies, focusing on governance and development policy. As a former corporate employee, she knows the cost and the benefits of capitalism and plans to dedicate her life to changing the narrative to ensure both people and the economy benefit equally: a feat that sounds impossible but she knows can happen.

Amid the US-Sino rivalry: how high is the risk of a deglobalisation trajectory for China?

By ISS Blog Bliss 26 August 20224 January 2025 3835 views

The ongoing military conflict between Ukraine and Russia has allegedly changed the course of history and revived the era of ‘Great Power Rivalry’. Under this backdrop of re-energised geopolitical competition, the hostile rhetoric and posture have only further aggravated between the U.S. and China, especially regarding the ‘Taiwan issue’. Re-assertion of the international order dominated by the west, and counteraction of it (led by Russia and China), have led to a more fractured world both politically and economically. In the meantime, as most of the world has stepped out of the horror of Covid-19 pandemic, China’s continuing resolute containment measures and minimum border entry have astonished audiences in the west and beyond. These Covid-related restrictions coupled with China’s position in the rivalry with the U.S., have posed the question of whether China is gradually taking a deglobalisation course? Because China is so deeply ingrained in many aspects of globalization, including the global trade network, the answer to this question will not only have a significant bearing on China’s economic development and state-building, but it will also have significant worldwide implications. In this blog, we endeavor to answer this question by taking stock of modern China’s history of globalisation as well as the discourse around it and taking into account the consequences of the present Ukraine-Russia conflict.

A historical sketch of globalisation in modern China:

Globality has been an essential part of the discourse of modernity in the non-European world, when western history has become world history and those being perceived as oriental or raw have been compelled into this form of world history. The choice of globalisation has never been a given for modern China, and the early encounters with the Europeans has been stamped and memorised as ‘sovereign door being knocked open by the cannons’ and ‘Century of Humiliation’. Since the ‘humiliation’ was primarily caused by techno-scientific backwardness of the old, un-modernised China, the discourse of modernity had mainly been formulated as techno-scientific and economic progress, with even cultural inferiority mostly enunciated as a hindrance to scientific advancement. While globalisation was forced upon China and its past was derogated for absence of any elements of modernity, China paradoxically had been looking outward for its ideal model of modernity and formation of nation-state, especially from nations that bore some similarity with China in the past— ranging from Sun Yat-Sen’s acclaim of Japanese victory in Russo-Japanese war as ‘our own victory’, and communists’ marvel at Soviet Union’s rapid industrialisation during Stalin’s rule, to China’s learning and replication from newly industrialised east Asian countries in post-Mao period. The most notable walking-back of globalisation in modern China was the Soviet-Sino split from 1960 when China severed economic ties and technological exchange with Soviet Union and consequently most of the socialist camp that China once belonged to, with reasons ranging from Soviet Union’s unfulfilled promise of technology transfer to personal enmity between top leaders. Nevertheless, even under the integument of revolutionary discourse of modernity in late Mao-era, huge underlying efforts had been made by the technocrats led by then premier Zhou Enlai to pursue (and had achieved to some extent) techno-scientific progress and capital accumulation in the industrial sector (Yao, 2019). At last, unprecedented economic and technological progress has been most-effectively achieved in modern China since the 1980s, which features deepening globalisation, with China also taking lead on initiatives in issues like global infrastructure development and climate change to gain a bigger footprint in global governance. Nevertheless, recent signs are emerging that the Chinese state is tending to downplay the importance of globalisation to economic achievement (the advocacy of ‘dual circulation’ economic development pattern, in which global economic cycle plays a supplementary role relative to domestic economic cycle) and is willing to compromise the economic benefits of globalisation for political and public-health ends (divergent Covid-19 policy).

China’s choices in the ‘Great Power Rivalry’:

Utilitarians put emphasis on material and economic gains and ignore the role of values in driving human and social behaviors, however, the materialistic and individualistic approach of utilitarianism may fail to explain certain strategic decisions based on calculations beyond economic rationalisation. Recent events have shown that, when factoring non-material values into social behaviours, the underprivileged could take on a trade-off between nationalistic values and economic benefits in severely unequal and polarised society, which has been manifested in the form of populism that climaxed in the trade war that former U.S. President Donald Trump (Murshed, 2020) waged against several countries, and in the form of outright war that Russia wages presently against its western neighbor. The mechanism behind such a non-utilitarian rationalisation is that the feeling of deprivation and grievance arising from unequal distribution of economic output is compensated by the sense of fairness arising from the collective glorification or collective insecurity during conflicts (whether armed or unarmed) fought for nationalist rhetoric. Thus, on one hand, a repetition of Russian experience as deglobalisation by outright military conflict in Taiwan strait could happen in China, as two countries bear similarities in both the dynamics of ‘Great Power Rivalry’ with the U.S. and domestic factors pertaining to authoritarian rule and severe socio-economic inequality. On the other hand, the Russian economy has exhibited a certain level of resilience under western sanctions mainly because of Europe’s energy reliance on it, and this dynamic has shown that economic dependence is an advantage to be leveraged even when globalisation is compromised for other political ends.

In all, China has been going through considerable reconfigurations in a broad range, including assertion in global economic and political sphere, revival of Confucian values, and strengthening of patriarchal authoritarianism within party-state, since mid 2010s, when China’s share in world economic output approximately reached historical level, which was generally above 20% before mid-19th century (Broadberry et al., 2018). Currently, by displaying strategic behaviors across different issue areas, China is seeking space to further gain techno-scientific and economic prowess, while at the same time, preserving the party-state’s political and economic interests at home and abroad. Russia’s war against Ukraine could also prompt a profound re-calibration of China’s globalisation policy as the possibility of a west-east division resembling the cold war era rises. If any lessons can be drawn from the Soviet-Sino split in the Mao-era and the recent deglobalisation courses that populist governments (Brexit, Trump’s tariff war) and authoritarian regime (Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) have taken, we believe that the level of patriarchal authoritarianism within party-state and socio-economic inequality (not always independent of one another) are the two most significant home elements in any potential reversal of globalisation course for China. Inopportunely, the trends for these two domestic factors are on the side of disruption rather than cooperation within the current international order dominated by the west. However, in the manner that the conditions of deglobalisation have been partly brought about by the rise of China’s relative economic and technological strength in the world, globality will persist in any measured deglobalisation, which should be dynamic and imbalanced among multi-fronts if it would occur.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Li Yanbai is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). His research interests lie in China’s resources trade with developing countries and the causes and consequences of socio-economic inequality in China and beyond.

Addressing the deadly impacts of heatwaves in Europe – The European Union Must Do More

By ISS Blog Bliss 13 August 20224 January 2025 5738 views

This year in June and July (and into this month of August), a global heatwave led to an increase in deaths and disasters. Several European countries were largely impacted, including the Netherlands, France, Portugal, and Spain. In this blog, we (Shellan Saling and Sylvia I. Bergh) review the European Union’s (EU) policy response to heatwaves, and argue for a more active role for the EU in coordinating national efforts to develop heat-health action plans (HHAPs).

The death tolls of past and future heatwaves

The current heatwave is not the first one. In 2003, an extreme heatwave killed over 70,000 people across Europe. Certain population groups – such as the elderly, people with disabilities, youth, ethnic and racial minorities, and those experiencing homelessness – are especially vulnerable. These groups, as well as pregnant women, young children, and people with chronic conditions such as cardio-vascular diseases, are at higher risk of suffering from reduced physiological and behavioral capacity for thermoregulation, for example due to a limited capacity to sweat. Socio-economically disadvantaged people also have limited access to information sources where health warnings are shared and awareness is raised about how to protect oneself from the heat. More recently, the 2019 summer heatwaves affected Europe, more specifically France, Belgium, and the Netherlands with over 2500 deaths.

Unfortunately, future prospects are bleak. Researchers at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission predict that assuming present vulnerability and no additional adaptation, annual fatalities from extreme heat in 2100 could rise from 2,750 deaths now to 30,000 at 1.5°Celsius global warming, 52,000 at 2°C, and 96,000 at 3°C. The highest number of fatalities are expected to occur in France, Italy, and Spain. Given these dramatic figures, effective policy response from the European Union is urgent.

The EU’s policy response

The origins of the EU’s policy response can be traced back to the aftermath of the 2003 heatwaves, whose death toll sent shockwaves throughout Europe and prompted immediate action to develop national heat-health action plans (HHAPs). At the EU level, and the European Commission and European Environmental Agency (EEA) in particular, HHAPs fall under the health domain. Hence, the EU has worked closely with the World Health Organisation (WHO) on HHAPs beginning with the EuroHeat project, which identified eight core elements of HHAPs in 2008. They include an agreement on a lead body, accurate and timely alert systems, a heat-related health information plan, a reduction in indoor heat exposure, particular care for vulnerable population groups, preparedness of the health and social care system, long-term urban planning, and real-time surveillance and evaluation.

However, apart from issuing guidance, the EU has lacked a major role in mitigating the impacts of heatwaves. The question remains about why it does not play a more active role in mitigating the effects of heatwaves and in formulating heat-health policy.

We tried to answer this question as part of a wider study on HHAPs in France and The Netherlands, conducted as part of the first author’s Research Paper in the context of her International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) MA degree. The study was carried out in collaboration with an applied research project led by the second author. The findings are based on desk reviews and interviews with experts and policymakers.

Obstacles to a more effective EU response

We found that heatwaves and climate change in general fall under several different policy arenas including climate mitigation, adaptation, social policy, and health. This fragmentation limits the EU’s actions on heatwaves. In addition, categorising HHAPs as falling in the health domain makes it challenging for the EU to act because of their existing laws and regulations. According to the mandates specified in the Maastricht Treaty (European Union Treaty) and its Article 129(4), the European Union is allowed to spend money on European Union level health projects, but is not allowed to harmonise public health measures in member states. The Amsterdam Treaty and the Lisbon Treaty (article 152(7)) provided further updates making it clear that health policy is the responsibility of EU member states.

Recent progress on climate change policy has been made within the European Union with the EU Green Deal. A key component, Regulation 2018/1999 of the European Parliament (known as the European Climate Law issued in 2021) established the framework for achieving climate neutrality. However, this regulation does not specifically discuss or call for national HHAPs.

Hence, there is currently no institution within the EU responsible for monitoring the heat-health action plans or heat health policy of member states more generally because under the EU’s limited mandate, it cannot enforce the HHAPs in the member states. Also, it is not in the EEA’s mandate to provide a framework for policy action in this area, and they cannot lobby or influence the EU member states much.

Sharing knowledge and funding research is good but not enough

Therefore, the main role the EU continues to have is to create and share knowledge with and between the member states. The EuroHEAT project mentioned earlier was co-funded by the European Commission (EC) Directorate-General for Health and Consumers. It quantified the health effects of heat in European cities and identified options for improving health systems’ preparedness for and response to the effects of heatwaves. By coordinating with the WHO European Region, the project led to the first framework for HHAPs. In addition, through the European Environmental Agency (EEA), in 2012 the EU has set up knowledge and research databases available on the European Climate Adaptation Platform (Climate-ADAPT), which contain a host of data on climate and health (among other topics), including case studies on the impact of heatwaves on vulnerable populations and policy measures taken. In early 2021, the EU climate law led to the establishment of the European Climate and Health Observatory. It is managed jointly by the European Commission and the EEA as part of Climate-ADAPT. However, the Observatory has yet to increase its staffing to be fully operational.

Two other recent research and policy development projects funded by the EU were HEAT-SHIELD (a Horizon 2020 research project addressing the negative impact of increased workplace heat stress on the health and productivity of five strategic European industries) and the SCORCH (the Supportive Risk Awareness and Communication to Reduce impact of Cross-Border Heatwaves) project, which have generated useful academic and policy outputs.

However, besides investing in research and policy development, we believe that going forward, the EU should take a more active role in coordinating national efforts to develop HHAPs. For example, in our interviews, we found that there is a lack of communication between the national policymakers who work on heatwaves across the EU, and a desire for more exchanges on best practices. This could be addressed by funding targeted projects under relevant EU programs such as Interreg Europe. We also believe that it would be desirable for the EU to have a stronger role in monitoring the quality of the various HHAPs (using the elements in the WHO framework) and ensuring that they are integrated with other relevant (national and EU) polices on disaster risk reduction or national environmental planning.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Shellan Saling is a recent graduate from the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) where she received her MA in Development Studies majoring in Governance and Development Policy. Her research paper (thesis) was on climate adaptation policies, and specifically on national heat-health action plans and heat-health policy within the EU.

All Bark, No Bite? The Case for Human Security in European Migration & Asylum Governance

By ISS Blog Bliss 5 August 20224 January 2025 5501 views

In order to prioritise the needs of humans over those of the state, migration and asylum governance needs to shift towards utilising a human security framework. A case in point for the urgency to do so can be found in the inhumane conditions within the European ‘refugee camps’ to which migrants are confined under the nomenclature of ‘national security’. Mainstream frameworks for evaluating camps reveal the illegal and inhumane conditions yet remain unable to challenge their structural existence – all bark, no bite. Through human security, these camps can be evaluated and improved (the bark) and ultimately dismantled (the bite).

In this blog post, I wish to explore what it means to center the human in migration governance. To do so, I draw on the framework and ontology of human security, prioritising the protection, and security of the human over the state. Looking at European asylum governance practices, specifically that of the ‘refugee camp’ or ‘migrant camp’, which can be broadly understood as spaces of containment and practices of detention, reveals the dire need to center the security of humans over national security. In a 2017 briefing, the European Council on Refugees and Exiles argues that while the “existence of robust and dignified reception conditions is a vital precondition for allowing asylum seekers to recover their dignity and to prepare their applications”, provision of such conditions has remained “a key challenge” for many European countries. This begs the question – how can Europe overcome this challenge? Or rather, to follow a human security line of thinking, how can asylum seekers be guaranteed to have dignified, humane reception conditions? Despite the existence of several prominent frameworks and guidelines for migration governance, this question remains unanswered.

As illustrated in a 2022 policy brief entitled Towards Humane and Dignified Living Conditions for Refugees and Other Migrants: A Human Security Framework for Assessing ‘Migration Camps’ in Europe that I published with the Human Development Research Initiative, despite these well-established international standards and frameworks, inhumane conditions remain the norm within European migration and asylum governance. Illustrative of these inhumane reception conditions are that of Camp Mória, and the space between the Polish and Belarusian border, both of which were explored in the policy brief and widely reported elsewhere (e.g., Human Rights Watch, Médecins sans frontières, UNHCR, ECRE).

These conditions call into question to what extent current practices can be viewed as ‘durable’ (to borrow the vernacular of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)), ‘sustainable’ (in the vernacular of some organizations and academics), and more importantly, humane and dignified. Scholars like Dorothy Estrada-Tanck highlight that within international law, human security “may have the potential to act as a catalyst for the realisation of human rights in the contemporary world”. In this vein, I wish to put forth the argument that human security is capable of evaluating, ‘improving’, and ultimately dismantling the practice of creating camps to hold asylum-seekers.

Mainstream Frameworks: All Bark, No Bite.

We can outline three prevalent frameworks applicable in the management of ‘migration camps.’ The SPHERE standards seek to establish a universal minimal baseline for humanitarian action via a rights-based approach. In a 2016 speech calling for humanitarian reform, David Miliband identifies how SPHERE Standards prescribes minimally “what should be provided for water and sanitation, food, shelter, and health… [yet] are often not enforced”. Within migration governance and extending protection and/or assistance to migrants, the International Organisational for Migration (IOM) has developed the “determinants of migrant vulnerability (DoMV) model” to elicit a “programmatic response” across multiple levels and types of relevant actors, assessing the interlinked domains of: 1) individual factors, 2) household and family factors, 3) community factors, and 4) structural factors.

The UNHCR’s official policy seeks to dissuade the provision of migration camps, instead favoring the three ‘durable solutions’ of repatriation, integration, and/or resettlement to a third country. Similarly, alternative arrangements have been proposed by Human Rights Watch and academics for increasing participation or sustainability in camp design. Yet, despite these alternatives, the existence of migrant camps continues, leading to a considerable body of scholarship referring to the practice of camps as the unspoken fourth ‘durable solution’.

In this way, I argue that the three outlined frameworks fall into the idiom, all bark, no bite – interesting ways for states and NGOs to conceive of and assess the problem at hand, or standards to aspire towards when implementing humanitarian support. Despite these well-established frameworks, there remains a wide sweeping consensus that the previous and current implementation of European refugee camps has failed migrants. To exemplify this, one can think of how the conditions at Camp Mória were found by Human Rights Watch to be blatantly in violation of both “EU and Greek laws”. Thus, while these frameworks provide relevant ways of informing humanitarian action, inhumane conditions persist (a whole lot of bark), yet are ineffective to temper the state’s capacity to confine migrants in order to protect ‘national security’. Importantly, these frameworks do not challenge or hinder the pursuit of the state’s interest over that of the migrant’s – giving them no bite. In other words, none of the three frameworks challenge a state-centric approach toward migration governance, and thus are unable to provide an answer to the key challenge of providing newly arrived refugees and other migrants with dignified, humane reception conditions.

From the bark: Human Security as Evaluating & ‘Improving’.

Similar to the other frameworks, human security is capable of evaluating and identifying ways to improve the conditions within refugee camps. Human security highlights the conditions necessary for a truly human life, inclusive of material and immaterial conditions, physical and psychological health, and other necessary human capabilities. From the outset, the United Nations Development Programme identified seven dimensions of human security, namely: 1) economic, 2) food, 3) health, 4) environmental, 5) personal, 6) community, and 7) political security. The re-orientation from nation state to human is accompanied by mandating a reliable, minimum degree enjoyment of basic human needs in a manner that links to both human rights and human development. All of this to say, the barking stays – by pursuing a human security approach, all the strengths from the mainstream frameworks remain well articulated. Additionally, the ontology of human security centers on ensuring the dignity and rights of migrants themselves as humans, rather than presenting guidelines for professionals to solve problems.

Theoretically, secure and dignified conditions can occur within a camp structure – but previous and current practice shows that the EU and member states have continually been either unable or unwilling to do so. Médecins sans frontières posits that policies such as the EU-Turkey deal promote confining migrants “in awful and unsafe conditions… further traumatising an already extremely vulnerable population”.

To the bite: Human Security as Dismantling Migrant Camps.

To conclude, while human security encompasses mainstream assessments of living conditions within refugee camps, I would like to put forth the argument that it goes even further – both barking and biting. Adopting a human security framework and ontology towards migration governance fundamentally challenges harsh exclusionary practices of detention and confinement pursued in the interest of the state, and the continual framing of migrants as threats to national security – the so-called “European strategy of containing those fleeing conflict and persecution”, as ECRE puts it. Human security articulates both the everyday experience of (in)security, while also drawing attention to the social, political and economic structures which contribute to this (in)security.

Assessing conditions through the lens of human security presents a hopeful way forward – beginning with improving the (im)material conditions which refugees and other migrants find themselves upon their entry in Europe and going beyond that to inevitably dismantle policies of confinement – doing so also empowers and engages migrants themselves, guaranteeing them agency over their situation. Thus, human security is necessary in migration governance to explicitly challenge and temper the interest of the state, reverting the focus to that of human beings themselves rather than nation-states.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Xander Creed holds a MA Development Studies degree from the ISS, within the track Governance of Migration & Diversity and a specialization in Conflict & Peace Studies. Currently, Xander is a PhD candidate at the ISS, where their research interests include human centric ways of approaching migration studies and policy, as well as the relationships between (im)mobility and (in)security.

Urban heatwaves and senior citizens: Frugal solutions in The Hague

By ISS Blog Bliss 23 July 20224 January 2025 5920 views

As The Netherlands is currently suffering from extreme heat, it is worth reminding ourselves of the effects of the latest heatwave, which took place from 10-16 August, 2020. Worryingly, the excess mortality was 37% higher among people receiving long-term care than the average in the previous weeks. Especially senior citizens (people aged 65 and above) are vulnerable to the negative health effects of heatwaves. They often do not feel thirsty, and accordingly, they do not drink enough. Due to their reduced mobility, they have difficulties in moving to cooler places such as parks. They also cannot afford to buy air conditioners or sunscreens. Hence, as we, Erwin van Tuijl, Sylvia I. Bergh, and Ashley Richard Longman, argue in this blog, there is a need for frugal solutions to protect seniors against heat. Frugal solutions are both affordable as well as “simple” . We present some frugal solutions we identified in a recent research project in The Hague, The Netherlands. We also discuss challenges that hinder development and usage of these frugal solutions.

Affordable solutions

The respondents in our survey ranked sunscreens and air conditioning highly as their preferred options to keep cool, but the purchase and operating costs are significant barriers. Although not many research participants knew about them, we found affordable alternatives. Instead of air conditioning, wet towels in combination with fans are an effective measure to keep cool, just like applying wet sponges or using a (foot)bath. Pragmatic alternatives for sunscreens are bed sheets to create shade, whereas sun sails/canopies (see picture 1), balcony awnings and window foils (picture 2) are more durable alternatives.

These solutions can be obtained from specialised (online) suppliers, as well as from (low-cost) retailers. Another example is a clamp awning (picture 3), a sun protection device for balconies and terraces that is fastened between the floor and a roof or protrusion, also available at low-cost retailers. These affordable solutions are installed without drilling or other construction measures. The products are therefore a good alternative for sunscreens that are often prohibited by landlords or housing corporations due to aesthetical reasons (i.e., sunscreens may decrease the aesthetical value of buildings) or technical limitations (i.e., some locations might be too windy for sunscreens). Moreover, sun sails and clamp awnings can be taken away quickly when there is no sun, or when seniors move to another house. In this way, seniors do not invest in buildings, but in a product that they can take with them.

The need for simple solutions

Beyond affordable, solutions need to be simple in terms of easy to use and easy to access. However, not all solutions are easy to use. For example, digital apps and other “smart” solutions, such as a “smart beaker” – a cup with sensors and an app that warns when seniors need to drink – are regarded as too complex for seniors who for the most part still have limited digital skills in comparison to younger generations. And due to the limited mobility of seniors, (non-digital) solutions must be easy to use and to access. For instance, we found that for seniors with health problems (e.g., diseases like Multiple Sclerosis) it is difficult to take a cooling vest on and off without assistance. Furthermore, cooling vests might be difficult to obtain for seniors as they are only available online or in shops targeted to business customers. Simple alternatives are wet towels and cooling scarfs (that have a cooling effect for four to five hours) (picture 4). Both alternatives are easy to obtain and can be put on and taken off relatively easily.

4. Cobber Cool Shawl © Cobber by Vuursteker

A solution that is put in place in The Hague as well as other cities around the world are so-called cooling centres. These are dedicated cooled rooms (i.e., with air conditioning) in (semi)public buildings, such as schools, or libraries. However, will senior citizens really use such spaces? Even if transport was arranged for them, some of our respondents argued that seniors may prefer to stay at home during a heatwave due their limited mobility, and that they are at an increased risk of dehydration if they would undertake the trip to the cooling centre. Seniors now sometimes “flee” their hot apartments and sit in the hallways, leading to noise and other nuisances. Some of our respondents proposed turning their existing common rooms into a cooling centre instead by equipping it with an air conditioning unit.

Challenges ahead

So, while we identified a number of frugal solutions, both in the market and developed by the senior citizens themselves, we also observed demand and supply gaps. Especially smaller entrepreneurs we interviewed struggled to identify their “real” customer – should they talk to homeowners, tenants or representatives of individual retirement home and housing corporations, or rather with those working at the “headquarters” of retirement home chains or housing corporations? Indeed, the same type of organisation might have different ownership and organisational structures. For example, retirement homes can be owned by dedicated elderly care organisations, housing corporations or by real estate investors, and they can be managed in a decentralised way (e.g., per building) or centrally (from a headquarters).

Another issue is that heat health risks are still underestimated by most people in The Netherlands, partly due to the irregular occurrences of heatwaves and their usually short duration. This makes it hard for entrepreneurs to market their products, especially those products that are relatively new on the Dutch market, such as sun sails, cooling scarfs or clamp awnings. And when heatwaves strike, there is a sudden increase in demand, which entrepreneurs have limited capacity to respond to. Therefore, procurement officers in organisations such as senior housing agencies or elderly care centres would be well advised to view heat preparedness as a strategic priority rather than a short term and reactive solution, and prepare for heatwaves in advance. Public agencies could also create more opportunities for entrepreneurs and the “demand side”, i.e., users or those acting on behalf of users, to meet. Likewise, agencies should not only warn seniors and (informal) caregivers about the risks of heatwaves, but also inform them about frugal solutions that can be used to keep cool. Such actions could literally save lives.

Related links:

The project report can be downloaded by clicking here.

More information on the research project is available on the ISS, ICFI, as well as THUAS websites.

More information in Dutch is available on the Kennisportaal Klimaatadaptie.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Erwin van Tuijl, Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) and at the International Centre for Frugal Innovation (ICFI), and visiting researcher and lecturer at the Division of Geography and Tourism, KU Leuven (Belgium).

Sylvia I. Bergh, Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), and Senior researcher, Centre of Expertise on Global Governance, The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS).

Ashley Richard Longman, Lecturer, Faculty of Social Sciences, Political Science and Public Administration, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Rebuilding the economy one home-office at a time: the pros and cons of working from the office

By ISS Blog Bliss 22 July 20224 January 2025 5046 views

Are we sure we still need to be in the office 40+ hours a week? The economy may suffer in the short term if we continue flexible working, but society suffers in the long term if we force a return to the office So, do we really need to return to full time work-from-office? I say no. Hear me out.

It’s 2022, and now that COVID-19 is not as serious a threat, we are collectively looking at figuring out how to move forwards (or backwards) to a post-pandemic reality. This includes the slew of opinion pieces we are bombarded with extolling both the perils and virtues of continued hybrid working (Hsu, 2022; Duncan, 2022; Sherman, 2022). It is time, therefore, to look at both the merits and consequences of not returning to the office.

https://www.newyorker.com/cartoons/daily-cartoon/tuesday-june-8th-work-home

Before doing my master’s degree, I was working in a large multi-national corporation in Singapore. As someone who had to work from home from November 2019 (read: before the global pandemic) because of a broken leg, but whose job required her to personally connect with as many colleagues as she could, let me tell you that working from an office is not the end-all solution. Before November 2019 I had been going in every day, and not once did I underestimate the power of working face to face in an office environment. However, working entirely from home didn’t stall my productivity either. If anything, the more flexible schedules allowed me to take better care of local and global relationships because I could catch colleagues at all hours of the day based on their own disparate schedules, and take proper breaks in between to deal with personal needs like physio and doctor’s visits, cooking, cleaning, or other household needs for myself and my family without scheduling set office hours or the pressure of commuting. The lack of travel to and from office, as well as huge savings on professionally mandated socialising via lunches, coffees, and drinks meant saving enough money that I was able to pay for my degree almost in full!

We saw during the height of the pandemic that our biggest collective fear is facing the consequences of the unknown, which is why the urgency we see from governments and companies in having people return to the office is understandable (Franklin, 2022; Lim, 2022; Forrest, 2021; Gordon and McGregor, 2022). It is far more comforting to revert to the familiar, and in this case, those in charge – from companies to governments, to university administrators – are keen to go back to what they know: physical attendance.

Let us give them credit: in-person connectivity has immeasurable benefits. To start with, an influx of staff back to office buildings will certainly help those businesses that rely on office spaces (think cleaners, the food and beverage industry [F&B], real estate), and by extension the families who depend on these businesses. In addition, it is undeniable that team rapports and knowledge sharing are built more effectively through face-to-face interactions. However, this is where the fallacy fails: it is misguided to assume office jobs are only truly effective when conducted from an office. Indeed, the pandemic has taught us otherwise, and forgetting this lesson will result in regressive consequences (Choudhry, 2020).

To be clear, no one questions the need to rebuild economies. This is a feat that takes both manpower and brainpower, but I would argue that the more of both we have, the faster and more efficiently we can rebuild. Working from an office once again limits brainpower to those who are able enough to reach the office in the first place (usually men, the able-bodied, youth, and for instance those who can afford or do not need childcare). In considering this state of affairs, we exclude hugely talented swathes of the community who, during COVID-19 were actually being given the opportunity to find employment through remote-working opportunities, including fully educated but full-time mothers, the retired and the elderly, and those with disabilities. Inherently, in forcing staff back to the office, we once again exclude these groups: fundamentally counter-productive to rebuilding.

It is true that maintaining a permanent hybrid working environment does pose risks, but inherently they are all short-term. The most obvious has already been mentioned – the financial strain on the office-dependent businesses and the families who depend on those businesses. By extension, businesses that have depended on in-person connectivity will also be affected, like the airline business. Just recently, British Airways announced the cancellation of 30,000 flights in 2022 alone (BBC, 2022). F&B and hotels are equally affected, as are their related supply chains (Jagt, 2022; Mijnke, Obermann and Hammers, 2022). But people and businesses are creative and resilient. They will find ways to reinvent the wheel and make it work for them. Indeed, considering the tenacity of human nature, we will endure – for instance, an option to convert existing unutilised office spaces into public utility spaces such as schools, day-cares, or temporary shelters with related shops to protect housing and living costs.

But for any of these to happen, governments and companies need to stop thinking short-term, and start considering the long-term effects of their actions. A full-time return to office spaces will result in an undoing of all the effort that went into repairing what this neoliberal, profit-centric, exclusionary, high-pressure system progressively broke in the past: from the strengthened family relationships (hello two-year lockdown!) to the healthier diets and more socio-environmentally conscious purchasing and living (home-cooking, supporting local shops, gardening, the upsurge in second-hand markets, a reduction in carbon footprint from reduced traveling). Talent from forgotten resources like mothers, the less-physically-abled and retirees can be reinstated in new forms, and the subsequent intellectual discrimination that has, until now, been a detriment to the economy can be renewed and utilised. The cost, therefore, of forcing a return to the white-light corridors, communal coffee machines, recycled air, and open plan desks will far outweigh the benefits of corporate camaraderie, social capital, and political protection. As important as it is to recognise the value of in-person work, it appears that, once again, companies like LinkedIn and Twitter appear ahead of the curve by suggesting long-term work-from-home options (Kay, 2021; Kelly, 2022). Perhaps the time has come for other institutions to follow their lead and see the value they derive in it. And perhaps in changing what an ‘office’ looks like, corporations can gain back some of the trust they have lost by putting profit over people for so long.

British Broadcasting Corporation (6 July 2022) ‘British Airways to Cancel 10,300 More Flights’, British Broadcasting Corporation, accessed 19 July 2022

Choudhry P (2020) ‘Our Work-From-Anywhere Future’, Harvard Business Review, accessed 19 July 2022

Duncan E (18 February 2022) ‘COVID has Changed the Way We Work and There’s No Going Back’, The Times UK, accessed 19 July 2022

Forrest A (3 August 2021) ‘Government Urges Businesses to ‘Ramp Up’ Return to Office this Summer’, The Independent UK, accessed 19 July 2022

Franklin J (1 June 2022) ‘Elon Musk Tells Employees to Return to the Office 40 Hours a Week – or Quit’, NPR, accessed 19 July 2022

Gordon N and McGregor G (29 June 2022) ‘As the Return-to-Office Debate Rages in the U.S. and Europe, the Matter is Already Settled in Asia’, Fortune, accessed 19 July 2022

Hsu A (5 June 2022) ‘The Idea of Working in the Office, All Day Every Day? No Thanks, Say Workers’, NPR, accessed 19 July 2022

Jagt R (2022) ‘COVID-19 and the Food Industry’, Deloitte, accessed 19 July 2022. www.deloitte.com/nl

Kay D (29 July 2021) ‘LinkedIn Allows Employees to Work Fully Remote, Removes In-office Expectation’, Reuters, accessed 19 July 2022

Kelly J (5 March 2022) ‘Twitter Employees Can Work from Home ‘Forever’ or ‘Wherever You Feel Most Productive and Creative’, Forbes Magazine, accessed 19 July 2022

Lim J (25 April 2022) ‘Some Firms Want Staff Back at Workplace, but Experts Warn Against Rushing Into It’, The Straits Times, accessed 19 July 2022

Mijnke F, Obermann W, and Hammers T (2022) ‘Impact of COVID-19 on the Hospitality Industry’, Deloitte, accessed 19 July 2022. www.deloitte.com/nl

Sherman A (8 March 2022) ‘Making Sense of Why Executives are Eager to get Employees Back in the Office’, CNBC, accessed 19 July 2022

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Niyati Pingali is currently completing her MA in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), focusing on governance and development policy. As a former corporate employee, she knows the cost and the benefits of capitalism and plans to dedicate her life to changing the narrative to ensure both people and the economy benefit equally: a feat that sounds impossible, but she knows can happen.

Transformative Methodologies | Changing minds and policy through collaborative research?

By ISS Blog Bliss 8 July 20224 January 2025 5131 views

Can collaborative research with marginalised communities be transformative, turning around unjust social relations, and supporting solidarity and rights in a practical sense? In this blog post, we (Jack Apostol, Helen Hintjens, Joy Melani and Karin Astrid Siegmann) reflect on this question based on our experience with the PEER approach, a participatory research methodology, that we used in a study on undocumented people’s access to healthcare in the Netherlands. The answer? We posit that the claim that social science methodologies can directly transform social realities, may be raising expectations too high, at least for the PEER approach. Yet, dissolving barriers between academic and non-academic knowers might be useful in itself, leading to greater respect for, and the amplification of the voices of marginalised people.

https://www.istockphoto.com/nl/foto/vluchtelingen-mensen-met-bagage-lopen-in-een-rij-gm921353784-253049275

What is PEER?

PEER stands for Participatory Ethnographic Evaluation and Research. The participatory aspect stems from the involvement of members of marginalised and stigmatised communities as co-researchers. It is used in contexts where it is essential to build trust, where new insights are needed, and where the underbelly of sensitive topics can be exposed through mostly non-directive (open-ended) interviews with hard-to-research and marginalised groups in society. Examples of such topics include research on sexual health, sex work, the illicit or informal economy, and refugees on the move.

PEER research on undocumented people’s access to healthcare

We used the PEER methodology to understand the puzzle of why undocumented people in the Netherlands rarely access healthcare, despite their health rights being formally guaranteed in Dutch and EU regulations. Our research team consisted of people based at universities, like Helen, Karin, and our colleague Richard Staring, and non-academic experts from a group of undocumented peer researchers, including Joy and Jack. Interview questions were developed within the team, with peer researchers knowing best how to address sensitive issues with other undocumented people. Once interviews were concluded, debriefing meetings with the peer researchers formed the starting point of our data analysis.

The benefits of the PEER methodology for accessing and learning from people, who have good reasons to remain under the radar, came out clearly in our study. Joy highlights trust as the main advantage of reaching out to fellow undocumented persons for an interview: “Undocumented people cannot trust anyone. But if we interview them, they know that we are undocumented, and they can open up easily. They can tell the real story, their own emotions, and experiences. Because they know, having the same situation, you can understand them, how they feel, their thoughts.”

Time constrains were tough for peer researchers for whom research came on top of their normal working day. Working as a domestic worker full time, Jack recalls: “I worked as a full domestic worker that time. I started my work from the morning until 6 in the afternoon. Attending workshops and meetings during the whole period of PEER research project were a challenge to me. Usually, I rushed to the evening meetings at ISS [International Institute of Social Studies] after my whole day work. This made me physically and mentally a bit tired to participate in the discussion and share my ideas. Sometimes, I came late due to extra work. But I ought to do it as part of my commitment to the project.”

Two PEER researchers simulating an interview during training, August 2014, The Hague

So can the PEER Methodology change minds, influence policy?

Contributing to social change clearly motivated Jack:

“First, I believed that the project was for the well-being of the undocumented migrants in the Hague. This was about a health issue which was vital for the interest of the undocumented migrants whose access to medical care had been hindered by lack of information, discrimination, and ignorance of some medical professionals about the existing health policy of the government.” But what is the actual potential of such collaborative research to transform the injustices that undocumented people experience? Jack soberly concludes that any broader impact depends on the political context: “Absolutely, a rightist government is against migrants. Any outcome of the research based on a PEER approach would not actually convince the rightist government to take initiatives to change their policy in favour of migrants.”

This suggests the practical limits of what one can realistically achieve with academic research under an illiberal dispensation. On its own, without a shift in attitudes, social research cannot shift policy parameters. As the saying goes, one can take a horse to water, one cannot make it drink! Yet PEER research does break down barriers. The status-quo that segregates undocumented people from the rest of society is challenged, as PEER researchers open doors to long-concealed stories of undocumented life in the midst of plenty. Those without status are respected experts in self-organisation, and can be supported to negotiate access to rights and services. In conclusion, one can highlight the vital transformative role played by migrant self-help organisations like Filmis and others, whose solidarity work has stepped up since the start of the COVID pandemic.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Jacob Apostol is the co-founder and the current president of the Filipino Migrant in Solidarity (FILMIS) Association. He is a human rights advocate.

Helen Hintjens has been interested in pro-asylum advocacy for about 40 years now. She is inspired by the self-advocacy of those confronting current deterrence-based policies on migration and asylum.

Melanie (Joy) Escano is the Vice-President of Migrant Domestic Workers Union. She is also the co-founder and the current public relation officer of the Filipino Migrant in Solidarity (FILMIS) Association.

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

Transformative Methodologies | A reflection on collaborative writing across sex worker organisations and academia

By ISS Blog Bliss 2 July 20224 January 2025 5300 views

We – members of Empower Foundation – a sex workers’ rights organisation in Thailand – and two scholar-activists from International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam (ISS) in the Netherlands, reflected on our experience of collaboration in light of our search for social transformation.

About us and what brought us together

Empower Foundation is a leading organisation in the defense of sex workers’ rights, and is located in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It has almost 40 years experience of working with creative and transformative methodologies – doing community-based research which then feeds into policy proposals, that are brought to the attention of governmental and international organisations, such as International Labour Organisation (ILO). It models best labor practices in their own ‘Can Do Bar’. Empower is the space for sex workers to exchange experiences, organise and create ways, often using art and culture, to inform and influence society on many issues, including the harms caused by anti-trafficking policy and practices.

What brought us together initially was the interest in bringing insights from labor studies – Karin’s area of research – on the one hand, and gender and sexuality studies – Silke’s field of expertise – on the other, in conversation with each other, in order to explore how that could contribute to proposals for structurally improving labor conditions of sex workers. Our first paper was on analysing ILO discussions around decent work, and how sex work and sex workers have been systematically excluded from conversations around the decent work agenda. It was in this context that in 2014 Silke and Karin contacted members of Empower Foundation that Silke had met the year before at an event co-organised with Mama Cash at ISS.

Trying to make a difference in the way we collaborate

While Silke and Karin had an initial idea about the paper, there was explicit room for adapting the focus, approach, and language. Neither of the three partners had experience in this kind of joint project, so we had an open conversation about the ways in which we wanted to collaborate from the beginning, thereby establishing some common guiding principles – that we would explore how to go about it along the way, keeping in mind that the contribution of the expertise and perspectives of Empower was crucial to the paper, both in terms of the kind of knowledge that we wanted to produce, as well as in terms of the social impact that we were seeking, namely, to improve sex workers’ labor conditions. We also agreed that Empower’s involvement could be more or less, depending on their availability, while our shared preference would be to have the collective as co-author.

This conversation was particularly important given the previous negative experience of working with academics. Liz Hilton from Empower Foundation summarised: “We’ve had one or two earlier experiences with people who wanted to collaborate and that was really terrible. The whole premise of collaboration was theft, of stealing our work.” Liz mentioned the importance of being aware of the differences in our language – “…not just the difference between Thai and English, but also the difference between sex worker language and academic language. We don’t see this as an obstacle, but it will be an adventure!”. The problem with academic jargon, as Empower also explained in a preparatory note for a meeting of sex workers organisations at ISS that took place at a later stage, is not that sex workers are not able to understand it, but that it does not reflect their experiences or realities properly, and it often operates with implicit assumptions that are problematic.

One common assumption in both academia and policy for instance is the conflation between sex work and trafficking that occurs when using the term “sexual exploitation”, to refer to what in any other economic sector would be called either “forced labor” or “labor exploitation”. Moreover, even within academic language, there were many different ways of talking about sex work with important political implications. Empower has published a dictionary that provides many examples of such – often problematic – assumptions and disconnects that occur. So, one of the first things that Silke and Karin asked was: how does (or doesn´t) the language that we use speak to members of Empower Foundation? In which ways do they think we should change it?

We also talked about timelines, and the need to adapt those to the realities of the different parties involved. For Empower, this compared positively with earlier collaborations with academics: “Other people that we were collaborating with didn’t want to give us the time to properly translate, think, come back to it, put forward what we can do, will do, and what we think. They were very rushed. Everybody has deadlines, we know that, but their rush was quite rude. They were continuously trying to fit us into what they already decided.”

Final reflections

We co-authored the paper that came out two years later. Empower Foundation made a tremendous contribution to the paper by critically analysing the language used, and by bringing in the findings of the community-based research that Empower was conducting independently – both through previous research on the adverse impact of anti-trafficking measures, published under the title “Hit and Run”, and the study on “Moving Toward Decent Sex Work”. This contributed towards a very nuanced and very tangible understanding of what decent work and labor exploitation means for sex workers in Thailand, by looking at these not as a binary, but as a continuum and as multidimensional.

Finally, and most importantly, in this process we developed a relationship of trust, friendship, and deep appreciation that became the basis for our further collaboration.

Now, has this collaboration lessened the precarity and contributed to more decent working conditions experienced by sex workers, as our chapter’s title suggests? Probably not. Yet, in a context in which sex workers’ knowledge about their lives and work is continuously devalued and ignored, we like to believe that a respectful collaboration that challenges these hierarchies of knowledge, and augments sex workers’ own voices can make a small, yet, meaningful contribution to a changed discourse on sex work – and ultimately to more respect and rights for them.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Sex Worker Networking Zone at the International AIDS Conference 2018, Amsterdam.” by junomac is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Empower Foundation is a Thai sex worker organization promoting opportunities and rights for sex workers for more than 30 years

Silke Heumann is a Sociologist and Assistant Professor (Senior Lecturer) in the Major Social Justice Perspectives (SJP). Her areas of expertise and interest are Gender and Sexuality Studies, Social Movements, Latin American Politics, Discourse Analysis and Social Theory.

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

From Awareness to Action: World Heritage in Young Hands

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 May 20224 January 2025 6441 views

At a workshop in Bulange, Uganda, held in August 2021 the focus was on how to engage youth in protecting, preserving, and promoting World Heritage. The goal was to sensitise youth about heritage through learning from past legacies, understanding what elders live with today, and what they will pass on to the future generations. With a focus on the UNESCO World Heritage Kasubi Tombs site (No.1022), this workshop was important because cultural and natural heritage are both invaluable sources for life and inspiration, that require actionable innovations to transmit heritage knowledge, create heritage-related employment, and preserve the moral development of societies, while promoting young people’s cultural and intellectual development in a globalised world. In this blog, I make the case for increasing grassroots funding for youth-led activities to protect and preserve heritage, as well as to integrate information computing technology (ICT) to help disseminate heritage knowledge globally in a variety of digital formats.

Tombs of Buganda Kings at Kasubi (Uganda) © UNESCO

What is World Heritage?

World heritage includes places as diverse and unique as the Pyramids of Egypt, the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador, the Taj Mahal in India, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the Grand Canyon in the USA, or the Kasubi Tombs in Uganda.[i] They are designated as places that are of outstanding universal value to humanity, and as such have been inscribed in the World Heritage List. Nevertheless, these sites face major problems, such as pollution, earthquakes, and other natural disasters, poaching, armed conflict and war, uncontrolled urbanisation, and unchecked tourist development. Young people, as the future generation, still lack knowledge to contribute to the sustainability of heritage in all forms. But they are the ones who can innovate, through local activities, that can offer potential solutions to protect, preserve, and promote Heritage around them. Moreover, they are also skilled at using new digital communications tools, which, if used effectively, can help in implementing concrete solutions to protect these sites.

As a UNESCO initiative, developed in 1998, the World Heritage in Young Hands Educational Resource Kit, for secondary school teachers, advances heritage sensitisation in schools as one approach towards raising awareness among youth.[ii] This has contributed to the transnational conception of heritage protection, preservation, and promotion. While providing a global tool for schools, those not enrolled are, however, excluded from various forms of engagement in preserving local, national, and world heritage. It is important to equally involve out-of-school youth in the protection of our common cultural as well as natural heritage through increasing youth-led initiatives to protect, preserve, and promote heritage.

Varying Forms of World Heritages

The UNESCO Convention concerning the protection of the World cultural and Natural Heritage[iii], describes heritage in varying forms – the cultural and natural heritage. These two, furthermore vary in the forms of tangible and intangible aspects. Tangible cultural heritage is movable and immovable. Immovables include archaeological sites, architectural works, historical centres, monuments, cultural landscapes, historical parks, and botanical gardens as well as sites of industrial archaeology. Movable tangible heritage on the other hand, includes museum collections, libraries, and archives. Examples of intangible cultural heritage include music, dance, literature, theatre, oral traditions, traditional performances, social practices, traditional know-how, crafts, cultural spaces, and religious ceremonies and for natural heritage. Examples of tangible and immovable heritage are natural and maritime parks of ecological interests, geological and physical formations, and landscapes of outstanding natural beauty.

Protect, Preserve, and Promote

In a UNESCO-funded workshop on “Empowering Ugandan Youth through Culture and Heritage” held in Bulange, Uganda, in August 2021, 35 cultural leaders discussed the role of youth in protecting, conserving, and promoting the Kasubi Tombs built in 1882 (UNESCO’s World Heritage Site No. 1022). Utilising the World Heritage in Young Hands Educational Resource Kit, they concluded that:

There is a risk that future generations no longer know much about cultural heritage preservation. If youth are not actively engaged in protecting and promoting heritage sites, they will sooner or later be littered with hotels, stadiums, and arcades that exploit the touristic potential of cultural sites.
We need to preserve heritage sites as an expression of humanistic values that ancestors created with the intention of telescoping them to the future, allowing generations to interpret their symbolic meaning, and investigate past customs of human interaction globally.
Heritage may not immediately appeal to younger generations. Still, knowledge gaps ought to be addressed, and misconceptions dispelled as an inclusive transition to promote an authentic heritage value system among youth.

The Youth Have Their Say

Workshop participants suggested that a regional transnational governance framework under UNESCO be supported, one that would be designed to promote a grassroots-based system driven by all categories of young people to enable them to act beyond awareness in support of promoting heritage. There could be a potential intra-regional role for the African Union in such an initiative.

While alternatives for young people to protect, preserve, and promote tangible heritage sites were made by speakers, it was also suggested that outreach initiatives such as using cartoons to mobilise youngsters in support of World Heritage protection and promotion be used. In addition, it was proposed that families engage young people in extra-curricular events such as excursions to nearby heritage places of interest, youth camps, cultural festivals, and exhibitions, as well as participate in role play activities to recreate traditional social events, such as processions, ceremonies, youth camps and festivals, using tradition to enable, integrate, and promote youth development for continued World Heritage preservation for future generations.

The way forward

Participants recommended various ways to move from sensitisation to action to protect, preserve, and promote world heritage from the perspective of youth engagement. Firstly, nation states should give responsibility for overseeing the security needs of cultural sites to youth through integrating them more into heritage management. While teaching based on the World Heritage kit by practitioners should include more about the provision of security as an essential factor for youth to innovate in relation to heritage related projects, global leaders should also ensure adequate budgets for heritage funds for youth to tap into and protect world heritage.

Moreover, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre should support custodians of heritage sites in transforming the intangible value of heritage sites into written descriptions. In addition, youth learning centres, or interpretive centres, should be constructed by nation states at bigger sites to facilitate the preservation of heritage. Lastly, there is an urgent need for better use of ICT and social media by Ministries of Culture among member states of UNESCO. This will facilitate the digitalisation of knowledge dissemination on heritage across the world, along with inviting youth to engage in diverse and creative ways for promotion, protection, and preservation of world heritage for the future generations.

[i] Definition of World Heritage by UNESCO. (see https://whc.unesco.org/en/faq/19/ retrieved on 11 November 2021)

[ii] UNESCO, World Heritage in Young Hands Educational Resource Kit for secondary school teachers (1998). The resource kit complement other initiatives including World Heritage Youth Forums, World Heritage Adventures cartoon series, Training seminars for educators on the use of the resource Kit, On-site skills-development courses for young people, workshops & conferences, and the World Heritage Volunteers initiative.

[iii] Varying Forms of Heritage are described in the UNESCO Convention concerning the protection of the World cultural and Natural Heritage (1972) see https://whc.unesco.org/en/conventiontext/. Retrieved on 06/12.2021

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Umar Kabanda holds a PhD and a master’s degree in Governance and Regional Integration, as well as a Post Graduate Diploma in Human Rights and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology. Currently he is the Managing Director of Kalube consults limited and a Policy leader Fellow with the School of Transnational Governance in the European University Institute in Italy.

Return of Military coups in Africa threatens Democratic gains achieved in past decades

By ISS Blog Bliss 12 May 20224 January 2025 5643 views

The recent coups d’état in Africa threaten the political stability and democratization trends achieved in the past decade in the post-independence era. History has shown that military coups directly impact the human development and economic growth of a country. This article analyses the root causes of these coup, often masterminded by the military regimes. Whereas the continent has achieved tremendous progress in building democratic institutions, in this blog I argue that the conditions for recurring coups have largely remained since the adoption of continental binding principles (Lome declarations, ACDEG). The African Union (AU) and regional economic communities (RECS) ought to be more pragmatic, bold and decisive in its approaches in promoting good governance agenda in Africa.

Guinea Military juntas led by Col.Mamady Doumbouya shortly overthrowing President Alpha Conde in Guinea. Source. Internet

Historically, the army has been a part and parcel in masterminding coup d’états in many African countries. Over the years, the continent through its governing body (AU) has worked towards strengthening capacity to discourage unconstitutional change of governments. However, these trends are seen to be making a comeback. In Sudan, in October 2021, Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan announced the dissolution of the civilian arm of a transitional government, set up just 2 years after we witnessed the coup d’état that overthrew the reign of long-serving leader Omar Al Bashir. Worrisome, that we witnessed similar events unfold on 5^th September 2021 in Guinea, where Guinean special forces army officers led by Col. Mamady Doumbouya overthrew the government of Alpha Conde, 83, who had secured the third term in office after successfully extending the presidential term limits while in office. In the neighboring country Mali, the military in 2021 dissolved the government twice within the space of one year. In Niger, an attempted coup was staged in March 2021, just days before the presidential inauguration ceremony. Likewise, in Chad, the Military Council, headed by former President Idriss Deby’s son, took over power and installed a new government after the assassination of the then President in office. Furthermore, we have witnessed several failed coups attempts in Ethiopia, the Central African Republic, South Sudan, and Burkina Faso. Much as these coups are inspired by several different contextual factors, one similarity that spans across the countries is that the military juntas often ride on the popular support from the frustrated and unemployed civilian population against the long-serving authoritarian leaders, who are deemed responsible for bad governance and lack of opportunities.

The African continent has experienced several coups d’états during the post-independence struggles. According to a report published by Cambridge University in 2003, Sub-Saharan Africa experienced 80 successfully staged coups, and 108 failed coup attempts between 1951 and mid-2020. During that time, only 30 incumbents were able to relinquish power peacefully after losing an election to opposing politicians, while 28 heads of state voluntarily left office after serving the legally allowed number of terms as President. In the past years, the leaders of coup d’état often credit their actions for toppling governments to reasons such as corruption, mismanagement/failure of governance, and poverty.

The plotters of recent coups have also echoed similar claims. In an interview by Reuters, Col. Mamadou Doubouya of Guinea cited “poverty and endemic corruption” as the reasons for removing President Alpha Conde from office. Likewise, in previous coups in Sudan and Zimbabwe, the Generals who removed Omar al-Bashir in 2019 and Robert Mugabe in 2017 respectively, made similar claims.

The coups are a reflection of deeper governance issues in the continent

The justifications made by coup plotters resonate with the current realities in many African countries. There is increasing frustration among the unemployed and uneducated young population that is yearning for participation in the governance process and access to economic opportunities. A report released by Afrobarometer in 2021 found that several citizens in sub-Saharan Africa acknowledged that governments are not matching the promises on service delivery, job creation for the youth, and the fight against corruption. Instead, there has been a considerable shrinking of civic space to demand these rights. We have witnessed an outrageous crackdown on freedom of expression, killings, arrest, and forced disappearance of dissenting views. These have instilled fear and mistrust between the government and the civilian population. As a result, young Africans are falling onto the promises of “coupes” army generals, who are forcefully assuming power with false hope for radical change, economic progress, and freedom — promises that often turn out to be short-lived.

Civilians took to the streets of Guinea capital Conakry after the overthrow of Alpha Conde. Source: BBC News

Even if assumed that there is a positive side to these coups, the important question is, whether popular support is enough to justify these coups? This has been a subject of contentious debate over the years, raising the uncomfortable dilemma of whether citizens can pursue undemocratic means to remove political leaders who entrench themselves in power through irregular methods and subversive use of the military. History shows that these military rulers govern no better than democratically elected leaders in Africa, and such interventions often come with great risks. The world has not forgotten the iron fist rule of army generals like Idi Amin, Babangida, Jean-Bedel Bokassa, and Sani Abacha who brought hope and excitement initially when they overthrew regimes, but with time, turned out to be monsters against their people. (McGowan: 2003:340).

Therefore, by condoning such an approach, Africa risks falling back to its darkest times in the post-colonial era characterized by lawlessness, instabilities, dictatorships, and relentless coups. Much as most of these coups have been met with popular jubilations on the streets by the disenchanted youth celebrating the fall of leaders who use unconstitutional methods to cling to power, this unconstitutional approach for transfer of power does not provide a better antidote.

Col.Mamody Doumbouya addressing the media after the Juntas took charge. Source; Aljazeera news

What can the African Union and RECs do?

The biggest continental body (The African Union) has been subject to criticism by its lack of teeth to bite when it comes to the enforcement of continental agreements. The existing framework drawback from 2000 when the propensity for staging coups had drastically increased, then, the Organization for African Unity (OAU), which was not known for getting involved in “internal affairs” of member states made an exception to toughen its measures to discourage unconstitutional change of government. The Union adopted a decree (Lome Declaration of 2000), which stipulates the suspension of any member states involved in unconstitutional change in government. This was followed by the adoption of The African Charter on Democracy, Election and Governance (ACDEG) framework to guide member states, regional economic communities (RECs) in building stable democratic institutions, rule of law, promoting good governance, and ensuring peace and security. To oversee the implementation of these ambitions, a secretariate was created, called The African Governance Architecture secretariate within the department of political affairs, to promote engagement and dialogue of member states on the adoption of better approaches to promote rule of law, consolidation of democratic institutions, ensuring good governance, and addressing the aspects of unconstitutional change of government in the continent.

However, for such a continent framework to achieve results, members states must work towards the commitments. Up to now, about 35 member states out of 55 have ratified the agreement. About 15 have shown interest through signing but have yet to ratify according to the primer published by the ECDPM think tank in 2022. Similarly, the greater task has been on enforcement by the governing body. Over the year, the African Union has been criticized for its inconsistency in responding to these coups. For example, David Zounmenou, the researcher at Institute for Security Studies (ISS) pointed out how the Union suspended Mali from AU and ECOWAS after the 2020 and 2021 coups, while Chad was allowed to remain in the AU, pending transition to civilian rule in the election. He argued that such inconsistency appears biased and perpetuates deliberate regime changes on the continent.

Another critique posited by Atta-Asamoah at a recent seminar on peace and security in Africa stated that the framework is only reactive, not preventative. Therefore, there is a need to uncover the root causes of these coups by asking questions as to why they happen and dismantling the breeding factors that encourage them.

African Union must strengthen its response mechanism to predict these coups. It must show that it can bite by punishing bad governance on the continent by toughening and applying sanctions indiscriminately on presidents who manipulate and extend constitutional term limits against the will of the people and calling out flawed elections which often leave citizens yearning for regime changes. These approaches will not only deter leaders from clinging to power, but will also reignite citizens’ trust towards using democratic means for seeking regime changes. Democracy can work for Africa, but its leaders ought to prioritise and practice good governance, adopt democratic principles, and hold free and fair elections to affirm and renew the faith of its citizens towards democratic transfer of power.

References

McGowan, Patrick J. “African Military Coups d’état, 1956-2001: Frequency, Trends, and Distribution.” The Journal of Modern African Studies, vol. 41, no. 3, Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 339–70, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3876235.

Downing, J. (2008) “Social Movement Theories and Alternative Media: An Evaluation and Critique,” Communication, Culture & Critique, 1(1), pp. 40–50. DOI: 10.1111/j.1753-9137.2007.00005.x.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Robert Okello is an ISS alumnus who attended the Human rights, Gender, and Conflict class of 2020-2021. He currently works as Policy Researcher with European Centre for Development Policy Management under the governance and accountability, working to build inclusive and sustainable development policy and cooperation between Europe and Africa.

The role of National Governments in delivering humanitarian-development-peace nexus approaches: a reflection on current challenges and the way forward

By ISS Blog Bliss 5 May 20224 January 2025 5125 views

The concept of humanitarian, development, peace (HDP) — referred to also as the triple nexus — gained momentum during the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016, and more recently with the wide adoption of the recommendations on the HDP nexus issues by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development – Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) in 2019.

The HDP nexus pushes for strengthening the links between humanitarian, development, and peace actors and actions in contexts of protracted settings, where all three forms of assistance overlap within the same communities. The focus on strengthening these links, however, is not new. For example, the discourse on ‘linking relief, rehabilitation, and development’ (LRRD) from the 1980s, also attempted to better align humanitarian and development activities. It was, however, critiqued because it saw aid as a linear process and lacked incentives for co-ordination, and focused primarily on the process of humanitarian agencies finishing their work, and development agencies taking over at some point. The triple nexus approach, on the contrary, pushes agencies and actors to improve co-ordination, collaboration, and coherence in order to increase aid effectiveness.

In this blog, I will explore the questions around engagement of national governments with triple nexus approaches. Specifically, I will look at (1) the importance of engaging with the national government; (2) existing challenges to this engagement; and (3) overcoming the challenges in engaging with the national government in relation to triple nexus approaches.

Wide acknowledgement for the need to engage with national governments

The overarching objective of the triple nexus approach is the prioritisation of better coordination and coherence between different actors and interventions in order to ‘end need’ and ‘leave no one behind’, thereby making the role of national governments a crucial element of this approach.

The Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) Results Group 4 in 2020 stated that “[National] Governments bear the primary responsibility to respond to disasters, protect their own populations, including displaced persons, abide by the refugee conventions, respect international humanitarian principles and law, and should drive the achievement of the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs [Sustainable Development Goals] in their country.”^[1] Additionally, the OECD-DAC Recommendation 2 advocates for the “appropriate resourcing to empower leadership for cost-effective coordination across the humanitarian, development, and peace architecture, by supporting local and national authorities, including legitimate non-state authorities wherever possible, and appropriate and in accordance with international law.” Still further, the IASC Results Working Group 4 in May 2020, in regard to the triple nexus, states that actions must be “in consultation with government and leaders in all three pillars both within and outside the UN system.”

Therefore, while on one hand, national governments are critical for moving from emergency relief to long-term peace and stability, on the other, national governments can pose a threat to this progress when they are party to the conflict. This then becomes a difficult, and often a political dilemma, to determine how, and to what extent, should national governments be involved in planning aid strategies and interventions.

Challenges in involving national governments

One of the major concerns with engaging national governments in triple nexus approaches is that they will manipulate the strategies and interventions to their advantage — primarily by using the resources for their own gain — and fail to prioritise the interests of the majority of citizens. According to Berebi and Thelen (2011), aid, when given directly to affected population(s), rather than through unstable and potentially corrupt governments, can prove more effective. This is especially true for contexts dominated by conflict, where aid absorption is far less likely than in contexts that are safer and more secure.

This, however, raises an important dilemma— should a triple nexus approach sidestep government to focus on the need for more and better co-ordination in other areas? Purposely disengaging with the government in the spirit of more effective aid in the short and long-term, however, signals a lack of confidence in the national government, and thus, may cause more harm than good.

For example, according to a United Nations report from 2021 focused on South Sudan, since 2018, there has been more than an estimated $73 million, which has gone missing or been syphoned off by various government officials and bodies. In fact, from the recent interviews, which I conducted in November 2021, there is evidence that there has been an increase in tensions between both international and national non-governmental organisations in South Sudan and the national government. This is reportedly because more and more international donors are side-stepping from working with and depending on the government, for ensuring distribution of funds to specific project interventions. Whenever possible, the funds, instead, go directly to the national NGOs and project implementers. In cases where the national and regional governments are involved, the money meant to reach the intended beneficiary is not only often delayed but is also deficient in the intended amount. This issue becomes even more complex when related to implementing a multi-component initiative, that may require several different government ministries to work together efficiently and effectively.

Moving forward

While this is only one issue of aid in the context of fragile and protracted settings when engaging with national governments, it is nonetheless, a very important one. For the triple nexus approach, I would argue that the national government, like all entities, is made up of different people with varying interests. Therefore, when engaging across actors and actions, a process of discernment, by international actors, should be a priori, in finding those individuals in government who are invested in meaningful change — focused on meeting the needs of the community and the country in a way that builds long-term peace and stability.

A triple nexus approach, therefore, must assess different levels of engagement, that balance information sharing with proactive engagement within government bodies to determine the best way of engagement. Those using a triple nexus approach, must recognise that in pulling together humanitarian, peace, and development actors and actions, it may mean that they are encouraging and promoting inter-governmental collaboration, co-ordination, and coherence, that might be weak or non-existent.

On a positive note, however, encouraging working relationships between different ministries can also become a conduit for them to see the benefits of more co-ordinated responses that are focused on immediate relief, as well as ensuring the long-term peace and development of the country. In essence, the triple nexus approach can provide an opportunity for supporting positive inter- and intra-government working relationships.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

Summer Brown is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Her research focuses on how Humanitarian and Peacebuilding interventions work together from the perspective of National non-governmental organisations in South Sudan. She takes on consulting work focused primarily on the HDP nexus and conflict sensitivity respectively. Some of her clients include the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Mott MacDonald’s Girls Education in South Sudan programme, International Alert, Islamic Relief, Christian Aid and Caritas Switzerland.

Gender Studies is yet to make its mark among university students in Pakistan: Findings from a study on perceptions and attitudes towards gender studies among students in Quaid-i-Azam University, Pakistan.

By ISS Blog Bliss 28 April 20224 January 2025 7540 views

Since 2010 I have been working as a lecturer at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at the Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan. I am also pursuing a Ph.D. degree in Sociology, with my research focusing on understanding the challenges and opportunities related to offering gender studies as an academic discipline in universities in Pakistan. Moreover, I will also be joining the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) as external Ph.D. candidate beginning in May 2022.

Main Entrance Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Credit: Ghulam Mustafa GMG, November 2021

Quaid-i-Azam University is a public university, established in July 1967 under the Act of National Assembly, and offers research programs for PhD and MPhil degrees across several disciplines. The university is renowned internationally, and attracts many foreign students, although gaining an admission is fairly competitive. However, the student body is quite diverse, with students from across Pakistan enrolled at the university.

The master’s program in Gender Studies was first started in 2008 at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies^[i]. The data show that between 2008-2020, more women (252) applied to study gender studies than men (220). Moreover, overall, the total number of students who applied for gender studies increased after 2008, although there was also a decline observed in the number of students who enrolled in the program in 2015.

Myths and misconceptions associated with Gender Studies among students

The data to examine perceptions towards the discipline of gender studies has been gathered from show that between 2008-2020, only 37% students outlined gender studies as their first choice for field of study in university application. While it is unsettling to see such low interest among young people towards this discipline, these findings not only reflect the low awareness and commitment in Pakistan toward gender justice, but also illuminate how factors such as merit, affirmative action, and broader socio-cultural dynamic in Pakistan contributes towards certain academic disciplines being perceived as less important or prestigious than others.

One possible reason for this interesting enrolment trend could be that new study programs usually garner a lot of attention initially from students, but gradually the numbers decline as students begin to question the market utility of the degree, particularly if there is a sizeable number of past students who remain unemployed post-graduation, with bleak prospects for employment. Another reason could be the considerable reduction in the higher education budget in Pakistan in the past few years, leading to limited financial aid and scholarship support for new students. There is also the additional factor of master’s degree programs all over Pakistan, since 2020, being replaced by four-year bachelor’s degree programs, thereby translating into additional cost of pursuing higher education for students across Pakistan.

As part of this study, I also conducted in-depth interviews with students to further unpack the enrolment trend and perceptions held by students towards gender studies as a discipline. I have categorised these perceptions into the following themes:

Assuming that studying gender studies makes one a feminist

The foremost assumption among the new students is that gender studies, as a field, is limited to studying about patriarchy and social construction of gender, and hence focusing on these issues makes one a feminist. Feminism and feminist activism are some of the most controversial terms in the context of Pakistan, viewed as being against the Pakistani society and harming its social fabric. Moreover, feminist activism, soon after the emergence of Pakistan as an independent state, has remained confined largely within the bounds of bourgeois respectability, thereby misunderstood, and sometimes even despised, by the masses. As a result, students are often oblivious or unaware about the richness of this discipline and its diversity. In this sense then, teaching gender studies has become a deconstructive project (Bari 1996).

Misplaced focus on jargon rather than lived experiences by the students and teachers

In term papers, students are often more concerned about using terminology and jargon, instead of grasping a deeper understanding of concepts such as social constructionism, feminism, and patriarchy. In other words, pedagogy in our context involves unpacking these assumptions. Adding to Dr. Bari reflections, I point out that at times teachers’ in terms of assignments, reflection papers, and critical essays from students are unrealistic as they come with a specific cultural baggage and presuppositions. It is true that students feel burdened to use certain type of language and jargons, hence feeling burdened by the discipline rather than enjoying it.

Low market utility of a degree in gender studies

Concerns related to employability of a gender studies degree in the job market are highlighted in the lived experiences of students pursuing gender studies. For example, one of the respondents from the study shared:

“Where we will go for a job after this degree. The development sector has already shrunk in Pakistan, and gender studies is not being offered at college level. What is its scope after college?” Our concern is a job after all our parent’s will not feed us throughout the life and we have seen that most of our seniors in gender studies are not doing any job, they have no work.

Gender studies perceived as not relevant to daily life

Another important perception related to gender studies was the belief that the discipline doesn’t relate to their lived experiences. As one student noted:

“If the research and theory is not produced in our own local context, then this whole exercise is detached from our society, and it is less relevant for us.’’

In fact, some students also claimed that gender studies, as a discipline, was a form of western propaganda, with little relevance to their daily life. Moreover, it is also important to note that such misconceptions persist event among students pursuing other degree programs at the university. They question the relevance of gender studies as an academic discipline, given that they are unaware of what it entails, as it is not a subject that is offered during undergraduate studies in Pakistan.

Perceived judgment from fellow students

Most students reported feeling judged by fellow students from other socials sciences departments because of the course content, with a common assumption being that the focus of the discipline is primarily on teaching about sexuality. As one student shared: “He considered it [gender studies] to be useless.”

Increasing awareness about Gender Studies key to making it more accessible

It can be concluded that discernments, disillusions, and self-transformation struggles are important for a newly emerged discipline. However, we have now had gender studies at the graduate level in Pakistan for 30 years, and there is an urgent need to devise and implement strategies to address these myths and misperceptions about the discipline. For instance, introduction of gender studies at the undergraduate level across Pakistani universities can help increase awareness about the discipline and address the associated stigma and misbeliefs. In this context, in-depth interviews with educators and policymakers can also help identify ways to incorporate ownership and state patronage to this discipline.

Moreover, to increase awareness about gender studies within the university, organising engaging events and session, such as reading groups or movie screenings can help students from across disciplines not only learn more about gender studies, but also encourage them to see and understand, in a relatable way, its relevance to their own life, and to that of their communities. Lastly, valuing students with this degree in the job market, by increasing access to job opportunities for gender studies graduates across different sectors – non-profits, policy jobs, education, healthcare, etc. – can encourage current and future students to build a stable and inspiring career with a gender studies degree.

Bibliography

Ahmed, A. (2019, December 17). DAWN. Retrieved from dawn.com/news.

Bari, D. (1996, April). Women’s Studies: a Cause betrayed? Islamabad, ICT, Pakistan.

Khan, R. A. (2021). From Antagonism to Acknowledgment: Development of Gender and Women’s Studies as Academic Discipline in Pakistan. Progressive Research Journal of Arts and Humanities, 3(1), 171-185.

^[i] Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

Rabbia Aslam is currently working as a lecturer at the Centre of Excellence in Gender Studies at the Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan for more than ten years. She is enrolled in Ph.D. Sociology at Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad. With an Academic background in Sociology and Gender, her research and teaching areas include Violence, Sociology of Knowledge, Sociology of Gender, bifurcation in the Education system, Post and Decolonial thinking in Pakistan. She writes for newspapers and blogs as well. She has been a speaker for national and international forums, also has been part of international projects. She will be joining ISS as an external Ph.D. candidate in May 2022.

Addressing threats to scholars on the ground demands proactive measures from Academic institutions: Notes from fieldwork in Kashmir

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 April 202230 November 2025 4999 views

Fieldwork is the most critical, and perhaps, the most demanding component of research, especially in difficult and hazardous contexts such as active conflict zones or nations with authoritarian regimes.

I started my fieldwork in June 2021, at a time when India was slowly recovering from a severe second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic that had also affected the disputed region of Kashmir, where I was undertaking my research on the rise of anti-state socio-political movement in relation to the restructuring of land relations in this restive Himalayan valley. Although the entire region had been put under a strict lockdown – restricting public mobility and access to government offices – I steadily began my fieldwork.

I had been cautious in interacting with people and gathering data because of the sensitive nature of my research and the region’s extensive hyper surveillance. Despite being a native of the place, I found it difficult to have people talk to me on record or being interviewed. At the time, there was a massive clampdown on political activists, human rights defenders, journalists, and lawyers who were critical of the state.

Despite my cautious approach, I soon found myself under investigation by state police, who started querying for information about me from my family, friends, and acquaintances. They even visited my home to take my picture and additional information. It was suggested that I put my research on hold and resume it after the situation had calmed down. While the situation was still unravelling, I remained unaware of the extensiveness of the problem of state surveillance and continued traveling to different parts of the valley.

However, it became clear in the first week of September that I was not only facing the possibility of being detained by the state, but that the sensitive data that I had collected was also at risk of being accessed by state agencies, which would not only have violent consequences for me, but would also jeopardize the safety of my interviewees. The situation had escalated after the residences of four of my fellow journalists were raided by the police, and their documents, books, and phones were confiscated. As the state police was widening its crackdown, I was informally being informed from different sources that I was also at risk of police search and questioning.

Current pre-fieldwork protocols inadequate to ensure researchers’ safety on the ground

Given that state authorities often confiscate all electronic devices, including phones, computers, and hard drives, and force you to give up all passwords as part of the interrogation process, I discovered few resources for protecting and securing research data in such scenarios. As a researcher, I knew I had very little legal options and protections.

I was also informed that my name had appeared on the list of three dozen researchers, scholars, journalists, and activists that had been put on the ‘no-fly’ list and faced the risk of passport cancellation. As a researcher, I had followed all the required procedures to ensure that the research I was undertaking was done in an ethical, responsible, and safe manner. However, when I became aware of the state machinery creeping in on me, all the existing guidelines and protocols appeared inadequate.

The data and privacy management plans the institutions expect researchers to follow fail to include the possibilities of scholars facing detention or confiscation of their research material, especially when researchers can be detained without trials even on the flimsiest pretext of holding contact details of an interviewee or a document deemed ‘anti-state.’

It appears that the pre-fieldwork safety evaluation does not reflect the possibility of incarceration, material seizure, or travel prohibitions. These assessments, it appears, only look at the level of threat, nature of possible hazards, and ethical issues. There is no training to prepare or inform scholars what to expect from the institutions in situations where they are detained or restricted from traveling..

Prioritising researchers’ safety is possible with bold and proactive measures by academic institutions

Conducting research has become increasingly difficult for many scholars in growingly illiberal and authoritarian countries like India, where scholars are actively targeted. Recently, an anthropologist at University of Sussex, Filippo Osella, was denied entry and deported from the country. Many others have been jailed and remain incarcerated for years. Many scholars, especially from Kashmir, who study in universities across the globe have faced intimidations and raids from state agencies, with many unable to return to even visit families, let alone conduct any research. The government is actively censoring all forms of research to erase the facts, and their documentation, on the ground.

As scholars, these are critical challenges to address, given that governments are increasingly targeting researchers, thereby making it harder to undertake any kind of study, especially those deemed critical of the state.

One conceivable agreement that universities and critical research institutes like the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) can establish is to set up mechanisms with governments, through their embassies or other state organisations, that make them the guarantor of academicians’ and researchers’ safety, especially for those undertaking research in places like Kashmir. Universities must make governments pledge their support for establishing such mechanisms through legally binding bonds or MOUs.

If such requests to ensure safety of scholars are not met, institutes must discontinue undertaking any research in countries that refuse to ensure the safety of scholars and academics. This will guarantee that the government doesn’t only say it’ll provide a safe atmosphere for researchers to undertake research, but also holds them accountable if something goes wrong. This idea will be key for securing protection of scholars and academics, who otherwise lack any immunity from the state onslaught.

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 April 20224 January 2025 5082 views

In response to the social and psychological suffering caused by humanitarian emergencies, aid organisations implement ‘mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS)’. However, interestingly enough, academic research in MHPSS tends to only look at individual and psychological outcomes. This blog post outlines what social outcomes can be found in programme documents of aid organisations, and how we can improve the way we research these outcomes.

https://pixabay.com/nl/vectors/mentaal-therapie-counseling-mensen-6841357/

Mental health and psychosocial support

Armed conflict, disaster, displacement, and other humanitarian emergencies can cause great social and psychological suffering. These crises, as can be seen in Yemen, Ukraine, Ethiopia, and many other countries in the world, lead to loss of lives and homes, and rip families and communities apart. To heal trauma and rebuild social fabric, a wide variety of interventions are implemented under the heading of ‘mental health and psychosocial support’ (MHPSS). This response includes any type of support ‘that aims to protect or promote psychosocial well-being and/or prevent or treat mental disorder’ (Inter-Agency Standing Committee Guidelines, 2007). MHPSS starts from the recognition that the psychological and the social are closely interconnected. Examples of interventions include clinical mental health care, psychological first aid, and child friendly spaces. These interventions reflect the aim to address a great variety of needs – from building support through social networks to reducing anxiety with medicine. Approaches are moreover based on the availability of resources (i.e., access to healthcare facilities, community-based structures) in specific contexts. Given the protracted nature of humanitarian crises, as well as the increase in global attention to MHPSS, it is crucial to understand the way the psychological and social interact. Our study therefore reviewed the literature on the social outcomes of MHPSS (Ubels, Kinsbergen, Tolsma & Koch, 2022).

Researching the social outcomes

The ample academic research into MHPSS has a tendency to only look at individual and psychological outcomes. As a result, academic studies so far contribute to only a partial understanding of the impact of MHPSS interventions. We, therefore, turned to the programme documents of aid organisations. After reviewing 95 documents, it becomes apparent that aid organisations are more advanced in mapping social outcomes than academic institutions. Various types of social outcomes could be drawn from the literature. For example, strengthening cohesion within communities was a regularly found aim or outcome of interventions. This may be particularly relevant for contexts wherein host and refugee communities live in close proximity to each other. Improving personal relations and socio-economic positions were similarly recurring themes. We can think of families who are reunited after conflict and need to reinvent their family dynamics, or individuals who lost their livelihoods and are in need of social support to find economic resources. This information can help guide academic research, in showing which social outcomes deserve attention or should be further examined. Whilst the reviewed documents resulted in a useful overview, they lacked rigorous analysis (i.e., no inclusion of definitions, description of mechanisms to reach outcomes and measurement instruments).

Finding the ‘social’ in researching mental health and psychosocial support

The recommendations resulting from our study can briefly be summed up by looking at the following conceptual model we developed to enable systematic research:

(Ubels, Kinsbergen, Tolsma & Koch, 2022)

We should, first, make a distinction between individual and social level outcomes, and define which outcomes are being targeted by specific MHPSS interventions. Second, we should explain why we think the intervention can reach these particular outcomes. This includes direct outcomes (path A and B), but also changes over time (path C and D) and interactions between social and individual outcomes (path E and F). Third, we should find methods to ensure we properly measure outcomes, drawing tools from social sciences, medicine, and psychology. Fourth, we should find ways to also document the (positive and negative) unintended outcomes of interventions (Ubels, 2020).

Our mental health cannot be understood in isolation, so where is the ‘social’ in researching mental health and psychosocial support? Only through improving our understanding of the social outcomes of MHPSS, we can know its full possible impact. This will ultimately lead us to do more justice to the lived realities of people affected by humanitarian emergencies.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Tessa Ubels is a PhD candidate at the Anthropology and Development Studies department of Radboud University and affiliated to the Interuniversity Centre for Social Science Theory and Methodology.

Russian citizens under threat from within: The increasing repression of anti-war voices in Russia

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 April 20224 January 2025 5559 views

Amid continued international condemnation and sanctioning of Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, voices opposing the war can be heard within Russia too. However, Russian citizens are exposed to an increasing risk of repression due to excessive state control over their opposition to the war, and the institutional manipulation that justifies the invasion and criminalises anti-war voices.

As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues, individuals, organisations, and governments around the world have condemned the Putin regime and are calling for an immediate end to the war. While every voice is precious, of particular note, however, are the voices against the war blossoming inside Russia. Russian citizens are taking political action, individually and collectively, to express their opposition to the devastating actions of the Putin regime. For example, not only did an online petition in Russia, initiated by a human rights activist, demanding an end to the war garnered more than 1.5 million signatures in just a few days, but also sizeable anti-war protests continue to be held in cities across the country.

Anti-war protests in Russia are not a one-time event, but have rather continued as a series of popular political actions targeting the Putin government. However, their action often ends badly. In late February, thousands of Russian citizens started a protest, and more than 1,700 people in 54 cities were detained by the police under the charge of conducing illegitimate protests. Since 24 February, over 15,000 people have been detained for anti-war actions, according to the OVD-Info, an independent Russian media outlet on human rights and political repression. Anyone – children, ordinary adults, independent reporters, opposition politicians, and activists who openly criticise the invasion – can fall into a cycle of intimidation, detention, and criminal prosecution. The police in Moscow even took two women and five children to a police station for holding placards displaying the words ‘No War’ and attempting to place flowers in front of the Ukrainian Embassy.

The Putin regime is, now, more boldly directing the institutional conditions to its advantage to justify the invasion and to silence anti-war voices. This month, the Putin regime enacted laws that identify independent reporting or public opposition to the war as crimes of spreading false information, and which are subject to up to 15 years imprisonment. Also, recent provisions added to the Criminal Code and to the Code of Administrative Offences criminalise criticisms of the activities of the Russian Armed Forces, and are linked to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine. The authorities nip public protests in the bud by pre-emptively hindering organisers and independent media outlets from sharing details on protest plans with others, and by imposing heavy fines for disseminating information on the ‘illegal’ action of holding a protest.

Through these measures, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is legitimised, at least at the institutional level, whereas public opposition and criticism of the invasion are framed as illegitimate. In this context, Russian citizens raising their voices against the war are particularly exposed to a greater risk of repression and being perceived as law-breakers. Therefore, the language of ‘false information’ and ‘undermining the Russian army’ incorporated into the set of legal documents significantly confines the scope of political action that citizens can engage in, free of the threat of punishment.

According to Freedom House, Russia is categorised as a ‘Not Free’ country, scoring 19 out of 100 — 5/40 in ‘Political Rights’ and 14/60 in ‘Civil Liberties’. These relatively low scores imply that rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and media were being circumscribed even before the invasion of Ukraine. In 2012, Russia put a law into effect that drastically increased the fines for protesters violating public order rules — fines increased nearly 150 times, from 2,000 roubles to 300,000 roubles (approximately 2,000 euros), and up to one million roubles (approximately 7,500 euros) for protest organisers. Furthermore, several rounds of legislative amendments since 2014 have led to even non-violent protest organisers and participants experiencing severe and frequent curtailment of freedoms, leading to questions about the extent and conditions under which even peaceful protests are identified as unlawful by the Russian authorities.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr. Seohee Kwak is a Guest Researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). Her academic interests include political rights, contentious political action, authoritarian/democratic politics, and state-society relations.

Reforming the international financial system is no act of charity

By ISS Blog Bliss 29 March 20224 January 2025 5230 views

Rolph van der Hoeven and Rob Vos are the authors of a chapter* of the recently published book ‘COVID-19 and International Development’. In this blog, they elaborate on their chapter, which is about the international financial system. They urge governments worldwide to implement four reforms, necessary to create more fiscal space and access to adequate external finance for developing countries.

Deep inequalities in pandemic response capacity

The global economic crisis provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic has painfully revealed the fundamental flaws in the international financial and fiscal system (IFFS). While advanced countries could engage in massive fiscal and monetary support measures, low- and middle-income countries lacked such capacities and were hit disproportionally. During the first year of the pandemic (2020), advanced countries provided fiscal stimuli to the tune of 12.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on average. This was three times more in relative terms than the stimulus in emerging and other middle-income countries, and almost 10 times more than governments in low-income countries could provide (Figure 1). This divergence in government support mimicked the inequality in vaccine roll-out.

Figure 1. Fiscal and monetary support in response to COVID-19, as of January 2021

**Source**: Van der Hoeven and Vos (2022), based on data from IMF (2021), Fiscal Monitor, Database of Country Fiscal Measures in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Four reforms to overcome financing flaws

As with past crises, a lack of adequate contingency financing forced poorer nations to take a big hit with lasting consequences. While high-income countries could engage in massive, and almost costless fiscal and monetary expansion, low-income countries saw their external debts increase to severe distress levels. In addition, they were forced to devalue their currencies, and curtail economic and social support programs. Consequently, an estimated 100 million to 150 million more people faced hunger during 2020, lifting the total number of people with not enough to eat to 810 million.^[1]

The lack of fiscal space and access to adequate external finance for developing countries has its origins in the weaknesses of the International Financial and Fiscal System (IFFS). These structural weaknesses demand four urgent reforms, outlined below:

Establish credible mechanisms for international tax coordination.

Such mechanisms would include, among other things, an internationally agreed, uniform corporate tax rate of approximately 25% to stop tax base erosion. This tax rate would hinder multinational companies shifting their profits to tax havens. Improved tax coordination should further include mandated publication of data on offshore wealth holdings. This would enable all jurisdictions to adopt effective progressive wealth taxes and facilitate the monitoring of income taxes effectively paid by the super wealthy. After years of deliberations, the G20 indeed agreed to a proposal for uniform corporate tax treatment in 2021. Unfortunately, at 15%, the rate is still significantly lower than we proposed, thereby falling short of making a more significant impact on boosting tax revenues and on limiting profit-shifting behaviour.^[2]

Establish a multilaterally backed sovereign debt workout mechanism.

Although existing mechanisms to renegotiate sovereign debts with private creditors have improved over the years, they are still far from adequate. This is due to the multiplicity of debt contracts, some of which are not subject to collective action clauses. These collective action clauses are perceived as preventing more drastic action in cases of crises; without them bonds could potentially lose a great amount of their value. A global institutional mechanism to renegotiate sovereign debts should, therefore, be put in place as soon as possible. To this day, sovereign debt solvency problems continue to be solved in an ad-hoc fashion, at little favourable terms to debt-distressed countries. Moreover, they are accompanied by policy conditionality. This leads to unnecessary hardship in affected countries.^[3]

Reform of policy conditionality attached to International Monetary Fund (IMF) contingency financing.

While the IMF has recognized the need for enhanced public spending by developing country governments, including those facing debt distress, in practice, however, it continues providing pro-cyclical policy advice. This means that the IMF asks for fiscal restraint, rather than deficit spending when economies are in recession.

Increasing the availability of truly international liquidity by increasing Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) and making these available to developing countries.

As an important step in this direction, the IMF approved the issuance of US $650 billion in new SDRs in June 2021. However, no agreement has yet been reached regarding how these additional SDRs should be allocated to developing countries, and how they can leverage additional investment to foster sustainable development. Had such reforms been in place already, the pandemic response would have provided a fairer level playing field for emerging and developing countries. This would have mitigated the pandemic’s worst economic consequences.

Conclusion

None of these reforms should be seen as acts of charity. They are necessary to facilitate a global economic recovery that is both sustainable and equitable. As in past crises, government leaders have acted with a ‘me first’ attitude, as has been blatantly clear in the roll-out of vaccination programs. Some countries perceived this as a return to protectionism. This form of protectionism was evident in the unprecedented fiscal responses of high-income countries to protect the livelihoods of their own citizens, but which woefully disregarded the fate of people in low-income countries. The governments of those countries did not have the means to protect the livelihoods of their citizens to the same extent. Beggar-thy-neighbour policy responses, however, will affect global prosperity in the long term, and will make the Sustainable Development Goals elusive.

^[1] Laborde, D., Martin, W. and Vos, R. (2021) Impacts of COVID-19 on Global Poverty, Food Security and Diets, Agricultural Economics 52(3) https://doi.org/10.1111/agec.12624, and FAO, IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO. 2021. The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2021. Transforming food systems for food security, improved nutrition and affordable healthy diets for all. Rome: FAO. https://doi.org/10.4060/cb4474en

^[2] A. Cobham, 2021 Is today a turning point against corporate tax abuse? Tax Justice Network, 4 June 2022

^[3] INET. (2021). The pandemic and the economic crisis: A global agenda for urgent action (Interim report of the commission for global economic transformation). Institute for New Economic Thinking. https://www.ineteconomics.org/research/research-papers/the-pandemic-and-the-economic-crisis-a-global-agenda-for-urgent-action

Note

*This blog is based on: Rolph van der Hoeven and Rob Vos (2022), ‘Reforming the International Financial and Fiscal System for better COVID-19 and Post-Pandemic Crisis Responsiveness’, Chapter 2 in Papyrakis, E.(ed.). COVID19 and International Development, Springer

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Rolph van der Hoeven is Professor of Employment and Development Economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

Rob Vos is Director of Markets, Trade and Institutions Division at the International Food Policy Research Institute.

Border communities in Nigeria continue to remain unsafe: Are border security forces to blame?

By ISS Blog Bliss 23 March 20224 January 2025 5636 views

Imeko border town remains a significant border area in Nigeria, due to the sizeable economic activity that is carried out there, which contributes to the country’s revenue base. However, despite the economic benefit that the border area provides Nigerian states, it remains marginalised and in a state of heightened insecurity. This article argues that the large presence of various Nigerian security forces, has in no way, ameliorated the security situation in the border area. However, this anomaly can be addressed if proper monitoring of the border area is carried out by relevant authorities.

Marginalisation of border communities in Nigeria: the case of Imeko

Globally, border communities have a long history of marginalisation. These are communities situated on the edge of formal states. Inhabitants of these communities continue to remain the victims of various forms of criminality that occur at the borders, mostly because of a lack of police presence or failure of the security personnel posted to such locations to perform their duties. In Nigeria, border communities have faced various forms of marginalisation, which results mainly from the lack of basic infrastructure like schools, hospitals, health care facilities, potable water and, importantly, protection. Border regions in Nigeria are notoriously dangerous due to cross-border criminalities ranging from smuggling and trafficking activities to the presence of terrorist organisation i.e. the Boko Haram mainly found in the North-Eastern region of the country.

A case in point is the border town of Imeko in Nigeria. Imeko is a traditionally recognisable Yoruba town densely populated in southwest Nigeria, close to the country’s border with Benin. Most of its inhabitants are farmers, hunters, and traders who take part in predominantly informal cross-border trade (ICBT) activities, otherwise viewed by the government as smuggling, which hence serves as a justification for the deployment, by the government, of a Special Force, known as the Joint Border Patrol, at the border town to curtail such activities.

When I visited Imeko in April 2021 and interviewed inhabitants for my study on the perpetual marginalisation of Imeko border town, it became evident that this border area has been challenged in many ways, ranging from a lack of basic infrastructure to failure to protect the citizens of the border communities. Aside from the fact that they are neglected by the government, there are instances where projects are being approved in the community’s name at the national level, without the community leadership even being informed. As revealed by a local, who was also my guide, the majority of the few schools in the town were built by the community itself before the government took over their management. Yet, these schools are not in good shape, and are short-staffed. An example is the Nazareth High School, where the current Oba^[1] of Imeko taught before he became a traditional ruler.

The double burden of marginalisation and violence in Imeko

However, what is perhaps most concerning is how insecure the border area is. Given that Imeko is foremost an agrarian community, the presence of nomadic or semi-nomadic Fulani^[2] herdsmen, who roam the region with their cattle, has been a curse according to farmers I interviewed, who claimed that the cattle had destroyed their farmland. Complaints from the people to the security forces stationed in the community about this, and other issues, have fallen on deaf ears, even after the traditional ruler’s interventions. In fact, there have been accounts of complainants being arrested by police officers instead, on the grounds that they are not being accommodating of the Fulani herdsmen, and have also been made to pay for their release from police custody.

While the traditional ruler plays an important role in ensuring that the community mobilises its local resources and strategies to address issues facing the community, the constant state of insecurity puts a strain on the limited resources, given the failure of the police and other security forces, deployed in the border town, to ensure the security of life and property, and the prevention of various forms of cross-border criminalities. For example, Figure 1 and 2 below, show burnt vehicles and motorcycles, often used by the local guards when on a search mission for kidnapped persons in the forest.

Figure 1: Motorcycles burnt by their attackers

Source: My Guide, April 12, 2021(Imeko Town)

Figure 2: Cars burnt by their attackers

Without sufficient protection from the police and other security forces in the area, these acts of violence are likely to continue. It is also worth noting that such violence continues even though this border area is heavily securitised by the government due to cross-border activities that are carried out along the borders such as importation, smuggling, and human trafficking. In fact, at the time of my visit, there were more than fifty checkpoints manned by heavily armed security officers along the stretch of road between Kara (an area known for cattle market in Abeokuta), some 90 kilometres away from Imeko border town. This further confirms the assertion by various researchers of the entrenchment of the border guards and security personnel in the potent mix of poverty and corruption that plagues the border areas.

Are border security forces to blame?

Thus, this also raises the question about the role of the security forces towards addressing the issue of kidnappings of innocent civilians in the border area. Can their presence make a difference? Or are they complicit in the kidnappings? On various occasions, community members, traders, and skilled workers have been kidnapped. While some were released after paying huge sums as ransom, others were found dead.

Based on the interviews I conducted, I concluded that despite the presence of security forces, they are not likely to make a difference, as they are only focused on cross-border activities, while completely neglecting the problems that face communities in the border region. One would assume that the presence of the police and other security forces on the long stretch of road, and in the border town, should have brought some level of safety to the people, however, the opposite has been the case, as the border communities see the deployment of the security forces as part of the problem. Instead of protecting them, the security forces are perceived as aiding and engaging in smuggling activities themselves. According to some locals, while the locals who go to buy items such as rice, cereals, and vegetable oil for personal consumption across the border are stopped by security operatives and their items are confiscated, smugglers are known to offer and pay bribe to the same security forces, sometimes right in the presence of the locals, and are then allowed to drive off with impunity.

Moreover, most robbery and kidnappings happen on the road which is manned by heavily armed security operatives. According to one kidnapping victim, who had been kidnapped in 2019, he was not only dispossessed of huge sum of money which he went to withdraw in Abeokuta, but he was also a witness to women being sexually assaulted, by those he identified as Fulani herdsmen. Therefore, the people in the border communities feel that if this has been happening over the years, and it has not been addressed, then the presence of the security forces manning various check points on the road is futile. During my time in Imeko, I also observed that as you move into the border town, immigration officers who check foreigners, mostly Fulani, were willing to take bribes from those who did not have any official identification. Even at the checkpoints for items such as rice, cereals, and vegetable oils, officers demanded bribes from the drivers and traders, and if they were unable to pay the bribe, their items were confiscated.

The way forward: what can be done?

The role of security agencies in border communities, therefore, cannot be overstated. As it stands, the communities have lost hope in the ability of the police and security forces deployed in their communities to secure life and property as they are perceived to only come in and engage in activities for personal gains. It is important to note here that this feeling is in no way different from what has also been documented in Nigeria cities. The people do not feel safe as police officers continue to extort money from them. This shows that there is a fundamental structural problem vis-à-vis the salaries/ wages of security personnel, which if paid on time and are a liveable wage, might also motivate them to do their job diligently and objectively. Security experts and concerned citizens have in the past, and continue to this day ,raise and stress this issue for the government to investigate and address.

It is in this light that I would equally add to their voices to say that it is imperative for the federal government to address this concern, as it is the common populace, and often those most vulnerable, who are bearing the brunt. The government, through coordination and leadership of various security organisations, must strictly monitor the activities of officers posted in the border area. In the case where special forces are deployed specifically for curtailing smuggling activities, they must be utilised and enforced to maintain and ensure security and order in the community, rather than waiting for special intervention from the state whenever there is a case of violence and kidnapping. Only when such measures are implemented with urgency, will the border communities, such as Imeko, be safe, and their confidence restored in the ability of the government to protect them.

^[1] An Oba is a traditionnal ruler who rules over a Yoruba town or city in southwest Nigeria.

^[2] A nomadic tribe found in Northern Nigeria.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Samuel Okunade is a borderlands scholar who researches on borders and migration most especially as it concerns human trafficking and migrant smuggling in Africa. He is also interested in thinking through ways in which social and ethnic cleavages in border communities could be used for economic integration and social cohesion in Africa. He equally advances the course of border communities that have an age long history of marginalization and neglect by the government.

What the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 crisis teach us about our global interconnectedness and its implications for inequality

By ISS Blog Bliss 22 March 20224 January 2025 4876 views

Due to the war in Ukraine not only the country’s inhabitants have come under fire, but also the granary of much of the world. If the war is not stopped, grain prices will rise. This will have severe effects on many countries and vulnerable countries in Africa are likely to bear the brunt. The war, like the corona pandemic, illustrates how closely we are interconnected as nations on a global scale. What effects do such crises have on existing inequality? In this blog, a number of researchers of global development and social justice share their thoughts.

On 17 March, the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) at Erasmus University launched the book ‘COVID-19 and International Development’ (Springer, 2021). During the recent book launch in Amsterdam, ISS researchers have shed light on the unseen faces of the corona pandemic in low-income countries. We spoke with some of the authors of the book about the impact of COVID-19 on the Global South, and their expectations for the future.

What are the main socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Global South?

Rolph van der Hoeven and Rob Vos: ‘Developing countries have suffered severe economic fallouts due to the pandemic. Between 100 and 160 million more people in low-income countries have fallen into poverty and hunger. The recovery has been bumpy and developing countries have had little fiscal and monetary capacity to respond. Many countries now face severe debt distress. Some progress has been made towards realizing two of four reforms we proposed in the book: international tax coordination and issuance of new SDRs. However, these still need to be tailored to serve the interests of the Global South. Worldwide, we are unprepared for future pandemics and major global crises. Just look at last year’s events: many of the world’s poor also had to cope with a surge in food prices. The current Russian invasion of Ukraine will further increase food prices, while the capacity of the government to protect the vulnerable has eroded. We should expect poverty and hunger to rise even further.’

Natascha Wagner: ‘We still have very little fact-based evidence on the indirect health consequences in the Global South where health information systems are weak. We have observed severe disruptions in the provision of routine health care services, preventive care, and treatment schemes. Foregone health care potentially results in more severe complications, co-infections and uncurable conditions, in particular among the poorest. The combination of ad hoc lockdowns without a social assistance system that just as rapidly reaches the poorest has severely affected the already sluggish progress towards the SDGs.’

Farhad Mukhtarov: ‘The pandemic has made it clear that the global water crisis is not so much about scarcity or affordability of water. These can be resolved in most cases by temporarily augmenting supply and providing subsidies. Rather, it is about societal inequality, racial and class-based patterns of violence and exploitation. Many things are needed: fairer wealth re-distribution, more equal practices of taxation, greater investment in the public sector, as well as greater social provision of marginalized groups. They are all necessary to treat various ailments of contemporary global societies.’

Matthias Rieger: ‘The global nature of the pandemic and insufficient data often render it hard to precisely quantify “impacts”. During the pandemic I noticed confused public and policy discourse around the world on “impacts” without proper counterfactual thinking. I think the pandemic has highlighted the need to use natural experiment approaches in global health research and to routinely collect reliable health data.’

Sylvanus Kwaku Afesorgbor: ‘We are getting more and more confident that our optimism about the quick recovery from the COVID-19 trade shock was justified. Although the omicron is more contagious, it has less health consequences and the impact of the pandemic is weaning off – also amongst the non-vaccinated’.

Have you become more (or less) optimistic about the COVID-19 -related impacts since your chapter was written?

Peter A.G. van Bergeijk: Globalization encountered another setback with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The revival of a Cold War setting is on the verge. This will tend to reduce the world’s openness by another 1.5% points (indication of the increase in the share number): Mr. Putin may have effectively killed the era of globalization.’

Binyam Afewerk Demena: NEW The major (COVID-19) implication is that the feasibility of export-oriented growth strategies decreases. In addition, the workings of international organizations will be further frustrated. That is bad news for developing countries. The Global South still has to deal with many challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, due to weak health systems, low socio-economic conditions, extreme poverty rates, and limited access to sanitation to contain impacts.’

Agni Kalfagianni: ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has put further strain on poor health care systems and has reduced even more access to food for the most vulnerable. Not much has changed really to give reason for either optimism or pessimism in that respect. The lack of solidarity towards vaccine access from the Global North to the Global South exacerbated existing problems. Regarding future pandemics; we may react more quickly, given the experience that we gained. But until major changes in the health care systems and global cooperation take place, we will fail again.’

Are we now better prepared to protect vulnerable individuals and communities from future pandemics?

Zemzem Shigute: ‘The corona virus has proven to be a conundrum that even the most economically powerful nations were not able to control. The virus itself does not discriminate between rich and poor people or nations. However, marginalized groups, including migrants, continue to bear its plight. They face intersecting layers of struggle based on various factors including gender, marital status, education, language, employment, and duration of stay in the country.’

Syed Mansoob Murshed: ‘The COVID-19 pandemic’s initial impact on inequality was negative. However, there are signs that the world’s inequality tolerance may be diminishing. Secondly, the labour supply surge – engendered when China and the former Eastern bloc embraced capitalism – is now also ending. That may be good news for workers and the poor in developing countries but has to be counterbalanced with the bad news about trade disruptions and rising energy prices.’

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

Integrated approach to research: Towards transformation of social (gender) injustices: A case of understanding gender-land injustice

By ISS Blog Bliss 19 March 20224 January 2025 4596 views

This article is a contribution to the transformative methodologies blog series. It argues that employing an integrated approach to research, by equally highlighting status order (such as gender relations, by utilising a gender lens), challenges the focus only on class or political-economic dimensions of research concerns. Hence, an integrated approach to research brings forth the integration of economic (distribution), cultural (recognition), and political (representation) dimensions in knowledge production, thereby challenging the conventional methodological approaches, and elucidating the neglect and invisibility of an equally important research dimension, such as gender relations.

What is integrated approach and what makes it transformative?

The theory on integrated approach is taken from Fraser’s theory of integrative approach to justice. In this article, the integrated approach is taken and discussed as a methodological approach in knowledge production. This means, taking cognisant consideration of the economic (mal)distribution, cultural (mis)recognition, and political (mis)representation (Fraser, 1999, 2005) in research. As such, these three spheres are considered as equal loci of power structures. Thus, an integrated approach not only challenges power hierarchies, and dominant perspectives and approaches in research, but also explores the transformative potential of undertaking research.

According to Fraser (2005:73), overcoming injustice means eliminating the institutionalised barriers (economic, cultural, and political) that hinder “parity participation” in societal interaction, between and among social classes and status order. Injustice emanates from economic maldistribution, cultural misrecognition (especially women’s subordination to men), and political misrepresentation. Thus, an integrated approach to justice becomes useful in developing a more comprehensive understanding of social injustice, by bringing both gender and class concerns simultaneously to the forefront of research and analysis. In the following sections, I use the case of land injustice to illustrate the utility and challenges of employing an integrated approach towards developing a nuanced understanding of the various intersecting forces that shape and sustain land injustice.

Understanding an integrated approach to research: the case of gender and land injustice

The economic sphere of justice centres on the redistribution of resources, where class structure is the main barrier. When people are deprived of required economic resources to participate fully in societal life, there is a distributive injustice (Fraser, 1999/2005). This subscribes to the Marxian understanding that class is an economic relation between the capitalist and proletariat, and thus focuses on structures of exploitation and domination (Wright, E.O. 2009:60). Examining the agrarian structure, for instance, Borras, (1997/2007) found the link between landlessness and peasants’ socio-economic status in relation to land reform. Borras elucidated, among other factors, that landlessness has a direct correlation with peasants’ poverty and injustice, and landowners’ domination and violence (Ibid). Similarly, feminist scholars have found that women’s landlessness is brought about by both — a lack of land redistribution, and a lack of recognition of women’s equal land rights (see for example, Deere and Leon, 2001, Jacobs, 2013, Deere, 2017 , and Bejeno 2021a and 2021b).

The cultural sphere, which centres on the recognition of status order, posits that status relations (in this case the gender relations) is the main barrier. When people, particularly women, are deprived of required recognition to fully participate in societal life, there is recognition injustice (Fraser, 1999/2005). This gender injustice is produced and reproduced through patriarchy or male supremacy, and is described as “the institutional all-encompassing power that men, as a group, have over women, [along with] the systematic devaluation of all the roles and traits which the society has assigned to women.” (Popkin, A., 1979). Therefore, under patriarchy, men obtain economic, cultural, and political dominance, on one hand, and maintain women’s subordination and oppression on the other. This divide between hegemonic power of men, and the subordination of women, shapes the societal everyday practices, norms, and public policies, that in turn produce and reproduce gender-based injustice, such as land injustice (Bejeno 2021a).

Now, in the political sphere, which centres on the representation of peoples (in this case of women’s voices and participation), the political structure is the main barrier. When people (such as poor women and men) are deprived of participation, such as in framing policies, there is a representation injustice (Fraser, 2005). The political misrepresentation of women, for instance, in policy formulation and implementation (be it in state or peoples’ organization), may jeopardise women’s advancement and equality, such as in land (Bejeno, 2021a). Thus, by employing an integrated approach to research, the simultaneous scrutiny of the economic, cultural, and political sphere, as discussed above, can result in a more holistic and nuanced understanding of the intersecting injustices at play, thereby pointing to more transformative solutions for societal change.

Barriers in using integrated approach to research in understanding land injustice

In land reform and peasants’ studies, various dimensions of land justice are oftentimes ignored, which render gender (in)justice invisible. Gender justice here means that women are also recognised, for instance, to own land independently, or as co-owners in the event of all agrarian land redistribution (Bejeno, 2021a). Many studies are oftentimes not cognisant of gender inequality and fail to consider the contemporary status relations in the society. Therefore, the land reform discourse remains generally centred on class question, which in turn, continuously neglects gender-based injustice in land reform. Moreover, such a discourse is also bolstered by discriminatory laws and policies, women’s ignorance to their land rights, male dominance in decision-making bodies, directed distribution of land to household heads, (primarily men), and the strong opposition of men, on one hand, and non-assertion of women, on the other regarding their land rights (Agarwal, 1994a; Deere and Leon 2001; Levien, 2017; Morgan, 2017; Leonard, et.al 2015 Bejeno, 2021b:7-8).

This discourse is also rooted in the undervaluation or devaluation of women’s labor and contribution to production, and the equation of reproductive work to ‘unemployment’ (Bejeno, 2021a). Women’s access to, and control over land, is oftentimes determined by the patriarchal households (Walker, 2003:143). And in many cases, women may not necessarily inherit from their husbands in case of widowhood, such as in Sub-Saharan Africa (Doss et.al, 2014) and Asia (Agarwal 1994a and 1994b). A household, therefore, can be a site of women’s oppression (Jacobs, 2002:33, see also Agarwal 1994a) and women’s exclusion from land ownership (Ibid; Bejeno, 2021a; Kieran et.al, 2015; Leonard et.al, 2015, Alano, 2015). In effect, by giving primacy to the economic or productive aspects in research, any other form of intervention becomes problematic, which, therefore, cyclically places women in less valued, invisible, and marginalised socio-economic and political status, and thus neglects the interconnected root causes of societal inequality and injustice.

Using a gender justice approach, therefore, can illuminate the gender-based power relations and dynamics. Thus, an integrated and transformative approach to land injustice would entail not only ensuring access to and control over land resources for women and other marginalised groups, but also engendering fundamental changes in perceptions of and about women as citizens and human beings (Cornwall, 2016). Transformative approach, therefore, requires an overhaul of social structures and power asymmetries to build a just society, where people, regardless of gender and other status order, have equitable resources, standing, and voice (Fraser 2005).

Paving the way forward for transformative social change

In conclusion, a transformative methodology in research considers both the class hierarchy or economic maldistribution, status relations (such as gender relations) or cultural recognition, and political structure or misrepresentation, to understand and address societal problems in a more nuanced and comprehensive manner. The case of land injustice discussed in this article illustrates, for instance, how gender relations, as a form of status order, is often neglected in more traditional research approaches, and how an integrated approach can offer a more nuanced analysis by taking into account gender relations as a critical dimension of inquiry in agrarian concern. Such an approach, therefore, may result addressing the gendered control of assets, decision-making power within the household and communities, and women’s participation, among others, thereby leading to a more transformative change in the long term.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Cynthia Embido Bejeno is a PhD and a Guest Researcher of Civic Innovation group at ISS

The War in Ukraine: Is this the End of the Liberal International Order?

By ISS Blog Bliss 11 March 20224 January 2025 4319 views

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has brought war back to Europe. The international ramifications of the war are clear, for instance now that President Putin talks about nuclear deterrence and the United Nations has condemned the invasion. This blog argues that a proper assessment of the war in Ukraine should take into consideration the dimensions of international order and the European security order.

The world woke up to hear the news of the Russian invasion into Ukraine in the early morning of 24 February 2022. The invasion followed on weeks of military build-up of Russian troops on the eastern, northern, and southern borders of Ukraine. Many commentators doubted the intentions of Russian President Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine, and had hoped for a peaceful ending to the confrontation. Putin’s televised speeches on 21 and 24 February attempted to justify the Russian attack of Ukraine on the basis of alleged activities of western countries to expand their grip on the Eastern European country, and ultimately include it in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) military alliance, as well as the domination of the Ukrainian government by hostile (‘Nazi’) rulers.

Around the world, people are currently following the horrors of the war in Ukraine with growing anxiety. Putin’s announcement that Russian nuclear ‘deterrence’ forces would be put on special alert, allegedly in response to statements by the UK’s Foreign Secretary about a possible clash between NATO and Russia, seem to forebode a return to the days of the Cold War. A resolution in the United Nations General Assembly, demanding the unconditional withdrawal of Russian forces from Ukraine, was adopted on 2 March 2022 by a 141 to 5 majority, with only Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Eritrea voting against it. A proper understanding of the international ramifications of the war in Ukraine needs a focus on deeper-lying processes related to the international order and the European security system.

The post-World War II period has been characterised by what many call a liberal international order. This order applied mainly to the US and its allies during the period of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union managed to build a parallel order. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its military alliance created a so-called ‘unipolar moment’, with the US as the only remaining great power. During the unipolar moment, which is usually dated between 1990 and 2005, the Western alliance assumed growing pretensions regarding the spread of liberal political and economic principles. It is now well recognised that the liberal international order is under attack, and may be giving way for a more pluralistic order, where different principles are embraced by rising powers such as China. The statement issued by China and Russia on the opening day of the 2022 Winter Olympics referred to ‘international relations entering a new era’. The statement provided a clear vision for a new ‘polycentric world order’, where China and Russia would challenge the ‘attempts at hegemony’ of ‘certain states’, which try ‘to impose their own “democratic standards” on other countries, to monopolise the right to assess the level of compliance with democratic criteria, to draw dividing lines based on the grounds of ideology, including by establishing exclusive blocs and alliances of convenience’. Russia, however, may have overestimated the pledge, contained in the Chinese-Russian statement, that there would be ‘no limits’ regarding their friendship and cooperation, as China did not support Russia in vetoing the UN Security Council’s resolution on Ukraine, while it also abstained from voting in the subsequent General Assembly session.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine signals an attempt at overturning the European security order. The order of the past 30 years followed on the Cold War, during which an ‘iron curtain’ separated the Western and Eastern parts of Europe, and the Soviet Union’s military intervened in several member states of the Warsaw Pact. In the post-Cold War period, various countries in Central Europe as well as the Baltic states became members of NATO, a move that was seen as an expansion of democracy in the West. In 2014, the so-called Maidan revolution in Ukraine, which led to the eventual departure of the Russia-backed President, was embraced by a range of West European politicians – something that was questioned by some so-called realist scholars of international relations. Over the years, the legitimacy of the European security order was attacked by a variety of Russian commentators. For instance, the honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, Sergey Karagavov, referred to the ‘Putin doctrine’ that is aimed at ‘constructive destruction’ of the relations between Russia and the West. This doctrine aims at a ‘pivot to the East’, and the prioritisation of Eurasian relations over those with the West, alongside ‘a new kind of relations between Russia and the West, different from what we settled on in the 1990s’. As a clear reflection of Russia’s revisionism, the latter position includes a repudiation of the agreements that were signed by Soviet Union and Russia’s Presidents Gorbachev and Yeltsin, including the Charter of Paris (1990) and the Budapest Memorandum (1994), which provided clauses on freedom of association for previous member states of the Warsaw Pact and security guarantees for Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The proposed security treaty that President Putin presented to the US and NATO in December 2021 similarly put in question the post-1990 security order in Europe, as it specified that Ukraine would not be offered NATO membership, and that NATO forces should be withdrawn from Central and Eastern Europe.

As the war in Ukraine is now in its third week, and the devastation of the country is increasing, the full implications of Russia’s military action are still unclear. What is clear, however, is that the war will seriously impact the international order of the years and decades ahead. At a minimum, one could expect a new Cold War to characterise political and military relations in Europe, certainly now that the war in Ukraine has led to the resolve of the German government to increase its military spending, and the indications by Finland and Sweden that they may consider NATO membership. Next to this, the call for revision of the principles of the post-World War II global order will continue, with clear support by China, but one can only hope that this will take a less violent turn, unlike the tragic events over the past weeks.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Wil Hout is Professor of Governance and International Political Economy at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam. He teaches on issues of international order in the Erasmus Minor Evolution of International Order and in the Masters course Politics of Global Development: Debating Liberal Internationalism. Together with Michal Onderco, he is currently co-editing a special issue of the journal Politics and Governance, vol. 10, no. 2 (2022), on ‘Developing Countries and the Crisis of the Multilateral Order’.

Humanitarian implications of sanctions to end the war in Ukraine

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 March 20224 January 2025 4377 views

The sanctions package against Russia is expanding every day as the main strategy to end the invasion of Ukraine. While it is inevitable that ordinary Russians will suffer from these sanctions (as will people in the countries applying these sanctions), we must do everything in our ability to protect all civilians affected by this war, including people in Russia, from the impact of sanctions. This is not an easy task at all. On one hand, the sanctions might bring suffering to people in Russia (primarily for the most vulnerable ones), but on the other hand, they might lead to the end of the war, and, thereby, save many lives and reduce the extreme suffering of millions in Ukraine.

The great dilemma: using sanctions as a tool to end war

This great dilemma of how to stop the war while avoiding more suffering should not be taken lightly, and its impacts carefully assessed. On Tuesday evening, we listened to a conversation with two well-known military experts on the Dutch radio: Rob de Wijk and Arend Jan Boekestijn. After a while the conversation turned to the effects of the sanctions. Rob de Wijk stated, ‘‘We will smoke out the ’regime’.” He found it likely that the ruble would completely collapse, and hence destroy the Russian economy. Boekestijn went one step further. He praised that the Russians, as a result of the imposed sanctions, can no longer withdraw money from ATM machines. He continued, “when people get hungry, they will go out on the ’street’.” While the sanction seek to affect those in power, oligarchs, and the government itself, either of these two men did not seemed concerned about what their predictions would mean for the majority of people in Russia. On the contrary, they were impressed and fascinated by the sanctions, and almost jubilant about their possible effects.

The assumption, however, that hungry people will take to the streets to overthrow Putin is debatable. It ignores the fact that many Russians have already taken to the streets. In the early days of the war, an estimated 5,000 Russian civilians were arrested during widespread protests against the war. The effects of large-scale protests are also uncertain. Until now, we have never seen Putin care much about protests or act based on what people think.

The unsettling costs of sanctions: hurting the innocent and the most vulnerable

Provoking hunger is, unfortunately, a common weapon of war. Forcing the enemy to surrender through a siege that cuts off an area from food is a recurring theme in history. The creation myth of Carcassonne in France, in which Mrs. Carcass managed to deceive besiegers by throwing a well-fed pig over the city wall is just one of many examples. Emperor Charles V who besieged the castle did not realise it was the only pig left over in the desperately hungry city, and withdrew his troops when he concluded their siege was not successful. In the previous century, hunger has been used as a weapon of war in many conflicts — in China, Ethiopia, Biafra, Sudan, and so on. The Dutch hunger winter in the Second World War should not be missing from the long list as well, and nor should the so-called holodomor, in which Russia caused a dramatic famine in Ukraine in the 1930s, resulting in the death of more than 3 million people because of starvation.

Hunger often kills more civilians during wars than armed violence, and the long term effects of malnutrition are incalculable. The World Peace Foundation has listed 61 famines as part of conflicts that took place between 1870 and 2015. A conservative estimate of the number of victims came to 105 million deaths. To end hunger as a weapon of war, an international resolution was passed in 2018 condemning this. The resolution 2417 was an initiative of the Netherlands, and thanks to a great deal of diplomatic effort, it was adopted with unanimous support by the Security Council of the United Nations.

Making sanctions work without impacting civilians — is it possible? Sanctions are meant to end the invasion. Russia is targeting civilians with the bombing and seems to be rapidly accumulating war crimes. In the last 8 years, while war was ongoing in the separatist regions of Ukraine, humanitarian needs were immense. There were at least 850.000 people internally displaced, along with an acute need for socio-economic and psycho-social care. Aid providers shared with us about the difficulties they faced in the areas controlled by the Russian-backed separatists, ranging from concerns for the safety of aid providers to administrative hindrances (withholding permissions) in providing access. It will, therefore, be important to continue negotiating access to Ukraine, and enabling people to move freely in search for refuge, and most importantly seek an end to the invasion.

There is great optimism that the international solidarity and widely shared support for sanctions may facilitate the end of the war. It is inevitable that ordinary Russian civilians will bear some of the burden of the imposed sanctions. But we cannot let this become the goal. Instead, let us think about how to organise sanctions so that citizens are spared as much as possible, because the most vulnerable are, in every side of the conflict, the ones that usually pay the greatest costs.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

Rodrigo Mena is Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University.

COVID-19: the disease of inequality, not of globalization

By ISS Blog Bliss 3 March 20224 January 2025 4483 views

Binyam Afewerk Demena is one of the authors of several chapters of the recently published book ‘COVID-19 and International Development’. In this blog, he and his colleagues elaborate on their contributions to this book. We welcome you to join us for the book launch on March 17 (3:30-5:00 CET) at Pakhuis de Zwijger. Registration is now open.

The COVID-19 outbreak has posed a threat to both lives and livelihood. Because of the strong and interdependent global production value and linkages, coupled with the closure of international borders, businesses, and factories, the economic expectations and forecasts in the early months of the pandemic were generally pessimistic.

The prospect of the world plunging into another major and long-term economic recession comparable to the Great Depression in 1930s and the Great Recession of 2008/9 was on the minds of many economists, governments, international organizations, and citizens worldwide. The attacks on supranational governance and international cooperation were a symptom of an underlying disease – inequality – that has been illuminated by the pandemic. The de-globalization process was driven by increasing inequality, and a dreary lack of trickle-down of the benefits of internationalization.

COVID-19 and globalization

Globalization is a multifaceted concept that describes the process of creating networks of connections among actors at intra- or multi-continental distances. This emphasizes that globalization captures the increased interdependence of national economies, and the trend towards greater integration of different varieties of flows such as information, goods, labour, and capital.

More recently, however, there has been growing discontent and increase in negative sentiments about the impact of globalization. These negative sentiments have manifested in different ways, including through the election of the former U.S. President Donald Trump in 2016, Brexit, and criticism of the World Trade Organization. For instance, Afesorgbor and Beaulieu (2021) argue that the Trump presidency strained diplomatic relationships with close allies, and undermined the rule-based global system, creating uncertainty for the global economic system.

These occurrences constitute a major setback to the pace of globalization, and have set the stage for growing protectionism and nationalism around the world. As van Bergeijk (2019) highlighted, these actors were political. More recently, the principal actor was a virus. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic introduced new health threats to globalization (see van Bergeijk, 2021 for details), emanating from the health risk posed by the contagious nature of COVID-19. In a sense, the pandemic clearly reflects globalization — the virus went global in a few weeks’ time due to the high level of globalization and interconnectedness. COVID-19, however, also relates to de-globalization — the breakdown of international co-operation, and the re-emergence of zero-sum thinking and raw beggar-thy-neighbour polices on the markets for medical productive gear, medical machinery, and vaccines.

We* set out to explore the impact of COVID-19 on the global economic system by looking at three components of globalization: economic, social, and political globalization. The pandemic and the economic policy response to the crisis have impacted these three aspects to different degrees.

Economic globalization

Economic globalization has been conceptualized by means of flows of goods, services, capital, and information in connection to long distance market transactions. Although the pandemic is global, regions and countries have experienced differential effects on various indicators of the economic dimension of globalization. For instance, merchandise trade contracted for the global economy, but the rate of decline was more pronounced in advanced economies compared to in developing and emerging economies. Moreover, not only were trade flows hit, but the impact of COVID-19 on foreign direct investment (FDI) was also immediate, as global FDI flows declined by nearly half in 2020.

Social globalization

COVID-19 was also impactful, in particular, on social globalization, an aspect which involves interaction with foreign nationals through events such as migration, or actions such as international phone calls and international remittances paid or received by citizens.

Linking COVID-19 to social globalization is important since the former reduced interpersonal globalization, as many countries imposed travel restriction on both residents and foreign travellers. Border closures hindered temporary migration, especially tourists’ and foreign students’ movements in and out of countries. Migrant remittances were also affected, not because of any formal restrictions on remittances, but mainly because of a negative labour market shock on immigrant employment. Demena et al. (2022) found that the pandemic, overall, negatively affected various labour market outcomes. The impact has been most pronounced, in particular, in developed countries, reducing the number of remittances that could be repatriated to developing countries.

Political globalization

Political globalization captures the ability of countries to engage in international political co-operation, as well as the diffusion or implementation of government policies.

The initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected international co-operation, mainly because of the blame game between the two largest economies in the world, the US and China. Although global co-operation to fight the virus did not begin immediately with the outbreak of COVID-19, there were many efforts later by different countries to co-operate in fighting the pandemic. China, for example, supported countries like Italy, which became the epicentre of the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe in April 2020. Politically, the outbreak of the coronavirus could, therefore, be used as a building block in the future to reinforce international co-operation and strengthen the pillars of political globalization.

Optimistic outlook for the global economy

There are, in fact, reasons to be optimistic about the COVID-19 economic recovery, as well as about the future of globalization. The main reason for optimism is the noteworthy resilience of world merchandise trade and investment during previous global crises. Multinational enterprises have already had their stress test during the 2008 – 2009 collapse of world trade. That collapse kick-started the process of de-globalization. However, global merchandise trade and industrial production recovered to previous peaks quickly, and this recovery has occurred even quicker during the COVID-19 crisis.

This is the big and fundamental difference with the Great Depression of the 1930s, and it may be related to the fact that world trade is governed and supported by the multilateral trading system. The shock of the pandemic was sharp and immediate, but so has been the recovery. The so-called invisible flows (FDI, remittances, tourism, official development cooperation) have been hit harder compared to the two major historical economic crises during the Great Recession and the Great Depression, and a full recovery of these invisible flows is not to be expected before vaccination is ‘sufficiently global’ in scope. Yet, the expectation of a speedy recovery is realistic at the time of writing. For instance, global FDI has shown full recovery in the last quarter of 2021, although recovery has been highly uneven regionally, and was concentrated in developed economies. Recovery efforts, therefore, took hold early, compared to the two major historical episodes of economic crises. This suggests stronger resilience of the global economic system than anticipated.

The disease of inequality

The prediction and reports of the expected “death” of globalization, however, were, with hindsight, grossly exaggerated. Yet, the pandemic has taught us that inequalities are the breeding ground for the spread of disease and the suffering that follows. Reducing epidemic vulnerabilities, therefore, requires tackling those inequalities. The fight against next potential pandemics, however, implies that we cannot limit ourselves to domestic developments only. Inequalities around the world – within and between countries – provide the breeding grounds and disease pools from which new variants, viruses, and other contagious diseases emerge. Adhering to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is a high-return investment project, in particular SDG 10 (reduced inequalities). A recent study by Fantu et al. (2022) pointed out that the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbates the inequalities between migrants (in particular Eritrean and Ethiopian migrants) and ordinary citizens in the Netherlands. Likewise, Murshed (2022) highlighted that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to accelerate the various forms of inequality.

And last but not least, the outlook for openness of the world economy is still much better than in the 1930s. Yes, de-globalization exists. Yes, overall globalization will probably be lower for the foreseeable future. Our societies will, however, remain much more open than at the start of the globalization wave in 1990. We are now connected via the internet with an intensity that has never been observed before in history. Even though the push towards de-globalization certainly still exists, economies are now digitally connected in ways they have never been before.

Conclusions and recommendations

In conclusion, the eradication of the spread of the virus will require international co-operation, and a global effort to make sure that no single country is left behind. A pool will be forged to prevent new variants and potential future outbreaks. Vaccines must be made available to all countries and must be affordable, something that has been reiterated by the promise of the leaders of the G7 nations as a ‘big step towards vaccinating the world’ – to supply one billion doses of vaccine to poorer nations. A global initiative recently called for urgent further funding to supply a minimum of 600 million additional doses. Just as globalization has ramifications for all countries, the health of different nations is intertwined. The health of one nation affects the health of the other, as the pandemic has demonstrated. The implication, therefore, is that fighting a pandemic requires us to tackle inequalities, as the latter determine pandemic vulnerability to a large extent. Moreover, it requires a global approach to ensure equality for all the world’s citizens.

References:

*Afesorgbor, S.K., van Bergeijk, P. and Demena, B.A., 2022. COVID-19 and the Threat to Globalization: An optimistic note. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.) Covid-19 and International Development, Springer.

Demena, B.A., Floridi, A. and Wagner, N., 2022. The short-term impact of COVID-19 on labour market outcomes: Comparative systematic evidence. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and International Development, Springer.

Fantu, B., Haile, G., Tekle, Y.L., Sathi, S., Demen, B.A., and Shigute, Z., 2022. Experiences of Eritrean and Ethiopian Migrants during COVID-19 in the Netherlands. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and International Development, Springer.

Murshed, S.M., 2022. Consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic for economic inequality. In E. Papyrakis (Ed.), Covid-19 and International Development, Springer.

van Bergeijk, P.A.G., 2021. Pandemic Economics, Edward Elgar: Cheltenham.

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Devdiscourse – Discourse on Development

(NEWS) – the Canadian National Post

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Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the contributors:

Binyam Afewerk Demena: International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University

Peter A.G. van Bergeijk: International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University

Sylvanus Kwaku Afesorgbor: Agri-Food Trade and Policy, University of Guelph

Sub-Saharan migrants transiting through Algeria: Migratory farm labor in Covid times

By ISS Blog Bliss 1 March 20224 January 2025 3728 views

The agricultural sector in Algeria relies on the informal labor force of Sub-Saharan migrants on their way to Europe. Interviews with migrants highlight their precarious conditions of life and work, worsening during the Covid-19 health crisis.

A migrant cycling through a wadi to avoid checkpoints. Photo: M. F. Hamamouche

Over the last few decades, the Maghreb has become a migratory space: in addition to its traditional function as a site of emigration, it is now a transit land for many migrants trying to reach Europe. Since many African countries are dealing with unstable political and economic situations as well as with climate change, the in-flux of sub-Saharan migrants has become a major societal fact in Algeria. While in the 1990s, this concerned only the Saharan regions, during the 2000s it spread to the coastal cities of the north of the Maghreb, feeding the local economies. Transit through the Algerian territory happens in stages and through specific corridors. Although transnational migration to Europe begins in a heterogeneous manner, sub-Saharan migrants reorganize themselves collectively during their journey. During different stages of their journey, migrants ‘recognise’ each other and cooperate, gradually creating a common history, an ‘adventure’: their migratory project is a collective one and brings them together (for more information on sub-Saharan migration through North Africa see the book “Le Maghreb à l’épreuve des migrations subsahariennes. Immigration sur émigration” edited by Bensaâd, 2009).

According to the report “Contribution à la connaissance des flux migratoires mixtes, vers, à travers et de l’Algérie: Pour une vision humanitaire du phénomène migratoire”, compiled by the International centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD) in 2015, the province of Ghardaïa is an unavoidable transit land for migrants. They settle temporarily in order to accumulate the financial resources and information necessary to reach Europe. This reality is evidenced in the strong presence of migrants in the informal labor market in the Sahara, particularly in sectors with labor shortage, namely in agriculture, construction and public works. In recent years, sub-Saharan undocumented workers have become essential to the functioning of these sectors.

However, the introduction of a range of measures to limit the spread of Covid-19 has disrupted this migration process. In light of the context and our previous work with different rural actors, including sub-Saharan agricultural workers in the M’zab Valley, we explored how they dealt with the constraints posed upon them by the pandemic. In other words, how did sub-Saharan migrants experience the pandemic and the related lockdown measures? How did these impact on their work and which coping strategies did they adopt? We answer these questions by placing the experiences of young sub-Saharan migrants at the heart of our qualitative analysis. Because of the structural role of sub-Saharan labor particularly in Saharan agriculture, we focus on this sector and have made some recommendations for policy that could contribute to more a just development of this sector.

The M’zab Valley

The M’zab valley is located in the province of Ghardaïa, in the northern Sahara, about 600 km from the capital Algiers, and is characterized by the coexistence of two agricultural landscapes: the ancient palm groves created in the eleventh century and the new agricultural extensions created in the 1980s. The labour force is mainly composed of sub-Saharan migrants in transit.

This study is based on our work prior to the pandemic with agricultural actors in the M’zab valley. During the month of March 2021, 10 interviews were conducted with sub- Saharan workers in order to document their experiences during the Covid-19 crisis.The names of the sub-Saharan farm workers interviewed are fictitious in order to maintain their anonymity.

From Mali to Ghardaïa, a long and difficult journey

The Malian border is more than 1200 km away from Ghardaïa. The migrants we spoke to underlined the reasons for crossing the border. One of the migrants we interviewed, Djamel, 22, told us:

I left my country, Mali, because life is difficult and we cannot find work… In Mali, there is almost no work left because of the civil war and the pay is very low, around 3 euros for a 9-hour working day… the search for gold is hard work with a lot of risk, without guaranteeing any money at the end of the day.

Another migrant, Nassim, 24 highlighted the difficult conditions of the journey:

We had to walk for hours in the middle of the desert while avoiding the main roads in order to avoid the Algerian security service who are very present in the border regions… Algerian smugglers show us the way in exchange for money… So to pay for our journey from the Malian border to Ghardaïa, we are obliged to stop in certain towns to earn a little money… part of the money is used to pay the smugglers and the other part is sent to our families who stayed in Mali through an informal network of money changers… our families rely on us to provide for them.

One of the Malians interviewed, Karim, 23, said:

I am the eldest of 10 children… My father has a low income… he relies on me to feed the family… that is why the goal of going to Europe is not achieved quickly… We have to meet the needs of our families first.

Over the years, an informal network of money changers has developed between Algeria and Mali. As a young Malian, Said, 20, explained:

If I want to send the equivalent of 10,000 DA (± 63 €) in Francs to my family in Mali, I have to give 17,000 DA (± 106 €) to the trader.

The choice to settle in Ghardaïa and not in another Algerian province is mainly explained by family ties:

My older brother settled in Ghardaïa since 2014…he welcomed all the young men from the family and from our home village who wanted to embark on the adventure of migration…we need a stable focal point before we embark…because this is the person who takes care of us once we are arrive and waiting to find a job…he also puts us in contact with employers.

Karim added

My brother worked for years with a farmer-digger… when he went back to Mali temporarily, he gave me his contact… I came directly to him in 2019.

This choice to go and work in Ghardaia can also be explained by the need for labour, as explained by a young Malian, Yacine, 20:

I came here to Ghardaia because work is available and the pay is better… During my journey, I stopped first in Bordj Baji Moukhtar, a border region with Mali, where I worked for 1000 da/day, then I went to Adrar where I worked for 1200 DA per day (± 7,5 €)… here in Ghardaïa, we are paid between 1500 and 1700 DA per day (± 94 and 106 €).

Bypassing checkpoints during the lockdown

Migrants have taken an important role in the development of the national economy despite their irregular situation in Algeria. In case they are stopped, they risk being escorted back to the borders. With the Covid-19 health crisis, control has been reinforced, which has led migrants to develop strategies to avoid coming across the checkpoints. The 10 migrants we interviewed told us that they used secondary roads, wadis and mountains to move between their homes and workplaces. As Djamel explained:

I chose to work on a remote farm in Ghardaïa in order to ensure my safety…to get to the city center, if necessary, I cross the gardens and farms in order to avoid the controls.

This irregular situation makes migrants vulnerable. Some take advantage of the situation of Malian migrants by refusing to pay them when their work is completed, while threatening to call the security service. Migrants are also subject to repeated theft, not only by some Algerians but also by migrants from other countries.

As Salah, 25, confided to us:

I was attacked when I tried to bypass the town on the side roads. They stole my phone, my bike and my money for the day.

According to the same person,

attacks and thefts have increased since the beginning of the Covid-19 health crisis… These attacks are carried out with impunity… the aggressors know that we cannot file a complaint.

Gathering sites have been replaced by word of mouth and phone recruitment

Before March 2020, migrants looking for daily work used to gather in specific gathering points. Farmers used to come and recruit them in these places. However, with the health crisis and the reinforcement of checkpoints, migrants deserted the collection points. To find work, they could only rely on word of mouth and through phone contact, as Karim explained:

During the first months of the lockdown, when mobility restrictions were strict, I was able to find work thanks to my network of contacts. My former employers, who had kept my phone number, contacted me when they, their family or neighbors needed a worker”. Another worker, Nassim, 24, told us: I took the initiative to call my former bosses, one by one, to ask them if they needed a worker. Only the farmers responded positively to my request… the building contractors did not need any more workers since this sector was heavily impacted by the health crisis.

On the other hand, for migrants who arrived in Ghardaïa shortly before the health crisis, it was more difficult to find work because of the restrictions imposed by the government to counter the spread of Covid-19. They relied on their compatriots who had been in the M’Zab valley before them. As Adam, 18, explained:

I arrived in Ghardaïa in February 2020… I was able to find a job quickly and even during the lockdown thanks to a young man from my native village who has been living in Ghardaïa since 2018. He contacted me every time his employers needed several hands.

Some of those who did not find work during the months of the lockdown, relied on help from their compatriots:

I borrowed money from a friend… then I paid it back a few months later… fortunately there is mutual aid and compassion between Malians… in my opinion this is what makes the difference with other migrant nationalities (Ilyes, 19).

Turning to agricultural work and a strong demand for versatility

Migrants who worked in the construction and public works sectors before the health crisis saw their activity suspended when the lockdown measures were implemented in March 2020. This economic sector has been hit hard by Covid-19. To support themselves and their families back in Mali, some of them have turned to agriculture. According to Nassim:

Before the crisis, I worked mainly in masonry, but with the introduction of the lockdown and the suspension of all building activities, I found myself without work… I then became an agricultural worker because this activity cannot stop… The farmers needed us to carry out certain agricultural tasks: working the soil, irrigation, manual weeding, harvesting seasonal vegetables… we found work by word of mouth.

Agricultural tasks carried out by sub-Saharan workers. Photo: M. F. Hamamouche

Another worker, Salah, told us that he had been recruited to help clean out wells:

A friend, an agricultural worker for a farmer- washer, called me to tell me that his employer was looking for workers with knowledge of construction and public works to restore a dozen wells in an old oasis… I responded positively to this proposal because I knew that this type of work would last several months.

In addition, there was a high demand for multi-skilled workers during the lockdown period, as farmers were looking for Malian workers with skills in agriculture and construction, as was the case for Mohamed, 23:

When my employer called me on the phone to recruit me, he had asked me if I had any knowledge in construction, as he wanted to fence his farm and do some work in his secondary house so that his family could confine themselves… he had specified that the work also consisted of maintaining the garden… he had offered me free accommodation in the farm during the work as his family was not yet there.

More responsibility for skilled agricultural workers

Migrants who have been working in the agricultural sector in Ghardaïa for a number of years, have seen their responsibilities increasing in the farms, particularly in the phoeniculture sector. Indeed, the mobility restrictions imposed by the Algerian state to counter the spread of Covid-19 during 2020 have had an impact on the availability of skilled agricultural workers for harvesting dates. Traditionally, date harvesting in the M’Zab Valley, and particularly the harvesting of Deglet Nour dates, relies on workers from the Timimoun region, some 600 km away. The workers specialised in harvesting dates belong to a socio-ethnic group descended from the slaves who worked in the M’Zab valley. The latter were formerly called “khammès”, which means “sharecropper to the fifth” because they worked the land in exchange for a fifth of the harvest. Most of the descendants of the khammès gradually returned to their native region (Timimoun) after the 1971 land reform –a decision implemented to distribute land to landless peasants and to change the social status of the descendants of the khammès (for more information see Aït-Amara, 1999).

However, in October 2020, these skilled workers were unable to travel to the M’Zab valley due to mobility constraints. Consequently, Malian workers benefited from this situation. As Samir, 25, said:

I have been working as a farm laborer since I arrived in Algeria in 2017, and I never went near the palm tree until 2020…the farmers preferred to use skilled workers to harvest the dates which have a high market value…but with mobility restrictions and the low local availability of skilled workers, they turned to sub-Saharan migrants as a last resort.

Conclusions

In the Sahara, agriculture continues to be the main sector of occupation for migrants. However, its socio-economic role has evolved. It has gone from being a seasonal supplementary job in the traditional oases of the border areas, to an essential activity in new forms of Saharan agriculture.

Indeed, the unlocking of access to groundwater and agricultural land from the 1980s onwards allowed the development of large ‘pioneering front’ type agricultural projects, occupying new land and renewing agricultural methods and practices (see also the article “From Oasis Archipelago to Pioneering Eldorado in Algeria’s Sahara”, by Amichi et al., 2018).

In the Algerian Sahara, where less than 11% of the Algerian population lives (3.6 million inhabitants), agricultural development would not have been possible without foreign labor. Although irregular immigration is neither formalized nor controlled by the state, it has become structural to the functioning of strategic sectors and to the national economy.

Paradoxically, this pervasive reality, which puts immigrant agricultural workers in even more vulnerable conditions regarding their labor and health security and rights, is officially concealed, albeit tolerated to varying degrees depending on the area, the different sectors of the economy and the economic or political conjuncture. The ambiguity surrounding this migration (partially tolerated but not recognised) and the fragility of the conditions of residence and work, which inevitably lead to situations of vulnerability (e.g. blackmailing of employers controlled by the security services) are accentuated in times of crisis.

This situation more than ever highlights the importance of politically recognizing the rights of migrant workers and of taking action to address their needs. The migrants we interviewed told us that the conditions in which they are living and working are not dignified. The regularization of seasonal work and the allocation of work permits to foreigners would allow them to claim fundamental rights (social, economic and civil).

This issue of recognition must be given special attention by public authorities. A better understanding of the dynamics of migration and employment in Saharan agriculture can help to inform policies and regulations to reorganize the recruitment and employment of migrants and ensure decent and dignified working conditions. Policies must address the precarious situation of these workers focusing on providing them with proper housing, secure living conditions and health assistance. Moreover, little information is available on the impact of COVID-19 on the health of the immigrant workers.

This blog was first published in Undisciplined Environments.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Meriem Farah Hamamouce is a junior water management and agronomy researcher. She is the founder and manager of BRDA (Agricultural Research and Development office) and an associated researcher at G-Eau Research Unit (France). She also works as an independent consultant for the engineering office (ECA) in Algeria.

Amine Saidani is founder and manager of an engineering office (ECA) in Algeria and a Ph.D student in water sciences at IAV Hassan II (Rabat, Morocco) and SupAgro (Montpellier, France).

Rethinking Transactional Sex in Humanitarian Settings: Reflections for the way forward

By ISS Blog Bliss 27 February 20224 January 2025 7670 views

Transactional Sex (TS) is often used as an umbrella term to encompass a wide range of practices ranging from sex work to sexual exploitation and abuse. TS is typically framed in humanitarian settings through reductive lenses that portray the person engaged in them as without agency, forced into “negative coping strategies” by a larger crisis. Academics and practitioners have challenged these dominant framings in the Transactional Sex in Humanitarian Contexts panel as part of the 6th International Humanitarian Studies Conference. The presentations highlighted both the complexity and the nuanced nature of TS in different contexts, and common trends spanning a broad spectrum of humanitarian and displacement settings, including Bangladesh, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), France, Greece, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Sudan, Switzerland, Syria, and Turkey. The panel offered a reflection of the ideologies and frameworks implicit in humanitarian operations, which can blind us to the diverse needs and strategies of those engaged in transactional sex.

Transactional sex in humanitarian contexts: contemporary paradigms and interpretations

Transactional sex is the exchange of sex for cash, goods, services, commodities, or privileges. It is often framed by humanitarians as a form of violence in and of itself. Characterised by victim/saviour relationships and rescue narratives, these problematic and essentialising representations can have real world implications on policy and programming, along with unintended, often negative impacts on the lives of those engaged in them. To further complicate matters, there is a lack of conceptual clarity, and standardised and consistent use of terminology, such that what many describe as “transactional sex” is commonly conflated and used interchangeably with survival sex, sexual exploitation and abuse, sex work or sex trafficking.

Transactional sexual relationships exist on a spectrum encompassing various states of consent, power, emotional attachment, economic compensation, and social acceptability. All panelists highlighted that the lived experiences of those engaged in transactional sex do not align well with these monolithic representations, and are rather shaped by numerous structural factors, relating to historical pathways of patriarchy, conflict conditions, and other social, economic, and individual factors that often intersect with intimate consensual relationships. There is growing recognition that interpretations of transactional sexual relationships are culturally determined and constructed, and that this work involves complex negotiation of strategies of agency. Transactional sex occurs against a backdrop of gendered social norms, which are constantly shifting, and may vary between and within countries and communities.

Limitations and challenges of the current discourse

This is not to say that transactional sex is necessarily a safe or desirable livelihood strategy. Transactional sexual relationships are shaped by various structural drivers and conditions that are often created by migration, and aid policies and politics, among other inherent power disparities that entail risks of gender-based violence, and negative impacts on sexual and reproductive health. However, it is crucial to recognise that individuals weigh such risks in relation to their own lives and define what safety and protection means for them. This is further shaped by other factors relating to sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, social and cultural factors, and disability, for example. Research and empirical insights from practitioners are increasingly challenging the erasures of non-heteronormative experiences of transactional sex and calling for more intersectional approaches in research and programming.

People engaging in transactional sex and civil society groups, including human rights defenders, health advocates, sex worker-led organisations, NGOs, and grassroots movements, have already provided rich empirical insights and recommendations across a wide-range contexts, which, however, have not been taken up meaningfully by the humanitarian community. For example, in the post-panel Q&A it was highlighted how the Women´s Refugee Commission (WRC) Working with Refugees Engaged in Sex Work: A Guidance Note for Humanitarians, issued in 2016, might have been overshadowed by the #Aidtoo movement in 2017, and how a moral panic seldom allows for nuance and complexity. Moreover, we may also need to recognise that not all those who engage in TS identify as sex workers, and humanitarian actors do not necessarily see TS as sex work, which may be why such guidance can be interpreted very narrowly. More recently, UNHCR and UNFPA launched the operational guideline Responding to the health and protection needs of people selling or exchanging sex in humanitarian settings (2021) which will hopefully provide a clearer framework going forward in this regard.

The way forward: Rethinking transactional sex policy and programmes.

It is crucial to examine whose knowledge, voice, and power drives policy – or lack of it – on issues around TS, and how people engaged in TS in humanitarian settings, including migrants and refugees, become problematised, supported, and intervened upon by institutions based on vulnerabilities associated with and/or biases regarding gender, sexual behaviour and orientation. It is worth reflecting on why some experiences are omitted or marginalised, and how conditions of vulnerabilities are created by these very same institutions.

Transactional sex will continue to be a coping strategy for many individuals who make complex decisions and tradeoffs in humanitarian and displacement settings. Sometimes it may be the least risky option compared to the available alternatives. Bringing in the perspectives from and lived experiences of people engaging in transactional sex offers a crucial step in understanding their lives, decision-making process, desires, needs, or wants, and understanding. This includes, for example, the structural conditions and policies imposed by governments and humanitarian institutions that drive people into this practice, as well as considerations about whether they want to continue to engage in transactional sex safely or find other strategies. Ensuring sustainable and inclusive programming, and refraining from causing harm by perpetuating stigma and exclusion, centres on this more holistic reimagining of the issue of transactional sex as a complex social phenomenon.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Clea Kahn has nearly 25 years of experience in the humanitarian sector in Africa, South Asia, and Southeast Asia. She holds an LL.M. in international human rights law, an MSc in psychology, and is currently pursuing a doctorate in counselling psychology. Clea focuses on protection of civilians, gender-based violence and migration/refugee issues, and is a member of the ListenH project: Livelihoods and transactional sex in Humanitarian Crises. She can be contacted at cleakahn@cleakahn.com.

Michelle Alm Engvall is a cultural anthropologist with a specialty in sex work and humanitarian action. Her research focuses on how framed understandings of transactional sex influence policy and programming and how this can lead to unintended consequences for affected populations. She can be contacted at michelle.a.engvall@gmail.com

Shirin Heidari is a senior researcher at the Global Health Centre, and research affiliate at the Gender Centre, Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She is the principal investigator of a multi-country multi-disciplinary research on transactional sex and health repercussions in forced displacement. She can be contacted at: shirin.heidari@graduateinstitute.ch

Megan Denise Smith is a humanitarian worker and gender-based violence specialist with ten years of experience working with migrants and refugees in Bangladesh, Egypt, Lebanon, Rwanda, and the UK. She is currently based in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) where she has managed IOM´s GBV programming as part of the Rohingya refugee response since 2017. She can be contacted at megandenisesmith@gmail.com

Dorothea Hilhorst is professor of Humanitarian Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University. Her focus is on aid-society relations: studying how aid is embedded in the context. She coordinates the ListenH project: Livelihoods and transactional sex in Humanitarian Crises. Email: hilhorst@iss.nl Twitter: @hilhorst_thea

Transformative Methodologies | Using a caring approach to equalise research relationships

By ISS Blog Bliss 21 February 20224 January 2025 3989 views

Collaboration between researchers and those they engage with for their research is increasingly promoted as a way to address some of the epistemic injustices arising from the process of producing knowledge. Stepping back and allowing those we work with to shape research agendas and become intimately involved in the research process is an act of care, and the effects and benefits are tangible, writes Marina Cadaval Narezo. Care can be a thread that weaves together multiple and diverse actors, helping create a dense fabric of experiences through which researchers and those they work with can collectively, and in more equitable ways, make sense of the creative process.

Uncomfortable questions

Before starting my PhD at the ISS, I was working in Mexico for an initiative that provided grant scholarships to indigenous people to pursue graduate studies. During the 15 years I was involved in operational and executive activities for this initiative, I got to know many inspiring women whose stories to obtain a university degree filled me with uncomfortable questions. Most of them were the first in their families or in their communities to go to university; most of them had attended boarding schools since they were children or had to migrate as teenagers to continue their education. Most of them had full-time jobs to cover their university expenses; those who did not face these challenges were considered privileged. Their academic trajectories were at times the result of collective efforts and at others that of solitary struggles. Nevertheless, they were generally painful, complex processes.

I felt that a better understanding of their paths was needed, so I decided to explore and highlight their stories through my PhD research. I wanted to know what had happened to some of the women who received a scholarship after they graduated and how their master’s or doctorate degrees affected their professional – and personal – development. I was puzzled about what changed and what remained in their lives as women, as indigenous people, and as professionals. Given my closeness to many of them due the long journeys together at the scholarships program called IFP-Probepi[1] but also as a researcher committed to anti-oppressive (Brown and Strega 2005), feminist (Haraway 1988; Harding 1991), and indigenous methodologies (Wilson 2008; Smith 2012), I thought that the most appropriate thing to do was to ask them directly. To talk it over.

‘Reflective conversations’: bridging times and spaces[2]

At the end of 2019, I contacted 36 indigenous women who had obtained master’s or PhD degrees between 2004 and 2014. Of those I contacted, 17 participated in the research. They were from different indigenous groups, states, ages, and areas of specialisation. Diversity was intentionally considered in order to identify those changes and continuities I was looking for, as well as the intersections of gender, race, and class that inform educational policies in Mexico. Originally, I was exclusively paying attention to their exclusion in terms of racism, sexism, classism, and tokenism.

I went to the towns or cities where they lived, including Yucatán, Chihuahua, Oaxaca, Mexico City, Chiapas, and Veracruz. We had long talks, or what I call ‘reflective conversations’, which I understand as dialogues that start from previous common and mutual understandings – such as the IFP-Probepi scholarship, the graduate courses, our feminisms, our families, and our health – that allowed us to meet and examine ourselves across multiple times and spaces. While sharing a meal, a drink, or a walk, we conversed, reflecting on the experience of studying abroad, on our current jobs, on how much or how little life had changed. We connected those we were when we first met through IFP-Probepi with those we had become.

Shifting centers – from ‘victims’ to social and political change agents

After organising, systematising and analysing the information obtained, in the summer of 2020 I shared the preliminary findings with them. The meetings were online which allowed us to connect our multiple geographies: Oaxaca, Chiapas, Yucatán, Veracruz, Chihuahua, Mexico City, The Hague (The Netherlands). Sharing and discussing these findings and listening to their responses led me to shift the focus of my research -initially centered in their exclusion of the education system- to their processes and strategies of resistance. “We do not want to be the victims nor being seen only as beneficiaries of educational programs and social schemes,” some stated. “We must be recognised as the social and political actors that we are.”

Our encounters allowed me personally to understand in a much clearer way their paths and to address my research questions considering their gazes, but also to build networks and take action that goes beyond the very objective of writing a doctoral thesis and is more closely linked to the reality we want to transform. Thus, in 2020, we participated in a campaign to help eradicate racism in higher education promoted by Cátedra UNESCO Educación Superior y Pueblos Indígenas y Afrodescendientes en América Latina (UNESCO Chair in Higher Education and Indigenous and Afro-descendant Peoples in Latin America). Through the ISS Research Innovation Facility (RIF), we then set up an independent and collective blog called ‘Resistencias y Mujeres Profesionistas Indígenas’ (Resistances and Indigenous Professional Women) that we are using to share our stories of racism and the strategies that each of us has developed to face it.

A transformative methodology?

Was the methodology I developed and used transformative? For the way academia produces knowledge, I think so. I am doing research showing how collaboration, reciprocity, and recognition can work together to create caring processes in which different voices can be woven together into one fabric of experiences. For the women I am working with, I think it also does. It has created synergies and coalitions necessary to challenge stereotypes and transform not just how knowledge is produced, but how we want to walk in this world. For me, for sure. It has allowed me to reconnect with those women who have made me confront my own privileges and prompted me to use my position to continue exposing some of the still-existing structural exclusions. The way is long, but it is important to keep sharing, discussing, and resisting.

REFERENCES

Brown L. and S. Strega (2005), Research as Resistance. Critical, indigenous and anti-oppressive approaches, Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press.

Cadaval Narezo, M. (2022), “Methodologies for collaborative, respectful and caring research. Conversations with professional indigenous women from Mexico”, in W. Harcourt, C. Dupuis, J. Gaybor & K. van den Berg (eds.), Experiments and Reflections in Feminist Methodologies, Series: Gender, Development and Social Change. Switzerland: Palgrave.

Haraway, D. (1988) “Situated knowledges: The Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective”, Feminist Studies, 14(3): 575-599.

Harding, S. (1991), Whose Science? Whose Knowledge? Thinking from Women’s Lives, Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Smith, L. T. (2012), Decolonizing Methodologies. Research and Indigenous Peoples, New Zealand: Zed Books/Otago University Press.

Wilson S. (2008), Research Is Ceremony Indigenous Research Methods, Winnipeg: Fernwood Publishing.

[1] The initiative was financed from 2001 to 2012 by the Ford Foundation as the International Fellowships Program (IFP), and from 2013 until present (2022) by the Mexican government through the National Council of Science and Technology (CONACYT) as the Fellowships Program for Indigenous People (Probepi). In both cases, it has been administered by the Center for Research and Higher Education in Social Anthropology (CIESAS).

[2] For a more in-depth discussion of the methodology I used, see Cadaval Narezo (2022).

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Marina Cadaval Narezo is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies.

“Nothing about us, without us!”: Disability inclusion in community-based climate resilient programs. A case study of Indonesia

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 February 20224 January 2025 3860 views

In design of climate-resilient programs for community development, there is growing awareness of the benefits of gender assessments, but it is far less common that disability is considered. The meaningful inclusion of people with disabilities can reveal their knowledge and capacities to contribute, and result in more contextualised and socially-just responses to climate change.

Caption: Plan Indonesia and PERSANI staff in hybrid workshop to provide recommendations for the Guidance on assessments for climate-resilient inclusive WASH. Photo credit: Silvia Landa, Plan Indonesia (2020)

Climate change poses huge challenges for the wellbeing of individuals and communities, especially those reliant on their local environments for subsistence. As the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2021 report demonstrates, we are experiencing changes to our climate at an unprecedented scale and intensity. There is growing awareness that the impacts of climate change are not merely biophysical, but embedded in social processes. To varying degrees of success, non-governmental organisations and local governments are mainstreaming climate resilience in their community development programs. In designing programs, it is important to involve diverse community members in assessing climate change impacts and finding solutions, including those who are often marginalised.

The catch-cry of disability rights organisations of “nothing about us, without us” draws attention that all people have the right to self-determination and to have a say in development outcomes and policy that affects them. This blog provides three arguments for inclusion of people with disabilities in community-based climate-resilient programs, with a case example from Indonesia.

Improving community sanitation in Manggarai district, Indonesia

Together with Yayasan Plan International Indonesia (Plan Indonesia), Institute for Sustainable Futures – University of Technology Sydney (ISF-UTS) conducted a research-practice project to collaboratively inform how Plan Indonesia addresses the impacts of climate change on their inclusive sanitation program. In 2019, ISF-UTS and Plan Indonesia co-designed and trialled seven participatory methods/activities to assess how climate change affects water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services, and gender and social inclusion outcomes.

All activities considered inclusion of marginalised groups and people with disabilities, but the assessment of climate impacts on sanitation accessibility was most specific in addressing disability inclusion. Adapted from the WaterAid “How to conduct a WASH accessibility and safety audit” guide, this activity identifies: barriers that currently affect sanitation accessibility; how climate extremes can potentially worsen and create new barriers; and how the community and local government can help people overcome barriers.

The activity was piloted in Manggarai district in the central part of Flores Island, Indonesia. In recent times there has been increasing intensity of rainfall, causing landslides, floods, and soil erosion. Increasing seasonal variability, longer dry spells, and more extreme weather events were also noticed by villagers, and have been in line with climate change projections for the region. The case shared below shows three benefits of inclusion of people with disabilities in climate change assessment for inclusive WASH programming.

First, people with disabilities are likely to experience climate change impacts most severely. Their vulnerability to climate change is linked to multiple disadvantages they experience. For example, people with disabilities globally are disproportionately represented among the poor, have higher levels of unmet health needs, and are twice as likely to be unemployed. Due to these differentiated impacts, their voices are critical for identifying the issues so they can be addressed. For example, in Manggarai, we met with a young woman, with a physical disability, who told us about accessibility issues with the lack of ramp and handrails at the public toilet. To access the toilet, people needed to step across a drain, which fills and overflows during heavy rain.

Second, people with disabilities are routinely excluded from education, jobs, leadership roles, and often denied the opportunity to contribute to public forums. Through including people living with disabilities in community decision-making on climate-resilient programs, they have an experience of being treated with dignity and respect. Through meaningful participation, there may be growing awareness of the actual capacities and contributions of people with disabilities to their community. This helps to shift their position and perception from being an aid beneficiary, to an agent driving their own development, with perspectives worthy of inclusion.

As a result of the inclusive design of the participatory activities, people with disabilities in Manggarai joined the assessments, and other participants created space for them to voice their concerns. In one village forum, an elderly man with disabilities was vocal in requesting assistance from government. A Plan Indonesia team member reported, “we talked about how people with disabilities can have a voice and be heard, using Pertuni (disability people’s organisation) as an example. We want to try changing thinking about people with disabilities as charity recipients, so they can also be empowered and involved in the community”.

Third, drawing on information gathered from a diverse range of community members of different ages, genders, ability levels, and occupations can inform new pathways forward for surviving well in the face of climate change, and possibly positive transformation. This approach pays attention to contextualised and place-based knowledge on the changing environment. Inclusive programs are more likely to be effective, sustainable, and align better with the values of communities.

The community assessment revealed the difficulty of accessing sanitation facilities in challenging weather conditions, such as heavy rain and drought. Learning about experiences of people with disabilities and their carers could then be used to help identify solutions that could be implemented by the community or the government. For example, in all villages, community members suggested using collective funds and labour to build toilets, and provide support to facilitate equal access to water and sanitation for people with disabilities.

Benefits of disability inclusion

Through this case study of a WASH program in Indonesia, we can see the benefits of people with disabilities participating in climate-resilient development programming. Representation of people with disabilities can contribute to a breakdown in negative stereotypes and misconceptions of their capacities. The meaningful inclusion of diverse perspectives ensures a nuanced and contextualised program that benefits all community members with an inclusive outcome.

Although the empowerment and leadership of people living with disabilities is critical in responding to climate change, external assistance is also needed. With the perspectives and needs of people with disabilities in mind, development actors can work alongside disabled people’s organisations, and provide more targeted support for climate change resilience and adaptation.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Tamara Megaw is an ISS alumnus who graduated in 2015 from the MA program in Social Policy for Development. After graduating, she worked in global education at Nuffic NESO Indonesia and then consulted for Transnational Institute. Since late 2017, she has worked at the Institute for Sustainable Futures, University for Technology Sydney (ISF-UTS) on research related to development effectiveness, gender equality and social inclusion.

Anna Gero is a Research Principal at ISF-UTS. Anna is a climate change and disaster resilience leader and specialist with over 13 years’ experience in the Asia-Pacific region.

Dr Jeremy Kohlitz is a Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) researcher at ISF-UTS with interests in climate change impacts on equitable WASH service delivery in the Asia-Pacific region.

Transformative Methodologies | Listening differently, hearing more clearly: a decolonial approach to fostering dialogue between plural knowledges

By ISS Blog Bliss 8 February 20224 January 2025 4274 views

Recent debates on decolonising research have highlighted the importance of accounting for plural knowledges by seeking to foster a dialogue between them. Yet, a dominant modern rationalist approach informing how we understand the knowledges we encounter and produce through our research is impeding this objective. A diversity of languages is used to share and represent knowledge – and not all of them can be captured and understood by modern rationality, writes Agustina Solera.

“The people (el Pueblo)^[1] do not speak the same language that we do. Their alphabet doesn’t have letters; only shapes, movements, gestures.
And it is not that the people are illiterate, but that they want to say things that we no longer say.”^[2]
Rodolfo Kusch, 1966, Indios, Porteños y dioses

In the chapter ‘La Zamba y los Dioses’ (‘Zamba and the Gods’) from his 1966 book Indios, Porteños y Dioses (Indians, Porteños and Gods), Argentine philosopher Rodolfo Kusch contemplates the ritual meaning of Zamba, a traditional Argentine music genre and folk dance that is performed in pairs and with handkerchiefs in hand. In the colony, Zamba was the term attributed to the mestizo descendants of indigenous and black people, arising during the independence process as a show of affection for the mestizos. Kusch, recognised as a key antecedent for decolonial thought thanks to his in-depth research on indigenous and popular Latin American thought, in this work wonders which senses are evoked through Zamba – which meanings emerge through the movement of bodies, the rhythms, the gazes, the cadence, or the energetic swishing of handkerchiefs.

Kusch’s examination of this form of expression sets the scene for my discussion of the link between languages and transformative methodologies. It is clear that Zamba is a form of non-verbal communication that is used in popular culture to say those things that cannot be expressed orally or in writing – or that its adherents do not wish to say in any other way than through music or dance. And, as the ethnographic research I did with the Mapuche community near the city of San Martín de los Andes in Patagonia, Argentina in pursuit of my PhD showed, trying to render these forms of expression meaningful by assuming a rational lens results in the failure to capture the sensitivity and spirituality of such ways of communicating. Zamba, like other forms of cultural or social expression, must be understood in ways not based solely on a modern rationality.

From the modern-Western knowledge perspective, a dialogue of knowledges becomes possible only when the exchanges coexist within a framework of modern rationality; exchanges can only occur when communities share the same language. By language I mean any system of expression used to represent meanings. From this perspective, the senses that cannot be expressed through the resources considered genuine in knowledge production become insignificant and subsidiary (Palermo, 2004). This is inherently problematic, first and foremost because the untranslatable is ignored – those things that are inexpressible in logical-rational terms, precisely because they come from other logics and other ways of seeing, feeling, and making sense of the world. If in the immense universe of meanings present in the encounter with others, those ones that cannot be translated to the specific understanding of rationality, are excluded, then what is the point of opening up our research process toward other ways of knowing? Aren’t those ‘insignificant’ senses – the ones that have been able to survive continuous domination and impositions – the ones that have transformative potential?

Different representational resources are needed for dialogue across different ways of knowing; these are rooted in transformative methodologies. Such methodologies would be transformative since they would challenge not only the privilege attributed to one valid form of knowledge (modern-Western) over others, but also the superiority attributed to the resources considered valid to represent life experiences.

Resistance and re-existence

Mignolo (1992) denounces the colonisation of language and memory in Latin America, enabled by introducing the Roman alphabet and the discursive genres (or frames) associated with it to this region. Alphabetic writing was imposed as a way to preserve that which was previously transmitted through glyphs, pictograms, and oral stories. According to him, the graphic languages used before the conquest to share knowledge could be silenced by alphabetic writing.

Yet, the languages spoken with the body could not be completely colonised. All those who keep alive indigenous languages up to the present are proof that knowledge can still survive when shared in non-written ways. Zulma Palermo (2012) argued that not only expressions of resistance, but also expressions of re-existence emerge through languages that confront the canonical principles of modern rational knowledge. From a critical perspective of what has led to refusal and self-ignorance, the processes of re-existence refer to ways of re-elaborating life, of revaluing what has been denied (Albán Achinte, 2013).

Let’s go back to Kusch and the endless meanings that can be found in Zamba. He cannot translate into words what’s so fascinating about Zamba, nor can anyone who has witnessed this form of expression. The argumentative reasons are difficult to be found; the fascination seems inexplicable: “In the end, it is something very simple; it is only a dance that takes place in a special moment of any popular celebration. … A man and a woman… braid a circle while flipping handkerchiefs to the rhythm of guitars and a kick drum, and that’s it. And yet, the Zamba fascinates us … Why? Is there something else in it? … Have we put in it what we have forbidden ourselves to show?” (Kusch, 2007: 287-289)[3]. And it is acceptable not to understand that which is not expressed in a modern rationalist manner. Dialoguing, accessing, or even noticing the colorful fabric of cultural plurality will hardly become possible through a monochromatic canonical gaze.

Representational resources are a primary part of methodological procedures, since they are the rationalities in which the meanings that constitute a scientific investigation are sustained (Peyloubet & Ortecho, 2015). Languages are part of the tools used to represent, interpret and translate the meanings that emerge in the encounter with others. Hence the importance of reflecting on languages when thinking about transformative methodologies, as well as the importance of reflecting on the scope of the resources that scientific institutions consider valid for producing knowledge and the possibilities that other-than-verbal-centered languages may create.

References

Alban Achinte, Adolfo (2013). Más allá de la razón hay un mundo de colores. Modernidades, colonialidades y reexistencia. Casa del Caribe y Editorial Oriente.

Kush, Rodolfo (2007). Rodolfo Kush: Obras completas. Tomo 1. Fundación Ross. Rosario, Argentina.

Lugones, María & Price, Joshua (2010). Translators’ introduction. In W. Mignolo, I. Silverblatt & S. Saldívar-Hull (Ed.), Indigenous and Popular Thinking in América (pp. lv-lxxii). New York, USA: Duke University Press.

https://doi-org.eur.idm.oclc.org/10.1515/9780822392514-004

Mignolo, Walter. (1992). “La colonización del lenguaje y la memoria. Complicidades de la letra, el libro y la memoria”. Coord. Iris M Zavala. Discursos sobre la ‘invención’ de América. Ed. Amsterdam, Holanda.

Palermo, Zulma (2012). “Mirar para comprender: artesanía y re-existencia”. Otros Logos. Revista de estudios críticos. Nº 3. 223-236. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Neuquén, Argentina.

Palermo, Zulma (2004). “Ricardo J. Kaliman, Alhajita es tu canto. El capital simbólico de Atahualpa Yupanqui”. Revista de crítica literaria latinoamericana. Nº 60. pp. 392-394. Lima.

Peyloubet, Paula & Ortecho, Mariana Jesús. (2015). Desafíos empíricos, crítica semiótica y una apuesta por la introducción a nuevos lenguajes. Signo y Pensamiento, 34(66), 14-27. https://doi.org/10.111447javeriana.syp34-66.decs

Solera, Agustina (2018). Movimientos decoloniales en la Patagonia Andina. Reflexiones para una conversación desde el territorio. (Decolonial Movements in Andean Patagonia. Thoughts for a conversation based on the territory). Doctoral dissertation. Centro de Estudios Avanzados, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.

^[1] Pueblo points not to ‘‘the people’’ as an abstraction, but to the concrete, disoriented human manyness that contains the possibility of community. (Lugones & Price, 2010: Ixi).

^[2] Author’s own translation.

[3] Author’s own translation.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Agustina Solera is a Post-Doctoral Researcher for Prince Claus Chair in Equity and Development at ISS.

Transformative Methodologies | How ‘interactive research’ can foster mutual learning as a first step in transformative research

By ISS Blog Bliss 3 February 20224 January 2025 4705 views

Transformative research is an evolving concept rooted in the conscious action of embedded scholar-activism. Opening up possibilities for mutual learning can be an important first step for interested scholars in making their research transformative. In this blog, Holly A. Ritchie proposes that subtle social change may be triggered through the research process itself by what she terms ‘interactive research’.

From participatory to interactive research

Qualitative research aims to explore the “meaning of people’s lives, under real-world conditions”[1] (Yin 2011: 8) by examining the views and perspectives of actors in specific contexts. Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA)[2] is an innovative approach to qualitative data collection that seeks to engage local people in sharing, analyzing, and reflecting upon their lives. These ethnographic techniques can incorporate visuals and exercises that include ranking, mapping, and Venn diagrams. Yet whilst PRA may be considered somewhat transformative in actively involving participants in the research process, there remains a lack of thoughtful reflection with participants that inhibits potential processes of learning in local communities.

In taking participative research a step further, I have coined the term ‘Interactive Research’ to describe a deliberate two-way research process in which both researchers and local communities interact and learn from each other. On the one hand, through the PRA exercises, the researcher can better understand the community by actively engaging with local actors. On the other hand, facilitated discussions and reflections on emerging findings can help foster new community perspectives and dialogues. The approach thus benefits both the researcher and target communities by illuminating nuanced understandings of local lives (for the researcher) and by triggering new local knowledge and awareness (for the community).

Interactive research may be particularly significant in more fragile research contexts including conflict environments, refugee situations, as well as slum areas where respondents may be less educated and marginalised. In these contexts, a new consciousness can spark critical processes of social change from within, particularly amongst vulnerable groups such as women that may suffer illiteracy, oppression and violence. For example, conversations and reflections around women’s social norms in my research in Afghanistan and East Africa have encouraged women to take stock of their efforts and to look critically at pathways of change for women and girls.

A critical realist approach to exploration and learning

My evolving research approach has been shaped and inspired by critical realism, a philosophical standpoint that takes a holistic approach to understanding ‘reality’. With an emphasis on the ‘social’, Tony Lawson (1997) maintains that the phenomena of the world can be better explained through reference to powers, mechanisms, and related tendencies. In fragile contexts, I have highlighted that a critical realist approach benefits from a “creative researcher” with a strong self-reflective capacity to explore subtle themes and dynamics,[3] drawing attention to the value of participatory techniques. A critical realist investigation has also been shown to require researcher sensitivity and trust. This exploratory and grounded research approach with intimate community engagement has prompted a new awareness for me around the potential for deep reflection and learning of vulnerable groups that may be enabled through the research process.

In adopting a conscious critical realist approach, the PRA exercises I have conducted have stimulated both fruitful exchange as well as nuanced reflection on social change, especially in fragile environments. I found that “[p]articipatory-oriented sessions permitted both relaxed, and strikingly open discussions, in an informal style that was arguably more suitable for less-educated women in low-trust contexts who were unaccustomed to interview style questions and/or afraid to speak out…these techniques were especially useful in delving into sensitive topics around culture, religion, and power”.[4]

Interactive research in practice: creating space for reflection

In my various research studies, visual tools have sought to be imaginative and have included self-designed group exercises and networking diagrams often using a mix of cards, string, and beans (or stones). As a researcher, I guided the activities, but local actors took the lead in making sense of the tasks and formulating responses. The central focus of the tools has been on engaging participants, particularly women, in exploring and unpacking their thoughts, ideas, and perspectives. This allows for the confident relaying of local phenomena and experiences and creates a space for storytelling. It also offers the opportunity for facilitated reflection.

I drew on such methods initially in my doctoral research in which I investigated institutional change in women’s enterprise development in grassroots communities in Afghanistan (2009-2013). In some of the PRA exercises that I conducted, female participants used various coloured cards to represent different actor ‘strategies’ in faciliating or holding back social change for women at the community level, particularly related to women’s public mobility and work. Handfuls of beans were then to used indicate relative involvement of different community actors in discussions around women’s changing roles. In these explorative sessions, elaborate discussions were held on the women’s individual and collective ‘journeys’ of changing norms and what this has meant for their social and economic lives.

Figure 1: Strategy mapping of local actors in Afghan women’s changing roles

In subsequent NGO research, I looked more broadly at gender norms, and trends of change in pastoralist communities across the Horn of Africa – Ethiopia, Kenya, Somaliland, South Sudan and Darfur (2014-2018). In PRA exercises, I examined the scope of different social norms and their prevalence for women and girls, including harmful traditional practices such as female genital mutilation (FGM), early and forced marriage, as well as norms around domestic chores, community participation, and attending school. In these cases, various norms were explored by making use of picture cards. Once again, with encouragement, some women reflected on their own experiences of change and persisting barriers that were still holding them back both individually and as a community.

Figure 2: Exploring the prevalence and scope of different norms for women and girls with the Afar people in northern Ethiopia using the prompt of picture cards.

From new dialogue and ideas to enjoyment and trust

The dynamic but sensitive reflections with community groups in interactive research can nurture conversations, perspectives, and ideas in fragile research environments. This can generate new insights into often opaque beliefs, values, and habits, and what might be changing and why, particularly for vulnerable groups. Such an approach may be gently transformative for participants in the new potential clarity gained on their own experiences and realities. On a human level, interactive research approach has also permitted an important sense of enjoyment with many sessions and learning moments generating humour and laughter, influencing local wellbeing in meaningful exchange. In longer-term studies, interactive research may foster a sense of trust and rapport between the researcher and respondents.

Towards the development of conscious research for activist scholars, interactive research may offer a ‘light touch’ approach to pursuing transformative methodologies through integrating mutual learning and fostering subtle community-led social change. In further developing this approach, research projects can explore the co-development of tools and reflective exercises with local actors that may allow the identification of unexpected themes and analysis. This could stimulate a deeper level of social dialogue and exchange, presenting a greater potential for learning and local transformation, both cognitively and socially.

[1] Yin, R. (2011). Qualitative Research From Start to Finish. London: Guilford Press.

[2] The Participatory Rural Appraisal method originally stems from rural development work and entails various approaches and methods that “enable local people to share, enhance and analyse their knowledge of life and conditions, to plan and to act” (Chambers 1994: 953).

[3] Ritchie, H. A. (2019). ‘Investigating Gender and Enterprise in “Fragile” Refugee Settings: The Use of Critical Realism to Explore Institutional Dynamics and Change’. In Sage Research Methods Cases Part 2. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

[4] Ritchie (2019). ‘Investigating Gender and Enterprise in “Fragile” Refugee Settings: The Use of Critical Realism to Explore Institutional Dynamics and Change’. In Sage Research Methods Cases Part 2. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.

Additional references

Chambers, R. (1994) ‘The Origins and Practice of Participatory Rural Appraisal’, World Development 22(7): 953-969.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Holly Ritchie is a (post-doctorate) research fellow at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), part of Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR).

Hope, Play, Relate: Changing narratives for greater solidarity and open civic space

By ISS Blog Bliss 1 February 20224 January 2025 3605 views

Narratives or the stories we use to set our perceptions and experiences in a larger context of meaning are powerful tools for both supporting civic space and engagement and oppressing them. As we are often not even aware of these narratives, changing them is not easy and requires much more than spreading information. A roundtable at the recent EADI/ISS conference “Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice” explored successful practical examples how a deeper change of narratives can take place in favour of positive social change and freedom of expression. Nicole Walshe and Anne Mai Baan summarize its recommendations.

In our work to strengthen and support civic space worldwide (i.e. the space for freedoms of meaning, and shape our understandings of the world – are like layered currents. Sometimes only a part of the narrative is visible, the tip of the iceberg, but beneath the surface it is connected to deeply held and shared social norms and values, history and culture which are often invisible and difficult to melt down.

We seized the opportunity at the recent EADI conference on ‘Solidarity, Peace and Social Justice’ to understand different strategies to influence narrative currents. The virtual roundtable on solidarity-building narratives affirmed that such narratives can be powerful tools to protect and strengthen the space to practice our civic rights – as key enablers of peace and social justice. We also learned that narrative change work is about:

Hope and Play. Narrative work finds creative ways to move people to new ideas and experiences, tapping into feelings of hope and visioning possible futures.
Relationships and Understanding. It is a process of mutual learning – demanding openness to have one’s own mind changed too.
Listening. It is most powerful when you reach out to those you don’t necessarily already agree with, to find shared values and meet in the middle.
Co-Creating: It is a constant iterative process, asking interaction with all kinds of actors and individuals, finding expressions of solidarity to create a better future together.
Showing, not telling. Narratives need to be embodied, and solidarity is best expressed through concrete actions.
Moving beyond strategic communications: The end goal of narrative change work is a deeper level of social change based on power analysis and social norm change strategies.

So what does this look like in practise? Read about the approaches, tactics and lessons from Bulgaria, South Africa and Colombia….and how funders can support this work.

The importance of Hope – shifting perceptions in Bulgaria

For Fine Acts – a global creative studio for social impact – hope is the thread that cuts through all their work. Research about what makes people care reveals that opinions don’t change through more information but through compelling, empathetic experiences. Yana Buhrer Tavanier explained that if our messaging triggers fear and guilt, people will shut down. We need to communicate hope and opportunity to engage people and gather the positive and creative energy for change! Fine Acts applied this in their Love Speech campaign, which engaged 35 leading Bulgarian artists in a vast campaign against hate speech, which has been on the rise particularly against Roma, LGBTQI+ people and refugees. The campaign featured a series of urban art interventions, a participatory installation, a viral online video, and a large free-to-use collection of illustrations, and reached more than one million people, raising awareness of the implications of hate speech on wider society. Through creativity, playfulness, hope and wit, the campaign was able to engage people in a non-threatening way to shift perceptions of these marginalized groups and counter dominant hateful narratives.

Yana’s tip: – don’t let trying to do things the ‘perfect way’ hold you back – experimentation is just as good. Try, learn, adapt, learn and adapt again!

The importance of Play – challenging beliefs in South Africa

Narrative change work combines campaigning and communication strategies. In order to be effective it needs to focus on understanding the interests and psychology of those whose perceptions you want to change, and taps into culture, humour, history to connect with the audience on multiple levels. This also requires a certain amount of playfulness – in particular when serious and demanding human rights activism can lead to burnout or feelings of powerlessness. Ishtar Lakhani illustrated the creative and playful mixed approach through the example of raising awareness on the rights of sex workers in South Africa. The Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce (SWEAT) chose to focus on challenging the specific image of sex work pushed out by Hollywood blockbuster imagery. By instead showing the multiple working identities of sex workers – as mothers, carers, often combining different jobs – the campaign demonstrated that sex work is not the only work that sex workers (can) do. For example, SWEAT also seized the opportunity of the 2019 South African National Elections to deploy their creative activism and started a fictitious sex worker-led political party called SWAG. Through political party posters, convincing social media coverage and a campaign video with the one-liner ‘Your Rights, Your Freedom, Your SWAG’ they gained attention and public space to talk about the rights of sex workers and managed to get the two largest opposition political parties to include this as an issue in their election manifestos.

Ishtar’s tip – changing the language you use can sometimes create bridges to unexpected allies and new ways of looking at the issue. You can then jointly make a new narrative!

The importance of Relationships and Showing, not Telling – Human Rights outreach in Venezuela

Doing narrative change work can also be about using concrete action to show people what we mean when talking about rights. Often those concrete practical examples are precisely what pulls people towards social change activism rather than mere rhetoric and general statements about rights. In Venezuela two things came together to change the way a team of pro-bono lawyers did human rights outreach to communities. The team had already been facing narrative attacks labelling human rights proponents as ‘anti-Venezuelan’, and had been working on a series of events that would ‘materialise’ rights in ways beyond their traditional legal accompaniment. By offering opportunities for sports, music, and entrepreneurial training, for example. With the onset of COVID, the need to creatively rethink how they reached community members became even more urgent. So they held upcycling workshops to make PPE face-shields, began partnering with community kitchens, and formalized a position for creative community activism. These creative approaches resulted not only in more effective community engagement, but also prompted reflections on what it means to be lawyers and how they might give a face to human rights that resonates more with the lived experiences of the communities they work in.

Lucas’s tip: Appeal to people’s ideal collective future, to reveal how much the values underlying these visions of an ideal society align. Narrative success depends on making relationships and experiences the ends of your project, not the means.

The importance of FAILing and funding failure!

FAILing, or a First Attempt In Learning, is something James Savage from the Global Fund for Human Rights encourages all funders to not only be excited about, but to incentivize and enable. He suggests some key points for funders who are interested in supporting narrative change work to bear in mind:

Focus on the process, not product, and fund the process. Work on shifting norms, perceptions and deep currents in society has different timelines and measures of change!
Embrace risk, unpredictable outcomes and experimentation. ‘Success’ is redefined by the learning, iterations and ‘FAIL’ing forward.
Understand the objective of a funder as ‘accompanying a learning journey and building of narrative power’, and translate this directly into an accountability framework focusing on changes and learning instead of impact.
Resource local narrative changemakers & foster connection for mutual support, learning and collaboration. Lots of small initiatives may be the answer.
Support an infrastructure of narrative work with the means to widely disperse and deeply immerse narratives over time that shape how societal norms are set.

James’s tip: Funders need to be prepared to FAIL forward and to support others to FAIL forward.

Solidarity in Narratives, Narratives for Solidarity

Humans tend to assemble mutually reinforcing stories in order to establish common sense and construct shared beliefs or truths about people, places, communities, cultures and their understandings of rights and social justice. Narrative work is about changing what is ‘known’ about a group of people, or about a situation. It is, however, not about ‘convincing’ people; rather about building new and different relationships and understanding. Co-constructing narratives can be a key way to connect with different constituencies and build solidarity across groups, including those that didn’t start out with the same perspective or agreement. It is as much about story-listening as story-telling. And the stories continue to be written:

Get inspired by the Love-Speech Campaign and all the other campaigns run by Fine Acts
Read Ishtar’s journal article on creatively fighting for the rights of sex workers in South Africa and listen to Ishtar’s tips on creative activism
Explore the innovative approaches to of JustLabs
Dive into more of James’s reflections on narrative work
To learn more about Oxfam’s narrative work and journey contact Anne Mai Baan and Isabel Crabtree-Condor.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Nicole Walshe coordinates Oxfam’s Knowledge Hub on Governance & Citizenship (KHG&C) – a network for staff working on themes of governance & citizenship, with a specific focus on civic space, fiscal justice and active citizenship. She does this together with the inspiring KHG&C Core Team, who are based in The Netherlands, Bolivia and Vietnam. Nicole is passionate about the topics of civic space and human rights and combining these with influencing tactics and strategy, and has a keen interest in supporting knowledge and learning processes that can help us take action and make strategic decisions based on what we observe and learn.

Anne Mai Baan is a Knowledge Broker on Civic Space & Narratives in the KHG&C Team at Oxfam. This position is all about convening connections and building relationships across Oxfam’s network on the topics of civic space and narratives. Within the knowledge Hub we find creative and inclusive ways to make different forms of knowledge (experiences & expertise) more visible, accessible and useful for greater reach, impact and influence! Anne Mai is passionate about issues of power and exclusion, the way language shapes our experiences and the impact of competing narratives in humanitarian and development contexts.

Palestinian Human Rights Defenders need protection: what can we do?

By ISS Blog Bliss 27 January 20224 January 2025 4217 views

On 19 October 2021, the government of Israel issued a military order that designated six, renowned and award-winning Palestinian human rights groups as “terrorist organisations”. The reason for this military order, and the evidence for making such designations, have not been disclosed. This is the latest of Israel’s longstanding efforts to undermine the work of these organisations. It also seems clear that this action is intended to intimidate donors and supporters of these organisations.

The Palestinian human rights organisations under threat

The six organisations affected by Israel’s military order are: Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defence for Children International-Palestine, Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and Union of Palestinian Women Committees. The work of these six organisations is both crucial to a future peace in Israel and Palestine, and has been invaluable for the work of United Nations human rights treaty bodies, as well as Special Rapporteurs and Commissions of Inquiry, and for the International Criminal Court that is currently investigating international crimes in Palestine. Declaring the work of these organisations as “terrorist” not only undermines efforts at peace, but also places individuals who work for them in a potentially very dangerous situation, and potentially creates dilemmas for states, individuals, and organisations who have supported them (financially or otherwise) regarding the continuity of that support. This combination of (possible) effects forms an existential threat to the work of the six organisations, which no doubt is intended by the government of Israel.

Addameer was founded in 1992 and advocates for Palestinian political prisoners who suffer long-term arbitrary detention, without charge or trial. Al-Haq, founded in 1979, is the West Bank affiliate of the International Commission of Jurists-Geneva, and has issued dozens of meticulously documented reports on the countless human rights violations that Palestinians experience daily. These violations include denials of the right to housing and freedom of movement, lack of protection against settler violence, and a long list of international crimes, most of which are connected to Israel’s regime of apartheid, itself a crime against humanity. The Bisan Center for Research and Development, in operation since the late 1980’s, focuses on the most marginalised communities in Palestine, including women, youth, and workers in the most rural and deprived areas, and advocates for their development needs. Defence for Children International-Palestine has, since 1991, documented serious human rights violations directed against children, including inhuman and degrading punishment and treatment, arbitrary detention, torture, and unlawful killings. The organisation also provides legal assistance and representation to these children in Israeli military tribunals.

The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) is one of the oldest Palestinian NGOs that advocates for Palestinian farmers’ rights to sovereignty of their land and products. They have played a leading role in documenting settler violence against Palestinian farmers, work that is especially important now as Palestinians across the West Bank are facing massive settler violence when they try to harvest their olive crops. This is confirmed by reports from the International Committee of the Red Cross, which have documented that from August 2020 up until August 2021, settlers destroyed over 9000 Palestinian olive trees, in addition to increased levels of violence and harassment directed against Palestinian farmers. The Union of Palestinian Women Committees (UPWC), established in 1980, is the umbrella organisation for all Palestinian women’s groups in the Occupied Territories. Its staff have supported Palestinian women’s rights, equal opportunities for men and women, and equity between social classes. UPWC has been a major force in the women’s rights movement in Palestine, and plays an active role in the global movement for women’s rights, including in relation to attention for gender-based violence.

Global reaction to the designation

B’tselem was among the first Israeli organisations to condemn the Israeli government’s designation as a ‘draconian’ measure. In addition, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights condemned the designations as “an attack on human rights defenders, on freedoms of association, opinion and expression and on the right to public participation”, and called for the designations to be “immediately revoked”. International human rights NGOs Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International also issued strong statements condemning the designations. They have been joined by international legal experts, including the celebrated South African law professor John Dugard, who also reflected on the similar treatment of human rights organisations by South Africa’s apartheid regime in the 1980s.

On 3 November 2021, more than 30 Dutch organizations addressed the Dutch Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Dutch Parliament; they called on the Netherlands to:

publicly speak out against and condemn Israel’s decision as an unjustified violation against civil society;
appeal to Israel to retract this military order with immediate effect;
continue its support to Palestinian partner organisations and ensure that Dutch banking and financial institutions disregard Israel’s order;
openly support the work of these affected organisations.

Above all, the Netherlands has been called upon to ensure support to civil society, and especially to human rights defenders who speak out in defence of the rights of Palestinians.

All of these demands by Israeli, international, and Dutch human rights organisations are fully in-line with the United Nations Declaration and the European Union Guidelines on Human Rights Defenders. Referring to these sources, the Dutch government has openly declared that it “supports human rights defenders, so that they can do their work effectively and safely”.

Valuable time, however, has been lost since 19 October. Even worse, in January 2022, the Dutch government announced that it was stopping its support to one of the six designated organisations (UAWC), even despite their admission that they lacked evidence of a link to terrorist activity.

Action is needed NOW

Respect for international law, and the UN and EU guidelines on human rights defenders, should compel the government of the Netherlands to reverse its decision to defund UACW, and to urge the European Union to join United Nations experts, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, and others, in irrefutably condemning Israel’s designations.

So, what can we do now?

Both financial and diplomatic support are crucially needed during this time when Palestinian civil society is under great pressure from Israel’s military and apartheid regime. This is why we produced a letter for individual sign-on, to protest the Dutch government’s decision, and why we will be organising a webinar on 27 January 2022 to discuss this further. For more information, please register here, or alternatively contact our network.

An earlier version of this article, which we provide key updates to above, was published in the Dutch newspaper Trouw.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Jeff Handmaker is Associate Professor in Legal Sociology at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Christian Henderson is Assistant Professor of International Relations of the Middle East at Leiden University. Both are supporters of Dutch Scholars for Palestine.

Marthe Heringa is a student at Leiden University and an organiser of Students for Palestine.

Transformative Methodologies | How emancipatory research can help prevent the misrepresentation of marginalised groups in conflict-prone settings

By ISS Blog Bliss 26 January 20224 January 2025 3774 views

The misrepresentation of minority groups through research taking place during the colonial period has had lasting effects, impacting not only the way in which such groups are represented and represent themselves, but also how they are seen in academic research and treated by researchers. Delphin Ntanyoma by discussing the case of the Banyamulenge in the DRC shows how social and political settings, as well as historical oversights, errors, and rationalisations are perpetuating harm against minority groups. He proposes emancipatory research based on the co-creation of knowledge as a way to prevent further harm.

I write both in my capacity as a researcher in the field of conflict and peace studies and as a member of a community called the Banyamulenge that for decades has been affected by discrimination and violence. The turmoil caused by their misrepresentation, amongst others through research, has led to a deep-seated identity crisis, causing others to question the place of this minority ethnic group among others in the DRC.

This sorry state of affairs results from the misinterpretation and manipulation of South Kivu’s population migration history in colonial accounts of this part of the DRC. Resulting discrimination has had socio-political effects including physical violence against minority groups, but it has also spilled over into the academia arena. For instance, during my field research, a prominent university professor in Bukavu revealed how members of the Banyamulenge community are absent in academic debates organised to discuss their problems in South Kivu.

Their absence in academic spaces seems to be opening gaps that are being filled by the dominant views of those (un)intentionally reproducing colonial accounts. When reading the following debatable statement, for example, I question the way this conclusion has been drawn: “… the identity Banyamulenge includes every wave of immigrants to Mulenge, including those who came in the wake of the genocide of 1994. They are all Banyamulenge” (Mamdani, 1999, p.56).

Such damaging constructions of the Banyamulenge based on so-called ‘scientific research’ conducted during the heyday of colonialism are still used to this day when speaking of this and other minorities in the DRC. It is in light of this that I have realised how important a transformative research methodology is for ensuring social justice through research itself. Giving voice to marginalised groups by recognising them as participants or co-researchers can largely prevent some of these questionable findings; that is, the use of emancipatory approaches can help prevent not only present, but also past harms from being repeated by researchers. However, my experience during the fieldwork in Eastern DRC has proven that marginalised groups face challenges in accessing field sites and therefore cannot participate fully in research.

The historical misrepresentation of minority groups: pseudoscience?

Back in 1954 and 1955, a few years before the DRC’s independence from colonial rule, Belgian research Jean Hiernaux set out to do research in an area in South Kivu where the territory of Uvira now lies. His ‘anthropological’ research was aimed at explaining physical (dis)similarities between three groups, of which two at that time lived in South Kivu/DRC: the Tutsi of Itombwe (now referred to as the Banyamulenge) and the Bafuliro ethnic groups, and the Tutsi of Rwanda. For this purpose, Hiernaux looked at the diets and physical characteristics of people from each of the groups, including their height and the width and length of their mouths, noses, lips, and foreheads. He based some of his key conclusions on these measurements, linking these characteristics to the origin of the Banyamulenge; ever since, this has constantly been used to exclude them politically.

Such physical anthropological work was not specific to Hiernaux or this region of the DRC. Similar studies conducted in the African Great Lakes region fill colonial archives. These kinds of ‘scientific’ findings raise questions about methodologies that researchers use to conduct research and the responsibility of the researcher towards those they study. In this case, the measuring of physical features contributed to the widening schism between natives and immigrants[1] by trying to confirm that the Banyamulenge are more linked to the Tutsi of Rwanda than closer to their neighbours, the Bafuliro ethnic group.

The same set of binaries still mobilises armed actors in the Kivu region of the DRC today. As Matthys and Verweijen noted for South Kivu, contemporary armed conflicts tend to revolve around the dichotomy reinforced by Hiernaux six decades ago. And this violence unfolds in the form of a slow genocide against the Banyamulenge minority, alleged to be ‘immigrants’ in the DRC. But what’s even more devastating is that these groups are themselves referring to these ‘causal relationships’ in how they relate to each other. Even today, these kinds of colonial writings are regularly referred to when local ethnic communities come into conflict with one another over claims to belonging, power, and resources.

The ‘stickiness’ of research findings

Colonial documents, being written, express the power of written over oral knowledge: ‘written knowledge’ generally dominates oral sources. Yet, whatever the deficiencies of colonial archives, researchers, politicians, activists, and social media users (including myself) continue to refer to these to support their different positions. The blind spots and errors of such documents have in this way been retransmitted and reproduced across generations. Even comparative measurements of noses and lips in the example used above are part of contemporary debate around who can be considered a DRC ‘native’ or not.

Two ways to prevent further harm

As a researcher, I am honestly led to question my ability to write in such a way that my work could not be misused a hundred years from now, as it has been in the case discussed above. Although methodologies in the social sciences have improved and to some extent been decolonised, there remains a tension between the positive outcomes of research and the misuse of the knowledge that was created. Thus, scholars and researchers, regardless of their role in society, must exercise caution in conducting research to prevent it from being used in the future to harm others.

How can researchers do this? Whenever research has potentially damaging effects, especially in contexts characterised by the widespread use of violence, academics should consider sharing the collective responsibility for what happens with their knowledge. After all, by writing up and publishing their findings, they share in a collective sense of honour or achievement. Taking responsibility would mean that researchers and scholars deploy efforts to rehabilitate and educate public opinion on what has been gone wrong, decolonising knowledge in this case.

Second, as Mertens (2010) shows, there is room for transformative methodologies to step in and prevent some of these negative effects of scientific research. Specifically, the argument in this article is that by adopting a transformative emancipatory perspective on research in conflict situations, potential harm can be avoided (Shanon-Baker, 2016: 326). From such a perspective, excluded groups are viewed as important actors in the knowledge production process; this leads to “intentional collaboration with minority and marginalized groups or those whose voice is not typically heard on particular issues”. In this way, the researcher can pay particular attention to issues of power, privilege and those voices mostly unheard and rarely listened to.

The approach can be considered emancipatory in that it provides more space for minority people and marginalised groups to participate in research as participants whose perspective is taken into account. I would argue that there are considerable possibilities for their deeper involvement in processes of knowledge generation, not only as participants, but also as researchers. The more we are open to learn from the contributions of marginalised groups as both participants and co-researchers, the more their voices enhance transformative social change. From my own personal research experience, marginalised groups face competitive and hostile environments, yet have similar innate abilities compared to others. The fieldwork experience revealed that undertaking research while belonging to a marginalised group is not easy.

However, this is not a call for specific attention to specific kinds of individuals, such as the Banyamulenge minority in the DRC. Rather, it is a plea to pay closer attention to how members of given minority groups are constrained in their ability to contribute to research because of what is imposed on them by their social and political settings, and by historical oversights, errors, and rationalisations. Transformative research must go hand-in-hand with the decolonisation of research. Great harm has been done, but researchers through the responsible and careful co-creation of knowledge and the communication and implementation of this knowledge can strive to prevent further harm.

[1] A century and a half ago, the classification of groups and communities across the African Great Lakes region as ‘native’ versus ‘immigrants’ resonated with the racial binaries of ‘Bantu’ and ‘Hamitic’ or ‘Nilotic’ peoples. As in other settings in the African Great Lakes, the colonial ‘native’/’immigrant’ distinction later led to a whole series of violent conflicts and even to genocide. In 1994, it was this categorisation that propelled the Rwandan genocide where the Tutsi population was practically erased in a matter of days.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Delphin Ntanyoma is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies.

Transformative Methodologies | On ‘being with’ and ‘holding space’ as transformative research tools in anthropology

By ISS Blog Bliss 19 January 20221 February 2022 5173 views

[vc_row css=”.vc_custom_1592900783478{margin-right: 0px !important;margin-left: 0px !important;}”][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1592900766479{margin-right: 10px !important;margin-left: -10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Despite advances made in the field of anthropology to address some of its problematic practices, anthropologists still conduct research in the same ways as they always have, their comings and goings based on the amount of data they have acquired. The decolonisation of anthropological studies may benefit from a different approach in which researchers spend time ‘being with’ studied groups, hold space for their stories, and are responsible for the stories they as researchers then put forth, writes Aminata Cairo.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_single_image image=”21547″ img_size=”full” add_caption=”yes” alignment=”center”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Helicopter anthropologists

“For every Indian, there was an anthropologist.” So joked the Native population with me as I was visiting the Navajo reservation to conduct research. There were plenty more jokes about the scientists who, in the name of science, came and went and excavated their stories, only to misrepresent them and never be heard from again. Similarly, when I went to my first national anthropological conference in the US as a graduate student, I attended a session with the Native American cohort where I learned about the concept of ‘helicopter anthropologist’ – those who come and ‘hover’ to extract what they need and then leave without a trace.

Those jokes and lessons have stayed with me. As an anthropologist, I have always felt strongly that in order to do right, we should heed the guidance of those that have been affected the most by these practices. In American anthropology, that would be the Native American population.

I have been trained as an American anthropologist, and as much as I love the discipline, something never felt right. I switched from clinical psychology to anthropology because it was a different way of dealing with people’s stories. Anthropology allowed me to help people give voice to their own stories. And yet there was something about it…

Anthropology was born out of a very specific colonial history,[1] after all. Yes, it was about people’s stories, but those stories were studied so people could be dominated, exploited, or classified as ‘less than’ in support of white supremacy. I am well aware of its past. The approach has changed since its early beginnings, but the means to extract the stories have basically remained the same. We are still helicopter anthropologists.

Yet things could be different. At that same anthropology conference, I met a Native American elder who told me that “the community should be better off for the anthropologists having been there.” It is the teaching that has stayed with me and set me on my path to study indigenous approaches to knowledge.

Researchers as stewards of knowledge

After reading the work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith[2] and Shawn Wilson,[3] my approach to knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge changed forever. According to Wilson, we can never be owners of knowledge. Knowledge is all around us, and we stand in relationship to it. Ultimately, we can only be stewards of knowledge. This approach brings with it a certain humility, an understanding that engagement with indigenous peoples and the gaining of insights is a privilege, not an entitlement. Tuhiwai Smith acknowledges the colonial foundation of research practices and advocates for an approach to research that is decolonising and treats research populations with respect.

Reliable accountability and holding space

My approach to research now is totally different from how I was initially trained. Now, I start with the premise that we are all connected and that for a short period of time, I would ‘be with’ and join a community in order to unearth a story or stories that can be a benefit for all of us. I follow Wilson’s mandate of ‘relational accountability’ represented in the three ‘R’s’: respect, responsibility, and reciprocity. In addition, I use my own concept of ‘holding space’ in which I am not entitled to the story or stories, but must earn the right to experience those stories through being with, displaying care, and building trust. Through joining and collectively being touched and transformed by the story or stories, they will come to light.

The key is that this journey is a respectful collaboration, rather than the standard data extraction pursuit of traditional research. Even in anthropology’s method of participant observation, the ultimate goal is for the researcher to walk away informed and enriched. In this endeavour, the goal is for the researcher and the (research) community to have learned something that will be of benefit to both and potentially useful to transform the space.

In our most recent research project, where we joined a marginalised community within The Hague to explore solidarity in the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, we engaged in a journey with the community. What started as a pursuit for counternarratives to the existing negative public stories shifted and became an exercise in holding space for all the stories that existed in this community, whether positive or negative. It was the community members, after all, that reminded us that they didn’t have anything to prove, and that in fact they had earned the right to just be. Through joining and ‘being with’, we then shifted course and learned about how people hold space for each other – a far more valuable lesson.

I understand that some of my colleagues might frown upon my approach to research. However, in my world of inclusion, there are many different approaches to knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge. My way of doing knowledge is just fine. What matters is that I can contribute to knowledge and communities and feel good about what I do. All of it. That is the best reward and my incentive to keep going.

[1] Lews, D. (1973) ‘Anthropology and Colonialism’, Current Anthropology 14(5): 581-602.

[2] Tuhiwai Smith, L. (1999). Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London and New York: Zed Books Ltd.

[3] Wilson, S. (2008). Research is Ceremony: Indigenous Research Methods. Winnipeg: Fernwood.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1642552768504{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the author:

Aminata Cairo is the chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Team at the International Institute of Social Studies.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column css=”.vc_custom_1596795191151{margin-top: 5% !important;}”][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]

Transformative Methodologies | Thinking Transformative Methodologies Collectively

By ISS Blog Bliss 12 January 20224 January 2025 4694 views

For research to be called socially transformative, the production of scientific knowledge with the aim of addressing a societal problem is not enough. Research processes themselves must also be socially just, which calls for critical self-examination by researchers of how they do research. A project led by ISS researchers seeks to conceptualise a transformative research methodology that underlines a radically different and morally responsible way of conducting research by identifying and challenging assumptions that perpetuate social injustices in research processes. This post introduces the project and its core premises.

Introduction

The veneration in the academe of a singular ‘expert’ knowledge produced by persons and groups based in academic institutions in the Global North, preferably with white bodies, and the failure to create knowledge with communities who are supposed to benefit from it are perhaps the two central obstacles preventing development research from realising its transformative potential. Knowledge produced without the involvement of those it is supposed to serve is not making the impact that it could – and should.

In response to this significant challenge, critical scholars have called for the development of transformative research methodologies based on the collectively identified aim of enacting social justice through research processes themselves. In our understanding, some of the key questions that arise in this context include:

What is the purpose of scientific research?
Who benefits from such research?
How can transformative social change be achieved?
Who enacts such change?
What are the intersectional implications of such change?

Asking such critical questions makes it clear that power relations that continue to play a central part in the production of knowledge need to be changed so that research itself can be truly transformative. In particular, the gap between ‘the researcher’ and ‘the researched’ sustained through current research methodologies must be addressed by recognising those we work with to produce scientific knowledge as primary actors in the research process.

Many researchers at the ISS and beyond are already adhering to the core principles of such methodologies through their work, which led us to seek to synthesise the different approaches and methods at the ISS in a bid to create a framework for transformative research. And so, in late 2020, a group of researchers from the Civic Innovation (CI) Research Group put their heads together to explore the possibility of taking initial discussions on transformative methodologies further. Such discussions had taken place frequently over the past few years within the CI group in recognition of the need to increase the societal impact of research through the inclusion of those we work with and serve through our research in the research process.

We agreed that the research methodology researchers employ to guide the research process matters. The research process itself shapes the extent to which the knowledge that is produced makes a lasting and transformative impact. Thus, we developed a project that would explore different transformative elements of our research and bring them together to form the basis of a transformative research methodology. Our point of departure is to critically engage with possibilities for communities that are commonly depicted as benefactors of produced knowledge to become part of the process as experts and co-producers of knowledge.

Our main activity was to organise a workshop in which we could explore transformative methodologies researchers at the ISS have employed. This synthesis of experiences and techniques, we hoped, could inspire other researchers to do the same. But the workshop was also meant to be a space to discuss issues related to transformative methodologies, including things such as our own biases and assumptions, financial and legal constraints, and hazardous fieldwork sites.

Here are some of the things that emerged from the inspiring discussions we had during the workshop:

Coloniality plays a role in perpetuating untransformative research methodologies; to address this, knowledge production processes need to be decolonised. Delphin Ntanyoma, a PhD researcher, proposed that in the light of dominant colonial writings and research and for responsible knowledge production to occur, “researchers need to look backwards and forwards a hundred years”, by which he meant that they need to consider both the historical politics of knowledge production and its long-term consequences for social justice. He gave an example of his own community, the Banyamulenge in DRC: the violent conflicts that affect the Banyamulenge in eastern DRC to date are rooted in constructions of a ‘local’ versus ‘immigrant’ identity that dates back to colonial writings.
A focus on individual achievement in the academe, related in part to the well-known ‘publish or perish’ adage, has come to overshadow the notion of collective responsibility that is a crucial premise of a truly transformative methodology. These structures in academia focusing on performance and prestige rather than impact catalyse ‘(extr)activist’ development research that instrumentalises marginalised communities for the benefit of furthering academic careers. Knowledge is extracted from research communities, never to be seen again.
Things might have been different if researchers were to be considered responsible for the impact of their research, including how it is used, and indeed for the effect of the research methodology itself on the research communities they engage with. One workshop participant highlighted how researchers from the Global North have made careers out of writing about the contradictions within indigenous communities in India – a process that has exacerbated prejudices against these already heavily marginalised communities.
For researchers who see themselves as scholar activists and whose deep connection with a specific group of people directs their research, responsibility and commitments in research would also be something to learn from and develop together with the community. During the workshop, Silke Heumann and Karin Astrid Siegmann for instance explained how their collaboration with sex worker groups taught them that the framing of sex work matters: ‘whore stigma’ has been used to justify sex workers’ exclusion from relevant policy discourses, such as those on human trafficking and labour rights. Such and similar relationships to marginalised communities constantly remind researchers to rethink the meaning of what counts as valid knowledge and who is regarded and respected as a knower. This reflective process has been understood as getting closer to ‘strong objectivity’ by feminist theorists like Harding.

Engaged scholarship carries risks that may threaten the ability of methodologies to be transformative. For instance, allying with the LGBTI+ movement has led to serious threats to both researchers and research participants. Workshop participants, including Cathy Wilcock and Natalia Lozano Arevalo, shared how they have used art-based research methods and humour to try to provide a safe space for those actors they work with to share their experiences without the fear of being prosecuted or stigmatised. These forms of data collection can also be seen as more engaging alternatives to conventional forms of doing and communicating research.
An important, yet, difficult step to move forward in the conversation on transformative research is to critically interrogate the role of our research institutions in shaping how we do academic research. Besides assumptions about who can be identified and respected as a knower, coloniality shapes how authorship and budgets are distributed between development researchers in Northern universities and their collaborators in the Global South. In this context, it is extremely important to implement and guarantee a clear ethical, respectful, and responsible no-harm policy.

Keeping these humbling experiences in mind, researchers’ moves out of the individualistic academic ivory tower towards a collective of researchers and activists that shape research and its outcomes together may still be a crucial first step towards transformative research. To be able to engage with transformative methodologies in research and discuss challenges such as those mentioned above, it is important to attempt to create a collective space where instead of individualism and competitive careerism, a meaningful relationship between collective research and activism is promoted. While giving space to issues of intersectionality, identity, and diversity within academia, it is equally relevant to prioritise larger structural issues that threaten the existence of collective communities.

There is still a long way to go to in the dialogue towards evolving scientific research methodologies that would help us maximise their transformative potential. This project on transformative methodologies is one picture that we hope can form part of what will hopefully become a collage of meaningful engagement informing research practice and making it truly transformative.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Sreerekha Sathi is assistant professor at the International Institute of Social Studies.

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS).

Cynthia Embido Bejeno is a PhD candidate in Development Studies at the International Institute of Social Studies.

Lize Swartz is a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies.

Richard Toppo is external PhD candidate at International Institute of Social Studies.

From ‘merchants and ministers’ to ‘neutral brokers’: how the Dutch do water diplomacy

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 December 202113 January 2025 5651 views

The Netherlands has been a leading participant in water diplomacy efforts due to a self-proclaimed water management expertise. An extensive discourse analysis of an advisory report finds that the Netherlands in framing itself as a ‘neutral broker’ pursues multiple objectives in its water diplomacy efforts. The article shows that these include much self-interest, and that this small nation’s mercantilist ambitions are alive and well. It also illustrates how to apply a linked series of discourse analysis methods to key policy texts in a way that is feasible for non-specialists.

Water diplomacy as a geopolitical tool

“An old cliché about who the Dutch really are – a mix of merchants and [religious] ministers – applies to foreign policy as well.” (Lechner 2008: 247)

Water conflicts loom large in the present world. Think about Israel/Palestine/Jordan, India/Pakistan, Turkey/Syria/Iraq, US/Mexico and conflicts in the Mekong and Nile basins. There are many more on a smaller scale. Water diplomacy seems to be the only solution to prevent bloodshed and ensure regional stability.

Two things are essential for understanding water diplomacy:

There is no multilateral and universally accepted system in place to manage transboundary water conflicts and tensions. The two UN conventions (New York 1997 and Helsinki 1992) failed to build a global regime, although they partly succeeded in advancing some governance norms. This gave space for so-called ‘third-parties’ – states, NGOs, foundations – to try to mediate and resolve conflicts, including far away.
‘Third parties’ explicitly pursue self-interest when engaging in water diplomacy. This means pursuing the goals of enhancing their own international prestige and authority, facilitating exports of goods and services, and shaping global governance norms. Merrill Lynch and the Bank of America estimated that the water industry market could be worth US$800–1,000 billion annually by 2030.Water diplomacy is one of the areas where countries compete to get a share of that huge pie. They do so by promoting their own private sector through technical cooperation and also promoting their own image through promoting and using venues and mechanisms of conflict resolution. The Netherlands is one such country with global aspirations in the water sector, including water diplomacy.

In search of a ‘niche’ for water diplomacy

Third-party water diplomacy offers opportunities for the Dutch water sector. It may win a lot of good will internationally and especially from some powerful riparian actors if successful mediation or prevention of conflicts in transboundary basins occurs. In some cases of strategic importance, such as the conflicts in the Nile and Mekong basins, technical cooperation is an important element of transboundary cooperation through services such as dam construction and maintenance, flood early warning systems or extraordinary releases, and exchange of monitoring and water flow information. Setting up these systems can generate revenues.

Furthermore, there are indirect ways of wielding influence internationally — for example through setting global norms of ‘good transboundary governance’ that would be more accepting of private involvement or that would allow for an internationally-funded river basin organisation to play an active role.

Another possible pathway to influence is by promoting particular venues where transboundary disputes can be discussed, such as the Permanent Court of Arbitration and the International Court of Justice, both conveniently located in The Hague. If these courts can wield authority over transboundary conflicts and the Dutch government has some influence over the two courts (by virtue of being a host country), then there is a clear interest for the Netherlands.

Analysing seemingly contradictory objectives

However, aggressive promotion of own self-interest in water diplomacy raises questions. The aims of helping achieve peace on the one hand and pursuing economic self-interest and geopolitical influence on the other may, at least in some cases, be conflicting. This observation led us to research how the acceptance of the Netherlands as a third-party actor in water diplomacy by the riparian parties as well as the wider international community can be furthered despite such seemingly contradictory objectives.

We looked at an advisory report (van Genderen and Rood, 2011) to the Dutch government on water diplomacy, from a key phase of policy reorientation, to find out how the Netherlands positions itself as a leader in water diplomacy efforts globally in relation to its objectives to benefit economically. We looked at the different rhetorical tools used in the report to manage the seeming contradiction by applying a series of discourse analysis techniques: 1) content analysis (word frequency tables plus collocations for key terms, showing the terms that accompany them); 2) text and argumentation analyses, following the approach of Scriven-Toulmin-Gasper (e.g. Gasper, 2000; Gasper and Roldan, 2011); 3) metaphor analysis in the formats by Schmitt (2005) and Steger (2007); and 4), growing out of the previous three steps, a frame analysis using the WPR format developed by Bacchi (2009).

We used these methods in sequence. The content analysis helped in initial orientation and sharpening questions, the argumentation analysis investigated key sections in detail, the metaphor analysis explored then how the central issues are finessed, and the frame analysis synthesised the findings that emerged from the preceding stages.

Here are some of the things we found:

The Netherlands frames itself as a water diplomacy expert. The word “diplomacy” (152 counts) featured more than the word “conflict” (112 counts); “the Netherlands” (138 counts) was mentioned more frequently than the “UN” (86 counts). Also using collocation analysis and concordance analysis, we concluded that the report is not focused on a deeper understanding of the conflicts in specific river basins and ways of resolving them. Instead, its primary concern is the promotion of the Netherlands as a diplomacy agent with a specific ‘niche’.

The detailed text and argumentation analysis confirmed that there is an effort to establish the Netherlands as a credible, authoritative, capable and willing actor to be involved in conflict prevention. We examined the meanings communicated and the logic in the report’s ‘Conclusions’ section where it turns to recommendations for the Dutch government. There, the authors openly but carefully contradict the Minister of Development Cooperation (in 2011 this was Ben Knapen, now Minister of Foreign Affairs) and argue that the Netherlands is better suited to engage in conflict prevention than conflict resolution.

One of the possible benefits of this, along with smaller risks compared to mediation, is the larger role for the Netherlands water sector in all kind of activities that may go under ‘conflict prevention’. We also observed that the water engineering and management prowess of the Netherlands at home is treated as a prerequisite to engage in water diplomacy internationally – which is not self-evident.

Most importantly, neutrality is presented as a key enabler of the Dutch water diplomacy efforts. Using a metaphor analysis, we explored the report’s presentation of the Netherlands as a “neutral broker” in water diplomacy efforts. We looked at three key types of metaphors in the report – “neutral broker”, “conductor of an orchestra”, and games metaphors such as “win-win”, “zero-sum game” and “player” – and observed that the “neutral broker” metaphor (11 uses) dominated. This metaphor links from a source domain of business deals to a target domain of promoting peace (Kövecses, 2002). “Neutral broker” aptly hints at a desired combination of minister/preacher and merchant: a state that will act as an ”international hub”, “enabler”, “norm entrepreneur” and “mediator”, promoting peace (roles that are all suggested for the Netherlands in the report) while at the same time actively promoting its own country’s business.

Finally, we performed a frame analysis to synthesise findings and understand how the report frames the problem that it addresses, what solution it offers, and how this solution is legitimised. The earlier three techniques provide inputs and background to this. We use the format designed by Carol Bacchi called “What is the Problem Represented to Be?”. We found that the report produces three key effects of representation:

The representation of attempted water conflict resolution as risky prompts a focus on conflict prevention. This steers the Netherlands’ external involvements away from conflict mediation towards a larger field with more economic opportunities, both technical and governance-related, namely conflict prevention.
The perception that there are many developing countries in the world without technical knowledge and expertise in water governance and diplomacy leads to the promotion of Dutch assistance – with ‘economic spin-offs’ for the Netherlands.
The presentation of the Netherlands as having a reputation for neutrality, which is foundational to use of the “neutral broker” concept, facilitates the efforts to secure its participation in water diplomacy.

Summary

The report that we studied framed the Netherlands as capable, neutral and willing to engage internationally (with partners in the Hague and around the world). At the same time, it implicitly framed the world (Global South river basins) as lacking expertise and in need of third-party mediation/involvement — hence the ‘niche’ for the Netherlands that has something to gain from such involvement. No serious engagement with counterarguments on these fronts was detected. The report’s orientation is in line with a business-oriented world order within which globally competing nations are there to uphold self-interest (in the competition between “Global Hydro-hubs”). The report seems to continue the historic trajectory of Netherlands’ foreign policy by combining its two paradigmatic roles: the “merchant” (pursuit of self-interest) and the “(religious) minister” (provision of advice and aid).

This post presents findings from our recent article in International Journal of Water Resources Development. The article is open access and can be accessed via the link.

References

Bacchi, C. (2009). Analysing Policy: What’s the Problem Represented to Be? Pearson Press.

Gasper, D. (2000) “Structures And Meanings – A Way To Introduce Argumentation Analysis In Policy Studies Education”. Africanus 30(1), 49-72.

Gasper, D., and Roldan, B. (2011) “Progressive Policy Framing: Kofi Annan’s Rhetorical Strategy for The Global Forum on Migration and Development”. African Journal of Rhetoric, vol.3, pp. 156-195. https://repub.eur.nl/pub/77719

Kövecses, Z. (2002) Metaphor: a Practical Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lechner, F. J. (2008). The Netherlands: Globalization and National Identity. New York: Taylor and Francis.

Mukhtarov, F., Gasper, D., Alta, A., Gautam, N., Duhita, M. S., & Hernández Morales, D. (2021). From ‘merchants and ministers’ to ‘neutral brokers’? Water diplomacy aspirations by the Netherlands–a discourse analysis of the 2011 commissioned advisory report. International Journal of Water Resources Development, 1-23.

Schmitt, R. (2005). Systematic metaphor analysis as a method of qualitative research. The Qualitative Report, 10(2), 358-394.

Steger, T. (2007). The Stories Metaphors Tell: Metaphors as a Tool to Decipher Tacit Aspects in Narratives. Field Methods, 19(1), 3-23.

Van Genderen, R., and Rood, J. (2011). Water diplomacy: A niche for the Netherlands. Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’, with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Water Governance Centre.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Dr. Farhad Mukhtarov is Assistant Professor of Governance and Public Policy at International Institute of Social Sciences (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Des Gasper is professor of Human Development, Development Ethics and Public Policy, at ISS of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The Challenge of Securing Access to Minerals for the Green Transition

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 December 202113 January 2025 3465 views

COP26 came to an end a month ago, and with it the opportunity to have a clear-cut global agenda for the energy transition. While many political leaders acknowledge the need for a green transition, the narrative and the strategies to address this global concern maintain the existing inequalities between the resource-rich (developing) and consuming (developed) countries. A transition to a green and sustainable economy requires a comprehensive understanding of the consumption-driven lifestyle heritage of our liberal economies, writes Jewellord Nem Singh.

COP26 ended in Glasgow last month, with activists and developing country governments disappointed in the global ambition as laid out in the final agreement text. On the one hand, the final document reflects commitments to cut on methane, doubling of monetary compensation for adaptation measures, and the need for cooperation between the US and China—two largest carbon emitters—to set out a roadmap to reach the target of keeping the lid below 2 degrees celsius temperature. On the other hand, developing countries have criticized rich countries from evading the language of loss and damage —a point made given that the most affected countries of climate change are likewise the least contributors in planet-warming greenhouses. Crucially, the language on coal was also changed from ‘phasing out’ to ‘phasing down,’ which underlines the reticence of emerging market economies like India, China and South Africa to unwittingly end coal dependence on electrification and commit to halt public subsidies towards fossil fuel in many countries. This outcome looks even more lackluster when put in the context of the failure of rich countries on climate finance until 2020. One emerging solution to the climate crisis involves securing investments and prioritizing financial commitments towards clean technologies and shifting towards renewable energy.

The climate crisis is a compelling challenge brings both industrializing Asian economies and their Western counterparts to the table. However, there are vast differences in terms of motivations and strategies to address the climate question. While Japan, Korea, and China see the climate agenda as an opportunity for their domestic companies to internationalize and to produce clean technologies through supportive industrial policies as part of their strategy to promote eco-developmentalism, the European Union (EU) views the energy transition as an opportunity to demonstrate its leadership in global environmental politics demonstrated by its emphasis on the circular economy.

Often missing from both discussions, however, is how increased demands for the critical raw materials that power the green transition are likely to exacerbate—and create—inequalities between resource-rich (developing) and consuming (developed) countries. The International Energy Agency’s latest report says that to meet the Paris Agreement goals, the total demand for clean technologies by 2040 will require an increase of more than 40 percent for copper and rare earth elements, 60 to 70 percent for nickel and cobalt, and almost 90 percent for lithium Some of these minerals are heavily concentrated in only a few countries, such as Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina for lithium; Brazil for niobium; Democratic Republic of Congo for cobalt; South Africa for platinum-group metals; and China for REEs and other critical minerals. As detailed in my recent Wilson Center report, unequal sharing of primary mineral production will yield to new forms of dependencies and problems, including the externalization of the environmental costs of clean technology.

The current climate change narrative absolves polluters and puts pressure on developing countries

The discourse on climate change has largely framed the political narrative as a race for human survival and an existential threat, leading to an apparently inevitable choice: To address climate change, we must accelerate efforts to build bigger wind turbines, to power electric grids using solar panels, and to shift from traditional fossil-fuel towards electric vehicle cars.

The blindspot in this narrative is that the industrialized world is largely absolved from their political culpability in perpetuating the crisis, and developing countries face increased pressure to extract their natural resources for the green transition. By framing climate change as a collective action dilemma requiring ‘global efforts,’ existing inequalities between countries and communities are set aside.

A second problem relates to the imbalance between the supply and demand solutions on the table. Currently, the narrative inadvertently justifies an emphasis on the supply side of the resource access problem—namely, finding technological solutions to make extraction more efficient and to substitute one technology with another to solve fossil fuel dependence. For example, wind turbines are now reliant on a gearbox that uses permanent magnets as opposed to older models that used copper. But with Japan and China controlling the production of permanent magnets, the green transition is dependent on the willingness and capacity of these countries to process rare earth elements and supply for the whole world.

A further problem arises: this type of technocratic approach positions leaders and industrialized societies as ‘problem-solvers,’ with an underlying assumption that we can save the planet without making substantive adjustments in the consumption-driven lifestyle we inherited from the 19^th century Industrial Revolution.

Environmentalists, for example, are often caught in conflicting positions. On the one hand, campaigns against new mining projects in Europe are commonplace—the so-called ‘not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) attitude—given the high socio-environmental costs of mineral extraction. Green parties all over Europe have won seats with an agenda of greening the economy. On the other hand, there is strong support for switching to renewable energy, which requires more intensive and extensive extraction of a range of natural resources. Thus, the logical conclusion is to extract minerals in the developing world. One cannot have renewable energy and leave the costs external to Europe and United States.

Three principles to incorporate issues of justice into the climate change discourse

To address the climate crisis effectively, there are at least three principles to which we need to adhere. First, we need to accept that someone must pay for the green transition. The question is whether the global community can agree with a fair distributional arrangement of these costs. Here, the EU Commission has constantly raised the issue of investing in primary mineral production within the continent—a proposition that, while politically controversial, must be discussed by the public and policymakers.

Second, given the history of colonialism, imperialism, and extractivism by Europe, the United States, and Japan, future reforms of global rules must accommodate the right to economic development of developing countries. For 500 years, developing countries were mineral economies integrated in the world economy to supply for the industrialization of the West. In the course of history, mineral dependence has co-produced ineffective governance institutions, reinforced elite capture of rents, and exacerbated societal inequalities.

To abate the disproportionate impacts of mining on the Global South, the global architecture of trade, investment, and finance must accommodate developing countries’ policy space to design new growth strategies aimed at fueling inclusive development. Part of the discussion might involve rethinking whether norms supporting the free market and unfettered international trade are beneficial for developing countries, or whether these exist as instruments of power and domination exercised by rule-makers to maintain hierarchy and inequality.

Finally, we need a comprehensive climate agenda that entails far-reaching reforms beyond environmental policy. This agenda is needed to support African, Latin American, and Asian resource producers’ efforts to industrialize, not just serve as raw material suppliers to the Global North.

In the United States and European academia and mainstream media, China is increasingly portrayed as a threat, often highlighting its illiberal centralized regime as a challenge to the democratic order. For many developing countries, however, China opens new doors of alternative trade, finance, and investment. And perhaps more importantly, China’s experience of selective liberalization and heavy-handed state guidance through industrial policy serves as an inspiration for experimentation of different strategies beyond the straitjacket imposed by free market ideology. For instance, industrial policy and national development planning have returned in the developing world, most of which are patterned after in-depth exchanges and studies between East Asia and Africa. While learning between late industrializing countries and the rest of the Global South is important, we must remain clear-eyed about any efforts to find a single blueprint or magic bullet to achieve structural transformation.

While many leaders now accept the need for a green transition, there are many competing strategies regarding which policy instruments to deploy, whether to rely on the private sector (and if domestic or foreign firms can do a better job), and how to solve market failures. There is no blueprint to address these questions. What is clear, however, is that developed countries must acknowledge and accommodate the reality that developing countries want and deserve a say on their own environmental policies and transition to clean technology.

This article was first published in the blog New Security Beat.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Jewellord Nem Singh is senior lecturer/assistant professor of international development at the International Institute of Social Studies, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam in the Netherlands. He is the principal investigator of a five-year research program entitled “Green Industrial Policy in the Age of Rare Metals: A Trans-regional Comparison of Growth Strategies in Rare Earth Mining (GRIP-ARM),” which this article draws evidence from.

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | Some steps for decolonising international research-for-development partnerships

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 December 202113 January 2025 4457 views

While partnerships between researchers and practitioners from the Global North and Global South can be and often are intellectually and socially impactful, they remain highly unequal. Coloniality pervades these partnerships, influencing who leads the research projects implemented in the Global South and whose interests are represented. Here, the conveners and panellists of a roundtable discussion on partnerships in academia that formed part of the recent EADI ISS Conference 2021 propose some steps for decolonising international research partnerships.

Much of the very urgent and timely discussion on decolonising the academe[1] – recognising and changing the colonial relations of power that are embedded in teaching as well as research – has focused on representation, on diversifying the curricula, and on theorising from the Global South. But what about research partnerships and collaborations? This is a slightly overlooked issue in the decolonisation agenda, but one that is no less important.

In the field of international development particularly, but not only, collaborations between academic institutions in the Global North and academic and non-academic institutions in the Global South are often crucial to demonstrate research impact and to generate funding. But these partnerships themselves are fraught by unequal power relations. To truly decolonise research, it is necessary to decolonise every aspect of it – including the way in which we collaborate internationally.

At a recent roundtable at the EADI ISS Conference 2021 called ‘Partnership, participation and power in academia’, we sought answers to questions that included:

How do unequal power relations manifest in the design and operation of research?
What might we do to challenge these relations?
What would it mean to decolonise these research partnerships?

During the roundtable, participants highlighted key issues that arose in how international research collaborations are designed and implemented. These are summarised below. We start with reflections on how coloniality manifests itself through various stages of the collaboration process.

Agenda-setting: whose interests are really represented?

There are a number of programmatic and institutional issues that result in unequal relations between collaborators across the Global North and Global South, both within academic institutions and between academia and practice. Funding sources and structures are obvious culprits here. Not only are funders often situated in the Global North, the criteria for eligibility and affiliation means that these partners need to be the principal or lead investigators. As a result, more often than not, project outcomes and impacts end up being structured and valued by the parameters of funding bodies and university departments in the Global North with little regard for what might be important for partners inhabiting other geographies and institutional environments. So, for example, the inordinate emphasis in projects on high-impact journal publications may be at odds with the priorities of an NGO partner in the Global South.

Constrained research design processes

Moreover, grant applications typically require clearly defined questions, outcomes and outputs – in fact, proposals are often marked down when they demonstrate the slightest sign of tentativeness – and the time between the announcement of grant and submission deadlines can be quite limited. These issues mean that research partnerships do not always have enough time and space to jointly develop a research agenda that accounts equally for interests of partners across the Global North and Global South and to allow for the messy process that robust research often tends to be.

More knowledge is more power (when it comes to agenda setting)

In fact, because researchers in the Global North also have more tacit knowledge and institutional support to make a proposal ‘fundable’, they have more power in setting the research agenda. In such situations, the degree to which partnerships are equitable depends on the discretion and conscience of individual academics.

Partners in the Global South: mediators or change agents?

There are more fundamental questions that arise from these issues: who is considered a researcher and what does it mean to be a researcher? It is now widely accepted that the ‘lone researcher’ never was – the work of academics has always been enabled by other individuals and networks of support. In the context of many North-South research collaborations, practitioner organisers and local communities based in the Global South often become mediators providing access to field data, data collecting agents and/or passive recipients of research findings. Academics everywhere, but especially in the Global North, need to find ways of sharing power with institutions, communities and individuals in whose name these collaborative grants are often established.

Decolonising international research partnerships: some steps

With these issues and questions in mind, and based on the roundtable discussion, we propose some steps to decolonise international academic collaborations and foster partnerships that are equitable, democratic, and lead to locally relevant impacts.

Decolonise the research ecosystem

First, the research ecosystem of funding bodies, higher education organisations and research institutions needs to be transformed to eliminate systemic biases against research partners from the Global South. More often than not, grant guidelines require that project leadership and budget administration remain with the Northern partners while hiring policies for project staff (e.g. PhD researchers) frequently discriminate against Southern candidates. We propose:

Redressing the hierarchies of funding structures: building funding instruments that recognise academic excellence, merit, and local relevance, regardless of researchers’ nationality;
Designing funding instruments that prioritise project leadership by Southern partners, both academics and practitioners;
Reflecting on the ways in which our own attitudes and practices perpetuate the systemic injustices within the research ecosystem.

Decolonise the research process

Second, it is necessary to think critically about the biases that permeate the research inception process – from articulating the research idea through conceptualisation to funding acquisition. Rarely does it happen that the Northern and Southern co-applicants have the chance to brainstorm the research idea together and articulate their needs and preferences. For projects to be co-created in an equitable manner, we propose the following:

Debunking the myth of research projects as linear and allowing for flexibility, adaptation, and learning throughout the project cycle;
Recognising that a certain degree of ‘messiness’ is an indispensable part of collaborative knowledge co-creation and that project priorities, as well as desired outputs and impacts, might change during the project;
Creating spaces for informal interaction between researchers and practitioners from institutions in the Global North and Global South where innovative ideas can be developed and discussed prior to grant application submission.

Decolonise the research outputs

Third, research projects in the field of international development are frequently expected to deliver both applied (positive social change on the ground) and scientific (contributions to theory) impacts, but it is only the latter that often determine project ‘success’. This results in a somewhat skewed project logic that prioritises scientific outputs over practical insights.

Research outputs may be decolonised by:

Legitimising alternative knowledge systems, recognising the plurality of methodological approaches, and appreciating the indispensability of grounded and localised practitioner experiences;
Decoupling academic and non-academic project outputs, as well as recognising their value and complementary nature.

Research partnerships: processes, not actor constellations

North-South partnerships are not an isolated issue – they are part of a complex and dynamic research-for-development system. For this reason, we propose approaching partnerships as a process, as opposed to simply a contract or institutional arrangement. This process starts with decentralised, inclusive, and democratic agenda setting, followed by resource allocation that acknowledges the indispensable and complementary contributions of all partners. Project governance needs to be democratic and fair and, finally, knowledge co-creation must be recognised as leading to both academic and non-academic outputs and impacts. Approaching partnerships as a process can allow us to prioritise locally defined development agendas, to include and appreciate all relevant stakeholders, and to build on their diverse knowledges, skills, and experience

[1] For example, https://www.geog.cam.ac.uk/about/decolonisation/

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Katarzyna Cieslik is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on work, livelihoods and employment in the Global South, in particular in relation to technology/work/environment tradeoffs.

Shreya Sinha is a Lecturer at the University of Reading, working on agrarian political economy, political ecology and critical development studies with a focus on India.

Cees Leeuwis is professor of Knowledge, Technology and Innovation at Wageningen University. He studies processes of socio-technical innovation and transformation in networks, research for development policy, the functioning of innovation support systems and the role of innovation platforms, communication, extension and brokers therein.

Tania Eulalia Martínez-Cruz is an independent researcher and consultant at the Indigenous Peoples Unit at FAO, researching the politics of knowledge, gender and social inclusion/exclusion, climate action, nutrition and traditional food systems.

Nivedita Narain is Chief Executive Officer, Charities Aid Foundation India, an adjunct faculty member at the Charles Sturt University, Australia and has worked with Professional Assistance for Development Action (PRADAN) for over thirty years. She has worked on gender, livelihoods, and human resources management for non-profits and setting-up development practice as an academic discipline.

Bhaskar Vira is a Professor of Political Economy at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on environmental and development economics; political economy, particularly the study of institutions and institutional change; public policy in the developing world.

Keeping Africans out: Injustice following wilful neglect and the politicization of Covid-19 measures

By ISS Blog Bliss 2 December 202113 January 2025 4257 views

As the Omicron variant continues to spread across the globe, Western nations have taken the decision to impose travel bans to African countries. This measure to contain the virus, is the latest -but neither the only nor the most outrageous- example of how Covid-19 responses have been instrumentalised for political purposes, write Dorothea Hilhorst and Rodrigo Mena.

This weekend, BBC News featured an interview with the co-chair of the African Union Vaccine Alliance Dr Ayoade Alakija. Visibly angry, she explains in a nutshell how it was inevitable that a variation of the Covid 19 (Omicron) would develop in Africa, and that the travel bans imposed on African countries only are more politically-motivated than scientifically-justified. Dr Alakija’s anger concerns both the lack of action beforehand and the immediate reaction when Omicron evolved, even before it has been properly established where the variation comes from and what its exact properties are. At the moment of writing this post, the travel ban is restricted to African countries, whereas the Omicron variation has already been found in several other countries too, including the Netherlands, Belgium and Israel. This ban shows how, once again, measures related to Covid-19 are not always taken based on scientific knowledge, but maybe on political agendas and strategies.

Multiple examples of the instrumentalisation of Covid-19 responses can be found in a recent article based on a research conducted by a group of ISS students on responses on Covid-19 in conflict-affected countries, including Brazil, Chile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Haiti, India, Philippines, and Zimbabwe (see in the links blog post in the cases). The country studies found ample evidence for the claim that Covid-19 policies were often instrumentalised and subsumed to non-Covid -19 politics. The pandemic was either over-securitised (where its impacts were exaggerated), or under-securitised (where impacts were denied), and there were many examples of governments seen to use the pandemic as an opportunity to tighten their control over the population at large and political opponents in particular. In several of the countries, governments used the COVID restrictions to curb opposition or even arrest opponents on grounds that they violated these restrictions. Even though the global situation today is in many ways different from these country cases, they have in common that COVID responses are highly politicized and subject to geo-politics interests.

Another example of the instrumentalisation and injustices that Covid-19 measures may carry is found in Calais, France. The knee-jerk European reaction in response to the Omicron variation reminded us of the stories that Cambridge PhD candidate Maria Hagan heard from irregular migrants residing near Calais, in the early months of the pandemic. When the Covid-19 crisis evolved last year in 2020, authorities in Calais and other surrounding municipalities were quick to take ´protective measures´. However, it soon appeared that the measures were not meant to protect migrants from the virus, but to protect the French population from the migrants while rumours started to circulate that the latter were particularly likely to carry the virus.

In a similar twist as with today’s response to Omicron, these rumours in Calais were loosely associated with ideas of dirtiness and lack of hygiene. It was glossed over that if indeed migrants could not maintain hygienic standards, it was because of the French policies denying them shelter and showers, and leaving them to sleep in small tents that did not enable maintaining distance. At some point, migrants were not even allowed to enter grocery stores. This left them hopelessly outside, unable to buy the most basic supplies, which were indeed necessary to strengthen their bodies against the virus. As Maria Hagan concludes in a forthcoming article: “The half-hearted humanitarian response by the French state to protect the displaced at the border from pandemic […] demonstrate the state’s prioritisation of protection from the displaced above their protection from infection”.[1]

There is a lot amiss with the reaction to ban travels from African countries. To some extent it is a case of under-securitisation, by assuming that a travel ban from Africa can keep the variation under control, although it has been found beyond the continent too. On the other hand, there seems to be over-securitisation because the strictest measures are already taken while the scientific evidence is still being collected about the level of danger the variation poses. Moreover, the travel restrictions come into play in a world where the access to and distribution of the vaccine is highly unequal.

Important then is also to ask: Would these restrictions have been imposed if the majority of the population in southern Africa countries had been vaccinated? llustrative is the map below that shows the geographical division between Europe and the global South regarding the position in relation to the waiving of patents for COVID-related medical tools. The map shows how European countries voted against vaccine patent wavers, and with it, contributed to (or are in part responsible for) the low African vaccination records, because of a lack of sharing technology and not making vaccines available[2]. Now they act all alarmed and resort to reaction to keep (unvaccinated) Africans out.

Politics that protect the economic and political interests of a few above general interest and that resort to a strategy to keep people out are not only blatantly unjust but also another example of the instrumentalisation and politization of Covid-19 measures. Unless vaccination becomes available at a global scale it is likely if not inevitable that the virus will evolve variations that become increasingly apt at spreading. To stop this, we require genuine global policies aimed to protect all.

The authors thank Isabelle Desportes for her inputs and comments.

[1] Forthcoming paper: “They tell us to keep distance, but we sleep five people in one tent” The opportunistic governance of displaced people in Calais during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Maria Hagan; Department of Geography University of Cambridge

[2] https://www.bbc.com/news/56100076

https://www.openglobalrights.org/mobilizing-international-human-rights-to-challenge-coronavirus-vaccine-apartheid/

https://www.openglobalrights.org/supporting-the-trips-covid-waiver-is-essential-to-support-international-human-rights/?lang=English.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at ISS.

Rodrigo Mena is Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Studies at ISS.

Toward a postcapitalist economics: Are community economies the answer?

By ISS Blog Bliss 2 November 202113 January 2025 5464 views

Community economies based on collective action and reciprocity have the potential to help us move toward a postcapitalist economics. However, communities tend to be romanticised and their politics sidelined. (Almost) forgotten economists have some interesting things to say about community economies and how they can be strengthened to contribute to systemic change, writes Irene van Staveren.

My training as an economist did not prepare me sufficiently to tackle the four ‘wicked problems of today – climate change, rising inequality, pandemics, and increasing financial volatility – through my work. The reason for this is that I was taught to take an individualist perspective, which holds that markets generate added value for society and improve well-being, whereas the state merely redistributes this created value. According to this logic, markets are by definition the most efficient mechanism for allocating value, even when this reinforces inequalities. When having to choose between market and state, the market always wins – or so mainstream economists claim. The exception is when markets fail, but then the state may be captured by private interests and hence may not be able to repair market failures. I’ve struggled with this concept ever since coming to the realisation that it simply isn’t working in this day and age.

There is a way out of the binary trap that forces us to choose either government-led or market-based ‘solutions’ that to date have been insufficient. We can look completely beyond either the market or the state to find innovative and hopefully enduring policy options that could help address the four wicked problems. Of course, a global tax floor for multinational companies is very welcome, as is a demand for a temporary waiver of patent rights on COVID-19 vaccines. But systemic change in the economies of both the Global North and Global South may come from an unexpected corner: the community economy.

A number of heterodox economists have mentioned community economies as alternative to the state-market binary either explicitly or implicitly in their work. This triggered my interest, so in a recent book I decided to look at fundamentally different ideas about the economy in which the community economy plays an explicit or implicit role. Interestingly, they do not only have a positive role, as I’ll explain below.

The bad/sad news is that romantics who hope that communities will save the world will be disappointed. Communities are made up of people – the same ones who are also consumers, investors, producers, and workers. Feminist economist Barbara Bergmann pointed at gender discrimination in communities, which affects the attitudes of employers, colleagues, and, through socialisation, even sometimes of women themselves. Indeed, gender norms may constrain women worldwide in their agency and wellbeing, as many feminist development economists have shown.

Thorstein Veblen, the founding father of institutional economics, pointed at another negative effect of communities, namely their tendency for emulation: we look up to the rich, copy their lifestyles, and thereby increase our ecological footprint – we emulate them. And status seeking makes it difficult to shift to a less materialistic lifestyle or even simply to give up the basic comfort of using plastic bags and bottles, for example.

Fortunately, there are also economists who believe in the transformative power of the community economy. Because it can be where collective action for the common good originates, it can provide the social norms for cooperation even if the benefits are not individually, but jointly obtained or are reserved for future generations.

Adam Smith, who is often referred to as the promotor of markets with his metaphor of the ‘invisible hand’, actually used this famous metaphor only once in his foundational economic book The Wealth of Nations. Instead, Smith wrote a whole book titled The Theory of Moral Sentiments twenty years earlier in which he theorised that the community economy was necessary to help markets flourish. Not the other way around, thus.

Let me mention one more almost forgotten economist here: Gunnar Myrdal. This Swedish economist who won a Nobel Prize did an extensive study on relentless racism in the US. In his explanation, he came up with the concept of cumulative causation. He deliberately proposed this as an alternative to the concept of a market equilibrium. In a market, supply and demand are supposed to be independent. But, Myrdal argued, markets are influenced by social norms, attitudes, beliefs, and behavioral patterns.

Why is this important? Just like Veblen before him, he recognised the power of institutions in economic behaviour. But he added a dynamic model to this, showing that one form of discrimination, for example racial segregation in neighbourhoods, triggers another form, such as prejudice among white populations about unemployment and poverty in those neighbourhoods. This in turn feeds other forms of discrimination, such as lower-quality schooling for black children, which subsequently feeds into lower labour market opportunities.

So the important insight from Myrdal was that discrimination is not a linear process that can easily be ended with some legal changes. Instead, he argued, when discrimination is part and parcel of community life, it inevitably affects markets and is self-reinforcing.

The good news is that social inclusion and empowerment follow the same logic of cumulative causation, for example of women in the Global South. For example, with more girls in school and the labour market, African economies experience more growth and human development while at the same time individual girls and women obtain more opportunities, bargining power in the household, and more influence on their fertility.

Challenging unequal North-South relations

I think that these ideas are still relevant today, but now on a global scale. They help us to understand how social norms, attitudes, and beliefs in the Global North affect the Global South through structural inequalities in markets: global value chains, financial markets, labour markets, and even land markets. Hence, global markets tend to constrain the opportunities of people in the Global South to choose their own development paths.

Countries in the Global South are then likely to rely less on global markets and more on the strength of their own communities to help markets flourish. This is an inherently negative development, but it can also have positive dimensions when it comes to a possible economic transformation. Here are three of countless examples of how community economies in the Global South can provide the seeds for postcapitalist economies to develop their own strength in a way that makes them independent from the unequal market relationships with the Global North.

A first example is the increasing popularity of worker cooperatives. We find them in all sectors – from agriculture to manufacturing, and from construction to energy. The strength of these is that the market in which capital hires labour is dissolved. In worker coops, labour owns capital and controls it in terms of investment out of their own pockets, bank loans, and retained profits.

A second example is the decades-old practice of savings and loan associations such as the ROSCAs (Rotating Savings and Credit Associations) in Africa. Here, the market is dissolved by excluding banks and financial market transactions. Communities themselves bring savings and credit together by using rotating schemes or lotteries with all members having an equal position as both saver and lender. The stokvel is a classic example.

A third and last example is community-led energy initiatives. Across the Global South, rural communities which are not yet connected to the national electricity network, or who experience many power interruptions, build off-grid solar power networks. These provide the community with power for light, water pumps, or other basic needs. Again, the market is dissolved, in this case through bypassing electricity firms and national supply and demand of electricity on markets.

Community economies can be key – but don’t romanticise them

The urgent wicked problems that the world faces cannot be addressed by the market, while the state is often not capable of addressing them effectively. The community economy is a likely candidate for systemic economic change. But it should not be romanticised. We need a new balance of power, influence, and innovation between the market, the state and the community economy, with the last one in the lead. How this may be done can be learned from some key insights by (almost) forgotten economists.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Irene van Staveren is professor of pluralist development economics at the Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam. Professor van Staveren’s theoretical interest in is feminist economics, social economics, institutional economics and post-Keynesian economics.

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | How social accountability initiatives are helping pursue social justice aims

By ISS Blog Bliss 21 October 202113 January 2025 4793 views

Achieving social justice in service delivery in the health, social welfare, and humanitarian sectors is still a formidable challenge in most developing countries. Poor and marginalised people generally lack the voice to make their demands heard and the awareness to claim their rights. However, social accountability initiatives have become a promising way to address these issues, as a panel discussion at the recent EADI ISS Conference showed. In this article, Elsbet Lodenstein and Sylvia Bergh highlight the key insights that emerged during the discussion, which focused on issues related to ensuring substantive citizenship and legitimacy and the role of interlocutors, donors, and of researchers themselves in helping pursue social justice through such initiatives.

Traditional ‘democratic’ accountability mechanisms such as elections are failing citizens. In response, citizens have set up a range of initiatives called social accountability initiatives to demand the respect of civic, political, and social rights and improved public service delivery in their interest. Such social accountability initiatives are targeted at holding the state and service providers accountable and are – under certain conditions – proving rather effective. What can we learn from these initiatives?

A lively panel discussion that took place at the recent ISS EADI 2021 Conference showed that such initiatives can help pursue to social justice in a number of ways, contributing for example to equitable participation or greater respect for diversity. Participants in the panel session considered how these could be supportive to the transformation of power relations between marginalised groups and the state or other duty-bearers such as humanitarian agencies.

Convened by Elsbet Lodenstein (KIT Royal Tropical Institute) and Sylvia I. Bergh (ISS and Centre of Expertise on Global Governance at The Hague University of Applied Sciences), the panel reviewed experiences from the humanitarian, health, and sexual and reproductive health and rights sectors in several countries where participating researchers conducted case studies. The following social accountability initiatives were discussed during the panel session:

K. Sandhya (SAHAYOG) described how NGOs, CBOs, and grassroots organisations of poor and marginalised women in Uttar Pradesh in India jointly demanded accountability from Hospital Management Committees who are responsible for ensuring patient welfare and quality of care.
Another initiative in India was presented by Jashodhara Dasgupta (independent researcher), who analysed the trajectory of the transgender community’s claims for state recognition and access to the benefits of the welfare state.
Afeez Lawal (University of South Africa) shared insights on the role of health committees in the oversight of a Community-Based Health Insurance programme in Nigeria.
Seye Abimbola (University of Sydney, Australia; National Primary Health Care Development Agency, Abuja, Nigeria, and current Prins Claus Chair) explored how health committee members in Nigeria perceive their role in social accountability and how these perceptions shape their motivations to demand accountability for the underperformance of health service providers and policymakers.
A research team led by Thea Hilhorst (ISS) explored the social accountability mechanisms in place in the humanitarian sector in Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, and Myanmar. Mechanisms include feedback channels on programme delivery, community-based indicator setting activities, and complaint mechanisms.

Some key takeaways

What can we learn from the case studies about the potential of social accountability to contribute to social justice? The key takeaways of the panel discussion are summarised here:

Ensuring the ‘right to have rights’ is a crucial first step in enacting change.

Many social accountability initiatives are based on the assumption that citizens are able and willing to express their voice in the face of injustice regardless of their gender, age, class, sexuality, or education and regardless of their experiences with and position vis-à-vis the state. Yet many citizens are discriminated against, whereby intersecting identities can influence the way in which citizens engage with the state and the way in which they participate in social accountability initiatives.

For example, Jashodhara Dasgupta noted how the recent Indian law on transgender persons makes no provision for ensuring gender non-conforming individuals’ access to public goods and denies them adequate protection from violence and discrimination. This makes it challenging for these groups to develop the confidence to demand accountability and take collective action.

Donors and funders in conflict settings may also need to be more aware of how different social markers may constrain the possibilities for exercising voice. Thea Hilhorst for example highlighted how internally displaced people, and within that group, minority groups, such as the Rohingya in Myanmar, cannot be reached by formal accountability initiatives.

Jashodhara Dasgupta and Y.K. Sandhya suggested that for marginalised groups, their own realisation that they are rights holders, i.e. having ‘the right to have rights’, needs to become a primary focus of social accountability initiatives. Attention could be drawn to this by strengthening the political capabilities and negotiation skills of marginalised groups to articulate and voice demands. Doing so means moving beyond just improving service delivery or effectiveness of humanitarian interventions to strengthening the agency of citizens in a way that can help further equitable participation towards changing the norms of engagement that challenges power relations.

Your understanding of your role in society may influence how engaged you are in pursuing social justice.

Research plays a significant role in unpacking the assumptions about agency, motivations, and capabilities of intermediary organisations such as health committees or community governance boards in voicing demands on behalf of citizens. Afeez Lawal talked about how health committees in Nigeria have helped improve dialogue between health service providers and users. For example, they facilitated joint monitoring with traditional leaders, enrolees, and health providers to demand programme managers to address drug stock-outs and preferential treatment of non-enrolees. But, he noted, their ability to influence larger political agendas remains limited.

Seye Abimbola confirmed this based on his own research in Nigeria. He found that the perceptions of health committee members of their roles influence their level of engagement in social justice agendas. For example, they could consider themselves either representatives of the health sector aiming to improve the uptake of services and/or advocates for communities and patients. In general, though, the way in which health committees are created and trained tends to limit committee members’ sense of legitimacy to challenge governments and service providers, thus giving them a marginal role in fostering social accountability.

Identifying interlocutors can help citizens act strategically.

Interlocutors or agents that catalyse change were considered crucial by many of the discussants. These individuals or associations are allies of citizens that share a common goal in helping to address injustices. They may have resources or networks that make it possible for them to connect individuals or groups to each other or to find ways to communicate with government officials, whether formally or informally. Often, as Seye Abimbola suggested, these may be the local elite who have the resources to bear the costs of participation and who have the connections to make a difference.

The identification of interlocutors who speak for marginalised groups requires longer-term and in-depth participatory research such as that conducted by Y.K. Sandhya and her team in India. Interlocutors might be individuals who act on behalf of citizens in their individual capacity; an example is a clerk of a health facility with whom the NGO informally built relation of trust and who pushed for internal reforms to intensify community-based monitoring.

Interlocutors might also be members of grassroots organisations – Sandhya noted that legitimate and established community-based organisations, such as the grassroots association of marginalised women in India, are able to navigate institutions, identify opportunities for legal and policy change and identify opportunities for support by influential actors who want to reverse situations of marginalisation and poor accountability. Other organisations with fewer resources might struggle more with this. It’s therefore crucial to find individuals who know how to navigate the institutional landscape and who hold power to facilitate dialogue or strategic action.

Long-term support building on community initiatives is needed.

Social accountability initiatives need intensive, long-term support from funders in the humanitarian and development sectors. Sylvia Bergh flagged the danger of technocratisation of social accountability initiatives by donors, who often frame them as a technical and neutral process that leaves political struggle aside. If more initiatives would build on existing solidarity groups and indigenous forms of collective action and get support from these groups, the chance of enacting meaningful change could be much greater.

Questioning own assumptions can help academics do better research.

The panel was concluded with an observation by Elsbet Lodenstein that (operational) research is required to break down assumptions about the voice, behaviour, and agency of citizens, civil society, and institutions and to understand how context influence these. Too often, external interventions in humanitarian and development sectors are based on problematic assumptions about how and why citizens act for change, or how and why governmental actors and other duty-bearers react to social accountability initiatives. Researchers can support the development of grounded, contextualised and ‘smart’ approaches to social accountability in terms of whom to engage, where to push the needle, and how to leverage existing forms of collective action by adopting methods of longer-term (participatory) research and in-depth analysis.

With thanks to Francesco Colin for the notes taken during the panel session.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Dr Elsbet Lodenstein is a senior gender and governance advisor at the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) with 18 years of experience in international development. She has a keen interest in integrating a social science and gender perspective into development programming and research and specialises in community engagement and the governance of local health systems, citizenship and the empowerment of marginalized groups, including women and girls. She is skilled in gender and intersectional analysis, gender integration, monitoring and evaluation, learning and knowledge management, policy review, evidence synthesis, and research capacity building.

Sylvia I. Bergh (a Swedish national) is a Senior Researcher at the Centre of Expertise on Global Governance at The Hague University of Applied Sciences, as well as Associate Professor in Development Management and Governance at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam. Sylvia has a keen interest in multi-level governance issues, and has published widely on state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa region. She currently leads a research project that studies the effects of heatwaves on vulnerable populations in The Hague.

On the Racist Humanism of Climate Action

By ISS Blog Bliss 13 October 202113 January 2025 5333 views

The Atacama salt-flats in Chile are a hotspot of lithium extraction, a major source of conflicts with local indigenous communities over access to water. Credit: Bachelot Pierre J-P. Source: Wikimedia Commons.

Climate Action and Othering

Mitigation and green extractivism

Adaptation and vulnerability

The “improvement” of populations and territories targeted by adaptation programmes has no room for redressing development-induced dispossession; rather, it is expected to work through the dispossession itself. As Markus Taylor shows in the case of adaptation policies in Mongolia and South Asia, urbanisation and proletarianization of rural populations, which result in poverty, indebtedness and loss of access to their means of production and livelihood, are framed by the institutions like the World Bank precisely as a way of reducing small farmers’ vulnerability to climate change, while also freeing up rural space for more mechanised and capital-intensive agriculture.

Climate-Induced Migration

Discursive constructions of the climate migrant exemplify how the two forms of othering (to “sacrifice” and to “improve”) are deployed in overlapping and contradictory ways. A common way in which othering operates in this context involves the separation between “good” and “bad” migrants. For instance, Andrew Telford has shown how EU and US policy reports on climate-induced migration often represent Muslim and African migrant populations as threats, as racialised others with a potential for radicalization and terrorism.

Othering and the Adaptation of Capital

Despite their stated aim to mitigate and adapt to disastrous climatic changes, mainstream climate policies are explicitly envisioned as avenues for furthering capital accumulation. This is obvious in the case of industrial-scale renewables, dominated by transnational energy corporations seeking to expand their markets and diversify their production. But it also applies to the increasingly privatised and financialised business of adaptation, presented as creating opportunities for profit-making and rent extraction. For instance, a report released in September 2019 by the Global Commission on Adaptation—a private-public partnership led by the UN, World Bank and Gates Foundation—calculated that “investing $1.8 trillion globally” in climate change adaption until 2030 “could generate $7.1 trillion in total net benefits”.

Alternatives

This blog was originally published in Undisciplined Environments, and is based on a longer, open access article published in the journal Political Geography.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Diego Andreucci is a postdoctoral researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and a member of Undisciplined Environments. @diegoandreucci

Christos Zografos is a Ramón y Cajal Senior Research Fellow of the Department of Political and Social Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. He is Vice-Director of GREDS (Research Group on Health Inequalities, Environment, and Employment Conditions), and Executive Board member of the Johns Hopkins University – Pompeu Fabra (JHU-UPF) University Public Policy Centre.

Le ONG europee si adattano ancora al registro dei loro interlocutori – ma ci sono segnali di cambiamento

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 October 202113 January 2025 4334 views

Pensando all’Unione Europea (UE), si tende ad immaginare un corpo unico che parla con una sola voce. Una percezione simile vale anche per le ONG europee, ma uno studio recente mostra che nell’ultimo decennio diversi quadri teorici, perlopiù riformisti, hanno ispirato la visione ed i discorsi delle ONG riguardo allo sviluppo. Questo articolo esplora cosa significhi tale riformismo per le ONG, mostrando che un’agenda di sviluppo più radicale, che si distanzi dal modello di crescita economica e dal retaggio coloniale dell’Europa, stia potenzialmente emergendo, anche se le discussioni a riguardo avvengono ancora prevalentemente internamente.

Create allo scopo di cooperare per lo ‘sviluppo’ e la ‘giustizia sociale’ nei paesi del Sud globale, le Organizzazioni Non Governative (Internazionali) (ONGI) operanti su tematiche legate allo sviluppo hanno prospettive e discorsi specifici su temi globali, che influenzano le loro attività di lobbying e advocacy a vari livelli decisionali. Tali discorsi, radicati in specifiche teorie di sviluppo, possono successivamente influenzare le politiche. Ciò motiva un’analisi critica dei discorsi e delle teorie sulle quali questi ultimi si basano.

Nella mia ricerca dottorale in corso, analizzo il discorso generale sullo ‘sviluppo’ proposto da CONCORD, che rappresenta circa 2600 ONG a livello europeo. Comparo il discorso di CONCORD con quello di organizzazioni pan-Africane attive in Europa. Tale paragone può essere utile per rivelare punti comuni e divergenze relativamente alla problematizzazione di vari temi (es: le diseguaglianze globali sono accidentali? hanno radici storiche?), alle soluzioni proposte (es: più crescita, più commercio internazionale, redistribuzione delle risorse), o alla percezione del ruolo di vari attori (es: l’UE, le ONG stesse), in particolar modo per quanto riguarda lo ‘sviluppo’ in Africa.

L’obiettivo generale è quello di capire quali teorie di sviluppo influenzino i dibattiti a livello europeo tra le organizzazioni della società civile come quelle che studio, così da vedere quanto critici siano i messaggi che raggiungono l’UE attraverso queste organizzazioni. Per far ciò, ho intervistato membri del personale di alcune organizzazioni membre, osservato riunioni, analizzato documenti ufficiali che mostrino le posizioni delle organizzazioni.

È stato affermato come, a livello UE, le ONG debbano essere ‘critiche ma non troppo’[i] se vogliono mantenere le loro relazioni con le istituzioni UE che adottano politiche o che le finanziano. Per capire come le ONG di sviluppo europee riescano a farsi strada nelle relazioni stato-società civile, ho suddiviso le teorie di sviluppo tra convenzionali (quelle che mantengono lo status quo neoliberale), riformiste (quelle che propongono cambiamenti di alcuni elementi del sistema economico, politico e sociale) o radicali (quelle che criticano il sistema nel suo complesso e tentano di proporre un cambio di paradigma). Se l’affermazione di Smismans è valida anche per il settore dello sviluppo, allora le ONG di sviluppo europee dovrebbero tendere, nei loro discorsi, verso teorie presenti nella seconda categoria. Il caso dell’advocacy di CONCORD verso le istituzioni UE sembra confermare questo postulato generale.

La mia ricerca descrive come il discorso cambi nel corso del tempo, in particolare quello di CONCORD nel decennio scorso. Si può notare come sia applicato un insieme di teorie ed approcci, concetti e quadri teorici piuttosto riformisti (es: approcci come quello dello sviluppo umano, dei diritti umani o dello sviluppo sostenibile). Vari quadri teorici possono essere applicati simultaneamente nella costituzione dei discorsi, ed è ciò che sembra avvenire in CONCORD. La presenza sporadica di riferimenti convenzionali (quali quelli alla ‘crescita a favore dei poveri’ verso il 2010)[ii] e di altri ben più radicali (come quelli alla ‘post-crescita’ a partire dal 2019)[iii] aggiungono sfumature rilevanti a questo quadro generale.

Allora perché si tende a posture e teorie riformiste? Questo risultato, che è prima di tutto teoretico, ha anche uno scopo strategico: si tratta di posizionare la confederazione all’interno della governance internazionale dello sviluppo, accettandone la grammatica generale (fatta di paesi donatori, istituzioni e agenzie, attori che implementano, paesi e comunità riceventi, pratiche di valutazione, linguaggio), operando al contempo per dare a tale grammatica dei significati più rispettosi da un punto di vista sociale ed ambientale, mantenendo quindi l’attenzione sugli obiettivi ultimi dello sviluppo (le popolazioni locali ed i loro bisogni). Ciò implica strategie di advocacy e proposte di soluzioni che facciano da ponte tra i bisogni locali (così come percepiti dalla confederazione) e le politiche ed i comportamenti delle istituzioni (così come analizzati dalla confederazione). Significa anche cercare costantemente un equilibrio tra ciò che si considera necessario e ciò che si ritiene raggiungibile (cioè accettabile da donatori e decisori politici).

La ricerca di consenso interno, insieme all’imperativo della rappresentatività di un insieme così grande di ONG, contribuisce inoltre a questa postura riformista. La rappresentatività è una risorsa di credibilità fondamentale nei confronti delle istituzioni politiche, ma può avere come contropartita quella di portare ad un consenso a minima, basato cioè sui temi che il settore ritiene da sempre imprescindibili. Fare lobby per un aumento dell’Aiuto Pubblico allo Sviluppo (APS) dell’UE e degli stati membri è uno di questi: l’aiuto allo sviluppo [iv] è considerato una priorità dalla maggior parte dei membri; il lavoro relativo al finanziamento dello sviluppo è, di conseguenza, un caposaldo della confederazione.

Le discussioni interne alla confederazione stanno però cambiando alla luce dei cambiamenti dell’ambiente esterno e di nuove sfide. Ciò si vede, per esempio, nel recente focus su un’economia al di là della crescita [v], ma anche in dibattiti interni su colonialismo [vi], neo-colonialismo e relazioni UE-Africa [vii]. Anche se questi non indicano necessariamente un cambiamento decisivo nel modo in cui lo sviluppo sia compreso e praticato, mostrano però una tendenza potenziale verso un discorso sullo sviluppo che sia più radicale, più focalizzato su come rimediare passate ingiustizie.

References

[i] S. Smismans, “European civil society and citizenship: Complementary or exclusionary concepts?”, Policy and Society, vol. and S^o vol. and Soci

[ii] CONCORD, “EU responsibilities for a just and sustainable world CONCORD Narrative on Development” (https://concordeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CONCORD-Narrative-on-Development.pdf)

[iii] Cox, T. “Economic growth will not cure inequalities”, 25 June 2019, (https://concordeurope.org/2019/06/25/directors-blog-economic-growth-will-not-cure-inequalities/)

[iv] CONCORD, “EU ODA up, but far from levels promised and needed amid international crises – CONCORD press release: OECD DAC 2020 preliminary statistics”, 13 April 2021 (https://concordeurope.org/2021/04/13/eu-oda-up-but-far-from-levels-promised-and-needed-amid-international-crises/)

[v] CONCORD, Talking Development Ep. 1 “Beyond Growth: An Economic Model that works for Everyone”, 09 May 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmHHEfx4G6k&t=8s)

[vi] Poissonnier, L. tweet on CONCORD General Assembly 2020, 17 November 2020 (https://twitter.com/Lonne_CONCORD/status/1328711315016339459)

[vii] CONCORD, Talking Development Ep. 8 “How civil society can keep up with the speed of change”, January 2021, mins 7:00 to 12:30, accessed 10 January 2021 (https://soundcloud.com/concord-europe-ngo/how-civil-society-can-keep-up-with-the-speed-of-change)

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Valentina Brogna è dottoranda al Centro di Ricerca in Scienza Politica (CReSPo), Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles (Belgium), attraverso una borsa FRESH (F.R.S. – FNRS). La sua ricerca compara i discorsi relative allo sviluppo di ONG di sviluppo internazionali e Organizzazioni Pan-Africane della diaspora in Europa, operative perlopiù a livello UE. Tali discorsi di riferiscono a varie teorie di sviluppo, in uno spettro che va dallo Sviluppo sostenibile al Rinascimento africano. Prima di intraprendere la ricercar dottorale, ha lavorato in organizzazioni della società civile nel campo dello sviluppo e femministe a livello italiano e UE.

European NGOs still dance to the tune of their interlocutors – but this might be changing

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 October 202113 January 2025 5680 views

When we think of the European Union (EU), we tend to see a unified body that speaks with one voice. While this perception also holds true for European NGOs, a recent study has shown that in the last decade, a multitude of different, mostly reformist theoretical framings have been informing how these NGOs view and talk about development. This article explores what this reformism means for such NGOs, showing that a more radical development agenda that moves away from an economic growth model and Europe’s colonial legacy might be emerging, even if discussions are still mostly taking place internally.

Created to support ‘development’ and ‘social justice’ in the Global South, (International) Non-Governmental Organisations (INGOs) working on development-related issues have specific understandings of and discourses on global issues that inform their advocacy and lobbying activities at multiple decision-making levels. Such discourses, which are rooted in specific development theories, may ultimately come to inform policies. This motivates a critical analysis of the discourses used and the theories they’re based on.

As part of my ongoing PhD research, I am analysing CONCORD’s overall development narrative in a bid to understand which theory or theories of development it uses. CONCORD is the European NGO Confederation for Relief and Development representing some 2,600 NGOs at the EU level. I compare its narrative with those of pan-African organisations active in Europe. This comparison can be useful in revealing commonalities and differences related to how issues are problematised (ex: Are global inequalities an accident of fate? Are they historical?), what solutions are proposed (ex: more growth, more international trade, resource redistribution), or how the role of different actors is perceived (ex: the EU, NGOs themselves) particularly with regards to ‘development’ in Africa.

My overall aim is to understand what theories of development inform discussions at EU level among civil society organisations such as those I studied, so as to see how critical the messages reaching the EU through these organisations are. To do this, I’ve interviewed staff of some member NGOs, observed internal meetings, and analysed a set of official documents that display the organisations’ positions.

At EU level, it has been argued that NGOs have to be ‘critical, but not too critical’[i] if they want to maintain their relations with EU institutions making policies or providing them with funding. To understand how European development NGOs manage to navigate the state-civil society relationship, I distinguished development theories as either conventional (maintaining the neoliberal status quo), reformist (proposing changes to some elements of the economic, political and social system), or radical (criticising the whole system and tentatively proposing a paradigm change). If Smismans’ statement held true for the development sector as well, then European development NGOs would rather align their narrative to the second category. The case of CONCORD advocacy towards EU institutions seems to confirm this general assumption.

My research describes changes in the dominant development narrative over time, especially the one used by CONCORD in the last decade. What I witnessed is how a clump of rather reformist theories and approaches are applied, as well as concepts and frameworks relating to these (e.g. a human development, human rights or sustainable development frameworks). But several frameworks can be applied at the same time to inform narratives, which is what’s happening within CONCORD. The sporadic presence of very conventional references (such as those referring to pro-poor growth around 2010)[ii] and quite radical ones (those mentioning post-growth since 2019)[iii] add relevant nuances to this overall picture.

So why is there a move toward reformist approaches and theories? This move, which is first of all theoretical, also serves a strategic purpose: it consists of positioning the confederation within international developmental governance, accepting its overall grammar (donor countries, institutions and agencies, implementing actors, recipient countries and communities, assessment practices and language), while operating to give that grammar more social and environmental-friendly meanings, thus keeping the focus on the ultimate targets of development (local populations and their needs). This implies advocacy strategies and solution proposals bridging local populations’ needs (as perceived by the confederation) with institutions’ policies and attitudes (as assessed by the confederation). It also implies constantly striking a balance between what is considered necessary and what is considered attainable (i.e. acceptable by donors and targeted policy-makers).

The search for internal consensus, coupled with the imperative of representativeness of such a vast group of NGOs, also contributes to its overall reformist positioning. Representativeness is a fundamental credibility asset vis-à-vis political institutions, but it can have the trade-off of leading to a consensus a minima, mainly based on those issues that the sector historically deems fundamental. Lobbying for an increase in EU and members states’ Official Development Assistance (ODA) is a case in point: development aid [iv] is considered a key priority by a majority of members; the work on ‘financing and funding for development’ is, consequently, a longstanding pillar of the confederation.

But it’s becoming clear that internal discussions within the confederation are changing in light of the evolving external environment and new challenges. This is visible, for instance, in a recent focus on an economy beyond growth [v], but also in more internal discussions about colonialism [vi], neo-colonialism and EU-Africa relations [vii]. Although these do not signal a definite shift in how development is understood and practiced, they show that a move toward a more radical development narrative strongly focused on redressing past injustices may be looming

References

[i] S. Smismans, “European civil society and citizenship: Complementary or exclusionary concepts?”, Policy and Society, vol. and S^o vol. and Soci

[ii] CONCORD, “EU responsibilities for a just and sustainable world CONCORD Narrative on Development” (https://concordeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/CONCORD-Narrative-on-Development.pdf)

[iii] Cox, T. “Economic growth will not cure inequalities”, 25 June 2019, (https://concordeurope.org/2019/06/25/directors-blog-economic-growth-will-not-cure-inequalities/)

[v] CONCORD, Talking Development Ep. 1 “Beyond Growth: An Economic Model that works for Everyone”, 09 May 2019 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmHHEfx4G6k&t=8s)

[vi] Poissonnier, L. tweet on CONCORD General Assembly 2020, 17 November 2020 (https://twitter.com/Lonne_CONCORD/status/1328711315016339459)

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Valentina Brogna is a PhD researcher at the Research Centre in Political Science (CReSPo), Université Saint-Louis – Bruxelles (Belgium), funded through a FRESH Grant (F.R.S. – FNRS). Her research compares development narratives by International Development NGOs and Pan-African Diaspora Organisations in Europe, mostly advocating at EU level. Such narratives refer to different development theories, in a spectrum from Sustainable Development to African Renaissance. Prior to her PhD, she gained professional experience in feminist and development civil society organisations at EU and Italian level.

Environmental destruction and resistance: a closer look at the violent reoccupation of the DRC’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park

By ISS Blog Bliss 30 September 202113 January 2025 5289 views

The decision of the indigenous Batwa to reoccupy parts of eastern DRC’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park by force shocked many outside observers. They were further shocked when the Batwa started to ally with rebel groups, traders, and illegal timber cutters in order to exploit part of the ancestral forest they had been forced to leave decades prior. In a recently-published article in the Journal of Peasant Studies, Fergus Simpson and Sara Geenen show why the Batwa’s decision to return to the park should in fact come as anything but a surprise.

During the 1970s, the Congolese government forcibly displaced the Batwa people, a hunter-gatherer minority group, from eastern DRC’s Kahuzi-Biega National Park[1] (Barume 2000). In the decades following their displacement, the Batwa would secretly re-enter the park to collect firewood and food and to practice customary rituals. But after a 2018 attempt to buy them land outside the park failed, several hundred Batwa violently reoccupied parts of the park’s highland sector. Park authorities were quickly overwhelmed; a series of clashes has since claimed the lives of at least eleven Batwa, two eco-guards, and a government soldier.

Once back in the land of their ancestors, the Batwa formed alliances with armed groups, traders, and Bantu peasants to exploit the park’s natural resources both for personal consumption and for commercial purposes. Interviews conducted with local conservation NGOs has shown that this has led to the loss of hundreds of hectares of forest. In addition, through the abovementioned alliances certain Batwa chiefs have been able to assert strong territorial control over parts of the park and have become wealthy as a result.

The Batwa’s decision to forcibly reoccupy the park should not come as a surprise. Rather, it can be explained by three factors: 1) the failure to secure compensation and access rights to their ancestral lands through formal and legal channels, 2) an increase in threats to the Batwa’s dignity, identity, and livelihoods over recent years, and 3) the emergence of opportunities to forge alliances with more powerful actors in a way that consolidated the group’s power and allowed it to exploit natural resources contained within the forest for commercial purposes.

Slow violence and everyday resistance

The Batwa had been the custodians of Kahuzi-Biega’s forests from time immemorial. Yet in 1970, the Congolese government introduced a decree which would invalidate the Batwa’s customary land rights, transforming their ancestral forests into a place of strict preservation, scientific research, and tourism. During the 1970s, the Congolese conservation agency (at that time the Institut Zaïrois pour la Conservation de la Nature) worked alongside the national army to evacuate people from the area without prior warning; they would simply show up and say ‘this is no longer your home’.

The Batwa fled to live in squatter camps among other communities at the park boundaries and were forced to eke out a meagre existence by stealing from their non-Batwa neighbours. Although there were occasional opportunities to do piecemeal labour on the farms of wealthy landowners, discrimination based on ethnicity hindered the Batwa’s ability to find work. Their living conditions were poor, with substandard medical care, education and inadequate housing, as well as nutritional deficiencies, poor hygiene and a high mortality rate resulting from the lack of a proper diet and the absence of water and sanitation facilities.

The Batwa were not just deprived of their means of subsistence; they were also cut off from their identity as forest dwellers and their spirituality that is linked to nature. When they were separated from the forest, they became separated from themselves. This erosion of their identity and means of livelihood through dispossession can be seen as a process of ‘slow’ violence, which Robert Nixon (2011:2) describes as ‘a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is not viewed as violence at all’.

Unsurprisingly, the act of dispossession and subsequent slow violence did not go uncontested. Due to the presence of armed eco-guards and severe punishments for breaking park regulations, the Batwa mostly opted against risky forms of overt resistance in the decades spent outside the forest. Instead, they engaged in what James Scott (1989) calls covert ‘everyday’ resistance. Often under the cover of nightfall, they would illegally enter the park to collect food and firewood and to practice customary rituals that not only helped them survive, but also to make continued claims of their ancestral rights to the park.

All that changed in October 2018 when the Batwa decided to return to the park en masse, unleashing violent clashes and a wave of environmental destruction in the process. Based on six months of ethnographic fieldwork from August 2019 to February 2020, we tried to understand what led the Batwa to reoccupy their ancestral land.

Peaceful strategies had failed to deliver change

In the decade before the Batwa returned, Minority Rights Group worked with the local NGO Environnement Ressources Naturelles et Développement to create a lawsuit against the Congolese government. A case was brought to Bukavu’s Tribunal de Grande Instance in 2008, after which it was transferred to the Court of Appeal in 2013. It proposed that the Batwa had been expelled from the park illegally and should receive land, financial compensation, and continued access rights to the forest. The case was dismissed on the grounds that it concerned a problem of constitutionality and should therefore be resolved at the national level.

Two more cases were brought to DRC’s Supreme Court in Kinshasa in 2013 and to the African Union in 2015; both remain pending. From 2014, Forest Peoples Programme also facilitated a dialogue process between the Batwa and park authorities to agree upon appropriate compensation and identify sites inside the park for the Batwa to continue cultural and subsistence activities. But negotiations broke down after ICCN repeatedly failed to deliver on its promises.

As a result of these failures, the Batwa came to distrust the NGOs that support them, pushing them a step closer toward violent reoccupation. The level of scepticism is exemplified in the statement of one Batwa chief:

An NGO invited me in several different meetings, but this NGO lies that they are going to plead for our rights and bring projects. They swallow the money and then claim in their reports that they are pleading on behalf of the Batwa!

An increased threat

In August 2017, in a prelude to the mass reoccupation, a Batwa man and his son went into the park to collect medicinal herbs and were shot by park guards on patrol, leaving the father wounded and his son dead. This provocation led to almost instantaneous uprising. The Batwa took the boy’s body to park headquarters in protest. As the hours passed, tensions increased. Some Batwa even started waving sticks and machetes, threatening to reoccupy the park.

In the months after the killing, a representative of the Batwa in Bukavu told me how an international donor attempted to buy land for the Batwa to settle on outside the park. But the director of a local NGO who received the money on behalf of the Batwa then proceeded to buy a house and a car with the cash. It was at this point that the Batwa decided to violently retake the land of their ancestors by force, feeling that they could trust no-one and had to rely on themselves to take back what they saw was rightfully theirs.

Alliances with more powerful actors

Both before and after the national election in December 2018, the Batwa took advantage of opportunities to form strategic alliances with more powerful actors to consolidate their control over parts of the park and extract its resources. First, they allied with non-state armed groups operating in the park’s highland sector. This provided them with access to weapons and soldiers to assert control over their reoccupied territory. The Mai-Mai Cisayura is reported to have helped a group of Batwa attack a patrol post in Lemera, killing one guard in the process. On the side of these armed groups, they claimed to be ‘helping the Batwa claim their rights’ as a way to legitimate their presence in the park and extract minerals.

Second, the Batwa collaborated with businessmen and politicians from the provincial capital Bukavu who typically control the region’s trade networks. Over several months, trucks filled with bags of charcoal and planks of wood could be seen leaving the villages on the edge of the park for urban centres in Bukavu and Kavumu. These alliances enabled the Batwa to sell the resources that they were extracting from the park and led to significant deforestation, which continues up to this day.

Third, the Batwa deepened their commercial relationships with Bantu peasants to access expertise, financial capital, and technology to exploit resources. One group of Batwa even started working with Bantus who own a chainsaw to cut wood inside the park. This ensured that they had enough power to maintain the occupation and that they could more effectively exploit and sell natural resources extracted from within the park.

Fighting against slow violence

The above observations all reveal that the reoccupation of the park by the Batwa followed decades of slow violence, manifest in the gradual erosion of their group identity and sense of dignity. It also reveals that the event should not be considered surprising, as numerous related events led up to it. The sudden transition of the forest from a protected to an exploited zone raises further questions about whether the exclusion of indigenous groups from protected areas can have the perverse effect of severing their relationship with the land they once conserved, which in the case of Kahuzi-Biega National Park led to both large-scale deforestation and violent clashes.

Based on our research, we argue that a better understanding of the factors which push communities from covert resistance toward overtly violent forms of contestation against conservation could help prevent the social unrest and environmental destruction we have seen in Kahuzi-Biega over recent years from being repeated elsewhere. Such knowledge could also be used to inform a contemporary conservation movement that is more environmentally sustainable and socially just for future generations of indigenous people.

[1] The park, which extends over 600,000 hectares, is home to the endangered eastern lowland gorilla and 13 other species of primate. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site mainly because of the diverse mammal and bird species it houses.

References

Barume, Albert Kwokwo. 2000. Heading Towards Extinction?: Indigenous Rights in Africa : The Case of the Twa of the Kahuzi-Biega National Park, Democratic Republic of Congo. IWGIA.

Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt2jbsgw.

Scott, James C. 1989. ‘Everyday Forms of Resistance’. The Copenhagen Journal of Asian Studies 4 (1): 33.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Fergus Simpson is a Joint-PhD student at the University of Antwerp’s Institute of Development Policy (IOB) and the ISS funded by FWO. He is also a member of the Centre d’Expertise en Gestion Minière (CEGEMI) at the Université Catholique de Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). His research focuses on the intricacies between environmental conservation, armed mobilisation and conflicts surrounding natural resources in eastern DRC’s South Kivu Province.

Sara Geenen is assistant professor in International Development, Globalization and Poverty at the Institute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is co-director of the Centre d’Expertise en Gestion Minière (CEGEMI) at the Université Catholique de Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Her current research interests lie in the global and local development dimensions of extractivist projects, addressing questions about more socially responsible and inclusive forms of globalization.

Human Trafficking |Community self-regulation of the sex industry: a bottom-up approach for fighting sex trafficking in India

By ISS Blog Bliss 28 September 202113 January 2025 5595 views

Efforts by the government of India to prevent and address human trafficking are failing to improve the conditions of the sex industry in a meaningful way, in particular due to its focus on the rehabilitation of ‘rescued’ sex workers. To resist this patronising attitude toward sex work, community organisation Durbar has been working on an alternative ‘paradigm’ to counter human trafficking in Kolkata, one of India’s largest cities. Its approach rooted in community participation in the protection of sex workers is proving effective because the dignity and agency of sex workers are placed central in the organisation’s efforts, writes Jaffer Latief Najar.

“Our work related to anti-trafficking has two pillars. One is protection, the other prevention. So we are doing rescue operations as a form of protection, and after the rescue operations, we are providing them with aftercare facilities… We are doing this so that girls can be empowered [through knowledge about trafficking] and can better understand what trafficking is.”

This statement by a representative of a non-government organisation working in collaboration with the Indian government in Kolkata to combat human trafficking, particularly trafficking in the sex industry, reveals how sex workers are framed – as victims of trafficking. While human trafficking indeed remains a serious issue in Kolkata, and in the rest of India, with India’s National Crime Record Bureau registering 6,616 cases of trafficking in 2020, this approach of ‘rescuing’ victims of trafficking is doing more harm than good. This is the case particularly due to its failure to regard sex workers as agential individuals, which has led to the criminalisation of activities related to sex work, forceful rescues, physical violence, and a loss of livelihoods in a context of chronic and widespread poverty.

This focus on human trafficking has been accompanied by additional interventions like rehabilitation and ‘sensitisation’ stipulated by Indian national laws; these have been inspired by the United Nations’ framework for anti-trafficking known as the Palermo protocol of 2000.[1] As reflected in the fact that raid and rescue operations targeting human trafficking focus solely on the sex industry (see Sangram, 2018; Walters, 2018), the representative in fact describes how sex work is conflated with human trafficking; moreover, the ‘aftercare’ that follows is rooted in the idea that sex workers should exit the sex industry given the opportunity to do so (even with their own consent). According to this paternalistic approach to the governance of human trafficking, a person’s agency to consent is irrelevant.

Resisting forced ‘resue and rehabilitation’

The targeted ‘beneficiaries’ of such anti-trafficking interventions are not without agency, however, but resent and resist these interventions. For instance, a sex worker I interviewed[2] said:

“Sex workers see anti-trafficking actors as dhandabaaz (rookies) who do business in the name of looking after the welfare of sex workers and monitor [sex] trafficking… The government should think about how it should help sex workers gain and reclaim their dignity. We don’t need rehabilitation.”

To deal with the detrimental impact of anti-trafficking practices, community collectives in India have shown resistance to the government’s approach to sex work and have conceptualised alternative standards for regulating the industry. For instance, in Sonagachi in Kolkata where around 15,000 sex workers are situated, a collective of migrant sex workers called the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee (Durbar) is engaged in anti-trafficking efforts based on such an alternative governance approach. Unlike the approach taken by the UN and Indian government, Durbar does not conflate human trafficking with either sex work or migration, focusing instead on individual consent and the effects of the migration process on livelihoods (e.g. violence, working situation, health issues, financial exclusion, etc.). It considers sex work a contractual service between consenting adults without any element of force or coercion, supporting decriminalisation of consenting adult sex work in India.

As a result, the organisation has implemented a community-led self-regulatory board (SRB) to keep an eye on new entrants to the Kolkata sex industry, especially when they are underage or have experienced violence. But this kind of monitoring assumes a very different character – the SRB focuses more on individual and community welfare.

One of the members of Durbar talked about how the SRB was formed:

“The idea of SRB arose during a conference at Bidhannagar in Kolkata. Many people from outside the city and some representing ministries attended. We presented our work on HIV prevention and other health-related issues. But the people attending the conference said that despite these efforts, we were helping in the continued entry of minors into the industry. We then took up the challenge and worked on this. Later, we decided that we should create a platform stopping minors and adults from forcefully entering into the profession”.

The SRB involves volunteer and peer sex workers who meet newly arrived individuals, make enquiries about their intention to join the trade, their relationship with employers or the person accompanying them, and examine the role of brothel owners and landlords in the process of recruitment. If it appears in Durbar’s intervention that the person is trafficked, it assists with the person’s return, typically without the interference of state agencies or partner NGOs. The peer workers accompany the person and keep in touch with them for a certain period to avoid their return to forced labour. Durbar also offers job opportunities to such persons within the collective.

This self-regulation approach is effective in identifying cases of abuse as they occur in neighbourhoods where sex work takes place, which is not the case for government interventions that may come too late. The approach has also helped community members to create a movement that counters the harmful consequences of government anti-trafficking practices. The data of a decade that I gathered from Durbar’s SRB for my present research show a declining trend of forced or trafficked cases where the organisation has intervened.

Not completely recognised by the government….

This approach of Durbar is not legally authorised by the government because India follows UN protocol guidelines and its domestic anti-trafficking intervention differs from Durbar’s focus on self-regulation. This has produced several hurdles for the members of Durbar in executing their interventions, and also limits resources. For example, a Durbar member mentioned that the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA) prevents it from registering the SRB, as ITPA conflates trafficking with sex work, which is opposite to the approach of Durbar’s SRB. While India’s Supreme Court acknowledged the efforts of Durbar and invited Durbar to contribute to national policies on sex work and trafficking, talks with the government about the SRB’s registration have failed. This has resulted in everyday resistance against forced rescues and exclusion from welfare schemes for migrants and entire labour sectors, leaving the community to manage their affairs by interventions like SRB with limited resources.

…yet embraced on the ground

But despite such challenges, my observations of the SRB’s operations on the ground indicate that it has significant legitimacy and acceptability among community members and thus can be viewed as an effective bottom-up approach in combating human trafficking that directly assists in minimising the harm to and abuse of its members. This bottom-up approach has also helped marginalised communities such as sex workers to further develop a movement for advocating their rights and dignity, and challenge the legislations through protests and advocacy campaigns. As a substitute to the government’s approach that does not seem to be built on an understanding of the dynamics of the sex industry, this approach that is conceived and led by community itself shows the effectiveness of participatory governance and hence reflects a learning scope for an evolving critical conceptualisation of human trafficking, hybrid arrangement of anti-trafficking governance, workers’ agency, and the framing of anti-trafficking interventions.

[1] Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime.

[2] This interview was recorded as a part of my ongoing PhD research dedicated to understanding the marginalized perspectives on anti-trafficking interventions in India.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Jaffer Latief Najar is PhD Researcher at International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, The Netherlands.

Human Trafficking | How anti-trafficking governance is getting it wrong: consequences of the differential treatment of migrant worker groups in the Netherlands

By ISS Blog Bliss 23 September 202113 January 2025 4436 views

In many countries, including the Netherlands, being an immigrant – or being perceived as one – is a key mechanism used to normalise job precarity and poorly paid work. From this perspective, in theory, the rising attention to exploitative conditions that has paralleled anti-trafficking interventions is promising for migrant workers. Yet, using the case of the Netherlands as an example, this post highlights that, in practice, the exploitation of some workers seems to worry policy-makers more than others. The selective concern for migrant workers’ exploitation has paradoxical consequences, writes Karin Astrid Siegmann.

In a recent case of human trafficking of Slovak workers on a Dutch strawberry farm, the Netherlands Supreme Court identified “systematic substantial underpayment and provision of poor, far too expensive housing” as indicators of exploitation. While hardly used in the International Labour Organisation’s labour rights framework, the term ‘exploitation’ is central to the 2000 UN Anti-Trafficking Protocol – shorthand for the UN Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children. The Protocol does not define exploitation, but outlines forms that it can take, such as the “exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal of organs”. By 2021, with 178 ratifications, most countries of the world are party to the Protocol.

Having worked with migrant workers in the Netherlands for a couple of years now, I can’t get my head around how Dutch policy discourses on exploitation differentiate between occupational groups. Take migrant workers employed in the Dutch agricultural sector, like the Slovak migrants mentioned above. Agriculture employs the biggest share of the approximately 370,000 migrants from Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) working in the Netherlands. Significantly contributing to the country’s Euro 49 billion value added produced in the agri-food industry, they make this small country the largest agricultural producer in EU and the second largest agricultural exporter globally.

These successes are lauded publicly, yet the migrant workers contributing to these successes are commonly invisibilised. While court cases countering the exploitation of farm workers are exceptional, their insecurity, poverty, and dependency are the rule. Even the Dutch Labour Inspectorate speaks of a large grey area of unfair labour practices affecting agricultural workers that are de jure legal. Mostly being workers deployed through employment agencies, they have little say about the number of hours they will work or the resulting earnings – and they can easily lose their job from one day to the next. Given that the employment agency often provides them with housing, too, dismissal simultaneously means losing accommodation.

Then there are migrant sex workers. Other than in many other countries, sex work is a legal profession in the Netherlands. A closer look reveals that this might not be much more than a ‘legal façade’: instead of being treated as work like any other, sex work is handled as a security risk, reflected in the fact that the sector is regulated by the Ministry of Justice and Security instead of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Welfare. A small sector anyway, in which an estimated 4,000 to 4,500 sex workers provide direct forms of sex work on a daily basis, the number of licenses for legal workspaces for sex work have halved since 2000. Based on a split image in which the Dutch sex workers are cast as modern, emancipated on the one hand, and migrant sex workers depicted as exploited and trafficked on the other, the sex industry is the only sector in the Netherlands that does not allow non-EU foreigners to work legally in the sector.

Yet despite their small number, migrant sex workers figure prominently in discourses around anti-trafficking governance in the Netherlands. This becomes evident in the proposed law on the regulation of sex work (WRS), which lists the fight against human trafficking as one of the drivers of the law amendment and argues that the sex industry is more prone to trafficking than other sectors. It is ironic here that for many years, the incidence of forced labour in other sectors, such as horticulture, was actually not included in official reports on human trafficking.

Anti-trafficking interventions heighten rather than reduce risk of exploitation

The selective concern for migrant workers’ exploitation has paradoxical consequences. The skewed framing of migrant sex workers’ realities justifies repressive policies that heighten the risk of sex workers’ exploitation. The conflation of sex work with human trafficking that has been exacerbated since the ratification of the Anti-Trafficking Protocol affects all sex workers. It has been used to justify increasingly repressive regulation of this legal profession, for example through the progressive closure of streetwalker zones across the Netherlands and the criminalisation of the clients of unlicensed workers. Undermining the stated objective of such regulation, the focus on human trafficking pushes migrant sex workers further into informality with greater vulnerability as a consequence.

The underpayment, insecurity, and dependence of a much larger group of migrant workers in the agricultural sector, in contrast, commonly remains out of view in media and policy discourses. This supports the normalisation of their ‘regulated precarity’: they pay for economic success of Dutch agriculture. In this way, both the misrepresentation of migrant sex workers and the invisibilisation of migrant farmworkers’ realities heighten the risk of exploitation that they face.

These examples demonstrate that anti-trafficking governance has not been an effective tool to address migrant workers’ exploitation. Both groups are losing instead of gaining what’s sorely needed – job security, better working conditions, and fair treatment. A more promising road towards fair labour practices for migrant workers involves a shift from a criminal law to a labour approach to human trafficking, including migrant sex work, as María Inés Cubides Kovacsics argued in her recent post in this series. This implies a regulatory environment that considers both migrant workers in agriculture and the sex industry citizens rather than passive production factors or victims – and effectively guarantees living wages and inclusive social protection based on that recognition.

This post is based on the author’s presentation on ‘Paradoxes of Migrants’ Exploitation in the Netherlands’ during an ISS expert meeting with representatives of the Dutch Ministries of Justice and Security and Foreign Affairs on 9 January 2020.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Karin Astrid Siegmann is Associate Professor in Labour and Gender Economics at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS)

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | Development researchers as advocates: eight tips for more engaged scholarship

By ISS Blog Bliss 22 September 202113 January 2025 4028 views

Research impact has become a strategic priority for many research institutes around the world, with an increasing focus on “bridging the gap” between research and society and positioning research in a way that ensures the knowledge it produces can contribute to bringing about change. But do and should researchers make sure that their research contributes to these objectives? And how can they go about it? This article shares some key insights from a roundtable forming part of the recent EADI ISS #Solidarity2021 conference.”

Development researchers often find themselves straddling two worlds: the academic sector on the one hand, and the development sector on the other. But is there a moral imperative for development researchers to bridge these two realms by acting as advocates in ‘the real world’? If so, how can they best share knowledge in ways that contribute to solidarity, peace, and social justice? During a roundtable at the EADI ISS #Solidarity2021 conference, a unique lineup of speakers shared their insights from a number of different perspectives. The session ‘Is there a moral imperative for development researchers to act as advocates?’ took place on 7 July 2021 and was moderated by Prof. Arjun Bedi (Deputy Rector Research Affairs at ISS).

Eight tips for more engaged scholarship

We briefly summarised the main points of the discussion – here are eight key takeaways:

Engage early on

Development research can help NGOs, policy-makers and other actors gain a contextualised and multi-faceted understanding of the dynamics of development. If researchers want their work to better inform programs and policies, they should interact with non-academic actors early on and allow them to help shape design objectives, recommends Adriano Nuvunga (Executive Director of the Centre for Democracy and Development, Mozambique). This will generate interest in the research that can improve research uptake later. It can also help to move away from extractive research models to approaches grounded in dialogue with local actors in which researchers spend more time with communities and talking to others.

Make it political

Research generally does not inform policy-making unless it’s politicised. If researchers want policy-makers to engage with and use their research, they need to be willing to make it political and engage in political debates, says Dirk-Jan Koch (Chief Science Officer at the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Professor by Special Appointment International Trade & Development Cooperation at Radboud University). Researchers need to understand what is going on in the minds of policy-makers. Make time available to regularly use (social) media by writing blogs or op-eds on research relevant to policy-makers, and make sure to reach the right people. Despite the political sensitivity, Dirk-Jan for example wrote an op-ed about the unintended side-effects of development cooperation that focused on how Dutch aid given to Syrian rebels was passed on to Islamist militias in Syria.

Take a stand & be purposely passionate and provocative

Researchers seek to be objective and neutral when conducting research, but could embrace a bit more boldness and engage in activism when it comes to sharing their research and advocating for change in policy and practice. Sometimes simply sharing information is not enough. Researchers should find ways to appeal to hearts and minds, for example through storytelling that makes known the societal relevance of the research. By being “purposely passionate and provocative”, research can get noticed by policy-makers and the general public more widely, notes Kristen Cheney (Associate Professor in Children and Youth Studies at ISS).

Spread the message far and wide & together with others

Researchers are generally expected to continually search for and share something new through their research. As a result, they tend to publish in academic journals and elsewhere and quickly move on to the next project. Yet advocacy and transformative change requires the opposite – namely long-term engagement – as such change takes time. If you want your research to contribute to change, you likely need to repeat the message again and again and to different audiences. Find networks of like-minded people, as this can help reach a critical mass of people who support a particular cause and can create enough momentum to sway politicians to act.

Beware of the politics of knowledge production

Development as we know it today is inextricably linked with European colonisation, leaving us with a system of dominant ways of knowing and the monopoly of ‘useful knowledge’ and ‘expertise’ by institutions in the ‘Global North’. Lata Narayanaswamy (Associate Professor in the Politics of Global Development, University of Leeds) warns that we must not presume that there is a tangible thing called knowledge that is by definition valuable to share and to acknowledge that there are implied power hierarchies in how knowledge is produced and shared.

Careful consideration must be given to the why, what, and how of knowledge sharing. For example, practically speaking, what does the hegemonic position of the English language and the widespread use of digital technology mean in terms of inclusion and exclusion? Not only should knowledge sharing be coupled to clear action objectives, we must also think about how to engage research participants as co-creators, co-curators, and co-producers of knowledge.

Move beyond a single identity

Traditional siloed research approaches in which one person conducts research, another communicates about the knowledge produced, and yet another is expected to do something with it are outdated. Science-society collaboration can be strengthened if researchers start wearing different hats and assume multiple roles, for example by combining a position at a ministry and a university (as Dirk-Jan does), communicating about their research throughout the research process, or engaging in digital academic citizenship.

Become a digital academic citizen

Digital academic citizenship expands on the traditional perspective outlined above and is a way to engage in modern-day advocacy, comments Tobias Denskus (Associate Professor in Development Studies at Malmo University). Examples can be found on Twitter – which serves as a connector of ideas, communities, and platforms – where researchers are actively seeking and making themselves heard in certain debates: Dan Hicks (Professor of Contemporary Archeology at Oxford) for instance is often seen in the cancel culture debate in the UK, while Laura Hammond (Professor of Development Studies at the University of London) tweets about the impact of budget cuts on research and her relationship with partners in the Global South. Importantly, Twitter isn’t used by them only to advocate their own research or organisations – they also use it to shed light on challenges and constraints faced by researchers, and on who they are and how they work toward overcoming societal injustices.

Collaborate for greater impact

Maximising the impact of research knowledge and insights requires a different, perhaps new modus operandi than many researchers are used to. Thinking of advocacy and impact as a linear process with inputs and outputs doesn’t align with the complex reality of today’s world and its ‘wicked’ problems. We need to acknowledge this complexity and not oversimplify or underestimate what is needed.

Researchers can, but don’t need to go it alone. Oftentimes, colleagues working on research communication, uptake, and impact are ready to brainstorm and co-develop fitting strategies and plans to make sure knowledge is heard and applied. Don’t think or work in silos. Seek to collaborate, both within your organisation and beyond.

Looking forward

Going back to where we started, one critical question remaining unanswered in this blog is whether there is a moral imperative for development researchers to act as advocates. That is, after all, what the roundtable was all about. The truth is, we don’t have the answer (yet). Panelists and attendants touched on it, exchanging insights on the sequencing of research and advocacy and, more fundamentally, the objectivity and neutrality of the social sciences altogether. It became clear that the roundtable would not provide enough time and space to answer this provocative question. To really do justice to this critical debate, further in-depth discussions need to take place. But rest assured, the EADI Working Group on Research Communication is working on this, so stay tuned for more information!

About the EADI Working Group on Research Communications

This working group – comprising primarily communication professionals and a few academics – focuses on research communication as a vital part of ensuring that research in development reaches and engages other societal actors such as policymakers and practitioners so that recommendations and findings can contribute to change.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Adinda Ceelen is Knowledge Broker & Research Communications Advisor at the International Institute of Social Studies, part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. She is also co-convenor of the EADI Working Group on Research Communications.

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | Risk dumping in field research: some researchers are safer than others

By ISS Blog Bliss 16 September 202113 January 2025 2939 views

Researchers who conduct their fieldwork in unfamiliar or hazardous settings are routinely exposed to risks that can bring them harm if these are not anticipated and circumvented. Often, junior PhDs or foreign researchers conduct fieldwork on behalf of more senior researchers; and in doing so, they also take over the risks that fieldwork poses. The practice of ‘risk and ethics dumping’ that was discussed at a roundtable session on safety and security for researchers at the recent EADI ISS #Solidarity2021 Conference should end, and research institutions and senior researchers should start feeling greater responsibility toward those they work with or employ, write Linda Johnson and Rodrigo Mena.

A quick glance at who is out collecting data in ‘the field’, including in remote and sometimes hazardous environments, is enough to make our point clear: the main executors of in-situ research (also known as fieldwork research) are local researchers and research assistants, sometimes together with junior or PhD researchers from research institutions in the Global North. These groups are being systematically and disproportionately exposed to safety and security issues linked to field research.

Senior and more experienced researchers from these institutions are not likely to be doing hands-on field work. Instead, they often lead projects, supervising those doing the fieldwork and providing advice on to how do fieldwork while keeping a safe distance from ‘the field’ itself. In cases where senior researchers do engage in field research, they usually do it with adequate resources and strong social and professional networks at hand. This protects them from the hazards of doing fieldwork.

Moreover, universities feel compelled to protect themselves from liability, but not their researchers from harm. University managers often approach security with the objective of protecting the university from liability. This means that entire countries and sometimes even continents can become inaccessible to international researchers, mainly by being declared off-limits due to a broad-brush approach in response to hazards identified, but not well understood, by ministry officials and/or university administrators. In reality, such hazards can often be geographically limited to relatively small areas, and relatively safe travel to much of the areas considered off-limits would be feasible, if only more detailed analysis of the actual situation were used in the risk assessment process, and a sound risk plan were developed.

A lack of concern

In her introduction to the topic at the roundtable on “Safety and security for university staff, students and research participants” that formed part of the recent EADI ISS #Solidarity2021 Conference, Thea Hilhorst from the ISS warned about “risk dumping” on a large scale and discussed some of its dimensions. Risk dumping, which means that risks are diverted to others or simply ‘dumped’ on them, often takes place unintentionally, she argued. She also mentioned that junior staff, PhD candidates, or local researchers are less likely to be insured against risk or trained in risk mitigation, which makes it more difficult for them to identify, mitigate or confront the hazards they come across in the field. Such an insurance policy and appropriate training would also include potential risks for research participants and collaborators. Hilhorst thought that the following four things were crucial for improving the security and safety of researchers:

Safety guidelines. These are essential for ensuring that researchers have a basic knowledge of risks in the field and how they can limit exposure to these.
Safety training. Guidelines without training do not serve much purpose. Researchers with experience of hazardous contexts can help others understand some of the risks better.
Strong safety and security support structures. Universities and research centers need to develop adequate protocols and structures to prevent and manage safety and security risks.
Good insurance cover (including protection against so-called acts of God, i.e. natural hazards and conflict). Both international and local researchers, and those who work with them locally, should be protected in this manner.

What other panellists had to say:

Local researchers are often overlooked

Vagisha Gunasekara from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies argued that research policies rarely pay attention to the role of local researchers and enumerators, and the main researchers (principal investigators) fail to recognise that there are ethical issues to be resolved in this respect.

PhD researchers are worth their weight in gold…

Rod Mena from the ISS reminded us that PhD researchers play a vital role in collecting and analysing data for research projects led by more senior academics. He stressed this by asking the participants to imagine a research landscape without PhD researchers: huge swathes of research would never happen without them. However, he said, “although they are clearly vital for research, the approach to their safety is often cavalier at best”.

…but they are forced to put themselves at risk

Mena also pointed to the fact that most PhD researchers have limited resources to conduct fieldwork, thus making it necessary for them to opt for the cheapest options in terms of transportation, accommodation, and even food. This necessity to skimp on costs often increases risks, including to their safety and health.

The implementation of guidelines is important

Eric Beerkens from the Dutch funding division WOTRO Science for Global Development pointed out that his organisation requires adherence to the Global Code of Conduct for Research in Resource-Poor Settings, which is a step in the right direction, but feels that funding organisations like WOTRO could do more to ensure the implementation of regulations and to raise awareness about the possible risks involved in fieldwork and the need for protective measures.

Researcher exploitation reveals a colonial mindset

Finally, EADI president Henning Melber said that there is clear evidence of colonial mindsets in academia that lead to asymmetric power relations and unashamed exploitation of both PhD researchers and local researchers.

Collectively taking responsibility

All panellists agreed that it is time to end the (often unintentional) risk and ethics dumping in the field of development studies and to self-critically assess our policies and practices. Only by taking responsibility as an academic community can we ensure that important research in the future will be conducted according to high ethical standards and under safe conditions for all involved. The recent letter to the European Commission from many rectors’ conferences and university umbrella organisations in Europe on ‘Enhancing Research Excellence at African Universities through European/ African Cooperation’ signals an intention to collaborate more intensively on research with partners in the Global South. The need to improve our practices has never

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Linda Johnson was the executive secretary of ISS, but has now retired. She is particularly interested in the societal relevance of research. In addition, she has done recent work on the safety and security of researchers and co-developed a course on literature as a lens on development.
Rodrigo Mena is assistant Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Disaster Governance. Mena is Board Member of the International Humanitarian Studies Association (IHSA) and as convener of the Peace and Ecology in the Anthropocene commission at the International.

Human Trafficking | Overregulated, but unprotected? Human trafficking governance is not protecting sex workers in the Netherlands

By ISS Blog Bliss 14 September 202113 January 2025 3435 views

Furthering the discussion on the negative consequences for sex workers[1] of the regulatory conflation of sex work and human trafficking, this post reflects on how regulation focused on identifying cases of human trafficking in the Dutch sex industry has failed to protect sex workers, whose primary concerns remain an unsafe working environment and a lack of job security. Government surveillance of the sex industry does not produce better working conditions – what is needed is increased dialogue for evidence-based policy-making that ensures that immediate needs of sex workers are met without further ado.

“I don’t want security – I want that window to be changed. It’s unsanitary, it’s dirty,” says Vanessa[2], a transgender sex worker from Ecuador who has been working in the sex industry for 30 years, when I ask her what would make her feel safer at work. After reflecting a bit about what safety means and how we understand it, we start to talk about working conditions. What ‘good conditions’ means in the practice of sex work does not seem to be a priority for the authorities in charge of supervising this industry in the Netherlands, Vanessa and other sex workers tell me. Their objective is mainly to identify cases of human trafficking and illegal forms of sex work.

According to the sex workers I interviewed and observations in both window-based sectors in The Hague that I carried out for my master’s thesis, the working conditions vary from place to place. One afternoon, in the internal windows of one of the Doubletstraat passages, I could feel the dense, heavy, and hot air that many sex workers live with during the summer, as well as the dust that accumulates. Martha, who has been in the industry for 10 years, says: “Of course, there is no air here, here you are like a fish out of water”. For others, bad working conditions are also related to:

The lack of access to a clean bathroom with a shower;
The lack of access to clean changes of bedding;
The lack of a clean and sanitary work environment;
The lack of separate spaces for eating and resting;
High rental amounts;
The precarity of the business;
The possibility of being left without a workplace, as the number of licenses issued for sex work are still decreasing; and
The (im)possibility of working from home in cities where home-based sex work is illegal.

From bad to worse…

Sex workers’ insecurities were exacerbated by COVID-19-related government measures, which due to the extended lockdown and limitation of face-to-face contact left a big group of sex workers, especially immigrants, without work for longer periods than any other worker, and without financial help. Yet resisting the difficult working conditions is not straightforward. The fear of the consequences of their airing grievances is preventing sex workers from doing so. Vanessa tells me: “I have talked to the others about it, but they tell me not to mess with it because I am going to have problems”. Like her, several sex workers tell me that they would not be taken seriously if they complained about their working conditions, or that they could be retaliated against by the operators, who would no longer rent the site to a ‘troublemaker’. A member of the support organisation Spot 46 says that sex workers can go to the municipality to complain, but nobody really hears them.[3] Thus, the path to changing their precarious working conditions is unclear to window-based sex workers in The Hague.

Focused on legality, not on working conditions

“If you have your papers in order, there is no problem” – Martha (name changed)

Matters of legality seem to take precedence over the wellbeing of sex workers. When I talked to the sex workers I interviewed for my study, inevitably, the discussion turned to the controls and supervision of this industry that are carried out by municipalities. In The Hague, a team called HEIT (The Hague Economic Intervention Team), made up of members of the police and the municipality, oversees the sex industry. Interestingly, this team only focuses on identifying cases of human trafficking and eradicating criminality (City Council 2019:10). When I asked about their perception of government supervision, the first response of all sex workers was that the government was worried about ensuring their legality through document control: by checking their immigration status, work permit, and registration at the Chamber of Commerce. In addition, municipal health service GGD also monitors the industry, but its focus is on public health and therefore is directed at the sexual practices of sex workers, who are considered a risk group (City Council 2019: 10).

Overregulated, but unprotected

From sex workers’ experiences with the controls and from what is stipulated in public policy, it can be argued that government surveillance of the sex industry does not produce better working conditions. Although there are specific and very strict regulations for sex workers, and although multiple institutions are involved in their enforcement, sex workers’ own concerns, and hence their protection as workers, are not a priority. Experiences on the ground reveal that what sex workers need is not more repressive surveillance that frames them as powerless victims of trafficking, but regulation that takes their demands for decent working conditions seriously.

References

[1] See: Heumann et al. (2017); Heumann et al. (2016); Hubbard et al. (2008); Outshoorn (2012); Pitcher and Wijers (2014) Verhoeven (2017).

City Council (2019) ‘Algemene Plaatselijke Verordening Voor De Gemeente Den Haag (APV) [General Local Regulation for the Municipality of the Hague]’. Local Regulation – Public order and safety, Municipality of The Hague.

Heumann, S., Coumans, SV., Shiboleth, T., Ridder-Wiskerke, M. (2017) ‘The Netherlands: Analysing Shifts and Continuities in the Governing of Sexual Labour’, in Ward, E., Wylie, G. (ed.) Feminism, Prostitution and the State, pp. 46-65. New York: Routledge Studies in Gender and Global Politics.

[2] Pseudonyms were used to protect sex workers’ identities.

[3] Interview, member of Spot 46, 2019.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author

María Inés Cubides Kovacsics is Professional in Development Studies with an ISS major in human rights, gender, and conflict studies. I have a particular interest in gender and sexuality, labour rights, sex workers’ rights, youth, security, and restorative justice. I have worked for identifying and fighting discrimination, exclusion and rights violations suffered by historically marginalized people and communities, alongside LGBTQ communities, imprisoned transgender women, homeless people, sex workers, drug users, street vendors, teenagers and young people with deprivation of liberty sanction.

Human Trafficking | The criminalisation of sex clients will not help combat human trafficking

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 September 202113 January 2025 2422 views

Starting in 2014, World Day Against Trafficking in Persons has been held on 30 July each year. The events that correspond to these days are meant to raise awareness about the crime of human trafficking and the protection of the rights of trafficked persons. In the month of September, we are publishing a series on critical engagements with interventions to combat human trafficking. The series opens with Marie-Louise Janssen’s and Silke Heumann’s critical discussion of a new law that seeks to protect victims of human trafficking in the sex industry of the Netherlands, but is unlikely to do so.

The [Dutch] Senate recently passed the Criminalization of Abuse of Prostitutes Who Are Victims of Human Trafficking Act. The bill, submitted by the Christian Union, PvdA, SP and CDA – four prominent political parties in the Netherlands – creates the possibility to punish clients of sex workers when they are found to have known, or to have had “serious reason to suspect”, that someone has been forced into prostitution and is therefore a victim of human trafficking. Those clients can be fined or imprisoned for up to four years.

However, both experiences of sex workers and scientific research on human trafficking show that any form of criminalisation of clients does not prevent human trafficking, but actually increases the vulnerability of sex workers to coercion and violence. Therefore, this law raises many questions.

First, when is someone a victim? Often, ‘unlicensed’ sex workers are equated with victims of exploitation and trafficking. But the increase in the group of sex workers working outside the licensed circuit (popularly called ‘illegal’) is mainly caused by policy – a policy that leads to fewer and fewer licensed workplaces combined with a ban on self-employment.

Secondly, when does legal sex turn into ‘punishable’ sex? If we take the signals of human trafficking used by the police as a guideline, such as illegal residence in the Netherlands and having high debts, quite a few people fall under this category. Does this mean that having sex with a sex worker who has debts or not the right papers is already a crime? And should the sex worker also see herself as a victim? We know from research that only a small proportion of people who are considered victims of trafficking by the government see themselves as such.

Unclear definitions

So while the government comes up with unclear definitions of victimisation, customers are expected to recognise a victim and report it to the police. As a result, customers are now at risk of being criminalised because they “could have suspected” it. Not surprisingly, a recent study shows that customers are less willing to report exploitation or coercion for fear of criminal prosecution.

Third, why does criminalisation apply only to addressing abuse of trafficking victims in the sex industry, and not to victims in other economic sectors? This only contributes to the perception that sex work and human trafficking are the same thing, and thus to the stigma attached to sex work. It seems that this law has little to do with countering violence and abuse, but much more to do with the taboo on paid sex.

In the Netherlands, sex work has been a legal employment sector since 2000. Despite this, we have difficulty with the idea of sexual services. For example, clients are often portrayed as ‘certain kind of men’ who despise women and treat or exploit sex workers violently. Oversimplification is one of the main ways of creating and perpetuating the stereotypes that form the basis for stigmatising clients.

This act stems from the taboo of paid sex

However, in addition to the market for male clients, there is also a growing market in the Netherlands for services to female clients. Business manager Lex of De Stoute Vrouw had to temporarily close her business due to the lockdown, but she is still in daily contact with female homosexual and heterosexual clients who cannot wait to reopen. Eight out of ten of her clients have gone through an unpleasant experience regarding sexuality and find their sexual pleasure again through contact with a female sex worker.

Heteronormative picture

Sex work challenges our idea of how sex should be: based on love and a permanent relationship. But not everyone finds this romantic ideal attainable or desirable, and not everyone fits into this heteronormative picture of a heterosexual couple in a long-term, monogamous relationship. The sex industry meets a need by creating a place where men, women, transgender and non-binary people can meet to explore their bodies and sexuality.

This article was earlier published in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the authors:

Marie-Louise Janssen is senior lecturer in gender and sexuality studies (UVA).

Silke Heumann is senior lecturer at ISS/EUR.

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | Questioning development: What lies ahead?

By ISS Blog Bliss 21 July 202113 January 2025 2099 views

Development Studies requires “an epistemological and ontological change”, write Elisabetta Basile and Isa Baud in the introduction to the recent EADI volume ‘Building Development Studies for a New Millennium’. The planned sequel of the book will take this analysis one step further and explore viable ways to build on both the critique of development as such and the growing demand to decolonise knowledge production. During a plenary session titled ‘Questioning Development – Towards Solidarity, Decoloniality, Conviviality’ that formed part of EADI’s recent #Solidarity2021 conference, four contributors discussed the upcoming book. Christiane Kliemann summarised the discussion.

The need to critique development has become urgent as global inequalities increase and the need for the decolonisation of knowledge to redress knowledge production asymmetries becomes greater. “We have been much better at critique than at changing things”, quipped Uma Kothari during a panel session titled ‘Questioning Development – Towards Solidarity, Decoloniality, Conviviality’ of EADI’s recent #Solidarity2021 conference that she recently chaired.

Kothari is also one of the editors of a forthcoming book with the working title ‘Questioning Development Studies: Towards Decolonial, Convivial and Solidaristic Approaches’ that will be a sequel to the already-published EADI volume titled ‘Building Development Studies for a New Millennium’. During the panel session she asked four panellists who contributed to the book to discuss their own practices towards challenging the classical ‘development’ paradigm and possible ways forward. Their diverse and insightful arguments are captured below.

Integrating indigenous understandings of relationality

Yvonne Te Ruki-Rangi-O-Tangaroa Underhill-Sem, Associate Professor in Pacific Studies, Te Wānanga o Waipapa, University of Auckland, New Zealand, started the discussion with an interesting example from New Zealand, or Aotearoa, as she calls it by its Maori name, where the Maori concept of Manaakitanga has even influenced the way in which research is done in the whole country. Manaakitanga, as Underhill-Sem explained, is all around caring for the ‘Mana’ of people we relate to – ‘Mana’ itself being understood as anything we relate to, be it other people, land, or whatever is meaningful to us. “We’ve been working very closely between New Zealand Maori and Pacific scholars to begin to infuse and embed this concept in one of the major research policy platforms in Aotearoa that control the funding of research and the definition of what is excellent research”, she explained.

As a very tangible example for encouraging research based on a much broader understanding of knowledge, she referred to the Toksave Research Portal which has drawn its name from one of the languages of Papua New Guinea and started as a “process inviting a whole range of different knowledge-makers around the region and the Pacific to submit their work”, be it a poem, a thesis, or an NGO report.

Lauren Tynan, Trawlwulwuy woman from Tebrakunna country in northeast Tasmania, who is currently doing her PhD on aboriginal burning practices at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, also views the issue of decolonising knowledge and knowledge production through a lens of relationality. She aspires to hold herself accountable to all relations she has; her recent paper ‘Thesis as kin: living relationality with research’ explored how she relates to her research.

At times, this understanding can be quite challenging to the concept of research she had been initially taught, which she finds “quite a colonising way of researching”. For example, it doesn’t take into account her responsibilities as a mother of small children, which prevent her from traveling back and forth for her research: “Part of that relationality is to see that I shouldn’t feel that as a limitation but as part my responsibilities and obligations to my family and my wider family which is also my research relationship”.

Migration as constitutive dimension of human existence

Samid Suliman, Lecturer on Migration and Security in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University, Australia, brought in another important, but much-overlooked perspective. As he focuses much of his work on the relationship between migration and development, he started from the point that “mobility has been and continues to be colonised through development”, with the “entrenchment and hegemony of the nation state as the primary organising framework of human existence”. Although we are now living in a ‘hyper-mobile world’, he pointed out that the “state-centred way of understanding human mobility continues to be reproduced”, and migrants are looked at with fear and trepidation. One of his research questions therefore is: “How can we better understand migration and mobility as a constitutive dimension of human existence, rather than just an outcome of human activity?”

As one step forward, Suliman suggested to “think critically about the way in which we normalise certain assumptions and certain normative dispositions about the movement of human beings and resist the impulse to settle everyone in their place”. This would require finding new mechanisms, institutions and possibilities for convivial relations and forms of justice that go “beyond the national as the frame of reference for decision making and action on the governance of the moving of people”.

Hospitality as basic principle for societies beyond development

For Aram Ziai, Heisenberg-Professor of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for Development Policy and Postcolonial Studies at the University of Kassel, Germany, it all starts with questioning the term ‘development’. He considers a simple redefinition of the term insufficient, as this could produce misunderstandings and a “beyond-criticism gambit”. If the term development continues to bear different meanings, from democratic industrial capitalisms to any type of positive social change, he said, “we are in fact obstructing the critique of development organisations by saying, ‘if something bad happened out of a development project, it was not really development’”.

He also made clear that ‘development’ cannot be seen independent of its historical context: “Development came into being as a new programme to legitimise a capitalist world order in the Global South at a time when the colonial ideology was losing credibility and a new framing of North-South relations was needed to maintain access to the raw materials of the South and the corresponding division of labour. So, development thinking was a new frame, but it was still linked to colonialism, to the idea of transforming geo-cultural differences into historical stages, so that the self is the norm, and the other is the deviant, deficient, other”.

How to move on? Less data, more stories!

All panellists agreed that big changes don’t occur overnight and that it takes everyone’s efforts in their specific places and fields to contribute to a systemic change that might still take years or even decades to gain full ground. In Suliman’s words, “We need to do all we can within our various roles and positions to push back on the research monoculture imposed from above”.

As one important step in this direction, Underhill-Sem called on the older and more advanced scholars to be much more audacious in their engagement with policy: “Are we seeing that audacity with obligation? Are we seeing active engagement in these key structural places, in terms of reviewing the way in which we do and fund research, the way in which we build ethics around research? Are we reaching in those spaces and doing the work there, or are we leaving these spaces for others to populate them?” According to Ziai, we are already moving in the right direction by “talking more and more about these issues and less and less about economic growth, productivity and other things that are increasingly questioned”.

Suliman thinks that it all boils down to the question of making ourselves known to each other in ways that don’t colonise, and in creating space for multiple meanings and exchanges between us: “I think we need to keep moving towards other ways of seeing and listening and knowing, so in short: less data, more stories.” And, Tynan observes, these stories are already there: “Wherever we are in the world there are peoples who have story and belonging to the land, it’s about knowing these stories and their full implications on ourselves as individuals and communities”.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Christiane Kliemann Communications European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI).

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | For the redistribution of water, framing matters!

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 July 202113 January 2025 2495 views

In the face of increasing pressure on global water resources, a degree of inventiveness in finding just and sustainable ways to ensure access to water is required. The redistribution of water is one possible way in which this could be done. But ongoing research on elite responses to a recent water scarcity crisis in South Africa shows that the redistribution of water resources will not go uncontested by water elites and that existing narratives on the sharing of water are not creating the extent of solidarity needed. We need to frame this action differently, writes Lize Swartz.

Water is intricately linked to development, both to ensure or improve people’s quality of life, as well as to help secure livelihoods such as subsistence farming. But increasing pressure on water resources due to a changing climate, as well as an increased demand for water, amongst others, is making it difficult to even sustain current access to water, let alone provide new access to populations that are not yet connected to formal water networks.

Millions of people around the world are still waiting for the moment they can turn on a tap and watch water gushing from it, to be able to flush a toilet, or to bathe under running water. In light of the need to keep an expanding access to water and sanitation facilities, but also with the realisation that less and less water is available per capita, new ways of thinking about ensuring access to water are needed.

‘Sharing is scaring’

During a recent panel session on inclusive development and water governance linked to the 2021 EADI ISS Conference, the likelihood of having to share water came up toward the end of the discussion. Emanuele Fantini[1] suggested that it’s not as straightforward as ‘sharing is caring’ when it comes to water, pointing to the many complexities that would affect the governance of water redistribution by using the term ‘sharing is scaring’. Joyeeta Gupta[2], one of the panel convenors, observed that it is likely that “there will be no win-win situation; it will be a win-lose situation” when it comes to sharing water. As one of the main challenges, she recognised the need to convince water elites of the necessity of sharing water.

My ongoing research on elite responses to water scarcity shows exactly how difficult it will be to get ‘buy-in’ from those who are able to share water: I investigate the way in which elite water users navigated the collapse of three urban water supply systems in South Africa in 2016. With ‘buy-in’ I mean that those who have sufficient water agree to share it, provided that they still have enough water to meet their own basic water needs. ‘Elite water users’ in the context of South Africa can be considered those who either have water and sanitation connections within their own homes, or who have access to non-municipal water resources such as groundwater (through boreholes) that can replace or supplement municipal water.

Some of the preliminary conclusions of my research are that:

Basic water needs are different for different socio-economic groups in South Africa. For example, irrigating private gardens to ensure that lawns remain green and plants continue to grow may be considered a basic need by those owning gardens, but not by those without gardens. This may be linked to the pride that is taken in being able to maintain ‘life’ by tending to an urban nature.
The way in which water is used is closely linked to the socio-economic and cultural identity and status of water users; water is much more than a product linked to hygiene, for example – having abundant water is a reminder of a high standard of living and prosperity. Swimming pools, fountains, and running water in general is considered part and parcel of a ‘good life’.
Water is closely linked to emotional and mental health; having sufficient water creates a sense of peace and safety among water users, which turns into anxiety when the threat of water scarcity or shortages looms. My research found that retaining a sense of water security seems to trump other considerations that may inform how water is used and whether and how it is shared.

Allegations of mismanagement stand in the way of viewing water scarcity as collective problem

In addition to the symbolic importance of water that moves beyond the idea of water needs as largely material, political factors may also affect the willingness of water elites to share water. My research found, for example, that specific interpretations of the collapse of urban water supply systems as being caused by municipal mismanagement and water losses through leakages in general may prevent water users from seeing water scarcity as a collective problem and responding to it in a similar way. Those who hold such views are unlikely to cooperate with local governments to ensure that those without water are helped out of own accord. My research also shows that water is hoarded by households out of fear of not being able to access it in the future and is mostly shared with those elites’ own social networks.

Also, in the communities studied, distrust stretches beyond the local level and is rooted in perceptions regarding the legitimacy and accountability of the national government. A certain level of mistrust is based on its perceived disability to govern in the interests of water elites, who in South Africa for the most part are also socio-economic elites. This also affects the extent to which water scarcity is considered a collective problem requiring collective action, similar to the above observation.

Capping the water use of elites?

Thus, ensuring elite buy-in of the need to redistribute water will not be a simple task. The sharing of water may involve the limiting of water use for elites by imposing a maximum daily or monthly limit (‘holding back’ water) and making greater amounts of water available for other water users who have used less water. Another example is the redistribution of groundwater by pumping it into municipal water tanks that are accessible to all. But limiting the water use of some households and not others is likely to cause dissatisfaction and perhaps even resistance.

What complicates matters further is that the amount of water used in informal urban areas is generally far lower than that of the amount used in formal urban areas – while the redistribution of water is likely to reduce the amount of water used by water elites, water use may not increase in areas where there are different water needs and priorities and where the majority of residents still share taps and toilets. This may thus not create the impression that water has been distributed more equitably so that everyone gets ‘more or less the same’.

The overall reduction of water on the other hand may be beneficial in countries like South Africa where the water supply is under severe stress. But convincing water users that it is possible – and desirable – to use less water will be a challenge.

In light of this difficulty, the redistribution narrative – and indeed a narrative of ‘sharing is caring’ – will need to be reconsidered. A reduction in the amount of water used by water elites that frees up water for a municipal ‘reserve’ may be achieved more easily if it is framed in light of the need for a water reserve to prevent the water scarcity and corresponding water use restrictions – the idea of ‘using less water now so that there will be water in the future’. This de facto would free up water that is needed elsewhere in urban areas. Elite water users may have to be convinced that limiting their water use will benefit them in the future, and that this sacrifice is worth making.

[1] Senior Lecturer in Water Politics and Communication at IHE Delft

[2] Professor of Environment and Development in the Global South at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research of the University of Amsterdam and IHE Delft Institute for Water Education in Delft

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[

About the author:

Lize Swartz is the editor-in-chief of ISS Blog Bliss and a PhD researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam, where she researches political dynamics of socio-hydrological systems. She is part of the newly formed Transformative Methodologies Working Group situated in the Civic Innovation Research

Can a global ‘vaccine citizenship’ help us move toward an inclusive pandemic-free space?

By ISS Blog Bliss 15 July 202113 January 2025 2510 views

The dire shortage of COVID-19 vaccines across low- and middle-income countries is a strong indicator of global health injustice in recent times. Vaccine hoarding by affluent countries, for example the USA or Canada, is causing vaccine apartheid, and global policy responses thus far fall short in failing to save the world from this catastrophic moral failure. While the political and economic relationship of vaccine production and distribution is dominating the discussion, it’s the socio-cultural dynamics of the COVID-19 vaccine that put global governance in a fix.

The absence of a standardised treatment protocol and the current impossibility of eradicating the COVID-19 virus projects the COVID-19 vaccine as a new hope, not only for preventing infection, but also for restoring the sense of physical and mental wellbeing that was eroded when lockdowns were imposed and then extended worldwide. For society at large, vaccines promise a return to a free social, economic, and political life – the ‘old normal’. Thus, the vaccine represents a new type of ‘cure’ – one that would ‘fix’ all the pandemic-induced abnormalities in our daily lives.

This new ‘culture of cure’ has a profound impact on policy making at the national level. Ever since the search for a possible vaccine started in earnest last year, several vaccines have been developed, of which some are showing potential. But the vaccines are now being viewed and used politically as social medicines to ‘cure’ ‘pandemic ills’ that are largely linked to a life under lockdown. The vaccine when viewed as a social medicine creates a sense of confidence of being able to both prevent infection and also ‘unlock’ society that has been ‘imprisoned’ by pandemic-imposed restrictions. Therefore, in the policy-making process, a vaccine moves from being a preventive medicine to being a social medicine.

Vaccine nationalism and a return to sovereignty?

National leaders have taken this transformation as an opportunity to re-establish the eroded social contract in their jurisdictions. For political leaders, the large-scale vaccination of citizens signals a pathway toward combating pandemic-induced discontent. Vaccine nationalism, in which countries compete in arranging vaccines for its citizens, has become a way, especially for affluent countries, to ensure that citizens regain trust in governments. However, this competitive nationalism over the vaccine has been creating an abysmal shortage of vaccines in many other low- and middle-income countries.

The resulting vaccine inequity scripts the failure of global health governance in two distinct ways. First, it prevents nations from establishing a global coordination framework for the equitable distribution of vaccines. This is evident in the case of COVAX. Second, it fails to govern the market at the time of emergency to safeguard the interests of the people. The reluctance of a few pharmaceutical companies to share knowledge on vaccines with manufacturers, also those in developing countries, is a case in point. This means that the majority of vaccines are being developed and used in the Global North.

While vaccine nationalism has indeed had many ramifications when it comes to global ‘vaccine equity’, most of them negative, these two failures have created a new form of global mobilisation. This may only overtly appear as an alliance of less advanced countries pushing for a waiver of an agreement called TRIPS that currently upholds COVID-19 vaccine patents. The suspension of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) signed by World Trade Organisation members would help make the products and technologies needed to fight COVID-19 more freely available during the course of pandemic.

More importantly, the collective demand for the TRIPS waiver is also a new treaty-in-making that questions the role of knowledge in vaccine production and capital formation. This is a culture of counterpolitics in international relations that opposes the primacy of knowledge protection as an intangible asset over human lives.

Opposing vaccine inequity

Interestingly, this politics is not driven by national leaders as in the case of vaccine nationalism, but by the people themselves. Beyond the politics of a TRIPS waiver, there is a politics of breaking a knowledge monopoly that is instrumental in ideating a socially shared space of a pandemic-free territory. This imagined territory is for vaccinated people only. So those deprived of vaccines across the world have reasonably claimed that patented knowledge is a barrier in the ‘access to vaccine’ and thus ‘access to a pandemic-free territory’. This irrefutably triggers the current global outcry against ‘Big Pharmas’ and has been followed by domestic public actions. The Indian government for example had to halt vaccine exports despite diplomatic commitments to assuage the anger of people in the aftermath of second wave of the virus and a nationwide vaccine shortage.

But governments are also rallying to redress global vaccine inequity. Members of a bloc of some 62 countries (with India and South Africa driving it) are pursuing the sharing of vaccine-related knowledge. They are very well aware of the exclusiveness of pandemic-free territories in the current global order and are thus in the process of negotiating with international organisations and actors, especially the WTO, to be considered ‘entitled’ to the knowledge needed to manufacture vaccines.

Vaccine citizenship

This politics of vaccine entitlement is globally producing a new social category of vaccine citizens. Unlike vaccine nationalism, vaccine citizenship is a global citizenship not linked to nationality, with members from all over the world that collectively seek to quash the virus and its related social and economic effects by working together. Vaccine citizens are seen to struggle against the global knowledge-capital nexus.

Hence, vaccine nationalism driven by states is dividing the world, while vaccine citizenship driven by the general public who seem to be desiring a more equitable and accessible pandemic-free space that is not confined to state borders may help redress global inequities that have emerged alongside the COVID-19 pandemic. Only time will tell what the long-term effects of this people’s alliance will be in the global distribution of the vaccine. It might permanently change the global order. And rightly so!

Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question

About the author:

Amitabha Sarkar holds a Ph.D. in Health from the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). He is a scholar of international development of health politics and is currently associated with the Transnational Institute (TNI).

How unified resistance efforts within and across borders can help restore democracy in Myanmar

By ISS Blog Bliss 13 July 202113 January 2025 2401 views

The coup d’état that took place in Myanmar in February this year led to a global outcry as the junta took over the country’s government. But despite massive and enduring citizen-led protests and strong criticism by the international community with accompanying punitive measures, the junta remains in power and continues to arrest and kill citizens. Seohee Kwak in this article argues that resolving the situation requires the Burmese public and foreign actors to work together more concretely and coherently.

Photo: February 8, 2021. REUTERS/Stringer-0u

More than four months have passed since a coup d’état took place in Myanmar on 1 February 2021. The political legitimacy of the junta that staged the coup has been challenged by not only millions of protesting citizens, but also by the international community. For instance, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had meetings with junta leaders on 24 April, reaching a so-called five-point consensus which includes the cessation of violence and arrangements for dialogues for a peaceful solution. However, little progress has been made since then, and the military still practices violent repression against the people. By 5 July 2021, more than 6,500 people have been arrested and 892 people have been killed by the junta forces. The number of casualties and detained or arrested people is still on the rise.

Are internal or external pressures insufficient to put an end to this crisis? This article shows that independent actions by citizens from Myanmar and the international community are less likely to have a substantive effect and that collaboration may produce better outcomes.

Can Burmese citizens stop the violence?

Burmese citizens have taken individual and collective political action rather than choosing to submit to the junta, but they have neither the opportunity to hold the junta to account, nor the political leverage to make the junta yield to democratic principles. The military regime currently maintains control by force with uneven and illegitimate power. However, for the junta leaders, political legitimacy in the eyes of citizens is not currently a top priority, and it therefore does not fear retaliation by citizens through voting in future elections.

As heavy repression has continued, more people have started to resort to more direct confrontation. Pro-democracy and self-defense forces have been formed across the country, and armed resistance movements against the junta have resulted in casualties for the military and the police. Due to the pre-coup oppression of ethnic and religious minority groups lasting decades, armed conflicts between the military and civilian rebel groups have become more intense in several regions where these minorities reside, bringing the country to the brink of a humanitarian emergency. For instance, more than 100,000 inhabitants in Kayah State have had to flee due to military attacks and airstrikes.

Can foreign actors reverse the situation?

Foreign actors have also opposed the junta, but have not been very successful so far due to their fragmented actions. The months-long condemnation of the junta by the international community has reached a point of saturation, and more tangible measures have been implemented:

The World Bank and the Asian Development Bank froze their project fund disbursements and implementations in opposition to the junta.
Japan, another leading donor to Myanmar, placed development assistance on hold.
On 18 June, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution calling for a moratorium on arms transfers to Myanmar.
On 21 June, the European Union announced another round of sanctions, mainly travel bans and an asset freeze against key junta leaders and organisations connected with the coup.
And in addition to punitive measures by bilateral and multilateral actors, the private sector has also mobilised. International firms, particularly those linked to oil and gas that are key sources of revenue for Myanmar, have suspended dividend payments by a joint venture to the state-owned Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE) with which the military has allegedly close links.

Foreign actors that are key partners to Myanmar are resorting to a wide range of measures to attempt to sway the junta; these include dialogues, tightened conditions for foreign aid, the freezing of investments, resource/trades embargoes. Yet these actors are not unified. For example, China, despite condemning the current situation, is seemingly calling for stability for strategic and not moral reasons. Similarly, the Beijing-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank seems to focus more on how the coup is affecting its own interests and less on the consequences of this form of government for Burmese citizens. And Russia formally refuses to condemn the coup, stating the need to maintain its strategic links with Myanmar. External pressures are therefore fragmented and incoherent.

Unity for greater political leverage

Myanmar’s protesters and foreign actors need to act together to create greater political leverage. Without this, it is very likely that public protests and other forms of resistance will result in ongoing violent repression. Stronger networks with links to international organisations and concrete assistance to the Myanmar citizens fighting for democracy would resonate more strongly with the junta leaders to the extent that they would be hard to ignore. For instance, the provision of technical or financial assistance to Myanmar civil society organisations or groups of activists could encourage them to continue their activities and strengthen their capacities during such a political crisis. At the same time, foreign actors also need to work together more effectively to make a greater impact. When foreign actors shut financial and political doors to the military regime, a key for success is to ensure that there is no other door open for the junta to sneak through. It is not easy, but to prevent further violence and to restore democracy in Myanmar, unity is needed both between Burmese civilians and foreign actors, and among foreign actors.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Seohee Kwak is a PhD candidate at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR). With a geographical interest in the Southeast and East Asian regions, her academic interests include political rights/freedom, political action, public protest, state repression, and state-society relations.

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | COVID-19: solidarity as counter-narrative to crisis capitalism

By ISS Blog Bliss 9 July 202113 January 2025 2198 views

The absence of serious measures to protect citizens from the COVID-19 virus in countries such as India and Brazil, as well as vaccine grabbing by countries in the Global North, have created much avoidable suffering, mainly, but not only, in the Global South. Nearly a year and a half after the outbreak of the pandemic, hope for transformative change rests mainly on the countless practices of solidarity by local communities worldwide. It therefore comes as no surprise that all speakers at the opening plenary of the EADI ISS #Solidarity2021 conference were torn between pessimism and hope when taking stock of solidarity in times of COVID-19.

Solidarity for survival

Brazil and more recently India are two countries on opposite sides of the world that felt the effects of the pandemic most acutely in the last months. In both these countries, the failure to implement adequate measures has led to a skyrocketing number of infections and related deaths. In the face of such adversity, communities have banded together to try to survive.

Sreerekha Sathi from the ISS, who discussed how the pandemic was navigated in India, and Patricia Maria E. Mendonça from the University of São Paulo, who brought in perspectives from Brazil, pointed to the many encouraging solidarity practices among local communities in both countries. “What we see in Brazil are people connecting to each other, helping each other without expecting anything from the government,” stated Mendonça. In India, on the other hand, Sathi recounted how “we sacrificed many lives, mostly from marginalised sections of society such ad Dalits and migrants”. But solidarity could be witnessed among ordinary people.

Indian leadership, as Sathi put it, can well be compared with that of Trump and Bolsonaro, who “followed a similar response to COVID in many ways, framing it as a flu and promoting unscientific and ineffective treatments”. In India, the system failed particularly during the second wave, when people in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh were even struggling to bury those who had lost their lives to the virus and its mismanagement.

Mendonça connected the situation in Brazil to the broader Latin American history of extreme inequality and shrinking civic space:

“The legacy of extreme inequality is a mark of the continent, and these inequalities are now rising, as Latin America largely depends on the informal economy, which is most effected by the pandemic. And so, we see inequality in access to health, education and food”.

She and her colleagues explored initiatives in urban peripheries in São Paulo and other Brazilian cities, where communities “not only found ways to increase mutual support and to channel donations to those who needed them the most, but also to fight fake news, which is a big issue in Brazil”.

Sharing vaccines will impact global development

To build more global solidarity, Sathi sees the wide and equal distribution of vaccines as a central element, stressing that access to vaccines in countries with large populations such as India and Brazil will have a tremendous impact on global development. And the other way round, “we in our countries need to figure out how to make our democracies work in a better way, and then globally, to look for more solidarity in vaccine and other resource sharing”.

Sowing seeds of hope…

Although it might seem cynical at the first sight to view the pandemic as a catalyst for positive change, there are also good reasons for cautious hope. According to Danny Sriskandarajah, CEO of Oxfam Great Britain, the pandemic has the potential to set the seeds for transformative systemic change:

“Many of us have been spending decades saying, we are all in this together, we have common threats and challenges, and are one humanity who needs to build on solidarity. In some ways, there has been nothing in our collective history that comes close to this pandemic in making us feel we are all in this together.

To have solidarity, you need to have some sense of community or proximity, some sense of familiarity, and the optimist in me thinks that this is the moment for our generation to build back very differently on this basis. Wherever you look, there are really worrying signs, but there are also seeds of something really transformative that could look very differently in years to come, and I do think historians will look back at this era of humanity and judge us by whether we grabbed the opportunity to do things radically differently”.

…or amplifying differences?

Melissa Leach, Director of the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) (University of Sussex) held a different view. Leach admitted that the conditions for the cautious hope she had expressed in a paper almost a year ago on ‘How and why COVID-19 requires us to rethink development’ have now changed:

“On the contrary, instead of people-to-people sharing, we see COVID amplifying differences and inequalities across place, across race, across gender and class. Some people have thrived. Others have faced worsening health and other intersecting precarities. We see COVID exposing these long-term forms of structural violence as cracks in the systems we all depend on. While doing little to mend them, we see it giving reign to authoritarian politics and backlashes from the UK to Uganda, Brazil, India.

And instead of human-nature solidarities, we are seeing a whole range of new climate and biodiversity deals, which are emphasising national, market-based targets and mechanisms. We are actually exporting responsibility for restoring ecosystems or offsetting the degradation via the market to others, often undermining indigenous and local solidarities with nature”.

‘Vaccine apartheid’, ‘regressive’ solidarity, and crisis capitalism

On top of this comes the new ‘vaccine apartheid’ and something she calls ‘regressive’ solidarity, which Guy Standing has described as “the virulent global solidarity of the rentiers, the plutocracy, and globalised finance”.On the other hand, the pandemic has not only seen ‘crisis capitalism’ at work, as described by Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, and – as a counterpart – the many practices of solidarity as just described, but also according to Leach “an unprecedented moment of reflection and imagination about alternative futures, and in a way this very conference session is an example of that”. But, she wondered, “Can these local solidarities from the margin globalise? Can we see progressive global solidarity building from the bottom up that can challenge the regressive solidarities of crisis capitalism?”

Moving past stereotypes

Sathi argued that the pandemic has also taught us some lessons on rethinking the usual North-South clichés. For example, while people in so-called ‘developed’ countries such as the US were hoarding sanitiser and toilet paper, people in ‘developing’ countries were setting up community kitchens from scratch. She also mentioned that in the early stages of the pandemic, when the Indian state of Kerala provided better virus protection that the US, for example, citizens from the Global North who wanted to extend their visa there suddenly found themselves in the same situation as people of colour usually do in countries of the Global North.

A return to normal – but one that we cannot accept

The seeds of transformative change may be visible to some, and in some places, but they need to be sown before it’s too late and we return to the world of inequality and suffering we lived in before the pandemic emerged. It’s up to us to find these seeds and to help them sprout and grow.

Sriskandarajah in his concluding remarks hit home:

“When left unchecked, the pandemic will simply reinforce almost all of that which we worried about pre-pandemic, whether that’s climate vandalism, vulgar levels of economic accumulation and inequality, deepening of gender inequities and injustices in our societies, and so on.

But I can also see, like in any system change, the little threads you would like to pull at, the sort of peripheral solidarity or disruptive solidarities that could undo the whole system. If I had a wish list of what I would like to see in 10 or 20 years’ time, that list would include things like social protection for every human being, a fundamental rethink on how we frame growth, and a reframing all those measures we have been using and abusing in the recent decades”.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Christiane Kliemann Communications European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI)

17th Development Dialogue| Communicating research differently: how a comic strip is bringing the everyday struggles of Somaliland’s Uffo to life

By ISS Blog Bliss 7 July 202113 January 2025 2362 views

Researchers and non-researchers alike can learn much about and draw inspiration from the everyday struggles of ordinary people in difficult contexts. Yet such stories that we hear when working with communities engaged in the pursuit of social justice or emancipation often go untold or are overlooked. A comic strip about acts of civil resistance in Somaliland shows just how powerful such visual imagery can be in communicating lived experiences of struggles, writes Ebba Tellander.

Illustration: Pat Masioni, PositiveNegatives

In the early 1980s, the people of Hargeisa, Somaliland suffered greatly. The negligence of the Siad Barre regime and the 1977/78 war with Ethiopia meant that the city’s residents did not have adequate access to basic services such as electricity, sanitation, and health care. At the same time, political oppression dominated life in northwest Somalia. Despite the possible consequences of blatantly opposing the government, a group of young professionals, including teachers, engineers, and doctors, set out to change the state of things by volunteering to help the people of Somaliland. They started in 1981 by cleaning and refurbishing the Hargeisa Group Hospital – at their own expense and in their own time. They saw it both as a form of humanitarian assistance responding to the acute suffering of patients due to the lack of a properly functioning hospital, and as a way of resisting the oppressive policies of the regime. Through their humanitarian action they were illuminating the negligence of the government in the health sector, mobilising people in the community to take care of themselves when the government wouldn’t, and showing them that they could act independently from the government.

To create more awareness about the oppressive polices, two of the professionals also wrote a newsletter called ‘Uffo’, which means ‘the sweet-smelling wind before the rain’. The meaning seemed to have foreshadowed what happened next. When the professionals were arrested a few months later and faced the risk of execution, this became the spark that ignited and inspired others, especially secondary school students and women, to oppose the regime openly on the streets. Today, the protests that took place are remembered as the Dhagax Tuur, which means ‘stone throwing’, and are regarded as the beginning of the resistance movement that continued for years afterward and eventually led to downfall of the authoritarian regime.

Despite the Uffo story’s historical importance, it is not widely known; instead, narratives of crisis, conflict, and violence dominate reports on the situation in the Horn of Africa, where Somaliland lies. These narratives are perpetuated by journalists, NGO personnel, and researchers alike. Reports on the Somali region in particular are typically focused on themes such as piracy, terrorism, war, and state failure. One consequence of such a limited focus is that ordinary people are portrayed either as perpetrators or as passive victims. This gives a flawed picture that downplays essential parts of the human experience, including those that provide a glimmer of hope, such as the courage and creativity of those who struggle, as well as their care for others. For my doctoral research I therefore chose to focus on the case of Uffo to highlight the tales and self-awareness of those people who act collectively to counter violence and oppression. I found a story that should not go unheard. And so I sought a way to make sure that it would be heard.

To communicate this story to new and larger audiences, I have been part of a production team of producers, storytellers, artists, and researchers who over the past years have created a comic in five parts. The comic is available in both English and Somali (read it here). I am part of a larger research team at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) that is committed to exploring the power of visual storytelling in research through a collaboration with the organisation PositiveNegatives that produces educational comics to raise awareness about social and humanitarian issues across the globe.

Comics and animations are particularly suitable for communicating lived experiences and sensitive themes, including topics such as love, torture, and mental health. It is easier for a larger group of people to recognise themselves in animated characters when compared to other visual formats such as photographs and films. In addition, comics can easily be translated into many different languages and spread on social media. Thus, they can reach people who normally do not read academic texts or policy reports.

How did we create this comic strip?

These comics were created in a collaborative manner that allowed the professionals and other research participants to tell their stories. The production team met the Uffo professionals in Hargeisa to discuss the comic before it was developed into a first draft. They were then given the opportunity to provide feedback during several crucial steps in the production process. The Uffo professionals have been very enthusiastic about the project throughout the process.

The artwork was created by established Congolese artist Pat Masioni who was personally inspired by the story. His 1980s comic style was a perfect fit with the Uffo story. To stay true to the story, Pat Masioni used historical photographs and pictures that I had taken during my fieldwork to create the artwork.

The process of creating a comic based on research and in such a collaborative manner is time-consuming, but the whole team stayed committed to the importance of communicating this story in a nuanced way that resonated with the stories of the professionals.[1]

What’s the comic about?

The comic strip powerfully illustrates the role of agency in challenging circumstances. Those who read all five chapters will know how Uffo invented astonishing ways to survive and stay sane during their harsh prison sentences (note: Tolstoy’s fans will be pleasantly surprised). There are many such smaller parts of the story that capture the professionals’ care for each other as well as their capacity to create light in the dark, which is a common thread throughout the whole series. These stories can be transformative in themselves, as they have the power to inspire and show us what is possible in otherwise bleak situations.

When the comics were launched, Dr Tani from the Uffo group was interviewed by BBC Africa. Several of the Uffo professionals were later granted political asylum in countries such as the UK, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, and the US. I therefore wish for the comic to be read by people living in those countries, as it will give us a better understanding of the lives of fellow citizens with refugee backgrounds.

I also wish for the comics to be read by youth in Somaliland and by diaspora. While I was conducting the research in Somaliland, I got involved in the process of creating a 13-episode TV program about Uffo in Hargeisa in 2018 together with Star TV. I followed journalists to universities and other public spaces where they were asking people on the street whether they had heard of Uffo. Very few had. One contributing reason is the country’s cautious approach to bringing up painful memories from the past, which could contribute to division. However, the story of Uffo is not only a painful one, but also carries messages of hope and strength, which I noticed inspired the young women and men I worked with in Hargeisa, most of whom had not heard the Uffo story before.[2]

All in all, this exercise has shown that engaged researchers not only can contribute to social change through the findings and insights generated by their research, but also through the ripple effects of the research process itself and from the stories that are being illuminated. It’s up to researchers to find out how to do this and to actively seek to create waves through their research.

[1] The production of the comic was informed by rigorous research, including in-depth interviews with the Uffo professionals and people who participated in the protests, many of them women. As part of the research process, the interview data has been triangulated with archival data such as human rights reports, political poetry and the trial protocol from 1982.

[2] Thanks go to Nasra Daahir Raage, Shukri Sagal Ali, Yasmin Gedi, Abdifatah Omar, Wahiba Ismail, Mohamud Ismail, Nasra Sagal, Hadiya Sayid Ali and Hassan Sayid Ali Daoud for their excellent research assistance.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Ebba Tellander is a doctoral researcher at the Peace Research Institute of Oslo and International Institute of Social Studies within the TRANSFORM project. She researches people’s motivations and actions when initiating collective action and civil resistance in repressive settings, focusing on the case of Uffo. For her research, she also took part in the production of a 13-episode TV series about the Uffo.

17th Development Dialogue | A call to end the ‘social distancing’ of the sciences – in the COVID-19 era and beyond

By ISS Blog Bliss 5 July 202113 January 2025 2868 views

The chasm that separates the different scientific disciplines remains deep as ever despite the evident need to address pressing global problems through transdisciplinary collaboration. C. Sathyamala and Peter A.G. van Bergeijk in this article show how close and intensive cooperation across the artificial borders between the sciences can be made possible and argue for a methodology acknowledging that only a combination of qualitative and quantitative research can create the type of knowledge that’s required to move forward together.

We start with a proposition: that both social and natural sciences are good at boxing, but not as good at wrestling. They ‘box’ by telling themselves stories about where they and researchers in the respective fields ‘fit’ into the scaffolding erected around the supposedly chiasmic divide of natural and social sciences. We all seem to know what side of this divide we want to be on, and a lot of time is invested in delineation, often drawing distinctions without differences. For too long, specialisation and deeper knowledge, both applied and theoretical, have been seen as the royal road to academic success.

But there are limits to what any science can do on its own. We’ve seen this during the current pandemic. As in any context, COVID-19-related health problems cannot be tackled from a purely medical angle; the exploitative social and economic structures that make people sick must also be challenged. Indeed, the validity of medical solutions to a large extent depends on social and economic conditions of time and place. The pandemic does not provide a new insight – it simply makes it clearer.

The COVID-19 pandemic taught us that by boxing in the disciplines and keeping them apart, we fail in a monumental way to ‘wrestle’ with multi-faceted problems, like global pandemics. We avoid the intellectual battle inherent in engaging with what the other side thinks. To deal with COVID-19 or to understand what is happening, we need less boxing and more wrestling! A mono-disciplinary perspective, however sophisticated, cannot help us design and evaluate policy interventions, or grasp the wider meaning and significance of COVID-19 in specific contexts. A lot of time is now being invested in delineation with other strands and lines of thought based on high principles of epistemology and ontology. Our point is that that energy would be better spend on truly working together.

A physician and an economist…

We write from different sides of a supposedly chiasmic divide, a divide we each try to bridge and straddle in our own ways. C. Sathyamala is a public health physician with a Master’s degree in Epidemiology who opted to do her PhD in development studies at the ISS. In the process, she developed a strong interest in class and state power and in the history of the biopolitics of food and hunger. As a medical doctor concerned with action for social justice, the Bhopal gas leak disaster proved a crucial turning point in her life as corporate interests in collusion with the state effaced people’s lives. The COVID-19 pandemic created similar tendency, displacing the migrant working class across India and subjecting them to what Giorgio Agamben has called ‘bare life’.

As an agnostic Dutch economist, Peter van Bergeijk is the first academic in a family of South Holland-based bakers, carpenters, and farmers. As a policy maker at the OECD, he was frustrated by the impossibility to engage major developing countries in discussions on environment and health. This motivated his move to the ISS, where he is equally happy to employ a neo-Marxist or a ‘empiricist’ framework as a toolkit, depending on what analytical toolbox is most suitable for the problem at hand.

…together critically examining the COVID-19 pandemic

Each of us has written on COVID-19 – on the urgency of communicating our concerns – in the form of books or a range of Working Papers. Writing from different social and professional positions, we now also write…together. A common interest around COVID-19 has bridged our science-social science divide.

Primarily, we agree that if at all a silver lining is to be found in the COVID-19 situation, it is that we can learn a great deal, especially with mixed disciplinary backgrounds, with science, social sciences, and the arts (we have also worked together artistically: you will find Sathya’s poetry and Peter’s lithography alongside at the exhibition Broken Links).

And we both agree that we will only truly understand pandemics and their consequences, and what to do about protecting human societies from their fallout once social scientists and natural scientists stop practicing social and intellectual distancing by boxing themselves into their own disciplines.

This is more urgent than often recognised: the next pandemic is a certainty, only its timing is uncertain.

The WHO hopes to forge solidarity and encourage the sharing of knowledge across disciplinary and global divides. The purpose is to generate greater consensus around COVID-19.

But while lip service is paid to medical opinion, it is powerful political and economic elites that continue to call the shots. State interventions provide selective care in the matter of making live and letting die, and even in making die in the Foucauldian biopolitical sense. Academics find themselves struggling to keep up in real time with the pace of the pandemic, with its spread, recurrence, changing pattern, and often its gross mismanagement.

Huge as the problem is, we are pleased to have started our own dialogue, right here at the ISS, and based on our own published and ongoing research on the subject. How COVID-19 affects us now, and what kinds of ‘pandemic futures’ we face, are questions all of us can contribute to answering once we learn to wrestle across our disciplinary divides.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text]Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.[/vc_column_text][vc_separator color=”custom” accent_color=”#a80000″ css=”.vc_custom_1594895181078{margin-top: -15px !important;margin-bottom: 10px !important;}”][vc_column_text css=”.vc_custom_1625466035491{margin-top: 0px !important;}”]About the authors:

C. Sathyamala is a public health physician and epidemiologist with a PhD in Development Studies. She is currently a postdoc academic researcher at the International Institute of Social Studies, Den Haag, Erasmus University Rotterdam. Her areas of interest include food security and politics of food, political economy of health, medical ethics, reproductive rights, and environmental justice. She has been active in both the health and women’s movement in India for some decades. She has authored and co-authored books and published in journals, peer-reviewed and otherwise, and in newspapers on wide-ranging topics.

Peter van Bergeijk is professor of international economics and macroeconomics at the ISS.

EADI ISS Conference 2021 | How online conferences can contribute to social justice: lessons from organizing the EADI ISS Conference 2021

By ISS Blog Bliss 24 June 202113 January 2025 1937 views

When we think of social justice, we often think of working towards it through academic research and development practice. But what if conferences themselves can also help further social justice? The EADI ISS Conference that’s taking place between 5 and 8 July 2021 is an excellent example of the extent to which the reshaping of conferences can change who is involved in the conversation and what is being discussed. We never expected this to work so amazingly, but it did. And we are in agreement that all conferences should be held online at least in part to bring scientific knowledge closer to society and further inclusion.

Let us be honest to you from the beginning: we have never organized an online conference before. We feel like we are inventing the wheel in many ways, because many things are absolutely new to us. We’ve never had to do this. But now that we have organized the EADI-ISS Conference 2021, which is to start in just a few days, we know one thing for sure: we will never organize a conference again without providing substantial online participation facilities.

Of course, we did not realize this over a year ago when the pandemic emerged and the conference was postponed by one year. In March 2020, nobody had any experience in online conferencing. We believed that the pandemic would be over in a few months and that the conference could still be held in The Hague.

How naïve we were! By October 2020, it was clear to everyone involved that the pandemic would last much longer than a few months, and for many people worldwide probably more than over a year. So we decided to cancel our preparations for a face-to-face conference which would have taken place in five different venues, all closely together and located in The Hague’s city centre, with the ISS hosting the conference. This also meant no visits to peace and justice organizations in The Hague, no massive information market with our international Master’s students, and no gala ‘beach party’ to show off The Hague’s in all its splendour. Everything was going to happen online. And we had to make peace with it and work with it.

So we got inspired, first by positive experiences from other online conferences, and then by feedback from several conference panel convenors who had generated ideas about new online discussion formats after they had been forced to start teaching virtually. We realized that hundreds of EADI colleagues would have had the same experiences and routines in using online platforms. The entire conference was not going to take place on Zoom, as that leads to fatigue. But we came up with some other interesting ways of meeting online, including virtual coffee corners and a virtual social drinks corner that we tried out with student volunteers (where they had to bring their own drink and chat online).

Greater inclusion

But the main comparative advantage of an online conference was without doubt this: anybody far away from The Hague would be able to join the meeting. Financial constraints, let alone visa- or virus-related restrictions, were suddenly neutralized by an online setting. By early May, we saw the registration of Global South participants booming! Almost half of the nearly 700 expected participants will be non-European and/or based in the Global South. This was never seen before in the history of EADI’s international conferences!

As a result, we started thinking about regional networking sessions, also to explore how we can strengthen linkages with institutes from the Global South. We expanded the list for the virtual visits to professional organizations to other Dutch cities: we now have a broad array of organizations involved in the conference that work on solidarity, peace and social justice in practice, all offering an engaging visitors’ programme. Many of these wish to have discussions about key developmental challenges with the conference participants.

In sum, there is an exciting programme with a wide array of panel discussions, workshops, and round tables. For two days, the Development Dialogue by and for PhD researchers will host over 15 sessions. There will be a with Asian Pacific speakers on ‘questioning development’ on Wednesday morning, meeting rooms for ISS Alumni, and a special exhibition by artists from Myanmar on the Raising Three Fingers campaign. And the will feature a non-facilitated ‘fishbowl’ session (never seen before online) to explore how our research practice has changed by the pandemic, and maybe also how it has changed ourselves as well!

This blog is also an invitation to all conference participants to : about a key conference experience, a thriving discussion, or an afterthought after being online for four days with so many colleagues. Together with this post, they will all be part of the EADI-ISS blog series on , and will keep running for the next months. Join the conversation #Solidarity2021!

Looking forward to seeing you all soon online at EADI’s 12th General Conference in the virtual reality of The Hague!

Basile, Susanne, Sushrutha, Kees

EADI-ISS Conference Team

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the authors:Susanne von Itter is Executive Secretary at EADI

Basile Boulay is Senior Executive at EADI

Kees Biekart is Associate Professor at the ISS

Sushrutha Vemuri is a Project Assistant at the ISS

The noise never stops: life in Palestine during the Israeli occupation – a conversation with Rana Shubair

By ISS Blog Bliss 23 June 202113 January 2025 3450 views

The noise never stops. The sky is filled with the buzzing of drones, echoing on and on, and with the sound of buildings collapsing as they are bombed. It’s not safe anywhere. There’s nowhere to flee to. And amidst a crumbling country and the chaos that is life in Palestine, people are trying to keep themselves upright. Rana Shubair in this article talks about life under the Israeli occupation and how parents have to stay strong as they watch their children face the hardships the occupation and grow up before their eyes.

A woman holds a Palestinian flag during a protest demanding the right to return to their homeland, at the Israel-Gaza border fence in Gaza October 19, 2018 [File: Mohammed Salem/Reuters]
Credits: Al Jazeera, available at: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2019/3/30/how-the-great-march-of-return-resurrected-palestinian-resistance

Since the 1948 Nakba, Palestinians have been resisting colonial aggression from Israel at the cost of risking their lives. Over the past decades, the intensity of violence by Israel appears to have been rapidly increasing. The Israeli aerial bombardment of Palestine, especially of Gaza, has claimed many lives of innocent Palestinians. For example, the 2008-09 air attacks and ground invasion by Israel led to at least 1,100 Palestinian deaths. The 2014 air attack and ground invasion resulted in the killing of 2,100 Palestinian civilians in Gaza. And the aerial, sea and land bombardment that happened weeks ago ended in the killing of 254 persons in Gaza, including 39 women and 66 children.

These numbers are important for revealing the extent of violence and brutality on Palestinians by Israeli occupation, but it should not diminish other aspects of the daily struggle of those Palestinians who live under siege and occupation of Israeli forces. Apart from these killings and air attacks, Palestinians resist, struggle against, and experience everyday aggression, restrictions, and sanctions that affect their economy, wellbeing, health, and every other aspect of their life. The most vulnerable among them are children and women. This piece thus focuses on the life and struggles in Gaza and learns from the lens and perspective of a Palestinian woman, Rana Shubair, whom I interviewed about her lived experiences of the conflict and life in Gaza.

Rana Shubair is a survivor of latest aggression of 2021 in the Gaza Strip. She is an activist, mother of three, and author of two books. Her first book ‘In Gaza I Dare to Dream’ recounts details of her own life under the Israeli Occupation and the Gaza Siege. She presents Gaza as “a land where joy and grief are entwined, yet its people dare to dream, dare to love and struggle to gain their basic human rights”. Her second book, ‘My Lover Is A Freedom Fighter’, is a historical fiction that reflects about romance in Palestine while living under occupation.

While her narrative and personal experiences are heartfelt and reflect the hardship of Palestinians in present, in this interview she also reveals how Palestinians express their agency and determine their resilience and their power of resistance. You can listen to the entire interview (in English) at Global Development Review Podcast or watch it here. A shortened version of the interview follows.

Jaffer: How do you experience of being mother in Gaza at present, and what does it mean to be a mother in Gaza?

Rana: A mother in Gaza is a hero. We are stereotyped in the Western world as having domestic roles, but this is not the case. Mothers, wives, daughters, sisters – they all have a critical role in the Palestinian society and Palestinian resistance. So when I first had my children, I had hoped that by the time they grew up, this occupation would have ended. But I found myself confronted with new realities and much harsher ones. I grew up under occupation, but it wasn’t as brutal as the occupation my kids and their generation are witnessing. Because there was no aerial bombardment at that time.

So as my children grew up, they started asking me questions that sometimes I couldn’t find answers to.

One of my most famous entries I wrote in my book is when my two daughters were arguing with each other. One was saying, “we live in Gaza” and other was saying, “no we don’t live in Gaza, we live in Palestine”. I overheard it and my heart was broken because my own kids who live in their own country don’t know where they are located. They think that Palestine is a foreign land. They learn about Palestinian cities in their schools. But they have never seen those cities and were never allowed to go and visit their own country. So there was this dilemma that if we are living in Gaza, if we are living in Palestine, how come we can’t see it? As a mother I have come across situations where I can’t explain to them why we can’t go there.

This was one issue. Another issue that they were faced with the issue of Palestinian prisoners. One day my son came and wanted to make a poster that teachers often ask children to do for extra credit. When he came back, he brought a poster that was about a girl Wafa who was recently released from Israeli prison. And my son asked me innocently why she went prison. So I had to explain why they were in prison.

When we are walking down on the street, we see pictures of martyrs that are pasted on the walls. And they would ask you who these people were. Then you would have to say them that they are martyrs and explain what a martyr is. So one day my son came home and said, ‘mom I wanna go and see the hole where they put the martyrs in’. I was really shocked, because I don’t know where he got the information from.

For me, you can’t prevent your children from going outside. And this is something that is very painful for us as parents and as mothers. They don’t go through the normal phases of childhood that other children go through. They can tell you what kind of warplane is flying over them or what kind of rocket or missile is being launched. So as a Palestinian parent, you have to be strong, you have to be resilient, and you have no choice. It’s a heavy burden that we shoulder.

Jaffer: When people’s houses are destroyed, where do they go?

Rana: Those whose houses are targeted – the one that were recently targeted – were not as lucky as those who were prewarned. People living in the tall towers were warned. They could flee from their homes, some of them going to nearby relatives and some of them going to UNRWA schools (United Nations Relief and Work Agency Schools). And I believe that many of them took refuge in UNRWA schools because it is presumably safer, as it was assumed that Israel would not target a UN school. But in 2008 and 2014, Israel did target schools and they killed people who took refuge there. There is no safe place. If I want to leave my home and go to another home, it doesn’t mean that I am going to a safer place. Because what happened to two families that I know is that one of the women went to her parents’ house and she was killed there. So it’s like another displacement in the Gaza Strip and these people really have nowhere to go.

I would like to say that ordinary Palestinian life here is not ordinary. Israeli drones don’t leave our skies. And these drones are the surveillance drones, but they can also shoot and kill. So it’s not safe. So you think that it’s a surveillance drone, but a few years ago children were playing at the nearby park and they were killed and targeted by the drone on the spot. So by day and night, you can’t ignore the noise; you can’t pretend that it’s not there. I can’t really pretend that nothing is going to happen. So life here is very unstable and unpredictable.

Jaffer: As an international community, how can we support Palestine or how can we stand in solidarity with the Palestinians?

Rana: What I see is that the media outlets in the Western world is that they block the Palestinian narrative or twist the facts. So number one, I think we need to promote awareness about the Palestinian cause, no matter how small your role is. For me, connecting through this kind of online webinar or meeting between you and I is one way in which to do so.

In the recent attacks on Gaza, I have seen dozen of protests across the world, such as in America, in Britain, and even in Arab countries. They were people who responded to the protests and they are people who still protest to this day. And this is something that is very crucial. I think we have to keep making noise. Tell your government to keep making noise and keep being vocal about what the Palestinians are going through.

This article comes as a collaboration between Jaffer Latief Najar and Rana Shubair with an aim to spread awareness about the life and struggles in Palestine, especially Gaza. The collaboration was in the form of interview with Rana Shubair.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Jaffer latief Najar is a PhD researcher at International Institute of Social Studies, and Rana Shubair is a Palestinian survivor, activist and author of two books.

#AbolishFrontex: On World Refugee Day, we call on the EU to end its border regime

By ISS Blog Bliss 20 June 202113 January 2025 3216 views

More than 700 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea this year alone while attempting to reach Europe. This article shows how EU border agency Frontex has been complicit in the suffering and deaths of many thousands of refugees and why it cannot be allowed to continue doing so. Today, on World Refugee Day, through the international campaign #AbolishFrontex we urge the EU to end its border regime.

Photo: Brussels Frontex Office. Abolish Frontex.

More than 700 people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea since the beginning of this year while attempting to reach Europe, bringing the total number of refugees and migrants who have died due to the restrictive policies of ‘Fortress Europe’ since 1993 to 44,764. This is an amount equal to the inhabitants of a small town – and the real number is likely to be much higher. These were people who drowned while crossing the Mediterranean Sea on boats, were shot at border crossings, or who lost their lives after being deported to unsafe places. They were avoidable deaths, deaths that resulted from choices made by bureaucrats, by politicians – and by members of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex.

The European Agency of Shame

What started as a small agency in Poland has ever since become one of the EU’s biggest. Frontex, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency, is now a key actor in enforcing the EU’s border regime. It does so by running border control operations throughout the Mediterranean region and Balkan countries, coordinating and enabling deportations, and cooperating with member states as well as third countries to increase border controls. Frontex’s border guards and other employees have reportedly and repeatedly been directly and indirectly involved in illegal pushbacks, effectively preventing refugees from making use of their right to claim asylum, and are complicit in the commitment of violence against migrants at borders and during deportations. Frontex also cooperates with and delivers trainings to the so-called Libyan Coast Guard, responsible for multiple pullbacks into Libya, where migrants are held in “concentration camp-like conditions”.

And its influence and power are increasing. The budget of Frontex has grown by over 7,560% since 2005, with €5.6 billion being reserved for the agency from 2021-2027 by the European Commission. Thanks to this, it has been able to recruit an army of border guards who can own and use handguns and aims to have 10,000 guards by 2027.

In response to these developments and their potential ramifications, on 9 June this year, an international coalition consisting of more than 80 groups and organisations launched the campaign #AbolishFrontex to end the EU border regime, with direct actions across eight countries in Europe and North Africa. They presented the following list of demands:

Abolish Frontex
Regularise migrants
Stop all deportations
End detention
Stop the militarisation of borders (and the military-industrial complex)
Stop the surveillance of people on the move
Empower solidarity
Stop the EU’s role in forcing people to move
Freedom of movement for all – end the EU border regime

Locating the root cause of inhumane border regimes

Crucially, to stop Frontex, the EU needs to stop funding it. Why? Because the cycle of violence is perpetuated as long as support for Frontex continues. But that also means changing the EU’s approach toward migration. The ever-expanding budget of Frontex symbolises the EU’s reliance on deterrence, repression, and externalisation to deal with populations it has marked as unwanted. The EU member states are fortifying Europe’s land, sea, and virtual borders instead of developing a much-needed politics that would create safe migration channels. Furthermore, by framing migration as a security issue that needs a securitised response, they avoid addressing their own involvement in the root causes of why people have to move in the first place.

One of these causes is found in the spending on arms, which totalled USD 378 billion in Europe and almost USD 2 trillion (USD 2,000,000,000,000 – an amount so big it can hardly be read) globally in 2020. Arms trade fuels wars around the planet, benefiting and lobbied for by the same companies that are also profiting from the increased militarisation of borders. The investigative research ‘Frontex Files’ has shown that the EU agency is among the institutions targeted heavily by lobbyists from the border industrial complex. This cycle – arms companies in rich countries producing weapons that displace people in poorer countries and subsequently producing security equipment that keeps the displaced people out of these very same rich countries – perpetuates violence.

Other root causes, of course, include the climate crisis, also largely caused by rich countries, unequal trade policies that increase poverty worldwide, and repercussions of (neo-)colonialism. To put it simply, Europe is rich because it exploits other parts of the world, and other parts of the world are unsafe because Europe makes them so. Abolishing Frontex would not be a gesture of benevolence, it would mean taking responsibility for the destruction of people’s homes and lives the EU is causing elsewhere. The least the EU can do is to provide shelter to those displaced.

Beyond Frontex and national security

Abolishing Frontex also means to challenge the idea that fortifying borders and blocking migration leads to increased security. This idea rests on a deliberate misunderstanding of the concept of safety and perpetuates racist and colonialist structures of power. As Arun Kundnani writes in his recent TNI publication ‘Abolish National Security’,

An abolitionist framework entails understanding that genuine security does not result from the elimination of threats but from the presence of collective well-being. It advocates building institutions that foster the social and ecological relationships needed to live dignified lives, rather than reactively identifying groups of people who are seen as threatening.

Turning Europe into a fortress cannot be the answer to the challenges of our time. Instead of enlarging Frontex, we need to tackle the root causes of the displacement of people and establish safe migration routes to Europe for those who need and those who want to move.

Let’s abolish Frontex and make death at sea history. Join the campaign: abolishfrontex.org.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Josephine Valeske holds a MA degree in Development Studies from the ISS and a BA degree in Philosophy and Economics. She currently works for the research and advocacy organisation Transnational Institute in Amsterdam that supports the #AbolishFrontex campaign. She can be found on Twitter @jo_andolanjeevi.

All Posts By ISS Blog Bliss

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Affordable solutions

The need for simple solutions

Challenges ahead

What is World Heritage?

Varying Forms of World Heritages

Protect, Preserve, and Promote

The Youth Have Their Say

The way forward

The coups are a reflection of deeper governance issues in the continent

What can the African Union and RECs do?

Wide acknowledgement for the need to engage with national governments

Moving forward

The M’zab Valley

From Mali to Ghardaïa, a long and difficult journey

Bypassing checkpoints during the lockdown

Gathering sites have been replaced by word of mouth and phone recruitment

Turning to agricultural work and a strong demand for versatility

More responsibility for skilled agricultural workers

Conclusions

Themes

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