A right-wing populist party ‘won’ the Dutch elections. What does this mean? And will Geert Wilders become Prime Minister?

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In this blog, Thea Hilhorst looks at the potential outcomes following the Dutch general election last week. Whilst the PVV party, led by Geert Wilders, won the largest proportion of votes, this is just the beginning of the government-forming process. The Dutch system requires building governing coalitions, and the largest party does not always form the next government. So, what is the PVV? How might they govern? And will Geert Wilders become Prime Minister?

Photo 5533984 | Dutch Parliament © Jan Kranendonk | Dreamstime.com

Last Wednesday, 22 November, the PVV (Party for Freedom) led by Geert Wilders won the most votes in the national elections in the Netherlands. But the national elections to elect members of the Lower House of parliament in The Netherlands is just the beginning of the government-forming process.

The Netherlands has a system of parliamentary elections, unlike other countries that have presidential elections. In those countries, the two winners of a first round of elections may need to contend in a second round until one of the presidential candidates obtains a majority vote. In a parliamentary system, on the other hand, elections are about allocating parliamentary seats to political parties. The Netherlands has 150 parliamentary seats, and a party or coalition needs 76 seats to form a government, and so select a Prime Minister. The PVV came out of the elections as the largest party with 37 seats. As there are 150 seats in total, this means that slightly less than 25% of the electorate voted for PVV (and 75% did not).The second place in the elections came to the combination of the Green Left and Socialist Party, that ran together in these elections for 25 seats, followed by 24 seats for the currently largest party VVD and 20 seats for the new party of New Social Contract.

Another notable difference between a presidential and a parliamentary system is the different power invested in the leader of the government. While a President usually has executive power, a Prime Minister is technically speaking just the chairperson of the government – although far more powerful in practice than this job description would imply.

 

What is the PVV? And what did they win?

The Party for Freedom is mainly known for its leader: Geert Wilders, who has started PVV in 2005, having previously been a politician for the VVD party (of Mark Rutte, current Dutch PM). As a party it stands out, because there is no membership and hence it is often referred to as a ‘one-man show’. The PVV can be seen as a right-wing populist party. It rides strongly on anti-immigrant sentiments and islamophobia, and it denies the relevance of climate policies. Its political programme for the election proposes to end immigration, development cooperation and involvement in climate action. Geert Wilders also announced he wants to spend “not a single Euro” on gender equality, and he is a proclaimed fan of NEXIT (Netherlands leaving the EU). Socio-economically the PVV profiles itself as the champion of marginalized people, promising to lower costs for health insurance, lower the retirement age and increase minimum wages, although it is not clear how proposed measures will be financed.

The PVV has never previously been part of the Dutch government, but in 2010 they did provide support to the first government formed by Mark Rutte. This arrangement, sometimes known as a ‘confidence and supply’ formation meant that whilst the PVV did not provide any Ministers, they did support the government during votes in the Upper and Lower chambers of the Dutch parliament. In any case, the PVV pulled out of this arrangement in 2012 and collapsed the government, leading to fresh elections.

 

The Dutch government is almost always a coalition, and the process can take months

In the Dutch parliamentary system, coalitions need to be formed of different parties to reach a majority of seats in the parliament. Ruling by a single party could only happen when a political party won more than 75 seats, which has never happened in Dutch history. This means that PVV cannot form a government unless it can form a coalition with at least two more parties. The RTL News service has made a handy ‘coalition forming tool’– with so many political parties having been elected, coalitions can involve up to 5 parties in partnership. The formation of a coalition is a long-term process. The last government of the Netherlands consisted of 4 different parties and only reached an agreement  after 271 days. It is usual that the largest party can initiate the coalition building process, and that this party will take the lead in the government and provide the Prime Minister. This is not always the case, in fact there have been 11 elections in the 20th century where the leader of the largest party did not become Prime Minister, the most recent in 1986.

Moreover, it is even possible that the winner is not going to be part of the new government at all. Whilst the largest party is given the first chance to form a coalition, there have been a few historical precedents where coalition negotiations failed, and new negotiations started up with other parties. This can have the consequence that the party with the largest number of seats is shut out of the government. This happened three times in the last century, and co-incidentally always in cases where the Labour (PvdA) party won the elections. In 1982, the party obtained 52 seats, more than one third of the votes, and was nonetheless side-lined in the formation of the government.

 

What happens next?

Formation processes are very unpredictable. The programmes of PVV and any likely coalition partners (other parties on the right side of the political landscape) have some issues in common but are also hugely different on others. An additional complications  is that the VVD –the largest party for the last 12 years – now has a new leader who has initially ruled out working with the PVV. The new leader, Dilan Yeşilgöz, remarkably has a refugee background herself yet opposes liberal asylum practices.  The second likely coalition partner for the PVV would be New Social Contract (NSC), that is an entirely new Party formed by the popular parliamentarian Pieter Omtzigt, who won 20 seats  at the first election it joined. The combination of a new leader of the VVD and an entirely new party sitting at the negotiation table with Geert Wilders, who has been a solo player since he started the PVV, makes the process markedly unpredictable.

The three parties may find it easy to form a right-wing government in no time, or they may clash over their differences and leave an open arena for other parties to try to form a coalition. Only time will tell.

Photo 5533984 | Dutch Parliament © Jan Kranendonk | Dreamstime.com

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

 

 

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Institutional care is an affront to rights of children with disabilities

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In solidarity to the 16 days activism against gender-based violence, this article highlights the structural violence that impedes the rights of children with disabilities —including girls— in Kenya. The author Stephen Ucembe, who is an alumni of the International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, emphasizes the need to protect the rights of children confined to institutional care.

Image Credit: Hope and Homes for Children

Every child, including those with disabilities, is entitled to the rights enshrined in the Convention of the Rights of the Child which Kenya has ratified. As a country, we have agreed to uphold these rights through the Children’s Act 2022.

However, in contravention of their rights, children with disabilities are often hidden away in communities or sometimes separated and isolated in institutions against their wishes. Isolation from communities on the basis of disability is discriminatory. It is a dereliction of duty – an abdication of responsibility by the government. Supporting these children to be visible in our communities and families normalizes disability. Hiding them from others dehumanizes and perpetuates stigma and discrimination, hence exacerbating the problem.

Furthermore, unnecessary placement in residential care institutions often multiplies violations; children with disabilities are denied other rights, like the right to family and community care, to culture, to identity, to freedom of association.

A global Human Rights Watch report, published in 2017 titled, ‘Children with disabilities: Deprivation of liberty in the name of care and treatment’ documented that children with disabilities often face severe neglect and abuse. This included beatings and psychological violence, sexual violence, involuntary and inappropriate medical treatment, use of abusive physical restraints, seclusion and sedation, denial of education and denial of regular contacts with families.

An investigative media exposé traced how the problems described above play out locally. It uncovered multiple human rights violations perpetuated against institutionalized children with disabilities, by a government agency.

Nobody is seeking to romanticize families and communities. There are many children facing abuse, neglect and exploitation, including stigma and discrimination within family and community settings. However, studies consistently point to serious violations in institutional care settings. Moreover, over 80 years of research shows that supported families and communities are far better equipped than institutions when it comes to improvement of children’s overall well-being.

The primary role of government should not be to create more barriers, or spaces that deepen inequality and diminish inclusivity. Yet, this is exactly what we do when we institutionalize these children or neglect them in communities. The role of the government should be to ensure their protection and enjoyment of all rights, through full inclusion and participation in the community.

To make inclusion a reality, we need responsive initiatives that tackle ubiquitous stigma and discrimination. That starts with community services and facilities available to persons with disabilities, enabling them to access education, housing, rehabilitation and therapy.  It extends to respite care centers that allow struggling care-givers time off, or time to go and work. And it means we must improve infrastructure and provide necessary assistive devices, aids and services, like hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, tricycles, white canes and walking appliances to support full participation.

Lastly, it’s up to us to ensure we do not leave these children behind in the care reform processes that the government has initiated. To support governments to include disabled children in family based alternative care, the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities developed ‘Guidelines on deinstitutionalization, including in emergencies’.

These guidelines are meant to ensure an end to rampant violence against institutionalized persons with disabilities, including children. This advice should ensure children with disabilities are included and supported in families and communities, and prevent their institutionalization.

This article was first published on The Standard.

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Stephen Ucembe is the Regional Advocacy Manager, Hope and Homes for Children. He is a professional social worker with skills, knowledge, and experience working with children and young people without parental care, and vulnerable families. His preference is to work in Kenya, or regionally (east and southern Africa) with organization (s) whose mission and vision is family and child focused.

 

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Anti-discrimination legislation: findings from a parliamentary investigation and some recommendations

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Despite myriad legal provisions in place in the Netherlands to prevent discrimination, it remains a serious issue, permeating all societal sectors and informing government actions and policies, as the recent childcare allowance scandal has shown. Between 2020 and 2022, ISS Rector Ruard Ganzevoort in his capacity as a member of the Dutch Senate chaired a parliamentary committee of inquiry that examined the effectiveness of anti-discrimination legislation. In this blog article, he discusses some of the key findings of the investigation and names six factors that can be considered when seeking to ensure that existing laws effectively prevent discrimination.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

Why is it that discrimination is rampant, even when strong anti-discrimination laws are in place? And not just discrimination by individuals or organizations, but also by government institutions? In the Netherlands, a country often priding itself on its strong (although at least partly imagined) history of tolerance and equality, this has come to the public attention with the childcare allowance scandal, where substantial indications of systemic or institutional discrimination in our social welfare system and our tax system surfaced.

As a member of the Dutch Senate, a position I held until last June, I chaired a parliamentary committee of inquiry on the effectiveness of anti-discrimination legislation. The question the Senate wanted to address is why our legislation seems unable to curb this widespread and systemic discrimination. The first article in the Dutch Constitution explicitly bans discrimination on any ground. We also have specific laws against discrimination on more specific grounds. We have implemented a system for complaints and local institutions to address individual cases. In short, we have extensive policies against discrimination. And yet… discrimination not only persists despite our legislation and policies but sometimes because of them. And it is highly detrimental to our citizens.

The committee looked specifically at discrimination in the domains of 1) the labour market, 2) education, 3) social security, and 4) the police — four domains with a different degree of governmental influence. In each domain, we selected specific issues in discrimination that would help us understand the dynamics so that we can improve the legislative process. In the domain of social security, we looked at two issues: first, the role of algorithms in detecting unlawful use of social support and, second, the fact that certain groups tend to avoid the social security system, even if they are entitled to receive support.

The results of the inquiry were published in June last year and can be viewed here (full report in Dutch) and here (summary in English). Below, I briefly discuss two key findings from the report: that algorithms carry a discriminatory risk, and that people do not access social security provisions available to them in part because the government seems to mistrust eligible persons.

 

Algorithms can discriminate and pose a risk

The analysis of our investigation highlighted the discriminatory risk of algorithms, especially when prejudice and bias are incorporated into the risk profiles and data sets. Moreover, even relevant and / or seemingly neutral information can contribute to the discriminatory use of profiles and data. A combination of postal codes, IP addresses, and phone numbers for example can indicate ethnicity or nationality and thereby can result in indirect discrimination.

 

Government distrust may explain failure to access social security provisions

Regarding the non-use of social security provisions, the complexity of the system and the fact that the government seems to mistrust those who need support were found to be important factors. This regards especially those with fewer social-economic resources and people with structural or temporarily impaired capabilities. Although these criteria are hard to define in law, the outcome can be seen as discriminatory.

 

Six factors to consider for more effective legislation

Analyzing cases from these four domains, the investigation yielded six crucial factors that are not only relevant for the effectiveness of legislation (although that was the focus of the analysis), but also for policies in organizations. In those cases, the word ‘government’ can be exchanged for ‘leadership’.

  1. First, trust. Does the government trust or mistrusts its citizens? The fundamental attitude should be that people by and large can be trusted and that in varying degrees they need support. If the government displays fundamental mistrust, this will likely result in discriminatory laws and policies.

 

  1. Second, attention. Does the government display continuous attention for discriminatory processes and outcomes, and does it listen specifically to what people need and experience? Lack of attention puts systems above people and easily results in discriminatory laws and policies.

 

  1. Third, norms and language. Do new laws explicitly refer to antidiscrimination principles and make them concrete? And are implicit norms inclusive enough or do they favor certain groups? Vague and implicit norms can easily result in discriminatory laws and policies.

 

  1. Fourth, simplicity. Do our laws and policies provide transparent, consistent, and integrated criteria and regulations to citizens and institutions, including educators and social services? The complexity of our laws and policies makes it difficult for citizens to claim the support they need, to execute their rights and to file complaints where needed. It also yields space for bias and prejudice and can therefore result in discriminatory laws and policies.

 

  1. Fifth, leadership and accountability. Does the government explicitly make institutions and organizations responsible to curb discrimination and to arrange accountability structures? And do our policies provide for the necessary skills and professional space to use and account for discretionary power and hardship clauses? Failure to do so, especially in situations of unclear norms or conflicting political demands, may result in discriminatory laws and policies.

 

  1. Sixth, clear and effective complaint procedures. Are the possibilities for citizens to complain about certain decisions clear, accessible, and effective? It is not enough to have procedures in place, if people cannot realistically use them. Moreover, this should not be the only safeguard because then only the well-resourced citizens are able to use them which actually increases the risk of discriminatory laws and policies.

 

Trust, attention, norms, simplicity, leadership and accountability, and clear procedures. Obviously, these principles for legislation and policies are not a foolproof remedy for discrimination. They are, however, an important instrument in addressing the systemic and institutional dimensions of discrimination. They clarify how our legislative processes and organizational policies can willingly or unwillingly result in discrimination, and they show what we can do to reduce that. In the end, of course, they turn out to be just principles for good laws and good policies for all our citizens.

Photo by Jeremy Bishop on Unsplash

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Ruard Ganzevoort is rector at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague

 

 

 

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

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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?

Photo: Visual Rebellion SSR 104.

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.

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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.

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The Global South and the return of geopolitics

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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.

 

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

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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

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

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[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.

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

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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.

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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

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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 12th 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:

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:

  1. blurring the state-civil society divide
  2. controlling foreign and domestic funds, and
  3. 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.

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

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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.

 

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Brazilian democracy – an aberration or a challenge?

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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.

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

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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.

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Return of Military coups in Africa threatens Democratic gains achieved in past decades

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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 5th 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.

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Russian citizens under threat from within: The increasing repression of anti-war voices in Russia

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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.

 

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From ‘merchants and ministers’ to ‘neutral brokers’: how the Dutch do water diplomacy

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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:

  1. 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.
  2. ‘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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.

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Keeping Africans out: Injustice following wilful neglect and the politicization of Covid-19 measures

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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
Dorothea Hilhorst is Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at ISS.

Rodrigo Mena is Assistant Professor of Disasters and Humanitarian Studies at ISS.

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How unified resistance efforts within and across borders can help restore democracy in Myanmar

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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

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.

 

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17th Development Dialogue | A call to end the ‘social distancing’ of the sciences – in the COVID-19 era and beyond

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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.

Hans-Peter Gauster (unsplash)

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.

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India’s farm ordinances: fuelling a famine

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India’s countless farmers have rallied together en masse over the past few months to protest farm ordinances imposed by the Indian government. These ordinances may have severe implications for agriculture in India, including reduced state support for agriculture, the increased domination of corporate interests, and a threat to food security, land rights, and livelihoods of the farmers. The intersection of this development with already tenuous conditions may fuel a famine and further increase vulnerability of the agrarian classes, writes Karishma Shelar.

Editor GoI Monitor/Flickr

Starting late November 2020, millions of farmers have marched to and gathered on the outskirts of New Delhi, India’s capital, where they have been met with water cannons of the riot police, barricades, tear gas and lathi charges (the police-led beating of protesters with clubs). Defying COVID-19 restrictions and the bitter cold, the farmers are protesting newly passed national government farm ordinances[1] that seek to dismantle former regulations and legislations protecting the farmers from laissez-faire price and purchase mechanisms. This blog attempts to break down why the ordinances will escalate in a famine-like disaster while discussing the debt-cum-groundwater crisis in the state of Punjab which lies at the heart of the ongoing protests.

Paving the way for corporate farming

Simply put, the farm ordinances, if passed, pave the way for full-fledged corporatisation of India’s agricultural sector through free market price mechanisms and the eventual withdrawal of all forms of state support for agriculture. This spells disaster for nearly 60% of India’s households directly or indirectly relying on the agricultural sector for jobs or survival, of whom 86% are small and marginal landholders (holding plots of land of less than two hectares).

The farm ordinances can have three devastating impacts:

  1. It is a step towards disassembling mandis (state-regulated marketplaces where agricultural produce is traded) to make room for agro-business-driven open market trading.

The mandis are not flawless systems of trade. They are limited in number and geographically favourable to certain regions and class groups. Nevertheless, these are important systems of price discovery and signalling. The mandis are supposed to assure farmers a minimum support price (MSP) declared by the state for their produce. What is required of the government, then, is to strengthen and expand procurement through the mandis and to legalise MSP than abolish the system and shrug off its responsibilities.

  1. No legal assurance of the MSP in the ordinances leaves the farmers vulnerable to the whims and fancies of agro-businesses and other private players.

Such firms are more concerned about making profit than ensuring accessible and affordable food to the public. While the ordinances allow for farmers to enter pre-determined contract farming arrangements with private entities, the former’s financial precarity and no protection against potential discrepancies on part of the latter compromises the farmers’ bargaining power.

In addition, over the past three decades, the increased privatisation of agricultural inputs has resulted in a rise in input costs that has now spiralled into a debt crisis for agrarian households. Private entities with their enormous financial capacity will have free reign to dictate the terms of exchange, pricing, type of produce and inputs, enslaving the farmers to market dictates and furthering the debt crisis in the country. A recent report also suggests that 45–60% of India’s rural households are unable to meet their daily nutritional requirements. Securing the interests of private players in agriculture will only escalate a famine-like crisis in the country.

  1. The ordinances allow for the unregulated storage of harvests, with limited regulation thereof by the state except in the case of extraordinary circumstances such as war, famine, or excessive price increases (exceeding 100%).

This move is aimed at providing private entities freedom to stockpile and control the storage and distribution of harvests. It threatens food and nutrition security to millions of people and particularly those dependent on one of the largest state-run public distribution systems (PDS) in the world. Under the National Food Security Act of India (GoI, 2013), 65% of the households (or around 800 million people in India) are legally assured a right to food at subsidised rates from the PDS and through welfare programmes such as the Integrated Child Development Services and the Mid-Day Meal Scheme.

Additionally, the Food Corporation of India (FCI) is legally mandated to maintain a central pool for procuring, storage, transportation and maintenance of food stocks in the country to which the mandi system and the PDS are closely linked. Besides, as per the Government of India’s estimates, the PDS supported food security for 750 million people during the COVID-19 lockdown (PIB, 2020). The ordinances indicate the intent of the government to downscale the role of the FCI and the PDS by promoting open-market food procurement, thereby dismantling the existing state structures that ensure nutrition security.

Punjab: a case in point

The state of Punjab is one of the major benefactors of the state-based system of procurement through the MSP. In the 2019-20 agricultural year, it contributed 28% and 21.5% of the total wheat and rice produced in the country to the central pool of procurement (FCI, 2020b, 2020a). Therefore, while the farm ordinances are being opposed by farmer unions across the country, the Punjab farmers have become the face of the protests around New Delhi.

It must be noted that Punjab was one of the leading states to adopt the assemblages of Green Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, which brought about prosperity to farm households in Punjab and self-sufficiency from food imports to India. However, this dramatically shifted the traditional cropping patterns of the state. In 1966, rice occupied around 5.2 million hectares (MHa) of land in Punjab (Mann, 2017), spiking to 23.39 MHa by 2012 and displacing other food crops that occupied over 50% of Punjab’s area under cultivation in the pre-Green Revolution period to around just 10% in 2012. Over time, the ecological impact of the Green Revolution has become visible in the form of deteriorating groundwater tables and soil quality that have led to stagnating production levels (Sarkar and Das, 2014).

The period also witnessed the average debt per cultivator household in Punjab increase to INR 216,524 in 2014–15 from INR 7,125 (USD 97.21) in 1991–92 (NSSO, 1998; GoI, 2014). Literature on the agrarian crisis in Punjab also acknowledges an increase in landlessness, with small and marginal farmers resorting to wage labour and forced to sell their land and other assets to pay off. Often, the income earned from wage labour is so meagre that it becomes impossible to pay off incurred debts. The unremunerative nature of agriculture further impoverishes households when they are forced to take on a debt to meet social obligations and cover health-related expenses(Padhi, 2009; Singh and Bhogal, 2020).

While it must be acknowledged that the agrarian dynamics of caste, class and gender differ greatly across geographies in India and also in Punjab, the current farmer protests mirror the larger agro-ecological crisis that has penetrated the country. The farm ordinances will only aggravate indebtedness, escalate land degradation, open the floodgates for corporate landgrabbing, and further deteriorate the socio-economic situation of the landless.

References

FCI (2020a) ‘Statewise Procurement of Rice for RMS 2019-20’. Food Corporation of India. Available at: https://fci.gov.in/app/webroot/upload/Procurement/Statewise%20Procurement%20of%20Rice(KMS%202019-20)_56.pdf (Accessed: 10 October 2020).

FCI (2020b) ‘Statewise Procurement of Wheat for RMS 2019-20’. Food Corporation of India. Available at: https://fci.gov.in/app/webroot/upload/Procurement/Statewise%20Procurement%20of%20wheat_57.pdf (Accessed: 10 October 2020).

GoI (2013) The National Food Security Act, 2013. Available at: http://www.egazette.nic.in/WriteReadData/2013/E_29_2013_429.pdf (Accessed: 12 October 2020).

GoI (2014) Key Indicators of Debt and Investment in India – NSS 70th Round 2013. New Delhi, India: Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation – National Sample Survey Office, Government of India. Available at: http://www.mospi.gov.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/KI_70_18.2_19dec14.pdf (Accessed: 10 May 2020).

Mann, R. S. (2017) ‘Cropping Pattern in Punjab (1966–67 to 2014–15)’, Economic and Political Weekly. Economic and Political Weekly.

NSSO (1998) ‘Debt and Investment Survey: NSS Forty Eight Round (January – December 1992)’. National Sample Survey Organisation, Department of Statistics, Government of India. Available at: http://mospi.nic.in/sites/default/files/publication_reports/419_final.pdf (Accessed: 12 July 2020).

Padhi, R. (2009) ‘On Women Surviving Farmer Suicides in Punjab’, Economic & Political Weekly, 44(19), pp. 53–59.

PIB (2020) ‘Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana Phase-I: April 2020 to June 2020’. Ministry of Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Government of India. Available at: https://pib.gov.in/PressReleasePage.aspx?PRID=1643542 (Accessed: 5 December 2020).

Sarkar, A. and Das, A. (2014) ‘Groundwater Irrigation-Electricity-Crop Diversification Nexus in Punjab: Trends, Turning Points, and Policy Initiatives’, Economic and Political Weekly, 49(52), pp. 64–73. Available at: http://www.jstor.org/stable/24481208 (Accessed: 10 October 2020).

Singh, S. and Bhogal, S. (2020) ‘Punjab’s Agricultural Labourers in Transition’, Economic and Political Weekly. Economic and Political Weekly.

[1] These are the Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Ordinance of 2020, the Farmers’ (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Ordinance of 2020, and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020.

Opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of the ISS or members of the Bliss team.

About the author:

Karishma Shelar has recently graduated with a MA in Development Studies from the ISS, part of Erasmus University. Her dissertation focused on the agro-ecological crisis in rural India and investigated the interlinkages between agro-ecology and indebtedness at the level of the state, agro-businesses, and households.

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Knowledge is the missing link in the Dutch aid and trade agenda

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On the eve of the national elections set to take place on 17 March in the Netherlands, developmental issues are being debated and diverging solutions proposed by political parties running in the elections. A recent debate organized by SAIL on the role of knowledge in aid and trade relations indicated that even though not receiving much attention in pre-election debates, knowledge produced by Dutch knowledge institutes is considered vital in sustaining aid and trade relations between the Netherlands and its counterparts in the Global South, writes Linda Johnson.

On 12 February, in anticipation of the upcoming national elections, a debate was organized by SAIL, a platform for knowledge institutes such as the ISS that promotes international education and research for inclusive sustainable development in the Global South. The debate was intended to bring attention to the missing link of ‘knowledge’ in international relations and the role that knowledge institutes situated in the Netherlands wish to play in the post-election policy landscape.  SAIL feels strongly that international relations all too frequently are not sufficiently informed by knowledge produced by Dutch knowledge institutes. This means that a key source of knowledge and a wealth of connections between the Netherlands and the Global South remain largely untapped and underutilised.

Five members of parliament (MP) participated in the debate: Kirsten van den Hul (PvdA), Dennis Wiersma (VVD), Jan Paternotte (D66), Mustafa Amhaouch (CDA), and Tom van den Nieuwenhuijzen (GL). Thea Hilhorst, professor of humanitarian studies at ISS of Erasmus University Rotterdam and Marhijn Visser of the Confederation of Netherlands Industry and Employers (VNO-NCW) provided introductory and closing remarks on the theme. Over 200 participants followed the debate online. Marcia Luyten, a well-known Dutch publicist, led the discussions.

The debate was interesting because it made clear that there is a strong willingness on the part of politicians to engage with knowledge institutes with a view to shape future policy.

Partnerships that last

It is hard to overstate the case for ensuring that Dutch knowledge institutes become a key piece in the shaping and implementing of policy in relation to aid and trade with partners in the Global South. Ever since the early 1950s, the SAIL member institutes have been building and maintaining durable partnerships with countries in the Global South. Partnerships have been built at the level of individuals, many of whom were (partly) funded by the Dutch government to study toward a Master’s or a PhD degree in the Netherlands, and at the level of knowledge institutes by means of countless interventions and collaborations designed from the outset to co-create (academic) capacity in the Global South, and more recently to ensure global knowledge circulation to ensure mutual learning.

The tried and tested partnerships between knowledge institutes are key to this process. The combined expertise of staff of these institutes ensures that the specifics of the local needs are the basis for the work done. These individuals and teams know how best the needs of all parties can be met in a cost-effective and sustainable manner. Many of these partnerships date back decades. Trust has been established, friendships have flourished, and knowledge easily flows back and forth to the benefit of all participants in the process. It works so well that it seems effortless and herein lies the potential for mishap by oversight… It is indeed in many ways effortless, as it is born of years of investment in a process of mutual learning.

This is the time to make sure that the judicious investment of decades is not overlooked as policy is set and budgets allocated after the elections.  Political debates leading up to the elections have not yet shown much attention to such partnerships. However, at the SAIL debate  there was strong consensus across the political spectrum on the importance of the role of knowledge institutes as a linking pin, which led me to think that if the time was taken to explore these partnerships’ role in aid and trade relations, they would become evident to the new cabinet.

For example, at the debate, all five parliamentarians agreed that knowledge is vital for healthy trade and development. Kirsten van den Hul, for example, stated that “knowledge collaboration is essential to development.” The big problem, she said, is that “knowledge is unevenly distributed.” Dennis Wiersma: “A level playing field is important for trade”. Mustafa Amhaouch: “There is clearly nowhere near a level playing field at present […] It is a societal responsibility to share knowledge.” Jan Paternotte: ‘’The Dutch trade agenda should be linked to the knowledge agenda.”

This makes clear that the role of knowledge – and the institutes that produce it – is seen as important. But we need to take the discussion further once the elections have taken place. Two important points made during the debate were that knowledge institutes can help protect human rights in fragile states whilst also benefitting the Netherlands through strong alumni networks.

Knowledge institutes are vital in fragile states

Something that received particular attention in the debate was the role of knowledge institutes in fragile states, where the Netherlands is active. Knowledge institutes in fragile states are key in upholding a vision of a positive society and in speaking out for human rights. The Netherlands needs to keep on supporting relationships between Dutch institutes and their counterparts in fragile states. Fragility is increasing. The COVID-19 pandemic is exposing the cracks in the starkest possible way as the richer nations hoard vaccines. GL, PvdA and D66 spoke out strongly in favour of the need to finance COVAX (the WHO programme designed to ensure equitable access to COVID-19 diagnostics, treatments and vaccines) generously.

Sustaining aid relations through alumni networks

The word “alumni” also popped up frequently in the debate. The Netherlands has built up a huge network of alumni across the world, many of whom have moved into positions of influence in their home countries. All of the parties represented and the Federation of Industry and Employers concluded that these alumni were a key resource in building an equitable, sustainable, win-win agenda for Dutch aid, trade and knowledge policy in the wake of the upcoming elections.

Focusing on the alumni of knowledge institutes means moving beyond capacity building to viewing and engaging these alumni as potential change agents in their own countries. This will also benefit the Netherlands by ensuring that these warm, trust-based relationships can be the basis for both political and economic collaboration in the future.

A reason for cautious optimism?

There is much to be gained by enhancing the role of knowledge institutes in future collaboration and there is support for this approach across the political spectrum. Could this be a reason for optimism? Watch the political space and join in the debate, whether or not you have a Dutch vote to cast….

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.

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