What Works? Cruel challenges

What works?

There is a debate and doubt whether human rights standards and law really work especially at poor and conflict prone countries. Two important questions are associated with it. i) Does it work?, ii) Where does not it work and why?

If it does not work, it is nation sate’s failure to respect and implement for the citizens within its territory. It is discussed earlier that limited resources is not an excuse for not implementing human rights. Germany can because of richness and Ghana can not because of poverty; this logic may not valid here. Thus, Resource and wealth may not be the only reasons; there are other causes for the failure of human rights standards. It is all about changing “attitude” of people and nations towards human rights.

Legal/moral obligation or Conscience

Commitment of governments for international human rights standard is often found weak in developing countries. Moral obligation seems almost absurd. Individual, groups, private, and corporate bodies are found busy within greater capitalist frame. These entities are becoming greedy, exploitative, and manipulative, which are some of the outcomes of capitalism. Moral degradation is happening in a faster pace.

For legal obligation state party must respect human rights first and foremost. Many state parties lack in “respecting”. Myanmar, North Korea, and China are some examples of repressive regime about human rights. A country having strong legal framework and democracy may appear incompetent. ODI (1999: 6) gives a good example,
The legal recourse is the hardest hurdle to jump in achieving rights, especially so in countries where legal recourse is most needed, but also in others: for example in India, which has a well-developed legal framework, it has been estimated that it would take 350 years to clear the current backlog of court cases, even if no new cases were added. It is also easy to think of countries where any dialogue about rights would be extremely difficult.

Thus any prescription is difficult to be given under above circumstances for fulfillment of human rights. However, coherence between national, regional, and international legal framework could give a better result in terms of “respecting” and “protecting” human rights. European Union (EU) and Organization of American States (OAS) are good examples. Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) is in a process to develop human rights legal frame for the region. South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is still found ignorant about human rights. Nonetheless, SAARC’s usefulness and effectiveness is also under doubt comparing with other regional entities in the world.

Moral or legal obligation may not alone work. Both can be mutually complementary to each other. In addition, conscience, which is inward ability, faculty, or sense of right or wrong, is needed. Conscience is connected to moral values. Moral values are things held to be right or wrong or desirable or undesirable. Different cultures have very different moral value systems. Moral values, along with traditions, laws, behaviour patterns, and beliefs, are the defining features of a culture.[1] There is no generally accepted definition of what conscience is and how it works. Formation of United Nations at the end of devastating World War II was a kind of universal conscience of the nation states to unite the world with out any discrimination, which is reflected in UN Charter and UDHR. However, educating or awaking people about conscience and moral values could be hardest challenge. This issue needs more study and research for human development in general.

Changing global context and new age challenges

Changing global context and challenges may worsen situation that ever imagined. We are not the programmer or designer of the world and subsequently we can not come up with any “magic bullet” for poverty alleviation along with a time frame. Perhaps we will be watching one such effort MDG’s fatal end at the end of 2015. According to AAI at the current rate of progress, it will take 120 years to reach the Millennium Development Goal and WFS commitments to halve hunger by 2015. Therefore, it is time to have alternative thoughts and solutions rather prescriptions. As long as we do not have unusual magic bullet, we keep trying with whatever we have such as MDGs, PRSPs, SLA, RBA, Human Security, and so on. But we do not have time much for experimentation. It is time for action,

In a world overflowing with riches, it is a outrageous scandal that more than 826 million people suffer hunger and malnutrition and that every year over 36 million die of starvation and related causes . We must take urgent action now. (Jean Ziegler, April 2001, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food)

Cornwall and Brock (2005: 1) says, “Open the newspaper and the first few pages often have enough talk of violent death, inequity, deprivation and misery to make one feel the world we live in is hardly a place where a “world without poverty” could ever come to exist.” Is not it true for most of the countries in the world. And what about Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Darfur, and other conflict prone African states where death toll is gradually increasing day by day.

Sustainable livelihood, rights based approach, participation, empowerment, good governance, accountability, poverty alleviation etc are. the concepts that had been discussed so far in this paper. I am afraid, if critics say all these are buzzwords of development industry. Arguably there could be many set of buzzwords and each set could have some purposes or messages. Is it new fashion to play with jargons in the development world? However, arguably these buzzwords are not empty at least. Each of the “jargon” is carrying intention to do good to bring change in institutions, processes, and practices. “Human development”, “rights based approach”, and “human security” have their distinct dimension for addressing human sufferings and substantially looking for way out for human wellbeing though have not succeed yet. They may not come up with any absolute solution over decades, which may further upset development practitioners.

How long should we be continuing this effort to end poverty? It may appear pessimistic prediction that hunger, poverty, and food insecurity may continue till dooms day. Academics and activists of transnational civil society agree that there is enough food in this world to feed the population in hunger. Where does the surplus food of the world go? Is not it the politics to trash food rather feed hungry? And this power politics of wealthy groups is no more a secret. The amount of food they waste and the amount of money they spend in arms production and in war could be surplus for solving hunger and poverty issue in the globe. This is not supposed to happen. Politics, conspiracy, and exploitation are dominating over good will for serving humanity.

Acording to Bello (2006), “there has been too much dissonance between the promise of globalization and free trade and the actual results of neoliberal policies, which have been more poverty, inequality, and stagnation.” Hypocrisy is adopted so skillfully in neoliberal policies and executed so efficiently by agencies like WB and WTO that developing countries are feeling cheated. In one hand, these agencies had been talking a lot about poverty reduction, empowerment, governance etc., and on the other hand, exploiting with the help of trade rules and conditionalities. According to Bello, China is the country where 120 million had been lifted out of poverty during last 15 years. Interventionist state policies managed market forces to do that. Neoliberal prescriptions did not work. China’s success in poverty reduction may not be our role model because it is known as repressive regime in terms of human rights, governance, and democracy. It is not at the same time unavoidable to agree that political will and state interventions are the best way to control market forces and achieving food sovereignty.

UN came into existence from the conscience of the world because of devastation of World War II. And its range of conventions on international human rights standards and treaty committees are there for safe guarding humanity. There are some criticisms that UN is toothless and ineffective. Some angry activists call UN as “United Nothing”. MDGs seem to end by 2015 as commitments unfulfilled. UN could not give any comprehensive solutions to injustice, inequity, and conflicts around the world. Starting from Rwanda genocide to Darfur crisis, from Israeli occupation in Palestine to US invasion in Afghanistan and Iraq, from nuclear race between big powers to small countries like North Korea and Iran, from hunger to malnutrition and poverty; UN failed significantly. UN is reforming itself because of its set back and is trying to find a way out for its efficacy.

According to Kofi Annan (2005: 4), “divisions between major powers on key issues have revealed a lack of consensus about goals and methods.” He mentions, over 40 countries have been scarred by violent conflict, number of internally displaced people stands at roughly 25 million, global refugee population of 11 to 12 million, and some of them have been the victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity, HIV/AIDS, the plague of the modern world, has killed over 20 million and people infected has surged to over 40 million, more than one billion people still live below the extreme poverty line, and 20,000 die from poverty each day. Declining public confidence in the institution is observed. He also notes that dozens of countries have become poorer, devastating economic crises have thrown millions of families into poverty, and increasing inequality in large parts of the world means that the benefits of economic growth have not been evenly shared. In my opinion, these are the facts of present world. And we should not live anymore on dreams and wishes rather think about the truths, cruelties, and challenges of the changing global context. Nonetheless, it is time to come up with locally made innovative solutions appropriate in specific social, political and cultural context rather than depend on development prescriptions.

However, this is the last Institution of sovereign states in the world that has global human rights standard, which protects rights of the global citizens. It is the last mediator and negotiator for peace in this conflict torn world. If it fails and wipes out, the humanity may have to watch the collapse of civilization.

Huntington (1993) predicts, “Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will be the battle lines of the future.” In the last couple of centuries the conflicts were between princes, nation states, and ideologies within western civilization. Huntington defines “civilization” as a cultural entity. Thus, civilization is a kind of big picture where people are grouped in a bigger circle such as Chinese, Westerners, Arab etc. According to Huntington West is now at the peak of power in terms of military and economy. Thus, desire of west is translated through the policies and decision of multilateral institutions in the name of desire of world community, which is a double standard. Therefore, we are approaching towards dangerously conflicting world, as Huntington notes, “…conflicts between groups in different civilizations will be more frequent, more sustained and more violent than conflicts between groups in the same civilization; violent conflicts between groups in different civilizations are the most likely and most dangerous source of escalation that could lead to global wars…” The severity of conflict in the present could help us to imagine the brutality of the future. A relevant question may appear how poverty, hunger, and food insecurity will be reduced or alleviated? Even being optimistic, only the contrary could be imagined.

Global average temperature is going to increase between 1.5C and 4.5C so as increasing the green house gases. Rate of ice melting is getting higher, which will increase sea level at the end. Incidences of storms will be increasing along with frequent earth quakes. The 2007 report of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the evidence of climate change and subsequently an emergency alarming for the human race. Persistent lobbying by Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel overcame most American resistance, but she was unable to achieve implementation of binding emissions restrictions for G8 nations. Given the large rift over climate change that has existed between the US and Europe, however, Merkel and her allies still deemed the summit a success[2]. Bush Administration threatened to reject most of the German sponsored measures. Here, we see the imperialist’s “naive response” in the climate change issue. Climate change, that will cause more natural disasters, is going to add more vulnerability to human race.

End Notes:

[1] for detail see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_value, visited July 2, 2007
[2] for detail see http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/206 , visited July 3, 2007

Food Security, Food Sovereignty, and political will

Food security
There are complexities of issues, policies, and national-international perspective over fod security, hunger and famine. The interesting aspect is that defining and setting policies for food security had always been in the hand of powerful agencies. Most of these agencies are dominated by the think tanks and representatives of rich countries. The politics of favoring interests of rich countries lies within the domination of multilateral implementing agencies such as WTO, WB, Asian Development Bank (ADB), IMF, International Finance Corporation (IFC), United Nations (UN) agencies etc. Multilateral agencies are complex and paradoxical in policies and practices rather bilateral agencies in terms of “trade-off”. For example, AoA of WTO benefits rich nations by exploiting poor nations in the name of trade justice and trade liberalization. The process happened in such a perplexing way that representatives and thinkers of poor nations realized the paradox of exploitation from the impacts of this trade rule.

FAO’s definition focusing on “access” rather “food production and sufficiency of poor nations” reminds us the politics of favoring rich nations in line with WTO. In 1983, FAO defined, “ensuring that all people at all times have both physical and economic access to the basic food that they need”. FAO stresses on “access” besides demand and supply side of food equation. Interestingly, the definition could not recognize the large group of people without purchasing power. Therefore, access and supply of food may not ensure their “food entitlement”.

In 1974, World Food Summit (WFS) defined, “availability at all times of adequate world food supplies of basic foodstuffs to sustain a steady expansion of food consumption and to offset fluctuations in production and prices”. Surprisingly, this definition could not give special attention to vulnerable and marginalized poor across the LDCs. However, in 1986, WB recognized “chronic food insecurity” associated with “structural problem”, “low income” besides “transitory food insecurity” caused by natural disaster, economic collapse or conflict. The definition further appears as, “access of all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life”. WB still missed stressing on “production” and “food sufficiency”.

In 1994, UNDP’s HDR came up with “Human Security”, which covered a range of components including food security. From human security perspective, food came up much more as entitlement and social security aspect rather stand alone issue. In 1996, world food summit came up with more complex definition stressing ‘physical and economic access’ to ‘sufficient, safe and nutritious’ food. The definition is further refined in The State of Food Insecurity 2001 as ‘physical, economical, and social’ access to ‘sufficient, safe, and nutritious’ food. The later version of food security definition added words like ‘sufficient’, ‘safe’, and ‘nutritious’. It could be ridiculous in the context of conflict stricken, famine, and hunger affected countries to think about safe and nutritious food. The world leading agencies have been fallen in the trap of bureaucratization, which resulted in producing tons of documents beside numerous dialogues and conferences with out any significant outcome and change on the ground. We need to revisit this issue of multilateral agencies’ role in addressing and changing food insecurity on the ground.

The concept “food security” is exploited, partly because the leading agencies’ stand point is not clear. When trade liberalization clearly exploits food security of developing nations, the so called development agencies do not take side of marginalized farmer of the developing nations. As Glipo notes,

To the degree that food sovereignty incorporates fundamental questions of economic sovereignty, land reform, women’s rights and small farmers’ rights, it has become a more comprehensive platform for advocacy among those seeking fundamental changes in the national and global order. To the extent that it advocates a new development paradigm that rejects the rigidity of free trade and the export-oriented industrial agriculture model of the North, many accept its relevance to third world conditions. (2003: 22)

So called agencies, thus, played tricky role with food security and technically saved face of WTOs and their allies. However, more or less these food security efforts goes in line with ‘access to food’, which ultimately reminds the existence of market and ability of people to buy from the market. Thus, vibrant and radical agencies for the marginalized peasants of the south deny “access to food” for food security and replace it by “production of food” for food-sufficiency, which is food sovereignty.

This study focuses on ‘entitlement’ to food, which is in line with Amartya Sen’s ‘entitlements’ of ‘individuals’ and ‘households’. And ‘entitlement’ complies with ‘power relation’ from the perspective of RBA. This issue will be further discussed at the power relation section.

Political will for food security
11 years after the 1996 WFS summit food insecurity remains high across the world. The same is echoed by Flavio Valente[i],
“It is unacceptable that more than 850 million human beings continue to go hungry everyday despite repeated – and repeatedly breached - commitments of governments and intergovernmental organizations.”

Despite of WFS and lots and lots of seminars, conferences, and dialogues, food insecurity and hunger remains. The quest for knowing ‘why hunger exists’ could lead us to find root cause. Le Vallée (2006) stressed on ‘willingness of government’ so as the ‘greater political will’ to erdicate hunger and ensure food security. Political will of a government could solve food insecurity within a nation state. For example, a country like Bangladesh, which had been corrup and failed for couple of decades because of lack of political will. Off course, absence of good governace resulted in corruption and food insecurity. Therefore, good governace could ensure an idol mechanism through which political will could alleviate food inecurity. Good governance should have rule of law, accountability, transperancy, sound public administration, respect and protection for human rights.

Good governnace —————— political will

If it is the policy of ‘pruduction’ and ‘self-sufficiency’ for food security, the government of a nation state has to adopt that policy and its implication. If it is ‘access to food’ in the market, which is sometime beyond government’s control because of global trade and free markets, still government needs to avoid policy intervention to protect her citizens. If it is international politics for exploiting developing countries, the government needs to have strategies for not to be exploited. Paarlberg (2002) says, “Food insecurity persists largely because of governance and policy failure at the national level”. Paarlberg adds where national governments have performed well in the developing world, hunger has been significantly reduced, while in those regions where hunger is not yet under control, improving governance at the national level must now be the highest priority (cited in Le Vallée 2006). Therefore, the responsibility and duty of national government is the only measure for production, supply, and entitlement of food unless conflict and disaster issues destabilize a nation state.

Some may argue that globalization and trade liberalization have impacted food insecurity locally. Top down pressure of multilateral and bilateral agencies could obligate a developing country to adopt and implement self-destructing policies. Still Paarlberg (2002) says, “Despite globalization, most food insecurity today is still highly localized and locally generated”. Ultimately it is states responsibility to fight against international policy intervention, which is against state’s interest.

There is a need for synergy between national and international political will. Unless political will of international community wants an end of food insecurity rather food conspiracy, it could be a struggle to overcome hunger and insecurity from a national perspective. Poltical will should not end in frsutrated attempts to address problem rather it should end in policies and programs. But there is a doubt about international political will?

The conept of food security is misinterpreted by rich countries and their alliens, which is a food conpiracy. Developing countries now distrust western counterparts for agricultural trade off. As Glipo notes, “In the Philippines, Indonesia, Thailand, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh where rapid trade liberalization practically demolished small-scale agriculture…national peasant movements are strong in these countries and are leading the movement to dismantle the WTO and its oppressive trade agreements, particularly the AoA and the TRIPs agreements (2003: 21).” This growing distrust leads these Asian countries to believe in “food sovereignty”.

Globalization Vs Food Sovereignty
In the name of globalization and free market economy, the rich and powerful nations have been exploiting the poor nations. And this is a cruel reality, which has been realized by the citizens of poor nations lately today. As Bello[ii] notes, The free market policies that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank imposed on some 100 developing and transitional economies between 1980 and 2000 had induced, in all but a handful of them, not a virtuous circle of growth, prosperity, and equality but a vicious cycle of economic stagnation, poverty, and inequality.

Globalization and it neoliberal programs has the intention to destabilize social and economic atmosphere of developing countries and eventually taking control over market along with natural resources. After the end of colonial legacies, this is an imperialist aggression in the form of trade agreements to have control over the markets of poor nations. TNC and big players out of corporate driven globalization have been wiping out small payers of developing nations at the so called open market. Thus, trade invasion is much more sophisticated and complicated in nature than military invasion of colonizers’ era. American and British invasion in sovereign nations Iraq and Afghanistan is examples of neo imperialism, which is a new form of colonial invasion. This indicates growing threat against national sovereignty. However, this paper may keep track on food sovereignty issues.

Asia-Pacific Network on Food Sovereignty’s (APNFS) agenda is to remove WTO from food and agriculture and to ensure food sovereignty through developing national policies for food and agriculture. And the agenda is to develop protection mechanism from external hazards like AOA. Pesticide Action Network (PAN) - Asia Pacific, IBON and Via Campesina are some networks that want no more WTO and their slogan is food sovereignty. These protestors and advocacy groups had chosen “food sovereignty” as objective because “food security” is already misinterpreted by northern elites for their own benefit. Thus, food sovereignty is not confusing concept for the oppressed peasants and policy advocacy groups. As Glipo notes, “food sovereignty came popularly to mean not only the struggle for food security and food selfsufficiency…” A considerable definition was given by International NGO/CSO Planning Committee (IPC),

Food Sovereignty is the right of individuals, communities, peoples and countries to define their own agricultural, labour, fishing, food and land policies, which are ecologically, socially, economically and culturally appropriate to their unique circumstances. It includes the true right to food and to produce food, which means that all people have the right to safe, nutritious and cultural appropriate food and to food-producing resources and the ability to sustain themselves and their societies

Food sovereignty opposes export oriented model of agriculture. It protects farmers who are landless, small, marginalized and rural women. It promotes agro-ecological model and community based natural resource management. Food sovereignty paradigm has come through a series of conferences of NGOs, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), and social movements and become more comprehensive. The elements of food sovereignty are identified in the following box.

Elements of food sovereignty

i. priority of local agricultural production to feed people locally;

ii. access of smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolk and landless people to land, water, seeds and livestock breeds and credit. Hence the need for land reform; for the fight against GMOs and patents on seeds, livestock breeds and genes; for free access to seeds and livestock breeds by smallholder farmers and pastoralists and for safeguarding water as a public good to be distributed equitably and sustainably used; and for secure access to fishing grounds by artisanal fisherfolk;

ii. the right to food;

iii. the right of smallholder farmers to produce food and a recognition of Farmers Rights;

iv. the right of consumers to decide what they consume, and how and by whom it is produced;

v. the right of countries to protect themselves from under-priced agricultural and food imports;

vi. the need for agricultural prices to be linked to production costs and to stop all forms of dumping. Countries or unions of states are entitled to impose taxes on excessively cheap imports, if they commit themselves to using sustainable production methods and if they control production in their internal markets to avoid structural surpluses (supply management);

vii. the populations’ participation in agricultural policy decision-making;

viii. the recognition of the rights of women farmers who play a major role in agricultural production in general and in food production in particular;

ix. agroecology as a way not only to produce food but also to achieve sustainable livelihoods, living landscapes and environmental integrity.

Source: ITDG 2005

The forum on ‘food sovereignty’ debated over the above elements and later on came up with four priority areas, which are known as four pillars or principles. These are 1) right to food, 2) access to productive resources, 3) mainstream agroecological production, and 4) trade and local market. Right to food is legal obligation where as food security is technical concept. And food sovereignty is a political one. And so far food sovereignty is most comprehensive solutions for ensuring livelihoods of the marginalized rural population. In addition, it protects poor and developing countries form exploitative interventions of globalization and trade agreements led by elite countries.

End Notes:
[i] Secretary General, FIAN International, International Human Rights Organisation for the Right to Food.
[ii] Walden Bello, ‘The Future in the Balance’ Acceptance speech, Right Livelihood Award, Swedish Parliament, Stockholm, 8 December 2003.