The news from
Africa just this morning mentions witch lynchings, the stoning of a rapist and murderer,
militant attacks on oil reserves, an ex-president on trial for corruption,
elections following the assassination of a president, amputations, genocide,
the rising number of people facing food insecurity…the gloom and doom is
incessant and pervasive.
In the face of such
a mountain of violence, injustice, corruption, death and poverty, it is no
wonder that Western countries feel aid exhaustion, indifference coming on the
heels of countless failed attempts to solve the myriad problems by throwing
money at them and expecting immediate success. There just seems to be no way to
crawl up the slippery slope of poverty and political and economic
marginalization in the face of seemingly innumerable obstacles…That is, if
Western countries insist on going it alone.
It just stands to
reason that Africans know best about what they need and want. Lawmakers in the
US are and will always be too distant from the realities of Africa, its
challenges, and most especially, its charms. While life for many Africans is
not ideal, and countries with influence and money have a responsibility to engage
with Africans to help improve their situations, ‘African life’ is not always
the tragic and shocking saga that the media portrays. Without taking away from
the severity of those hot spots of violence and the numbing poverty in so many
families, an important antidote to accumulated indifference is the exposure to
what is potentially good and admirable in Africa; where there is already light,
there can never be complete darkness.
Africans know of
the intimate intricacies of what is both good and bad in their world; Americans
make the Hollywood mistake of painting the picture with broad strokes of blood
and poverty. There are two sides to the continent, and focusing only on the
tragic can serve to dehumanize and generalize African people. The tricky
balance of weighing what must be fixed with what is already working can temper
the headlong advancement of the West into exhaustion while maintaining what is
truly African about the continent.
Binta
and the Great Idea is
a Spanish-Senegalese short film nominated for an Oscar in 2007. It is the
cinematic manifestation of what is good in the African reality, the antidote to
the Blood Diamonds and Hotel Rwandas of this world. There is a
time and a place for the darker side of reality, as there is for the lighter
side of African life. It challenges the Western viewer to reevaluate not only
how Africa is perceived off the continent, but how Africans perceive
themselves. Momentarily shelving the humanitarian, it is a brilliant glimpse
into the human.
“Imagine your creditors tripled the interest they demanded on your loans without warning and then all of a sudden, all at once, called the loans in.” ~ 'Vulture Funds Policy Alert, TransAfrica Forum'
Yes, the topic of Africa’s debt is thankfully back in the news in a big way, with the reintroduction of the “Stop VULTURE Funds” Act (H.R. 2932) last Thursday, June 18, by Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA). Building on the aims of a similar bill introduced in August 2008, the act now before Congress seeks to outlaw the profiteering by private equity or hedge funds in the U.S. at the expense of some of the world’s poorest nations. [ Africa Action Press Release]
Activists and campaigners celebrated this important step in opposition to particular subset of funds that target distressed sovereign debt - buying up the debt of poor countries from either a government or commercial creditor. Vulture Funds' apparently clawing (no pun intended) desire to make a profit – profits reaching into the tens of millions of dollars – siphon much-needed funding away from initiatives like health care, education, combating HIV/AIDS, clean water access etc. in impoverished countries.
“A ‘vulture fund’ is a company that buys up the debt of poor countries at a big discount from the original owner with the purpose of suing the indebted country in court once it has some money (often after debt cancellation)”
“…Donegal International, got hold of $15 million from Zambia, money that was freed up by debt relief and should have been used for the fight against HIV/AIDS and poverty. Zambia was not alone: A 2007 report on vulture funds by IMF staff showed that 11 out of 24 poor countries approached said they were involved in litigation worth a total of $1.8 billion with 46 creditors.”
“These companies tend to be quite secretive, and very many of them are based in tax havens. Some are owned by large (often US-based) financial institutions such as hedge funds. In other cases, there is no information on who owns them. Often companies are set up simply to pursue one debt, then shut down again.”
Jubilee USA’s Briefing Note also points out that in Niger, “lawsuit costs were 52.2 percent of health and education expenditure,” and 98.3 percent of Cameroon’s budget revenue ($51.7 million).
The Congressional Representatives supporting the bill have drawn a line in the sand, standing on the side of Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC), and they are certainly not the only ones lending a voice to the cries of discontent over Africa’s debt situation. These issues have also been explored in more popular realms as well, where the message may not be in technical terms or political jargon, but attempt to start dialogue over Africa’s urgent debt issues.
Enter Bamako: Abderrahmane Sissako’s 2006 film, whose foundation is the exploration of the crippling debt, poverty, and social injustice facing many African countries.
With a plot both original in its premise and powerful in the questions that it raises, Bamako immediately came to my mind because, in many ways, it calls for the changes in Africa’s debt situation that activists have been working on and which has culminated in the Vulture Funds bill.
The central storyline follows a trial in which the citizens of Mali charge that the policies of the defendants, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), have greatly hurt, rather than improved, the socio-economic and political stability of the country. Using real judges and attorneys (who wrote their own dialogue), as well as regular, Malian citizens as witnesses – invited to improvise their testimonies – the result is a film that is much more than a courtroom drama, played out in the dusty courtyard of a Bamako household. In an interview with Sight & Sound, Sissako pointed out that “Victims in Africa don’t need inventing…Just go out on the street and they’re there.” And, truly, the people and their representatives are frank in relating their grievances surrounding such ills as privatized water, education, medicine, and other social services, ultimately questioning the sincerity of such institutions’ claims to want to improve developing courtiers.
Arguably, the power of the film lies in the line it walks between reality and fiction. The possibility of seeking to hold the actions of The World Bank and IMF accountable to the Africans on the ground, who are the ones who suffer from the exploitation of illegitimate debt and poor social and economic program planning, further highlights the power imbalance at play (since deep down, a part of us knows such a trial could never happen). And, in between debates and testimonies, is the interplay and interjection of everyday life in Mali – the people around the neighborhood who pay avid attention to the trial’s broadcast on the radio, and the others who are distracted, indifferent, getting married, or working all day. The documentary style of filming only increases the feeling that you are watching a case of immediate, real-world concern, yet the undercurrent of Sissako’s film is the near-futility of attacking such a colossus of a predicament.
Unlike other movies where a trial figures prominently in the plot, there is no final verdict handed down in Bamako and the film’s conclusion becomes a sign that it is less about the decision that could come from such a trial (or even whether such institutions should be put on trial), and more about educating those who watch. Is globalization the solution to Africa’s problems? Is foreign aid to the continent actually easing poverty? And, honestly, why would the World Bank, IMF, and even other wealthy nations want to perpetuate the terrible conditions of poverty, hunger, illiteracy that plague many of Africa’s nations? (a question even asked by a lawyer for the World Bank in the film). Sissako’s work asks us to think carefully about these questions if we haven’t before, and to not only see the disconnect between the aims of these financial institutions and the reality of Malian life, but to try and find some hope in resolving these issues.
With the reintroduction of the “Stop VULTURE Funds” Act, with additional co-sponsors and even more momentum behind it, the aims of advocates and activists have now been placed into the hands of the highest government officials in the country. It couldn’t come at more needed time, with the economic downturn hitting poor countries hard and world hunger recently hitting the 1 billion mark – the vast sums of money Vulture Funds seek is badly needed by citizens of the impoverished nations they target. Could it be that we will see change step off the silver screen and into the real world? Only time will tell.
Check out Bamako – on DVD now, and Africa Action’s resource pages for more information on Africa’s Debt and Vulture Funds.
A lot is said
about advancing the cause of women worldwide, and it just makes sense. Studies
have shown that when women are educated, given the right to make their own
family planning choices and given economic opportunities, the fate of a country
can be turned around. Sadly, no matter the economic, political, social and
moral benefits that could come from treating women as equals, women are treated
as expendable second-class citizens who nevertheless are expected to support
families and communities. This is especially true in developing countries,
where the role of the community and the family is intrinsically important to
success, and survival in some cases.
This case for women’s equality is nothing new and has been
made, almost ad nauseum, for decades.
What is so disturbing is that no matter what is said, no matter what is shown,
no matter how convincing the argument seems to be, the status of women
worldwide remains untouched. This is not a concern uniquely placed onto the
shoulders of developing countries; even the wealthiest and most educated
countries have failed to protect women to the extent possible. Whether cultural
relativism provides a facile argument for oppressive male leaders, an argument
that will not often be challenged for fear of appearing politically incorrect,
or the collective global political will has simply not caught up with the times
and the facts, women are still caught in an ongoing struggle against their
oppression.
Nothing symbolizes the unequal power dynamics of the genders
more than the very manifestation of oppression and power: rape and sexual
violence against women. A new study conducted by South Africa’s Medical Research
Council provides a striking and horrifying case study of sexual violence within
a population.
This was a study of 1,738 men in Eastern Cape and
KwaZulu-Natal Provinces in South Africa; they were men of all racial groups
from both rural and urban areas. The shocking findings were that one in four
men said they had raped someone; nearly half admitted to more than one attack. The
first assault was before the age of 20 for 73% of the respondents. One in 20
men surveyed said that they had raped a woman or girl in the past year. Gang
rape is reportedly common; it is seen as a form of male bonding.
South Africa has one of the highest numbers of reported
rapes in the world; a child is being raped in South Africa every three minutes,
though the vast majority of the cases go unreported.
Rape is a manifestation of a need for power more than it is
of sexual desire; it makes sense that men who may feel powerless in an economy
that does not provide enough opportunities for them to support themselves or
their families or in a political system that stifles their voices and prevents
them from living lives of dignity may be more prone to unleashing their
frustrations on the even less powerful women around them. Providing more
economic opportunities and offering men a voice could potentially be an avenue
for improvement that could help spare women in an indirect way. But will women
really have to wait until the male condition is improved before they are free
of the risk of being raped and abused?
Projects that make an economy more sustainable and
governance more efficient are great, but are at their core a generic response.
A country that is in a state of transition or development can be a country that
can rewrite not only its formal laws, but also its cultural mores and social
priorities. For reasons that have been presented countless times, women’s
equality falls just short of being a silver bullet for the ills that ail,
especially in countries that are already struggling; falling just short is a
lot better than what we currently have up our sleeves.
Giving men power in healthy ways can help in protecting
women from becoming the countless victims of frustrations and can even help
those countries that are developing their economies and governance structures. However,
taking away some of the “reasons” for the high rates of rape by enabling and
empowering men is not doing much for women. Their safety and sexual choices
will forever be at the whims of the men around them if development does not
have a gendered approach. Poverty affects men and women differently;
development projects can be successful if and when those differences are
evaluated and considered during the course of implementation. Women in
developing countries are often not necessarily the heads of household, but are
certainly the caretakers of the family. Enabling women to make a living that
does not involve begging or prostitution, sustainable and safe work that can
pay for their children’s education, birth control methods and put food on the
table is a step towards empowerment. Education opportunities that allow women
to know their rights and defend them when necessary and health care systems that
ensure safe pregnancies and deliveries while providing everyday preventative
care lead to empowerment.
Every aspect of development must be seen through the double
lens of gender; what can be done for education so that it is the best it can be
for both girls and boys? What can be done within the health care system so both
men and women are protected and offered the care and information they need? How
can governance systems adequately represent both men and women’s interests
while advancing the development of the country as a whole?
Gendered development cannot be the side note or the
supplementary report to umbrella development projects. The development of men
and the development of women can happen simultaneously and in a parallel
fashion, in hopes that this empowerment of both will meet at some point in a
future egalitarian and human rights observant state. Developing countries have
their struggles and their challenges to achieving success and stability; there
is also a blank slate intrinsic to the development process that could change
the future of the populations, and most importantly, of its women. Development
can never guarantee the end of sexual violence, but the empowerment that comes
with gendered development will do wonders to decrease its frequency.
By Ariana Childs Graham, International Policy Associate at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, http://www.siecus.org/
To read the report, "Making Prevention Work: Lessons from Zambia on Reshaping the U.S. Response to the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic," click here.
A recent study, released this past spring by Stanford University researchers Eran Bendavid, MD, and Jayanta Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, was released in the Annals of Internal Medicine, which presented findings that the U.S. effort to curb the global HIV/AIDS epidemic has been a mixed bag. The study, “The President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief in Africa: An Evaluation of Outcomes,” found that significant progress has been made in the areas of care and treatment, a laudable accomplishment of the first phase of implementation. However, the report also confirmed what too many of us have involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS have foretold for far too long – we have not made any significant progress in curbing new infections because our prevention efforts have failed.
For those of us who closely follow the global HIV/AIDS pandemic, the numbers of new infections coming out of the countries in Africa hardest hit by HIV/AIDS confirms in real life, the findings of the Stanford report: without the right policies and adequate resources, the HIV/AIDS epidemic continues to wreak havoc. No single government or organization, international or otherwise, is solely responsible for the current situation in Zambia. Rather, it is the result of a failure to integrate sound, responsible policies at the international level while prioritizing effective execution of strategies on the ground. In other words, where none are to blame, all are to blame.
While PEPFAR does a great deal of good now, particularly in the areas of treatment and care, the prevention portfolio must be reshaped and fine-tuned into a tool to turn the tide in this global conflict against HIV/AIDS. A look at the particular case of PEPFAR’s impact in Zambia highlights the realities faced by those struggling against the HIV/AIDS epidemic, recommending where attention needs to be paid and suggested next steps. Zambia has an estimated HIV prevalence of 15.2 percent in a population of approximately 12 million, making it one of the Sub-Saharan African countries most affected by the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The high prevalence of HIV throughout the country has contributed to the decline in life expectancy which dropped to the astonishingly low number of 38.7 years in 2008.
The Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) has long been critical of the prevention paradigm in the Bush Administration’s global HIV/AIDS efforts and at the end of this month, will release Making Prevention Work: Lessons from Zambia on Reshaping the U.S. Response to the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic. This report is based on interviews and on-the-ground research by SIECUS staff to Zambia, and offers seven concrete recommendations for moving forward.
While advocates based in the United States can’t presume to put ourselves in the shoes of the dedicated workers and volunteers who are have given countless hours of their lives to curbing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Zambia every day, we can take care of business on our side – strengthening the largest source of money on earth to fight HIV/AIDS, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). During the last 20 or so years, our knowledge about HIV/AIDS treatment and prevention has come light years, and there is no reason why we cannot lower rates of transmission and ensure access to treatment if we finally take the steps that are necessary to show that we are serious in our fight.
Dr. Eric Goosby, nominated by President Obama at the end of April, is poised to assume the role of the Global AIDS Coordinator, and with this pending new leadership at the helm, now is the time to take a close and introspective look at our global HIV/AIDS efforts and make an informed and deliberate choice about how to proceed.
The nascent Responsibility to Protect (R2P) approach to international humanitarian law (IHL) in armed conflict is a relatively new addition to the discussion of the rights and responsibilities of sovereign states and the international community in times of internal conflict. The crux of the approach is that the governments of individual states have the responsibility to protect their own populations; if they are unable or unwilling or do so, the international community, whether in the form of the UN or individual states, has a responsibility to act to protect the vulnerable populations from mass atrocities. The international response can be diplomatic overtures, economic sticks (or carrots) and even military intervention, although only in the most extreme cases.
The approach is gaining more credibility worldwide, with more sovereign governments beginning to adopt the language of responsibility towards vulnerable people, though effective and consistent implementation under that pretense remains an elusive dream as of yet. While R2P signals the long-awaited advancement of IHL into the new era of modern globalization, it fails to address one of the most marginalized components of these vulnerable populations: women. Its new framing of responsibility is gender-blind and threatens to leave the gender considerations behind. Doing so would inevitably cripple any effective implementation of R2P in the future,
The focus of R2P is three-fold: prevention, reaction and rebuilding. Considerations of the degree of gender equality is of paramount importance for any of these steps and a gendered response is crucial in giving any reaction or rebuilding process the chance to succeed in the long-term. Conflict affects men and women in different ways, and ignoring women in any way is a recipe for half-hearted attempts at creating peaceful institutions after a conflict.
In the area of prevention, there is a strong link between the level of equality of women in a state and their access to development opportunities and the prevention of conflict. It must be considered that gender inequality in a state increases the likelihood of internal conflict in that state. A study in 2005 found that states with high fertility rates were nearly twice as likely to experience internal conflict as those with low fertility rates. States with women making up 10 percent of their labor force are nearly 30 times more likely to experience internal conflict than states whose labor force was made up of 40 percent women. Based on these conclusions, addressing gender inequality as a preventative measure could clearly have dramatic results in decreasing violence in their countries. Women’s organizations are also well placed to warn of any impending conflict because women are often the first victims of any violence. As concerns the reaction of international actors to a conflict, the measure of the impact of any reaction on women must be considered. Gender-sensitive responses could include the development of specialized police units and the training of peacekeepers in areas of gender-based violence and protection. Women’s organizations are again instrumental in achieving a sustainable peace and must have a voice in peace negotiations. Women are also a pivotal voice in any rebuilding process; the exclusion of women from any peace-building effort effectively excludes half of the population and cannot be sustainable. Studies have shown that the rate the female suffrage in a state is directly correlated to that state’s use of violence. Women’s political participation is almost the only way that a country can rebuild in a permanent and representative way; their marginalization could be a death knell for any fledgling peace effort.
The argument for including women in a discussion of preventing conflict, reacting to violence or rebuilding for a peaceful future is not only a feminist cause, but a practical aspect of peace and conflict. Cultures that resist the full and equal inclusion of women, which is certainly the majority of them, can hide behind cultural relativism while their government fail, economies weaken, opportunities disappear and violence rages. Cultures are flexible, adapting to technology, altered lifestyles and adjusted goals over time; why should the marginalization of women remain intact while the rest of the culture morphs and shifts? While gender inequality does not guarantee internal conflict, it is a consideration in determining the potential of a state to fall victim to violence; taming the specter of bloodshed within its borders should be impetus enough for cultures to accept the healthy inclusion and participation of women.
This bright new future in IHL heralded by R2P can pave the way for gender to be an essential part of any conflict-related discussion instead of being the afterthought that could determine the fall into violence or the success of peace.
Video: Africa Action brings friends and family to unite together and reflect on the struggle for human rights and social justice in Zimbabwe. April is a month in which millions of lives were lost in some of the worst cases of crimes against humanity and genocide. This includes the genocide in Rwanda, the war in Liberia, the holocaust, and the genocide in Darfur. This video is a reflection on the event and honoring the sanctity of human life. Together, we extend solidarity to calls for peace and justice around the world.
