The Precipitous Barbarisation of Our Times

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Opinion

ROME, Jul 23 2019 (IPS) – When all is said and done, it appears that Thomas Hobbes, the 17th century English philosopher who had a dire vision of man, was not totally wrong.

From the frivolous to the serious, in just a week we have had four items of news which would not happen in a normal world. An English porn beauty with 86,000 followers on social media has put bottles of the water she bathes in on sale at 30 pounds a bottle and has sold several thousand bottles.


Roberto Savio

A survey in Brazil found out that 7% of citizens believe that the earth is flat (40 percent of American schools teach that the world was created in a week, according to the Bible, so there cannot be ancient civilisations) Another survey, this time of members of the British Tory party, who seem likely to elect Boris Johnson as prime minister (not exactly a triumph of reason) are so in favour of a “hard” Brexit that they do not care if this means the exit of Scotland and the end of the United Kingdom. Finally, in order to win election, US president Donald Trump has made racism one of his banners and, in a country of immigrants, this has given him an increase of 5 points in opinion polls.

There are so many signs of barbarisation that they would fill a book… and, as Euripides famously wrote: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.

It is not a popular task, but we have to look at the reality and observe that, in the most scientifically and technologically developed period of history, we are living in times of precipitous barbarisation.

Social inequality has become the basis for the new economy. People have now lowered their expectations and are prepared to work part-time in a precarious job, where young people (according to the International Labour Organisation) can hope for a retirement pension of 600 euro a month. This has been accepted by the political system. We even have a study from Spain according to which, in the present housing market, nearly 87% of people need 90% of their salary just to rent a house.

Today, for many, a salary means survival, not a dignified life. The new economy has developed the so-called gig economy: you work to distribute food, but you are a co-entrepreneur without any of the rights of an employee, for an amount that will never allow you to marry. Children have grown accustomed to look at phenomena such as poverty or war as natural. And now politics are not based on ideas but on how you can successfully exploit the guts of the people, waving banners against immigrants (when we are witnessing a rapid fall in the birth rate) and splintering countries between ”We” who represent the people and “You” enemy of the country. The United States is the best example, where Republicans consider Democrats enemies of the United States. And this brings us to a central question: have Trump, Italy’s Matteo Salvini, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and company not been elected democratically? And they are the symptom or the cause of the “populocracy” which is replacing democracy?

It is not possible to offer a sociological or historical study here. Let us just use a bite: we have gone from the Gutenberg era into a new era – the Zuckerberg era.

Those who greeted the arrival of the Internet with enthusiasm also did so because it would democratise communication and therefore bring about greater participation. The hope was to see a world where horizontal communication would replace the vertical system of information which Gutenberg made possible. Information was, in fact, a support for states and business that used it to reach citizens, who had no recourse to feedback. With Internet, people could now speak directly throughout the world and the propaganda which accompanied its arrival was not considered relevant: it is not important to know, it is important to know where to find It. Well, we have all the statistics on how Internet has affected the general level of culture and dialogue.

The attention span of people has declined dramatically. The majority of Internet users do not stay on an item more than 15 seconds. In the last five years, book volumes have been shortened by 29 pages. Today, articles longer than 650 words are not accepted by columnists’ services. The last meeting of editors of international news agencies decided to lower the level of news from the level of 22 years to that of 17 years. In Europe, the percentage of people who buy at least one book a year now stands at 22% (in the United States it is now 10.5%). According to a recent study in Italy, only 40% of the population is able to read and understand a book. In the same country, 13% of libraries have closed in the last ten years. A very popular transmission in Spain was ”59 seconds” which saw a number of people debate round a table; at the 59th seconds their microphones would disappear. Today, the dream of a TV interviewer is that the person interviewed will give a shorter answer than the question. Newspapers are for people over forty. And there is a unanimous complaint about the level of students entering the university: not all are free from mistakes of orthography and syntax. And the list could continue practically ad infinitum.

The problem of barbarisation has major relevance for political participation. The Gutenberg generations were accustomed to dialogue and discussion. Today, 83% of Internet users (80% under the age of 21), do so only in the virtual world they carved out for themselves. People of Group A gather only with people of Group A. If they come across somebody from Group B, they insult each other. Politicians have been able to adjust rapidly to the system. The best example is Trump. All US newspapers together have a circulation of 60 million copies (ten million those of quality, both conservative and progressive). Trump has 60 million followers who take Trump’s tweets as information. The do not buy newspapers, and if they watch TV it is Fox, which is Trump’s amplifier. No wonder that over 80% of Trump’s voters would vote for him again. And the media, which have lost the ability to offer analysis and cover processes, not just events, take the easy path. Let us follow famous people and make the famous more famous. Analytical journalism is disappearing. In the United States it exists thanks to grants … in every European country, there are few quality papers left, and the largest circulation goes to tabloids which spare their readers the effort of thinking. The Daily Mirror in Britain and Bild in Germany are the best examples.

Internet has made everybody a communicator. This is a fantastic achievement. But in this increasing barbarisation, people also use the Internet for transmitting false information, stories based on fantasy, without any of the quality controls that the media world used to have. And artificial intelligence has been taking over, creating many false accounts, which now interfere in the electoral process, as was proven in the last US elections. We have to add to this that the algorithms used by the owners of the Internet aim to trap the attention of users in order to keep them as much as possible. This month, El Pais published a long study entitled “The toxic effects of YouTube”, where it shows how its algorithms push the viewer to items that are of fantasy, pseudoscientific and of great attraction.

This is due to the fact that the owners have become fabulously rich by transforming citizens into consumers. They find out our identity, and they sell it to companies for their marketing, and also for elections. Those owners have unprecedented wealth, never achieved in the real world: not only in that of production, but even in the world of finance, which has become a casino with no control. The entire world of production of services and goods, man-made, is now close to a trillion dollars a day; that same day, financial flows reach 40 trillion dollars. Jeff Bezos ‘s divorce gave his wife 38 billion dollars. That is equal to the annual average income of 20,000 dollars of 19 million people. No wonder that 80 individuals now possess the same wealth as 2.3 billion people (in 2008, they were 1,200 individuals).

According to historians, greed and fear are great engines of change in history. That was also true in the Gutenberg era. But now, they have triggered a combination of both in a short period of time. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the doctrine of liberal globalisation arrived with such strength that Margaret Thatcher (who with Ronald Reagan ushered in the new vision of individual profits and elimination of social goods) famously talked of TINA: There Is No Alternative.

The entire political system, including Social Democrats, accepted riding a system of values based on greed and unfettered competition at individual level, at state level and at international level. It took twenty years to understand that the poor have become poorer, and the rich richer, and that states have lost much of their sovereignty to multinational corporations and the world of finance. It is worth noting that, in 2009, in order to save a corrupt and inefficient financial system, the world spent 12 trillion dollars (the United States alone, 4 trillion). Since that rescue, banks have paid the impressive amount of 800 billion dollars in penalties for illicit activities.

The financial crisis of 2009 has triggered a wave of fear. Let us not forget that until 2009, there were no sovereignist, populist, xenophobic parties anywhere, except for Le Pen in France. Soon old traps such as “in name of the nation” and “the defence of religion” were resurrected by politicians able to ride fear. A new scapegoat – immigrants – was found and populocrats are now undermining democracy everywhere.

Populocracy is the new wave. Former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi ushered in a new language, and that language has now been updated by Salvini, Trump and so on. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are the new medium and now the medium is the message. The old elite had not found a new language.

The Zuckerberg era is an era of greed and fear. Zuckerberg is now attempting to create a global currency, the Libra, to be used by his 2.3 billion users. Until now, states were the only entities able to emit money, a symbol of the nation. Zuckerberg’s currency is based entirely on the Internet and will have no control or regulations. In case of a default, we will have a world crisis without precedent. In the Gutenberg era, this was not possible.

But who has made able Jeff Bezos to give 38 billion dollars to a former wife? Who has elected Trump and Salvini and company, who speak on behalf of the nation and the people, and turn those who do not agree into enemies of the nation and the people, creating an unprecedented polarisation, accompanied by an orgy of revolt against science and knowledge, which have supported the elite, and must now be put aside for the good of people.

This process of barbarisation should not obscure an old proverb: every country has the government it deserves. It is called democracy. However, the traditional elite has no code of communication with the new era. The answer will come from citizen mobilization.

A young Swedish girl, Greta Thunberg, has done more with her stubbornness to raise awareness about impending climate change than the entire political system. Even Trump (albeit for electoral reasons) has now declared that climate change is important.

Today, there many “points of light“ appearing in the world. The elections in Istanbul are a good example, as are the mobilisation in Hong Kong, Sudan and Nicaragua, among many others. Let us hope we will reach a point where people will take the reins of the process and awake the world from the precipitous course of barbarisation. Even Thomas Hobbes concluded that humankind will always, soon or later, find the right path, and give itself good governance. He thought that an elite would always be able to lead the masses.

Well, elites are now the Greta Thunbergs of the world.

Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti neoliberal global governance. Director for international relations of the European Center for Peace and Development.. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.

 

A Roadmap for Children as Victims, not Terrorists

Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Peace, TerraViva United Nations

UNITED NATIONS, Jun 26 2019 (IPS) – The feeling in the air at a recent meeting of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) was one of compassion and benevolence.

The focus was on children as Foreign Terrorist Fighters (FTFs), a subject that everyone at the panel discussion argued is delicate and politically sensitive.


Alexandra Martins, the Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Officer at the UNODC, pointed out that “”Nobody is a lost cause, and there is always a possibility to rehabilitate and reintegrate children from these groups.”

Two of her words were repeated by almost every speaker: “rehabilitate and reintegrate”.

The meeting was meant to discuss the release of the UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups.

The roadmap’s main goal is to provide UN’s 193 Member States with guidance on how to treat children associated with terrorist and violent extremist groups. It argues for an approach to rehabilitate those associated with or accused of being FTFs, and to reintegrate them back into their communities.

Though many of the children accused have taken part in terrorism, the UNODC advocates for a change in the way Member States handle the children.

Speaking during the release of the handbook, Dr. Jehangir Khan, Director at the UN Office of Counter-Terrorism/Counter Terrorism Centre (UN OCT/CCT), said “children must be seen first and foremost as victims.”

The roadmap was released alongside 4 technical assistance tools: UNODC Handbook on Children Recruited and Exploited by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups: The Role of the Justice System (2018); the UNODC Training Manual on Prevention of Child Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (May 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Child Victims of Recruitment by Terrorist and Violent Extremist Groups (to be released in July 2019); the UNODC Training Manual on Justice for Children in the Context of Counter-Terrorism (May 2019).

The documents are based on three years of technical assistance work conducted by the UNODC to Member States that have found children as FTFs.

One country already advocating its support for the Roadmap is Lebanon. Until 2013, children accused of being or associated with terrorist fighters were kept in adult prisons and tried as such.

“It is in prison that I learned the meaning of life” one of the boys, aged 19, remarked in a video played by the representative from Lebanon stated.

A step in the direction of treating children as victims came in 2013, when they were moved to a juvenile prison.

Lebanon’s Head of the Prison Administration at the Ministry of Justice of Lebanon, Judge Raja AbiNader, said: “By showing them the same respect we showed the rest of the children, things started to change.”

Martins told IPS that there are many such countries, like Lebanon, whose children and communities have already benefited from the guidance offered in the Roadmap.

“As a result of the protocol, children deprived of liberty for association with Boko Haram were released and transferred to child protection authorities to begin a process of reintegration in their communities,” she said.

Martins stated that more than 30 countries have received guidance on child FTFs from the UNODC’s, from 6 different regions (West Africa, East Africa, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia).

Despite the Roadmap offering guidance, at the panel discussion, Martins clarified that “there is no one size fits all approach” on handling children.

There have been different approaches offered on handling the children in general, and specifically when dealing with different genders.

There will be a second event during the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) in September that Martins hopes will “promote the guidance further.”

Gender and the Roadmap

But there appears to be some disagreement still on the treatment of boys and girls during the rehabilitation and reintegration processes.

Under international law (Havana Rule 87.d., Bangkok Rules), boys and girls must be held in separate detention facilities. But the Roadmap encourages them to still engage together, to foster development.

The Roadmap also advocates for targeted approaches on the treatment of girls.

Martins told IPS that girls are “considerably more vulnerable to both physical and sexual abuse and require special attention in this regard.”

She noted that “girls deprived of liberty are exposed to other forms of sexual violence such as threats of rape, touching, ‘virginity testing’, being stripped naked, invasive body searches, insults and humiliations of a sexual nature.”

Given these sensitive issues, and the fact that girls are different physiologically and often psychologically from boys at certain development stages, the Roadmap advocates for an awareness of gender and for specific targeted approaches.

“A section in the manual alludes that girl victims of recruitment and exploitation by terrorist and violent extremist groups require specific approaches to reintegration, because of their increased exposure to violence at multiple levels and from different actors,” Martins said.

But it is not clear yet that this section on gender differences has been implemented.

While Martins says the Roadmap takes seriously the different approaches for girls and boys, Judge AbiNader told IPS that in Lebanon “Very honestly, we’re not working specifically with girls concerning rehabilitation.”

As of June 7th, Lebanon has 10 boys and 2 girls in prison for being associated with or accused of being FTFs.

When asked why there were not specific programs that tackle children of divergent genders differently, he argued that they girls “should be treated the same” during rehabilitation.

“And it hasn’t been discussed because the number [of girls in prison for accusations of being FTFs] is so low,” he added.

Despite the low numbers of accused girls in detention facilities, Martins believes that targeted women’s health education should be provided, and that “Access to age- and gender-specific programmes and services, such as counselling for sexual abuse or violence, has to be given to girls.”

Though the UNODC has advocated a change in outlook on children involved with terrorist organizations, the Roadmap’s release is just the beginning of that change being implemented.

 

Civil Society Leaders Meet Amid Protests, Attacks on Rights

Civil Society, Conferences, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global, Global Geopolitics, Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Regional Categories, TerraViva United Nations

Civil Society

This article is part of a series on the current state of civil society organisations (CSOs), which will be the focus of International Civil Society Week (ICSW), sponsored by CIVICUS, and scheduled to take place in Belgrade, April 8-12.

Representatives said that civil society and concerned citizens worldwide have started to respond with “renewed determination” to the unprecedented challenges facing the world, and that this resolve will be in the spotlight during International Civil Society Week (ICSW). Pictured here is a protest by France’s Gilets Jaunes (or Yellow Vests) from earlier this year. Credit: Olivier Ortelpa/CC By 2.0

PARIS, Apr 7 2019 (IPS) – Amid rising attacks on rights campaigners, and mass protests in countries such as France and Serbia, civil society groups are urging governments to ensure the protection of “democratic values” and freedom of expression.

In Belgrade, some 850 human rights campaigners, civil society leaders and engaged citizens will meet Apr. 8 to 12 for the annual International Civil Society Week (ICSW) – a gathering co-hosted by the Johannesburg-based global civil society alliance CIVICUS and Serbian association Civic Initiatives, with the support of the Balkans Civil Society Development Network.

Under the theme, “The Power of Togetherness”, ICSW 2019 “seeks to generate deep conversations among civil society leaders, social justice advocates, development practitioners, members of the philanthropic community, diplomats and others on emerging global challenges and how civil society should be responding to these,” said Mandeep Tiwana, CIVICUS’ chief programmes officer.

“Defence of democratic values, civic space and participation, along with citizen action, will be among the topics of discussion,” he told IPS in an email interview while en route to Belgrade.

“Our message to governments is that the right to peaceful protest is a basic human right enshrined in constitutional and international law. Governments have an inherent responsibility to enable the right to peaceful protest as an integral element of the defence of democracy,” he added.

The ICSW meeting comes at a time when human-rights organisations, campaigners and media workers in many regions have experienced growing repression, including arrests, beatings and killings that have shocked and outraged international observers.

“In country after country, democracy is under attack, with populist and right-wing movements gaining ground and democratic regression being witnessed even in countries historically considered bastions of democracy,” CIVICUS says.

“Activists, journalists and people who speak out against growing restrictions are persecuted. A historic rise of populist leaders continues to erode fundamental freedoms, heightening political polarisation and sowing division,” the group adds.

Representatives said that civil society and concerned citizens worldwide have started to respond with “renewed determination” to the unprecedented challenges facing the world, and that this resolve will be in the spotlight during ICSW, which includes a large youth participation.

“This year’s event in Serbia comes at a critical and opportune time for civil society and the world’s citizens to realise the power of unified, collective action to challenge a global trend that threatens our fundamental freedoms,” said Lysa John, CIVICUS’ Secretary General.

The discussions will take place against a backdrop of unrest in various countries: massive public demonstrations have been continuing in Serbia, for instance, while France’s Gilets Jaunes (or Yellow Vests) marched again on Apr. 6 in Paris and other cities for the 21st weekend in a row.

This latest French strife began last November in response to fuel price increases, and the demonstrators say they won’t give up until their demands are met for a restructuring of French society so that the “elite” aren’t always in charge.

During earlier marches, rights groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticised the French police for using “excessive force” and “heavy-handed” crowd control and anti-riot measures.

But some protestors have also participated in violence, looting and the targeting of media professionals, as reporters covering the marches have come under attack.

Media workers, in fact, often find themselves between a rock and a hard place, caught amongst the security forces and protestors as they try to report on turbulent events. CIVICUS said that the role of the media and their relationship with civil society will be a key topic of discussion at ICSW, alongside the focus on protecting rights campaigners.

“CIVICUS is working in several ways to stop attacks on members of the media and civil society activists targeted for exposing rights violations or speaking truth to power,” Tiwana said. “We engage with a broad range of civil society organisations that support press freedom using several approaches ranging from in-depth participatory research and analysis to raising awareness of attacks on the media, strategic coalition building, and directly engaging decision-makers at the national and international levels.”

He told IPS that joint efforts had contributed to the “release of journalists and the scrapping of repressive bills that restrict media freedoms” in some instance, while in others the efforts had “helped put serious  violations of media freedoms on the UN’s radar through its various human rights mechanisms”.

The choice of Serbia’s capital as the 2019 ICSW venue will draw attention to current protests and also recall the bloody recent history of the Balkans, highlighting the need for international vigilance in protecting rights, according to civil society groups.

“During the 1990s, authoritarian regimes produced conflicts, severe human rights violations and genocide. Today, as we approach European Union membership, internal and international independent monitoring mechanisms show shrinking media freedoms, a lack of separation of power and rule of law, and deterioration of freedom of elections,” stated Maja Stojanovic, of Civic Initiatives.

“This region, and particularly Serbia, demonstrates that changing laws, strategies or governments offers no guarantees – democracy does not exist if it is not built constantly. By hosting this year’s event in Belgrade, we will convene and send messages rooted in local circumstances and, in the same time, fully reflecting global challenges,” she said.

Ahead of the meeting, Serbia and four other countries have been added to a global watchlist of countries that have seen an “escalation in serious threats to fundamental freedoms in recent weeks and months”, according to CIVICUS Monitor, an online platform that tracks threats to civil society across the world.

Citizens of all five countries (Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Venezuela are the others) are experiencing increasing rights violations that “include killings, attacks on protesters, media restrictions and arbitrary detentions of human rights defenders”.

“It is deeply concerning to see escalated threats to basic rights in these countries,” said Marianna Belalba Barreto, CIVICUS’ Civic Space Research Lead.

“It is critical that these five governments wake up to their failure to respect international law and take swift action to respect their citizens’ most basic freedoms in a democratic society,” Belalba said.

CIVICUS is also calling upon “neighbouring states and international bodies to put pressure on these countries to end the repression”.

 

South-South Cooperation: a Path to Implementing UN’s 2030 Agenda

Civil Society, Conferences, Development & Aid, Editors’ Choice, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Poverty & SDGs, TerraViva United Nations

Opinion

António Guterres, is Secretary-General of the United Nations

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 25 2019 (IPS) – I see five issues that will be central to implementing the Paris Agreement on climate change and achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. South-South Cooperation can offer solutions to all of them.

First, rising inequality both between and within countries is eroding trust and deepening a sense of injustice. Globalization has enabled many people to escape poverty – but its benefits are not shared equitably and its costs fall disproportionately on the poor and vulnerable.


António Guterres

Cooperation can enable developing countries to learn from each other and grow more quickly, close income gaps and build inclusive, resilient societies.

Second, climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are losing the race. 2018 was the fourth hottest year on record and natural disasters are impacting nearly every region.

That is why I am bringing world leaders together at a climate action summit in New York in September. I am calling on leaders to bring concrete, realistic plans that raise ambition on mitigation, adaptation, finance and innovation.

We must enhance nationally determined contributions by 2020, in line with reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 45 percent over the next decade.

We need fundamental shifts to support green financing and increase investment in climate action from billions to trillions.

The Green Climate Fund must become fully resourced and operational. And the pledge to mobilize 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 for climate action in the developing world, including mitigation and adaptation, must be implemented.

South-South cooperation will be vital to ensure mutual support and exchange of best practices, to enhance adaptation and increase the resilience of developing countries and communities facing the devastating impacts of climate change.

South-South Cooperation can also support the transformation of economies dependent on fossil fuels, with strategies that reinforce both sustainable development and environmental protection.

Third, infrastructure and energy needs are set to expand enormously, thanks to population growth and urbanization in the Global South.

Some 60 percent of the area that is expected to become urban by 2030 has yet to be built. If we get this wrong, we will lock ourselves into a high-emissions future with potentially catastrophic consequences.

But if we get infrastructure right, it will be an opportunity for development cooperation, industrial transition and growth, cross-border trade and investment, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and sustainable development.

Fourth, gender has been described as the docking station for the SDGs, since it offers opportunities to engage on different crosscutting issues. It must be at the heart of all efforts if we are to succeed.

We have seen significant progress for women over the past forty years. More girls are in school; more women are doing paid work. Harmful practices like female genital mutilation and child marriage are in decline.

But this progress is not complete; indeed, we are seeing a pushback against our efforts and in some cases the gender equality gap is widening.

This affects us all, because where women are better represented in politics, we see improved social protection and increased spending on development. When women have access to land and credit, harvests increase. When girls are educated, they contribute more to their communities and break cycles of poverty.

And let’s not forget that countries with the highest number of women in parliament, in national security institutions, and as farmers, are indeed in the Global South.

Fifth, the multilateral development system must be better positioned to support South-South cooperation and implement the 2030 Agenda.

South-South cooperation has evolved significantly over the last decades – but multilateral institutions, including the United Nations, have not kept up.

I am grateful to Member States for recognizing the role of the United Nations in the outcome document for the South-South Conference (in Buenos Aires). We will take up the mandates you are entrusting to us, and you can count on my personal commitment to make sure the ongoing reforms of the United Nations reinvigorate our support for South-South cooperation.

We also need to realign financing for sustainable development and unlock the trillions that will deliver the 2030 Agenda.

South-South cooperation can never be a substitute for official development assistance or replace the responsibilities of the Global North set out in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda and the Paris Agreement.

South-South Cooperation must also involve young people, civil society, the private sector, academia and others, building innovative partnerships and extending the reach of initiatives. It must harness the potential of new technologies and digitalization that create opportunities and promote inclusivity.

South-South cooperation is a global exercise of all countries of the South to benefit everyone, including the Least Developed Countries. Every country, every partner has something to share or teach, whatever their circumstances.

This conference is a starting point.

Later this year, over the course of a week in September, Heads of State will gather in New York for the Sustainable Development Goals Summit and the Climate Action Summit. They will discuss Universal Health Coverage, Financing Sustainable Development and the Global Partnership to support Small Island Developing States.

All these meetings are aimed at accelerating implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement, which were born from a consensus on the common interests that bind us together.

Now is the time to stake out that common ground again and take bold and transformative action.

Together, we can achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, we can beat climate change, and transform the lives of people around the world.

I thank the Government and people of Argentina for hosting this Conference.

Forty years ago, the landmark international conference on South-South Cooperation resulted in the Buenos Aires Plan of Action for Promoting and Implementing Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries.

Since then, the Buenos Aires Plan of Action, known as BAPA, has been the foundation and reference point for South-South cooperation, based on principles of national ownership, equality and non-conditionality.

BAPA transformed the dynamics of international cooperation.

It highlighted the value of a different form of cooperation, based on the exchange of knowledge and appropriate technologies among nations facing similar development challenges.

Across the global South, we have seen remarkable advances since BAPA. Thanks in part to South-South cooperation, millions of women, men and children have been lifted out of extreme poverty. Developing countries have achieved some of the fastest economic growth rates ever seen and have set global standards for sustainable development.

As we gather again in Buenos Aires, we recognize and celebrate the long journey we have walked together.

But we also recognize our common challenges.

Today, we are here to ensure that South-South cooperation remains responsive to the evolving realities of global development and the changing needs of developing countries as they implement the 2030 Agenda.

We have an opportunity to develop and strengthen frameworks for South-South cooperation; improve systems and tools; increase transparency; and strengthen accountability.

*Extracts from a keynote address by Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to the Conference on South-South Conference in Buenos Aires on March 20, 2019.

 

Communication, a Key Tool for South-South Cooperation

Civil Society, Conferences, Featured, Global, Global Governance, Globalisation, Headlines, Press Freedom, Regional Categories, South-South, TerraViva United Nations

South-South

Participants taking part in the colloquium "The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation", organised in Buenos Aires by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America, within the framework of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Participants taking part in the colloquium “The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation”, organised in Buenos Aires by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America, within the framework of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 24 2019 (IPS) – Communication can be a key tool for the development of cooperation among the countries of the global South, but the ever closer relations between them do not receive the attention they deserve from the media.


This conclusion arose from the meeting organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America in Buenos Aires on Mar. 22, during the third and final day of the Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation, which brought together representatives of almost 200 countries in the Argentine capital.

“The role of communication in the challenge of South-South cooperation” was the colloquium that brought together journalists, political analysts and officials from international organisations in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia.

“There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs.” — Mario Lubetkin

The colloquium, organised by the regional branch of the international news agency IPS, was one of the parallel meetings to the conference and the only one dedicated to communication.

“Forty years ago, when the first conference, also held in Buenos Aires, approved the Plan of Action that forms the basis of South-South Ccoperation, there was awareness that communication was key,” said Mario Lubetkin, assistant director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

“However, that notion has been lost and communication has not kept up with the changes that have taken place since then. This creates a vacuum for our societies,” said Lubetkin, the moderator of the meeting.

“There is little coverage on what progress has been made in trade, technology or health cooperation among the countries of the South, which may seem very different among themselves but are quite similar in terms of their needs,” concluded Lubetkin, a former director general of IPS, an international news agency that prioritises information from the global South.

In front of an audience made up mainly of journalists and other media workers, the debate was oriented towards the most appropriate tools for developing countries to better disseminate news from the global South, the latest term coined to define the group of nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia.

The president of IPS Latin America, Sergio Berensztein, stressed that “today there is an opportunity for nations like ours, thanks to the fact that there is no longer the biloparity of the Cold War era, nor the unipolarity of the years that followed. Today we are in a time of what we call apolarity.”

Berensztein stressed that at a time when there is a renaissance of protectionism and nationalism in the world, it is necessary for journalists to reinforce the idea of cooperation and ensure that a plurality of voices is heard on the international stage.

“We are living in a moment of crisis in which the old has not fully died yet and the new has not yet been fully born. That is why it is a time of uncertainty and accurate information is an element that favors the peaceful resolution of conflicts,” said Berensztein.

View of the room where the meeting on the role of communication in promoting South-South cooperation was held in Buenos Aires, organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America. The participants agreed that media outlets in the global South must generate attractive content that will allow them to combat a news agenda imposed by the countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

View of the room where the meeting on the role of communication in promoting South-South cooperation was held in Buenos Aires, organised by Inter Press Service (IPS) Latin America. The participants agreed that media outlets in the global South must generate attractive content that will allow them to combat a news agenda imposed by the countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The power of the large media based in countries of the industrialised North, which tend to impose their journalistic agenda on a global level, was present in the debate as a worrying factor and as evidence of the failure of initiatives aimed at bringing about a new and more balanced information and communication order.

“What is the best way to foment the mass circulation of information about the global South, in order to escape this problem?” was one of the main questions that arose during the two-hour debate, held at a hotel in the Argentine capital.

From the city of Lagos, in a videoconference, the news director of the Nigerian Television Authority, Aliyu Baba Barau, called for strengthened cooperation between media outlets and journalists from developing countries, through the organisation of trips and mechanisms that favour the sharing of resources.

“Nigerian TV permanently shares its resources with other countries,” he said as an example of what can be done in terms of cooperation in media projects in the South.

“The mechanism of South-South cooperation and its advantages need to be understood not only by those who lead our nations, but also by the global community,” said Baba Barau.

Media representatives from China played a prominent role in the exchange of ideas and reflected the strong interest in Asia’s giant in achieving closer ties with Africa and Latin America.

Participants included Zhang Lu, deputy editor of China Daily, the country’s largest English-language news portal; Cui Yuanlei, Mexico correspondent for the Xinhua news agency, which distributes information in several languages (including Spanish); and Li Weilin, team leader of the CCTV television network in São Paulo, Brazil.

Li said the media in emerging countries should not depend on the information distributed by the news networks of industrialised countries, and said journalism should be a way to share experiences.

He said, for example, that during the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, CCTV produced coverage for people in Kenya to see how Jamaica’s star runners were trained, and for Jamaica to meet the Kenyan runners who perform so well in the long-distance and medium-distance races.

Roberto Ridolfi, Assistant-Director General of FAO’s Programme Support and Technical Cooperation Department, stressed that the countries of the South “do not have a shared past, but they do have the same future.”

Ridolfi said communication has a key role to play in the arduous path towards Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which seek to improve the quality of life of the world’s population and bring the South into line with the level of development in the North.

“The media and journalists have the mission of attracting audiences with news linked to sustainability. The proliferation of plastics in the oceans, the devastation of forests or the problems plaguing food production are issues that should be on the agenda,” he said.

Like the other panelists, Ridolfi lamented that societies are unaware of the South-South cooperation mechanisms that have emerged in recent years and said journalists have a lot of work to do in that regard.

“We have yet to demonstrate to the world the real value and benefits of South-South cooperation,” the FAO official said.

The need for African, Asian, Latin American and Arab media to get to know each other better was recognised as a necessity.

The local participants were particularly emphatic about this, since Argentina is a country with deep cultural ties with Europe, where little is known about what happens in the countries of the regions of the South, beyond catastrophes and conflicts.

The challenge, now that new technologies have democratised communication but have also put it at risk, is to generate information from the South in attractive formats that allow a better understanding of the realities and opportunities in developing countries and between the countries and regions of the South.

 

South-South Cooperation Now Triangulates with the North

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South-South

The Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation was held at the Exhibition and Convention Centre in the Argentine capital, forty years after the Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries produced the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) in 1978. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The Second High-Level United Nations Conference on South-South Cooperation was held at the Exhibition and Convention Centre in the Argentine capital, forty years after the Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries produced the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA) in 1978. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

BUENOS AIRES, Mar 23 2019 (IPS) – It sounds like a contradictory play on words, but the countries of the industrialised North are currently the big supporters of South-South cooperation, as was demonstrated at the United Nations Second High-Level Conference on this subject, held in the Argentine capital.


If there is one thing that the three-day meeting in Buenos Aires, which ended on Friday Mar. 22, made clear, it is that the space created 40 years ago as an arena for mutual assistance and exchange of experiences among countries of the South, aimed at mutually promoting their development, no longer belongs only to them and has in fact become triangular.

Francisco Quintanar is a Salvadoran engineer who was in the Argentine capital to participate in the conference – not as a representative of El Salvador, but as part of the German delegation attending the meeting, which brought together 1,500 representatives from 193 countries.

“In the past, triangular cooperation was seen simply as a way of adding funding to South-South collaborative projects, but in which donors were passive actors. Now, instead, we do joint projects.” — Noel González Segura

He came to tell the story of an energy efficiency project born in February 2016, which benefited 10 textile, chemical and other companies in El Salvador and Nicaragua. The initiative was developed with technical assistance from Mexican experts and German funding.

“The Salvadoran companies were able to reduce their energy consumption by the equivalent of 2.5 million dollars a year thanks to this project, so the positive result was not only economic but also environmental,” Quintanar told IPS.

“This is an example of triangular cooperation: Germany provided the resources, Mexico provided technical expertise, and El Salvador and Nicaragua were the beneficiaries,” he added.

Hundreds of similar projects were exhibited at events parallel to the conference, which was inaugurated on Wednesday, Mar. 20 by U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres, along with Argentine President Mauricio Macri, and featured South-South/North triangular cooperation.

The meeting took place forty years after the U.N. Conference on Technical Cooperation among Developing Countries, held in 1978 also in Buenos Aires, when the last military dictatorship of this South American country (1976-1983), responsible for serious human rights violations, was at the height of its power.

In the midst of the Cold War, that conference was characterised as an effort by countries in Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean and Asia, aimed at strengthening their negotiating power and making their voices heard more on the international stage, while at the same time promoting mutual cooperation between their countries and regions.

The result of the 1978 conference was the Buenos Aires Plan of Action (BAPA), which built a bridge of political collaboration and economic and social cooperation among developing countries in what is now called the global South.

Salvadoran engineer Francisco Quintanar (L) was part of the German delegation that attended the South-South Cooperation Conference in Buenos Aires. His project on energy efficiency is an example of triangular cooperation between countries of the South, with the support of one or more countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Salvadoran engineer Francisco Quintanar (L) was part of the German delegation that attended the South-South Cooperation Conference in Buenos Aires. His project on energy efficiency is an example of triangular cooperation between countries of the South, with the support of one or more countries of the industrialised North. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

Forty years later, in the gigantic lobby of the Buenos Aires Exhibition and Convention Centre, a two-storey underground building inaugurated less than two years ago, it looked like just another international meeting, similar to any other major U.N. conference.

On the stage of the High Level Conference, known in U.N. slang as BAPA+40, the sober suits of the diplomats from Japan, Norway or Switzerland contrasted with the colourful outfits of the African representatives.

And in the exhibition hall the participants could visit the stands of the Spanish or German development aid agencies, or the stand of Argentina’s Foreign Ministry, since it does not have a cooperation agency.

“The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the climate agenda make it necessary for the world to work in a very different way than it has in the past,” said Marc-André Blanchard, Canada’s permanent representative to the U.N.

“Neither the North nor the South can do it alone. That’s why Canada was so eager to be here,” he told IPS.

“Think of foreign aid to emerging countries. It is essential for them, but it is only two percent of the money needed to implement Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development,” which is articulated in the 17 SDGs, he added.

Blanchard concluded: “We need to find the remaining 98 percent and we can only do that with new forms of collaboration. That’s why countries in the South need countries like Canada as partners.”

The South-South Cooperation Conference was accompanied by a number of parallel events, organised for example by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), which discussed how to promote direct farmer-to-farmer cooperation among developing countries. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

The South-South Cooperation Conference was accompanied by a number of parallel events, organised for example by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), which discussed how to promote direct farmer-to-farmer cooperation among developing countries. Credit: Daniel Gutman/IPS

“We have knowledge or financial resources, but they are limited,” admitted Noel González Segura, director of planning at the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation.

“So through triangular cooperation with a traditional partner like the United States, Germany or Spain, we can multiply our capacity for action in favour of third countries,” he told IPS.

According to González Segura, “in the past, triangular cooperation was seen simply as a way of adding funding to South-South collaborative projects, but in which donors were passive actors. Now, instead, we do joint projects.”

“So, for example, the Germans come with money, knowledge and proposals, we add an international organisation and together we build a stronger partnership,” he said.

The Final Document of the Buenos Aires Conference, which unusually was distributed before the beginning of the meeting, speaks of the need to “better understand triangular cooperation and to provide more evidence and rigorous information on its magnitude, scope and effects.”

The text, signed by heads of delegations and senior government representatives, argues that triangular cooperation “offers an adaptable and flexible approach to the evolving problems of development.”

One of the cases reported during the conference was the cooperation of technicians from the National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) of Argentina to help rural Haitians improve their ability to grow food after the devastation caused by Hurricane Jeanne, which in 2004 left more than 3,000 dead in the Caribbean island nation.

“After the tragedy there was a tremendous lack of fresh food. We traveled and worked there with Haitian technicians and 4,000 volunteers, 60 percent of whom were women,” said Francisco Zelaya, a technician at INTA, which depends on the Secretariat of Agroindustry.

“We reached 40,000 families and developed 13 local species of seeds,” he told IPS.

Zelaya said that “Argentina did not have the financial capacity to collaborate on a project like this. So the initiative was planned with Canada, which acted as a funder because it has a particular interest in Haiti, since it tends to receive many migrants from that country.”

For Roberto Ridolfi, assistant to the Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), “we must abandon the idea that two countries in the South can make a wonderful agreement and then ask a third country to foot the bill.”

“What we need are triangles, in which everyone brings something and takes something away. Innovative forms of South-South cooperation must be found. If we want to replicate North-South collaboration projects, it will be difficult,” he told IPS.

“It is about finding ways to combine skills, money and human resources from the three sides of the triangle. We don’t want to measure everything by money, but development is supported by investment,” Ridolfi said.