Bernardine Evaristo won half the Booker Prize last week — sharing the award with Margaret Atwood, when the judges, chaired by Peter Florence, failed to do their job, choosing a winner.
The split decision, expressly forbidden by the rules of the prize, has been universally ridiculed. One of the judges, Afua Hirsch, didn’t help by publishing an article asserting she was proud of the decision, while inadvertently revealing that, on her part at least, it was made on dodgy criteria. When it comes to Atwood and Evaristo, “you can’t compare them”, she said, “but you can recognise them both. And I’m glad this is what we did.” On this helpless basis, there can be no literary prizes. Or if there are, they should have as many winners as entrants.
How did the Booker end up such a muddle? Perhaps partly because it was so overtly, this year, a prize devoted to celebrating diversity above other forms of excellence in fiction.
If diversity is what you value most in new fiction — and given that one of the great purposes of fiction is to help us understand the experiences of others, it might very well be — then it seems almost indecent to prize one form of diversity more than another. So that would make it difficult to choose a single winner wouldn’t it? Unless perhaps it is possible to decide which novel is, as it might be almost quantitatively, the most diverse?
That novel this year is Girl, Woman, Other. This highly readable, even slightly saga-ish, book is dedicated to presenting the life experiences of 12 black British women from different backgrounds, giving a voice as directly as possible to those who, until really quite recently, have been little represented in British fiction, certainly not in novels with the sales that Evaristo’s now seems certain to achieve.
Each of these women is given her own section, almost a separate short story, loosely linked. First we meet Amma, the character most resembling Evaristo herself, a radical feminist lesbian playwright in her fifties, about to go to the first night of her latest play, The Last Amazon of Dahomey, at the National. The book returns to the celebratory after-party in its penultimate chapter, an occasion that brings together nearly all the other characters.
There’s Yazz, Amma’s sparky 19-year-old student daughter, fathered by dapper gay media don, Roland. There’s Dominique, her lifelong ally, despite her move to America, after being inducted into a radical feminist lesbian commune by a controlling lover, Nzinga. There’s her schoolfriend Shirley, who has become a teacher herself, striving to help her more talented pupils. Among them is Carole who, after being gang-raped as a teenager, has resolutely taken control of her life, attending Cambridge, becoming a banker — and finding a white partner, to the initial consternation of her Nigerian mother, Bummi. Carole’s schoolfriend LaTisha, however, works in a supermarket and has three children by different fathers.
Unconventional prose: BernardineEvaristo at the 2019 Booker Prize at The Guildhall in central London. She shared the award with Margaret Atwood (Dave Benett)
Then there’s the extended family of Grace, born in 1895, to an itinerant Abyssinian seaman and a 16-year-old girl from South Shields, orphaned when she was eight but married to a landowning farmer. Her one child, Hattie, now 93, married an African-American serviceman, Slim — and their descendants include Megan/Morgan, who self-identifies as gender-free, “they”, and has become an important social media influencer and activist. “Megan was part Ethiopian, part African-American, part Malawian, and part English which felt weird when you broke it down like that because essentially she was just a complete human being”, we are told, in a voice that is partly her own but also choric.
One of the 12 women here, a foundling, Penelope, a middle-class, twice-divorced feminist now nearly 80, seems not to belong so much to this novel — until an Ancestry DNA test proves otherwise, returning her to its heart, for a heartwarming end (“this is about being / together”).
Evaristo packs all this in by adopting a free declamatory style, using commas, but no caps to start sentences, and no full-stops or quotation marks. The prose is printed almost as verse, with crudely emphatic line breaks, and even single-word lines, mixing together narration, dialogue and internal monologue, reading at times like a play-script. The syntax is repetitious (she does this, she does that), the diction loose and conversational. Evaristo provides a great deal of information about her characters (including always about the food they eat and the clothes they wear and other such markers) but it nonetheless remains cursory and sketchy, like a series of rapid CV’s.
Despite the lack of conventional punctuation Girl, Woman, Other makes for fast, easy reading, but it never deepens much as a novel beyond this level of quasi-sociological reportage, skimming along. Perhaps given the mission — “ I just wanted these characters to expand in people’s minds the idea of what black British women can be”, Evaristo said after half-winning — this profusion is no fault, but rather the essence of her achievement.
The Booker Prize might usefully clarify its purpose next time around, though.
Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton, £16.99), buy it here.
policy in the area of rights through international non-profit organisations. Her areas of interest include sexual and reproductive health and rights, gender equality, women’s rights and social justice*.
Credit: United Nations
BRUSSELS, Oct 22 2019 (IPS) – The number of newly elected Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) who oppose women’s reproductive rights, gender equality, sexuality education, same sex marriage and the Council of Europe Convention on Violence Against Women (Istanbul Convention) stands at around 30 per cent.
This European Parliament term has therefore seen a doubling of the number of MEPs who claim to fight these issues as compared to the last one, where I estimated around 15 per cent of parliamentarians fell into this category in a study for Finnish MEP Heidi Hautala.
Issues as diverse as women’s reproductive health and rights, LGBTI rights, sexuality education and preventing gender-based violence are collectively termed by their opponents as being part of a larger agenda of ‘gender ideology’.
The use of this ambiguous term has given opponents of women’s and other minority rights the ability to combine several diverging topics under one umbrella and present them as an integral package, allegedly being imposed on ‘traditional families’ by an all-powerful feminist and LGBTI lobby.
Many progressives are baffled by the rise of this phenomenon and often resort to the backlash or backsliding discourse to explain it, suggesting it is mere conservative opposition to the inevitable march towards greater gender equality and LGBTI rights.
However, this argument has limited explanatory power, as it ignores the complexities of the right-wing narratives and presents their voters as individually responsible for their rise.
Elena Zacharenko
To fully understand what is fuelling this trend, progressives must ask themselves a question that is much more self-reflective: what is the problem with the political, social and economic system in which opposition to these issues is able to capture the imaginations not only of supporters of extreme-right parties but also some of the voters traditionally belonging to the political centre?
As has already been argued, opposition to ‘gender ideology’ allows not only for the divergent causes mentioned above to be brought together under one umbrella, but to also bring together disparate actors, from centre-right to far-right and libertarian parties, as well as various religious movements and conservative grassroots organisations, for a common cause.
Indeed, the increase in opponents of ‘gender ideology’ in the European Parliament comes mainly from the strong performance by Matteo Salvini’s Lega, Nigel Farage’s Brexit party, Jarosław Kaczynski’s Law and Justice, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz and Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National – groups which have little in common in terms of their origins and programmes, aside from their opposition to these issues.
While most of these parties belong primarily to the new far-right Identity and Democracy group or the conservative and Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists, Fidesz and Bulgarian GERB are opponents of ‘gender ideology’ within the centre-right EPP, while Slovakian SMER and Romanian PSD represent this trend within the S&D group.
A healthy debate within the progressive movement
While they are not unaware of the divisions in the progressive movement, conservative actors choose to present the debate within the women’s and LGBTI rights movements as homogenous and equally supported by the political mainstream.
This allows them to create a false dichotomy between themselves as proponents ‘traditional families’ and the progressives as ‘gender ideologues’ for their own political gain.
This picture however, misrepresents the progressive scene as one with a clear and unified agenda, rather than a heterogenous collection of movements, activists, NGOs, academics and public entities with distinct and often disparate opinions and calls.
While many of the objectives of these movements are indeed aligned, significant disagreements continue to exist between parts of the feminist movement and the LGBTI movement, as exemplified by the ongoing debate on defining gender as a social construct prescribing roles for men and women and that of a felt sense of identity, or that on surrogacy.
Within feminism itself, many divergent schools of thought clash, with liberal feminists opposed to radical feminists in the sex work vs. prostitution debate and Marxist and (neo)liberal feminists disagreeing on the origins and solutions to women’s oppression as being systemic/socio-economic or individual/cultural in nature.
Opposition to ‘gender ideology’, including labour market optimisation efforts, has become a new and very potent form of anti-establishment organising and protesting the neoliberal order.
Regrettably, in view of the abovementioned rise of opposition to many of the progressive movement’s causes, its reaction has been to attempt to silence these internal debates or present them as settled – to the detriment of their quality. It is often argued that the progressive movement cannot be seen to be internally squabbling in the face of the advance of the right, lest they become the ‘useful idiots’ furthering their opponents’ cause.
This results in self-censorship as movements do not want to appear to break the joint front in the face of attacks, stifling healthy debate and creating taboo topics. However, this attitude is not conducive to coming up with either a better understanding of the arguments of the other side, or with appropriate society-wide debates leading to policy-level solutions.
The EU’s proposed gender equality measures are designed to optimise the bloc’s economic outcomes and labour market performance and take little interest in promoting reproductive rights or social justice.
This lack of the EU’s normative influence is visible in the divergent and often weak approaches taken by EU member states’ in their policies on reproductive rights. That’s true not only for Poland and Malta but also Germany, where doctors have been prosecuted for providing information on abortion care, wherein describing the procedure has been labelled by anti-choice actors as ‘advertising’ it.
The case has sparked debate on the 1933 law limiting the provision of information on abortion in Germany, which has since been relaxed, but not fully overturned.
Istanbul Convention as collateral damage
Furthermore, EU governments and their state institutions still lack commitment to combatting sexual and gender-based violence as well as domestic violence (see the horrific cases of sexual violence in Spain and Ireland which were initially dismissed by local courts).
EU governments’ approaches to the sex industry are also absolutely incoherent, ranging from the Nordic model which criminalises the purchase of sex in Sweden, to decriminalisation in Denmark and the legalisation in Germany and the Netherlands.
The economic divisions between the countries of origin of prostituted women and those with a high sex industry demand, in addition to persisting gender inequalities in the EU, are laid bare though the legalisation model, which has been shown to increase demand and in turn promote both migration and trafficking of women from East Central Europe to the West of the EU.
The EU chooses not to engage on most of these issues, with the notable exception of combating violence against women. However, its efforts in this area are now being thwarted by its own member state governments, including those belonging to the moderate political centre: at the beginning of this year, both the Bulgarian (centre-right) and Slovakian (centre-left) government refused to ratify the Istanbul Convention – a text designed to increase state efforts to combat male violence against women and provide victims with better protection.
These decisions were taken in the face of popular protests against ‘gender ideology’ (and, in Bulgaria’s case, a decision by the constitutional court which ruled the Convention unconstitutional).
The protests hardly referred to the issue of violence against women but instead accused the Convention of being ideologically driven and denying the distinction between the male and female sexes – a claim that the definition of gender in the Convention (‘social roles, behaviours, activities and characteristics that a particular society considers appropriate for women and men’) clearly refutes.
These developments constituted an additional blow to the EU’s already fraught attempts to ratify the Istanbul Convention as a bloc, which came under increased scrutiny from opponents of ‘gender ideology’ in the wake of a letter from over 300 (predominantly anti-choice) NGOs.
They pointed out that the EU’s own interpretation of the Istanbul Convention appears to define ‘gender based violence’ beyond the confines of the text (i.e. male violence against women), as ‘violence that is directed against a person because of that person’s gender, gender identity or gender expression’.
The disenchantment with neoliberal globalization
Given the disagreements within and between the feminist and LGBTI movements and the EU’s lack of interest or inability to engage on a number of key gender equality questions, why are these entities facing attacks from opponents of ‘gender ideology’, and how is this movement able to gather so much popular support?
This appears to be a symptom of a disenchantment with centrist ‘politics as usual’ and the EU’s all-pervasive neoliberal policies and its member state governments, as well as the values they are perceived to support.
Opposition to ‘gender ideology’, including labour market optimisation efforts, has become a new and very potent form of anti-establishment organising and protesting the neoliberal order.
It perfectly exemplifies the rising dissatisfaction with liberal democracy and its pronounced discourse on human rights and the protection of minorities coupled with a lack of social and economic assurances for wide swathes of the population. Examples of this trend appear across the globe, from Brazil and the US, to Western European states like France and Spain.
Continuing to push forward neoliberal economic and employment policies while continuously eroding social provisions was what drove up support for opponents of equality measures in the first place.
In East-Central Europe, ‘gender ideology’ has become a means of expressing a rejection of the European East-West hierarchy and the failed promises of capitalist transformation. Indeed, despite assurances that austere economic policies and market liberalisation would allow the region to ‘catch up’ with the West, it continues to lag in economic development and standard of living when compared to ‘old’ EU member states.
What was imported instead, often with a patronising attitude, were lessons on ‘correct’ attitudes and values. Voters reject the values of gender equality and LGBTI rights not, as is often agued, because of civilizational ‘backwardness’, but because of the strongly felt disingenuity of neoliberal decision-makers’ concerns for rights, as long as these rights are not social or economic in nature.
The EU’s focus on the labour market participation of women as an indicator of gender equality or ‘emancipation’ is a perfect example. This logic fits in with the EU’s overall neoliberal model of governance, which, especially in times of demographic decline, requires both women’s participation in the paid employment and their (unpaid) reproductive capacity and reproductive labour to continue operating.
This message is primarily communicated in a value-laden or normative way: one of the main ways to achieve gender equality is ensuring women’s equal participation in the labour market.
The more a country’s employment force structure diverges from this ideal, the more ‘catching up’ it has to do to reach the developed or enlightened club of ‘old’ member states – never mind that women’s increased availability to take up paid employment in West European countries may be facilitated by the (often underpaid and unregulated) care work of East Central European women.
This workplace ‘empowerment’ model is completely at odds with many Polish women’s experience of the neoliberal labour market since the transformation. Indeed, their work experience has been far from emancipatory – they were the ones who bore the brunt of the consequences of the de-regularisation of the labour market post-1989, working in low-pay, low-status service industry jobs.
What progressives need to do
Alongside a host of other measures targeting women and families with additional social protections, the Law and Justice (PiS) government has introduced its flagship 500+ programme, which guarantees an unconditional monthly cash transfer of €120 per each child from the second one, and from the first one for families in particular financial difficulty.
This has allowed some of them to escape the harsh conditions of the labour market and helps explain the party’s popularity among women.
As I argued with Weronika Grzebalska, women’s strong support both for PiS and its social programmes stems from these programmes meeting women’s pragmatic interests in a society governed by neoliberal policies and allows to glean some insight into why the anti-‘gender ideology’ party continues to attract a significant voter base, gathering 45.4 per cent of the votes in the European election of May 2019.
If progressive political movements want to regain the electorate that is currently increasingly voting for parties espousing the war on ‘gender ideology’ (whether it be because of this position or despite of it), it must reflect on how much of this state of affairs is in fact due to the rejection of the neoliberal world order, rather than opposition to specific groups’ rights.
Continuing to push forward neoliberal economic and employment policies while continuously eroding social provisions was what drove up support for opponents of equality measures in the first place.
Moreover, voters feel a lack of recognition and representation if popular concerns are dismissed as ‘backwards’, hotly contested issues presented as settled and beyond debate and any critique of progressive positions coming from within the camp labelled as being the ‘useful idiot’ of the right.
Any political programme that wants to reverse this trend must address these issues and introduce policies which coherently address socio-economic needs in the field of gender equality and support for minorities. *This article was originally published in International Politics and Society
KINGSTON REIF is director of disarmament and threat reduction policy at the Arms Control Association and SHANNON BUGOS, research assistant.
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 18 2019 (IPS) – The Trump administration is reportedly on the verge of withdrawing from the 1992 Open Skies Treaty, according to lawmakers and media reports. Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, first sounded the public alarm in an Oct. 7 letter to National Security Advisor Robert C. O’Brien.
“I am deeply concerned by reports that the Trump Administration is considering withdrawing from the Open Skies Treaty and strongly urge you against such a reckless action,” Rep. Engel wrote. “American withdrawal would only benefit Russia and be harmful to our allies’ and partners’ national security interests.”
Slate columnist Fred Kaplan reported Oct. 9 that former National Security Advisor John Bolton pushed for withdrawing from the treaty before departing the administration.
Following Bolton’s departure in September, White House staff continued to advocate for withdrawal and convinced President Trump to sign a memorandum expressing his intent to exit the treaty. The Omaha World-Heraldreported that the signed document directed a withdrawal by Oct. 26.
House Armed Services Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), and Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-R.I.) joined Rep. Engel in an Oct. 8 letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper denouncing a possible withdrawal.
The lawmakers wrote that “pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, an important multilateral arms control agreement, would be yet another gift from the Trump Administration to Putin.” They also noted that the treaty “has been an essential tool for United States efforts to constrain Russian aggression in Ukraine.”
The United States and several allies in December 2018 conducted an “extraordinary flight” over eastern Ukraine under the Open Skies Treaty. The flight followed a Russian attack in late November 2018 on Ukrainian naval vessels in the Black Sea.
Republican lawmakers also expressed concern about ditching the treaty. In an Oct. 8 statement, Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) stated that he has “yet to see a compelling reason to withdraw from Open Skies” given the “valuable access to Russian airspace and military airfields” the United States gains from the treaty.
Signed in 1992, the Open Skies Treaty permits each state-party to conduct short-notice, unarmed, observation flights over the others’ entire territories in order to collect data on military forces and activities. The treaty entered into force in January 2002 and currently has 34 states-parties, including the United States and Russia.
According to the treaty, states-parties must give one another 72 hours advance notice before conducting an overflight. At least 24 hours in advance of the flight, the observing state-party will supply its flight plan, which the host state-party can only modify for safety or logistical reasons.
No territory is off-limits under the treaty. Each participating country is assigned a quota of overflights it can conduct and a quota, based on its geographic size, of overflights it must accept every year.
Since 2002, there have been nearly 200 U.S. overflights of Russia and about 70 overflights conducted by Russia over the United States. After the overflight, the information collected must be provided to all states-parties.
In recent years, disputes over implementation and concerns from some U.S. officials and lawmakers about the value of the treaty have threatened to derail the pact.
For example, Washington has raised concerns about Russian compliance with the treaty, citing, in particular, Russia’s restricting of observation flights over Kaliningrad to no more than 500 kilometers and within a 10-kilometer corridor along Russia’s border with the Georgian border-conflict regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
In response, the United States has restricted flights over the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii and the missile defense interceptor fields in Fort Greely, Alaska.
The House-passed version of the fiscal year 2020 defense authorization act included a provision that would reaffirm Congress’ commitment to the treaty and prohibit the use of funds to suspend, terminate, or withdraw from the agreement unless “certain certification requirements are made.”
The Senate version of the bill did not include a similar provision. The House and Senate continue to negotiate a final version of the bill.
Sohrab Razzaghi is Executive Director of Volunteer Activists Institute a non-profit, non-governmental, non-political and independent institute, whose primary aim is capacity building among activists and civil society organizations for democracy, human rights and peace building within Iranian society and communities in the MENA region.
Masana Ndinga-Kanga is MENA Advocacy Lead at CIVICUS, an alliance of 7000 civil society partners around the world.
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran
JOHANNESBURG / AMSTERDAM, Oct 15 2019 (IPS) – 2019 has not been a good year for Iranian human rights activists. At a time where civic space had completely closed, many watched in disbelief as the regime mounted even more restrictions on civil society. Over recent months, many activists have been arrested, like Noushin Javari (a photographer), Marzieh Amiri (a journalist), and Javad Lal Mohammadi (teacher).
As the UN Third Committee prepares to meet in October 2019, it will be worth following whether the General Assembly will take proactive steps to respond to the crisis in Iran or continue to avert its eyes in the face of complicated global politics that have emboldened President Rouhani in his regressive anti-western crackdown on civil society.
During the UN General Assembly on 25 September 2019, Iranian President Rouhani’s called for the creation of a ‘coalition of hope’ in the Gulf region, that would focus on “peace, stability, progress and welfare” and working to “invest on hope towards a better future rather than in war and violence [sic],” with the aim of restoring justice and peace.
However, the civic space track record of Iran and many of its Gulf neighbours demonstrates that oftentimes the state is the perpetrator of violence and restrictions in-country, curtailing the very justice and peace it aims to implement.
It then begs the question, how can a regional coalition of hope be developed, when the state so frequently responds to human rights defenders with violence – excluding the language of human rights from even sustainable development goals.
Many civil society actors have been detained – deemed enemies of the state and foreign agents. As Iranian communities reel under the pressure of yet another bout of sanctions, it is worth begging the question ‘does the closure of civic space serve the interests of sustainable development in Iran?’
Contrary to what policymakers responsible for civic space closure might think, these restrictions ultimately hurt sustainable development. Human rights activists around the world, including in Iran, are oftentimes the critical purveyors of equitable ‘sustainability’ in the development process, campaigning for environmental justice, worker’s rights and the respect for the dignity and humanity of all.
In 2018, the Ayatollah Khamenei’s official website published a draft 50-year vision for “progress.” The document, entitled the Islamic-Iranian Pattern for Progress (IIPP), sets out a set of objectives to be met by 2065, covering a vast range of issues, among them the economy, justice and poverty – still to be approved by parliament.
The plan focuses on addressing poverty, the economy and the justice system. It seeks further alignment of religion and the sociopolitical system in the country, but also includes provisions for “prompting independence, accountability and specialization in the judiciary” and “enhancing women’s position and providing equal opportunities for them, with emphasis on their role as mothers.”
Critics of the regime would not be wrong to look at these policy objectives with concern, especially as the regime has a narrowed position on the role of women in society and has repeatedly failed to guarantee independence of the judiciary – where human rights defenders and political dissenters are subject to numerous violations of the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights (to which Iran is party).
According to a recent comparative report on Sustainable Development, Iran is in 82nd place among 156 countries. This lower-than-average score, however, is not surprising. Iran has not committed to the indexes of sustainable development, meaning people in Iran are not participating in a systematic and organized manner in the process of development. Instead, policymaking and development is a top-down process steered by the government.
In fact, most involvement of Iranians in this process is decorative. As a solution, Iranians have been organizing themselves in civil society to combine their voices and make sure they are heard. This, however, is counteracted by repression from the state, resulting in the country being rated as closed on the Civicus Monitor.
Countless activists who have been advocating for the true meaning of sustainable development have paid the price. Civil society activists, especially environmental activists, labor union and teacher union activists, as well as human rights defenders have been wrongfully persecuted.
Eight environmental activists are sitting in prison on charges of espionage, four of whom are additionally charged with “sowing corruption on earth”. If convicted, they will face death penalty. Another environmental expert, Dr. Kavous Seyed Emami, died in detention, and the circumstances of his death are unclear.
According to the Iranian Constitution, citizens are permitted to set up associations and assemblies; yet this clause is not implemented. Few, if any, groups have permission to freely form associations, including socio-political groups or ethnic/religious minorities. Last month for example, Omid Mehr foundation was closed by government authorities. When asked about the reason for closure, authorities said that Omid Mehr foundation was advocating Western values, which does not fit in Iran.
The false claim that campaigning for human rights is equal to advocating Western values is an adage used by repressive regimes to silence dissent and put forward a development agenda that excludes minorities and others on the margins. But development is not sustainable if they are excluded.
For example, the regime frequently equates the campaigns of women to determine their dress codes as acts against the state, threats to national security or prostitution. Despite the peaceful protest (handing out flowers in commemoration of International Women’s Day) against the hijab by Yasaman Aryani and Monireh Arabshahi, they were sentenced to 16 years imprisonment after being subject to enforced disappearance. Such lengthy sentences and gross human rights violations do not equate sustainability nor development.
The government not only fails to safeguard the freedom of associations and civil society organizations, but actively creates non-independent organizations (or Governmental NGOs, GONGOs) to put forward an inaccurate picture of civic engagement by the state.
Only CSOs that support the agenda of the state are accepted by the government, strengthening the top-down, government-centered way of working. The Organization for Defending Victims of Violence (ODVV), one of many GONGOs, attends international meetings, including UNHRC meetings.
Actively curating a counter-narrative of progress through GONGOs shows the vulnerability of the state to international pressure in an interconnected global political economy. The state recognizes its reliance on international partnerships for the advancement of its economic objectives.
But instead it fails to align its internal policy processes to international human rights conventions – channeling resources that could be spent on authentic engagement with civil society in country to its image. As a result, tensions in Iran are mounting at the dire state of socioeconomic affairs.
For instance, in January 2018, mass protests against poverty and economic difficulties erupted in the country. Rather than engage with citizens, the state responded through 4,967 arrests and any assembly was strictly and heavily repressed.
Among those arrested were activists, women, workers, students and teachers. Many of the arrestees have been sentenced to long imprisonment terms. Many more are critical to the realization of sustainable development in Iran.
Rather than supporting socioeconomic development, the state-imposed limitations on freedom of assembly and association in Iran, have weakened and decapacitated citizen engagement, and prevented their participation in the process of achieving sustainable development. It is short-term thinking that creates enemies of civil society and sustainable development.
In fact, a dynamic, vibrant, democratic and development-oriented association landscape is an important requirement for sustainable development. By releasing activists and opening the civic space, Iran can truly begin the process of social change for the upliftment of all.
Isabel Ortiz is Director of the Global Social Justice Program at Joseph Stiglitz’s Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, former Director at the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF, and senior official at the UN and at the Asian Development Bank.
Matthew Cummins is senior economist who has worked at UNDP, UNICEF and the World Bank.
WASHINGTON DC, Oct 11 2019 (IPS) – While this week Ministers of Finance and economists meet in Washington to confront global economic challenges at the IMF and World Bank Annual Meetings, the majority of the world population lives with austerity cuts and see their living standards deteriorating. World leaders must reverse this trend.
Isabel Ortiz
Since 2010, most governments in both high income and developing counties have been implementing austerity policies, cutting public expenditures. Surprisingly, this trend is expected to continue at least until 2024, according to a global study just published by the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, global trade unions and civil society organizations. Austerity has become “the new normal.”
Based on IMF fiscal projections, the study finds that a new fiscal adjustment shock will start in 2020. By 2021, government expenditures as a share of GDP will be declining in 130 countries, nearly three-fourths of which are in the developing world. The reach of austerity is staggering: nearly 6 billion persons will be affected by 2021.
How are governments cutting their budgets and implementing austerity reforms? In practice, the most commonly considered adjustment measures in 2018-19 include: pension and social security reforms (in 86 countries); cutting or capping the public sector wage bill, including the number and salaries of teachers, health workers and civil servants delivering public services (in 80 countries); labor flexibilization reforms (in 79 countries); reducing or eliminating subsidies (in 78 countries); rationalizing and/or further targeting social assistance or safety nets (in 77 countries); increasing regressive consumption taxes, such as sales and value added taxes (in 73 countries); strengthening public-private partnerships (PPPs) (in 60 countries); privatizing public assets/services (in 59 countries); and healthcare reforms (in 33 countries).
All of these measures have negative social impacts. As a result, in many countries older persons have lower pensions; there are not sufficient teachers, medical and care staff, and the quality of public services suffers; there are less jobs, and people work under more precarious conditions; prices increase while wages are stagnant; and the low and middle classes are squeezed and under pressure.
Matthew Cummins
In perspective, the macroeconomic and fiscal choices made by governments over the last decade are alarming. The G20 alone committed US$10 trillion to support the financial sector in response to the global financial crisis, and then passed the costs of adjustment to populations, with millions of people being pushed into poverty and lower living standards.
The worldwide drive toward austerity or fiscal consolidation can be expected to aggravate the growth and employment crisis and diminish public support at a time of high development needs, soaring inequalities and social discontent.
Austerity is also being used as a trojan horse to induce “Washington Consensus” policies to cut back on public policies and the welfare state. Once budgets are contracting, governments must look at policies that minimize the public sector and expand private sector delivery, including PPPs. There are clear winners and losers from this renewed Washington Consensus, and governments must effectively assess and question these policies.
Austerity and budget cuts do not need to be “the new normal.” There are alternatives, even in the poorest countries. Governments can find additional fiscal space to fund public services and development policies through at least eight options, which range from increasing progressive tax revenues, cracking down on illicit financial flows, improving debt management and using fiscal and foreign exchange reserves, to adopting more accommodative macroeconomic frameworks, reprioritizing public expenditures and -for lower income countries- lobbying for greater aid. All these options are endorsed by the United Nations and the international financial institutions.
It is time for world leaders to abandon the myopic scope of macroeconomic and fiscal policy decisions that benefit few and, instead, look for new fiscal space and financing opportunities to foster a robust global recovery and the achievement of long-term global prosperity for all.
Izumi Nakamitsu is UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs*
Credit: UN peacekeeping
STOCKHOLM, Oct 10 2019 (IPS) – Throughout history, technology has transformed armed conflict. The carnage of First World War battlefields is a stark example of what happens when advances in weaponry outpace the normative frameworks around its use.
Today, we are experiencing a technological revolution that holds incredible promise for human development and welfare. From genome editing to quantum computing and artificial intelligence, emerging technologies offer us powerful new ways to achieve our shared commitments, including the Sustainable Development Goals.
Our networked society is promoting a “democratization” of technological dissemination. Ease of understanding and using technology is greater than ever before. Yet these benefits also bring with them clear risks for international peace and security.
Before I address the trends and consequences of the current technological context, I want to add my usual caveat: it is important not to be alarmist about the ramifications of technology, but at the same time not dismissive either.
With that, let me share with you some of the major trends in conflict risk as I see them and the implications they carry for international peace and security.
First, the application of technology to new means and methods of warfare is aggravating an arms-racing dynamic in both conventional and nuclear weapons. This dynamic is evident in the eye-watering amounts of money spent on weapons – some 1.8 trillion dollars last year, according to SIPRI – and the nuclear modernization campaigns that are, in effect, a qualitative nuclear arms race.
This is both exacerbated by, and in turn exacerbates, the absence of transparency and confidence in international relations. As States strive to develop newer and better weapons, it threatens to undermine stability and increase the prospects for unintended and potentially uncontrollable escalation.
This dynamic is not limited to States with advanced technological bases. The democratic characteristics of technological innovation provide for creative asymmetric responses – the digital IEDs, if you will.
The second trend I want to highlight is how technology is opening new potential domains for the conduct of hostilities.
Military operations using emerging technologies and in new domains can involve actions that are not easily classifiable or fall below traditional thresholds for an armed attack or an act of aggression.
This creates challenges for international peace and stability, as even non- permanent means of disrupting or disabling a military capability can prompt a conventional armed response.
Take, for example, what is commonly referred to as “cyber warfare”.
The frequency of malicious cyber incidents is growing, along with their severity. Such acts are contributing to diminishing trust and confidence among States and encouraging them to adopt offensive postures for the hostile use of these technologies.
The difficulty of attributing responsibility for cyber-attacks could result in unwarranted armed responses and escalation. Constraints agr the case of cyberattacks that do not cause physical damage and are not lethal.
New domains and methods of warfare will also change the impact on civilians in ways that are less kinetic but equally damaging. For example, “casualties” in a cyber conflict could include millions of people who have had their bank accounts wiped out by an offensive cyberattack.
Put differently, some of these new technologies could not only change the size and speed of destruction in conflict, but also the character and nature of destruction in war.
A third and related trend is how certain new technologies, in particular armed uncrewed aerial vehicles, are undermining civilian protections. Lower risks to armed forces and comparatively lower levels of physical violence risk lowering the threshold on the use of armed force in situations where it would not otherwise have been contemplated.
Such actions not only endanger civilians, but risk escalating conflict.
The fourth and final trend I want to draw attention to is the emerging nature of warfare enabled by networked militaries, autonomy, uncrewed vehicles, advanced sensors, and weapons that can attack at hypersonic speeds.
This form of warfare is not yet fully realized, but technological innovation, coupled with evolving military thinking, is trending the world in this direction with several significant risks.
So-called “hypersonic weapons” pose particular concerns because they could both reduce decision-making times while also adding ambiguities related to the nature of their targets and their own payloads, whether conventional or nuclear.
Increased adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) may lead to decision-making processes faster than human cognition and concern has been expressed about the potential for unpredictable and non-transparent behaviour by AI in armed conflict.
Increasing autonomy in the critical functions of weapons systems raises serious ethical and legal questions for existing frameworks and how to ensure human accountability for the use of force. The growing use of UAVs and increased autonomy could lead to perceptions of casualty-free warfare.
The possibility of third parties with malicious intent interfering in control systems to incite conflict cannot be discounted.
The potential for such advances to exacerbate political divisions and global tensions would be alarming even in the most benign of international environments.
However, we are currently mired in a geostrategic context defined by distrust, the militarization of international relations and a dearth of dialogue. Relations between the so- called “great powers” are eroding as the rules-based international order – including the disarmament and non-proliferation regime – is being challenged.
Other global issues – climate change, mass migration and social unrest – will also continue to affect the nature and conduct of armed conflict.
In this unsettling environment, where brakes on warfare are being removed, the utmost caution should be exercised in the deployment of technological innovations with disruptive ramifications.
Having said this, it is easy to list risks and challenges. It is a much harder task to elaborate solutions.
I would like to suggest today what might be some of the key elements, from the United Nations’ perspective, for our joint work ahead to elaborate possible solutions. Some of them relate to substance, others to the process and partnerships we must forge.
First, a few points related to the development of norms and their operationalization or implementation.
One of the most prominent debates in the governance of emerging technologies has been whether international frameworks can adequately contain new risks and concerns. There is divergence over whether existing law is sufficient or whether new legal instruments are required.
Some new technologies, such as armed drones, have prompted concerns about how they can tempt some to reinterpret international law.
What we need is an honest debate about how international law applies to any possible use of emerging technologies as weapons, how any such uses are constrained or prohibited by existing international law and where new approaches, including new law, is needed to mitigate foreseeable risks.
Increased transparency and accountability in the use of new technologies could help increase confidence in adherence to international law. When it comes to the weaponization of new technologies, broadened use and transparency of weapons reviews – those required under article 36 of Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions – would build confidence about the legality of those weapons systems.
Regardless of where States sit on this debate, protecting civilians from the effects of armed conflict must continue to be a central concern when addressing the means and methods of warfare.
This is a tenet that we cannot lose sight of as States rush to utilize technological innovations in armed conflict.
We must reinforce mechanisms for the protection of civilians, including respect for and compliance at all times with applicable international law, including international humanitarian law.
While Member States will continue to have primary responsibility in matters of international peace and security, twenty-first century norm-making cannot be just straightforward treaty negotiations between States.
Much of the technology we have been discussing today is either dual-use or even enabling. Its creators need to be brought into the fold.
The importance of developing effective multi-stakeholder platforms that can bring together experts from Member States, industry, academia and civil society should be a priority.
This is important not only to ensure that intergovernmental deliberations are adequately informed, but also that technical communities are aware of the context and possible consequences of their work.
Modern norm-making should consider a broad spectrum of responses, from self-regulation such as code of conducts, to political initiatives such as transparency and confidence-building measures, to comprehensive and multifaceted efforts in the traditional intergovernmental negotiations.
Secondly, while each of these technologies will have a disruptive individual impact, it is at their convergence where the real challenges lie.
We need to generate a better understanding of the combined effects, especially of enabling technologies such as cyber and AI that will impact everything, not least each other. What, for example, will be the impact of autonomous malware?
I am particularly worried about how the combined use of technological innovations could upend strategic stability and lower the barriers to the use of a nuclear weapon.
Concepts such as “left of launch” missile defence – the disabling of nuclear command and control structures by cyber means – could create “use it or lose it” mentalities for first strikes.
Experts have raised the possibility of AI deep fakes to spoof command and control or early warning systems, as well the prospect of so-called “data poisoning”, the deliberate alteration of the data on which AI runs to produce unintended outcomes.
Because of such risks, Cold War concepts, including classical deterrence models, should be re-evaluated for the digital age where terms such as “cyber deterrence” could have dangerous escalatory consequences. In this era, instead of deterring conflict we need to better focus on preventing it.
In the UN context, we have made good progress to address some of the challenges posed by innovations in technology.
On autonomous weapons, States considering this issue within the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have produced three consensus reports. My office stands ready to support Member States to build on the commonalities identified in those reports, including by elaborating measures to ensure that humans remain in control of the use of force.
Five UN Group of Governmental Experts have agreed that international law applies to the use of ICTs and that the UN Charter applies in its entirety. In 2015, the GGE was able to forge 11 voluntary non-binding norms to reduce risks to international peace, security and stability. That work continues now in two forums – an Open-Ended Working Group that met earlier this month, and another GGE that will convene later this year.
To help facilitate responses to their potential risks, my office, together with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, published a study on hypersonic weapons. The study makes the case for multilateral discussion of these weapons, the development of which cannot be seen in isolation from the current deterioration in strategic arms control. We have now convened two track 1.5 meetings to inform and explore its findings.
Member States have taken practical steps to preserve peace and security by developing and commencing the implementation of transparency and confidence-building measures in outer space activities.
Later this year, the First and Fourth Committees of the General Assembly will convene a third ad hoc meeting on possible challenges to space security and sustainability.
A GGE on the prevention of an arms race in outer space also met earlier this year. Unfortunately, it was unable to agree on a substantive report, but nevertheless had the most substantive dialogue since the item was introduced to the Conference on Disarmament in 1985.
As you can see, there have been good discussions taking place in various individual areas of new technology. It is important to start now in understanding what might be the possible combined impact of these technologies in today’s international security environment. This leads me to my third and final key issue.
The disruptive nature of technological innovations and the convergence between them has prompted calls for new thinking in disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation.
As the Secretary-General said in February this year: “We need a new vision for arms control in the complex international security environment of today.”
Any new vision would need to preserve the indispensable benefits of the existing frameworks but could address many of the issues I have already mentioned. It should encompass all kinds of nuclear weapons and their qualitative developments.
It could consider particularly destabilizing categories of weapons such as hypersonic weapons. It could take into account new developments in technology and the potential vulnerabilities these have exposed, as well as the convergences between them, and new models of governance.
It should preserve and further develop or strengthen measures for protection of civilians in any type of conflict. And it should enable the use of these technologies for our collective benefit, in conflict prevention and peace-building mechanisms, and also arms control, disarmament and non-proliferation.
The UN has the convening power to create different types of platforms and discussion mechanisms. It is uniquely situated to be an impartial convener and bring in non-government actors so that multiple stakeholders can learn from each other and develop creative, mutually beneficial solutions.
I believe that the UN system, due to its broad expertise, is also well-placed to act as a catalyst for innovative thinking. I believe the UN has to play a central role in bringing together the security and humanitarian discourses in a new vision for arms control and disarmament.
And I believe the UN should contribute creative ideas to maximize the benefits and minimize the challenges of disruptive technology.
The use of technology in warfare in ways that undermines our collective security is not a forgone conclusion. Through dialogue, transparency, negotiation and cooperation, we can build the normative framework that prevents the direst of scenarios from taking place. I look forward to working together to secure our common future.
*In an address to the fourth annual Stockholm Security Conference at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)
