Rene Wadlow

Rene Wadlow

How many victims of silence there are, and at what cost! Silence has its laws and its demands… Silence demands that its enemies disappear suddenly and without a trace.  Silence prefers that no voice of complaint or protest or indignation disturb its calm. And when such a voice is heard, silence strikes with all its might to restore the status quo ante – the state of silence. Ryszard Kapuscmski in The Soccer War

25 November is the UN-proclaimed International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. Violence against women is a year-round occurrence and continues to an alarming degree.  Violence against women is an attack upon their bodily integrity and their dignity.  We need to place an emphasis on the universality of violence against women, the multiplicity of its forms and the ways in which violence, discrimination against women, and the broader system of domination based on subordination and inequality are inter-related.  The value of a special ‘Day’ is that it serves as a time of analysis of the issue and then of rededication to take both short-term and longer-range measures.

Pierre Spitz, a former Geneva colleague, had coined the term “silent violence” for policies which not only perpetuate the existing system but in some cases reinforce it by forestalling the development of a political consciousness which might degenerate into social disorder. [1] In this spirit, we can speak of “silent violence” against women.  Both at the international UN level and at the national level, there have been programmes devoted to the equality of women and to the promotion of women in all fields for some time. However, only recently has there been  growing attention to physical violence against women and to the trafficking of women. When the issue of violence against women has been raised by NGO represeentatives in the UN human rights bodies, the government representatives replied that violence against women exists but is very rare in their country and that “domestic violence within the family” is a subject they cannot deal with unless action is taken by the police. Thus, there has been just enough attention given  to  violence against women to prevent “the development of a political consciousness which might degenerate into social disorder.”

Yet as Susan George, another former Geneva colleague, has written “That all governments are concerned for, and are representative of, the majority of their people is patent nonsense.  Plenty of governments are most concerned with enriching those who keep them in power.  Human rights, including the right to food, run a poor second.” [2].

At the national levcl in many countries, women have largely remained invisible and inaudible by being allowed to have the key role in the “informal sector” — those sectors of the economy that are the least organized, often left out of the statistics of the formal economy as if it did not count. Women have turned to the informal sector — or have been pushed into it — as a way of sustaining a livelihood for their families.  Women’s work in this sector accounts for a large proportion of total female employment in most developing countries of Africa, Latin America and Asia.  The informal sector, though often considered marginal in economic planning, tends to account for a significant proportion of total employment.

In this informal sector, women work as food producers, traders, home-based workers, domestic workers, recyclers of waste, prostitutes, and increasingly engage in drug trafficking — anything to earn an income to feed their children. The informal sector is their last hope for economic and social survival for themselves and their families.

In the informal society, women survive and often have a major responsibility for the economy of the whole family.  Fathers are often absent by need or by choice.  Some women do well in the informal sector and serve as a model — or a hope — as to what others can accomplish.  Self-employed women are increasingly helped by micro-credit programs. These are useful but rarely do such loans allow a person to move outside the informal economy. There has been a good deal of research on women’s role in agriculture, on women’s informal-sector employment, and increasingly on women’s entrepreneurship.  Researchers in different world regions have pointed to the handicaps faced by women to obtain credit and in getting access to new agricultural technologies.  However, research has rarely been brought into the mainstream of global or national decision-making.

Inequality and the walls built around the informal sector are the marks of the “silent violence” against women.  Amartya Sen defined the major challenge of human development as “broadening the limited lives into which the majority of human beings are willy-nilly imprisoned by the forces of circumstance.”  On 25 November, this day for the elimination of violence against women, we need to look closely at the social, cultural and economic walls that imprison.

References:

1. Pierre Spitz. “Silent violence: famine and inequality” International Social Science Journal Vol. XXX (1978)
2. Susan George. Ill Fares the Land (Washington, DC: Institute of Policy Studies, 1988).

[page_section template=’1′ position=’default’] [/page_section]

Credits: http://foreignpolicynews.org/2017/11/15/silent-violence-women/

Rene Wadlow

[page_section template=’1′ position=’default’] [/page_section]

Credits: http://foreignpolicynews.org/2017/11/19/us-congress-takes-first-steps-negotiated-end-saudi-led-conflict-yemen/

Rene Wadlow

Rene Wadlow

In a 12 May 2017 article “Korea: Back from the Brink, Small Steps Forward” I hoped that the 9 May election of Moon Jae-in as President of the Republic of Korea may have applied the brakes to a dangerous increase in tensions between the two Korean States, the USA, China, Japan and Russia.  I thought that “there may be a possibility of small steps that build confidence between the two Koreas and that do not overly worry the USA and China who watch events closely and who may do more than watch…It is unlikely that any progress will be made in the foreseeable future concerning denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula or unification. Small steps are probably the ‘order of the day’.  However, Track II – informal discussions which are not negotiations but a clarification of possible common interests and areas of joint action – can be helpful.”

Track II efforts have not been on a scale to quell tensions over North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile advances, and the saber rattling of governments has done nothing to reduce tensions. “Fire and fury like the world has never seen” is probably not the vocabulary that leads to negotiations. Nor is an editorial in the Chinese government English-language newspaper Global Times which quotes a spokesperson saying “If the US and South Korea carry out strikes and try to overthrow the North Korean regime and change the political pattern of the Korea Peninsula, China will prevent them from doing so”.

It is hard to know how seriously to take the saber rattling, but the sound is loud enough and the sabers are sharp enough that calmer spirits need to propose confidence-building measures.  The Association of World Citizens had proposed to the then Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon to have a U.N.-led conference to transform the Korean War Armistice of 1953 into a Korean Peace Treaty.  Such a Peace Treaty would confirm the international legitimacy of the two Korean States while not preventing at a later date a con-federation or other form of reunification.  Such a conference and Peace Treaty could play an important role in reducing regional tensions.  However, such a conference would require a good deal of negotiations as all conditions would have to be agreed upon in advance.  Diplomatic conferences “bless” efforts made before in private.  A successful diplomatic conference rarely starts from zero.

Another avenue of confidence-building measures is what the University of Illinois psychology professor Charles Osgood called GRIT – Graduated Reciprocation in Tension Reduction.  He recommended an incremental series of conciliatory unilateral initiatives.  They should be varied in nature, announced ahead of time without bargaining and continued only in response to comparable actions from the other party – a sort of “arms race in reverse”. Unilateral initiatives should, whenever possible, take advantage of mutual self-interest, mutual self-restraints and opportunities for cooperative enterprise.

As Osgood wrote “the real problem is not the unavailability of actions that meet the criterion of mutual self-interest, but rather the psychological block against seeing them that way. The operation of psycho-logic on both sides makes it difficult for us to see anything that is good for them as being anything other than bad for ourselves.  This is the familiar ‘if they are for it, we must be against it’ mechanism” (1)

Osgood directed his proposals for dealing with tension reduction so as to ease fear, foster more circumspect decisions in which many alternatives are considered, and modify the perceptual biases that fan the flames of distrust and suspicion.  The most favorable feature of the GRIT approaches that it offers a means whereby one party can take the initiative in international relations rather than constantly reacting to the acts of others.

Such GRIT efforts were carried out concerning Korea in the early 1990s between Presidents George H.W. Bush and Kil Il Sing but rarely since.   Currently, the governments of Russia and China have proposed a GRIT-type proposal of a “double freeze” – a temporary freeze on North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests in return for a sharp reduction of US military presence in South Korea.

A “double freeze” may be too large a shift at this stage.  In my article, I had proposed such steps as increased family contacts, cultural exchanges, increased food aid to the Democratic People’s Republic, a lessening of economic sanctions and an increase in trade.

There is a need to halt the automatic reaction to every provocation, and to “test the waters” for a reduction of tensions.  Real negotiations may take some time to put into place, but GRIT-type unilateral measures are a possibility worth trying.

Note
(1) Charles E. Osgood. An Alternative to War or Surrender (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois

Rene Wadlow

On 7 July 2017, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was approved by 122 Member States of the United Nations.  The Treaty will be open for signature – the first step toward ratification – on 20 September at the U.N.

Immediately  after the positive vote, the delegations of the USA, the United Kingdom, and France issued a joint press statement saying,

“The initiative clearly disregards the realities of the international security environment… This treaty offers no solution to the grave threat posed by North Korea’s nuclear program, nor does it address other security challenges that made nuclear deterrence necessary.”

We have to thank the collective forces of the US, UK, and French diplomatic corps, their intelligence services and assorted think tanks for informing us that there is still work to do.  Those of us who were working for the Treaty had a dim feeling that the Treaty was not the end of the road but nevertheless an important step on the road toward a cosmopolitan, humanist world society.  We are now reminded of the existence of North Korea and other security challenges. Perhaps it is useful to look at the possibilities of confidence-building measures and negotiations in good faith in some tension areas related to nuclear-weapon States.

We are asked to think about Korea and we should, given the amount of saber-rattling that has gone on of late.  The Association of World Citizens has been pushing for a number of years (with no visible results) the transformation of the Korean Armistice Agreement into a Korean Peace Treaty, especially as a confidence-building measure to recognize the legitimacy of the two Korean States even if at some later date there are efforts for a con-federation or some other form of reunification.  With nuclear-weapon States of the USA, Russia and China all concerned, we could expect a host of creative ideas of confidence-building measures and offers of hosting negotiations. For the moment on the part of governments we have secret diplomacy secretly carried out.  There have been a few non-governmental “Track II” efforts but none on the scale of the need to reduce tensions.

While in Asia, we also have the somewhat lightly frozen conflict between the nuclear-weapon States of India and Pakistan, a conflict that heats up occasionally and then freezes over again.  Nuclear weapons in Pakistan, a politically unstable State, with insurgencies on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, does worry some.  While there have been Track II efforts among Indians and Pakistanis, the divisions seem deep and would merit more attention.

Moving to what the Indians call “Western Asia”, we have the relations of nuclear-weapon Israel with the Palestinians and the neighboring Arab States.  The tensions have gone on so long that they have become “one of the facts of international life”, and confidence-building measures have been few.  Over the years, there have been a good number of Track II efforts carried out by NGOs and academic institutions.  There have been times when I thought that progress was being made, but there has been no permanent breakthrough.

The one happy note in looking at policies of nuclear-weapon States is that nuclear war between France and England is unlikely. There was the 100-Year War and periodic tensions since, but it is the one area with nuclear-weapon States which we can safely leave aside.

Thus we can turn our attention to the tensions among the nuclear-armed Russian Federation, NATO and Ukraine.  Again, the Association of World Citizens has been suggesting (with no visible results) a federal system for Ukraine rather than the creation of two separate republics in eastern Ukraine, an improvement over fighting, troop movement, NATO troop reinforcements etc. For the moment confidence-building measures are few.

We end by again thanking the U.N. Missions of the US, France and the UK for reminding us that there are security challenges.  We disagree that these challenges require deterrence with nuclear weapons.  Rather, we think that confidence-building measures linked to creative negotiations is the best step forward.  Thus we work for the rapid ratification by the 50 States needed for the Nuclear Prohibition Treaty to come into force and at the same time organize for the conflict-resolution efforts still needed.

René Wadlow

12 June is a red letter day on the UN agenda of events as the World Day Against Child Labour.  It marks the 12 June arrival in 1998 of hundreds of children in Geneva, part of the Global March against Child Labour that had crossed a 100 countries to present their plight to the International Labour Organization (ILO).

“We are hurting, and you can help us” was their message to the assembled International Labour Conference which meets each year in Geneva in June.  One year later, in June, the ILO had drafted ILO Convention N° 182 on child labour which 165 States have now ratified — the fastest ratification rate in the ILO’s  history.

ILO Convention N°182 sets out in article 3 the worst forms of child labour to be banned:

1. all forms of slavery or practices similar to slavery, such as the sale and trafficking of children, debt bondage and serfdom and forced or compulsory labour, including forced or compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict;
2. the use, procuring or offering of a child for prostitution, for the production of pornography or for pornographic performances;
3. the use, procuring or offering of a child for illicit activities, in particular for the production and trafficking of drugs as defined in the relevant international treaties;
4. work which, by its nature or the circumstances in which it is carried out, is likely to harm the health, safety or morals of children.

The Convention is supplemented by a Recommendation: the Worst Forms of Child Labour Recommendation N° 1999, which provisions should be applied in conjunction with the Convention: “Programme of Action (article 6): Among other issues, the situation of the girl child and the problem of hidden work situations in which girls are at special risk are explicitly mentioned; Hazardous work (article 3(d): In determining the types of hazardous work, consideration should be given, inter alia, to work which exposes children to physical, psychological or sexual abuse.

The ILO is the only UN organization with a tripartite structure, governments, trade unions and employer associations are all full and equal members.  Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within the UN system as a whole played an important role in highlighting children working in circumstances that put their physical, mental and social development at risk, children working in situations where they are exploited, mistreated and denied the basic rights of a human being.  Today, millions of children, especially those living in extreme poverty, have no choice but to accept exploitive employment to ensure their own and their family’s survival.  However, the ILO is the UN agency most directly related to conditions of work. Thus the ILO has often been an avenue for ‘unheard voices’ to be heard, usually through the trade union representatives; more rarely the employer representatives have played a progressive role.

Child labour and the increasing cross-frontier flow of child labour did not have a high profile on the long agenda of pressing labour issues until the end of the 1990s. At the start of the 1990s, there was only one full-time ILO staff member assigned to child labour issues; now there are 450, 90 percent in the field.

Child labour was often hidden behind the real and non-exploitive help that children bring to family farms.  However, such help often keeps children out of school and thus outside the possibility of joining the modern sector of the economy.  The ILO estimates that of the some 200 million child labourers in the world, some 70 percent are in agriculture, 10 percent in industry/mines and the others in trade and services — often as domestics or street vendors in urban areas.  Globally, Asia accounts for the largest number of child workers — 122 million, Sub-Saharan Africa, 50 million, and Latin America and the Caribbean, 6 million.  Young people under 18 make up almost half of humanity, a half which is virtually powerless in relation to the other half.  To ensure the well-being of children and adolescents in light of this imbalance of power, we must identify attitudes and practices which cause invisibility.

Statistics are only one aspect of the story.  It is important to look at what type of work is done and for whom.  The image of the child helping his parents on the farm can hide wide-spread bonded labour in Asia. Children are ‘farmed out’ to others for repayment of a debt with interest.  As the interest rates are too high, the debt is never paid off and ‘bonded labour’ is another term for a form of slavery.

In Africa, children can live at great distances from their home, working for others with no family ties and thus no restraints on the demands for work.  Girls are particularly disadvantaged as they often undertake household chores following work in the fields.  Schooling for such children can be non-existent or uneven at best.  There is often a lack of rural schools and teachers.  Rural school attendance is variable even where children are not forced to work.  Thus, there is a need for better coordination between resources and initiatives for rural education and the elimination of exploitive child labour.

There is still a long way to go to eliminate exploitive child labour.  Much child labour is in what is commonly called the non-formal sector of the economy where there are no trade unions.  Child labour is often related to conditions of extreme poverty and to sectors of the society where both adults and children are marginalized such as many tribal societies in Asia, or the Roma in Europe or migrant workers in general.

In addition to the worst forms of exploitive child labour, there is the broad issue of youth training and employment. The challenges ahead are very much a youth challenge.  The world will need to create millions of new jobs over the next decade in order to provide employment for the millions of new entrants into the labour market in addition to creating jobs for the millions of currently unemployed or underemployed youth.

There needs to be world-wide labour market policies that provide social protection measures, better training for an ever-changing work scene. World Citizens support the demands of decent work for all.  We need to cooperate to build economies and societies where young persons participate fully in the present and the future.