Demography and the failure of sustainable development: denial, indifference and skewed power
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Slides for my public talk Flinders University, South Australia, environment colloquium May, 2006. Millennium Development Goals, rediscovering the virtuous circles of lower fertility in low income settings
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Demography and the failure of sustainable development: denial, indifference and skewed power
- 1. CRICOS #00212K Demography and the failure of sustainable development: denial, indifference and skewed power “The Refugee” (c) Anne Vaughan, oil on canvasanne-vaughan.jpg Prof Colin D Butler Flinders University School of the Environment Colloquium May 25, 2016 http://www.artversed.com/meletios-meletiou-art-is-duty-lesbos-and-the-refugee-crisis/
- 2. CRICOS #00212K A “child-friendly” space in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. Photograph: Griff Tapper/IRC http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- 3. CRICOS #00212K 1. Setting the scene Burundi (2016); Sahel (now, future) Syria (now) Climate change 2. Behind the scenes “Neoliberalism” The colonisation of demography the “fortress world” Four vectors driving migration 3. Solutions Beyond the SDGs?
- 4. CRICOS #00212K Our duty, in science and the academy, is to analyse and report “truth” as we see it - even if we can’t change politicians and public opinion
- 5. CRICOS #00212K Setting the scene Burundi (2016); Sahel (now, future) Syria (now)
- 6. CRICOS #00212K Royal Society. People and Planet (2012)
- 7. CRICOS #00212K Men carry away a dead body in the Nyakabiga neighbourhood of Bujumbura, Burundi in December 2015. Photograph: STR/AP http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-
- 8. CRICOS #00212K Women at the IRC women’s centre at Nyarugusu. Photograph: Griff Tapper/IRC http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- 9. CRICOS #00212K Burundian refugees return from an hours-long trip outside the Nyarugusu refugee camp to collect firewood. Photograph: Griff Tapper http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- 10. CRICOS #00212K One of the mass shelters in Nyarugusu refugee camp, Tanzania. Built to host 200; in many cases they house many more. Photograph: Luca Sola http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/14/life-escaping-conflict-nyarugusu- tanzania-i-dont-feel-like-burundian-i-am-a-refugee
- 11. CRICOS #00212K Burundi refugees wash their clothes near a river on the edge of the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. Photograph: Phil Moore/Oxfam http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/15/nowhere-to-run-burundi-violence-follows-escapees-across-borders
- 12. CRICOS #00212K Burundian refugees listen to Tanzanian PM Kassim Majaliwa speak at Nduta camp in Kigoma, Tanzania. Photograph: STR/AP http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- 13. CRICOS #00212K The Sahel, 2016 http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/13/opinion/out-of-africa.html Thomas Friedman: “interviewed 20 men from .. 10 African countries.. all had gone to Libya, tried and failed to get to Europe, and returned penniless, unable to go to their home villages. I asked: “How many of you and your friends would leave Africa and go to Europe if you could get in legally?” “Tout le monde,” they practically shouted, while they all raised their hands. I don’t know much French, but I think that means “everybody.”
- 14. CRICOS #00212KRefugees en route from Africa to Italy, 2014 Up to 200,000 predicted for 2016
- 15. CRICOS #00212K “Agadez, with its warrens of ornate mud-walled buildings, is a remarkable Unesco World Heritage site, but the city has been abandoned by tourists after attacks nearby by Boko Haram and other jihadists. So, as one smuggler explains to me, the cars and buses of the tourist industry have now been repurposed into a migration industry.” Total Fertility Rate: (2015): 6.8
- 16. CRICOS #00212K 24 M 52 M 209M 2020 2050 2100
- 18. CRICOS #00212K http://oasisinitiative.berkeley.edu/mission/ We are focused on three “pillars” critical for the region: 1) educate and empower adolescent girls, 2) expand access to voluntary family planning, and 3) adapt agricultural practices to climate change. Vision A Sahel where all girls are educated and free from early marriage, where all women are free to choose the timing and number of their children, and where everyone has enough to eat
- 19. CRICOS #00212KPNAS - 2015
- 22. CRICOS #00212K Damascus, 2014. Line for food aid from UN Relief and Works Agency in a great city - large parts of which have been destroyed by civil war, along with basic food supply infrastructure
- 23. CRICOS #00212K Towards a 4 degree world
- 24. CRICOS #00212K
- 26. CRICOS #00212K
- 27. CRICOS #00212K Credits: Dave/Flickr Creative Commons/CC BY 2.0 http://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/new-nasa-web-portal-shines-beacon-on-rising-seas/# Fort Lauderdale, Miami, Florida
- 28. CRICOS #00212K Behind the scenes “Neoliberalism” “the fortress world” Four vectors driving migration
- 29. CRICOS #00212K The great takeover: “there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families” (Margaret Thatcher, 1987) http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/apr/08/margaret-thatcher-quotes
- 30. CRICOS #00212K
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- 33. CRICOS #00212K
- 34. CRICOS #00212K Keynesianism – dominant, Primary Health Care – health systems approach “Health for all by 2000” Share of income top 1% UNCTAD, 2012
- 35. CRICOS #00212K Ascendancy of neoliberalism Share of income received by top 1% (UNCTAD, 2012)
- 36. CRICOS #00212K Some ways the powerful “rig” the system, harming public goods* 1. Own, control, influence media* 2. Excessive influence on policy* 3. Ignore big tax evaders 4. Encourage social norms blaming poor 5. Cut foreign aid * 6. Promote loyal academics * 7. Ignore, imprison, or murder dissidents* * (not just neoliberalism)
- 37. CRICOS #00212K The Pedagogy of the Oppressed 1968, 1970
- 38. CRICOS #00212K
- 39. CRICOS #00212K
- 40. CRICOS #00212K Orthodoxy: 1950s-early 1980s High population growth impedes economic takeoff Eg Coale, Liebenstein, Nelson Nelson RR. A theory of the low-level equilibrium trap in underdeveloped economies. The American Economic Review. 1956;46(5):894-908. Coale AJ, Hoover EM. Population Growth and Economic Development in Low Income Countries. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press; 1958. 40
- 41. CRICOS #00212K Lyndon Johnson “… less than five dollars invested in population control (sic) is worth a hundred dollars invested in economic growth” 1968: shipped 1/5 US wheat harvest to India, on condition that India step up family planning programme 41
- 42. CRICOS #00212K Richard Nixon “… countries such as Mozambique, Ethiopia, .. need to maintain real economic growth rates of 3% just to keep their per capita incomes from dropping. Unchecked population growth will put them on an ever-accelerating treadmill that will outpace any potential economic performance" 42
- 43. CRICOS #00212K “Revisionism”: early 1980s-1990s – now? High population growth irrelevant – leave it to “market forces” 43
- 44. CRICOS #00212K “The Cornucopian Enchantment” Simon: “the notion of something being infinite is very much a matter of how we look at it..” (The Ultimate Resource) “From a high point some 10-15 years ago, intellectual concern about population has steadily waned to a position where it falls now somewhere between ocean mining and acid rain” (McNicoll and Nag, 1982) 44
- 45. CRICOS #00212K Ronald Reagan When questioned about population growth the New York Times reported that he considered the problem to have been “vastly exaggerated” (Finkle and Crane, 1985) 45
- 46. CRICOS #00212K US policy at the Mexico City population conference, 1984 American Population Association: ‘authors of draft report “either unaware of 50 years of demographic research, or deliberately ignored it”’ 46
- 47. CRICOS #00212K US Nat’l Acad. Sciences 2nd enquiry into pop/envt: 1986 • Mostly economists • Strong “Cornucopian” influence (especially Simon) 47
- 48. CRICOS #00212K “There is only one earth - yes, but the potential for transforming it is not necessarily finite" (African Academy of Sciences, 1994) Denial of human carrying capacity “There are no...limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind any time in the foreseeable future.” Larry Summers (early 1990s)
- 49. CRICOS #00212K Demography, inequality, magical thinking (The Human Titanic) 1. Reliance on market will provide public goods (including public health) 2. Ridicule “Limits to Growth” 3. Fallacious doctrine (conceit) of capital substitutabilityin one boat danger of sinking hypocrisy, loss of connection with poor
- 50. CRICOS #00212K Consequences for Family Planning • Budget falls US, Australia, globally • 1994 Cairo conference: ignores economic argument • 2004 pop’n conference: abandoned • Environmental groups: largely ignore pop’n (including IPCC, Millennium Assessment, Greenpeace, Up in Smoke) 50
- 51. CRICOS #00212K “Revisionism”: revisited 2000s – now? Kelley UK Parliament Royal Society Gates Foundation WHO? 51
- 54. CRICOS #00212K The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) pointed out that almost 1.5 billion young men and women will enter the 20-to-24-years age cohort between 2000 and 2015, and if they don't find jobs "they will fuel political instability." 54
- 56. CRICOS #00212K Four vectors driving migration
- 57. CRICOS #00212K push - pull • poverty - riches (eg Gold rush) • hunger – plenty (eg Irish migration) • persecution – freedom (eg Jewish diaspora) • dreary weather – endless sun (UK to Queensland) 57
- 59. CRICOS #00212K “fend” factors – refugees in Australia 59 Australian refugee camp riots spreading Mark Chipperfield in Sydney 01 Jan 2003 (before we got really cruel)
- 60. CRICOS #00212K http://www.nojailforourduty.org/#!Laureate-Professor-Nick-Talley-President-of-the- Royal-Australasian-College-of-Physicians/cmbz/56ee6c7c0cf2ca5152e8a79a Refugees and asylum seekers have complex needs as patients. Their experiences .. often result in complex disease, malnutrition, developmental issues severe mental health concerns. Our immigration detention policy takes these needs and exacerbates them. .. detention, particularly > six months, leads to serious trauma. .. statistics on mental health conditions in detention are shocking in both adults and children.
- 61. CRICOS #00212KCRICOS #00212K Australia: too much on “fend” not enough on “glue” Photograph: Ben Doherty for the Guardian http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/20/resettling-refugees-in-papua-new-guinea-a-tragic-theatre-of-the-absurd? utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+mail+callout&utm_term=173320&subid=7792814&CMP=ema_632 “one refugee who remains working .. paid a daily wage of about $12, yet is accommodated in a hotel costing about $140 “Detention on Manus Island and Nauru alone cost the government $1.2 billion in the year to June 2015.”
- 62. CRICOS #00212K Why do we have this evidence? .. because my colleagues, dedicated physicians and paediatricians working in these centres to provide the health care the detainees so badly need, have been brave enough to speak out about the sometimes appalling conditions inside these centres.
- 63. CRICOS #00212K Gillian Triggs (Human Rights Commission president ) We’ve got senior public servants who will roll their eyes at the idea of a human right. They say, “Look, Gillian, you’re beating a dead horse.” “Our parliamentarians are usually seriously ill-informed and uneducated. .. they’ve lost any sense of a rule of law, and .. don’t even understand what democracy is. https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2016/04/23/human-rights- commission-president-gillian-triggs-speaks-out/14613336003160
- 64. CRICOS #00212K Gillian Triggs (Human Rights Commission president ) “The government has used the word unlawful [in relation to asylum seekers] and George Orwell understood the power of language very well. In the department you have a minister saying, “You will call these people ‘illegals’.” It’s shocking that Australia would come to that depth of abuse of power.” https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2016/04/23/human-rights-
- 65. CRICOS #00212K “In 2016–17, Australia will provide $2.9 billion in International Development Assistance (IDA).” http://dfat.gov.au/aid/aid-budgets-statistics/Pages/default.aspx
- 66. CRICOS #00212K
- 67. CRICOS #00212K Signs of hope? Namibia: President Hage Geingob with First Lady Monica Geingos http://allafrica.com/stories/201604220898.html Alex Ezeh Eliya Zulu
- 68. CRICOS #00212K Human “carrying capacity” = f [nc, hc, sc, bc, fc] – Partial inter-convertibility of types of capital – HCC expandable via co-operation, conquest, trade and technology (eg) –But: need to conserve minimum reserves - especially natural, human & social natural human Social built financial “CAPITAL”
- 69. CRICOS #00212K What we can do 1. Form coalitions – among colleagues, with other disciplines and with other groups 2. Strive to challenge neoliberalism and magical thinking; accelerate action on climate change 3. Keep optimistic but not complacent
- 70. CRICOS #00212K http://www.koreaneye.org/filestorage/cities/1/artworks/jinee_ahn Acknowledgements Maurice King Tony McMichael Bob Douglas Joseph Chaimie Lucia Arman Ahn Jinee
- 72. CRICOS #00212K He Had a dream 7272 Health for all on a single planet
- 73. CRICOS #00212K The World Bank granted Tanzania $50m in 2007 in a drive to boost educational standards and school enrollment levels. $4.5tn is needed for development projects like this around the world that will help meet the SDGs Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/may/04/the-missing-development-trillions-where-will- they-come-from?CMP=ema-1702&CMP=
- 74. CRICOS #00212K The Inside Story of the Papal Birth Control Commission (1963-66) 74
- 75. CRICOS #00212K Human Carrying capacity 75
- 76. CRICOS #00212K
- 77. CRICOS #00212K A member of Burundi’s military on patrol as police seek weapons in Bujumbura. Photograph: Griff Tapper/IRC http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- 78. CRICOS #00212K Historic Centre of Agadez Copyright: © CRA-terre Author: Arnaud Misse http://whc.unesco.org/? cid=31&l=en&id_site=1268&gallery=1&&maxrow
- 79. CRICOS #00212K The lion (and gazelle) of al-Lāt (2000 years old) Palmyra, Syria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion_of_Al-l %C4%81t#/media/File:Lion_in_the_garden_of_ Palmyra_Archeological_Museum,_2010-04- 21.jpg
- 80. CRICOS #00212K
- 81. CRICOS #00212K education of illiterates, especially adults .. every human being, no matter how “ignorant” or submerged in the “culture of silence” is capable of looking critically at his/her world, provided with proper tools for such encounter s(he) can gradually perceive his/her personal and social reality and deal critically with it. When an illiterate peasant participates in this sort of educational experience s(he) comes to a new awareness of self, a new sense of dignity; s(he) is stirred by new hope. The Pedagogy of the Oppressed
- 82. CRICOS #00212K Unfair?? Imagine if I did this in China! or Thailand!
- 83. CRICOS #00212K People at present think that five sons are not too many and each son has five sons also, and before the death of the grandfather there are already 25 descendants. Therefore people are more and wealth is less; they work hard and receive little. HAN FEI-TZU, ca. 500 B.C.
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- 86. CRICOS #00212K Demography and the Limits to Growth, Paul Demeny, Population and Development Review 1988 What evidence is there that the pond is half full?
- 87. CRICOS #00212K Women at the IRC women’s centre at Nyarugusu (Tanzania). Photograph: Griff Tapper/IRC http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/15/nowhere-to-run-burundi-violence-follows-escapees-across-borders
Editor's Notes
- 2016 Environment Matters! Campus Map Environment Matters! is a series of traditional research colloquia and innovative cross-fertilisation workshops sponsored by Flinders University, School of the Environment. These colloquia and workshops will offer insights in contemporary research into environmental sustainability and security issues. Speakers and workshop facilitators will be drawn from a wide range of science and social science disciplines, as well as industry and the policy making arena. We have assembled experts from overseas, interstate and South Australia. Attendance is open to everybody and you are most welcome. Suggestions for future speakers and workshop topics are also welcome. Coordinators: Dr Graziela Miot Da Silva All welcome: Enquiries to Yvonne Haby Venue: Teletheatre, Information, Science & Technology (IST) Building (building number 47) Time: Wednesdays, 3.30 - 5.00 pm (unless otherwise stated) https://artinsmallplaces.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/the-refugee- “The Refugee” (c) Anne Vaughan, oil on canvasanne-vaughan.jpg https://artinsmallplaces.wordpress.com/tag/impressionism/ http://www.artversed.com/meletios-meletiou-art-is-duty-lesbos-and-the-refugee-crisis/ --- Environment Matters! A Research colloquium and Workshop Series School of the Environment PRESENTS Prof Colin Butler Faculty of Health and Health Research Institute, University of Canberra. Visiting Fellow National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, Australian National University. Demography and the failure of sustainable development: denial, indifference and skewed power. In recent decades, an ideology, often called neoliberalism, has become dominant in most high-income countries. It can be characterised as the view that freeing market forces will maximise global development and human well-being. An important component and result of this ideology is laissez faire population growth and suppressed knowledge of the “demographic dividend”, the development bonus that accrues to low-income countries from slower population growth, especially through improved education, an important determinant of fertility. Instead, a “fortress world” has intensified, with ever-steepening inequality, and with growing recognition by the middle and working class that they are being left behind, with little power to change the rules, to restore free education, or to prevent offshore banking rorts. Environmental resources continue to decline, and in every month temperatures rise, as does the sea level. Migrants press on Europe, not only from the Middle East and Afghanistan, but also from the Sahel. Between 1 and 1.8 million refugees entered Europe in 2015, and millions more appear likely in future. Burundi is again flirting with ethnic-based genocide. These events are neither random nor inevitable. They are promoted by neoliberalism, the cutting of aid, and because elites, in poor and rich countries, have made insufficient attempts to promote determinants of sustainable development. For over a decade Australia has evaded the spirit of the Refugee Convention, which is intended to grant protection to people fleeing persecution. Most asylum seekers have ceased seeking protection here, as a result of the cruelty practised in our name and widely supported. These interlinked and growing global crises are consistent with long-standing predictions, but which have been rarely heard, including in the development literature. Affordable technological solutions to greenhouse gas accumulation are emerging but many more fundamental changes are needed, if civilisation is not only to expand in this century, but even to survive. Prof Colin Butler is a former Australian Research Council Future Fellow (“Health and Sustainability: Australia in a Global Context”) who in 2009 was named by the French Environmental Health Association as one of “a hundred doctors for the planet”. In 1989 Colin co-founded the NGOs BODHI and BODHI Australia, which promote development, mainly in South Asia. Colin has given 70 invited talks outside Australia, including to a joint audience of environment and reproductive health at WHO (2013), and, most recently (Feb 2016) he was the keynote speaker on biodiversity and health at the ASEAN conference on biodiversity. All welcome Drinks and nibbles follow Wednesday 25 May 2016 at 3:30-5pm Teletheatre, Information Science & Technology (IST) Building Building 47, off Physical Sciences Road, Car park 15 - parking fees apply- Campus Map (8 C) Information on the coming presentations in this series please visit the school website: http://www.flinders.edu.au/science_engineering/environment/activities/2016-environment-matters.cfm
- A child-friendly space in the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. Photograph: Griff Tapper/IRC http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- Women at the IRC women’s centre at Nyarugusu. Photograph: Griff Tapper/IRC
- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/oct/14/life-escaping-conflict-nyarugusu-tanzania-i-dont-feel-like-burundian-i-am-a-refugee Ndayishimiye has been a refugee for so long that this state of being has come to define him more than his formal nationality. The 28-year-old is from Burundi, but for decades his family has been washed back and forth across porous borders by the waves of violence that regularly batter Africa’s Great Lakes region. Since his birth in a refugee camp in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1987, to his present life in an overcrowded camp on the border between Tanzania and Burundi, Ndayishimiye – who does not want to give his full name – has spent more than a quarter of a century in a state of almost perpetual displacement. Hundreds of lone Burundian children flee to Rwanda Read more “I’m tired of being a refugee,” he says, in the Nyarugusu camp where he now lives. “I would like the UNHCR [UN refugee agency] to provide some kind of university training here, to further my education. But there’s nothing I can do.” Ndayishimiye’s father, a Hutu, fled Burundi first in 1972 with his Tutsi wife and family, and headed to neighbouring DRC to escape ethnic violence. The family returned in 1993, but were forced back to DRC when civil war broke out in Burundi just two months later, pitting rebels from the Hutu majority against the Tutsi-led army. Three years later, the family left DRC, fleeing a new conflict in that country. They spent some time in Tanzania before being repatriated to Burundi in 2012. They fled again in May, after Burundi was gripped by violence and fear following President Pierre Nkurunziza’s decision to seek a controversial third term as leader of the densely populated nation of about 10 million people, who are among the most malnourished in the world. Nkurunziza’s decision triggered street protests, clashes with police, and a short-lived coup. Today, Ndayishimiye lives in a small family tent with two brothers and three sisters. His three other siblings, parents and foster brother also live at the camp. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Busloads of refugees arrive at Nyarugusu camp in Tanzania every day, and pressure on resources on the camp are mounting. Photograph: Luca Sola “There’s no life here,” he says of Nyarugusu, one of the world’s biggest and most overcrowded camps, and home to 160,000 people. “This place is a prison.” The average time that refugees are uprooted and in need of assistance, unable to return home or find refuge in another country, is 17 years, according to the UNHCR. The global toll of these protracted individual emergencies is stark: today, one in every 122 people is either a refugee, or internally displaced, or seeking asylum. The crisis in Burundi has added to that toll with more than 200,000 people fleeing the country to seek shelter in Rwanda, Tanzania, Zambia, DRC and Uganda since April. Many of those who have fled in recent months have cited their fear of the Imbonerakure, the youth wing of the CNDD-FDD ruling party. Even before his family’s home was destroyed in this latest violence, Ndayishimiye had reason to fear the Imbonerakure, whose rebel predecessors had tried to recruit him when he was 15 and living in Muyovozi camp in Tanzania. This was during the 12-year civil war, which killed around 300,000 people in Burundi. “They came in the middle of the night, saying, ‘We need you and your brother’,” he says. As they grappled with his brother Emmanuel, they broke his arm. Ndayishimiye says the rebels only left them alone when the war ended in 2005. After they had returned home from Tanzania, Ndayishimiye’s father was imprisoned three times as the family tried to reclaim the land they had lost while they had been out of the country, a common issue for Burundians who have fled and returned. 'If I go, someone else will claim my land': the stark reality of real estate in Burundi Read more Ndayishimiye says he “hated” his time in Burundi. “The Imbonerakure … control everything, and they are always coming after you for money and to intimidate you,” he says. “It was always insecure.” Most people in the Nyarugusu camp live in tents for up to 10 people. New arrivals are being lodged in large shelters made out of logs and plastic sheeting, but a spike in recent arrivals has meant these too are overcrowded. Since the beginning of October, the numbers of refugees arriving by bus each day have swelled from an average of 200 people to as many as 1,142, putting pressure on resources. Now, UNHCR has started moving 50,000 people from Nyarugusu to other camps in north-west Tanzania to ease crowding. Advertisement “Urgent work is required at Nyarugusu,” UNHCR said. “Strong winds have damaged several mass shelters, exacerbating the already dire living conditions. Refugees also need to be relocated to higher ground from some areas which are flood-prone.” “The imperative is to decongest the camps, as well as protect people from flooding during the upcoming rainy season,” said UNHCR spokesperson Joyce Mends-Cole. She said that the new sites – in Nduta, Mtendeli and Karago – were being prepared but because they had been used for displaced people in the past, the necessary structures were already in place. However, some aid agencies say Nduta, which will take the majority of the refugees, is not ready. “We are particularly concerned about the move because the new site does not have enough water to service the population,” said Dana Krause, Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) field coordinator in Nyarugusu. Additionally, while the focus moves to the new site, the congested Nyarugusu camp still needs attention. “The rainy season combined with the poor living conditions in Nyarugusu will most likely result in another cholera outbreak,” she said. For Ndayishimiye, if the move means better conditions in the long-run, he would be keen to go. He still dreams of a future – he would like a girlfriend to “be serious and have a family with” – but he is also tormented by the hopelessness of his situation. His life has never really been his own. “The UNHCR calls me a Burundian, but I don’t feel like I am a Burundian,” he says. “This is my life. I am a refugee.”
- Burundi refugees wash their clothes near a river on the edge of the Nyarugusu refugee camp in Tanzania. Photograph: Phil Moore/Oxfam http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/apr/15/nowhere-to-run-burundi-violence-follows-escapees-across-borders
- http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/10/burundi-ethnic-violence-refugees
- Agadez, NIGER — It’s Monday and that means it’s moving day in Agadez, the northern Niger desert crossroad that is the main launching pad for migrants out of West Africa. Fleeing devastated agriculture, overpopulation and unemployment, migrants from a dozen countries gather here in caravans every Monday night and make a mad dash through the Sahara to Libya, hoping to eventually hop across the Mediterranean to Europe. This caravan’s assembly is quite a scene to witness. Although it is evening, it’s still 105 degrees, and there is little more than a crescent moon to illuminate the night. Then, all of a sudden, the desert comes alive. Using the WhatsApp messaging service on their cellphones, the local smugglers, who are tied in with networks of traffickers extending across West Africa, start coordinating the surreptitious loading of migrants from safe houses and basements across the city. They’ve been gathering all week from Senegal, Sierra Leone, Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Chad, Guinea, Cameroon, Mali and other towns in Niger. With 15 to 20 men — no women — crammed together into the back of each Toyota pickup, their arms and legs spilling over the sides, the vehicles pop out of alleyways and follow scout cars that have zoomed ahead to make sure there are no pesky police officers or border guards lurking who have not been paid off. It’s like watching a symphony, but you have no idea where the conductor is. Eventually, they all converge at a gathering point north of the city, forming a giant caravan of 100 to 200 vehicles — the strength in numbers needed to ward off deserts bandits. Poor Niger. Agadez, with its warrens of ornate mud-walled buildings, is a remarkable Unesco World Heritage site, but the city has been abandoned by tourists after attacks nearby by Boko Haram and other jihadists. So, as one smuggler explains to me, the cars and buses of the tourist industry have now been repurposed into a migration industry. There are now wildcat recruiters, linked to smugglers, all across West Africa who appeal to the mothers of boys to put up the $400 to $500 to send them to seek out jobs in Libya or Europe. Few make it, but others keep coming. I am standing at the Agadez highway control station watching this parade. As the Toyotas whisk by me, kicking up dust, they paint the desert road with stunning moonlit silhouettes of young men, silently standing in the back of each vehicle. The thought that their Promised Land is war-ravaged Libya tells you how desperate are the conditions they’re leaving. Between 9,000 and 10,000 men make this journey every month. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story A few agree to talk — nervously. One group of very young men from elsewhere in Niger tell me they’re actually joining the rush to pan for gold in Djado in the far north of Niger. More typical are five young men who, in Senegalese-accented French, tell a familiar tale: no work in the village, went to the town, no work in the town, heading north. What’s crazy is that as you go north of here, closer to the Libya border, to Dirkou, you run into streams of migrants coming back from Libya, which they found ungoverned, abusive and lacking in any kind of decent work. One of them, Mati Almaniq, from Niger, tells me he had left his three wives and 17 children back in his village to search for work in Libya or Europe and returned deeply disillusioned. In Libya, say migrants, you can get beaten at any moment — or arbitrarily arrested and have the police use your cellphone to call your family in Niger and demand a ransom for your release. Just as Syria’s revolution was set off in part by the worst four-year drought in the country’s modern history — plus overpopulation, climate stresses and the Internet — the same is true of this African migration wave. That’s why I’m here filming an episode for the “Years of Living Dangerously” series on climate change across the planet, which will appear on National Geographic Channel next fall. I’m traveling with Monique Barbut, who heads the U.N. Convention to Combat Desertification, and Adamou Chaifou, Niger’s minister of environment. Chaifou explains that West Africa has experienced two decades of on-again-off-again drought. The dry periods prompt desperate people to deforest hillsides for wood for cooking or to sell, but they are now followed by increasingly violent rains, which then easily wash away the topsoil barren of trees. Meanwhile, the population explodes — mothers in Niger average seven children — as parents continue to have lots of kids for social security, and each year more fertile land gets eaten by desertification. “We now lose 100,000 hectares of arable land every year to desertification,” says Chaifou. “And we lose between 60,000 and 80,000 hectares of forest every year.” As long as anyone could remember, he says, the rainy season “started in June and lasted until October. Now we get more big rains in April, and you need to plant right after it rains.” But then it becomes dry again for a month or two, and then the rains come back, much more intense than before, and cause floods that wash away the crops, “and that is a consequence of climate change” — caused, he adds, primarily by emissions from the industrial North, not from Niger or its neighbors. Says the U.N.’s Barbut, “Desertification acts as the trigger, and climate change acts as an amplifier of the political challenges we are witnessing today: economic migrants, interethnic conflicts and extremism.” She shows me three maps of Africa with an oblong outline around a bunch of dots clustered in the middle of the continent. Map No. 1: the most vulnerable regions of desertification in Africa in 2008. Map No. 2: conflicts and food riots in Africa 2007-2008. Map No. 3: terrorist attacks in Africa in 2012. All three outlines cover the same territory. The European Union recently struck a deal with Turkey to vastly increase E.U. aid to Ankara for dealing with refugees and migrants who have reached Turkey, in return for Turkey restricting their flow into Europe. “If we would invest a fraction of that amount helping African nations combat deforestation, improve health and education and sustain small-scale farming, which is the livelihood of 80 percent of the people in Africa, so people here could stay on the land,” says Barbut, “it would be so much better for them and for the planet.” Everyone wants to build walls these days, she notes, but the wall we need most is a “green wall” of reforestation that would hold back the desert and stretch from Mali in the west to Ethiopia in the east. “It’s an idea that the Africans themselves have come up with,” she adds. It makes enormous sense. Sign Up for the Opinion Today Newsletter Every weekday, get thought-provoking commentary from Op-Ed columnists, The Times editorial board and contributing writers from around the world. Because, in the end, no wall will hold back this surging migrant tide. Everything you see here screams that unless a way can be found to stabilize Africa’s small-scale agriculture, one way or another they will try to get to Europe. Some who can’t will surely gravitate toward any extremist group that pays them. Too many are now aware through mass media of the better life in Europe, and too many see their governments as too frail to help them advance themselves. I interviewed 20 men from at least 10 African countries at the International Organization for Migration aid center in Agadez — all had gone to Libya, tried and failed to get to Europe, and returned, but were penniless and unable to get back to their home villages. I asked them, “How many of you and your friends would leave Africa and go to Europe if you could get in legally?” “Tout le monde,” they practically shouted, while they all raised their hands. I don’t know much French, but I think that means “everybody.” Frank Bruni is off today. I invite you to follow me on Twitter. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter, and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. A version of this op-ed appears in print on April 13, 2016, on page A25 of the New York edition with the headline: Out of Africa. Today's Paper|Subscribe Continue reading the main story Thomas L. Friedman Foreign affairs, globalization and technology. Trump’s Miss Universe Foreign Policy MAY 11 Trump and the Lord’s Work MAY 3 Out of Africa, Part III APR 27 Out of Africa, Part II APR 20 Impossible Missions APR 6 See More » Recent Comments Mungu April 14, 2016 Niger can become green if it learns from Israel, a country located in the heart of the desert, but which over the years has taught many... BJ April 14, 2016 Droughts? There was never a drought in California, just far to many people and irrigated farmland for the ecosystem to support. I suppose... Nicholas Griffin April 14, 2016 Much as I hate to admit it, Tom Friedman is not wrong to connect climate change, population, poverty and terror. And yet, having gone to... See All Comments Trending Ryan Caught Between Desire for Republican Unity and Future Agenda The Stone: If Philosophy Won’t Diversify, Let’s Call It What It Really Is Contributing Op-Ed Writer: The Miserable French Workplace Man vs. Marathon Sadiq Khan, London’s Muslim Mayor, Calls Trump ‘Ignorant About Islam’ The Great Instagram Logo Freakout of 2016 One of Florence’s Oldest Families and Its 600-Year Archive Congo Lurches Toward a New Crisis as Leader Tries to Crush a Rival Addicts Who Can’t Find Painkillers Turn to Anti-Diarrhea Drugs Sinosphere: Queen Elizabeth II Says Chinese Officials Were ‘Very Rude’ on State Visit View More Trending Stories » Thomas L. Friedman
- WN – en route to Africa
- Niger 6.76 children born/woman (2015 est.) https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html 24,315 51,878 209,334 20 2050 2100
- Kelley, C.P., Mohtadi, Shahrzad., Cane, Mark.A. Seager, Richard, and Kushnir, Yochanan., 2015. Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (USA).
- FILE - In this Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2013 file photo, a Syrian man cries as he holds the lifeless body of his son, killed by the Syrian Army, near Dar El Shifa hospital in Aleppo, Syria. More than 130,000 people have died in three years, and more than a quarter of the country's population now live as refugees, either displaced internally or in neighboring countries. An untold number of people have been subjected to the trauma of losing loved ones or witnessing lives blown apart. (AP Photo/Manu Brabo, File) (The Associated Press)
- Syrian refugees cross the border from Syria to Turkey, as the UN announces that 2 million people have fled the country. Photograph: Manu Brabo/AP http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/04/syria-people-help-g20
- WN - Syria
- http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/monitoring-content/sotc/global/2016/apr/ytd-horserace-201604.png
- About Pedagogy of the Oppressed To the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side - dedication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire’s work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. Years before he was “invited” to leave his homeland after the military coup of 1964, Freire had begun devoting his life to the advancement of the fortunes of the impoverished people of Brazil. After his twenty-year exile he moved first to Chile, then emigrated to the United States before returning to Brazil. In the course of his work and travels, and as a result of his studies in the philosophy of education, he evolved a theory for the education of illiterates, especially adults, based on the conviction that every human being, no matter how “ignorant” or submerged in the “culture of silence” is capable of looking critically at his world in a dialogical encounter with others, and that provided with the proper tools for such encounter he can gradually perceive his personal and social reality and deal critically with it. When an illiterate peasant participates in this sort of educational experience he comes to a new awareness of self, a new sense of dignity; he is stirred by new hope. “We were blind, now our eyes have been opened.” “Before this, words meant nothing to me; now they speak to me and I can make them speak.” “I work, and working I transform the world.” As the illiterate person learns and is able to make such statements, his world becomes radically transformed and he is no longer willing to be a mere object responding to changes occurring around him. The educated are more likely to decide to take upon themselves the struggle to change the structures of society that until now have served to oppress them. This radical self-awareness, however, is not only the task of the workers, but of persons in all countries, including those who in our advanced technological society have been or are being programmed into conformity and thus are essentially part of “the culture of silence.” Over one million copies of Pedagogy of the Oppressed have been sold worldwide since the first English translation in 1970. It has been used on courses as varied as Philosophy of Education, Liberation Theology, Introduction to Marxism, Critical Issues in Contemporary Education, Communication Ethics and Education Policy. It has been translated into many languages, including German, Italian, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, and French. Pedagogy of the Oppressed is one of the foundational texts in the field of critical pedagogy, which attempts to help students question and challenge domination, and the beliefs and practices that dominate. Paulo Freire was born in 1921 in Recife, Brazil. He became familiar with poverty and hunger during the 1929 Great Depression. In school he fell behind and his social life revolved around playing pick up football with poorer kids, from whom he learned a great deal. These experiences would shape his concerns for the poor and would help to construct his particular educational viewpoint. Freire enrolled at Law School at the University of Recife in 1943. He also studied philosophy, more specifically phenomenology, and the psychology of language. Freire never actually practiced law but instead worked as a teacher in secondary schools teaching Portuguese. In 1944, he married Elza Maia Costa de Oliveira, a fellow teacher. In 1946, Freire was appointed Director of the Department of Education and Culture of the Social Service in the State of Pernambuco, the Brazilian state of which Recife is the capital. Working primarily among the illiterate poor, Freire began to embrace a non-orthodox form of what could be considered liberation theology. In Brazil at that time, literacy was a requirement for voting in presidential elections. In 1961, he was appointed director of the Department of Cultural Extension of Recife University, and in 1962 he had the first opportunity for significant application of his theories, when 300 sugarcane workers were taught to read and write in just 45 days. In response to this experiment, the Brazilian government approved the creation of thousands of cultural circles across the country. In 1964, a military coup put an end to that effort. Freire was imprisoned as a traitor for 70 days. After a brief exile in Bolivia, he worked in Chile for five years for the Christian Democratic Agrarian Reform Movement and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. In 1967, he published his first book, Education as the Practice of Freedom. He followed this with his most famous book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, first published in Portuguese in 1968. Freire was offered a visiting professorship at Harvard University in 1969. The next year, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was published in both Spanish and English, vastly expanding its reach. Because of the political feud between Freire, a Christian socialist, and the successive authoritarian military dictatorships, it wasn’t published in his own country of Brazil until 1974. After a year in the United States, Freire moved to Switzerland to work as a special education advisor to the World Council of Churches. During this time he acted as an advisor on education reform in former Portuguese colonies in Africa, particularly Guinea Bissau and Mozambique. Freire moved back to Brazil in 1980. He joined the Workers’ Party in the city of São Paulo, and acted as a supervisor for its adult literacy project from 1980 to 1986. When the Party prevailed in the municipal elections in 1988, Freire was appointed Secretary of Education for São Paulo. In 1986, his wife Elza died. Freire married Ana Maria Araújo Freire, who continues with her own educational work. Paulo Freire died in 1997. ---- PAULO FREIRE PEDAGOGY of the OPPRESSED ; 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos With an Introduction by Donaldo Macedo A continuum IfNEW YORK LONDON 2005 The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 15 East 26,h Street, New York, NY 10010 The Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SE1 7NX Copyright © 1970, 1993 by Paulo Freire Introduction © 2000 by Donaldo Macedo All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc. Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Freire, Paulo, 1921- [Pedagogia del oprimido. English] Pedagogy of the oppressed / Paulo Freire ; translated by Myra Bergman Ramos ; introduction by Donaldo Macedo.—30th anniversary ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-8264-1276-9 (alk. paper) 1. Freire, Paulo, 1921- 2. Education—Philosophy. 3. Popular education—Philosophy. 4. Critical pedagogy. I. Title. LB880.F73 P4313 2000 370.11*5—dc21 00-030304 To the oppressed, and to those who suffer with them and fight at their side Contents Publisher's Foreword 9 Introduction to the Anniversary Edition by DONALDO MACEDO 11 Foreword by RICHARD SHAULL 29 Preface ^ 35 Chapter 1 43 The justification for a pedagogy of the oppressed; the contradiction between the oppressors and the oppressed, and how it is overcome; oppression and the oppressors; oppression and the oppressed; liberation: not a gift, not a self-achievement, but a mutual process. Chapter 2 71 The "banking" concept of education as an instrument of oppression— its presuppositions—a critique; the problem-posing concept of education as an instrument for liberation—-its presuppositions; the "banking" concept and the teacher-student contradiction; the problem-posing concept and the supersedence of the teacher-student contradiction; education: a mutual process, world-mediated; people as uncompleted beings, conscious of their incompletion, and their attempt to be more fully human. Chapter 3 87 Dialogics—the essence of education as the practice of freedom; dialogics and dialogue; dialogue and the search for program content; the human-world relationship, "generative themes," and the program content of education as the practice of freedom; the investigation of "generative themes" and its methodology; the awakening of critical consciousness through the investigation of "generative themes"; the various stages of the investigation. Chapter 4 125 Antidialogics and dialogics as matrices of opposing theories of cultural action: the former as an instrument of oppression and the latter as an instrument of liberation; the theory of antidialogical action and its characteristics: conquest, divide and rule, manipulation, and cultural invasion; the theory of dialogical action and its characteristics: cooperation, unity, organization, and cultural synthesis. Publisher's Foreword This is the thirtieth anniversary of the publication in the United States of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Since the original publication, this revolutionary work has gone into more than a score of printings and sold over 750,000 copies worldwide. In his foreword to the first edition, which is included in this one, Richard Shaull wrote: In this country, we are gradually becoming aware of the work of Paulo Freire, but thus^far we have thought of it primarily in terms of its contribution to the education of illiterate adults in the Third World. If, however, we take a close look, we may discover that his methodology as well as his educational philosophy are as important for us as for the dispossessed in Latin America.... For this reason, I consider the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed in an English edition to be something of an event. These words have proved prophetic. Freire's books have since taken on a considerable relevance for educators in our own technologically advanced society, which to our detriment acts to program the individual—especially the disadvantaged—to a rigid conformity. A new underclass has been created, and it is everyone's responsibility to react thoughtfully and positively to the situation. This is the underlying message of Pedagogy of the Oppressed. As times change so do attitudes and beliefs. The translation has been modified—and the volume has been newly typeset—to reflect the connection between liberation and inclusive language. An important introduction by Donaldo Macedo has been added. This revised thirtieth-anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed thus represents a fresh expression of a work that will continue to stimulate and shape the thought of educators and citizens everywhere. Introduction Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined when I first read Pedagogy of the Oppressed in 1971 that, a decade later, I would be engaged in a very close collaboration with its author, Paulo Freire— a collaboration that lasted sixteen years until his untimely death on May 2, 1997. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that, today, I would have the honor to write an introduction to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the publication of Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a book that according to Stanley Aronowitz, "meets the single criterion of a 'classic' " in that "it has outlived its own time and its authors." I remember vividly my first encounter with Pedagogy of the Oppressed, as a colonized young man from Cape Verde who had been struggling with significant questions of cultural identity, yearning to break away from the yoke of Portuguese colonialism. Reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed gave me a language to critically understand the tensions, contradictions, fears, doubts, hopes, and "deferred" dreams that are part and parcel of living a borrowed and colonized cultural existence. Reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed also gave me the inner strength to begin the arduous process of transcending a colonial existence that is almost culturally schizophrenic: being present and yet not visible, being visible and yet not present. It is a condition that I painfully experienced in the United States, constantly juggling the power asymmetry of the two worlds, two cultures, and two languages. Reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed gave me the critical tools to reflect on, and understand, the process through which we come to know what it means to be at the periphery of the intimate yet fragile relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Paulo Freire's invigorating critique of the dominant banking model of education leads to his democratic proposals of problem-posing education where "men and women develop their power to perceive critically the way they exist in the world with which and in which they find themselves; they come to see the world not as a static reality but as a reality in the process of transformation." This offered to me— and all of those who experience subordination through an imposed assimilation policy—a path through which we come to understand what it means to come to cultural voice. It is a process that always involves pain and hope; a process through which, as forced cultural jugglers, we can come to subjectivity, transcending our object position in a society that hosts us yet is alien. It is not surprising that my friends back in Cape Verde—and, for that matter in most totalitarian states—risked cruel punishment, including imprisonment, if they were caught reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I remember meeting a South African student in Boston who told me that students would photocopy chapters of Pedagogy of the Oppressed and share them with their classmates and peers. Sometimes, given the long list of students waiting to read Freire, they would have to wait for weeks before they were able to get their hands on a photocopied chapter. These students, and students like them in Central America, South America, Tanzania, Chile, Guinea-Bissau and other nations struggling to overthrow totalitarianism and oppression, passionately embraced Freire and his proposals for liberation. It is no wonder that his success in teaching Brazilian peasants how to read landed him in prison and led to a subsequent long and painful exile. Oppressed people all over the world identified with Paulo Freire's denunciation of the oppressive conditions that were choking millions of poor people, including a large number of middle-class families that had bitterly begun to experience the inhumanity of hunger in a potentially very rich and fertile country. Freire's denunciation of oppression was not merely the intellectual exercise that we often find among many facile liberals and pseudo-critical educators. His intellectual brilliance and courage in denouncing the structures of oppression were rooted in a very real and material experience, as he recounts in Letters to Cristina: It was a real and concrete hunger that had no specific date of departure. Even though it never reached the rigor of the hunger experienced by some people I know, it was not the hunger experienced by those who undergo a tonsil operation or are dieting. On the contrary, our hunger was of the type that arrives unannounced and unauthorized, making itself at home without an end in sight. A hunger that, if it was not softened as ours was, would take over our bodies, molding them into angular shapes. Legs, arms, and fingers become skinny. Eye sockets become deeper, making the eyes almost disappear. Many of our classmates experienced this hunger and today it continues to afflict millions of Brazilians who die of its violence every year.1 Thus, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has its roots in Paulo Freire's lived experiences. The experience of hunger as a child of a middle-class family that had lost its economic base enabled Freire to, on the one hand, identify and develop "solidarity with the children from the poor outskirts of town"2 and, on the other hand, to realize that "in spite of the hunger that gave us solidarity... in spite of the bond that united us in our search for ways to survive—our playtime, as far as the poor children were concerned, ranked us as people from another world who happened to fall accidentally into their world."3 It is the realization of such class borders that led, invariably, to Freire's radical rejection of a class-based society. Although some strands of postmodernism would dismiss Freire's detailed class analysis in Pedagogy of the Oppressed, it is an enormous mistake, if not academic dishonesty, to pretend that we now live in a classless world. Although Freire understood very well that "material oppression and the affective investments that tie oppressed groups to the logic of domination cannot be grasped in all of their complexity within a singular logic of class struggle/'4 he consistently argued that a thorough understanding of oppression must always take a detour through some form of class analysis. Until his death, he courageously denounced the neoliberal position that promotes the false notion of the end of history and the end of class. Freire always viewed history as possibility, "recognizing that History is time filled with possibility and not inexorably determined— that the future is problematic and not already decided, fatalistically,"5 In like manner, Freire continued to reject any false claim to the end of class struggle. Whereas he continually revised his earlier class analyses, he never abandoned or devalued class as an important theoretical category in our search for a better comprehension of conditions of oppression. In a long dialogue we had during his last visit to New York—in fact, the last time we worked together—he again said that although one cannot reduce everything to class, class remains an important factor in our understanding of multiple forms of oppression. While poststructuralists may want to proclaim the end of class analysis, they still have to account for the horrendous human conditions that led, as Freire recounted, a family in Northeast Brazil to scavenge a landfill and take "pieces of an amputated human breast with which they prepared their Sunday lunch/'6 Freire also never accepted the ' poststructuralism tendency to translate diverse forms of class, race, and gender based oppression to the discursive space of subject positions/'7 He always appreciated the theoretical complexity of multifactor analyses while never underestimating the role of class. For example, he resisted the essentialist approach of reducing all analysis to one monolithic entity of race. For instance, African functionaries who assimilate to colonial cultural values constitute a distinct class with very different ideological cultural values and aspirations than the bulk of the population. Likewise, it would be a mistake to view all African Americans as one monolithic cultural group without marked differences: United States Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas is black, after all (and conservative). Somewhat similar gulfs exist between the vast mass of African Americans who remain subordinated and reduced to ghettoes and middle-class African Americans who, in some sense, have also partly abandoned the subordinated mass of African Americans. I am reminded of a discussion I had with a personal friend of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who had joined him in the important struggle to end segregation and oppression during the 1960s. During our discussion, King's friend remarked, "Donaldo, you are right. We are using euphemisms such as Economically marginal' and avoid more pointed terms like 'oppression/ I confess that I often feel uneasy when I am invited to discuss at institutions issues pertaining to the community. In reality, I haven't been there in over twenty years." Having achieved great personal success and having moved to a middle-class reality, this African American gentleman began to experience a distance from other African Americans who remain abandoned in ghettoes. In a recent discussion with a group of students, a young African American man who attends an Ivy League university told me that his parents usually vote with the white middle class, even if, in the long run, their vote is ^detrimental to the reality of most black people. Thus, we see again that race, itself, is not necessarily a unifying force. Freire never abandoned his position with respect to class analysis as theorized in Pedagogy of the Oppressed. However, as he continually did, he reconstituted his earlier position throughout the years, particularly in our co-authored book Ideology Matters. In it Freire argues that whereas, for example, "one cannot reduce the analysis of racism to social class, one cannot understand racism fully without a class analysis, for to do one at the expense of the other is to fall prey into a sectarianist position, which is as despicable as the racism that we need to reject."8 In essence, Freire's later works make it clear that what is important is to approach the analysis of oppression through a convergent theoretical framework where the object of oppression is cut across by such factors as race, class, gender, culture, language, and ethnicity. Thus, he would reject any theoretical analysis that would collapse the multiplicity of factors into a monolithic entity, including class. Although Freire was readily embraced in societies struggling against colonialism and other forms of totalitarianism, his acceptance in the so-called open and democratic societies, such as the United States and the nations of Western Europe, has been more problematic. Even though he has an international reputation and following, his work is, sadly, not central to the curricula of most schools of education whose major responsibility is to prepare the next generation of teachers. This relative marginality of Freire's work in the school-of-education curricula is partly due to the fact that most of these schools are informed by the positivistic and management models that characterize the very culture of ideologies and practices to which Freire was in opposition all his life. For example, the Harvard Graduate School of Education sanctions a graduate course called "Literacy Politics and Policies" without requiring students to read, critique, and analyze the work of Freire. In fact, one can get a doctoral degree from this school, or from others, without ever learning about, much less reading, Paulo Freire. This is tantamount to getting a doctoral degree in Linguistics without ever reading Noam Chomsky, The following illustrates my point. In a lecture at Harvard that analyzed Paulo Freire's theories, given by Professor Ramon Flecha from the University of Barcelona, a doctoral student approached me and asked the following: "I don't want to sound naive, but who is this Paulo Freire that Professor Flecha is citing so much?" I wonder, how can one expect this doctoral student to know the work of "perhaps the most significant educator in the world during the last half of the century" in the words of Herbert Kohl,9 when his graduate school pretends that Paulo Freire never existed? Whereas students in the Third World and other nations struggling with totalitarian regimes would risk their freedom, if not their lives, to read Paulo Freire, in our so-called open societies his work suffers from a more sophisticated form of censorship: omission. This "academic selective selection" of bodies of knowledge, which borders on censorship of critical educators, is partly to blame for the lack of knowledge of Paulo Freire's significant contributions to the field of education. Even many liberals who have embraced his ideas and educational practices often reduce his theoretical work and leading philosophical ideas to a mechanical methodology. I am reminded of a panel that was convened to celebrate Freire's life and work at Harvard after his death. In a large conference room filled to capacity and with people standing in hallways, a panelist who had obviously reduced Freire's leading ideas to a mechanized dialogical practice passed a note to the moderator of the panel suggesting that she give everyone in the room twenty seconds to say something in keeping with the spirit of Freire. This was the way not to engage Freire's belief in emancipation—unless one believes that his complex theory of oppression can be reduced to a twenty-second sound bite. Part of the problem with this mechanization of Freire's leading philosophical and political ideas is that many psudocritical educators, in the name of liberation pedagogy, often sloganize Freire by straitjacketing his revolutionary politics to an empty cliche of the dialogical method. Pseudo-Freirean educators not only strip him of the essence of his radical pedagogical proposals that go beyond the classroom boundaries and effect significant changes in the society as well: these educators also fail to understand the epistemological relationship of dialogue. According to Freire, In order to understand the meaning of dialogical practice, we have to put aside the simplistic understanding of dialogue as a mere technique. Dialogue does not represent a somewhat false path that I attempt to elaborate on and realize in the sense of involving the ingenuity of the other. On the contrary, dialogue characterizes an epistemological relationship. Thus, in this sense, dialogue is a way of knowing and should never be viewed as a mere tactic to involve students in a particular task. We have to make this point very clear. I engage in dialogue not necessarily because I like the other person. I engage in dialogue because I recognize the social and not merely the individualistic character of the process of knowing. In this sense, dialogue presents itself as an indispensable component of the process of both learning and knowing.10 Unfortunately, in the United States, many educators who claim to be Freirean in their pedagogical orientation mistakenly transform Freire's notion of dialogue into a method, thus losing sight of the fact that the fundamental goal of dialogical teaching is to create a process of learning and knowing that invariably involves theorizing about the experiences shared in the dialogue process. Some strands of critical pedagogy engage in an overdose of experiential celebration that offers a reductionistic view of identity^ leading Henry Giroux to point out that such pedagogy leaves identity and experience removed from the problematics of power, agency, and history. By overindulging in the legacy and importance of their respective voices and experiences, these educators often fail to move beyond a notion of difference structured in polarizing binarisms and uncritical appeals to the discourse of experience. I believe that it is for this reason that some of these educators invoke a romantic pedagogical mode that "exoticizes" discussing lived experiences as a process of coming to voice. At the same time, educators who misinterpret Freire's notion of dialogical teaching also refuse to link experiences to the politics of culture and critical democracy, thus reducing their pedagogy to a form of middle-class narcissism. This creates, on the one hand, the transformation of dialogical teaching into a method invoking conversation that provides participants with a group-therapy space for stating their grievances. On the other hand, it offers the teacher as facilitator a safe pedagogical zone to deal with his or her class guilt. It is a process that bell hooks characterizes as nauseating in that it brooks no dissent. Simply put, as Freire reminded us, "what these educators are calling dialogical is a process that hides the true nature of dialogue as a process of learning and knowing. . . .Understanding dialogue as a process of learning and knowing establishes a previous requirement that always involves an epistemological curiosity about the very elements of the dialogue."11 That is to say, dialogue must require an ever-present curiosity about the object of knowledge. Thus, dialogue is never an end in itself but a means to develop a better comprehension about the object of knowledge. Otherwise, one could end up with dialogue as conversation where individual lived experiences are given primacy. I have been in many contexts where the over-celebration of one's own location and history often eclipses the possibility of engaging the object of knowledge by refusing to struggle directly, for instance, with readings involving an object of knowledge, particularly if these readings involve theory. As Freire himself decidedly argued, Curiosity about the object of knowledge and the willingness and openness to engage theoretical readings and discussions is fundamental. However, I am not suggesting an over-celebration of theory. We must not negate practice for the sake of theory. To do so would reduce theory to a pure verbalism or intellectual-ism. By the same token, to negate theory for the sake of practice, as in the use of dialogue as conversation, is to run the risk of losing oneself in the disconnectedness of practice. It is for this reason that I never advocate either a theoretic elitism or a practice ungrounded in theory, but the unity between theory and practice. In order to achieve this unity, one must have an epistemological curiosity—a curiosity that is often missing in dialogue as conversation.12 That is, when students lack both the necessary epistemological curiosity and a certain conviviality with the object of knowledge under study, it is difficult to create conditions that increase their epistemological curiosity in order to develop the necessary intellectual tools that will enable him or her to apprehend and comprehend the object of knowledge. If students are not able to transform their lived experiences into knowledge and to use the already acquired knowledge as a process to unveil new knowledge, they will never be able to participate rigorously in a dialogue as a process of learning and knowing. In truth, how can one dialogue without any prior apprenticeship with the object of knowledge and without any epistemological curiosity? For example, how can anyone dialogue about linguistics if the teacher refuses to create the pedagogical conditions that will apprentice students into the new body of knowledge? By this I do not mean that the apprenticeship process should be reduced to the authoritarian tradition of lecturing without student input and discussion. What becomes very clear is that the bureaucratization of the dialogical process represents yet another mechanism used by even some progressive educators to diminish Freire's radical revolutionary and transformative proposals through a process that gives rise to politics without content. Thus, it is not surprising that some liberals join conservative educators to critique Freire for what they characterize as "radical ties." For example, Gregory Jay and Gerald Graff have argued that Freire's proposal in Pedagogy of the Oppressed to move students toward "a critical perception of the world"—which "implies a correct method of approaching reality" so that they can get "a comprehension of total reality"—assumes that Freire already knows the identity of the oppressed. As Jay and Graff point out, "Freire assumes that we know from the outset the identity of the Oppressed' ahd their 'oppressors/ Who the oppressors and the oppressed are is conceived not as an open question that teachers and students might disagree about, but as a given of Freirean pedagogy."13 This form of critique presupposes that education should be nondirective and neutral, a posture that Freire always opposed: "I must intervene in teaching the peasants that their hunger is socially constructed and work with them to help identify those responsible for this social construction, which is, in my view, a crime against humanity."14 Therefore, we need to intervene not only pedagogically but also ethically. Before any intervention, however, an educator must have political clarity—posture that makes many liberals like Graff very uncomfortable to the degree that he considers "Radical educational theorists such as Freire, Henry Giroux, and Stanley Aronowitz ... [as having a] tunnel-vision style of. . . writing . . . which speaks of but never to those who oppose its premises."15 The assumption that Freire, Giroux, and Aronowitz engage in a "tu
- Global development is supported by About this content
- global population size was not a topic at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America. One insider, commenting on this, noted “the problem has become a bit passé
- Finkle, J. L. & Crane, B. 1985. Ideology and politics at Mexico City: The United States at the 1984 International Conference on Population. Population and Development Review, 11, 1-28.
- The U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA) pointed out that almost 1.5 billion young men and women will enter the 20-to-24-years age cohort between 2000 and 2015, and if they don't find jobs "they will fuel political instability." (5).
- severity and sensitivity (eg scale of climate change,
- http://www.myanmathadin.com/news/world/498-cnn-expose-on-thai-refugee-abuse-wins-award.html http://www.google.com.au/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=rohingya+thailand+images&meta=&btnG=Google+Search http://www.burmalibrary.org/docs4/Chin-docs.pdf
- http://www.nojailforourduty.org/#!Laureate-Professor-Nick-Talley-President-of-the-Royal-Australasian-College-of-Physicians/cmbz/56ee6c7c0cf2ca5152e8a79a
- http://www.refugeeaction.org.au/?page_id=3447 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/20/resettling-refugees-in-papua-new-guinea-a-tragic-theatre-of-the-absurd?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+AUS+v1+-+AUS+morning+mail+callout&utm_term=173320&subid=7792814&CMP=ema_632 Skip to main content Advertisement The Guardian home › opinion home election 2016 australia world opinion selected sport football tech culture lifestyle fashion media environment browse all sections Manus Island Opinion Resettling refugees in Papua New Guinea: a tragic theatre of the absurd David Fedele Papua New Guinea is an extraordinary country very close to my heart, but I can say with absolute surety that it is not an appropriate country in which to resettle refugees ‘Disillusioned with their new life in Lae, three men have returned back to Manus Island, unsuccessfully attempting to re-enter the detention facilities where they had spent the past two-and-a-half years.’ Photograph: Ben Doherty for the Guardian Friday 20 May 2016 14.56 AEST Last modified on Friday 20 May 2016 15.28 AEST Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Shares 1,184 Comments 367 Save for later I have recently spent six weeks in the city of Lae in Papua New Guinea, with unique access to the first group of refugees resettled from Manus Island, and have been able to experience their resettled life first-hand. Instead of integration and assistance, I have witnessed the total lack of mental support and infrastructure provided to these men, who – fresh from the trauma of their time in detention – have been left to fend for themselves far away from media scrutiny and the national spotlight. I have also witnessed scenes of despair and disillusionment as they realise the reality of their “resettled” life is very different from what they were led to believe, and at odds with the hollow rhetoric and political spin that is being fed to the Australian public. Papua New Guinea is an extraordinary country very close to my heart, but I can say with absolute surety that it is not an appropriate country in which to resettle refugees. After the supreme court of Papua New Guinea ruled that Australia’s detention of asylum seekers and refugees on Manus Island was illegal, immigration minister Peter Dutton continues his hardline stance, confirming that recognised refugees will not be brought to Australia, but will be settled in PNG and provided assistance to integrate into PNG life and society. Manus Island detention centre to close, Papua New Guinea prime minister says Read more Ranked 153rd out of 187 countries on the United Nations human development index, Papua New Guinea is currently struggling to look after its own people. It is plagued with extremely high levels of corruption and political instability. There is no true social security system for its population, and excruciatingly high living costs, unemployment and crime. Though Papua New Guineans are extremely welcoming people, there is a growing resentment towards the idea of settling refugees in their country, believing that PNG is being used as a dumping ground for Australia’s problems, and fearing they will receive preferential treatment over locals, many of whom are struggling to meet their own daily needs. There are also concerns about how Muslim refugees would be integrated into PNG, with its strong Christian majority. Papua New Guinea is also currently in a state of political turmoil. There are serious fraud allegations surrounding the prime minister, Peter O’Neill, which has resulted in a split in the police force, leading to the closure of the national fraud and anti-corruption directorate which was investigating the allegations. Students at universities around the country are currently boycotting classes, demanding that O’Neill stand down immediately. Lae is considered the most dangerous city in Papua New Guinea. I would describe it as rough and ready, and a number of the local buses proudly emblazon the phrase “Wild West” across their back window. The Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s website advises Australian citizens “to exercise a high degree of caution in PNG because of the high levels of serious crime”, with particularly high crime rates in Lae, where “bush knives (machetes) and firearms are often used in assaults and thefts”. Yet, somehow, Australia has chosen this city as the ideal place to resettle refugees. In total, six refugees have been resettled in Lae from Manus Island. One secured employment independently, while five were placed in jobs with a local building company and paid the PNG minimum wage of 3.50 kina per hour (approximately A$1.50), which is barely enough to survive. Three have since quit, citing disputes over pay, safety, working and living conditions. Disillusioned with their new life in Lae, these three men have returned to Manus Island, unsuccessfully attempting to re-enter the detention facilities where they had spent the past two-and-a-half years. Today, only one of the refugees is living in any sort of permanent housing, with the others all currently staying in hotels both in Lae and back on Manus Island, paid for by the immigration department. During my time in Lae, two refugees were twice held up at gunpoint by groups of raskols, the local term used to describe street criminals, armed with guns and bush knives. They believe they were specifically targeted, and now no longer walk around the streets of Lae unless they have to. They definitely don’t walk around at night. Advertisement They also had a lucky escape when armed raskols unsuccessfully attempted to enter their living compound while they were sleeping. For weeks I witnessed their stress as they were forced to continue living in this accommodation in constant fear for their safety. They demanded to be moved to safer accommodation, but were told by their case worker there were no options other than living in the squatted settlement areas in the outskirts of town, known breeding grounds for raskols and hardcore criminals. They were eventually moved to a hotel, which is where they remain. Straight from the real-life theatre of the absurd, the one refugee who remains working for the building company is paid a daily wage of 28 kina (about $12), yet is being accommodated in a hotel costing 330 kina (about $140) per night. He desperately wants the opportunity to go to university and is distraught at the knowledge that so much money is being wasted when it could be redirected to his education, to his future. It would be comical if it wasn’t so tragic. The Australian and PNG governments have now had almost three years to prepare for the proper resettlement of refugees, yet it is clear the system is broken and lacking any sort of long-term vision. The refugees were told they would have access to mental health professionals and support networks, including culture and language classes, however these services are nonexistent. The situation is particularly dire for nonskilled or semi-skilled refugees; apart from the one building company, there doesn’t appear to be any other employment opportunities and no plans for suitable and safe long-term living accommodation. Peter Dutton indicates Australia won't take back Manus Island asylum seekers Read more Even the refugees’ legal status in Papua New Guinea is temporary. They were given a PNG identity card and working visa, but these documents were only issued for one year, which is in contravention of the United Nations charter for refugees. And due to bureaucratic incompetence, some of these documents are now invalid, expiring a few days ago on 1 May 2016, so a number of the refugees are now technically without valid documents to remain and work in PNG. I have observed the failure of our asylum seeker policies first-hand and spoken to those whose lives have been adversely affected by them. It is clear asylum seekers and refugees have become pawns in the Australian governments’ game of political chess. They are being used as human collateral, a working deterrent and trophy on the mantelpiece of our toxic asylum policy, to show the world if you attempt to come to Australia by boat, this is the future that awaits you. Resettling refugees in PNG is just another way of delegating our legal responsibility and moral obligation to our poorer Pacific neighbours, with little or no regard for the wellbeing of either the resettled refugees nor the population of the host country – out of sight, out of mind. More comment Topics Manus Island Australian immigration and asylum Papua New Guinea Australian politics Asia Pacific Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+ Save for later Reuse this content Advertisement Most popular in Australia The world's largest cruise ship and its supersized pollution problem Moby: ‘There were bags of drugs, I was having sex with a stranger’ Crystal Palace 1-2 Manchester United (aet): FA Cup final – as it happened! 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Australian Gas Networks Congress Moves to Nullify Judge’s Order on Guantánamo Guards The New York Times 5 features that rarely add value when you sell realestate.com.au Timeless and practical laundry tips… Kmart This Is The Track To Walk At Least Once In A Lifetime Sydney.com Breaking down solar batteries AGL comments (367) Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion. Guardian Pick Little of these comments are relevant. The people seeking asylum have been detained in a prison on a poorly resourced, remote tropical island managed by a contractor who is paid billions to feed, cloth and shelter them (at prices many times the price of community detention or swift processing in Australia). They have been held without charge for over 1000 days. They were seeking asylum in Australia. Australia has a responsibility to process their… Jump to comment F_Commando 16h ago 3 4 popular The Guardian home election 2016 australia world opinion selected sport football tech culture lifestyle fashion media environment all sections Opinion › Manus Island Facebook Twitter advertising masterclasses Guardian labs subscribe UK jobs all topics all contributors solve technical issue about us vacancies information contact us terms & conditions privacy policy cookie policy securedrop © 2016 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.
- https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2016/04/23/human-rights-commission-president-gillian-triggs-speaks-out/14613336003160 Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs speaks out Ramona Koval In an Abbott government attack Gillian Triggs was very publicly upbraided in a senate estimates hearing last year. But despite the battering, the Human Rights Commission president has vowed to stay true to her cause. AAP IMAGE Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs. When Gillian Triggs began her five-year term as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2012 she aimed to bring our domestic laws into line with our international treaty obligations. Now, after the government’s attempts to trash her reputation and to ignore most of the 16 recommendations in The Forgotten Children report, she’s just back from Geneva where the United Nations review of our human rights record found we’d regressed. Australia, the review found, continues to be in breach of its human rights obligations. Ramona Koval Did you think it was going to be this hard when you started at the commission? Gillian Triggs [laughs] No! I had absolutely no idea. I rather naively thought if you’d been dean of a law faculty you could manage anything. I was unprepared for dealing with senior political figures with no education whatsoever about international law and about Australia’s remarkable historical record which they are now diminishing. We’ve got senior public servants who will roll their eyes at the idea of a human right. They say, “Look, Gillian, you’re beating a dead horse.” It’s not going to work, because they can’t talk to the minister in terms of human rights. We’ve had, in my view, very poor leadership on this issue for the past 10 to 15 years, from the “children overboard” lie. They’ve been prepared to misstate the facts and conflate asylum-seeker issues with global terrorism. What I’m saying applies equally to Labor and Liberal and National parties. They’ve used this in bad faith to promote their own political opportunistic positions. RK When you delivered The Forgotten Children report you said your investigations proved to be “life-changing”. What did you mean? “When you see that you are being bullied by people who you know are not coming from a good place, you know you don’t have to give in to them. They are cowards…” GT Talking to young men, old women and children on Christmas Island for the third time and they’re saying to me, “You’ve been here three times and what have you done? You’ve achieved nothing for us.” There were children in the dirt with chickens at our feet, the children waiting to use my pens and pencils because they had nothing to write with. Seeing women in their cabins who are starving themselves to death because they want to die, vomiting in front of me and I’m helping to clean them up and the guard turns away and says, “Nothing to do with me; it’s not my job.” And I said, “Get a doctor!” I’ve lived in a fairly lofty world of international law … Then you realise that you must learn how to translate these broad principles of law into action at a practical level. RK What can you say to those men and women? GT I say I have very limited powers and I’m doing everything I can but I find myself saying pompous things like, “Please don’t break the rules here in the camp. If you do they declare you noncompliant and you end up staying longer or they are spiteful to you. Please be patient.” You can hear I’m not saying anything very comforting. The government has used the word unlawful [in relation to asylum seekers] and George Orwell understood the power of language very well. In the department you have a minister saying, “You will call these people ‘illegals’.” It’s shocking that Australia would come to that depth of abuse of power. RK You’ve said, “When I was younger I thought one could build on the past. But I have learned that we need to be eternally vigilant in ensuring human rights in a modern democracy.” Is that a sense of an idea of conservatism, building on the past, not letting go of good things that have been achieved? And feeling that confidence in that idea has been shaken? GT A shocking phenomenon is Australians don’t even understand their own democratic system. They are quite content to have parliament be complicit with passing legislation to strengthen the powers of the executive and to exclude the courts. They have no idea of the separation of powers and the excessive overreach of executive government. RK Sisyphus comes to mind. GT Well, it’s quite true. One can be astonished at the very simplistic level at which I need to speak. Our parliamentarians are usually seriously ill-informed and uneducated. All they know is the world of Canberra and politics and they’ve lost any sense of a rule of law, and curiously enough for Canberra they don’t even understand what democracy is. Not an easy argument to make, as you can imagine: me telling a parliamentarian they need to be better educated. [laughs] But it’s true. RK Have you done that? GT Oh, I have. And I have to say that some parliamentarians, and surprising ones, a Nationals MP, says “Come and give us a seminar.” Another one asked me to come up and work in parliament with the members of a particular committee that she was on. Terrific! But they listened to me and do you know, the response of some of them was, “Well, we had no idea Australia had signed up to these treaties. We should withdraw from them!” So backward steps! You still hear people say we must withdraw from the Refugee Convention or we must withdraw from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. RK The treatment of you and your officers at last year’s senate legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee was quite shocking. You stood up to it with grace. Were you expecting it? GT I expected questions on legal and constitutional analysis and on how we spend public monies. I have never had a question on that ever. I was completely unprepared for the attack at a personal level. RK What were you thinking as the nine hours unfolded? GT I was thinking, “I must stay calm, I must keep my answers measured, moderate and evidence-based, I mustn’t be rattled by them and I mustn’t react with the same lack of courtesy that they show to me.” The reality was that they could suffer no harm from this, whereas if I gave the wrong answers, I could lose my case and I just had to keep control of myself. I knew we had the law right and the facts right. I knew that anger was under the surface. I knew I could have responded and destroyed them – I could have said, “You’ve asked me a question that demonstrated you have not read our statute. How dare you question what I do?” And the chair [Queensland senator Ian Macdonald] said, “I haven’t read The Forgotten Children’s report because I’m far too busy.” How dare you do that when you are an elected parliamentarian and you are expected and required to read my reports. RK I was astonished listening to him – how could the chair of the committee say he hadn’t read the report with such pride? GT I know. So I could have reacted very angrily to that and I am quite articulate and I can be very strong if I need to be: I could have used those skills, but I determinedly did not. It’s an environment in which I must be respectful, so frankly I thought as a lawyer I’d lose my case if I did [react angrily]. There was a point when I thought, “I’ve had 50 years as a reasonably respectable and quite conservative lawyer, how on earth do I find myself in this situation?” [laughs] But in the end I just had to get through the moment. But there were some lovely little side things, like the public servants behind the scenes, coming around with bowls of Jelly Snakes and Jelly Babies and mini Mars bars. Because we’d had nothing to eat, and they wouldn’t get us any food. The senators and members of the committee were all going off and having lunch. We’d had no breakfast, no morning tea and no lunch and I thought I’d faint, but these wonderful people were coming in and we were grabbing the food and eating it and they were saying [sotto voce], “You do realise that we are not responsible for this, don’t you?”, because some might think the secretariat had fed them these questions. RK But it was all the senators’ own work? GT With the attorney-general sitting next to me and encouraging it. And he was writing the questions which would be taken by his staff up to one of the senators, so feeding them the questions – an extraordinary experience. People were hugely supportive afterwards. Flowers were coming in. Each one brought a cheer from the staff and eventually it was so full that I couldn’t get in the room anymore. It was almost as though I had died the week before, and I’m thinking I must have missed something because I’m still standing here. RK Bullying in such a public forum made me think of the experience people have behind closed doors, especially in immigration detention, for example – such hubris to have this occur in a broadcast to the nation without any thought of what it might imply. GT Yes, hubris, quite right – did they ever say, “What if people see me behave like this? What will this mean about Australia’s democracy?” And the other point is if they can bully the president of the Human Rights Commission when she is on very firm grounds in law and evidence, what are they doing in these detention camps with these concepts of “noncompliance”? What on earth does this mean? And the spitefulness of some of it – making women stand in the heat for sanitary materials, or they are given three nappies a day and the child has used more than that and they have to stand again for more nappies. RK The extent of the hostility and the personal nature of the attacks must have shocked you. GT To use those terrible words that the prime minister and especially the attorney-general used: “We have no confidence in Gillian Triggs.” The words reverberated around my head for a very long time. It was a very cruel and unjustified comment and the attempt to get me to resign for another position was a disgraceful thing to do, but it was exposed by the questions in senate. I could have had other options, the possibility of criminal prosecutions of the attorney. RK I wondered why you decided against pursuing that avenue? GT The AFP did consider it. They dealt with it extremely professionally. They were courteous but I made the decision that the greatest recognition of this wrongdoing was in the senate itself, when the senate censured the attorney for the first time in about 80 years and I felt that this issue was much more political than it was legal. I also wanted to move on, and I think that this underlies a lot of cases that don’t proceed. RK Senator Brandis told a journalist a year or so into your appointment that: “My sense is that she’s more conservative than her predecessor and therefore more open to cultural change at the commission.” Was it a message to you? GT Oh, it was a deliberate message. I’m a lawyer and lawyers tend to be conservative. I really love the law and that means you tend to be cautious and careful and I have been for 50 years. It was a message that he expected me to stay away from the controversial matters. Well, no Human Rights president in the world could have turned their backs on the human rights issue. RK Did you note it at the time as a message to you? GT Yes. I thought politicians work in curious ways. Wouldn’t it have been nicer of him to pick up the phone or meet me for coffee, which he was happy to do in the glare of publicity in other contexts. RK Could the government’s laws to prevent doctors speaking about the harm being inflicted on refugees or the ban on community legal centres from advocating law reform be framed as free speech issues, too? GT Indeed. Of course they can. And this is where you get people who will use the language of human rights occasionally like “freedom of speech, liberty of movement” but very quickly find that they are trapped because they’ve promoted laws which are precisely against those freedoms. The attempt to stop people speaking about conditions was simply ham-fisted and completely unnecessary. Probably they are protected by the whistleblower’s law anyway, and in any event any self-respecting medico will always abide by the Hippocratic oath long before they are going to worry about some detailed bit of legislation passed in Canberra. RK Thinking of the response to your report, how do you manage disappointment? GT It’s hard because we’ve worked so hard on this. Our report met social science standards of credibility, we took senior members of the medical profession with us – paediatricians, psychiatrists who lent a huge level of credibility to our report. Our language is moderate, balanced and applied to both governments equally. It’s very disappointing to have such a careful report damaged in the way that this government set out to do. What I have learned is that politics in Australia is absolutely brutal. RK When the new prime minister took up his office last year there were reports that he had invited you over for a cuppa, even poured the tea. This seemed to be the beginning of a more constructive relationship between the president of the AHRC and the government. You said that you were very optimistic indeed. Has there been a lot of tea since then? GT No. I haven’t shared a cup of tea but I remain optimistic. I have written many times to the PM. His staff are terrific to work with. I deeply believe the first words he said to me, which were that on his watch we are returning to the rule of law, to the Westminster system and to respect for the AHRC. I believe that he believes that, and were he to win the next election I believe he will be good to his word. RK I see that you have not let the 2015 experience cower you. You have made many comments on matters that you have proper concerns in – from marriage equality and Safe Schools programs to calling for monitoring of conditions for asylum seekers and refugees in offshore detention centres to concerns about counterterrorism laws. It looks like, if the government thought they could bully you into submission, they made rather the wrong call. GT I’ve just turned 70 and I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m so confident about the law and about the evidence for the law not being respected that I feel very sure-footed in going forward on these other issues. My resilience and determination and experience for a long time in the law give me the determination to get through the remaining 15 months to continue to speak out. When you see that you are being bullied by people who you know are not coming from a good place, you know you don’t have to give in to them. They are cowards and the moment you stand up to them they crumble, and they did crumble. And several now have been seen off long before me. They’re not used to a woman aged 70 standing up to them. They can’t quite believe it. If I were 40 looking for a career opportunity, I probably wouldn’t do what I’ve done because it would have queered the pitch for me professionally. But why do I care now? I can do what I’m trained to do and they almost can’t touch me. And I’ll continue to do that work when I’ve finished with this position. Tags: Australian Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs Forgotten Children Tony Abbott George Brandis This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on Apr 23, 2016 as "‘I knew I could have destroyed them’". Subscribe here. Read more Ramona Koval
- https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/news/politics/2016/04/23/human-rights-commission-president-gillian-triggs-speaks-out/14613336003160 Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs speaks out Ramona Koval In an Abbott government attack Gillian Triggs was very publicly upbraided in a senate estimates hearing last year. But despite the battering, the Human Rights Commission president has vowed to stay true to her cause. AAP IMAGE Australian Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs. When Gillian Triggs began her five-year term as president of the Australian Human Rights Commission in 2012 she aimed to bring our domestic laws into line with our international treaty obligations. Now, after the government’s attempts to trash her reputation and to ignore most of the 16 recommendations in The Forgotten Children report, she’s just back from Geneva where the United Nations review of our human rights record found we’d regressed. Australia, the review found, continues to be in breach of its human rights obligations. Ramona Koval Did you think it was going to be this hard when you started at the commission? Gillian Triggs [laughs] No! I had absolutely no idea. I rather naively thought if you’d been dean of a law faculty you could manage anything. I was unprepared for dealing with senior political figures with no education whatsoever about international law and about Australia’s remarkable historical record which they are now diminishing. We’ve got senior public servants who will roll their eyes at the idea of a human right. They say, “Look, Gillian, you’re beating a dead horse.” It’s not going to work, because they can’t talk to the minister in terms of human rights. We’ve had, in my view, very poor leadership on this issue for the past 10 to 15 years, from the “children overboard” lie. They’ve been prepared to misstate the facts and conflate asylum-seeker issues with global terrorism. What I’m saying applies equally to Labor and Liberal and National parties. They’ve used this in bad faith to promote their own political opportunistic positions. RK When you delivered The Forgotten Children report you said your investigations proved to be “life-changing”. What did you mean? “When you see that you are being bullied by people who you know are not coming from a good place, you know you don’t have to give in to them. They are cowards…” GT Talking to young men, old women and children on Christmas Island for the third time and they’re saying to me, “You’ve been here three times and what have you done? You’ve achieved nothing for us.” There were children in the dirt with chickens at our feet, the children waiting to use my pens and pencils because they had nothing to write with. Seeing women in their cabins who are starving themselves to death because they want to die, vomiting in front of me and I’m helping to clean them up and the guard turns away and says, “Nothing to do with me; it’s not my job.” And I said, “Get a doctor!” I’ve lived in a fairly lofty world of international law … Then you realise that you must learn how to translate these broad principles of law into action at a practical level. RK What can you say to those men and women? GT I say I have very limited powers and I’m doing everything I can but I find myself saying pompous things like, “Please don’t break the rules here in the camp. If you do they declare you noncompliant and you end up staying longer or they are spiteful to you. Please be patient.” You can hear I’m not saying anything very comforting. The government has used the word unlawful [in relation to asylum seekers] and George Orwell understood the power of language very well. In the department you have a minister saying, “You will call these people ‘illegals’.” It’s shocking that Australia would come to that depth of abuse of power. RK You’ve said, “When I was younger I thought one could build on the past. But I have learned that we need to be eternally vigilant in ensuring human rights in a modern democracy.” Is that a sense of an idea of conservatism, building on the past, not letting go of good things that have been achieved? And feeling that confidence in that idea has been shaken? GT A shocking phenomenon is Australians don’t even understand their own democratic system. They are quite content to have parliament be complicit with passing legislation to strengthen the powers of the executive and to exclude the courts. They have no idea of the separation of powers and the excessive overreach of executive government. RK Sisyphus comes to mind. GT Well, it’s quite true. One can be astonished at the very simplistic level at which I need to speak. Our parliamentarians are usually seriously ill-informed and uneducated. All they know is the world of Canberra and politics and they’ve lost any sense of a rule of law, and curiously enough for Canberra they don’t even understand what democracy is. Not an easy argument to make, as you can imagine: me telling a parliamentarian they need to be better educated. [laughs] But it’s true. RK Have you done that? GT Oh, I have. And I have to say that some parliamentarians, and surprising ones, a Nationals MP, says “Come and give us a seminar.” Another one asked me to come up and work in parliament with the members of a particular committee that she was on. Terrific! But they listened to me and do you know, the response of some of them was, “Well, we had no idea Australia had signed up to these treaties. We should withdraw from them!” So backward steps! You still hear people say we must withdraw from the Refugee Convention or we must withdraw from the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. RK The treatment of you and your officers at last year’s senate legal and constitutional affairs legislation committee was quite shocking. You stood up to it with grace. Were you expecting it? GT I expected questions on legal and constitutional analysis and on how we spend public monies. I have never had a question on that ever. I was completely unprepared for the attack at a personal level. RK What were you thinking as the nine hours unfolded? GT I was thinking, “I must stay calm, I must keep my answers measured, moderate and evidence-based, I mustn’t be rattled by them and I mustn’t react with the same lack of courtesy that they show to me.” The reality was that they could suffer no harm from this, whereas if I gave the wrong answers, I could lose my case and I just had to keep control of myself. I knew we had the law right and the facts right. I knew that anger was under the surface. I knew I could have responded and destroyed them – I could have said, “You’ve asked me a question that demonstrated you have not read our statute. How dare you question what I do?” And the chair [Queensland senator Ian Macdonald] said, “I haven’t read The Forgotten Children’s report because I’m far too busy.” How dare you do that when you are an elected parliamentarian and you are expected and required to read my reports. RK I was astonished listening to him – how could the chair of the committee say he hadn’t read the report with such pride? GT I know. So I could have reacted very angrily to that and I am quite articulate and I can be very strong if I need to be: I could have used those skills, but I determinedly did not. It’s an environment in which I must be respectful, so frankly I thought as a lawyer I’d lose my case if I did [react angrily]. There was a point when I thought, “I’ve had 50 years as a reasonably respectable and quite conservative lawyer, how on earth do I find myself in this situation?” [laughs] But in the end I just had to get through the moment. But there were some lovely little side things, like the public servants behind the scenes, coming around with bowls of Jelly Snakes and Jelly Babies and mini Mars bars. Because we’d had nothing to eat, and they wouldn’t get us any food. The senators and members of the committee were all going off and having lunch. We’d had no breakfast, no morning tea and no lunch and I thought I’d faint, but these wonderful people were coming in and we were grabbing the food and eating it and they were saying [sotto voce], “You do realise that we are not responsible for this, don’t you?”, because some might think the secretariat had fed them these questions. RK But it was all the senators’ own work? GT With the attorney-general sitting next to me and encouraging it. And he was writing the questions which would be taken by his staff up to one of the senators, so feeding them the questions – an extraordinary experience. People were hugely supportive afterwards. Flowers were coming in. Each one brought a cheer from the staff and eventually it was so full that I couldn’t get in the room anymore. It was almost as though I had died the week before, and I’m thinking I must have missed something because I’m still standing here. RK Bullying in such a public forum made me think of the experience people have behind closed doors, especially in immigration detention, for example – such hubris to have this occur in a broadcast to the nation without any thought of what it might imply. GT Yes, hubris, quite right – did they ever say, “What if people see me behave like this? What will this mean about Australia’s democracy?” And the other point is if they can bully the president of the Human Rights Commission when she is on very firm grounds in law and evidence, what are they doing in these detention camps with these concepts of “noncompliance”? What on earth does this mean? And the spitefulness of some of it – making women stand in the heat for sanitary materials, or they are given three nappies a day and the child has used more than that and they have to stand again for more nappies. RK The extent of the hostility and the personal nature of the attacks must have shocked you. GT To use those terrible words that the prime minister and especially the attorney-general used: “We have no confidence in Gillian Triggs.” The words reverberated around my head for a very long time. It was a very cruel and unjustified comment and the attempt to get me to resign for another position was a disgraceful thing to do, but it was exposed by the questions in senate. I could have had other options, the possibility of criminal prosecutions of the attorney. RK I wondered why you decided against pursuing that avenue? GT The AFP did consider it. They dealt with it extremely professionally. They were courteous but I made the decision that the greatest recognition of this wrongdoing was in the senate itself, when the senate censured the attorney for the first time in about 80 years and I felt that this issue was much more political than it was legal. I also wanted to move on, and I think that this underlies a lot of cases that don’t proceed. RK Senator Brandis told a journalist a year or so into your appointment that: “My sense is that she’s more conservative than her predecessor and therefore more open to cultural change at the commission.” Was it a message to you? GT Oh, it was a deliberate message. I’m a lawyer and lawyers tend to be conservative. I really love the law and that means you tend to be cautious and careful and I have been for 50 years. It was a message that he expected me to stay away from the controversial matters. Well, no Human Rights president in the world could have turned their backs on the human rights issue. RK Did you note it at the time as a message to you? GT Yes. I thought politicians work in curious ways. Wouldn’t it have been nicer of him to pick up the phone or meet me for coffee, which he was happy to do in the glare of publicity in other contexts. RK Could the government’s laws to prevent doctors speaking about the harm being inflicted on refugees or the ban on community legal centres from advocating law reform be framed as free speech issues, too? GT Indeed. Of course they can. And this is where you get people who will use the language of human rights occasionally like “freedom of speech, liberty of movement” but very quickly find that they are trapped because they’ve promoted laws which are precisely against those freedoms. The attempt to stop people speaking about conditions was simply ham-fisted and completely unnecessary. Probably they are protected by the whistleblower’s law anyway, and in any event any self-respecting medico will always abide by the Hippocratic oath long before they are going to worry about some detailed bit of legislation passed in Canberra. RK Thinking of the response to your report, how do you manage disappointment? GT It’s hard because we’ve worked so hard on this. Our report met social science standards of credibility, we took senior members of the medical profession with us – paediatricians, psychiatrists who lent a huge level of credibility to our report. Our language is moderate, balanced and applied to both governments equally. It’s very disappointing to have such a careful report damaged in the way that this government set out to do. What I have learned is that politics in Australia is absolutely brutal. RK When the new prime minister took up his office last year there were reports that he had invited you over for a cuppa, even poured the tea. This seemed to be the beginning of a more constructive relationship between the president of the AHRC and the government. You said that you were very optimistic indeed. Has there been a lot of tea since then? GT No. I haven’t shared a cup of tea but I remain optimistic. I have written many times to the PM. His staff are terrific to work with. I deeply believe the first words he said to me, which were that on his watch we are returning to the rule of law, to the Westminster system and to respect for the AHRC. I believe that he believes that, and were he to win the next election I believe he will be good to his word. RK I see that you have not let the 2015 experience cower you. You have made many comments on matters that you have proper concerns in – from marriage equality and Safe Schools programs to calling for monitoring of conditions for asylum seekers and refugees in offshore detention centres to concerns about counterterrorism laws. It looks like, if the government thought they could bully you into submission, they made rather the wrong call. GT I’ve just turned 70 and I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’m so confident about the law and about the evidence for the law not being respected that I feel very sure-footed in going forward on these other issues. My resilience and determination and experience for a long time in the law give me the determination to get through the remaining 15 months to continue to speak out. When you see that you are being bullied by people who you know are not coming from a good place, you know you don’t have to give in to them. They are cowards and the moment you stand up to them they crumble, and they did crumble. And several now have been seen off long before me. They’re not used to a woman aged 70 standing up to them. They can’t quite believe it. If I were 40 looking for a career opportunity, I probably wouldn’t do what I’ve done because it would have queered the pitch for me professionally. But why do I care now? I can do what I’m trained to do and they almost can’t touch me. And I’ll continue to do that work when I’ve finished with this position. Tags: Australian Human Rights Commission Gillian Triggs Forgotten Children Tony Abbott George Brandis This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on Apr 23, 2016 as "‘I knew I could have destroyed them’". Subscribe here. Read more Ramona Koval
- https://www.oxfam.org.au/what-we-do/aid-and-development/campaign-for-australian-aid/australias-aid-effort/ Main Content ABC Home Open Sites menu - use enter key to open and tab key to navigate Search Location: Canberra, ACT Change Tuesday 16°C Min 5° Currently 11° Feels like 9° Detail News Home Just In Election 2016 AustraliaNational Australian Capital Territory New South Wales Northern Territory Queensland South Australia Tasmania Victoria Western Australia World Business Sport Analysis & Opinion Fact Check ProgramsTelevision 7.30 #TalkAboutIt Australian Story Australia Wide Behind the News Big Ideas The Business Capital Hill The Drum Foreign Correspondent Four Corners Insiders The Killing Season Landline Lateline National Press Club News Exchange The World Offsiders One Plus One Planet America Q & A Retrospect The Quarters The Mix Radio AM Correspondents Report Friday Late Pacific Beat PM The World Today Radio Australia News NewsRadio MoreABC News 24 Arts & Culture Corrections & Clarifications Entertainment Environment Fact Check Good News Health & Wellbeing Indigenous Local Music Religion & Ethics Rural Science Technology Weather The Weather Man World War 1 Centenary Elections Antony Green's Election Blog Archive Video Audio Photos NewsMail Podcasts Contact Us Site Preferences TopicsView all topicsenvironment government-and-politics arts-and-entertainment community-and-society Home Promise Tracker Recent Browse Contact About Print Email Facebook Twitter More Fact check: Does Australia spend more on offshore processing than the UN spends on refugee programs in South East Asia? Updated 21 Jul 2015, 11:09am Photo: Refugee advocates say offshore processing costs five times what the UNHCR spends in South East Asia (ABC: Karen Barlow) Map: Australia Human rights advocates are challenging the Abbott Government's spending on offshore processing. The claim: Daniel Webb, director of the Human Rights Law Centre, says Australia is currently spending "more than five times the United Nations refugee agency's entire budget for all of South East Asia" on offshore processing of asylum seekers. The verdict: Although difficult to pinpoint a final figure, current spending for the 2014-15 financial year based on Senate estimates is comfortably over $1 billion, while the UN's budget for the South East Asia region is $US157 million in 2015. Mr Webb's claim checks out. In May lawyers acting for asylum seekers detained offshore launched a High Court case that challenges, in part, whether the government has the power to spend public money on the policy. Despite a bill rushed through the Senate to close a loophole and endorse spending on Nauru and Manus Island, lawyers have said the High Court challenge is still on the table. Daniel Webb, director of the Human Rights Law Centre and a lawyer involved in the case, said money spent on offshore detention could be much better spent on developing "safe pathways to protection" for refugees. "We're currently spending $1 billion a year detaining asylum seekers offshore. That's more than five times the United Nations refugee agency's entire budget for all of South East Asia", he said when the proceedings began on May 14. How does Australia's offshore processing spending compare to the South East Asian budget for the UN refugee agency? ABC Fact Check takes a look. Offshore processing Asylum seekers are processed by the country they arrive in to determine whether they can gain the protections of refugee status. In August 2012, the Gillard Labor Government introduced legislation that meant all asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat are now sent to offshore processing facilities. According to the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales, the government began transferring asylum seekers to two overseas centres shortly afterwards – to Nauru in September 2012, and to Manus Island, a part of Papua New Guinea, in November 2012. As of May 2015, there were a total of 1,577 men, women and children in regional processing centres: 635 on Nauru; and 943 on Manus Island. The cost of running offshore processing centres Fact Check asked Daniel Webb from the Human Rights Law Centre for the basis of his claim about "current spending". He referred to Senate estimates hearings for the Immigration and Border Protection portfolio from the 2014-15 federal budget - specifically from October 2014. Mr Webb made his comment two days after Treasurer Joe Hockey handed down the 2015-16 budget, which contained updated figures for 2014-15, and forecasts for the four years of the forward estimates. The Department of Immigration and Border Protection refers to the costs of offshore detention as having three components: operational "administered" expenditure on Manus Island and Nauru, which includes paying the private contractors who run the centres; expenditure by the department itself; and capital expenditure offshore. At a Senate estimates hearing on May 26, the department's chief financial officer, Steven Groves, said the administered and departmental costs combined for July 2014 to April 2015 came to $821 million. He said that there was also capital expenditure offshore in that period of $286 million. Together, these amount to $1.1 billion in the first 10 months of the 2014-15 financial year. The department's portfolio budget statements released with the 2015-16 budget anticipate the full year's administered costs for offshore processing in 2014-15 to be $858 million and the departmental costs to be $54 million, a total of $912 million. Any capital expenditure would be in addition to this figure, but no specific number was outlined for this expense offshore in the budget statements . Mr Groves was also asked at Senate estimates in May about comparable figures for the previous two financial years. He said in 2013-14, operating expenditure was $922 million and capital expenditure was $391 million, a total of $1.3 billion. The previous financial year, when the processing centres on Manus Island and Nauru were opened, the operating expenditure was $205 million and capital expenditure was $139 million, a total of $344 million, he said. Does the Government expect the costs to fall? The budget papers predict that these figures will drop sharply over the coming years. The head of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, Michael Pezzullo, told the May 26 hearing that "Operation Sovereign Borders, in effect, has led, in bureaucratic terms, to a reduction in what is called demand." Fewer people meant less money was needed, he said. The department's budget statements give a breakdown of operating expenses, but not capital expenses. They show that administered and departmental expenses on offshore management of asylum seekers are expected to be $811 million in 2015-16, about $100 million lower than in 2014-15. The statements project that this figure will more than halve the following year to $349 million, and remain at about that level in 2017-18 and 2018-19. While the portfolio statements do not give a specific figure for the capital expenditure on offshore processing, they do show that the department's overall capital expenditure over the forward estimates is projected to be lower that the capital expenditure on offshore processing alone has been in recent years. In 2015-16, capital expenditure across the immigration department is expected to be $203 million before falling away to around $20 million in each of the following three years. It is unknown what proportion of this will be spent on offshore processing facilities. Together, these figures indicates that while the combined operational and capital expenditure on offshore processing could be close to $1 billion again in 2015-16, the Government expects it to fall to a less than $400 million a year after that. These numbers include resettlement costs for asylum seekers moving into the community on Manus Island and Nauru, or taking up the option of transferring to Cambodia. Where is the money spent at offshore processing centres? In the October 2014 Senate Estimates, Mark Cormack from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection provided a breakdown of where money was allocated on Nauru for 2014-15: Breakdown of Government expenditure on Nauru 2014-15Charters$24,700,000Escorts$8,600,000Independent reviews$479,000Garrison and welfare$316,900,000Healthcare services$25,400,000Family and unaccompanied minors welfare support$26,150,000Property$150,000Advisory Committee costs$205,000Returns$2,800,000Removals$810,000Visas$15,500,000Leases$1,800,000Other payments to Government of offshore centre$600,000Other costs$9,900,000TOTAL$433,994,000Departmental expenses - Staff$9,100,000Departmental expenses - Supplies$26,000,000TOTAL$35,100,000Source: DIBPThe UN refugee agency The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (or UNHCR) was set up in 1950 in the aftermath of World War II. The agency, whose mandate is outlined in the UNHCR Statute, says its role is to "lead and co-ordinate international action to protect refugees and resolve refugee problems worldwide". It allocates money globally to four programs: refugees; statelessness; reintegration; and internally displaced persons. Its work is carried out through several regional offices, including one in Bangkok covering Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. How much does it cost to run the agency in South East Asia? According to UNHCR's website, the budget for the South East Asia region was $US159 million for 2014 and is estimated to be $US157 million for 2015. The budget breakdown for the South East Asia region is as follows: South East Asian budgets ($US)Operation2014 revised budget (30 June 2014)Refugee program 2015Statelessness program 2015Internally displaced persons 2015Total 2015Bangladesh12,385,98814,425,5758,731014,434,305Indonesia8,146,7936,910,23389,94207,000,175Malaysia20,161,42816,410,089830,521017,240,610Myanmar68,108,70310,746,41113,848,08443,178,23167,772,726Philippines9,677,8221,059,787952,0903,465,8945,477,770Thailand32,803,30336,035,5421,197,917037,233,459Thailand regional office*7,389,7037,019,359797,64707,817,006Vietnam437,2030000Total159,110,94492,606,99617,724,93146,644,125156,976,052*Includes Cambodia and Vietnam from 2015 Source: UNHCR How does the UN spend its budget? Vivian Tan, a spokeswoman from the UNHCR regional office in Bangkok, told Fact Check the South East Asia budget is used to cover over 200,000 refugees, half a million internally displaced people and nearly 1.4 million stateless persons in the region. She said the exact expenditure within these programs varies across countries "depending on the needs and what we are authorised to do". As a general guide, the refugee programs focus on providing relief supplies in the region's refugee camps, and ensuring access to basic services such as water, sanitation, health care, education, and camp management, she said. The UNHCR's refugee program also "pursues durable solutions for refugees", aiming to resettle vulnerable populations in other countries, or return them to their own country when it is safe to do so. Money spent under the internally displaced persons budget is used to "promote community co-existence, self-reliance and livelihoods to enable IDPs to return home eventually". The statelessness programs work to prevent and reduce the number of people without a nationality by "engaging the authorities on relevant laws and policies on citizenship" and aiming towards law reform, birth registration and documentation to prevent the problem. Thailand and Myanmar account for the largest share of UNCHR's regional budget, and the agency provides a detailed breakdown of expenditure only for these countries. The Thailand breakdown shows $36 million out of the total $37.2 million allocated in 2015 is to be spent on refugee programs, with much of this going towards basic needs and essential services, and working towards "durable solutions" such as voluntary return and resettlement of refugees and asylum seekers. Is it a useful comparison? In his May 14 media release, Mr Webb explained why he compared Australia's offshore processing budget with the UNHCR's South East Asia budget. "Instead of using costly and cruel measures to stop the boats, Australia should be working with the United Nations to address why people get on them in the first place," he said. "We should be using our resources and our influence to develop safe pathways to protection for people who need to seek it." The Refugee Council of Australia has also used a similar comparison. In a recent submission to the Productivity Commission, the council contrasted government spending on asylum seekers with the total expenditure of the UNHCR in 2014. It said the agency spent $3.72 billion worldwide "with which it did its best to respond to the needs of around 46.3 million refugees, internally displaced people and stateless people under its mandate. "Clearly, there is a strong argument to be made that the money spent on Australia's asylum seeker policies could be put to far better use," the submission said. Lucy Morgan from the Refugee Council told Fact Check: "If the Government instead channelled this money into improving protection and achieving solutions for displaced people overseas, it could help to resolve the issues which compel asylum seekers to undertake dangerous boat journeys in the first place." Jane McAdam, director of the Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales, told Fact Check there is a point in comparing the amount of money Australia is spending on a few thousand people in offshore detention versus UNHCR's budget to show "how disproportionate it is (and where Australia's money could actually make a real difference to alleviating displacement)". The verdict Mr Webb uses the comparison between offshore processing and the UN's refugee agency to argue government money could be better spent elsewhere, in light of the recent case launched in the High Court. Offshore processing expenditure varies between years, and forward estimates suggest the overall costs needed to run Nauru and Manus Island will start to decrease sharply within the next two years. Although difficult to pinpoint a final figure, current spending for the 2014-15 financial year based on Senate estimates is comfortably over $1 billion while the UN's budget for the South East Asia region is $US157 million in 2015. Using the exchange rate at the time of Mr Webb's claim, Australia is currently spending more than five times the amount on offshore processing than the UNHCR spends in South East Asia. Mr Webb's claim checks out. Sources Human Rights Law Centre, High Court Challenge to Offshore Detention, May 14, 2015 Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, Offshore Processing: Conditions, April 7, 2015 Department of Immigration and Border Protection, Immigration Detention and Community Statistics Summary, May 2015 Department of Immigration and Border Protection, 2015-16 Portfolio budget statements, May 2015 Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, October 20, 2014 Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee, May 26, 2015 Statute of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNHCR, Global Appeal 2015 update, South East Asia UNHCR, Global Appeal 2015 update, Thailand UNHCR, Global Appeal 2015 update, Myanmar Refugee Council of Australia, submission to Productivity Commission inquiry into the migrant intake into Australia, June 2015 Topics: immigration, budget, government-and-politics, world-politics, refugees, australia First posted 14 Jul 2015, 11:57am Print Email Facebook Twitter More Comments Please read the House Rules, FAQ and ABC Online Terms of Use before submitting your comment. 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AEST = Australian Eastern Standard Time which is 10 hours ahead of UTC (Greenwich Mean Time) Change to mobile view Terms of Use Privacy Policy Contact Us © 2016 ABC ------------------- Detention costs Detention on Manus Island and Nauru alone cost the government $1.2 billion in the year to June 2015. This enormous sum could instead reverse government cuts and boost spending on health and education. It is a stark example of the government’s priorities. Cost of detention per person a year (Souce: National Commission of Audit) Detaining a single asylum seeker on Manus or Nauru costs $400,000 per year. Detention in Australia costs $239,000 per year. By contrast, allowing asylum seekers to live in the community while their claims are processed costs just $12,000 per year, one twentieth of the cost of the offshore camps, and even less if they are allowed the right to work. The Liberals are running a scare campaign about refugees. They seek to paint refugees as “economic migrants”, “country shoppers” or worse, equate refugees with terrorists. In reality, approximately 90% of those who arrive by boat are legitimate refugees, and no refugee has ever been convicted of a terrorist offence in Australia. Before the election, Abbott promised “no cuts to health, no cuts to education.” Their arrogance and refusal to answer questions about Operation Sovereign Borders also shows this government’s lies and deceit on asylum seekers. The government clearly has plenty to hide. The government loves to claim success in “stopping the boats”. They use his claim that refugees are some kind of threat as a scapegoat to try to distract attention from budget cuts and attacks on workers—and the fact that the real threat to our living standards is the Liberal government. It claims that stopping the boats is about saving lives at sea. But processing asylum claims in Indonesia and flying those found to be refugees to Australia would save lives, and cost a fraction of the cost of detention. Keeping thousands of asylum seekers locked in camps to deter others is a miserable and cowardly act. Effectively this government is saying “no matter what horrors you’ve come from, we’ll treat you worse in Australia. So die somewhere else.” The government’s claim that it will be able to save millions of dollars by stopping the boats and being able to close detention centres is another lie. As the boats that arrived from Sri Lanka and India in July carrying 41 and 157 Tamil asylum seekers have shown, people fleeing persecution will continue to ask for help, no matter how cruel Australia tries to be. There is no need to cut welfare, make you pay for the doctor, increase the cost of your education, and slash funding to hospitals. The government will continue to waste billions of dollars sending asylum seekers to the camps on Nauru and Manus Island until we demand humane policies. replenishments being negotiated for the Asian Development Fund (ADF) and the International Development Association (IDA). Administered expenses for ‘International Development Assistance’ are budgeted at $2,919.8 million, a decrease of $192.4 million from the 2015-16 estimated actual which reflects the reduction in expenditure on the Australian Aid Program. Australia’s aid effort Despite being one of the wealthiest nations, successive cuts to Australian aid mean our nation is on track to its lowest ever level of aid spending. Some facts about Australia’s aid program: Australia currently spends $5.03 billion dollars on foreign aid – that’s 0.32% of our gross national income, or 32 cents in every $100 But, recent plans have been set out to drastically lower our aid spending. New cuts planned for the May Federal Budget will lower Australian aid to around 22 cents in every $100 of our national income by 2016. This will be the lowest ever level of Australian aid in its 60-year history. The Australian Government and Opposition have both pledged to increase overseas development assistance to 50 cents in every $100 before the last Federal Election. However, neither major party currently has a clear timetable for achieving this goal. This leaves Australia lagging behind many other developed nations, including the UK, who has lifted its aid spending to 70 cents in every $100. Australia, with one of the highest incomes per capita in the world, currently ranks a low 13th out of the 28 wealthy OECD member nations that give aid – and with the proposed new aid cuts, we will fall down the list to 19th.
- http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/un-reviews-development-goals-again-ignores-population-growth Population growth is linked to conflict, water shortages and resource depletion, climate change and mass migrations. The global population is now 7.3 billion people, up from 2.5 billion in 1950, and is expected to swell to near 11 billion by the end of the century. World leaders convene this week at the United Nations and prepare to adopt new Sustainable Development Goals for 2030. The draft document does not address population growth, and instead outlines goals on combating poverty, hunger and inequality, promoting peace with inclusive societies, protecting human rights, caring for the planet and its sustainability. “Certainly lowering high rates of population growth to manageable levels is not a panacea ensuring sustainable development for the least development countries,” notes demographer Joseph Chamie. “However, reducing rapid rates of population growth will contribute substantially to the developmental efforts of those countries by making national goals easier and less costly to achieve.” Every goal on sustainability could benefit from reduced population growth. – YaleGlobal UN Reviews Development Goals, But Again Ignores Population Growth UN sustainability goals should not overlook population growth centered in the poor, least developed countries Joseph Chamie YaleGlobal, 22 September 2015 Developing population gap: Booming population of Uganda, top, is set to reach same level as that for the United Kingdom – though the UK's was three times larger than Uganda's in 1995 NEW YORK: As world leaders convene for the UN Sustainable Development Summit in New York, to reflect on the progress of the Millennium Development Goals set in 2000 and adopt more goals for 2030, they ought to focus on the elephant in the room – a swelling global population that weighs on sustainability of social, economic and environmental development. A swelling global population that has tripled since 1950, with a record high of 7.3 billion people, should not be overlooked in setting new international development goals. According to the summit’s draft Declaration of the Sustainable Development Goals, the heads of state and government and high representatives resolve before 2030 “to end poverty and hunger everywhere; to combat inequalities within and among countries; to build peaceful, just and inclusive societies; to protect human rights and promote gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls; and to ensure the lasting protection of the planet and its natural resources.” To achieve these lofty aims, the agenda includes a diverse set of topics, including 17 specific developmental goals and a broad range of 169 targets. Yet, population growth is not mentioned among the goals nor the targets. Over the past 15 years, world population increased by 1.2 billion people and is now at a record high of 7.3 billion. During that time period, the population of the least developed countries grew nearly 10 times as fast as the more developed countries. The UN Population Division anticipates another billion by 2030 and at least 11 billion by the end of the century. Today the average annual population increase of the least developed countries is 22 million compared to 3 million for the more developed countries. Also, whereas the combined populations of the least developed countries, about 954 million, represent 13 percent of the world’s population, they account for about 27 percent of the world’s annual population increase of about 84 million. When the international community adopted the Millennium Development Goals in 2000, the population of the 47 more developed countries was about twice as large as that of the 48 least developed countries (see Figure 1). Due to the substantial differences in rates of demographic growth, the population of the least developed countries is expected to surpass the population of the more developed countries by 2030. Looking further ahead, the world’s least developed countries are projected to have twice the population size of the more developed countries by around 2070. While the average annual rate of natural increase – births minus deaths - of the least developed countries is 2.5 percent, the rates among some of the poorest countries are in excess of 3 percent, which translates into a population doubling time of less than 25 years. Most of this growth is in Africa: The populations of Burundi, Chad, Niger, Somalia and Uganda, for example, are expected to double by 2040. The countries projected to increase at least fivefold by 2100 include Angola, Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, Mali, Niger, Senegal, Somalia, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia. In contrast, the average annual rate of natural increase of the more developed countries is about one-10th of one percent. In addition, with the numbers of deaths outnumbering births, some 18 developed countries are experiencing negative rates of natural increase, including Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Japan. Immigration is the only alternative to fertility for population growth. In the absence of sufficient compensating immigration, the populations of these aging countries as well as those of 20 others are projected to be markedly smaller by 2030.A comparison of two countries with the same area, Uganda and the United Kingdom, illustrates the profound demographic changes underway. Several years before the Millennium Development Goals were adopted in 2000, the United Kingdom’s population was three times as large as Uganda’s. A few years after 2030, when the Sustainable Development Goals are scheduled for review, the populations of the two nations are expected to be the same size. Looking even further ahead, Uganda’s population is projected to be twice as large as the United Kingdom’s around 2075 (see Figure 2). The underlying reason for the rapid rates of demographic growth among the least developed countries is high fertility rates. While the average number of births for the more developed countries is around 1.7 births per woman, the average for the least developed countries is 4.3 births per woman. Considerably higher fertility rates are observed in many of the least developed African countries, such as Niger with 7.6 births per woman; Somalia, 6.6; Mali, 6.4; Chad, 6.3; Angola, 6.2; and Uganda, 5.9 (Figure 3). Many countries in various regions of the world have already passed through the demographic transition achieved by both low birth and death rates. At present nearly 80 countries, representing close to half of the world’s population, have fertility rates at or below the replacement level of about two children per woman. In contrast, about 21 countries, accounting for about 9 percent of the world’s population, have fertility rates of five or more births per woman. Certainly lowering high rates of population growth to manageable levels is not a panacea ensuring sustainable development for the least development countries. However, reducing rapid rates of population growth will contribute substantially to the developmental efforts of those countries by making national goals easier and less costly to achieve. Slower population growth rates will give those countries with more time to adjust to future population change. This in turn will strengthen their abilities to expand their economies, improve living conditions, educate youth, develop infrastructure and protect environments. There is not a single issue among the sustainable development goals – including poverty, hunger, housing, education, employment, health, gender equality, human rights and environment – that would not benefit from reducing high rates of population growth. Lower rates of population growth among the least developed countries would also contribute to improving economic and employment prospects, while easing environmental stresses, thus reducing the pressures for young men and women to migrate to other countries to secure a decent standard of living. Moreover, if fertility rates in the least developed countries were to decline faster than currently projected in the United Nations medium variant projection, the difference in population by the century’s close could be close to a billion people less, 2.2 billion versus 3.2 billion. Such a sizeable demographic difference would contribute to early stabilization of the world’s population. As has been the case at previous global summits, world leaders will briskly walk into the UN General Assembly and deliver 10 minutes or so of largely forgettable prose. It would indeed be memorable if at least one leader recommended that the international community work together to address high rates of population growth. In 15 years, the world population will have gained another 1.2 billion people and grow to 8.5 billion people. By then, nearly all of today’s political leaders will have either retired, been removed or passed away. Their replacements will address the UN Development Summit in 2030 – and by then, may find the courage to ask why rapid rates of population growth were repeatedly ignored for so long – and recommend that population growth be included in any future set of international development goals. Joseph Chamie is an independent consulting demographer and a former director of the United Nations Population Division Rights:Copyright © 2015 YaleGlobal and the MacMillan Center http://www.un.org/press/en/2015/pop1039.doc.htm 15 April 2015 POP/1039 Integrating Demographic Challenges in Sustainable Development Goals Focus of Panel Discussion in Population Commission Commission on Population and Development, Forty-eighth Session, 5th & 6th Meetings (AM & PM) Economic and Social Council Meetings Coverage Economic and Social Council President Calls for Inputs for Ministerial Review; Debate Continues on National Experiences Integrating population issues into sustainable development was inevitable if new goals were to be achieved, experts and delegates said in an exploration of holistic approaches towards that end, as the Commission on Population and Development continued its forty-eighth session. Throughout the morning, panellists and participants, in presentations and an interactive discussion, considered issues of demographics, climate change, the environment, women’s empowerment, youth, sexual and reproductive health, as well as how data was collected, broadly agreeing that those were inextricably linked in the effort to meet the global challenges needed for a sustainable future. Moderated by Pamela Falk, Foreign Affairs Analyst of the CBS News TV and Radio and former President of the United Nations Correspondents’ Association, the panel featured interventions by Mark Montgomery, Senior Associate of the Population Council and Professor of the Department of Economics, Stony Brook University; Gita Sen, Professor of Public Health, Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore; Jacob R. S. Malungo, Professor of Demography of the University of Zambia; and Lori Hunter, Professor at the Environment and Society Program, Institute of Behavioral Science, University of Colorado at Boulder. Mr. Malungo said that there were two ends to the demographic continuum. At one end were a great many young people, and at the other, a preponderance of elderly. Neither was ideal for a sustainable and productive future. Developing countries tended to have younger populations with higher fertility rates putting pressure on educational and health services, which was out of balance with the needs of that population, whereas the industrialized world had an ageing populace, which, among other things, created an economic burden on the shrinking working population. Furthermore, he said, cultural norms and location must be considered. Certain practices, such as “sexual cleansing” and polygamous marriages, increased the spread of sexual infections and were not socially sustainable, he said as an example of the problem. Noting that indicators for sustainable development would be different for different regions, he said that, in less developed systems, indicators might hover around health, education and entrepreneurship; the demographic dividend could be used to determine which areas to profile. More advanced systems, he explained, might have ageing as a priority indicator. Ms. Hunter said that individuals, communities and nations were short-changed by single-sector approaches. Rather, multisectoral approaches were more effective. She noted that progress on any of the sustainable development goals, awaiting agreement, related to poverty, health or education, would affect all the others. Climate change would loom large in shaping the next 15 years, shift the context and gain traction in becoming a big determinant in food production and the welfare of cities, among other consequences. The “disposable era” had to come to an end, she said, stressing the importance of thinking about the socio-ecological system. New ways of living that had a lesser ecological footprint must be created. Then, too, environmental issues could differ from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. In that regard, she also spoke about gathering place-specific qualitative data, rather than the quantitative data collected by most demographers. In-depth interviews and research on the ground should be included in the “tool-box” of data collection, she suggested. Mr. Montgomery, recognizing the importance of coping with environmental risk, said it was important to lay down a framework that would show who was at risk and where. It was essential to put people in place. Suppose a localized drought struck a particular region of the country, would a statistical office know the total population of the region and its demographic breakdown? Clearly, a system was needed in which space and place were the foundation. Disaggregation of data could help to determine whether development was inclusive and provide a stress test on achievement of the sustainable development goals, he said. For example, one of the draft goals emphasized that cities and human settlements should be safe and sustainable. But, how was progress towards those ends to be gauged? The urban scene was characterized by the emergence of megacities, which dominated the conversation about urbanization. But, one must be able to get down to the neighbourhoods, for which assessment tools were needed. Smaller settlements were often overlooked in the discussion, although they contained three times the number of people as larger cities. For cities and towns to be vital and sustainable, it was necessary to know what was going on and for Governments at all levels to have access to that data. Central to the task of integrating population issues into sustainable development, Ms. Falk said, was to ensure that improving the quality of life for today’s generation would reach into the future. Statistics indicated that between 2015 and 2030, 1.9 billion people would turn 15 years of age. “We need to be ready for them,” she said. Ms. Sen drew attention to two aspects which she said would shape developments over the next 10 to 15 years and beyond. The first was to greatly reduce fertility in order to maintain the population ages 10 to 24 at 1.9 billion. Otherwise, that age group could reach 3.2 billion by 2040. It was important to understand how to stabilize that population. The second aspect concerned the uneven population distribution across regions, with Africa having a much greater percentage. Indeed, the continent might have 41 per cent of the world’s young people by 2100. All systems must be geared to their health and human rights. She said that half those young people would be girls, who had special needs. Focusing on health rather than just numbers and rates was a paradigm change spurred by the International Conference on Population and Development, known as ICPD. Indeed, she suggested, the best way to stabilize the population and reap the potential demographic dividend was to focus on the health and human rights of women. At the same time, addressing those draft goals required money. Developing countries had been funding three quarters of the world Conference’s targets through out-of-pocket spending by individuals, which was one of the reasons households and individuals fell below the poverty line. Set against military spending, the amount needed was “peanuts”, but would achieve enormous results in improving the health and rights of women and all people. This afternoon, the Commission considered the contribution of population and development issues in the context of the Annual Ministerial Review of the Economic and Social Council’s, which would examine the transition from the Millennium Development Goals to the sustainable development goals. Council Vice-President, Vladimir Drobnjak (Croatia), drew attention to enhancing reproductive health and rights, as highlighted in the 1994 Cairo Programme. Reductions in fertility, he said, opened a window of opportunity for a dividend, especially when coupled with education and employment opportunities. The global trend towards population ageing, he said, also must be given the attention it deserved, along with issues of expanding urbanization and migrants’ rights, among others. He commended the collaboration among the Council’s functional bodies. In the ensuing discussion, the representative of Mexico focused his remarks on urbanization and changing patterns of consumption. His country had 384 densely populated cities, as well as a significant number of small towns. Basic infrastructure had strengthened, he said, but, at the same time, services must be improved. Environmental education would also motivate change. A representative of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said that migration must be seen as a benefit rather than a problem. How migrants and their families fared was a key determinant in furthering development. He thus urged harnessing the positive potential of migration for development. Also today, the Commission continued its general debate on national experience in population matters, hearing from nearly 50 representatives, many of whom hailed from Africa. They shared progress achieved by their countries amid myriad obstacles. Togo’s representative, for example, said his country had attained the first Millennium Development Goal — it had improved women’s health and its goal on HIV/AIDS was in reach. However, many challenges remained, including catering to the needs of young people. The representative of Botswana noted the significant decline in his country in infant and maternal mortality and the increase in life expectancy. Botswana, he said in that regard, was promoting sexual and reproductive rights, and provided comprehensive sexuality education in schools. However, it, too, faced a challenge in addressing the needs of its youth population. Jamaica had also made significant progress towards achieving development targets, its representative said. However, it was challenged by health-related issues, such as high rates of maternal and infant mortality and increasing rates of non-communicable diseases, among others. In the same vein, Sierra Leone’s representative said that, while his Government had introduced policy measures and strengthened health-care programmes that would elevate service quality and accessibility, the outbreak of the Ebola virus had adversely affected the gains. Niger’s representative highlighted a project on the empowerment of women and the resulting dividend. However, he said, two demographic indicators were of concern: the fertility rate at 7.6 children for women of reproductive age and 3.9 per cent overall, was the highest in the world. In that regard, the Vice-Minister from Nigeria cautioned that policies aimed at reducing fertility rates should be weighed carefully against the development needs of States and their capacity to absorb increased populations. Nigeria was among the highest reproductive, productive and consumptive countries in the world and thus faced an opportunity to create sound policies to address development needs. A number of speakers from Latin America, including Peru’s representative, highlighted their commitment to the Montevideo Consensus, noting its overarching framework in the region on population and development. Owing to sustained economic growth, he said the Peruvian Government had been able to focus on programmes to reduce poverty and provide health services. However, reducing illiteracy, which was predominant among women and in rural areas, remained a challenge. Paraguay’s representative said his country had also experienced economic growth and was focused on a national plan aimed at sustainable development. Noting the significant indigenous presence in the population, with 15 different ethnic groups in the country, he said that the young and indigenous people were the nation’s most vulnerable groups and thus were the focus of the national development plan. A representative of Argentina said his country also focused on reducing gaps in social inequality and guaranteeing the rights of those of African descent and of indigenous people. Many speakers underscored the importance of a rights-based health approach, which would ensure that women could decide when and how many children they wished to have. Australia’s representative, for one, said that at the core of empowering women and girls was enabling them to have control over their own bodies, through reproductive health rights. Similarly, the representative of the United Kingdom expressed concern that, despite progress, there was still too much “stubborn” resistance to the simple notion that women and girls had the right to decide what happened to their bodies. Access to sexual and reproductive health and evidence-based comprehensive sexuality education must be available and accessible to all. Similarly, Norway’s representative said her country gave the highest priority to ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and respect for human rights. However, while culture and religion were important in supporting central values of human dignity and in protecting the rights of all, she said it was unfortunate that those very factors were also being used to suppress people and deny them access to the protection and services they needed. A number of speakers also highlighted their countries’ attention to achieving a demographic dividend, including Thailand’s representative who said it had been successful in that, owing to a large working population and fewer dependents. Yet, population trends required new policy initiatives, he said. Challenges for Thailand included an increase in the adolescent birth rate, decline in overall fertility and ageing of the labour force. The Philippines’ representative said his country too was focused on facilitating the necessary conditions to reap a demographic dividend, as well as to prevent and reduce teenage pregnancy, and foster mobility and urbanization. However, given the prevailing poverty and inequality in the country, putting people at the centre of sustainable development was indeed challenging. He hoped the country, despite its economic limitations, would continue to pursue policy and programme reforms that integrated population issues into sustainable development. Also participating in the interactive panel discussion were the representatives of Senegal, Japan, Uganda, Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Jamaica, United States and the United Kingdom. Additional speakers in the general debate were the representatives of Uganda, Pakistan, Armenia, Canada, Germany, Mexico, Ireland, Serbia, Nepal, Botswana, Moldova, Zimbabwe, Colombia, Portugal, Zambia, Turkmenistan, Sudan, Senegal, Tonga, Romania, Iran, Gabon, Kenya, Turkey, Maldives, Lebanon, Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda. The Commission will meet again at 10 a.m. on Thursday, 16 April, to continue its work.
- Namibia: Mothers With Many Children Are Usually Poor - Geingos Tagged: Governance Health Namibia Pregnancy and Childbirth Southern Africa tweet share Google+ comment email more Related Topics Governance South Africa: Zuma Faces Return Bout in Battle Over Corruption Charges Central African Republic: UN Security Council Extends Peacekeeping Force Mandate Nigeria: Govt Begins Preparation of 2017 Budget Nigeria: Transport Ministry to Acquire National Carrier Health Nigeria: Mixed Reactions As President Buhari Slashes Immunisation, Polio Funds Africa: Widespread Ingestion of Packaging Chemical Revealed Africa: Dangerously Expensive - Youths Opt for Costly, Unsafe Abortions Africa: Parasitic Worms May Hold Key to Cutting Spread of HIV - Researchers Namibia Namibia: Country Prepares for Floods As El Nino Rapidly Transitions to La Nina Africa: Major International Wildlife Ranching Conference to be Held in Namibia Namibia: Affirmative Repositioning Accuses Attorney General of Lying in Parliament Namibia: Yellow Fever Case Confirmed Pregnancy and Childbirth Gambia: NAS Boss Outlines Achievements Under Pmtct Programme Nigeria: FG Tasks Media On Use of Neonatal Commodities for Newborn Babies Nigeria: 126 Personal Trained On Eclampsia Detection, Treatment Nigeria: 20-Yr-Old Gives Birth in Aba Prison Southern Africa Zimbabwe: Over 2 000 Lose Homes to Bank South Africa: Govt Must Open Student Funding to Public Scrutiny Zimbabwe: Probe Against Mining Firms Opened Malawi: Albinos Still Living in Fear, Call for Police Protection President Hage Geingob with First Lady Monica Geingos. By Selma IkelaWindhoek — The higher the number of children a woman has the more work she has to do to get herself out of poverty, or move up the harsh economic ladder. Sharing the wisdom was First Lady Monica Geingos, who said there is an economic cost for a woman to have children without planning for them, as it takes away her ability to work her way out of poverty. Geingos made a comparison between herself who is a mother of two and a mother who has eight children. "Now if I had eight schoolchildren, I would not afford eight school fees. The woman who has eight children is likely to put eight babies into poverty," said Geingos during the donation of HIV/syphilis duo test kits to the Namibia Planned Parenthood Association (Nappa) at the women's centre in Okuryangava. Nappa works in advancing youth sexual and reproductive health services in the country and particularly in Windhoek's underprivileged suburb of Katutura, where the majority of the underserved community in the capital lives. Geingos wholeheartedly spoke to adults and schoolchildren who attended the event about family planning, education, health and parents, especially fathers, taking up their responsibility to raise their children. Geingos said her office is passionate about reproductive health and rights because they want to see young people and women fully exploring their potential. "We want them to become whatever they want to become, so anything that stops a woman from fully maximizing her potential is a problem for us. When we see for instance the statistics in terms of teenage pregnancies, I don't really see it [the situation] just from a health perspective. I see it from an economic perspective because there is an economic cost to falling pregnant when young, and there is a health cost," she remarked. Geingos said the economic cost is the mother's risk of not being able to finalize her education and not be able to provide for the baby the way she would have if she managed to have the child a little bit later. The first lady said she saw statistics generated by UNFPA that show that even in Namibia 53 percent of women in higher wealth quarters use more contraceptives than women in the lower quarters. "A wealthy woman can afford to send her child to an expensive school. So by having less children she is enabling herself to continue moving up the economic ladder, whereas the person in the lower quarter who is likely not to afford her child, or not likely not have access to health facilities, is the one with eight children," she lectured women. She said the woman with eight children is the one who gets trapped in poverty, and citizens would want to live in a country where if you are poor it's because you choose to be poor. "We don't want to live in a society where you are trapped in poverty and don't have a way out. We can trap people in poverty if we don't provide them with access to mobile services, if we don't give them information. It is one thing to ask why are you having many babies if you can't afford but [yet] we not giving accessible, affordable and understandable information, because then we can't judge that woman with eight children if we didn't empower her with the information," further stated the first lady. Geingos thinks it's not about stopping unwanted pregnancies but about empowering women to make decisions to exercise a choice. "If you have all the information and your choice is to have eight children, then it's your choice, then there is nothing we can do about it," stressed Geingos. In addition, the Deputy Minister of Economic and National Planning and Napa treasurer, Lucia Iipumbu, said that in 2015 over 15 000 young people accessed services at the facility. Iipumbu said 11 236 family planning services were delivered and this made a significant impact in the reduction in unsafe abortions and cases of baby dumping. She said nearly 4 800 young people were tested for HIV at the clinic, with 280 testing positive and referred for ART, while 581 young people were screened for sexually transmitted infections. "This is testimony of the impact Nappa services are making in the lives of young people in Windhoek and Namibia in general," said Iipumbu.
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- The World Bank granted Tanzania $50m in 2007 in a drive to boost educational standards and school enrollment levels. $4.5tn is needed for development projects like this around the world that will help meet the SDGs Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images http://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2016/may/04/the-missing-development-trillions-where-will-they-come-from?CMP=ema-1702&CMP=
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- A member of Burundi’s military on patrol as police seek weapons in Bujumbura. Photograph: Griff Tapper/IRC
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- When everyone signed up to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals last year, one thing was very very clear; the SDGs would be expensive. “Trillions, not billions,” went the cheery slogan. Of course it’s impossible to calculate precisely how much they will cost, but according to one widely referenced calculation by UNCTAD, the SDGS could cost up to $4.5tn a year between 2015 and 2030 (some sums have come out even higher). But at current investment levels in development, that leaves us with an annual investment gap in key SDG sectors of at least $3tn or even more. Where on earth are we going to get that money? We will be exploring this issue in a series called The Missing Development Trillions from 9-15 May, with experts from across the sector sharing their opinions on where the answer to this trillion dollar question lies, from fixing tax to blended finance, from the private sector to philanthropy. We want to know your thoughts too - do you think this bold target can be acheived? Have you got any alternative suggestions for financing, or critiques of the SDGs themselves? Tell us how you’d manage the development finance crisis in the form below. We will publish a selection of the best answers on Friday 13 May. Loading... Join our community of development professionals and humanitarians. Follow @GuardianGDP on Twitter.
- Congolese refugees divide up rations at a WFP food distribution point in the Nyarugusu refugee camp. Photograph: Phil Moore/Oxfam