From:  briefing at unwatch.org
Subject: Exclusive Report: Today’s UN Durban II African Prep Meeting Slams Israel, Free Speech; But Silent on Darfur Atrocities.
Date: August 26, 2008

UN Watch Exclusive from Nigeria: Today’s Durban II Text
News and Analysis from UN Watch in Geneva
Vol. 179 | August 26, 2008

In this Issue:

• UN’s Durban II African Prep Meeting Slams Israel, Free Speech; Silent on Darfur Atrocities and African Ethnic Violence
• UN Watch Plenary Speech to African Conference Defends Principles, Exposes Hypocrisy
• France to Boycott Durban II If Hijacked, Warns Human Rights Minister Rama Yade
• UN Palestine Investigator Richard Falk Lauds Gaza Boat Protest, Without Disclosing Ties to Campaign
• Qaddafi Rights Prize Awarded to Former Malta PM for ‘Defending Palestinian and Iraqi Oppressed Peoples’
• UN Watch in the News: Feature Interview in German Weekly Jungleworld

{See also www.UNWatch.org to get a fill of our indignation at how the UN is being misused by the oil barrons and their friends. Do not expect here Ethics, UN Charter ideas, or UN Human Rights ideals.

The only positives come from indignation expressed by a handfull of UN Member States. Even some of these will not speak up all the time - this because of the daze that comes from their addiction to oil.}

UN’s ‘Durban II’ African Prep Meeting Slams Israel, Free Speech; But Silent on Darfur Atrocities and African Ethnic Violence.

UN Watch’s Leon Saltiel (right) participated at this week’s conference
in Abuja, Nigeria, meeting with UN experts, diplomats and NGOs

Abuja, Nigeria, August 26, 2008 — Geneva-based human rights group UN Watch expressed alarm over the declaration adopted today by an African regional meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, which will now shape the UN world conference on racism to be held in April.

“The declaration (CLICK FOR TEXT) fails to address racial and ethnic crimes committed by Sudan, tramples international human rights guarantees on free speech, places Islam above all other religions, and targets Israel alone, implying that it is uniquely racist,” said UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer. “Regrettably, Durban II is looking more and more like the original Durban debacle of 2001.”

The stated objectives of the African regional conference, which opened Sunday and closed today, were to review regional implementation of the 2001 Durban declaration, and map the way for the UN’s Durban Review Conference on racism set for Geneva in April. But the declaration adopted today “failed to review any African country’s actions, and its inflammatory provisions now threaten to derail the world conference in April,” said Neuer.

The Canadian government is boycotting the April meeting and its preparations, saying it will “not be party to an anti-Semitic and anti-Western hatefest dressed up as an anti-racism conference.” French President Sarkozy and cabinet ministers from Britain and the Netherlands have warned that a breach of red lines could also trigger their boycott of the 2009 meeting in Geneva. French Minister Rama Yade repeated the caution in a statement this month to the French parliament.

Declaration Fails to Review African Performance on Racism

“By failing to review the performance of African countries on racism and related intolerance, the conference is ignoring its primary mission, and squandering a golden opportunity to help Africa’s many victims of racism and xenophobia,” said Neuer.

“Apart from UN Watch’s plenary speech on Sunday, neither the conference nor its final declaration addressed the Sudanese government’s crimes against humanity in Darfur, including the ethnic killings of at least 200,000 black Africans, mass rape, and the displacement of over 1 million men, women and children,” said Neuer. When UN Watch representative Leon Saltiel addressed the Darfur atrocities in his speech to the Abuja conference on Sunday, Sudan immediately interrupted with an objection — supported by Algeria and Morrocco — and chairman Martin Uhomoibhi of Nigeria ruled that country situations could not be mentioned.

“Moreover, the text fails to review the xenophobic attacks that recently broke out in South Africa — the leading organizer of the Abuja meeting and the overall Durban process — where foreigners, notably from Zimbabwe and Mozambique, were targeted in May during a wave of anti-immigrant attacks in which at least 62 were killed and tens of thousands were displaced,” said Neuer. “Nor does the text review the ethnic crimes in Kenya this year that killed 1,000 people, displaced another 600,000 and burnt down 40,000 buildings, in an outburst of tribal bloodletting. Millions of African victims of xenophobia — present and future — are ill-served by the conference’s grant of impunity for racial or ethnic crimes committed in African countries.”

Declaration Attacks Free Speech, Seeks to Import Islamic Anti-Blasphemy Prohibitions into International Human Rights Law

The new text calls upon states to avoid “inflexibly clinging to free speech in defiance of the sensitivities existing in a society and with absolute disregard for religious feelings.” Other provisions in the text on “incitement to religious hatred,” said Neuer, “mirror efforts by Islamic states at the UN Human Rights Council to insinuate Islamic anti-blasphemy prohibitions into international law. Yet UN expert on religious freedom Asma Jahangir and other international human rights experts have expressly opposed ‘defamation of religion’ resolutions, which seek to alter international human rights law by defining religions — instead of individuals — as the bearers of rights.”

The declaration’s attack on free speech contravenes the Article 19 guarantee of freedom of expression of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, whose 60th anniversary the UN will be celebrating next week with a major gathering at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. (At the event, UN Watch will be chairing a NGO panel discussion on the UN Human Rights Council.)

“The language goes far beyond the recognized norms for balancing prohibitions of racial hatred with respect for free speech, which is the lifeblood of democracy. If the right to express one’s beliefs — to question the dogmas of the day in society, law, politics, art, science, and, yes, religion — is to be restricted by the ‘feelings’ and ‘sensitivities’ of others, this will mark the end of free speech as we know it,” said Neuer.

Declaration Imposes Hierarchy of Religions

The text’s special emphasis on Islamophobia (paragraph 20) “seeks to impose a hierarchy of religions, placing adherents of Islam above all others,” said Neuer. “This is contrary to the basic principles of equality enshrined in the UN Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and undermines the very premise of the global struggle against racism.”

Conference Singled Out Israel for Opprobrium, Threatening to Repeat Durban Debacle of 2001

The declaration makes only one reference to a country situation, “reiterat[ing] its concern about the plight of the Palestinian people under foreign occupations.” Neuer asked, “Why is a non-African situation mentioned in a declaration about Africa, one that references neither Sudan’s racist killings, nor any other country in Africa?”

“The special reference to the Palestinian issue implies that Israel is practicing racism. This reverts to the discredited rhetoric of the UN’s 1975 “Zionism is Racism” resolution, sponsored by the Soviet and Arab blocs, which was repealed by the United Nations in 1991, and which has since been repudiated by its highest officials,” said Neuer.

“Portraying Israel’s conflict as racial is more than political mischief; it’s an attempt to dehumanize Israelis and their supporters as uniquely evil. We regret that African states today allowed the extreme political agenda of certain Middle Eastern governments to undermine their legitimate cause.”

The UN, however, today tried to offer a different interpretation. “It is only one paragraph that mentions the Palestinians, so the interest of Israel was never badly damaged,” Ibrahim Wani, from the office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told Reuters, after the 3-day talks in Abuja.

UN Watch participated at the African conference as an international non-governmental organization. The plenary speech delivered by UN Watch representative Leon Saltiel on Sunday (see below) was interrupted by Sudan, after he addressed the situations in Darfur and Zimbabwe, and described Libyan hypocrisy.

UN Watch Defends Principles and Exposes Hypocrisy in Plenary Speech to Durban II Prep Conference in Africa

UN Watch Speech to Regional Conference for Africa

Preparatory to the Durban Review Conference

Abuja, Nigeria, 24 August 2008

Delivered by UN Watch communications director Leon Saltiel

(Video of speech will be published soon)

Thank you, Mr. President.

We assemble here in the Nigerian capital of Abuja, in the heart of Africa, to discuss how to fight racism, and to prepare for the Durban Review Conference that will take place in April 2009.

That I have come here from afar is testament to the great importance that UN Watch attaches to the African cause, to the global struggle against racism, and to the outcome of this gathering.

Mr. President,

UN Watch has always stood in solidarity with the African people in their struggle for human rights, equality and freedom.

A half century ago, UN Watch founder Morris Abram was a leading advocate in the American civil rights movement led by Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King. It was Mr. Abram who won the 1963 U.S. Supreme Court case that recognized African-American voting rights, under the principle of “one person, one vote,” and who went on to head the United Negro College Fund.

In 1993, guided by the same vision of human rights and equality, Morris Abram founded UN Watch.

Since then, we have been a leading voice at the United Nations for victims of persecution—for Africans in places like Darfur and Zimbabwe, as for millions of other victims of racism and intolerance around the world.

Mr. President,

It is with this legacy, and with these principles, that UN Watch urges this conference to rise to the occasion.

Let this African gathering give voice to all who suffer from racism, persecution and intolerance.

Let us promise that the crime of slavery shall never be forgotten. That men and women everywhere should be treated with basic dignity and equality.

Let us be true to the universal principles of human rights that underlie the struggle against racism.

Mr. President,

We will only advance toward these goals if we stay on the true path—by avoiding dangerous diversions, and by remedying the wrongs of the past. We must prevent a recurrence of the foul actions of 2001, which paradoxically turned a conference on racism into a platform for racist hatred and anti-Semitism.

Let us oppose the campaign by certain governments and lobby groups to distort the language of human rights for a narrow and extreme political agenda, which only distracts from and harms the African cause.

Let us ensure that our outcome document—which will influence the final declaration of the April conference in Geneva—will neither single out nor demonize any country or people.

Finally, let us keep this conference a serious one. Its credibility is at stake when countries preach one thing while blatantly practicing the very opposite.

Consider, for example, the official submission of Libya that is before us today. The Libyan government speaks of racism against the African people and how it confronts, and I quote, “[a] new form of racism related to house helpers [and] (maids).”

Yet just last month, when Mr. Hannibal Qaddafi was arrested in Geneva for the crime of beating his African maid and African house-helper,

[At this point in the speech, Sudan interrupted with an objection, supported by Morocco and Algeria.]

Libya fully supported his actions. Worse, Libya then punished one of these African victims by kidnapping his mother. With this same country being the chair of the committee organizing the Durban Review Conference, what should the world think?

Mr. President,

The eyes of the world are upon us. When history is written, let it be recorded that in Abuja, in August 2008, the struggle against racism was advanced, and not harmed; promoted, and not politicized. We owe its victims—in Africa and around the world—no less.

Thank you, Mr. President.

France to Boycott Durban II If Hijacked, Warns Human Rights Minister Rama Yade

Writing in reply to a parliamentary question, Rama Yade, France’s Senegalese-born Foreign Affairs and Human Rights Secretary, warned that France will walk out of the UN’s Durban II process if it veers off track.

“France will not maintain its participation at any price,” said Yade in her response published on August 5. “The President said at the dinner organized by CRIF, and the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and Human Rights herself said to the UN Human Rights Council: France will remain engaged in this process only if the review conference does not depart from its assigned objectives.” Read More…

UN Palestine Investigator Richard Falk Lauds Gaza Boat Protest — Without Disclosing Own Ties to Campaign

The UN Human Right Council’s expert on Palestine yesterday praised a boat trip to Gaza by pro-Palestinian campaigners, without revealing his own close ties to the group. Falk is best known for his repeatedly expressed support for the conspiracy theory that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were an “inside job” by the Pentagon. Read More…

Qaddafi Rights Prize Awarded to Former Malta PM for ‘Defending Palestinian and Iraqi Oppressed Peoples’

Even with the Qaddafi servant-beating episode still unresolved, the Libyan human rights prize went ahead and announced its annual award. The International Committee for the Al-Gaddafi Award for Human Rights awarded its prize for 2008 to former Maltese prime minister Dom Mintoff, the Tripoli Post reported.

“In their appreciation of those honourable leaders of the North who have stood by justice and rights and who defended the causes of oppressed peoples, especially in Palestine and Iraq, the International Committee of Al-Qathafi Award for Peace of 2008 is awarded to the European leader and former Prime Minister of Malta,” the committee said… Read More…

UN Watch Feature Interview in German Weekly

Die Genfer NGO “UN Watch” kontrolliert seit 1993 die Arbeit der Uno im Hinblick auf Menschenrechtsfragen. Sie ist mit dem Ame rican Jewish Committee assoziiert. Ihr Vorsitzender, der Kanadier Hillel Neuer, tritt regelmäßig vor dem UN-Men schen rechts rat auf. In einer Rede im März 2007 kritisierte er sehr drastisch die Arbeit des Rates, der “die Sprache und Idee der Menschenrechte entstellt und per vertiert” habe…” – Feature interview of H. Neuer, Executive Director of UN Watch, by Ivo Bozic in “Die Atmosphäre ist totalitär,” Jungle World, Aug. 7, 2008. Read More…

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Climate conference makes progress on key dispute.

By (AP) Published: 2008-08-23, ACCRA, Ghana.
Delegates at a key U.N. climate conference made headway Friday on a plan to encourage developing countries to regulate carbon emissions by focusing on their largest industries.

The emerging plan sidesteps objections from countries like India and China, which refuse to accept national targets for the overall emission of the greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

How to get developing countries to commit to reducing pollution levels has deeply divided countries seeking to craft a new climate change agreement to succeed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

The meeting of 1,600 delegates and environmentalists from 160 countries was the third conference this year working on the accord, due to be adopted in Copenhagen in December 2009.

The Accra meeting also was discussing ways to integrate the conservation of the world’s ever-shrinking forests into the Copenhagen agreement, as well as studying ways to raise and distribute the tens of billions of dollars needed annually to help poor countries deal with the consequences of climate change.

Under the Kyoto pact, only 37 industrial countries committed to meet specific targets. Together, they were required to cut emissions by an average 5 percent from 1990 levels by 2012. The United States refused to participate in the Kyoto regime because it excluded China and other large newly powerful economies from any obligation.

Korea, which is not one of the 37, surprised delegates by announcing that next year it will adopt a target for reducing its carbon emissions by 2020, but declined to give specifics. Earlier this year, South Africa also said it would embrace self-imposed targets, peaking its emissions by 2025.

Under the “sectoral approach” now taking shape, developing countries would set pollution targets for specific industries, like cement, steel or aluminum. Unlike the 37 industrial countries, they likely would not be punished for missing their goals.

“Something quiet but quite dramatic is happening,” said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “People are now talking about the same idea in the same language.”

India voiced reservations, but did not reject the concept. As for China, Doniger said the plan fit neatly with Beijing’s intention to increase the efficiency of its key industries, which produce the bulk of its carbon emissions.

Details of any agreement on the new approach would be complex and difficult to reach, and it is only one of many disputed components of a post-2012 pact.

But consensus appeared to coalesce around the notion that industrial countries will remain legally bound to meet a national cap on their carbon emissions, while developing countries would have flexibility in deciding which industries would be controlled and at what levels.

A critical element calls for advanced countries to provide the technology and funding to help other countries curb emissions in heavily polluting industries.

***

“There is now a basis for discussion,” said Katrin Gutmann, policy coordinator of the WWF Global Climate Initiative. “Before, we worried there would just be more clashes,”

But financing remains unresolved and it was unclear how governments would move forward, she said.

Japan, which advanced the proposal earlier this year to a chorus of criticism, said it was pleased with the response in Accra after it dropped several components that aroused objections.

Developing countries had feared the Japanese proposal was a backdoor device to impose binding targets that would limit their economic development.

“That is a great advancement compared with the beginning of this year,” Japanese delegate Jun Arima told the conference.

——————

From:  sniffenj at un.org
Subject: Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Says UNEP Report
Date: August 26, 2008 10:21:12 AM EDT

UNEP NEWS RELEASE

Cutting Fossil Fuel Subsidies Can Cut Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Says UN
Environment Programme Report.

Meanwhile, New Assessment of Clean Development Mechanism Shows
Climate-Friendly Energy Projects Achieving Lift-Off in Sub Saharan Africa.

ACCRA/NAIROBI, 26 August 2008 — Scrapping fossil fuel subsidies could play
an important role in cutting greenhouse gases while giving a small but not
insignificant boost to the global economy, a new report by the UN
Environment Programme (UNEP) says.

The report challenges the widely held view that such subsidies assist the
poor, arguing that many of these price support systems benefit the
wealthier sections of society rather than those on low incomes.

They are also diverting national funds from more creative forms of pro-poor
polices and initiatives that are likely to have a far greater impact on the
lives and livelihoods of the worse-off sectors of society.

Globally, around $300 billion or 0.7 per cent of global GDP is being spent
on energy subsidies annually.

The lion’s share is being used to artificially lower or reduce the real
price of fuels like oil, coal and gas or electricity generated from such
fossil fuels.

Cancelling these subsidies might reduce greenhouse gas emissions by as much
as 6 per cent a year while contributing 0.1 per cent to global GDP.

***

The report acknowledges that some subsidies or mechanisms, whether in the
form of tax breaks, financial incentives or other market instruments, can
generate social, economic and environmental benefits.

A case in point are feed-in tariffs that have kick-started a renewable
energy revolution in countries such as Germany and Spain.

The report also accepts that there may be cases where some subsidies can,
if well- devised and time-limited, meet important social and environmental
goals — for example, ones to encourage a switch from dirty,
health-hazardous or environmentally harmful fuels such a charcoal.

The report also cites the case of Chile where well-devised subsidies have
increased rural electrification from around 50 per cent to over 90 per cent
of the population over 12 years.

But the report argues that many seemingly well-intentioned subsidies rarely
make economic sense and rarely address poverty. The report, therefore,
challenges the widely-held myth that scrapping fossil fuel supports would
hit the poor.

The report cites liquid petroleum gas (LPG) subsidies in India where $1.7
billion was spent in the first half of the current financial year on trying
to get the fuel into poor households. “LPG subsidies are mainly benefiting
higher-income households. … Despite the ineffectiveness of the subsidy the
programme is being extended until 2010”, says the study.

Indeed the report concludes that in many developing countries the real
beneficiaries of such subsidies are neither the poor nor the environment
but well-off households; equipment manufacturers and the producers of the
fuels.

Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director,
said: “In the final analysis many fossil fuel subsidies are introduced for
political reasons but are simply propping up and perpetuating
inefficiencies in the global economy—they are thus part of the market
failure that is climate change.”

“There are now less than 500 days before the crucial UN Climate Change
Convention meeting in Copenhagen in late 2009. Governments should urgently
review their energy subsidies and begin phasing out the harmful ones that
contribute to the wasteful use of finite resources and delay the
introduction of renewables or more efficient forms of generation while
creating disincentives and barriers to public transport up to energy saving
appliances”, he added.

***

The new UNEP report– Reforming Energy Subsidies: Opportunities to
Contribute to the Climate Change Agenda—was released today at a meeting in
Accra, Ghana of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Here Governments have gathered to continue negotiations under the Bali Road
Map towards a conclusive and far-reaching new climate deal by Copenhagen
2009.

***

CDM Takes Off in Sub-Saharan Africa:
Today UNEP also presented new findings on the penetration of the Clean
Development Mechanism (CDM) in sub-Saharan Africa.

The CDM, part of the Convention’s Kyoto Protocol agreed in 1997, allows
developed nations to offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions by
funding cleaner energy projects in developing countries that generate
carbon credits known as certified emission reductions.

These can range from wind and biomass energy projects to ones that tap
methane from rubbish tips and schemes that encourage the use of less
polluting fuels or power plants.

There has been concern that the benefits of the CDM, a contrasting example
of a policy tool aimed at wider social, economic and environmental benefits
when compared with fossil fuel subsidies, have been by-passing countries in
Africa.

The main countries benefiting to date have been the rapidly developing
economies such as China, Brazil, and India.

The new figures, compiled by the UNEP Risoe Centre on Energy, Climate and
Sustainable Development in Denmark, indicate that this is changing with the
first CDM projects emerging over the past 18 months in six countries– the
Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Madagascar, Mauritius, Mozambique,
Mali and Senegal.

These include an oil well, gas flare reduction project in the DRC and a
river hydroelectric project in Madagascar.

In Kenya new projects include a 35MW extension of geothermal, hot rocks,
generation and a sugar cane waste-into-energy project with Mumias Sugar
Company.

Mr. Steiner added: “Whereas fossil fuel subsidies are an example of a
blunt policy instrument, perpetuating old and inefficient economic models,
the CDM is an example of a more intelligent, market-based mechanism that is
fostering the transition to a modern Green Economy.”

He said the uptake in Africa was due, in part, to the impact of the UN’s
Nairobi Framework initiative launched in 2006.

Here UNEP, along with partners including the UN Development Programme
(UNDP), have been working to build the human and regulatory capacity of
poorer countries to access carbon financing.

Other measures have included awareness-raising among banks and industry
players on the continent to new green finance opportunities.

The UNEP Risoe Centre has been monitoring global trends in CDM investment
and the impacts of these activities for some time.

“Excluding South Africa, there were only six CDM projects in five
sub-Saharan countries in 2006. Now there are 49 projects in 12 countries,
South Africa included”, says Lars Appelquist, a researcher at the Centre.

This still remains low compared to a global tally of close to 3,500 CDM
projects, but does mark a departure from the very low levels of the past.

“As new policy drivers and planned capacity development activities bear
fruit, the market will likely exhibit exponential growth like other
regions”, says Glenn Hodes, CDM Programme Manager at UNEP Risoe. Indeed,
assuming Governments agree on a deep and decisive new climate agreement in
2009, Africa overall could see roughly 230 projects by 2012, according to
Hodes’ and Appelquist’s calculations.

These could cumulatively generate over 65 million certified emission
reductions, worth close to $1 billion at a conservative carbon credit price
of $15.

“Compared to CDM prodigies like India, Africa is poised to be the late
bloomer”, says Hodes.

—————————-

Notes to Editors:

“Reforming Energy Subsidies: Opportunities to Contribute to the Climate
Change Agenda” was commissioned by UNEP’s Division of Technology, Industry
and Economics. The principal author is Trevor Morgan of Menecon Consulting
and now with the International Energy Agency (IEA).

It says that Russia has the largest subsidies in dollar terms amounting to
around $40 billion a year and mainly spent on making natural gas cheaper.

Iran comes second with around $37 billion; six countries, spending in
excess of $10 billion on subsidies, come next. These are China, Saudi
Arabia, India, Indonesia, Ukraine and Egypt.

The report can be downloaded at www.unep.org

The new data and estimated take up of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)
projects in Africa can also be downloaded at www.unep.org

For more information, please contact: Nick Nuttall, Spokesperson/Head of
Media, UNEP Nairobi, on Tel: +254-20-762-3084, Mobile: +254-733-632755 or
+41-79-596-5737, E-mail:  nick.nuttall at unep.org;
Or Anne-France White, Associate Information Officer, UNEP Nairobi, at Tel:
+254-20-762-3088, Mobile: +254-72-8600-494, or E-mail:
 anne-france.white at unep.org

=========

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***

Africa mourns loss of a leader unafraid to speak his mind.

By Tom Burgis

Published: August 20 2008 03:00 | Last updated: August 20 2008 03:00

One Sunday in late June, Levy Mwanawasa, the Zambian president who died yesterday aged 59, was on the eve of the most momentous day of his career.

He had been the first to break the longstanding deference of African rulers towards Robert Mugabe, condemning the abuses that had culminated in the Zimbabwean autocrat claiming victory in a discredited election. As early as March last year, Mwanawasa had referred to the “sinking Ti-tanic” that was Zimbabwe’s inflation-battered economy.

Now, as the serving chair of the southern African bloc, the retiring former lawyer would carry the hopes of many Zimbabweans into an African Union summit in Egypt at which Mr Mugabe would try to stare down his counterparts into legitimising his flawed triumph.

For a man most at ease in small gatherings, assiduously reading his briefing papers or escaping to the family farm for the planting season, the ordeal ahead was immense. Alphabetical seating by country was to have put him next to Mr Mugabe.

It proved too much. Always in poor health since the car crash 17 years earlier that left him with slurred speech, Mwanawasa suffered a stroke. Even as he was flown to the Paris hospital where he would die seven weeks later, the summit was welcoming Mr Mugabe back to the fold, thwarting the efforts of a handful of Mwanawasa’s like-minded peers.

The second son of 10 siblings, Mwanawasa was born in Mufulira, near the Congolese border, in 1948, 16 years before Zambia’s independence from Britain.

A crusading legal career established his public profile. When the one-party state of Kenneth Kaunda unravelled into elections in 1991, Frederick Chiluba, the victorious leader of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy, appointed Mwanawasa as vice-president.

In 2001, disillusioned with the pervasive corruption of the Chiluba regime, Mwanawasa turned on - and ousted - his mentor. Within weeks he had stripped his predecessor of immunity from prosecution. A London court later found that Mr Chiluba had salted away $46m (€31m, £25m) of public funds.

Mwanawasa’s anti-graft offensive won him the allegiance of international donors who flooded state coffers with aid. China came calling too, tempted by some of the world’s richest copper deposits. Economic growth rose from just over 3 per cent a year when he took office to 6 per cent last year.

Yet, as his critics point out, about seven in every 10 Zambians still live on less than $2 a day. “Wealth has trickled downwards but it has not trickled outwards to the rural areas,” said a European diplomat in Lusaka. “That challenge is only just beginning.”

It is not clear who will take up that challenge. Mwanawasa avoided anointing an heir. His death has thrown his party into turmoil as cabinet ministers who thought they had three more years to jockey for position face an election within three months. The discord may open a window for Michael Sata, the opposition leader who came second when Mwanawasa won a second term in 2006 and who has lambasted the government’s fiscal orthodoxy.

Those who knew Mwanawasa, who had six children with his wife Maureen and two from a previous marriage, describe a man whose unspectacular oratory masked a deep conviction.

Morgan Tsvangirai, leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition, yesterday lamented the death of “a good friend and comrade”. He added: “Sadly, he has left us at this most trying time.”

Effigies of the G8 leaders on holiday by
Oxfam International (CC).

COMMENTARY: The Global Leadership Vacuum

By Jeffrey Sachs

The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly aren’t up to the task. A dose of basic management logic could help them establish goals, mobilize financing, and identify the scientific expertise and organizations best suited to implement solutions.

The Global Leadership Vacuum
By Jeffrey Sachs

August 1, 2008

The G8 Summit in Japan last month was a painful demonstration of the pitiful state of global cooperation. The world is in deepening crisis. Food prices are soaring. Oil prices are at historic highs. The leading economies are entering a recession. Climate change negotiations are going around in circles. Aid to the poorest countries is stagnant, despite years of promised increases. And yet in this gathering storm it was hard to find a single real accomplishment by the world’s leaders.

The world needs global solutions for global problems, but the G8 leaders clearly cannot provide them. Because virtually all of the political leaders that went to the summit are deeply unpopular at home, few offer any global leadership. They are weak individually, and even weaker when they get together and display to the world their inability to mobilize real action.

There are four deep problems. The first is the incoherence of American leadership. While we are well past the time when the United States alone could solve any global problems, it does not even try to find shared global solutions. The will to global cooperation was weak even in the Clinton administration, but it has disappeared entirely during the Bush administration.

The second problem is the lack of global financing. The hunger crisis can be overcome in poor countries if they get help to grow more food. The global energy and climate crises can be overcome if the world invests together to develop new energy technologies. Diseases such as malaria can be overcome through globally coordinated investments in disease control. The oceans, rainforests, and air can be kept safe through pooled investments in environmental protection.

Global solutions are not expensive, but they are not free, either. Global solutions to poverty, food production, and development of new clean energy technology will require annual investments of roughly $350 billion, or 1 percent of GNP of the rich world. This is obviously affordable, and is modest compared to military spending, but is far above the pittance that the G8 actually brings to the table to solve these urgent challenges. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has made a valiant effort to get the rest of Europe to honor the modest aid pledges made at the G8 Summit in 2005, but it has been a tough fight, and one that hasn’t been won.

The third problem is the disconnection between global scientific expertise and politicians. Scientists and engineers have developed many powerful ways to address today’s challenges, whether growing food, controlling diseases, or protecting the environment. And these methods have become even more powerful in recent years with advances in information and communications technology, which make global solutions easier to identify and implement than ever before.

The fourth problem is that the G8 ignores the very international institutions—notably the United Nations and the World Bank—that offer the best hope to implement global solutions. These institutions are often deprived of political backing, underfinanced, and then blamed by the G8 when global problems aren’t solved. Instead, they should be given clear authority and responsibilities, and then held accountable for their performance.

President Bush may be too unaware to recognize that his historically high 70 percent disapproval rating among U.S. voters is related to the fact that his government turned its back on the international community—and thereby got trapped in war and economic crisis. The other G8 leaders presumably can see that their own unpopularity at home is strongly related to high food and energy prices, and an increasingly unstable global climate and global economy, none of which they can address on their own.

Starting in January 2009 with the new U.S. president, politicians should take the best chance for their own political survival, and of course for their countries’ well-being, by reinvigorating global cooperation. They should agree to address shared global goals, including the fight against poverty, hunger, and disease (the Millennium Development Goals), as well as climate change and environmental destruction.

To achieve these goals, the G8 should set clear timetables for action, and transparent agreements on how to fund it. The smartest move would be to agree that each country tax its CO2 emissions in order to reduce climate change, and then devote a fixed amount of the proceeds to global problem solving. With the funding assured, the G8 would suddenly move from empty promises to real policies.

Backed by adequate funding, the world’s political leaders should turn to the expert scientific community and international organizations to help implement a truly global effort. Rather than regarding the UN and its agencies as competitors or threats to national sovereignty, they should recognize that working with the UN agencies is in fact the only way to solve global problems, and therefore is the key to their own political survival.

These steps—agreeing on global goals, mobilizing the financing needed to meet them, and identifying the scientific expertise and organizations needed to implement solutions—are basic management logic. Some may scoff that this approach is impossible at the global level, because all politics are local. Yet today, all politicians depend on global solutions for their own political survival. That by itself could make solutions that now seem out of reach commonplace in the future.

Time is short, since global problems are mounting rapidly. The world is passing through the greatest economic crisis in decades. It’s time to say to the G8 leaders, “Get your act together, or don’t even bother to meet next year.” It’s too embarrassing to watch grown men and women gather for empty photo opportunities.

Q&A: ‘Israel In a Weak Parallel with Apartheid’ -
An IPS Interview with Judge Dennis Davis, High Court Judge in Cape Town.

JERUSALEM, Jul 31 (IPS) - In Israel’s control of Palestinian movement, Dennis Davis sees a “stark” parallel with the old, apartheid South Africa of which he was an outspoken critic. But Davis, a Justice of the High Court in Cape Town and a prominent member of the South African Jewish community, strongly rejects those who “run from that into an immediate conclusion” that Israel is an apartheid state.

Davis, who was also involved in drafting the constitution of post-apartheid South Africa, recently visited Israel and the Palestinian territories as part of a delegation of prominent South African civil rights activists. In its closing statement, the group said it had not come “to bring solutions, or to spend our time here debating solutions,” but that it wanted “to learn, and to witness first-hand the suffering, pain, anger and human rights abuses.”

The Israel-South Africa comparison is one that is increasingly used by Israel’s critics and by those who question the very legitimacy of the Jewish state. It is a comparison that incenses Israelis and many Jews around the world. But it is also a comparison that some of Israel’s leaders have invoked in an attempt to convince Israelis that ceding territory to the Palestinians is vital to the country’s future survival.

Davis, who is a former chairman of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies and a former head of the Centre for the Abolition of the Death Penalty, spoke to Peter Hirschberg from IPS about the “apartheid” parallel and about the political impotency that he senses on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides.

IPS: Israel has been accused of adopting policies that are reminiscent of apartheid South Africa. Is this a fair comparison?

Dennis Davis: I think the only issue is with the movement of people. This is remarkably similar to certain forms of influx control (in the old South Africa). And it’s so much more sophisticated. We didn’t have computers. And the separate roads and separate number plates (for Palestinians and Jews in the West Bank) is unquestionably a more sophisticated form of restriction of movement of the kind that we had. The fact that you’ve got those definitions at some of those controls, of what constitutes an Israeli and what constitutes somebody else, is not entirely unreminiscent of what we had. I was deeply disturbed by that because I hadn’t realised how stark that parallel was.

IPS: So you feel the comparison is valid?

DD: It is unfortunate that people now run from that into an immediate conclusion that this is an apartheid state. We met Israel’s Chief Justice and what is clear is that there is a pretty relaxed form of (judicial) standing by which Palestinians can petition the High Court of Justice in Israel. That’s impressive. That obviously didn’t exist in South Africa. And within Israel itself, there aren’t zones the way we had group areas (for blacks and whites). Arabs who live here can also vote and have rights of citizenship.

This is not so much a discrimination based on ethnic identity in the broad sense of Arab versus Jew. It does seem to me to be a very intricate form of social control.

IPS: Apartheid was based on racial superiority.

DD: There’s no racial superiority here. There’s no pervading ideology that confirms the inferiority of Palestinians.

Both sides play the victim. There is tremendous competition over who the victim is. When you have a notion of victimhood what you tend to do is to dehumanise the other. I think there is a lot of dehumanising of the other on both sides. If I was a Palestinian I’d probably be very, very angry. If I was an Israeli who had suffered suicide bombings I’d be incredibly angry as well.

The one group that impressed me most of all was the Parents Circle (made up of bereaved parents on both sides). I was incredibly moved by them. That sort of group and others perhaps are the beginnings of what in South Africa became a much more non-racial movement. In South Africa, the prefiguring of the society in which whites and blacks could live together began a very long time ago. The Communist Party. The trade unions. There’s much less of that here. There is such an absence of integration here.

When you separate populations like this and lock them into an almost fatal embrace then there’s a dehumanising aspect to it. What’s good about the Parents Circle is that it does show there is at least some movement toward seeing the humanity in the other. I look at the soldiers. I look at these kids. It’s got to dehumanise them. You can’t be policemen at border posts like this, having to question people, and not have your humanity affected. I cry for them.

But I think it’s incredibly unhelpful to say you can simply take this to be apartheid and therefore the South African struggle is the same and the South African solution is the same. That’s a very lazy form of reasoning.

IPS: One of the problems for Israel with the apartheid analogy is that its own leaders use it, albeit with very different intentions to those who challenge the legitimacy of the Jewish state. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has invoked the comparison, warning Israelis that if they don’t relinquish the territories they will find themselves in a South Africa-type situation in which a minority of Jews rules over a majority of Palestinians, and that will spell the end of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.

DD: But the paradox of it for an outsider is this: that argument is very compelling but also bizarre, because at the same time that you’re making it, you then drive through the West Bank and you are struck by the permanency of settlements. So what worries one is that successive Israeli governments have made it more difficult to get to a two-state solution.

For somebody who really wants the state of Israel not only to exist but to flourish, which is me, I’ve got to say that I’m deeply disturbed by the fact that they’re trying to keep two contradictory balls in the air at the same time. It doesn’t work. If you continue to strengthen West Bank settlement for another five years, lord alone knows what will happen. You can’t do that and talk