Development and Equity : An Interdisciplinary Exploration by Ten Scholars from Africa, Asia and Latin America [1 ed.] 9789004269729, 9789004267909

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Development and Equity

Copyright RVD/foto Captial. Photographer: Ruud Taal 6/10/2002

Development and Equity An Interdisciplinary Exploration by Ten Scholars from Africa, Asia and Latin America With a Foreword by Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands Edited by

Dick Foeken Ton Dietz Leo de Haan Linda Johnson

LEIDEN | BOSTON

This publication has been typeset in the multilingual ‘Brill’ typeface. With over 5,100 characters covering Latin, ipa, Greek, and Cyrillic, this typeface is especially suitable for use in the humanities. For more information, please see brill.com/brill-typeface. isbn 978 90 04 26790 9 (paperback) isbn 978 90 04 26972 9 (e-book) Copyright 2014 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Nijhoff, Global Oriental and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. Brill has made all reasonable efforts to trace all rights holders to any copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful the publisher welcomes communications from copyright holders, so that the appropriate acknowledgements can be made in future editions, and to settle other permission matters. This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents Foreword: Development Happens from the Inside  vii Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands Chair of the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair Preface: The Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity  viii The Editors List of Maps, Figures, Tables, Photos and Boxes  x Development and Equity—Introduction to the Lustrum Conference of the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity  1 Leo de Haan, Ton Dietz & Dick Foeken 1 A Fresh Perspective on Economics and Equity  13 Syed Mansoob Murshed 2 ‘Waithood’: Youth Transitions and Social Change  28 Alcinda Honwana 3 Beyond Survival: Militarism, Equity and Women’s Security  41 Amina Mama 4 Development, Equity, Gender, Health, Poverty and Militarization: Is there a Link in the Countries of West Africa?  69 Irene Akua Agyepong 5 The Right to Stay Home: Equity and the Struggle of Migrant Indigenous Peoples  87 Gaspar Rivera-Salgado 6 Towards a Territorial, Multi-Actor and Multi-Level Approach for Sustainable Development Cooperation and Social Responsibility Policies  105 Patricia Almeida Ashley 7 Gender Equality and Muslim Women: Negotiating Expanded Rights in Muslim Majority and Immigrant Contexts  118 Rema Hammami 8 Identities and Access to Energy: A Case From India  132 Atul Kumar 9 Gender Equity and Governance in Pakistan: Looking through Leventhal’s Concept of Organizational Justice  144 Nasira Jabeen 10 Looking through the Leventhal Lens: Is Gender Equity in the Philippines a Puzzle?  156 Stella Quimbo

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11 Bargaining Positions and Trust in Ethiopian Coffee Cooperatives: A Gender Perspective  167 Annemarie Groot Kormelinck 12 The Right to Development: Can States be Held Responsible?  191 Nienke van der Have 13 Responsible Business Practices of Dutch Enterprises in Kenyan Agri-Business  217 Lisanne Heemskerk Appendix Equity or Equality? Tenth Anniversary of the Prince Claus Chair  235 Frans Bieckmann List of Contributors  240

Foreword Development Happens from the Inside It is impossible to ‘develop’ another person or country from outside; people develop themselves, and so do countries. All that we can do is assist that process if asked to do so. These words of wisdom from my late father-in-law Prince Claus have been an inspiration to many working for development and equity throughout the world. They have certainly been a source of inspiration to me. As Chair of the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair for Development and Equity, I have had the privilege of meeting many talented and impressive individuals who have a strong, personal connection to these themes. Chief among them were the ten Prince Claus Chair holders of the first decade of the Prince Claus Chair. This chair was established in 2002 by Utrecht University and the International Institute of Social Studies, now part of Erasmus University Rotterdam. It was a tribute to Prince Claus’s life-long commitment to global development and equity and to his impressive expertise in this field. My father-in-law sought to bring people together to solve problems and to make the most of opportunities. He saw empowerment as a means to achieving sustainable development. He believed in enabling people to direct their energies within their own cultural context to bring about change. Change happens from the inside out. This simple truth is often overlooked. It is the mission of the Prince Claus Chair to support outstanding young academics from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific and to help them fulfil their amazing potential. To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Prince Claus Chair, the first ten chair holders were asked to write a paper reflecting on issues of equity and development. These papers were compiled to form a book. In addition, the winners of the Cheetah Challenge, a competition designed to identify talented students at Dutch universities working on topics related to development, equity and citizenship, were given the opportunity to turn their Master theses into contributions for this extraordinary volume. The result is a fascinating kaleidoscope, containing a host of ideas and insights. I hope that these contributions will be a means of helping us all to further deepen the concepts of equity and development. I look forward to the next ten years of the Prince Claus Chair with the confidence that we will continue to succeed in identifying talented young academics who have both the ability and the aspiration to make a difference.

Her Majesty Queen Máxima of the Netherlands Chair of the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair

Preface The Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity This book is the result of the lustrum conference that was organized to honour Prince Claus, the late husband of HM Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands. The conference was held in Paleis Noordeinde in The Hague on 28 November 2012, in the presence of the Queen and HRH Princess Máxima of the Netherlands. Prince Claus had a life-long commitment to global development and equity, with a special interest in Africa. Prince Claus would have enjoyed the discussions at the occasion of the second lustrum, where ten professorial chair holders and ninety invited guests shared ideas about equity and equality. Twenty-four years after Prince Claus had formulated his famous statements, he would have seen that these ideas are still very much alive, and probably even more appropriate in the current political and scientific debate than in 1988. The professorial chairs for ‘development and equity’ were and are called ‘Prince Claus Chairs’. “The Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity was established by Utrecht University and the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam in early 2003 in honour of Prince Claus of the Netherlands (1926–2002). The establishment of the Chair attests to the deep respect and appreciation of the academic community of Utrecht University and the ISS for Prince Claus as a person, for his work, and for his commitment to and authority in the field of development and equity throughout the world”.1 “The objective of the Prince Claus Chair is to continue the work of Prince Claus by establishing a rotating Chair. Utrecht University and the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam will alternately appoint an outstanding young academic from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean or the Pacific to the Prince Claus Chair . . . for the advancement of research and teaching in the field of development cooperation”.2 “The objective is to advance research and teaching in the field of development and equity. Candidates for the Chair are nominated by a Curatorium, under the chairmanship of HRH Princess Máxima of the Netherlands”.3 “HRH Prince Claus of the Netherlands was strongly committed to development and equity in North–South relations. Through his work, his travels and his personal contacts, he gained a deep understanding of the opportunities for, and the obstacles facing equitable development. He was tireless in his work for development and equity throughout the world, bringing people together to solve problems and make the most 1 Prince Claus Chair website: http://princeclauschair.nl/. 2 Ibid. 3 Annual Report Prince Claus Chair (2011), p. 6.

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of opportunities. His knowledge, his accessibility and his personality all made an important contribution to his work. As a result, he was—and remains—a source of inspiration to many. In 1988, Prince Claus received an Honorary Fellowship from the International Institute of Social Studies ‘in recognition of his continued insistence on the importance of reducing the differences between the rich and the poor in national and international fora, while emphasizing the human dimension of this process and not only that of international policy and strategy’. At the official ceremony for the award of the Fellowship, Prince Claus gave an acceptance speech stating his views on development and equity in the form of 23 propositions”.4 For the Second Lustrum Conference, all ten chair holders were asked to write a paper with his/her own reflection on a rephrasing of Leventhal’s5 question: What have you done in your work to enrich equity theory? as input for the conference. The first five chair holders were invited to write a paper taking this question as point of departure, while each chair holder from the second cohort was asked to discuss one of these papers. So, Professor Murshed’s paper was discussed by Professor Honwana, Professor Mama’s paper by Professor Agyepong, Professor Rivera-Salgado’s paper by Professor Ashley, Professor Hammami’s paper by Professor Kumar and Professor Jabeen’s paper by Professor Quimbo. These ten papers are presented in the first ten chapters of this volume. The volume is completed with three essays from young, promising scholars who ended as the top three in the competition for best Master’s thesis in development, equity and citizenship (the so-called Cheetah Challenge competition) organized by the Netherlands Committee for Sustainable Development (NCDO) at the request of the Prince Claus Chair Curatorium. The jury consisted of the Prince Claus Chair Curatorium and the Director of NCDO. Nienke van der Have and Annemarie Groot Kormelinck were the runners-up in this competition and the first prize went to Lisanne Heemskerk. All three were invited to refashion their thesis into an essay, and these essays are presented in the last three chapters of this volume.

The Editors

4 Ibid. p. 7. 5 G. Levental (1980), What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. K. Gergen, M. Greenberg & R. Willis, Social exchange: Advances in theory and research. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 27–55.

List of Maps, Figures, Tables, Photos and Boxes Maps Caption 5.1 5.2 13.1

Migratory route for indigenous migrants from Oaxaca to California  94 Major indigenous regions in Oaxaca  95 Locations of interviewed companies (in green)  222

Figures Caption 3A.1 4.1 4.2a 4.2b 4.3

4.4 4.5 4.6 5.1 5.2 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

World military spending, 2002–2011  67 Gender inequalities in net secondary school enrolment (%) in West Africa, 2009   74 GNI per capita and infant mortality rate (IMR) in selected countries of the West African sub-region  74 GNI PPP per capita (US$) 2010 and maternal mortality rate (MMR) 2008 in selected countries of the West African sub-region  75 Per capita GDP (2010) and inequalities (difference between women in Q1 [poorest fifth] and Q5 [richest fifth]) in % women with skilled attendance at birth  75 Inequalities in deliveries by skilled health personnel in selected countries in West Africa  76 Maternal mortality trends in selected West African countries with protracted/localized or generalized conflict/instability  78 Maternal mortality trends in “non-protracted conflict” countries in West Africa  79 Poverty rates for indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in Mexico, 1992–2008  92 Poverty levels in Mexico, 1992–2008  92 Principles and themes of social responsibility, according to ISO 26000:2010  110 Multiple territories and actors’ duties on social responsibility themes  110 Levels of ethical challenges applied to social responsibility themes, multiple territories and actors’ duties  111 Four phases of multilevel governance of values and policies applied to social responsibility themes, multiple territories and actors’ duties  113

list of maps, figures, tables, photos and boxes

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The Master Model of social responsibility aimed at development goals  114 9.1 The GOS model of gender equity and governance  152 10.1 The Global Gender Gap and GDP per capita, 2010  160 10.2 Proportion of Filipino women who decide on everyday purchases, by wealth quintile, 2003 and 2008 (%)  162 10.3 Proportion of Filipino women who decide on large purchases, by wealth quintile, 2003 and 2008 (%)  163 10.4 Proportion of Filipino women who decide on daily needs and large purchases, by religion, 2003 and 2008 (%)  164 13.1 Responsible business focus of Dutch enterprises on different stakeholder groups  225 13.2 Average responsibility score for large companies and SMEs  228 13.3 Average responsibility score for export and domestic companies  228 Tables Caption 3.1 3A.1 4A.1 4A.2 4A.3 9.1 10.1 10.2 10.3 11.1 11.2 11.3 11A.1 13.1 13.2

Some statistics on the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars  55 World military spending by region, 2011  68 Selected development indicators for countries in the West African sub-region  82 Selected inequality indicators for countries in the West African sub-region  86 Under-5 and maternal mortality indicators and trends in the West African sub-region  84 GDI and GEM indicators for Pakistan, showing Pakistan’s gender gap in 2011  150 Global Gender Gap Index, selected countries, 2011  157 Basic economic indicators, Philippines and Pakistan, 2011  158 Gender Gap Sub-indexes, the Philippines and Pakistan, 2011  159 Overview of respondents by cooperative and by gender  173 Descriptive statistics on bargaining relations in the household  175 Descriptive statistics of the survey and economic experiments  178 Descriptive statistics: Comparing gender bargaining gaps within and between low- and high-performing cooperatives  190 Research population by subsector  223 Corporate social responsibility actions per stakeholder group  224

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Photos Caption 5.1 5.2 5.3

Members of FIOB voting about the right not to migrate, at their general binational assembly in Oaxaca City, 15 October 2011  88 Debating the Right not to Migrate Initiative in Juxtlahuaca  100 Members of Triqui weavers cooperative  102

boxes Caption 9.1 11.1

Issues and problems related to household cooking in Africa   141 Zem zem: a typical female member  182

Development and Equity—Introduction to the Lustrum Conference of the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity Leo de Haan, Ton Dietz & Dick Foeken

Development and Equity

According to Prince Claus’s own convictions, it is important to make a distinction between the notions of development and equity in order to arrive at a full understanding of the conflation of both words. Development is usually considered as an intentional acceleration of modernization, consisting of transitions of the economy, the state and the political system, as well as society. As a result of these transitions the economic system, embedded in international trade relations, has become highly productive; the state has become able to deliver essential services in education, health, housing and security; the political system ensures political decision-making to which citizens feel committed; and society offers scope for individual and collective development of talents.1 Thus, development means progress in terms of improved standards of living, higher literacy levels and better schooling, better health care and rising life expectancy, and decent housing and increased human security. But development also entails decision-making processes that enable citizens to align both with the outcomes of these processes and with each other. And, finally, it entails an open society enabling the development of personal abilities. In fact, the latter issues indirectly refer to development as a right and to the perspective of rights-based approaches to development. Prompted by an important orientation in the develop­ment debate in the 1980s, in 1986 the United Nations adopted the ‘Declaration on the Right to Development’ as a group right of peoples. “The right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate in, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized”.2 1 WRR (2010), Minder pretentie, meer ambitie. Ontwikkelingshulp die verschil maakt. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, p. 61. 2 Article 1 of the Declaration on the Right to Development, adopted by United Nations General Assembly 1986. United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: http://www2.ohchr .org/english/law/rtd.htm.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004269729_002

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Prince Claus’s intention to focus on development and equity has much to do with the notion that is also reflected in the second article of the declaration, i.e. that human persons should be active participants and beneficiaries of development. Here we touch upon the distributional effects of development. Explicit attention to equity brings to the fore that development is often a process with winners and losers, those included and excluded from the process itself and the gains from it and who are hidden behind average targets and average results. Equity highlights fairness and social justice. It is about the distribution of resources within social groups, between generations—and even between nations—and about the perceived fairness of the distributions. That in turn triggered a debate over whether policies should be designed to actually redress the perceived unfairness—for example in education, in health services or in the job market—and to whom these policies should be directed: rich and poor, men and women, old and young, ethnic majorities and minorities.3 So, the issue of equity in development was part of a broader debate on development that questioned and criticized the basically Western mainstream conceptualization of development as a linear process of progress. In that sense, it even preceded right-based approaches to development. An important contribution to the equity debate was made by Leventhal.4 He observed that the way in which any social system deals with questions of allocating resources, punishments and rewards has a great impact on its effectiveness and on the satisfaction of its members. Research on the perceived fairness of distributions of rewards and punishments has been guided by equity theory, which poses that “human beings believe that rewards and punishments should be distributed in accordance with recipients’ inputs or contributions”.5 However, Leventhal identified three majors problems with the state of affairs in equity theory at that juncture: The first problem is that equity theory employs a unidimensional rather than a multidimensional conception of fairness. The theory conceptualizes perceived justice solely in terms of a merit principle. The second problem is that equity theory considers only the final distribution of the 3 Of course, in financial economics ‘equity’ refers to something different, i.e. the value of an ownership interest in property, such as that of shareholders, but we choose to ignore that in the context of this introduction. 4 G. Leventhal (1980), What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. In: K. Gergen, M. Greenberg & R. Willis, eds, Social exchange: Advances in theory and research. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 27–55. 5 Leventhal (1980), p. 28.

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reward. The procedures that generate the distribution are not examined. The focus is on fair distribution. Problems of fair procedure are ignored. The third problem is that equity theory tends to exaggerate the importance of fairness in social relationships. Concern for justice is only one motivational force among many that influence social perception and behaviour, and it may often be a weaker force than others.6 Leventhal’s solution to the first problem is to follow a multidimensional approach, in which not only the outcome as such determines the reward but also the recipient’s deservingness in terms of needs and contribution in relation to capability. With respect to the second problem, Leventhal draws our attention to procedural fairness, i.e. the way in which an individual member of society perceives the fairness of different procedures in society that regulate the allocative process. That means that issues of consistency, equality of opportunity, good information and informed opinion, accountability, correctability and representation need to be taken into account. Thirdly, fairness may be the result of other motives than moral or ethical concerns. It may be driven by an objective to manipulate or to control. Similarly, in cohesive groups, rewards may be divided equally by the authority concerned. But is that in order to be fair or in order to preserve solidarity?7 Equity and equality are hot topics. The United Nations Task Team on the post-2015 United Nations Development Agenda suggests in a recent report to the un Secretary General—Realizing the future we want for all8—that ‘reducing inequalities’ should become one of thirteen new goals for a post-2015 development agenda. These goals are framed under four major headings: ‘inclusive social development’, ‘inclusive economic development’, ‘peace and security’ and ‘environmental sustainability’. As part of what the un Task Team calls ‘inclusive economic development’, it is no longer enough to eradicate income poverty and hunger, but reducing inequalities and ensuring decent work and productive employment have now been formulated as combined challenges for the world community as well. What the Task Team writes in their document is so central to what was discussed during the Second Lustrum Conference that it is important to quote the start of the section on inclusive economic development:

6 Ibid. 7 Ibid. p. 52. 8 http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/Post_2015_UNTTreport.pdf.

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Sustainable development involves stable, equitable and inclusive economic growth, based on sustainable patterns of production and consumption. Inclusiveness is broader than just a pro-poor focus. It implies universality and focuses not only on those defined as poor, but also on vulnerable populations in precarious livelihoods.9 This is what should have been included in the original Millennium Development Goals, formulated in 2000, but world leaders could not agree then. They might now. And it can be expected that in the next few years many discussions will be focused on how to formulate measurable targets for reducing inequality and reaching better equity conditions for all. Leventhal’s influential work of the late 1970s becomes very relevant again: defining targets should not be restricted to general measurement tools for measuring inequality, like the Gini coefficient and the Lorenz curve. There should also be targets for the procedural fairness of the development process, and output as well as process variables should be specific for different categories of people, with enough attention paid to cultural differences. Indeed, Prince Claus would have liked to hear this. Contributions As mentioned in the Preface, each chair holder was asked to reflect on a rephrasing of Leventhal’s question: What have you done in your work to enrich equity theory?, as input for the Lustrum Conference. Syed Mansoob Murshed— the first Prince Claus Chair holder at Utrecht University (2002–2003)—argues that in economics equity should mean both freedom from want and freedom from fear. The former freedom, referring to the quality of life, could be considered as belonging to the traditional core of economics, though interpreted in different ways over time. For Murshed, ‘freedom from want’ means a focus on economic growth and on disparities of economic growth between countries, simply because growth is the way to reduce income poverty and thus to augment people’s capabilities. ‘Freedom from fear’ became of interest more recently to economists, because the lack of economic growth or disparities in economic growth may affect human security, while maximization of growth may result in minimiza­tion of conflict and thus increased human security. In Murshed’s view, equity entails therefore both maximization of growth and minimization of conflict. Both freedoms are therefore inseparable. Forces of 9 Ibid. p. 29.

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conflict can be greed or grievance, but they can only strongly affect human security in cases of institutional weakness. For this reason, Murshed calls for the study of conflicts in relation to the distributional effects of economic growth, democratic transitions, and also social capital and the role of institutions. Returning to Leventhal, it can be established that Murshed, though primarily pointing at growth and income distribution as indicative of freedom from want, underpins the importance of a multidimensional approach to understanding—and subsequently enhancing—processes and procedures that may result in equity in terms of freedom from want and freedom from fear. It also means that the agenda of inclusive economic development should be connected—as the un Task Team does—to peace and security goals, which they define as both freedom from violence, conflict and abuse and conflict-free access to natural resources. In her reaction to Murshed’s paper, Alcinda Honwana—Prince Claus Chair holder at the International Institute of Social Studies (2007–2008)—examines youth transitions to adulthood in Africa as a struggle for freedom from want and freedom from fear. She argues that the worldwide failure to create secure jobs or to open opportunities for sustainable livelihoods have caused a state of limbo for African youth. Instead of being able to evolve to conventional adulthood, joblessness and livelihood insecurity keep them in a prolonged situation of ‘waithood’. Honwana explains that waithood is a fundamental contradiction in modernity. On the one hand, all the achievements and symbols of welfare are on display. On the other hand, access to these achievements and symbols is severely constrained. The result is “a long process of negotiating personal identity and financial independence in circumstances of deep socio-economic crisis”. But waithood is also a period of experimentation and creativity and even of the development of shared identity and group consciousness. Recently, the world has witnessed that its transformative powers have been able to overthrow dictatorships. According to Honwana, this proves that “young people’s struggle to attain freedom from want often allows them to achieve freedom from fear”. With respect to Leventhal’s discussion of equity, Honwana pays attention first of all to the recipient’s—in her case youth—deservingness in terms of needs. Secondly, her contribution makes clear that waithood reveals the unfairness of allocative processes. Consequently, there is a political and social need to explicitly include youth in equity targeting. According to Honwana, this is not only a moral appeal but also an economic and political necessity. Amina Mama—Prince Claus Chair holder at the International Institute of Social Studies (2003–2004)—weighs the prospects of development and equity

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in Africa against militarism in contemporary neoliberal globalization. She argues that militarism is intensely gendered and produces more gender in­equity and abuse than was already the case. It has thus increased the insecurity of women, as becomes clear from a discussion of wars in Sierra Leone and Liberia. Interestingly, in the combat economy, women became more organized, sometimes to sustain the fighting but more often to attain peace. Mama discusses a number of cases in which women and women’s organizations played an active citizenship role in initiating, facilitating and sustaining peace. She also makes clear that sustaining peace and human security in post-war situations requires more than adding women to the police force and to the army. It requires a comprehensive process towards gender-equitable democratic governance, which in its turn requires strengthening the power and effectiveness of women’s organizations. In terms of Leventhal’s terminology, Mama’s gender-equitable development means first of all deservingness on the basis of needs and capabilities. Furthermore, she points to the necessity of procedural fairness. In her response, Irene Agyepong—Prince Claus Chair holder at Utrecht University (2008–2010)—examines the issues raised by Mama against health and education indicators for a number of West-African countries. She refers to Leventhal in order to point out that equity is both the fairness of the final distribution and the procedures for final distribution. This means that equity is not synonymous with equality. Equally, inequality is not necessarily unfair. For example, health budgets are allocated more to sick people than to the ablebodied, but this unequal allocation of resources is not considered unfair. Nevertheless, inequality can be used as a proxy indicator for equity. Analysis of education and health indicators of West-African countries leads one to suspect important gender inequalities. Comparative analysis of countries that have experienced prolonged conflict seems to point in the direction of negative health effects for the population. However, Agyepong does not want to jump to conclusions; she calls rather for further research. Significant is her conclusion that “poverty itself, irrespective of conflict, is a major determinant of development and equity. The poorest countries in the sub-region have similar performance indicators, with or without conflict and militarization”. Implicitly, besides health care (her own field of specialization), she therefore connects the other three major goals of the new un approach to post-2015 world development to a new way of looking at what the un calls inclusive social development, which includes adequate nutrition for all, reduced mortality and morbidity, universal access to clean water and sanitation, quality education for all and—as an overarching goal—gender equity, although the un still uses the word ‘gender equality’ in that recent document.

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Gaspar Rivera-Salgado—Prince Claus Chair holder at Utrecht University (2004–2005)—considers the objective of migrant organizations in Mexico to make outmigration a last-resort survival strategy instead of a first choice a matter of equity. He points to the fact that despite the social, economic and political exclusion of migrants (both in their home countries in Central America and in the US) coming from indigenous communities, these migrants managed to form their own social organizations and identity expressions in the US, while at the same time taking part actively in the social and political life of their home communities. As a result, vibrant indigenous migrant networks are created, which are able to carve out social spaces in which both transnational and indigenous identities can be sustained at the same time. In this context, outmigration is all too often considered as the only viable livelihood option. Rivera-Salgado considers it a matter of fairness and equity that as an alternative to outmigration—though still within the context of these vibrant indigenous migrant networks—sustainable economic oppor­ tunities are being promoted in the indigenous home communities, which contribute to their cultural, social and linguistic integrity. In other words, connecting territories becomes ever more important, and territorial governance has to deal with the growing impact of international networks, including those of migrants. He formulates a powerful plea to think about migrants not as clients but as agents of change and agents of innovation, political as well as economic. In her answer, Patricia Almeida Ashley—Prince Claus Chair holder at the International Institute of Social Studies (2009–2011) and thus the first chair holder appointed at Erasmus University Rotterdam—identifies RiveraSalgado’s ‘Right to Stay Home’ movement as an autonomous civil society initiative taken by communities in different zones/territories and therefore as an example of multi-territoriality. Subsequently, she argues in favour of a multiactor, multi-level and multi-territorial approach towards sustainable development, instead of a one-dimensional focus on communities, organizations and companies as separate entities. Sustainable development is the joint responsibility of public, private and civil society agents, which should be supported not only by the soft regulation of so-called social responsibility global guidance tools but also by “a supporting legal and institutional framework to protect human rights and environmental justice”. Pointing to her ‘master model of social responsibility aimed at development goals’, she formulates a very powerful plea for the idea that development and equity targets in the world are not just the responsibility of the various governments and of the un system. These targets are also responsibilities for the business community and for social and cultural organizations. In her vision, sustainable development cooperation

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and social responsibility policies should go hand in hand, at all levels of scale, and as a concerted effort of all relevant agencies. Rema Hammami—Prince Claus Chair holder at the International Institute of Social Studies (2005–2006)—explains that the notion of ‘gender equality’ should be given preference over the notion of ‘gender equity’. Equity “is based on subjective notions of fairness between sexes rather than on legal principles of non-discrimination and substantive equality (or equality of outcomes)”. Equity de-politicizes women’s rights’ agendas. At first sight—and in Leventhal’s wording—Hammami seems to focus here on outcomes rather than on deservingness in terms of needs or in terms of contribution in relation to capabilities. But her discussion of the sameness/difference debate makes clear that the latter is important, as are the procedures that ensure fairness. The gender equality model was based on a problematic calculation of the sameness of women and men. The principle that women have the same capacities as men—and should therefore have the same rights and opportunities as them—crucially overlooked where women are different from men, most critically in the spheres of biological and social reproduction. Hammami continues by making clear that equality—as identity—is continuously changing because it is subject to changing social, political and cultural configurations. Equality might be an absolute principle; it is also never complete. She illustrates this with a short account of her experiences in teaching gender studies in the Muslim-majority context in occupied Palestine. Very rarely do students want to support “radical feminist positions about men’s and women’s innate difference”, mainly because this is the conservative argument for gender discrimination. But after understanding the equality/difference problematic, they tend to react in a more nuanced manner. Hence, gender equality becomes what it is: an absolute principle and a non-linear process of expanding rights. Co-existence of simultaneous identities is not necessarily contra­dictory. There have always been multiple identities, and so struggle against discrimination is never total but always in relation to other identities. In his response to Hammami, Atul Kumar—Prince Claus Chair holder at Utrecht University (2010–2012)—reflects first upon his personal experiences with identity issues in India. In an impressive account, he makes clear that living in a rural environment surrounded by seemingly obvious signals of poverty, exclusion and injustice does not necessarily mean that these phenomena are problematized at the outset. It took time. It also took the experience of living and working in a cosmopolitan university environment to become fully aware of the differences in caste groups, religions and worldview. That led to work for a grassroots organization in one of the most backward rural areas in India. In Kumar’s own field of expertise, ‘equity’ is represented by unequal access to

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energy for different groups. This means first of all attention to gender equity, because women are the primary energy procurers and managers and carry that burden. Moreover, “in TERI,10 our attempts to improve cooking and lighting conditions by improving access to electricity and other forms of ‘modern’ energy are aware of the importance of cultural elements, and we never see the introduction of these innovations as purely technical projects”. Nasira Jabeen—Prince Claus Chair holder at Utrecht University (2006– 2007)—positions her paper in the centre of the problem statement for the Lustrum Conference. She adds to Leventhal’s conceptualization of procedural fairness the dimension of interactional justice, i.e. the individual’s perception of the extent to which she or he is treated with dignity, respect and concern. Moreover, she agrees with Prince Claus that development is impossible without democracy in its basic meaning, i.e. ‘by and for the people’. Subsequently, Jabeen examines gender participation in governance in Pakistan and arrives at the conclusion that, on the one hand, progress has been made with respect to women’s representation in governance, but, on the other hand, underrepresentation, inequality and discrimination are still noticeably apparent. To address the structural bias against women in governance, she proposes a holistic policy framework that both identifies and tackles gender inequity on the systemic, organizational and personal/gender level and enables gender-sensitive policies and practices. Finally, Jabeen identifies specific interventions at two levels, i.e. the level of developing people and the level of enabling institutional environments, the latter to allow women in Muslim societies to be treated with respect and to live in dignity. Stella Quimbo—Prince Claus Chair holder at the International Institute of Social Studies (2011–2013)—takes up the challenge by applying Jabeen’s holistic policy framework to the Philippines. In terms of Leventhal’s three-layered notion of equity, she arrives at the conclusion that gender outcomes are fair in distribution and in procedures. In the Philippines, the gender gap in health and education has been closed, while with respect to economic participation and opportunities and with respect to political empowerment, much progress in gender equity has been made. However, she stresses that to make gender outcomes fair in distributional as well as procedural terms, governance arrangements should be fair not only at the level of public and corporate levels of scale but also at the household level: children already learn fairness or the lack of it in day-to-day household situations. Or, in her own words, “[t]he procedures leading to these equitable outcomes appear to be mostly informal, 10

The Energy and Resources Institute, the Indian national-level institute for energy studies.

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within households, involving decisions made mostly by parents, and with a strong likelihood of being perceived as fair by the children”. This discussion demonstrates that all ten Prince Claus Chair holders have continued to take the central range of thought of their chair in development and equity as an unremitting source of inspiration of their work. With all their diversity of backgrounds and disciplines, they seem to be in agreement with each other and with Leventhal that equity theory should move from a one-­ dimensional to a multidimensional conception of fairness. Most will conclude that rather than in accordance with people’s input, distribution of opportunities, services and rewards should be distributed according to needs and to input in relation to people’s capabilities. All also underline the importance of, and the need for, fairness in the allocative process. Less attention has been paid to Leventhal’s third problem, i.e. whether fairness may not be driven by moral or ethical concerns but by manipulation or control. Perhaps legal principles of non-discrimination and substantive equality, as distinguished by Hammami, may technically fall under this third problem, but these are still driven by ethical motives falling into the second category. This volume is completed with the three essays of the two runners-up and the winner of the best Master’s thesis in development, equity and citizenship (the Cheetah Challenge competition). Annemarie Groot Kormelinck’s research on women’s bargaining position and trust in Ethiopian coffee cooperatives is based on a survey among member households of coffee cooperatives, as well as on economic experiments to explore the behaviour of individual members. She first concludes that female members have stronger bargaining positions than spouses of male members. This confirms existing insights that once women exploit livelihood opportunities outside the household, their bargaining positions tend to improve, both within and outside the household. Moreover, actual membership of cooperatives and related participation result in higher trust levels in the cooperative as an institution: again female members perform better in that respect than spouses of male members. Therefore, Groot Kormelinck concludes that not only do female members have a much better bargaining power than spouses of male members—i.e. that participation matters—but also that they demonstrate higher levels of institutional trust. She concludes that at both levels positive contributions to gender and equity can be established. This is interesting because other research does not always confirm that shifts in the balance of power at the micro-level are reflected in power balance shifts at the meso-level. Nienke van der Have builds on the original roots of the right to development, i.e. the 1986 United Nations ‘Declaration on the Right to Development’. As explained in the beginning of this Introduction, Prince Claus’s focus on

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development and equity was directly linked to an important principle of that declaration, i.e. that human persons should be active participants and beneficiaries of development. Van der Have investigates from the legal perspective of international law how states can be held accountable for that right and violations of it. She makes clear that solidarity rights, such as the right to develop, can only be realized through collective action, which makes it therefore a collective state obligation. In particular, she explores the potential of the so-called external dimension of state responsibility, “which concerns obligations of a state towards people outside of its jurisdiction and obligations to cooperate with other states”. In this vein, she draws a parallel with the recently formulated ‘Responsibility to Protect’ and subsequently recognizes two problems. First, it is difficult to identify the holders of such a responsibility or obligation because it implies the distribution of collective obligations to a specific state or states. We lack a mechanism that can distribute collective obligations. Second, in the current era of increased cooperation between states, we lack a mechanism to attribute state responsibility in those cases where two or more states share a wrongful act, for example through acting via a shared organ. Up to now it is unclear how this collective responsibility should be allocated to the individual states, especially when it comes to the burden of reparation. Therefore, Van der Have explores how international rules can be adjusted in order to better hold states accountable. In this regard, she highlights two concepts from environmental law, a field where more experience has already been gained in “transforming responsibility for global concerns into legal obligations and ensuring account­ability when these obligations are breached”. The first concept is intergenerational equity, promoting fairness among generations. The second is common but differentiated responsibility, which could help to identify duty-bearers and promote burden-sharing. By doing this, she also adds a challenging new dimension to Leventhal’s procedural fairness. Lisanne Heemskerk adapted her first-prize winning thesis into a paper that discusses a highly relevant and topical issue, namely how the business sector may contribute to development and equity. While the role of the state and subsequently that of civic organizations in the process of development have been widely discussed, researched and conceptualized, the business sector is a relative newcomer to the scene. Responsible business or corporate social responsibility concerns the societal responsibility private firms are supposed to demonstrate for their actions, whether it is their impact on the environment, on consumers, on employees and other stakeholders, or on the society at large. Developmental impact is also considered to be part of responsible business, and therefore Heemskerk examined the impact of Dutch agri-business on local sustainable development. She concludes that responsible business practices of

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these firms are well-established. In general, large enterprises and those operating in the export sector showed higher responsibility levels than small firms. This is caused by the fact that responsible business practices are still viewed in a short-term perspective and not yet sustainably embedded in firms’ core values. Responsible business practices are primarily driven either by (in this case) Kenyan law and requirements or by the international markets, i.e. international codes and certification requirements. Heemskerk sheds an interesting new light on Leventhal’s discussion of equity. Leventhal is concerned with equity issues in society and takes persons (or citizens) as members of that society as point of departure, i.e. as interested parties. But she broadens the analysis by picturing stakeholders as interested parties. Though some of these stakeholders are still persons (such as employees, consumers, investors and suppliers), they are persons who act in distinct capacities, and therefore stakeholders may easily overlap. One particular member of society might define itself, depending on the issue at stake, as belonging to various—or even to all—groups of stakeholders, making equity more complex to perceive. Complexity further increases when persons as stakeholders become represented by stakeholder organizations. Surely, future equity debates should take this complexity into account. Finally, Heemskerk also identifies the environment as a stakeholder and puts it on an equal footing with the other groups, without much discussion. This raises the challenge of integrating environmental sustainability into the equity debate. In the preceding paper, Van der Have already pointed out one way of addressing that challenge, i.e. through conceptualizing intergenerational equity as promoting fairness among generations. All three essays of the Cheetah Challenge competition demonstrate the quality of development studies at large at Dutch universities. Even more importantly, they prove that issues of development and equity are still considered crucial to a proper under­standing of the development process and that the conceptualization of equity in development has become more mature as well as made fit for the rapidly changing global context.

chapter 1

A Fresh Perspective on Economics and Equity Syed Mansoob Murshed 1 Abstract Two dimensions of equity are addressed: the freedom from want and the freedom from fear. This paper examines freedom from want by focussing on economic growth. Differences in growth rates over the last two centuries have produced the present disparities between rich and poor countries. Growth also constitutes the principal avenue for poverty reduction. The paper also analyzes the role of institutional functioning in explaining the determinants of long-term growth. With regard to the freedom from fear, the paper looks at violence as an alternative economic activity to peaceful production. It then examines what economics can contribute to the understanding of the causes of civil war. The paper concludes by looking at the relationship between globalization and conflict, bearing in mind that civil war is only one form of violent organized internal conflict, and the fact that the relationship between economic progress, human security and equity may be non-linear, thus implying that procedural fairness is never enough for the achievement of equity. Thrasymachus: I declare that justice is nothing else than that which is advantageous to the stronger. (Plato, The Republic)2

I will relate the notion of equity to the concept of human security, which will enable me to situate much of my understanding of equity. The concept of human security can be traced back to the basic needs ideas of the 1970s, and Amartya Sen’s (1985) capability approach, which finally took shape in the notion of human development in the 1990s (Streeten 1993). Essentially, it marked a move away from narrow welfarist concepts based purely on consumption. Human security represented an accretion to the concept of human development, embedding rights to safety and security. This development, at the turn of the millennium, was motivated by the greater recognition of the 1 First holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2002–2003. 2 Translated by A.D. Lindsay (1937), p. 14.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004269729_003

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nature of civil war, which until about a decade ago was a subject not normally analyzed by development economists. There is now a widespread acceptance of the poverty–conflict nexus (see, for example, Collier et al. 2003), whereby endemic poverty exacerbates the risk of internal violent conflict, as poverty lowers the opportunity cost of the violent over the non-violent (negotiated) option in dispute settlement. In turn, violent internal wars help to perpetuate poverty through the collateral damage that war engenders and because internal war is believed to retard poverty-reducing (or pro-poor) growth. Thus, the earlier concept of human development needed further extension and elaboration so as to incorporate individual and collective safety and security. Consequently, human security may be characterized as human development combined with political and social freedoms—above all, individual and collective safety and security. It encompasses economic as well as personal (or group) security and rights.

Introduction: Freedom From Want and Freedom From Fear

I will address two dimensions of equity: freedom from want and freedom from fear.3 The first refers to the quality of life. Economics is rich in approaches to this, many of which go beyond the simple utilitarian paradigm, making the epithet economics is associated with, ‘the gospel of Mammon’, rather unfair. The crudest form of the utilitarian approach states that (cardinally immeasurable) utility emanates from consumption. One can, of course, incorporate non-hedonistic or altruistic components into an individual utility function, such as the utility of one’s children, as well as solidarity with a cause. Societal welfare is maximized when the sum of individual utilities are maximized. This, in turn, leads to the two fundamental welfare theorems in mainstream economics that are associated with the concept of efficiency. First, a competitive equilibrium is Pareto efficient; and second, a Pareto optimal allocation is also a competitive equilibrium. In the strictest sense, Pareto efficiency implies that one person cannot be made better off by re-allocation without making at least one other person worse off. It also means that changes that make some better off without making any others worse off should be implemented. But it raises 3 These are the last two of the four freedoms enunciated in President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s State of the Union address to Congress on 6 January 1941. The other two are the freedoms of expression and worship. See www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org/pages/the-fourfreedoms [accessed 7 April 2013].

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problems of equity. In a two-person society, for example, Pareto efficiency is compatible with one person having everything and another person nothing— something that is repugnant to most sensibilities. Besides utilitarianism we also have Sen’s (1985) capability approach, which states that well-being emerges from capability, examples of which could be the twin freedoms from want and fear. Capabilities are related to entitlements, which could include security; but exchange entitlements or participation in the market are very much part and parcel of ‘entitlement’. Rawls’ (1971) ‘maximin principle’ is, perhaps, less well known. Allocation and choice under this rule maximize the utility of the least fortunate member (or group) in society. From within economics, the latest challenge to crude measures of wellbeing based principally on hedonistic consumption comes from behavioural economics, which emphasizes the psychological basis of choice. Individual preferences are not just about maximizing utility in consumption, but contain innate and socially (hence institutionally) determined preferences that may contradict choice that is principally based on narrow self-interested (current and future) consumption.4 Unlike in traditional economics, where preferences were exogenous (or given) to the analyst, we are referring to preferences that are endogenous to, and shaped by, economic, political and social institutions (Bowles 1998). Preferences (and choices) may also be related to personal histories and experiences, including violence and trauma. Akerlof & Kranton (2000) also demonstrate how individuals can derive utility from behaviour and actions appropriate to their own group’s identity and norms, as well as similar behaviour by other members of the group one identifies with. Earlier work by Boulding (1956) about individual self-image and the effect of various stimuli in framing one’s image is remarkably similar to the tenets of the currently fashionable behavioural economics. The second section of the paper examines freedom from want by focussing on economic growth. Differences in growth rates, particularly over the last two centuries, have produced the growing disparities between rich and poor countries, which is the principal factor underlying the current state of 4 One may trace the conventional view of welfare in economics to Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarianism using an exogenous pleasure–pain principle from which individuals derive utility. Societal welfare is the sum of all individual welfare, leading to the greatest good of the greatest number principle. It has to be remembered, however, that another great utilitarian, John Stuart Mill, who may be regarded as a linear disciple of Bentham, wrote “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied” (J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, first published in 1863, p. 14), thus contradicting simplistic interpretations of the pleasure–pain principle.

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­ nderdevelopment, and the unfair nature of the planet Earth. Without growth, u citizens cannot exercise capabilities. Growth also constitutes the principal avenue for income poverty reduction. In poor countries, mere acts of redistribution can only serve to make all equally poor. This does not mean, however, that no attention should be paid to distribution, as perceptions about unfair distribution across groups can promote conflict. The section also analyzes the role of institutional functioning in explaining the determinants of long-term growth and growth failure. As the opening line of Tolstoy’s novel Anna Karenina pithily points out: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” The third section concentrates on the freedom from fear. It begins by looking at violence as an alternative economic activity to peaceful production. It then examines what economics can contribute to the understanding of the causes of war. The problem of transnational terrorism is also analyzed. The fourth section deals with recent trends and unanswered questions, indicating the possible links between globalization and conflict, along with a sketch of the new forms of conflict that are appearing. It also develops the idea that both under-development and development can produce large-scale violent conflict. Consequently, the relationship between economic progress and equity may be non-linear, implying that the association between the two is at some times positive and at other times negative.

The Lack of Economic Growth and the Freedom From Want

Freedom from want in low-income countries, where poverty is endemic, can only ensue in the long run from economic growth. This is because growth enlarges the economic pie and creates the necessary pre-conditions for economic well-being. Granted, this is not sufficient for the freedom from want, which also depends on other mechanisms, including the distribution of income. Recent growth rates of real income per-capita have been low—and even negative—for many developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America in the 1980 to 2000 period. In Africa, in particular, the last two decades of the twentieth century were associated with huge development failure. Not only did incomes decline, but also other indicators of inclusion and well-being deteriorated. This includes the increases in the incidence of old diseases such as tuberculosis, the AIDS pandemic and stagnating maternal mortality and literacy rates. On the other hand, developing countries in East Asia, and more recently in South Asia, have been doing well for a long time.

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Historically also, disparities between rich and poor countries have been growing in the last two centuries. UNDP (1999) reproduces figures to show that the gap in average income between the richest and poorest nations was only 3:1 at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution in 1820, rising to 11:1 by 1913. More recently, it grew to 35:1 in 1950, rising slightly to 44:1 by 1973. After the commencement of the present round of globalization, this figure has acquired a staggering magnitude of 72:1. The lack of economic growth and the increasing disparity between rich and poor nations undermine human security from the standpoint of the freedom from want and other human capabilities. What are the long-term determinants of growth? Acemoglu et al. (2005) contend that good economic institutions (property rights and the rule of law) are required for growth in the longer term. Economic institutions are a product of political systems and processes. These authors argue that growth-promoting institutions are more likely to materialize in the context of settings (chiefly, but not exclusively democracy) that constrain the arbitrary exercise of political power, where there is a broad-based interest in property rights, implying less inequality, and if there are fewer rents that can be appropriated by a small political elite. Recent empirical studies also confirm the independent importance of institutions in determining economic performance as measured by the levels of per-capita income. Easterly & Levine (2003) present evidence based on cross-country econometrics that a mineral natural resource endowment, a poor geographical (tropical) location and an excessive mortality rate (disease burden) does retard economic development but via institutions of governance. Similarly, bad economic policies and choices also hinder economic development via institutional quality. Consequently, institutions and institutional functioning are the crucial link between resource endowments, geography and policies on the one hand and economic outcomes on the other hand. A similar line of reasoning is presented in Rodrik et al. (2004). There is now a consensus that institutions—in the shape of the framework of governance, respect for property rights, contract and law enforcement, the rule of law and administrative capacity—matter a great deal if a country is to be successful in its quest for growth and development. The current economic literature points out several sources of institutional determination, some of which may be related to natural resource endowment. Authors such as Acemoglu et al. (2001) date back poor (or good) institutional determination to the pattern of colonialization at least a century ago. They distinguish between two types of colonies. The first group corresponds to parts of the New World settled by European migrants, such as North America and Australasia. The second group refers to tropical developing countries, today’s Third World. The idea is that better institutions, especially property

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rights and the rule of law, were embedded in the first group.5 In the second category of colonial countries, an extractive pattern of production was set up. This extractive and exploitative pattern of production is also the legacy of colonialization—malign colonialization in these cases. Clearly, this pattern was more prevalent in some parts of the world, particularly in Africa and Latin America; the Belgian Congo is cited as the worst example. The latter’s contemporary counterpart, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), has probably the worst growth experience on record. As the extractive state is expropriatory and predatory, malfunctioning institutions emerge and become entrenched even after independence, and a predatory equilibrium emerges. The important question that remains unanswered is this: why does de-colonialization, and the opportunities it provides for policy changes, not alter the destiny of an extractive economy? It does in some, but not in others. Secondly, despite the salience of the colonial phase in history, many developing nations have had a collective experience prior to—and after—colonialization that must have also shaped institutions. In East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East and North African regions of the developing world, well-functioning institutions of good governance existed long before the advent of colonialization, and European colonial powers merely adapted pre-existing administrative institutions. The work of Acemoglu et al. (2001) is therefore mostly applicable to sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. Another strand of the literature builds on the link between inequality and mineral-type resource endowment (Easterly 2007). Commodity endowments of the mineral or plantation variety tend to depress the middle-class share of income in favour of elites, as in Latin America—the idea being that these elites in turn use their power, identical with the forces of the state, to coerce and extract rents. When different groups compete with one another for these rents, the rent-seeking contest can lead to even more perverse and wasteful outcomes than when elites collude. The important point made by Easterly (2007) is that small elite-based societies do not have a stake in the long-term development of the land. Unlike in middle-class dominated societies, publicly financed human capital formation and infrastructural development falls by the wayside, hence depressing growth prospects. The reason is that mass education promotes growth, although it eventually leads to power shifting away from elite groups through demands for democracy. The important point is that a tiny oligarchy may be the most disinclined to redistribute income.

5 The authors argue that the mortality rate amongst Europeans is what determined whether Europeans settled a colony or not.

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Violent Internal Conflict and the Freedom From Fear

We are used to viewing war as something that happens between nation states. Today’s conflicts mostly occur between groups within the same country and in the developing world. Conflict is also a major cause of the persistence of poverty, which in turn is also a cause of conflict (see Collier et al. 2003). Are these violent conflicts fundamentally irrational, and could the differences underlying these disputes not be settled peacefully? Sadly, conflict may be the product of rational decisions, even if they are only of a limited or myopic rational choice variety. It is important to understand that violence is an alternative to peaceful production as a form of economic activity. Francis Edgeworth (1881: 16–17), writing in the late-nineteenth century, distinguished between consent—and its absence—in human economic interaction: The first principle of Economics is that every agent is actuated only by self-interest. The workings of this principle may be viewed under two aspects, according as the agent acts without, or with, the consent of others affected by his actions. In wide senses, the first species of action may be called war, the second contract. In securing an income, humanity has a choice between production and predation, the relative returns being in part determined by the cost of ‘swords’ relative to ‘ploughshares’. The institutional environment, the quality of law and contract enforcement also determine this choice. Criminal activity, whether taking the form of extortion or theft, is only one aspect of the economics of violence. War, especially civil war, also has an economic dimension. Hirschleifer (1995) models anarchic inter-group warfare using non-cooperative game theory, in a setting reminiscent of the primitive conflict over resources between neighbouring communities. Similarly, Grossman (1991) models rebellion against a tax-farming state, where individual choices are predicated upon the relative returns to farming or working for the state or rebelling against it. The main characteristic of these rational choice approaches is the notion of expected utility: the returns (sometimes negative) are the sum of the pecuniary value of various activities weighted by their subjective probability. In the new rational choice literature on civil war, a distinction is often made between grievance—a motivation based on a sense of injustice in the way a social group is or has been treated—and greed—an acquisitive desire similar to crime, albeit on a much larger scale.6 In many ways the former refers to 6 The expression ‘greed disguised as grievance’ was coined by Paul Collier.

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intrinsic motivation, and the latter to an extrinsic or pecuniary incentive to go to war. These motives are not entirely separate in practice, and change as conflict progresses. Addison et al. (2002) present an analytical game-theoretic model of civil war, where greed and grievance exist simultaneously in the midst of poverty. There is a long-standing position that relative deprivation (Gurr 1970), which refers to a feeling of being left behind in the midst of generalized progress, fuels internal violence.7 Identity is also crucial to intra-state conflict. This is due to the collective action problem, as discussed in Olson (1965). It is difficult to mobilize large groups to undertake collective action, because of mutual mistrust, monitoring difficulties and the free-rider problem. Ethnic identities, whether based on race, language, religion, tribal affiliation or regional differences, may serve as a more effective amalgam for the purposes of group formation, compared with other forms of difference such as socio-economic class. The formation of enduring identities is therefore central to mobilizing groups, including the machinations of conflict entrepreneurs who organize men to fight each other. Conflict cannot proceed without the presence of palpably perceived group differences or grievances, which may have historical dimensions. Frances Stewart (2000) has introduced the notion of horizontal inequality, the inequality between groups, rather than the inequality within an ethnically homogenous population (vertical inequality). Here, more enduring (or difficult to change) dimensions of inequality (Tilly 1998) as opposed to relatively more transient causes of inequality (like current income) are crucial, such as the manner in which certain groups are discriminated against simply because of their ethnic characteristics rather than their other personal attributes. Therefore, designing procedural fairness, without attention to outcomes, is never enough for conflict prevention. More often than not, horizontal inequalities and/or relative deprivation take the form of high asset inequality, discriminatory public spending across groups and unequal access to the benefits of state patronage such as government jobs. Furthermore, state failure in providing security and a minimal level of public goods often forces individuals to rely on kinship ties for support and security. Discussion of greed as a motive for conflict arises mainly in the context of natural resource endowments in Africa and has been popularized, for example, by the work of Collier & Hoeffler (2004). Capturable natural resource rents, such as alluvial diamonds in Angola and Sierra Leone, can result in contests over the right to control these, some of which contests take the form of war7 Mention of this factor is made in Aristotle’s Politics.

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fare, but also criminality and corruption in other instances. Ross (2004) points out that lootable gemstones and illegal narcotics help to finance and perpetuate civil war, as they are a major source of profit for some of the competing groups. Their presence does not, however, robustly explain why civil wars begin in the first place but why they may last longer, as a ready source of finance is available. Ross (2004) also finds that oil and gas revenues significantly contribute to secessionist wars. The greed versus grievance dichotomy can provide a useful beginning to the discussion of the causes of conflict. But for these forces to take the form of large-scale violence there must be other factors at work, specifically failing institutional mechanisms for peaceful conflict resolution, which may be called the ‘social contract’, and conflict triggers. A functioning social contract—and the concomitant institutions that distribute income and resolve disputes— can prevent the violent expression of greed or grievance (see Murshed 2002 and 2010). The degeneration of a viable social contract that resolved disputes without recourse to large-scale violence is a sufficient cause for the outbreak of conflict, and in the extreme can lead to a failed or collapsed state (as in Somalia, for example). Furthermore, the outbreak of conflict always requires triggers, both internal and external. External triggers involve support and succour from an outside power; internal triggers refer to events that induce parties to abandon peaceful negotiation in favour of outright war. Addison & Murshed (2006) indicate that a social contract can contain three dimensions. The first is political (the rules that govern political representation, consultation and decisionmaking), the second consists of moral values (the rules that govern personal conduct and society’s sense of justice) and the third is economic (the rules that govern production, exchange, distribution and government intervention). Transnational terrorism, and the strategy of war on terrorism to combat it, is a form of ‘new’ war. Here, intrinsic motivation, which often takes the form of the collective sense of humiliation, plays a greater role; therefore, deterrence against terrorists may backfire if it hardens their resolve to resist, as modelled by Addison & Murshed (2005). Perpetrators of terrorist acts are not often uneducated and poor, unlike in the case of civil wars, where the soldiery is often drawn from the ranks of the impoverished whose alternative gainful employment prospects are scant. In fact, education can act as an indicator of reliability in acts such as suicide bombing. Terrorism requires individuals to express solidarity with an intrinsic cause or value, where the notion of pecuniary gain associated with greed in the case of civil wars is totally irrelevant. From the viewpoint of individual choice, suicide bombing may be a rational act, as explained by Wintrobe (2006). This is because the individual has made an allor-nothing choice between solidarity with a cause and individual autonomy.

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An all-or-nothing choice involves a ‘corner solution’ to a utility maximization problem. In this situation, changing relative prices (increasing deterrence) has little impact on individual choice, which is another way of saying that deterring terrorism will not succeed in preventing people from committing to their cause, even if the success rate of individual acts of terrorism diminishes. Conflict resolution is more difficult when the intrinsic motivation to fight is strong, as is the case in secessionist wars and certain forms of terrorism. It is also difficult to sustain peace when parties feel tempted to resume warfare so as to enable themselves to continue looting valuable resources. The commitment problem to an agreed peace treaty is also a serious problem. This difficulty arises when it is in the interest of one or either side to renege on the promise of peace and the actions that peace involves. In that situation, commitments lack credibility. Sometimes, agents or groups cannot commit credibly because there are no institutions or mechanisms upon which to anchor promises. For governments, this is more likely in the context of weak state capacity, as it is difficult for a state to guarantee pledges when its own legitimacy and power base is fragile.

Recent Trends in Civil Wars and Lacunae in Conflict Studies

The number of civil wars peaked in 1991, when 52 wars occurred in 38 countries, and by 2007 this number declined to 34 wars in 25 countries (Gleditsch 2008). Along with this, associated conflict fatalities are also declining. Civil (and inter-state) war incidence is on the wane, but other forms of violent conflict may be rising, and these do not always involve the state as a direct participant. Moreover, the new types of conflict often occur in countries and contexts of ‘development’ and where growth and success in globalization is taking place. An example would be the various Maoist insurgencies in India that are growing and taking place in the overall national context of growth and success in a globalized economy. A variety of lacunae remain in conflict studies. First and foremost is the complex and non-linear relationship between development and economic progress and conflict risk. Both severe under-development and rapid economic progress can produce conflict risk. The former is associated more with the risk of civil war, the latter usually with mass violent protest and localized rebellion that does not fundamentally undermine the position of the state. Bates (2001) gives us historical examples when increased prosperity first increased violence before further economic progress slowed it down. The reason is that increased affluence produced haves and have-nots, and the insecurity of the latter

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increased violence. But further increases in living standards could not be sustained except via relative peace and the emergence of new rules of the game governing production and distribution. Attention has to be focussed on the distributional consequences of growth. New sources of tension arise in our globalized world because of rising food and fuel prices, which intensify existing grievances against the state and the burdens of servicing international debt, and through the relative deprivation felt because of the ever-widening gap in living standards between rich and poor countries. We have the losers from increased globalization that widens the gulf between the ‘haves and have-nots’, creating relative deprivation and sometimes transforming protests into violent insurgencies. Rapid globalization, especially in the form of increased international trade and inward foreign investment, has increased income differences between skilled and unskilled workers all over the world (Mamoon & Murshed 2008) and income inequality generally (Milanovic 2011). The reason is that the race to acquire international competitiveness—a zero-sum game—requires real wage compression relative to labour productivity, something that has been skewed towards the relatively unskilled worker in the past three decades. In many developing societies, rural hinterlands have been particularly disadvantaged; where it is combined with ethnic differences from the majority of the state’s population, this relative backwardness can constitute a recipe for violent (Maoist style) insurgencies. The important point is that such relative deprivation can take place even when the nation’s aggregate economic performance is impressive and growth is both positive and buoyant. Moreover, there are ethnic or communal conflicts where groups compete over dwindling environmental resources, such as those utilized in agriculture (Homer-Dixon 1999) or other contestable endowments like land. Many of these conflicts do not include the state as a direct participant. The second lacuna concerns the non-linear impact of increased democratization on conflict risk (see Hegre et al. 2001). Mature democracies are peaceful, but democratic transitions enhance the chances of violent conflict. Although there has been a marked shift towards democracy in most developing countries since the end of the Cold War, and most have adopted the multi-party electoral system to form governments, they still lack adequate constraints on the executive, and their electoral systems are fraught with imperfections, making them anocracies rather than democracies. An anocracy has characteristics of both democracy and autocracy; most developing countries fall into this category, which raises conflict risk. This means that we must have a nuanced take on the role of institutions, eschewing the naive institutional fundamentalism that pervades the mainstream thinking about long-term development nowadays.

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Thirdly, greater emphasis has to be put on detailed case studies of local conflict. This means a deeper understanding of local economic conditions and social capital. The role of intrinsic motivation in joining movements—­ particularly the part played by an individual’s identification with the cause of a disadvantaged group that he/she belongs to—deserves much more than the scant and passing attention that it has hitherto received in the rational choice literature on conflict. The study of sectarian (or communal) conflicts in countries such as India, Indonesia and Nigeria, as well as cultural conflict with Muslims in Europe, merits more sophisticated study. In the ultimate analysis, conflict resolution ubiquitously requires justice, not just the justice that is in the interest of the stronger. Conclusions In this essay, I have attempted to argue that equity broadly understood in economics can encompass elements of the freedoms from want and fear. What I have discussed are some of the necessary conditions for these freedoms, which emanate respectively from growth and the prevention of violent internal conflict. Freedom from want has been the traditional subject matter of economics and includes a wide-ranging understanding of utility and welfare. The freedom from fear or insecurity is something that development economists have been increasingly paying attention to, as it is recognized that economic policy cannot be formulated or conducted independent of the political and security environment. Furthermore, the potential for conflict and civil war to retard growth and development is also accepted. Hence, the freedom from want and the freedom from fear are in reality inseparable. Equity at the aggregate level implies the maximization of growth and the minimization of conflict. The latter objective also requires that growth is not too unequally distributed. Institutions and institutional functioning are central to both these goals, as they promote growth and prevent conflict. As Rodrik (1999) emphasizes, countries with weak institutions of conflict management and high income inequality are less able to withstand economic shocks and experience growth failure. Moreover, growth and conflict are also related in other ways. Countries with a low per-capita income are more prone to conflict, while nations in conflict have their growth potential curtailed. Although poor institutional quality can both retard growth and promote violent internal conflict, its effect on these two phenomena is not symmetric. Not all countries with growth failures descend into large-scale internal violence. Similarly, although most nations experiencing conflict do have a poor record in terms of

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economic growth, several others do not, such as in East Asia (Indonesia), South Asia (Nepal, Sri Lanka) and Latin America (Colombia). Conflict prevention requires the presence of institutions governing economic distribution, political participation and social norms that result in the non-violent resolution of inter-group disputes. I refer to these mechanisms as the social contract. Finally, with regard to the achievement of peace, even an idealist philosopher like Immanuel Kant (1795) considered war to be the natural state of man. In that respect, he shared the perspective of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1651). According to Hobbes, the state of nature was characterized by anarchy akin to perpetual war,8 each man taking what he could with no basis for right or wrong. Life was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short”.9 Consequently, it was in the interest of individuals to surrender their individual freedom of action to an absolute ruler in return for personal security and rulebased interactions in society. Kant was concerned more with preventing war between nations. That would require the simultaneous adoption of a republican constitution by all nations, which inter alia would check the war-like tendencies of both monarchs and the citizenry; the cosmopolitanism that would emerge among the comity of nations would preclude war, implying a confederation amongst such nation states ( foedus pacificum).10 Kant’s notion of cosmopolitanism is also applicable to divided and factionalized nation-states. Both thinkers were concerned with mechanisms that would engender peace. In other words, peace has to be achieved through continuous and evolving deliberate design. Similarly, the achievement of equity for individuals requires not only procedural fairness, but also attention to outcomes, as existing rules and mechanisms can be captured and diverted towards inequity, necessitating their periodic modification. References Acemoglu, D., S. Johnson & J.A. Robinson (2001), The colonial origins of comparative development: An empirical investigation. American Economic Review 91(5): 1369–1401. ——— (2005), Institutions as the fundamental cause of long-run growth. In: Ph. Aghion & S. Durlauf, eds, Handbook of economic growth 1(1). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 385–472. 8 9 10

Bellum omnium contra omnes, or war by all against all. Hobbes (1651, 1998: 84). Arguably, the ideal behind the European Union is in the spirit of Kant’s thinking.

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Addison T. & S.M. Murshed (2005), Transnational terrorism as a spillover of domestic disputes in other countries. Defence and Peace Economics 16(2): 69–82. ——— (2006), The social contract and violent conflict. In: H. Yanacopoulos & J. Hanlon, eds, Civil war, civil peace. Oxford: Currey, pp. 137–163. Addison, T., Ph. Le Billon & S.M. Murshed (2002), Conflict in Africa: The cost of peaceful behaviour. Journal of African Economies 11(3): 365–386. Akerlof, G. & R.E. Kranton (2000), Economics and identity. Quarterly Journal of Economics 115(3): 715–753. Bates, R.H (2001), Prosperity and violence, New York: Norton. Boulding, K.E. (1956), The Image: Knowledge in life and society. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Bowles, S. (1998), Endogenous preferences: The cultural consequences of markets and other economic institutions. Journal of Economic Literature 36(1): 75–111. Collier, P. & A. Hoeffler (2004), Greed and grievance in civil wars. Oxford Economic Papers 56(4): 563–595. Collier, P., L. Elliot, H. Hegre, A. Hoeffler, M. Reynal-Querol & N. Sambanis (2003), Breaking the conflict trap: Civil war and development policy. World Bank, Oxford University Press. Easterly, W. (2007), Inequality does cause underdevelopment. Journal of Development Economics 84(2): 755–776. Easterly, W. & R. Levine (2003), Tropics, germs and crops: How endowments influence economic development. Journal of Monetary Economics 50: 3–39. Edgeworth, F.Y. (1881), Mathematical psychics. London: Kegan Paul. Gleditsch, N.P. (2008), The liberal moment fifteen years on. International Studies Quarterly 15(4): 691–712. Grossman, H.I. (1991), A general equilibrium model of insurrections. American Economic Review 81(4): 912–921. Gurr, T.R. (1970), Why men rebel. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hirschleifer, J. (1995), Anarchy and its breakdown. Journal of Political Economy 103(1): 26–52. Hegre, H., T. Ellingsen, S. Gates & N.P. Gleditsch (2001), Towards a democratic civil peace? Democracy, civil change and civil war 1816–1992. American Political Science Review 95(1): 17–33. Hobbes, T. (1651), Leviathan, reprinted 1998. Oxford: World Classics. Homer-Dixon, T.F. (1999), Environment, scarcity and violence, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kant, I. (1795), Perpetual peace and other essays on politics. History and morals, reprinted 1983. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

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Mamoon, D. & S.M. Murshed (2008), Unequal skill premiums and trade liberalization: Is education the missing link?’, Economics Letters 100(2): 262–266. Milanovic, B. (2011), The haves and the have nots. New York: Basic Books. Mill, J.S. (1863), Utilitarianism, accessed via Google books, 20th February 2012, un. Murshed, S.M. (2002), Civil war, conflict and underdevelopment. Journal of Peace Research 39(4): 387–393. ——— (2010), Explaining civil war: A rational choice approach. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar. Olson, M. (1965), The logic of collective action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Plato (1937), The Republic, translated by A.D. Lindsay. London: Everyman’s Books. Rawls, J. (1971), A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rodrik, D. (1999), Where did all the growth go? External shocks, social conflict, and growth collapses. Journal of Economic Growth 4(4): 385–412. Rodrik, D., A. Subramanian & F. Trebbi (2004), Institutions rule: The primacy of institutions over geography and integration in economic development. Journal of Economic Growth 9(2): 131–165. Ross, M.L. (2004), What do we know about natural resources and civil wars? Journal of Peace Research 41(3): 337–356. Sen, A. (1985), Commodities and capabilities. Amsterdam: North Holland. Stewart, F. (2000), Crisis prevention: Tackling horizontal inequalities. Oxford Development Studies 28(3): 245–262. Streeten, P. (1993), From growth via basic needs to human development: The individual in the process of development. In: S.M. Murshed & K. Raffer, eds, Trade, transfers and development. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, pp. 16–33. Tilly, C. (1998), Durable inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press. Tolstoy, L. (1877), Anna Karenina (2000). New York: Random House. UNDP (1999), Human Development Report-1999, New York: United Nations Development Programme. Wintrobe, R. (2006), Extremism, suicide terror and authoritarianism. Public Choice 128(1): 169–195.

chapter 2

‘Waithood’: Youth Transitions and Social Change Response to Syed Mansoob Murshed Alcinda Honwana1 Abstract This paper examines the challenges of youth transitions to adulthood in Africa as an illustration of global contemporary forms of the struggle for freedom from want and freedom from fear. It explores the lives of young people struggling with unemployment and sustainable livelihoods in the context of widespread social and economic crisis. Failed neo-liberal economic policies, bad governance and political instability have caused stable jobs to disappear—and without jobs young people cannot support themselves and their families. Most young Africans are living in a period of suspension between childhood and adulthood that I call ‘waithood’. This state of limbo is becoming pervasive and is gradually replacing conventional adulthood. While focusing on four African case studies, the paper argues that youth in Europe, North America and other parts of the world face the same crisis of joblessness and restricted futures. Thus, this youth crisis is global. The ‘waithood generation’ possesses a tremendous transformative potential, as young people understand that the struggle to attain freedom from want requires radical social and political change. From riots and protests in the streets of Maputo, Dakar, Madrid, London, New York and Santiago, to revolutions that overthrow dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, the ‘waithood generation’ appears to be conquering freedom from fear and fighting for their rights.

Introduction The majority of African youths are today grappling with a lack of jobs and deficient education. After they leave school with few skills, they are unable to obtain work and become independent—to build, buy, or rent a house for themselves, support their relatives, get married, establish families and gain social recognition as adults. These attributes of adulthood are becoming 1 Sixth holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2007–2008.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004269729_004

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increasingly unattainable by the majority of young people in Africa. I use the notion waithood, a portmanteau term of ‘wait’ and ‘-hood’, meaning ‘waiting for adulthood’, to refer to this period of suspension between childhood and adulthood. On the one hand, young people are no longer children in need of care, but on the other, they are still unable to become independent adults. While chronological age defines them as adults, socially they are not recognized as such. Rather than defining youth on the basis of age categories (for example 15–24 or 14–35),2 this paper understands youth as defined by social expectations and responsibilities and considers all those who have not yet been able to attain social adulthood, despite their age, as youth. The paper draws from in-depth interviews with young people in four African countries—Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia—between 2008 and 2011. It examines young people’s strategies for coping with waithood and carving out forms of livelihoods which, albeit precarious, keep some of them afloat even if just for one day at a time (Honwana 2012). The analysis of youth’s experiences is framed around the discussions on equity in Syed Murshed’s paper, which focus on two fundamental freedoms: freedom from want and freedom from fear.3 These two freedoms constitute basic tenets of the human security approach and resonate with Amartya Sen’s concept of ‘development as freedom’ (1999), which understands freedom as both constitutive of development and instrumental to it. Development should be understood as a process of expanding freedoms. As Sen (1999: 10) argues, “freedoms are not only the primary ends of development, they are also among its principal means”. Prince Claus’s own ideas of development and equity are built around notions of progress and fairness that should provide people with access to resources and fundamental freedoms.4 The paper argues that waithood—youth’s inability to access basic resources to become independent adults—does not result from a failed transition on the part of the youth themselves but rather from a breakdown in the socioeconomic system supposed to provide them with the opportunities to grow up healthy, get a good education, find employment, form families and contribute 2 The United Nations and the World Bank defined youth as all those between the ages of 15–25 (United Nations 2007; World Bank 2007). The African Union, and many African nations, define youth as those aged 15–35 (African Union 2006). 3 These two freedoms are part of the four freedoms first articulated by US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in his famous “Four Freedoms” speech presented in the 1941 State of the Union address. The other two freedoms he referred to are freedom of speech and expression and freedom of worship. 4 See Prince Claus’s acceptance speech for his Honorary Fellowship at the Institute of Social Studies, 1988. Available at: http://princeclauschair.nl/23-propositions/ [accessed 1 March 2013].

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to society as fully fledged citizens. What is broken is the social contract between the state and its citizens. Unsound economic policies, bad governance, corruption and absence of civil liberties are often at the root of this problem. These socio-economic conditions prevent these young people from experiencing freedom from want; but at the same time, their daily struggles to free themselves from a state of want make them lose fear of police repression and police retaliation; they come out to the streets and directly confront the establishment. Youth social movements are today taking place around the globe as they contest socio-economic policies and governance strategies that exacerbate poverty, social inequalities, uneven development and lack of basic freedoms. Waithood The notion of waithood was first used by Dianne Singerman (2007) and Navtej Dhillon and Tarik Yousef (2009) in their work on youth in the Middle East and North Africa. They rightly suggested that waithood encompasses the multifaceted nature of youth transitions to adulthood, which goes beyond securing a job and extends to social life and civic participation. While their use of waithood suggests a sense of passively “waiting”, my research shows that young people in waithood are not inactively lingering and waiting for their situation to change. Despite the challenges, youth in waithood are dynamic and use their agency and creativity to invent new forms of being and interacting with society (Honwana & de Boeck 2005; Honwana 2012). Waithood accounts for a multiplicity of young people’s experiences, ranging from daily survival strategies such as street vending and cross-border trade to involvement in gangs and criminal activities. Waithood represents the contradictions of modernity, in which young people’s opportunities and expectations are simultaneously broadened and constrained. They are enlarged by the new technologies of information and communication that make young people more globally integrated. Youth relate to local social structures and cultural patterns, but they are also connected to global culture via mobile telephones, cyberspace, television and advertising. At the same time, they are also constrained by lack of access to basic resources owing to unsound socio-economic policies, epidemics, political instability and repression. In West Africa, the term youthman is commonly used to refer to people who have not attained social adulthood despite their biological adulthood (Abdullah 1998). Even men over forty continue to be seen as youths because of their inability to gain a stable livelihood, live independently, marry and form

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families. The very existence of the expression youthman, as Ibrahim Abdullah observes, stands as a metaphor for Africa’s poverty and attests to the pervasiveness of waithood across the continent. The lyrics of a popular song from Sierra Leone lament the conditions of a youthman’s life: I feel sorry for the youthman today The system is bad for the youthman today Every day and every night they suffer The youthman want to sleep but no place The youthman want to eat but no food The youthman want good dress but no good dress The youthman want to buy but no money The youthman want to work If no work, how do you expect him to eat?5 There is no doubt that waithood stems from bad governance and from the social and economic policies espoused by international financial institutions that were imposed on Africa and other countries in the global South. Structural adjustment programmes (later known as the poverty reduction strategy programmes) deeply weakened African states’ ability to determine national socioeconomic policies and priorities and to uphold the social contract with their citizenry.6 But bad governance and pervasive corruption and absence of both freedom of expression and civil liberties further compounded the problem. Nevertheless, waithood does not affect every young African man or woman in the same way. Some have become adults too soon, such as child soldiers, child labourers or surrogate parents to younger siblings after their parents died. Others can never attain the socio-economic autonomy that allows them to partake of the social responsibilities of adulthood. At ten, a child soldier is an adult; at forty, an unemployed and unmarried man is still a youth. But many 5 A 2008 song by Sierra Leone hip-hop artist Lansana Sheriff, also known by the artistic name of Steady Bongo. 6 As various scholars observed, structural adjustment policies were against state investments in health, education, transport and telecommunications. They favoured the removal of trade barriers that protected local producers and the relaxation of tax regimes, as well as the privatization of agriculture, land and food production and distribution (Manji 1998). The result was the increase of socio-economic disparities and the gradual transformation of citizens into consumers. Power and influence over social policy were increasingly determined by wealth, and those who had no means to participate in consumer society were disenfranchised (Manji 2011).

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children who assume adult roles at a tender age are later pushed back into waithood as they grow up and try to attain their independence. Rather than being a short interruption in their transition to adulthood, waithood may last for extended periods, well into their thirties and even forties. Some never get out of it and remain permanently in the precarious and improvised life that waithood imposes (Sommers 2012). Prolonged waithood is becoming the rule rather than the exception, and waithood is gradually replacing conventional adulthood. For many, being young in Africa today is synonymous with living in waithood. Waithood is not just an African phenomenon. In the US and the UK, terms such as kidults, adultolescents7 and thresholders (Apter 2001) have been used to describe youths who are in limbo between childhood and adulthood, stuck in what some scholars called “emerging adulthood” (Arnett 2004; Molgat 2007). Expressions like the ‘boomerang’ or ‘yo-yo’ generation have been used to describe college graduates who return home and continue to depend on their parents. In Japan, freeters (furītā)8 and parasaito shinguru (parasite singles) refer to the growing number of young people who are having difficulties joining the labour force and forming their own families (Miyamoto 2004; Kosugi 2006). In Italy, bamboccioni (big dummy boys) is a sarcastic term that indicates the growing number of young men in their mid-twenties and thirties who are still unmarried and living with their parents.9 Thus, waithood is a global phenomenon.

Experiencing and Coping with Waithood

Liggey, which means “work” in Wolof, 10 is one of the most notable virtues in many African cultures. Liggey is celebrated as an important marker of adult7 8 9

10

See Grossman’s article in Time magazine, 16 January 2005, and also Tyre’s article in Newsweek of 25 March 2002. Freeter ( furītā) is a Japanese expression for people between the ages of 15 and 34 who lack full-time employment or are unemployed. In October 2007, Tommaso Padoa-Schioppa, then Minister of Economy and Finance, spoke to a parliamentary committee about the government’s plan for tax relief (approximately €500/year) to people 20–30 years old, especially males, who were still living with their family, saying it would help them move out on their own. He used the ironic or sarcastic term bamboccioni. Many Italians found the term offensive because in their opinion the problem is not the youth themselves but rather the system. A substantial number of young Italians live on approximately €1,000 per month and cannot afford to leave their parents’ house. Wolof is a West African language spoken in Senegal, The Gambia and Mauritania.

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hood because the ability to work and provide defines a person’s self-worth and position in the family. This idea prevails in all four countries I studied. Yet, the majority of young men and women are unable to find work and attain a socially valued status as independent and responsible men and women, as well as the sense of dignity embedded in the notion of liggey. Joel, a 28-year-old Mozambican man, explained that “[a]t the age of eighteen our fathers would go to South Africa as labour migrants to work in the mines . . . [and] come home with enough money to pay lobolo [bride wealth] for a girl. They would then go back for another contract and return with more money to build a house and pay for the wedding and other family expenses.” Becoming a labour migrant was a rite of passage into adulthood, as work in the mines provided the resources the young men from southern Mozambique needed to become workers, husbands, fathers and providers for their families, as well as taxpayers and contributors to the wider society. Today, African societies no longer endow young men and women with the social, economic, cultural and moral resources they need to follow robust pathways to adulthood. African societies are struggling with economic decline, strained educational systems, high unemployment rates and insecure livelihoods, all of which seriously weaken the social fabric. So extreme is the situation—particularly with the current global economic crisis—that most governments are unable to provide their citizens with basic social and economic resources. The decline of opportunities in rural areas has led young men and women to migrate to the cities, where their chances of finding employment remain very slim. Young people are increasingly forced to survive in an oversaturated informal economy or as informal labour in the formal sector (Chen 2006). Bad governance, corruption, nepotism and political repression often compound the already dire economic situation. Young men and women experience waithood in very different ways. For men, waithood entails facing the pressures of finding a steady job; securing the resources to purchase, build or rent a home; and covering the costs of marriage and family formation. Although women are increasingly being educated and have always engaged in productive labour alongside household chores, marriage and motherhood are still the most important markers of adulthood. Yet their ability to attain this adult social status often depends on men’s moving beyond waithood (Calvès et al. 2007; Singerman 2007). Waithood involves a long process of negotiating personal identity and financial independence in circumstances of deep socio-economic crisis. Narratives from various young women and men I met during my fieldwork point to the impact of structural conditions on their lives and highlight their inescapable socio-economic vulnerability. From having to resort to improvised forms of

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livelihood in the informal economy to involvement in illegal and sometimes criminal endeavours, young people in waithood struggle to make a living. Young Mozambicans used the Portuguese term desenrascar a vida (eke out a living); young Senegalese and Tunisians employed the French term débrouillage (making do); and young South Africans spoke about “just getting by”. All these expressions vividly convey the extemporaneous nature of their lives. The notions of desenrascar a vida and débrouillage situate the waithood experience in the realm of ad-lib, or “making it up as you go along”. Vigh (2009) found a similar notion—dubriagem—among young people in Guinea Bissau. Dubriagem—like desenrascar a vida, débrouillage and “getting by”—elucidates simultaneously a way of examining possibilities and of actualizing those possibilities in praxis (ibid. 150). In this sense, desenrascar a vida implies a conscious effort on the part of young people to assess the challenges and possibilities of their position and to plot scenarios by which they might achieve their goals. Theoretically, these notions can be understood through LéviStrauss’s (1962/1966) concept of bricollage; he sees the bricoleur as someone who undertakes odd jobs and is a Jack-of-all-trades, taking advantage of situations presented to her/him. Similarly, Michel de Certeau (1984) sees these kinds of practices as tactical actions to respond to immediate needs as opposed to strategic ones aimed at long-term goals. As de Certeau asserts, tactics are the only weapons available to the poor and the dispossessed. Young people in waithood are pushed out of the system and forced to survive on the margins of society. Rejected by the state and the formal sector of the economy, they create new spaces and mechanisms for survival and operate in subcultures outside hegemonic structures. They live in a state of ‘want’, of desire for basic socioeconomic freedoms; and every day is a struggle to attain freedom from want. The young people I interviewed recognize the external factors that limit their actions and their ability to thrive and succeed. Education systems have been unable to provide young people with the skills they need to compete in, or even enter, the labour market. There is a mismatch between the education system and the needs of the labour market. But at the heart of the problem is the unavailability of jobs. Rates of youth unemployment and under-employment in the continent are extremely high. In Tunisia, for example, unemployment rates are higher among university graduates (Honwana forthcoming 2013). Notwithstanding, young people are not just sitting and waiting for their elders or the government to do something for them. Instead, they are using their creativity to find solutions for everyday-life challenges. They are creating innovative spaces for action—or “youthscapes” (Maira & Soep 2005)—with their own modus vivendi and modus operandi. Within these “youthscapes”, they try to subvert authority, bypass the encumbrances created by the formal

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system and fashion new ways of functioning and manoeuvring on their own. These youth spaces foster opportunities and possibilities for desenrascar a vida, débrouillage and “getting by” through improvisation. In this sense, waithood should not be understood as failed transition, a form of deviance or a pathology from which young people suffer (Jones 2009). Waithood, with all its challenges, constitutes also a period of experimentation, improvisation and great creativity as young Africans adopt a range of survival strategies to cope with the daily challenges in their lives. They identify, explore and try to maximize whatever opportunities arise in a constant effort to improve their situation. Their responses to their predicament vary considerably and are linked to their particular structural positions, which affect the resources they can leverage in efforts to lift themselves out of the unstable situations they inhabit. By improvising diverse income-generating activities, some young people manage to sustain themselves and even improve their living conditions, while others continue to flounder as they pursue one biscato (odd job) after another and/or resort to criminal activities. Formal institutions and authorities often view their ways of operating as distasteful, dangerous and criminal. It is not surprising that their relationship with the state and the formal sector is marked by tension and mutual distrust. The state enforces laws that delimit and control the spaces of legitimate activity and mark them as outsiders. Police and municipal officers harass and chase vendors off the streets. Employers often refuse to sign contracts, making many young people informal workers in the formal sector, subjected to their superiors’ whims and in permanent fear of instant dismissal. People in society often fear and recoil from the young men and women making a living in garbage dumps, condemn the behaviour of chapa11 drivers and pushy street vendors, reproach the smugglers and illegal immigrants (Honwana 2012). Amidst this marginalization, and in many cases repression, young people in waithood are—sometimes—able to develop a sense of shared identity and group consciousness that leads them to challenge the establishment and fight for their rights.

Waithood, Citizenship and Social Change

Young people I interviewed showed strong awareness of the broader socioeconomic and political environments that affect their lives. They are acutely 11

Popular name given to privately owned minibuses used for public transportation in Maputo.

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conscious of their marginal structural position, and they despise and rebel against the abuse and corruption that they observe as the elites in power get richer and they become poorer (Honwana 2012). These youths are not a ‘lost generation’ nor are they completely apathetic about what is going on in their societies (Diouf 2003). Young people in Mozambique, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia feel deeply disconnected from those who control power and national politics. They are critical of unsound economic policies that focus on growth but do not enlarge the productive base by creating more jobs. They also condemn bad governance and widespread corruption practices that hinder their ability to progress in life and free themselves from a state of want. Young people are dismayed by the growing lack of fairness and equity in the distribution of resources. And they are coming out into the streets to express their anger and discontent, and are challenging government authorities and political parties to pay attention to their socio-economic needs (Honwana 2012). In September 2010, I was in Maputo when thousands of Mozambican youths staged riots against the government to protest against the rise in prices of basic staples such as bread, water and fuel. Angry youths blocked the streets of the capital, burned tires and confronted the police who tried to disperse the crowds. The police used batons and tear gas and fired bullets at the young protesters, causing numerous injuries and more than ten deaths. In June 2011, shortly after I visited Senegal, hundreds of young people, rallying alongside the Y’en a Marre! (Enough is enough!) movement12 clashed with police. They were denouncing 85-year-old president Abdoulaye Wade’s attempt to change the constitution to enable him to win a third term and create the post of vicepresident, supposedly for his son. Thousands of protesters gathered outside the National Assembly, where lawmakers were debating the proposed constitutional amendment, protesting government corruption, high unemployment and other social ills. Clouds of tear gas enveloped the square as police fought the demonstrators with tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannons. The demonstrations quickly spread from central Dakar into the suburbs and three major towns in the interior (Honwana 2012). In North Africa, a 29-day youth uprising in Tunisia led to the ouster of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali on 14 January 2011. The uprising was triggered by the death of a young man: the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old unemployed street vendor. Bouazizi’s death symbolized the despair of an entire generation of young men and women grappling with 12 The Y’en a Marre movement was created in 2011 by a group of young Senegalese hip-hop artists along with some students and journalists to protest against economic hardship and massive unemployment and to demand that their voices be heard.

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unemployment and bleak future prospects. Thousands of youths came out into the streets and cyberspace to demand jobs, better living conditions and respect for their dignity. The brutal and disproportionate use of force by the authorities radicalized the protests. Youths chanting “Ben Ali Degagé! ” (Ben Ali Go!) demanded the president’s departure (Honwana forthcoming 2013). The Tunisian revolution quickly spread across the Arab world and a few weeks later young Egyptians took control of Tahrir (Liberation) Square for days of protests that toppled the 40-year reign of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011. Conflicts between youth and the state also erupted in Bahrain, Yemen and Syria. The youth-led armed rebellion in Libya that began in February overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and culminated in his death in October 2011. Like Africa and the Middle East, the rest of the world has recently experienced a wave of youth uprisings. In Portugal, in March 2011, more than 30,000 young people filled the streets to vent their frustrations about unemployment and the absence of career prospects. In May 2011, young people in Spain who call themselves the indignados (indignant) protested against soaring unemployment rates. The demonstrations in Spain have been more explicitly political than the riots that occurred in the UK in August 2011, in which mainly underprivileged British youths staged riots and looted stores in reaction to the shooting of a young man of colour by the police.13 In Chile, an estimated 100,000 young people took to the streets of the capital to demand a free, quality public education in August 2011. And in the US, many young Americans struggling to find work and pay for their college education joined the Occupy Wall Street movement to protest against corporate greed and corporations’ undue influence over government. These events illustrate the ways in which young people are rising up against unemployment, socio-economic marginalization, unsound economic policies, corrupt governments and political exclusion. These are cries for freedom by a generation yearning to make a place for itself in the world. In the cities of Mozambique, Senegal, Tunisia, South Africa, Portugal, Spain, the UK, Chile and the US, frustrated young people strive to get a good education, find decent jobs, attain adult status, partake in the fruits of modernity and have a say in their 13

During the UK riots, the looting of fancy stores—Nike sneakers, Hugo Boss clothing, television sets, Apple mobile phones, computers and iPods—can be seen as an expression of exclusion. These are all desirable symbols of a consumer culture from which many young people, especially the unemployed and disadvantaged, feel excluded. As Ken Livingstone, former mayor of London, observed, this is the first generation of British youth who expect to be worse off than their parents. British youths (white, black and Asian) from poor neighbourhoods feel they have no stake in society, and so they are prepared to do anything because they have nothing to lose.

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future. The assumption that the state will uphold the social contract with its citizenry and put in place effective institutions and welfare systems is beginning to erode, and young people are losing fear and taking their destinies into their own hands. There is no doubt that young people are a critical indicator of the state of a nation, of its politics, economy and social and cultural life. Although national and regional contexts differ and grievances are diverse, young people’s anger derives from deepening social inequalities; they are affected by the same ills created by globalization and failed neo-liberal policies that broke the social contract. As globalized communications raise their expectations, local conditions and public policies push those aspirations out of reach. These developments suggest a broader crisis in the pursuit of freedom from want and a growing drive to achieve freedom from fear on the part of youths experiencing waithood. Conclusion This paper argued that the majority of young Africans are in waithood; because of its pervasiveness and prolonged duration, waithood is becoming a more permanent state and, arguably, gradually replacing conventional adulthood. It also emphasized that waithood is not about geography but essentially about lack of equity and freedom from want. While the specific reasons for delayed adulthood differ from one context to another, this phenomenon is not just African but affects an increasingly large number of youths across the globe. Waithood is creative; young people have not resigned themselves to the hardships of their situation but are using their agency and creativity to fashion new “youthscapes” (Maira & Soep 2005) or sub-cultures with alternative forms of livelihood and social relationships in the margins of mainstream society. Through improvised and precarious strategies for desenrascar a vida, débrouillage and ‘getting by’, young people in waithood use their energies to try and overcome their state of ‘want’ and lead decent and dignified lives. While a few may succeed, the vast majority remain in this twilight zone for most of their lives. Last but not least, waithood is transformative. Young people’s struggle to attain freedom from want often allows them to achieve freedom from fear. From more or less spontaneous street riots and protests in Mozambique, Senegal, Spain, Chile, Greece, the UK and the US to the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya, this generation in waithood appears to be losing fear and openly defying dictatorships, autocratic governments and political repression.

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These current youth social movements are still unfolding and it is anyone’s guess where they will lead. But there is no doubt that this generation is fighting for freedom from want and freedom from fear and is taking it upon itself to redress the wrongs of contemporary society. References Abdullah, I. (1998), Bush path to destruction: The origin and character of the Revolutionary United Front/Sierra Leone. Journal of Modern African Studies 36(2): 203–234. African Union (2006), Youth charter. Addis-Ababa: African Union. Apter, T. (2001), Myth of maturity: What teenagers need from parents to become adults. New York: W.W. Norton. Arnett, J. (2004), Emerging adulthood: The winding road from the late teens through the twenties. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Calvès, A-E., J-F. Kobiane & E. Martel (2007), Changing transitions to adulthood in urban Burkina Faso. Journal of Comparative Family Studies 38(2): 265–283. Chen, M. (2006), Rethinking the informal economy: Linkages with the formal economy and the formal regulatory environment. In: B. Guha-Khasnobis, R. Kanbur & E. Ostrom, eds, Linking the formal and informal economy: Concepts and policies. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 75–92. de Certeau, M. (1984), The practice of everyday life. Berkeley: University of California Press. Dhillon, N. & T. Yousef, eds (2009), Generation in waiting: The unfulfilled promise of young people in the Middle East. Washington DC: Brookings Institution Press. Diouf, M. (2003), Engaging postcolonial cultures: African youth and public space. African Studies Review 46(2): 1–12. Grossman, L. (2005), Grow up? Not so fast. Time Magazine, 16 January 2005. Honwana, A. (forthcoming 2013), Youth and revolution in Tunisia. London: Zed Books. ——— (2012), The time of youth: Work, social change and politics in Africa. Washington DC: Kumarian Press. Honwana, A. & F. de Boeck, eds (2005), Makers and breakers: Children and youth in postcolonial Africa. Oxford: James Currey; Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press; Dakar: Codesria. Jones, G. (2009), Youth. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kosugi, K. (2006), Changes in transitions from school to work: Employment behavior and transitions of youth in metropolitan areas. Japan Institute for Labour Policy and Training (JILPT), Research Report, no. 72.

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Lévi-Strauss, C. (1966), The savage mind (La pensée sauvage, 1962). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Maira, S. & E. Soep, eds (2005), Youthscapes: The popular, the national, the global. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Manji, F. (1998), The depoliticization of poverty. In: D. Eade, ed., Development and rights. Oxford: Oxfam, pp. 12–33. ——— (2011), African awakenings: The courage to invent the future. In: Firoze Manji & Sokari Ekine, eds, African awakenings: The emerging revolutions. Oxford: Pambazuka Press, pp. 1–18. Miyamoto, M. (2004), Shakaiteki haijo to jyakunen mugyo: Igirisu to Sue den no taio (Social exclusion and youth non-employment: The responses of the UK and Sweden). Nihon Ro do Kenkyu Zasshi 533: 17–26. Molgat, M. (2007), Do transitions and social structures matter? How “emerging adults” define themselves as adults. Journal of Youth Studies 10(5): 495–516. Sen, A. (1999), Development as freedom. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Singerman, D. (2007), The economic imperatives of marriage: Emerging practices and identities among youth in the Middle East. Washington DC and Dubai: Wolfensohn Centre for Development and Dubai School of Government, Working Paper 6. Sommers, M. (2012), Stuck: Rwandan youth and the struggle for adulthood. Atlanta: University of Georgia Press. Tyre, P. (2002), Bringing up adultolescents. Newsweek, 25 March 2002. United Nations (2007), World youth report 2007: Young people’s transition to adulthood: Progress and challenges. New York: United Nations. Vigh, H. (2009), Youth mobilization as social navigation: Reflections on the concept of dubriagem. Cadernos de Estudos Africanos 18/19: 140–164, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE). World Bank (2007), World development report: Development and the next generation. Washington DC: World Bank.

CHAPTER 3

Beyond Survival: Militarism, Equity and Women’s Security Amina Mama1 Abstract This paper explores the tension between the prospects for equitable development and the global investments in militarism. It argues that militarism—a highly gendered economic, political and cultural phenomenon—not only sustains under-development in poorer nations, but also poses a key obstacle to gender equity in militarized societies more generally. Evidence from current research on the Liberian and Sierra Leonean civil wars illustrates women’s increased participation in more recent conflicts, their improvised livelihood strategies and their contribution to peace activism. In the era of neoliberal globalization, postcolonial militarism continues to undermine the prospects for democratization, social justice and genuine security, especially for women. An effective strategy for addressing the dual perils of militarism and gender inequality requires strengthening the work of women’s movements, to engage in more effective evidence-based advocacy that highlights and challenges the gendered political, economic and cultural foundations of militarism and insecurity.

Introduction

• 231 million deaths were caused by war in the twentieth century. (Leitenburg 2003) • In the 1990s decade alone, about 3.6 million people died in wars within

states, while the number of refugees and internally displaced persons increased by 50%. (UNDP 2002: 2) In 2011, the world spent 1,738 billion US$ on weapons. (SIPRI 2011) World military expenditure in one year is greater than would be required to fulfil the Millennium Development Goals in 11 years. If 10% of world military

• •

1 Second holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2003–2004.

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expenditure, or 20% of US military expenditure, were diverted yearly, the MDGs could be fully funded. (ECAAR 2003)

Over the last decade, enormous investments of human and financial resources in military expansion have taken place in the context of the sustained economic liberalization popularly referred to as neo-liberalism (SIPRI 2007). Yet, there appears to be a low level of public awareness regarding the costs of this global military expenditure. The military as an institution undoubtedly profits some very influential actors, but it also carries enormous material, human and environmental costs. The military are the world’s largest source of carbon emissions, so posing one of the most ignored threats to planetary ­sustainability.2 The redirection of even a modest proportion of the vast resources allocated to weapons of mass destruction alone would provide enough finance to fully attain the Millennium Development Goals.3 Why do we, the people who inhabit the planet, not act more intelligently to change this starkly destructive reality, either individually nor collectively? Part of the reason may lie in the fact that the general public remains largely unaware of these massive costs.4 Much military expenditure is veiled from public scrutiny by the secrecy that surrounds the security establishment, so that even the large sums that are made public do not reveal the full picture. Security spending and decision-making is largely defined beyond the exercise of public scrutiny and accountability within nations. At the global level, military costs are exempt from the regulation of international trade organizations like the WTO.5 Yet both the investments and the costs are huge and the outcomes affect everybody, not just the military. 2 The largest producer of carbon emissions in the world is the US. According to local critics, the US military account for 80% of the US government’s carbon emissions. See http:// www.greenbiz.com/news/2010/04/23/us-military-battles-massive-carbon-footprint [accessed 28 August 2012]. 3 Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (ECAAR) 2003 (name subsequently changed to EPS: Econo­mists for Peace and Security). 4 See the work of Catherine Lutz and her colleagues at Brown University, available at: www .costsofwar.com 5 How the arms’ trade benefits from economic globalization: “[A]rms corporations derive a double benefit from the WTO system: not only do they profit from the elimination of environmental, health, and labor standards generated by the WTO process, but their own activities in the military sphere—including massive research and export subsidies from their home governments—are EXEMPT from challenge under WTO rules.” See Stephen Staples et al., The WTO and the Globalization of the Arms Industry (World Policy Institute, December 1999).

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More people-centred approaches to governance are likely to be more attentive to the human costs of increasing global inequities (between rich and poor nations) and thus to the threat that this entrenched spending pattern poses to democratic and people-centred development, as well as to the developmental inequities that are part and parcel of the global norms of excessive and competitive investment in the military. This is the case even in the poorest and least defendable territories that face no imminent threat of invasion. I will discuss the manner in which public acceptance of militarism and war is mediated by highly specific militarist definitions of ‘national security’ and ‘national interest’. Understand­ings of ‘security’ are strongly mediated by gender, class and other more context-specific differences, which become augmented into more antagonistic relations. These “horizontal inequalities” (Stewart 2000) then play out in violent ways inflected by religion, clan, ethnicity, sexual politics and so on. Frances Stewart (ibid.) discusses the role of both vertical and horizontal inequalities as both cause and effect of conflict, or in other words, inequalities and conflict exist in a recursive (mutually constitutive) relationship. She addresses class, through the developmentalist rubric of poverty, as well as religion and ethnicity. Curiously, she makes no mention of gender inequities, despite the centrality of gender as a key dimension of social organization featuring both vertical and horizontal inequalities, also greatly exaggerated by militarization (Enloe 2000, 2007) and military rule (Mama 1995). Including gender would of course complicate her schematic discussion of group and inter-group relations, because the production of all the other group identities that reflect inequalities—be these national, ethnic, class, caste or religion based—is invariably mediated by normative, discursive constructions of gender and sexuality. Feminist literature places an emphasis on the gendered features of militarism and conflict, to demystify the conservatism of militarist gender politics and draw attention to the co-constitutive relationship between gender (masculinity, femininity and heteronormativity) and militarism. Instead of being presented as gender-neutral, military ideologies, institutions and practices are conceptualized as androcentric, relying on and re-inscribing patriarchal idealizations of masculinity that valorize aggression, killing and the latest high-technology weaponry. This ranges from benevolently paternalistic notions of men-as-protectors to more problematic constructions of men’s physical and sexual prowess in relation to their own and other women. There is a rapidly growing body of work that draws links between conflict, gender and development, some of which will be drawn on below. Economic liberalization may also be part of the problem. While we can agree that it has produced varied results globally, it is clear that it has favoured the wealthy within nations and across regions, enriching the already rich and

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worsening the lot of those already poor. Stewart (2000) confirms the connection between extreme poverty and conflict, to argue quite clearly that this is a reciprocal relationship: poor nations are more prone to conflict and conflict exacerbates poverty, exactly as feminist scholars have noted in relation to gender and militarized masculinity (Enloe 2000, 2007; Gallimore 2009). Globalization as it has been pursued so far—largely dominated by the promotion of free-market capitalism—has generated an inordinate emphasis on narrowly defined measures of economic growth that obscure the human (and social) aspects of development (UNDP, Human Development Reports, 1995– 2011). It has also been clear since Boserup (1970) that economic growth (as measured by increase in gross domestic product, for example) does not translate into greater gender equity, but relies on the devaluation of women’s labour within and beyond the household. So it is that some of the world’s wealthiest and most militarized economies do very poorly on the gender and development index. Macro-economic growth also does not in any case necessarily lead to the reduction of violence and conflict, and can sometimes lead to conflict, particularly in resource-rich zones. On the other hand, increases in military expenditure generally bear a relationship to social expenditure (SIPRI 2007) and are thus associated with increased inequalities, particularly gender inequities. The well-documented human costs of globalization as it has so far been pursued—through public sector divestment and private sector subsidization— are increased inequities globally and locally, as well as the particular burdening of women through their gendered roles as carers. The care economy is devalued by the focus on macro-economic growth, in ways that reflect male bias among the most influential development players, public and private. Because gender intersects negatively with class, poor women are especially badly off (UNDP 2012). These negative effects of growth-driven modes of globalization on the prospects for gender-equitable development have been the subject of much critique since the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s,6 drawing our attention to the manner in which growth-centred approaches to development exacerbate longstanding historical legacies of inequality that are mediated by gender, class, ethnicity, religion and national interests.7 6 Sen & Grown (1988), Elson (1995), Beneria (2003). 7 The United Nations Research Institute for Development (UNRISD 2005) extensively reviews global progress with regard to gender equity in development, pointing to the contradictions of a post-Beijing Decade, in which growth has had disparate effects regarding gender equity. For example, the gender gap in employment levels has decreased, only for gender disparities in pay and working conditions to increase. In other words, more women work than ever before, but the terms under which they labour have remained far from equal.

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The divestment of the public sector has significantly curtailed the capacity of governments to deliver on gender equity and other social justice concerns. The popular critiques emerging very clearly from the anti-globalization and the Occupy movements give much emphasis to the fact that today’s most powerful players—the international financial institutions and corporate interests that dominate the global economy—are neither democratic nor accountable to the public. This then is the global context in which I argue that militarism poses a key threat to equity, development and freedom. The term militarism includes military institutions and expenditures but in addition describes the related sociocultural, ideological and material changes that are wrought in societies that can be said to be undergoing militarization. The conceptualization of militarism applied here extends beyond the conventional focus on the security sector, security institutions and weaponry, to include changes in all aspects of social organization and subjectivity, including gender relations.8 The fact is that global military expenditure has escalated dramatically since the new century dawned, reaching the highest levels in human history. The most recent global total is 1,738 billion US$, led by a US that leads the way, being responsible for almost 50% of total global expenditure.9 These figures are all the more shocking because of the gendered inverse relationship between military and social spending. The divestment of health, education and social welfare directly burden women in two immediate ways. Through their gender roles and the gendered divisions of labour, women are impacted both as the major consumers of public services and as women workers who rely on the same sector for their jobs as teachers, nurses, hospital staff, social workers and so on. In other words, high military spending may well add specifically to women’s insecurity as well as human insecurity in general. I will develop this argument with reference to the African region. Africa has been the region worst affected by militarization, with more than 20 major civil wars since 1960, characterized by huge numbers of civilian casualties, not to mention unrecorded deaths due to related ecological destruction (e.g. of farmlands, fishing grounds, etc.), infrastructural damage (roads, railways, bridges, etc.) and disruption of public institutions and services (government offices, health and social welfare services), as well as dislocation and disruption of livelihoods—the list is endless. Yet, in 2011, when the post-9/11 8 This usage draws on the work of Catherine Lutz (2002, 2009), Cynthia Enloe (2000, 2007) and others working on the militarism in the US and globally. 9 For details, see Appendix 3.1. In fact, the most recent data shows the first flattening of this global escalation since 1998, largely due to a very modest decrease in US spending as the Obama admini­stration draws down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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global escalation slowed, Africa’s military expenditure in Africa was the largest of any region (see Appendix 3.1). Over the decade 2002–2011, African military spending increased by 65%. It would be hard to refute the link to social development, when Africa is also failing to attain the modest targets set by the Millennium Development Goals, and mass abjection remains a dominant feature of life for ordinary people. African leaders who have reason to fear for their own security still address many social problems arising out of mass abjection with military action, working increasingly under the leadership of the US High Command for Africa (AFRICOM) and in complicity with the free-market traffic in weapons. Military action can also be identified as a cause of new outbreaks of conflict,10 and the prospects for durable regional peace are poor given the fact that conflict is the biggest predictor of future conflicts.11

Militarism under-develops Africa The real security need for Africans is not military security but social security, security against poverty, ignorance, anxiety and fear, disease and famine, against arbitrary power and exploitation; security against those things which render democracy improbable in Africa. (Ake 2000: 147)

Africa today remains deeply marked by the history of colonization, a project that relied directly and indirectly on the military superiority of the colonizers. Colonial rule was in its essence military rule. The military might of imperial and colonial armies was buttressed by a far-reaching array of technologies of power. These ranged from brutal forced labour and taxation systems to sophisticated psychological and cultural strategies, including abduction, eviction and land seizure, hostage taking, incarceration, rape and torture, to which women and men were variously subjected. These strategies worked together to create complex tapestries of consent and coercion, terrorizing local populations and orchestrating complicity and provoking anti-colonial resistance. The examples of Algeria during French colonialism (Lazreg 2009), British colonialism in Kenya (Elkins 2004), the Belgian occupation of the Congo (Hochschild 1999) and Rwanda (Mamdani 2001) illustrate how colonial regimes relied on

10 11

For instance, the Nigerian military’s massacres of civilians in its responses to the elusive Boko Haram are largely credited with the escalation of violence across northern Nigeria. Stewart (2000).

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military force and modern weaponry—deployed along with a formidable array of political, economic and social technologies12—to militarize the societies they conquered and governed. These extended far beyond the barracks, into the very fabric of peoples’ lives. The armies established in the colonies differed profoundly from the conventional modern armies of Western nations because their major role was not so much the protection of the nation from invasion as the suppression of anticolonial dissent and rebellions arising among the subjugated peoples inhabiting the colonial territories (e.g. Gutteridge 1975; Decalo 1990; Echenberg 1991). Colonial soldiers were also used to fight their colonizers’ battles, not only on European soil but all over the empire during the First and Second World Wars, with some being sent as far afield as Burma. Finally, at root, imperial and colonial armies were deployed to secure the natural and human resources necessary for Western capital accumulation, with minimal regard for the societies that were being so profoundly affected by militarism. Twentieth-century feminist Virginia Woolf (1938) is among the many Westerners who draw links between war and the male domination of political and economic arenas. Woolf may not have been fully aware of it, but she wrote at a time when African women were losing sons, fathers and husbands conscripted and recruited into colonial armies, dispatched around the world to fight for their European masters. The records show that over 175,000 French West African conscripts fought in the First World War, of whom at least 30,000 died in the trenches. In the Second World War too there were huge numbers of French West African conscripts, with as many as 20,000 participating in the Allied landing of 1944 alone (Echenberg 1991). The British also utilized large numbers of Africans, as the living memories in many communities confirm. Less well documented is the fact that those who returned did so as militarized men who saw Africa’s future in ways that reflected their training in all-male colonial armies, as did their own aspirations for dignity and power. The use of military force to pursue economic objectives has also provoked dissent among Western leaders and military personnel. We can find an early critic in General 12

The term derives from Foucault’s concept ‘technologies of power’, used to conceptualize production of ‘the self’ and ‘the market’ as developed by social theorist Nikolas Rose (1999) and cultural theorist Theresa de Lauretis (1987). Rose refers to the array of techniques for regulating the social sphere, particularly in relation to production of ‘the self’ and ‘the market’. Technologies of power are those “technologies imbued with aspirations for the shaping of conduct in the hope of producing certain desired effects and averting certain undesired ones” (Rose 1999: 52).

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Smedley Butler in the 1930s13 or President Eisenhower’s warning (1961) about the corrupting dangers of militarized politics he foresaw in the rise of the US military-industrial complex. After the Second World War, much of Africa gained independence during the 1950s–1960s, years that overlap with the Cold War era. Africa was caught up in the politics of East versus West. A series of ‘proxy wars’ were sponsored as the powers competed for influence and provided massive military assistance driven by their strategic interests (Schroeder & Lamb 2006). Throughout the 1990s, in one estimate, the US sold over 1.5 billion US$ worth of weaponry to Africa, with many of the top buyers—Liberia, Somalia, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)—governed by despots responsible for significant human and women’s rights abuses. The US provided military assistance to 94% of Africa’s already indebted nations, and in order to ensure that the huge debt incurred in this way would be repaid, it was accompanied by another 87 million US$ in loans during the first five years, thus compounding the enormous debt burdens rooted in the colonial history of nations that remain as poor as ever. It is ironic that Western governments that think of themselves as defenders of democracy continue to provide military support to dictatorial regimes. In the case of the DRC, for example, the US government supplied arms and provided training to both sides in the conflict, thereby prolonging it (Hartung & Moix 2000). Yet coltan exports continue apace, ensuring the profits of high-technology corporations that dominate the computer and mobile phone industries.14 This evidence confirms the argument that external powers have continued to pursue their own vested interests through military means in the postcolonial era. It may be true that the manner in which this is done has changed since the end of colonial rule, but the fact is that Western nations have resourced and therefore sustained militarism in postcolonial Africa, thus retarding progress to democracy and undermining development (Hutchful & Bathily 1998; Ake 2000). Much of the African continent therefore emerged from colonial rule to be governed by regimes already imbued with a patriarchal militarist logic that is authoritarian and anti-democratic, and clearly inimical to considerations of gender equity. Indeed, by the mid-1970s, more than half of Africa’s newly independent nations were under military rule. 13

14

A highly decorated General Smedley Butler wrote a famous treatise entitled War is a Racket in the 1930s. It begins “[War] is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.” Available at http://www.ratical .org/ratville/CAH/warisaracket.html [accessed 1 September 2012]. Coltan is an extremely rare mineral, indispensible for the manufacture of silicon chips.

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The African experience of conflict and military rule provides good grounds for arguing that in Africa, militarism has generated more insecurity than security, often terrorizing rather than protecting local populations, dominating the political sphere, blurring the boundaries between civilian and military and thereby undermining all non-military forms of political and institutional authority and accountability (Hutchful & Bathily 1998). Gender analysis points to military rule as an extreme variant of patriarchy, a regime characterized by discourses and practices that subordinate and oppress women and less powerful men, reinforcing existing social divisions and hierarchies of class, gender, race and ethnicity, religion and location. Catherine Lutz (2002: 5) characterizes militarism as “[t]he contradictory and tense social process in which civil society organizes itself for the production of violence”. She continues: This process involves an intensification of the labor and resources allocated to military purposes, including the shaping of other institutions in synchrony with military goals. Militarization is simulta­neously a discursive process, involving a shift in general societal beliefs and values in ways necessary to legitimate the use of force, the organization of large standing armies and their leaders, and the higher taxes or tribute used to pay for them. She further notes socially divisive effects that include the impact on gender relations and sexuality: Militarization is intimately connected to the less visible deformation of human potentials into the hierarchies of race, class, gender, and sexuality, and to the shaping of national histories in ways that glorify and legitimate military action. (ibid.) Many others15 single out the particular dynamic through which men adopt particularly violent hyper-masculine identities and behaviours. To understand the hegemonic power of militarism requires us to go beyond the obvious material aspects of the craft—weaponry, armed forces and security institutions—to critically engage with its more enduring cultural, ideological, political and economic aspects. It is these that cast light on the pervasiveness of militarism, 15

The work of Cynthia Cockburn (UK; 2007), Cynthia Enloe (USA; 2000, 2007), Jacky Cock (South Africa; 1992) and Dubravka Zarkov (Croatia, at ISS; 2001, 2008) is illustrative of the growing body of international feminist studies of militarism.

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even in nations that have never been invaded. Philosopher Iris Young (2003) describes the escalation of US militarism as being fuelled by a “masculine logic of protection” that relies on a gendered politics of fear. Women and men experience war and conflict very differently. Men are mobilized by the opportunities to glorify themselves as men, through heroism, and by the valorization of violence and killing. Men—particularly from poorer social strata—may join up to earn a living. Others may be drawn by the promise of rapid wealth accumulation, and various other forms of adventure less enjoyed by women. Indeed, the conditions that have seen much larger involvement of women as fighters suggest quite different rationales, as I will explore in the cases discussed below. Detailed studies of post-conflict, post-military-rule nations suggest that part of the answer lies in the fact that these nations continue to exhibit the political, cultural and economic features of militarism, alongside the detrimental effects that these have had on both the economic options and the political prospects for women (Meintjes et al. 2001). Recent evidence suggests that postconflict reconstruction often re-marginalizes women within contemporary, security-based policy discourses and practices focusing on demobilization, disarmament and reconstruction (DDR) and on security sector reform (SSR) (Pugel 2007; Fuest 2008). The fact is that male-dominated security institutions and military forces continue to dominate the post-conflict policy landscape, with clear implications for women’s prospects. In addition to national armies and various rebel forces, the West African region has seen the involvement of the Economic Community of West Africa’s Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) forces, the UN peacekeeping forces and a plethora of foreign military advisors. This raises some serious doubts as to whether conventional security-centred strategies actually lead to demilitarization and/or a return to the pursuit of development understood in terms that go beyond the cessation of hostilities and narrow, militarist definitions of national security. There is now evidence that, for all the good that they may do in vanquishing local military forces involved in conflicts, the soldiers deployed to quell unrest and secure conflict areas also become participants in the war economy and in the distorted social practices that have arisen and become normalized. So, for example, UN troops are also implicated in abusing and exploiting girls and women in ways that resemble the actions of the forces they are mandated to control (Highgate & Henry 2004; Defeis 2008). Local research indicates that DDR and SSR are not in fact yielding the much-anticipated post-conflict ‘peace dividends’ for women (MARWOPNET/Isis-WICCE 2009). Despite such concerns, peace-building operations have sustained militarism in the name of ‘national security’, by replacing the temporarily deployed foreign forces with

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newly trained local military forces, rather than demilitarizing. This is the only aspect of overseas development financing that has not decreased with the global economic crisis of the last few years.

Postcolonial Militarism in Africa

Twenty-first century wars are not like those of the twentieth century. Much twentieth century war took place in the developed world. Today’s wars look more like export products. Most of those fighting, dying and otherwise having their lives disrupted by war now live in the least developed countries of the global South, far from the corporate headquarters profiting from the production and financing of armaments and wars. Contemporary conflicts are less boundaried, with battlefields that include inhabited streets and villages. Militias of various forms have taken to replenishing themselves from civilian communities, a fact which may explain the high recruitment of women and children into fighting forces that would traditionally have been comprised largely of adult men. The pervasive and diffuse character of today’s ‘theatre of war’ is reflected in the dramatic change in the ratio of civilian-to-soldier causalities—from 1:9 at the end of the First World War to 10:1 by the end of the twentieth century (International Committee of the Red Cross, cited in Tavernise & Lehren 2010). Thandika Mkandawire (2009) critically examines in some detail the rebel movements that have been the visible actors in Africa’s postcolonial conflicts, to challenge rational choice dogma, by drawing on the link between economic crisis—exacerbated by reform measures—and the breakdown of impoverished nations into conflict. He also argues that failures in national governance and continued external domination have put extreme pressure on the political sphere by exacerbating the gaps between the nouveau-riche political class and the impoverished majorities, thereby creating a strong sense of relative deprivation. The rebel forces he describes are made up of horizontally dispersed, roving bands that operate at great cost to the communities they pass through, acting more as predators than as the liberators they have sometimes claimed to be. The technologies of violence used to pursue their objectives include attacking, torturing, humiliating and otherwise terrorizing civilian populations. Mkandawire does not address the gender inequities that precede and are sustained through conflict, or the horrific extent of sexual violence and torture of women in particular, though this too is a common feature of wars everywhere, now gaining more attention.

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In today’s globalized economy, the connections between militarism and capitalism have in no way diminished (e.g. Kirk & Okazawa-Rey 2000; Staples 2000; Enloe 2007). Extraction of oil in Nigeria, diamonds in Sierra Leone and rubber in Liberia have fuelled armed conflicts of unspeakable dimensions (see, respectively, Okonta & Douglas 2001; Leavitt 2005; Hirsch 2001).16 There is little doubt that war and conflict continue to be highly profitable for those positioned to take advantage of deadly opportunities for capital investment (e.g. Klein 2007). Peterson (2008) offers a useful conceptualization of war economies. She delineates three main economic modes that specifically characterize war economies: the coping economy, the combat economy and the criminal economy. Applying Peterson’s framework to the cases of Liberia and Sierra Leone (below) allows us to highlight the gendered features of war economies. If, as she suggests, the ‘coping economy’ addresses individual survival and the social reproduction of families and households, then it resembles the peacetime ‘care economy’. However, the notion of ‘care’ extends beyond the Western formulations of ‘women’s work’ as largely within the household, as in Africa it includes women’s farming, food production trading and numerous microeconomic transactions such as bartering among dislocated groups. In this respect, the coping economy looks very much like the peacetime ‘informal economy’ that women in West Africa have always been located in, presumably because of the long-term experience of gendered economic hardship. It is the feminized bottom end of the war economy, as the hard subsistence labour of finding and providing food and caring for and nurturing children, elders and fighting men falls even more heavily on women in any crisis situation. In other words, the pre-existing, peacetime gender divisions of labour initially sustained in the context of mass poverty are merely exacerbated by war. All the same, violence—especially sexual violence—has drastic effects on women’s lives and prospects. Peterson’s ‘combat economy’ coexists with the coping economy, but is somewhat more specific to preparation and execution of war, being run by combatants who directly supply and fund fighters and insurgent activities. This fraternity is locally and transnationally networked, and our evidence suggests that it involves some women at local level, most likely through the informal-sector-provisioning networks, because these also service combatants and criminals operating in conflict zones, even when women are killed and their goods are seized rather than being paid for. Peterson defines the ‘criminal economy’ as opportunistic, run by profit-seeking entrepreneurs who take full advantage of economic deregulation and the collapse of the state to 16 The DRC is another of the worst ongoing cases of ‘resource curse’.

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pursue profitable businesses, in ruthless, free-market bliss. They include gunrunners, conflict entrepreneurs, money launderers and traffickers of people, sex slaves, drugs and consumer goods—in short, all those who finance and supply the conflict on a for-profit basis. This mafia-like aspect is the most profitable, internationalized and also the most male-dominated sector. Peterson’s framework as applied here suggests that de-militarization will require political and economic changes to dismantle the war economy. In other words, building sustainable peace and restoring democratic politics will not be possible unless it is also accompanied by economic transformation to dismantle and displace the war economy that has developed with militarization, and place reconstruction and human security at the centre of economic policy. There is little basis for assuming that leaving matters to market forces will be an adequate strategy given the evidence that neoliberalism has facilitated recent outbreaks of conflict and the emergence of the war economy. The remainder of this paper explores the gendered costs of surviving militarism, with particular attention to the impact of conflict—and the war economy—on the arena that has proved vital to West Africa’s resilience throughout the modern history of the region: women’s work and livelihoods.

The Gendered Costs of Surviving Militarism

Africa’s conflicts have never been addressed by anything as comprehensive as the Marshall Plan, which injected a giant ‘stimulus package’ into the reconstruction of war-devastated Europe. Africa’s worst conflicts have been manifest in contexts in which a viable national economy has never existed, despite the best efforts that followed flag independence. Sierra Leone and Liberia in particular have long histories of elite military rule and mass poverty coupled with elite alienation and dependency on the West. The development of good governance and democracy has been constrained by the same. The global response to these terrible conflicts has been the imposition of constraints on public spending in the name of economic reforms, reforms which deepen inequality and dependency on investors and speculators with limited interests beyond rapid profits. Austerity measures prevent the development of social protections and services. The civilianization of casualties since the end of the Second World War has taken a disproportionate toll on women. This fact alone weakens the very fabric of survival sustained by networks of women that transcend men’s battle lines and borders. The availability of those networks (informally and with minimal support) actually provides the survival services that sustain war-affected communities, as we shall see below. It is clear that if left

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unchallenged, the social and economic criminality that gains ground during conflict persists after peace has been formally declared, with particularly grievous implications for gender relations, sexual politics and the prospects for freedom and justice. The wars in Sierra Leone (1991–2002) and Liberia (1989–2003) were characterized by the significant involvement of women as fighters, on the one hand, and the horrendous victimization and abuse of women, on the other. These two features are related, rather than contradictory, given the testimonies of women fighters who report joining the fighters and learning to kill following their own victimization. The fact that women can and do become as brutal as men challenges the assumption that merely including women in existing security institutions will reduce the widespread abuses of and contempt for women that characterize today’s conflict zones, whether women are given weapons or not. Yet it is this assumption that underlies UN Resolution 1325 (UNSC 2000). The kind of equity that women fighters endured suggests the naivety of any such assumption and defies the evidence—the involvement of women (most of whom are children, for that matter) only worsens the social impact of war— and the prospects for societal rebuilding. Equal participation will not make war and conflict any less damaging to women. The various militias involved in these conflict zones became notorious for their terror tactics—amputations, hangings, burnings and extraordinary levels of sexual violence—used to intimidate rural communities. Rebel bands heavily preyed upon local communities, within and across the borders, as civilians fled from one camp to another trying to escape the violence. Militarized versions of masculinity were played out through sexual violence, coercion and abuse, with enduring damage to women. Gender-based violence has received much attention as an index of gender inequity, but it is also often mediated by ethnic, racial, religious and/or class differences that are acted out by men against other men, but using the bodies of women. Local cultures of tolerance and cooperation become displaced by a militarized culture in which gendered and ethnicized violence against dehumanized ‘others’ is normalized and sustained, even after the formal declarations of peace. Most of the largely rural populations of both Sierra Leone and Liberia became deeply militarized, with spill-over into Côte d’Ivoire and Guinea, both of which have continued to experience political instability and some conflict, including the unprecedented rape of women by the Guinean military in 2010. The basic statistical facts of the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars are shown in Table 3.1. These data can only hint at the devastating effects these two conflicts had on all aspects of society. How were the already fragile livelihood options of ordinary women and men changed by the gendered realities of

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Some statistics on the Sierra Leonean and Liberian wars*

Sierra Leone

•

Liberia

•

By 1999 approximately 2 million people (almost 50% of the 4.5 million population) were already displaced. • 50,000–75,000 Sierra Leoneans were killed. • 250,000 girls and women were raped. • 25–50% of the RUF fighters were women and girls. By 2003 half a million of the 3.3 million population were displaced. • 250,000 Liberian were killed. • 20–40% of fighters in Liberia were women and girls. • Two thirds of Liberian women were subjected to various forms of violence, including random acts of sexual assault, mass rape and other forms of abuse.

* All figures are estimates, culled from Mazurana & Carlson (2004), Pugel (2007), Isis-WICCE (2008).

conflict and what options did they have before, during and after the actual fighting? To what extent did women actually choose to become fighters? What constitutes ‘choice’ in such extreme situations? What are the prospects for sustaining peace and freedom without addressing social injustice and security? How can ‘peace’ even be imagined without addressing the gender dynamics of the long-term insecurities that feed wars? Can ordinary women living in such contexts move beyond mere survival in societies that remain impoverished and precariously located in the global economy? Not all these questions can be answered without substantially more in-depth studies on women’s status and their options. However, drawing on preliminary research, and the existing studies, the discussion below explores how women survived the war and the war economy, with the objective of considering the potential of women and women’s movements in Sierra Leone and Liberia with regard to a more active and effective role in the reconstruction and transformation of their societies towards more socially just and gender-equitable political and livelihood options. Gendered Livelihoods The first and most obvious change is the militarization of livelihood options as the economy becomes skewed toward military priorities, notably fighting and sustaining the national army and the various militias that emerge. However,

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the implications of becoming a fighter are highly gendered and persist long after the fighting has ended. Researchers find that the vast majority of women and girls in all the fighting forces reported ‘abduction’ or ‘forced recruitment’, following raids and destruction of their communities (Coulter 2009). Young men and boys may be coerced into becoming fighters, but the roles they undertake and the social implications of their wartime activities are quite different. Women played multiple roles in the military forces and militias. Many were involved in ceremonies and rituals, serving as spiritual leaders, medics, herbalists, spies and cooks, as well as frontline fighters and commanders. According to Mazurana and Carlson (2004), among the girls, 44% received military and weapons’ training from their commanders or captor ‘husbands’, while many served as cooks (70%), porters (68%), carers for the sick and wounded (62%), ‘wives’ (60%), food-producers (44%), messengers between camps (40%), spies (22%), communication technicians (18%) and workers in diamond mines (14%). These roles were fluid, with many serving in more than one capacity either simultaneously or over time. These various jobs were also hierarchically organized in such a manner that the women who were able to earn the status of fighters improved their chances, because it allowed them to better protect themselves, to have access to food and other benefits and to gain greater opportunities to escape than captives. Within Sierra Leone’s Revolutionary United Front (RUF), child-wives were often left in command of the compounds, where they could exercise substantial authority, deciding who would fight, carry out reconnaissance and raids for food and loot, selecting and sending troops and spies and generally supporting and advising their commander-husbands. They had their own weapons and were often provided with personal bodyguards, usually groups of other girls and boys charged with their security. They commanded the Small Boys Units and Small Girls Units carrying out scouting and food raiding, but also involved in some of the most gruesome killings and mutilations. Surrogate ‘families’ were formed in many of the camps and it was through these that food and favours were distributed. Girls seeking protection from gang rape were reported to have formed liaisons with commanders and boys. However, the vulnerability of even the most powerful of these girls and women persisted, as those who fell from favour were very easily disposed of (Denov & Maclure 2006; Coulter 2009). Surviving among the fighters was only one of the modes of livelihood generated by the conflict, but the multiplicity of women’s roles points to the fact that women participated in both the coping and combat economies, perhaps in greater proportion than may have been predicted. While the involvement of women is considered high relative to conventional wars (but not to national liberation wars that preceded the postcolonial era), most women survived as

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civilians, pursuing activities that may have been familiar such as farming and trading, under the entirely different conditions of war. Given the very high rates of dislocation in both conflicts (more than half of the population), this very often meant being displaced, perhaps several times over, to roam in the bush or live in refugee camps. Many women engaged in trade within and across borders, in keeping with the pre-war livelihoods, but under the more hazardous and unstable conditions of violent conflict. However, given the impact of war on the normal systems of producing and supplying food, this role became far more vital to war-affected communities. In some instances, women extended their activities into terrain abandoned by male traders, not necessarily because they were more willing to face the risks than men, but because others depended on them. In other words, market women filled the economic vacuum left by the severely devastated infrastructure by engaging in high-risk trading. Sierra Leonean women also smuggled goods across the Guinea–Sierra Leone border by collaborating with and bribing border police and customs officials. They traded with various armed forces, an activity that places at least the more successful traders firmly in the combat economy. Their entrepreneurship was based on complicated relationships with sets of cross-border and cross-ethnic business partners that demanded extraordinary strategizing: Market women profiteers were also engaged in a thriving trade with rebels. Foodstuffs and petrol were smuggled from ‘safe’ stores in Freetown to rebel-held areas in the provinces, on board trailers or big trucks, and sold to rebel commanders. In turn, they were either paid in cash (Leones or Dollars) or in kind, including jewellery, gold or diamonds. Back in Freetown, market women either sold their diamonds to Lebanese diamond dealers or smuggled the gems across the border to Guinea where they fetched higher prices enabling them to buy more foodstuffs. (Solomon 2005: 10) It is not possible to ascertain how successfully women participated in the combat economy, or indeed whether significant profits were made, given the low rates paid to locals even for products that might fetch high prices under more stable conditions. Furthermore, many women met their deaths in road accidents or ambushes, and sometimes their own customers would organize for them to be pursued after their business was ostensibly completed. Women in conflict zones also survive by engaging in transactional sexual relations with soldiers and militiamen, commanders, peacekeepers and human­itarian agency staff. While this may be referred to as sex work, the

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conditions under which sexual transactions take place suggest this too to be predominantly a means of survival. If profits were made at all, they cannot be compared to the more serious profiteering that took place in the criminal economy. Sierra Leone also included mining areas that utilized forced labour in the arduous extraction of diamonds that involved some women, although young men and boys were preferred. The war years saw women in both countries taking on many of the roles previously carried out by men, such as making bricks, building and roofing houses and clearing farms, as well as trading. At the bottom of the war hierarchy were women prisoners, kept under horrendous conditions of confinement and multiple raped at the will of their captors, a great many of whom did not survive to tell of their experience. Costs are very high for women, and while these have not been given enough critical attention, the existing gender analyses suggest they may be more enduring. Mazurana and Carlson (2004) note that it is much harder to return to any level of ‘normalcy’ because women who have gained notoriety as fighters and killers are stigmatized even more than men. Fuest (2008) is critical of the fact that projects for women re-inscribe conventional gender limitations through income-generating projects for women that continue to focus on hairdressing, sewing or raising chickens. The result is that the livelihood strategies that women (and men) develop during the consolidation of a war economy are likely to persist, thus jeopardizing the prospects for more substantial and equitable economic development. Finally, it has been noted that the implementation of demobilization, disarmament and reconstruction (DDR) programmes was carried out in ways that did not reach women effectively because the programmes did not take male– female power inequities into account. Thus, payments were made to men who turned in guns, while many girls and women had little option but to remain with their war-time male partners and their children. All in all, one can conclude that the economic and social costs of conflict worsen the prospects for ordinary women, in part because they are already at the base of the economy prior to the war, and in part because an economy that is both poor and militarized limits the options and prospects facing women. The fact that women understand this can be deduced from their anti-war activism and peace-­ building work in these militarized under-developed contexts. War and Citizenship What happens to the meaning of citizenship in wartime? Perhaps the first point to note is that citizenship, no less than livelihoods, is entirely disrupted by war. The functioning of government—and whatever policy agenda was in place—is radically interrupted and altered in ways that vary across the dura-

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tion, location, intensity and extent of the conflict. As noted above, the militarization of the state and politics in Africa dates back to colonial rule (effectively military rule), to the establishment and bequest of all-male colonial armies to independent nations, as a definitive aspect of the ‘modern’ state. In other words, the dedication to maintaining a state of war preparedness, in the conventional sense of securing national borders, was taken for granted and seldom, if ever, questioned. Both Liberia and Sierra Leone (along with many other African post-colonies) have since seen politics dominated by the military, either directly as a military dictatorship or less directly during periods of lessthan democratic civilian rule (Gberie 2005). The practice of citizenship—and women’s citizenship in particular—is severely limited under conditions of military rule (Mama 1995). With extremely circumscribed access to power and with no voting rights or power, the universal loss of rights and freedom of expression might be mistaken as ‘gender equity’ in the worst sense but for the extreme patriarchy that characterized militarized government and military rule in both nations. Considering the notion of citizenship in militarized contexts poses certain methodological and conceptual challenges. Nonetheless, from the individual and collective experience of all those who have lived and survived decades of military rule, it is clear that there are still ways in which individuals and communities exhibit forms of agency that can be described as practices of citizenship. Women’s movements offer a particularly fertile area for examining questions of citizenship, in part because they have always struggled with the questions of exclusion and marginalization that come to the fore for men under conditions of war and military rule, in which men are also disenfranchised. Politics in the context of militarism and/or conflict looks very different. Once the ballot box is out of the picture, political action has to be conducted pragmatically and/or subversively and improvised, drawing on whatever has been the history of movement and organizing. It takes the form of informal political practices, including behind-the-scenes lobbying and advocacy, various forms of protest activity and community organizing and many other practices that fall ‘below the radar’ of conventional understandings of politics and citizenship, all of them always already gendered. What is possible in terms of citizenship is drastically affected by the pre-conflict, conflict and post-conflict landscape and by the changes it goes through. To be effective, movements can best accumulate experience and work with an inherent flexibility, to both understand and build on whatever shreds of political agency can be salvaged and re-activated. What happens to women’s citizenship in militarized zones and how can this be advanced as a key aspect of the transition to peace and democratic governance?

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Despite the appalling situation they endured, women from all classes and ethnic groups—and across borders—mobilized extensively to facilitate the ending of the war and build peace. Among the best-known examples in Sierra Leone are the Mano River Women’s Peace Network (MARWOPNET), the Sierra Leone Women’s Forum, the Network of Women Ministers and Parliamentarians and the Sierra Leone Women’s Movement for Peace. The various strategies they used included behind-the-scenes lobbying of warlords and political leaders, as well as organizing public rallies and demonstrations and the provision of peace-making-related services such as civilian electoral education and training. As early as 1996, a delegation of women’s groups led by Women Organized for a Morally Enlightened Nation pressured the military government to hold democratic elections. However, when the elections that brought President Kabbah to power were held, only 5 women were on the list of 68 candidates on the victorious party’s list. In 1999, women played a leading role in the negotiations that led to the signing of the 1999 Lome Peace Accord. Their insistence on including the RUF in a power-sharing arrangement was probably crucial to the deal, even though it was to be another three years before the end of the war was finally declared. In Liberia, many of the women’s groups that now exist were formed expressly to agitate for an end to the war, prevailing upon warlords and political leaders, in concerted actions all over Liberia, as well as in Nigeria and Ghana where the peace processes were hosted. During the early years of the war (1989–1996), a Monrovia-based group, Concerned Women of Liberia, made contact with women in territories held by warring factions and encouraged mediation, prayer and conflict-resolution techniques that drew on old traditions and new methods. Professional and religious networks of women (the Christian Health Association of Liberia, the Abused Women and Girls Program and the Association of Female Lawyers of Liberia) worked to provide support for women who had been raped. Numerous other women’s groups, such as Women in Action for Liberia, and mixed groups with women in leadership, such as Special Emergency Life Food Program, maintained communication across community lines, distributed food and cared for the elderly and refugees. The formation of Liberian Women’s Initiative (LWI) marked the beginning of a more far-reaching movement that was to bring a broader cross-section of women of Liberia together. The LWI went door to door, took to the streets and mobilized diverse groups of Liberian women, and, although not invited to the table, their work had influenced the 1997 Abuja Peace Accord (AWPSG 2004: 17). At workshops during the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing in 1995, a contingent of Liberian women recounted their experience of living through the war and struggling as peace activists, winning international

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respect and support and so gaining confidence (AWPSG 2004). The later years of the war (2000–2003) saw a second round of mobilization in which the Women’s Peace Network (WIPNET) steered the movement (among them Leymah Gbowee, Nobel Peace Prize winner in 2012). Supported by the Women in Peace and Security Network-Africa, ABANTU for Development and other partners, Liberian women responded to the prolonged crisis of 2003 by organizing more aggressively, setting off mass protests by thousands of women who wore white T-shirts and held sit-ins on the streets for many weeks. They were eventually able to present a petition for peace to President Taylor. Once the peace talks were in progress in Ghana, WIPNET mobilized protests and advocacy to ensure the success of the talks. When they continued for weeks with no sign of a settlement, a large group blockaded the protagonists into their hotel to prevail upon the Nigerian and Ghanaian hosts to insist on progress. The women’s sustained activism and its escalation during the peace talks appear to have been highly effective. Charles Taylor’s ensuing indictment for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, during these talks and women’s protests, and the final major assault on Monrovia launched by LURD and MODEL, saw Taylor accept asylum in Nigeria and the warring factions signing the peace agreement, officially ending the war. Conclusions Contemporary militarism—itself a deeply gendered phenomenon—is sustained by enduring political, economic and socio-cultural changes, all of which are also highly gendered. The cases discussed here confirm this in some detail with regard to the effects of violent conflict on women’s livelihoods and their practice of citizenship through peace activism. The changes that occur are intrinsic to militarism, escalating as the process of militarization deepens before, during and after conflict. In states of war and war-preparedness, security concerns and actors displace equity, social justice and sustainability agendas, leading to political regression and under-development. The resulting development reversals have especially high costs with regard to the prospects for gender equity in both the economic and political life of the territory. Humanitarian and aid interventions are problematic insofar as these reinscribe the long-term culture of gendered economic dependency and retard progress towards a recovery of political autonomy and an actively democratic practice of citizenship that extends to women as much as men. Militarism constitutes a formidable obstacle to equity, development and freedom, both within the militarist-exporting nations (like the US) and the beneficiaries of

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these exports where the violent conflicts take place. Militarized developing countries accumulate severe debts, only to draw further on foreign military assistance, which is readily available and which sustains this deadly global industry, while the true costs are paid in loss of lives and basic freedoms and the long-term deformation of human potential. Insecurity characterizes the lives of women in Africa in many ways, all of which are sustained by their exclusion from politics and decision-making arenas and by the exploitation and marginalization of their economic roles. These existing inequities are significantly worsened by the militarization of the economy and outbreaks of conflict, which profit the few—most of whom are men—over the many—most of whom are women and children. Women play an important economic role in the coping economy as defined by Peterson. The above material suggests that this develops out of the informal sector, which it closely resembles and which women in West Africa have relied on for survival ever since pre-colonial times and certainly during colonization. Half a century of economic development has seen most West African women remaining in the less profitable areas of the informal sector and still marginalized and under-represented in the more lucrative areas of trade, as well as in the formal economy. The combat economy as characterized by Peterson is more organized than the coping economy, as it is specifically concerned with the procurement of all the supplies needed to continue to fight—all that is generally referred to as logistics. There is evidence that women became more organized, but this has more often been for the political purpose of attaining peace—or in defence of their own interests—than to sustain the fighting. Despite the gender inequities and the horrors of conflict, women survivors play active citizenship roles in initiating and facilitating peace processes and in sustaining and re-building affected communities, as exemplified by the women of Sierra Leone and Liberia. In this respect, the women’s movements in these countries have common cause with the transnational women’s movements and networks calling for the complete dismantling of militarism in order to bring genuine security to women.17 Current policy discourses call for the greater inclusion of women in the new armies and police forces (UN Resolution 1325). While this may offer paid 17

The International Network of Women Against Militarism advocates ‘genuine security’, a concept that, like human security, includes economic, educational and other human development concerns, but which specifically addresses security from women’s perspectives. As the members of the network argue, women’s security (and genuine security) requires not just an end to war, but also freedom from rape and violence in the home and on the streets (www.genuineseccurity.org).

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employment to the few women who are interested in becoming soldiers or policemen, the evidence suggests that sustainable human security will require a great deal more than ‘adding women’ into existing security arrangements. Real security is based on a respect for human life as a foundational principle of politics, culture and economics. For women, security is defined in ways that include freedom from violence in the home as much as from the hands of soldiers, and decent and secure livelihoods options, as well as political equity. As such, it requires a comprehensive process towards gender-equitable democratic governance, inevitably preceded by the demilitarization of politics and the re-structuring of the war economy to provide for and protect the population, rather than limiting reconstruction to humanitarian aid and security ­sector reforms that work to sustain dependency and re-militarize wartorn countries. The gender dynamics of militarism and conflict discussed here support the argument that equitable development and freedom will be usefully advanced by a gendered process of change that does not merely include women in security as it is currently defined, but will redefine the meaning of the term. Feminist approaches to security treat women’s insecurity as an integral feature of patriarchal development. This demands that militarism be understood and conceptualized as a key site for the production of gender inequities and abuses. Women’s definitions of security point to the need for alternative approaches to security that treat the matter through critical engagements, drawing the connections between violent conflict, under-development and gender inequities. One way of achieving this is the ongoing work dedicated to strengthening the power and effectiveness of women’s movements in countries that are underdeveloped and unequal and thus have a hard time sustaining peace, a basic condition for the pursuit of gender-equitable and humane development agendas. References Ake, C. (2000), The feasibility of democracy in Nigeria. Dakar: CODESRIA. AWPSG (African Women and Peace Support Group) (2004), Liberian women peacemakers: Fighting for the right to be seen, heard, and counted. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press. Beneria, L. (2003), Gender, development and globalization: Economics as if people mattered. New York: Routledge. Boserup, E. (1970), Women’s role in economic development. London: Allen and Unwin. Cock, J. (1992), Women and war in South Africa. London: Open Letters.

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Cockburn, C. (2007), From where we stand: Women’s activism, and feminist analysis. London and New York: Zed Books. Coulter, C (2009), Bush wives and girl soldiers: Women’s lives through war and peace in Sierra Leone. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Decalo, S. (1990), Coups & military rule in Africa: Motivations and constraints. New Haven: Yale University Press. Defeis, E.F. (2008), U.N. peacekeepers and sexual abuse and exploitation: An end to impunity. Global Studies Law Review 7(2). De Lauretis, T. (1987), Technologies of gender: Essays on theory, film and fiction. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Denov, M. & P. Maclure (2006), Engaging the voices of girls in the aftermath of Sierra Leone’s conflict: Experiences and perspectives in a culture of violence’ Anthropologica 48(1): 73–85. ECAAR (2003), Military vs social spending: Warfare or human welfare? Washington, DC: Economic Policy Institute. www.epi.org Echenberg, M. (1991), Colonial conscripts: Les tirailleurs sénégalais in French West Africa, 1857–1960. Portsmouth, New Hampshire: Heinemann. Elkins, C. (2004), Imperial reckoning: Britain’s Gulag in Kenya. New York: Owl Books. Elson, D. (1995), Male-bias in the development process. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Enloe, C. (2000), Manoeuvres: The international politics of militarizing women’s lives. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. ——— (2007), Globalization and militarism; Feminists make the link. New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Fuest, V. (2008), ‘This is the time to get in front’: Changing roles and opportunities for women in Liberia. African Affairs 107(427): 201–226. Gallimore, R.B. (2009), Militarism, ethnicity and sexual violence in the Rwandan genocide. Feminist Africa, Issue 10: Militarism, conflict and women’s activism, African Gender Institute, Cape Town. Gberie, L. (2005), A Dirty War in West Africa: The RUF and the destruction of Sierra Leone. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gutteridge, W.F. (1975), Military regimes in Africa. London: Methuen. Hartung, W.D. & B. Moix (2000), Deadly legacy: U.S. arms to Africa and the Congo war. New York: World Policy Institute. Highate, P. & M. Henry (2004), Engendering (in)security in peace support operations. Security and Dialogue 35: 481–498. Hirsch, J.L. (2001), Sierra Leone: Diamonds and the struggle for democracy. International Peace Academy Occasional Paper Series. Boulder: Rienner. Hochschild, A. (1999), King Leopold’s Ghost: A story of greed, terror and heroism in colonial Africa. New York: Mariner Books.

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Hutchful, E. & A. Bathily, eds (1998), The military and militarism in Africa. Dakar: CODESRIA. Isis-WICCE (2008), A situation analysis of the women survivors of the 1989–2003 armed conflict in Liberia. Kampala: Isis-WICCE. Kirk, G. & M. Okazawa-Rey (2000), Neoliberalism, militarism, and armed conflict: An introduction. Social Justice 27(4): 1–17. Klein, N. (2007), Shock doctrine: The rise of disaster capitalism. Toronto: Penguin. Lazreg, M. (2009), Torture in the twilight of Empire: From Algiers to Baghdad. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leavitt, J. (2005), The evolution of deadly conflict in Liberia: From ‘paternaltarianism’ to state collapse. Durham: Carolina Academic Press. Leitenburg, M. (2003), Deaths in wars and conflicts in the 20th century. Centre for Peace Studies, Cornell University, Occasional Paper 29. Lutz, C. (2002), The homefront: A military city and the American 20th century. Boston: Beacon Press. ———, ed. (2009), The bases of Empire: The global struggle against U.S. military posts. New York: New York University Press. Mama, A. (1995), Feminism or Femocracy? State feminism and democratisation in Nigeria. Africa Development / Afrique et Développement 20(1): 37–58. Mamdani, M. (2001), When victims become killers: Colonialism, nativism and the genocide in Rwanda. Princeton: Princeton University Press. MARWOPNET/Isis-WICCE (2009), Tambaka Women and Reconstruction—Wasted peace dividend? Sierra Leonean women and girls’ experiences of the post conflict reconstruction process, final report. Freetown: Mano River Women’s Peace Network. Mazurana, D. & K. Carlson (2004), From combat to community: Women and girls of Sierra Leone. Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. January, 2004. http://www.peacewomen.org/resources/Sierra_Leone/sierraleoneindex.html, accessed June 2009. Meintjes, S., A. Pillay & M. Turshen, eds (2001), The aftermath: Women and post-war transformation. London: Zed Books. Mkandawire, T. (2009), The terrible toll of postcolonial rebel movements: Towards an explanation. In: A. Nhema & P.T. Zeleza, eds, The roots of African conflicts: The causes and the costs. Ohio: James Currey, UNISA. Okonta, I. & O. Douglas (2001), Where vultures feast: Shell, human rights and oil. London: Verso. Peterson, V.S. (2003), A critical rewriting of global political economy: Integrating reproductive, productive and virtual economies. London: Routledge. ——— (2008), ‘New Wars’ and gendered economies. Feminist Review 88: 7–19. Pugel, J. (2007), What the fighters say: A survey of ex-combatants in Liberia, FebruaryMarch 2006. New York: United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

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Rose, N. (1999), Governing the soul: The shaping of the private self. London: Routledge. Schroeder, M. & G. Lamb (2006), The illicit arms trade in Africa: A global enterprise. African Analyst 1: 68–76. Sen, G. & C. Grown (1988), Development, crises and alternative visions: Third World women’s perspectives for Development Alternatives with women for a New era (DAWN). London: Earthscan. SIPRI (2007), Yearbook. Stockholm: Sweden. www.sipriyearbook.org ——— (2011), Yearbook. Stockholm: Sweden. www.sipriyearbook.org Solomon, C. (2005), The role of women in economic transformation: The market women of Sierra Leone. Paper presented at the Transformation of War Economies— Expert’s Conference at Plymouth, 16–19 June 2005. Staples, S. (2000), The relationship between globalization and militarism and capitalism. Social Justice 27(4): 18–22. Stewart, F. (2000), Crisis prevention: Tackling horizontal inequalities. Oxford Development Studies 28(3): 245–262. Tavernise, S. & A.W. Lehren (2010), A grim portrait of civilian deaths in Iraq. New York Times 23 October 2010, p. A1. UNDP (1995–2011), Human Development Reports, 1995–2011. New York: United Nations Development Programme. ——— (2002), Human Development Report 2002. New York: United Nations Development Programme. ——— (2012), Human Development Report, Africa. New York: United Nations Development Programme. ——— (2005), Gender equality: Striving for justice in an unequal world. Geneva: United Nations Research Institute for Social Development. UNSC (2000), Resolution 1325: Women, Peace and Security. New York: United Nations Security Council. http://www.un.org/Docs/sc/unsc_resolutions09.htm Woolf, V. (1938), The Three Guineas. London: Hogarth. Young, I. (2003), The logic of masculinist protection: Reflections on the current security state’ Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 29(1): 1–25. Zarkov, D. (2001), The body of the other man: Sexual violence and the construction of masculinity, sexuality and ethnicity in Croatian media. In: C. Moser & F. Clark, eds, Victims, perpetrators or actors? Gender, armed conflict and political violence. New York: Zed Books, pp. 69–82. Zarkov, D., ed. (2008), Gender, violent conflict, development. New Delhi: Zubaan Books.

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Appendix 3.1: World Military Expenditure18

World military expenditure slowed significantly in 2011, for the first time since 1998 (see Figure 3A.1 and Table 3A.1). The world total for 2011 is estimated to have been 1,738 billion US$, representing 2.5% of global gross domestic product or 249 US$ for each person. Compared with the total in 2010, military spending remained virtually unchanged in real terms. However, it is still too early to say whether this means that world military expenditure has finally peaked.

Spending (US$ trillion)

2 1.5 1 0.5 0

Figure 3A.1

2002

2003

2004

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 Rest of the world United States

World military spending, 2002–2011

18 Source: SIPRI (2011).

2010

2011

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Table 3A.1 World military spending by region, 2011 Region

Spending (US$ b.)

Africa North Africa Sub-Saharan Africa Americas Central America and the Caribbean North America South America Asia and Oceania Central and South Asia East Asia Oceania South East Asia Europe Eastern Europe Western and Central Europe Middle East World

34.3 13.9 20.4 809.0 7.0 736.0 66.0 364.0 61.7 243.0 28.6 31.0 407.0 80.5 326.0 123.0 1,738

Change 2010–2011 (%)

+8.6 +25.0 −0.1 −1.4 +2.7 −1.2 −3.9 +2.2 −2.7 +4.1 −1.2 +2.7 +0.2 +10.2 −1.9 +4.6 +0.3

chapter 4

Development, Equity, Gender, Health, Poverty and Militarization: Is there a Link in the Countries of West Africa? Response to Amina Mama Irene Akua Agyepong1 Abstract This paper briefly explores issues around development, equity, gender, health, poverty and militarization in the West African sub-region and asks whether there are links between these concepts in the sub-region that merit further exploration. It is a response to the paper by Amina Mama (2012) in this series, entitled: ‘Beyond survival: Militarism, equity and women’s security’. The paper starts with a summary of the understanding with which the terms equity and development will be used. It then proceeds to use some available develop­ment indicator data for the sub-region to explore the issues. The treatment of the data is essentially qualitative, exploratory and inductive. The aim is to raise ideas for further exploration to develop theory rather than to make any deductive inferences or provide statistically generalizable results. The paper concludes by suggesting themes for further exploration, research and interventions related to development and equity in the West African sub-region. A kingdom can endure with unbelief, but it cannot endure with injustice (Shehu Usman Dan Fodio)2 By justice a king gives a country stability, but one who is greedy for bribes tears it down. The wealth of the rich is their fortified city, but poverty is the ruin of the poor. (King Solomon)3

1 Seventh holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2008–2010. 2 Founder of the Sokoto Caliphate and religious teacher, writer and promoter of Islam. Quoted in Maier (2000: 143). 3 King of ancient Israel. Proverbs 29:4 and Proverbs 10:15. New International Version of the Bible.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004269729_006

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Introduction Sub-Saharan Africa is a region that continues to lag behind much of the world in development indicators. Within this region, the 15 countries that make up the West African sub-region—Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal and Sierra Leone—include some of the poorest countries in the world. Many are classified as low income by the World Bank and the rest as lower-middle income. This paper is an exploratory and qualitative reflection and ‘think piece’ with an inductive approach, with the aim to stimulate thinking for theory building and further exploration rather than an exhaustive analysis. Central to the paper are the concepts of equity and development around which the Prince Claus Chair is based. It is a response to some of the issues raised in the paper by Mama (2012) entitled ‘Beyond survival: Militarism, equity and women’s security’. Equity Equity, justice and fairness are concepts with similar meanings. The Chambers Dictionary (2006) defines equity as “the right as founded on the laws of nature; moral justice, of which laws are the imperfect expression; the spirit of justice which enables us to interpret laws rightly”, and justice as “the quality of being fair and impartial; integrity, impartiality, rightness, the awarding of what is due; the administration of law”. Fairness has to do with impartiality, justice and equity. Equity is related to the distribution of resources, gains, losses, rewards, punishments, etc. in societies and social relationships. In this paper, I will use the terms fairness and justice interchangeably. The fairness of final distribution as well as procedures for final distribution are equally important in assessments and perceptions of equity (Leventhal 1976). Equity is thus a state (distributional) as well as a process (procedural). Leventhal describes fairness in distribution as multi-dimensional. One dimension involves the perceived fairness of the criteria used for distribution. However, beyond criteria, another dimension is that the relative weights awarded to each criterion matter in determining fairness. Finally, the final distribution of rewards, punishments and resources that arises when these criteria and the weights attached to them are applied also matter. Procedural fairness, on the other hand, refers to the procedures and processes that are followed to arrive at the final distribution. Distribution as well as procedure rules are important for final outcomes to be seen as fair.

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Justice (fairness) has been a concern of great teachers across continents and cultures over the ages. Within West Africa, Usman Dan Fodio (1754–1817)— founder of the Sokoto Caliphate in West Africa and renowned religious teacher, writer and promoter of Islam—is reported to have stated that “[a] kingdom can endure with unbelief, but it cannot endure with injustice” (Maier 2000). It is of interest that in his promotion of education, literacy and scholarship, he included women and educated his own daughters. Several of the proverbs of Solomon, legendary King of ancient Israel over three thousand years ago and famous for his wisdom, deal with justice and governance. Equality and equity are both used in the development literature. Though related, they are not identical concepts. Equal is not necessarily equitable, and an inequality is not necessarily an injustice. An inequality is merely a difference in distribution that could be fair or unfair. For example, spending more of the health budget on those who legitimately need more health care—e.g. children with sickle-cell disease or pregnant women—will be perceived by many people as equitable despite the fact that it involves an unequal allocation of resources (an inequality). However, many inequalities can be an indication that there is some unfairness in the way society is allocating benefits. In terms of measurement within populations, inequalities are often used as proxy indicators for inequities because they are more quantifiable. It is an imperfect approach, but the more complex construct of equity requires in-depth ‘thick’ descriptions with many contextual nuances to be taken into account that are not always easy to ‘measure’. It can be done with case study approaches but is difficult in multiple country comparisons of the complex social, cultural and economic constructs that make up ‘development’. This probably accounts for the fact that many development indictors measure equality rather than equity. Despite the limitations of the equality approach, the data that is readily available in the literature is predominantly of this kind. In my subsequent explorations and discussions, while recognizing the limitations, I will use some of the data on inequalities from countries in the West African sub-region—as a proxy for exploring equitable development in the sub-region. Development Development can be conceptualized as a state but also as a process of change that is perceived as good or positive. In that sense, it is a process that involves bringing out what is latent in an individual or society to move them towards a more advanced state of their full potential (Chambers 2004). In terms of human societies, development has to do with a progression towards ­qualitative

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as well as quantitative improvements in the context as well as in the human experience of living. Quantitatively, efforts are made to assess national and regional develop­ment using measurements of nutritional status, income, education and literacy, security, access to health services, women’s status, etc. Given that it is a state as well as a process, development is often expressed in terms of current status as well as progression in levels of selected indicators. The World Development Indicators, for example, express and compare average incomes, literacy levels, etc. for the different nations of the world. Gender is a concept of increasing importance in the concept of development, and the World Development Report 2012 (World Bank 2012) argues that gender equality is a core development objective in its own right. The notion of human development covers all aspects of individual wellbeing and encom­passes health status as well as economic and political freedom. The 1978 Alma Ata declaration of Primary Health Care (WHO 1978) defined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. This is a broad conceptualization that overlaps the concept of human development. The recognition of this is clear in the declaration, which goes on to state that the realization of this definition “requires the action of many other social and economic sectors in addition to the health sector”. The current literature, concepts and work related to the social determinants of health recognize this similar broad conceptualization of health and the major overlaps with the concept of human development. Health is affected by the social, economic, political and cultural context in which people live their lives as well as the individual life choices they make. There are also systems outside of the health systems, such as education, water and sanitation, whose performance affects achievement of health goals (Marmot 2005; CSCH 2008). Economic growth is clearly important in, and tied to, development. To quote the 1996 Human Development Report: “human development is the end— economic growth is the means” (UNDP 1996). However, our discussion and analysis in the next section shows that economic growth alone is not enough.

Equitable Development, Poverty and Gender in the West African Sub-Region

The term ‘equitable development’ involves a fusion of the two distinct concepts of ‘equity’ and ‘development’ around which the Prince Claus Chair is based. Despite their distinctness, the two concepts are often used together in the development literature because a strict separation becomes rather

Development, equity, gender, health

73

a­ rtificial. Both concepts are relativist in that their construct or interpretation in a given context is to some extent subject to the perceptions of the interpreter. Thus, indicators to measure either concept as well as agreements on which indicators to use for measurement and/or comparison are all relative. Many indicators of development are also indicators of health and vice versa. This is not surprising given the importance of the social determinants of health. Many of the major improvements in health indictors in Europe and North America preceded the onset of modern medical interventions. Health improved in response to improvement in environmental and social indicators such as incomes, nutrition, water, sanitation, literacy and the status of women. Tables 4A.1 and 4A.2 (Appendix 4.1) summarize selected current development and inequality indicators for the countries of the West African sub-region. Infant mortality ranges from a low of 50 deaths per 1,000 live births in Ghana and Senegal to as high as 114 per 1,000 live births in Sierra Leone. All countries show gender gaps in net secondary-school enrolment, with girls trailing behind boys in all cases. For the countries where data are available, the figures range from a low of 7% for girls and 12% for boys in Guinea Bissau to a high of 44% for girls and 48% for boys in Ghana. The population estimated to be living on less than 2 US$ per day ranges from the lowest estimate of 46% in Côte d’Ivoire to as high as 95% in Liberia (PRB 2012). Figure 4.1 displays graphically a simple analysis of gender inequalities in net secondary-school enrolment (percentage of males and females enrolled and the difference between the two percentages) in the countries of the sub-region. There are wide gender inequalities within the countries. There are also inequalities across the countries of the sub-region. The countries have been arranged in the figure, from Liberia with the lowest per capita Gross National Income (GNI) as measured in terms of Purchasing Power Parity (International) (416 PPP$) to Nigeria with the highest (2,363 PPP$). The graph does not show any clear pattern or relation with income. It suggests that despite the importance of resources (economic development) for setting up educational systems towards universal literacy and elimination of gender gaps, increased resources alone without an explicit focus on development and equity may not make the needed difference. Figure 4.2a is a scatter plot of GNI per capita and infant mortality rates (IMR) per 1,000 live births for the countries in the sub-region, while Figure 4.2b shows GNI per capita and maternal mortality rates (2008) per 100,000 live births. Both figures suggests a weak relationship between the outcomes (IMR) and income. This is similar to observations in other parts of the world. However, an examination of inequities in access to skilled birth attendants within the countries (Figures 4.3 and 4.4) suggests a different but not new

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Agyepong

% Net enrolment

60 50 40 30 20 10 0

ia

er

b Li

r

ge

Ni

go

To

ali

M

a

ne

i Gu

ne

i Gu

au

ss

i aB

ki

r Bu

o

as

F na

n

ni

Be

a

an

Gh

al

eg

n Se

ria

ge Ni

IMR (deaths /1000 live births)

Female Male Difference Figure 4.1 Gender inequalities in net secondary school enrolment (%) in selected countries in West Africa 2009 Source: PRB (2012)

120 100 80 60 40 20 0

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

GNI PPP per capita (US$) 2010 Figure 4.2a GNI per capita and infant mortality rate (IMR) in selected countries of the West African sub-region Source: Appendix 4.1 and Table 4.1

5000

75

Maternal deaths per 100,000 live births

Development, equity, gender, health 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

GNI PPP per capita (US$) 2010

Q5‒Q1 (%)

Figure 4.2b GNI PPP per capita (US$) 2010 and maternal mortality rate (MMR) 2008 in selected countries of the West African sub-region Source: Appendix 4.1 and Tables 4.1 and 4.3

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

Per Capita GDP 2010 (PPP$) Figure 4.3 Per capita GDP (2010) and inequalities (difference between women in Q1 [poorest fifth] and Q5 [richest fifth]) in % women with skilled attendance at birth in selected countries of the West African sub-region Source: Appendix 4.1 and Tables 4.1 and 4.2

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Agyepong 120

% deliveries

100 80 60 40 20 0

ia

er

b Li

r

ge

Ni

rr

Sie

e

on

e aL

go

To

ali

M

Richest fifth (Q1)

a

ne

i Gu

ne

i Gu

au

ss

i aB

ki

r Bu

o

as

F na

a

bi

m Ga

Poorest fifth (Q5)

n

ni

Be

na

a Gh

te

Co

re

oi

v d’I

S

l

ga

e en

ria

ge Ni

Difference (Q1‒Q5)

Figure 4.4 Inequalities in deliveries by skilled health personnel in selected countries in West Africa Source: Appendix 4.1 and Table 4.2

story. Figure 4.3 is a scatter plot of inequalities in percentage of women with access to skilled attendance at birth (measured as the difference between the percentage of women in the richest fifth of the population with access and the percentage of women in the poorest fifth with access) and the per capita GDP PPP$ in 2010 for the countries in the sub-region. The trend line between the dots has an upward direction, suggesting that the inequalities are worse in the countries with higher incomes. Thus, though developmentally the countries with the higher incomes in the sub-region have more women having access to skilled attendants at birth, the gaps between the richest and the poorest are more marked. Figure 4.4 shows the same data as a bar chart. It would appear that wealth alone, without an explicit focus on equitable development, may not lead to the best outcomes. Militarization Mama (2012) raises the challenges posed by militarism to equity and development. In her words, “militarism and conflict severely undermine development and exacerbate existing social inequities, particularly those of gender”. In her opinion, militarism under-developed Africa in the colonial era and remains a continuing formidable obstacle to development in the postcolonial era in Africa. She provides examples of the effects of militarism in undermining

Development, equity, gender, health

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development and exacerbating social inequities with a special emphasis on gender-related social inequities. She uses two of the wars in the sub-region, those in Liberia and Sierra Leone, to illustrate. In concluding, she raises and addresses the question of what can be done to address the inequities that have been deepened by militarism and conflict. She suggests that it is important to enable women to lead solutions that bring an end to conflict and enable postconflict survival and reconstruction. In her words, militarism “constitutes a formidable obstacle to equity, development and freedom” and “existing inequities are significantly worsened by the militarization of the economy and outbreaks of conflict”. Equitable development will best be promoted, in her opinion, by a “gendered process of demilitarization”. I agree with Mama that militarization is a threat to development and equity in the sub-region. The sub-region has been and remains challenged in several countries by protracted national or sub-national armed conflicts and violence for close to a decade or more. Liberia, Africa’s oldest republic, descended into a destructive civil war in the 1990s. Like other conflicts in the sub-region, it eventually acquired an international dimension with the involvement of West African and UN troops and peacekeepers and the flooding of neighbouring countries with refugees, weapons and fighter spill-over. The conflict is over, but the country has been left in ruins, and reconstruction promises to be a long and by no means easy task. Its neighbour Sierra Leone also descended into conflict in the 1990s, with evidence of links between Liberian fighters and warlords and those of Sierra Leone. Again sub-regional and UN peacekeepers were drawn in, as was the colonial power of the United Kingdom. Peace has finally come; but like Liberia, reconstruction is not going to be an easy task. Côte d’Ivoire, one of the most stable countries in the region for several decades, destabilized after the death of its long-time ruler Houphouët-Boigny and descended into a civil war in 2002/3 that left the country divided for several years. After President Laurent Gbabgo refused to accept his defeat in the national elections of 2010, internal conflict erupted once more and he was eventually toppled by force in a major post-election conflict that eventually drew in the colonial power of France. Despite the fact that its civil war ended in the late 1960s, the long-standing unrest in the Niger delta region of Nigeria and the increasing violence in the north mean that, to an extent, parts of the largest country in West Africa, home to 53% of the population in the sub-region, are militarized, with effects spilling over into the rest of the country.

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From the data examined for this paper, it is not possible to draw generalizable conclusions on whether these four countries in the West African sub-region with long-standing internal conflicts have experienced effects on the health of the population. However, there are indicators that this is an area worth further study and analysis. Comparison of trends over time for maternal mortality in these four countries with the other countries in the sub-region suggests that the countries that have experienced protracted conflict may be under-performing on this indicator relative to other countries in the sub-region at similar income levels (see Table 4A.2 in Appendix 4.1 and Figures 4.5 and 4.6). Maternal mortality rose in all these countries in the decade 1990–2000 and only subsequently showed a gentle decline. Moreover, these countries are driving the sub-regional average, probably because between them they are the home to 62% of the population of the sub-region. Despite being the wealthiest of the countries in the sub-region, the development indicators of Nigeria, one of the lower-middle-income countries in the sub-region, are sometimes on a par with some of the poorer countries (Table 4A.1). Moreover, the picture is in a way similar to that of Côte d’Ivoire, the other lower-middle-income country in the sub-region that has experienced significant militarization. Several of the Côte d’Ivoire development indicators, e.g. IMR and maternal mortality rate, are similar to those of the poorer countries in the sub-region. Senegal and Ghana—at similar World Bank income classification levels as Côte d’Ivoire and Nigeria, but having enjoyed relatively stable

Deaths/100,000 live births

1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

1980

Cote d’Ivoire

1990 Liberia

Nigeria

2000 Sierra Leone

2008 Sub-region average

Figure 4.5 Maternal mortality trends in selected West African countries with protracted/ localized or generalized conflict/instability Source: Appendix 4.1 and Table 4A.3

79

Deaths/100,000 live births

Development, equity, gender, health 1600 1400 1200 1000 800 600 400 200 0

1980

1990

2000

2008

Benin

Burkina

CapeVerde

Gambia

Ghana

Guinea

GuineaBissau

Mali

Mauritania

Niger

Senegal

Togo

Figure 4.6 Maternal mortality trends in “non-protracted conflict” countries in West Africa Source: Appendix 4.1 and Table 4A.3

democracies over the last several decades and no militarization—have somewhat better indicators, despite the fact that they still have a lot of work to do in terms of equitable development. Conclusion When equity is combined with development, the consequence is a concern with how the development is distributed at any given point in time and over time and with the fairness of the distribution, rather than purely with the progression in the levels of the average. The limited data set that I have examined for countries in the West African sub-region suggests that the countries in this region need to have an explicit policy focus on development and (in)equity. Moreover, they need to establish a continuing comparative analysis of progress towards these goals to inform sub-regional policy. Regional bodies such as the West African Health Organization could potentially be strengthened to play this role. There is a need to deepen the comparative analysis of intra-country as well as inter-country analysis of indicators of equitable development in the sub-region and to use the information to engage in explicit advocacy efforts to get governments to have an explicit focus on ‘equitable development’ rather than just on ‘development’. Averages hide inequities that are also important in assessing the progress of countries and sub-regions.

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Militarization is also a threat to the sub-region, as Mama (2012) points out clearly in her paper, and I agree with her observations that as militarization deepens before, during and after conflicts, security concerns are likely to displace equity and development agendas. More­over, resources are increasingly needed to feed the needs of both sides in the conflict. The corruption, cruelty and injustice to local populations—many of them unarmed women and children—that arise from the struggle of powerful armed groups for resources to feed militari­zation are aptly illustrated by the tragic stories of the role of mineral resources in the conflicts in Sierra Leone and the Congo and oil in South Sudan. Strengthening women in militarized zones is proposed by Mama as an intervention to bring an end to militarization and minimize the postmilitarization problems she describes. A comprehensive process of demilitarization in areas of already existing conflict, as she recommends, in addition to strategies to prevent new armed conflicts are indeed the way forward to remove this threat to equitable development. However, poverty itself, irrespective of conflict, is a major determinant of development and equity. The poorest countries in the sub-region have similar performance indicators, with or without armed conflict and militarization. The 2012 World Development Report (World Bank 2012) argues that gender equality is a core development indicator in its own right. I think the report uses the term equality as a proxy for equity, and in discussing the recommendations I will maintain that understanding. It is important to strengthen women all across the continent to advocate and work for the prevention and reduction of militarization and of poverty and for equitable development. The four priority areas proposed by the 2012 World Development Report for policy to improve gender equality are relevant as interventions to strengthen women in this process: (i) reducing excess female mortality and closing education gaps where they remain; (ii) improving access to economic opportunities for women; (iii) increasing women’s voice and agency in the household and in society; and (iv) limiting the reproduction of gender inequality across generations.

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References Bhutta, Z.A. et al. (2010), Countdown to 2015 decade report (2000–10): Taking stock of maternal, newborn and child survival. The Lancet 375, 5 June 2010. Chambers, R. (2004), Ideas for development. Institute for Development Studies, Brighton, Sussex BN1 9RE England. IDS Working Paper 238. http://www.opendocs .ids.ac.uk CSCH (2008), Closing the gap in a generation: Health equity through action on the social determinants of health. Final report of the commission on the social determinants of health. Geneva: World Health Organization. Hagan, M.C. et al. (2010), Maternal mortality for 181 countries, 1980–2008: A systematic analysis of progress towards Millennium Development Goal 5. The Lancet 375, 8 May 2010. Leventhal, G.S. (1976), What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, September 1976. Available from Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202. Also from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERIC WebPortal. Maier, K. (2000), This house has fallen: Nigeria in crisis. London: Penguin Books. Mama, A. (2012), Beyond survival: Militarism, equity and women’s security. Draft paper presented at the Symposium on Development and Equity in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Prince Claus Chair, 28 November 2012, Noordeinde Palace, The Hague. Marmot, M. (2005), Social determinants of health. The Lancet 365(9496): 1099–1104. PRB (2012), Population and Economic Development; 2012 data sheet. Washington, DC: Population Reference Bureau. Shaik Usman dan Fodio. Brief Biography. http://www.nmfuk.org/danfodio.htm. The Chambers Dictionary 10th Edition (2006), Edinburgh: Harrap Publishers. UNDP (1996), Human Development Report 1996. New York: United Nations Development Programme. WHO (1978), Declaration of Alma Atta. International Conference on Primary Health Care, Alma Atta, USSR, 6–12 September 1978. http://www.searo.who.int/LinkFiles/ Health_Systems_declaration_almaata.pdf World Bank (2012), World Development Report 2012. Gender Equality and Development. www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/beyondco/beg_01.pdf, downloaded 10 August 2012.

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Appendix 4.1

Table 4A.1 Selected development indicators for countries in the West African sub-region  

Benin Burkina Faso Cape Verde Côte d’Ivoire Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea Bissau Liberia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Senegal Sierra Leone Togo Sub-region

Population % of mid-2012 population (millions) in the sub-region

GNI PPP per capita (US$) 2010

Urban Life expectancy population at birth  as % of total

 

 

 

 

Both Male Female   sexes

 9.4  17.5

 3%  5%

1590 1250

44 24

56 55

54 54

58 56

5.4 6

 0.5  20.6

 0%  6%

4710 1810

62 50

73 55

69 54

77 56

2.5 4.9

 1.8  25.5  11.5  1.6

 1%  8%  4%  0%

1300 1620 1020 1180

59 44 28 43

58 64 54 48

57 63 52 47

59 65 55 50

5 4.1 5.3 5.1

 4.2  16  3.6  16.3 170.1  13.1  6.1

 1%  5%  1%  5%  53%  4%  2%

 340 1030 2410  720 2240 1910  830

47 33 42 20 51 42 40

56 51 58 58 51 58 47

55 50 57 56 48 57 47

57 52 60 60 54 59 48

5.8 6.4 4.4 7 5.7 5 5

 6 324

 2% 100%

 890 1810

37 44

62 54

60 52

65 56

4.7  

Source: PRB (2012; www.prb.org).

Total fertility rate

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Development, equity, gender, health

Married Infant women 15–49 mortality using modern rate (IMR) contraception (%)

Children under age 5 moderately or severely underweight (%) 2011

Per capita government expenditure on health (US$)

Net   secondaryschool enrolment (%) 2009

Percent of pop. living on less than 2 US$/day 2009

 

 

 

 

Female

Male  

6 15

73 93

20 26

18 23

13 14

26 18

75 81

57 8

29 86

12 17

108 12

   

   

41 46

13 17 6 14

57 50 81 92

16 14 23 17

13 28 3 5

  44 22 7

  48 35 12

57 54 70 78

10 6 8 5 10 12 7

74 99 75 73 88 50 114

20 28 17 40 27 18 21

12 18 14 12 25 33 5

14 26 15 8 22 18  

25 39 17 13 29 24  

95 77 44 76 84 60 76

13  

66  

21  

7  

15  

30  

69  

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Table 4A.3 Under-5 and maternal mortality indicators and trends in the West African sub-region  

Deaths per 1,000 live births in children under 5 (Bhutta et al. 2010)

 

1990

2000

2008

Average annual rate of reduction 1990–2008 (%)

Benin Burkina Faso Cape Verde Côte d’Ivoire Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea Bissau Liberia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Senegal Sierra Leone Togo Sub-region

184 201   150   118 231   219 250 129 305 230 149 278 150  

144 188   138   111 185   174 217 122 227 207 131 252 122  

121 169   114    76 146   145 194 118 167 186 108 194  98  

2.3 0.7

Source: Bhutta et al. (2010) and Hagan et al. (2010).

1.5 2.4 2.5 2.3 1.4 0.5 3.3 1.2 1.8 2 2.4

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Development, equity, gender, health

Maternal mortality ratio—Deaths per 100,000 live births (Hagan et al. 2010) 1980

1990

2000

2008

Difference between 1980 and 2008

Difference Difference as % of 1980 between levels 1990 & 2008

Difference as % of 1990 levels

 829  541  528  590  898  731 1140 1155  645 1125 1491 1083  516  670 1240  600  683

 588  488  229  580  628  549  965  966  729  831 1295  890  473  542 1044  540  582

 551  456  139 1116  396  538  976  809 1055  807  866  754  694  491 1200  552  742

 469  332  75  944  281  409  860  804  859  670  712  601  608  401 1033  447  629

 360  209  453 –354  617  322  280  351 –214  455  779  482  –92  269  207  153  54

 43%  39%  86% –60%  69%  44%  25%  30% –33%  40%  52%  45% –18%  40%  17%  26%  8%

 20%  32%  67% –63%  55%  26%  11%  17% –18%  19%  45%  32% –29%  26%  1%  17%  –8%

 119  156  154 –364  347  140  105  162 –130  161  583  289 –135  141  11  93  –47

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Table 4A.2 Selected inequality indicators for countries in the West African sub-region  

Married women 15–49 using modern contraception (%)

Deliveries attended by skilled health personnel

Share of income or consumption (%) 2000/2010

 

Poorest fifth (Q5)

Richest fifth (Q1)

Poorest fifth (Q5)

Richest fifth (Q1)

Poorest fifth (Q5)

Richest fifth (Q1)

Benin Burkina Faso Cape Verde Côte d’Ivoire Gambia Ghana Guinea Guinea Bissau Liberia Mali Mauritania Niger Nigeria Senegal Sierra Leone Togo

 2  6

13 36

52 56

96 65

 3

18

12  3  1  3  3  1  2  3  3  3  7

21 13 19 17 16 16 16 22 22 18 16

29 28 22 26 19 26 35 21 21  8 20 28 30

95 89 94 57 79 81 86 95 71 86 89 71 97

7 7 5 6 5 5 6 7 6 7 6 8 5 6 6 8

46 47 56 48 53 49 46 43 45 46 46 43 49 46 49 42

Source: PRB (2012; www.prb.org)

chapter 5

The Right to Stay Home: Equity and the Struggle of Migrant Indigenous Peoples Gaspar Rivera-Salgado1 Abstract In this paper my goal is to reflect about equity theory and practice, based on my practical work with indigenous Mexican migrant grassroots organizations which are attempting to achieve the goal of making migration a last alternative for survival and have launched a programme called “The Right to Stay Home”. Indigenous Mexican migrants claim that rather than having migration as the only option for making a living, they want to have the opportunity to make ends meet and realize their dreams in their home communities. They want migration to become the last-resort choice for survival, rather than the first and sometimes the only choice for survival, since they are losing an entire new generation of youth, who in order to escape poverty have to migrate hundreds of miles away to a foreign land where they are losing their traditional ways, their language and their culture.

Introduction In my inaugural address as Prince Claus Chair in April 2004, I reflected about the crucial link between cultural identity and development as an autonomous process. I attempted to explore certain implications of that link, while focusing on the dialectics of home and migration. In this paper my goal is to reflect about equity theory and practice, based on my practical work with indigenous migrant grassroots organizations which are attempting to achieve the goal of making migration a last alternative for survival and have launched a programme called “The Right to Stay Home”. In the autumn of 2011 in the City of Oaxaca, Mexico, during a bi-national gathering of an indigenous migrant grassroots organization called Frente Indígena de Organizaciones Binacionales (FIOB), indigenous migrants from different parts of Mexico issued a statement calling for a change in the paradigm 1 Third holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2004–2005.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi 10.1163/9789004269729_007

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Photo 5.1 Members of FIOB voting about the right not to migrate at their general binational assembly in Oaxaca City, October 15, 2011 [© David Bacon]

of how we think about international long-term migration from indigenous communities. They declared that despite the fact that migration was allowing families who stayed behind in their home town access to much-needed money for their daily needs in the form of remittances, the price that these families and communities were paying was too high for the return they were getting. In exchange for a few hundred dollars a month, they were losing an entire new generation of youth, who, in order to escape poverty and despair, had to migrate hundreds of miles away to a foreign land where they were losing their traditional ways, their language and their culture. They claimed that rather than having migration as the only option for make a living, they wanted to have the opportunity to make ends meet and realize their dreams in their home communities. They wanted migration to become the last-resort choice for survival, rather than the first and sometimes the only alternative for survival. It is true that indigenous peoples in the Americas face tremendous challenges for their own survival. However, in spite of centuries of poverty, discrimination and genocide, indigenous communities are no longer the passive victims of exploitative conditions and have now become actors of social change. No longer able or willing to wait for the nation-states to deliver the long-awaited promise of universal human rights, equality before the law, and

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individual and collective freedom (since these nation-states are the ones that have denied such entitlements to indigenous peoples), indigenous communities are experimenting with new ways of being autonomous in practice, since the legal framework has yet to be worked out in international institutions in the coming years if not decades. Despite the fact that the debate about the international legal framework regarding the rights of indigenous peoples has lagged behind among nationstates in Latin America (with the exception of Bolivia and Ecuador), in practice, indigenous communities have adapted traditional practices such as the cargo system and the tequio system2 to the process of globalization to fight for their rights and their own survival. This is especially the case of indigenous communities who have experienced the process of dispersal due to international migration. The presence of large numbers of indigenous peoples outside their traditional homelands pose some serious questions about indigenous identity, issues of citizenship and territoriality of indigenous communities. Indigenous communities in the Americas have transformed long-term outmigration, which appeared to be threatening their own existence (the process of depopulation), into a source of strength and renewal. I will now explore in detail this issue, using the case of indigenous peoples of Mexico who have migrated in great numbers to the major urban centres within the country in the last fifty years and to the US in substantial numbers at least since the mid-1980s.

Indigenous Peoples in the Americas

The past and the future of many Latin American countries can be seen in the faces of the tens of thousands of indigenous people who each year set out on their journey to the capital cities of their countries, as well as the many others who decide to settle in countless communities within the US, Canada and Spain. To study the struggles of indigenous peoples living outside their homelands today requires a transnational lens, taking into account basic changes in the way Latin American societies are understood as the twenty-first century begins. On the one hand, many countries in Latin American—such as 2 The cargo system refers to the indigenous political institution where all adult males in a community occupy different elected positions, starting at the bottom as messenger (topil ) and working themselves all the way to the top position as presidente or agente municipal. The tequio refers to the unpaid compulsory labour all members of the community have to perform as public service.

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Mexico, El Salvador, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, to name just a few—are increasingly recognized to be nations of migrants, as societies whose fates are intimately linked with the economies and cultures where their diasporas currently reside. On the other hand, the experiences specific to indigenous migrants require an understanding of Latin America as formed by multi-ethnic societies in which basic questions of indigenous rights are finally on their national agendas but remain fundamentally unresolved. However, the future projected by Latin America’s dominant economic model has little place for indigenous peoples other than their joining the urban and agro-export workforce. The political classes of most Latin American countries have embraced neo-liberalism as a political, economic and even cultural model. This is a model that does not give pride of place to indigenous rights. Political elites sometimes bow to popular and domestic political pressure by placing basic questions of indigenous rights on national agendas, but thus far few such agendas have been even partially realized anywhere. Because the majority of Latin American indigenous peoples live in small villages and depend on agriculture to this day, their livelihood prospects are highly sensitive to governmental policies toward that sector. Mexico is a case in point. Three decades ago, Mexico’s government abandoned what had already been on-again/off-again commitments to making family farming economically viable.3 Since the 1980s, peasant agriculture has been a target of state welfare policy rather than production support, a shift that has weakened the economic base of indigenous (as well as other peasant) communities. As a consequence, according to official figures, poverty throughout Mexico worsened in 30% of the predominantly indigenous communities between 1990 and 2002 (Hill & Patrinos 2006). This has meant, among other things, that more and more indigenous people and peoples are either domestic or international migrant workers. Whatever the intentions of elites, neo-liberal theory and practice do not include an independent role for indigenous migrants other than that they join the urban and agro-export workforce at whatever level their skills determine and indigenous identity permits. In other words, they are subject to the labour market with all that market entails in terms of opportunity but also in terms of racist and exploitative labour practices. Since implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), the government’s rural development strategy has been based on the assumption that a large proportion of the rural poor would move either to Latin America’s larger cities or to the US. Indeed, Mexico City’s population of urban Indians in the hemisphere is officially estimated by the city government 3 On the history of government policies toward peasant grain production, see Fox (1992).

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at half a million in the Federal District and one million in the greater metropolitan area.4 Mexico’s more than 12 million indigenous peoples constitute about 11% of the country’s population. While accounting for a smaller percentage of the country’s total population than in some other Latin American countries, Mexico’s indigenous population is the largest in Latin America and represents a third of the continent’s total indigenous population (Hill & Patrinos 2006). The fact that Mexico’s indigenous peoples are far poorer than its non-indigenous peoples is well known (see Figure 5.1)—about 80% of indigenous peoples in Mexico are poor, while only half of the non-indigenous people live below the official poverty line (Garcia-Moreno & Patrinos 2011). Indigenous peoples constitute one of the most marginalized social groups in Mexico. Studies show that extreme poverty—whether measured by income alone or by many dimensions, including access to health and education—is typically concentrated in Mexico’s indigenous communities. Income poverty is higher and more severe and is falling more slowly in indigenous municipalities than in non-indigenous ones (Borja-Vega et al. 2007). This is despite the fact that the percentage of people living in extreme poverty in Mexico fell from 24% of the population in 2000 to 17% in 2004 and 14% in 2006 (see Figure 5.2). In 2008, however, the extreme poverty rate went up again to 18% (Levy 2006). This upward trend in poverty is hitting Mexico’s poorest rural areas in the southern states especially hard: Campeche, Chiapas, Guerrero, Hidalgo, Oaxaca, Puebla, Quintana Roo, Tabasco, Tlaxcala, Veracruz and Yacatán. These are the same states with the largest concentration of indigenous population in the country, since close to 80% of indigenous peoples in Mexico live there.5 The government has made significant efforts to combat poverty, but it remains widespread and is closely linked to high levels of inequality in terms of unequal access to healthcare, education and available work opportunities (World Bank 2004). In rural areas the percentage of those living in moderate poverty was 61% in 2008, while that of those living in extreme poverty was 32% (CONEVAL 2009). Indigenous migrants find themselves excluded—economically, socially and politically—as migrants and as indigenous people in their countries of origin and their places of destination. Economically, they work in ethnically segmented labour markets that relegate them to the bottom rungs. In the social sphere, in addition to the well-known set of obstacles that confront cross-border 4 This is the official estimate of the Government of the Federal District (personal communication, Pablo Yanes, Dirección de Atención a los Pueblos Indígenas, June 2003). For background on the Assembly of Indian Migrants of Mexico City, see www.indigenasdf.org.mx. 5 See: ‘Indigenous peoples, democracy and political participation: Demographic distribution’. 2006. Consulted at: http://pdba.georgetown.edu/IndigenousPeoples/demographics.html.

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Rivera-Salgado 100 80 60 40 20 0

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

Non-indigenous

2002

2004

2006

2008

Indigenous

Figure 5.1 Poverty rates for indigenous and non-indigenous peoples in Mexico, 1992–2008 Source: World Bank (2011), Mexico Country Brief No. 7. 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1992

1994

1996

1998

Extreme poverty

2000

2002

2004

2006

2008

Moderate poverty

Figure 5.2 Poverty levels in Mexico, 1992–2008 Source: Mexico’s Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social, July 2008.

migrants, especially those without documentation, they also face entrenched racist attitudes and discrimination from other mestizo populations as well as from the dominant white society in North America. In the civic–political arena, most cross-border indigenous migrants are excluded from full citizenship rights in the places where they reside. For exam-

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ple, the US government resists implementing proposals to regularize the status of millions of workers. In addition, the Mexican government has yet to comply either with the 2000 constitutional reform that recognized migrants’ right to vote or with the 1996 San Andrés Accords on Indigenous Rights and Culture, which had promised a modest form of indigenous autonomy. In addition, lack of effective absentee ballot provisions also prevents many migrants within Mexico from voting. In the less tangible arena of the dominant national political culture, both indigenous peoples and migrants have long lacked full political rights and full representation in the larger national polity—a powerful historical inheritance that began to change substantially only by the mid-1990s as a consequence of the increasing massive mobilizations by indigenous peoples in the region. Indigenous peoples of the Americas bring with them a wide range of experiences with collective action for community development, social justice and political democratization, and these repertoires influence their decisions about who to work with and how to build their own organizations whatever they happen to be.

Indigenous Mexican Migration

The case of Mexico’s indigenous peoples is of primary importance to understand larger trends in the continent’s indigenous populations. In terms of the absolute sizes of national indigenous populations in Latin America, Mexico is followed by Peru, Guatemala, Bolivia and Ecuador. Mexico’s national indigenous population stands at 12 million, who speak 62 different languages and represent at least 11% of the Mexican population, according to the government’s relatively strict criterion of indigenous language use (though the most recent national census allows for ethnic self-identification for the first time). In other words, despite five centuries of pressure to assimilate, at least one in ten Mexicans reports to their national census that an indigenous language is spoken in their household.6 Historically, most indigenous migrants were from the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico (see Map 5.1) and went to large cities or agri-business jobs within Mexico, especially the northern states of Sinaloa and Baja California. Until the 1980s, their relative share of the overall cross-border

6 The National Indigenous Institute’s (INI) most recent estimates of the national indigenous population range between 10.3 and 12.7 million people, depending on the criteria.

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migrant ­population was relatively low. More recently, the indigenous proportion of the Mexican cross-border migrant population has grown significantly, most notably in both urban and rural California and increasingly in Texas, Florida, New York and Oregon. As the public debate within Mexico continues over the nation’s multi-ethnic character and indigenous rights, the growing presence of indigenous migrants in the US has also raised this issue within Mexican migrant communities. By 2010, an estimated 165,000 Mixtecs worked in agriculture in California’s Central Valley (Mines et al. 2010), and 75,000 to 80,000 Zapotecs had settled in Los Angeles, mainly in the central neighbourhoods of Koreatown, Pico Union and South Central (see Map 5.1) (Kissam 2011). The proportion of predominantly

Map 5.1

Migratory route for indigenous migrants from Oaxaca to California

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indigenous migrants from southern Mexico in California farm labour approximately tripled during the 2000s, from 6.1% (1993–1996) to 20% (2005–2010). The parallel process of long-term settlement and geographic concentration has led to the creation of a ‘critical mass’ of indigenous Oaxacans, especially in California. This has permitted the emergence of distinctive forms of social organization and cultural expression, especially among Mixtecs and Zapotecs. Their collective initiatives draw on ancestral cultural legacies to build new branches of their home communities. Their public expressions range from building civic–political organizations to the public celebration of religious holidays, basketball tournaments involving dozens of teams, the regular mass celebration of traditional Oaxacan music and dance festivals such as the Guelaguetza and the formation of village-based bands, some of which return to play in their hometown fiestas. Their cultural and political activities also include the revival of traditional weaving workshops, the publication of bi-national newspapers, indigenous- and Spanish-language radio programmes, and efforts to provide translation services and preserve indigenous languages, as well as the emergence of writers and visual artists with cross-border sensibilities. Indigenous migrants participate in a rich cultural exchange between the US and Mexico by bringing back to their communities of origin commodities,

Map 5.2

Major indigenous regions in Oaxaca

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styles and attitudes acquired in the north. Paradoxically, migrants’ insertion into the US labour market also reinforces what appears to be quite ‘traditional’ at home. For example, traditional fiestas, which are central to indigenous communities, have not only been perpetuated but also made more elaborate with funds from migrant earnings. It is not uncommon for migrant workers who have done relatively well in el Norte, to volunteer to serve as mayordomos (sponsors) of festivities celebrating their community’s patron saint. The expense for these festivities can run into thousands of dollars, all paid by relatives and extended families of the main mayordomo. Many migrants living permanently or working temporarily in the US return to Oaxaca during these celebrations, adding even more excitement to these events. A striking feature of indigenous Mexican migrant workers’ transnational activism is their active participation in the local political life of their communities even when they are not physically present. This political participation by migrants both strengthens and transforms their community’s cultural and social resources (such as traditional forms of self-government, including the cargo system, leadership accountability to popular assemblies and a strong corporate community political identity). The ideas and practices indigenous migrants bring back are in fact remoulded in the context of the home community, and ‘traditional’ community practices have been adapted to the transnational context. During my fieldwork in California, I met many indigenous migrants who have been summoned back to their communities to perform tasks they had been elected to carry out by the local community assembly. Often, these migrants have been absent from their communities for many years, working and living as far away as Oregon, California or New Jersey. Many Mexican indigenous communities with heavy out-migration flows, like the Mixteco and Zapoteco communities in Oaxaca, have decided to ­incorporate paisanos that have migrated into the local political process by redefining, through their community assemblies, their conceptualization of citizenship and community. According to their own redefinition of ‘citizenship’, migrants who relocate abroad do not sever their ties with the community and can continue to enjoy the same rights and obligations as members of the community who stay, as long as these migrants continue to serve the cargos the community assembly decides to confer on them. In this way, the definition of community has been expanded to incorporate the many members who reside abroad. People in indigenous villages in Oaxaca refer to their community as including the local population as well as the population dispersed along the migratory network that extends to northern Mexico and into the US. Thus, through the constant movement of migrants back and forth and the ­concurrent flow of information, money, goods and services, the communities of origin and

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their various ‘satellite communities’ in northern Mexico and the US have become so closely linked that in a sense they form a single community, a transnational community. The ability of indigenous communities to adapt their political and cultural capital to the transnational process of migration is closely related to the high degree of autonomy they have traditionally exercised in regulating their internal affairs. In this sense, autonomy understood as “the right to exercise collectively the free determination” (Regino 1996) of indigenous peoples is a well-established community practice. I could list many examples of how, in everyday practice, these indigenous communities have governed their communities and exercised authority through their own traditional mechanisms for a long time. For example, in Oaxaca, 418 of the 572 municipalities elect their local authorities via the community assembly, without the intervention of any political parties. This ability turns out to be of great importance, especially for those communities with a high rate of out-migration. In other words, migrant indigenous communities in Oaxaca have reversed the threat of depopulation—caused by extremely high rates of outmigration—by incorporating migrants into a source of synergy that assures their cultural, social and economic reproduction. Indigenous autonomy, understood as the mechanism to govern and exercise their authority, has been fundamental to their response to the migratory experience. Within this context, indigenous communities have reconceptualized and expanded the concept of ‘political community’, redefining this notion in a way that allows for the incorporation of the immense indigenous populations dispersed across many geographical borders. In the case of indigenous migrant organizations such as the FIOB, the Organización Regional de Oaxaca (ORO) and the Federación Oaxaqueña de Comunidades y Organizaciones Indígenas en California (FOCOICA) and other indigenous village-based migrant associations in California, it is apparent that the cultural base of these organizations is a recently emerged sense of panethnic identity—namely Mixtec and Zapotec ethnicity—that was formerly non-existent in Oaxaca. There is a strong relationship between the emergent ethnicities and the formation of migrant political organizations among indigenous migrant communities whose political participation and activism in California have been reinforcing their ethnic identity, holding the community together as it becomes ever more extended throughout both Mexico and the US. The active participation of indigenous migrants in the affairs of their communities of origin has strengthened their ethnic identity, which has allowed them, at the same time, to build bi-national political organizations (such as FIOB, ORO and FOCOICA) that further strengthen close ties with communities

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in Oaxaca. Many indigenous migrants not only continue to be consulted about political decisions in their communities while they live in the US, they also still maintain rights and obligations as members of their specific ‘political com­ munity’. In practice, indigenous migrants have the right to participate in the internal governing process of their home community. Indeed, as I have indicated, they are eligible to be considered for elected positions within the local governing structures. In this context, the transnational organizations of indigenous migrants perform two basic tasks. First, these organizations institutionalize political practices that allow for collective action in the different places where the migratory network is located (that is, the transnationalized space sometimes denominated ‘Oaxacalifornia’). Second, they institutionalize cultural exchange practices and the circulation of information that give meaning to a political community that transcends many geographical borders at the community, state and international levels. Despite the adverse conditions that indigenous migrants encounter, they have nevertheless managed to create a wide range of civic, social and political organizations that are notable for the diversity of their strategies and goals. Within this indigenous migrant civil society, two main kinds of organizations stand out. The first includes the large number of hometown associations, known in Spanish as organizaciones de pueblo, clubes de oriundos or clubes sociales comunitarios. They are composed of migrants from specific communities who come together mainly to support their community of origin, most notably by raising funds for local public works such as road or bridge building, water systems, electrification or public spaces such as town squares, sports fields, schools, churches or community halls. The second main kind of indigenous migrant association includes coalitionbuilding projects that draw on hometown, ‘translocal’ ties but bring people together from a broader, regional ethno-geographic sphere. The most consolidated coalitions include the FIOB, the ORO, the Union of Highland Communities of Oaxaca (UCSO), the Coalition of Indigenous Communities of Oaxaca (COCIO), the International Indigenous Network of Oaxaca (RIIO) and the recently formed FOCOICA, whose affiliates include most Oaxacan organizations in that state. Both kinds of organizations have created spaces within which indigenous migrants can engage in collective action and cultural sustenance. These organizations open up spaces within which social identities are created and recreated through the institutionalization of collective practices in which migrants are recognized as Oaxacans and as indigenous people. That is, these diverse collective practices generate discourses that recognize their specific

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cultural, social and political identities. The real and imagined space in which they develop these practices is called ‘Oaxacalifornia’, a transnationalized space in which migrants bring together their lives in California with their communities of origin more than 2,500 miles away.7

Equity and Fairness for Indigenous Migrant Communities in Oaxaca

El Derecho a No Migrar (The Right to Stay Home) The programme called El Derecho a No Migrar (‘The Right to Stay Home’) was conceived by indigenous migrants working with the FIOB, which was founded 20 years ago by Mixtec and Zapotec migrants residing in California. The main idea emerged during their bi-national meeting that took place in June 2008 in the Mixtec city of Juxtlahuaca, Oaxaca. The main objective of this initiative, implemented by a consortium of two indigenous migrant organizations (FIOB and Desarrollo Binacional Integral Indígena Asociación Civil (DBIIAC)), is to empower indigenous migrant communities to make migration a last-resort option for survival, and not the only option available to them, as is currently the case in their communities of origin in rural Oaxaca. It is worth describing briefly the two organizations which implemented this initiative, since they provide a clear example of unique transnational political actors. The DBIIAC is a non-for-profit association incorporated under Mexican law and based in the city of Juxtlahuaca in the heart of the Mixteca region in Oaxaca. It has been in operation since 2004. Its main objectives are to contribute to the integral development of indigenous communities in Oaxaca by supporting economic develop­ment as well as cultural and social initiatives. In addition, DBIIAC advocates on behalf of indigenous communities’ human and labour rights. The FIOB was established in 1991 in Los Angeles as a membership organization by bringing together a coalition of indigenous migrant organizations and communities. FIOB is a bi-national political organization working to advance the human, labour and civil rights of indigenous peoples in Mexico and the US. There are currently around 5,000 members and offices exist in Oaxaca, California and Tijuana. The FOIB’s mission is to contribute to the development and self-determination of their migrant and non-migrant indigenous communities, as well as to work for the defence of their human rights, 7 The term ‘Oaxacalifornia’ was coined in the seminal article by Michael Kearney & Carole Nagen­gast (1989), to refer to the de-territorialized community from which new forms of organization and political expression emerged.

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with promotion of justice and gender equality at the bi-national level. Their strategic plan calls for developing work in three interconnected work areas at the bi-national level:

• • •

To maintain the cultural, social and linguistic integrity of the indigenous communities wherever they reside To promote the economic, social and cultural development of the Oaxacan indigenous communities To protect and defend the human, labour and civil rights of migrant indigenous communities FIOB’s bi-national leadership is provided by a central coordinating committee composed of six members, with equal representation from the three regions where FIOB organizes. The bi-national coordination is a rotating office and is currently based in Los Angeles, California. The bi-national leadership is elected every three years during a membership congress. They celebrated their Seventh Congress in October 2011; therefore, the current bi-national coordinating committee will be in office from June 2011 through June 2013. The principal objective of the El Derecho a No Migrar project is to empower indigenous migrant communities to make migration a last-resort option for

Photo 5.2 Debating the Right not to Migrate Initiative in Juxtlahuaca [© David Bacon]

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survival, and not the only option available to them as is currently the case in the communities of origin in rural Oaxaca. The basic approach is the creation of economic opportunities and the expansion of rights for indigenous migrant communities through a process initiated from below that ultimately benefits all individuals equally and builds on the participation of each of them. Ultimately, as stated in the UN Human Development Report, “the process of development can expand human capabilities by expanding the choices that people have to live full and creative lives” (UNDP 2004: 127). The El Derecho a No Migrar project builds on this idea of expansion of opportunities and is anchored on a grassroots approach, which has as its basic strategy the creation of economic alternatives for indigenous migrant communities in Oaxaca. This approach also seeks to increase its organizational capacity and leadership capabilities in the Mixteca region in Oaxaca to make FIOBA and DBIIAC effective vehicles for social change (see Photo 5.2 above) (Sen 1999). The understanding among indigenous migrants is that in order to live full and rewarding lives people have to organize and take action to change the structures that oppress them. Therefore, with this strategy, they seek to expand the rights and capabilities of indigenous communities by creating economic opportunities in a more systematic way. Economic Opportunities and Sustainable Development in Oaxaca The goal in this project is to build on FIOB’s work during the last ten years supporting income-generating activities and food production projects for selfconsumption and the local market for a network of 25 communities that expands throughout the Mixteca Baja corridor—from Huajuapan de Leon to Silacayaopan and Juxtlahuaca. The main projects FIOB is implementing in these communities in Oaxaca are: (1) agricultural projects that have an immediate positive impact in the families’ economy and well-being such as the production of food for household consumption (promoting healthy eating habits and consumption of diverse healthy foods) and for the local market (collective seta-mushroom plants, family and community-based vegetable production enterprises, and organic fertilizer production); and (2) micro-enterprises such as textile and palm-weaving cooperatives (see Photo 5.3). The main objective they seek to reach is to consolidate the organizational aspect of the economic opportunities and sustainable development area of their work. During the first phase they will focus at the local level, working very closely with community assemblies and project participants to ensure that they have the vision, organizational capacity, skills and information they need

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Photo 5.3 Members of Triqui weavers cooperative [© David Bacon]

to make their projects successful. In a second phase of this work they will move to the regional level and create a regional council composed of leaders from the communities, projects and cooperatives involved in economic ­development work. They will organize yearly regional assemblies where communities can showcase their products and members can discuss organizational issues and challenges across projects and develop a work plan with FIOB and DBIIAC. In a third phase they will articulate the transnational relation between production in Oaxaca and migrant communities in California as potential markets and sources of funding via remittances and investment strategies. The long-term vision is to use this programme as a model for activities with other regions in Oaxaca and Mexico. This programme can be scaled up to develop a successful state and national economic development programme in communities with a high degree of international migration. They envision a network of grassroots organizations that have the capacity and alliances to build a movement and ultimately shift the balance in favour of indigenous and rural communities to increase their leverage against poverty and lack of economic opportunities in their home communities in rural Mexico.

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Conclusion It is hoped that the experience of the El Derecho a No Migrar initiative will encourage further collaborative initiatives among indigenous migrants, researchers and development agencies to help fill the many gaps that remain, as well as among other social and civic actors concerned with building sustainable economic options for indigenous peoples across multiple cultural divides. This will require rethinking Mexican migration in terms of the diversity of different ethnic, gender and regional experiences. This recognition has very practical implications. First, it can help to inform potential strategies through which indigenous migrants can bolster their own capacity for self-representation. Second, this recognition of diversity is crucial for broadening and deepening coalitions with other social actors, both in the US and in Mexico. In summary, indigenous Mexican migrants’ organizational initiatives and rich collective cultural practices open a window on their efforts to build new lives both in Mexico and in the US while remaining who they are and remembering where they come from. This is the challenge they face. References Borja-Vega, C., T. Lunde & V. García-Moreno (2007), Economic opportunities for indigenous peoples in Latin America. Washington, DC: World Bank. CONEVAL (2009), Poverty Report. Mexico: Consejo Nacional de Evaluación de la Política de Desarrollo Social (CONEVAL), July 18, 2009. Fox, J. (1992), The politics of food in Mexico. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Garcia-Moreno, V.A. & H.A. Patrinos (2011). Indigenous peoples and poverty in Mexico. Washington, DC: World Bank, Mexico Country Brief No. 7. Hall, G. & H.A. Patrinos, eds (2006), Indigenous peoples, poverty and human development in Latin America. London: Palgrave MacMillan. Kearney, M. & C. Nagengast (1989), Anthropological perspectives on transnational communities in rural California. Davis: Working Group on Farm Labor and Rural Poverty, California Institute for Rural Studies. Kissam, E. (2011), Population estimates for indigenous women in Los Angeles County: A methodological note, November 2011. Levy, S. (2006), Progress against poverty. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution. Mines, R. et al. (2010), California Indigenous Farmworkers. http://www.indigenousfarm workers.org/IFS%20Full%20Report%20_Jan2010.pdf.

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Regino, A. (1996), ‘La autonomía una forma concreta del derecho a la libre determinación y sus alcances.’ Paper presented at the first Foro Indígena Nacional celebrated during January 3–8, 1996, San Cristobal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico. Sen, A. (1999), Development as freedom. New York: Anchor Books. UNDP (2004), Human Development Report 2004: Cultural liberty in today’s diverse world. New York: United Nations Development Programme. World Bank (2004), Poverty in Mexico: An assessment of conditions, trends and government strategy. Washington, DC: World Bank, Report No. 28612-ME, June 2004.

chapter 6

Towards a Territorial, Multi-Actor and Multi-Level Approach for Sustainable Development Cooperation and Social Responsibility Policies Response to Gaspar Rivera-Salgado Patricia Almeida Ashley1 Abstract In his paper ‘The Right to Stay Home: Equity and the struggle of migrant indigenous peoples’, Rivera-Salgado writes about the strategies adopted by Mexican indigenous communities to sustain their cultural identity and bonds among those who migrated and those who stayed. It presents a typical example of the importance of networkterritories in the current globalized world. Based on the concepts of multi-territoriality and intercultural dialogue of knowledge, I argue that development approaches that focus on communities, organizations and companies as separate entities are not sufficient to meet sustainable development goals. I propose that soft regulations on social responsibility and sustainability need to be complemented by coherent legislation for sustainability, both in zone-territories and network-territories. Finally, I propose an analytical meta-model for the design of policies and strategies for sustainable development cooperation, which combines public, private and civil society agents.



Initial Remarks on Rivera-Salgado’s Paper on Migrant Indigenous People

Rivera-Salgado’s paper presents the case of indigenous people from Mexico migrating within their national territory and abroad, mainly to California in the US. He describes how migrant grassroots organizations, based in both the US and Mexico, have started a project called ‘The Right To Stay Home’. This is an initiative to empower indigenous migrant communities in their homelands, to ensure that migration is no longer the only option available. The project is 1 Eighth holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2009–2011. This paper was supported by Koen Kusters (Wereld in Woorden).

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an autonomous civil society initiative, initiated by members of indigenous communities in different zone-territories. The case underlines that development, in the contemporary globalized world, can no longer be viewed as a local process. Both zone-territories and network-territories are equally important to understanding and promoting sustainable development. Porto-Gonçalves (2011) explains that ‘territory’ refers to spaces appropriated by individuals and social groups. Multi-territoriality in social phenomena is defined by Haesbaert (2008, 2011) as simultaneous and integrated layers of both network- and zone-territories. It means that layers of zone-territories and network-territories are dynamically combined. The concept of multi-­territoriality helps one to understand how the members of an indigenous community who are located in different zone-territories maintain their cultural identity and develop strategies for community development, like the case presented by Rivera-Salgado. The indigenous people described by Rivera-Salgado created their own network-territories in multilayer patterns and flows of norms, values, practices, goods and services. The building of such a network-territory is facilitated by modern information and communication technology (ICT), which enables people to communicate over large distances. Time and space are increasingly interwoven and the classical understanding of territories as continuous zones (e.g. national territories) is no longer sufficient to explain communities and cultures. The people who started ‘The Right To Stay Home’ project are essentially acting as entrepreneurs for the development of their villages in Mexico and for the preservation of their cultural identity. In this paper, I argue that such entrepreneurship should not only be supported by the application of soft regulations on social responsibility and sustainability but also by hard regulation to align policies from public, private and civil society agents. Sustainable development requires the synergic complementation of zone-territories and network-territories policies and legislation, aimed at promoting multi-actor and multi-level social responsibility practices.

Towards a Territorial, Multi-Actor and Multi-Level Approach to Social Responsibility and Sustainable Development

Globalization, Knowledge and ICT Globalization, as a cultural phenomenon, means that cultural identities become dynamic and interwoven. This is influenced by four important factors. Firstly, there is the emergence of global network-territories of businesses,

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which cross cultures in zone-territories (countries, regions, states and cities). Secondly, international exchange of students, educators and policy agents in education institutions is leading to a dialogue of knowledge and cultures as part of the curricula in secondary, vocational and higher education. This results in a plurality of identities and an intercultural dialogue of knowledge (Santos 2003; Díaz Polanco 2004; Porto-Gonçalves 2001, 2011). Thirdly, soft and hard regulations as part of global anti-corruption policies are implemented at international, national and sectoral levels, and help to promote higher ethical standards, more transparency and better governance in public and private organizations. Finally, there is the increased use of information and communication technology (ICT), providing updated flows of information and an exchange of knowledge. ICT is affecting and breaking apart traditional ways of education, allowing distant learning by communities and individuals. Countries that face the challenge of large zone-territories with heterogeneous and unequal social and economic standards can use ICT to develop both network- and zone-territories. In development cooperation, ICT facilitates information exchange among stakeholders in different territories, allowing better governance using participative processes in designing, implementing and evaluating programmes. Thus, ICT can support multi-territorial policies by bringing transparency, information inclusion and integration of initiatives for development cooperation from public, private and civil society spheres. This can involve agents from both different zone-territories (as is the case of international cooperation between countries) and network-territories (as is the case of global, national, regional and local supply chains). Global Guidance Tools for Social Responsibility In the last ten years, human rights have been recognized as a core element of the corporate social responsibility (CSR) concept and global frameworks for soft regulation of global business activities. The following three recent documents function as social responsibility global guidance tools, endorsing human rights as part of CSR: (1) the guiding principles on business and human rights for implementing the United Nations’ ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework (UN 2011); (2) the ISO 26000:2010 standard guidance on social responsibility (ISO 2010); and (3) the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (OECD 2011). These guidelines and principles refer to international conventions on human rights signed by country members of the United Nations. The design of these ‘global tools’ went through a long process of consultation and dialogue with different stakeholder representatives from a wide number of countries and cultures. They can be taken as expressions of the current state of

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global consensus on the content of business and organizational social responsibility. They should be considered a form of ‘soft regulation’, as the guidelines and principles cannot be enforced. Concerning human rights of indigenous people and in reference to the United Nations conventions on human rights, I quote from OECD (2011: 30): Enterprises can have an impact on virtually the entire spectrum of internationally recognised human rights. In practice, some human rights may be at greater risk than others in particular industries or contexts, and therefore will be the focus of heightened attention. . . . For instance, enterprises should respect the human rights of individuals belonging to specific groups or populations that require particular attention, where they may have adverse human rights impacts on them. In this connection, United Nations instruments have elaborated further on the rights of indigenous peoples; persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities; women; children; persons with disabilities; and migrant workers and their families. This quotation illustrates that even soft regulations, such as the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises, recognize the issue of human rights of specific groups and indigenous peoples as a theme for policies on corporate social responsibility. However, we can wonder whether soft regulation is enough for dealing with these issues, especially when country boundaries and zone-territories bring incoherent national or regional legislation when they are compared with the divergent cultural stage found in the content of soft regulations. During Rio+20, in June 2012, the World Congress on Justice, Governance and Legislation for Environmental Sustainability, with the support of the United Nations, brought together Chief Justices, Heads of Jurisdiction, Attorneys General, Auditors General, Chief Prosecutors and other high-ranking representatives of the judicial, legal and auditing professions from different parts of the world. The congress generated a final declaration (UNEP 2012: 3) in which it is stated that, in addition to soft regulation, a supporting legal and institutional framework is necessary to protect human rights and environmental justice: Environmental sustainability can only be achieved if there exist effective legal regimes, coupled with effective implementation and accessible legal procedures, including on locus standi and collective access to justice, and a supporting legal and institutional framework and applicable

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principles from all world legal traditions. Justice, including participatory decision-making and the protection of vulnerable groups from disproportionate negative environmental impacts, must be seen as an intrinsic element of environmental sustainability. Only through the active engagement of all parts of society, especially national and sub-national institutions and officials responsible for addressing justice, governance and law issues, including judges, prosecutors, auditing institutions and other key functionaries, can meaningful progress be achieved that is sustained and responsive to the needs of the peoples of the world and protective of human rights. In the next section, I present the Master Model of social responsibility (Ashley 2012) as a multi-actor, multi-level and multi-territorial framework for strategic design and evaluation of social responsibility studies and policies aimed at development goals. An initial version of the Master Model (Ashley 2011) was developed during my nomination period of the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity at the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam.

The Master Model

Social responsibility studies and policies usually have an exclusive focus on the individual and organizational sphere of corporate actors. The Master Model, however, reframes social respon­sibility, making it a concept that applies not just to individual companies or organizations, but to society as a whole. The model connects different policies on social responsibility, recognizing the ISO 26000:2010 standard guidance for defining principles and themes of social responsibility as a reference for policy contents (Figure 6.1). The model aims to contribute to greater policy coherence and integration among different actors from public, private and civil society spheres in different territories, recognizing the United Nations ‘Protect, Respect and Remedy’ framework for Business and Human Rights as a case of multi-actor approach to social responsibility policies (Figure 6.2). The model presents three levels of ethical challenges for any one of the themes of social responsibility (Figure 6.3): (1) legal compliance; (2) the adoption of soft regulations and voluntary initiatives according to specific cultures and territories; and (3) the aspiration for ethical ideals beyond current patterns of cultures and territories. Current CSR tools are based on the assumption that soft regulation promotes socially responsible entrepreneurship and that

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Figure 6.1 Principles and themes of social responsibility, according to ISO 26000:2010

Figure 6.2 Multiple territories and actors’ duties on social responsibility themes

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Figure 6.3 Levels of ethical challenges applied to social responsibility themes, multiple territories and actors’ duties

entrepreneurs’ decisions should be free of constraints from legislation concerning social responsibility and sustainability. In line with this, a plethora of principles, protocols and guidelines has emerged, which together constitute a soft law framework that is almost entirely geared to companies. However, in different territories we find different legislation, and these laws do not necessarily consider social responsibility and sustainable development as principles, guidelines or goals. Some questions the Master Model proposes for policy-making and research programmes are the following: Can entrepreneurship become sustainable entrepreneurship if based only on values and beliefs? What are the limits and constraints acting on entrepreneurs to ensure they become legally compliant and act beyond legal compliance in their social responsibility policies? How

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outdated are legal frameworks in specific territories in relation to ethical standards in social responsibility towards development and equity goals? How viable or feasible is the transference of ethical challenges from one territorial or institutional scope to another, either from local to national and international or vice-versa? How can hard and soft regulations in local, national and international zone-territories and network-territories be combined to integrate social responsibility, development and equity? What innovative legal frameworks and soft regulations can become benchmarks for further adaptation and implementation in different cultures and institutional fields? What policies are considered for capacity-building related to the social, economic, political and environmental conditions in a specific territorial level for legal compliance? What content and methods in capacity-building programmes are needed to further evolve ethical issues related to social responsibility in different institutional contexts? The model proposes four phases in the development of a framework for multi-level governance of multi-actor social responsibility for sustainable development goals (Figure 6.4). The first phase is the political commitment to policies on social responsibility. The second phase would imply an assessment of current values and policies concerning standards of social responsibility for sustainable development goals in specific territories and how they align. In the third phase, present laws, regulations, conventions, norms and standards would need to be revised according to social expectations and ethical ideals. The last phase would be the innovation of values and policies. These four phases are expected to last, depending on the territorial scope, from around eight to more than twenty years. Among the basic requirements are the possibility for social dialogue, democratic multi-level governance and political commitment towards social and economic inclusion and environmental protection for development and equity goals. The combined Master Model is presented in Figure 6.5. It includes United Nations development frameworks to be considered for the purposes of social responsibility policies. In synthesis, the Master Model stresses relevant and complementary aspects in the strategic design of social responsibility studies and policies aimed at sustainable development goals for specific territories, which are the following: soft regulation, legislation and multi-actor and multilevel governance and cooperation in policies and practices of social responsibility principles and themes.

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Figure 6.4 Four phases of multilevel governance of values and policies applied to social responsibility themes, multiple territories and actors’ duties



Brazilian Cases of a Territorial, Multi-Actor and Multi-Level Approach to Sustainable Development of Communities

The Master Model can be used as a framework to analyze initiatives and guide policy makers on how to engage a multiplicity of initiatives on different themes of social responsibility in place in specific territories. I present two territorial cases to illustrate recent public policies for multi-actor and multi-level approaches aimed at sustainable development of communities on local and regional scales or territorial levels. The UPP Social Programme in Rio de Janeiro City is an empirical case of a multi-actor, multi-level approach to social responsibility and development on a local territorial scale. The programme not only supports socially responsible entrepreneurship in pacified favelas,2 but combines this with development 2 Favelas is a Brazilian Portuguese word for slums or shanty towns.

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Figure 6.5 The Master Model of social responsibility aimed at development goals

targets for universal access to safe housing, water and sanitation, garbage collection, initiatives of financial inclusion and social assistance programmes, as well as the promotion of the cultural heritage of communities. The UPP Social Programme includes a specific participatory and multi-level governance approach. It brings together favela residents, business associations (e.g. Firjan and SESI),3 the local municipality, state and federal government bodies, universities and civil society organizations in order to implement so-called ‘Integrated Actions’ within the favela (Henriques 2012). ICT plays a crucial role in the implementation of the UPP programme by facilitating the exchange of information.4 This is an example of a territorial approach adopting multi-level and multi-actor governance for policy integration and coherence and promoting partnership initiatives among government agencies, private actors and civil society. Also, it adopts both the zone- and the network-territorial approach to approximate and combine multi-actors’ programmes and services, r­ espectively: 3 Firjan is the Federation of Industry of Rio de Janeiro and SESI is the social service unit of industry, as part of Firjan. 4 The UPP Social Program is run by the Pereira Passos Institute for Urban Planning, in the Prefecture of Rio de Janeiro City. See more of the use of ICT in territorial management of UPP Social Program at http://www.uppsocial.org.

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from public bodies, private and civil society organizations originally situated or servicing within or around the boundaries of the favela (e.g. schools, health units, electricity service and community-based associations); and those which are run or are initiated elsewhere in Brazil or abroad but aimed at complementary goals or projects in relation to the UPP Social Programme (e.g. the UN-Habitat Programme, extension or research programmes in universities, the Social Service of the National Confederation of Industry). Another example of a territorial approach to public policies adopted by the federal government is the Brazilian National Policy for Sustainable Development of Traditional Peoples and Communities (PNPCT), established by Federal Decree no. 60405 on 7 February 2007. The main objective of the PNPCT is to promote sustainable development of traditional peoples and communities, with emphasis on the recognition and strengthening of their territorial, social, environmental, economic and cultural rights, with respect and appreciation for their identity, their forms of organization and their institutions. So-called ‘Sustainable Development Plans of Peoples and Traditional Communities’ are designed to support and guide the implementation of the PNPCT. They consist of a set of actions for the short, medium and long term and their implementation takes place through forums specially created for this purpose. A key characteristic of the PNPCT is equity in the participation of representatives of government agencies and traditional peoples and communities. Again, it connects zone-territories with network-territories and, again, it goes beyond agency or sector-specific social responsibility frameworks. Conclusion Rivera-Salgado describes how indigenous people living abroad are acting as entrepreneurs for the development of their communities back in Mexico and for the preservation of their cultural identity. Their ‘Right To Stay Home’ project is an initiative to support community development in the homeland zoneterritory. This is a typical example of a network-territory that transcends zone-territories. Taking the Master Model as a strategic framework for social responsibility policies aimed at development goals, in support of such initiatives presented by Rivera-Salgado—which are based mostly on voluntarism and autonomous sphere of communities—I call for alignment of complementary policies from 5 This decree is available online at https://www.planalto.gov.br/ccivil_03/_ato2007-2010/2007/ decreto/d6040.htm.

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public, private and civil society agents interacting with communities. This implies a reframing of the concept of socially responsible entrepreneurship: the focus should no longer be solely on the voluntarism of the individual and organizational spheres, but on conceiving social responsibility as an embedded value in both culture and economy and, as such, requiring complementary multi-actor, multi-level and multi-territorial policies. Community involvement and development as well as human rights are defined as social responsibility themes according to ISO 26000:2010 and recognized in the Master Model. Thus, complementary multi-actor policies on these themes for indigenous peoples could further promote the preservation of their cultural identity. As an illustration of a public policy aimed at the protection of indigenous lands and isolated indigenous peoples to ensure their cultural survival, I would like to mention the ‘Guiding Axis III: Achieve universal rights in a context of inequality’ of the Brazilian National Programme for Human Rights (PNDH-3), which was established by Federal Decree no. 7037 on 21 December 2009. There is a specific policy section dedicated to dealing with structural inequality in Brazil.6 In this policy, the second strategic objective is the maintenance and rescue of conditions for the reproduction of indigenous peoples, thus ensuring their livelihoods. Among the programmatic actions in this strategy, there is the protection of indigenous lands and isolated indigenous peoples to ensure their cultural survival. Here, the Brazilian and Mexican agencies supporting indigenous peoples can learn from each other. In synthesis, the Master Model, once it conceives the cooperation or collaboration among actors for principles and themes of social responsibility as shared values in economy and culture, can be compared to the mathematics’ operations of addition and multiplication. The alternative and most currently published approach of socially responsible entrepreneurship can be compared to the mathematics’ operations of subtraction and division, when it is solely based on voluntarism and soft regulation and practised in institutional contexts which label it as a rare or sporadic practice or a fragmented or less valued policy in economy and culture. References Ashley, P.A. (2011), The Master Model on multi-actor and multilevel social responsibilities: A conceptual framework for policies and governance on stakeholders’ social responsibilities. ISS Working Paper Series no. 506. The Hague: ISS/EUR. 6 Policy 9: Tackling structural inequalities.

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——— (2012), The Master Model © on multi-actor, multilevel and territorial social responsibility: A mapping tool for social responsibility, development and equity policies and studies. In: P.A. Ashley & D. Crowther, ed., Territories of social responsibility: Opening research and policy agendas. Surrey: Gower Publishing Ltd. Díaz Polanco, H. (2004), El Canon Snorri. México DF: UACM. Haesbaert, R. (2008), Território e Multiterritorialidade: Um debate. GEOgraphia 17: 19–45. ——— (2011), O Mito da Desterritorialização: Do “fim dos territories” à multiterritorialidade (6th edition). Rio de Janeiro: Bertrand Brasil. Henriques, R. (2012), Integrated social and urban policies in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro: The experience of UPP Social Program. in: P.A. Ashley & D. Crowther, ed., Territories of social responsibility: Opening research and policy agendas. Surrey: Gower Publishing Ltd. ISO (2010), International Standard ISO 26000:2010 guidance on social responsibility. Geneva: International Organization for Standardization. OECD (2011), OECD Guidelines for multinational enterprises: Recommendations for responsible business conduct in a global context. Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation Development. Available at www.oecd.org/daf/investment/guidelines. Porto-Conçalves, C.W. (2001), Geografias: Movimientos sociales, nuevas territorialidades y sustentabilidad. México, D.F: Siglo XXI, 2001, v. 1. ——— (2011), A Globalização da Natureza e a Natureza da Globalização. 2ª. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, v. 01. Santos, Boaventura de Sousa (2003), Reconhecer para libertar. Os caminhos do cosmopolitismo multicultural. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira. UN (2011), Guiding principles on business and human rights: Implementing the United Nations “Protect, Respect and Remedy” framework. New York and Geneva: United Nations, Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner. UNEP (2012), Rio+20 Declaration on justice, governance and law for environmental sustainability. New York: United Nations Environmental Programme. Available at www.unep.org.

chapter 7

Gender Equality and Muslim Women: Negotiating Expanded Rights in Muslim Majority and Immigrant Contexts Rema Hammami1 Abstract This paper addresses contemporary debates about Muslim women’s rights and equality through re-visiting a fundamental debate in Western feminism: the conundrum of equality versus difference. At the end of the twentieth century, Muslim women’s inequality and lack of rights came to play an active role in the rhetoric and politics of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’. In both Muslim majority and minority contexts, dominant public discourse increasingly posed gender equality and Muslim identity as mutually exclusive and conflicting choices for women and society at large. This problematic view reflects a politics of gender where Muslim women’s rights have become a standin for various imperial, national and identitarian agendas that in the process ignores and silences the desires and needs of the very women it claims to represent. This paper attempts to cast light on the different nature these debates take when they are re-positioned among the women concerned—women in Muslim majority and minority contexts seeking a more just gender order within their societies and communities. Rather than seeing contemporary debates around gender equality among women in Muslim majority and minority contexts as incommensurable with those of their Western counterparts, this paper seeks to address how desires for equality with recognition of difference is a basic dilemma shared by women in any context seeking a more just gender order.

Introduction At the end of the twentieth century, Muslim women’s lack of rights and inequality came to play an active role in the rhetoric and politics of the ‘Clash of Civilizations’. Longstanding assumptions about Islam and women (or how women’s inequality is foundational to Islamic culture and religion) became 1 Fourth holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2005–2006.

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wedded in alarming ways to intense ideological conflicts and debates that had immediate political implications in the real world. In foreign policy, the Bush administration in the US used the ‘liberation’ of Afghani women from the oppressive Islam of the Taliban in their arsenal of justifications for invasion and regime change (Abu-Lughod 2002; Kandiyoti 2007, 2011). Across Europe, pitched battles broke out over the right of Muslim women to wear Islamic dress in public (in what became known as the ‘burqa wars’). Propelled by right-wing political movements, these divisive debates thrust the issue of Muslim women’s oppression within immigrant communities onto national agendas, forcing governments to create commissions and legislation to grapple with everything from Muslim women’s ‘forced marriage’ to their right to wear headscarves in public schools (Dustin 2006; Najmabadi 2006; Scott 2007; Gole & Billaud 2012). And in the contemporary Middle East, the rights of Muslim women have also been thrust onto national agendas and placed at the centre of polarized debates, most recently in the democratic transitions taking place in Egypt and Tunisia where their rights have become the terrain on which political forces battle out their contending ideological visions of their society and polity’s future (Elsadda 2011; FIDH 2011; Atassi 2012; ElKouny 2012). What is common to all these conflicts in which Muslim women’s rights or inequality have been invoked (be it in the ‘war on terror’, in Europe or in the Muslim majority contexts of Tunisia and Egypt) is that they are not fundamentally about the very women they claim to be concerned with. Instead, a range of highly charged conflicts and agendas has been played out using ‘Muslim women’ as their stand-in. In the ‘war on terror’, women’s rights and equality have been made a measuring stick in the politics of demarcating the civilized ‘us’ from the barbaric ‘them’, thus being a means to claim a ‘just war’ (regardless of the use of torture and forced rendition). In Europe, the real nature of the debate has been immigration, cultural integration and legacies of racism (Scott 2007; Parvez 2011). In relation to the Arab Spring, women’s rights and equality have been the stand-in for struggles over religious versus secular ideologies and their role in modern democratic governance (Moustafa & Quraishi-Landes 2012). In all three cases, Muslim women have been the terrain on which wider forms of identity politics have been fought. In the ‘war on terror’, they were used to express the civilizational identity of the West. In the ‘burqa wars’, rather than being about rights and equality for Muslim women immigrants, more profoundly they were used to debate what it means to be French or European and how immigration policy should relate to issues of national identity. In Egypt and Tunisia, whether women should have rights and what rights they should have is fundamentally a debate about the role of Shari’a in national identity: To what extent does religion as a source of identity

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need to be encoded in the laws and policies of the modern state and society (Kandioyti 2011a)? But where does equality enter into these debates? The calls for Muslim women’s integration in European cultural contexts encompass a number of arguments about their equality and inequality. On the one hand, they are seen as inhabiting an Islamic sub-culture that is founded on their innate inequality with Muslim men. And on the other hand, their membership in their religioethnic communities makes impossible their ability to enjoy the gender equality that accrues to women of the dominant culture, be it French, Danish or Dutch. Thus, in relation to these polarized debates in the European context, Muslim women are offered an either/or proposition: either to remain in inequality within their religion and community or to achieve full equality by leaving them behind and integrating into the dominant culture. The logic of these choices is that gender equality and cultural difference are made mutually exclusive categories. Only by assimilation (i.e. erasing their cultural difference) can Muslim women attain gender equality as it is provided by the dominant culture. The dominant debates in contemporary Egypt and to a lesser extent Tunisia go in the opposite direction but also tend to provide women with an either/ or proposition based on the equality/difference dualism. In the discourse of religious conservatives and dominant Islamist groups, the choice offered to women is this: either remain attached to your religious heritage and accept that men and women are fundamentally different and therefore unequal or forsake your religious identity (our collective difference) for gender equality (Abu-Odeh 2004; FIDH 2011; Kandiyoti 2011b; Mir-Hosseini 2011; Tadros 2011a). In other words, we once again have gender equality and cultural difference being made mutually exclusive categories, where Islamic conservatives and Islamist political movements assert that women cannot lay claim to Islamic identity and gender equality at the same time. In this paper, I want to show how the politics of gender vis-à-vis Muslim women—or “processes of appropriation, contestation and re-interpretation of positions on gender relations and rights by state, non-state and global actors” (Kandiyoti 2011a)—has foreclosed spaces for them to voice their own range of desires for gender equality. Rather than assuming—as these dominant debates do—that gender equality is an inherent good (or bad) aspiration for Muslim women, I aim to show that the contradictions and dilemmas inherent in the ‘equality feminism’ that marked the experience of feminist movements in the North America and Europe a generation ago remain salient today for Muslim women trying to negotiate an expansion of their rights across varying contexts. I consciously focus on the concept of equality (versus equity), because it has been the foundational (albeit often problematic) principle for women’s

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rights struggles historically and globally. The equality principle is the legal basis for the United Nations’ most powerful convention on gender rights. The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) of 1979 suggests the degree to which the concept of equality remains the central and normative term for women’s rights struggles in the contemporary world. In contrast, while the notion of gender ‘equity’ has increasingly taken hold in the language of the development industry since the 1990s, it has been criticized for de-politicizing women’s rights agendas because it is based on subjective notions of fairness between the sexes rather than on legal principles of non-discrimination and substantive equality (or equality of outcomes).2 I end the paper with a personal example of debates around gender equality among women in a Muslim majority context when there is a space free from the adverse effects of the ‘politics of gender’: my Gender Studies classroom in the occupied West Bank. Rather than being a utopian case, I offer the example as exemplary of the myriad though invisible “third spaces” (Soja 1996) throughout the region and across Muslim minority contexts in which women grapple with the promise and problems inherent in gender equality as a basis for a more just gender order.

Sameness versus Difference

Over thirty years ago, the dilemmas and contradictions of gender equality became a core debate within Western feminism. The principle of demanding full equality between the sexes that had guided feminist activism since the 1960s became in the 1980s the centre of conflict over the very meaning of feminism itself, in what is now known as the equality/difference debates (Phillips 1987, 1999, 2000; Fraser 1998; Scott and Keates 1999). Back then, it was argued that the liberal feminist model of gender equality actually rested on a number of crucial exclusions and made invisible the variegated needs and circumstances of women in relation to men and between women of different ethnicities and classes. The outcome of campaigns for gender-equal legislation and access across the US and Europe had by the 1980s achieved much 2 For a discussion of this position, see International Women’s Rights Action Watch, Equity or Equality for Women? Understanding CEDAW’s Equality Principles. IWRAW Occasional Paper Series, No. 14 (2009). For a counter-view, see Hazel Reeves & Sally Baden, Gender and Development: Concepts and Definitions. BRIDGE Development and Gender Report (#55) (2000).

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in increasing women’s access and expanding their rights: to the professional workplace, to property and over their bodies, as well as increasing access to political office and making strides towards lowering gender-based wage gaps. But particularly the entry of women into professional employment and public life had been won at the cost of denying the existence of women’s double burden (working women’s continued responsibility for domestic and caregiving work). The actual choices for women within the gender-equality model were either to be the ever-exhausted super-woman (who worked as well as a man but then went home to become the perfect wife and mother) or to forsake family life altogether in order to fully concentrate on their career as a man could. While in Europe provisions of the welfare state to some extent mitigated these conflicts for middle-class women, in North America they were particularly acute, leading some of the icons of the movement to repudiate the equality paradigm.3 For many feminists the conclusion was that the gender-equality model was based on a problematic calculation of the sameness of women and men. The principle that women have the same capacities as men, and should therefore have the same rights and opportunities as them, crucially overlooked where women were different from men, most critically in the spheres of biological and social reproduction. Thus, women, in order to achieve equality, were forced to make blind these differences and act as if they did not exist. But the sameness/difference problematic also arose as an issue over differences between women. Feminists of different ethnic, racial and class groups criticized equality feminism as focusing only on women’s inequality with men, while ignoring other forms of crucial disadvantage they faced as migrant, black or poor women (Hooks 1981; Moraga & Anzaldúa 1984). They charged that equality feminism had primarily met the desires and needs of middleclass white women, for whom equality with men had enabled entry into professional employment and public life (though at the costs mentioned above). But equality feminism had done nothing to address the racism and structural poverty that was the overwhelming experience of many women, who due to these factors were unable to take advantage of the expansion of rights and access that mainstream feminism had opened up. Western feminism as a political movement never found a programmatic answer to either of these profound challenges posed by the equality/difference debates. Indeed, the debate over difference ultimately succeeded in dividing what had been until then a fairly united women’s movement along the lines of identity politics—and is still looked upon as a destructive and divisive moment in the history of that feminism. 3 See, for instance, Betty Friedan’s The Second Stage (1981).

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However, when we look at the outcome of these debates in the practical world of politics today, the principle of gender equality seems to have survived largely unscathed and untouched by these challenges. Indeed, the language of gender equality continues to be the dominant language of gender-based legislation throughout Europe and North America, as well as having become the core language for principles of gender rights in international law such as the General Assembly’s 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW), where it is highlighted in Article 3. Gender equality has gone on to be mainstreamed throughout the United Nations’ system in development practice as a guiding principle at all levels of the institution’s policy and praxis. In sum, regardless of the profound criticism that the gender equality framework has undergone by feminists themselves, it continues to be the normative language for gender rights globally. But feminist thinkers who have reflected on the profound political implications that arose from the equality/difference debates have gone on to develop more nuanced understandings of how the issue of women’s equality might be re-thought as a more inclusive goal that is enabling to women suffering from a variety of, and multiple experiences with, disadvantages. This has become especially critical given that identity has increasingly come to dominate the global political landscape more generally since the 1990s, displacing earlier frameworks that were primarily focused on a politics of re-distribution (Phillips 1987, 1999; Fraser 1998). In addressing what they call the conundrum of equality, Joan Scott & Debra Keates have argued that group identities are an inevitable aspect of social life, but they only become visible, salient and troubling in specific contexts—when they are made the basis for exclusion and disadvantage and become the basis for political contestation. Specifically, . . . when exclusions are legitimated by group differences, when social and economic hierarchies advantage some groups at the expense of others, when one set of biological or religious or ethnic or cultural characteristics are valued over another—the tension between individual and group identities emerges. Individuals, for whom group identities were just simply dimensions of multi-faceted individuality, find themselves fully determined by a single element: religious or ethnic or racial or gender identity. (Scott & Keates 1999: 3) In other words, exclusion and discrimination on the basis of perceived group attributes works to heighten individuals’ identification with their group. Importantly, Scott & Keates argue that exclusion and discrimination

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negatively homogenize the variegated identities of individuals within groups, reducing them all to some basic and fixed negative characteristics. And this is a mirror process—members of the disadvantaged groups themselves tend to overlook their individual differences and attach a fixed and immutable character to their collective identity. Effectively, group identities are not the cause for exclusion or disadvantage—but the opposite: politicized group identities are an outcome of exclusionary processes and the imposition of disadvantage. And the conundrum is that in demanding inclusion and equality, disadvantaged groups are forced to use the very identities that were the terms for their exclusion at the same time as rejecting them. Individuals as women, minorities or members of ethnicities take these on as collective identities only in relation to the exclusion and disadvantage based on them. But the fight against discrimination based on these attributes themselves forces them to use these identities as the grounds for inclusion. As Scott & Keates (1999: 7) note, [F]eminism was a protest against women’s political exclusion; its goal was to eliminate sexual difference in politics. But it had to make claims on behalf of women. To the extent that it acted for women, feminism produced the very sexual difference that it sought to eliminate—drawing attention to exactly the issue (sexual difference) that it wanted to banish.

The Dynamics of Identity Politics

Scott and Keates’s insights are extremely relevant to our understanding of the problematic of Muslim women and identity politics both in the Middle East and in Europe. The politicization of Muslim identities in the European context (including Muslim women’s identities) is the outcome of a two-sided process. On the one hand, immigrants experience discrimination and disadvantage and have been negatively homogenized and identified as ‘Muslims’ in dominant political discourse and practice. On the other hand, the outcome has been the growing identification with this one dimension of their identity by males and females from migrant backgrounds who under other forms of discrimination and disadvantage might have identified themselves primarily as migrants, women, workers, Moroccans, Turks or a whole variety of other identities. And since Islamic identity has been made the salient basis of exclusion, struggles for inclusion have actually heightened and underlined issues of Islamic identity both among those struggling against exclusion and among the dominant culture.

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In the contemporary Middle East4 we can see similar processes at play. Across a range of different societies, contexts and historical moments, Islamist movements have provided a political identity framework for large sectors of the society that have been economically or politically disadvantaged or disenfranchised. Political movements carrying the message of Islamic solidarity and justice have found fertile ground for their version of identity politics among large social sectors that—under the long legacy of authoritarian states claiming to be secular, democratic and modernist—actually denied political voice to most of the populace while excluding them from access to basic social and economic goods. And in international relations, Islamic identity has also been made extremely salient, even before 9/11 and the twenty-first century invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In the past, the inequities of colonial legacies and imperialism across the region gave rise to an identity and politics of Arabism. But increasingly over the past two decades, as Arab nationalism became seen as corrupt and incapable of challenging US hegemony over the region (especially, but not only, as it relates to Palestine), Islamic identity has increasingly gained ground. But it is through the politics and rhetoric of the ‘war on terror’ under the Bush administration that even secularists and non-Muslims across the region found themselves being identified as Muslims and indeed identified themselves with them. The larger lesson from this is that we need to understand both identity and equality as changing, as historically contingent and always a product of specific social, political and cultural configurations and conflicts. As we have seen, group identities are made salient through exclusion on the basis of characteristics associated with them. Through processes of enfranchisement and inclusion, these same group identities lose their critical power and return to be just one among an array of an individual’s multiple selves that can be a source of joy, sadness or neglect—but no longer who they primarily are and what they need to fight about or for. That many women in North America and Europe no longer see the need for feminism is exactly because they no longer see discrimination on the basis of their sex as a dominant force of exclusion in their lives. Equality But while one can view identities as shifting and changeable, is equality not an absolute principle? According to Scott & Keates (1999), paradoxically it 4 The complex and variegated histories across the region that led to the resurgence of Islam as a central marker of political identities among men and women is beyond the scope of this paper.

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is both. Through calls to the absolute principle of equality, diverse groups have made claims through history and across societies for various forms of equality that have changed through time and in relation to new and changing forms of disenfranchisement. As nations under colonialism, as castes and classes, as races and genders and, more recently, as identities (ethnic, sexual, religious and cultural), groups have all used the principle of equality as their means to challenge discrimination on the basis of a shared exclusion. In that sense, equality is both never complete and always an ongoing process. National liberation may solve one inequality, but many others remain, while some will be made more salient than others and thus be made the basis of a new struggle for equality. Ultimately then, equality is a protest against discrimination and injustice. It is always fought for on the basis of group identities that are themselves contingent. And its achievement can never be total but only in relation to the identity that has been instantiated by discrimination at any one moment. And as those earlier feminist critiques have pointed out, it is especially when equality is claimed to be without identity (as in universal rights or the rights of man or the citizen)—and therefore is constructed on the basis of an abstract individual rather than a socially situated group or person—that it makes both the greatest claims and the greatest exclusions. Who the rights-bearing abstract individual is, is usually defined by the dominant and the powerful and thus reflects their interests. For instance, as feminist legal scholar Carol Pateman (1988) has shown, the rights-bearing citizen of the liberal social contract that underpins much of Western political and economic theory is actually the selfowning white male.

Muslim Women and Equality/Difference

How can we apply these insights to the issue of Muslim women and the equality/difference conundrum? Here, in the short space left, I would like to address them by calling upon my experiences of teaching Gender Studies for the past seventeen years in occupied Palestine—which, for the sake of this discussion, I will term a Muslim majority context. In 1995, my university—Birzeit University in Ramallah—founded the Women’s Studies Institute, only the second academic centre for the study of women and gender of its kind in the region. By 1997, we became the first in the region to offer a full degree programme in Gender Studies at the MA level along with teaching elective undergraduate courses. Over that period of seventeen years, the students that I teach have changed considerably in relation to the

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extent that Islam has become a salient dimension of their identities—but in much more complex and surprising ways than one might assume. Superficially, the changes could be summed up by the growing numbers of female students wearing some form of Islamic dress. Where fifteen years ago only one student out of the twenty in the course wore a headscarf, now approximately half of our students are religiously identified in terms of their dress. These are outward signs of social phenomena, but what exactly do they mean? And do they all mean the same thing? A simple reply: No. The first question that needs to be asked according to Scott & Keates (1999) is not who or what is a Muslim woman (as if it is something fixed and unchangeable), but when and in what specific contexts do women primarily define themselves as Muslims? Even among my group of students, regardless of what they are wearing, there is not an obvious answer; simply because they are wearing a headscarf or other variety of Islamically identified dress does not mean in the least that their main identity is as Muslims. For the majority, in relation to Israeli oppression and discrimination, they see themselves as Palestinians. In relation to experiences of bias and inequality within Palestinian society, they see themselves primarily as women. And only when they feel discriminated against or excluded on the basis of their Muslim religious identity do they become primarily Muslim. Yes, Muslims can feel and be discriminated against even in Muslim majority contexts. In the classroom, on a few occasions I have seen what is normally a vibrant and critically thinking range of individuals suddenly become a distinctive and defensive unified group, because a secular student (either male or female) has made a remark implying the inferiority of women wearing headscarves. Outside the classroom, it is in relation to some workplaces that prefer ‘secular’ women, where religiously identifiable students have faced discrimination. But more often, this happens when students are working with international agencies and foreign nationals where their Islamic identity becomes emphasized because they have faced negative stereotypes and insulting treatment. A number of times, students have actually turned these negative experiences into research projects and looked at how other religiously identified women actively challenge these stereotypes while attempting to negotiate respect on the basis of difference. But in all these cases, Muslim identity has become for them the salient issue exactly because it has been used as a basis to identify them negatively. Similarly, a number of studies have noted that one outcome of the rise of Islamophobia in Europe and the US has been a growth in the numbers of Muslim women choosing to wear ‘Islamic’ dress as markers of their faith and

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identification with their community, rather than the opposite (Phillips 2000; Dustin 2006). However, by calling some of our students ‘religiously identified’, I am imbuing a range of highly variegated individuals with a single collective identity that presumes their religiosity is the same. As individuals, how they define, practice and give content to the religious dimension of their identity is extremely diverse and, I imagine, is also changing over time. A small handful of students (often among the best academically) are active in Islamic political movements. Others support secular national movements, but the majority are like the majority of people in the world: critical of all organized political parties, religious or secular. Beyond some foundational practices and beliefs, they also differ on the definition and demands of piety; not only in terms of ‘Islamic dress’, but also in the degree to which Islamic faith is the dominant or guiding ethic in their everyday lives and what that might entail. For the majority, being a Muslim is simply part and parcel of who they are: a natural and mundane part of their everyday lives. It is sometimes a cause for celebration and positive belonging, at other times a source of burden and responsibility; and at others still, a source of solace, support or guidance in a difficult and complex world. But what about gender equality. Do my students want it? Of course—but exactly in accordance with the contingent and changing historical practice that I have already discussed. Many of them, both religious and secular-identified, arrive at the programme fully wedded to the notion that their struggle is about equality with men. Rarely do I find students willing to support radical feminist positions about men’s and women’s innate difference—because it is the conservative version of this position that has been the force for gender discrimination in their lives. So when I review the equality versus difference debates and bring out the limitations and dilemmas that I have discussed here, students still attempt to claim the model—but seek ways to make it work for their needs and context. Should women be in the military if they want full equality? The class divides among an array of individual opinions. What about the double burden? That the majority of them are working wives and mothers also doing a higher degree in their spare time actually means they work a triple burden. On this issue, they profoundly identify with the trade-offs Western feminists made long ago, and their answer is that men—be it husbands, employers or the state—need to share more of that responsibility. But what about difference? In discussion over Islamic family law, when it is pointed out that the gender logic underlying Islamic jurisprudence is the principle of the complementarity of the sexes (their fundamental difference from each other) rather than equality—once again, the responses are to look for context-specific solutions .

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of how to expand women’s rights within and simultaneously against a source of inequality. In summary, equality for our female students (both religious and secularidentified) is seen as an absolute principle through which they seek to fight discrimination on the basis of their gender in their Muslim majority context. At the same time, they see it for what it is—a process of expanding rights, one that can lead in unforeseen directions, or create new dilemmas and contradictions. There is no universal model and no universal outcome, only a universal struggle against existing inequalities. Conclusion In conclusion, I would like to return the discussion from Palestine back to the issue of Muslim women in Europe. Through sharing the discussions and experiences I have had with my students, what I have tried to do here is to give an example of how debates and conflicts are profoundly different when those being debated actually have a voice. My students do not represent all Muslim women, or even all Palestinian women. But in comparison with the European context, they have the space to actively shape and discuss what equality or religious identification means for them. And they can do so without fear that their criticisms and demands for change will be used as a weapon against their community and as a means to impose further discriminatory practices against them (Israeli discriminatory practices may be gendered but they are not about gender!). Nor do they face a situation where racism throws them back on their communities, which are mostly led by conservative men who further shut down the space available to them to voice their visions of gender change and equality. Finally, they are not operating in an environment where their choices have become framed as a series of incommensurable dualisms— equality versus oppression, religion versus secularism, one of us versus one of them. This question of voice is also extremely relevant as we see the struggles around visions of gender relations unfold in the democratic transitions in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere across the region. This is especially so when we see that hard-won democratic elections brought to power political parties that seem inimical to gender equality—often with the help of women’s activism and votes. In the media, we are constantly being warned that women in Egypt and Tunisia who fought for the revolution are likely to be its main victims. But across the region, if we look behind the headlines and listen to what women are saying, we find a range of much more complex arguments

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and debates going on. Though beyond the limits of this paper, public opinion polls find a majority of women supporting an expansion of women’s rights— with for instance, approximately 80% of women and a slightly lower percentage of men in post-revolution Egypt asserting that men and women should be granted equal legal rights (Gallup 2011). Also in Egypt, polls found that women’s support for an expansion of their rights had no correlation with whom they voted for (i.e. religious or secular parties); and perhaps most importantly, that among men, conservative views on gender relations correlated strongly with low socio-economic and life satisfaction levels, while bearing little or no correlation with religious sentiments. References Abu Lughod, L. (2002), Do Muslim women really need saving? Anthropological reflections on cultural relativism and its others. American Anthropologist 104(3): 783–790. ——— (2011), The active social life of Muslim women’s rights. In: D.L. Hodgson, ed., Gender and culture at the limit of rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 101–119. Abu-Odeh, L. (2004), Egyptian feminism: Trapped in the identity debate. In: Islamic Law and the Challenges of Modernity, pp. 183–211. Atassi, B. (2012), The new Egypt leaving women behind. Al Jazeera on-line. [http:// www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2011/03/201138133425420552.html]. Badran, M. (2011), Between secular and Islamic feminism/s: Reflections on the Middle East and beyond. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 1(1): 6–28. ——— (2011), From Islamic feminism to a Muslim holistic feminism. IDS Bulletin 42(1). Dustin, M. (2006), Gender equality, cultural diversity: European comparisons and lessons. London: London School of Economics and Political Science. ElKouny, N. (2012), Islamists add obstacles but no reason to panic say women activists. Al-ahram on-line. http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentPrint/33/0/28525/ Elections-/0/Islamists-add-obstacles-to-gender-equality,-but-no.aspx. Elsadda, H. (2011), Women’s rights activism in post-Jan25 Egypt: Combating the shadow of the First Lady Syndrome in the Arab world. Middle East Law and Governance 3(1): 84–93. Fraser, N. (1998), Social justice in the age of identity politics: Redistribution, recognition, participation. http://Hdl.Handle.Net/10419/44061. WZB Berlin. http://hdl.handle.net/ 10419/44061. Friedan, B. (1981), The Second Stage. New York: Summit Books.

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Gallup (2012), After the Arab uprisings: Women on rights, religion and rebuilding. http:// www.gallup.com/poll/155306/Arab-Uprisings-Women-Rights-Religion-Rebuilding .aspx. Gole, N. & J. Billaud (2012), “Islamic Difference and the Return of Feminist Universalism” in Triandafyllidou, A., Modood, T., & Meer, N. European multiculturalisms: Cultural, religious and ethnic challenges. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Hooks, B. (1981), Ain’t I a woman: Black women and feminism. Boston, MA: South End Press. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) (2011), Women and the Arab Spring: Taking their place? http://arabwomenspring.fidh.net/index.php?title=Foreword. Kandiyoti, D. (2007), Between the hammer and the anvil: Post-conflict reconstruction, Islam and women’s rights. Third World Quarterly 28(3). ——— (2011), Disentangling religion and politics: Whither gender equality? IDS Bulletin 42(1): 10–14. Mir-Hosseini, Z. (2006), Muslim women’s quest for equality: Between Islamic law and feminism. Critical Inquiry 32(4): 629–645. ——— (2011), Beyond ‘Islam’ vs ‘Feminism’. IDS Bulletin 42(1): 67–77. Moraga, C. & G. Anzaldúa (1983), This bridge called my back: Writings by radical women of color. New York: Kitchen Table, Women of Color Press. Moustafa, T. & A. Quraishi Landes (2012), The paradoxes of religious freedom in Egypt. http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/5103/paradoxes-of-religious-freedom-inegypt. Najmabadi, A. (2006), Gender and secularism of modernity: How can a Muslim woman be French? Feminist Studies 32(2): 239. Parvez, Z.F. (2011), Debating the Burqa in France: The antipolitics of Islamic revival. Qualitative Sociology 34(2): 287–312. Pateman, C. (1988), The sexual contract. Stanford: Stanford University Press. Phillips, A. (1987), Feminism and equality. New York: New York University Press. ——— (1999), Which equalities matter? Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. ——— (2000), Equality, pluralism, universality: Current concerns in normative theory. The British Journal of Politics & International Relations 2(2): 237–255. Scott, J.W. (2007), The politics of the veil. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Scott, J.W. & D. Keates (1999), The conundrum of equality. Princeton, NJ: School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study. Soja, E.W. (1996), Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and other real-and-imagined places. Cambridge, Mass: Blackwell. Tadros, M. (2011a), The Muslim Brotherhood’s Gender Agenda: Reformed or Reframed? IDS Bulletin 42(1). ——— (2011b), Gender, rights and religion at the crossroads introduction. IDS Bulletin 42(1): 1–9.

chapter 8

Identities and Access to Energy: A Case from India Response to Rema Hammami Atul Kumar,1 supported by Ton Dietz Abstract Cross-cutting identity issues play a significant role in shaping individual identities. These identities are quintessential determinants of access to energy services, which in turn are interlinked with equity and development. The variations in levels of access to energy across identity groups are largely governed by rural–urban disparities, gender difference and poverty levels within rural and urban areas. In this paper a modest attempt has been made to analyze the various identity issues surrounding the energy and climate change debate. The paper explores the intricate dimensions of linkages between rural–urban population, gender and energy access. Identity issues also find their place in the climate change topic revolving around the equity debate, involving rich greenhouse gas-emitting countries at one end of the spectrum and resource-poor countries at the other end. The paper concludes that in designing policies and programmes for providing adequate and equitable access to basic amenities and services, these identity issues cannot be ignored.

Background For an Indian man, working in an academic environment that is linked to private and public organizations in New Delhi, it is tricky to respond to a very outspoken (and very interesting) essay about changing identity perceptions among female students with a Muslim and Palestinian background. It is also far from my professional work, in which ‘equity and development issues’ are linked to access to energy and to climate change. I will first provide some thoughts about ‘identity issues in India’, from my personal experiences and background. I will then add some thoughts about the relevance of the ‘equity’ debate in my own field of expertise. 1 Ninth holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2010–2012.

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The Identity Crisis

Everywhere in the world, people deal with multiple identities. In his famous essay ‘Violence and Identity: the Illusion of Destiny’, the Indian–American Nobel laureate Amartya Sen writes about the impossible, and often violent, choices that people make (or have to make) if they are forced to focus on only one of their many identities (Sen 2006). He also shows that the nuances of mixed or hybrid identities and the fluidity of identity positions in people’s lives are undermined if people are forced to make choices, often in times of political upheavals. An individual’s identity depends on the context of the situation; for example, based on nationality you are Indian or Pakistani; based on gender you are man or woman; based on religion, you are Hindu or Muslim. In the professional hierarchy, you are either part of the support staff or an ‘executive’. Identities everywhere in the world are part of folklore and joking relationships, but they can sometimes become a matter of life or death. Not being explicit about identity choices that people make—or hiding identity expressions or explicit debate about it—is often a strategy to avoid conflicts, violence or distress. That is certainly so in India, where I come from. In my own youth, the most important identity for me and my family was being from a ‘rural area’ and, as a visitor in a village, ‘coming from elsewhere’. My father was a secondary-school teacher and migrated from one place to another, but always in the rural areas of northern India. We were ‘outsiders’, but also always had that very clear feeling of having rural roots, being ‘village people’. The grand Himalayan ranges of Uttarakhand was where I grew up in my early life, and I was and am proud about that. I was also brought up to be self-evidently proud about my Brahmin caste and my Hindu culture. Like my father (who did an MA in history after a BA in education), I was destined to be an academically educated teacher. Although my mother was not earning a salary, she came from the same background and also stimulated my brother, three sisters and myself to study up to university level. As the last-born in the family, my sisters and brother showed me a self-evident route in life for people with our caste and social background. Living a village life in a rural settlement with only look-alikes around us, most villagers being from socially upper castes, did not make me very aware about identity differences, poverty or inequality. We were certainly not rich, but for us ‘being respected’ was far more important than ‘being rich’. The fact that my grandfather was a very respected man— as he was responsible for initiating a school (and a primary-school teacher himself)—was far more important for our family’s ‘standing’ than showing many signs of material wealth. Of course, poverty was a ‘self-evident’ fact of

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life among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.2 Before I was born, my father had worked as a teacher teaching ‘tribal’ people who had many trading and cultural links to Tibet, so these stories about caste differences commonly found a mention in our family conversations as well. But it took me quite some time to question their poverty and the exclusion that was connected to cultural specificity, or to see it as injustice. In our environment, gender differences were much less of a problem. It was self-evident that both boys and girls would go to school (and for secondary education to separate schools). In my own family my sisters had the same opportunities to go to university as the boys (and all of them did). In many of the Indian universities in social science subjects there are more girls than boys nowadays, but not in the technical or physical sciences, where it was and is mostly a male affair—as everywhere else in the world. Later, I became aware of the fact that among the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes, the number of school drop-outs was high (particularly among girls), and most of these children were lined up for a continuation of an underprivileged life, even if there were many political projects trying to counteract this. If I look at another obvious aspect of identity tensions in India, in the area where I grew up religious tensions were simply absent. Almost everyone regarded himself or herself as Hindu. The few Muslims were simply there and nobody seemed to bother. Of course, in earlier periods, and in other parts of South Asia, religious identities were/are a source of tension, or even violent conflict. This was often caused by ‘fear of forced conversion’ whenever new rulers with a different religious background took over or conquered the area, or whenever a process of migration shifted the composition of identity groups in an area, with their respective old and new claims on local resources. If these resources were ‘land’ or ‘water’ rights, or access to certain forest or mining resources, ‘old rights’ became contested by newcomers, and conflicts could start. These would in some cases cascade into violence, where ‘recognizable others’ either took some resources by force or were excluded from access to or use of certain resources and did not take that access for granted. Going to Delhi for my studies suddenly made me part of a much more cosmopolitan environment, in which almost everyone felt like an outsider and many ‘identities’ came together: different caste groups, different religions, different worldviews, etc. In the university, there were certain places reserved for people from underprivileged backgrounds, in an otherwise very competitive 2 The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes are two groupings of historically disadvantaged people that are given express recognition in the Constitution of India.

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environment; and for people from Scheduled Caste backgrounds there was even a possibility to do a preparatory year, a kind of pre-course. This was and is a major issue in university circles, and recently the ‘reservation policy’ was even extended to include bright children from the so-called other backward castes; and there is now also a certain reservation policy for certain opportunities for women (at the lower levels of government, for instance). A debate is going on in India if this should be state and national policy as well. As always, when ‘reservation policies’ are part of government efforts to redress historical situations of exclusion, there is a debate (also among the recipients of the created possibilities) about selection on the basis of merit or just because you are from a ‘designated group’ and what this would mean for the quality of your degree (or your job or whatever). In practice, the relative number of ‘special cases’ have always been few; and to be selected from a ‘special group’ was also a very competitive process within that group. As long as the same criteria would apply for judging performance (e.g. examination results), irrespective of ‘background’, the risk of undermining ‘the principle of merit’ would be less. Pursuing a doctoral degree in the field of renewable energy at the Indian Institute of Technology brought me together with people who would regard ‘hard science’ as the ‘best science’, although my rural background and interests in ‘rural energy’ made me one of the outsiders, who was also interested in the social, cultural and economic aspects of energy, and particularly access to energy. This led me to work for a grassroots NGO in the rural areas of the Bundelkhand region, which is considered to be one of the most backward regions of India. Working at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), the Indian national-level institute for energy studies, made it possible for me to combine this identity as a ‘hard-core scientist’ with policy issues, which are much more related to political economy and cultural studies. For me, improving rural energy conditions was and is a way to combine my technical interests and my contributions to fighting poverty and injustices. As a professional with an academic background, working for TERI makes me feel an integral part of a culturally enlightened group. The international exposure I get as a research professional working at TERI has made me adjust to cultural differences seamlessly. But it also depends on which aspects of culture can be more flexible and which aspects much less so. In my case, I have adapted to very different types of greeting behaviours, even if they are far away from what is regarded appropriate in my Indian or Hindu group. I can be flexible in body language and in clothing behaviour, whenever it is required to do so. But I have never adapted my eating behaviour, which I find one of the most personal aspects of life: I will not eat pork or beef.

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Hygienic restrictions, so important in Hindu upper-caste behaviour, are also something I try to adhere to: how and where I use the washrooms, or in what conditions I sleep are some things that are difficult to change from what I was brought up with. For instance, I will never share a dormitory with unknown people, and certainly not with women. On the other hand, I know that my parents are stricter than I can afford to be, being exposed as I am to a much wider international circle of behavioural ‘normalities’. One of the things that I find a bit different is the continuous changes in ways to behave with people who are hierarchically placed higher or lower than I am. Even within TERI there are major differences. Some of the older senior professionals insist on formal behaviour and demand to be called ‘Sir’. Others are much more informal. Among researchers, the most important identity is being a professional and in a certain position within the hierarchy. But everyone knows the codes of differences beyond that, even if people dress more or less the same. Even Muslim women among the staff do not show their identity as Muslim: they sometimes dress in a ‘Western’ style and sometimes wear saris. However, in an Indian context (and most TERI people are Indians), names of people tell a great deal, and beyond sharing an identity as a professional of a certain status or rank, we all know about the differences in the other identities of our colleagues. Mostly that does not matter; sometimes it does. Among male Indian academic professionals with a Muslim background, one can sometimes see an expression of Muslim identity manifested in their physical appearance and dress codes. In the few ‘Muslim universities’ in India this is different, but here the dress codes are seen as the conservation of Muslim values and codes and not meant to be a provocation. Also, non-Muslim Indians do not regard it as a provocation. Rema Hammami’s essay gives significant attention to the role of gender and its impact on one’s identity. I can say that Indian society provides a mixed experience. In education, gender inequality is not so clear, although in practice, as we have seen before, girls from lower-caste or low-income family backgrounds tend to drop out faster, and their average education levels are slightly lower than those of men. However, girls do have a secondary position in family hierarchies, as can be seen by the tendency of pregnant women to have an abortion the moment parents know their child is going to be a girl. Female foeticide is a major social problem in India, and surprisingly, this tendency is seen to have higher incidence among the upper-caste and wealthy families. Although taking this practice into consideration, the government has introduced an act called the Pre-conception and Pre-natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Selection) Act. In accordance with this Act, doctors and

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radiologists conducting or soliciting parents for sex determination tests can be imprisoned for up to five years and fined up to approximately 1,000 US$. However, the conviction rate is low and the selection of a male child before conception and female foeticide continues to take place. If we look at political office, there are many more men than women. At the municipal level, there is a rule now that 33% and in some cases 50% of all positions be reserved for women, but often these are wives of male leaders, and they sometimes seem to ‘stand in’ for their husbands. A bill is pending to have the same (33%) rule for the national parliament, but that comes with a lot of political debate and has not yet been decided. While in government and in the ‘formal’ private sector, there is no wage discrimination against women, it is prevalent in the ‘informal’ sector. In professional jobs there are fewer women than men, although one can easily find women in top jobs across the board. Although India has arranged maternity leave by law, it is not easy in all professional circles to be a professional and a mother at the same time.

Energy Access, Climate Change and the Equity Debate

What about energy and equity? In the course of my studies, I became aware of the importance of unequal access to energy for different groups in Indian society: this perpetuates inequality, and for those without access to dependable, fast and cheap energy resources, it perpetuates their poverty. Different levels of access to energy cut across identity groups and are more related to rural–urban differences and to poverty levels within rural and urban areas than to other identity differences. The levels of penetration of clean commercial fuels are still low in India. This fact is corroborated by the results of the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO) 2011 household survey, which quite clearly revealed the low penetration levels of commercial fuels like liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). The reasons for this limited access to cleaner fuels could be attributed to the policies that have been largely urban-centric and have not addressed the issue of rural energy in its entirety. Also, there is a lack of appropriate credit mechanisms for energy access at the rural level, which has limited the options to consumers with a low purchasing power (Srivastava & Rehman 2006). Lack of availability and knowledge about availability of alternatives has created uncertainty about alternative technologies (Rehman et al. 2012). Also pronounced is the urban–rural divide. For example, analysis of the NSSO (2011) in India indicates a rural–urban electricity access gap of 28 percentage points (94% and 66% of

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urban and rural households, respectively, use electricity as a primary source for lighting); the rural–urban divide increases to 58 percentage points when modern cooking access is considered (71% and 13% of urban and rural households, respectively, use commercial fossil fuel-based cooking options as the primary cooking energy source) (NSSO 2011; TEDDY 2011). The total annual light output (about 12,000 lumen-hours) from a simple kerosene wick lamp is equivalent to that produced by a 100W incandescent bulb in just 10 hours, thus demonstrating inequity of energy services for the rural poor (Mills 2005). Hence, compared with the recommended standards for lighting for various household tasks, the low-quality lighting of kerosene-based wicks adversely affects the quality of life, as people can suffer eye strain and fatigue, resulting in poor performance (van Bommel et al. 2002). Suspended particulates in the smoke cause indoor air pollution, with consequential negative health impacts (Smith et al. 2004), and these lamps pose fire and burn hazards (Mills 2005). With a large proportion of India’s population relying on traditional biomass as their main energy source, this brings to the fore the issue of linkage between gender equity and energy access. With women being the primary energy procurers and managers, the burden of household chores such as fuel and water collection results in missed opportunities of education, livelihood and other activities. Energy can not only save time for women, but also ‘empower’ women. As mentioned above, the uses of traditional energy sources pose health risks from indoor air pollution (asthma and other respiratory problems), particularly for women, who are generally more exposed. Providing adequate and equitable access to basic amenities and services is the immediate priority of policy makers. Energy access for all is recognized as a policy priority and stems from the recognition of its strong impact on creating opportunities for economic development. Without access to basic energy services, daily needs like cooking, heating and lighting can only be met at the expense of economic productivity. Energy is hence required to meet the targets defined in the Millennium Development Goals adopted at the UN Millennium Summit in Johannesburg in September 2000 to improve the condition of the world’s poorest by 2015 (Kumar 2011). The literature also reveals that no country has substantially reduced poverty without massively increasing its use of energy. Electricity, in particular, plays a crucial role in improving levels of human development and quality of modern life (ADB 2007). This is suggested by the empirical relationship between the Human Development Index (HDI) and energy consumption for different countries (ADB 2007; UNDP 2007).

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In current ‘development speak’, the term ‘inclusive development’ is a key concept. It is also a key part of India’s former and current five-year plan. Better access to clean cooking energy resources is a major aspect of this ‘inclusive growth strategy’, and there are specific targeted groups, generally called ‘marginalized people’. Lower-caste people are included, but also (and in general) ‘women’. There are specific awareness programmes and educational projects for girls/women and for lower-caste women/girls in particular. One can now see that ‘energy modernization’ penetrates ever more deeply into rural areas. Here and there this causes major conflicts, as some community leaders in these more marginal areas fear the cultural changes (and ‘globalization’) that comes with electricity: television, mobile phones—a ‘glamourized world’. As far as climate change and equity is concerned, climate change has been described as the defining global social justice issue. While it raises equity considerations between generations, it also has powerful implications for intragenerational equity. Climate change brings into focus the sharp division of a world that is highly polarized—between intensive greenhouse-gas-emitting countries and resource-poor countries that will suffer the worst consequences. The rich countries of the world are predominantly responsible for climate change owing to their historical contribution to the build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, while poor people in poor countries bear the brunt of its impacts (Kumar 2011). It is also important to recognize that there are middle-income countries, particularly oil-producing countries, with per capita emissions equal to or higher than those of industrialized countries—highly populous, fast-growing, developing countries such as India and China, with sharply rising greenhouse gas emissions. While it may appear convenient to characterize climate change mitigation as being primarily the responsibility of rich countries and adaptation the main concern of poor countries, things are not quite that simple. Vulnerability to climate change, viewed first and foremost as a development challenge, cuts across any such divisions (Kumar 2011). At TERI, in our attempts to improve cooking and lighting conditions by improving access to electricity and other forms of ‘modern’ energy, we are aware of the importance of cultural elements, as we never see the introduction of these innovations as purely technical projects. We also know that we should be part of an agenda that not only provides better energy resources to as many people on Earth as possible, but also to do so in a sustainable way. On the one hand, it means that we try to improve the efficiency of energy use— for example, by assisting in the development and distribution of improved cooking stoves, which use less energy, and studying complete supply chains in

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which energy plays a role to discover where efficiency gains can be made. On the other hand, we try to improve on the sources of energy used for electricity and other uses; the climate change debate makes it clear that energy production should go beyond oil, gas and coal and that the world has to adjust to more environmentally sustainable and less carbon-adding forms of energy production and use. The debate here brings in a new aspect of equity: we should be aware that our current pattern of energy utilization (and our attempts to redress the unequal access to these resources among the current world population) could be highly problematic for future generations of mankind, and for other species in nature. We need to find ways to produce carbon-free energy, but at the same time we have to do something to address the current levels of poverty and unequal access. TERI, as a part of its South–South Cooperation activities, has established its presence in Africa through a range of activities with the partnership of local, national and regional institutions in East, West and Southern Africa (see Box 9.1 on issues and problems related to household cooking in Africa). Issues which TERI has embarked upon in Africa deal primarily with climate policies and with the intertwined relationship between clean, renewable energy access and rural societies of Africa. This collaboration encompasses a diverse domain of instruments of cooperation in the form of grassroots projects, capacityenhancing training programmes and policy-relevant knowledge inputs for decision makers. Some of the partner organizations with whose support this has been possible are the African Climate Policy Centre (United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), based in Addis Ababa and covering the regional networks of UNECA in Africa), the Horn of Africa Regional Environment Centre and Network (HOAREC), covering the Horn of Africa Region), and the ECOWAS Centre for Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency (covering the West Africa region). As we have started our adventure in this area, we have understood that the journey has just begun and we have to address larger common challenges of sustainable development faced by the global South. In this journey of learning through mutual exchange of knowledge with our partners of the global South, TERI has realized that the challenges of tomorrow have to be solved in unison by joining hands and being sensitive to the partners and people of the global South. This has also emanated from our learning experiences in India, which show that cultural and environmental aspects are not the only ones that are important in ‘development interventions’. The success of energy and human innovations very much depends on the context, history and economics of engineering and innovation.

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Issues and problems related to household cooking in Africa

In sub-Saharan Africa, 94% of the rural population and 73% of the urban population use biomass—wood, charcoal, crop residues, animal dung and coal—as their main source of energy for cooking and heating. This inefficient, ‘primitive’ fuel consumption method over a long period of time has led to wide-scale deforestation, global warming and indoor as well as outdoor air pollution affecting the health of millions of women and children (Smith et al. 2004). It was estimated that 1.6 million people die annually from indoor air pollution due to biomass burning (Rehfuess 2006), including the one million children who fall victim to childhood pneumonia. Exposure to black carbon aerosols, along with other products of incomplete biomass combustion—including total particulate matter and ozone pre-cursers like carbon monoxide—causes myriad health problems to stove users; and these can be reduced by 90% with the deployment of improved cooking stoves (Kar et al. 2012). These are preventable diseases. Appropriately designed and utilized improved cooking stoves are improving public health, reducing global warming and deforestation and helping the poor to come out of poverty (Bond & Sun 2005; Bice et al. 2009; Johnson et al. 2010; Ramanathan et al. 2011). Sub-Saharan countries have witnessed substantial efforts in modernizing smallscale biomass energy systems in the last two decades. Market-based programmes for improved biomass cooking stove dissemination can access the multi-billion dollar demand from the fuelwood-for-cooking markets (Hammond et al. 2007). However, the free market will not be able to deliver renewable energy and energy efficiency products and services to people who truly cannot afford them, while these very-low-income people are among those who are most in need.

Hence, we have realized that an implementable model of enhancing access to energy can only be successful when energy provision is not just technically possible, but also culturally acceptable and environmentally sustainable (as much as currently possible) in the long run. Therefore, we are experimenting continuously to make use of new insights about micro-finance arrangements, using community models of responsibility sharing. These community models have been gender-sensitive through encouraging women entrepreneurs to expand their businesses and increase their share in the various energy markets. These models have also brought innovation within energy-using production and distribution chains. One of the key aspects of energy expansion nowadays is to create connections through nationwide (or even international) grids, integrated with local-level additions and decentralized, off-grid, stand-alone initiatives. But the challenge is to do so in an economically viable

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way which is also environmentally sound, technologically manageable and socially responsible. If these challenges are met for human society, then access to clean energy for the downtrodden masses of the world can be improved. Such an achievement will reduce poverty, inequality and injustice for the human race and mark a brighter future for humanity at large. Conclusion Across the world, people deal with multiple identities. Identity issues cuts across multiple dimensions, including nationality, caste, religion, urban–rural divides and above all gender, the latter being the prime focus of Rema Hammami’s essay. Against this backdrop, the equity debate dealing with the issues of energy and climate change is contextual and holds relevance. Equity and development issues are inextricably linked to access to energy, and individual identities play a part in the determination of access to energy services. A large proportion of India’s population primarily residing in rural areas and figuring amongst the country’s low-income groups still relies on traditional biomass as their main energy source. The issue of linkage between gender equity and energy access is also more pronounced in this regard. Indian women, particularly in rural areas, are engaged in activities of fuel and water collection. The uses of traditional energy sources not only hinder empowerment of women but also pose considerable health risks resulting from indoor air pollution. Climate change brings to the forefront the sharp division between intensive greenhouse gas-emitting countries and resource-poor countries, with the latter suffering the worst consequences. While it raises equity considerations between generations, climate change also has powerful implications for intra-generational equity. Undoubtedly, providing adequate and equitable access to basic amenities and services should be the immediate priority of policy makers. In designing implementable programmes, the importance of cultural elements and identity issues also need to be considered. References ADB (2007), Energy for all: Addressing the energy, environment, and poverty nexus in Asia. Manila, Philippines: Asian Development Bank. Bice, K., A. Eil, B. Habib, P. Heijmans, R. Kopp & J. Nogues (2009), Black Carbon; A review and policy recommendations. Princeton University, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. Bond, T.C. & H. Sun (2005), Can reducing Black Carbon emissions counteract global warming? Environmental Science and Technology 39(16): 5921–5926.

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Hammond, A.L., W.J. Kramer, R.S. Katz, J. Tran T. & C. Walker (2007), The next 4 billion: Market size and business strategy at the base of the pyramid. Washington DC: World Resource Institute and International Finance Corporation. Johnson, M., R. Edwards & O. Masera (2010), New approaches to performance testing of improved cook stoves. Environmental Science and Technology 44(1): 368–374. Kar, A., P.S. Praveen, R. Suresh, I.H. Rehman, L. Singh, V.K. Singh, T. Ahmed, J. Burney & V. Ramanathan, (2012), Real time assessment of Black Carbon pollution in rural households due to cooking in traditional and improved biomass stoves. Environment Science Technology 46(5): 2993–3000. Kumar, A. (2011), Growth, sustainable development and climate change: Friends or foes? Inaugural address as Professor to the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity 2010–2012, 23 March 2011, Utrecht University. Mills, E. (2005), The specter of fuel-based lighting. Science 308(5726): 1263–1264. NSSO (2011), NSS 61st round (July 2009–June 2010), (uniform and Mixed Reference Period, Unit level data, household consumer expenditure round). Data on CD, National Sample Survey Organisation, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India. Ramanathan, N., M. Lukac, T. Ahmed, A. Kar, P. Siva, T. Honles, I. Leong, I.H. Rehman, J. Schauer & V. Ramanathan (2011), A cell phone based system for global monitoring of Black Carbon. Atmospheric Environment 45: 4481–4487. Rehfuess, E. (2006), Fuel for life: Household energy and health. Geneva: World Health Organization. Rehman, I.H., A. Kar, M. Banerjee, P. Kumar, M. Shardul, J. Mohanty & I. Hossain (2012), Understanding the political economy and key drivers of energy access in addressing national energy access priorities and policies. Energy Policy 47: 27–37. Sen, A.K. (2006), Identity and violence. The illusion of destiny (issues of our time). New York: W. Morton. Smith, K.R., S. Mehta & M. Maeusezahl-Feuz (2004). Indoor air pollution from household use of solid fuels. In: M. Ezzati, A.D. Rodgers, A.D. Lopez & C.J.L. Murray (eds), Comparative quantification of health risks: Global and regional burden of disease due to selected major risk factors, vol. 2. Geneva: World Health Organization, pp. 1435–1493. Srivastava, L. & I.H. Rehman, (2006), Energy for sustainable development in India: Linkages and strategic direction. Energy Policy 34: 643–654. TEDDY (2011), TERI energy data directory and yearbook. New Delhi: TERI Press. UNDP (2007). Human Development Report 2007/2008. Fighting climate change: Human solidarity in a divided world. New York: United Nations Development Programme. van Bommel, W.J.M., G.J. van den Beld & M.H.F. van Ooijen (2002), Industrial lighting and productivity. Philips Lighting, Netherlands. Accessible at: http://www.lighting .philips.com/in_en/applications/industry/pdf/industrial_lighting_and_productivity/ pli-0005_whitep-uk_20sep.pdf

chapter 9

Gender Equity and Governance in Pakistan: Looking through Leventhal’s Concept of Organizational Justice Nasira Jabeen1 Abstract This paper discusses the critical issue of gender equity and governance in Pakistan using Leventhal’s concept of equity and organizational justice. Since both distributive and procedural justice are interrelated concepts, they should be considered important in the analysis of the issue. The paper reviews the trends and significance of gender participation in governance processes in general and with reference to Pakistan in particular. It highlights that despite much progress having been made in terms of increasing representation of women in quantitative or distributive terms, their participation remains low and limited in qualitative and procedural aspects. An application of the Gender, Organization and System (GOS) framework to the local governance system in Pakistan reveals that in Pakistani society several systemic, organizational and personal factors contribute to the low participation of women in governance. It underscores the need for adopting a two-pronged strategy that seeks to promote participation through developing people and an enabling environment in institutions. More specifically, interventions in this regard may include the following: repeal of discriminatory laws and procedures through legislation; equitable access to education, health and employment opportunities; gender-sensitive organizational policies and practices; capacity building; mentoring, networking, and partnering for research and creation of indigenous knowledge; and political will and sincere support for having a meaningful impact on governance.

Introduction Drawing on the key concept of fairness in equity theory in terms of distribution of resources, rewards and inputs among social groups, nations and generations and its perception among the recipients, Leventhal (1976) expanded 1 Fifth holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2006–2007.

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the research direction towards procedural fairness in such distribution. While challenging the one-dimensional concept of fairness in equity theory, he developed his concept of organizational justice based on a multidimensional conception of fairness, including distributive as well as procedural fairness/ justice. Leventhal argued that the process used to determine the distribution of rewards plays a vital role in perceived fairness of rewards among the recipients; therefore, the process needs to be an integral part of the conception of equity or fairness in social relationships. He further added that procedural fairness takes into account the social system which generates this distribution and is based on rules, including consistency over time and across persons, accuracy, prevention of bias, ethics and representativeness of all stakeholders. Later research on the subject added the dimension of ‘interactional justice’ to the view, which referred to the individual’s perception of the degree to which s/he is treated with dignity, respect and concern (Sharlicki & Folger 1997). While there is sufficient support for distributive and procedural dimensions of justice and its relation to organizational performance, less evidence exists on interactional justice. Leventhal’s approach to the study of fairness in social relationships is considered to be com­prehensive, which provides a reasonable basis for conceptualization and interpretation of the view. Many professional organizations—including UNDP, the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and researchers like Amartya Sen (the Noble Laureate of 1998) and Dr. Mehboobul Haq—utilized the concept for developing their work on equity, empowerment, capability and human development. Moreover, this view of equity is closely linked to the basic philosophy of the Prince Claus Chair as advocated by Prince Claus: Development in the true sense of the word is impossible without some form of democracy which gives the people some say in the process. It is a question of enabling people to direct their energies within their own cultural context to bring about change, in the belief that it is in their own interests. I am not using democracy here in the formal Western sense but in its more basic meaning of ‘by the people and for the people’. (Prince Claus’s Proposition, 22, 1988) This paper attempts to apply the above view of equity (both distributive and procedural) to the situation of gender and local governance in Pakistan and outlines its implications for development. Applying the Gender, Organization, System (GOS) framework, proposed by Fagenson (1990) and further developed and tested in the context of Pakistan by the researcher, the paper offers useful insights for analysis and provides policy recommendations in this direction.

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Trends and Significance of Gender Participation in Governance

According to the UNDP (1995, 1998, 2010) definition of the term, gender refers to the economic, social and cultural attributes and opportunities associated with women and men in a given society. In view of this definition, gender equity denotes equal outcomes for women and men, recognizing their different needs, preferences and interests, as well as distribution of resources. Therefore, the goal of gender equity moves beyond equality of opportunity by requiring the transformative change and differential treatment of women and men for equal outcomes (Kabeer 1996; Sen 1999; World Bank 2011). An equity approach calls for revisiting all development initiatives for their meaningful impact on both women and men in economic, social and political aspects. To assess the level of development among countries, the UNDP (1995) has developed two indices, i.e. the Gender Development Index and the Gender Empowerment Measure, based on education, health, employment and political and administrative participation of women in different means of governance. Thus, women’s participation in governance is recognized as extremely important for an even human resource development, poverty alleviation and sustainable development. The term governance, traditionally understood as synonymous with government, has now acquired a new meaning. Governance today refers to new methods, processes and interactive ways of governing a society. Governance under the new mode is participatory, transparent, accountable and equitable (World Bank 1992, 2006; UNDP 1998, 2007). Government accord­ing to this concept is one of the partners in governance along with civil society and the corporate sector. For instance, the UNDP definition of governance defines it as the “exercise of economic, political, and administrative authority to manage a country’s affairs at all levels” (UNDP 1998: 2). This view of governance implies that quality of governance in a country depends on efficient and effective management of institutions, organizations and resources. Since quality of human capital is one of the major determinants of institutional/­societal effectiveness, it can be argued that gender-responsive governance is not only to promote social justice but also to promote efficiency and effectiveness in all institutional arenas of governance. In other words, gender equity should not be seen merely as a social imperative but also as an economic need for developing and using human capital for promoting sustainable good governance in a country. Recognizing the need, an array of institutional, structural, administrative and human resource reforms have been introduced worldwide in the form of decentralization, devolution, democrati­zation and privatization to improve perfor-

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mance, responsiveness, efficiency and effectiveness of governing institutions, including public, private and civil society organizations (Christensen 2001; Haque & Zafarullah 2006; Kaufman & Kraay 2007). All of these reform initiatives call for greater citizen participation, involvement and inclusion in the process of governance irrespective of gender. Democratic means—such as public debates and discussions, expression of public opinion on various policy issues, involvement of community in the process of development and participation in various decision-making bodies and policy forums—are frequently adopted as initiatives to promote the engagement of people in the process of governance (Haque 2003; Cornwall & Gaventa 2006; Rondinelli 2006). In this regard, the issue of gender equity in terms of women’s representation and participation is also recognized as a concern related to distributive and procedural justice, which needs to be addressed carefully. Women constitute about half of the world’s population, and it is widely believed that without including half of the human resource in the process of development, nations cannot reach their full potential.2 In 2006, Kofi Annan reaffirmed his belief in gender equity in terms of development and empowerment and said: “It is impossible to realize our goals while discriminating against half of the human race” (quoted in DFID 2007). Hence, gender equity and equality of opportunities on the basis of gender are recognized as key strategies of the development framework of the international development community in order to obtain sustainable governance. Factors that have contributed to bringing the issue of gender equity into discussion include the role of international development organizations, greater awareness, better access to education and information, the role of media, the role of feminist movements, global linkages and civil society organizations now considered as partners in governance process. Governments’ own commitments to various international conventions and policies to promote gender equality for sustainable growth and human development have also played a significant role in promoting the cause, resulting in an expanded role for women in governance. The Convention on Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW 1979), the Declaration on Ending Violence Against Women (DEVAW 1993), the Vienna Declaration (1993), the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action (BPFA 1995), the Millennium Development Declaration (2000) and the UN Gender Mainstreaming Policy and Strategy (2006) are some of the path-breaking international conventions defining the charter for women’s legal, political, economic and social struggle and their equal access to and full participation in various arenas. 2 www.onlinewomen.org (2010).

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To ensure implementation of the various conventions, the international donors and development bodies—i.e. the World Bank, UNDP, ADB, CIDA—regularly undertake governance assessments of countries through World Governance Indicators (WGIs) (World Bank 2006), the World Governance Assessment (WGA) (UNDP, in Hyden & Court 2002) and the Human Governance Index (HGI) (UNDP 1997). Participation and equity on the basis of gender is a key criterion of the above governance assessments. At the national level also, special ministries, commissions and forums have been established to integrate gender equity in govern­ance reforms.

Gender and Governance in Pakistan

Pakistan gained independence from British rule in 1947. Pakistani elite and educated women took an active part in the independence movement of the IndoPak Subcontinent. After the creation of Pakistan, Pakistani women formed their own association—the All Pakistan Women’s Association (APWA)—to protect women’s interests. The Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan provides equal status to women and men regarding their rights to vote and to contest in elections. Articles 25 and 27 of the Constitution ensure equality of opportunities for all citizens and provide protection against discrimination on the basis of race, religion, cast or sex. Furthermore, Article 34 of the Constitution indicates the state’s commitment to ensure full participation of women in all spheres of life and provides room for affirmative action in this regard (Khosa 1992). Besides the above constitutional provisions, Pakistan is a signatory to various international conventions to reaffirm its commitment to promote gender equity in different spheres of life. It has established the Ministry of Women’s Development and the National Commission on the Status of Women and Gender Reform Action Plans (GRAPS) at national and provincial level to ensure smooth implementation of gender reforms. Various plans and policy documents—including the Constitution of Pakistan, the Ten-Year Perspective Plan 2000–2011, the National Policy for Development and Empowerment of Women and the National Plan of Action—reflect the country’s commitment to strengthen gender equity at all levels. The national efforts also include legislation on women’s issues and affirmative action through reservation of seats and quotas for women to level the playfield, such as the reservation of 10% of the seats for females in the civil services of Pakistan at federal and provincial level and a 33% representation of women at all tiers of local governance—including

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District, Tehsil and Union Council—through quotas.3 All partners in development, including public, private and civil society organizations, are putting in concerted efforts to fulfil their commitment to gender equity in all spheres of life. However, despite all of the above global, national and local-level efforts to enhance women’s representation, women are still under-represented in governance, with wide gender inequalities and subtle discriminatory practices. A review of the literature on the subject points to a glaring inequality on the basis of gender, whereby women do not have an equitable share in decision making. They are marginalized in all aspects of life, spending more hours than men on welfare work and domestic activities, and encountering unequal access to social, economic and political inputs (UNDP 2010; Berniell & Sanchez 2011; World Bank 2012). Data on South Asia, including Pakistan, revealed shocking gender inequalities for women compared with men on all indicators of human development and empowerment, including education, health and employment and representation in political and administrative decision-making bodies. Both the Global Gender Gap Reports of 2009, 2010 and 2011 and the Human Development Reports of 2009 and 2010 found South Asian countries in the lowest ranks of the GDI and pointed to the wide gender gap in the region. According to the reports, the gender gap has increased in Pakistan in consecutive years and the country ranking on gender equality has gone down from 112 in 2006 to 126 in 2007, 132 in 2009, and 133 in 2011 out of 134 countries (Global Gender Gap Report 2006, 2007, 2009, 2011). The above reports found Pakistan’s performance the poorest among the South Asia and global lower-income group of countries. Women in Pakistan were found to be the poorest of the poor, bearing 70% of the burden of poverty, with lesser opportunities of development, longer working hours and lower earnings compared with men. The figures presented in Table 9.1 point to the dismal state of human development for Pakistani women on the Gender Development Index (GDI) and Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM). Similarly, gender imbalances persist in the civil services, where only 8.7% female employees are represented at Officers Category (BPS 16–22). The situation at local level of governance is better than at national level governance, which is mainly due to the Devolution of Power Plan 2001, which allocated 3 District is the top tier in the local governance system, representing subdivision of provinces; Tehsil represents the middle tier, consisting of a city or town that serves as a headquarters for other towns or villages; Union represents the lowest tier, covering rural as well as urban areas.

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women 33% representation through an affirmative action. As a result, 36,105 women were elected as representatives at various levels of local governance. At the national and provincial level also, women were provided representation through reservation of 17% of the seats. Nevertheless, various audit reports of the Devolution of Power Plan and interviews with elected repre­sentatives point to the women’s low and limited participation in the process of governance at that level. More interestingly, women representatives through a process of gender streaming are concentrated in social areas, compared with the legal, political, economic, and administrative and decision-making areas. An in-depth review of the profile of elected women revealed that 60% of the elected women were relatively young (less than 45 years), 75% had never Table 9.1

GDI and GEM indicators for Pakistan, showing Pakistan’s gender gap1 in 2011

Economic participation and opportunity Labour force participation2 Legislators, senior officials, managers3 Professional and technical workers3 Educational attainment Literacy rate2 Enrolment in primary education2 Enrolment in secondary education2 Enrolment in tertiary education2 Health and survival Healthy life expectancy2 Political empowerment Women in parliament3 Women in ministerial positions3

Male

Female

22  3 22

88 97 78

40 60 29  5

69 72 36  6

55

56

22  8

78 93

Notes 1) The Global Gender Gap Index was introduced by the World Economic Forum in 2006 to capture gender-based disparities and to track progress. It benchmarks national gender gaps on economic, political, education and health indicators for effective comparisons among countries. All of the figures represent female/male ratios in order to capture gaps between their attainment levels, except for Educational Attainment, which presents a long-term view of the country’s ability to educate and vertically combines primary, secondary and tertiary levels of education. 2) Vertical percentages. 3) Horizontal percentages. Source: Global Gender Gap Report 2011, p. 280.

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been elected before, 74% were housewives and only 34% were literate with a high-school degrees. It was also found that in some parts of interior NorthWest Frontier Province and Baluchistan women were not allowed to vote and to contest in elections, with the apprehension that they would have to interact with male staff (CIET 2004). The system of reserved seats for women was also viewed negatively compared with men being elected to open seats. Women in reserved seats were viewed as a passive vote bank and were denied equal access to information, political party support and organizational resources for completion of community projects, resulting in their low and limited participation in governance. Therefore, despite having distributive representation in quantitative terms, women were deprived of participative and qualitative representation through procedural inequities in the larger system. A review of the studies on the subject suggests that in Pakistan, so far, a distributive and quantitative approach to promoting women’s representation is more dominant than a procedural and qualitative approach. This is reflected in the form of women’s quotas in employment and politics, a relatively easy and short-term approach to promoting gender equity. Quotas violate merit, a fundamental principle of organizational effectiveness. However, quotas can be used as a temporary measure, but ultimately there is need for a shift in gender policy from a distributive to a procedural and human capital view of gender equity. Otherwise, after the quotas system is abolished, women’s representation in governance will decline. Women need to be empowered through having equal access to education, skill development and employment opportunities. Pakistani women are hardworking, intelligent and committed. Female students outperform in professional examinations. Position holders at the tertiary level of education are mostly women. The top performer in the Competitive Examination for Central Superior Services (CSS) in the previous year, 2011, was a woman. Likewise, the 2012 Oscar Award winner was also a woman, who prepared an eye-opening documentary (‘Saving Face’) on women victims of acid attacks. These are just a few examples of the evidence of women demonstrating better quality of human capital. Therefore, it is not surprising that quotas are seen by many professional women as a stigma on their ability to compete against men for professional and power positions. Quotas may increase the representation of women but do not guarantee their full participation in institutional and organizational affairs, owing to structured and procedural gender biases against women. Therefore, I argue that a holistic policy framework is needed to address the issue of structured biases against women at different levels. I also postulate that no policy for promoting gender equity will succeed if it ignores the institutional and contextual realities of Pakistani society. Thus, a holistic

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Gender–Organization–System (GOS) framework (see Figure 9.1) is proposed to address challenges and issues of gender-responsive governance in Pakistan and to develop comprehensive and indigenous policies and strategies for promoting both distributive and procedural equity. The GOS Model of Gender Governance The GOS approach suggests that women representatives’ own gender, the institutional policies and practices, and overall societal norms, legal environment and culturally prescribed social attitudes influence women’s participation in the process of governance. It also underscores the interaction of gender, organization and system while investigating the issue (Fagenson 1990; Jabeen 2001). An application of the GOS approach to local-level governance in Pakistan was made to find factors that facilitate or impede the elected representatives’ participation at that level through face-to-face interviews with elected members (Jabeen 2009). The findings of the study revealed that, at the systemic level, the most common factors related to the issue were legal factors (including discriminatory laws), lack of proper legislation on women’s issues, subtle Systemic factors Legislation, laws, policies Gender development measures: ‒ Education ‒ Health Gender empowerment measures: ‒ Economic participation ‒ Political participation Culture and traditions

Organizational factors Gender composition Opportunities for training and development Participation in decision making Mentoring and networking Gender-friendly policies and practices

Personal factors Education Skills’ development Self-confidence Parental education Socio-economic background Socialization

Gender equity and governance

Figure 9.1 The GOS model of gender equity and governance Source: Jabeen (2001), p. 499.

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forms of discrimination against women by not offering them a honorarium for attending meetings, and women’s relegation to the areas traditionally perceived as more suitable for women. Absence of implementation of the existing laws on harassment and offensive behaviour was also identified as a major problem in this regard. Other societal factors included political and cultural factors, pointing to the unstable political situation in the country and the prevailing social attitudes and cultural norms that assign more prominent roles to men in the public arena compared with women and that place women in subordinate positions. At the organizational level, gender disparities in terms of access to education, training and development, gender streaming, inadequate budgetary allocations, lack of gender-friendly policies and practices, absence of women from important decision-making bodies and lack of mentoring and networking were identified as major barriers in this regard. At the personal/gender level, certain demographic factors including women representatives’ education and training, their self-confidence and family support (including parental and spouse education), socio-economic background and the requirements of child and elderly care accounted for women’s low and limited participation in governance.

Conclusion and Recommendations

To conclude, an application of the GOS framework in the specific context of local governance of Pakistan suggests that myriad systemic, organizational and personal factors affect women representatives’ participation in the process of governance. Since women’s participation in governance is extremely important for an even and equitable human resource development, there is a need to understand the phenomenon holistically in view of the local and cultural realities and develop a comprehensive and indigenous plan towards addressing the issue. It is suggested that a two-pronged strategy of developing people—both women and men—and creating an enabling environment at systemic and organizational level through gender-sensitive policies and practices may help to improve the situation. Some specific interventions in this regard may include the following: 1) reconstitution of the governance agenda by making it more specific to gender needs through legislation on gender discriminatory laws and practices, such as sexual harassment, domestic violence, acid attacks and honour killings; 2) adequate budgetary allocations for gender mainstreaming and development endeavours; 3) equal access to education, health and skill development

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opportunities; 4) gender-friendly organizational policies and practices; 5) egalitarian role divisions through effective socialization processes, gender mainstreaming and gender sensitivity training of all representatives; 6) mentoring, networking and partnering by building alliances among institutions working in this direction; and 7) creation of indigenous knowledge through promotion of collaborative research, seminars and conferences at university level on the issues. Last but not least, a sincere and genuine effort and political will to promote gender equity in distributive and procedural terms in all spheres of human development and governance is crucial in order to have a meaningful impact on both representative and participative governance. I want to end on this note: To have an adequate appreciation of the far-reaching effects of disparities between women and men, we have to recognize the basic fact that gender inequality is not one affliction, but many, with varying reach on the lives of women and men, and girls and boys. Amartya Sen 24 April 2001 References Berniell, M. & Sanchez-Paramo (2011), Gender equality and development. In: World Development Report, Washington DC: World Bank. Christensen, T. (2001), Administrative reform: Transforming the relationship between political and administrative leaders. Governance 14(4): 457–480. CIET/DTCE (2004), Social audit of governance and delivery of public services, Pakistan. Islamabad: Community Information, Empowerment and Training (CIET) and Devolution Trust for Community Empowerment (DTCE) (www.ciet.org). Cornwall, A. & J. Gaventa (2006), Participation in governance. In: A.S. Haque & H. Zafarullah, eds, International development governance. London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 405–413. DFID (2007), Gender Equality Action Plan 2007–2009: Making faster progress to gender equality. London: Department for International Development. Fagenson, E. (1990), At the heart of women and management research: Theoretical and methodological approaches and their biases. Journal of Business Ethics 9: 267–274. Global Gender Gap Report (2006, 2007, 2009, 2011). World Economic Forum. Haque, A. & H. Zafarullah (2006), Understanding development governance. In: A.S. Haque & H. Zafarullah, eds, International development governance. London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 13–50.

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Haque, S. (2003), Citizen participation in governance through representation: The issue of gender in East Asia. International Journal of Public Administration 26(5): 569–590. Hyden, G. & J. Court (2002), World Governance Survey. Tokyo: United Nations University, Discussion Paper 1. Jabeen, N. (2001), Gender, Organization, System: A framework for research on women in management. Asian Profile 29(6): 493–501. ——— (2009), Gender and local governance in Pakistan: Representation vs. participation. International NGO Journal 4(5): 264–276. Kabeer, N. (1996), Agency, well-being and inequality: Reflections on the gender dimensions of poverty. IDS Bulletin 27(1): 11–21. Kaufmann, D. & A. Kraay (2007), Issue Paper for the Roundtable on Measuring Governance. Washington, DC: World Bank Institute (http://www.govindicators.org/). Khosa, A. (1992), Constitution of Pakistan. Lahore: Kausar Brothers, pp. 26–28. Leventhal, S. (1976), What should be done with equity theory? New approaches to the study of fairness in social relationships. Washington, DC: National Science Foundation, September 1976. Available from Department of Psychology, Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan 48202. Also from http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal. Online Women Statistics (2010). www.onlinewomeninpolitics.org. Rondinelli, D. (2006), Decentralization and development. In: A.S. Haque & H. Zafa­ rullah, eds, International Development Governance. London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 391–404. Sen, A. (1999), Development as freedom. New York: Knopf. ——— (2001), Many faces of gender inequality. Frontline, India 18(22). Sharlicki, P. & R. Folger (1997), Retaliation in the workplace: The roles of distributive, procedural and interactional justice. Journal of Applied Psychology 82(3): 434–443. UNDP (1995), The revolution for gender equality. www.hdr.undp.org/hdr. ——— (1997), Human Development Report 1997. New York: Oxford University Press. ——— (1998), Human Development Report 1998. New York: Oxford University Press. ——— (2007), Gender Parity Report. New York: United Nations Development Programme. ——— (2009), Human Development Report 2009. New York: Oxford University Press. ——— (2010), Human Development Report 2010. New York: Oxford University Press. World Bank (1992), Governance and development. Washington DC: World Bank. ——— (2006), Worldwide governance indicators. Washington DC: World Bank. ——— (2011), World Development Report. Defining gender in the 21st century. Washington DC: World Bank. ——— (2012), World Development Report. Gender equality and development. Washington DC: World Bank.

chapter 10

Looking through the Leventhal Lens: Is Gender Equity in the Philippines a Puzzle? Response to Nasira Jabeen Stella Quimbo1 Abstract Pakistan and the Philippines are populous Asian countries and have similar economic development levels. However, the disparity in the status of women across both countries is substantial. Jabeen (2012) proposes a Gender, Organization and Systems (GOS) model, an application of Leventhal’s concept of equity, to understand the pathways to a fair distribution of outcomes across gender and, specifically, the low levels of participation in governance of Pakistani women. I utilize Jabeen’s analytical framework to discuss the case of Filipino women. In the Philippines, males have few advantages over females in economic participation and opportunities, health and education outcomes and political empowerment. Equitable gender outcomes in the Philippines appear to be mostly driven by informal processes, rather than formal mechanisms. Overall, gender outcomes in the Philippines seem to be fair, not only in distribution but also in procedure.

Introduction In his 1976 and 1977 papers, Gerald Leventhal made the important point that equity is a multidimensional concept, going beyond the fairness of distribution—the sole focus of traditional equity theory—and including the notion of fairness of procedure. Based on this alternative formulation, “procedural fairness takes into account the social system which generates this distribution and is based on rules, including consistency over time and across persons, accuracy, prevention of bias, ethics and representativeness of all stakeholders” (Jabeen, this volume). In this sense, equity is clearly a richer notion, unpacked in a way that allows a discussion of the various processes 1 Tenth holder of the Prince Claus Chair, 2011–2013.

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influencing it and, ultimately, facilitating the identification of handles available to society’s leaders. Jabeen provides an interesting application of Leventhal’s multidimensional concept of equity to the problem of the lack of gender equity in Pakistan. She proposes a Gender, Organization and Systems (GOS) model to help in the understanding of why women’s participation in the governance of Pakistani remains low. The model traces the various factors within society that explain distributional outcomes. Through the model, she points out that there are systemic, organizational and personal factors that contribute to the situation of Pakistani women. The model also helps motivate the need for a two-pronged strategy involving “developing people and [providing an] an enabling environment in institutions” (ibid.). I hope to contribute to Jabeen’s discussion by reflecting on the case of the Philippines, which, according to the 2011 Global Gender Gap Report, has made important strides in closing gender gaps. On the basis of the Global Gender Gap Index, the Philippines is ranked eighth in the world (see Table 10.1), ranked first in Asia and among lower-middle income countries, and the only country in Asia to have closed the gender gaps in health and education. While there still remain gender gaps, particularly in economic participation and opportunity as well as political empowerment, the Philippines has made noteworthy achievements in gender equity despite being resource-poor. This is perhaps the only development indicator for which the Philippines outranks rich nations such as the Netherlands. Table 10.1 Global Gender Gap Index, selected countries, 2011 Country

Overall

Economic Educational participation attainment and opportunity

Health and survival

Political empowerment

Rank Score

Rank Score

Rank Score

Rank Score

Philippines  8 Netherlands  15 Pakistan 133

0.7685  15 0.747  27 0.5583 134

0.7632 0.7432 0.3446

Source: Global Gender Gap Report (2011)

Rank Score  1  32 127

1  1 0.9985  92 0.7782 123

0.9796 16 0.9697 26 0.9557 54

0.3314 0.2766 0.1547

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Philippines and Pakistan: Some Similarities, Yet Huge Differences in Gender Equity

The Philippines and Pakistan are similar in a number of ways (see Table 10.2). Both are located in Asia and highly populous. While Pakistan’s population is almost double that of the Philippines—173 million versus 93 million—the land area of Pakistan is more than twice as large as that of the Philippines. In terms of gross national income, the sizes of their economies are comparable. Labour productivity levels, as measured by GDP per person employed, are also similar across both countries. However, GDP per capita of the Philippines (3,560 PPP US$) is about 50% larger than that of Pakistan (2,411 PPP US$). Yet, despite the presence of some similarities, both countries differ markedly in terms of gender equity, as shown by Table 10.3, which extends Jabeen‘s table by including Philippine data. The differences in gender equity appear to be disproportionately larger than that in income (e.g. a 16-fold difference in gender ranking versus a 50% difference in GDP per capita). The female–male ratios shown in Table 10.3 suggest that it is in the sphere of economic participation and opportunity that the Philippines and Pakistan differ most. Relatively speaking, labour force participation, incomes and opportunities for technical jobs are significantly higher among Filipino women compared with their Pakistani counterparts. On the other hand, similarities are most apparent in the areas of health and political empowerment. Table 10.3 raises the question: how did the Philippines attain relatively good gender gap indices, despite its relatively poor overall economic growth Table 10.2 Basic economic indicators, Philippines and Pakistan, 2011 Variable

Land area Population Population density

Description

Pakistan

Philippines

sq. km. 770,880 298,170 Total 173,593,383 93,260,798 People per sq. km. of 225 313 land area GDP per capita PPP, constant 2005 2,411 3,560 international $ GDP per person employed PPP, constant 1990 $ 8,525 8,354 Gross national income constant 2000 US $ 120,153,556,306 129,216,102,020 Source: World Bank Data Bank.

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Looking through the Leventhal lens Table 10.3 Gender Gap Sub-indexes, the Philippines and Pakistan, 2011 Gender Gap Sub-indexes

Economic participation and opportunity Labour force participation Income (PPP US $) Legislators, senior officials, managers Professional and technical workers Educational attainment Literacy Rate Enrolment in primary education Enrolment in secondary education Enrolment in tertiary education Health and survival Healthy Life Expectancy Political empowerment Members of Parliament Ministerial positions Years with female Head of State (last 50 years)

Philippines

Pakistan

PhilPakistan ratio

Female Male

F–M Female Male ratio

F–M F–M ratio ratio

 51 2642  55%  62%

 80 4429  45%  38%

0.64 0.60 1.22 1.63

 88 3402  97%  78%

0.25 0.29 0.03 0.28

 2.55  2.08 39.52  5.78

 96  93  66  32

 95  91  55  26

1.01 1.02 1.20 1.23

  40   60   29    5

 69  72  36   6

0.58 0.83 0.81 0.83

 1.74  1.23  1.49  1.48

 64

 59

1.08   55

 56

0.98  1.10

 22 977   3%  22%

 22%  78% 0.28   22%  78% 0.28  1.00  14%  86% 0.16    8%  93% 0.09  1.89  16  34 0.47    5  45 0.11  4.24

Source: Global Gender Gap Report (2011)

performance in recent decades? To begin with, should we really expect a positive correlation between gender equity and income levels? There are at least two reasons for expecting this correlation. One is the fertility channel (Galor & Weil 1996): reduced gender wage inequality implies higher wages for women, higher costs of raising children, reduced fertility and, ultimately, faster economic growth through increased female labour force participation. Another is the human capital channel: an economy with more educated women grows faster because this will secure increased human capital of children (Hill & King 1995). Indeed, Figure 10.1 shows a positive correlation between income

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2010 GDP per capita (current US$)

120000 Luxemburg

100000

Norway

80000 Switzerland

60000

Australia

40000 20000

UAE Saudi Arabia

Japan

Korea, Rep.

Denmark Sweden Finland Germany Iceland

Spain Trinidad and Tobago South Africa

Yemen Pakistan Philippines 0 0,4000 0,4500 0,5000 0,5500 0,6000 0,6500 0,7000 0,7500 0,8000 0,8500 0,9000 Global Gender Gap Index 2010 score

Figure 10.1 The Global Gender Gap and GDP per capita, 2010 Data Source for GDP per capita: Data Bank, World Bank.2 Data Source for GGG: The Global Gender Gap Report 2010.3

and gender equity (p. All websites were last accessed on 4 February 2013. Note that some are available only for paying members.

chapter 13

Responsible Business Practices of Dutch Enterprises in Kenyan Agri-Business Lisanne Heemskerk1 Abstract Responsible business or corporate social responsibility (CSR) has received increased attention in the past decade and has been identified as having the potential to make significant contributions to poverty alleviation and development. Companies are under greater pressure to take responsibility for their impacts on the societies, environment and value chain in which they operate. There is, however, a great lack of research on what determines responsible behaviour in developing countries and what the impact is of ‘Western’ responsible business approaches in the context of these countries. This paper investigates how responsible business is practised by Dutch enterprises operational in Kenyan agri-business and questions what this means for local sustainable development. Specific focus is placed on the drivers of responsible business and the impact of applying responsible business in the value chain. The paper also discusses the implications of the findings for practice and policy, proposing that there is a need to critically pose the question: ‘How responsible is responsible business?’

Introduction The notion of acting responsibly in business has gained substantial ground. Businesses are increasingly considered to have obligations—which go beyond making a profit—to the societies and the environment in which they operate (Idemudia 2011). The private sector is increasingly seen as important in contributing to economic growth and development but also in reducing poverty, building human capital and protecting the environment. As a result, more and more companies are adopting responsible business practices—some 1 Winner of the Master’s thesis competition. This chapter is based on her Master’s thesis (Heemskerk 2012) and is available online at http://igitur-archive.library.uu.nl. The author wishes to thank Professor Annelies Zoomers (Utrecht University) for her supervision with the original thesis.

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voluntarily, influenced by the notion of giving back to society, and others more or less forced—as a means to sustain market access or merely a way to comply with rules and regulations regarding the behaviour of business in society (Gilbert 2008). Most research on responsible business has been concentrated on developed countries, generally in Europe and the US (Carroll 1991; Visser 2008). There is a great lack of research on responsible business practices in developing countries, and in particular on Africa. Previous research on responsible business in Africa mainly concentrated on best-practice case studies and did not take into account the overall impact of business practices. Nor has it shown the real impact of applying responsible business—such as the compliance to certification labels—in the value chain of a product. Furthermore, as African countries are in the initial stage of implementing responsible business, and regulatory frameworks are largely absent, responsible business often manifests itself differently compared with the more rooted responsible business in Western countries (Visser 2008). Hence, to discover what makes responsible business in developing countries different from its manifestation in the developed world, there is a need to examine the factors driving responsible business practices in these developing countries. These drivers could encourage or prevent a company from engaging in responsible business (ibid.). The need for research on responsible business practices in developing countries is increasingly felt because of the following factors: 1) developing countries have the most rapidly growing economies, attracting new businesses; 2) social and environmental impacts are acutely felt; and 3) current responsible business approaches, with their origin in Western countries, may not sufficiently relate to the context and circumstances in developing economies. As for the latter, developing countries have different cultural and social norms and values, so there has been increased apprehension that responsible business legitimizes values that are not in the interest of developing countries and the poor (Prieto-Carron 2006; Muthuri & Gilbert 2011). In Kenya, the notion of acting responsibly has received increased attention during the last decade. As the country is economically growing and has obtained a substantial economic position internationally, domestic and international companies are deemed to contribute to the further economic as well as social and environmental development of Kenya. This is particularly relevant in agri-business—and more specifically in the floriculture sector— in which many international (especially Dutch) companies are active. As these sectors produce mainly for the international market, they are increasingly exposed to international responsibility requirements. Hence, what these approaches involve, what their impact is in Kenya and whether they

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are indeed contributing to local sustainable development in Kenya needs to be examined.

Theoretical Framework

Much has been said and written on responsible business (or related terms like corporate social responsibility, shared value, and inclusive business). There is, however, no uncontested global definition of responsible business, nor are there internationally accepted guidelines on the practices it includes. Responsible business has been defined in many ways, from the limited economic perspective of creating a profit for shareholders, to enterprises adding value to a country’s development as a core business (Gilbert 2008; Jamali 2008). The term is rather versatile, dynamic and context-specific. For the purpose of this research, responsible business is defined as follows: [T]he formal and informal ways in which businesses, next to making a profit, consistently create shared value in society through economic development, good governance, stakeholder responsiveness and environmental improvement of the countries in which they operate, while remaining sensitive to prevailing religious, historical and cultural contexts. (Visser 2008: 474) Drivers of Responsible Business The motivations driving the responsible business practices of companies have been categorized by many scholars and in several ways. Wood (1991), for instance, identifies principles that motivate a company’s responsibility at three levels: the institutional level, the organizational level, and the individual level. Motivations at the institutional level refer to adopting responsibility approaches out of credibility and social legitimacy. Motivations at the organizational level—or public responsibility—refer to the adoption of responsibility approaches in order to conform to the companies’ stakeholder expectations. And motivations at the individual level refer to the adoption of responsibility approached out of self-motivation and personal interest, instead of societal pressures (Carroll 1991; Jamali & Mirshak 2007; Gilbert 2008). Maignan & Ralston (2002) also identify three drivers for responsible behaviour—performance-driven, stakeholder-driven, and value-driven—that are rather similar to the motivations of Wood (1991). In addition, Visser (2008) identifies ten major drivers that can provide insight into how responsible business is perceived and practised. These drivers are categorized as internal

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or local drivers (i.e. pressures from within the country) and external drivers (i.e. pressures with a global origin). Responsible Business and the Value Chain As the nature of many business relations increasingly involves engagement in international value chains, the concept of responsible business no longer covers only the individual company but also the entire value chain in which a company operates. Companies are expected to take responsibility for the economic, environmental and social impact of their actions in the whole value chain—for instance, by ensuring that their suppliers do the same and, if necessary, helping them to improve. Close collaboration with suppliers and producers up the value chain and with customers and consumers down the value chain has become essential (Boomsma 2008). Tallontire & Greenhalgh (2005) argue that the motivations for responsible business practices can vary a great deal in different parts of the value chain. Up the value chain, at the producer end, the benefits of acting responsibly and applying responsible business practices are largely motivated by cost savings, better management systems and better access to international markets. For the retailer, the benefits are of a more commercial nature and entail the protection of the retailer’s image and reputation (image-branding). In addition, responsible behaviour is of less interest when suppliers are uncertain whether their access to markets and buyers is sustained and when the financial burden is too high. Furthermore, codes of conduct and certification labels have increasingly become one of the main tools used to show responsible behaviour in the value chain, particularly for large international companies (Anderson & Skjoett-Larsen 2009). Most of these codes originated in developed countries and generally reflect Western concerns but are applied in both developed and developing countries. Doubts have been raised about the efficiency of these labels and the impact on different stakeholders. Hence, there is a need to assess the real impact—and the added value—of applying responsible business and certification labels in value chains (Boomsma 2008). Responsible Business and Sustainable Development Businesses and their responsible business practices are increasingly portrayed as part of the solution to the development of developing countries (Blowfield & Frynas 2005). However, many development practitioners and scholars are concerned about the lack of empirical evidence supporting this claim. Arguments advanced for why responsible business can be considered a good development is that it maximizes spill-over effects of foreign direct investments.

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For example, governments can better ensure the contribution of foreign investors to development by adopting inward investment policies, such as requirements for local economic linkages, technology transfer and public–private partnerships. In addition, Blowfield (2005) argues that responsible business can be effective in developing countries because it can fill government gaps and reduce the financial burden of these governments. Prieto-Carron (2006), however, argues that the notion of businesses contributing to the development of developing countries reveals several limitations. These are mainly due to a lack of clear definitions of what poverty and development actually encompass, leading to very different ideas and approaches on how to tackle poverty and how to foster development. In addition, several aspects of development, such as living standards, are often overlooked. For example, although the violation of labour rights and unsafe working conditions are high on the international agenda, the fact that many people have no other choice but to work in inhumane conditions, which are determined by international buyers and Western consumers, is often overlooked. The opponents of the notion that responsible business leads to development argue that responsible business suffers from a major weakness, namely that it treats values like commoditized labour and capital rights as universal norms while they often contradict norms of local communities. In addition, the notion that responsible business can deliver long-term sustainable development is questioned, as currently the market generally rules in favour of companies focusing on short-term responsibility demands and solutions (Sagebien & Whellams 2010). According to Idemudia (2011), there are three interrelated factors that make it difficult to prove whether responsible business can or cannot generate sustainable development. First, there is a lack of clear definitions and guidelines on responsible business and sustainable development. Second, there is too much emphasis on the business side of responsible business and too little attention on the benefits in the local context. And third, there is a limited focus in the empirical research agenda on the real impact of responsible business on local sustainable development (Sagebien & Whellams 2010).

Research Outline2

The research on which this paper is based focused on the responsible business practices of Dutch enterprises in Kenyan agri-business. Three questions are 2 For more details on the research methodology, see Heemskerk (2012).

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Mandera Lodwar

Kitale Bungoma Kakamega

Eldoret

Kisumu Kericho Kisii Migori

Isiolo

Nakuru

Nyeri Naivasha Karuri

Garissa

Thika Kikuyu Ruiru Ngong Nairobi Athi River

Malindi Kilifi Mtwapa Mombasa Ukunda

150 km 100 mi

Map 13.1

Locations of interviewed companies (in green)

dealt with: 1) how is responsible business practised by Dutch enterprises operational in Kenyan agri-business? 2) what are the drivers encouraging and preventing the engagement of enterprises in responsible business? and 3) what is the impact of applying responsible business in the value chain of a product? In total, 37 surveys and interviews were conducted with owners and managers of Dutch enterprises active in Kenyan agri-business (using a snowball technique and assistance from the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Nairobi). Businesses were mainly located in the areas of Naivasha (14) and Nairobi (16) (see Map 13.1). Other locations were Nakuru (1), Kisumu (2), Mombasa (2),

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Responsible business practices Table 13.1 Research population by subsector Type of agri-business

N

Horticulture—flowers/plants Horticulture—vegetables/fruits Dairy/livestock Beverage (water) Consultancy (agri-business) ICT/Software Energy (wind, solar) Others (packaging, cooling, etc.) Total

18 5 4 1 2 2 2 4 37

Kericho (1) and Turkana (1). Of the 37 interviewed companies, 17 were small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and 20 were large companies. In addition, 16 companies had an international-market focus and 21 had a domestic-market focus. Table 13.1 shows in which subsectors within agri-business the interviewed companies were active. To discover how responsible business is practised by Dutch enterprises in Kenya, a combination of the research strategy of Papasolomou-Doukakis et al. (2005) and Spiller (2000) was used (see Table 13.2). Both strategies focus on finding which practices a company employs towards its primary stakeholders and both measure this by defining actions for each stakeholder group. For this research, these actions were applied in the form of a Likert scale question, in which entrepreneurs could indicate to what extent—from 1 (“not at all”) to 5 (“to a large extent”)—the actions were implemented. The results could then indicate what the total responsibility level or score of these enterprises was and to what extent enterprises focused on which stakeholder groups. This method also allowed for a comparative benchmark assessment of the enterprise’s responsibility performance in relation to other firms and different agribusiness subsectors.3

3 The method employed has two limitations: 1) the research is prone to a high-self assessment level and could thus give a more positive view of the responsible business practices than is actually the case; and 2) the research focused only on Dutch enterprises, thus not making it possible for cross-national comparisons.

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Table 13.2 Corporate social responsibility actions per stakeholder group Stakeholder

Actions vis-à-vis key stakeholders

Employees

Provides a family-friendly work environment Engages in responsible human resource management Provides an equitable reward and wage system for employees Engages in open and flexible communication with employees Invests in employee development Encourages freedom of speech and promotes employee rights to speak up and report their concerns at work Provides child-care support/paternity/maternity leave in addition to what is expected by law Engages in employment diversity in hiring and promoting women, ethnic minorities and the physically handicapped Promotes a dignified and fair treatment of all employees Respects the rights of consumers Offers quality products and services Provides information that is truthful, honest and useful Products and services provided are safe and fit with their intended use Avoids false and misleading advertising Discloses all substantial risks associated with product or service Avoids sales promotions that are deceptive/manipulative Avoids manipulating the availability of a product for purpose of exploitation Avoids engagement in price fixing Fosters reciprocal relationships between the corporation and community Invests in communities in which corporation operates Launches community development activities Encourages employee participation in community projects Strives for a competitive return on investment Engages in fair and honest business practices in relationship with shareholders Engages in fair trading transactions with suppliers Demonstrates a commitment to sustainable development Demonstrates a commitment to the environment

Consumers

Community

Investors

Suppliers Environment

Source: Jamali (2008)

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Responsible business practices



Research Results

Focus Areas The study revealed that responsible business practices of Dutch enterprises were well established, whereby activities regarding employees and customers were most frequently mentioned (Figure 13.1). Employee-directed activities concerned mainly the provision of healthy and safe working conditions, payment of sufficient salaries, provision of housing or housing allowances, provision of travel allowances, health care on site and promotion and learning opportunities within the enterprise. Motivations provided for the emphasis on employee-related activities were that employees are essential for the survival of an enterprise. Therefore, companies invest in the loyalty of employees by providing good salaries, good working conditions and growth opportunities within the enterprise. The focus on employee activities can also be related to or triggered by the well-established Kenyan labour laws, concerning minimum wage, sick leave, working hours, etc. Typical customer-related activities were mainly concentrated on maintaining a good business relationship, improving customer service, providing clients with information on the economic, social and environmental performance of the enterprise and responding to customer product preferences. Through frequent dialogue with their clients and customers, companies can cater to their demands and produce products accordingly.

Community 3.37

Environment 3.66

Investors/shareholders 3.67 4.5 4 3.5 3.7 3 2.5 2 3.4 1.5 1 0.5 0

4.2

3.5

3.7

Employees 4.23

Suppliers 3.46

4 Customers 3.95

Figure 13.1 Responsible business focus of Dutch enterprises on different stakeholder groups

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The responsibility levels of the interviewed companies were lowest regarding supplier- and community-related activities. The relatively lower focus on supplier activities can be ascribed to the fact that most Dutch enterprises either import the supplies needed or acquire them from large local companies. This is especially the case in the flower sector, in which most companies do not have any form of relationship with their suppliers; only the price and quality of input products was found to be important. The following quotes emphasize this view of suppliers: The type of relationship depends very much on the suppliers themselves. The target is to come to a long-term relationship where both benefit, but in practice this is not always the case. (Company 18) We tend to be reasonably loyal to our suppliers, although it is a very competitive industry that we operate in. (Company 30) In the horticulture and dairy and livestock sectors, however, companies appeared to rely more heavily on the input of suppliers. To ensure that these companies can rely on the regular supply of inputs—and on the agreed price, amount and quality—liability contracts are signed between both parties. Community activities were also undertaken by the interviewed Dutch companies, though to a lesser extent than the other stakeholder activities. Respondents in several companies argued that financially supporting communities and community projects generally has no significant benefit for the enterprise itself; hence, these companies invested only in community wellbeing if the company could directly or indirectly benefit from the investment made. The following quote highlights this view: We don’t want to be involved in philanthropic nonsense. Any investment in communities needs to also benefit the enterprise itself. (Company 17) Common examples of community-related activities were restoration and building of schools and clinics, financial contribution to educational programmes in schools, support of orphans with school tuitions, water purification programmes for surrounding villages and financial contributions for lunch and tea in surrounding schools. These activities were generally provided in the form of donations and had an ad hoc character, i.e. when money was available and when communities needed it. Environmental activities appeared to form an important part of the responsible business practices of the interviewed Dutch companies. However, akin

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to employee well-being activities, the Kenyan environmental laws are well established and encompass issues such as the protection of lakes, rivers and ponds, the protection of wildlife, the management of waste and the management of pesticide and fertilizer usage. In addition, the majority of these environmental activities were requirements set by the range of certification labels and standards to which many of the interviewed companies are certified. On the other hand, the companies’ respondents also mentioned environmental activities that are not required by either Kenyan law or by certification standards. These activities include recycling used water and waste, making sure that waste water stays in the farm, (re)planting trees, training employees on good environmental practice, changing greenhouse lighting systems to LED lights, decreasing the use of Lake Naivasha water, educating farmers (suppliers) about the possibilities of biogas and drip irrigation, and minimizing the use of non-renewable resources. In addition, several larger companies in the Naivasha region had made it their goal to manage the large amount of wildlife in the region. Shareholder- and investor-related activities were generally not of great importance to most companies, as the majority of the interviewed Dutch companies were family-owned and generally had shareholders and investors from within the family and company. Size and Market Focus Results show that the responsibility level of the large interviewed Dutch companies was statistically higher4 than the Dutch SMEs, the overall scores being 3.9 and 3.45, respectively. In addition, Figure 13.2 shows that large companies had a (significantly) higher score than SMEs regarding employees, environment, communities and investors/shareholders. Furthermore, results indicate that export-oriented enterprises had a statistically higher5 responsibility level than domestic-oriented enterprises, the overall scores being 3.96 and 3.54, respectively. On five of the six focus areas, the interviewed export-oriented enterprises showed higher levels of responsibility than the domestic-oriented enterprises (Figure 13.3). This applied particularly to community and environmental activities. These results may indicate that international pressure and standardizations positively influence the responsible business practices of the export-oriented enterprises. In addition, the 4 Significance level: 0.015 using Mann-Whitney test; correlation of 0.402 using Spearman’s rho test. 5 Significance level: 0.044 using a Mann-Whitney test; correlation of 0.338 using Spearman’s rho test.

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Community

Investors/ shareholders 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

Employees SMEs Large companies

Suppliers

Environment

Customers

Figure 13.2 Average responsibility score for large companies and SMEs* * Large companies: N=20; SMEs: N=17.

Community

Investors/ shareholders 4.5 4 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 0.5 0

Environment

Employees Export Domestic

Suppliers

Customers

Figure 13.3 Average responsibility score for export and domestic companies * Export companies: N=16; Domestic companies: N=21.

large difference between export- and domestic-oriented companies on environment-related activities could be an indication of increased global anxiety towards the state of the environment in the world, and in particular the state of the environment in Kenya, such as the current concerns on climate change and human–wildlife conflicts. It was only on customer-related activities that the domestic-oriented enterprises revealed a (slightly) higher responsibility level than export-oriented enterprises. This may indicate that the competitiveness on the domestic market is higher than on the international market, and stronger business relations with customers are essential for domestic-oriented enterprises.

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Drivers of Responsible Business Results furthermore indicated that the interviewed Dutch enterprises were primarily engaged in responsible business activities for two possible reasons: 1) because this is required by either international standardization and international market access or by Kenyan labour and environmental laws; and/or 2) because the enterprises wished to keep up with competitors, to maintain legitimacy, to sustain their market position and to ensure survival. In Wood’s (1991) terminology, these are all indications of drivers at the institutional level, and in Maignan & Ralston’s (2002) terminology as performance-driven responsible business. Or, to use Visser’s (2008) terms, these are particularly drivers—or pressures—that originate at the external—or global—level. The internal—or local—drivers of the enterprises were especially concerned with making a profit and with business growth. By investing in responsible business activities, particularly in employee- and customer-related activities, the competitive advantage of the enterprise was argued to be enhanced, thus maximizing profits and creating growth for the business. In addition, long-term sustainability for the enterprise was also mentioned as an important motivation for the enterprise to invest in responsible business activities. During the last decade, the requirements for companies to comply with certain certification labels—to show that products are produced under the right conditions—have increased. As a result, market access for exportoriented companies is increasingly linked to international standardization. This is especially the case for companies that produce for the international market and have supermarkets or warehouses, such as Albert Heijn or IKEA, as a client. The great majority (70%) of the interviewed Dutch companies in agri-business were certified by a range of different international and national certification labels and standards. In addition, approximately half of the noncertified enterprises indicated that they were to get certified in the near future. The international certification labels most certified by were GlobalGAP, MPS, Fairtrade (FLO), Fair Flowers Fair Plants (FFP) and the ISO standards 14000, 22000 and 26000. In addition, the national certification labels most certified by were the Kenya Flower Council (KFC), specific for the flower sector, and the Kenyan Bureau of Standards (KEBS). As international standards play a substantial positive role regarding the way responsible business is practised, adherence to international standards also encourages the homogenization of responsible business practices across Kenya. For instance, since a relatively large proportion (70%) of the enterprises comply with international standards, the responsible business practices of these companies are likely to be more focused on the workplace (employees), the market place (customers) and environmental issues in accordance with

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the requirements of the standard than on community-related issues, which are generally not required. Responsible Business and the Value Chain The responsible business practices of Dutch enterprises operational in Kenyan agri-business do not always have a positive influence on different stakeholders in the value chain. In particular, compliance with ever-increasing product quality demands from the European market, without compliance affecting the competitive advantage of the industry, poses a serious challenge for the entire value chain. It has become increasingly difficult for vegetable-exporting companies (especially Dutch ones) in Kenya to have smallholder farmers as their suppliers. Several companies had been forced to change to a different business model because compliance with traceability and quality control requirements, necessary to access the European market, led to high costs or was not possible at all. Hence, the smallholder business model has generally changed towards several medium-sized farmers (between 5 and 15 ha), who are able to deal with the strict food safety and traceability requirements. The international pressure on product quality and the lack of sufficient amounts and quality of Kenyan supplies have also resulted in Dutch companies taking more stages of the value chain into their own hands, leading to highly integrated value chains represented by large integrated exporters. The lack of knowledge of local smallholder farmers—hence the poor quality and unreliable supply of products—has, amongst other things, triggered this development. Providing inputs, packaging, processing and (often) transporting involves product monitoring, so that product quality is improved and in compliance with European standards, and an increased product price is ensured. Results also showed that Dutch enterprises in Kenyan agri-business placed little emphasis on strategically targeting the value chain in their responsible business practices. The responsibility levels of suppliers was not considered when doing business, even within companies that place considerable emphasis on responsible business within their companies. Impact of Responsible Business Practices Although the responsible business practices of Dutch companies are well established, this is mainly as a result of pressures from customers, international standardization and from the requirements set by Kenyan law. Hence, the responsible business practices seem to be no more than compliance. Although some companies clearly stated they practiced responsible business out of personal conviction, the general tendency showed otherwise. For this

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reason, the question arises: how responsible actually are the responsible business practices of these Dutch companies? For large companies—mainly in the flower industry, which uses large amounts of resources (land, labour, water)—responsible business practices can be argued to be no more than a kind of compensation for the strain put on these resources. In addition, the products produced are all exported to highly developed countries. Therefore, it can be questioned whether using scarce Kenyan land and water for the production of flowers and vegetables and subsequently exporting the products is responsible. Furthermore, since flowers are a luxury product produced in a country that imports food because it cannot produce enough itself owing to the scarcity of land and water, it is debatable whether using land and water for these luxury products is ethically right and thus ‘responsible’. Results also showed that the pressures of international standardization have led in some instances (in the horticulture sector) to the exclusion of smallholder farmers as suppliers of export companies owing to traceability issues. Smallholders have been pushed out of the international market and forced to find a new market for their products, which has led to unemployment and reduced income, thus posing impediments to local development. Responsible business in this case can be argued to be not very responsible. Is it therefore correct that responsible business is often defined as the overall contribution of a business to sustainable development? A more detailed understanding of these developments could enable companies and policy makers to limit the negative aspects, while increasing the positive aspects, making responsible business practices a contributor to local sustainable development. The developmental impact of responsible business practices at the economic, environmental and social level reveal both negative and positive effects. At the environmental level, the negative outcomes seem to outweigh the positive ones because companies put a large strain on natural resources, particularly on land and water. The economic effects, on the other hand, are largely positive and lead to specialized sectors and skilled employees, attracting more foreign direct investments and improving the livelihoods of local Kenyans owing to the creation of employment. At the social level, responsible behaviour is mainly related to quick-fix or temporary solutions, with a limited long-term developmental impact. Generally speaking, however, responsible business practices seem to have a positive developmental impact, as the quality of products improves, the environment is better taken care of and better working conditions and salaries are provided for employees.

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Conclusion The study showed that the uptake and focus areas of responsible business practices varies according to company size, sector, market focus and certification demands. Understandings and levels of commitment to responsible business are demonstrated by the issues the companies prioritize, the stakeholders they prioritize and the range of responsible business activities they employ. In addition, the responsible business practices of these enterprises are often not viewed and labelled as responsible business or corporate social responsibility but ‘just’ as part of their daily business activities. What is consistent, however, is that it is largely driven by the need to conform to Kenyan laws and the requirements of the international market—in the form of codes of conduct and certification labels—and as an attempt by the enterprises to keep up with competitors, to maintain legitimacy, sustain their market position and ensure survival. A large part of the responsible business practices are still short-term solutions instead of long-term sustainable solutions implemented as a core business activity. Responsible business practises may have been proclaimed as one of the best ways to alleviate poverty and create development, yet this and other studies show that responsible business practices—although in essence positive and implemented to improve situations—often also have negative effects on mainly local players in value chains and on local sustainable development. In particular, the need to comply with the ever-increasing international quality demands and certification labels—without affecting the competitive advantage of the industry—poses a serious challenge for the entire value chain. These negative effects need to be taken seriously, particularly as they affect those who were targeted for help in the first place. Hence, if these trends continue, the potential benefits of responsible business for development may not be achieved. For this reason, it is necessary to find ways to practise responsible business in such a way that all actors—export-oriented and domestic-oriented, large, medium and small—are involved and add to and gain from responsible business. This applies in particular within international value chains. Finally, the mixture of findings—some responsible practices being truly long-term solutions but others being no more than quick-fix solutions—leads to the following questions: 1) when negative effects of responsible business practices outweigh the positive effects, can responsible business actually be called responsible or is it merely a disguised form of traditional business? and 2) should responsible business practices not be about being good rather than being less bad?

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References Anderson, M. & T. Skjoett-Larsen (2009), Corporate social responsibility in global supply chains. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal 14(2): 75–86. Blowfield, M. (2005), Corporate social responsibility: Reinventing the meaning of development? International Affairs 81(3): 515–525. Blowfield, M. & J.G. Frynas (2005), Setting new agendas: Critical perspectives on corporate social responsibility in the developing world. International Affairs 81(3): 499–513. Boomsma, M.J. (2008), Sustainable procurement from developing countries: Practices and challenges for businesses and support agencies. Bulletin 385. Amsterdam: KIT Publishers. Carroll, A.B. (1991), The pyramid of corporate social responsibility: Toward the moral management of organizational stakeholders. Business Horizons 34: 39–48. Gilbert, V. (2008), An insight into corporate social responsibility in Kenya. MA thesis, University of Nottingham. Heemskerk, L. (2012), How responsible is responsible business? An analysis of the drivers and effects of the responsible business practices of Dutch enterprises active in Kenyan agribusiness. Master’s thesis, Utrecht University. Idemudia, U.O. (2011), Corporate social responsibility and developing countries: Moving the critical CSR research agenda in Africa forward. Progress in Development Studies 11(1): 1–18. Jamali, D. (2008), A stakeholder approach to corporate social responsibility: A fresh perspective into theory and practice. Journal of Business Ethics 82: 213–231. Jamali, D. & R. Mirshak (2007), Corporate social responsibility (CSR): Theory and practice in a developing country context. Journal of Business Ethics 72: 243–262. Maignan, I. & D.A. Ralston (2002), Corporate social responsibility in Europe and the U.S.: Insights from businesses. Journal of International Business Studies 33(3): 497–514. Muthuri, J.N. & V. Gilbert (2011), An institutional analysis of corporate social responsibility in Kenya. Journal of Business Ethics 98: 467–483. Papasolomou-Doukakis, I., M. Krambia-Kapardis & M. Katsioloudes (2005), Corporate social responsibility: The way forward? Maybe not! European Business Review 17(3): 263–279. Prieto-Carron, M. (2006), Critical perspectives on CSR and development: What we know, what we don’t know, and what we need to know. International Affairs 82(5): 977–987. Sagebien, J. & M. Whellams (2010), CSR and development: Seeing the forest for the trees. Canadian Journal of Development Studies 31(3): 483–510.

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Spiller, R. (2000), Ethical business and investment: A model for business and society. Journal of Business Ethics 27: 149–160. Tallontire, A. & P. Greenhalgh (2005), Establishing CSR drivers in agribusiness. Final report for Foreign Investment Advisory Service, International Finance Corporation and World Bank. Visser, W. (2008), Corporate social responsibility in developing countries. In: A. Crane, A. McWilliams, D. Matten, J. Moon & D. Seigel, eds, The Oxford handbook of corporate social responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 473–479. ——— (2011), The age of responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the new DNA of business. London: Wiley Publishing. Wood, D.T. (1991), Corporate social performance revisited. The Academy of Management Review 16(4): 691–718.

Appendix

Equity or equality? Tenth anniversary of the Prince Claus Chair Frans Bieckmann

On 28 November, The Broker attended an exclusive meeting of the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity, chaired by Her Royal Highness Princess Máxima of the Netherlands. The meeting took place at Paleis Noordeinde in The Hague. On this day, the Prince Claus Chair celebrated its tenth anniversary. The Prince Claus Chair aims to continue the work of Prince Claus (1926–2002) on equity and development. Development and equity: two words that were always central to the thinking of the late Prince Claus (1926–2002). These concepts were therefore chosen as the motto of the rotating academic Prince Claus Chair that was established in 2002. They indicate two areas of thinking that have guided the academic work of the ten professors from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and the Pacific who have held this chair so far. For Prince Claus, equity was always a crucial element of development. Only recently, however, has it once again become central to development discussions. Equity and equality, two words that were used during the discussions and presentations at this tenth anniversary seminar, appear at first sight to be interchangeable. However, there is a difference. The difference lies in the more ‘political’ connotation of the word equality (or inequality). Unlike poverty, inequality can be solved only by fundamentally altering power relations, while the mainstream approach to poverty reduction tends to be more technical: if we just try hard enough, poverty can be reduced without harming the rich and those in power. Whatever perspective is right, it was clear that such a political debate had to be approached carefully at Paleis Noordeinde. As a member of the royal family and especially as the wife of the future King of the Netherlands, Princess Máxima always has to be understandably very cautious in making political statements. In her speech, therefore, she did not burn her fingers by attempting to define equity, let alone inequality. She could, however, have done so by citing her late father-in-law, who argued that economic growth must benefit social equality. Prince Claus, for example, made the following sharp statement on cash flows and development in the speech he wrote to ‘celebrate’ fifty years of development cooperation, in 1999. In the end, Prince Claus was not allowed to deliver this speech, but the text was quoted in the book De wereld volgens Prins Claus:1 “There are more poor 1 Bieckmann, F. (2004), De wereld volgens Prins Claus. Amsterdam: Mets & Schilt, p. 260.

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and disadvantaged people in the world than ever. . . . Fifty years of development aid has created a situation in which there is a net transfer of resources from poor to rich countries. That is the antithesis of what development aid is about, and it serves as a very useful indicator of the efficiency and effectiveness of what we call development aid. . . . After 50 years of development cooperation the world is more unequal than ever.” The Prince was also highly aware of the relevance of posing the right questions. “We are desperately in need of new conceptual and analytical paradigms which demonstrate much more sensitiveness to issues relating to the distribution of poverty and possibilities, both between and within nations”, Prince Claus said at the opening of the SID World Conference in Amsterdam in 1991.2 In his Amsterdam 1991 speech, he strongly criticized the current role of economics in development theory: “I believe that part of the problem is due to the place of economics in development theory. My conviction is that there is more to it: if we take a look at the development of economic theory in the past 200 years, we can conclude with acceptable exaggeration that it has mainly been committed to the question of how those who are rich can increase their wealth. Economists are paying almost no attention to the question of distribution. I believe indeed that mainstream economics represents an orthodox consensus in many respects, which is demonstrably conservative.”



Tenth Anniversary of the Prince Claus Chair

The Broker was present at the tenth anniversary of the Prince Claus Chair, which was celebrated in Paleis Noordeinde in the presence of Queen Beatrix and Princess Máxima of the Netherlands. A select and diverse audience of 100 invitees listened to speeches by Princess Máxima, who is Chair of the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair, and the Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation Lilianne Ploumen, followed by presentations by the ten holders of the Prince Claus Chair since 2002. The ten chair holders briefly introduced their papers, which will be published in 2013. The discussion was led by Leo de Haan, Rector of ISS (part of Erasmus University Rotterdam). Towards the end, ASC Director Ton Dietz, who is a member of the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair, summarized the discussion. The debate among the chair holders and the symposium guests did touch upon a number of the more sensitive aspects. According to Bob van der Bijl (Netherlands African Business Council, NABC), the “core of the matter is a very small elite refusing to share the wealth in almost all African countries”. Amina Mama replied: “It is not about wrong leaders, but about wrong processes, wrong systems and wrong institutions,

2 Ibid. p. 257.

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which are not democratic and participative.” She pointed to the fact that African elites act differently from Western elites, who usually invest their wealth in their own countries. Financial globalization makes it possible for African and other elites to move their capital and avoid paying taxes. Minister Ploumen, who had been in office for only a short time when making her speech at Noordeinde and had just returned from a trade mission to Brazil, spoke of both equity and equality. She outlined some initial elements of ‘inclusive development’ or inclusive growth policies, building on the views of her predecessor Bert Koenders. In brief, her message was that although “economic growth is essential for poverty reduction”, this growth “has no consistent effect on inequality. . . . Both extreme egalitarianism and extreme inequality can be bad for economic growth. . . . Unequal opportunities are economically inefficient and redistribution can potentially stimulate both growth and equity.” Ploumen also elaborated a little on how countries can achieve greater equality, citing research on how Asian countries had found their way out of poverty. “As it turns out, the Asian miracle was simply due to policy choices;”—a result established by the Tracking Development research project, funded by her ministry—“sound macroeconomic management; economic freedom for farmers and small entrepreneurs; and, last but not least, pro-rural and pro-poor public spending.”



The Prince Claus Chair

The Prince Claus Chair was founded in 2003, with the aim of continuing the work of Prince Claus on equity and development. Utrecht University and the International Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam alternately appoint an outstanding young academic from Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean or the Pacific to the Prince Claus Chair, which rotates annually with an overlap. The first ten chair holders were:

• Syed Mansoob Murshed (2002–2003) • Amima Mama (2003–2004) • Gaspar Rivera-Salgado (2004–2005) • Rema Hammami (2005–2006) • Nasira Jabeen (2006–2007) • Alcinda Honwana (2007–2008) • Irene Agyepong (2008–2010) • Patricia Almeida Ashley (2009–2011) • Atul Kumar (2010–2012) • Stella Quimbo (2011–2013)

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Some chair holders in the debate underlined the need for a more structural approach to equity. “Equity is not only about redistribution, but even more so about the process to reach this”, said Stella Quimbo, the chair holder for 2011–2013. Patricia Almeida Ashley added that an analytical framework is needed for political and economic factors that can feed into more social policies. “We need not only goals like the MDGs, which are merely wishes, but also indicators for the processes to get there.” As Ton Dietz remarked in his summarizing speech at the meeting, in reference to the MDGs: “It can be expected that in the next few years many discussions will be focused on how to formulate measurable targets for reducing inequality and reaching better equity conditions for all.” Speaking to a partly academic audience, Ploumen underlined the necessity of ongoing research, referring to one of the five ‘knowledge platforms’ at her ministry, focusing on development strategies, with a focus on inclusive development. However, she continued, “research is nothing without policy . . . and growth is nothing without equity. For equity, we need coherence. That is why my portfolio covers trade, investment and finance, industry, social policy and rural development. That is why coherence is at the heart of my development policy.” “So economic growth alone cannot be the whole answer”, the minister continued. “We need inclusive growth; we need equity to fight poverty successfully. This is not a new concept. It has been used to fight poverty in Western Europe for a long time. Think of progressive taxation, social services and safety nets. Or take government subsidies for the underserved. Some people still believe that these initiatives are synonymous with killing economic growth. But history proves them wrong.” Ploumen ended her speech with an urgent plea: “All the more reason to step up the fight against inequality. . . . I hope inclusive development will not turn out to be just another development buzz word. I hope we can truly place equity at the heart of our development efforts.” Ton Dietz also addressed both equity and equality in his speech. He emphasized that it can be expected that reducing inequality and providing better equity conditions for all will be high on the political agenda. He stressed that the United Nations Task Team on the post-2015 United Nations Development Agenda has suggested in its recent report to the UN Secretary General—Realizing the Future We Want for All—that ‘reducing inequalities’ should become one of 13 new goals for a post-2015 development agenda. The discussions at the seminar were not only about income inequality, which The Broker chose to focus on in its ‘Inequality Dossier’, but about a multitude of inequalities. This broad range of inequalities was accorded its full weight in the wide-ranging issues the ten chair holders addressed in their presentations. And indeed, looking at only material differences is a much too narrow and one-dimensional view. However, this broadness also entails a risk: if all problems can be addressed under the umbrella of ‘inequality’, as used to be the case with terms like ‘poverty’ or ‘development’, in what

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sense is the concept helpful? An overly strong generalization of inequality, prompted by the renewed attention paid to it, might miss its purpose. The risk is that the development sector will walk into old traps: new terminology and new hypes conceal the fact that it is a question of ‘same meat, different gravy’. So what precisely is the new, distinctive feature of the focus on inequality? Unfortunately, this question was not explicitly on the agenda of the seminar. But perhaps an answer lies in the words of Professor Rema Hammami: “Would you like equal rights or equitable rights? The latter is vague, it depends on what someone wishes to appropriate to you. Equality, on the contrary, is a political tool. . . . We need to put development back into the real world of politics and inequality.”

List of Contributors Irene Akua Agyepong Professor Agyepong was appointed as the seventh holder of the Prince Claus Chair by Utrecht University at Utrecht Medical Center’s Julius Center for Health Sciences and Primary Care. She is a strong advocate of investing simultaneously in research into public health and the development of health policy. In her research, she has been concentrating on how to manage and transform health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa. She obtained her Doctorate in Public Health (DRPH) in 2000 from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Public Health. She is presently seconded full time by the Ghana Health Service to the University of Ghana School of Public Health. Her research interests are in Health Policy and Systems Research, and she has numerous publications in international peer-reviewed journals related to this area of work. Included among her current research and capacity building projects in this area of work is the NWO/WOTRO funded research project “Accelerating progress towards attainment of MDG4 & 5” being carried out in collaboration with the University of Utrecht and the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. [email protected]

Patricia Almeida Ashley Professor Ashley was appointed as the eighth holder of the Prince Claus Chair by the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam for her interdisciplinary approach to Socially Responsible Entrepreneurship (SRE) and her knowledge of the relationship between SRE, development and equity in Latin America. In 2002, she obtained her PhD in Business Management (PUC-Rio, Brazil) in the area of Management of Change, developing a thesis on a dynamic and intercultural model for the analysis and design of corporate strategies on social responsibility. Currently, she is Associate Professor at Universidade Federal Fluminense, Brazil. Her research interests focus on social responsibility, governance and sustainable development. She has authored and/or edited several books, chapters and articles on social responsibility, democratic governance, citizenship and education policies, in a context of sustainable development studies, applied to business, government, education institutions and civil society organizations in Brazil and abroad. Her most recent work, in collaboration with members of the International Policy and Research Network on Territories of Social Responsibility (INTSR), is a book entitled, co-edited with

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David Crowther, Territories of Social Responsibility: Opening the research and policy agenda (Gower Publishing Ltd, UK, 2012). [email protected]

Frans Bieckmann Frans Bieckmann is co-founder, executive director and editor in chief of The (Global Development Knowledge) Broker, an online platform that brings together cutting-edge knowledge and expert opinions from researchers, policy­makers and practitioners in global development, human security, inclusive economy and social change. ‘Brokering’ between knowledge networks, The Broker functions as a ‘thinknet’ that provides new and integrated perspectives on current global policy issues. In August 2012, he published his most recent book Soedan—Het sinistere spel om macht, rijkdom en olie, a detailed analysis of the international involvement with Sudan and the conflict in Darfur. Bieckmann studied international relations at the University of Amsterdam, and has worked for 25 years as a journalist, researcher and advisor. He is a partner in the research bureau WiW- Global Research & Reporting, which specializes in international relations, globalization and development cooperation. In the book De wereld volgens Prins Claus (2004, 2011), he described the involvement of Prince Claus of the Netherlands with Africa and development cooperation. Leo de Haan Leo de Haan is Rector of the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS) of Erasmus University Rotterdam and Professor of Development Studies. He is a member of the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair. ISS has co-hosted the Prince Claus Chair since its establishment. His current research interests are the developmental state and the conceptualization of rural and urban livelihoods; international and national migration patterns resulting in the multilocality of livelihoods; and the multi-dimensionality of poverty in the Global South. His previous research focused on the commercialization of agriculture, environmental management, pastoral livelihoods and resource conflicts among peasants and pastoralists, with an emphasis on Africa. Leo de Haan is the former Director of the African Studies Centre (ASC), Leiden and Professor of Development in Sub-Sahara Africa at Leiden University. Before this, he was Professor of Development Studies at Radboud University Nijmegen and Director of the Centre for International Development Issues Nijmegen (CIDIN). [email protected]

Ton Dietz Ton Dietz is a human geographer (PhD University of Amsterdam, 1987) who became professor in ‘geography, environment and development’ at the

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List of Contributors

University of Amsterdam in 1995. In 2010 he became director of the African Studies Centre in Leiden and professor in African development at Leiden University. He is vice chair of the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair in Development and Equity. He was the co-initiator of the World Connectors, the Broker, and the Development Policy Review network. He has held a variety of functions in WOTRO Research for Development. Between 2002 and 2007 he was the scientific director of CERES, the research school for resource studies for development in the Netherlands. Currently he is a member of the Knowledge Platform for Development Strategies of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His research interests are participatory assessment of development and change, dryland development, agricultural and livestock dynamics, conflict and cooperation on natural resources, impact of climate change, identity politics and the changing connections of Africa with the world. He has written many books, articles, reports and web-based communications. [email protected]

Dick Foeken Dick Foeken holds a PhD (1991) in Political Geography. Since 1987, he has been a senior researcher at the African Studies Centre in Leiden, The Netherlands. His main interests are urban poverty, urban agriculture and urban water supply, mainly in Kenya. He has (co-)written six monographs and co-edited five volumes. He has also published in such journals as Geoforum, GeoJournal, Ecology of Food and Nutrition, The Journal of Peasant Studies, Habitat International, Political Geography, Journal of Modern African Studies, Urban Studies and Gender, Place and Culture. [email protected]

Annemarie Groot Kormelinck Annemarie Groot Kormelinck is a development sociologist by profession and is currently working as an advisor in rural economic development for the Centre for Development Innovation of Wageningen University and Research Center. Her MSc thesis was on the topic of the relationship between gender bargaining relations and institutional trust in agricultural cooperatives. [email protected]

Rema Hammami Professor Rema Hammami was appointed as the fourth holder of the Prince Claus Chair by the International Institute of Social Studies because of her impressive academic contribution and as an intellectual champion of peace and co-existence in the struggle for Palestinian independence in the occupied

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territories. Her gendered approach provides a valuable point of entry into issues of governance, civil society, citizenship, rights and peace. She is currently is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the Women’s Studies Institute at Birzeit University (Ramallah), where she chairs the Graduate Program in Gender and Development. She has written widely on development, politics, popular culture and gender, and serves on the editorial boards of the Arab Studies Journal, Jerusalem Quarterly File, Middle East Reports, Development and Change, and Feminist Review. Her recent publications include: Who Answers to Gazan Women? A study in security and economic rights (UNWomen: New York, 2011), “Home and Exile in Jerusalem” in Shehadeh, R and P. Johnson (eds.) Seeking Palestine: New Palestinian Writing on Home and Exile (Northhampton, Mass.: Olive Branch Press, 2013). [email protected]

Lisanne Heemskerk Lisanne Heemskerk graduated in 2012 with an MSc in International Development Studies from the University of Utrecht, with a specialization in corporate social responsibility and sustainable development. She has carried out research on the social, economic and environmental responsibilities of Dutch enterprises operational in the Kenyan agribusiness. She is currently working as a junior consultant at the sustainable business development unit at Triodos Facet. [email protected]

Alcinda Honwana Professor Honwana was appointed as the sixth holder of the Prince Claus Chair by the International Institute of Social Studies. She is an authority on child soldiers and on the predicament of youth in the context of socio-economic crisis and ongoing globalisation processes in Africa. Currently, she is a visiting professor in Anthropology and International Development at the Open University. She completed her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of London (SOAS) in 1996. Her research interests cover issues such as: political conflict and its impact on children, youth and women; youth activism, participatory citizenship and involvement in processes of social change. Her latest books include Youth and Revolution in Tunisia (2013, Zed Books); The Time of Youth: Work, Politics and Social Change (2012, Kumarian Press); Child Soldiers in Africa (2006, University of Pennsylvania Press); and Makers & Breakers: Children and Youth in Postcolonial Africa (2005, James Currey Publishers). [email protected]

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Nasira Jabeen Professor Nasira Jabeen was appointed as the fifth holder of the Prince Claus Chair by the Utrecht School of Governance of Utrecht University. Coming from a Pakistani background, her research interests include governance, public management, gender, human resource management, and organizational change and development. She is Professor of Public Administration, Director of the Institute of Administrative Sciences at Punjab University, Lahore, as well as Director of the Human Resources Development Centre of the University of Punjab. She has a wide experience of working as Human Resource Development Consultant with international development organizations, such as UNICEF, the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the World Bank, the Governance Institutions Network International (GINI), the British Council and the Ministry of Education. She has published her research work in various international and national journals. [email protected]

Linda Johnson Linda Johnson has been executive secretary of ISS and secretary to the Curatorium of the Prince Claus Chair since 2010. She has been involved in the internationalisation of Higher Education since 1988. Before joining the ISS staff she worked for a number of Dutch institutions of Higher Education and latterly for the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW). She is a former president of the EAIE (European Assocation of International Education) and speaks and writes regularly on matters pertaining to international education. She was educated in the UK and has also worked in Germany and Nigeria. She currently serves on the publications committee of the EAIE, the Fulbright social sciences selection committee and is series editor for the EAIE occasional papers series on International Education. [email protected]

Atul Kumar Professor Atul Kumar was appointed as the ninth holder of the Prince Claus Chair by Utrecht University. He is of Indian descent. His research focuses on climate change, energy policy, energy technology system analysis and how a sustainable lifestyle can combat climate change. He is currently Fellow & Area Convenor, Modelling & Scenario Building, The Energy and Resources Institute, New Delhi, India. He is the author of six books and many articles in peerreviewed journals such as Energy Strategy Reviews, Energy Policy, European

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Review of Energy Markets, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, World Affairs, International Journal of Sustainable Energy and Energy Sources. His latest books are Sub-national actions on climate change in India and implications for international collaboration (The Energy and Resources Institute, 2011) and Growth, sustainable development and climate change: Friends or foes? (Utrecht University, 2011). [email protected]

Amina Mama Professor Mama was appointed as the second holder of the Prince Claus Chair by the International Institute of Social Studies. She was appointed for her contribution to the academic field of African culture and its relationship to development. She is currently Professor of Women and Gender Studies, University of California, Davis. Her academic fields are feminism, militarism, critical development studies, social movements and transformations. She is Editor of Feminist Africa. Recent publications include ‘Militarism, conflict and women’s activism: Challenges and prospects for women in three West African countries’ (Feminist Review, 2011) and ‘What does it mean to do feminist research in African contexts?’ (Feminist Review, 2010). She is currently involved in a film project ‘The Art of Ama Ata Aidoo’ (forthcoming, 2014). [email protected]

Syed Mansoob Murshed Professor Murshed, an economist from Bangladesh, was appointed by Utrecht University as the first holder of the Prince Claus Chair. He was appointed for his academic work in the fields of international economics, political economy and the relation of conflict to economic development. Professor Murshed’s recent research concerns the economics of conflict and natural resource management. He is currently Professor of the Economics of Peace and Conflict at the International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University in the Netherlands and is also Professor of Economics at Coventry University in the UK. He was a Research Fellow at UNU/WIDER in Helsinki where he ran projects on ‘Globalization and Vulnerable Economies’ and ‘Why Some Countries Avoid Conflict, While Others Fail’. He is the author of seven books and over 130 refereed journal papers and book chapters. His latest book, published in 2010, is Explaining Civil War (Edward Elgar). He is on the Editorial boards of Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy (PEPS), as well as Civil Wars. His research interests are in the economics of conflict, resource abundance, aid conditionality, political economy, macroeconomics and international economics. [email protected]

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Stella Quimbo Professor Stella Quimbo was appointed as the tenth holder of the Prince Claus Chair by the Institute of Social Studies of Erasmus University Rotterdam. After spending a year as a post-doctoral fellow at Brown University in the US (Providence, Rhode Island) in 2002, she took up her current position as professor at the School of Economics of the University of the Philippines. Stella Quimbo has published widely on topics such as insurance design, provider incentives, equitable access to health care and health care demand, as well as child nutrition and cognitive development. [email protected]

Gaspar Rivera-Salgado Professor Rivera-Salgado is a sociologist from Mexico. He was appointed as the third holder of the Prince Claus Chair at Utrecht University’s Netherlands Institute of Human Rights and School of Human Rights Research on the basis of his academic work in the field of indigenous rights, particularly in Latin America and the United States. He received his doctorate in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is currently Project Director at UCLA Center for Labor Research and Education where he teaches classes on Work, Labor and Social Justice in the US and immigration issues. He also directs the Institute for Transnational Social Change. He currently serves as an advisor to several migrant organizations in California, including the Binational Center for Oaxacan Indigenous Development, the Coalition for Humane Human Rights of Los Angeles, and the Binational Front of Indigenous Organizations. He has extensive experience as an independent consultant on transnational migration, race and ethnic relations and diversity trainings for large organizations. Among his most recent publications include the volume (with J. Fox) Indigenous Mexican Migration in the United States (University of California, San Diego, 2005) and the recently published volume (with E. Telles, and M. Sawyer) Just Neighbors?: Research on African American and Latino Relations in the United States (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2011). [email protected]

Nienke van der Have Nienke van der Have obtained her LL.M cum laude at the University of Amsterdam. She currently holds a PhD position at the same university and conducts research into the international legal framework for the prevention of gross human rights violations. [email protected]