The Social Evil of Child Labour

Child labor condemns millions of children around the world to a life of servitude. Children aged less than 18 years bear a heavy burden, comprising 40 to 50 per cent of all forced labour victims globally. Children born, unwanted, to the world of poverty brought up in the conditions where joy and happiness is a rare commodity - humiliation is their primary teacher, left with scars that shape their future. Watching other children's activity in their way to school under the protection of their families - street children in turn are left wandering in the streets of perpetual abuse. The street children - these unwanted, excluded, unknown entities with no human identity. Elements of negligence and ignorance of the society and state. They grow up carrying the burden of heavy responsibilities on their shoulder to feed the family. At early ages, destiny forces shape their behaviour to act as adult and work like one. When you look at their feature you see a tired man in a small defigurated body - they cant afford to enjoy the childhood innocense. As little as seven with no access to education, they fall into gangs and crime, in the hands of those of the underground world - are introduced to drugs and other illegal works. Often they are put to sell drugs to provide for their addicted parents.

Child workers in worst form of working condition are forced into labour - lacking any protective measures. For their weakness in being a child, physically and mentally, they are exposed to oppressive conditions, incapable to secure their lost rights. Conventions and drafts of laws circulate between myriad of national and international official desks filled with words with no action or at times for political interests. In South Africa, the Office of the Rights of the Child in the Presidency is three years late in submitting a progress report on children’s rights to the United Nations -- tainting the country's image as a human rights champion. Child rights activists have slammed the office for failing to submit the report, which was due in 2002 as part of South Africa’s ratification of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In Russia more than 30,000 children and teenagers are reported missing every year. Many fall prey to traffickers. Another 5,000, living hand-to-mouth in the streets, are also an easy mark. Ratification and implementation of the UN Convention on Transnational Organised Crime, which in addition to containing Firearms Protocol also contains a Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, could be part of the response to address the trafficking of women and children as sex workers. The biggest deterioration in the newly globalised economy, in sectors such as the sex industry, agriculture, construction and domestic service. Increased concern about organised crime has led to a new international protocol against people-trafficking. Last year, trade unionists from a range of countries met in Cameroon to discuss issues including slavery and abduction, forced domestic labour and the sex trade.


To end cruelty against children is an ambitious goal, which we cannot achieve alone unless we work in partnership with other professionals and the public. The sharing of knowledge and information about child protection is a key part of this. It’s one of the most important ways we can bring about changes in law, policy and general attitudes towards children. Every day, all over the world children are bought and sold, imported and exported like consumable things. Children are forced to be soldiers, prostitutes, sweatshop workers, servants. Children who have lost their parents and are deprived of their primary caregiver are directly exposed to unprotected environment. As many as one in eight Togolese children are sent away from home to work, a study of child labour in the West African state suggests. They travel across borders, to as far away as Liberia, Cameroon or Gabon. One surprise is that children still go, despite the fact that other youngsters have come home sick, unhappy and often still destitute, the boys telling stories of exploitation on agricultural plantations, many girls pregnant as the result of rape, some even infected with Aids. In Eastern Europe alone, almost 1.5 million children live in public care. In Iran approximately 2 million children work or are engaged in some form of child labour.

Most forced labour today is still exacted in developing countries where older forms of forced labour are sometimes transmuting into newer ones, notably in a range of informal sector activities. Where child labor has been banned they are often held uninformed and hidden without any legal protection. This is the cause of additional deprivation from acquiring sufficient wages. Employers capitalize on the docility of the children recognizing that these laborers cannot legally form unions to change their conditions. They are put to work for minimal pay and long hours. The measures taken by the governments often is limited to close down the factories that used child labor. But the policy will do no good for the child who is compelled to cope with poverty and deprivation, bullied and abused physically and mentally. States are bound to take effective action in poverty alleviation measures and combatting abusive elements out of the life of children.

Lack of protection and proper law affect children in many different ways. They are deprived from primary care and remain illiterate, unhealthy and impoverished - facing an intimidating future. They are the direct victim of sustained high levels of inquality, poverty and vulnerability out of the negligence of officials and ineffective planning by misuse of public budget. In under developed countries opportunity for primary and secondary level of education in rural areas particularly of girl child is yet to be solved. Traditional factors such as rigid cultural and social roles in certain countries further limit educational attainment and increase child labor. She is not as free as her brother to walk far from home to attend school. Child labor is especially prevalent in rural areas where the capacity to enforce minimum age requirements for schooling and work is lacking.Africa and Asia together account for over 90 percent of total child employment. In rural areas in Iran, girl children are 15% more prone to malnutrition and marginalized due to traditional norm of men eating first before other members of the family. Girls have to cope with what is left on the table, if any. A recent official census points out to the increasing number of mal nurtured children in the country and its adverse effects on the child physical condition, leaving children shorter than average for the most part. The situation of women as head of households is also vulnerable. School-aged children, too, often pay the price. Some working mothers can only cope with their double duties by taking their eldest daughters out of school to look after younger children, but the girls lose their chances of a more skilled job in the future. In Morocco, 80 per cent of women with older children had taken daughters under 14 out of school to do so – no wonder that many eventually follow their mothers into the factories.

Working together with relevant government bodies, local NGOs and traditional charities is encouraged to assist the families to create protective environment and provide basic primary needs of children. These children are deprived of the simple joys of childhood, relegated instead to a life of drudgery. However, there are problems with the obvious solution of abolishing child labor. First, there is no international agreement defining child labor. Countries not only have different minimum age work restrictions, but also have varying regulations based on the type of labor. This makes the limits of child labor very ambiguous. Most would agree that a six year old is too young to work, but whether the same can be said about a twelve year old is debatable. Until there is global agreement which can isolate cases of child labor, it will be very hard to abolish. There is also the view that work can help a child in terms of socialization, in building self-esteem and for training (Collins 1983). The problem is, then, not child labor itself, but the conditions under which it operates (Boyden 1991).

Table 1:
Distribution of Economically Active Children under 15 Years of Age
(percent of total world child labor)


Region 1980 1985 1990
Africa 17.0 18.0 21.3
Americas 4.7 5.6 na
Asia 77.8 75.9 72.3
Europe 0.3 0.2 0.1
Oceania 0.2 0.2 0.2

Source: ILO 1993
Note: na...not available


Nasrin Azadeh

1)Trading Away Our Rights, make trade fair, Oxfam, 2004
2)Collins, J.L. 1983. "Fertility Determinants in a High Andes Community." Population and Development Review 9,1: 61-75.
3)ILO (International Labour Office). 1993. Bulletin of Labour Statistics 1993-3. Geneva.
4)World Bank, CHILD LABOR: ISSUES, CAUSES AND INTERVENTIONS
5)Child Labour Inquiry, http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/Library/9175/inquiry1.htm
6)Global March Against Child Labour, http://www.globalmarch.org/

Development Paradigm

Development Policies

Globalization is defined with a concensus on the fact that the world now operates –– socially, culturally, politically and economically –– more as a single, integrated system and less as a collection of separate societies insulated from each other by national boundaries. What we are witnessing is the neo-liberal corporate globalization which is the expanding network of transnational movements and networks that has sought to redefine the process of globalization to emphasize the universalization of rights (human rights, women’’s rights and workers’’ rights) and the defense of transnationally shared interests (most prominently ecological sustainability), the so called “global justice movement.”The dark side of the Globalization is not the oppressive role of neo liberal global governance but the lack of global governance. At any level hegemony which depends on the construction of consent is a much more effective form of rule than domination as coercion by itself, now more than ever regimes are forced to retreat to rule by domination.

But as we become closer in the process of globalization, people of various genders, ethnicity, religious, racial and cultural diversities demand recognition of their identities, their representation in decision making, they demand to be heard in discussions and dialogues by wider society. Women are also demanding social justice, while suffering discrimination and marginalization from social, economic and political opportunities. In the era of globalization, preserving local cultures and diversity has become an issue of challenging deprivation. A sense of identity and belonging to a group with shared values and other bonds of culture are important for individuals. There are historic questions of social changes, of struggles for fairplay, of new understandings of human freedom and democracy. Democracy as a rare commodity needs global mobilization for mass production through out the globe. Global social movements need coherent capable global governance to make its way. Global governeance institutions need powerful effective global social movements to keep them from becoming predatory in captive of priviledges.

Participatory policy development in turn is a process that enables those experiencing deprivation to be more directly involved in designing policy. Through wider involvement there is a greater chance that weaknesses will be identified and rectified before implementation, and that policies will therefore be more effective. In addition the process leads to greater accountability – through direct engagement, as well as through greater understanding, both of issues faced by poor people and of policy development. True participatory policy development is an ongoing process of analysis, prioritisation, problem solving and review. There are a number of tools that can facilitate this process, and one of the most widely used is Participatory Poverty Assessments (PPAs), processes established in the international development arena which are supported by the World Bank, among others. PPAs attempt to define poverty within a country from the perspective of those experiencing it. PPAs have then informed government policy development, often ensuring that the priorities of those living in poverty become those of the government as well.

Deprivation often works through processes of exclusion, from livelihood, from free thinking, free speech, exclusion from access to knowledge, exclusion from basic health and security. These are dimensions that the process of institutionalized poverty and deprivation turns people as a stranger in their local geography. Religious intolerance and fundamentalism has been also the source of widespread exclusion, to the point that is about to intimidate our civilization.

With many countries experience increase of poverty under programmes of so called economic reform, unfair income distribution and institutionalized monopoly and greed the future is not promising. These concerns have led to changes in our thinking about how realistic we are in our development policies. This includes social sector spending, budget allocation and the funding of social programmes.


The Meaning of Development

The following four definitions of development are representative of the existing approaches.

(a) “Economic Development as distinct from mere economic growth, combine:
1. Self-sustaining growth
2. Structural change in patterns of production
3. Technological upgrading
4. Social, political and institutional modernization
5. Widespread improvement in the human condition” (Adelman, 2000, p. 1)
It is clear that were we to monitor a reform process designed in this framework, the intermediate goals to check would be associated with suitably defined targets for each of the five conditions listed. This view is representative of the “traditional” conception of development as structural transformations.

(b) “Sustainable development requires attention not just to economic growth but also to environmental and social issues ... the core challenge for development is to ensure productive work and better quality of life (World Development Report, 2003, p. 1).” The WDR 2003 analyzes the intermediate goals that should be pursued and expresses some consistency conditions among the goals. First, it states that any serious attempt at reducing poverty requires sustained economic growth. Second, after reviewing the threats posed by widespread poverty, widening inequality, devastating conflicts, air pollution, the shortage of fresh water, the degradation of the soil, the destruction of the forests, disappearing bio-diversity and the decline of fisheries, the Report says that “None of these social and environmental patterns is consistent with sustained growth in an interdependent world over the long term” The Report discourages developing countries from following strictly the strategies of developed countries because “development strategy to date has often relied on drawing down environmental resources and replacing them with human-made assets. This was the strategy followed by today’s industrial countries”. And there is no guarantee that such a replacement will be possible in the future because certain critical thresholds could be breached. In this regard, it is critically important to take into account the precautionary principle for decision taking under uncertainty.

(c) “Expansion of freedom is viewed in this approach, both as the primary end and as the principal means of development. Development consists of the removal of various types of unfreedoms that leave people with little choice and little opportunity of exercising their reasoned agency” (Sen, 2000, p. xii). From an instrumental point of view, Sen distinguishes five types of freedom which are particularly important: (1) political freedoms; (2) economic facilities; (3) social opportunities; (4) transparency guarantees; and, (5) protective security. Each of these distinct types of rights and opportunities helps to advance the general capability of a person. Consequently, the intermediate goals of reform should be related to the
enhancement of these five types of freedom.

(d) “Polities significantly shape economic performance because they define and enforce the economic rules. Therefore an essential part of development policy is the creation of polities that will create and enforce efficient property rights” (North, 1994). In this approach there are no substantive intermediate economic goals to monitor. The reform should focus on building appropriate rules for the economic game. In fact, to focus on specific variables that are supposed to be correlated with growth, such as technology or human capital, may even be misleading. According to North, “A theory of economic dynamics is crucial for the field of economic development...Neoclassical theory is simply an inappropriate tool, to analyze and prescribe polices that will induce development.... When applied to economic history and development is focused on technological development and more recently human-capital investment but ignored the incentive structures embodied in institutions that determined the extent of societal investment in those factors” (North, 1994, p.359). In the same vein, Williamson (1996) states that the lessons of firm and market organization carry over to the study of development and reform. Running the risk of being too schematic to reap the benefit of clarifying some political dimensions of reform, we can classify these definitions of development in two categories, substantive approaches (SA) and procedural approaches (PA). A reformer sustaining SA will tend to specify the substantive goals to be achieved by reform (i.e. a given reduction in poverty, certain types of technological upgrade, a minimum growth rate) and, hence, the results of the reform could, in principle, be assessed on such bases. A reformer adopting PA, in contrast, will focus on building and improving the rules of the game. And, since it is the polity that sets and enforces the rules, the reform will attribute a key role to political economy factors. The SA emphasizes the final destination of the journey toward development; the PA focuses on the construction and improvement of the tracks that are supposed to lead the economy toward the best economic outcome. The substantivist policy maker claims to be judged by the results obtained, the proceduralist, by the quality of the track that the polity managed to build.

Although they follow distinct conceptions, definitions (a), (b), and (c) can be classified as substantive approaches to the extent that they identify development with the achievement of substantive and specific results. Besides, these results are explicitly distinguished from “mere” growth. In this regard, the first three definitions present key differences with (d), which defines development in a procedural way. Good economic performance is the outcome of good institutions and good institutions are built by good polities. Another difference with the other three is that there is no explicit concern for distinguishing development from growth. In fact, North (1994) and Williamson (1996) tend to use “growth” and “performance” as synonyms and to identify good performance with either high growth or development.

According to Sen, the efficiency results reached in the neoclassical framework alone do not guarantee distributional equity.15 “The far-reaching powers of the market mechanism have to be supplemented by the creation of basic social opportunities for social equity and justice” (Sen, 2000, P. 146). If we are prepared to assume that welfare is much more than preference satisfaction and to accept that freedom, equality, and justice are also relevant, it is necessary to adopt a broader view of the role of institutions. For example, the reform could aim at establishing rights and institutions that satisfy Rawls’s principles. This would lead to the design of institutions that will minimize the need for redistributive efforts and concentrate on the means with which individuals can construct their own good rather than directly satisfy preferences (Hausman and McPherson, 1997). Furthermore, this perspective would call for a more integrated view of institutions.

According to Sen, “Even though different commentators have chosen to focus on particular institutions (such as the market, or the democratic system, or the media, or the public distribution system), we have to view them together to be able to see what they can or cannot do in combination with other institutions. It is in this integrated perspective that the different institutions can be reasonable assessed and examined”(Sen, 1999, p. 142).


Democracy and Development

Democracy regarded as system of established rule of law is the pillar of development and reforms. The recent Human Development Report (UNDP, 2002) entitled Deepening Democracy in a Fragmented World, states that “political freedom and participation are part of the human development, both as development goals in their own right and as means for advancing human development” (p.52). There is less agreement, however, on how these goals relate to others, such as growth, more equitable income distribution, higher life expectancy, or increasing educational levels. The Report argues that there is no trade-off between democracy and growth and that democracies, in fact, contribute to stability and equitable economic and social development. In this view, the issue of the “relative price” of democracy becomes largely irrelevant. The literature, however, strongly suggests that the questions involved are far from settled. The Rawlsian tradition gives priority to democratic values. According to Rawls (1971), civil liberties, including political rights, “are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.”

A survey of 18 studies (Przeworski and Limongi, 1993) produced mixed results– the only pattern that one can discover in these findings is that most studies published after 1987 find a positive link between democracy and growth, whereas earlier studies, although not different in samples or periods, generally found that authoritarian regimes grew faster.

Przeworski et al.(2000) assess the relationship between democracy and development by analyzing the role of indicators such as population dynamics and life expectancy rather than growth. One relevant finding is that in democracies, controlling for differences in income, birth rates and death rates are lower and life expectancy is higher.

We do not consider income inequalities and crime rates owing to the lack of good quality comparable data. The available evidence suggests though that the Gini coefficient of income distribution is higher in democracies than in autocracies for all GDP per capita groups except for the lowest one (less than $1000). The gap is the highest for countries with GDP per capita of $3000 to $5000: 32-35% for dictatorships and 45-47% for democracies (Przeworski et al., 2000).

Capital Driven Development

from the macroeconomics side, the Mexican crisis in December 1994 and its repercussions called attention to the fact that the implementation of reforms and, specially, the financial integration with the world economy might have been more complicated than what had been expected. what made the Mexican crisis unique in terms of “signaling” a problem were two facts. First, it was the first large post-Washington Consensus crisis that occurred in a country that was not undergoing a particularly difficult period, such as a regime change from socialism to capitalism or a highly unstable situation (which could include armed conflicts) like some African countries that had implemented structural adjustment programs. Second, it was largely unexpected. This explains the international community’s interest in drawing “lessons” that the multilateral institutions engaged in structural reforms in other countries could apply. In this regard, the most relevant lessons were that capital movements can be volatile; that it was necessary to preserve financial stability based on good supervision and adequate prudential regulations; and, that it was necessary to avoid a large current account deficit that could be difficult to finance (see, for example, Calvo and Mendoza, 1996). In addition to the lessons, however, some researchers raised the question of whether something was missing in the WC in particular regarding the role of capital movements, its volatility, and the occurrence of irrational phenomena such as contagion and self-fulfilling prophecies (Stiglitz, 1998).

The South Asian Crisis 1997 occurred where they were least expected: in some of the East Asian Miracle countries, that is, countries that had shown very high growth rates for an extended period of time and generally had reasonably good macroeconomic management and open economies. They were unexpectedly experiencing macroeconomic and financial problems that appeared to be relevant only in Latin America, some transition economies, or countries like Turkey.

Large current account deficits
Excessive short-term foreign currency liabilities
Weak banking systems

the challenges that reforming countries were facing, other less impacting, though no less pressing, problems progressively appeared in the eighties and nineties as the process of structural reform unfolded. The most relevant were: the deterioration in social conditions of specific groups; the sluggish progress in poverty alleviation; environmental degradation; the difficulties to establish the required regulatory framework; the lack of transparency; rent seeking; political instability; and, corruption. to improve the quality of growth by attacking poverty and by promoting good governance and transparency. According to EBRD (1999), the quality of governance in the transition economies, as it is evaluated by the companies themselves, is negatively correlated with the state capture index. The relationship seems to be natural: the less corrupt the government, the better the quality of governance.

According to Wolfensohn (1999), the President of the World Bank, the SGR focuses on two questions, first, the structure of the right institutions to develop the institutional capability for reforms and, second, the issue of ensuring two primary goals of economic policy in the developing world: sustainable growth with poverty alleviation. Under the SGR approach, the World Bank and the IMF should coordinate efforts to better pursue both FGR and SGR objectives. Reforming countries, in turn, would have to improve the quality of policies and institutions (transparency, governance) (Camdessus, 1999, Rodrik, 1999).



The Institutional Turn

“Capital fundamentalism” assumed that solving the problem of underdevelopment was primarily about increasing poor countries’ stock of capital. It was a vision with strong intuitive appeal. From the point of view of poor countries, it also lent itself to optimistic projections of future growth. However capital fundamentalism did not work to extend development and eradicating poverty —either theoretically or empirically. Given that capital, especially physical capital, is subject to diminishing returns, additions to the stock of capital could not possibly account for long-term growth of the kind experienced by the United States.4 Relying on increases in the capital stock to solve development problems in the global South didn’t work either. Capital tended to flow among rich countries rather than from rich to poor. International institutions, trying to compensate with loans and grants, found to their frustration that more capital often did little good. Visions of capital accumulation as a “magic bullet” persist, despite all, even in academic discussion.5 Nonetheless, the consensus has moved capital off its throne as magic bullet.

Bit Driven Growth

The new growth theory, which has become an established part of conventional theoretical discussions of growth in the last twenty years, started from Solow’s argument that “technological change” must account for most growth, then went further by making the production of new ideas “endogenous.”10 Instead of being something whose explanation lay outside the bounds of economic growth models, the emergence of productive new ideas (“rate of technological change”) was seen as depending on economic incentives which were in turn shaped by institutional contexts.

The theoretical presumption that inputs of capital are the key to increased well-being is thoroughly congruent with the preferences of those who control capital. The institutional turn threatens this congruence. Its implications for policy are complex and often ambiguous. It draws attention to ways in which the interests of the powerful may conflict with those of ordinary citizens, particularly in poor countries. Of most immediate concern here, however, is another effect of the institutional turn. It challenges social scientists outside of economics, who have traditionally claimed to be institutionally oriented, to engage with the new perspectives coming out of economics and demonstrate how their own approaches can help resolve some of the complications created by the institutional turn.

The importance of “bitbased” assets extends well beyond ideas and brands. Most corporations are partially bit-based. Purely physical commodities (e.g., steel, cotton, soap, or cloth) are increasingly the exception rather than the rule in the modern economy. A wide range of manufactured goods (e.g., Kleenex, Nike shoes) depend on associated images for their profitability and this is even more true of services—whether production or consumption oriented. Thus, the preferences of “bitbased entrepreneurs” play an ever growing role in defining economic rationality.

The disparity in technological development is one of the asymmetries between developed and developing countries that gives rise to sharply difficult policy dilemmas and conflicts of interest between countries situated at different stages of the development ladder. Key policy questions are whether there is an optimal strategy to shorten the distance in technological levels; to what extent a developing country should rely upon technology transfer and upon local innovation efforts; and what the regime of technology transfers should be to allow welfare maximization. it stimulates innovations by rewarding the inventor but at the price of inhibiting the dissemination of inventions. Many authors have cast serious doubts upon the usefulness of stricter protection of intellectual property rights (Chang, 2001; Boldrin, Levine, 2002). Second, even if there is a need to protect intellectual property rights, protection rules could be more lenient in developing countries. There seems to be a consensus among economists and policymakers that the transfer of technology to the poor countries is a highly efficient way to provide assistance. Yet, the TRIP agreements undoubtedly limit the transfer of technology to the South. TRIPS may also affect social development. Copyrights hinder the dissemination of information, knowledge and culture, whereas patents on pharmaceutical products limit the ability of the poor countries to fight diseases and lower mortality rates. It is only in cases of national emergencies, such as the AIDS epidemic in South Africa, that drugs can be purchased/produced with no regard to patent protection. Third, in developing countries, there is no clear reason to link intellectual property rights to the trade liberalization agenda as is currently happening within the WTO. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was founded at the end of the 19th century, but TRIP agreements were worked out and introduced within the WTO framework. Industrialized countries are in the minority in WIPO and have no leverage on developing countries. In the WTO, instead, the protection of intellectual property rights is linked to trade liberalization and access to industrial countries' markets, which is crucial for developing countries.

Developing countries thus find themselves between a rock and a hard place: either access to developed markets with no easy transfer of technology or easy transfer of technology with restricted access to those markets. Since trade liberalization has an intrinsic value for developed and developing countries, to hold it hostage for the protection of intellectual property does not seem to be a rational policy. Indeed, it has been suggested that trade negotiators are “captured” by industry and that intellectual property policies can become overprotective even if trade policy negotiators are equally concerned with all domestic interests (i.e. those of consumers and producers), because intellectual property is the only available tool by which cross-border externalities can be recaptured by the innovating country. To a trade policy negotiator, profit earned abroad
is unambiguously a good thing, and the consumers' surplus conferred on foreign consumers does not count at all (Scotchmer, 2003).


Learning Organisations

As practitioners know, development is non-linear, unpredictable, and what is needed for sustaining development on a non-trivial scale is poorly understood. In this process, there is only a small range of things organisations actually have any control over, and a great many over which they don’t. It is not clear which aspects are most important, when and how they interact, and what downstream effects will be if ‘success’ or anticipated change is achieved in any one area. This presents a significant challenge to any organisation committed to learning, because it is not always clear what it should be learning or how to make sense out of what it learns. Ellerman argues that this learning challenge is greatly compounded when development organisations, including some with enormous influence and resources, embrace ‘dogma’, try to identify the ‘One Best Way’, and become deeply wedded to these beliefs. This creates significant obstacles to learning, as people focus on explaining away failures (bad single-loop learning) rather than question the dogma or dominant paradigm (double- and triple-loop learning). Bloch and Borges suggest that NGOs tend to get stuck in single-loop learning because their planning and evaluation tools focus on the operational level, and fail to engage people in critical reflection on underlying issues of behaviour, values, and agency. They agree with Michael Edwards that the complexity and diversity of the development process ‘means that to develop capacity for learning and to make the connections is even more important than accumulating information’ (Edwards 1997).

The competitive lens used by private sector is not the most useful for analysing actors in the development sector, particularly as collaboration has become increasingly important for achieving development and humanitarian goals. Development and humanitarian organisations in different countries, of different sizes, with different missions, mandates, and accountability structures have to collaborate with each other in the hope of having an impact. Even within a given organisation, there can often be many hierarchical levels and a variety of sectors or units, as well as remote offices, each with their own cultural contexts, each of which may have very different worldviews. The challenge in the development field is to instil learning capabilities, including the learning challenge of consistently and effectively working with others, in a range of very diverse organisations, which operate at different and/or multiple levels and in profoundly different contexts. Several papers tackle aspects of the challenge that collaboration poses for both individuals and organisations. Laura Roper examines academic–NGO learning collaborations and argues that different organisational cultures can undermine partnerships that would seem to have enormous potential.

In the politicised context of bilateral programmes, in a joint rural development effort of the Dutch and Kenyan governments, Samuel Musyoki finds that the ability to carry forward any learning from one phase to the next is hindered by high staff turnover, national politics, diplomatic considerations, and shifts in the international development agenda. Learning organisation theory tends to assume some degree of consensus or shared vision, both of which can be elusive in development programmes that involve multiple actors, competing interests, and conflicting goals.Where leadership structures are highly politicised, as in the case analysed by Musyoki, learning and change may be very threatening to the status quo. Commitment to a shared vision may not exist, even nominally, and it may be necessary to create alternative, communitybased structures that can build trust and hold officials accountable.


New Development Paradigm

“As thinking about development has changed, so too has what we have come to expect from development agencies such as the World Bank. At the time when much of development thinking placed planning at centre stage, the Bank helped finance the big projects which were at the heart of many of these plans. When the emphasis shifted to the policy environment, particularly getting prices right, the Bank promoted stabilization and trade liberalization and financed structural adjustment. Now, the agenda has stronger governance and institutional elements, including helping societies provide effective public services oriented to the poor. This calls for a different role for the Bank: one that puts still more emphasis on learning and knowledge. In many cases communities have to learn for themselves how to design effective institutions that work in their setting” (Collier, et al. 2000).

When the party celebrating the new world order ends, there will be a moment for reflection. That moment might coincide with another Mexican financial disaster, because there is little real hope that Mexico can ever pay off the debts it incurred to shore up the old foreign investment, much less the new investment that rushed in when the marching bands started up again. It might occur with the collapse - under the weight of poverty, fundamentalism, corruption and political myopia.

As we are living at a time that powerful forces are changing the world history there is no other solution but to respond by creating drastic changes in economy, changes in social arrangements. Measures should be taken by the World Bank, IMF and donor agencies triggered by external pressures from NGOs as well as, policy makers, researchers, and women activists to give a higher profile to the gender differentiated impacts of development policy reform and to modify policies on this basis.

Feminist scholars have argued that as gender was taken into development-policy processes, particularly as part of an effort to ‘mainstream’ gender issues, the focus was originally on women as the target group to be brought into development (Jackson and Pearson 1998). This process was based on the common and mistaken assumptions that:

(a) women were not already involved in some way;
(b) their labour was a ‘free’ good readily available for new activities; and
(c) women would automatically control the fruits of their labour in any such activities.

As the crudest mistakes were addressed, policy makers persisted with the need for a more careful inclusion of women, as it was recognised that successful use of women’s labour could make development occur more efficiently. But it is increasingly being recognized that unless the issues of gender inequality, women’s social and economic empowerment, and women’s role and contribution to the national and global economy is recognized and deeply intertwined into all aspects of macro policies- =including trade--the issues of poverty, inequality and under-development cannot be adequately resolved. Joekes (1995), Standing (1989) and the United Nations (1999), found that industrialization in the Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs) (Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Singapore) is ‘as much female-led’ (the feminization of export) as it is ‘export-led’. This supports observations that “(t)he employment of large numbers of women in the low-value chains of global production
networks often provides the stepping stone for a systemic industrial strategy.” (See for example, Export Processing Zones (EPZs) in South Korea, Mexico, etc. where women are over 60% of the EPZ labour force. However, recent work on Taiwan, Hong Kong, South Korea and Mexico show a decline or reversal of women’s share in manufacturing— its de-feminization.

In general, economists assume that gender roles and relationships are not relevant to the study of macroeconomics and trade which deals with highly technical aggregates such as price stability, employment, external balances and policy instruments (fiscal, monetary, exchange rate, tariffs, NTBs). While conventional economic reasoning may accept the validity of gender at the micro level of analysis and in research and analysis focused on labour market issues, unpaid work, etc. there is resistance to the incorporation of gender as an analytical category in the so-called hard areas of macro analysis, trade and finance. The work of feminist economists and gender advocates has shown that “gender as a relation of power, is a social stratifier that influences the distribution of output, work, income, wealth, etc.” (Cagatay). And since, ‘gender also influences the behavior of economic agents’, it is critical to our understanding of the economy as well as the role of trade in the global economy.

For all the rhetoric we are hearing, unless women have higher representation in economic, politics, legal, judiciary, policy making, decision making and auditing processes, talking about human rights, fair play and democracy will be just some empty words. From a human development perspective all legal systems must conform to international standards of human rights, including gender equality. The courts applying the prevailing customary law should respect basic universal human rights and there should be legal measures to guarantee social justice. Globalization by incorporating innovative ways to include women and gender equity in development policies can bring recognition to local people through expansion of investments and knowledge. Respecting cultural identity and promoting socio-economic equity through participation and benefit sharing, that are possible as long as decisions are made democratically— by people, by states, and by local as well as international institutions.

Exctracted from:
1. Development, Women, and War - Oxfam, 2002
2. On the Philosophical, Political, and Methodological Underpinnings of Reform
José María Fanelli, Vladimir Popov, the Fourth Annual Global Development Conference.
3. The Role of Trade in The Global Economy, High Level session on Trade, Economic and Growth, Mariama Willams, April 2005, WTO
4. The Challenges of the Institutional Turn: New Interdisciplinary Opportunities in Development Theory: Peter Evans, Berkely Univ, 2004
5. The sex Wars, and the other Wars, Oxfam GB, First published in Development in Practice 13(2&3): 154–77 in 2003
6. Globalization, Social Exclusion and Work: with special reference to informal employment and gender,
Marilyn Carr and Martha Chen, ILO
7. Development and the Learning Organisation: an introduction, Laura Roper and Jethro Pettit
8. Let Them Eat Paradigms: Public Attitudes and the Long, Slow Decline of Development Cooperation By Ian Smillie
9. Gender budgets and beyond: feminist fiscal policy in the context of globalisation, Nilufer Cagatay, Oxfam GB
10. Formula for fairness: patient rights before patent rights, Oxfam Briefing Paper, PFIZER

Human Development

The basic purpose of human development is about departing from needs to wants, perpetuating creativity - challenging, producing and expanding choices in their living with the 'others' in 'equity', and with 'dignity'. Human development is about expanding human dimensions in their strive for a free, dynamic and creative life, lived in full potential - pursuing evolution of human wisdom and knowledge. It is about taking measures to provide an environment 'governed by ethical and aesthetic' principles, in which people can develop their capabilities to carry forward the completion in becoming human.

By Nasrin Azadeh

Climate change is real - Oxfam

No one disputes that Earth's climate is changing or that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased as a result of human activities. The concentrations of carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are higher now than at any time during the last 420,000 years.

Overwhelming scientific evidence supports the conclusion that observed changes in the global climate are, in large part, due to human activities and primarily related to fossil fuel consumption patterns. Without urgent action to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the Earth will become warmer by 2050 than at anytime in the last 10,000 years.

One Earth, Two World - Oxfam publication


Poor people in the Southern hemisphere depend on their environment more directly than the rich and are more directly affected by its destruction or deterioration. For this reason, this work argues, they are entitled to protect it, yet in many places they are powerless to do so.

With case studies from Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean, this text looks at environmental issues from the point of view of the poor. It examines the pressures on the environment in the Southern hemisphere, such as industrial development, unfair trade and military conflict, and the solutions which people are developing. It examines the contribution of the Northern hemisphere, outlines the work of Oxfam to change the situation through Fair Trade campaigning, and looks at ways in which individual people can make a difference.

Gender, Development and Climate Change - Oxfam Publication

In the face of extreme weather events, desertification, and a rise in the sea levels, governments and communities increasingly recognize the urgent need to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Global institutions focus on what governments and corporations can do in the search for large-scale technological solutions; yet local communities have roles, responsibilities and interests which have the potential either to harm or to benefit their environment.

This book considers the gendered dimensions of climate change. Ranging in scope from high-level global decision-making to local communities, the contributions examine the potential impacts of environmental degradation and change on vulnerable groups. They identify the differing vulnerabilities, coping strategies and risks experienced by men and women and the socio-economic implications of changing livelihoods and insecurity. Examples of mitigation projects that have successfully integrated gender concerns are assessed as well as initiatives which have overlooked gender considerations and resulted in different outcomes for women and men.

INFLUENCING POVERTY REDUCTION STRATEGIES: A GUIDE

Oxfam Publication


Extract:

International Development Goals

++Poverty The proportion of people living in extreme poverty in developing countries and the proportion of malnourished children should be reduced by at least one half between 1990 and 2015.

++Education There should be Universal Primary Education (UPE) in all countries by 2015.

++Gender Equality Progress toward gender equality and the empowerment of women should be demonstrated by eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education by 2005.

++Infant and Child Mortality The death rates of infants and children under the age of five years should be reduced in each developing country by two-thirds the 1990 level by 2015.

++Maternal Mortality The rate of maternal mortality should be reduced by three- fourths between 1990 and 2015.

++Reproductive Health Access should be available through the primary health care system to reproductive health services for all individuals of appropriate ages and the spread of HIV/AIDS should have begun to be reversed, no later than the year 2015.

++Environment There should be a national strategy for sustainable development, in the process of implementation, in every country by 2005, so as to ensure that current trends in the loss of environmental resources are effectively reversed at both global and national levels by 2015. The proportion of the population without access to an improved water source should be reduced by at least one-half between 1990 and 2015.


The PRSP provides a framework to prioritise poverty reduction in the policy of all low-income countries. In government, but also IFI, and donor, policy and programming – and in all areas, from setting poverty reduction targets, to macro-economic and structural reform, the issue of pro-poor growth and redistribution, budgets, gender equity, to social sector provision, agriculture, industry, poverty monitoring and governance. The PRSP also requires the development of greater efficiency, transparency and accountability in public expenditure management (PEM). The focus is on targeted and costed policies, and as such on implementation and measurable impact. Prioritisation of the budget, public spending and monitoring, and efficiency of spending are all important areas highlighted in the PRSP approach. As such the PRSP offers Oxfam and other NGOs major opportunities to influence policy and practice at local, national and international levels, both at the formulation and the implementation stages.

Oxfam’s view is that poor women and men have a ‘right to be heard’ and that ‘voice poverty’, the denial of people’s right to influence the decisions that affect their lives, and the lack of accountability of decision-makers, are central causes of impoverishment and suffering in the world. We have three central concerns:

Where people living in poverty are systematically excluded from institutions, decision-making processes, and resource allocation decisions, they are less likely to benefit from development investments.

Systematic denial of people’s right to participate erodes the accountability and effectiveness of organisations, institutions, companies, and governments, making these much more prone to poor decision-making, and the corruption, malpractice and malfeasance that exacerbate poverty.

The exclusion of women and marginalised groups from policy making leads to an imbalanced perspective on development priorities, and to exclusion from the benefits of development for significant sectors of the population.

The World Bank also highlights ‘voicelessness and powerlessness’ as one of the four main dimensions of poverty, as defined by the poor themselves: ‘those materially deprived feel acutely their lack of voice, power and independence. This helplessness subjects them to rudeness, humiliation, shame, inhumane treatment, and exploitation at the hands of the institutions of state and society’.

This lack of voice can only be countered by empowering the poor women and men to participate and become involved in influencing the structures and institutions that have power over them.

The World Bank defines participation as “The process through which stakeholders influence and share control over priority setting, policy-making, resource allocations and access to public goods and services.”

It also notes that PRSPs should: “Be developed transparently with broad participation of elected institutions, stakeholders including civil society, key donors and regional development banks.

EMPLOYMENT AS DECISIVE ELEMENT OF HUMAN IDENTITY

Designing specific measures to place the goal of full employment at the centre of macroeconomic policy:

Accelerating growth, and ensuring the participation of poor people in that growth, is fundamental for poverty reduction. The proposals across this Report – on infrastructure, investment climates, governance, peace and security, trade, human development, culture, the environment and the quality of aid – should both boost participation and contribute strongly to increasing sustainable growth, investment and employment.

Strong and sustained progress in human development requires fundamental change. That change will happen only if women and men are at the centre of the action. The world has made inspiring commitments, including education for all and commitment to fight against AIDS. Sustained development requires financing that aligns behind national health and education systems and is harmonised with and complementary to other assistance. Effective use of the large new resource flows will require careful attention to mechanisms for delivering and monitoring results, and accountability to the poor communities that are being served.

There is solid evidence, based on two generations of experience and research, that there is a "population effect" on economic growth. Since 1970, developing countries with lower fertility and slower population growth have seen higher productivity, more savings and more productive investment. They have registered faster economic growth. Pregnancy and childbirth are heavy risks for poor women. Many, and unplanned for, children impose a heavy burden on them. High levels of fertility contribute directly to poverty, reducing women's opportunities, diluting expenditure on children's education and health, precluding savings and increasing vulnerability and insecurity. Additionally, the poor suffer from the direct effects of their numbers: lower wage rates for large pools of unskilled workers, landholdings divided among more inheritors, classes too crowded for educational improvements. High fertility means that poor people have less capacity to take advantage of opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. Evidence supports the perception that large families and rapidly growing populations hold back development. First, in the household, children have a variety of needs, all of which have a cost. A large number of children compete for limited family resources for food and clothing, health and education, and some are left behind. In rural communities, farmland is a fixed resource. Dividing it too often impoverishes successive generations. Without resources for development, supplies of fuel or water must also be shared among growing numbers. In urban communities, those without some education can find only low-level, ill-paid work, if they can find work at all. Most countries officially frown on child labour, though implementation varies, and it is becoming socially and politically unacceptable from a humanrights perspective. The change from high to low mortality and fertility can create a "demographic bonus" for countries. Mortality declines first, followed by fertility. What happens as fertility declines is that the working-age population increases relative to younger and older dependents. That creates a one-time opportunity for growth. The opportunity can be realized if countries have made the appropriate investments, not only in family planning, but in health and education generally, with special attention to the needs of girls and women, and in employment opportunities for the new and enabled workforce. Open and responsive governance makes these adjustments possible.

“Productive work and employment are central elements of development as well as decisive elements of human identity. Sustained economic growth and sustainable development as well as the expansion of productive employment should go hand in hand.”1

Lack of access to education, the persistence of poverty and unemployment, and inequitable access to opportunities and resources could cause social exclusion and marginalization. Poverty is at least in part the result of inequitable distribution of opportunities, resources, incomes and access to employment and to social services. It further recognized that, in many countries, there is a growing gap between people in high-quality, well-paid employment and those in poorly paid, insecure jobs with low levels of social protection. Owing to continued discrimination and exclusion, women and girls face particular disadvantages. Discriminatory practices, social polarization and fragmentation, widening disparities and inequalities of income of wealth within and among nations, violence in all its forms were listed among many that present fundamental threats to societies and the global social order.

Actual progress in reaching the goal of full employment has also fallen far short of expectations. Rather than making strides towards the attainment of productive employment and work for all, the past ten years have witnessed a rise in unemployment levels. An unprecedented 186 million people were unemployed in 2003, accounting for 6.2 percent of the working population, up from 140 million a decade earlier. In addition, 550 million people fell among the ranks of the working poor. Where job growth has taken place, it has been disproportionately concentrated in insecure, informal forms of employment with low wages and few benefits.
Although the overall picture is negative, employment trends have shown considerable variation across regions and social groups. Among developed countries as a
whole, unemployment rates declined by 1.2 percentage points over the decade, in contrast to much of the developing world which experienced rising unemployment rates, ranging from an increase of 0.9 percentage points in East Asia, to 2.1 percentage points in Latin America and the Caribbean, 2.4 percentage points in South-East Asia and 2.9 percentage points for the Economies in Transition of Central and Eastern Europe. On a more positive note, unemployment rates held steady in South Asia and the Middle East and North Africa over the decade, while even declining by 0.2 percentage points in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Forced Labour

In 1807, Britain banned the slave trade and tried to get the French, the Spanish, the Dutch and the Portuguese to end this trade in human flesh. But despite the agreement reached at the Vienna Conference in 1815, it was by force of arms, and the confiscation of ships and their human cargo, that the trade in human beings was brought to an eventual end.

At least 12.3 million people are trapped in forced labour around the world, the International Labour Office (ILO) said in a new study where it points at forced labour as "a social evil which has no place in the modern world".

Among them 2.4 million are trafficked, as sex workers and other forms of slavery, a business that makes 30 Billion USD profit for pimps and traffickers. ILO in its annual report requesting the world cooperation to fortify laws and most important, to raise awareness of what is called a hidden issue. Forced labour is a global problem, in all regions and types of economy. Of the overall total, some 9.5 million forced labourers are in Asia, which is the region with the highest number; 1.3 million in Latin America and the Caribbean; 660,000 in sub-Saharan Africa; 260,000 in the Middle East and North Africa; 360,000 in industrialized countries; and 210,000 in transition countries.

Forced economic exploitation in such sectors as agriculture, construction, brick-making and informal sweatshop manufacturing is more or less evenly divided between the sexes. However, forced commercial sexual exploitation entraps almost entirely women and girls. In addition, children aged less than 18 years bear a heavy burden, comprising 40 to 50 per cent of all forced labour victims. But the report sees the biggest deterioration in the newly globalised economy, in sectors such as the sex industry, agriculture, construction and domestic service. Increased concern about organised crime has led to a new international protocol against people-trafficking.

Most forced labour today is still exacted in developing countries where older forms of forced labour are sometimes transmuting into newer ones, notably in a range of informal sector activities, the report says. Debt bondage frequently affects minorities - including indigenous peoples - that have long experienced discrimination on the labour market, and locks them in a vicious cycle of poverty from which they find it ever more difficult to escape. Many victims are working in remote geographical areas, where labour inspection presents a particular challenge. Devising effective strategies against forced labour requires a blend of law enforcement and ways of tackling the structural roots of forced labour, whether outmoded agrarian systems or poorly functioning labour markets.


Youth Unemployment and National Policies

Of all age groups, the increase in unemployment rates was most pronounced for youth aged 15 to 24. World youth unemployment jumped from 10 per cent, or 70 million young people in 1995, to 14.4 per cent, or over 88 million youth by 2003. Although youth comprise just 25 per cent of the working age population between 15 and 64 years, they account for nearly 47 per cent of the 186 million people unemployed worldwide. As a consequence, youth unemployment is typically two to three times higher than for others. Young women are especially at risk, as they experience unemployment rates 20 to 50 percent higher than that of young men.

The factors that shape these discouraging trends in employment vary across regions and economic groupings. Those that appear to stand out include: globalization;
competitive pressures; and national policy decisions. Globalization and the integration of economies have had major impacts on employment. As the ILO described recently, jobs, incomes, security and the rights of workers are heavily affected by such things as patterns of international investment, the growth of trade and the cross-border movement of workers. On the other hand, the drive to become ever more competitive in the international economy has created pressure among companies to contain labour costs, with the resultant action engendering feelings of insecurity and instability among workers worldwide. It is also important to recognize the impact of national policies and programmes. Given the level of job changes and dislocations inherent in today’s dynamic labour market, active labour market policies are essential to foster the smooth reallocation of labour from declining industries into new and emerging ones. Yet national policies are often not in place to facilitate job search assistance, training and skills upgrading to help dislocated workers’ transition into new jobs. In addition, without sufficient investment in education and training, countries cannot be assured of a skilled, adaptable workforce prepared to compete in a knowledge-based economy.

There is serious lack of employment policies in international economic and social strategies. There is a need for a broad coalition of international organizations to lay down concrete strategies on employment creation, the world labour force would expand over the next decade by some 500 million people, who should be seen as assets, rather than problems. Additionaly there is a need to direct official development assistance towards employment creation, as well as to transfer employment-creating experiences between nations. Such plans should focus on microeconomics, as well as macroeconomics, the quantity and quality of work, increased productivity in agriculture, and supply and demand.

why is employability important?
Employers face enormous changes in a highly competitive global marketplace. The new economy demands new ways of thinking, new ways of managing, and new ways of working. Thus, the level and type of education and skills required has also changed. And there is a need to prepare young people to participate in paid work, as employees or selfemployed, in the new environment. Educators face the challenge of preparing young people to participate in this increasingly complex and changing world of work, and they have been calling on employers to articulate and communicate their needs better. Employers' dissatisfaction with young job applicants is not primarily due to inadequate technical knowledge or skill. A review of the literature indicated that employers have no quarrel with the skills performance of today's graduates, but they do have serious reservations when it comes to their nontechnical abilities. providing young people with qualifications for employability is, among other things, an ethical responsibility. "This is not just an economic issue," Bhaerman and Spill (1988); "it is one of equity and fairness." They continue: Think about employability skill development as one of the civil rights issues....Those responsible for programs in this area have a moral obligation to provide the most complete education and training possible for students and clients (pp. 43-44). These employability skills include reading, basic arithmetic and other basic skills; problem solving, decision making, and other higher-order thinking skills; and dependability, a positive attitude, cooperativeness, and other affective skills and traits.

Youth unemployment and uncertain futur that have forced families to informal world of work has impact on their social behaviour, consequently disrespect and yobbish behaviour would prevail. People are increasingly faced with street corner and shopping centre thugs, with binge drinking, vandalism and graffiti. What youngsters need is a hopefull work oriented future perspective. Instead of bulk of advertisments and provocative images in every corner, what young people also need to see more are scenes, events and recreational gatherings that stimulates positive thinking, curiousity, creativity and more meaningful approach to life.

Extracted from:
1- World Summit for Social Development, March 1995, United Nations, Part II: Programme of Action of the World Summit for Social Development, para 42.
2- ILO World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization, “A Fair Globalization: Creating opportunities for all”, ILO 2004, p. 110.
3- Technology Information, http://ttclear.unfccc.int/ttclear/html/InfOverview.html
4- http://unfccc.int/methods_and_science/items/2722.php
5- http://www.unfpa.org/swp/2002/english/ch3/index.htm
6- http://www.un.org/womenwatch/asp/user/list.asp?ParentID=60
7- http://www.sd.aznet.org/en/index.htm
8- http://www.odi.org.uk/rapid/Lessons/Index.html
9- BBC online, Modern Slavery, 11 May

Free will and Intentional State of Mind - Chaos Theory Implies Unpredictability Not Indeterminism

It is tempting, to think that the explanation of the conscious experience of free will must be a manifestation of quantum indeterminism at the level of conscious rational decision making. We thought free will was a mystery, but consciousness and quantum mechanics were two separate and distinct mysteries. Now we have the result that in order to solve the first we have to solve the second and invoke one of the most mysterious aspects of the third to solve the first two.

I think most neurobiologists would feel that this is probably how the brain actually works, that we have the experience of free will but it is illusory; because the neuronal processes are causally sufficient to determine subsequent states of the brain, assuming there are no outside stimulus inputs or effects from the rest of the body. It means that our experience of freedom plays no causal or explanatory role in our behavior. It is a complete illusion, because our behavior is entirely fixed by the neurobiology that determines the muscle contractions. On this view evolution played a massive trick on us. Evolution gave us the illusion of freedom, but it is nothing more than that - an illusion.

Together with the experience of acting, and in addition how the brain produced conscious thought processes,in which the constraints of rationality are already built in as constitutive elements, you would, so to speak, get the self for free.

The elements necessary for an organism to have a self are first, it must have a unified field of consciousness; second,it must have the capacity for deliberating on reasons, and this involves not only cognitive capacities of perception and memory but the capacity for coordinating intentional states so as to arrive at rational decisions; the constraints of rationality are already built into intentional phenomena such as beliefs and desires and into thought processes.


Chaos theory, as I understand it, implies unpredictability but not indeterminism.

"Free Will as a Problem in Neurobiology"
John Searle
Mills Professor of the philosophy of mind and language

Critical Mass: How One Thing Leads to Another

by Philip Ball

Winner of Aventis Prize, the world's most prestigious Science book award - Phillip Ball uses the laws of physics to explain human behaviour in circumstances, as diverse as football crowds, traffic jams and stock market.

Extract:

Hobbes's masterwork, Leviathan, was an attempt to develop a political theory out of this mechanical world-view. He set himself a goal that today sounds absurdly ambitious, although at the dawn of the Enlightenment it must have seemed a natural marriage. Hobbes wanted to deduce, by logic and reason no less rigorous than that used by Galileo to understand the laws of motion, how humankind should govern itself. Starting with what he believed to be irreducible and self-evident axioms, he aimed to develop a science of human interactions, politics and society.

It is hard now to appreciate the magnitude not just of this challenge in itself, but of the shift in outlook that it embodied. There has never been any shortage of views on the best means of governance and social organization. Almost without exception, proposals before Hobbes - and many subsequently - were designed to give the proposers the greatest (perceived) advantage. Emperors, kings and queens sought to justify absolute monarchy by appeal to divine covenant. The Roman Catholic Church was hardly the first theocracy to set itself up as the sole conduit of God's authority. In Plato's Republic, one of the earliest of utopian models, cool and self-confident reasoning argued for a state in which philosophers were accorded the highest status. The rebellious English Parliament of the early 1640s demanded that the King transfer virtually all governing power to them. One could always find an argument to put oneself at the top of the pile.

Hobbes was different. What he aimed to do was to apply the method of the theoretical scientist: to stipulate fundamental first principles and see where they led him. In theory, any conclusion was possible. By analysing human nature and how people interact, he might conceivably have found that the most stable society was one based on what we would now call communism, or democracy, or fascism. In practice, Hobbes's reasoning led him towards the conclusion that he had probably preferred at the outset - from which we may be sure that his method was not as objective as he would have had the world believe. Nonetheless, its claim to have dispensed with bias and to rely only on indisputable logic is what makes Leviathan a landmark in the history of political theory.

But it is something more too. Hobbes's great work is seen today as historically and even philosophically important - but political science has become a very different beast, and no one seriously entertains the notion that Hobbes's arguments remain convincing. Nor should they, in one sense - for as we shall see, his basic postulates are very much a product of their times. Yet Leviathan is a direct and in many ways an astonishingly prescient antecedent to a revolutionary development now taking place at the forefront of modern physics. Scientists are beginning to realize that the theoretical framework that underpins contemporary physics can be adapted to describe social structures and behaviour, ranging from how traffic flows to how the economy fluctuates and how businesses are organized.

This framework is not as daunting as it might sound. Contrary to what one might imagine from the popular perception of modern physics, we do not have to delve into the imponderable paradoxes of quantum theory, or the mind-stretching revelations of relativity, or the origins of the universe in the Big Bang in order to understand the basic ideas behind these theories. No, this is an approach rooted in the behaviour of everyday substances and objects: of water, sand, magnets, crystals. But what can such things possibly have to say about the way societies organize themselves? A great deal, as it happens.

Hobbes had no inkling of any of this, but he shared the faith of today's physicists that human behaviour is not after all so complex that it cannot occasionally be understood on the basis of just a few simple postulates, or by the operation of what we might regard as natural forces. For Hobbes, contemplating the tumultuous political landscape of his country, the prime force could not be more plain: the lust for power.

THE LEVIATHAN WAKES

Thomas Hobbes had never been able to take anything for granted. His father was a poorly educated and irascible vicar, a drunkard who left his family when Thomas was sixteen and died 'in obscurity'. This put his son to little inconvenience, since from a young age Thomas was supported and encouraged by his wealthy and altogether more respectable uncle, Francis, a glover and alderman of Malmesbury. Francis watched over the boy's education, helping to nurture a clearly prodigious intellect: by the time the fourteen-year-old Thomas won admittance to Magdalen College at Oxford, he had already translated Euripides' Medea from Greek to Latin. He so excelled at the university that, when he graduated, he was recommended to the Earl of Devonshire as a tutor to the earl's son (himself only three years younger than Thomas). From such a position Hobbes was free to continue his studies of the classics. In his early twenties he acted as secretary to Francis Bacon (1561-1626), whose interests ranged from natural science and philosophy to politics and ethics. During this time, until Bacon's death, Hobbes showed no evident inclinations towards science; but Bacon's rational turn of thought left a clear imprint on his thinking.

It was not until 1629 that the forty-year-old Hobbes, a committed classicist, had his eyes opened to the power of scientific and mathematical reasoning. The story goes that Hobbes happened to glance at a book which lay open in a library, and was transfixed. The book was Euclid's Elements of Geometry, and Hobbes began to follow one of the Propositions. 'By God, this is impossible!', he exclaimed - but was soon persuaded otherwise. As Hobbes's contemporary, the gossipy biographer John Aubrey, tells it,

So he reads the Demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a Proposition; which proposition he read: that referred him back to another, which he also read, and sic deinceps [so on], that at last he was demonstratively convinced of that trueth. This made him in love with Geometry.

Hobbes was deeply impressed by how this kind of deductive reasoning, working forward from elementary propositions, allowed geometers to reach ineluctable conclusions with which all honest and percipient people would be compelled to agree. It was a prescription for certainty.

The axioms of geometry are, by and large, statements that few people would have trouble supposing. They assert such things as 'Two straight lines cannot enclose a space.' We can often convince ourselves of their validity with simple sketches. Other fields of enquiry struggle to muster analogous self-evident starting points. 'I think, therefore I am' may have convinced Descartes that, as an axiom, it is 'so solid and so certain that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of upsetting it'; but in fact every word of the sentence is open to debate, and it has none of the compelling visual power of geometry's first principles.

Hobbes was sufficiently enthused to become a would-be geometer himself, but he was never a master of the subject. Through clumsy errors he persuaded himself that he had solved the old geometric conundrum of 'squaring the circle' (a task that is in fact impossible). But that was not his principal concern. In the 1630s the tensions between Crown and Commons led Charles I to dissolve Parliament and embark on an eleven-year period of 'Personal Rule'. In the midst of an unstable society, Hobbes wanted to find a theory of governance with credentials as unimpeachable as those of Euclid's geometry. First, he needed some fundamental hypothesis about human behaviour, which in turn had to be grounded in the deepest soil of science. And there was one man who had dug deeper than any other. In the spring of 1636, Hobbes travelled to Florence to meet Galileo.

The fundamental laws describing how objects move in space are called Newton's laws, since it was Sir Isaac who first formulated them clearly. But the tallest giant from whose shoulders Newton saw afar was Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), who laid the foundations of modern mechanics. Galileo taught the world about falling bodies, which, he said, accelerate at a constant rate as they descend (if one ignores the effects of air resistance). And with his law of inertia, Galileo went beyond the 'common-sense' view of Aristotle (384-322 bc) that objects must be continually pushed if they are not to slow down: on the contrary, said Galileo, in the absence of any force an object will continue to move indefinitely in a straight line at constant velocity.

Aristotle's view is the 'common-sense' one because it is what we experience in everyday life. If you stop pedalling your bicycle, you will eventually come to a standstill. But Galileo realized that this is because frictional forces act in nature to slow us down. If we can eliminate all the forces acting on a body, including gravity and friction, the natural state of the body is motion in an unchanging direction at unchanging speed. This was a truly profound theory, for it saw beyond the practical limitations of Galileo's age to a beautiful and simple truth. (An air pump that could create a good vacuum and thus eliminate air resistance was not invented until 1654.)

Galileo's law of inertia is without doubt one of the deepest laws of nature. On meeting the great man, Hobbes became convinced that this must be the axiom he was seeking. Constant motion was the natural state of all things - including people. All human sensations and emotions, he concluded, were the result of motion. From this basic principle Hobbes would work upwards to a theory of society.

What, precisely, does Hobbes mean by this assumption? It is, to modern eyes, a cold and soulless (not to mention an obscure) description of human nature. He pictured a person as a sophisticated mechanism acted upon by external forces. This machine consists of not only the body with its nerves, muscles and sense organs, but also the mind with its imagination, memory and reason. The mind is purely a kind of calculating machine - a computer, if you will. Such machines were popular in the seventeenth century: the Scottish mathematician John Napier (1550-1617) devised one, as did the French philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62). They were mechanical devices for adding and subtracting numbers; and this, said Hobbes, is all the mind does too:

When a man Reasoneth, hee does nothing else but conceive a summe totall, from Addition of parcels; or conceive a Remainder, from Subtraction of one summe from another . . . For REASON . . . is nothing but Reckoning.

The body, meanwhile, is merely a system of jointed limbs moved by the strings and pulleys of muscles and nerves. Man is an automaton.

Indeed, Hobbes held that the ingenious mechanical automata created by some inventors of the era were truly possessed of a kind of primitive life. To him there was nothing mysterious or upsetting about such an idea. Others were less sanguine: the Spanish Inquisition imprisoned some makers of automata on the grounds that they were dabbling in witchcraft and black magic.

What impelled Hobbes's mechanical people into action was not just external stimuli relayed to the brain by the apparatus of the senses. They were imbued also with an inner compulsion to remain in motion. For what is death but immobility, and which person did not seek to avoid death? 'Every man . . .', said Hobbes, 'shuns . . . death, and this he doth, by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than that whereby a stone moves downward.'

Mankind's volitions, therefore, are divided by Hobbes into 'appetites' and 'aversions': the desire to seek ways of continuing this motion and to avoid things that obstruct them. Some appetites are innate, such as hunger; others are learnt through experience. To decide on a course of action, we weigh up the relevant appetites and aversions and act accordingly.

What Hobbes means by 'motion' is a little vague, for he clearly does not intend to imply that we are forever seeking to run around at full pelt. Motion is rather a kind of liberty - a freedom to move at will. Those things that impede liberty impede motion. Even if a man sits still, the mechanism of his mind may be in furious motion: the freedom to think is an innate desire too.

What room is there in this mechanical description for free will? According to Hobbes, there is none - he was a strict determinist. Humans are puppets whose strings are pulled by the forces at play in the world. Yet Hobbes saw nothing intolerable in this bleak picture. After all, he believed that he had arrived at this basic, indisputable postulate about human nature by introspection - by considering his own nature. The first puppet he saw was himself:

whosoever looketh into himself, and considereth what he doth, when he does think, opine, reason, hope, feare, &c, and upon what grounds; he shall thereby read and know, what are the thoughts, and Passions of all other men, upon the like occasions.

MAKE POVERTY HISTORY - OXFAM

About the campaign

Oxfam is part of a coalition of organisations and groups around the world who believe 2005 provides an unprecedented opportunity to say ‘enough is enough’ to global poverty.

In the UK under the banner MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY we ensure 2005 – when the UK hosts the G8 summit and holds the chair of the European Union – is a special year for millions of people living in poverty. 2005 is also the 20th anniversary of Live Aid.

There will be lots of chances for you to help make poverty history throughout the year. Oxfam will be offering support to teachers wanting to cover key issues like trade (including fair trade), aid and third world debt in schools. Schools may also wish to take part in awareness-raising activities planned throughout the year.

Keep your eye on Cool Planet for Teachers, or sign up for our termly email newsletter, to keep up to date with new materials for 2005.

For more information and to sign up for regular updates on MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY, visit: www.makepovertyhistory.org

MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY is the name for the UK platform in support of the Global Call to Action Against Poverty. To find out what other countries are doing to support this worldwide campaign, visit www.whiteband.org.






The Internationalisation of EU Asylum Policy

European Union asylum policy is shifting overseas. The politicisation of asylum-related issues and the desire to ‘manage migration’ are the forces behind a wave of new ‘internationalised initiatives which could have a serious impact on the lives of refugees.

This mixed agenda has the potential to enhance as well as threaten refugees’ safety and dignity, but at present it includes inadequate safeguards for their protection, and it is insufficiently informed by an understanding of the realities of their lives.

Because these policies are moving from the domain of home affairs into the arena of foreign policy and aid, this report is aimed at a wide range of readers in the EU and in refugees’ countries and regions of origin and transit:

official policy makers on asylum and migration, and on foreign affairs and development;
staff of international agencies and NGOs, representatives of refugee groups, and experts on asylum and on humanitarian, development, and foreign affairs.
The authors draw on the experience of Oxfam GB in Europe and in refugee situations worldwide. Policy analysis is interwoven with original research into refugee realities in three countries (Sri Lanka, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Tanzania), drawing lessons from the conditions there and bringing in the voices of refugees, returnees, and internally displaced persons, who are so often excluded from the debate.

The report presents an agenda for action to ensure that the internationalisation of asylum policy pays full regard to the rights and protection of individuals.

Copies may be ordered at £5 (to cover postage and packing). You can contact publish@oxfam.org.uk. You can also download a PDF version from www.Oxfam.org.uk.




Climate Debate

www.opendemocracy.net/climate_change

From 21 April until 10 June, leading scientists, artists, writers, politicians, businessmen and others are taking part in the world’s first global online debate on the politics of climate change. Join them!

- Prof. Sir David King, chief scientific advisor to the UK government, says climate change is a real and present danger, requiring urgent and committed action.

- most climatologists are convinced that global warming is mainly due to humans, but critical evaluation and scepticism should not be scorned, says Benny Peiser

- unchecked fossil fuel combustion is making the oceans more acidic. This could have catastrophic consequences, say Carol Turley and Jerry Blackford

- Sounds and pictures of a changing world by Max Eastely and David Buckland

- The UK roundtable – activists ask, have we failed? Where do we go from here?

Partnerships for Poverty Reduction:Rethinking Conditionality

A UK policy paper March 2005

The United Kingdom recently released a policy paper setting out its position on aid conditionality. UK policy paper produced jointly by the Department for International Development, HM Treasury and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to form partnership for poverty reduction, elaborates on its clear responsibility to parliament and people to ensure that aid is not used corruptly and is well spent for the purpose for which it was intended. The paper stesses that the right kind of partnership must have reducing poverty at its heart, alongside upholding human rights and strong financial management. In this new approach, and the significance of good governance and social policies, agreed benchmarks for measuring progress on the reduction of poverty, rather than policy conditions set by donors, will be the basis for both partners to be accountable to their citizens. UK is the first major donor to publicly state its re-assessment of conditionality, and to encourage other donors to do the same. The policy has yet to be effected, and this may require significant changes to the legislative environment.

The policy is based on the fact that developing countries must be able to determine their own policies for meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A shared committment to three objectives: reducing poverty, respecting human rights and other international obligations, and strengtheing financial mangement and accountability, by avoiding its misuse, is placed at the forefront of the future partnership with actors and governments of developing countries. The mutualy agreed benchmarks to assess progress should, where possible, be drawn from national poverty reduction plans. In deciding how to allocate aid between countries, the UK will take account of the extent of poverty in a country, and of its ability to use aid effectively (as evidenced by the expected impact of its poverty reduction programme and its commitment to sound financial management and accountability standards), and where appropriate, will also work with civil society and the private sector.

DFID will support nationally owned poverty reduction plans and will not make its aid conditional on specific policy decisions or attempt to impose specific policy choices such as privatisation or trade liberalisation. Both donor and developing countries should be accountable, to their citizens and to the wider global community, for showing how aid is improving the quality of life for poor people. The UK will seek to make aid more predictable to be integrated as part of the user country budget plan in long term. UK will continue to press World Bank and IMF to monitor and streamline their combined terms and conditions. In giving aid it will also take account of countries’ commitment to universal human rights standards and other international obligations. The reduction of aid will only be considered when unjustifiable rise in military spending, or a substantial deviation from the agreed poverty reduction programme occur or there is significant breakdown in partner government financial management and accountability known as ‘fiduciary conditionality’.

Good policy matters for development. Macroeconomic stability and growth are essential for lasting poverty reduction. But the policies needed for poverty reduction and long term development are much broader, and encompass the social, cultural, economic, civil and political rights of all men, women and children. They also include governance issues, environmental concerns and social exclusion.We will support developing countries to decide for themselves what policies to include in their poverty reduction plans. Donors have broadened the focus of aid conditions from macroeconomic policies to include also conditions linked to political and institutional change, as well as social and environmental policy. Such conditions have included commitments by the partner country to tackle corruption or establish more transparent and inclusive systems of government. However, developing countries sometimes agreed conditions in areas of reform even though they were unconvinced of the case for change. Nonetheless, conditionality which attempts to ‘buy’ reform from an unwilling partner has rarely worked.

in the 1980s and 1990s donors pushed for the introduction of reforms such as structural adjustment, privatisation and trade reforms, regardless of whether these were in countries’ best interests. This led to the governments becoming more accountable to donors than to their own people. Evidence on the social impact of privatisation policies in the area of public services has been the subject of much debate, and therefore the use of conditionality. On trade there were concerns that aid conditions have constrained poor countries from incorporating on appropriately sequenced trade measures, and that conditions requiring unilateral trade liberalisation affect the ability of poor countries to negotiate effectively in multilateral discussions.

In the last few years, donors have recognised the insufficient analysis of the impact and started supporting Poverty and Social Impact Analysis (PSIA) of major policy changes. This analysis anticipates and assesses the intended and unintended consequences of policy changes for the welfare of poor men and women and vulnerable groups, such as ethnic minorities, disabled people, older people and children. It covers both income and non-income measures of welfare. So far over 100 assessments have been completed or are underway. But PSIA needs to be implemented much more consistently, and be more widely owned within developing countries. The UK is working with partners to encourage a country-led approach, involving all stakeholders at each stage of selection, design and implementation, and including social and political analysis as well as economic analysis.

Commitment to poverty reduction
The International Development Act, which came into force in 2002, makes the elimination of poverty the primary purpose of UK development assistance. DFID provides aid to further sustainable development and improve the welfare of people
outside the UK. The UK is increasingly interested in assessing whether the programme is producing the desired poverty outcomes, rather than whether the government is implementing a particular policy measure.


Commitment to human rights and other
international obligations

States have a shared responsibility to ensure that human rights are upheld, that violations do not take place, and that governments respect their international obligations. Donors have a particular responsibility, as part of their accountability to parliament and the public, to ensure that their development assistance is not used in ways that abuse human rights. The human rights situation should be assessed on the basis of the partner country’s own international human
rights obligations. The country’s position in relation to other international obligations, for instance on peace and security is also under consideration.

Commitment to strengthening financial management
and accountability

The UK elaborates that improving performance in public financial management and accountability is critical for building the capability of states to deliver basic services and to progress towards the Millennium Development Goals. Partner governments, like donors, are also accountable to their electorates for the propriety of public finances. DFID is accountable to Parliament for how UK taxpayers’ funds are used.


Commitment to key principles

In its aid relationships, the UK will be guided by five principles:
• developing country ownership;
• participatory and evidence-based policy making;
• predictability;
• harmonisation; and
• transparency and accountability.


In deciding how to allocate aid between countries, DFID will take account both of the extent of poverty in a country, and of its ability to use aid effectively (as evidenced by the expected impact of its poverty reduction programme and its commitment to sound financial management and accountability standards). Poor political governance, such as widespread human rights violations, can hasten a country’s decline towards instability. Instead of withdrawing from these countries, the UK is committed to finding ways of delivering targeted, selective aid focusing on improving governance and delivering services. In the fragile states UK will work with the governments as far as possible apply the principles set out in this paper. Partnerships can be built around simple planning instruments for prioritisation and sequencing of reforms. In countries where the government is weak or uninterested in development, UK will closely monitor the situation to identify opportunities for political dialogue. Wherever possible, it will remain involved through partners other than the government, for example supporting NGOs in the provision of services. Apart from decisions on aid, well-targeted sanctions may also have some impact on the pace of reform. Measures such as asset freezing and travel bans which target those individuals most likely to be able to influence a positive change on the ground can often help limit any wider negative impact on the population.

Donors need to take a back seat, giving more space to countries to draw up their own plans for poverty reduction. To make this happen, we need to find more effective ways to strengthen countries’ policy expertise. The relaxing of aid conditionality is likely to be welcomed by developing countries, but the challenge of getting other donors on board remains.

1. The policy paper can be viewed at http://www.dfid.gov.uk/pubs/files/conditionality.pdf
2. Also See http://awid.org/go.php?stid=1459.

Exhaustion of Domestic Remedies - CEDAW

Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

Introduction


The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, CEDAW was adopted by the General Assembly in 1979 and had 165 states parties as of January 2000. The Convention seeks to address pervasive social, cultural and economic discrimination against women, declaring that states should endeavour to modify social and cultural patterns of conduct that stereotype either sex or put women in an inferior position. It also declares that states should ensure that women have equal rights in education and equal access to information; eliminate discrimination against women in access to health care; and end discrimination against women in all matters relating to marriage and family relations. The Convention declares that states must act to eliminate violations of women's rights whether by private persons, groups or organizations.
The Convention sets clearer definitions and standards than the earlier covenants with respect to gender equality and expands the protections against discrimination. In particular, it recognizes that because socially defined gender roles differ, provisions against discrimination and abuse cannot simply require equal treatment of men and women; there must be a more positive definition of responsibilities that applies appropriate rights standards to all. The Convention recognizes the need to examine rules and practices concerning gender in society to make sure that they do not weaken rights guarantees ensuring the equality of the two sexes in all aspects of their lives.

Nearly all states Except Afghanistan, Iran, Brunei, Monaco, Somalia, Sudan, Swaziland, United Arab Emirates and the United States - have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, making it a strong tool for holding governments accountable on human rights issues. In addition to upholding specific rights of children, this Convention, adopted in 1989, deals more broadly with gender relations. It reaffirms, for example, the right to family planning services, recognized by prior conventions and conferences.

Article 24 obligates states "to ensure appropriate prenatal and post-natal health care for mothers". It also calls on them to take "all effective and appropriate measures with a view to abolishing traditional practices prejudicial to the health of children"; this is an explicit recognition of the deleterious effects of such practices as female genital mutilation. Article 34 says that states must "undertake to protect the child from all forms of sexual exploitation and sexual abuse". Article 17 states that the child should have access to information "aimed at the promotion of his or her social, spiritual and moral well-being and physical and mental health".
Applying the Convention, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has, for example: recommended that specific laws be enacted and enforced to prohibit FGM (1997); called on Kuwait to take action to prevent and combat early marriage (1998); and called on Mexico to raise and equalize the minimum legal ages for marriage of boys and girls (1999).



Exhaustion of Domestic Remedies


The exhaustion of domestic remedies is one of the most important procedural aspects of the Human Rights Convention. Under Article 1 of the Human Rights Convention, States are under an obligation to 'secure' its rights and freedoms to everyone within its jurisdiction. The obligation includes the duty to have a legal framework in place to secure those rights. Article 35 reflects the general rule of international law that recourse may not be had to international tribunals unless and until every possible avenue of national redress has been tried and failed. To this end, Iranian legislators of the sixth Parliament have been reviewing the CEDAW for its compatibility to Constitutional laws in order to use domestic remedies to address discrimination against women. The ratification of CEDAW has been hampered by hardliners due to the fact that they are of opinion that in Islam, basic human rights of women are not identical to that of men. Subsequently the Constitution can not respond to the demands made by the CEDAW upon signatories as it explicitly calls on member governments to devise penalties for those who perpetrate discrimination against women.

CEDAW Article 1: Explaining discrimination against women:

The Constitution of the Islamic Rep of Iran gives women following position: 'women, because they have suffered greater oppression under the regime of the Taghoot (the Shah's Regime) will deserve greater restoration of their rights.' Article 21 of the Iranian Constitution declares that 'the State is duty-bound to guarantee the rights of women in all areas while upholding Islamich criteria...' and: 'to adopt the necessary measures in order to prepare the ground for the elevation and development of the personality of women and revival of their material and spiritual rights.'

I will argue this very basic statement of the State as manipulation of the realities surrounding the life of Iranian women. The fact that women have had higher and more human social standing before the Islamic establishment is undeniable act. I suspect the authorities of Islamic establishments having examined and adopted their proposed measures to redress the personality of women in their accepted frameworks should be more realistic in using the discourse while facing with serious social deviations, corruption, and degradations that have occupied the essence of women's lives in Iran.

Decline of social capital is a serious issue in the country to the point that national statistical indicators reflecting the number of escaping women from home, prostitution and wide spread poverty as its highest level ever. The fact that the radical rulers in Iran have been enforcing and enacting the Islamic fundamentalism in women's lives at all political, economic, social and cultural levels are undeniable facts. The Islamic fundamentalism proves to be a political movement with a political ideology that considers women inherently inferior in intellectual and moral capacity. Contradictory to what is stated in the Constitution the Islamic regime in Iran has implemented rules and regulations that has shadowed women’s life. This version of interpreting Islam stems out of dominant masculine fundamentalism that its existence depends on women’s lack of awareness and Education to abide and play passively the role that is disgnated to them. The Iranian Constitution rooted in Islamic jurisprudence emphasis the equal rights of men and women before the law. However, this principle of equality is unequivocally subordinate to Principle 4:'All civil, criminal, finacial, economic, administrative, cultural, minitary, political and similar laws and regulations must be based on Islamic criteriea. The fact that this article has precedence over all and every other articles of the constitution and dicerning this rests with radical members of the Guardian council', have in practice contradicts with rights of women in all areas of her life. This is basiclly due to the fact that equality before the law when the Islamic Shari'a laws assigns subordinate position for women, does not necessarily means equal rights for both men and women. Despite the paradoxical phrases of equality under the law, in practice men and women have different rights and responsibilities in certain situations, primarily due to the differential roles assigned to them under Islamic Law. The equality in principle repeatedly endorsed by the Constitution has been circumscribed by Islamic criteria. The distinctions between the rights of men and women under Islamic law are reflected in Iran's internal laws. Hence, positions such as Leader, Members of the Council of Guardians, the President, heads of the Judiciary and Supreme Court, Judgement and religious leading are exclusive to moslem men either explicitly as in the case of the presidency, or implicitly through applicatoin of the term mojtahed.

The Civil Law and other domestic laws also shown evidence of such distinctions. While the intent of the Constitution is to give equal rights to men and women, since these rights are based on Islamic jurisprudence they are unequal. Such as:

1) Clause 6 of Article 976 of Civil Law states that every foreign woman who marries Iranian man will be given Iranian nationality. On the contrary Iranian woman is not free to marry foreign man, she is obliged to initialy obtain her father's concession, and then the approval of the state by a legal paper from the Governement. The Clause No 1060 Civil Code of Iran declares In order for an Iranian woman to marry a foreign citizen, official authorization must first be obtained from the Government of Iran, the authorization is called 'marriage permit'. Without this permission the marriage is not considered legal under the Iranian law. The Head of a Family Court pointed out that this clause has been added for the safety and security of Iranian women and their protection, to think twice about getting married to foreign nationals. According to Iranian civil law any foreign man who marries an Iranian woman without the proper Marriage Permission, will be convicted to 1 to 3 years of prison. None of the mentioned laws are applied and effective for Iranian men, being free to choose their partners; since it appears that contrary to women they are mature individuals who can wisely decide for themselves. As such, as an Iranian girl apart from your father who owns your life and spirit, the interfering Government into family affairs is an inseparable part of her life. Further more, Iranian woman married to foreign national not only will not provide him new nationality but also might loose her own civil status which might result in loss of her nationality in favor of her spouse's nationality, where under Clause 987 she will loose her nationality. the foreign woman who has obtained Iranian nationality through marriage, is able to return to her own nationality in case of her spouse death, unless her child is still under 18. In that case she is not allowed to return to her nationality until her child reaches to legal age.

2) Men as spouse must authorize by providing legal signature if woman decides to travel and applies for the issuance of travel document and passport. For girls under 18 the authorisation is designated to the father instead of husband. Additionaly girls at any age must obtain the concession of the father for her first marriage according to Act 1043 of Civil Law; however the opinion of her mother does not have any legitimate effects, and her concession is not required. In terms of travel within the country according to Clause 1114 of Civil Law, it is for man to decide for woman's place of home. To this end, women travelling inside the country although she would not need legal authorisation, however, she has to obtain the concession of her husband or father to leave the house.

3) According to Islamic law, women are entitled to own material goods and property under their name. However, the assets accumulated during the marriage period are considered the property of man and she does not have any legal rights to claim otherwise unless she has clearly requested and added in her marriage documents. This is due to the fact that husbands according to Constitution are the sole bread winners of the family. Women as 65 percent housewives are not entitled to any money income or social security protection measures unless the husband applies for her.

CEDAW Article 2: Obliging States to take concrete steps to eliminate discrimination against women.

1) Article 20 of the Constitution states:'all members of the nation, men and women are equally under the protection of the law and enjoy full human, political, economic, social and cultural rights in accordance with the criteria of Islam.' However, equality of women and men before the law does not necessarily remove existing discrimination against women. Since domestic laws give unequal rights to men and women, such as the inheritance law. A wife inherits only one eight of the estate of her deceased husband and does not have the right ot inherit the land on which a building is built. In contrary, the husband of a deceased woman inherits half of her estate.

2) Article 881 of the Civil Code, in effect, provides:' an unbeliever (non-moslem) does not take inheritance from a Muslim and if there are unbelievers among the heirs of a deceased unbeliever, the unbelieving heirs do not take inheritance even if they have closer affinity to the muslim. Therefore if a Zoroastrian dies, according to his religion, his property will be divided among his heirs. But if one member of his family has converted to Islam, no matter how far is the family relationship he will inherit all the deceased person's property according to the Law of Islamic Republic of Iran. Conversely, in the case of a muslim person passing away, only the muslim heirs will inherit, and if there is no muslim heir all the property will go to the Government.

3) According to Iranian laws, the father or paternal grandfather are designated obligatory custodians by religion of underage children and this custody is absolute. The mother is only entitled to the custody of her children until the age of seven, no matter how unappropriate the father might behave or act. The child's financial management is on father and grand father where the mother has no rights on her child's asset even if it was the mother who provided the asset or property.

4) The right of the husband to divorce his wife with out bringing up any reason and loss of the right of a divorced woman to child custody if she remarries are among major discriminations in internal laws. Legal codes tend to legitimize patriarchy by granting men the right to divorce their wives whenever they choose.

Section (f) of Article 2 of CEDAW requires member governments to adopt the necessary measures to reform or repeal laws, regulations, traditions or other conventions that entail discriminatio against women. The Islamic Punishment Act of 1978 according to Islamic jurisprudence makes clear gender discriminations as follows:

1) The Criminal Liability for Boys are after completion of their fifteenth year, but this age for girls began when they turn to nine, while still a child.
2) The amount of blood money is unequal for men and women. In the case of woman being murdered the blood money is half of a man. The family of the murdered woman should pay half of blood money to the family of the killer man in order to bring him into justice and have him executed. If a father kills his child he will not bear any criminal punishment unless the mother file a complaint to the court.Even with that his maximum punishment will not exceed more than 10 years prison.

3) The validity of testimony in criminal matters for woman is not considered the same as man. The testimony of a woman plaintiffs is considered half valid, therefore two women witnesses equal to one man.
4) Men and women who commit 'Zena' adultary will be punished by stonning, however the woman will be kept in the soil upto her neck so she would not escape, but the level for men is upto her chest where it gives him too much space to free himself. The law states that if he could free he would be allowed to go.

Article 3 of CEDAW is calling member states to adopt every appropriate measure in all fields including legislation of the laws.

1) Women's work and profession needs to be endorsed by the male figure of the family. Women are allowed to work providing that the dignity of the family and values and criteria of Islam are preerved. However as there are no definitions to these terms it is upto men who decide whether their wives, daughters or sisters are allowed to work.

2) Men are considered breadwinner of the households according to Constitution. And in endorsement of this statement, women are considered to be in need of Guardians. To this end, the protecting women and children without GUARDIANS Act was passed in Nov 1992 that provides protection to widows, girls and women in general as they are considered disabled and in need of GUARDIANS.

3) Proper roles for women are proved by Islamic law to be limited to mother hood, caring and nurturing the members of the family. This role could be shared with upto four wives for man's ultimate happiness. Apart from stereotyped jobs such as teachers and nurses, women are not encouraged to increase their economic participation. In practice income generation is the realm of man and have been biased to the advantage of man, in the extent that women participation in economy in all moslem countries does not exceed 20 percent and in the case of Iran it has decreased to 8 percent after the revolution. Due to increase of higher educated women this figure has increased to 13 percent in recent years.

Article 4 of CEDAW stresses the adoption of special temporary measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality between men and women.

1) Girls are deprived enrollment in more than 200 fields of study that are considered unappropriate in universities, such as mining, car maintenance, etc..
2) The cost of women labor in support of their pregnancy is solely on the account of employer, making it costly for employers to employ female labor force, due to over protective labor laws. For instance all the costs to set up care taking centers for worker's children must be paid by the employer and they do not receive any assistance from the Government. Therefore employers are reluctant to bear all these extra cost only to employ women. These policies not only protect female laborers rather drive them toward informal jobs which provides no social protection.The Labor Law enacted in 1990 considers women's work in production on equal terms with men's but in practice, they are liable to less working hours, early retirement, and certainly much lower wages for the same job categories.

3) Women who are socialy marginalized as homemakers constitute 65 percent of women population; consequently they are excluded of any protective measures covered by national social security system.
4) Women are deprived to participate or watch sport maches, drive bicycles, do swimming and other physical activities that are considered to be unappropriate.

Article 4 of CEDAW, elaborates ontemporary affirmative action measures aimed at accelerating de facto equality, this means a positive discrimination to elevate women's position in the society.

Special measrures must be taken for women's empowerment and further capacity building to enhance her self confidence after centuries of abuse and discrimination.Due to the fact that men and women have unequal rights to employment and income, there are special treatment such as nuptial dowry from the husband for the bride which is intended to provide them with some financial security. Dowry is binding in the country of Iran, but many do not know that once out of the country, say if the couple decided to move to America, the husband has no obligation to the wife if there was never a written contract. This can leave an ignorant divorcee or widow in a desperate situation. According to Local official news agency, 95 percent of women who resort to the court of justice to request the payment of her dowery (marriage portion) are homemakers out of which only 25 percent succeed to actualy get their hands on the most legitimate money that women earn. This is due to the fact that man has all the right to ownership of his home and other family earnings. Man is entitled to divorce his wife without any specific reason, it is put to his judgment to play fair and give her a just divorce

Article 5 of CEDAW that is calling for modification of the social and cultural patterns to eliminate gender stereotyping.

Gender stereotyping is widely practiced and encouraged through traditional norms, job selection, educational opportunities and general role division at all level. The first Woman Judge designated in the family Court was publicized by reformists as positive acts of the Islamic regime. However 3 years after in October 2004 she was found dead in her home, and was claimed that she had committed suicide.

Article 6 of CEDAW has requested the states to implement every measures including legislation of law in order to prevent women trafficing and prostitution
Although Iranian culture condemned the exploitation of women but their economic exclusion has infact gave free hands to trafficers to easily get their hands on girls and women who have no other channels to fight poverty and abuse. The Islamic act of Sigheh (fixed term Islamic marriage) which was meant to legitimize relationships between men and women have brought disgrace and humilition for women. The fruit of these kind of relationships were illegitimate children wandering in the streets of Iranian city as street children because men do not accept to register as the father.

Article 7 of CEDAW requesting states to address discrimination in political and public life and shall ensure participation in the formation of government policy.
1) The national statistics are evidence of women under representation in offices where only 6 percent of management positions are occupied by women. This figure contains education sector where girl schools that are usually run by women are also included, otherwise real statistics for participation in political offices are much lower.
2) women are asked at the time of campaigning to produce votes for candidates selected by their spouses, this in fact should not be accounted as participation and should be considered as kind of abuse. Out of 290 members of the Parliament only 12 were women.
3) In May 1982 the Act of law opens with the sentence that Judges are selected from among men wiht the following qualifications...
4) Section c of Article 7 of Constitution guarantees women the right to participate in NGOs, however all kind of association or relationship outside home must be authorized by the husband or the father. In addition Article 10 of the Activities of Political Parties empowers the Government to exercise full control over any kind of assoiciations through a commission that is responsible for this issue.

Article 8 of CEDAW ecouraging women's participation in international affairs
1) In terms of representation of women, the fact is that until now, female employees of the Foreign Ministry have not been included on the permanent staff of missions abroad.
2) women who wish to continue their higher education abroad must be married before their file is considered eligible, no matter how gifted or eager she may be to continue her study.

Articles 9 ,10,11,12,13,14,15,16 of CEDAW elaborate on rights and access to them. These rights include all above mentioned discrimination such as right to education, right to work as a human right, right to social security, right to knowledge. Article 1117 of Civil law, clearly states a woman cannot accept employment without her husband's consent. This law in the hand of abused me can force women to leave their jobs. In the case of women physicians, due to the fact that it is the husband who must approve that his wife travels to remote areas to practice her studies it has actualy worked against women for proper implementation of their profession.

Under Section 2 of Article 82 of Social Security Acts of 1975 and 1979 states children can claim social security benefits on the death of their mother only if their father has died or is not eligible to receive any other allowances. There are no such conditions for the children of a deceased man.

Iranian laws relating to polygamy implicitly saction a form of discrimination against women. Article 83 of the Social Security Law states: The amount of allowance of the wife of the deceased person is equal to 50 percent of the annuity of the insured person, and if the person leaves several permanent wives, then the amount is divided among them in an equal way.

In 1992, the majority conservative Parliament passed an Act which guarantees women without guardian (meaning head of household) with a minimum livelihood. However, in practice only handful number of poor women heads of households receive nearly 30 percent of minimum basic salary that does not cover even basic food necessity for the poorest of poor who are marginalized by the society and by law.The head of the family, the husband or the father legally is responsible for safeguarding the interest of his family, hence under Islamic law in family decisions, there is no negotiation or discussion. A wife must accept the husband's superior role and decisions. Ultimatly there is no machinery or mechamism to compensate for any legal discrimination exerted on women. The only law that can be mentioned could be the Act 38 of Labor Law that requires equal wage for equal work for both men and women. Hence in case of breach of the law the female worker can complain to the court. As a result the employer must pay the difference to the worker and additionaly pay fine to the Government.
References:
1) UN, Division for the advancement of Women, Dept of Economic and social affairs: www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/cedaw
2) UNHCHR, Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women: http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/6/cedw.htm
3) Links, Oxfam newsletter on gender, www.oxfam.org.uk/what_we_do/issues/gender/links/downloads/LINKS0702.pdf
4) CEDAW, UNICEF Resources, full text : www.unicef.org/jordan/resources_722.html
5) Women's Rights, Human's Rights, Farideh Hamidi, Parvaneh Ghassemian, Solmaz Saleh Novin, Roshangaran publishing, Tehran in Farsi, 2003
6) UNICEF, The state of women, Iran, 1998
7) CEDAW, The Office of Women's Studies and Research, Ghom, Edited by Alireza Shaliaf, 2003
8) Feminist online journal, www.badjens.com/fifthedition/Joining.htm
9) Iran Feminist Tribune, website: http://www.iftribune.com/news.asp?id=3&pass=29


Nasrin Azadeh, Feb, 2005