What we can do

Ideas for Stand Up Against Poverty events
Get yourselves noticed! Standing up is an ordinary thing, but if you do it together in an unusual way, you’ll definitely get people’s attention and get them to take action by using action cards or petitions.
• Gather a group of people together in a town or city centre and wrap them in a giant white band – while they’re standing up. You could use a roll of white material, rolls of wallpaper, banqueting roll, old sheets tied together, or


anything else white. Alternatively you could get people to dress in white and form a human white band.
• If you’ve got prominent town steps or a public staircase, get people to gather on these for impact especially if it’s a media focused event with photo opportunities.
• Instead of a “sit in”, why not organise a “stand in”, gathering together as many people as possible to stand together in solidarity against poverty at one time. You could do this inside or outside and you could choose somewhere unexpected to create a bit of a stir, e.g. a supermarket or a coffee shop.
• Organise a ”flash mob” – this is where a group of people arrange by text or email to gather together at a prearranged time, carry out an action, and then disperse without explanation about what you’re doing. Organising a few “stand up” flash mobs in a limited time (a week or two) in a town or city centre should get talk flowing, and could be in the build up to a big event with clear messaging and branding. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob for useful information.

Linking with what is already happening where you are
• Contact local cinemas, theatres, concerts or other audience-focused events and ask them to all stand up before the event starts, explaining why.
• Link with comedy nights or open mic comedy nights, and persuade them to do “stand up against poverty comedy”, with an information and action stall at the event and asking people to stand up together during the event.
• Get local sports teams or sports stadia on board. You could ask if they could put a loudspeaker announcement out to get people to all stand together before the match, or even do a Mexican stand up wave. The sports clubs could include information in the match programme and get the players involved.

People you could try to get involved
To provide additional local media interest or to generate more of a talking point, get local celebrities or influentials involved, but also think about people who are known for sitting down and use any links your town has with developing countries.
• Use any twinning links your town has with developing countries to make a link to campaigning in those countries. Involve local twinning groups in your planning.
• Work with local refugee and asylum groups if appropriate to see if any people would be willing to talk about the poverty and issues in their home countries.
• Get schools, universities, supermarkets and shopping centres on board to see if they could hold a stand up at a certain time – perhaps as part of the world record attempt.
• Get local faith groups from all faiths on board, encourage them to organise their own stand up events in their places of worship and also to get involved in any actions in your town/city centre.
• Get local newsreaders and radio presenters known for sitting down to stand up.
• Don’t forget to get your sitting MP involved. For more information about who your local MP is visit: www.locata.co.uk/commons

Materials for events
You can use the Make Trade Fair and More Teachers and Health Worker materials for your events, but you can also make your own materials.
• Make a stand up people paper chain before or at events. Schools and youth groups or people at the stall could colour in those people using the flags of all
the different countries that are taking part in the Global Month of Action. This paper chain could be used as a decoration, or as a symbol of events at events.
• Create flags or banners with key messages on them, or with images of people standing up on them.
• Balloons work well at public events and engage people, especially children, in the activity. You could get balloons made with a message, or just use bought balloons with the message attached. Using white balloons could also enable you to create a band of balloons during your stand up events.



source: www.oxfam.org.uk

Democracy

Democracy is about representation not manipulation and influence. Anyone can amass a damning picture by cherry-picking facts, distorting history and taking events out of context - an unbiased presentation of events would be far more admirable, while morality needs to sustain its real value and become a matter of greater concern. Indifference and too lenient approach creates a gap that can be manipulated by more hostile, abusive and radical views to justify their activities while taking advantage of inertia of people. There need to be more efforts for good governance based on meaningful social justice and commitment.

The new world order with increased connectivity by the technological condition of our time has imposed a way of life that is not self governing. Being part of the society we ought to have political choices aligned with our aspiration and our place in the world. But the political choices of others who share our environment have imposed severe constraints to measures of self governance. Additionally, in autocratic regimes fear of exclusion increasingly cause people to be forced to take up the role that is designated to them, which is rather co-conspiring than concession.

On the importance of keeping distinct public and private boundaries to enforce exclusion, the state attempts to threaten and vandalise individual’s integrity which results in marginalisation of those endangered. Putting in action most “notorious agents” playing the role of masters and targeting “vulnerable” already weakened by restriction from participating in social and economic activities, they sustain obedience - out of fear and disgust. Since there is total blockage on financial income humiliating consequences are on agenda to complete the vicious cycle of obedience.

By imposing threat and creating an environment of fear, insecurity, and poverty, particularly on those more aware, state tightens the grip on self censorship and that someone cannot speak of her problems even to her closest associate, and cannot do so for she become vandalised, defamed and excluded from her peers. Therefore cancerous self censorship turns one to blame all who have resorted to outsiders to end the misery.

And where there is confusion on social codes, making it impossible to distinct between thugs or ministers, then third class agents can intrude as they have free hands on controlling the resources necessary to effective communication. And the reason they can control those resources is that the state enforces rules and provide instruments of intrusion (even to most private spaces) which give a lowest of low a veto power, backed by a legitimate menace of state force, over their use.

Critical Questions

Demography and Migration: ageing or declining populations will affect western countries in particular and impact on approaches to migration, taxation, pensions, employment and public services.

Resource pressures: pressures on the world’s natural resources will grow. Rapid growth in some developing economies and growing consumption in the developed world will increase competition for energy, water, forests and land. The impacts of climate change are more dangerous that was previously calculated. The world’s biological, social and economic systems will be damaged by flooding and drought, lower crop yields. Climate change will increasingly be a barrier to development and a factor in instability; demand for energy in particular will grow.

Energy Scarcity: Upgrading and building oil pipeline networks in producer and transit countries will present economic, technological and political challenges. A world-wide shortage of refining capacity will continue to affect the price of refined petroleum. Supply and demand in the world energy market will diversify, driven by the emergence of new technologies and suppliers, and the need to reduce carbon emissions. The long-term shift towards renewables and better energy efficiency will gather pace in developed countries. Nuclear power will play a greater role. Environmental degradation and the effects of climate change will constrain development, placing ever greater importance on the effective management of natural resources and the revenues they generate.

Good governance: Local government is intended to be a democratic institution that reflects local meanings with a degree of relative autonomy in exercising its functions. Those functions include the provision and delivery of state services to local populations, but also acting as an advocator in securing the delivery of publicly desired goods by private and voluntary organisations. Local government is given autonomy to eco the needs and wants of local populations within spatial context which vary from one locality to another. By allowing adaptive policies of the state to vary from area to area the varied needs and wants of the citizens are better met. This will ensure that needs and wants of citizens are easily expressed and voiced to be heard by trusted familiar faces.

Misuse of Arms and explosives: The challenge to all governments to help control the misuse of arms is urgent. To achieve this, they must invest more resources in professional policing based on the agreed international standards. Only then can governments provide protection to women, men, and children through legitimate security forces that respect human rights, and gain the widespread support from civil society that is needed to curb the flow and use of illicit arms.

Media: self-confident citizenry means that people are less likely to participate in conventional politics resorting instead to less conventional means such as protests, joining NGOs, engagement in various social groups in order to get their views across.
The media perhaps could shift the interest from allegations of impropriety which alienates public from the political system by building on dynamics of social capital channeled toward meaningful concerns.

Military Intervention

For the past decades major conflicts have increasingly become internal in some ways, and were stopped by invasions of foreign forces, such as, Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia, which declared war on its own people and committed extraordinary attack on the urban culture of its country, killing anybody who lived in a city, anybody who had education or profession. And then the Vietnamese stopped it – not entirely for humanitarian reasons – they had strategic goals, but they stopped it.

There was similar case in East Pakistan (Bangladesh) where India had to intervene, and in Uganda where Tanzania had to intervene. In all those cases there were murderous regimes and external interventions. However there must be workable thinking on political reconstruction of the after math of intervention, which is best administered or regulated by the UN or similar international bodies. UN or communities of democracies should elaborate some universal principles of intervention that is backed by some kind of international military forces. There is of course UN Charter which explains the circumstances under which it is right or not right to use force across the boundary. But the problem is with the workability of the UN as an enforcer of these rules. For example, the UN would not have authorized anybody to go into Cambodia, it would not have authorized India to invade East Pakistan and create Bangladesh; and it would not have authorized the Tanzanian invasion of Uganda. More examples are Srebrenica in Bosnia, or Rwanda or Darfur in Sudan. Therefore no political leader in his right mind would limit the fate of his people into the framework of the UN. And all of these are not because the principles are not there. It is because there is no readiness; there is no real commitment to live by these principles, to enforce them.

It is important to think about alternatives and how to create a more effective global body. Ideally there should be a UN police force, which is not composed of military forces of different countries but individuals recruited by the UN for the purpose of enforcing the law and avoiding the state to commit genocide or crime against its own nation. To reform the UN it can be possible to move it closer to a global state and a global government. However it is difficult to come to any consensus, in today’s world make up, any willingness in the contemporary society of states to allow that to happen. A Security Council police force might work in some situations and it is obviously not going to work in lot of other situations. It is not going to work where there is a great power determined to have its way, like the Chinese in Tibet. Nobody is going to stop it.

Exploitative political leaders

Governance failures mean that we have not been able to work out meaningful means of intervention to mitigate human sufferings, and bring hope to those who are systematically oppressed and marginalized. Inefficient, exploitive, incompetent, or abusive national authority structures have impaired the economic well being, violated the basic human rights, and created security traps for populations. Local governments within confines of conventional sovereignty which emphasises on autonomy and international recognition have legitimized their monopoly of exploiting resources and people. The fundamental rules of conventional sovereignty manipulated by abusive political leaders are not functioning anymore. While there is a growing initiative on humanitarian interventions, there is little corresponding study of international policies to address exploitive authorities. There must be a focus on how best international orgs can intervene, had there been an international system of containment to curb abuse of power, and sustain more meaningful international commitment to defend basic rights of people.


The state has a role to play in providing public goods such as education and health services as well as in reflecting the political and social values through good governance. This is translated in to establishing environment and institutions that impede systematic corruption that undermines accountability. Good governance is seen not just necessary condition for wellbeing and economic development but also new concerns for democratic participation, social justice and accountability. Research utilizing a comprehensive governance database of 200 countries shows that, higher national incomes per capita result from improving governance, rule of law, and corruption control (World Bank, 2006). Yet, capacities to govern must be developed; capacities related to setting strategic direction, building capacity to implement policy, and building new ways of financing public goods and services. Governments must take responsibility for providing essential services that are free or heavily subsidised for poor people and geared to the needs of all citizens (Oxfam GB,2005). Civil society organisations and non profit private entities need to develop capacity for participatory intervention to tackle shortcomings. In democratic systems, governments are accountable to the people because the citizens are the original power holders who delegate authority temporarily and over certain specific issues to the government. However unless people get engaged, raise their awareness, meaningfully participate and develop capacity to solve social problems the power vacuum will be hijacked by more aggressive and often abusive power players. Good governance mainly is about fair allocation of resources, education and health for citizens to find ground for flourishing. Oxfam research found that teachers’ salaries in least developed countries have halved since 1970. And there are not enough of these dedicated individuals as populations grow disproportionately. In order to provide basic health care and education for all, the world needs 4.25 million more health workers and 1.9 million more trained teachers (Oxfam GB, 2006).

In the last decade, self-governing public institutions have multiplied to hold governments accountable in different areas, such as corruption control bodies, independent electoral institutes, auditing agencies, human rights Ombudsmen, and Public Prosecutors. In Latin America, in Asia, Africa, Australia and Eastern Europe countries have all created or revived one or more such independent institutions. Another indicator of this trend is that over 80 countries currently have a national Ombudsman while only a dozen had one only 20 years ago (Bennett, 1997). However, the accountability of their performance varies widely while there are as many cases that merely serve to help governments avoid accountability as there are those who strengthen government accountability. States that experience poor governance and are not accountable to their own people tend to co-conspire with power abusers to sustain their sovereignty. They loose interest in winning their own constituencies. Weak governing structures that lost the support of people, are confronting endemic violence, exploitative political leaders, and even state sponsored genocide.

Humanitarian disasters exacerbated by abusive political leaders have disturbing impact on the conscience of international community; and leave them with no other choice but a workable military intervention to stop inhuman conflicts, mostly ethnic or racial based, which have affected and raised security risks. The persistent misuse of arms by state law forces can itself be a significant contributing factor in undermining development, because economic actors lose confidence in the justice sector and look for safe havens. Where small arms are widely misused, potential business investors may well look elsewhere for a more secure environment in which to invest their capital. Promoting the rule of law, protection of property rights, freedom of the press, political competition, and transparency in general, and in politics in particular (such as in campaign finance) is vital to sustain development (World Bank, 2006).

Mechanisms to allow citizens to have an effective voice are important to institutionalize good governance. The denial of people's right to influence decision makers has been a central cause of suffering in the world. NGOs and humanitarian agencies are in difficult situation for interfering in conflicts where it requires utmost impartiality. This is particularly important for justification of international agencies’ intervention that although familiar with local meanings could act quite neutral. However, if authorities want to violate, marginalise and impoverish people, then humanitarian workers are not particularly well placed to stop them since protection activities will be working against the intentions of the legal or de facto groups perpetrating these abuses. Humanitarian personnel will be seen more as a threat than an ally by such exploitive authorities.

In any case, humanitarian crises and deeply felt human rights issues have engaged electorates in advanced democracies and created no win situations for political leaders who try to keep their hands clean and avoid criticism. And, attempts by stronger countries to interfere in the human rights abuse cases, they are confronted with the governments justifications such as national sovereignty, as a means of subjugating their population even further. The extent that local government conspire against their people under the excuse of domestic sovereignty in states is astounding. Conventional sovereignty is now the only fully legitimated institutional form but, unfortunately, conventional sovereignty is abused by local authoritarian rulers. Some leaders will find exploitation of their own populations more justified to secure their presence in the office rather than the introduction of reforms. Any attempt by international actors to eliminate abuse will be contested and constrained.

Increasing demands and lack of planning and resources severely aggravated transition period in the path toward reform. If we are serious about exerting good governance, the transitional administration has to be sincere about human rights monitoring, election processes, disarmament and demobilization of armed forces, and protection of humanitarian relief workers. Alternatively, local leaders need to strike a balance between external and internal support that is provided for them to make changes. Civil society, the media, Parliament, the judiciary and the private sector must be involved in a participatory way, with full voice and empowerment to institutionalise good governance. While their efforts to establish institutional arrangement for good governance would provide a new choice.

Civil Resistance

Power Politics

Project on ‘Civil Resistance and Power Politics’

Oxford University is organizing an interdisciplinary research project on ‘Civil Resistance and Power Politics: Domestic and International Dimensions’. A landmark international conference on this topic will be held in Oxford on 15 to 18 March 2007, to be followed by a major scholarly edited book. There will also be certain other workshops and seminars, and other forms of product – e.g. journal articles, shorter books, web pages, and radio/TV programmes. A full-time Research Associate, Dr Thomas Davies, is co-ordinating the work. The project’s Organizing Committee consists of seven Oxford academics. The project also reflects extensive consultations with numerous other colleagues in Oxford, the UK generally, and many other countries.
1. PURPOSES
The Project on Civil Resistance and Power Politics: Domestic and International Dimensions will assess the nature and significance of civil (i.e. non-violent) resistance, especially, though not exclusively, in the period since the 1960s. It aims first and foremost to raise the academic level of treatment of the subject. This mode of political action has been of demonstrable importance in the past hundred years and more, yet there has been far too little serious study of many of its aspects. A focus on this phenomenon and its roles in international politics challenges the view that only the exercise of power by military means can bring about fundamental changes in authoritarian societies. The project will explore this phenomenon in a rigorous and open-minded way, asking a number of hard questions that are often avoided, and exploring a wide range of relevant historical evidence. The resulting book and other output will have as an aim to assist a better understanding of civil resistance on the part of governments, activists, members of the public, and scholars. They may therefore have significance for future action as well as for understanding the past and present.
The conference, attendance at which is by invitation only, will consist mainly of academics and analysts plus some practitioners who have been involved in particular campaigns of civil resistance. On the basis of prepared papers, it will look at some general themes, and also at a large number of cases. The cases considered will include, but not be limited to, the Indian independence struggle to 1947; the US civil rights movement in the 1960s; resistance to the Greek colonels’ regime 1967-73; the Iranian resistance in 1979; the overthrow of President Marcos in the Philippines in 1986; opposition activity in South Africa contributing to the end of the apartheid regime; many examples of civil resistance in central and eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, culminating in the regime changes of 1989-91; Serbian opposition activities culminating in the fall of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000; the ‘rose revolution’ in Georgia in 2003; the ‘orange revolution’ in Ukraine in 2004-05; and events in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. It will also examine a number of apparent failures such as the Czechoslovak resistance in 1968; the resistance to Noriega in Panama in 1989; the events leading to the Tienanmen Square massacre in 1989 in China; and the resistance in Kosovo before the 1999 war. It may also include certain cases that are ongoing, such as Iran or Burma, although these can obviously not be studied in the same way.

2. COMMON QUESTIONS IN CASE STUDIES
The project, and its conference, will explore a wide range of issues relating to the role of civil resistance in international politics. Some common questions would be addressed in the case studies and also in some thematic papers:

1. Were the reasons for the use of non-violent methods derived from an absolute rejection of all political violence, or from more particular strategic, moral, cultural and other considerations?

2. To the extent that a non-violent movement was able to operate effectively, was this in part due to particular favourable circumstances in the overall power situation, both domestic and international?

3. Has civil resistance demonstrated a particular value as one instrument for challenging fraudulent election processes and ensuring a free and fair outcome?

4. Can an international legal/normative regime provide a favourable background for civil resistance?

5. To what extent did the non-violent movement succeed in undermining, or threatening to undermine, the adversary’s sources of power and legitimacy?

6. Was any force or violence used alongside non-violent methods, and if so what were its effects?

7. What has been the role of external actors of all kinds (government, quasi-non-governmental organisations, NGOs, diasporas) in assisting or attempting to influence civil resistance in this country?

8. Is there evidence of agents provocateurs being sent in by the state, or of other efforts to discredit the movement by depicting it as violent?

9. How has the development of technologies, especially information technology (e.g. fax, email, internet), affected the capacities of civil resistance?

10. Was there any implicit or explicit threat of a future use of force or violence to carry forward the non-violent movement’s cause if the movement did not achieve a degree of success, or if extreme repression was used against it?

11. If there was such a threat, was it from the leaders of the movement itself, from potential allies among its ‘constituency’ of support, or from outside forces such as, for example, the governments of neighbouring states or international bodies?

12. In cases where outside governments or organizations supported the movement, did they understand and respect the reasons for avoiding the use of force or violence? Should rules be established regarding the character and extent of such external support?

13. Was civil resistance in one country instigated or assisted by another state as a mere instrument for pursuing its own ends or embarrassing an adversary? If accusations of this kind were made, did they have any credibility?

14. Overall, can the movement be viewed as a success or failure? How adequately do these labels reflect outcomes that may be highly ambiguous, especially with the benefit of hindsight?

15. In what time-frame should the effectiveness of civil resistance be judged?

16. If they subsequently entered into government, did the leaders and exponents of civil resistance show any distinctive approach to the management and use of military and police power by their state?

17. Is there a connection between the practice of civil resistance and liberal outcomes? If yes, what is the nature of that connection, and what lessons might be learned?

Good Governance

Justice in full capacity

Governance failures are a fundamental problem of our time. Failed, inadequate, incompetent,or abusive national authority structures have sabotaged the economic well being, violated the basic human rights, and undermined the physical security of their populations. The problems generated by inadequate governance cannot be adequately addressed within the confines of conventional sovereignty which stipulates that all states should enjoy both autonomy and international recognition. Alternative institutional arrangements, need to be developed including de facto if not de jure global trusteeships arrangements that engage external international institutions in judicial and rights based aspects of domestic governance on a quasi permanent basis. The fundamental rules of conventional sovereignty -- recognize juridically independent territorial entities and do not intervene in the internal affairs of other states -- although frequently violated in practice have rarely been challenged in principle. But these rules no longer work, and their inadequacies have had harmful consequences for the strong as well as the weak. The policy tools that powerful well governed states have available to fix badly governed or occupied polities . Development programs for assisting good governance carried out by the United Nations, World Bank or IMF or other institutions are inadequate in their outcomes to institutionalize democracy and social justice. Better domestic governance in badly governed or occupied polities will require transcending accepted rules in specific issue areas and possibly some new form of trusteeship as well. There is a conspicuous gap between the analytical emphasis on international institutions’ decision-making processes to initiate or intervene during a conflict, and violation of human rights. While there is a great and growing literature on humanitarian intervention during a conflict, there is little corresponding study of international policies to address exploitive authorities involved with widespread and systematic violations of human rights. Deciding whether and how to deal with suspected atrocity perpetrators is of critical importance to policymaking and judiciary system.



Key words: Justice, judiciary, governance, human rights, corruption, transparency



Exploitative Political Leaders

The state has a role to play in providing public goods such as educating the youth of the country as well as in reflecting the political and social values, such as throwing out parties who turn a blind eye to corrupt privatisation. Yet, “capacities to govern” must be developed – capacities related to setting strategic direction, building capacity to implement policy, and building new ways of financing public goods and services.

Weak governed countries globally are confronting endemic violence, exploitative political leaders, falling life expectancy, declining per capita income, and even state sponsored genocide. In Colombia much of the territory is controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, a Marxist rebel group. In Rwanda more than 700,000 people were slaughtered in a matter of weeks in 1994. The consequences of failed and inadequate governance have not been limited to the societies directly affected. Poorly governed societies can generate conflicts that flow across international borders. Trans-national criminal and terrorist networks, human and drug traffickers can operate in territories that are not controlled by the internationally recognized government. Humanitarian disasters not only prick the conscience of political leaders in advanced democratic societies but also leave them with no good political choices.

In conflicts beside the real human cost of misery, injury and death, there is also the economic cost of the loss of human life, destruction of property, and economic activity foregone. The persistent misuse of arms by law enforcement agencies, particularly the police and paramilitaries, encouraged by the ability to secure further supplies of arms, can itself be a significant contributing factor in undermining development, because economic actors lose confidence in the justice sector. Where small arms are widely misused, potential business investors may well look elsewhere for a more secure environment in which to invest their capital. States that experience failure or poor governance more generally are beset by many problems. In such states infrastructure deteriorates; corruption is widespread; borders are unregulated; GNP is declining or stagnant; crime is rampant; and the national currency is not widely accepted. Armed groups operate within the state’s boundaries but outside the control of the government.

Political leaders who are operating in an environment in which material and institutional resources are limited have often themselves chosen policies that make things worse. For some leaders disorder and uncertainty are more attractive than order and stability. In a more chaotic environment they are better able to extract resources from the society. Decisions affecting the distribution of wealth are based on personal connections rather than bureaucratic regulations or the rule of law. Leaders create multiple armed units that can be played off against each other.

Factors around governance are crucial in order to assess the level of responsibility of the government in terms of the way the imported arms may be used. There is a clear relationship between governance standards and military spending. At a meeting in 1997, donors formally recognised that the defence-spending decision-making process pursued by a government influences its spending priorities. Research, as well as government statements, suggest that transparent, accountable, and participatory processes for defence-spending decision making are more likely to produce .appropriate. spending policies that take into account development needs.160 Such processes are also likely to apply to appropriate spending on law enforcement.

The denial of people's right to influence decision makers has been a central cause of suffering in the world. Systematic denial of people's right to participate erodes the accountability and effectiveness of organisations, and governments, making these institutions much more prone to the corruption, malpractice, and malfeasance that exacerbate poverty. In 1989 one of the most damaging flaw undermining the UNHCR’s Comprehensive Plan of Action CPA, was the extent of corruption among immigration officials, most notably, in the Philippines and Indonesia. Under the CPA, the UNHCR was tasked with overseeing the screening process and ensuring that it would comply with international standards. However, there was little the UNHCR could do about violations. Its mandate power to overturn negative decisions on the grounds of gross injustice was used in only exceptional circumstances (Brook 2001: 48).

Organised crime is also potentially subversive of democracy and inhibits inward investment, whilst relationships of connivance between organised crime and some politicians forms a ‘parallel’ state that undermine the quality of, democracy. Although organised crime and corruption are analytically separate phenomena, where the former is deep rooted, the latter finds particularly fertile soil and vice versa. Corruption involves the suspension of normatively defined criteria for the allocation of resources, in favour of market exchanges – whose distributive consequences in turn depend on the arbitrary and unequal distribution of money and other resources. By undermining principles of equality and transparency, corruption is subversive of rules of democracy. It inflates the costs of public services and perpetuates administrative inefficiency besides being self-generating. Corruption becomes systematic and routine when the places of the official actors and administrators are gradually taken by lower moral calibre supported by the monopolizing system of governance. The organized crime and corruption can accelerate by factors such as universal suffrage, weak governance, and absence of strong international institution to bring abusers to justice. Therefore, politicians should not be able to provide protection from judicial investigation to over rule social and moral agenda. What incentives then do politicians have to tackle corruption and organised crime when public indifference mean that the status quo is the preferred option of all concerned? Corruption is self perpetuating in a context with a strong or predominant executive, weak legislatures, public indifference, and exemption from prosecution, each of which require discrete solutions. Transparency is held to be central to contemporary discussions of democratic governance, since open access to information and elimination of secrecy is taken to be a condition for the prevention of corruption and promoting public accountability.

Of the most striking aspects of the contemporary world is the extent to which domestic sovereignty has faltered so badly in states which still enjoy international legal and other legitimated and accepted institutional forms. Conventional sovereignty is now the only fully legitimated institutional form but, unfortunately, conventional sovereignty is abused by local authoritarian rulers. Some leaders will find exploitation of their own populations more advantageous than the introduction of reforms. The leverage of external actors will usually be constrained.

Transitional administration is difficult: the demands are high; advance planning which must prejudge outcomes is complicated, especially for the UN; and resources -- economic, institutional, military, often limited. The responsibilities of transitional administration must include more severely human rights monitoring, election assistance, disarmament and demobilization of armed forces, and protection of humanitarian relief workers.

Alternatively, local leaders who become dependent on external actors during a transitional administration, but who lack support within their own country, do not have an incentive to invest in the development of new institutional arrangements that would allow their external benefactors to leave at an earlier date. The endorsement of a new institutional arrangement would provide a new option, a new choice.

Human Rights Crises

Humanitarian crises and deeply felt human rights issues have engaged electorates in advanced democracies and created no win situations for political leaders who are damned if they intervene or damned if they do not. And, attempts by stronger countries to interfere in the human rights abuse cases, they are confronted with the governments justifications such as national sovereignty. The availability of small and heavy weapons, ease of movement across borders for traffickers in human and drugs, and terrorist networks have generated capability for criminals to kill large numbers of people. Non state actors, such as anarchist groups in the 19th century could throw bombs that might kill 50 or even several hundred people, but not more. Irresponsible states with limited means can procure chemical and biological weapons. Nuclear weapons demand more resources, but they are not out of reach of radicals. Humanitarian disasters, widespread migrations, slavery and forced labour are pressurizing decision makers in democratic countries to face with serious global issues. Weapons deployed by radical tempered, and trans-national terrorists networks that might operate from failed and failing states can kill ten of thousands or even millions of citizens in other states. If external actors intervene militarily, either because of security threats or a breakdown of internal order, they cannot ignore the question of how new domestic authority structures will be constituted.


Transitional Justice

In some parts of the world disorder, including civil war, has become endemic. For the period 1955 to 1998 more than 136 state-failure events in countries were identified with populations above 500,000. State failure was operationalized as one of four kinds of internal political crisis: revolutionary wars, ethnic wars, adverse regime change, and genocides. In 1955 less than 6 percent of the countries were in failure. In the early 1990s the figure had risen to almost 30 percent.

Options, rarely used, considered for dealing with suspected war criminals are narrow such as: prosecutions through an international criminal tribunal (ict), executions on sight, executions en masse later, show trials and then executions, exile, concentration camps, amnesty, and, as Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill suggested for suspected atrocity perpetrators in World War II, castration.

Recent events have reinforced the salience of these issues. The International Criminal Court (icc), which was established by the Rome Statute on 17 July 1998 and which entered into force on 1 July 2002, recently announced that its first two investigations will concern mass violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo (particularly the northeast) and Uganda (particularly the north), where tens of thousands of people have suffered atrocities, including murder, summary executions, torture, mutilation, sexual violence, forcible displacement, and cannibalism. For the past two decades, Sudan (particularly the western region of Darfur) has been consumed by a civil war that, in 2003, erupted into mass atrocities, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of individuals and the displacement of 1.5 million more. thorough investigation of transitional justice options and the issues surrounding them is crucial for the process of evaluating responses to past atrocities and for developing appropriate and effective policy to address suspected atrocity perpetrators in the future.

Essentially a collective, extra-judicial punishment through presumed guilt by political association, lustration is often seen as a quick and relatively easy method of dealing with a large number of suspected atrocity perpetrators and their accomplices. Some argue that this process violates laws concerning discrimination based on political association, specifically international law, such as the Fourth Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, or domestic law.

Political authorities in badly governed countries must be held accountable to international institutions and have to be encouraged to use their international legal sovereignty, their right to commit to international agreements, to create shared sovereignty arrangements that compromise their lack of concern for establishing law and justice in their jurisdictions. International aids should be given to train judges, re-write criminal codes, increase transparency, fight corruption, professionalize the police, encourage an open media, strengthen political parties, and monitor election. Ignorance of rule of law and weak judiciary is not only misleading the effective legal process to establish justice but is also dangerous to prevail crime, corruption over the borders.

Transitional justice involves states and societies shifting from a situation of conflict to one of peace and, in the process, using judicial and/or non-judicial mechanisms to address past human rights violations. Recent efforts to bring to justice Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić, Charles Taylor, Théoneste Bagasora, Augusto Pinochet, Hissène Habré, Luis Echeverría, and other suspected perpetrators of atrocities in the Balkans, Rwanda, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Burundi, Chad, Chile, East Timor, Cambodia, Iraq, Mexico, demonstrate how relevant and crucial issues of effective justice system are today and, unfortunately, will be for the foreseeable future.

There is a conspicuous gap between the analytical emphasis on international institutions’ decision-making processes to initiate or intervene during a conflict, and violation of human rights. While there is a great and growing literature on humanitarian intervention during a conflict, there is little corresponding study of international policies to address exploitive authorities involved with widespread and systematic violations of human rights. Deciding whether and how to deal with suspected atrocity perpetrators is of critical importance to policymaking and judiciary system.



Re-organizing Good Governance and Justice institutions

In 1997 the World Bank’s World Development Report was sub-titled The State in a Changing World. The Report stated that the clamour for greater government effectiveness has reached crisis proportions in many developing countries where the state has failed to deliver even such fundamental public goods as property rights, roads, and basic health and education..

“THE passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations.”

Yet, the modern ideas of rationality and of free individual choice has become a new dogma of anti dogmatism era and is applied in just about all fields of social life: in the political and the economic, in the moral and the aesthetic, in the collective and the individual spheres, and in yet others. One of the most important of the aspects of its operation is that it tends in a decisive respect to deny the relevance of power to truth and that in an epoch of unprecedentedly advanced techniques of political and commercial mass manipulation!

Organisational sociology suggests that values can be imparted throughout an organisation, and individuals can internalise its values, so that what starts as social conditioning and emulation for acceptance may eventually turn into something which is practically indistinguishable from a developed ethical awareness, as long as the values are clearly and regularly signalled. Nevertheless, the problem remains that individuals will vary in their susceptibility to these processes.

Furthermore, codes of conducts were innovated in systems where boundaries are better maintained, as opposed to systems where influence is exercised by the political class over the judicial system. However, codes of conduct introduce new and potentially ambiguous criteria of performance judgement. In so far as they deal with issues that are not encapsulated in hard law, they introduce considerations into the employment relationship that expose public servants to controls and sanctions by either political masters or public managers that are at the least risky. As such, codes of conduct are expected to be adopted for both elected representatives and appointed officials, with the accountability mechanism concerns about governance that include constitutional or quasi-constitutional relationships especially between officials and elected representatives, impartiality, efficiency, institutional repute, and service delivery.

Looking at democratic values of both Western and Eastern society, Michiel de
Vries offers a dynamic analysis of value change at the local level in Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, Sweden and the Netherlands. By using policymaker surveys to look at attitudes toward leadership, minorities in decision making processes, participation, conflict resolution, parochialism, central-local relations, and income policies, he finds that “period-effects seem to be most important for explaining value change and that values are especially characteristic for periods and less for generations and age-groups.”

Democratic values and processes range of projects in human rights in UK have initiated the inclusion of issues in prison and police training on behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, university courses on human rights, and theatre projects in prisons to raise awareness of human rights. The question is raised whether improved management of public institutions, such as the police and prison service, reduce corruption and abuses? What are the political and institutional problems facing would-be reformers? These are important themes to learn from one another’s experiences as to what works in the areas of: police reform; prison system reform, alternatives to custody and human rights within prison; and the interlinked problems of corruption and organised crime and the role of judicial institutions in tackling these issues.

Good governance contributes to the protection of human rights through promotion of the rule of law. Accountability and transparency in the justice institutions, and encouragement of governmental responsibility for civil liberties. The argument is that human rights need to be grounded in good practices, with professionalism, procedures, and stable, accountable institutions replacing arbitrariness. For this to happen, human rights need to be made relevant to the day-to-day operation of the justice system, including those who work within it.

The Act of Human Rights requires a re-evaluation of the relationship between government and citizen. In placing the language of rights at the centre of our legal and political systems, it also presents an opportunity to further the protection of a wide range of rights, such as social rights.

In this context new arrangements such as the concept of community police are regarded as more police, helpful and less violent and corrupt. However, they are also regarded as ‘less efficient’, a measure that for many is the bottom line. Confidence in the police and lower levels of fear are present where community police are formed and, crucially, the local populace are acquainted with them. Community policing works but only when it is sufficiently visible and understood to inspire greater support from population and police alike.

Where coercive power is paramount, citizen security needs to be separated from other issues, whilst legitimacy needs to be restored on several levels, for political parties, civil society and for institutions. With community policing, arbitrary justice is quick whilst restoring the rule of law is slow. Moving from policing by fear to policing by consent in El Salvador has been hampered by low social capital, high political polarization, and low institutionality. Given the continuing politicisation of the judiciary, and the fact that 80 per cent of homicides are due to social violence in the community, home and street, not to acquisitive crime, the police can only function with the backing of political and civil society. Tolerance and negotiation need to be built around the police force and responsibility for human rights and reducing crime shared by everyone.

It is true that responsibility for protecting human rights must be shared between state and civil society. Whilst reform of the criminal justice institutions is crucial, they need to be supported by changed societal attitudes as well in relation to crime and human rights. To expand democratic governance, protect human rights; and to reduce international threats and improve the right of civilians in badly governed polities, alternative institutional arrangements supported by external actors should be added to the policy toolkit. Such new institutional arrangements may also be critical for establishing decent and effective governance in post conflict situations, whether caused by civil, ethnic, tribal wars or by invasion and occupation by more powerful states.


References:

Programme Impact Report, Oxfam GB’s work with partners and allies around the world, July 2004

Guns or Growth, Assessing the impact of arm sales on sustainable development, Oxfam, Amnesty, Iansa, Control Arms Campaign, June 2004

‘TRANSPARENCY: THE TERM AND THE DOCTRINES’: A British Academy-ESRC Public Services Programme Sponsored Workshop, www.britac.ac.uk

REPORT ON HUMAN RIGHTS CONFERENCE: Promoting human rights through good governance in Brazil, June 2003, St Antony’s College Oxford, Dr Fiona Macaulay and Marcos Rolim.

Andrezj Bolesta, Conflict and displacement, international politics in the developing world, International Politics in the Developing World,

Z.D. Kaufman ‘The Future of Transitional Justice’, stair 1, No 1 (2005): 58-81.

R. Willman, Hobbes on the Law of Heresy, in Preston King, Thomas Hobbes: Critical Assessments, London, Routledge, 1993:103-5

GOVERNANCE FAILURES AND ALTERNATIVES TO SOVEREIGNTY, Stephen D. Krasner, Department of Political Science, Stanford University, 3/22/2004

World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World (Washington D.C.: World Bank, 1997), p. 2.

Codes of conduct for public officials in Europe, common label, divergent purposes, “Governance and Political Ethics”,David Hine, University of Oxford, May 2004

Taking the widely-quoted Transparency Corruption Perceptions Index, the UK stands highest (for probity). The UK ranks 11th in the global rating; These widely-reported rankings have been fairly stable over time.

Conveying clear message

Storytelling is quite simply the use of stories in organisations as a communication tool to share knowledge. Traditionally, organisational communications have had a tendency to be somewhat dry and lacking in inspiration. Storytelling uses a range of techniques to engage, involve and inspire people, using language that is more authentic (everyday language as opposed to textbook) and a narrative form in a context of pragmatic and comprehensive learning.

Storytelling has been part of human cultural activities for years as a means of exchanging information and generating understanding. Similarly, it has always existed in organisations but as a deliberate tool for sharing knowledge it is quite recent while growing very rapidly, to the extent that it is becoming a favoured technique among an increasing number of management consultants.

When used effectively, storytelling offers numerous advantages over more traditional organisational communication techniques:
Stories communicate ideas holistically, conveying a rich yet clear message, and so they are an excellent way of communicating complicated ideas and concepts in an easy-to understand form. Stories therefore allow people to convey tacit knowledge that might otherwise be difficult to articulate; in addition, because stories are told with feeling, they can allow people to communicate more than they realise they know.
Storytelling provides the context in which knowledge arises as well as the knowledge itself, and hence can increase the likelihood of accurate and meaningful knowledge transfer. Stories are an excellent vehicle for learning, as true learning requires practice and interest, which abstract principles and impersonal procedures rarely provide.
Stories are memorable - their messages tend to ‘stick’ and they get passed on, although it might convey its message along with misleading interpretation of chain of events.
Stories can provide a ‘living, breathing’ example of how to do something and why it works rather than telling people what to do, hence people are more open to their lessons.
Stories therefore often lead to direct action - they can help to close the ‘knowing-doing gap’ (the difference between knowing how to do something and actually doing it).
Storytelling can help to make organisational communication more ‘human’ – not only do they use natural day-to-day language, but they also elicit an emotional response as well as thoughts and actions.
Stories can nurture a sense of community and help to build relationships.
People enjoy sharing stories – stories enliven and entertain.

Experience has shown that storytelling can be highly effective as a change agent, even in change-resistant organisations. Telling an appropriate story can stimulate people to think actively about the implications of change and to projecting themselves into visions of the future, enabling them to better understand what it will be like to be doing things in a different way, rather than being given vague, abstract concepts about it.

In contrast to the conventional approach which views communications as the sending of a message from a communicator to a recipient, storytelling is based on a more interactive view of communication. Because the listener imaginatively recreates the story in his or her own mind, the story is not perceived as coming from outside, but rather as something that is part of the listener's own identity. The idea becomes the listener's own.

Tacit knowledge can be a multi-layered and multidimensional thing and as such it is often difficult to articulate (for example, have you ever tried to explain to someone who can’t swim how to swim, without actually showing them?). Stories can provide a way of allowing people to express and share tacit knowledge in rich and meaningful ways, rather then being forced to articulate it in more ‘structured’ ways that can detract from its value.

Similarly, a simple story can communicate a complex multi-dimensioned idea, not simply by transmitting information as a message, but by actively involving the listeners in co-creating that idea. Furthermore, as a story is told and retold, it changes, and so the knowledge embodied in it is constantly being developed and built upon.

The use of storytelling in innovation and knowledge creation can encourage people to move away from linear thinking towards a more multi-dimensional view, to see new connections between things, and also to marry scientific logic with a more creative or intuitive approach. Storytelling to build community – There is something about stories that brings people together and fosters a sense of community. Storytelling is non-hierarchical, it unlocks feelings and emotions as well as thought processes, and hence it helps to build relationships and trust.

People often find it difficult to communicate about technology. Users can have trouble articulating their needs and expectations, while experts can have difficulty ‘talking in plain English’. Wherever there is a gap in language and understanding, storytelling can provide a bridge, by communicating the real essence of what each party is trying to get across.

Storytelling for individual growth – Storytelling is a skill, and one that draws on a number of other key skills, mostly relating to interpersonal communication. The development of these skills is an important component of most knowledge management programmes.

Source:
www.oxfam.org.uk
www.sphere.com