P u b l i s h e d in 27 l a n g u a g e s September...

PEOPLE AND PLACESColombia: a pirouettearound poverty

PLANETVenice: duels overtroubled waters

ETHICSSport medicine: to heal or to win

CONNEXIONSCuddling up to cyborg babies

The other face of globalization

September 2000

P u b l i s h e din 27

l a n g u a g e s


PEOPLE AND PLACES

3 A pirouette around poverty Photos by Richard Emblin, text by Oscar Collazos

PLANET

9 Ve n i c e : duels over troubled waters Piero Piazzano

WORLD OF LEARNING

13 C h i n a ’s migrant children fall through the cra c k s James Irwin

ETHICS

37 Sport medicine: to heal or to win Philippe Liotard

SIGNS OF THE TIMES

40 Ko s o v o :burned books and blasted shrines Interview with András Riedlmayer

41 Crimes against culture Colin Kaiser

CONNEXIONS

43 Cuddling up to cyborg babies Sherry Tu r k l e

INTERVIEW

46 Tim Berners - L e e : the We b ’s bra i n c h i l d

1 5 Focus The other face of globalizationThey come from the hills of the Philippines, the offices of SiliconValley, the Andean cordillera and the fishing villages of India. Butdespite their different agendas, these groups have found commonground and given birth to a worldwide social movement that hasstayed in the limelight since Seattle. Who are these new citizensmaking their voices heard on both the local and global stage? Dothey have a viable alternative to unfettered,free-marketglobalization? What stands behind their call for “democraticworld governance”?

Detailed table of contents on page 15.

C o n t e n t sSeptember 2000 53rd year

Published monthly in 27 languages and in Braille by the United Nations Educational,Scientific and Cultural Organization.31,rue François Bonvin,75732 Paris Cedex 15 FranceFax:(33) (0) 1.45.68.57.45 - (33) (0) 1.45.68.57.47e-mail:[email protected]:http://www.unesco.org/courier

Director: René LefortSecretary, Director’s Office/Braille editions:Annie Brachet (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.47.15)

Editorial staff (Paris)Editor in Chief: James BurnetEnglish edition: Cynthia GuttmanSpanish edition: Octavi MartiFrench edition: Sophie Boukhari

Ethirajan AnbarasanIvan BriscoeLucía Iglesias KuntzAsbel LópezAmy Otchet

TranslationMiguel Labarca

Art and production unit: Georges Servat,Photoengraving: Annick CouefféIllustrations: Ariane Bailey (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.46.90)Documentation: José Banaag (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.46.85)Liaison with non-Headquarters editions and press:Solange Belin (Tel:33 (0) 1.45.68.46.87)

Editorial CommitteeRené Lefort (modera t o r ) , Jérome Bindé, Milagros del Corra l ,A l c i n oDa Costa, Babacar Fa l l , Sue W i l l i a m s

Non-headquarters editions Russian:Irina Utkina (Moscow)German:Urs Aregger (Berne)Arabic: Fawzi Abdel Zaher (Cairo)I t a l i a n :G i o vanni Puglisi, Gianluca Formichi (Florence)Hindi:Shri Samay Singh (Delhi)Tamil:M.Mohammed Mustafa (Madras)Persian: Jalil Shahi (Teheran)Portuguese:Alzira Alves de Abreu (Rio de Janeiro)U r d u : Mirza Muhammad Mushir (Islamabad)Catalan:Jordi Folch (Barcelona)Malay:Sidin Ahmad Ishak (Kuala Lumpur)Swahili:Leonard J. Shuma (Dar-es-Salaam)S l o v e n e :A l e k s a n d ra Kornhauser (Ljubljana)Chinese: Feng Mingxia (Beijing)Bulgarian:Luba Ranjeva (Sofia)Greek:Sophie Costopoulos (Athens)Sinhala:Lal Perera (Colombo)Basque:Juxto Egaña (Donostia)Thai:Suchitra Chitranukroh(Bangkok)Vietnamese:Ho Tien Nghi (Hanoi)Bengali:Kafil uddin Ahmad (Dhaka)Ukrainian: Volodymyr Vasiliuk (Kiev)G a l i c i a n : Xabier Senín Fernández (Santiago de Compostela)Serbian:Boris Ilyenko (Belgrade)

Circulation and promotionFax:(33) (0) 1 45.68.57.45

Subscriptions and customer serviceMichel Ravassard (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.45.91)Sales and subscription agentsMohamed Salah El Din (Tel:(33) (0) 1 45 68 49 19)Stock management and shippingPham Van Dung (Tel:(33) (0) 1.45.68.45.94)

Individual articles and photographs not copyrighted may bereprinted providing the credit line reads “Reprinted from theUN E S C O C o u r i e r ” , plus date of issue, and three voucher copiesare sent to the editor. Signed articles reprinted must beara u t h o r ’s name. Non-copyright photos will be supplied onr e q u e s t . Unsolicited manuscripts cannot be returned unlessaccompanied by an international reply coupon coveringp o s t a g e. The UN E S C O Courier is produced in microform( m i c r o film and/or microfiche) by: (1) UN E S C O, 7 Place deFo n t e n o y, 75700 Pa r i s ; (2) University Microfilms (Xerox ) ,A n nA r b o r, Michigan 48100 U. S. A . ; (3) N. C. R . Microcard Edition,Indian Head Inc., 111 West 40th Street, New Yo r k , U. S. A . ;( 4 )Bell and Howell Co. , Old Mansfield Road,Wo o s t e r, O h i o4 4 6 9 1 , U. S. A .

IMPRIMÉ EN FRANCEDÉPOT LÉGAL : C1 - SEPTEMBER2000COMMISSION PARITAIRE N° 71844 - Diffusé par les N.M.P.P.The UN E S C O Courier (USPS 016686) is published monthly in Paris byUN E S C O. Printed in Fra n c e. Periodicals postage paid at ChamplainNY and additional mailing offices.Photocomposition and photoengraving:The UNESCO Courier.Printing:Maulde & RenouISSN 0041-5278 No. 9-2000-OPI 00-592 A

Signed articles express the opinions of the authors and donot necessarily represent the opinions of U NESCO or thoseof the editors of the UNESCO Courier. Photo captions andheadlines are written by the UNESCO Courier staff. Th eboundaries on maps do not imply official endorsement oracceptance by UN E S C O or the United Nations of the countriesand territories concerned.

C o v e r : © Michel Granger, acrylic painting

Corrections for July/August issue:• Cover photo by Pierre Emanuel Rastoin/l’Usine, Paris, (also appears on page 56).• Photo on page 39 by Lalo Borja.

Corrections• The cover photo of the July/August issue was taken by Pierre Emanuel Rastoin/l’Usine, Paris. It also appears on

page 56.• The photo on page 39 is by Lalo Borja.

http://www.unesco.org/courier

P E O P L E A N D P L A C E S

September 2000 - The UNESCO Courier 3

A PIROUETT EA ROUND POVERTY◗ Photos by Richard Emblin, text by Oscar Collazos

Two enthusiastic and seasoned choreographers open new horizons for underprivileged childrenin Cartagena by introducing them to modern dance

◗ Richard Emblin is a Canadian photographer living in Colombia.

Oscar Collazos is a Colombian writer and columnistwho has written some 20 books. His most recent workspublished in Spanish include Goodbye to the Virgin(1994) and Dying with Dad (1997). An earlier book,Young, Poor Lovers was published in English (AimsInternational Books, 1983).

■A l varo Restrepo, a Colombian dancerand choreogr a p h e r , could have pur-sued his career anywhere in the

world—in New Yo r k , where he was trained,or in Europe, where he first made his mark.But in 1993, he decided to sacri fice all this to

introduce modern dance to Colombia—where the discipline was barely know n — a n dto teach it to disadvantaged children bet-ween 10 and 15 ye a rs old. He teamed upwith Marie-France Delieuvin, p r o gr a m m edirector at the National Centre for ModernDance in A n g e rs , F r a n c e , and their jointe n d e avour has produced astonishing results.

In 1997, four ye a rs after sowing theseeds of the new art form in Bogotá andC a l i , they launched Project El Puente(“The Bridge”),which reached Cartagenaa few months lat e r.The city where Restrepowas born 42 years ago is a historic tourist

The first tentative steps to taking the stage as professionals.

centre featured on UNESCO’s World Heri-tage List, but it cannot hide a darker side:t wo-thirds of its 700,000 inhabitants livebelow the poverty line.

Restrepo and Delieuvin’s bridge is two -way. It has led a pair of dedicated perfor-mers to the outskirts of one of Cartagena’smost wretched slums, while also linking theproject to professionals in Europe andL atin A m e rica through festivals andexchanges.

In 1997 and 1998, Restrepo began ap r o gramme of “ awareness training” t h atreached 480 children at Inem College in


4 The UNESCO Courier - September 2000

Lobady, a young student from Cartagena, rehearsing in front of one of the frescoes depicting a scene from Christ’s passion in the San Francisco convent.

The day begins with classical ballet exercises.



Santiago rehearsing his role in “Los Virtuosos,” a recent performance staged by the Academy.

Disadvantaged teenagers build their daily routine around the dance school.

Cartagena. He eventually ended up with asmaller group of 90 young dancers stri v i n gto hone their skills in a discipline that tou-ched the ve ry roots of their cultural andp e rsonal identity. After a few months,through a kind of natural selection that leftonly those determined to take part in ac r e at i ve project, 22 of the children quali-fied for membership in the Experi m e n t a lTroupe of the Academy of the Body.Theywere crossing the bri d g e , t r avelling fromone side of the river to the other.

From outcaststo performers

D ri ven on by their pove rty stickenb a c k gr o u n d s , the chosen boys and gi r l s —n ow more mat u r e ,with deeper voices andchanged bodies—are often tempted toshirk off school to rehearse their newdance projects eve ry d ay in the beautifulcolonial-era cloisters of the 16th-centurySan Francisco conve n t , leant especially tothe troupe by a religious foundat i o n . I t sw i d e , empty court yard is flanked by theCentennial Park and the city’s modernc o nvention centre, while the old neigh-bourhood of Getsemaní lies just behind.

Without the free classes at the A c a d e my,these children—most of whom come from

the city’s Nelson Mandela neighbourhood,home to families forcibly displaced byC o l o m b i a ’s civil wa r — would continueliving like outcasts, scraping through life.But in the three short years the Academyhas been around,they have become teena-g e rs and gr own from average pupils in out-lying schools to performers of an art form,

m o d e rn dance, which once seemed remoteand inaccessible. The children have alsocome to understand that they could leadc r e at i ve live s , e ver since Restrepo, w i t hunshakeable faith and endurance, arrivedin their midst and began mounting showswith them that have started to attract publicacclaim.



Besides training its members , the ElPuente troupe has also attained highprofessional standards, while some for-mer members have become dance tea-c h e rs in their own ri g h t . The nat u r a l ,almost inborn Caribbean sense of rhy t h mhas produced dancers imbued with a pos-sibly more abstract and certainly moresymbolic way of expression, yet one whichu l t i m ately springs from the gr e at tradi-tions of modern dance.

Toursand troubles

With meagres resources and a make-shift organization patched up by theu n fla g ging enthusiasm of teachers and stu-dents alike, the A c a d e my of the Body hasstaged two arts festivals in Cart a g e n a , i n1998 and 1999, and presented three of itsown show s.The troupe has also at t e n d e df e s t i vals in Colombia and Europe.

After their performances abroad, i n-cluding one that took them to Pa ris inA p ril 2000 and gave them a chance tom a rvel at wealth they could not dream of,the children returned to the pove rty oftheir tiny homes to grapple once morewith life in the slums. But this time theycame back with the confidence ofh av i n g s t a rted to do something special int h e i r l i ve s.

It hasn’t all been a bed of roses. D e s p i t ethe support of public bodies and pri vat efirm s , money problems still loom over theA c a d e my. But the iron will of Restrepoand Delieuvin is rooted in a dream, o n et h at often ove rrides the reality that sha-ped it. The dream lives on because tea-c h e rs and students in Cartagena seem tou n d e rstand that the rewards of pers i s t e n c eare mightier than the pull of despair. ■

Breathing techniques form part of the dancers’ daily training.

The Academy’s directors, Marie-France Delieuvin and Alvaro Restrepo.

Cartagena

Caribbean Sea

PacificOcean

COLOMBIA

VENEZUELA

ECUADOR

PERU

BRAZIL

Bogotá


September 2000 -The UNESCO Courier 7

A young dancer carefully observes her partners.

Between classes, a moment of laughter.



Restrepo showing his students a dance step.

Rehearsing in the recently restored colonial cloister of the San Francisco convent.

P L A N E T


V ENICE: DUEL SO V ER TROUBL ED WAT ERS◗ Piero Piazzano

How can the ecological balance of Venice be reconciled with the demands of industry? Is the highlycontroversial construction of mobile floodgates the solution? The decision will be made by 20 01

◗ Italian journalist, editor in chief of the magazineAirone

■The traveller to Venice should arri veat the end of a summer’s aftern o o nto see the sun turn into a huge red

disk and swell until it casts the lagoon’sf u rthest islands in a fie ry glow before sin-king into the sea.T h e n , when the last tou-rist has left Saint Mark’s Square,Ve n i c eonce again becomes magi c a l . In streets

t h at are empty at last, the inhabitants ofthe wo r l d ’s most beautiful city open theird o o rs , letting the few lingering visitorsc atch a glimpse of a time-wo rn , h i s t o ry -laden monumental staircase, or a hidden,tree-shaded garden where Giacomo Casa-n ova may have awaited one of his mis-tresses two and a half centuries ago. It isthe moment when the souvenir shop signsgo dark and the Ve n e t i a n s ’w i n d ows lightu p.

Each day, they are fewer and older. I n1 9 5 1 , about 175,000 people lived on oneof the 118 islands connected by 160 canalswhich form the historic centre of Ve n i c e .In 1998, a mere 68,000 remained, a n dt h at figure will likely drop to 40,000 by2 0 0 5 . If students are not counted—theyare lodged by landlords who do notdeclare them to avoid paying taxe s —residents under the age of 19 make up at i ny percentage of the populat i o n . T h e

Land and water: the historic centre of Venice is formed by 118 islands connected by 160 canals.

P L A N E T


average age, already 50 in 1998, c o n t i-n u e sto ri s e .

The Venetians are leav i n g, and theyare taking their institutions with them:the Assicurazioni Generali insurance com-p a ny, the daily newspaper Il Gazze t t i n o, t h elocal Rai station (the State radio and tele-vision network) and the banks. To u ri s t s ,who arri ve en masse, fill the vo i d : 10 mil-lion debarked in 1994 and 15 million areexpected in 2005. The city of theat r e s ,c h u r c h e s , c o nve n t s , m o n a s t e ri e s , p a l a c e sand bordellos is turning into a huge eat i n gp l a c e . From 1976 to 1991, the number ofp i z z e ri a s , restaurants and hotels increasedby 144 per cent.

Confronting the seawith picks and shovels

Will Venice gr ow old and die like itsinhabitants? T h at is any b o d y ’s guess: t h et ruth is hard to come by in this labyri n-thine city.Venice is the city of “ p e r h a p s ,”as unstable as the lagoon’s ecologi c a lb a l a n c e . It is impossible to imagine thecity without its lagoon, an uncert a i ns p a c e , neither land nor sea, whose ve ryname expresses absence: l a c u n a is Lat i nfor “ l a c k .” This precarious and prov i-sional place emerged little by little as theri ve rs , t o rrents and streams that flowacross the plains on their way to theA d ri atic deposited millions of cubicmetres of silt.

The lagoon is not part of the sea; it iss e p a r ated from the A d ri atic by 50 kilo-metres of sandbars that end with themouths of the Lido, Malamocco andC h i o g gia port s. E ve ry six hours , the tidesrun through the bars , flowing in as saltwater and receding as bri ny wat e r. Like agigantic lung made up of thousands ofbronchial tubes, the lagoon breat h e s. It isnot only formed by islands high enough tostand up to the sea’s equinox tides.B a r e n e,the sandbars that emerge at low tide, a r ecomplex ecosystems, home to plants andanimals which have adapted to thise nvironment oscillating between air andwat e r.Ve l m e are the mud-flats visible at lowtide while g h e b i are channels that aregreen with mire and seaweed throughwhich the water leaves the lagoon at lowt i d e .

The lagoon was bound to disappearu n t i l , one day, a group of bold mendecided to make something solid out of anunstable mass.T h e n , from one generat i o nthe next, the Venetians battled the ele-ments like funambulists walking a tight-r o p e . Prepared with shovels and picks toconfront the sea’s efforts to upset the

d e l i c ate equilibri u m , they had only onething in mind: to preserve the existenceand richness of Ve n i c e , the city of stoneand marble that they built on spongym a rs h l a n d , as if it were on t e rra firm a.Venice was a utopia: the wo r l d ’s mostf r a gile city, but powerful enough to rule afa r - flung empire.

Those stubborn people started byd rying out the land, d i g ging canals andd e v i ating ri ve rs. For example, as part of ahuge project begun in 1501 and com-pleted two centuries lat e r , they changed

the course of the lagoon’s three mainwat e r way s : the Sile, the Piere and theB r e n t a . T h e n , and with increasingf r e q u e n cy, they launched major publicand pri vate building projects to furt h e rt h e civil and military development oft h e “most serene republic.” These pro-j e c t s enabled merchant vessels andwa rships boasting the biggest drafts oftheir time to enter the harbour or theA rs e n a l .

“Although with each project the tech-nology became more aggr e s s i ve than thesimple shovels and picks of the early day s ,these interventions have always gi ven thelagoon enough time to develop a newb a l a n c e ,” s ays Stefano Boat o, professor ofcity planning at the Unive rsity of Ve n i c e .The same was true during the operat i o n sc a rried out in the second half of the 19th

c e n t u ry, when Venice was defin i t i vely inte-gr ated into the Kingdom of Italy (1866)after changing hands several times bet-ween France and A u s t ri a .

It was not until much lat e r , b e t we e n1952 and 1969, t h at the city was dealt itsh a rshest blow. A straight, 15-metre deepcanal was dug so that oil tankers couldb e rth at the industrial port of Marghera.At the same time, highly polluting che-mical and petrochemical plants were bu i l tacross the lagoon, pumping more andmore water out of the aquifers and pou-ring more and more poison into the wat e r.“At that time, the delicate balance thathad always existed, and that Ve n e t i a n shad always managed to maintain ove r 1 9c e n t u ries of interacting with nat u r e , wa sb r o k e n . The situation is becoming alar-m i n g,” s ays Boat o.

Aquatic highways fortankers and tourists

The lagoon, a unique ecosystemf o rmed of fresh wat e r , b rine and saltwat e r , is inexorably turning into an arm ofthe sea in its central portion and a swa m paround the edges. D u ring the time of ther e p u b l i c, it was forbidden to dig canalsmore than four metres deep. To d ay, t h e r eare ve ritable aquatic highways ove r2 0 metres deep. Oil tankers , f r e i g h t e rsand powerful speedboats that can carryhundreds of tourists create waves thatd e s t r oy the sandbars and mud-flat s , a n dcancel out the natural movements thatonce slowed down the advancement ofthe tides.

All these disruptions increase theerosion that is ruining the depths of thelagoon and eating away at the founda-

Life goes on: when the waters rise, the temporary footbridges are brought out.

Venice was a utopia:t h e world’s most fragile city ,but powerful enough to rulea f a r - flung empire.

P L A N E T


tions of bu i l d i n g s. The Venezia NuovaC o n s o rt i u m , a group of public and pri vat ecompanies which the Italian Public Wo r k sM i n i s t ry and Ve n i c e ’s Water Depart m e n th ave put in charge of carrying out pre-s e rvation work in the lagoon, s ays that1 . 2 million cubic metres of soil are wa s h e daway each ye a r , while the province ofVenice puts the figure at four million.The mussel fis h e rmen who “ wo r k ” t h efloor of the lagoon using a fishing methodt h at is outlawed but tolerated also contri-bute to the erosion.

To make mat t e rs wo rs e , fishing zoness u rrounded by dikes limit the tides’ a r e aof expansion.Twenty ye a rs (1950-1970)of pumping subterranean water lowe r e dthe city’s ground level by 10 centimetres.L a s t l y, the A d ri atic is ri s i n g, wo rsening thefloods to which the city and the surr o u n-ding area fall victim.

As a result, in 1990 Venice was 23centimetres lower than in 1908. F u rt h e r-m o r e , b e t ween 1965 and 1995, the Ve n e-tians “ f o r g o t ” to clean the city’s canals, apractice that their ancestors consideredindispensable for reasons both physical (toi m p r ove the circulation of tidewater) andhy gienic (to wash out accumulated wa s t e ) .

The neglect has proven costly. On theone hand,Venice is beleaguered by over 50d ays a year of acqua alta (“high wat e r ” ) ,which floods many of the streets ands q u a r e s. On the other, with increasingf r e q u e n cy the tides are so low that ve s s e l scan no longer sail on the canals.

Hard work formeagre results

On November 4, 1 9 6 6 , a gi g a n t i cacqua alta entirely submerged Venice andthe lagoon’s islands for 24 hours , c a u-sing tremendous damage to the city’s eco-n o my and art wo r k s , and sending a waveof panic around the wo r l d . If the wat e rhad risen a little higher, the wo r l d ’s mostbeautiful city might have been lost. A n dthe flooding could reoccur at any time!The shock triggered countless initiat i ve s :Italian and intern ational commissionswere set up, studies conducted, l aw spassed and projects proposed. M a j o ri n t e rn ational bodies went on the alert ,UN E S C O chief among them. The organi-z ation moved its office for science andtechnology in Europe to Venice andu n d e rtook the grandiose “Project Ve n i c e ,”an initiat i ve that has gi ven rise to a pro-fusion of studies and meetings to poreover all the problems of the city and itsl a g o o n : geology and morp h o l o g y, t h ewat e r ’s dynamics, chemical and biolo-gical processes, c o n t a m i n at i o n , d e m o-

gr a p h i c s , traffic and cleaning up thec a n a l s.

No other city in the world has beenstudied in such detail. None has been sopainstakingly dissected to determine thereasons for its rise and fa l l .A n d , it mustbe added, n e ver has so much hard wo r kproduced such meagre results.

All things considered, and at the ri s k

of ove rs i m p l i f y i n g, this complicated bu s i-ness can be summed up in two sentences.They are written in bu r e a u c r atic jargon inl aw 798, the most important piece ofl e gi s l ation concerning Venice passed sincethe 1966 flo o d . The first sentence say st h at the work to save Venice must “ r e s t o r ethe hy d r o g e o l o gical equilibrium of thel a g o o n ,s l ow down and reve rse the processof degr a d ation and eliminate its causes.”

In other wo r d s , e ve rything must bedone to clean up the canals and to restoretheir depth to acceptable levels (otherl aws specify 12 metres), to re-open thefishing lagoons, and to recreate the sand-b a rs and mud-flat s. But a harm l e s s - s o u n-ding sentence in the same law specifie st h at all these operations must be carri e dout while “ p r e s e rving the area’s produc-t i ve and economic interests.”

In other wo r d s , the bottoms of thecanals must be raised but oil tankers mustnot be prevented from travelling throught h e m , the size of the lagoon’s harboursmust be reduced but the current level oft r a f fic must be maintained, the tidal swe l l smust be contained but vessels must bea l l owed to continue carrying swa rms oft o u rists to the islands of Torcello andM u r a n o. The law ’s authors seem to bethe direct heirs to the play w right CarloGoldoni and his Harlequin who serve dt wo masters.

The system of mobile dikes and flo o d-g ates planned as a solution has been abone of contention for nearly 20 ye a rs ,setting off many debates and discussionsb e t ween engi n e e rs and politicians. It iscalled MO S E, the Italian name for Mosesand an acronym that stands for M o d u l oS p e rimentale Elettromeccanico, a prototypeflo o d g ate that was tested in the Tr e p o rt icanal between 1988 and 1992. After ye a rsof studies and numerous va ri at i o n s ,P r o-ject Moses was adopted by the Ve n e z i aN u ova Consort i u m .The plan is to equipthe entrances of the Lido, C h i o g gia andMalamocco ports with a system of mobileflo o d g at e s : chests that are 20 metres wide,20 to 30 metres high and four to fivemetres deep.

In normal conditions and as long asthe tide’s amplitude does not exceed onem e t r e , the wat e r - filled chests will lie on thefloor of the canal.When the tide is dubbed“ e x c e p t i o n a l ” (an average of seven a ye a rand 20 in 1996), a hydraulic system willfill the chests with air to raise them. S i n c ethe chests are connected to the canal’sfloor with stakes dri ven into the mud,

The city’s delicate equilibrium was upset by the digging of a canal deep enough to allow oil tankers to berthat the industrial port of Marghera.

No other city in the worldh a s been studied in suchd e tail. None has been sop a i n s takingly dissectedt o determine the reasonsf o r its rise and fall.

P L A N E T


they work by rising like a gate that closes,becoming dikes that cut the lagoon offfrom the sea. Under the plan, 18 flo o d-g ates will be set up at the entrance tot h e p o rt of Chioggi a , 20 at Malamoccoand two sets of 20 and 21 separated bya n i n t e rm e d i ate harbour basin at theentrance to the Lido.

Furor over floodgatesAccording to estimat e s , this enorm o u s

task will require eight ye a rs , 6,000 wo r k e rsand 3,700 billion lire (approx i m at e l y$ 1 . 8 b i l l i o n ) .The city of Venice puts thep r o j e c t ’s total cost at 5,334 billion lire(in 1992 pri c e s ) , or some $2.6 billion—not including maintenance.

“These mobile dikes must be bu i l t ,”a f firms Philippe Bourdeau, a professorat Bru s s e l s ’ Free Unive rsity and chairm a nof the intern ational committee of expert snamed by the Italian gove rnment to eva-l u ate the project. “The mobile flood-g at e s ,” he say s ,“ a r e , along with raising theground level and the other planned mea-s u r e s , the best way to save Venice for thenext 100 ye a rs.”

“These mobile dikes must be abso-

lutely avo i d e d ,” replies Stefano Boat o,along with the Green Pa rt y, the ItaliaNostra environmental gr o u p, G r e e n-p e a c e , the World Wildlife Fund forN ature (WWF) and other env i r o n m e n t a lo r g a n i z at i o n s , which say that the pro-ject would have a disastrous effect onthe fragile ecosystem. But the munici-pality of Ve n i c e , together with the Env i-ronment and Cultural Heritage minis-t ri e s , are leading the camp of thosei nvoking the precautionary pri n c i p l e .They argue that the lagoon’s geomor-p h o l o gi c a l , hydraulic and biologi c a lbalance must be restored—for example,by cleaning up the canals, which beganin 1998 (see box ) , and raising the gr o u n dl e vel—before any decisions about themobile dikes are made.

In addition to this controve rs y, o t h e rquestions have ari s e n . For example, t h ec i t y ’s autonomy is at stake. The Depart-ment of Wat e r , which depends on thePublic Works Ministry in Rome, and thecompanies that make up the Consort i u m ,which include major public and pri vat ec o rp o r ations (such as Fiat ) ,h ave few or noties with Ve n i c e , whose population hasbeen accustomed to solving its problemsalone for 2,000 ye a rs.

Fear ofoil spills

And then there is the economic aspect:$2.6 billion, a sum that rises with eachpassing day, is a tremendous amount ofm o n e y. If all of it is allocated to a singlep r o j e c t , w h at will be left for other initia-t i ves and for the small Venetian companiest h at could carry them out? When all iss a i d and done, the big corp o r ations inM i l a n , Tu rin and Rome would reap theb e n e fits and Venice would have to settlefor the cru m b s.

The debate has been raging for a longt i m e . In November 1998, the project’se nvironmental impact commission,appointed by the Environment Ministryand chaired by Maria Rosa V i t t a d i n i , a narchitecture professor at the Unive rsity ofVe n i c e , issued a negat i ve assessment andrequested the Consortium to review theentire project. One month lat e r , a minis-t e rial commission published a similarr e v i e w, which was annulled in June 2000by the regional administrat i ve tri bunal ofthe Ve n e t o.The latest news is that ,d u ri n ga meeting of experts held in Rome in July2 0 0 0 , P rime Minister Giuliano A m at osaid the final decision would lie with hisoffice and that it would be made at acabinet meeting by the end of the ye a r.

But what if Ve n i c e ’s real problems is

not the exceptional tide, such as the onet h at struck the city in 1966? And what ifthe next disaster comes not from thelagoon but from the sea? Each ye a r ,2 5 million tons of freight is shipped on thel a g o o n , half of which is oil and petro-leum products. A single oil tanker accidentwould be enough to cause incalculabledamage to the ecosystem, c over the canalswith a thick coat of petroleum and leavegr e a s y, viscous streaks on the founda-tions of palaces and churches foreve r. O nN ovember 29, 1 9 9 5 , five tons of light fuelspilled into the lagoon, f o rming a hugeslick that drifted for four day s.Was that awa rn i n g ?

In the city of masks, the fie ry glow ofthe beautiful red sunsets over the city’spalaces and churches, which enchant tou-rists the year round, m ay not be solelythe gift of nat u r e .T h at extra shade of redm ay well come from air pollution ari s i n gfrom Marghera’s petrochemical fa c i l i t i e s.

■

+ …Pierre Lasserre and Angelo Mazollo (eds.),The Venice Lagoon Ecosystem, UNESCO

INSULA ANDT HE CA N A LCL E A N - UP

Any city can be compared with a big machinethat needs to be overhauled and repaired on

a regular basis.This analogy is especially apt for Venice, with

its fif ty-something kilometres of canals that accu-mulate nearly half a million cubic metres of wasteand mud each year, its 454 bridges and its100 kilometres of banks lined by the cellars ofpalaces, churches, monasteries and convents,pictures of which are reproduced in art booksaround the world.

Although the city’s regular maintenancewould seem an obvious necessity, it took years ofdiscussions to come about. The result is calledInsula, a mixed company (52 per cent of theshares are owned by the municipality and48percent by four private companies) set up inJuly 19 97 to manage the urban machine of Ve n i c e .In slightly less than three years, Insula, basing itswork on a huge mass of studies conducted byUNES CO in Venice, has dredged over 22 kilometresof canals, extracted 123,000 cubic metres of mudand restored 79 bridges. Soon it will start layingfibre optic cables, because to survive, Ve n i c emust also be on the cutting edge of science andresearch. ■

At exceptionally high tide, a hydraulic system fillsthe chests with air. They lift and turn into gatesthat cut the lagoon off from the sea.

W O R L D O F L E A R N I N G


■E ve ry semester, Li Shumei and Y iB e nyao turn away hundreds of appli-cants seeking to study at their school,

l o c ated in a former paint fa c t o ry in we s t e rnB e i j i n g . I t ’s not because they’re choosey:they know all too well that these childrenmay not have another chance of steppinginto a classroom. But there is simply notenough space to satisfy demand.

This unlicensed school caters to over1,300 children from 28 Chinese prov i n c e s.“ M a ny of the kids have to ride four differentbuses to get here in the mornings, it takesthem up to two hours,” says Li.“And they

work hard knowing how difficult it is fortheir parents to afford it.”W h at makes thesechildren different from other city-dwellersis simply that they belong to China’s “ flo a-ting population,” a label used to describepeople who are not permanently regi s t e r e din their current place of residence. Most arethe children of peasants who have left thepoverty-stricken countryside in search ofwork in big cities.

E m p l oyed in menial jobs with no secu-rity or healthcare, m i grants are responsiblefor the lion’s share of the tough physicallabour that has transformed urban skylinesin the past decade or so.While the govern-ment puts the “ f l o ating populat i o n ” at

100 million,Western analysts estimate thefigure closer to 150 million, making thephenomenon one of the largest ru r a l - t o -urban migrations in history.

This migr ation began in 1979, w h e nthe commune system was dismantled.A gri-cultural productivity boomed, f e wer handswere needed to work the land, so familiesheaded to cities such as Beijing and Shan-ghai. In the mid-1980s, as rural incomessteadily fell, the trickle became a flo o d ,prompting municipal authorities to tightenm i gr ation ru l e s. M i grants would now berequired to get temporary residence perm i t sand letters of employment before coming tothe city. In practice, tens of millions never

CHIN A’S MIGRANT CHIL DRENFALL THROUGH THE CRACK S◗ James Irwin

Despite China’s educational achievement, migrant children in the country’s big cities arestruggling to find a place in school. For many, the unlicensed route is at best, the only option

◗ Shanghai-based Canadian journalist

All the children at this primary school in a Beijing suburb come from China’s provinces.

W O R L D O F L E A R N I N G


obtain such permits. As such, they are notr e gistered in the place where they are living,c o n t r a ry to permanent migrants whosem ove is officially sanctioned.Their tempo-r a ry status exposes them to widespread dis-crimination.When it comes to education,their only option, until recently, has been toenroll their children in an unlicensed school.

Li Shumei left Henan Province in 1993to work in a clothing market in Beijing.Atthe time, she say s , there were no schools formigrant children in the capital. Nor werethey allowed to enroll in city schools. Af o rmer teacher, she started educating a fewchildren in her home before starting up aschool with her husband.“ For our pupils inthe lower grades, the level of Chinese andm at h e m atics is about the same as in regulars c h o o l s ,” said Li. Te a c h e rs have to makedo with a lack of books and other mat e ri a l s ,but Li explains that one of the gr e at e s tchallenges is to help pupils overcome asense of inferi o rity wrought by their second-class stat u s. And because the school is unli-c e n s e d , they face difficulties re-enteri n gthe educational mainstream to continue inhigher gr a d e s , though many, once theyreach the age of 12, return to their homep r ovinces to continue their schooling whileliving with relatives.

Some of school’s teachers are recentgr a d u ates from the students’ home pro-vinces, others are retired instructors fromB e i j i n g .Their wages are less than half thosepaid in the mainstream, with no benefit s.A l lexpenses incurred in running the school,including salaries, are derived from paltrytuition fees—about $100 a ye a r. Li was for-t u n ate enough to receive a generous dona-tion from a retired couple in Los Angeleswho read about the school in an overseasChinese newspaper. The funds were puttowards relocating the school when policeordered its removal from an earlier site.

According to the Ford Fo u n d at i o n ,t h e r eare between 200 and 300 unlicensed schools

o p e r ating in the capital which struggle top r ovide schooling for an estimat e d1 0 0 , 0 0 0 m i grant children, m a ny of whomr e c e i ve no education at all. D o r o t hy Solinger,a political science professor at the Unive rs i t yof California at Irvine and author of C o n t e s-

c i t i e s ,” said Solinger. “The municipalg ove rnments in some cities are now morep e rm i s s i ve about letting parents set upschools of their ow n . More migrants canafford to pay the extra fee required for theirchildren to attend city schools, not to men-tion that some migrant parents can nowafford to purchase the card which enablestheir children to attend city schools on cityt e rm s.”

O ver the ye a rs howe ve r , people from theprovinces have become accustomed to fen-ding for themselves to provide education.“ We actually prefer it when the gove rn m e n tleaves us alone,” says Chen Yi Fu. “Whenthey visit the school, they usually either tryto close us down or fine us for va ri o u sthings.”

But with the likelihood that China willsoon join the World Trade Organization andcompete in world agricultural markets, alarge portion of the country’s 800 millionfarmers might find it even more difficult tos u rv i ve in the country s i d e . If current trendscontinue, there is little doubt that migrante d u c at i o n , and more broadly, m i grant ri g h t s ,will become an increasingly pressing issue onthe government’s books. ■

ting Citizenship in Urban China, e s t i m at e dt h at only 40 per cent of migrant childrenb e t ween five and twe l ve attended school inB e i j i n g, compared with 100 per cent of nat i vec h i l d r e n .This situation is mirrored in otherbooming cities like Shenzhen and Shanghai.Chen Yi Fu, p rincipal of the Hu Wan Ele-m e n t a ry school in nort h - e a s t e rn Shanghai,e s t i m ates that “in some migrant communities,only 20 to 30 per cent of children go tos c h o o l .” O f ficial statistics differ.According toa 1996 study conducted by the Depart m e n tof Basic Educat i o n , the average enrollmentr atio of migrant children stood at 96.2 perc e n t .The study at t ri buted non attendance toove r c r ow d i n g, high fees and an unfavo u r a b l ehome env i r o n m e n t .

Media exposure and pressure froms e veral delegates from the National Pe o p l e ’s

C o n gress led to a change in the law in May1 9 9 8 .The central gove rnment decreed thatunlicensed schools could exist and that it isu n l awful for large municipalities to denyentrance to migrant children between sixand 14 who had lived for more than sixmonths in the area. City gove rnments oftenresponded by jacking tuition fees to impos-sibly high levels for migrants—up to $440a n n u a l l y, when the average yearly incomeof a migrant worker in Beijing is an esti-m ated $600. And to dat e , only a handful ofc i t i e s , such as Wuhan and Guiya n g, h avegranted legal status to migrant schoolsaccording to the Pe o p l e ’s Economic Jo u rn a l.

For Chen Yi Fu,a native of Anhui Pro-vince, “the Shanghai government doesn’tfeel they are responsible for educating ourchildren, even though the latter belong tofamilies from rural areas who do all thehard jobs.” Y i F u ’s school cat e rs to chil-dren from 13 provinces, who pay close to$100 per year for tuition. “They are thelucky ones,” he said, bemoaning the $7,000rent he has to pay each year to the army,which owns the land.

Besides the 1998 law howe ve r , t h e r eare signs that the situation is slowly chan-gi n g . Recognizing that China’s economicmiracle has clearly not benefitted all regi o n s ,the central gove rnment has embarked on am a s s i ve scheme to invest in the country ’sh i n t e r l a n d . M o r e ove r , “there are indica-tions that in some respects, things are get-ting slightly better for rural migrants in big

“ We actually prefer it whenthe government leaves usalone. When they visit theschool, they usually either tryto close us down or fine us forvarious things.”

One of the greatest challengesis to help pupils overcomea sense of inferiority wroughtby their second-class sta t u s .

EDUCAT IONAL LEAPS

When the People’s Republic of China wasproclaimed in 1949, a mere 20 per cent of

the country’s primary school-age children wereenrolled in school while 80 per cent of the popu-lation was illiterate. Education has been anunwavering priority of this country of 1.2 billionpeople. After efforts at universalizing primarye d u cation, the government passed a law in 19 8 6extending compulsory education to nine years.The country has recorded some remarkableachievements over the past fif ty years. In 19 9 8 ,the net enrollment ra t i o1 of primary school-agechildren reached 98.9 per cent , while adult illi-t e ra cy stands at 16 . 37 per cent, according to ar e p o r t2 prepared for the World Education Fo r u min Dakar (Senegal, April 20 0 0 ) . The reportstresses that efforts are now being focused onimproving access to education in poor regionsand those with minority populations, facilitatingf u n d raising for educational purposes and ra i-sing the overall quality of teachers. ■

1. Number of children enrolled who are in theofficially defined primary school age-group, expressedas a percentage of the total population of that age-group.2. China’s country report can be found at:http://www2.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreport/china

http://www2.unesco.org/efa/wef/countryreport/china


Fo c u s The other faceof globalization

C o n t e n t s1 | New battle lines

1 6 Renewing the stateKidane Mengisteab

1 7 Social pioneers come of ageJulie Fi s h e r

1 9 G l o b a l i z a t i o n : a moral impera t i v eJagdish Bhagwa t i

2 0 To m o r ro w ’s humane economyJean-Louis Laville

2 2 Unequal gains

2 | Movers and shakers

2 4 O rganic re b e lJennifer Morrow

2 5 I g o ro t s : in defence of homeVictoria Ta u l i - C o r p u z

2 7 E c u a d o r : beyond the dollar coupMarcos A l m e i d a

2 8 Banana bluesCrépin Hilaire Dadjo

3 0 The fis h e r m e n ’s fire b ra n dt a kes on the fle e t sInterview by Ivan Briscoe

3 1 Justice for janitors in Silicon Va l l e yVictoria Elliott

3 3 Connected and capablePierre Calame

3 | Power plays

3 4 G o v e r n a n c e : time for a radical re m a keI van Briscoe

3 5 N G O s :s e a rching for solid gro u n dCandido Grzybowski

Now that globalization has reached the furthest cor-

ners of the planet, the world is said to have been

globalized —either for better, as some argue (pp

1 9 - 2 0 ) ,or for worse according to the critics (pp 20-21).Fa c e d

with the universal and uniform spread of this revolutionary

p r o c e s s, these critics have created a kind of international

opposition movement made up of previously fragmented

g r o u p s, drawn together by the inseparable nature of local

and global issues. Seattle was their spotlight.

This dossier offers a guided tour through this constellation

of movements opposed to the current style of globalization

and spearheaded by NGOs (pp 24 to 32).Though their back-

g r o u n d s, demands and actions are radically different, t h e s e

U. S. environmental activists, Philippine ethnic minorities, i n d i-

genous groups in Ecuador, peasants in Burkina Fa s o, I n d i a n

fisherfolk or janitors in Silicon Valley have joined to attack the

same targets and support the same aspiration:a new notion

of citizenship that balances the might of business with a

much stronger political realm. Sharing experience and capi-

talizing on knowledge have thus become key elements in

their strategy (p 33).

But what shape should the future “democratic world

g o v e r n a n c e ”t a ke? Current plans are still vague (pp 34-35),

while the legitimacy of these NGOs appears to rest solely

upon the relevance of the issues they raise and their ability to

develop ideas that can be turned into action (pp 35-36). ■

Dossier concept and co-ordination by René Lefort, director of the UNESCO Courier, and staff journalist Ivan Briscoe.


Ma ny view globalization as a technology-d ri ven global order that has led to an inten-s i fic ation of interconnectedness among

nations.This, however, is merely one facet of glo-b a l i z at i o n , and does not presuppose the ideolo-gical homogenization or the rapid retrenchment ofthe welfare state that is currently underway.

The dispute over globalization is not about thei n t e n s i fic ation of global interconnectedness. R at h e r ,it is over the vision of the global system that globa-l i z ation projects.This vision entails a global economicsystem with identifiable rules of behaviour in trade,fin a n c e , t a x at i o n , i nvestment policy, i n t e l l e c t u a lproperty rights, and currency convertibility, all ofwhich are crafted along neo-liberal principles withminimal governmental regulation. As the politicaleconomist Ellen Wood per-ceptively notes, this visionof a global system repre-sents a new phase of capi-talism which is “more uni-ve rs a l , more unchallenged,more pure and more una-d u l t e r ated than eve rbefore.”

For many cri t i c s , g l o-balization is essentially ana n t i - d e m o c r atic process that excludes the interestsof a wide range of groups. But the process is notshaped by market forces alone. It is only made pos-sible by the acquiescence if not active support ofg ove rn m e n t s , especially those in advanced countri e s.

G ove rnments in developing countri e s ,m e a n w-hile,are often said to be unable to stand up to glo-b a l i z ation without incurring severe costs. T h eg ove rnment of South A f ri c a , for example, c o u l dbe punished by capital flight if it insists on imple-menting its agenda of social reform .The masses ofSouth Africa,however,are likely to sustain heaviercosts if the gove rnment abandons its reform i n gm a n d at e . Faced with such a dilemma, g ove rn m e n t sh ave generally selected the side of capital for asimple reason: as the economist Paul Krugman hasnoted, the collapse of communism has taken theheart out of opposition to capitalism.

The list of problems caused by globalization isl o n g . In low-income countri e s , such as those in

Sub-Saharan A f ri c a , where gove rnments have beenunable or unwilling to provide their populations withe ven the most basic protection from the new phaseof global capitalism and structural adjustmentprogrammes,the people’s plight has been particu-larly severe.

Opponents of globalization are addressinggenuine problems. But it is uncertain whether theywill succeed in reversing globalization or even inm i t i g ating its adve rse impacts.To begin with, m a nyof them are badly organized. Most of them have alsorallied around specific issues instead of art i c u l at i n ga comprehensive counter vision.At this point, thecounter vision they project appears to be a globalsystem which is not shaped by the narr ow interestsof capital but which accommodates the interests of

diverse social groups. Thisv i s i o n , h owe ve r , is not ye twell developed.

Furthermore,these op-ponents have yet to deve l o pviable strat e gies to constraing l o b a l i z at i o n . Some arguefor weakening or even abo-lishing institutions such asthe World Bank, the Inter-n ational Monetary Fund,

and the World Trade Organizat i o n , which they viewas agents of globalizat i o n . But to the extent that theseorganizations are effective agents of globalization,it is unclear why business interests and gove rn-ments would allow this to happen.The relevance ofthese bodies is only likely to decline if Third Worldc o u n t ri e s , especially middle-income ones, b e gin toreduce their dependence on them under pressurefrom their populations.

Yet the main problem faced by these critics isthat many of them do not see the relevance of thes t at e . A successful struggle for genuine populardemocracy can liberate the state from the grip ofc o rp o r ate and financial interests, t u rning it into a cri-tical agent for the promotion of broad social inter-e s t s. M a ny NGOs rely instead on civil society,though this cannot substitute the state in policy-m a k i n g .The struggle against globalization is essen-tially a struggle for democracy:the state cannot bebypassed, but must be won. ■

O p i n i o n

Renewing the s t a t e◗ Kidane Mengisteab

◗ A native of Eritrea,the author is headof the departmentof African and African-AmericanStudies at PennsylvaniaState University and has writtenseveral workson globalizationand African development

Opponents of globalizationa re addressing genuine pro b l e m s.But it is uncertain whether they

will succeed in re v e rs i n gg l o b a l i z a t i o n

or even in mitigatingits adverse impacts

Gold-dust is dustt h e while it liesu n t r a v e l l e din the mine,And aloes-wood merefuel is uponits native ground:And gold shall win hishighest worth whenfrom his goal ungoal’d ;And aloes sentto foreign parts growcostlier than gold.“The Tale of Nur A l - D i nand Son,”The Thousand and One Nights



Eve rywhere we turn there is good economicn e w s. The massive gr owth of the globale c o n o my, fed by revo l u t i o n a ry changes in

c o m m u n i c at i o n , promises unending prospe-rity that will, it is said, b e n e fit even the poorestpeople on eart h .

P r o t e s t o rs in Seattle who questioned therole of the World Trade Organization in sup-p o rting the present contours of globaliza-tion were widely port r ayed in the media asnew activists focusing on small issues such asthe fate of the sea turt l e . Yet the “ B attle inS e at t l e ” was but one tip of a mountain rangeof non-gove rnmental challenges to politics asu s u a l .

This worldwide explosion of NGOs (non-g ove rnmental organizations) actually beganabout thirty ye a rs ago, in response to the inter-twined crises posed by pove rt y, p o p u l at i o n ,and environmental degr a d at i o n . Po p u l at i o ngr owth can lead to deforestation or soil exhaus-t i o n , and thus increased pove rt y. The lat t e rfuels migr ation to giant urban centres, or tomore remote areas where the cycle begins anew.M o r e ove r ,e nvironmental destruction by mul-t i n ational corp o r ations can further pove rty byd i s rupting the traditional co-existence betwe e npeople and the land.

N G O s , including the grassroots move m e n t sf e atured in this issue,h ave focused on these pri o-rities for some time and have pushed gove rn-ments to do so as we l l . The recent surge ofactivism testifies not to a change in purp o s e , but agr owing realization that certain shared problems arep a rtly caused by the common root of globalizat i o n .Ta r-gets like the agencies of intern ational trade and fin a n c eare hardly new, though their current prominencer e flects an era of much gr e ater NGO co-ordination inthe face of rapid economic change and unresponsiven ational gove rn m e n t s.

The real question, h owe ve r , is whether a gr ow i n gglobal civil society, e ven in concert with willing gove rn-m e n t s , could begin to match the magnitude of theglobal challenge. No one alive today can answer thisq u e s t i o n , but an ove rview of what is happening mayp r ovide some clues.

I n t e rn ational NGOs (INGOs) generally focuso n d e ve l o p m e n t , r e l i e f, r e f u g e e s , human rights or

◗ Programme officer at theKettering Foundation,an institutebased in Dayton,Ohio, devoted toresearch into improving theworkings of democracy. Her mostrecent book is Nongovernments:NGOs and the PoliticalDevelopment of the Third World(Kumarian Press, 1997).

1 New battle l i n e s

Social p i o n e e rscome of age◗ Julie Fisher

Non-governmental organizations took centre stage in Seattle, but many have beenspinning their web for several decades around the globe

Protesting against the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle,November 1999.

d e m o c r at i z at i o n .As of 1995 there were an estimat e d20,000 INGOs with branches in at least three countri e s ,plus 5,000 or more nort h e rn NGOs working intern a-tionally that are based in only one developed country.

Although INGOs have quadrupled in numbersince 1970, their contri bution to relief and deve l o p m e n tpales beside the demands posed by increasing numbersof complex human emergencies. In 1995 only about$10 billion of $60 billion in ove rseas deve l o p m e n tassistance flowed through NGOs.

Yet these organizations have become prominentglobal playe rs.They lobby official intern ational orga-n i z ations with increasing frequency and success, a n dh ave become important actors in agenda-setting mee-t i n g s. From the Montreal Protocol regulating ozoneemissions in 1987 to the 1994 Cairo Po p u l ation Confe-rence and the 1995 Beijing Wo m e n ’s Conference, t h e yh ave accompanied their partner organizations in kee-ping such issues as human ri g h t s , women and env i-ronmental deteri o r ation on the front bu rn e r.

The most dramatic chapter in the NGO story hasbeen their proliferation in the global “ S o u t h .”B e gi n n i n gabout thirty ye a rs ago, increasing numbers of we l l - e d u-c ated young people took advantage of foreign fin a n c i a lassistance to create NGOs. Although a few organizersc r e ated local “ c o u n t e rp a rt s ” to INGOs, most others usedfunds from several donors tod e fine their own progr a m m e s.S e veral of these organizat i o n sp r ovided protection from poli-tical repression.

Almost eve ry w h e r e , t h i sprocess depended on part-n e rships between two types of NGOs: grassroots orga-n i z ations (GROs) and grassroots support organizat i o n s( G R S O s ) . Grassroots organizations have local mem-b e rs and help develop their own communities.A l t h o u g hs o m e , such as wo m e n ’s gr o u p s , are new,o t h e rs evo l ve dfrom traditional community organizations such asr o t ating credit societies that have existed for thou-sands of ye a rs.There are now probably several hundredthousand GROs in A s i a ,A f rica and Latin A m e ri c a .

Faced with the deteri o r ation of their env i r o n m e n tand the increasing impove rishment of the 1980s,G RO sand local individuals began organizing networks andm ovements among themselve s.A network of lane com-mittees in Oranji, Pa k i s t a n , for example, has prov i d e dclean water and sewage for 100,000 people. An esti-m ated 50,000 largely professional GRSOs, m e a n w-h i l e ,help channel intern ational support to these lowe rl e ve l s. In Bolivia, for example, a set of GRSOs focuseson propagating solar greenhouse technologi e s.

Other organizations work on corruption or humanri g h t s.An anti-corruption centre in Maharashtra,s u p-p o rted by a GRO netwo r k , succeeded in getting fort ylocal revenue offic e rs dismissed and has receive drequests for help from other localities intent on purs u i n gcomplaints through the court s.This type of politicalactivism sometimes reaches the global leve l , as thePhilippine indigenous leader V i c t o ria Ta u l i - C o rp u zexplains (p. 2 4 - 2 5 ) .

The retreat of authori t a rian ru l e , m e a n w h i l e ,h a sled to the creation of new types of NGOs concentrat i n g


on broader democratic processes such as public deli-b e r at i o n , voter regi s t r ation and election monitori n g,a n de ven to the election of some grassroots leaders to localo f fic e . M a ny NGOs also advo c ate major politicalc h a n g e s , though protests are not always at the street-l e ve l .A Brazilian NGO, for instance,p r ovides citizenswith a toll-free “ green phone” to report env i r o n m e n t a lc ri s e s.Nor is there a clear distinction between advo c a cyand collaborat i o n . One network in India, the Inte-gr ated Child Development Serv i c e , campaigns forpolitical change through both NGOs and “ c h a p t e rs ”in federal and state gove rn m e n t s.

Stronger civil societies are also emerging in Cen-tral and Eastern Europe,and the former Soviet Union.Only a minority of the estimated 75,000 “ E a s t e rn ”NGOs were previously tied to Communist regi m e s ,with the rest created or resurrected by an inflow offoreign assistance after 1989. Because these NGOsemerged with the collapse of gove rnmental social ser-v i c e s , they are more likely to be service prov i d e rs thantied to members at the local leve l .I n d e e d , some form sof local organization such as co-operat i ves acquired abad name under Communism.

Among the more innovat i ve NGOs in this regi o nare those organized in response to the emerging env i-ronmental crises of the 1980s. O ri gi n ating as quasi-

opposition move m e n t s ,t h e yh ave continued to challengeg ove rn m e n t s. M i c r o c r e d i t ,i n i t i ated in the deve l o p i n gwo r l d ,has also gained at leasta toehold in the transitionalc o u n t ri e s.

The non-profit sector has also gr own in the deve-loped countri e s. In the United Stat e s , for example, 7 0per cent of non-profit organizations are less than thirt yye a rs old. E ven more recent are the protest and othersocial change movements fuelled by the gr owth of theI n t e rn e t , such as those described by student activistAndrea del Moral (p. 2 2 - 2 3 ) .

If nothing else, this ove rview highlights the diffi-culties in mapping a complex, vast and dynamic globalcivil society still in its infa n cy. On a global leve l ,s o m ebusiness networks focus on sustainable deve l o p m e n t ,and national NGOs as dive rse as the Grameen Bankin Bangladesh and Working Capital in New Hampshire( U.S.) promote bu s i n e s s e s. T h u s , the non-gove rn-mental challenge to mindless globalization is not oppo-sition to profit s , but rather support for broader ow n e r-ship and competition. Most import a n t l y, t rue civilsociety is more than a collection of NGOs, but rat h e ra measure of how citizens associat e , talk and act toge-ther in public life.

Much has been made of the Internet and how itm ay contri bute to a stronger civil society.Yet though theI n t e rnet has helped create global coalitions on hundredsof issues,billions of people still have no access to a tele-p h o n e , much less to a computer. E ven if people gaina c c e s s , they may be more likely to see an adve rt for asoft drink than learn how to purify wat e r. U l t i m at e l y,the contri bution of the Internet to the gove rnance ofg l o b a l i z ation will depend on the human ties that areestablished off-line. ■

When the peoplefought against slavery,or apartheid, o rc o l o n i a l i s m , t h e y d i dnot speak in terms ofsharing better theb e n e fits of slavery orapartheid orc o l o n i a l i s m . Th e yfought the systems ofs l a v e r y, apartheid andcolonialism themselves.So too, we cannot justtalk of sharing bettert h e b e n e fit so f g l o b a l i z a t i o n .We have to fig h tt h e s y s t e mo f g l o b a l i z a t i o nw e have today.Martin Khor, d i re c t o rof the T h i rd World Network

The non-governmentalchallenge to mindless globalization

is not opposition to p ro fit s, b u trather support for b ro a d e r

o w n e rs h i p



“Gl o b a l i z at i o n ” has become today ’s bu z z-wo r d . It has also become a battle gr o u n dfor two radically opposed gr o u p s.T h e r e

are the “ a n t i - g l o b a l i s t s ” who fear globalization andstress only its dow n s i d e , seeking therefore powe r f u li n t e rventions aimed at taming, if not (unwittingly)c rippling it.Then there are the “ g l o b a l i s t s ” (a classto which I belong) who celebrate globalization ins-tead, emphasize its upside, while seeking only toensure that its few rough edges be handled througha p p r o p ri ate policies that serve to make globalizat i o nyet more attractive.

Many anti-globalists consider the central pro-blem of globalization to be its amorality, or even itsimmorality. But these critics have too blanket anapproach to globalizat i o n .The word cove rs a va ri e t yof phenomena that characterize an integr ating wo r l de c o n o my : t r a d e , s h o rt - t e rm capital flow s , d i r e c tforeign investment, immigration, cultural conver-gence et al.The sins of one of the above cannot bevisited upon the virtues of another. Some are benign

even when largely unregulated whereas others canbe fatal if left wholly to the marketplace.

In part i c u l a r , the freeing of trade is largelybenign: if I exchange some of my toothpaste forsome of your toothbrushes, we will both be betteroff than if we did not trade at all.It would requirea wild imagination,and a deranged mind,to thinkthat such freeing of trade leads to debilitating eco-nomic crises. But only ideologues would deny thatthe hasty freeing of short - t e rm capital flow s ,u n d e rpressure from what I have called in Foreign Affairs(May 1998) the US-Treasury Complex, was whathelped to precipitate the huge Asian financial cri s i s.E q u a l l y, it is illogical to believe , as non-economistswho fear globalization do, t h at freeing of trade is badbecause the freeing of short-term capital flows ledto a debilitating financial and economic crisis andcould do so again. In fact, while there are someobvious similarities between free trade and freecapital flow s — e . g . t h at segmentation of marketsc r e ates effic i e n cy losses—the economic and politicald i s s i m i l a rities are even more compelling andpolicymakers cannot ignore them.

Anti-globalist critics are in fact often reactingviscerally to a much larger issue: the victory of capi-talism over its arch ri va l ,c o m m u n i s m . For campusidealists who have always looked for altern at i ves tow h at they conventionally consider to be the greed andlack of social conscience that characterize capita-l i s m , the situation is psychologically intolerable.Some have turned to street theat r e , nihilism and theanti-intellectualism that has been manifest in thelast few ye a rs. The more sophisticated have suc-cumbed to a stereotypical representation of corp o-r ations as the “ e v i l ” forces of capitalism that have cap-tured the stat e , d e m o c r atic institutions, and eve ni n t e rn ational bodies such as the World Trade Orga-n i z at i o n .

W h at these critics often forget is that certain eco-nomic freedoms are basic to prosperity and socialwell-being under any conditions, and are thus of thehighest moral va l u e .P r o p e rty rights and markets, f o ri n s t a n c e ,p r ovide incentives to produce and allocat eresources effic i e n t l y, and can in turn strengthend e m o c r a cy by allowing a means of sustenance out-side pervasive government structures.The qualityand breadth of democracy can then be enlarged asexcluded gr o u p s , such as women and the poor, a r e

G l o b a l i z a t i o n :a m o ral i m p e ra t i v e◗ Jagdish Bhagwa t i

A leading international trade theorist argues that free markets and integration into the worldeconomy are key to making a dent on poverty

Winners and losers: Indian farmers protest againstthe effects of globalization.

◗ Andre Meyer Senior Fellow inInternational Economics at theCouncil on Foreign Relations, NewYork, on leave from ColumbiaUniversity, where he is a professorof economics and politicalscience. Author of over 40 works,of which the most recent is AStream of Windows, UnsettlingReflections on Trade, Immigrationand Democracy (MIT Press, 1998).


To m o r ro w ’sh u m a n e e c o n o m y◗ Jean-Louis Laville

Countering the previous viewpoint, the author turns to history to show that belief in them a r ket as the best of all social ord e rs is an old ideal that does not bear up to s c r u t i n y

◗ French sociologist and author ofseveral books on the future ofwork and the social economy,including Une troisième voie pourle travail (“A Third Way for Work,”Desclée de Brouwer, 1999) andL’Economie solidaire: uneperspective internationale(“Economic Solidarity:AnInternational Perspective,”Desclée de Brouwer, 2000).

pulled into literacy, gainful employment and betterhealth through higher public spending or the spreadof economic incentives.

Critics nevertheless go on to maintain that theglobal spread of free markets and free trade is res-ponsible for continuing poverty in poor countries,and for alleged growth in inequality between andwithin countri e s. Labour unions in the rich countri e salso fear that their workers are being hurt by tradein cheap labour-using goods from poor countries.

But I do not think these concerns are we l l -f o u n d e d . In India which has almost a quarter of thewo r l d ’s poor, there is good evidence that autarchicand anti-market policies produced abysmally lowgr owth rates at 3.5 per cent annually over a quart e rof a century, with a correspondingly negligible impacton pove rt y. Since gr owth rates picked up since the1 9 8 0 s ,p ove rty has declined. Higher gr owth rates int u rn depend on several fa c t o rs ; but openness totrade and direct investment and a skilful use of mar-kets are definitely an important contri bu t o ry fa c t o r.

As for inequality among nations, it is preciselythose countries that embraced integration into theworld economy, i . e . the Far Eastern Four and then theASEAN countries, which raced ahead with dramaticgr owth rates whereas several countries of A f ri c a ,L atin A m e rica and Asia that looked inwards failed to

Since the early 1980s, when the T h at c h e rite andReaganite revolutions were in full sw i n g, the doc-t rine of neo-liberalism appears to have staked

itself out across the countries of the world withoutmeeting much serious opposition.But negat i ve reactionsto the spread of free market philosophy have ensued asthe damage it has caused — in terms of inequalities,i m p ove ri s h m e n t , social exclusion and env i r o n m e n t a ld e s t ruction—come to light.

S u p p o rt e rs of the free market advo c ate deregulat i o nto the extent that all human activity would be run by thep ri vate sector,while public authorities would be left tomanage the tools of coercion and law within a gi ven ter-ri t o ry :n a m e l y, the army,the judicial system,and (if onlyin part) the police and pri s o n s. On the other side, s u p-p o rt e rs of a more humane economy, who have gr ow nhugely in number over recent ye a rs , back a rather dif-ferent formula for the good society:“ yes to the market

e c o n o my,not to the market society.” In other wo r d s ,t h e yinsist on the need to resurrect and re-establish regula-tion in new and va ried forms so that it can cover today ’sglobal dimensions of economic activity.

The differences between these two broad schools ofthought is at least three centuries old, b e ginning whenthe old divine order— in which political authority wa senmeshed —collapsed.At the start of the 17th century,Galileo confounded the Scriptures by proving that theE a rth rotated around the Sun. S h o rtly after, p h i l o s o-p h e rs such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke arguedt h at the social order was not grounded in Prov i d e n c e ,but in the decisions of individuals.The medieval dogmaholding that all power came from God, who assignedeach person his or her “ n at u r a l ” place in society, wa ss h at t e r e d .From then on, societies faced a new challenge:d e fining the “social contract” t h at linked people witheach other and with the stat e .

deliver growth and also made little dent on poverty.The evidence on trade and investment impove-

rishing our wo r k e rs is also flawe d . My own researchsuggests that the dow n ward pressure on wo r k e rs ’wages due to technical change has been dampened,not magnifie d , by trade with the poor countri e s.Research also shows that big corp o r ations use abroadt e c h n o l o gies similar to those at home, instead ofexploiting lower standards or forcing them yet lowe rthrough their financial clout.

One result of these mistaken arguments againstg l o b a l i z ation has been an insistent clamour for cert a i ne nvironmental and labour standards to be linked torules on intern ational trade. But by seeking to creat enew “ o b s t a c l e s ” to free trade, you undermine thefreeing of trade, while mixing up trade with a moralagenda undermines that ve ry moral agenda. It gi ve sother countries the definite impression that yo ua r e using ethical rhetoric to mask protectionists e l f-i n t e r e s t .

The notion that global free trade and inve s t-ment are responsible for pove rt y, i n e q u a l i t y, l owe ri n gof standards and harming social progress is little shortof astonishing.Yet it is gi ven curr e n cy by nat i o n a lpoliticians and intern ational bu r e a u c r ats who thinkt h at going along is a way of getting along. In deny i n gthe virtues of globalizat i o n , they actually harm theve ry causes they profess to embrace. ■

Nobody forces yout o eat at McDonald’s.Paul Krugman,U. S. economist (1953-)

Two radically opposed forms of contract were putf o r wa r d .The first “ p o l i t i c a l ”f o rm placed its trust in thegood will of individuals, who could freely decide theshape of the new social order.The second “ e c o n o m i c ”option suspected that this trust in fa l l i b l e ,fickle humann ature was open to abu s e .A new social order, these lat t e rt h e o rists maintained,needed rock-solid foundat i o n s —namely economic “ l aw s ,” which are “ n at u r a l ” and thusu n c h a n gi n g .

The first such law is that eve ryone acts pri m a rily outof his or her own personal interest, the main thrust ofwhich is a desire for ri c h e s. This impulse is sharedu n i ve rsally in all societies, the theory goes,and will eve n-tually be the best method for organizing all of them.A sa result, the market theory took its first step towards autopian vision in which eve rything is subjected to itsru l e s.

It is false to claim, as many neo-liberals do, t h att o d ay ’s enhanced market ideology is essentially modern ,and that the revival of tougher “ p o l i t i c a l ” r e g u l at o rymechanisms to check the supremacy of pri vate interestsover the public good would be a step backwa r d s.



Scottish economist Adam Smith outlined the funda-mentals of the free market two centuries ago; r e g u l at i o ncame much lat e r.

In the 19th century, a number of ve ry tightlycontrolled national and intern ational markets gaveway to a much more open market. The pendulumswung again, h owe ve r , and as a result of the market’sfailure to deliver a wo r k a b l e , peaceful society, m a r k e t swere refined so that they today include “ ru l e s ,i n s t i t u-tions and networks that control and monitor the crea-tion of supply and demand and the relationship bet-ween them,” according to French economist Je a nG a d r e y. But these interventions are now being chal-lenged by a new wave of deregulat i o n . D e fining amarket economy, s ays Gadrey, has hence become an“extremely contentious and political” issue—as well asa ve ry urgent one.

A second flawed argument used by neo-liberals ist h at the market economy is the only source of we a l t h ,and in part i c u l a r , wealth for all (the notorious “ t ri c k l e -d ow n ”t h e o ry ) .The past 20 ye a rs ,h owe ve r ,h ave testi-fied to widening inequality,with the three richest peoplen ow wielding a fortune gr e ater than the combinedGDP of the wo r l d ’s 48 poorest nat i o n s.

The third error committed by today ’s free-marke-t e e rs is their denial of the fact that the real economy infact rests on three foundat i o n s , as the Hungari a né m i gré political scientist Karl Po l a nyi argued. In amarket economy, the terms of trade are fixed by pri c e st h at va rious participants in the markets decide upon onthe basis of their interests. But hidden in these calcu-l ations are all sorts of non-market va riables and contri-bu t i o n s ,s t a rting with gove rnment aid and subsidies tofirm s.

In the non-market economy, the distri bution ofgoods and services is largely handled by the publics e c t o r , which operates according to the rules set dow nby democratically elected authori t i e s.This is the “ we l-fare stat e .”But beyond this, in the third,n o n - m o n e t a rye c o n o my, the pri o rity rests on reciprocity, with ser-vices distri buted by groups or people according to thesocial links that bind them together, whether in fa m i-l i e s ,a s s o c i ations or mutual support gr o u p s.

F i rms benefit from training and teaching conductedin the home,and thus draw on a fund of “social capital.”L i k e w i s e , in the expanding service sector,businesses takea d vantage of intangible investments like educat i o n ,which depends largely on the public sector, as well ason orders and investments from public authori t i e s.They also depend heavily on the political decisionsmade by gove rn m e n t s.

These examples go to prove that neither the oft-mentioned distinction between a market and non-market economy nor the claim that the former is theonly source of wealth surv i ve critical examinat i o n .I n s-t e a d , we should adopt a more realistic and less ideolo-gically dri ven model: t h at of a plural economy. By put-ting these va rious beliefs up for discussion, we canescape the tyranny of a market conceived as an abstractand impersonal norm imposed on eve ryo n e . To m o r-r ow ’s humane economy can only be built through theinteraction of regulated markets, s t ates and democrat i ccivil societies. ■

Bearing the burden of the IMF in Bangkok earlierthis year.

1987

1998

Total number in millions.In parentheses,percentageof regional population.


417(26.6%)

278(15.3%)

474(44.9%)

6(1.9%)

522(40.0%)

217(46.6%)

291(46.3%)

9(4.3%)

78(15.6%)64

(15.3%)

1(0.2%)

24(5.1%)

U n e q u a l g a i n sx x x x x x x x

East Asia& Pacific

Eastern Europe& Central Asia

Latin America& Caribbean

Middle East& North Africa

South Asia Sub-Saharan Africa

28,66828,737

21,418

10,960

5,752

12,547

1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 1998

1,880

2,970

3,740

5,150

5,9906,400

The world’s GDP(US$ billions) The world’s GDPper capita (1995 US$)

While the world is growing richer, inequality is increasing and extreme poverty remains deeplye n t re n c h e d , as critics of globalization’s current style are quick to underline.

Global GDP has grown fivefold in real terms over thepast 25 years (top left), though over the same

period global GDP per capita only increased 3.5 times( a b o v e, l e f t ) .This growth, h o w e v e r, has not been sharedby all.

The absolute number of people living on less thana dollar a day in developing countries has remainedpractically unchanged (slightly fewer than 1.2 billion)

over the past decade (below).The income gap betweenthe richest and poorest 20 per cent of world populationhas more than doubled over the past 40 years (oppo-site page, top left),and nearly tripled if we look at thew o r l d ’s five richest and five poorest countries (oppositep a g e, top right).These disparities are even more strikingin specific areas:the poorest 20 per cent,for example,only account for 0.2 per cent of the world’s Internet

users, while the richest 20 per cent make up 93.3 per

cent of users (opposite page, centre).

Fi n a l l y, a comparison between the sales of top cor-

porations and the GDP of a number of countries offers

a telling illustration of the sheer power of big business

(opposite page, below).

People living on less than $1 per day in developing and transitional economies



The world’s top corporations had sales totalling more than the GDP of many countries in 1998 - GDP or total sales (US$ billions)

Ratio of income earned by richest 20% against poorest 20% of world population

Stark disparities between rich and poor in global opportunity (1997 share s )

The trajectory of the world’s five richest and poorestcountries, 1950-1992 (GDP per capita in 1990 US$)

Corporation

Richest 20% Middle 60% Poorest 20%

Country

Shares of world GDPShares of exports of goods and ser-

vices Shares of foreign direct investment Shares of Internet users

The richest

The poorest

178 175166

159

146 145 143133 129 129 128 127

121 123 120 118 113 111 111 107 103 102 100

6,270

14,429

578

19,953

5444571960

1950 1973 1992

1970 1980 1990 1997

30

1 1 1 1 1

32

45

60

74

13%

86%

1%

17%

82%

1%

31%

68%

1%

6.5%

93.3%

0.2%


◗ Freelance journalist based inNew York City

“ Eat your food. Children in Ethiopia are star-v i n g .” It is a familiar refrain at the A m e ri c a ndinner table to which scores of children have

r e p l i e d : “Send them my broccoli!” But to Andrea delM o r a l ,n ow 22, the question sparked confusion.W hywere children starving? “I still don’t understand it,” s h ea d m i t s ,“ i t ’s not about not enough food in the wo r l d .”

T h at she continues to pursue the question sets hera p a rt from her peers. A nat i ve of we a l t hy Seat t l e ,Wa s h i n g t o n , she has turned her back on lucrat i ve jobo p p o rtunities to consider the co-existence of prosperi t yand starvat i o n .

But the solution remains elusive . Looking back ona year of hard-core activism that has included the Wo r l dTrade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle andWa s h i n g t o n , D. C . , teach-ins and cross-country road-t ri p s , del Moral says fru s t r ation and hard lessons fromthe world of global politics have forced her to re-eva l u at eh ow she can help bring down the corp o r ate forces thatshe believes are undermining food securi t y.

With close-cropped curls and baggy carp e n t e r ’sp a n t s , she describes her look as “a little bit punk,” bu tshe is no arrogant rebel. Del Moral is thoughtful, a rt i-c u l at e , with an easy, sometimes self-deprecating laugh.

T h at a young woman who has never known hungershould make it her vo c ation comes as a surp rise even toher own parents. But del Moral credits them for plan-ting the seeds. Her father is a botany professor and hermother works for the U. S .g ove rn m e n t ’s Env i r o n m e n t a lProtection A g e n cy. “I grew up with that ethic [of env i-r o n m e n t a l i s t s ] ,” she say s , adding that “ my family alway sencouraged me to make my own decisions.”

But to the dismay of her parents, del Moral aban-doned her studies at a Montreal unive rsity to purs u eactivism full-time.S u rviving on money earned tutori n gand taking on odd acting roles, she began her subve r-s i ve education with a band of like-minded twe n t y -somethings in Montreal.While mounting street play si l l u s t r ating the nightmarish creations of genetic engi-n e e ring gone wrong,the troupe began plastering mock-labels on genetically modified foods and holdingd e m o n s t r ations outside the city’s superm a r k e t s.

Like thousands of other activists around the wo r l d ,it was on the World Wide Web that del Moral first heardthe buzz about the WTO’s November 1999 meeting inS e at t l e .“At first I didn’t know what the WTO wa s ,” s h ea d m i t s. By tapping into dozens of “ l i s t - s e rve s ” a n demail discussion gr o u p s , del Moral soon began flu e n t l yusing terms like “ c o rp o r ate seed supply”and “ b i o p i r a cy.”

Practice before preachingShe also deepened her knowledge of the Bretton-

Woods institutions and their sister, the WTO. She nowrealizes that “these institutions were not formed bypeople saying ‘ l e t ’s control the wo r l d ’ .They were creat e dwith good intentions that went wrong.” For del Moral,“The big organizations are power structures that are incomplete contradiction with direct democracy, which hasthe most potential for freedom.”While she unders t a n d sthe need for intern ational bodies to regulate and har-monize the laws of different countri e s , del Moral fearst h at these organizations are more concerned with pro-fits than with people, and advo c ates dismantling them.

In the months prior to the Seattle protest, del Moralt r avelled across the country,attending demonstrat i o n s ,workshops on civil disobedience and classes in Social Eco-

2 M o v e rs and s h a k e rsO rganic re b e l◗ Jennifer Morrow

After dodging police in the stre e t s, a young activist in the U. S. t a kes the battleagainst corporate forces onto firmer gro u n d



I g o ro t s: in defence of home◗ Victoria Ta u l i - C o r p u z

In the mid-1970s, the Igorot people won fame for fighting the largely World Bank-fundedC h i c o River Dam pro j e c t . N o w, their survival is increasingly linked to changing the rules ofinternational tra d e, as a leading advocate explains

Ihad become a student activist after living inManila at the height of the anti-Vietnam Wa rm ove m e n t , but I was firmly convinced that my

future lay in going back home to help organize myn at i ve people, the Igorots1. Since martial law hadbeen declared in 1972, the only legi t i m ate way forus to operate was through NGOs. Six ye a rs later Ic r e ated one to organize villagers and set up com-munity-based health progr a m m e s.

l o g y, the philosophy of living by nat u r e ’s example inwhich organic fa rming is central.She soon discovered herknack for addressing crow d s. But after speaking to moreand more people, she began to realize the limitations ofher theori e s.She recalls meeting with a fa rmer in we s t e rnC a n a d a , who agreed that big corp o r ations like Nabiscowere manipulating the price of his harvest for their pro-fit s , but didn’t see how organic fa rming would solve hisfinancial problems.“ For him it was about profits not pro-d u c t i o n .We thought about how we could help, but we arejust city kids,”s ays del Moral,“I have no place telling thesekinds of people I have the solutions.”

Disappointed by that encounter,del Moral decidedto learn to practice what she was preaching in thecontext of the global economy.She figured the best placeto get the big picture was in Seat t l e .

Del Moral arri ved in her hometown on the eve ofT h a n k s giving—ironically the A m e rican harvest holidaya s s o c i ated with ove r - e at i n g . No one anticipated theextent of the violence that erupted in Seattle fromN ovember 30 to December 3.Television images beamedaround the world showed a deva s t ated city in a state ofe m e r g e n cy ; riot police in bulletproof armour beat i n gback protestors ,a rmed National Guardsmen roamingthe streets and gr a f fiti-ed storefronts.

As WTO d e l e g ates arri ve d ,s e c u rity was bolstered.Stepping into the streets she had roamed as a child,d e lMoral felt the ground shift.Her first encounter with ri o tpolice in a parking garage marked a moment oft ru t h : she and her fri e n d s , a rmed only with bigi d e a s , were about to engage in a battle with fa rm o r e p owerful forces. “At that moment” s ays delM o r a l , “I realized a sort of war was being waged uponus and this (the police) was its visible manifestat i o n …I wish I could carry that realization around with mee ve ry day.”

While she steered clear of the front lines to avo i da rr e s t , sleepless nights and days spent dodging thepolice left her bat t l e - we a ry. Once again, del Moralwondered if she was making the best use of her energy.“ We will never take down industrial agri c u l t u r e ,” s h erecalls asking hers e l f,“so why are we doing this?”

Committed to change but still searching for herplace in the anti-globalization move m e n t , del Moralhas retreated from the front lines, d e voting herself toorganic fa rm i n g . On a six-acre fa rm in the quiet hills ofVe rm o n t , she earns $50 a week tilling the land, and expe-rimenting with seed saving and ancient fa rming tech-niques which she believes still hold the key to solvingworld hunger. ■

◗ Executive director of the M a n i l a -based Tebtebba Fo u n d a t i o n([email protected]),theIndigenous People’s Centre forPolicy Research and Education,setup in 1996 to promote the cause ofindigenous peoples and investigatethe effects of globalization on theirlivelihoods.

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz (left), with Guatemalan activist

1. The Igorots are indigenous people from six ethno-linguistic tribes—the Ibaloy, Kankana-ey, Ifugao, Kalinga,Apayao/Isneg and the Bontoc—living in the ruggedCordillera region in the northern Philippines. All six tribesshare common traits, including religious beliefs based onnature.The total population of Igorots in the region standsat 1.2 million according to the 1995 census.

We raised the social and political awareness of ourp e o p l e , and mobilized them against the dictat o r-ship of Ferdinand Marcos. We understood that wewere oppressed and discri m i n ated against as indi-genous people, and that therefore we should stru g g l efor self-determ i n ation and regional autonomy. I nthe 1980s, the gove rnment was finally forced tocancel the Chico River Dam Project because of oursustained opposition. This project would have dis-placed around 300,000 Igorots.

At the time we could already see the value ofi n t e rn ational networking to gather support for ours t ruggles against military rule in many of our com-m u n i t i e s.We discovered the Unive rsal Declaration ofHuman Rights, and used it to strengthen our cause.

Indigenous peoples also became active in lob-bying the United Nations to address human ri g h t s

After the Cold Wa r, t h efourth world war hass t a r t e d .Sub-Commandante Marc o s,head of the Zapatista A r m yo f National Libera t i o n ,a f t e rt h e Seattle pro t e s t s


v i o l ations of indigenous peoples. Since the crea-tion in 1982 of a UN Working Group on IndigenousPo p u l at i o n s , indigenous peoples have regularly takenp a rt in drafting minimum standards for the protec-tion of their ri g h t s. I am, h owe ve r , a strong believe rin the pri m a cy of local and national struggles ove ri n t e rn ational action.Without strong resistance ont h e gr o u n d , i n t e rn ational campaigns will fa i l .T h efa l l of the Marcos dictat o rship came aboutp ri m a ri l y because of the protests of the poor majo-ri t y, which had built up for more than 20 ye a rswithin the country. Only once the regime becamewidely unpopular did the elite Filipinos and the

i n t e rn ational community start to withdraw somes u p p o rt from it.

But I have also seen how decisions or agr e e-ments reached by intern ational institutions like theWorld Bank and the Intern ational Monetary Fund( IM F) can erode gains achieved locally. From thel ate 1970s to the 1980s, I helped to set up commu-nity-based health progr a m m e s , only to see the stru c-tural adjustment policies and programmes of theWorld Bank and IM F lead to budget cuts in health,while liberalization of our investment and trade law sset back much of our progr e s s.

The struggle for ancestral land ri g h t s , for ins-t a n c e , was undermined by the Mining Act of l995,which allows foreign mining corp o r ations to have100 per cent foreign equity and a 75-year lease on amaximum of 81,000 hectares of mineral lands. T h eIndigenous Pe o p l e s ’ Rights Act (IPRA), a new lawpassed in 1998, r e c t i fied some of the damage but fa l l ss h o rt of what we wa n t . The mining corp o r at i o n sh ave neve rtheless filed a suit in the Supreme Courtquestioning its constitutionality.

We were told that to deve l o p, we have to shiftfrom producing for our domestic use to producingfor the world market. But those who shifted to cashcrop production are now going bankrupt because ofthe dumping of highly-subsidized, i m p o rted agri-cultural products from foreign countri e s. C h e a p

r e a d y - t o - f ry sliced potat o e s ,c o rn , oranges and pears ,frozen-dressed chicken and other foods are beingdumped in the country, d e s t r oying the livelihoods oftens of thousands of fa rm e rs. The commitments ofthe Philippine gove rn m e n t , p a rticularly relating toa griculture as part of the Uru g u ay Round of theGeneral A greement on Ta riffs and Tr a d e , has allowe dthis to happen.

This situation is not unique to the Philippines.Our Quechua sisters from Pe ru share a similar story.Their potatoes are now left to rot in the fields becausethey cannot compete with cheap, dumped processedp o t ato slices from North A m e ri c a .I m p o rted maize orc o rn has also destroyed the traditional corn produc-tion of indigenous peoples in Mexico. Food insecu-rity and the loss of livelihoods are wo rsening each day.

Of cours e , we argue that our gove rnments shouldbe blamed because they signed these agr e e m e n t s ,a n dalso because they push an unsustainable economicmodel that is debt-dri ve n , e x p o rt - o riented andi m p o rt - d e p e n d e n t .

In our own voiceBut we are not blind to the powe rs of the Wo r l d

Trade Organizat i o n , the IM F and World Bank, a n dbodies like the Organization for Economic Coope-r ation and Development (OE C D) or the Group ofE i g h t . Those economies that do not fall in linebecome pari a h s.The globalization of the productionand consumption systems of the few elite countri e s ,c o rp o r ations and individuals is a threat to the conti-nued existence of dive rse and sustainable indige-nous live l i h o o d s.

This is the main reason why Tebtebba was set upin 1996. After doing work on the local and nat i o n a ll e ve l s , I felt that there was a gap. Global decisionsdirectly impact on our daily lives and can erodegains achieved through ye a rs of hard wo r k . Yet weh ave no chance to influence these decisions. O u rabsence in the global arena allows others to speak foru s , and in many instances we are misrepresented.Tebtebba is a Kankana-ey-Igorot term for discours eand I thought this was an appropri ate name for anIndigenous Pe o p l e s ’I n t e rn ational Centre for Po l i cyResearch and Educat i o n .

Indigenous peoples are pushing hard for the UNto adopt the Declaration on the Rights of IndigenousPe o p l e s , and are campaigning to slow down or haltunfettered globalizat i o n . Tebtebba took the lead inresearching and writing on globalization and indi-genous peoples. In Seat t l e , we adopted the “ S e at t l eD e c l a r ation of Indigenous Pe o p l e s.” Among othert h i n g s , this called for the removal from the WTO o fthe Tr a d e - R e l ated Aspects of Intellectual Propert yRights—a legal device allowing corp o r ations toa p p r o p ri ate our dive rse biological and geneticr e s o u r c e s , along with our traditional know l e d g e ,and to patent life itself.

We still have a long way to go.We need all kindsof part n e rs h i p s , e ven with gove rn m e n t s , to bri n gabout a world which allows us to exist as distinctpeoples and where social, economic and env i r o n-mental justice reigns. ■

Ke yi n d i c a t o rsPo p u l a t i o n( m i l l i o n s, 1 9 9 8 ) : 7 2 . 9

GNP ($ billions): 7 8 . 9

GNP per capita( $ ) : 1 , 0 5 0

Population belowincome poverty line of $1 aday (%):1 8 . 7

Source:UNDP HumanDevelopment Report 2000



Luis Macas is one of the most prominent leadersand thinkers in Ecuador’s indigenous people’sm ove m e n t .I nva riably dressed in the distinctive l y

dark poncho and sombrero from his village of Sara-g u r o, in the country ’s we s t e rn highlands, he managesthe Internet edition of a newsletter published by theInstitute for the Knowledge of Indigenous Culture.Macas heads this Quito-based body, h aving serve dstints as president of the Confederation of Ecuador’sIndigenous Nationalities (CO N A I E) and as a nat i o n a ldeputy for the Pachakutik move m e n t .

The CO N A I E and its political wing Pa c h a k u t i k ,which today has six deputies in the 123-seat unicameralE c u a d o rian parliament, was one of the main gr o u p si nvo l ved in a popular uprising in Ja n u a ry 2000 thatshocked the world by seizing control of the gove rn m e n tand parliament in Quito. Allied with a group of yo u n gm i l i t a ry offic e rs rebelling against corru p t i o n , the indi-genous groups forced the then President Jamil Mahuadto resign and flee the country, though the insurgentsfailed to secure one of their main objective s :s t o p p i n ga bid to dollarize the economy, which wiped out then ational curr e n cy, the sucre, with the stroke of a pen.

Niches of local powerFor Luis Macas, a restored sense of identity is not

only important for indigenous people, who make up athird of the country ’s 12 million people, but for Ecua-d o rian society as a whole. Once indigenous peoplecomplete their period of “ s e l f - d e fin i t i o n ” t h r o u g hs t ruggles for land and preservation of their ancestral cul-t u r e , Macas argues, “ethnic differences can be super-s e d e d ”and political plans drafted for the whole society.

Macas places gr e at hope in the niches of localp ower won by Ecuador’s indigenous movement inM ay 2000, when they romped to victory in 27 tow nhalls and five provincial districts out of 22—a totallyunparalleled event in recent Latin A m e rican history.

According to Macas, success at the ballot box needsto be conve rted into better training for local indigenousl e a d e rs and gr e ater democratic part i c i p ation by com-m u n i t i e s :“there are two bases, the technical and the poli-t i c a l , and we have to strengthen both,” he declares.

One person who appears to carry off both technical

E c u a d o r : b e y o n dthe d o l l a r c o u p◗ Marcos A l m e i d a

Globalization is fin e, say Ecuador’s indigenous leaders, as long as it allows us to preserve ourt raditional culture and begin talks with the North on a level playing fie l d

◗ Ecuadorian journalistBrandishing the Ecuadorian flag, indigenous protestors march in a bid to save their currency.


Ousséini Ouédraogo, f o rt y - s o m e t h i n g, looks likea lumberjack.He has the moral strength of one,t o o.Ouédraogo coordinates the programmes of

the National Fe d e r ation of Fa rm e rs ’ O r g a n i z at i o n s(FE N O P) , a group that was set up in 1996 and boasts1 9 7 u n i o n s , 500 grassroots associations and some400,000 members in eve ry corner of Burkina Fa s o.

O u é d r a o g o,an agronomist who descends from Pri n-cess Yennenga—the ancestor of the Mossé, B u r k i n aFa s o ’s main ethnic group—is fighting for the fa rm e rs inhis country, where nearly 80 per cent of the populat i o nl i ves off the land.Almost non-existent fa rm mechaniza-t i o n ,i l l i t e r a cy and low yields mean they are barely ableto eke out an existence.And ye t , the country owes theme ve ry t h i n g . C o t t o n , Burkina Fa s o ’s pri m a ry source offoreign curr e n cy, accounted for two-thirds of exporte a rnings in 1998, or over 1.2 billion French francs

and political roles with ineffable skill is Mariano Curi-c a m a .M ayor of the Guamote district in the province ofC h i m b o r a z o, which houses over 133 indigenous com-m u n i t i e s ,C u ricama combines a long career as leader ofhis people’s campaigns with an extraordinary manage-rial dynamism.“ You’ll never find me inside my offic e ,”he explains,“I’m always on the road.” Re-elected twicesince 1992, this Quechua from the country ’s centralhighlands who started work as a builder at the age of 17,has revolutionized his distri c t , promoting public part i-c i p ation in local assemblies, and combining the m i n ga—the Quechua people’s traditional community wo r k — w i t hassistance from leading foreign organizat i o n s.The resultsare there for all to see: r o a d s ,d rinking wat e r , i rri g at i o nc h a n n e l s , r e f o r e s t ation andreplenishment of the local fis hstock in places where previousg ove rnments sowed only pove rty and pat r o n a g e .A fewmonths ago he created the Indigenous Chamber ofC o m m e r c e , which local people hope will adve rtise andsell their products within the country and abroad.M a riano Curi c a m a , who has travelled to 14 countri e s ,is not afraid of globalizat i o n : “If we don’t jump on thisc a r , we’ll be left by the side of the road,” he declares.

Miguel Lluco, a former national deputy andn ational co-ordinator of the Pachakutik move m e n t ,i salso convinced that his people’s horizons will have tow i d e n : “Ecuador can’t be an exception in this processof globalizat i o n ,” he say s. The bloodless uprising inJa n u a ry, he acknow l e d g e s , was “the inevitable refle c-tion of a global situation that has been imposed on usthrough dollari z ation and the globalization of cur-

r e n cy exchanges, and which threatens to disrupt thed e velopment of our own political agenda.

“ T h at ’s why it’s so vital to build up links with peoplewho are campaigning and proposing altern at i ves acrossthe wo r l d . If we had stayed put in Ecuador with thelocal land conflicts of the 1960s, when eve ry villagefought with its own landlord as if it were engaged in a pri-vate bat t l e , we would never have made all this progr e s sin indigenous people’s organizat i o n . People in the Firs tWorld can provide us with a lot, while we can promoteour values and community vision.”

Until the age of 13, when on one moonlit night heleft the rustic house where he lived with his illiterat e

peasant family and headed tothe sugar cane plantat i o n son the coast, Miguel Llucoknew nothing outside hissmall corner of the A n d e s.

On the basis of his experience as a labourer, s h o e s h i n eb oy, ice-cream salesman, c a rp e n t e r , union leader,p o l i t i c i a n , d e p u t y, and indefatigable defender of the“ i n t e gral human being,” as he likes to put it, L l u c oweighs up the risks and opportunities of a globalizedwo r l d :“I see it in the same way as the course of my life,from my village of Sacaguan, to discove ring the neigh-b o u ring town of Guamote and its school, then on tothe situation of Ecuador and Latin A m e rica as aw h o l e , until I started to wonder ‘ W h at do they thinkin the First Wo r l d ? ,’ ‘ H ow do we build a form of com-m u n i c ation and perhaps co-operat i o n ? ’ ”

The future of the first Latin A m e rican country toabandon its own curr e n cy hinges on the answe rs thatEcuador and the North gi ve to these questions. ■

($171.4 million). Breeding accounted for 15 per cent ofe x p o rts ($38.5 million) the same ye a r.

“ For us, fa rm e rs are full-fledged citizens,” s ays Oué-d r a o g o.“They are entitled to respect.We are working toi m p r ove their status and to defend their interests.We ’r ea lways there wherever and whenever one of our mem-b e rs needs us.”The FE N O P fought its first battle againstan “ i n t e rnal enemy.” In 1997, the organization clashedwith the Textile Fibre Company (SO F I T E X) , which ru l e sthe cotton industry and has a monopoly on input ands a l e s. Cotton was in cri s i s. A black veil covered the“white gold.”Cotton fields were ove rrun by cat e rp i l l a rs ,and the pesticides supplied by a SO F I T E X s u b s i d i a rywere ineffective . Some fa rm e rs left the country, o t h e rscommitted suicide. G r owe rs who went into debt up totheir necks at the start of each agricultural season felt asif they had a knife to their throat s.

Banana b l u e s◗ Crépin Hilaire Dadjo

A farmers’ group in Burkina Faso gains clout in its battle against the liberalization ofa g r i c u l t u re, and turns to the global movement for support

◗ Journalist with the Jade agencyin Burkina Faso


GNP ($ billions): 1 8 . 4

GNP per capita( $ ) : 1 , 5 2 0

Population belowincome poverty line of $1 aday (%): 2 0 . 2


“If we don’t jump on this car,we’ll be left by the side

of the ro a d .”



Appealing to popular opinion, Ouédraogo and hiso r g a n i z ation asked a pri vate newspaper, Le Pay s, to seefor itself. SO F I T E X c o u n t e r - attacked by staging a pro-paganda tour of a cotton-gr owing region for other news-p a p e rs.T h at is when the FE N O P r e c e i ved unexpecteds u p p o rt from L’ I n d é p e n d a n t, directed by the fa m o u si nve s t i g at i ve journalist Norbert Zongo, who was assas-s i n ated on December 13, 1 9 9 8 .Protests swelled and theg ove rnment had to calm things dow n : it wiped out all thedebts that fa rm e rs had contracted to purchase the pes-t i c i d e s. This was the first time in any fa rm e r ’s livingm e m o ry that the State backed down in the face ofa n gry protests.

The FE N O P is proud of that victory, but it had to keepon fig h t i n g, this time on the broader front of fa rmi n d u s t ry liberalizat i o n . In the 1980s,s t ructural adjustmentpolicies had dealt severe blows to fa rm aid such as sub-sidized fert i l i z e rs and training. M o r e ove r ,l ower importduties helped to increase competition between nat i o n a land foreign products on the domestic market. I n t e r g o-ve rnmental accords signed in Ja n u a ry 2000 in the fra-m e work of West A f ri c a ’s regional integr ation policy onlyf u rthered the trend towards lower customs barri e rs.A n d , as usual, nobody asked small fa rm e rs what theyt h o u g h t .

In this context, the FE N O P s t a rted two bat t l e s ,o n e against bananas from Côte d’Ivo i r e , the otheragainst rice from A s i a , both symbols of trade liberaliza-t i o n . But the struggle against bananas from Côte d'Ivo i r eseems futile. E ven though they do not taste as good asBurkina Fa s o ’s smaller fru i t , they look better and costl e s s. G r own on large, m o d e rn plantat i o n s , they alsob e n e fit from better agricultural conditions and a moreclement climat e .

The battle against Asian ri c e , which is gr a d u a l l yreplacing local gr a i n s , seems off to a better start bu tdepends on untangling a web of corru p t i o n .“ We haveconducted an inve s t i g at i o n ,” s ays Ouédraogo,“to show

t h at a ton of that rice costs 25 per cent less on themarket at Ouagadougou than it would if the import e rspaid all the duties.”He adds that Burkina Fa s o ’s rice “ i sof better quality because it comes from recent harve s t s ,while the imported rice is sometimes seven to 10 ye a rso l d .And there is not a shadow of a doubt that chemicalp r e s e rvat i ves had to be added to keep it from spoiling.But many consumers are unaware of all that .”

Winning market shareswithout selling out

According to its leaders , the FE N O P is fighting so thatp r o d u c e rs are no longer left out of the global economyand can win positions on future markets.The group goesout into the field to inform and train fa rm e rs , while pro-ducing films for national television about promisingc r o p s , such as oil seeds, shea and sesame. For example,few fa rm e rs know that sesame brought in some $4.2 mil-lion two ye a rs ago.T h at tidy sum was harvested becauseof the quality of Burkina Fa s o ’s crop, gr own without fer-t i l i z e rs (because fa rm e rs cannot afford them) at a timewhen organic products are becoming increasinglypopular in Europe and A s i a .

So opening up borders sometimes has positivee f f e c t s. But Burkina Fa s o ’s fa rm e rs must be careful notto sell their souls to the devil. “ T h at is also what wed e f e n d . A kind of citizenship agri c u l t u r e ,” s ays Oué-d r a o g o.“Like José Bové in France. In September 1999,we even adopted a motion of support for the impri s o n e dFrench fa rm e r.”Faced with a gove rnment that is seekingto divide and denigr ate the fa rm e rs ’ m ove m e n t , t h eFE N O P k n ows it needs allies. At the beginning of July2 0 0 0 , the group helped to set up a regional organizat i o nof West A f rican fa rm e rs ’ m ovements and maintainscontacts with Via Campesina, a worldwide move m e n tto support fa rm e rs ’ cultures and stru g g l e s.The Sahel andM c D o n a l d ’s may not be at war ye t , but fa rm e rs ’o r g a-n i z ations are gearing up for the fray. ■


GNP ($ billions): 2 . 6

GNP per capita( $ ) :2 4 0

Population belowincome poverty line of $1 aday (%): 6 1 . 2

Source:UNDP HumanDevelopment Report 2000.

The country’s “white gold” has plunged many farmers into debt.

If globalization is nota l ways a choice,i t should at least beaccepted by thosei t i n v o l v e s. To d a y,t h e dose imposed onAfrica is undoubtedlytoo strong. I fglobalization does nottranslate into equalityfor all, it should evenless be the dominationof the strongest overthe weake s t .Gertrude Mongella, f o r m e rmember of the Ta n z a n i a nparliament and secre t a r yg e n e ral of the 1995 BeijingWo m e n ’s Confere n c e


were accepted by the Cabinet,and since 1996,thegovernment has stopped giving new licenses. Forprobably the first time, a fishing community changedthe policy of globalization through protest.

Your movement has also expressed particularconcern over shrimp production for export.

First of all, you have to ask why aquacultures[ s h rimp fa rms] exist. I t ’s because a particular va ri e t ylike shri m p, cuttle fish or salmon is already depleted,and is no longer available in the marine sector. B u tthe ve ry fact that it is a monoculture means trouble,because it depends on a high use of pesticides anda rt i ficial manure.This pollutes the entire area.T h e nthe paddy-fields,which are meant for the people’sbasic needs, are conve rt e d . Then the mangr ove sare destroye d , though they are the breeding gr o u n dfor many species. By bringing in saline water, youpollute the drinking water meant for local people.The entire development [around 200,000 hectaresof coastal land have been converted into shrimpfa rms] is displacing coastal people and fishing com-m u n i t i e s. And all this intensive aquaculture ofshrimps is controlled by big companies,big inves-t o rs and big rich people—and funded by the Wo r l dBank.It is a philosophy of rape and run: you makethe money fast,then you run away.

In 1996, the Supreme Court ordered all the aqua-culture fa rms in the country to be abolished. But insteadof abolishing them,the gove rnment and political part i e ssided with the World Bank and multinational companies,and ordered a review of the judgement.They then intro-duced a new Aquaculture A u t h o rity bill, which is pen-ding approval by the Upper House of Pa r l i a m e n t .F i s h e r-people are ve ry angry about this.

How has the experience of Indian fishermendiffered from that of other fishing communitiesaround the world?

Whether in India, the U. S . or Europe, s m a l lb o ats and small communities have no chance of sur-vival.Everywhere the pattern is the same:only thebig will survive,and the rest will be wiped out.

But globalizat i o n ’s victims can change the situa-t i o n . From Senegal to Brazil, from Canada to SouthA f ri c a , fis h e rpeople are struggling against destru c-tive fishing and the stronghold of multinationals.Local communities should be the custodians ofthis natural capital. ■

I n t e rv i ew by Ivan Briscoe, UNE S C O C o u r i e r j o u r n a l i s t

“The life of the planet and the dependenthealth and we l fare of humanity must not bes a c ri ficed to the greed of the few,”d e c l a r e d

Father Thomas Kocherry last year on being awa r d e dthe Sophie’s Pri z e , c r e ated by Norwe gian nove l i s tJostein Gaardner,for his environmental wo r k . Fa m e dfor his powerful orat o ry, this Catholic priest helped toc r e ate the World Fo rum of Fish Harve s t e rs and FishWo r k e rs in 1997, of which he is now a co-ordinat o r.

The last ten years have been marked by a series ofprotests by fisherpeople across India, in which youhave been deeply involved. Why are fishingcommunities so angry?

In 1991 India introduced its new economicpolicy, which marked the beginning of a new deepsea fishing policy. Huge foreign ve s s e l s , wo r k i n gunder the guise of joint ventures and fees paid to theg ove rn m e n t , were gi ven licenses and started cominginto Indian wat e rs.There are some 25,000 such ve s-sels around the world.They have depleted all theoceans apart from the Indian Ocean, and are at h r e at to over 100 million people in deve l o p i n gcountries who depend on fisheries for their liveli-h o o d . So this new policy was clearly going to affectIndian fisherpeople, and probably displace them.Ten million fis h e rpeople went on four all-Indias t ri k e s.The gove rnment appointed the Murari com-m i t t e e , which made 21 recommendations aimed atchanging the entire deep sea fishing policy. These

The fis h e r m e n ’s fire b ra n dt a kes on the fle e t sFather Thomas Kocherry has been catapulted into leading India’s 10-million-strong fis h i n gcommunity in its campaign against industrial fle e t s, shrimp farms and coastal pollution

A small Indian port threatened by industrial fishing.

Ke yi n d i c a t o rsPo p u l a t i o n( m i l l i o n s, 1 9 9 8 ) : 9 8 2 . 2

GNP ($ billions): 4 2 7 . 4

GNP per capita( $ ) : 4 4 0

Population belowincome poverty line of $1 aday (%):4 4 . 2




While some circuit board assembly lines havesince been exported abroad, to Ta i wa n ,K o r e a ,I n d i aand East Germ a ny, j a n i t o rs need not wo rry that theire m p l oye rs will pull out and move elsewhere. T h egleaming office buildings in Cupertino and on theman-made lake at Redwood Shores are not goingaway.

But the janitors have also been caught in the cha-r a c t e ristic bind of the new economy. Conditions ofe m p l oyment in California have gr own increasinglytenuous as the new economy goes from strength tos t r e n g t h .According to Working Pa rt n e rs h i p s , a labourthink-tank based in San Jo s e , 45 per cent of Califor-nians now have no more than two ye a rs ’ tenure in theirc u rrent jobs,and temporary employment agencies bet-ween 1993 and 1998 expanded by 182,900 people —more than the net job gr owth in the software and elec-tronic industries combined. The trend towa r do u t s o u r c i n g, as businesses pare down extraneouse m p l oyees to concentrate on their core bu s i n e s s ,h a sbeen felt throughout the wo r k f o r c e .

Fo u rteen ye a rs earlier, wo r k e rs like Mendozawould have been in-house employees earning asmuch as $14 an hour at such firms as Hewlett Pa c-k a r d . But in the economic slump of the early 1990s,the high-tech firms reaped a bonus, spinning off jani-t o rial wo r k , along with such services as landscapingand securi t y, to competing independent contractorsand substantially bri n ging down the cost of janitors ’l a b o u r , to around $8 an hour.

Justice for Ja n i t o rsin Silicon Va l l e y◗ Victoria Elliott

By exposing the fla g rant gap between rich and poor, j a n i t o rs in A m e r i c a ’s high-tech heartlandhave captured nationwide attention in their fight for decent working conditions

◗ Editor at the San FranciscoChronicle

V icente Mendoza, an immigrant from Mexico,t r avels about 15 miles (24 km) through therush hour traffic each morning from Oakland,

C a l i f o rn i a , to his first job in San Ramon, where hes h ows up to work in a restaurant at 9 a.m. After fiveh o u rs of wo r k , he stops home again for a couple ofh o u rs , then crosses the San Mateo Bridge over the SanFrancisco bay and heads for the offices of A d va n c e dMicro Devices, 26 miles (40 km) away in Sunny-va l e .H e r e , he works as a janitor for his second shift ofthe day, from 6 p. m . to 2.30 a.m.The office wo r k e rsare gone; only a few late night stragglers see himpush his cart around, loaded with cleaning fluid andm o p s. By the time he gets home again, i t ’s 3:15 a.m.

I t ’s surp rising he had any energy left over tom a r c h ,but this spring Mendoza was one of the 5,500j a n i t o rs in Service Employees Intern ational Union,Local 1877, who came out with the Justice for Ja n i-t o rs movement to rally in Sunny vale for decent wo r-king conditions and better wa g e s.They wore red T-s h i rts to make the point that invisible as they are,working out of the public view, they were determ i n e dto be seen.

Tenuous contractsIn this they succeeded. L ow-paid wo r k e rs in a

high-tech economy, they managed to capture at t e n-tion nationwide as cast-offs of the unprecedentedgr owth in Silicon Va l l e y.Working relentlessly to try tomake ends meet, they have been left behind by ani n d u s t ry that has gr own faster and produced morewealth than any other in the history of the wo r l d .

At the World Trade Organization protests in Seat t l ein December, there was little talk of this vo l atile nexusof the world economy.And ye t ,according to one of theS e attle protesters , Raj Jayadev—a young Bay Area acti-vist who grew up in San Jose as the son of Indiani m m i grants—Silicon Valley brings together the keyissues raised by globalizat i o n .

“The labour stru g g l e , the environmental degr a-d at i o n , the inequities, the falling standards of living,the importance of immigr ation — it’s all played outon the shop flo o rs of Santa Clara County,” he say s.Jayadev describes how he worked on the assembly lineat Hewlett Pa c k a r d , lifting boxes with an electri c a le n gineer from the Punjab, an Eritrean with a degr e ein finance and a plant owner from Kerala, I n d i a , all ofwhom were acutely conscious of their drop in stat u s.

Some will alwa y sbe above others.Destroy the inequalityt o d a y,and it will appear againt o m o r r o w.Ralph Waldo Emers o n ,U. S. poet and essayist( 1 8 0 3 - 1 8 8 2 )

PACIFIC

OCEANSan Francisco

Bay

Golden Gate Bridge

San Mateo Bridge

San FranciscoOakland

Santa Clara

San Jose

N

San Ramon

San Mateo

Redwood Shores

Palo Alto

Sunnyvale

Cupertino

Bay Bridge


The Silicon Valley giants in turn argued that theyhad no responsibility for the wo r k e rs that the sub-c o n t r a c t o rs brought in to sweep their marble halls.Ja n i t o rs ’l e a d e rs ,h owe ve r ,h ave not hesitated to exploittheir position as a symbol of the vast disparities ofwealth in the area. “It was a larger question thatbrought so much at t e n t i o n :W h at are we going to dowith our poor in today ’s booming economy ? ” s ay sMike Garcia, the president of the local janitors ’u n i o n .“These people were working two to three jobs andt rying to raise a fa m i l y. M e a n w h i l e ,t h e y ’re cleaningthe edifices of the fil t hy ri c h , the ove rnight billio-naires and millionaires. H ow could they explain thattheir janitors are living two to three families in ag a r a g e ? ”

Tom Csekey, the union’s vice president, has spentthe last decade with Garcia building up union repre-s e n t ation among janitors in the Bay Area from about25 per cent of the janitorial workforce to more than75 per cent this ye a r. In 1996, they were able to get aliving wage ordinance passed in Los A n g e l e s ; t h e

u n i o n ’s recent struggles have centred on immigr at i o nissues and health insurance. “ We devised a strat e g ywhere we were able to talk not so much about wa g e sas about the conditions the wo r k e rs live in,” s ay sC s e k e y.“The backdrop was going to the clients ands ay i n g : ‘These people work within your wa l l s.Yo u ’ vegot some level of responsibility here.’ ”

And fin a l l y, faced with a chorus of protest fromother unions, C atholic bishops and local politicians,e xe c u t i ves at the biotech firm Genentech and thet e l e c o m m u n i c ations company Pa c i fic Bell we r eshamed into admitting responsibility for wo r k e rs theyhad refused to acknow l e d g e .

The contract the janitors settled in June,w i t h o u tgoing on stri k e , was the most generous in the historyof the union. It provides for an eight per cent annualincrease in their hourly pay over the next three ye a rs ,from $7.64 or $8.04,depending on which county theywork in, to $9.64 or $10.04. But that is hardly goingto help them move out of the conve rted garages theyl i ve in, where a small two-bedroom house can fetch$ 7 5 0 , 0 0 0 .

After prevailing both in the Bay Area and in LosA n g e l e s , the union is now concentrating on the jani-t o rs of Sacramento.The expiration of the contracts ithas just negotiated has been synchronized, so that inthree ye a rs , 14,000 janitors across California will beacting in concert .

The dispossessedMuch of the workforce of Silicon Valley is as ye t

u n o r g a n i z e d , from the crews at Internet start - u p swho work 14-hour days and camp out in their offic e sto the lower echelons. In the almost entirely non-unionized “clean rooms” t h at assemble circuits,A s i a nwo r k e rs are often wa ry of joining a union, s o m e t i m e sbecause their immigr ation status is uncert a i n .

But among the ranks of the janitors ,m a ny of whomare also undocumented, the Mexican tradition of orga-nizing is strong. “They understand the concept ofu n i o n i z at i o n ,”s ays Garcia.“ T h e y ’re not confused at allt h at our powe rs lie in our ability to come together.”

Garcia is anxious to make common cause with theincreasingly dispossessed middle classes.The stri k e ,he feels,has helped to turn around the climate of xe n o-phobia that swept through California over proposeda n t i - i m m i grant legi s l at i o n . “ People look at immi-grants in a much more positive vein today,” he say s ,“as hard-working people trying to advance them-s e l ve s.”

M a rianne Steeg, staff director of the South BayLabor Council, argues that the janitors ’s t rike helpedto draw attention to questions of the area’s socialc o n t r a c t , putting the need for affordable housing,t r a n s p o rt ation and health care firmly at the top of thepolitical agenda.

“School teachers , fir e m e n , health wo r k e rs — som a ny of our wo r k e rs who can no longer afford to livehere —no longer identify with the upper-middle class,but with the working poor,” she say s , adding that thes t rike put a dent in the shining armour of the high-techfirm s.“They can no longer claim that the prosperi t yof Silicon Valley means prosperity for all.” ■

Ke yi n d i c a t o rsPo p u l a t i o n( m i l l i o n s, 1 9 9 8 ) : 2 7 4

GNP ($ billions): 7 . 9 0 3

GNP per capita( $ ) : 2 9 , 2 4 0

Population belowincome poverty line of$14.40 a day, the norm forindustrialized countries (%):1 4 . 1


On strike: in Los Angeles, a member of the janitor’s union marches for better pay.


September 2000 -The UNESCO Courier 33

It all starts with a sense of powerlessness, sprin-ging from a paradox that can be formulated inmany different ways but which boils down to a

simple tru t h : humanity will have to make somepretty fundamental changes if it wants to surv i ve .Weclearly cannot rely on the main political and eco-nomic playe rs — i m p risoned in their agendas, h a m-pered by short-sightedness and practicalconstraints—to take up the challenge.Instead,it’sup to the ordinary citizens to organize on a globals c a l e , and change from being powerless to taking as t a n d , joining the debate and drafting a different wayforward.

The Charles Léopold Mayer1 Foundation forHuman Progress was set up in 1982 in Genevawith the aim of linking activism in the world tostudy of the future.At the time, our societies, t h o u g hricher and wiser than ever before, seemed singularlyunable to satisfy the hopesand most basic needs oftheir members. We hadto weave a closer relation-ship between thought anda c t i o n , b e t ween adva n c e sin knowledge and possibilities for human progr e s s.

The foundation started out by support i n ge n d e avo u rs that brought these elements together—a novelty at the time—but these initiat i ves stillremained isolated “ p r o j e c t s.” For example, o n eproject in Brazil invo l ved assistance in building a net-work across 10 regions to gather inform ation on tra-ditional branches of knowledge and contrast the fin-dings with modern science. In Tanzania, a projectaimed to improve agricultural training by making itmore attuned to small farmers’ needs.

While involved in these projects, we made twod i s c ove ri e s. F i rs t l y, we found that solutions to pro-blems must be made on the basis of each part i c u l a rsocial context, though the problems themselves arebroadly the same.A common denominator of issuescropped up in all the projects, no matter wherethey were taking place. But these shared characte-ristics were often hidden by the sheer complexity oflocal circumstances, ri gid mindsets, i n s t i t u t i o n a lfactors and different schools of knowledge.

This common denominator became the ve rybasis of our programmes, and explains the impor-tance we have attached to establishing netwo r k s.

Equipping some of our partners with Internet, apotentially formidable tool for democratic progr e s s ,has thus become one of the foundation’s priorities.

Our second discovery was that the most usefulknowledge for future action comes from practice,namely from one’s own experience and that of others– experience that must be identified and recorded soothers can learn from it. Hence the need to storeinformation and circulate it by creating a tool forcommunication that can become a type of “collec-t i ve intelligence.” Since 1986, the foundation has gr a-dually built up an intern ational database for shari n gexperience,establishing first of all norms for orga-nizing and distri buting the inform at i o n .To d ay, t h i sc o rpus of shared experience cove rs a wide area,from the geopolitics of drugs and social exclusion inAsia to the management of difficult neighbourhoodsin nort h e rn France and innovat i ve educat i o n a l

methods in Brazil. S o m e8,000 contri butions fromcitizens and local, regionaland national institutions,research centres and NGOsare gathered in the dat a -

base, while the Association of Chinese Mayors hasexpressed interest in adopting it for future use.

By enabling some of our netwo r k ’s members tobecome more knowledgeable than recognizedexperts in the field, these tools are among the keyelements that will help take “civil society” into itsthird historical phase.A first period of protest wasf o l l owed by part i c i p ation in major world foru m s ,t owhich we brought a critical vo i c e .N ow we are gea-ring up for a new era of initiat i ve by connecting thea l t e rn at i ve strat e gies and visions that people aroundthe world are searching for, weighing up and inve n-ting.All these alternatives are based on the simplepremise: think locally, act globally.

This new unity, built over time and striving to rea-lize a common goal through respect for the part i c u-l a rities of eve ry place, is the essence of the Alliance fora Responsible and United Wo r l d . Set up in 1993, it hasp a rt n e rs in 115 countri e s , and made its most recentproject a bid to “encourage the definition and prac-tical application of a form of ‘ world gove rn a n c e ’t h atmeets the challenges of the 21st century.” ■

+ …

The Foundation: http://www.fph.chThe Alliance for a Responsible and United World:

C o n n e c t e d and capable◗ Pierre Calame

F i rs t , civil society acted as an opposition forc e, then it brought a critical voice into major worldf o r u m s. Now the time has come to offer alternatives

◗ Director of the Foundation forHuman Progress (FPH)

1. Charles Léopold Mayer (1881-1971) was a philosopher,chemist,philanthropist and long-term investor. Thefoundation’s budget is exclusively financed by revenue fromhis wealth,to the tune of approximately $8 million a year.

We have oftenobserved thatt h e world has becomesmaller with thedevelopment of rapidcommunication andt r a n s p o r t a t i o n . In fact,h o w e v e r, t h e world hasbecome largera s millions of peopleleft out oft h e m a i n s t r e a mo f c i v i l i z a t i o nf o r centuries havecrowded their way intomodern society.Martin Luther King Jr,American religious leader andcivil rights activist (1929-1968)

I t ’s up to the ordinary citizenst o o rganize on a global scale,

a n d change from beingpowerless to taking a stand.

http://www.fph.ch


A s protest movements go,the mass gat h e rings that shou-ted down trade representat i ves and finance offic i a l sover the past year in Seat t l e ,Washington and Bang-

kok bore few of the hallmarks of traditional opposition.T h e r ewas no formal hierarchy to speak of, no single nat i o n a l i t y, n oclear shared cause. In the eyes of one pro-business gr o u p,t h enew genre of activism mimicked a political “ swa rm .”

Yet though the dive rsity of the groups—from nort h e rnsteel unions to disappearing tribes—seemed to many cri t i c slike rank incoherence, the move m e n t ’s leaders stress that thisve ry va riety stands at the heart of their political project. I nplace of the uniform spread of commercial va l u e s ,d e rided byleading U. S . campaigner Lori Wallach as a “one size fits allp h i l o s o p hy,” they plead for new distri bution of power that isporous enough to allow room for other interests.

“ T h e r e ’s been an invasion in inappropri ate spaces byu n a c c o u n t a b l e , unalterable trade ru l e s ,” declares Wa l l a c h ,whose public profile has soared since helping to c o - o r d i n at ethe Seattle protests as director ofthe Public Citizen’s Global Tr a d eWat c h . “A ve rsion of the rules hasbeen imposed that has much moreto do with corp o r ate input thanthe input from public interest . . . T h at ’s the democracyd e ficit in the global economy.”

In the eyes of campaigners , the rapid, g ove rn m e n t -a p p r oved spread of the free market has stripped politicald e b ate of any interest in the virtues that found a good societyor legi t i m ate global order.But the questions remain: h ow canthe corp o r ate bottom line be eclipsed with the least economicdamage? W h at reforms are needed, and where?

According to Walden Bello, e xe c u t i ve director of theBangkok-based Focus on the Global South, g l o b a l i z at i o nmust be rescued from its current “ m o n o l i t h i c, u n i f o rm andu n i ve rsalistic character” t h at has seen transnational corp o-r ations account for a majority of the wo r l d ’s exports and globalinequality more than double since 1960.

A chief culpri t ,he argues, is “the free market biases of thef r a m e work pushed by the trinity of the World Trade Orga-n i z ation (WTO) , the World Bank and the Intern ational Mone-t a ry Fund (IM F) , which are fundamentally antithetical to thes o rt of dive rse world that is conducive to equity. It is vital to◗ UNESCO Courier journalist

cut them down to size—make them just ordinarya c t o rs among a plural set of actors in the global eco-n o my.”

But the problem, as many activists agr e e , is thatthere are scanty fora for these demands to be heard andacted upon. N ational gove rnments are seen as weak inthe face of global fin a n c e , or in the case of deve l o p i n gn at i o n s ,h a m s t rung by the obligations of IM F- s p o n s o r e ddebt reduction programmes and foreign aid. B u s i n e s sitself has no wish to see its wings clipped, while inter-n ational bodies—from the United Nations to theWTO ’s infamous “ green room” trade talks, a l l e g e d l yd o m i n ated by rich nations—appear saddled with unde-m o c r atic structures and practices.The only way out,c a m p a i g n e rs argue, is a radical remake of gove rn a n c e .

In the short - t e rm , the pri o rities are clear. For Wa l-l a c h , the punch-drunk WTO must be swiftly leve l l e d :“ i t ’ss h rink or sink for the WTO,”she say s.“ M a ny of our cur-

rent env i r o n m e n t a l , l a b o u rand human rights agr e e-ments are illegal trade bar-ri e rs under WTO ru l e s.”Besides a shrunken trade

o r g a n i z at i o n , activists also call for the wo r l d ’s twomain lending bodies to be stripped of the power to pres-c ribe standard austerity packages. In Bello’s opinion,the IM F and World Bank need to be balanced by ana rr ay of other bodies including regional trading blocslike AS E A N,strong labour and environmental agencies,and an official body to represent developing coun-t ri e s.This would gi ve “more space to take independentp aths to deve l o p m e n t ,” he argues.

O ver the longer term , the proposals become hazier.Essentially defensive in nat u r e , few NGOs invo l ved inthe campaign against globalization have drawn updetailed blueprints for a new world power stru c t u r e .T h eideas that have been suggested tend to stress the needto reinforce global bodies so they can patrol the newbreed of footloose corp o r at i o n s , while bri n ging theroots of power down to the local leve l ,v i e wed as themost accountable level of democracy.Some gr o u p s ,l i k ethe Penang-based Third World Netwo r k ,a d vo c ates a

3 Po w e r p l a y sG o v e r n a n c e :time for a radical re m a ke◗ I van Briscoe

Despite their vastly different agendas, NGOs stand united in their plea for stemmingt h e power of transnational corporations through more plural global structure s

How can the corporate bottomline be eclipsed with the least

economic damage?

“ W h y, then thew o r l d ’s mine oyster,Which I with swordwill open.”The Merry Wives ofW i n d s o r, Wi l l i a mS h a ke s p e a re,English dramatist and poet( 1 5 6 4 - 1 6 1 6 )



N G O s: s e a rc h i n gfor solid gro u n d◗ Candido Grzybowski

The role of NGOs should be to foster the emergence of a worldwide civil society, the first stept o w a rds making globalization a more democratic affair

◗ Sociologist,director ofthe Institute of Social andEconomic Analysis (IBASE),Rio deJaneiro, Brazil

NGOs were not born ye s t e r d ay, but the ri s i n gnumber of conflicts that have reve r b e r at e din recent decades around a world globali-

zed in the neo-liberal mould has ledthem to multiply and dive rsify into highly visibleb o d i e s.

Who are the main playe rs in this process of glo-b a l i z ation? Gove rnments (politics) and the market

(the economy) are the twin pillars supporting thep r o d u c t i ve systems and structures of moderns o c i e t i e s. So who has the legi t i m ate right to changethem? The societies themselve s , for they aloneare made up of citizens grouped together as ap e o p l e , a nation or a country.The right does notbelong to gove rn m e n t s , s t ate stru c t u r e s , c o rp o-r ate exe c u t i ves or markets. This is why, a s

whole arsenal of global gove rn a n c e : a more demo-c r atic United Nations to include civil society repre-s e n t at i ve s , a code of ethics for worldwide bu s i n e s s e s ,and new global agencies for competition, i nve s t m e n tand cri m e .

Of all levels of gove rn a n c e ,the nat i o n - s t ate seems theleast favoured by NGOs. Either as a result of the flawe dd e velopment and environmental destruction forged byc o u n t ries such as Brazil and India since World War II, o ras a result of current political fa i l u r e s , few groups favo u rgiving gr e ater powe rs to national exe c u t i ve s. E ven Wa l-lach is quick to stress that unive rsal trade rules of abasic anti-tariff nature are essential.

In contrast, s e veral activists in developing countri e stout Europe, where the union’s powe rs appear to co-exist reasonably well with local and national decision-m a k i n g, as an at t r a c t i ve model. But the “ s ove r e i g n t ym i n d s e t ,” wa rns Jan A a rt Scholte, reader in Intern a-tional Studies at Bri t a i n ’s Unive rsity of Wa r w i c k ,remains strong:“people tend not yet to have the poli-tical imagi n ation to think of gove rnance beyond thes t ate as a place where their interests can be serve d .” I nthe case of proposed global environmental and labourprotection ru l e s , for instance, d e veloping countri e sh ave already cried foul.

For some NGOs,h owe ve r ,neither global reform norlocal powe rs are the key to gr e ater equity and sustainabled e ve l o p m e n t . I n s t e a d , the mission is to educat e ,enlighten and conve rt , so that the driving force of cor-p o r ate gr owth —the tastes of each global consumer—are restrained.“If the world lived like the A m e ricans orE u r o p e a n s ,” s ays Ngai Weng Chan, c h a i rman of theM a l aysian Nature Society,“ we would be doomed.” ■

“Stronghold.”


N G O s , our attention is directed at civil societyi t s e l f.

At the global leve l , our basic task is to foster theemergence of a worldwide civil society as a pre-condition to calling for a new style of globalizat i o n :“ world gove rn a n c e .” Our mission is to encou-rage the re-founding of globalization along mored e m o c r atic lines by taking part in public debat eand promulgating the concept of world citizenship.The political stances we take and our lobbyinga c t i v i t i e s , t h e r e f o r e , do not come out of the blue,but are efforts to transmit the main currents anda s p i r ations of public opinion and make this opi-nion stronger and clearer.

The tripartitem i ra g e

All NGO actionsare based on a ob-vious pri o ri t y, n a m e l yt h at of support i n gsocial protests andpublic pressure duri n gmajor negotiat i o n staking place withinthe main circles ofp owe r. T h at is whyt h e a greements weconclude and thealliances we forge area b ove all else aimedat organizations andm ovements ari s i n gfrom civil society.T h at is also why webuild foru m s , c o-alitions and netwo r k st h at straddle nat i o n a lb o r d e rs. On the basisof our approach, wecan think globally, s e tup links between thep a rticular and theu n i ve rs a l , swap expe-riences and keep ours e l ves regularly inform e d .

To d ay, global power is monopolized by majorm u l t i l ateral organizat i o n s , and is fundamentallya n t i - d e m o c r atic in its structure and wo r k i n g s. I ntheir current form , these organizat i o n s ’ claims toembody democracy and unive rsal citizenship ri n gh o l l ow. In fa c t , their only possible claim to legi t i-m a cy is through the vo t e . But not all the nat i o n a lg ove rnments represented in intern ational orga-n i z ations have been elected by popular suffrage,and ve ry few of them represent all the differentsocial forces that go into making up their nat i o n s.

Does this mean that NGOs, which are sup-posed to embody civil society, should claim torepresent these peoples? Does it mean that ourgoal should be to win a place at the heart of afuture new world democratic order? Does it meant h at we are fully entitled to a seat in some new tri-p a rtite structure—made up of gove rn m e n t , c o m-

panies and civil society—that some people arecampaigning for? In my opinion, all of that is justa mirage; e ven wo rs e , we risk losing sight of ourmost useful and most legi t i m ate purpose if weembrace that vision.

Small players,big issues

NGOs are not out to conquer power or wine l e c t i o n s , be they wo r l d ,n ational or local bodies.We are not set up like political part i e s , e ve nthough our activities are public and seem highlyp o l i t i c i z e d .We cannot even present ours e l ves asr e p r e s e n t at i ves of civil society because civilsociety has not entrusted us with any suchm a n d at e .

So what do we want? To reach out, m o b i l i z e ,e d u c at e , get acrossm e s s a g e s , s u g g e s t ,i n n ovat e ,p e rsuade andpolitically strengthenva rious groups in civilsociety and, more spe-c i fic a l l y, those excludedfrom the decision-making process. Wewant to gi ve a voice toi d e a s , va l u e s ,q u e s t i o n sand proposals thati nvo l ve social justice, amore equitable distri-bution of we a l t h , r e s-pect for the env i r o n-m e n t , the stru g g l eagainst pove rty andsocial exclusion.

Who are we? Smallp l aye rs , compared tothe other pillars of civils o c i e t y, such as tradeunions and profes-sional organizat i o n s ,o rbodies in the state orthe market. But we are

also—and this is something new—“big” p l aye rs ,because our mission and our field of action are notlimited to a gi ven society, n ational economy orsingle gove rn m e n t . Our task is to form a bri d g eb e t ween the local and the global: in other wo r d s ,to deal with what is unive rs a l , with what iscommon to all humanity. Human ri g h t s , s o c i a lc rises and environmental protection are globali s s u e s.We deal with them in specific situat i o n s , bu tour pers p e c t i ve is always planetary.

So where does our legi t i m a cy lie? In the qua-lity of the va l u e s ,p rinciples and ideals we defend.In the relevance and the importance of the issueswe raise. In the inve n t i veness of the proposals weput forwa r d . Our only source of legi t i m a cy is ourability to develop ideas aimed at action—ideas thatare up to the standards of public duty to which wea s p i r e . ■

“Planetary perspectives.”

E T H I C S


those day s. Questions surrounding the pros-pects of human embryo research (and therisks of new forms of eugenics) as well asresearch spurred by the mapping of thehuman genome, are generating new law sbased on consultation with national andi n t e rn ational ethics committees, along withmedical and research gr o u p s. This is themost public part of the debate, the issuesthat make headlines.

But medical ethics invo l ve far more thanthese issues, which are all essential to ima-gining the kind of “humanity” that we areembarking to create.Tomorrow’s society isbeing assembled day by day in the pri va cy of

■A d vances in life sciences and biotech-nology are stirring up a broad debateabout ethics. E x p e rt committees are

being called upon to bring ethical codes inline with genetic research deve l o p m e n t s ,assisted reproduction, p r e n atal screeningand the prospects for human cloning.

Standards for clinical reseach onhumans,spelt out in the 1947 NuremburgR u l e s , are now being challenged by medicala d vances and research unimaginable in

doctors’ surgeries. For medical ethics arealso being challenged by patients them-selves, and by practices that have becomeroutine.

A premium on efficiencyand performance

D o c t o rs are inevitably affected bysocietal changes, shifting aspirations andaccepted behavioural norm s.They alsoh ave to try, in their relationship withp at i e n t s , to reconcile ethical considera-tions with the new demands arising froma liberal society that puts high value on effi-c i e n cy, output and perform a n c e . This is

SP ORT MEDICINE :TO HEAL OR TO WIN ?◗ Philippe Liotard

On the eve of the Sydney Olympic Games, sport medicine is faced with ethical dilemmas thatstretch well beyond the domain of top-level competition

◗ Professor at the Sports Faculty of the Universityof Montpellier (France), co-founder of Quasimodomagazine

An all-out effort: coached by Russian gymnasts, the young South African Victor Mzimango gets ready to launch himself onto the parallel bars.

E T H I C S


especially true in the case of dru g - t a k i n g(or doping) in sport , which can be seen asthe logical outcome of a perform a n c e -based type of medical practice. O d d l ye n o u g h , discussion about doping is gene-rally reduced to a few clichés: it is brandedas unethical in light of an imagi n a ry spor-ting ideal. Calls are made for better dru g -testing and stiffer punishment for “ c h e at s ”and their accomplices. But this skates ove rthe real issue—the pressures of competi-tion in sport—and hides it even furt h e rfrom the public, d o c t o rs and authori t i e s.

Doping in high-pressure sports canhardly be equated with reckless or rashb e h av i o u r. On the contrary, it requires theconscious invo l vement of the competitorwho personally controls the state of hisor her own body and training.The at h l e t eis led to take drugs daily to reduce fat i g u eand to increase muscle powe r , or to recove rquickly from an injury or excessive trai-n i n g, for example. The scandal over theTour de France bicycle race in 1998s h owed how ri d e rs knowingly and pers o-nally take banned substances in order toendure tough training and back-to-backraces throughout a whole season.

So the real ethical debate rests solely onmedical practice. It means we should refle c ton how doctors respond to requests fromathletes at all leve l s , for doping is also onthe rise among amat e u rs and children.

The scandal over the Tour deFrance bicycle race in 19 9 8showed how riders knowinglyand personally ta ke banneds u b s tances in order to enduretough training and back-to-back races throughout a wholes e a s o n .

At the 43rd A m e rican HealthC o n gr e s s , held in Washington in Sep-tember 1996, Thomas H. M u rr ay, of theCenter for Biomedical Ethics at Case We s-t e rn Reserve Unive rsity (Cleve l a n d ,O h i o ) ,recounted how a mother asked for gr ow t hh o rmones for her son to improve his spor-ting perform a n c e . There are two fa c t o rsbehind this request. F i rs t , a d vances inmedical biotechnology have made it pos-sible to produce artificial horm o n e s.S e c o n d , the dri ve to win draws the doctorinto altering the body to make it performb e t t e r.

All medical codes of ethics condemnd o c t o rs acceding to such requests. T h eWorld Medical A s s o c i ation calls on eve ry

doctor to “oppose andrefuse to administer orc o n d o n e ” methods thataim at “an unnat u r a lincrease or maintenanceof performance duri n gc o m p e t i t i o n ” or which“ a rtificially change fea-tures appropri ate to ageand sex” (1981 Declara-tion on Principles ofHealth Care for SportM e d i c i n e , amended in1 9 9 9 ) .

Hormone boostsBut many doctors

must still deal with theconsequences of sport i n ga c t i v i t y. P hy s i o l o gi c a l l y,s p o rt depletes a pers o n ’sn atural reserve s ,e s p e c i a l l yh o rm o n e s. I n t e n s i ve train-ing for example, uses upthe male hormone testos-terone faster than thebody replaces it. A doctorcan put an athlete on sup-plements to make up fort h at loss, just as iron orvitamins are prescri b e dfor people lacking them.So a deficiency in thebody is made up forwithout any regard forw h at might have causedit in the first place—suchas malnutri t i o n , ove r wo r kor disease.

We do not yet have as e p a r ate branch of medi-cine dealing with perfor-m a n c e . So fa r , it is just afew doctors straying fromthe ori ginal purposes ofm e d i c i n e . In the ri c h e s tc o u n t ries and among theelites in poor nat i o n s ,such medicine is indemand as a medical prop to cope withthe new emphasis placed on perform a n c ein all spheres of life. This is also ve rysimilar in principle to anti-ageing treat-m e n t s , where health care is being adjustedto the fact that people are living longer.H o rmone replacement therapy in elderlypeople is aimed at “ i m p r oving the qualityof life to match the extra number of ye a rsg a i n e d ,” according to Dr. B runo Deli-g n i è r e s , head of the endocrinology serv i c eat the Necker Hospital in Pa ri s. Here too,h o rmonal adjustment is being prescri b e dbecause of progress in life sciences and

p at i e n t s ’ requests for drugs to alleviate theeffects of ageing.The doctor is respondingto a pers o n ’s natural desire to improvetheir physical condition. Just like cos-metic surgery and treatments for impo-t e n c e , which have been boosted by thei nvention of the drug V i a gr a , medicine ist u rning towards satisfying desires, s p u rr e dby images of well-being and yo u t h .T h epressure to get, maintain or preserve an“ e f fic i e n t ” body and a “ s l i m ” figure issteadily increasing. The same goes forreducing pain during childbirt h , old ageand of course in eve ry d ay life, w h i c h

The New York City marathon: a yearly event prizedby executive types, among others.

E T H I C S


includes sporting activity.So one might think there is nothing

wrong with prescribing drugs whichi m p r ove the quality of an at h l e t e ’s life,marked by intense physical activity. F i g h-ting against stress, r e c ove ring from long-t e rm fat i g u e , using anti-inflammat o ryd rugs to reduce pain caused by intensee xe rtion become normal gi ven sociale x p e c t ations of chemically-assisted we l l -b e i n g .

But testosterone and related products,such as nandrolone, are classified as ana-bolic steroids and are the substances mostfrequently detected during drug testing.When taken in big doses, together withs u f ficient food and training, t e s t o s t e r o n eincreases body mass, strength and musclep ower as well as aggressivity and resis-tance to fatigue and pain. C o rticoid dru g salso reduce pain and help a person to tireless easily. So these substances are ve rysuitable for easing the physical effects andp s y c h o l o gical pressures of competitives p o rt .

The crucial issue lies in deciding wheremedical efforts to restore equilibrium endand efforts to improve performance begi n .An art i ficial dividing line has been draw n .A scale has been devised to measure thequantity of “ s u p p l e m e n t s.” Medical testscan now detect if a person has taken“ u n r e a s o n a b l e ” amounts of substancest h at are no longer banned, but tolerated upto a certain point.

The good health riddleMedical ethics do not require a doctor

to ask whether someone is “ c h e at i n g ”under the rules of sport . A doctor does noth ave to take a stand on demands made infields other than his ow n .The problem ish ow to define the state of health that thedoctor aims for, not the level of doping.The World Medical A s s o c i at i o n ’s GenevaD e c l a r ation (adopted in 1948 andamended in 1983) is clear: “The health ofmy patient will be my first considera-t i o n ,” a doctor is supposed to pledge. S oit naturally condemns “procedures tomask pain or other protective symptomsif used to enable the athlete to take partin an event when lesions or signs are pre-sent which make his part i c i p ation inad-v i s a b l e .”

D o c t o rs (in sport or otherwise) whoengage in these practices are not perfor-ming their duty towards patients (whichi nvo l ves prescribing a halt to painful acti-vity) but are complying with the demandsof sport . From an ethical standpoint, adesired performance must not be takeninto account in the course of diagnosis or

t r e at m e n t . Medical ethics condemn anyaction dictated by interests or pressures notr e l ated to the goal of good health.

This is where the debate gets reallyt ri c k y, because in modern parlance andin the language of doping in sport , g o o dhealth is understood to mean the absenceof illness or lasting after-effects. H owe ve r ,since 1940, the World Health Organizat i o nhas defined good health as a combineds t ate of phy s i c a l , emotional and socialwe l l - b e i n g . The Centre for Health Pro-motion at the Unive rsity of To r o n t o, p o i n t sout that good health is not an end in itselfbut a means to a balanced life.

This makes good health a quest forwell-being based on individual aspirat i o n s

in a particular social and cultural context.Put this way, it becomes something extre-mely subjective and changeable accordingto the time and place as well as the sex, a g eand social class of the person invo l ve d .Each individual decides on the basis ofhis or her own life and cultural env i r o n-ment a relationship to we l l - b e i n g, p a i nand illness.

S p o rt presents doctors with a paradox .Most of them believe physical activity

makes for a balanced life. But they arealso well aware that competition upsetsthis balance, and that chemical-based treat-ments can be prescribed to supplementd e f i c i e n c i e s. If they respond to suchd e m a n d s , they are only reinforcing thea l i e n ating emphasis put on performance atall costs, of which sport is just the mosts t riking example.

Scienceat the altarof performance?

But doctors can still, without anyqualms of conscience, refuse to play thegame and deplore the effects of a hecticlife-style imposed by the obligation top e r f o rm . Acting in the interest of pat i e n t s ’we l fare invo l ves teaching them how top u rsue a balanced life. A doctor’s duty isto tell patients why they are ill. If thiscan be done without problem where obe-sity and the dangers of smoking or dri n-king are concern e d , the same goes wherethe dangerous effects of sport arei nvo l ve d .

S p o rt medicine is a forerunner of themedicine of the future—a medicine atthe behest of institutions in the bu s i n e s sof boosting effic i e n cy. It runs the risk ofu s h e ring in a common norm dictat i n gp e o p l e ’s appearance (through cosmetics u r g e ry ) , character (through prenatal dia-gnosis) and social behav i o u r , n a m e l ythrough the demand for performance inall fie l d s , be it professional, sexual or spor-t i n g . ■

ET HICS: THE TA BL ETS OF STONEThe Hippocratic Oath“I swear by Apollo the Physician, and Aesculapius,and health, and all-heal, and all the Gods and God-desses, that, according to my ability and judgment,I will keep this oath and stipulation:(...) I will follow that method of treatment which,according to my ability and judgment, I consider forthe benefit of my patients, and abstain from wha-tever is deleterious and mischievous. I will give nodeadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggestany such counsel. (...) Into whatever houses I enter,I will go into them for the benefit of the sick and willabstain from every voluntary act of mischief andcorruption. (...) While I continue to keep this oathunviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life andthe practice of the art, respected by all men at alltimes, but should I trespass and violate this oathmay the reverse be my lot.”

The Olympic Charter, inspired by Pierrede Coubertin, responsible for revivingthe Olympic Games in 1896“Olympism is a philosophy of life which glorifies thequalities of the body, the will and the mind by uni-fying them into a perfectly balanced entity. Unitingsport, culture and education, Olympism wishes tocreate a way of life based on contentment born ofeffort, on the educational value of setting theexample and on the respect of universal ethical prin-c i p l e s . ”

The Olympic Charter against Dopingin SportThe International Olympic Committee in Fe b r u a ry1999 defined doping as “the administration or useof prohibited classes of drugs and of bannedmethods.” ■

Sport medicine is a forerunnerof the medicine of the future –a medicine at the behesto f institutions in the businessof boosting effic i e n cy.

S I G N S O F T H E T I M E S


You spent three weeks in Kosovo in October1999 documenting damage to culturalheritage. What were your main findings?

K o s ovo ’s 600-year-old Islamic heri t a g esuffered large-scale deva s t ation during the“ethnic cleansing”o p e r at i o n s.More than onethird of the regi o n ’s 600 mosques were des-t r oyed or seriously damaged.A standard tech-nique was to pack the base of the minaret withe x p l o s i ves so that the stone spire would col-lapse onto the building and smash the dome.We found racist anti-Albanian and anti-Isla-mic gr a fitti inside,Korans with pages ri p p e dout and smeared with feces, and crosses car-ved into the mosques’ m i h ra b s [ p r ayer niche].Valuable collections of Islamic manuscri p t swere bu rn e d .The 500-year-old mosque andh i s t o ric centre of Vu c i t rn was set afire andcompletely bulldozed by Serb paramilitari e s.Of Kosovo ’s four we l l - p r e s e rved Ottoman-era urban centres,only one, P ri z r e n ,e s c a p e dsuch deva s t at i o n .

The other gr e at loss are the k u l l a s —s t o n emansions typical of Albanian residential archi-t e c t u r e .They tended to belong to the moreprominent Albanian families and had been inthe same hands for 150-200 ye a rs. As suchthey were filled with art i facts and documentsand were regarded as symbols of A l b a n i a nculture in Kosovo. Barely ten per cent of ther e gi o n ’s 500 k u l l a s s u rv i ved the wa r.All thisd e m o n s t r ates that the damage was clearly notc o l l at e r a l . It was ve ry intentional.

There have been allegations that the Serbianheritage also suffered damage.

As soon as the conflict broke out, B e l gr a-d e ’s Inform ation Ministry and several conser-vation institutes claimed that NATO was deli-b e r ately targetting Serbian pat rimonial sites.We visited each one of the sites for whichdamage was claimed and found these allega-tions to be unsubstantiat e d .At the end of thewa r ,K F O R1 troops were stationed to guardthe most famous monasteries and churches.

H owe ve r ,m a ny village churches became easytargets for revenge by returning Kosovar vil-l a g e rs.A majority of the attacked bu i l d i n g swere built in the 20th century, and quite alarge number during the 1990s.These we r eseen as political monuments and were espe-cially targetted. Since the end of the wa r ,a sfar as we can tell, about 40 churches have beenbadly damaged and 40 vandalized to somee x t e n t .While most were modern , about adozen were genuinely ancient stru c t u r e s.

Where do reconstruction efforts stand? The buildings being restored are those that

can be fixed quickly, which means concreteframe modern bu i l d i n g s. U n f o rt u n at e l y, t h eUN agencies in charge in Kosovo don’t havemuch of a budget for reconstruction projectsand the fate of cultural heritage has not rankedve ry high among the intern ational commu-n i t y ’s concern s. Our Kosovo Cultural Heri-tage Project recently obtained funding for ther e c o n s t ruction of three damaged histori c a lmonuments in Kosovo2. Another initiat i veenabled the Institute for the Protection ofMonuments of Kosovo to clear the ru b b l e ,stabilize and cover with plastic sheeting closeto 100 of the most endangered histori c

bu i l d i n g s. In the case of the mosques, S a u d i -based Islamic aid agencies are bri n ging theirown sectarian agenda to reconstru c t i o n , as ithappened in Bosnia.They notably frown onall decorations and consider some practicescommon elsewhere in the Muslim world tobe ve r ging on the idolat r o u s.

Are the Albanians intent on rebuilding theirheritage at this point?

There is a tremendous desire to rebu i l dtheir own heri t a g e . People are immenselyd e voted to it and that ’s why it was targetted.But there is a lack of funding, and above all,a lack of expert i s e .Through our project, wehope to establish methodologies adapted tothe local context and foster links between localand foreign professionals. ■

Interview by Cynthia Guttman, UNESCO Courier journalist

◗ András Riedlmayer, Aga Khan Program Bibliographerat Harvard’s Fine Art Library, conducted the KosovoCultural Heritage Survey in October 1999 with colleagueAndrew Herscher, an architect and architectural historian.

KOSOVO: BURNED BOOK SA ND BLAS T ED SHRINESKosovo’s cultural heritage was deliberately targetted during the 1998-1999 conflict saysHarvard University’s András Riedlmayer ◗, co-author of the first survey assessing the damage

The ruins of the kulla of Jashar Pasha, burned in May 1999 by Serbs.

1. KFOR is a NATO-lead international forceresponsible for establishing a security presence inKosovo under a UN mandate.2. The restoration and training project will becarried out in association with a Boston-basedNGO, Friends of Bosnia, and local authoritiesinvolved in cultural heritage in Kosovo.



◗ Cultural heritage expert, former director of the UNESCO

office in Sarajevo

CRIMES AG A INS TCULT URE◗ Colin Kaiser

In the former Yugoslavia, the destruction of cultural heritage erased a common identity in citiesand fulfilled an archaic dream in the countryside

t h at generals and politicians are being prose-cuted by the Intern ational Criminal Tri bunal forthe former Yu g o s l av i a .

Other terms emerged during these wa rs :“ u r b i c i d e ” to describe the bombing of citiessuch as Mostar and Sarajevo in Bosnia andH e r z e g ov i n a ,and “cultural cleansing” or “ c u l-tural genocide” to indicate the fate of mosques,c h u r c h e s ,m u s e u m s ,a r c h i ve s ,l i b r a ri e s ,s c h o o l s ,and so on. I n e v i t a b l y, these terms were part ofa propaganda wa r , but all too often, t h e yr e flected the new landscapes of Croat i a ,B o s n i aand Herzegov i n a ,and more recently,of Kosovo.

The deliberate destruction in wa rtime ofcultural heritage is no historical nove l t y.S o m e-times destruction has been an affair of pillagi n g

■In 1991, in the early days of the ColdWa r ’s end, We s t e rn Europeans we r eshaken by television images of a dow n p o u r

of explosives falling upon the sleepy littleDanube town of Vu k ova r , and plumes ofs m o k e snaking their way over Dubrov n i k ,“ t h ej e wel of the A d ri at i c ” and a World Heri t a g es i t e . From 1991 to 1999, c o u n t ries of thef o rmer Yu g o s l avia were subjected to wa r.W h i l em o d e r ate commentat o rs referred to a cam-paign of “ethnic cleansing,” those targeted bythe violence spoke of “ g e n o c i d e .” It is preciselyon this count and for crimes against humanity

for profit , at others it has been part of thewidely recognized right to annihilate thee n e my.D u ring World War I,churches and oldt own centres were reduced to rubble out ofm i l i t a ry necessity.D u ring World War II, l a r g eG e rman urban centres disappeared as partof strat e gic “area bombing” by Common-wealth airforces.

But there are other reasons.The phy s i c a lgenocide of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis wa saccompanied by a cultural genocide—the des-t ruction of synagogues, c e m e t e ries and otherlandmarks and treasures.

In the case of the former Yu g o s l av i a , t h eh e ritage sites destroyed for purely military rea-sons were few and far betwe e n . H i s t o ry

A church destroyed in Croatia during fighting around Lipik.



T HE MOS TAR BRIDGE :REBIRTH OF AN EMBL EM

It took no more than 30 minutes for Stari Most(“The Old Bridge”), the emblematic symbol of

Mostar’s multicultural past, to be destroyed bybombardment from a Croatian army tank onNovember 9, 1993. Completed in 1566 after nineyears of work, the bridge, designed by the Ottomanarchitect Mimar Hayruddin, once rose high abovethe emerald waters of the Neretva, connecting itseast and west banks.

The 29-metre-long stone arch bridge, a WorldHeritage site, gave the town its name and stimulatedits blossoming from a tiny medieval settlement to athriving trading centre that attracted merchants andt ravellers from across the region. This is where loca lcouples romanced and young men dove into theriver below in a famed annual contest. At the out-break of the war, inhabitants cushioned the bridgewith car tyres in an attempt to protect the struc-ture. It was first damaged in 1992 by Yugoslav Armyshelling.

As soon as the bridge was destroyed, loca larchitects and heritage experts who had fled the citystarted building a network to plan the reconstruc-tion. In 1997, Hungarian military divers from theNATO-led peackeeeping force in Bosnia salvagedthe bridge’s stone blocks from the river bed andhoisted them from the water with technical assis-tance from the Hungarian bridge building com-pany Hídépítö Rt. In 1998, UNES CO, the World Bankand the City of Mostar launched a project to rebuildthe bridge. Due to extensive damage, less of the sal-vaged stonework will be reused than expected andstones will likely be extracted from a nearby quarryused by Stari Most’s builders.

And Mostarians are already preparing to seetheir city’s emblem resurrected. More precisely,the party begins on September 15, 2004 at 5 p.m.,a date chosen in the midst of the war by Mostarianarchitects whose life work is now dedicated torebuilding their town. ■

reminds us that sacral buildings have beend e s t r oyed time and time again in the Balkans.The longstanding belief that the Ottomana rm i e s , in the 15th century, were gentle withC h ristian heritage might well be a my t h .L at e r ,in the 19th century, the conquering Hapsbu r ga rmies and Catholic administrat o rs in Croat i at u rned a handful of mosques into churches andd e s t r oyed the rest.More recently,d u ring Wo r l dWar II, m a s s i ve destruction of SerbianO rt h o d ox churches was carried out in Croat i aand parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the fa s-cist Ustasha forces. Ruins in Eastern Slavo n i aand Krajina,prominently Serb areas of Croat i a ,stand as tangible reminders of this peri o d .

But the more recent events are of a sin-gularly different nat u r e .We are not referring to

foreign powe rs invading a terri t o ry and swe e-ping aside eve rything in their wa k e .We are inthe presence of old societies which were tosome extent integr at e d , but in the process ofbreaking up.The Serbian inhabitants of Croa-tian Krajina were not newcomers to the regi o nin 1991. C r o at s , Muslims and Serbs havel i ved together in Bosnia and Herzegov i n asince the 16th century.And more recently, i nthe 20th century,m i xed marriages in cities andt owns played a significant role in we aving thesocial fa b ri c. In the country s i d e ,where peopleoften settled by ethnic belongi n g, the situat i o nwas different. A c c o r d i n g l y, d u ring the wa r ,when Muslims, C r o at s , Serbs or Kosova rAlbanians were chased out of their villageswhile their mosques and churches were mined

or bu rn e d , it was the “other”—“the forei-gner”—who was being removed from ther e gi o n .The public dream of the nat i o n a l i s t s(and sometimes the unavowed secret dream ofthe villagers) was thus fulfil l e d : to be finally atp e a c e , alone among our own people. T h emythical pure rural world was creat e d .

In the cities and towns of Bosnia and Her-z e g ov i n a , d e s t ruction had a different signifi-c a n c e . It was common to hear in Sarajevoand Mostar that synagogues, C h ri s t i a nchurches and mosques are only 100 metresfrom each other.This may not in fact be tru e ,but in people’s minds, it wa s.The cities enjoye dgr e at religious foundations and were hometo the finest Ottoman sacral heri t a g e .A senseof integr ation had developed through acommon attachment to places and shareds p a c e s.The coexistence of religious traditionsp r ovided people with a common sense ofow n e rship of sacral heri t a g e .S e r b s ,M u s l i m sand Croats also took equal pride in theirsecular bu i l d i n g s , such as the Sarajevo Nat i o n a land Unive rsity Library.

“Ethnicized” herita g eAll this was profoundly changed by wa r.

Although we perceive destruction as barbari c,it is seen as an act of creation in the eyes of itsp e rp e t r at o rs. In the countryside of Croat i aand Bosnia and Herzegov i n a , it was the crea-tion—or the liberation—of a mythical ru r a ls o c i e t y, with the symbols of the unwa n t e dother—his minarets or church steeples—eli-m i n ated from the hori z o n .But in the cities ofBosnia and Herzegov i n a , a common civicidentity was destroye d , and along with it, t h e“ o t h e r ” inside the people. Secular and sacralh e ritage became ethnicized: before the wa r ,nobody in Mostar would have said that the OldB ridge was a “ M u s l i m ” m o n u m e n t . Its des-t ruction by Croat tanks turned it into one. I nBosnia and Herzegov i n a , the impove ri s h m e n tof the post-war cities is appalling, not simplybecause they are largely emptied of anotherethnic group or of gr e at sacral bu i l d i n g s.T h es u rviving bu i l d i n g s , e ven intact, are simplyghosts from another age: the “ o t h e r ” has beene l i m i n ated at all leve l s , inside people and out-side on the streets.

In this context, the restoration and rebu i l-ding of cultural heritage can take on politicaland dow n right divisive dimensions: it is nolonger a question of rebuilding what was heldin common, but only “ w h at was ours.” T h etechnical problems of reconstruction are infi-nitely less important than the “ d e - e t h n i c i z a-t i o n ” of heri t a g e , and it is difficult to imagi n eh ow the Balkan societies will be able to ove r-come this problem.The only hope of restori n ga once commonly held landscape lies in acommitment to do so by the ethnic or nat i o n a lgroup that carried out the cri m e s. ■

C O N N E X I O N S


children who had only played games withhuman opponents, reaction to this objectwas intense. For example, while Merlin fol-lowed an optimal strategy for winning tic-tac-toe most of the time, it was progr a m m e dto make a slip eve ry once in a while. S o

when children discovered strat e gies thata l l owed them to win and then tri e dthese strat e gies a second time, they usuallywould not wo r k . The machine gave theimpression of not being “dumb enough” t olet down its defences twice.Robert,seven,

■Children have always used their toysand playthings to create models foru n d e rstanding their wo r l d . Fifty ye a rs

ago, the genius of Swiss psychologist JeanPiaget showed it is the business of childhoodto take objects and use how they “ wo r k ”t oconstruct theories of space,time,number,c a u s a l i t y, life and mind. At that time, ac h i l d ’s world was full of things that could beunderstood in simple, mechanical ways. Ab i cycle could be understood in terms of itspedals and gears, a windup car in terms ofits clockwork springs. Children were ablet o take electronic devices such as basicradios and (with some difficulty) bring theminto this “mechanical” system of unders-tanding.

Revisiting MerlinBut in the early 1980s, a first generat i o n

of computer toys changed the traditionalstory.When children removed the back oftheir computer toys to “ s e e ” h ow theyworked, they found a chip, a battery, andsome wires. Sensing that trying to unders-tand these objects “physically” would leadto a dead end,children tried to use a “psy-c h o l o gi c a l ” kind of unders t a n d i n g . T h e yasked themselves if the games we r econscious, if they had feelings and even ifthey knew how to “cheat.” Earlier objectsencouraged children to think in terms of adistinction between the world of psychologyand the world of machines, but the com-puter did not. Its “ o p a c i t y ” e n c o u r a g e dchildren to see computational objects aspsychological machines.

Among the first generation of compu-t ational objects was Merlin, which chal-lenged children to games of tic-tac-toe. Fo r

CUDDL ING UPTO CY BORG BA BIES◗ Sherry Turkle

A “cybershrink” traces relations between children and their electronic pets and computer toysover three generations

◗ Professor in the Program in Science, Technology andSociety at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)and author of numerous articles and several books onpeople’s relationships with technology, especiallycomputers. Her most recent book is Life on the Screen:Identity in the Age of the Internet (Simon and Schuster,1995 Touchstone paperback, 1997). Virtual pets: nine-year-old Zhu Ying tries out a Tamagotchi in a Beijing store.

C O N N E X I O N S


playing with his friends on the beach, wat-ched his friend Craig perform the “ w i n-ning tri c k ,” but when he tried it, M e r l i ndid not slip up and the game ended in adraw.

R o b e rt , confused and fru s t r at e d ,t h r e wMerlin into the sand and said,“Cheater. Ihope your brains break.” He was ove r h e a r dby Craig and Greg, aged six and eight, w h os a l vaged the by-now ve ry sandy toy andtook it upon themselves to set Roberts t r a i g h t . “Merlin doesn’t know if it cheat s ,”s ays Craig. “It doesn’t know if you break it,R o b e rt . I t ’s not alive .” Greg adds, “ I t ’ssmart enough to make the right kinds ofn o i s e s. But it doesn’t really know if it loses.And when it cheats it don’t even know it’sc h e at i n g .” Je n ny, s i x ,i n t e rrupts with disdain:“Greg, to cheat you have to know you arecheating.Knowing is part of cheating.”

In the early 1980s such scenes were notu n u s u a l . Confronted with objects thats p o k e ,s t r at e gized and “ wo n ,” children we r eled to argue the moral and metaphy s i c a ls t atus of machines on the basisof their psychologies: did themachines know what they we r edoing? Despite Jenny’s objec-tions that “ k n owing is part ofc h e at i n g,” children did come tosee computational objects as exhi-biting a kind of know i n g . By doings o, they recast the Piagetian framewo r kin which a definition of life centred around“moving of one’s own accord.”

Observing children in the world of the“traditional”—that is non-computional—o b j e c t s , Piaget found that at first they consi-dered eve rything that moved to be alive .Then only things that moved without anoutside push or pull. Gradually, childrenrefined the notion to mean “life motions,”namely only those things that breathed andgrew were taken to be alive.

Motion gives wayto emotion

Children broke with this orderly cate-g o ri z ation by making distinctions about“machines that think.” Their discussionsabout the computer’s aliveness came tocentre on what the children perceived as thecomputer’s psychological rather than phy-sical properties. To put it simply, motiongave way to emotion and physics gave wayto psychology as criteria for aliveness.

In the 1980s, the computational objectst h at evoked “ a rt i ficial life” (the “ S i m ”s e ri e s ,for example, assigns the task of creating afunctioning ecosystem or city) strained thatorder to the breaking point. Children stillt ried to impose strat e gies and cat e g o ri e s , bu tthey did so in the manner of theoretical

b ri c o l e u rs , or tinkerers , making do withwhatever materials were at hand and witha ny theory that fit a prevailing circum-s t a n c e . When children confronted thesenew objects and tried to construct a t h e o ryabout what is alive , we were able to s e ethem cycling through theories of “ a l i ve-ness.”

“Sort of alive”robots

An eleven-year-old named Holly wat-ched a group of robots with “ o n b o a r d ”c o m p u t ational intelligence nav i g ate a maze.As the robots used different strategies toreach their goal, Holly commented on their“personalities”and “cuteness.” She finallycame to speculate on the robots’ “ a l i ve-ness” and blurted out an unexpected for-mulation:“It’s like Pinocchio [the story ofa puppet brought to life]. First Pinocchiowas just a puppet. He was not alive at all.Then he was an alive puppet.Then he wasan alive boy. A real boy. But he was alivee ven before he was a real boy. So I think therobots are like that . They are alive likePinocchio but not like real boy s.” S h ecleared her throat and summed up:“Theyare sort of alive.”

Robbie, a ten-year-old who has beengi ven a modem for her birt h d ay, put the

emphasis on mobility when she consi-dered whether the creat u r e s

s h e has evo l ved whilec r e ating a vir-tual ecosystemthrough thegame SimLifewere alive.“Ithink they area little alive inthe game, but

you cannots ave your game [when you turn it off], so thatall the creatures you have evo l ved go away. B u tif they could figure out how to get rid of thatp a rt of the programme so that you wo u l dh ave to save the game and if your modemwere on, then they [the creatures] could getout of your computer and go to A m e ri c aOnline [an Internet Service Provider].”

The resurfacing of motion (Piaget’sclassical criterion for how a child decideswhether a “ t r a d i t i o n a l ” object is alive) isn ow bound up with notions of a presumedp s y c h o l o g y : children are most likely toassume that the creatures in Sim gamesh ave a desire to “get out” of the systemand evo l ve in a wider computational wo r l d .

Through the 1990s, children still spokeeasily about fa c t o rs which encouraged themto see the “ s t u f f” of computers as the same“stuff” of which life is made. I observed a

group of seve n - year-olds playing with a setof plastic transformer toys that can takethe shape of armoured tanks, r o b o t s , o rpeople.The transformers can also be putinto intermediate states so that a “robot”arm can protrude from a human form or ahuman leg from a mechanical tank. Twoof the children are playing with the toys,mixing human and machine parts. A thirdchild insists that this is not right.The toys,he say s , should not be placed in hy b ri ds t at e s. “ You should play them as all tank orall people.”An eight-year-old girl comfort sthe now upset third child. “ I t ’s okay to playthem when they are in-between.It’s all thesame stuff,” she said,“just yucky computer‘cy-dough-plasm.’”

This comment reflects a cy b o r gconsciousness among today ’s children: atendency to see computer systems as “sortof” alive, to fluidly cycle through variouse x p l a n at o ry concepts, and to willingly trans-gress boundaries.

Feelings forFurby

Most recently, the transgressions haveinvolved relationships with “virtual pets”and digital dolls (the first and most popularof these were Tamagotchis and Furbies)which raise new questions about the boun-d a ries of what children consider as life.What these objects have that earlier com-p u t ational objects did not is that they ask thechild for nurturance.They ask the child toassess the object’s “state of mind”in orderto develop a successful relationship withthe object. For example, in order to growand be healthy, Tamagotchis (imagi n a ryc r e atures “ h o u s e d ” in small screeneddevices) need to be fed, cleaned anda m u s e d . Going a step furt h e r , the furryelectronic pets called Furbies simulate lear-ning and lov i n g .They are cuddly, they speakand play games with the child. Furbies addthe dimensions of human-like conve rs a-tion and tender companionship to the mixof what children can anticipate from com-putational objects. In my research on chil-dren and Furbies, I have found that whenchildren play with these new objects theywant to know their “ s t at e ,” not to get some-thing “ ri g h t ,” but to make the Furbiesh a p p y. Children want to understand Furbylanguage, not to “win” in a game over theF u r b i e s , but to have a feeling of mutualr e c o g n i t i o n .They do not ask how the objects“ wo r k ,” they take the affectively chargedtoys “at interface value.”

In my previous research on childrenand computer toys,children described thelife-like status of machines in terms of theirc o g n i t i ve capacities (the toys could “ k n ow ”

C O N N E X I O N S


t h i n g s ,“ s o l ve ”p u z z l e s ) . In my more recents t u d i e s , children describe the new toy s ,Furbies, as “sort of alive,” which reflectstheir emotional attachments to the toys andtheir fantasies that the Furby might be emo-tionally attached to them.When asked whe-ther the Furbies are alive , children tendnot to speak about what the toy can do andfocus instead on their feelings for the “ p e t ”and how it might feel about them.

Emotional vulnerability“Well, the Furby is alive for a Furby,”

says Ron, six. “And you know, somethingthis smart should have arm s. It might wa n tto pick up something or hug me.” Kathe-ri n e , age five ,a s k s : “Is it alive? We l l , I love it.It’s more alive than a Tamagotchi becauseit sleeps with me. It likes to sleep with me.”Je n , age nine, focuses not on what the objectoffers her, but what she can do for it. “Ireally like to take care of it.So, I guess it isalive, but it doesn’t need to really eat, so itis as alive as you can be if you don’t eat. AFurby is like an ow l . But it is more alive thanan owl because it knows more and you cantalk to it. But it needs batteries so it is notan animal. It’s not like an animal kind ofalive.”

Today’s children are learning to distin-guish between an “animal kind of alive ”

and a “Furby kind of alive .”The cat e g o ry of“sort of alive” becomes increasingly used.Pe r c e i ved intelligence or “ k n ow i n g ” is ano-ther key distinction.

Over the past five decades, research ina rt i ficial intelligence has not even comeclose to creating a machine as intelligent asa person. But it has succeeded in contri-buting to a certain deflation of our lan-guage in terms of how we use the wo r di n t e l l i g e n c e . It is now commonplace to talkabout intelligent machines when we reallyare talking about machines that play chessor assess mortgage applicat i o n s.These feat sare wo n d r o u s , but intelligence used to meana gr e at deal more than that .We now face theprospect of a similar deflation of languagein talking about affect and emotion. Chil-dren talk about an “animal kind of alive”and a “Furby kind of alive.”Will they alsotalk about a “people kind of love” and a“computer kind of love”?

These questions bring us to a differentworld from the old “AI [art i ficial intelligence]d e b at e s ” of the 1960s to 1980s in whichr e s e a r c h e rs argued about whether machinescould be “ r e a l l y ”i n t e l l i g e n t .The old debat ewas essentialist. The new objects sidestepsuch arguments about what is inherent inthem and play instead on what they evoke inu s : when we are asked to care for an object,

when this cared-for object thri ves and offersus its attention and concern , we experi e n c eit as intelligent, but more import a n t , we feela connection to it.The old AI debates we r eabout the technical abilities of machines.T h enew ones will be about the emotional vulne-rabilities of people. ■

W EBSITE OF THE MON T Hh t t p : / / w w w. u n i c e f . o r g

Nearly everyone is familiar with the UnitedNations Children’s Fund through its greeting

cards. Yet the activities of this 1965 Nobel Pe a c ePrize laureate go far beyond Christmas fund-ra i-sing. Its programmes on child health, nutrition,e d u cation and labour operate in 161 countries, afar cry from its original mandate in 1946 to meetthe emergency needs of children in post-warEurope and China.

Today, the organization continues to providerelief and humanitarian assistance to every troublespot in the world. Its website offers a wealth ofinformation—teaching aids, games, photos, aswell as full-text versions of many publica t i o n ssuch as its annual report, The State of the Wo r l d ’ sC h i l d re n. ■

Rest in peace: Tamagotchis even have their own graveyards, the ultimate reflection of their quasi-human status.

I N T E R V I E W


T IM BERNERS - L EE :T HE WEB’S BRA INCHIL DA staunch idealist, the British inventor of the World Wide Web is worth more than his weightin gold. Tim Berners-Lee has shunned opportunities in the private sector to captain aninternational consortium grouping the Web’s who’s who. His foremost goal: to keep onimproving the Web for the common good.

How do you account for the Web’s formidablegrowth in the last 10 years?

The Web initially spread because of exis-ting Internet infrastructure set up during the1970s. By the time I had the idea for theWeb at the end of the 80s, computers inm a ny unive rsities and institutes in theUnited States and in Europe were alreadyconnected to each other by cables exchan-ging inform at i o n . So you have to gi ve creditto those pioneers who put together such a

network before the Web’s arrival.The Web spread fast because it wa s

decentralized and no one was controlling itsgrowth.The fact that anybody can start aserver or run a browser,without having toregister with any central authority, is whata l l owed it to gr ow rapidly.There were enthu-siasts all over the world who realized whatthe world could be with the Web anddirected their efforts at developing it.

Also the Web’s openness is a powerful

at t r a c t i o n . E ve ryone can not only readwhat’s on the Web but can also contributeto it. Everybody is in a sense equal.Thissense of boundless opportunity also led toits remarkable growth.

Does the Web stand to benefit those traditionallyon the margins of technological innovation?

It is obvious that the present imbalancein society is unhealthy for the whole wo r l d .But do not look to innovations alone for sol-

I N T E R V I E W


ving global issues. It is for people to makedecisions on how to manage themselve sand it requires a lot of effort on all sides tos o l ve va rious problems. We ’ ve had manytools in the past and Internet can be anothertool in addressing those challenges.

The basic idea of the Web is that it is ani n f o rm ation space through which peoplecan communicate, but communicate in aspecial way, by sharing their knowledge ina pool.The Web is more of a social creat i o nthan a technical one. It has not changed any-thing fundamentally in the way humanbeings think, read and communicate witheach other. It has gi ven people gr e at e rchoice than ever before by simply prov i-ding information. Advantages of the Webrange from enhanced collaboration bet-ween people in different countries to readinga newspaper sitting in a remote village.

Though the Web has gi ven us manyc h o i c e s , we still don’t know how to usethose choices to our advantage. I hope thefact that each individual has more choicenow will give us greater power to reformu-late our society.

In your book Weaving the Web, you talkabout the danger of the Web being controlledby a select group of companies or commercialdeeds blocking its growth. What would theconsequences be?

The danger is when large companiest h at sell computers and software effective l ys t a rt to control what inform ation you receiveon the Intern e t . Companies which offer freec o m p u t e rs or Web brow s e rs could prevent a

user from utilizing or accessing progr a m m e sof their commercial competitors. E ve nInternet Service Providers (ISPs) can havecommercial deals with certain Web sites,making them easier to access than othersites.This is already starting to happen.

On the one hand, people feel it’s reaso-nable for a company to influence yo u rI n t e rnet access if they provide you withfree computers and software progr a m m e s.But on the other, it’s really important thatthe right of the individual to access unbiasedi n f o rm ation be upheld.The point is that oneshould not masquerade the other.

I’m not sure to what extent people rea-lize or can measure whether their at t e m p t sto access different websites are beingaffected by commercial concerns. It’s alsove ry difficult to find a balance between theright of a company to offer a service whichis subsidized and the right of somebody toh ave unbiased access.We have yet to find agood social arrangement

Another danger is that if a companyestablishes a monopoly, it will start makingarbitrary changes to universally acceptedWeb standards.This would force competi-t o rs to concentrate their efforts on mat-ching these rather than coming out withnew, bright ideas to improve the product.This would affect the Web’s overall deve-lopment.

The Web has allowed a much greater flow ofinformation which some countries are seekingto regulate and control. How do you react tothis?

I know that some countries are contem-plating or attempting to control informa-tion available to individuals on the Intern e t .My feeling is that it is ve ry difficult toa c h i e ve because the Internet allows infor-m ation to flow in many different way s.Yo uare only a small hole in this vast system. I na way, controlling or regulating inform at i o nis bad for the relationship between ag ove rnment and the people and, in thelong term,for the stability of the country.

There have also been calls for wides-pread censorship on the net. But in most ofthe Western world, censorship is a deroga-tory term for one body trying to controlwhat information another body has accesst o. H owe ve r , there is a gr owing recogni-tion that parents have the right and theduty to protect their children from viewingundesirable sites.This led our Web Consor-tium to develop systems like the Platformfor Internet Content Selection (PICS) thatenables adults to control children’s accessto different websites.

The large number of filtering softwaretools on the market are more effective thang ove rnment censors h i p.A nat i o n ’s laws canr e s t rict content only in that country bu tfil t e rs can block content no matter where itcomes from on the Web. Fundamentally, itis for the people to determine the type ofsocial mechanisms and regulations that willbenefit society.

There have been rising concerns over surfers’privacy. How is this being tackled?

P ri va cy invo l ves the ability of each

CI T IZ EN TIM

In a field churning out dot.com millionairese v e ry other week, Tim Berners-Lee stands in a

league apart. The London-born and ra i s e dB e r n e r s - Lee could easily have become one of theworld’s wealthiest men by commercializing hisinvention. Instead, he chose to focus his effortson improving and universalizing the We b .

A physics graduate from Oxford University ,B e r n e r s - Lee started working for the Geneva-based CERN (European Particle PhysicsL a b o ra t o ry) in 1980 where he wrote ap r o g ramme called E n q u i re that could store andr e call information based on random associations.That set the tone for the future developmento f the World Wide Web, which he invented inl a t e 19 9 0 .

B e r n e r s - Lee wrote the HTML (HyperTe x tMarkup Language) establishing links with otherdocuments in a computer and designed anaddressing scheme that gave each web page a

unique location, or URL (Universal ResourceLo cator). Then he developed a set of rules ca l l e dH TTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) fort ransferring information across the Net. In 19 91,he made the programmes freely available forInternet users across the globe. For the next tw oyears, he continued working on improving thedesign of the Web with feedback from Internetusers.

After leaving CERN in 1994, Berners-Le eheaded for the Massachusetts Institute ofTe c h n o l o gy’s (MIT) Labora t o ry for ComputerSciences in Boston, where he is director of theWorld Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Theorganization, which is comprised by more than300 members from the global industry includinggiants like Microsoft and IBM, sets technica lstandards for the Web.

Hailed by T i m e magazine as one of the 10 0greatest minds of the 20th century, the 45-year-

old Berners-Lee remains a paragon of modestydespite the astonishing growth and success of hisinvention. Sitting in his office at the W3C, heasserts that the Web is just in its infancy. ‘‘Theultimate goal is to support and improve our web-like existence in the world,’’ he says, explainingthat the Web offers an unprecedented means toachieve greater freedom and social growth. “Weare a still a long way from realizing its fullp o t e n t i a l . ” ■

+ …• For more information:

Weaving the Web: The Past, Presentand Future of the World Wide Web byits Inv e n t o r, Tim Berners-Lee with MarkFischetti, (Orion Business Books, 19 9 9 ) .

• Useful Web sites:h t t p : / / w w w. w 3 . o r gh t t p : / / w w w. c e r n . c h / c e r n

I N T E R V I E W


person to dictate what can and cannot bedone with his or her own personal infor-m at i o n . For consumers using the Intern e t ,the gr e atest pri va cy concern is that aftert h e y ’ ve ordered a number of products, c o m-panies will have accumulated enough per-sonal inform ation to harm or take adva n t a g eof them.With consequences ranging fromjunk mail to the denial of health insurance,the problem is serious.

Users should be aware of how variouswebsites use their personal inform at i o n .I na way, p ri va cy concerns are a leading impe-diment to the further gr owth of We b - b a s e dc o m m e r c e , but I think sites should highlightthe need for consumer privacy.With thesec o n c e rns in mind, our Consortium hasd e veloped a new tool called P3P (Plat f o rmfor Privacy Preferences Project). It woulda u t o m atically communicate to users a we b-site’s stated privacy policy and compare itwith the user’s own pre-set policy prefe-r e n c e s. If a Web site’s pri va cy policy does notsuit the user’s interests,they can stop thenand there.

A responsible website should have a pri-va cy policy at the bottom of the home page.Failing that, I believe there ought to be alegally enforced default policy that offersindividuals the highest protection.The issueof privacy has been addressed to a certain

extent in Europe where companies have tokeep secure the information they hold onc u s t o m e rs , and are barred from combiningd atabases in ways that are legal in theUnited Stat e s. M a ny people in the U. S .a r estarting to realize the need for more regu-lation of privacy and the need for greaterprotection of the individual and society.

There has been a spurt of Internet-relatedpatents in recent years. What effect are thesehaving on the Web’s development?

The awarding of Intern e t - r e l ated pat e n t sposes a danger to the We b ’s unive rs a l i t yand can kill good ideas.There was a widelyheld assumption in the We b ’s first five ye a rst h at a common good was to be gained fromputting together a far-reaching infrastruc-t u r e . N ow a huge amount of business isbeing done on the We b. The ability tocontrol any part of it through patent claimswill be very lucrative. In some cases busi-nesses may be able to gain money simply bythreatening to take legal action.This has adampening effect on people working toge-ther to create a universal Web.

For example, people in the WWW pro-fession meet often to discuss technologicali m p r ovements and innovat i o n s , f r o mi m p r oved graphic or video conferencingsystems to ways of wiring the deve l o p i n g

world.These projects have the potential tob e n e fit many people but are sometimes sud-denly abandoned because of fears orru m o u rs of legal action from a companyh aving patent claims to that technology.C u rr e n t l y, in the U. S . (unlike in many otherc o u n t ri e s ) , it is possible to patent part ofthe way a programme does something.

Some of the recent Intern e t - r e l at e dp atent awards have been derided by theWeb community. They are effectively res-tricting the use of technologies that couldexpand the use and unive rsality of theI n t e rn e t . I hope that ve ry soon patents willonly be considered valid if they represent areal novelty or a really bright idea. I have ye tto see a patent like this in the field.

There is no way to judge the authenticity orreliability of information on the Web, makingusers highly vulnerable. Is this likely tochange?

We are not using all the technology ava i-lable to verify the authenticity of a websiteor a person you come across. M o r ea d vanced tools will soon be introduced.With the help of new brow s e rs and by usingdigital signatures, you will soon be able toactually ensure that the document or thewebsite you are referring to was in fa c tg e n e r ated by its claimed author.With regard

Surfing the Web in a Dakar slum is a rare luxury on the African continent, where only 3.5 inhabitants out of 1,000 have access to the Internet, compared with 14.1in Asia, 88 in Europe, 160.3 in the Americas and 224.5 in Oceania, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

I N T E R V I E W

use to access it. If you analyze the recentv i rus at t a c k s , you’ll find it’s computers ru n-ning the same software produced by thesame company that are usually comingunder attack by hackers. While it’s advan-tageous to have many people running thesame software, there is a need for alterna-tive types of products in order to build upresistance to virus attacks.

There have been proposals that Internet usersin developed countries be taxed in order towire the rest of the world?

I do think that the developed wo r l dowes a gr e at debt to the developing oneand Internet access adds one line to that

debt. However, it is not obvious whethertaxing all Internet users in general is a smartidea. It has to be done on a selective basis.I feel that those who can afford largeamounts of Internet access—those for ins-tance who are in position to get videos-on-demand or use the Web extensively for com-mercial purposes—can be taxed.

One could also argue that introducing atax might discourage some countries fromi nvesting in the Intern e t , which is deve l o p i n gso rapidly right now.The only place whereyou could gi ve serious thought to a tax is theU. S . , and perhaps Finland. Other deve-loped countri e s ,which are trying to catch upwith the U. S . , m ay be a bit reluctant to

to electronic messages, new and securec o m m u n i c ation protocols allow us to makesure that nobody can sneak in and alter amessage along its way.

Now the question is how do you knowwhether a particular document or personyou come across while surfing on the net isreliable.You just can’t do that.There is noi n f r a s t ructure set up at the moment bywhich you can actually check the reliabilityof a person or of a site you are visiting.W hyshould you believe in somebody aboutwhom you have never heard of? I thinkpeople will have to learn whom they cantrust on the Web.

Take a book for example. You read itbecause it was referred to you by reliables o u r c e s. In the same way somebody yo uk n ow may point to a web site.Trust is alway st r a n s f e rred from one individual to another.We have to set up a “Web of trust.”

Some people initially thought of theWeb as an anonymous space separated fromreality in which there was no individualresponsibility.This is not the case.Anyonewho sends a fraudulent message is sittingsomewhere and is naturally subjected tolocal laws. If someone makes forged tran-sactions, the fact that they did it electroni-cally doesn’t in any way absolve them oftheir responsibility under the law.

Thanks to the Web, the world has become aglobal village. But we have recently witnesseda rising incidence of hackers paralyzing publicutility systems with viruses. Can systemsbecome more resilient?

While the Internet is a decentralizeds y s t e m , I think the principle danger it fa c e snow is the lack of diversity in the tools we

Y E S, I wish to subscribe, or take out a subscription for a friend, to the UNESCO COURIER✂

LANGUAGE: English French SpanishFor editions in other languages (see page 2) please contact us

RATES (including postage):

Industrialized countries:1 year: 211French francs ( 32 .15 ) instead of 24 9 FF* ( 11 issues including 1 double issue)2 years: 396French francs ( 6 0 . 35 ) instead of 498FF* ( 22 issues including 2 double issues)Binder: 72FF ( 11 ) for 11 issues including 1 double issue* Total cover price

Students, unemployed persons (please send copy of relevant documents), developing countries:1 year: 132French francs ( 20 .10 )2 years: 211FF ( 32 .15 )

Your first issue will be sent to you as soon as your subscription has been processed.This normallytakes around two weeks.The list of themes already covered in the UNESCOCOURIER is available on request.

I enclose payment (in French francs only) to UNESCOBank cheque (except Eurocheque)

Visa E u r o c a r d M a s t e r c a r d

No. ❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘—❘ Expiry date: ❘—❘—❘—❘—❘

Family name:

First name:

Address:

Postal code: City:

CountrySignature:

In order to improve our service to readers, we should appreciate the help you could give us by answeringthe optional questions below.

Occupation:

(Teachers and students) Special field: Level:

Age: Tel.:

Please send this form with your remittance, in French francs only, made payable to THE UNESCO COURIER Subscription Services: 31, rue François-Bonvin 75732 Paris CEDEX 15 (France)Tel.: (33) (0) 1 45 68 45 91, Fax: (33) (0) 1 45 68 57 45, e-mail: [email protected]

For payments in other currencies, please contact one of the subscription agents whose addresses are given on the back of this order form.

No, it wasn’t a love message… Only greater product diversity will build up resistance to virus attacks, says Lee.

I N T E R V I E W

c u l t u r e . E ven in European countri e s , i twas difficult for the Web to get start e dbecause you didn’t have a huge monocul-ture or monolingual audience waiting eve-ry w h e r e . Getting over this barrier in coun-tries with smaller linguistic audiences willbe very difficult.

Could you elaborate on the “Semantic Web”you are working on at the moment?

My dream for the Web has two part s. I nthe first, I see the Web becoming a muchmore powerful means for collaborat i o namong people. In the second, c o l l a b o r a-tions extend to computers. M a c h i n e sbecome capable of analyzing all the data onthe Web — the contents, links and transac-tions between people and computers.

The Semantic Web would be able totake inform ation from different databases onthe We b , from catalogues and we ather sitesto stock price inform at i o n , and to allowthis data to be processed by computers. Atthe moment, this cannot be done becausethe data available on the Web is not in a formt h at can be understood or conve rted byc o m p u t e rs for direct analysis. This isbecause the Web pages are designed only forhuman readership.

The Semantic Web would also answermany people’s prayers for a logical searchengine that gives you solid results. Rightnow, search engines come up with thou-sands of Web pages in response to a request.It is impossible to search what ’s in all thosepages. With the Semantic Web, the searchengine would go out and say “Well,here isan object which I can mat h e m atically proveto you matches the criteria requested.” In

s h o rt , search engines will become moremeaningful and effective . Once the two -part dream is achieved, the Web will be aplace where the whim of a human being andthe reasoning of a machine will co-exist inan ideal, powerful mixture. ■

Interview by Ethirajan AnbarasanUNESCO Courier journalist

introduce taxation.

It is still difficult to get an Internet connectionin the South because of the lack of telephonelines. Are there solutions to this?

Te l e c o m m u n i c ations departments inm a ny developing countries are still bu r e a u-c r atic and would never agree to shari n ga nything with anybody or to allow any com-petition that would improve access. O n eoption is to rethink the technology altoge-ther.We should start off by expanding theuse of wireless technologies for basic com-munications in rural areas. Once networksh ave been built up, walkie-talkies coulde ventually be merged with the Intern e twithout any input from telecommunica-tion ministri e s. The system would be adecentralized one in which there would beno need to apply for an Internet address ora domain name. Research is already goingon in this field and I strongly feel that com-mercial production of this technologyshould start soon to expand Internet accessin Southern countries.

H owe ve r , it may be difficult for thistechnology to be deployed in some countri e sbecause it would threaten the existingmonopoly of telecommunication compa-nies or government control over commu-n i c at i o n s.The United Nations could play arole in spreading the idea among its memberS t ates as this technology offers ve ry excitingpossibilities.

I also think subsidies should be putt owards translating inform ation on theI n t e rnet into different languages. It isi m p o rtant that the Web support localcultures and not just broadcast American

L IST OF SA L ES A ND SUBSCRIP T ION AGEN T SSubscriptions can be paid to the subscription agent in your country who will supply rates in local currency on request

A RGEN T IN A: Edilyr Srl, Librería Correo de la UNES CO, Tucumán 16 8 5 ,10 50 Buenos Aires. Fax: 371 - 819 4 .A US T RA L I A: Hunter Publications, 58A Gipps Street, Collingwood VIC3066. Fax: 419 7154. ISA Australia, PO Box 709, To owong QLD 4066. Fax: 371 556 6 .United Nations Assoc. of Australia/Victorian Div., 179 St George’s Road,N. Fitzroy VIC 3068. Fax: 481 76 9 3 .Gordon & Gotch Australia Pty. Ltd., Private Bag 290, Burwood VIC 3125 .Fax: 03 9888 8561A US T RI A: Gerold & Co, Import & Export, Zeitschriften/Pe r i o d i ca l s ,G raben 31, A-1011 Vienna. Fax: 512 47 31 29BELGIUM: Jean de Lannoy, 202 av du Roi, B-1060 Brussels. Fax: 538 08 41.BRAZ IL: Fundaco Getulio Vargas, Editora Divisão de Vendas, CaixaPostal 62.591, 22257- 970 Rio de Janeiro RJ. Fax: 551 - 0 9 4 8 .CANADA: Renouf Publishing Company Ltd, 5 369 ch. Canotek Road, Unit1, Ottawa, Ont K1J 9J3. Fax: (1-613) 745 7660. Faxon Canada, PO Box 2382, London, Ont. N6A 5A7. Fax: (1-519) 472 1072 .CHIL E: Universitaria Textolibro Ltda., Casilla Postal 10 220, Santiago. Fax: 681 9091.CHIN A: China National Publications, Import & Export Corp., PO Box 88,16 Gongti East Road, Beijing 10 0 0 20. Fax: 010 650 6 3101.CZECH REPUBLIC: Artia, Ve Smeckach 30, 111 27 Prague 1.DENM A RK: Munksgaard, Norre Sogade 35, PO Box 2148, DK-1016Kobenhavn K. Fax: 12 93 87.FINLA ND: Stockmann/Akateeminen Kirjakauppa, PO Box 23, SF - 0 0 371Helsinki. Fax: +358 9 121 4450 .Suomalainen Kirjakauppa Oy, PO Box 2, SF - 016 41 Vantaa. Fax: 852 79 9 0 .GERM A N Y: German Commission for UNES CO, Colmantstr. 15, D- 53115Bonn. Fax: 63 69 12 .Uno Verlag, Dag Hammarskjöld Haus, Poppelsdorfer Allee 55, D- 53115Bonn. Fax: 21 74 92.GREECE: Librairie Kauffmann SA, Mauvrokordatou 9, GR - 106 78 Athens.Fax: 38 33 967.

GU AT EM A LA: Comisión Guatemalteca de Cooperación con la UNES CO,3A Avenida 10 29, Zona 1, Apartado Postal 26 30, Guatemala City.HONG KONG: Hong Kong Government Information Svcs. Dept., 1B a t t e ry Path Central, Hong Kong.HUNG A R Y: Librotrade K F T, Pe r i o d i cal Import/K, POB 126, H-16 56Budapest. Fax: 256 - 87- 27.INDI A: UNES CO O f fice, 8 Po o rvi Marg, Vasant Vihar, New Delhi 110 0 57Orient Longman Ltd (Subscriptions Account), Kamani Marg, BallardEstate, Bombay 400 038. Fax: 26 91 278 .ISRA EL: Litera ry Transactions Inc., C/0 Steimatsky Ltd., PO Box 14 4 4 ,Bnei Brak 51114. Fax: 52 81 187.I TA LY: Licosa/Libreria Comm. Sansoni SPA, Via Duca di Calabria 1/1, I-50125 Florence. Fax: 64-12 - 57.JA PA N: Eastern Book Service Inc., Pe r i o d i cals Account, 3 13 Hongo 3Chome, Bunkyo Ku, Tokyo 113. Fax: 818 - 0 8 6 4 .KORE A: Korean National Commission for UNES CO, CPO Box 64, Seoul100-600. Fax: 568 74 54 .LUX EMBURG: Messageries Paul Kraus, BP 20 22, L-10 20 Luxembourg.Fax: 99 88 84 44.M A LTA: Sapienzas & Sons Ltd., PO Box 36, 26 Republic Street, Va l l e t t aCMR 01. Fax: 24 61 82.M A URI T IUS: Editions Le Printemps Ltée., 4 Route du Club, Va c o a s .Fax: 686 7302. MOROCCO: UNES CO, B.P. 1777 RP, Rabat. Fax: 212-767 03 75, Tel.: 212-767 03 74/72.MEX ICO: Librería El Correo de la UNES CO SA, Col Roma, Guanajuato 72 ,Deleg Cuauhtémoc, 06700 Mexico DF. Fax: 26 4 - 0 9 - 19 .NET HERLA NDS: Swets & Zeitlinger BV, PO Box 830, 2160 SZ Lisse. Fax: 2524 - 158 8 8 .T i j d s c h r i f t c e n t rale Wijck B V, Int. Subs. Service, W Gra c h t s t raat 1C, 6221CT Maastricht. Fax: 32 50 10 3 .NEW ZEALA ND: GP Legislation Services, PO Box 12418, Thorndon,We l l i n gton. Fax: 496 56 98.NORWAY: Swets Norge AS, Østensjøvein 18-0606 Oslo, PO Box 6512,Etterstad. Fax: 47 22 97 45 45.

P ORT UG A L: Livraria Portugal (Dias & Andrade Lda), Rua do Carmo 7074, 1200 Lisboa. Fax: 34 70 26 4 .RUSSI A: Mezhdunarodnaja Kniga, U1 Dimitrova 39, Moscow 1130 9 5 .SOUTH AFRICA: International Subscription Services, PO Box 410 9 5 ,C raighall 20 24. Fax: 880 624 8 .Mast Publications, PO Box 901, Parklands 2121. Fax: 886 4512 .SPA IN: Mundi Prensa Libros SA, Castelló 37, 28 0 01 Madrid. Fax: 91575 - 39 - 9 8 .Libreria Al Andalús, Roldana 3 y 4, 410 0 91 Sevilla. Fax: 954 22 - 53 - 38 .UNES CO Etxea, Alda Urquijo 60, Ppal. Dcha., 48011 Bilbao. Fax: 427- 51 - 59 / 6 9SRI LA NKA: Lake House Bookshop, 100 Chittampalam, GardinerMawatha, Colombo 2. Fax: 44 78 48.S W EDEN: Wennergren Williams AB, PO Box 1305, S-171 25 Solna. Fax: 27 00 71.S W I TZ ERLA ND: Dynapresse Marketing SA, (ex-Naville SA), 38 av Vibert,CH - 1227 Carouge. Fax: 308 08 59 .Edigroup SA, Case Postale 393, CH - 1225 Chêne-Bourg. Fax: 348 44 82.Europa Verlag, Ramistrasse 5, CH - 8 0 24 Zürich. Fax: 251 60 81Van Diermen Editions Te c h n i q u e s - A D E CO, Chemin du Lacuez, CH - 18 07B l o n a y. Fax: 943 36 05.T H A ILA ND: Suksapan Panit, Mansion 9, Rajadamnern Avenue, Bangkok 2. Fax: 28 11 639 .T UNISI A: Commission Nationale Tunisienne auprès de l’UNES CO, 22, ruede l’Angleterre, 10 0 0 RP Tunis. Fax: 33 10 14UNI T ED KINGDOM: The Stationery Office Publications Ctre., 51 NineElms Lane, London SW8 5DR. Fax: 873 84 63.UNI T ED STAT ES: Bernan Associates, 4611-F Assembly Drive, LanhamMD 2070 6 - 4 391. Fax: 459 - 0 0 56 .URUGU AY: Ediciones Trecho SA, Pe r i o d i cals Account, Maldonado 10 9 0 ,Montevideo. Fax: 90 59 83.V ENEZ UELA: Distriplumes, Apartado 49232, Colinas Bello Monte, 10 4 2A Cara cas. Fax: (58 2) 979 8 36 0UNES CO/ CRES A LC, Edif. As o v i n car, Av Los Chorros, Cruce C/CAcueducto, Altos de Sebucan, Cara cas. Fax: (58 2) 28 6 0 326 .

T HE NETA ND THE WEB

A s Berners-Lee puts it, the Web couldnot exist without the Net. First developed

for military purposes by the U.S. Departmentof Defence in the 1960s, the Internet isa network of networks. It refers to millionsof computers around the world connectedto each other by telephone wire, cable andsatellite. The Web, a part of the Internet,is a worldwide collection of text andmultimedia files linked to each other via asystem of hypertext documents. The HypertextTransfer Protocol (HTTP) was created byBerners-Lee in 1990 at CERN, the EuropeanParticle Physics Laboratory, as a means ofsharing scientific data internationally, instantlyand inexpensively. With hypertext, a word orphrase can contain a link to another text.To achieve this, Berners-Lee developed aprogramming language called HTML,which allows users to easily link to otherpages or network services on the Web. ■

World Heritage R e v i e w

S u b s c r i p t i o n s :Ediciones San Marcos, Maldonado 65,28006, Madrid, Spaintel. : +34 91 309 20 80 fax : +34 91 444 80 51e-mail: [email protected]

The timeless treasures of ournatural and culturalheritage and the efforts underway to safeguard themfor futuregenerations

m a n y v o i c e s o n e w o r l d

P u b l i s h e din 27

l a n g u a g e s

In the next issue:

Fo c u s :

The new shooting stars of cinema■ Asian directors make their mark

■ Are the movie powerhouses running out of s t e a m ?

■ I ra n ’s revolution of the image

■ Ja p a n : a taboo-free genera t i o n

■ South Ko r e a : zooming in on a new identity

■ Making ends meet in A r g e n t i n a

■ Directing in exile

Fe a t u res include

■ Cub photo journalists in a tough French neighbourhood

■ Nomadic schooling: a second-class education?

■ C h e r n o b y l : the legacy of half-truthsand broken lives

■ African dance: a social springboard

■ Death penalty in the U. S. : an unethical debate

The UNESCO Courier is available on the Internet:

www.unesco.org/courier

P u b l i s h e d in 27 l a n g u a g e s September...

Documents

Transcript of P u b l i s h e d in 27 l a n g u a g e s September...