Winter 2021 | The Steal of Nations: Informal Workers in the Global Economy

WINTER 2021 | VOL . XLII | NO. 1

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THE STEALTH OF NATIONS I NFORMAL WORKERS I N T H E G LO B A L E C O N O M Y

CHRISTINE LAGARDE

President of the European Central Bank

MICHA KAUFMAN Founder and CEO of Fiverr

LICYPRIYA KANGUJAM Youth Climate Activist

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A LETTER FROM THE EDITORS According to the UN International Labor Organization, two billion people are informal workers, or 62 percent of the total number of workers in the world. With the rise of transnational corporations and technological innovation, workers’ employment status is increasingly informal: without long-term contracts, union support, or outside legal protections. On the other hand, informal work can offer newfound flexibility, self-governance, and employment opportunities.

This edition of the Harvard International Review focuses on untraditional work, in particular the challenges of legal protections, economic development, and the globalization of labor markets. In recent years, the informal economy has only grown in significance, from the emergence of rideshare apps such as Uber and Lyft to the displacement of millions of workers around the world due to refugee crises.

Florian Bochert explains how stateless individuals regularly face exploitation, finding themselves in a vicious cycle of migration and informal employment. Similarly, Yanxi Fang shares the plight of global maritime workers, sometimes literally stranded at sea. And, Joy Ding demonstrates how even highly educated individuals are not immune from similar challenges, explaining why immigrant post-doctoral researchers are sometimes referred to as the “slaves of academia.”

Today, COVID-19 has exacerbated the promise of and the challenges for informal work. In an exclusive interview, President of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde charts the economic path forward for the EU and the world. Justin Qi echoes the importance of carefully crafted fiscal packages, focusing specifically on the importance of supporting developing nations’ labor markets. Finally, CEO Micha Kaufman of Fiverr—the world’s largest marketplace connecting business with freelancers—makes the case for how freelancers can benefit from the flexibility of informal work while avoiding burnout, fatigue, and depressed wages.

In addition to our cover topic, we are proud to feature inter-disciplinary analysis that spans six continents. Jolly Rop tells the story of Bobi Wine, a rapper from the slums of Kampala who is igniting a political revolution in Uganda. Rachel Harris reports on the erosion of free press in the Eastern Mediterranean at the hands of Turkish President Recep Erdoğan. Salomé Garnier shines a light on the impact of South-South cooperation through the lens of Cuban medical diplomacy. And, Licypriya Kangujam—the Harvard International Review’s youngest ever interviewee—advocates for widespread environmental education, cleaner air in India, and Indigenous solidarity in the climate movement.

Informal work is here to stay, touching every corner of the globe. Whether it be powering Fortune 500 companies on Wall Street or street vendors lining the streets of Jakarta, it is an indispensable reality of the modern economy.

Until next time, Paul Apostolicas and Indu Pandey

A migrant worker with his face covered with cloth amid concerns over the spread of coronavirus, stands in a wheat field during harvesting time in Uttarchata village. Uttar Pradesh, India. April 2020.

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VOL. XLII • NO. 1 • WINTER 2021 SENIOR STAFF Editors-In-Chief // Paul Apostolicas & Indu Pandey Managing Editor // Lexa Brenner Chief-of-Staff // Talia Blatt & Nick Nocita Design Directors // Clara Guzman & Katherine Ricca Business Director // Joseph Wornom Executive Content Editors // Otto Barenberg, Brandon Chen, Bonny Lemma, Marc Leroux-Parra, Justin Qi, & Minjue Wu Senior Editors // John Berkay, Becca Buehler, Joy Ding, Yanxi Fang, Melinda Meng, Joshua Park, Marc Leroux-Parra, Andy Wang, Satoshi Yanaizu, & Sydney Young Associate Editors // Samar Ahmad, Salomé Garnier, Abby LaBreck, Olga Kiyan, & Will Schrepferman Senior Solicits Editor: Interviews and Perspectives // Kendrick Foster Copy Editor Chair // Jelena Dragicevic Copy Editors // John Berkay, Joy Ding, Salomé Garnier, Olga Kiyan, Melinda Meng, & Skylar Smith Advertising and Marketing Directors // Hannah Pan & Ammara Vaid Financial Director // Oscar Berry Technology Director // Hunter Hawk GENERAL STAFF Business Associates // Carlos Bejar-Garcia, Yanxi Fang, Fred Horne, Rebecca Kay, Max Shakespeare, Kira Trout, & Lutfi Zubi Design Associates // Ammara Vaid, Hunter Hawk, & Isabelle Blair Staff Writers // Nithyani Anandakugan, Paige Anderson, Max Bahdanovich, Daniel Brickman, Carlos Bejar-Garcia, Ishan Bhatt, Florian Bochert, Natalka Bowley, Roshni Chakraborty, Galadriel Coury, Ines De La Morena, Uluc Kadioglu, Eric Li, Ilyas Mardin, Nidal Morrison, Jaya Nayar, Paige Proctor, Brammy Rajakumar, Choetsow Tenzin, & Octavio Vega

The Harvard International Review is published quarterly by the Harvard International Relations Council, Inc. Copyright 2020 (ISSN 0739-1854) Harvard International Relations Council. No material appearing in this publication may be reproduced without permission of the publisher. The opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the contributors and are not necessarily shared by the editors. All editorial rights reserved. The Harvard International Review is indexed in the PAIS Bulletin, the Political Science Abstracts, and the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences.

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GLOBAL NOTEBOOK THREATS TO DEMOCRACY IN THE BALKANS 6 SILENT REACH A ROAR Delaney Hurley, Staff Writer

FUMIGATION IN COLOMBIA: THE BAD AND THE 11 AERIAL UGLY Jaya Nayar, Staff Writer

RISE OF BOBI WINE: HOW A RAPPER FROM THE 17 THE SLUMS IS IGNITING A REVOLUTION IN UGANDA Jolly Rop, Staff Writer

ATTEMPTS FOR CONTROL OF THE GREEK 22 ERDOGAN’S PRESS AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN Rachel Harris, Staff Writer

ARMY OF WHITE COATS: EXPLORING THE 26 AN IMPLICATIONS OF CUBAN MEDICAL DIPLOMACY Salomé Garnier, Associate Editor

RENAISSANCE OF WATER 32 THE Amen Gashaw, Staff Writer FEARED, AND REVERED: WOMEN IN POLITICAL 38 LOVED, MOVEMENTS Choetsow Tenzin, Staff Writer

COVER HUMANS: HOW STATELESS PERSONS ARE 42 NON-EXISTENT FORCED TO WORK INFORMALLY Florian Bochert, Staff Writer

ACADEMIA: INVISIBLE INNOVATORS 46 CUTTHROAT Joy Ding, Senior Editor

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CONTENTS

CONTENTS COVER POST PANDEMIC CHALLENGES FOR EMERGING ECONOMIES Justin Qi, Executive Content Editor

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MODERN DAY SLAVERY: THE KAFALA SYSTEM IN LEBANON Patrick Rak, Staff Writer

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ADRIFT, ALONE, AND FAR FROM HOME: THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE GLOBAL MARITIME INDUSTRY Yanxi Fang, Senior Editor

INTERVIEWS ON THE FUTURE OF FREELANCING: INTERVIEW WITH FIVERR CEO MICHA KAUFMAN Paul Apostolicas, Editor-In-Chief

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FIGHTING FIRES IN THE ENGINE ROOM: A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINE LAGARDE Garrett Walker, Editor-in-Chief (2019-2020)

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SURVIVAL FOR THE FUTURE: INTERVIEW WITH CLIMATE ACTIVIST LICYPRIYA KANGUJAM Indu Pandey, Editor-in-Chief

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Migrant workers look out a train window before moving to their home states, at a railway station. Hyderabad, India. May 2020.

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Protesters light torches during a rally in support of the ruling pro-Western party and against the pro-Serb and pro-Russian groups. Podgorica, Montenegro. September 2020.

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SILENT THREATS TO DEMOCRACY IN THE BALKANS REACH A ROAR Delaney Hurley Staff Writer

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n the night of July 7, thousands of protesters faced off with police in Belgrade. Incensed over a snap COVID-related lockdown that they viewed as another self-serving move of a government already known to modify the system for its own benefit, the crowd attempted to storm parliament. The air filled with tear gas and repeated chants of “Ostavka! Ostavka!”—a word meaning “resignation” in many Slavic languages.

Just two days later, Bulgarians took to the streets of the capital en masse after a journalist reported on yet another act of corruption within the political elite.

As they stood in front of the National Assembly waving flags and staring down state security forces, they rallied around a familiar cry: “Ostavka! Ostavka!”

While the EU has locked its eyes on the Belarusian and Hungarian cases of democratic back-

sliding, threats to institutions in the Balkans have continued to grow. The EU has failed to recognize how declining democracy on the peninsula will erode civil rights protections, undercut the legitimacy of both national governments and the EU, and cause it to lose control over human rights norms in Europe.

Causes of the Current Protests Both Serbia and Bulgaria, two neighboring states on the Balkan peninsula, have watched their democracies quietly erode for years. This July’s protests marked the end of that silence.

As Bulgaria is an EU member state, but Serbia is not, examining these case studies side-byside can provide a valuable perspective on the EU’s role in the protection of democracy.

Although the largest wave of protests in recent Bulgarian history started on July 9, its citizens’ frustrations have existed

Protesters carry a poster reading “ Borissov, I am not afraid, but you are! Resignation” during a mass protest.

Sofia, Bulgaria. July 2020.

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for much longer, especially over government corruption. During Bulgaria’s Communist era just a few decades ago, the mafia controlled much of the business and political worlds. Oligarchs still control much of Bulgarian society today, despite the judicial and economic reforms that were instituted prior to the country’s accession to the EU in 2007. A prominent mobster has accused Prime Minister Boyko Borissov of having strong ties to the mafia, an allegation that protesters, and even President Rumen Radev, give weight to.

The consequences of corruption on this scale are staggering: according to a Eurobarometer poll from 2019, 78 percent of Bulgarians believe that the “only way to succeed in business is to have political connections,” and an estimated 11 billion euros (approximately US$13 billion) are lost from the economy to corruption every year.

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Beyond corruption, Bulgaria’s track record with human rights is reprehensible. The country has by far the worst press freedoms in the EU: it ranked 111th in the world in 2019, trailing behind many widely-criticized countries such as Kenya and Malaysia. Just last year, Bulgarian journalists protested the suspension of reporter Silvia Velikova from a public radio station for urging her audience to oppose the appointment of Ivan Geshev for Chief Prosecutor, though their numbers paled in comparison to the sheer volume of demonstrators on the street now. This demonstration is just one example of a broader trend of media suppression. Oligarchs control many formerly independent news organizations. Journalists outside of those organizations who may have more discretion about what they report on are harassed or threatened when they report on the mafia or government misdoings; some are threatened with up to a year of jail time for defamation. During the current protests, police have beaten and pepper sprayed journalists even after these reporters have shown their media IDs. The International Press Institute reports that members of the media were also prevented from approaching protests so they could document the events.

If the Bulgarian people have faced these concerns for decades, why have they started protesting now? As the answer often is nowadays, it is because of social media. On July 7, the leader of Bulgaria’s anti-corruption party showed on a livestream that an honorary chairman of the state’s ethni-

cally Turkish party had illegally privatized a beach—despite all beaches in the country being public—and defended it with state-funded security guards.

This corruption scandal was the spark that “lit the powder keg.”

Every single night since July 9, Bulgarian protesters have taken to the streets in droves demanding the resignation of the Prime Minister Borissov and his entire cabinet.

The protests remained relatively peaceful on both sides, until Borissov’s party, known as Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), attempted to solve the crisis by proposing a new constitution— one that glossed over most of the demonstrators’ demands.

In order to secure enough votes to begin deliberations on the constitution, GERB had to form a coalition with one of the nation’s far-right parties and include provisions like mandatory conscription for adults into the Bulgarian army. In response, unprecedented numbers of protesters well into the thousands joined demonstrations on September 3 in a “grand national uprising.” As police pushed protestors to the ground and used pepper spray to suppress any resistance, they arrested 126 people and injured over 50.

Just across the border, the deterioration of Serbia’s democracy has grown increasingly apparent in recent years. Earlier this year, Freedom House demoted Serbia and Montenegro (as well as Hungary) from democracies to “hybrid regimes” that exist “in a ‘grey zone’ between democracies and pure autocracies.” The prominent rights

group called the backsliding “unprecedented.” The Serbian government controls all daily newspapers and nationwide television channels and gives significant loans to private media companies, evidence of how the country has the worst press freedoms in the Western Balkans. Opposition members in parliament are prevented from fully engaging in legislative debate and proposing amendments to bills because President Vučić’s allies fast-track nearly half of all laws through parliament under “urgent procedure.”

This trend of rushed process began before the COVID-19 emergency emerged. In short, almost all of the country’s power is consolidated in the ruling party.

When protesters stormed Parliament in Belgrade, they were reacting to President Vučić’s move to impose strict COVID-19 lockdown measures just days after securing re-election. Prior to the election, he lifted restrictions so that people could attend sports matches and vote while under the impression that the state had defeated the virus. In response to this rapid policy reversal from a government that many viewed as “botching” a COVID-19 response, Serbians rushed to parliament and clashed with police officers in Belgrade. Though the Serbian protests have fizzled out, the underlying issues with the manipulative electoral politics remain.

The State of the EU In spite of the recent turmoil, the EU has remained woefully silent. Although the European Commission authors annual H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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“rule of law” reports on member and candidate countries, these reports usually have no teeth.

Serbia and Bulgaria failed to muster an appropriate response to critiques on their democratic institutions in their 2020 reports.

In fact, Borissov actually commented that this year’s report on Bulgaria was “exceptionally objective” and did not seem to be concerned by its findings. In contrast to their radio silence on Serbia, though, the European Commission passed a resolution in October that “chastised Bulgaria for flaws in respecting the rule of law, combating endemic corruption, and supporting media freedom.” However, the reports and resolution have no enforcement and, at best, merely embarrass Bulgaria and Serbia’s leaders.

The EU has made a critical mistake by remaining inert in the face of these threats to democracy given the massive internal implications of Bulgaria’s fragile democracy. Bulgarians already distrust governing systems as a whole. If the EU does not defend the values it claims to embody by decisively standing with the Bulgarian people during their time of need, Bulgarians’ support for the Union will likely fallwhile the breakneck growth of Euroskepticism across the continent in countries such as Italy already threatens the health of the EU. Beyond Euroskepticism, the EU will face disastrous consequences for letting Bulgaria’s corruption run rampant. If Bulgaria continues to misuse EU funds, other nations in the EU may grow resentful of how the Bulgarian government wastes

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their contributions and resist paying into the EU’s initiatives.

In addition to decreased faith in the EU and its funding, democratic backsliding threatens to undermine the enforcement of human rights protections throughout Europe. The EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights lays out standards for the protection of rights that it expects from each of its member states.

If constituents of the EU fail to uphold those standards, enforcement elsewhere becomes much more difficult. This is especially true as it pertains to countries wishing to accede to the EU: membership in the valuable economic and political union is often used as leverage to force candidate states to significantly decrease human rights violations.

Serbia stands out as a prominent example. In order to accede to the EU, Serbia must meet certain standards for transparency and human rights. Clearly, Serbia does not yet meet those standards, based on its issues with media freedom and the democratic process; but, the EU has good reason to want Serbia as an eventual member state.

Otherwise, it will likely fall into the arms of China, a nation that has already invested heavily in the Balkan state’s infrastructure and COVID-19 response. The citizens of Serbia are no stranger to this aid: the Institute for European Affairs found that 40 percent of Serbian citizens consider China their largest donor, whereas only about 20 percent believed the EU filled that role.

Similarly, Russia could occupy this role: Serbia already imports 75 percent of its natural gas from

Russia, has a strong connection with Russia through the Orthodox church, and is influenced by Serbian-language Russian state media. Close ties between either of these non-Western powers and Serbia could limit the EU’s influence. This becomes especially important considering that Russia and China are not exactly champions of democratic values like the EU views itself as. If Serbia knows it will receive assistance from China or Russia regardless of its human rights practices, it is less likely to rectify its current abuses; the Serbian government is unlikely to listen to the shouting voices of its constituents unless the EU leverages it to do so.

When faced with the threats in Serbia and Bulgaria, the EU has a few options. For the case of Bulgaria, members of the European Parliament can put party differences aside and call the corruption what it is, in contrast to the partisan vote held on the statement of condemnation earlier this month. It can also stop pouring funds into projects riddled with corruption until the government makes substantial reforms ranging from the judiciary to the press. Serbia can face either the carrot or the stick for its actions: either the EU can back up its abhorrent rule of law report with consequences, or it can incentivize President Vučić and his party to halt anti-democratic practices. Without this action, the EU has failed both its member states and neighbors.

The people of Bulgaria and Serbia are no longer staying silent about the threats to their democracies. The EU should not be, either. H

AERIAL FUMIGATION IN COLOMBIA THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Jaya Nayar Staff Writer

A police plane sprays herbicides over coca fields. El Tarra, Colombia. June 2008.

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ight as the scales of justice slowly began to tip in favor of the people, Colombia’s counternarcotics practices have tilted back towards destruction and damage as it reconsiders the practice of aerial fumigation. From 1994-2015, under the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations, the United States government sprayed a chemical called glyphosate over coca crops in an attempt to decrease cocaine production. After the World Health Organization (WHO) raised health concerns about the chemical in 2015, President Juan Manuel Santos ended the use of aerial fumigation, and the Supreme Court of Colombia banned the chemical for said health reasons.

Now, under pressure from the Trump administration, Colombia’s new president Iván Duque has vowed to restart fumigation.

Earlier in the year, it looked uncertain as to whether Duque would be able to meet the stringent requirements the Court laid out for resuming fumigation, but with President Trump whispering in his ear—or rather, ranting about Colombia’s drug problem on live television— Duque’s has had much more motivation to try to meet the requirements. For further encouragement, Trump even threatened to cut off aid and loans unless Colombia decreased cocaine production. For reference, the majority of aid the United States gives to Colombia is explicitly for “International Narcotics and Law Enforcement.” The loss of this funding would devastate any attempt at alternative development programs meant to decrease drug production.

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As such, this financial pressure holds grave implications for Colombia, only exacerbating their drug trade problem.

Yet restarting aerial fumigation seems like the wrong response. Colombia is the only coca-producing country in the world to have used glyphosate to destroy coca crops. While Duque pledged to not fumigate in protected areas and national parks, his promise doesn’t resolve most of the concerns with aerial fumigation. For example, the wind carries the chemical beyond the coca crops since pilots spray from high up in the air.

Furthermore, these pilots can accidentally spray the wrong crops since it’s hard to tell the difference between coca and non-coca crops. Even if the pilots can discern the difference, there’s often no way to eradicate coca crops without spraying non-coca crops since farmers frequently hide illegal plants among legal ones. Finally, farmers might still be out in the field while fumigation is occurring.

Coronavirus has put a pause on Duque’s plans. The Constitutional Court ruled that in order to pursue aerial fumigation, the government would have to inform affected communities. The Court mandated this in order to give communities time to prepare for fumigation; they wanted people in affected areas to be able to ask questions and voice concerns about the new policy.

However, many of these communities don’t have access to the internet, and therefore can’t be reached via online platforms.

As such, coronavirus has stalled Duque’s plans since there’s no way to notify the communities

of fumigation when travel and large gatherings, that are necessary to provide information, have been restricted. But, rest assured, the government is finding ways around this mere temporary road block.

Academic Controversy Over Glyphosate In order for the judicial ban to be lifted, there needs to be “scientific and conclusive evidence that aerial fumigation poses no health and environmental hazard.” The reason Colombia has even been able to consider restarting fumigation is because of the disagreement in academia over whether glyphosate actually does represent a threat to human health, or if studies have overestimated its impact.

The side that views glyphosate as a dangerous chemical has convincing evidence. The WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) convened 17 experts from 11 countries to survey glyphosate. The way the IARC classifies agents is based on a scale of four: group one agents are “carcinogenic to humans,” group 2A agents are “probably carcinogenic,” group 2B agents are “possibly carcinogenic,” and group three agents are “not classifiable as to its carcinogenicity.” The IARC classified glyphosate as group 2A, along with 88 other “probably carcinogenic” agents. Additionally, the most recent meta-study on glyphosate reviewed and re-analyzed 13 studies discussing its effects on animals, finding that glyphosate does significantly increase the risk of developing tumors in mice. Finally, the most specific study regard-

GLOBAL NOTEBOOK A mom sits next to her daughter, who was born premature with a club foot and a missing leg after pregnancy problems from vegetables fumigated with chemicals from a plane. Cordoba, Colombia. May 2015.

ing the effect of glyphosate on communities in Colombia was published in 2017. It used data from the Ministry of Health and cross referenced illnesses in patients with the dates and locations of fumigation. The study found that exposure to glyphosate increased the risk of dermatological and respiratory problems, as well as miscarriages,

across different municipalities while controlling for other important demographic factors.

On the other hand, the United States Environmental Protection Agency published a report in December 2017 finding that glyphosate was “not likely to be carcinogenic to humans.”

The European Chemicals Agency Risk Assessment Commit-

tee also found “no evidence to link glyphosate to cancer in humans,” and refused to classify it as a chemical causing mutations or reproductive issues. This has only further entrenched skeptics in their views since both of these agencies are quite reputable.

The main issue is that both sides are interpreting statistical evidence differently; they’re often working with the same dataset, but have ideological disagreements on how to view the conclusions from their research.

These beliefs may be informed by the social location of the researchers. For the most part, academics have been the ones declaring glyphosate a dangerous chemical. Meanwhile, policy-making institutions, who are often beholden to political and industrial pressures, have been more reluctant to renounce the chemical. These ideological disputes can be very hard to reconcile, especially when underpinned by political and monetary considerations. This makes it nearly impossible for groups to agree on any course of action regarding glyphosate.

The Role of Lived Experience Among people who have actually experienced fumigation in their communities, the verdict is unanimous: it’s destructive.

Indigenous Colombians, Afro-Descendent Colombians, and Colombians from local communities came together to write a letter to Duque outlining the harms of fumigation and why it shouldn’t be restarted. The letter states that fumigation encourages “triple deforestation.” This is the process where first, coca farmers clear land to prepare it H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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Workers carry harvested lettuce.

Chia, Colombia. March 2020.

for illegal crops. Then, aerial fumigation destroys the crops and makes the land non-viable. As a result, the farmers move to another location and start the same process all over again. The farmers bring with them armed violence, gangs, and other aspects of the drug trade, which even further devastate local communities. The Office of Human Rights and Displacement in Colombia estimated that 39,397 people were displaced from fumigation in 2002, and 36,200 in 2001. The letter continues on to

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state that their communities rely on the flora and fauna around them, and the toxicity of glyphosate destroys these delicate ecosystems.

The claims of these local communities regarding the environmental effects of glyphosate can be verified through research; the chemical has severely damaged the Colombian ecosystem. The destruction of coca crops comes with the erosion of soil and poisoning of aquatic life. The effects are especially long-lasting because temperate ecosystems

take more time to regenerate.

This has only hurt the farming industry, contributing to issues of food insecurity.

More concretely, countless farmers have testified to their horrible experiences with glyphosate. Some have battle scars.

Jose David Hernandez described how glyphosate would irritate his skin to the point where it would bleed, and he still has white scars left from the treatment he received for the chemical. Manuel de Jesus Sanchez was in his rice paddy when

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planes fumigated his crops, and now has skin problems and eyesight issues. Others have horror stories. Blanca Nohemi Arcos and Doris Iles told Colombia Reports of how their pineapple crops were mistaken as coca crops by pilots, and the spraying of the chemical eliminated their main source of income for that season. Pedro Arenas remembers how his friends were forced to move since they lost their whole livelihood as a result of spraying over non-coca crops.

The Colombian and United

States governments were aware of all this suffering, but still chose to continue with fumigation until 2015. Between late 2001 and October 2002, the Colombian Ombudsman received over 6,500 claims of damage for food crops. The office even reported these health issues and stated they stemmed from aerial fumigation. Similarly, the Amazon Alliance criticized the United States State Department for continuing with fumigation despite adverse health and environmental effects. Nevertheless,

these communities were almost entirely overlooked until 2015 when the WHO got involved.

Yet, it’s shocking that it took an actor like the WHO to get the United States and Colombian governments to acknowledge, much less actually address, the pleas of the people suffering in glyphosate-affected communities.

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nificance and the reliability of various studies, the best place to look for evidence of whether glyphosate is actually harmful is within communities that experienced aerial fumigation. The testimony of minority groups within these communities as an example of “lived experience” is valuable. None of the studies listed above can take into account the specific circumstances that exist in Colombia in areas riled with conflict and how glyphosate might differentially affect people in those regions.

As David Restrepo, the environmental director for the Center of Security and Drug Studies at the University of the Andes, said, “The studies saying glyphosate is relatively safe were done on factory farms in stable conditions in the US, not on families growing yuca in a conflict zone.

There is no parallel.”

Clearly, science has limitations in the case of Colombia. It can go so far as to locate causal relationships between glyphosate and health issues (even if there exists disagreement over the truth-value of these relationships), but quantitative studies can’t describe what people on the ground actually experience.

People in glyphosate-affected communities should be considered experts in the issues surrounding the chemical instead of interesting side-notes. This is especially true when those people are suffering as a result of the disagreement over whether glyphosate is toxic or safe; it raises the stakes for refusing to take action and means policymakers should err on the side of caution rather than accepting inconclusive scientific evidence.

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There’s less incentive to lie about skin issues or health problems as a result of glyphosate, but companies that conduct studies on glyphosate have a strong investment in seeing it categorized as a safe material so they can continue selling it. This is specifically true for the company Monsanto that produc-

" THE COLOMBIAN AND UNITED STATES GOVERNMENTS WERE AWARE OF ALL THIS SUFFERING, BUT STILL CHOSE TO CONTINUE WITH FUMIGATION UNTIL 2015" es glyphosate and has invested large sums of money into studies that claim the chemical is safe. The balance between scientific evidence and lived experience is critical for ethical policy-making—numerous reports of health concerns and economic disruption to communities must

be taken as seriously as state and industry backed scientific investigations.

This isn’t a novel concept.

Courts in the United States have accepted lived experience as evidence before. For example, in Monroe County, West Virginia, a group of citizens defeated a massive corporation in court not by citing complicated scientific studies, but by sharing their stories regarding environmental injustice.

What this framework of prioritizing lived experience implies for Colombia is that aerial fumigation mostly does more harm than good for the communities it affects. With such academic uncertainty surrounding glyphosate, lived experience ushers policymakers to stop the practice in order to ensure the government does not condone the suffering of thousands of people at the hands of a toxic chemical.

The Colombian government may be better off investing in practices like alternative livelihood programs meant to support local communities in their resistance against the drug trade by investing in the establishment of legal and thriving developed economies. Programs like this would better contribute to a long-term solution for narcotics than short-term eradication methods, which fail to create change without the requisite infrastructure in place to prevent the drug trade from just shifting locations. Under this model, farmers wouldn’t have to resort to growing illegal crops during desperate times. This is the kind of action that prioritizes the people first over bottom lines and politicking. H

THE RISE OF BOBI WINE HOW A RAPPER FROM THE SLUMS IS IGNITING A REVOLUTION IN UGANDA Jolly Rop Staff Writer

Kyadondo MP Robert Kyagulanyi , commonly known as Bobi Wine, talks.

Nairobi, Kenya. October 2018.

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hen Robert Kyagulanyi, later to be known as Bobi Wine, first started making rap music in the slums of Kampala, Uganda, he did not set out to eventually become a revolutionary. “Music was seen as a thing for failures.

So initially I was involved in different little businesses, selling tapes and records, making bricks, doing this and that,” he told the Rolling Stone in April 2020. Luckily, his efforts paid off. By the early 2000s, Wine had made a big name for himself in the East African music scene. His dancehall hits consisted of a groovy blend of reggae and kidandali—Ugandan afrobeats. He wrote love ballads, gloated about his riches, and exuded the braggadocio of the typical rapper. He rarely delved into serious topics, such as poverty, corruption, and human rights.

He was a part of the Ugandan elite, befriending politicians and businessmen and enjoying a life of decadence in one of the poorest countries in the world. By the late 2010s, he made a big name for himself in another arena: politics. His reggae love ballads were replaced with inflammatory rap disses of the Ugandan establishment. Since his successful bid for parliament in 2017, Bobi Wine the dancehall sensation has transformed into Bobi Wine the political provocateur. Wine’s populist, pro-democracy, anti-corruption movement, People Power, has gained a substantial following, especially among the young, urban, and poor. The movement, with its red berets and clenched fists, reeks of revolution. Now, he’s running for president.

It is tempting to assume that Wine’s popularity is mostly

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Ugandan supporters of Bobi Wine protest his arrest and call for his release and an end to police brutality.

Nairobi, Kenya. November 2020.

based on his rap origins. Music was certainly the catalyst to his popularity, but the forces that propelled him to political infamy and fuels his People Power movement go beyond just one man.

Growing discontent with a neglectful, autocratic government is the basis for his popularity.

Bobi Wine’s liberal, democratic vision is attractive to a people living under the repressive, lawless dictatorship of Yoweri Museveni.

In other words, the rise of Bobi Wine represents the growing disenchantment with the political establishment—not only in Uganda but also throughout the continent.

Museveni came to power in the 1980s after leading a successful rebellion against Idi Amin, the former president also known as the “Butcher of Uganda,” who was often accused of cannibalism (when asked, he responded “I don’t like human flesh…It’s too salty for me”). Once Museveni took office, he abandoned his democratic promises and reverted to power consolidation and repressive rule. Since he took office 34 years ago, Museveni has repeatedly shown his disregard

for the people. A November 2016 incident, where the Ugandan security forces killed more than 100 people, including 15 children, is just one of many instances in which the government has favored its own interest over the interests of the people. Human Rights Watch reports that the incident was the result of a military operation to kill the administrative authority of the Rwenzururu kingdom in western Uganda.

Most of the people killed during the operation were unintended bystanders—cooks, custodians, and children. According to Human Rights Watch, the government responded by charging “hundreds of civilians, including six children, with treason, terrorism, and murder for the deaths of 15 police in six sub-counties outside the town of Kasese, among other crimes.” Other civilians were detained and tortured.

The November 2016 incident highlights the two main problems in Uganda: a powerful, unchecked security force and a blatant disregard for the rule of law. In 2018, security operatives tortured Bobi Wine and 33 others, but no charges were brought

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forward. In July 2019, government officials and police rounded up over 600 children and young adults in Kampala to remove and resettle homeless street children, using sticks and batons to force them into vehicles. Incidents like these are why Uganda ranks 117th out of 128 countries on rule of law by the World Justice Project.

Museveni’s power is not derived from the people—it is derived from the military and law enforcement. He, after all, came to power through the military. If Museveni wants to stay in power, his safest strategy is to appease the military, which gives security officials unchecked power in Uganda. Rarely are security officials held accountable for the crimes they commit. The unilateral transgression of the security officials essentially allows them

to murder people without consequences, thus undermining the rule of law and public trust.

Bobi Wine, more than any other opposition leader, clearly articulates the people’s frustrations.

Before he ran for parliament, Wine was known as “the Ghetto president” because of “Ghetto,” his first song critical of the government. According to Rolling Stone, Wine was inspired to release the song after the government swept vendors and beggars off the streets of Kampala to polish the city’s image as it prepared to host the Commonwealth Heads of Government.

Since then, Wine has repeatedly used music as a political tool to rally his supporters and spread his message. His use of rap music has made him more successful than past opposition leaders.

One of them, Kizza Besigye, has

run for president four times. In a country where the median age is 16 years old, It’s not surprising that Kizza Besigye, who is 64 years old, has not been able to capture the same energy among young people as a reggae star.

Because of his appeal to the people, Wine represents a legitimate threat to Museveni’s rule.

Museveni does not need the people’s respect to stay in power. Museveni, like other strongmen, holds elections to build a facade of legitimacy, especially to western allies that give him millions of dollars worth in aid.

The United States rewards Uganda $1 billion each year for their contributions to the war on terrorism. Uganda has also taken in a substantial number of refugees that Europe has largely rejected—and the US$200 million in humanitarian assistance to come

Ugandan pop star and opposition politician known as Bobi Wine poses next to a mural of himself during a visit to an activists’ arts center in Nairobi, Kenya. October 2018.

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along with it. The discontent that Wine is fostering makes Museveni seem illegitimate, especially to the international community.

Wine’s plan to oust Museveni includes exploiting this vulnerability. Wine has extensively engaged with western media outlets as part of his international strategy to generate foreign support for Museveni’s departure. His efforts have yielded some fruit, such as when the United States invoked the Magnitsky act against Uganda’s former police chief, denying him entry into the United States last year.

A mass uprising, like the Arab Spring, is also another fear of the regime. The need to sustain the facade of legitimacy and avoid a popular uprising mostly explains Museveni’s response to the Bobi Wine problem. Museveni has tried to deal with Wine through fear and intimidation but has avoided killing him in fear of sparking a popular uprising. Wine has been arrested many times, often on dubious charges, then beaten and tortured. His driver was found shot dead, but Wine claims the bullet was for him. Multiple members of his party have also been arrested, beaten, kidnapped, or tortured. Given the cult of personality around Bobi Wine and his immense popularity, his death would surely send shock waves and spark the kind of mass uprising the government fears. Museveni has had multiple opportunities to permanently deal with Bobi Wine, but his reluctance to do so suggests that, for the time being, Bobi Wine is still alive because of his popularity.

Popularity most likely will not translate to electoral victory,

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however. Bobi Wine is almost certainly going to lose the 2021 presidential election. Museveni has a strong political machine with deep ties to big business and the military, and Daniel Kalinaki, the General Manager of the Daily Monitor (Uganda’s largest independent newspaper) says “Even if Jesus Christ ran against Museveni, he’d lose.” He could even, as he did in 2016, arrest his opponent the day of the election.

Bobi Wine’s real potential for change is through his People’s

“ WINE IS USING MUSIC AND SOCIAL MEDIA ORGANIZING TO EFFECT CHANGE.” Power movement. Wine’s movement is meant to pull back the facade of legitimacy and, according to him, “sensitize the people of Uganda” to the problem. He told the Center for Strategic and International Studies his local strategy entails raising support for his party using tools like music and social media, where government repression is less organized, to mobilize the masses. In conjunction with his international strategy, his national strategy has the potential to affect real change in Uganda once people feel compelled to take active steps to remove the regime from power. Currently, Bobi Wine and his movement is a thing to behold, but the movement has not reached the point where people are ready to carry pitchforks to

the capital. But, what he is doing—raising awareness about the problem—is the first step to getting there. Similar to how the men of the French Revolution used pamphlets to awaken the consciousness of the French people to the vices of monarchy, Wine is using music and social media organizing to effect change. In essence, he’s trying to lead a twenty-first century revolution.

The rise of Bobi Wine coincides with a growing trend within the continent—the rise of the young and urban. Amaka Anku and Tochi Eni-Kalu of Foreign Affairs make an interesting connection between growing urbanization, changing demographics, and increasing democratization in Africa. They write that “By 2040—a decade before Africa’s population is forecast to reach 2.1 billion, or double what it is today—the continent will become majority urban.” While some have argued this will lead to anarchy, Anku and Eni-Kalu believed that urbanization will increase calls for government accountability.

Urbanization often leads to increased demands for better social services, such as sanitation, public health guidelines, transportation, and education. This was the case during the English Industrial Revolution of the late 19th century; more people in cities lead to the demand and creation of better public social services. Cities are uniquely conducive to progress because their density makes it easier to organize protests.

All the while, Africa is growing younger: 60 percent of the population in Sub-Saharan Africa is under the age of 25. The rise of the young and urban will increase political competition because it

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renders the current political establishment, which mostly consists of veterans and descendants of the independence revolution, inadequate. New parties or factions that can capture and harness the progressive attitudes of young people will become more popular. In fact, the dethroning of establishment political parties is happening right now.

Anku and Eni-Kalu write that “incumbents in Senegal and Nigeria were voted out of office for the first time in 2012 and 2015, respectively… In South Africa, the ruling African National Congress has lost close to 50 parliamentary seats in the 400-seat National Assembly since 2004...Altogether, over 20 sub-Saharan African nations, including those under long-standing authoritarian rule such as Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and Sudan, have had a transfer of

power, often as a result of a competitive election, in the past four years alone.”

Uganda appears to be following these two trends: the populace is incredibly young and their urbanization continues to increase each year—and so is their hunger for change. Bobi Wine arose to satisfy their appetites. And, he could only have done it through music. The slums of Kampala do not offer many opportunities to become a politician. The political elite in Uganda, and in many African countries, is insular; the chances of breaking into politics without familial linkages are abysmal. The entertainment industry allowed Wine to amass the wealth and build the national recognition necessary to break into politics. In a country with strangling inequality, decimal chances of mobility, and inad-

equate education, it is hard to think of another avenue to politics for someone who was not born into the political elite. It is also hard to imagine a member of the elite generating the type of anti-establishment, populist movement Wine has managed to cultivate.

Bobi Wine is not the only political rapper on the continent.

Last year in Kenya, Kennedy Ombima, known as “King Kaka” on the stage, released an instantly viral and controversial song called “Wajinga Nyinyi (you are fools) ” in which he accused the Kenyan political establishment of neglecting the people. Perhaps he was inspired by Bobi Wine, who was propelled into politics after releasing “Ghetto.” Perhaps he will follow in Wine’s footsteps.

Time can only tell. H

A supporter holds posters of pop star-turned-opposition lawmaker Bobi Wine. Kampala, Uganda. September 2018.

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ERDOGAN’ S ATTEMPTS FOR CONTROL OF THE GREEK PRESS AND THE EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN H A R VA R D I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E V I E W

Rachel Harris Staff Writer

Turkey ’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan gestures as he addresses his party members.

Ankara, Turkey. August 2020.

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n September 18, 2020, the front page of Dimokratia, a right-wing Greek newspaper, featured the headline “Siktir Git Mr. Erdogan,” meaning “F*** Off Mr. Erdogan.” In response, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, leader of Turkey since 2014, filed an aggressively worded criminal complaint against the four people involved. Erdogan’s criminal report and the scramble

by Greece and Europe to respond reveals the degree to which Erdogan’s desire for total control over his public image has expanded beyond Turkey’s borders, impacting the way he engages diplomatically with both allies and rivals. This diplomatic tension, unfolding against the backdrop of Turkey’s resumption of talks with Greece over energy control in the Eastern Mediterranean, highlights Erdogan’s use of journalists as leverage in his broader fight for regional hegemony. By weaponizing his abuse of the free press towards his international agenda, Erdogan is signalling his increasing willingness to push the boundaries of international norms in his overall campaign for more geopolitical power.

Erdogan and the Press Erdogan has had a rocky history with the press: the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that 47 journalists are currently jailed in Turkey, and Erdogan has sued over 2,000 people for insulting him since taking office. The legal consequences for insulting the president as well as restrictions on vaguely defined “terror propaganda” and content that allegedly threatens national security contribute to an atmosphere of media self-censorship in Turkey.

Even for journalists who don’t face legal consequences, the professional pressure to refrain from censuring the Erdogan government is strong, aided by government policies after the 2016 coup that forced over a hundred media outlets to shut down and required others to be transferred or sold at below-market rates to businessmen who are friends or allies of Erdogan. This functional cartel of business interests, which are intimately linked to Erdogan, transforms nearly all Turkish journalism, even privately-owned news outlets, into de facto state media. Because of this tight control, Turkey ranks 154th out of 180 on the 2020 World Press Freedom Index, lower than Russia and Pakistan.

An International Incident While Erdogan’s relationship with the press in Turkey has consistently worsened since he took office, international outlets have, naturally, remained largely outside of his sphere of influence.

The recent Dimokratia dispute, however, has appeared to change this norm: although the offensive headline was published in Greece, Erdogan has attempted to use the same aggressive legal threats that granted him full control of the Turkish press to silence international journalists as well. Rather than address his concerns with Dimokratia to the newspaper directly or to relevant Greek officials, Erdogan has attempted to resolve his dispute exclusively within Turkey’s bureaucracy, a major affront to Greek sovereignty. Inflating the severity of the headline from a personal slight to a perceived international crime, Erdogan’s

complaint was submitted directly to the Ankara prosecutor’s office. Although the only “suspects” named in the complaint were the four journalists directly involved in the publication of the article (Manolis Kotakis, Andreas Kapsampelis, Yorgos Giatroudakis, and Dimitris Rizoulis), Erdogan’s complaint also implicated broader Greek society; it asserted that, “considering the silence of the Greek public, it is understood that this moral collapse is not limited to marginal segments.” This view that all of Greece was somehow involved in the headline’s aggressive view of Erdogan’s administration was echoed by Dimokratia itself, who responded to the backlash by saying that their headline “said everything that all the Greeks wanted to say.”

Acting on his complaint implicating the entire Greek public, Erdogan has mobilized all levels of Turkey’s government to fight the perceived slight against him, treating it as an affront to Turkey rather than to Erdogan as a private citizen. Fahrettin Altun, Communications Director at the Turkish Presidency, wrote a letter to the Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas, stating: “on behalf of the Turkish government, I condemn in the strongest terms the publication of insults directed at our President.” In a letter to Greek Justice Minister Kostantinos Tsiaras, Turkish Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül goes even further: “I strongly condemn and find this immoral and shameless act unacceptable that is presented under the guise of freedom of the press but is far from the objective of freedom of the press and in no way compatible with H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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the peaceful intentions required by international law.” This understanding of the “objective of freedom of the press,” apparently defined by Gül as media that does not offend the sensibilities of foreign leaders, was not fully embraced by the Greek foreign ministry, which was summoned by the Turkish government over the incident. In response, the Greek ministry wrote: Freedom of expression and freedom of the Press are fully protected in Greece. This fact does not negate the obligation to refrain from insulting the personality of any individual, particularly a foreign leader. The use of offensive language is contrary to our country’s political culture and can only be condemned.

Although they did not accept Greeks burn a banner depicting Turkish President Erdogan, during a rally against Turkey ’s military action in Syria. Athens, Greece.

October 2019.

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Turkey’s broad assertion that insulting Erdogan should be internationally illegal, the Greek officials’ willingness to condemn the headline reveals Erdogan’s surprising influence in Greek matters. By garnering a somewhat receptive response to his rather aggressive claim, Erdogan has succeeded in his goal of pushing the boundaries of Turkish influence a little further, thus encroaching on Greek sovereignty.

Conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean Erdogan’s decision to use Turkish bureaucracy to fight the headline makes sense, as his complaint argued that “the target of this despicable act was not only the president, but the interest of Turkish nation that Erdogan defends with determination in the

Eastern Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea.” Erdogan’s determination to be the sole defender of the Eastern Mediterranean has been the topic of significant international scrutiny lately as Turkey, Greece, the European Union, and NATO have recently resumed talks over energy control in the Eastern Mediterranean. Ever since large amounts of hydrocarbon were discovered in the Mediterranean, Turkey and Greece have struggled to delineate their maritime borders in the region. Typically, such disputes would be decided by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which governs the boundaries of exclusive economic zones off the coast of countries. However, Turkey has not acceded to UNCLOS (Greece has), and both countries

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claim historical control over islands in the Eastern Mediterranean that would make the region their exclusive economic zone.

Because of these disputed territorial claims, the issue of regional control remains hotly contested.

Control of the Mediterranean is especially important to Turkey, as Cem Gürdeniz, a former Turkish admiral, described gaining control over the sea as “defending our blue homeland [...] after our continental shelf was stolen

by Greece and Cyprus,” singling it out as “the greatest geostrategic challenge of the century.”

In pursuit of total control, Turkey has deployed two research vessels near Cyprus over the past few months, ratcheting up tension in the region. These tensions peaked in August, when Turkish and Greek military vessels collided in the Eastern Mediterranean, causing years of slowly bubbling tensions to reach a boiling point. While Turkey has since removed the offending ship from the waters, its recent aggressive moves—the continued deployment of more naval vessels— have exacerbated the consistent tensions between Turkey and the EU over maritime control. In treating the Eastern Mediterranean as Turkey’s exclusive territory before the dispute has been settled, Erdogan has demonstrated his willingness to presumptively act as if he has control over other sovereign states, then occasionally pull back when challenged. While none of these disputes have escalated into military confrontations, Erdogan’s tendency to push the outer bounds of international acceptability demonstrates a deeply concerning trend. The recent criminal

complaint against Dimokratia is only the latest in Erdogan’s series of nonviolent but unmistakably aggressive moves toward Greece, which strategically pushes them into a constantly reactive, defensive position when entering talks.

Erdogan’s consistent challenges to Greek control through military actions and attempted media censorship have certainly upset some Greek officials, including Greece’s Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, who has stated, “one thing is certain: Turkish provocation, whether manifested through unilateral actions or through extreme rhetoric, can no longer be tolerated.” However upsetting they may be to Prime Minister Kyriakos, Erdogan’s consistent “provocations” may make sense for Turkey’s longterm geopolitical strategy, as they allow Erdogan to regain the perceived upper hand in diplomatic talks mediated by Germany and the European Union (EU). Maintaining dominance in diplomacy is clearly important to Turkey, as Erdogan has repeatedly warned the EU that they must be impartial in negotiations and expressed concerns about possible biases toward existing EU members, specifically Greece and Cyprus.

In forcing the Greek people to respond to his complaint against Dimokratia, Erdogan could be attempting to regain some of the influence he feels he has lost in the EU’s mediation.

While Turkey may be somewhat disadvantaged in negotiations with the EU, it is ostensibly on equal footing with Greece within NATO, in which both countries are members. On October 1, Greek and Turkish negotiators agreed to a bilat-

eral de-confliction mechanism through NATO that includes the establishment of a hotline between the two countries to prevent military conflict in the Eastern Mediterranean. Assuming this mechanism will be effective in preventing military conflict, which is far from guaranteed, the NATO resolution only sets the basic groundwork for diplomatic discussions of long-term control over the hydrocarbon reserves.

These broader discussions, as of right now, are still being mediated by the EU and its member states.

Erdogan’s decision to target members of the Greek press, whether as a strategic provocation to gain leverage in energy negotiations or simply the protection of a totalitarian strongman’s ego, reveals his disregard for the free press of other sovereign states. Erdogan’s attempted encroachment on Greek press not only highlights his willingness to treat journalists as pawns in his geopolitical power struggles, but also advances his concerning pattern of provocations toward Greece in particular and Europe in general, including his recent assertion that French President Emmanuel Macron needs “some sort of mental treatment.” This comment, coupled with Erdogan’s increasing military aggression, has caused the EU to threaten to impose sanctions against Erdogan if his affronts toward EU nations continue. As Greece and the EU head into energy talks with Turkey, how they choose to respond to Erdogan’s more aggressive maneuvers, both military and diplomatic, may be pivotal in the broader struggle over regional dominance. H H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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AN ARMY OF WHITE COATS

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EXPLORING THE IMPLICATIONS OF CUBAN MEDICAL DIPLOMACY Salomé Garnier Associate Editor

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Cuban doctors form up during a farewell ceremony as they prepare to leave for Italy. Havana, Cuba. April 2020.

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here are 68 languages spoken in Kenya. Most people speak Swahili or English and at least one of many local mother tongues. In the streets of Nairobi, it is not uncommon to hear greetings in multitudes of different languages, from “hey, how are you?” in English to “jambo, habari gani?” in Swahili, including “wĩmwega, ũhana atĩa?” in Kikuyu. Kenyans speak and understand many different languages—Spanish, however, is not usually one of them.

In the past few years, though, Kenyans have been hearing Spanish increasingly often, especially when seeking medical care. The introduction of a new language in Kenyan society may be surprising, but it is not a coincidence. Like many other countries in the world, Kenyans have seen Cuban doctors enter their health facilities and provide healthcare alongside their local counterparts since 2018 when the Cuban government deployed its doctors in rural, underserved areas in severe need of specialized medics. With this arrival, local clinics were able to provide quality specialized healthcare to patients in need instead of referring them to urban hospitals. The doctors generally adapted well to their new environments, such as by learning local dialects, and their presence led to improved access to specialised medical care and reduced congestion in urban referral hospitals, or hospitals that provide specialized care after referral from local primary care providers.

However, as a new, smaller wave of Cuban doctors entered Kenya to help address the COVID-19 pandemic, questions arose about the conditions un-

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der which these foreign medics had been working on Kenyan soil. Kenya and Cuba struck a deal in 2018 to bring in 100 Cuban doctors to Kenya’s underserved rural areas. However, all details and logistics remained confidential, including the doctors’ salaries and how much money the Cuban government received for the deal. Amidst rising public scrutiny around the 2018 deal, Kenya’s major news outlet The Nation led a thorough investigation on the materialization of this transaction and on the benefits granted to Cuban doctors to keep them in Kenya for the past two years.

The Kenya-Cuba Doctors Deal In 2005, Cuban President Fidel Castro established The Henry Reeve Medical Brigade, nicknamed the “White Coat Army,” to respond to emergencies and serious epidemics around the world. Doctors from the Brigade are trained in specialized medicine and infectious disease containment. So, in July 2020, 20 Cuban doctors from the Brigade arrived in Kenya to help manage the coronavirus pandemic.

They came to join the 100 other Cuban doctors who had been working on Kenyan soil for the past two years since Kenya and Cuba had agreed on the Doctors Deal.

The relationship between Kenya and Cuba was instigated in 2016 when then-President Uhuru Kenyatta launched a diplomatic push to increase cooperation with Havana and advance “shared collaboration interests.”

Specifically, Kenyatta was interested in Cuba’s health expertise.

Shortly after the Kenyan administration had set up an embassy in Havana, both governments

began talks over a new partnership in the field of health. These discussions originally revolved around “investment opportunities for the manufacture of vaccines, ARVs [antiretroviral drugs], medical gases and antimalarial medicines,” and there was no mention of bringing in physicians. A year later, however, Kenyan Cabinet Secretary Sicily Kariuki signed a deal to import 100 doctors to Kenyan rural areas. The deal was beneficial for both countries; while Cuba would be generously remunerated for each doctor—a welcome financial support for a country with large public deficits—Kenya would compensate for its chronic shortage of healthcare professionals with highly trained doctors in oncology, nephrology, and infectious and tropical diseases.

It is true that Kenya has an insufficient amount of licensed doctors. While the World Health Organization recommends one physician per 1,000 people, Kenya has only 9,000 doctors to take care of 47.5 million Kenyans, leaving one doctor responsible for more than 5,000 people. The Kenya Medical Practitioners and Dentists Council, which licenses Kenyan doctors, blames this shortage on two related phenomena: brain drain—the emigration of highly skilled or trained professionals—and the government’s failure to create incentives for doctors to practice within the country.

The lack of government support for Kenyan doctors is key to understanding the tensions brought about by the Kenya-Cuba doctors deal, specifically among medical professionals.

As part of the deal, Kenya committed to pay an estimated KES

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Sh1 million (US$13,996.85) per month for each of the Cuban doctors, equivalent to the pay of five Kenyan medical professionals. The amount includes monthly stipends paid to the doctors and expenses for accommodation, such as rent, furniture, and utilities, but most of the total amount goes to the Cuban government as payment.

The Kenyan government also covers health insurance and malpractice insurance for all Cuban doctors. These measures stand in stark contrast with the way Kenyan doctors are treated.

Beyond receiving much lower salaries, Kenyan medical professionals do not benefit from free health or malpractice insurance, which can be very expensive.

These out-of-pocket expenses with no subsidy from the government make it difficult to survive on low wages, providing little incentive for Kenyan doctors to keep (or start) practicing.

The public indignation following the exposure of these details in 2020 stemmed from the realization of how unfair-

ly native doctors were treated despite the government clearly having the resources to treat them better all along. Many Kenyans were outraged that the resources spent towards importing foreign doctors had not been directed towards better training and incentives for Kenyan-born medical professionals instead.

Still, the Kenyan government has been extremely appreciative of the work of Cuban doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Health Cabinet Secretary Mutahi Kagwe commended them for “doing a fantastic job, especially at this time when we need experienced doctors to deal with COVID-19 as well as our usual cases.”

A Worldwide Phenomenon Kenya is not the only country that has been hosting doctors from Cuba for several years.

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, medics from the Cuban Henry Reeve Medical Brigade were present in dozens of developing countries throughout the world. And, unlike in Kenya,

where their presence has resulted in controversy, these doctors are overwhelmingly praised for their work. More recently, since the beginning of the pandemic, Cuban medics have been deployed in nearly 40 countries across five continents. Some examples include Togo, South Africa, and Jamaica, the latter of which has welcomed 137 Cuban doctors since March in addition to the 296 already in the country. Cuban doctors even started working in wealthy countries such as Andorra and Italy as well as in countries that are not politically aligned with Cuba, like Peru. While Cuba has been providing this service to some countries for free during the pandemic, other recipient countries are paying, which is helpful for Cuba to support its exorbitant public deficit and food shortages during the pandemic.

Authorities from these countries have openly praised these doctors’ work. In South Africa, the Head of Health for the Eastern Cape declared that Cuban doctors had made “a very im-

Children await the arrival of Cuban doctors who were helping with the Covid-19 emergency in Italy. Havana, Cuba. June 2020.

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pactful intervention, at low cost, in low resource areas.” The head of cooperation at Togo’s foreign ministry, Charles Azilan, was grateful that “as scientific and medical circles groped in the dark, Cuban medicine, strong from past experiences, brought appropriate answers.” Indeed, the Brigade gained much experience with the management of infectious diseases when they helped fight cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa. Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, called the medics “lifesavers” who constituted “the backbone of the response to the pandemic.”

Diplomacy through Health Care Medical humanitarianism is inherently linked to Cuba’s role in the international community.

Since its 1959 leftist revolution, Cuba has dispatched volunteer doctors to disaster sites and disease outbreaks in the name of solidarity. After the creation of the Henry Reeve Medical Brigade in 2005, more than 7,400

volunteer Cuban health professionals were trained in medicine and infectious disease containment before being deployed throughout the world. Preceding the onset of COVID-19, they helped fight cholera in Haiti and Ebola in West Africa as well as responded to floods in Guatemala and to the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. The Nation wrote that “medical workers are Cuba’s biggest export.” In fact, in 2018, Cuba’s medical services export program generated $6.4 billion and was Cuba’s largest source of income. The Cuban strategy is to help alleviate its massive foreign debt and public deficit by doing what it does best, producing highly trained medical professionals and exporting them wherever they are needed.

Beyond economic incentives, exporting doctors has become a diplomatic tool to increase Cuba’s soft power around the world. Humanitarian aid is essential to promoting the country’s image, and Cuba’s medical professionals have become indispensable for both responding

to health crises and supporting local health services on a continuous basis. These exports are not just symbolic: Cuban doctors are highly trained in stateof-the-art medical skills and have significantly contributed to the bettering of health throughout the world. Despite little attention from Western media, the exceptional services provided by these doctors have been recognized for years, even before the coronavirus pandemic. For example, in 2014, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon praised the brigade as “miracle workers,” who are often “the first to arrive and the last to leave.”

Nobel Peace Prize Nomination While Cuban doctors have been working abroad for years, the increased dedication of the Brigade during the COVID-19 pandemic recently drew attention from the World Peace Council. In October 2020, the Council formally registered the candidacy of Cuban doctors for the Nobel Peace Prize, stating in a letter to the Norwegian

Cuban doctors return from Italy where they were helping with the COVID-19 emergency. Havana, Cuba. June 2020.

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Nobel Committee that the work of Cuban doctors during the pandemic was “the most sincere exampleof ... international solidarity.” Organizations and individuals around the world supported this nomination, ranging from the mayor of the small Italian town of Crema to communist organizations in many African countries. Congo’s newspaper La Prospérité beautifully stated that: As our world had barricaded itself with selfishness, it suddenly was surprised by an altruistic and generous lifeline: a team of Cuban medics, with state-ofthe-art epidemiological knowledge to fight against infectious diseases. When most countries preferred protecting their medical personnel and keeping them for themselves, these Cuban doctors volunteered their lives.

Their availability and generosity deserve to be honored.

The Cuban brigade’s extraordinary humanitarian efforts were recognized for their outstanding efficiency in the fight against COVID-19. A nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize is significant: it signals a consensus that these Cuban doctors have been exceptionally helpful and critical to their recipients.

In the words of Alfred Nobel himself, the prize should go to those who have done “the best work for fraternity between nations.” The Cuban brigade does just that: it embodies fraternity and the exchange of strengths between developing countries, providing a great example of effective South-South collaboration.

South-South Collaboration The Cuban medical initiative, regardless of underlying eco-

nomic and diplomatic motives, paves the way for a new type of global cooperation. Ban Kimoon, in a 2014 press release, thanked the doctors for “leading the way on South-South cooperation.” For generations, humanitarian aid has been tainted by the paternalistic dynamics of Western countries helping low-income nations.

The concept of international aid paternalism stems from a widespread perception of donors as benefactors of the world and of recipients as unable to take care of themselves without such help. Aid paternalism has created a hierarchy that places wealthy Western nations at the top and recipients of Western aid at the bottom. Most importantly, many humanitarian initiatives have stemmed from a “we know what is best for you” mentality, leaving little room for national determination and agency. Many times, humanitarian workers are not fully qualified for the task at hand, and they end up doing more harm than good to the populations they came to help.

For example, in 1999, a popular American charity called Operation Smile was placed under scrutiny for medical malpractice. It was accused of prioritizing its public image and publicity over medical standards and patient safety. The charity, which was perceived as a stellar organization providing oral surgery to children in the developing world, was widely criticized in the countries it served, as patients faced excessive medical complications following their surgery. In addition, 16 of Operation Smile’s patients had died since the beginning of their operations. A local pediat-

ric surgeon in Bolivia accused the organisation of conducting “surgical safaris,” describing it as “a form of neo-colonialism.”

The case of Operation Smile embodies international aid paternalism, and its leaders cared more about the symbolism of their actions than about actually providing quality care to the patients they treated.

Cuba’s medical program opens the door for a different type of humanitarian aid, one that leads to true cooperation between equal nations. Cuban doctors are highly qualified, and they are not sent to host countries out of paternalistic charity. Instead, they are sent to partner countries as part of mutually beneficial deals. In the case of Kenya, the deal itself was instigated by Kenyatta.

However, the doctors are highly trained and produce actual positive effects in response to health emergencies despite potentially unfair deals struck between the two governments. The doctors are educated by a nation that understands the role that a healthy population can play in a nation’s development and a nation that believes that healthcare should be a right for all. Today, the small developing country has more medical staff working in the Global South than all of the G-7 countries combined.

They have traveled to Europe for the first time during the pandemic, suggesting a reversal of existing paternalistic dynamics of humanitarian aid. Cuba’s medical services abroad bring hope that new humanitarian dynamics may be on the rise, promoting empowerment for the Global South and increasing cooperation across the hemisphere. H H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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THE RENAISSANCE OF WATER Amen Gashaw Staff Writer

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A Tigray woman carries water on her back at Umm Rakouba refugee camp. Qadarif, Sudan. November 2020.

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t is only a river, but wading through its expansive water, hearing the roaring wet conflagrations of Tissisat Falls (literally, waterfall of smoke), or watching fishermen cast their nets and women wash their clothes, one can swear the Nile breathes. It is no surprise, then, that Professor James McCann in an interview with Boston University’s “The Brink”, maintains that the Nile has a soul— “a reference to the changing beliefs about the Blue Nile, its source, its cultural meaning to the peoples who have lived at that site, and the high modern national meaning.”

In recent years, the Nile’s “soul” has taken on a more hostile and internationally toxic tone. The waters that were once monopolized by Egypt’s Aswan Dam have a new surveyor: the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), a highly contested and expensive venture that has the potential to simultaneously lift millions from poverty and throw the eastern world into tumult. Contrary to public knowledge, however, these developments are not new. In conjunction with the United States Bureau of Reclamation, Ethiopia conducted the first feasibility study for a dam on the Nile in 1964, nearly half a century before construction would begin.

During the 47 years following, Ethiopia fell victim to communism, revolution, secession, and rampant chaos that distracted from wider efforts for economic development. Even once talks to implement the project began, Ethiopia entered into a nearly perpetual conflict with Egypt regarding the implications of

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access to Nile water. This and a slew of other disputes have arisen in the decades since the dam was first conceived and have, unsurprisingly, not been resolved even as Ethiopia now begins to fill GERD. It is clear that Ethiopia, in its attempt to reverse decades of regression, has systematically circumvented the interests of multinational and internal entities that have sought to sabotage its efforts to complete the Grand Renaissance Dam with the intention of maintaining preexisting alliances and protracting the subjugation of nations in the global periphery. An exploration of such dynamics warrants a model of equal artistry, innovation, and tragedy: a journey through the Renaissance of times past.

El Greco: A Posthumous Visionary Despite his clear artistic prowess, a life of romantic intrigue and exorbitant wealth followed by debilitating debt, conflict, and ostracization led El Greco, a pioneer of the Spanish renaissance, to die poor and without renown.

He did not gain widespread prestige until the last century— his well-deserved fame delayed by some four hundred years.

Indeed, El Greco’s contributions to Spanish “rebirth” went unrewarded much in the same way Ethiopia has lived in Nilotic subservience to other nations for decades, if not centuries, despite supplying more than 85 percent of the river’s water. Ethiopia’s decision to build GERD is less a renaissance than it is a much overdue reconnaissance of the territory over which the nation,

empirically, should have had jurisdiction long ago.

Years of geopolitical and resource subordination, thus, have placed Ethiopia at a vast disadvantage. A mere 30 percent of the population has access to ready electricity for non-essential tasks despite being the most populous landlocked country in the world, and 55 percent rely exclusively on wood for food preparation. This is not to say that Ethiopia is devoid of energy stores. Quite the contrary, as the region is rife with sources of potential wind, solar, and hydroelectric power, but has lacked the infrastructure or developmental capacity to utilize them. Imagine, then, a highly populated nation, blessed, or perhaps cursed, with vast natural resources that have gone virtually untapped. Such inefficacies have further impoverished rural Ethiopians in relation to their urban counterparts, stunting national efforts to reach universal electrification by 2025 and further develop via widespread industrialization.

GERD stands to become one of Ethiopia’s solutions to its poverty predicament, but its final implementation has long been thwarted by other nations— Egypt for instance, which has benefited from similar forms of infrastructure. Indeed, Egypt’s Aswan High Dam, in addition to regulating flood and facilitating irrigation, has 2.1 GW of electrical capacity and accounts for 45 percent of Egypt’s power needs.

Studies suggest that the benefits wrought on the Egyptian economy on account of the dam could value as much as US$10 billion, four percent of the nation’s GDP,

GLOBAL NOTEBOOK A Tigray boy who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region, carries water, at Umm Rakouba refugee camp.

Qadarif, Sudan. November 2020.

which was triple that of Ethiopia in 2018.

It is clear then that Ethiopia’s growth has been stifled while other nations, in undertaking the same methods which Ethiopia aspires to actualize, comparatively prosper. It’s true that Ethiopia has managed exponential growth without the dam, but it remains one of the world’s poorest nations. Thus, despite a 10.5 percent rate of economic expansion, the vast majority of Ethiopians live in poverty, and their destitution has been exacerbated by a lack of access to electric power that could be remedied by a dam on the Nile.

Cosimo de Medici: An Architect of Execution In spite of insurrection, rebellion, and unrest in 15th century Florence, Cosimo de Medici commissioned the building of several magnificent cultural, economic, and political centers in Renaissance Italy. Doing so took immense individual ingenuity and resourcefulness on Medici’s part, coupled with the collective community agency of the Florentine population. Much in the same way, in the face of fierce international opposition, Ethiopians and a few select global allies mobilized to finance the building of GERD, which, as of October 2020, has been completed and is set to begin generating power in the next 12 months.

Bonds sold during times of crisis—World War, economic downturn, famine—tend to have nationalistic roots. In Ethiopia, indeed, it was patriotism that the government repurposed to fund the US$5 billion price tag of the Renaissance Dam. Any re-

maining costs were covered by a miniscule number of international actors, namely China and Middle Eastern nations who are unallied with Egypt. Employing largely domestic funding of the dam was not, however, the Ethiopian government’s initial intention.

In 1996, Ethiopia was granted permission to IMF and World Bank funds via an Extended Structural Adjustment Program.

However, after an airline loan dispute with the United States, Ethiopia was all but sanctioned from future requests for financial aid. When they appealed to the World Bank to finance GERD, Ethiopia was then denied and has had to crowd-fund much of the project, a testament to national commitment to the initiative. Even so, international agents meant to mitigate global financial conflict have been, by default, apprehensive of Ethiopian expenses, or at least, subservient to wealthier and more influential nations, in this case the United States.

Despite a sense of national solidarity surrounding the dam’s construction, the Ethiopian domestic climate has been far from devoid of conflict regarding its completion. Since its construction began in 2011, the Ethiopian Attorney General has charged 50 people with abuse of power and embezzlement of funds intended for dam construction, especially involved with the Metal Engineering Corporation (METEC). METEC was also held responsible for structural inefficacies in the dam which, when being repaired, resulted in construction delays. Preexisting complications were exacerbatH I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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ed by the alleged suicide but suspected murder of GERD engineer Simegnew Bekele. Thus, even within Ethiopian borders, GERD has had to overcome significant and simultaneous financial and domestic barriers.

Zora Neale Hurston: Hard Pressed on All Sides The figures of the Harlem Renaissance were not friends to Zora Neale Hurston who, in her brutally honest and unfiltered writings, critiqued the essence of both mainstream American and Black culture. Indeed, she was buried in an unmarked grave after critical feedback to her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching God” placed her on the outskirts of the literary community until her death. GERD has also, on many occasions, fallen into obscurity and near disaster after insurgents, multinationals, and even the leader of the free world have tried to combat Ethiopia’s dam building efforts. Indeed, Israel, the United States, Egypt, and even other sub-Saharan African nations like Sudan and the Congo, on account of deep rooted conflicts of interest, have voiced and acted to prevent the Renaissance dam’s completion.

Israel, for instance, has been on the receiving end of Egypt’s North Sinai Agricultural Development Plan since the late 1990s, through which it has acquired a steady flow of Nile water that Egypt has continued to supply despite initial geopolitical concerns. Indeed, likely on account of the steady flow of vital water, Israel currently prioritizes its relationship with Egypt, which has historically been one of animosity, over Ethiopia. When

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accused of opportunistically installing defensive air systems to protect GERD in attempts to secure access to the dam upon its completion, Israel denied involvement. This deprioritization of Ethiopian interests exists in direct contrast, however, with Israeli intentions to assume responsibility for energy distribution of the new dam, ensuring that even if their alliance with Egypt along the Nile collapses, Israel will continue to have access to its hydroelectric power.

The tale of GERD-Israeli relations, then, is one of inconsistency and interference, potentially destabilizing the climate of Ethiopian affairs.

Israeli meddling is not the only difficulty posed by more developed nations. The United States, which has been instrumental in “facilitating” peace talks between Egypt and Ethiopia regarding the dam, recently withdrew US$130 million of foreign aid from Ethiopia after the latter’s unilateral decision to begin filling the dam before a settlement was reached. In reality, this diversion of funds displays a clear bias in favor of Egypt in the United States’ “engagement” efforts and lack of understanding of the gravity of the dam’s completion for individuals throughout Africa. Indeed the fund halt may do more to suspend trilateral discussions between Egypt, Sudan, and Ethiopia respecting the future of GERD, further backlogging its completion and amplifying the toxicity of intra-African relations.

In keeping with gradually decaying relations within Africa regarding GERD, negotiations for

the dam have largely been characterized by Egyptian bitterness, Sudanese opposition, and Congolese hypocrisy. This is not to say that Ethiopia is entirely blameless, but holistically, there seems to be a superordination of personal interests over continental harmony. Egypt, feeling betrayed by Ethiopia’s decision to build GERD rather than the border dam that had been internationally agreed upon in a 2008 World Bank deal, has claimed that the dam will drastically reduce its access to Nile water, which fuels and supports over 95 percent of its population, and has mounted the lofty request that Ethiopia increase its share of Nile water flow from 66 percent to 90 percent. This may, however, be impossible without deliberately underutilizing GERD’s capacity. Sudan holds similar concerns that Ethiopia’s decision to begin filling the dam will harm its population, sending a letter to the UN claiming that GERD could disadvantage millions if its completion depletes water access for Sudan’s own Roseires Dam. The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)’s recent endorsement of Egypt’s counter-GERD initiatives is ostensibly the most nuanced facet of the politics of Ethiopia’s water renaissance.

Providing its full support for Egypt’s position in dam peace talks, the DRC continues its long-standing policy of acting in accordance with Egyptian interests. The decision to do so, however, may be tied to the DRC’s own dam building efforts, as its Grand Inga Dam, a project that could cost US$100 billion over the next half century, was

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recently denied funding by the World Bank in July. To support the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam would, then, be to jeopardize the DRC’s future prospects at finance acquisition and international support for its 8 dam system.

GERD is projected to generate 56 gigawatt hours annually once in function. Despite its vast implications for energy access throughout Africa, however, pre-existing alliances, geopolitical intrigue, and unilateral self interest among nations of both great power and proximity to the Nile basin, Ethiopia included, actively continue to combat

and derail efforts to make the dam operational.

Hydroelectric Renaissance Once the filling and negotiation processes conclude, if they ever will, in addition to its immense hydroelectric power, GERD has the capacity to mitigate floods of up to 19,370 cubic meters per second, pave the way for irrigating some half a million hectares of land, and reduce unhealthy soil buildup and around 40 km of flooding in Sudan.

Specialized structures will allow it to moderate excess water evaporation and, in marginally reducing the water access of the

Aswan High Dam, will conserve 6 billion cubic meters of water that would otherwise have evaporated or been inefficiently allocated. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, thus, has the ability to vastly accelerate the development of Ethiopia and Africa at large, and to some, stands as a symbol for the African Renaissance.

If African nations are able to successfully address, negotiate, and compromise on their shared interests in the completion of the structure, then, it is indubitable that GERD’s implications of rebirth will stretch far beyond Ethiopia’s borders. H

A man swims in the Nile River on Heisa Island. Aswan, Egypt. May 2018.

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LOVED, FEARED, AND REVERED H A R VA R D I N T E R N AT I O N A L R E V I E W

WOMEN IN POLITICAL MOVEMENTS Choetsow Tenzin Staff Writer

A women takes part in the performing the anthem, “ Un violador en tu camino” or “A rapist in your path,” in a demonstration against gender-based violence. Rio de Janiero, Brazil. December 2019.

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GLOBAL NOTEBOOK

T

he ways that mothers, wives, and daughters have equalled activists, protestors, and world changers have been gaining more attention in the modern era. Dressed in white, hand in hand, and chanting together, the women of Belarus gathered in the capital streets of Minsk to form a human chain in protest.

The protests followed the results of the recent election where many accused Alexander Lukashenko’s party of rigging the election, as their party won almost 80 percent of the vote. Following the results of the August 9 election, protests increased and took a violent turn, with reports of police using excessive force such as water cannons, stun grenades, and rubber bullets. However, it is not the protests and the violence that have captivated international attention, but rather the women leading them.

After the violent aftermath of previous protests, many women took to the streets to show their support for the three opposition candidates, two of whom had fled the country in fear of their safety post-election. Since August, thousands of women have

taken to the streets in cities across the country to protest, not only against the sheer misogyny their government has shown them but also in hope of establishing a fairer democracy for their country.

This is not the first time the world has seen women spearheading political movements.

Throughout history, women have often played a pivotal role in organizing mass political movements. However, these brave leaders never seem to receive as much attention as their male counterparts. When examining mass movements and political protests, male figures dominate the conversation and news stories. Behind the scenes, women have been historically stepping up to lead and organize mass movements that not only progress their country’s political agenda but also aid in changing their roles in society.

Hidden Figures from East to West On March 12, 1959, thousands of women—ranging from mothers to nuns—gathered in front of the Potala Palace while Chinese troops stormed into the Tibetan

capital city of Lhasa. The sheer mass of people was able to form a thick human barricade between the Palace, where His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama resided, and the invading Chinese troops.

While in the past social roles of Tibetan women were often unequal to men, their resilience and bravery were astonishing as they led this mass movement, which lasted over five days and escalated into violence. It was after this series of protests and mass unrest that His Holiness and his escape party fled to India. Without the leadership and political awareness of these women who sacrificed their lives for their country and leader, the future of Tibet and their spiritual leader would be unknown.

Women who face even stricter social roles have not hesitated to take a role in political movements. Often neglected during reports of the Arab Spring were the number and heavy influence of women. Ranging from Tunisia, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and Egypt, women took an active role in organizing demonstrations for and against regime changes.

Egypt is known for its histo-

Women hold hands as they create a human chain during a protest. Minsk , Belarus. August 2020.

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ry of conservative perspectives on the social status and role of women ranging from what they wore to what they are allowed to do. However, Egyptian women played an influential role during the 2011 protests against the country’s former president, Hosni Mubarak. Many Egyptian women fearlessly defied their conservative social environment by involving themselves in public discourse. Women stayed out late protesting, painted bright colors on their faces, and marched side by side with their male counterparts. Amongst the shock was a sense of acceptance and unity of the Egyptian people. Women played a critical role in numbers, with reports stating that on some days female protestors made up 40 to 50 percent of the demonstrators and leaders of the protests were commonly women.

The lack of attention provided to strong female leaders is not only an issue for more conservative communities, as many progressive nations still struggle with this phenomenon. A prominent example of this was the bravery of many women, especially

women of color, and the role they played in organizing the non-violent Black Lives Matter protests that occurred this past summer.

Black women are often the victims of both racism and sexism, but they are frequently the most active in organizing protests, petitions, and campaigns in their communities. The role that Black women play in political movements is often underreported and unappreciated. Stories following Martin Luther King Jr. have often neglected the influence of his wife Coretta Scott King.

The most startling and standout demonstration was the “Wall of Mothers” protest held in Portland, Oregon. This large group of mothers gathered to protest against the unequal treatment of Black people at the hands of police brutality. However effective they were in shocking the nation, they drew some sharp criticism as a majority of the mothers were white. Even in discussions about women in protest, intersectionality looms large. Participation and tactics are often dictated by constraints due to race, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and

Egyptian women chant slogans during a protest outside the presidential palace. Cairo, Egypt, July 2013.

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more. In the context of the Wall of Mothers, some observed that the white mothers were only able to utilize this tactic as police officers were unwilling to utilize violence against them. Their Black counterparts would have been seriously injured due to racial differences in usage of violence.

“You wouldn’t hurt your mother, would you?”

Women are vital in many of these political protests to make them more “ethical.” Protests that have large numbers of women tend to be less violent, but that does not necessarily exclude them from violence. For countries with traditional cultural roles of women as modest and innocent, it is much more disturbing to see such violent and exploitive content about women protestors. Images of Egyptian women beaten and having their clothing ripped spread to shocked audiences and drew more international attention to the protests in Egypt. In these societies, the role of women is often seen as vulnerable or weak rather than instigators of political change. The provoking

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images of injured or violated females are felt more personally, as viewers are more likely to see their mothers, wives, or daughters instead of just another protestor being exposed or harmed.

Women being associated with political movements is positively correlated with the likelihood of it being successful. More involvement from women in political protests indicates more people, from all different backgrounds, from all sectors of society, are becoming involved. Besides being physically and vocally active, there are many creative ways women become involved in these protests. These methods range from the flower and hand-holding human chains of Belarus, creating human shields around protests in Lebanon, blocking mass highways in the capital of India, boycotting daily responsibilities to show the need for women in Mexico, and much more.

On a broader scale, women involved with politics face much danger. There is a severe lack of women in politics, either from lack of education or consistent discouragement, in most societies. Female protestors are especially vulnerable to brutality from law enforcement or oppositional forces. Women in Sudan face abuse against their personal and professional lives ranging from sexual violence, defamation, and threatening physical safety. Likewise, in an increasingly modern world, not only do these women face physical challenges, but they are also subject to harassment online. Female protestors found on social media are then subject to barrages of verbal harassment with threats of murder or sexual assault.

Who Runs the World?

Despite these challenges, all

around the world women are leading and organizing protests.

Research from Harvard University professors Erica Chenoweth and Zoe Marks states that, out of all the nonviolent campaigns from 2010 to 2014, an estimated 70 percent had women involved or on the front lines. They come from diverse backgrounds; women involved in the Arab Spring ranged from being wealthy and educated to uneducated and unemployed. However, even with all of their organizing, marching, blogging, hunger-striking, and more, they are hardly ever given credit, and in some cases, equality.

Some reasons attributed to this are the prejudice and bias in the media. For example, in Belarus, the national media continuously shares strong ideas of misogyny with the nation, and the global media industry is mostly made up of men. According to the 2015 UNESCO report, the global average of women in print, radio, and televised news was only 24 percent. Most reporters are more likely to focus on male perspectives rather than a female reporter who may be more likely to report the female perspective. The small fraction of women in media face many challenges in both physical and verbal discrimination. There are many incidents of women in journalism who are subject to verbal threats, physical assaults, or arrest by their government.

Women have historically been used as martyrs or symbols to inspire movements or change.

For example, the famous French painting, Liberty Leading the People, portrays a woman leading the French Revolution. Over time, the involvement of women in social matters could have developed to be a natural expectation. One of the reasons that female protestors are so impactful

is because of their social status as a “caregiver” and responsibility to play a “motherly” role.

Although this perception can help soften the responses of political entities to protests, it also creates expectations for women. For some, when mothers or young girls become politically involved, it is not viewed as revolutionary as men because people assume they are naturally caring towards their communities. It is often afterward that their stories and roles are diminished as men step in and take up space in these political and social movements, as seen in the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Claudette Colvin and Rosa Parks started something revolutionary, but they were soon pushed aside as their male counterparts took center stage.

Beyond the possible reasons why women do not receive equal recognition, what is most important is that going forward, the media, governments, and citizens recognize the contributions of women. No matter how much support women give one another, they are only half of the population. Although much progress has been made over the last decade, men also need to take active measures in sharing space and giving credit to women in society, especially in politics. This phenomenon of incredible women putting their lives and status at risk is not limited to these three examples. All across the world, from Brazil to Sudan to India, women have played crucial roles in political movements. As the situation in Belarus unfolds, people, and especially women, all around the world should be paying attention to what these leaders envision and can accomplish when pursuing their version of a brighter future. H H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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Sayed, a member of Myanmar 's long-persecuted Rohingya minority, stands behind a metal door.

Malaysia. April 2019.

NON-EXISTENT HUMANS HOW STATELESS PERSONS ARE FORCED TO WORK INFORMALLY

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pening a bank account, obtaining a driver’s license, or even getting married—while many of us may take these activities for granted, they are impossible for people without a formal nationality, or so-called stateless persons.

Yet, the lack of a bank account is just a minor detail compared to the more severe consequences of being stateless, particularly a lack of access to healthcare, education, or employment. As Isa, a stateless person from the former Yugoslavia, explains, “To be without documents and a nationality is as if you never existed in this world.” Together with at least 10 million stateless people across the globe, Isa belongs to the most vulnerable group of humans, who are often even described as “legal ghosts.” Wellknown examples of such demographic groups not having the nationality of any country include the Rohingya in Myanmar or Eastern Europeans after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In recent years, public awareness about the issue of statelessness has increased due to increased efforts by the UN and many international non-governmental organizations. In fact, the UN has even launched a campaign to end statelessness by 2024, identifying flawed administrative procedures, which can be fixed rather quickly in theory, as the main cause of statelessness.

However, this campaign is unlikely to be successful because the public discourse so far has forgotten about the connection between statelessness and informal employment. As part of globalization, what Professor Nina Glick Schiller calls a new “glob-

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al labor regime” has emerged, in which transnational companies looking for inexpensive labor will incentivize workers to move from their less-developed home countries to more prosperous nations. While the workers, which include both stateless and documented persons, undoubtedly hope for a better future, they soon encounter restrictive and complicated administrative procedures in their new country that effectively prevent them from applying for citizenship. With few legal protections, stateless labor migrants in particular then become a pawn sacrifice of the “global labor regime.” This strategy of capitalizing on human defenselessness renders informal labor possible at the expense of stateless persons, particularly in newly industrialized countries in Southeast Asia like Malaysia. Therefore, merely blaming flawed administrative procedures will be insufficient to properly address the issue of statelessness.

More creative and comprehensive solutions such as a “transnational labor citizenship,” a type of proxy identity provided through membership in a transnational civil society organization, are needed so that the seeming contradiction of non-existent humans does not become reality for even more people.

How Statelessness and Informal Employment Connect To understand why the “global labor regime” is even effective at incentivizing low-skilled workers to migrate, it is important to discuss the precarious living situations that many migrants face at home. On the one hand, such

insecure conditions are caused by the subsistence-level living standards found in many parts of the world, where low-skilled workers typically receive low wages and have few opportunities to enhance their skills. On the other hand, people’s desire to accumulate previously unimaginable amounts of wealth has crushed the labor and social rights that had been won throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. This capitalist centralization of power and wealth has removed the governmental frameworks and social institutions that once prevented labor exploitation and has served to reinstitute the kind of dispossession that most people have only heard of in the context of the Middle Ages. As a result, many low-skilled workers can only dream about the kind of financial security, labor protection, and long-term security that citizens in industrialized countries have come to take for granted. This phenomenon is well summarized by three scholars from the International Institute of Social Studies, who recently showed how “foreign employment demands to be understood as precarious work undertaken to mitigate existing conditions of precarity at home.” The desire to migrate appears quite natural given the perilous living situations many low-skilled workers find themselves in.

It is these push factors, which are driving people with low levels of education out of their home country, that the new “global labor regime” profits off of in order to meet the increased demand of low-wage labor caused by globalization. As H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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the global market increasingly demands faster production of consumer goods at lower prices, large companies can only stay competitive internationally by reducing workers’ wages. Additionally, the significant demographic changes in many industrialized nations have shrunk these countries’ populations and domestic labor supplies, forcing them to increasingly depend on low-wage migrant workers. Yet, national governments and large companies have to actively cooperate on an informal level to ensure that these migrant workers can consistently be employed at a comparably low price. This is where the idea of a “global labor regime” comes in. Scholars have coined this term to describe the mutual effort of governments and companies to exclude particularly stateless labor migrants from access to citizenship. Built on nationalism and seemingly justified by a defense of the modern welfare state, this “global labor regime” systemically keeps migrants without a nationality in statelessness. For instance, governments in East Asia intentionally refuse to adopt inclusive administrative procedures that would more easily grant stateless migrant workers from Southeast Asian countries citizenship rights as doing so would endanger economic growth. In short, national governments purposely accept the statelessness of migrants so that their economic sector can more easily exploit these people via low-wage labor. This practice is deeply troubling from a human rights perspective because it effectively dismisses the humanity of a nation’s stateless migrant

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workforce.

How Stateless Workers Suffer This “global labor regime” fundamentally intertwines statelessness and informal employment, creating devastating consequences for the stateless workers who have become the regime’s pawn sacrifice. Without some type of government-issued identification, which thereby systematically excludes them from the formal labor market, stateless people are forced into chronic economic instability. For instance, they are denied access to almost all public-sector jobs within almost all countries since employment at federal or state agencies is generally restricted to citizens. As these public-sector jobs often present a key avenue to getting paid employment, especially for women in Southeast Asia, victims of the “global labor regime” are compelled to carry out cheaper, more dangerous under-the-table work even after many years in their new country. Yet, while ordinary citizens might be able to escape the low-wage sector, stateless persons are rarely able to find paths toward upward mobility. Given that the main mode of acquiring citizenship by birth in almost all Asian countries is by ius sanguinis (based on the nationality of one or both parents), generation after generation is ultimately trapped in a hopeless combination of poverty and obscurity. And, as if this is not enough already, most labor laws do not apply to workers without an official nationality, opening the door for employers to exploit, sexually harass, or even abuse their stateless employees. This is

not to mention excessive working hours without overtime pay or the substandard working conditions that have almost become the new normal to many labor migrants. Unfortunately, these are the heavy burdens stateless workers have to bear at their workplace. Within their private life, stateless people similarly have to suffer from countless other examples of marginalization and discrimination.

A particularly heartbreaking example of the type of marginalization that stateless workers are confronted with can be found in Sabah, a Malaysian state in the northern part of the island Borneo. For decades, Sabah’s most crucial economic branches, such as rural oil palm plantations, have massively depended on migrant labor. Yet, as a professor at Hasanuddin University in Indonesia has described, a system of “mutual illegal collaboration” between local politicians, the police, and employers has prevented any provisions that would have granted stateless migrant workers the right to permanent employment. Instead, Sabah’s labor regime has ensured that foreign stateless workers are chained to one particular employer. The victims are people such as Rozita, whose father once came to Sabah as a refugee from the Philippines.

Due to a series of family moves, Rozita lost her birth certificate and a copy of her father’s passport, which effectively made her stateless as she has been unable to prove her nationality ever since. By now, Rozita has four children who all lack birth certificates because of their mother’s statelessness. The family is effec-

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A little girl helps her parents work on a palm oil plantation. Sabah, Malaysia. December 2018.

tively trapped in a vicious cycle of migration, statelessness, and informal employment. As Rozita says herself: “I don’t know how to get documents for my children. I want to go to Immigration or the Police to ask them, but I am scared.” Rozita, like so many others around the world, has become a victim of the new “global labor regime.”

How Solutions Do Exist Although it might at first seem hard to solve this issue effectively, there is still hope for people like Rozita and her children. Most obviously, stateless workers could become naturalized citizens of the country they currently reside in. This measure would not only boost the worker’s income, but it would also indirectly benefit the host country’s economy through increased spending and demand, which would undermine many nations’ demand for exploitable, low-wage workers. In this sense, improving statelessness determination procedures or granting stateless workers unimpeded access to a nation’s labor market would also contradict the interests of many transnational companies. These are but a few of the reasons for why the current UN initiative, which sees flawed

administrative procedures as the predominant cause of statelessness, will most likely not succeed. Instead, a proposal for a “transnational labor citizenship” put forth by Fordham University Professor Jennifer Gordon seems much more promising. Such citizenship would link the permission to enter a country in search of work to the membership in a “cross-border worker association [that would] allow migrants to carry benefits and services with them as they move.” Gordon’s idea has already gained support among numerous scholars who agree that this kind of “proxy citizenship” through membership within a civil society organization would be quite effective if labor organizations are empowered to develop a transnational capacity. For instance, labor movements in Indonesia as well as the Philippines have developed greater organizational capacity in recent years. A combination of political activism from below by civil society and continuing global initiatives from above by the UN could intensify this trend, possibly also spreading it to other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia or Singapore. If continued efforts by the international community or do-

mestic pressures empower these labor organizations to a sufficient degree, a “transnational labor citizenship” could actually defeat the “global labor regime.”

In the end, Rozita and her children might still have a chance.

Although the right to a nationality has theoretically been enshrined within Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948, stories like those of Rozita have shown us how statelessness and informal employment are still possible, particularly within newly industrialized countries in Asia.

A new “global labor regime” driven by international competition for the lowest prices purposely denies stateless persons the right to citizenship to ensure that these stateless migrant workers can consistently be employed at low wages. The result could hardly be more catastrophic as humans become a pawn sacrifice that is continuously exploited, sexually harassed, and physically abused.

People like Isa and Rozita become legal ghosts, non-existent, without any rights, privileges, or happiness. As the current world fails them, their sole remedy might be a transnational labor citizenship. The stakes could not be higher. H H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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CUTTHROAT ACADEMIA

INVISIBLE INNOVATORS Joy Ding Senior Editor

Oscar A. Hernandez, graduates from the University of California, Irvine school of medicine as the school’s first DACA postbaccalaureate and first DACA medical school student. Irvine, California. May 2020.

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or immigrants chasing the ever elusive American Dream, the phrase, “education is the greatest equalizer,” is repeated, then recited, until it becomes a promise. In academia and scientific research, fulfilled dreams abound. On the tip of the iceberg, the immigrant professors, just awarded tenure, or the immigrant scientists, perhaps now working on a COVID-19 vaccine in big pharma, are living proof of the American Dream. They are the lucky ones—sometimes the exceptional ones. Others become invisible workers driving scientific innovation and research; their stories are rarely told. This is too often the plight of the immigrant postdoctoral (postdoc) researcher. Placed into a system that tends to exploit immigrant labor, the unlucky ones go from blue-collar work to, in extreme cases, 100-hour work weeks inside clandestine labs. The American Dream is put on indefinite hold.

Indentured to Research Academia is not a true meritocracy. At the golden tip of the hierarchy are the tenured professors, who hold the job for life.

Choosing these professors, a tiny sliver of the doctorate-holding population, is an inherently political process. The demand for that coveted slot is what has fueled the relevance of the postdoc.

Officially, a postdoc position is marketed towards candidates who have completed graduate school. It allows them to receive invaluable training, additional research experience, and strong

mentorship—everything that, on paper, seems to prepare graduates for tenure-track professorships. A vast majority of students believe they need to do at least one postdoc in order to be considered for tenure-track positions. In reality, it’s a job built on empty promises.

What the job really entails is far less rosy than advertised. Postdocs are often hired through scientific grants awarded to professors, so they are responsible for one thing: creating valuable output. There is a simple equation that determines job security—publications equals grants equals employment. The 40 hour work week becomes a myth, as output is measured by number of publications, not the hours spent on research. Salary is neither measured by time nor skill. The average annual salary hovers around US $40,000, with minimal employee benefits. Because most postdocs are in their 30s or 40s, it’s a salary that goes towards supporting a family. In contrast, full time researchers hired to do the same work are paid up to twice that amount, and the income gap becomes much larger for researchers in industry. It is clear that postdocs are often valued as a source of cheap labor. The justification for this is that a postdoctoral fellowship is not a job, but rather a temporary training period that serves as a down payment on a stellar academic career to come.

So, in spite of what often looks like a blatantly exploitative job, junior researchers still compete for postdoc opportunities at research facilities working under well-connected faculty.

For immigrants, however, a postdoctoral fellowship is often neither temporary nor freely chosen. A postdoc is meant to be a temporary placeholder until something better comes along, but what if nothing better is up for grabs? It’s especially telling that, as of 2018, 51 percent of postdocs were foreign nationals.

Immigrants more often than not realize that a postdoc is rarely a short-term affair; being a postdoc becomes a career, and an unstable, stagnated one at that.

When grants dry up, postdocs simply move on to the next lab, the next professor. It’s common and almost expected to spend five or more years as a postdoc before moving on to the next job, and even then there’s no guarantee that the next job will be any better.

Because the US job market tends to be less forgiving for foreign nationals, the postdoc is a vital opportunity for immigrants to make their mark through important publications in well-known journals. Only by building up a substantial portfolio can they further a career in academia or even find a position in industry. Unfortunately, individual potential for innovative research often stagnates after too many years of postdoctoral research. Recall that most postdocs are in their thirties or forties, and more often than not, the years spent in school and then research make them overqualified for most entry level positions in industry, but underqualified for other senior roles.

Condemned by the Visa As much as the postdoc can H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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become a semi-permanent position, it is also a volatile one for immigrants. The stamp of foreign status can be used as leverage to guarantee output. In some cases, this is used to take advantage of workers afraid of being sent back to their home country. Right after signing off on a postdoc’s visa renewal, one professor decided that he would be withholding 30 percent of the previously agreed upon salary. In another lab, one student remembers seeing foreign postdocs who were waiting for experiments to run sneaking in naps on the floor of the lab during 100 hour work weeks.

Extreme situations like these are unfortunately more common than most would think.

The lack of quantitative surveys on postdocs, much less foreign postdocs, creates room for marginalization. However, there is a wealth of informal anecdotal evidence suggesting that professors abuse their power in these kinds of situations.

The reason for this is that professors are most often the ones who approve visa renewals; the research institution rarely has any oversight in this matter. Visas in exchange for compliance, the right to stay in exchange for labor. All of these stories, of course, are whispered. As one university administrator claims, these events are frighteningly normal. The abuse or otherwise tough conditions are often normalized, and most postdocs refuse to file formal complaints because they fear retribution.

In small scientific communities, reputation and connections mean everything, and the goodwill of a professor is critical. Fil-

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ing a report could very well be a career-ending move.

This exploitation then comes to occur systematically due to the simple fact that immigrants have much more to lose than a job or a promotion to a tenure-track position. Career aside, to stay in the United States, immigrants must have a visa. This sacred document is always at stake, and ironically is what often traps them in the postdoc position.

For postdocs, the most common visa is the J-1 visa, and less frequently, the H1-B visa.

Both of these visas are contingent on employment. However, a postdoc position is often synonymous with instability.

The job is tied to availability of funds: if a professor’s grant is spent, a postdoc will very likely be let go. Having a job and a visa sponsor will always be the top priority for foreign postdocs; why reach for competitive positions in industries or tenure-track professorships when postdoc positions are available and frankly more realistic? Immigrants have the most to lose, and the unpredictable politics of visas are often to blame for that.

With the Trump Administration’s recent visa suspensions that placed further quotas and restrictions on H-1B and J visas, the competition for limited positions open to foreigners, especially in industry, will only intensify. For foreigners, the only way to escape the postdoc trap seems to be through luck, brilliance, or obtaining resident or citizenship status. Unfortunately, on all three counts, the odds seem to be stacked against the average postdoc.

So You Think You Can Get a Green Card?

For the majority of workers that don’t catch a lucky break, have a brilliant streak, or snatch up one of the limited spots in industry, what options remain?

Because the job market invariably favors US citizens and permanent residents, the only way to get a leg up is to apply for a green card. The green card is the golden ticket for immigrants. It holds the promise of security and employment opportunities; it is the key that unlocks the American Dream. Not surprisingly, the paths to winning that plastic card are incredibly limited for all immigrants, including postdocs. Assuming that the average foreign postdoc is neither married to a US citizen nor seeking asylum, one of two options is a test of luck: the green card lottery. Citizens of certain countries are prohibited from applying; even if eligible, the odds are astronomical. In 2017, 50,000 cards were awarded out of a pool of 19 million applicants. The second option, and most viable for postdocs, is to apply for an employment-based green card.

Within this broad category, there are several classes of visas with different levels of preference. The lowest preference levels, EB-5 and EB-4, are for wealthy business investors and religious workers, respectively.

This clearly excludes the typical postdoc, who is generally paid less than US$15 an hour. Two categories up are the EB-3, for professionals and other skilled workers with at least two years of experience, and the EB-2, for individuals with advanced de-

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grees or exceptional abilities.

At first glance, this sounds feasible. Unfortunately, the EB-3 and EB-2 both require employer sponsorship to prove that the applicant has or will have a permanent, full-time job—and a postdoctoral fellowship is officially deemed temporary. To apply for these two categories, an immigrant postdoc would need a full-time faculty position or a position in industry.

The last and arguably only resort for any postdoc without a full-time employment offer is the holy grail of green cards: the EB-1. Often referred to as the “genius visa,” it is as daunting as it sounds. It is reserved for individuals with “extraordinary abilities” such as “outstanding professors or researchers; and multinational executives and managers.” To be eligible, an

applicant has to be at the very top percentiles of their field, and proof—such as publications or positions held—is required. The only reason it is the only feasible option for many foreign postdocs is that they do not need a permanent position to apply.

Nonetheless, it is incredibly daunting and difficult for junior researchers to apply for and be awarded this visa. The immigration system is set up so that a select few are successful. The question is, what happens to the rest?

Exposing a Broken System The fundamental problem in combating the exploitation of foreign postdocs, and immigrants in general, is the lack of visibility. The majority of the time, these postdocs simply go unseen even though it is clear

that they and other junior researchers are responsible for much of the output in research institutions. The current system in academia and in domestic politics is designed to lure and almost coercively retain highly skilled foreign researchers. It uses them, but refuses to acknowledge them through protective regulations. After postdocs leave one institution, most universities and research institutions do not track career outcomes for immigrant postdocs. They effectively become transient workers. Some continue building successful careers in academia, or find lucrative positions in industries. As for the rest, do they bounce between low-level, low-paying academic positions or simply relocate back home, dreams unfulfilled?

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A lab technician prepares components for a diagnostic testing kit. Beijing, China. May 2020.

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A migrant worker takes a bath in Dharavi, one of Asia’s biggest slums. Mumbai, India. December 2020.

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POST- PANDEMIC CHALLENGES FOR EMERGING ECONOMIES Justin Qi Executive Content Editor

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ith over 360,000 deaths from COVID-19, the United States was supposed to be among the places best prepared to handle a health crisis. It has since instead proven, at least among comparable countries, one of the worst in handling the crisis.

Looking past the developed world yields an even more sobering picture. Even countries without solid testing infrastructure—India, Brazil, Argentina—have seen their case counts explode. Many of these nations lack more than healthcare: India’s lockdown trapped millions of migrant workers thousands of miles away from home, and food prices in Yemen have spiked after lockdowns.

One thing those who suffered most from the pandemic have in common is clear: they all have substantial informal economies, networks of businesses and la-

borers operating in a gray zone overlooked by government regulations and protections. Far from being a distinct challenge, heavy reliance on the informal sector has exacerbated the pandemic, hamstrung governments’ ability to effectively respond, and set up a myriad of future policy challenges. Workers left off official payrolls and statistics make it difficult to enforce public health orders or target welfare programs, and missing tax revenue from unregistered businesses strains governments’ abilities to finance new stimulus. Now, more than ever, governments need to tackle the weaknesses at the heart of the informal economy as they move into a post-pandemic world.

Before the Crisis: The Welfare State in Emerging Economies Prior to the pandemic, most informal workers were not eligible

A single mother looks for tomatoes good enough to eat for her family in the dumpster of discarded tomatoes. Asuncian, Paraguay. May 2020.

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for government benefits. Many migrant laborers and gray-market factory workers are not protected by unions or entitled to unemployment insurance, nor can they report poor working conditions to local authorities for fear of being exposed for under-the-table work. Lest we think this is an exception, the UN International Labor Organization estimates that 2 billion people worldwide work informally, or more than 60 percent of the global workforce. Among these, most work in cottage industries or agriculture, sectors especially prone to underregulation. Fewer, though still many, work in export industries like textiles.

To some extent, these gaps exist by necessity. The countries with the highest share of their workers employed informally are the least able to afford an expansive welfare state. The World Bank finds that in these

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An Indonesian informal migrant worker sharpens the blade of his sickle used for cutting down palm oil fruit from tall trees.

Sabah, Malaysia. December 2018.

countries, less than three percent of the population is eligible for unemployment benefits. Despite the well-documented benefits of the welfare state in developed economies, such as higher social mobility, less extreme poverty, and, importantly in the current crisis, better population health, the simple truth is that the generous coffers and expansive borrowing capacities that allow rich countries to maintain stable safety nets is a pipe dream elsewhere.

When emerging economies take on new debt, they often pay exorbitant interest rates thanks to a very real risk of default. From Argentina to Lebanon, history is littered with examples of governments that overspent and left creditors empty-handed. Compare that to the United States, where the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency and innovative monetary policy keep interest payments at a minimum, and debt-to-GDP ratios above 100 percent are paper inconveniences at best and future problems at worst.

Unfortunately, tolerating the

informal economy creates its own set of problems. Governments justifiably believe that they cannot afford to crack down on informal workers with so many jobs at risk. But businesses that hire and fire off the record also keep their money off the books, creating a cycle of insufficient tax revenues that further constrain government spending.

It is no surprise, then, that rather than shrinking as the economy grows, informal sectors sometimes expand with it. Combined with other factors like corruption, many emerging economies were left thoroughly unprepared for an economic shock like the pandemic.

The COVID-19 Pandemic and Emerging Economy Responses The COVID-19 pandemic created a clear dilemma for governments: they could shut down their economies using stay-at-home orders and temporary shutdowns to “flatten the curve” or they could accept the public health cost of the crisis in an attempt to stave off an eco-

nomic shock. Nearly all developed countries chose the former, believing that the temporary pain, eased by expansive monetary and fiscal policy, would be worth avoiding mounting death tolls and overcrowded hospitals.

Emerging economies face a different challenge. Unable to borrow as much to sustain massive fiscal responses like the United States’ CARES Act, and without the infrastructure to deliver aid, lockdowns literally risk starving the poor. While street vendors and waste pickers lose their livelihoods, formal businesses like grocery stores reopen, exacerbating inequalities.

In India, migrant workers say that they are likely to die from hunger before the virus, and in March, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan asked, “If I impose a total lockdown, what will happen to our country’s poor?” As a result, even where lockdowns have been implemented, informal workers must often disregard them to survive, and governments must lift shutdowns sooner than planned. Add to that H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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densely populated urban centers and poor sanitation and law enforcement, and most developing countries have no room to implement or enforce traditional social distancing policies.

Nevertheless, many emerging economies have done what they can to provide more fiscal ammunition. In addition to lowering interest rates, developing countries’ COVID-19 fiscal response packages average two percent of their annual GDP—not insignificant, though it pales in comparison to the 8.3 percent of GDP that the average developed economy has brought to bear. Knowing that they cannot afford a prolonged lockdown, governments have strategically allocated more of their funding to healthcare rather than broad-based social welfare, buying time and flattening the curve with short-lived social distancing measures. Owing to clear gaps in health infrastructure, developing countries are especially reliant on primary care providers and communities for healthcare rather than hospitals. All told, however, the direct public health impact on developing countries has been lower than predicted.

Migrant laborers returning to the city for work queue up to register for COVID-19 test. New Delhi, India. August 2020.

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Avoiding a “Lost Decade” Even without the social distancing policies that some in the developed world blame for exacerbating the economic downturn, developing economies face many barriers to recovery.

The lacking public health response has direct effects on the economy: more people die or suffer long-lasting side effects from being infected, taking away from future productivity. More importantly, however, the pan-

demic is uniquely likely to cause economic “scarring,” where long-run economic growth slows even after an initial recovery.

Unemployed workers and bankrupted businesses do not move on or reopen overnight, children who miss school or fall into poverty lose out on future earnings, and businesses that forgo new investments miss out on years of lost growth. For example, years after Sierra Leone’s Ebola epidemic, its growth remains below pre-epidemic levels. And after a 1995 earthquake hit Kobe, Japan, the local shoe industry collapsed, permanently damaging the region’s employment prospects. Worsened by the lack of fiscal support, the economic shock alone will take years to recover from, especially given the fact that it may take months at the very least to effectively distribute a vaccine when one becomes available. Estimates early in the pandemic warning that corporate defaults might exceed the level in 2008 seem to be coming true, and any rebound will be halting at best.

Perhaps more concerningly, the fiscal measures that governments have taken on may come back to bite them in the future.

With lower tax revenue due to economic losses and investor flight away from markets more vulnerable to the pandemic, lenders have increasingly entrenched themselves in safer assets like gold and richer governments’ bonds. Defaults earlier in the pandemic have convinced many investors that emerging markets are especially susceptible to being overwhelmed by pandemic-related shocks, making it costly to borrow even as

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A boy looks out from a window during a lockdown to curb the spread of the new coronavirus, at the Villa 1-11-14 shanty town in Argentina, which faces 50 percent inflation, overwhelming debt, and diff iculty accessing credit. Buenos Aires, Argentina. May 2020.

governments need more cash to sustain the economy. Recent default events, like Zambia missing an interest payment in late October, will only exacerbate these concerns.

Worse, combined higher expenditures and lower revenues may go beyond the level of previous defaults. Defaults on debts to foreign investors are admittedly dangerous: they increase the premiums on future borrowing and force governments to adopt painful austerity measures. But a potential default on debts to domestic investors looks increasingly likely as the crisis drags on, which would erase savings and further damage an economic recovery.

Some progress has been made on this front. The G20 countries, for example, agreed to suspend bilateral debt payments with emerging economies in May and committed to additional restructuring guidelines in November. This does little to

resolve debt to other creditors, especially private lenders who have often refused to renegotiate debt, hoping to freeride on relief instead provided by governments. Unfortunately, this stubbornness undermines the effectiveness of governmental responses as well: when ratings agencies downgraded the debt of participants on the G20’s restructuring scheme, some developing countries opted to pull out of the plan, afraid that future borrowing would become more expensive.

Even without default, the consequences of this game of chicken will be devastating. As history demonstrates, painful austerity measures when countries are on the brink of bankruptcy do little to encourage growth. In fact, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva estimates that African countries will need more than US$300 billion of additional fiscal firepower through 2023.

Rather, spending cuts constrain

recoveries, making countries unable to stimulate their economies and kickstart a recovery.

Any solution to the looming fiscal crisis must involve more than individual lender countries agreeing to forgo debt payments; large-scale restructuring deals must involve private sector buyin, especially as many African countries borrow less through bilateral debt agreements and more from commercial creditors.

But without a clear legal mechanism to force a deal, it seems increasingly likely that private creditors will wait for other lenders to blink first, profiting off being the last ones to take a haircut on their payments. Coordinated action by lender countries, such as using courts to invalidate lending agreements, seems unlikely to occur.

Of course, international financial institutions could step in.

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posals have remained strictly academic. Given international financial institutions’ track record during the pandemic—the World Bank has been slower to act and disbursed fewer funds than it did in 2008—a major intervention seems unlikely.

This is not to say there are no ways forward. During the Greek sovereign debt crisis, for example, the country’s legislature unilaterally amended debt contracts, forcing investors to take losses on the order of 50 to 60 percent of their owed earnings.

At the time, the concern was that such a massive restructuring would scare investors off from the Eurozone entirely and create an unsustainable moral hazard—what would stop Italy and Spain from taking the same route to end their fiscal problems? In hindsight, however, it seems as if the Greek restructuring had little effect on the markets or other European countries’ ability to

borrow.

Naturally, a concerted effort by emerging economies to rehaul their debt agreements would be far more impactful than Greece’s restructuring. And there is no ignoring the collective action problem at play: countries too quick to bail themselves out of an oncoming crisis might find themselves hard pressed to borrow in the future (though it is worth noting that Argentina, with nine defaults in the last century, seems to have no trouble finding creditors). But in light of the pandemic’s unprecedented impact on the global economy, perhaps unconventional methods are necessary to prevent a stalled recovery.

The Way Forward: Reforming Informal Economies after the Pandemic Beyond a looming fiscal crisis, emerging economies face a greater problem. Unlike the last

A Rohingya barber sits in his makeshift roadside shop as others walk past at Kutupalong refugee camp. Cox ’s Bazar, Bangladesh. January 2018.

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recession, which many developing countries weathered relatively unscathed, the pandemic has demonstrated that a system built on informal work is deeply vulnerable to outside shocks.

Governments are less able to effectively target economic stabilizers, and many workers inevitably fall through the cracks.

While another pandemic on the scale of this one is unlikely— though climate change and environmental destruction admittedly increase the risk—recovery from future crises will hinge in large part on governments’ ability to act decisively.

Most of the reasons why the informal economy exists are structural. Opaque regulations and corruption make it easier and more attractive to dodge government oversight. Many established firms ignore poorer, marginalized consumers who turn to informal businesses. Poor or arbitrary law enforcement can make the benefits of legal protection less obvious for employers and employees alike. Progress on issues like more transparent governance is always gradual, but it exists: the IMF estimates that the informal economy’s share of GDP has steadily fallen over the past decade.

A common adage in politics is to “never waste a crisis.” The unprecedented levels of government intervention during the pandemic, from lockdown orders to business bailouts, have set the stage for a sea change in the way developing countries regulate the economy. In light of the clear shortcomings exposed in the past year, papering over the cracks in informal work is no longer enough. H

MODERN DAY SLAVERY THE KAFALA SYSTEM IN LEBANON

Patrick Rak Staff Writer

A Banglades hi wor k e r look s out f r om be hind t he cur t ain of his apar t me nt w he r e migrant wor k e r s live in ove r cr owde d, unpr ote c te d, homes . Many of t hes e wor k e r s ar e at r is k of cont rac ting dis eas e f r om t he ir e nv ir onme nt s .

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wo hundred and fifty thousand workers under the Kafala system in Lebanon are currently struggling to survive in an exploitative system. Conflicts within the country due to an economic recession and corruption add to the challenges these workers face.

What is the Kafala System?

The Kafala System is an oppressive system that controls unskilled migrant workers in the Arab states, most of them being women from Africa and South Asia. The system requires each worker to be sponsored by a citizen of the host country. That employer, also known as a kafeel, is responsible for the worker’s legal status and visa. When the worker’s term finalizes, the employer can either renew it or terminate the worker’s status, which requires that the worker be immediately deported.

Under this oppressive system, workers are excluded from Lebanese labor laws regulating minimum wage, maximum working hours, vacation, and overtime.

In essence, the Kafala System creates a power dynamic, enabling employers to have complete control over their employees. The workers are not protected by law against basic labor abuses and they are subject to deportation if they speak out about their conditions. If beaten, raped, or starved, the workers have nowhere to go. In practice, they either risk getting deported if they report their conditions to the police or they are ignored. A worker also cannot move without their employer’s consent: they are often forced to stay at home through financial

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limitations, emotional abuse, or physical abuse. Additionally, workers have no say in transactions between one employer and another. The employees are treated as objects, expected to do their work with disregard for their personal conditions. They have no safety barriers and, as a result, are subject to multiple human rights abuses.

“ THE EMPLOYEES ARE TREATED AS OBJECTS, EXPECTED TO DO THEIR WORK WITH DISREGARD FOR THEIR PERSONAL CONDTIONS.” The History of the Kafala System The Kafala System began in the 1950s as a way to control migration into Arab countries. It was intended to be a means by which foreigners could gain short term employment for projects hosted in countries that practice the Kafala System, which include the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates

(UAE), Jordan, and Lebanon. It was supposed to be hospitable, named kafala after the word that means “to take care of” in Arabic. The system trusted that the kafeels, sponsors of the workers, would protect them properly.

Lebanon’s History Before the Lebanese Civil War, which lasted from 1975 to 1990, wealthier Lebanese families would hire poor girls from Lebanon and bordering countries to work for them. This practice created Lebanon’s reliance on outside domestic work. Over time, relations with other Arab countries deteriorated and job security decreased. As a result, the Lebanese had to look elsewhere to find employment. In the 1970s, an opportunity arose with the arrival of the first large waves of immigrants from Africa and Asia. With time, a complex system of oppression was designed to target people from impoverished areas of the world to work for them. The system was supported by Lebanon due to the reduction of debt as a result of the remittances that the migrants would send. Even today, the government is battling unsustainable debt in efforts to pay it off. Over time, the workforce became gradually more female dominated; this pattern persists to this day.

As the Kafala system continues, Lebanon has received international backlash, notably from the United States in the early 2000s when they deemed Lebanon Tier 2 in terms of human trafficking. They still remain at Tier 2 today. Recently, multiple organizations such as the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty

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International attempted to shed light on the exploitative system within Lebanon. Despite recent coverage, the Lebanese government is still exerting minimal effort to solve the issue.

Who are the Victims?

The numbers vary, but there are estimated to be around 250,000 kafala workers in Lebanon. The majority of the workers are women who come from the Philippines, Ethiopia, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, as well as from various other African and Southeast Asian countries. Most come from impoverished backgrounds where they earned just enough money to survive. They took a part in the system under the assumption that they could help themselves and their families.

In multiple households, however, workers are not given days off, starved of food and deprived of water, physically abused, restricted access of movement and communication, and not pro-

vided with proper living conditions. Their passports, freedom, and basic human dignity are disregarded for the sake of pleasing the kafeel who invested money into their acquired worker.

Their nightmarish conditions can be reflected through multiple suicide reports. In a 2017 report by The New Humanitarian, official Lebanese government figures found that an average of two domestic workers were dying every week, often by suicide. Specifically, it was revealed that workers jump off of their employer’s balconies, unable to cope with their dire situation any longer.

This prevalence of abuse and suicide can be seen in an interview by This is Lebanon, where a worker named Halima explained her life as a domestic worker under the Kafala System. She would get locked inside of her bedroom at night and “have to relieve herself in the room” because she did not have access to a bathroom. She

is covered in scars as her “madam” would throw hot coffee at her or beat her with a broom for minor mistakes such as spilling something. At one point, Halima was brought to see the body of a dead Ethiopian woman who had jumped off her balcony under the employment of her employer’s family. The employer did not care to bring the woman to the hospital.

Recruitment Most workers enter the Kafala system through a very unregulated recruitment industry. Every recruitment agency varies in its operations, but some of the most abusive ones require that workers pay fees and incur debt in order to travel abroad for work. The agencies travel to poverty-stricken neighborhoods and have agents manipulate citizens into believing that they will better their lives if they join the system. The agencies tell the citizens that they will have enough money to send back to their chil

A domestic worker hangs wet clothes on a balcony in Beirut, Lebanon. For her, and the countless other imported workers in Lebanon, the justice system continues to fail to protect their rightss as employees.

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dren as well. When the workers accept, many end up spending the rest of their time working every day to try and pay off debt acquired as a result of traveling to the host, which often never gets fully returned. That indebtedness leaves them in irreversible bondage to an owner, a power dynamic that resembles that of slavery. Recruitment agencies commonly lie to the kafala workers, claiming higher than average wages, reasonable jobs, well-maintained living conditions, and recruitment fee reimbursements. Upon arriving in the host country and being assigned to their kafeels, the workers are left terrified upon realizing that the life that they were advertised was falsified. Now, they have no way of getting out, as they are already indebted to either the agency or host, and

left without a passport, which was quickly confiscated by the kafeels after the first interaction.

As many as 84 percent of workers would not have traveled away from home if they were informed about the truth of their situation.

Impact of Kafala due to Recent Events in Lebanon Lebanon has had a turbulent year. The Lebanese pound has lost 80 percent of its value due to irresponsible financial handlings by the government, resulting in the majority of the middle class becoming significantly poorer and putting the economy into a deep downwards dive. This collapse in the currency caused unemployment rates to surge past 30 percent and public discontent to be at the highest rates since the Lebanese Civil War. The

government is ignoring these issues and is instead attempting to please more powerful individuals in Lebanon at the expense of everyone else. Currently, over 50 percent of Lebanon lives below the poverty line and the middle class is rapidly disappearing. In addition to extremely high unemployment rates, a severely inflated currency, and a corrupt government, Lebanon endured yet another tragedy with the explosion of the Beirut port on August 4, 2020. The explosion ended up costing almost 200 lives and resulted in over 5000 injuries. In addition to this, the explosion destroyed the infrastructure for several miles out along the path. The mushroom-cloud explosion was said to have shattered windows dozens of miles away from the epicenter. An astounding 90 percent of imports

The r oom of a Ke nyan domes tic wor k e r f ight ing to be r e pat r iate d back to t he ir homeland.

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COVER An Ethiopian domestic worker cleans her employer ’s balcony in Beirut as some 250,000 migrant laborers in Lebanon face a crippling economic and financial crisis amid the coronavirus pandemic. Beirut, Lebanon.

May 2020.

came through the Beirut port, including massive amounts of food in a country that relies on imports to feed its people. The result could be a famine in the distant future. Food prices have risen 56 percent from October 2019 to June 2020, an impossible price for an already poor population to pay. The long term damages of the explosion are estimated to cost around $15 billion, a hefty sum, especially for a country under so much duress

already.

The poorest of Beirut and Lebanon have suffered the most as a result of the tragic recent events.

Kafala workers are often paid in Lebanese dollars, while the kafeels hoard their US dollars for themselves. This has caused the kafala workers to work for well below living means with little to no money to send back home as remittances. In addition to a disruption in their wages, a higher number of kafala work-

ers are also being left in the streets outside of their respective embassies. Hoards of kafala workers have been thrown out of homes as a result of the financial and emotional stress placed on everyone in Beirut, leaving them homeless. Kafala workers and their employers are legally required to sign a contract that says that the employers will pay for the Kafala workers to get sent home, but that has not happened in practice. The Ministry of Labor is ignoring the crimes that hosts are committing. If one was to walk outside the Ethiopian embassy, they would see dozens of kafala workers sleeping on the streets, hoping that they will somehow be saved and sent back home.

Current Movements Multiple organizations are working with the Lebanese government to lobby new legislation that changed the labor laws surrounding the Kafala System, including NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. This year, there have been strides made in Lebanon to reconstruct the rules surrounding the Kafala system. The Labor Ministry of Lebanon has drafted new legislation that will allow 48 hour workweeks, overtime pay, and other amenities to ensure that the Kafala system will no longer be binding. Despite these clear legislative efforts in the right direction on paper, it is unknown if the authorities will actually enforce these rules. In a country so dependent on the Kafala system and run by a corrupt government, it will have to take more than a few sentences to fix the issue. H H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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ADRIFT, ALONE, AND FAR FROM HOME: THE HUMAN SIDE OF THE GLOBAL MARITIME INDUSTRY Yanxi Fang Senior Editor

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A

The MV Irene SL, pictured here in 2003, was reported attacked by pirates off the coast of Oman while transporting crude oil. Oman. February 2011.

t any moment, nearly 50,000 cargo ships are crossing the oceans, carrying more than 5 million containers of goods destined for countries around the world. Fueling this massive operation is an equally large workforce of more than 1.6 million people, many of whom hail from developing countries such as Indonesia, Ukraine, India, and the Philippines. Collectively, these sailors ensure not only the continued success of global commerce, but also the safe movement of goods that are essential to the wellbeing of billions of people.

However, despite the importance of their roles, sailors do not reap commensurate benefits— or in fact, much benefit at all.

The maritime industry, which includes both cargo ships and passenger-carrying cruise ships, relies heavily on low-cost labor sourced directly from developing countries. Many sailors sign fixed-term contracts to serve on a particular ship for approximately four to six months; once their term ends, they typically return home to rest before joining another ship on a new contract. While on board, they work long hours and face enormous risks. One estimate suggests that approximately 2,000 sailors lose their lives every year while on the job; many more injuries and deaths have gone unreported. Furthermore, piracy also threatens the physical safety of ships and their crews even in heavily protected areas that see frequent ship traffic.

Although sailors face highly dangerous conditions, they have very little protection from their employers, the international legal framework, and their home countries. Since their floating workplaces are almost always in international waters, no single country has the legal jurisdiction H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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necessary to enforce labor rights and workplace safety. Even the United Nations (UN) has struggled to address this issue. For example, the international body’s Law of the Sea Convention, adopted in 1982, does not address the dilemmas that sailors face in attempting to seek recourse for injustices suffered on the high seas. This status quo places an undue burden on the disadvantaged sailors, and unless the international community decides to accelerate the pace of regulation, sailor discontent may soon spark coordinated labor actions that threaten not only the stability of international supply chains, but also global security itself.

Deregulating the High Seas At its core, the plight of modern sailors is the product of economic incentives. The cost efficiency of ocean shipping comes not just from optimizing fuel usage or leveraging economies of scale, but also from the industry’s avoidance of all types of unnecessary costs. Many ships around the world carry so-called flags of convenience: by registering in a country with lax safety regulations, fewer taxes, and a lower minimum wage, shipowners can avoid costly laws and reduce their exposure to legal action. At the same time, the registering countries have little incentive to change their regulations because they generate a significant amount of revenue. Although such countries may collect fewer taxes on each ship than other countries, the income quickly adds up: half of the world’s ocean fleet is registered in Panama, Liberia, and the Marshall Islands, three relatively small countries that have few regulations for ships and the sailors aboard them. The lack of an economic incentive to

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change the status quo only contributes to regulatory stagnation, thus depriving maritime workers of many benefits that their land-based counterparts receive.

In addition to cost-cutting schemes, the ongoing volatility of the shipping industry also adversely impacts labor conditions.

In a sector dominated by both very small and very large firms, the competition between companies is immense. For instance, when small shipowners run into financial trouble, they often deprive sailors of their pay. In more egregious situations, crews could be stranded at sea without supplies or fuel. This abandonment of sailors has even been compared to modern slavery because the ocean physically prevents sailors from leaving their workplace and returning home. Even large fleet owners are not immune to this trend. When Hanjin, South Korea’s largest shipping firm, declared bankruptcy in 2016, its demise not only deprived sailors of their pay, but also stranded more than 60 staffed vessels at sea. The hundreds of crew members onboard were unable to even call at any port around the world because there was no assurance that the company would pay docking fees. Such incidents demonstrate the difficult conditions that today’s sailors toil under in exchange for little compensation or protection.

However, it should theoretically be possible to develop regulations to reshape the incentive structure and limit the negative externalities with regard to labor in the global shipping industry.

The fact that the international order has not adopted such regulations is a clear indication of a systematic failure to protect the rights of sailors. For example, the International Maritime Organization (IMO)—the UN agency

responsible for shipping—notes that individual governments are responsible for implementing and enforcing laws. The IMO further states that the cost of developing police powers to enforce UN regulations globally would be prohibitively expensive, implicitly rendering such regulations useless. These statements also serve as an acknowledgement that even if the UN had funding for a police force, most UN member states would not allow ships flying their flag to be boarded in international waters, thus making enforcement all but impossible. More significantly, these statements are a capitulation to the status quo, which benefits shipowners, convenience-flag countries, and consumers at the expense of sailors.

Here, contrary to what it often purports to do, the liberal international order has evidently failed to stand up for the powerless.

From Sea to Shining Sea: The Industry on Land In addition to the challenges that modern sailors face at sea, the global maritime industry also creates significant problems for its land-based workers. When ships reach the end of their useful life, they must be disassembled and scrapped as part of a labor-intensive process. Instead of scrapping ships themselves and potentially running afoul of environmental or labor laws, many companies—including large industry leaders—evade responsibility by selling the ships to a third party. These third parties then register the vessels with countries that have lax environmental laws, such as Comoros and St. Kitts and Nevis, which virtually eliminates any legal obligation to scrap the ships in a humanitarian and environmentally responsible way. The actu-

COVER

al scrapping then occurs in the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, where the shore-based labor is inexpensive, and where safety conditions are nonexistent. This has resulted in countless injuries and deaths every year since the 1960s.

The poor working conditions in the vessel scrapyard sector mirrors those that sailors face daily. In both cases, the average worker is only a very small—and replaceable—part of the global maritime industry. To make matters worse, the people who rely on such workers seem to overwhelmingly disregard their wellbeing. This certainly appears to be true for the many governments that allow, and depend on, morally questionable employment practices for the billions of people who reap the benefits of globalization and cheap foreign imports, and even for the industry as a whole, including some of the world’s largest shippers.

The ineffectiveness of the international system in offering regulatory solutions to this crisis is best exemplified in the analo-

gous context of the industry’s environmental impacts. For example, the scrapping sector places a heavy emphasis on recovering metal for resale. This means that hazardous materials, which are expensive to properly dispose of, are often intentionally overlooked during the scrapping process, creating untold ecological damage to many kilometers of the South Asian shoreline. Furthermore, the shipping industry alone is responsible for nearly 1 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions each year, an amount equal to 2.5 percent of all global greenhouse gas emissions.

Despite the sheer magnitude of these environmental concerns, the IMO has not taken concrete action to remedy the situation.

The lack of action prompted the European Union to express a lack of confidence in the UN body by adding the maritime industry to its transport emissions cap-andtrade system starting 2021. This will gradually force the sector to reduce emissions, thus solving a problem that the IMO was powerless to address. The very fact

that one key component of the Western-led liberal world order (the EU) is actively overriding another component (the UN) shows the inadequacy of existing mechanisms, even with an issue that is as clear as environmental damage. For more complicated issues, such as the plight of the maritime industry’s workers, the international response—if any— will only be slow and ineffective.

COVID-19: A Slow Turning Point?

Although current conditions are bleak, there is reason for optimism about the future of global shipping. The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated the many flaws of the existing labor system: starting in March 2020, as the majority of countries closed their borders to non-citizens, sailors reaching the end of their work contracts were prevented from disembarking at ports and flying home. Meanwhile, rested sailors looking to join new ships were generally barred from traveling to another country to embark at a port, thus creating a labor im-

Fishermen unload crates of fish from newly arrived boats at a port . Pemalang, Central Java, Indonesia. May 2016

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balance: employed sailors reaching the end of their contracts could not return home, while unemployed sailors could not begin their contracts. Although this suspension of crew changes was meant as a temporary measure, the protracted spread of the pandemic has continued to make repatriation impossible. Forcing sailors to work well beyond the terms set in their original contracts has not only created widespread fatigue, but also issues with mental health and stress.

These issues stem from one critical difference between land and sea based employment: while at sea, sailors literally cannot leave their workplace or take a complete break from work. Serving on a ship for an extended period of time can jeopardize sailors’ safety by forcing them to complete many repetitive tasks, while also creating social isolation because sailors are separated from their families. The recent lack of crew changes has only worsened these existing challenges.

Fortunately, the tide appears to be turning for these sailors. In addition to substantial press coverage about the issue of crew changes, the UN and its Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, have publicly urged governments around the world to designate sailors as essential workers during the course of the pandemic, which should enable them to return home or participate in crew rotations.

More generally, COVID-19 has also increased public awareness about the importance of freight and a stable supply chain, especially in Western countries where the sight of empty shelves in stores has shocked and angered many consumers. Ideally, this awareness should lead to greater appreciation for the global maritime industry, and perhaps

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more public sympathy in case of labor actions such as strikes.

Since sailors come from (and work in) areas around the world, they may find it difficult to coordinate labor action; therefore, a positive public perception of the workforce is crucial for achieving progress. Fortunately, COVID-19 seems to have affirmed this view.

Smooth Sailing: The Future of Maritime Work Even more encouragingly, some shippers and countries have come to the realization that good economic performance does not need to be mutually exclusive with humanitarian labor practices. For instance, despite the important economic role of its ship scrapping industry, Bangladesh implemented a Ship Recycling Act in 2018 to transition to a more humanitarian set of regulations within five years, shortly after its neighbor India made a similar commitment. This shows that substantial change is possible when the industry reaches a critical mass of reform. When enough major players have committed to new policies, they create a new incentive structure for the industry that can solve the existing problem. Furthermore, the example of Bangladesh demonstrates the power of national governments to rectify unjust situations. As the shipping industry becomes more prominent in the public realm, other countries have taken similar concrete steps to remedy injustice. For example, Canada intervened to secure the repatriation of sailors stranded by the COVID-19 outbreak, in part by threatening to detain the ship while it was docked at a Canadian port. Again, this progress shows that action and mitigation is possible, albeit slow.

Even the IMO has made some progress in 2020 toward better

regulating the maritime industry. It recently implemented strict emissions standards, requiring ships to either use fuel with substantially less sulfur content, or be equipped with scrubbing devices that reduce sulfur emissions. Although this change has been largely successful, it also reflects the glacial pace of progress in the shipping industry: the transition was negotiated in 2008, more than a decade before the implementation. Furthermore, the industry has been pessimistic about the prospect of becoming more environmentally sound: despite a relatively smooth transition, an industry-funded report recently warned that the actual cost of the fuel transition will be US$50 billion over the next four years, with the long-term goal of substantially reducing carbon emissions by 2050 set to cost US$1 trillion. Nonetheless, the very fact that there has been some change at the international institution level—however slow and expensive—is encouraging for the prospects of current and future workers in the global maritime industry.

Moving forward, as globalization progresses and makes the supply chain more important than ever, sailors will only play an increasingly valuable role. As long as the world continues to rely on the conveniences made possible by shipping, governments and individuals everywhere should start considering the adverse conditions that maritime workers face. Unless sailors and their land-based counterparts receive fair treatment and safer working conditions, the world’s countless cargo ships might not continue to enjoy the smooth sailing that they have experienced over the past few decades. H

ON THE FUTURE OF FREELANCING INTERVIEW WITH FIVERR CEO MICHA KAUFMAN Paul Apostolicas Editor-in-Chief

Two people work on a computer. Atlanta, USA. March 2016.

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Micha Kaufman is the Founder and CEO of Fiverr (NYSE: FVRR).

Operating in over 160 countries, Fiverr offers a platform to connect businesses with over 1 million freelancers.

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or our readers unfamiliar with Fiverr, can introduce Fiverr to our readers as well as your company’s mission?

Fiverr’s mission ever since it started back in 2010 is to change the way people work together.

We have created what today is, the world’s largest marketplace for digital services, connecting businesses of all sizes with a global freelance talent network.

The novelty behind Fiverr’s unique approach is making the experience of buying a digital service as easy as shopping on

Amazon. Fiverr has productized services and created a catalog with over 450 SKUs, making the task of getting something done using a freelancer as easy as browse, search and click to order—we call this our “service-as-a-product” model.

This e-commerce system allowed Fiverr to develop a proprietary digital service catalog, a sophisticated matching, quality and liquidity engine powered by years of transaction data, a highly efficient and scalable marketing infrastructure, and a global brand and community with millions of buyers and sellers. These allowed us to execute and grow with tremendous momentum in 2020 and expand our leadership position during a time when businesses and free-

Vilem Prochazka, who works from home in Kolin, Czech Republic, poses for a photo at his computer. Kolin, Czech Republic. July 2017.

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lancers needed us the most in terms of digital transformation and income opportunities.

Since the beginning of the year, Fiverr’s market cap has grown over 700 percent to reach over 6.5 billion dollars.

Can you speak to this growth and how Fiverr has responded to COVID-19?

Remote work has been at the core of our model and COVID-19 has been an accelerating factor in demonstrating the power and efficiency of remote work and delivered the experience to every business in the world. Fiverr has always been a fast-growing business and this year that rapid growth accelerated. Our results speak for themselves and in Q3 this year we delivered 88 percent

INTERVIEWS

revenue growth year on year.

The ability to access the right remote talent was especially important for companies that needed to make the shift from offline to online. We also recently launched Fiverr Business, a new platform that helps teams within companies better manage and collaborate with freelancers.

At a time when the world is facing unprecedented challenges, we don’t take our responsibilities lightly. We strive to create opportunities for anyone in the world to build their business, brand and dreams, and to provide anyone with access to those opportunities through our marketplace.

One of the programs we launched recently is Fiverr Empower which partners with universities to help students with disabilities to get equal opportunities, build their professional careers, and establish financial independence.

Earlier, you spoke about the distinction between the “gig economy” and the “freelance economy.” What’s the difference between the two, and how does Fiverr fit into the picture?

While we often get brought into the gig economy conversation, we are on our own journey to define the skilled freelance economy. Unlike many traditional “gig economy” companies, freelancers on Fiverr need to be extremely skilled and creative to sell their service, and they do so on their own terms.

A critique of the freelance economy is that workers are prone to lower wages, longer hours, less routine, and increasingly blurred lines between home and work— each of which can cause burnout. Is this a fair characterization, and if so, how does Fiverr address and/or avoid this problem?

.

“ WE STRIVE TO CREATE OPPORTUNITIES FOR ANYONE IN THE WORLD TO BUILD THEIR BUSINESS, BRAND AND DREAMS, AND TO PROVIDE ANYONE WITH ACCESS TO THOSE OPPORTUNITIES” Freelancers on Fiverr get to define what they work on, where they work, when they work and how much they charge. We do

not dictate any of these aspects and therefore their earning potential is not capped. Freelancers set their prices based on the value they place on their experience and time. For us and for people on our platform, it’s not a race to the bottom, but rather a race to the top—freelancers are only making more money year over year. Actually, in 2020 their income grew twice as fast as in prior years.

We found that freelancers who have been doing this for a while are much more in control of their work-life balance than those new to remote work.

We also built a number of features to help freelancers to manage their time effectively.

We have an “out of office mode” that freelancers turn on whenever they go on vacation or want a break from their work. We also have “queue limits” that allow freelancers to limit the number of orders they get—this way they can ensure they are giving themselves the necessary time to complete their work.

Freelancers on Fiverr enjoy the freedom and flexibility that comes with “being their own boss” and we provide them with resources to help them.

Fiverr has freelancers from 160 countries, and you’ve spoken about geographic expansion as key to your growth strategy.

What economic and cultural considerations are you taking into consideration as you think about expanding beyond English speaking areas?

We view international expanH I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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sion as a massive opportunity.

That means localizing the platform, not just translating it into different languages, but allowing people around the world to communicate in their native language, and transact in local currencies. We believe that by reducing these barriers to entry, we will see more customers from around the world coming to Fiverr and more professional and talented freelancers signing up on the platform.

In the wake of the pandemic, there has been a heightened sense of nationalism around the world. Some people want to work with other people from their own country, and with Fiverr now localized into seven different languages (including English) and tools that allow businesses to search for freelancers in their country, we are providing a more personalized and customized experience to make this possible.

Freelance photographer Thomas Gaulke, of Germany, photographs smoke from the Wallow Fire. Springerville, USA. June 2011.

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Some of the most prevalent postings on Fiverr are by highly educated individuals such as accountants, writers, and computer programmers.

How do you think about the difference between the “highskill” freelance economy and the “low-skill” one?

Fiverr welcomes all freelancers to its platform, whether it’s those who have been working in an industry for years or someone that is testing out their skills in a certain field. That is why we have certain levels for freelancers on our site. For instance, someone who is a true industry

INTERVIEWS

A woman holds her baby while video calling her parents to avoid work burnout. New York, USA. November 2013.

expert in their field should apply to be a Fiverr Pro seller. Fiverr Pro is our tier of hand-vetted, verified talent. Fiverr employees personally verify each Pro talent to ensure exceptional and quality service.

On the other hand, we have plenty of resources on Fiverr, including our e-learning platform Learn, for people to learn new skills and improve on what they already have. If they then want to try their hand at selling those services on Fiverr, they’ll start out at Level 1, and as they continue to provide quality service to their buyers and deliver quality work, they will advance to higher levels.

Finally, in your opinion, what is most misunderstood

about the modern-day freelance economy? Where is the freelance economy headed in a post-COVID world, and how does Fiverr plan to adapt?

One of the biggest misconceptions is that freelancing is temporary. A decade ago, freelancing was considered something people did in between jobs or as a way to gain qualifications to be hired for a full-time position.

This is no longer the case. Freelancing today is a career choice and a lifestyle preference. This trend will only continue to grow post-COVID as it was already one of the fastest-growing sectors of the economy.

Because so much talent wants to engage in this new lifestyle, companies, businesses, and organizations will have to deal

with the fact that this generation of skilled workers are not available full-time. This means businesses will need to figure out how to integrate freelancers into their workflows and how to augment their full-time team by adding flexible talent. This is not just a challenge but also a meaningful opportunity to rethink the organization’s efficiency and agility. The global pandemic has underlined the need for financial efficiency. Adding flexible work into the mix allows organizations to think about how they manage their budgets, separating work into fixed expenses (full-time team) and variable expenses (freelancers). This is very powerful because it allows them to quickly scale their organization up or down as needed. H H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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FIGHTING FIRES IN THE ENGINE ROOM A CONVERSATION WITH CHRISTINE LAGARDE Garrett Walker

Editor-in-Chief (2019-2020)

European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde leaving an EU summit.

Brussels, Belgium. December 2020.

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Christine Lagarde is the President of the European Central Bank (ECB).

Previously, she served as the Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and as a minister in the French government.

Lagarde spoke with Garrett Walker in the early fall.

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n normal times, the goal of any central bank is to keep the boat steady; suffice it to say, these are not normal times. How is the role of the ECB changing?

Keeping the boat steady is even more important in turbulent waters. While this may require some extraordinary maneuvers, one should not lose sight of the course to reach the destination. This has very much been our role. Faced with the severe economic consequences of the pandemic, we have taken a number of extraordinary measures to support the economy and to help euro area citizens through this extremely challenging time. Failing to do so would have blown us off course in the delivery of our mandate to maintain price stability.

The key pillars of our crisis response have been asset purchases and targeted liquidity operations.

Under our Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP), we are purchasing assets with a total envelope of €1,350 billion (US$1,582 billion), at least until the end of June 2021, to support favorable funding conditions for all sectors in the economy. Moreover, we have substantially eased the conditions under which banks can obtain liquidity under our targeted longer-term refinancing operations.

Given the bank-centered financial system in the euro area, these operations are of great importance to ensure the flow

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of credit, especially to smaller and medium-sized firms and to households. As a result of our measures, we have been able to avert the most adverse real financial feedback loops, and financing conditions for governments, firms, and banks have improved again. But inflation is still very distant from levels in line with our inflation aim. So we need to maintain ample monetary policy stimulus to reach our objective.

You’ve called for a “safety net” until at least July 2021. While that may be the only option for the ECB, what long-term economic consequences do you anticipate?

The pandemic has driven the euro area economy into an economic contraction of a magnitude and speed that are unprecedented in peacetime. Confronted with such an unparalleled shock, otherwise sound companies saw their liquidity buffers dwindle which risked turning into unnecessary bankruptcies and job losses. In response, macroeconomic policies in the euro area have acted forcefully, geared towards protecting productive capacity and jobs. National fiscal authorities have offered massive loan guarantees and other liquidity support measures to mobilize banks and deliver liquidity to firms as fast as possible.

Monetary policy has flanked these measures by providing cheap central bank liquidity to the banking sector with the aim of supporting the maintenance of credit provision by the banking sector. In parallel, our asset purchases have supported financing conditions throughout the economy and have helped to stabilize financial markets. This package of measures has contributed to avoiding an even deeper recession

and a credit crunch that would have left deep and long-lasting scars on our economy.

However, we should guard against the premature withdrawal of these support measures. For this reason, we have already announced that we will maintain our “safety net” in place until we consider the COVID-19 crisis phase is over, but in any case not before the end of June 2021. This is not to mention other policies including fiscal measures and structural reforms.

The ECB has consistently struggled to implement monetary policy that satisfies all 19 member states. Especially in the midst of the pandemic, how do you hope to balance the unique problems facing different countries?

Indeed, while the pandemic is a common global shock, the local impact is going to be uneven. To illustrate this point: the output loss in the first half of 2020 ranges from less than 11.5 percent in Germany to more than 22.7 percent in Spain. These differences reflect the severity of the outbreak, the design of the national response— itself a function of diverse fiscal positions—the economic structure, the sectoral activity, the fiscal absorption capacity, and the resilience of the corporate and financial sectors. These factors will also play a crucial role in shaping the profile of the recovery going forward.

It is clear that the crisis might leave behind a legacy of even more pronounced divergences among the economies of the euro area than we have observed so far. Countries will return to pre-COVID GDP levels at different points in time, some earlier,

INTERVIEWS

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde, left, speaks with IMF Corporate Secretary Lin Jianhai at the opening of the annual meetings plenary of IMF and World Bank Group. Tokyo, Japan. October 2012.

some later. Those countries set to struggle for longer with the aftermath of the pandemic shock will likely suffer from deeper and longer-lasting scars. All this risks prolonging and even entrenching structural heterogeneity within the euro area.

This is why Europe’s Next Generation EU COVID-19 recovery package (NGEU) is so critical. It has a dual function: not only can it help support demand, which hastens the recovery for all economies. But, at the same time, it can also increase the structural resilience and growth potential of the entire area, thus healing the wounds that the pandemic will likely leave behind.

Thus far, Europe has weathered COVID-19 without widespread unemployment. But some analysts worry that stimulus plans have quietly propped up “zombie firms” that will struggle in the

long term. Are you worried about that possibility, and do you plan to address it?

There has been a timely and comprehensive response to the pandemic at both the national and the European level. This is true for monetary policy, through which we are supporting banks, firms, and households through easier access to finance and medium-term price stability. But this is also true for national fiscal policies, which comprise a wide range of measures such as credit guarantee schemes for firms and employment support for workers.

On the latter, given that you mention unemployment, the national measures have undoubtedly so far been very effective to support employment. ECB internal staff analysis estimates that about 13.5 million people are currently on job retention schemes in the euro area (8 percent of the la-

bor force). This compares to about 12.8 million unemployed workers in July (7.9 percent of the labor force). Such schemes have successfully prevented a large-scale increase in unemployment.

That said, the adjustment in the labor market is not yet completed. In fact, while we assume that the job retention policies will be largely successful in keeping “reduced-time” workers in employment, we expect a significant increase in the unemployment rate over the next quarters, in particular in the sectors most affected by the crisis. According to the September ECB Staff Macroeconomic Projections, unemployment is expected to rise from 7.3 percent in the first quarter of 2020 to 9.5 percent in 2021 before declining to 8.8 percent in 2022.

An ambitious and coordinated fiscal stance remains absolutely critical going forward, in view of H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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the sharp contraction in the euro area economy and remaining large uncertainties around the economic outlook. The Next Generation EU package is also very welcome and has the potential to significantly support the regions and sectors hardest hit by the pandemic, strengthen the Single Market, and build a lasting and even recovery. Additionally, the European Stability Mechanism, the European Commission via its Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE) scheme, and the European Investment Bank made available a €540 billion (US$633 billion) safety net to help finance sovereign expenditures related to the pandemic, fund national short-time work schemes, and provide credit guarantees to firms.

At the same time, the national support measures should be temporary and targeted to ensure that only structurally sound firms are supported. This allows the structure of our economies to adjust where needed, so that capital and labor flow to the most productive companies in the economy. This is

particularly important now, with the digital and green transformations of our economies underway.

It is up to national governments to set the right incentives for productivity-enhancing investment and innovation that help rejuvenating the European economy. The European level will support governments in this endeavor, though, among other things through the initiatives just mentioned.

How has the ECB worked with national politicians and public health officials? What has the pandemic revealed about leadership and coordination across borders?

The European crisis response has powerfully demonstrated how closely policies interact and how communication between policymakers at all levels is indispensable. The personal interactions between leaders of the Council, the Commission, European Central Bank, and member states’ leaders in the most acute phase of the crisis was decisive.

From the perspective of a central bank, it also serves as a reminder

New International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde gestures during her first news conference at the IMF. Washington D.C., United States. July 2011

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that coordination does not mean that we sacrifice our independence; rather, the sound management of crisis situations and the economy reinforce and guarantee our independence in the long term.

Via our participation in EU fora, the ECB has interacted intensively with national and EU-level policymakers since the crisis outbreak.

This has fostered a better understanding of the economic situation and impact of possible policy actions. In addition to its regular exchanges with the European Parliament, the ECB took part in discussions with Member States at the European level, particularly the European Council, ECOFIN, and the Eurogroup, where the ECB contributed to shaping the European policy response with its input and advice.

Also thanks to these interactions, monetary and fiscal policies in the euro area have indeed reinforced each other. Owing to the EU institutional framework, where monetary policy is a European competence and fiscal stabilization takes place through

INTERVIEWS

national budgets, national governments and the ECB were the first responders to the crisis in Europe. Besides adopting ambitious fiscal measures of around 4.5 percent of GDP, euro area governments have put in place loan guarantee schemes for companies equivalent to 20 percent of GDP. Monetary policy has provided €1.5 trillion (US$1.76 trillion) to fund this credit expansion at the most favourable terms we have ever offered through our new series of targeted longer-term refinancing operations. In order to ensure that lending reaches even the smallest borrowers, the ECB has also started to accept loans to micro firms and sole traders as collateral in our operations.

From March to May, the increase in bank lending to euro area firms was almost €250 billion (US$293 billion), the largest rise on record in a three-month period. Across countries, loan growth and guarantee take-up are very strongly correlated.

Actions by the ECB and national governments have further been complemented and supported by decisive action at the European level. To help cushion the immediate impact of the crisis, the European Union temporarily eased its State Aid rules to allow member states to better support companies and also agreed that member states should not be constrained by the EU fiscal rules in designing their immediate crisis response.

Moreover, the three safety nets by the European Stability Mechanism, the European Investment Bank, and the European Commission via the European instrument for temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency (SURE) will provide up to €540 billion (US$633 billion) in

support of European countries, companies, and workers. Finally, in July, European leaders agreed on a recovery fund worth €750 billion (US$879 billion) to provide further crucial macroeconomic policy support to EU economies while investing in Europe’s future by using funds for modernization, notably advancing the green and digital transitions.

Without intensive exchanges and strong leadership, this historic policy response would not have been possible. It took courage and commitment from 27 countries and all EU institutions to provide the necessary policy support, and to provide it swiftly. And it will still require more of the same to ensure we live up to the agreement on the European recovery fund by leaders and use it as the force for modernization and recovery that Europe needs to emerge from this crisis not just stronger, but also more united, than before.

Stepping back a bit, what do you see as the biggest long-term challenges to Europe’s economic stability?

The current crisis has convincingly shown that Europe can react forcefully if need be—individually through bold national measures and jointly through the agreement on the Next Generation EU. This notwithstanding, Europe still faces a number of economic challenges, among others an aging population, climate change, fragmented capital markets or economic structures that cannot yet facilitate innovation, adoption of new technology, and an efficient allocation of resources more generally.

Let me give you a few exam-

ples.

An aging European population will limit potential growth and present a challenge for social security systems. In that respect, pension reforms and retraining policies play a key role in enhancing labor supply.

Moreover, policy efforts to accelerate the green and digital transitions should be at the center of the EU agenda and recovery effort, both at national and European levels. They are important prerequisites for strengthening the economic resilience of our economies.

In this regard, the Digital Single Market is an important EU policy strategy, and its implementation could be accelerated and expanded. More investment by the public sector in digital technologies may be useful, along with faster progress in e-government. Startups and investment in intangible capital could be stimulated by greater provision of venture capital (VC), including in conjunction with further advances in the capital markets union.

Regarding the necessary transition to a low-carbon economy, it is important that policy measures to accelerate economic recovery are not only consistent with but further the objectives of the EU Green Deal.

We also need extra efforts from policymakers to complete the Banking Union to achieve a truly unified domestic market for all European banks. This would reduce fragmentation across the European Single Market, diminish the bank-sovereign link, and contribute to safer and sounder banks. Lastly, the COVID-19 pandemic is a reminder that economic resilience across euro area countries varies. In several countries, H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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rigid economic structures and inefficient institutions prevent an inadequate economic response in a crisis situation. Going forward, it is essential to boost productivity, either by firms innovating and adopting new technology, or by reallocating resources within and across sectors toward the most productive firms.

The good news is that with the agreement on the Next Generation EU package there is a great opportunity to strengthen economic resilience and convergence of member states. This opportunity should not be missed.

Implementing comprehensive and credible national reform agendas to support employment and growth in a sustainable way would reduce the economic and social costs of the next crisis.

The Phillips curve, a key concept in economic theory, suggests that inflation and unemployment are inversely correlated. In recent years, though, that hasn’t been the case: inflation has fallen well short of central bank targets, and is less sensitive to employment levels. Has that development changed your approach to monetary policy?

It is true that while employment growth has been strong before the COVID-19 pandemic, underlying inflation remained below its historical average in the euro area.

Yet, that does not mean that the Phillips curve relationship is broken or that the effect of monetary policy on the real economy does not transmit to inflation. Empirical studies show that the slope of the Phillips curve is rather shallow in the euro area, which means that unemployment has to fall more to put pressure on inflation. We will go deeper into the subject in our monetary policy

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strategy review we just restarted.

We will take stock of the drivers of inflation, evaluate any structural developments, and assess to what extent they warrant a different approach to monetary policy decision-making.

You were the first woman to serve as finance minister for a G8 country, and the first woman to lead the IMF and the ECB. Still, gender equality in the field of economics remains elusive.

What more needs to be done?

We should challenge the view that economics is for boys only.

This is about challenging perceptions of what we think an economist should be and how they should behave.

Leaders can serve as powerful examples and catalysts of change.

Of course, all of us have a collective responsibility to foster and contribute to inclusive behaviors and a respectful working environment. This also includes speaking up clearly if we see discriminatory and disrespectful situations.

In addition, organizations can implement inclusive policies.

Family-friendly career paths and flexible working arrangements are just two examples of how the adverse environment can be addressed. Mentoring and sponsorship can be powerful means to level the playing field for women.

But it should not just be women involved in this transformation.

Everyone needs to embrace inclusive behavior and gender equality.

The causes of gender inequality are equally important. I invite every organization to investigate their data. At the ECB, we have conducted research to understand what drives disparities between female and male economists.

Lagarde, left, bumps elbows in greeting with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen with an elbow bump during a round table meeting at an EU summit.

Brussels, Belgium. December 2020.

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International Monetary Fund Managing Director Christine Lagarde speaks at the World Government Summit.

Dubai, United Arab Emirates. February 2019.

We found a “gender application gap,” which means that women are less likely to apply for a promotion. But we also discovered that when they do apply, they are more likely to succeed. This gives me hope that change is possible and indeed necessary to ensure talent is not left behind.

Globalization, automation, and immigration all support economic growth, but also contributed to the right-wing populist movements that swept across Europe in recent years. How can governments support displaced populations while also boosting productivity?

Globalization, automation, and immigration trends call on governments to provide credible policies to support confidence and to make the economic adjustment more equal and sustainable.

Globalization has certainly contributed to economic growth.

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Openness fosters productivity gains by allowing an efficient allocation of resources and the materialization of comparative advantages while at the same time enabling technological diffusion.

However, the impetus towards economic integration has faded and public worries related to globalization, like inequality and equitable integration, have arisen in recent years. Domestic welfare policies together with multilateral cooperation are key to address those concerns.

Automation and digitization present a potential for higher productivity growth. Yet, reaping this potential depends to a large extent on the availability of complementary assets such as human or managerial capital. Key aspects of any thoughtful response will include avoiding the digital divide within member states and making further progress in terms

of education and training to improve job quality. This requires both public investment and private initiatives so that the labor market can fully reap the benefits of new technologies.

The pandemic outbreak has led to a faster adoption of technologies, including working from home. This has spurred additional investment and training, which are expected to increase the technological content of certain jobs.

While this can reduce the gap in the degree of technological adoption across countries, it may still increase inequality, as low-skilled workers are less likely to benefit from these technological innovations.

At the same time, Europe needs to tackle pockets of skill shortages and mismatches, which will be essential to foster workers’ upskilling, to identify the type of skills that will be needed in the future,

and to promote life-long learning.

Finally, firms’ investment in information and communication technologies as well as in R&D are fundamental drivers in the creation of new and highly productive jobs.

Well-functioning markets should support the transfer of new technologies and their diffusion. Firms should adopt management systems and organizational processes that can secure the full benefit of the digital era.

Let’s end on a positive note—I think we could all use that right about now. What makes you hopeful about the future of the European experiment?

By nearly any metric, Europe’s response to the crisis has been impressive. The European Union—with its still young currency union—are emerging from the biggest crisis in recent history thanks to the concerted policy efforts of member states and our common institutions in this exceptional situation. And while the recovery is only starting and we cannot yet afford to rest, this does give me hope that we can deliver and do the work that lies ahead of us.

Europe has shown that it has learned its lessons from the past.

For the first time in its history, the European Union will take on common debt to overcome a crisis. This broadens the boundaries of what is possible should we be struck by such dramatic shocks again. Even though the recovery fund is temporary, the potential to activate such tools in future crises is a powerful change to the structure of the Union.

The euro area is highly interconnected, with trade and supply chain linkages amplifying com-

mon shocks by around 20 percent.

This means that no country can recover and thrive fully unless its European partners do, too. For that reason, policies need to complement each other: unlike 2011 to 2013, policies are fully aligned in securing the fastest possible recovery, which also underpins medium-term price stability. Similarly, the decision to place the recovery fund within the EU budget sent a strong signal about solidarity and the EU’s ability to make collective decisions. This was confirmed by the very positive market reaction to the European Commission proposal in May and the July European Council agreement.

Of course, we have a critical phase ahead of us, because much of the impact of the recovery fund will depend on how the money is used. The recovery fund helps all member states, including those which are more fiscally constrained, to provide adequate policy support to their economies.

Yet, to have a real transformative impact, raise our economies’ growth potential, and avoid further divergence, member states will have to be committed to implementing truly ambitious reforms alongside these investments. This will require political courage and strong European governance to ensure that the money is put to productive uses.

Ultimately, Europe is a community built on interdependence and the deep realization that on the whole working together will deliver superior solutions to retreating behind national borders.

This is true for the response to COVID-19, but also for any other major policy challenges—be they climate change or digitization.

Through the Single Market, the

European Union is uniquely positioned to deliver the most cost-effective solutions for green and digital innovation. Firms, workers, and consumers are rapidly becoming more accustomed to using digital technologies during the pandemic, which will likely have permanent effects on labor markets and consumption patterns. The Single Market offers unique opportunities to European companies to take advantage of those trends in Europe by exploiting network effects and the scalability of their products in a market with 450 million consumers.

It is also through the European Union that we can strengthen our strategic resilience and autonomy in key economic sectors in a more volatile world. The crisis is expected to have implications for global supply chains—which are estimated to shrink by 35 percent—but also for payment systems, for our financial sector, for the international role of the euro.

Now more than ever, having a strong banking union and capital markets union backed by modern retail payments systems is essential.

Most importantly of all, European citizens want Europe to succeed: in a recent EU survey, 68 percent of respondents replied that they would like to see more EU authority to deal with crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, and 56 percent would like the European Union to have greater financial means to overcome the economic impact of the pandemic. Citizens clearly want more Europe; this is what policymakers should deliver.

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INTERVIEW WITH CLIMATE ACTIVIST LICYPRIYA KANGUJAM Indu Pandey Editor-in-Chief

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INTERVIEWS

Licypriya Kangujam is an Indigenous climate activist from India.

At nine years old, she spoke at the United Nations Climate Conference (COP25) in 2019 and traveled around the world to speak at climate and international conferences. Kangujam is a World Children Peace Prize recipient, recognized for her clean air initiatives and protests against the Indian government.

Y

Environmental activist Licypriya Kangujam stands at Juhu beach in front of a pile of trash during a cleaning drive. Mumbai, India.

February 2020.

ou’re the HIR’s youngest interviewee ever at 9 years old. How did you get your start in climate advocacy?

Thank you so much for this opportunity. I’m glad to hear that I’m the youngest interviewee in your history.

I was born in a small village of Manipur in North East India surrounded by lush green mountains and an alluring atmosphere. I never realized what I’m doing is activism until 2018 when people started calling me a climate activist. In 2016, I came to Delhi for the first time for my schooling, but my life became very messy due to the high air pollution level. Later, I moved to Bhubaneswar, Odisha, in the same year for my schooling.

Again my home in Odisha was hit by Cyclone Titli in 2018 and Cyclone Fani in 2019. These incidences in my life turned me into an outspoken child that talks about the impact of climate change to our leaders when they failed to act on it.

The Nepal Earthquake of 2015 is also an important event in my life. During that time, I accompanied my dad to raise funds to help the victims’ children and families. That was the first time that I learned the words “climate change” and “natural

disasters,” but I couldn’t realize what exactly they were as I was a small baby that time. But, this could be the main reason why I am so concerned about the environment and our planet.

My father did his Masters in Environmental Studies in Nalanda International University.

He frequently talked to me about various environmental issues happening everyday around the world. It also helps me to learn and understand many things about the environment and climate change. Unfortunately, he couldn’t complete his degree in the university, but he wishes for me to love and be concerned about our nature and our environment.

In July 2018, when I was just six years old, I got an opportunity to attend the United Nations Disaster Conference in Mongolia. It was a life changing event.

Just after I returned back home from Mongolia, I started my organization called “The Child Movement” in July, 2018 to call on world leaders to take immediate climate action to save our planet and our future. It has now become a people’s movement for climate justice in India and various other countries.

My first parliament protest was on February 2, 2019. I have my three main demands to our leaders and the Government to change the system: to pass the climate change law in the parliament as soon as possible, to make climate education compulsory in every school in India, and to ensure plantations of minimum of 10 trees by every student in India.

If they pass the climate law then we can control carbon emissions and greenhouse gasH I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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es. Also, it will give climate justice to millions of poor vulnerable people and other marginalized communities who are the victims of climate change.

It can bring accountability and transparency to the government.

Making climate education mandatory in schools’ curriculum will help to fight the climate crisis from the grassroots.

Italy has already made climate education compulsory in their school curriculum since 2019. If India follows suit, India will be the second country after Italy to take such initiative in the history of the world and the first in Asia.

India has over 350 million students. If 350 million students plant a minimum of 10 trees every year, then we will plant 3.5 billion trees every year. Trust me; India will be green within five to 10 years. This will help fight the air pollution, floods, droughts, heat waves and other environmental issues in the country.

I dropped out of school as of February 2019 due to my protests every week in front of the parliament house. My parents couldn’t afford the expenses for traveling every week from Bhubaneswar to New Delhi for my protest, so I decided to drop out of school. It was the most disappointing period of my life. I missed my school, my friends, and my teachers.

Before my parliament protest, I moved from place to place to create awareness on climate change, specifically targeting children and young people and also attended various global important meetings to raise my voice.

I addressed the world leaders at the United Nations Climate

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Conference 2019 (COP25) held in Madrid, Spain. It helped me to amplify my voice globally.

So far, I have traveled to about 32 countries as a part of my movement and spoke in more than 400 institutions and platforms to advocate adults on climate change as a speaker across the globe in the last two years.

When I began the movement, I was alone, but today, I have thousands who love and support from across the globe.

What is the value of youth advocacy in the climate movement? What unique perspective do you bring?

Some of the changes I brought to my country through advocacy are as follows: New Air Pollution Law in India: It’s one of my long-standing demands for our leaders over the past two years. I played an important role to bring about this new law to curb the air pollution crisis in Delhi. I protested in front of the President House at midnight on October 15, 2020.

I was detained by Delhi police on October 18, 2020. On October 28, 2020, the President of India signed and approved an ordinance to enact this new air pollution law in India in five states.

The Prime Minister of India also ordered that a new commission be established on air pollution with its headquarter in Delhi to solve the Delhi air pollution crisis permanently. As per the new law, polluters can be fined US$134,000 or be jailed for up to five years.

Inclusion of climate change as a compulsory subject in School Education Curriculum:

So far, the Indian states of Rajasthan, Gujarat and Sikkim have given me positive responses. Starting from zero, now over 145,000 schools in India will include climate change as a compulsory subject in their curriculums. Still I need to wait more and see. Now India becomes the second country after Italy to take such initiative in the history of the world. And, over 1000 private schools have already started taking this initiative across India and many other parts of the world after my request.

1 Year 1 Million Trees: I have planted over 350,000 trees in my life in various places across India and many parts of the world with school children, which is equivalent to planting 100 trees every day since my birth. I plant thousands of trees every week by celebrating “Monday for Mother Nature” with children of various schools across India and others to make our planet green again with the mission of plating one million trees each year as a part of taking climate action from the grassroots.

Indigenous communities around the world have been vocal about the impact of climate change on their livelihoods. As an Indigenous girl, why is climate change an Indigenous issue? Is there room for solidarity between the climate movement and Indigenous rights movements?

Indigenous people are playing a crucial role in protecting our planet. We are not on front covers, but we are the first line of defenders. Due to rising violence against Indigenous com-

INTERVIEWS A thick blanket of smoke is seen against the setting sun as young ragpickers search for reusable material at a garbage dump. New Delhi, India. October 2014.

munities around the world, it’s an alarming situation for all of us along with the bigger challenges of protecting our forests and the environment. Even in my home state, the government has given licenses to big foreign companies based in the Netherlands to exploit our indigenous forest for oil exploration while local people are opposing it. Many Indigenous activists are in jail or are even murdered in several places across the world. Denial of the climate crisis by our leaders increases the threat to us. As both the climate movement and Indigenous rights movement are fighting for the common cause, it’s time to come together to strengthen our movement with one common voice to protect our rights and to defend the defenders. We are interconnected and interdependent. The climate movement will fail without indigenous people.

India, your home country, is a major carbon emitter, but also

a developing country. How do you respond to critics who say that developed carbon emitters like the US and countries in the EU should be the ones involved in climate advocacy as opposed to countries like India?

Climate change has no border.

India is also equally responsible for the global carbon emissions.

Developed nations should invest more for a green economy as compared to developing ones, but India can lead and be a role model in fighting the climate crisis because we have full potential to do so. Besides the EU and the United States, two of the highest global carbon emitters like China and India are two giant neighboring countries and they’re not doing enough. They are still giving huge subsidies to fossil fuel companies, which are responsible for massive carbon and greenhouse gases emissions globally.

I’m very much confident and I expect a lot from United States

President-Elect Joe Biden’s leadership. We are going to hold him accountable. Yesterday, I was so happy when I heard the news that our Prime Minister Narendra Modi discussed climate change with Biden. I was a little bit surprised too because it never happened in the last four years of the Trump administration.

India needs to see climate change as an urgent political issue. India is already experiencing adverse extreme weather events like floods, droughts, heat waves, cyclones, and locusts in addition to extremely polluted air and water stress at the same time. These are all the impacts of climate change. India must take a leadership role in the shift to sustainable production and consumption to end this crisis and the shift from a carbon economy to a green economy. India must create policy that encourages resource efficiency and a reduction in waste of resources. In doing so, it will provide a template H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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for other developing countries as well.

India must build on international initiatives it has piloted, such as the International Solar Alliance to further global cooperation and collaboration to address climate change. India should bring the United States into the International Solar Alliance. Working with partners in the developed and developing world, New Delhi must take the lead and be instrumental in shaping global climate efforts.

As the United States and India work together, the United States must demonstrate that they feel an obligation to act ambitiously to cut greenhouse gas emissions given America’s level of economic development and the current size and the historic volume of US emissions.

The United States and India can also scope out areas of cooperation, including advancing green investment, cooperating on solar and wind technologies, cooperating on forest policy;

especially conservation and accounting, cooperating on climate resilience (drought, flood and coastal lines), and developing state-to-state and city-to-city cooperation on resilience, mitigation, monitoring and assessment.

The United States and India can do more together, and we must do more together. We have to do it faster otherwise our planet will be dying soon. The world needs a concrete climate action plan to save our planet and our future.

You have advocated for climate education in schools. What would this look like? Why is climate education important?

I receive a lot of positive responses both from state governments and schools. It’s become a movement now. Over 1000 private schools in India and many parts of the world are now teaching climate education in their schools. In each school, there are a minimum of around

Environmental activist Licypriya Kangujam holds a sign at Juhu beach during a cleaning drive.

Mumbai, India. February 2020.

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3000 to 4000 students, and some schools are run under a society and they have dozens of branches across the country. So, it’s easier for me if their founder or the head of the society accepts my proposal without approval from the government.

Climate education is very important if we really would like to fight the climate crisis. Adults are not doing enough already, and I don’t have much faith in them to come to the frontline and save our planet and future. The last hope is children. If we include climate education in schools, then we can fight climate change from the grassroots. It will help to educate adults and our leaders via their children and grandchildren, so that we altogether can support each other to save our environment and our planet. This also increases environmental consciousness among the people in addition to a love and respect for nature. I am even preparing to go to court to direct the government to include it as

INTERVIEWS

mandatory in all national curriculums of various school boards.

I trust it will be a very successful mission.

India experiences many extreme weather events that have been linked to climate change from floods to heat waves. What can be done to prepare the country better for these devastating events? How do you approach this in your advocacy?

India is the sixth most vulnerable country in the world to climate change. We are facing floods, droughts, heat waves, cyclones, and air pollution all at the same time. These are all the impacts of climate change.

We need to shift to a green economy from a carbon economy.

The government needs to make strong new climate laws to protect our environment. We need to promote clean energy like solar in cities and wind turbines in rural areas for power instead of depending on coal. We need urgent green transitions from fossil fuel vehicles to electric vehicles. We should also stop deforestation for mining and developmental activities. I have written several letters to our leaders and officials, submitted memorandums multiple times, and held protests to draw their attention. I also use social media, like Twitter, as a powerful tool to address the voice of the people to our leaders.

Some people always tell me that I’m too young to get involved in such activism, but I am proof that age doesn’t matter to make a difference. Big or small, it doesn’t matter. I’m a young girl. I’m strong, smart, intelligent, and brave.

The majority of the people encourage me. But, I have always received lots of online threats, abuse, and cyberbullying everyday in addition to criticism whenever I speak out against any of our leaders who try to silence my voice.

You advocate for a Survival Kit for the Future, a campaign to reduce air pollution in India.

Why is this an important issue? What are you proposing should be done to clean up India’s air quality?

I developed a symbolic device called Survival Kit for the Future (SUKIFU) to curb the air pollution on October 4, 2019. SUKIFU is an almost zero-cost kit designed from trash to provide fresh air to breathe when pollution is bad. It draws the attention of the leaders to find an urgent solution for the current crisis of air pollution in Delhi and the National Capital Region.

This invention sends a poignant message about environmental degradation and questions the planet’s unknown future and environmental depletion. Our governments are busy blaming each other instead of finding long-term solutions to deadly air pollution. Children are unable to go out of the home in Delhi. They must act now otherwise our future will be dying. I developed the model with the support of Professor Chandan Ghosh, of Indian Institute of Technology Jammu (IIT).

Air quality in many parts of Delhi crossed measurable limits of AQI 999, which is a public health emergency situation for the 30.3 millions people of Delhi, including millions of children.

Our leaders failed to address

and handle all the environmental and health concerns of the people. This is unacceptable.

I’m demanding our leaders to shut down all the coal and thermal power plants in and around Delhi, to stop stubble burning, to revive the Aravelli Forest, to mark bicycle lane in all roads of Delhi, to increase green spaces, to ban permanently bursting of firecrackers in Delhi for next 5-10 years, to promote renewable energies instead of burning fossil fuels, and to replace all diesel and petrol vehicles with solar or electric.

The global deadline to address accelerated warming is rapidly approaching. Are you optimistic that the global community can sufficiently address the problem? Where do you see the most room for improvement?

Our leaders need political willpower to cut down emissions and become a net-zero, carbon-neutral country by 2035 or 2050. I understand developing countries have a bigger challenge. India also is a big country with a large population; our government faces a lot of challenges to set a deadline to achieve global commitments, but we need to increase the speed. I’m very much optimistic that if developed countries stand together with those developing countries, we can easily achieve the Paris Climate Agreement before the deadline. The biggest problem is that our leaders don’t trust each other. If they trust each other, we can easily fight the global climate crisis with a concrete action plan.

The interview was condensed and lightly edited for clarity. H H I R . H A R V A R D . E D U //

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