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tuesday 08•11•2016
IN FOCUS
THE MORUNG EXPRESS
The Power of Truth
The Morung Express volume Xi issue 307
The Traveler
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his is the story of the traveler. It is adapted from the one narrated by Deanna Zantingh during a panel discussion “On Being Good Neighbors” in Winnipeg, Canada. One day, a traveler was walking down the road besides his ancestral land. Suddenly, the traveler’s journey is interrupted when he is robbed, stripped naked, left half dead and the ancestral land taken away. • After some time a government official comes along, and on seeing the situation throws some money at the traveler, passes by on the other side of the road without actually offering to help, and continues without looking back. • A Preacher comes by, and on seeing the traveler says a prayer, but leaves the person there on the road and continues walking. • Some NGO workers happen to be passing by, and when seeing the badly injured naked traveler, express their concern about the situation. But, since they are too busy to offer any real help they tell the traveler that they will report the incident by publishing a statement of condemnation in the newspaper, and they move on. • Later a development worker comes by, and on seeing the traveler tries to paint the face white, but gives up and leaves only after extracting a bag of natural resources from the indigenous person’s land. • And then, a corporate worker comes and seeing that the traveler is already down and out, takes further advantage of the opportunity. The corporate worker floods the traveler’s fields destroying the traditional food sources, extracts more natural resources and claims the largest and most productive piece of land for the corporation. Eventually, the worker leaves on the other side of the road with his pockets lined with money. • Later that day, a young person comes along and is moved with empathy for the traveler. The young person treats the traveler’s wounds, takes him home until the person heals, and becomes whole again. Then the young person’s relationship with the traveler grows and gets to learn about how the traveler’s life was interrupted by the robbery and beating, how his land and natural mineral resources were confiscated, and his identity hijacked. They become friends, partners in restoring wholeness as they pursue justice and peace together. Can you identify with Deanna’s story, its meaning and the dilemmas it poses? Are we like the Government that reacts with short term measures, are we like the development worker that tries to cover up the problem with paint, or are we like the corporate worker that takes advantage to further exploit the situation? Or, are we like the young person that forms relationships with the people by building understanding while walking in solidarity and learning with them? It is through the process of addressing the issues together – step by step – which creates a far more productive, relevant and open space for open dialogue. In a broken and fragmented society where people don’t know each other and are suspicious and too afraid to reach out and help each other, where do we begin? In other words, it is persuading us to liberate the self, to confront the structures of domination using a holistic multicultural approach with a bottom-up pedagogy in the context of right relationships, mutual respect and shared responsibilities. This includes getting to know our neighbors and deconstructing the structures of violence. It is about enabling a dialogue of civilizations and consciously creating inclusive systems that uphold the relational web of interdependence. It is by inter-weaving these many different strands that the values of humanization are expressed. Our search for justice and peace absolutely depends on how we engage these dilemmas with mutual respect and integrity. In order to create peaceful and inclusive societies in which everyone benefits we need to know each other. We need to ask what kind of relations we are cultivating. Are we building relationships of dependency, relationships of domination, fear, and injustice? Or are we building relations that nurture and cultivate right relationships based on dignity and respect, which are the foundation for holistic sustainable development and transformation that are essential for a society to peacefully coexist. Knowing our stories helps us know ourselves and each other. There is power in knowing who you are, and in knowing each other in mutual respect that actually strengthens our ability to uphold fundamental human rights, and the equal rights of men and women that increase the likelihood for future generations to live peaceably as the propensity for violent conflict and war are systematically reduced. Clearly the honoring and upholding a people’s right has and continues to be the focus of human history. The question remains as to whether or not we have the collective will and the prophetic imagination to pursue this revolutionary necessity of our times that is required for us to chart our own destinies in pursuit of a holistic, sustainable and dignified co-existence.
lEfT wiNg |
Yasser Machat
Revolutionise education
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ello internet! I am Yasser, a university student from Tunisia. Through my fourteen years in our educational system, I've studied in three types of schools: private schools, public schools and pioneer schools (a school for "good students"). So I developed a few ideas about education and I want to share them with you. The world is changing every single day, yet we fail to adapt our education system to these massive changes. We expect our kids to be creative and to think outside the box, yet we imprison them in school buildings and order them to obey and memorise different school curriculums. We tell them to follow their dreams and fight for them, yet in schools we keep them away from things they love. "Don't do arts! You'll never be an artist anyway!" We let grades define their intelligence and the consequences of that are that many highly talented kids think they're not. We have to revolutionise our education. First, as a basic rule, education must be available to all kids in our planet. All chances must be equal. Schools must teach them more about life, and how to connect with people. It must drive their passion and fuel their creativity. We need education to give equal weight to the arts, humanities, social studies - and not just technical subjects. I've always believed that, through education, we can make this world a better place for us and for our children. Therefore I am super motivated to join you to talk about education and democracy at the World Forum for Democracy. And to use my blog to spread this noble message: we have to revolutionise our education! Thank you.
C O M M E N T A R Y
Ourania S. Yancopoulos openDemocracy
How will Guterres tackle the UN’s gender problem? Can António Guterres make good on his promises to advance gender equality as UN Secretary-General, or will “politics trump gender” once again in an organization established to stand for all the world’s people?
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hroughout the Secretary-General selection process, António Guterres publically committed to achieving a gender-balanced United Nations. “The UN must be at the forefront of the global movement towards gender equality,” he wrote in his vision statement dated February 2016, “Given that previous commitments to gender parity were not fulfilled, the SG should present and implement a road map for gender parity.” The occasion of Guterres’s appointment on 13 October 2016, served as yet another visible reminder of just how far the United Nations needs to come. Despite remarks by both the General Assembly President, Peter Thomson, and current Secretary-General Ban Kimoon on women’s empowerment and their historic role in this year’s selection process, only one woman crossed the stage to welcome Guterres to his new position. However, the UN’s only woman Permanent Representative serving on the current Security Council – US Ambassador, Samantha Power – took the opportunity to deliver a hopeful message, “[W]hile being a woman is not among Mr. Guterres’s many qualifications, he has pledged gender parity at all levels of the United Nations, with clear benchmarks and timeframes.” As the work of his transition team gets well under way expectations are high for Guterres to make good on his pledges. UN Women’s former Chief Advisor on Peace and Security, Anne-Marie Goetz told openDemocracy, “Mr. Guterres has been careful to mention gender issues in recent public statements. But now is the time to send a convincing message about his intentions, a confidence-building indication of the steps he will take to strengthen the UN's flagging work on gender equality and to build women's leadership.” The UN has an obvious and complex gender problem – and it’s up to Guterres to provide clear indication that he will move the United Nations in the right direction. And quickly. The United Nations was founded seventy-one years ago. Since then, 28 women have chaired one of the UN’s six main committees (compared to 424 men); 3 women have served as General-Assembly President (compared to 68 men); and zero have ever held the position of Secretary-General. Recent revelations about the organization’s failures to empower women within its senior staff show that the roots of gender bias run deep. Moreover, the UN’s selection last month of comic-book character Wonder Woman as its first honorary ambassador for women and girls’ empowerment is a graphic reminder of the UN’s failure to take gender issues seriously. Pro-
tests by UN staff erupted immediately. One of the protest organizers who spoke to openDemocracy on the basis of anonymity explained,“[F]or something that is this important, you need a woman or a man who can speak, who can travel, who can champion these rights.” “If you’re looking for a woman with long black hair, toned arms, […] great legs- pick Michelle Obama,” she exclaimed. “She’s out of a job on the first of January – and she kicks ass!” For another protestor, Cass DuRant, what Wonder Woman stands for goes completely against the core values of the UN, “She is a warrior and those are male values. The UN is not about going in and fighting to resolve issues, it is about talking and compromising and agreeing, so on every imaginable level we think she is a poor choice.” The nearly 30,000 people who have signed the online petition, started by U.N. staffers, agree. The petition reads, "The message the United Nations is sending to the world with this appointment is extremely disappointing." Wonder Woman’s appointment is a reminder that in an organization that has made gender equality a stated “top priority,” today, women make up just twenty percent of Permanent Representatives, twenty-one percent of Senior Managers, six percent of military experts, and three percent of military troops. It could not be more obvious— from reports of sexual violence by UN Peacekeepers, to the persistent gender imbalance in the UN’s senior management, and now the seemingly tone-deaf appointment of Wonder Woman—that the United Nations desperately needs an overhaul in its attitudes about women. That task will fall to António Guterres. The work Guterres has performed in the areas of gender parity and women’s empowerment both as a politician in Portugal and as an official in the UN is well recognized. But while he has a laudable feminist record, there are aspects to his career that give gender equality advocates pause. Even before becoming Portugal’s Prime Minister in 1995, Guterres was committed to gender equality. In an email to openDemocracy earlier this fall, Guterres reflected on his early exposure to gender issues, “I became aware of these issues as a teenager doing volunteer work in poor neighborhoods of Lisbon. I witnessed the extra burden that weighed upon women living under precarious conditions, doing menial jobs and still carrying the responsibility for keeping extended families, often on their own. I wanted to help change this and other harsh realities in my country. That is why I went into politics—to effect change.”
As leader of Portugal’s Socialist Party he enacted a quota system to impose a minimum threshold of representation of women in party offices. The thirty percent quota was far from parity but still quite impressive almost two decades ago in a country that had only recently transitioned to democracy. Such change did not come easily. In the email exchange, Guterres noted, “Reactions … ranged from harshly opposed to mildly indifferent. We had to go the extra mile to convince people that this was important and this was the right way to go.” At the same time, however, Guterres publicly opposed a referendum on Portugal’s strict law against abortion, instead favoring a law that mandated jail time for Portuguese women who performed the procedure. According to the New York Times, while a majority of the Socialist Party favored the move to reform abortion laws, Guterres opposed it based on his Catholic faith. While his stance on abortion may call into question his stance on gender equality, Guterres’s commitment to women’s empowerment did not waiver when he became the UN’s tenth High Commissioner for Refugees in 2005. During his tenure, he worked to shift UNHCR’s focus from perceiving refugee women and girls as vulnerable victims, to promoting their empowerment. The successes of Guterres’s programs during this time abound. In Pakistan, UNHCR arranged for mass information campaigns to ensure women are aware of individual registration to guarantee their security, access to essential services, and political rights. In Liberia, guidelines on refugee election procedures now ensure that fifty percent of the camp leadership is women. To advance gender equality in food security in Afghanistan, women are now prioritized for food distribution. And in Jordan, separate pick-up areas and times for food distribution are designated for women. Not only did Guterres work to advance a different narrative about women and girls on the ground, but he also worked to achieve gender parity at all levels of institutional leadership. When Guterres came into office in 2005, women made up not even thirty percent of the UNHCR’s senior positions. According to UNHCR records, gender parity was fully met within his Senior Management Committee by the end of his tenure—with ten women and ten men—and rose to forty-two percent among all senior leadership positions. “If I had to choose just one measure during my years at UNHCR that really had an impact and triggered substantive change I would say parity at the Senior Management Committee,” said Guterres in an email to openDemocracy. He does regret however, that during
his tenure the proportion of women among junior levels staff appeared to drop. Now, Guterres has committed to achieving full gender parity in the United Nations. In an interview with openDemocracy in early September, he provided more detail, saying he would start with the UN’s most senior levels—a tactic he believes will have the greatest and swiftest impact. But some gender-parity advocates worry that these rhetorical commitments are empty, and that promises of a feminist agenda from a male Secretary-General may not amount to much. In a recent interview with openDemocracy, Shazia Rafi, UN Expert and former Secretary-General of Parliamentarians for Global Action, said, “[Men] have had their chance for seventy years, they have not created a more equal or peaceful world, they have not kept their commitments on gender equality made over twenty years ago at the Beijing Conference 1995; I was there, I helped write the words. There is no reason to believe the men will do so now.” After the appointment of Mr. Guterres, Rafi says her views have not changed per se. “But, I am open to them doing something completely different from the pattern of the last 70 years,” she wrote in an email on 3 November. The UN has committed itself to fifty-fifty gender parity in top senior managerial posts since February 1996. The closest it ever got in those twenty years was twenty-four percent in 2012. In fact, if the current trend continues, the UN will favor men in its senior positions for the next 110 years. The UN’s gender problem is much more than just staffing issues. Gender equality activist groups such as the United Nations Feminist Network, and the International Center for Research on Women, have outlined clear, concrete proposals for the next SG. These feminist agendas include targets from achieving gender parity to preventing and addressing sexual harassment, and even repurposing the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. Changes in staffing, however, can be delivered almost immediately. On the occasion of the appointment of a new Secretary-General, all high-level employees submit letters of resignation. This gives Guterres the chance to take bold action toward parity. If Guterres appoints a gender-equal Senior Management Group—just as Canada’s Justin Trudeau appointed a gender-equal Cabinet upon taking office in 2015—the move would be a brave step forward toward a genderequal UN. He might next consider sending seventy-five-year-old Wonder Woman back into retirement.
Falling Asian elephant numbers may impact forest biodiversity sahana Ghosh
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IANS
eclining numbers of endangered Asian elephants, which play a key role in seed dispersal and maintain the diversity of forest ecosystems, may have negative, longterm consequences for sustenance of certain tree species, researchers warn. These mega-gardeners eat the plant's fruit and defecate the seeds, often far away from the parent plant, and contribute to forest biodiversity. Some trees in Africa seem to exclusively rely on elephants for the dispersal of their seeds. But much less is known about the role of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) for seed dispersal of trees in Asia, a team of international researchers has pointed out. So, the researchers studied the capabilities of Asian elephants to boost dispersal and seed germination for an evergreen tree species, known as elephant apple (Dillenia indica), which is commonly found throughout South and Southeast Asia. "While we still know relatively little about elephant seed dispersal in Asia it is clear that elephants hold key functions in forest ecosystems. They can help maintain plant diversity and a further decline or local loss of elephants and other large herbivores would likely lead to simpler plant communities and could further trigger negative cascading effects for overall system function-
ing," Franziska K. Harich, of the Department of Agroecology in the Tropics and Subtropics, University of Hohenheim, Germany, told IANS in an email interaction. In addition to University of Hohenheim, the study involved researchers from International College for Sustainability Studies, Srinakharinwirot University, Thailand, and Conservation Ecology Program, King Mongkut's University of Technology, Thailand. They examined whether planting seeds with elephant dung makes a difference to their germination and also mapped the link between the duration the seed stays inside the pachyderm's digestive tract and the seed growth rate and time when planted. Both African and Asian elephants could potentially disperse seeds over distances as large as 54 to 57 km. "We used six captive elephants from the Golden Triangle Asian Elephant Foundation in northern Thailand for our feeding experiments and offered them as many ripe D. indica fruits as they wanted to eat. We then monitored the elephants and collected all their dung from which we retrieved the seeds," explained Harich. In total, 1,200 seeds were planted and germination was monitored for six months to see if seeds eaten by elephants had a higher and faster germina-
tion rate than those acquired from fresh fruit that was not eaten by elephants. "Our results show that D. indica does not solely depend on but seems to benefit from being eaten by elephants as ingested seeds were significantly more likely to germinate and to do so earlier than non-ingested seeds. "Seeds with the longest gut passage time (those that stayed within the elephant gut for the longest duration) and, therefore, the largest potential dispersal distance had the highest germination success," Harich said, adding the declining numbers of these megafaunal seed dispersers might, therefore, have "long-term negative consequences for the recruitment and dispersal dynamics of populations of certain tree species". The study underscores the importance of stringent protective measures for the pachyderms, whose habitats have shrunk by 95 percent and population declined by at least 90 per cent over the last century. Less than 50,000 Asian elephants, according to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), roam the forests of Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka in South Asia and Cambodia, China, Indonesia (Kalimantan and Sumatra), Lao PDR, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam in Southeast Asia.
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In times of climate change, a large dispersal area might become increasingly important as it might help in buffering potential population losses due to adverse environmental conditions, the study notes. Harich said that to fulfil their ecological role, the animals need sufficient space to roam. Apart from habitat loss and fragmentation, conflicts between humans and elephants are another major concern for conservation efforts. "India is in the fortunate position to harbour the largest population of wild elephants in Asia that likely accounts for more than 50 per cent of the remaining animals of this species. "Only if we can maintain viable elephant populations within large enough natural areas will the animals be able to continue fulfilling their important ecological roles in forests, for example as longdistance seed dispersers," Harich said. According to wildlife biologist Varun Goswami of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), the Asian elephant has been described in the past as "Mega-gardener of the Forest" because of the critical role it plays in the ecosystem as a seed disperser. "Dillenia indica is a key species that elephants feed on in India as well, and this study makes a valuable contribution in demonstrating through experiments how the ingestion of the plant seeds by Asian elephants significantly improves their germination success," Goswami told IANS.
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