Should we continue giving aid to India? Photo by Emily Wight

.

The question of aid to India has been circulating around Britain recently.

In this article, Blog Officer Emily Wight puts forward the basic facts so that you can make up your own mind – does India still need help? And should that help come from a country steeped in its own economic crisis?

How much does the British government give to India per year?

Britain’s Department for International Development (DfID) is giving £280m ($444m) worth of aid toIndiauntil 2015. The pledge is part of a commitment to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which has led to the world’s richest countries pledging to spend 0.7% of their Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on foreign aid before 2015.

The UN states, “If every developed country set and followed through on a timetable to reach 0.7% by 2015, the world could make dramatic progress in the fight against poverty and start on a path to achieve the Millennium Development Goals and end extreme poverty within a generation.”

How does the figure translate in real terms?

£280m of public money could pay for:

• The National Health Service (NHS) to remove over 100,000 risky Poly Implant Prothese (PIP) breast implants, more than twice the 50,000 believed to be fitted in British women
• The employment of over 112,000 trainee police officers on Britain’s streets
• 31,000 students to attend UKuniversities for a year, according to the recent rise in tuition fees

Despite its economy growing at nearly 10% per year, India is steeped in poverty. Photo by Emily Wight

Why would India need aid?

According to DfID, a third of the world’s population living below the World Bank’s extreme poverty line live in India.

The World Bank has classified India as a Middle Income Country (MIC), but many advocates of aid donations claim that this is irrelevant, as 72% of the World Bank’s classified poorest people live in MICs.

According to the BBC, more people live in poverty inIndia than in the entirety of sub-saharanAfrica.

The prominent Indian political analyst Praful Bidwai said: “In reality, since 1991, during which timeIndia has experienced the highest growth in recent history, there has been no significant reduction in poverty or hunger. Two in every five children remain malnourished. A third of adults have an abnormally low body-mass index. Half of women of childbearing age are anaemic, a proportion far higher than in sub-Saharan Africa. More than 500 million Indians have no electricity, and less than a third have toilets.”

Why do some people have a problem with UK aid to India?

The latest round of attacks on the UK’s aid programme to India comes from a Sunday Telegraph article entitled “India tells Britain: we don’t want your aid” in which it is revealed that India’s Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee called the UK’s annual £280m “peanuts” in India’s total development expenditure. However, this attack was made last year and DfID claim that the aid programme has been revamped since then.

Many critics of the budget to India cite the country’s nuclear weapons arsenal and advanced space programme. According to Conservative MP Philip Davies,India spends £36bn ($57bn) a year on defence and £750m ($1,187m) a year on its space programme.

Commentators also think it unfair that the Indian Air Force refuses to buy Typhoon jets, partly built in Britain – instead spending an estimated £13bn ($21bn) on French fighter jets.

The BBC claims thatIndiagave more than £300m ($475m) in aid to poorer countries in 2008. Some people see this as evidence that India no longer needs aid from other countries.

Furthermore, India’s economy is growing at nearly 10% per year; according to Forbes, it has more billionaires than the UK.

Women's empowerment projects are funded by the UK government. Photo by Emily Wight

Where does the money go?

DfID insists that they are working in three of India’s poorest states – and half of the money is directed at “pro-poor private sector investment”, which they say will benefit both the Indian and British taxpayer.

DfID works with the Indian government in programmes directed at coping with climate change, and women’s empowerment. Because India is so huge, DfiD has also partnered with specific state governments to help their individual programmes – such as this health programme in Orissa.

Comments from politicians:

Unlike many issues that spark political debate in the UK, the question of aid to Indiais not clear-cut between a right/left divide. After all, DfID is headed by Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell, who defends his department’s efforts:

“India itself has got 60 million children into school in recent years with their own money but more than 30 per cent of the world’s poorest people live there.

There are states the size of Britain where half of all children suffer from malnutrition. We will not be inIndiafor ever but now is not the time to quit.

Our completely revamped programme is in Indian’s and Britain’s national interest and is a small part of a much wider relationship between out two countries.

We are changing our approach toIndia. We will target aid at three of India’s poorest states, rather than central Government. We will invest more in the private sector, with our aid programme having some of the characteristics of a sovereign wealth fund.”

However, according to Conservative MP Peter Bone, “India has its own foreign aid programme so it is absurd for us to be still giving them aid. They are more than capable of looking after their own issues.”

What does the press say?

Unlike the political parties, the British press is divided in its consideration of UK aid to India. Writing in the left-leaning Guardian, Praful Bidwai said, “Numbers such as 8% growth, and the fact there are 153,000 dollar millionaires, mean little to most Indians.” He also said that aid should be “about poor people, not poor countries.”

Meanwhile Rahul Bedi, writing in the right-wing Daily Mail, said, “The programme is unnecessary, patronising and counter-productive. It smacks of an outdated, colonialist mindset rather than modern economic reality.”

Several Telegraph readers also wrote to the right-wing newspaper saying that India should not continue to receive aid from the UK.

Andrew Mitchell. Photo by DfID

.

Josh Dickens recaps the Secretary of State for International Development’s talk at Cambridge University last week. Josh is studying an MA in English at Cambridge and has a keen interest in current affairs and international development.

“Our capacity to make a difference is absolutely enormous”, declares Andrew Mitchell, MP for Sutton Coldfield and Secretary of State for International Development. Despite the inevitable political bluster in such a claim, you can’t help but think he might have a point.

For nearly two years now, Mitchell has been at the helm of DfID, the government department with an £8 billion remit to help bring some of the world’s poorest people out of poverty and to provide essential relief to disaster-hit areas.

And today he is speaking at Cambridge University.

Mitchell’s department has the unlikely honour of actually seeing an increase in spending money in the midst of a recession, with the pledge to spend 0.7% of annual Gross National Income (GNI) on international development by 2015.

Mitchell grandly states that “America is a military superpower and Britain is a development superpower”, and certainly the statistics back him up: Britain was the world’s second biggest aid-giver in 2010 (after the United States), while it led the way among G8 countries with the highest aid expenditure relative to GNI (and seventh overall). The Coalition’s promise to ring-fence the DfID budget, a fantastic show of support that only the NHS has been similarly afforded, reveals a serious commitment to Britain’s world-leading role.

Floods devastated Pakistan in 2010. Photo by DVIDSHUB

With such a show of faith to international development, it is unquestionable that DfID can and do a great deal of good work throughout the world. Following the devastating floods in Pakistan in 2010, UKaid has provided shelter, including many permanent dwellings, to over 1 million people made homeless by the disaster, while DfID has helped more than 200,000 return to school in the flood-hit areas.

In Kenya, programmes supported by UKaid have vaccinated 400,000 children against measles and have distributed 199 million condoms over an eight year period in the country’s ongoing battle against HIV and AIDS. This year’s primary focus across the department is on females in developing countries, and girls in particular. Mitchell says, “If you want to understand development, you have to see it through the lens of girls.”

Successful aid provision is not always as clear cut as the above examples suggest, however. The Secretary of State proudly points out that for the first time since records began, there were no new polio outbreaks in India last year, no doubt a fantastic achievement. Yet earlier this month the Telegraph reported Indian Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee as saying that British aid was not required, and was “peanuts” in comparison to India’s own development expenditure.

In many ways, the situation in India reveals some of the essential problems faced in International Development, and Mitchell rightly describes it as a “development paradox”. One the one hand, there are more people in poverty in India than in the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa, while seven and a half times the whole UK population subsist on less than 80p a day.

At the same time, however, the Indian economy has been growing at nearly 10% per year, and is tipped to be larger than Britain’s by the end of the decade. What’s more, British aid to Delhi has been widely understood to be partly dependent on the sale of British-made Typhoon jets to the Indian airforce: a sale which appears is now not going ahead.

As well as the ugly implications of politically tied aid, the recent case in India points to a much larger hurdle facing DfID: namely, how can increasing expenditure be justified abroad when more than ever, people are struggling at home. If British aid to India is seen as “peanuts” in Delhi (and India is the world’s top recipient of British bilateral aid), then why can’t taxpayers’ money be spent where it will be appreciated: on taxpayers?

The debate here is a long and complex one, but Mitchell suggests that part of the problem lies in people’s perceptions of development. When polled, the public thought on average that 17% of government expenditure went on overseas projects; in fact the figure is 1.1%. When asked what amount should be spent on international development, the public’s response was 7%. By my reckoning, that suggests we could spend seven times as much in the world’s poorest places. Our capacity to make a difference is enormous: we just have to realise it.

For information on DfID’s graduate trainee scheme please click here.

Organisations such as DfID have their own blogs. Photo by DfID

.

Throughout the past few years, the media has been undergoing a digital revolution. Sam Hall – who has worked for the New Indian Express and the disaster relief charity Shelter Box - assesses the implications for the development sector.

New media has become an ignorable presence within the world writ-large; even if you don’t have a social media presence, the collapsing spaces between celebrities, politicians – and, for the topic of this post, development practitioners – cannot be ignored. It is instead becoming embraced.

There is already a burgeoning depth of blogs and twitter accounts on the subject of development from the critical armchair academic to the wide-eyed gap year student on their first volunteer excursion. This rapidly growing online presence culminated yesterday with the launch of AidSource a social network designed specifically to be the hotbed of shared content, knowledge and contacts within the Humanitarian Sector.

So why is this so crucial?

Unlike many other specialisms, problems within development are time and space specific. Previous to the web 2.0 revolution humanitarians would be operating in remote locations, or in isolation, having to tackle problems which require specific technical expertise and advice. With the advent of these readily available streams of knowledge to tap into, and increasingly mobile devices on which to extract it, problems suddenly seem less foreign.

Away from the field, the nature of new media is encouraging the dissemination of academic and specialist knowledge outside of paid-for journals, an industry which has come under criticism for its increasing restriction and price of access, as well as its article turn-around times.  Criticism has reached such an extent that academics are boycotting certain publishers altogether. As a result, more experts are investing time and attention to online open-access journals which may soon endanger the monopoly of discourse held within exclusively academic circles.

However, this rapid and freely available spread of information is only one facet of new media that can benefit the subjects of development just as much as its practitioners. Amazon have developed a rugged, energy-efficient and increasingly cheap device which not only has the obvious feature of being able to download literature from anywhere (internet permitting) but also an inbuilt dictionary and text-to-speech functionality; accidently, the Kindle presents itself as an appropriate technology for the developing world.

In time, humanitarian exchanges and discussions will not only be held more freely between those in the global north but increasingly in the global south too, as more of the world gets interconnected with the problems and solutions encountered within development, lending itself to an increasing endogenous discourse advocated by development critics such as Arturo Escobar.

New media is not only modifying the status quo of development –  it’s creating one of its own.

Follow Sam on Twitter – twitter.com/samjohnhall.

.

Development in Action’s Research Officer Rachel Benson has put together the first of our blog postings on Development Education. On these news updates you can read about current news in the world of development education.

.

.

Global Learning for the Workplace

An ICM business poll has found that three out of four business leaders fear that the UK will be left behind unless young people learn to think more globally in a multicultural economy. The Global Skills Gap research found that 93% of businesses think it is important for schools to help young people develop the ability to think globally.

Furthermore, when recruiting new employees, more employers said they considered global awareness to be important (79%) than those who said degree subject and classification (74%) or A-level results (68%).

In contrast to these findings, the Next Generation UK report commissioned by the British Council and Think Global shows that less than half of the students asked (48%) thought that an international outlook would benefit their career prospects.

However, the research also indicates that students are not always able to experience global leaning and spent time abroad. While 90% of students asked believed that working, studying or volunteering abroad were great opportunities, only 18% said they had done or planned to do one of these things.

Surprisingly, only one in three science, technology and engineering students felt that having an global outlook was important for their subject.

More information about the report’s findings can be found here: http://www.think-global.org.uk/news/item/?n=14183

• Do you think a more global outlook and experience of international volunteering has improved your work prospects?
• How do you think global learning and international study/volunteering could be made more accessible?

Global Learning – Let’s Talk About It

A new paper on Development Education is now available to read and download online. Written by Scott Sinclair, programme manager of the ESDGC (Education, Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship) Schools Network in Wales, Global Learning – Let’s Talk About It asks what is next for global learning in light of changes in government and the financial crisis. The paper looks at how global learning is taught as well as the challenges faced by ESDGC practitioners. Check out the cartoons on the final page of the paper which reveal some of the different approaches to global learning in schools.

.

New Resources

Global Dimension has compiled a list of development education resources with an Olympic / Paralympic theme. The resources, produced by a variety of charities and development education organisations, explore topics including equality, social justice, trade, diversity and inclusion. Most of the resources can be downloaded for free online. The full list of resources can be found here: http://www.globaldimension.org.uk/resources/search/?picks=1

Oxfam have launched Food for Thought, a new global citizenship project for schools. Food for Thought encourages students to consider where their food comes from and how climate change and population growth affects the global food system. From April 2012, students will also have the change to connect with other young people across the globe and help to build a future where everyone has enough to eat at Class for Change.

.

Have you come across any global learning resources or activities you’d recommend to others? Contact our Development Education Officer Frankie at frankie@developmentinaction.org.

.

Another year and another terrorism threat has been reported somewhere in the world.  This time Kenya is the nation under fire. A country suffering more than its fair share of hard times, this sun-baked but poverty-stricken East African nation is braced for another attack at the hands of al-Qaeda associated al-Shabab, the Somali based Islamic militant group.

The cradle of humanity and romantically portrayed in high-gloss format as the wildlife and safari destination of choice, Kenya has so much to offer. Sadly though, daily life is often far removed from such idyllic conceptions. Through the safe distance of our digital television sets it may be hard for us to fully comprehend the adversity faced by the average Kenyan citizen but I was afforded a glimpse in 2011.

Last March, in partnership with i-to-i, I spent two weeks as an ecological volunteer just North of Nairobi outside a tiny village called Naru Moru and I can say, unreservedly, they were two of the best and memorable weeks of my life. Straight out of an adventurer’s travel brochure, my walk to the Reforestation Project each morning was blessed with stunning views of Mount Kenya’s misty peaks. The mountain is revered by the Kikuyu, Kenya’s largest tribe, and they call it ‘Kirinyaga’, meaning ‘place of light’. Homes were traditionally built to face the 5,199m Batian peak that I saw every day.

In my first attempt at being green-fingered I spent my days there wistfully tending to the plant nursery and collecting and re-planting seedlings in the company of local Kenyan volunteers. Ethnic diversity as well as being a huge ‘tourist attraction’ – just think of the red-clad Maasai, an iconic image associated with Kenya – is a well-documented source of conflict and the farming community I worked alongside were clearly proud of their Kikuyu heritage, regularly celebrating their ethnic connections to President Kibaki who was elected in 2002.

In the midst of the worst drought to hit the Horn of Africa in the recent years, the terrorism threats have only made things worse. Between August and September of last year, Somali militants raided Kenyan coastal resorts and a refugee camp, purposely targeting foreigners. Barely two months later, Kenyan troops entered Somalia in retaliation against the rebels they accused of being behind the kidnappings. I can recall with clarity my shock at seeing the news bulletin after returning home. To think I was there just months before the British tourists were kidnapped.

A question that instantly entered my mind was, why Kenya? Kenya’s best-selling newspaper, The Daily Nation, provides one possible explanation:

“Kenya is affluent enough by African standards to have Western investments and interest, but it is without enough money to buy worldwide security…It is sufficiently democratic and sufficiently corrupt to allow the terrorists and their equipment to move around.”

Photo by Emma Forrest

The Kenyans are fighting the militant group al-Shabab (translates as ‘the youth’ in Arabic). Backed by al-Qaeda there are an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 active fighters and in one form or another, have posed as a vicious force in East Africa for nigh on 15 years. It was in 2006 that al-Shabab, as they operate today, formed as the youth wing of the now non-operational Union of Islamic Courts. Compared to the average Kenyan individual, this group is relatively well-off: they are fully funded and financed, generating millions of dollars of income each year. Naturally, being so well disposed only increases their ability to target innocent people and exercise their reign of terror.

Crucially, the tourist industry on which so many Kenyan’s depend for their livelihood, may suffer a blow as a direct result of terrorism; regardless of whether a threat is broadcast, or an actual attack occurs. Fear is often enough to make holidaymakers cancel their much-anticipated safari or beach holiday. It follows therefore, those such as me, involved in volunteer projects and international development aid work may also deter from travelling to the country. Or they simply may not be permitted access. Only yesterday, al-Shabab announced plans to ban international aid organisations from entering the country. More importantly, the lives of Kenyan residents in both urban and rural Kenya are undoubtedly affected. Such unnecessary violence make my blood boil; the individuals and families I met endure things I could barely imagine in the comfort of my own home and yet, touchingly, always had a smile on their faces.

This January, latest coverage reported that the British Government has warned British tourists amid fears of an imminent attack on the capital city, Nairobi. Tourists are discouraged from travelling to certain areas of East Africa. Official Foreign Office Travel Advice suggests tourists avoid all but essential travel to Kenya, and the Kenya/ Somali border is out of bounds:

“Attacks could be indiscriminate and target Kenyan institutions as well as places where expatriates and foreign travellers gather, such as hotels, shopping centres and beaches. We strongly advise British nationals to exercise extra vigilance and caution in public places and at public events.”

It seems that nowhere is completely safe.

Following al-Shabab’s vow to carry out suicide bombings in Kenya and had this taken place last January, I admit I would have some misgivings about venturing far into rural Kenya. Ashamedly, there is the possibility of a British link to the trouble in East Africa as one Briton was arrested and later charged in a disruption to the major terrorist plot of last year.

Photo by Emma Forrest

However, a ray of hope is shining for Kenyans in the form of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development [IGAD], an 8 country regional development organisation in East Africa.  Hopefully, through successful collaborative support, Kenya, Somalia and other countries in East Africa can work together to combat the extremism. On another positive note, the lucrative tourist industry bounced back following a slump in 1998 (post-Nairobi bombings) and in 2006 (post-Mombasa terrorist attacks); after horticulture and tea production, tourism was the highest earner for the country.

Whilst the dark cloud of terrorism appears to be sticking around for now, here’s hoping that both Kenyan and foreign nationals can make the most of East Africa’s beautiful landscapes and it’s ever-cheerful people (and plant a tree or two along the way!) as I had the chance to do. In a huge understatement, Kenya does not have the resources to effectively eradicate al-Shabab and does not deserve to sag under the added burden of terrorism, least of all the brilliant people I met through i-to-i.

The country is ravaged by drought, poverty and HIV/ AIDS and we need to pave the way for developmental progress and with any luck the safety of resident Kenyans and those visiting the country – tourists and volunteers alike – will be assured alongside this. There is a long way to go and no single factor will be resolved overnight. But I took more than my fair share of hope and inspiration from my brief fortnight in Naru Moru.

Amongst all this, there is only one thing I can be certain of: I sure as hell don’t want the life-changing chance I had to be denied for future volunteers.

Tweet
//

Photo by Pablo Manriquez

.

As the African Cup of Nations’ qualifying stages kick off, Rowan Emslie points towards corruption within FIFA and asks how realistic it is to expect greater transparency in all areas of development.

The African Cup of Nations is the 3rd most watched football tournament in the world. This year, one of its co-hosts is Equitorial Guinea, which happens to be the 3rd largest producer of oil in Sub-Saharan Africa. President Teodoro Obiang has been in power for 32 years, during which his regime has been connected with a whole litany of abuses of power – from electoral violence to failing to comply to international transparency standards to the extortion of public funds used to buy $32 million worth of property in the USA. There are numerous other teams in the tournament representing nations with highly valuable national resources that, all to often, do almost nothing to help average citizens while making politicians and corporate executives massively wealthy.

Transparency is one of the most fashionable global development movements of the last few years. It makes donors happy and it addresses some issues regarding the division of industry power between the global north and global south. On top of the good it can do to alleviate extreme poverty, transparency is something that pro aid advocacy organisations and their associated celebrity advocates (and their media coverage) can use to combat most of the common anti-development arguments: namely, the ones about money.

Transparency is a movement that has very high profile supporters in business – it’s easier to make a profit when doing deals doesn’t necessarily involve a margin-narrowing amount of bribery. This isn’t just the wittering of lefties: it’s an argument made by one time richest man under forty, Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and one that got him put in prison (there is a very good documentary on this subject). Most notably leading the charge is Bill Gates, now a figure who straddles the twin spheres of corporate enterprise and philanthropy so completely that he has become the figurehead of surprisingly large sections of ‘the fight on global poverty’ – as Bill Easterly referenced with this somewhat barbed tweet the other week, you can’t do much in global development without encountering the Gates Foundation.

Football is another industry that has something of a split personality – the institutions that rise to the top are three parts sporting excellence and two parts ruthless money-making expertise. Sepp Blatter, a man who has constituted the top of the worldwide governing body of the sport, FIFA, for the best part of fifteen years, is no stranger to the term ‘transparency’ if only from the wrong side of a headline.

He has been accused of what can charitably be referred to as ‘shenanigans’ on numerous occasions, particularly when it comes to issues of financial impropriety. Expecting anything to come from FIFA on these issues of transparency will be an extremely long wait. Fortunately, there are other organisational bodies that can step up.

EU legislation has been proposed that would require oil, gas, mining and forestry companies to publish all the payments they make to governments like that of Equatorial Guinea. This law would allow citizens to hold their government to account for the money received for oil and other things that you have to rip out of the ground at great expense and, often, to the enormous detriment of the local environment and people, even in the rarefied global north (heaven forfend). The UK, France and the European Commission have all supported the law so far, but fierce lobbying from oil companies determined to maintain the secrecy status quo threatens its progress.

One of the most important things about lobbying for increased aid and development spending is to lobby for that larger budget to be spent more effectively. Fortunately for everyone involved, it seems that aid organisations have started to get on board with this. Tom Murphy, who writes the excellent development blog A View From The Cave, recently wrote a post outlining how, in the face of ever increasing calls for lowered foreign aid budgets during the ongoing economic malaise, the humanitarian industry can start to help prove their worth to the general public:

“Providing disaster relief is hard and complex. IFRC’s Matthias Schmale, suggests that humanitarian organizations “Provide more credible leadership through less marketing and spinning, and ensure actions match words.”

An effort to make the industry of development more effective in the face of probable financial restraints is one that should be applauded. It also throws the actions of corporations and governments who hold barely dimmed resources like oil yet fail to positively affect the people of the country that they benefit from into sharp relief. In fact, it makes them completely reprehensible.

Originally published for SOAR, Generation C Magazine and bathimpact

Read more from Rowan

Tweet
//

Mountains in Bhutan c. rajkumar1220

.

Charlotte Marshall, who taught Bhutanese refugees last year, reports on the global diaspora caused by the ethnic cleansing that took place in the country in the 1980s and 1990s. Charlotte is studying an MPhil in Development Studies at Cambridge University.

Bhutan, a nation nestled high in the Himalayas, universally revered for its breath-taking natural beauty and well-preserved traditional values; most significantly it is famous for being the only country in the world to measure ‘Gross National Happiness’. Until recently, I, like many others, knew only the Bhutan in the glowing news reports on its glamorous royals and the glossy tourist brochures filled with silky pictures of magnificent landscapes.

It was last September that I first learnt of a very different side to the nation. I, and a group of other students at the University of Manchester, established a project alongside the charity Refugee Action, in which we taught English to Bhutanese refugees newly arrived in Greater Manchester as part of the government’s Gateway Protection Programme. The programme is an international resettlement programme run by the UN’s refugee agency, in which around 30 countries participate. Since 2004, the Home office has accepted up to 750 refugees a year under the scheme. Those that attended the sessions were all ethnic-Nepali or Lhotshampas, the ethnic group persecuted by the Bhutanese government in the early 1990s. The more English they learnt the more I and the other volunteers ascertained about the circumstances that forced them to leave Bhutan. Their stories compelled me to undertake further research into the situation.

A monastery in Bhutan c.babasteve

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, in an effort to preserve the majority Buddhist culture the Bhutanese elites began to persecute the thousands of ethnic-Nepalis living in the south of the country. The government introduced discriminatory citizenship laws that stripped the Lhotshampas, about one-sixth of the population of Bhutan, of their citizenship. As the early 1990s progressed, many ethnic-Nepalis, most of whom are Hindu, fled following violent harassment campaigns, and countless more were expelled from their homes by Bhutanese security forces. Bill Frelick, director of the Refugee Programme of Human Rights Watch, describes in his articles on the issue, a conversation with a young refugee:

‘As we left Bhutan, we were forced to sign the document. They snapped our photos. The man told me to smile, to show my teeth. He wanted to show that I was leaving my country willingly, happily, that I was not forced to leave.’

According to the UNHCR, as of 2011 more than 77,000 Bhutanese refugees are living in refugee camps in Nepal.

Thankfully, there has also been hope for a better life for the refugees in the form of resettlement programmes, like the Gateway Programme, in a number of host nations. More than 43,500 of the Bhutanese refugees have been resettled in a handful of countries including the United Kingdom. Undoubtedly, this resettlement has vastly improved their lives, and indeed, the Bhutanese I taught felt accepted in the Manchester area and happy with the opportunities available to them. Yet many, particularly the older generation expressed their primary desire had been to return to their homeland.

Bill Frelik suggests that this is a common theme, particularly among the older refugees, noting how, ‘about 17,000 of the remaining refugees have not sought third country resettlement, many still holding out for repatriation’. Yet there is little hope that repatriation will become an option in the near future. The ethnic cleansing in Bhutan largely escaped the prying eyes of the world’s press, and as we enter 2012, the events of the 1990s continue to fade into distant memory. The Bhutanese government has persistently denied responsibility and in July 2010, Prime Minister Jigme Y Thinley described the refugees as illegal immigrants. Thousands of refugees continue to languish in camps in Nepal and as of yet, not a single person expelled in the 1990s has been allowed to return.

Some of the children whom I taught at the weekend classes had been born in the refugee camps in Nepal. They have sadly never seen, and most likely will never see their parent’s home country. The time has come for those host nations, coupled with the UNHCR, to push for the Bhutanese government to take responsibility for its actions. Until then, the unrelenting discrimination in Bhutan continues to slip beneath the radar in the international media, and the attitude of the Bhutanese government does not waiver.

Essentially, the reality is, that for many Bhutanese, ‘Gross National Happiness’ is still a long way in coming

Karen children c. Benoit Mahe

.

To follow Aditi Gupta‘s recent post concerning the treatment of ethnic minorities in Burma, Alistair Walker examines the ceasefire between the Karen separatist movement and the Myanmar Government that took place last week. Alistair is studying an MA in Interactive Journalism at City University.

At first, I was sceptical. Then I was incredulous. Finally, I was hopeful. One of the world’s longest-running sectarian conflicts came to at the very least an entente on a perfectly normal Thursday last week. At best, the bitter civil war between the Karen people and the Myanmar Government has now reached (whisper it quietly and hope) an end.

The Karen separatist movement in Burma, or Myanmar as it is officially known, has been a struggle that has continued unabated and unended since at least 1968.That makes it one year older than the Provisional IRA’s entry into the Northern Irish Troubles and only slightly younger than the Maoist-Naxalite insurgency in India. Their aim is and has always been to establish a separate Karen country sandwiched between Burma and Thailand, with hundreds of thousands of civilians, militants, and soldiers alike dying in the process.

Burma/Myanmar is, unfortunately, one of those countries that should probably never have been made into a nation-state, but rather a loose patchwork collection of peoples, territories, religions and cultures haphazardly slapped together by the British Empire in its insatiable appetite for territory. Even the name assigned to the region by the British – Burma – was a clumsy choice, based on a transliteration of the name of the main ethnic group, the Burman, into English. After the rapid break-up of Britain’s imperial holdings in South-East Asia, Burma became the epitome of disorderly de-imperialisation in a region not known for easy transitions to independence.

Again, the country’s very name became a symbol of all that was most chaotic about the country – Myanmar, adopted in the 1980s by the military dictatorship that ended Burma’s brief democratic experience, is a transliteration of Burma back into the language spoken by the Burman people. Which is all very well until you consider the sheer diversity of ethnic and cultural groups – 135 according to the Government’s own official classifications – many of whom feel short-changed that the name of their country still marks it as a nation of, and for, the Burman.

The most vocal of these has been the Karen National Liberation Army, the militant wing of the Karen National Union, who agreed to a ceasefire last week. For some, the ceasefire  was all but inevitable; a flurry of liberalisations, all carefully controlled by the military of course, have taken place over the last couple of years. Hundreds of political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi, the A-Lister of the pro-democracy movement in Burma, were released; ceasefires were negotiated between the KNLA’s peer organisations, the Karenni Army and the Democratic Karen Buddhist Army; even the Government’s tight economic control seems to be loosening.

The obvious question is why.

The value of the US’ understated, softly-softly diplomatic approach to Burma has been a huge boon to Burma’s humanitarian and democratic future. The tactful and sensitive negotiations of Senator John Kerry, who heads up the US Senates’ Committee on Foreign Relations, and of Secretary of State Hilary Clinton were Realpolitik at its finest. Ironically, John Yettaw, the American tourist who illegally swam to Aung San Suu Kyi’s island home cum prison in 2009 and sparked a major diplomatic incident, may have done more to draw America’s interest in Burma than any US Government official ever had.

But that isn’t the story here. The real story is what the peoples of Burma did for themselves. Despite Burma’s famously atrocious healthcare – the country has one of the worst rates for HIV and Aids-related deaths, only 2% of GDP is spent on healthcare and there is only one hospital bed available per 2,000 people – it can boast a well-educated populace, with 90% literacy rate in over-14s. Under the political tutelage of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her late father, a hero of Burmese independence, the peoples of Burma have remained admirably aware of the crippling problems facing their country and, in large part, have been willing to make a lot of noise until the government agreed to reasonable reform.

Karen dissidents and refugees have successfully lobbied for Thailand, Burma’s all-important trading partner and neighbour, to quietly exert political and economic pressure on the Burmese Junta. The Burmese Government made a short-sighted decision to close down its border with Thailand, who have accepted Karen refugees in their droves, for ten days in July. Official government estimates put the damage to the Burmese economy at around £1.75m a day. A change had gotta come.

Then there’s the KNLA themselves. Traditionally hard-line separatists, the KNLA have grown increasingly moderate in reaction to the Junta’s liberalisations. Rumours sparked in November that a ceasefire was being broached when KNLA representatives met the Government’s railway minister U Aung Min, but both sides played it down, saying they were just mooting the idea. On Thursday, though, the KNLA threw the ultimate curveball; they were willing to drop separatism as a major pillar of their programme, as long as the Government could work on its human rights record, particularly forced labour for the Karen, and work towards “sustainable peace”.

So whisper it quietly and hope that the fifty year civil war ended on a perfectly normal Thursday.

An uprooted tree in Angalakkupam

.

Last month a cyclone hit South India and Pondicherry, where Development in Action’s partner organisation Sharana is, was badly affected. Blog Editor and DiA committee member Emily Wight reports on the effects. Emily spent five months volunteering in Pondicherry last year.

When monsoon hits Pondicherry, it hits hard. I remember when I was volunteering there with DiA last year we returned from our Diwali holiday to find the windows of our flat blown in and dirt and rubble all over the floor. Locals told us there had been a cyclone – so casually we realised it was commonplace.

But Cyclone Thane, which struck South India on December 30, was not just another cyclone. Tamil Nadu, Pondicherry and neighbouring states Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala were on high alert. Fishermen were warned not to go to sea; ships were told to stay away from ports; trains to Chennai were delayed. 

According to the Hindustan Times, 33 people – seven of which were from Pondicherry – were killed in the cyclone, which saw winds of 140km per hour. It struck Pondicherry at 6.30am – a sociable hour for Tamils, who are usually wide awake by this time and enjoying breakfast or doing household chores.

Looking at this video, you can see the destruction caused by Cyclone Thane: trees uprooted, buildings smashed to pieces, debris filling the streets.

Devastation in Mathur (c.Sharana)

But it is worse in Pondicherry’s neighbouring villages. Villages such as Angalakuppam, where our partner organisation Sharana has a community centre, creche and clinic – and Mathur, which is a more recent project of the organisation. These photos from Sharana illustrate the damage caused.

Cyclone Thane was covered by the BBC website, but other than that it was neglected by mainstream British press – possibly because these sorts of natural disasters are occuring more and more due to climate change and the media can’t report everything.

Sharana said on their website: “Not only has the cyclone lead to the loss of property, but the immediate aftermath is a complex situation complicated by issues of logistics, rescue, relief distribution, limited accessibility to some of the affected areas.”

Destruction in Pondicherry (c.Sharana)

Many of the villages around Pondicherry are difficult to access and this will have been made harder due to fallen debris obstructing roads.

DiA will keep you posted about how you can donate to Sharana to help them – a very small charity doing such great work in the community – get back on their feet.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s brilliant 2007 novel Half of a Yellow Sun details the plight of the brief, doomed breakaway of Biafra from Nigeria in the late 1960s. It follows the interweaving narratives of three main characters, all of whom have a personal stake in the success of the Biafran seccesion and so stay until the exhausted end of the war with Nigeria they couldn’t hope to win. It is a beautiful read. Well paced and populated with characters whose personal emotions give you access to the hope felt by those first (and last) Biafrans and their stubborn refusal to accept the destruction of their secessionist dream in a brutal war.

This was a war in which more than a million people died, mainly from starvation, as the world watched – it was the war that saw the birth of modern humanitarian aid and Médecins Sans Frontières. It was a war in which old colonial interests were writ large, as the UK and France took up opposite sides, continuing to meddle with the affairs of the region the best part of a decade after it had been declared independent. Amongst the historical, regional, political and religious divides  that fuelled this conflict, the machinations of the new world powers, the USA and the Soviet Union, recognising another chance to recruit more allies to their ideological Cold War, fought by proxies all over the world.

Biafra was dominated by the largely Christian Igbo people whereas the Nigerian military government of the time was dominated by the Muslim Hausa people. The split seperated two groups with historical ethnic, cultural and religious differences – ones that had caused friction for many years. So why not let them go? As Kainene, an important supporting character in the novel, puts it,

‘It’s the oil,’ she said. ‘They can’t let us go easily with all that oil.’

Thousands of miles across the continent, forty years on and again it is oil that underpins the story of a young country’s secession from a larger nation, established by colonial rule and dominated by one ethno-religious group. South Sudan became an independent state, almost exactly six months ago, on July 9th 2011. The split from the government in Khartoum was a historic and popular step, symbolically splitting the South from a state that had seen two civil wars and millions of deaths in the previous sixty years. In the official referendum in January 2011, around98% of voters voted in favour of independence.

The Western media headlines might have been grabbed by the drought further west in Somalia and Kenya, but that didn’t mean that international organisations, large companies and governments from around the world didn’t keep their eyes firmly on South Sudan.

Now that they have their independence they have a few other assets that the global community would like to access. Most important of those is oil – the rising price of which is driving protestors to the streets in Nigeria as I write, just as it helped to spark Uganda’s ‘Walk to Work’ protests throughout 2011.

With the desire for investment and profit that inevitably surrounds such an under-developed oil-rich area comes enormous tensions, not least from the International Criminal Court indicted government of Sudan which has repeatedly been accused of meddling with the petroleum resources it no longer owns, most recently using foreign companies to sidetrack crude from the South to refiniries in the north.

On top of the clamouring for oil comes human suffering. The UN has warned of an impending humanitarian crisis in the world’s youngest country. Ongoing conflicts with rebel groups, an influx of  Sudanese and Ethiopian refugees escaping neighbouring conflict zones, and the general lack of infrastructure and stability have made the last six months something of a baptism of fire. It has left hundreds of thousands of people in an extremely vulnerable situation, cut off from vital food supplies being delivered by humanitarian organisations.  As with Biafra, it seems that South Sudan will face a crisis almost immediately after independence.

Regionally, there are sevaral East African states, that make up the Southern border of this new country, with vested interests in keeping it intact. The links between Yoweri Museveni’s NRM government of Uganda and the South Sudanese government are particularly well established because of the high profit potential of trade links between the neighbours and their mutual animosity with Khartoum.

An unspoken part of what makes so many Western countries interested in the future of the country is the looming spectre of growing Chinese investment, just as it continues to grow over much of the rest of the continent. Europe and the USA are increasingly seeing African investment as a way to stabilise their own weakened markets, but they are aware that Asia – and China in particular – have gotten there first, particularly in terms of infrastructure links.

The state of Biafra lasted just under three years before it was torn apart by economic and geopolitical interests from parties both home and abroad. Let us hope that South Sudan does not continue to remind us of a place that became perhaps the most notable humanitarian disaster of its time. We would do well to listen to what Adichie reminds us of in the postscript of her devastatingly harrowing novel,

May we always remember.