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| December 10, 2006 | Sunday | Ziqa'ad 18, 1427 |
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Focus on renewable energy
A horrific crime
Human rights and poverty
It’s still about oil in Iraq
POVERTY is frequently both a cause and a consequence of human rights violations. And yet the linkage between extreme deprivation and abuse remains at the margin of policy debates and development strategies.
WHILE the Bush administration, the media and nearly all the Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.
THE MMA’s move to postpone its decision on resignations from the National Assembly is welcome for many reasons. The postponement is believed to be due to the resistance put up by the JUI and its leader Fazlur Rahman to the idea of resignations, whose most enthusiastic advocate has been the Jamaat-i-Islami chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad. What are the arguments that were exchanged at the meeting where the postponement was decided are not known in detail. Obviously the JUI, among other reasons, is concerned about the fact that it rules the Frontier province, and doesn’t wish to surrender the power it has managed to acquire in that province as well as its share in power in Balochistan. It also has a greater awareness of political realities amidst its otherwise religious obscurantism. Perhaps some elements also realised that resignations would harm the MMA itself, weaken and confuse the political system and actually do little to shake Gen Pervez Musharraf. It is to be hoped that some also had the courage to point out that the weakest point behind the idea of resignations was that it was based on what for a majority of the people and political parties is a non-issue. The JI’s attacks on the women’s protection act were not eliciting much of a response, and whatever response one saw was forced and artificial. Its charge that the legislation had been passed to please the West was dismissed as being ridiculous: the JI had no answer when it was pointed out that agitation against the Hudood laws was launched immediately after these were promulgated by Ziaul Haq, whose backer the JI was — a fact that it can hardly ever live down.
The point is that the attitude of the religio-political elements towards social issues has been negative and self-defeating. Whether it is women’s exploitation or their empowerment, economic inequalities, the problems faced by the common citizen in daily life or rural backwardness and feudal domination — if the religious parties have taken any interest in them, it has only been to detect where the government of the day is doing something that is liberal and against their conservative beliefs. Even in education, the entire approach has been not to ensure that Pakistanis are educated but that they are indoctrinated in every textbook on concepts such as jihad and religious self-righteousness. We remember the resistance put up by such elements to the family laws and the efforts to control population, and also remember how time and the harsh realities of life have diluted that resistance — unfortunately not as quickly as should have occurred.
Anyhow, the MMA’s decision for the time being is welcome. The existing set-up should be allowed to limp along till the elections without more trouble. The MMA has agreed in the meanwhile to launch a movement against the Musharraf government which it is entitled to if it is on issues concerning democracy, constitutional supremacy, independence of the judiciary, people’s civil rights and arrangements for free and fair elections. Some of the boastful claims emanating from the top and humiliating remarks about politicians are bound to provoke resentment and draw other parties into anti-government agitations. What is necessary is for everyone to scale down fiery rhetoric and cooperate to create a congenial pre-poll atmosphere, but the government seems indifferent to this need, which is a pity.
A DAY after the government approved the country’s first renewable energy policy, the Asian Development Bank announced on Thursday that it would be lending Pakistan $510 million to develop clean and efficient sources of power. With a life of 10 years, the ADB facility will focus on small and medium-size hydropower plants as well as wind, solar and biomass power. ADB claims that renewable energy currently accounts for just 180MW of the country’s total power output. It would seem that hydropower from large dams is excluded from the bank’s definition of ‘renewable energy’, at least in this case. According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan, the country’s total installed generation capacity in 2005-06 stood at 19,439MW. Hydropower’s share in this was 6,463MW, almost all of it generated by big plants. Though new large dams have become something of an obsession in Islamabad, it is encouraging to note that efforts are being accelerated to explore alternative sources of power. The ADB facility will be geared to the rural areas where the goal is 600,000 new connections serving some 4.8 million people. First to be financed are a number of small and medium-size hydropower projects in the NWFP and Punjab. Sindh and Balochistan can avail themselves of relatively small loans.
The growing power shortage will become more acute with each passing year, and it is important to initiate projects that can come on line fairly quickly. This is not possible in the case of large dams, even if the political hurdles in the way of their construction can somehow be overcome. Such mega projects also come with huge environmental, social and livelihood costs that militate against their desirability. Seen in this light, smaller schemes with a focus on renewable energy are the way forward, at least in the short to medium term. They are also favoured by most lending agencies, as evidenced by the recent ADB package. The tax holidays and other incentives offered by the renewable energy policy should also help attract both foreign and local investment in this neglected sector. With advancements in research and greater economies of scale, the financial viability of small hydropower, biomass, geothermal and wind technologies has shown vast improvement in recent years. Solar power too could become competitive in due course.
WHERE does one begin in recounting the tragic tale of a young woman who was burnt to death by her father and brothers in a village outside Sahiwal because they wanted to rid her of the evil spirits that they believed possessed her? That this incident, reminiscent perhaps of a bygone era, can occur in this day and age is shameful. The tragedy nonetheless reflects just how deeply a section of our society is steeped in superstition and evil customs. The police have arrested the three family members who say that her murder was necessary as otherwise the “evil witch” that had possessed her would have killed them instead. Oddly enough, when the family was conducting an exorcism on the woman last Wednesday, concerned neighbours called the police who came to investigate. The police’s strict warnings to the family fell on deaf ears, for later that night, the woman was killed. There is every possibility that there may have been some other motive behind her killing. She is said to have refused to solemnise her nikah and even burnt her dowry. That she was herself burnt to death lends credence to one theory that her murder was a punishment and women in this country are often punished for no fault of theirs. Only an investigation can determine what really happened. However, it doesn’t take away from the fact that a serious crime has been committed for which justice must now take its own course.
Such heinous crimes can only be stopped when the perpetrators are apprehended and made to suffer the legal consequences of their crimes. The more difficult part is to educate and pull people out of their antediluvian mindsets. But formal education alone cannot do that as many so-called educated people also believe in witchcraft and the like. An awareness campaign must be launched to teach people not to believe in sorcery for cures to their problems.
To draw attention to this crucial, but often neglected correlation, this year’s Human Rights Day, being observed today is dedicated to the fight against poverty. This should represent not only an opportunity for reflection, but also a call for action to governments, as well as to the human rights and development communities, to ensure a life in dignity for all.
All human rights — the right to speak, to vote, but also the right to food, to work, to healthcare and housing — matter to the poor because destitution and exclusion are intertwined with discrimination, unequal access to resources and opportunities, and social and cultural stigmatisation. A denial of rights makes it harder for the poor to participate in the labour market and have access to basic services and resources.
In many societies, they are prevented from enjoying their rights to education, health and housing simply because they cannot afford to do so. This, in turn, hampers their participation in public life, their ability to influence policies affecting them and to seek redress against injustice.
In sum, poverty means not just insufficient income and material goods, but also a lack of resources, opportunities, and security which undermines dignity and exacerbates the poor’s vulnerability. Poverty is also about power: who wields it, and who does not, in public life and in the family. Getting to the heart of complex webs of power relations in the political, economic and social spheres is key to understanding and grappling more effectively with entrenched patterns of discrimination, inequality and exclusion that condemn individuals, communities and peoples to generations of poverty.
However, poverty is often perceived as a regrettable but accidental condition or as an inevitable consequence of decisions and events occurring elsewhere, or even as the sole responsibility of those who suffer it.
A comprehensive human rights approach will not only address misperceptions and myths surrounding the poor, it will also and more importantly help to find sustainable and equitable pathways out of poverty. By recognising the explicit obligations of states to protect their populations against poverty and exclusion, this approach underscores government responsibility towards creating an environment conducive to public welfare. It also enables the poor to help shape policies for the fulfilment of their rights, and seek effective redress when abuses occur.
There are strong legal foundations for such an approach. All states have ratified at least one of the core seven international human rights treaties, and 80 per cent have ratified four or more. Moreover, the world community has subscribed to the millennium development goals which set concrete targets for joint international efforts to tackle poverty and marginalisation. The world summit in 2005 reiterated such commitments.
Irrespective of resource constraints, states can take immediate measures to fight poverty. Ending discrimination, for example, will in many cases remove barriers to labour market participation and give women and minorities access to employment. Child mortality can be reduced through effective, low-cost, low-technology interventions. For their part, states in a position to provide assistance should come forward and help.
In contrast, indifference and a narrow calculus of national interests may hamper both human rights and development just as damagingly as discrimination. Last year the World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz noted that it is “not morally justifiable for rich countries to spend $280bn — nearly the total gross domestic product of Africa and four times the total amount of foreign aid — on support for agricultural producers.”
In one of his last speeches as United Nations secretary-general, Kofi Annan stated that he regarded focusing global attention on the fight against poverty as one of the biggest achievements of his tenure. He had emphasised the critical vulnerability and the assaults on human dignity that accompany poverty.
Crucially, the secretary-general identified human rights, security and development as indispensable elements of a world where all people could live in larger freedom. As one in every seven people in the world goes hungry, that freedom depends on tackling poverty as one the gravest human rights challenges of our time.
The writer is the United Nations high commissioner for human rights.
Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq’s importance to its region, the US and the world with this reminder: “It has the world’s second-largest known oil reserves.” The group then proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals are followed, Iraq’s national oil industry will be commercialised and opened to foreign firms.
The report makes visible to everyone the elephant in the room: that we are fighting, killing and dying in a war for oil. It states in plain language that the US government should use every tool at its disposal to ensure that American oil interests and those of its corporations are met.
It’s spelled out in Recommendation No. 63, which calls on the US to “assist Iraqi leaders to reorganise the national oil industry as a commercial enterprise” and to “encourage investment in Iraq’s oil sector by the international community and by international energy companies.” This recommendation would turn Iraq’s nationalized oil industry into a commercial entity that could be partly or fully privatized by foreign firms.
This is an echo of calls made before and immediately after the invasion of Iraq.
The US State Department’s Oil and Energy Working Group, meeting between December 2002 and April 2003, also said that Iraq “should be opened to international oil companies as quickly as possible after the war.” Its preferred method of privatization was a form of oil contract called a production-sharing agreement.
These agreements are preferred by the oil industry but rejected by all the top oil producers in the Middle East because they grant greater control and more profits to the companies than the governments. The Heritage Foundation also released a report in March 2003 calling for the full privatization of Iraq’s oil sector. One representative of the foundation, Edwin Meese III, is a member of the Iraq Study Group. Another, James J. Carafano, assisted in the study group’s work.
For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to apply to all the country’s oil fields, Iraq has to amend its constitution and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is ambiguous as to whether control over future revenues from as-yet-undeveloped oil fields should be shared among its provinces or held and distributed by the central government.
This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake, because only 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields have been developed. Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of the constitution to be “pursued on an urgent basis.” Recommendation No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq’s oil revenues in the hands of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the US government to “provide technical assistance to the Iraqi government to prepare a draft oil law.”
This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired the consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the Iraqi oil ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.
Plans for this new law were first made public at a news conference in late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department officials, Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice president) explained how this law would open Iraq’s oil industry to private foreign investment. This, in turn, would be “very promising to the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil companies.” The law would implement production-sharing agreements.
Much to the deep frustration of the US government and American oil companies, that law has still not been passed.
In July, US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman announced in Baghdad that oil executives told him that their companies would not enter Iraq without passage of the new oil law. Petroleum Economist magazine later reported that US oil companies considered passage of the new oil law more important than increased security when deciding whether to go into business in Iraq.
The Iraq Study Group report states that continuing military, political and economic support is contingent upon Iraq’s government meeting certain undefined “milestones.” It’s apparent that these milestones are embedded in the report itself.
Further, the Iraq Study Group would commit US troops to Iraq for several more years to, among other duties, provide security for Iraq’s oil infrastructure.— Dawn/Los Angeles Times Service