CRY, which has just changed its nomenclature from Child Relief and You to Child Rights and You, is trying to bring about an attitudinal change to children’s issues, from charity-focused to issue-based support. It has also changed its approach to middle class citizens -- from merely asking them to write out a cheque to getting them to volunteer to advocate the cause of child rights, says Ingrid Srinath, CEO of CRY
“I’d rather accept a cheque for $20,000 than have a donor write out a cheque for $40,000 because of the sympathy factor,” declares Child Rights and You Chief Executive Officer Ingrid Srinath. Her statement is a reflection of how important the rights-based approach is to the organisation. It is also ready acceptance of what the three-decades-old CSO stands to lose in terms of funding as it seeks to supplement (not substitute, as Srinath is at pains to clarify) its stupendously successful relief-based strategy with a rights-based approach to children’s issues in India. An interview with the MBA and former advertising executive, who says she chucked up a cushy job as an accounts executive because she was convinced she could do things other than boosting some shareholder’s bottom line
What were the key issues that CRY was engaged with three decades ago? What are they now?
In 1979, CRY was very education-focused. Education was the great big hope for us then. But there were a dozen other things that were keeping kids out of school. We had to address those issues by interfacing with local government, through policy implementation. To make a significant dent in the problem, we had to start looking at national policy and we were only going to be able to do that if we created alliances, first at the state level with partners we were already working with.
What’s changed today is that education is not the end – now we see education as more an outcome, not an input. We’re trying to get communities to see the linkages between education and what they see are the other important issues for them – livelihoods, migration etc – and get them to see that education is a way out of these problems. Today we are committed to ensuring the quality of education available to children, to ensuring that the government system works.
Earlier we would run balwadis, substitute wherever the government was lacking, whereas now the approach is to make sure that the government is accountable, that the system works. In fact the balwadi often lets the government off the hook. We need to ask the government, when you say education is a fundamental right, what is the minimum quality of education that you will deliver?
What is the most pressing children’s issue at the moment?
The child’s right to survival is a key concern – maternal health is a key determinant of infant health, female foeticide and infanticide, malnutrition, and the availability and quality of healthcare services. There has actually been a decline in government services offered in everything from the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) to the primary healthcare centres (PHCs). For example, women in Thane (self-help groups) are being expected to fund the ICDS programme. On the one hand you advocate community participation but on the other hand that has become an excuse for the government to completely absolve itself of the responsibility of running these services.
Why has CRY chosen to take the rights-based approach now? To what extent will the change in nomenclature impact the care and delivery aspect of CRY’s work?
The national campaign for the right to education was the template for our future strategy. Right from 1979 we have had state-level alliances and grant-making relationships with other organisations and groups. But in 1997-98, when the nationwide campaign for the right to education began, we realised there was strength in numbers…. the government took us that much more seriously because there were so many of us coming together. The education campaign was the template.
Donors are stuck in sympathy mode. CRY has never done sympathy. However, now we are looking to bring about an attitudinal change to the whole business of children’s issues, from charity-focused to issue-based support. If this approach means getting less donor support, that’s a risk I’m willing to take, in the interests of bringing about long-term changes in donors’ mindsets.
Even today, only 14% of donors are institutional donors, the rest are individuals. And all they ask is that we make it convenient for them to donate and be accountable, using their money honestly and effectively. CRY has been successful because we have been able to do that.
Will CRY’s focus on rights advocacy affect its care and delivery services?
No. You need direct action in the here and now in the form of balwadis, you need the community mobilisation component, but you also need the advocacy. What has changed is how we approach the middle classes, in terms of what we’re asking them to do. Until now in many ways it hasn’t really been about volunteerism, it’s primarily been about them giving up money. For example, we set up these community action groups in five cities – Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore -- where we’ve got a range of people, educated urban middle class, slumdwellers, professionals, the entire microcosm of that community coming together to see what are our issues and how are we going to deal with them collectively, not as adversaries, as urban middle class vs slumdwellers’ associations. Some of these groups are working on identifying how many children in their neighbourhoods are in school or out, why, what their conditions are, how they can improve them, using the right to information to get better services from the government.
The response you or I would get if we started asking questions in a government school is very different from the answer a parent of one of these students would get. It's about getting them to see that any solution that gives priority to one group's concerns over the others' is inherently unsustainable.
What are the strategies and methods that CRY will employ to advocate child rights?
We have been fairly successful in getting local, tribal communities to mobilise their resources within their specified area. Over the years we’ve discovered that community participation works. One of our most successful community participation initiatives was in Uttar Pradesh in an area called Ghorawal where we ran a joint programme with a group called Child Welfare Services. This was a district where zero children were in school -- a carpet-weaving hub with a mostly adivasi population. Drought was common. Most children were employed in the carpet factories. Instead of haranguing people to get their kids into school, we began with evening classes, then campaigned for minimum wages so that adults could earn a decent wage, and the movement spread like wildfire, to 26 villages within months. The locals then reclaimed 250 acres of land that had been expropriated and used it for community farming of medicinal herbs. Eventually, 98% of the children were in school and from two primary schools the area now has 17.
The thing is, how do you scale that up, how do you build a coalition of communities everywhere -- of the marginalised, the middle class, media, bureaucrats, the administration, judges, the corporate sector and so on -- who can be persuaded to actually work together .We think child rights should be a national priority. Millions of children are dying every year before they reach their fifth birthday: that’s a national calamity on a scale much bigger than the tsunami and everything else put together
The methods will be largely the same – advertising, direct mailing, events, the Internet. It will be the same media-type advocacy, but focusing all these methods into a rights-based message rather than a relief message.
What about the Charter of Child Rights that CRY recently presented to the President of India?
Most important is a uniform definition of a child as defined by the United Nations. A child is simply everyone 0-18. Currently the definition varies depending on what you’re talking about -- if it’s the Child Labour Act it is 14 years, for some other laws it is 12 or maybe 15 years.
Other key demands are: make available at least 10% of GDP for education and make the fundamental right to education available to all children 0-18; ban child labour in all sectors, not just for hazardous industries but for all sectors including agriculture; make child labour illegal; expand coverage of the mid-day meal scheme to all children, regardless of whether they are in school or not. The right to survival is universal, why should it be restricted to just the children who are in school? That's just wrong. You can do it through the ICDS programme that covers children 0-6, you can technically use the PHCs, there is existing infrastructure that can be deployed to deliver these services.
We need a better definition of the poverty line -- for example, we are told that 27% are below poverty line but 51% of children are malnourished .Evidently, there are families above the poverty line who are unable to feed their children adequately. What kind of measurement is that? Originally, the poverty line was a calorific count, based on how many calories a person consumed a day. Then the government went and changed it to the number of goods a person owned etc and the whole thing got skewed. All sorts of people got excluded from the list. We would like a return to the earlier definition.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Why some civilisations survive and others die
Is it ecocide and the depletion of natural resources that is responsible for the collapse of the Mayan and other civilisations? Is it natural disasters, or socio-political cataclysms that are responsible for societal decay? Jared Diamond’s new book discusses these issues
When Satish Sahaney, director of the Nehru Centre in Mumbai, recently asked me to take part in a discussion on Jared Diamond’s new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (Penguin, London, 2006, ₤ 6.99 in India), I was intrigued. I was intrigued merely because the title of Diamond’s previous book sounded strangely radical: Guns, Germs & Steel (Vintage, Random House, London, 1998). I had imagined that these were the three ingredients that determined how some societies conquered others.
I had not read that book and, for that reason, was not acquainted with its sub-title: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. When I did some research, I felt that Diamond’s earlier book was far too ambitious, if not arrogant. “Everybody,” really? Can anyone paint on such a vast canvas and yet not leave some areas untouched? In fact, the title is derived from a question that a New Guinea islander (off the Australian coast) put to the author, who is an evolutionary biologist by training: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
Perhaps unknown to him, Diamond carries a great deal of baggage himself, not all of it visible. In his current book, Penguin leaves no stone unturned in going for the jugular: ‘The No 1 International Bestseller’, it crows above the title.
I delved into the book and found it difficult going, because it is so densely argued, packed with case studies of why certain societies flew out of the pages of history books while others survived to tell the tale.
Diamond was a psychology professor at UCLA Medical School but branched off into a study of the ecology and evolution of birds in New Guinea. I suspect both the careful observation enjoined by ornithology, coupled with a study of the birds’ exotic habitat, led him to examine much more fundamental issues -- the terminal decline of civilisations or, in his own words, ‘ecocide’.
I once asked Dr Salim Ali, India’s pre-eminent birdman, how he was qualified to pronounce on such complex issues as the controversy over the hydroelectric dam in Silent Valley in Kerala or the threat to the Taj Mahal from the Mathura oil refinery. He said that if anyone had spent a lifetime, as he had, painstakingly studying the life of birds he was capable of understanding the impact on the environment of big projects.
At the Nehru Centre, each discussant chose some chapters, so that s/he could do justice to parts of the book.
Diamond’s thesis is that there are eight factors that are seminal to survival or demise: deforestation, habitat destruction, soil, hunting, fishing, population, the human footprint (referring to the actual area that a person uses to obtain all the natural resources he consumes) and the intrusion of foreign species. That’s a fairly comprehensive list and no one would quarrel with these being responsible, in various permutations and combinations, for societal decay.
To begin with, there is the collapse of the Mayan empire. Diamond’s interesting observation is that because the Mayans did not keep proper records of such ‘mundane’ things as drought -- they restricted their notings to the deeds of kings -- they could not learn from history. Droughts, it is now learned (presumably from carbon dating or some other such modern tools), had occurred some two centuries before the collapse of this empire (or more properly, empires), but there was no way that the people knew this.
Diamond refers to ‘Twilight at Easter’, the huge, enigmatic, carved stone faces left on Easter Island, while other traces of human habitation have been totally wiped out. This must have led, in the days before archaeology, to people speculating whether this was the handiwork of visitors from another planet! Some of the statues weighed as much as 80 tonnes, which must have been as much an artist’s masterpiece as it was a marvel of engineering to erect. The story, it seems, is that the islanders, closed to outside societies, farmed far too intensively and in the process robbed the soil of its support systems. There was no escape for them by way of migration.
Diamond also speculates that the construction of the stone visages must have itself taken a terrible toll of the ecology. The builders, who must have numbered several hundred, had to be fed; they were doing ‘unproductive’ work, reminiscent of the pyramids of Egypt. There are archaeological traces of ferocious fighting between clans as well as cannibalism. The Easter islanders had a particularly grisly curse: “May the flesh of your grandmother stick in my teeth!”
There are also historical records that when a French ship sailed past a few centuries ago, the islanders called out in desperation -- not to be rescued from their isolated hell but for the timber embodied in the vessel, a resource they had overexploited to the point of no return. The author wonders, as many environmentalists do today, what it was like when the islanders decided to cut the very last tree. Was it everybody for himself (or herself, in these days of politically correct herstory)? During the Silent Valley controversy, the well-known poet Sugatha Kumari, who is an avid environmentalist and social activist, composed a poem called Maram (‘tree’ in Malayalam), where the last monkey on earth mistakes an electric pole -- Kerala sorely lacked electricity in the 1970s, as it does today -- for a tree, jumps on it and electrocutes itself.
The Mayan civilisation melted into the jungle -- as did some which bear a Hindu hand, the spectacular ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Borobodur in Indonesia -- till it was ‘re-discovered’ in the 18th century. The Mayans consumed corn, which contained less protein than other staples. What’s more, they couldn’t store it, given the primitive methods of that era, for more than a year, which made them highly vulnerable to famine. There may have also been shortages of freshwater: even though some cities were a square mile in area there were no rivers nearby, especially at those heights, and they had to harvest the rain. As cities grew, it is conceivable that they ran out of this most precious of resources. After all, closer home, Tughlaqabad and Daulatabad have suffered the same fate.
Additionally, stripping the forest slopes to cultivate crops may have caused the downfall, since it would have led to erosion, especially when coupled with population pressures. Unfortunately -- once again, the vital importance of communication -- Spanish bishops burned historical records for being ‘pagan’, leaving no trace of why this most sophisticated civilisation had to bite the dust.
The discussants raised a most fundamental issue. How does Diamond judge which society is successful and which is not? By any yardstick, the US is the most successful economy (as distinct from society!) in the world. But by ecological standards it is a disaster. This is why his overall thesis is flawed: while North Americans and Europeans are enjoying unprecedented prosperity, it is their insatiable appetite for natural resources, and energy in particular, that is destabilising the entire climate regime of the world and causing tremendous havoc globally. Might there be a Diamond -- or ‘Heera’ in this neck of the woods -- who, in the 23rd century, excavates the tip of the Empire State Building or similar skyscrapers in Manhattan and analyses the causes of the collapse of this affluent society?
Diamond employs a comparative approach, which was endorsed by some of the discussants. Citing the absence of traces of animals in the Mayan and Easter Island societies, one pointed out how rhino bones have been discovered in Harappan towns. These two early societies must have depended on wild nuts and other sources of protein.
A great deal depended on the presence or absence of ruling elites in early societies, as well as what produce they marketed or bartered. Ecocide, in Diamond’s words, was more of a process than an event or sudden calamity. In Harappa there was a co-existence of city and countryside, with agriculture and animal husbandry continuing alongside. Out of 132 Indus Valley civilisations, as many as 101 were abandoned. These populations didn’t simply disappear, they must have voted with their feet -- an option that the Easter islanders didn’t possess. Elsewhere, in the Saraswati Valley, the population actually increased. The Indus Valley decline was more of a socio-political-economic disaster than a cataclysmic event.
There is speculation in our country on how the vegetation around Lothal consisted of thorn and dry deciduous forests, which were used to make charcoal. There are also traces of teak growing near what is now Ahmedabad. Ultimately, whether due to climate, or population, or over-intensive agriculture, only acacia was left. Interestingly, in Harappan culture, we find deodhar logs brought all the way from the Shivaliks.
Metallurgy gave rise to several ecological problems. To produce a single kilo of smelted copper -- recall the Indus Valley figurines which have given this country one of its most potent iconic images -- it took 620 kg of charcoal: convert that into trees lost. Incidentally, the Bishnois have a long tradition of protecting the sparse natural terrain around them in memory of their fellow community members who were hacked to death when a king wanted to cut down their kejri trees to fire bricks for his palace. Verrier Elwin has recorded how the Agaria tribe in Madhya Pradesh had to search for trees for their livelihood as traditional ironsmiths.
There are also records of how the Harappan civilisation prompted soil salinity and massive erosion. It is difficult to say what population pressures there were between 2600 and 1800 BC. In Mohenjodaro it is possible to speculate that the widespread cultivation of wheat and barley required cattle to plough. In turn, the cattle had to be given fodder, which would have impacted on the local vegetation. The huge quantities of bricks found there would have lopped off the topsoil; there are records of some 700 wells, which would have been affected too.
A discussant who is a sociologist had difficulties with Diamond’s methodology, which all research depends on. He ascribes far too benign a role to business, even if one subscribes to neither environmentalism nor anti-environmentalism. The reference to ecocide would also trigger off the “deepest anxieties” in western readers, with visions of an apocalypse. This is reminiscent of Samuel P Huntington book, Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (Simon & Schuster, 2004) where the best-selling author raises fears of Americans being swamped by the Hispanic culture.
Similarly, I was uneasy about the glib assumptions that the best-selling Diamond makes, like the two maps showing how there is congruence between the political and environmental ‘trouble spots’ in the world, which include Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan (fortunately, we have escaped!). Only recently, a study by the New Economics Foundation and the Open University in the UK pointed out that the United Kingdom is “eating the planet” -- in other words, depleting the earth of natural resources far faster than it is able to replenish them. If global consumption levels reached those of the UK, it would take 3.1 earths to meet the demand. Needless to add, neither the UK nor Europe, and least of all the US, figure in Diamond’s demonology.
I have even greater problems with the author’s assertion that business can play a constructive role in protecting the environment, which he illustrates by his experience as a consultant with an oil company in New Guinea. Anyone who is painting a picture of entire societies in decline cannot fail to see how the oil companies have contributed to global warming for 150 years. And, as for the record of companies like Shell in Nigeria, where the earlier military government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, the celebrated opponent of its oil fields in a tribal region, the less said the better...
In conclusion, what does one make of this book? There is a danger, like in the mainstream American media, that most Americans will derive their notions of why societies collapse from books like these that catch their attention as they wait to pay their bills at the supermarket. Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a novel that pooh-poohs the whole science of climate change, is an even worse example of preaching scepticism to the ignorant. There is a great deal of fact in Diamond’s book, but there is some fiction as well. Indeed, his thesis resembles a rough, uncut gem, which deserves to be polished to reflect its myriad facets, not to present a unilateral view of the world.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
When Satish Sahaney, director of the Nehru Centre in Mumbai, recently asked me to take part in a discussion on Jared Diamond’s new book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive (Penguin, London, 2006, ₤ 6.99 in India), I was intrigued. I was intrigued merely because the title of Diamond’s previous book sounded strangely radical: Guns, Germs & Steel (Vintage, Random House, London, 1998). I had imagined that these were the three ingredients that determined how some societies conquered others.
I had not read that book and, for that reason, was not acquainted with its sub-title: A short history of everybody for the last 13,000 years. When I did some research, I felt that Diamond’s earlier book was far too ambitious, if not arrogant. “Everybody,” really? Can anyone paint on such a vast canvas and yet not leave some areas untouched? In fact, the title is derived from a question that a New Guinea islander (off the Australian coast) put to the author, who is an evolutionary biologist by training: “Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?”
Perhaps unknown to him, Diamond carries a great deal of baggage himself, not all of it visible. In his current book, Penguin leaves no stone unturned in going for the jugular: ‘The No 1 International Bestseller’, it crows above the title.
I delved into the book and found it difficult going, because it is so densely argued, packed with case studies of why certain societies flew out of the pages of history books while others survived to tell the tale.
Diamond was a psychology professor at UCLA Medical School but branched off into a study of the ecology and evolution of birds in New Guinea. I suspect both the careful observation enjoined by ornithology, coupled with a study of the birds’ exotic habitat, led him to examine much more fundamental issues -- the terminal decline of civilisations or, in his own words, ‘ecocide’.
I once asked Dr Salim Ali, India’s pre-eminent birdman, how he was qualified to pronounce on such complex issues as the controversy over the hydroelectric dam in Silent Valley in Kerala or the threat to the Taj Mahal from the Mathura oil refinery. He said that if anyone had spent a lifetime, as he had, painstakingly studying the life of birds he was capable of understanding the impact on the environment of big projects.
At the Nehru Centre, each discussant chose some chapters, so that s/he could do justice to parts of the book.
Diamond’s thesis is that there are eight factors that are seminal to survival or demise: deforestation, habitat destruction, soil, hunting, fishing, population, the human footprint (referring to the actual area that a person uses to obtain all the natural resources he consumes) and the intrusion of foreign species. That’s a fairly comprehensive list and no one would quarrel with these being responsible, in various permutations and combinations, for societal decay.
To begin with, there is the collapse of the Mayan empire. Diamond’s interesting observation is that because the Mayans did not keep proper records of such ‘mundane’ things as drought -- they restricted their notings to the deeds of kings -- they could not learn from history. Droughts, it is now learned (presumably from carbon dating or some other such modern tools), had occurred some two centuries before the collapse of this empire (or more properly, empires), but there was no way that the people knew this.
Diamond refers to ‘Twilight at Easter’, the huge, enigmatic, carved stone faces left on Easter Island, while other traces of human habitation have been totally wiped out. This must have led, in the days before archaeology, to people speculating whether this was the handiwork of visitors from another planet! Some of the statues weighed as much as 80 tonnes, which must have been as much an artist’s masterpiece as it was a marvel of engineering to erect. The story, it seems, is that the islanders, closed to outside societies, farmed far too intensively and in the process robbed the soil of its support systems. There was no escape for them by way of migration.
Diamond also speculates that the construction of the stone visages must have itself taken a terrible toll of the ecology. The builders, who must have numbered several hundred, had to be fed; they were doing ‘unproductive’ work, reminiscent of the pyramids of Egypt. There are archaeological traces of ferocious fighting between clans as well as cannibalism. The Easter islanders had a particularly grisly curse: “May the flesh of your grandmother stick in my teeth!”
There are also historical records that when a French ship sailed past a few centuries ago, the islanders called out in desperation -- not to be rescued from their isolated hell but for the timber embodied in the vessel, a resource they had overexploited to the point of no return. The author wonders, as many environmentalists do today, what it was like when the islanders decided to cut the very last tree. Was it everybody for himself (or herself, in these days of politically correct herstory)? During the Silent Valley controversy, the well-known poet Sugatha Kumari, who is an avid environmentalist and social activist, composed a poem called Maram (‘tree’ in Malayalam), where the last monkey on earth mistakes an electric pole -- Kerala sorely lacked electricity in the 1970s, as it does today -- for a tree, jumps on it and electrocutes itself.
The Mayan civilisation melted into the jungle -- as did some which bear a Hindu hand, the spectacular ruins of Angkor Wat in Cambodia and Borobodur in Indonesia -- till it was ‘re-discovered’ in the 18th century. The Mayans consumed corn, which contained less protein than other staples. What’s more, they couldn’t store it, given the primitive methods of that era, for more than a year, which made them highly vulnerable to famine. There may have also been shortages of freshwater: even though some cities were a square mile in area there were no rivers nearby, especially at those heights, and they had to harvest the rain. As cities grew, it is conceivable that they ran out of this most precious of resources. After all, closer home, Tughlaqabad and Daulatabad have suffered the same fate.
Additionally, stripping the forest slopes to cultivate crops may have caused the downfall, since it would have led to erosion, especially when coupled with population pressures. Unfortunately -- once again, the vital importance of communication -- Spanish bishops burned historical records for being ‘pagan’, leaving no trace of why this most sophisticated civilisation had to bite the dust.
The discussants raised a most fundamental issue. How does Diamond judge which society is successful and which is not? By any yardstick, the US is the most successful economy (as distinct from society!) in the world. But by ecological standards it is a disaster. This is why his overall thesis is flawed: while North Americans and Europeans are enjoying unprecedented prosperity, it is their insatiable appetite for natural resources, and energy in particular, that is destabilising the entire climate regime of the world and causing tremendous havoc globally. Might there be a Diamond -- or ‘Heera’ in this neck of the woods -- who, in the 23rd century, excavates the tip of the Empire State Building or similar skyscrapers in Manhattan and analyses the causes of the collapse of this affluent society?
Diamond employs a comparative approach, which was endorsed by some of the discussants. Citing the absence of traces of animals in the Mayan and Easter Island societies, one pointed out how rhino bones have been discovered in Harappan towns. These two early societies must have depended on wild nuts and other sources of protein.
A great deal depended on the presence or absence of ruling elites in early societies, as well as what produce they marketed or bartered. Ecocide, in Diamond’s words, was more of a process than an event or sudden calamity. In Harappa there was a co-existence of city and countryside, with agriculture and animal husbandry continuing alongside. Out of 132 Indus Valley civilisations, as many as 101 were abandoned. These populations didn’t simply disappear, they must have voted with their feet -- an option that the Easter islanders didn’t possess. Elsewhere, in the Saraswati Valley, the population actually increased. The Indus Valley decline was more of a socio-political-economic disaster than a cataclysmic event.
There is speculation in our country on how the vegetation around Lothal consisted of thorn and dry deciduous forests, which were used to make charcoal. There are also traces of teak growing near what is now Ahmedabad. Ultimately, whether due to climate, or population, or over-intensive agriculture, only acacia was left. Interestingly, in Harappan culture, we find deodhar logs brought all the way from the Shivaliks.
Metallurgy gave rise to several ecological problems. To produce a single kilo of smelted copper -- recall the Indus Valley figurines which have given this country one of its most potent iconic images -- it took 620 kg of charcoal: convert that into trees lost. Incidentally, the Bishnois have a long tradition of protecting the sparse natural terrain around them in memory of their fellow community members who were hacked to death when a king wanted to cut down their kejri trees to fire bricks for his palace. Verrier Elwin has recorded how the Agaria tribe in Madhya Pradesh had to search for trees for their livelihood as traditional ironsmiths.
There are also records of how the Harappan civilisation prompted soil salinity and massive erosion. It is difficult to say what population pressures there were between 2600 and 1800 BC. In Mohenjodaro it is possible to speculate that the widespread cultivation of wheat and barley required cattle to plough. In turn, the cattle had to be given fodder, which would have impacted on the local vegetation. The huge quantities of bricks found there would have lopped off the topsoil; there are records of some 700 wells, which would have been affected too.
A discussant who is a sociologist had difficulties with Diamond’s methodology, which all research depends on. He ascribes far too benign a role to business, even if one subscribes to neither environmentalism nor anti-environmentalism. The reference to ecocide would also trigger off the “deepest anxieties” in western readers, with visions of an apocalypse. This is reminiscent of Samuel P Huntington book, Who Are We: The Challenges to America’s National Identity (Simon & Schuster, 2004) where the best-selling author raises fears of Americans being swamped by the Hispanic culture.
Similarly, I was uneasy about the glib assumptions that the best-selling Diamond makes, like the two maps showing how there is congruence between the political and environmental ‘trouble spots’ in the world, which include Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan (fortunately, we have escaped!). Only recently, a study by the New Economics Foundation and the Open University in the UK pointed out that the United Kingdom is “eating the planet” -- in other words, depleting the earth of natural resources far faster than it is able to replenish them. If global consumption levels reached those of the UK, it would take 3.1 earths to meet the demand. Needless to add, neither the UK nor Europe, and least of all the US, figure in Diamond’s demonology.
I have even greater problems with the author’s assertion that business can play a constructive role in protecting the environment, which he illustrates by his experience as a consultant with an oil company in New Guinea. Anyone who is painting a picture of entire societies in decline cannot fail to see how the oil companies have contributed to global warming for 150 years. And, as for the record of companies like Shell in Nigeria, where the earlier military government executed Ken Saro-Wiwa, the celebrated opponent of its oil fields in a tribal region, the less said the better...
In conclusion, what does one make of this book? There is a danger, like in the mainstream American media, that most Americans will derive their notions of why societies collapse from books like these that catch their attention as they wait to pay their bills at the supermarket. Michael Crichton’s State of Fear, a novel that pooh-poohs the whole science of climate change, is an even worse example of preaching scepticism to the ignorant. There is a great deal of fact in Diamond’s book, but there is some fiction as well. Indeed, his thesis resembles a rough, uncut gem, which deserves to be polished to reflect its myriad facets, not to present a unilateral view of the world.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
Public sector research and agricultural biotechnology
Over 20 research studies related to GM crops are ongoing in the public sector in India. It is important that public sector research be supported in order to facilitate a level playing field with resource-rich private sector companies
At the third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Curitiba, Brazil, from March 13-17, the role of public sector research on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) received considerable attention. One of the concerns raised by public sector scientists is that under the Protocol the information requirements for small-scale confined field trials and risk assessments have to undergo a lengthy documentation process similar to that of bulk shipments meant for commercial use. Though the motive is not to undermine the objectives of the Protocol, the information requirement, the public sector scientists argue, should be commensurate with the lower level of risk involved in research activities. There is growing apprehension that in the long run this could hinder public sector research and instead increase the influence of the private sector as knowledge providers. It would hamper the attempts of civil society organisations to curtail private sector research and influence, which in a way defeats the purpose of the Protocol. Currently, the public sector in India has over 20 research activities related to the development of genetically modified crops. The government projects agricultural biotechnology as an important instrument in achieving food security in India. It is therefore important that public sector research gain necessary support in order to facilitate a level playing field with the resource-rich private sector companies, else the latter stand to gain.
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP3)
The third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol (MOP3) held in Curitiba, Brazil, reached a landmark decision on the documentation requirements for living modified organisms (LMOs). After hours of deliberation a consensus was reached: it was agreed that shipments that are identified and separated as containing transgenics will carry the label ‘Contains LMOs’. This landmark, as argued by some, will have a crucial impact on international trade in products derived from genetic engineering.
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is a legally binding international treaty that governs the transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms. Adopted in 2003, the Protocol aims to ensure safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on biodiversity and human health.
In 2005, two years after its adoption, the MOP2 at Montreal was to resolve issues on information requirements for documentation of LMOs for food, feed or processing (LMO-FFPs), but failed to do so, due to conflicting trade interests. It was apparent at MOP3 that countries were eager to reach a decision on the controversial issue of documentation. However, the article remained the bone of contention till the final hours when Mexico, supported by Paraguay, delayed the proceedings by resisting the clause on mandatory labeling of transboundary shipments containing LMOs, and instead suggested the insertion of brackets, implying that the topic was not completely resolved but open to future dialogue. After further negotiations, the signatories reached a consensus; they agreed to review country experiences on the implementation of documentation requirements in 2010 at MOP5, after which a final decision will be made at MOP6 in 2012. Mexico insisted on adding a clause which states that mandatory labeling does not apply to transboundary movement between parties and non-parties. Mexico is a major trading partner of LMO exporting countries such as Canada and the US, a non-party to the Protocol.
MOP3 also took decisions on other matters, including biosafety capacity-building activities, risk assessment for GMOs, and the operation of the Biosafety Clearing House, the web-based information exchange portal established by the Protocol.
Public sector research and the Protocol
The debate over LMOs at MOP3 was largely dominated by trade interests and therefore much of the implications of the Protocol are assessed in terms of its impact on trade in agricultural commodities. On the other hand, the “side events” were dominated by civil society organisations targeting their scepticism at big transnational companies that develop these genetically modified crops and also the socio-economic implications of such crops on small farmers. In hindsight, what seems to have emerged at the Protocol is the presence and importance of public sector research in agricultural biotechnology. Though public research was debated more informally at the side events than at the formal negotiation table, discussing its role in agricultural biotechnology itself underlines the fact that public sector research has wider policy ramifications. Particularly since the Cartagena Protocol is seen as a model on which countries formulate their biosafety policies. The larger picture that emerges from this debate is whether certain provisions in the Protocol can have a restrictive effect on public sector research -- a large number of which is carried out in developing countries -- as it requires lengthy information for small-scale confined field trial research and risk assessment where the level of risk is considered lower than shipments intended for commercial purposes. Is it possible to evolve a regulatory response that does not undermine the objectives of the Cartagena Protocol? At present, the Protocol does not accord separate treatment to LMO shipments for commercial purposes and for public research. Public sector researchers express concern about the implications of such decisions in the Protocol.
This lengthy documentation requirement can delay research and lead to increase in opportunity cost and utilisation of public funds. A study by the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC) shows that for China, the cost involved in meeting strict documentation requirements for soybean imports amounted to US$ 13.98 million in 2005. Public sector scientists claim that the information required is so exhaustive that sometimes it is not available since research is ongoing or yet to be conducted. For instance, confined small-scale research on fruit and shoot borer resistant Bt brinjal in the Institute of Plant Breeding, University of the Philippines, Los Banos College, experienced a setback as the documentation process for importing the Bt gene from India took almost a year, instead of the expected three months. Scientists explain the need to define LMOs for confined field trials as public research could suffer serious setback worldwide.
The public sector initiative
Recognising the crucial role of the public sector in biotechnology and also the need to explain the implications of the Protocol on public research, several public research scientists from different parts of the world with similar concerns and objectives united to form the Public Research and Regulatory Initiative (PRRI). Most international negotiations such as the Biosafety Protocol are discussed and debated at length among country policymakers, many of whom may not be trained to handle complex scientific issues such as biotechnology. On the other hand, scientists work in isolation in laboratories knowing little about the implications of these negotiations on their research. It has been observed that the international negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol which began since 1995 have always been well represented by NGOs and the private sector. However, public sector researchers were conspicuous by their absence, despite the fact that the Protocol could have a direct impact on their research. The PRRI is an initiative to involve public researchers in international negotiations that have a direct impact on their work, such as the Cartagena Protocol.
One of the major reasons for participation in the Protocol is to make delegates aware of the substantial role played by the public sector on research in modern biotechnology worldwide. The team is represented by public research scientists from different parts of the world concerned about the importance of disseminating science-based information and to explain in layman’s terms, the science of agricultural biotechnology and to dispel certain misconceptions about crop biotechnology. The PRRI seeks to clarify that it does not align with private sector companies that develop GM crops, since both private and public sector are developers of GM crops, and are therefore considered to have similar profit motives.
Public sector research in developing countries
Since most public sector research is not profit driven, but more directed towards the needs of local farmers, the products derived from the sector have wider acceptance among farmers and sceptics, as no conditions are imposed on them. Besides, the products are distributed at costs that are lower than those of the private sector companies.
The role of the public sector in the research and development of crop biotechnology, particularly in developing countries, is often undermined. A study conducted by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), released in 2005, shows that there are more than 200 types of research conducted on genetically modified (GM) crops in 15 developing countries. The largest number of research studies was in Asia (109) of which 21 are in India. About 85% of the genetic resources used for developing these GM crops were sourced from locally available materials. Farmers seem to prefer the local variety as they adapt better and are also devoid of the intellectual property issues associated with the most of the private sector developed genetic materials. In most developing countries, examples of public-private partnerships in plant biotechnology are rare.
In many Asian countries the focus is on food crops and crops of high commercial value to increase food production in order to meet the demands of the burgeoning population and also to assist resource-poor farmers with marginal land holdings. These crops are developed to respond to local needs, in the form of drought and salinity resistance, insect, fungal and bacterial resistance, reduction in the use of agrochemicals, prolonged shelf-life, nutritional improvement, etc. In India where almost 70% of the population is still dependent on agriculture, these varieties can offer tremendous benefits.
Despite the large number of ongoing public sector research studies in developing countries, only seven have been commercially released. In India, crop biotechnology research in the public sector is at all various of development -- from the experimental to the pre-commercial stage, but none are approved for commercial cultivation. In China, public sector developed GM vegetables have been approved for cultivation. Currently, there are more than 44 ongoing confined field trials in developing countries and most of them have problems in moving on to the next phase, the pre-commercial trial stage. This is partly due to the confusion regarding the amount of information required for the confined and open field trials. One of the reasons for this delay, as cited by IFPRI research, is the implementation process of the Cartagena Protocol. This involves huge regulatory costs and can be carried out either by sharing these with government seed production facilities or seed companies. There is a need to expedite regulatory decisions and testing of public sector developed GM crops. Though it is widely accepted that public research can deliver GM crops in response to local needs, the regulatory procedure necessary to gain approval for commercial use can delay the process as these are novel crops that have not been tested earlier. The irony is that the GM crops in the West get speedier approval in developing countries as they have already been tested. As a result, crops developed by the public sector remain at the pre-commercial stages and farmers continue to wait.
Biotechnology is considered by many in the public and private sector to have enormous potential in achieving food security. At the same time, the scepticism of critics of agricultural biotechnology has been directed largely towards issues surrounding the technology, such as the transnational companies that develop it, the royalties involved, the socio-economic implications etc, but the focus has rarely been on the technology per se. Public sector scientists claim that genetically modified crops developed by public research can contribute to meeting the needs of the local farmers and that scientifically unfounded claims about the technology need to be dispelled. They emphasise that their role is to present the scientific facts of genetic engineering as they are, without any particular agenda. Transnational companies have the financial resources, but lack the trust of the general public. On the other hand, public research institutes have limited financial resources but are trusted to develop crops in response to specific local needs.
In India, the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority suggested the speeding up of approval process for transgenic crops through a single window clearance mechanism. This is particularly significant for the public sector as it would minimise the public funds as well as the opportunity cost. At the same time, it would be important to examine the health and environmental safety aspects of the novel transgenic crops. Once the regulatory and safety aspects are in place, it is the farmers who would ultimately have the last word.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
At the third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Curitiba, Brazil, from March 13-17, the role of public sector research on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) received considerable attention. One of the concerns raised by public sector scientists is that under the Protocol the information requirements for small-scale confined field trials and risk assessments have to undergo a lengthy documentation process similar to that of bulk shipments meant for commercial use. Though the motive is not to undermine the objectives of the Protocol, the information requirement, the public sector scientists argue, should be commensurate with the lower level of risk involved in research activities. There is growing apprehension that in the long run this could hinder public sector research and instead increase the influence of the private sector as knowledge providers. It would hamper the attempts of civil society organisations to curtail private sector research and influence, which in a way defeats the purpose of the Protocol. Currently, the public sector in India has over 20 research activities related to the development of genetically modified crops. The government projects agricultural biotechnology as an important instrument in achieving food security in India. It is therefore important that public sector research gain necessary support in order to facilitate a level playing field with the resource-rich private sector companies, else the latter stand to gain.
Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (MOP3)
The third meeting of parties to the Cartagena Protocol (MOP3) held in Curitiba, Brazil, reached a landmark decision on the documentation requirements for living modified organisms (LMOs). After hours of deliberation a consensus was reached: it was agreed that shipments that are identified and separated as containing transgenics will carry the label ‘Contains LMOs’. This landmark, as argued by some, will have a crucial impact on international trade in products derived from genetic engineering.
The Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety is a legally binding international treaty that governs the transboundary movement of genetically modified organisms. Adopted in 2003, the Protocol aims to ensure safe transfer, handling and use of living modified organisms that may have adverse effects on biodiversity and human health.
In 2005, two years after its adoption, the MOP2 at Montreal was to resolve issues on information requirements for documentation of LMOs for food, feed or processing (LMO-FFPs), but failed to do so, due to conflicting trade interests. It was apparent at MOP3 that countries were eager to reach a decision on the controversial issue of documentation. However, the article remained the bone of contention till the final hours when Mexico, supported by Paraguay, delayed the proceedings by resisting the clause on mandatory labeling of transboundary shipments containing LMOs, and instead suggested the insertion of brackets, implying that the topic was not completely resolved but open to future dialogue. After further negotiations, the signatories reached a consensus; they agreed to review country experiences on the implementation of documentation requirements in 2010 at MOP5, after which a final decision will be made at MOP6 in 2012. Mexico insisted on adding a clause which states that mandatory labeling does not apply to transboundary movement between parties and non-parties. Mexico is a major trading partner of LMO exporting countries such as Canada and the US, a non-party to the Protocol.
MOP3 also took decisions on other matters, including biosafety capacity-building activities, risk assessment for GMOs, and the operation of the Biosafety Clearing House, the web-based information exchange portal established by the Protocol.
Public sector research and the Protocol
The debate over LMOs at MOP3 was largely dominated by trade interests and therefore much of the implications of the Protocol are assessed in terms of its impact on trade in agricultural commodities. On the other hand, the “side events” were dominated by civil society organisations targeting their scepticism at big transnational companies that develop these genetically modified crops and also the socio-economic implications of such crops on small farmers. In hindsight, what seems to have emerged at the Protocol is the presence and importance of public sector research in agricultural biotechnology. Though public research was debated more informally at the side events than at the formal negotiation table, discussing its role in agricultural biotechnology itself underlines the fact that public sector research has wider policy ramifications. Particularly since the Cartagena Protocol is seen as a model on which countries formulate their biosafety policies. The larger picture that emerges from this debate is whether certain provisions in the Protocol can have a restrictive effect on public sector research -- a large number of which is carried out in developing countries -- as it requires lengthy information for small-scale confined field trial research and risk assessment where the level of risk is considered lower than shipments intended for commercial purposes. Is it possible to evolve a regulatory response that does not undermine the objectives of the Cartagena Protocol? At present, the Protocol does not accord separate treatment to LMO shipments for commercial purposes and for public research. Public sector researchers express concern about the implications of such decisions in the Protocol.
This lengthy documentation requirement can delay research and lead to increase in opportunity cost and utilisation of public funds. A study by the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council (IPC) shows that for China, the cost involved in meeting strict documentation requirements for soybean imports amounted to US$ 13.98 million in 2005. Public sector scientists claim that the information required is so exhaustive that sometimes it is not available since research is ongoing or yet to be conducted. For instance, confined small-scale research on fruit and shoot borer resistant Bt brinjal in the Institute of Plant Breeding, University of the Philippines, Los Banos College, experienced a setback as the documentation process for importing the Bt gene from India took almost a year, instead of the expected three months. Scientists explain the need to define LMOs for confined field trials as public research could suffer serious setback worldwide.
The public sector initiative
Recognising the crucial role of the public sector in biotechnology and also the need to explain the implications of the Protocol on public research, several public research scientists from different parts of the world with similar concerns and objectives united to form the Public Research and Regulatory Initiative (PRRI). Most international negotiations such as the Biosafety Protocol are discussed and debated at length among country policymakers, many of whom may not be trained to handle complex scientific issues such as biotechnology. On the other hand, scientists work in isolation in laboratories knowing little about the implications of these negotiations on their research. It has been observed that the international negotiations of the Cartagena Protocol which began since 1995 have always been well represented by NGOs and the private sector. However, public sector researchers were conspicuous by their absence, despite the fact that the Protocol could have a direct impact on their research. The PRRI is an initiative to involve public researchers in international negotiations that have a direct impact on their work, such as the Cartagena Protocol.
One of the major reasons for participation in the Protocol is to make delegates aware of the substantial role played by the public sector on research in modern biotechnology worldwide. The team is represented by public research scientists from different parts of the world concerned about the importance of disseminating science-based information and to explain in layman’s terms, the science of agricultural biotechnology and to dispel certain misconceptions about crop biotechnology. The PRRI seeks to clarify that it does not align with private sector companies that develop GM crops, since both private and public sector are developers of GM crops, and are therefore considered to have similar profit motives.
Public sector research in developing countries
Since most public sector research is not profit driven, but more directed towards the needs of local farmers, the products derived from the sector have wider acceptance among farmers and sceptics, as no conditions are imposed on them. Besides, the products are distributed at costs that are lower than those of the private sector companies.
The role of the public sector in the research and development of crop biotechnology, particularly in developing countries, is often undermined. A study conducted by International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), released in 2005, shows that there are more than 200 types of research conducted on genetically modified (GM) crops in 15 developing countries. The largest number of research studies was in Asia (109) of which 21 are in India. About 85% of the genetic resources used for developing these GM crops were sourced from locally available materials. Farmers seem to prefer the local variety as they adapt better and are also devoid of the intellectual property issues associated with the most of the private sector developed genetic materials. In most developing countries, examples of public-private partnerships in plant biotechnology are rare.
In many Asian countries the focus is on food crops and crops of high commercial value to increase food production in order to meet the demands of the burgeoning population and also to assist resource-poor farmers with marginal land holdings. These crops are developed to respond to local needs, in the form of drought and salinity resistance, insect, fungal and bacterial resistance, reduction in the use of agrochemicals, prolonged shelf-life, nutritional improvement, etc. In India where almost 70% of the population is still dependent on agriculture, these varieties can offer tremendous benefits.
Despite the large number of ongoing public sector research studies in developing countries, only seven have been commercially released. In India, crop biotechnology research in the public sector is at all various of development -- from the experimental to the pre-commercial stage, but none are approved for commercial cultivation. In China, public sector developed GM vegetables have been approved for cultivation. Currently, there are more than 44 ongoing confined field trials in developing countries and most of them have problems in moving on to the next phase, the pre-commercial trial stage. This is partly due to the confusion regarding the amount of information required for the confined and open field trials. One of the reasons for this delay, as cited by IFPRI research, is the implementation process of the Cartagena Protocol. This involves huge regulatory costs and can be carried out either by sharing these with government seed production facilities or seed companies. There is a need to expedite regulatory decisions and testing of public sector developed GM crops. Though it is widely accepted that public research can deliver GM crops in response to local needs, the regulatory procedure necessary to gain approval for commercial use can delay the process as these are novel crops that have not been tested earlier. The irony is that the GM crops in the West get speedier approval in developing countries as they have already been tested. As a result, crops developed by the public sector remain at the pre-commercial stages and farmers continue to wait.
Biotechnology is considered by many in the public and private sector to have enormous potential in achieving food security. At the same time, the scepticism of critics of agricultural biotechnology has been directed largely towards issues surrounding the technology, such as the transnational companies that develop it, the royalties involved, the socio-economic implications etc, but the focus has rarely been on the technology per se. Public sector scientists claim that genetically modified crops developed by public research can contribute to meeting the needs of the local farmers and that scientifically unfounded claims about the technology need to be dispelled. They emphasise that their role is to present the scientific facts of genetic engineering as they are, without any particular agenda. Transnational companies have the financial resources, but lack the trust of the general public. On the other hand, public research institutes have limited financial resources but are trusted to develop crops in response to specific local needs.
In India, the National Biotechnology Regulatory Authority suggested the speeding up of approval process for transgenic crops through a single window clearance mechanism. This is particularly significant for the public sector as it would minimise the public funds as well as the opportunity cost. At the same time, it would be important to examine the health and environmental safety aspects of the novel transgenic crops. Once the regulatory and safety aspects are in place, it is the farmers who would ultimately have the last word.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
Refugees are not illegal migrants
Though India plays host to over 300,000 refugees from neighbouring countries, the country has a completely ad hoc system of refugee determination, deportation and protection
India plays host to approximately 332,300 refugees (World Refugee Survey 2003), and is the second largest refugee-receiving country in South Asia, after Pakistan. India’s multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society has made it an attractive destination for a lot of asylum-seekers. Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, the Jumma people from Bangladesh, the Chin and other tribal refugees from Myanmar, refugees from Afghanistan, Iran and even Sudan comprise the bulk of India’s refugee population.
But the enormity of the situation is discussed only with regard to the political rhetoric on ‘illegal migrants’ who, the government claims, have become an economic burden on the country and need to be deported. This claim works as a strategy for playing the ethnicity card, to create vote-banks before the elections. At other times, people rejoice when census figures show that the number of ‘illegal migrants’ has actually gone down. How the government deals with the ‘illegal migrants’ and the process of their determination and deportation is seldom questioned. Not by the media, not even by civil society.
As a major player in South Asian politics, and indeed world politics today, issues regarding India’s economic might have become central to its attempts at claming South Asia’s ‘big brother’ status. As a rapidly ‘developing’ nation, free movement of capital in and out of the country is supported by a structured regime of national economic policies that adhere to international trade-law obligations through the WTO, World Bank and IMF and regional trade cooperation treaties through SAARC. However, we know very little about India’s state obligations towards respecting and protecting the human rights of people who are labelled ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘aliens’, arrested as criminals under the Passport Act 1967, the Registration of Foreigners Act 1939 or the Foreigners Act 1946. In spite of the presence of such large numbers of people in the country who have fled persecution in neighbouring countries, India has a completely ad hoc system of refugee determination, deportation and selective protection.
The government officially recognises only Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and provides them state protection. For all other refugee populations -- the Burmese Chin, Chakmas and Rohingyas from Bangladesh, Sudanese and Afghans, etc -- it’s left to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi to administer operations to provide refugee identity certificates to those belonging to communities/nationalities not recognised by the government.
So, people fleeing persecution and ending up in India are left at the mercy of the government’s ad hoc policies and the limited operations of the UNHCR. All this, despite a Supreme Court judgment (NHRC vs State of Arunachal Pradesh) that categorically states that all ‘refugees’ within Indian territory are guaranteed the right to life and personal liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution.
This judgment, passed in the year 1996, has not yet prompted the Indian government to accede to the 1951 UN Refugees Convention. According to the government, the convention is Eurocentric in nature and does not reflect the special needs of the countries of the Global South. This, however, has not prompted India to take proactive steps towards a national law on refugee protection or to initiate a dialogue to develop a regional refugee protection regime. In fact, the country’s fears of an economic burden created by ‘illegal migrants’, and also the security threat posed by ‘terrorists’ could actually be allayed by the setting up of a national or regional refugee protection regime.
Although the UNHCR has done some commendable work in the country, in the absence of any national law, India’s ad hoc refugee policy curtails a lot of its work. In India, the UNHCR provides only de facto protection to its mandate refugees and relies on the tolerance and goodwill of the Indian government. The government only partially recognises the UNHCR mandate; mandate refugees therefore have no formal recognition and are subject to the same municipal laws as foreigners. This lack of formal status weakens the UNHCR’s role in advocacy and intervention for refugee rights.
This situation is mirrored in other South Asian countries that have not acceded to the 1951 convention or the 1967 protocol, thus undermining the international legal regime for the protection of refugees. Though the Indian government proceeds on the assumption that India has a strong humanitarian tradition of hosting refugees, which was present even before the drafting of the convention, lack of accession or the development of a national or regional refugee legal regime is cause for concern.
Even with its limited capacities, the UNHCR itself flagrantly ignores guidelines for the treatment of refugees while conducting interviews to determine and adjudicate refugee status.
Ravi Nair, director of the Delhi-based South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) observers: “The cardinal problem arises when both the UNHCR and the Government of India (GoI) violate their own standards and principles. While it is possible to bring the GoI under the scrutiny of quasi-judicial bodies like the National Human Rights Commission and the judiciary, there is no such mechanism to scrutinise the UNHCR. Official rules and procedures have become an excuse to raise the veil of secrecy and to resort to arbitrariness at the expense of the refugees.”
Consider an incident that took place in October-November 2003, when Burmese Chin refugees and asylum-seekers staged a protest against the UNHCR for not processing their applications in time and humiliating them during the assessment process. Following the protest, the police arrested around 25 demonstrators. It took more than three weeks for organisations working with refugees in the capital to arrive at a consensus on how to bail the demonstrators out!
This was a point where the UNHCR’s New Delhi office required security protection -- fearing attacks from Burmese Chin refugees it claimed to assist. When the demonstrations turned slightly volatile, the UNHCR actually got them arrested, knowing full well that some of the protestors were asylum-seekers and could now be deported. Those arrested were remanded to custody for over two weeks without any intervention by the UNHCR. The Socio-legal Information Centre (SLIC), one of the UNHCR’s implementing partners responsible for providing legal assistance to refugees, also turned a blind eye to the events. It was only when other civil society organisations took up the issue that the UNHCR responded.
This is just one of the many instances where the UNHCR has violated its own standards.
Given the realities in South Asia, efforts should be geared towards developing comprehensive national laws that uphold the universal principles of international refugee protection, while at the same time taking into account the distinctive traits of the region. This would be a more solution-oriented approach; one that is both pertinent and fair in light of current displacements within the South Asia region.
“If such a national legislation were adopted by South Asian states without acceding to the refugee convention, it would be a rare example of national legislation superseding international obligations,” says Brian Gorlick, a former legal officer with the UNHCR, New Delhi. “The absence of national laws has meant that refugees are dependent on the benevolence of the state rather than on a regime of rights to reconstruct their lives in dignity. A consistent legal framework is vital for the prevention of political ad hocism, which often translates into forcible repatriation for refugees,” adds Nair.
The first attempt at formulating a draft regional law for refugee protection was formulated in 1966, when the African-Asian Legal Consultative Committee, an inter-governmental organisation, adopted the Bangkok Principles on the Status and Treatment of Refugees. These principles have since been kept in cold storage; only the text was finalised at a meeting in New Delhi in 2001.
In November 1997, the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) for South Asia, put together by the UNHCR, approved a model national law at its Dhaka Consultation. This model law is the first step in the process of building a consensus on preventing, managing and solving the problems accompanying refugee flows within South Asia in a comprehensive and humane manner. The purpose of the law is to establish a procedure for granting refugee status to asylum-seekers and those forced to migrate due to a well-founded fear of persecution; to guarantee them fair treatment and to establish the requisite machinery for its implementation. The model law provides a comprehensive definition suiting the needs of the region. Unfortunately it has remained a legal fiction, with states showing no inclination towards incorporating it in their respective national legislations.
Since India is one of the largest receiving countries in South Asia, it should take the initiative in establishing a refugee law regime in the region by first making a national law on refuge protection. This would be an extension of India’s obligations under various international human rights instruments that it has acceded to. Such an initiative would also show that India takes its membership of the UNHCR EXCOM (executive committee) seriously, and wants to strengthen its role there. As Professor B S Chimni, an international law expert and vice-chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, points out: “To remain a member of the EXCOM without either acceding to the 1951 convention or passing a national legislation shows an opportunistic attitude towards UN institutions that does the image of the country little good in the international community.”
Post September 11 and July 7, political realities and trends in immigration policies inevitably lead to the conclusion that refugee rights protection in South Asia can only be made effective if efforts are focused on improving the national legal and judicial practices to supplement the existing conventional international refugee law framework. A regional refugee treaty would be the most effective way of making sure that states remain bound to their obligations. It is also recommended that a treaty-monitoring body be established with powers similar to those of human rights treaty bodies. This body should have the authority to issue general recommendations, view state reports and receive individual complaints from people facing persecution.
The process of developing an ‘asylum law’ regime in South Asia must include governments, NGOs and protection agencies alike because it is important to take a holistic view of this phenomenon. Along with advocating and campaigning for the establishment of a national/regional ‘asylum law’ regime, civil society institutions must urge states that are not signatories to other international human rights law instruments to accede to them and also press those states that have acceded but have not made enabling legislation to do so.
“Governments must be more concerned about the protection of people facing persecution, rather than thinking about how a refugee regime might open the floodgates to illegal immigrants. It is a substantive law that would facilitate states to identify illegal immigrants from refugees,” says Chimni.
A step in this direction would not only be a landmark achievement in the development of asylum jurisprudence in the region, it would also be a major addition to intervention mechanisms for the protection of human rights globally.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
India plays host to approximately 332,300 refugees (World Refugee Survey 2003), and is the second largest refugee-receiving country in South Asia, after Pakistan. India’s multi-ethnic, multi-lingual society has made it an attractive destination for a lot of asylum-seekers. Tamil refugees from Sri Lanka, the Jumma people from Bangladesh, the Chin and other tribal refugees from Myanmar, refugees from Afghanistan, Iran and even Sudan comprise the bulk of India’s refugee population.
But the enormity of the situation is discussed only with regard to the political rhetoric on ‘illegal migrants’ who, the government claims, have become an economic burden on the country and need to be deported. This claim works as a strategy for playing the ethnicity card, to create vote-banks before the elections. At other times, people rejoice when census figures show that the number of ‘illegal migrants’ has actually gone down. How the government deals with the ‘illegal migrants’ and the process of their determination and deportation is seldom questioned. Not by the media, not even by civil society.
As a major player in South Asian politics, and indeed world politics today, issues regarding India’s economic might have become central to its attempts at claming South Asia’s ‘big brother’ status. As a rapidly ‘developing’ nation, free movement of capital in and out of the country is supported by a structured regime of national economic policies that adhere to international trade-law obligations through the WTO, World Bank and IMF and regional trade cooperation treaties through SAARC. However, we know very little about India’s state obligations towards respecting and protecting the human rights of people who are labelled ‘illegal migrants’ or ‘aliens’, arrested as criminals under the Passport Act 1967, the Registration of Foreigners Act 1939 or the Foreigners Act 1946. In spite of the presence of such large numbers of people in the country who have fled persecution in neighbouring countries, India has a completely ad hoc system of refugee determination, deportation and selective protection.
The government officially recognises only Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamil refugees and provides them state protection. For all other refugee populations -- the Burmese Chin, Chakmas and Rohingyas from Bangladesh, Sudanese and Afghans, etc -- it’s left to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in New Delhi to administer operations to provide refugee identity certificates to those belonging to communities/nationalities not recognised by the government.
So, people fleeing persecution and ending up in India are left at the mercy of the government’s ad hoc policies and the limited operations of the UNHCR. All this, despite a Supreme Court judgment (NHRC vs State of Arunachal Pradesh) that categorically states that all ‘refugees’ within Indian territory are guaranteed the right to life and personal liberty enshrined under Article 21 of the Constitution.
This judgment, passed in the year 1996, has not yet prompted the Indian government to accede to the 1951 UN Refugees Convention. According to the government, the convention is Eurocentric in nature and does not reflect the special needs of the countries of the Global South. This, however, has not prompted India to take proactive steps towards a national law on refugee protection or to initiate a dialogue to develop a regional refugee protection regime. In fact, the country’s fears of an economic burden created by ‘illegal migrants’, and also the security threat posed by ‘terrorists’ could actually be allayed by the setting up of a national or regional refugee protection regime.
Although the UNHCR has done some commendable work in the country, in the absence of any national law, India’s ad hoc refugee policy curtails a lot of its work. In India, the UNHCR provides only de facto protection to its mandate refugees and relies on the tolerance and goodwill of the Indian government. The government only partially recognises the UNHCR mandate; mandate refugees therefore have no formal recognition and are subject to the same municipal laws as foreigners. This lack of formal status weakens the UNHCR’s role in advocacy and intervention for refugee rights.
This situation is mirrored in other South Asian countries that have not acceded to the 1951 convention or the 1967 protocol, thus undermining the international legal regime for the protection of refugees. Though the Indian government proceeds on the assumption that India has a strong humanitarian tradition of hosting refugees, which was present even before the drafting of the convention, lack of accession or the development of a national or regional refugee legal regime is cause for concern.
Even with its limited capacities, the UNHCR itself flagrantly ignores guidelines for the treatment of refugees while conducting interviews to determine and adjudicate refugee status.
Ravi Nair, director of the Delhi-based South Asia Human Rights Documentation Centre (SAHRDC) observers: “The cardinal problem arises when both the UNHCR and the Government of India (GoI) violate their own standards and principles. While it is possible to bring the GoI under the scrutiny of quasi-judicial bodies like the National Human Rights Commission and the judiciary, there is no such mechanism to scrutinise the UNHCR. Official rules and procedures have become an excuse to raise the veil of secrecy and to resort to arbitrariness at the expense of the refugees.”
Consider an incident that took place in October-November 2003, when Burmese Chin refugees and asylum-seekers staged a protest against the UNHCR for not processing their applications in time and humiliating them during the assessment process. Following the protest, the police arrested around 25 demonstrators. It took more than three weeks for organisations working with refugees in the capital to arrive at a consensus on how to bail the demonstrators out!
This was a point where the UNHCR’s New Delhi office required security protection -- fearing attacks from Burmese Chin refugees it claimed to assist. When the demonstrations turned slightly volatile, the UNHCR actually got them arrested, knowing full well that some of the protestors were asylum-seekers and could now be deported. Those arrested were remanded to custody for over two weeks without any intervention by the UNHCR. The Socio-legal Information Centre (SLIC), one of the UNHCR’s implementing partners responsible for providing legal assistance to refugees, also turned a blind eye to the events. It was only when other civil society organisations took up the issue that the UNHCR responded.
This is just one of the many instances where the UNHCR has violated its own standards.
Given the realities in South Asia, efforts should be geared towards developing comprehensive national laws that uphold the universal principles of international refugee protection, while at the same time taking into account the distinctive traits of the region. This would be a more solution-oriented approach; one that is both pertinent and fair in light of current displacements within the South Asia region.
“If such a national legislation were adopted by South Asian states without acceding to the refugee convention, it would be a rare example of national legislation superseding international obligations,” says Brian Gorlick, a former legal officer with the UNHCR, New Delhi. “The absence of national laws has meant that refugees are dependent on the benevolence of the state rather than on a regime of rights to reconstruct their lives in dignity. A consistent legal framework is vital for the prevention of political ad hocism, which often translates into forcible repatriation for refugees,” adds Nair.
The first attempt at formulating a draft regional law for refugee protection was formulated in 1966, when the African-Asian Legal Consultative Committee, an inter-governmental organisation, adopted the Bangkok Principles on the Status and Treatment of Refugees. These principles have since been kept in cold storage; only the text was finalised at a meeting in New Delhi in 2001.
In November 1997, the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) for South Asia, put together by the UNHCR, approved a model national law at its Dhaka Consultation. This model law is the first step in the process of building a consensus on preventing, managing and solving the problems accompanying refugee flows within South Asia in a comprehensive and humane manner. The purpose of the law is to establish a procedure for granting refugee status to asylum-seekers and those forced to migrate due to a well-founded fear of persecution; to guarantee them fair treatment and to establish the requisite machinery for its implementation. The model law provides a comprehensive definition suiting the needs of the region. Unfortunately it has remained a legal fiction, with states showing no inclination towards incorporating it in their respective national legislations.
Since India is one of the largest receiving countries in South Asia, it should take the initiative in establishing a refugee law regime in the region by first making a national law on refuge protection. This would be an extension of India’s obligations under various international human rights instruments that it has acceded to. Such an initiative would also show that India takes its membership of the UNHCR EXCOM (executive committee) seriously, and wants to strengthen its role there. As Professor B S Chimni, an international law expert and vice-chancellor of the National University of Juridical Sciences, Kolkata, points out: “To remain a member of the EXCOM without either acceding to the 1951 convention or passing a national legislation shows an opportunistic attitude towards UN institutions that does the image of the country little good in the international community.”
Post September 11 and July 7, political realities and trends in immigration policies inevitably lead to the conclusion that refugee rights protection in South Asia can only be made effective if efforts are focused on improving the national legal and judicial practices to supplement the existing conventional international refugee law framework. A regional refugee treaty would be the most effective way of making sure that states remain bound to their obligations. It is also recommended that a treaty-monitoring body be established with powers similar to those of human rights treaty bodies. This body should have the authority to issue general recommendations, view state reports and receive individual complaints from people facing persecution.
The process of developing an ‘asylum law’ regime in South Asia must include governments, NGOs and protection agencies alike because it is important to take a holistic view of this phenomenon. Along with advocating and campaigning for the establishment of a national/regional ‘asylum law’ regime, civil society institutions must urge states that are not signatories to other international human rights law instruments to accede to them and also press those states that have acceded but have not made enabling legislation to do so.
“Governments must be more concerned about the protection of people facing persecution, rather than thinking about how a refugee regime might open the floodgates to illegal immigrants. It is a substantive law that would facilitate states to identify illegal immigrants from refugees,” says Chimni.
A step in this direction would not only be a landmark achievement in the development of asylum jurisprudence in the region, it would also be a major addition to intervention mechanisms for the protection of human rights globally.
InfoChange News & Features, May 2006
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