I SSUE 2 N
1

Editor’s Letter, p.3
China and its demand for agro-commodities:
Surprise? by Juan Pablo
Gonzalez, p.4
Can democracy be exported?, by Dimitris
Mathioudakis, p.6
A Seemingly Optimistic
Future for the ICC, by
Alessa Rigal, p.9
Africa’s Forgotten
Footballers: the New
Slave Trade, by Damon
Boughen, p.10
(Un)comfortable time in South Africa, by
Shirin M. Rai, p.14
Invisibility of Women: does Unpaid Work
Matter?, by Nino
Akhalaia, p.17
Tallest Dam in Poorest
State, by Zuhursho
Rahmatulloev, p.19
Harsha Biswajit’s Art, p.21
GGD Symposium, p.22
PaIS Picture Day, p.23
2

W ith the lessons learned over the past year in the Globalisation, Governance and
Development Module, this issue of the WGDS Newsletter will encounter several topics that were analysed in the course and others that take GGD as a baseline for further research. The articles you are about to read focus on student’s personal interests. There are two articles that target direct and indirectly China, one on agri-business and the other on its potential democratic turn. Commercial and political are then linked with international criminal law and the vulnerability of its principal institution. South Africa is tackled beyond the joys and victories of the
2010 World Cup, towards the ‘defeats’ that football has on young African boys related to slave trade. Apartheid and women discrimination is witnessed by Shirin Rai during her visit to Cape Town.
Furthermore, the debate of the invisibility of women and its ‘economic thinking’ is critically assessed. The final article relates to a prospective hydroelectric economic boom in Tajikistan. The continuous flow and ‘logical’ sequence of topics in the articles takes me back to the first GGD class with Mat. We had an exercise to define development with short sentences handed out by our professor, ranging from goals to policies. Some students agreed that the first step to achieve development was to eradicate poverty. Others settled to define that eradication of poverty was the ultimate goal for development, but to get to it, certain policies and achievements had to be overcome first. In this sense, the article about the ‘poorest state’ is the last one of the series of the
2009/2010 WGDS Newsletter. However, in my perspective, development does not imply only economic development, but gathers more social instruments to achieve it. In that sense, economic growth does not always imply development. The uneven distribution of income makes poverty even harder to target. Moreover, pro-poor development and environmental sustainability can be challenged even more with the BP’s ‘Oil Spill’ illustration.
The newsletter maintains a coherent link between articles, and hope you find this last series insightful. We would like to highlight the successful GGD Symposium that took place in March. The panelists and debates were heated and well managed by the moderators. We would like to thank our module tutors Shirin Rai, Iain Pirie, and Mat Doidge who could not accompany us this day.
Moreover, the Symposium could not have been achieved if it wasn’t for the collaboration of our Vice
Presidents Rasool Daya and Zahra Nurmohamed and President Ali Datoo.
I would like to thank all of the writers for this issue and the previous one. Great job everyone! Also, a special thanks for Harsha Biswajit, our special art guest for the two issues of the newsletter: incredible art!
To Shirin, Mat and Iain, the GGD module was amazing. We learned a great deal, made us aware of theoretical and practical issues on how to tackle them. It was a challenging course, in which knowledge, critical thinking and organisation was needed to succeed in the assessments.
This Newsletter wishes Mat Doidge, dear GGD professor, the best luck after teaching at Warwick. He is now living in New Zealand. All the students are very grateful with you and wish you all the best in future life prospects. Thank you!
For all GGD and PaIS Postrgrad students, it was a fantastic year at Warwick, filled with memories that we all will cherish for a lifetime. It was great to have spent this year with all of you. All the best!
3

1
China constitutes 22% of the world population land.
Juan Pablo Gonzalez, MA. GAD.
C hina‟s accession to the World Trade
Organization (WTO) was greeted with great enthusiasm among agricultural exporting countries. The opening of the biggest world market would provide a golden opportunity for flooding the Asian giant with grains, oils and meat.
However, the preconceptions of most analysts proved to be wrong. After the accession in 2001, China managed to remain self-sufficient in most agricommodities and even built a net trade surplus for many years. In other words, despite its huge market and the gradual liberalization of import barriers, China entered the world as a timid food importer. Although imports have surpassed exports in recent years, the import pattern of China is remarkably heterogeneous across products and is clearly evidential of a sought national strategy.
Food security: the eternal obsession
For a country with limited natural resources 1 , hunger is naturally the main threat to its population. From the point of view of national governments, hungry citizens constitute a source of social turmoil and obviously, a clear barrier to growth. During the communist era, with the notable exception of the Great Leap
Forward, the Party was successful in assuring self-sufficiency in food. This achievement cannot be underestimated when looking at the enormous dimensions of China. To accomplish this objective, the government relied on a series of planning tools that ranged from total control of crop patterns and marketing channels to indirect influence on farming decisions based on price incentives and subsidies. It is important to note that even after the introduction of the reforms in the late but only possesses 9% of the world’s agricultural
1970s, food production is still of critical importance in the government‟s agenda.
Although several steps towards liberalization have been taken, the agricultural sector has never been set completely free to market forces.
Consumption trends
Income growth and urbanization are altering the food system in China, both boosting demand and changing the consumption mix. Firstly, as people become richer, they start demanding meat, vegetable oils and dairy products instead of just rice and wheat. Secondly, as people migrate from rural areas to cities, they leave behind rural semi-subsistence farming and incorporate urban lifestyles.
This implies a transition from home cooked food to processed foods and restaurant meals. As a result, the combined effect of income growth and urbanization has been massive. It involves not only an increase in demand for traditional staple foods but also the incorporation of new products and a change in consumption habits. In addition, it can be observed that amongst wealthier Chinese there is a demand for quality food and food with specific attributes.
Import-export decisions
Nearly all analysts predicted that China‟s agricultural imports would rise sharply after it joined the WTO. The strength of a huge population with increasing purchasing power underpinned these predictions. Although China‟s agricultural imports did increase, its exports kept pace with them. And what is more important, the broad-based increase in imports of grains, other field crops, meat, and dairy products did not occur. The growth in imports has been concentrated in a very narrow range of commodities. Specifically, imports of soybeans, soybean oil, and palm oil, which constituted around 60% of
4

all agricultural imports in 2007. On the other hand, imports of corn, rice, wheat and meat have remained far below projections, and in many years during the last decade China was even a net exporter.
This Chinese import-export pattern does not follow trends based on price relationships and tariffs. On the contrary, it illustrates a threefold strategy pursued by Chinese policymakers: maintain selfsufficiency in staple foods, maximise natural resource endowments and keep economic surplus from food industrialization in Chinese hands. The first objective is a direct consequence of the fear of food insecurity and social turmoil, so local production of staple foods
(mainly rice) is encouraged. Domestic production assures not only volume but also keeps prices quite isolated from international volatility. The second objective is orientated at profiting from labour abundance and attenuating land scarcity. So, China tends to import bulk land-intensive commodities (for example soybeans) and export labour-intensive commodities (for example, vegetables).
Finally, in order to add as much value as possible locally, it has focused on importing intermediate inputs for later manufacturing. A clear example is again the soybean‟s chain. From the imported beans and after the crushing process,
China obtains oil and meal. The former is used for the food industry and the latter to feed cattle, chickens and pigs. As a result, domestic consumption of processed food and meat is mainly fulfilled by local production. The same pattern can be observed in other agriculturally related imports such as hides and skins, which are used in the garment, footwear, and leather product industries
Lessons and future prospects
The main lesson of the past decade might be that the opportunities generated by
Chinese growth may be carefully analysed.
Although a huge economy growing at high rates will unarguably affect the rest of the world positively in “aggregate” terms, the effects can be strongly uneven amongst sectors and products. The main driver under this fact is that the nation states and policy makers‟ decisions do matter. In the case of China, where markets are, in average, weaker than in western democracies, the government‟s room to shape the economy is heightened.
Future prospects continue to be puzzling.
Many aspects of the Chinese economy are not well known or are kept hidden, like grain stocks and sectoral statistics. Many others are going through major changes, like the land market. Additionally, in the last decades China has increased local production sharply by straining natural resources and intensifying the use of fertilizers and pesticides. Hence, the environment has been intensively damaged and therefore constitutes a constraining variable for further growth.
The urbanization process continues to play a key role in shaping agriculture prospects.
It not only influences demand but also production factors such as the cost of land and labour. Finally, improvements in biotechnology and production methods have a lot to do to increase and stabilize yields. To conclude, agriculture in China is a very dynamic sector and it is far from equilibrium. Keeping an eye on these factors as well as on others is vital for understanding trends and consequentially acting. Having said this, and as I have emphasized through this article, the final impact on world trade will be highly determined by the decisions of policy makers and their capacity to deploy their strategies. China has defied analysts and forecasters in the past; so future
“surprises” should not be unexpected.
5

Dimitris Mathioudakis, MA. IR
A ll year long, while studying the GGD module, we all became familiar with such things as „structural adjustment‟ programmes and PRSP‟s
(poverty reduction strategy papers).
Similarly, we reviewed several attempts to install democracy in some countries, the latest of which were the American wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. Together with the existence of such things, we discovered billion of ways in which they could be improved.
I must admit that it was one of the weeks that interested me the least, as policy formulation and structural characteristics of particular states are not what interest me the most.
Nevertheless, once I became familiar with the subject that would become the main theme of my dissertation, I changed opinion, as both subjects link perfectly.
This subject is democratization, and more particularly political culture theory, as presented by Ronald Inglehart and
Christian Welzel in their book
Modernization, cultural change and democracy: the human development sequence (2005). And it is this theory that
I would like to present in this article, in order to link it with the two American wars and how hopeless their announced goals seem to be.
Political culture theory is a modified version of modernization theory. It was first presented by Gabriel Almond and
Sidney Verba in 1963 in their truly groundbreaking book The Civic Culture .
Before that, the consensus was that socioeconomical development „generates‟ democracy through the modification of structural aspects of nations, such as its level of inequality, the revenue per capita or the rate of unemployment. This is because there is strong statistical evidence showing that the more socio-economically a society is, the more democratic it tends to be (there obviously are exceptions such as Singapore among the rich and India among the poor). Almond and Verba believed that structural characteristics of a society cannot generate directly an immaterial thing like democracy and postulated that it is through the values of the people, their civic culture, that democracy appears in a country.
Socio-economic development changes most aspects of a society, but more interestingly to this theory, people‟s values. In a very maslowian (see Maslow‟s pyramid of needs) fashion societies that are little developed bring up citizens that are preoccupied about their existence, thus privileging survival values – working instead of studying, cultivating instead of playing instruments, working some more instead of taking holidays, rejecting homosexuality (as it is seen to threaten the survival of the race as they cannot have children), etc. – and traditional values – xenophobia, believing strongly in a religion, etc. In the same way, socioeconomically developed societies bring up citizens that are not preoccupied about their survival, thus privileging selfexpression values – freedom of speech, a stronger drive for higher education, acceptance of homosexuality, etc. – and secular values – belief in technologies
(rain does not depend from divinities anymore but is known to be a physical phenomenon), separation between the church and the state, etc.
These two different value axis, survival/self-expression values and traditional/secular values, appear in different moments and favoured different things. The latter set of values rises with industrialization and the improvement of technologies. Even though they are a clear demonstration of what could be called progress, they still allow for authoritarianism. Indeed, whether on religion or on science, people‟s set of beliefs is focused on something higher than them and still show to be compliant with authority, thus allowing for dictators to take over. It is only with postindustrialization, the rise of the tertiary
6

sector and better education that selfexpression values will develop. Such values lead to prefer tolerance over conformity, autonomy over authority, expression over security and equality over patriarchy, and are intrinsically leading to democracy.
The process of value change obviously does not occur overnight. As mentioned above, these values develop while growing up, and have been proved to change only slightly during crisis periods, to come back to what they were in the post-crisis period.
It is easy to infer that every generation has more secular and self-expression values than the preceding one. It is often said that someone‟s values become more traditional with the age advancing, but it is only an illusion due to the fact that the new generation always is more secular and self-expression, given that positive socioeconomic conditions occurred in their fifteen first years of their lives. This also means that if the conditions get worse, as they did in Eastern Europe after the fall of
USSR, the new generations will have as values as traditional and survival-centred, if not more so.
How then, does an intergenerational slowly cumulative process provoke such drastic and usually big regime changes, from authoritarianism to democracy?
The answer is that there are thresholds in the effect of self-expression values on democracy. Inglehart and Welzel showed that the share of a country‟s population holding self-expression values can increase slightly every year without the level of democracy of that country changing. Though, above a threshold of discrepancy between self-expression values within the population and the level of democracy in a country, things are bound to change. Indeed, if too many people are unhappy with the level of freedom (which is equated to the level of democracy, as it is the kind of regime that defends it best), that level must change.
This threshold varies according to the different conditions that exist at that time.
A small discrepancy between the level of self-expression among the population and the level of democracy in Western democracies will be enough to provoke that change. A bigger discrepancy will be needed for an entire population to revolt against a dictatorship. These thresholds also change according to international conditions and events. Thus, when
Gorbatchev declared the USSR would not intervene in his neighbouring countries if a problem were to happen, the threshold for these countries was considerably lowered. Illustrations of this are Poland and Belarus. Poland‟s level of selfexpression among the population was considerably higher than its level of democracy, but this discrepancy was not big enough to think they would be able to beat the Red Army. After the end of the
Red Army‟s threat, the threshold for things to change considerably lowered and actually fell below the level of discrepancy between self-expression values and democracy. Indeed, soon after the fall of the USSR Poland democratized thanks to mass movements that sprung from within.
On the other hand, Belarus remained an authoritarian regime, as there was little or no discrepancy between the country‟s level of self-expression and its level of democracy; in other words, the lowered threshold for things to change still was higher than the democratic discrepancy, so no movement within emerged to democratize.
This congruence between the level a country‟s self-expression level and democracy level also works in the other way. If more freedom is offered than the population needs it, as it would have to think about getting food and shelter before writing an editorial in a newspaper, then these liberties will not survive for long, as the elites will take advantage of the situation.
It is now easy (hopefully) to apply this to
Iraq‟s and Afghanistan‟s situation.
Democracy usually springs from within the population, because of rising selfexpression values and a certain threshold of discrepancy between those and the level of democracy is passed. International events can help instating democracy, like
US invasions, but that regime will not survive if there is no sufficient level of selfexpression to sustain it. It is thus normal
7

to see that corruption and fraud are still common in Iraq and Afghanistan, notwithstanding the US invasion. This is just because the predominance of survival values still brings them to take bribes and help family and friends hoping to get help back when they need it.
In other words, and as many have already said, democracy cannot be exported. It must spring from, or at least be sustained by, the population and its values.
Inglehart and Welzel proved this in their book and even though it means that any
American attempt to instate democracy abroad while ignoring that fact is bound to fail. Moreover, it also gives good hope for other countries. An example of country for which we can hope is China. It develops quickly on the socio-economical level and its population‟s self-expression values are already higher than the level of democracy it lives in. According to Inglehart and
Welzel, a significant democratization of
China should happen within two decades.
8

Alessa Rigal, MA. GAD
A s Tzvetan Todorov stated so eloquently, „the role of justice is to
„manifest reality‟ and „be a forum for truth.‟ 2 The need for the International
Criminal Court (ICC), a permanent, independent, and international court was a long time coming within International
Criminal Law (ICL). Criminals neede `d to know that just because they were heads of state, for example, or in a country where such core crimes were not within their judicial system that they would be made accountable and would set a precedent for future criminals. The Ad-hoc tribunals were useful, but because they focused on just one country and had prosecutors and judges appointed by States, the justice was seen to be almost biased. Despite problems: jurisdiction, gravity, complementarity and legitimacy, a future can be seen with ICL. Issues with the aforementioned provisions of the court were discussed not as a criticism of the court, but as a guide. If these problems are addressed, ICL and the future role of the
Prosecutor will remain strong. While this is a very simple answer, there is more to it than meets the eye. Let us focus on the
ICC‟s hope to act as a deterrent for future criminals committing atrocities because they will be made accountable for their actions, as an example. The US went into
Iraq amongst many other potential reasons, under the pretence of toppling a dictatorship of a man whose tyranny against his people had been going on for nearly twenty years. Why was Saddam‟s authority not put forth as a possible investigation for the ICC? Currently the situations in Darfur, Uganda, DRC, etc put into question the authority of the state and the atrocities that they have committed against their own people. Why was US military action Iraq then necessary? That question is still one of many that show the importance of this communication for ICL
2
Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Limitations of Justice” and the role of the Prosecutor. The communication represents a still limited role by the Prosecutor and a need for more specifics within ICL. Ultimately it is the end of impunity that we strive to achieve, is it not? Antoine Garapon puts it quite simply as to what needs to be done to secure a more definitive role not just for justice, for ICL as a whole: „the power of justice is not simply the power to judge, but also above all, the power to prosecute.
To prosecute is to designate, isolate and, therefore, disqualify a human being.‟ 3
Prosecution is the blood of court system, without it, there is nothing. ICL has to, without a doubt, poor all its power into making the ICC a strong being, a court that the world takes seriously. States must cooperate and we will begin to see an end to the atrocities of this world. One needs to think collectively and not as individual countries to see that only through reciprocity and the reinforcement of an
ICC with all countries under its Statute will the future of ICL be a thriving organism. The world needs to maintain that „justice should not be confused with truth; nor should it be confounded with public peace or the common good. Each of them has a specific and sufficiently burdensome task to accomplish. 4
Tordorov once again exercise his thoughts with ease and expresses himself to all of us, of what we must possess to preserve humanity and fight impunity with all our might.
3
Garapon, Antoine. “Three Challenges for
International Criminal Justice”
4
Todorov, Tzvetan. “The Limitations of Justice”
9

Damon Boughen, MA
. IR
Soccer's Lost Boys:
A sk the man in the street to name an
African footballer in a top flight league and without fail names such as Essien, Drogba and Eto’o will inevitably arise. Ask an actual football fan, and they may give you names like Kieta,
Sessègnon, Diarra and Gyan. In short, football fanatic or not, one cannot but help notice that African footballers are now seen as equal, if not better, foreign equivalent. When you couple this with a relatively successful World Cup held in
South Africa this year and that, so far,
Ivorian Yara Touré’s transfer to
Manchester City is the largest close-season deal of the Premiership at £24 million
(Hunter, A. 2010), then one could assume that African football is in rude health. But what of those young footballers who don’t make it?
Vanguard parents wish to move academies or approach an agent themselves, they will have to buyout the licence from the coach.
With the financial gains that can be made on the sum paid by agents to transfer the ownership of these licences, there is a definite reason for coaches to seek to train youth players purely for profit. Of course, there are those who actually train youngsters for the love of the game, taking the agents fees just to sustain their academies, but they are few and far between.
In Africa, according to the continent’s governing body, the Confederation of
African Football (CAF), all academies must be registered with either the local football association or local government.
However, when you consider that over five hundred unlicensed (and often poorly staffed and equipped) academies exist in
Accra alone, then it is clear to see that many are seeking to profit on the success of Ghanaians such as Essien and Appiah.
As young adults growing up in some of the poorest states on earth, young amateur
African footballers are of course going to idolise not only the skills of the aforementioned footballers but their fame and fortune (Touré’s new contract making him the highest paid Premiership player at a meagre £200,000 a week). Seeing football as there only means of escape from abject poverty, many of these young players are desperate to reach the
‘promised land’ of a European league team by whatever means necessary.
Even before any talk of a European transfer however, the corruption of these young players can begin before they even reach their teens. In countries such as
Ghana, even youth players as young as seven require a licence to compete at any level. Since these licences are held not by the player, but their coach
, it is the child’s coach who has the final say on where he plays or when he is sold onto an agent.
This also means should a child and/or their
Trailer // Current
Despite this, many families in Ghana and across Africa still see football as their ticket out of poverty, with many parents paying what wages they have to academies, licensed or otherwise, in the hope that one day their son will play in
Europe. The likelihood of this is slim, particularly if the child is being trained in an illegal academy where the staff is likely to have limited knowledge of coaching or even football, stunting the child’s development. In spite of this, when approached by agents some parents go as far as selling their family jewels or even the deeds of their house to cover the cost of transport to Europe for trials.
Should a child ever get the chance to be signed by an agent, then gaining a contract with a European club is often the least of
10

their worries. As demonstrated in the eyeopening documentary Soccer's Lost Boys by Current TV, many of the documents sold to agents are falsified by coaches.
Most agents will only take on children of sixteen years or above as gaining working visas for younger children are near impossible, and thus most European clubs are not interested. However, faced with the prospect of making a profit on one of their young talents, coaches have been known to lie about ages of players to attract agents.
In the documentary, Ghanaian coach
Danny Smith almost boastfully demonstrates how easy it is for him to change the date on a 14 year olds player’s licence to read that he is actually 16, and goes onto gain a fake passport for the boy.
With fake documents in hand, the agent pays off the coach, and sets about attempting to arrange trials for his new acquisition. The problem arises when the player fails to get a contract for one of two reasons. First, the player is not good enough or not what the club is after at that point. Secondly, the player is good enough, but when the club attempts to get working visas for the player, then his true age is often revealed and the contract is swiftly withdrawn. With the agents fingers burnt, there is no fiscal incentive for them to return the player home, often leaving them in an unfamiliar place with no money, transport, shelter and often no grasp of the local language.
It is estimated that this practise of abandoning failed prospects is so extensive that approximately 20,000 Africans are currently stranded across Europe, and that number continues to rise. This is further compounded by the actions of unlicensed agents and outright human traffickers. A common report in Africa is that a young prospect has been promised the chance to play in Europe, and all he has to do to make it a reality is give a large sum of money to an agent. Unbeknownst to him this agent has no intention whatsoever of taking the player out of Africa. As mentioned previously, player’s parents are often so desperate to gain their son an agent; they will sell all they own, including their house to pay for their son’s transport to Europe. In reality, often only part of this is used to cover transport costs.
The ‘agent’ will take the player, as promised, to Morocco as a transit point into Europe. At this point, he or she will demand the player gives them their fee in full to secure their boat. Of course, there is no boat, and the agent swiftly makes his escape, several thousand pounds richer.
Even though the prospect of being abandoned in Morocco at the age of 16, sometimes even less, without shelter or money is horrifying, a worst fate awaits those targeted by human traffickers on the pretence of a trial abroad. Dan McDougall reports that in 2007 a compact fishing vessel with 130 Africans aboard washed up on La Tejita beach in Tenerife, many hypothermic, all badly dehydrated. Not an uncommon story sadly, but what makes this unique is that 15 of them were teenagers who boarded the boat falsely believing they were about to have trials with Marseille or Real Madrid.
This is furthered by Jean-Marie Dedecker, a Belgian Member of Parliament who highlighted at a Play The Game conference in 2005 that his country has 170 illegal agents operating within its borders compared to 30 official agents. He goes onto state categorically that some of these illegal agents use the players they have fooled into drugs trafficking, prostitution and organised crime. In an act of self validation that these shadowy figures are tied to these agents, several direct threats were made to Dedecker, threatening to kill him should he carry out his promise to travel to Nigeria to further investigate these agents. He eventually sent a representative in his place.
Even those who get to Europe with the aid of ‘legitimate’ agents can have a horrific
11

experience. The story of 17 year old
Bernard Bass of Guinea-Bissau is a good example of this. From his own country he travelled first to Ghana, then to Senegal to take a boat to Tenerife. This crossing took two weeks. When he eventually arrived on the Spanish island, his passport and visa was withheld by his agent, and he was effectively kept prisoner in a house in
Tenerife for a month, not being allowed to leave without the agent present. Bass’s agent finally took him onto France for a trial with Metz, which never took place.
Bass now sleeps on the floor of a friend’s flat in Clichy-sous-Bois, a notorious Paris ghetto.
With no money and little clothing, many abandoned players are forced to sleep rough or in small squats in abandoned buildings with other players, sleeping five or six to a bed. Culture Foot Solidaire, a
French based NGO set up to combat the problem of these abandoned youths, is aware of around 800 boys sleeping rough in Paris alone. As these 800 are just the ones that have been identified, this number could be in the thousands. Jean-Claude
Mbvoumin, President of the NGO goes on to state that these boys become desperate for food and money, often become involved in crime and both users and pushers of drugs. As shown in the Current documentary, some even sell their bodies to earn enough to survive.
With no visa, and often no passport as it is either fake or stolen by the agent, going to the police for help is often not an option for these boys. Sometimes, those who can return home do not wish to do so, feeling that their family will lose face with their local community as their son returns having failed to make it in Europe. Many of the players are illiterate, as they are often withdrawn from school at a young age to concentrate on football, so they often only have no way of knowing where to go for help. With little choice but to continue to try and earn a contract, the last resort is what are known as ‘black market’ games.
Essentially, these games are held away from the public eye, often in playing fields long after they have closed. All the players have been abandoned, often with expired or no visas. They are playing illegally.
This still does not stop many agents from attending these illicit games in the hope of finding a player who has slipped through the net. These agents will then pay the organiser of these games a kick back to take any player they want, often for only a few hundred pounds. The agent will then attempt to gain trials and visas for the player, possibly fraudulently, and should this fail the player is again abandoned and the cycle begins again. Whilst these agents are often unlicensed and the organisers connected to criminal organisations, sometimes agents with connections to big
European teams are seen at these games.
Even though the future is bleak for many young players abandoned across Europe and Morocco, there is a glimmer of hope.
First, Culture Foot Solidaire continues to gain attention and funding, and now has attracted the Cameroonian legend (for lack of a better word) Roger Milla as its new ambassador (FIFA, 2008). Secondly, academies such as the Right to Dream academy in Ghana are providing an alternative to the current for-profit structure of many academies. Right to
Dream provides residencies and a combined academic and sporting curriculum for five years, regardless if the child gains an agent or not. Should the boy not succeed on the pitch, then they are still well qualified to seek employment elsewhere, something that cannot be said of football centric academies. Despite this,
Right to Dream is already oversubscribed and similar academies are few and far between. More worryingly are the developments in Belgium and the
Netherlands.
12

Both clubs in the Belgium and Dutch leagues have been long known to double as feeder clubs to clubs in ‘bigger’ leagues i.e. the English Premiership. What this means is that the large clubs can circumvent stricter UK laws on immigration by loaning prospects out to feeder clubs for a few years in the hope that they can gain an EU passport by taking the nationality of their host country.
Belgium is particularly popular with big clubs as passports can be applied for after only three years of residency. The idea that a 17 year old prospect from, say, Nigeria can be placed in Antwerp for three years, learn the game in a good standard league and then is available to be brought to
England at 20 is obviously attractive; so much so that Manchester United has a written contract with Royal Antwerp FC to do just that (Castle, S, Smith, A.D. &
Rundle, L, 2000). Whilst this obviously helps young Africans increase their chances of playing in one of the world biggest leagues, it is just the start of a worrying trend.
In the last decade or so, there has been heavy investment in club sponsored academies, with both Dutch giants Ajax and Feyenoord operating extremely well staffed and equipped academies in Ghana as well as other African states. Manchester
United has a controlling interest in South
African side Western Province United; even the comparatively small Belgian club
Lokeren has five African ‘satellite clubs’.
Even though this growing investment in the continent brings a sheen of professionalism to otherwise amateur setups, benefiting those involved, it also attracts more illicit agents and academies as well. The more money put in, the more money to be made unethically. It also undermines the ability of local African leagues to grow as many of their best players are lost to Europe. No wonder
FIFA President Sebb Blatter once accused
Europe's richest clubs of 'despicable' behaviour and engaging in 'social and economic rape' when questioned on the topic of their activities in the developing world (BBC Sport, 2003).
So next time you see Mariga or Eto’o run out at the San Siro, or Essien or Drogba pull on a Chelsea shirt, remember how many more are not so lucky.
References
BBC Sport (2003) Blatter condemns
European Clubs. Available from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/footb all/africa/3326971.stm
Castle, S, Smith, A.D. & Rundle, L
(2000) Inquiry into 'slave trade' in
African footballers. The Independent.
7 th
November.
Current TV (2010)
Soccer’s Lost
Boys. Available from: http://current.com/shows/vanguard/9
2495403_soccers-lost-boys.htm
FIFA (2008) Culture Foot Solidaire protecting youth. Available from: http://www.fifa.com/newscentre/new s/newsid=920094.html
Hunter, A (2010) So Yaya Touré, what is it about Man City's billionaires that attracts?
The
Guardian.
24 th
July.
MacDougall, D (2008) Inquiry into
'slave trade' in African footballers.
The Observer. 6 th
January.
Play The Game (2005) Football’s trafficking in third world athletes.
Available from: http://www.playthegame.org/news/de tailed/footballs-trafficking-in-thirdworld-athletes-1255.html
13

I
have just returned from my first trip to South Africa. I went to Cape Town to do some work on the South African parliament for the Leverhulme Trust programme on Gendered Ceremony and
Ritual, which I direct. Together with a colleague, I interviewed several parliamentary officials – the Sergeant-atarms of the National Assembly, the
Secretary to the Assembly, the
Administrator and the ex-curator for the parliament‟s art collection, the director of a civil society group that monitors the working of parliament, the
Parliamentary Monitoring
Group. The idea was to understand how the parliamentary space and symbols are being transformed in the postapartheid era and what do they tell us about the complex politics of
South Africa‟s transition to democracy.
The premise of the programmes is that ceremony and ritual are co-constitutive of politics – they reflect as well as frame politics of a country.
Before I went, I had heard a lot about violence and insecurity on the streets of
South African cities. The bed and breakfast I stayed in seemed to symbolize this fear – there were two gates both centrally locked, all day. We were told on arrival that we should not walk around in the evening and that we should not take public transport. That this fear was racialized (not explicitly but implicitly definitely so) made the whole issue of security most problematic. To live daily in a „prison‟, to suspect one‟s cocitizens, to view others with suspicion on a day to day basis seemed to me to diminish everyday life. Cape Town is also of course a segregated city – not strictly, not in apartheid terms but in terms of class/race overlap. There might not be apartheid laws keeping communities separate, but there are definitely social boundaries that are still not being crossed – whites owned the houses in the area we stayed in and blacks worked in these houses.
And yet. I looked around the parliament, the restaurants that we ate in, the shopping arcades that we visited, parliamentary tours, the tour to Robben Island, where Mandela and the
ANC leadership was incarcerated for long stretches, on the streets in the area we stayed – everywhere the apartheid boundaries on grounds of colour had broken down. While restaurant workers served the small but visible black middle class. Thinking of only twenty years ago, I had to take a deep, exhilarating breath every time I saw this – not mingling of people, but definitely breaking of legal barriers even though social barriers still remained in place. Our visit to parliament was a case in point.
Like in the broader economy, there now exists a programme of affirmative action for recruiting black people in jobs in the civil service and in institutions of learning – University of
Cape Town has now more than fifty per cent non-white population.
To meet the „coloured‟ sergeant-at-arms and the „Indian‟ Secretary to the National
Assembly and to know that the „black rod‟ was indeed black, was also to reflect upon
14

the changes that have being achieved in this country.
This change has been reflected in the symbols of the new South Africa – in the context of the parliament, in its redesigned emblem, mace and the black rod. The parliament is now called the
„people‟s parliament‟ so these symbols of postapartheid democratic
South Africa need to reflect this new phase in their political history – of unity as well as diversity, of democ ratic govern ance and of an
„Africa nization‟ of their public rituals and symbols.
A delicate balance between the various provinces, cultures and races is depicted through these redesigned symbols of state and democratic power. But this is most clearly evidenced in the new mix of faces in parliament. We took a parliamentary tour with a group of Africans; the guide repeated many times that this group could not even enter parliament much less take a tour of it before 1994 – black South
Africans were not even thought to be good enough to work within the precincts of the legislature! Now, most of the MPs are black. The art on the walls also tells the story of change. The Keiskamma tapestry
(120m long embroidered panel made by a women‟s collective, depicting the history of South Africa) now adorns the wall, and the portraits of white parliamentarians and the British monarchs now hide in the store rooms.
So, art and craft, symbols and ceremony tell us a lot about politics and the changes in a country. We need to look closely to see how space is reconfigured in times of change to reflect the momentous shifts that take place in political life of nations.
At the same time I witnessed a lot of anger
– of young black people who think the pace of change is too slow; of older blacks who feel that their sacrifices have not resulted in a redistributive politics that they struggled for; of Indians and
„coloureds‟ who think that they are being sidelined by the new regime and by whites who feel that they are being dispossessed by (perhaps) an undeserving majority. The politics of this country seems to be teetering on a precipice – between
15

populism and dictatorship, trying desperately to bridge the gap between hope and despair.
So, I heard and saw a lot in five days – of hopes and disappointments, change and stability, sacrifice and aggrandizement, patience and impatience. I noticed that when political struggles succeed they also inherit problems and challenges that are not easy to address; that impatience of the next generation overlooks the huge achievements of the previous generation; that structure and agency clash and that the gap between the two makes for uncomfortable times.
‘History depends on who wrote it’.
Nelson Mandela
16

T he problem of “invisibility of women” is not new. This phenomenon has captured attention of many analysts and researchers who have produced interesting studies about this topic. However, even given a high profile of this issue, many people still remain vague about the essence of the problem. That is why the purpose of this article is to clarify the concept of
“invisibility of women‟.
One of the most seminal works in this area was produced by a political economist
Marilyn Waring in 1988. The author draws attention to the fact that in national income accounts only cash generating activities are taken into account, which renders unpaid work of women invisible.
5
Hence the problem of the failure to acknowledge, respect and register the role of women in economic activity. is starting a day at 4 am, fetching water and carrying thirty-litre tin to a borehole about eleven kilometers from home, fetching firewood, cleaning utensils, preparing food, fetching wild vegetables, putting children to sleep.
7
Although there is no doubt that these women do work, according to the international economic system, they are considered as unproductive, unoccupied and economically inactive only because their work is economically invisible. This kind of logic leads to the conclusion that for example, “those who care for children in an orphanage are „occupied‟; mothers who care for their children at home are
„unoccupied‟ ”. 8 However, is this the case?
The answer is certainly negative.
What is “invisibility of women”? This term refers to the unpaid work carried out by women through caring for their families and reproducing the labor force. For example, an invisible part of a young middle-class North American housewife is preparing food, setting the table serving meals, cleaning food and dishes from the table, washing dishes, dressing and diapering her children, disciplining children, taking children to day-care or to school, disposing of garbage, dusting, doing the laundry, going to the supermarket, repairing household items, ironing, keeping an eye on or playing with the children, making beds, paying bills, caring for pets and plants, sewing or mending or knitting, answering the phone, vacuuming, sweeping, and washing floors, cleaning the bathroom and the kitchen, and putting children to bed.
6 Similarly, invisible job carried out by an African girl
So what is the root problem of invisibility of women? The major problem is that there is the lack of understanding of what social reproduction means and what the role of women in it is. As for the definition,
“ social reproduction can be taken to include the following: biological reproduction; unpaid production in the home (both goods and services); social provisioning (by this we mean voluntary work directed at meeting needs in the community); the reproduction of culture and ideology; and the provision of sexual, emotional and affective services (such as are required to maintain family and intimate relationships).” 9 Closer examination reveals that these elements are contributed to economy and society in general by women, regardless their position in society.
10 However, the problem is that growing and processing
7
Ibid, p.15
8
Ibid, p.31
9
Catherine Hoskyns, and Shirin M. Rai, (2007)
5
See Marilyn Waring, If women counted : a new feminist economics , San Francisco :
HarperSanFrancisco, 1990
6
Ibid, pp.15-16
'Recasting the Global Political Economy: Counting
Women's Unpaid Work', New Political Economy ,
12:3, p.300
10
ibid
17

food, nurturing, educating and running a household, which are all parts of the complex process of reproduction, are unacknowledged as part of the production system. A woman who supplies such labor is not seen by economists as performing work or value.
What leads to this sort of false logic? Many analysts and authors, including Waring, see the problem in the United Nations
System of National Accounts (NSA). The
SNA, which was established in 1993 and authorized by all major international institutions, sets out by common agreement how national accounts should be constructed across the different countries of the world. Its aim is to map national economies in order to establish gross domestic product (GDP), identify national and global trends and to make cross national comparisons.
More importantly, however, the SNA sets the
„production boundary‟ for all countries that defines which activities are counted as
„productive‟ and therefore as part of the market economy, and which are „not counted‟ because they are not deemed
„productive‟.
11 According to this system, unpaid work of women is seen to be outside the „production boundary‟, which automatically makes women‟s work invisible.
It is hardly surprising that due to its method of constructing national accounts the NSA is subject to major criticism.
Feminists criticize it mainly for not making the effort to measure all female economic activity and for hiding behind dismal excuses about the complexity of data collection. However, in order to demonstrate that it is feasible to measure the value of unpaid work, feminist economists and statisticians have offered certain solutions. At least two methods seem workable.
The first is called the “replacement value” method and it offers to „count‟ unpaid work through defining how much would it
11
Ibid, p.301 cost to replace unpaid workers with paid workers. The other approach – The
“opportunity value” method – implies calculating the amount the unpaid worker would be earning if s/he were in the paid labor market instead of doing unpaid work. 12
In sum, judging from the above discussion, two main conclusions can be made: firstly, the logic that only work that generates economic profits should be considered productive is fundamentally flawed. Second, counting women‟s unpaid work is both feasible and highly desirable as it will lead to new kind of „economic thinking‟, implying that economy is more than just market.
12
Ibid, p.302
18

C an a country with total GDP of around $5 billion 1 accommodate a project that requires $2-$6 billion? It seems that Tajikistan – the poorest state in the post-soviet region – may prove that with political will, “voluntary” donations from the public and an international support, only sky is the limit. „Rogun‟ is deemed to be the tallest hydroelectric dam in the world if completed.
2 The country has a potential to be a great hydropower with its mountains and glaciers that hold over half of Central
Asia‟s water reserves. The height of the dam is said to be 335m with projected power of 3600 megawatt which should be able to generate 13.1 billion kilowatt hours per annum.
3 The project was initiated during Soviet times but was stalled after the collapse of the Communist regime that left the country in the state of civil war and hibernated much of its economic activity at the time.
4 After relative stability returned to Tajikistan the government began actively searching for prospective investors to reinvigorate its economy through construction of hydroelectric dams that could nicely serve poverty-stricken, energy-stripped and landlocked country. This project offers not only secure and stable electricity supply within its borders but also an export potential to neighbouring countries, including Afghanistan and
Pakistan. designed to raise capital to, at least partially, activate the dam
(two of its six aggregates).
Nation-wide campaign kicked off in January 2010 to encourage citizens to purchase Rogun shares which ranged from $23 to about $1, 150 5 in the country where over 50 percent of the population live below poverty line.
6
According to Radio Free Europe, by the end of April 2010 the purchase of shares reached $184 million 7 (about 4% of country‟s GDP) after alleged unconventional persuasion techniques by the government to suckle the private purse. A deluge of complaints from university students, private enterprises, hospitals, schools and the like has contributed to a downward slide of the country‟s already tarnished reputation in major human record and democracy indices piloted by various international bodies. For example, the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) warned that this kind of approach might adversely affect general welfare of the population, encourage corruption and slow down economic growth in 2010 by up to 1 percent.
8
However, to fully complete the project the country will have to attract investment from elsewhere which will be very troublesome due to its reputation for jobbery and a failure to pay for the service of another hydro-power, the controlling share of which is owned by
Russian government and companies
(75%).
9
Not being able to attract investors the government decided to carry out the project without any foreign assistance via government-mediated shares that were
Anxious neighbour
19

Though, this grandiose development is not without its opponents. Uzbekistan, a country to the west of Tajikistan, is deeply concerned about possible disruption of water flow (which it desperately needs for irrigation of its main export produce – cotton) and the environmental risk of having a mammoth basin in seismic prone area.
10 Nevertheless, Tajikistan is determined to get on with the project which is viewed as national idea and a saviour of its crippled economy. It is the same neighbour that has (in)directly affected the country‟s decision to limit its dependence on imported electricity which was often subjected to cut-offs by
Uzbekistan over payment disputes.
Uzbekistan went as far as creating an economic blockade of Tajikistan by not allowing Tajikistan-bound railway cars to pass through its territory which is the only transit route available to Tajikistanis. In
May 2010 around 2,500 wagons were stranded in Uzbekistan.
11 Moreover, it is believed that Uzbekistan is intentionally undermining Tajikistan‟s attempts to develop due to various political reasons which are open to speculation.
12
Road ahead
At this stage it is hard to tell whether this project will go ahead with its communist past, bitter present and uncertain future.
For most Tajikistanis cold winter nights coupled with electricity cuts could be a turning point for the government to take concrete measures to eschew possible social unrest. It is important to engage with all stakeholders and select priorities according to the country‟s needs without hurting the most vulnerable groups of the society. Technical assistance and impartial mediation by international entities is welcome but more is required to embark the country on a firm developmental path.
What lies ahead only time will tell...
1.
Central Intelligence Agency (2010)
Tajikistan , The World Fact Book (Online]
Available from: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/ the-world-factbook/geos/ti.html
(Accessed on 22 June 2010).
2.
Tolstoy, A. (2010) The people’s dam, but what price for energy security?
neweurasia.
http://www.neweurasia.net/p olitics-and-society/the-peoples-dam-butwhat-price-for-energy-security/#more-
8201 (Accessed on 22 June 2010).
3.
See 2
4.
Marat, E. (2010) Will Tajikistan successfully construct Roghun? Eurasia
Daily Monitor , 7 (17). [Online] Available from: http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_ca
che=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=35955
&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=5
3f9274652 (Accessed on 23 June 2010).
5.
See 4
6.
UNDP (2001) Tajikistan, PEI Country fact sheet .
http://www.unpei.org/PDF/Tajikista n-Fact-Sheet.pdf
(Accessed on 23 June
2010).
7.
Radio Free Europe (2010) Tajikistan to allow Roghun shares on the marke t. http://www.rferl.org/content/Tajikistan_
To_Allow_Roghun_Shares_To_Go_On_T he_Market/2025180.html
(Accessed on 23
June 2010).
8.
Forestier-Walker, R. (2010) Tajiks invest in mega-dam project, Al Jazeera English . http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/2010/0
3/201032513529763859.html
(Accessed on 23 June 2010).
9.
Volkov, V. (2009) Dmitry Medvedev‟s visit to Tajikistan not solves existing problems,
Turkish Weekly . [Online] Available from: http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/8578
7/-dmitry-medvedev-s-visit-to-tajikistannot-solves-existing-problems-.html
[Accessed on 23 June 2010).
10.
See 8
11.
Radio Freedom Europe (2010) Cargo trains line up in latest Tajik-Uzbek row . http://origin.rferl.org/content/Cargo_Trai ns_Line_Up_In_Latest_UzbekTajik_Row
/2058030.html
(Accessed on 23 June
2010).
12.
Parshin, K. (2009) Tajikistan: Dushanbe may stop water flow as Uzbekistan pulls plug on power, Asia Plus . available from: http://asiaplus.tj/en/articles/31/4406.ht
ml
20

H drawing. arsha Biswajit returns to the second issue of the WGDS Newsletter with another astonishing art work. „Oil Spill‟ captures the current BP oil disaster. We would like to thank the artist and IPE master student for taking the time to prepare this
21

The last GGD module was organised by a student-led
Symposium. To culminate a great year at Warwick, the Symposium gathered interesting panels, moderators, dance shows and surprise Capoeira demonstration thanks to the Capoeira Society. Also, the students proved their cooking talent preparing national dishes. Moreover, national dresses we worn, showing the variety of traditions in the world. The Symposium was a great success and was truly an exciting and fun day. The panel discussions consisted in: Disaster Response and Reconstruction in Haiti, the Situation in
Kashmir, the Politics of HIV/AIDS, is Aid Counterproductive?, and Q&A on military in Iraq and Afghanistan. During each break, activities took place, like a Role Play in ‘What is Poverty?’, Mock the World and a World Dance-Off.
Not just GGD students attended the Symposium; many PaIS students sat down during the panels and activities. The Symposium ended at the Terrace
Bar.
Here are some pictures of the day.
22

The day after the submission of the second round of Research Essays, the PaIS Postgraduate
Department along with the SSLCs organized ‘picture day’. Master students of International Political
Economy, International Relations, Globalisation and Development, International Security,
International Politics and Europe, International Politics and East Asia, and Politics gathered together to capture an incredible year at Warwick. Shirin accompanied us to celebrate the end of term.
23