Warwick Global Development Society
IN THIS ISSUE
GLOBALISATION
FORUM
Introduction
AND
DEVELOPMENT
2
By Shirin M. Rai
Newsletter
Vol.3, Special Edition,
June 2005
PANEL I: AFRICA – DEVELOPMENT AS A
UNIFYING FORCE?
Senegal
3
WELCOME!
By Abou Fall
Tanzania – Looking Back: Lessons Learned
5
By Gloria N. Labarani
Zimbabwe
6
By Vulindlela Ndlovu
PANEL III: GLOBALISATION IN ASIA – THE
CASE OF PAKISTAN, INDIA AND SOUTH KOREA
Pakistan: Nationhood under the Conditions
of Globalisation
7
By Uzma Hussain
PANEL IV: THE GREAT BRITISH PANEL
An Alternative Britain: A Radical View
9
By James Duggan
The Future of Great Britain
11
By Keith Addenbrooke
WORLD MODEL UNITED NATIONS
Introduction
12
By Laura Dunbar
Considering the Role of the United Nations
Development Programme (UNDP)
12
By Laura Dunbar
Debates in the Sixth Committee (Legal
Committee) of the General Assembly in the
Harvard World Model of the United
Nations (Edinburgh, March, 2005) on the
Issue of Standards for Imposing Sanctions
and other Coercive Measures
14
This Special Edition of the 2004-2005
Warwick Global Development Society
Newsletter is focused on the
conferences and events of the latter
stages of the taught Masters
programme.
This Special Edition features revisited
presentations from the Globalisation
and Development Forum, convened as
a concluding chapter to the
Globalisation
and
Development
programme,
and
reports
from
participants in the 2005 World Model
United Nations Conference. It
concludes with a brief word from two
of the G+D participants, reporting on
the path they will be following when
their time at Warwick comes to an end.
Once again our thanks go to all those
who have contributed.
Enjoy!
By Rossalina Madjirova
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
Beyond Globalisation and Development
15
By Keith Addenbrooke
West African Trade Hub
By Abou Fall
16
1
GLOBALISATION AND DEVELOPMENT FORUM
The Globalisation and Development Forum was convened on 8th March 2005, a
concluding chapter to the taught component of the Globalisation and Development
Masters Programme. The Forum was organised into four thematic panels,
considering: Africa – Development as a Unifying Force?; Latin America – Past,
Present, Future; Globalisation in Asia – The Case of Pakistan, India and South Korea;
and The Great British Panel. A small selection of participants have kindly agreed to
revisit their presentations for this Newsletter.
Introduction
Shirin M. Rai
Professor of Politics and International Studies
Director: MA/Dip Globalization and
Development, University of Warwick
I would like to express my thanks to all the students
who helped organise and participated in the Forum
on the 8th of March 2005. The presentations and
the discussion that followed gave a real flavour of
the complex set of issues that cluster under the
umbrella of Globalisation and Development.
Several themes emerged from the discussion. First,
that there is not one but many globalisations that
effect the many nations, nationalities and states that
were the focus of the Forum. There is the
globalisation of political economy, of culture, of
socio-political institutions. There is the globalisation
that encompasses all countries but in different ways
– the drivers of this globalisation in both senses
of the term are different and unequal. There is
also the globalisation of discourses – of
identities, language and of the politics of
alternatives. What is considered feasible and
what is not is increasingly confined within a
narrow spectrum – the politics of convergence
is an aspect of globalisation. Those who presented
the case-studies at the Forum, both from the South
and the North, reflected upon these many facets of
globalisation.
The particular concern was with inequalities – that
are generated, gendered and institutionalised
through the processes that we have come to
characterise as globalisation. This concern with
inequalities was also historically situated –
globalisation is, it was argued, the current form of
international political economy; colonialism was the
previous form. The panels on Asia and Africa were
particularly concerned to reflect upon how the
colonial experience has affected the trajectories of
development and of engagement with the global
2
political economy of the countries of these regions.
The Great British panel too reflected on
colonialism from the perspective of the North; of a
tired but still powerful economy. The Latin
American panel reflected a concern with the
growing inequalities of the terms of engagement
with the global political economy, which was, as in
the case of Mexico, resulting in economic
development but also leading to a growing
inequality between the countries of the region.
Social and political dissonance, resistance and even
social conflict was another theme that cut across all
the panels. Reference was made to women’s
movements in Asia, the Shining Path in Peru and
the land movement in Zimbabwe – very different
responses from very different contexts to the
pressures of globalisation and of development. The
overwhelming concern was whether globalisation is
leading to opening new avenues for development or
is it closing off those that had already been opened.
The message was at the same time optimistic and
cautionary. The continued high levels of poverty in
the world and the different forms that this poverty
was taking in the context of the growth of the
economy in many parts of the South were
discussed. There was also some reflection on the
nature of institutionalisation of globalisation – the
World Bank, IMF and the WTO on the one hand
and the UN on the other.
All in all, it was a marvellous event – organised with
the enthusiasm and commitment that I have come
to expect of those doing the course. The
commitment showed in many ways but also in the
food that was brought to the common table. It was
truly a global cuisine!
Panel I: Africa – Development as
a Unifying Force
Senegal
Abou Fall
MA student in Globalisation and Development,
University of Warwick
INTRODUCTION
A critical evaluation of development as a
unifying force, in the Senegalese setting,
pushes me to look at the various
outcomes of the developmental
frameworks throughout Senegal’s social
and political history. I argue that the
development paths taken by Senegal
have created a fragmentation of the Senegalese
society, hence the reference to the multiplicity of
Senegal.
I am interested in identifying how development, as
articulated and implemented in Senegal, has led to
multiple ‘Senegals’, multiple in the sense that the
social fabric is segmented into several groups, each
living different socio-economic realities.
SENEGAL’S ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
ARCHITECTURE THROUGHOUT HISTORY
With its geographical position, at the westernmost
point in Africa, Senegal has been at the crossroads
of the trade routes linking Africa, America, Europe
and, through the Maghreb, the Arab world. But it
was essentially the development of groundnuts in
the 1840s as a dominant cash crop that deeply
influenced the subsequent economic, political, and
social development of Senegal.
The early development paradigm driven by the
peanut trade drew upon the social organization of
the Senegalese society for expansion. Such
organization was characterized by authority from a
village chief who usually sheltered a marabout, or a
Muslim cleric for spiritual protection and guidance.
These Muslim guides grew in religious and political
influence and were later used by the French to
secure trading zones.
With independence proclaimed in 1960, it was
under the first President Leopold Sedar Senghor
that the ruling class tried to set up the political,
administrative, and economic framework guided by
the doctrine of ‘African socialism’. After
independence, the state was seen as the primary
player of economic life through the drawing of
several four-year plans aimed at stimulating
agricultural and industrial development.
This experimental phase of interventionism in the
farming sector ended in the late 1960s in a climate
of discontent and disillusionment with regard to the
hopes raised by independence (Berthélemy et al.,
1996). The mismanagement and ineffectiveness of
the structures designed to intervene in and control
farming activities, the withdrawal of the French
support for groundnut farming (which entailed a 25
per cent reduction of its price) and the aftermath of
the first signs of drought on groundnut production
led to an increasing loss of interest in groundnut
farming on the part of farmers.
The economic slump in the countryside
provoked a rural exodus which
provoked a tremendous growth of the
informal sector. This strained urban
development by exerting pressure on
the supply of public amenities and on
the
urban
labour
market.
Unemployment and precarious living conditions
became the order of the day; as did claims and
3
protests from an ever-increasing urban youth
population. The discontent led to social unrest in
1968 and 1969. This unrest led to a change in
strategy in favour of voluntary participation and a
type of interventionism more oriented towards
industrialization.
The economic crisis of the 1970s in Senegal cannot
only be confined in the policy choices made by the
state, or the mismanagement of resources by a
plethoric state. The choices made by the elite and
the way in which it fostered particular alliances, in
my opinion, contributed to a fragmentation of the
population, with certain groups (bureaucrats, the
French elite, religious leaders) benefiting immensely
from the exploitation of resources, and other
groups such as the farmers, paying the burden of
mistaken policies.
Since 1979, Senegal has undergone several
generations of structural adjustment programs
directed by the World Bank and the IMF. The
primary objectives were to rectify the
macroeconomic imbalances and to re-launch the
growth of the economy. The level of success of the
various adjustment programs is open to
appreciation. The latest macroeconomic figures
suggest that Senegal is on the road to recovery, but
it is still far away from addressing the objectives of
the Millennium Development Goals.
A CLOSER LOOK AT THE SOCIO-POLITICAL
CONTEXT AND THE SEGMENTATION OF THE
POPULATION
The political and social organization of Senegal has
been largely influenced by old administrative and
political management traditions from the colonial
period. Senegal was governed through a ‘direct
administration’ system.
The French colonial system eroded the traditional
organization of society by disallowing traditional
chiefs from keeping their prerogatives. The
sovereignty of traditional chiefs was removed and
replaced with the colonial administration. The
territorial expansion however signified the need to
set up a new chieftainship that was less traditional
but more administrative.
It is in this context, as noted above, that religious
brotherhoods (confreries) were used in part to get rid
off traditional chiefs. The specificity of ‘confreries’
in Senegal is worth mentioning, as it is through
such confreries – particularly the Mourides – that
the expansion of groundnut production was
possible.
By independence, Senegal had a ruling elite capable
of running public affairs. The ruling elite adjusted
the State apparatus to strengthen its political power,
and marginalized or co-opted opposition leaders. It
also strengthened the corporate nature of the army,
by constantly re-organizing its command structure,
and awarding benefits to army personnel. As such,
the army has always remained loyal to the
government. This may explain why the Senegalese
army was not very keen on coups d’etat, unlike some
countries in the sub-region.
The State dealt with social unrest, particularly from
unions, by affiliating them to the ruling party and
appointing their leaders to legislative and ministerial
positions.
For the socialist regime, the reorganization of the
state also meant appointing young executives into
the ruling party organs. This lead to a patronage
system where for example, political supporters
could get access to bank loans, and the ‘big
growers’ of groundnuts, most of them marabouts
(religious leaders) had access to loans which were
often not reimbursed.
Until the 1970s, the mode of management of the
economy and political power rested upon
preserving the interests of a heterogeneous
coalition of politicians, bureaucrats and religious
leaders. At the same time, a new generation of
entrepreneurs emerged (named Baol Baol, after the
region from whence most them came), which
derived influence from their ties with Mouride
marabouts, this new generation of entrepreneurs
constitute the bulk of the informal sector
mentioned above. The failure of the developmental
frameworks also brought economic imbalances in
the regions, epitomized by the secessionist
movement in the southern region of Casamance.
The severity of Structural Adjustment programs has
also led to a gradual fragmentation of the cohesive
social make up in the sense that that the system that
relied heavily on the marabouts is currently
characterized by the exit of the first generation of
religious brotherhoods’ leaders and their
replacement by a new generation of marabouts who
are more concerned with their own business than
their traditional functions. Voting for the majority
of rural dwellers and some of the urban population,
especially the informal sector entrepreneurs
mentioned above, was done through directives
given by the marabout. This system has however
eroded since 1993 with the contentious Presidential
election.
CONCLUSION
Looking at the political, social and economic
history of Senegal, we can identify early on the
emergence of key actors, and the brokering of
alliances to promote economic development.
Throughout Senegal’s history, we have seen the
predominant role of religious leaders playing a
buffering role, initially with the French colonialists,
then later with the ruling elites. These types of
alliances have created a specific type of social
organization, which do not suggest an egalitarian
structure or a social system free of conflicts, but
4
they denote a well-established and accepted
structure of power, and a set of social rules.
In essence, I argue that the development
frameworks undertaken by Senegal has created
three ‘Senegals’, the first mainly rural and involved
in agricultural production, who are the first to
suffer the consequences of economic failures; the
second Senegal which is constituted of the educated
elite, vested with most of the decisional powers,
both political and economic; and the third Senegal
characterized by entrepreneurial Senegalese who
have mainly come from the region and who
constitute the bulk of the informal sector in urban
centers. Although distinct, there exists a structure
of interrelation between these groups that has so far
maintain some form of apparent cohesiveness.
This social cohesiveness is however under a lot of
strain with Senegal’s liberal framework, and the
various social demands that are still not met by the
State. Under such conditions, political alliances are
changing, both in urban and rural centers.
Moreover, the lack of transparency and
consultation in the choice of economic policies is
going to put further strain on the State as civil
society actors are getting more informed. The
biggest challenge for the State will be to identify
how to defend its legitimacy with the
heterogeneous nature of the society that has
resulted from failed economic policies. This
challenge is more severe with the increase in the
number of independent newspapers, the setting up
of private radio stations and television channels, the
dramatic expansion of new information
technologies, all of which play an important role by
making available for the population information
that concerns not only their daily life but also the
management of public affairs.
REFERENCES
Berthélemy, Jean-Claude; Seck, Abdoulaye;
Vourc’h, Ann (1996) Growth in Senegal: A Lost
Opportunity? Paris: OECD.
Tanzania- Looking Back: Lessons
Learned
Gloria N. Labarani
MA student in Globalisation and Development,
University of Warwick
In 2003, when President Mkapa
officially announced the inauguration of
the Tanzania Development Forum
(inviting civil society, academics, and
indeed opposition parties to debate the
future of Tanzania and take stock of the
past), the thoughts on most if not everyone’s minds
was ‘How far had we come since Independence?
With Tanzania’s wealth of resources, relatively
peaceful history and aid abundance, where is
Tanzania today vis-à-vis the Global Political
Economy? And the even bigger question is what
lessons one can derive from the development
process in Tanzania? The socio-political history of
Tanzania serves to identify salient factors within the
state’s developmental process - factors that can be
singled out as ‘lessons to be learnt’ for future
reference.
The Post - Independence era through to the Ujamaa
era of 1967 reinforced state-led social cohesion
through equity as a development priority. A special
focus was paid to the eradication of poverty and
illiteracy – hence the government’s special focus on
education and health provisions through not only
rhetoric but also in state policies. This was reflected
in the villagisation process (in order to facilitate
governments ability to provide social care to all).
Socialism as a political policy was therefore the only
policy capable of reinforcing such social provision.
However, whereas the social sector thrived, the
state-led economy failed due to inefficiency.
The Post-liberalisation period of the 1980’s and the
present period is characterised by the Structural
Adjustment Programmes and their effects (very
little investment in social sectors such as education
and health to mention a few so much so that
literacy rates that stood at 80 per cent in the first
ten years of independence fell to a whopping 63 per
cent – a whole generation practically lost out on
social services). Politically, this was more
catastrophic. The hard earned peace in Tanzania
through Swahili as a unifying language is now at
stake with party divisions on various levels. The
unification of Tanganyika and Zanzibar heralded as
a major step in state consolidation in postindependence Tanzania is likewise in jeopardy.
As a young adult in contemporary Tanzania, certain
factors catch my attention. Development and
Democracy are context sensitive concepts .i.e. the
needs of a state and its people at different stages
differ. The sooner such uniqueness is taken into
account, the better for all concerned. Both models
of development i.e. post-independence and postliberalisation, contain within them lessons Tanzania
and indeed any other country can take into
consideration when devising a strategy for
Development. Contrary to popular belief,
democracy and multipartism are not synonymous.
Fragmentation and competition are not necessarily
factors for democracy. Unity can serve the purpose
just as well. In Tanzania for instance,
following IMF/WB pressure for
multipartism, at least 80 per cent of the
population voted in favour of a one
party system. If democracy is to mean
the rule of the majority, then surely in
this scenario, a single party is the way to
5
go. So many questions, just as many answers!!
Ironically, the Tanzanian system of prioritising
human capability building and social provision in an
equitable fashion is reflected in the lessons being
preached in current rhetoric within social justice
causes e.g. Oxfam as well as multilateral institutions
such as the WB & IMF (whether or not this is put
into practice is an issue for another debate). While
the prioritising of economic efficiency as suggested
by liberalisation would serve to improve growth for
poor countries, sidelining government intervention
denies poorer people access to the fruits of growth.
Possibly, a shrewd combination of the two i.e. the
combination of efficient economic growth with
prioritised equitable human capability building
could serve to pull countries such as Tanzania out
of the cycle of poverty, albeit slowly. The current
development model that serves to promote
economic growth along severe disparities of the
magnitude present in modern day Tanzania, in my
opinion, is a system that helps to sustain a culture
of corruption and this has a potential to jeopardise
not only democracy but also the rule of law and the
maintenance of hard earned peace. The biggest
lesson I learn from Tanzania’s experience is that
development, if anything, should be a learning
process whereby every policy is assessed for
potential benefits and replaced after important
lessons have been taken on-board. Without a
learning process, regardless of one’s definition,
development tends to be fragmented and totally
inefficient. Tanzania is a classic example of such a
scenario.
Zimbabwe
Vulindlela Ndlovu
MA student in Globalisation and Development,
University of Warwick
When I started thinking about the
question ‘development as a unifying
force’ in the context of Zimbabwe,
recent
events
involving
white
Zimbabwean farmers being violently
forced off their farms immediately
sprung to mind. Zimbabwe’s colonial and postcolonial histories have in many ways been defined
by land. It is by no means the only defining issue,
but it has been one of the most important. In the
short time I have, I hope to give an overview of
how land has influenced political, social and
economic outcomes in Zimbabwe. The various
development models chosen in the course of
Zimbabwe’s colonial and post colonial history have
played a key role in determining how land has
shaped political, social and economic outcomes. In
my opinion the outcomes show that the attempts at
development in Zimbabwe have not been a
unifying force. White Zimbabwean farmers being
forcibly and violently removed from their farms is
one of the more visible examples. I hope to bring
out other less visible, but important outcomes that
show Zimbabwe’s attempts at development have
failed as a unifying force. I will proceed by outlining
four stages in the history of Zimbabwe’s
development: the colonial period from the late 19th
century to 1980, the immediate post-colonial period
from 1981 to 1990, the turn to neo-liberal
economics from 1991 to 1999, and finally the post1999 period.
The early colonial period was dominated by a settler
quest for productive land. The most productive
tracts of land were identified and divided into
numerous farms and ranches. Indigenous
populations were forced off the land onto less
productive land where rainfall was low, the soil was
poor, and resources were stretched as more and
more people were crowded onto a smaller area of
land. At independence in 1980 over two-fifths of
land in Zimbabwe was occupied by the minority
white settler farmers with more than 70 per cent of
the best agricultural land owned by about 5,000
white farmers. This distribution of land and the
racism inherent in colonial economics and politics
meant that the black majority were given few
economic and political freedoms. Politically they
were denied the right to vote. Economically, they
could not own land. To survive, the black
population was thus largely restricted to three
options: attempting to eke out a living on the poor
land they had been forced onto but did not own;
providing cheap labour on the white owned farms
and ranches; or; providing cheap industrial and
service labour in towns and cities. From a
dependency theory perspective, the white farmers
could thus be seen as the ‘core’ within ‘periphery’
and the black population the ‘periphery.’ But the
colonial system did not only create divisions along
racial lines, it served to accentuate gender divisions
and inequalities. The majority of those employed in
towns and cities were men and in most cases they
would leave their families in their rural homes and
send remittances. Rural women were
thus left with the task of raising
children, caring for the old and sick,
farming where it was possible, and the
general maintenance of the household.
This unpaid work by women can be seen as
subsidising the colonial system.
Independence in 1980, after a 13 year nationalistled guerrilla war, was seen as an opportunity to
develop the country, economically, socially, and
politically, by addressing the imbalances colonialism
had created. Dependency theorists might have
proposed radical redistribution of land as a form of
wealth redistribution to the rural poor. But the
peace agreement and the new constitution that
paved the way for independence prevented this
from happening by including a market based
willing-seller clause for the first 10 years of
6
independence (i.e. the government could only
redistribute land that white farmers were willing to
sell). With few farmers willing to sell, there was little
land redistribution and the redistribution that did
take place was largely undermined by government
corruption and ineptitude. Thus, without significant
redistribution of land the ownership of productive
land maintained many of the structural relationships
that colonialism had created. But the 1980s did see
the growth of an urban middle-class. Protectionist
and tight regulatory policies meant a growth in
Zimbabwean industry and created new jobs in
urban areas, allowing the formation and growth of
the urban middle class. The growth in urban
employment also allowed for the continued flow of
urban-rural remittances. The growth of an urban
middle-class served to create a significant ruralurban income gap, while the flow of rural-urban
remittances maintained a rural dependence on
urban incomes.
Economic stagnation in the late 1980s forced the
government to embark on an IMF and World
Bank-sponsored structural adjustment program.
The adjustment program resulted in increased
unemployment, cuts in education and health, and
decreased real wages. The structural adjustment
program not only had the effect of significantly
reducing living standards for the urban populations,
but it also led to a dramatic decline in rural urban
remittances and thus substantially increased the
already existing burden on rural women. However,
the negative social and economic consequences of
the structural adjustment program did serve to reawaken Zimbabwean civil society from its postindependence slumber to demand socio-economic
and political reform through widespread strikes and
demonstrations. The revival of civil society
culminated in the formation of a new political party
(MDC) that posed a significant challenge to the
post-independence dominance of the ruling party
(ZANU-PF). The problem with the reinvigorated
civil society and new political party was that they
were rooted in, and largely driven by an urbanbased trade union movement. Thus, while it was
effective in articulating the demands of the urban
workers and the urban middle class, there remained
little articulation of the demands of the rural poor.
Land redistribution was still immensely important
to the rural poor, but was largely
ignored by the main actors in civil
society. And yet by 1999, Zimbabwe
was still very much dependent on its
agricultural land: agriculture employed
over 70 per cent of the workforce and
contributed about 47 per cent to the
total value of exports. The urban-based
civil society and party movement thus undermined
its efforts to bring about political reform by paying
little attention to the land issue and in so doing,
alienated the rural poor. Parliamentary elections in
2000 showed the MDC’s strong appeal to the urban
voters, but its failure to replicate that appeal to rural
voters possibly prevented it from winning the
elections.
The deteriorating economic conditions in the late
1990s lost ZANU-PF significant political support.
But the MDC’s failure to address the land issue,
meant that ZANU-PF has been able to appeal to
the impoverished rural poor by proposing radical
and rapid redistribution of land. From 1999,
ZANU-PF invoked memory of the anti-colonial
struggle by using nationalist rhetoric and blaming
white farmers for the plight of the rural poor. Thus
by using a group of war veterans and impoverished
rural poor to the forcibly and violently remove
thousands of white farmers from their land,
ZANU-PF was able to claim that only it was
concerned and could deal with the issue of land.
But the land invasions have been chaotic and have
only served to plunge Zimbabwe into an economic
crisis. The rural poor, including those who took
part in the land invasions, are no better off than
they were before and they still do not have any
rights to ownership of the land. Those in the urban
centres have been severely affected by the
economic crisis – inflation of more than 300 per
cent and unemployment at an estimate 80 per cent
has made life extremely difficult. The optimism for
change that greeted the new millennium has
disappeared as most Zimbabweans have lost faith
in the ability of the MDC and civil society to bring
about the change so desperately needed.
Panel III: Globalisation in Asia –
The Case of Pakistan, India and
South Korea
Pakistan: Nationhood under the
Conditions of Globalisation
Uzma Hussain
MA student in International Political Economy,
University of Warwick
Conventional
accounts,
whether
domestic or global, have assumed a
Westphalian cartography of clear lines
and stable identities and a stable, settled
social bond. What if we argue that one
of the effects of globalisation is the
unbundling of territorial boundaries,
and the stable social bond deteriorates? The social
bond is almost exclusively understood in terms of
sovereignty. Strain on the social bond within states
is giving rise to a search for newer forms of
organization that transcend the sovereign state. The
sovereign state is the primary subject of modern
7
international relations – the highest point of
authority and decision.
The institution of state sovereignty brought with it
a social bond (or social contract) which
distinguished between the domesticated interior and
the anarchical exterior. But “with the passage of
time, and the changed milieu in which states exist, it
is no longer axiomatic that the sovereign state is
practical or adequate as a means of
comprehensively organising modern political life
and especially providing the array of public goods
normally associated with the late twentieth-century
welfare state” (Devetak and Higgott, 1999, p.487).
Material changes associated with economic
globalisation – especially the processes of
liberalisation, deregulation and integration of the
global political economy in the domains of
production, exchange and finance – are affecting
the ability of the sovereign state to stabilise the
social bond.
Globalisation makes it more difficult for states to
maintain the stability of the social bond, making it
harder for the government to provide the
compensatory mechanisms that could underwrite
social cohesion in the face of change in
employment structures. As it becomes more
difficult to tax capital, the burden shifts to labour,
making it more difficult to run welfare states. It
might be good economic theory but it is poor
political theory. Globalisation is a term that has
come to be used in recent years increasingly
frequently and arguably, increasingly loosely
(Scholte, 1997). The logic of modern economics,
hyperglobalists would argue, is making the state
redundant. Globalisation cannot be reduced to a
question of capitalism alone – it should not be a
narrow materialist political economy, it needs to be
accorded causal significance of structures of
identity, community, knowledge and ecology.
Discussions of globalisation usually highlight the
question of borders – the territorial demarcations of
state jurisdictions. Not all states have been affected
by and responded to trans-border capitalism in the
same way. Individual states have faced globalisation
with different levels and kinds of resources,
different histories and cultures, different policy
options and choices – and different domestic
circumstances.
States, again, especially the powerful states, have
also retained important influence in contemporary
global finance.
Three problems faced by the postcolonial state in
the era of global capitalism: the reconfiguration of
the subject citizen, the crisis of sovereign borders,
and the depoliticisation of politics. People come to
face core contradictions of ‘boundedness’ and
belonging.
Shifting
relationships
between
Globalisation shifts the distinctive wealth of
nations, and so nations need to turn to a
redefinition of their identities. Why, at this point in
the history of postcolonial nation-states, has the
question of boundaries and their transgression, of
membership and citizenship, become such an
incendiary issue? How, in turn, does the
naturalisation of nationality relate to the
construction of older identities framed in terms of
history, culture, race, ethnicity?
The idyll of European styled democracy, the era of
postcoloniality has fast had to realise that the
promise of growth and autonomy was sundered by
the realities of neo-colonialism, which freighted
them with an impossible toll of debt and
dependency.
The struggle to arrive at meaningful terms with
which to construct a sense of belonging, in
circumstances that privilege difference; into the
endeavour to regulate sovereign borders under
global conditions that not only encourage that
transnational movement of labour and capital,
money and goods, but make them a necessary
condition for the wealth of nations; into the often
bitter controversies that rage as people assert
various kinds of identity to make claims of
entitlement and interest, into troubled public
discourses on the proper reach of twenty-first
century constitutions and, especially, their
protection of individual rights; into the complicated
processes by which government, non-governmental
organisations, citizens acting in the name of civil
society, and other social fractions, seek to carve out
a division of political and social labour; into the
implications of angst about the decay of the public
order, and crime both organised and random, about
corruption and its policing.
Nationalism stresses continuity, heroic fabrication
of the past, and its link with the inadequacies of the
recent past in order to mobilise support for
progress and development to a supposedly better
future. An important aspect of nationalism’s appeal
is the stress on continuity with the past.
Nationalism is simultaneously a ‘plan’ for society’s
geopolitical organisation and a false consciousness
as it presents social constructs such as territorial
homeland, nation and nation-state as ‘natural’ and
‘eternal’. Ethno-relations require some recognitions
of territorial centralisation. A vital aspect of this
international architecture, however, was the premise
that its component parts – the sovereign states –
were capable of functioning in a ‘Westphalian’
sense, i.e. that they could exercise genuine control
over at least the larger part of their territory and
population and act as sovereign entities in the sense
of cooperating with other states, governing
according to the rule of law, respecting
international legal obligations, preventing crime etc.
Is democracy a pre-requisite for a fully functioning,
economically efficient and politically stable nation
state? Is the Westphalian order willing to accept
other forms of governance?
8
What works for the post-colonial countries? In
post-colonial Pakistan we are still talking about
nation-building. In South Waziristan there have
been military operations to gain control of tribal
territory and disarm citizens since US intelligence
indicated that there were terrorists operating freely
in the region. Citizens do not feel that the state is in
their hands – global political economy means that
control has been redistributed – there are multiple
centres of authority, and domestic public pressure is
an increasingly minor interest group.
Pakistan's problem is more basic still: like much of
Africa, the country makes no geographic or
demographic sense. It was founded as a homeland
for the Muslims of the subcontinent, yet there are
more sub-continental Muslims outside Pakistan
than within it. Like Yugoslavia, Pakistan is a
patchwork of ethnic groups, increasingly in violent
conflict with one another. While the Western media
gushes over the fact that the country has a woman
Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, Karachi is
becoming a sub-continental version of Lagos. In
eight visits to Pakistan, I have never gotten a sense
of a cohesive national identity. With as much as 65
percent of its land dependent on intensive
irrigation, with wide-scale deforestation,
and with a yearly population growth of
2.7 per cent (which ensures that the
amount of cultivated land per rural
inhabitant will plummet), Pakistan is
becoming a more and more desperate
place. As irrigation in the Indus River basin
intensifies to serve two growing populations,
Muslim-Hindu strife over falling water tables may
be unavoidable. In 1971 Pakistan lost Bangladesh
which is evidence of the lost capacity of the
national narrative to have allowed for a functioning
government within the international system. A
failed state?
Has it been long enough for the state to have
established enough domestic legitimacy for it to be
able to implement the changes that are demanded
of it by the international organisations and the neoliberal dictates? The autonomy of the state came
into question from the pressures of globalisation
before the autonomy of the state was established
domestically. The conception of the state as eternal
and natural is not the case for all countries,
especially within the postcolonial context, and
therefore the Bretton Woods system holds multiple
complexities for such countries: crisis of identity,
conformity to the world system, functionality of the
state offices, and welfare of their populations.
While the state is supposed to be the legitimate
actor within the international system, in reality you
have weak institutions and poor functionality of the
state (member of the international organisations).
Therefore what you end up with is a crisis of
legitimacy for the state within and outside of its
territory – a crisis of legitimacy, a crisis of
belonging, and, a loss of autonomy in decision
making.
REFERENCES
Devetak, Richard; Higgott, Richard (1999) ‘Justice
unbound:
Globalization,
states
and
the
transformation of the social bond?’, International
Affairs, 75(3), pp.483-498.
Scholte, Jan Aart (1997) ‘Global Capitalism and the
State’, International Affairs, 73(3), pp.427-452.
Panel IV: The Great British Panel
An Alternative Britain: A Radical
View
James Duggan
MA student in Globalisation and Development,
University of Warwick
Firstly, the task of formulating an
alternative
social,
political
and
economic system and outlining it in ten
minutes is beyond my capabilities…
and if it wasn’t, like all the other
contemporary original thinkers I’d write the book
of my idea and sell it through one of those
publishing houses for independent thought at
£15.99 a copy and all of you could go and buy it.
This in itself demonstrates both how ingrained
capitalist behaviours are and how resilient the
system of capitalism is.
Instead I want to argue against ‘TINA’ – Margaret
Thatcher’s acronym that ‘there is no alternative’.
Although I don’t have the answer, I believe, an
alternative is both possible and necessary.
Ideally I would not label my views as a ‘radical’
alternative. ‘Radical’ is politically a negative term,
compare it to, for example, the way ‘pragmatic’ is
used. We are living in a time when ‘radical’ means
fundamentalism and there are no alternatives.
Myopically or optimistically, Fukuyama claimed that
it was the ‘end of history’. Apparently radicalism is
dead and there is no alternative. However, I would
define my position as an alternative to the radical,
albeit the current orthodox neo-liberal radicalism.
In False Dawn, John Gray (2002) demonstrates that
capitalism at the moment is engaged on a utopian
project of social engineering, the outcome of which
we can know in advance. Free markets exacerbate
social and economic conflict, which leads to
political response – protectionism – and then war
(e.g. WWI and WWII). Indeed attempting to
9
reproduce globally something that occurred in
extremely favourable circumstances in 19th Century
Great Britain is an undoubtedly radical project.
So what is the alternative? This is the question
asked of the anti-globalisation movement. Although
I recognise the fundamental importance of the
question, I do doubt its sincerity. Also, as Chomsky
notes, capitalism formed gradually. Capitalism
wasn’t born fully-fledged and flying, it took time
and thought to develop.
I want to look at two typical rebuttals to alternative
socio-economic orders: that Communism failed –
thus, there is no alternative – and, capitalism is
based on self-interest and thus human nature –
TINA.
Sklair (2002) reminds us that the failure of Stalinism
was conflated to the failure of Communism and
with it any alternative to neo-liberal global
capitalism. Singer (1999) informs us that the failure
of the Soviet Union was taken as proof of
Capitalism’s eternal bond to humanity. As Chomsky
reminds us, we should remember the vastly
different starting positions and the ignored
similarities of the two systems. Therefore we should
remember that there are different temporal, cultural
and economic contexts in which alternatives may be
developed and implemented.
I think we should be sceptical of the claim that
capitalism is the true manifestation of human
nature. Human’s had natures before capitalism and
hopefully will afterwards. Looking at the
development of this idea, briefly put, it can be
traced to Social Darwinism and, in the words of
Herbert Spencer, the ‘survival of the fittest’.
Without drawing any exact parallels this vein of
thought produced the eugenics movement. What is
of note is that Social Darwinism was adopted in
Capitalist ideology because it justified colonialism
and Victorian expansionism. At the time other
proposals, such as Kropotkin’s, that focussed on
the co-operative nature of human social
interactions were ignored because they contradicted
what Darwinism justified.
real and meaningful change to the way people live,
the way society functions, the way the world relates.
Of course, Britain is integrated into the architecture
of global finance, so any change would mean that
jobs would probably be lost, capital would flee,
people’s lives would be significantly changed and in
many cases negatively affected. The fact that the
economy is effectively insulated from democratic
change, and to avoid temporary capital relocation,
means that change would have to occur globally…
and you can just imagine the conversation with the
emerging Eastern economies: “So Capitalism’s bad
now, is it? The error of your ways, have you? Now
we have to all work together, do we?”
What I think we need is a fundamental change of
values. It seems that capitalism will probably be the
system that makes the most money. Any measures
that interfere with the production and flow of
capital will be deemed impractical (e.g. the Tobin
Tax). It depends, though, on what we value most:
money or people? Our wallet or ourselves? I am not
particularly confident that this sort of change can
be made in Britain.
I’m not sure if I’m too radical or not radical
enough. There are other options, maybe the reskilling of workers through the redesigning of
machines and technology – but I don’t see where
the incentives to reverse the continuation of the deskilling process would come from. George Monbiot
heralded a totally self-sustainable community – it is
in fact a real die-hard hippy commune – living in
England as proof of the feasibility of an alternative
lifestyle. But for the millions who tune into all of
the ‘do your home up’ programmes on TV that’s
not an alternative to global cataclysm.
The problem for a radical solution is of course that
it must be made palatable for the majority of
people. Although capitalism is imposing nondemocratic reform – that is incidentally
undermining democratic powers – I believe any
other type of non-democratic reform would face
insurmountable resistance in Britain… unless you
said that it was to fight terrorism maybe.
Gray gives an apt example of this contradiction
between the claim and reality. Neo-liberalists claim
that free-markets are the result of natural processes,
when in fact they are the deliberate products of
political coercion. In 19th Century Britain this was
due to an absence of functioning democratic
practices. The ascendance of non-democratic
organisations, such as the WTO, that insulate
economic policy from democratic control are the
modern analogues.
So my ‘radical’ alternative is that we recognise that
economic relations grew out of social relations and
so we should re-integrate them back into a function
that genuinely serves the social, meaning humanity
not just the people of Britain.
So, my brief brushstrokes of an alternative future
would include a form of participative democracy
and the re-politicisation of economics. Beyond that
is for the participative democratic system to decide
but the re-politicisation of economics would allow
Singer, D. (1999) Whose Millennium? Theirs or Ours?
New York: Monthly Review Press.
REFERENCES
Gray, John (2002) False Dawn: The Delusions of Global
Capitalism. London: Granta.
Sklair, Leslie (2002) Globalization: Capitalism and its
alternatives. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10
The Future of Great Britain
Keith Addenbrooke
MA student in Globalisation and Development,
University of Warwick
Can I now retire happy? After all, two
of the predictions in my presentation at
the G+D Forum have proved to be
correct: we have had a general election
in Britain and, yet again, forty per cent
of those eligible to vote elected not to.
Although I did vote, my choice of candidate and
party was made by an immiserated process of
elimination: who did I dislike the least? In this, I
know, I was not alone. Which leaves the question
opening my presentation on an alternative future
for Britain still valid: which way now?
As a parent it is an important question, for my three
children can be expected to live into the second
half of this century, by which time the UN
estimates the world population will have swelled to
around 9 billion. And this is one of the reasons why
I cannot subscribe to the conventional view that
‘more of the same’ will do, especially as ‘the same’
meant a reduction in official development
assistance to nothing more than 0.23 per cent of
developed countries’ GDP during the 1990’s
(although it has since risen it is still well below the
UN target of 0.7 per cent).
Like Leslie Sklair, I believe that the self-interested
nature of consumerism that defines Western
lifestyles represents the fundamental weakness of
the present system. But mass consumption was
never intended to be the final stage of
development. Walt Rostow argued that there was a
stage ‘beyond consumption.’ Rostow’s problem was
that, writing in 1960, he had to observe that it was
‘too soon’ to work out what it might be. Now is the
time to find out. The problems of persistent
inequality and deep social injustice are not just
global – they exist here in Coventry and across
Britain too.
John Gray argues that, “the innermost
contradiction of the free market is that it works to
weaken the traditional social institutions on which it
has depended in the past.” In Britain, I believe it
has. But I cannot share Sklair’s
enthusiasm for a global socialist future.
Instead, I believe Britons will
increasingly come to be recognised for
their contribution to an alternative view
of development.
For me, fifty years of failure in development merely
confirms the view that ‘the Enlightenment’ was, in
some respects, a rather big mistake. In alternative
development however I see a plurality of bottomup initiatives that do not converge into a new metanarrative, but really can deliver localised results. I
argued in March that Britons are beginning to
rediscover the values that underpin society, as
disenchantment with the endless consumption that
has become the sorry end-game for development
grows. Under the heading of ‘the respect society’
this, it would appear, has become government
policy in just two months. But I don’t believe the
rebuilding of societal values will come from
government policy. It will be ordinary people who
will make the change.
In many ways, eighteen weeks of seminars only
allowed us to scratch the surface of Globalisation
and Development, but I will leave Warwick
believing that there is a new hope that lies outside
our present paradigm. Instead, I ask that we look
for the good things that good people are now doing
on fair trade, poverty/debt reduction and the
environment, and see in them a better future.
11
WORLD MODEL UNITED NATIONS CONFERENCE
University of Edinburgh, Scotland
28th March to 1st April 2005
Introduction
Laura Dunbar
MA student in International Political
Economy, University of Warwick
The World Model United Nations Conference is an
annual event which brings together over 1,000
students from across the world to debate social,
economic, political and cultural issues within the
simulated environment of the United Nations. The
conference provides a fascinating insight into the
workings of the United Nations, with difficult
decisions to be made and careful diplomacy
required. This year delegates enjoyed lively
discussion on a variety of topics, from debt relief
and the politics of free trade, to gay rights as human
rights and Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. Within the
UN committee structure representatives worked to
resolve issues in an environment best characterised
as one of ‘competitive cooperation’. As the
delegations of Mozambique and Iraq, thirteen
postgraduate students from the Department of
Politics and International Studies were confronted
with the challenge of shaping this policy
environment to their country’s advantage. For the
Iraqi delegation this task was significantly
complicated by the uncertainty and insecurity of the
country’s current political and economic situation.
In the absence of a formed Iraqi government,
alliances were at best tentative, and policy stances
subject to change. The following accounts detail
various aspects of this richly diverse conference.
Considering the Role of the
United Nations
Development Programme
(UNDP)
Laura Dunbar
MA student in International Political Economy,
University of Warwick
World Model United Nations aims to foster an
environment of cooperation and friendship through
a simulation of the United Nations system. My
experience as the head delegate for Iraq and
representative on the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP) testifies to this fact, with the
near unanimous vote to pass a resolution on the
topic of debt relief epitomising this cooperative
spirit. For Iraq the resolution provided a positive
outcome. The country carries a heavy debt burden.
It owed more than $120 billion in external debts
and up to $300 billion in war reparations in 2004.
Yet after five days of debate and discussion it was
clear that the strengths of the UNDP had not been
fully harnessed to bring action to bear on the issue
of debt relief, provoking more questions than
answers about the role of the UNDP and its
strengths as a development agency. The following
article aims to address some of these issues.
The work of the UNDP is of undisputed
importance. The organisation’s declared mission is
to help countries in their efforts to achieve
sustainable human development by assisting them
to build their capacity to design and carry out
development programmes in poverty eradication,
employment creation and sustainable livelihoods,
the empowerment of women and the protection
and regeneration of the environment, giving first
priority to poverty eradication. The UNDP
specialises in the provision of resources, experience
and knowledge required to achieve these objectives.
The success of the UNDP is built upon a
committee structure which affords each member
state equal representation on the basis of a one
member, one vote system. It also accords
consultative status to selected non-governmental
organisations. In theory these measures expand the
12
basis of informed debate, encourage dialogue and
ultimately foster effective development policy
solutions. As a result, the UNDP enjoys unrivalled
country ownership of policies and programmes.
However, in practice, these multilateral negotiations
may be replaced by the formation of competing
majority voting blocs, which impede any
meaningful dialogue and produce a resolution with
no practical consequences. In such cases major
donors may prefer bilateral negotiations, which
produce agreements that can be implemented. This
undermines the utility of the UNDP as a forum for
the coordination of development policy.
To some extent this was the experience of the
World MUN UNDP committee. Early on in the
proceedings voting blocs were formed reflecting
different country interests, perceptions and
expectations. Mozambique aligned with the African
bloc, Iraq with any country willing to consider the
case for the cancellation of odious debts. A
consensus was formed in favour of debt relief, but
agreed standards were matched by disagreement
over the method by which these standards were to
be achieved. More time was required to grapple
with and resolve contentious issues in order to
provide a sustainable solution to the crippling debt
burden confronting so many countries.
However, cooperation within the UNDP is a
necessary but insufficient condition for the
resolution of the problems associated with the
scheduled committee topics: ‘rethinking the
conditions for debt relief’ and ‘the costs and
benefits of financing AIDS programmes’. At the
very least, the scope of action required to effectively
address these issues requires the coordination of
economic and social policies between the various
UN bodies; including the specialised agencies, the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World
Bank, whose policies often contradict the values
and purpose of the UNDP.
Delegates devoted much time in committee session
to these financial institutions in an attempt to utilise
the UNDP as a means by which to rein in their
worst excesses, in particular to reform aspects of
the current initiative to relieve the debt of the
Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC).
However, the World Bank and the IMF cannot be
regulated through the UNDP precisely because of
the functional separation institutionalised between
the central UN system and the specialised agencies.
This means that “no matter whether development
issues, administration or financial methods are
concerned, the agencies cannot be obliged to adopt
policies laid down by the Secretariat or other bodies
of the United Nations” (Ho-Won, 1998, p.224). On
the contrary, the UNDP lacks this organisational
independence. Instead it falls within the remit of
the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC).
Therefore, the UNDP’s management arrangements
are subject to direct General Assembly supervision
and modification by Assembly resolution, and like
other funds and programmes within the UN system
the organisation is largely funded on a voluntary
basis (Taylor, 1997, p.267). This relationship brings
the UNDP into direct competition for funding with
other UN bodies and politicises the formulation of
development policy.
In response to these challenges, Klingebiel argues
that reform of the UNDP is required not only to
strengthen, but also to sustain its position within
the
international
development
community
(Klingebiel, 1999). Greater policy coordination is
required within the UN system and a more stable
source of funding for the UNDP remains its
principal challenge. These problems of funding and
coordination will require more extensive reform of
UN development cooperation. Originally the
UNDP was envisaged to play a greater coordinating
role within the UN system. This function was
undermined, in part by the growth in funding for
technical assistance by the World Bank. Now more
than ever is the time to increase this role by
according the UNDP greater status and powers.
Only then can the cooperative efforts of UNDP
committee members produce maximum effective
action. The need to ensure that this cooperation
becomes more than simply words on paper is surely
one of the most important lessons to be drawn
from the World MUN experience.
For further information about the World MUN
conference and this year’s committee resolutions
please visit www.worldmun.org/2005/committees/
REFERENCES
Ho-Won Jeong (1998) ‘The struggle in the UN
system for wider participation in forming global
economic policies’, in Chadwick F. Alger, ed., The
future of the United Nations system: Potential for the
twenty-first century. Tokyo; New York: United
Nations University Press.
Taylor, Paul (1997) ‘The United Nations and
International Organization’, in John Baylis and
Steve Smith, eds., The Globalization of World Politics:
An Introduction to International Relations. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Klingebiel, Stephan (1999) Effectiveness and Reform of
the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
London: Frank Cass.
13
Debates in the Sixth Committee
(Legal Committee) of the General
Assembly in the Harvard World
Model of the United Nations
(Edinburgh, March, 2005) on the
Issue of Standards for Imposing
Sanctions and other Coercive
Measures
Rossalina Madjirova
MA student in International Political Economy,
University of Warwick
The Iraqi delegation took part in the
debates on one of the most important
and interesting issues in the Harvard
World
Model
United
Nations
Conference (Edinburgh, March, 2005) –
standards for imposing sanctions and
other coercive measures. The problem
is debated in the Legal Committee –
one of the six permanent committees of the
General Assembly of the United Nations. The
issues discussed there are voted on through
resolutions passed in plenary meetings of the
General Assembly, after the committee has
completed its consideration of them and submitted
draft resolutions to the plenary Assembly.
The Legal Committee members of the Harvard
World MUN first decided on the agenda, i.e. they
had to choose between two topics – Jurisdictional
Immunities of States and their Property and
Standards for Imposing Sanctions and other
Coercive Measures. Although the latter one is much
more controversial and difficult to reach consensus
on, Harvard World MUN delegates, including Iraq,
decided to consider the issue of sanctions at their
meeting.
Sanctions have negative humanitarian and
economic effects on targeted states as well as on
third parties. Reforming those provisions of
international law pertaining to sanctions with the
aim of addressing these effects and striving to
minimise them has become one of the priorities of
the United Nations. There is a consensus among
UN member states that standards for imposing
sanctions need to be reformed, but there is strong
disagreement on the scope that this reform should
take and on the legal means of implementing such
reforms: the type of legal framework that should be
used and legal tools that could be utilized.
The problems that the delegates in the Legal
Committee of the MUN in Edinburgh
predominantly focused their attention on were
related to measures for insulating third parties from
economic difficulties resulting from sanctions, as
well to minimizing the adverse effects of sanctions
on innocent populations.
POSITION OF THE IRAQI
DELEGATION IN THE WORLD MUN
These issues are of extreme importance
and sensitivity for the Iraqi government,
given the fact that comprehensive sanctions were
imposed on the country for the twelve years from
1990. The economic sanctions, though intended to
be focused on the previous regime, did not have as
a result the removal of the former Iraqi leadership
or a change in its behaviour, but led to the immense
suffering of the innocent population. The losses in
terms of economic and social development and
cohesion were huge. In this context Iraq
acknowledges the vital role of the United Nations,
and in particular its humanitarian commitment,
which provided a lifeline to millions of Iraqis at that
time. In order to prevent a catastrophe, which
could have included epidemics and famine, the Oil
for Food programme was established in 1995.
Although the programme had contributed to
arresting the decline and to improving the overall
socio-economic conditions of the Iraqi people, it
could not be considered a substitute for normal
economic life.
BACKGROUND TO THE ISSUE
It is entirely within the competences of the Security
Council of the United Nations to decide on the
issue of the imposition of sanctions on a particular
country: according to article 41 of the UN Charter
“the Security Council may call upon Member States
to apply measures not involving the use of armed
force in order to maintain or restore international
peace and security”. Such measures are commonly
referred to as sanctions and may include a complete
or partial interruption of economic relations and of
rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other
means of communication, and the severance of
diplomatic relations. The members of the Security
Council deal with each case on an ad hoc basis.
Iraq considers that all efforts should be made so
that the legal basis for imposing sanctions may be
improved in order to reduce the negative effects
that sanctions may have on innocent populations
and on non-targeted States. The present legal
framework for imposing sanctions is not sufficient
and is not precise enough to grasp the complexity
of the issues that arise in this context. A detailed
document, preferably with legal force, should be
elaborated to meet these challenges. Given the
difficulties and the long process of drafting and
adopting and entering into force of a legally binding
instrument, a document containing strong political
commitment would be a positive step forward. Iraq
confirms its attachment to the principle of equity
with regard to the bearing of the burden of
14
sanctions. This requires the establishment of a
special mechanism to safeguard the interests of
neighbouring countries and of the main trading
partners of the targeted country.
Iraq believes that a sanctions regime should be
focused and with minimal negative consequences.
Targeted, or so-called ‘smart’ sanctions should
become the regular tool of the Security Council. To
that end, sanctions regimes should involve clearly
defined objectives and criteria for determining that
their purpose has been achieved. Being a political
body, the Security Council must take care that
objectivity does not yield to partisan interests. The
application of sanctions should be monitored so as
to measure their effect to enable the Security
Council to fine tune them with a view to
maximising their political impact and minimizing
collateral damage. And, above all, the delivery of
humanitarian assistance to vulnerable groups
should be ensured.
The basis for the debates in the Legal Committee of
the World MUN was the draft Declaration on the
basic conditions and standard criteria for the
introduction and implementation of sanctions and
other coercive measures contained in the Working
paper of the Russian Federation. The Iraqi
delegation expressed its general approval of the
document, and in particular to the view that
sanctions are an extreme measure which should
have clear and precise objectives, be limited in time
and be subject to regular review. Iraq especially
shares the consideration that the concerns of the
targeted State should be taken into account. But
Iraq believes that the Secretariat should provide
Security Council and sanctions committees with an
assessment of the humanitarian and socioeconomic impact of sanctions not ‘at their request’,
as the paper stipulates, but as a mandatory part of
the process.
CONTENT OF THE ADOPTED RESOLUTION
Following heated discussions, a resolution was
adopted by the delegates in the Legal Committee.
The basis of the resolution was the proposed draft
by a group of delegates from the Arab countries,
including Iraq.
The resolution encouraged the Security Council to
consider the implementation of sanctions after
extensive negotiations with the targeted state. It
provided that sanctions should have explicit and
clearly stipulated goals, which would allow for them
to be limited in time. An advisory body is to be
created under the UN Secretariat with analytical
tasks and with the competence to observe and
investigate the humanitarian and economic
outcomes of existing sanctions and issue reports on
the issues, which are publicly accessible. The
resolution urges all Member States of the United
Nations to pledge humanitarian assistance to the
vulnerable populations of the targeted and third
party states and recommended that the
Commission on Human Rights (a functional body
of the UN Economic and Social Council) include
the topic of humanitarian effects of imposing
sanctions and other coercive measures on its
agenda. The Security Council is also encouraged to
suspend sanctions in emergency situations which
threaten to create humanitarian disasters. According
to the provisions of the resolution, sanctions should
not be open-ended and should be subject to
periodic reviews.
The Iraqi delegation to the Harvard World MUN
supported the adoption of the resolution, given that
its provisions reflected to a large extent its views on
the issue of sanctions.
WHERE TO FROM HERE?
Ever wondered what your classmates will be doing after submitting their final
dissertation (apart from falling down the stairs on their way home from the pub)?
Beyond Globalisation and
Development
Keith Addenbrooke
MA student in International Relations,
University of Warwick
I applied to Warwick to study Globalisation and
Development because my career as a divisional
finance director in a multi-national company (albeit
an ailing one) had left me with
questions that business alone could not
answer. I will leave Warwick in the
summer with some answers, more
15
questions, our third child, a lot less money and the
chance to pursue a direction I believe in.
In early May I learned that the Church of England
is to sponsor me to train to be an Anglican priest.
Although it is something I have wanted to do since
I first made a commitment to Jesus Christ and the
Christian faith when I was 11 years old, it is only
now that I can step forward with any confidence
that I can make some sense of the problems of the
world and my small role within it! Although the
contribution of faith and religion (both good and
bad) has not been central to our syllabus, it is only
in my faith that I can truly reconcile the persistent
failure of secular Enlightenment thinking to resolve
the problems of poverty, inequality and structural
injustice with a belief in a God who created a world
where it was intended that our brief sojourn here
would be fulfilling.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act
(AGOA) is a trade act concerning 38 eligible
countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with the aim of
increasing export trade to the United States through
the elimination of US tariffs on approximately
6,400 export products.
For more information
http://www.agoa.gov
on
AGOA,
see
As a destination, the priesthood will offer the
exciting prospect of being able to apply what I have
learnt in a community setting and while that may
not shake the foundations of the present worldsystem, it will give me the chance to support the
ordinary people who do extraordinary things day in
and day out to try to make our world a better place.
For, as Peter Newell, Shirin Rai and Andrew Scott
observe in the introduction to their 2002 book,
Development and the Challenge of Globalization, it is at
the micro level that we understand the way in
which globalisation manifests itself (p15). It is
where I intend to be.
References
Newell, Peter; Rai, Shirin M.; Scott, Andrew (2002)
Development and the Challenge of Globalization. London:
ITDG.
West African Trade Hub
Abou Fall
MA student in Globalisation and Development,
University of Warwick
I am supporting the West Africa
Trade Hub (WATH), a USAID
funded program based in Accra,
Ghana, in planning programmed
AGOA-related community outreach and training to
six out of the 15 established AGOA Resource
Centers (ARCs) in West Africa.
This activity aims at enhancing awareness on the
part of the business community of the potential
benefits of exporting under AGOA and of available
resources from the AGOA Resource Center. The
final aim is to help West African businesses increase
export trade to the United States, and within Africa.
The Team
JUSTINE COULTER
(WGDS President)
FABIANA ILLESCAS TALLEDO
(Editor)
MATHEW DOIDGE
(Co-Editor and Technical Production)
VULINDLELA NDLOVU
(Co-Editor)
Want to Contribute?
Please e-mail queries and submissions to:
FABIANA ILLESCAS TALLEDO
F.Illescas-Talledo@Warwick.ac.uk
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