FOCUS
ACTION FOR GLOBAL JUSTICE Issue 74 / Spring 2006 €2.50 ISSN 1649-7368
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INSIDE The radical history of family farming / Genetic bogeymen / Dublin’s community of food / How to spend your SSIA ethically / What’s wrong with work permits? / WTO Hong Kong - an insider’s view
Cover Story: Dublin’s community of food
{ Welcome } Credits & Contact details Focus magazine, established in 1978, now published four times a year, is Ireland’s leading magazine on global development issues. It is published by Comhlámh, Development Workers in Global Solidarity, Ireland, which works to promote global development through education and action. Focus is produced by an editorial collective of volunteers, with the support of the Comhlámh offices in Dublin and Cork. New volunteers are always welcome. Please contact Comhlámh if you are interested in any aspect of the production of this magazine. No prior experience is necessary. The views expressed in individual articles are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the collective, of Comhlámh, or our funders.
Correspondence Comhlámh, 10 Upper Camden Street, Dublin 2, Ireland. Ph +353-1-4783490 Fax +353-1-4783738 E-mail: info@comhlamh.org Comhlámh, 55 Grand Parade, Cork, Ireland Ph +353-21-4275881 Fax +353-21-4275241 E-mail: comhcork@iol.ie Comhlámh Northern Ireland c/o 9 University Street Belfast BT7 1FY Northern Ireland Email: comhlamhni@hotmail.com
Editorial Team Conall O’Caoimh, Stephen Rigney, Thomas Geoghegan. Additional writing: Ian McDonald, Jennie McGinn, Miren Maialen-Samper. Photography: Bríd Ní Luasaigh, Paul Sherlock. Design: Thomas Geoghegan (thomas@monkeybomb.com), Alice Fitzgerald (www.alicefitzgerald.com). Printed by Ecoprint on Corona 100% recyled paper waste and printed using biodegradable soy-based inks. The publication of Focus Action is grant aided by Trócaire, Christian Aid and by the Development Education Unit of Irish Aid.
© Copyright Comhlámh 2006
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Join Comhlámh In a world that seems so unfair, don’t you wish that Ireland would stand up for justice? Yet there have been moments to be proud of when Ireland helped make a difference: ● ● ●
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But these breakthroughs only happen because people - like you - make justice matter and demand change. For 30 years, Comhlámh (Irish for ‘solidarity’ and pronounced ‘co-law-ve’) has been educating and campaigning for global justice in solidarity with the developing world. Our members and volunteers challenge the root causes of injustice and inequality - globally and locally.
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{ Call to action }
Action: Spend your SSIA Ethically! sually when we consider ethical shopping, we think mainly about Fair Trade products in our supermarket shopping trolleys. And, thankfully, Fair Trade is available in most shops all over the country – bananas, tea, coffee, fruit, chocolate, even toys and clothing. But now that Special Savings and Investment Accounts (SSIAs) are reaching maturity, many readers will be considering larger purchases or investments. There are lots of ethical investment or shopping options for those SSIA funds. Except for houses, pensions are likely to be the biggest investment people will ever make. Normally the money goes into the hands of fund managers who buy and sell shares in multinational companies and use the profits to pay for retirement. So, while we may criticise the behaviour of multinational companies, who are they but ourselves writ large? There is an alternative. Ethical pension and investment funds are now available in the Republic of Ireland through two companies, Friends First and New Ireland. Readers in Northern Ireland have a far wider range of options. The difference with an ethical pension fund is that a committee advises the fund manager about which unethical companies to avoid when buying shares. Some funds let you guide decisions based on a range of criteria, like avoiding the arms and tobacco industries or dodgy political regimes or making sure that you only hold shares in companies with good labour and environmental standards. The fund manager still works to maximise the value of your fund so that your needs are met after retirement. Ethical
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funds perform surprisingly well, so you should not end up as a pauper in your old age. They don’t always deliver the profits of ordinary funds, but then we can’t expect to hold our principles completely free of effort. The independent Ethical Investment Research Service - www.eiris.org - has more information on ethical funds. aybe you don’t have heaps of cash yourself. But you may be part of an organisation that does – for example, a trade union, professional body, sports club or religious congregation. Think about a motion on ethical investment for your organisation’s next AGM. You may have transport plans for your SSIA. If you intend buying a car, look into its fuel efficiency and CO2 emissions rates. Any garage can give you a free copy of a leaflet published by the Society of the Irish Motor Industry, which shows the mileage rate and emissions levels of every model of car available for sale in Ireland. Ask for the Guide to Passenger Vehicles Fuel Economy & CO² Emissions, or go to www.simi.ie. Extending the house? Make sure it is properly insulated – this will also save you money. And ask the builder if the timber used comes from renewable forests. Sustainable Ireland has a very valuable directory on its website, www.sustainable.ie. offering leads on where to source many such products. This is just the tip of the iceberg. If you want to see a full range of ethical options, see www.ethicalconsumer.org. And remember, you’ll enjoy spending your money much more if you know it is doing no harm.
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Focus {3}
{ Trade Justice }
The Radical, Dangerous History of Family Farming In searching for a model of sustainable farming, Ireland’s history of agrarian struggle and the Land League movement may offer the developing world a few ideas, says Ian McDonald. he profound affect that advances in refrigeration were to have on the very foundations of rural Ireland couldn’t have been obvious to many when, in the 1870s, the first refrigerated cargos of beef set sail from the great shipping hub of Chicago bound for the markets of Europe. Like 21st century beef from the latifundios of Brazil, in the 19th century American beef posed a grave threat to Irish agriculture. The extent of the contemporary vulnerability of European agriculture was recently expressed by (then) EU Trade Commissioner Pascal Lamy, “Farming is not an industry”, he said, “that can be abandoned to the tender mercies of capital markets. [This would have] consequences unacceptable to our communities ... five million of Europe’s six million farmers would go to the wall.” And yet the EU’s support and protection of farmers is under attack from many directions, not least from development NGOs who decry the incalculable suffering that western agriculture policy inflicts upon the developing world. But there’s a grave danger here. “You’re pitting one set of farmers, North against South, against another”, warns former IFA deputy president Ruaidhri Deasy, regarding some NGO rhetoric. But it needn’t be ‘Us against Them’, he argues, for “both sets of farmers at the moment are pauperised and not making a living at a time when industry are the big winners and farmers have been the losers all along”.
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Campaigning on CAP “When we started to talk about the Common Agricultural Policy we got a very negative reaction back.”, says Allison Marshal, head of campaigns for CAFOD, a sister organisation of Trócaire in the UK, “[People were] saying ‘Look, small farmers
{4} Focus
are having real difficulties, and you’re talking about taking away even the small subsidies they get.’ Our reply was … that the rich farmers, the big farmers, the agribusiness, they’re the ones who are getting the big money and small farmers everywhere are struggling. So this isn’t an issue of farmers in the North against farmers in the South. It’s about agribusiness against small farmers.” 65% of European farmers receive less than €5000 per year. This may sound extravagant, but it should really be put in context with the nearly E16 million received by Nestlé, which again pales before the €334 million received by the multinational Tate & Lyle. “I even suspect”, continues Allison Marshal, “that agribusiness may be using small farmers in the UK as a front, if you like, to protect their subsidies, because everybody sympathises with the plight of the small farmers.” The skewed distribution of CAP benefits is repeated in Ireland, although on a much smaller scale. While Irish agriculture is pushed firmly in the direction of bigger farms and agribusiness there is, by the standards of England, no such thing as a large farm in Ireland. And it’s worth taking a minute to remember
“… even the capitalist countries like Ireland and France they all did the agrarian reform…it is necessary for the developing of the country” - Maira Kubikmano
why. A Radical New Idea Next to the grand estates of Brazil or England, it is a fundamentally different vision of development that has allowed a rural Ireland based on small farms. In the autumn of 1778 it was widely understood that the landlordism had repeatedly led the nation to the brink of Famine. The strength and confidence awakened in rural Ireland by the Land League would ensure that henceforth debate of the “The Irish question” would look towards a vision of “Peasant Proprietorship” as the basis of the rural economy. Or as we would call it today: “Family Farming”. And so when poor weather afflicted Irish farmers in the summer of 1878, it combined with the new flood of refrigerated American imports, sparking the showdown between landlord and tenant. Arguably, this was the moment where globalisation rendered the Irish landlordism of the 19th century obsolete. A Country that writes its own History With Brazil able to undercut the price of European produce so dramatically, and with vast amounts of unused land, you would think that more access to European markets would be a panacea for Brazilian agriculture. But sitting in a stadium full of peasant farmers in January 2005, I describe to Miguel Stédile the opposition of Irish farmers to Brazil’s push for further EU market access. Not only is he sympathetic to the interests of Irish farmers, he is enthusiastic. “If Irish farmers would do that, that would be great.” he says. “Those exports do not benefit us, they only strengthen the latifundios and corporations.” Miguel is a spokesperson for the MST, the “Landless Workers Movement” of
{ Trade Justice }
Farmers and Trade Liberalisation “The Peasantry in Mexico are almost non-producing because cheap imports of basic grains have taken them out of production. These imports from the United States, mainly maize or corn, are so cheap that peasants just can’t compete … there are huge subsidies … which makes the production of maize so cheap in the US, and it is especially big or industrial companies that have huge lands in the US” (Manuel Perez Rocha, Mexican National Network on Free Trade)
Clockwise from top left: Having grown up in a shanty town, a farmer of the MST 15 years after his family recieved land is living proof of the viability of family farming in Brazil; A Brazilian family living in the shanty town of an MST land occupation, having left their homes in the slums in hopes of gaining their own land (top right); Miguel (bottom right and Mairia (bottom right), MST activists. (Photographs: Ian McDonald)
Brazil. In the last 25 years the MST has become one of the largest social movements in the world. Already a million families of the MST have fought successfully for land. And with the slogan, “The land is just the door”, they continue to fight for a new vision of rural Brazil, meaning rural development and family farming, which they describe as agrarian reform. “It’s the vision of the country that finds its own development, a country that writes its own history.” Says Maira Kubikmano, a journalist based in the MST offices in Sao Paulo, “[Opponents] are saying agrarian reform is socialist and is from the past, and we say that even the capitalist countries like Ireland and France they all did the agrarian reform…it is necessary for the developing of the country.” Maira describes how in the MST office the phone still rings from time to time, bringing news of another member murdered by the militias of the latifundios. Family farming remains a dangerous idea here.
Defending the Victories of the Land League As a model, family farming has served the economic, social and political development of Ireland well. But in the 21st century, it is hard to imagine the survival of family farming, were Irish agriculture thrown to the free markets. Agribusiness may cloak its interests in the struggles of small farmers in Europe, but the fact is that a) the status quo, however amenable to Nestlé and Prince Charles, is failing small farmers in Europe and destroying them in much of the rest of the world and b) a very different kind of reform is needed if it is to benefit small farmers anywhere. It remains to defend the victories of the Land League. And based on their proven track record, these ideas must be defended anywhere that communities fight for the still very radical and dangerous idea of family farming. Read about Comhlámh’s conference on linking Southern and Northern farmers in solidarity on page 13
“In Uruguay the small farmers have been wiped out of their land because they cannot compete under so called free trade rules with dumped products that come from the US and Europe mainly. Their livelihoods are lost, and then they end up in the slums in the biggest cities of Latin America. That’s the real story … The consequences of liberalisation in Latin America have been devastating.” (Alberto Villa Real, REDES, Uruguay) “The trade liberalisation, as much as we appreciate that the intentions are good, but we are not yet seeing results on the ground. The government used to subsidise agricultural production, but as one of the requirements by World Bank and the IMF, if Malawi is going to borrow any loans from it, they are not supposed to subsidise production. And because of that, the inputs are beyond reach for many farmers. As a result production is very low, cases of Malnutrition are on the increase and poverty is increasing as well.” (Sankstar Nkhondwe, Central Church of Africa, Presbyterian, Malawi) “As soon as WTO came to India, suicides started here.” (Sheesha Reddy, Farmer, Karnataka State Farmers association, India) Source: “A People’s History of the WTO”. A radio series downloadable from www.peopleshistory.net
Focus {5}
{ Health }
As the Pro- and Anti-GMO lobbies continue to pit themselves against one another, Stephen Rigney questions some assumptions
n Europe, a fierce and largely successful battle is raging to keep genetically modified organisms (GMOs) off farms and supermarket shelves. The front has spread to the developing world, which European environmentalists claim is under threat from multinational bio-technology predators. But environmentalists’ distrust of big business may be shutting down debate on something that could benefit the world’s poor. GM’s opponents are deeply suspicious of the way multinationals stake ownership of important food crops by patenting elements of their genetic make-up. “The introduction of patented GM crops is the biggest rip-off in the history of humanity,” says Michael O’Callaghan of GM-Free Ireland. “The bio-technology industry, having failed to persuade us that GM crops are safe or will reduce pesticide use, are trying to manipulate our guilt by mentioning the poor.” Dr. David McConnell, vice-dean of TCD’s department of genetics, doesn’t agree. He believes that European science should be more focused on what he calls “the great humanitarian tragedies of the developing world.” In fighting one tragedy – hunger – he thinks scientists could make a significant contribution by using GM technology to increase food production. He becomes very annoyed at what he regards as a dogmatic refusal to consider the technology on its scientific merits. “I find it hard to explain why Europeans have an irrational and silly attitude to GMOs,” he says. “There are no dangers from them which do not apply equally to non-GM plants. But in the EU, we have wrongly given GMOs a bad name, undermining efforts to apply the technology to benefit developing countries.” Concern CEO Tom Arnold is a member of the UN Task Force on World Hunger, where, he says, “GMOs were hardly on the list of options we came up with.” He does,
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however, see situations where GM applications could be beneficial, provided proper safeguards are put in place. He worries that the discussion on GMOs has degenerated into a shouting match between irreconcilable viewpoints. “There are simplicities on both sides of the debate,” he says. “I heard President Bush say that GMOs will solve the world’s hunger problems. Other people say no GMOs under any circumstances at all. We need to move away from the extremes of this debate to a common space because the interests of the poor are not served by doctrinaire views.” But will opponents move to a common space if that means accepting GMOs under some circumstances? Not any time soon, says Michael O’Callaghan: “In 100 years, science may have developed so that we have more understanding on how to work with
“We need to move away from the extremes of this debate to a common space because the interests of the poor are not served by doctrinaire views”Tom Arnold, CEO of Concern nature. At the moment, many environmental organisations believe genetic engineering is a criminal enterprise which is trying to rob people of their property.” There are no exemptions for patent-free GMOs like Golden Rice, which has been genetically modified to contain boosted levels of Vitamin A. Given that 250 million people lacking this vitamin face increased
Photograph: Paul Sherlock
Genetic bogeymen
risk of blindness, Golden Rice could play a small part in anti-hunger strategies. For their part, the companies who hold patents on the rice’s genes agreed to distribute the seeds among poor farmers without charge. But Christoph Then, Greenpeace’s GM campaigner, believes the rice is a Trojan horse. “Industry tries to sell Golden Rice as a magic solution,” he says, but “their strategy is to mislead the public, oversimplify the actual problems in combating vitamin A deficiency and turn down other, more effective solutions. The Golden Rice project simply aims to help industry to gain support for their controversial genetically engineered food.” It shouldn’t come as a surprise that multinationals are happy to boost their profits by basking in an undeserved glow. But, ironically, the refusal to make a distinction between potentially beneficial applications like Golden Rice and the patented-GMOs that serve corporate greed is giving big business free rein to do just that. Anyway, whatever Europeans would like to believe, GMOs are no longer experimental crops grown on a few test fields. Brazil, China and India have all embarked on ambitious GM research programmes, on top of the millions of acres grown in North America. Debate is needed on how to regulate these programmes to minimise the harm to the environment while maximising the benefits to the people who will grow and eat GM food. Such a debate cannot take off while environmentalists hold tight to their antiGM opinions. There is nothing wrong with Europeans who oppose GMOs in their own diets. After all, as Tom Arnold argues, “countries should have the right to say for consumers or trade they are not in favour of GMOs.” But, before they campaign for the rest of the world, Europeans should have the courtesy to ask themselves whose interests they are defending.
{ Human Rights }
Work permits Welcome to Ireland - Welcome to Limbo: Ireland’s work permit system, is forcing increasing numbers of migrant workers into the informal margins of the labour market.
elcome to work permit limbo, a place where Ireland’s employment laws don’t apply. Nidit ended up there, after he came from India to work for his cousin in a Galway restaurant, only to find himself earning €80 for working 70 hour weeks. William, a chef from Romania, fell into the limbo when his boss started paying him with bounced cheques. Darsan, a Bangladeshi, went a year without realising he was in limbo, because his employer lied about renewing his work permit. These are a few of the stories told to ICTU and the Migrant Rights Centre Ireland (MRCI) about the hidden exploitation that goes on in Ireland. The three workers – whose names have been changed to protect them – all came to Ireland on work permits only to find themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous employers and informal labour markets. Their stories are by no means unique. Delphine O’Keeffe hears similar stories on a daily basis in the MRCI’s drop-in centre, sometimes from people who have worked here for more than two years without documentation. Work permits put migrants in a very vulnerable position within the Irish labour force. The permit is in the hands of the employer, which makes it difficult to move on to better jobs elsewhere. And without a permit, workers risk deportation by calling attention to their mistreatment. Nitin experienced the exploitation that can result from giving such power to employers. “I was stuck and had to accept it, He says. “People on work permits can only work on the employer’s terms and
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conditions. They have our lives in their hands, and they know it.” The 2004 expansion of the EU has further complicated the problem because of the requirement that employers prove that the job cannot be filled by an EU citizen before they are issued a permit. With hundreds and thousands of Eastern Europeans ready to take on low paid jobs, it has become much more difficult for nonEU migrants to find legal work. For many, there is little alternative to working here, legally or otherwise. “They often have very large debts to pay off and family members back home depending solely on their remittances for survival”,
The danger of allowing a limbo economy to spread is that immigrant workers rather than employers are blamed. says Delphine, “so their main concern is to keep in employment, even if it is in the informal economy.” New legislation to reform the work permit system is currently before the Dáil. But, according to Congress General Secretary, David Begg, it doesn’t address the basic problem of employers controlling the permission to work. “All the new Bill does is ensure the employee now has a
physical copy of his or her permit,” he says. “But they can only change employment if another employer applies for their services. They’d be passed around like virtual chattels.” The Deparment of Enterprise’s labour inspectorate is supposedly there to protect employment rights, but, according to Congress’s Gareth Keogh, there are far too few inspectors to properly police the nation’s workplaces. “Their hearts are in the right place,” he says, “but there just aren’t enough of them.” And anyway, because inspectors also have to enforce the law against illegal labour, they are more likely to prosecute than to protect migrants stuck in the informal economy. The work permit limbo benefits a few unscrupulous employers but has a damaging effect on wage levels and workplace standards across the board for lower paid workers. William sees the ensuing danger. “Bad employers are replacing Irish workers on minimum wage or higher with foreign workers working for much less,” he says. “The Irish workers are worried about the future and safety of their jobs, not understanding that we did not choose to work for less than the Irish.” The danger of allowing a limbo economy to spread is that immigrant workers rather than employers are blamed. If Ireland is to maintain its work conditions and prevent the growth of antiimmigrant sentiment, greater efforts will have to be made to protect migrant workers, rather than push them into the informal margins. Words by Stephen Rigney
Focus {7}
{ Integrating Ireland }
Dublin’s community of food One of the most exciting elements of Dublin’s growing multi-culturalism is the increasing variety of ethnic food produce across the city. Food stories, by Bríd Ní Luasaigh (photos) and Jennie McGinn (words).
Isabel Two years after moving moving from Honduras, Isabel is not used to Irish winters, but that’s just part of the adventure. The best part about travel, says Isabel, is the chance to sample different cultures – and different foods. “While I stay here I want to try something different. Why look all the time for Honduran food? I’m not going to die if I don’t find it.” What gets to Isabel, though, is that so few people know anything about her home. “When people ask where I am from, they don’t always know where Honduras is. When they do, most just think it’s a poor country but is has much more than that.”
{ Integrating Ireland }
Kizito Kizito is a member of the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya. As a political activist, Kizito was continually in trouble with the authorities and was encouraged to go to Ireland through his connection with an Irish priest in Amnesty. “Homesickness is with me every day”, he says, and so he tries to cook Kenyan dishes as much as he can. East African food is more mild and stew-based then West African. A typical dish contains charcoaled beef, lamb or goat and a salad of chopped tomatoes, collard, and ugali – “a pudding style dish made from maize and rice. It’s our national dish”. Kizito has noticed that migrants from Kenya tend to congregate in Kenyan-dominated enclaves. He tries to avoid this and to meet new people and eat new foods instead – he prefers shopping in Superquinn the specialist Caribbean shops. “Superquinn has really good quality vegetables and meat”. Although he finds the Irish “very open and patient”, he will return to Kenya in a few months as “I have a lot to do for Kenya”.
Recipe for Ugali (Be forewarned, it is definitely an acquired taste…) Ingredients Maize (white corn flour, water, salt optional) Method Put 1 cup of cold water in a medium-size saucepan. Mixing continually, add 1 cup of flour and 1 teaspoon of salt. Bring to a boil over high heat and slowly mix in 3 cups of boiling water. Reduce to simmer, cover and cook for about 5 to 8 minutes, mixing frequently to prevent sticking. The ugali is done when it pulls from the sides of the pan and does not stick. The finished product should look like stiff grits. Serve with vegetable beef broth, cream, sugar, syrup or melted butter poured over it. Note: The type of flour used—from white corn flour to yellow cornmeal—determines the character of the ugali.
“I really put my heart and soul into cooking, I’m just not very good at it!” Focus {9}
{ Aid }
“Japanese people go crazy for Irish food. They think the potato is excellent”.
Chiz Chiz is Japanese and has been living in Ireland for nearly 6 years now. She is a culinary buccaneer, willing to try her hand at any recipe. Friends demand authentic sushi, but when hosting dinner parties, traditional Greek and Italian dishes are her forte. Traveling through Europe she mastered culturally specific cooking techniques and “really knows how to make spaghetti”. When cooking for herself, Chiz loves “a hearty Irish stew or soup”. Chiz misses authentic Japanese rice – her hometown, with its’ exceptionally moist climate and fertile ground produces “a grain of rice unrivalled in its sticky perfection.” The Irish seafood paradox baffles her – an island surrounded by delicious fish with nobody eating it? “In Japan we get cod marked ‘from Ireland’, and we think, no – is that really from Ireland”? It was her stomach that led her to Ireland, after having enjoyed the cuisine of other countries such as Germany, “but couldn’t live with just meat and bread”. In Ireland, Chiz has reached cuisine contentment.
{10} Focus
Recipe for Teriyaki Ingredients Chicken thighs/breasts 1 teaspoon sugar 4-5 teaspoons soy sauce Saki Method Cut the best meat from a chicken thigh or breast into cubes and stirfry. Add one teaspoon of sugar and four to five teaspoons of soy sauce. If there is some saki lying around, thrown in a teaspoon for good measure. Just fry altogether and voila – authentic Japanese teriyaki. Eat with rice or bread … the only thing rivalling its basic perfection is the cuisine teriyaki burger in Mc Donald’s. Favorite restaurants: Messrs MaGuire for pub grub Sakura Japanese restaurant in Malahide Kilkenny Design Shop café
“First thing I cooked in my whole life was in Drogheda…when I was 20”.
Raj Raj is from Dhaka in Bangladesh. His parents are political leaders of the opposition, engulfing Raj in a “repressive and suffocating world”. He embarked upon a journey, both spiritual and gastronomic, across the Indian sub-continent, meeting the Dalai Lama twice and encountering a cultural smorgasbord of tastes and smells. “Cows eyeballs in Tibet, aboriginal dishes in the Himalayas, raw salted fish from Lithuania”. He settled in Ireland, genuinely blown away by his reception. “Everywhere I go in Ireland, there is love. Ireland is going to be my home forever. There is no doubt about that”. It was Raj’s artistic background that provided a blueprint for his cooking. “As an artist I always work with loads of different media, multitasking in a way so I translated that approach into cooking”. He has engineered a new form of cooking called 4d – “Four dimensions – taste, smell, sound and sight”. He takes fusion cooking to new extremes, creating exotic new recipes with his clash of cultural dishes. “Mexican and Chinese? Why not?” Why not indeed! Tibetan Food Enlightenment: Raw cow’s eyeball = You will see with more clarity Raw cow’s tongue = You will speak more freely Raw cow’s ear = You will hear, without obstruction
{ Campaigning Artists }
Yann Although Parisian born and reared, Yann has West African blood pumping through his nomadic veins. His restless soul however has been temporarily placated here in Dublin ‘town’. The geniality of the Irish is a world away “from all the bad things in Paris right now”. Yann was raised on West African food and his signature dishes are the nostalgic dinners shared with his father and some Italian experiments. Despite suffering from self-confessed “sporadic laziness”, Yann really enjoys the process of cooking. He finds the kitchen a place of freedom, and enjoys rupturing stereotypes. He also finds the cooking habits of the Irish male disturbing, which he says consists of “sliced cheese, sausages and beans – that’s all they seem to eat”. Yann points to a problem that is common to all recent Irish immigrants. “In Dublin it’s so difficult to find ingredients, in France it is so readily available. The language barrier can prove difficult sometimes, when I cannot find the right word for the right ingredient”. Ireland eagerly embraces cooking cosmopolitanism, but it is not quite a reality yet.
“I know nothing about French cooking…but lots about Irish drinking”.
{ Action News }
Dancing for fairer trade
hairman Mao waves an arm in salute with each passing second on the face of a novelty watch but that’s the only sign of communism evident in Hong Kong. The WTO saw here the perfect place for 150 governments to negotiate the opening up of markets to free trade. For the first four days of the talks, it
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What was decoded in Hong Kong? On Agriculture: ● Eliminate agricultural export subsidies by 2013 - but they are just a small part of overall subsidies ● Eliminate cotton subsidies in 2006, but other subsidies can continue ● Some improved access to Northern markets for developing country farmers ● New mechanism to prevent flooding developing country markets with cheap Northern products On Services: ● New way Services rules are negotiated places more pressure on developing countries to open up their markets On Manufactured goods: ● Poorer countries will have to make deeper tariff cuts than Northern countries The Development Package ● Rich countries will provide ‘Aid for Trade’, but money is from existing budgets and will be spent mostly on consultants. ● EU, US and Japan to give ‘Duty Free and Quota Free Access’ for 97% of goods to LDCs – but remaining 3% means they can block products vital to LDCs’ development For more info visit: http://www.twnside.org.sg/analysesofwto. htm
was like dancing the traditional ‘Walls of Limerick’. Negotiators approached each other and withdrew; assumed well rehearsed positions; restated old ones; and flung accusations. Little progress by any definition. That was until the Friday afternoon, when, with just 48 hours remaining, the pace suddenly shifted inside the talks on opening up service industries. The Korean chairperson had heard from 41 countries. As just 15 ‘expressed concerns’ with the text (i.e. rejected it), he proposed it would be accepted. This in an organisation which says it works by consensus. Tempers flared. The Dominican Republic was first of several to point out that when Malawi had spoken it was representing the Group of 90 developing countries. Therefore the chair should revise his mathematics. Some European negotiators in sombre mood feared the talks, now charged with anger, would collapse as they had two years earlier in Cancun, Mexico. But older hands said keep the nerve - in negotiations with such high stakes this is the essential process before agreement. Suddenly it was game on! The dance had stopped and the horse trading began in earnest. In the end Hong Kong did produce a result for the WTO. It had failed to get one from two of its previous fixtures. So the institution has been saved for the moment. The outcome will of course mean the loss of agricultural jobs in Ireland. It will accelerate the trend in Ireland for small farmers to leave the land and large farms to expand. We will go further down the agribusiness route and have fewer family farms. So why did the Irish government sign up to the Hong Kong deal? Precisely because it got what it wanted in the services talks, and in the manufacturing talks. Yes, farm jobs will be lost, but many more jobs will be created in Ireland in services and manufacturing. Irish firms will enjoy new opportunities in Latin America and Asia opportunities to export or to invest. Yes, it is a cold mathematic, but not one that many Irish politicians will articulate in
Photograph: Conall O’Caoimh
Conall O’Caoimh, who attended the WTO Talks in Hong Kong last December, looks at how power really happens at the “world’s most democratic international body in existence”*
public. Trade talks are not about maths. They are about power. Despite the consensus method, the Group of 90 developing countries know that they cannot stop the train. Eighteen of them were to have their debt cancellation packages decided at the IMF in the very week after the Hong Kong talks - imagine just how free they felt to block a consensus. The sad part is that it will not be the poor producers of countries such as Malawi who will gain at the expense of Irish farmers. Rather, it will be the agricultural multinational companies based in Brazil, Chile or New Zealand. The deal does include some small gains for the poorest countries, mostly in agriculture. But what a price they have to pay in exposing their local companies to international competition. And this was promised to be a ‘Development Round’ of talks. In Hong Kong, you can walk through the futuristic city on a web of elevated streets, avoiding the bustle below. Maybe too fitting for the model of a WTO directed world - the rich can design the products, own the brands and the factories that produce them. The bustle will go on below. This article first appeared in Hot Press, February 2006. * According to Michael Moore, former WTO Director-General
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Common Ground?
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Above: Dharamkumar Seeraj (Guyana Rice Producers’ Association), Mike Matsebula (Swaziland Sugar Association), Ruaidhri Deasy (Irish Farmers’ Association), Pongtip Samaranjit (Local Action Network, Thailand), Paul Goodison (European Research Office, Brussels), Carin Smaller (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Geneva) (Photograph: courtesy of Comhlámh Cork)
he debate about agricultural supports in rich countries is often cast as an unfair fight where rich Northern farmers stamp on the livelihoods of poor Southern farmers. But is it this simple? At ‘Agriculture Beyond the WTO Hong Kong Talks’, a conference organised by the Comhlámh Action Network in Cork last January, farmers, activists and trade experts from every continent found common ground on this question – and decided the real battle was the one to protect family farms. Attacking the way agri-business muscled the majority of the world’s farming population out of the WTO negotiations, Ruaidhri Deasy of the Irish Farmers’ Association said, “family farmers the world over are being impoverished by the multinationals”. A call for solidarity among the world’s family-scale farmers was made by Southern activists. Among them, Dharamkumar Seeraj of the Guyana Rice Producers Association said he used to consider Thailand’s rice producers as the enemy. After meeting Pongtip Samranjit from Thailand’s Local Area Network, he saw that rice farmers in both countries are in the same boat. Just a few months ahead of the next top-level talks, it’s more important than ever that those losing out to globalisation can present a united front to make the WTO a truly pro-people organisation and not a secretly probusiness one.
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For more on this issue, see Ian MacDonald’s article – pages 4-5
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Poverty Made History? Up to 14,000 people sent Bertie Ahern a Christmas card calling on him to help Make Poverty History by helping to make trade rules fair. Thank you to all of those who took part. Special mention is due to all the students One World and Suas college societies around the country who gathered so many of the signatures. On page thirteen, you can see on feedback from Hong Kong, and how much we still need to campaign. Discussions are currently taking place among international activists to decide how best to follow-up on the Make Poverty History campaign. It was set up as a special push for 2005, but many want to keep the momentum going. World Food Day, October 17th, will be the focus of activity in 2006, being a date chosen by civil society instead of being determined by meetings of the big shots.
We made the list, he checked it twice. Honourary Santa Claus, Ronnie Drew, delivers some of the 14,000 Make Poverty History Christmas cards to Government Buildings last January. (Photograph: Dóchas)
Competition! We have two copies of Peadar Kirby’s latest book, Vulnerability and Violence: Mapping Globalisation’s Impact, to give away. Peadar Kirby looks at the concept of vulnerability and describes how it is a pervasive feature of our world today. The concept of ‘vulnerability’ is being increasingly used to describe globalisation’s impact on individual security, local communities and even global finance. Yet there has been little attempt to examine the term and what it tells us about social change. Linking it to new forms of violence resulting from decreased security and social cohesion, Peadar Kirby traces the causes of growing vulnerability and violence to the shift of power to the market and the culture of consumerism that this has unleashed. Illustrating his argument with a wealth of examples from all over the world — from the global water crisis to the erosion of social
capital, and from childhood at risk to Chile’s credit-card citizenship — he offers a robust theoretical grounding that will be of use to anyone studying the nature and impacts of contemporary globalisation. Peadar Kirby is a senior lecturer in the School of Law and Government at Dublin City University where he lectures on International Relations and Globalisation. He is the author of Introduction to Latin America, The Celtic Tiger in Distress and co-editor of Reinventing Ireland.
To win a copy of Vulnerability and Violence, e-mail focus@comhlamh.org the answer to the following question:
How many UN Millennium Development Goals are there?
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W orking for a Better World: a Guide to Volunteering in Overseas Development Available in shops You can also order copies from the Volunteering Options website w w w.volunteeringopThe Volunteering Options programme is supported by Irish Aid