Global Geneva • November/December 2016 • Pilot Issue

G LOBAL geneva BERGER&BORGES IN GENEVA’S CEMETERY OF THE KINGS

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NEW CITY MAYOR: PROMOTING A DYNAMIC GENEVA 21

FIFA’S SHAME: KIDNAPPING THE GAME 23

How alpine resorts are coping with

CLIMATE CHANGE DESPERATE EXPATS 27 The Trailing Spouse

CO

CORRUPTION&POWER 42

M PL IM EN

How Africa’s rulers survive

TA RY CO PY CO UR TE SY

LIBYA 49

OF

What future with the Mediterranean and Europe?

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COVER PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL KEATING

LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

WHY GLOBAL GENEVA MAGAZINE? p.6

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016

COVER STORIES : THE MOUNTAINS COVER STORY

HOW ALPINE RESORTS

10

ARE COPING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE

16

NEPAL'S WOMEN:

54

THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

56

AN 8000-METER HIGH “VERTICAL UNIVERSITY”

BEARING THE BRUNT OF RURAL AGRICULTURE

MORE THAN A BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT

DESPERATE EXPATS

THE TRAILING SPOUSE

p.38

AGENT PROVOCATEUR

MAKING THE SDG s REAL

PHOTOGRAPHERS FOR HOPE BREAKING IN

LETTER FROM RUAHA

SUMMER INTERNSHIP IN TANZANIA

p.60

WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM

p.58

p.32

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

BERGER&BORGES

IN GENEVA’S CEMETERY OF THE KINGS p.20

NEW CITY MAJOR:

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PROMOTING A DYNAMIC GENEVA p.22

LUC HOFFMAN’S LEGACY

FIFA’S SHAME:

OF HOPE FOR THE PLANET p.34

KIDNAPPING THE GAME

GENEVA’S NETWORK HUB PUNCHING ABOVE IT’S WEIGHT p.63

37 43 50

Travellers’ Tales p.64

YAZIDIS:

LIFE AFTER GENOCIDE

KEEPING IT FAMILY:

HOW AFRICA’S CORRUPT LEADERS STAY IN POWER

LIBYA’S WORSENING TURMOIL

_ BAD FOR EVERYONE

LIFESTYLES & TRAVEL

THE PRETTY LITTLE VILLAGE ACROSS THE LAKE p.66

WEEKEND TRAVELS VALLEY OF THE LOUE p.67

MEDIA

LIGHTS GO OUT IN ‘THE SHED’ p.69

NEW JOURNALISM & REAL REPORTING THE PARIS METRO - 40 YEARS ON p.70

ENCOUNTERS

AUNG SAN SUU KYI THE PRICE OF ISOLATION p.72

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NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2016

FROM THE FIELD

© JEFF DANZIGER

WHY GLOBAL GENEVA MAGAZINE? As a young reporter during the Soviet war in Afghanistan, I encountered a guerrilla commander who was holding two Red Army prisoners. They were barely 20 and facing execution. After all, the Soviets were bombing their villages, so why not kill these foreign invaders? I appealed to the commander by referring to the Geneva Conventions. He had no idea what I was talking about.

Nor had he heard of Switzerland where this ‘Geneva’ was located. Yet when I mentioned the International Committee of the Red Cross, suggesting that he might wish to hand over the POWs to them, he knew both the name and emblem. With hospitals along the Pakistan border, ICRC surgical teams had saved the lives – and limbs – of thousands of Afghans. The two Soviets were eventually released into the hands of journalists who accompanied them to Pakistan..

Today, 30 years later, while Switzerland may not be broadly recognized in conflict or humanitarian crisis zones, such as Syria, Libya, Haiti or Columbia, the names – if not the symbols – of many Geneva agencies are.

Countless refugees and migrants are fully aware what groups such as the ICRC, UNHCR, IOM, MSF and Handicap International do. They’re also more likely to know Geneva than Switzerland.

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AN UN-RECOGNIZED GOLD MINE OF KNOWLEDGE, ACTION AND DIPLOMACY WITH WORLD-WIDE IMPACT

EDITOR’S LETTER As Geneva mayor Guillaume Barazzone (see article) maintains in this pilot issue, International Geneva is Switzerland’s best trump card. After all, it is one of the world’s most crucial focal points for humanitarian response, conflict mediation, climate change, world trade, access to health, human rights, arbitration… It is also a region with an exceptional array of humanitarian and development specialists, scientists, academics, writers, entrepreneurs, artists, sports people, lawyers, communicators, thinkers...

GLOBAL GENEVA: A NEW MAGAZINE FOR COMPELLING JOURNALISM, IDEAS AND LIFESTYLES. Yet International Geneva is in dire need of critical – and credible – reporting. The Geneva region, which arguably includes the Geneva-Lyons-Turin axis making it the real heart of Europe, is still a largely unrecognized gold mine of planetary knowledge, frontline action and back-room diplomacy. Whether private or public sector, its players perform a vital global role, often with remarkable impact, but it is one that needs to be better known.

This is where Global Geneva comes in. Based on the urging of numerous groups and individuals for a ‘fresh’ publication on international Geneva, Global Geneva is stressing good journalism that is not only compelling, but puts across what this community represents in a manner that informs as well as provokes public debate. (Global Geneva is available in print for the Lake Geneva region and international conferences, plus online world-wide).

Many International Geneva players have told us that they need to reach out more effectively. They feel frustratingly stuck in silos, unable to communicate what they are doing, even through social media. What they want is a publication that is not necessarily there to promote, but to credibly highlight, such as our stories on how Alpine resorts are coping with climate change, the work of Photographers for Hope or a personal look-back on Norlha, a small Lausanne-based NGO helping in the Himalayas.

This, of course, does not mean that everything Geneva does is effective. The United Nations, for example, urgently needs real reform. As UN Geneva chief Michael Møller himself points out, unless the organization opens up to the outside, it may not be around in 10 years’ time.

Bern, too, while funding various International Geneva initiatives, needs to ensure that the Swiss themselves better understand the vital importance of this unique cosmopolitan community in their own backyard.

With our global network of 2,000 journalists, photographers, film-makers, producers and cartoonists, we believe in editorially independent reporting as a highly effective way of serving the International Geneva community. So, whether positive, negative, or politically incorrect, we aim to provide our readers with the sort of relevant insight and good writing that will enable them to

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better grasp what is happening. Hence this issue’s articles from the field such as the legacy of the Yazidi massacres, Libya’s disconcerting future, or FIFA’s kidnapping of world football. Or stories on International Geneva itself.

Equally important, we offer an impartial platform for the Global Geneva Support Community to contribute well-written and informed guest columns. While this reinforces the sort of coverage in the public interest that such a diverse community deserves, we also wish to pinpoint solutions worth bringing to the table.

This includes Opeds (Agent Provocateur ), such as a piece on the need to turn the Sustainable Development Goals (or SDGs) into a household term if they are to succeed; or why the UN needs a more effective whistleblowing mechanism. And finally, Global Geneva will cover International Geneva lifestyle, culture and events, such as art reviews or tourism and travel.

JOURNALISM IS IN TROUBLE BECAUSE DEMOCRACY IS IN TROUBLE BECAUSE JOURNALISM IS IN TROUBLE. GOOD REPORTING DOES NOT JUST HAPPEN; HELP US INSTIGATE REAL CHANGE. But for Global Geneva to work, it needs your involvement. Good journalism does not just happen. It costs money. As we see it, no matter where in the world, journalism is in trouble because democracy is in trouble because journalism is in trouble. So if you believe in quality reporting that can provide something more than just news, notably well-honed insight, then please join the Global Geneva Support Community as an individual or institutional subscriber. Or advertise with us. In our efforts to remain editorially independent, all subscription support will go towards quality reporting, while advertising will cover production costs.

We want Global Geneva to be your magazine.

But it won’t happen without you.

EDWARD GIRARDET editor@global-geneva.com

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WITH SUPPORT FROM

Editor & Founder Edward Girardet (Geneva) Americas Editor William Dowell (New York) Francophone Editor Daniel Wermus (Geneva) Assistant Editor Chris Woodburn (Geneva) Photo Editor Tala Skari (Paris) Publishing Director Timothy Weaver (London) Contributing Editors Leyla Alyanak (Geneva), Edward Barnes (New York), Jeff Carmel (San Diego), Mary Fitzgerald (Marseille), Julian Gearing (Bangkok), Peter Hulm (Erschmatt), Elizabeth Kemf (Geneva), Peter Kenny (Geneva), Donatella Lorch (Ankara), Jean McKenzie (Kabul), Mort Roseblum (Paris), Mark Schapiro (San Francisco), Peyman Pejman (Paris), Charles Norchi (Portland, Maine) Cartoonists Hani Abbas (Geneva) Jeff Danziger (New York) Vision, Community & Compliance Caroline Hunt-Matthes (Geneva) Design & Layout Nathanial Daudrich (Paris) Advertising & Distribution For further information, contact: editor@global-geneva.com Executive Advisory Board Veronique Barbey, Xavier Cornut, Michael Keating, Anselm Zurfluh, Editorial Advisory Board Jonathan Randal, Ahmed Rashid, Kim Gordon-Bates

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COVER STORY: MOUNTAINS

HOW ALPINE RESORTS ARE

COPING WITH CLIMATE CHANGE

BY EDWARD GIRARDET

Climate change is in the process of drastically changing the Alps as we know them.

While still difficult to predict, its impact is already beginning to affect mountain fauna, flora and agriculture. It is also forcing traditional resorts to re-think their tourism strategies for the next decades.

Global Geneva editor Edward Girardet explores how they are coping.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MICHAEL KEATING

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A

As a child visiting Switzerland with my family during the summer holidays in the 1960s, I used to spend a month in Riederalp, a 2000-meter high resort in the Upper Valais overlooking the Rhone Valley. We stayed in Riederfurka at the Villa Cassel, a Victorian-style hotel - now a Pro Natura information center - with its spectacular panorama of nearby mountains, such as the Matterhorn, Jungfrau and Dom. Just below, you could see the Great Aletsch Glacier, Europe’s largest and now protected as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

In those days, you could take the cable car up to Riederalp and then climb by foot the final kilometre to the Villa. Today, you can still walk but also ‘cheat’ by taking the chairlift. The Villa was originally built by British businessman, Sir Ernest Cassel of Cassel’s Dictionaries as a private summer home for health purposes. Celebrities such as Winston Churchill used to come here until it was turned into a hotel during the 1920s, when it continued to attract renowned scientists, writers and other notables.

When I stayed there, the hotel porter was still bringing up daily supplies by mule from the téléphérique station.

I remember accompanying him down to the base of the glacier to cut ice dating back thousands of years for home-made ice cream. Since then, the glacier has retreated almost one kilometre (2.8 km since 1880 according to Swiss scientists), with the last 30 years alone witnessing a pullback of more than 800 meters. The Aletsch is now 23 kilometres long with some 27 billion tons of ice, but fast disappearing. All of Europe’s Alpine glaciers have receded over the past century.

This is primarily because temperatures among the eight countries that constitute the European Alpine region (Switzerland, France, Austria, Lichtenstein, Italy, Germany, Monaco and Slovenia) have risen by just under 2°C -- almost twice the global average -- over the past 120 years. As organizations such as the Lichtenstein-based International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA) point out, temperatures are expected to increase over the next half century by another 2°C. While high altitude ski areas (over 1,600 meters) will still be able to offer reliable snow conditions, this is bad news for lower resorts.

“The opportunities for families and young people to learn skiing and snow-boarding at lower (cheaper) resorts will be reduced, meaning fewer new recruits for winter sports,” said Professor Rafael Matos-Wasem of the School of Management and Tourism at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland (HES-SO Valais-Wallis). Rising levels of snow cover, the shortening of winter periods (by 47 days since the 1970s), the reduction of water availability, and the melting of glaciers

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1979

2015

Glacial ice dating back thousands of years is melting at an astonishing rate.

By 2050, scientists expect most mountains overlooking the Rhone Valley to be completely without snow in the summer.

Climate change is a harsh reality. Alpine ski resorts can no longer rely on winter sports for survival. They need to diversify.

and permafrost, all jeopardize the security of local inhabitants, tourists, day trippers as well as infrastructure, notably cable cars, chair lifts, restaurants, and hotels, he maintained.

Overall, global warming is causing significant changes in rain and snowfall patterns, notably increasing the risk of avalanches, mudslides and floods, such as the heavy storms that battered Switzerland, France and Italy earlier this year. Higher temperatures are beginning to degrade the permafrost suggesting that the foundations of high-altitude dams and bridges may have to be restructured. As one Swiss geothermal engineer from Sion said: “We human beings tend to forget that despite all our technology, we cannot control nature. All we can do is cope and adapt.”

According to the WWF or World Wide Fund for Nature (also known as the World Wildlife Fund in some countries) based in Gland, Switzerland, these effects are leading to an upward migration of Alpine plants at the rate of 0.5 to 4 meters per decade, with lowland species “displacing them to ever-higher altitudes until they have nowhere to go, forcing them into extinction.” Glacial recession is also affecting other forms of wildlife with still unknown consequences for food chains, but possibly leading to invasions of southern pathogens, bringing new diseases against which Alpine species have no defence.

For Prof. Christophe Clivaz of the Institute for Geography and Sustainability at the University of Lausanne, it is not too late to act, but this means embracing a far more elaborate mitigation strategy. “Switzerland has

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finally grasped that it needs to adapt to climate change, particularly given that global warming is happening twice as fast here as in the rest of the world,” he said in an interview with the Swiss daily 24heures.

Riederalp is fortunate in that it is a well-known summer and winter resort at a relatively high altitude.

Nevertheless, as with other mountain communities, Riederalp is having to think out-of-the-box in order to remain sustainable. Initially, many resorts responded by bringing in snow-blowers, but these can inflict negative side-effects such as a rise in water use. Another was to lay out slopes and build lifts at higher levels. “But this can prove difficult, costly and even dangerous,” said Matos-Wasem.

Tourism planners are now pushing for more visitors from countries such as China, Brazil and India. Yet while this will bring in more cash, the downside is more CO2 emitting air travel. “People are going to have to make choices,” Clivaz said. This will depend on whether resorts will opt for more immediate economic solutions, or longer-term sustainability. “If we manage to stabilize winter tourism, it will be a miracle. So we should stop talking about growth.” The real potential, he added, lies with summer.

“Winter sports will have to change,” agreed MatosWasem. He and others believe resorts may have to stop marketing themselves primarily as places for skiing, but as “purveyors of mountains” with ‘four season’ tourism.

Ironically, summer or weekend tourism could benefit

The 23-kilometre Great Aletsch Glacier – Europe’s largest – is part of the Jungfrau-Aletsch Protected Area, declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2001.

from rising temperatures in the cities as urban dwellers seek to escape “heat islands” aggravated by automobile traffic and other forms of pollution. Agriculturally, too, it may open up new wine-growing areas. Melting glaciers are also expected to create 500-600 new Alpine lakes.

The emphasis now needs to be on developing activities which would have less impact on the environment, but also ensure longer-term sustainability. Key resorts, such as Crans in Switzerland, Chamonix in France, the Gressoney Valley in Italy and Germany’s Garmisch Partenkirchen are all pushing to broaden their year-round activities.

For Tourist Office representative Miriam Nussbaumer in Leukerbad, a 1400 meter high resort in the Valais, climate change is definitely a problem. “December 2015 was very warm with almost no snow, so it was difficult to prepare the slopes in time for Christmas and New Year’s,” she explained. As a renowned spa town, however, Leukerbad’s thermal baths are open 365 days a year. It is also an official CO2 Neutral Partner whereby warm water is reused for showers or heating local school and community buildings, thus helping reduce CO2 emissions by 90 percent. The resort is constantly developing new activities, such as its summer International Literature and Music Festivals, or guided wildlife and plant tours to the nearby Pfyn-Finges Nature Park.

Mountain tourism is also becoming far more tailored or niche-oriented. Clients in their 50s and 60s or older no longer obsessed by downhill skiing are willing to try snow-shoeing, biking (winter and summer), crosscountry skiing, paragliding, trekking, rock-climbing or simply walking to enjoy the clean mountain air. People are increasingly interested in activities such as public lectures, wine-tastings, good food, astronomy, museums or cultural activities, not just in the resorts themselves but nearby towns and villages. Furthermore, even if high-altitude skiing will become steadily more elitist, resorts are seeking to cater to travellers, who normally might holiday in the Maldives or Tunisia, but are now concerned about CO2 emissions and terrorism. Stay-home tourism is steadily becoming the new norm.

Gstaad-Saanenland in the Bernese Alps, for example, now considers “Alpine authenticity” crucial not just for wealthy clientele but ordinary families on weekend or vacation breaks. This includes relaxing, networking and enjoying local cultural heritage to ‘re-charge’ from the stresses of everyday life. “We are far more ecologically

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aware,” said Kerstin Sonnekalb, head of Public Relations for Gstaad. “People come here because of our preserved natural environment.”

The challenge, too, is how to develop more sustainable tourism that is not only integrated into local economies, but combats CO2 emissions. Clivaz advises German and Dutch tourists to travel by train and to rent equipment on arrival. “Cars pollute the environment 20 times more than anything else,” he said. “Not only would this alleviate the impact of climate change, but would make for a far more relaxing vacation.”

Places such as Chamonix, only one hour from Geneva, are attracting visitors throughout the year for events ranging from extreme sports to bird-watching during migration periods. There is also a rise in part-time or full-time residents, who travel regularly on business, but can work out of their mountain homes using Internet. One South African businessman says that most of his clients believe that he is based in London but is in fact living with his family in the Swiss Alps. “I am up early for the Hong Kong and Singapore markets, but can also go skiing or biking during the day.” This may be part of the future, commented one Swiss Tourism analyst in Zurich. “People who no longer have to live in cities can use non-polluting public transport to attend conferences or meetings, and have their kids go to good local schools. Such people are an incredible asset not just because they support the local economy, but because they have ideas to contribute.”

But does the European Alpine experience have any lessons for mountain regions elsewhere, such as the Himalayas? “The phenomena are basically the same,” explained Matos-Wasem. “But the impact may differ radically because of divergent stages of tourism development. We can foresee rising numbers of Western tourists attracted by exoticism but also even higher existing or potentially feasible winter resorts.” At the same time, different or more specific forms of tourism will need to be developed, such as eco-trekking in Afghanistan, Pakistan, northern India or Nepal, with locals trained to provide B&Bs with basic facilities such as a bed, good meal and shower. Most critical of all, both host populations and visitors need to be better informed about the impacts of climate change – and what they can do about them.

Global Geneva editor Edward Girardet is writer and former foreign correspondent living in the Lake Geneva region.

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COVER STORY: MOUNTAINS

NEPAL'S WOMEN:

BEARING THE BRUNT OF RURAL AGRICULTURE

BY JULIEN BETTLER With most Nepalese men forced to migrate for work to the cities or Malaysia, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, it is now largely up to the country’s women to run the farms. This is a massive task made worse by the 2015 earthquake. Julien Bettler, who is standing down as head of Norlha, a Swiss NGO he helped found in 2005, looks back on his experience. He explains how a little can go far in helping remote mountain communities change the course of their lives.

Seti Ghale, a Nepalese farmer, in Dhading holding a piece of corrugated iron roofing.

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A

At the age of 35, I have decided to move with my family to Nepal. This means starting a new life in a region that initially inspired me to decide to work with those living in the poorest parts of the rural Himalayas. While an enormous personal decision, this move is also possibly the easiest in my life. First, it means that my wife, who is Nepalese-born of Tibetan background, is able to move back to her native land. But it also means that my two Swiss-born children, aged 6 and 3, will have a chance to know the country which has so shaped the lives of their parents.

Ever since arriving in the Himalayas as a back-packing student from Switzerland nearly two decades ago, I have lived and breathed the culture of Nepal and Tibet. I was taking a gap year before returning to study Sanskrit and Asian Studies at Lausanne University. What struck me was the richness and sheer energy of the culture; I was mesmerised by the constant joy of these people who managed with so few material possessions.

This first visit to Nepal changed my view of the world.

I became inspired to tackle poverty and social injustice.

Like any young person, I wanted to make a difference. I just needed to learn how. Eight years later, I did precisely that. As a Buddhist, I had travelled already extensively throughout the Himalayas, mainly in Tibet. It was also where I met my wife. Together with a group of friends, all enthusiastic about the region, we were approached to help with two projects. One was to build a school in Tibet and the other to support a group of nuns in Nepal. We set up an NGO and chose the name Norlha, which means ‘Providence’ in Tibetan.

During the decade that followed, we established several schools and supported four health clinics. We also launched environment projects designed to turn litter, a veritable curse caused by the indiscriminate strewing of garbage, into a business opportunity for local people. But we then decided to concentrate on one of the country’s most basic needs: food. There was no shortage of NGOs seeking to help children, schools and health, but few dealing with food security.

The path we chose was to help parents feed their families but also benefit from the enormous opportunities that could emerge: better health, cash crops, money for schooling and the means to invest in tools and seeds. We chose plastic houses so that they could grow vegetables at higher altitudes, plus introduced more resilient breeds of sheep and goats.

Given Norlha’s emphasis on sustainable projects, we created self-help cooperatives enabling villagers to improve their skills and develop businesses such as sauce- and jam-making. To date, we have built over 200 greenhouses supporting thousands of people in Nepal and Tibet and China, and more recently Bhutan, where we have launched an environmental project.

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Outgoing Norlha director Julien Bettler holding his son Phuntsok, then aged five months, in Nepal.

Last year, I found myself in Nepal visiting one of our projects. I met Januka Kumari Gurung, a female member of the Sunaulo farming group, which we had helped set up in Rasuwa District in northern Nepal. Given that so many men have to leave the countryside to work in cities or abroad, such as the Gulf countries, women are often left alone to cope with farm and family. Some 70 per cent of farmers are now women, so we have been increasingly developing projects focused on their needs. This includes literacy and numeracy classes to help them become more independent and business savvy as small producers. More recently, as part of our equality training, we have tackled social barriers, which often hold women back.

Such approaches are already changing the way people think. According to Januka, our education courses have made her feel more considered, more respected. “My opinion is taken into account by my husband, my in-laws and neighbours as a person in my own right,” she told me. This never happened before. Januka now controls the family purse strings and is saving for her children’s education.

For me, it is incredibly moving to hear these women, who are proud to be playing an active role. Following the 2015 earthquake, Norlha helped set up disaster prevention committees in the villages and we made sure women were involved. This year we created a new initiative, also in Rasuwa District, specifically targeting wives whose husbands are away. We will teach them how to manage remittances, invest money and start small businesses. We are also developing a Centre for Women in the Himalayas, a platform to exchange ideas with experts and each other, to share what we have gleaned over the years. However, for our support to have any long-term benefit, it is crucial to make such experience available as widely as possible.

This is the only way rural development can succeed properly.

Norlha offers a bridge of support from the Alps to the Himalayas. The Lausanne NGO funds its projects through grants from the Fédération Vaudoise de Cooperation (FEDEVACOA), the Geneva government, private foundations and individual public donations.

Looking back, I still find it hard to believe how much Norlha has grown; from a handful of friends to a team of 50 people working in Lausanne and our regional office in Kathmandu.

When I finally leave Geneva in January, I will not be turning my back on the organization that I have led and which, in return, has led me. I will continue to advise, notably in Kathmandu, where I will no longer be a well-meaning visitor but a part of the social fabric. Furthermore, all of us, whether the people of the Himalayas or Switzerland, who have given so much of their time and money to help Norlha, have all learned something. Personally, I have been rewarded a thousand times over. This is particularly true when I hear stories such as Januka’s. Everything becomes both concrete and profound with an impact that will transcend generations.

Now my two children will have the chance to ‘bathe’ in the culture they do not really know and to spend time with their Nepalese grandparents. They will learn first hand what the Himalayas have brought to the world. Perhaps, too, they will understand why Norlha has taken so much of my life, a time, perhaps, which should have been theirs. I was never sure where this extraordinary adventure would lead me, or where it will now lead them.

Norlha’s rubbish collection initiative.

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Julien Bettler has been director of Norlha, a Lausanne-based NGO focusing on the Himalayan region, since 2010. www.norlha.org

FOR MORE

MOUNTAIN STORIES

The Arctic and the Alps From the annual Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykajivik, Iceland, Charles Norchi explores what makes the Arctic similar to the earth’s mountain ranges.

THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

MORE THAN A BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT As the logo of the Caucasus Nature Fund (CNF), the Caucasian or Persian Leopard is an endangered – and declining – species. Fewer than 200 individuals are believed to be still roaming the Caucasus, Hindu Kush and Caspian Sea regions.

READ FULL ARTICLE ON PAGE 52

AN 8000-METER HIGH

“VERTICAL UNIVERSITY” Biodiversity in the Himalayas is fast disappearing.

As William Dowell writes, a new initiative aims at documenting what remains. The hope: better knowledge of what is being lost will help preserve the region’s extraordinarily rich flora and fauna for science and future generations.

READ FULL ARTICLE ON PAGE 54

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What do the Alps have in common with the Arctic?

Cryosphere — water in its solid form -- the frozen places of our planet. Cryosphere influences the climate of the entire world and it is melting. Cryspheric change evidenced by ice melt is affecting people, wildlife, business, transport, tourism and security from polar to Alpine regions. And there is substantial cryosphere expertise from environmental to human problems in Switzerland, much of it on display at the annual Arctic Circle assembly.

The Arctic Circle occurs about a week after the Arctic Council closed meeting in Portland, Maine. The Council comprises the governments of Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, the Russian Federation, Sweden and the United States plus various observer states, organizations and Arctic indigenous communities. By contrast, the Arctic Circle is a large open forum where government, science, media, education, culture and civil society examine a wider range of Arctic issues from ice melt and shipping to tourism, wildlife, pollution, energy, business, law and security.

Despite the fact that the Arctic is an ocean, one landlocked country has a reservoir of relevant expertise, notably Switzerland. Swiss research in the Arctic dates back to the 19th Century. To highlight this, Berne’s Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) organized a plenary Switzerland Country followed by a panel on cooperation in Arctic scientific research. At an opening ceremony lead by Olga Letykai, a traditional Chukchi singer residing in Switzerland, various Swiss experts, including Yves Rossier, Secretary of State of the FDFA, Frederik Paulsen of the Swiss Polar Institute, Matthias Finger of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale Lausanne (EPFL) co-director of the Global Arctic project, Konrad Steffen, head of the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, all explored different aspects of their involvement with the Arctic. In 1990 climatologist Konrad Steffen established Swiss Camp, one of the first automatic weather stations on Greenland's ice sheet. The camp, located 3.5 degrees north of the Arctic Circle, is a collection of three semi-permanent tents and a vestibule that doubles as a sauna. An Arctic Circle exhibition was specifically devoted to Swiss Camp.

Virtually every Arctic actor, whether government, corporation, indigenous community or scientist, is asking the same questions: “Who gets what, how, where and why?” That is, how to manage the activities (business, science, tourism, security) in the regions of our planet experiencing drastic cryospheric change? How will local, regional and global communities dole out the weal and woe of life in polar and alpine regions? This question was specifically addressed in a key Arctic Circle titled “Contemporary Arctic Meets Global Politics: Rethinking Arctic Exceptionalism in the Age of Growing Uncertainty.” Coupled with its Alpine expertise, Switzerland is front and centre in these intense polar region conversations.

Charles Norchi is professor of law in the University of Maine School of Law, Portland, Maine U.S.A.

LIFESTYLE & TRAVEL

BERGER & BORGES

IN GENEVA’S CEMETERY OF THE KINGS

BY PETER HULM

British writer and artist John Berger - 90 years-old on 5 November, 2016 - has lived in the nearby French Haute-Savoie since the 1970s and has made a name celebrating the vanishing culture and life of European peasants. But as Peter Hulm points out, Berger is also a suprising fan of bourgeois Geneva, and of an author who seems on the surface to be his complete opposite: the teasing, brilliant Argentinian, Jorge Luis Borges, who died in Geneva of liver cancer at the age of 86 thirty years ago.

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INTERNATIONAL GENEVA The grave of Borges in the Cemetery of the Kings at Plainpalais, with its headstone inscriptions in Anglo-Saxon and old Norse, has become a place of literary pilgrimage.

Berger visited the Plainpalais grave some 15 years ago as Iraq was being torn to pieces and re-built as a temporary ‘democratic’ shell that has been falling violently apart ever since.

Berger mentions the destruction of Iraq in an essay entitled Genève, part of his collection Here Is Where We Meet (2005). Without making a big issue of it, Berger contrasts Geneva's perennial quiet with what was happening to people at that time in the Middle East. The piece explains the secret of the shrub on the writer's grave, the story behind its headstone inscriptions, why a star soprano from The Grand Theatre was imitating a starling on the streets of Geneva in the baking sunshine (and perhaps was applauded for her efforts). "The only other European town whose natural situation may be as breathtaking is Toledo," he writes. The Genevois "frequently get bored with their town, fondly bored", he observes, but they seldom leave for good.

Borges himself said he had been "mysteriously happy" in Geneva and regretted writing harshly of the city and his formative teen years here at what is now the Collège Calvin. For his part, Berger describes Geneva as "sexy and secretive" -- not the first words most people would use, but the English writer fixes the city's puzzling charm in the feeling residents get that "nothing she hears or witnesses shocks her". Its insatiable curiosity is not that of a nosy gossip. "Genève" -- for Berger the city is teasingly feminine, at least in his imagination -- "is an observer, fascinated by the sheer variety of human predicaments and consolations".

Berger finds Geneva "as contradictory and enigmatic as a living person". Nothing else I've read captures the city's bland seductiveness that still bewitches many international civil servants with its imperturbability decades after they came here for what they imagined would be short-term assignments. Geneva's secret passion, he further suggests, is for recording what has been put aside (and not just committee reports and speeches). In Argentina, Berger notes, while Director of the National Library, Borges too used his imagination to become "the tireless collector of put-aside objects, torn tell-tale notes, mislaid fragments".

Genève is a narrative tour de force, as we have come to expect from Berger, in a completely different register from the tightly woven pieces that characterize Borges’ writings. But their differences, though deep, do not disguise the instinctive solidarity and empathy that the left-wing poet of the working poor shows for the deeply conservative aristocrat.

Berger remarks that Borges in life was "scandalously or grievously lost in politics". He met Pinochet in Chile at the height of the Rightist killings and described the dictator him as "an excellent person". Borges was also made a Knight Commander of the British Empire. A Chilean poet and translator achieved notoriety with a photo apparently showing him urinating on Borges' grave in protest at the Argentinian's politics. It was later revealed that the offending liquid was just water.

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In contrast, Berger, who is the last person you would expect to accept ennoblement, was a self-proclaimed Marxist for decades and published a collection of essays entitled Permanent Red. As part of his personal convictions, his writings renounce all the conventional literary tricks and fabulations that are superficially impressive to reviewers. It makes Berger hard for critics to position as a member of any school.

But Borges' description of his art in later life could easily apply to Berger: "I have done my best," Borges asserts in the Preface to Dr Brodie's Report, "to write straightforward stories. I am not, nor have I ever been, a fabulist. I have given up the surprises inherent in a baroque style."

So Berger paints for us a Geneva in high summer when his daughter suggested they visit the grave together. The few pedestrians are mainly the elderly, moving like sleepwalkers over the pavement. The tightly packed streets south of the Rhône, he writes, face each other as if they are library shelves of hidden lives, and their varnished doors gleam like the front of drawers.

The essay retains its magic and remains inexhaustible no matter how much you quote from it. A 15-minute read, its few thousand words tell us much more about Borges, his secrets, the city, its people (local and foreign), motorcycling, the realities of peasant life, Borges’ relationship with his father silently contrasting with Berger’s friendship with his own daughter, and a trip inside the Grand Theatre that most of us will never take, plus a brilliant definition of music – all in an unbuttoned style that never comes off as forced or formulaic.

Berger's insights also point outwards to Geneva's many other secrets. The Plainpalais cemetery, for example, created in 1482, is named after the Rue des Rois on which it is found. The kings in this fiercely republican city are not nobles and this is not their graveyard. The kings are the winners of an annual archery competition that was staged by the city's professional guild of arquebusiers, who used the land for their training. The hackbut society, founded in 1474, still flourishes.

Today the cemetery is also dubbed Geneva's Pantheon, but in fact the graveyard started as a burial ground for plague victims and was the only cemetery to survive Calvin's purges because it was outside the city walls. The cemetery is now officially restricted to people who do Geneva honour (and its magistrates!). Nevertheless, its 300 graves include that of the activist prostitute Grisélidis Réal (who died in 2005) as well as Jean Calvin’s. You won't find her on the official tally of notables on the city website.

Dostoevsky's daughter, however, makes the list. Secretive Geneva. But still secretly sexy.

John Berger’s Here is where we meet is available from Bloomsbury Paperbacks or Amazon (including a Kindle edition). His “dispatches on survival and resistance”, Hold everything dear, is being reprinted in a new edition by Verso for his 90th birthday.

Peter Hulm is a reporter and editor based in the Geneva region. He teaches communications at universities here and is a specialist in postmodern cultural theory. His teaching website is StepWiser.net.

Geneva mayor Guillaume Barazzone with former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

NEW CITY MAYOR:

PROMOTING A DYNAMIC GENEVA Guillaume Barazzone, Geneva’s dynamic new mayor, seems determined to make his city a key global hub not only for Greater Geneva but for Switzerland. Journalist Luisa Ballin met with the young mayor to discuss what he is trying to do to make International Geneva more of a reality.

Only recently appointed mayor of Switzerland’s second largest city, 34-year-old Guillaume Barazzone is a man with a mission. As a member of the city council but also head of the Department of Environment and Security, plus a representative in the National Council, the country’s parliamentary lower house, he seems determined to push International Geneva as Switzerland’s principal diplomatic and economic front to the outside world. “I regard International Geneva as an exceptional ace, a priceless business card, for representing Geneva and Switzerland abroad,” he told Global Geneva.

Furthermore, “it is an exceptional key to employment,” he added, referring to the 40-odd major international organizations that operate out of the city, but also an estimated 1,000 NGOs and 174 diplomatic missions. “We’re looking at a good 28,000 jobs that rely on this international presence with its enormous impact on the world.”

Born in Geneva and speaking several languages, including English, his dual national Italian-Swiss background marks this energetic young lawyer’s cosmopolitan approach. A graduate of the University of Geneva followed by a year in Zurich, Barazzone went on to study law at Columbia Law School and then at Columbia

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University’s renowned School of International and Public Affairs. On his return to Switzerland, he passed the Geneva bar before joining the law firms of Lenz & Staehlin and then Schellenberg Wittmer. Finally, to top his international credentials, he was appointed in 2015 a Young Global Leader of Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum.

“International Geneva is crucial in terms of our image because we have the most important actors dealing with the key issues that affect the world at large,” he said. This includes humanitarian response, environment, migration, security, commerce and health. “Maintaining and developing International Geneva is absolutely vital both for our city and for Switzerland.”

Even though some observers argue that it has taken more than a few years for Berne to finally recognize the critical importance of International Geneva on the world stage, both the City and Cantons of Geneva, but also the Swiss government are directing increased support to the reinforcing of this vital global image. Such backing includes financial support to international organizations, notably the renovation of the Palais des Nations buildings, which formerly housed the League of Nations

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA and now serve as Geneva headquarters for the United Nations. They are also supporting the expansion of the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) headquarters, initially constructed for the International Labour Organization (ILO), overlooking Lake Geneva.

According to Barazzone, the Mayor’s own office plans to accentuate the importance of Geneva’s economic and humanitarian organizations. “Geneva needs to recognize this very specific institutional role which basically constitutes the DNA of our city,” he said. “We have to do everything possible to retain these organizations because their work represents the spirit of Geneva when it comes to greater openness, tolerance, respect, dialogue and the need to create a more welcoming society.”

Barazzone admits that problems exist between Genevans themselves and the international civil servants living and working in their city. There has always been a tendency for the internationals, particularly at the UN, to exist on their own, such as sending their children to international rather than Swiss schools, or never making the effort to learn French. For their part, Genevans who are not part of the ‘international’ scene, go about their own lives.

Has this changed in recent years with all the efforts to promote a more functional International Geneva ?

Barazzone answers not without a sense of humour. “Well, we have what you might describe as a spirit of Geneva and then you have the spirit of the Genevans. They are not the same thing. If in the past, local Genevans and International Geneva did not really communicate with each other, regarding each other with suspicion, these two worlds are now speaking more and more together.”

Before, he added, there was certainly a linguistic barrier, but today the new generations tend to speak English – the lingua franca of globalization. “Numerous expatriates have told me that they have very little contact with actual Swiss, so it’s up to us, the Geneva authorities, to encourage the local citizens and the citizens of International Geneva to get together more readily.” As both Genevans and internationals themselves point out, this is happening increasingly given the city’s cultural events, such as art festivals or the Human Rights Film Festival, or even multi-cultural food fairs.

“Genevans often point out that they find it difficult to understand the international organizations or the multi-national corporations,” Barazzone pointed out. “But the reverse is also true. When a foreigner visits Geneva or other Swiss cities they are struck by the Helvetic reserve that exists. At the same time, these same expatriates admit that when they do make friends with Genevans and other Swiss, these ties remain for a long time. ” Barazzone further noted that the Geneva authorities are supporting the efforts of Michael Møller, the popular Danish head of the UN in Geneva, who is widely perceived as crucial instigator for building bridges between the two communities, but also with the world-at-large.

Another area of concern is ‘Le Grand Genève’ or Greater Geneva. This is an ambitious multi-sectoral approach that includes inter-city relations, communes, Lausanne and the Canton of Vaud as well as local and regional authorities in neigbouring France. Is this much-heralded initiative

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moving ahead, or is it in danger of peetering out ?

Guillaume Barazzone does not hide the fact that bi-lateral relations between Geneva and neighbouring France are ‘geometrically’ variable. “We have to continue developing good relations with our French neighbours, because these will always be ongoing. International Geneva was built on the City of Calvin’s ability to open up and to respect the views of others. Certain political forces are pushing to have Switzerland, and hence Geneva, isolate itself from its neighbours and in general with the world-at-large. This is dangerous. If you look at history, it is only when we created a united bloc that cantons were able to form a confederation based on mutual interests. ” It is this openness to the world that is critical, Barazzone insisted. And not only with commerce. Geneva is located in a region with more than one million inhabitants, including France with which Geneva shares over 100 kilometres of frontier. There are also huge numbers of frontaliers, or cross-border employees who work in Geneva. “All our interests are well beyond our frontiers, whether dealing with mobility or economic challenges.”

Among the most important issues confronting Greater Geneva is the current housing crisis. “Few new arrivals are able to find accommodation in Geneva; as a result many have opted to live in France. This means we have to build our future together and to resolve our problems together. We have to speak with each other and imagine new cross-border solutions, ” added the Geneva mayor.

This also means developing the Lyon-Turin-Geneva triangle. As a Swiss citizen of Italian origin, he regrets the lack of logistical links along this crucially important European axis, for some, the real centre of western Europe. “It is very much in our interests to improve the links between these region and not to forget that Europe is largely built along North-South lines in terms of mobility.”

Among Barazzone’s numerous commitments, both personal and as mayor, are his support for initiatives such as the Cartooning for Peace Foundation (CPF). Last September, he spoke at a charity concert by the SwissRomande Orchestra (OSR). Two CFP caricaturists, notably Chappatte and Plantu, drew alongside the musicians to the rhythm of Beethoven’s Heroic Symphony. “Cartooning for Peace participated as part of this spirit of Geneva, which favours tolerance and freedom of expression.

These cartoonists of the press, who are part of the international network Drawings for Peace, are talented and courageous. They have extraordinary power with their pencils, summarizing a situation with humour and a few quick lines, ” he said.

The mayor further stressed his city’s commitment to the liberty of expression and press freedoms. “Denouncing the behaviour of dictators and highlighting problems such as violence and war through Cartooning for Peace and the International Prize for Press Drawings is a good example of this. We have courageous artists who are imprisoned or lose their jobs because of their work. In this way, Geneva is modestly fulfilling its role.“

Luisa Ballin is a Geneva-based Swiss journalist

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

FIFA’S SHAME: KIDNAPPING THE GAME

BY JAMIL CHADE

FIFA’s new president, Gianni Infantino (R). Can he bring about real change? [Photo: FIFA]

Following years of investigation by news organizations such as the Sunday Times of London, finally the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation and Internal Revenue Service brought the Zurich-based International Federation of Football Associations (FIFA) to heel for corruption with the indictment of 14 people for wire fraud, racketeering and money laundering. Many wondered why the Swiss, who were fully aware of illegal activities within FIFA, did not act sooner. Brazilian journalist and author Jamil Chade explains what enabled soccer Federation officials to bring the game into such disrepute.

F Football is a simple game.

Twenty-two men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end the Germans always win. Or so maintained Gary Lineker, the popular TV commentator and former England international. He was wrong. Football, in fact, is a system that benefits a small group of people claiming to represent the game by exploiting the passion and emotions of millions around the world. For the past 40 years, this is precisely what game officials have been doing with the complicity of

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politicians, dictators, presidents, companies and TV networks.

For decades, FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association), the structure created to govern football globally, opened the floodgates to the mind-boggling possibilities of buying the staging of a World Cup, commercial deals, the construction of stadia, the choice of referees, results on the pitch, ticketing, TV rights and even the ball itself. “You have created a monster” is what João Havelange, FIFA’s Brazilian president from 1974 to 1998, warned his successor Sepp Blatter.

The former president was not talking about corruption, bribes or commissions, but was referring to the fact that multinational companies and TV networks had been invited to the

game, a move that would transform sports forever and take it to every corner of the globe. Despite the potential of hundreds of millions of dollars in fees, there was no oversight.

What emerged instead was an unholy alliance that would enable a small group of officials and businessmen to control football and to kidnap all that it represented for the millions of fans around the world.

When Havelange assumed control of FIFA in the mid-1970s, the organization was little more than a modest entity located in the outskirts of Zurich. It had 12 employees and, according to Blatter’s own account, was financially in serious difficulty.

Three aspects, however, would cause a revolution.

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA The first one was political. Havelange saw the decolonization process in Africa and Asia as an opportunity to enlarge the organization. After all, the newly independent countries across Africa and parts of Asia would need not only a flag and a seat at the United Nations, but also a national football team. FIFA supplied financial help, the uniforms and even the footballs to these new members. In exchange, Havelange gained strategic allies around the world.

The second was the decision to bring in sponsors. Adidas was one of the first to sponsor, notably, a crucial part of the game: the ball itself. Huge investments poured into FIFA, Adidas could claim that it owned the official ball of the World Cup, as if other balls would not prove appropriate. Other multinational companies followed suit. Today, the renowned tour of the football World Cup trophy is actually a Coca-Cola event. A fan can hardly take a picture of the world’s most desired sports cup in history without the red and white brand of the American company being fully visible.

It was the third element, however, that would enable football to become the richest and most popular sport on Earth. This was brought about by the increasing popularity of television coupled with the emergence of live broadcasting. In exchange for the exclusive rights to show the game, networks would pay millions of dollars to FIFA, which, in theory, it would re-invest as a public interest organization in football.

Political expansion, sponsors and the growth of television around the world soon began to transform FIFA from a small hilltop organisation on the outskirts of Switzerland’s largest city Zurich into a global superpower.

Today, its accumulated Swiss financial reserves amount to some US$1.5 billion, a ten-fold increase in less than a decade. The last World Cup, in Brazil, generated a record revenue of US$5.7 billion for FIFA, more than twice what it had earned during the 2006 event hosted by Germany.

But what sort of monster has this led to? What mechanisms had been put into place to provide oversight and to control the massive amounts of cash that football was generating?

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Virtually none. This astonishing lack of control was precisely the Achilles heel of the newly globalized structure. As football grew, the ‘world government’ of this incredibly popular sport continued as it had during the 1970s. Only a small handful of people made all the actual decisions, with absolutely no transparency nor need to justify their actions or contracts.

What they did achieve, however, was to bring in unprecedented profits.

The running of an organization over 40 years without control is precisely what led to the indictments of 14 FIFA officials and businessmen on 27 May 2015 by the US Department of Justice. This proved to be the downfall of an empire constructed outside of the legal system by a group of individuals who had declared their own monopoly of the game, accountable to no one. Even more astonishing, one by one, they all seemed to believe that they should benefit from the same immunities as heads of state. Instead, they found themselves arrested and jailed and are now being extradited to face charges in the US. Every single World Cup since 1998 is under suspicion of corruption.

The indictments revealed how media and marketing companies paid commissions to those in power, not only at FIFA, but other related sports organizations, to acquire, maintain or extend lucrative contracts for the broadcasting of matches. The marketing companies would then sell on these rights across the planet in return for large profits. In just over 20 years, these entities are alleged to have moved over US$150 million in bribes around the world, often using offshore centres, such as the Cayman Islands or Panama.

Bribery for lucrative broadcasting contracts purportedly included TV rights for various other tournaments, such as the rights to broadcast the Copa América (the largest football tournament in the Americas) from 2015 to 2023, purchased by Datisa, a joint venture of marketing companies from Argentina. According to the May 2015 US Department of Justice indictment, the bribes in this case alone reached US$110 million for a handful of sports officials.

Key figures such as José Maria Marin, the former president of the Brazilian Football Confederation (Confederação Brasileira de Futebol: CBF), Eugenio Figueredo, the former head of the South American Football Confederation (CONMEBOL), and the presidents of each of the national associations in South America were all solicited, or intended to receive, bribes.

The legal frameworks of such organizations did not encourage investigation into their decisions.

Only until recently, FIFA enjoyed a status in Switzerland that made any form of investigation almost impossible. When questioned by journalists, FIFA officials usually refused to explain and simply pointed to their website for information.

Around the world, however, FIFA played a very simple game: any threats of investigations by national authorities would mean that the possibility of that country hosting a big event would be almost erased. In other words: blackmail. Marketing companies, investors, TV networks and multinational companies all danced to FIFA’s tune. And in this way, such behavior not only corrupted the system but enabled it to welcome if not directly ask for compensations and commissions.

Corruption trickled down to every level of the game. In 2014 in Brazil, the world’s most important sports event left a very sour taste for ordinary Brazilians. Yet losing 7-1 to Germany was the least of their humiliations.

The real legacy is the constantly evident white elephant stadiums from Brasilia to Manaus; the financial albatross that also hangs around the neck of the famous Rio de Janeiro Maracanã; and the various kickbacks and subsequent arrests and police raids of the local government offices in Natal, Recife and Salvador where games were played.

Can there be a new FIFA? Over the past year, Sepp Blatter, the organization’s Swiss former President from 1998 to 2015, his Secretary-General Jerome Valcke and dozens of other officials were banned from football, including French football hero Michel Platini, who also served as head of UEFA (Union of European Football

Many young football players voiced disappointment about FIFA’s betrayal of the game. Photo: [Edward Girardet]

Associations). But beyond a punishment for wrongdoings, these penalties were part of a wider power struggle between groups. With such a gold mine at their disposal, FIFA officials would fight long and hard to retain power and, with it, the capacity to enrich themselves by ‘selling’ football.

Elections at FIFA and the regional confederations became not only a matter of sports, but decisive moments in establishing which groups would control these channels of payments.

This is what happened when, in February 2016, FIFA held a new election to find a substitute for the disgraced Blatter. The winner, Gianni Infantino, promised a “new FIFA”. He was young, had new ideas about football and assured everyone that a true reform would take place. But the strategy he used to convince FIFA members to vote for him was simply a repetition of what Havelange had done four decades earlier to keep himself in power for 24 years. The dual-national (Swiss and Italian) president opted to do exactly the same. He based his campaigning on two elements: a more generous distribution of FIFA money to national federations and an enlarged World Cup, from 32 to 40 teams. The strategy which had worked well in the 1970s proved just as successful in 2016.

On his election, the new president promised a “full control” of the use of these funds. The new FIFA also immediately raised suspicions when, on taking office, Infantino made it clear that, despite various international investigations still underway, he had no intention of removing the right of Qatar to host the World Cup in 2022.

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Over the past months, Infantino has been fighting a bloddy internal battle forcing the creation of new FIFA to be put aside.

Even adopted reform elements did not come without controversy.

Claiming that the new president had abolished the independence of its oversight mechanisms, one of FIFA’s most influential officials, Domenico Scala, abandoned his post as Independent Auditor.

He accused his new boss of simply not fulfilling the promise of submitting all FIFA documents for scrutiny. Internal accusations against Infantino presented for investigation, including the use of private jets owned by businessmen for official meetings, were found by the Ethics Committee not to be in breach of rules.

The scandals, however, did not fade away. In September 2016, the Attorney General’s Office in Switzerland revealed that it had opened criminal proceedings in connection with the German Football Association (DFB). The suspects were members of the executive board of the organising committee for the 2006 World Cup in Germany, including the famed footballer, Franz Beckenbauer. The proceedings related to allegations of fraud, criminal mismanagement, money laundering and misappropriation. The investigations focus on the joint financing of a gala event, initially at the cost of EUR 7 million, later reduced to EUR 6.7 million. It is suspected that the officials knew that this sum was not being used to fund the gala event, but instead to repay a debt not owed by DFB. The debt, it appeared, was linked to a fund supposedly used to buy FIFA votes in support of Germany’s bid for the World Cup. Since 2015, police investigations in different countries have revealed the extent to which football has been kidnapped by business groups and personal interests. Such operations against FIFA, however, are not the end of the story. But rather the beginning of a very painful process. Breaking this structure will require a more vigorous intervention of law enforcement althougb this alone may not be enough in itself. As long as there are no clear rules, no transparency in contracts for sponsors, TV rights and commercial partners, the room for undue influence from business interests will remain a threat. What many believe is needed is a profound reform, a totally new institution, with clear guidelines for those who are elected to key FIFA positions.

If not, this Swiss-based international organization will continue to operate as a private, non-transparent company acting more as an instrument of ‘football oligarchs’ rather than the interests of all the millions of people, young and old, who follow or play this truly world game.

Geneva-based journalist Jamil Chade is the award-winning European correspondent for the Brazilian daily O Estado de S. Paulo. Ranked as one of his country’s 40 most influential journalists, he is an expert advisor with Transparency International and a member of the Anti-Corruption Solutions and Knowledge (ASK) Network. He is the author of four books, including: Politica, Propino e Futebol (Bribes, Politics and Football).

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DESPERATE EXPATS

THE TRAILING SPOUSE

BY DONATELLA LORCH

There are thousands of them all over the world from Geneva and Bangkok to Ougadougou. Former business managers, teachers, designers, engineers, bankers, whose spouses have taken a priority job overseas and whose professional identities have been relegated to embracing the role of host(ess) because they can’t or aren’t allowed to work. Donatella Lorch, once a foreign correspondent for the New York Times, explains what it’s like to play second fiddle – and how she has dealt with it.

© HANI ABBAS

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DESPERATE EXPATS

M My identity boils down to an airplane landing card.

It’s that dreadfully loaded question, that 10-letter word that used to have me turn to my husband and ask: “What should I say I am?” It used to be easy. Profession? For a while it was “student”. Then, for more than 25 years, much of it spent in conflict zones, I wrote “journalist.” I’ve been seven years off that wagon now. I used to cringe, was often tempted to lie. There was that occasional slight tightening of the chest, that fleeting moment of angst that I wasn’t anybody. Or at least anybody that I deemed worthwhile meeting. I am now vague, undefinable, unexplainable. I am a “spouse”.

Or more precisely, these days, I am commonly referred to as a “trailing spouse”. I married in my 40s. My 11-year-old son, Lucas, the product of the union, jokes I’m ancient. When Lucas wasn’t quite four, my husband, John, was posted to Kenya for the World Bank. It was a return for both of us to a country we had worked and lived in years before we met. There was only a small glitch. It was difficult to get a work permit, especially as a journalist.

Even harder if you are a freelancer who, having spent years covering civil wars and a genocide in that region, had no desire to go back to conflict reporting. As friends called to congratulate us and to ask when they could visit, one British colleague emailed to ask me if, as a World Bank spouse, I was looking forward to hosting weekly afternoon tea parties for the Nairobi ex-patriots.

It was, I have to admit, quite a well-aimed jab at my self-centered insecurities. I was jobless, heading into a spousal world where I had never dared to venture. And besides, I don’t do tea. I don’t drink it. I don’t serve it.

But in the yin and yang of adapting to spousal life, I did savour this colleague’s gumption a few months later when I received an email asking me if I’d arrange an interview with my husband. Many others since have asked me to facilitate access to him. But John, a trailing spouse himself in his first marriage, brushed off my indignation: “Just tell them I have my own email address and you are not my secretary.”

Four years in Kenya. Almost three years in Nepal.

Now almost a year into a four-year assignment in Turkey. It’s a process. Like learning several languages at once. There are plateaus, there are steep climbs and the occasional tear-stained crash. The trip I have taken as a “trailing spouse” is deeply personal and has as much to

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do with addressing my roller-coasting sense of identity as it does learning how to pay an electricity bill in a foreign country.

I’ve missed being in the thick of breaking news. Since I crossed into Afghanistan in my mid-20s with the Mujahidin (holy warriors), reporting has been my unrelenting beast inside. Many World Bank couples work in the same field and they lead a long-distance commuting lifestyle on airplanes. I wanted to live with my new husband. I wanted to explore. I wanted adventures I would not find in suburban Washington D.C. His job offered all these possibilities. But being rather undiplomatic, I had no idea how to be the unemployed wife of a diplomat.

In hindsight, Kenya was an emotionally smooth country. It was easy to be the old me. I had many friends there from my previous posting with The New York Times.

People knew me by my byline. They knew me by my last name, not my husband’s, and sometimes they referred to him as “Mr. Lorch”. It pleased my ego. I hopped between UN and USAID consultancies. John gave me a dog, a very big dog. Biko may be a bureaucratic nightmare to move between countries, and John subsequently learned that he is highly allergic to him, but Biko brightens the darkest days. He has been and continues to be my great emotional leveler.

We arrived in Nepal in 2013, but almost immediately – due to complex World Bank reorganizations – John was moved to Bangladesh. For the first time in decades of traveling, I went through what I assume is culture shock. I was jobless, lonely, alone, unhappy, alienated. I felt pathetically insignificant.

My days were spent on lines to buy diesel and cooking gas and to track down which store might have broccoli or asparagus. It gradually occurred to me that everything everyday had the heartbeat of a story starting with the logistics of Nepali survival. I bought milk from a local cow I met on one of my Biko walks. With little reliable electricity, I made yogurt wrapped in blankets. I hoarded 120 litres of diesel for our car and generator in my garage (this was pure gold during a five-month Indian fuel blockade). I planted beans, lettuce and basil and froze pounds of pesto for winter spaghetti dinners. In this highly seismic region I obsessed about earthquake preparedness, storing water and food and clothes in our yard. I made friends. I learned to love running. I had fun.

I started to write again. About my life. About life in Nepal. NPR occasionally assigned a story. I tried to avoid political topics but I doubt anyone in the government bothered to read the American press. My representational role as the wife of the head of mission was limited to the occasional party where the Scotch flowed fast and freely.

Then the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit.

Few international news organizations had anyone nearby so for a short while I was flooded with requests.

There is nothing quite like the heart-thumping, almost giddy feeling of being in the middle of major breaking news. But here I was living it, not just reporting it. This was my home and I interpreted what I saw in a personal way I had never reported before.

Donatella Lorch reporting as a journalist in earlier days from the Horn of Africa.

Unwilling to leave Lucas at home because of frequent aftershocks, I brought him with me on reporting trips to mass cremations and collapsed towns. Only later, once settled in Turkey, did I realize that being a trailing spouse for two years in Nepal had given me a unique gift. I belonged. With John often out of town, I had an extended family at the World Bank office in Kathmandu. John’s assistant, Kiran, virtually adopted me, including me in office events, bringing me sacks of apples and potatoes from his village in the far west. He was the first one to check in on me post-quake, even though part of his own house had been damaged. I felt that someone always had my back. I hadn’t felt that since my reporting days in Mogadishu, Iraq and Pakistan.

Somehow, I’d managed for years to avoid most of the expected diplomatic socializing. In Turkey, I don’t know what was more nerve wracking for me: wearing dresses and panty hose for the first time in decades (I still ban high heels in my closet) or attending my first meeting of the ‘Spouses of Heads of Mission’ (SHOM). I’ve recovered.

In Turkey, where scores of journalists have recently been arrested and newspapers closed, I have no problem defining myself as just a spouse, especially on the landing

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card. Forget about the work permit.

Early on, I had lunch with the Turkish President’s wife … with a hundred other SHOM members and an army of choreographed Mozart-dressed waiters. I felt like an imposter, until I met some down-to-earth practical and funny women. They, too, were trailing spouses. My life in Turkey is far from glitzy. I’ve spent long days with a group of Iraqi refugee women. As I struggle hopelessly at times with Turkish, I practice my miserable grammar exploring the worlds of farmers, neighborhood police, shop owners, hairdressers, and of course dog-owners that I meet walking Biko. The language barrier is definitely isolating but without my own set of work colleagues, Biko and a few Turkish and ex-pat friends have proven indefatigable door-openers.

I no longer fight who I am - even as that changes from day to day. I still have my demons. But I haven’t been co-opted. It’s not a masquerade. To quote Norah Ephron: “Everything is copy.”

Donatella Lorch is a former correspondent for The New York Times, NBC and Newsweek who has covered Afghanistan, the Horn of Africa, Middle East and other parts of the world. She is currently based in Ankara, Turkey.

PHOTOGRAPHERS FOR HOPE

Established with the help of world-renowned photographer David Burnett, Photographers for Hope is a highly unusual and inspiring initiative. As Anna Wang writes, the project could not only help non-profit organizations significantly improve their public outreach, but also provide them with a more human understanding of the work they do.

Soviet and US leaders Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan with interpreters. [Photo: David Burnett]

At the Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) Hotel just a few kilometres from Angkor Wat in Cambodia, surrounded by photographers, chain smoking and drinking while talking about gear, I realized that I had found my tribe.

My pre-midlife crisis of what I should be doing was now clear. I wanted to hang out and do something fun and purposeful with them. By the pool of the FCC, the idea of a photographers’ collective was born. Now I just needed a leader, an inspiration, a rock star. I needed someone to give the group credibility, someone who any photographer in the know would drop everything to work with and learn from. Someone who is fun to hang around with.

I knew only one who could take on this role, and lucky for me, I knew he would say yes.

David Burnett may not be a household name (hardly any photographer is), but in the photojournalism world, he is a super star. He has won practically every photojournalism award and twice chaired the jury at the World Press Photo competition. In his career that has spanned some 50 years (he would gasp at this number), David has photographed events in more than seventy countries. He has covered stories as diverse as the French and American Presidential elections from 1972 to the present; the famine in Sahel and in Ethiopia; the Iranian revolution following

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Ayatollah Khomeini's return to Tehran, every Summer Olympics since 1984 and Bob Marley in his hometown.

However, he is perhaps even more revered for his humanity, humour and ability to capture equally amazing photos with his pocket-size Olympus and his 1950’s speedgraphic while strapped with another two or three cameras around his neck. His stories are often as touching and colourful as his pictures. When he talked about being with AP Photographer Nick Ut during the event that led to the iconic photograph of 9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc running from the napalm bomb that defined the Vietnam War, he had to pause while all of us, including him, finished weeping. And the next slide would be the historic summit in Geneva between Gorbachev and Reagan. David would demonstrate how the photographers engineered the placements of the seats for the photo op that contributed to the end of the Cold War. In my day job as a communications professional for non-profits, I had seen way too many over-exposed photos of people standing behind a banner during a conference.

Too often, these are plastered across websites or annual charity reports. Here, we have a perfect supply and demand situation. Photographers want to have their photos be seen and not stored in a hard drive, to have some

jury with David as the chair. On the 4th floor of a historic and nearly empty warehouse by the river, we edited the thousands of images down to 99. With the support of Canon who provided a large format printer, we started churning out these photos for a public exhibition on the 10th day. (Note to self: next time, start printing earlier than 24 hours before the show.)

We came to document the revival of an American city where it once served as the headquarters of the Continental Army during the revolutionary war and the first city in the country to be electrified. In the last 40 years, Newburgh has fallen on hard times with economic downturn coupled with drugs and crime which inevitably strangles a distressed city. But in the past few years, things seem to be quietly improving. To our surprise, we discovered that the magic of the city is not in the number

David Burnett photo of the 2002 Winter Olympics, Park City, Utah.

Men’s 120k Ski Jump.

meaning in their work, to somehow make a difference.

And charities or “causes” need compelling photos that they often cannot afford to pay for.

During one of the first conversations with David about the idea of this collective, someone asked, what to call this group. “Photographers for Hope” was more of an instinctive reflex than a well thought-out plan. The name stuck. It seemed to capture the spirit of the group and what we wanted to achieve.

Since its inception, Photographers for Hope, under the guidance of our spiritual leader, has travelled to 10 countries, working on projects from the power of sports in Rio to deforestation in Indonesia. Our latest project was the most personal one for David. Nine photographers from as far as India, Hong Kong and Croatia descended upon the city of Newburgh along the Hudson River, 60 miles north of New York City. We were documenting a historic town on the cusp of a revival.

In fact, we were there because it was David’s home or rather, a place where he would pack and unpack between trips. His cousins have been harassing him about not taking photos of what’s right on his doorstep. You can say that this project was born out of a typical Jewish family guilt trip. Yet, what was a chance to do something less exotic than the jungles of Indonesia or the slums of Bangladesh turned out to be anything but unadventurous. For all of the photographers, David included, it was life changing, life affirming and the best 10 days any of us have spent in a long time.

We combed the streets from meth clinics to community centers, from rodeos to artist studios, from homeless shelters to Baptist churches. In just over a week, we collectively shot around 30,000 pictures. From the fifth night onwards, we had our own version of a World Press Photo

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David Burnett (facing camera) with members of Photographers for Hope earlier this year in Newburgh, New York.

of new businesses or new houses under renovation, it is the spirit of a community. It was the perfect place for a project by Photographers for Hope.

With the support of the Kaplan Family Foundation, long-time benefactor of the city, we were able to capture this unique story in a documentary film and a book. The film and book on the rise of Newburgh are being launched this fall. Our hope is that it will show Newburghers some aspects of the city they might not know but will want to connect with. And beyond Newburgh, we hope these images and the story will inspire discussions on the future of other cities in America and around the world.

At the end of our assignment, while we all flew out feeling a permanent connection to the city, David felt, perhaps for the first time, very much at home in Newburgh.

Anna Wang is a Geneva region-based communications specialist and photographer.

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

LUC HOFFMAN’S LEGACY OF HOPE FOR THE PLANET

When world-renowned Swiss ornithologist Luc Hoffman passed away earlier this year, he left more than just a passion for birds and wildlife conservation, writes Elizabeth Kemf.

World-renowned Swiss ornithologist Luc Hoffmann, who dedicated his life to conserving birds as well as ecosystems and flyways. His particular passion was protecting the Mediterranean wetlands of the Camargue in southeastern France.

If the crane is sent from heaven to transport those destined for eternal life, then surely during his final journey Luc Hoffmann was carried on the wings of the bird that symbolizes fidelity and immortality.

This modest and passionate ornithologist, who died in July at the age of 93, dedicated his life to conserving not only birds but entire ecosystems and flyways. His favoured habitat was the Mediterranean wetlands of the Camargue in southeastern France, where in 1947 he purchased the vast pastures, woodlands and marshes of the Tour du Valat estate of the Rhone River delta. While still a biology student, he had fallen in love with the rare Camargue white horses, galloping through the shallow saltwater and the breeding grounds of the elegant Greater Flamingos, their gangly chicks, and other less striking water birds.

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Luc was from Basel, Switzerland, and as the grandson of the founder of the pharmaceutical company Hoffmann-La Roche, he was a billionaire who rolled up his sleeves and worked shoulder to shoulder with fellow scientists, ecologists and neighbours. He founded the Tour du Valat Biological Research Station in 1954, initially to ring birds.

One of the keys to the Station’s achievements is that monitoring is carried out and projects are initiated and followed through by, in Luc’s own words, “the institutional and especially human networks it has been able to create.”

Starting in 1962, Luc and his colleagues began charting the course for the first global environmental treaty, the Ramsar Convention. Negotiations lasted nearly a decade.

It was adopted by 18 nations at a seaside resort on the Caspian Sea in 1971.

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

Luc was tenacious. If the flamingos in the Camargue and other birds from Northern Europe and Siberia wintered in the Banc D’ Arguin on the western fringes of the Sahara, he was determined to ensure they were protected.

Thanks to the organizations that Luc established or funded, his role as Vice-President of IUCN and WWF, and his close relationship with the Government of Mauritania, the Banc D’Arguin, which constitutes one of the largest global gatherings of over two million waterbirds, was declared a National Park in 1976, a Ramsar Site in 1983 and a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1989.

Today, one third of Mauritania’s entire coastline and one of the world’s richest fishing grounds − in which local Imraguen fishermen cooperate with dolphins that drive schools of yellow mullet into their waiting nets − are thriving.

Birds and endangered estuaries weren’t Luc’s only passion.

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He loved people and saw the best in them, especially their potential. One of his employees, Heinz Hafner, had a penchant for ornithology and Luc encouraged and supported Heinz on his path from cook, to scientist, to internationally renowned conservationist. Every year the Tour du Valat holds a Heinz Hafner Lecture in his honour.

Heinz, who died in 2003, was one of thousands of people who benefited from Luc’s discreet benevolence.

Luc was humble, but I remember him losing his cool in WWF’s reception area a few years after I joined the organization. He had been trying to phone WWF’s DirectorGeneral, Charles De Haes, and the receptionist, who did not recognize his name, refused to put him through. Luc drove from home to the headquarters and exclaimed that the woman did not know who he was! I assured her he was the Vice-President and one of the founders. He strode up the stairs to Charles’ office, his tall frame upright and his gait forthright. That was a rare moment in WWF’s halls.

In 1998 Luc befriended Professor Vo Quy of Vietnam, who had been awarded WWF’s Gold Medal for his efforts to restore his country’s war-torn environment. Luc was so taken by Vo Quy that he invited him to the Camargue to participate in the annual ringing of the flamingos.

Immediately, I volunteered to drive Vo Quy to the Tour du Valat.

Since I am wont to get lost, we did just that. I didn’t have a mobile phone back then, and we called from a neighbour’s house, who led us to Luc’s residence. We were immediately forgiven; the wine and I breathed a sigh of relief. Vo Quy swooned. The two men rarely stopped talking, except when watching birds before sunrise on Luc’s 2,600 ha nature reserve.

Luc, who bought his land in the wake of World War II, was fascinated to learn that the Eastern Saurus Crane had returned to a wetland drained and defoliated during the Vietnam War and that a nature reserve, Tram Chim, near the Cambodian border had been established to protect the birds and the recovering mangroves. Some 1,000 cranes were wintering in Vietnam, the largest population in Southeast Asia. Vo Quy’s Centre for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies (CRES) was organizing an international conference to be held at Tram Chim and told Luc he had asked WWF for funding.

Soon after, Luc invited Vo Quy to his home in Montricher, Switzerland. The two ornithologists set off on a walk, and I followed. They examined every leaf, butterfly, bird, and insect, in their path. The image of the pair engrossed in discovery, binoculars at the ready, is imprinted in my mind like a chick on her mother: forever.

Back at the house, beneath the majestic cathedral ceiling of a converted barn, Luc asked Vo Quy about the cranes and if he had managed to find sufficient funding.

When Vo Quy revealed that the proposal had not been approved, Luc asked how much he needed. He promised 7,000 US dollars on the spot.

Luc did what he believed in and he never deviated from his path. From the salty marshes of the Camargue, Luc’s outreach covers every country and continent. He would never have told you that.

Elizabeth Kemf is a Geneva-based journalist, author and conservation specialist.

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FROM THE FIELD

THE YAZIDIS: Life AFTER GENOCIDE

BY VICKEN CHETERIAN

Š KRISTIAN SKEIE

When self-styled Islamic State fighters invaded Yazidi territory in northern Iraq in August, 2014, they unleashed a ruthless and deliberate attempt to destroy this ancient people and their unique culture. The militants massacred an estimated 5,000 men and boys but also kidnapped and brutalized thousands of women and girls. The Yazidi plight prompted international outrage and the direct intervention of US forces against ISIS. Writer Vicken Cheterian and photographer Kristian Skeie recently visited Sinjar in northern Iraq and the Yazidi communities that remain.

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© KRISTIAN SKEIE

A Yazidi refugee tent near Dohuk in northern Iraq. Conditions are basic and vary with some displaced living in the towns, others scattered across the countryside. Graffiti shows the date they fled Sinjar. [Photo : Kristian Skeie]

H Hajji Mirza is from Tel Azar.

Now he and his family are condemned to live in a tent in Khanke, a refugee camp with over 16,000 people near Dohuk in northern Iraq. “For 20 years I worked as construction worker in Tikrit. For 15 years I did the same in Kurdistan. We did not ask for government positions, we did not protest, all what we want is to continue our way of life. In spite of all that they keep killing us.”

Hajji Mirza is lucky because he lives inside the camp, where local authorities and international relief agencies provide basic services as there are thousands of other, less fortunate, families scattered over the hills and fields and on the outskirts of Khanke who must cope on their own. We entered a tent as its inhabitants were washing the ground. Unable to enjoy the benefits of a real camp, they lack even the most basic services. Written by hand on the canvas next to the entrance are the words: Ya khowdi, wa ya

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“WRITTEN BY HAND ON THE CANVAS NEXT TO THE ENTRANCE ARE THE WORDS :

YA KHOWDI, WA YA MALEK TAWOOS” (OH GOD, AND OH PEACOCK ANGEL)

malek tawoos (Oh God, and oh Peacock angel).

Next to this, the fateful date: 3/8/2014.

On that day, in the early hours of August 3, 2014, ISIS (also known as Daesh) fighters with heavy weapons from Ba’aj, who had conquered Mosul two months earlier, attacked the Yazidi villages of Girzarek and Siba Sheikh Khidir. Until then, the Yazidis had been protected by Kurdish Peshmerga forces, but these withdrew on receiving orders from above. They did not evacuate the Yazidi civilian population, leaving them defenseless and at ISIS’ mercy. Local Yazidi resistance armed with light weapons collapsed after four hours; they did not have enough ammunition, nor heavy arms to resist the Jihadis in their armoured vehicles. ISIS forces quickly entered the town.

Panic-stricken, the population tried to flee to nearby Mount Sinjar. Some were lucky, many not and ISIS captured the unfortunate ones: men were forced to convert to Islam and those who refused were killed on the spot. More than 35 mass graves have been found so far. But the horror didn’t stop there and perhaps the dead were luckier than those who survived. ISIS revived open sex slave markets, a tradition that had disappeared from the region with the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the early 20th century. Thus, after the fall of Girzarek and Siba Sheikh Khidir, some 5,240 women and girls were captured, eventually sold as slaves.

Invited into the tent, we found ourselves sitting opposite to a woman – call her Amal - who narrated her ordeal. She could be 45 years old,

THE YAZIDIS : LIFE AFTER GENOCIDE BY VICKEN CHETERIAN

but it was difficult to tell. A life of hard work under the Iraqi sun has shriveled her skin. Next to her is her daughter, an infant in her lap, and her two sons, 11 and 14 years old. They lived in Kojo, a village south of Mount Sinjar.

“Back then we lived normal lives,” she says. “We were satisfied.” When ISIS attacked her village early one day, they killed one of her daughters.

The woman survived with her other daughter Nisrin and two teenage sons, but together with dozens of other family members, they were taken hostage. The Daesh militants forced them to convert to Islam and to read the Koran. When an old woman refused, they immediately shot her.

Yet, converting did not protect them from the worst of suffering.

“The first group that attacked Kojo were local Arabs,” Amal continues.

“They separated the women from the men, and took us to Sinjar city. They mistreated us, left us without food for ten days. Then, they separated us to small groups of 10-15, and one of them started selling us to others, and sent us to different places.” Amal was taken to Mosul where she stayed for a month, before being moved to Tel A’far where she was kept captive for another month, before being sold yet again. This time, they sent her to Raqqa where she languished as a slave for yet another month. ISIS often kept her at their military headquarters, one of the worst places to be hostage, given the constant mistreatment and abuse by large numbers of militants passing through. When she sought to resist, one of her captors struck her on the head with the butt of his rifle; the wound bled for a month. Amal still has pains and memory gaps. She urgently needs treatment and medication, but does not have the money.

Given the discreet expressions of pain on her beautiful face, Amal clearly finds it difficult to tell of her suffering to strangers, particularly in front of her three children. “They treated us better in Raqqa,” she continues nonetheless after a moment’s respite. “They gave us food to eat and proper water to drink.” She managed to escape thanks

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FROM THE FIELD

to the assistance of a Syrian woman. Her sons managed to flee with another group of women. But 30 members of her family remain hostages at the hands of these ISIS militants, including her 10-year-old nephew from whom they had news two weeks earlier. Amal receives news of these relatives, but not necessarily good news. She shows a photo on her mobile phone; it is an ISIS propaganda photo and in it the young nephew is shown holding an old Kalashnikov rifle that looks huge next to him, while his other hand points a finger upwards, the jihadi sign of tawheed – or unity of the creator. Amal’s nephew is one of the captured Yazidi boys that ISIS is now training as killers.

© KRISTIAN SKEIE

A young Yazidi boy, lucky to have survived the ISIS onslaught. If not killed, he might have been inducted as a Daesh suicide bomber or fighter. [Photo : Kristian Skeie]

DEPARTURE COULD ELIMINATE THE YAZIDIS AS A COMMUNITY

© KRISTIAN SKEIE Photos of Yazidi women and girls kidnapped and enslaved by ISIS. [Photo : Kristian Skeie]

DEPARTURE COULD ELIMINATE THE YAZIDIS AS A COMMUNITY “All Yazidis want to leave, in a generation none will be left in Iraq,” says Falah, a pharmacist, now a displaced refugee in his own country. Falah receives us in his family’s newly-built house, a house with bare walls. We sit with him on the ground; from behind a curtain, we hear the women of the house preparing food. Indeed, Yazidi hospitality never ceases, not even when things are dire. As proof of the matter if further proof were needed, Falah’s daughter, barely two years old, is crying. Every time he leaves to go to work, Falah says, she cries. Falah has another daughter who is three, but she is gone. His wife took her, together with three of his younger brothers last December, crossing into Turkey and then risking the precarious boat journey across the Aegean Sea to reach the eventual safety of a refugee camp in Germany.

Why did he let her family embark on such a dangerous trip in the middle of winter? “Because we heard that the corridor for refugees was going to be closed, we thought it was our chance.” Then why didn’t he join his wife and daughter? “Because I did not have enough money to take all my family, including my aging parents. Now I am working to join them.”

It is difficult to understand why people take such risks.

The only way to grasp this is by linking it to their utter desperation, and the complete lack of tangible hope. Yet for Falah, ISIS is only part of a bigger problem, notably the systematic and often violent discrimination levelled for centuries against the Yazidis because of their religion.

For some, their beliefs are associated with mystical Zoroastrianism and Sufism, while others argue that it has more to do with a combination of Shi’a and Sufi Islam mixed with pagan folklore and sun worship, “We are a

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drop in a sea of Muslims which wants to suffocate us,” he says. His friend Ali, originally from Durkeré and now living in Dohuk, adds: “We could never imagine something like this could happen. In 2003 (during the American invasion of Iraq) many Sunni Turkmen from Tel A’far, a Baathist stronghold, found refuge in Sinjar, and we welcomed them.

But the good will was not reciprocated. Far from it. As far as the Sunni Muslim can see, the Yazidi are not “people of the book”, that is a people inscribed in the Abrahamic tradition. From the ISIS perspective, Yazidis do not own a holy book; the Yazidi sacred texts, contained in their Kitêba Cilwe (“Book of Illumination”) are not recognized

by Fundamentalist Islam as worthy of respect. This single track fanaticism leads naturally to extreme notions and equally extreme inhuman actions, “Therefore they have the right to kill us men and rape the women.” says Ali ruefully.

In the village of Duguré, where heavy fighting took place prior to the defeat of Daesh fighters, the retreating militants blew up 417 houses. On the wall of one of them, where Jihadists had evidently lodged, there is graffiti with the words: Ya ‘abdat al-shaytan, bildabh’ ji’nakom (Oh worshippers of the devil, we came to massacre you).” But who is the real personification of Satan?

The Yazidis feel doubly wounded and betrayed. Their neighbouring Arab tribes attacked them, the Kurdish Peshmerga abandoned them, and the “international community” ignores them. The question now is whether this extraordinary religion, civilization and unique way of life that has survived for centuries, will outlive the ISIS genocide? Many, such as Falah, are pessimistic. They think the Yazidis will seek refuge in countries far away from their historic temples. But as Ali points out, the Yazidis have been victims of massacres and forced conversions

THE YAZIDIS : LIFE AFTER GENOCIDE BY VICKEN CHETERIAN

many times before. “Yazidis call the 2014 events a farman, a term that comes from the late 19th century Ottoman massacres of religious minorities. In previous farmans, converted Yazidis remained Muslim. This time, they returned to their Yazidi religion.”

Vicken Cheterian is a Geneva-based journalist and author.

His latest book is: Open Wounds: Armenians, Turks, and a Century of Genocide (C Hurst, 2015). He travelled as part of a Webster University (Geneva) research assignment to northern Iraq with Norwegian photographer Kristian Skeie.

NOTE ON THE PHOTOGRAPHER Kristian Skeie (kskeie@gmail.com) is a Norwegian, Swiss based documentary photographer and contributor to Keystone Photo agency (www.keystone.ch) Zurich. His main work has focused on the aftermath of war, specifically life today in Srebrenica (Bosnia), Rwanda and Iraq. He seeks to depict the story of how people are resettling in Europe, notably Germany and Sweden, following their war or genocide experiences. He is currently working on a new project on the impact of Middle East migration in the Balkans. Skeie is also collaborating with various NGOs, companies and media partners, notably on an initiative exploring new technologies for amputations and the reconstitution of nerves in the body. For further information, see: http://ks-imaging.blogspot.com and https://www.facebook.com/photographerkristianskeie

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FROM THE FIELD

Escape from ISIS: Mobile phones and the Yazidi women In August, 2014, more than 5,000 Yazidi women were captured and enslaved by so-called Islamic State fighters when they attacked the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar. The women, some of them teenagers and even girls as young as eight, were forced to watch as militants murdered their families before selling them into sexual slavery. “Basically, ISIS (also IS or Daesh) has returned to a medieval form of radical Islam whereby captured women and girls in time of war can be enslaved according to their reading of the Koran. They are war booty,” explained Lynne Franjié, professor of Oriental Studies at Lille University in France, at the 2016 Geneva International Human Rights Film Festival.

As poignantly depicted in Edward Watts’ Escape from ISIS , a 2015 Channel Four television documentary shown at the Festival, most of these women have been repeatedly raped by IS fighters who purchased them in open slave markets. Nevertheless, as many as 2,000 have been able to escape, some with the help of Khalil, a Yazidi lawyer, and his network of undercover volunteers.

Given the widespread use of mobile phones – some of the women were able to talk with their families as they were being abducted – these rescuers have managed to keep track of their movements, plus arrange secret escape routes. The underground railway operatives also use Google Maps as a means of determining which routes out of IS territory are the safest.

On at least one occasion, the volunteers succeeded in surreptitiously stealing back a group of women while pretending to negotiate via mobile phone for a ransom payoff.

Part of the footage was in the form of clandestine mobile phone filming by Khalil’s volunteers inside IS zones. There was also ‘vanity’ footage shot by IS militants discussing the types of women they wanted to buy. Other materials were provided by individuals who posted testimony and photographs on Facebook while still living in the IS-controlled ‘capital’ of Raqqa.

One woman was forced to flee after militants came by her house and threatened to kill her family unless she handed over her computer. Crucial testimony also has been provided by Seivan Salim, an Iraqi female photographer and author of the Escaped project, which tells the stories through personal accounts and pictures of those women, all dressed in traditional white Yazidi wedding gowns to symbolise purity, who have managed to get away.

For Human Rights Watch researcher, Rothna Begum, it is crucial to compile such documentation if ever perpetrators are to be brought to justice in courts of law. (Vanity footage shot by Sri Lankan government soldiers during the final days of the Tamil conflict also has been used as a way of gathering evidence regarding crimes against humanity). “One problem we envisage is that some of the women may not wish to testify because they would have to admit that they were raped repeatedly,” said Begum. “They have suffered incredibly and there is very little being done to deal with psycho-social trauma, which is profound. Then there is the problem of social stigma and children born as a result of these rapes. How will society deal with these women, particularly those who are not married, but have been violated?” THE EDITORS

TOM’S PAINE LETTER FROM AMERICA THE PRESENT COPIES THE PAST From Brexit to ISIS to the rise of nationalism in Europe, not to mention Donald Trump and the chaotic recent American election campaign, it is easy to get the impression that the international order is coming apart at the seams. To a certain extent it is, although what we are facing today is more of a matter of digesting globalization than calling for revolution. At moments like this, it’s worth recalling the situation the world faced two and a half centuries ago when Britain tried unsuccessfully to cope with a revolt in its 13 North American colonies, and European feudal aristocracies were about to be shaken by the turbulent ideas of the French Revolution and the conquests of Napoleon Bonaparte that followed.

In North America, the man who clarified the confusion of the moment was a former British excise officer, Thomas Paine, who on the advice of Benjamin Franklin, sailed for Philadelphia in 1775. Paine became editor of the Pennsylvania Magazine, and writing under the pseudonym, Republicus, argued that the distraught colonies should band together to form one nation. “We cannot offer terms of peace to Great Britain,” he reasoned, ”until we agree to call ourselves by some name. I shall rejoice to hear the title of the United States of America, in order that we may be on a proper footing to negotiate a peace.”

The clarity of the logic in Paine’s pamphlet, Common Sense, is credited with forging the soul of America’s War of Independence. His essay series, The American Crisis, begins: ”These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country, but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives everything its value.”

The United States and world at large could use another Tom Paine today. What appears to be chaos is in fact a natural phenomenon in which society redefines itself and adjusts to a larger vision with larger parameters. In the United States, the issue is the transition to a diverse, multiethnic and genuinely global population. For the first time, Americans who trace their ancestry to western Europe no longer have a political majority. The surprisingly vocal support for Donald Trump is a rear-guard action by a segment of society that feels it is losing out in the new America that is now taking shape. The equally passionate support for Bernie Sanders in the primary campaign came

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from that segment that wants the transition to a new society to take place faster.

Both groups want change, only it is change in opposing directions. The contentious, no-holds-barred election campaign, has led more than a few potential voters to seek relief from “election anxiety.” But the campaign has also probed the character of each candidate in a way that would have been difficult for any other approach to achieve. This is what the Founding Fathers decided after they themselves had experienced even more contentious debates. Machiavelli noted that when a crisis forces a society to reassess and reaffirm its values, it can provide unexpected benefits. As one woman, who had originally supported Trump, put it: “I want change, but I don’t think I want that kind of change.”

The real elephant in the room is the economy, that and technological disruption. Globalization, which was pushed largely by private business in the interest of cutting labor costs, has done more to accelerate development in the Third World than decades of international aid programmes. It has also displaced hundreds of thousands of jobs in highly industrialized countries, but given the inevitability of automation, climate change and over-population, those jobs were doomed in any case.

The era of mass factory employment in which workers are imprisoned in endlessly repetitive, mindless tasks is over. What is needed in the world of the future is people who can think and use reason to work through problems.

That requires an increased investment in education.

More than that, it requires government leadership. If you want to lead society through wrenching change,” a former Swedish prime minister once observed,” you need to first make people feel confident in the future.”

The world we’ve inherited is substantially wealthier and better than it was in Paine’s time. Paine became involved in the French Revolution after he had helped the one in America. He had a brief meeting with Napoleon, who claimed that he kept a copy of Common Sense under his pillow. Paine later denounced the self-styled emperor as “the greatest charlatan the world has seen.” He returned to the US in 1802 at the invitation of Thomas Jefferson.

Both he and Jefferson became embroiled in partisan politics that might have made even Donald Trump blush.

Our debt to these men is nevertheless substantial. Here at Global Geneva, we intend to contribute a regular column.

It’s name, fitting enough: Tom’s Paine.

Americas editor William Dowell, is a journalist, author and former foreign correspondent for TIME and ABC News.

FROM THE FIELD

KEEPING IT FAMILY:

HOW AFRICA'S CORRUPT LEADERS STAY IN POWER

BY KEITH SOMERVILLE

Earlier this year, the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, which supports democracy, human rights and an end to corruption, failed to select – yet again - a deserving winner for its prestigious 2016 prize that recognizes former presidents who have developed their countries for the benefit of their people. There was simply no one worthy of the prize - $5 million awarded over 10 years and then $200,000 per year for life.

Keith Somerville explores why Africa’s ruling and largely dictatorial elites prefer to keep themselves in power by using and abusing their economies at the cost of progress and on the backs of Africa’s masses.

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© JEFF DANZIGER

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Africa over the past months has seen closely-fought elections whose integrity was far from clear - alongside serious outbreaks of protest and violence in a number of countries. The continent has also experienced a surge in death and population displacement as civil wars flared up once more in South Sudan, the Central African Republic, to name but two examples, along with continuing insurgencies in Somalia, Nigeria and Mali. This challenges the complacent and self-serving view on the pace and depth of democratisation and accountability of many African governments. It has also clearly demonstrated the ability of its leaders to use the media, forces of coercion and informal networks to retain power and crush opposition.

Regrettably, in Africa, the past is still present.

Gabon is currently undergoing protests and a general strike looms as defeated opposition candidate Jean Ping and his supporters reject the questionable victory by incumbent president Ali Bongo. In mid-August, President Edgar Lungu clung to power in Zambia following an election campaign marked by violence and inflammatory speech.

At the same time, the Ethiopian government used extreme force to suppress demonstrations in Sondar province and among the large Oromo community bitter about a perceived political and economic marginalisation in addition to being the victim of land grabs favouring elite groups and foreign states, such as China and Gulf States, who have close economic ties with the government of Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn. UN aid agencies have reported that the protests and violent repression are obstructing attempts to get food aid to malnourished children, suffering as a result of food shortages.

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Weeks before, forces of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army loyal to South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir launched attacks on the troops of Vice President Riek Machar effectively wrecking a painstakingly-constructed peace deal to end the civil war.

Machar was subsequently sacked

by Kiir. Earlier in the year, that other cowboy-hatted African leader, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, was re-elected in a far from clean election. In typical African fashion, Museveni used state media, restrictions on independent journalism and the frequent arrest of opposition leader Kizza Besigye to ensure victory at the polls.

Not to be outdone, Zimbabwe’s ailing President Robert Mugabe remained in office, at the age of 92, despite an unremittingly crumbling economy and bitter in-fighting of competing factions of within the ruling ZANU-PF, all with an eager eye on succession to the throne. Over the years, Mugabe had lost the backing of the key network of war veterans, once the bedrock of his patronage system.

These examples all demonstrate the ability of long-serving presidents and their support networks (formal and informal) to retain power. It also enables them to duck any form of real accountability for their well-documented records of economic mismanagement, corruption and violations of basic human rights.

Can this stark continuum of failure, and worse, at the top be explained by the use of force and state resources?

Or are there other instruments in the African stay-in-power tool-box? For all their willingness to use coercion and naked force, how do they actually manage to stay in power despite weak state structures and institutions not to mention the distractions caused by seemingly structural factions and in-fighting?

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL In all these countries, from Angola to Congo, the political, social and economic dynamics are indeed different. Over-simplifications are often misleading. There are no easy explanations. That said, there are common factors that lead to the

development, and maintenance, of such autocratic, repressive and unaccountable systems.

The single most influential factor is that sub-Saharan African economies are crucially dependent on export revenues, the inflow of foreign aid and loans from international institutions or commercial banks. This enables ruling elites to control incoming and outgoing financial flows. This they do by extracting rents, which they then use to bolster their hold on power through patronage networks and, naturally, to enrich themselves even further.

EXTRAVERSION AND THE POWER OF THE GATEKEEPERS Many of Africa’s economies have become inordinately dependent on export revenues, primarily based on agricultural or mineral commodities. In most cases, this reliance on exports also is coupled with a chronic failure to re-invest earned revenues, including loans and international aid, into the necessary diversification and broadening of those export-led economic sectors critical to development. Domestic industrial, agricultural production and commercial networks (providing consumer goods, processed foods and fuel) would generate jobs plus a significant (and vital) domestic tax base.

Instead, these economies, largely because of insufficient reinvestment in local infrastructure have performed poorly and so explain economic stagnation. Income from exports is skimmed off by political elites and sent abroad to be lodged in banks or invested in Western economies rather than being used as the seed-corn for domestic growth.

In Nigeria, with all its oil earnings, economic diversification and investment in agriculture or non-oil related industries have been poor with little generation of depth and breadth to the domestic economy or job creation. The African Development Bank recently disclosed that the numbers of Nigerians living in poverty has increased to 61 per cent compared with 55 per cent in 2004 – between 1970 and 2000, the population of poor has risen significantly from 19 million

KEEPING IT FAMILY : HOW AFRICA’S CORRUPT LEADERS STAY IN POWER

to 90 million. The failure to develop domestic agriculture and industry and over-reliance on fickle export income means that many countries remain heavily dependent on foreign aid to support basic government budgets (almost 90 per cent reliance in Ethiopia and 40 per cent in Malawi, for example).

The end result? Highly unbalanced economic systems, that in turn impede the growth of independent, private business classes rendering government revenues unduly reliant on export income. The warped system affects not only royalties earned from mineral and agricultural production but taints to the point of negating much of the sought developmental effect of those budgetary and investment finance projects and programmes from donor nations, international financial institutions, such as the World Bank, and foreign commercial banks.

Domestic business or personal taxation ranks low as a source of official income, despite a burgeoning middle class in some countries. With taxpayers few and far between, the link between taxation and representation, or participation in decision-making, a corner-stone of democracy, remains limited or non-existent. For a variety of reasons (self-serving ones not least), these governments and their ruling elites shun such forms of cash generation.

Instead, they prefer to exploit easier financial resources. Taxation, though encouraged by donors, also enables accountability - the last thing these particular leaders want.

This continental-grown and carefully nurtured economic selfishness and self-serving structures frees governments, especially those inclined to authoritarianism, from the shackles of domestic economic and political constraints.

This gross imbalance in most African economies not only reinforces the abusive powers of these elites, it also prevents them from dealing with key developmental issues, such as food insecurity, inequality, unemployment, stagnant agricultural production and widespread poverty. Patronage – whether typified by food aid deliveries being used to reward or punish

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communities according to their political allegiances, job-generating local projects benefiting communities that are part of patronage networks, or even by the contributions of some rich politicians to things like funeral costs of the poor in their key support areas - becomes even more critical enterprise as an informal yet unquestionably influential tool of power. More perverse still, it compels the ruling elites to rely even more tightly on a form of foreign funding influenced by global markets and aid donors policies over which they have little control. This means these leaders and their cronies can (hope to) continue to hold or perhaps just simply cling on to power whilst hidden assets grow in off-shore bank accounts or investments abroad – the Angolan elite is one of the biggest investors in the Portuguese economy, for example, while the non-oil sectors in the country are starved of investment.

As gatekeepers, they have the resources to pay off their client-patronage networks, such as party officials or key figures within the army, police and other support groups. Unsurprisingly, in Africa as elsewhere, money and privilege buy the most effective forms of loyalty. Equally unsurprisingly, due to spiralling requests and demands, their ability to extract wealth either for themselves or to fuel ever-greedy elite groups, becomes even more extroverted. Hence, for these regimes control is survival.

Yet despite the patronage or perhaps because of it, African power elites are unabashedly distant from their own people. They seek to rule through the instruments of state coercion, such as secret police, and in addition to informal networks of patronage that power and access to rents brings them. In countries such as Uganda, Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Rwanda, power networks are based on the military or former military officers, and on the home areas of political leaders. Or they manipulate business elites by judicious management of government contracts, assets available thorough divestment of state resources (usually under externally-driven structural

FROM THE FIELD

adjustment programmes), or import licenses.

As gatekeepers, leaders can mix and match their patronage networks to whatever is need to maintain the regime in power.

Perhaps paradoxically, this also generates overt or covert backing of authoritarian governments by Western states, those supposedly committed to the extension of democracy. Uganda and Rwanda are obvious examples. In both countries, nascent democracy is increasingly undermined by the steadfast external support for Museveni and Kagame, seen by Washington, London and Paris as manifest guarantors of the goal of stability. Such regimes are indeed perceived by the outside backers, investors and sundry development managers as the only credible bulwarks against terrorist and anti-Western movements, notably Al Shabaab in Somalia. French interventions in the Central African Republic and Mali play similar roles.

The French political scientist Jean-Francois Bayart identified the core of ‘extraversion’ as a system representing “the creation and capture of a rent generated by dependency and which functions as a historical matrix of inequality, political centralisation and social struggle.” This is a viewpoint also supported by the Cameroonian political scientist and theorist Achille Mbembe, who emphasises how revenue extracted from export and external financing transactions helps develop and maintain “local systems of inequality and domination” in many African states, often facilitating the formation of elite coalitions and worsening factional conflict.

Gate-keeping thus allows those in power to counter or at least contain most threats by emerging from factional struggles or domestic opposition if, and only if, they are seen by the king-making elites as the only approved if not obligatory points de passage as recipients for foreign “benevolence”.

As Yale University historian Frederick Cooper stressed, this can result in the development of a domestic ruling elite “distant from the population it governed, exercising control over a narrow range of resources focused on the juncture of domestic and world economies”.

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KEEPING IT FAMILY : HOW AFRICA’S CORRUPT LEADERS STAY IN POWER

Regimes operating in this way only become fragile when export revenues fall or when they suffer a loss of foreign loans generally a result of severe indebtedness. Or because banks refuse – or not allowed - to continue to fund those engaging in glaring mismanagement and corruption. The ensuing fall from Western monetary grace can in turn lead to a loss of domestic stability.

In recent years, however, one source of external backing that seems to have enabled a variety of gatekeepers from Mugabe to Bashir, Dos Santos, Meles Zenawi/Hailemariam Desalegn and Museveni to keep their options open and even defy Western opprobrium or even sanctions, is China.

As the past two decades have seen, China has its own agenda in Africa. This includes the search for raw materials, markets for cheap manufactured goods and even ways of exporting surplus labour. Such support does not include political conditionality. Chinese cash comes with no strings. The legitimisation of base economic practices – corruption in plain words – can therefore be conveniently cloaked under the emotional appeal of “national independence” or “sovereign respect”. This means Chinese economic support, infrastructural aid and finance are only leading to a widening of options for canny gatekeepers. If need be, they can play West against East in the hope that never twain shall meet, and thus increasingly reduce their dependence on those Western backers who can be so fickle in the eyes of many an African autocrat. Switzerland, for example, has been under local and international pressure to stop African dictators from using its banks as havens for dumping cash and storing jewellery in its secretive safes and vaults under the Lac Léman.

Indeed, in recent years, the Swiss have been making noted efforts to return ill-gotten funds back to their home countries.

Over the past decade, this new reality has been often typified

by Western commentators and politicians as “Africa Rising”, notably the growth in GDP (essentially through booming commodity exports), increased Chinese trade and aid, and, in some places, certain advances in democracy and aka the regular holding of elections. Nevertheless, Africa’s dominant elites and their patronage networks continue to depend largely on their gatekeeper roles for rents, wealth and survival. And they do not hesitate to use such wealth to adapting their political strategies for survival at the cost of their own people. They continue to maintain their power networks by openly manipulating the advantages of incumbency, such as Burundi president Pierre Nkurunziza’s efforts to change the constitution to enable him to run for a third term. Or Mugabe’s and Museveni’s ability to distribute sufficient patronage to win or rig elections. Uganda’s Museveni has tended to rely on both state and informal power networks through his clients in the military or among the new (frequently ex-military and highly state dependent) unofficial networks go a long way in explaining his hold on power for over 30 years.

Zimbabwe’s Mugabe, who still insists that British colonialism is the real reason behind his country’s disastrous economic collapse, and Bashir in Sudan have done much the same.

Except that Mugabe’s ZANU-PF thugs have openly indulged over the years in the beating, incarceration and murder of political opponents as well. In the case of Zambia, Lungu used control over the state media, restrictions on the main independent newspaper, The Post, violence from his supporters and then state power to limit campaigning in some areas to ensure his re-election.

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FROM THE FIELD

AFRICAN LEADERS WHO ABUSE POWER - A SELECT LIST [PT.1] Transparency International ranks a good 20 African nations as particularly corrupt. These range from Nigeria and Mozambique to Kenya, Sierra Leone and Somalia – the latter being one of the world’s worst. Here is a list, in no particular order, of leaders who have abused their positions to hang on to power and – in most cases – to extend their own personal wealth.

YOWERI MUSEVENI UGANDA

As with so many African leaders, Museveni started off in 1986 with hope for real change. But now, with corruption widespread, he just can’t leave it. Last February, he embarked on his fifth presidential term following campaign irregularities, thuggery and detention of political opponents. President Obama recently told African Union leaders that “nobody should be president for life.” Museveni claims that this will be his last, but few believe him.

ROBERT MUGABE ZIMBABWE

At 92, Mugabe appears determined to hang on. When Zimbabwe gained independence in 1980, many felt it would become Africa’s new economic hub. Aspirations were high, particularly among the young, while the remaining whites felt they could work with him. But visions of Mugabe becoming a second Mandela quickly dissipated. His crudely corrupt and repressive ZANU-PF regime has indulged in crimes against humanity, racism and policies that economically ruined the country.

PAUL BIYA CAMEROON

In power since 1975, first as prime minister, then president, Biya won his sixth term in 2011 after ridding the Constitution of term limits. At 83, he embraces a sense of governance politely described as ‘lackadaisical’.

Nevertheless, he is considered to be the richest man in Cameroon with over 100 million dollars. His supporters are ‘urging’ him to run again in 2018, but past elections have proven a sham with “international observers” paid to declare them clean.

TEODORO OBIANG NGUEMA MBASOGO EQUATORIAL GUINEA

Africa’s longest ruler since 1979, Obiang has done well for himself – and his family - from the revenue produced by his oil-rich country and the US companies doing business there. Despite having one of the world’s highest per capita incomes, the country has not experienced such theoretical prosperity. Equatorial Guinea ranks terribly (138th) in the UN Development Index; most people do not have clean water and suffer from one of the highest infant mortality rates: 20 percent die before the age of five.

OMAR HASSAN AL-BASHIR SUDAN

The fact that the International Criminal Court has indicted him for genocide does not particularly bother Bashir, who has been in power since 1989. Supported by fellow African leaders, but also the Muslim world, he has remained one of Africa’s most enduring heads of state. Ruling with an iron fist, he was re-elected in 2015 by 94% (allegedly) of voters with opposition parties desisting. Renowned for his corruption, Bashir – according to Wikileaks - has siphoned over nine billion dollars of Sudan’s funds into UK bank accounts. NEXT PAGE >

AFRICAN LEADERS WHO ABUSE POWER - A SELECT LIST [PT.2] JOSE EDUARDO DOS SANTOS ANGOLA

For a nation that still begs for humanitarian support, oil-rich Angola should rank as one of the continent’s wealthiest. Yet, considered by Transparency International as one of its most corrupt, there is very little trickle down. Two-thirds of its people live below the poverty line. In power for nearly four decades, Dos Santos is Africa’s richest president. He unabashedly runs his country like his own private investment firm and is believed to have amassed over 20 billion dollars.

Last March, he promised to step down in 2018, but has made such pledges before – and reneged.

IDRISS DEBY CHAD

Another leader who ensures that his elitist supporters and corrupt civil servants enjoy the good life with spacious villas and other privileges, while the bulk of his country remain poor, Déby is a tough survivor.

Despite being hated by human rights groups, he is now welcomed by the United States and France for his forthright opposition to Boko Haram. He has used his country’s oil revenue to bolster the military – and hence his own security support.

Without doubt, there have been advances over the last 25 years in freedom of the press, the development of multiparty political systems and some improvement in the flow growth in accountability of governments. Yet even with such progress, Africa’s ruling and increasingly wealthy power elites have proved adept at manipulating their formal and informal instruments of control to cede as little power as they can. And as usual, it is ordinary Africans who are expected to bear the brunt.

Clearly the “winds of change” won’t come from China (or Pyongyang!) and equally clearly most people agree that solutions for Africa’s problems can only come from Africans themselves. Perhaps some level of hope can be derived from the initiative put forward recently to open up an African “common market” allowing for the free flow of people, goods and capital between a number of African nations.

Perhaps hope can be derived too from the increasing role of some African States to seek to tackle African problems (through an increased role for the African Union and its Peacekeeping forces as well as the need to confront some dictators with their past deeds and requests for justice – Hissene Habré’s trial in Dakar – headed up by a Swiss prosecutor no less - being notable progress in this respect).

ISAIAS AFWERKI ERITREA

A former guerrilla leader, Afwerki has headed up Eritrea since independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

With official claims that he earns a monthly salary of less than 12,000 dollars, Akwerki’s ruthless regime has repressed any modicum of free press and committed widespread human rights abuses. This has caused thousands of Eritreans, many of them young men, to flee the country and join the migrant exodus to Europe.

YAHYA JAMMEH GAMBIA

In power for 22 years, Jammeh is no believer in democracy, but has promised to crack down on corruption and raise living standards equal to that of the West.

Nevertheless, as human rights advocates point out, his campaign against witchcraft resulted in arresting, torture and killing scores of suspects. He is also known for his hatred of homosexuals, threatening to slit their throats.

SASSOU-NGUESSO REPUBLIC OF CONGO

Denis Sassou-Nguesso of the Republic of Congo In charge since 1977, Sassou-Nguesso, a former soldier, enriched himself and his buddies off his country’s oil wealth. But then, in an apparent pang of remorse, gave up power opening the door to multi-party elections in 1992. This did not last and he regained power in a 1997 coup. Sassou-Nguesso was re-elected in March 2016 in a vote widely considered rigged.

KING MSWATI III SWAZILAND

When he first came to power as a British public school teenager in 1986, many thought that his elitist background would produce an enlightened leader despite 2,000 bare-breasted virgins at his coronation. Instead, this absolute monarch has demonstrated little concern for his people. His polygamy (15 wives) does little to prevent HIV/AIDS (at 27 percent, the world’s highest) and he presides over a poverty-stricken nation (nearly 70 percent live on less than one dollar a day) with one of the lowest life expectancies (33 years).

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Professor Keith Somerville is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies and teaches at the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent. His book, Africa’s Long Road Since Independence. The Many Histories of a Continent was published in December 2015 and the updated paperback edition is coming out in January 2016, published by Penguin.

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FROM THE FIELD

LIBYA'S WORSENING TURMOIL BAD FOR EVERYONE

BY MARY FITZGERALD

Since anti-Gaddafi protests first erupted in Benghazi in February 2011 leading to the Libyan dictator’s death eight months later, this oil-rich North African country has been in a constant state of disarray with rival governments and factions, including ISIL, jostling for power.

Journalist Mary Fitzgerald points out that, once so full of hope, Libya’s fragile UN-brokered deal is in danger of unravelling, while the economy is on the point of collapse. With the threat of a new dictatorship and more migrants seeking to leave, this is bad news for both the Mediterranean and Europe.

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© ICRC | PHOTO : GUY MAROT

FROM THE FIELD

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Five years ago this February I was among the first foreign journalists to arrive in Benghazi, the city in eastern Libya that had just birthed the uprising that would eventually bring an end to Mummer Gaddafi’s decades long rule. I remember telling BBC radio that it felt like everyone and no one was in charge as Libya’s eastern flank threw off the shackles of Gaddafi’s regime. There was a sense of unity of purpose: locals volunteered to direct traffic and distribute food while others flocked to the frontline, their efforts later augmented by NATO-led air strikes.

It would be another eight months before everything would culminate in the capture and killing of Gaddafi at the hands of rebel forces in his hometown of Sirte, which would later - in early 2015 - become ISIL’s stronghold in Libya.

Almost immediately after Gaddafi’s demise disagreements over Libya’s transition from dictatorship to democracy set in among those who then comprised the various political and armed branches of the rebel camp. In many ways, these disputes - ranging from petty personal rivalries to conflicting visions for Libya’s future - inform the multi-faceted power struggle that sparked a civil war in 2014 and continues today.

But ordinary Libyans remained optimistic in those early days, noting that the oil-rich nation of just six million inhabitants had none of the sectarian or ethnic cleavages that plagued Syria and Iraq. Several talked of Libya becoming “another Dubai” within years. Today, however, those dreams have been dashed and Libya is more divided than at any point in its modern history. Facing economic collapse, with hundreds of thousands displaced and hundreds more killed battling Islamic State, the country’s future looks bleak.

The distance of time and the chaos that has engulfed Libya has prompted a measure of soul-searching as Libyans contemplate why their transition failed so badly.

It is not unusual to hear Libyans claim they have failed their own revolution, as the country finds itself pulled in different directions by power struggles that are more about regional and tribal interests than competing ideologies.

Squabbling between the different political factions, and their allied militias, has left ordinary Libyans frustrated as they struggle with a chronic liquidity crisis (long queues outside banks are a daily occurrence, sometimes spilling over into violence), power cuts, water shortages and crumbling infrastructure. Western powers have looked on with increasing alarm as both human smugglers and ISIS took advantage of the ensuing chaos, the smugglers

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increasing the flow of migrants transiting through Libya en route to Europe, ISIS attempting to use Libya as a fallback base if weakened in Syria and Iraq.

To understand the current ruptures in Libya, we have to go back to two pivotal events in 2014. One was an operation launched in Benghazi that May by Khalifa Haftar, a former Gaddafi-era general who, inspired by Sisi in Egypt, had attempted a coup a few months earlier.

Haftar's operation was aimed at Islamists of all stripes —extremists accused of assassinations, but also others, including the Muslim Brotherhood, who had participated in Libya's democratic transition—and it triggered fighting that continues today. Egypt and the United Arab Emirates have blatantly flouted the UN arms embargo to support Haftar.

The other was a militia battle for control of Tripoli following Libya’s second post-Gaddafi parliamentary elections that June. It ended with an alliance known as the Libya Dawn, which included Islamist factions, becoming the dominant power in the capital and out of that emerged a self-declared government backed by the rump of the previous parliament, the General National Congress. The then recognised government of Prime Minister Abdullah al-Thinni fled to eastern Libya.

This meant Libya was split by two rival governments and two rival parliaments, one internationally recognized and elected - the House of Representatives based in the eastern town of Tobruk - and the other self-declared until a pain-staking UN dialogue process culminated in the signing last December of a political agreement, from which, the UN hoped, a unity government would emerge.

Complicating matters is the fact that each side remains backed by myriad armed factions, some comprised of units from the Gaddafi era military (which Gaddafi, fearful of an army coup, hollowed out), others militias that emerged during and after the 2011 uprising, and others still a mix of army and militiamen.

ISIS found opportunity in the resulting vacuum, declaring its first affiliate in the eastern town of Derna in late 2014 and steadily expanding its presence and cohort of foreign fighters until local militias started to push back following a string of deadly attacks. With ISIS now routed from Derna, fighting continues - with the help of over 140 US air strikes - to dislodge the group from Sirte. But while ISIS (or ISIL) may be on the back foot in Libya, it was only ever a symptom and not a cause of the country’s instability. Tackling the zero sum politics driving the national power struggle that erupted in 2014 is the only path to a stable Libya.

But the UN-brokered deal is fragile; it does not have the endorsement of key actors and constituencies inside Libya and some external players continue to pay lip service to it while backing certain armed factions on the ground. The presidency council, the first layer of what is hoped to be the unity government, maintains an uneasy presence in Tripoli, surrounded by militias known for their shifting loyalties.

© ICRC | PHOTO : Teun Aanthony Voeten The threat of renewed – or expanded - conflict in Libya is far from over threatening to further undermine the Mediterranean. [Photo: ICRC]

The agreement has not secured full approval from the Tobruk parliament either, which insists a clause related to army leadership be changed. A number of factions want Haftar - appointed commander in chief by the HoR in 2015 and recently promoted to Field Marshal - to remain in that role and will accept nothing else. But on the other side are elements adamant that Haftar be removed; they believe that his ultimate aim is a power grab. Those fears have been bolstered by Hiftar’s recent capture of several key eastern oil ports and fields. This, along with his ‘militarization’ of eastern Libya - elected mayors have been replaced by military governors and Haftar’s chief of staff has interfered in the appointment of regional managers of state bodies including the national electricity firm - confirms long-standing suspicions that Haftar sees himself as a potential Libyan Sisi. The question of what to do about Haftar could likely cause the entire political agreement to unravel.

Added to Libya’s woes is looming economic meltdown, despite its oil wealth. The country is burdened with one of the largest public payrolls in the world and massive fuel and food subsidies, all a leftover from the Gaddafi era. Due to an ill-fated decision taken after Gaddafi’s fall in late 2011, armed groups on both sides of the current power struggle are receiving state salaries from the central bank headquartered in Tripoli. The instability of

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recent years has cut oil production to a fraction of the 1.6 million barrels per day Libya had been pumping before Gaddafi’s overthrow. With global oil prices plummeting, Libya’s central bank has been forced to eat into its foreign reserves to cover the budget, and foreign diplomats have warned that Libya could go broke before it is at peace.

If the current stalemate continues, it will be increasingly difficult for the UN-backed unity government to assert itself in ways that would bring tangible results - solving the liquidity crisis for example or increasing oil production - that would in turn help boost popular support. Too many external players continue to publicly express support for the beleaguered unity government while hedging their bets with armed groups on the ground.

In the meantime, Haftar’s swagger is proving more appealing to those ordinary Libyans who are so frustrated they say they want security above all else. Five years after the ousting of Gaddafi, Libya’s unravelling is such that many are prepared to sacrifice the hard-won freedoms of 2011 in favour of another would-be strongman.

Mary Fitzgerald is a Marseille-based journalist and researcher specialising in the Euro-Mediterranean region with a focus on Libya.

A former roving correspondent for The Irish Times, she has reported from more than 40 countries in the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

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COVER STORY: MOUNTAINS

THE SOUTH CAUCASUS

MORE THAN A BIODIVERSITY HOTSPOT

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As the logo of the Caucasus Nature Fund (CNF), the Caucasian or Persian Leopard is an endangered – and declining – species. Fewer than 200 individuals are believed to be still roaming the Caucasus, Hindu Kush and Caspian Sea regions.

The victim of poaching, illegal logging and other incursions on its habitat, the animal remains a cherished symbol for this multi-partner conservation trust in its efforts to improve the management of up to 20 South Caucasus nature parks and reserves. But – a sign of their desperate plight -- barely ten leopards are reported to survive in the rugged Khosrov State Reserve on the south-western slopes of Armenia’s Geghama Mountains.

The largely mountainous South Caucasus is ranked as one of the world’s 35 “biodiversity hotspots”, an exceptional biologically rich and culturally diverse eco-region. Spread over three countries – Armenia, Azerbaijan and Georgia no other temperate climate zone has more biodiversity per

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square kilometre. Only a quarter of the Caucasus region, however, remains in reasonable condition. Less than 12 percent of the original vegetation, including forests, can be considered pristine. Other endangered species include the Caucasian Turs, Caucasian Red Deer, Wisent or European bison, Goitered Gazelle, Brown Bear, Striped Hyena and Gmelin’s Mouflon, plus vulnerable fauna and flora that include birds, salamanders and plants.

Since 2010, the CNF has been providing long-term support to protect the region’s unique flora, fauna and ecosystems. Even though two of its member countries are at war – Armenia and Azerbaijan – the Fund does this by backing operating costs, such as technical assistance and training, electricity, fuel, ranger uniforms, the refurbishing of park information centre, and tailored initiatives to promote more sustainable conservation approaches.

“Basically, we’re trying to encourage the involvement of local communities and to make sure that the parks and reserves are better managed,” said Geoff Giacomini, CNF’s Executive Director in Tiblisi. “We’re also looking at ways of encouraging eco-tourism so that all will benefit.” Since 2010, the CNF, whose key partners include the German Development Bank-KfW (www.bmz. de), WWF-Germany wwf.panda.org), Conservation International (www.conservation.org) and the Global Environment Facility/GEF (www.thegef.org), has

The endangered Persian, Caucasus or Central Asian leopard (Panthera pardus ciscaucasica syn. Panthera pardus saxicolor) still survives in the Caucasus, Turkmenistan, Iran and Afghanistan. [Photo: CNF]

provided 50 percent of its long-term support in the form of matching grants to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the Caucasus. “We expect the governments concerned to provide the other 50 percent and increase this year by year so that they do not become reliant on outside funding,” he added. “The end goal is to help make the parks sustainable.”

For the moment, some of the Fund’s recommendations have yet to be implemented. As Giacomini and his team note, there are still numerous problems, such as poaching and illegal logging. “But the cutting of trees is understandable if there is no gas and people need to exploit the natural resources around them,” he said. The local communities also give the efforts a very mixed bag of reactions. Some are extremely positive, others less so.

Certain groups are deliberately undermining the Fund’s initiatives, CNF officials suspect.

Nevertheless, with the current push for eco-tourism plus other forms of development, many local people are beginning to understand the need for wildlife protection.

“The guest houses are generally full in the summer and, depending on the parks, we’re seeing a rise in both national and international tourism,” he noted. Visitors include individuals, but group tours have also come from Georgia, Russia, Israel and other parts of Europe. Some visitors respond to specific interests, such as organized bird-watching or painting, enticing tourists from the United Kingdom and Germany. Bike-riding attracts people from Poland and the Czech Republic. Local and Diaspora Armenians come to the Caucasus in search of their cultural heritage. The more established parks are attracting the bulk of visitors but infrastructure overall is improving.

The parks are also increasingly bringing in school children

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to better explain the importance of conservation.

As Giacomini stresses, much of what they are doing is to explore what works and to establish priorities. One crucial programme is biodiversity monitoring of plants and animals. This means establishing baseline data to determine whether CNF interventions are having an impact or not. While wildlife is already increasing in some parts, another initiative is exploring how to curb poaching.

“This may mean managed hunting. We’re looking for ways to get poachers away from the endangered species and to promote sustainable hunting, particularly where people are poor and cannot pay for hunting licenses. The objective is to provide a viable alternative to poaching,” he said.

A further unusual initiative for the Caucasus Nature Fund is to consider the creation of trans-border parks similar to Africa’s international peace parks. Given that Azerbaijan and Armenia are on a war footing, the only regular form of effective collaboration so far is scientific. Nevertheless, similar efforts worked in the Mediterranean through the Geneva office of the United Nations Environment Programme, getting Israelis and Arab nations to cooperate in preserving marine life and controlling development of the coastal environment.

In the Caucasus, too, the long-term vision seeks close involvement of all three countries with a shared history that dates back to the Romans and Mongols, the Ottoman Turks and the Soviets. Although the region may be split by different religions, separate cultures and distinct ethnicities, all three countries are now taking the first steps towards adopting a genuine joint approach to preserving EG their unique eco-system.

COVER STORY: MOUNTAINS

AN 8000-METER HIGH

“VERTICAL UNIVERSITY” Biodiversity in the Himalayas is fast disappearing. As William Dowell writes, a new initiative aims at documenting what remains. The hope: better knowledge of what is being lost will help preserve the region’s extraordinarily rich flora and fauna for science and future generations.

Rajeev Goyal and Priyanka Bista are concerned. Not too long ago the Himalayas and the Hindu Kush from Tibet to Nepal were virtually inaccessible to almost anyone who was not native to the region. That quality enabled them to become one of the last pristine refuges of Nature.

Not any more. Endless waves of tourists ready to spend small fortunes to scale Everest and the lesser mountains were the first invaders. Now, China plans to revive the ancient Silk Route as a way of extending its commercial reach across Asia, threatening to disrupt the region’s equilibrium even more.

Nepal is a geographically small country with a densely packed population of nearly 29 million people. Roughly 80 percent live in rural villages. The immediate reaction to China’s expressed interest in establishing commercial links to India with a route that runs through Nepal has triggered a frenzied land grab with little or no concern for the environment. The thirst for quick profits threatens ecological disaster.

Rajeev is a New Yorker of Indian extraction. His fascination with Nepal grew out of a tour with the Peace Corps spent in a remote Nepalese village, which became the subject of a book, The Springs of Namje. Priyanka is Nepalese, but emigrated to Canada as a teenager. She ultimately studied architecture and encountered Rajeev when she began looking for work that involved Nepal and heard that Rajeev was working on an interesting project.

They were soon married. The project that had enflamed Rajeev’s passion was nothing less than documenting and,

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if possible preserving the Himalaya’s astonishingly broad biodiversity before it fell victim to careless exploitation.

Although Nepal only occupies 0.09 percent of the earth’s surface, it ranks 21st for the depth and variety of its flora and fauna. In Asia, it is the 11th most important area for biodiversity. What makes Nepal different from other regions is the extraordinary range in altitude made possible by the world’s highest and most majestic mountains. As Rajeev sees it, a failure to document Nepal’s enormous natural resources could mean that the human race loses forever the opportunity to discover an as yet unknown plant that might make a critical difference in medicine or science. Both he and Priyanka are convinced that time is running out. From 1990 to 2005, Nepal lost 25 percent of its forests. And that kind of degradation seems likely to accelerate now that the Chinese have expressed an interest.

Rajeev’s solution: work in conjunction with Nepalese farmers to preserve sample plots of land that are strategically placed to enhance the study of biodiversity at different altitudes. Eventually, if properly funded, the project will create a biodiversity belt running from the Himalayas in Nepal as far as Myanmar or Burma. The corridor will be open to anyone wanting to study nature preserved from exploitation. The exhibition plots will also serve to illustrate for Nepalese villagers themselves the value of the biodiversity that already surrounds them. That more than anything else is the most effective argument against mindlessly stripping the land. To bolster

COVER STORY: MOUNTAINS

his own knowledge, Rajeev, who already had a law degree, attended Cornell and did a masters in biodiversity. The real education, however, has been on the ground.

What Rajeev and Priyanka envisioned as they plunged into what came to be known as the KTK Belt project was the creation of a “vertical university.” The 8,000-meter high mountain, Kanchenjunga, in Eastern Nepal and the world’s third tallest peak, would serve as the initial campus. The Nepalese indigenous inhabitants would serve as ‘professors’ revealing their knowledge of how the land and its life actually function. Priyanka, whose interest in architecture also covered the structure of complex programmes, would organize deeper scientific inquiries from world experts.

In 2013, the project kicked off with the purchase of 100 acres of land at 20 carefully chosen strategic locations. The sites were at different altitudes, moving up the 8,000-meter mountain. Each plot was imagined as a ‘learning ground’ and functioned as a community seed bank, agriculture research and demonstration site, and resource hub for alternative energy and conservation infrastructure. The ultimate goal was to engage multiple stakeholders to create a botanical conservation and education corridor running from Koshi Tappu, one of South Asia’s largest aquatic bird sanctuaries, adjacent to the Indian border all the way to Mount Kanchenjunga.

A local school teacher Kumar Bishwakarma, who is also a medicinal plants expert, led a research team reporting on the indigenous knowledge that local people expressed about their surrounding landscapes. In a little more than 20 square kilometres, the team discovered 412 unique plant species, belonging to 96 plant families. That was just a beginning. In a KickStarter appeal, Rajeev and Priyanka managed to raise more than $100,000 to expand the project’s reach.

While other NGOs have tried to contribute to Nepal’s environmental protection, the KTK-Belt vertical university project has a number of advantages. First, its location is on the ground in a remote area. Second, it has integrated local Nepalese into the project, villagers who actually own the land. As a result, the project has access both to the land and to information that would normally be almost inaccessible for the average run-of-the-mill internationally-based organization. For Rajeev and Priyanka, the work so far merely constitutes a beginning. The real challenge is how to save the mountains, not just for Nepal, but for the world.

Global Geneva America’s Editor William Dowell, a former foreign correspondent for TIME and ABC News, is a writer and journalist based in Philadelphia.

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AGENT PROVOCATEUR

Agents Provocateurs is Global Geneva’s Oped page for independent opinion. It is open to all members of the Global Geneva Support Community or at the invitation of the Editors.

MAKING THE SDG S REAL

BY MARK HALLE

It has taken years, but “climate change” is finally understood. Apart from a minority of ignorant politicians and hardline sceptics, society has more or less grasped that our survival is at stake. But what about the world’s Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs? Mark Halle points out that, despite the fanfare, the SDGs are still far from becoming the overriding priority of international cooperation. Most people, too, have no idea what the SDGs are, let alone what they mean.

A

A few years ago I interviewed the Director of one of China’s Special Economic Zones. I asked him what he felt about the new low-carbon production standards that many investors wanted and that had the support of the Chinese government.

He assured me of his enthusiasm for these standards and his determination to implement them diligently. But what would determine his career advancement? The answer was very simple: meeting his annual target of 11 percent growth.

In practice, what this meant was this: if the GDP target could be met while introducing the low-carbon standards, that is what would be done. The best of both worlds. If, on the other hand, there was a trade-off, the growth target would prevail.

GDP growth was the “defining target”, far more crucial than lowering carbon pollution rates. These would only be seriously addressed if they posed no threat to growth.

I often recall this conversation when basking in the burst of energy that has lit up International Geneva since the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development – and in particular its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – was adopted a year ago. There is palpable enthusiasm for the new global challenge and the part this global lakeside hub can play in achieving these ambitious goals. There is a sincere hope that this is the agenda that, finally, we will fully implement. But the world has still far to go before the SDGs can even begin to be considered a household term.

Nevertheless, organizations are examining their programmes and priorities, reconfiguring them so that they align optimally with the SDGs. And not just the United Nations. International NGOs of all stripes are busy with this task, as are academic

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AGENT PROVOCATEUR

centres, corporations and both the Canton and City of Geneva. It has the makings of a massive collaborative effort in which Geneva can expect to play a crucial role in the eventual triumph of this agenda. After all, the target is to save the planet. Nothing less will do.

Their enthusiasm and commitment appear genuine. This is not simply a cynical salute to the latest buzz-words that are already populating new funding proposals.

The combination of fear at what is happening to our planet, and a clear road-map of what we need to do, is powerful and certainly a powerful motivating force. We may or may not succeed, but for now at least there is a real determination, at least here in Geneva, that we must. No previous frameworks for global action have had anything like this mobilizing effect.

So will the magic occur? The answer depends on whether the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs succeed in genuinely becoming the “defining target”. And whether we can succeed in communicating both the need and urgency to the world-at-large.

The stark reality in China some years back was that, too often, environmental performance came a distant second to economic growth. The imperative to reach the GDP target rendered improved environmental outcomes impossible. Can we be confident that the 2030 Agenda will secure the priority status needed to define international cooperation? Will other powerful agendas be obliged to prove their alignment and compatibility?

I doubt it. The fact is that the SDGs will only succeed if we are able to identify and phase out behaviour that undermines them or makes them more difficult to achieve.

This includes removing subsidies to fossil fuels and to fishing fleets that are devastating our marine resources. It means closing tax loopholes that allow corporations to book their profits in a tax haven and contribute only a modicum to the public purse at home. It means taking a range of actions that challenge dominant economic and competition policy.

The genuine enthusiasm and determination surrounding the SDGs, unfortunately, offer little prospect of success unless the 2030 Agenda is clearly established as the dominant and defining agenda for international cooperation. Success will also require a massive and urgent effort to bring other policies – trade, investment, competition, tax, subsidies, etc. – into full conformity and alignment. Ideally, these policies would be reconfigured so as to reinforce the thrust of the SDGs and accelerate their implementation. But at a minimum they need to do no harm.

We are far from that today. As things stand, the SDGs have little chance of success unless the commitment to implement them moves beyond the believers. They will only be secured through popular demand, through a groundswell that insists that our governments and communities deliver on them. Just as happened with climate change, there has to be a massive push to convince ordinary people of the genuine potential for the SDGs to change lives for the better.

What will it take for this unprecedented shift in public policy priority-setting to succeed? One thing is certain – it will not happen through top-down action by international organizations. It requires a massive effort at communication and mobilization. And while it is unlikely that the SDGs will simply fall off our tongues, the changes they call for could generate a demand for actions capable of shifting our planet. If this doesn’t happen, popular disaffection could undermine the prominence and reputation of everything Geneva stands for.

Securing the pre-eminent position for the SDG agenda and ensuring compatibility of all other public agendas is the top priority today and will remain so for the entire period to 2030.

Mark Halle is the Executive Director of the International Institute for Sustainable Development – Europe in Geneva. http://www.iisd.org/

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BREAKING IN

LETTER FROM RUAHA Summer internship in Tanzania

Earlier this year, Charlène Thiry, a 17-year-old French-Swiss high school student, wanted to do a last minute summer internship in Africa before heading off to study veterinary sciences. A number of organizations offered voluntary field séjours for two or three weeks in places like Botswana or Namibia, but charged prohibitive fees.

Charlène then talked with one of her neighbours, who happened to know someone in Tanzania…

BY CHARLENE THIRY I adore animals and have always wanted to do something with wildlife. Having just completed my final exam, I dreamt of spending five or six weeks working somewhere in Africa. Together with my parents, we went online and checked various options. There were quite a few but all were incredibly expensive. Then my next-door neighbour, a writer, suggested that he contact his friend Chris Fox in Tanzania. Chris ran a few safari operations, but also sought to bring tourists into contact with village communities living outside the parks. This was so that they would better understand why local people need to be directly involved and to benefit from wildlife if conservation is to succeed. Chris, our neighbour said, could probably use someone who speaks several languages in order to take care of his international clients. Plus maybe accompany them on safari.

For me, this sounded too good to be true. Chris was willing to take me on as a professional intern on the condition that I pay my own travel, visa and other costs.

Everything else, such as food and lodging, would be taken care of. So, several weeks later, armed with a business visa, I headed off to Dar-es-Salaam and then Ruaha National Park where Chris ran his Mwagusi safari camp. For the next five unforgettable weeks, I lived in the savannah and what for me was one of the wildest places in the world.

I met a lot of incredibly nice local people, some of them working at the camp, others in the nearby town of Iringa.

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But I also had the chance to see lots of wild animals, including lions, leopards and buffalo.

I was immediately given special responsibilities, basically taking on the work of an additional camp manager for day-to-day activities.. I lived in a banda, or hut, with a proper bed and shower. Plus with my French, English and German, I had to make sure that the guests were well-catered for and comfortable. But I also taught some of the local staff about geology and local wildlife. I was put in charge of all the food and camp materials to make sure that all was accounted for, so I was always walking around with a huge bunch of keys making sure that everything was put back after meals.

The most difficult challenge was to find myself working in such a wild place. I have always lived in Europe so I was not used it. But it was incredibly exciting. Three times, I was charged by elephants. And then there were the snakes, some of them highly venomous. At night, while returning to my banda, I encountered a spotted hyena only just a few feet from me. I was told that hyenas can be incredibly dangerous, but I was not afraid. I simply admired the beauty and wildness of this mammal. Sometimes I also found fresh lion tracks under my bare feet.

In fact, my best experiences were out in the wild, including seeing animals that one would only see in zoos in enclosures. Walking around the camp, one could spot all sorts of animals: impalas, yellow baboons, giraffes,

BREAKING IN

warthogs, jackals, kudus, buffalos, sand snakes, even black mambas and cobras. But because I was a volunteer, I was able to accompany the tourists on their late afternoon safaris, mainly by vehicle, but sometimes by foot. It was also an incredible feeling to see my first wild lions, leopards and elephants.

Every day was a new adventure.

While the park had an enormous amount of wildlife, I was shocked to see that there was almost nothing outside the perimeters. I asked my friends why there were no animals and I was told that local villagers only regard the wildlife as fresh meat, notably food. Or they see wild animals as dangerous and threats to their crops. They did not understand how tourism could prove beneficial to them. There are efforts to try and make local communities part of what is happening in the parks and to protect wildlife. Local people need to feel that they are also benefitting. Wildlife only seems to exist in the parks.

Before leaving for Africa, I had thought that there would be animals

Charlène Thiry (center) with staff from Mwagusi safari camp in Ruaha National Park, Tanzania.

everywhere and that Africa was a heaven for wildlife. But that’s not true. Based on my experience – I also met some veterinary researchers who came to the park – I now want to do something about working with wildlife and local communities.

This has to be the key to successful conservation. For me, too, I now find myself constantly remembering this incredible mix of images from smiling villagers to extraordinary wildlife, notably the beauty of the leopards or the grace of the giraffes. Even if my volunteer internship was not that long, I have learned a lot. It changed my life. Other young people should have the same chance to experience what I did.

Charlène Thiry now 18, is doing her pre-veterinary studies in Biology at Lausanne University.

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MWAGUSI

SAFARI CAMP

RUAHA NATIONAL PARK TANZANIA

One of the very few owner-run camps in the Ruaha National Park and a rare gem on the safari circuit, Mwagusi Safari Camp is a charming, small, exclusive tented camp of 13 bandas nestled into the banks of the Mwagusi river. Renowned for its high-calibre of local Tanzanian guides and their in-depth knowledge of the African bush, Mwagusi is situated in one of the best game areas in Ruaha.

FOR MORE INFORMATION OR BOOKING ENQUIRIES CONTACT Sales Agent : Wings Over The Wild Ltd | Email: safaris@wingsoverthewild.co.uk www.mwagusicamp.com

GENEVA’S NETWORKING HUB: PUNCHING ABOVE ITS WEIGHT As a non-profit association founded in 2009, AGIR (Action pour la Genève Internationale et son Rayonnement) brings companies and organizations together while highlighting the benefits of International Geneva. For AGIR president, Xavier Cornut, the long-range purpose is to focus on what this vibrant cosmopolitan hub represents, especially when it comes to innovation, business, culture and social life.

The UN’s Michael Møller at a British-Swiss Chamber of Commerce networking event.

A AGIR is primarily a highly effective network for better cooperation, says Xavier Cornut, President of the Genevabased association. Agir works closely with international stakeholders so that they can see “first hand” the benefits of integrating with international Geneva as part of a united community. “This year alone, we’ve had tremendous feedback from our various partners,” says Cornut. These partners include the United Nations, the Department of Transportation of the Canton of Geneva and the Mission of the Netherlands. “Lately, we’ve also been supporting Swiss TV to do a programme about the integration of expatriates in Switzerland,” adds Cornut.

One of Geneva’s main problems is a lack of communications between its two communities, the one Swiss and the other international. In a canton where 40 percent of the population is not Swiss, “this is a real concern,” Cornut explains. Many local and international Genèvois are living in silos, but it is also a town where “geography is fate,” to quote an old proverb. If a company or institution is located near to international organisations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), World Trade Organization (WTO) or the International Telecommunications Union (ITU), it also benefits from access to opportunities in areas such as Corporate Social Responsibility, innovation, science, education and public outreach. “This is something that does not exist in other major European cities,” he says.

“International Geneva offers competitive added value.”

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“From what I hear on a daily basis,” Cornut says, “there is a lot of curiosity among the various stakeholders about such advantages, but it still doesn’t reflect real co-operation yet.” Today, most of the private sector has no idea what the UN agencies are doing, and vice versa.

“It’s like having two blind think-tanks of immense value operating next to each other.” While some groups speak of having worldwide partners, this often does not include the UN agencies next door. At the same time, the UN itself may be more aware of what is being done in New York than what is happening less than 30 minutes away. “A lot still needs to be done to create a truly enduring climate of co-operation.”

Cornut agrees with Geneva mayor Guillaume Barazzone that International Geneva is Switzerland’s greatest trump card. The city punches way above its weight. Yet while both government and tourism officials understand the city’s unique position and benefits, the Swiss do not seem to promote one of its most important assets, notably its easy connections. “It’s far easier to meet key people here than in New York, Paris or Moscow,” he says. For such a small country, which boasts both neutrality and an incredibly stable political system, “this makes opportunities for co-operation and exchange far greater than anywhere else in the world.”

What is lacking, however, is a forum or cycle of conferences that can bring International Geneva’s most influential corporations, institutions and organizations together on a regular basis. This already happens for key players of the local Geneva economy. Cornut concludes, “A well-organized ‘International Geneva Day’ exploring the roles of private-public partnerships could make an enormous difference.”

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON AGIR, SEE: HTTP://AGIR-GENEVEGAGNE.CH/

Travellers’ Tales A bit over the top? Government obsession with terrorism can go a bit too far. Recently, a Geneva-based UN official flew into Heathrow for a slew of high-level donor meetings in London. A Her Majesty’s Border Force agent was not at all impressed by her light-blue UN laisser-passer nor her western passport. And he scowled at her dubious entry form.

“What’s an un-official?” he asked.

“You mean, UN Official,” the UN diplomat replied.

“I see. What sort of work do you do?”

“Humanitarian crises.”

He cocked an inquiring eye.

“You know, Syria, Iraq...” she added helpfully.

“Syria? You have met with Syrians? Please step this way, Madame.”

He queried her in a side-room about her clearly questionable Syria affiliations until a policeman arrived.

Shaking his head in silent dismay, the officer proved somewhat more world-savvy. “Our apologies, Madame,” he said, escorting the bemused UN coordinator back to the exit lines. “Our immigration colleagues do get carried away.” LG And then there’s the US terrorism obsession… Not to be outdone, America’s Homeland Security take an even dimmer view of non-conformist travellers. One American student, who had flown to Europe to meet with her family for a two-week break in the UK, Switzerland and the South of France, found there was a bit too much security than homeland when she returned.

The family had advised her to come with only carry-on, as she could always borrow clothes. This way she would not have to pay any extra EasyJet baggage. On her flight back to Houston, the student was stopped at Kennedy by US Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which is part of Homeland Security. They wanted to know why she was only travelling with a carry-on backpack and a handbag after visiting three countries in Europe. No suitcase?

“Perplexed, the young woman said: “But I didn’t need one.”

Homeland Security insisted on detaining the highly suspicious young woman until she missed her connecting flight. She had to buy a new ticket which the CBP refused to reimburse. When the family called Homeland Security to ask why people are not allowed to travel with only carry-on given that this is precisely how many seasoned travellers now do, the only response was a very humourless: No comment. AR Not like in the zoo… Seeing elephants in the wild is an aspiration for many of us - until they actually run wild, that is, writes Leyla Alyanak. “While visiting Yankari national park in Jos, central Nigeria, with fellow environmental writers, they found ourselves picking their way across a narrow bridge. It wasn’t quite a bridge, more like

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twin rotten planks stretching over a seemingly bottomless chasm. Suddenly we sighted an elephant, beautiful, gigantic and unexpected after years of wildlife neglect.

But then, agitated, she turned, a baby emerging from behind. We froze, aware of how violent a protective mother could become. She reared her head, flapped her ears, and faster than we could slam on the brakes and slap the Landcover into reverse, she surged to the edge of the ravine. There she stood, snorting, a few meters away, edging closer. In mounting panic, we shot backwards across the rickety span. I clambered out the window and heaved myself into the rooftop luggage rack to help the driver across, praying my final moment wouldn’t be spent hugging a backpack. We made it to the other side, the elephant stayed on hers. But at least we didn’t find ourselves at the bottom of a Nigerian cliff.”

Overheard in Pakistan… Two British visitors entered an Islamabad pharmacy asking for sun-tan lotion. The young shop assistant had no idea what they were talking about and asked his older colleague. But the latter had no idea either. “What exactly is this suntan lotion?” he asked.

“Oh, you know, you put it on your body and it makes your skin turn brown,” one of the Brits said.

Both Pakistanis looked pained, but still anxious to be helpful. “I am terribly sorry, sir,” said the older one.

“We have not got this suntan lotion.” When the two Brits left, the man turned to his younger colleague: “Typically English. Always taking the piss out of us.” PJ Swiss pay on time… One expat working for a Genevabased NGO was voicing his frustration about how so many Swiss fail to understand that if you travel a lot, you cannot always pay your bills on time. When he rang a local utility company to apologize given that he had been in Africa visiting projects, the administrator on the other end admonished: “Well, Monsieur, if that is the case, then perhaps you should not travel.”

Zimbabwe is heaven… A now South African-exiled Zimbabwean teacher who had been arrested and beaten

by President Mugabe’s thugs was released after several days. On leaving jail, a senior policeman told him that he should be ashamed of himself. “This is a wonderful country,” the policeman had insisted. “Zimbabwe is now the richest country in Africa. How else do you think our President and his people can live so well? We are the new whites except we are better.”

The teacher could only laugh. “Of course, we all know how Mugabe and his ZANU-PF people live, but I’m not quite sure which ‘people’ this man was talking about. The other 95 percent who live no better than dogs?” TR

TRAVELLER’S TALES Good news for those holding Zim dollars though.

According to Mark Butcher of Geneva’s World Radio Switzerland, the Zimbabwe dollar rose following British Prime Minister Therese May’s Brexit speech to the Conservative Party Conference at the beginning of October. No one is quite sure what this means for Britain.

Or Zimbabwe. Maybe some sort of union with Mugabe now that the EU has been rejected.

Have gun, will travel. You never know when you’ll have to shoot your way out of a sticky situation. According to a recent Washington Post story, Jim Cooley regularly packs an AR-15 assault rifle when visiting his local Walmart superstore. On a visit to Atlanta, Georgia’s International airport, a major international hub and potential terrorist hot zone, Cooley expanded his usual load of ammunition with a 100-bullet drum magazine. Enough presumably to take on a battalion of bad guys. Cooley’s wife was not amused. Refusing to go to Walmart’s with him, the Post reported that she blurted out: “I am not going to sit there and have the police called on you. I mean, I don’t want to see that crap.”

In the US, Georgia’s free wheeling love of guns does make one feel edgy, but the rest of the US appears almost equally determined to act out Hollywood-style. It’s now legal to carry guns openly in 45 of the 50 states, and 14.5 million pistol fanatics are overjoyed to do so. Despite some unsettling statistics, most of these guns aren’t used against people. The real function appears to be one of giving their owner a sense of power at a time when inequality is squeezing the middle class out of existence and any sense of control is fast slipping away. WD Forget Jo’burg. South Africa’s O.R. Tambo airport in Johannesburg is becoming increasingly chaotic with travellers, now waiting two or three hours, even longer as one jumbo load of passengers after another jam into arrivals. Journalist Graham Boynton noted that there were only three immigration desks dealing with 1,0001,500 arrivals, making for a lot of peeved off people. And this was not even peak season. Others note that it’s time for Home Affairs to jump on the job creation bandwaggon and “start welcoming our visitors in the way the rest of South Africans do. What is happening with our visas and our arrivals is a disgrace!” The good news is that Capetown and other South African airports seem to be operating efficiently.

Switzerland’s most expensive stretch of autoroute.

Swiss public relations is not helped when it comes to currying favour with transit visitors simply wishing to drop off or pick up passengers at Geneva airport. Despite constant urgings to declare the 11.8 km stretch from the French border at Bardonnex to Cointrin as ‘open’, the authorities insist on obliging drivers to pay the full 40 CHF annual highway fee. Nor do they tell drives that they can avoid paying by driving through Geneva. All this leads to a lot of un-necessary agro and upset potential tourists, who perceive this more as Helvetic greed than anything else.

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SwissRail not doing itself any PR favours either. For those who purchase SwssRail’s annual half-price card (200 CHF a year), travellers are now tied into automatically re-newing. (It’s all in the small print!) Until recently, you could do this whenever you liked given that not everyone takes the train on a regular basis. Your ID details would remain on file. All very user friendly. Now, however, SwissRail sends out threatening letters demanding that you re-new immediately.

The fact that customers might prefer to make this decision on their own does not seem to occur to the company. According to SwissRail, it decided to impose this because 60 percent of passengers automatically renew.

“So we decided everyone should do it,” noted one representative. Another offered this curious explanation with regard to the hapless 40 percent: “We can’t cancel your card unless we get a confirmation that you are not living in Switzerland at the moment. Those policies seem threatening to you but you signed them and we wouldn’t have set up the system like that if we knew the majority of the people don’t renew it.” So does this mean that anyone living in Switzerland doesn’t have the right to cancel? Or is this SwissRail’s version of Brexit? Go figure.

Aid Speak… The following is to help ordinary human beings understand the impressive but often incomprehensible-sounding terminology of the international aid community.

Accountable: Key UN buzzword. Indicates readiness to be criticised, but would prefer not to.

Beneficiaries: Aid-speak for turning disaster victims and refugees into commodities.

Challenge: Euphemism for problem. Problems don’t exist; only challenges.

Crisis: Governments and the UN prefer the term ‘situation’.

Really bad crises are known as “situation situations.”

Donor: Government that provides grants to NGOs allowing them to call themselves non-governmental.

Empower: Lending ordinary human beings the impression that they have a say as long as they don’t.

Inclusive: A ‘challenging’ word that no one really understands, yet creeps into every self-respecting UN or NGO report. It is vital to be ‘inclusive’ so as to come across as inclusive, a bit like Putin’s annexation of the Crimea.

Nansen passport: The only time in history when refugees had an aristocratic class.

NGO: A cheap way for governments to get their dirty work done.

Opportunity: A promising initiative that could ‘empower’ but donors can’t be bothered.

LIFESTYLES & TRAVEL

THE PRETTY LITTLE VILLAGE

ACROSS THE LAKE

BY LEYLA ALYANAK

For many who come to Geneva, the medieval lakeside town of Yvoire is one of the first places they visit outside of the city. But it’s also a favourite for long-time residents in the region. Leyla Alyanak, who used to live there, reminds us why it is so popular.

To many who forget its name, this pretty little village across the lake may already be familiar. It tends to be the first place one is escorted to when visiting Geneva. And with reason.

Its cobblestoned streets, ramparts and restaurant choices make it the perfect day trip during hot summer months, with boats leaving every 20 minutes from Nyon on the Swiss side.

I say Swiss, because Yvoire, one of Geneva’s favourite outings, is actually on the French side of the lake.

In high season, Yvoire embraces more than a million visitors, most of whom at some point must have stopped to chat below my window when I lived there for two years.

These visitors usually cross the lake briefly for lunch or to grab a quick souvenir from one of its 65 shops.

That whirlwind ‘eat and shop’ tour may be the perfect plan for an initial

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visit, but what if Yvoire enchants you enough to return? What if your own friends or relatives visit for a day?

Yvoire vaguely claims signs of Roman settlement as far back as the 2nd century BC, but the medieval stronghold we know today really begins to take its present form in 1306.

The original fortified chateau, strategically positioned at the crossroads between warring Savoy and Geneva, was burned to the ground during one many local conflicts. It was eventually rebuilt by the Yvoire family, which has lived in it since the 17th century.

In fact, the Yvoires were my landlords and owned the flat I rented within the village walls.

In 2006, Yvoire’s 500-1,500 permanent residents (no one seems to know for sure) proudly celebrated seven centuries of the village’s existence. Given this rich history,

rushing back to Geneva’s waiting arms would be a dismal day trip outcome.

Yvoire has far more than it willingly unveils the first time, preferring to hold back a few tantalizing secrets for those willing to return.

Take the labyrinth of the Jardin des Cinq Sens, which occupies what was once the chateau’s vegetable garden.

With its 1,300 medicinal plants and aromatic herbs, its aviaries and fountains and vintage rose bushes, it looks like a formal medieval garden, but with a twist: you’re invited to use all your senses during the visit. (To tell you more would ruin the surprise.)

Though you cannot visit Yvoire’s very-much-lived-in chateau, you can take a 20-minute stroll to the Châtaignière-Rovorée and its magnificent grounds. Not quite a castle, this 24-hectare complex is home to two handsome manors. One of them

LIFESTYLES & TRAVEL (Rovorée) is closed to the public and houses the library of the Haute-Savoie but the other, La Châtaignière, is a regional cultural center with regular exhibits. Too tired to walk? A solar-powered boat will drop you off right from the Yvoire dock.

One of the more pleasant local excursions has nothing to do with Yvoire itself, but with the discreet little village next door.

After an unforgettable lunch of filets de perche at Yvoire’s Restaurant du Port, walk off your indulgence along Lake Geneva for an hour until you reach the quiet little fishing haven of Nernier. The French poet Alphonse de Lamartine was so seduced by its paved alleyways and stone houses he moved here.

Compared to Yvoire’s brashness and popularity, Nernier yields a sober and discreet feel.

Back in Yvoire, those with artistic tastes might enter one of the village’s intriguing galleries, leaving only when the last boat toots its horn. Yvoire has succeeded in promoting artisans and artists, and the result is (mostly) an absence of tacky souvenir shops. A few, though, have managed to edge in.

Yvoire’s metamorphosis has been absolute since the 19th century French writer Alfred de Bougy called it “a jumble of huts on a hill, twisted and rocky streets leading to the lake – if one can give the name ‘street’ to its nauseating passageways that serve more as gutters for manure.” And that is as complimentary as he gets. Of course Yvoire’s present-day residents laugh at that past, having transformed their downtrodden village into one of France’s most remarkable hamlets, a charming fishing port with a picturepostcard perfect view across Lake Geneva.

Leyla Alyanak is a Contributing Editor of Global Geneva and writes about travel at Women on the Road, www.women-on-the-road.com

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Ornans on the Loue River in eastern France.

WEEKEND TRAVELS VALLEY OF THE LOUE

As both visitors and residents often forget, neighbouring France is just as much part of Lake Geneva as is Switzerland. And many excursions whether by car, train, bus or bike are within easy striking distance of Geneva or Lausanne. Janet Hill focuses on the Franche-Comté, one of the region’s most underappreciated destinations.

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A preferred hideaway for those seeking to escape the urban bustle, you can be enjoying the Franche-Comté is less than two hours, driving (or biking) through the valley of the river Loue, wondering why on earth you don’t escape on weekends more often. Ornans, the birthplace and home of painter Gustave Courbet, is a perfect destination.

Head to Yverdon and then continue towards the French border through the Cluse de Joux with its imposing 11th-century chateau protecting this narrow pass and ancient merchant route that has traditionally linked northern Italy to Champagne and Flanders. Today, the chateau hosts a museum of arms with over 600 early 18th to 20th pieces. Over the seven centuries that followed, the chateau was remodelled and upgraded, most notably by Vauban. Aficionados of defensive architecture can take a guided tour of the hilltop fortress.

The drive into the Jura continues through Pontarlier, not the most elegant town but known as a good starting point for excursions in summer and sports in winter. Pontarlier was famous for absinthe until around 1915, when the addictive drink was banned. The city turned to producing pastis instead. With the lifting of the ban in the 1990s, the distilleries returned to the emerald-coloured liqueur once again, albeit without the key hallucinogenic ingredient, wormwood. If you have time and the Green Fairy beckons, consider a visit to the local distillery or check out the absinthe story at the art and history museum, located in one of the city’s oldest buildings. Or plan another weekend following the new Route de l’Absinthe.

Continue following the N57, but be sure to stop at the Relais du Terroir et Fromagerie Napiot, near the hamlet of La Vrine. The family-owned inn specializes in regional products for which the Jura Mountains are famed, including cheese (Comté, Morbier, Mont d'Or and Bleu de Gex), smoked meats, wines and liqueurs. For a quick lunch, order at the counter but make sure to stock up on locally-produced wine, beer, sausages and cheese. Better still, plan a picnic weather permitting.

Not too far past the fromagerie, turn left at the sign for Ornans and Mouthier Haute-Pierre. Depending on time, take the next turn towards the Source of the Loue, located just before the village of Ouhans. Until the end of the 19th century, the river, technically a resurgence of the Doubs River, was home to a multitude of mills, filling the valley with the sound of industry. Today, it’s a peaceful place to walk and contemplate. Courbet painted the source over a dozen times, trying to capture its grandeur as the river gushes from a deep rocky cavity at the foot of towering limestone cliffs.

For a more active weekend, lace up your boots and walk to the source. The hike starts from a small parking area located on the D67 after the village of Mouthier Haute-Pierre, and takes you on a circuit along the river through deep gorges, climbing to its source. Other nearby activities include mountain biking, fishing and kayaking.

A TIP FOR FAMILIES

If your weekend includes active kids, treat them to a visit to the Dino-Zoo, not far from Ornans in the direction of Besançon. The park includes a trail where kids will discover life-sized dinosaurs and learn about life in the Jurassic world. A reproduction Neolithic “hut” plays host to workshops and hands-on exhibits for all ages explaining the everyday life of prehistoric people in the region. A combination ticket to the nearby Gouffre de Poudrey is also available, best for school-aged children.

About 13 centuries ago, Mouthier Haute-Pierre was the site of a Benedictine monastery; today, it is better known for the production of cherry kirsch, considered among France’s best.

After admiring the views, continue into Ornans, the jewel of this valley and a fine weekend destination.

With several hotels, it is considered the prettiest town on the prettiest river in the region. If you prefer a bed and breakfast to a traditional hotel, Le Jardin De Gustave might be a good choice. The guest rooms are individually decorated, while breakfast consists of pastries, homemade jam, orange juice and local cheese and cake. Guests can request traditional meals and are free to relax by the fireplace in the lounge. Another option is La Table de Gustave, also a restaurant, located on the river with views of the town.

Given the names of these hotels, one can guess that a prime tourism focus in Ornans is Courbet himself. Don’t

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miss the museum dedicated to the painter’s life and work, overlooking the river. Courbet is perhaps best known for his landscapes but, more interestingly, he scandalized the art world by painting life-size tableaux featuring scenes of daily life with ordinary people. Until this ‘revolutionary’ act – at least for critics at the time - this format was reserved only for portrayals of religious or noble historical scenes. He was also known for his portraits of women, many of which are displayed in this small jewel of a museum.

Courbet’s life took a turn with the Commune of Paris in 1871. Taking part in the unrest, he was arrested and blamed for the dismantling of the Vendȏme Column. He was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay the total cost of rebuilding the column. Worse, the art world turned against him, banning him for life from the prestigious annual Salon. Financially ruined, his career in tatters, he was exiled in Switzerland and died a broken man in Tour-de-Peilz near Vevey. The museum in Ornans devotes space to explaining the events of the era, and features items related to their devastating effect on Courbet.

After the museum, be sure to stroll along the river and cross its bridges to admire the mirrored reflections of the buildings overhanging the Loue. The town is best explored on foot, and features several 17th century mansions, notably the hȏtel de Sanderet de Valonne and the hȏtel de Grospain. If a morning with Courbet isn’t your thing, you can visit the Musée de Pȇche for everything you’ve ever wanted to know about fishing.

Before leaving, take the small road up to the Château d’Ornans, perched on the cliff above the river. The drive itself is scenic, winding steeply through the forest to the top with its incredible views of the valley below. A nearby 12th-century chapel is worth a peek as are the ruins of a strategically-placed castle that used to guard the salt route in the Middle Ages, but was then destroyed on orders of Louis XIV when he reconquered the region for France.

Janet Hill lives in the Geneva region.

MEDIA

LIGHTS GO OUT IN THE SHED

World music fans used to tuning into Mark Coles’ weekly radio programme, ‘The Shed’, either live or via podcast on World Radio Switzerland and Radio New Zealand, will be disappointed to hear that it is being discontinued, Tim Archer writes.

World Music fans used to tuning into Mark Coles’ weekly radio programme, ‘The Shed’, either live or via podcast on Word Radio Switzerland and Radio New Zealand, will be disappointed to hear that it is being discontinued, Tim Archer writes.

Working independently from the bottom of his garden, Mark Coles has been providing an eclectic mix of exotic contemporary and traditional music over the past few years. Times are hard, however, for independent DJs in the digital era. Following budget cuts from his major backer, he can no longer devote the time to this programme which has endeared him among numerous listeners around the globe.

This is the second blow for Coles in his ideological quest “to bring musics and cultures from around the world into one shed with the aim of bringing the world together.”

In 2011, despite ghettoization ghettoization ghettoization of listener complaints, the BBC World Service shut down the long-running World of Music show that Coles had inherited from World Music trail blazer and guru, Charlie Gillet. The half-hour DJ format was no longer being acceptable to the BEEB, which had decided to sacrifice it to five and 10-minute chunks of rolling news.

So does World Music as a movement really exist anymore? Coles never liked the ‘ghettoization’ of such an array of different sources and rhythms into a catch-all categorization. Vinyl and CD racks under that title appeared in the 80s following the popularity of ground breakers, such as John Peel

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and Andy Kershaw, playing African bands such as the Bhundhu Boys, who sold out large venues for live gigs. This evolved into a discovery of original rhythms, going hand in hand with the Lonely Planet Generation of independent travellers accessing new sounds and cultures. Aficionados in the music consuming countries were hungry for some alternative to the seeming lack of originality of western musical styles.

However, in the digital era, record labels are suffering at the hand of streaming and downloads, especially those on the margin of the music business. There is little money left for development and promotion of talent for record sales. Coles has seen a dramatic drop off of new global music arriving in his Shed in the last 18 months as labels are forced to abandon investing in promotion and bemoan the current lack of experimentation. The main push for commercial success seems to be following the singer-songwriter Folk and Country trend.

Conversely, while these global acts have trouble selling 1,000 records, a sellout crowd of 35,000 attend the Womad World Music festival in the UK annually. Meanwhile, nearer to home at the Paleo festival, the World Music tent always attracts large audiences of those wanting to see top acts from faraway places. As open air festivals continue to expand, global acts can provide a cost effective alternative. On balmy Geneva evenings at the Parc des Granges in July and August, the park is full with locals listening to an array of free concerts with acts from around the world, this year from Cambodia, Cameroon and the Middle East.

In the meantime, Coles can be still be heard doing ‘shift work’ at the BBC, adding his distinctive Northern tones well-remembered

by The Shed listeners coupled with his penchant for occasionally pulling in his young son for support. You’ll be able to admire his craft sporadically on the Radio 4 Profile Programme and podcasts, including the likes of Elon Musk, Laura Trott to Jose Mourinho. The Shed may be silent, but you can still check out past programme streams on the WRS site and his own personal ‘one man band website’ www.markcolesmusic.com - and let him know that you Tim Archer miss him.

MEDIA

NEW JOURNALISM & REAL REPORTING THE PARIS METRO - 40 YEARS ON

When a group of disparate mainly American journalists, writers and designers founded The Paris Metro four decades ago, they not only launched a mini-revolution in new journalism and great writing, but also investigative reporting – something the French and Swiss press did not, and still don’t really – indulge in.

The magazine barely lasted two years, but it established a hallmark for the type of journalism we need more than ever today. American writer Lex Hames reviews The Paris Metro 40th Anniversary Issue: The Book About Paris Yesterday.

W What could be more wonderful than being in Paris in 1976 when revolution was brewing and rebellion was in the air and you were young and the Seine was flowing and all of Paris was laid out for you like – as you know who said – a moveable feast? Well, only one thing. Being there to write about it.

In 1976, Joel Stratte-McClure, Tom Moore, Harry Stein, and several other young American writers of undoubted courage and possibly excessive zeal, started up an English-language magazine in The City of Light called The Paris Metro. And now, these many years later, they have remembered the creation, birth, and glorious if brief run of that magazine – remembered it all – a feat almost as remarkable as being there young and undaunted in Paris to write about it all in the first place.

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And they are bringing it back to us, to all of us, in a collection of the original articles and wry, wise retrospectives glancing back. Old wine looking back on young wine, as it were; the effect is quite marvelous. If you were not – like Stratte-McClure and Moore and their cohorts – lucky enough to have been in Paris in the ‘70s, breathing life into a fledgling magazine that was a labor of love, gathering the riches of Paris into your arms and then scattering your spoils across those new, fresh pages.... Well, you can still go there now, through the memories summoned up in stunning prose and charming anecdote in this book. If you don’t melt in certain sections of this book, then you are unmeltable. If you don’t feel a sudden glow in your heart and don’t

MEDIA feel a sweet wine trickling down your throat as you peruse certain passages here, you have never been to Paris, and you have never been young....

It quickly becomes apparent, reading these articles – each and every one of them marvelous and worthwhile – that being in Paris at that time, and even better, writing for The Paris Metro at that time, was an unending adventure.

There was something strange and wonderful and dazzling and often perplexing under every rock; er, under every Parisian stone. There were garret hotels where Metro writers stayed that were full of porn stars who wanted to be jazz singers, and deposed African chieftains who had terrifying masks on their walls and six wives crammed into their rooms, and starving novelists who despaired and sang to the wallpaper. There were fledgling writers on the Metro who drifted in and out of the Paris scene like clever fish on a coral reef, nibbling here, nibbling there, and then moving on: in every way feeling the city, in every way embracing life. This was Jack Kerouac meets Sartre meets Ernest Hemingway with Hunter Thompson tossed in for good measure. It was a heady time and a heady brew. Moveable feast, hah! It was a rolling banquet cart with a full jazz band and a cartful of dancing gypsies trailing behind.

And the staff – oh my God, the staff. If anything was more interesting than Paris itself, it was the people on the Metro staff – that is, the writers who have contributed their memories and reminiscences to this book. They were mostly Americans, quite young, still in their 20s and early 30s, eager for life and avid for fame and acclaim, and almost unanimously fearless and crazy – at least a little bit crazy. I think it helped to be crazy at The Metro, in the best slightly-addled, too-smart-to-be-alive French literary way. There were difficult geniuses on staff who had to be cooed and coddled and slack writers who were always, always late and stoned writers who were at their best when stoned and serious, diligent reporters who turned in everything on time and polished each word like a gemstone. There were, shall we say, quirks and oddities; peccadilloes, my dear. There was the wordsmith who had such a deviated septum that he could push his finger from one nostril to the other. And so on.

There were financial battles as well as business contretemps and political disagreements. There was the unending fight to turn in good copy and find great stories and somehow sell the ads that kept everything afloat. (And ultimately, did not – lack of ad revenue was the magazine's demise. If only they could have sold the sheer fun!) These folks did great, seminal work at the Metro, and then went to TIME, to Life, to the New Yorker, to CNN, to running quite bourgeois but powerful media empires back in the US. And to being some of the great reporters and writers of their time. But they trained “on life”, as it were, in Paris, and on the Metro, and it made them better writers and better thinkers and....well, if not always better people, at the least much more interesting people.

Interesting people who did interesting things. There was the missed plane flight to Iran with Ayatollah Khomeini returning, so fatefully, to Tehran....There was the dating of the beautiful le Comte Chandon de Brialles....

There was bumming around Paris half broke and hungry

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but interviewing the President of France and going to parties hosted by Andy Warhol....There was scuba diving in the Seine to prove how dirty and dangerous the water was! There was interviewing Dylan and Joan Baez and Rudolph Nureyev and Mary McCarthy – and quite often pissing them off with candid, frank articles! There was sitting in Hemingway’s bar in the Ritz sipping a brandy and planning your next article.

This was all the normal beat and life of the Metro. You thought hard, wrote hard, partied hard, and took down life in large fast gulps. Jesus Christ, it was wonderful. It was a life for the young, reckless and hardy, certainly, but most of these folks – just because they WERE so smart and talented (if not always judicious or discreet) – survived.

And they now live in Normandy, or New York, or Mexico City, and have a long line of literary accolades and journalistic awards trailing behind them. Damn them. But all the fame, acclaim, wealth and power started with a few crazy kids working for a wild, upstart, arrogant, perky little publication called the Paris Metro. It didn’t succeed in the long run, but then skyrockets are only supposed to burn brightly for a time, aren’t they? And the people who made the magazine did succeed, in life, in love, in adventure and fame, generally speaking. Damn them.

The only thing wrong with reading this collection of saucy, salacious, dazzling, touching tales, is wanting to strangle yourself for not being there, if you had the chance to be – as I did. I was of the age. My old friend and college classmate Joel Stratte-McClure was publisher of the Metro and one of the chief writers – why didn’t I chuck over whatever I was doing at the time and go join him?.... in Paris? I was roping steers and chasing wild horses out of the hills in Montana at the time, and that was not so bad either, and that was adventure too, certainly. But I will tell you: the food was a lot better in Paris than in Lolo, Montana, and there was a somewhat wider range of intriguing female comrades in Paris than in the Bitterroot Valley on the Idaho border. Maybe I should have gone.

But it doesn’t matter, because I can go there now, to Paris, and so can you, and breathe in all the rewards of lively minds and apt, rapt tongues and a fast, live it to the hilt pace; breathe in all the delights of excess and of zeal, in the one of the most fascinating places in the world in a fascinating time. Don’t read this book. Pick it up, inhale it, consume it, enjoy. And feel Paris and all the power of youth spread through your bones. Enjoy.

Lex Hames is an American writer and film-maker living in Helena, Montana. His latest book is All Fall Down, an election thriller. Hames is currently developing a feature film, A Cowboy in China, about his father’s adventures in China in WWII. The Paris Metro 40th Anniversary Issue: The Book About Paris Yesterday is available online at: https:// www.createspace.com/6405288 and Amazon.com Hard-copies also available at WH Smith in Paris.

ENCOUNTERS:

AUNG SAN SUU KYI

THE PRICE OF ISOLATION

BY ED BARNES

Veteran journalist Edward Barnes was recently in Myanmar, also known as Burma, where he sought to meet with former opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, now the country’s first female Foreign Minister and Minister of the President’s Office in President Htin Kvaw’s cabinet. While his requests to ‘encounter’ her were ignored, Barnes examines why Aung San Suu Kyi may be losing touch with expectations.

Reverently, she is known simply as “The Lady.”

For the last 20 years Aung San Suu Kyi was a captive in a lake shore home that advertised the power of her military minders. Yet for more than two decades she was the most formidable enemy a military regime could face: the intelligent daughter of a national hero, willing to sacrifice all, children and husband, to prepare her country for a new century. Quietly she defied them.

Her plight stirred the world.

And in an effort designed to keep both her and her country's hopes alive, the world rallied around. Each year, it seemed, there was a coveted prize awarded to the captive Lady (the most notable being the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991). It all served to remind her captors that, although she was silenced and isolated, she was not alone.

Her saviours created an idol, and icon, who the humanitarians felt sure, due to their exhaustive efforts, had to be dedicated to democracy and human rights. It was that image that kept her alive.

Today she is the unelected leader of Myanmar, or Burma. In the eyes of the vast majority, she is the destined saviour of the country. Her international supporters clearly hoped that she would become the Mandela of Asia. But the first 100 days of her rule have left many of her supporters staggered and depressed. Her priorities, the world thought, and she avowed, were clear: She would heal the country, stop the genocide of the Rohingya, negotiate the integration of the ethnic armies into Burmese society, re-make the country as the agricultural breadbasket of Asia, as it once was, and restore the pivotal position Myanmar once held in the region.

Instead she is rapidly losing support and at the same time raising doubts about whether she is still capable of leading a democratic society.

Internally, the most pressing political problem is continued conflict with the well-armed ethnic armies that rule large swaths of the country. Observers say they have little to be hopeful for a resolution.

Henry Bragg, a Kachin Independent Army spokesman sums up the misgivings: "We trust her personally,” he says, “but we do not trust her politically." Other ethnic army leaders complain that she has not reached out in

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a meaningful way and that their efforts to reach her have been met with silence. "She is not building a government that will last longer than her tenure,” another critic despaired. “All the decisions come through her. She is 71.

We can negotiate with her now, but where will be when she is gone if there are no institutions to ensure the agreements last?"

In the agricultural sector, the foundation of the economy, farmers voice the same refrain. Once the breadbasket of Asia, the nation was reduced under military rule to largely subsistence farming. When Aung San Suu Kyi assumed power, hope blossomed that agriculture would be restored and modern farming techniques would swiftly transform the countryside. Instead, 100 days into her rule, "Nothing has changed," says a New Zealand agricultural expert. The expert has spent the 100 days waiting for a meeting with government officials. He now suspects that that is not likely to happen.

"The country has gone from one party rule--the military--to one person rule," he explains. "That is dictatorship. And people are just starting to use that word.

Nothing happens with out her and she cannot rule that way. They system has to open up," he argues.

Even more perplexing is the recently announced decision not to close down state media enterprises that acted as the military's main propaganda weapons. At a conference in May Myanmar's main foreign supporters, and dozens of companies and journalists that wanted to start independent media organizations, expected to see the dismemberment of the general’s vast media machine.

Instead, Information Minister U Pe Myint announced that the military state's news organs would not be closed.

Representatives from several nations, who had hoped to create a new and free media as the basis for democracy, were dumbfounded.

"You have to understand, as long as there is a state media there can be no free press,” explained one angry diplomat, who asked not to be named. “Businesses think that if they do not advertise in state newspapers or on state television and state radio channels they will be targeted for reprisal or viewed with suspicion. That is the way it has been. As long as state media exists there will be no economic support for any another newspaper, radio

ENCOUNTERS station or television outlet. If the state media exists, no free press can survive economically. There simply will be no money to run them without advertising," And then there are the Rohingya.

To all those who supported her in captivity there was one thing that seemed certain: When Aung San Suu Kyi took the reins of power she would move quickly to stop the genocide against the 1.3 million Muslim ethnic group.

Increasingly, it looks as though this is the one issue on which her international reputation will rest.

Again, all hopes of a swift and humane settlement have vanished.

Human rights groups now face a dilemma: how can they resolved the paradox that the women they made a symbol of human right now appears to be a major violator of those very rights she embodied.

Of the 136 ethnic groups in Myanmar the Rohingya are the only one that has been denied citizenship and what that entails—namely health care, the vote, the right to work and some would say survival. The Rohingya have been described as "the world's least-wanted people".

In the past few years they have been herded into IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps run by the military and armed police, and they have become the targets of ethnic cleansing by an increasingly militant radical Buddhist movement. To escape targeted violence, they have been forced into fleeing by sea in a refugee boat lift that increasingly resembles the one challenging Europe.

In fact, Aung Sang Suu Kyi dressed down the American ambassador for openly using the name Rohingya. She wants the group referred to as Bengalis. The implication is that they do not belong in Myanmar. She has shown no visible inclination to take action that would stop the violence. Instead of finding common cause, She makes it clear that the Rohingya can expect little help from her.

Tensions over the issue have become so inflamed that US Secretary of State John Kerry made a brief stopover to discuss the issue on his way to meet President Barak Obama in his historic visit to Vietnam. Myanmar needs to "promote respect for human rights, and to benefit all of those who live in Rakhine and throughout Myanmar, and that’s what we’ve come here to say to the minister,” Kerry said, emerging from the meeting for a quick, threequestion press conference. Kerry made it clear that little common ground had been found. Aung San Suu Kyi asked that she be given time and for outsiders not to interfere.

"We see no hope from the new government," Kyaw Hla Aung, a Rohingya leader living in the IDP camp in Sittwe said.

The Associated Press even asked if she was a “fallen star”. Yet while the assessment of her first 100 days is bleak, it is still the early days of her rule. Her supporters argue that there is time for things to change. While hard pressed to name significant accomplishments, they argue she still has widespread popularity and that it is probably unfair to use the traditional 100-day mark make as a measurement of progeress since the problems are so immense. She also has to deal with sharing control of the government with the military.

Requests to get an interview that might have helped qualify her version of events went unanswered by her office and the Ministry of Information.

"She has been in isolation for 20 years,” explained one supporter.” she just needs more time to learn and to grow," Time may make a difference. Her former supporters are just not so sure anymore.

Ed Barnes is an experienced foreign correspondent, who has covered most of the world’s trouble zones including years as an investigative reporter for LIFE and TIME Magazine.

GLOBAL geneva

WITH SUPPORT FROM

Join us in Celebrating the Laureates of the

2016 Right Livelihood Award The Laureates of this year’s Right Livelihood Award, widely known as the ‘Alternative Nobel Prize’, will be in Geneva for the annual debate:

2016

“Speaking Truth to Power” Wednesday, 30 November 2016, from 18:30-20:00 Auditorium Ivan Pictet, Maison de la Paix, Chemin Eugène-Rigot 2E, Pétale 1, 1202 Geneva The event will be moderated by Dr Thania Paffenholz, Director of the Graduate Institute’s Inclusive Peace and Transition Initiative, and is organised in partnership with:

Right Livelihood Award Laureates

Syria Civil Defence (The White Helmets) …for their outstanding bravery, compassion and humanitarian engagement in rescuing civilians from the destruction of the Syrian civil war.

Mozn Hassan/Nazra for Feminist Studies (Egypt) …for asserting the equality and rights of women in circumstances where they are subject to ongoing violence, abuse and discrimination.

Svetlana Gannushkina (Russia) …for her decades-long commitment to promoting human rights and justice for refugees and forced migrants, and tolerance among different ethnic groups.

Cumhuriyet (Turkey) …for their fearless investigative journalism and commitment to freedom of expression in the face of oppression, censorship, imprisonment and death threats.

For more information, please contact the Right Livelihood Foundation: RSVP-Geneva@rightlivelihood.org | +41 22 555 0955 | www.rightlivelihoodaward.org