Global Geneva • March/April 2017 • Issue #2

LOBAL geneva

GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM

: L L A W E H T OFF RESET

KNOCKING IT ALL DOWN:

FRENCH PROPERTY DEVELOPERS DICTATE LAKE GENEVA’S URBAN VISION

IS LEGAL TRADE THE

ONLY WAY TO SAVE AFRICA’S REMAINING RHINOS?

MAYORS, NAPOLEONS & CORRUPTION:

A VERY FRENCH CURSE

CIVITAS MAXIMA: A TINY

GROUP OF SWISS LAWYERS TAKES ON WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

ISSUE 02 • MARCH/APRIL 2017 • SWITZERLAND 8CHF • FRANCE 8EUR

DON

L A B O L G S ’ P ALD TRUM

MARCH/APRIL 2017

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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR

REAL DEMOCRACY DOESN’T COME ON A PLATTER

Nor does credible information

COVER STORIES: TRUMP’S AMERICA

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OFF THE WALL: DONALD TRUMP’S GLOBAL RESET

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TRUMP & INTERNATIONAL LAW: A GREAT UNRAVELING?

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REX TILLERSON & THE ‘ART’ OF THE OIL BUSINESS

POETRY: Days Giving pg.11

POETRY: Do Not Love A Refugee pg.23

POETRY: Hammurabi Replica at the ILO pg.35

FROM THE FIELD

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IS LEGAL TRADE THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE AFRICA’S REMAINING RHINOS?

The Hans Haas Fifty Fathom Award pg.24 Palau: At The Edge Of The World pg.26

28 PEACEKEEPING: WHEN ALL SEEMED LOST...

Afghanistan Today: Is Russian Back To Old Tricks? pg.30

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GLOBAL GENEVANS

CIVITAS MAXIMA: A TINY GROUP OF SWISS LAWYERS TAKES ON WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

WHO PAYS THE HIDDEN PRICE OF

49 CONGO’s CONFLICT FREE MATERIALS

MARCH/APRIL 2017

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

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MAYORS, NAPOLEONS & CORRUPTION: A VERY FRENCH CURSE

International Tribunals: Justice Must Be Seen To Be Done pg.36 Corruption in France: The Time of Impunity Is Over pg.48 More Than Just A Hub: International Geneva Can Lead The Fourth Industrial Revolution pg.48 Trade For Aid But Get Paid pg.53

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KNOCKING IT ALL DOWN: FRENCH PROPERTY DEVELOPERS DICTATE LAKE GENEVA’S URBAN VISION

Speaking Up For The Other Europe pg.52 Switzerland’s Global Compact: Making SDGs Real pg.54 Dealing With Poop: The Virtues Of Perfume pg.56

OTHER STORIES 58

EXTENDED PLAY: INTERVIEW WITH JAN-MATHIEU DONNIER

EDUCATION: Social Entrepreneurship In Schools: Starting Something that Matters pg.62

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BREAKING IN: LETTER FROM CONGO

EDUCATION: Geneva Schools: Making The Best Choice pg.66 MUSIC: Patricia Kaas: A Girl From The East pg.68

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LEADING EDGE: WHY ‘MEDIA’ IS NOT JOURNALISM

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ENCOUNTERS: ON MEETING OSAMA BIN LADEN

FROM THE EDITOR

REAL DEMOCRACY DOESN’T COME ON A PLATTER. Nor does credible information.

L

aunching into our second issue of Global Geneva, we realized we could not ignore Donald Trump. Or what is happening to democracy, good governance and transparency — all international Geneva themes - in the face of untruths and intolerance not just in the United States but also here in Europe. Hence our cover with a Jeff Danziger cartoon, William Dowell’s Lead Story on Trump’s potential impact on the world and Charles Norchi’s article on how Trump’s policies could affect international law. Plus Claudine Girod-Boos on France’s sorry state from ex-prime ministers to mayors when it comes to abuse of power, corruption or conflict of interest, coupled with an additional piece on how the European Parliament is obliging member countries to become more accountable to their own citizens.

At the same time, there is rising concern with the way information is unabashedly manipulated and abused to push agendas, such as Brexit, or the manner with which Trump has been attacking critical reporting whether by the New York Times or CNN. Hence Mort Rosenblum’s warning that if we wish to cultivate vibrant democracies, we need to have real journalism. And this does not mean ‘media’, or ‘social media’. Both are as banal as ‘food’ and ‘cars’ when trying to describe what each represents.

So, asking our colleagues to write or draw about Trump in a balanced manner was like suggesting they jump into Lake Geneva in mid-winter. Why on earth would you want to do that? Trump is not just crazy but dangerous. Danziger first sent us a cartoon depicting the American president as a sleazy SS officer. Then one with him urinating into a blue UN helmet. I had not realised how utterly angry — and fearful - so many of my normally calm and reflective journalist friends had become in the face of Trump’s demeaning of traditional

American values. “What Trump represents is the last days of Weimar,” said Danziger. “If we do nothing, it’s our fault.”

As democracies go, of course, both Britain and the United States have ranked pretty poorly over the past year. America did not even make it in The Economist’s Intelligence Unit’s latest Democracy Index as a “full democracy.” (Curiously, despite Brexit, the UK did at number 16, while Switzerland came 8th.)

With a disastrously-informed campaign based on lies and disinformation, Britain’s Third World-style approach to Brexit — “Latin American populism” as Alan Greenspan, former head of the US Federal Reserve, put it - demonstrated only too clearly its inability to hold a responsible referendum. Or to ensure that voters were properly informed. How can one embrace a poll asking citizens to make a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ decision that would not only profoundly affect their economic well-being for decades to come, but also the security of Europe when clearly so many had little understanding of the issues at hand? Is that real democracy? Or simply a nation indulging in the pretence?

The 2016 US presidential election took dishonesty a step further. The Trump campaign affirmed that it’s quite all right to propagate lies, fake news, untruths and alternative facts, and that if you repeat them enough, they become reality. What a wonderful lesson to teach one’s children!

“IN A TIME OF UNIVERSAL DECEIT - TELLING THE TRUTH IS A REVOLUTIONARY ACT.” - GEORGE ORWELL Both votes undoubtedly enabled frustrated electorates to stick their finger to the Establishment revealing incredible divides within each country. Many voters felt that they were not being heard, whether by London, Brussels or Washington, and hence welcomed simplistic solutions (“we want our sovereignty back” or “make America great again”) by cracking down on foreigners or blaming their woes on others. This same phenomenon is emerging in countries such as France and the Netherlands, where right-wing politicians are embracing scare tactics directed against migrants and refugees. They also claim to want their countries back.

The fact that all these societies, whether the United States since the early 17th century or Europe (including the UK) since well before Roman times, have always been immigrant societies seems conveniently ignored.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR As a people, the Swiss have their very distinct cultural divides, but somehow they seem to work things out. Pragmatists, they would never risk their economic future based on a highly questionable referendum that was implemented so shoddily. Not only is Switzerland — a non-EU member — part of Schengen but it is doing everything possible to remain bilaterally part of the single market. This despite a 2014 referendum with a feather wisp majority (50.3%) to impose quotas on EU immigrants. Now, three years later, the Federal Council in Bern — always in search of quiet compromise - has more or less ignored the vote by deciding that it would be like shooting oneself in the foot. Too many Swiss industries, whether tourism, high-tech companies, multinationals, academic research and health care require foreign labour not only for survival, but to stay ahead of the game.

Furthermore, recent polls suggest that over 60 per cent of Swiss would now cast their ballots the other way.

Of course, Brussels made it perfectly clear that no special cases would be tolerated, something Britain needs to bear in mind. Either you play by the rules, or you’re out.

So the Swiss figure that quiet diplomacy is the best route.

The Swiss, who introduced their first referendum 125 years ago, also know something about the process.

Held at the rate of one every three months, referendum participation is usually less than 50 per cent but has been rising in recent years. Crucial, too, is the manner with which issues are presented. Last February’s referendum, for example, asked citizens to vote on three critical federal issues. But the ballots did not simply ask on a single page whether to ‘Remain’ or ‘Leave’ as did Brexit. Each election pack always incorporates detailed information with explanatory ‘for’ and ‘against’ arguments, including the government’s own position; all very impressive.

So even if you can’t be bothered to read newspapers or follow the debates on radio, television or social media, you can assume your civic responsibility with a last minute ‘read-in’. Thus, as in this last referendum, Swiss voters could still make relatively informed decisions, such as whether to grant third generation foreign residents the right to easy naturalization (60.4 per cent said ‘yes’); an overhaul of the company tax system (rejected by 59.1 per cent); and a proposal to spend more federal funds on roads (accepted by 62 per cent).

The bottom line is that the Swiss approach not only offers a responsible means of engaging its population in direct democracy, something Brexit completely failed to do, but also a simple, but efficient platform for voters to grasp the key issues at hand. Perhaps even more critical, no Swiss citizen can argue that he or she was not aware.

Edward Girardet, editor. editor@global-geneva.com

GLOBAL GENEVA MAGAZINE AND INTERNATIONAL GENEVA Congratulations. Your print and web journal is truly impressive. Please accept my congratulations and warm wishes for your success and hard work. Doing this kind of work to the quality you have achieved in the current environment is remarkable.

Brij K., Geneva.

This is precisely what international Geneva needs.

A print and online magazine that is not afraid to look at issues that need more public debate. I also like the idea of treating ‘international Geneva’ as a concept without frontiers. I read every article in the magazine, something I rarely do.

Hans-Peter Schurren, Bern.

Excellent job with Global Geneva. Much appreciate that you are focusing on themes in need of more critical exposure and reporting. My only fear is that this is not the first publication that has tried to cover the extraordinary potential of Geneva. I only hope the Swiss and Geneva governments realize what an amazing information tool you are offering.

They should be supporting you without question.

Trudy Mercer, Geneva

FIFA AND AFRICAN CORRUPTION I really enjoyed your pilot issue, particularly the articles on FIFA and Corruption in Africa. Good to see that we Africans are not the only ones who are corrupt. More articles like this please. This is what good journalism should be doing here in Africa. My question regarding FIFA article. Why was it the FBI that arrested these 14 culprits and not the Swiss police? As far as I know, the Swiss have been aware of FIFA’s corruption for years.

Peter J. Nairobi

DESPERATE EXPATS Donatella Lorch hit the nail on the head with her piece on Trailing Spouses. And what wonderful writing. The Trailing Spouse syndrome is something that affects so many of us, not just in Switzerland but all over the world.

Janet Christen, New Dehli.

We look forward to readers’ comments. The editors reserve the right to edit letters, emails or tweets for length. Write to us at editor@global-geneva.com

MANA NEYESTANI, IRAN

WITH SUPPORT FROM

Editor & Founder Edward Girardet (Geneva) America’s 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 Rosenblum (Paris), Mark Schapiro (San Francisco), Peyman Pejman (Paris), Charles Norchi (Maine) Cartoonists Hani Abbas (Geneva) Jeff Danziger (New York) Poetry Editor Carla Drysdale (Geneva) 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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Demonstrators in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. [PHOTO: WILLIAM DOWELL]

COVER STORY: TRUMP & HISTORY

OFF THE WALL:

DONALD TRUMP’S GLOBAL RESET

When Donald Trump promised during a toxic US presidential election campaign to overthrow the Washington establishment, most people thought he was caught up in the hyperbole of the moment. No one thinks that now. Trump has waded into Washington’s elite with all the energy of a whirling dervish. As Global Geneva’s America editor William Dowell writes, it now looks as though it’s not just Washington he wants to overthrow, but the entire international system that the US took half a century putting together after World War II. Trump’s first move delivered the coup de grace to the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) that Barack Obama spent years stitching together. He followed up with verbal attacks aagainst NATO and the European Union, and then hinted that the US intended to cut its funding to the United Nations by 40 per cent. This includes most of the Geneva based agencies.

And if that was not enough, he threatened to start a trade war with China, send the US Navy to stop Beijing’s ships in the South China Sea, and slap a 35 per cent import duty on German cars sold in the US. As an after-thought, he pledged to dismantle the safety features of the Dodd-Frank Act, designed to stop another financial crisis like the one that almost destroyed the world economy in 2008. Trump accompanied this bluster with a barrage of false statistics, outright lies and insane exaggerations, which he insisted on sticking to, even when they were demonstrably proven untrue.

Just a few weeks into the Trump administration, most of Washington is exhausted.

There are some scattered signs of hope. With former Exxon-Mobile CEO, Rex Tillerson now confirmed as Secretary of State, and former Marine general, James Mattis already active as Secretary of Defense, US foreign policy may begin to stabilize, and sidestep some of the more glaring pitfalls. It also looks as though those parts of government that are still able to function are beginning to find ways of working around their manic commander-in-chief. Tillerson, Mattis and another former Marine general, John Kelly, who now heads Homeland Security, have imposed some adult supervision on Trump’s personal advisors who appear to be largely clueless about foreign affairs and how government works.

The heavy Russian involvement in spreading disinformation about Democrats and Moscow’s use of WikiLeaks to publicize embarrassing campaign emails purloined by Cozy Bear, a group of hackers with close ties to Russian intelligence, continues to haunt Trump. Paul Manafort,

an early campaign manager, had previously worked on contracts to favour of Moscow’s candidates in Ukraine’s elections. The Russians had also paid a substantial fee to Michael Flynn, whom Trump picked as his National Security Advisor, to attend a conference in Moscow promoting RT, its English-language TV network. Flynn was forced to resign after it emerged that he had had secret conversations with the Russian embassy in Washington, and had lied about the content to Trump and the vice president. Even without Flynn, serious questions were raised about Trump’s inexplicable personal flirtation with Vladimir Putin. A question not cleared up yet is whether members of Trump’s team conferred with the Russians and might have been aware of their help during the actual campaign.

Despite his inexperience in foreign affairs and government in general, Trump has so far steered clear of advice from what he sees as the Washington establishment. He has a running war with US intelligence agencies, who tried to warn him about getting too close to Moscow. He has also refused the Daily Presidential Briefing, intended to keep the leader of the free world informed on fast breaking events. Instead, he informs himself largely by watching cable TV news shows, Twitter and various dubious websites, including InfoWars, a false news site run by Alex Jones, an extreme conspiracy theorist. Trump is prone to conspiracy theories himself, and throughout most of Barack Obama’s presidency, he held to the bizarre fiction that Obama had been born in Kenya and had falsified his Hawaiian birth certificate.

JUST A FEW WEEKS INTO THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION, MOST OF WASHINGTON IS EXHAUSTED

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COVER STORY: TRUMP & HISTORY

The real fly in the White House ointment, however, is Steve Bannon, Trump’s pick to be his key strategist and head White House thinker. Bannon, who is practically the only member of the team who reads books, previously headed Breitbart.com, a rightwing website that Bannon himself describes as a platform for the “alt-right”, a euphemism for neo-nazi movements. Bannon, who claims to be an “economic nationalist,” told one interviewer that he sees himself as a modern-day Thomas Cromwell, Henry VIII’s chancellor who climbed to power as the Machiavellian intellect behind one of England’s bloodiest monarchs. Bannon also likes to compare himself to Lenin, storming the Winter Palace at the start of the Russian Revolution. Bannon doesn’t have a palace to burn, but he stressed his desire to overturn what he considers to be a bourgeois Washington elite. What he intends to put in its place is anyone’s guess.

Early on, critics compared Bannon to the more intellectual groupies who surrounded Hitler during the Weimar period. But the real story may prove far more sinister. At a Vatican conference in 2014, Bannon tried to shed light on his philosophical roots, referring to Julius Evola, an Italian fascist philosopher who had a major influence on Mussolini.

Evola promoted an obscure theory known as Traditionalism, which holds that progress and equality are poisonous illusions that weaken the human spirit.

Evola’s reasoning roughly paralleled Nietzsche’s criticism of Christianity and Judaism for allegedly weakening the primal human spirit. Evola, who died in 1974, experienced a resurgence of popularity among Italian fascists in the 1960’s, and his writings soon crossed the Atlantic. They were particularly influential in Breitbart circles.

Fascism, it turned out, was just what the economically disenfranchised, underemployed, rust belt underclass needed to rationalize that it had been bypassed by a rapidly evolving global economy. It turned out that this group was precisely what Trump, a reality TV star comfortable with junk television, wanted to appeal to in his campaign. Trump’s politically incorrect, authoritarian message delivered in a limited, but easy to understand, vocabulary, came across as a vindication of economic failure and a promise that the future would be different.

That was a lie, of course, but one which a segment of the population, convinced that they had already lost everything, were more than ready to believe.

Trump appears more than grateful to Bannon for showing him the way. Since he is astonishingly ignorant of foreign affairs himself (he believed that Scotland had voted for Brexit) and is gifted with the attention span of a gnat, Trump has been more than happy to let Bannon

BANNON ALSO LIKES TO COMPARE HIMSELF TO LENIN, STORMING THE WINTER PALACE AT THE START OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION

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provide an intellectual, behind-the-scenes, veneer to the Oval Office. While Trump plays golf at his palatial estate at Mar-a-Lago in Florida, Bannon has been quietly moving more Breitbart alumni into positions of power, especially when it comes to defining policy.

So far, the march towards fascism has mostly involved words and a few presidential executive orders, although that may change. The brother of Betsy DeVos, Trump’s pick for Education Secretary is Eric Prince, the infamous founder of Blackwater, a mercenary group responsible for massacres, torture and random killings during the Iraq war. Prince dropped out of Blackwater when it disbanded and changed its name to Academi, but he was reported lurking in the background and volunteering advice while Trump’s transition team were putting the new administration together.

Another dubious influence is Stephen Miller, an extreme right wing apparachik, who hates immigrants and is occasionally described as a Bannon acolyte. The two shared writing credit on the infamous executive order that briefly kept Muslims from seven middle eastern countries from visiting the United States. At first, it was thought that Miller would take the fall for the disastrous edict, which sparked mass protest demonstrations across the country.

However, after Miller made a whirlwind tour of television Sunday news programmes in support of some of Trump’s more outrageous fantasies, the president seems determined to keep him on the team. As Trump’s admirers keep pointing out, he values loyalty over common sense.

Other members of the Trump band are not faring so well. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, has been mocked mercilessly on the satirical TV comedy show, Saturday Night Live, with a female actress, Melissa McCarthy, shrieking a hilarious imitation. Relations with the press are so poisoned that it has been impossible until now to find anyone willing to fill in as a communications chief for the White House. At the Grammys awards broadcast, rapper Busta Rhymes referred to Trump as President “Agent Orange.”

The White House Correspondent’s Dinner, normally a must-go event, has had one news organization after another decline to participate this year. A competing event, hosted by TV comedian, Samantha Bee, at the Willard Hotel, a block from the White House, is being advertised as “Not the White House Correspondent’s Dinner” and is likely to be swamped by the in-crowd.

It’s reasonable to ask what happened to America’s vaunted checks and balances. They seem to have vanished in a perfect political storm. Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, and Republican House Majority Leader, Paul Ryan, spent the last eight years sabotaging nearly every step taken by Barack Obama. Now that they have a majority in both houses, they want Trump to survive long enough to push through their agenda. This appears to consist of absolving the federal government of as much financial responsibility as possible by dividing up tax revenues and handing the loot in block grants to the individual states to do as they wish.

Their biggest target was Obama’s Affordable Care Act, usually referred to as Obamacare. Yet now that Republicans have absolute power, they are beginning to

COVER STORY: TRUMP & HISTORY

realize that ex-Yugoslavia president may have been right when he claimed that his approach was the only one that could actually work. Killing the programme means stopping health insurance for an estimated 18 million people. The independent Congressional Budget Office estimates that depriving that many people of medical insurance would lead to the death of 22,000 citizens.

Having promised miracles, Republicans now face an enraged electorate in many of their districts. Several congressmen had to be protected by police escorts after raucous town hall meetings.

Reality is slowly descending on Trump as well. After casually suggesting to automobile manufacturers that he might help them by slapping an across-the-board 20 per cent duty on all imports, manufacturers explained that most cars today are assembled from thousands of parts manufactured by the global supply chain. Far from saving them, Trump’s grand scheme would increase significantly the cost of American cars. The same principle holds for imported Chinese goods sold at discount stores like Walmart. Without cheap imports, the lower economic brackets that Trump depends on would rise in revolt.

The hope in Washington these days is that Trump’s team may be so incompetent that it may only be capable of inflicting limited damage before Tillerson and Mattis manage to bring the president up to speed. Bannon and the Breitbart crew of would-be fascists are definitely a cause for concern, but so far their message hasn’t resonated with the public. The overwhelming demonstrations of public support for refugees and immigrants affected by Bannon’s Muslim travel ban and the enormous crowds that demonstrated for the multiple Women’s marches were a strong indication that the American public is not on board with either Trump or the Republicans.

In two years, the entire House of Representatives will be up for re-election, and if Trump continues to operate in his alternative reality, it’s likely that he will either be isolated from causing major harm, or he will be impeached.

Optimists hope that the US can still survive Trump, but the US that the rest of the world knows may need to drop out of the international scene for a few years. This includes the numerous interests that international Geneva represents, such as humanitarian response, access to health, human rights and climate change.

In many ways, however, this could provide some breathing space for the world-at-large, notably the UN. As one senior UN official noted, Trump’s threats of cutting funding could prompt the UN to finally embrace the realistic reforms which are urgently needed. They could also oblige the international community, particularly the European Union, to assume its responsibilities and to build a more equal world that does not depend on a single super power.

Journalist and author William Dowell is the America editor of Global Geneva based in Philadelphia. A former correspondent for TIME magazine and ABC News, he has covered international affairs in Asia, Africa and Europe. Dowell was previously based in Geneva and accredited to the UN. His most recent book is “In the Shadow of the Dragon: The Global Expansion of Chinese companies — and how it will change business forever.”

POETRY

Days Giving When nothing was left as if we possessed anything we give our days to each other I give you my morning with a coffee and toast a smile for a jam I helped you to put on your wings we flew to discover what we had already discovered we give them new names they give us new names.

At lunch you asked me how did you get this spice?

You give me your evening with a glass of wine and a touch wherever your hands wanted to touch you unbuttoned what was locked in me we made the bed warm with our naked bodies and became one just before falling to sleep we said: thank you for giving me your day.

Bashir Sakhawarz is an award-winning poet, novelist and short story writer. His poetry collections include ‘The night Stories’, winner of the Afghan Writer’s Association for poetry in 1978. He has worked in Europe, Asia, Africa and Central America for various international organizations. such as the UN, EU and Asia Asian Development Bank. http://www. sakhawarz.com/english/

MORE ON AMERICAN POLITICS? For more commentary, analysis and insight from William Dowell visit Tom’s Paine online: global-geneva.com/toms-paine/

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TRUMP & INTERNATIONAL LAW:

A GREAT UNRAVELING?

Donald Trump’s impact on international law has already had a dizzying effect. Contributing editor Charles Norchi writes that Trump’s actions have brought the international legal system to the tipping point with regards to the United Nations, the use of force, international trade, human rights, refugees and the environment.

T

wo months into the new United States administration, Donald Trump has already had an impact on international law, and the international legal system that now appears on the brink of unravelling.

Executive Orders intended to modify or withdraw from legal obligations by the US government will affect the United Nations, human rights, refugees, international trade, the environment and limitations on the use of force.

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US law classifies international agreements according to three basic categories: treaties, congressional executive agreements and sole executive agreements. In most circumstances, the President can withdraw unilaterally from sole executive agreements (i.e. political arrangements).

The December, 2015 UN-sponsored Paris Agreement on climate change falls into this category. As a result, Trump’s proposed policies could significantly undermine much of the progress made in recent years with regard to environmental protection.

Three of Trump’s executive orders have a bearing on immigration and human rights and they impose dramatic restrictions on asylum and other immigration protections in the United States. These breach the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the

TRUMP & INTERNATIONAL LAW: A GREAT UNRAVELING?

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the American Convention on Human Rights, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The 1951 Refugee Convention, for example, obliges governments to observe the principle of non-refoulement.

It prohibits parties from expelling or returning refugees to territories where their lives or freedom would be at risk.

The Border Enforcement Order violates this agreement by directing the Department of Homeland (DHS) to expand “expedited removal” to the maximum extent possible.

This executive order alone threatens the lives of up to 11 million illegal immigrants. It will exponentially increase the likelihood of refoulement. The criminal penalties under the new policies violate international law and fail to protect basic refugee rights. The Refugee Convention also prohibits the imposition of penalties on refugees for unauthorized entry or presence in a country. Trump’s policy of prosecuting and penalizing undocumented entrants without consideration for why they fled is a breach of the international obligations of the United States.

International trade agreements and the global trade system have also been put at risk. Trump intends to terminate agreements pertaining to international commerce and trade, beginning with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). President Obama signed the TPP, but the agreement required Congressional approval, was never debated and consequently never entered into force.

Trump’s “un-signing” the TPP—the largest regional trade accord in history—as a matter of unilateral Executive power was straightforward. It went ‘puff” with the stroke of a pen.

NAFTA, in theory, requires six-months notice before any of the partners can withdraw. Nevertheless, it was implemented by congressional-executive agreement, and it is unclear whether Mr. Trump has the authority to withdraw without the support of Congress. However, since Mr. Trump is a Republican and Republicans control both houses of Congress, it is a moot point. What is clear is that if the U.S. retreats from the global economy, other countries will fill the vacuum, notably China.

Trump has also suggested that the US could withdraw from the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO treaties were congressional-executive agreements approved and implemented by Congress. Withdrawal would require consent from both houses of Congress as well as the president. There is no question that a withdrawal would significantly affect the ability of American companies to access foreign markets. It would also make them vulnerable to customs, duties, tariffs and regulatory barriers. In addition, American firms would no longer be able to challenge expropriations and other commercially discriminatory actions before international tribunals. Global trade and commerce would become much more unpredictable. International markets are already beginning to show signs of instability.

The most important function of international law is the prevention of war. The Iran Nuclear deal, also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was concluded by the United States, the EU and five other

countries precisely to ensure that Iran could not build a nuclear weapon. The intention was to avoid war, especially with Israel. Trump has called the JCPOA “the worst deal ever negotiated,” and declared that ending it would be his “number one priority.” The JCPOA is a political commitment that turns on technical—and thus far successful—verification measures. US denunciation of the JCPOA would not only risk an international confrontation, it would also be harmful to Western companies seeking to do business in Iran and to the legal regime for the control of nuclear weapons. It would send a dangerous signal to paranoid elites who control nuclear weapons.

The Trump Administration will most likely attempt to undercut more ratified treaties which impose international legal obligations on the United States. The US Supreme Court has not settled the question of whether the President can unilaterally withdraw from treaties or congressional executive agreements. However, whether any state can withdraw from, denounce or terminate a treaty is not merely a domestic matter. It is also a matter of international law which requires either compliance with a specific withdrawal procedure or narrow exceptions.

Under the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, a state may only withdraw from or otherwise terminate its obligations if the treaty itself permits, or with the consent of all parties. Without such clauses, which can vary widely with many specifying a fixed term of years and/or notice period, the treaty is presumed to continue indefinitely.

Failure to comply with the Vienna Convention procedures means that a US withdrawal would not be considered legal by the international community.

Flouting international law has consequences and risks blowback. It encourages similar behavior by other countries, often powerful ones. If the US government breaches the 1951 Refugee Convention, other states are also likely to suspend the Convention. In the first months of the Trump Administration, for example, Russia violated the 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) by a missile deployment. A Russian surveillance vessel sits in waters 30 nautical miles from the east coast of the U.S., and the Kremlin continues to breach the UN Charter by annexation of Crimea. Strongmen in Turkey suppress expression and in the Philippines execute citizens extra-judicially; China re-asserts aggressive maritime claims, and North Korea threatens nuclear war.

A principle goal of international law is to ensure a measure of predictability in an otherwise anarchical international system. Presidential pronouncements, signals and tweets can erode the international legal system because they may be taken as authoritative. And as exclusive self-interests displace inclusive common interests, the public order of the world community degrades. If Trump succeeds in his stated objectives, we will see the waning of a 70-year international order (built on the ashes of World War II) which enshrined respect for law. It remains to be seen just how far Trump will go in his denigration of the rule of international law.

Charles H. Norchi is Professor of Law and University Trustee Professor in the University of Maine School, USA, and a contributing editor to Global Geneva.

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COVER STORY

REX TILLERSON & THE ‘ART’ OF THE OIL BUSINESS

The Prestige breaking up off the coast of Portugal in 2002 creating the area’s worst oil spill — 79 million gallons of crude. [PHOTO: GREENPEACE]

California-based journalist and author Mark Schapiro examines the background of the former ExxonMobil CEO’s past dealing with the impact of oil spills and climate change and tells us about Tillerson’s environmental approach as Donald Trump’s recently appointed Secretary of State.

A rock about the size of a fist sits on the bookshelf above my desk. It’s ridged and bumpy and covered in oil.

I’ve been carrying it with me for over a decade now after picking it up on a beach in Galicia, in Northwest Spain — my own talisman to recall and understand the story behind the story of the central energy commodity of our time.

I’ve been reminded of that rock and that beach lately as Rex Tillerson, former CEO of ExxonMobil, assumes his new position as U.S. Secretary of State in the Trump administration. Tillerson was for 10 years the CEO of America’s largest oil company (the world’s fourth largest) — a testament, said his fan Donald Trump, to his global savvy and sharp business instincts. We’ve been told that Tillerson is an ideal pick because he understands how to pull the levers of the free market to turn investments around the world into jobs and steady profits.

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“The energy business is not a get-rich-quick scheme,” extolled the Wall Street Journal about Tillerson shortly after he was nominated. “To succeed requires integrating technical, political and financial acumen over a long period.” Let’s grant Tillerson the first two — a lifelong engineer at the company, he clearly knows how to extract fossils from under the earth. And cutting deals to extract hundreds of millions of barrels of oil from, say, Russia, Nigeria, Equatorial Guinea and other authoritarian or fragile states does suggest a certain political facility. When it comes to ‘financial’ skills however, Tillerson is more like an artist of the sleight of hand. Like every other oil CEO, he benefits from unparalleled distortions of the free market which he claims to master.

The business model that Tillerson perfected involves hiding your costs, and getting the rest of us, taxpayers, to pay them - which makes it a lot easier to make it appear

COVER STORY: REX TILLERSON & THE ‘ART’ OF THE OIL BUSINESS

that you’re making a profit. Business savvy? More like tricks of accounting, tucking costs onto a ledger outside the company that nobody inside has to face. But the rest of us do — as that rock reminds me.

The beach where I found that rock is about 80 kilometers north of the border with Portugal, an isolated place with a sharp cold wind even in the spring when I visited. Six months before I slipped the rock into my overcoat pocket, on the night of November 22, 2002, a ferocious storm off that coast tossed a 245-meter-long single-hull oil tanker called the Prestige around in the waves like a toy boat. As she lurched in the violent waters, a wave smashed into the right forward hull and the three-foot-thick steel frame blew open — “like a sardine can,” a rescue worker later recalled. After the captain’s SOS, the Spanish Coast Guard sent a helicopter to pick up the nineteen crew members, and towed the ailing tanker out to sea.

The Prestige sank about 50 kilometers offshore. Out from the hull came viscous cascades of oil: 79 million gallons of crude washed onto a thousand miles of coast, all the way up to the beaches of southwest France. Satellite photos taken by the French research agency CIDRE show the oil spreading from the Prestige like spindly black veins in the circulatory system of the Atlantic.

The Prestige unleashed one of the worst environmental disasters in history, at least until the Deepwater Horizon, BP’s oil derrick, exploded in the Gulf of Mexico in April 2010. I didn’t go to the Louisiana coast to watch, nor did I make it to Prince William Sound in Alaska back in 1989, when the tanker plying the Pacific for Tillerson’s company, the Exxon Valdez, sank off the coast of Alaska. Like many, I watched

those other two oil-soaked nightmares unfold from afar.

Tillerson was a mid-level Exxon engineer when that tanker sank. Shortly thereafter, ExxonMobil spun off its ship division to an affiliate and took the company’s name off the tankers it used in an effort to delink itself, in the public imagination anyway, from the actual ships carrying its products. By the time Tillerson became CEO in 2006, he attempted to distance the company further from the consequences of the catastrophe when he refused billions of dollars in persistent damage claims by Alaskan fishermen and coastal communities, and pursuing a challenge to a $5 billion punitive damage penalty assessed by the federal government all the way to the Supreme Court, which reduced it by 90 per cent to $500 million.

Standing on that perch in the Atlantic, it became clear that oil spills are not very different. Spills are the Esperanto of the oil business. They occur in similar ways, and they speak the same language no matter the shores they happen to contaminate. The Prestige and the ExxonValdez were carrying a refined version of what the Deepwater Horizon was pumping directly from under the ocean. By way of contrast in the fossil-fuel-catastrophe sweepstakes, the Prestige spill was far bigger than the Exxon Valdez crack-up in 1989, which spilled some 15-30 million gallons of oil (the exact figure is still in dispute) along the coast of southeast Alaska, less than half of the Prestige’s toxic load.

The Deepwater Horizon blew them both away — unleashing over its excruciatingly public effusion some 210 million gallons of oil. That cold spring day I was standing on the Atlantic coast of Spain, but I might as well have been standing on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico,

Seeking to rescue birdlife from oil contamination caused by the Prestige [PHOTO: GREENPEACE] 15

COVER STORY: REX TILLERSON & THE ‘ART’ OF THE OIL BUSINESS

or off Prince William Sound in Alaska. Each of these catastrophes provide us a glimpse into the many ways in which oil company accounting is very different from the accounting practiced by honest practitioners of the free market. In fact, if we gas guzzlers were not so complicit in the scheme, they’d be arrested for cooking the books.

Even in the brisk wind, the air on that isolated beach had the sickening smell of a gasoline station. All I could see in either direction — to the south, toward Africa and to the north, toward Ireland — were thousands of rocks, millions of them, stretching into infinity, covered in the black gooey crud that had been carried in the cargo holds of the Prestige. An assortment of volunteers from as far away as Italy and the Czech Republic were still scraping rocks and boulders with spoons in a quixotic effort to remove the vile substance.

The closest town was Corcubión, about 15 kilometers away, which for hundreds of years has been sustained by the abundant fish of the North Atlantic. The town is renowned as the source of a marine delicacy unique to

Currents carried the Prestige’s vile contents northward, and in fishing communities along its path there was a similar sense of having been besieged by an evil, destructive force that seemed to come from nowhere and let loose its demons upon their shores. Some of Spain’s most pristine beaches were plunged into a scene out of science fiction. The Spanish government sent out hazardous materials crews in insulated white suits to

“THIS WAS AN ACT OF TERROR, A CRIMINAL ACT! WE NEED AN INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNAL” power-spray the beaches with high-pressure hoses. The cleanup costs quickly mounted into multiple billions of dollars.

I’ve held on to that rock for all these years so I would not forget the image and feel of the environmental and economic destruction wrought by that sunken tanker, and the price that is paid for our reliance on a fuel that at

© GREENPEACE

Cleaning up oil pollution on a Portuguese beach. [PHOTO: GREENPEACE] this area called percebes, a barnacle that clings to the side of the rocks and is a prized feature of Galician cuisine. The waves that crashed upon those rocks were tainted with oil.

There would be no percebes that season, nor any other fish caught along the Galician coast. The marine environment was severely damaged, and tens of thousands of fishermen suddenly lost their source of livelihood all along the coast.

Tourists who normally crowd this area in the spring and summer stayed away.

The economy of Corcubión was devastated. I met the town’s mayor, Rafael Mouzo, who with his trim beard and bushy mustache looked like a character out of Cervantes. We walked along the stone balustrade overlooking the town’s port, lined with idle fishing boats stranded by the blacklist on Galician fish. Mouzo could barely contain his rage at the disaster that had befallen his town. He told me that the oil spill was like an act of war. “This,” he exclaimed, “was an act of terror, a criminal act! We need an international tribunal to judge . . . all those responsible for the spill.”

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every turn wreaks collateral damage while it powers our economic might. That Galician rock is perhaps the only physical legacy remaining of the sunken Prestige here in the United States. It tells a story of the acute effects of oil unleashed upon the sea and upon the land—and the ways in which the players in the oil business, including America’s new Secretary of State, have dodged responsibility for the costs of their key product. The same principles of shunting costs onto others, as it happens, apply to climate change — which is now going to be the purview of Rex Tillerson.

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE, PLEASE GO TO WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM Mark Schapiro is a California-based journalist and author. His latest book is The End of Stationarity: Searching for the New Normal in the Age of Carbon Shock (Chelsea Green) http://media.chelseagreen.com/the-end-of-stationarity twitter.com/schapiro | www.markschapiro.com

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[PHOTO: KEITH SOMERVILLE]

IS LEGAL TRADE

THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE AFRICA’S

REMAINING RHINOS? 18

FROM THE FIELD: IS A LEGAL TRADE THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE AFRICA’S REMAINING RHINOS

t’s a controversial issue, but what is the best way for dealing with rhino poaching? Contributing editor Keith Somerville was recently in South Africa to explore the issue.

T

he air buzzed with the sound of an electric saw. Next to me a 2,000kg white rhino slumped on the ground. When the saw fell silent, I was handed a heavy, greyish brown lump of horn. “That’s worth about $40,000 in Vietnam,” I was told. Poached rhino horn can now fetch as much as $65,000 per kg. By weight it is more valuable than gold or cocaine. The high price and massive demand in Vietnam and China have fuelled a poaching epidemic that has swept southern Africa. About 1,300-1,500 rhinos are killed each year for their horns — over 6,000 since 2009.

But I was not holding poached horn and the huge male white rhino next to me was not dead. I had just witnessed the painless dehorning of a rhino on the huge farm of South Africa’s leading private rhino owner, John Hume.

The rhino had been darted to sedate it, held down by four strong men, and blindfolded to avoid stress. Then its two horns were cut to within a couple of inches of their base.

It took just ten minutes from darting for the rhino to climb back slightly unsteadily to its feet and shamble off into the veldt.

John Hume has 1,446 rhinos on his 8,000ha ranch near Klerksdorp in South Africa. The latest addition was a male calf born there on 28 December 2016. This was the 1,000th rhino bred from animals owned by Hume over a period of 25 years. South Africa’s total population is around 20,600 but it has been hit hard by years of heavy poaching in Kruger National Park, Hluhluwe-Imfolozi Park in KwaZulu-Natal and on private reserves and game farms.

Increased security, tougher sentencing of poachers and improved intelligence and the creation of high intensity protection zones in Kruger are working to reduce poaching there and to slightly cut the overall level of poaching in South Africa. In 2014, 1,215 rhinos were killed for their horns in South Africa. This was reduced to 1,175 in 2015 — about 65 per cent of those poached are killed in Kruger.

Kruger’s chief ranger, Nicholus Funda, told me when I met him at the Park that they hoped to keep the number killed in the park below 700, which should lower the national figure to around 1,000 (458 were killed in Kruger between January and late August). No firm figures have been released by the South African Department of the Environment for 2016, but Albi Modise, a spokesperson for the department said on 27 December that the final number would show a reduction on previous years. While the overall figure is likely to be slightly lower for the country as a whole, there are signs that the focus of poaching is shifting because of increased security in Kruger.

When I visited Hluhluwe-Imfolozi in September, the head of rhino security, Cedric Coetzee, told me that they were experiencing a worrying rise in poaching. Incursions by poachers had risen from two a week to two a day in

the previous 18 months. On 27 December 2016 Musa Mntambo, a spokesperson for Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife, which runs the Park, said that 159 rhino had been killed in the province during the year compared with 97 in 2015.

Hluhluwe-Imfolozi had borne the brunt of the increase.

Any minor advance in South Africa is being offset by increased rhino poaching in Zimbabwe and Namibia, which also hold significant proportions of the 20,378 white rhino and 5,250 black rhino remaining in Africa, according to Save the Rhino and to the South African conservationist John Hanks. The numbers poached in Namibia have risen in recent years, reaching 80 in 2015 having been down at 25 the year before; 2016’s death toll has not been released. Zimbabwe lost 50 rhinos in 2015, double the previous year’s level.

Why is rhino horn so expensive and so much in demand? It has been utilised in Chinese traditional medicine for millennia and is also used to carve cups, libation vessels and other artefacts popular with China’s prosperous elite. But the booming market is in Vietnam among wealthy businessmen. They give horns as gifts to wealthy clients or prospective business partners, and serve it in wine at banquets. Many Vietnamese believe it is a cure for hangovers and cancer — though there is no evidence to support either claim. It is a luxury commodity that reeks of wealth and power. Demand has risen rapidly over the last ten years and shows no sign of abating.

International trade in rhino horn has been banned since 1977, when CITES (The Convention on Trade in Endangered Species) voted to ban all export-import trade in rhino horn to conserve dwindling wild rhino populations in Africa and Asia; South Africa, due to breeding successes, has been allowed by CITES to export live white rhino in certain circumstances, such as restocking parks elsewhere.. This did not mean that domestic trade was banned in all countries but it did attempt to stop horn being exported from Africa — where rhino numbers were decimated in the 1970s and 1980s. But increasing prosperity in the major markets for horn in the Far East has caused a horrific rise in poaching. This is despite that fact that rhino horn is basically compacted hair (keratin) — with no medicinal properties and without even the aesthetic appeal of ivory.

Despite this, demand is high and the ban is not stopping poaching. High security in key national parks, shoot-to-kill policies and attempts to uncover the criminal syndicates that thrive on the high price of horn have only limited effect and appear to be shifting the focus of poaching rather than seriously reducing it. Most wildlife and conservation NGOs rigidly oppose any suggestion of a legal trade to meet demand and so reduce the appeal of poached ivory.

Speaking at a debate with private rhino breeder John Hume at the Royal Institution in London in August 2016, Will Travers of the Born Free Foundation spoke for many

19

FROM THE FIELD: IS A LEGAL TRADE THE ONLY WAY TO SAVE AFRICA’S REMAINING RHNIOS

NGOs when he expressed total and absolute opposition to any legal trade. Hume countered with an argument in favour of trade in horn from dehorning rhinos and natural mortality, that would not involve harming rhinos.

As I witnessed on Hume’s ranch, dehorning is painless and does no harm to the animal. Rhinos can be dehorned every 18 months, producing about 0.5-1 kilo of rhino each time. Currently, such horn and horn from natural mortality is collected by private owners who dehorn and by national parks and it is kept under tight security. It cannot be sold or traded. South Africa, which has more rhinos than any other country but also the worst poaching problem, banned domestic sales in 2009. Hume is fighting a court case to overturn that. He wants the right to trade in rhino horn to bring in funds for rhino conservation, anti-poaching and also for community projects.

Proponents of trade in horn argue that dehorning rhinos protects them from poachers and could, if a legal, regulated trade was sanctioned by CITES, provide substantial funds for conservation of rhino and their habitats, more sophisticated anti-poaching techniques and funds for rural development to make rhinos an asset for rural populations (whose poverty is often a driver for recruiting local men as poachers). In September 2016, CITES voted down a request by Swaziland for a limited legal trade in natural mortality ivory from its small population of rhino, so the pro-trade lobby has a fight on its hands in trying to get CITES agreement for a trade in horn.

Both black rhino (CITES appendix 1 listing) and white rhino (appendix 2 listing) are listed by CITES in categories that do not permit trade in horn or other products (with the exception for live South African white rhino already noted).

On 8 February, 2017, following earlier court and appeal court decisions lifting the moratorium on domestic trade in rhino horn, the South African Environment Minister published draft regulations for the domestic trade in legally acquired rhino horn, which would also allow the export for "personal" rather than commercial purposes of two rhino horns by persons holding the necessary South African permits and import permits from the country to which they would go. It remains to be seen if this will be fully adopted and how it will affect the poaching epidemic in the country and how CITES will react.

David Cook (formerly director of the Natal Parks Board, and Hluhluwe-Imfolozi senior ranger), believes poaching isn’t declining, it is just shifting location and developing new strategies. In the 1960s, Cook worked closely with renowned conservationist Ian Player to save the Hluhluwe-Imfolozi’s white rhino, the last in the region. This operation was responsible for the survival of the white rhino in southern Africa and the enabled the restocking of southern African parks, conservancies and private game reserves. Cook told me that a regulated trade

“HE WANTS THE RIGHT TO TRADE IN RHINO HORN TO BRING IN FUNDS FOR RHINO CONSERVATION...”

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© KEITH SOMERVILLE

Rhino breeder, John Hume, is a champion of painless and natural dehorning to meet demand legally at a fixed price below the current level and without risk of prosecution for retailers or buyers should be part of a cocktail of measures to further the conservation of rhinos.

While I understand the position of the conservation NGOs and their desire for an ultra-ethical stance on trade in wildlife products, there is an equally strong and ethically-based argument that regulated, non-lethal trade in horn could reduce poaching. It will never totally stop it but could reduce it to a level where rhino numbers increase and funds from legal sales produce a sustainable form of conservation that benefits rhinos and local communities through income from rhino horn. It is Benthamite utilitarianism against a Kantian categorical imperative.

The argument by anti-trade that a legalised trade would encourage demand is a strong one, but only if one ignores that there is already considerable demand and rhino numbers are falling fast and consistently. Demand reduction is not working, so a legal trade won’t worsen the situation, it might just reduce poaching sufficiently so that numbers recover rather than keep falling. Trade in non-mortality rhino horn could reduce poaching, though I have no illusions it would stop it completely. Misplaced altruism will not save the rhino. Regulated sustainable-use strategies could.

Professor Keith Somerville teaches at the Centre for Journalism at the University of Kent, is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies (University of London) and is the author of Ivory: Power and Poaching in Africa (Hurst and Co, November 2016) and Africa’s Long Road Since Independence (Penguin, January 2016).

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The following poem by Ahmad al-Mouhmad, a Syrian refugee, was translated from Arabic by Jamie Osborn.

Do Not Love a Refugee – A poem Do not love a refugee. His pockets will be cramped, full with the keys of all his journey’s houses; there will be no room for candy hearts or rings.

His face will be lined with red, black. You will not know it until you have acquired the dispassionate mastery of maps.

What you will think is his laugh will be the echo of the shells in his voice, a gripping of his throat.

What you will think is his brooding temper, and find attractive, will be the passionate fear of the moment after a sniper’s bullet misses its target, or the suspicion and wisdom before he runs into the next gunman’s path.

How can you love him if he stutters and stumbles every time he tries to talk to you? He cannot repeat the grandmothers’ songs he has kept in the back of what is left of his heart. He cannot explain why his skin is blotched as it is, nor his clenched scars, the welts that will no longer bear any caressing touch. His eyes will be darkened, not by sleepless nights waiting for his lover — their blackness is pure extinction.

Do not ask him for an explanation. If you ask him to speak, you will push him back into the spirals of slaughter.

The legends he used to know of his country and its heroes have turned to nightmares screened every night before him. Do you believe that any survivor of war could tell him “have happy dreams again”?

You will see no life in his face until he receives his residency papers. How can you understand his obsession with those papers? How can they or you realise the simple difference between a “thing” and “one with rights”?

One thing you must know — nothing you can do will ease the disappointment from that same living face while his papers are granted for one year alone.

Do not love a refugee. You will not be able to cut down the barriers between you. All he knows is Borders Closed. Whatever opens between you will be lost in generations of exile.

On the road he ran from the police and from the border guards until he could no longer run, could 22

Assyrian children photographed in a refugee camp outside Erbil, Iraq. no longer escape the violence and the clampdown hand. How can you love a man with no strength left to run, who only knows running, runs even from his pride?

A tree is wooden thing, it has no arms to embrace you, it cannot breathe as a lover. Have you touched a man with no arms before? One with no breath?

He has had only trees to protect him when he is afraid of the shells, too afraid to run to his mother, too used to becoming a thing of wood.

Still, he knows the soil, not as peasant farmers know it, seeing in it the sowing and the turning of the seasons, nor as the poor children you see in documentaries know it, playing there in the filth. He knows it as it is defined in creation stories.

He had a crude doll he made from the earth in which to place his dreams, but he could not admit the truth of it even to himself. He could not breathe spirit into it for fear it would become like him, a man on the smugglers’ road.

POETRY

Do not love a refugee. Or love him, if you want a life of waiting, mornings of tight-lipped news, sudden bursts of crying, unexplained. In the morning, you will dance crazily after a victory. You will not understand it — it is the victory of a few men with a pair of rifles in the street he spent his childhood playing in.

Or love him, if you want to know the time in the cities of the world he’s saved on his phone, so he can know if his brothers and friends from the old gang are waking now to a new dawn or are just settling to the night’s long talk.

Maybe, if you love him, you will see his own face returning, over the lines of the six maps that define him now. Maybe you will find the traces of soil from his journey fit for sowing new seeds, new dreams, dreams beyond the flight from his home, dreams of redefining what is possible and what is not.

Maybe, if you fall in love with a refugee, you will know what it means to breathe the air, to have a home, what it means to belong, to be safe, to dream.

What we believe in must exist, else we sink and drown. And only those who are drowning know the wrench of not being able to breathe; only refugees know that. If you fall in love with one of them, will you know the wrench of losing a home?

[PHOTO: KRISTIAN SKEIE]

Do not love a refugee. There will be no room for you, for your trinkets or your gifts, in his little bag. His bag is full of shrapnel, severed fingers, parties to a shattered view — the remains of streets, his school, the opened pavement next door. The mothers who haven’t slept for years, thinking they are waiting for the births of their children, not knowing what hell their children have been taken to — they too cross in his bag.

The pictures of those children, alive, do not appear on your TV screens. They are too far “outside the norm”. How can he be free of the loneliness of those children’s lives?

He has become something beyond your standards.

Where would you put your love for him? Can you imagine what your love would be after a year in such company?

- Ahmad al-Mouhmad, translated from Arabic by Jamie Osborn. Originally published by The Missing Slate.

Ahmad al-Mouhmad is 27 and from Syria. He worked as a visualiser for luxury fashion brands in Kuwait from 2014-2015.

He was unable to renew his visa in Kuwait because the Syrian government demanded that he join the army. He fled to Turkey, where he applied for work but was told that only Turkish citizens would be employed in respectable companies, not Syrian refugees.

He crossed by boat to the Greek island of Chios, where he has now been for eight months, including through the winter, living in a tent with no protection from sub-zero temperatures. He has been denied asylum and is threatened with deportation. He says, “All I ask for is a safe place to be and to go back to a normal life. All I need is to leave the nightmare I’m living in, and find a job so I can use my skills and passion, have a purpose and feel like a human being again.”

Jamie Osborn spent the summer volunteering with refugees in Chios, Greece. As founder of Cambridge Student PEN and contributing editor (formerly Senior Poetry Editor) at The Missing Slate, he has translated and published writing by refugees hoping to raise their voices abroad. Having spent some months in efforts to help refugees and campaign for climate justice from his hometown of Hastings, he is now an intern at WHO in Geneva.

23

FROM THE FIELD

THE HANS HASS FIFTY FATHOM AWARD:

COMMUNICATING THE OCEANS

The world’s oceans and islands are being increasingly threatened by climate change, pollution and garbage, such as plastics. Film-maker and diver Krov Menhuin, who is also the son of the late violinist Yehudi Menhuin, describes his passion for the seas and why it is important to make people more aware of their importance, including the intelligent use of oceans as an enormous natural resource.

M

y love for the ocean dates back to my early teens when my parents, having already decided that I was at least semi-aquatic, decided to move to the Bahamas—so that I could become totally aquatic. I would later discover that their motives were more fiscally based, but I have thanked them every day of my life for their choice.

It was 1954 and I had just purchased my first aqua-lung.

We had no idea that diving involved complex physics, but the tank came with a small fold-out booklet offering a few critical warnings, such as not holding one’s breath on ascent. What kept us from a serious diving accident was that the tank only contained enough air to allow dives that didn’t incur the time/depth penalty leading to a decompression accident. Naturally, if we could have afforded it, we would have had more than one tank, or an air compressor, but then we would have killed ourselves through repetitive dives. What we did learn, however, was that diving was not the irresponsible game we had embarked upon. We very soon set out to learn all we could not only about diving but of the ocean, its inhabitants and its magnificent constructs. This process has never ceased.

Today, well over 60 years later, my life has always focused on an ocean horizon. I have made television features and worked for 25 years on the French nature series, Ushuaia. During this time, I have had the privilege of meeting, working with and listening to some of the finest scientists in the world. It is their enthusiasm, their knowledge and their words that have guided me.

The deep ocean pioneer explorer Dr Robert Ballard, most famous for his discovery of the Hydro-Thermal Vents and the Titanic, is one whose ideas about mankind’s future in the ocean are prescient. The United States, he said, has two exploration programmes. One is NASA, with a mission to explore the great beyond, the other is NOAA,

24

the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with a mandate to explore the oceans. NASA's annual budget alone would fund NOAA for 1,600 years! Why are we primarily only looking up, he asks? “Is it because it's heaven? And hell is down here? Is it a cultural issue? Why are people afraid of the ocean? Or do they just assume the ocean is just a dark, gloomy place that has nothing to offer?”

He went on to talk about the potential of the oceans to supply almost everything that we need. “You know, it's just ludicrous, we are constantly playing the zero-sum game.

We're going to do this, we're going to take it away from something else. I believe in just enriching the economy, but we're leaving so much on the table.” Fifty per cent of the United States consists of legal jurisdiction of what lies beneath the sea. Nevertheless, he adds, “we have better maps of Mars than that 50 percent.”

And on a global scale Ballard is unequivocal. As he points out, the mid-ocean ridge runs around the planet like the stitching on a baseball—42,000 miles (67,592 km) in length—and covers 23 per cent of the earth's total surface area. Almost a quarter of our planet is a single mountain range. It was only after Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin went to the moon that scientists began exploring it. Along this ridge are tens of thousands of active volcanoes — more than on land by two orders of magnitude. Each of these, he added, spews out commercial grades and quantities of copper, lead, silver, zinc and gold. “So the Easter Bunny has put things in the ocean floor, and you have massive heavy metal deposits that are being made continually in this mountain range,” Ballard maintains.

My own experience in the Bahamas and filming all over the world has shown me that the thousands of square miles of shallow banks and similar regions could become the platform for large areas of human habitation. They could also provide the core geography for truly viable fish

© KROV MENHUIN

Austrians Hans and Lotte Hass: world pioneers of deep ocean diving.

farms and fish ranching, seaweed production; virtually all of our needs. The oceans, which cover 72 per cent of our planet, are capable of providing a continually renewable food, raw material and energy source. Living, both in and on the sea, is a practical solution. Given its enormous biological wealth, most of which has yet to be discovered, it is inevitable that people must turn towards the deep oceans.

But how do we go about making the ocean as psychologically acceptable as Mars?

There is no question about the economics. Exploring, developing and otherwise exploiting the oceans is massively cheaper than doing the same in outer space.

Documentary films, photography and books are a prime means. The first person to give us not only photographs of the living marine world in 1938, but also laid the foundation on which today’s scuba diving and free diving activities are built, was an Austrian, Professor Hans Hass (1919-2013). His achievements were both exceptional and huge. An advanced Google search for ‘Hans Hass’ provided 145,000 results in 0.21 seconds.

Hans, together with his wife Lotte, continued throughout their lives to help mankind understand the oceans. As far as Hans was concerned, the future of human life on this planet is inexorably linked to the sea.

I joined an extraordinary, inspirational friend of Hans — Leslie Leaney, a diving historian and editor of the Journal of Diving History — when the Hans Hass Award was created in 2002 to honour those seeking to bring this understanding forward. I chair the Awards Committee and Leslie is Executive Director.

So far, this prize has recognized an array of scientists, film-makers and deep ocean engineers, such as Sylvia

Earle, Laurent Ballesta, James Cameron and Cui Weicheng, who have raised the bar of understanding. The Blancpain Watch Company joined this commitment in 2013. It is now known as the Hans Hass Fifty Fathom Award, recognizing Blancpain’s Fifty-Fathom watch, the world’s first dedicated diving watch.

As global interest in the oceans grows, the plan is to expand recognition for other crucial disciplines, particularly the arts, as more people become involved in what is humanity’s greatest challenge. Our mission now is to get young people involved and passionate about the oceans. As a career path. Or any aspect of it — whether it is biological, mechanical. Whether it’s through art, even music! To take advantage of all the opportunities. We have programmes to colonize the moon and Mars, but not our own planet. Not unlike the galactic initiatives of today and tomorrow, our ocean technology is already available today.

FOR MORE INFORMATION ON THE HANS HASS FIFTY FATHOM AWARD, SEE: HTTPS://WWW.HANS-HASS.ORG/ HANS-HASS-FIFTY-FATHOMS-AWARD/ Underwater film-maker and writer, pilot and diver, Krov Menuhin is chairman of the Hans Hass Award and lives in Nassau, Bahamas.

A former US Army Green Beret, he helped set up the Special Forces Combat Divers School while also indulging in high altitude parachuting from 30,000 feet before dedicating himself full-time to ocean exploration and filming. Krov’s 40 years of film work has earned numerous international awards and he has served twice on the jury of the Rolex Awards for the Spirit of Enterprise. He is a Founding Benefactor of the Historical Diving Society and a Fellow of the Royal Geographic Society.Independence (Penguin, January 2016).

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PALAU:

AT THE EDGE OF THE WORLD Located in the western Pacific ocean, the Republic of Palau consists of some 400 islands which, though independent, remain associated with the United States. While not exactly on the mainstream tourism route, the islands are increasingly attracting visitors attracted by its pristine waters and unusual marine environment. Writer Liesl Graz recently had the opportunity to visit.

Just beyond the vibrant coral reefs on the eastern rim of Palau’s island archipelago, the clear blue o the Western Pacific suddenly becomes even bluer, both on the map and in reality, as it drops off into the Marianas Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans that slices 5,973 fathoms (10,924 m) into the core of the earth. On the surface, Palau is just as remote. Draw a line 1,000 km north from New Guinea, and another 1,000 km east from Mindanao in the southern Philippines. Where they intersect is the Republic of Palau, or Belau as the Palauans say — over an area approximately the size of Europe. With a population of about 22,000, barely the size of a market town in Switzerland, it manages to function as a fully independent country and a member of the United Nations.

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Only five islands are permanently inhabited, plus a handful of islets with tiny populations, including one with a solitary hermit. The Palauans, even adolescents, are incredibly friendly, polite, and helpful. Ordinary crime is so rare that doors are almost never locked — if, indeed, they have locks. It is difficult to believe the statistics showing that violence, even murder, is far from unknown; it almost always occurs within the family or the clan.

Last year was election time in Palau; the big day: November 1, 2016, a week before the US elections. Months beforehand candidates had bloomed like oleander. Those seeking the presidency included the outgoing president, Tommy Remengesau and his vice-president, Sandra Pierantozzi. There are no political parties, only large

FROM THE FIELD

posters, and stickers. And lots of talk. In the end, Mr. Remengesau was re-elected for another four-year term.

Palau was the last American territory under a United Nations mandate. Full independence came in 1994 after years of wrangling — and repeated referenda — over the formal status that would replace that of a UN Trust Territory as it was since the end of the Second World War. Two decades had elapsed since the US engineered — some would say calved (as in iceberg) — the Federated States of Micronesia. Originally Palau was to be included, but the Palauans, who are separated from their nearest Micronesian neighbour, Yap, by more than 500 km of water, wanted none of it. They have always, at least since anyone started thinking in those terms, considered themselves a cut above their neighbours. They speak a different language and, in their tiny numbers, with a certain degree of homogeneity.

There was another crucial political consideration.

Despite strong pressure, the Palauans flatly refused any naval bases on their territory. No Guam. They went one step further by insisting that the “Treaty of Free Association” that defines their relationship with the United States, include a clause forbidding any unilateral military use of their islands, not even “naval visits” by ships carrying or powered by nuclear material. The Palauans know only too well what happened on Bikini, the Marshall islands’ atoll and neighbour in Pacific-island terms, which was the scene of 23 American nuclear tests between 1946 and 1958. The entire population of Bikini was moved to Rongerik, a nearby atoll that proved to be so resistant to good agriculture or fishing that only emergency aid kept the Bikinians from starving to death. Eventually the United States paid the islanders and their descendants $2 billion in compensation and two generations on, in 2014, declared that Bikini was once again habitable. By then very few of the original Bikinians were alive. And even fewer - or their descendants - wanted to return.

Major political or economic decisions occasion lively discussion, particularly in the Legislative Assembly — the 16-member lower house of Parliament — but by some turn of magic the violence that erupted in the first years of the Republic when two presidents were assassinated, has dissipated. Now there are long palavers aimed at consensus. If the modern institutions of the Republic remain deadlocked, the dispute is referred to the Council of Chiefs, a second, traditional layer, under — or perhaps above — the surface. The chiefs are all men but the power of the council can only be confirmed by the women who choose them. In the same vein, property is passed from one generation to the next through the women of the family, mothers or maternal uncles. Bilung Gloria Gibbon-Salii, the current queen, preserves the system symbolically by insisting that no one who visits her may go away emptyhanded. That applied even to me, a foreigner: I treasure two cowry shells, once used as traditional currency in much of the Pacific. Knowing that their export is strictly controlled, I asked her whether I needed a certificate from the Bureau of Conservation (a child I know calls it Ministry of Shells). “If anyone asks you, just say that they were a gift from me,” she replied.

Historically, few Pacific islands were matriarchies.

Palau, under the surface of a miniature republican government copied from the United States, still is. There may be a president, senate, house of delegates, and state governors, but it is Bilung, a matriarchal figure who trumps them all. She doesn’t make much noise; there is very little public ceremony. On Saturday mornings she joins in worship with the congregation of the Seventh Day Adventist church in Koror and on other days you may meet her on the town’s main street going about her business, usually accompanied by a relative or two.

The Palauans, officials or simple citizens, realise that their only real resources lie in the extraordinary natural beauty of their barely developed islands and the richness of the sea. The potash mine that attracted the Germans in the late 19th century was exhausted by the time Berlin’s colonisation gave way to the Japanese. Palau has only 415.6 sq km of land area. Coral reefs and mangroves cover almost five times as much (1,940 sq km). Its vast territorial waters — full of fish — are both a blessing and a problem. Leases for fishing rights provide an important part of its income, but it is impossible for the tiny Palauan coast guard to patrol and control legal and illegal boats.

The Australians and Japanese, the latter, poachers turned gamekeepers, provide some help, but not enough. Even local fishing is strictly regulated and the regulations seem to be adhered to; a substantial part of the waters have been declared a reserve.

How can such a Lilliputian country survive? The simple answer is: modesty and no illusions. The Palauans manage to live, not lavishly but not in poverty either. The figures are suitably tiny and this is no Qatar. There are a few relatively wealthy families, a handful of successful businessmen. Although no one will say so outright, it is clear that by holding out longer than the rest of the islands of Micronesia the Palauans negotiated an excellent deal at the end of the mandate. The “Compact of Free Association” with the United States provided a lump sum that became a sovereign fund.

Recent low interest rates, however, have made the fund less lucrative. Extra money can often be negotiated with the United States for specific projects. In return, the US can usually count on Palauan support in voting at the UN. The Compact gives Palauan citizens the right to live and work in the United States as well as to enlist (and rise) in the American military, an important source of well-paid employment. There have been proposals to find extra funds in offshore ships’ registry or even offshore financial services but the dodgy reputations of some of the countries that have taken that route has given the Palauans food for thought.

TO READ THE FULL ARTICLE, PLEASE GO TO WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM/FROM-THE-FIELD Liesl Graz is a writer living in Lake Geneva’s Canton of Vaud.

Former Swiss correspondent for The Observer and The Economist. She has also written for various Swiss and French newspapers. Graz is the author of four well-received books about the Middle East.

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© COPYRIGHT?

FROM THE FIELD

PEACEKEEPING: WHEN ALL SEEMED LOST…

When political crises, such as recently witnessed in The Gambia, become too mired with internal strife and outside mediation fails, what are the options? Dante Paradiso, both a writer and a US diplomat, examines what he considers to be a strong case for intervention to keep peace, primarily because there may be no other options or local solutions. As imperfect as international peacekeeping operations may be, they are still essential for re-establishing stability. If not, we may be faced with more Syria-type situations.

M

onrovia, Liberia, August 5, 2003: General Cobra sat behind a wooden desk, bare but for an elephant carved from rosewood, a porcelain figurine of a bucking bronco, and an abacus. He sported a scarlet beret, gold-rimmed aviators, and an unkempt beard that lent necessary heft to his sunken cheeks. Grim lieutenants stood behind him, walls were dark and moist. A water-stained map of Denmark was the only décor in the commandeered office.

The American ambassador and the Nigerian force commander, General Festus Okonkwo, were ushered in.

Discussion, such as it was, centred on the ambassador’s proposal that the rebels withdraw from the capital now that now that West African peacekeepers had come to Liberia, the rebels could cede the port to them, confident that government forces could not then reclaim it. The ambassador noted that rebel chairman Sekou Conneh had signed a ceasefire agreement, and as he understood it, the

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rebels wanted peace. It all seemed too much for Cobra.

“You negotiate with me,” he yelled, slamming his fist on the table. “Only me. I don’t take orders from Sekou Conneh. I command the army. I am going to take Monrovia and Taylor-men will pay in blood for what they have done. In blood. We have the tactics, we have the men, and nobody can come and save them. We will control the city and I will make the decisions.”

Cobra turned to the force commander. “I already know this man,” he sneered.

It was meant as an insult. General Okonkwo rose.

Cobra circled round… rebel and peacekeeper stood chestto-chest, trash talking in mutually unintelligible dialects.

It was clear that they had met previously and equally clear that it had not gone well. The Nigerian towered over the smaller, thinner rebel, but he was easily outgunned.

A decade of international investment in training and equipment for regional peacekeepers; a peace conference four years in the making; a criminal indictment for a sitting African president; two months of intensive, senior

FROM THE FIELD

diplomacy worldwide; a brutal, three-week siege of the capital: all crystallized at this moment. Sweat slipped along temples, mouths bent into scowls, eyes narrowed, and fingers crept to triggers… Peace in Liberia rested on a razor’s edge.

Nearly a decade and a half later, if recent rhetoric is to be believed, multilateralism is out of favour, meaning that peacekeeping operations may be harder than ever to stitch together — even as conflicts spread. International peacekeeping has a checkered history but over the past few years well-publicized scandals (most recently, Central African Republic), poor results (Darfur) and outright mission failures (Juba), whether due to ineffective mandates, inadequate planning or training, or negligence, have intensified scrutiny from those who hold the purse strings in troop-contributing countries and from human rights advocates.

The difficulty in organising a mission, whether at the sub-regional, regional or international level, cannot be minimized: Governments are asked to commit people, money and other resources to a collective effort that inevitably involves cultural, linguistic and other tough challenges in a situation where compatriots are killing each other. The bar to convince leaders that the costs of inaction outweigh the potential pitfalls is rising.

Furthermore, in the epoch of terrorism, peacekeeping has become immeasurably more dangerous. Preventing peacekeepers from being sucked into the conflict is imperative yet warring factions seek to do just that through direct attacks on them and on civilians. Financial conditions also have to be right: the donor world is grappling with slow or no growth coupled with domestic angst, making contributions more difficult to get. There also needs to be high-level concurrence on mandate, such as the scope of responsibility for civilian protection and essential tasks. At the United Nations Security Council spheres of influence are shifting making agreement on intervention, even with the best intentions, all that much harder to forge.

The case for interventions, as just seen in The Gambia, is this: there are no alternatives. Countries in conflict cannot be sealed off. Traffic in weapons, drugs, resources (oil, diamonds…) and people fuels war; the inputs in most wars today are in substantial portion non-local, so solutions are also beyond local means. On the flip side, the effects of parochial fights are inevitably cross-border in nature: refugees, terror attacks, pandemics, trade disruptions and a host of other social, economic and environmental ills. International peacekeeping operations, imperfect though they may be, are still essential to re-establish regional stability, and thus global security. In their absence, or when it is too kinetic, you get Syria. But that is where we are: Syria drags on and on, and the risk is that it becomes the norm, not the exception.

The specter of a retreat from multilateralism is alarming because even the best operations rely on alchemy to succeed. Missions by definition start late as a reaction to crisis and even then the belligerents and their political masters still must cooperate with the intervention. Then, and only then, does the brief chance for peace open. At that point, everything comes down to the choices made

by those with guns such as those in the commandeered office…

The siege in August, 2003 split the Liberian capital in two. People were dying on both sides from indiscriminate fire, malnourishment, and disease. President Charles Taylor was under indictment and set to step down and leave the country, but his forces were dug in and the rebels were prepared for another bloody assault. But the international community rallied to Liberia’s cause, high-level multilateral diplomacy paid off, and the Economic Community of West African States teed up a peacekeeping operation. Against this backdrop, the ambassador and the force commander crossed the front lines to try to work out a deal: to convince the rebels to quit the city and allow West African peacekeepers to separate the warring parties. The aim was to reunify the city, allow aid to come in and buy time for peace talks to yield a way forward.

Now in a dank, stuffy room filled with soldiers, it looked like it all might come undone.

The ambassador jumped up and separated the two men with his hands. “Look,” he said to Cobra, his voice dry and one note from breaking, “I’m here to represent the American people to the people of Liberia. Not just one side, you know. I’m here for everyone. So that means I’m your Ambassador too.” Cobra eased off, and General Okonkwo did his part and stepped back. The objective was to open up the port, and move the rebels out of the city. And despite the tense moments, reason prevailed.

The mission succeeded. The international community’s investment in Liberia paid off.

Dante Paradiso is a career Foreign Service Officer the author of “The Embassy: A Story of War and Diplomacy” (Beaufort Books, New York (2016)) available on Amazon.com in hardcover and Kindle.

The views expressed in this article are his own and not necessarily those of the United States Department of State or the United States Government.

In a distant war, in a city under siege, U.S. Ambassador John W. Blaney faced a terrible choice: abandon the mission or risk the lives of his team to give diplomacy a last chance... “The Embassy” is a graphic, cinematic retelling of the harrowing climax of the Liberian civil war and the U.S. and West African role in ending it.

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FROM THE FIELD

AFGHANISTAN TODAY

IS RUSSIA BACK TO OLD TRICKS? Ever since the 19th century’s Great Game, Moscow has meddled in Afghanistan’s affairs.

After the Soviet invasion in December, 1979 and the disastrous occupation that followed, Afghans thought that Russia had finally left for good. No such luck. Pakistani writer and journalist Ahmed Rashid explores how Russia is trying to use the Trump-Putin relationship to reinsert itself into the affairs of this mountainous country. And whether there is a role for Geneva to finally end this war.

The Red Army suffered a humiliating defeat and retreated from Afghanistan in February, 1989. Now the Kremlin is clawing its way into a diplomatic thicket in which Pakistan, India and Iran are also vying for influence.

No end is in sight for efforts to achieve a political negotiation of Afghanistan’s long-enduring conflict, and efforts by experienced UN hands to arrange for a neutral country, such as Switzerland, to oversee peace talks have so far got nowhere. The alternative leaves the key decisions determining Afghanistan’s future to regional players, all of whom have something to gain or to lose from the eventual outcome. The list of players includes Qatar, which for several years has tried to bring Kabul and the Taliban together. At the end of the 1980s, talks in Geneva were successful in getting the Soviets to finally withdraw from Afghanistan, but these failed to end the fighting. In place of foreign occupation, Afghanistan now has to cope with a dragging, bitter civil war.

With US policy in Afghanistan facing a military and political stalemate, and with US President Donald Trump apparently open to establishing closer relations with

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his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in the hopes of getting his assistance in fighting the self-styled Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria, Moscow has begun making belligerent statements against the 12,000 US and NATO forces still stationed in country. Russian diplomats also have been cultivating Afghan politicians and warlords, while wooing neighbouring states including China, Iran and Pakistan.

What may be even more significant is the fact that Moscow has been holding secret talks with the Taliban.

Russia's principal objective seems to be to undercut the US’s previous policy in Afghanistan. Moscow clearly wants to be the biggest power in the region, and fostering a peace process between Kabul and the Taliban is one way of achieving that. Moscow’s success would be particularly sweet since US attempts to achieve the same goal in recent years have gone nowhere.

Last December, Moscow hosted a tripartite conference with Pakistan and China with the express purpose of discussing the terrorist threat to Central Asia that was allegedly coming from Afghanistan. A key topic at the conference was the question of how the Taliban could be

FROM THE FIELD

used to battle the growing presence of the Islamic State.

An added dividend would be the end to the country’s seemingly endless war. At the conference, the Americans were notable because of their absence. The Russians were following a pattern that characterized their recent negotiations to establish ceasefires in Syria. The US was not invited to those meetings either.

Not surprisingly, the government in Kabul reacted furiously at the fact that it was also excluded from the meeting. The government of Afghan President Ashraf Ghani charged that Russia was plotting Afghanistan’s future behind its back.

Adding to the tension is the fact that Afghan officials fear that Trump is not really interested in Afghanistan, even though Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-born, former US ambassador to Kabul and Baghdad, provided foreign policy advice to Trump during the recent US election campaign. Khalilzad was also short-listed as a candidate to become US Secretary of State, but clearly missed the boat. Despite early contacts with Khalilzad, Trump hasn’t mentioned Afghanistan since, and there is no indication that the country is even on Trump’s foreign policy radar screen.

Although the government in Kabul was highly critical of the tripartite meeting, the Taliban seemed eager to welcome the meeting. They saw it as acceptance in the region that the Taliban is now an established military and political force to be taken seriously. Recent skirmishes and attacks in Afghanistan have expanded Talib influence in and around key locations, and notably around Kunduz to the north. The meeting was taken as proof that Russia and the Taliban are definitely cozying up to each other.

In the meantime, the lack of US interest is striking.

Barack Obama showed little interest in Afghanistan during his last year in office, and he failed to support US State Department efforts to foster talks between Kabul and the Taliban. US Special Forces do continue to help the beleaguered Afghan army which is taking horrendous casualties fighting the Taliban and emerging elements of ISIS. Despite wavering interest in Washington, the US is still the principal donor supporting both the Afghan state and its army.

Even if Trump does decide to continue Obama's policy in Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that the Kabul government will survive for long. The country is in chaos and the Taliban is making substantial military gains. Political infighting and overt corruption among government officials have paralyzed the capital, and accentuated the economic crisis. Afghan migrants, fleeing the country, now constitute the second largest group of refugees in Europe. The stepped up secret dialogues between regional players and the Taliban help create the impression that the Taliban is about to win the war.

Moscow has eagerly seized upon the vacuum left by the US. The absence of any input from the US is likely to continue for months while Trump picks his team. In contrast to Europe and the Middle East, Moscow already has a number of friends in the region. China, India and Iran now count as close allies. The Kremlin is currently wooing Pakistan, which was formerly a pro-US adversary of Russia. Today, Pakistan is a sharp critic of Washington.

It is also anxious to build alliances with both China and Russia so that it can stand up to pressure from India, which is accentuated by the fact that the dispute over Kashmir is still on the front-burner. If a future regional conference brings all of Afghanistan's neighbors together to foster talks with the Taliban, Russia will be in a much stronger position to influence the negotiations than the US. Russia's readiness to make friends with the Taliban, while taking on Islamic State, will be welcomed by many of the countries in the region. Pakistan has backed the Taliban for a long time. Iran currently hosts some factions of the Taliban. China and Central Asia are also on board.

Everyone appears ready to accommodate the Taliban, if only to have a solid political presence that will let them initiate new economic plans for the region. High on the list are access, not only to Afghanistan’s considerable resources, such as natural gas and copper, but also to the transportation benefits that could accrue from Afghanistan’s strategic position as a crossroads between east and west, north and south.

Russia's anti-US stance is also accompanied by a certain amount of dabbling in Afghan politics. Central Asian diplomats note that Russia has never been a fan of Ashraf Ghani, whom it sees as too pro-American. Instead, Moscow favours a return of the former President Hamid Karzai, who in the last few years has become vehemently anti-American. Recently Russia vetoed attempts by the Afghan government to remove Gulbuddin Hekmetyar from the UN black list of terrorists, but this was lifted in early February. The Russian move ran counter to a peace deal that Kabul had brokered with Hekmatyar. An Islamic fundamentalist politician during the Soviet-Afghan war, Hekmatyar was a favourite of both the Americans and the Pakistanis, despite the fact that he was criticized by humanitarians, journalists and diplomats at the time as little more than a ruthless killer.

Russia has had a considerable team of experts working on Afghanistan for years. It is led by Zamir Kabulov, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s presidential envoy.

Kabulov has been around since the 1980s, and he has always denied charges by Western diplomats that he was formerly a KGB agent. Kabulov describes the Taliban as a ''predominately a local force,” which includes radical and mainstream elements. Kabulov’s contention deeply upsets Kabul which loses dozens of troops every week to insurgent attacks. In contrast, Russia argues that the most important enemy today is IS, the Islamic State, which has the potential to penetrate Central Asia, which is still heavily influenced by Russia.

The chaos in Afghanistan and recent moves by Russia risk upsetting the power balance across Central and South Asia. For the moment, there is nothing to stop Russia's ambitions in the region. Maybe this is where both the United Nations and Switzerland should seek to step back into the game.

Ahmed Rashid is a journalist and best-selling author based in Pakistan. He has written five books, including the best-selling Descent into Chaos. Rashid is a regular contributor to the BBC, Financial Times and New York Review of Books. For further information, see: http://www.ahmedrashid.com/ 31

GLOBAL GENEVANS

CIVITAS MAXIMA A TINY SWISS GROUP OF LAWYERS TAKES ON WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY

Swiss ICC prosecutor Alain Werner in Sierra Leone.

The International Criminal Court at the Hague was created in 2002 to hold individuals responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The concept was good, but the international tribunal was almost immediately paralyzed by politics. As William Dowell writes, Alain Werner, who created Civitas Maxima, has a different idea: represent the victims and fight the cases in domestic courts if need be.

GLOBAL GENEVANS

Since the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened for business 15 years ago only four cases have been successfully tried. The ICC was originally intended to be an updated, modern version of the Nuremburg trials that prosecuted Nazi war criminals. It didn’t quite work that way.

The principle behind the ICC seemed good enough, especially in the increasing wave of kidnappings, recruiting of child soldiers, and brutal amputations that have characterized the wars fought over “conflict minerals” and ‘blood’ diamonds in Africa. Despite the best intentions, the ICC almost immediately became bogged down by political pressure, rendering living proof of the old adage that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter.

The United States, which has strongly opposed the ICC from the beginning, was clearly concerned that Americans in highly politicized conflicts would soon be subject to prosecution. Henry Kissinger was often mentioned as a particularly tempting target. And to be fair, if the US had agreed to the court, it would almost certainly have run into complications. This includes the Iraq war abuses at Abu Ghraib and the secret CIA kidnappings and torture of terrorist suspects around the world, not to mention the indefinite imprisonment without trial of suspects at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. Besides the United States, Russia, Sudan, China, Indonesia and Israel also have refused to be bound by the ICC’s rulings.

Politics aside, there is, nevertheless, a general consensus that individuals, who commit crimes against humanity, should not be allowed to escape with impunity. A Swiss lawyer, Alain Werner, who founded Civitas Maxima in 2012, thinks he may have found a solution. Rather than depend exclusively on international tribunals, Werner believes that it is worth shifting the focus to the actual victims of war crimes, and working with them to compile the solid evidence that is needed to enable a prosecution to stand up in any court of law. Once the evidence is there, the cases can be prosecuted in any court that expressly outlaws crimes against humanity. It does not matter if the court is an international tribunal, a specially constituted war crimes court or even an ordinary domestic court.

The name, Civitas Maxima, which translates roughly as “the greater state”. is reference to the legal term in Latin that captures the notion that all civilized societies hold certain values in common. The implication is that any society, which considers itself civilized, will instinctively condemn international crimes such as crimes against humanity and war crimes. So far, Werner’s group has been investigating well over 10 cases, and at least three have led to actual arrests by national authorities since 2014. That may not seem much, but in fact, it represents a third of the extra-territorial arrests by national states for international crimes in 2014 and 2015. During that period, only eight extra territorial arrests by national authorities took place world-wide.

One of Werner’s cases is currently being prosecuted in Switzerland; two are in Belgium. One of the accused, a naturalized American who held Belgian nationality and was arrested in Spain, died while in jail awaiting trial this

spring. This was the first time ever a Western businessman was arrested for the trade of so-called blood diamonds.

Werner did this in conjunction with a local Sierra Leone partner, the Centre for Accountability and Rule of Law (CARL). Most of the current public cases involve militia leaders who were responsible for atrocities during civil wars in Liberia.

Alain Werner as a lawyer is also representing victims of Hissène Habré, who was president of Chad from 1982 until 1990. The Extraordinary African Chambers in Senegal, convicted Habré last May on charges of rape, sexual slavery, and slaughtering members of opposing tribes.

Werner had been working on the case since 2008, and it was typical of the kind of case that the ICC would have particular difficulty in dealing with, even if it had jurisdiction. Habré’s rise to power was largely due to support he received from France and the US. The CIA, under Ronald Reagan, had provided military aid in the hopes that Habré would eventually help the CIA establish a paramilitary force to oppose Muamar Khaddafi after the Libyan leader had tried to seize the Aouzo Strip between Chad and Libya.

The region is rich in uranium, and there was concern that Libya was trying to build an ‘Islamic’ nuclear bomb. No one had seriously thought or cared about what Habré would do to other Chadians once he was in power.

“One of the major issues in international justice,” Werner says, “is the fact that politics always affects the process. The International Criminal Court tries to create the impression that it is independent, but so far it has been mainly driven by political factors.” The answer to this conundrum, Werner feels, is for more independent organizations with legal expertise similar to that of Civitas Maxima to take the lead in building convincing cases that will stand up in court, and which cannot be ignored. “Organizations that advocate and write reports, like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, are doing a great job,” he says. “But in the end, you badly need independent lawyers and trained investigators who can compile evidence that meets international standards.”

A key requirement, of course, is funding. “If you work for an international court, the funding is there.” Werner says, “If you work independently you have to come up with the funds on your own, and in our case that is complicated by the fact that we do not accept funding from governments.” In fact, Civitas Maxima receives funds from several independent foundations worldwide. A major factor in the group’s planning is that it is never certain for how long the current funding will continue. Werner realizes that the small size of Civitas Maxima limits what it can do, and that it cannot take on all the world’s problems at once, but he sees the group, which has five staff members in Europe and another 15 in Liberia through his local Liberian partner organization, as an innovative model.

Werner’s own involvement in prosecuting war crimes

THE FOCUS NEEDS TO SHIFT TO THE VICTIMS OF WAR CRIMES

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GLOBAL GENEVANS

started with his work for the Special Court for Sierra Leone in 2003, including the trial of the former president of Liberia Charles Taylor. “It has been a long journey,” he says.

The 11-year civil war in Sierra Leone (1991 to 2002), killed an estimated 50,000 people, and drove another 80,000 into Liberia as refugees. The action of the rebels was particularly cruel. Children were forced to murder their parents or amputate the limbs of brothers and sisters. Mothers were raped and mutilated in front of their families. The major incentive driving the combat was greed. Rebel commanders made fortunes by selling alluvial ‘blood’ diamonds, easily found along river beds and sold on the international market once local populations had been driven away. Charles Taylor, who had participated in the coup which led to the murder of Liberia’s former president William Tolbert and who was subsequently arrested in the United States after being accused of embezzling more than $1 million in Liberian government funds, also intervened in Sierra Leone with his self-styled National Patriotic Front of Liberia. He was accused of torture and multiple war crimes.

Alain Werner worked for the special court in Sierra Leone for five years. “That’s where I learned how to prosecute war crimes,” he says. In 2009, he went to Cambodia to represent victims in the case of the Khmer Rouge who had run the infamous S-21 concentration camp that fed into the “killing fields.” After that he joined an independent group, the Aegis Trust, which also runs the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Rwanda, and which had a small programme focused on helping victims gather evidence. The initiative ran out of funding after about two years, but by then Werner was already heavily involved in a number of cases involving victims of Charles Taylor’s operations in Liberia. Werner decided that he couldn’t abandon the work, and so he created Civitas Maxima. He already had promises of funding in March 2012, and by September, Civitas Maxima was officially launched.

To gather evidence in Liberia, Werner put together an investigation team headed by Liberian journalist, Hassan Bility, who had been tortured by Charles Taylor. Werner paid for Bility to go to the Hague and be trained as a professional investigator focusing on war crimes. Returning to Liberia, Bility put together a 15-man investigation team, which today is completely financed by Civitas Maxima.

Since Bility had also been tortured by Taylor, he had a special credibility with former victims. The team has received numerous threats, but continues with its investigations.

CHILDREN WERE FORCED TO MURDER THEIR PARENTS OR AMPUTATE THE LIMBS OF BROTHERS AND SISTERS. MOTHERS WERE RAPED AND MUTILATED IN FRONT OF THEIR FAMILIES.

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Former Liberian president Charles Taylor sentenced to 50 years in prison for crimes against humanity.

Werner is also collecting evidence from victims of Ivory Coast’s current president, Alassane Ouattara, whose forces are accused of committing atrocities during the post-electoral violence of 2010 and 2011. His predecessor, Laurent Gbagbo, is the first head of state to be tried for war crimes at the ICC for atrocities committed during the same period by his own forces. With both current and past president accused of war crimes, Ivory Coast is a particularly sensitive area. “Most of the victims we represent are afraid to talk to anyone,” says Werner, “so in that case we send staff members from Europe to gather information.”

Werner says that since the work of Civitas Maxima has taken off, numerous victims of other conflicts have approached them. For the moment, the group has a full plate. It intends to send a representative to Philadelphia for the case pending in the US, involving an alleged Liberian warlord to make the organization better known to a wider audience. Nicknamed “Jungle Jabbah”, the Liberian has been living near Philadelphia since the end of the 1990s and was arrested by the United States Homeland Security for lying about his past when he applied for political asylum. Werner says that Civitas Maxima is trying to gauge how much extra work it can realistically take on.

“We need to grow the concept,” he says. “Will Civitas Maxima continue to be successful, or will another independent take the idea and make it grow? I don’t know, but I am convinced that we really need this innovative approach. In the United States, you have a head of state saying that torture is fine and in the Philippines another one boasting about the fact that he has killed criminals.

The climate is getting crazy. We absolutely need more fiercely independent lawyers to use their expertise to counter impunity for mass crimes.”

William Dowell is Global Geneva’s Americas editor based in Philadelphia. As a journalist and author, Dowell has reported on conflicts around the world, including Africa and Asia, for TIME magazine, ABC News and other media.

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© COPYRIGHT?

INTERNATIONAL TRIBUNALS: JUSTICE MUST BE SEEN TO BE DONE

With growing disrespect for the rule of international law, most recently US President Donald Trump’s threat to bring back the use of torture and even encourage reprisals against the families of alleged terrorists, one way of shaming governments into abiding by their legal responsibilities is more publicity. According to our author, who has worked with international tribunals but wishes to remain anonymous, there needs to be far greater effort to highlight the role of international courts in bringing perpetrators to justice.

On 31 January, 2017, the African Union (AU), in a divisive debate during its annual heads-of-state meeting, called for a mass withdrawal of its members from the International Criminal Court (ICC). Last October, the South African government announced that it was pulling out after the country’s appeal court said the government had violated its international legal obligation by not arresting visiting Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir. The ICC, which was established by a treaty signed in 1988 by more than 120 countries, including the Pretoria government, has an international arrest warrant for the Sudanese leader on charges of violations of human rights. African states’ disagreements with the ICC is not new. They have long argued that the Court is biased against Africa.

South Africa’s decision drew loud and voluminous international outcries from numerous human rights groups. Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, an African himself, and spokesperson for his immediate successor Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon came to ICC’s defense — which, ironically, is not part of

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the UN. One organization that said absolutely nothing regarding the court’s actions, however, was the ICC itself.

There was no statement from the organization’s spokesperson, nor the Prosecutor, who is normally very open towards the press.

In another example, Turkey arrested Judge Aydin Sedaf Akay on a trip home last September on suspicion of involvement in the unsuccessful coup against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in July 2016. The judge sits on the United Nations International Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) in The Hague, Netherlands, that tries genocide crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. When MICT finally decided to make a public statement regarding the arrest, it only came bundled in the November report of MICT president, Theodor Meron, to the UN General Assembly.

As for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, another court set up in The Hague by the UN Security Council, its press releases are hardly informative. Most do not even follow traditional format of an accepted press release.

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

That courts and tribunals are conservative institutions goes without saying. Their primary job is to provide an impartial venue to try the accused. But there is a difference between a ‘normal’ court and an international tribunal.

These global institutions were established following genocides, massacres, or significant political assassinations. We should not forget the enormity of the crimes for which these tribunals were established.

The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), for example, was established to try senior members of the Khmer Rouge on charges of involvement in the killing of one and a half million Cambodians. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), previously known as the International Tribunal for the Prosecution of Persons Responsible for Serious Violations of International Humanitarian Law Committed in the Territory of the Former Yugoslavia, was established to try “serious crimes” committed during the wars in the ex-Yugoslavia. At least 130,000 people died and 4,000,000 were displaced in those wars.

As for the Special Tribunal for Lebanon, the equivalent of about 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds) of TNT were exploded to kill one of the Middle East’s richest and most powerful politicians, former Prime Minister Raficq Hariri, and 21 others — plus the suicide bomber.

These courts and tribunals are also different because of the enormous amount of money poured into them.

They cost upwards of $50 million a year. At its height, the Cambodia and former Yugoslavia tribunals each cost around $140 million a year. ICTY and ICTR (Rwanda) have wracked up over $2 billion dollars. The Special Tribunal for Lebanon costs around $70 million a year — and it does not have a single suspect in custody. It may not ever have one.

If for no other reason than the two mentioned above, international courts and tribunal owe it to the general

Former Chad president Hissène Habré sentenced to life for rape, sexual slavery, and ordering the killing of 40,000 people.

public to be more communicative and transparent about what goes on behind their gated facilities. As someone who has worked for two of the tribunals in The Hague, I believe there are two primary reasons why international tribunals do a poor job in communicating their work, and their message.

First, communications is seen as an ad hoc and personality-driven “concept,” not a “mission necessity.” At ICTY, former prosecutor Carla del Ponte had no problems talking to reporters. At the STL, former prosecutor Daniel Bellemare considered media contacts an essential part of his office’s job, The current ICTY and STL prosecutors don’t see external communication as a primary part of their job.

While one can understand why judges might be media-shy and why a high public profile might present ethical and operational risks, there is no reason why the Registrars, whose administrative sections run the operations of these multi-million dollar tribunals, cannot organize better coverage of the their entire courts and tribunals.

Second, the communications office at the courts and tribunals often has unwittingly become part of the power struggle between the Registrar and the President — and even between the Prosecution and Defense.

That competition too often has determined the communications poster of these institutions. The Principals (Registrar, President, Prosecutor, and sometime the Defense Office head) are appointed directly by the UN Secretary-General, often at the rank of an Assistant SecretaryGeneral. To say that many of them often have unchecked ego would be an understatement.

Those who have worked inside these tribunals know too well that the tone and severity of these personal contests quickly determine the level of “communicativeness” that comes out of these organizations. When the President and the Registrar get bogged down on turf battles, communications productivity goes down to the lowest common denominator. That’s a fact, and that’s a shame.

Defenders of tribunals not having done better in communications have excused the shortcoming as “human,” or “organizationally justifiable.” In fact, they are a dereliction of duty, given the taxpayer money they receive. But much more important is that their unwillingness to do better communications amounts to disrespect to the memory and blood of tens of thousands of people whose demise is the only reason these Principals have a job! As the old adage goes: “Not only must justice be done; it must also be seen to be done.”

“THESE COURTS AND TRIBUNALS ARE ALSO DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF THE ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF MONEY POURED INTO THEM. THEY COST UPWARDS OF $50M A YEAR.”

The author is a former consultant with international tribunals.

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SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: FRANCE

MAYORS, NAPOLEONS & CORRUPTION A VERY FRENCH CURSE

Leading up to Presidential elections this spring, France has been particularly afflicted by one case of government corruption and impropriety after another. While ‘PenelopeGate’ involving alleged— but not proven—inappropriate payments of parliamentary funds by presidential candidate and former Prime Minister François Fillon stands out as one of the most prominent, the extent of both local and high level corruption in France is becoming increasingly apparent. In this article, Franco-Swiss journalist Claudine Girod-Boos explores the link between power and corruption, including its impact on France’s over 35,000 mayors.

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: FRANCE

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ast January, police jailed several local officials in the Paris region suspected of corruption in collusion with a property developer. This was followed in early February by another case whereby a young mayor representing a small commune in the Pas-de-Calais in northeastern France was accused of deliberately obfuscating the minutes of a village council discussion to hide the granting of a property contract to a real estate firm managed by his mother.

These are just two recent examples among others in an official environment where investigations of suspected cases of conflict of interest or corruption are severely hampered by the lack of a centralised—and public-data base. For a country that professes to be democratic— France did not even rank as a full democracy in The

“Corruption is something that exists at all levels,” recently noted Isabelle Attard, a National Assembly member for the Calvados region. “There is small and large corruption, everywhere. It can start very early in a career, at the level of the mayors or the community of communes.

It is a system that has become so institutionalized that we no longer pay attention. Then you find it rises to the ministers themselves who believe that they have total impunity,” said Attard.

Jean-Christophe Picard, President of Anticor, an association that fights against corruption and for ethics in politics, welcomed the opening of a preliminary investigation by the National Finance Office against conservative presidential candidate François Fillon, suspected of having paid his wife Penelope for almost 10 years as his parliamentary assistant, while also controversially remunerating his two

Marseille municipal council: France’s more than 35,000 mayors are among the most powerful in Europe with little effective oversight by Paris.

Economist Intelligence Unit’s recent Democracy Index. This is made worse by the fact that a culture of transparency in the public interest has enormous difficulty in establishing itself.

France remains extremely restrained when it comes to credible facts and figures. Select ministries, such as Justice or Interior, simply ignore — or are reluctant to get back to — journalists’ questions regarding government processes.

And French citizens have long since resigned themselves to the stark realities of not being informed when it comes to the business of running their nation. For the past two years, volunteers of the French office of Transparency International, a Berlin-based NGO, decided to attack the massive task of identifying convictions of corruption, both in the private and public domains. They have managed to put together a unique database of at least 660 cases dealing primarily with illegal conflicts of interest and the embezzlement of public funds.

children for special tasks. While not necessarily illegal at the time, Fillon eventually agreed that such actions were inappropriate. Corruption, however, is everywhere, “but it does not interest many people. In France, unacceptable anachronisms exist. What needs to happen is a complete change of culture, habits and mentalities,” said Picard.

As a result, Anticor has launched an online petition for a “new abolition of privileges” in the form of a 10-point charter. It is also promoting actions designed to “rehabilitate participatory democracy.”

The accumulation of mandates, whereby a senator or minister can also serve as a local mayor or regional council member, is “a great French specialty,” added Anticor’s president. This has long been regarded as one of France’s major causes of corruption. “Those who are supposed to impose regulatory laws would then be themselves affected, so they have no desire to create new constraints.” At the same time, he observed, 80 per cent of parliamentarians

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accumulate mandates. “Small rural mayors are even elected for 20, 30 or 40 years.” In Rhone-Alps’ Pays de Gex near Geneva, for example, the former mayor of Cessy, who was indicted for corruption some years back and given a six-month suspended sentence, was France’s secondlongest serving mayor with 37 years in office.

In its 2013 annual report, France’s Central Service for the Prevention of Corruption (SCPC) aggressively denounced the “accumulative vision of the local political career” which leads to the “creation of almost impregnable electoral fiefdoms by limiting the emergence of competitive options”. The report specifically highlights the high risk of corruption in many areas of local government ranging from public procurement to urban planning.

“We have counted 149 MPs and senators who are in their 4th, 5th, 6th and even 7th successive mandates. How can we sustain a democracy under such conditions of sclerosis?” maintained Daniel Lebègue of Transparency International’s French section, notwithstanding a 2017 decision to finally impose mandate limits, "The potential conflict of interest is terrible. Everyone is fully aware that the current situation is not at all satisfactory,” added Picard. Prior to PenelopeGate, "almost nobody spoke of transparency in public life and the fight against corruption in this presidential campaign," he said.

His impression, he added, is that the current presidential election will “definitively demonstrate that people are fed up.”

Another critical issue is France’s decentralization process since its steady introduction over the past 30 years. Coupled with its own persistent centralizing traditions dating back to well before the Napoleonic era the process has had perverse effects on corruption, as some analysts point out, a view shared by Anticor. “It gave an enormous amount of power to the local level without setting up efficient safeguards,” said Picard. It also made it extremely difficult to impose all the necessary legal and human means of control on all those elected, “many of whom have made a lot of money.” A Prefecture official with the Ain Department was embarrassed to concede that France’s over 35,000 mayors have virtually no real form of public oversight “until after the fact.” Only then can action be taken, she said.

Housing, property and urban development, asset management, economic aid, corporate investments, training, banking, patronage and property development are all areas where corruption, conflicts of interest and influence trading are alive and well. At the same time, in recent years France has moved slowly toward more open political transparency — a concept that many French view as exotic — by adopting several remedial laws. The case of Jérôme Cahuzac, the Junior Budget Minister who in 2013 admitted he had kept a foreign bank account for some 20 years, was the most prominent scandal of the Hollande Presidency. It clearly marked a turning point and lead to the sentencing of the former Socialist Minister last December to three years imprisonment for tax evasion.

Two further transparency laws emerged after this scandal. Parliamentarians are now obliged to declare all their assets as well as the identities of their collaborators. In 2014, a national financial prosecutor’s office was

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established with 15 magistrates to specialize in investigating fraud and corruption. And last November, France set up an anti-corruption agency. Yet many deplore the lack of resources allocated to such initiatives and call for a veritable ‘revolution’ in the battle against corruption and the lack of political ethics.

The elected officials most at risk from these new measures include the heads of regional, departmental, inter-communal and communal representations, notably communities with populations of more than 20,000, such as the Pays de Gex or Annemasse in the Lake Geneva area, as well as their deputies with the right to delegation of authority or signature. They, too, are now subject to a declaration of interests and assets. They must inform the High Authority for the Transparency of Public Life (HATVP) of their profession, any membership of associations, their various mandates or shares held in companies, their income and even the professional activities of their relatives. Local mayors, for example, who purchased properties in construction projects with permits granted under their watch, would have to declare these to prove that there was no conflict of interest.

“Some of my elected peers are reluctant to associate themselves with transparency because they perceive it as a form of suspicion of guilt that would question their integrity,” said Chantal Cutajar, Deputy Mayor of Strasbourg in charge of ethics, local democracy and public procurement. The Alsatian capital is one of France’s few cities to employ an ethics specialist, notably Patrick Wachsmann, a professor of public law. But his brief as a ‘watchdog’ of publicly elected officials, which was introduced last year, has barely prompted five complaints, only one of which he considers valid.

For political scientist Yves Mény, author of ‘Corruption of the Republic in France’ in the early 1990s, the causes of corruption are both structural and cultural. The structural is the result of an osmosis that has prevailed for a long time between the economic and the political sectors, he explains. The historical, because “the French state has always mixed itself in economics and even served as an instigator for economic development.” Ever since the French Revolution until 1983, the Prefect, as representative of the Paris government, was also an executive of the departmental council, Mény noted, effectively making the state the patron of local authorities. This role has been reinforced by the fact that its elites are recruited from a fairly narrow field, notably that of the Grandes Ecoles, such as ENA and Polytechnique. “Very often, these same Grandes Ecoles alumni leave the state to go into the private sector. All this causes a confusion of powers leading to conflicts of interest,” he added.

Franco-Swiss journalist Claudine Girod-Boos is based in Strasbourg. Formerly with the Tribune de Geneve, she is now a blogger and social media editor at www.citizenclo.org. Accredited to the European Parliament and Council of Europe, she is also correspondent for the New China press agency plus follows media developments for the Swiss magazine EDITO-KLARTEXT. Girod-Boos also lectures at the European Institute for Journalism IF YOU LIKED THIS ARTICLE, THEN PLEASE SUPPORT GLOBAL GENEVA SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE PROVIDING QUALITY INVESTIGATIVE REPORTING. SEE WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM

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KNOCKING IT ALL DOWN:

FRENCH PROPERTY DEVELOPERS DICTATE LAKE GENEVA’S URBAN VISION

Early last year, the London Sunday Times ran a two-page spread on how Paris law and local governments are enabling ‘promoteurs’ — property developers — to destroy France’s historic village centres. Largely ignored by the local press, but shared on social media, this article triggered an extraordinary response among thousands of concerned French and expatriate residents. As pointed out by Mark Hartford (with files by contributing journalists), this has hardly stopped the ravaging of irreplaceable 17th–19th century buildings. It also suggests a worrisome failure of French top-down democracy.

42 © EDWARD GIRARDET

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azi Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring may, or may not, have said: “Whenever I hear the word ‘culture’ I reach for my gun.” Whenever French developers hear the words patrimoine, or cultural heritage, it seems, they go for the bulldozers.

And the authorities, whether the Paris government or local mayors, seem unable, or unwilling to do anything about it. As for residents, both French and expatriate, many feel ignored and powerless.

This is happening all over France, particularly in areas with rapid urban expansion, including Lake Geneva’s own Rhone-Alpes region. As a recent New York Times article noted, such practices are destroying France’s ‘Frenchness’.

The Pays de Gex outside Geneva ranks as one of France’s fastest growing zones, increasingly serving as a sprawling dormitory for cross-border frontaliers working in Switzerland. With low interest rates, property developers, including banks, are throwing up uninspiring apartment blocks, making use of low interest rates. Towns such as Ferney-Voltaire and St Genis are mushrooming with box-like constructions that look the same all over France. Few developers make any effort to incorporate centuries-old buildings of character, preferring the cheaper option of knocking down old walls and starting from scratch.

One example of this ravaging of France’s patrimoine is in Cessy, a rapidly growing Pays de Gex village. In early October last year, Franco-Suisse 2Lacs, a Paris property company, demolished a clutch of 18th and 19th century Gessien buildings on the edge of the ‘bourg,’ the village’s historic centre. Leaving what looks like a World War II bombsite, the company plans to construct a set of catalogue buildings incorporating 57 flats and a 100-vehicle, two-story underground parking. Last-minute efforts, including a protest poll with over 600 signatures, failed to halt the demolition. The company also ignored all email and phone attempts to discuss possible changes. Instead, it posted promotional signs unabashedly extolling its ‘love for cultural heritage’. “We are not destroying village patrimoine, but rather creating a new one,” insisted a company representative.

This blatant destruction of Cessy’s historic past was met with shock if not tears by numerous inhabitants. In dozens of interviews, the overwhelming majority said that they had no idea about plans to annihilate the buildings, which, while not particularly beautiful examples of Gessien architecture, could have been integrated. Many, too, could not believe that the local authorities, including the Communauté des Communes (CdC) representing 27 Pays de Gex towns and villages, would allow such a ‘sacrilege’ to happen. “We French like to boast about our culture but this is disgraceful,” noted one villager, who, like so many others, preferred not to be identified.

From Cessy town hall’s point of view, the rules had been followed. As part of the Paris government’s ‘densification’ approach to urban development, which largely fails to take into account local cultural concerns, the promoteurs had met all the legal requirements. “My hands are tied,”

SPECIAL INVESTIGATIVE REPORT: FRANCE

the mayor told one journalist. “We have to follow the dictates of Paris.” Furthermore, he added in a four-page letter, the CdC is now responsible for future development, not the mairies. All development will be carried out in partnership with the Conseil d’Architecture, d’Urbanisme et de l’Environnement (CAUE) and the Service Territorial de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine (STAP).

The Prefect of the Ain Department, however, firmly disagrees with the mayor, who is also president of the CdC. As noted by the Prefecture’s François Lamarque, there are 384 protected ‘historic monuments’ in the Department of Ain, mainly prominent structures such as the Chateau de Voltaire in Ferney or village fountains. There is no specific legislation designed to protect the “traditional character” of towns, he explained. “But for other buildings of cultural historic value, it is up to the local authorities to protect them.” Since 1983, this has been the communes, including the CdC, most of which today have the responsibility for their own urban development.

Acting as a regional mandarin for central government, the Prefecture firmly maintains that the communal authorities have the perfect right to declare their historic village centres as ‘protected’, even if Paris has decreed that all urban areas, whether country villages or towns, have to ‘densify’ from the inside out. (In many situations, this means replacing traditional buildings with flat-roofed, high-rise constructions which have nothing to do with local character). If mayors cannot prevent new construction because of the PLU (Local Urbanization Programme), the Prefecture added, they can still oblige promoteurs to respect architectural tradition. As pointed out by Vincent Chritin and Jerome Riff, both founding members of the Cessy Patrimoine Association, which, together with other public interest organizations, seeks to preserve what little remains of the region’s historic value, “the Pays de Gex’s cultural heritage is worth far more than the sad initiatives imposed by an outmoded PLU which only benefits the developers.”

The end result is that both the Prefecture and the mayors blame each other, leaving residents in a position of helpless confusion. As critics point out, both local and national authorities, regardless whether on the Left or Right, tend to have an arrogant predilection for administrative procedure rather than imagination or individual opinion. “It’s the same all over France,” noted one Rhone-Alp urban planner.

“What needs to happen is for the mayors to work with local associations by speaking out and taking their cases to court.

SUCH PRACTICES ARE DESTROYING FRANCE’S ‘FRENCHNESS’.

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New planned project on the outskirts of Gex [PHOTO: EDWARD GIRARDET] They need to be pro-active.” But many mayors fear that this might lead to costly legal wrangling, while others reportedly simply don’t care. “They have their own interests to push,” observed one town counsellor.

Some pushback has been achieved by protests and critical press coverage.

For example, one group of three nearly 400-year-old buildings threatened with destruction and representing one of the Pays de Gex’s oldest and most beautiful chateaux may now be preserved.

Perhaps the result of growing pressure, the CdC is also holding a series of public meetings asking inhabitants how they wish see their region develop by 2030.

Not all communes disregard the historic features of their towns. Gex is making deliberate efforts to safeguard its cultural heart by upgrading roads, street features and pavements while regularly consulting with the public.

Though many bland constructions are visible on the outskirts, there is now a feeling that renewed respect for traditions may prevent further blight. “It is really quite impressive the way the town council has made a conscious decision to protect what’s left,” observed one foreign resident, although, as another added, picturesque buildings of a past epoch are still being knocked down.

“THERE IS NO SPECIFIC LEGISLATION TO PROTECT THE TRADITIONAL CHARACTER OF TOWNS…IT IS UP TO THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES.”

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Even more striking is the nearby village of Vesancy.

With its historical assets including a small castle and 17th and 18th century buildings lining both sides of the main street, the town’s efforts to preserve its past stand as a steadfast reminder of what patrimoine should mean in stark contrast to many other parts of France, which have given in to the pressures of quick and easy money.

Which structures authorities deem worth saving—a fountain, a 200-year farm outbuilding, or a disbanded train station—seems to hinge on the whims and desires of the powers that be. “While similar problems exist elsewhere in Europe, there is sadly now an astonishing disregard for local culture in France,” observed a UNESCO official in Paris. “The technocrats push through their political agendas ignoring what people might think. It’s all about fulfilling building quotas and supposedly producing jobs, but in the end represents extreme short-sightedness.”

Ironically, the only French political party to respond in the Rhone-Alpes region among the five contacted for this article was the right-wing Front National (FN) of Marine LePen, strange bedfellows for many of the French and largely liberal expatriates resident in the region seeking to preserve the past. Last November, the head of the FN’s Pays de Gex chapter accused the Cessy mayor of ‘complicity’ with the developers. “Instead of renovating, they are wrecking a building of cut stone. The Pays de Gex is losing its soul by destroying the past for money,” a communique stated.

The difficulty with France’s urban planning process is that given constant changes in Paris law, residents find the process hard to understand. Another is the failure of the authorities to be more transparent. (See article on corruption in France). Residents can appeal planned constructions, but only if directly affected. And then, it is usually too late. In the case of Cessy’s Franco-Suisse 2Lacs project, the developers not only posted the legally-required

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public notice at the height of the summer holidays but also apparently 10 days late. It was then conveniently obscured from view for a few more days by a parked tractor. The town hall did not nothing, but under European Union rules, this would not be considered illegal.

And yet, as residents in other parts of France point out, such tactics are not unusual. In the Provence, for example, new projects are posted in winter when most secondary residents are not present. In Echenevex, a village at the foot of the Jura mountains, residents complain that property developers have used, according to their lawyer, “legal subterfuge’ with “full knowledge of the mayor” to bypass appeals opposing new constructions. The developers reportedly created a new company (by adding an ‘s’ to its name) and then ignored requests for meetings until the official delay had passed. This is yet another example of the “unchecked power of the Mairie in France,” said Leisa Campbell-Lendrum, a resident.

Ever since a 2013 law that virtually allows developers to do what they like, it has become almost impossible for residents to halt projects. Plaintiffs can even be fined for wasting the court’s time. Furthermore, some mayors pointedly warn critics that they will file defamation charges if falsely accused. All this leaves residents feeling ignored and with the sense that they can do nothing. It also helps explain why the FN is picking up support. People feel betrayed by the establishment and the failure of direct democracy. A more recent 2016 revision of this law allows residents somewhat more leeway, but still gives the promoteurs the benefit of the doubt. As French historian

New apartment blocks in St. Genis that look the same all over France. [PHOTO: EDWARD GIRARDET]

And on the Swiss side…

While some Swiss communes, notably in the Valais, may not always be as pristine white as Alpine snow, most authorities tend to respect local concerns. As pointed out by several communes both in the Cantons of Geneva and Vaud, parts of which used to belong to France prior to the 1815 Congress of Vienna and where villages are architecturally similar to those on the French side, every effort is made to preserve cultural integrity. No decisions that might threaten historic buildings, even if not formally protected, are made without involving both residents and the Cantons. Furthermore, some banks such as Raiffeisen, which is in fact a cooperative, make an effort to renovate old town buildings rather than destroy and build something completely new.

In Founex in the Canton of Vaud, Claudine Luquiens — the communal greffe who is a form of administrator—explained that though few buildings are classified as protected in the town, whose demographics are similar to Cessy’s, any plans to destroy or transform such buildings would have to approved by the cantonal authorities. There can be no local conflicts of interest. Luquiens added that constructions or any major work carried out on the buildings’ facades are also subject to a public inquiry over a 30-day period, and that they must respect communal regulations on new constructions. Unlike France, where only residents directly affected by a construction project can appeal, neighbouring owners also have the right to oppose such new structures, and can take matters to the cantonal court if necessary. The Editors

Jean-Pierre Richardot points out: “The trouble with France is that nothing has really changed since the revolution. We are still caught up in a Napoleonic or Gaullist mindset.”

If someone feels that a town council is acting with impropriety, the only option is to write to the Procureur de la Republique, a form of public prosecutor. “It is then up to the Procureur to decide whether a matter is worth investigating,” explained a Prefecture official. Another option is to go public. An open missive to the President François Hollande by Pays de Gex high school pupils asking that their patrimoine be respected for future generations received a bland couldn’t care less response from the Elysée Palace before passing on the young people’s concerns to the Ministry of Culture. This clearly got the matter on the radar but little has happened since.

With planned massive property developments in the Pays de Gex ranging from shopping malls to myriad apartment blocks, many stress the complete lack of urban

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INTERNATIONAL GENEVA: KNOCKING IT ALL DOWN: JUSTICE MUST BE SEEN TO BE DONE

vision other than what the developers impose. Local infrastructure, such as police services, sewage and roads, can’t keep up. Many are also worried by the lack of oversight, which the Prefecture — not without embarrassment admits is a problem, particularly in rapidly burgeoning towns such as St Genis, Ferney-Voltaire or Thoiry. “As elsewhere in France where there is a lot of development, it’s always been about money — and power,” explained one renovation specialist, who has asked to remain anonymous. “In one way or another, most town councils are in bed with the property developers who are dictating the urban vision.”

Organizations such as Transparency International point out that there is a real problem with both local and high-level corruption and conflicts of interest in France.

Wheeling and dealing, however, is not necessarily a matter of money under the table. It is more a question of subtle favours, a discount on the sale of an apartment in the South of France perhaps, or the allocation of a subsidized council residence to a friend or family member. Or, quite simply, promises to improve urban infrastructure in return for allowing projects through. “We all know it’s going on, the elephant in the room, but there is no one putting a stop to it. It’s sort of accepted,” added another long-term Gex resident.

Most residents have nothing against new construction.

“It is clear that the Pays de Gex has to expand,” said

one. “But this does not mean that everything has to be destroyed.” Residents also fear that rampant development, such as Cessy’s Franco-Suisse 2Lacs project, could mean a dangerous surge in traffic for children walking to school.

Given, too, that much of the Pays de Gex is originally a swamp area, proposed underground parking could also undermine the structures of neighbouring houses, some dating back to the 17th century. As old timers point out, there is regular flooding in basements, including parking garages, whenever there is too much rain or runoff from the mountains. All this costs the communes and insurance companies money.

Both Switzerland and France are ostensibly pushing for a more integrated Greater Geneva. Yet while Genevan urban planners attend cross-border meetings well-prepared, they complain that the French often turn up with no agreement amongst themselves. The real issue, however, seems to stem from the shaky roots upon which French democracy is built. As some argue, if there is to be any effective protection of patrimoine, both local authorities and promoteurs need to be held to account.

There also have to be more effective ways for countering inappropriate development. For the moment, none of this is happening.

20SWISSYEARSRADIOOF Compiled and edited by Mark Hartford with contributed files.

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CORRUPTION IN FRANCE: THE TIME OF IMPUNITY IS OVER

Corruption remains not just for France, but for the European Union. Journalist Claudine Girod-Boos met with Eva Joly, a Franco-Norwegian MEP and former French presidential green candidate, at her office in the European Parliament in Strasbourg to discuss the need to make ‘transparency’ more of a household word both in French politics and the public-at-large.

As a former investigating magistrate, Eva Joly probably knows better than anyone the problems of France’s own backyard. For the past 20 years, she has been fighting corruption in France ranging from the Bernard Tapie and ELF affairs to the Taiwan frigates and Dumas cases. In her fifth floor office (Room 69) of the Louise Weiss Tower, seat of the European Parliament, she offers me a seat — and a coffee — among the piles of files splashed by a warm, mid-February sun. Speaking eloquently with a combination of perceptive pessimism and individual optimism, she does not hesitate to launch straight into the François Fillon Affair. “Very caricatural, very symbolic,” says Joly, who began her career as a secretary but then studied law at night school.

With France’s conservative presidential candidate under investigation, the now 73-year-old Norwegian-born parliamentarian suggests not without a touch of malice.

“François Fillon is very much a man of the old world, but he doesn’t know it. He does not realize the requirements of transparency and accountability are not what they were 40 years ago. He fails to grasp that he is out of the game and can only engage in a rear-guard action. While he may not understand, pubic opinion certainly does…the time of impunity is over, " she adds quietly, looking over her glasses.

This blindness of people who only live among themselves and believe that they are owed privileges is a common affliction in France, maintains Joly who sits with the parliament’s Europe Ecology group. Given that one can now see inside this world, “one now needs to unlearn this illusion,” she says. The country is routinely exposed to scandals with the Fifth Republic increasingly looking like a presidential monarchy. Until the age of 50, Joly continues, she had taken for granted the greatness and nobility of France’s venerable institutions, something that young people today no longer know. To quote her book, “La Force qui nous manque” (The force we lack) published in 2007: “France sobered me, unveiled the other side of the equation”.

For Joly, France has never abandoned its Latin tradition of a village standing in the shadow of its castle, offering its confidence in exchange for protection. This largely explains why privileges and impunity have persisted for so long. Until 1993, a mayor or even an elected municipal

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council member could not simply be referred to the criminal court if suspected of corruption or conflict of interest. “It was a very complicated procedure. They enjoyed judicial privilege. The file was sent to the Court of Cassation (one of France’s last resort tribunals), and very often everything was lost on the way,” she recalls.

The status of senators and National Assembly members remains very protective. Until recently, they were not prosecuted. “The privileges of office are very important,” Joly explains. “They’re the real treasure chests. Former presidents of the Senate receive 200 sq. m. apartments in the most beautiful districts of Paris, while the vice-presidents enjoy chauffeur-driven cars. Former Presidents of the Republic have drivers, bodyguards and lifetime remuneration, she explains further. “In many countries, this is simply incredible. In Norway, ministers ride bikes and take the tram.”

Joly further points out that 80 per cent of French parliamentarians have accumulated mandates — another ‘Made in France’ speciality - such as serving as a local mayor or on a regional council. This is completely incongruous with practices in other European countries in the same manner that transparency is regarded (as) something completely bizarre in France, Joly argues. “Being forced to declare one’s wealth and sources of income is perceived as the beginning of totalitarianism by the same elected officials who seek to impose increased security constraints on the population such as the 2015 Intelligence-gathering law, and who at the same time fear an all-inclusive society,” she adds, in a rare moment of repressed irritation.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ONLINE WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM

MORE THAN JUST A HUB:

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA CAN LEAD THE FOURTH INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Geneva could weather the fourth industrial revolution by becoming a hub of globalism, says the World Economic Forum's Klaus Schwab. Not so surprising, you may think. But receiving Geneva's most prestigious official award on 22 February at the Geneva Enterprise Centre, Prof. Schwab also urged the city to establish itself as the heart of multi-stakeholder concerns: a place where all sides of civil society can come together and plan to manage the future together.

The fourth industrial revolution, in case you hadn’t realized it...

Read a profile of Professor Schwab and the achievements of the World Economic Forum in the next issue of our magazine. And read more about his address on being the fourth person to receive the "Geneva acknowledges" award on our website here.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ONLINE WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM

WHO PAYS THE HIDDEN PRICE OF CONGO’S CONFLICT-FREE MATERIALS?

The following article by Emmanuel Freudenthal, a freelance journalist, is part of a contributed special investigation

by IRIN, a Geneva-based independent online news service focusing on humanitarian crises. The report finds merit in President Trump’s claim that a US law banning conflict minerals is leading to lost livelihoods.

PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMMANUEL FREUDENTHAL 49

FROM THE FIELD

Valentin was in trouble. His arms were tied behind his back and he couldn’t move. The sun was beating down in the courtyard of the mining company where he and his friends were being held. The men had been arrested by mining police for peacefully protesting the low price of the coltan ore they had dug out by hand from deep narrow shafts in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Western activists have sought to help end violence in Congo by championing conflict-free mineral policies that aim to stop armed groups profiting from the trade.

But thousands of miners like Valentin are paying a heavy price. At his mine, Kisengo, a monopoly on clean coltan has kept prices low, reduced revenues, and driven some miners to trade their wares illegally or move into the illicit artisanal gold sector. A proposed executive order by US President Donald Trump reportedly seeks to cancel those regulatory controls. The draft order, obtained by The Guardian and Intercept, claims to be acting out of concern over “mounting evidence” that instead of preventing minerals from fuelling conflict, these controls are actually causing harm and contributing to instability in the region.

On this occasion, Trump may have a point. A months-long IRIN investigation in mineral-rich eastern Congo found that some artisanal mining communities have suffered serious consequences as a result.

Several thousand self-employed miners work alongside Valentin (not his real name) in the Kisengo mine. Like him, they’re only allowed to sell to a single company. That company, MMR, is a pioneer in the supply of untainted minerals. It has exclusive rights to purchase the entire production of the four main artisanal mines in what was formerly Katanga Province — now four smaller provinces.

Like Valentin, some 240,000 miners work with just picks and shovels, under extreme conditions, to extract valuable minerals, among them coltan.

The dark metallic ore contains the commercially important element tantalum, which is extracted and used to make key components in mobile phones and almost every other electronic device. The forests and grasslands where the miners work, however, are crisscrossed by armed militias, whose violence has led to millions of deaths since the 1990s.

The motivations of these groups range from local grievances to regional proxy wars. But one thing many of them have in common is that they sustain themselves by taxing the natural resources trade — in particular minerals.

In reaction, human rights activists in the United States lobbied for a law, section 1502 of the Dodd-Frank Act, which was passed in 2010 and requires publicly listed companies to determine whether their products contain “conflict minerals” produced in Congo. The new rules provided the impetus for similar legislation in Congo and neighbouring countries. This year, the European Union will have its own version, which will apply worldwide. Whether these

MMR HAS BEEN BUYING COLTAN FOR $20-24 PER KILO...HE SOLD ORE IN KIGALI FOR MORE THAN $50 PER KILO

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efforts have reduced conflict in Congo is hotly debated.

Passed in the wake of the financial crisis of 2007-2009 to tighten company oversight, Dodd-Frank was hugely unpopular with the Republican Party and is now under general assault by the Trump administration, which reportedly intends to suspend section 1502 for two years.

It’s a challenge. The mines validated as conflict-free can be just a few hills away from those controlled by armed groups. And the trade is messy, with miners and mineral traders operating independently and constantly on the move across the region. Conflict minerals can easily leak into the supposedly clean supply chains. [“If you use the old trading networks… it’s almost impossible to track your minerals,” explained Ken Matthysen, who helped conduct a unique survey of more than 1,600 mines in eastern Congo for the Belgian research institute IPIS.] MMR has been at the forefront of efforts to produce bona fide conflict-free minerals.

Its first clients included companies such as Fairphone and Motorola that make a big deal out of sourcing materials responsibly. While other mines have more open access, potentially allowing tainted minerals to leak in, MMR goes to great pains to make sure its production is kept pure, from the shafts all the way to export.

The company was also among the first to implement a traceability scheme, called iTSCi, which currently channels nearly all of Congo’s legal coltan exports. In 2007, large deposits were discovered there, which soon attracted the miners, with families and merchants in tow. More than 20,000 people arrived within the first year. Indian businessmen were also attracted to Kisengo’s natural riches. In March 2010, their company, MMR, obtained the exclusive rights to purchase the entire production of Kisengo and three other large mining sites.

This proved a particularly good deal as, around the same time, the price of tantalum doubled on international markets.

The contract between MMR and the provincial government of Katanga, headed by Moïse Katumbi at the time, was not subject to any tender. Instead, the agreement gave MMR exclusive rights, on the understanding that the company would prevent the mineral trade from funding armed groups and maximise tax revenues for the province. In exchange, MMR had to build a hospital and a school in Kisengo, which it did. The contract also instructed MMR to collaborate with a miners’ cooperative, CDMC, which, according to Africa Intelligence, was founded by a brother of the mining minister.

The minister, Martin Kabwelulu, did not reply to IRIN’s emails.

MMR has enforced this agreement with the help of the army, and latterly the police, as set out in its contract.

Claude Iguma, a PhD researcher who has studied the

FROM THE FIELD

security situation in Kisengo, counted 43 policemen in the village, most of them armed with assault rifles, and five control points at its exits. MMR pays the police on top of their government salaries, according to several IRIN interviews with informed sources and prior research, but the company denies this. There’s good reason for that. The prices offered by MMR are much lower than those offered on the black market.

Several traders told IRIN they could smuggle minerals out of the Kisengo mine and sell them for twice what MMR offers. MMR has been buying coltan for $20-24 per kilo, whereas one trader told IRIN he sold ore from Kisengo in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, a few months ago for more than $50 per kilo. The price of coltan depends on its tantalum content, and Kisengo’s ore is known by traders to be of the highest quality.

and some of the others decided to strike, and a large crowd of miners ended up blocking access to the mine. Valentin said they harassed no one but simply demonstrated, saying, “No organizations owned by foreigners will be allowed to come and conduct its activities… until the price is increased.” At the end of that day, MMR increased the price from $20 to $22 per kilo. When the police reportedly fired shots in the air, the miners dispersed and returned to town.

But a little later on, more than a dozen protesters, including Valentin, were arrested by the mining police, tied up in MMR’s compound for several hours, thrown into one of MMR’s cars, and taken to Kalemie (half a day’s drive away), where they were jailed overnight, according to several miners and independent eyewitnesses. There, they were accused of being armed rebels and only released after the provincial governor, Richard Kitangala, intervened.

According to confidential information obtained by IRIN, MMR has bought between 100 and 160 tonnes of coltan annually from Kisengo miners over the past few years. This could add up to anywhere between $3 million and $9 million in annual export sales, depending on production, grade, and exact price. Purchase prices are set by a committee composed of MMR itself, formal representatives from the miners' cooperative, and government officials.

But the miners’ cooperative, CDMC, supposedly a separate entity, is indistinguishable from the company.

Its director sits behind an empty desk in MMR’s building.

Questioned by IRIN on this point, the company said: “All entities that work collaboratively with MMR on production of minerals spend time in MMR facilities.” But MMR also pays the salaries of CDMC’s employees, according to two CDMC managers interviewed by IRIN. As such, none of the members of the price-setting committee can claim to effectively represent the miners’ interests.

In May 2016, a delegation of miners met with MMR to request better prices, but the company refused. Valentin

A local MMR representative said the car had been commandeered by the police and denied that the miners were held in its compound. Contacted by email, MMR’s head office responded: “We know nothing of the specifics that are referred to here.” The head of the mining police responsible for the area said he was not authorised to speak with journalists and could not provide a spokesperson.

Similar protests against MMR’s monopoly have occurred routinely over the years. In 2011, UN investigators found that when miners protested the coltan price in another of MMR’s mines, the police and army were deployed. The report said: “Live rounds were fired, and two civilians were killed." But MMR told IRIN: “We doubt this is true, as we have never heard of such incident.”

TO READ THE FULL-STORY, GO TO: www.irinnews.org/investigations/2017/02/14/who-pays-hiddenprice-congo’s-conflict-free-minerals A freelance investigative reporter, Emmanuel Freudenthal covers East and Central Africa, with a focus on business, corruption, natural resources, land and human rights.

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SPEAKING UP FOR THE OTHER EUROPE Geneva never felt so far from Brussels as in the heady cold-war days of the 1970s and 1980s. The United Nations Economic Commission for Europe represented the ambition for a kinder, gentler Europe through cooperation between East and West. Its 56 member states include Canada, Israel and the United States, and since the collapse of the Soviet bloc, several Central Asian states. As editor Peter Hulm recalls, no-one embodied this vision better than its information officer, Tony Curnow.

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russels meant the Big Boys, the nabobs of nationalism and bureaucratic mandarins of the European Union for whom the European ideal was a larger stage on which to exercise their national ambitions. They loved power and weren’t afraid to use it.

Boris Johnson, that Eton and Oxford populist, reacted against such European elitism and made a career in journalism by reporting alternative facts about the EU before he embraced Brexit.

Geneva was the other Europe. Off a dim corridor on the third floor of the Palais des Nations and in recesses beyond, you could find reasonable Estonians, hard-working Russians, quiet Spaniards and undogmatic Poles. They didn’t throw their weight around. Theirs was a Europe of compromise. In place of the regal Jacques Delors, whose sacred principle of ‘subsidiarity’ somehow never seemed to mean local democracy, the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) had an extremely educated Slovene as its boss.

It was no surprise that Janez Stanovnik, now 94, vanished quietly from Geneva in 1983, or that he reappeared equally without fanfare as Slovenia’s President in 1988 and led it peacefully to become a parliamentary democracy through negotiations with the opposition.

No surprise, either, that the current Executive Secretary of UNECE is a Danish economics professor (and former Minister of International Cooperation) who normally lives on a small farm. The 56-nation UNECE doesn’t make a big show of its efforts to build through consensus a new and different kind of egalitarian Europe.

For a long time, the face of this self-effacing Europe for journalists in the Palais was Tony Curnow, a French and New Zealand citizen, who died aged 93 at his home in France on 9 January this year. His style as the UNECE’s information officer was as buttoned-down as UNECE itself.

His news releases were never just about the UNECE’s institutions. Only the problems they were trying to tackle, written in an impeccable and accessible style with no fluff.

He believed in writing handouts journalists would read. They need to judge from the first paragraph whether a story is news, he told me once, when I asked him how his pieces were always so informative. He rigorously defended these principles. As a result of his information sheets, hard-bitten reporters found themselves writing

52

about the Committee on Invisibles (OK, I admit it might not exist). But cynical news types would still discover it worthwhile to tell the rest of the world about the importance of fresh fruit. And thanks to Tony, I learned the key role that motorways, containers and standardized regulations played in unifying Europe through trade and road safety standards.

It was an important story that deserved telling—and the sort of overlooked achievement common in the international community that helped make our Geneva office the second most productive newsroom (after Washington) in the Reuters network, even more than Brussels. As the UNECE points out, its work “impacts the life of citizens every single day when they, for instance, buy food, drive a car, breathe clean air, transport goods, handle chemicals, save energy or walk in the forest”.

From its website, I see the UNECE is still going about its quiet work: currently preparing guidance for countries on fire-water retention. It may not sound like much to shout about, but 30 years ago when a Swiss chemical warehouse caught fire, the water firefighters used to control the blaze sent a 70km toxic plume down the Rhine. In France, Germany and the Netherlands as well as Switzerland, it threatened water supplies and damaged fish stocks.

Finally they are doing something about it—faced with the reality that it could happen again, as a 2005 accident in Germany showed.

UNECE is also running an Ideas4Change competition, for the second time, to promote the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. The deadline for proposals, by the way,is 1 March. Its annual symposium on the future networked car takes place on 9 March.]

Perhaps even more astonishing in our era of brazen spin doctors, I never heard Tony say one stupid thing about his organization. But I never found a way to write about the UNECE’s Committee on Housing and Land Management.

My loss. I stopped covering the UNECE before the 2015 Geneva UN Charter on Sustainable Housing. So I missed the news that over 100 million people in the UNECE region spend more than 40 per cent of their income on housing, and nearly half young adults (18-29) today live with their parents.

Peter Hulm, a former Reuter’s correspondent, has worked as a communications consultant for both the European Union and UNECE.

AGENT PROVOCATEUR

TRADE FOR AID BUT GET PAID ‘This column is open to all Global Geneva Support Members as long as contributions meet our editorial standards. Members are also invited to write for our regular online ‘oped’ column: Geneva Hub. ’

As you sit drinking your tea or coffee reading this article, it is worth noting that of the EUR 4 you paid in the café, the South American farmer who produced the coffee beans was lucky if he got eight cents and the Grenadian nutmeg that you sprinkled perhaps two cents on the dollar. The exclusive West Indian cotton shirt that your wife bought for you while on your trip to New York at Christmas probably cost $300; the West Indian farmer got less than five dollars on the original cotton.

And those top of the range CHF 200 golf gloves made from the leather of the nearly extinct capra goat in Ethiopia enabled the farmer (or poacher) to be paid $1 for the hide which is known for its durability and lightness.

Then comes the gift you made to your wife of that exclusively-branded Shea butter, which retails at a $1000 per kilo in a chic Bond Street store, and yet the female former child soldiers in South Sudan who produced it were ecstatic to be paid 50 cents.

But this is still better than the "Masai look" chemise from a Milan fashion house on the Via Montenapoleone, which paid exactly zero to the Masai nation for using their unique cultural brand. I could go on, but you get the point.

There are numerous products from the developing world for which you — as a customer — pay top dollar and yet the producers themselves barely receive two cents.

The point being is that there are many developing world value-added products that are treated as commodities at source but as “premium goods” when branded to western ‘end’ consumers - where 98 per cent of their intangible value goes to "middle men". This market is huge. Indeed, USAID and DFID-funded research indicate that in Africa alone, over 200 such value-added products are worth $25 billion.

There is an additional social element to all this. The further you are from a port, the less likely as a community you can compete on the narrow and volatile margins of a commodity price. Development is strewn with the victims of this volatility. And there are numerous other impacts, notably the destruction of local heritage and natural wildlife resources. It also aggravates conflicts between farmers and conservationists. Or, in worst-case scenarios, they fuel the world’s fourth largest illegal trade: animal trafficking. Not only can the African elephant expect to be

extinct in the wild within 15 years, but, as Time magazine reports, the ivory trade significantly funds international terrorism.

So how should such ‘abuse’ be tackled? A traditional response is increased government spending. But donor support is increasingly under pressure from other “more pressing” issues, such as migration. Another is to appeal to the world of foundations. However, such institutions represent a highly inefficient form of capital and incentive structures. Furthermore, the extent of their contributions — in real terms — has been more or less flat over the last ten years. At the same time, the number of charities and social enterprises looking for capital has grown by 40 per cent.

Or maybe you are a stage further and now looking at impact investing or venture capital opportunities. As the G8 Impact Investing report suggests, this can mean seeking social entrepreneurs to address these issues bilaterally. Or as some government funders argue, going down the value chain and moving manufacturing to these countries. “Let them make the underpants” as one major development finance institution memorably put it at a recent conference.

But wait. Does all this really make sense when we treat it as an economic value chain? Why do we focus our interventions on changing the economic dynamics of the two per cent of the tangible value? Surely, it makes more sense to be capturing more of the 98 per cent of the intangible economic value?

The good news is this can now be done with “Intellectual Property Value Chain Capture.” To you and me, this means trying to rope in more of the brand value paid by the consumer to the benefit of the local communities and farmers.

READ THE FULL ARTICLE ONLINE WWW.GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM Arthur Wood is a former Bank Director of an award-winning Financial Product Development team. First joining Ashoka in 2005 as a Leadership Group Member where he conceptualized the Social Impact Bond. He is recognized as Impact Investment pioneer.

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©UNICEF

SWITZERLAND’S GLOBAL COMPACT: MAKING SDGs REAL

In early February 2017, over 100 Swiss companies which are part of the UN’s Global Compact, met in Berne to explore how privatepublic partnerships can achieve more effective — and imaginative — inroads in helping make the world a better place.

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onstituting Switzerland’s first Global Compact Dialogue, over 200 business people, government and NGO representatives, as well as journalists and students, gathered to discuss what appears to be a new reality: responsible and sustainable business approaches are becoming mainstream.

Growing numbers of companies are realizing that becoming more involved with the 17 Sustainable Development Goals not only makes good business sense, but can bring about a veritable developmental shift. “There is clearly a change in mindset among those companies,” said Ole Lund Hansen, chief of the UN Global Compact’s Local Networks, a world-wide initiative of 160 countries, incorporating over 8,000 companies and 4,000 institutions representing business, civil society, academia, industry associations, and media.

Officially, the SDGs have the objective of “building a better world” by 2030. Basically, observed Manuel Sager, Director General of the Swiss Development Corporation (SDC), “We need to use the SDGs as a business model to invest and innovate.” This includes creating partnerships between the private and public sectors s a means of fighting corruption and promoting education. The SDC already has 30 such partnerships for disaster response, agriculture, and water technologies. Nevertheless, while the upper echelons of firms such as Swiss Post (61,000 employees), Switzerland’s third largest employer, understand the concepts of the SDGs, they remain a totally alien concept for most ordinary people. Swiss Post’s head of communications, Marco Imboden, admitted that many of his company’s own employees have no idea what an SDG is. “This may take years to seep down,” he noted.

There are clearly numerous challenges for making more socially responsible and sustainable approaches work. As pointed out by Global Compact’s Antonio Hautle, this should not be solely the responsibility of governments, NGOs and companies. “Everyone should be responsible,” he said. “Fortunately, we are not starting at zero.”

Switzerland is already well-advanced. “What we can do is bring the agenda of business and world development ahead.”

The main challenge is to go beyond business as usual without simply ticking the boxes or promoting “greenwashing” for PR purposes. “There will always be conflicts in attaining these goals,” explained Markus Mugglin of the National Action Plan on Business and Human Rights.

“But there are clearly many ways of expressing one’s interest.” Another issue is how to bridge the pressures of implementing simpler short-term options against more sustainable, longer-term ones. As several participants pointed out, while genuine sustainable development may at first seem difficult, if not costly, the reality is that in the end it is far more economically productive both for consumers and shareholders.

INTERNATIONAL GENEVA

For Katrin Muff of the Business School of Lausanne, “there really is no other option than developing more sustainable economies.” While the SDGs make sense, she said, they are also “rather generic.” So how does one turn them into effective tools for business? One has to ensure they have local and global relevance, which should not be too difficult given that they represent trillions of dollars of market opportunities. The key, Muff said, is how to engage people on the outside. How can we eliminate poverty and hunger? What is going to keep the CEO awake at night?”

As they stand, the SDGs act as an ambitious guide to the world’s most critical problems, whether poverty, food security, health, or climate change. But according to the 2017 Global Opportunity Report produced by UN Global Compact and other partners, they also represent the world’s largest marketing opportunities, such as the development of new technologies, robotics and big data, or by taking advantage of possibilities on the “edges” of existing markets. This is particularly attractive to small and medium-size companies, which are “more purposedriven,” it said.

For Robert Heinzer of the Victorinox Group, which not only makes the renowned Swiss Army knives but now also clothes, “it is part of running a company successfully.” Operating since the late 19th century, Victorinox’s emphasis always has been on job creation. “This is the basis of our business,” he said. “If you don’t create and maintain employment, you can’t support the SDGs properly.”

A further key factor is the role of sustainable investors.

According to Sabine Döbeli, CEO of Swiss Sustainable Finance, they play a critical function within companies.

“Their engagement adds exceptional value,” She said. In 2015, sustainable investments reached an estimated 10 trillion Euros worldwide, she noted. Swiss sustainable investments alone now stand at CHF 191.9 billion (180 billion Euros) since 2013.

Speaking as a civil society representative, Laurent Martile of Alliance Sud, a Lausanne-based NGO, agreed that business is a vital partner for achieving the SDGs. In 2013, industrial countries invested $778 billion in the developing world, he said, while public aid barely accounted for 3 per cent of investments needed. “So clearly, the business community is crucial for bringing about real change.”

For many, however, a vital question remains: how to put the message across. For Joanna Hafenmayer, founder of the Responsible Corporate Leadership Forum (RECOL), advocates need to speak the language that everyone understands. “I often find that it is like looking at an iceberg. We talk, but we’re not really doing anything. People wish to have an emotional involvement that they can support.”

Swiss Post’s Michael Heim further stressed the importance of communicating with people who may not be involved, but wish to understand. “For me, what is central is that we do not isolate ourselves and are not able to move.

These elements need to be translated into a language that people understand, such as making it part of education.

We cannot expect stakeholders to learn our language. It has to be the other way around.”

The Editors.

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DEALING WITH POOP: THE VIRTUES OF PERFUME

56 ŠUNICEF

Companies are increasingly partnering with foundations as a means of promoting more effective sustainable development models. One example is the collaboration between the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Firmenich, the world’s largest privately-owned fragrance firm. Last November, Bill Gates met with Firmenich in Meyrin, outside Geneva, to discuss ways of improving their support for global sustainability, such as odour-free toilets and better sanitation. Such initiatives come at a time when international aid agencies, including the United Nations, need to venture more out-of-the-box to find alternative partners, notably the private sector.

The American doctor was standing in the shade of an acacia tree, scarcely shielded from the blistering midday heat of a Somali refugee camp. Working for Oxfam, he was carefully taking samples from a large water tank to ensure that it was not polluted. Many of the refugees, who had fled the nearby fighting, were using the surrounding area as an open-desert latrine. “People understand why medical treatment or basic health care are needed. But for those of us dealing with water and sanitation it’s different.

How the hell do you sell shit?”

While public awareness of the need to provide safer water and sanitation has improved in recent years, dealing with toilets or outdoor latrines remains an acute problem. It is not something that people readily understand, unless — as with more than one billion around the world — they themselves do not have access to a toilet.

Three billion more people have toilets, but their waste is dumped untreated, seeping into water and food supplies.

So the main challenge today is how to provide better sanitation as a means for improving conditions, thus saving lives. Some 800,000 children under age of five die each year from diarrhea, pneumonia, and other common infections caused by unsafe water and sanitation.

One solution is to ensure that latrines smell better.

What is the connection between odour-free latrines and better sanitation, and why companies like Firmenich, Switzerland’s leading fragrance and flavour company, can be so important? Foul-smell of toilets and public latrines contribute to people relieving themselves in open areas to benefit from fresh air. That open defecating contaminates water resources, which in turn has adverse public health consequences. As Gates argues, the predicament is “staggering”. In India alone, the lack of proper facilities costs nearly $55 billion a year, more than six per cent of the country’s GDP. According to the Seattle-based philanthropist, Firmenich can play a crucial role in the development of odour-free toilets so that “poop doesn’t smell bad”. While millions of new toilets are being built around the world to help end open defecation, including in India where a massive new loo programme is underway, many — particularly pit latrines - still have powerful stenches.

For the past four years, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been working with Firmenich to counter bad odours. When Gates came to Geneva last November, it was to see where the two organizations stood in their efforts to make latrines, as he put it, “less foul-smelling”.

Both the Gates Foundation and Firmenich, a 120-year-old family firm, are members of the UN’s Global Compact of over 12,000 companies and organisations which seek to show that more sustainable approaches can be good for business. (See article on Switzerland’s Global Compact).

For Gilbert Ghostine, Firmenich’s CEO, the issue is quite simple. “I deeply believe that business is a force for good…and co-create affordable solutions”, he maintained.

The Swiss firm, which is better known for crafting some of the planet’s best-known fragrances and enhancing the flavours of beverages and foods, decided to work with Gates as a means of finding more imaginative ways for solving today’s sanitation crisis. “Because smell was so

central to solving this serious public health issue, we knew we could be part of the solution”, said Prof. Geneviève Berger, Firmenich’s Chief Research Officer. “Not only because we had the science to counter bad smells, but also because it resonated with our DNA. As part of a Toilet Board Coalition dedicated to finding innovative business solutions, both Gates and Firmenich engaged in a “smell summit” several years back to discuss ways of dealing with the issue. With more than a century of experience creating scents, but also developing sophisticated approaches for analysing odours and breaking them down into their chemical components, the Swiss firm began to work with Gates Foundation’s sanitation team to determine why toilets smell so badly.

Toilet odours are highly complex and have more than 200 different chemical compounds arising from faeces and urine that change with time.

Firmenich’s researchers isolated four principal chemicals as part of the root causes: indole, p-cresol, dimethyl trisulfide, and butyric acid.

They then recreated the odour by using synthetic compounds. In other words, they made a “fragrance” that smelled like faeces.

To ensure that they got it right, Firmenich asked people in Switzerland, India, and Africa which scents most closely mimicked a stench-ridden toilet.

The researchers then began to experiment with other fragrances to see how they could effectively mask the offensive smells. Firmenich’s approach was to attack the problem on a molecular level in connection with human noses and brain. With 350 olfactory receptors, the human nose can sense an array of smells ranging from vanilla to smelly feet. Only a handful of these, however, have can detect repulsive odours. In this manner, the researchers used this knowledge to develop fragrances capable of blocking selective receptors, basically masking stenches.

As Gates explained, “I was invited to push my nose into a glass sniffing tube and breathe in a mixture of the poop perfume I had just experienced and one of the new odourblocking fragrances. It smelled pretty good…Instead of stinky sewage, sweat, and ripe cheese, I sniffed a pleasant floral scent.”

The question now is whether such technology can make a real difference in communities with poor sanitation. For this reason, Firmenich is launching pilot projects across India and Africa to understand whether their fragrances will make toilets and pit latrines more inviting. The company also needs to determine whether it is better to use a spray, a powder or something completely different.

“The ultimate goal is to make the product affordable and easy-to-use”, maintained Gates.

The Editors.

“...SMELL WAS SO CENTRAL TO SOLVING THIS SERIOUS PUBLIC HEALTH ISSUES, WE KNEW WE COULD BE PART OF THE SOLUTION.”

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REPORTING & PHOTOGRAPHY DIGITAL GENEVA STAFF

Extended Play is a conversation with Swiss innovators and entrepreneurs at all stages of the development cycle.

Jan-Mathieu Donnier explains how he transferred dreams into reality as CEO of Global Vision.

GG: Now 10 years old, Global Vision was first to market in corporate services for drones and Virtual Reality production, what you call ‘visual innovation’. VR is absolutely booming right now, but what was booming ten years ago when you started?

the day while the other worked at night. My brother is someone I trust, someone I can rely on, and someone I see daily. We’d say: “That would be so cool, let’s make it” and the next day it was there. Today it’s like this with the entire Global Vision team. It brings new ideas, new ways of working, new types of value.

JMD: In the technology space you had the first smart phones from Apple. People started to discover screens outside the computer, screens that would be personal devices that could do amazing things! And they would be with you all the time. Today I probably wear my phone more than I wear any of my clothes.

GG: So you knew there would be a need for content at a time when it was all about hardware?

JMD: I clearly remember the iPhone1. It was the first moment I saw someone holding a television and interacting with it like a computer. I knew this was would be life-changing. Ten years later I can say our analysis was right.

GG: A trait of many entrepreneurs is an uninhibited childhood. Parents just let them explore and break things. Would that loosely describe your upbringing?

JMD: I‘m not from an entrepreneurial family and my parents always remind us how unique we are. Our mother was a teacher so she always urged us to study, but with our studies she said, “Just do something that is your passion.” I’m super-happy my family supported us in this regard. We were forward thinking, we liked to test stuff, and we liked technology. So if we tested something and it worked, we knew we could convince others.

GG: Meeting entrepreneurs you notice people who GG: Content as a service was still very experimental in the mid 2000s. You had this cottage industry - crossmedia - and then came transmedia. While most content providers went the traditional route of film, gaming or publishing, you bet on cameras that fly in the air.

JMD: We’ve always been a bit geeky. For us being geeky is not a crime. We were testing 3D cameras at the time, and then the first drones, like the helicopters you see behind me, which were mostly toys. But we knew these toys had real potential. We started building multi-copters and adding small cameras. They were low quality, but

by Moore’s Law the quality would double. Our way of thinking is future-proof. This is why clients come to us.

have a dream and follow it. Did you have a dream in the beginning, or were you building and then discovered that dream along the way?

JMD: I remember it quite clearly at the very beginning.

My brother said to me, “Did you see what happens in America? People get rich with the Internet.” Then the question was how can we get rich with the Internet.

This was pre-2000. It was the dotcom bubble and I had a very small website I coded myself, on the beach, in the summertime. Then we ran advertisements on the website, then we coded more websites. I was 15.

GG: Coding on the beach at 15 while dreaming of the Internet...

GG: Moore’s Law seems to be the axiom of everything you do.

JMD: It’s a forward-thinking mindset that allows us to see trends and act on this. It’s what we call a growth-axis.

HD film was one growth-axis. Drones became another.

VR filming is our current growth-axis.

GG: The capacity for rapid prototyping comes from a rich collaboration between you and your brother Marek.

I’m guessing innate curiosity came at a very young age?

JMD: The Internet was the dream. With minimum investment we knew we could reach a global audience.

The dream was reaching a global audience and making a tower. With our name on the top. So we decided on this.

We didn’t have a proper idea of what to do but knew the area we wanted to play in. This new ‘information highway’ called the Internet had so many divisions, so many fields you could play in. We just had to pick one and be successful.

GG: In the American experience you learn very young JMD: We started the company in our bedroom as teenagers. We shared a computer, one would work in

to dream big. In Switzerland is there is a tendency to dream small?

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JMD: In Switzerland we have a tendency to dream, not

GG: Global Vision was part of several accelerator initia-

small, but realistically. People expect you to deliver on your objectives. Swiss people dream big but express very little. You don’t dare express your global vision.

tives in Geneva. How critical was outside support in bringing you closer to the goal?

JMD: Switzerland has several initiatives supporting startGG: Is this a fear of failure? In America you might convert

had to go forward. We can go above, dig down, break the wall, but we’re gonna go through. We started with nothing, zero, no money, no investment. Failure was just simply not an option.

ups. There is the InnoVaud in Canton de Vaud. In Geneva there is Fondetech, Fongit and AlpICT. There are many initiatives to give you guidance and advice, and in some cases funding. Global Vision was lucky to be selected for Venture Leader in 2011, an accelerator programme put in place by VentureLab. At the same time we were contracted

by Mozilla Foundation. This was a new level for us. We weren’t talking to people on the corner about small stuff, it pushed us to look for the big game.

GG: In this economy banks are not lending to fulfil

GG: VentureLab sent you to the US for a 10-day bootcamp.

dreams and VCs are not financing unproven products.

How do you cover the funding gap?

What were the takeaways when you came back, what did you do differently?

JMD: To tackle the money issue we said, “Let’s get

JMD: Visiting large companies that started with two

customers and this problem will be solved.” I totally agree, banks won’t lend to companies with no proven track record. For VCs it’s always too early or too late. I always said we would self-finance our entire growth. The first step was proving we could reach a certain level with zero. Now we’ve reached that level. Twenty-five people.

Two offices. Clients in 30 countries. We did what we said we would do. We transformed our ideas into reality and now we are looking for investors, for like-minded people, to contact us.

people just like us was really inspiring. Plus we gained a lot of feedback, people telling us, “Guys, stop doing websites. It’s worthless.” Then I realized it was true, yes, we earned money but we were losing time. Our DNA is making super hi-tech products focused on innovation, not making websites for one-off customers. We had to look for the big game. This really shaped our mindsets.

failure into a positive but in Switzerland there is a real phobia towards failure.

JMD: For us we never, ever considered we could fail. We

GG: Though Global Vision has gone international you’ve kept the Swiss touch. What would you say is uniquely Swiss about your business?

GG: You beat the odds in a market that‘s not easy for start-ups. Not all Swiss entrepreneurs reach the finish line.

JMD: Switzerland is a dream-country for start-ups. If you succeed in this microcosm of International Geneva you can succeed in any large capital. With this vast diversity you can test your products on people of different cultural backgrounds and demographics. The government also helps start-ups with programmes to help validate your project, refine it a bit more, and then it’s up to you. We have so many global players in Switzerland, if you have a good product, you have a good team, you can find customers easily and those customers you can replicate.

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JMD: We want clients to be happy. Ultimately, this is what drives customer loyalty. If something isn’t right, we’re going to re-do it. We want to deliver good quality and make the whole experience a positive one. Our new tagline is “Creative mindset, technical expertise and worldwide reach.” We have the capacity to think about something, to create it, and then promote it. We are Swiss in the way that, no matter what, we’re going to make it work. Swiss people are very resilient people.

Join us on Twitter and get involved in Geneva’s digital culture @dgtlGVA

YOU TAKE THE SHOT, WE RAISE THE SCORE SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN SCHOOLS.

Social entrepreneurship means a positive initiative created by an entrepreneur with a social vision. It may be a non-economic, charitable or business initiative with or without personal profit. As Ian Smith, a teacher at the International School of Geneva’s La Chataignerie campus (Ecolint) suggests, high school students should take up Muhammad Yunus’s challenge for a new kind of capitalism that serves humanity by designing ‘social businesses’, even launching them individually or collectively to express their creative talents in changing the world.

Late last year, the Global Fund for AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria approached the International School of Geneva (Ecolint) with the possibility of engaging students in developing more effective means of reaching out to young people for evaluating and solving world issues. The challenge? To come up with creative, new ideas, such as how to better market RED, a world-wide initiative to end HIV/AIDS in Africa involving iconic corporate brands, on Facebook and Twitter.

Together with the UK-based organization, Entrepreneurs in Action, the organizers created a “Classroom to Boardroom” project with 32 students, who researched, discussed and developed more imaginative social media initiatives, such as involving world-renowned sports stars or key international events. The students, for example, came up with a Twitter campaign to promote awareness through basketball player Magic Johnson with the slogan “you make the shot, we change the score”. Every time the ball goes through the hoop, money is raised. The proposed initiatives, which were presented to the Global Fund’s Executive Board, were so imaginative that the Geneva-based organization is taking them on.

Bearing such opportunities in mind, what should students be learning for the 21st century? We know the benefits of education – human potential, societal wellbeing, collective prosperity - but the road ahead is also caught up in uncertainties ranging from financial instability and religious intolerance to political partisanship, climate change, and technological disruptions.

For such challenges, our young people are not properly prepared. School curriculums continue to reflect the late 1800s instead of today`s or tomorrow’s world. In the age of exponential technologies, we are now in a race that education must not lose. Syllabuses are evolving, slowly, but our students are literally begging for relevance.

Imagine a deeper learning for engagement that seeks to harness inter-disciplinarity, such as coding, robotics or entrepreneurship, by stimulating inner creativity and more critical thinking. A sort of collaboratory with prototyping for innovation coupled with character-building for empathy, curiosity, courage, resilience and ethical leadership. This should aim to leverage the entire self, whether the head or heart, for a more progressive 21st Century education. Such approaches would improve our knowledge skills but also the means for engaging with key

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EDUCATION: SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN SCHOOLS: STARTING SOMETHING THAT MATTERS

global players to solve societal crises. What we need to encourage is a mastery for embracing a relevance with a greater purpose.

A recent World Economic Forum report, The Future of Jobs, predicts rising demand for skill sets not today considered crucial. It stresses the need to help children become the new generation of global problem solvers.

These should be people who can innovate as technologists, think as entrepreneurs and act as social change agents.

They need to develop social skills, such as persuasion, emotional intelligence and the ability to teach others.

They will then be in “higher demand across industries than narrow technical skills, such as programming or equipment operation and control. In essence, technical skills will need to be supplemented with strong social and collaboration skills,” the report argues.

According to a survey of millennials conducted by Deloitte (2016), 50 per cent of young people want to work for a business with ethical practices and 60 per cent choose their workplace based on its purpose. Research indicates that for 55 per cent of the current four million US students who graduated in 2016, consider social causes to be an important factor in deciding where to work. This strong interest for social good has led to an explosion of social entrepreneurship university programmes around the world. There are now 148 centres across 350 countries.

Ashoka University, for example, promotes social innovation in higher education by developing a global network of students, faculty and community leaders working to advance the field. Over the past few years alone, it has expanded to 30 university campuses. Harvard, Stanford, London Business School have all integrated SEIs programmes with global impact. Social entrepreneurship is not a passing trend. It poses all educational institutions with the challenge: how effectively are we preparing our students for global citizenship?

The recent UN Compact Conference Making Global Goals our local business (SEE ARTICLE) at the headquarters of Swiss Post in Bern represented a call to arms to embed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into a business corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy. Taking some of our students prompted us to give more urgent consideration of ways to engage with SDGs. Dr Katrin Muff, acting Dean at Lausanne Business School, also challenged them to lead “a socially entrepreneurial agenda” across the school.

Our own Strategic Planning Group is now in the process of considering this agenda with the idea of developing an appropriately relevant framework. This will build upon the rich learning principles of the International Baccalaureate (IB) for promoting more fulfilled individuals, sustainable societies and productive economies to meet the challenges of the 4th Industrial era. There is a very compelling case for introducing social entrepreneurship as a core element in all places of education.

So how can promoting enterprise learning benefit students? First, it can nurture risk tolerance, drive, vision, flexibility and open-mindedness. In addition, it can offer practical skills for financial literacy, including better knowledge of micro-finance, impact investing,

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basic income and social dividend as well as the impact of technology on the 21st century workplace. Second, it can increase student awareness of local and global initiatives. This will enable young people to better grasp the complexity of this new world but also to empathise and initiate actions to address inequality, sustainability and development from a more global perspective.

Start Something that Matters is an initiative that seeks to engage with the youngsters` entrepreneurial spirit (curious to Start {up} Something) aligned to an ethical and sustainable purpose (that Matters). The overall aim is to build upon the compelling body of work that Ecolint has already developed in recent years around peace education and empathy, curriculum innovation and technology augmentation. Enterprise capability is not only the ability to be innovative or to take risks and to manage them, but also to adopt a can-do attitude and the drive to make ideas happen. The idea is to foster a climate whereby students and staff are confident and enthusiastic to `Start Up` initiatives with educational, moral or social purpose for good.

At Ecolint’s La Châtaigneraie campus, we are fostering a socially entrepreneurial mind-set that aims to encourage our students to work collaboratively on projects with local and global engagement. These are integrated within our character development programme (Years 7-11) with an emphasis on the UN Global Goals. Initiating social businesses inspired by Year 12 Enterprise Ambassadors, alumni from Classroom to Boardroom with Global Fund 6-9 June 2016, empowers younger students to think big, take risks and become ethical change-makers. Such innovation and co-creative opportunities are designed to inspire students to realise talent, think outside the box and build capacity through collaboration. They are also in addition to the Strategic, Resilient and Challengeorientated enrichment activities (STRETCH) already offered by the school.

Back in 2013, I was proud to be recognised for encouraging such learning in UK schools with the Queen`s Award for Enterprise Promotion. Stimulating big-picture thinking and curiosity can inspire all learners in a relevant and contextualised curriculum. Educational success is no longer mainly about passing on or developing content knowledge, but about extrapolating from what we know and applying this to new or difficult situations. Such forms of creativity and critical thinking, including the capacity to recognize the potential of new technologies, will foster the qualities that can help young people live and work together. These are all compelling fundamentals for young leaders of tomorrow.

Ian Smith has been a teacher of Economics and Business Management in the state, independent and international sector for over 20 years. As Vice Principal at Surbiton High School in the UK, he was responsible for pupil care, character development and an entrepreneurial mindset in teaching and learning. Since 2015, Ian has been working at the International School Geneva, representing the Princess Diana Award as an ambassador and engaging with other socially entrepreneurial organizations such as the WE movement, Wildhearts, Entrepreneurs in Action and Wings of Hope to empower young people. Ian has an MBA in educational leadership.

Help support Global Geneva Special Reports in the public interest.

FROM THE ALPS TO THE HIMALAYAS: MAKING MOUNTAIN REGIONS SUSTAINABLE.

CARTOON Courtesy of IS CLIMATE CHANGE ERODING TRADITIONAL ALPINE SOCIETIES AND ECONOMIES? Global Geneva plans to address these issues by presenting a series of investigative reports by specialists and journalists from around the world on how to make mountain regions more economically sustainable.

From the Alps to the Himalayas, from the Andes to the Caucasus, from the Pyrenees to the New Zealand’s Southern Alps, governments, private sector, tourist offices and eco-tourism specialists, scientists and academics are coming to realize the need to work together, with more imagination, and to share their expertise and ideas on what works. This includes finding ways to make tourism more viable all year-round as well as creating mountain environments and resources that are more conducive to agriculture and business.

These reports will lay the groundwork for an international conference - From the Alps to the Himalayas: Making mountains and tourism economically sustainable – to be held in Gstaad/Saanen, Switzerland in April, 2018.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, OR IF YOU WISH TO SUPPORT THESE REPORTS IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST, PLEASE CONTACT: EDITOR@GLOBAL-GENEVA.COM If you are interested in being involved with - or wish to sponsor - the international mountain conference, please contact: conference@newhighlanders.ch

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LETTER FROM CONGO

As any young graduate will tell you, one of the greatest hurdles searching for a job is experience. No one wants to hire someone without a ‘real’ CV. Emilie Linder, a Swiss national, completed her Masters in Human Rights at Essex University in the UK before interning for several NGOs. She then spent three months working for the Fonds pour les Femmes Congolaise (FFC) in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and supported by Geneva’s Oak Foundation. Now 25, Linder’s African experience convinced the FFC to take her on for six months as a paid fund-raiser but based in Switzerland because of rising political tensions in the DRC itself.

I

Grassroots initiatives drive change. Congolese women are now in the position to provide solutions.

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t is my last morning in Kinshasa. It’s early winter 2016 and already it is sweltering. On the way to the office, I walk slower than usual.

I want to notice everything, engrave into my memory every detail of this neighborhood: the young kids playing football in the middle of the street; the familiar smile of the old

woman selling fragrant beignets; the group of men lively discussing in Lingala under the trees.... Dirty sand is stuck between my toes, the sun burns my skin and the delicious scent of the street food makes me hungry.

I arrive at work to see my colleagues one last time before leaving. We talk about everything and nothing.

When it’s time to head for the airport, I look at my

co-workers with some trepidation. “See you soon,” I tell them. But they had all already warned me. This is not a goodbye, they say. I will be back in DRC for sure!

Based on previous internship experiences — writing about human trafficking and working with Physicians for Human Rights — I had become acutely aware of the issue of sexual violence in conflict zones. But I felt that my involvement with this sort of work was not legitimate unless I had some form of first-hand exposure. I felt that I needed to encounter the people affected by this crisis; to meet the victims of sexual violence in order to better understand why such horrors happen and how such destructive attitudes take root.

Thanks to Julienne Lusenge, a fervent Congolese activist, I was offered the possibility of spending three months in the DRC to work with the Fonds pour les Femmes Congolaises (Fund for Congolese Women or FFC) an NGO providing financial and technical resources to women-led grassroots initiatives. I was grateful for the opportunity, excited to discover a new country, and ready to challenge my preconceived ideas.

Particularly important was the chance to learn more about the DRC, which, since independence from Belgium in1960, has been caught up in a complex series of wars characterized by the large-scale displacement of hapless men, women, and children. The “second Congo war” (1998-2002) was an especially bloody conflict that involved at least seven African countries and countless rebel groups. Connected to the Rwandan genocide, this multi-dimensional conflict further weakened the country with current clashes still the result of past fighting. This despite the official “end” to the war in 2002 following the intervention of the United Nations Stabilization Mission to the DRC (MONUSCO) and various bilateral agreements.

It is early November 2015. I have just landed in Kinshasa, the DRC’s sprawling capital of more than 10 million people. After the total disorientation of the first few days, I begin to adapt. I become accustomed to permanent chaos, crowded streets, the endless traffic jams, the incessant horns, the stifling heat....

As I get used to my new environment, I quickly find my place at the FFC. My colleagues are very friendly and I feel proud to be part of the team. I mainly work with the communication department, helping to fine-tune their social media accounts and increase the FCC’s visibility by organizing events in the city. I also help them with everyday tasks: translating documents, meeting potential donors, editing project proposals, and writing reports. My co-workers are always helpful and in return I can assist in many different areas.

By late November I have learned a great deal. This internship is unlike the previous ones. The challenges are extremely different. Every day, I go to the office where I confront the realities of the field: the difficulty of working in the dark during power outages, the frustration of an extremely slow internet connection, the serious lack of funding for projects. The sort of problems that so many NGOs have to endure.

Despite the everyday burdens of dealing with a harsh reality, the FFC team steps up to what needs to be done.

They are hardworking and determined, and the results are evident. Since its creation in 2007, FFC has funded close to 200 projects throughout the country. It has supported initiatives aimed at eliminating violence against women, setting up empowerment programmes and educating women about HIV/AIDS and reproductive health and so much more. What is fascinating about the FFC is that it is a truly grassroots women’s rights movement having been started in the DRC — the result of a few women putting their force and efforts together to create a proximity fund to answer the real needs of the population. Their rationale is based on the belief that grassroots initiatives drive change and that Congolese women have the potential to provide effective solutions to sustain these advances.

All this has helped me gain a completely new perspective of human rights in the field. It has also offered me a more pragmatic vision of how NGOs work.

For any project to be effective, I now believe, it is crucial to completely integrate the beneficiary population in every stage. To reach durable human rights advances, we need to use a bottom-up approach with an emphasis on local decisionmaking, community participation, and the creation of a truly grassroots movement.

Just before finishing the internship, I travel to Bunia, a small town in the eastern part of the country, to work with a partner NGO: SOFEPADI. As a local association, SOFEPADI’s mission is to protect women’s rights and to provide support for survivors of sexual violence by advocating for justice. It also runs a medical clinic for victims of sexual violence. Once there, I speak with passionate people, deeply committed to the protection of such survivors. Doctors, nurses, pharmacists, psychologists, social workers and lawyers work together to give them the best possible support. In fact, the centre is unique because it provides a holistic response by combining medical care, psycho-social help, legal aid and socioeconomic reintegration. In the days that follow, I meet beneficiaries of SOFEPADI’s support and collect their testimonies. I am rendered speechless by their courage and strength.

Most of these women have become real actors of change based on their victim experience and are actively fighting against sexual violence. They want to help those in similar situations by testifying and explaining how they have managed to get by with SOFEPADI’s help. One of these women confides to me: “This tragic event has awakened something in me. The pain and anger I felt after the assault gave me the strength to fight. I have a duty to help others and to do everything to stop these horrors.”

The trip east is a beautiful way to conclude my short, but intense experience in the DRC, and I have become emotionally attached to this country. My mind is full of indelible memories and I am awed by the kindness of the Congolese people and the courage and fervour of these women who work so fiercely to change their country. I have been so fortunate to learn from them and I will always be thankful for this precious time spent by their side.

Emilie Linder lives and works in Geneva.

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GENEVA SCHOOLS MAKING THE BEST CHOICES

It is a perennial problem, not just in Switzerland or neighbouring France, but also around the world.

What’s the best option for my child?

A local school? An international establishment? Or sending them off to board? Education specialist Anne Keeling explores some of the options for ensuring that parents make the right choice.

B

ritish expatriate Mel McGarry has four children; two of them at a local Swiss school for Early Years, while the older ones are enrolled in an international one.

“I wanted the two little ones to learn French,” she says. For McGarry, it’s all about being part of a community, where one gets to meet everyone in the village and benefits from Switzerland’s local education system which is widely regarded as both excellent and well-rounded, regardless whether in French, German or Italian-speaking parts. But ultimately, she adds, it’s not if, but when they will go to the international school. “My children are international children. As expatriates, we don’t know how long we will remain in Switzerland, so providing them with the best long-term opportunities; for relocating to another school in another country, for their higher education options too, I need to ensure they are educationally agile.”

For the older children, she has opted for Geneva English School (GES), which, located in Genthod outside of Geneva just off the lake road, describes itself as a British school with a global outlook. Its small size (280 children in primary, and a brand new secondary which opened last September) sets it apart from most of the other international schools in and around Geneva, some of which are teaching almost 2,000 students.

McGarry is not alone among expatriates considering Swiss public schools for her younger children. Many are motivated by the cost. Another more recent concern is the

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impact that the new Trump presidency could have both on United Nations agencies, which partially subsidize educational costs, as well as corporations. The fact that UN organizations may find themselves with less funding could have a severe impact. Some are already talking about cutbacks. It is a similar situation with the private sector.

“Less schooling is being paid by companies so more employees are paying for their child’s education themselves, or obtaining public school places, especially for younger children,” explains Relocation Manager at Sterling Relocation in Geneva, Kim Wark. He provides relocation support for many families moving into Geneva.

The fact that the public option is completely free and the structure is quite good is a deciding factor for some families, he notes. However, given that the learning is in French, other families that expect to eventually return to their home country, or have older kids thinking about examinations or considering higher education needs, it is a different matter. Such parents tend to keep them in the system and curriculum they’re already used to. For them the international schools are the answer. “Schooling is a huge decision for families,” notes Wark. “It’s usually the first question that needs to be addressed apart from immigration.”

Norbert Foerster, the Director General of Institute International de Lancy in Grand Lancy in the Canton of Geneva, which offers both a French and English system, says he’s seeing fewer children transition from the local school to international school after primary than in past years. “Most families are making the decision at the earliest stage; if they are in a local system, they tend to go through the entire primary system then change,” he says. Transitioning from a public school to international can have its challenges, he admits. “If children don’t have language skills that can be a problem, and the curriculum and system is not the same; parents see that after some time, there are gaps for sure. We deal with that of course but I think it’s important for parents to make a decision from the first year as the paths are not the same.”

Institut International de Lancy has over 850 students aged from 3 to 18, and currently has children from 93 different nationalities including Swiss locals. “That’s Geneva for you; the UN and multinationals bring many expats from all over the world,” Foerster points out. It’s one of a number of expansive international schools in Geneva including the International School Geneva, which now has three main campuses, and Collège du Léman, each location with well over 1,000 students offering a wide range of facilities and options for students.

And on the FRENCH side…

Mel McGarry prefers the alternative option, notably a small international school environment as offered by GES, and also, further afield, at Brillantmont International School in Lausanne. “Both my extrovert daughter and my more introvert son have a sense of belonging that comes from a school where everyone knows each other,” says McGarry. “There can be pros and cons to this; you can lose out on additional competition with a smaller group, but in a smaller group there are fewer places for you to hide.

That smaller class size and the size of the school really helps.”

Head of Admissions at Brillantmont, Sarah Frei, believes a small school is an advantage to many children given that it can offer a far more personalised approach to education. “Small doesn’t mean missing out. We offer some very strong extra-curricular activities including TEDx, Model United Nations and Habitat for Humanity,” she maintains, GES headmaster Tim Meunier agrees about the benefits of school size. “For over fifty years, we have purposely kept the school small to ensure that every child is known, and supported as an individual,” he says. “We’ll reflect this same approach in GES Secondary. Geneva needs such a school.”

Several of the international schools around Geneva meet specific needs of different families. Leysin American School, for example, provides a vital boarding option.

“Only about 20 percent of our parents live in Europe,” says Head of School, Marc Ott. “Most of our families live in the Middle East, Far East, North or South America.

Typically, children are here because there is no adequate schooling where they are. Some are families who are moving out of Geneva but wanting to keep their children here for stability in their education. Others, it’s where both parents are travelling with business and need their child to board. There are plenty of very good day schools here in Geneva; we are primarily focused on providing a boarding solution.”

Susan Krumrei, Europe Consultant for ISC Research, the leading provider of data and intelligence on the international schools market, observes that Geneva’s options are outstanding. “It’s not just the fact that they are offering excellent curriculum programmes and qualifications that are globally respected such as IGCSE, A levels and the International Baccalaureate, but the international schools in Geneva also have an exceptional reputation for helping children to develop the skills of critical thinking and

Across the border in neighbouring France, notably in the Pays de Gex, there is the option of having your child attend a free local primary school, while also taking part in the modestly-priced weekly English National Programme, which was initially created by CERN for its employees. This is designed to keep your child up with English (there are also options for German, Dutch, Spanish and other languages) just in case one changes systems or moves elsewhere in the world. Once out of French primary school, your child can opt for the International Lycée (which includes a Collège) in Ferney-Voltaire near Geneva airport, which is state-run and has recently expanded to a second campus in St Genis. The Ecole Jeanne d’Arc in Gex, which is private, also offers bi-lingual programmes similar to Ferney.

Both cost far less than Swiss-side international schools, but one needs to be resident in France.

The French system, however, is not easy.

Some parents have found that while one child may do well, another may not. This produces situations whereby families may have one or two children on the French side and another in Switzerland at one of the international schools. The advantage with the French International Lycée approach, however, is that high school graduates who obtain their International Baccalaureate also emerge with a multi-cultural education incorporating two entirely different ways of thinking. Many universities and companies find the ability of such students to adapt to different cultural mind-sets a highly desirable asset.

The Editors

international mindedness,” she says. “Demand for school places has remained high. Many schools are at capacity and some have waiting lists for certain ages. It’s good to see another option (GES Secondary) about to open.”

Nick Smith, Community Liaison Officer at the UK Mission to the United Nations which supports the relocation of families working at the Foreign Office agrees.

“We have more families here than we used to. It’s a popular posting. Geneva is great for kids. It’s a safe place to live, the schools are excellent; they’re definitely a draw. I don’t think there’s a bad school here, but you have to find the right school to suit your child. Visit some schools before you decide; it makes such a difference. At the end of the day, your school selection can be as simple as it being all about the people you meet during your visit.”

Anne Keeling is media relations manager for ISC Research and has been writing about international education and schools for over ten years

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PATRICIA KAAS

A GIRL FROM THE EAST

With 30 years of performance under her belt, French singer Patricia Kaas may not be widely known among ‘anglo-saxon’ audiences but certainly deserves to be. Early last month, this highly professional multi-cultural artist from eastern France’s Lorraine region sang to a packed audience in Geneva belting out an array of new and old, including chansons from her latest album — simply titled: Patricia Kaas - coupled with powerful renditions laced with Piaf, jazz, and pop. Edward Girardet chatted with Kaas about the influences of her German-French background, particularly at a time when being European is increasingly questioned.

While hardly household names among British and Americans, any expat living in Paris — or Brussels and Berlin for that matter — cannot help but absorb France’s repertoire of artists ranging from road-hardened routards such as Jean-Jacques Goldman and Francis Cabrel to more contemporary ones such as Louane and Nolwenn Leroy.

They simply haunt the airwaves of most radio stations.

And Patricia Kaas is no exception. While better known in France, Germany and the Benelux countries, she is also popular in Russia, Romania, Ukraine and other parts of eastern Europe. There her voice seductively represents what audiences imagine to be the essence of a Paris which probably never really existed, notably a nostalgic mix of Edith Piaf, cabaret and jazz combined with modern rock.

In Vietnam, she is regarded as a sort of French Madonna.

As a Paris-based foreign correspondent, I knew Kaas — as with most other French singers — from FIP, an eclectic all-music station that you listened to while caught in traffic jams. But her gravelly femme fatale voice only came into my life on a more determined basis during the 1990s. This was while on assignment (usually with French film teams) accompanying Médecins sans Frontières in war zones such as Sri Lanka, Mozambique, Liberia and Afghanistan. Whenever we roamed the countryside crossing in our 4x4s between government and rebel checkpoints or carefully manoeuvring our way across battle zones, Kaas invariably blasted from the tape deck with songs such as Mademoiselle chante le blues, Jalouse, ll me dit que je suis belle (by JJ Goldman) or Kennedy Rose, the latter an unusual tribute to Rose Kennedy, the mother of John F. Kennedy.

Kaas was our travelling Goddess. Of course, there were other singers, such as Jane Birkin or Patrick Bruel, but a Kaas cassette always seemed to be playing in the houses and clinics of the ‘French’ doctors. Her vibrant voice emerged as a stark contrast to the horrors of the war hospitals or shell-blasted buildings that punctuated once beautiful landscapes of villages and fields. And, I suppose too, as with so many other supposedly hardened frontline reporters and medics, we fell in love with her sonorous tones and the woman we imagined her to be.

So, years later, when I finally saw Kaas perform at Geneva’s Arena in early February, strutting the stage and throwing back her head with its short blond hair, I felt intrigued if not somewhat embarrassed. It was like having had a primary school crush.

Born of Germanic background in Lorraine, or Lothringen as the Germans call it, in eastern France (her father was a French miner of German-speaking background and her mother, a German national from just across the border in Saar), Patricia Kaas was brought up conversing in Plattdeutsch, a form of ‘low German’ not unlike Dutch. She learned French at school and still spoke dialect when she went to Paris in pursuit of her singing career. When I asked her in which language she preferred to do the interview at her hotel, she replied without hesitating: “German. I need to keep it up, particularly as I am now in Zurich.”

While Kaas considers herself French, she is also very much aware of her roots from a historically-disputed transborder region with close links to what today

constitutes modern-day French and German cultures. This is indicated by her song: Une Fille de L’est (A Girl from the East). As the lyrics go, “If you really wish to learn about me, if you really wish to know me, I am with every word, with every one of my gestures, a girl of the east.” Whenever Kaas performs in Germany, she will sing a few songs in German, plus speak to her audience in German. “They are very touched when I do this, because they consider me one of theirs, but they like to hear me sing in French. I suppose it’s what I am about to them,” she explained.

“I can fight my way through with English, which is important if you are trying to reach different audiences,” said Kaas, who has worked in the United States but also began an acting career in 2001 in a Claude Lelouche film And now… ladies and gentlemen with Jeremy Irons. “I regard myself as French although my character is half and half, but French is now my language.” At the same time, she remains close with her roots, visiting her family several times a year. “Only the other day I performed in Metz and saw my friends and family,” she added, referring to northeast France’s cultural capital and the economic heart of the Lorraine region.

Defining herself further, Kaas regards herself as European in the sense that her music transcends borders.

“People are very curious about my music and who I am,” she adds. In Russia, for example, they see her as someone representing Paris and French culture. When she first sang there in 1989, Russia was beginning to go through a major political change, she maintained. “It was very important for Russians to have contact with the outside. Culturally, it was not just about my music but also what I represented, you know, French wine, fashion, life…”.

Coming from a very working class background with seven kids in the family, however, she believes that many Russians feel an affinity because she was poor and has now succeeded in life. Furthermore, when she was young and first went to Paris, she had an accent, a provincial German accent. Ordinary people can identify with this, she explained. “But I made it in Paris and I am proud. I have achieved something with my music. This is what brings me to the heart of the people.” She is also touched by the fact that some, particularly in Eastern Europe, study her music.

Kaas was the first European singer since 1958 of any stature to perform openly in the ‘new’ Vietnam. This was in 1993. “I was both foreign and exotic to them, but the Vietnamese also have a strong memory of France from their colonial past, so they feel a connection,” she said. It was also a very curious experience with audiences going somewhat berserk given that her dress was short and the same colour as her skin. “I wasn’t intending to be outright sexy, but I have never had such security,” added with a slight laugh. Hence the comparison with Madonna.

So far as her music is concerned, Kaas has a preference for emotional texts. It all then depends on how she expresses herself. “I have to have my soul when I sing and this is what audiences expect, particularly after 30 years, so I always try to give them a mix of the old and the new.”

Edward Girardet is editor of Global Geneva magazine.

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WHY ‘MEDIA’ IS NOT JOURNALISM

A British television team reporting the war in Afghanistan.

Recent events, particularly Brexit and Donald Trump’s arrival in the White House, have powerfully underlined the urgent need for real reporting. This comes at a time when governments, politicians, corporate lobbyists and a host of other players unabashedly manipulate the public domain with blatant lies, untruths, fake news, alternative facts and other disinformation terms. As Global Geneva contributing editor Mort Rosenblum writes, if we wish our democracies to survive, it is time to stand up for credible journalism and not be intimidated by the likes of Trump.

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mong the scariest aspects of the creeping coup d’etat in America is that so many among the fringe of voters who elected Donald Trump, who spout their worldviews with ironbound conviction, could not find Syria on a map or tell you the difference between Switzerland and Swaziland. Wondrous new tools provide firsthand dispatches, up-close images, and analyses from just about anywhere. Yet, at a time when reliable reporting is so crucial to human survival, Americans have never been so ignorant of real-world realities.

Rather than make sense of this heaven-sent manna, many simply tune it out and keep a tenuous watch on global events via hodgepodge aggregator sites or disjointed snippets that appear on their Facebook feeds.

Everything is lumped together as “the media,” whether it is an eyewitness report from besieged Mosul, insight from a correspondent who has spent a lifetime on the road, or guesswork from a kibitzer in his bedroom an ocean away.

Media is no more useful as a collective noun than, say, food, which covers anything from a six-course dinner prepared by a three-star chef to greasy fries and a Big Mac in a paper bag. Faults of its worst extremes are attributed equally to all. Against this backdrop, people who can’t find Africa on a map, let alone Benghazi, denounce Hillary Clinton for failing to help whoever it was in that terrorist attack, whatever it was about — something to do with Qaddafi.

This is tailor-made for a bombastic demagogue focused fixedly on himself. Trump lies outrageously to bedrock supporters, who believe him rather than their own eyes.

They cheer wildly when he labels all journalists dishonest and despicable.

A recent poll at Emerson College in Boston found that 49 per cent of American voters it sampled believe the Trump administration is “truthful.” But only 39 per cent felt that way about the “news media.” Pause a moment to catch your breath.

Trump demonized news organizations from the beginning and yet his circus-act campaign elicited billions of dollars worth of free airtime. Cameras rolled, with no critical comment, as he spewed preposterous distortions, outright lies, insults, and baseless accusations. News executives fixated on quarterly profit with little regard for public responsibility exulted at the windfall.

The bias perception runs deep. One popular conservative financial newsletter began: “The media declared Donald Trump as enemy, and like any enemy, they’ve set out to destroy him.” That is, only his alternative facts matter. During the campaign, t-shirts appeared reading, “Rope. Tree. Journalist. Some assembly required.” I chuckled at that, thinking how few of those morons could read the instructions to pull it off. But it’s not really funny.

Corporate mainstream media pulled its punches. It was too respectful of “authority,” too fearful of perceived offense, too prone to dilute reality with false equivalence.

One incident illustrated clearly how this played out.

Christopher Morris, working for Time, photographed a Trump rally that was disrupted by Black Lives Matter protesters. He is a seasoned pro, who alternates between covering far-flung mayhem and picturing presidential families in the White House. Chris took a half step out of the roped-in press pen, and two U.S. Secret Service agents threw him roughly to the ground. An understandable “fuck you” escaped his lips. On CBS Evening News, after a reporter narrated the footage and said Chris would not file charges, Scott Pelley said something like: No wonder, considering the way he treated those federal agents.

“Fake news” is a problem. Trump uses the label for actual news he doesn’t like. But it refers to propaganda, easy to debunk, that should only fool the foolish. Yet one poll estimated half of Trump voters believed Clinton ran sex slaves out of a basement in a Washington pizzeria and that Obama is a foreign-born Muslim.

The bigger problem is thinly reported real news. It is too often sketchy, bereft of the political and cultural contexts that explain why it matters. Americans who care can inform themselves these days far more effectively than ever before. But that takes work, the sort of triangulation that reporters apply. If two trusted news organizations concur on a story, and an independent third source adds perspective, it is reliable.

The New York Times, Washington Post, The New Yorker, among others, dug deep for solid coverage throughout the campaign. But non-American reporters with a detached eye added essential details to reveal the man behind the message. An American president, whatever his other attributes, needs humanity and character.

Holger Stark of Der Spiegel, for instance, described a New England rally last winter: “When Trump began speaking, a demonstrator stood up and yelled that Trump was a racist. The candidate paused, shook his fist and demanded that security throw the protester out. ‘Keep his coat. Confiscate his coat, Let the bastard freeze.’ Trump said from the stage. It was 21 degrees Fahrenheit (-6 degrees Celsius) outside. Trump snarled as his fans jumped to their feet hooting and jeering. One was reminded of a lynch mob.”

Demagoguery is hardly new, but the world is different now. A mad ruler’s reach was once limited to how far and fast his armies could march. Today, when the threat is global and of incalculable proportions, we Americans — but also Europeans - need to keep careful watch. If not, we cannot blame a meaningless scapegoat known as “the media.”

Mort Rosenblum is a journalist, editor and writer, who has reported widely across seven continents from the wars in Biafra and Ethiopia to Trump’s America. A former editor of the International Herald Tribune and a Senior Writer with the Associated Press, he has written numerous books, including Little Bunch of Madmen: Elements of Global Reporting (2010), Escaping Plato’s Cave (2007), Chocolate: A Bittersweet Saga of Dark and Light (2006, Olives (2000), Who Stole the News? (1993) and Coups and Earthquakes (1981). He writes and lectures regularly on media and political issues and lives between the United States and France. His pieces appear on his regular Facebook blog, Reporting Unlimited.

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ANNECY

THE PERFECT CLICHE

As travel writer Leyla Alyanak points out, the Haute Savoie town of Annecy may be clichéd as tourism destination, but it still draws even the most blasé Genevans to its lake and walls.

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bad travel story about Annecy would read something like this: It is a charming (perhaps even adorable) little city “nestled between a stunning lake and majestic mountains” in a “fairy-tale setting” with a “breathtaking medieval old town”.

This poses a problem. That description, however clichéd, describes Annecy to perfection.

If you were an eagle soaring high, you would see a roughly rectangular lake of deep turquoise, the city fanning out at its northern end and its shores ringed by pre-Alpine mountains. As you circled the lake — its waters are reputed to be among Europe’s cleanest — you might swoop down over a castle or two, skim past sailboat masts or admire the shadow of your wings silhouetted against the mountainside, competing with the intrepid paragliders who dot the sky.

You don’t even have to take my word for it —take Mark Twain’s. Lake Annecy was “a revelation, a miracle” that brought tears to his eyes. By 2020, you’ll be able to walk or

Three times a week — on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays — locals gather throughout the old town to sell produce but also specialty cheeses and sausages, like the garlic saucisson with espelette peppers. On the last Saturday of the month, the old town is transformed into a busy antiques market, with grandfather clocks and grandmother’s crockery stuffed pell-mell under the arcades.

All this outdoor activity whips up an appetite. With a foot in urban France and the other in rural Savoy, cheese is a staple. At L’Etage, you can (and you should) order your cheese fondue with truffles. At the Fromagerie Pierre Gay, make your way to the back of the shop and bravely stand on the thick glass floor: below you, hundreds of cheeses are busy ageing until maturity.

cycle all the way around the body of water he described as “a little blue and a little bluer still, and again a shade bluer till you strike, the deep, rich Mediterranean splendor which breaks the heart in your bosom, it is so beautiful.”

Where the lake meets the city, the Thiou River — possibly Europe’s smallest — splits into canals that have earned Annecy the nickname of “Venice of the Alps”.

Between lake and town, as a border might, sits the Paquier, an enormous expanse of grass filled with people enjoying a view of the lake and which was, not so long ago, still a cow pasture.

Annecy is a city so beloved it has been called the “prettiest town in France”. Of course it has a spectacular chateau — this is France, after all — and it has plenty of churches, as would befit a city serving as a refuge from Calvinist Geneva during the Reformation. Its most iconic sight is surely the Palais de l’Ile, a triangular structure built on the river, against which every selfie in Annecy seems to be snapped and which has served successively as a mint, a royal residence, a barracks, an old people’s home and a prison.

One of my greatest pleasures in Annecy is to sit in a café and watch people ambling along the crooked streets and vaulted arches, stepping across cobblestones and listening to the water splashing, flowing and tumbling over the Thiou’s waterwheels.

unlikely as licorice, violet or basil. Or do both.

Strategically positioned between Geneva and Italy, Annecy was already a village in 3100 BC but the city as we know it today is more recent, dating back to the 12th century. Over time, much of it spent as part of the Holy Roman Germanic Empire, Annecy bounced from ownership by Savoy to France to Sardinia and finally to France again. To many Savoyards who see French rule as an imposition, that final word hasn’t been spoken yet.

Annecy was only discovered as a tourist destination after the arrival of the steam train in the mid-1800s.

While today it is a quick and scenic 30-minute drive from Geneva, it was once considered the ‘end of France’. If you went any further, you’d be in Switzerland.

In a region — the French Alps — with a surfeit of spectacular scenery, Annecy manages to corner many superlatives. There’s no way around it. Annecy most certainly is charming, its setting is sublime, and its streets are delightfully picturesque. Sometimes a well-worn phrase is the only one worth using — and when a phrase becomes a cliché, there is usually a reason.

Tired of cheese? Philippe Rigollot is a past winner of the World Pastry Championship, and you’ll know why if you try his Passion Burger, a delightful trompe l’oeil made of brioche, passion fruit and chocolate. Or stop at one of Annecy’s famous ice cream parlours for flavours as

Leyla Alyanak is a Contributing Editor of Global Geneva and writes about travel at Women on the Road (LINK: http://www. womenontheroad.com)

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ZUNAR AND GADO: RESISTING WITH POLITICAL CARTOONS

A recently opened exhibition (until 2 April, 2017) in the Swiss Lake Geneva town of Morges explores the role of political cartoons as a form of resistance to government and other forms of repression, writes Luisa Ballin. The exhibition focuses on the works of Malaysian artist Zunar and Tanzanian Gado, both laureates of the 2016 International Press Drawing Awards, which are given every two years by the City of Geneva and the Cartooning for Peace Foundation.

Zunar, who faces 43 years imprisonment for sedition, notably his criticism of Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak for his alleged corruption, and Gado, who lives in Nairobi but lost his job to government pressure for lambasting both Kenya’s and Tanzania’s presidents, have made their mark for being too daring. Armed only with pencils, talent and creativity, each has denounced with his own sharp wit, the official graft that exists in their respective countries.

“How can I remain neutral if even my pen takes a position?” asked Zunar, when he and Gado jointly received the City of Geneva and Cartooning for Peace award. For almost a decade, Zunar has been living with a Damocles sword over his head. The Razak government could easily cut this loose at any moment by forbidding him to travel or to distribute any of his publications.

Global investigators and human rights groups believe that the Malayasian Prime Minister may have embezzled more than $1 billion, much of it taken from a state investment fund. While Najib denies any wrong-doing and continues to repress any form of press opposition, the scandal has caused major rifts within his own party.

Such threats notwithstanding, Zunar last December received the support of numerous artists, such as Switzerland’s Patrick Chapatte, vice-president of the Cartooning for Peace Foundation and whose work is published by the New York Times, Le Temps and Neue Zurcher Zeitung (NZZ). All demanded “an immediate end to his harassment.”

Chappatte also has not hesitated to offer his support to Gado, whose real name is Godfrey Mwampembwa, by recently inviting him to his Geneva atelier on the eve of the Morges exhibition. This, he said, was to express his backing for one of Africa’s most celebrated cartoonists, who, since 1992, has been the principal artistic contributor of The Daily Nation in Nairobi. He also draws for other newspapers and magazines, such as Tanzania’s Daily News and Business Times Express, South Africa’s Sunday Tribune, the UK’s New African and Courrier International in France.

In 2015, however, The Daily Nation suddenly announced that it would not be renewing his contract.

Despite denials by the publishers, Gato maintains that this was the result of months of political pressure by Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto, including legal action over his cartoons. Since 2013, press freedoms in Kenya have come under growing pressure by a government that is increasingly accused of corruption and political manipulation. While the Nation Media Group deny that they are being coerced, a July 2015 Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) report maintains that since Kenyatta took power, journalists in the country “are vulnerable to legal harassment, threats, or attack, while news outlets are manipulated by advertisers or politician-owners."

The Zunar and Gado exhibition runs until 2 April, 2017.

Maison du Dessin de Presse, Rue Louis de Savoie 39, Morges.

For more visit: www.maisondudessindepresse.ch

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ENCOUNTERS

Anyone who has a story to tell about a personal encounter with the good, the bad or the nasty (living or dead) is welcome to contribute.

T

ON MEETING OSAMA BIN LADEN

When the Soviet Union withdrew from Afghanistan in February, 1989 after nearly a decade of failed occupation, most Red Army soldiers were already gone. In their stead, they left a demoralized force of Afghan soldiers and militia to protect the communist ‘Khalqi’ regime in Kabul. With their backs to the wall, these would continue fighting for almost three more years. Reporting Moscow’s final days, Edward Girardet visited the frontlines near the eastern town of Jalalabad where both government and guerrilla forces were shelling each other. Dug in at the base of a low mountain, he came across a group of foreign Jihadists, one of them an extremely tall Arab...

he Arabi manned their own trenches well away from those of the mujahideen, as Afghan guerrillas were known. The Afghans did not particularly like these foreign Islamic legionnaires, mainly Wahhabi from Saudi Arabia, Yemen or North Africa. They considered them both excessively wealthy and arrogant, but, in good Afghan tradition - “You can always rent an Afghan; you can never buy him” - they readily took the Arab dollar. Furthermore, if these diwane (crazy people) wanted to die fighting Jihad (holy war), then let them. Most Afghans had no intention of succumbing on the battlefield, even if they did fight hard and well. They were not idiots.

So it was with some surprise that I beheld the strikingly tall Arab with the wispy beard emerge from his dugout demanding to know who I was. He was evidently the leader of this bedraggled group of 60-odd Jihadists.

Afghanistan at the time was the only Jihad going, so it had become a sort of rite of passage for any Islamist — a bit like young Americans “doing Europe” after college — to claim that he had spent a few months combatting the filthy Russian kafirs (infidels) in the Hindu Kush. The fact that most did very little fighting was another matter.

It was all for show.

“Who are you and what are you doing in Afghanistan?” the Arab demanded in slightly American-accented English. Wearing a military fatigue anorak and billowing trousers with black boots, he scarcely hid his contempt for the kafir a few paces away. He spoke with the confidence of someone from an affluent background who always got his way. Within minutes, a good dozen fellow Arabs, all armed with AK-74 assault rifles or rocket-propelled grenade launchers, had stepped up behind him. In turn, various Afghans came out from their trenches to gather behind me.

It was a curious standoff. I resented the manner with which the Arab had addressed me. So, for the benefit of my Afghan companions, I turned to Abdul, my interpreter, and asked him in English what this man wanted. Abdul glanced at me quizzically. “He wants to know who you are and what you are doing?” he said.

Tell him, I declared as grandly as possible, that “I’ll leave if our Afghan friends no longer consider us their guests, just as I am sure you’ll leave if they no longer consider you their guests.” Grasping what I was doing, Abdul dutifully recounted with amusement what I had just said to the Arab — in English. He then translated the same in Pushto to the Afghans, who now regarded the confrontation as a form of trench theatre to be enjoyed. Visibly annoyed, the tall Arab, who gave his name as Abu-al Kakar, retorted: “This is our jihad, not yours. Afghanistan does not want you.” Once again, Abdul ‘translated’ back to me in English.

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I now felt that I had made my point. We began to debate directly, at first heatedly, almost childishly, and then guardedly. At one point, it even became a relaxed conversation. I explained that I had been covering the war since just prior to the Soviet invasion, and had never seen him or any of his colleagues. He glared at me angrily when I also remarked that French doctors - most of them women - had been risking their lives helping Afghans since 1980.

I noted that most Afghans welcomed the international aid workers and journalists who had come to their country in their time of difficulty.

“Where were you people then?” I could not help adding.

“You just throw money and pretend that you are fighting Jihad.” It was probably not the wisest thing to say. I could hear the giggles of the Afghans as soon as Abdul had translated. For them, this was wonderful entertainment. They clearly did not like the Arabs.

For his part, the Arab commander, who referred to me as a kafir to my face, contemptuously maintained that he was fighting Jihad. “Afghanistan does not matter.

It is Islam that matters,” he declared. Raising both hands while peppering his discourse with Koranic references, he claimed that he and his men were here because of Allah.

“The Afghans are our brothers of Islam, but we were here to fight all enemies — Americans, Russians, Israelis,” he said.

We talked for nearly an hour. At one point, the tall Arab disdainfully claimed that the Afghans were uneducated and not real Muslims. “We have to show them the true Islam,” he maintained. I was wary of overextending our conversation. With his unsmiling entourage of fighters and my bemused Afghans, it could easily deteriorate. I gestured to my colleague, Steve McCurry, a photographer for National Geographic, who had been clambering over the nearby hill shooting pictures of the government positions below, that it was time to leave. I bade the commander farewell, moving forward to shake his hand. He refused.

“You see,” I ventured. “You keep saying how uneducated these Afghans are, and what poor Muslims." For me, I explained, they understand civilization and hospitality. They will always shake your hand. “That is why this is such an extraordinary country and why this extraordinary people will never be like you.” Of course, I was saying this for the benefit of the Afghans, but I also meant it. As I turned to finally leave, I heard the Arab’s voice.

“Don’t come back. If I see you again, I’ll kill you.”

A week later, I was back inside, this time to shoot a television documentary with producer-cameraman Tom Woods to mark the last day of the Soviet occupation.

We spent several days filming bombed villages but also newly-established chaikhane (tea houses) and market places catering to the Afghan guerrillas converging for what they expected would be their final victory against the Khalqi. Our Afghan commanders suggested we head down to the frontlines.

As we drew up, the Arabs appeared with their weapons and I warily remembered the final words of the tall Arab. The Afghan commanders, however, dismissed my concerns: “This is Afghanistan. These Arabi don’t tell us what to do.”

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Afghan guerrillas surveying the frontlines near Bin Laden’s trenches.

“I told you not to come back!” came a loud, irate voice from the scrum. It was the tall Arab. Wearing a beige shalwar-kamiz and a white headscarf, he demanded to know why we had returned. An argument erupted between the Jihadists and the Afghans. Screaming, they levelled their guns at each other. Tom was trying to film discreetly, holding his camera at knee level, but the Arab commander saw the red recording light. “Turn that camera off,” he bellowed. A small, squat Arab stuck his Kalashnikov into Tom’s back, cocking it.

For the first time, I felt we might be killed. Either by the mortars now exploding less than 150 meters away, or by these deranged Jihadists. Mohammad Ali, our Afghan commander and a former English teacher, obviously felt the same way. He stepped into the melee holding up his arms and shouting in Pashto and Arabic. “Stop! Stop! This is not good for Islam.” At the same time, one of his men bundled us to our pickups. As we careened down the track, two mortars slammed into the very place where the vehicle had been parked, showering us with earth and stones. The other vehicle, now following close behind, remained miraculously unscathed.

A few years later, I found myself in Kabul, which the mujahideen had finally taken, where I bumped into our erstwhile commander from that encounter near Jalalabad.

We embraced and sat down at a nearby chaikhana to catch up. “By the way,” he laughed. “Do you remember that tall Arab, you know, the one who wanted to kill you?”

How could I not?

“Well, you know who that was?” Mohammad Ali asked.

I shook my head.

“Osama bin Laden.”

Edward Girardet is editor of Global Geneva. You can read about his Afghan experiences in his most recent book: Killing the Cranes — A Reporter’s Journey through three decades of war in Afghanistan.

(Chelsea Green) Available in French: Il me parait que vous voulez me tuer. (Editions Les Arènes, Paris). Girardet is also co-editor of The Essential Field Guide to Afghanistan (4th fully revised edition)