Ninety-Nine magazine - February 2019 by Global Justice Now

Challenging the power of the

Issue 13 - February 2019

Corporate courts are hammering democracy

Also in this issue Bolsonaroâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Brazil Inside the migrant caravan The great aid betrayal

ISSUE 13: February 2019 03 Campaign news 06 Global news 08 Corporations vs democracy 10 Indonesia resists corporate courts 13 Global Justice Now supporters 14 The great aid betrayal 16 Escaping the Honduran nightmare 18 Bolsonaro’s Brazil 19 Reviews

Ninety-Nine is published three times a year by Global Justice Now Global Justice Now campaigns for a world where resources are controlled by the many, not the few. We champion social movements and propose democratic alternatives to the rule of the 1%. Our activists and groups in towns and cities around the UK work in solidarity with those at the sharp end of poverty and injustice. Ninety-Nine magazine, Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road, London SW9 0LS 020 7820 4900 • offleyroad@globaljustice.org.uk • globaljustice.org.uk Editor: Jonathan Stevenson Graphic Design: Matt Bonner www.revoltdesign.org Cover illustration: RevAngel Designs Printed on 100% recycled paper. Get Ninety-Nine delivered to your door three times a year when you become a member of Global Justice Now. Go to globaljustice.org.uk/join

We can beat corporate courts Heidi Chow Senior campaigns manager This month we are launching a new campaign to challenge the corporate privileges embedded in trade and investment deals in the form of corporate courts. These courts, known officially as Investor-State Dispute Settlement or ISDS, enable big business to sue governments for making decisions that threaten their profits. We first opposed them as part of our campaigns against TTIP and CETA in recent years. These campaigns succeeded in drawing attention to corporate courts in a major way and mobilised widespread opposition to them. With growing resistance to corporate courts globally, we are joining the fight again to challenge these courts and their threat to democracy. Around the world, billions of pounds in public money has already been paid out by governments to companies which objected to policies protecting environment, public health or workers’ rights. It’s a flagrant elevation of corporate privilege over human rights and it's no The UK ranks wonder this attack on democratic decisionin the top three making has sparked countries globally resistance. TTIP and CETA for the number of represented a massive companies suing in attempt to expand this form of corporate power corporate courts. So and the campaigns we have a crucial against them brought corporate courts into the role to play in the light. Now, the system is global movement. facing a crisis of legitimacy as countries such as South Africa, Bolivia, Ecuador, Indonesia and Tanzania have all terminated investment treaties which include ISDS. Government officials, small businesses, academics, trade unions and civil society groups have spoken out against corporate courts. And people are mobilising against them in different parts of the world and across Europe.

This means we have a window of opportunity to push back against this unjust system of corporate privilege. That’s why we are launching a new campaign to get corporate courts out of UK trade and investment deals. Whatever happens with Brexit, the UK will retain the power to strike its own investment deals with other countries. And the UK ranks in the top three countries globally for the number of companies suing other governments under this system. @GlobalJusticeUK Global Justice Now

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If we are going to address the dominance of corporate power in driving inequality, marginalisation and poverty – here in the UK and around the world – then now is the time to mobilise together to get rid of corporate courts once and for all.

Pablo Fajardo, a lawyer for communities resisting human rights abuses in Ecuador, holds a copy of the draft treaty. Below: Campaigners marching in Geneva ahead of the week of discussions on the UN treaty.

CAMPAIGN NEWS

Binding UN treaty on corporate abuses takes step forward Global Justice Now joined more than 200 NGOs and movements from around the world in Geneva in October for a week of action to push the UN to develop a legally binding treaty to force transnational corporations to abide by human rights responsibilities. After several years of preliminary negotiations, the UN human rights council was beginning discussions on a draft text of the treaty. The UK, which currently sits on the council, has traditionally been hostile to the treaty, supported by Ecuador, South Africa and many other developing countries. Thousands of Global Justice Now supporters emailed new foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt to demand the UK supports the treaty. Despite critical interventions by members of the European Union delegation, the process survived and discussions will

continue in 2019. UK campaigners were joined in Geneva by supportive politicians including Helen Goodman, Labour MP and Shadow Foreign Office minister and Molly Scott Cato,

Green MEP. They participated in a side event organised by a network of parliamentarians and local government officials who support the binding treaty process. UK

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, who expressed his support for the treaty in 2017, also met with a delegation of movements on a visit to Geneva. During the week of action Global Justice Now released updated statistics showing that 69 of the world’s top 100 economic entities are corporations rather than countries. Comparing annual revenues for governments and corporations, it found that the top 10 corporations by revenue – a list which includes Walmart, Apple and Shell as well as several Chinese corporations – all accrued more wealth than even fairly rich countries like Russia, Belgium and Sweden in 2017. When it comes to the top 200 entities, the gap between corporations and governments gets even more pronounced: 157 are corporations. Read more: globaljustice.org.uk/corporate-power

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Global Justice Bristol activists dressed as chlorinated chickens challenge leading Brexiter Jacob Rees-Mogg at his constituency surgery in Saltford in October.

CAMPAIGN NEWS

Pressure for trade democracy grows amid Brexit uncertainty For the last 12 months, Global Justice Now has been trying to amend the government’s Trade Bill to secure democratic control over the UK’s planned post-Brexit trade deals. The Trade Bill has been stuck in the House of Lords since the autumn, after repeated delays to avoid Brexit rebellions. Following last summer’s narrow defeat for a key amendment in the House of Commons, more than 67,000 people signed our trade democracy petition to the Lords, with other Trade Justice Movement members, and several new amendments have been tabled

by opposition peers. As Ninety-Nine goes to press, we are waiting for a confirmed date for the Bill’s next stage. Meanwhile, Global Justice Now director Nick Dearden again gave evidence to parliament’s international trade committee in October, and was interviewed by BBC Radio 4 for a documentary about global trade. In late December the trade committee released a report calling for MPs to be given a “meaningful role” in ratifying post-Brexit trade deals, including scrutiny at an early stage and a decisive final vote – two of our key demands.

Many thousands of Global Justice Now supporters made submissions to trade secretary Liam Fox’s four consultations over possible post-Brexit trade deals with the US, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In December Fox reported that more than 600,000 submissions had been received in total making it the largest public consultation in UK history. Whether it will also turn out to be the largest exercise in not listening to the public remains to be seen. Listen to Nick Dearden on BBC Radio 4 at: globaljustice.org.uk/tradedocumentary

Over 125 MPs sign MPs Not Border Guards pledge Thank you to everyone who sent the MPs Not Border Guards postcard to your MP in the last issue of Ninety-Nine. So far 129 MPs have signed the pledge not to report their constituents to the Home Office as part of the government’s ‘hostile environment’ for migrants, and to make sure their surgery is a safe space for all. It follows new figures showing the immigration enforcement hotline was called 68 times by MPs or their staff last year. In October a group of leading

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migrant organisations, including Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and Doctors of the World, wrote to the speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow MP, in support of the campaign. This led to media coverage on the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire show and across national newspapers. Global Justice Now continues to push the campaign with our partner, Migrants Organise. Check if your MP has signed at: globaljustice.org.uk/signatories

nise on the m Migrants Orga Akram Salhab fro w. sho re shi rby De ia BBC Victor

CAMPAIGN NEWS

Taking public control of medicines

The report authors at the launch at the

Royal Societ y of Medicine.

Global Justice Now’s pharmaceuticals campaign is taking on the system that allows big drugs companies to make killer profits while pricing people out of medicines around the world. In our latest report, The People’s Prescription: Reimagining health innovation to deliver public value, we explore alternatives to this system in partnership with campaign groups STOPAIDS and Just Treatment, as well as University College London researchers including economist Mariana Mazzucato. The report outlines actions that governments can take today to address the symptoms of this failing system as well as radical ways to transform it in the long term. Last year the UK’s cash-strapped NHS was forced to spend £20 billion on medicines – a bill that is rising faster than its budget despite recent increases. Yet still the NHS was unable to afford the most expensive drugs. Patients are being denied access to life-changing medicines like Orkambi, which treats cystic fibrosis, because the company which makes it refuses to offer the drug at a price the NHS can afford. Globally, the system of relying on private companies and ‘the market’ to produce medicines is failing patients, and we urgently need changes which increase public control. Read more at: globaljustice.org.uk/medicines-briefing

Putting the hostile environment on trial “Colonisation stole Nigeria’s wealth and made us poor, now that we come here to escape poverty, we are accused of stealing jobs and are called illegal.” These words were part of Clara Osegiede’s powerful description of her life and experience in the UK as a migrant. Her testimony was one of the many powerful and inspiring stories heard at the two-day public hearings of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on the 'hostile environment' held in London on 3 and 4 November. The tribunal, which Global Justice Now co-convened with 15 other organisations and the support of 50 others, discussed the systemic violations of the fundamental rights to life and dignity that are part of the living and working conditions of migrants and refugees here in the UK. These violations are deemed systemic as they result from a spectrum of repressive legislation and policies enacted by the UK government over several years. There were four sessions at the London tribunal: (1) State of Fear, on living in destitution and on exclusion, surveillance and enforcement; (2) Detention and Corporate Profit; (3) The Global Supply Chain and Labour Exploitation; and (4) Gender and Labour Migration. These came out of the more than 50 submitted written and oral testimonies from migrants, refugees and witnesses received by the tribunal. Co-convening the tribunal was part of Global Justice Now’s work on issues surrounding the causes and conditions of migration, which we consider a social, political and economic justice issue. Read more at: globaljustice.org.uk/ppt-london

Gracie Mae Bradley giving evidence about the hostile environment in education at the Permanent Peoples' Tribunal.

GLOBAL NEWS MOVEMENT NEWS

South Africans win landmark case against mining companies

25 October 2018: Residents of the Lesetlheng village community celebrating outside the Constitutional Court in Johannesburg after the verdict.

A group of 13 families from the village of Lesetlheng in north-western South Africa won a landmark victory in October, when the country’s Constitutional Court ruled against a platinum mine which had evicted them from their farming land and banned them from setting foot on it. The verdict has been seen as fundamentally challenging the power imbalance between mining companies and local communities in rural South Africa. Louise Du Plessis of

Lawyers for Human Rights said: “This judgment is exactly the milestone mining communities needed, especially because it clearly outlined that having a mining right does not surpass the rights of those that are currently occupying the land.” The community had first bought the land in 1919, but due to the racist colonial laws of the time, they were unable to register the farm in their names. The judge quoted Frantz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth

in his judgement: “For the colonised people, the most essential value, because the most concrete, is first and foremost the land: the land which will bring them bread and, above all, dignity.” “This is not about us, it is about our children and our children’s future,” said Motlapele Ntshabele, 67, from Lesetlheng. “We are very happy that we have set a trend for other communities in South Africa.”

UN votes to recognise rights of small farmers The global movement for food sovereignty won a significant victory in December when the ‘UN declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas’ was ratified by the UN General Assembly. The declaration recognises the rights of small-scale food producers who feed the majority of the world’s population, but face mounting

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levels of violence, oppression and discrimination. Their livelihoods and communities are threatened by the expansion of global agribusiness, which is grabbing their land and seeds and destroying the environment they rely on for food production. The historic declaration is the product of around two decades of negotiation and advocacy

spearheaded by the global social movement for food producers, La Via Campesina. Global Justice Now supporters have mobilised at key moments during this process in the last few years in solidarity. The declaration will be an important tool for civil society to resist further agribusiness expansion and protect against state repression.

GLOBAL MOVEMENT GLOBAL NEWS

NEWS SHORTS Sit-in for climate justice at Poland climate talks

London bankers arrested over $2bn secret loans to Mozambique government to purchase boats including for military use, were not approved by Mozambique’s parliament, making them illegal, and were only revealed in 2016, sparking an international crisis for the country. The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority was criticised by Mozambican campaigners after dropping its own investigation into the scandal in November. The Jubilee Debt Campaign is calling for a change to UK law to require all loans given to governments to be publicly disclosed.

Hundreds of climate justice activists from around the world staged a sit-in on the last day of the COP24 UN climate talks in Katowice, Poland in December. They were demonstrating against the lack of substantive progress on crucial justice issues, such as delivering funding for countries in the global south.

Three former bankers from Credit Suisse were arrested in January as part of a US investigation into a secret loans scandal in Mozambique. It followed the arrest of former Mozambique finance minister Manuel Chang at a South African airport in December. Civil society groups in Mozambique have been demanding international action over the scandal, which saw $2 billion of secret loans made by London-based banks Credit Suisse and VTB in 2013. The loans, which were used by the then Mozambican

Indian women form enormous human chain for gender equality

Global movement gathers to fight neoliberal healthcare

Up to 5 million women formed an extraordinary 620km-long human chain in the southern Indian state of Kerala in January. The government-backed protest was in response to attacks on female visitors to a prominent Hindu temple, historically closed to women ‘of menstruating age’. It followed India's top court overturning the ban in September. Tunisians protest as eighth anniversary approaches

Demonstrations erupted in several Tunisian towns and cities in December against the continuing failure to improve living conditions nearly eight years after the 2011 revolution. The unrest followed the death of journalist Abderrazk Zorgui, 32, who set himself on fire in protest. Tunisia faces high inflation and unemployment levels amid an IMF-imposed austerity programme.

At a workshop on the right to safe abortion, participants show solidarity with Argentina’s ‘green scarves’ movement.

The People’s Health Assembly in Bangladesh in November brought together over 1,400 activists, health workers and campaigners from 73 countries to ignite solidarity and direction in the fight for health for all. In an inspiring four days, activists from the global north and south came together to strategise and share learnings and perspectives on diverse themes related to health. It was the fourth time the People's Health Movement has organised such an assembly since 2000.

From the fight against privatisation of health in Tunisia, to access to medicines in India, and indigenous movements ‘decolonising’ health in Latin America (undoing the effects of colonialism), the assembly emphasised that the struggle for everyone’s right to health is a political act of resistance to neoliberalism. Global Justice Now took part in the assembly and we are looking forward to contributing to the movement in the coming years. 2019 Ninety-Nine 7

TRADE

Corporations vs democracy They’re the barely-believable secret tribunals that brought down TTIP. But corporate courts are deeply embedded in thousands of treaties, and it’ll take an international push to roll them back, writes JONATHAN STEVENSON Do you remember, before we were rudely interrupted by Brexit, having a conversation about corporate power? Before backstops, and before most people had heard of Dominic Raab, the original ‘taking back control’ was not about the transfer of power from Brussels to Westminster, but from corporations to the people. Between 2013, when the idea for an EU-US trade deal was first tabled, and 2016, when it was shelved, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) provoked a wave of popular revulsion around Europe. More than 3 million people signed a European citizens’ initiative against it. And right at the heart of that mass opposition were corporate courts – the investor-state dispute mechanism or ISDS which EU trade commissioner Cecilia Malmström called “the most toxic acronym in Europe”. And no wonder. Some of the cases brought before corporate courts are so outrageous they sound like caricatures of corporate greed. When Uruguay’s parliament voted to put visual warnings on cigarette packets, US tobacco giant Philip Morris demanded $22 million in lost profits. When Germany decided to bring an end to nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster, Swedish energy giant Vattenfall demanded a $5 billion payout. And after the Obama administration decided to reject the Keystone XL pipeline bringing more toxic tar sands oil to the US, energy corporation TransCanada claimed $15 billion. This is what corporate courts do: they give special privileges to transnational companies to challenge democracy. Thanks to clauses written into over 3,000 international investment agreements

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over the last 50 years, corporations can sue governments in these tribunals for making decisions that harm their profits. These powers aren’t available to ordinary people – or to domestic companies. They are only available to foreign companies and superrich investors. Corporate courts exist outside normal legal frameworks. They usually meet in secret, are presided over by specialist corporate lawyers, and there is no right of appeal. Crucially, their judgements are not required to balance

Opposition to corporate courts was a key part of the campaign against TTIP, the proposed EU-US trade deal.

TRADE

TAKE ACTION Sign and return the enclosed postcard calling on the UK government to take out corporate courts from UK trade and investment policy.

Freepost RRBA-HAE G-YUHJ Global Justice Now 66 Offley Road London SW9 0LS

investment treaties against other international obligations – human rights law, for example, or environmental following protections. They are the backlash narrowly focused on the claims of investors. Most deals involving ISDS are contained in against TTIP, the EUinvestment treaties between two countries. Australia The first was signed in 1968 between and Indonesia and the Netherlands – many EU-New Zealand more were signed in the aftermath of free trade deals currently being decolonisation as western companies no negotiated will not contain it. longer enjoyed the protection of colonial Today, over 1,000 bilateral investment rule. The UK has 94 investment deals in force treaties have reached a stage today, the fourth most of any country. where one of the two countries could For decades, however, corporate courts terminate them. Most British deals were barely needed. By the turn of the with ISDS are among them. So we millennium, fewer than 50 ISDS cases had need to push home our ever been filed. Yet advantage. spurred on by a global We may never Increasingly, ISDS industry of lawyers is being bundled into have as good and financiers, there multilateral deals, deals have now been an opportunity which also cover trade (it’s more than 900. Over no coincidence that TTIP to put an end to half of judgements was a trade and investment find in favour of corporate courts deal). The Trans-Pacific investors – with many Partnership, which UK trade as we do today. more cases settled secretary Liam Fox wants out of court – and the UK to join after Brexit, contains it, for the money involved is huge. By the end instance. of 2016, the average successful claim The EU has been trying to learn from the against governments was $1.4 billion, the opposition to TTIP. When CETA, the Canadaaverage award was $545 million. Even if a EU trade deal, was agreed, it contained corporation loses a case, governments face a modified ‘new and better’ form of ISDS. typical legal costs of $6 million, and up to And in early 2018, the European Commission $24 million in some cases. started to try and negotiate a permanent GLOBAL FIGHTBACK Multilateral Investment Court, to embed an In recent years, however, this attack on ‘ISDS-light’ system internationally. democratic decision-making has sparked But institutionalising ISDS, however ‘light’, resistance, especially in the global south. won’t cut it. We may never have as good South Africa led the way, terminating an opportunity to put an end to this system investment deals that had been used as we do today. Whatever happens with to challenge post-apartheid changes Brexit, we need to return to that earlier to mining laws in the late 2000s. Bolivia, conversation. It’s time to take back control – Ecuador, Tanzania and Indonesia (see from corporations.. overleaf) have followed suit. Jonathan Stevenson is head of communications at Then, in spring 2011, Australia said it would Global Justice Now. no longer include ISDS in trade deals, and

STOP CORPORATE COURTS HAMMERING DEMOCRACY

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TRADE

Our resources, our choice RACHMI HERTANTI on how the mining industry’s cynical use of corporate courts to sue Indonesia has sparked resistance Below: Indonesia for Global Justice hold a public assembly in Jakarta. Right: Rachmi Hertanti at the Asia-Europe People's Forum last year.

In 2012 two lawsuits filed in international tribunals shook the Indonesian government. Churchill Mining and Ravat Ali Rizfi sued Indonesia for lost profits under the terms of the UK-Indonesia bilateral investment treaty, signed by President Suharto in 1976. Churchill claimed to have suffered up to $2 billion of losses after local officials revoked its license to mine coal in the East Kutai district (it later reduced the claim to $1.2 billion), while Ravat Ali claimed to have suffered losses related to banking investments. Together, they alerted the Indonesian government to the full dangers of international investments treaties, and the powers they contain.

POWER AND PROFIT Investment protection policy in Indonesia is tightly linked to the history of expropriation of its natural resources since independence in 1945. Foreign mining and mineral companies were heavily involved in the development of Indonesia’s investment laws, which provide open access for liberalisation in the mining, oil and gas sectors by foreign companies, and maximum protection for foreign investors. Between 1967, when he came to power, and the 1970s, President Suharto signed bilateral investment treaties with Germany, Luxemburg, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United

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TRADE

Kingdom. Since the colonial era these countries have had long historical ties with Indonesia related to mining and plantations. Along with the United States, they are the biggest players in the extractives industry today. Up to now there have been eight Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) cases against Indonesia, half of them in the mining sector, and the sums demanded are vast. In the Churchill Mining case, the $1.2 billion ultimately demanded is equivalent to more than three-quarters of the funds allocated to food subsidies by the Indonesian government in a year. It is also more than Indonesia spends on support for public transport, small and medium enterprises and subsidising seeds for farmers combined. Another mining company, Indian Metals & Ferro Alloys, filed a case against Indonesia in 2015 because the local government revoked their mining license in Kalimantan. The claim is for $560 million – enough to pay 64,130 teachers for a year.

treaty, via a Dutch subsidiary. It in the case of Newmont. In 2009, objected to the law, and halted Indonesia introduced a new law on work at the Batu Hijau copper and coal and mining, which aimed to transform the mining industry to ensure gold mine on the island of Sumbawa in West Nusa Tanggara Province, it was of greater benefit to the people subsequently closing it. Eventually, of Indonesia. Instead of raw materials Newmont withdrew being mined and its ISDS claim, but exported directly, not before it was companies ISDS lawsuits in REGULATORY CHILL given special would have to the mining sector exemptions by the ‘downstream’ In effect, ISDS allows corporations to government. It was production – aim to weaken hold the state hostage while they required to pay refining and seek control of Indonesia’s natural the government’s only a 7.5% export processing resources. The threat of lawsuits duty, and signed minerals in role and oppose means the state does not have the Indonesia before sovereignty to make decisions that its efforts to restore aofmemorandum understanding exporting them. prioritise the interests of Indonesian popular control of allowing it This would have people. Corporations are able to to resume to happen intervene in the process of deciding natural resources, exporting on the within five years, the direction of the country’s as well as improve understanding that or progressive economic and political policies, deterring the government from passing export taxes of mining governance it would build a processing plant at between 20% laws that might lead to investment in Indonesia some point in the and 60% would claims. This regulatory ‘chill effect’ future. begin to apply. prevents the state from carrying out its In this way, ISDS Enter ISDS. In obligations to respect, fulfil and protect lawsuits in the mining sector aim to 2014, Newmont Mining Corporation, human rights. weaken the government’s role and one of the world’s biggest mining Sometimes an ISDS claim is not oppose its efforts to restore popular companies headquartered in the made as a last resort, but as a United States, filed an ISDS claim under control of natural resources, as well negotiating tactic. We can see this the Netherlands-Indonesia investment as improve mining governance in

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TRADE © Indonesia for Global Justice

Indonesia. The ISDS mechanism hinders the people of Indonesia from stopping the monopoly and exploitation of mining multinationals over natural resources.

FIGHTING BACK This is why the Indonesian government decided to act. In the wake of the Churchill case, the then vice-president Boediono stressed that it would not let multinational companies do as they pleased to put pressure on Indonesia, with international back-up. The government announced it would conduct a full review of its investment treaties, of which there are more than 60 that contain an ISDS clause. It wanted to strike a balance between investor protection and national sovereignty. Most provisions of the existing agreements are outdated, giving extremely broad privileges to foreign investors, but leaving the host state with little to no policy space to implement its own development goals. And in particular, the ISDS provisions have increased Indonesia’s exposure to investor claims in international arbitration, overriding national legislation. The review aimed to identify a template investment protection agreement which could become a standard model to be used by Indonesia on the bilateral, regional and multilateral level, dealing with crucial questions around how to limit the scope of any corporate privileges. These include the definition of investment, how to ensure fair and equitable treatment, and the nature of any dispute settlement mechanism. All alongside an effort to include the fulfilment of public rights protection. The review took two years, and in 2014 the government announced that it would use the results to seek to remove ISDS from its current bilateral trade and investment treaties. To start with, it announced that the NetherlandsIndonesia investment treaty would be terminated

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in July 2015, a major step. Subsequently, many others have not been renewed. In December 2016 there was the added positive that Churchill’s ISDS claim was refused. Unsurprisingly, the benefits of termination are not immediate – the Netherlands-Indonesia treaty, for example, includes a ‘survival clause’ meaning that investments originating before the treaty’s termination date continue to enjoy full protection for another fifteen years. Most investment treaties contain similar survival clauses. Nevertheless, it is a sign that Indonesia, along with other countries in the global south, is not willing to continue giving away power to corporations in this way. Slowly but surely, we are reasserting our rights. Rachmi Hertanti is Executive Director of Indonesia for Global Justice.

Activists from Indonesia for Global Justice campaigning against free trade agreements and for economic democracy.

Global Justice Now supporters sleeve Wear your politics on your By James O’Nions, head of

activism

a global movement wh ich is I’m rea lly proud to be par t of ter world, and I know ma ny fighting for and bui lding a bet and suppor ters are too. For a Global Jus tice Now members to to have more ways for all of us wh ile now we’ve been keen ut. ice when we’re out and abo show our suppor t for global just ent s integra l to progressive movem The pol itical t-sh irt has been m can also mean a lot of upfor decades, but producing the e ani sation s. So when we cam front cos ts for cam paigning org thing com pany with a print-on across Teemill, an organic clo ortu nity. demand system, we saw an opp we are thri lled to introduce our Fas t forward a few month s, and by of three images, all des igned new store. Choose from one er eith h Now, and com bine wit cam paigners at Global Jus tice or cot ton bag, ava ilable in a a t-sh irt, a hoodie, a sweats hirt variety of colour s. c lity (and produced with organi The clothing itself is great qua the ), and because Teemill prints cot ton and renewable energy up ing there’s no risk of us end des ign only when you order it, nt, in our basement! At the mome with a pile of unsold hoodies s ion opt g , but we are investigatin it is only pos sible to buy onl ine for paying by cheque. g can be as sim ple as ma king Sometimes movement-bu ildin g a thought or conver sation. you r pol itic s visible and spa rkin

baljustice.teemill.com Browse the onl ine store at glo

A legacy for global justice

r will in flet about leaving a gift in you You mig ht have noticed our lea ’s income two -thirds of Global Jus tice Now er Ov e. -Nin ety Nin of e issu this ever large ters, includ ing gift s in will s. How comes from ind ivid ual suppor bal justice, us to carry on fighting for glo or sma ll, legacy gift s ena ble our sha red ependence to work toward s giving us the flexibility and ind ving a gift 'd like to have a chat about lea vision for a fairer world. If you 328 2153 0 with Eleanor Wil lliam s on 080 in you r will please get in touch lobaljustice.org.uk or email eleanor.willia ms @g

AID

The great aid betrayal Theresa May danced her way into the headlines on a trip to Africa last year, but the real story was about the future of UK aid and trade, writes ED LEWIS. to set up new opportunities for trade and Last summer, Theresa May made headlines on a trip to Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, investment beyond the EU. Faced with an ailing domestic economy, new markets where she declared in the most bullish across the global south have become terms yet the government’s objectives for a strategic international aid. focus for the The Prime Minister government’s said she was Underneath this rosy economic “unashamed” vision of a world where planning, about ensuring especially new that our aid the interests of British markets for the spending “works corporations and the City of London for the UK”. On and its often tour with an world’s poorest are damaging entourage of 29 perfectly aligned is a financial businesspeople, products. In May laid out her clear political agenda. addition, the goal of Britain government becoming the increasingly sees the protected aid number one investor in Africa through budget as a mechanism through which private investment, announcing a slew to pursue other foreign policy objectives. of new business deals to the tune of £300 million. Shortly after, Penny Mordaunt, DOUBLING DOWN secretary of state for international The problem with this approach development, gave a speech arguing that is that it threatens the the British public should see “a personal integrity of aid altogether. return” from the aid budget. International As enshrined in British development policy should bring together law, the goal of UK “compassion and capital” and development aid enable “doing good while is eradicating making money”. poverty Underneath this rosy overseas. vision of a win-win world, in Yet which the interests of British corporations, British finance and the world’s poorest are perfectly aligned, is a clear political agenda. Ever since the Brexit vote, the UK government has been busy trying

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Below: Theresa May speaks to business leaders at the offices of First National Bank in Cape Town. Right: Handing in our petition calling for aid money not to be spent on fuelling conflict.

AID even before either May or Mordaunt’s interventions, parliament’s international development select committee was already warning that the government’s approach to aid involves “an insufficient focus on poverty reduction and on helping the very poorest and most vulnerable”. They warned that girls and women, disabled and young people were all threatened by DfID’s market-led economic development strategy. This backs up Global Justice Now’s campaigning in recent years to expose the UK aid-funded New Alliance for Food Security & Nutrition, which undermined small-scale farmers by liberalising seed laws, and aid-funded promotion of private schools which leaves the poorest pupils unable to access education. Yet the government’s rhetoric and practice suggests it has paid scant heed to these concerns – rather, it is doubling down on using aid to promote big business. A flagrant example of this was exposed recently, when the energy watchdog Platform announced that aid money has been used in 16 projects to expand the fossil fuel industry across the global south, with specific support for expanding fracking in China. This may well provide a fillip for British business interests – British fossil fuel giant BP is, after all, known to be exploring natural gas extraction in China – but it is a reckless threat to a planet threatened by climate breakdown, not to mention the impact on local communities. A darker dimension to the UK’s aid agenda has emerged through the way it has become entangled with foreign policy objectives. The legal charity Reprieve recently raised concerns that aid money to Pakistan is being used to support a repressive justice system, such that there is an “appalling prospect that British taxpayers are unknowingly complicit in torture and death sentences”. This money comes from the Conflict Stability and Security Fund (CSSF), which has half of its budget funded by UK aid. This comes as the latest in a catalogue of alarming investments by this fund – Global Justice Now has previously published

research showing that the CSSF has funded human rights abusing security services in Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Burma.

POWER AND PROFIT Faced with an approach to aid that increasingly prioritises commercial and ‘security’ interests, we should consider why there’s a need for aid in the first place. Recent research by the Indian economist Utsa Patnaik estimates that between 1765 and 1938 India lost $44.6 trillion to its British colonial master. Historic wealth extraction on such a staggering scale is what underlies the wealth of former colonial powers such as the UK – and this continues today. Through tax havens, repatriation of profits and other means, more wealth still flows from the global south to the north than goes the other way. So it’s particularly ironic that a major focus of new aid projects is focussed on securing post-Brexit Britain’s role as a source of financial products to Africa. In this context, aid should be seen as one element of the reparations for historic plunder of the global south by northern states and corporate elites. Converting aid itself into a tool of power and profit is a betrayal of this duty. It is up to us to resist it. Ed Lewis is policy and campaigns manager at Global Justice Now.

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Escaping the Honduran nightmare Photographer SEAN HAWKEY spent a month travelling with the migrant ‘caravan’ across Mexico in October and November. It began in Honduras with 150 people, marching towards the border, trying to get to Mexico or the US. It grew to perhaps 7,000. Often they would set out before dawn, walking in the dark for several hours, to get some miles behind them before the relentless Mexican sun began scorching. All along the route, people showed an abundant human solidarity. Marchers testify that they are leaving Honduras because there is no safety, work, food or future. They are leaving despite knowing that the journey is beset with dangers, and that it is ultimately heading towards a closed

and hostile border. Yet the caravan is not an isolated incident or an inexplicable phenomenon – some 700 people a day are estimated to cross the Mexican/US border illegally just around Tijuana. That’s how there are millions of Central Americans in the US. Honduran congressman Jari Dixon summed it up: “these people aren’t going because of the American dream, they are escaping the Honduran nightmare.” That nightmare has become more acute since the USsupported coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009, and the recent unconstitutional re-election of Juan Orlando Hernández.

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MIGRATION

In some ways I see the march as a protest. As all legitimate and democratic ways of changing Honduras have been crushed with military force, espionage, infiltration – all supported by the US and the UK (the UK sold the cyber-spying systems to Honduras after the fraudulent and illegal elections in 2017) – this is the only way that Hondurans can protest. I walked with a man called William. His ten-year-old son was shot, his 15-year-old daughter was raped, he can't afford to pay his bills, his crops fail because of the prolonged drought. Why wouldn't he migrate? Who can tell him to go back to that? 4

Sean Hawkey is a freelance documentary photographer www.hawkey.co.uk

1. Thousands on the caravan were stopped outside Arriaga, Chiapas. To avoid some of the heat of the day they began walking at 2am. Negotiations began in the dark, and shortly after dawn, the caravan continued towards Juchitán.

2. Bathing in the river at Pijijiapan, Chiapas, on the way north. 3. In Guadalajara, a neighbour of a stadium where the migrants were staying came out to give free haircuts. 4. A couple take a nap on the road from Pijijiapan.

5. Under a bridge at Querétaro, migrants sit atop a flatbed truck on a lift out of the city. During the caravan journey there was at least one death caused by a fall from a lorry like this.

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BRAZIL

If he threatens my existence, I will be resistance Some say new president Jair Bolsonaro is the Brazilian Donald Trump. But, as DIÊGO LÔBO explains, he’s even worse.

Last year’s election unleashed an unprecedented level of intolerance, fascism and violence in Brazil. Some say Bolsonaro is our version of Trump, but I disagree. He’s much worse. He isn’t a conservative neoliberal businessman. He has built his entire campaign on attacking the rights of women, black people, LGBT+ populations, indigenous people and grassroots activist movements. He glorifies torturers and Brazil’s dictatorship, sparking fear, violence and hatred within society. He has threatened to remove Brazil from the United Nations and said he will open up the Amazon for exploitation and withdraw the country from the Paris climate agreement. His heated speeches and massively controversial (and probably illegal) fake news industry have spurred violent assaults and even murders perpetrated by his followers. During the election period I swung between being hopeful and being realistic about the outcomes. But strangely a wave of hope, solidarity and unity during the second round of voting gave us an energy boost for the struggles ahead. On the day of the election itself, people went to cast their votes holding books. Using #MaisLivrosMenosArmas (MoreBooksLessGuns), they flooded social media with pictures of classic

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books from Brazilian writers, but also international authors like Angela Davis, José Saramago, Eduardo Galeano, and many more. I’ve never seen anything like it. © Caco Argem i CPERS / Sindicato

So Bolsonaro won. Captain Bolsonaro, a former military officer who was expelled from the army for undisciplined behaviour; parliamentarian Bolsonaro, a member of congress for almost 30 years who hasn’t authored any relevant bill; conservative Christian Bolsonaro, a hardcore evangelical whose political platform rests on providing guns to citizens so they can take matters into their own hands. That’s my new president. Whether I like it or not, he received over 57 million votes, about 55% of all valid votes.

Demonstration again st presidential candi

date Jair Bolsonaro in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

A quote from Conceição Evaristo, a Brazilian writer and black people’s rights advocate, has become a motto to many of us human rights activists and minorities: “They agreed to kill us. But we agreed not to die”. This is why I say that today we grieve for the hit our democracy received, but tomorrow we won’t run, we won’t surrender. For the next four years, we will continue to move forward, holding each others’ hand, being together. Because no matter what, one thing is certain: we will resist. Diêgo Lôbo is a human rights activist in Rio de Janeiro.

REVIEWS

Reviews A HISTORY OF THE WORLD IN SEVEN CHEAP THINGS

YOUR QUEEN IS A REPTILE

Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore

Impulse!, 2018

Verso, 2018 Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore explain the history of capitalism, and provide radical alternatives, through the following ‘cheap things’: nature, money, work, care, food, energy – and lives. From the symbolic importance of the Chicken McNugget, to the expanding of empires, the authors give a detailed and engaging account of how colonialism and capitalism go hand in hand. It’s a stirring introduction to the damages the global north has inflicted on the global south. The book is also an essential read to understand how black, brown and indigenous people have always resisted and rejected systems of exploitation despite being treated as disposable objects in the name of profit. Patel and Moore not only lay out the history of the West’s capitalists past, but also provide a manual on how we can challenge climate change, capitalism and colonialism in the future. Through recognition, reparation, redistribution, reimagination and recreation of the current exploitative capitalist system, we can start to give things their proper value. Rosanna Wiseman

Sons of Kemet Crank up the volume and make space to stomp, jazz is back. And to quote from the opening song from Sons Of Kemet’s latest album it’s “Black and proud, and determined”. If you've not heard Your Queen Is A Reptile yet, you need to. Its immense energy pummels you with a mix of beautiful anger and joyful militancy. It’s truly hard to believe this beautiful cacophony of music is made by just two brass instrumentalists and percussion. This is riotous joy straight out of the beating heart of south London’s blossoming new jazz scene. Each song title is named for an influential black woman in history. Joshua Idehen’s

spoken word further exposes the deeply political essence of the music: “I’m born strong, the son of an immigrant… I’ll be here when your cities are sediment, and only your borders and fences are left… I’ll be here when your banks stop selling debt”. Sam Lund-Harket

NAE PASARAN! Felipe Bustos Sierra Debasers Filums, 2018 With repressive, nationalistic regimes on the rise globally, Nae Pasaran! is a timely and welcome riposte to hopelessness. Set in the 1970s in the wake of the USbacked coup against left-wing Chilean president Salvador Allende and the neoliberal policies which followed under General Pinochet, the film documents four former workers of the Rolls Royce plant in East Kilbride, who refused to repair Chilean planes. Director Felipe Bustos Sierra doesn’t shy away from the horrors which wracked Chile. Through contemporary footage interwoven with personal testimonies, we see bodies in the streets and hear pain

still raw 40 years on. It’s direct, visceral, and heartbreaking, but as it draws together the threads of the Scottish boycott – and we see, with the workers, the true impact of their solidarity actions – the picture which emerges is moving and full of hope. Nae Pasaran! presents a remarkable image of the ripples sent out by local activism, and though at times it had me in tears, I left the cinema inspired and reinvigorated. Ruth Wilkinson

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GROWTH, DEGROWTH & CLIMATE JUSTICE Saturday 23 February, 12noon-5pm Kennington Park Community Centre Harleyford Street, London SE11 5SY With speakers including:

Jason Hickel, author of The Divide Ann Pettifor, prizewinning economist and

author of The Production of Money Economic growth is a shibboleth of modern politics, but is it compatible with climate justice? Do rich countries need to â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;degrowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, and if so, what would that actually look like? Join us to discuss this and more. Book a free place at globaljustice.org.uk/growth