One of Barack Obama's first acts as the Democratic Presidential Nominee was to pledge his support for Israel to the AIPAC convention: "Let me be clear: Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. As president I will implement a Memorandum of Understanding that provides $30 billion in assistance to Israel over the next decade - investments to Israel's security that will not be tied to any other nation." Furthermore he assured his audience that as President, he "will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security."
That Mr Obama's comments are an obvious attempt to attract and secure the votes and support of the influential Jewish lobby is not controversial. The Forward recently reported that Jewish donations account for as much as 40% of Democratic campaign funds. Indeed, it would be a foolhardy presidential candidate that neglected to make public his support for Israel. However, much can be read into the content of Obama's speech – which garnered thirteen standing ovations – despite its obvious deference to the body at which it was aimed. As his first speech since defeating Hilary Clinton, Obama undoubtedly knew how widely it would be reported, and analysed, given his perceived inexperience in foreign policy.
What was left unsaid is perhaps as revealing as what was said. "Let me be clear: Israel's security is sacrosanct. It is non-negotiable. The Palestinians need a state that is contiguous and cohesive and that allows them to prosper. But any agreement with the Palestinian people must preserve Israel's identity as a Jewish state, with secure, recognized and defensible borders." The security of the Palestinians is, quite obviously, not sacrosanct, and is by implication negotiable. Israel has a superpower fighting its corner; the Palestinians do not.
That the US favours one over the other isn't news by any stretch of the imagination – last year President Bush announced a gargantuan $30bn arms deal with Israel (along with $13bn for Egypt and around $20bn to be shared between other friendly regimes in the region). However, Obama is widely viewed as a relatively progressive candidate – compared to the current President – and many commentators undoubtedly harboured hopes that his Middle East policy might be rather more pragmatic in character, especially given his previously stated openness to dialogue with Iranian authorities. Obama's pledge of $30bn in investments to Israeli security seems squarely to accord with the unwavering support his predecessors have offered. Compare Obama's proposed arms deal, which constitutes $3bn annually, to US aid to the Palestinians, which last year amounted to $127m, and it adds considerable weight to his assertion that he "will never compromise when it comes to Israel's security."
The question of Jerusalem was also addressed. "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided." This statement attracted widespread criticism, not least from Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who reiterated his view that a Palestinian state without Jerusalem as its capital would be unacceptable. Moreover it seemed like a stark dismissal of both Israeli and Palestinian self-determination. Responding to his critics on CNN, Obama softened slightly, admitting that "it's going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues." His opponent John McCain broadly agrees, stating: "the subject of Jerusalem itself will be addressed in negotiations by the Israeli government and people." Notice, the Palestinians have no seat at this hypothetical negotiating table.
Finally, Mr. Obama pledged to "ensure that Israel could defend itself from any threat – from Gaza to Tehran." This means the US will continue to bankroll one of the most advanced military machines on the planet, and there is little doubt that Israel is prepared to flex its military (and nuclear) muscle against actual or perceived belligerence from its neighbours. Israeli transportation minister Shaoul Mofaz recently made it very clear that "if Iran continues its nuclear arms program, we will attack it." The following day, Infrastructure minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer echoed his aggression: "we must tell them: 'If you so much as dream of attacking Israel, before you even finish dreaming there won't be an Iran anymore.'"
Obama's promise also suggests that under his leadership, the US will also continue to veto any resolution in the UN Security Council that attempts to criticise Israeli actions or policy, in accordance with the Negroponte doctrine. This has been a defining feature of US conduct in the security council for the last 20 years. Indeed, since 1989, the US has been the sole dissenting vote on ten security council resolutions pertaining to the Israel/Palestine conflict. This loyalty seems unlikely to change given Obama's stated intention never to compromise on questions of Israel's security. The only concession Obama demanded of Israel was as follows: "Israel can ease the freedom of movement for Palestinians, improve economic conditions in the West Bank, and refrain from building new settlements." Note, 'Israel can'. Not 'Israel must', or even 'Israel should', but 'Israel can'.
So, it seems that despite the relatively progressive nature of Obama's candidacy, the status quo of the Israel/Palestine conflict will remain largely the same, in terms of the decisive political, financial and military support the US will apportion. From Israel's point of view, this continuation of the current status quo is more than acceptable. Rockets and suicide terrorism are part of the current status quo and are of course atrocious, but the prevailing state of affairs seems to be one in which Israel can continue to expand settlements, and can annex land using the security fence (deemed illegal by the UN). This facilitates the all-important 'facts on the ground', which will be crucial if a peace agreement is ever reached. Until the Palestinians can rely on a similarly generous superpower as an unwavering ally, the intractable stalemate will surely remain.
It is not just that the government's electoral prospects look terminal. Its great predicament is that no one in or near the cabinet yet looks capable of fixing the underlying political problem.
The issue is not Gordon Brown's personality or leadership style, but an inability to deal with the twin challenges that confront all the main parties and leaders: the failure of the market and the failure of the state. Without addressing these two fundamental questions, swapping leaders in an internal coup or swapping government through a general election will mean politics continuing to disappoint and society continuing to shrink.
Since 1979 Britain has lived in a Neverland of market fundamentalism that New Labour has mostly failed to challenge and too often sought to embed. From being the problem that social democracy existed to correct, markets were regarded as the cure-all.
But market fundamentalism took hold for a reason: the failure of the state. The inability of the centre-left to modernise the state for new, less deferential, more decentralised times left the door open for free-market ideologues. People wanted a voice but got only a remote bureaucracy. The state was cast as the problem instead of the answer, and was reformed on market lines first by Thatcher and then New Labour.
That left Labour governing in conflict with its central purpose - using competition to fix the social recession that market fundamentalism created in the first place. For 11 years Labour has been trying to achieve fairness using the very tools that exacerbate the problem. The poverty created under Thatcher has become not just a permanent feature of life under New Labour - it has got worse. This week's figures on youth and pensioner poverty are an indictment of any socially minded government.
Voters in Reading and Rotherham are left reeling as market forces in both the economy and the state leave them more isolated and vulnerable. The result is the collapse of the New Labour coalition. Gordon Brown, despite Herculean efforts, cannot paper over the cracks of a contradictory project kept alive by spin, charm and debt.
The centre-left project will be renewed only by facing the challenges of market and state failure. While no one in the cabinet looks capable of understanding the scale of the challenge, let alone coming up with answers, the nation looks to David Cameron.
The Tory leader at least seems to recognise the problem's scale and talks the language of the broken society; but will he regulate the market or revive the state? One-nation Conservativism, if he can rediscover it, offers some respite from free markets. It is paternalistic but has an organic view of society in which the rich and powerful have some obligation to the poor. This can be more progressive than the market-first politics of New Labour. But for the moment the Tory party is likely to resolve itself only in favour of charity: a sticking plaster on a broken society that won't hold.
Cameron likes to say that in the 1980s the Tories fixed the economy; now it is their historic duty to fix society. But surely he must know that the market fundamentalism introduced by Margaret Thatcher was instrumental in creating the broken society he now stands ready to fix. Cameron can be taken seriously only if he renounces Thatcherism as an aberration in Conservative philosophy and practice. It's unlikely - but who knows? New Labour became the party of big business out of electoral expediency. Means shaped ends. Can the reverse now happen to the Tories? If you wear the mask for long enough, the face starts to fit.
But in the absence of such a Clause Four moment, the cycle of political disappointment will quicken: first Labour's demise in the 1970s after the long postwar settlement; then 18 years of Thatcherism before she was turfed out; and now 14 years of New Labour facing equal rejection. But if Cameron comes in as the heir to Blair he will meet the same fate, only faster. All the time people retreat from politics because it makes no difference to their lives: markets always win and the state feels like it fails.
All the challenges of the 21st century demand new forms of collective action, and nowhere is there popular support for more markets.
If Labour is incapable of making the switch, then those inside the party must start looking outside. Labour was always a necessary but far from sufficient vehicle for centre-left advance. Gordon Brown kicked off his premiership with a government of all the talents. But it was just his right hand that was extended to dissident Tories and business interests. This exacerbated the market fundamentalism problem. Just as the centre-left advanced in the past, so in the future it will take a movement of academics, intellectuals, open-minded politicians of all progressive parties, campaigners, activists and trade unionists to renew not just the centre-left, but a belief that politics can make a difference.
This article first appeared on Compass.
For some time now the rising cost of food all over the world has taken households, governments and the media by storm. The price of wheat has gone up by 130% over the last year. Rice has doubled in price in Asia in the first three months of 2008 alone,and just last week it hit record highs on the Chicago futures market.For most of 2007 the spiralling cost of cooking oil, fruit and vegetables, as well as of dairy and meat, led to a fall in the consumption of these items. From Haiti to Cameroon to Bangladesh, people have been taking to the streets in anger at being unable to afford the food they need. In fear of political turmoil, world leaders have been calling for more food aid, as well as for more funds and technology to boost agricultural production. Cereal exporting countries, meanwhile, are closing their borders to protect their domestic markets, while other countries have been forced into panic buying. Is this a price blip? No. A food shortage? Not that either. We are in a structural meltdown, the direct result of three decades of neoliberal globalisation.
Farmers across the world produced a record 2.3 billion tons of grain in 2007, up 4% on the previous year. Since 1961 the world’s cereal output has tripled, while the population has doubled. Stocks are at their lowest level in 30 years, it’s true,but the bottom line is that there is enough food produced in the world to feed the population. The problem is that it doesn’t get to all of those who need it. Less than half of the world’s grain production is directly eaten by people. Most goes into animal feed and, increasingly, biofuels – massive inflexible industrial chains. In fact, once you look behind the cold curtain of statistics, you realise that something is fundamentally wrong with our food system. We have allowed food to be transformed from something that nourishes people and provides them with secure livelihoods into a commodity for speculation and bargaining. The perverse logic of this system has come to a head. Today it is staring us in the face that this system puts the profits of investors before the food needs of people.
Market realities
The policy makers who have shaped today’s world food system – and who are supposed to be responsible for averting such catastrophes – have come out with a number of explanations for the current crisis that everyone has heard over and over again: drought and other problems affecting harvests; rising demand in China and India where people are supposedly eating more and better than in the past; crops and lands being massively diverted into biofuel production; and so on. All of these issues, of course, are contributing to the current food crisis. But they do not account for the full depth of what is happening. There is something more fundamental at work, something that brings all these issues together, and which the world’s finance and development chiefs are keeping out of public discussion.
Nothing that the policy makers say should obscure the fact that today’s food crisis is the outcome of both an incessant push towards a “Green Revolution” agricultural model since the 1950s and the trade liberalisation and structural adjustment policies imposed on poor countries by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund since the 1970s. These policy prescriptions were reinforced with the establishment of the World Trade Organisation in the mid-1990s and, more recently, through a barrage of bilateral free trade and investment agreements. Together with a series of other measures, they have led to the ruthless dismantling of tariffs and other tools that developing countries had created to protect local agricultural production. These countries have been forced to open their markets and lands to global agribusiness, speculators and subsidised food exports from rich countries. In that process, fertile lands have been diverted away from serving local food markets to the production of global commodities or off-season and high-value crops for Western supermarkets. Today, roughly 70% of all so-called developing countries are net importers of food. And of the estimated 845 million hungry people in the world, 80% are small farmers. Add to this the re-engineering of credit and financial markets to create a massive debt industry, with no control on investors, and the depth of the problem becomes clear.
Agricultural policy has completely lost touch with its most basic goal of feeding people. Hunger hurts and people are desperate. The UN World Food Programme estimates that recent price hikes have meant that an additional 100 million people can no longer afford to eat adequately.Governments are frantically seeking shelter from the system. The fortunate ones, with export stocks, are pulling out of the global market to cut their domestic prices off from the skyrocketing world prices. With wheat, export bans or restrictions in Kazakhstan, Russia, Ukraine and Argentina mean that a third of the global market has now been closed off. The situation with rice is even worse: China, Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, India and Cambodia have banned or severely restricted exports, leaving just a few sources of export supply, mainly Thailand and the US. Countries like Bangladesh can’t buy the rice they need now because the prices are so high. For years the World Bank and the IMF have told countries that a liberalised market would provide the most efficient system for producing and distributing food, yet today the world’s poorest countries are forced into an intense bidding war against speculators and traders, who are having a field day. Hedge funds and other sources of hot money are pouring billions of dollars into commodities to escape sliding stock markets and the credit crunch, putting food stocks further out of poor people’s reach. According to some estimates, investment funds now control 50–60% of the wheat traded on the world’s biggest commodity markets.One firm calculates that the amount of speculative money in commodities futures – markets where investors do not buy or sell a physical commodity, like rice or wheat, but merely bet on price movements – has ballooned from US$5 billion in 2000 to US$175 billion to 2007.
The situation today is untenable. Look at Haiti. A few decades ago it was self-sufficient in rice. But conditions on foreign loans, particularly a 1994 package from the IMF, forced it to liberalise its market. Cheap rice flooded in from the US, backed by subsidies and corruption, and local production was wiped out.Now prices for rice have risen 50% since last year and the average Haitian can’t afford to eat. So people are taking to the streets or risking their lives to journey by boat to the US. Food protests have also erupted in West Africa, from Mauritania to Burkina Faso. There, too, structural adjustment programmes and food-aid dumping have destroyed the region’s own rice production, leaving people at the mercy of the international market. In Asia, the World Bank constantly assured the Philippines, even as recently as last year, that self-sufficiency in rice was unnecessary and that the world market would take care of its needs.Now the government is in a desperate plight: its domestic supply of subsidised rice is nearly exhausted and it cannot import all it needs because traders’ asking prices are too high.
Making a killing from hunger
The truth about who profits and who loses from our global food system has never been more obvious. Take the most basic element of food production: soil. The industrial food system is a chemical-fertiliser junkie. It needs more and more of the stuff just to keep alive, eroding soils and their potential to support crop yields in the process. In the current context of tight food supplies, the small clique of corporations that control the world’s fertiliser market can charge what they want – and that’s exactly what they are doing. Profits at Cargill’s Mosaic Corporation, which controls much of the world’s potash and phosphate supply, more than doubled last year.The world’s largest potash producer, Canada’s Potash Corp, made more than US$1 billion in profit, up more than 70% from 2006. Panicking now about future supplies, governments are becoming desperate to boost their harvests, giving these corporations additional leverage. In April 2008, the joint offshore trading arm for Mosaic and Potash hiked the price of its potash by 40% for buyers from Southeast Asia and by 85% for those from Latin American. India had to pay 130% more than last year, and China 227% more.
While big money is being made from fertilisers, it is just a sideline for Cargill. Its biggest profits come from global trading in agricultural commodities, which, together with a few other big traders, it pretty much monopolises. On 14 April 2008, Cargill announced that its profits from commodity trading for the first quarter of 2008 were 86% higher than the same period in 2007. “Demand for food in developing economies and for energy worldwide is boosting demand for agricultural goods, at the same time that investment monies have streamed into commodity markets,” said Greg Page, Cargill’s chairman and chief executive officer. “Prices are setting new highs and markets are extraordinarily volatile. In this environment, Cargill’s team has done an exceptional job measuring and assessing price risk, and managing the large volume of grains, oilseeds and other commodities moving through our supply chains for customers globally.”
Managing and assessing are not so difficult for a company like Cargill, with its near monopoly position and a global team of analysts the size of a UN agency. Indeed, all of the big grain traders are making record profits. Bunge, another big food trader, saw its profits of the last fiscal quarter of 2007 increase by US$245 million, or 77%, compared with the same period of the previous year. The 2007 profits registered by ADM, the second largest grain trader in the world, rose by 65% to a record US$2.2 billion. Thailand’s Charoen Pokphand Foods, a major player in Asia, is forecasting revenue growth of 237% this year.
The world’s big food processors, some of which are commodity traders themselves, are also cashing in. Nestlé’s global sales grew 7% last year. “We saw this coming, so we hedged by forward-buying raw materials”, says François-Xavier Perroud, Nestlé’s spokesman.Margins are up at Unilever, too. “Commodity pressures have increased sharply, but we have successfully offset these through timely pricing action and continued delivery from our savings programmes”, says Patrick Cescau, Group CEO of Unilever. “We will not sacrifice our margins and market share.”The food corporations don’t seem to be making these profits off the back of the retailers. UK supermarket Tesco reports profits up 12.3% from last year, a record rise. Other major retailers, such as France’s Carrefour and the US’s Wal-Mart, say that food sales are the main factor sustaining their profit increases.Wal-Mart’s Mexican division, Wal-Mex, which handles a third of overall food sales in Mexico, reported an 11% increase in profits for the first quarter of 2008. (At the same time Mexicans are demonstrating in the streets because they can no longer afford to make tortillas.
It seems that nearly every corporate player in the global food chain is making a killing from the food crisis. The seed and agrochemical companies are doing well too. Monsanto, the world’s largest seed company, reported a 44% increase in overall profits in 2007. DuPont, the second-largest, said that its 2007 profits from seeds increased by 19%, while Syngenta, the top pesticide manufacturer and third-largest company for seeds, saw profits rise 28% in the first quarter of 2008.
Such record profits have nothing to do with any new value that these corporations are producing and they are not one-off windfalls from a sudden shift in supply and demand. Instead, they are a reflection of the extreme power that these middlemen have accrued through the globalisation of the food system. Intimately involved with the shaping of the trade rules that govern today’s food system and tightly in control of markets and the ever more complex financial systems through which global trade operates, these companies are in perfect position to turn food scarcity into immense profits. People have to eat, whatever the cost.
The urgent need for a policy rethink
The larger backdrop to this perverse food market situation is the global financial system, which is now teetering on its flimsy axis. What began as a localised housing loan collapse in the US in 2007 has unravelled into something far more serious, as people realise that the emperors of the global financial system have no clothes. The world economy is living on debt that no one can pay. While central bankers and Lear jet executives try to patch the holes and restore confidence, the underlying truth is that the system is close to bankruptcy and no one in power wants to take the necessary tough measures: not the IMF, nor the World Bank, nor the leaders of the world’s most powerful nations. Not much more than public relations glitter can be expected from the G8 meeting in June.
Similar problems lie at the heart of the food crisis: an ideologically driven elite has forced countries to wrench open markets and let the free market run, so that a few megacorporations, investors and speculators can take huge payoffs. Many countries have lost that most basic power: the ability to feed themselves. This loss, coupled with the corruption that plagues our countries and trading systems, shows that neoliberalism has lost any legitimacy that it might once have had. It is a measure of how out of touch these ideologues are that many now openly call for more trade liberalisation as a solution to the food crisis, with some even proposing that the rules of the WTO be changed to prevent countries from imposing export restrictions on food.
The World Bank president, Robert Zoellick, has tried to win the world over with his call for a “New Deal” to solve the hunger crisis, but there is nothing new about it: he calls for more trade liberalisation, more technology and more aid. Today’s food crisis is the direct result of decades of these policies, which must now be rejected. While immediate action is necessary to lower food prices and to get food to those who need it, we also need radical changes in agricultural policy so that small farmers around the world gain access to land and can make a living from it. We need policies that support and protect farmers, fishers and others to produce food for their families, for the local markets and for people in cities, rather than money for an abstract international commodity market and a tiny clan of corporate boardroom executives. And we need to strengthen and promote the use of technologies based on the knowledge and in the control of those who know how to grow food. To put it another way, we need food sovereignty, now – the kind that is defined and driven by small farmers and fisherfolk themselves.
Social movements around the globe have been struggling to promote such a reversal of strategy, only to be dismissed as unrealistic and backward by those in power, and often violently repressed. The glimmer of hope in this crisis is that the situation can be reversed. Peasant organisations have concrete proposals about what needs to be done to resolve the crisis in their countries, and governments should listen to what they are saying. Already some governments are talking of a policy change towards food self-reliance. Others are starting to question the fundamental rationale of pushing for more free trade. Neoliberal hawks at the top of the global food policy pyramid have lost whatever credibility they may think they once had. It is time for them to move out of the way so that the visions of food sovereignty and agrarian reform that come from the grassroots can take their place and get us out of this hellish mess.
This article originally appeared in www.grain.org/front/
Former Coca-Cola transportation workers have totally paralyzed Coca-Cola production and distribution in Venezuela, calling for President Hugo Chávez to intervene in the six-year dispute over severance pay. Monday, Venezuela’s Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) ruled against the ex-workers’ claims and officially ended its 16-month mediation of the dispute.
Over the past five days, the ex-workers have blocked access to all four bottling plants and 26 out of 32 distribution centers run by FEMSA, the Mexican firm which holds Coca-Cola’s concessions in Venezuela.
According to Manuel Ureña, the national coordinator of the Union of Ex-Workers of Coca-Cola FEMSA, the company owes a total of 520 million bolivars ($242 million) to 11,633 former fleet-workers. “The company should assume the responsibility of fulfilling the labor rights of the ex-workers,” Ureña commented to the press this week.
FEMSA claims the protesting workers were last employed by the previous Coca-Cola concession-holder, Panamco, before FEMSA took over operations in Venezuela in 2003, so FEMSA is not responsible for the ex-workers’ grievances.
According to Coca-Cola FEMSA’s Human Resources director Ignacio Mayorca, the company lost $15 million as a result of three separate takeovers of company facilities by the ex-workers so far this year.
“These takeovers have brought consequences not only for production, but affecting the workers,” Mayorca stated. FEMSA currently employs 8,000 direct workers and 7,000 contract laborers in Venezuela. Many of these workers have lost wages due to the stoppages and have pleaded with the former workers to channel their struggle through the courts.
But the courts have not favored the former workers. According to Mayorca, FEMSA has won 27 court measures in several regions of Venezuela which rule that the ex-workers were never contracted to FEMSA.
These court measures, Mayorca argues, obligate the government to repress the protestors and protect company facilities. “It cannot be that in a state of the rule of law the authorities have not liberated the plants ... we should comply with the rules of the game,” Mayorca told to the press earlier this week.
Moreover, Venezuela’s Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will respect these regional court decisions and no longer mediate the dispute, which it had done since March 2007, according to Venezuela’s Communication and Information Ministry.
The Supreme Court exhorted the workers to “Reconsider their stance, desist from the path of action, and dialogue with the company about the possibility of moving forward on the construction of a socially satisfactory solution.”
Judge Juan Rafael Perdomo, who had been in charge of the mediation, ruled that “the reclamations of the ex-transportation workers do not have a legal basis.”
“The problem is out of our hands. It now lies at the level of regional courts or direct negotiations” between the workers and the company, Perdomo added.
Venezuela’s Labor Ministry offered to assume mediation of the dispute Wednesday, calling on the ex-workers to heed the Supreme Court’s call to dialogue.
But the ex-workers hope to inspire President Chávez to intervene in the dispute. Oscar Ovalles, leader of the National Coca-Cola Ex-Workers Front (FRENEXTCO), said the former fleet workers want Chávez himself to end the conflict by deciding either for or against them.
Some of the protestors met recently with government officials who told them that Chávez supports the Supreme Court’s recent proclamations. If this is so, Ovalles declared, “We ask [the president] that by way of the media he tells us that we are wrong and this way we will remain calm.”
For two years, the former workers have counted on the support of National Assembly Deputy Iris Varela and Marcela Máspero, a national coordinator for the pro-government union federation UNT.
In the past, Varela and Máspero called on the federal government to nationalize Coca-Cola’s operations and produce “Venezuelan soft drinks instead.” Now, they stand firm in their demand that public security forces defend the protestors in their plight.
In late 2007, the company offered to contract the former workers in a transportation cooperative and pay them less than 2% of the pending severance pay they demanded. The workers rejected the offer and opted to occupy company facilities in January and February of this year.
Coca-Cola FEMSA claims to have become Latin America’s largest soft drink bottler when it acquired Venezuelan operations in 2003. The current stoppages impede the production and delivery of 700,000 beverages daily, according to Mayorca.
James Suggett writes for Venezuela Analysis.
"As long as violence against women continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development and peace" (Kofi Annan). The aspiration that men and women are born with equal status and access to rights remains elusive even in the 21st century.
In every country of the world, albeit to differing degrees, women do not enjoy the same privileges as men. They face discrimination in their homes, in places of education, in the workplace and in the wider community. For over 45 years Amnesty International has campaigned for the human rights of all people. We recognise that violence against women violates a range of fundamental human rights. At the forthcoming Compass National Conference, Amnesty International will be hosting a debate to consider how violence against women is a consequence of profound inequality and prevents women from participating fully in society as equals.
Gender based violence includes any act that results in or is likely to result in physical, sexual or psychological harm or suffering to women, including threats of such acts. One in three women has been beaten, coerced into sex, or otherwise abused in her lifetime. Gender based violence happens because of the underlying inequalities in society between men and women, because of the lower value placed on women and girl's lives; because of the cultural prejudices that determine how women and girls should behave; and because governments often do not have the political will to address structural inequalities - or to even recognise them as such.
Gender based violence reinforces discrimination and prevents girls and women from participating on an equal basis with men in many different ways. Certain forms of gender based violence are targeted at young girls of school age and result in them being denied an education; forced marriage, early marriage and female genital mutilation. It has a direct impact women's short term and long term health, for example a report on trafficking found that women's psychological reactions compared to or exceeded symptoms experienced by torture victims. In the most extreme cases, it threatens women's very right to life; here in the UK on average two women a week are killed by a partner or former partner.
In addition to loss of life gender based violence can also result in physical injury, mental health problems, self-harm and suicide, poverty and social exclusion. The impact however is not just restricted to women's lives. It places children at risk, devastates families and communities, and brings an estimated heavy financial cost of £40 billion a year; taking into consideration costs such as healthcare, policing and the lost economic output from women who are abused.
The British Crime Survey shows that just under half of women in the UK experience domestic violence, sexual assault or stalking at some point in their lives. 3 million women across the UK experience rape, domestic violence, forced marriage, sexual exploitation or another form of violence each year. Many more are living with the legacies of abuse experienced in the past.
Equally shocking, is the degree to which perpetrators of violence against women are rarely held accountable for their acts. A recent report found that only 5.6% of rape allegations lead to a conviction in England, Wales and Scotland. Women who are victims of gender based violence often have little recourse because many agencies or authorities there to help are themselves guilty of gender bias and discriminatory practices. Many women opt not to report cases of violence because they fear the reaction, fearing whether they will be believed or whether they will be blamed or ostracised by communities that are too often quick to blame victims of violence for the abuses they have suffered. When women do challenge their abusers, it can often only be accomplished by long and difficult court battles.
Gender based violence is not inevitable. We can take steps to tackle it. It took many years for gender based violence to be understood as one of the most pervasive global human rights challenges. Much progress has been made in understanding that governments have a clear responsibility to address this challenge. All Governments, including the UK government should strive to eliminate violence against women by providing firm leadership and commitment in implementing comprehensive strategies that cut across different sectors and at different levels. Strategies that address education and prevention, that provide protection and support for victims and their families, together with resources and systematic training for officials who monitor and enforce them, including police, judiciary, health and social service providers. In the UK, progress has been made in the last decade to respond to gender based violence. A number of initiatives have been developed to improve services, legislation and protection for women, including the Domestic Violence Rule, Domestic Violence Courts, Sexual Assault Referral Centres and the signing of the European Convention against Trafficking. However despite these welcome initiatives vulnerable women are falling through the gaps. The UK government need must commit to an integrated strategy to tackle violence against women and importantly to take concrete steps to design and implement it immediately.
Ending violence against women also requires changing public perceptions. One third of Britons believe women who act flirtatiously, wear revealing clothes or are drunk are at least partly to blame if they are raped. We need to breakthrough the barriers of culture and tradition that tolerate or justify these attitudes. Everyone has a responsibility to put a stop to it and to redress the suffering it causes. It requires governments to address inequality in both the short term and long term, ensuring that women's human rights are protected and upheld at all levels so that they can enjoy access to their rights and freedoms on an equal footing with men. Violence against women is never normal, legal or acceptable and we all must strive to ensure it is never tolerated or justified.
Lucy Wake works for Amnesty International.
This article first appeared on Compass.
In any historical period, the dominant ideas are those of the ruling class. In 1989 the world was treated to the words of Francis Fukuyama, who published an essay with the title 'The end of history?' His argument was not that historical events had literally stopped happening but that the collapse of so-called 'communism' in the Soviet union meant that western liberal democracy had successfully established itself as the ultimate and ideal form of government. With all the other forms of political rule having been discredited, it was only a matter of time before Western liberal democracy spread to the entire world, he argued. Wars, inequality and injustice, starvation and avoidable death through disease would soon be things of the past. Marxism, with its ideas of the class basis of society, of class conflict and of the need for economic and political revolution to bring about a democratically planned and controlled socialist society lay totally discredited he declared, gloatingly.
Fukuyama's anti-socialist triumphalism was music to the ears of the advocates of capitalism everywhere. The 'captains of industry' pride themselves on being hard-headed practical people who get things done and have little time for fancy talk or fancy theories. However even they sometimes feel the need to provide some kind of moral, historical or theoretical justification for the consequences of ‘free market’ economics. That is when their client so-called intellectuals are hauled out of the universities, dusted down and allowed to give the wider world the benefits of their 'wisdom'. Every dog has his day and this was Fukuyama's.
Fukuyama
Time and reality inevitably have dealt unkindly with Fukuyama's theories. Capitalism, on a global scale and increasingly dominated by multinationals possessing the power to dictate to national governments, has continued to subject the world to civil and international wars that have killed millions; to headlong exploitation of natural resources and environmental pollution that threaten the future existence of the globe; to untold luxury for tiny minorities and despair and desperation for huge swathes of the population particularly in the so-called 'developing economies'; and now to growing economic uncertainty and insecurity even in the advanced countries.
Economic ideas and theories are used to serve the material interests of conflicting classes. No matter how flawed or false, if repeated often enough they can develop a power of their own and become the accepted wisdom of the day. Fukuyama's ideas, despite being absurd, served the world of capitalism well at the time.
In the UK the late 1980s, when Fukuyama advanced his ideas, and the subsequent decade and more have been difficult times for the labour and trade union movement. They were still recovering from the severe defeats inflicted by the Tories on organised labour, the miners in particular. Neil Kinnock and other Labour Party leaders had launched an attack against the Marxists in the Labour party with the enthusiastic support of the capitalist press.
Witchhunt
This action was followed up by various constitutional and organisational changes in the Labour Party, which strangled criticism of the leadership and stifled political discussion, leading to a decline in membership and activity. Many good socialists who were long-term activists dropped out of politics altogether in disgust or simply in disillusionment. Strikes and industrial militancy were at a low level. At the time the economy was undergoing a boom which may have been built on quicksand but nevertheless spread the 'feel-good' factor, as large numbers of working people experienced improvements in their living standards and expectations.
In these circumstances the general drift of Fukuyama's ideas, which should have been discredited the moment he uttered them, evoked something of an echo with certain elements both on the right and the left of the labour movement. Strikes and even trade unions, it was 'explained’, were now outdated and irrelevant. Workers had been 'bought off' with consumerism. Human beings, they argued, are by nature greedy and selfish. Socialist ideas were a thing of the past, they said, because 'we're all middle class now.'
Strikes
Without any worked-out political theory, it is inevitable that even many genuine socialists will be blown hither and thither, enthused when things go well and confused and disillusioned when they don't. Only Marxism provides a method of objectively analysing economic, social and political processes and identifying the most likely developments among the various possibilities.
So far as the UK is concerned, the next few years could be very different from the past period. We appear to be entering a period of economic instability. The economy is likely to grow only fitfully. Price inflation is already biting and the collapse of Northern Rock is evidence of the fragility of finance capital. House prices are falling. The capitalists are confused and pessimistic about their own system, but one thing we can be sure of is that they will try to solve the problems of their system by attacking the living standards of the working class. We can be equally certain that the working class will fight back.
Answering Fukuyama on the one hand, and those genuine socialists who have grown pessimistic over the last period on the other, social changes have taken place that are likely to have a bearing on the forthcoming struggles. Far from the working class having disappeared, the reality is that proletarianisation has taken place. Workers are now subject to harsher discipline and ever more demanding work rates as productivity increases. Relative differentials in pay and status have been eroded. No longer can so-called 'professional' workers such as teachers stand aloof because of their relative social and economic privilege. Huge numbers in low-paid and low-status jobs such as those in call centres or massive open-plan offices experience conditions which are an updated version of the industrial employment which Marx and Engels studied in the nineteenth century and out of which class consciousness developed. Advanced technology has given some small groups of skilled workers the potential to bring key areas of the economy to a halt. Far from us all being middle class now, a recent Guardian poll showed that over two-thirds of those interviewed regarded themselves as 'working class and proud of it.'
Marxists
For Marxists, conditions determine consciousness. However this theory is not applied as though it is simply automatic. Already we have witnessed a rise in industrial militancy among teachers, civil servants and the Scottish oil refinery workers, for example. Workers will not simply stand by and watch the value of their wages being eroded through inflation, nor will they lie down and accept the job losses that are likely to be threatened if the economic stutter turns into a full-scale crisis. There will be setbacks but workers largely develop class consciousness through the experience of shared struggle. Their experiences in a period of what could be real instability are likely to contrast starkly with what they have seen and known in recent times.
Of course the labour movement has been relatively quiescent over the past decade. As the mood changes however trade union branches kept going by a few stalwarts are likely to be revived, trades councils could become the centre of local struggles and trade union leaders will be forced to reflect and lead an aroused membership or risk being shouldered aside by real class fighters. Even in the Labour Party ward branches that are currently no more than empty husks and even whole constituency parties are likely to undergo a transformation as they are reclaimed by working class people from the real infiltrators, Messrs Kinnock, Blair, Brown and other supporters of the 'New Labour Tendency'.
This article first appeared on Socialist Appeal.