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Conference Pack
The Conference Pack, given to each student, contains sheets on:
Background Information
History of University of Birmingham International Development Department
Pen Portraits of the speakers.
About Beacons
Feedback Form
READ ON!
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
This paper aims to give brief explanations of some of the key organisations, events and facts that are important in understanding our world. David Terry April 2008
UNITED NATIONS. Formed in 1945 as a successor to the impotent League of Nations with the aim of promoting peace, international cooperation and security. Its HQ is in New York. All 193 fully recognised independent states are members (e.g. not Kosovo, Taiwan, Scotland. The WW2 victorious powers, the US, China, Russia, France and the UK are permanent members of the 15-member Security Council. Each has a veto. The UN is financed by contributions from member states, assessed by ability to pay. The annual budget is about £1.5bn, excluding peacekeeping and the UN organisations referred to below, all of which are funded separately.
Unlike the League, the UN can deploy blue-bereted peacekeeping forces, drawn from member states, provided the Security Council agrees.
There is a family of UN organisations, each with its own budget and aims. The current Secretary-General is Ban Ki-moon of South Korea.
The Millennium Development Goals or MDGs. In 2000 the UN agreed a number of goals to be achieved by 2014. They are:
1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empower women
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability
8. Develop a global partnership for development
For each there are sub-targets. These are given on the UN website (simply Google UN) where there is also a great deal of other information.
The World Food Programme (WFP) is the food aid branch of the United Nations, and the world's largest humanitarian agency. WFP provides food, on average, to 90 million people per year, 58 million of whom are children.
The World Health Organization (WHO) is an agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, its HQ is in Geneva, Switzerland. The Director-General, Margaret Chan, is leading the international strategy to contain a possible Avian Flu pandemic.
The WHO is financed by contributions from member states and from donors. In recent years, the WHO's work has involved more collaboration; there are currently around 80 partnerships with NGOs and the pharmaceutical industry, as well as with foundations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. But serious disagreements on methodology have arisen with the former.
The World Bank was formed to channel funds for the rebuilding of Europe after World War 2. It works a bit like a building society; rich countries lend it money, poor ones borrow from it. The Bank's activities are now focused on developing countries, in fields such as: education, health, agriculture and irrigation; rural services; pollution reduction; roads, urban regeneration, electricity, and governance (e.g. anti-corruption), legal institutions development. Loans or grants for specific projects are often linked to wider policy changes in the sector or the economy.
The headship of the Bank is in the gift of the President of the USA. Robert B. Zoellick, a respected American economist is the current Chief Executive.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) was founded in 1944 with the aim of building a framework for worldwide economic cooperation that would avoid a repetition of the disastrous economic policies that had contributed to the Great Depression of the 1930s. The IMF and the World Bank complement each other's work and their HQs are next to each other in Washington DC, USA.
While the IMF's focus is chiefly on macroeconomic and financial sector issues, the World Bank is concerned mainly with longer-term development and poverty reduction. IMF loans finance infrastructure projects, the reform of particular sectors of the economy, and broader structural reforms.
Countries must join the IMF to be eligible for World Bank membership. All but a handful of countries are members of both. Voting is proportionate to contributions. Currently, the US has 16.4% of total votes, Japan 7.9%, Germany 4.5%, and France and the UK 4.3% each. As major decisions require an 85% super-majority, the US can veto any major changes.
The head of the IMF is, by convention, a European. The current head is Rodrigo de Rato, previously Spain’s Minister of Finance.
Both the IMF and the World Bank have often been criticised for forcing free market reforms on countries that are not ready for them, sometimes with disastrous results.
The World Trade Organisation (WTO). Successor to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade created after WW2 . With HQ in Geneva, it exists to supervise and promote free international trade. Currently 155 states are members. Most of the WTO's current work comes from the 1986-94 negotiations called the Uruguay Round. The WTO is currently hosting the Doha Round which aims to reduce grossly unfair agricultural subsidies and dumping practices of, especially, the USA, the EU and Japan. (Subsidies make it impossible for poorer nations to sell their farm products; dumping of surplus produce in poor countries at very low prices can bankrupt entire sectors of their economy). Progress so far is deeply disappointing.
The G8. The leaders of the eight richest nations meet annually to try to agree policy priorities. The 2005 meeting took place at Gleneagles in Scotland and was chaired by the then prime minister, Tony Blair, who put world poverty at the top of the agenda. For more on this meeting, see the DFID booklet in the conference pack.
The European Union (EU) developed after WW2 from a determination by French and German leaders to tie their economies together so as to make war between them almost impossible. Starting with six members states, there are now 27 with several more wishing to join including, controversially, Turkey. The EU seeks to create a level playing field for trade between members. This entails political measures that impinge on the sovereignty of individual states and sometimes lead to bitter disputes. But all consider it in their interests to remain members. A relatively small civil service implements the decisions of the member governments, and is generally reviled for doing so. Richer states are net contributers to the EU budget; poorer states and regions are given grants to modernise. The most objectionable feature of the EU is the Common Agricultural Policy or CAP under which agriculture, even in the richest members, is heavily subsidised, with dire consequences for the ability of developing nations to sell their farm products.
The EU funds many projects in developing nations in addition to such work done by its member states. Member states sometimes form an EU peacekeeping force. There is currently an EU force in Chad, neighbour of the Darfur region of Sudan.
DFID. The UK Department for International Development. The cabinet minister heading the department is Douglas Alexander. There are three assistant ministers (or secretaries of state), all MPs; Gareth Thomas, Gillian Merron and Shahid Malik.
In 2006/07 DFID budget was £7.5bn, about 0.6% of the UK’s total expenditure.
South Africa. Now the economically strongest state in sub Saharan Africa. It was a British Dominion from 1909 (similar, for example, to Canada) that declared itself independent as the Union of South Africa in 1961 in order to follow its policy of racial segregation or apartheid, under which white superiority was maintained by brutal suppression of the black majority. The country became something of a pariah state. It eventually crumbled in 1989. Nelson Mandela was freed after over 27 years imprisonment and led the country to democracy and racial equality.
NGOs or non governmental organisations. This covers aid charities such as Christian Aid, Oxfam, Medecin sans Frontieres, which are funded by donations but are often used by governments to channel aid. They tend to work together remarkably well and often campaign together for action aimed at creating a fairer world. They also guard their independence fiercely, Their budgets, compared with those of governments, are small. Oxfam, for example, spends about £220m a year. But their influence is considerable. In addition, there are private foundations.
The Cold War. After WW2 there were two super powers, the USSR (Russia and countries it had overrun) and the USA. Each had the power to destroy the whole human race with nuclear weapons; and each tried to maintain influence over its perceived sphere of influence and to expand it. Africa was a continent where this battle for influence was particularly intense, with often regrettable consequences.
The cold war ended with the collapse of the USSR in1989.
NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, is a military alliance of the USA, Canada and the major western European countries. It was founded in 1949 to counter the threat posed by the vast army of the USSR in eastern Europe. Several former Soviet Union states have joined, thereby causing tension with Russia.
The UK is a major contributor to the NATO force fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Independent Military Action. All nations consider they have the right to act independently. The British army’s most successful intervention was in Sierra Leone in 2000. A UN force had failed totally to end a vicious civil war in which the rebel RUF army used the most brutal methods, including hacking off hands, feet and limbs from women and children. The RUF rapidly collapsed on the arrival of a British force of a few hundred willing, unlike the UN force, to take casualties if necessary.
The Middle East. The historical background goes back over 2,000 years. The Roman Empire dispersed the Jews after they rebelled in 70 CE - the diaspora -and there was no state of Israel until the last century. The whole of the region was part of the Ottoman Turkish Empire before WW1. After the war, Britain controlled all of what is now Israel and surrounding countries, except Syria and Lebanon which were controlled by France. We promised a ‘national home for the Jews’ would be established. This meant that Arabs had to be moved to make way for Jews. Persecution in Russia, Poland and, above all genocide in Germany, led to large numbers of Jews coming. After WW2, the UN suggested an outline for a possible state of Israel. This was rejected by the surrounding states. The first Arab-Israel war followed, leading to a larger state of Israel and a large number of Arab refugees. Two facts need to be borne in mind. First, it was not Arabs who murdered six million Jews, but it was Arabs who were forced to make way for the Jews who fled from Europe. Historically, it is indisputable that Arabs have been the victims of a monumental injustice. But, second, Israel exists and will, understandably, fight to continue to exist. A large number of Jewish people fled to the USA in the last century, and many now occupy positions of influence. The USA has consistently supported Israel financially, militarily and politically since its foundation.
Terrorism and Suicide Bombing. While al-Qaeda suicide bombings are what we are most keenly aware of, they are by no means the only group to perpetrate such atrocities. Nor are they the first; that honour going to the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka who have been engaged in a bloody civil war with the government for some 30 years. And the Tigers are not Muslims, indeed while they come from a Hindu background, they are not of any religion, and their suicide bombers do not even believe in an after-life. In Lebanon there have been women suicide bombers and Christian ones. So it is a mistake to think that only Islam produces extremists capable of being prepared to die in killing and hideously wounding completely innocent men, women and children.
Al Qaeda, Afghanistan and Iraq. Led by Osama bin Laden, a Saudi Arabian multi millionaire, Al Qaeda is a world-wide network of terrorists which specifically targets western non-Muslim countries by seeking to murder people completely at random, often by suicide bombings. The worst atrocity, but by no means the first, was 9/11, so called because it occurred on September 11 (or 9/11 in the USA), when four passenger planes were hijacked on take-off. Two were crashed into the twin towers of New York’s Trade Center, one crashed into the Pentagon, the HQ of the US armed services, and the fourth crashed into an open area after the passengers overpowered the hijackers. Over 3,000 people perished, including everyone on board the planes. The US then led invasions of Afghanistan, where the Taliban, an extreme Muslim sect, ruled with medieval policies and punishments and where Al Qaeda were thought to be based, and Iraq, which was ruled by Saddam Hussein, one of history’s more vile dictators. The UK was one of a small number of countries that sent troops to fight alongside the US and to try to install stable democracy afterwards. The US led force quickly won the war but has manifestly failed to win the peace. The cost in human lives, and financially, has been enormous.
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Birmingham University IDD History
The History of The International Development Department
The International Development Department was founded in 1964 as the Institute of Local Government Studies and provided courses for local government officers from around the world.
In 1968 the Department launched courses for UK local government officers in collaboration with the British Local Government Association. In 1968 the two departments split forming the new Development Administration Group (DAG) and the British-focused Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) retaining the original title. The DAG, as it became widely known, ran short courses for overseas administrators in a range of subjects including rural development, urban development and local government finance. In the 1970’s the Department began to offer full MSocSci and Diploma courses in development administration.
Over the years our activities have broadened to cover the full range of academic research, publication and postgraduate teaching. In the 80’s and 90’s we launched new MSc programmes and short courses, took on more research and research students. We also developed a strong track record in advisory and project management services, managing long term donor-funded projects in Bangladesh, Ukraine, Zambia, Latin America, China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan and Central and Eastern Europe.
Our expertise has broadened at the same time. Whilst we retain our focus on decentralisation, we are more broadly concerned with issues of government reform, democracy, civil organisation, participation and poverty reduction.
In 1998 we changed our name again, recognising that the term development administration had become outmoded. Through our new name 'The International Development Department of the School of Public Policy' we wanted to show our close links with our colleagues in the rest of the School.
In addition to the International Development Department, the School comprises four other departments:
The Institute of Local Government Studies (INLOGOV) is concerned with manage- ment and policy studies of British and European Local Government.
The newly formed Centre for the Study of Global Ethics examines the wide range of ethical issues that arise in the context of globalisation.
The Health Services Management Centre (HSMC) is one of the leading centres for management education and research in the UK. HSMC’s purpose is to strengthen the management of health services and to promote better health.
Centre for Urban and Regional Studies (CURS) is a leading international centre for research and teaching in housing, regional and local economic development, urban policy and regional and urban regeneration
Our colleagues are concerned with similar issues of public management, governance and poverty reduction and to their application in Europe, UK, American and Australasia. The Department has always been and remains today unique amongst the UK’s development studies community as forming part of a broader comparative policy forum such as this.
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Pen Portraits
PEN PORTRAITS
The following pen portraits are in the order of speaking to the Bromsgrove Conference
Chris Edwards Headmaster. He won a scholarship to the University of Oxford where he achieved a First Class Honours Degree in English Language and Literature. He has subsequently worked in four continents, primarily, though not exclusively, in education
David Terry A part-time BEACONS volunteer and coordinator for sixth form conferences. He has held two headmasterships and his last full-time post was Principal of Halesowen College. A former Army Officer, he read Maths at Oxford
Paul Jackson Director of the International Development Department (IDD) which is part of the School of Public Policy at the University of Birmingham.
He has spent some fifteen years working in development education, largely with overseas students who are frequently working civil servants in their own countries.
Alongside this teaching experience, Paul has worked on a number of overseas development programmes. He is predominantly an Africanist and has worked in several countries across the continent, including Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Rwanda and Zambia, but he has also worked in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus (Kazakhstan, Georgia, Ukraine, Romania) and elsewhere (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Chile).
An expert in institutional development (how governments work), and also conflict and post-conflict reconstruction he has worked for several different charities and development agencies, including DFID, the World Bank, the UN, and various national development agencies (Denmark, Sweden, Canada). He currently runs a big programme on security and development for DFID, the MOD and FCO and is writing the UN’s new policy on how to rebuild local governments following war, based on his experiences in Sierra Leone. He is currently Director of the Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform, an international research and practitioner network providing research support for the UK Government on security issues. At the IDD he directs the MSc postgraduate degree programme on Conflict, Security and Development
He used to be a backpacker, remains interested in subjects as diverse as heavy metal and poverty alleviation, and says he seems to be working in more war zones than he used to.
Lucy Ferguson has been a Lecturer at IDD since September 2007 and her specialisms include the political economy of development, gender and development, tourism as a development strategy and the political economy of social reproduction. Before this she completed her PhD at the University of Manchester which explored the gender dimensions of tourism as a development strategy in Central America. This involved six months of field research across several countries including Belize, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Panama. Lucy is currently convening a series of panels for the International Studies Association and British International Studies Association conferences into the political economy of social reproduction. She is also carrying out research into tourism-based poverty reduction strategies, in particular focusing on the gendered political economy of microenterprise development.
Maya Segas Aged 28, she is a Regional Campaigner for Oxfam. Based in Birmingham, she leads on Oxfam’s Climate Change Campaign. Climate change is affecting, and will affect, first and worst the world's poorest people. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Maya is half Swedish and is fluent in Swedish, French, Spanish and German and, of course, English. After a BA in International Relations from the University of British Columbia, where she was active in student politics, being elected Student Union President for one year, she took a Masters in Human Rights and Democratisation at the University of Padua, Italy. Before joining Oxfam, she worked for two years for a Birmingham MP. She has also completed internships with the European Parliament in Brussels and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe's Parliamentary Assembly in Copenhagen. Maya went to Sri Lanka in March last year to study how donors' money is being spent on Oxfam projects. She is dedicated to overcoming poverty and suffering through her work with Oxfam, and believes that young people can make a real difference in helping to achieve this goal.
Sunday Okello has been a PhD student in the IDD since October 2006 during which time he has been conducting research into conflict transformation and peacemaking in Northern Uganda. Before this he trained in peacebuilding and conflict transformation. He travels widely in order to combine practical experience with his research. In 1996, he studied for a BSc/MSc programme in Manufacturing and Quality Engineering at Vaxjo University in Sweden He has worked as a computer consultant and adviser to the Swedish Immigration Department Southern Region, an asylum centre for young people who are unaccompanied and without legal guardians. In 2003, he completed his Post Graduate Certificate in Conflict Resolution Skills at Lancaster University and in 2005 completed his Master of Arts in Peace and Reconciliation studies at Coventry University.
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About Beacons
ABOUT BEACONS
We are a group of volunteers dedicated to promoting development education within the two counties. We are part of a national network of similar centres, and have been working in the area for over twenty-five years.
Our primary aim is to encourage people of all ages to become more actively aware of the issues that affect international development. We aim to counteract some of the misconceptions and distortions of international issues that are fuelled by some of the media, and to stimulate informed debate and a more balanced understanding.
By active awareness we mean being prepared to do something about promoting sustainable development - not merely a passive ‘so what? it’s not my problem’ response but ‘what can I do to help?’ Whether we see it as a matter of national self-interest that we should try to help people in poor countries in their efforts to improve their quality of life, or a matter of morality that some of us enjoy standards of living vastly superior to others elsewhere who work just as hard, there is much that groups and individuals can do to help, as well as governments.
These are the kinds of issue that we try to address through such events as sixth-form conferences. We also promote awareness of the various organisations and agencies working within the two counties on various aspects of international development, and we encourage people to join in their activities. Many of these groups are represented at the conferences that we arrange. One of our functions is to organise an annual general conference at which people concerned with international development can meet. Our 2008 conference is on the theme: ‘Water: Friend or Foe?’ and will focus on three communities affected by floods in 2007: Upton-upon-Severn here in Worcestershire; Kolkata in West Bengal, India; and Teso District in Uganda.
We maintain a substantial library and resource centre from which schools and colleges, community groups and individuals can borrow. We are currently planning to develop a new series of theme boxes or study packs on development-related issues, such as Migration, Child Labour, Water, Climate Change, Tourism, Trade Justice, Food and Farming, New Technologies, etc. For the past quarter century we have been based in the Oxfam shop in Malvern, but we are moving this summer to a new base in the former Good Shepherd church in Upper Colwall, on the other side of the Malvern Hills, which has kindly been made available to us by the Colwall Parish Council, and is appropriately situated between the two county beacons. We are open on Saturday mornings and at other times by arrangement.
BEACONS is always keen to recruit new volunteers who can help in various ways. We are particularly keen to attract student volunteers, especially those who have visited or done some work in a developing country, and who would be willing to talk about their experiences to schools and community groups.
If you want to know more about BEACONS, or are interested in volunteering, please visit our website at www.beaconsdec.org.uk or phone us on 01684 576737. We are keen to develop this website as a forum for discussion of international development issues.
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Feedback Form
The Development Education Centre for
Herefordshire & Worcestershire
MAKING POVERTY HISTORY
BROMSGROVE SIXTH FORM CONFERENCE
BROMSGROVE SCHOOL APRIL 21, 2008
FEEDBACK SURVEY
We would value your feedback. Please complete the questionnaire below and hand it in to your houseparent by Friday April 25. If you would like BEACONS to help you get involved, please give your name and contact details, in confidence. If you have further comments please write them on the back of this form or contact David Terry.
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Website: www.beaconsdec.org.uk Email: coordinator@mdec.org.uk
Any enquiries please call David Terry on 01905 774907 or email terrydroit@aol.com
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