Global Policy Forum

Land grabbing

Land grabbing has been at the top of GPF's agenda in recent months. We followed closely the "global AgInvesting" conference in NYC in April

Somalia

GPF's report on illegal fishing and toxic dumping off the coast of Somalia has attracted wide media attention.

Cholera in Haiti

GPF organized an event on the cholera epidemic in Haiti which looked at the UN peacekeeping mission's responsibility and its braoder role.

Drone Warfare

GPF organized a book launch with Code Pink founder and activits Medea Benjaming.

Somalia: Pirates and Fishermen

In early February, GPF published a report on Somalia titled "Fishermen, Pirates and Naval Squadrons" (PDF). The paper - by Suzie Dershowitz and Jim Paul - looks at the illegal foreign fishing and toxic waste dumping off the Somali coast. The Security Council has ignored these illegalities, while steadily ratcheting up the naval force deployed to eliminate piracy in the same waters. The authors question why forty large and lethal naval ships, bristling with missiles, aircraft, cannons and torpedoes, are needed to combat a few lightly-armed Somali pirates in inflatable rafts. The report argues that effective action against piracy requires addressing illegal fishing and toxic dumping. Many of the pirates are Somali fishermen whose livelihoods have been ruined by the illegal foreign trawlers.

The text stirred considerable political interest and it attracted wide media attention. An InterPress Service wire story on the report was picked up by over 40 outlets worldwide, including many in Africa. During the London Conference on Somalia in late February, journalists cited GPF's work, pointing out that illegal fishing and toxic dumping were conspicuously absent from the UK government's conference's agenda. Several present and past Security Council delegates have told GPF privately that they agree with our analysis, but powerful Permanent Members have consistently blocked action. Newly-discovered oil and mineral deposits in Somalia have evidently raised the stakes considerably and led to greater use of force. In late March, the European Union decided to expand its naval operations off the Somali coast by allowing ship-based forces to attack land targets. GPF attended a briefing in New York on April 27, where we sharply questioned Admiral Duncan Potts, the EU fleet commander. We will continue to speak out against the thoughtless escalation of force in Somalia and in favor of maritime policies that protect Somali fishermen and coastal people.

Haiti

In April, GPF co-hosted an event on "UN Peacekeeping, Cholera, and Human Rights in Haiti." Untreated wastes from UN peacekeepers introduced cholera into the country in October 2010, triggering an epidemic that has infected half a million Haitians and killed more than 7,000. Human rights organizations are demanding accountability, and 5,000 cholera victims have submitted a petition asking for UN compensation. The GPF event attracted a large turnout and informed the UN community about the epidemic and some of the larger problems with the peacekeeping mission, which deployed following a coup that overthrew the democratically-elected president, Bertrand Aristide. The program opened with the screening of a short documentary on the cholera case, "Fight the Outbreak," by the New Media Advocacy Project (N-MAP). A discussion followed, featuring lawyer Brian Concannon, filmmaker Abby Goldberg, Haitian lawyer Mario Joseph and doctor Evan Lyon.

Evan Lyon explained how the cholera epidemic - the first in Haiti in over a hundred years - had had been traced by medical experts to a unit of Nepalese peacekeepers. Haiti badly needs water treatment and sanitation facilities and the UN must begin to address the environmental impact of its peacekeeping missions. Mario Joseph argued that the UN must assume its liability for the epidemic and compensate victims as well as help build a national sanitation system. The peacekeeping force costs $800 million annually and that money could be better spent on a humanitarian approach. Transcripts of the speakers' remarks are available on the GPF website.

Food & Land Rights

Land grabbing - the large scale acquisition of land by foreign investors - has been at the top of GPF's agenda in recent months. In mid-April, we invited Haroon Akram-Lodhi, a professor at Trent University (Canada), to speak about this issue at a policy luncheon. As Akram-Lodhi pointed out, investors are rushing to profit from lucrative land deals amid record levels of hunger and rising food prices. These investors include governments, agri-business corporations and financial firms. Between 2001 and 2011, they bought up or leased more than 200 million hectares of land in the Global South - an area the size of Western Europe. An audio recording of the event is available on the GPF website.

On April 23-25, hundreds of institutional investors gathered at New York's elegant Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a conference on "Global AgInvesting 2012." For a fee of $3,000, participants - including university endowment funds, public sector pension funds and charitable foundations - heard about lucrative new investment opportunities in agricultural land and commodities. GPF has sent open letters to the presidents of Harvard, Yale and Princeton - three of the universities participating - urging them not to invest in land grab deals. We have also reached out to student groups advocating for a more transparent and socially responsible endowment process on the Princeton and Harvard campuses.

Drone Warfare

GPF hosted a meeting on May 2 with Code Pink founder Medea Benjamin, who spoke about her new book on Drone Warfare. Also on the program was Shahzad Akbar, a lawyer who represents victims seeking redress from death and injury due to US drone strikes in Pakistan. Benjamin, who often drops by GPF when she comes to the UN, was in her usual feisty mood, explaining the rapid spread of drone technology into military and intelligence operations worldwide. Compared with other weapons systems, she said, drones are relatively cheap and popular with governments because they put no armed forces personnel at risk. She called on citizens to oppose the US use of these weapons for extrajudicial killing and she made it clear that in spite of claims to "pinpoint accuracy," many non-targeted persons are killed or injured in these lethal strikes. A recording of the event is available on our website.

Global Finance

GPF organized a luncheon meeting on April 23 with Bernard Tissot, a top official at the Swiss-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS). The little-known but influential BIS acts as a forum for 60 central banks from major world economies and it works to address instability in the global financial system. Tissot pointed out that the ongoing financial crisis has gravely endangered the system of public debt, by adding $14 trillion in emergency sovereign borrowing worldwide since the crisis began. Governments are running out of options to deal with this problem, he said, and even strong economies could be hit with the contagion. His comments reminded us just how weak and dysfunctional the global financial governance system has become, at a time of high risk and potential systemic meltdown.

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