What GPF is working on
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Occupy Wall Street
The worldwide "Occupy Wall Street" movement electrified global politics in the month of October. In six weeks through the end of the month, it had spread to over nine hundred cities worldwide, with hundreds of thousands of participants. GPF staff and interns have gone to New York's Liberty Square to participate in events and to join in this powerful democratic upsurge. The Occupy movement has given us renewed conviction that dramatic change is possible and we are already aware of a new terrain for our discussion and debate. As Occupy keeps growing, GPF will do its part to provide critical information and analysis. GPF Europe's bold "Reflection Group" statement, shaped by participants from across the globe, adds important new ideas across a range of global economic and development issues. GPF New York is working on a soon-to-be published forty-year timeline on the long economic crisis that has led up to the present debacle - an analytical tool that will be a valuable basis for new thinking.
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Food & Hunger Program
On October 14, in observance of International Day of Rural Women and World Food Day, the Working Group on Food and Hunger organized a conference on Women Smallholder Farmers. A panel on "Food Security: Global Policy and Grassroots Realities" brought together policy experts and on-the-ground activists from around the world to speak on how rural women are affected by food policy.
On October 28, GPF organized a policy luncheon featuring Ken Davies, head of the World Food Program's "Purchase for Progress" initiative. Ken discussed efforts by WFP to buy food from small producers, located in the Global South, rather than large, agro-industrial enterprises located in major exporting countries like the United States, the European Union, Canada or Australia. The program also works with small producers to help them improve the quality of their produce.
GPF closely follows developments across the street at UN headquarters. Multinational companies are increasingly prominent there, we have noticed. But we scarcely would have predicted that PepsiCo, a giant soft drink and snack food company, would play a lead role in a high-profile UN initiative on nutrition! This GPF report, focusing on a meeting hosted by Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, reveals PepsiCo's curious role in a UN nutrition partnership.
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Working Group on the Security Council
GPF's NGO Working Group on the Security Council held lively meetings with India, Brazil, the UK, Lebanon, and the United States. Approaches to security policy differ sharply among these (and other) Council members. Brazil, long skeptical about armed intervention, has recently started to speak in public about "responsibility while protecting" - a concept that puts the imperative of "protection of civilians" into a new context, implying that "protection" is itself subject to abuse and that protectors also have responsibilities.
On another topic, GPF has been especially interested in the Palestinian membership bid and we have continued to do public education around it, including an excellent recent video interview of UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk by Harpreet Paul. In our background work on Palestine, we have learned that the United States has pressed other Council members to abstain on the key membership vote, in order to scuttle the process. Some diplomats have complained of US "bullying" on the matter. The Palestinians have been aware of these pitfalls and they have alternative plans. When the Security Council fails to act, they will seek a stronger status in the UN General Assembly where they are certain to win the vote, while also applying for membership in the UN's agencies, funds and programs. Palestine is not the first country to have its membership barred by the US or other Permanent Members, but it is an especially egregious case. Eventually, applicants prevail.
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Interview with Jean-Marie Guéhenno
GPF's Catherine Defontaine, Coordinator of the NGO Working Group on the Security Council, interviewed Jean-Marie Guéhenno, the former chief of the UN's Department of Peacekeeping, in a wide-ranging video discussion that has been posted on the GPF website. Guéhenno talks about the fundamental dilemma of peacekeeping - it cannot lead to lasting peace in conflict zones without a real political settlement. He addresses the problem of heavily-armed peacekeeping missions, the challenges of taking sides in internal conflicts, how to find personnel for peacekeeping missions, and the new financial pressures on peacekeeping.
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Media Interviews
GPF gave many media interviews during the month on topics including the food crisis, the Palestine UN application, Security Council action on Libya and Syria, the Peacekeeping operation in Haiti, UN finance and more. The interviewing media included InterPress Service, Le Monde, Saudi Television and Le Figaro.
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Highlights
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Food & Hunger
Former chief of the UN's Department of Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guéhenno is interviewed by GPF's Catherine Defontaine.
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Occupy Wall Street
Members of the GPF Fall Team show their support of the movement at New York's Liberty Square.
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Security Council
NGO Working Group on the Security Council meets with Ambassador Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti of Brazil.
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 Food & Hunger
WFP's Purchase for Progress Coordinator Ken Davies presents at a NGO Working Group on Food & Hunger Policy Luncheon.
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