UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education 2019

Application Deadline: 28th May 2019 (midnight, Paris time).

Eligible Countries: UNESCO Member Countries


About the Award: Governments of UNESCO Member States and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in official partnership with UNESCO are now invited to nominate up to three individuals, institutions or organizations who have made outstanding contributions in favour of girls’ and women’s education.
The UNESCO Prize for Girls’ and Women’s Education honours outstanding innovation and contributions made by individuals, institutions and organizations to advance girls’ and women’s education. It is the first UNESCO Prize of this nature and will be unique in showcasing successful projects that improve and promote the educational prospects of girls and women and in turn, the quality of their lives.
The two laureates of the first edition of the Prize were selected by the Director-general of UNESCO on the basis of recommendations by the International Jury, composed of five experts in girls’ and women’s education. The Prize was awarded for the first time to two outstanding projects from Indonesia and Zimbabwe at an official ceremony that was held in Beijing, P.R. China in June 2016.

Type: Award

Selection Criteria: The two Prize winners will be selected by the Director-General of UNESCO on the basis of recommendations made by the independent International Jury of the UNESCO Prize on Girls’ and Women’s Education consisting of five experts from all geographical regions. The project/programme of the nominee will be assessed by the Jury based on the following criteria:

1. Impact: The project/programme’s impact should be qualitatively and/or quantitatively measureable, and deliver tangible results relative to the invested resources. This can include demonstrable changes in: (1) attitudes, beliefs and practices toward gender equality; (2) girls’ educational participation, attendance, completion and learning outcomes; and/or (3) other relevant parameters to advance girls’ and women’s education.
2. Innovation: The project/programme is stimulating, and/or drawing on, innovative approaches advancing girls’ and women’s education. This includes new ways of working where “business as usual” has failed, and transformative “out-of-the-box” thinking and actions. The project/programme can demonstrate innovation in terms of: (1) the themes covered; (2) the methodology employed; (3) the channels used to create change for girls and women; and/or (4) other aspects.
3. Sustainability: The project/programme has taken steps, ideally from its design or implementation phases, to ensure it will have a lasting impact beyond the project lifecycle. This may include efforts to ensure the: (1) continuation of local action; (2) institutionalization of project components; and (3) generation of further initiatives as a result of the project/programme.

Eligibility: In addition to these three criteria, the project/programme should:

• have already been running for at least two years
• show evidence that it may be replicable, scalable and/or provide significant learning potential for initiatives in other contexts
• contribute to one or more of the five priority action areas of the Prize:
  • 1. supporting girls/adolescent girls to transition from primary education to lower secondary education and to complete full basic education;
  • 2. supporting adolescent girls and young women to acquire literacy skills;
  • 3. supporting the creation of a gender-responsive and safe teaching-learning environment, free of school-related gender-based violence;
  • 4. engaging female and male teachers to develop gender-responsive teaching attitudes and practices and be change agents; or
  • 5. supporting adolescent girls and young women to acquire knowledge and skills for them to adequately transition from school to work and lead a fulfilling life.

Number of Awardees: 2

Value of Program: Laureates receive USD 50,000.

How to Apply: Nominations must be submitted in English and French via the online platform, only accessible to UNESCO Member States and NGOs in official partnership with UNESCO. Nominations will be assessed by an independent International Jury of five experts on the basis of the project’s potential for impact, innovation and sustainably.
Nominations must be completed online by the Permanent Delegation to UNESCO(See in link below) of the concerned Member State, or by an NGO in official partnership(See in link below) with UNESCO, through their official account.

Visit Program Webpage for details

Total/NNPC International Masters Scholarships 2019/2020 for Nigerian Students (Full Board)

Application Deadline: 28th March 2019

Offer ID:  17215BR

Eligible Countries: Nigeria

To be taken at (country): France

Fields of Studies: The scholarship is dedicated to students interested in applying for a master degree in France in the following fields:

• Engineering and Geosciences (Oil & Gas related)
• Finance and Management

Type: Masters

Eligibility: 

• Only Nigerian nationals are eligible to apply
  • Students should have graduated between 2014 and 2018
  • Must hold a first degree with at least Second class upper division relevant to the fields defined above
  • Must have completed 1(one) year mandatory NYSC programme

Selection:  The selected applicants will come at their own cost to write Aptitude Tests for English comprehension and numeric computational analysis skills. Applicants who are successful at these tests will be interviewed during the month of May, 2019

Number of Awardees: Not specified

Value of Scholarship: The award is full board.

Duration of Scholarship: See Below

About the Award: Total welcomes applications from suitably qualified young Nigerians for any of the programmes in the schools below.

1. IFP School (Petroleum Engineering)

• 12 months of classes and 6 month internship
  • Specialized Master in Petroleum Geosciences Geology
  • Specialized Master in Petroleum Geosciences Geophysics
  • Specialized Master in Reservoir Geoscience and Engineering

• 11 months of classes and 6 month internship
  • ​Specialized Master in Processes and Polymers
  • Specialized Master in Petroleum Economics and Management
  • Specialized Master in Petroleum Data Management

2. Ecole des Mines d’Ales IMT

• Disaster Management, environment, human and social sciences, Information et Communication Technologies (18 month academic program + 6 month internship , Possibility of doing it home country or in France)

3. Ecole des Mines de Nantes IMT Atlantique (Engineering and environment)

• Master in Project Management for Environnemental and Energy Engineering (PM3E) – 2 years

• Master in Process and Bioprocess Engineering – Project Management for Environmental & Energy Engineering (PM3E) 2 years
• MSc Management and Optimization of Supply Chains & Transport (18 month acadamic program + 6 month internship)

4. Ecole Centrale de  Nantes (Engineering)  – 2 years

• Master in Applied Mechanics on Computational Structural MechanicsMaster in Applied Mechanics on Design of Production and Systems
• Master in Applied Mechanics on Metallic and Composites Complex Assemblies
• Master in Control Engineering and Production Systems on Automatic control, Robotics, Signal and  mage

5. Institut Supérieur d’Électronique de Paris (ISEP)

• ISEP Engineering Master Degree in computer Science – 2 years

6. INSA Toulouse (Engineering)

• Master in Fluids Engineering for Industrial Processes – 2 years
• Advanced Master in Safety Engineering and Management – 1 year
• Advanced Master on Innovative and secure IoT systems – 1 year

7. ICSI Toulouse (HSE)

• Master in Safety Engineering and Management (HSE) – 2 years

8. Arts et Metiers ParisTech – 1 year

• Petroleum Geosciences & Engineering/ forage et Production
• MSc Knowledge Integration in Mechanical Production
• Master Degree in Materials and Engineering Sciences

9. ENSG Lorraine – 2 years

• Master Subterranean Reservoirs of Energy: Hydrodynamics Geophysics – Modeling

10. ENSGTI Pau – 2 years

• Chemistry International Studies (Chem.I.St)
• International Master “SIMOS“ : SIMulation and Optimization of energy Systems

Context and environment

Other programmes are:

11. ENSIC Nancy

• Chemistry International Studies – 2 years

12. GRENOBLE INP

• 1 year
  • Mécanique et energétique
  • Master CyberSecurity (CySec)

• 2 years
  • MSc in Electrical Engineering for Smart Grids and Buildings
  • Mechanics: Fluid Mechanics and Energetics – FME
  • Master in Sciences and Materials Engineering
  • Electrochemistry and Processes
  • Master in Sustainable Industrial Engineering
  • Master MSE – Program Biorefinery and Biomaterials
  • MSc in Integration, Security and TRust in Embedded systems
  • Master of Science in Industrial and Applied Mathematics (MSIAM)
  • Master in Hydraulic and Civil Engineering

13. HEC Paris (Business) – 10 month academic program + 6 month internship

• MSc Sustainability and Social Innovation
• MSc in International Finance (MIF)
• MSc Strategic Consulting
• MSc Managerial and Financial Economic

14. EDHEC Business School – 2 academic semesters + 3-6 month internship

• MSc in International Accounting & Finance
• MSc in Finance
• MSc in Management Studies
• MSc in Entrepreneurship & Innovation Management

15. ESC Rennes (Business) – 15 month academic programme including a 4 month internship

• MSc in International Management
• MSc in Global Business Management
• MSc in International Finance

16. Sciences Po Paris (Political Science, Law and Business)

• 1 year
  • LLM in Transnational Arbitration & Dispute Settlement
  • Master in Corporate Strategy
  • Master in Financial Regulation and Risk Management

• 2 years
  • Master in Public Affairs
  • Master in International Energy
  • Master in International Management and Sustainability
  • Master in Environmental Policy

17. Université de Cergy-Pontoise – 1 year

• LL.M in Law and Business Ethics
• Master (LLM) M. in Business and Taxation Law

18. CNAM –  1 year

• Master of Science in Telecommunications and Networks
• Master of Business Administration

19. Polytechnique Palaiseau – 2 years

• MSc Internet of Things: Innovation and Management
• MSc Ecotechnologies for Sustainability and Environment Management
• MSc  Energy Environment: Science Technology and Management – STEEM

20. ESCP Europe (Energy Management)

• MSc in Energy Management (MEM) – 3 academic semesters (London-Paris-London) + 4-6 month internship

21. University of Lyon 1

• MSc Synthesis, catalysis and sustainable chemistry – 1 year

22. EM LYON Business School

• Quantitative Finance – 1 year

23. Université de Grenoble Alpes –  2 years

• MSc in Chemistry  – five specialties
• MSc  in Earthquake Engineering & Engineering Seismology

Visit Scholarship Webpage for details

Displacement and Ethnic Conflict in New Ethiopia

Graham Peebles

Fundamental political reforms are underway in Ethiopia, but as the new Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed and his government work to bring about change in the country, historic ethnic divisions have erupted. Dozens of people have been killed, many more injured and over a million people displaced since April 2018 due to rising ethnic violence. The total number of internally displaced persons, according to Human Rights Watch (HRW) exceeds two million, this is a major test for the government, and to date little has been done for people driven from their homes.

While other groups have been involved in the clashes, much of the violence has been attributed to men from Oromia. Young men who, Al Jazeera report, have also been accused of looting and destroying property, as well as taking new homes in the capital which had been allocated to other citizens by dint of a ballot

Ethnic identity

With around 80 tribal groups and a population of 105 million people (growing at an alarming rate of 2.5% per annum), 70% of who are under 30, the demographic make up of Ethiopia is diverse and complex.

The Oromo, who are mainly Muslim, constitute the largest ethnic group with 35% of the population spread over a large region of the country; followed by the Amhara (Orthodox Christian) with 27%, and against who the Oromo have fought numerous wars. Many Ethiopians identify themselves more strongly with their tribal group than their nationality; ethnic clans have their own dialect and traditions, and are deeply attached to specific areas of the country. Tribal identities die hard and, together with stories of past conflicts and injustices, are passed down the centuries from parent to child.

In the early 19th Century Oromo monarchies ruled over large parts of central and southern Ethiopia, however for generations since the Oromo have complained of economic, cultural and political marginalization at the hands of governments led by politicians from other ethnic groups; most recently a brutal gang from the Tigray region who formed The Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which dominated the ruling EPRDF coalition that ruled from 1991 until April 2018.

Under the TPLF regime the Oromo people, like other ethnic groups, including the Amhara and ethnic Somali, were persecuted, falsely arrested, tortured and murdered, women raped. Amnesty International published a report in 2014 entitled, ‘Because I Am Oromo: Sweeping Repression in the Oromia Region of Ethiopia’, in which they stated “that thousands of Oromo people were “being ruthlessly targeted by the state based solely on their perceived opposition to the government…dozens of actual or suspected dissenters have been killed.”  There is no question that the Oromo were persecuted by the TPLF, but with the exception of people from Tigray, they suppressed the whole country. The danger now is that some Oromo may have revenge in their minds and feel protected by an Oromo Prime minister.

Long held Anger

One of the first actions undertaken by PM Ahmed was to dismiss all TPLF ministers, and, as Foreign Policy states, to arrest “a number of top military and intelligence officials – many from the ethnic Tigrayan community on charges of corruption and human rights abuses.” A new (gender equal) cabinet was agreed, predominantly populated by men and women from the same ethnic group as the new PM – Oromia.

Oromo people, particularly young Oromo men played a key part in the protest movement that swept across the country from 2015, culminating in the collapse of the previous regime. Now, for the first time, they have an Oromo government. The election of PM Ahmed was met with cries of ‘we won’ from Oromo people; the reaction revealed their feeling that the movement to bring about a change of government was an ethnically centered political uprising, something the rest of the population, many of who were involved in the protest actions would not agree with.

The change of government – the Oromo ‘victory’, seems to have allowed years of anger and resentment to come to the surface, and as Felix Horne of Human Rights Watch makes clear, since the new PM took office, “the ethno-nationalist narrative is much more dominant than it used to be … a lot of the young Oromo’s are not willing to take ‘second place.”

This sense of entitlement is extremely dangerous, it is part of an ‘Oromo First’ approach being promoted by certain influential Oromo’s and is a key factor in the recent ethnic clashes. Expectations of what the new government should do for the Oromo community is high: A group of young Oromo men told Reuters what they want: That the rights (including land rights as they see them) of Oromo’s are respected, support for poor Oromo families, an end to corruption and unfair land deals, dignity, and more generally, “freedom and justice, economic opportunity, jobs, democracy and free and fair elections.” In addition the Oromo stake a claim to the capital, Addis Ababa, which occupies an administrative island of autonomy within Oromia land. People from various ethnic groups populate the city, with the largest number, around half being Amhara. It is the capital for the whole country, and should not be associated with any one particular ethnic group.

Social unity

Under the previous regime a policy of Ethnic Federalism was introduced, the 1994 Constitution divided the country into nine ethnic regions together with two federally administered states: rights to land, employment and higher education was determined by ethnic identity; schools taught in ethnic dialects, tribal loyalties were strengthened, divisions aggravated and national unity, which was already fragile, weakened. Economic disparities between the regions caused ethnic competition and resentment, calls for succession were made by groups in the Ogaden/Somali region and Oromia and hardline ethnic political parties strengthened.

The new government and leaders of the main opposition parties – all of which are ethnically rooted, are spouting the rhetoric of unity and reconciliation, this is encouraging but by itself is not enough. The PM needs to take a lead in bringing about a shift in thinking, one that acknowledges differences, celebrates tribal culture and heritage, but also inculcates a sense of national identity, community tolerance and broad social responsibility.

Strong support networks exist within extended families in Ethiopia, but there is a lack of wider social engagement and civic responsibility. The cultivation of and investment in a vibrant civil society to support those in need, whatever their ethnicity, would help to break down ethnic divisions and foster an environment of compassion and tolerance; a collective atmosphere in which neighbors, workmates, students etc. are no longer seen through a prism of ethnicity, but simply as fellow human beings, Ethiopians all.

Tribal nationalism is on the rise throughout the world; an ethnically rooted country like Ethiopia is fertile ground for such extremism and all efforts must be made to build unity. Ethnic tensions and the huge number of internally displaced people is the first real test of PM Ahmed’s government; those that have been forced from their homes need to be supported and re-settled as a matter of urgency and measures taken to ensure that ethnic violence is dealt with as a criminal act, whilst introducing methods that encourage social cohesion. Building a united, tolerant country is essential if the new government is to succeed in introducing democracy to Ethiopia and creating peaceful integrated communities.

Chinese pressure tactics put countries between a rock and a hard place

James M. Dorsey

Recent Chinese pressure on Myanmar to approve a controversial dam project and the arrest in recent days in Kazakhstan of a human rights activist suggest that China in a seemingly tone-deaf pursuit of its interests is forcing governments to choose between heeding increasingly anti-Chinese public sentiment and pleasing Beijing to ensure continued political and economic support.

Apparent Chinese disregard of public opinion, whether as a matter of policy or because of haphazard insensitivity, is compounded by the powering of anti-Chinese sentiment in several countries as a result of commercial terms of China-funded Belt and Road projects that favour the use of Chinese rather than local labour and materials.

The Chinese approach risks anti-Chinese sentiment meshed with social and economic discontent exploding into popular protests that could prove destabilizing. It potentially could complicate Chinese efforts to ensure that the Muslim world continues to refrain from criticizing China’s crackdown on Turkic Muslims in the strategic but troubled north-western province of Xinjiang.

Chinese pressure on various countries aimed at imposing its will strokes with China’s adoption of a more aggressive diplomatic posture that has seen its diplomats employ blunt, undiplomatic language and repeatedly break with diplomatic protocol.

As a result, increasing Chinese pressure on Myanmar to revive the suspended Myitsone dam project in ethnic Kachin state is putting the government between a rock and a hard place.

The government is being forced to choose between ignoring popular concerns that the dam would disrupt the traditional economy of the Kachin in a region wracked by ethnic insurgency and cost Myanmar control of the Irrawaddy River, its most important waterway, or risk the ire of China on which it depends politically and economically.

China has reportedly offered in return for the dam to support Myanmar that has been condemned by the United Nations, Western countries and some Muslim nations for its repressive campaign against the Rohingya, some 700,000 of which fled to Bangladesh in 2017.

China has invested some US$15 billion in scores of projects in Myanmar

China’s state-controlled Global Times newspaper recently quoted Xiamen University Myanmar expert Fan Hongwei as saying that “the abrupt suspension of such a significant project has blurred political trust between China and Myanmar.”

Former Myanmar President Thein Sein in 2011 suspended the US$3.6 billion dam project in response to a campaign that brought together conservationists, scholars, and political activists including Nobel Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.

Activists assert the dam, if built as previously designed, would flood 600 square kilometres of forestland in northern Kachin state and export 90 % of the power produced to China.

Myanmar is not the only country that has recently experienced Chinese attempts to force it to act in ways that could have unintended consequences.

Kazakh police, despite widespread public criticism of the crackdown in Xinjiang, last weekend raided the office of Atajurt Eriktileri, a group that has reportedly documented more than 10,000 cases of ethnic Kazakhs interned in China and arrested activist Serikzhan Bilash.

Activists suspect that the raid was the result of Chinese pressure aimed at squashing criticism of the crackdown in Xinjiang.

Similarly, Russian leaders are facing mounting public anger in the Lake Baikal region and the country’s Far East at their alleged connivance in perceived Chinese encroachment on the region’s natural resources including water.

A petition by prominent Russian show business personalities opposing Chinese plans to build a water bottling plant on the shores of Lake Baikal attracted more than 800,000 signatures, signalling the depth of popular resentment and pitfalls of the Russian alliance with China.

Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi sought to put a good face on differences with China over his country’s demand that the focus of the China Pakistan Economic Project (CPEC), a US$45 billion plus crown jewel of the Belt and Road, be shifted from infrastructure and energy, to poverty alleviation, job creation and agriculture.

China has acknowledged Pakistan’s demand but suggested that the refocussing would happen in good time.

Mr. Qureishi asserted this week had CPEC had entered its second phase but provided few details. The minister said agreements on the second phase that would involve the creation of four economic zones would be concluded at some unspecified date in the future.

China notably refrained in recent months from contributing to a financial bailout of Pakistan that was achieved instead with the help of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who have committed some US$30 billion in funding and investments.

Pakistani and Chinese officials have gone out of their way in recent months to deny any dent in what they have described as an all-weather friendship.

“There is no threat to CPEC. Our government considers it a game changer,” M. Qureishi insisted this week.

China’s deputy chief of mission in Islamabad, Lijian Zhao, insisted in an interview last year and in a series of tweets that China “always supported & stood behind @Pakistan, helping #develop it’s #infrastructure & raise #living standards while creating #job.”

Ultimately, the proof will be in the pudding. Indications so far are that China is digging in its heels on the assumption that its political and economic clout will allow it to get its way. Its an approach that ignores potential black swans and does little to garner soft power.

India’s Agrarian Crisis: Dismantling ‘Development’

Colin Todhunter

In his 1978 book ‘India Mortgaged’, T.N. Reddy predicted the country would one day open all sectors to foreign direct investment and surrender economic sovereignty to imperialist powers.

Today, the US and Europe cling to a moribund form of capitalism and have used various mechanisms to bolster the system in the face of economic stagnation and massive inequalities: the raiding of public budgets, the expansion of credit to consumers and governments to sustain spending and consumption, financial speculation and increased militarism. Via ‘globalisation’, Western powers have also been on an unrelenting drive to plunder what they regard as ‘untapped markets’ in other areas of the globe.

Agricapital has been moving in on Indian food and agriculture for some time. But India is an agrarian-based country underpinned by smallholder agriculture and decentralised food processing. Foreign capital therefore first needs to displace the current model before bringing India’s food and agriculture sector under its control. And this is precisely what is happening.

Western agribusiness is shaping the ‘development’ agenda in India. Over 300,000 farmers have taken their lives since 1997 and many more are experiencing economic distress or have left farming as a result of debt, a shift to (GMO) cash crops and economic liberalisation.

Other sectors have not been immune to this bogus notion of development. Millions of people have been displaced to facilitate the needs of resource extraction industries, land grabs for Special Economic Zones, nuclear plants and other large-scale projects. And the full military backing of the state has been on hand to forcibly evict people, place them in camps and inflict human rights abuses on them.

To help open the nation to foreign capital, proponents of economic neoliberalism are fond of stating that ‘regulatory blockages’ must be removed. If particular ‘blockages’ stemming from legitimate protest, rights to land and dissent cannot be dealt with by peaceful means, other methods are used. And when increasing mass surveillance or widespread ideological attempts to discredit and smear does not secure compliance or dilute the power of protest, brute force is on hand.

India’s agrarian crisis

India is currently witnessing a headlong rush to facilitate (foreign) agricapital and the running down of the existing system of agriculture. Millions of small-scale and marginal farmers are suffering economic distress as the sector is deliberately made financially non-viable for them.

At the same time, the country’s spurt of GDP growth – the holy grail of ‘development’ – has largely been fuelled on the back of cheap food and the subsequent impoverishment of farmers. The gap between their income and the rest of the population has widened enormously to the point where rural India consumes less calories per head of population than it did 40 years ago. Meanwhile, unlike farmers, corporations receive massive handouts and interest-free loans but have failed to spur job creation.

The plan is to displace the existing system of livelihood-sustaining smallholder agriculture with one dominated from seed to plate by transnational agribusiness and retail concerns. To facilitate this, independent cultivators are being bankrupted, land is to be amalgamated to facilitate large-scale industrial cultivation and remaining farmers will be absorbed into corporate supply chains and squeezed as they work on contracts, the terms of which will be dictated by large agribusiness and chain retailers.

US agribusiness corporations are spearheading the process, the very companies that fuel and thrive on a five-year US taxpayer-funded farm bill subsidy of around $500 billion. Their industrial model in the US is based on the overproduction of certain commodities often sold at prices below the cost of production and dumped on the rest of the world, thereby undermining farmers’ livelihoods and agriculture in other countries.

It is a model designed to facilitate the needs and profits of these corporations which belong to the agritech, agrichemicals, commodity trading, food processing and retail sectors. A model that can only survive thanks to taxpayer handouts and by subsidising the farmer who is squeezed at one end by seed and agrochemical manufacturers and at the other, by powerful retail interests. A model that can only function by externalising its massive health, environmental and social costs. And a model that only leads to the destruction of rural communities and jobs, degraded soil, less diverse and nutrient-deficient diets, polluted water, water shortages and poor health.

If we look at the US model, it serves the needs of agribusiness corporations and large-scale retailers, not farmers, the public nor the environment. So by bowing to their needs via World Bank directives and the US-Indo Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture, what is the future to be for India?

A mainly urbanised country reliant on an industrial agriculture and all it entails, including denutrified food, increasingly monolithic diets, the massive use of agrochemicals and food contaminated by hormones, steroids, antibiotics and a range of chemical additives. A country with spiralling rates of ill health, degraded soil, a collapse in the insect population, contaminated and depleted water supplies and a cartel of seed, chemical and food processing companies with ever-greater control over the global food production and supply chain.

But we don’t need a crystal ball to look into the future. Much of the above is already taking place, not least the destruction of rural communities, the impoverishment of the countryside and continuing urbanisation, which is itself causing problems for India’s crowded cities and eating up valuable agricultural land.

So why would India want to let the foxes guard the hen house? Why mimic the model of intensive, chemical-dependent agriculture of the US and be further incorporated into a corrupt US-dominated global food regime that undermines food security and food sovereignty? After all, numerous high-level reports have concluded that policies need to support more resilient, diverse, sustainable (smallholder) agroecological methods of farming and develop decentralised, locally-based food economies.

Yet the trend in India continues to move in the opposite direction towards industrial-scale agriculture and centralised chains for the benefit of Monsanto-Bayer, Cargill and other transnational players.

The plan is to shift hundreds of millions from the countryside into the cities to serve as a cheap army of labour for offshored foreign companies, mirroring what China has become: a US colonial outpost for manufacturing that has boosted corporate profits at the expense of US jobs. In India, rural migrants are to become the new ‘serfs’ of the informal services and construction sectors or to be trained for low-level industrial jobs. Even here, however, India might have missed the boat as jobless ‘growth’ seems to have arrived as the effects of automation and artificial intelligence are eradicating the need for human labour across many sectors.

If we look at the various Western powers, to whom many of India’s top politicians look to in order to ‘modernise’ the country’s food and agriculture, their paths to economic prosperity occurred on the back of colonialism and imperialism. Do India’s politicians think this mindset has disappeared?

Fuelled by capitalism’s compulsion to overproduce and then seek out new markets, the same mentality now lurks behind the neoliberal globalisation agenda: terms and policies like ‘foreign direct investment’, ‘ease of doing business’, making India ‘business friendly’ or ‘enabling the business of agriculture’ embody little more than the tenets of neoliberal fundamentalism wrapped in benign-sounding words. It boils down to one thing: Monsanto-Bayer, Cargill and other transnational corporations will decide on what is to be eaten and how it is to be produced and processed.

Alternatives to development

Current policies seek to tie agriculture to an environmentally destructive, moribund system of capitalism. Practical solutions to the agrarian crisis must be based on sustainable agriculture which places the small farmer at the centre of policies: far-sighted and sustained policy initiatives centred on self-sufficiency, localisation, food sovereignty, regenerative agriculture and agroecology.

The scaling up of agroecological approaches should be a lynchpin of genuine rural development. Other measures involve implementing land reforms, correcting rigged trade, delinking from capitalist globalisation (capital controls) and managing foreign trade to suit smallholder farmers’ interests not those of foreign agricapital.

More generally, there is the need to recognise that genuine sustainable agriculture can only be achieved by challenging power relations, especially resisting the industrial model of agriculture being rolled out by powerful agribusiness corporations and the neoliberal policies that serve their interests.

What is required is an ‘alternative to development’ as post-development theorist Arturo Escobar explains:

“Because seven decades after World War II, certain fundamentals have not changed. Global inequality remains severe, both between and within nations. Environmental devastation and human dislocation, driven by political as well as ecological factors, continues to worsen. These are symptoms of the failure of “development,” indicators that the intellectual and political post-development project remains an urgent task.”

Looking at the situation in Latin America, Escobar says development strategies have centred on large-scale interventions, such as the expansion of oil palm plantations, mining, and large port development.

And it is similar in India: commodity monocropping; immiseration in the countryside; the appropriation of biodiversity, the means of subsistence for millions of rural dwellers; unnecessary and inappropriate environment-destroying, people-displacing infrastructure projects; and state-backed violence against the poorest and most marginalised sections of society.

These problems, says Escobar, are not the result of a lack of development but of ‘excessive development’. Escobar looks towards the worldviews of indigenous peoples and the inseparability and interdependence of humans and nature for solutions.

He is not alone. Writers Felix Padel and Malvika Gupta argue that adivasi (India’s indigenous peoples) economics may be the only hope for the future because India’s tribal cultures remain the antithesis of capitalism and industrialisation. Their age-old knowledge and value systems promote long-term sustainability through restraint in what is taken from nature. Their societies also emphasise equality and sharing rather than hierarchy and competition.

These principles must guide our actions regardless of where we live on the planet because what’s the alternative? A system driven by narcissism, domination, ego, anthropocentrism, speciesism and plunder. A system that is using up oil, water and other resources much faster than they can ever be regenerated. We have poisoned the rivers and oceans, destroyed natural habitats, driven wildlife species to (the edge of) extinction and have altered the chemical composition of the atmosphere to the point that runaway climate change seems more and more likely.

And, as we see all around us, the outcome is endless conflicts over fewer and fewer resources, while nuclear missiles hand over humanity’s head like a sword of Damocles.

Wealth Concentration Drives a New Global Imperialism

Peter Phillips

Regime changes in Iraq and Libya, Syria’s war, Venezuela’s crisis, sanctions on Cuba, Iran, Russia, and North Korea are reflections of a new global imperialism imposed by a core of capitalist nations in support of trillions of dollars of concentrated investment wealth. This new world order of mass capital has become a totalitarian empire of inequality and repression.

The global 1%, comprised of over 36-million millionaires and 2,400 billionaires,employ their excess capital with investment management firms like Black Rock and J.P Morgan Chase. The top seventeen of these trillion-dollar investment management firms controlled $41.1 trillion dollars in 2017. These firms are all directly invested in each other and managed by only 199 people who decide how and where global capital will be invested. Their biggest problem is they have more capital than there are safe investment opportunities, which leads to risky speculative investments, increased war spending, privatization of the public domain, and pressures to open new capital investment opportunities through political regime changes.

Power elites in support of capital investment are collectively embedded in a system of mandatory growth. Failure for capital to achieve continuing expansion leads to economic stagnation, which can result in depression,bank failures,currency collapses, and mass unemployment.  Capitalism is an economic system that inevitably adjusts itself via contractions, recessions, and depressions. Power elites are  entrapped in a web of enforced growth that requires ongoing global management and the formation of new and ever expanding capital investment opportunities. This forced expansion becomes a world wide manifest destiny that seeks total capital domination in all regions of the earth and beyond.

Sixty percent of the core 199 global power elite managers are from the US, with people from twenty capitalist nations rounding out the balance. These power elite managers and associated one percenters take active part in global policy groups and governments. They serve as advisors to the IMF, World Trade Organization, World Bank, International Bank of Settlements, Federal Reserve Board, G-7 and the G-20. Most attend the World Economic Forum. Global power elites engage actively on private international policy councils such as the Council of Thirty, Trilateral Commission, and the Atlantic Council. Many of the US global elites are members of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Business Roundtable in the US. The most important issue for these power elites is protecting capital investment, insuring debt collection, and building opportunities for further returns.

The global power elite are aware of their existence as a numerical minority in the vast sea of impoverished humanity. Roughly 80% of the world’s population lives on less than ten dollars a day and half live on less than three dollars a day.Concentrated global capital becomes the binding institutional alignment that brings transnational capitalists into a centralized global imperialism facilitated by world economic/trade institutions and protected by the US/NATO military empire. This concentration of wealth leads to a crisis of humanity, whereby poverty, war, starvation, mass alienation, media propaganda, and environmental devastation have reached levels that threaten humanity’s future.

The idea of independent self-ruling nation-states has long been held sacrosanct in traditional liberal capitalist economies. However, globalization has placed a new set of demands on capitalism that requires transnational mechanisms to support continued capital growth that is increasingly beyond the boundaries of individual states. The financial crisis of 2008 was an acknowledgement of the global system of capital under threat. These threats encourage the abandonment of nation-state rights altogether and the formation of a global imperialism that reflects new world order requirements for protecting transnational capital.

Institutions within capitalist countries including government ministries, defense forces, intelligence agencies, judiciary, universities and representative bodies, recognize to varying degrees that the overriding demands of transnational capital spill beyond the boundaries of nation-states.  The resulting worldwide reach motivates a new form of global imperialism that is evident by coalitions of core capitalist nations engaged in past and present regime change efforts via sanctions, covert actions, co-options, and war with non-cooperating nations—Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea and Russia.

The attempted coup in Venezuela shows the alignment of transnational capital-supporting states in recognizing the elite forces that oppose Maduro’s socialist presidency. A new global imperialism is at work here, whereby Venezuela’s sovereignty is openly undermined by a capital imperial world order that seeks not just control of Venezuela’s oil, but a full opportunity for widespread investments through a new regime.

The widespread corporate media negation of the democratically elected president of Venezuela demonstrates that these media are owned and controlled by ideologists for the global power elite. Corporate media today is highly concentrated and fully international. Their primary goal is the promotion of product sales and pro-capitalist propaganda through the psychological control of human desires, emotions, beliefs, fears, and values. Corporate media does this by manipulating feelings and cognitions of human beings worldwide, and by promoting entertainment as a distraction to global inequality.

Recognizing global imperialism as a manifestation of concentrated wealth, managed by a few hundred people, is of utmost importance for democratic humanitarian activists.  We must stand on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and challenge global imperialism and its fascist governments, media propaganda, and empire armies.

The Youth Climate Strike and the fight against global warming

Bryan Dyne

Hundreds of thousands of students and young people are expected to take part this Friday in a worldwide Youth Climate Strike to protest the inaction of governments on the issue of climate change. That the international demonstration has evoked a broad response is an indication of both the serious nature of the ecological crisis and the radicalization of youth all over the world.

The strike is the culmination of a series of international protests that began last August after 15-year-old Greta Thunberg began picketing the Swedish parliament every Friday. Since then, students and youth, some as young as 12, have organized weekly walkouts, protests and strikes in many parts of the world. Friday’s demonstrations, which will be the largest to date, will take place in more than 1,200 cities in at least 92 countries across six continents—including in Australia, Brazil, China, Great Britain, India, Iran, Italy, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Somalia, Sweden and the United States.

The protests have expanded amidst a series of reports indicating that global warming is accelerating, and that the destruction already caused by climate change from hurricanes, heat waves, droughts and other extreme weather events will become qualitatively more catastrophic as early as 2040. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the measures taken by governments to halt global warming are so much empty bluster. It estimates the potential economic damage from unabated climate change to be between $54 and $69 trillion worldwide.

Perhaps the most tragic consequence of global warming is the creation of so-called “climate refugees,” those forced to permanently flee their homes as a result of climate change-related disasters. The United Nations estimates that 210 million people worldwide have been displaced since 2008, and that up to one billion will be displaced by 2050.

The student strikes reflect the politicization and leftward trajectory of a generation that has come of age in a world of unprecedented social inequality, ongoing environmental degradation, growing state repression and expanding imperialist wars.

Polls consistently show a leftward movement of young people and growing support for and interest in socialism. Central to the perspective of genuine socialism is the understanding that there is not a single social problem confronting humanity—from climate change, to poverty and unemployment, to authoritarianism and war—that can be resolved except through the political mobilization of the international working class in a revolutionary movement to overturn capitalism and establish a society based on social need, not private profit.

The objective basis for such a revolutionary movement is beginning to emerge in the growth of the class struggle internationally, beginning in 2018 and escalating this year.

Mass protests and strikes in the past several weeks have paralyzed the Algerian government. Protests in Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal and Sudan have erupted against pro-business austerity and the victimization of refugees. Workers in different parts of Iran have been regularly striking for 15 months. Tens of thousands of autoworkers in Mexico have been on strike since January, and tens of thousands of teachers in the United States have gone on strike this year, in conflict with the pro-company unions. Students themselves are joining in these struggles, particularly in support of teachers and to defend public education.

It is to the working class that young people must turn, not to the corporate politicians and government institutions. Young people must study politics and come to an understanding of the role played by organizations that claim to be “left” or “green,” but work to channel opposition behind the ruling class and its policies of war and austerity.

In the United States, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has advanced the proposal for a “Green New Deal” to address climate change. The proposal is based on political fictions—namely, that global warming can be halted on a national basis, that the Democratic Party can be made to carry out major social reforms, and that progressive change can be achieved within the framework of the existing economic and political system.

In the upcoming 2020 presidential election in the US, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders is once again seeking to appeal to the anger and opposition of young people and workers in order to direct this anger behind the Democratic Party. His campaign, like the “Green New Deal” proposal, is characterized by a basic contradiction between the limited reforms it proposes and the absence of any realistic strategy for their implementation. The Democratic Party, which both Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are dedicated to promoting, is fully responsible, no less than the Republicans, for implementing the right-wing policies that are driving workers and young people into struggle.

Similar efforts to promote the parties of the ruling class are present in every country. Whether it is the Labour Party in Britain, the Socialist Party in France, the Social Democratic, Green and Left parties in Germany—all have played leading roles in implementing policies of war and social counterrevolution.

As for their supposed “solutions” to climate change, these are so many empty pledges and toothless measures. The track record of every international agreement and climate summit shows that none of them are capable of solving the crisis posed by climate change. They are ultimately dominated by the major corporations, which are responsible for global warming in the first place. Any measures that are adopted, such as carbon emissions trading, are thinly veiled mechanisms for these companies to continue business as usual—and even turn the poisoning of the environment into a new source of speculative profit.

The urgent measures needed to address climate change require a major reorganization of economic life on a global scale. The framework of energy production has to be transitioned from one that uses fossil fuels to one that relies on renewable energy. This, in turn, requires an international effort, involving a massive influx of funding for infrastructure, the development of current technologies and the investigation of new ideas.

All such measures come into conflict with the nation-state system, the basic political framework of capitalism, which itself has become an intolerable brake on the development of the world economy. They also collide with the foundation of capitalist exploitation of the working class—private ownership of the means of production and production for profit. As long as a handful of billionaires dominate society, with every aspect of economic life geared to their personal enrichment, not a single social problem, including climate change, can be solved.

This makes the solution to climate change an inherently class question and a revolutionary question. It is the working class that will suffer the brunt of the impact of global warming. It is the working class that is objectively and increasingly defining itself as an international class. It is the working class whose social interests lie in the overthrow of capitalism and the abolition of private ownership of the means of production, which will open the way to the establishment of an economic system based on the satisfaction of human need, including a safe and healthy environment.

The growing opposition of workers and youth must be developed into a conscious, international socialist movement. We call on young people participating in these demonstrations, and all workers and youth internationally, to join the Socialist Equality Party and its youth movement, the International Youth and Students for Social Equality, to lead this fight.

Israel mounts savage air bombardment on Gaza

Jean Shaoul

Israel Defense Forces launched a massive aerial attack on 100 sites in Gaza in the early hours of Friday morning, injuring at least four people in the southern city of Rafah. Hours later, strikes were still pummeling the town of Khan Younis.

According to Palestinian witnesses, IDF planes bombed security facilities belonging to Hamas, the bourgeois Islamist group that has controlled the Gaza Strip since winning the Palestinian legislative elections in 2006, as well as 30 sites held by Islamic Jihad, causing significant damage.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the strikes in retaliation for two rockets that set off air raid sirens across Tel Aviv, Israel’s most populous city. Israel’s Iron Dome defence system intercepted one of the missiles, while another landed in open space, causing no damage or injuries.

Hamas denied any responsibility for the rockets launched against Tel Aviv. It pointed out that the attack took place at the very time when its negotiators were meeting with Egyptian mediators, supported by the United Nations and Qatar, to try to reach an accommodation with Israel to ameliorate the terrible conditions in Gaza due to the crippling 12-year-long blockade by Israel, imposed with the active support of Egypt and President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah-led Palestinian Authority.

Such is the determination for negotiations to succeed that Palestinians stopped the night-time protests that were part of the Great March of Return movement, as well as Friday protests at one of the five gathering points demonstrators have used since 30 March 2018.

Hamas reportedly made these concessions in response to Israeli demands, transmitted by Egypt, calling for the “stopping the coarse tools” used by Palestinians after Israel again halted Qatari aid to Gaza. The talks follow the breakdown of an earlier agreement brokered by Egypt in November, following Israel’s raid on Gaza that triggered renewed fighting. Israel repeatedly broke the agreement, which allowed Qatari payments to Israel for fuel and power as well aid into Gaza.

Netanyahu explained at Monday’s Likud faction meeting that it was better for Israel to serve as the conduit for aid rather than the PA. “Now that we are supervising, we know it’s going to humanitarian causes,” he said. Whoever “is against a Palestinian state should be for” transferring funds to Gaza because maintaining a separation between the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in Gaza helps prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state.

A spokesperson for Gaza’s interior ministry insisted the rocket fire went “against the national consensus” and promised to take action against the perpetrators.

Two other Palestinian groups, Islamic Jihad and the Popular Resistance Committees, likewise denied responsibility. Daoud Shihab of Islamic Jihad told the Palestinian news agency Quds Network, “These accusations are mere lies by the Israeli occupation. Our movement and its military wing the Al-Quds Brigades did not fire any rockets.”

IDF spokesperson Brigadier-General Ronen Manelis admitted they did not know who had fired the rockets.

In the wake of the Israeli air raids, the Palestinians have called off their Friday protests along the Gaza-Israel fence entirely, the first time the marches have been stopped since they were launched nearly a year ago.

Netanyahu, for his part, is determined to prevent a large protest planned for 30 March. This date marks one year since the start of the demonstrations demanding the Palestinians’ right of return to their homes from which they were driven out in 1948-49 and 1967 and the lifting of the illegal siege that has left much of Gaza without power, sanitation, clean water and basic commodities.

Israel’s massive aerial assault on Gaza takes place in the run-up to elections on April 9, with Netanyahu, who has been indicted on multiple charges of corruption, fighting for his political life.

His strategy is based on an escalated far-right orientation, including the cultivation of neo-fascist forces both within Israel and internationally, that is shifting official Israeli politics to the right.

He has brokered a merger between the fascist Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party and the more established right-wing party of religious Zionists, Jewish Home. This is aimed at securing sufficient support from the ultra-nationalist and religious parties to form another Likud-led coalition under his leadership. In so doing, he has legitimized an organization that traces its roots to the long-outlawed Kach party of Meir Kahane, which the United States declared a terrorist organization.

Otzma Yehudit, like Jewish Home, encourages violence against Palestinians, calls for the expulsion of Arabs from Israel and the occupied territories, and advocates a ban on intermarriage or sex between Jews and Arabs. This fascistic outfit could, following its electoral alliance with Jewish Home, win seats in the Knesset and become part of the next government.

The two leaders that head the Otzma Yehudit list and could win parliamentary seats—Michael Ben Ari and Itamar Ben Gvir—are cofounders of a group implicated in a 2014 arson attack on a school for Jewish and Arab children in Jerusalem. Ben Ari was denied a visa to the US in 2012 as a member of a terrorist organization. Ben Gvir has acknowledged having a picture in his home of Baruch Goldstein, the Kahane supporter who murdered 29 Palestinians at a mosque in Hebron in 1994.

While Israel’s Elections Committee has allowed these Jewish supremacists to run in the elections, it has barred the Arab nationalist Balad Party along with Dr Ofer Cassif, the sole Jewish candidate on the combined Arab list of Communist Hadash and Ta’al, headed by Ahmed Tibi. They have appealed to the High Court to overturn the decision.

At the same time, Netanyahu has forged alliances with far-right and neo-fascist forces and leaders around the world, including Viktor Orban of Hungary, Matteo Salvini of Italy, Sebastian Kurz of Austria, Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines, Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and, above all, Donald Trump in the US.

Accompanying this turn, Netanyahu is whipping up virulent nationalism against the Palestinians, Iran and its regional allies, Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon, prompting Israel’s mainstream parties to compete over who is the most ardent defender of Israel’s security.

Netanyahu’s bourgeois political rivals competed with each other to demonstrate an even more bloodthirsty attitude toward the Palestinians. Education Minister Naftali Bennett of Hayamin Hehadash demanded that Netanyahu draw up plans for the assassination of Hamas leaders. “I call on Netanyahu to order that the IDF present the cabinet a plan to defeat Hamas.”

Benny Gantz, the former general who heads the Kahol Lavan party demanded that the Israeli military take “significant and harsh” measures to “renew its deterrence.”

Similar statements were issued by other leading Israeli politicians. While competing with Netanyahu, all of them like him, aim to deflect social tensions within Israel outwards.

Israel is among the most economically unequal advanced economies in the world and has the highest poverty rate of any country in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). It has seen a growing wave of working class strikes and demonstrations, including a mass protest of thousands of people demanding an investigation into the fatal police shooting of Yehuda Biadga, a mentally unstable Ethiopian-Israeli.

Netanyahu has responded to the weekly Palestinian protests along the Gaza-Israel fence with the utmost brutality. The IDF has killed at least 267 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip since March 30 last year and injured 29,000 more. Many of them are disabled for life. The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry that investigated Israel’s actions in Gaza during the protests stated that they “may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity.” A further 60 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, while Israel has lost just two soldiers.

The authorities have continually escalated tensions around Al-Aqsa Mosque in East Jerusalem, the third holiest site in Islam, over the last month, sparking repeated protests and demonstrations. On Tuesday, Israeli police sealed off the entrances to Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, following an alleged firebombing of a police station on the site that in fact was caused by children playing with fireworks, leading to scuffles between Palestinian worshippers and the police, injuring at least 10 Palestinians and leading to several arrests.