Dear Rob and Friends,

Warm greetings!

Kindly read invitation, below, to the Tenth Asia Europe People's Forum (AEPF10). This event is a biennial civil society gathering of major Asian and European social movements and NGOs, prior to the ASEM Summit. Rob, you were an AEPF speaker in 2004 in Hanoi.

Please read as well, attached,  AEPF10 Discussion Paper on Social Protection.

In warm solidarity,
Tina
Cristine "Tina"  Ebro
Coordinator for Asia
Asia Europe People's Forum (AEPF)
www.aepf.info

Dear colleagues,

Concerns are mounting about the human toll the increased flows of migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean is taking. Conflict and persistent political instability in the Middle East and parts of Northern Africa are only one push factor. There are at least as many who try to escape economic distress, risking their lives in search for a better future. Much of Africa’s youth sees migration as the only way out. This will be like this unless we find better ways to give them a future at home. Some practical solutions are offered in a recent publication:

FAO-IFAD-CTA, Youth and Agriculture: Key Challenges and Concrete Solutions (August 2014) (http://www.fao.org/3/a-i3947e.pdf)

Some more to the broader background in the piece below. It would be good for this forum to engage in a discussion about these solutions and the feasibility and desirability to scale them up. It’s time to look ahead from “recovery with a human face” to “suatainable development with a human face”. Today’s youth should be at the centre.

Rob
Rob Vos
Coordinator Strategic Programme on Rural Poverty Reduction (SO3) and
Director Social Protection Division (ESP)
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)
Room C-328
Viale delle Terme di Caracalla -- 00153 Rome, Italy
email:  rob.vos@fao.org
Website: http://www.fao.org/economic/social-protection/en/

Dear colleagues,

About 805 million people, or one in nine, in the world suffer from hunger. The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI 2014) released this week confirms a positive trend which has seen the number of hungry people decline globally by more than 100 million over the last decade, and by more than 200 million since 1990-92. The report is published annually by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), all headquartered in Rome.

The overall trend in hunger reduction in developing countries means that the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the proportion of undernourished people by 2015 is within reach, “if appropriate and immediate efforts are stepped up”, the report says.

Clearly, accelerated, substantial and sustainable hunger reduction is possible with the requisite political commitment, well informed by sound understanding of national challenges, relevant policy options, broad participation and lessons from other experiences.

Progress still too slow…

At the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS), heads of government and the international community committed to reducing the number of hungry people in the world by half. Five years later, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) lowered this level of ambition by seeking to halve the proportion of the hungry.

789 million of the chronically hungry are in developing countries, where their share has declined from 23.4 per cent in 1990-92 to 13.5 per cent in 2012-14. By 2012-14, 63 developing countries had reached the MDG 1c target -- to either reduce the share of hungry people by half, or keep the share of the hungry under five per cent -- with several more on track to do so by 2015.

Of these 63, 25 have also achieved the more ambitious WFS target of halving the number of undernourished people by 2015. Some 25 countries have made impressive progress, achieving the more ambitious WFS target of halving the number of hungry. However, the number of hungry people in the world has only declined by a fifth from the billion estimated for 1990-92.

…and uneven

Overall progress has been highly uneven. All but 14 million of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. Some countries and regions have seen only slow progress in reducing hunger, while the number of hungry has even increased in several cases.

Despite significant progress overall, several regions and sub-regions continue to lag behind. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than one in four people remain chronically undernourished, while Asia, the world’s most populous region, is also home to the majority of the hungry, over half a billion people. Meanwhile, Latin America and the Caribbean have made the greatest overall strides in increasing food security by region.

Marked differences in reducing undernourishment have persisted across regions. There have been significant reductions in both the estimated share and number of undernourished in most countries in South-East Asia, East Asia, Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean—where the MDG target has been reached, or nearly reached. West Asia has seen a rise in the share of the hungry compared to 1990–1992, while progress in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Oceania has not been sufficient to meet the MDG hunger target by 2015.

In several countries, underweight and stunting persist in children, even when undernourishment is low and most people have access to sufficient food. Such nutrition failures are due not only to insufficient food access, but also to poor health conditions and the high incidence of diseases such as diarrhoea, malaria, HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis.

SOFI 2014 notes how access to food has improved rapidly and significantly in countries that have experienced overall economic progress, notably in East and South-East Asia. Access to food has also improved in South Asia and Latin America, but mainly in countries with adequate social protection especially for the rural poor, who comprise three quarters of the poor globally.

Enabling environment

With the number of undernourished people remaining “unacceptably high”, SOFI 2014 stresses the need to strengthen political commitment to tackle hunger. The pledges of the Community of Latin America and the Caribbean (CELAC) at its 2013 summit and of the 2014 African Union (AU) summit in June to end hunger on their respective continents by 2025 are very encouraging.

The report specifies that hunger eradication requires establishing an enabling environment and an integrated approach. Such an approach includes public and private investments to increase agricultural productivity and incomes; access to land, services, technologies and markets; and measures to promote rural development and social protection for the most vulnerable, including strengthening their resilience to conflicts and natural disasters. SOFI also emphasizes the importance of specific nutrition programmes, particularly to address micronutrient deficiencies of mothers and children under five.

Case studies

This year’s report includes seven case studies -- Bolivia, Brazil, Haiti, Indonesia, Madagascar, Malawi and Yemen -- that highlight some ways that countries tackle hunger and how events may influence their capacity to deliver on food security and nutrition objectives. The countries were chosen because of their political, economic, agronomic and cultural differences.

Bolivia has made progress by creating institutions to involve a range of stakeholders, particularly the previously marginalized indigenous peoples.

Brazil’s Zero Hunger programme placed food security at the centre of the government agenda, thus accelerating achievement of both MDG and WFS targets. More recently, it has prioritized addressing other dimensions of undernutrition and family farming through innovative and inclusive social protection besides helping other national efforts as part of South-South cooperation.

Meanwhile, Haiti, where more than half the population is chronically undernourished, is still struggling to recover from the effects of the devastating 2010 earthquake. Nonetheless, it has adopted a national programme to strengthen livelihoods by supporting small family farmer access to inputs and services.

Indonesia has established institutions to improve food security and nutrition involving ministries, NGOs and community leaders in measures addressing a wide range of challenges from agricultural productivity growth to safe and nutritious diets.

Madagascar is emerging from political crises and is resuming relations with international development partners to tackle poverty and malnutrition and build resilience to shocks and climate hazards, which often afflict the island nation.

Malawi has reached the MDG hunger target, thanks to a strong commitment to boost maize production. As malnutrition remains a major challenge, the government is promoting community-based nutrition interventions to diversify production for healthier diets, and to raise household incomes.

Conflict, low agricultural productivity, poverty and economic downturn have made Yemen one of the most food-insecure countries in the world. Besides restoring political security and economic stability, the government has committed to drastically reduce hunger, food insecurity and child malnutrition.

Lessons

Improvements in food security and nutrition generally require complementary policies, including improving health conditions, hygiene, water supply and education. More sophisticated and creative approaches to coordination and governance are needed, with more, and more effective resources to end hunger and malnutrition before 2030.

With high levels of deprivation, unemployment and underemployment continuing and likely to prevail in the world in the foreseeable future, poverty and hunger are unlikely to be overcome without universalizing social protection to all in need, but also to provide the means for future livelihoods and resilience.

SOFI 2014 will be discussed by governments, civil society, and private sector representatives at the 13-18 October meeting of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome. The report will also be a resource for the Second International Conference on Nutrition (ICN2) in Rome on 19-21 November. This high-level intergovernmental meeting seeks to strengthen political commitment to combat malnutrition in the world through more integrated actions at both national and international levels.

Best regards,
Jomo Kwame Sundaram
Coordinator for Economic and Social Development
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
FAO (ES-ADG, Room B532), Vialle delle Terme di Caracalla,
00153 Roma, Italy.
Websites: http://www.fao.org/, http://www.jomoks.org/, http://www.ideaswebsite.org/

Dear colleagues,

I recently shared a somewhat elaborate note to a private list but suspect it might be of interest to the recovery with a human face crowd. It complements Bodo's message and is perhaps somewhat less pessimistic than Kuni's follow up comment, which you will have also received. We are all very encouraged by the adoption of the General Assembly resolution (A/68/L.57/Rev.1). Please note, however, that the original called for a convention and the final draft called for GA adoption of a framework. These are very different. That in itself is a major step back but it was still too much for 10 developed countries to accept, not to mention the 41 countries that abstained. There are answers to the complaints of the governments that abstained or voted against the draft and I hope these can be successfully addressed in the modalities discussion. I also hope Argentina will continue its leadership on the issue in 2015 and beyond as will likely be necessary to actually get to an agreed international debt workout process. I will try to put these developments into context.

The best news in the resolution is that the salience of the problem has been raised at the UN thanks to Argentina. I think the vulture fund case against Argentine is so ludicrous that every sane political authority knows it cannot be allowed to be a precedent and should not be enforced on Argentina. Even the US Government wrote an amicus curiae brief for Argentina, albeit at the appeals court stage. Several governments wrote amicus briefs at the Supreme Court stage, including France and Brazil. And the International Capital Markets Association responded already in August when it launched new suggested standard fine print for bond documentation that will prevent another Argentina vulture fund case (member firms of ICMA help borrower governments bring their bonds to market, so their recommended "boilerplate" text is important).

There is a problem, however, in that the vulture funds usually collect their money in the end and may do so again after certain Argentine legislation expires at the end of the year. It has prevented settlement thus far since it would require giving all Argentina's other bondholders the same deal as it gave the vultures. It cannot afford that. Nobody likes the vulture funds, but it is my understanding that lots of institutional investors (and probably rich individuals as well) from developed and developing countries gladly give them the money to pursue their financial strategies.The Argentina case has apparently been great advertising for this business (they probably also made money shorting Argentine bonds and collecting on credit default swaps when the bond interest payment deadline passed end July).

But this is too much. If not by international agreement, the international community should be able at the very least to stop future vultures through national legislation in major capital market countries. After all, Elliot Associates (the very same guys that have been pursuing Argentina) collected on some Peruvian bank debt through Euroclear in Brussels, after which the Belgian Parliament adopted legislation to prevent misuse of Euroclear for this purpose again. Also, after Donegal International collected in the UK courts on some defaulted Zambian export credits that Romania sold them, the British Parliament adopted legislation to limit what a vulture fund can take home from a HIPC. As the US and UK opposed the UN resolution and as most international sovereign bonds are issued in New York and London under their respective laws, should not those governments at least agree to propose legislation to their legislatures to outlaw vulture fund adventures against insolvent sovereigns? The argument could be, if you won't join in developing a missing piece of the international financial architecture, at least do something useful.

Nevertheless, a majority of governments at the UN have now embarked on a more ambitious track. The resolution commits the General Assembly to agree to modalities for negotiation by the end of 2014 (OP. 6) and to adopt through those negotiations by the end of the 69th session (i.e., by about 16 September 2015) a "legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring processes" (OP.5). The GA "adopts" by agreeing to a resolution which can either be by consensus or by recorded vote. A GA resolution is not binding but a normative statement to which governments give more or less political priority. It is not clear what is meant by the "legal framework" but the resolution refers to restructuring processes (in plural), so the decentralized systems for restructuring bonds, bank debt, bilateral official and on special occasion multilateral debt could remain (or not; it is not clear). One may thus read the text as proposing that the GA adopt a set of legal principles that should govern any and all sovereign debt workouts. The UNCTAD expert group has been working in this vein; e.g., it agreed at its last meeting that the principles of legitimacy and impartiality would be important for a debt workout mechanism. Other principles discussed at earlier expert group sessions included efficiency, sustainability, transparency, ownership, human rights and social protection (for details, see http://www.unctad.info/en/Debt-Portal/Project-Promoting-Responsible-Sovereign-Lending-and-Borrowing/About-the-Project/Debt-Workout-Mechanism/).

It seems, in other words, that the Argentine initiative does not take us all the way to an international debt workout mechanism. The US statement in explanation of vote on Tuesday rejected adoption of a statutory approach, preferring to continue with contractual approach with disputes settled in the courts of the country whose laws govern the contract. But there was no proposal for a statutory approach in the resolution.

In fact, there are several proposals for mechanisms to speed fair and effective debt workouts. Where is the expertise and balanced and representative deliberative body that could help advance from broad principles to an proposed mechanism or process? Answer: the United Nations. It has well-regarded existing expertise on international insolvency in UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law). Working Group V of UNCITRAL is on Insolvency Law. It does not address sovereign insolvencies, but cross-border matters in mainly corporate bankruptcy. It could address sovereign insolvency if the General Assembly requested it to do so (informal opinion in early 2000s of Jernej Sekolec, former Secretary of the Commission, now retired). And so, after considering the broad principles to put into a framework for sovereign debt workouts during 2015, the GA could request UNCITRAL to develop proposals for how to operationalize them. Should it be through adoption of a model law that countries would then adopt into their domestic legislation (Christoph Paulus)? Or an arbitration mechanism (FTAP)? Or a mediation service (Gitlin/House)? Or something court like (Jubilee South)? UNCITRAL could be asked to study the issue and make a concrete recommendation to the GA, which could debate it in the context of a Financing for Development discussion at which all relevant stakeholders would be represented and at which governments could be represented jointly by their finance and foreign ministries.

The point is, it could be done. The international community actually did it once before, in 1907 in the Hague Treaties that agreed to settle sovereign insolvency through arbitration instead of gunboat diplomacy. More than a century later, Argentina has opened the door a crack. You can almost feel the breeze beginning to come into the room.

Barry

Barry Herman
Julien J Studley Graduate Program in International Affairs
Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy,
The New School
72 Fifth Avenue, Room 624
New York, NY 10011, USA
Email: hermanb@newschool.edu
Faculty web page

Dear all

These are my contribution on the subject:

http://alainet.org/active/77001

http://www.elnorte.fi/archive/2007-2/2007_2_elnorte_ugarteche.pdf

having read Kuni's message, I don't understand why a UNCITRAL type process is so difficult to put in place. That was what we had in mind with Acosta when we suggested the UN as the natural space for this to be advanced. Not the IMF surely for the obvious reason it cannot be a part and judge and secondly because the 124 who voted against would probably not agree.

Argentina will probably get the ball rolling as it has all along on this subject for the past few months.

Dr.Oscar Ugarteche
Instituto de Investigaciones Económicas
UNAM
Oficina I 120
Circuito Mario de ls Cueva. s/n
Ciudad universitaria, Coyoacán
México DF 04510
Coordinador OBELA
www.obela.org

Dear colleagues:

An important step, no doubt, but still a long and arduous way to go. A mechanism – without further specification – might well bring debtor countries, the poor, but even bona fide private creditors out of the frying pan, but right into the fire.

As Bodo mentions “The most relevant practical work, on the other hand, was the IMF’s concept for a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism” – but not even the proposal many NGOS including EURODAD have propagated over years  -  one cannot but point out that an SDRM-type solution would have no debtor protection, no guarantee of human rights standards, no voice of those affected and would firmly put one or several (most likely

public) creditor(s) in the driver’s seat.  Vultures might well be stopped that way, but at huge costs because – again referring to the SDRM – one has to agree with Ms Krueger:

"The Fund would only influence the process as it does now, through its normal lending decisions" (Krueger, “Sovereign Debt Restructuring and Dispute Resolution", June 2002, p.4). This would no doubt be cause for joy for some, but not necessarily for all.

Therefore it is mandatory to start discussing what features the solution should have and advocate a fair and proper insolvency procedure that finally puts an end to the unjustified differences in how insolvent debtors are treated now, depending on who or what (sovereign country) they are.

Best

Kunibert Raffer
Dept.  of  Economics,
Univ of Vienna, Austria

Dear colleagues,

The UN General Assembly has passed a landmark resolution that mandates the UN to create a “multilateral legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring”. Promoted by the G77 countries and triggered by the aggressive vulture funds lawsuits against Argentina, this resolution could be a game changer for the way future debt crises are managed. First and foremost, it has shifted the forum for political debate away from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) towards the UN.  However, shamefully the EU’s vote was split over this crucial decision.

The path towards a real debt restructuring regime

It is certainly not news that the lack of a legal framework for sovereign debt restructuring – a state insolvency regime – has been a gaping hole in the international financial architecture. Prominent economists such as Joe Stiglitz, senior officials such as the IMF’s former Deputy Director Anne O. Krueger and civil society campaigners have pointed again and again to this deficit.

However, governments from both debtor and creditor countries have so far been reluctant to put their political weight behind any meaningful initiative. The most relevant political commitment is probably the Monterrey Consensus’ vague commitment to “consider” new debt workout mechanisms. The most relevant practical work, on the other hand, was the IMF’s concept for a Sovereign Debt Restructuring Mechanism, which was shelved 11 years ago when it faced a political deadlock in the US and EU-dominated IMF Executive Board.

Never miss a good crisis

Remarkably, even the global financial crisis has not led to any meaningful political initiative by governments since 2008. It was civil society campaigns that kept the flame burning until the issue was picked up last year by the staff of international organisations, when the IMF issued a staff paper and the UN set up expert groups on new debt workout mechanisms at the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA).

Then came the rather surreal vulture fund lawsuit of NML Capital vs Argentina at a provincial court in the US state of New York, and Judge Thomas Griesa’s ruling to pay out the vultures in full. He interpreted the pari passu (equal treatment) clause in an extraordinary way and – probably as an unintended side-effect – kicked the whole contemporary sovereign debt restructuring non-regime into the dustbin.

Basically all the experts agree that debt restructurings as we knew them, which used to depend on the voluntary participation of creditors, simply don’t work anymore if holdout creditors can achieve full payment through litigation. Restructuring decisions must be binding for all creditors and must be enforceable, hence the need for a multilateral legal framework.

Debtor countries drive the issue forward

Argentina’s bold move of proposing a UN General Assembly (UNGA) Resolution – and successful mobilisation of the whole G77 as well as China to back this Resolution – represents a long overdue political breakthrough. Finally, a critical mass of governments is willing to act. Most remarkably, while governance reform processes in the area of sovereign debt restructuring used to be dominated by creditor nations, or creditor-dominated institutions such as the IMF, debtor nations have now finally taken the driving seat. The Resolution was voted on yesterday, on 9 September 2014, and was passed with a large majority: 124 UN Member States voted in favour, 41 abstained, and only 11 voted against.

UN takes centre stage

When looking at the debate that took place around the vote, it becomes clear that any conflict was not so much about whether there should be a legal framework or not. Only the USA, one of the few ‘no’ voters, stated that this was counter-productive. For the other countries that spoke out, the question was more whether the UNGA should be mandated to take it on, or if this should be left to the IMF.

Developing countries made it clear that the UNGA, as the most inclusive forum, is the right place for political debate and decision-making to take place. Debt restructuring is simply too important to be left to the IMF, in whose board developing countries do not have a significant stake, and which, as a major creditor, would face an impossible conflict of interest.

All BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) voted in favour of the Resolution, another expression of their dissatisfaction with the stalled governance reform at the IMF. Of the five countries that have the largest share of voting rights and their own Executive Director at the IMF, four voted no (USA, Japan, Germany and the UK). The EU vote was split; the majority of European nations abstained. The EU speaker, Italy, stated the key reason for abstaining was that the G77 initiative was simply too rushed.

European governments’ voting behaviour is shameful, as this continent is currently the most vulnerable to debt crises. As things stand, Europe is in most urgent need of a better state insolvency regime. However, at the next stages of this process, EU leaders will have the opportunity to engage constructively and to listen to their citizens. Ahead of the vote, a large coalition of European civil society organisations, including Eurodad, called on European governments to vote in favour of the Resolution. This might have helped to shift some European votes from ‘no’ to abstention.

The next steps

In any case, the G77’s support was sufficient to help the Resolution pass. However, this represents just the beginning, not the end, of a process leading to a multilateral framework for sovereign debt restructurings. The next step will be that the UNGA decides on the modalities of the intergovernmental negotiations.

The character this new multilateral framework will take will be subject to political power plays in the future. For us as civil society organisations campaigning for just solutions to debt crises, it is key that a legal framework does not only make binding and enforceable decisions, but that it also reduces the human suffering that debt crises cause, and also addresses the question of illegitimate debts.

We therefore share the view of the UN Special Rapporteur on Debt and Human Rights that “international  human  rights  law  should  be  considered  as applicable  law  in  the  context  of  debt restructurings”. On 25 September 2014, the UN Human Rights Council will vote on a complementary resolution that places debt restructurings firmly in the context of human rights. We hope that Europe will take a more constructive position when it gets its second chance later this month.     

Bodo Ellmers
Policy and Advocacy Manager - Debt and Responsible Finance
Eurodad, European Network on Debt and Development

Tel: + 32 2 894 46 51

Skype: eurodad-bodo

Email: bellmers@eurodad.org
Rue d’Edimbourg, 18-26. Brussels 1050. Belgium

Dear friends,

Most recently the Ebola outbreak e.g. in Sierra Leone drew special attention to gaps and deficits in health care in the globally poorest countries and threatened the Western world. For many years, ILO has stressed the relevance to move rapidly forward with health protection in developing countries, including in Sierra Leone. However, progress in coverage and access to needed health care remained modest and immeasurable deaths, suffer and angst is caused by neglecting to implement effective health protection policies. 

At the same time, inequities within and across countries widen given significant advances in medical science – ranging from cloning stem cells to tissue regeneration – that have the potential to further improve the life expectancy of the richest parts of the world’s population enjoying universal health protection. It is also interesting to note that most of the Ebola infected from richer countries who were flown out of Africa to receive treatment in their home countries survived as compared to many African Ebola victims. Thus, universal health protection has the potential to reduce severe disease outbreaks that seem hardly be manageable in the absence of quality health services.

Against this background, what is needed most urgently in Sierra Leone and beyond is progress towards universal health protection for all people in need.

As outlined in the recent ILO publication Universal Health Protection - Progress to date and the way forward many policy options are available for developing and improving health protection coverage and access taking into account the unique historical, social and economic developments in each country. To achieve sustainable progress, focusing on equity by prioritizing policy coordination across the social, health and economic sectors e.g. to fight the dual-causal relationship between ill health and poverty is of key importance. Such a move towards universal health protection would be a major step towards the world we all want and it can be done rapidly following the three step approach suggested by ILO in our just released policy brief  Rapid Extension of Health Protection.  

Dr Xenia Scheil-Adlung
Health Policy Coordinator
Social Protection Department
International Labour Organization
scheil@ilo.org
http://www.social-protection.org/