Mois : juin 2007

Linked with International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment INCHRITI.

Mr. Kothari is a leading voice at national, regional and international forums on human rights, especially economic, social and cultural rights. Mr. Kothari was appointed in September 2000 by the UN Commission on Human Rights as the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing. His mandate involves reporting annually to the Commission on the status throughout the world of the realisation of the rights that are related to the right to adequate housing, and identifying practical solutions and good practices towards this end. In addition, the Commission requested the Special Rapporteur to promote cooperation among and assistance to Governments in their efforts to secure these rights: apply a gender perspective in the work, and develop regular dialogue and collaboration with Governments, relevant UN bodies, specialised agencies, civil society and international financial institutions. An architect by training, Mr. Kothari, who resides in New Delhi, India, has extensive experience in the area of housing and land rights. He is the convener of the Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network and is a founding member of the International NGO Committee on Human Rights in Trade and Investment INCHRITI. (full text).

Read: Call for plan to solve housing ‘crisis’ (in Australia), June 11, 2007.

Miloon Kothari – India

He says: « The creation of slums in Nairobi and other urban centres is a sign of lack of planning. It is shocking to see the scale of poverty across the country. When you look at the gross inequalities which have led to an apartheid situation in which a few people occupy the large portions of land and large populations live in small areas: a lot of it has come through political corruption. It is obviously a creation of two Kenyas, one with a lot of land and wealth, the other more dispossessed. The common thread should be how do you meet the needs of the most vulnerable people, and human rights should be the basic theme. If they want to discourage slums, they must take clear action against the shack-owner phenomenon and land mafia, which are connected with local authorities ». (full text of the interview).

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He is Professor of Sociology, University of California-San Diego. With a primary discipline in sociology, John Skretny is also known by political scientists, legal scholars and historians. His research most generally is on law, public policy and inequality. He has recently begun research on immigration law and policy in East Asia and Europe. Skretny is able to comment on any of these topics, or, more generally, on race/ethnicity politics/law, gender politics/law, and immigration politics/law. (full text).

He says: ”But the end of the affirmative action debate suggests that Americans — including both political parties — are no longer interested in racial inequality, in particular the problems of black America. The two policies long identified in the public mind as “black” policies — affirmative action and welfare — have both been severely retrenched in the last several years. As political scientist Paul Frymer has argued, Democrats take for granted the support of black voters. They worry more about alienating white voters by being too closely identified with black interests. Consequently, Democrats have not pushed for a major policy initiative for blacks or other minorities in decades and they do not put up great resistance to retrenchment efforts ». (full text).

John D. Skrentny – USA

John Skrentny received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Harvard University and a BA in Sociology and Philosophy from Indiana University. His research focuses on public policy, law and inequality. He has written two books and edited another on the historical development of laws and policies to protect the rights and opportunities of minorities. These studies have included a wide variety of groups, including African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, and white ethnics, as well as immigrants, the disabled, gays/lesbians and women of all races and ethnicities. This research has sought to bring a cultural approach to the fields of historical institutionalism and American political development. Starting with the premise that no policy is developed without the decisions of policy makers, Skrentny has focused his research on the worldviews and actions of policy-making elites, situating them in their historical, local and global contexts. (full text).

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Linked with Jubilee South JS, and with Total and Unconditional DebtCancellation.

She is the International Coordinator of Jubilee South, a network of anti-debt coalitions in more than 60 countries across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She also currently serves as vice president of Freedom from Debt Coalition in the Phillippines, the oldest organization working for debt cancellation since 1988. (greenfestivals.org).

Lidy is also Vice-President of the Freedom from Debt Coalition in the Philippines and was previously its Secretary-General. Prior to that, Lidy was a student activist during the time of the Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. A passionate political activist and feminist, she has campaigned on issues of debt, democratisation and citizenship for more than 20 years. (full text)

She says: « It is a lie that IFIs are giving loans to ‘poor’ countries because they need capital. It is a lie that the goal of these organizations is poverty reduction and development. It is business lending, pure and simple. And the biggest lie is lie of the ‘poor’ countries’ call them poor, developing, backward, whatever. We call them the Global South, not in geographical terms but as a term of reference. The fact is that as of today, more funds are flowing from the Global South to the North than vice versa. The powerful countries are financing us with our own money. The so called poor countries are not poor at all, they are supplying huge amounts of riches to the rich and powerful countries, while unable to retain any for themselves. If this plunder of the South stops, the so called poor countries would not have any need for loans ». June 9, 2006. (full text).

Lidy Nacpil – Philippines

As the G8 Closes … , June 8, 2007.

She says also: « The G-8 governments claim to support calls for responsible behavior by lenders like vulture funds, » Lidy Nacpil, of Jubilee South, said in a statement. « But the G-8 must recognize that the issue of irresponsible lending and illegitimate debt begins first and foremost with themselves ». (full text).

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Linked with Founding statement of CorA, with NEPAD New Partnership for Africa’s Development, and with Global Policy Forum GPF.

He is T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs, International Professor of Applied Economics and Management, Professor of Economics at the Cornell University.

He has previously taught at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Essex, Princeton and Warwick. He has also served on the staff of the World Bank, including as Chief Economist for Africa. (University of Toronto).

Ravi Kanbur, the T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs at Cornell University is on leave of absence from his post for the academic year 1999-2000 to lead this report (WDR 2000). A UK citizen, Kanbur was on the staff of the World Bank from 1989 to 1997, serving successively as Adviser, Senior Adviser, Resident Representative in Ghana, Chief Economist for Africa, and Principal Adviser to the Chief Economist. (Africa Action, scroll down).

The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), An Initial Commentary, by Ravi Kanbur, Cornell University, 2001.

Ravi Kanbur – Ghana & England

Kanbur stated: « since you asked for my views, I wanted to let you know my own personal philosophy and perspective as we go into the processes leading up to the Poverty WDR. First and foremost, I want to stress that I would stand behind any Report that I put my name to, and would not submit to any substantive editing I did not agree with », (In a letter to the Bretton Woods Project of 17 July 1998, Africa Action, scroll down).

Professor Kanbur’s main areas of interest are public economics and development economics. His work spans conceptual, empirical, and policy analysis. He is particularly interested in bridging the worlds of rigorous analysis and practical policy making. (Center for the Study of Economy and Society).

His epopee with the World Bank: Censorship at the World Bank, the Case of Ravi Kanbur (who resigned from the World Bank in 2000): Ravi Kanbur, a distinguished development economist and T.H. Lee Professor of World Affairs at Cornell University, was appointed by the Bank in Spring 1998 to lead a team in writing a World Development Report (WDR) on poverty.

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Linked with Questions for the left … .

Alex Callinicos (born 1950 in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe)) is a Marxist intellectual and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers’ Party. He received his BA and DPhil from the University of Oxford, and was Professor of Politics at the University of York before being appointed Professor of European Studies at King’s College London in 2005. He is a member of the editorial board of International Socialism and British correspondent of Actuel Marx. A prolific writer for both the revolutionary and the academic presses, he is a descendant of the famous historian Lord Acton. During the Second World War his father was active in the Greek Resistance to Nazi occupation, his mother was a member of the British aristocracy [1]. In 1977 he married Joanna Seddon, an Oxford doctoral student of similar aristocratic background. (full text).

Read: German strikers look to target G8 summit, May 15, 2007.

Alex Callinicos – England

He says: « Of course, there is much more to be said about Venezuela and Bolivia, and we have tried to say some of it, notably in our publications. Anyone who consults on the web the back-issues of Socialist Worker, Socialist Review, and International Socialism could not but be struck by the extent of our coverage of the major developments in these two countries over the past few years. Moreover, among the main memories that participants in Marxism 2006 would have taken away was the impact of the Latin American speakers, notably Roland Dennis from Venezuela and Oscar Oliveira from Bolivia. We hope to continue this at Marxism 2007 in London in July with the participation of the Venezuelan Trotskyist trade union leader, Stalin Perez, who has spoken at the Greek SWP’s own Marxism event in 2006 and 2007. ». (full long text, May 24, 2007).

Read:

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