The Causes of Poverty (49): Brain Drain?

People with socially useful skills – such as nurses, doctors and teachers – often desire to leave their poor native countries and migrate to the West. A higher wage and the chance of escaping some of the world’s most dysfunctional societies trumps national and social attachments.

However, some argue that this “brain drain” is detrimental to the prosperity of developing countries: not only do they lose their best and brightest – emigration of skilled citizens makes it more difficult to prepare younger generations for their role in society (teachers leave, and governments faced with the risk of brain drain are less eager to invest in education – and even if they are eager they will have a smaller income from taxes necessary to fund education).

And indeed, the better educated citizens of poor countries are more likely to emigrate. You need some money and know-how to move to the West, and you have to expect some value-added. A poor farmer in Africa doesn’t have the money to leave, and his chances of finding a socially useful role in Europe or America, compared to his fellow-citizens who are doctors or engineers, are small.

However, when assessing the economic impact of the brain drain, one has to take all effects into account. For example, criticism of the brain drain often fails to mention the clear benefits for those who decide to leave their countries. More counter-intuitively, those who stay behind may also gain rather than lose: people who spend time abroad often return home with socially valuable skills and savings, and while they’re abroad they send home remittances. Also, the possibility of leaving a country incites many people to improve their skills and education, even if ultimately they stay home. And when they stay home, their higher education is a net social gain. Governments of developing countries may also benefit: perhaps they’ll lose some money when people leave after finishing their government subsidized education, but they gain money when the families that stayed behind spend their remittances, or when they don’t have to pay unemployment benefits to those who leave – some of those would have been unemployed had they stayed home.

It seems that the brain drain is no more than a catchy phrase, and certainly not an important cause of poverty in developing countries.

More posts in this series are here.

Human Rights Maps (104): Human Development Index, Migration and Borders

If you’re not familiar with the Human Development Index, go here first. In essence, the HDI combines measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for countries or regions.

When checking differences in HDI scores between countries or between regions of a country, you can clearly correlate those differences with migration patterns. The purpose of a lot of migration is to leave a low HDI region for a high HDI region. Take a look at these two beautiful maps:

(source, the border locality in the US with the lowest HDI still has a higher HDI than the Mexican border locality with the highest HDI)

(source)

Obviously, there can also be a reverse causation taking place: poor migrants move to richer places, but these places can – in part – be richer because of the activities of migrants.

Also, one wouldn’t want to imply that economic opportunities explain all the reasons why people migrate, but they obviously do explain a lot.

More human rights maps.

Human Rights Maps (101): Governance in Africa

The Ibrahim Index provides a comprehensive ranking of African countries according to governance quality. It measures the delivery of public goods and services to citizens by government and non-state actors and uses indicators across four main pillars: safety and rule of law (murder rate, corruption etc.); participation and human rights; sustainable economic opportunity (fiscal policy, free markets and inflation); and human development (education and health care). Together those constitute a proxy for the quality of the processes and outcomes of governance. The following map shows the scores for 2007/2008 (dark blue for low scores to dark red for countries that are better governed):

(there’s an interactive version here and here)

Here’s the ranking for 2010:

(source)

Careful with the data before 2006; there are some methodological problems with those. Also, don’t forget that these are country aggregates and that there may be huge regional differences within countries (a country that scores very badly overall may have regions that do relatively well, and vice versa).

More maps on issues related to governance are here (other posts about governance are here). More maps about human rights in general are here.

Related Articles

• 2010 Ibrahim Index shows a ‘mixed picture’ of African governance (one.org)
• African progress threatened by ‘democratic recession’ (theglobeandmail.com)
• Africa rights advances ‘reversed’ (bbc.co.uk)
• An index of African governance: A rum old mix (economist.com)

Human Rights Video (17): How To Do Development Aid

More on development aid here and on so-called “tied international aid” (mentioned in this video) here. More human rights videos here.

Human Rights Maps (86): Interactive Maps of the Millennium Development Goals

Millennium Development Goals (MDGs)

(source)

There’s a really good collection of maps on the Millennium Development Goals here. This is a screenshot:

If you don’t know a lot about the MDGs, check out this page first. More human rights maps here.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (12): The Economic Case against Human Rights and Democracy, Ctd.

After completing my older post on the topic – in which I argued that the case is very weak – I found this quote by Bill Easterly which I thought would illustrate my point:

Democracy doesn’t attract as much love as it deserves in aid and development circles. Many wonder if benevolent autocrats might be better for development than messy elections, even though there is no evidence to support benevolent autocracy. There is a strong positive association between democracy and LEVEL of per capita income, which at least some authors argue is causal. (It’s true there is no robust association between democracy and GROWTH of income, but then there is no robust association between GROWTH and ANYTHING.) But even if there had been SOME material payoff to autocracy, why don’t we care more about democracy as a good thing in itself? (source)

Some data about the correlation between democracy and GDP (both level and growth) are here. My argument for democracy is usually instrumental (see here) and prosperity is one of the values that can and should be promoted by instrumental democracy. But I’ve also written about democracy as a good thing in itself. Go here if you care about that sort of argument.

Why Do We Need Human Rights? (11): The Economic Case against Human Rights and Democracy

Some authoritarian governments claim that human rights and democracy have to be sacrificed for the sake of economic development and economic progress. Here are some of the reasons given in support of this claim.

Discipline in production and consumption

Discipline in production and consumption is believed to be more important for economic growth than freedom. This discipline requires discipline in general in society, and therefore also a strong state. The exaggerated attention to rights instead of duties is incompatible with discipline. Duties are much more useful in economic development than rights. Instead of wasting scarce resources on consumption, people should moderate themselves and resources should be used for necessary investments. In addition, the free choice of labor is less important than the ability of the state to direct labor towards certain development projects. There may even be a rationale for forced labor.

"Fully engage in the movement to increase production and to practice economy to set off a new upsurge in industrial production", Chinese poster from 1965

(source)

And finally, if you want economic development, wages need to be low, union activity needs to be minimal, working hours need to be long and perhaps you have to turn a blind eye to child labor. None of this is possible in a democracy that tries to respect human rights.

You need a strong state for all of this, able to force people to be disciplined in both consumption and production.

Discipline in politics

You also need a strong state able to implement and enforce long term plans. Economic development requires consistency, coherence, long term planning and so on, all of which is incompatible with democracy and rotation in office. A democracy doesn’t look further than the next election and is unable to plan economic development. Democracy is the national equivalent of the shortsighted consumer spending everything instead of investing for the future. A democratic government will take measures which guarantee the short term interests of electors and elected, even if these measures are detrimental to the long term economic well-being of the nation.

A strong state doesn’t have to fear election results and can focus on long term planning. It has the power to enforce certain measures which are unpopular in the short run—for example because they imply limits on short term consumption, because they redirect funds towards long term investments or because they entail labor planning—but which yield great dividends in the future.

On top of that, human rights promote individualism and egoism because they are claims of the individual against society. Together with adversarial democracy they hamper national cooperation and harmony which are necessary for economic success.

Radical, not temporary, incompatibility

So according to this narrative, political freedom and human rights have to be rejected because they are by definition incompatible with economic development. And perhaps even with prosperity as such: they may not even be a luxury which poor countries cannot afford yet and which are useless when bellies are empty; they are even less than that. If you choose freedom, then not only will it be impossible to escape from underdevelopment – it will be impossible to maintain prosperity.

Rebuttal

Now, what can we say against this? Let’s take the different arguments in turn. If you assume that discipline in consumption and production is a good thing, then you basically create an export dependent economy. It’s well known that domestic consumption drives economic growth (see also here). If consumption is discouraged (and savings and investments encouraged), and if wages are low and working hours long, then you may get an initial boost in the economy, but this is no strategy for long term success. Not only does it imply dependence on exports and hence vulnerability to shocks occurring in the economies of the trading partners; it also keeps living standards low. And that can hardly be the purpose of economic development. China has clearly understood this and is trying to boost domestic demand (see also here).

The utility of child labor is obviously shortsighted – no economy can prosper without an educated citizenry – and the need for planning and long term consistency in economic policy is also a dubious argument. Centrally planned economies aren’t known for their successes. The state is not necessarily the most appropriate engine for development. Investment and planning decisions are probably best left to the market, and those investments that are best done by the government don’t require an authoritarian form of government. I don’t see how a dictatorship is better placed to plan transport infrastructure or energy provision for example. On the contrary even: the lack of transparency in a dictatorship makes it likely that such investments turn out to be corruption machines.

The argument that democracies are too fickle and shortsighted for economic planning and investments is also a bit weak. It’s difficult to deny that a democratic government, because of the way it comes to power, has more legitimacy and is therefore better placed to take difficult and unpopular decisions. People are more willing to accept or live with unpopular policies if they have a government that can be forced to justify its actions in public. Besides, the point is moot because most authoritarian leaders aren’t the long term planners and do-gooders they are supposed to be: most think only of the short term, namely their own short term financial profit.

What about the lack of cooperation, harmony and unity of democracies, and the selfishness cultivated by human rights? First of all, it’s not evident that national cooperation and harmony are best for economic development. Maybe individualism, entrepreneurship, inventiveness and doing things different are more important. And secondly, why would we assume that human rights are necessarily individualistic and selfish? There can never be an exaggerated attention to rights at the expense of duties. There are no rights without duties. And many so-called individualistic human rights create strong groups (freedom of religion, tolerance, freedom of association and assembly etc.).

Also, why would we have to think that democracy is more adversarial than autocracy? The democratic procedures for changing governments create social stability because they help to avoid revolt. Authoritarian harmony is often only skin deep – if it exists at all – because it’s based on suppression of differences. Things that are suppressed have a habit of popping up later in a more violent form.

The point is that human rights and democracy are magnificent weapons in the struggle for economic development rather than a luxury which poor people can’t afford or a false blessing which will render every economic achievement impossible or short-lived. Read more…

Why Do Countries Become/Remain Democracies? Or Don’t? (8): The Resource Curse

I’ve written before on the so-called resource curse: the fact that some countries with lots of natural resources tend to do worse than countries with less resource wealth, worse in two respects: less economic growth and prosperity and less political stability and respect for basic rights.

I’ve also tried to list some of the possible reasons why reliance on natural resources inhibits development, political and institutional stability, anti-corruption efforts and legal protection for human rights.

Now, the important thing to stress here is that reliance on resources can lead to negative consequences, but doesn’t necessarily have to. Not all resource-rich countries are “cursed”. There’s a paper here arguing

that the natural resource curse burdens non-democracies, but countries with better democratic institutions are not corrupted by such endowments. For governments accountable to their citizens, resources can be a blessing.

The figure below, from the same paper, plots a measure of resource dependence against the Political Risk Service’s corruption index (all data for 1990) – corruption being an indicator of the resource curse. The figure does not demonstrate that there’s a linear relationship between higher levels of corruption (lower index value on the y-axis) and natural resources (higher value on the x-axis). The fitted line does have a slight rightward slope, but the dispersion of countries is very wide. Norway and Iraq are more or less on the same level of resources, but on opposite extreme of corruption, and the same is true for many other countries.

So, natural resources do not produce corruption or a resource curse in any mechanical or deterministic way. Some third element is necessary for the curse to take place. The paper cited above argues

that strong democratic institutions help to moderate the effect of natural resources on corruption. In figures [below], we split the sample into democratic and non-democratic countries. These suggest that the negative relationship between natural resources and the corruption index prevails in the sample of non-democratic countries but not in the sample of democratic countries… the relationship between natural resource rent and corruption depends on the quality of the democratic institutions… These findings imply that resource-rich countries have a tendency to be corrupt, because resource windfalls encourage their governments to engage in rent seeking. However, history shows that countries discovering natural resources after they have established well-functioning democratic institutions tend to handle the scourge of corruption much better.

More on the related topic of good governance.

Human Rights Facts (45): Increasing International Development Aid

From Nate Silver’s blog, an invaluable resource for statisticians and other people interested in data:

The amount of development aid per capita, in terms of donors and recipients has risen dramatically over the last 30 years – using 1975 as the approximate end of the direct colonial period with the independence of most Portuguese colonies – and small but perceptible increases in human well being have been seen in least developed countries (those who rely the most on aid). (source)

He doesn’t claim, nor should he, that the former is necessarily or exclusively the cause of the latter. Official development aid (ODA) may help countries achieve development, but there’s no universal agreement on that (read Bill Easterly’s blog for instance, or the writing of Dambisa Moyo). What is clear, however, is that specific types of development aid help to solve specific types of problems (such as malaria for instance). Just looking at total amounts of aid given or received isn’t going to tell you much about the usefulness or effectiveness of aid. Large total amounts aren’t necessarily better than small amounts.

The following chart illustrates total development aid flows from all donors to “Least Developed Countries” (or LDC), or those countries who have a human development index (or HDI) of less than 0.5, using constant 2007 US dollars, on a per capita basis [per capita of receiving countries, FS]:

(source)

The large increases in total aid flows have resulted from several trends: First, more donors are present, as oil-rich middle eastern states and others have since the 1980s begun to provide a significant portion of development aid. Second, OECD countries have increased both in number and in disbursals. Large disparity occurs between countries in terms of per capita aid, however, largely driven by high-profile events such as conflicts, natural disasters, and political commitments to domestic populations by former colonial powers.

Since independence and decolonization, and assisted by development aid and strengthening of domestic economies and social systems, the least developed countries have made slow but steady progress toward human development:

(source)

More statistics on development aid are here. Why this is a human rights issue is explained here.

Human Rights Quote (74): Should We Stop Giving Aid to Africa?

Dambisa Moyo

(source)

In this previous post on the same subject, I quoted Paul Collier’s criticism of Dambisa Moyo’s hugely overhyped but enjoyable book on development aid.

Here’s another critical quote:

Surely, Moyo should recognize the difference between aid provided to oppressive kleptocrats and aid given to faith-based organizations distributing AIDS drugs. Michael Gerson (source)

Dambisa Moyo’s reply:

I’m not going to sit here and say the fact that 2 million Africans are on HIV drugs is a bad thing. Of course that’s a good thing. But whose responsibility is it to provide those HIV drugs? American society does not operate by sitting around and waiting for handouts. Why should we as Africans? (source)

Matthew Yglesias’s reply to Moyo’s reply:

For one thing, in the developed world we clearly do offer financial assistance (“handouts”) to indigent people suffering from illness. Even in the United States there’s Medicaid and people get treated at emergency rooms regardless of their ability to pay. Meanwhile, in terms of HIV drugs obviously the reason Africans find themselves needing to rely on handouts is that the continent is so full of poor people. Ultimately, obviously, the ideal solution would be for Africans to get richer. But the per capita GDP of Africa isn’t going to magically reach American (or even Mexican or even Chinese) levels overnight even if Africa does start seeing strong growth. Meanwhile, people with HIV will die really soon unless someone gives them medicine. And even better, the marginal cost of producing extra HIV medication is really low. There’s just no getting around the fact that giving poor people medicine is a useful and important way of making the world a better place. (source)

I understand Moyo’s point about paternalism, about the need for Africans to take matters into their own hands, and about the debilitating effects of aid. But I suspect her of exaggerating her point in order to stir up some controversy and get into the limelight. And if that is really her strategy, she has obviously succeeded. But at the same time she has succeeded in discrediting all kinds of aid, good and bad. However, she can be credited with having started a necessary debate.

Some statistics on development aid are here.

Human Rights Quote (71): Some Counter-Intuitive Facts on Development Aid

In 2007, people in the Western Province of Zambia lost their homes, their livestock and their crops when heavier-than-normal flash floods swept through their area. USAID’s office of disaster assistance stepped in with $280,000 worth of with seeds and fertilizer, training for farmers, and emergency relief supplies.

Two NGOs working in Zambia, Oxfam GB and Concern Worldwide, tried a different approach: they handed out envelopes stuffed with cash—from $25 to $50 per month per affected family, with no strings attached. An evaluation found that common fears about cash transfers – that the cash infusion will cause inflation in the market, that the money will be squandered, or that men will take control of the money – were unrealized.

What did people buy with the money? The list includes maize, beans, salt, cooking oil, meat, vegetables, clothes and blankets, paraffin, transport, soap and body lotion, and lots of other mundane household items. They also loaned it to friends, used it to pay back debts, purchased health care, education and transport, and rebuilt their homes. Only a very small fraction of the money (less than .5%) was spent on “unproductive” items, like liquor for the men.

Unconditional cash transfer programs can be fast and cost effective. With no technical experts’ salaries to pay, and no trans-Atlantic shipping costs for US-produced food aid, more of the cash can go straight to the recipients…

Cash transfers also acknowledge that poor people are capable of making good economic decisions without the help of outside experts armed with needs assessment checklists. … [V]illagers made sophisticated investment decisions…

When USAID provides blankets, seeds and fertilizer to flood victims, they are doing their best to decide for the victims what their most urgent needs are. With the cash transfers, the people can decide for themselves how to meet their most urgent needs. This gives people who have lost their livelihoods, belongings or loved ones a new feeling of control over their lives, builds money-management skills, and restores to them their power to make economic decisions. If you were in their shoes, which would you prefer? Laura Freschi (source)

Some statistics on development aid.

Human Rights Facts (33): The Recession and Development Aid

(source)

In an older post I mentioned some of the negative effects of the current economic recession on human rights. One of the human rights likely to be effected is the right not to suffer poverty. The recession will cause an increase in poverty in several ways, one of which is a possible reduction in development aid, both official development aid (given by governments and international institutions) and private aid (charity, remittances etc.).

Emmanual Frot has estimated the likely effect of the current crisis on development aid:

Based on previous crises, aid flows to developing countries should be down by 13%. However, donor countries’ pledges may soften the shock this time around. … Shall we expect aid to fall? The past suggests we should. The question then becomes whether donor countries will act as they used to. Given the scale of the current crisis, international institutions and donor countries have already taken actions, or at least made pledges, to tackle its consequences for developing countries. The World Bank has decided to increase its financial support up to $100 billion over the next three years, specifically to help developing countries cope with falling revenue. In December 2008, it unblocked $2 billion for the poorest countries. At the UN Conference on Financing for Development in Doha in November 2008, bilateral donor countries underlined the need to comply with their aid commitments, even amid the current economic slowdown. Whether these promises turn effectively into action remains to be seen. If they do not, then this research provides some indication about what should be expected from aid donors in the following years.

David Roodman made a similar point.

None of this implies that more development aid is always better, and less is worse. See here for a counter-example. However, in general it’s not unreasonable to assume that people who depend on aid face a risk of increased poverty when this aid is suddenly reduced as a result from an outside shock.

More on the link between the recession and poverty is here and here.

Human Rights Poem (65): The Development Set

(source, Peter Nicholson, The Australian, Sydney, Australia)

The Development Set, by Ross Coggins

Excuse me, friends, I must catch my jet
I’m off to join the Development Set;
My bags are packed, and I’ve had all my shots
I have traveller’s checks and pills for the trots!

The Development Set is bright and noble
Our thoughts are deep and our vision global;
Although we move with the better classes
Our thoughts are always with the masses.

In Sheraton Hotels in scattered nations
We damn multi-national corporations;
injustice seems easy to protest
In such seething hotbeds of social rest.

We discuss malnutrition over steaks
And plan hunger talks during coffee breaks.
Whether Asian floods or African drought,
We face each issue with open mouth.

We bring in consultants whose circumlocution
Raises difficulties for every solution -
Thus guaranteeing continued good eating
By showing the need for another meeting.

The language of the Development Set
Stretches the English alphabet;
We use swell words like “epigenetic”
“Micro”, “macro”, and “logarithmetic”

It pleasures us to be esoteric -
It’s so intellectually atmospheric!
And although establishments may be unmoved,
Our vocabularies are much improved.

When the talk gets deep and you’re feeling numb,
You can keep your shame to a minimum:
To show that you, too, are intelligent
Smugly ask, “Is it really development?”

Or say, “That’s fine in practice, but don’t you see:
It doesn’t work out in theory!”
A few may find this incomprehensible,
But most will admire you as deep and sensible.

Development set homes are extremely chic,
Full of carvings, curios, and draped with batik.
Eye-level photographs subtly assure
That your host is at home with the great and the poor.

Enough of these verses – on with the mission!
Our task is as broad as the human condition!
Just pray god the biblical promise is true:
The poor ye shall always have with you.

No one can accuse me of being insensitive to the plight of the poor. I regularly blog about poverty and development aid, and I believe that poverty is an important human rights violation. However, I also believe that we shouldn’t forsake our sense of humor when contemplating the gravity and seriousness of human rights violations in general and poverty and development in particular. And neither should we lose our sense of criticism, especially when it concerns our fellow travelers. Hence this “poem”.

Human Rights Maps (43): Dependence on Remittances

Remittances are money sent back home by migrant workers. Sometimes these amounts are more important than foreign aid and some developing countries are heavily dependent on them in the sense that remittances represent a large share of their national income or GDP.

(source)

More on remittances here.

Human Rights Quote (64): Politically Correct Development Talk

John Cochrane

“Global south”. What does this oxymoron mean? We used to say what we meant, “poor countries”. That became unfashionable, in part because poverty is sometimes a bit of your own doing and not a state of pure victimhood. So, it became polite to call dysfunctional backwaters “developing”. That was already a lie (or at best highly wishful thinking) since the whole point is that they aren’t developing. But now bien-pensant circles don’t want to endorse “development” as a worthwhile goal anymore. “South”–well, nice places like Australia, New Zealand and Chile are there too (at least from a curiously North-American and European-centric perspective). So now it’s called “global south”, which though rather poor as directions for actually getting anywhere, identifies the speaker as the caring sort of person who always uses the politically correct word. John Cochrane

I’m the last to claim that development aid is not an extremely important business, or that poverty is to be blamed on the poor. But if you can’t stand a joke, you’re a joke.

The Shrinking of Development Space in the Global Knowledge Economy: The Era of Intellectual Property Rights (1)

(source)

[This post is by guest-writer Line Løvåsen].

3 stages of globalization

In her book “Biopiracy- the plunder of nature and knowledge”, Vandana Shiva mentions three stages of globalization which each have played a role in the making of inequality of the world.

• The first was colonialism.
• The second was the creation of the Post War World Order with the Bretton Woods institutions.
• The third, which bloomed approximately ten years ago and which is dominating our time, is the era of so-called “free” trade and Intellectual Property Rights (IPR’s) or the exclusive rights to products of the mind.

The global knowledge economy

IPR’s are particularly relevant in our present day economy in which knowledge plays an ever more important role. The current “knowledge revolution”, also known as the “information age”, has made information a new global currency. Knowledge and ideas have today become a business product in themselves. The diffusion of information and access to innovations are today as crucial for economic growth as the scientific revolution turned out to be (Zakaria, “The earth’s learning curve”, Newsweek Special Edition November 2005- February 2006:8).

But not all people have equal access to crucial information because of IPR’s. So as IPR’s have become more widespread and their impact on economic growth more important, this has negatively impacted the wealth and development of poor people because the poor are usually not the once holding IPR’s. Especially indigenous peoples are strongly affected. The structures of the inequality in the global knowledge economy – the sphere where knowledge is used to attain economic benefits – and its impacts is what I will examine in this series of posts.

(source)

Making Four Worlds

In his book “The indigenous voice in world politics”, Frankie Wilmer mentions three phases in European vs non-European relations:

• The first was the conquest of Columbus where non-Europeans were seen as “savages“.
• With the colonization during the nineteenth century, they had become part of a “civilizing mission“.
• The period during the twentieth century has turned non-Europeans into two groups; those part of the decolonization project and those who have fallen outside.

Furthermore, four different concepts have been used to show different levels of incorporation in the current world political and economic system:

• The “First World” is of the highest grade of incorporation and its worldviews, established by the scientific revolution and nation-states, are central. This “world” came to be characterized by hierarchical structures and surplus economies which exploit the environment on a large scale. Today, the First World is characterized by industrialization and national economies, and the ideologies of free market and democracy. Normative consensus in the First World is the assumption that to create surplus through industrial capitalism is good.  It is also good to have political and economic institutions that protect ownership. Sovereignty and self-determination are the organizing principles of these states, and acquiring this is conditioned on promoting activities consistent with the normative consensus.
• The “Second World” may no longer exist, but refers to the Eastern European communist and dictatorial states. The Second World is also industrialized and is today attempting to restructure itself after the free market and democratic ideologies of the First World.
• The last two “worlds” are the divided non-Europeans mentioned above. Those affected by the second, “civilizing” colonization wave have become the “Third World“, and are local communities forced into nation-states by the First World. The Third World tries to industrialize, much according to Western free market principles. They are also moving towards democratizing forms, some faster than others.
• Outside the periphery of the Third World is the “Fourth World“, those who were affected by the first colonization project, better known as indigenous peoples. They have even been called “the unfinished business of decolonization”, or of the “civilizing mission” and are the second worldview central in this essay. They are distinct from the normative core in moral foundations (which justifies their exclusion), thus they do not benefit from the self-determination principle, contrary to the other three “worlds” (Wilmer ibid.). In other currencies of power recognized after Western standards, like military and technological (scientific) innovation-capacity, indigenous peoples also score very low (ibid.).

Indigenous knowledge

(source)

Indigenous societies possess an often unique body of cultural and environmental knowledge. Indigenous knowledge (IK) shows the conservation ethic of the indigenous people; the concept of sustainability and respect for nature is central, in addition to values such as cooperation, bonding in families and between generations, the well-being of future generations, local scale, and collective rights to land.

The role of IK is, also for the West, vital in for example, development projects, conservation, medicines, and food, and also botany, ecology, zoology, entomology, forestry, and agriculture (Posey).

In the context of IPR’s, IK is called prior art, which means knowledge as it is before it becomes an “invention” (as will be shown, this is a keyword in the context of IPR’s). No patents should be made with prior art because patents are only supposed to be made on new innovations.

Prior art, in most systems of patent law, constitutes all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent’s claims of originality. If an invention has been described in prior art, a patent on that invention is not valid. (source)

The problem with the US patent system though is that it does not consider prior art to be prior art when the product comes from another country, except if it exists in written form. As traditional knowledge is mainly orally-transmitted knowledge, this view thus legitimizes intervention and has been an important factor in many of the well-known biopiracy cases.

Protection of IK has received growing attention the last decade. IPR’s are seen as one possible means to protect IK. IPR’s may be appropriate under certain circumstances, but inappropriate in others. As will be outlined in the next posts, it may reduce rather than promote such knowledge.

(read part 2) (read part 3) (read part 4)

The Shrinking of Development Space in the Global Knowledge Economy: The Era of Intellectual Property Rights (4)

[This post is by guest-writer Line Løvåsen. Please first read the previous posts in this series: part 1, part 2, part 3].

(source)

This post is by guest-writer Line Løvåsen.

Impacts of the IPR regime

I begin with mentioning some socio-economic impacts of the Intellectual Property Rights regime (IPR’s). Access to basic needs such as medicines and food have for many indigenous peoples become difficult. People are forced to buy food from the international market, but have difficulties to pay for it. Because of liberalization, exports aren’t profitable and imports costs more. Economic opportunities for everyday survival thus are stolen. What have been the means of production for them, have become patented commodities.

Posey has in his text summarized the problems with IPR’s:

• They undermine free exchange of commonly held resources like indigenous knowledge (IK), cultural and genetic materials.
• They only benefit innovative persons and global corporations, not collective entities.
• IK becomes unprotectable because it is considered to be in the public domain.
• They do not accommodate non-Western systems of ownership.
• They serve to stimulate commercialization and distribution, the opposite of indigenous concerns.
• They recognize only market economic values.
• They are subject to manipulation by economic interests that exercise political power.
• They are expensive and time-consuming.
• The intellectual law is constructed around the notion of the innovator as an individual; people of collective communities who do not fit this model have no protection.

The system of IPR’s covers a double theft; it allows theft of knowledge, and allows patents on stolen knowledge. And, global corporations not only commit theft but also destroy agricultural systems with their massive industry. This situation has led to huge debts among poor people, especially in countries like India where 75% of the people make their livelihood on agriculture. Industrial agriculture leads to impoverishment, but is hidden behind a myth that it is “necessary to reduce hunger” and also that it saves resources. Farmers are robbed from the freedom to choose what to grow, and consumers from the freedom to choose what to eat.

The destruction of agricultural systems brings us to the environmental impacts of IPR’s. The environmental impacts of genetic engineering are many. The hybridization of seeds (in addition to forcing farmers back to seed breeders every year and stealing nature’s regenerative powers) requires more pesticides. Agrichemicals are necessary on sterile seeds as they are resistant to weeds, and so they use herbicides which kill all plants (agrichemicals like these are also mirrored in Western medicines, like antibiotics). Also, parasites used in moving genes are polluting. In addition to chemical pollution, genetically engineered organisms (GEO’s) are both resistant to population regulation factors, pass transgenes to related species and change the nature of the predator-prey relationship, and results in so-called biological pollution.

Some development impacts. In a comment to the Patent Agenda of WIPO, Médecins Sans Frontiéres (MFS) said – on the basis of their experience in the field – that the current IPR regime is undermining research and development for drugs and that its heightening of prices is making drugs unaffordable for poor people. Also, many diseases are not being researched, as they mainly affect people who cannot afford their drugs. Protecting intellectual property should not be a goal in itself. Keeping citizens alive is more important than encouraging them to make inventions.

This leads us to ethical impacts. Life has become instrumental rather than intrinsically valued. There are no barriers for how humans or animals are treated. Pigs with human growth hormone have a body weight that is more than its legs can carry. The behavior and health of animals change. Their capacity to heal and repair breaks down, and they get addicted to inputs. Interestingly, what happens in nature happens in society. Globalization is not cross-cultural integration as claimed, but the imposition of one culture on all. When imposing homogenization on social systems, it results in disintegration and violence. This must be enough evidence to show that monocultures do not work out.

I have shown how “natural” power structures threatening people’s lives are dominating the third wave of globalization. Last I want to see if, aside from the morally wrongfulness of the IPR’s, there are any written laws sinking its legality.

How legal is the political?

TRIPS is not the result of democratic negotiations, though democratic values are supposed to be one of the core values of Western culture. Rather it was shaped by the interests of transnational companies (TNC’s) from the US, Japan, and Europe. Indigenous peoples did not have any say in the negotiations which led to the agreement, even though this agreement influences them a lot. Through TRIPS they are forced to accept patents on innovations.

But the article 27:1 of TRIPS mentioned earlier, states that patents shall have access in areas of technique, but not all innovations are technique; they may be written sources, and according to several treaties are therefore exempt from patents. But praxis has developed that innovations can be patented on the grounds of their further technical effects. Indigenous organizations have called for amending TRIPS, but not surprisingly they talk to deaf ears.

Indigenous peoples have a full right to complain also according to several treaties that are worth mentioning. The Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) from 1992 is, with its 188 ratifications, the broadest supported global legally binding treaty. It promotes sustainable development and the fair and equal sharing of the benefits from the use of genetic resources. Article 8(j) of the CBD states that governments shall respect, preserve, and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities in biodiversity conservation and encourage equal sharing of benefits arising from this. Its implementation, however, is hampered by the patent monopolies and private rights of the TRIPS agreement. The CBD is a bit ironic in that it gives governments the sovereignty over indigenous resources and states are also the ones signing the agreement, not indigenous groups.

The WIPO Declaration is meant to make real those rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is not evident. According to articles 3 and 25, everyone has the right to share in scientific advancement and its benefits and have access to essential medicines, but as shown, strong patent protection on medicines, food and other basic goods compromise human rights commitments. Yet there has been little assessment of the human rights implications of IPR’s. On the basis of their field experience, MSF highlight the importance of addressing the current problems of public health before moving towards a substantive patent law.

Last, Article 27.3 (b) of TRIPS legitimizes private property rights in the form of intellectual property over life and processes entailed in modifying life forms. But these are rights for individuals, corporations and states, not for indigenous peoples and local communities. Discussions on indigenous knowledge should find support in ILO 169 and the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (strengthening Article 27 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights), which states that rights to indigenous knowledge, innovations, and practices cannot be discussed in isolation from indigenous people’s rights to their own territories and resources.

Sadly, the ILO 169, the only legally binding treaty to protect indigenous peoples, still has a weak legal status. Law does not necessarily mean justice and absence of discrimination. And indigenous peoples, which are a kind of nation within a nation, have no representation; they are not a category in official records. Governments, which mostly consider themselves to be the voice of all peoples within their territory, usually ignore indigenous peoples (Saugestad).

(read part 1) (read part 2) (read part 3)

The Environment and Human Rights (1): The Environmental Kuznets Curve

Simon Smith Kuznets

(source)

It’s not uncommon to hear people worry about the economic development of the developing world: what if these billions of people start to drive cars, use airco, eat meat etc. to the same extent as the people in the West? Would that not spell the end of the earth? Isn’t there a contradiction between the fight against poverty and care for the environment? Are we forced to make some tragic choices? Leave people in poverty and save the earth, or save people and destroy the earth? Or radically change the Western life style?

The concept of sustainable development, development and economic growth which takes the environment into account, doesn’t seem to calm the fears. And then people start to discuss overpopulation and all the nastiness that comes with it, or they turn to cultural pessimism about the excesses of the Western consumer society.

A more hopeful sign comes from economics, and in particular the Environmental Kuznets Curve. This curve shows a U-shaped relationship between per capita income (GDP) and the quality of the environment. Measures of the quality of the environment do indeed fall in the initial stages of economic growth, but this trend turns around at about $5.000 per capita GDP, with many measures of environmental damage showing improvement from $8.000 onwards (source).

(source)

What Are Human Rights? (17): Interdependent

Lyndon B. Johnson

Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty. Lyndon B. Johnson

Kofi Annan

Literacy is a bridge from misery to hope. It is a tool for daily life in modern society. It is a bulwark against poverty, and a building block of development, an essential complement to investments in roads, dams, clinics and factories. Literacy is a platform for democratization, and a vehicle for the promotion of cultural and national identity. Especially for girls and women, it is an agent of family health and nutrition. For everyone, everywhere, literacy is, along with education in general, a basic human right…. Literacy is, finally, the road to human progress and the means through which every man, woman and child can realize his or her full potential. Kofi Annan

The right to education (article 26 of the Universal Declaration) and the right not to suffer poverty (article 25) are examples of the interdependence of human rights. A good education helps people to escape poverty, and a good standard of living helps people to get an education. Of course, this works also the other way around: when suffering from poverty, it’s hard to educate yourself, and without education it’s hard to escape poverty.

Here’s a graph showing the correlation between poverty and lack of education in the 50 states of the US:

Similar data exist on the international level.

Here’s a quote by another “Johnson”:

Samuel Johnson

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult. Samuel Johnson

This is another example of interdependence. The absence of poverty is a prerequisite for the exercise of political freedom and participation. Material circumstances can be such that freedom of opinion or the right to political participation is difficult to use. Moreover, in this case it is almost impossible to use freedom and participation in order to improve your material circumstances. However, ou do not have to claim or participate in politics on your own behalf. You can claim rights (for exampl economic rights) or participate in politics on behalf of somebody else, someone who finds it difficult to do so himself.

Human Rights Facts (7): Human Development Index

I’ve written about the Human Development Index before on this blog, but only casually. This post is meant to give a more in-depth explanation of the concept.

The word “development” as it is used in terms such as “the developed and developing (or underdeveloped) world”, “international development aid” etc. refers to an evolution or process towards greater quality of life for humans, both physically and spiritually. It encompasses economic growth, health care, education, equality, disaster preparedness, infrastructure, human rights, governance, environment etc.

The process is usually understood as an international one, whereby countries and communities are assisted by others and by the international community as represented in international institutions such as the UN, the World Bank, the IMF etc. Non-governmental organizations (NGO’s) also play an important role.

In 2000, the United Nations declared eight “Millennium Development Goals” (MDG) to be achieved by 2015 or 2020 according to measurable targets and defined indicators:

The measurement of development and of the progress of development is a difficult and complex problem, given the many aspects of development as cited above. Some aspects of the measurement include:

• National GDP
• Literacy rates
• Life expectancy
• Infant mortality rates
• Gini coefficient
• HIV infection rates
• Number of doctors per capita
• Freedom scores
• Governance scores
• Number of PhD’s
• Number of newspapers or other publications
• etc.

While each component of development is relatively easy to measure (given adequate national statistics), their aggregation and relative weighting is complex and controversial. Hence it is difficult to measure a country’s overall development rate. A simplified and widely accepted overall measurement is the “Human Development Index” (HDI). The HDI combines measures of life expectancy, literacy, educational attainment, and GDP per capita for countries, so only 4 of several possible development measures, which is why some have called the HDI a “crude” measurement. The index was developed in 1990 by Mahbub ul Haq, Sir Richard Jolly, Gustav Ranis and Lord Meghnad Desai.

The following 2 graphs show the HDI in 2002 and 2007:

This graph shows the different levels of progress by continent:

Human Rights Cartoon (42): Privacy

(source)

I’ve written about privacy before on this blog (here, here and here), with a particular attention to the importance of private property for privacy. The current post deals more generally with privacy.

There’s no light without darkness. By recognizing the right to keep certain thoughts, relationships and communications secret, one automatically recognizes the right to make other thoughts, relationships and communications public. The right to privacy is a negative version of the freedom of expression, but is, of course, also a value in itself. Privacy is not only important because it protects publicity. It is also important in itself. Nobody can spend his or her entire life in public. People need to have privacy, a space of their own, protected against the intrusion of other people.

This private space has a literal and a figurative meaning.

• It is, first of all, your own house and your own, secret and protected place in society, and hence it is linked to private property and the right to property (an example of the indivisibility and interdependence of human rights). Privacy in this sense means absence of physical intrusion.
• Secondly, and still rather literally, the private space means the privacy of your own body. Nobody should intervene with your body or intrude into your biological space. In this sense, one can speak about the right to own your body, a right to not have other people violate or harm your body, or use it as a means for their profit, like for example in slavery or – less harmful but still a violation of privacy – the commercial use of one’s name or likeness without one’s agreement. The latter, like slavery but less painful, turns a person into a commodity that serves the profit of others. Privacy in this sense means absence of appropriation.
  
• Thirdly, your private space means, figuratively, the space of your personal thoughts, feelings, belief and actions. For example, the public disclosure of embarrassing facts about you, government intrusion into your correspondence etc. Privacy in this sense means absence of mental intrusion.

Article 12 of the Universal Declaration gives people their privacy right:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honor and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

Privacy in a way depends on development and technology, on good housing, mobility (distance) and a good income (related to smaller families and economic independence). But, on the other hand, technology makes it also easier for governments in particular to invade people’s privacy (CCTV, email monitoring, telephone taps etc.). In the current anti-terrorism panic, governments are more likely to invade privacy because they consider this to be a necessary price to pay for security.

I’ve stated before that sometimes one can indeed be forced to limit a right for the protection of another. But this motivation often gets derailed, either because the threat to another right is overestimated or exaggerated, or because governments find it a convenient excuse for the exercise of their power.

Here are some data on countries’ performance in the field of privacy protection for their citizens:

(source, source)