[Arms Trade] Groups: G-8 Arms Sales Fueling Poverty

By THOMAS WAGNER
Associated Press Writer

June 22, 2005, 4:34 AM EDT

LONDON -- Arms exports from Group of Eight nations such as Britain and the United States to poor, conflict-ridden countries are fueling poverty and human rights abuses there, Amnesty International and Oxfam said Wednesday.

As foreign ministers from the G-8 industrialized countries prepared to meet in London on Thursday and Friday, Amnesty and Oxfam urged them to end the problem by adopting a proposed international arms trade treaty.

Amnesty and Oxfam said if such a treaty was made international and legally binding it could establish universal standards regarding arms exports and save lives.

"Each year hundreds of thousands of people are killed, tortured, raped and displaced through the misuse of arms," said Amnesty Secretary General Irene Khan.

"How can G-8 commitments to end poverty and injustice be taken seriously if some of the very same governments are undermining peace and stability by deliberately approving arms transfers to repressive regimes, regions of extreme conflict or countries who can ill afford them?" she said in a statement.

The foreign ministers will meet ahead of a summit by the leaders of the G-8 countries -- Britain, the United States, Japan, Russia, Canada, France, Italy and Germany -- on July 6-8 in Scotland.
Amnesty, Oxfam and another human rights group -- the International Action Network on Small Arms -- said their new report shows that G-8 countries are still supplying military equipment, weapons and munitions to destinations such as Sudan, Myanmar (Burma), the Republic of Congo, Colombia and the Philippines, where they contribute to gross violations of human rights.

The human rights groups said their report exposes a series of loopholes and weaknesses in arms export controls that are common across G-8 countries.

The report's claims included:

* United States: Substantial U.S. military aid to states carrying out persistent human rights violations, including Pakistan, Nepal and Israel.

* Britain: From January 2003 to June 2004, Britain licensed arms exports to countries with serious human rights concerns, including Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Nepal, Israel and Indonesia. Britain also has increasingly used "open licenses" that allow companies to make multiple shipments without adequate scrutiny.

* Canada: Military exports to countries involved in armed conflict or human rights abuse, including light armored vehicles and helicopters to Saudi Arabia and aircraft engines and hand guns to the Philippines.

* France: Exports in the U.N. category of "bombs, grenades, ammunition, mines and other" to countries subject to European Union arms embargoes, such as Myanmar and Sudan.

* Russia: Exports of heavy weaponry, including combat aircraft, to states whose forces have committed abuses such as Ethiopia, Algeria and Uganda.

[Fair Trade] No end to subsidies in sight

Julio Godoy
PARIS, Jun 17 (IPS) - Most countries in Europe and North America do not foresee an end to the billions of dollars they pay out in subsidies to their farmers, a leading expert says.

Former European Union commissioner for agriculture Franz Fischler told IPS that most OECD countries are not willing to discontinue the financial support they provide to their agricultural sector despite complaints from developing countries that such subsidies distort world markets and constitute a barrier to their exports.

Fischler chaired a meeting on agricultural policies that the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) hosted in Paris this week where representatives from Brazil, China, India, and South Africa also participated.

These four countries are leading members of G20, the group of 20 developing countries set up in 2003 to coordinate international trade policy positions in the Doha round of international negotiations on agriculture and services.

The 230 billion dollars in subsidies that OECD countries pay to their farmers -- at a conservative estimate -- is the main bone of contention in the Doha round and in the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

The OECD represents 30 industrialised countries including the United States, European Union (EU) members, Japan, Australia, and also other countries that still rely heavily on agriculture, such as Mexico and Turkey.

Fischler made it clear that the meeting in Paris had no negotiating or even pre-negotiating character. ”The objective was to get a common understanding of the global dimension of agricultural policy reform,” he said.

Although the meeting had no definitive agenda, subsidies for the agricultural sector in the richest countries was the main subject, and served to prepare further negotiations on agriculture in the Doha round.

Most developing countries have long ceased to pay out heavy subsidies to their farmers. A new report to be published by the OECD later this year confirms this contrast. The report's preliminary findings, to which IPS had access, underlined that the producer support estimate (PSE) in France and in the United States amounts to 31 and 16, while the Brazilian value is less than 10. The PSE is the indicator the OECD uses to measure ”the annual monetary value of gross transfers from consumers and taxpayers to support agricultural producers, measured at farm gate level, arising from policy measures which support agriculture, regardless of their nature, objectives or impacts on farm production or income.” The PSE values for China, India, and South Africa are also considerably lower than those of the European Union and the United States, according to the preliminary findings of the OECD study.

But despite such findings Fischler says most OECD countries continue to maintain subsidies. ”There is no timetable for putting an end to this support,” he said. Fischler argued that the agricultural policy reform undertaken in the European Union since 2003 has only changed the nature of the subsidies. The EU spends roughly 40 percent of its budget (some 50 billion euros/60 billion dollars) in subsidies for farmers. France is the main beneficiary, taking 23 percent.

Following reform of the European common agricultural policy (CAP) launched in June 2003, EU subsidies are due to remain unchanged until 2013, but decoupled from the level of production. ”Decoupling the subsidies from the level of production has been a big step in the right direction,” Fischler claimed. Decoupling means that the European states still pay subsidies to their farmers, but at a level based on past income. Financial support comes now in the form of a one-off payment every year, and is aimed at encouraging farmers to rationalise production to focus on real market demand. ”Now subsidies for agriculture do not represent an incentive to produce more, but a price the state pays to farmers for providing public services,” Fischler added.

This was reflected in the declaration released after the OECD debate. The declaration recognises that progress towards reduction of subsidies has been slow, but adds that ”the contributions that agriculture can make beyond producing food and fibres have gained in appreciation.” These ”contributions” are said to include ”countryside and nature management, biodiversity, rural amenities, and rural community well being, amongst others.” Such claims go against the general perception that OECD subsidies have led to environmentally damaging intensive farming and are partly responsible for provoking a health crisis such as the mad cow disease.

Despite the OECD defence of subsidies, representatives from Brazil, China, India, and South Africa and also from the WTO see the subsidies even after decoupling as distorting the market mechanism. Ben Van Wyk, senior manager for economic analysis at the South African ministry for agriculture said the OECD countries should follow the example of developing countries ”which have largely liberalised the sector.” Ivan Wedekin, head of the department of agricultural policy in the Brazilian government said that Brazil, together with China, India, South Africa and other developing countries will continue ”working at the WTO to see that Europe and North America reduce their subsidies for agriculture, which distort prices and affect millions of farmers across the rest of the world.”

He added that the preliminary findings by the OECD on subsidies ”fortifies our negotiating position” before the WTO and the Doha round. ”Brazil, as well as other developing countries could win from the liberalisation of world trade,” he said. ”But our agricultural potential is negatively affected by subsidies paid to farmers by the richest countries.” Wedekin described the European plans of reforming financial support for sugar producers as ”a first small step in a long path.”

The WTO ruled EU support for sugar producers as illegal last month after Brazil, Thailand, and Australia filed a complaint. In April 2004 another WTO verdict established the illegality of U.S. subsidies for cotton, despite the U.S. government claim that it had ”decoupled” its support from the level of production.

http://www.ipsnews.net/new_nota.asp?idnews=29118

[Military Spending] Global spending on arms far outstrips aid

The Sunday Independent
June 12, 2005
By Andrew Buncombe

Washington

As leaders of the world's most powerful nations prepare to discuss financial help for Africa, a new report reveals the extraordinary sums spent by those same countries on weapons compared to the relatively modest sums spent on aid.In 2004 - the sixth successive year in which arms spending increased - the global total spent on munitions topped $1 trillion (about R6,6 trillion) for the first time since the height of the Cold War. In contrast, the amount spent on aid over the same period was $78,6 billion (about R520 billion).

Once again, America was by far the greatest spender on arms. In 2004, it spent $455 billion, an increase from 2003 of 12 percent, fuelled largely by the investment in President George Bush's "war on terror".

America's foreign aid spending is around 4,1 percent of its arms bill. Britain, the second largest arms spender, spent $47 billion, a tenth of the United States total.

The new figures were released this week by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri), an independent research institute.Aid groups and campaigners say that, compared to the amount spent annually on arms, the sums being set aside for aid to Africa are negligible."When you look at the amount being spent on arms compared to ... aid, it shows how little is being spent on aid," said Brendan Cox, a spokesperson for Oxfam. "We are pushing to increase aid by $50 billion annually, but the US spends $450 billion on arms. This shows that, when there is a political will to find funding, the resources can be delivered. We need a war on poverty."

Other groups have accused the G8 nations of hypocrisy. A separate report by the London-based Campaign Against the Arms Trade (CAAT) reveals that seven of the G-8 nations are among the world's top 10 arms dealers - responsible for the export of more than $24 billion worth of weapons, half of which last year went to developing countries.

The group's report also refers to an investigation by the Congressional Research Service which shows that in 2003 just five members of the G-8 - the US, Britain, France, Germany and Russia - were responsible for 89 percent of arms sales to developing countries."

The cost of arms sales, and the conflicts they help to sustain, have a massive and disastrous effect on the possibility of sustainable development. Talk about ending poverty at the G-8 summit will only be meaningful if G-8 countries end their political and financial support for the arms trade," said James O'Nions, a CAAT spokesperson.

Basildon Peta reports that Kader Asmal, the former education minister and former head of the committee that decided where South African arms could be exported, described the huge arms exports by rich countries as "a terrible cycle of waste".

Kasmal said there were "huge arrangements" between militaries, industries and governments in the North to keep on finding ways of spending money on arms at the expense of bettering the plight of human beings around the world."All weapons are manufactured to be used. Sooner or later, they will be used and this is a terrible nightmare for people," he says.But Henri Boshoff of the Institute of Security Studies said he did not think the $1 trillion was "far out of proportion in keeping militaries going", especially considering 47 percent of the spending was by the US.

Boshoff, a military analyst, said a significant portion of the money was invested in peacekeeping operations that were enormously expensive but necessary."You can't spend money on development and aid without stability. Stability need military forces who in turn need money to keep going," he said.

However, Terry Crawford-Browne of Economists Allied for Arms Reduction (Ecaar) South Africa said a very small proportion of the money goes to peacekeeping operations.He said poverty and deprivation among the poor were the biggest threats to stability, especially in countries such as South Africa, as evidenced by the recent riots in townships to protest against slow service delivery. Ross Herbert of the South African Institute of International Affairs said it was improper to just condemn military spending without looking critically at whether such spending was justified on security grounds. It was naive to think that simply transferring money spent on arms to places like Africa would cause automatic development, he argued, because many African countries had demonstrated little ability to absorb and put aid to good use.

According to Crawford-Browne, South Africa faced no military threat from its neighbours, and spending 1,5 percent of its budget on arms instead of investing in poverty alleviation was totally unacceptable.

[Africa] Africa needs deeds not words from G8 - ActionAid

Yahoo! Asia News
LONDON (Reuters)

Leaders of the world's richest nations have a unique opportunity to start digging Africa out of poverty when they meet in Scotland next month, pressure group ActionAid said on Monday.

Citing a stream of broken promises from past summits of the Group of Eight industrialised nations, ActionAid called for fair trade, more and better aid, wholesale debt cuts, money to fight the AIDS epidemic and action to halt global warming.

"The G8 have made grand statements on Africa for 10 years now. In that time they have continued to frogmarch African countries into policies that have harmed them," said Steve Tibbett of ActionAid UK.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has made helping Africa out of the pit of disease and debt a cornerstone of his year-long presidency of the G8.

Formed in 1972 as a British-based aid charity working in the world's poorest countries, ActionAid opened an international head office in Johannesburg two years ago and is now one of the world's largest development agencies.
In a report published on Monday and aimed at the G8 summit on July 6-8 at the prestige Gleneagles Hotel near Edinburgh, ActionAid drove home its message.

It said nearly nine African children died each minute from preventable diseases, 45 million were denied access to even basic education and hundreds of millions faced starvation.

Previous G8 summits had pledged to slash debts, tackle global warming, give more aid, fight disease, massively improve access to water and sanitation and make trade rules fairer.

But to date the pledges had proved to be little more than empty words. "G8 leaders have used previous summits to make grand speeches about waging war on poverty. But on past evidence, they are firing blanks," the report said.
"Now is the moment to act. Africa is at the top of the international agenda and the G8 is faced by a once-in-a-generation opportunity to help transform the region's prospects," it added.

Actual debt write offs were less than half the amount pledged which in turn was a fraction of the more than $300 billion owed by Africa as a whole. The report was written before G8 finance ministers agreed last weekend to write off $40 billion of debt owed by 18 Highly Indebted Poor Countries.

ActionAid urged the G8 to stop dumping subsidised goods on African markets and forcing local producers out of business, to open their own markets to African produce, slash the prices of vital drugs and to untie aid.
ActionAid also urged the G8 to meet their own long-standing pledges to spend 0.7 percent of gross national income on aid -- a fraction that no G8 country had yet got even close to.

A telling bar chart compared G8 aid per African to European Union subsidies per cow -- the latter being nearly 30 times larger than the former. Africa was starting to help itself, but the economic recovery and advent of peace in several countries was fragile and needed urgent and selfless help from the G8, it said.

"Failure to rise to this challenge will be judged harshly, by the millions of people mobilising in 2005 for change, and by history," the report concluded.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/050620/3/22omg.html