As readers of Development 52.2 will know this was a power packed Forum of over 2000 women, some men and trans, mostly under 35 and mostly from countries in the global South who were meeting to swap strategies about how to strengthen women’s rights worldwide. The Development journal was lucky enough to be asked to capture the best of the event last year in the issue ‘Power, Movements Change’. This is the second time Development has printed articles that emerge from AWID’s dynamic events, Development 49.1 carried the earlier journal issue (see www.sidint.org/development). In terms of the journal’s aim to make a difference publishing the articles from the AWID Forums is part of an exciting partnership where Development brings news and views from women of all ages from around the world to policy makers, academics and NGOS who might otherwise not have the chance to gain insight into the spirited work of women’s movements. The Forum 08 Review in linking to the journal issue is also giving AWID members the chance to visit the Development journal website and see what others in the development field are working on. The connection works both ways, where women focused mainly on women’s human rights, poverty, environment, technologies and more can read and explore others working in those fields. This is the sort of collaboration Development thrives on, making it a unique journal engaged in connecting networks, writers, policy makers or just people open to seeing what development is all about. Do take a look at Forum 08 in Review and let us know what you think! The next Development journal issue 52.2  is on Gender and Empowerment which will continue to explore gender and development in more depth. See the taster editorial ‘Lady Gaga Meets Ban Ki-Moon‘, one of our most visited SID Forum posts, and look out for the launch next month on the SID Forum.

In 2009‐2010 the Society for International Development (SID), in partnership with the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos), responded to the financial crisis through a special issue of the SID journal Development on ‘Beyond Economics’, and three consecutive launches on three continents.

The first one was held in New York on 29‐31 October 2009 together with the policy seminar ‘Responding to the interlocked financial, climate and care crises’. The second took place in The Hague on 11 December 2009 under the title ‘Beyond Economics: Building collective responsibility for sustainable livelihoods’. Finally, a third launch on 2‐3 February 2010 was carried out in Dar es Salaam under the title ‘Beyond Economics: An East African Conversation’.

All launches built on the journal issue on Beyond Economics. The conversations focused on the critique of mainstream neo‐classical economic thinking. They searched for visions for alternative forms of economies, as well as new frameworks for sustainable human development. The seminars aimed to analyze the systemic crisis the world is facing, going beyond the financial and economic one, and proposing solutions that also encompass the food, climate and care crises.

While the first two launches debated the implications of the crises and what it means to go beyond economics at the international level, the third launch discussed specifically the effects of the crises on Africa.

The launches were attended by a diverse audience including academics, development practitioners, activists, government and business sector representatives. The issue was debated from equally varied angles, including the economic, the political and the cultural, with a stress on the need for a new ethics.

This publication reproduces the three reports from the launches, the programmes of the events and the list of participants. It also carries interviews with journal’s authors and speakers at the launches. The interviews were regularly posted on this website.

SID and Hivos will continue their collaboration and will keep the dialogue alive on how to shape a different economy which ensures social justice and a more equitable world. The next step will be jointly producing Development 53.3 entitled ‘Sustaining Local Economies’, out in September 2010. This follow up journal issue will explore how local economies are functioning at the margins of neo‐liberal global capitalism.

For further information and to follow the discussion please visit www.sidint.net and www.hivos.net.

photo credit: Funadium

She is a Pakistani sociologist and the Deputy Director of a research project on Women’s Empowerment in Muslim Contexts: gender, poverty and democratization from the inside out. She is also a Visiting Fellow at the City University of Hong Kong.

Recipient of several national and international human rights awards, Farida Shaheed has worked for more than 25 years promoting and protecting cultural rights by fostering policies and projects designed in culturally sensitive ways to support the rights of marginalized sectors, including women, peasants, and religious and ethnic minorities.

An experienced participant in negotiations at international, regional and national levels, Farida has brought her distinctive perspective on the integration of culture and rights to her work as an independent expert/consultant to numerous United Nations and development agencies as well as to the government of Pakistan since 1980.

Read Farida Shaheed’s article ‘Rising Phoenixes: Creative resistance by victimized women’ published in Development 49.1 ‘Women’s Rights and Development’

Read more about Development 52.4 ‘Xenophobia, Culture and Identity’.

From 1945 to 1989 international relations were characterized by two major conflicts.¹ East and West drifted into a political and ideological conflict, a Cold War between superpowers threatening each other with nuclear arms. The aspirations of people in the South to liberate themselves from the political, economic and cultural oppression by the North led to a second conflict: a world groundswell towards decolonization that could have developed into a chain of long-lasting violent confrontations. However, neither of the two conflicts developed into a global battlefield.

Parties at all sides, fearing that a Third World War would result in mutual nuclear annihilation, exercised restraint. The United Nations system and its Security Council provided for an institutional mechanism to address issues that serve as a reason to launch a war. Institutions did play an important role in the second half of the last century. Next to the UN many new institutions came into being. The establishment of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, fostering political and military cooperation among the members of the respective alliances, resulted in a balance of power between East and West. The Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade helped to mitigate international economic instability, so that a return of the economic crisis of the 1930s could be avoided. The creation of the European Community with a Common Market of the economies of both the victorious and the defeated countries in western Europe was a peace project on the basis of economic cooperation, meant to once and for all prevent a new world war starting in Europe.

Full article in PDF.

Photo credit: on the road with sankara

Too often mainstream development skirts around the tricky realities of racism and xenophobia or fear of the ‘other’. Such discussions happen on the margins of development policy circles. They are not quite what one wants to air in debates on economics and trade or high-level state matters. Even the ‘soft’ topics of education and health rarely consider such difficult to measure realities. Ironically, even when racism gets on the development agenda, it tends to slip off. The outcome of a vibrant UN World Conference on Racism held in September 2001 was eclipsed totally by the events that happened in New York just three days after it concluded.1

Ironically, given the lack of impact of that Conference, September 11 and the aftermath of the ‘war on terror’ has much do with the growing xenophobia and deeply entrenched racism with which development is imbued. As Ben Pitcher explains in his article, part of the problem is that the very language we use in international relations and development negotiations is couched as if general openness and tolerance prevails. Such a pretense masks the fears and racism that even the most liberal of Europeans (and their descendents in dominant white populations around the world) often harbour. From assumptions about ‘tribal conflicts’ preventing growth of modern nations in sub-Saharan African to intolerance of Islamic women wearing head scarves, to descriptions about youth bulges in urban wastelands of big European cities and elsewhere development discussions are riddled with racism. Essentially, there is a deep-seated fear about the potential ‘problem’ of ‘others’ – the people who do not fit into the category of well-behaved western European (white, moderately religious Christian, employed, heterosexual and middle class) citizens. The unspoken given is that this is the type of citizen modern development aims to create. Those who are projected as the ‘other’ in development are rightly concerned that their way of life, their humanity and livelihoods are being run rough shod by such discrimination that does not accord them status or respect. They know and experience commonly held prejudices against their race, religion, creed, ethnicity, class and culture (and gendered expression within their culture) despite the loud proclamations of understanding and awareness. Some indeed, have endured genocidal attacks, which have been haplessly ignored by the development community (as for example in Central Africa) while apparently addressed in human rights policy.

As the journal issue suggests, the level of racism and xenophobic behaviour is evident not only in Europe and other western communities but also in attitudes towards ethnic minorities found all around the world. There is globally a prevailing mistrust along with naked exclusions and outright neglect and open attacks on peoples who are perceived as outsiders or a threat to the mainstream. Articles in the issue look at the rise of Islamophobia, the hate attacks on Roma people in Europe and violence against refugees in South Africa; the marginalizing of Palestinians in Israel; the distrust of African migrants in Sweden; the exclusion of indigenous people in Latin America; the neglect of Bushmen in Botswana; the racist policies directed at Aboriginal Australians in Australia; and the inherent racism in the Pacific. The articles capture both the difficulty that people who endure racism face and the courage of those who are trying to end unjust state policies, media misrepresentations and consequent violent behaviour directed against vulnerable and clearly marked ‘others’.

The message that emerges from the journal is that racism and xenophobia are hardly new. After all, colonialism in which the roots of development can be found thrived on the exploitation and paternalism of ‘others’ – both people and natural resources – by those who had the power, money and authority. What is worrying today is that despite all the legal frameworks and social concern expressed, racism and xenophobia are on the rise. Racism is integral to modern life. The numerous media reports are only vaguely dismaying to those whose lives they do not describe. It is cosily assumed that these stories are just blips in modern statehood, all is really okay, the norm is tolerance, liberty and equality.2

The articles point to how sadly the norm, despite the rhetoric and comforting assumptions, is far from that. The experiences of indigenous peoples, minority ethnic groups and migrants reveal steady and ongoing racism and xenophobic attacks occur daily in both the Global North and South. Not only is racism found on the streets but also within government institutions. Police forces can be deeply racist and are rightly viewed with great mistrust by many communities, particularly when minority groups are not represented in them. Racism and xenophobia are also central to the military agenda of national and international security.

The point is how to go beyond the fine words and well-meaning policy in order to confront widespread prejudice and hate that is so easily masked. A development based on humanity, respect, rights and tolerance has to unravel how closely development itself is built on a lack of respect and tolerance for other ways of life. It needs to reveal how such wilful ignorance leads to painful misunderstandings and unfair treatment, massive economic and social inequalities and almost inevitably violent conflict as Jan Pronk brings out forcibly in his contribution.

What is compelling in this set of articles is that they do not simply dwell on the violations. They inevitably relate the scandalous results of racist migration policy, the fall out of unconsidered multiculturalism and the violations of the rights of minorities, indigenous people and refugees. But, they go beyond the hype of much media coverage to look at how racism and xenophobia suffuses the language and mindset of development policy. In many ways, this is far more troubling. There may be good policies and legal frameworks, but the mindsets of ordinary people and the development community itself are still to change.

Practitioners and policymakers are too often unseeing of the implications of racism and xenophobia. They fail to confront the impacts of racism, intolerance and xenophobia at all levels of development and modern life. Such failures it seems are hard to counter, but crucial if we are to find justice, peace and tolerance.

Reading the articles, particularly those that relate to Australasia, brought to mind a conversation I had during a recent visit to the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.

In holiday mode, I got chatting with my fellow partakers of a beautiful sea view. Given our differently accented English, we were naturally asking where we came from. One couple came from a town two hours North. They were Maori, a fact I realized when they mentioned their ancestors originally came from Pacific Islands 1,000 years ago. An older woman spoke about being an Irish New Zealander. She had migrated 50 years ago as a 16-year-old school girl, from Ireland, and spoke about home both in relation to her New Zealand friends and family and her community of Irish friends and family whom she visited when she could. An Australian woman announced that she was Australian born and bred, as opposed to me being an Australian now living in Italy. Her contribution to the conversation rather broke the illusion I had of how well multiculturalism functioned in that part of the world. I was reflecting with them on how integrated Maori culture seemed to be in New Zealand particularly for young people where Maori was the official second language and taught at schools. However, the Australian woman was not so interested in that line of thought and moved onto recommend other holiday places in the Pacific, Fiji being a favourite destination. She confided in us that she goes there regularly. Apparently you can enjoy wonderful weather and outstanding hotels, good food, inexpensive cocktails and fabulous beaches. Her tip-off was not to go out of the hotel until the last day. One has to go out to see something more of the country, and its people of course, but the dire poverty of the people was far too depressing. Better to do it on the last day, otherwise it would ruin your holiday.

The inherent racism in this statement does not need to be elaborated, nor the injustices that lead to development being built on tourism that benefits the tourists and the owners of the industry rather than the people who live by the hotels and no doubt service them. But, what the articles in the journal ask you to do is not dismiss such statements as frivolous or ignorant and blind far removed from the aims of development policy in the Pacific or elsewhere in the Global South. We have to see such attitudes as part and parcel of the same development approach that recommends investments in tourism and service industries. This model of development promotes a grossly uneven type of growth that benefits elites rather than marginalized indigenous peoples. Instead, we need to promote a development that builds sustainable livelihoods, which preserves the environment and provides social and economic benefit for all citizens.

Such attitudes are not harmless. They are at the foundation of ways of seeing that can move swiftly from unthinkingly wanting to avoid the ugly sights of poverty, to anger at such poverty ruining a holiday or your neighbourhood. This attitude can ultimately lead to fears that nameless poor people might want to force their way into your privileged life, and need to be kept away in case they want to harm you or steal your property. Such intolerance lies hand in hand with policies that seek to develop people and nations that promote luxury for some at the expense of other’s livelihoods and rights. Development should not be so concerned about whether the resentment of the poor leads to violence and ‘failed’ states. Rather development should be challenging the assumptions of the well-off who see the lives of ‘others’, their ‘poverty’, their sense of ‘identity’ or ‘culture’ as something to be transformed, if not feared and controlled.

As Linda Burney of the Wiradjuri Nation and Minister for Community Services in New South Wales, Australia states, we are not talking here about clashes between the first world capitalist economy with third world communitarian societies. There are no big issues requiring big solutions.

‘The time for all-encompassing solutions is past … Too many reports have been written and shelved. The basic problem is that it involves a lot of hard work, with probably few results until years have passed … consultation is needed, ongoing dialogue between participants, because the people affected will not cooperate if they are not part of the process …’

Following Burney’s own contribution working with Australia’s disadvantaged but nevertheless thriving Aboriginal culture, all of us need to take incremental steps towards ending racism and xenophobia. This requires the development community to change itself and recognize that western ways of seeing needs to open up to different cultures. Without succumbing to a romanticism of culture, development needs to be inclusive of ‘others’, adapting to political and economic landscapes with flexibility and resilience so that all can participate.

Notes

1 The World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance was held in Durban, South Africa from 31 August to September 2001. See the official website http://www.un.org/WCAR. The statement of the NGOs who met at the Durban Review Conference held in Geneva April 2009 is published in this issue’s Last Word. For more details on the Durban Review Conference resolutions, see http://www.un.org/durbanreview2009.

2 Some might well argue that now the United States has a Black President and racism is no longer; but as Andrew Manis warns in the Macon Telegraph, published in Georgia, USA, in January 2009, there is a virulent and open hostility of US white ‘racist loud mouths’ towards President Obama. See www.clarksvilleonline.com/tag/dr-andrew-manis.

Presentations were made by representatives of indigenous movements from five continents, including Debra Harris from the Indigenous Peoples’ Council on Biocolonialism, USA; Saudata Aboubacrine from Tin Hinan, Burkina Faso; Ol-Johan Sikku from the Sami Council, Sweden; Windel Balag-ey Bolinget from the Cordillera People Alliance, Philippines, and Ben Powless from the International Environmental Network, Canada.

The presentations showed a great deal of commonalities among the experiences lived by indigenous groups worldwide. All stressed the importance of land as an ancestral territory and an integral part of the communities’ worldviews. Land grabbing by governments or multinationals for mining or other extractive industries’ purposes was also one of the main problems experienced by indigenous groups, especially as they are not consulted over activities planned on their territories in lack of compliance with both ILO Convention 169 and the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights. Often land is grabbed for big ‘development’ projects such as dams, which create forced displacement of indigenous communities. Climate change was also mentioned as one of the main problems for indigenous peoples, not only because they rely more on nature for their livelihoods, but also because they have fewer means to protect themselves from changes in climate patterns and more frequent natural disasters. The issue of climate justice and ecological debt was raised as indigenous peoples are the ones who are suffering the worst consequences of climate change, yet have contributed the least to this problem. Finally, most indigenous groups lack formal representation in national parliaments, which prevents them from making their voices heard through local institutional processes.

At the same time, the presentations offered the audience a glimpse into a variety of very rich and diverse cultures. Despite facing similar difficulties, each indigenous group has its own culture and identity, language and traditions which make it different and unique. This extreme diversity of cultures forces us once more to acknowledge the impossibility of applying a single development model to very different contexts. This is all the more true when this model is imposed without the consultation of the very people who live on a specific territory.
The presentations also highlighted the diversity of knowledges that these groups are carriers of and that should not be lost. As a representative from Rajasthan pointed out, the literacy rate is extremely low in his community, however the knowledge on cattle rearing is so extensive that no formally educated person would possess it.

The next seminar organized by SID in the framework of the Course will take place on 26 November and will focus on Food Sovereignty.

To read more about issues faced by indigenous people read the article ‘The Rise of Ethnic Politics: The indigenous movement in the Andean region’ by Laura Fano Morrissey.

Other articles will also appear in the forthcoming issue of Development 52.4 ‘Xenophobia, Culture and Identity’.

Photo credit: Keith Bacongco

Articles in the issue of Development boldly take up how the mindset of development practitioners need to change with a look at: the rise of  Islamophobia, the hate attacks on Roma people in Europe and violence against refugees in South Africa; the marginalizing of Palestinians in Israel; the distrust of African migrants in Sweden; the exclusion of indigenous people in Latin America; the neglect of Bushmen in Botswana;
the racist policies directed at Aboriginal Australians in Australia; and the inherent racism in the Pacific.

The journal issue highlights both the difficulty people who endure racism face and the courage of those who are trying to end unjust state policies, media misrepresentations and the violent behaviour against ‘others’.

Click here to view the table of contents. You can also click here to read the articles’ abstracts.

Gross National Product measures neither the health of our children, the quality of their education, nor the joy of their play. It measures neither the beauty of our poetry, nor the strength of our marriages. It is indifferent to the decency of our factories and safety of our streets alike. It measures neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our wit nor our courage, neither our compassion nor our devotion to country. It measures everything in short, except that which makes life worth living, and it can tell us everything about our country except those things that make us proud to be part of it.

Senator Robert Kennedy, 1968

Anwar Fazal of the  Right Livelihood College,  Malaysia,Penang, reminded participants of the insights of Bob Kennedy at the Launch of ‘Beyond Economics’  Development vol 52 no 3 held in UNDESA, ,New York,  29-31 October 2009.

The launch of the journal issue followed by a SID HIVOS UNDESA International Policy Seminar ‘Responding to the interlocked financial, climate and care crises’  fostered a lively set of discussions of mainstream neo classical economic thinking, visions for alternative forms of economies, as well as the new frameworks for sustainable human development.

‘I think it is time that we look at the world of these twin cultures of consumerism and increased poverty and secondly that we look for a world driven far more by ethical perceptions of the commonality of our fate living on a common planet’ Shobha Raghuram, independent researcher, India.

‘I see that there is a cultural crisis although I would not fully call it a crisis, it is a phenomenon that we cannot stop, that is inevitable, that we still don’t understand in relation to globalization because so much more attention has been given to economic globalization.’ Lourdes Arizpe, National University of Mexico.

The discussion continues at the SID-HIVOS launch in The Hague in December 2009 where SID President Jan Pronk will chair the debate. In the interim a detailed report will be posted on the SID Forum as well as interviews with key protagonists of the meeting. Some of the interviews will also be featured in Development Vol. 53.1 ‘New Institutional Arrangements for Human Development’ out next March.

Photo by Arthur Muliro: (from left to right): Cecilia Alemany, Lourdes Arizpe, Manisha Desai and Jonathan Glennie

Cover photo credit: mikecogh

In a volume on culture and identity it might seem at first somewhat puzzling to have the third issue devoted to ‘Beyond Economics’. Following on from issues on ‘sexuality and development’, ‘power, movements, change’ and anticipating ‘xenophobia, culture and identity’ the topic might appear incongruent. When the editorial board was finalizing the themes for Volume 52 in October 2008 the financial crisis in the run up to the United States elections was just hitting the news. What had actually been slated as the third issue was the culture of markets as a way of life that pervaded much of the mainstream development policy. We originally had thought to unpack the unbridled reliance on markets. However, history beat us to it and in our conversations reflecting on the profound shake up of the financial collapse wrought on economic wisdom, it was clear that it was not the concept of markets that needed to be revisited but economics itself. It was time to challenge very seriously within the development community the economic principles driving the interlocked crises of food, climate and finance, as well as the equally intertwined though far less visible global crisis of care.

The journal issue has taken up the challenge with three sets of articles. The first addresses the financial and economic crises as well as food, climate and care crises by looking at what urgently needs to change in economic thinking and policy. Though criticizing the current greed of global capitalism and its dire impact on peoples’ livelihoods, the environment and social relations the articles go beyond a diagnosis of problem. They look at what economics needs to become. Much of what they say is not entirely new to Development readers familiar with an editorial line that over the years has warned of the systemic faults in economic thinking that are not being addressed in development policy. Many issues of Development, beginning in the 1970s with the promotion of the new international economic order and human development have warned that economic development policy that fails to take into account people and the environment can only lead to increasing inequalities, poverty and devastation of the environment. What is new is that these writers are economists who are being self-reflective on the profession itself. The severity of the crises demands that the economic leaders (whether in academe or in policy) go beyond given economic beliefs and culture to change radically economic policies. It is imperative to drop neo-liberal belief in the market and recognize that new value systems, new forms of accountability, new forms of democracy are needed; ones responding to today’s realities and not harking back to old ideologies, of either right or left. Particularly challenging is how to bring in ordinary peoples’ needs rather than market needs as central to economics. In this process the question is what type of economics can redress the gender imbalances and geopolitical constraints, which perpetuate the deep and pervasive inequalities that rob the majority of the world’s lives of dignity and push the powerful minority along a fast and destructive pace of greed. There are answers given in the articles, from strengthening the multilateral system to introducing radically different monetary policy to ensuring full employment. Not all the authors are convinced that the systemic changes are going to be made easily, given the breadth of the crises and the entrenched ways of global political and economic institutions.

The second set of articles takes up what this rethinking of the culture of economics means for development models, which are so solidly based on the assumption of economic growth, trade and aid. The authors tackle this question with a solid focus on the livelihoods and rights of poor women and men, and the environment as the true focus for development. They argue how it is critical to move away from aid dependency and embrace principles of environmental and human-centred development that confronts the poverty that invades most of the world, North and South.

A strong message of the issue is to respect and take into account the livelihoods and rights of productive work of all kinds, and take far more seriously the major social and economic impact of climate change. Most of all in the wake of the current crises valuing care work needs to become a visible, crucial development strategy. The care crisis even in the most liberal of circles is rarely spoken about largely due to the gendered nature of the work. The role of caring, mostly undertaken by women, is too often just assumed, even if it is mostly invisible in official accounts and policy. Care work is vital for the survival of societies and economies. Currently it is work being carried out at the cost of the rights and health of women, as their capacity to care is being stretched to the limits in today’s stressed and unequal society. Development policy needs to take into account production and reproduction in relation to gender relations, social and cultural norms, as well as national and global economic trends. In going beyond economics, care needs to be factored into new development analysis and policies, if we are to find sustaining ways for societies to survive the current crises.

In the last section the articles look to the future as authors envisage a new world order based on ecological, gender and social justice. These articles though perhaps offering more hope than the earlier sections’ responses to the interlocked crises are not created out of fanciful utopian dreams. Instead they are based on the experiences and realities of ordinary lives, mindful of what has failed in a wealth and consumerist led society, and what has worked on the margins and peripheries of global capitalism. The vision is founded on what is possible on the small scale, and what exists outside global capitalism. The articles point to how all of us could move to a much more sustainable, harmonious, liveable and just world orders. Indeed they set out how we could create a new form of culture based on a different understanding of how economics works interlinked and informing ecological, social and political spheres.

Sadly this issue also commemorates and mourns the sudden deaths of two friends to the journal in the last months. Smitu Kothari was a much loved and respected intellectual activist from India and a valued member of the editorial board who contributed greatly to the work of Society for International Development (SID), particularly in South Asia. The second loss is the champion of Pan Africanism – Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, whose untimely death shocked the development world profoundly. He too was a great friend of the journal and the work of the East African programme. I am proud that we have published articles of both of them and their insights have helped shape the enduring message of the journal for peace, economic and social justice. In their different ways they carried a vision of justice based on a deep understanding of humanity and the frailties of economic and political processes. They both inspired the huge networks they engaged in to work collectively and honestly towards challenging prejudice, and transforming economies and societies. The death of Taj has lead to a huge number of memorials in his honour in all forms of media and is turning into a celebration of Pan Africanism on the continent of Africa.1 They were global citizens, family men and dear friends, loved and respected by many,2 remembered for their smiles and joy as well as wisdom they gave us in how to move towards a better world.

Notes

1 The popular list serve Pambazuka News, Pan African Voices for Freedom and Justice, is fielding all the comments and discussions. See http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/Tajudeen/. Firoze Manji, in Pambazuka News 436 on 4 June, as the editorial goes to press, reports that ‘tributes to Tajudeen Abdul Raheem, pan-Africanist, fighter, comrade and friend to so many, continue to pour in at Pambazuka News. Since last week, we have received some 60 tributes bringing the total to more than 250.’ http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/obituary/.

2 Smitu’s friends from around the world have sent many tributes to Smitu on a website set up to celebrate and remember Smitu. See http://celebrating-smitu.org/.

Recent Forums of the Association of Women’s Rights and Development (AWID) are marked by an energy that you cannot forget. The Forum on the ‘Power of Movements’ held in South Africa, November 2008 was no exception. From the giant screens of the plenaries, the hundreds of women marching through the streets of Cape Town, the jiving and theatre in the evenings and the staggering number of workshops and interactive events, it was simply exhilarating to see all that women are achieving. As ever, the Forum was highly professional, filled to the brim and driven by numerous agendas. Attending an AWID Forum no one could say there is no global women’s movement. Nor could one say there is a homogeneous women’s movement. Nor that it does not attract the young. More than 30 per cent of the participants, including many plenary speakers, were under 30 years of age. The minority of the 2,000+ participants were white Europeans or North Americans. Many more people applied than who could attend, in short it was the place to be, among a positively pulsating number of women, some men and transgenders.

The journal captures at least something of the range of issues covered: women’s organizing in rights and social movements from grassroot to UN level, multiple and various histories of women struggles in all regions, intergenerational dialogue, disability, fundamentalism, communication strategies, minority rights, sexual health and reproductive rights, union organizing, gender-based violence, and HIV and AIDS. The earlier Development issue on sexuality and development in this volume featured one of the outstanding plenary talks on sexualities by Nadine. As the second in a volume on culture and identity this issue has gladly picked up on the strong theme throughout the Forum of identity and cultural politics and the politics of difference. There is much to learn and celebrate here interestingly largely from women’s movements in the South. The collage of pictures presented in this issue’s ‘Last Word’ is a vivid illustration of the flavour of the meeting, vibrant, young and not so young, outspoken women from the South. ‘Window on the World’ gives just a sample of the many movements and organizations represented and we invite you to visit their websites as well as the AWID website (www.awid.org) where there are more images, videos, and audio of the Forum. This journal is designed to add to this rich set of resource materials. It was a privilege for me as an Editor of Development to be asked to put together this issue as the Forum Report. So all that being said, let me take some editorial privilege and share what I felt were some of the questions, even absences, I felt at the Forum.

Obviously, my view is determined by my own positioning as an Australian writer and editor living in Europe working on European issues and networking transnationally around issues of social and economic justice. At the Forum I was decidedly in the minority of people speaking about economic development, the financial crisis, climate change, and how to bring feminist perspectives into social and economic justice movements. In some of the smaller rooms a few of us found ourselves attending each others’ workshops to talk about hunger, famine, natural disasters, migration, the global financial crisis, and other political and economic issues. As Casal de Vela and Ofreneo suggest in their article it seemed at times that the Forum was more interested in women’s sexuality issues than gender and poverty concerns. Given the timing of the meeting in November 2008 I experienced an overwhelming silence about the impact of Obama’s Presidency for women and for the world. Instead it was whispered about in the corridors. Even more difficult was the fact that the Forum did not have the space for local South African women to attend and there were apparently protests outside the Forum at the fee charged, an issue conscientiously raised in the plenary. Later I spoke with newcomers to AWID Forums who had attended thinking the whole Forum would be about small grassroots movement organizing. They were somewhat bewildered at the scene they found there of highly professional speakers, high-tech presentations, and a whole set of those in the know about the world of New York UN policy debates.

Inevitably there are insiders and outsiders. But it is not so inevitable that identity, difference, and sexuality issues should be seen as the primary issues of AWID.

The feminist analysis of intersectionality asks that women take up and act on all the complex factors that determine gender injustice and subjugation: heteronormativity, identity, economic inequality, unequal resource base, disability, differential gender impacts of health and environment, colonialism, geopolitical power struggles, conflict, gendered culture and social oppression. In such an important Forum all of these factors need to be discussed as a way to understand, support, and further struggles for multiple freedoms.

I sincerely applaud that the AWID Forum reversed heteronormative privilege so that so many women from around the world could celebrate lesbianism as the norm (whatever their own sexual inclinations). As Srilatha Batliwala stated ‘The whole conference is a lesbian caucus.’ But that privileging of difference needs to be contextualized together with huge global economic and political injustice.
The concern with economic and social justice seemed strangely muted. Casal de Vela and Ofreneo in their article reflecting on southern feminism underline that issues of gender identity and sexual orientation are directly linked to economic livelihood issues. They rightly link homophobia and poverty within macro structures of discrimination and exclusion. This also rings true in Europe where I engage in women’s organizing with Women in Development Europe and the European Feminist Forum. European based feminists, whatever their origin, are also dealing with the problems of exclusion, poverty, racism, and sexism wrapped together in the current steep challenges to women’s political and social rights as well as economic well-being. It is important to ensure that issues of culture identity and women’s visibility go hand in hand with the issues of economic rights, justice, and livelihoods.

I write this editorial some four months after the Forum and wonder even more deeply at the lack of discussion about the financial and economic crises. International Women’s Day last weekend in Rome (where I live) beyond the puzzling phenomena of sprigs of yellow mimosa flowers sold on the corners to Italian women by Asian men, featured marches and public debates about deepening precarity, the care crisis, gendered and racialized economic inequalities. Gender-based violence was also on the agenda but along with warnings about how this feminist agenda is in danger of being instrumentalized in a more and more xenophobic Europe. In Rome, we are treated to almost daily reports on ‘migrant’ men violating women, to the point where there are now to be vigilanti on public buses. The disturbing spectre of fascism where the non-citizen is named, stigmatized, and brutalized is not far away.

That is not to say that I think gender-based violence is not a major and important issue, far from it, I have just written a book about ‘Body Politics in Development’ (Zed Books, 2009) which takes sexual and gender-based violence as a major theme. The point is that we need to ensure that those issues are carefully linked to other economic and social justice struggles. I did not attend the World Social Forum (WSF) in Belem in January 2009. From all reports it seems that women activists were visibly part of the WSF in the prevailing discussions on financial crises, climate change, alternatives to capitalism and indigenous rights. Out of the 133,000 registered 50,000 were youth and many of them young women. It is good again to see that young women are visible and engaged in social movements. But from the messages I received it seems that the feminist issues of sexuality, patriarchy, militarism, and religious extremism are much less visible. The feminist gatherings that did speak about them were poorly attended, in a kind of mirror image of the AWID Forum where economic and social justice issues were sidelined. I do not think I would jump to the conclusion as one report from South Asia did that this reflected the fact that Latin American women did not experience gender inequality, male domination, or curbs on their freedom. What I would say is that particular silence suggests that strategically the agenda of the AWID Forum and WSF need to come together so that the connections are clear about the links among sexuality, racism, gender-based violence, and social and economic justice.

In making those connections I cannot resist but go back to the image of migrant men mostly from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka selling sprigs of mimosa flowers on International Women’s Day on the streets of Rome. I have no idea how that particular custom started, but it is somewhat ironic that International Women’s Day which is about women’s labour rights has destitute migrant men who left their home and family in far off lands standing on street corners to sell (native Latin American) flowers in the eternal city. There is a lot of mixed cultural symbolism here, but undergirding it is deep-seated poverty of the men, the undermining of the strong message of women’s rights of international women’s day, and a less than ecological or fair trade going on. The flowers arrive in packing cases no doubt part of the organized business by the same people who provide the migrant men with the very, very cheap goods that daily appear and disappear on pavements and make-shift stalls along my street. But this year there was a difference. First I saw very few women bought the flowers, some of them I noted tersely brushed away the shabby and thin men who tried to ply their trade. By the end of the day there were straggles of mimosa discarded on top of the packing cases. There were unsold and unwanted. This year there was not so much good will, nor money, nor so much to celebrate on women’s day.