International

What being serious about the proposed UN 2030 would look like for the Taoiseach.

Expedite appointment of ambassador to Egypt, and get medical treatment for young Ibrahim.

PPPs sideline radical financial reform at Addis preparatory meeting, with Irish support.

How history made the Irish and other European Leftists pro-EU.

The small tropical island of Timor Leste (East Timor) grows coffee like you’ve never tasted before! Cultivated under the shade of massive rainforest trees, free from pesticides and chemical fertilisers, its taste is rare and creamy. It is one of Timor’s main exports, bringing critical revenue into the first independent nation of the 21st century. It was not coffee, however, but rather the courageous resistance of the people of this tiny country to colonialism and occupation that attracted recent interest in Timor, though it was its abundance of sandalwood that first drew European traders and colonialists to the island in the 16th century. East Timor was brought to the attention of many Irish people in the 1990s by the inspirational work of former bus-driver Tom Hyland from Ballyfermot who saw a TV programme showing the brutal murder of 270 unarmed citizens by occupying Indonesian forces in the Santa Cruz massacre in the capital Dili, but had the unusual fibre to respond by forming the East Timor Ireland Solidarity Campaign (ETISC). I was privileged to go to Timor last month to accept a Presidential medal, the highest honour that can be bestowed by the State, on behalf of ETISC. Oran Doyle accepted a similar medal on behalf of Sean Steele, a long time campaigner who unfortunately was unable to travel for health reasons. When talking to the people of Timor, one is constantly reminded of the territory’s turbulent history; colonised by Portugal; losing around sixty thousand of its citizens when occupied by Japan during the Second World War; re-colonised by Portugal following the end of World War 2. Civil War followed Portuguese withdrawal in 1974 and a unilateral declaration of independence was made in November 1975. But Timor’s darkest period came later when, with the support of the US, Indonesia invaded Timor in December 1975 and an estimated 190,000 people (one quarter of the population) were eventually killed. Determined resistance by the people of Timor, together with international solidarity, forced the Indonesians to accede to a referendum in 1999 in which the people voted overwhelmingly for independence. I visited it as part of an international human rights delegation in 1999 and found a population scarred by violence and repression but purposeful in preparation for a new era free from occupation and terror. There have been bumps along the road of independence with occasional unrest and serious violence in 2006; and problems remain, including high unemployment and a failure to spread the benefits of oil revenue outside the capital Dili. But today the country effectively has a government of national unity which is trying to tackle some of the most urgent problems facing this fledgling democracy. On a previous visit in 1999, I also visited the man who was seen as the leader of the resistance – the Nelson Mandela of Timor – Xanana Gusmaó in prison in Jakarta. Soon after that he was released and went on to become the first President of independent Timor Leste. During this visit I met Gusmaó, now an elder statesman, still hugely influential but handing over power to a younger generation of Timorese. The current dominant issue in Timor Leste is the island’s relationships with its large and powerful neighbours, Australia and Indonesia. Timor’s decision not to pursue Indonesia for the crimes it committed during the occupation, while it may be ‘pragmatic’, is understandably unpopular, especially among some human rights groups. Australia, on the other hand, is being challenged by the Timorese Government about the ‘dirty deal’ which was agreed by Indonesia and Australia in 1989, giving the vast oil resources in the Timor gap to Australia. Having stood by Australia during World War 2 and paid a high price, the Timorese now want Australia to respect their sovereignty and agree to a maritime boundary determination; as well as to cede a greater return on the lucrative Greater Sunrise oil and gas fields. This is perhaps an incongruent focus in the context of climate change but, when I raised this issue in a meeting with the Prime Minister and his officials, I was informed that this is as much about sovereignty over land, air and sea as it is about fossil fuels. I was assured that the government is well aware of the need to develop strong policies on renewable energy and is already engaged in doing so. Timor Leste faces many challenges. Issues of inequality need to be tackled, development is too centralised in Dili, the military and police take a too aggressive approach to citizens – in fact, Timor has recently been reprimanded by Amnesty International for “excessive use of force by security forces”. But it is important to keep in mind the strides it has made after only thirteen years of independence and to recall the difficulties involved in building a nation. • Joe Murray is the Coordinator of Afri – Action From Ireland. @AfriPeace; www.afri.ie.

  In late September 2009 I was walking through Dublin as the city prepared for the rerun of the Lisbon Treaty referendum. Outside Dublin Castle I ran into canvassers from Generation Yes, a young, liberal, pro-Europe group established early that year to campaign for the passage of the treaty. Drawing them into conversation you could feel the passion of their arguments. They were the Erasmus generation – students and graduates who saw the European Union as an engine of progress for Ireland and a liberator that had broken us from our bleak, parochial past. Rather than the ‘Yes for Jobs’ vacuities many of the main political parties ran with in the campaign, Generation Yes spoke to direct experience living and working in Europe, or for European businesses in Ireland. Many of its best advocates came from the tech sector and saw the EU as a vanguard project of a globalising world, breaking down borders, encouraging innovation and providing opportunity. Generation Yes played a crucial role in the landslide victory of 2009. More clearly than any other organisation involved they developed an identity for the Yes camp. The European Union represented a young, modern, idealistic cosmopolitanism. The No camp, as I remember now-Senator John Crown saying on my local radio station, were the past: “Trotskyite communists and right-wing zealots”. So, Lisbon II passed, Ireland’s political elite celebrated, and Generation Yes disappeared. But less than a year later the European Union, so long considered a benevolent actor in Irish politics, imposing human rights with a pat on the head from the continent, came to wear a quite different mask. 2010 brought the Troika. Just five years after its arrival on the scene, the creditors’ union of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund has come to dominate the popular imagination of the European Union. For the peripheral states which they made home, their policies have inextricably linked the project of European integration to falling living standards, crumbling welfare states and debt servitude. It isn’t an exaggeration to say that a Generation Yes for 2015 is almost impossible to imagine. A group of the same name might intervene in a referendum, it might even attempt to use a similar message, but it would have to reckon with the fact that the sickly-sweet vision of Europe it once sold has been indissolubly mixed with the bitterness of austerity. It would also have to reckon with a rival identity. Not the eurosceptic Right, an opponent it had always comfortably beaten. But, since 2011, the indignados and Europe’s movement of the squares, a rival, pro-European movement which was highly critical of the Troika and the increasingly undemocratic apparatus of the European Union. Last Sunday, in Greece, this movement was given a name: Generation No. The vote in Greece was striking in its breakdown. The typical No voter in the overwhelming rejection of the Troika’s ultimatum was young, working-class and held left-wing views. The number for ‘Oxi’ under 25 was 85%, under 35 was 78%. In many ways this mirrors the voting base of Podemos in Spain. The price of building up the reputation of the European Union as an arena of opportunity for Europe’s periphery has been the weight of frustrated expectations when this turned out not to be the case. As a result, in most of these states, it isn’t Generation Yes which represents the future but Generation No. This shift in orientation towards the European project is not down to a turn against Europeanism. In fact, the Greek No vote enjoyed enormous support from across the continent, clearly registered in marches, direct actions, and statements from social movements, trade unions, NGOs, academics and intellectuals. Instead what has happened is that the European Union has been stripped back to its essence as a neoliberal economic project. Gone are the pretences of common culture or social fabric – the Greek crisis has demonstrated that bonds of solidarity stretch only as far as is profitable. In truth the European Union was a market-oriented project from its inception. Despite the ‘social Europe’ myth he helped created, Jacques Delors’ success at seducing Europe’s social democrats in the 1980s only served to trap them. First into the 1988 directive mandating extensive free movement of capital and then, in 1992, into the Maastricht Treaty. These arrangements provided the foundation for the euro – a currency which was to drive the stake of neoliberalism even further into the European Union. The money in our pockets is the most monetarist currency ever designed. No mandate for the ECB to deal with unemployment. No lender of last resort. No framework for debt mutualisation. It was also forged in class warfare. On its inception wages and conditions in Germany were forced down to create optimal conditions for its export industry. To deal with its first crisis the same has been done to workers in peripheral Europe. Contrary to what we hear in the media, the cause of this crisis was not profligacy in countries like Greece or Spain. It was twofold – a failure in the international financial system and a failure in European capitalism. In the former Germany banks took on huge exposure to states like Greece by investing in high-yield bonds. For the business class this meant the availability of credit for Greek consumers – a boon for exporters to Greece. There was also the benefit of a heap of profit from financialising the peripheral economies. In Greece, it led to falling bond prices, cheaper credit and a bubble. Between 1998 and 2007, Greece had the second highest growth rate in Europe. During roughly the same period Greece’s bond yields fell from over 15 per cent to 3 per cent. There’s an almost direct correlation. This development was not led by demand from Greece but supply from Germany. In many ways the German business class was the sub-prime mortgage lender of the European financial system. But it has been workers in peripheral European states who paid the

By Lorna Gold. The UK Department for International Development, DfID, received its first ever “red warning” from the UK Independent Commission for Aid Impact (ICAI) in May 2014. The Commission concluded that DfID’s programme for “promoting private sector development” failed to yield any benefit for poverty reduction. It slated DfID for its ideological approach based on blind faith in markets to work ‘miracles’. The programme was discontinued as a result. Ireland is still far from anything like this. However, research carried out for Trocaire points to increasing pressure, external and internal, for a private-sector approach to be adopted by Irish Aid. The research concludes that getting both donor and poor communities to benefit from increased trade is difficult, without careful management. Most large-scale donor initiatives of this type have focused on facilitating Africa’s trade with the rest of the world rather than supporting indigenous growth. This “aid­for­trade” typically creates landing strips for expensive imports from the rest of the world, rather than launching pads for African goods and services. Clearly more support needs to be given for manufacturing and value­added activities in African countries. Reliable information about Ireland’s business presence in Africa proved difficult to obtain but is considered that Irish commerce in Africa is limited. Foreign direct investment amounts to just 0.25% of Ireland’s total direct investment overseas. Ireland’s trade with Africa is imbalanced by a ratio of just over two to one in favour of Irish exports. There was a total of €3.2bn exports in 2013, representing 1.5% of Ireland’s total exports of goods and 2.1% of Ireland’s total trade in services. Imports to Ireland of African goods and services amounted to €1.25bn. However, there is an intensification in official efforts to promote Irish trade and direct investment in Africa, from this low base. Irish Aid’s bilateral spend on private-sector and economic development is still relatively small, standing at €5.5m in 2013. Public Private Partnerships accounted for €8m, representing 2% of Irish Aid’s bilateral budget. However, Irish Aid has been involved in another significant trend in private-sector development: leveraging or blending of private sector finance to achieve development goals. This has been pursued via its funding of €5.2m to the Private Infrastructure Development Group over the four years up to the end of 2013. This is a group of six bilateral donors, which, together with the International Finance Corporation, aims to mobilise private-sector investment in developing countries. Ireland has also become more active in exploring business opportunities from these types of funds. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade commissioned a market assessment, ‘Winning Business in Africa Building a Cluster for Infrastructure’, which identified €12bn in projects to be funded by grants, tenders, loans and general procurement notices from the EU, the European Investment Bank, the World Bank, and the African Development Bank. The overriding focus for the private sector is on opening up new markets for multi-national corporations and extending their control over African resources. The consequence is that, in the name of reducing poverty, the food security and land tenure of vulnerable groups, especially women farmers, are being undermined. The G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa is one example of a poverty-focused initiative involving private-sector partners. Despite its title, focused on food security, the New Alliance initiative actually promotes the export of agricultural goods such as tobacco, coffee, cocoa, and biofuels, rather than the production of nutritious foods that could be consumed locally. If “aid-for-trade” is to benefit those living in poverty, a better starting point would be a focus on regional and local markets in the first instance. This trend towards private-sector engagement in development co-operation is set to continue. The Irish Government must, at least, mitigate the risk that Irish companies become complicit in human-rights violations by ensuring they adhere to high standards. Human Rights due diligence requirements should be mandatory. It is a concern, for example, that employees of Irish companies are currently being incentivised, via the Foreign Earnings Deduction, to operate in the Democratic Republic of Congo, without any provision for Human Rights due diligence. For this reason, Ireland’s commitment to develop a National Action Plan to implement the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights must be translated into robust action, soon. • Lorna Gold is Head of Policy and Advocacy with Trócaire