The Poor and the Market
Social Watch: Report 2002
Paperback 200 pp ISSN 07997-9231

Social Watch
Casilla de Correo 1539
Montevideo 11000, Uruguay
www.socialwatch.org

The Social Watch has done it again. A far-reaching report, drawing on 52 country-studies, attractively produced in print and on CD-ROM, with a theme as contemporary as the WTO GATS negotiations, currently in motion. A useful fold-out chart illustrates “The Hood Robin Economy: Taking from the poor to give to the rich”.

The Poor and the Market examines how access to social services and essential utilities (water, electricity, sanitation) have fared in the era of privatisation and government down-sizing.

Introducing the study, managing editor Roberto Bissio notes that the faith of the World Bank and of the WTO in privatisation “does not find support in what Social Watch coalitions from around the world report here.” This preface is complemented by 7 essays. Tim Kessler discusses the privatisation of health, education and basic infrastructure. Miloon Kothari examines the human rights implications of privatisation while Marina Fe.B. Durano provides a gendered critique. Martin Khor proposes a global partnership for development which Mirjam van Reisen asks whether Europe will exist for business or for its people. Ziad Abdel Samad brings a welcome introduction of how trade and globalisation are challenging the Arab world.

The study includes 45 pages of detailed charts which profile the achievements and failures of the world’s governments in meeting the commitments in poverty relief and gender emancipation which they themselves have made. A useful portrait of our world, the material assembled here is useful for teachers and students, for policy advocates and politicians.

The statistics and ratings take on human form in the 52 country studies, including an examination of planned privatisation legislation in Bahrain, the struggle in the streets against water privatisation in Bolivia, elite benefits and majority
impoverishment in Tanzania.

The Social Watch network was formed in 1996 to monitor commitments arising from the Copenhagen and Beijing world conferences. Each country report “is produced by autonomous citizen coalitions.”

Put together with the participation of an impressive assembly of national groups – from Action Aid Uganda to the Zambian Independent Media Association – the report is edited by an extremely productive secretariat based at the Instituto del Tercer Mundo, in Montevideo, Uruguay.

Civil Society in the Information Age
Ed. Peter I. Hajnal

Hardcover. 298 pp.
ISBN: 0 7546 1838 2

Ashgate Publishing
Aldershot, Hampshire, England
& Burlington, Vermont
www.ashgate.com

How has information and information and communications technology affected the way civil society organisations behave, in their relationships with each other and with major multilateral organisations? This is the task which editor Peter Hajnal of the University of Toronto and his academic and activist colleagues in this value address.

This book of case studies “examines…the principle goals, programmes, aspects of governance and working methods of selected major NGOs and civil society coalitions”. It examines “the relationship of civil society and intergovernmental institutions and, in one case, civil society and a national government.”

The cases touch many of the most well-known and, frequently, controversial themes of contemporary civil society organisations (CSO). Among the international NGOs under the microscope are Amnesty International, Oxfam and Medecins Sans Frontieres. The international struggles against land-mines and for the International Criminal Court are profiles, and the specific challenges confronting South-North NGO relationships are opened up.

The examinations of CSO-multilateral institution relations break some new ground. Hajnal himself examines encounters with the G7-G8 and Canadian officials Marc Lortie and Sylvie Bedard examine events around the Summit of the Americas in Quebec City, 2001. Heidi Ullrich examines the information dynamic in the WTO-civil society interaction. Barbara Adams brings intelligent reflections on the UN-civil society engagements and Benjamin Rivlin looks at the specific case of religious organisations at the world body.

The book includes an extensive bibliography and a detailed list of electronic sources.

Hajnal concludes with some useful reminders, among them that “governments, IGOs and the business sector cannot take it for granted that civil society will act on their terms”. Civil society organisations, in good part, embody the demands of the world’s dispossessed, who in the words of 100 Nobel laureates, who cannot be expected in all cases “to await the beneficence of the rich.”

Business and poverty: Bridging the gap
By Marya Forstater, Jacqui MacDonald and Peter Raynard

Paperback 152 pp.
ISBN: 18991 59053

Prince of Wales International Business Leaders Forum, 2002
www.iblf.org

This brief and very well laid out publication, detailing the
findings arising from over three years of work by the Resource Centre for the Social Dimensions of Business Practice. Headed by Body Shop veteran Jacqui MacDonald for much of that period, the Centre was supported by a number of British organisations including the Brighton University Centre for Development Studies, the Corporate Citizenship Unit at Warwick Business School, the Natural Resources Institute and Oxfam UK and Ireland.

The authors address a series of fairly simple and direct
questions:

• why is poverty becoming an issue for business
• what do I need to know about poverty
• how does poverty affect business
• how can working towards poverty elimination contribute to business success
• what can individual companies do about poverty
• what can we learn from companies experience so far
• how can public bodies and civil society organisations encourage businesses to engage in poverty elimination

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) is one of the themes of this study, but as the introduction points out, it “is only one way for business to contribute to fighting poverty….It is also becoming increasingly apparent that business must integrate broader societal issues into its corporate strategies for more direct business reasons.”

The book includes a series of brief but informative boxes, examples, best practices and evaluative comments.

In the useful appendices of this little volume you will find information on the Resource Centre for the Social Dimensions of Business Practice, an annotated listing of other organisations active in the CSR field and a handy glossary.

Making Global Trade World for People
By Kamal Malhotra lead author
UNDP, 2003 www.undp.org

Paperback 341pp.
ISBN: 1 85383 982 5

Earthscan Publications
www.earthscan.co.uk

The World Trade Organization (WTO) will bring ministers from around the world to Cancun, Mexico in September, 2003. How many of them will have this book in the briefcases? The NGOs who will assemble around the luxury hotels housing the trade ministers could benefit from a day or two’s study of the findings in this first UNDP report on trade and sustainable development.

This is the first comprehensive examination of trade and investment agreements from a human development perspective, overdue and welcome to say the least. Further, it has a bias, a bias or point of view which is “southern”, “less developed”, driven by perspectives gained from regional consultations with civil society organisations and governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The student of trade negotiations will find fresh perspectives, detailed charts and recommendations. The ingénue will find useful definitions and introductions to the major theatres of international negotiations. While the focus is on global negotiations there is short annex of regional agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The book is composed of an initial part which discusses human development and the challenge of orienting the global trade regime to developmental purposes and a second part which examines individual issues and agreements.

Included in this valuable examination are: agriculture, commodities, industrial tariffs, textiles and clothing, anti-dumping mechanisms, subsidies, trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights, trade-related investment measures and investment, the general agreement on trade in services, competition policy, government procurement, trade facilitation, standards, environmental policy and capacity strengthening. Extremely useful are dozens of illustrative and explanatory boxes, figures and tables.

This pioneering work was almost squashed by internal institutional politics, the resistance of the WTO and intrusive interference by at least least one powerful member state. It survived. Now, it should be used.