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	Banning torture absolutely by Salil Shetty Amnesty International   May 2011   With the benefit of 50 years of working to prevent torture and promote justice, Amnesty International has found itself re-affirming the centrality of human rights in the key challenges we face today – including the absolute ban on torture.   Some claim that torture works. They argue that last week’s events in Pakistan prove that torture played a role in bringing what they would call justice to the thousands of victims of Al Qaeda around the world. So how, they ask, can self-righteous human rights activists criticize torture?   But let’s look at detention centres. Detention centres in Tunis, Cairo, Tehran, Damascus, Manama and Sana’a. Detention centres where for decades people fighting to promote human rights and democracy have been tortured by what are now being publicly acknowledged as brutal and repressive governments. And the justification is always virtually the same. These people are a threat. In fact they are terrorists.   This is not about one person’s terrorist being another person’s freedom fighter. This is about states abusing their power both against those whose actions themselves are criminal and abusive and those who challenge criminal and abusive behaviour by governments. The reality is that, to achieve their ends, states often torture human rights defenders and end up protecting the terrorist. Too often the system fails and violators reign while defenders are imprisoned. And this is one clear reason why torture can never be justified.   Those who are promoting human rights and defending the marginalised, the excluded, the demonised, must be protected from any abuse of power – not just from states but also from the drug lords in Mexico, the Lords Resistance Army in Uganda and the Taleban in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But it is states that have an explicit and visible commitment to human rights that are key in preventing attacks on those who are marginalised, regardless of who is the perpetrator.   And that can only happen if torture is absolutely prohibited. There are no exceptions.   There is no question that those who threaten, kill, kidnap or maim must be brought to justice. But that rule should apply equally whether they be individuals harming others or government officials seeking to quell dissent.   In the panic that followed the attacks of 11 September 2001, the US and other western countries were quick to outsource torture to states that were experts in the practice. They could claim that their hands were clean, even as they increased support for governments they knew to be repressive, brutal and corrupt. It is the people of these countries who have paid dearly. The western governments have a debt to pay.   Which brings us back to the Middle East. Throughout the region we are seeing courageous men and women who are tired of repression, corruption and discrimination saying enough is enough and taking to the streets to demand change. They face batons, bullets, brutality and death. But their demands are clear. Like all of us, they want to live in dignity. Free from fear of violence by security forces and paid thugs. They want to live free from corrupt officials and businesses, to be empowered to influence the way their government acts.   For the women who have been so critical in these protests, their participation is an act of faith. They are engaged in an ongoing struggle to survive the dual scourge of repressive governments and entrenched discrimination against women. They are gambling that, after risking their lives, they too will have a place at the table - not in the kitchen - as the new order is drawn up. Too often the odds have seemed to be stacked against them, making their courage all the more remarkable.   The human rights revolution in the Middle East is at a critical juncture. For years Amnesty International has documented the repressiveness, brutality and corruption of these governments which recent events have laid bare in a way that no one can deny. The callow complicity of governments who claim to champion human rights is equally exposed. People living under repressive governments from Myanmar to Cuba, from Uzbekistan to Zimbabwe, are watching to see which if any governments will truly champion human rights and an end to repression, brutality and corruption.   If crisis can also bring about opportunity – we are living in a world of vast possibilities. This is a time for leadership. A time to move beyond the moral failure of governments all over the world and show support of human rights in practice, not just as a politically expedient sound bite.   At Amnesty International we have fifty years experience of working with the human rights movement to stand up to dictators. But the ordinary people acting with extraordinary courage taking to the streets in the Arab Spring are a living testament to our dream. They are defying the risk of torture and brutality to demand their human rights.   Let us – ordinary individuals working together – recommit to the vision of Peter Benenson, the man who founded Amnesty International, and remember that individuals can make a difference. Individuals can act in solidarity - across borders, across class, across beliefs, across all the differences exploited by those seeking to maintain power - to demand that governments end repression, weed out corruption and promote human rights.   * Salil Shetty is the Secretary General of Amnesty International. Visit the related web page
	Global Inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion by Jayati Ghosh STWR / Frontline India   May 2011   The latest data shows that rising inequality between and within countries is responsible for worrying dysfunctions across societies, from health and social problems to political instability. It’s time to place equity at the centre of development efforts, says a report by UNICEF.   The Widening Gap - Jayati Ghosh, Frontline.   This was supposed to be the period of economic convergence. Global interconnectedness and the reduction of the impact of distance in physical terms was supposed to lead to the reduction of economic distance as well, creating much greater convergence in per capita incomes.   And the catching up was supposed to extend beyond cross-country patterns to reduce divergences within countries as well. The often-repeated idea was that trade and investment openness would create new employment opportunities and make the poor (especially in the developing regions) better off.   But, despite the much-heralded success of the Chinese economy in terms of rapid growth, global (or inter-country) convergence is not really all that evident for the vast majority of countries in the world.   And within-country inequality has mostly increased rather than decreased except in a few countries where there has been active state intervention directed at reducing poverty. The result is that the world is more unequal possibly than ever before, with social and political implications that are becoming evident as in the growing unrest in the developing world.   A new research report from the United Nations Children"s Fund (UNICEF) brings out, with almost frightening clarity, the most recent trends in inequality, which must come as a surprise even to those who were cynical about the positive claims of corporate-driven globalisation (“Global Inequality: Beyond the Bottom Billion – A Rapid Review of Income Distribution in 141 Countries”; UNICEF, April 2011).   Most comparisons of income across countries tend to use purchasing power parity (PPP) exchange rates, which adjust for some estimate of prices of a common basket of goods in different countries.   This is argued to be necessary because of the widely observed reality that currencies command different purchasing power in different countries than is suggested by the nominal rates.   This is because of the well-known fact that exchange rate comparisons of less-developed economies consistently undervalue the non-traded goods sector, especially labour-intensive and relatively cheap services, and therefore underestimate real incomes. In some cases this underestimation of real incomes can be quite significant.   As of 2007, the top 20 per cent of the world controlled about 70 per cent of total income compared with just 2 per cent for the bottom 20 per cent.   In terms of change over time, the poorest 40 per cent of the global population increased its share of total income by a paltry 1.7 per cent between 1990 and 2007.   However, there are some serious problems with using PPP exchange rates in inter-country comparisons of income.   One significant problem is choosing comparable baskets of goods. The poor quality of the data on actual prices prevailing in the different countries (including large developing countries such as China and India) used in such studies affects the reliability of such calculations.   The most recent revision of the Penn World Tables, based on new information on prices in some important countries, shows how dramatically PPP estimates can change with more accurate data.   For example, the 2005 PPP-adjusted per capita income for China in dollar terms shows a 20 per cent decline compared with the 2000 estimate.   This is because the new PPP for China is estimated to be around half the nominal rate, whereas the previous estimate (dating from 1993) had suggested it was only around one-fourth the nominal rate.   This downward revision of per capita income in China also adds significantly to the estimate of poverty using the standard dollar per day definition, more than doubling the estimated number of poor people in China.   There is also the problem that the PPP estimates refer to a relatively unchanging basket based on the United States consumption norms, which are usually inappropriate to developing countries.   This may understate the true cost of necessities for the poor because the basket tends to include a range of non-necessities found in the “average” consumption of a rich country such as the U.S.   There is a less talked about but possibly even more significant problem with using PPP estimates. In general, countries that have a high PPP, that is, where the actual purchasing power of the currency is deemed to be much higher than the nominal value, are typically low-income countries with low average wages.   It is precisely because a significant section of the workforce receives a very low remuneration that goods and services are available more cheaply than in countries where the majority of workers receive higher wages.   Therefore, using PPP-modified gross domestic product data may miss the point, by seeing as an advantage the very feature that reflects the greater poverty of the majority of wage earners in an economy.   In other words, a country"s exchange rate tends to be “low” or the disparity between the nominal value of the currency and its “purchasing power” tends to be greater because the wages of most workers are low. So it is particularly inappropriate to use this yardstick to measure incomes across countries.   When nominal exchange rates are used, it turns out that global inequality is even more intense than is generally supposed.   As the authors of the report point out, the data “reveal an incredibly unequal planet.   As of 2007, the wealthiest 20 per cent of mankind enjoyed nearly 83 per cent of total global income compared to the poorest 20 per cent, which had exactly a single percentage point under the global accounting model.   Perhaps more shocking, the poorest 40 per cent of the global population increased its share of total income by less than 1 per cent between 1990 and 2007.”   At this rate of progress, it will take more than 800 years for the bottom billion to achieve even as little as 10 per cent of global income.   There are many reasons for this trend towards dramatically increased inequality. Perhaps foremost among them is that the nature of recent corporate-driven globalisation, in particular the role of finance, has not just changed relations between countries and forced a “race to the bottom” for workers everywhere; it has also changed political equations within countries.   Economic inequalities keep increasing because those in power want it that way, and that is so because the wealthy have an inordinate and growing power even in democracies, which should depend on wider public legitimacy.   This results substantially from the fact that progressive forces have become hostage to the caprices of international capital.   Cross-border capital flows swiftly punish most policy attempts at redistributive change within countries, even to the point of creating financial crises that then require large bailouts with taxpayers money, further intensifying inequalities.   This makes would-be progressive governments much more cautious in implementing policies that would reduce inequality or at least prevent it from increasing.   Even in the few countries where inequality has decreased slightly in the recent past – such as in Latin America – governments have been able to achieve these minor victories (which still leave these economies in the list of the most unequal in the world) by entering into a devil"s pact with finance.   In return for the limited ability to raise minimum wages and provide some social protection measures in the form of cash transfers to the poor, these countries have had to offer finance many policy sweeteners in the form of protected profits, which are akin to the “protection money” extracted from small businesses by the Mafia.   This increasing inequality at the global level, as well as within nations, is more than just disturbing and wrong from an ethical standpoint. It is also, as the authors of this study point out, deeply dysfunctional.   They argue that inequality results in slower and less sustainable economic growth, creates health concerns and other social problems, generates political tensions and instability, and has cross-generational effects on social inequalities because of the adverse impact on poor children.   We have been through – and seem to be continuing in – a rather extraordinary phase of global history, in which winners keep taking all even as they destroy the system that feeds them at so much cost to itself.   It is becoming increasingly obvious in many countries that such a system has political limits that are rapidly being reached as no social contract will tolerate such blatant economic injustice indefinitely.   These changes within national boundaries cannot but have their effects on the global scene as well. For better or worse, the global economic system is in for significant change in the near future. 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