Ron Pundak

Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul
Moving to a New World Order. Global Structural Policy, Development Policy and Their Practical Contributions

In the globalized world, many public tasks can no longer be managed at national level, but only via co-operation between individual states. Here, the poorer countries are increasingly needed as partners for co-operation (e.g. on climate protection). The rich industrial countries have a growing interest in ensuring that the developing countries are in a position to play their part in the emerging structures of "global governance". Enabling them to do this will have to be a priority objective of development co-operation in future. In order to reinforce the ability of poor countries to take action and assume responsibility, holistic approaches are needed which are oriented towards (a) the social and political structures of these countries and (b) the international environment. The first component necessitates a policy on development co-operation which always takes account of the desired changes in the partner country. The second component leads to the concept of global structural policy. The global environment will have to be more development-friendly. For example, the industrial countries need to facilitate access to the world markets for the developing countries, they need to free a number of them from the debt trap, and they need to prevent their development from being impeded by excessively restrictive international patent law. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have recently taken important decisions towards a more effective alleviation of poverty. But the necessary adjustments in the industrial countries themselves are still encountering substantial resistance.

 

Mahdi Abdul-Hadi
Israelis and Palestinians: towards a New Chapter of the Conflict

The factors which moved both Israel and the Palestinian leadership to embark on peace talks from 1991 were considerations of political opportunism. In view of the increasing radicalization of the Palestinian resistance, Israel wanted to reinforce the PLO, so to speak as the lesser evil. The exiled PLO leadership feared a loss of control to new upcoming elites in the occupied territories. Also, both sides had begun to understand that they could not achieve their respective maximum objectives. However, events since then have shown that Israel had no intention of granting the Palestinians full sovereignty, not even in the 22 % which remained of historic Palestine. Israel proved to be so restrictive and unyielding on its conditions that there could be no talk of an equal co-existence of the two peoples. Israel quite simply wanted an end to the conflict without any concessions. There was no substantial difference on this between Labor and Likud governments. A genuine peace settlement still cannot be "sold" to the Israeli people. It is to be expected that now, following the temporary end to the so-called peace process, new diplomatic initiatives will be launched to mediate between the Palestinian Authority and Israel. These will focus not on peace, but on "normalization". Arab states dependent on the USA - be they Jordan, Egypt, Qatar - will play an important role. They will try to boost their own international position. And Arafat will demonstrate once more what a skilled tactician he is. For the Palestinian people, however, progress will not come until the Israeli public is ready for reconciliation and exerts corresponding political pressure. Until then, the course is set for increasing anti-Israeli emotions - not least in Jordan and Egypt. Probably, peace will not come without intervention by an international protection force.

Ron Pundak
Israelis and Palestinians: the Price of Peace

Peace is demanding a very high price of Israelis and Palestinians. The Israelis need to relinquish beliefs which have directed their policies for decades. They need to give up the territories which were once regarded as vital to Israel's security. And they need to come to terms with the idea that those who will take control there are the ones who had sworn to destroy Israel and had long been regarded as terrorists. Also, Israel will have to hand over more than a hundred Jewish settlements and sovereignty over East Jerusalem. The Palestinians will have to finally accept that more than three-quarters of former Palestine is now Israeli territory and that the vast majority of Palestinians will not be able to return to Israel. The Palestinian government needs to proactively fight the anti-Israeli terrorism of its radical compatriots. In the Oslo accord of 1993, both sides had agreed in principle to pay their respective price. The route to a lasting peace was therefore mapped out, even if not every detail was clarified. It would result in a sovereign, but demilitarised, Palestinian state basically within the cease-fire borders of 1967. Major Jewish settlements would be retained by Israel, and in return Palestine would receive an equal amount of land next to Gaza. Jerusalem would serve both states as an open capital city. For the Palestinian refugees, there would be limited reparations, but no mass return to Israel. The renewed escalation in violence in September 2000 despite the basic agreement between the two sides is due to the bad management of the peace process. But the long-term direction continues to be towards peace: the basic understanding which has made the price of peace acceptable to both peoples remains in place.

Roby Nathanson
Israelis and Palestinians: the Need for Economic Cooperation

The Palestinians are so dependent on commercial exchange with Israel that every interruption causes disastrous welfare losses. More than 20 percent of the labor force earn their living in Israel. The taxes they pay cover 60 % of the budget of the Palestinian Authority. And Israel is the main export market for Palestinian products. Experience has shown that every "normalization" of Israeli-Palestinian relations leads directly to an improvement in the economic situation in Palestine. And Israel also benefits, since it is suffering from an increasing shortage of labor. However, the economic exchange is dependent on not being politically interrupted. Since the outbreak of the new Intifada, there have been louder calls in Israel for a permanent break in all economic relations with the Palestinian territories. But this is not a tenable option. Even though, for the foreseeable future, unstable relations with repeated escalations of violence form the most likely scenario, an intensification of economic co-operation would be desirable in the long term. This necessitates not only political stability, but also a sovereign, functioning Palestinian state.

Fritz Schatten
Return to Where? The Endless Drama of the Palestinian Refugees

The return of the Palestinian refugees is a key Palestinian demand in the negotiations with Israel. It is unlikely to be met. The question of who is regarded as a Palestinian or a Palestinian refugee is unclear. The Palestinian authorities speak of 3.5 million refugees, but many of the formerly displaced persons have since become integrated in their host country. This is particularly true of Jordan and the first wave of post-1948 refugees. In Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, many former refugees now form part of the administrative, commercial and educational elite. At the same time - even in Jordan - refugee camps remain in operation, symbolizing the continuing claim of the Palestinians to their homeland. For several Arab governments, the Palestinian refugees are a political tool to be deployed in the light of shifting political priorities. Finally, it is unclear where the Palestinian refugees should return to. Israel will not take them in, particularly following the outbreak of the al-Aqsa Intifada, which is supported by the Arab minority of Israeli citizens. But the Palestinian territories - the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - are already overpopulated, and even before the second Intifada, the living conditions in the Gaza Strip, for example, were more precarious than in Baqa'a, the worst refugee camp in Jordan. Moreover, many of the refugees themselves do not really aspire to a return to their homelands.

Wolfgang Quaisser / John Hall
Making the European Union Fit for Eastern Enlargement

The planned eastern enlargement of the European Union is an important undertaking. But judging by the way it is happening at the moment - following the "Agenda 2000" reforms and the Nice Intergovernmental Conference - the Union will at most be able to cope with the first round of enlargement. The future accession of another five to eight countries in later rounds would ask too much both of the EU's budget and of its decision-making processes. The EU needs a clearer definition of responsibilities between the various levels of government. Ultimately, this will produce a sort of confederation. But it also requires a fresh weighting of the votes allocated to the individual member states. Otherwise the countries making net financial contributions to the Union budget will have too little say in policy-making. If, even after 2007, the EU's expenditure is to remain within the framework which was set in 1992 and an expansion of which would not be politically acceptable, two policy areas need to be thoroughly reformed: the Common Agricultural Policy and the various structural policies. Agricultural policy should depart from the current system of price support and move to direct income assistance for the less well-off farmers. Structural policy should no longer be oriented towards the goal of supporting regions with weak economies. The top priority should be the goal of convergence of income amongst the member states. The assistance from the EU's various structural funds should almost entirely benefit the new member states in Central and Eastern Europe. To provide a framework for the necessary adjustments to agricultural and structural policy, an "Agenda 2007" is needed.

Michael Ehrke
Fresh From the Farm... The BSE Crisis, European Agricultural Policy and Consumer Protection

The BSE crisis - merely the latest in a series of European food scandals - was not caused by criminal meat-and-bone-meal producers and feeders, but is due to an immanent systemic risk in modern chemical veterinary agriculture. The performance of modern agriculture would be unthinkable without enormous productivity hikes, which have inevitably involved a fundamental change in the products and the production processes. Agricultural products have ceased to be natural products, and have become novel combinations of chemical and medicinal substances whose effect on the human organism is frequently unknown. In one respect, agricultural modernisation is market-driven: agricultural businesses are faced with tough budget constraints and are forced to cut their costs and improve their productivity. In another respect, this market is restricted by the common European agricultural policy, which honours productivity rises but makes production caps unnecessary. Under the conditions of a modern chemical veterinary agricultural and food industry, it is virtually impossible to achieve any effective product-related consumer protection. It is doomed to failure in view of the advocates of unrestricted market economics, of the agricultural market strategy of the EU, of the influence of the producers and, not least, of the vast range of substances and compounds. It would be more effective to have a form of consumer protection oriented not towards products, but towards processes. In future, European agricultural policy will be confronted with the alternatives of far-reaching liberalisation, which would have to go hand in hand with more effective supervision and a change to the liability laws, and the continuation of subsidisation, albeit with different objectives. These objectives can be defined in technological terms (genetic engineering versus organic versus conventional farming), or they can be oriented towards certain groups (producers versus consumers) or meta-economic objectives (environment, appropriate animal husbandry). In any case, the BSE crisis has certainly politicised agriculture. In future, agricultural development will cease to be an arcane field administered by lobbyists and bureaucrats. It will force governments to "act".

Julia Kuschnereit
Trade Policy Against Child Labor? The Limited Effectiveness of Social Clauses

It is estimated that, world-wide, 120 million children are working, many of them in inhuman conditions. However, an effective ban on child labor which does not also tackle the causes of child labor may mean that the situation of the children worsens. In view of the existence in many developing countries of an unlimited elastic supply of labor, the substitution of children by adult workers would not result in an increase in wages, but in a reduction in family income, possibly below the subsistence level. On the other hand, an effective ban is a minimal condition for the "worst forms of child labor" (ILO Convention 182: forced labor, bonded labor, prostitution, the drugs trade). However, so far neither national legislation nor international conventions have proved able to abolish child labor even in its "worst forms". Many ask for social clauses in international trade as an effective instrument in international trade. However, social clauses only affect the export sector which employs but a fraction of the working children (around five percent). Besides, in most cases, it is virtually impossible to prove whether child labor was used to manufacture a product. The impact of social clauses varies, depending on whether they are specific to products, sectors or countries. They also entail risks such as harming people who are not involved, impeding the economic development of a country, and being misused for protectionist purposes. Despite this, social clauses can help to restrict the "worst forms of child labor" (not child labor in general) and to improve the situation of the children, particularly by supporting local groups in their fight against child labor. At the same time, it is in the vital interest of the children that the international community increasingly channels its resources into a direct fight against the causes of child labor.  

Shahid Ashraf
Children Laborers Without Alternatives

Between seven and twenty-five percent of laborers in the Indian carpet industry are children. The work of weaving carpets mainly serves to top up the very meager income of local farming families. But there are also migratory child laborers. Some of the children are sold into bonded labor by their parents. The loom owners, who themselves face great economic pressures, have an interest in employing children, despite their relatively low efficiency, since they are both more reliable and easier to exploit than adults. International campaigns against child labor, such as the Rugmark initiative, have helped Indian public opinion to focus more on the problem of child labor and have resulted in a tightening of the various laws banning the practice. Child labor has indeed declined since the beginning of the campaigns. But the situation of the children involved has not improved much: there are hardly any promising alternatives to carpet weaving for them. Going to school does not generally point the way towards more lucrative employment. That would require a rural development which generates new economic activity. For the time being, it would be important to alter the structures of the carpet industry in such a way that there is less scope for exploitation. This will be virtually impossible without international co-ordination. In order to achieve a lasting improvement in the situation of the children, integrated programs need to be developed at the level of local self-government units (the Panchayats), but there are no patent solutions for such measures. The international campaigns against child labor should offer their services as partners here.

Reinhard Palm
Social Labels and Codes of Conduct as a Means to Shape Globalisation in a Social Way

Welfare labels divide the market into "ethical" and conventional segments. In the "ethical" segment, the consumers pay a higher price than in the conventional one, but in buying the product they can express their social preferences and contribute towards an improvement of living standards in the developing countries. A comparable, albeit less direct, effect is achieved by corporate codes of conduct. Welfare labels and codes of conduct are an effective instrument with which to shape globalization - i.e. to prevent the globalization of commerce from becoming a race to the bottom in welfare terms. They are more appropriate than trade-policy social clauses against "social dumping", which often hit entire countries - and which are not targeted at those profiteering from the inhuman working and living conditions. In order to be effective, however, the welfare labels and the codes of conduct need to fulfill certain requirements. In the industrial countries, they need to provide the consumers with credible information, and in the developing countries they need to provide incentives to reorganize production on a sustainable basis. One way to make better use of the potential of welfare labels and codes of conduct is to network initiatives and players, and here the state has an important intermediary role to play.