(A response to Sue Webb opinion in People’s World on January 4, 2016)

Dear Editor:

In Sue Webb’s opinion piece which appeared in the January 4, 2016 edition she implies that all that is needed in the USA is for us to change the word “capitalism” to “socialism” and everything will fall into place. Of course, this is pure fantasy, the words of a person who is satisfied with the capitalist system of greed and corporate control, what we used to refer to as the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.” Ms. Webb is, indeed, bourgeois and her oversimplifications show that.

Her slanders of the USSR and socialism are particularly disturbing. She writes “[socialism] – has been tainted by much of what happened in the Soviet Union and some other countries. But there’s nothing in socialism that equates to dictatorship, political repression, bureaucracy, over-centralization and commandism, and so on. Those features of Soviet society arose out of particular circumstances and personalities. But they were not “socialist.”

Ms. Webb never objected the to the USSR when, in an act of great proletarian internationalism, the Soviet Union and the socialist community of nations led an international movement to save the life of Angela Y. Davis. Now that there is no more USSR thanks to the counter-revolutionary activities of Mikhail Gorbachev and those around him that promoted the concept of socialist “markets” and private enterprise, Ms. Webb all of a sudden finds fault with the socialism of the 20^th Century, calling it dictatorial, politically repressive, bureaucratic, and over-centralized, with a command style structure. And what dare I ask, was the USSR when they supported the CPUSA and its fight against racism and its political anti-monopoly program? So soon she forgets! Ms. Webb never objected when the Soviet Union supported the Cuban economy and the development of Cuba. She never objected when the USSR supported the national liberation movements in Angola, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and the Congo. All during the existence of the Soviet Union, the world witnessed the greatest fighter for world peace and socialism. Real socialism. To deny that is the worst kind of right opportunism.

As her alternative to scientifically planned economic socialism, Ms. Webb describes how we in the USA have many publicly owned electric utilities. That’s nice. We also have private utilities Sempra Energy, Pacific Gas, and Electric (PG&E), and Edison International for example, that endanger our environment and public health, cause great disasters like the natural gas explosion in San Bruno, California, the natural gas leak in the Porter Ranch neighborhood of Los Angeles, and the financial manipulation of energy prices by companies like Enron. What is the plan of the social-democrats to deal with these privately owned conglomerates in a socialist economy?

Ms. Webb says that Bernie Sanders is a democratic socialist because he rejects the idea of a planned economy. Great! So we should continue living with the chaos we live in now, where material goods are produced not for the benefit of the people, but to continue the system of private profits and exploitation at any cost? She speaks like a typical believer in American exceptionalism. As long as we have markets for goods everything will be OK. She even says it would be OK to operate private businesses that continue to exploit workers, a kind of touchy, feeley, nice capitalism!

Gus Hall, the great American Communist leader, said many times that there is no “socialist model but that there are general concepts and economic laws of socialism that cannot be ignored. When they are cast aside as Sue Webb suggests we should, the result is counter-revolution and an increase in anti-worker activity. As long as there is a bourgeois class and that class holds the levers of power, it makes no difference who is President of the United States. We have two Americas. A capitalist America, and a working class America. The class war intensifies more every day. We will never have socialism unless and until the workers themselves take power and own the means of production and write their own ticket. They don’t need a Democratic Party messiah to do that. They need a real trade union federation like the World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU), another contribution to humanity from the Soviet Union and other socialist countries.

So what is socialism? In any country, in any language, socialism is the intermediary step toward a communist society. Socialism is defined as follows: “The social order which, through revolutionary action by the working class and its allies, replaces capitalism. It is “the first phase of Communist society, as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society” (Marx). It is the social order in which the exploitation of man by man has ended because the toiling masses own the means of production. In contrast with the higher phase of Communist society, where “each gives according to his need,” in Socialist society “each gives according to his ability, and receives according to the amount of work performed”.

Contrast this with Democratic Socialism, *which is the general term for reformist and opportunist parties in their “theory” and practice in the Labor Movement [in sharp contrast with class conscious, anti-imperialist trade unionism of the WFTU]. Social-Democracy’s history is marked by timidity, legalism, “respectability,” capitulation to the influence of the capitalists, and consistent betrayal, of the working class.

Time to ask yourselves, which side are you on?

*Marxist Glossary, L. Harry Gould, Sydney. Australia 1948

Joe Hancock

PCUSA, Los Angeles

Africa: Charting the Digital Gender Gap

AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 25, 2016 (160125)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

New research from the World Wide Web Foundation reveals new details
about the enduring digital gender gap in Africa’s urban cities,
despite the unprecedented expansion of access to mobile phones among
women as well as men. In poor neighborhoods of six African cities,
the study shows, “women are almost as likely as men to own a mobile
phone of their own, but they are a third less likely than men of
similar age, education level and economic status to use their phones
to access the Internet. ” The cities included were Lagos, Nairobi,
Maputo, Kampala, Yaounde, and Cairo.

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The full 10-country study, also including Manila, Jakarta, and New
Delhi in Asia, and Bogota in Latin America, predictably showed that
education, age, and income had significant effects on the scale of
the digital gender gap, and found that three of ten men surveyed
were adamant that the Internet should be a male-controlled domain.
But it also showed that once women did have access, they were able
to narrow the gap with men in effective use of the Internet.

It concluded that explicit attention to gender equity in ICT
policies could have major impact for poor women as well as men, in
an urban environment in which access to mobile phones is now almost
universal.

The report from Mozambique, which has long pioneered in Internet
access, well illustrates the point. “The Women’s Rights Online
Mozambique report found that while nearly all women and men in
Maputo slum areas own a mobile phone, only 33% of women had accessed
the Internet, compared to 59% of men. … The majority of
respondents (96% of men and 93% of women) used their mobile phone
every day.” But while women use it predominantly for voice and text
messaging, a higher proportion of men have access to data plans and
the Internet.

This AfricaFocus Bulletin includes the executive summary of the
report, as well as two brief blog posts on Maputo and Yaounde. The
full report, as well as data files from the survey, are available on
the website of the World Wide Web Foundation (
http://webfoundation.org).

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on information and communication
technology, visit http://www.africafocus.org/ictexp.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Women’s Rights Online : Translating Access into Empowerment

Global Report – October 2015

World Wide Web Foundation

with support from Swedish International Development Cooperation
Agency (Sida)

http://webfoundation.org/ – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/ztjkmx9

Executive Summary

The newly adopted UN Sustainable Development Goals include an
important pledge to harness information and communications
technologies (ICTs) to advance women’s empowerment, as well as a
commitment to connect everyone in Least Developed Countries to the
Internet by 2020. However, until now, estimates of the “digital
divide” between women and men in use of the Internet and other ICTs
have been sketchy.

This report explores the real extent of that divide in nine cities
across nine developing countries, in order to gain a better
understanding of the empowering potential of ICTs as a weapon
against poverty and inequality, and the barriers that must be
overcome to unlock it. Research was designed and carried out in
close collaboration with leading national civil society
organisations in the countries we studied.

The stereotype of poor people in the developing world uniformly
“left behind” in the darkness of a life without Internet
connectivity is as misleading as its opposite: the cliche in which
almost everyone in Nairobi or Jakarta now wields a mobile phone that
gushes forth market price data, health information and opportunities
for civic engagement.

Instead, our research reveals a picture of extreme inequalities in
digital empowerment – which seem to parallel wider societal
disparities in information-seeking, voice and civic engagement. For
example, Internet use among young, well-educated men and students in
poor communities of the developing world rivals that of Americans,
while Internet use among older, uneducated women is practically non-
existent.

Inequalities in access

Women are about 50% less likely to be connected than men in the same
age group with similar levels of education and household income.

Women are almost as likely as men to own a mobile phone of their
own, but they are a third less likely than men of similar age,
education level and economic status to use their phones to access
the Internet.

The most important socio-economic drivers of the gender gap in ICT
access are education and age. Controlling for income, women who have
some secondary education or have completed secondary school are six
times more likely to be online than women with primary school or
less.

Cities with the highest gender gaps in education level such as
Nairobi (Kenya), Kampala (Uganda), Maputo (Mozambique), and Jakarta
(Indonesia) were also the ones where the highest gender gaps in
Internet access were reported.

Conversely, in the cities where women’s educational attainment
outstrips the men in our sample (New Delhi and Manila), the gender
gap in Internet access has closed.

Unconnected women cited lack of know-how and high costs as the major
reasons that they are not using the Internet. In the countries in
our study, a monthly prepaid data allocation of one GB (enough for
just 13 minutes of Web use a day, excluding video) costs, on
average, about 10% of average per capita income. That’s 10 times
more than what the same data costs the average OECD citizen,
relative to income, and is double what

people in developing countries spend on healthcare. In the countries
with the highest Internet costs as a proportion of average income,
our study found the lowest numbers of women online and the largest
gender gaps in Internet use.

Inequalities in use

How people use the Internet, once they are connected, is also
strongly influenced by offline inequalities. Most of the urban poor
respondents in our study face comprehensive marginalisation in civic
and economic life. Only a small minority proactively seek out
information from any source on topics key to achieving their rights,
and an even smaller percentage participate in political debate or
community affairs. Most are in insecure, informal work or don’t have
any reliable income of their own. Being female deepens exclusion on
every single one of these counts.

A few of these poor urban dwellers are starting to use the Internet
to change their situation – to gain a voice, seek information,
enhance their livelihoods, or expand their networks beyond existing
social boundaries. Not only is this group small, it is also
disproportionately male.

Women are half as likely as men to speak out online, and a third
less likely to use the Internet to look for work (controlling for
age and education). However, there is potential for digital
empowerment to spread much more widely and equitably:

* A high proportion of women and men surveyed recognise and value
the Internet as a space for commenting on important issues, and say
that the Internet has made it safer for women to express their views
– even though they may not yet be using it for this purpose
themselves.

* Large majorities of urban poor Internet users do already exploit
digital platforms as a vehicle for reinforcing the social ties on
which their survival often depends, suggesting that the Internet’s
power to enhance social capital could be an effective route to
digital empowerment.

* Education is a major enabler of digital empowerment among women,
suggesting opportunities for greater investment in girls’ education
to work hand-in-hand with targeted ICT skills programmes in schools.

* Gender gaps in how men and women use the Internet are significant
– but not as large as gender disparities in access to the Internet.
In other words, once women do manage to get online, the gap narrows
between female and male users in terms of digital empowerment. The
policy challenge is to grow the minority of women using the Internet
and expand their voice and choices into a majority – both through
expanding women’s access and in tackling barriers to women’s
empowerment.

Notably, women who are active in “offline” political and civic life
are not only more likely to be connected in the first place, but are
also three times more likely (controlling for education level, age
and income) to use the Internet to express opinions on important or
controversial issues than other women. We need to better understand
this synergy between offline and online agency in order to learn how
gender norms that silence women in both realms can be overcome.

Patriarchy online

Around three in 10 men agreed with sentiments that the Internet
should be a male-controlled domain, but only two in 10 women agreed.
Only a tiny fraction of women said they do not use the Internet
because it is “not appropriate” for them or that they are not
permitted to do so. Such attitudes were much more prevalent in some
cities than others, however. For example, in New Delhi and Manila
nearly two-thirds of men agreed with the statement that women should
not be allowed to use the Internet in public places, and over half
agreed that men have the responsibility to restrict what women look
at online. Yet, these were the two cities with the highest levels of
Internet use among women, suggesting that patriarchal beliefs don’t
necessarily stop women getting online. However, further research is
needed to explore the extent to which they contribute to self-
censorship in how, where and when women use the Internet.

Summary of key recommendations

We will not achieve the SDGs on universal Internet access and
empowerment of women through ICTs unless technology policy is
specifically designed to tackle and overcome the steep inequalities
of gender, education, and income outlined in this study.

Full details of each recommendation can be found at the end of the
report, but the fundamentals include:

1 Establish time-bound targets for equity in Internet access, use
and skills, by gender and income level. Our 2014 Web Index shows
that many national ICT strategies or broadband plans include, at
most, a rhetorical commitment to gender equity. A few have a
patchwork of interesting but small-scale programmes and initiatives,
but overarching targets linked to budget allocations are needed to
ensure coherence, coordination and scale.

2 Teach digital skills from primary school onwards. Our findings
point strongly to the overwhelming difference that education makes
to women’s use of technology, even when controlling for other
factors such as income and age. By making sure that primary and
secondary school curricula include ICT literacy basics, we can take
advantage of near-100% primary enrolment rates to open up digital
opportunities for everyone.

3 Smash the affordability barrier. Making broadband cheaper is not
only the best way to get more people connected, but also a
prerequisite to enable them to go online and explore longer and more
often, so they can fully unlock digital opportunities. For example,
women who are able to go online daily are nearly three times more
likely than infrequent users to report that the Internet has helped
them to increase their income.

4 Practice woman-centred design. The impact of online services could
be dramatically increased by defining the end user as a woman and
not just a generic “consumer”. Experience shows that when women are
not consulted, products and services are often destined to fail.
When government agencies and donors invest in such services, the
number one target for success should be uptake by low-income women.

5 Make women’s civic and political engagement an explicit goal. The
small minority of poor women who are already active in community or
political life are not only much more likely to be online, but also
far more likely to use technology in transformative ways.
Policymakers should work with women’s groups to find ways that
technology can help women to enhance their offline participation,
voice and power.

6 Combat harassment of women online. In 74% of countries included in
the Web Index, law enforcement agencies and the courts are failing
to take appropriate actions in situations where ICTs are used to
commit acts of gender-based violence. Governments must take steps to
enact adequate legislative measure

7 It’s not (just) the technology, stupid. Neither communications
ministries, which typically have lead responsibility for national
ICT strategies, nor gender ministries, where these exist, can
achieve the SDGs on Internet access and women’s digital empowerment
on their own. Additionally, our findings underline the lesson that
empowering women does not happen in separate boxes labelled
“offline” and “online”, but requires progress across several fronts
at once. Government agencies, civil society groups and private
sector stakeholders will need to work together in all sectors to
ensure that ICT initiatives are systematically integrated with wider
efforts to expand women’s choices and capabilities in the labour
market, in the home, at school and in public life. Training
policymakers across different sectors (such as health, education,
small business, agriculture) to understand and harness the potential
of ICTs to tackle poverty and gender inequality may be a good
starting point.

*************************************************

Mozambique: What is keeping women offline?

Web Foundation · December 11, 2015

Women’s Rights Online

http://tinyurl.com/zawsfyd

As part of our Women’s Rights Online research, this series of guest
blogs features on-the-ground perspectives from each of our research
partners around the world. In this post, Mozambique’s Science,
Innovation, Information and Communications Technology Research
Institute (SIITRI) analyses Mozambique’s Women’s Rights Online study
results and outlines how to get more of the country’s women online.

The Women’s Rights Online Mozambique report found that while nearly
all women and men in Maputo slum areas own a mobile phone, only 33%
of women had accessed the Internet, compared to 59% of men. These
results confirm that women and girls are being excluded online in
Mozambique, and that we must take action to make sure the digital
future is inclusive.

As part of the project, we surveyed men and women in 29 urban poor
areas of the capital, Maputo to learn more about why the gap in
Internet access persists.

In our survey, women cited four main barriers to Internet access:

1. Many women have never learned how to use the Internet

2. Women simply do not have a device

3. Women are not able to access the Internet on their devices

4. High costs, including both network costs and the opportunity cost
of accessing the Internet, prevent women from accessing the Internet

Another important issue we considered was how women use their mobile
phones. Since the mobile phone is the first place many people
experience the Internet, we needed to know if the increase in mobile
phone use was benefitting women in terms of online access.

The majority of respondents (96% of men and 93% of women) used their
mobile phone every day. The service most frequently used by
respondents was combination of voice calls and SMS, and the
frequency of use of these services was higher amongst women (64%)
when compared with men (49%), as more men used a combination of
voice, SMS and data services.

This discrepancy in ownership and access to data services can be
explain in part by differences between men and women’s disposable
income. A greater percentage of men than women own a mobile phone
and spend more on accessing data.

How can Mozambique expand women’s access to the Web?

It’s clear that efforts are needed to expand women’s access. There
is much to be done, but we recommend focussing on four key areas to
tackle the gap in Mozambique:

1. Improve education: First and foremost, we must tackle low levels
of education and high illiteracy rates of women and girls. Keeping
girls in school longer means reading skills will improve. The
government should also integrate ICT skills training into the
curriculum early on, to equip girls with the tools they need to
enter the information economy.

2. Change attitudes: We must also encourage changes in cultural
attitudes. The gender gap in education is often due to domestic
responsibilities, and traditions that downplay the importance of
girls’ education.

3. Provide affordable public access: In order to facilitate access
for women, ICTs need to be located in other local institutions women
frequent where they feel safe and welcome. These might include NGOs,
women’s employment centres, libraries and health centres. Providing
Internet access in a local health centre could bring the added
benefit of increasing women’s access to health information during
their visits.

4. Reduce the cost of mobile Internet: So many women own mobiles,
but so few are using them to get connected. Mozambique could
consider introducing a subsidised or free Internet access scheme,
providing more women with the opportunity to use the devices they
already have to get online.

How can we make this happen?

Mozambique was one of the first countries to adopt a comprehensive
ICT policy and implementation strategy. As a next step, it needs to
become fully gender responsive. SIITRI will target politicians,
policy makers and influencers directly with these recommendations to
close the gender gap in ICTs through engagement events, workshops
and roundtables. We have already begun this work by advocating at a
national level at the Maputo Internet Forum organised by Swedish
Embassy in October, through the ongoing work and advocacy of the
A4AI-Mozambique National Coalition, and by hosting a workshop on
“Advocating for Empowerment of Women through ICTs and the Web” in
late November. It is our objective to secure concrete and time-bound
commitments from the government to close the digital gender gap.

We must ensure the digital revolution is a revolution for women and
girls. We hope this project has begun that process, and we are
excited about the possibilities for women and girls in Mozambique.
You can follow our updates on our website (http://www.siitri.ac.mz).

***************************************************

Narrowing Cameroon’s gender gap: reasons for hope

Web Foundation · October 7, 2015

http://tinyurl.com/gn9jwwz

Women’s Rights Online As part of our Women’s Rights Online research,
this series of guest blogs features on-the-ground perspectives from
each of our research partners around the world. In this post, Julie
Owono, Head of Africa Desk at Internet Sans Frontières (
http://www.internetsansfrontieres.org/), shares her experience of
how improving women’s access to the Internet is empowering women in
Cameroon.

Being an expatriate Cameroonian woman, I know from personal
experience how Web-enabled information and communication
technologies (ICTs) can expand possibilities for women. I have had
opportunities that I could never have anticipated if I had remained
in the offline world. Indeed,  I probably wouldn’t have found my
job, which now allows me to be involved in initiatives and projects
that help build a safe and accessible Internet for all, and help
tackle some social and economic issues that plague my country. I am
thinking for instance of the project Feowl, an open data project on
electricity cuts, that I created and implemented between 2012 and
2013.

I want the change that I have witnessed to spread to the many
Cameroonian women for whom survival and dignity are still a daily
struggle. ICTs are a tool – one that, when paired with the right
skills, can be transformational and empowering.

This is the focus of my work at Paris-based NGO Internet Sans
Frontières: ensuring that the Internet remains a space for
borderless creation, cooperation, and interaction, as well as a tool
for economic, social and political advancement.

Promoting Internet access among disadvantaged communities is central
in our work – from youth in Urban poor areas in Brazil, to helping
LGBT communities in Cameroon secure their digital communications,
and helping decrease the price of Internet access in the country
through our work with the Alliance for Affordable Internet -we are
committed to ensuring that the Web remains a space that  anyone,
regardless of social, economic, political background can access and
use.

One disadvantaged group still experiencing barriers to access and
use of the Internet is women in developing countries. A 2012 study
by Intel and Dalberg on Women and the Web concluded that “across the
developing world, nearly 25 percent fewer women than men have access
to the Internet, the gender gap soars to nearly 45 percent in Sub
Saharan Africa”.

The figure is striking, but probably not surprising when compared it
to other gender metrics. Women are still the most subject to
inequalities. In Cameroon, women hold only 16.1 percent of the seats
at the parliament. 63.3 percent of the women aged 15 and above
participate in the labor workforce, while the figure goes up to 76.7
percent for men in the same age groups according to the UN’s Gender
Inequality Index. According to a 2007 survey by the Cameroonian
National Statistics Institute, Women spent an average 17 hours per
week on housework against 9 hours for men. We believe that access to
and effective use of the Internet can facilitate women’s
participation in political and economic life, closing the gender
gap.

The good news for Cameroon is that the Cameroonian Government has
taken the issue of the gender gap in ICTs seriously. Importantly,
the government has acknowledged that the major barriers to gender
equality are “socio-cultural hindrances, that are the corollary of a
patriarchal social organisation”. Admitting this challenge publicly
gives women space to discuss the problem and possible solutions
directly.

The government also claims to have trained more 100,000 women
between 2012 and 2002 in digital literacy and the use of ICT. Our
study suggests that while these efforts are commendable, we need to
expand on them to make visible progress on empowering women through
ICT.

The number of Cameroonian Internet users is also increasing,
particularly through mobile phones. More and more women use a well-
known Facebook group called Kamer sisters (read more about the group
here – link in French http://tinyurl.com/jjc8cwf ), gathering more
than 7,000 Cameroonian women based in or outside Cameroon, to
advertise their products and businesses and look for jobs. It is not
rare to see women looking to hire nannies, or young women looking
for such positions.

Whatsapp is also gaining popularity as a platform for women to
generate income and run communications for their small businesses.
For example, one young female entrepreneur  advertises her talents
as hairdresser and makeup artist, giving her contact details on
whatsapp. For entrepreneurs like her, Whatsapp acts as a cheaper and
more direct alternative to a traditional website.

This is precisely what we hoped to achieve when Internet Sans
Frontières  decided to get involved in the Women’s Rights Online
project: see these new trends in the use of Web-enabled ICTs spread
among women from poor urban backgrounds and  benefit them socially
and economically. We look forward to sharing the full research
results and using them to understand the next steps for civil
society and government in narrowing Cameroon’s gender gap.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
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or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
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Africa: Stealth Assault on African Seeds

AfricaFocus Bulletin
January 19, 2016 (160119)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“There is a renewed and stronger assault on seed … based on legal
systems that permit exclusive rights over seeds on the spurious
contention that plant varieties were ‘discovered’ and improved on.
But these ‘discovered’ varieties are the product of the whole
history of collective human improvements and maintenance carried out
by peasants. To assert exclusive rights over the whole on the basis
of small adjustments is nothing short of outright theft.” – South-
South Dialogue, Durban, South Africa, November 2015

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In rich countries, debate about industrialized agriculture often
focuses on Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) and the safety and
transparency consequences for consumers. In developing countries
with large sectors of peasant farmers, this is only a small part of
a larger debate on the future of agriculture, pitting multinational
companies and large-scale investors against the autonomy and rights
of peasant farmers.

Land grabbing is highly visible, and has attracted much international attention. Less visible, and potentially even more damaging, is the appropriation of rights to seeds, fueled not only by the companies themselves but also by a concerted campaign to erode farmers’ traditional rights to seeds in favor of patents by multinational corporations. This is a issue not only for GMOs, but also for other seeds produced by other breeding technologies.

The debate is filled with acronyms, as well as the claim that
“scientific” agriculture will provide food and development
benefiting the peasants as well. And the campaign to change laws and
erode traditional rights is unrelenting. It is based on the
Universal Union for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants (UPOV
91), which works for the privatization of seeds by imposing
intellectual property rights on plant varieties.

In recent years a drive to extend these laws on “plant variety
protection” in African and other developing countries has rapidly
accelerated.

This Africa Focus Bulletin contains a recent declaration by groups
resisting this drive, and excerpts from a brief article by Dr. Carol
Thompson, noting the apartheid-like differential effect of these
laws. Also included (just below) are linked to other essential
resources on this issue.

For a recent series of short articles featuring interviews with
African grassroots leaders (mainly women), visit
http://otherworldsarepossible.org / direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/hjhe756

For global overviews of the issue, see

* The Berne Declaration. Owning Seeds, Accessing Food. 2014.
https://www.bernedeclaration.ch – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/zcryou5

* GRAIN. UPOV 91 and other seed laws: A basic primer. October 2015.
http://www.grain.org / direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/hlvztp8

Two longer related reports with additional background specifically
on African seeds include:

* African Centre for Biodiversity. The expansion of the commercial
seed sector in sub-Saharan Africa: Major players, key issues and
trends. December 2015. http://www.acbio.org.za – direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/qy382hc

* African Centre for Biodiversity. Profiting from the Climate
Crisis, Undermining Resilience in Africa. Gates and Monsanto’s Water
Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) Project. May 2015.
http://www.acbio.org.za – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/zk32nlu

For talking points and previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on
agriculture, food sovereignty, and related issues, visit
http://www.africafocus.org/intro-ag.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Declaration on Plant Variety Protection and Seed Laws from the
South-South Dialogue

Durban, South Africa

29 November 2015

http://www.acbio.org.za – direct URL: http://tinyurl.com/j5uxvkc

We, participants at the South-South Dialogue, are members of peasant
and civil society organisations and concerned individuals from
Africa, Asia, Latin America and Europe working on issues of food and
seed sovereignty, peasants’ control of seed production and exchange,
and biodiversity. We gathered in Durban, South Africa 27-29 November
2015 to share information and knowledge, and to come to a common
understanding on seed and plant variety protection (PVP) policy and
laws and strategies for resistance and alternatives in the global
South.

We are working in our countries and regions to advance the ongoing
global struggle for socially just and ecologically sustainable
societies, in which farming households and communities have control
and decision-making power over the production and distribution of
food and seed.

Human societies and the seeds we use to produce the food that
sustains us have grown symbiotically over millennia. Seeds emerged
from nature and have been diversified, conserved, nurtured and
enhanced through processes of human experimentation, discovery and
innovation throughout this time. Seeds have been improved by means
of traditional and cultural knowledge transmitted from generation to
generation. Seeds are therefore the collective heritage for people
serving humanity. Peasants and indigenous peoples have always been
the custodians and guardians of the collective knowledge embedded in
the wide diversity of seed that has enabled the development of
humankind as a species.

However, today capitalist greed poses fundamental threats to the
continued conservation, reproduction and use of the biological
diversity nurtured for all this time. The forced enclosure of land
and other natural resources and its capture and conversion into
private property was one disastrous step. This has caused and
continues to cause social dislocation and displacement, damaging the
social fabric of human societies, severing the connection between
people and the land, and consolidating social, collectively-produced
wealth in the hands of the few at the expense of the many.

There is a renewed and stronger assault on seed, agricultural
biodiversity heritage and the knowledge associated with these.
Related law and policy making processes are already far advanced in
Europe, the United States and other parts of the world and are being
imposed on our countries in the South through multilateral and
bilateral trade and investment agreements. They are based on legal
systems that permit exclusive rights over seeds on the spurious
contention that plant varieties were ‘discovered’ and improved on.
But these ‘discovered’ varieties are the product of the whole
history of collective human improvements and maintenance carried out
by peasants. To assert exclusive rights over the whole on the basis
of small adjustments is nothing short of outright theft.

Efforts to expand this expropriation to the global South are being
pursued aggressively by multinational seed and life sciences
corporations and their cohorts in state and multilateral
institutions. This takes the form of a coordinated political and
technocratic crusade to impose uniform and draconian laws and
regulations in favour of intellectual property (IP) rights such as
plant variety protection (PVP) for private interests, the
proliferation of genetically modified (GM) seeds, and exclusive
recognition and marketing of seed and plant varieties that pass
through breeding and production systems tightly controlled by
economic elites.

There are no benefits for peasant and farming households and
communities, or for society in general, from these developments. In
a few short decades – just a small fraction of the time humans have
been engaged in industrial agriculture – this enclosure of the
collective seed heritage has spread virulently across the globe. The
historical practices of context-specific peasant-managed seed
systems we have relied on are vilified, denigrated as being backward
and obsolete, and criminalised. Farmers are taken to court and
imprisoned for maintaining the biological base as a living system
while seed and food corporations make huge profits legitimised by
seed and IP laws.

The result is the alarming erosion of agricultural biodiversity and
related knowledge, and a deepening threat to the sustainable use of
the genetic base, and consequently to food production and ecological
balance, and to humanity. Current seed and IP laws violate the ethos
of sharing between farmers, which is the backbone of peasant farming
systems, seed and people’s sovereignty and the basic human right to
food.

We cannot stand by passively and watch this legalised dispossession
and destruction. We are compelled to resist. We declare our
commitment to work in alliance with one another, with peasant and
indigenous peoples’ movements, and with other likeminded civil
society organisations and individuals, to fight the spread of this
aggressive and violent system of domination on the basis of
autonomy, collective self-organisation, cooperation, sharing,
solidarity and mutual respect.

We declare our principled opposition to any form of IP on life
forms, seeds and related information or exclusive rights to their
use. We reject genetic modification and other current and emerging
proprietary technologies in agriculture as these technologies are
built on the disintegration of holistic farming systems, the
exclusion of farmers from processes of plant breeding and natural
resource management, and the control of seeds and planting material
in the hands of corporate and political elites.

We reject the imposition of the World Trade Organization (WTO) on
its country members, through the Trade Related aspects of
Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, to adopt rules
allowing the privatization of seeds and related knowledge. We reject
the International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants (UPOV) type laws and other intellectual property regulation
on seeds and plant varieties. It is also unacceptable that bilateral
free trade agreements impose on Southern countries intellectual
property measures that go beyond the provisions of the WTO.

We are opposed to laws dealing with the marketing and certification
of seed. These new seed laws undermine peasant seed systems that
have been developed locally over generations of farmers and are
geared towards creating massively increased private sector
participation in seed trade. In addition, these laws promote only
one type of seed breeding. The entire orientation of these seed laws
is geared towards genetically uniform, commercially bred varieties
in terms of seed quality control and variety registration. What is
very clear is that these laws criminalise the marketing of farmers’
varieties. The ultimate aim of these laws is to facilitate new
markets for commercial seed companies and the occupation by
multinationals in the seed sector in the global south and displace
and criminalise peasant seed systems.

We oppose the fragmentation of genetic information and the divorce
of this information from physical resources through the Global
Information Systems (GIS) such as DivSeek (a global information
system on genetic sequencing and related knowledge for seed,
proposed by the World Bank), since there is the possibility of the
use of this information expediting the further privatisation of
seeds through international legal systems.

We will fight for laws, policies and public programmes that support
and strengthen peasants and communities to continue with their
diverse and context-specific practices of plant breeding, selection,
production and distribution. We will fight for a more responsible
role for public sector activities based on ongoing democratic,
participatory and transparent processes of engagement with citizens
and inhabitants of our countries and regions. We will continue to
defend our rights to produce, use, exchange and sell all seed and
planting material. We will work to recover, maintain and expand the
use of native and local seed, and the revival of diverse food
cultures as the most effective routes to protect biodiversity. We
recognise the irreducible diversity that can only be managed through
peasant seed production systems and maintained by peasants as
breeders and users of seed.

We believe seeds are the people’s heritage in the service of
humanity that should be managed collectively, democratically and
sustainably. We reaffirm the centrality of agricultural producers as
the primary stewards of our collective genetic resources, especially
women peasants who continue to play a direct role in the maintenance
and enhancement of these resources. We commit to supporting peasant
households and communities in their stewardship, and to building
links with allies, wherever we may find them, to advance the cause
of food and seed sovereignty.

Organisations:

Acción Ecológica – Ecuador, Acción por la Biodiversidad – Argentina,
African Centre for Biodiversity – South Africa, Articulación
Nacional de Agroecología/Grupo de Trabajo en Biodiversidad,
Asociación Nacional para el Fomento de la Agricultura Ecológica –
ANAFAE- Honduras, Commons for EcoJustice – Malawi, Earthlife Africa
Durban, Fahamu Africa, Farmers’ Seed Network – China, GRAIN, Growth
Partners Africa, Grupo Semillas – Colombia, JINUKUN – COPAGEN,
Cotonou, Benin, Kenya Food Rights Alliance, Movimiento de Pequeños
Agricultores (MPA) – Brasil, Peasant Farmers Association of Ghana,
PELUM Association Zimbabwe, Red de Agrobiodiversidad en la Zona
Semiárida de Minas Gerais – Brasil, Red de Coordinación en
Biodiversidad – Costa Rica, Red Nacional para la defensa de la
Soberanía Alimentaria en Guatemala, REDSAG – Guatemala, Red por una
América Latina Libre de Transgénicos Swissaid Guinea-Bissau Zimbabwe
Smallholder Organic Farmers Forum (ZIMSOFF)

South-South Dialogue Participants (list available in original
document)

********************************************************

Apartheid Seed Law

Carol B. Thompson

Pambazuka News, June 3, 2015

[Excerpts only: for full text and references with explicit
comparisons to apartheid laws, see the original text at
http://www.pambazuka.net/en/category.php/features/94834]

[Carol Thompson is a professor emerita at Northern Arizona
University, a member of AGRA-Watch in Seattle, Washington, and co-
author with Andrew Mushita of Biopiracy of Biodiversity: Global
Exchange as Enclosure, which was featured in AfricaFocus after its
publication in 2007.]

Although political apartheid was dismantled by the 1994 election of
President Nelson Mandela, a new form of economic apartheid is now
stalking the entire African continent.

This new economic apartheid refers to the seed convention known as
UPOV91 (International Union for the Protection of New Varieties of
Plants), advanced by the European Union, the United States, and the
World Bank presuming to protect plant breeders’ rights under the
World Trade Organization. The EU is requiring its implementation by
African governments as a prerequisite for trading under the Economic
Partnership Agreements (EPAs), scheduled for 2016.

UPOV91 gives exclusive proprietary rights to plant breeders, who
work in modern laboratories full of expensive equipment. The
convention gives these breeders, or their corporate sponsors,
private ownership over a new strain, extending property rights
beyond the seed, to the full plant, and to “essentially derived”
products (e.g., flour from wheat).

To obtain this legal ownership, the new variety must be distinct,
uniform, and stable (DUS), characteristics not found in farmers’
newly bred varieties after their experimentation in the fields. It
means that farmers’ new varieties are not protected by the UPOV
convention and remain free for the taking.

Farmer breeders do not desire seed traits that are highly stable,
for they are looking for nuances in traits in order to choose the
next seeds for breeding. As one farmer asked, “what do they mean by
‘heritage seed’? Aren’t the seeds changing all the time?”

During the 20 years of proprietary rights for breeders of DUS
varieties, no one can exchange, use, experiment or save the seed
without permission, a prohibition eradicating farmers’ rights to
work with any seeds. Because farmers have cultivated diverse food
crops over millennia, two international laws protect farmers’ rights
(International Treaty for Plant Genetic Resources for Food and
Agriculture and the Nagoya Protocol to the Convention on Biological
Diversity). For African governments to incorporate UPOV91 into
national laws, they would have to violate these two treaties.

Farmers’ experimentation and freely sharing involve not only seeds
but the indigenous knowledge embedded in them. African farmers, for
example, know the hundreds of varieties of millets and sorghums or
teff, grains more nutritious than maize or rice or wheat, and ones
that are regaining interest on the continent because they grow well
in semi-arid conditions, while the more familiar maize varieties are
not standing up to climate change aridity. Smallholder African
farmers grow 20-25 crops on one hectare, sharing knowledge—sometimes
formally in farmer field schools but also daily in informal
ways—about which variety grows best under another crop, where to
place the various crops in terms of moisture percolation in the
small field, and especially, variable planting times in case the
rains come late, or start early. Farmers know the nutrition value of
their biodiverse crops, encouraging children and mothers to partake
more of one (e.g., pearl and finger millets) than of another
(cassava). And nutrition includes feeding the living soil with
leguminous plants rotated with grain crops.

Why would anyone want to destroy farmers’ experimentation and
knowledge? For the same reason apartheid reigned too long: it is
profitable. UPOV 91 offers another way to privatize a living
organism, accomplished more easily than the difficult job of
enforcing a patent across the globe.

[The following comparisons make clear the parallel to apartheid
laws, in establishing unequal rights to access to resources that are
essential for human survival.]

Segregation with inferiority

UPOV91 is trying to establish, by law, the inferior status of
smallholder farmers who breed and do scientific experiments in the
field. It legitimizes the corporate plant breeders’ entitlement and
presumed superiority. The normative law translates back into profit
for the corporations benefiting from PVP – plant variety protection.
This constructed distinction between two different types of breeding
becomes a “ritual of truth”.

Aesthetics of segregation

UPOV91 legitimizes the view that “real plant breeders” wear white
coats and work in a sparkling laboratory with the latest
instruments, while projecting that farmer breeders working in the
soil are inferior. Because they cannot produce DUS (distinct,
uniform, stable) seeds, they are not breeders. The Gates
Foundation’s Program for African Seed Systems (PASS) call farmers’
seeds “weak” and “recycled”, “used for decades”. Like apartheid
benches “for whites only” in the parks and on the beaches, only a
breeder of DUS seeds can sit on the laboratory stool as a recogn1zed
seed breeder; farmer breeders do not qualify.

Legal enforcement of apartheid

The pass laws, restricting the movement of Africans at all times,
became a core impetus for organ1zing against apartheid from the
Defiance Campaign (1952) through “making the townships ungovernable”
(1980s). Any “non-white” without a pass could be detained for 90
days, or more, without trial or notification of any lawyer.

Farmer breeders will not be summarily detained, but Canada has
already made violation of its UPOV-based law a criminal act, not a
civil offense. The U.S. courts have upheld Monsanto’s allegations
against hundreds of farmers that they stole a “Monsanto gene”, when
most often, pollen carried by wind fertilized the farmers’ crops.
With these precedents, the economic apartheid of UPOV91 will most
likely be strictly enforced by the courts.

Resistance

Civil society and farmers across the African continent are
organizing against UPOV91, but the threat of the looming European
trade agreements (EPAs) remains. Just as civil society resistance in
the North changed the context for domestic apartheid, the
international community needs to voice and organize rejection of
this apartheid seed law.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization recognizes two seed
systems: the formal one and farmers’, because all breeders are
essential to cultivate new food varieties in this time of climate
change. Further, farmers are more advanced breeders because their
new seeds are already “field tested”, whereas laboratory-bred seeds
often fail during field trials, not expressing the traits desired.
Let us not allow UPOV to gain any “sensibility of normalcy” in
segregating and denigrating farmer seed breeders:

The international community’s vociferous and sustained rejection of
this new economic apartheid would protect the future of food for us
all.

*****************************************************

AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with a
particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.

AfricaFocus Bulletin can be reached at africafocus@igc.org. Please
write to this address to subscribe or unsubscribe to the bulletin,
or to suggest material for inclusion. For more information about
reposted material, please contact directly the original source
mentioned. For a full archive and other resources, see
http://www.africafocus.org

I am reminded of Lenin’s definition of a revolutionary situation, whose language is reflected in this comment of mine:

* * * *

Two minutes of embryonic fascism from yesterday (Jan. 8, video link below)
It may seem everything is going according to plan for the U.S. fascists and their financial-monopoly money bags.
But I am very glad that AFL-CIO president Trumka representing 15 million workers has spoken against the push to divide workers along religious lines.
People are being pulled into two diverging and combative political movements in the U.S., pulled by the millions into action.
They each cannot continue to live in the same way.
The fascists plan is to:
1. Suck workers into fighting each other on sectarian lines.
2. Have them fight for solutions that leave the real problem untouched in a reckless effort to prolong the rotting profit system
This is a situation where even capitalists have lost faith in their own system and are starting to decide they can rule in the same way no longer.
The sulfurous smell of war and the open terrorist dictatorship of the financial-monopoly capitalist class is in the air.
But the labour movement is rising against it, millions of people behind Bernie Sanders’ socialist nomination bid are staunchly opposed to fascism, and the U.S. election will be a supreme test for democracy versus incipient fascism.
Note also that two people wore a label “Muslim” as demanded by Trump, but only the woman was targeted for eviction.

http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/08/politics/donald-trump-muslim-woman-protesting-ejected/index.html?sr=fbCNN010916donald-trump-muslim-woman-protesting-ejected0229PMVODtopLink&linkId=20232169

OR

https://www.facebook.com/cnn/videos/10154366085446509/?pnref=story

– Darrell Rankin, a Canadian comrade.

AfricaFocus Bulletin
November 11, 2015 (151111)
(Reposted from sources cited below)

Editor’s Note

“New research from the Tax Justice Network shows that the gap
between where companies pay tax and where they really do their
business is huge … even developed countries with state-of-the-art
tax legislation and well-equipped tax authorities cannot stop
multinationals dodging their tax without a thorough reform of the
global tax system. … [these practices have] a relatively greater
impact on developing countries, whose public revenues are more
dependent on the taxation of large businesses.”

For a version of this Bulletin in html format, more suitable for
printing, go to http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1511.php, and
click on “format for print or mobile.”

To share this on Facebook, click on
https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=
http://www.africafocus.org/docs15/iff1511.php

Two new reports, briefly excerpted in this AfricaFocus Bulletin,
shed light on the complex global systems of tax evasion and tax
avoidance which are draining resources from public needs in both
rich and poor countries. While giant companies and the super-rich
move their money around the world in secrecy, the system is obscured
both by secrecy and by deceptive language.

Thus, according to the highly regarded and well-publicized
Corruption Perception Index from Transparency International,
Switzerland, Hong Kong, the United States, Singapore, Luxembourg,
Germany, and the United Kingdom are all among the 20 “least corrupt
countries” in the world. Yet the less-well-known Financial Secrecy
Index, from Tax Justice Network, also places them among the top 15
“secrecy jurisdictions” (also known as “tax havens”) which serve as
the essential “enablers” of corruption and of illicit financial
flows by multinational corporations.

Similarly, there is no doubt that Africa and other developing
regions are hardest hit by this global tax abuse, while they have
the most urgent needs for investment in public goods. But a new
report by the Global Tax Justice Network and other civil society
groups shows that rich countries themselves are also major losers,
as corporations shift profits from one rich country to another (as
well as to smaller smaller jurisdictions fitting the stereotype of
“tax havens”). In 2012 U.S. multinationals alone shifted between
$500-$700 billion dollars out of the country, or roughly 25 percent
of their annual profits.

For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on tax justice and related
issues, visit http://www.africafocus.org/intro-iff.php

++++++++++++++++++++++end editor’s note+++++++++++++++++

Financial Secrecy Index 2015 reveals improving global financial
transparency, but USA threatens progress

Tax Justice Network

Press Release

http://www.taxjustice.net/

Nov 2, 2015

European Union moves furthest with reforms; USA causes great
concern; and developing countries are (as usual) reaping few
benefits.

Today the Tax Justice Network launches the 2015 Financial Secrecy
Index, the biggest ever survey of global financial secrecy. This
unique index combines a secrecy score with a weighting to create a
ranking of the secrecy jurisdictions and countries that most
actively promote secrecy in global finance.

Most countries’ secrecy scores have improved. Real action is being
taken to curb financial secrecy, as the OECD rolls out a system of
automatic information exchange (AIE) where countries share relevant
information to tackle tax evasion. The EU is starting to crack open
shell companies by creating central registers of beneficial owners
and making that information available to anyone with a legitimate
interest. The EU is also requiring multinationals to provide
country-by-country financial data.

But these global and regional initiatives are flawed and face
sabotage by lobbies that have already weakened them. Secrecy-related
financial activity risks being shifted to other areas such as the
all-important trusts sector, where no serious action is being taken
despite promises made by the G8 in 2013, and shell companies, where
many secrecy jurisdictions such as Dubai, the British Virgin Islands
or Nevada in the U.S. are refusing to open up.

The FSI Top 10

1. Switzerland
2. Hong Kong
3. USA
4. Singapore
5. Cayman
6. Luxembourg
7. Lebanon
8. Germany
9. Bahrain
10. Dubai / UAE

[Note from AfricaFocus Editor: African countries on the list rank as
follows: Mauritius 23; Liberia 33; Ghana 48; South Africa 61;
Botswana 62; Seychelles 72]

Crucially, even in those areas where there has been progress,
developing countries are largely being sidelined: OECD countries are
the main beneficiaries.

Our analysis also reveals that the United States is the jurisdiction
of greatest concern, having made few concessions and posing serious
threats to emerging transparency initiatives. Rising from sixth to
third place in our index, the US is one of the few whose secrecy
score worsened after 2013. Switzerland stays at the top of the index
and for good reason: despite what you may have heard, Swiss banking
secrecy is far from dead, though it has curbed its secrecy somewhat.
The United Kingdom also remains a huge concern. While its own
secrecy is moderate, its global network of secrecy jurisdictions –
the Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories – still operate in
deep secrecy and have, for instance, not co-operated in creating
public registers of beneficial ownership. The UK has failed to
address this effectively, though it has the power to do so.

The progress: a scorecard

Since the global financial crisis emerged in 2008, governments have
sought to curb budget deficits by cracking down on offshore
corporate and individual tax cheating and financial crimes by the
world’s wealthiest citizens. Campaigners have shown them the way and
the sea change in the political climate has been remarkable.
Progress has come in three main areas.

* Twelve years ago the tax justice movement created country-by-
country reporting (CbCR), a measure that can shine a light  country
where they operate, including tax havens. They told us CbCR would
never happen: it is now endorsed at G20 level and the first schemes
to implement it are in place. However, we are concerned that CbCR
cannot work unless the information is made publicly available.

* Just four years ago they laughed at us for pushing the concept of
automatic information exchange (AIE), where countries routinely
share information about each others’ taxpayers so they can be taxed
appropriately. AIE is now being rolled out worldwide.

* They said we at TJN were crazy to contemplate public registries of
beneficial ownership (BO), to crack open shell companies and ensure
that businesses, governments and the public know who they are
dealing with, and to provide the basis for effective AIE. Beneficial
ownership registries are now endorsed at G20 level: we now need a
big political push to make them a reality and bring this information
into the public domain.

Of these areas most progress has been made on AIE, with several
schemes emerging. Though the G20 had mandated the OECD to create a
country-by-country reporting standard, what it came up with has
fallen well short, victim of heavy lobbying behind the scenes by
U.S. multinationals in particular. Finally, the UK has passed
legislation to create a public register of company beneficial
ownership information, and the EU has required all member states to
make beneficial ownership information available to anyone with a
legitimate interest. However, little progress has been made towards
creating an effective form of public registry for offshore trusts.

These broad changes are welcome, and we are pleased to see the EU
leading the way: even some of Europe’s historically worst secrecy
jurisdictions, such as Luxembourg and Austria, are engaging.

The EU’s leadership role, however, is called into question by recent
resistance, spearheaded by Germany, to block public access to CbCR
data and prevent expansion of CbC reporting beyond the banking and
extractives sectors. (Read more about the current EU-level
negotiations here.)

Almost all of the progress to date has arisen from public pressure.
To counter the lobbies that constantly seek to undermine progress,
sustained political grass roots pressure is indispensable.

The backsliding

Yet huge problems remain.

None of these initiatives take the interests of developing countries
sufficiently into account. They haven’t been centrally involved in
setting the rules, and most will see little if any benefit. (Note,
too, that secrecy is just part of a wider charge sheet against tax
havens, as the box above explains.)

Meanwhile, even progress to date is under threat:

* Private sector ‘enablers’ and recalcitrant jurisdictions like
Dubai and the Bahamas are beavering away finding exclusions and
loopholes, being picky about which countries they’ll exchange
information with, and simply disregarding the rules.

* The United States’ hypocritical stance of seeking to protect
itself against foreign tax havens while preserving itself as a tax
haven for residents of other countries needs to be countered. The
European Union must take the lead here by imposing a 35 percent
withholding tax on EU-sourced payments to U.S. and other non-
compliant financial institutions, in the same way as the U.S. FATCA
scheme does; and this should become global standard practice.

* The UK has been playing a powerful blocking role to protect its
huge, slippery and dangerous trusts sector, probably the biggest
hole in the entire global transparency agenda. See below for more
details.

The next section gives a brief description of the biggest players in
the secrecy world today.

FSI 2015: the big players

[See full press release for more details on each country

* Switzerland (first place)

* United States (3rd place)

* United Kingdom [not in top ten, but “supports a network of secrecy
jurisdictions around the world.” If counted together, would be first
place]

* Hong Kong [2nd place]

* Singapore [4th place]

* Cayman Islands [5th place]

* Luxembourg [6th place]

* Lebanon [7th place]

* Germany [8th place]

* Bahrain [9th place]

* Dubai [10th place]

******************************************************

About the Financial Secrecy Index

http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/

The Financial Secrecy Index ranks jurisdictions according to their
secrecy and the scale of their offshore financial activities. A
politically neutral ranking, it is a tool for understanding global
financial secrecy, tax havens or secrecy jurisdictions, and illicit
financial flows or capital flight. The index was launched on
November 2, 2015.

Shining light into dark places

An estimated $21 to $32 trillion of private financial wealth is
located, untaxed or lightly taxed, in secrecy jurisdictions around
the world. Secrecy jurisdictions – a term we often use as an
alternative to the more widely used term tax havens – use secrecy to
attract illicit and illegitimate or abusive financial flows.

Illicit cross-border financial flows have been estimated at $1-1.6
trillion per year: dwarfing the US$135 billion or so in global
foreign aid. Since the 1970s African countries alone have lost over
$1 trillion in capital flight, while combined external debts are
less than $200 billion. So Africa is a major net creditor to the
world Рbut its assets are in the hands of a wealthy ̩lites,
protected by offshore secrecy; while the debts are shouldered by
broad African populations.

Yet all rich countries suffer too. For example, European countries
like Greece, Italy and Portugal have been brought to their partly
knees by decades of tax evasion and state looting via offshore
secrecy.

A global industry has developed involving the world’s biggest banks,
law practices, accounting firms and specialist providers who design
and market secretive offshore structures for their tax- and law-
dodging clients. ‘Competition’ between jurisdictions to provide
secrecy facilities has, particularly since the era of financial
globalisation really took off in the 1980s, become a central feature
of global financial markets.

The problems go far beyond tax. In providing secrecy, the offshore
world corrupts and distorts markets and investments, shaping them in
ways that have nothing to do with efficiency. The secrecy world
creates a criminogenic hothouse for multiple evils including fraud,
tax cheating, escape from financial regulations, embezzlement,
insider dealing, bribery, money laundering, and plenty more. It
provides multiple ways for insiders to extract wealth at the expense
of societies, creating political impunity and undermining the
healthy ‘no taxation without representation’ bargain that has
underpinned the growth of accountable modern nation states. Many
poorer countries, deprived of tax and haemorrhaging capital into
secrecy jurisdictions, rely on foreign aid handouts.

This hurts citizens of rich and poor countries alike.

What is the significance of this index?

In identifying the most important providers of international
financial secrecy, the Financial Secrecy Index reveals that
traditional stereotypes of tax havens are misconceived. The world’s
most important providers of financial secrecy harbouring looted
assets are mostly not small, palm-fringed islands as many suppose,
but some of the world’s biggest and wealthiest countries Rich OECD
member countries and their satellites are the main recipients of or
conduits for these illicit flows.

The implications for global power politics are clearly enormous, and
help explain why for so many years international efforts to crack
down on tax havens and financial secrecy were so ineffective, it is
the recipients of these gigantic inflows that set the rules of the
game.

Yet our analysis also reveals that recently things have genuinely
started to improve. The global financial crisis and ensuing economic
crisis, combined with recent activism and exposure of these problems
by civil society actors and the media, and rising concerns about
inequality in many countries, have created a set of political
conditions unparalleled in history. The world’s politicians have
been forced to take notice of tax havens. For the first time since
we first created our index in 2009, we can say that something of a
sea change is underway.

World leaders are now routinely talking about the scourges of
financial secrecy and tax havens, and putting into place new
mechanisms to tackle the problem. For the first time the G20
countries have mandated the OECD to put together a new global system
of automatic information exchange to help countries find out about
the cross-border holdings of their taxpayers and criminals. This
scheme is now being rolled out, with first information due to be
exchanged in 2017.

Yet of course these schemes are full of loopholes and shortcomings:
many countries are planning to pay only lip service to them, if that
— and many are actively seeking ways to undermine progress, with
the help of a professional infrastructure of secrecy enablers. The
edifice of global financial secrecy has been weakened – but it
remains fully alive and hugely destructive. Despite what you may
have read in the media, Swiss banking secrecy is far from dead.
Without sustained political pressure from millions of people, the
momentum could be lost.

The only realistic way to address these problems comprehensively is
to tackle them at root: by directly confronting offshore secrecy and
the global infrastructure that creates it. A first step towards this
goal is to identify as accurately as possible the jurisdictions that
make it their business to provide offshore secrecy.

This is what the FSI does. It is the product of years of detailed
research by a dedicated team, and there is nothing else like it out
there. We also have a set of unique reports outlining detailed
offshore histories of the biggest players in the game.

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Global Alliance for Tax Justice

G20 among biggest losers in large-scale tax abuse – but poor
countries relatively hardest hit

Press Release

[Excerpt. Full press release & related reports available at
http://www.globaltaxjustice.org | direct URL:
http://tinyurl.com/pcbgoyw]

November 10, 2015

G20 countries are among the biggest losers when US multinationals
avoid paying taxes where they do business. This is the main finding
of ‘Still Broken’ a new report on the global tax system released by
the Tax Justice Network, Oxfam, Global Alliance for Tax Justice and
Public Services International in advance of the G20 leaders’ meeting
in Turkey.

Overall it is estimated that, in order to reduce their tax bills, US
multinationals shifted between $500 and 700 billion—a quarter of
their annual profits—out of the United States, Germany, the United
Kingdom and elsewhere to a handful of countries including the
Netherlands, Luxembourg, Ireland, Switzerland and Bermuda in 2012.
In the same year, US multinational companies reported US$ 80 billion
of profits in Bermuda – more than their profits reported in Japan,
China, Germany and France combined.

Claire Godfrey, head of policy for Oxfam’s Even it Up Campaign said:
“Rich and poor countries alike are haemorrhaging money because
multinational companies are not required to pay their fair share of
taxes where they make their money. Ultimately the cost is being
borne by ordinary people – particularly the poorest who rely on
public services and who are suffering because of budget cuts.”

Rosa Pavanelli, general secretary of Public Services International
said: “Public anger will grow if the G20 leaders allow the world’s
largest corporations to continue dodging billions in tax while
inequality rises, austerity bites and public services are cut.”

The G20 Heads of State are expected to consider a package of
measures they claim will address corporate tax avoidance at their
annual meeting in Turkey on 15 and 16 November.

Alex Cobham, director of research at Tax Justice Network, said: “The
corporate tax measures being adopted by the G20 this week are not
enough. They will not stop the race to the bottom in corporate
taxation, and they will not provide the transparency that’s needed
to hold companies and tax authorities accountable. It’s in the G20’s
own interest to support deeper reforms to the global tax system.”

Twelve countries – the United States, Germany, Canada, China,
Brazil, France, Mexico, India, UK, Italy, Spain and Australia –
account for roughly 90 percent of all missing profits from US
multinationals. For example, US multinationals make 65 percent of
their sales, employ 66 percent of their staff and hold 71 percent of
their assets in America but declare only 50 percent of their profits
in the country.

While G20 countries lose the largest amount of money, low income
developing countries such as Honduras, the Philippines and Ecuador
are hardest hit because corporate tax revenues comprise a higher
proportion of their national income. It is estimated, for example,
that Honduras could increase healthcare or education spending by
10-15 percent if the practice of profit shifting by US
multinationals was stopped.

Dereje Alemayehu, chair of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice said:
“If big G20 economies with well-developed tax legislation and well-
supported tax authorities cannot put a stop to corporate tax abuse,
what hope have poor countries with less well-resourced tax
administrations? Poor countries need a seat at the table in
negotiations on future tax reforms to ensure that they can claim tax
revenues which are desperately needed to tackle poverty and
inequality.”

The Tax Justice Network, Oxfam, Global Alliance for Tax Justice and
Public Services International are calling on the G20 to support
further reforms to the global tax system that involve all countries
on an equal footing. These reforms should effectively tackle harmful
tax practices such as profit shifting and the use of corporate tax
havens and should halt the race to the bottom in general corporate
tax rates.

Summary of report

In 2013 the OECD, supported by the G20, promised to bring an end to
international corporate tax avoidance which costs countries around
the world billions in tax revenues each year. However, with the
recently announced actions against corporate tax dodging, G20 and
OECD countries have failed to live up to their promise. Despite some
meaningful actions, they have left the fundamentals of a broken tax
system intact and failed to curb tax competition and harmful tax
practices.

It is often assumed that the richest and largest economies, home to
most of the world’s multinationals, defend the current system
because it is in their interests.

However, new research from the Tax Justice Network1 shows that the
gap between where companies pay tax and where they really do their
business is huge and that among the biggest losers are G20 countries
themselves, including the US, UK, Germany, Japan, France, Mexico,
India, and Spain. This shows that even developed countries with
state-of-the-art tax legislation and well-equipped tax authorities
cannot stop multinationals dodging their tax without a thorough
reform of the global tax system.

Profit shifting to reduce taxes is happening on a massive scale. In
2012, US multinationals alone shifted $500–700bn, or roughly 25
percent of their annual profits, mostly to countries where these
profits are not taxed, or taxed at very low rates. In other words,
$1 out of every $4 of profits generated by these multinationals is
not aligned with real economic activity.

Large corporations and wealthy elites exploit the rigged
international tax system to avoid paying their fair share of taxes.
This practice has a relatively greater impact on developing
countries, whose public revenues are more dependent on the taxation
of large businesses. Recent IMF research indicates that revenue loss
to developing countries is 30 percent higher than for OECD countries
as a result of the base erosion and profit shifting activities of
multinational companies.

Tax avoidance is a key factor in the rapid rise in extreme
inequality seen in recent years. As governments are losing tax
revenues, ordinary people end up paying the price: schools and
hospitals lose funding and vital public services are cut. Fair
taxation of profitable businesses and rich people is central to
addressing poverty and inequality through the redistribution of
income. Instead, the current global system of tax avoidance
redistributes wealth upwards to the richest in society.

That is why civil society organizations, united in the C20 group,
together with trade unions, are calling for the actions announced by
the OECD to be regarded only as the beginning of a longer and more
inclusive process to re-write global tax rules and to ensure that
multinationals pay their fair share, in the interest of developed
and developing countries around the world.

Considering the enormous losses that countries around the world
incur, it is alarming that the G20 seems fairly satisfied with the
current agenda. Governments and citizens of G20 countries should
wake up, face the facts and take additional action immediately.

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