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Universal Human Rights

So today is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was adopted by the United Nations’ General Assembly on this day in 1948. The vote was 48 countries in favour, 0 against, and 8 abstentions. The countries which abstained were Soviet bloc states (Byelorussia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, The USSR and Yugoslavia), Saudi Arabia, and, I’m deeply ashamed to say, South Africa.

This morning I turned on the TV and in between the riots in Greece and the cholera in Zimbabwe, there was Eleanor Roosevelt,  former US First Lady, presenting the Declaration back in 1948.

That footage really made an impression on me. And it made me suddenly see the Universal Declaration in a new light. You see, it is most often human rights activists these days, who refer to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in support of their demands. These are usually people outside of the official establishment, and outside the the corridors of official power. Sometimes they are seen as radicals, sometimes as trouble-makers.

But here was this middle aged, respectable-looking American woman, with a posh accent, announcing the adoption of the Declaration. And it somehow suddenly came home to me, in a way it hasn’t before, that this Declaration isn’t anything outrageous, isn’t radical, isn’t something only associated with ‘trouble-making activists’. Eleanor Roosevelt, former US first lady, was the chair of the committee which drafted it. You can’t get closer to the official establishment than that. The Declaration isn’t anything new and alien — it was adopted way back in 1948.

I realised, watching TV this morning, that I’ve always had a subconscious feeling that the idea of universal rights needs to be justified, needs to be explained — isn’t quite part of the mainstream. Maybe that’s because I grew up as a white child in racist South Africa, surrounded by adults who expressed hostility to the UN and to the idea of equality. Maybe it’s because still today, when activists point to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a way of justifying demands for equality, for freedom of association and freedom of speech, for access to adequate health care, protection of children, for free elementary education, for social security, they are often looked on as trouble-makers, as rebels, as extremists.

But really, why do we have to still keep justifying these demands, keep pointing to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as we call for development and changes in the law? This declaration is binding on all UN members and forms part of customary international law. Come on already, what’s the argument about. We need to be saying to our governments, “There’s the Declaration. You’ve signed it. No arguments — the only discussion should be on how best to make it happen.

(By the way, Eleanor Roosevelt was something else. You think Hillary Clinton is the first former First Lady to be a formiddable political force in her own right? Think again. Eleanor Roosevelt was First Lady from 1933 to 1945, the year her husband died. She fought for equal rights for women, and openly supported the African-American civil rights movement. She also worked to promote the formation of the United Nations. In 1945 President Harry S Truman appointed her as a delegate to the UN, a position she held until 1952. During this time she oversaw the drafting and adoption of the Declaration.)

We need better roads

This year I’ve been travelling a lot, throughout East and Southern Africa. In some cases, I’ve visited countries that I haven’t been back to in several years. In all cases, the growth and progress that’s taken place since my previous visits has been visible and obvious.

But one thing that has really bothered me, is that no matter how well economies may be doing, no matter how much cities have grown and developed, the roads almost always seem to have been neglected.

I first visited Mozambique in the early 1990s, and have visited fairly regularly since then. My first visit was shortly after the end of the civil war, and Maputo was in very poor shape. The road from the South African border to Maputo was also horrible — full of potholes. On each visit, I’ve noticed improvements and development in Maputo. More and better shops, more hotels, and so forth. The road from the SA border is now much, much better, and the main road from Maputo up north is excellent. But within Maputo city, the roads are horrendous and if you’re driving you have to be constantly aware of obstacles and sometimes huge potholes.

Kampala was very village-like when I first visited in late 1993. On my last trip there, a couple of months ago, the city seemed way bigger, and the amount of traffic had increased several-fold. But the roads seem not to have been touched. One of the reason the traffic’s so bad is that the main roads are still narrow — not tailored to a city of its present size. And then within the city, again, there are huge potholes on major routes (sometimes seemingly big enough for a car to fall into and get lost for days!).

In my home city, Cape Town, I’ve noticed the deterioration of many roads in the city — from the heavy traffic, but also as a result of rain and weather damage. There are regular repairs and upgrades but they don’t seem to keep pace with the damage.

Now I know roads are incredibly expensive to build and maintain, and bigger, wider roads are not the answer to traffic woes (the wider the roads, the more cars there will be – what’s needed is better public transport). But roads are still crucial for all of our economies, and you’d think that with the evident economic growth in the redion, and the billions of dollars in aid that have been spent, at least some of it should have been used to ensure our roads are in tip-top shape.

An article I read this week has confirmed my views. It’s from the development news agency, IRIN, and is titled, “Better roads lead to more money”. It reports that there is a strong link between good roads, and food security. The article reports on how small-scale farmers in Malawi struggle to get their food to markets, because of the bad roads.

According to the article, money is readily spent on building or rehabilitating new major roads, while maintenance of existing roads, and especially of secondary and subsidiary roads, is neglected. Spending is also skewed to focus on roads in wealthier areas of the country, at the expense of poorer ones (where the population the faces extra barriers to earning a small income).

The article focuses on Malawi, but I bet the situation in many other countries in the region is similar. The good new roads I was talking about in Mozambique probably reflect the same trend — they’re big roads, benefitting tourists and major transporters, while the rural roads and city routes used by ordinary people every day, are left to crumble. In South Africa, I’ve been on some secondary national roads, where there is a visible line as you cross from a rich province to a poorer one — you can see the road change in quality before your eyes.

It’s not only rural farmers that are affected. Electoral commissions face problems getting ballots to and from areas where there are poor roads. Health care is also a problem when medical personnel cannot reach patients, or residents can’t get to clinics. And the list goes on.

It’s not glamorous, or headline-grabbing, but it’s time we invested in good road infrastructure. The benefits will be many, and long-lasting.

To the top from nowhere

There is a lot of big, important stuff happening in South Africa and the world at the moment: Barack Obama’s transition plans, the ongoing global economic down-turn, climate change (we’ve been having some crazy weather in Cape Town lately), and the breakaway party from the ANC here in South Africa.

But this week, it was a fairly short interview on the radio that made the biggest impression on me. It was an interview with Sibusiso Vilane, about his book, called To the Top from Nowhere.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of Sibusiso Vilane, but if you haven’t you should have. In fact, he should be a household name across the length and breadth of our continent, as far as I’m concerned. Vilane is the first black African to have climbed Mount Everest. And he did it not once, but twice. But he didn’t stop there. He has gone on to become a member of one of the most elite clubs in the world. It’s called the Seven Summits club, and there are only 198 members of this club in the whole world (six of them are South African).

Members of the Seven Summits club have successfully climbed the highest mountain on each of the seven continents. Vilane gained membership to the club in June of this year, when he ascended Mt Denali (McKinley), in Alaska.

Vilane was a game ranger in Swaziland, when he met the man who introduced him to climbing, and who became his benefactor, helping him find the funding for his Everest expedition. He began climbing in 1996, and first summitted Everest in May 2003.

In January 2008, Vilane and Alex Harris became the first South Africans to walk to the South Pole completely unassisted.

In 2006, President Thabo Mbeki bestowed the Order of Ikhamanga (Bronze) on Vilane, in recognition of his efforts.  The Order of Ikhamanga is given to South Africans who have excelled in the fields of arts, culture, literature, music and sports.

What impressed me, listening to Vilane, was his quiet confidence and modesty. He has achieved extraordinary things, but has no overblown sense of his own importance. He simply sets his goals, and then goes about achieving them.

A week after Barack Obama was elected President of the US, here I was, listening to another man of African descent who has gone from very humble beginnings to the very highest achievements (in this case, literally the highest!).

Vilane’s picture did appear on the front page of the newspapers when he first climbed Everest, but other than that, media coverage of him has not been spectacular. It just got me wondering about the many, many Africans there are who are quietly achieving great things, in every corner of the globe. We don’t hear enough about them, and we don’t listen enough to them, to hear their stories and learn from their experiences.

What a day!

I need to write this while it’s all fresh. What a day! This morning I woke up and turned on the TV, to see John McCain giving his speech conceding defeat on the US presidentlal election. I must say, what a gracious speech it was. If nothing else, McCain is a good loser.

Then about 20 minutes later, I watched Barack Obama’s victory speech. By that stage I was in an airport departure lounge, and there were quite a few of us gathered around the TV. I don’t think of myself as particularly sentimental, but I couldn’t stop a few tears from rolling down my cheeks. His speech was so fitting, the occasion so momentous, I couldn’t help but be moved.

The faces of the people in the crowd in Chicago reflected not just happiness but idealism, and hope. Goodness knows we need some ideals in today’s world, we need some heroes. Obama is now the focus of that need. Even as I savoured the moment, a part of my mind was already sceptical. Obama now carries the ideals and hopes not only of Americans but of many around the world. Will he live up to the heavy expectations that have been placed on him?

Please, please let us not be disappointed, as we so often are by our leaders. I recall, for instance, the scenes of jubilation in Kenya when Mwai Kibaki was elected president. Four years later, that jubilation had turned to bitter cynicism. In South Africa the hopes placed on the ANC have in many cases also faded all too soon. Let’s not have that again.

In a sense it doesn’t really matter. This moment, this day, will have a lasting positive impact, no matter what follows. As an American friend of mine has put it — African American men today see themselves re-imagined. The proliferation of negative images of black men in America, as prisoners, as drug dealers and so on, now have an extremely powerful counter-image. In a sense, the image of Africa, too, is changed. What impact is this having on youngsters, who now can imagine a world of possibilities they never before thought possible? Obama has broken the glass  ceiling for black Americans in the most powerful way.

Today, the USA, too, is being powerfully re-imagined by the rest of the world. Suddenly, the nation associated with George Bush, with war, with aggression and mindless conservatism, has transformed itself in this one act. Will our jubilation be justified, or will the strictures of office, the demands of the military-industrial complex force Obama into the mould of so many predecessors. Let us hope and pray not.

But again, I am hopeful, because this is not about one man. Obama’s campaign succeeded because it transformed the nature of electoral politics in America. It relied on an extensive network of grassroots-based organisations and individuals. It build on a model of citizen involvement and activism. The youth have been energised and re-engaged in politics by this election.

As Obama’s speech indicated, this is just the beginning. There are huge crises to tackle — a faltering global economy, two wars that the US is involved in, new forms of international instability. It will not be easy by any means. Obama can’t do it on his own. Individuals naturally have weaknesses and failings, but one of the huge strengths of the president-elect is his strength as an organiser, his realisation that he needs a strong team. In this case there is  a network, a movement that’s been established. In this sense, change has already happened.

Mobile activism, Part 2

Unfortunately I missed most of Jonathan Donner’s presentation at the workshop this morning on Innovations in Social Marketing, at the MobileActive08 conference. I did catch the last couple of minutes though, when he spoke of the use of missed calls in India, as a means of disseminating information. Eg: a number is offered, for people to beep, or give a missed call. They then get called back, and offered the information they need.

Gustav Praekelt and Robin Miller of the Praekelt Foundation then presented their project called Socialtxt. This makes use of the ‘please call me’ message that cellphone users frequently send. This message arrives as an SMS on recipients phones, while the sender gets a confirmation message. It is possible to attach marketing messages to these SMSs, and this is done frequently for commercial purposes. With Socialtxt, based on an open-source platform, instead of commercial messages, social marketing messages are used.

In South Africa, around 30 million ‘please call me’ messages are sent every day — this has the potential for enormous reach, at low cost.

In one of their case studies, the project implementers set out to answer the question:  “Can we get people to call in to the national hIV/Aids helpline?” The project operated for 5 weeks and they sent out 1 million messages a day. The result was a total of 20 million branded messages sent out, reaching 4 million unique people (it’s possible for each individual to send up to 7 please call messages a day). As a result, 45 000 people responded by calling the national HIV/AIDS helpline (and a by-product of this was that the project also ended up with a database of 45 000 telephone numbers).

This represented a 136% increase in call volumes for the HIV/Aids helpline — 1500 additional calls a day. Even after the messages stopped, people would keep them on their phones and refer to them. 98% of all callers were referred by Socialtxt.

One of the lessons learnt was the need to be prepared — organisations looking to replicate this need to ensure they can handle the huge call volumes. Also, if one operates a toll-free call centre, one’s costs double if call volumes double.

There are many ongoing questions: Howto  deal with capacity constraints?
How best to utilise these channels? What’s the business model? (can one combine social marketing with commercial business models to make it sustainable?).

Aside from the Socialtxt model there are many cellphone based social marketing options that one can consider, depending on options such as cost, penetration, and level of interactivity. Examples are bulk SMS, ringtones with messages, answer tones, WAP applications, wallpapers, and so on.

Some other things that came out of the session:

There is hIgh and increasing penetration of cell phones in the developing world. Eg SA: 48 million people, 37 milion have cell phones.

When considering campaigns and options one needs research:

* what’s the reach of the platform: real penetration numbers?
*  cost to the user?
*  ease of use
*  how many handsets support the technology?
*  is it standards based?
*  cost to reach audience?
* relevance to audience

There was some discussion of the value of using incentives to get people to call or take specific action — eg the possibility of winning some airtime. In commercial campaigns incentives dramatically increase response levels — but are they appropriate in social marketing? For example, would you get hoax callers dialing the HIV/AIDS helpline, just to win the prize?

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Brenda Burrell’s mini talk on Mobile and Radio for Independent Media presented a project called Freedom Fone. This is a project in Zimbabwe, run by the Kubatana Trust.

It involves providing radio-like audio content via interactive menu response by use of phones. Users can call up the service, and choose from a menu, to access audio items they with to listen to: news headlines, a feature, music and inspirational messages and so on.

The idea came from the use of interactive phone menus by commercial companies.
When she learnt about how interactive menus are used, Burrell thought, “Why don’t we get more creative with how we use that kind of interface?” She coined the phrase, ‘dialup-radio.’  “It’s not really radio she says — its how you put information together and make use of it.”

The idea seemed suited to Zimbabwe, where there is a lack of independent media, and broadcast media in particular — but where there is a large mobile phone user base.

There are two sides to the project, says Burrell:  building compelling audio materials, and making it accessible. WIth a large grant from the Knight Foundation, Kubatana will be working on both over the next 2 years. They also want to assist other organisations to learn to do this. They would also be interested in helping roll out the model to other countries.

One of the issues is cost to the user. This can be resolved by providing toll free numbers, or ‘tickle’ numbers — where you dial a number, hang up, and you get a call back.

The system operates with a telephony server and a couple of other pieces of equipment that is all very portable — it all fits into a medium size tote bag.

For more information email info@freedomfone.org

Mobile activism, part 1

I’ve just been wandering around the SIMLab and SIMPlace at the MobileActive 08 conference. Talk about information overload! It helps to focus on specific themes, and try to get a picture of what is happening in particular fields or areas of interest. One strong theme in the displays is the use of cell phones for field research. There are a number of systems and services on display.

Easy Capture offers options for data capture where field researchers use smart phones to collect data and transfer it to a central server. There it can be displayed directly in various formats such Excel and SPSS. Likewise, Mobile Researcher enables surveys to be conducted via standard cell phones, using simple-to-use questionnaires. Completed questionnaires are uploaded to the central server. Once uploaded the completed surveys are removed from the cell phone. This is done to ensure the confidentiality of respondents.

The Citizen Journalism in Africa participants at the conference are working with Mobile Researcher to conduct snap surveys of MobileActive08 participants. It really is simple to use: our team got the training in about 20 minutes and were all set. The results are displayed immediately in a mash-up map in the main foyer. So, for example, one can get an immediate picture of the various countries that delegates come from.

Research options on display at the conference range from very simple and straightforward — survey forms involving radio buttons and simple numerical and short text responses, to more complicated options allowing such things as integration and transfer of audio recordings and photographs of respondees.

Later this afternoon at MobileActive08 I attended ‘The Mobile Web’: The potential and reality for developing countries, facilitated by Toni Eliasz.

There was extended discussion of the value of the mobile web to developing countries. Views hinge a lot on how one defines ‘mobile web’. Some people had strong reservations about the potential of the mobile web, related to affordability, the need for high-end phones in order to browse the internet, the high cost of data access via cellphone networks, and ongoing problems with connectivity.

But many of these reservations can be removed if one defines the mobile web more broadly than accessing the Internet. One person proposed defining it as access to data and databases in whatever form. So if people are able to access data on the Internet, through tailored SMS services, for example, that qualifies as the mobile web.

Cost is not necessarily always high, some participants argued. One person pointed to MXIT – a South African-developed chat service used widely by teens. The cost of using it is minimal. Another pointed to widespread use of Google and social networking sites like Facebook among the youth, using cellphones.

The discussion also looked at the suitability and accessibility of present content on the web (some felt much current content is not really directed at the needs and capacities of people in the developing world — eg places with low literacy levels). On the other hand, the development of the mobile web could help people leapfrog into higher levels of computer – and Internet – literacy, and could also allow people in developing nations to develop their own content.

Mobile internet is not ‘the internet on the mobile’, said one participant. The nature of sites, and the kind of data accessed are different. The same person warned that as with the Internet, the mobile web, will be flooded with commercially-based sites and commercial information. We need to ensure that the important social and educational and developmental content gets attention. NGOs need to ensure that their sites are tailored for mobile use, or else they will lose out.

The session was more about questions than answers: is there a need for specialised applications? How do we scale up projects and initiatives? How do we get people to develop suitable applications? Is SMS the thing to focus on for the near future, or should we be looking at WAP applications?

Mobile banking was another big topic of discussion. Aside from the example of M-Pesa in Kenya, there is a great need for applications and services allowing not only mobile banking, but payments and transfers via mobile phones.

One problem is the amount of profit that cell phone companies take, for mobile-based payments — sometimes around 30-40% of the product cost. This is limits the viability of business models. Even charity appeals and services lose a huge percentage of mobile-based income in this way.

Medicines for All

I spent this week in Nairobi, at a workshop of NGOs from east and southern Africa involved in work around access to medicines. They were brought together to try to come up with ideas on how to solve the problem of regular shortages of essential drugs at government health clinics.

These days there is a lot of awareness of HIV/AIDS, and there are several campaigns to push governments to roll out and sustain anti-retroviral treatment for people living with AIDS. What we wanted to do was expand that activism and awareness to health in general — to include not only ARVs but essential medicines for a range of diseases and conditions.

It’s just about 30 years since the World Health Organisation drew up protocols on Essential Medicines, and every country is supposed to have an up-to-date list of Essential Medicines and ensure that these are always available in the public health system.

Essential Medicines vary from country-to-country depending on the public health situation, but range from headache tablets, to treatments for diarrhoea and malaria, antibiotics, anti-virals, folic acid (for pregnant women), and so forth.

Governments across the region profess to supply these, but the reality is that in every country there are regular stock-outs of these drugs. That is: there is the constant problem that certain — or all of these drugs are simply not in stock at the local clinics. The reasons are many: poor planning, lack of funds to buy drugs (although most essential medicines are very cheap), corruption (where officials steal drugs and sell them for their own profit), too few healthcare workers in clinics, and so forth.

Another problem is that people often struggle to get to clinics, because of large distances, and lack of transport and decent infrastructure. 

The meeting in Nairobi was organised by Health Action International-Africa, the Southern African Treatment Access Movement (SATAMO), and the Open Society Institute. Nine African countries were represented, involving a range of NGOs working in this field.  

At the meeting everyone resolved that stock-outs are unacceptable, and that access to affordable essential medicines is a human right. A region-wide campaign is being planned to highlight the problem of stock-outs, mobilise citizens, and pressure the authorities to act and ensure 100% availability and accessibility.

Watch this space!

The financial bubble bursts — what about Africa?

As I write this, US lawmakers are still haggling about whether or not to approve the $700-million bail-out package, to rescue Wall Street.

Exactly how all of this international financial stuff works is rather beyond me (and from reading newspapers and magazines such as Time, it seems not even seasoned financial reporters understand all of it, let alone the regulators). But basically it seems that top international banks made a whole lot of very risky loans, which were backed up by complicated inter-bank guarantees — and now that many people can’t pay back their loans, the whole system is coming crashing down.

Anyhow, there are a few points that can be made, and questions to be asked, about how all of this is affecting, or going to affect, Africa.

The first point is one that BBC World made, when the US bailout package was first proposed. At the time, the UN was also meeting to discuss measures to reduce global poverty. After lengthy deliberations, the delegates agreed to commit something like $16-billion to fight global poverty and try to meet the millennium development goal of halving the number of people living on just 1-2 US dollars a day. The UN secretary-general hailed that as a great achievement. Well, it does sound like a lot, but in comparison to the proposed $700-million to rescue Wall Street, it’s a pittance.

Another notable feature of the current crash, is that we are seeing a reversal of market liberalisation, as the US government rescues banks, and even effectively nationalises huge private financial institutions (which is what happened when the government took over the home loan organisations Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). There are huge contrasts here with what might happen should the economy of a developing nation be in the same situation. Firstly, the IMF and World Bank would be there, insisting institutions be allowed to collapse rather than be bailed out, and insisting on market liberalisation rather than the opposite (which is what happened in south-east Asia about a decade ago). Secondly, imagine an African or South American government suddenly deciding to nationalise major privately-owned financial institutions. The US would be decrying it, and imposing blockades and sanctions.

A key question for all of us must be, how will the current crisis impact on Africa. So far it seems that African banks are not in much danger — I think the fairly conservative banking and finance laws in most African countries have protected us to an extent. But there will obviously be other impacts. One I have wondered about is how the economic slump in the US and Europe will affect remittances sent back to Africa by Africans living in these countries. Remittances have been shown to be a major form of income, not only for individuals and families, but for national economies. But if Africans abroad start losing their jobs, or feeling the pinch, these contributions are bound to suffer.

In the long term, the picture may not be so bleak. Writing in South Africa’s Business Day earlier this week, finance expert Michael Power argues that savers in the rest of the world have up to now been financing the US’s over-consumption and credit-fuelled lifestyle, and have not been profiting from it. He says this huge bubble is about to burst, and the US is going to lose its place at the top of the global capitalist market system. He foresees “the end of the world as we know it”, and that the new global financial system that will emerge, will be much friendlier to countries that are rich in natural resources (such as in Africa). But, there is one important condition — these countries will only benefit if they and their economies are well managed.

Let’s hope our politicians and financial leaders are prepared.

The worst form of tabloid journalism

We’re in Uganda for the Citizen Journalism in Africa in-country training. Yesterday, we had a session covering the difference in the kind of news coverage between mainstream media and citizen journalism. Participants had a look at two Ugandan newspapers, to assess the kind of stories that are covered: the Daily Monitor, and the Red Pepper — seeing these are the only two newspapers readily available at our hotel.

As we looked through the two papers, I found myself utterly shocked by the Red Pepper. This is a sensationalist tabloid, rather like the Voice and Die Son, which we get in Cape Town. But it’s way worse than anything I’ve seen before.

Die Son and the Voice are sensationalist and often use offensive and insulting language, or publish nauseating pictures of victims of crime. But the Red Pepper goes several steps beyond that.

Yesterday, the paper carried a story about a school teacher who’d been having sex with a 12-year old pupil. So far, so ordinary. But the story went into great graphic detail about how that sex took place, using extremely crude language. The story was not written to convey horror and outrage at this abuse. Rather, it descended into pornography — it seemed designed to titillate readers rather than shock them. To top it all, the young girl’s photo was published — poor consolation that her name was withheld — there she was for all the world (and her friends, family, schoolmates and neighbours to see).

Through its coverage, the Red Pepper shamefully abused that poor girl all over again.

This morning, on my way to breakfast in the hotel, I passed the newspaper stand. The Red Pepper today has a front page story about a young man who was killed — allegedly by his brother, using a panga. While the Daily Monitor carries this story as a brief paragraph, saying the two fought over money. But the Red Pepper has it as a front page splash, saying the two fought over a woman (but they put it way more crudely than that). And there, on the front page, is a full colour picture of the dead man, his throat slit open.

I was so nauseated I could hardly eat my breakfast.

Some weeks ago during the xenophobic violence in South Africa, The Times published on the front page, a shocking photo of a mob burning a man to death. I would rather they hadn’t but I can buy the argument that the photo was justified, in order to make South Africans aware of what was happening. Arguably, that photo could be seen to be in the public interest. But the photo on the front page of Red Pepper today is about a dispute between two individuals. There is no public interest or other higher justification for publishing it. It’s completely gratuitous.