The Call to Solidarity

~by Geletaw Zeleke

The Fundamentals of Solidarity in the International Perspective. 

1.) Coexistence

The world came into existence by the coming together of elements. Constituents endure in a harmonious way because of the natural laws that bind them.  Likewise human beings are also governed by the laws of nature.  Man kind employs the law of solidarity in order to insure coexistence.  Not only is solidarity a means to live on the face of this planet in coexistence but it is also a vital force for the betterment of human life.  In the twenty-first century the threats to planet Earth can be overcome by the solidarity of nations.  Our world is threatened by the growth of nuclear weapons technology and high carbon emissions; as a result, we face problems such as global warming, advanced ecological destruction, lack of good governance, terrorism and poverty.  To tackle such failures of men, nations from the four sides of the world should come together to insure that the planet Earth can and will be a safer place to live in, in the years to come. 

2.)  Moral obligation

In all world cultures and religions the values of love, respect and responsibility are esteemed and honored.  These important elements of human experience are the pillars of solidarity.  Major world religions including Bahia, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism, Sikhism, Atheism, and Zoroastrianism show that solidarity is a morally obligation through their call to strengthen one’s soul by engaging with others in relationships of love, respect and responsibility. So, we can see from this solidarity is justified. Working together is not only incidental but it is a prerequisite.

3.)  Safeguard human rights

The concept of human rights goes beyond all boundaries of human identity.  It embodies instead the core of every human being.  Humanity is the origin of all nations.  Therefore whenever human rights violations have occurred in some part of the world it should pain the other parts of the world in return.  The concept of humanity does not distinguish color or race.  It again supersedes all of these external factors.  The owner of our universe is the human being not an individual nation or race.  Safeguarding the highest form of existence, which is the human being, is the task of all nations.  Nations have to build a guard to ensure human rights, where ever justice flourishes on our planet people maximize their potential.  In so doing humanity can trust that the planet Earth will be a better place to live in. 

4.)  Interdependency of development

After the Industrial revolution our world became a “hot” marketplace.  The core principal of marketing which is buying and selling brings about interdependence.  In order to maintain their mutual growth, both buyers and sellers should optimize their capacity.  Supply and demand should grow parallel in order to maintain sustainable growth in the world. However, unfair markets and unfair economic distribution slows down world development.

According to the UNEP (United Nations Environment Program 2011) in the twenty-first century, ironically, 660,000 people survive on less than 2 United States dollars per day.  385 million people live a saddening life with less than one dollar per day.  1.4 million Children less than age five die every year due to a lack of clean drinking water.  1.3 billion People live as dependents of their livelihood which implies a waste of much of the world’s productive manpower.  Billions of the world’s citizens have no access to the world’s modern sources of energy.  More than one fourth of the world’s population, in fact, does not even have access to electricity.  Nearly one billion people living in the modern world, today, are malnourished.  In low income countries 27.8% of persons under the age of 5 were malnourished between the years of 2000 and 2007 (World Bank 2010).  These phenomenons bring about regional and national instability while at the same time they weaken the stage for international stability.  All nations have the potential to provide for their members by themselves.  Their failures to do so are only the result of man made obstacles.  Needy people are angry people and such feelings and attitudes can have a negative impact on world peace and world development on every level.

5.)  Common Good

The concept of good is relative in some cases however there are jump boundaries or absolute goods which can be considered non-relative.  In all cultures and religions, regardless, common positive rights should always include the right to food, clothing and shelter as well as the protections of peace and freedom.  These are the common interests of all human beings.  Humankind should get together in order to secure these common interests.  These common do not exist outside of the concept of solidarity.

The race for MDGs Vs land grabbing

~by Geletaw Zeleke

The United Nations’ number one millennium development goal is eradicating extreme poverty from the face of the earth. Holding this slogan high, countries across the globe are working to get rid of poverty. Supporters of bilateral aid both international and national nongovernmental organizations up and down are working to achieve this goal.  There is, however, one colossal obstacle standing in the way of them achieving their goal and that, of course, is land and water grabbing. When the land and water grabbing phenomenon turned up all around the world it cast its shadow over MDG endeavors.

According to the World Bank 70% of world citizens who earn less than 2 dollars a day are located in the Sub-Saharan region. This region is an area where extreme poverty is highly concentrated and consequently where world combined force works to pull residents out from under the reign of multidimensional poverty.  The saddening fact however is that this region is now the 70% victim of land and water grabbing practices.

Never forget that in the Sub-Saharan region and others among the most under-developed regions in the world more than 80 percent of the population constitutes farmers. For these groups of people in particular, to break free from the grasp of poverty, of course agriculture plays a vital role. The land and water of these poor nations are the potentials in hand of its poor majority populations to achieve the eradication of poverty in alignment with MDG.

We have learnt from the development history of today’s most developed nation’s their initial and turning points in the process of development is agriculture. More than anything else for poor nations to eradicate poverty and to develop their countries they have no other choice than to utilize their agricultural potentials. Furthermore, under-developed countries have to choose agriculture first because agriculture is the preferred model for their capacity. Since education and technology is deficient in less developed areas the easiest way to move to wealth is by exploiting agriculture resources.

Land grabbing was born in the era of MDG and within a decade it spread very fast. It seems to have spread faster than the world race toward MDG accomplishment. The head of economic justice for Oxfam, Ms. Kelly Dent, says the following of the spread of land grabbing practices.

    “Over the last 10 years, poor countries have lost a soccer oval worth of land to foreign investors every second”

In addition, Oxfam’s “Working Together to End Poverty and Injustice”,

Reports the following about the scale of the scramble to land grab.

“In developing countries as many as 560 million acres of land, an area greater than the size of California, Texas, Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming combined, have been sold, leased or licensed in large-scale land deals since 2001.”

Imagine how fast and how aggressively the trend to land and water grab has spread. Land grabbing movement has become an over-consumptive movement. It was born out of the recent global recession when seeing the future as gloomy companies ran to grab land and water from the world’s poorest countries. It seems the calculations were not farsighted, however. How could they sustain their profit for long? Since there is no mutual respect and benefit it cannot self-sustain but rather it brings about other unexpected problems. Instability, hatred and war might result from such human rights violated business practices.

How does land and water grabbing differ from other kinds of investments?

Land grab is different from other investments in its nature. One of its unusual characteristics lies within its risk taking measures. Under normal circumstances when people invest their money they evaluate risks by assessing the rule of law, political stability and peace among other things. Investors are generally sensitive to investing their money when risks are substantial. Land grabbing on the contrary especially in Ethiopia, takes huge risks. These potential risks constitute the following dilemmas.

The quest for land tenor is an unresolved question.

In Ethiopia in the 1970s one of the hottest political issues was the land tenor question. University students paid a huge personal price for rehashing this hot political issue.  When the DERG regime came to power after taking possession of land from large scale land owners, instead of releasing the land to its tenors with full rights the government lotted it out for farming and could not resolve the land ownership quest. Then after the DERG regime fell Ethiopians were hoping that the EPRDF, the current ruling party, would resolve this question. However, this land is still owned by the government. This issue of land privatization is still an important question in the minds of Ethiopian elites and students. One of the indicators of this reality is that, except for ruling EPRDF party supporters all opposition parties believe that land should be possessed by citizens. Interestingly, this reality indicates that any governmental change is risky for land grabber security. Moreover, since there is no reliable doubt that sooner or later these ownerships will be privatized and repatriated by citizens, the situation actually put land grabbers in opposition to the same majority of Ethiopians whose lands they employ. The potential problem for land grabbers in Ethiopia is that when the time comes for change there will be a huge reorganization of Ethiopian land policy. Since land has remained in the control of government the possession transfer can and is expected to be a somewhat radicalized one.

Ethiopia has unutilized land but this does not mean that Ethiopia has surplus land. There is huge demographic pressure in some parts of the country while there is unutilized land in other disparate areas. In the high land areas for example farmers on average hold a little less than one hectare with 6 average family sizes. Due to bad policy citizens cannot fully exploit their own lands while man power is unrealized on sparse plots. So again, during that period of projected change those densely populate areas will have citizenship rights to claim unutilized areas. Remember that Saudi Arabian and Indian land and water grabbers in Ethiopia took this risk regardless.

Another risk not only impacts Ethiopia but also other countries where citizens have lost their access to land and as a result have experienced instability. People are resisting and protesting while land grabbers plague the land by employing government soldiers to guard and protect their interests.

Land and water grabbing is equivalent to a violation of the sovereignty of one’s country. Citizens have emotional attachments to their surrounding land and water environments. When they see their vast lands sold for 99 years at a time they feel frustrated and irritated because land is one of the manifestations of sovereignty.

In every country when the land is sold for a period of time that extends past the life of generations then individuals can begin to feel unsuccessful. People start to blame the government who gave away their land and they start to seek administrative change. In this case the sale of land becomes a stimulant for political change. This is a huge risk for grabbers. The recent years witness a good example of these risks.

In Madagascar an irresponsible government was dealt to sell half of the countries arable land to one Korean company. The Madagascar people protested and eventually this resulted in the downfall of the president Marc Ravalomanana.

Another risk of land grab is that it violates international human rights protections. While ultimately large scale investment cannot go far without the support of the international community.

Land and water grab is characterized by another dealing that differ it from other investments. The transactions of land grabbing are highly confidential. Why is land grab deals are not conducted in the public arena? In less developed countries the act of attracting investment is big news where gain is often even exaggerated; investment is usually publicized and often even politicized. When it comes to instances of land grab, however, deals are kept secret and are carried out by high level government officials and investors working privately.

In fact is land grabbing not kept confidential for the reason that it violates constitutional rights of nations and international human rights laws in the first place? Land grabbing is by all means illegal because it breaks the law by infringing on citizen rights. It has no legal fortitude or developmental base. The dilemma of secrecy exposes the crime of land grab and explains why it is carried out behind closed doors out of the arena of public scrutiny. This dilemma characterizes land grab and stigmatizes it apart from other investments.

In Ethiopia a land and water grab deal is always hidden from journalists, opposition leaders and the people. This creates distrust and frustration among citizens. The government continues to lease large areas of arable land but citizens have no right to know about the agreements or how their revenues will be spent. Land farmed for generations by one family can overnight become leased to foreign investors for up to 99 years.

Why do leaders do this? What is their profit?

The answer is easy. There are two major calculated profits. The first is to prolong or maintain seats of leadership and, or positions of power. Most governments who are accused of bad governance or dictatorial style leadership and those which have no public support will by nature cling to supports which enable them to retain their control, positions or power. One of the calculations of such is that by giving away their citizens land they can for all intents and purposes “buy” supporters. Land grabbers know that if there is political change, if there is democracy then there secret dealings will no longer be profitable to them. This bad business creates a conundrum where land grabbers may support bad government as much as they can at the expense of citizen benefits. This climate consequently will breed suspect and fear from the opposition that land grabbers play a negative role in their struggle for democracy, justice and even good governance.

The other negative impact of bad business practices such as land grabbing can be seen in the glitz economy. Glitz style of growth is a term proposed by Dr. Aklog Birara used to express the superficiality of growth when it does not impact citizen lives. Governments may get money from land deals of palm oil, flowers or bio fuel for agribusiness. This exchange is not expected to be proportional to the value of the land but it is used to build tall buildings and luxury hotels to give the outward appearance of prosperity and wealth. Meanwhile people are starving, out of work, desperate and isolated from the economic elite enjoying the benefits if the glitz economy.

Land and water grabbing activity not only takes the above mentioned risks but also undermines social responsibility.

         God Bless!

      geletawzeleke@gmail.com

References,

http://www.theafricareport.com/East-Horn-Africa/ethiopia-to-lease-out-land-to-investors-despite-land-grab-concerns.html

http://www.oxfamamerica.org/press/pressreleases/modern-day-land- rush-forcing-thousands-into-greater-poverty/?searchterm=global size of land grab
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https://ecadforum.com/2013/03/24/ethiopia-the-race-for-mdgs-vs-land-grabbing/

A Theory of Trust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Geletaw_Zeleke_Beyene

The idea of trust as social capital can be seen through three distinct points of view. These three separate interpretations of trust include the religious, the conscious and the systemic perspective. (1) Religious Perspective In the Christian religion trust is one of the expected behaviors of believers which can be understood as religious social capital. For example we can see the idea of trust as a religious social capital in the Bible the Book of Acts, Chapter 4 verses 32 -36. “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of their possessions was their own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all that there were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned land or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet and it was distributed to anyone who had need. Joseph a Levite from Cyprus, whom the apostles called Barnabas which means “son of encouragement”, sold a field he owned and brought the money and put it at the apostles’ feet” The general doctrine for the concept of trust or the thing that the members of each religious group lay their trust in is a supernatural force. That supernatural force is the ultimate source of trust in their minds. That supernatural force subsumes risk taking in their belief. In this doctrine members are expected to show other members and other human beings unconditional love. The value of trust is much more driven from undermining their physical world and giving more value to the other state of mind or the second world. The stimulus to trusting one another is that by trusting others they expect positive rewards from the supernatural force or from other group members. Christianity, Buddhism and Islam alike value trust in the same way. In general trust in this context is a moral question and it is a commandment of their spiritual scripts. Critical reasoning or questioning is not encouraged in this philosophy rather simply trusting in others and having confidence in one another without critical reasoning is prescribed. The motive of the doctrine is meant to create healthy communication amongst the group members and to attract non-believers. For some highly devoted believers trust is most likely unconditional. Bottom line trust in this doctrine is getting positive rewards from the superpower. In addition the guarantor to taking risks and trusting in their groups, members and organization is the superpower. Members have very low participation in leadership. They are not interested in auditing their churches and they do not worry about the terms of their leaders. Further, members have relatively high trust in their leaders. Members are not usually curious about the work flow of their organization because they believe that risk is very low.

(2) The Conscious Perspective Non-religious people and groups also encourage trust. Many groups have their own norms and values. They have a demarcation between “good” and “bad”. These relative terms will have life in the social system through the power of trust. Members of the group convince themselves that one thing is good and another bad according to their norms. There is no superpower which they revere but for the sake of their oath or their conscience they always try to do what is in their mind “good”. Conversely, when they do “bad” things or they violate their group norms or values they feel guilty. Their view of trust is based on their social or organizational mission, its core values and norms. In both the religious and the conscious perspectives trust at the level of individuals is governed by the logic of: Person X trusts in person Y and person Y trusts in person Z. Therefore, Person X trusts person Z. If person X trusts in person Y and person Y trusts in person Z then, in this philosophy, whether X and Z have intimacy or not, the probability of trust between person X and person Z is relatively higher. This doctrine doesn’t worry much about the personal intimacy of persons X and Z. Because of this multidimensional relationship of trust we see more worthy trust relationships among group members. In this doctrine the flow of information is faster and more likely healthier. Further their vertical trust which means their trust in leaders is relatively higher, in addition. Especially in the religious perspective group members have relatively higher trust towards leadership since they believe that risk is very low. Members will invest their time, money and energies non-discriminately as a result of their high levels of trust. (3) Systemic Perspective In this perspective trust is not an independent variable rather it is more likely a dependent variable. The driving motive of people from a systemic perspective is to ask at the organization or individual level, “trust in what?” They satisfied their need for trust in a strong and reliable system. These people do not simply accept preached trust. No matter how much they may have heard someone talk about trust they still yearn internally for a system to trust in. They want a strong and reliable system. Whenever these kinds of people want to invest their money, skill, knowledge or property in a given organization or group they need transparency, accountability, apparent managerial skill and a clear work flow across the system. People who want to deposit their money in a bank, for example, will not do so because they trust in bankers but because they trust in the banking system. These types of people do not rely on their government systems when they see, feel or believe that the system is corrupted or unhealthy. The level of trust or confidence will decrease as the transparency decreases. This lack of trust in extension may affect other positive values of the group. Values such as respect, love, compassion, integrity and responsibility may be eroded as the result of lose of trust. Systemic individuals lose trust and ultimately their social capital may deteriorate if the system is not good enough which means if there is no transparency, accountability, audit or participation of the group members. This system of trust does not necessarily govern itself by the following logic, ironically.

Person X trusts in person Y and person Y trusts in person Z. Therefore, Person X trusts person Z. From this trust perspective if person x trusts person y and person y trusts person z then, there will not necessarily be trust between person x and person z. The level of individual trust relies instead on intimacy or on how well the persons get to know each other. Systemic individuals are much more interested in getting to know each other before they trust. Of course, in some cases person x and z might trust each other by relying on person y or a mediator but in that case the degree of trust can be measured by the level of trust they have in person y. In this case person y is the guarantor and the person taking the risk and their agreement will rely on written agreements with officialized signatures, stamps or seals. Systemic people when it comes to group life yearn for a strong and reliable organizational work flow. Within that kind of system it will give them an opportunity to invest their skill, knowledge, attitudes and property. In this perspective the power of trust is highly dependent on the quality of the system. It is for this reason that we say trust is a dependent phenomenon in the systemic perspective opposed to the religious and conscious perspectives. Good quality of system generates trust and other moral values of societies in this perspective. In order to build trust there is no need to preach to people on how important trust is rather by establishing a trust worthy system it attracts the confidence of systemic individuals.

  To be continued
  Edited by MaGill Martini Dyess 

The writer can be reached at geletawzeleke@gmail.com