Category Archives: Voices

JU-Sylff LANS Meet 2018

May 10, 2018
By null

Local Association Networking Support (LANS) is a new support program intended to facilitate the organization of gatherings and other activities by groups of Sylff alumni, including local Sylff associations. Groups of five or more fellows and alumni from the same institution can apply to the Sylff Association for a maximum of US$5,000 per gathering to cover the long-distance transportation costs of participating fellows. This program was launched in September 2017, and the Jadavpur University Sylff Association (JU-Sylff Association) was the first to take advantage of it. In March 2018 the association organized a two-day event in Kolkata, India, inviting JU-Sylff fellows from Britain, Ireland, and other parts of India. The following is an introduction to the JU-Sylff Association and a report on the meeting organized by it.

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INTRODUCTION

The LANS Meet in progress.

The JU-Sylff Association was delighted to learn about Local Association Networking Support (LANS), the newly introduced Sylff support program. We felt that the grant recognized and encouraged the strong spirit of group work that the JU-Sylff Association has always upheld. LANS offered an excellent opportunity to bring together fellows, graduated and current, to discuss their own individual research and brainstorm over collective goals to address social, cultural, and environmental issues that concern us all in different ways.

Activities of the JU-Sylff Association

It was in 2005 that the JU-Sylff Program launched its association with the generous support of the Tokyo Foundation’s Sylff Network Program (SNP). For the first three years the JU-Sylff Association was reliant on the SNP for financial support, but for the last 10 years we have continued our activities unabated with contributions from Sylff fellows and financial support from the university and the Sylff Steering Committee.

Every week the researchers—current and, if they are in town, graduated fellows—come for Monday meetings to discuss research, activities of the association, and larger sociopolitical issues with Professor Joyashree Roy, the project director. Depending on our areas of research, we are often prompted to get in touch with a graduated fellow in some part of the world who can help us answer questions raised in our work or give us a lead as to how our work can be translated into some meaningful action within our society.

About once a month the association organizes the JU-Sylff Lecture Series, where academics and activists, under the JU-Sylff banner, engage with Sylff and non-Sylff students and researchers of the university. Intense and focused discussions follow, as the lectures bring together a small group of interested researchers. These lectures are frequently delivered by graduated Sylff fellows, further providing a platform to interact and exchange ideas. The JU-Sylff Annual Newsletter, Fellows, also provides a useful forum for current and graduated researchers to discuss their work.

Our Vision for LANS Meet 2018

When the LANS grant was announced, we saw an opportunity to bring together in the same physical space graduated and current fellows, as well as mentors, to discuss our work and imagine ways in which our and Sylff’s larger goals can be achieved through teamwork and capacity building. Interaction with graduated fellows and mentors helps us develop our ideas and become better researchers, but it is largely limited to either email correspondence or personal meetings with those who happen to be in the city. The LANS Meet could also provide a platform for current and graduated fellows to showcase their extracurricular skills. JU-Sylff fellows who are currently working in different institutions across the world are doing outstanding work. We felt that the opportunity to bring them together, allowing to share their diverse and inspiring stories, could give us fresh energy to pursue our goals and ambitions and to think bigger.

The meet was conceptualized and organized by all participating Sylff fellows, but it would not have been possible without the special commitment of and team building done by Ritajyoti Bandyopadhyay, Payoshni Mitra, Purbasha Auddy, Sudeshna Dutta, Sujaan Mukherjee, and Sritama Chatterjee, with invaluable guidance from Professor Roy.

 

DAY ONE: PRESENCE AND CONFLUENCE

On March 21, graduated and current fellows began trickling into Jadavpur University well before the scheduled time of the inaugural LANS Meet. They greeted each other enthusiastically, reminiscing with old colleagues and making friends with new faces. We were honored to have with us Ms. Mari Suzuki, Sylff Association, director for leadership development of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, who came especially to be a part of this special event. Her presence offered great encouragement to the fellows, and we were able to understand clearly that the goals we had set for ourselves were indeed in harmony with the larger Sylff mission and goals: to identify and support leaders for the future.

Apart from the fellows, many mentors of the JU-Sylff Program were present for the meet, including Professor Emerita Supriya Chaudhuri, Professor Amlan Dasgupta, Professor Samantak Das, Professor Paromita Chakravarti, Professor Sibashish Chatterjee, and Professor Kavita Panjabi. Members of the JU-Sylff Steering Committee attending the meet were Mr. Gour Krishna Pattanayak and Dr. Sanjay Gopal Sarkar, finance officer and joint registrar of Jadavpur University, respectively. The mentors and members of the Steering Committee have been with the Sylff community right from the program’s inception in 2003, when Jadavpur University was awarded a Sylff endowment.

In the august company of the Sylff fraternity, the latest issue of Fellows was introduced by Ms. Suzuki. The eleventh issue of Fellows addresses questions of academics’ role within and outside the walls of academia and their responsibility toward society at large. From this year, the newsletter will feature a guest editor from among graduated fellows, so as to increase the space for involvement and exchange.

Fellows’ Presentations and Group Discussion

Events were set in motion by Professor Roy, JU-Sylff project director. With Professor Chaudhuri chairing the opening session, fellows made brief presentations about their work; they had encapsulated their work in one slide each. With the same passion that had driven the fellows during their research under Sylff—and stayed with them afterward—they spoke about their work: their goals, their challenges, and their successes. They were also encouraged to think beyond their completed projects and speak to the assembled gathering about their dreams. What more did they want to do, not just individually but through teamwork?

On the one hand, the fellows spoke about the benefits that the Sylff program at Jadavpur University had offered them: through Monday meetings, progress report workshops, and the lecture series, it helped them structure their research and think beyond their own disciplines, indeed beyond the walls of academia. Many of the JU-Sylff fellows have incorporated into their work a strong sense of activism, as they try to make a positive impact on the society of which they are a part. This has happened at both the macro and micro levels, but it becomes evident from each fellow’s career that their leadership skills are growing from strength to strength.

As the discussion gathered momentum, new ideas and areas of common interest emerged. Among such areas are women’s rights and gender studies; studies of marginalized castes and communities; urban studies; sports; documentation and archive building; and the performing arts. The fellows decided that the best way to map these idea clusters was to put them in visual form. This was achieved by writing down ideas on sticky notes and arranging them on a whiteboard. What it reflected was how, by putting the individual voices together, a holistic idea of social development automatically emerged. The next step, naturally, was how to put these into action.

Capacity Building

The dialogue on capacity building, which was one of the initial goals of LANS Meet 2018, began. In keeping with the theme of the latest issue of Fellows, the discussion evolved around the ways in which the research that is conducted under the Sylff program could be disseminated in an efficient way so as to positively impact society at large. It was suggested that the JU-Sylff Association should focus on outreach. A number of ideas were put forth: along with the existing lecture series, a new Capacity Building Workshop Series was proposed, where Sylff fellows and mentors could offer workshops for the Jadavpur University student community on various skill sets, such as text editing, the ethics of fieldwork, and the use of archives. Potential plans for JU-Sylff LANS Meet 2019 were discussed in the hope that LANS will become an annual event in the JU-Sylff Association’s calendar.

Sylff fellows who are currently based in semi- or nonurban institutions suggested that the association could take upon itself a project to introduce students attending college in such areas to the idea of higher education and research as a viable career path. All fellows agreed that such dialogues are essential and should be the responsibility of fellows who are associated with a platform like Sylff.

Fellows who have worked with marginalized groups or with human subjects in the hope of finding solutions to the problems they face in society proposed that for the next LANS Meet (2019), a dialogue could be set up between other Sylff fellows and mentors and the individuals with whom they have interacted during the course of their research. This would not only allow researchers under the Sylff program to gain invaluable insights into the work done by their peers; it would also help give back to these communities some part of the knowledge generated through the addition of interpretive value by the researcher they have worked with.

Sylff Support Programs

Ms. Suzuki offered clarity in her description of the existing and new Sylff support programs, encouraging the JU-Sylff fellows to think big and plan ahead before applying for them. Fellows whose applications have been successful and those whose applications have not discussed how to write such proposals. Rimple Mehta spoke at length about her process. Sreerupa Sengupta remarked that what she found most valuable during the application process was that at each stage the reviewers at Sylff pushed her to think harder about the practicalities of her plan, while answering questions and informing her where her application could be improved. The Sylff Project Grant was mentioned, and ideas were exchanged about possible projects that might be supported by it.

Evening Gathering

Informal evening session.

Ms. Suzuki, Professor Roy, and the Sylff fellows made their way to the Global Change Program office on campus, where an informal cultural program took place. Fellows were able to showcase their extracurricular talents, as they conducted theater workshops, sang, and played music for everyone’s enjoyment.

The first day’s events ended on a note of great optimism. The fellows were energized, having connected with former peers and met new friends.

 

DAY TWO: SOCIAL ACTION PROGRAM

Visit to Premananda Memorial Leprosy Hospital

Serving lunch to the resident patients.

As part of the JU-Sylff Association’s Social Action Program, current fellows visit Premananda Memorial Leprosy Hospital each year. While this is always a fulfilling experience for the fellows and for the resident patients at the hospital, this year was exceptional. Unlike other years, the association linked the Social Action Program with the LANS Meet. This meant that graduated fellows, who had organized and visited the hospital during their time under Sylff, were able to revisit in a large group. Adding to that, we were honored to have with us Ms. Suzuki. Shounak Adhikari (MA, 2017) coordinated this year’s Social Action Program. Graduated and current fellows came forward enthusiastically to make this event a success.

The association bus reached the hospital at 11 am. After an opening address by Ms. Suzuki, Dr. Helen Roberts, who is superintendent of the hospital, gave a presentation on various aspects of leprosy and the activities of the Leprosy Mission Trust of India (TLMTI), whose history goes back 143 years. She informed us about how leprosy-affected people used to gather in the graveyard that now belongs to the hospital and, watching them in pain, Reverend Premananda Sen of the Oxford Mission started a dispensary for them. This eventually turned into a hospital.

Dr. Roberts spoke about recent advances in leprosy treatment and the ways in which the disease spreads. Twice a year healthcare workers go from house to house on behalf of the Leprosy Mission Trust to find persons showing symptoms of leprosy, and due to this initiative 30 percent more cases have been detected in the last two years compared to previous years. The hospital has started producing custom-made shoes for leprosy patients, which are now also delivered to other hospitals throughout the state. After the presentation, Ms. Roberts interacted with the fellows and answered their questions.  

With the contributions from the JU-Sylff fraternity, the fellows planned different aspects of the visit, including offering medical supplies to augment the hospital’s stock, presenting gifts (such as board games) to the patients, and decorating the hospital wards using stickers. A special lunch was also arranged for the patients.

Upon arriving, the fellows distributed the gifts and handed the medical supplies to the hospital. A popular film, Tiger Zinda Hai, was screened. The film is chosen every year based on the preferences expressed by the patients. It is usually a popular Bollywood film that makes a positive impact on the morale of the residents. During an intermission, the special lunch was served by the fellows. The hospital staff took the fellows to the factory where the special shoes are made and demonstrated their craft.

Graduated fellows decorating the hospital walls.

While the patients were watching the movie, the fellows went to the wards and decorated the walls with floral stickers. All the participants, including Ms. Suzuki, joined in the decoration. When the patients came for lunch, they were delighted to find the decorations. All the fellows personally interacted and spoke with every patient. Some patients returned to watch the movie after lunch, while others stayed in their wards for routine checkup and physiotherapy. Meanwhile staff members, doctors, and Sylff fellows had their lunch together.

After the day’s proceedings, the team departed from the hospital, looking forward to the next visit to Premananda Memorial Leprosy Hospital and hoping that, in the following years, the event will be as much a success as it was during LANS Meet 2018.

LOOKING AHEAD

Group photograph of LANS Meet participants.

It came as a happy, although not unexpected, surprise that fellows began writing their ideas for next year’s LANS Meet shortly after the inaugural gathering on April 21 and 22, 2018. The JU-Sylff Association has created a space where such ideas are to be stored for future reference, so that the planning for the next proposed LANS Meet can accommodate an even richer array of ideas.

After the success of the first LANS Meet at Jadavpur University, we feel that in subsequent such gatherings more ambitious plans may be brought to bear fruit, as we hope to involve not only a greater number of JU-Sylff fellows but also others who are involved with the research that is being conducted under the program at Jadavpur University and to take the mission of Sylff beyond the walls of the university, and indeed of academia, to ensure a sustainable future for society at large.

Delivering 3D-Printed Prosthetic Solutions in the Philippines: An Interview with Keio Fellow Yutaka Tokushima

May 9, 2018

Sylff Project Grant (SPG) is a new support program launched in September 2017. The program awards grants of up to $100,000 to support projects led by Sylff fellows with the aim of contributing to the resolution of a social issue. Selection criteria favor projects that take an innovative, sustainable approach and have high potential for social impact. Grantees must personify the Sylff mission and demonstrate the kind of leadership and commitment needed to spearhead social change.

In March 2018, the first grant was awarded to Yutaka Tokushima, recipient of a 2016–17 Sylff fellowship at Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus. In the following overview and interview, we profile the project’s leader, his previous accomplishments as a Sylff fellow, and his plans for translating those achievements into an enterprise with sustained social impact.

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Overview

Yutaka Tokushima is a doctoral student at Keio University specializing in fabrication design. Hoping to use his expertise for the good of society, Tokushima initiated a project aimed at leveraging digital technology to provide affordable prosthetic legs to low-income individuals in the Philippines.

Owing to dietary issues, diabetes is a growing problem among the poor in many developing countries, and when patients are poorly informed about their condition and its control, the complications can lead to amputation of the lower extremities. Unable to work, amputees typically sink deeper into poverty. A conventional artificial limb, which must be assembled by highly skilled artisans from multiple parts and a variety of materials, can cost anywhere between $3,000 and $9,000 in the Philippines. For someone subsisting on less than $400 a year, such a purchase is unthinkable. Yet an artificial limb would allow many of these amputees to find work and support themselves.

A 3D-printed prosthetic leg prototype and 3D printer (right).

In an effort to surmount these critical cost obstacles, Tokushima developed a system that uses 3D printing and machine learning to fabricate prosthetic legs entirely from plastic. The process yields dramatic savings, first of all, by eliminating the need for expensive materials. In addition, the application of a 3D printing system using software with machine-learning capabilities greatly reduces the need for advanced professional skills in the fabrication process. As a result, artificial legs can be created at a small fraction of the cost of conventional prostheses, putting them within reach of low-income amputees in developing countries.

Next, Tokushima set up a company, Instalimb, which is currently conducting clinical trials of 3D-printed prosthetic legs in Metro Manila. If all goes well, he plans to launch a social business in the form of a joint venture and begin providing 3D-printed prosthetic solutions on a commercial basis in Manila sometime in 2019. The next step will be to explore ways of expanding that business model to sparsely populated areas and outlying islands, where cost and accessibility hurdles are particularly high.

Tokushima believes he has a mission to apply his expertise in fabrication design to help better the lives of people in the developing world. He also believes that, in order to ensure lasting social impact, assistance from the developed world must focus on giving local citizens the means to tackle their communities’ issues themselves.

Interview

In the following interview, Yutaka Tokushima spoke with me about his goals and aspirations for the project recently awarded an SPG. (Interview conducted by Keita Sugai on March 26, 2018, at the offices of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research.)

Yutaka Tokushima, left, with program officer Keita Sugai.

— What made you decide you to undertake the development of a 3D-printed prosthetic solution?

YUTAKA TOKUSHIMA: It all started when I was working in Bohol, in the Philippines, with the Japan Overseas Cooperation Volunteers [JOCV] under the Japan International Cooperation Agency.

The digital fabrication technology already existed. I was wondering if that technology could be used to help people in Bohol help themselves. I realized that 3D printing was a groundbreaking technology that could give low-income individuals access to powerful fabrication tools even on a tiny island like Bohol. 

 

— Why did you choose Metro Manila as your market? 

TOKUSHIMA: I’ve always thought that I’d like to do something to contribute to development in Southeast Asia, and when I joined the JOCV, I was sent to Bohol. As an outgrowth of my work there, I had the idea of leveraging digital fabrication technology to help the poor via social entrepreneurship. I chose Metro Manila because it’s a big city with a lot of poverty and inadequate access to urban services, and because there’s a widespread feeling that something needs to be done about its social problems. In other words, it was the place that offered the best opportunities for this kind of social enterprise. For me, a key challenge is striking a balance between philanthropy and business viability, and Metro Manila seemed like the best location from that viewpoint.

 

— We know that you’ve already conducted some trials on a limited basis. What’s been the response from your subjects?

TOKUSHIMA: We’ve had a great response. I remember particularly an elderly man whose leg had been amputated seven years earlier. He couldn’t wait to get back to his job as a cabinetmaker, and his wife was so happy she was crying. It was truly gratifying.

 

— So, what are your short-term, medium-term, and long-term objectives?

TOKUSHIMA: This year I’m going to continue usability testing to perfect the product, while establishing a business model that can be applied to most third-world cities. I’m also going to make preparations for the launch of my venture business. And I’m going to conduct a feasibility study to gauge the possibility of developing a separate business model geared to remote areas and islands. Medium term, I want to begin offering prosthetic solutions throughout the Philippines within the next three years. Beyond that, I hope to use what I’ve learned in the Philippines to expand to other developing and semi-industrialized countries.

 

— Do you have any ideas about what you might do next?

TOKUSHIMA: I know that I want to pursue this approach of using new technology to empower developing nations. The traditional model of development assistance was based on a vertical relationship. The donor countries brought in their own materials, equipment, and know-how, and when something broke down or wore out, it was often difficult to fix it. The trend in international cooperation nowadays is toward a horizontal relationship between donor and recipient. There’s a growing emphasis on providing technology that empowers people in the developing world to solve their own problems. I’d like to be a part of that.

 

— Is there any message you’d like to convey to other Sylff Association members reading this interview?

TOKUSHIMA: Sylff's goals are very consistent with the trend toward horizontal cooperation that I was talking about. The Sylff mission centers on transcending differences and joining together to address the issues confronting society. It’s an honor to be selected for a Sylff Project Grant. For others around the world who are eager to pursue similar projects, I want to say that we’re lucky to be living in a time when there are people who will give us a chance. I want to make the most of that opportunity and provide an example for others by strengthening cooperative ties and making a real difference in the world.

Building a Closer Network of Socially Engaged Leaders

May 7, 2018
By null

In this article, written by the executive director of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research when the sixth Voices booklet was published, reaffirms the Sylff program’s founding vision and urges all to become active members of the Sylff community.

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This special issue of Voices from the Sylff Community (volume 6) highlights the many new initiatives that have been launched to commemorate Sylff’s thirtieth anniversary in 2017. Having been closely involved in the program since its very inception, I am happy to see how Sylff has grown into an important fellowship program that has helped nurture leaders around the world.

Some of the most prestigious international fellowships three decades ago—such as the Fulbright and Rhodes Scholarships—were national-scale programs that offered outstanding foreign students an opportunity to spend time in the country of the fellowship provider and gain a deeper appreciation of the country’s customs and values.

The guiding principles behind the launch of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund were similarly centered on supporting the development of future leaders. But rather than focusing on Japan—the country of the donor—Sylff sought to cultivate respect for diversity. Mr. Ryoichi Sasakawa, the late founder of the Nippon Foundation, was keen on nurturing leaders who would work for the common good of all humankind, transcending differences in religion, culture, ethnicity, political systems, and levels of economic development. So Sylff endowments were donated to universities marked by dynamic growth and a diverse, open-minded student body, regardless of the institution’s country, size, or history. Sylff administrators were asked to select fellows not according to a uniform, global standard but on the basis who, in their minds, were most likely to bridge narrow differences and make a positive contribution to their respective communities, regions, and countries.  

Nippon Foundation founder Ryoichi Sasakawa, right, with Sylff fellows at Leipzig University in May 1992.

The first institution to receive a Sylff endowment of US$1 million was the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. Today, 69 institutions in 44 countries have become members of the Sylff community, providing fellowships with income generated from investing their respective Sylff funds. The amount generated by investing $1 million may have been sizable 30 years ago, especially for developing countries, but as living standards rose with the growth of their economies, the fellowship amount, regrettably, is no longer regarded as being particularly generous. Some universities have been able to overcome this problem by skillfully retaining and reinvesting their Sylff income to expand their capital more than eightfold; they are now able to disburse hundreds of thousands of dollars in Sylff fellowships each year.

The difficulty of generating sufficient investment income has been compounded by the Lehman crisis and the low interest rates that have prevailed since then. As a result, the amount provided as fellowships has dropped markedly at around half of all Sylff institutions, further eroding Sylff’s competitiveness. To break this vicious cycle, the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research (known as the Tokyo Foundation before spring 2018) has—in consultation and partnership with the Nippon Foundation—devised a means of disbursing a guaranteed amount each year to students at Sylff universities. Under this “new financial scheme,” the Sylff funds of participating institutions will be pooled and invested by the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, and fellowships will be provided directly to graduate students nominated by the steering committees.

When we surveyed the many fellowships available three decades ago, we found that while many government and corporate scholarships existed to support students in the natural sciences, few offered funding for students in the humanities and social sciences. This was another factor behind the decision to direct Sylff fellowships to graduate students in these fields, especially those undertaking research from an international, interdisciplinary perspective.

What qualities do we seek in a Sylff fellow? There is no single answer to this question, as the type of leader society needs will invariably change with the times. While academic excellence is an important asset, it alone is no guarantee of leadership potential. What we look for is an ability to navigate the increasingly complex and interconnected problems confronting modern society; to understand and respect differences in culture and values; and to work for the common good of humankind. We want each of the 69 Sylff institutions in 44 countries to identify future leaders best suited to addressing the issues faces by their respective communities and regions. We have, accordingly, asked some universities to adjust their selection policies in line with this basic aim. Sylff is not a needs-based scholarship, nor should it be turned into a tool to advance government policy. I hope that administrators will keep in mind Mr. Sasakawa’s vision of nurturing leaders who will bridge differences and bring the world closer together as one family.

Sylff and NF-JLEP Association members at the April 2018 gathering in Tokyo to commemorate the launch of the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research.

The Sylff Association was launched in August 2017 in commemoration of Sylff’s thirtieth anniversary. Its members include the over 16,000 current and graduated fellows, the steering committee members at all 69 Sylff institutions, and the staff members of the Nippon Foundation (donor) and the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research (secretariat). The Association creates a single identify for all Sylff stakeholders, and I hope that we will forge even closer ties in the years ahead.  

Being chosen a Sylff fellow therefore automatically confers membership in the Association and eligibility to apply for the many support programs the Association offers. The secretariat is now busy developing additional programs and inviting applications. I hope everyone will become an active member of our Association, and by this I mean not just as a recipient of support but—in keeping with Sylff’s founding vision—also by offering to support others, either financially or in the area of their expertise.

I hope we can grow into a more closely knit Sylff community, sharing our knowledge and skills to build a world marked not by division but by understanding. I look forward to hearing about your research and social engagement activities through our online communication tools, as well as in person whenever you are in Tokyo, so that we can work together to make the Sylff Association a truly valuable network of socially engaged leaders.

 

The Many Hands of Humanitarian Aid：September 2017 Mexico Earthquake Relief Activities

April 26, 2018
By 22363

Fernanda Herrera Lopez is a Sylff fellow currently enrolled in a PhD program at El Colegio de México (Colmex). She was in Mexico City on the day of the magnitude 7.1 earthquake that struck on September 19, 2017. She is a member of the Colmex 19S Committee, which has led relief activities after the earthquake with support from the Sylff Disaster Relief Fund. Fernanda shares her experience and learnings.

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Up until last year, September 19 was a date that most Mexicans associated with the year 1985. In the early hours of that day in 1985, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake struck Mexico City, killing thousands of people and bringing together millions more. From that day on, citizens have conducted annual earthquake drills, both for safety preparedness and to remember and honor those who lost their lives.

September 19, 2017, was no exception. At exactly 11:00 am, students, professors, and workers of El Colegio de México (Colmex) heard the seismic alert and evacuated the facilities, as did all the other students and workers in neighboring areas. We then went back to our daily lives without knowing that the next couple of days would be spent away from the classrooms, scrabbling through rubble and helping people in improvised shelters.

The earthquake reached Mexico City at 1:14 pm. Most of us were having lunch in the school cafeteria when we felt the ground shake beneath us. Surprisingly, the alert did not go off right away; we later learned that our proximity to the epicenter in Morelos—just under 120 km away—meant that the warning system could not detect the seismic movement in advance, and it was only as we were leaving the building that the alarm was activated. Once outside Colmex, we heard rumors that some buildings had collapsed, that there were fires due to gas leaks, and that people were trapped inside their homes and offices. Later that day, we found out that the rumors were true; more than 40 buildings had fallen to the ground, taking with them 225 human lives.

The help was immediate: People rushed to pharmacies and bought first aid supplies and water for the survivors. All construction retailing companies donated or sold out basic rescue equipment like shovels, carts, mallets, heavy-duty gloves, and hard hats. People who could not afford to buy medical or construction supplies donated their time and effort, helping remove rubble from rescue sites and preparing and delivering warm meals to volunteers and rescuers. Citizens fought day and night to rescue trapped people and animals. If someone got tired, there was always another volunteer willing to step in. If someone lost hope, there were words of encouragement.

International aid was also prompt, and Mexico welcomed rescuers from El Salvador, Israel, Japan, Panama, Spain, and the United States. Even though we knew that the chances of finding survivors grew slimmer with each passing day, we all kept despair at a distance and focused on assisting the rescue teams as much as we could. Finding people who did not survive discouraged all, but we soon learned from the Japanese that death was also to be met with respect, and we joined them whenever they bowed to the victims.



Sylff Colmex Earthquake Relief Fund


Two days after the earthquake, we received a very kind email from the Sylff Association secretariat asking if we were all right. We told them that the Colmex community had not been tragically affected and that we were working to help those who were less fortunate than us; in fact, students, professors, and staff had managed to collect and deliver more than 10 tons of supplies and daily necessities to communities in Mexico City and other neighboring states. The Sylff Association then offered to start a fund-raising campaign among its members to help with the relief activities. We were happy to hear this and, subsequently, to receive very generous donations from the Sylff Association, namely, the Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research, the Jadavpur University Sylff Association, and Belgrade University Sylff fellow Marina Stetic. This reinforced our notion that the Sylff network has strong ties based on solidarity and brotherhood and that the interaction among its members goes beyond the mere generation of knowledge and the transmission of ideas.

Some of the members of the 19S Committee.

The Relief Fund meant that we could widen our scope of help, but at the same time, it brought with it a greater responsibility to choose and direct the resources. Bearing this in mind, Colmex created the 19S Committee, composed of two full-time professors, Dr. Sandra Kuntz and Dr. Satomi Miura; Laura Valverde, director for Student Affairs; Colmex treasurer Hugo Ortega; Dr. Laura Flamand, vice president of Academic Affairs; and two Sylff members, Erick Serna and myself. Together, we agreed that we would target three underprivileged communities in Mexico City, Morelos, and Oaxaca. This unanimous decision was reached after reviewing several proposals and holding meetings with project representatives and locals. One of our main concerns was that the initially abundant help was slowly running out, yet the survivors had not even managed to make a partial recovery.

Our choice of relief items to purchase was based on the following reasoning: People needed medicine, because the precarious conditions in which they live promote gastrointestinal and eye diseases. Survivors also required winter items like jackets, warm sleeping bags, and tents to deal with the cold, since many of them still lived in temporary shelters.


Participant Accounts


Erick Serna, a 2016 Sylff fellow at El Colegio de México, traveled alongside five Colmex students and Professor Satomi Miura to San Mateo del Mar, Oaxaca, on February 10, 2018. The group delivered 850 food packages, 800 medicine kits, 44 tents, 46 sleeping bags, and 35 winter jackets for men, women, and children. The following is his account.

“We traveled all Friday night and Saturday morning. The truck with the relief items arrived first. By the time we got there, the women of the community—all of them from indigenous groups—had unloaded most of the load. The language they spoke was Huave. Most of the women were accompanied by their children, some of whom were babies. CAMI, a center created by local women organized the delivery of the items. While traveling across San Mateo, we noticed the context of poverty in which the community lives. The town relies on fishing, yet such economic activity is not enough to fulfill the daily needs of its inhabitants.

Erick Serna in Huejotongo.

“After visiting San Mateo del Mar, Huejotongo, and San Gregorio, I had many contradictory feelings. I felt grateful to the Sylff Association for allowing me to continue doing social labor. But I learned that sometimes it is very difficult to have a meaningful impact given the social and cultural context in which some communities live. Nevertheless, I found that a little help is better than none, and I hope that we can find more reasons to continue helping our brothers.”

I (Fernanda Herrera Lopez), a 2016 fellow at El Colegio de México, accompanied two Colmex students and three staff members to San Gregorio, Mexico City, on February 5, 2018. We delivered 120 food packages and 32 winter jackets for men, women, and children.

Relief activity in San Gregorio.

We arrived in San Gregorio early in the afternoon. Two locals guided us through narrow unpaved streets—so narrow, in fact, that we had to leave the vans behind and carry the food packages ourselves. The first community we visited had already begun the demolition of destroyed houses. We delivered daily necessities to villagers and then headed to other communities that were more difficult to reach.

My guide was a civil defense expert. He pointed to a sign painted on the front window of a house and explained its meaning to me: the “6” to the left indicated the number of people who used to live in the house, the “0” on top was the number of people who died on September 19, the “0” on the bottom was the number of animals that lived there, and the “D” to the right indicated that the house was to be demolished. Once I learned this information, I could not help but feel a great sadness whenever we saw a number different than “0” marked on the upper part of a sign.

Since most of the houses in the area were deemed unsuitable for living, the local authorities had asked their inhabitants to relocate elsewhere, but some people continued living there. They explained that they had no money to pay rent elsewhere and that all they ever possessed was right there, even if it had been reduced to rubble. Families appeared to be in greater need than they were in September, because local businesses and factories had closed down due to the earthquake. This meant that the survivors had an extra adversity to face: unemployment. In spite all of this, people continue to have high hopes for the future. I think that, by easing their burdens in the short term, the aid that the Sylff Association kindly provided will allow them to recover.


Lessons

The lessons we have taken from the earthquake and the delivery of the relief items go well beyond anything we could have learned in the classrooms. In particular, we found that, despite Colmex’s full commitment to improving the social, economic, and environmental conditions of Mexico through theoretical and applied research, there is still much to learn from people whose voices we had not heard before. We are indebted to the Sylff Association for providing invaluable help to the survivors of the earthquake and for bringing us closer to them. We hope that joint efforts like these will have lasting impacts on all the agents involved.

To Unmake a Victim: Criteria for the Successful Social Reintegration of Human Trafficking Victims

April 3, 2018
By 24051

Rui Caria is a Sylff fellow currently enrolled in a master’s program at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. He is currently addressing research in the field of criminology, specifically victimization and social reintegration of human trafficking victims, which should be a legitimate policy to protect victims and prevent retrafficking.

***

Introduction

I am currently doing my dissertation for a master’s in criminal law. The title is “The social reintegration of human trafficking victims,” a theme that deals not only with international and European criminal law, criminology, and victimology, but also shines the light on how criminal policy should be carried out in order to find a balance between victim protection and criminal prosecution.

The goal of my research is to advance a criminal law policy oriented by the idea of social reintegration of the victims, capable of harmonizing and bettering the different mechanisms of victim protection, while at the same time helping the fight against trafficking.

To reach this goal, I explore the current international legislation on human trafficking and compare policies from various countries to see which are most effective and which to avoid. I also explore the real circumstances of the victims to paint a clear picture of their vulnerability, followed by an examination of the different concepts of vulnerability in various legislations to see which one is the most suitable for policy making. To conclude, a proposal of a concept of social reintegration is advanced, as well as an attempt to justify its purpose in criminal policy, and a study of the various criteria that in my understanding contribute to its success.

 

What Is Human Trafficking?

The isolation of the victim. (Photo courtesy of Pexels.com)

Human trafficking is one of the most devastating crimes occurring in the international landscape, not only for the gravity of its offenses but also for the way it exploits the victims through their vulnerability. It is considered a crime against personal liberty, transforming human beings into things and using them as such.

According to international and European law—Article 3 of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Palermo Protocol) of 2000, and Article 2 of the Directive 2011/36/EU—trafficking in human beings refers to the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harboring, or receipt of persons, by means of the threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power, or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person for the purpose of exploitation.

This exploitation includes the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labor or services, including begging, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, exploitation of criminal activities, or the removal of organs.

The definition of what constitutes human trafficking is important to determine what actions fall under the scope of the crime, as well as which victims.

 

Victims and Their Vulnerability

The despair of the victim. (Photo courtesy of Pexels.com)

According to the European directive and the Palermo Protocol, a position of vulnerability means a situation in which the person concerned has no real or acceptable alternative but to submit to the abuse involved. What, then, are some of the factors that contribute to the special vulnerability of human trafficking victims?

A brief criminological analysis will help us reach an understanding. By and large, human trafficking victims are people in situations of great economic struggle and social unbalance, originating from countries or regions that are both economically and socially debilitated. In the face of these circumstances, these people seek countries with better conditions where they might improve their lives, and it is with this idea that they fall in the trap of human trafficking.

Their being in a strange country or region is another factor of their vulnerability, for they lack knowledge of this new territory and suffer from geographical disorientation. Also, traffickers make them afraid of violence on themselves and their families. Another fear is that their community might find out about their activities in prostitution. Finally, a distrust of the local police and judicial authorities is fed by the traffickers that, along with the previous factors, leaves these people extremely dependent on them, which helps reinforce the control of their captors.

Various personal circumstances can contribute to the acceptance of their situation. Victims might have developed drug dependency during their stay in a foreign country, which makes them crave income so that they can satisfy their needs. They might also be economically indebted to their traffickers for having brought them to a new country, so that they need to work and suffer the exploitation to pay off that debt; this is a common stratagem among traffickers. Studies have shown that there are very reduced percentages of voluntary exercise of prostitution, indicating dark figures of exploitation in this area.

In light of these factors, Article 3 of the Palermo Protocol deems the consent of the victims irrelevant to excuse the criminal action when it is used in the context of this special vulnerability.

 

Social Reintegration as a Criminal Policy Goal

The shame of the victim. (Photo courtesy of Pexels.com)

It is this special vulnerability of the victims of human trafficking that, in our understanding, justifies the need for social reintegration, given the potential for prevention through this process. Before developing these justifications, we must define social reintegration: it is a process by which secondary victimization is maximally reduced throughout the victim’s journey before, during, and after criminal procedure, with the goal that they are not further victimized and, especially, that they are not retrafficked.

Secondary victimization, which social reintegration works to avoid, is a process by which, through complex selection and stigmatization by—but not only by—the judicial process and its entities, a person assumes the stereotype of a victim, suffering further victimization as a consequence of the way she regards her own identity. Human trafficking victims are very susceptible to this kind of process due to the stigmatization they suffer from their sexual work, the constant abuse from their traffickers, and their placement in the illegal market.

So, to sum up, the special vulnerability of the victims, whose factors we previously referred to, make victims more prone to stigmatization and mistreatment, which results in secondary victimization, therefore justifying the need for social reintegration. This is the humanistic or human rights approach aspect present in this process. The criminal law approach aspect, on the other hand, may manifest itself by justifying this minimization of secondary victimization as a form of prevention of future crimes. The logic we put behind this is the following: if social reintegration prevents secondary victimization, it prevents victims from being revictimized, mainly and ideally in the form of retrafficking; if it prevents them from being retrafficked, it prevents the crime of trafficking, for the object of this crime is the person itself.

We made the effort of emphasizing the two aspects of the process—the human rights approach and the criminal law approach—because these are the two opposing approaches represented in the policy making of human trafficking today: the first oriented towards the protection of victims and the recognition of their rights and the second towards border or migration control and criminal prosecution of the traffickers. We believe that by incorporating both these approaches in its goals, social reintegration can be a balanced criminal policy, taking into account the protection of vulnerable victims and the fight against the crime that exploits them.

We perceive this social reintegration not as a mere post-interventive response to crime, as it is often thought, but as a holistic process that is present before, during, and after criminal procedure and therefore dependent on various criteria for its success. For it to be successful, we believe there must be: a well-defined and useful concept of trafficking of human beings, mainly with regard to the position of vulnerability; a successful identification of the victims so they can benefit from the protection allowed to them by criminal procedure; mechanisms of protection integrated into criminal procedure that reduce the degrading effect it tends to have on the victims, allowing for their protection, legal assistance, and support, without demanding their cooperation in the prosecution; realistic and well-adjusted criteria in regard to the return, or not, of the victims to their country of origin, as well as defined obligations for the states regarding the matter of repatriation.

It is a difficult process, with many variables dependent on making it successful and many in need of improvement. However, I believe that through a good understanding of the real circumstances of the victims and effort on the improvement of international criminal policy to humanistic ideas of protection, there is way to unmake trafficking by unmaking the victims.

 

Rural Restructuring in the Visegrad Group after the Political and Economic Transition

March 30, 2018
By 24143

Specializing in rural geography and socioeconomic modeling, József Lennert, a 2017 Sylff fellow at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, shares highlights of his doctoral dissertation concerning the process and trends of counterurbanization after the fall of socialism in the Visegrad countries: Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia. Lennert made a comparison with the experiences of Western countries as well as among those of the four Visegrad countries, which pose both similar and distinctive aspects.

***

Introduction

Thanks to the long-lasting influence of the romanticized Anglo-Saxon narrative of rural idyll, rural areas are still often perceived as stagnant, untouched by modernity, and resistant to any change. However, this is far from the truth: change never avoided rural areas, its rate simply varied during the course of history. From the 1970s a fast-paced rural transformation process started in the first world, bringing about fundamental changes in many aspects of rurality. These intertwining change processes are often summarized with the umbrella term “rural restructuring.”

Some of these changes included shifts in migration processes. Before rural restructuring, rural areas had been suffering for a long time from rural out-migration (with the exception of some settlements in the vicinity of an urban center, which were affected by suburbanization). Around the 1970s, a new migration trend called counterurbanization appeared in many first-world countries. Counterurbanization meant the (partial) reverse of previous trends, and migration surpluses appeared even in some previously depopulating remote rural areas. One of the driving forces of these new migratory movements was the increasing appreciation of natural and cultural amenities of rural areas—amenity migration. Rural restructuring also had an impact on land use. Instead of a landscape dominated by monocultural, productivist agriculture, a more diverse, multifunctional countryside is now preferred. These changes also opened up new future prospects and development possibilities for many previously neglected rural areas.

While the first world underwent rural restructuring, political and economic transition brought different changes and challenges to rural areas of the former socialist bloc. Realizing this, I set the main goals of my research as follows:

  • to analyze the transformation of rural areas of the Visegrad Group after the political and economic transition;
  • to distinguish those processes similar to Western rural restructuring from those processes derived from the political and economic transition;
  • to identify the similarities and differences between the four countries and explore the role of historical backgrounds;
  • to map the spatial structure of rural areas in the light of the aforementioned processes; and
  • to determine whether the development policies in place are capable of addressing the ongoing transformation processes and territorial differences.

To achieve these aims, I conducted my research in the following manner:

  • I analyzed trends in migration processes and changes in land cover in the Visegrad Group after the political and economic transition;
  • I created a typology of the rural areas of the Visegrad Group; and
  • through a case study, I examined how the allocation of European Union funds varied between different types of settlements.

In the following sections, I would like to share some of the most important findings of this research.

Material and Methods

Figure 1. Urban areas, commutable rural areas, and remote rural areas of the Visegrad Group. Own elaboration.

To examine the processes at the lowest possible level, I conducted my analysis in the spatial level of local administrative units (LAU 2). While my units of analysis are not completely analogous with the municipalities and settlements of the four countries, I will refer to them as such for the sake of a more straightforward discussion.

To achieve the goals stated above, I used a two-step delimitation method. I considered all units of analysis with less than 5,000 inhabitants, as well as those municipalities that have higher populations but do not possess city rights, to be rural (regardless of administrative status). Based on the Western experiences of rural restructuring, I made a further distinction between commutable rural and remote rural areas. I defined remote rural areas as rural areas that require 45 minutes or more of driving to reach the nearest city with at least 50,000 inhabitants; the remaining rural settlements are considered commutable rural (Figure 1).

According to this definition, even though most units of analysis can be considered rural, only 28.9%  of the population of the Visegrad Group lives in commutable rural areas and another 11.5% in remote rural areas. Among the Visegrad countries, Slovakia was characterized with the highest and Hungary with the lowest share of rural residents.

For the purposes of analyzing migration trends, I used data from the statistical offices of the four countries: Központi Statisztikai Hivatal (KSH) in Hungary, Główny Urząd Statystyczny (GUS) in Poland, Český Statistický Úřad (ČSÚ) in the Czech Republic, and Štatistický úrad (ŠÚ) in Slovakia.

Figure 2. The typology of the selected rural settlements. Own elaboration.

The Corine Land Cover database was used to analyze land cover changes of the Visegrad Group. From the original 44 land cover categories, I created 8 aggregated categories: artificial surfaces, arable land, vineyards and fruit cultivations, grasslands, heterogeneous agricultural areas, forests, wetlands and other natural areas, and water bodies.

To analyze the allocation of funds from the European Union, I used Hungary as a case study. I randomly selected 50 commutable rural and 50 remote rural municipalities. Based on the results of the previous analysis, I classified them into groups with distinguishable migration and land use characteristics. I also took into account the state of the built environment, which is a good indicator of ongoing social changes (Figure 2). Finally, I analyzed EU-supported projects from the 2007–2013 programming period for the selected 100 municipalities.

Results

Figure 3. Rural migration trends in the Visegrad Group after the political and economic transition. Own elaboration based on data from KSH, GUS, ČSÚ, and ŠÚ.

 

The results indicate that the transition brought about drastic changes in the rural migration trends of the Visegrad Group. While rural out-migration dominated in the decades of state socialism, after 1990 the rural areas can be characterized with an increasingly positive balance (Figure 3). However, this surplus was mostly limited to the commutable rural areas. These results indicate the widespread emergence of suburbanization: the concentration of the population in suburban settlements around the central city of an urban agglomeration (Figure 4). Whereas in Western Europe and North America this process had already begun to take wings in the early twentieth century, it was restrained to a great extent in the centrally planned economies until the transition. After the fall of socialism, however, the former constraints lifted, and a rapid urban sprawl took place. This partially controlled process also had an impact on land cover change.

Figure 4. Rural migration trends in the Visegrad Group at the municipality level. Own elaboration based on data from KSH, GUS, ČSÚ, and ŠÚ.

 

Counterurbanization had a central role in the rural turnaround of the first world, but the appearance of this process in the research region is limited to a few destinations. Rural depopulation still persists in a large part of the remote rural areas of the Visegrad Group. Also, some remote rural locations became migration destinations for the socioeconomically disadvantaged. This unfavorable process is driven by economic necessities: those who are excluded from the work market are sometimes left with only one solution—to sell their former residence for a less valuable location and use up the difference for day-to-day expenses. Ultimately, this movement reduces their chances of reintegration into the labor market and leads to their further deprivation.

Figure 5. Land cover change trends in the Visegrad Group between 1990 and 2012. Own elaboration based on Corine Land Cover data.

 

The increase of artificial surfaces and forests and the decrease of arable land were already present during the decades of state socialism, and the results of the analysis show that the political and economic transition did not alter these long-term trends in land cover change (Figure 5). After the political and economic transition, however, the loosely controlled urban sprawl led to more chaotic expansion of artificial surfaces than in previous decades.

While some general trends are common for each country, we can still observe significant differences in the rate of change and in the spatial patterns. For example, despite the general shrinkage in the acreage of arable land, we can still identify areas of increase in the eastern regions of Poland (Figure 6). In these areas small-scale family farming persisted during the socialist era. The relatively low unemployment of these regions indicates that many former industrial workers returned to subsistence farming. This safety net function explains why market-controlled land abandonment did not reach the region.

Figure 6. Changes in the area of arable land between 1990 and 2012. Own elaboration based on Corine Land Cover data.

 

The significant transformation from arable land to grassland in the Czech peripheries stands in stark contrast to the trends in Eastern Poland. Behind this, we can once again find region-specific reasons. This area was inhabited by Sudeten Germans since the Middle Ages, but after World War II the Czechoslovak government expelled the vast majority of them. This event was shortly followed by the reorganization of agricultural land into state farms and cooperatives, thus preventing the new residents from forming emotional ties with their land before the socialist transformation of agriculture. After the restitution, this lack of attachment led to land abandonment in the changing market environment, where farming was no longer profitable.

These two examples reveal that in regions with divergent socioeconomic and historical backgrounds, even similar challenges can induce radically different changes, leading to further differences in the socioeconomic circumstances of the localities.

The results discussed above pose the question of whether the allocation of EU funds takes into account the differences between rural communities. In order to close the development gap, disadvantaged settlements should be favored, and the implemented projects should reflect the unique needs of these settlements. Fund allocation in the 100 municipalities selected for the case study shows us a mixed picture. Generally, the per capita fund allocation favors the disadvantaged (e.g., remote rural) municipalities. However, the combination of several socioeconomic challenges (e.g., small population coupled with rural out-migration) can lead to insufficient human capital and completely prevent the absorption of the EU funds.

Moreover, disadvantaged settlements that receive a sufficient amount of resources may nonetheless not use them in the most efficient way. In socially and economically balanced settlements, a significant percentage of the resources are spent on increasing the competitiveness of local business. But this is not true for the disadvantaged settlements; there the emphasis is shifted to investments in settlement infrastructure and local services. While these are important aims, without a more dynamic local economy, there is little to stop the decline and decay of these settlements.

Workshops on the Socio-Analysis of Oppression

February 22, 2018
By 19626

Melinda Kovai, a 2009 Sylff fellow at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, and her team members have recently completed their SLI project, which took them over one and a half years, to address the problem of social disparity strongly linked to negative notions toward the “Gypsy.” The project incorporated the idea of reflection on one’s own social position to encourage understanding of different social groups, which contributed to the uniqueness of the project. The training materials, the final project product, have been already integrated into two courses at universities in Hungary. The project members hope that the materials will be utilized in many educational settings not only in Hungary but also in neighboring countries faced with similar social challenges. They are determined to keep working on resolving the issue and extending the impact to society.

***

Background

A mother and son of the Roma people, commonly known as Gypsies.

In Hungary, primarily due to their disadvantaged social position, the Roma people are by far the greatest subjects to racism. In public discourse, the “Gypsy” is inseparably bound up with such negative notions as poverty, permanent unemployment, benefits, informal economy, and crime and, more generally, with fears related to existential insecurities. In most social domains, the “Gypsy” is intertwined with a certain inferior class position and social marginality, such as exclusion from or taking the most inferior realms of the formal labor market, with possibilities severely restricted by manifold exclusive processes. The Gypsy-Hungarian ethnic distinction is in many cases a manifestation of class difference, since class positions are heavily ethnicized in many areas of life, in villages and town districts, and in educational and other institutions. While the lower middle and middle classes are associated with majority Hungarians, marginalization from the labor market is associated with the Roma. Everyday social conflicts are hence often experienced as confrontations between different ethnically interpreted class positions, where the “Gypsy” appears as a menace to the middle-class normativity of the majority.

Our team of trainers comprised social scientists whose academic work focuses on social inequalities, public education, and the Roma communities. The project idea arose from a shared urge to engage in activities that have a more direct and palpable impact on the lives of the communities we work with. Therefore, this project was also a way to experiment and to elaborate methods of intervention and ways of committed political engagement that feel right and adequate to us, to our habitus. We held four one-day and four two-day workshops for six groups of university students training to become public-sector professionals and for two groups of Roma university students. Half of the workshops took place in Budapest and the other half in other big cities. In the workshops, participants were invited to work with and reflect on their own social position, their social roles, and their class position. Our workshops are based on the idea that reflection on one’s own social position can help to better understand the behavior of other social groups and encourage collective action and solidarity across groups. Recognizing the social interests and conflicts involved in encounters with the Roma helps to identify the source of negative emotions and reveals how racism veils the real causes of conflicts.

Potential Target Groups and Specific Objectives

The main target group of our workshops is professionals who regularly encounter Roma clients as part of their professional roles. According to the literature, street-level bureaucrats are public-service professionals who represent the state by their work and, on a daily basis, make numerous small decisions in relation to the lives of their clients.[1] Typical examples of such professions are social workers, health care professionals, and the police. In this project, we offered the trainings to university students preparing to enter these professions; in the future, we plan to approach in-service professionals as well.

The workshops address the complexity and tensions of the professional roles related to social assistance, care, and support. We spend time discussing the typical sociological and recruitment characteristics of the professions. We had to bear in mind that university students do not yet have professional casework experience, so the workshops concentrated on their past “private” minority-majority encounters (which most often happened at school) on the one hand and the motivations, desires, and fears related to the caring relationship on the other.

When working with university students, school was often an important theme: we discussed the role of schooling in social mobility, the class-specific strategies related to schooling, as well as the inequalities of the Hungarian education system, and the school’s role in mitigating or reproducing inequalities.

Our other important target group consisted of young intellectuals of Roma background. In these workshops, we discussed the situation of the Roma people within the Hungarian social structure, the typical Roma roles and social phenomena (e.g., ethnically framed poverty, entrepreneurship, and widening middle class), and the constraints of upward mobility. Subsequently, the workshops addressed the tensions of harmonizing the experience of deprived homes and middle-class intellectual roles. By sharing their stories and experiences, the workshops helped young Roma intellectuals recognize the similarities in their backgrounds and challenges and hence share the “weight” of upward mobility.

The Workshops

Melinda Kovai, team members, and other sociologists discussing the contents of the training.

The first part of the workshops concentrated on the social positions of the participants; they shared their memories and their private and work experiences in relation to conflicts with the Roma people. We then explored these encounters in a dramatic form, wherein participants placed themselves in the shoes of both sides and collectively explored the social constraints from which behaviors (stereotypically) associated with the “Gypsy” derive. Ideally, the recognition of common social constraints develops a sense of solidarity and recognition of the differences of the other.

It was important to constantly respond to the social differences among participants and the corresponding differences in career choices. On the final day of the workshops for university students, we set aside time to explore their career choices in the light of their social positions and experiences. While for first-generation young intellectuals our workshops shed light on the constraints and possibilities coming with their upward mobility, for young people coming from long-standing intellectual families the training provided an opportunity to reflect on their privileges.

The following training methods were employed in the workshops:

  • warm-up and energizing games
  • dramatic exercises, the adaptation of the “wall of success” in particular
  • storytelling: sharing experiences, which then become materials for dramatic exercises
  • sociodramatic exercises and action methods: the enactment of typical situations related to ethnosocial conflicts, exploring the motivations, positions, and interests of the participants through dramatic enactment
  • sharing, reflection, and discussion

The overall aims were that, by the end of the workshops, participants

  • understand that society is hierarchically organized along various dimensions and that the distribution of various forms of capital (economic, cultural, and social), based on which class positions form and encounter other social determinants such as housing, gender, and ethnicity, are decisive;
  • have a comprehensive idea of the structure of Hungarian society and the perspectives of people in various positions;
  • have a reflective understanding of their families’ and their own social positions, their mobility pathways, their career choices, and their interests, needs, demands, beliefs, values, tastes, and so forth;
  • understand how society shapes personal beliefs, interests, demands, and tastes and how habitus works;
  • understand how social conflicts are sparked by the clash of different habitus and how actors in higher social positions generate such conflicts according to their interests with the aim of preventing the formation of antisystemic alliances; and
  • in the light of their own social positions, recognize the opportunities for social action and possible alliances with groups in different but proximate positions to form antisystemic alliances despite the differences in their positions and habitus.

Participants’ Voices

At the end of the workshops, as a closure, we asked all participants to share how they enjoyed the course and which elements they liked and disliked in particular. Two weeks after the workshops, we also invited participants to anonymously fill out a detailed online feedback form. In the questionnaire, they could assess group directing, the structure of the workshop, and the tasks and activities, and they were asked to describe their positive and negative experiences and to give us suggestions for improvement. The majority of the participants gave an overall positive feedback on the training and the trainers. They highlighted that, even though it was an emotionally shocking experience, recognizing their own social position and social differences in general were the most important lesson of the workshop. In the participants’ own words: 

“I engaged both intellectually and emotionally—I was deeply touched in both respects. I thought a lot about these themes in the time between the workshops. The workshops were emotionally exhausting, but they were also extremely interesting intellectually.”

“I developed a sense of social remorse. . . . I could do so many things to be more responsible socially. . . . I used to see helpers as being in a great distance from me, as being much more clever, experienced, capable people. . . . Yet they just probably took the initiative, started something, and then became good at it. . . . Next year I will volunteer at a shelter for elderly or mentally disabled people.” 

“The topics broke taboos. It is painful to realize how stereotypical our thinking is.”

“I grappled with multiple feelings over a short period of time.”

Based on the feedback and our own experiences, we concluded that it would be more worthwhile to organize two- or even three-day workshops for each group. One-day workshops do not provide sufficient time to process such shattering and difficult experiences. One-day workshops were less successful as participants did not have time to open up or, to the contrary, brought in very moving stories and experiences into the group that could not be processed sufficiently and reassuringly in the given time frame. This difficulty was the most striking in the workshops held for Roma colleges. Furthermore, in the cases of both one- and two-day workshops, participants signaled to us that they would welcome more factual knowledge as well as more emphasis on practical solutions for solving conflict situations.

Citing participants:

“The dramatic enactments were great, but I think it would be good to focus on finding some optimal solutions for these situations. This would have helped us in applying what we learned in “real-life situations.”

“You should give us more factual knowledge on the second day. What is integrated education? How was it implemented and responded to? What is the situation with integrated education now? What are the main political claims about the Roma?”

“I was missing some frontal knowledge, as I was interested in data and practices related to [Roma] educational integration in Hungary.”

Training Material, Dissemination, and Future Plans

Working with Roma schoolboys.

The final output of the project is a detailed set of training materials based on the workshops. The training materials were produced with two objectives in mind. On the one hand, we would like to provide our partners with an introduction to the workshops in advance. On the other, we are planning to disseminate our methodology among university and secondary school teachers who are using action methods or are trained in social sciences. The document explicates why we think that awareness and reflection on one’s own social position can tackle racist attitudes and in what ways our approach is distinctively different from “traditional” anti-discrimination and intercultural awareness raising trainings. We describe the structure and main elements of the workshops in detail.

It perhaps indicates the success of our project that two of our partners, the Faculty of Social Work at Eötvös Loránd University and the Faculty of Psychology at the Károli Gáspár University of the Reformed Church in Hungary, integrated our training in their curriculum from 2017–2018 under the title of “Meeting with the Other” as an optional course for social worker students at the former and “Socio-analysis for Psychologists” as a mandatory course for psychology students in the latter’s Intercultural Psychology program. The trainings are led by two trainers: Melinda Kovai, who is a university lecturer at both universities, and another member of our team.

According to the participants’ feedback and our own evaluation, the workshops had the most tangible impact among Roma and non-Roma students enrolled in universities outside the capital. These students predominantly come from working-class families or from families in extreme deprivation. The workshops have the potential to help them not to experience their background as a source of shame but, instead, to recognize the resources in their difficult experiences and thus become professionals deeply and proudly committed to their work with socially deprived children and adults. We plan to orient our future workshops to this target group by developing a longer training in close cooperation with our partner institutions. Furthermore, we would like to begin working with professional adults and adapt the training to their needs.

The training materials are available from the following. (Please note they are written all in Hungarian.)
Training material_Hungarian

[1] Lipsky, Michael. Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of the Individual in Public Services. New York, NY: Russell Sage Foundation, 1980.

 

Own Fate: Self-Managing the Future―How to Link Academic Knowledge and Local Practice

January 5, 2018
By 19685

On September 8 and 9, 2017, five Sylff fellows organized an event aimed at promoting sustainable development in Hungary: Professor Eva Kiss, Dr. Andrea Kunsagi, Dr. Viktoria Ferenc, Dr. Viktor Oliver Lorincz, and Dr. Loretta Huszak. Mari Suzuki, director for leadership development of the Tokyo Foundation, attended the two-day event as a representative of the Sylff Association secretariat to support the fellows’ initiatives. The event was significant in that many participants as well as speakers consisted of past and current Sylff fellows. This opportunity served not only to encourage cooperation between academics and local practitioners in Hungary but also to strengthen the bonds among Sylff fellows in Hungary.

***

The Role of Bottom-Up Local Initiatives in Sustainable Development

A round-table discussion during the event, titled “Sustainability Initiated ‘Bottom-Up’: Is It Possible?” The participants are (from left to right): Zsolt Molnar, Andras Jakab, Balazs Hamori, Eva Deak, and Andras Takacs-Santa.

A round-table discussion during the event, titled “Sustainability Initiated ‘Bottom-Up’: Is It Possible?” The participants are (from left to right): Zsolt Molnar, Andras Jakab, Balazs Hamori, Eva Deak, and Andras Takacs-Santa.

Economically and ecologically sustainable development has become a universal concern. It merits the attention and action of all of us. Hungarian fellows of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff) have realized that efforts are needed on a variety of fronts to promote sustainable development. Local and bottom-up initiatives have significant impact and are indispensable for sustainable development. Accordingly, more attention should be paid to them.

Post-communist civil societies, like the one in Hungary, are characterized by a lower level of participation in bottom-up initiatives by ordinary citizens.[1] Nonetheless, recent academic literature indicates that an increasing number of municipalities in Hungary possess local strategies for sustainable development or support initiatives related to sustainability.[2] These initiatives are designed to use and develop the municipalities’ own resources and internal potential to change society for the better.

The focus of the two-day Sylff event was on analyzing how imperative local bottom-up initiatives are to the economic, social, cultural, political, and legal development of modern societies and understanding how their sustainable development can be ensured and observed in Hungary. The first day was dedicated to academic analysis of the above themes, and the second day was a field trip to Szigetmonostor—one of the most active municipalities in Hungary, where the local administration is very much engaged in cooperation with grassroots initiatives. The object of the initiative was to facilitate a bottom-up dialogue between academics and local leaders and initiators. The chief patron of the event was Laszlo Lovasz, president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.[3]

Conference Day at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

 The first day of the initiative was an interdisciplinary forum, which took place at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. It was dedicated to the academic analysis of sustainability and to the scientific elaboration of the role of bottom-up local initiatives in sustainable development. After the opening addresses, Andras Takacs-Santa, program director at Eötvös Loránd University Budapest, gave an opening lecture on “The need for a protective science in the light of the ecological crisis.”[4] He pointed out that the imperative of sustainable development is forcing us to think in new ways but that the way to an ecologically sustainable future is not at all yet clear. Human ecology and the sustainable way of thinking about the Earth’s resources should “run out in all directions” and find their path to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences too.

Section 1 of the forum focused on “the spatial dimensions of sustainable development” with five presentations. The well-prepared speakers approached sustainability from different aspects - environmental, economic, and social - and on diverse spatial levels. They dealt with different parts of the world, from the regional to micro level: China, the Carpathian Basin, Visegrad countries, the South-Bekes microregion, and underdeveloped regions of Hungary. Taken as a whole, the presentations significantly contributed to the success of the conference and to a better understanding of the processes of sustainability on different spatial levels. After the presentations, there was a lively discussion in which the audience raised several questions.

Section 2 analyzed “the successes and anomalies in communication and their role in community generating, business, and social life.” These aspects were investigated from psychological, marketing, management, and human-ecological collateral perspectives. The impact of people on their environment also prevails by numerous forms of manifestation in communication. Making public property from successes and anomalies in communication may help initiate more constructive societal, business, and grassroots movements and give these movements sustainability.

“The human dimension of biodiversity” was studied in section 3. Biodiversity can be found in both nature and culture. Our world is a living network made up of the millions of species of plants and animals and thousands of human cultures and languages that have developed over time. Languages, cultures, and ecosystems are interdependent. For humanity at large, the loss of cultural and linguistic diversity represents a drastic reduction of our collective human heritage. In this section, Sylff fellows discussed human communities that have special attributes in ethnic, linguistic, and cultural respects and whose existence is endangered. The topic is highly relevant in Europe as well as in the Hungarian context. The objective of the panel was to shed light on the importance of maintaining these communities and to link the knowledge represented by Sylff fellows to the practice of local actors and decision makers in Hungary.

Topping the presentation part of the forum was the legal section, which focused on “law and equity in a sustainable society.” Beyond environmental law, the question of sustainability also emerges in other domains of legal studies and political sciences, such as constitutional law, the institutional background of the protection of future generations, populism versus long-term policymaking, and the economic aspects of environmental damages and its legal consequences.

The conference day closed with a round-table discussion. Invited participants talked about the question of “sustainability initiated ‘bottom-up’: is it possible?” It was a valuable discussion, not only in that it summarized the main findings of the conference day but also because it brought together academia and municipalities with bottom-up local initiatives, as well as nongovernmental organizations, and raised expectations for the field trip that was to follow the next day. 

A key point of the conference day was that the presentations went beyond the speakers’ own research, adding aspects of sustainable economic development. They encouraged the audience to analyze the theme from broad perspectives and led to a successful forum, as audience members were able to understand the contents without specialized knowledge. The perspectives that were offered helped not only to identify research interests shared by the different disciplines but also to link academic knowledge with local practice.

Workshop Day in the Idyllic Village of Szigetmonostor

Discussion during the workshop in Szigetmonostor.

Discussion during the workshop in Szigetmonostor.

The field trip to Szigetmonostor was aimed at disseminating and applying academic knowledge to the field. To achieve these goals, academics—scientists employed by HAS (research institutions) and people employed by institutions of higher education—went to the field and experienced knowledge spillovers to the locals. Another aim was to heighten the awareness of local initiators about how academics can support and help their initiatives, thereby helping theoretical academic projects take on a more applied and realistic role; in other words, to help academic projects realize themselves in a more practical pragmatic environment.

The main reason for choosing Szigetmonostor was its isolation. Although the village is just 25 km from Budapest, it is difficult to access due to poor infrastructure; because there is no direct motorway, the only ways of reaching it are via a 50-km detour or by ferry.[5] This makes the village unique in its inhabitants’ reliance on one another. Given the natural beauty and environment of the place, which has been underdeveloped to date, it is an ideal spot to develop tourism. There is a need to create job opportunities within Szigetmonostor, as its geographic location makes it difficult for the locals to seek job opportunities in central Budapest.

Activities provided by Sylff fellows included raising awareness of the historical background of Szigetmonostor among the academic participants. Mayor Zsolt Molnar of Szigetmonostor elaborated on the current situation that the half-island was facing.[6] He gave his account at the dam, with the Danube and the city of Budapest visible in the background. This setting enhanced and inspired the visitors’ interest.

After this opening, the focus turned to local initiatives. Local initiators presented their activities and highlighted the key social challenges that they wanted to be tackled. A short group session followed, in which participants were divided into groups and had to identify possible solutions to local issues. These discussions were led by professional mediators as well as local experts. The idea was to find a common ground between the academics and locals to help with Szigetmonostor’s advancement in terms of tourism, education, local job creation, and so forth.

The group work was then followed by participants presenting new ideas and possible solutions to existing difficulties. The group activities provided a great platform for initiating future collaboration between the academics and local initiators.

Discussion during the Workshop in Szigetmonostor.

Hungarian Sylff fellows and locals in Szigetmonstor, with the newly planted Sylff tree in the background. Holding the plaque for the tree at center are Mariann Tarnoczy, who has been working with Sylff at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since the program’s inception, and Mari Suzuki, director of leadership development at the Tokyo Foundation.

Hungarian Sylff fellows and locals in Szigetmonstor, with the newly planted Sylff tree in the background. Holding the plaque for the tree at center are Mariann Tarnoczy, who has been working with Sylff at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences since the program’s inception, and Mari Suzuki, director of leadership development at the Tokyo Foundation.

To mark Sylff’s contribution and its recognition for future collaboration, the group of workshop participants went out to a beautiful park built by the local volunteers, where they planted a South European flowering ash tree as a symbol for future collaboration. With the help of locals, the academics dug the ground and planted and watered the new tree.

Impact of the Initiative

The two-day event was well attended, which is an objective indicator of success. Eighty-one people attended the conference day, almost half of whom were Hungarian Sylff fellows. The workshop day in Szigetmonostor saw the participation of 45 academics and locals; the number of Sylff fellows was 12.

The initiative aspired to link academic knowledge and local practice. Analyzing sustainable local initiatives and their impact on society was a new activity field for most of the participants. The researchers who gave presentations had been invited to combine their actual research with this important topic. It was an experiment that made great demands of the presenters but led to unforeseen ties between researchers from different disciplines—to real-time interdisciplinary interactions. 

The initiative also had the aim of contributing to society. Understanding basic human ecology principles and the operation of local initiatives can help to map out and evaluate alternatives. The participants identified such principles and recognized new opportunities for cooperation between local initiators and academics. We hope that this future cooperation will lead to positive social change in such forms as increased citizens’ participation in local initiatives, better understanding of the significance of such initiatives among scholars, and more academic projects taking on advanced applied and realistic roles.

A well-informed public is crucial for sustainable development. The media can help reach a wider audience, inform local stakeholders, and direct attention to the role of local initiatives in Hungary’s sustainable economic development. The first report of the initiative has already been published; an article appeared in the local online newspaper of Szigetmonostor, informing local stakeholders about the event..[7]

The organizers of the initiative have prepared a special edition for Magyar Tudomany, the periodical of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. All manuscripts are completed and should be published in the coming weeks. In addition, a seven-minute video on the initiative will be published soon on social media and Internet channels (YouTube and Facebook).

The main organizers of the event (from left to right): Viktoria Ferenc, Andrea Kunsagi, Eva Kiss, Loretta Huszak, and Viktor Lorincz.

The main organizers of the event (from left to right): Viktoria Ferenc, Andrea Kunsagi, Eva Kiss, Loretta Huszak, and Viktor Lorincz.

[1] Marc Marje Howard, The Weakness of Civil Society in Post-Communist Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. i.

[2] Henrietta Nagy, Tamas Toth, and Izabella Olah, “The Role of Local Markets in the Sustainable Economic Development of Hungarian Rural Areas,” Visegrad Journal on Bioeconomy and Sustainable Development, vol. 1, no. 1 (2012): pp. 27–31. https://vua.uniag.sk/sites/default/files/27-31.pdf

[3] For a list of elected chief officers of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences see:

 http://mta.hu/english/elected-chief-officers-of-mta-106110

[4] For further information on Andras Takacs-Santa visit: http://tatk.elte.hu/en/staff/TakacsSantaAndras

[5] Official website of the municipality: http://szigetmonostor.hu/ (in Hungarian)

[6] For further information on Zsolt Molnar visit: http://szigetmonostor.hu/index.php/onkormanyzat/polgarmester (in Hungarian)

[7] Loretta Huszak, “Az MTA kutatóinak és ösztöndíjasainak látogatása Szigetmonostoron,” Ujsagolo, vol. 23, no. 10 (October 2017): pp. 1, 10. http://szigetmonostor.hu/images/dokumentumok/ujsagolo/ujsagolo_2017_10.pdf

An Almost Forgotten Legacy: Non-Aligned Yugoslavia in the United Nations and in the Making of Contemporary International Law

November 16, 2017
By 23904

Arno Trültzsch is a Sylff fellow from the University of Leipzig. He is working on a dissertation to explore the former Yugoslavia’s non-alignment policy and movement and its impact on international norms, including international laws and major UN resolutions for humanitarian and peace-building efforts, between 1948 and 1980. In this article, Trültzsch discusses the essence of his findings and arguments.

***

Introduction

The title of my PhD project, “Non-Alignment Revisited: Yugoslavia’s Impact on International Law 1948–1980,” already indicates that the project is set on the crossroads of different disciplines and methods: global and local (i.e., Southeast European) history, international law, international relations, and intellectual history. My starting point was the rather well-known fact that, after its dismissal from the socialist camp in 1948, Yugoslavia became one of the instigators, main drivers, and pioneers of the so-called Non-Aligned Movement. Research on this global phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century is still scarce and scattered along single issues, such as decolonization, economic history, and postcolonial topics. General accounts of non-alignment are either contemporary assessments from the 1960s to 1980s or standout research endeavors done in recent years.[1]

I want to contribute to this strain of research with a study of Yugoslavia’s role and impact on international law through its non-aligned policies. I therefore focus on the historicity of international law and its doctrines as expressions of specific social and political contexts, tied together by the discipline’s normativity and claim to provide a universal set of rules to international problems. I have drawn on important thinkers like Martti Koskenniemi, Bhupinder Chimni, and Hersch Lauterpacht. I also address (early) Marxist and Soviet theories of international law, as both are crucial for understanding the Yugoslav socialist perspective on international affairs and their law.

Yugoslavia and the Non-Aligned Movement

Commemorative poster for the first conference of non-aligned states held in Belgrade in 1961. Josip Broz Tito is fourth from right on the top row.


The Non-Aligned Movement first started as a loose dialogue platform and public forum of diverse smaller countries, especially former colonies from the Global South (Africa, Asia, and later also Latin America), who wanted to raise their voices against global inequalities and injustices and the ongoing nuclear arms race in the Cold War. Hence the name “non-alignment,” coined by India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, to describe the country’s independent foreign policy outside the forming camps of the northern hemisphere—the United States and its allies versus Soviet Union and its satellites.

After 1948, Yugoslavia was mostly isolated in a divided Europe, so the Yugoslavs looked for new allies, which they found among former colonies and mandate territories that had just gained their independence. During the 1950s and 1960s, therefore, Yugoslavian President Josip Broz Tito engaged in lengthy travels around the globe to build personal alliances with the leaders of these “new” countries. Tito’s personal diplomacy was widely publicized and praised, gaining Yugoslavia worldwide prestige. After an overture in 1956, during which he built a personal alliance with Prime Minister Nehru of India and President Nasser of Egypt, the first conference of the non-aligned countries was held in Yugoslavia’s capital of Belgrade in 1961.

Besides this high-level public diplomacy, Yugoslavia sought to strengthen the United Nations’ system for solving international conflicts, particularly through binding norms of international law, mostly to secure its delicate position in a divided Europe and globe. To that end, Yugoslav protagonists initiated an increasing number of draft resolutions within the organs of the United Nations, together with their new non-aligned partners—especially India and Egypt. Although many of these moves were connected with the complexities of Yugoslav foreign policy, they deserve thorough analysis and reassessment.

Evaluating the Legacy

Milan Šahović, a legal expert of the Yugoslav delegation, speaking at the Fifth and Sixth Committees on legal matters of the UN General Assembly. 

I am about to explore and question whether these initiatives contributed to an increasing legal certainty in international affairs and how they fitted Yugoslav foreign policy interests, especially in the controversial fields of human rights, peace and security, state responsibility, and disarmament. All these issues were discussed and redefined in the course of the Cold War, during which the non-aligned sought to be a “third” option of independent but cooperating countries outside the political camps and military alliances epitomized by the Warsaw Pact and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In this vein, I am examining and evaluating specific Yugoslav approaches to and interpretations of international law, focusing on the triad of political actors, legal experts, and diplomacy. I combine this actor-based approach with the analysis of foreign policy documents—especially diplomatic correspondence and political reports between Belgrade and the UN delegations—and the critical examination of Yugoslav publications on international law. Another group of important sources are Yugoslav textbooks and studies dealing with different aspects and doctrines of international law and the UN system.

Likewise, a set of ideological and political treatises on non-alignment and Yugoslav socialism have caught my attention, as I try to highlight the connection between Yugoslav socialist ideology, legal expertise, and foreign policy initiatives in the United Nations. After 1948, Yugoslavia remained a socialist country (much to the surprise of the West) but outside the Soviet camp, soon developing a particular socioeconomic system and variant of Marxist ideology called “worker’s self-management,” which Yugoslav foreign policy even tried to popularize in some non-aligned developing countries, though to little avail.

Many of the pushes for a further juridification[2] of international relations did not necessarily result in so-called “hard” or codified international law. But I argue that these ideas still had a wider impact both on Yugoslavia’s international and self-image, especially in legitimating the authoritarian rule of its leader Josip Broz Tito and the League of Communists (the ruling party), and on the inner dynamics of the Non-Aligned Movement until the early 1980s. In my further research and writing process, I want to delineate whether these “image politics” were the primary purpose of Yugoslavia’s UN activities, or if they really had a tangible impact on international law.

I have therefore analyzed archive materials from the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (which still keeps the Yugoslav records) and the Historical Archives of Yugoslavia, both of which are in Belgrade, for the period from 1948 to 1980. In the textbooks and in the archive files, I was able to specify a number of significant UN initiatives and their wider impact. Among these are important contributions for defining acts of aggression against other states that resulted in General Assembly Resolution 3314 (XXIX) in 1974 and the codification and elaboration of diplomatic and consular intercourse, leading to the 1964 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Law. Furthermore, Yugoslavia helped establish a general Magna Carta of international legal conduct in line with the political doctrine of “active peaceful coexistence”: the Friendly Relations Declaration of 1970, or Resolution 2625 (XXV). Likewise significant are Yugoslav drafts on counterterrorism measures (specifically, aircraft hijacking and protection of diplomats), leading to important conventions in 1972 and 1973.

Drawing on legal language, while seeking political solutions, Yugoslav UN diplomats and law experts repeatedly requested serious steps on disarmament, calling for a halt to the nuclear arms race, and supported the decolonization process as well as providing direct support for various postcolonial liberation movements, such as those in Algeria, Palestine, and South Africa. These actions led to the criminalization of apartheid and racism under the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (adopted in 1965, entered into force in 1969) and the Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (1973 and 1976). In the disarmament debate, meanwhile, only single issues could be tackled, and Yugoslav experts codrafted the conventions on prohibiting biological and chemical weapons. The former was opened for signature in 1972 and entered into force in 1975, while the latter reached these milestones in 1992 and 1993, respectively.

On the European scale, Yugoslav politicians, together with their colleagues from neutral Finland and Austria, mediated between the power blocs to establish a dialogue on peace, disarmament, and civil rights—the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE). Belgrade was the host city of the second summit in 1977. The Yugoslav drafts on national minority protection were incorporated into the CSCE framework and are still valid for the CSCE’s successor organization, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Minority rights were also an important field of action in the United Nations, but without the impact that Yugoslav proposals and concepts had on a European scale. Altogether, the country’s openness and affirmation of human rights stood in contrast to the country’s record at home; human rights were nominally intact but were focused on social and workers’ rights, and Yugoslav citizens could not enjoy the civil rights and freedoms that their country had officially recognized on an international scale.

While Yugoslavia is today remembered largely for the wars that resulted from the country’s dissolution eventually into seven states (if one counts Kosovo), which led to new legal problems on an international scale, the contribution of this socialist, non-aligned country to international matters and their law is largely forgotten—often even inside the successor states. I am about to change that, pending the completion of my dissertation (in German) hopefully by next year.

 

Further reading

For general information on and English abstracts and presentations by the author, see: https://uni-leipzig.academia.edu/ArnoTrultzsch

Trültzsch, Arno. “Blockfreiheit und Sozialismus: der Beitrag Jugoslawiens zur Völkerrechtsentwicklung nach 1945.” Die Friedens-Warte: Journal of International Peace and Organization 90, no. 1/2 (December 2015): 161–88. (in German)

———. “Völkerrecht und Sozialismus: Sowjetische versus jugoslawische Perspektiven.” In Leipziger Zugänge zur rechtlichen, politischen und kulturellen Verflechtungsgeschichte Ostmitteleuropas, edited by Dietmar Müller and Adamantios Skordos, 1st ed., 83–104. Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2014. (in German)

Arnold, Guy. The A to Z of the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World. Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010.

Kilibarda, Konstantin. “Non-Aligned Geographies in the Balkans: Space, Race and Image in the Construction of New ‘European’ Foreign Policies.” In Security Beyond the Discipline: Emerging Dialogues on Global Politics—Selected Proceedings of the Sixteenth Annual Conference of the York Centre for International and Security Studies, 27–57. York: York Centre for International and Security Studies, York University, 2010.

Kullaa, Rinna. Non-Alignment and Its Origins in Cold War Europe: Yugoslavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge. London: I.B. Tauris, 2012.

Mišković, Nataša, Harald Fischer-Tiné, and Nada Boškovska, eds. The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi–Bandung–Belgrade. London, New York: Routledge, 2014.

[1] Significant recent publications on the general history of the Non-Aligned are: Jürgen Dinkel, Die Bewegung Bündnisfreier Staaten: Genese, Organisation und Politik (1927–1992), first ed. (München: DeGruyter Oldenbourg, 2015) (in German); Nataša Mišković, Harald Fischer-Tiné, and Nada Boškovska, eds., The Non-Aligned Movement and the Cold War: Delhi–Bandung–Belgrade (London, New York: Routledge, 2014); Guy Arnold, The A to Z of the Non-Aligned Movement and Third World (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 2010); and, with a focus on Finland and Yugoslavia during the 1950s, Rinna Kullaa, Non-Alignment and Its Origins in Cold War Europe: Yugoslavia, Finland and the Soviet Challenge (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012).

[2] Juridification: turning moral ideas and political demands into written law; a wider term for codification, which more narrowly describes the written consolidation of laws that have formed out of custom or sheer practice, particularly in international affairs between two or more states.

Indigenous Technology and Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Report

October 23, 2017
By 19603

Chika Ezeanya-Esiobu is a Sylff fellow from Howard University in the United States. She was also awarded an SLI grant in 2016, with which she implemented a workshop on leadership training for future young leaders in Rwanda. Born and raised in Nigeria, Chika first visited Rwanda as a junior consultant for the World Bank during her PhD studies and was enchanted by the peaceful, welcoming, and hardworking nation. She joined the faculty of the University of Rwanda after completing her PhD at Howard and, since then, has been vigorously contributing to further economic and social improvement in the country. The following article is based on her recent research on indigenous technology and how it can empower rural women in Rwanda.

***

 

Need for Local Technology

Drinking banana wine.

Technology is more strategically positioned to trigger innovation and growth within a community when it is founded on the realities and lived experiences of a people; indigenous technology is that technology with roots in a community or group of people. Many industrially advanced societies commenced their journey with indigenous technology as the starting point, from where they have traveled to reach their present place. A dependence on imported technology often leads to stunted growth of the industrial system. As such, and because innovation and creative output arising from indigenous knowledge is a pertinent driver of economic growth, societies aiming toward unhindered industrial progression will need to seriously explore options available within the indigenous technological knowledge pool (Basu & Weil, 1998). Processes, products, services, and systems built in response to existing and projected challenges or even the realities of a particular environment are essentially sustainable and hold potential for further enlargement by community members.

Role of Rural Women in Local Technology

Rural women are increasingly becoming the major custodians of indigenous technology. There are several reasons, including the traditional role of women in homesteads and the migration of men to urban areas in search of employment. Rural women apply indigenous technology to agriculture and food processing, family healthcare, livelihood management, and community development; even where they have access to employment in rural areas, women do not always have access to modern technology for use in the production process and still turn to traditional methods and techniques. Although many governments concerned with rural women’s economic empowerment have made efforts to institute modern technology and make it more accessible, its adaptation and sustainability has been a major challenge. The high cost of importing modern technology pales in comparison to the needed investment of time and funds in continuous education, training, and maintenance of that technology.

In rural areas, women are often marginalized in the distribution of jobs, mostly due to traditional beliefs about men being breadwinners and women being homemakers. Women in rural areas often have to contend with social norms that limit their ability to combine work, family, and other social and personal responsibilities. When they are engaged in meaningful employment, women tend to be clustered in fewer sectors than their male counterparts. In the field of agriculture, for instance, women tend to dominate the subsistence production sphere, even in situations where other nontraditional and commercial farming opportunities exist.

Despite the noted challenges, available empirical evidence across the world indicates that with women being increasingly in control of household resources, either through their own earnings or by cash transfers, the chances of overall economic advancement are remarkably improved. Indeed, at the family level, research outcomes from countries as varied as Brazil, China, India, South Africa, and the United Kingdom point to the fact that expenses on overall family well-being and children’s education increase when women have greater access to household income (World Bank, 2011).

Rwanda and Rural Women’s Advancement

Fifty-four percent of Rwanda’s population is female, while 30 percent of rural households are headed by women. Many rural households are not entirely food secure, because they cannot depend on farming due mainly to environmental factors and their utilization of technology that requires intensive labor (IFAD, 2012). In rural areas, women often cultivate smaller plots of less than one hectare and depend on rain to irrigate grain crops, rear traditional livestock, and grow vegetables. Few female farmers compete with men in the cash crops production sector, which occupies only about 4 percent of total arable land. In essence, female-headed households in rural Rwanda are susceptible to poverty and malnutrition.

The government of Rwanda has shown an unwavering commitment to advancing women on several fronts. Economically speaking, the percentage of Rwandan women who are in paid employment is higher than ever in the history of the nation. The government of Rwanda is one of the few countries in the world that have a dedicated Gender Monitoring Office tasked with ensuring the mainstreaming of gender issues in policy making. Still, as in many other parts of the developing world, unemployment and underemployment remain prevalent in Rwanda, especially among poor rural women, who are mostly subsistence farmers. This is despite several pro-poor policies by the Rwandan government that attempt to accommodate the needs of rural women. Several factors account for this, including low financial literacy, poor information access, and weak bargaining power (Pozarny, 2016).

Rwanda: An Empirical Study

The need to find homegrown and grassroots approaches to the economic empowerment of rural women in Rwanda informed research on the role that indigenous technology can play in achieving this aim. The research was conducted by a group of researchers from the University of Rwanda led by the author and supported by the International Development Research Center of Canada. Studies were conducted on the possibility that products based on indigenous technology, such as indigenous beverages (banana wine and juice, sorghum beer and drink), indigenous vegetables, and traditional fermented beer, could contribute to the economic empowerment of rural women.

Indigenous Beverage Production

The results indicate that indigenous-technology-based beverages and fermented milk hold great potential for improving the livelihoods of rural women. We interviewed 100 rural women who produce or sell indigenous beverages and 100 rural producers of fermented milk, who said that they make profits of between 40 US cents and 1 dollar per 20-liter plastic container. Sales can range from a few jerry cans to as much as 40 per week. Female producers also employ a number of casual workers, sometimes as many as five. Many female producers of indigenous beverages note that they were unable to afford meals for their families prior to beginning the business but can now pay school fees, purchase health insurance, and secure decent living spaces. Although these women do not receive government support—as they have said themselves and government officials have confirmed—they do pay taxes. However, many of them note that tax preparation takes up a lot of time, and many have to shut down business during tax preparation. Women producers also find it difficult to obtain loans from financial institutions due to their inability to provide collateral. Women say that although they would like to package their drinks, the cost of packaging is prohibitive and the packaged product would be outside the reach of their current customers.

The study established that rural women can benefit much more economically when diverse beverage products are on offer, especially when basic hygienic and aesthetic standards are met. Rural tourism is receiving a boost in many countries around the world. In France, for instance, tourists travel from all over the world to rural France in order to have a taste of locally made French cheese, crafted using centuries-old indigenous technological know-how. Rwanda can tap into the rural tourism market by identifying local champions in various rural areas and supporting them with branding and marketing.

Indigenous Vegetables

Female rural producers say that indigenous vegetables like urudega, ibidodoki, inyabutongo, and isogo have healing properties and have been used to effectively treat such conditions as anemia, ulcers, constipation, diarrhea, oral candidiasis, abdominal pain, and more. They testify that demand for these vegetables in rural areas far outweigh supply, whereas in the urban areas only a few traditional vegetables, such as dodoki, are in high demand and are quite expensive, as demand far outweighs supply. Female rural indigenous vegetable farmers note the penchant of urban dwellers for imported vegetables, such as cucumber, cabbage, and tomatoes. They say they are unable to produce sufficient quantities of indigenous vegetables due to limited land, lack of manure, limited knowledge, diseases and pests, the damaging effects of climate change leading to droughts and heavy rains, and the perception that the youth and urban dwellers hold of certain traditional vegetables as being food reserved for poor rural dwellers.

Conclusion

The Rwandan government and development partners can play a key role in improving the production of indigenous products by rural women using indigenous technology. Rather than the previous emphasis on imported technology, which is expensive, difficult to maintain, and does not foster local technology, emphasis can be placed on supporting rural women through a variety of means, including training on processing, hygiene, aesthetics, customer service, financial literacy, branding and marketing, business management, and simple production methods. There is also a need to provide these women producers of indigenous beverages with expanded access to finances, as well as ensure that they have improved market access, infrastructure, and facilities. Moreover, the public needs to be enlightened on the nutritious content and health benefits of indigenous products. The government of Rwanda will then be more likely to achieve its vision of turning the country into a self-sustaining economy, not dependent on external funds or resources for advancement and growth, in record time.

(NB: The full article will be published in 2018 as a special issue of the journal Indigenous Knowledge: Other Ways of Knowing.)

References

Basu, S., & D. Weil (1998). “Appropriate Technology and Growth.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 113, 1025–54.

IFAD (2012). Enabling Poor Rural People to Overcome Poverty in Rwanda. Rome: International Fund for Agricultural Development.

Pozarny, P. (2016). “The Rwanda Vision 2020 Umurenge Programme (VUP) Public Works and Women's Empowerment.” GSDRC at the University of Birmingham/Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations.

World Bank (2011). World Development Report. Washington D.C.: World Bank.