"When People Are Mad, They Start to React" to Corruption

José Domingo Guariglia interviews Brazilian corruption map creator RAQUEL DINIZ
There are enough digital tools for citizens to participate in political decision-making, says Raquel Diniz.

Photo Credit: Bernardo Gutiérrez/Courtesy Raquel Diniz

NEW YORK, Aug 30, 2011 (IPS) - The fight against corruption has taken centre stage in the government of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, and has led to the resignation or dismissal of several ministers over just a few months.

Civil society groups in Brazil are using digital media to protest against corruption, which is so deeply rooted in politics and economics that it is costing this South American country 43 billion dollars a year, according to the latest report by the Federation of Industries of the State of São Paulo (FIESP), published in May 2010.

Over a few short days, a post on the Facebook social networking site convening a rally in Rio de Janeiro Sept. 20, under the slogan "Todos unidos contra a corrupção" (Everyone United against Corruption) has attracted positive responses from 13,130 people.

But merely protesting is not enough. Citizens also have a role to play in watching over public resources and denouncing cases of misappropriation of funds, said Raquel Diniz, a journalist, filmmaker, and creator of the Mapa Colaborativo da Corrupção do Brasil, an online collaborative map of corruption in Brazil, in this interview with IPS.

"My idea was for people to take some sort of action, that would lead them to realise the seriousness of the problem, and to fight for a country free of corruption," she said in response to questions by email.

Her corruption map, which has been on-line since May, was inspired by maps designed in Spain by the NOLESVOTES (Don't Vote For Them) movement, the map of People's Party (PP) corruption, and the map used by the "Indignant" movement to plan protest camps at the Puerta del Sol in Madrid and in other Spanish cities, which led to the formation of the May 15 (15M) Movement.

Supporters of Diniz's map site are determined to use it to deliver a message of rebuke to the ruling elite.

"Politicians haven't really caught on to the idea; they are too far away, isolated in their shiny office blocks," Diniz said. "Sooner or later they will have to understand that everything has changed. Those who govern must hand over some of their power so that society can be truly democratic."

Map users can pinpoint the geographic location of cases of corruption that have been documented in the press, building up a collective memory that, in theory, will help citizens to access more information about politicians before voting for them in future elections.

Q: Why is it important to have a map of corruption in Brazil?

A: It's an opportunity for people to be informed about corruption cases, to participate in producing the map, in order to stimulate interest in the issue. It's very important that people should get angry when they see the map. I think when people are mad, they begin to want to change things and to fight back against corruption.

Corruption in Brazil is extremely serious, but people are so accustomed to corruption scandals that they seldom take action to change the practice, which is so common among politicians, the police, and therefore society as a whole.

Q: There are similar tools in the region to report and map crime and violence. Where did you get the idea from?

A: I went to live in Spain just as the 2008 economic crisis broke out. I saw the rise of many movements against the government, and the immense growth of communication via social networks. Then I found out about the NOLESVOTES Movement's corruption map, and the map on corruption perpetrated by the PP, the most conservative party in Spain, posted by Leo Bassi (a well-known Spanish leftwing journalist) on his PPLeaks web page.

I came back to Brazil and kept in touch with the growth of the 15M Movement. When I came across a Google map people could use to set up a virtual encampment at the Puerta del Sol (in Madrid), I realised that the Arab world and Europe were living through a time of profound social transformation, whereas here in Brazil it was the reverse. The vast majority of Brazilians are happy with the country's macroeconomic growth and turn their backs on social problems.

The same morning, an environmentalist couple who lived in the (northern) Amazon region were murdered, and that afternoon the lower chamber of Congress approved an amendment to the Forest Code, legalising the use of illegally deforested land which formerly had been protected reserves.

I was extremely angry that day. I felt I had to do something, and I created the map.

Q: What are the main results?

A: The main result was coverage in the principal Brazilian newspapers, and people hearing about the map and helping to construct it. My idea was to prompt people to take some sort of action that would lead them to understand the seriousness of the problem and to fight for a country free from corruption.

As it is an open access site, I always recommend that every post should carry references to articles published in the press, so that the posted data have credibility.

Brazil has a great record of investigating corruption cases, but corrupt people hardly ever go to prison. Any who are convicted just pay a fine and are released, and then they stand as candidates in the next elections. Many of them are voted into office again and exercise power!

Q: In your view, is the internet an effective tool for citizens and government to communicate with each other?

A: It could be very effective, because it's a channel for mutual interaction and the sharing of information. There are enough digital tools in the web 2.0 world, many of them with open access, for citizens to be able to participate in political decision-making.

It would be very easy to institute participative democracy systems for making political decisions, but we are all only just getting to know this new way of interacting.

Politicians haven't really caught on to the idea; they are too far away, isolated in their shiny office blocks. Sooner or later they will have to understand that everything has changed. Those who govern must hand over some of their power so that society can be truly democratic.

Q: Several studies have reported that Latin America is a leader in the use of social networks like Facebook or Twitter. Why do you think this is so?

A: People in Latin America are more sociable than those on other continents; they like to get to know people. Also, society here is very hierarchical, so there are few mechanisms for the social base to participate in building and running the country. The mass media are controlled by the elite, and are dependent on political advertising. The social networks, in a way, are a substitute for traditional mass media.

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UN Sustainability Conference will congregate 2,000 NGOs representatives

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 26- The 64th Annual United Nations DPI/NGO Conference will set a new record of participation with 2,000 expected NGOs representatives from more than 100 countries, the Under-Secretary-General for the Department of Public Information (DPI), Kiyo Akasaka, told reporters Friday.

Akasaka remembered the conference will take place this year between 3-5 September in Bonn, Germany, and will focus on sustainable development and volunteerism under the name “Sustainable Societies: Responsive Citizens”. He also said that a large number of young people and students will be involved in order to get ideas to poverty eradication through the establishment of a “green economy”.

The United Nations DPI/NGO Conference will work as a preparation for the Rio+20 Conference that will be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 2012. At the same time, the meeting celebrates the tenth anniversary of the International Year of Volunteers.

The Deputy Permanent Representative of Germany to the United Nations, Ambassador Miguel Berger, said his country is “extremely glad” that Bonn has been chosen to host the conference and that they are ready to receive all the participants and to activate many side events.

Berger explained that Bonn is the UN city in Germany, because 16 UN organizations and offices that work in the field of sustainable development and environment are located there. “This will be a lively and interactive event”, he said.

The Chief of the Partnerships and Communications Division of the UN Volunteers programme in Bonn, Donna Keher, emphasized the importance of the world “sustainability”. “If the next generations have to benefit from development, then development has to be sustainable”, she remarked.

In order to create sustainability, Keher called the civil society to actively participate with the governments and institutions. “People must involve, we need volunteers. This conference is showing the importance of partnership and the value of working together”, she expressed.

The UN DPI/NGO Conference will be the first of three meetings that will take place in Germany between September and November, as confirmed by the Chair of the Conference Felix Dodds.

Among the challenges the three meetings and Rio+20 will have to face, Dodds remembered climate change, food and water security, the consumption model and the disparity between developed and developing countries. Outcome documents are expected to come after each event.

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NGOs Must Play Key Role in Rio+20 Summit on Sustainable Development

Jose Domingo Guariglia interviews MICHAEL RENNER, of Worldwatch Institute

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Michael Renner

UNITED NATIONS, Aug 26, 2011 (IPS) - As the United Nations readies for a major international conference on sustainable development next June in Brazil, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are preparing to play a key role in the run-up to the summit meeting and are preparing a plan of action to be adopted by world leaders.

The Rio+20 conference will take place 20 years after the historic Earth Summit in Brazil in June 1992.

Asked about the importance of NGO contributions, Michael G. Renner, senior researcher at the Worldwatch Institute told IPS, "I think the answer is still outstanding. It will depend on how successful NGOs are in ensuring that the conference has adequate visibility in the public eye."

He said NGOs need to make sure that the conference is not seen as disconnected from people’s daily concerns.

A series of NGO meetings are scheduled to take place in the coming months, including one sponsored by the U.N.’s Department of Public Information in Bonn, Germany, Sep. 3-5.

In an interview with IPS, Renner said that mainstream media often either ignore U.N. conferences or portray them as only of interest to U.N. "bureaucrats" and policy wonks.

So, NGOs need to be an effective bridge: translate specialist lingo into language that is meaningful to people in communities around the world, and at the same time carry grassroots concerns into the conference.

They also need to ensure that the conference is not an isolated event. The time before and after the conference is as important as the conference itself.

Excerpts from the interview follow:

Q: Why is it important to have another Conference on Sustainable Development?

A: The Rio 2012 conference presents an opportunity to take stock of both the progress that has been made and the goals that remain unmet. It offers a unique political opening to review and refresh commitments and promote new modes of international cooperation to address some of the most pressing issues of the century.

By and large, the environmental trends since 1992 have not been encouraging, and so we need fresh commitments, and a reassessment of which policies work and which don’t.

Clearly, this is not just a "technical" assessment, but in large part a deeply political exercise. Since the first Rio conference, we have heard much rhetoric about relying on market tools and mechanisms. But if governments don’t provide an overall framework, then they are simply abdicating their responsibilities. And if the public cannot hold governments and corporations accountable, then commitments may never properly be translated into action.

The conference is simply a means to an end, training the spotlight on where we have succeeded and where we have failed. I don’t so much look to the speeches that will be given or official communiqués that will be released. What’s more important is to create a renewed sense of forward momentum, to forge new partnerships and alliances, and to empower those who all too often are relegated to sidelines.

Q: What do you think are the new and emerging challenges the world is facing regarding the environment?

A: I think less in terms of new challenges than about the need to think in more interdisciplinary ways. We are by now quite aware of the various strands of the environmental challenge, such as climate change, declining biodiversity, growing water scarcity, and so on. We need to get better at understanding how these strands are interwoven and that we may be in for growing surprises. Environmental change is not linear, but full of unexpected discontinuities and feedback loops.

An important aspect of the Rio 2012 conference is environmental governance. Mention this, and many people will think it means creating an arcane bureaucratic structure. But what is really required is that we challenge our compartmentalised world.

We can’t properly address environmental challenges if we assume that it’s a job for the environment ministries of the world alone. The causes and the impacts are multi-faceted, and policies at other ministries - economics, finance, science and technology, labour, foreign affairs, to name just a few - must evolve accordingly.

We have to figure out ways to overcome the walls that separate the different turfs, not to mention the borders that separate us into competing nation states. Clearly, a single conference is not going to accomplish this, but the discussions in Rio can help connect the dots.

Q: The U.N. Conference on Sustainable Development will take place in June 2012, 20 years after the original Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. This time the focus will be put on building a green economy and sustainable development governance. What are the main advances in these areas since 1992?

A: An important advance is that concepts like ‘Green Economy’ or ‘Green Jobs’ have entered the lexicon as accepted terms. For too many years, the discussion focused on whether the pursuit of environmental goals would be detrimental to the economy and to employment. But it has become clear that environmental protection and economic wellbeing do not have to be mutually exclusive goals.

In fact, economic wellbeing will increasingly depend on pursuing technologies that reduce humanity’s overall footprint, and a transition of economic and social structures toward greater sustainability.

That’s not to say the discussion is over, far from it. In some countries, such as the United States, the public discourse has suffered reversals. There is also the question of what is meant by green economy. As with other terms, such as sustainable development, there is a certain danger that it will come to mean highly different things to different people.

‘Green growth’ is now often seen as the goal, sidestepping the question whether continued expansion of the physical economy can go on unchecked, or whether there is a need to more fundamentally rethink how the economy functions. Greater efficiency in the use of energy and materials are important, but these gains might be cancelled out through higher levels of consumption.

Q: What comes after the Rio+20 Conference? What’s next?

A: As always, there is the challenge of making good on the speeches and declarations - to ensure that a conference like this is not just a one-time event with no meaningful follow-up. So, the work must continue. And in some ways, what happens in the corridors between conference sessions - making new connections, building new alliances - may well be even more important than what happens during the sessions. I regard the conference as an opportunity to create momentum, but the momentum then needs to be sustained.

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The World Humanitarian Day honours aid workers

JOSÉ DOMINGO GUARIGLIA

The Humanitarian Day 2011 “People Helping People” celebrates the work of all those who risk their lives to help others and it is also a way to remember those who are still in pain or struggling to live, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Valerie Amos, told in a special event with the Secretary General Friday.

She explained that this year’s celebration goes beyond the previous Humanitarian Days to focus on aid workers and their stories. “We celebrate the work of thousands of aid workers”, Amos said

The Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, supported Amos’ speech saying the World Humanitarian Day is dedicated to those who chose to save someone else’s life in spite of differences in gender, religion or race. He underlined the efforts of many aid workers in countries that are living under conflict like Afghanistan, Haiti, Japan, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Somalia.

“Wherever there are people in need, there are people who help them – men and women coming together to ease suffering and bring hope”, the Secretary-General said.

Regarding Somalia and the general situation in the Horn of Africa, both Ban and Amos remembered that humanitarian efforts have not been enough to deal with the situation and that more than 1 billion dollars are still needed to face the drought and famine that has affected more than 12 million people.

“We need to keep the attention focused on the Horn of Africa”, Amos stressed.

She also announced that the United Nations and the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) started a global campaign about the situation on the Horn of Africa and that a special mini summit about the topic will be held at the UN General Assembly on September 24th.

The UN General Assembly proclaimed the World Humanitarian Day on 19 August 2008 to commemorate the killing of 22 UN staff members in 2003, after the bombing of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, Iraq. More than 150 people were also wounded on the attack.