MAIL-IT REQUESTED: FEBRUARY 2, 2000 10580X CLIENT: PAUL LIBRARY: NEWS FILE: ALLNWS YOUR SEARCH REQUEST AT THE TIME THIS MAIL-IT WAS REQUESTED: KENYA AND MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS AND (DATE AFT 2/2/1999 AND DATE BEF 2/3/2000) NUMBER OF STORIES FOUND WITH YOUR REQUEST THROUGH: LEVEL 1... 43 LEVEL 1 PRINTED DISPLAY FORMAT: FULL SEND TO: WEBSTER LIBRARY, # 1 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 7141 SHERBROOKE STREET WEST MONTREAL, QUEBEC CANADA H4B 1R6 **********************************02663********************************** PAGE 1 LEVEL 1 - 1 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 2000 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. FDCH Political Transcripts January 20, 2000, Thursday TYPE: NEWS CONFERENCE LENGTH: 10170 words HEADLINE: FRANK VOGL HOLDS NEWS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL BRIBERY; WASHINGTON, D. C. SPEAKER: FRANK VOGL, TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL BODY: TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL HOLDS NEWS CONFERENCE ON INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS BRIBERY JANUARY 20, 2000 SPEAKERS: FRANK VOGL, CHAIRMAN, TRANSPARENCY INTERNATIONAL PETER HICKMAN, VICE CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL PRESS CLUB NEWSMAKER COMMITTEE * HICKMAN: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Of course that's a figure of speech today. Thank you for coming. You could have been sunbathing somewhere, I guess. Welcome to the National Press Club and another NPC Morning Newsmaker. My name is Peter Hickman, and I'm vice chairman of the club's Newsmaker Committee and a freelance journalist and editorial and media consultant. Before introducing this morning's newsmaker, two quick announcements. One is that a sound file for this Newsmaker, as with all of them, will be posted on the club's web page at NPC.press.org sometime later today and will be available there for members for about 30 days. And the other is that there is a list -- I think some of you may already have it -- of other speakers and events we have coming up at the club, and there's also some more at the front desk, and we hope you might want to come to some of those. And in addition there's some information concerning this morning's newsmaker. And that newsmaker, as you know, is the president of Transparency International, Mr. Frank Vogl. Mr. Vogl, welcome back to the National Press Club. Transparency International is described as a global coalition to curb corruption. And Mr. Vogl can, of course, give you more details about the PAGE 2 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 organization. But what he's going to do this morning is to release and discuss a set of findings on international bribery derived from a Gallup International poll of about almost 800 senior business executives in 14 major emerging market countries. And I heard you say a minute ago, Frank, they are all -- not all from these countries? Well, you'll probably explain that later. Well, after he speaks Mr. Vogl will take your questions, and please let him know your name and affiliation when you ask them. And when you do have a question, if you'll give me a signal at any time during the news conference I'll call on you in turn, giving priority to club members and accredited media and as many of you as our time permits. And finally, if you haven't already done so, as you leave, please add your names to the sign-in sheet outside. Thank you very much. Mr. Vogl. VOGL: Good morning. Peter, thank you, thank you very much indeed. I'm going to do something a little unusual. Instead of giving you a, sort of, formal, sort of, opening statement, I'd like to run you through, very, very quickly, the main charts that are in this book and explain to you perhaps what this is, what the significance of the individual data releases are, what our findings are, and why we think this is important. This is the first time that Transparency International has ever done anything like this. TI was created six years ago. I'm the vice chairman of the organization. We have our headquarters in Berlin. And today we have 77 national organizations around the world. And for a long time many of the people running our national organizations in developing countries said that they needed more information on the supply side of bribery -- who was paying the bribes, why were they paying the bribes, which business sectors were the ones that had the greatest bribery? -- and we didn't have any of that data. And so a year ago we held a series of internal discussions, then we held some focus groups in Belgium and in Argentina, and then last summer we developed a very detailed questionnaire and we went to Gallup. We actually put it out for bid, Gallup International in the U.K. was the successful bidder, and we commissioned them to go through a very, very detailed set of questionnaires. Our first slide here -- you'll find this data I'm just putting up on the bottom of the press release that we gave out -- shows the sample that we used. We went to 14 countries. These are all leading emerging market countries. They represent between them 60 percent of the imports of emerging market countries as a whole. PAGE 3 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 We excluded countries where either it was incredibly difficult to do the type of survey work that we wanted -- and that's why China is not in there -- and where we thought that there was such a close proximity to one particular industrial country that the results may not be as objective as we'd like. So as a result, you won't see Mexico there because we thought the results might be too U.S.- oriented, you won't see Cote d'Ivoire there because that might be too French-oriented, and so on. So we were quite careful in the selection. Nevertheless, these are large countries in terms of imports from industrial countries. Then the sample. In each country we selected about one-third of the total, and the total was about 780 people from the business sector. And all the questions -- let me stress this -- all the questions were about grand corruption, bribery of senior government officials and politicians. Not just the petty bribery you may have to pay a couple of bucks to get into the country to the immigration guy or minor bribery that happens in so many places all the time, we're talking about large-scale bribery. We went to -- we took the sample. One-third of those people who were interviewed -- and these were personal interviews; they weren't just sent a form and asked to fill it out, they gave a lot of time to answering the questions -- one-third were senior executives of foreign companies based in these countries. One-third are senior executives of domestic companies. And the other third are broken down between lawyers, accountants, bankers and heads of chambers of commerce, all who are very familiar with international business. So that's the base for where we asked. Now, the first item that I'd like to bring to your attention, which you will find in -- you'll find all of this in the booklet -- is what we call the bribery in business sectors. This is the first time Transparency International has ever issued this ranking. To the best of our knowledge, it's the first time anybody has done this. We are very sensitive to the fact that time and again one reads things about all international companies pay bribes or that bribery is massive without any real differentiation. Overwhelmingly, what was so interesting about the results of our -- of the analysis, was how uniform were the results from different countries and from different sectors that were interviewed. In other words, we don't see that in Argentina people were saying, "Oh, yes, the defense industry is by far the most corrupt," but in -- on the other hand in Russia people said, "No, by far it's the telecommunications industry." There was tremendous uniformity across the world in the results. And what are the results? If you took a scale, as you see here, from zero to 10, where zero would represent extremely high levels of corruption and 10 very low levels of corruption, what you'd find is an extremely high level of corruption in public works contracts and construction. That comes number one -- perceived to be the most corrupt business sector in emerging markets. And don't forget, much of the corruption is seen to be coming from international companies. Let me underscore for you just what this means. If you look at the cover of our booklet, you will see a picture of the Turkish earthquake. The day after the terrible earthquakes in Turkey last year there were stories in the press, PAGE 4 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 in Turkey and then internationally, about corruption, about violations of building codes, about how high-rise buildings simply collapsed because they weren't properly built because construction companies had simply bribed supervisors and others so they could be shoddy work on foundations. And the result was massive deaths that clearly, in many cases, could have been avoided. So there's huge impact. Arms industry's a very close second -- perceived to be the most corrupt. The power -- really meaning the energy industry comes not far behind that. And then you get the others and you have the full table there. And as I say, we have not released it before, and we will be pursuing this now in coming years to check and to see if there are changes. But clearly this ought to be a wake-up call, particularly to the three industries -- construction, defense and power -- that it's time that there was real transparency in the deals that they make and how they go about deals. And we can talk about the total secrecy that envelopes these particular sectors in international business transactions. And in my opinion also the complicity of governments, often the governments of industrial countries, in supporting the secrecy in the international trade in arms, the international negotiations on energy, and of course in major public works contracts around the world. Let me underscore that with our next slide, and this is something I will return to a little bit later if you have questions. We issued this last October, so this is not new. This ranked countries in terms of where they were perceived to be the biggest payers of bribes. Here we had a different scale -- well, zero to 10 again; 8.3 means very clean, so you can see it -- it's in the book, it's the first table, I think -- Sweden comes out clean. Australia comes out clean. China comes out as -- companies -- what this is means is companies from China are seen to be paying bribes a very great deal of the time. And what we've done here, however, is something interesting. We have put a series of comments on that table. One comment says, "R" means ratified, and the other is "S" means signed and "NS" not signed. This is the status of the OECD anti-bribery convention. The convention came into effect in February of last year. It, for the first time, made it a criminal offense for an international company to pay bribes to foreign officials. We are very concerned to see that that treaty is a reality and not just something on paper. If you look, you will see, for example, that France has signed but has not ratified yet. Italy has signed but not ratified yet. And if you look at where France and Italy come in these rankings, you'll see their companies are widely seen around the world to be paying bribes to a considerable extent. Why are we so worried about this? Well, if you turn to the next table that we'll put up, we asked the sample of people, through the Gallup poll, a lot of questions about whether they knew about the OECD convention, a convention that has been hailed all over the place as a landmark convention in terms of finally, finally ending the free-for- all in bribery, because, for the first time, for almost all countries except the U.S., it is a criminal offense to pay bribes abroad. PAGE 5 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 What did we find? When we asked all the respondents about their familiarity with the convention we found only six percent knew about it. What we found when we asked the senior executives of international companies in leading emerging markets, we found there was an even lower percentage: just five percent. When we asked them if they knew of anything that their companies were doing to review practices in the light of the convention or changes in anti-bribery climate, less than 20 percent said they knew of any changes. What this very damning set of statistics tells us is that international corporations, by and large, either are ignorant of the OECD convention or they don't care about the convention. The result, of course, is that executives from foreign companies around the world are breaking their national laws today -- their own national laws -- the local national laws in paying bribes. What this, we hope, this table shows is this should be a wake-up call that the OECD convention has a long way to go before anybody's going to really take it seriously in terms of compliance. This is the first set of data we've been able to produce on whether this new treaty -- came in February of last year -- is actually being used by corporations in a meaningful way. It's a very disappointing result. Well, we also went to these businessmen, used this opportunity to ask them about whether they saw other unfair business practices apart from bribery. And that's our -- and we have got a table in your book -- maybe we'll go straight to the next table actually. This graphically -- you have this one in your booklet, but let's go back, if we can, just to the other one for one second. These are just the numbers that go with that table, that bar chart -- that long bar chart. And let me explain this to you. We asked business people, "Apart from bribery, what unfair practices do you see being used by international corporations or the governments of those international corporations to help those corporations get deals from senior officials?" Much to our surprise, when we ranked countries, the United States came out far, far worse than anyone else. If you took a score from zero to 100, and you said 100 meant extremely use of so-called unfair practices -- and we'll define what those are in a minute -- then the United States comes out at 64 out of 100. The next worst is France with 34, followed by Japan with 34, and then China, really Hong Kong, at 32. And you can see from that bar chart how it goes down. And I'll gladly give you the numbers if you want all of the data, but I think it's quite clear from the bar chart. What is meant by unfair business practices? Let's go to the next chart. And here what you see comes out is the perception that high use, particularly of diplomatic and political pressure, followed by commercial pressure on special pricing issues and then subsidies and financing and tied aid are the factors. VOGL: Now let me be very clear about why this is possibly important with regard to the whole OECD convention issue. Many countries -- or rather, officials of many countries have for a long time said: The U.S. wants the OECD treaty against bribery to create a level playing field -- because the U.S. has the Foreign Practices Act -- against the bribery PAGE 6 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 of foreign officials, to criminalize bribery worldwide so that U.S. companies have an even ground there, while the U.S. government exerts its superpower status to bully, pressure, foreign governments to use U.S. contractors and that this is unfair. So we ask the questions about this. And you can see the perception. Transparency International is very neutral on this business of unfair practices. One, bribery is illegal, it is criminal and there are no questions about whether it is illegal or not. All of these other things are much more a matter of judgment. Every government in the world is trying to exert diplomatic pressure to get major deals for its major corporations. Clearly the U.S., with its superpower status, has more clout than others. But it is very interesting to note this very negative perception of the U.S. in this regard -- from a cross-section, after all, of business people, both foreign and national. Let me, finally, take you to two other points on our survey that are interesting data, that you'll find in the booklet. One is: Why do public officials take bribes? And you'll find the table on that. We asked this sample of businesspeople how they would rank the issues. They said clearly it was low public-sector salaries. But following from that were two other components which fit together. One is immunity from prosecution. In other words, officials are not scared of being prosecuted for taking bribes. And the other, which fits together with that, is secrecy in government. So long as judges in countries are not independent and not independently able to pursue prosecutions, and the press is not free to investigate corruption, officials of many countries clearly feel that they are immune when it comes to taking bribes -- they can get away with it, in other words -- and they can do it in secrecy. And what this data, sort of, supports that -- that, I think, common-held belief in a rather profound and clear statistical way. The low salaries issue leads us to another conclusion. In many countries -- particularly the poorer countries of the world -- the World Bank and the IMF have pursued civil service reform, which has been a euphemism for reducing the number of people in public sector payrolls. But it hasn't included -- in many cases; there have been some exceptions -- raising civil service salaries -- in other words, those who were left over the civil service -- to levels which provide decent wage levels. Singapore, with all the negatives, has for many, many years had very high public sector salaries on the belief that that is one way to reduce the incidence of corruption. And Singapore, internally at least, comes out very well in terms of being seen to be a corrupt-free civil service. So there is a correlation and this data show it. Finally -- sorry I've gone on for so long, but there is a lot of data, and you're getting, really, the highlights of the data that we've assessed. Finally, is bribery getting worse in the world? We asked this sample -- and of course, it only pertains really to emerging market countries -- 33 percent thought it had increased in the past five years; about 22 percent said it was about the same; 25 percent said it had decreased; and about 20 percent said PAGE 7 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 they don't know. What our evidence suggests -- and this comes through, really, from a lot of the data from the Gallup study and from other data that we have -- is that the levels of corruption around the world are extremely high and are perceived to be extremely high. So the sense that it has increased or not increased -- roughly 50 percent of the people surveyed said it's either the same or it's got worse, starting already at very high levels, is, of course, extremely discouraging and underscores for us the importance of doing still more in the anti- corruption area. So let me just go back to the first thing. The first -- there are many charts in here. One big theme for us is the OECD compliance. But another which we want to bring to your attention, because it's never been focused on before and will be a great stimulus to our work, is the chart on business sectors -- ranking those. We will start special initiatives in some of those sectors, such as bribery in the defense industry, bribery in the construction industry and public works monitoring partly as a stimulus of this. So thank you very much indeed. MODERATOR: Thank you, Mr. Vogl. We are open for questions now. QUESTION: I'm wondering why -- it appears you didn't ask what country the continents (ph) came from. Is our U.S. multinationals or German multinationals more or less likely to engage in these practices of both bribery and serious... VOGL: We did ask. And that's the bribery perception -- I think it's chart one. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) which countries -- which multinational, which set of multinationals, corporations from the United States, corporations from Germany. Because I'm wondering... VOGL: You mean, naming the companies... QUESTION: Naming the companies, naming which country they came from. VOGL: Well, that's what this is. QUESTION: Well, it says... VOGL: Essentially this is what this says. So when you read "U.S." there, you can infer from that that we're talking about multinational corporations headquartered in the United States; and if Sweden, its multinationals headquartered in Sweden. But with 60,000 transnationals in the world, we couldn't rank companies. We wish we could, but I'm sorry, we can't. QUESTION: I was wondering why, in view of the fact that Venezuela has a lot more U.S. investment, does trade -- a lot more trade with the U.S., why you picked Columbia, instead of Venezuela, as your VMI example primarily? PAGE 8 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 VOGL: Well, we -- you know, I must tell you, we looked at investment flows, we looked at trade flows, we looked at whether there was too strong a bias in favor of one particular country. But I can't claim to you that this is the right 14 countries to have chosen. We are going to be looking at it very carefully. We would ideally love to have a larger sample. I should say -- as you'll see in the footnotes on where this was largely funded by the MacArthur Foundation. This is the first time we've done it. And maybe there is a good reason to have Venezuela rather than Colombia. I really -- I don't have a good answer for you. We've decided on these 14 countries. There was a long debate about whether we should include this and not that. But ultimately it was a subjective decision, and maybe not a very good decision at that. So I can't defend that that way. QUESTION: Did you consider Venezuela a very complex situation? VOGL: I would consider all of the countries here a extremely complex situation. And I think one of the things that we found difficulty with here was that, when you look at where these countries, these 14 countries, rank on our corruption perception index -- which is reprinted for you in an annex in the booklet which we issued last October -- you'll see that most of these countries rank very, very low. In other words, they seem to have very high levels of domestic corruption. And when we asked the business executives in most of these countries: Do you believe that domestic companies are more willing to pay bribes than foreign companies in your country? The answer was yes. Which gives the excuse to the foreign companies, "Well, the domestic rivals are paying bribes, so therefore we have to." So we found domestic bribery which seemed to be even higher than international. I should point out, in many of the sectors, however, where's the biggest grand bribery, there are not domestic suppliers in many cases. Obviously construction and public works there are. But when it comes, say, to the defense sector, in many cases there are not domestic -- major domestic suppliers for major, heavy, large equipment in many of the countries that we -- where we did interviews. So it's a mixed picture. QUESTION: (inaudible) Mexico in a (inaudible) from one to 10, where is Mexico (inaudible)? How is NAFTA affecting the bribery (inaudible) border states in Mexico? VOGL: Well, we don't have the data one to 10 on Mexico. We haven't included Mexico -- and maybe we should in the future -- under the major exporters. Therefore it doesn't come into the bribery perception index. It comes, of course, in our corruption perception index, but that's really about bribe-taking by officials. It doesn't apply to the supplies of bribes, which is really what the main focus of our Gallup study is. So I can't answer that in a broad -- in any, sort of, detailed way. PAGE 9 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 We are -- as you know, we have a new national chapter of Transparency International in Mexico. And we think that there's a huge amount to be done in Mexico. And our national chapter is going to be focusing, amongst other things, on the elections his year and on striving to get the political candidates to in advance outline their anti-corruption strategies and to, essentially, pledge to do something about it. And we will see how effective that is. We are actually quite hopeful, but I can't -- I'm afraid I just don't have data on Mexican exporters. QUESTION: With respect to unfair businesses practices, do you have any anecdotal evidence to support the view that the U.S. is a major offender? Does the secretary of state get involved? And does it happen at the ambassadorial level? What is the typical exchange of light with government official X in a country Y? VOGL: Well, I think you know much more about it than I do, George. And you cover the State Department and you know how these things work. First of all -- again I'm going to say this -- we are very neutral on whether the term "unfair business practice" is even applicable or even appropriate. That was the way the question was phrased, and those were the responses. And then you got the detailed breakdown. I think almost all the governments today of major exporting countries use their foreign embassies to a greater or lesser extent to try to promote the business interests of corporations from their countries. Clearly, on very big deals -- and we've seen it prominently in the newspapers on defense; we've seen it sometimes in civil aviation -- major governments at a very high level get involved directly in phoning heads of state of foreign governments to say, We'd like you to look favorably on buying -- on signing the deal with a company from our country as opposed to its rival. But I don't know whether that is unethical. I don't know whether we should particularly say it's even wrong. Everybody does it. It's a very complicated, I think, discussion topic. But what is interesting is how strongly, amongst this sample of business executives --- and after all, these are pretty experienced business executives with a lot of experience in international business -- how strongly they perceive the U.S. doing so much more in this area than anybody else. The margin of 64 for the U.S. against 34 for, say, France or 32 for Japan is very impressive indeed. I was quite surprised when I saw that. It was also uniform across all the countries. Does this suggest a certain degree of anti-Americanism? Does it suggest a certain degree of jealousy? Who knows why businessmen come out with these sorts of conclusions? But there is no question that, at least at a reasonably, sort of, confidential and background basis, there are -- have been for a long time officials in European countries who have argued that the U.S. has used its diplomatic clout to get deals for American companies, and that because many European companies, especially from smaller countries, don't have that sort of political backing and political clout, therefore using bribes is somehow the only way for them to get the deals. It's a very spurious argument from our PAGE 10 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 point of view, but it's one that's been made, and certainly this data will only encourage those particular folks to pursue that argument. QUESTION: Well, why do we have this huge trade deficit if we're so wily in this area? VOGL: Well, as I said, I'm not going to defend the data. I'm just reporting to you what it is we found, and it is -- you know, it's very conspicuous and very interesting. And this, again, we though we would put it out there in the name of transparency -- even if we don't have a judgment of whether it's right or wrong. QUESTION: I want to follow up on that a little bit. Whether there is an assumption out there that success doesn't take place in the international marketplace unless there is unfair business practices. I know you don't have a solid read on... VOGL: I think, Skip, that one, I don't know I could draw that conclusion, but I certainly think that if you look at the scale of perceived bribery in the major industries, defense, construction and energy, for example, there is clearly the perception that you don't get major deals unless you use bribes. So, I know I've not quite answered your question because I can't because I don't have the data. But the -- I -- the fact that in construction of public works, you get a 1.5. It's so close to almost being right at the very top suggesting absolutely a massive level of corruption in major construction and public works contracts. At least in the views of those who we asked, right? These are actual perceptions, these are opinions, these are not hard facts. QUESTION: If I could ask also, is there any indications that the United States... (AUDIO GAP) QUESTION: ... anti-bribery laws? VOGL: Not that I know of, and if you want to, I'd encourage you and we will give you the phone number of our colleague, Fritz Heimann, who's the chairman of our U.S. national chapter, who can talk about the latest status in the U.S. Clearly, where -- if you look at table one here, and you see that the United States comes out in the middle about countries perceived to be bribe-payers, with only 6.2, there is clearly a question about whether there should be greater enforcement here of the Foreign Practices Act. Now, Fritz (ph) can respond to that. I'm not saying that there should be or there shouldn't be. I'm not quite sure where it is. But clearly, that result, as we discussed last October, is a very disappointing one. QUESTION: I wonder if you can comment or if you thought about the breakdown in the ministerial meeting in Seattle, where there was a move for greater transparency in both government procurement. Is that -- do you see that as on hold and what do you take (inaudible) and your goals and the goals of the OECD? PAGE 11 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 VOGL: There was a meeting -- a very important preparatory meeting in Geneva a couple of weeks before WTO, where my colleagues were invited to participate and where there was a very strong support on the part of the secretary and the part of, in fact, the delegates who were there for stricter rules on transparency of public procurement. And it really was not a controversial issue there. And that's why, frankly, we didn't go to Seattle and get involved with that, and I don't think it was an issue in Seattle. But it should be a major issue for WTO. WTO has the rule-making authority to be much more vigilant in this area. If you look at the fact that public procurement -- public works contracts or public procurement generally, is what we are really talking about today in all sectors, because it's government -- this is government contracting, and the lack of transparency in that -- in most parts of the world, clearly you've got a huge, huge issue. And we have found that it has been -- we have -- and you can find it on our web site -- we've detailed a little bit in the booklet -- we have tried, in Transparency International, to set up some model public procurement projects -- on big public sector projects; in Panama and Bulgaria and a few other countries. It is very hard to persuade governments to participate. It is very hard to persuade major corporations to participate. And unless there is the, sort of, WTO, kind of, push and the rule-making push that gives us a lever to which -- to promote enforcement. It's a very hard sell. Huge issue that's just neglected. QUESTION: I'm just wondering why China is not on the list of the (inaudible) countries that are considered in this... VOGL: We talked to Gallup a bit about this and they gave us some very practical answers. QUESTION: No access? VOGL: Not sufficient access. Apparently -- I don't know all the answers, so please don't quote me exactly here but very generally -- if you wish to conduct an opinion poll in China, you need to have government permissions. And if you wish to do it with different types of people, you have to have even more government permissions. It's a very -- apparently, it's a very complicated process. And to try to get the sample that we wanted of the different types of executives and so on, the conclusion was that for at least for this particular survey, maybe in the future we can go back, it was just practically not possible to do it. So, that's not a very good answer. We should have had China involved. But that was -- obviously, we pursued that a bit, that was the practical response that came back. QUESTION: If we could just go back to this table where the U.S. comes in (OFF-MIKE). VOGL: Yes. QUESTION: There was 61 percent; is that right? VOGL: Sixty-four. PAGE 12 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 QUESTION: Sixty-four? (OFF-MIKE). VOGL: Sorry. I'm so sorry. Sixty-one. I'm sorry. Sorry, yes. Sixty-one percent. France was 34 percent. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) believe this because of the sheer (OFF- MIKE) the U.S. produces, the U.S. government has to go (OFF-MIKE) off, and we've got more defense contractors than any of these other countries. We've got more public works. And then the other question is, this score of (OFF-MIKE) public works contracts; does that mean that nearly every -- every contract we have to pay a bribe (OFF- MIKE)... VOGL: That's what it implies, right? I mean that's essentially the implication, right? We're starting at zero, OK? QUESTION: Right. VOGL: So, what we are certainly saying is that a very, very high percentage of construction of public works contracts, the large ones, in these countries are perceived to involve bribery -- perceived to, right? I mean we're not saying they are. On the first question, I don't have a good answer. I'll give you a, sort of, a little bit of a personal view. I believe quite a number of major U.S. corporations have for a number of years taken the Foreign Practices Act very seriously and felt very strongly that, in order to win foreign deals, they have to do a lot more in terms of on- the-ground marketing, bid preparation and a lot of technical things in order to be fully competitive. I think a lot of major U.S. corporations have also been successful in winning a lot of foreign deals. And I think that success has led to all sorts of rationalizations, often, on the part of competitors. "Well, if they're not paid bribes, they must have some other advantage," type of reasoning. So I think there is a certain overlap there. And I'm particularly relating that to major deals, because I have a personal feeling that when you look at why does the U.S. only get a six or something like that in the bribe payer's index -- in other words, why doesn't it get a much cleaner score given the fact that we have the Foreign Practices Act? And I think one would tend to find that many of the largest U.S. corporations have very strict compliance codes in place and as far as possible -- they always have rogue managers here and there -- as far as possible try to adhere to it. But that there are many smaller or middle-size U.S. corporations that feel they're not going to get caught and that they can get away with it, and that that leads to that sort of image. Whereas the perception on the how -- you know, the U.S. pressure and so on, probably comes strongest in the very high profile, really big deals where quite often U.S. companies are successful. And when you say too many U.S. companies, you know, when you're looking at, say, power generations, in the end, for major contracts it turns out there are only four or five companies in the world that can compete. And one of them will be say GE, another will be ABB, another one will be Japanese and so everybody knows who's bidding. And of course there are a lot of sour grapes when -- amongst those who lose and rationalizations happen. PAGE 13 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 Sorry for the flaky answer, but we don't have more data on it. QUESTION: I have a question about the IMF and World Bank. You mentioned that both institutions right now are attempting a lot of changes in the structure of government, and this usually involves a scaling back of bureaucrats working. I'm wondering what suggestions you have in terms of what role they can play in terms of getting rid of corruption and (inaudible) what kinds of (OFF-MIKE) conditions you believe should be included, for example, in a letter of intent. VOGL: Well, both the bank -- World Bank and the IMF, in the last three years, have publicly been very vocal -- increasingly vocal in stressing the importance of fighting corruption as part of -- as central really to their programs. We saw it quite clearly in the Indonesia case, and I think both institutions are learning a great deal about how incredibly complicated this issue is. If you look at the Indonesia case, where the fund felt that they had a program that really did reduce the amount of corruption in the banking sector, only to find the Bank Bali (ph) scandal take place, which showed that despite Fund vigilance the Indonesians were still finding another way to get around the corner on this. It only shows the complexity of the subject. I think the Fund and the Bank, as a result, are putting more and more staff, more and more research resources into learning more about the approach and doing more about it. I think that one of the key things on civil service reform is to recognize that low public salaries of middle- to senior-level officials really is an untenable situation if, indeed, you're even going to start to address the corruption issue. But I think that, if I may, rather than go for a long category of possible solutions, give you one example; Olusegon Obasanjon came into office as president of Nigeria last May very determined to clean up corruption in that country. He has a very clear agenda. So far he's kept to the agenda. He has rescinded past contracts. He has, in fact, prosecuted some of the worst offenders. He has issued a code of conduct for all cabinet members and senior public officials. He is starting to attack a huge, huge problem in Nigeria that he is the first to recognize. And he has gone to the Fund and the Bank for a lot of support to strengthen his economy, to move forward to strength -- to get economic growth going in Nigeria which will allow a lot of the anti-corruption changes to take place. I think when you have a strong and determined leader in place like that then it's incumbent on the Fund and the Bank to try its very hardest to get behind them. When, on the other hand, they see a country with absolutely rampant corruption, then I think the Bank and the Fund should have great doubts about any lending at all. QUESTION: For example. VOGL: Such as Kenya, which is now trying to get back into the Fund's good books -- in the World Bank's good books. And we have, obviously, colleagues in Nairobi who can talk much more clearly about this, but I think the Kenyans have a long way to go to demonstrate that they are serious about their anti-corruption initiatives before the world is really going to believe that PAGE 14 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 the government of Kenya is going to change. But when it does change, and when it does do the right things, then I think the Fund and the Bank should be there to strongly support the efforts. QUESTION: Are there any places that are currently (OFF-MIKE) IMF program such as the... VOGL: Well, Emily (ph), you're much more expert on the IMF programs than I am. If you look at our corruption perception index and you look at all the countries that score in the bottom third, in other words, where corruption is perceived to be huge, and then you look at how many of those are getting IMF-World Bank programs, you will see that there is a tremendous overlap. I am not saying and TI is not saying -- and please, we want to be very clear -- we are not saying that we think the corruption issue should be a central conditionality issue in and of itself, because we don't want to end up in a situation where the Fund and the Bank are bribing countries not to take bribes. We're sensitive to that particular hazard. In countries where the government seems serious about doing something about corruption and is initiating strong anti-corruption programs, we think the Fund and Bank should be behind them and should be very supportive, even if these countries are still perceived at high levels of corruption. In countries, however, where it looks as if it's just window-dressing and that the anti-corruption efforts are purely there to please the Bank and the Fund and that there's no seriousness behind it, we think that the Fund and the Bank should be much more vigilant. And in this regard, particularly on topic for this morning, we think that public procurement monitoring is an absolutely crucial area where we would greatly encourage the World Bank and bilateral aid agencies to be even more vigilant, because it's an area where they have a lot to do with the overall environment in the countries in which they lend. And they shouldn't just be vigilant about contracting for their own portion of a project, but they should be vigilant about the whole system of public procurement. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) VOGL: Yes. QUESTION: And in that case, I mean, how do you respond (OFF- MIKE) can consider low private sector salaries the main... VOGL: Well, I'll give you a very simple example. VOGL: Take a country. I don't -- is there anybody here from Tanzania? So I'm not going to be too contradicted. But let me give you an example of one of the world's poorest countries. I personally know of situations of very senior government officials whose actual pay is barely a living wage. And they are in very powerful positions. And in many of the poorer countries of the world and the poorest countries of the world, that's the case. I remember a seminar here on the judiciary system in Ukraine where judges were saying they were getting paid $10 a month. Maybe they're getting paid $100 a month. But if they have to judge a situation where somebody's being accused PAGE 15 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 of tax evasion involving millions, they can't live off their low salary. So in many, many cases, the officials that we're talking about, that international business people deal with, whether they be senior customs officials, senior commissioners of mining, senior military people, senior people in the judiciary and so on, you find in many, many countries that the level of public-sector salaries are, relative to just normal living salaries, very low indeed. And clearly that is a temptation to augment those salaries. And once you start going down that road, maybe there's no end. QUESTION: So you say that that argument applies to these 16 countries at least... VOGL: That was the perception of the people we interviewed. But I wouldn't -- you know, I think one has to be a little bit careful of being too specific here. We are not -- TI is not saying that senior salaries in Argentina are too low and that encourages bribery. But we are saying that, as an overall generality, this is seen as -- to be a key factor. We're not surprised by that per se. We're a little surprised, given the fact that these are senior government officials, that it came up clearly as number one. We would have thoughts points two and three, which are very connected, as I mentioned to you, would be there. We would have thought there would have been clearer evidence of just greed. But I think what two -- points two and three say is the opportunity to take bribes is seen to be very great. QUESTION: And they'd be under the table? QUESTION: In light of the high score that construction and public works sector received, in terms of perceived bribery, will Transparency International be paying special attention to Southeast Europe as it prepares for (OFF-MIKE)? VOGL: We don't -- well, Kosovo -- we have an initiative in Croatia. We have one in -- we have some in several other parts of Southeast Europe. We don't have anything in Kosovo. Our whole approach has been institution-building and building local civil society groups, which are national in character. And we really haven't done anything in Kosovo. Maybe we will in time. QUESTION: In the whole region? VOGL: Now in the region we... QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) VOGL: ... yes, we have various national chapters and they're doing a variety of different things. I believe we have got what we call an integrity project in Bulgaria itself. And they've got varying degrees of success and lack of success, and I'll give you, if you want, a name of one of my colleagues -- a gentleman who you can contact who can give you a much bigger picture on that. QUESTION: Yes, my name is Herb Bolarent (ph) on statedepartment.com and we have been doing a series on the Saud family of Saudi Arabia and their international bribery pattern. We have done (inaudible) first world countries prior to getting involved in the military bribery and all of those things that you mentioned. (OFF- MIKE) comment on this example (OFF-MIKE)? PAGE 16 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 VOGL: I don't know what's typical. He went to prison for those (inaudible). And he's just come out -- came out last week I think. I have -- and I know TI has absolutely no information of Saudi corruption. We do not investigate corruption. We took a view early- on, when we created Transparency International, that we would be there to stimulate many initiatives of different kinds, to build institutions to curb corruption, including working with international journalism groups to strengthen the freedom of the press and the ability of journalists in many countries to investigate corruption. We think they are the ones -- and public prosecutors -- who should do that, rather than a nongovernmental organization. So I can't -- I really just can't comment to you on it. I think that our biggest concern has been corruption in developing countries. We know the corruption in major industrial countries may be caused by people outside of those countries. The corruption -- people in the U.K. government, or the Belgian government, or the German CDU Party today, and so on are -- that type of corruption is large, very worrying and disturbing, but doesn't have the same basic humanitarian and social impact in our belief, as the corruption that takes place in the poorer countries of the world. And that's where our focus has been. That's not to say we shouldn't do more there. Our main focus in the industrial countries has been on getting the OECD convention fully ratified, fully enforced, and fully monitored. And as I mentioned earlier, and as our data suggests here, we have a huge way to go, because corporations clearly, at least in the major emerging market countries -- the international corporations just don't even know about the convention, let alone are not complying with it. And if you look at our table of those countries that have ratified, even there we have major problems with the British legislation. We have major problems with the Japanese legislation. We have major problems with some of the legislation in line with the OECD convention because it isn't as serious as we thought it should be, let alone in enforcement. Sorry to give a long answer that didn't directly deal with Saudi Arabia, but we just don't have the information. I'm sorry. QUESTION: Excuse me if this has been addressed earlier, but in the case of the former Soviet Union and the emphasis on the absence of institutional framework, have you addressed that problem where, in fact, it is thought that the high level of corruption is due to the absence of an institutional framework and rule of law, as compared to, say, some LDCs which have pretty thorough laws, but still have high degrees of corruption? VOGL: Sort of yes and no, Barry, is the answer. The wonderful thing about the way in which our national organizations have evolved and are evolving -- and many of them are very young, including those in Eastern Europe -- is that they are adopting agendas that they think are realistic for their countries. And so we find that in some countries, for example, interestingly enough, the main focus of the national chapter is on education programs in schools about corruption. In others, it's very much to do with the electoral system. In others, it's to do with local procurement and municipal government. And in others, of course, it's a major macro issues of rule of law and so on. It varies enormously. PAGE 17 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 We have been -- as you probably know, we have been very hesitant about engagement in the former Soviet Union as a whole and in Russia in particular. We have got very active chapters in Estonia and in other Baltic countries. We have got very young fledgling dynamic chapters starting in some -- in Ukraine and in some of the other former Soviet Union countries. But in Russia, we haven't really known where to start. We have been a sense that the problems are so massive that building even a serious national chapter is a long-term project. We're quite prepared to do that. We have tremendous support, tremendous media interest, tremendous interest by lots of people there, but no -- but it's very hard to even really get started. And the dialogues that we have had with Russian officials really have not gone anywhere. At one point, the European Union encouraged us to go and work out with the Duma a new anti-corruption law, and frankly that was a farcical exercise. And so we're hopeful, obviously, that the government will get their act together. I think you're right about the rule of law, but I'm also being very candid and honest with you about the limits of a nongovernmental organization on this issue in a country where corruption clearly is as rampant and as massive as it is in Russia. QUESTION: In your surveys, was there any detection of trends and forms and types of influence that might indicate that they're getting clever in the quid pro quo, and maybe hiring cousins as consultants, for example, that might start taking influence outside the (OFF-MIKE) successive or (OFF-MIKE) restrictions? VOGL: No, and the reason is very simple. This is the first. We've never done this before. This is our baseline. This is the first time I think anybody's ever seen a ranking of sectors -- the first time we've gone out and asked these type of questions. Next time we will have a base for comparison. We'll also have a whole set of issues that we can start to ask questions about, that either didn't occur to us first time around or we thought we too complex to ask, simply as we've gone up our experience curve. The problem obviously of doing the very first is that you don't have any reference points and you don't have previous experiences. So all the experiences that I could tell you about, in answer to your question, would be anecdotal from our various national chapters, as distinct from this type of poll data. But what I would like to emphasize just one more time to you is if the margin of error, which we've put on these tables and you'll see it on the construction thing which is 0.2 or less, shows an incredible uniformity amongst the experienced business people that we asked here in 14 different countries about the basic conclusions that we produced today. That is comforting to us about the soundness of this poll and the way -- and the seriousness with which Gallup International went about the task. It is extremely disconcerting, however, because it suggests levels of corruption -- such as that question that I got earlier about the 1.5 on construction -- levels of corruption that I think many of us who've been following this daily are genuinely surprised about. We are surprised that the results are frankly as bad, meaning that the propensity to use bribes in international business is as great as the data is suggesting. PAGE 18 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 Yes, sir. QUESTION: It's very impressive what you've been doing in a short period of time. I note that you have a budget of nearly $3 million, and while I think you've touched on this in the past, it would be helpful (inaudible) if you could just give us a brief review of your paying sponsorship. Where do you get the dough? VOGL: We have it on your report. QUESTION: I have it. VOGL: And I've just got four or five copies here, and the back page I think lists -- or almost the back page -- somewhere here in our annual report -- being a transparent organization, I think we list somewhere -- page 14 on this is a financial statement with offering them thanks. And we list all the donors. I'm afraid I haven't got many, but we could send you other copies if you want. And that lists all -- not all, but most -- almost all of the sources that we get money from. We get money in different ways. Our budget is creeping up and I hope maybe this year we will be closer to $4 million -- that's for 2000. We are working with USAID on a substantial program. We are working with the Open Society Foundation -- that's George Soros' foundation -- on a substantial program in Eastern Europe. The MacArthur Foundation has been very generous in helping us to do studies like this one. We have -- I think Marcia (ph) (inaudible) is back there -- Marcia (ph) is with TI USA. I think we have something like 30 is it -- U.S. corporations, Marcia? (ph) -- who are contributors to Transparency International. So we have a very wide variety. Sorry? QUESTION: Could you name some of those for us? VOGL: Yes, I mean they are listed -- the names of the U.S. companies are listed. They range from General Electric and General Motors, to United Technologies, to United Parcel Service of Belgium, to Texaco, Tate and Lyle of the UK. One thing I would point out, though, which is very relevant, if I may, to this study. We have relatively low foreign corporate membership; strong U.S. corporate membership; low foreign corporate membership. Because when a foreign corporation doesn't see anything -- any risk under its domestic law in paying foreign bribes, it's not going to join and support Transparency International. We hope that, with the OECD convention and if companies abroad start to take it seriously and come into compliance, that they also will find it possible to actually support international anti-corruption efforts as well. VOGL: Now, this is not a fund-raising message that I've tried to give you but it's a reality. And the reality behind that reality is that there are many foreign corporations, major ones in Europe, that have said to us that -- and who have been very helpful, by the way, in helping us to get the OECD... (AUDIO GAP) PAGE 19 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 ... is a no-win situations for anybody. And they have said they want to stop paying bribes and the key thing is just to see that they arrive at stop paying bribes. We hope this type of information on sectors, and the BPI index, and the failure so far of countries like France and Italy to ratify the convention, all of that sort of news will stimulate more European countries -- companies to come into compliance, and, therefore, become more open supporters of TI. QUESTION: Do you think you'll ever get to the point where you'll be listing companies that bribe? VOGL: Maybe at the national level on certain sectors. I think one thing that is open is whether our national chapters may start conducting some of the surveys themselves on certain sectors in certain areas. And there if you get into a narrow enough area and a small enough defined sector, you may be able to do that. But doing this on a global basis as we are, where you've got literally hundreds of thousands of foreign affiliates of multinational corporations, there's just no way we could do it fairly. QUESTION: You just said that there are a handful of major firms that do large public works projects and... VOGL: Well, not public works, but... (CROSSTALK) VOGL: ... but say power generation of certain types. QUESTION: I mean (OFF-MIKE)... VOGL: Correct. Right. QUESTION: ... you mentioned ABB. VOGL: Yes. QUESTION: General Electric. VOGL: Yes. QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) sectors that are highlighted in the report, why is it so hard on a global scale to say, Well, let's name names? VOGL: No, I think that... (CROSSTALK) QUESTION: (OFF-MIKE) industries. VOGL: Right. And I think that's -- that's where, perhaps, we may have to go in the future and I'm not sure whether we'd do it at the national level or regional level or internationally. But I think that there is potential for that. Whether we do it or not, I'm not sure. But there's certainly potential, and we're interested to see what the reactions are to this sort of study and this sort of report. When you do something for the first time, you don't know quite what the reactions are, whether -- and whether we're encouraged to do PAGE 20 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 more or not and what questions, what countries, how we go about the selection. But hopefully we can improve the instrument. QUESTION: I have a two-part question. Given the ranking of the United States, sort of, in the middle, in that you have the arms and the defense industry, you would think that U.S. companies are still giving bribes and I'm wondering -- still paying bribes, and I'm wondering, one, why is it do you think that the Justice Department has so few criminal prosecutions and just a handful over the last five years? And the second question is, given the reliance on U.S. companies, do you run into problems overseas as people seeing you as, sort of, an organization with heavy support from U.S. companies and -- like for example, I know that your U.S.-based Transparency is not very active in the United States. People think that the United States has no bribery, but we have a legalized system of bribery where you dump -- the companies dump the money into the political parties instead of getting, you know, overt bribes, it's a legal system, money in (OFF- MIKE). VOGL: Well, you've asked me many questions. Less than 10 percent of our total funding comes from U.S. corporations, and we were very concerned when we started TI that we would not get into a situation of dependency on any sector or any type of funding. So -- and I don't think we are seen anywhere basically as being a, sort of, a proponent for the U.S. Having our headquarters in Berlin and having divulged a great deal of authority to our national chapters, I think that has been strengthened. It's interesting, we started only six years ago and there are only two people left on our 13-member board of directors, Peter Ike (ph), the chairman, and myself, the vice chairman, of the original group. All of the rest have been elected by the national chapters and there's been a turnover. Peter and I, for some reason, got reelected, but the others there's been a turnover and a substantial one. So, we have three members of the board from Latin America, three from Africa and so on. So, we are quite widely based from that point of view. I think there is another charge that is more general but just as serious, and that is that we are perceived perhaps in some quarters to be a northern group telling the South to clean up its act. And I think that one of the reasons why our -- one of our national chapters called very sternly for us to do this exercise that we're releasing to you today was to, in a sense, provide for those who are interested in the media and world-wide, with a sense that there are really two sides to this equation. And it's not just the question of the bribe takers, it's also the bribe suppliers, and of the bribe suppliers, the leading industrial countries and the corporations of those countries have a lot of answer for. Finally, on our U.S. national chapter, we think that there is absolutely no shortage of organizations, including the media, including congressional committees, including special think-tanks, foundations and non-governmental organizations, looking into every aspect of domestic politics, including political party financing and so on. At the moment, we don't think we have any competitive or comparative edge in any of those areas. And so our U.S. national chapter has been much more focused on areas of international business transactions where we, perhaps, are unique. Now, over time that may change as PAGE 21 FDCH Political Transcripts, January 20, 2000 our national chapter evolves. But that's the situation. On the Justice Department, I'd like to give you off, if I may -- maybe Marcia (ph) has it handy -- the phone number of Fritz Heimann, the chairman of TI USA, because I'd like him to talk about domestic enforcement and so forth. QUESTION: How do you spell his name? VOGL: H-E-I-M-A-N-N. QUESTION: He's an attorney here? VOGL: No, he's up in Connecticut. He's a retired assistant -- associate general counsel of General Electric. He is a member of the TI board. He's one of the founders of Transparency International and he's the chairman of U.S. national chapter, and if it hadn't of been for the snow storm, he would have been with us this morning. But I don't know if -- Marcia (ph) Grove (ph) is back there. She's with TI U.S.A., and I think Marcia (ph) may have Fritz's phone number, and Fritz will be delighted to take calls on this as I spoke to him last night. MODERATOR: Mr. Vogl, thank you very much. VOGL: Well, thank you very much for coming. END NOTES: Unknown - Indicates speaker unknown. Inaudible - Could not make out what was being said. off mike - Indicates could not make out what was being said. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: January 21, 2000 PAGE 22 LEVEL 1 - 2 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 2000 Times Newspapers Limited The Times (London) January 15, 2000, Saturday SECTION: Home news LENGTH: 740 words HEADLINE: Former refugee joins race for mayor BYLINE: Andrew Pierce BODY: A millionaire Asian entrepreneur, who came to Britain as a penniless refugee and made a fortune after starting a family corner shop, will enter the race next week to be London mayor. Ram Gidoomal, who owned six shops within six months of arriving in Britain in 1967 as a 16-year-old schoolboy, went on to run a multinational corporation that employed 7,000 people worldwide. Mr Gidoomal, a father of three, who is standing for the mayoralty on a Christian Democrat ticket, has secured wealthy backing for his candidacy, which he will announce on Wednesday. Mr Gulam Noon, whose company, Noon Products, supplies curries to Sainsbury's, and who last year gave Pounds 100,000 to the Labour Party, is one of his most ardent supporters. "Ram's story is one of going from being a refugee corner shopkeeper to successful corporate businessman," he said. "His record as a social entrepeneur shows he is the best equipped candidate to be mayor." Pru Leith, the restaurateur and author, and Tim Melville-Ross, the outgoing director of the Institute of Directors, are also publicly committed supporters. Mr Gidoomal, 49, whose father died when he was only four months old, was deported to Britain as a teenager from Kenya when his uncle, who had taken him in, was ordered to leave. The family of 15 scraped together the money to take over a struggling confectionery and newsagents in West London. They lived above it in two rooms. "It was doing so badly they almost gave the shop to us," Mr Gidoomal said yesterday. "When we took it over it opened from 7am to 5pm and was on its last legs. "The whole street was dying. I opened it from 4am until 7pm. Then we noticed crowds walking past the shop at 9.30pm after the bingo. So we reopened again in the evenings. We were packed every night. Within six months we had opened six shops within one mile of each other. My task was to ensure the shops functioned properly and profitably. We made a success of it because of the old-fashioned Asian work ethic." Having combined his career behind the counter with his schoolwork, Mr Gidoomal secured a special grant from the former Inner London Edcuation PAGE 23 Times Newspapers Limited, January 15, 2000 Authority to study physics at Imperial College, London. After a short-lived career in the City, he discovered there was a "glass ceiling" for non-white faces, so moved to the Inlaks Group, which was connected to his wife's family. The company made a series of acquisitions including tea plantations in India, vineyards in France and fish processing in Scotland. At its peak, it employed 7,000 people. Active in the voluntary and charity sector, Mr Gidoomal, who is an adviser to the Prince's Business Trust, which was set up by the Prince of Wales, was appointed CBE in 1998 for services to the Asian business sector. Mr Gidoomal was chosen as candidate for Britain's first Christian Democratic Party, the Christian People's Alliance, which is running candidates for the new London assembly. The party has support of leaders of the Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities. Raised in a Hindu family, Mr Gidoomal was brought up in the Sikh tradition, educated in a Muslim school and attends a Christian church every Sunday. "I love Jesus, I follow Jesus," he said. With a 25 per cent ethnic population in Greater London, Mr Gidoomal will have to be taken seriously by the main three political parties. "It has been such a farce and pantomine for Labour and the Tories, I think the voters want an alternative who is not tainted by party politcs," he said. His election manifesto includes a commitment to tackle issues of racial discrimination, regeneration of the inner-city boroughs and to enhance jobs-skill training. Mr Gidoomal is also a member of the Cabinet Office task force on better regulation. His candidacy will be announced next week at Toynbee Hall in the East End.. Ms Leith said: "I don't believe in God, but I do believe in Christian values and I do believe in Ram Gidoomal. He is a hugely successful businessman with the sense to see that plans for a prosperous London must include the other half - people without cars, good jobs, education or respect." Mr Melville-Ross said: "When Ram Gidoomal says he will work uncompromisngly to eliminate discrimination, you had better believe him. All my business experience tells me that organisations prosper when inclusion is the watchword and discrimination is shown the door." LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: January 17, 2000 PAGE 24 LEVEL 1 - 3 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 The Irish Times The Irish Times December 29, 1999 SECTION: CITY EDITION; WORLD REVIEW 1999; WORLD NEWS REVIEW; Pg. 60 LENGTH: 1087 words HEADLINE: If the 21st century is to achieve anything, it should have as an aim the deliverance of Africa from poverty and conflict An Africa riven by the obscenities of past misrule looks to a new era of self-government, reports Paul Cullen BODY: "It is an extraordinary thing that the conscience of Europe which 70 years ago has put down the slave trade on humanitarian grounds tolerates the Congo State today. It is as if the moral clock had been put back . . ." - Joseph Conrad to Roger Casement, December 1903. No region has better reason to rejoice at the passing of the 20th century than Africa, world capital of misery, corruption and the extinguishment of hope. At the time of writing, wars are continuing in at least seven African states. Sub-Saharan Africa is the region worst-hit by AIDS, with 70 per cent of all new infections and 80 per cent of deaths. The United Nations says 20 million of the 34 million people most urgently in need of humanitarian help are in Africa. But before looking at the prospects for Africa in the new millennium, it is crucial not to neglect Europe's contribution to this dismal state of affairs. More than 20 million Africans were exported for the slave trade between 1650 and 1850. All African states, with the exception of Liberia, were at some point colonised by a European power in the period 1500 to 1950. When the Europeans left, they did so hastily and messily. Some 53 new countries were formed, often with artificial boundaries. With no democratic history, middle-class or administrative caste, and risible infrastructures, Africans from about 3,000 ethnic groups, speaking 1,800 languages, were expected to make a go of it. As the late Tanzanian leader, Julius Nyerere, angrily told the World Bank some years ago: "We took over a country with 85 per cent of its population illiterate. The British ruled us for 43 years. When they left, there were two trained engineers and 12 doctors. This is the country we inherited." It is only 100 years since the publication of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and its depiction of the dark secret of Belgian King Leopold's personal empire in the Congo. Conrad summarised the attitude of the brutal colonists in the final words of Kurtz: "Exterminate all the brutes". It took years for these dark secrets to leak out of the Congo. In 1895, for example, the Swedish missionary Edward Sjoblom was giving a sermon at his church in the Congo. A soldier arrived and seized an old man whom he accused of not collecting enough rubber. Sjoblom asked him to wait but the soldier put a gun to the man's temple and fired. PAGE 25 The Irish Times, December 29, 1999 "A small boy of about nine is ordered by the soldier to cut off the dead man's hand, which, with some other hands taken previously in a similar way, are then the following day handed over to the commissioner as signs of the victory of civilisation," the missionary wrote. At about the same time the British were inventing the internment camp to house Boer soldiers during their war in southern Africa, Winston Churchill was witnessing the massacre of the Dervish army at the Battle of Omdurman, "the most signal triumph gained by the arms of science over barbarians". And the Germans were about to exterminate the Herero tribe in south-west Africa by driving men, women and children out into the desert. All this only 100 years ago. The colonists created divisions, ideologies and borders that lived on after their departure to disastrous effect. Gerard Prunier, in The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide, shows how the Belgians "modernised, simplified and ossified" an ancient, rich and complex society. "Administrators, government anthropologists and missionaries, all contributed, at times unwittingly, to an intellectually brilliant ideological reconstruction of Rwanda's past and, from that artificial past, of the present." The Tutsi were defined as a "superior race" while the Hutu, deprived of all power and exploited by both the whites and the Tutsi, were told they were inferior. We all know where this led. "The time-bomb had been set and it was now only a question of when it would go off," says Prunier. But he adds: "Although Rwanda was definitely not a land of peace and bucolic harmony before the arrival of the Europeans, there is no trace in its pre-colonial history of systematic violence between Tutsi and Hutu as such." Today, Africa is of no great strategic interest to the great powers. An economic interest remains, largely because of the continent's huge mineral deposits, but this is more effectively policed by multinational corporations, acting in tandem with powerful and often corrupt local elites. It seems to make little difference to the West just who runs a country like DR Congo (formerly Zaire), even when, as today, the country is riven by civil war and invasion from outside. The war in the Congo region has sucked in eight African states but the flow of minerals to the West continues undisturbed. Once again, as Conrad noted, the conscience of Europe "tolerates" the Congo. To Africans, too, the borders made by the colonists often seem to have little relevance. Cattle-herders bring their animals to water, regardless of national frontiers. Refugees flee war, crossing borders in massive numbers. Armed bands operate in many parts of central and east Africa, moving from country to country with impunity. So many other African phenomena refuse to be hemmed in by the straight lines drawn by the European powers. AIDS spread along the main trucking routes across the continent, and is now widespread throughout southern and eastern Africa. The Sahara eats away at arable land at an alarming rate, again without regard to borders. It's not surprising then that Africans today are questioning the status of the frontiers they have inherited. Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are showing the PAGE 26 The Irish Times, December 29, 1999 way by trying to create an African version of the Common Market, and other nations are expected to follow suit. Perhaps Africa will find its way out of the current morass by developing its strength regionally. By acting cohesively, African producers of minerals could more effectively control raw material prices on world markets, as OPEC did since the 1970s. If the Organisation for African Unity were to cure itself of inefficiency and corruption, Africa's voice might be listened to more closely on the world stage. Real political pressure might come to be exerted on issues such as debt and AIDS. Come the new year, the colonial legacy will have been consigned to a previous century. The time will have come for Africans to seize their own destiny, with the help of others. If the 21st century is to achieve anything, it should have as an aim the deliverance of Africa from poverty and conflict. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: December 29, 1999 PAGE 27 LEVEL 1 - 4 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 The Washington Post The Washington Post December 19, 1999, Sunday, Final Edition SECTION: A SECTION; Pg. A01 LENGTH: 3077 words HEADLINE: Old Tribe, New World; Brazilian Indians Seek Own Way of Modern Life SERIES: BEYOND 2000/Globalization BYLINE: Stephen Buckley , Washington Post Foreign Service DATELINE: ILHA DO BANANAL, Brazil BODY: As the dance of the Spirit Who Lives in the Water begins under a pale yellow sunset, 10-year-old Nahuria Karaja buries her face in her mother's lap. She does not want to watch another 10-year-old girl, nearly naked with decorative black lines across her smooth coppery skin, dance with two men in straw masks in the center of this Indian village of Santa Isabel. But the dance--a ritual at the heart of the identity of Nahuria's father and his ancestors--proceeds nonetheless. The men in the straw masks, shaking maracas and chanting, meet the girl, all black hair and downcast eyes, in the center of the path. They dance, separated by only a few inches. "This is very much ours," says Idjarruri Karaja, Nahuria's father. "This goes beyond 300 years of contact" with the outside world. As the men dance with the girl, Adais Karaja whispers to her daughter that, no, "You won't have to do it." After the 20-minute dance, Nahuria walks away. She is quiet for a long time. She is a modern girl who has been told that this faraway place is to be her home. This disconnect between a tradition-loving father and his citified, globalized daughter has complicated Idjarruri Karaja's dramatic attempt to restore simplicity and tradition to his modern life. Five years ago, Idjarruri, 36, and his wife, Adais, 37, left Brasilia, the capital, for this 180-mile-long, blade-shaped chunk of land, bounded by two rivers, in the heart of Brazil. The island had 3,000 people, 12 villages (known as aldeias), few phones, little electricity, no computers. Idjarruri's children had grown up in big cities around Brazil. Their lives were saturated with the latest in technology. Could they possibly thrive where their father and his six siblings had grown up--here, in a high-roofed hut in a village with a handful of cars, no shopping mall and no movie theaters? PAGE 28 The Washington Post, December 19, 1999 In 1993, Idjarruri returned to the land of his tribe, the Karaja, to build a new village he called Txuiri. His sons and daughter felt little connection to the island. They knew neither the tribe's central myths nor its language. But Idjarruri wanted them to know their land, the possession the Karaja cherish above all else. The land where thousands of their ancestors had shed blood, fighting colonists and other tribes. The land that holds everything you need, Idjarruri told his children repeatedly. The patrimony, he called it. Idjarruri wasn't suddenly anti-globalization. He spoke of computers and faxes and television as "exchanges," a return favor for what the Indians had taught the Portuguese about taking regular baths and hammocks and fishing. But in his gut he knew that such exchanges could be dangerous. The glare and chatter of television, the easy grasp of commercial goods, the ubiquitous sweep of technology could whittle away a person's sense of home. He also had a name to uphold. His late grandfather, Uatau Karaja, had been a fierce guardian of Indian rights. Idjarruri didn't want to admit it, but the Karaja saw him as an extension of his grandfather, a leader of his people. What kind of leader would he be if his own children rejected the ways of the tribe? His mantra today is "Neither isolation nor integration." Yet, as a new millennium dawns, what does that mean? Does it mean his children can watch "Independence Day" and "Dead Poets Society" over and over, as long as they also view videotapes of tribal ceremonies? That they can marry outside the tribe as long as they rear their children in the culture of the Karaja? That they can reject tribal mythology and language as long as they're committed to the land? Ultimately, for the Karaja and other indigenous groups around the world, the question is this: Having survived four centuries of neglect and oppression at the hands of colonizers and their own leaders, how will they negotiate a more subtle but no less critical challenge--the amorphous, unrelenting force known as globalization? Brazil's Indians already have waged a 500-year war against globalization. So it's no wonder that they have become an international symbol of native peoples' struggle to stave off change. Images of startled, isolated, naked Indians with shiny black-haired bowl-cuts and primitive weapons have become a late-20th century cliche. The Karaja are among the poorest of Brazil's tribes; their island is among the least developed of the nation's 187 indigenous territories. The Karaja, who lived across north-central Brazil, saw their numbers tumble from 45,000 earlier this century to roughly 3,000 today. "The Karaja were absolutely devastated by contact," said John Hemming, an expert on Brazil's Indians. From campaigns of enslavement to the stripping of their land, the Indians saw their culture shredded by colonizing Portuguese and Brazilian adventurers. There are an estimated 6,000 indigenous groups around the world. Their histories are tragically similar: Outside group discovers land awash in natural resources. Outsiders decide that indigenous people stand in their way. Indigenous group gamely fights back, but is overwhelmed and pushed to PAGE 29 The Washington Post, December 19, 1999 society's margins. The Brazilian Indians became so despised that some academics blamed the country's chronic social and economic underachievement on the high percentage of Brazilians--perhaps one-third--who are at least part Indian. Over the years--through Brazil's rubber boom, the discovery of gold and diamonds, and the construction of a road network through the Amazon--the Indians' yearning to retain their land and values has repeatedly collided with the development blueprints of multinational corporations and Brazilian regimes. "In every confrontation between 'progress' and the interests of the Indians," notes Joseph Page in his book, "The Brazilians," "the latter have had to yield." Numerous groups remain isolated or semi-isolated, and Sydney Possuelo, the famed discoverer of Indian tribes, keeps finding new ones. Yet far more Indians have meshed into Brazilian society. Today many Indians speak Portuguese, sometimes at the expense of their tribal tongue. More wear oxfords and khakis than grass skirts and loincloths. What is new at the end of the 20th century is that Brazilian Indians want change--on their terms. They're grappling with how to use globalization to affirm their values, rather than be enslaved all over again. Defying the Stereotype Idjarruri Karaja embodies that struggle. By the time he returned to the Ilha do Bananal, his serious demeanor, his blazing dark brown eyes, his glistening black hair, had become well known among Indians. In the early 1980s, they chose him to present to the government a report on the pitiful state of Indian education. He toiled for Indian rights to education, land and work. In the early 1990s, he helped organize a meeting in Rio de Janeiro of indigenous peoples from around the world. When he came to Txuiri, he wanted the village to defy the stereotype of the backward Indian. It took more than two years of cajoling and negotiating, but he got both electricity and telephone lines in February 1997. Today in Idjarruri's house, a computer with a 200-megahertz Pentium processor sits on a tablecloth decorated with renderings of Christmas elves. A printer, phone and old gray telephone-fax machine also rest on the table. Nearby, in front of a dingy, cracking vinyl couch, sits a color television with a 15-inch screen. On a shelf above, movies: "Anastasia," "Mad Max 2," "Final Judgment." Seventeen-year-old Idjarrina, whose bedroom door sports the typical teenager's "Don't Enter" sign under a skull and crossbones, has a stereo system. His brother Idjawala, 15, has one too. One Sunday morning, Nahuria, all bright eyes, giggles and flowing brown hair, stretches out on the couch, watching TV. She loves cartoons. She loves TV. She is embarrassed to admit that she watches it a good three hours a day. This morning, she watches "Ghostbusters" while she absent-mindedly cradles a video game on her lap. PAGE 30 The Washington Post, December 19, 1999 Her father always tells his children that they as individuals and the Karaja as a people must become economically viable. Computers, TV and fax machines must be just a beginning. "The people in the world who get respect are those who are economically strong," he says. "I've tried to prepare my children for this. It's hard to tell someone that their culture is important if they don't know if they're going to eat tomorrow." By culture, Idjarruri does not mean the ballet. He means land. Language and myth may be critical parts of any culture, but it is land, including the rivers that ripple through it, that has always bound indigenous people together. Language disconnected from land loses much of its unifying power, and eventually dies. Myths that explain who the Karaja are would lose their meaning without a sense of place. In Brazil, the land brought them food--through hunting, gathering and fishing. The land was their source of healing--through its plants and herbs. That land, on the eastern edge of the Amazon rain forest, is a place bursting with mango trees and palms. Thousands of cattle wander about. Stretches of forest are full of wildcats. Rivers teem with fish--from the tiny, fierce piranha to the gargantuan pirarucu, one of which can feed a whole village. Txuiri is a little less than an hour's drive from the nearest town (drive--or canoe--across a river, then head straight on a long red-clay road). But most of the villages are at least two or three hours from towns. Someday soon, Idjarruri's sons will leave this land. Idjarrina plans to earn a law degree. Idjawala plans to become a veterinarian. The question is whether they will return. It is hard to overstate how badly Idjarruri wants his children to stay on the island. He says he might even prevent them from marrying the women they love--if they are not of the Karaja. But many years ago, the father did just that. When Idjarruri asked his parents for permission to wed Adais, who has both European and Indian blood, he explained that so few Karaja women had a secondary education, he would never meet a woman who could match his intellectual curiosity. They said yes. Today, Idjarruri says that since anyone who marries his children would thus have a claim to tribal land--and since the land must remain in the hands of the Karaja--he expects his sons to honor his wishes. "It's not racism," he says. "It's protecting our patrimony." His sons say they're open to marrying outside the tribe. "I'm going to marry whomever I fall in love with," Idjawala says. A few seconds later, Idjarrina says: "I'm going to marry whomever God has chosen for me." Idjarruri's determination to maintain his tribal land is far from unusual. Whether it is the Melanesian in West Papua, the Innu in eastern Canada or the Masai in Kenya, the struggle for sovereignty over territory remains paramount. PAGE 31 The Washington Post, December 19, 1999 Activists and indigenous peoples often protest against companies that are mining or building dams. Yet more and more, they fear not bulldozers, but a small box with wires that has the potential to do as much damage as colonizers and adventurers ever did. "TV imposes on people a perspective," says Rudolph Ryser, chairman of the Center for World Indigenous Studies in Olympia, Wash. "It sells products that to the kids are new, modern, mysterious. So the kid looks around and says, 'Why don't we have these things? Is something wrong with us?' So they don't want to stay in the village." Television has so dazzled some tribal communities in Brazil that leaders have had to set limits. In one tribe, "people would just sit around and watch it all day," says Saulo Feitosa, vice president of the Indigenous Missionary Council, a Roman Catholic organization. "Now they can only watch at night--and only the news or soap operas." Idjarruri's boys seem firm in their commitment to the land, which heartens their father. After earning his law degree, Idjarrina plans to raise cattle--"money that's alive," he calls the animals--on the island, a place that he says "is big enough for my dreams." Idjawala says he would never flee the island. In fact, last July, during a six-week computer course in Brasilia, Idjawala grew ill. His gorgeous black hair fell out. He lost 19 1/2 pounds. He survived the course only by coming home on weekends. "He missed home so much," Adais Karaja says. Nahuria is aghast at her brothers' expressions of kinship with the land. "Can you imagine that?" she says. "When I grow up, I'm going to travel around the world." Encounters With Globalization By the time Nahuria grows up, perhaps more of Brazil's indigenous communities will have connected to the global economy. Her father dreams that by then the Ilha do Bananal will have fashioned prosperous agricultural and fishing export projects. He foresees the remote island, with its astonishing array of birds and 38 species of mammals, emerging as a magnet for eco-tourism. On many fronts, the lives of Brazil's Indians, while still impoverished, have improved. Health workers reach even the most isolated villagers to provide regular vaccinations. More Indians go to school, although as a group they remain far behind the rest of the population. Young, sophisticated Indian politicians have started to find their voices. Indian population numbers are easing upward again. Still, few native groups have wholly embraced globalization. An exception is the Kayapo tribe, believed to be the country's wealthiest indigenous group, which has used profits from lumber and gold extracted from its territories to purchase fancy cars and fine homes. For now, however, Indian encounters with globalization tend to occur at the shallowest levels. The village of Wari-Wari, about 60 miles south of Txuiri, is typical. Its 180 residents--members of the Javae, a tribe with close ties to PAGE 32 The Washington Post, December 19, 1999 the Karaja--have a generator that, when they can gather the money to buy diesel fuel for it, runs three hours a day. When the generator isn't working, a suffocating darkness falls on the village. The only light comes from the steady, tiny flashing of fireflies and distant bolts of lighting knifing through the sky. Wari-Wari has no running water, no telephones, three radios and, of course, a 12-inch television. The TV, cloaked in a dusty, cracking brown tarp, sits atop an old wooden table in Nilton Javae's hut. On the same table lie a machete and small calculator. The room also contains a hammock, a small transformer and a second TV that does not work. The people of Wari-Wari take enormous pride in these connections to a faster world. Their thirst to be a part of the outside is almost palpable. During several days of interviews, Walter Wassure, the village spokesman, smiled only twice. Once, when he sees a U.S. dollar bill--a 20--for the first time. And again when he is asked if he has heard of Mike Tyson. "He's brutal," Wassure says. "We saw him bite the ear," meaning he watched Tyson chomp Evander Holyfield's ears during their last championship fight. They have heard of the Internet--and would like to use it. But they have never heard of Bill Gates. They know who Bill Clinton is. And Monica Lewinsky. "We heard about her when Mr. Clinton was having those troubles with Iraq," Wassure says. They adore American-made films. Asked to name their favorite actors and movies, they spit out a list. "Rambo One," Wassure says. "Arnold Schwartz," says Wilson Hariana, referring to Schwarzenegger. "Van Damme," says Nilton Javae. "Movies that show American Indians killing the whites," Hariana says. Anything else? "Rambo Two and Three." Back in Txuiri, one evening just before 9, Adais stands in front of her home and lets out a whoop, something like a rooster's cock-a-doodle-doo. Within moments, dozens of villagers--mothers with suckling babies, young men on their bicycles, old women--gather in front of Idjarruri's home. For more than an hour, they sigh, laugh and gape at the videotaped images of their tribesmen chanting deep-throated chants and dancing in circles, wearing headdresses of gold and red and purple feathers, their legs, arms, chests and backs marked with lines of jenipapo fruit blended with charcoal. "We could show it 10,000 times," Idjarruri says, "and they would watch it 10,000 times." PAGE 33 The Washington Post, December 19, 1999 When the videotape whines to its end, the contented viewers spill out into the village, their shadows spreading under the lights along the main dirt path as they shuffle home. History of the Brazilian Indians After the Europeans arrived in 1500, the number of Brazilian Indians nosedived from between 2 million and 6 million to roughly 300,000. From 1900 to the end of the 1960s, an estimated 90 indigenous tribes became extinct in Brazil alone. More than 1,000 indigenous groups once lived all over the country; today, that number has slid to 210. The Indians' numbers were reduced by enslavement, removal from their lands, the sometimes-intentional planting of deadly disease in their midst, and the stoking of inter-tribal warfare. In 1967, a government report found that Brazil's Society for the Protection of Indians -- aided by groups that wanted to scoop up indigenous lands -- had been giving the Indians clothes exposed to diseases such as smallpox and measles. Adais Karaja writes in a notebook at her Ilha do Bananal home, with her husband's Internet-connected computer in the next room. A Javae Indian's face is decorated for the initiation dance for three young men in Wari-Wari in the Ilha do Bananal. Dancing Into Adulthood: Javae Indians at Wari-Wari perform a dance to initiate Lawaraxiki Javae, center, into adulthood. Gathering Honey: Idjawala Karaja, left, and other villagers reach for honey from a beehive after working in the fields. Idjawala plans to study to become a veterinarian and then return to the Ilha do Bananal. Lighter Moments: At left, Idjarruri Karaja and his wife Adais share a laugh. Above, their daughter Nahuria plays with her Barbie doll. On the Beach: Edilma Beruja holds a doll as Janis Cleia Javae plays on the shore of one of the rivers bordering Ilha do Bananal. A Shot in the Arm: Kumahira Javae reacts as he gets a shot in the village of Toncontin. Brazilian health workers provide regular vaccinations to isolated Indian villages. Scanning the Skies: A Javae villager looks up to the sky to check the time and the weather while cutting wood in the Ilha do Bananal. GRAPHIC: Map LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: December 19, 1999 PAGE 34 LEVEL 1 - 5 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 Inter Press Service Inter Press Service December 9, 1999, Thursday LENGTH: 996 words HEADLINE: RIGHTS-ENVIRONMENT: AMNESTY, SIERRA CLUB JOIN FORCES BYLINE: By Jim Lobe DATELINE: WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 BODY: Two major U.S. grassroots organizations announced today that they were joining forces in campaign to defend environmental activists threatened by governments and corporate interests around the world. On the eve of International Human Rights Day, the U.S. division of Amnesty International (AIUSA) and the California- based Sierra Club said they would cooperate in organizing, advertising and lobbying to bring pressure on corporations and governments to cease abuses against environmental activists. "It should not be dangerous to defend the earth in the world today -- to speak out against environmental destruction, to protest when oil or logging companies jeopardize the health of citizens, to write about the dangers associated with the construction of a new dam," said AIUSA president, Julianne Cartwright Traylor. "In far too many places, such activism can mean risking -- and losing -- your freedom, your health, or even your life," she said. With a combined membership of more than one million volunteers across the United States, the two organizations have worked together in previous campaigns to protect environmental activists in Nigeria, Russia, and Cambodia. The new campaign marks a consolidation of that partnership, according to Michael Dorsey, a member of the Sierra Club board of directors. As its first act, the new grouping -- named "To Defend Those Who Give the Earth a Voice" -- released a 31-page report on 10 of the most urgent cases of persecution of environmental activists around the world. "Governments in both developing and developed countries are colluding with multinational corporations to protect profits at the expense of the environment, democracy and human rights," said Taylor. She said the campaign was directed at two goals: to influence individual cases of environmentalists who had been imprisoned or arrested; and to work together to develop government and corporate policies to secure long-term protection for human rights and the environment. The new group's report, Environmentalists Under Fire, covered cases in Burma, Chad and Cameroon, China, Ecuador, India, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Russia, and Cambodia. PAGE 35 Inter Press Service, December 9, 1999 Mexican attorney Digna Ochoa y Placido said her clients, anti- logging activists Rodolfo Montiel and Tedodoro Cabrera, were arrested last May by Mexican soldiers in the town of Pizotla, Guerrero, for alleged ties to a guerrilla movement. Both men, who subsequently were beaten and tortured into confessing to the charges, were members of a local environmental group that had called for a ban on logging in nearby forests, which increased following the signing of the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). "American timber companies like Boise-Cascade have fled the United States to come to Mexico where they destroy our forests," said Ochoa y Placido, who added that the Mexican government still had not begun an investigation into the army's treatment of the two activists. Julia Tchernova told reporters here how her father, nuclear engineer Aleksandr Nikitin, was charged with espionage by the Russian government after publication of his book, which documented the problems of radioactive pollution from nuclear submarines based in Russia's Northern Fleet. Four years of constant harassment and persecution by the FSB, Russia's internal security agency, had resulted in the physical break-up of the family, according to Tchernova, as well as the loss of many civil and social benefits. "All my family is apart now," Tchernova said, suppressing tears. "Last time I saw my dad was a year and a half ago. The whole family has suffered from the FSB's harassment." Other cases highlighted in the report include the forcible displacement of minority groups in Burma, where the Western oil companies Unocal and Total have joined with the military government to build a gas pipeline; and the militarization of the Oriente region in Ecuador, where Indian populations are defending their territory against the encroachment and ecologically harmful operations of U.S. oil companies. Similarly, the ongoing repression by government forces deployed to protect U.S. and French oil installations in the Niger delta in Nigeria has been a cause celebre for both human rights and environmental groups, since even before the Nov. 1995 execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa and eight other Ogoni activists. Despite the election of a new government in Abuja earlier this year, the violence in the region appears only to have worsened, especially in recent weeks. In Chad, according to the report, at least 200 civilians reportedly were killed in the Doba oil region and the only member of parliament who opposed a multi-national oil project, led by Exxon, Shell and Elf, was imprisoned for 10 months for accusing another lawmaker of taking bribes from the oil companies. In neighboring Cameroon, where the same pipeline project threatened the Atlantic Littoral Forest, activists who demonstrated against the pipeline had received anonymous threats, according to the report. In China, activists opposed to giant infrastructure projects were being harassed and persecuted. In one case, a writer who published a book PAGE 36 Inter Press Service, December 9, 1999 criticizing the huge Three Gorges Dam project, Dai Qing, was imprisoned for 10 months and banned from publishing. In India, tribal and other demonstrators opposed to the construction of the Narmada Dam continued to face repression, including arrests, beatings, and intimidation, by security forces, according to the report. Activists in Kenya, who had tried to save the country's remaining public forests from development, were attacked, arrested and beaten, it noted. In Cambodia, the Sierra Club and AIUSA won a major victory by successfully pressing the government to drop charges against two activists who were arrested for allegedly inciting riots over the import and dumping of toxic wastes from Taiwan. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: December 10, 1999 PAGE 37 LEVEL 1 - 6 OF 43 STORIES Content and programming copyright 1999 Cable News Network Transcribed under license by Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. Formatting copyright 1999 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to Cable News Network. This transcript may not be copied or resold in any media. CNN SHOW: CNN NEWSROOM 04:30 am ET November 30, 1999; Tuesday 4:30 am Eastern Time Transcript # 99113000V05 TYPE: SHOW SECTION: News; International LENGTH: 4555 words HEADLINE: NEWSROOM for November 30, 1999 BYLINE: Andy Jordan, Rudi Bakhtiar, Rusty Dornin, Katharine Barrett, Dan Rutz, Lucia Newman, Alphonso Van Marsh, William Schneider, Tom Haynes HIGHLIGHT: The World Trade Organization meeting kicks off in Seattle, Washington amid protests. Next, they went to war for their country, and decades later they're still living the nightmare. Then, head to Kenya, where a radioactive hill threatens the health of villagers. Finally, a major milestone for Panamanians, as the Latin American country takes control of the Panama Canal. BODY: THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. ANNOUNCER: Seen in classrooms the world over, this is CNN NEWSROOM. ANDY JORDAN, CO-HOST: Welcome to another day on NEWSROOM. Welcome, we're glad you're with us. I'm Andy Jordan. RUDI BAKHTIAR, CO-HOST: I'm Rudi Bakhtiar. We have a lot to tell you about starting with the largest trade event ever in the United States. JORDAN: In our top story, the World Trade Organization meeting kicks off in Seattle, Washington amid protests. BAKHTIAR: In our "Health Desk," they went to war for their country, and decades later they're still living the nightmare. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RANDY, VIETNAM WAR VETERAN: I was hoping that I could leave Vietnam there. And being young, I thought I could. It just doesn't work that way. PAGE 38 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 (END VIDEO CLIP) JORDAN: In "Worldview," we head to Kenya, where a radioactive hill threatens the health of villagers. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) JUMA SAIED MWAMABA, VILLAGE ELDER (through translator): For years, there have been mysterious deaths. We fear some deaths have been caused by the air that we breath coming from this hill. (END VIDEO CLIP) BAKHTIAR: Then we'll "Chronicle" a major milestone for Panamanians as the Latin American country takes control of the Panama Canal. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Panamanians have an enormous challenge and they understand it, they understand this is the heart of their country, they need to make the canal work, and more importantly, they realize this is a great opportunity. (END VIDEO CLIP) BAKHTIAR: Today, we get down to the nuts and bolts of the global economy. While the wheels of international trade turn faster every day, in Seattle today, there are those who would just as soon see them grind to a screeching halt. Delegates and demonstrators are gathering there for a meeting of the World Trade Organization, or WTO. The delegates aim to set up an agenda for negotiations on a new international trade agreement. Security is tight with thousands of protesters swarming the meeting site. Some are championing the cause of turtles caught in shrimp nets. They're among the tens-of-thousands of demonstrators from an alphabet soup of protest organizations, all hoping to throw a wrench into the global free trade machine. As one of the United States' primary exporting cities, home to Boeing and Microsoft, Seattle is the focal point for trade and fury. The WTO is an international organization established in 1995 to ensure smooth, predictable, and free trade between nations. There are 135 member states and 30 more awaiting membership. The WTO is the successor to GATT, or the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which took shape after World War II. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RUSTY DORNIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): If you're talking trade, rules about tariffs, subsidies and such are set by international treaties. If you're talking about enforcing those rules, it's the World Trade Organization. You might call it the top cop of global trade. LAURA TYSON, ECONOMIST, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY: There was a view we should set up an organization to really adjudicate trade disputes, and PAGE 39 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 because we're moving out of manufacturing into services and regulatory issues and agricultural issues ultimately, it was felt that it was very important to have a dispute settlement mechanism with very clear rules of operation. DORNIN: To its supporters, the WTO is the free-market panacea for the world's trade troubles, a way to stimulate developing economies and keep developed economies supplied with plenty of open trading partners. To critics, the WTO enforces global trading rules that benefit big business. JULIETTE BECK, GLOBAL EXCHANGE: They're being made in an unaccountable, undemocratic fashion to benefit multinational corporations at the expense of the public interest. And the World Trade Organization now has a four-year track record of essentially undermining hard-fought-for environmental, health and safety protections. DORNIN: When Asian nations challenged a U.S. law protecting sea turtles caught in shrimp nets, the WTO ruled against the U.S., claiming the law discriminated against other nations, one of several rulings that angered environmentalists, anger that fostered some unlikely partnerships like the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club. DAVID FOSTER, UNITED STEEL WORKERS OF AMERICA: No organization is today more harmful to the things that organizations like the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, the United Steel Workers and the AFL-CIO have fought for than is the WTO. It is undermining through unrestricted free trade the social safety net that we've fought for a hundred years to establish as a labor movement in this country. DORNIN: Labor groups would like to see the WTO force nations to enact laws regarding workers' rights. They argue sweatshop conditions in developing countries are bad for all. But WTO supporters say sanctions make things worse. HOWARD LEWIS, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF MANUFACTURERS: Our answer is not to sanction the very people that you're trying to help, but to stimulate economic growth and development, which is what the trade -- the WTO and trade is all about. (END VIDEOTAPE) BAKHTIAR: The labor issue is just one of the concerns on protestors' minds. They also worry about the environment, human rights, and the exploitation of children and women. Katharine Barrett is listening between the chants and has more from Seattle. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KATHARINE BARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The largest trade event in the United States is proving also to be the loudest. PROTESTERS: The WTO has got to go. Hey, hey, ho, ho... BARRETT: Defenders of turtles and the environment, developing countries, organized labor: a fury of sound is rising in Seattle against the World Trade Organization, its rules, and the procedures which govern global trade. PAGE 40 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 With hundreds of thousands of protesters expected, security is on high alert. Scheduled meetings Monday between WTO ministers and non- government observers, meant to be a civilized airing of differences, started several hours late after a possible security threat shut out participants as the day began. Still, WTO leaders say they are prepared to listen to those thronging the streets. MIKE MOORE, WTO DIRECTOR-GENERAL: They're not all bad or mad. Many of our critics are right. Many and most want to improve the WTO. BARRETT: U.S. trade officials want to broaden the WTO mandate to include labor, environmental standards and more. But many developing countries say trade liberalization has for now gone far enough. MARTIN KHOR, THIRD WORLD NETWORK: The majority of the WTO members -- that is the developing countries -- are demanding that the agreements be reviewed and the weaknesses of the agreements be rectified so that we have rules in the WTO that are fair and just. BARRETT: But there is some progress to report. Officials have finally agreed on a rough framework for discussion here. Topics include agriculture, trade rules, market access, and labor and environmental standards. (on camera): The tussle over trade policy has even split this town: The nation's number-one exporter, Seattle-based Boeing Company, supports the WTO's agenda, while its own machinists will be marching Tuesday for international trade reform. Katharine Barrett, for CNN Financial News, Seattle, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE) JORDAN: While many of you weren't even born when the United States entered the Vietnam War in the '60s, it was a long and brutal conflict leaving tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers dead. Some of those fortunate enough to survive still remain caught in the web of unresolved terror. Now, a psychologist is studying the use of virtual reality as a tool to help veterans overcome their troubled past. Virtual reality is "an artificial environment which is experienced through sensory stimuli provided by a computer and in which one's actions partially determine what happens in the environment." Dan Rutz has the story. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAN RUTZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Vietnam was the first war to go prime time. And while TV images have faded for the millions who watched the news unfold, a generation ago, the reality of actually being there has haunted the lives of thousands of Vietnam veterans ever since. RANDY, VIETNAM WAR VETERAN: I was hoping that I could leave Vietnam there and, being young, I thought I could. It just doesn't work that way. PAGE 41 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 RUTZ: Randy arrived at middle age still imprisoned by repressed memories of his year of horror in the Asian jungle. Until now, he has buried his emotions with anger that could last weeks at a stretch. DR. DAVID READY, ATLANTA VA HOSPITAL: It is not a situation where they are just remembering the way you and I might remember something that happened 30 years ago. They are in it. When they have a nightmare, when they have a flashback, it is real to them. RUTZ: Doctors call it post-traumatic stress disorder and they believe an intense revisit with the past may bring about a shortcut to relief. The virtual reality hood takes Randy back to 'nam. It floods his senses with the sights and sounds of war, as his doctor urges him to keep one foot in the clinic, the other in the combat zone. READY: The longer they stay with it, the more likely they will start to process a desensitization, and that is the goal. RANDY: It is that constant reliving it that takes the sting away. RUTZ: Since completing the 10-week course, Randy finds his Vietnam flashbacks less likely to set him off. But Atlanta researchers need more proof before offering the treatment elsewhere. So they are seeking other troubled veterans to see for sure, if revisiting a long past war can truly bring about inner peace in the present. Dan Rutz, CNN, Atlanta. (END VIDEOTAPE) BAKHTIAR: We have more health news in "Worldview." We hit the road running in Kenya, a road with more pitfalls than potholes, it seems. Is radiation putting people there at risk? We'll examine the problem. And remember, at the top of our show, we talked about the WTO meeting? Well, Cuban President Fidel Castro refuses to attend. It's the latest in a long line of tensions between the United States and his country. JORDAN: We begin in Cuba, an island nation in the West Indies, the same 4,200 keys that, two centuries ago, made the Cuban archipelago a paradise for pirates, give cover to today's drug traffickers. Cuba is only about 90 miles, or about 140 kilometers, south of Florida and the United States. But relations between the two countries have been strained for years. Fidel Castro seized power in 1959; and in 1961, the U.S. ended diplomatic relations with the island country. Now Cuba says it wants to cooperate with the U.S. in a war on drugs. But it's not as easy as it sounds. Lucia Newman explains. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) LUCIA NEWMAN, CNN HAVANA BUREAU CHIEF (voice-over): Cuban and U.S. government officials warn the largest island of the Caribbean is increasingly used as a way point for narcotics traffickers who ship drugs to the U.S. or Europe. With a fleet of only 40 patrol boats for more than 3,000 miles, or nearly 5,200 PAGE 42 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 kilometers of coastline, Cuban law enforcement simply can't keep up. Low flying planes drop up to four tons of drugs a month. Picked up by speed boats from Jamaica and the Bahamas, the shipments race north to the United States. At Havana's airport, customs officials have beefed up efforts to stop smugglers posing as tourists from transiting from South America to Europe. (on camera): Ten years ago, less than 200,000 people visited Cuba a year. Today, the number is nearly 2 million, making Cuba far more tempting for drug traffickers who would like to use this island as a transshipment point. (voice-over): The British government is so alarmed it has helped finance and train Cuban customs officials on the latest detection techniques. The French have trained sniffer dogs. But while Cuba has drug-interdiction accords with 24 countries, the nation next door, and on the receiving end of most of the world's narcotic, the United States refuses to enter into any cooperation agreement with Havana. This despite several private and public offers this year by President Fidel Castro to work with the United States. FIDEL CASTRO, PRESIDENT OF CUBA (through translator): I've said that it's nonsense, absolute nonsense, that the United States refuses to have a drug interdiction agreement for fear of the raving and ranting of a group of people in Miami, even though we're willing to do it in exchange for nothing. NEWMAN: Right now, the only way the Cuban and U.S. coast guards are allowed to communicate is by fax. While Cuba has agreed to a U.S. Coast Guard representative being stationed in Havana, on Washington's insistence, real cooperation is strictly limited. The bottom line, says Cuba's justice minister, is that there cannot be any effective fight against drugs in the Caribbean without Cuba. ROBERTO DIAZ SOTOLONGO, CUBAN JUSTICE MINISTER (through translator): In the battle against narcotics, we must put aside our differences because there is a bigger duty on the part of all governments to free our people of the scourge of drug trafficking. NEWMAN: Cuba's new laws against drug trafficking are the toughest in the region. Smugglers risk the death penalty. While drug use in Cuba is low compared to other nations in the hemisphere, narcotics are creeping in. If only out of enlightened self-interest, the Cuban government is anxious to work with Washington. The benefit: not only better anti-drug intelligence and technology, but perhaps the beginnings of a better relationship with its old Cold War enemy. Lucia Newman, CNN, Havana. (END VIDEOTAPE) BAKHTIAR: Our look inside Africa takes us to Kenya where health concerns are heating up. Authorities in Kenya are moving quickly to set up health monitoring systems for a rural community exposed to low levels of radiation. Radiation is energy radiated in the form of waves or particles. In this case, we're talking about harmful radiation, which some scientists say the Kenyan government knew about but did nothing to prevent. PAGE 43 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 Alphonso Van Marsh has the story. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ALPHONSO VAN MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): John Shickopte (ph) is a bicycle taxi driver. He charges about 60 cents for a ride on this country road near Kenya's coast. UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): The bike taxi business is my only income, and this is the only road. I don't have a choice. VAN MARSH: But the materials the Kenyan government used to build this road are radioactive. To save money, authorities dug into this hillside instead of a rock quarry 20 kilometers further away. Now, some 25,000 nearby residents are exposed to low doses of radiation. At the University of Nairobi, nuclear scientists test samples to learn how much. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There is thorium, there is actinium. VAN MARSH: Institute of Nuclear Science Director Anthony Kinyua (ph) says the compound thorium, over time, poses the most risk. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It might result in some cancer. VAN MARSH: Results that could have been prevented, says geophysicist Jayanti Patel (ph). He published a study on the hill's dangerous radioactivity eight years ago. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I sent copies, personally, to all the relevant ministries. VAN MARSH: Of his recommendations... UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Sedimentary rock from the hill should not be used either for building houses or road constructions. VAN MARSH: Kenya's Radiation Protection Board, now reviewing Patel's findings, says radiation exposure will lead to problems of ill health later in one's life. (on camera): Radiation levels at some areas of this hill are more than 50 times what scientists consider safe. Health Ministry officials declined our request to appear on camera, but told CNN anyone exposed to the radiation that felt sick is more than welcome to check in at the local hospital. (voice-over): In rural Kenya, updated facilities, not to mention cancer treatment centers, are rare. Rare and needed in this hillside village, residents have used sediment to line their homes, grow their crops. JUMA SAIED MWAMABA, VILLAGE ELDER (through translator): For years, there have been mysterious deaths. We fear some deaths have been caused by the air we breathe coming from this hill. VAN MARSH: A hill still a mystery to these villagers, a hill of radioactivity known to Kenyan authorities for years. PAGE 44 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 Alphonso Van Marsh, CNN, Kwale District, Kenya. (END VIDEOTAPE) ANNOUNCER: You're watching CNN NEWSROOM, seen in schools around the world, because learning never stops, and neither does the news. JORDAN: Well, "Chronicle" takes us back to the United States and its particular brand of politics. Democracy is the principle behind American government. It says any natural-born U.S. citizen who's at least 35 can run for president. Easier said than done. Well, usually you have to have money and clout. Senators often fit that bill. Take this year's presidential race for example. It has four candidates with histories in the Senate, including Bill Bradley, Orrin Hatch, John McCain and Vice President Al Gore. Incidentally, the rest of the presidential candidates do not have that experience. Filling out that roster are Gary Bauer, George W. Bush, Steve Forbes, Alan Keyes and Pat Buchanan. For our weekly feature on democracy in America, Bill Schneider looks at presidential candidates who have experience on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) WILLIAM SCHNEIDER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Remember Edmund Muskie, once a distinguished senator from Maine? He looked like Lincoln in 1970 -- he looked like toast in 1972. John Glenn was supposed to have the right stuff -- and he did, but not for president. Arlen Specter didn't even make it to the first contest in 1996. Phil Gramm did. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. PHIL GRAMM (R-TX), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: There are going to be three tickets out of Iowa. We hope we we're going to get one of those tickets. (END VIDEO CLIP) SCHNEIDER: And that's as far as he got. Joe Biden ran into a buzz saw in the 1988 campaign. Bob Dole decided he had to leave the Senate to become a credible presidential candidate. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. ROBERT DOLE (R-KS), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I will seek the presidency with nothing to fall back on but the judgment of the people, and nowhere to go but the White House or home. (END VIDEO CLIP) PAGE 45 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 SCHNEIDER: Dole's legacy? One of the country's greatest senators, and one of its worst presidential candidates. Bill Bradley, running as a former senator, gave himself four years to change his image. Look at what happened to Bob Smith -- first, he's in the Republican race. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. ROBERT SMITH (R-NH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: It is without hesitation, and with deep respect for the promise of America, that I declare my candidacy today for the presidency of the United States of America. (END VIDEO CLIP) SCHNEIDER: Then he's out of the party, but still in the race. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. ROBERT SMITH (I-NH), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My intention is to run for president and seek the nomination of another political party. (END VIDEO CLIP) SCHNEIDER: Now, he's out of the race and back in the party. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. TRENT LOTT (R-MS), MAJORITY LEADER: Bob, welcome back. SEN. ROBERT SMITH (R), NEW HAMPSHIRE: Thank you. LOTT: And no music. SMITH: Today, as I announce my return, quote-unquote, to the Republican Party... (END VIDEO CLIP) SCHNEIDER: A few senators have escaped presidential politics fairly unscathed -- Howard Baker in 1980, Fritz Hollings in 1984, Paul Simon in 1988, Bob Kerrey and Tom Hartman in 1992 -- but none of them ended up quite as strong as when they went in. John F. Kennedy is the model, and the last time a candidate went directly from the Senate to the White House. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want Teddy. We want Teddy. (END VIDEO CLIP) PAGE 46 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 SCHNEIDER: But when his brother Ted tried it 20 years later, it didn't work out quite as well. It was only after his failed presidential campaign that the younger Kennedy really became a man of the Senate, one of the country's most respected legislators. Only a few senators have enhanced their reputations after losing a presidential race, like Gary Hart's first race in 1984, when he ran not on his Senate record but on his ideas -- make that new ideas. Barry Goldwater's campaign failed, but he reshaped his party. So did Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern. They didn't run on their Senate stature, they ran on ideas. There are two senators left in the 2000 presidential race. One of them is running on his stature in the Senate. SEN. ORRIN HATCH (R-UT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have the most experience of anybody in the race. Of course, I've got a better record of accomplishment than anybody in the race in either party. SCHNEIDER: It doesn't look good for Orrin Hatch. The other is running as a Senate outsider, someone who challenges the rules and doesn't get along too well with his colleagues. SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I have not been voted Miss Congeniality for about the 13th straight year here in the Senate. I've got to do what's right. SCHNEIDER: John McCain's prospects look a lot brighter. (on camera): There's another way senators can get to the White House: become vice president. A lot of senators have been named to their party's ticket: Nixon, Johnson, Humphrey, Mondale, Dole, and that totally changes their image. Compare Senator Al Gore, presidential candidate, 1988, and Vice President Al Gore, presidential candidate 2000. Bill Schneider, CNN, Washington. (END VIDEOTAPE) BAKHTIAR: From American politics to a major transfer of power for Panama. The United States turns over control of the Panama Canal to Panama in December. Well, NEWSROOM's Tom Haynes was in Panama and begins our coverage of this landmark event -- Tom. TOM HAYNES, CO-HOST: Rudi, taking control of the Panama Canal is a big deal for Panamanians. It will mean the beginning of a new global responsibility for the Latin American country, and the end of a U.S. presence there which began almost a century ago. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) (voice-over): Panama is one of the most strategically located countries in the world. It sits between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and is made up of PAGE 47 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 a 50-mile-wide isthmus connecting North and South America. Panama's identity and the identity of its people revolves largely around the Panama Canal, a massive man-made waterway linking the world's two largest oceans. JORGE EDUARDO RITTER, MINISTER FOR CANAL AFFAIRS, PANAMA: For Panamanians, the canal is not an engineering feat, the Panama Canal is part of our soul. Had it not been for the canal, Panama maybe would have not become independent in 1903. HAYNES: Before gaining its independence less than a hundred years ago, and before the Panama Canal ever existed, the land that makes up Panama long served as a passage way in one form or another; first, as early as 8000 B.C. when prehistoric man migrated across the isthmus on his way to South America. Thousands of years later, native Americans, most notably the Incas, settled there. In the early 1500s, Spain realized Panama's geographic significance during the Spanish conquest of the Americas. MARCO A. GANDASEQUI, SOCIOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF PANAMA: They used Panama and Panama City itself to conquer most of South America, the Inca empire, and to export all the riches of America, crossing the isthmus, those 50 miles that separate both oceans, to take all the riches from America to Spain. HAYNES: On the outskirts of Panama City, we found evidence of Spain's colonization at Panama Viejo, one of the oldest Spanish settlements on the Pacific Ocean. Much of it is buried underground now, but Panama Viejo once prospered as a center for Spanish trade and governance. Panama belonged to the Spanish empire for three centuries. It was Spain's Charles V in 1534 who first conceived of cutting a canal through Panama to connect the Atlantic and Pacific, but his vision was never realized. In 1821, Panama broke away from Spain and became a province of Colombia. GANDASEQUI: We joined voluntarily the great -- the so-called Greater Colombia, Grand Colombia, that was a project set up by Bolivar that was very short lived in the early 19th century. HAYNES: Panama's nationalistic sentiment didn't bode well for its relationship with Colombia. In fact, soon after becoming part of Colombia, Panamanians sparked a series of unsuccessful independence revolts. U.S. interest in Panama began to increase, due in large part to the California gold rush. Gold seekers going from the East Coast of the U.S. to the West did so thanks to a newly built railroad across the Panama Isthmus in the 1850s. NICHOLAS ARDITO BARLETA, DIR., INTER-OCEANIC REGIONAL AUTHORITY: This was the first intercontinental or transcontinental railways in the Western Hemisphere, built in 1856. A lot of the people that went for the gold rush of California came through Panama and through the Panamanian railroads. HAYNES: The first canal construction began in 1882, led by the French. It was a massive undertaking and a massive failure. Realizing the strategic importance of a transoceanic canal, the United States Congress gave President Theodore Roosevelt the go-ahead to pick up where the French left off. The only problem was that Panama was still part of Colombia, and the Colombian PAGE 48 CNN NEWSROOM, November 30, 1999 government rejected U.S. intentions. So, on November 3rd, 1903, with the help of three U.S. warships, Panamanians staged a successful revolt against Colombia and won independence. The United States recognized the Republic of Panama November 6th, 1903. GANDASEQUI: A Panamanian feeling came out of that, a national feeling that Panama could become an important part of the world if it continued servicing the international demands, as well as developing a national concern, a country called Panama. HAYNES: A treaty between the U.S. and Panama called for the U.S. to pay Panama to permit the operation of the Panama Canal. The U.S. would govern an area of land called the Panama Canal Zone lining both sides of the canal. And with all sides in agreement, construction on the Panama Canal began in May, 1904. (END VIDEOTAPE) HAYNES: And it took the United States more than 10 years to complete construction of the Panama Canal. And tomorrow we'll find out how this engineering marvel works. Guys, that's tomorrow. JORDAN: Yes, we'll look forward to it, Tom. Thanks. BAKHTIAR: Great stuff, Tom. Well, that does it for us here. We'll see you tomorrow. HAYNES: Bye. TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: November 30, 1999 PAGE 49 LEVEL 1 - 7 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 Africa News Service, Inc. Africa News November 21, 1999 SECTION: NEWS, DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARY LENGTH: 287 words HEADLINE: Africa-at-Large; WTO killing Africa BYLINE: Titus W. Kakembo, The Monitor - Kampala BODY: Kampala - African leaders have been called upon to jealously protect their indigenous food crops and markets from forces of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the forth coming negotiations in Seattle, USA. "We were pushed into liberalisation when we were not ready by WB and IMF. The results were opening our markets for cheap used vehicles, fabrics, electronics and shoes" said the minister of trade, tourism and industry Nicholas Biwott. In a speech read for him by the ministry assistant A.A.A Ekirapa, he asked the African delegation to jointly oppose the food rights and opening up their markets to global industries. This was during an ActionAid sponsored training workshop for journalists at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) Nov 1-5. Africa is unfairly pitted against giants like USA, EU and Japan. "The African team should brace for corridor and back-room underground lobbyists. Japan alone has a team of more than 50 specialist while a country on the continent may send only 5" said a Kenya member of the WTO negotiation team Lawrence Makumba. Participants were told that through WTO indigenous crops species will be extinct because distribution of seeds will be in the control of a few multi- national corporations. The ActionAid team leader Richie Johns said Africa risks loosing its indigenous species which are resistant to diseases. "As poverty and famine continues in a majority of the populace WTO is threatening to take away the little control of food availability on the table by subsistence farmers" he said. He said there is need to review the WTO agreement and enable more access of agricultural products from Africa to EU and USA markets. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: November 20, 1999 PAGE 50 LEVEL 1 - 8 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 Africa News Service, Inc. Africa News November 21, 1999 SECTION: NEWS, DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARY LENGTH: 287 words HEADLINE: Africa-at-Large; WTO killing Africa BYLINE: Titus W. Kakembo, The Monitor - Kampala BODY: Kampala - African leaders have been called upon to jealously protect their indigenous food crops and markets from forces of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the forth coming negotiations in Seattle, USA. "We were pushed into liberalisation when we were not ready by WB and IMF. The results were opening our markets for cheap used vehicles, fabrics, electronics and shoes" said the minister of trade, tourism and industry Nicholas Biwott. In a speech read for him by the ministry assistant A.A.A Ekirapa, he asked the African delegation to jointly oppose the food rights and opening up their markets to global industries. This was during an ActionAid sponsored training workshop for journalists at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) Nov 1-5. Africa is unfairly pitted against giants like USA, EU and Japan. "The African team should brace for corridor and back-room underground lobbyists. Japan alone has a team of more than 50 specialist while a country on the continent may send only 5" said a Kenya member of the WTO negotiation team Lawrence Makumba. Participants were told that through WTO indigenous crops species will be extinct because distribution of seeds will be in the control of a few multi- national corporations. The ActionAid team leader Richie Johns said Africa risks loosing its indigenous species which are resistant to diseases. "As poverty and famine continues in a majority of the populace WTO is threatening to take away the little control of food availability on the table by subsistence farmers" he said. He said there is need to review the WTO agreement and enable more access of agricultural products from Africa to EU and USA markets. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: November 21, 1999 PAGE 51 LEVEL 1 - 9 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 Times Media Limited Financial Mail (South Africa) November 12, 1999 SECTION: Business in Africa; Pg. 54 LENGTH: 1472 words HEADLINE: BRAVE HEARTS PROSPER BYLINE: Jabulani Sikhakhane BODY: BANKING Good returns for banks intrepid enough to enter the market Foreign banks are minting money in Africa. A lack of competition, combined with a strategy to cream off the top of the market, has produced profitability ratios almost three times those achieved in other markets. The biggest foreign banks operating in Africa, outside SA, are UK groups Standard Chartered (Stanchart) and Barclays, and SAs Standard Bank Investment Corp (Stanbic). Other players are HSBC Equator Bank, a joint venture between SAs Nedcor and the UKs HSBC, and US group Citibank. Africas banking market is not only risky but, like other sectors, functions under tough economic conditions, including poor infrastructure such as telecommunications and periodic electricity shortages. These conditions have kept some international banks away, ensuring that the arena is dominated by a few institutions. The fact that there are only a few competent players has reduced the level of interbank competition. Locally owned banks are hamstrung by lack of skills and capital so multinational companies and wealthy individuals prefer to deal with sophisticated foreign banks. The weakness of local banks is a hang-over from decades of government ownership and interference in the sector. Most governments either nationalised or tightened State control of banks soon after independence. The main reason cited was that foreign banks were only lending for the short term, and mainly to foreign companies. But undue interference in the workings of the banking system, including governments attempts to regulate which sectors banks should lend to, hampered the banking sectors ability to assess business risk. It also resulted in an inadequate regulatory infrastructure. Even where they existed, bank prudential lending regulations were likely to fall foul of government directives. Economists Charles Harvey and Martin Brownbridge argue that though most African governments have loosened their control of the banking sector, the ability of local banks to develop sound loan portfolios is still limited by stagnant economic growth. PAGE 52 Financial Mail (South Africa) November 12, 1999 Harvey, at the Botswana Institute of Development Policy Analysis, and Brownbridge, who works with the UN Conference on Trade & Development (Unctad) on the least developed countries, argue in their book Banking in Africa that the freeing African economies from government control has focused banking markets more narrowly. The few foreign banks that have entered Africa have mostly focused on corporate banking, while the local, privately owned banks target urban retail customers. In contrast to local banks, foreign institutions, through their international parentage, have the advantage of being well capitalised. In addition, they have better skills and the necessary technology, all of which enables them to deliver a good service for which elite customers are prepared to pay a premium. The returns these banks generate compensate for the high level of business risk they face on the continent. Contributing to high returns is the underdevelopment of Africas financial markets, including the equity and bond markets, which has given banks undisputed access to businesses seeking to raise capital. In developed countries, the role of banks as providers of loan capital has been eroded by the emergence of sophisticated securities markets. Stanchart, for example, achieved a net interest margin of 9,5% in Africa for the year ended December 31 1998. The highest average interest margin Stanchart achieved outside Africa was 3,4%. Net interest margin regarded as an indicator of a banks profitability is the difference between what a bank pays to attract deposits and what it charges on its loan portfolio. Stanchart and other banks can earn such high returns because they target Africas multinational corporations, SA companies doing business in the rest of Africa and local blue-chip companies. On the consumer banking side, Stanchart identifies its target market as numbering only 3m, or 0,4% of the continents 750m people. Among SA banks, Stanbic leads the pack in terms of the number of operations in the rest of Africa. Its venture into Africa began in 1992 when it bought the African operations of the antipodean group ANZ Grindlays for R166m. The acquisition gave Stanbic controlling interests in banks in Botswana, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Kenya and Uganda, and minority stakes in operations in Nigeria and Ghana. It later bought banking operations in Tanzania, and minority stakes in Banco Standard Totta de Mozambique and Madagascars Union Commercial Bank. Though Stanbics ventures were initially met with scepticism by some of its executives, they have paid off handsomely. During the past four years, Stanbic Africas profits have risen by more than 120% from R95m in financial 1995 to R211m in financial 1998. It uses 6% of the Stanbic Groups balance sheet but generates 10% of the groups earnings. PAGE 53 Financial Mail (South Africa) November 12, 1999 Stanbic Africa MD Rocco Rossouw says the potential exists to grow the banks African operations even further. But expansion will be targeted at countries where SA companies are expanding their operations, those preferred by multinationals and those that face reasonably good economic growth prospects. As part of the expansion, Stanbic is concluding the purchase of a controlling stake in Malawis Indebank. The Malawian deal will complete Stanbics reach into the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region, with the exception of the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and the Seychelles and war-torn Angola. Stanbic has no plans to set up a banking operation in Mauritius, though it may move the holding company of its African operations to the island to take advantage of the infrastructure built around an international financial services centre. With southern and eastern Africa already sewn up it operates in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda Stanbic is moving its sights westwards. This month, it will open its Ghanaian banking operation. Though Stanbic has had a foothold in the Ghanaian market since 1992, it only owned a 30% minority stake in Merchant Bank (Ghana), a position Rossouw says did not allow Stanbic to influence the direction and shape of the bank. Early this year, Stanbic sold this stake and used the proceeds to buy a 90% shareholding in Union Mortgage Bank, which had been granted a banking licence but had yet to begin operations. The bank has been renamed Stanbic Ghana, in line with the branding of the group throughout the continent. Ghana is a good banking market. There are a lot of SA companies doing business there, particularly mining companies. We are not going into the mass retail banking market in Ghana. We will focus on servicing SA corporations and other multinationals and perhaps do a bit of private banking to high net worth individuals, says Rossouw. In the rest of the west African region, Stanbic is expanding operations in Nigeria, Africas most populous country. Its return to democratic rule and the freeing-up of its economy from government control are expected to boost economic growth soon. Stanbic now has four branches in Nigeria. We have just put significant capital into our operations there. Nigeria has good banking potential. As in Ghana, we will focus more on corporate banking, investment banking and structured products, says Rossouw. Stanbic is also considering options in French-speaking west Africa. Rossouw says one option may be for Stanbic to open a representative office in Cte dIvoires capital, Abidjan, so it can closely follow developments in the regions banking market. Abidjan is already Francophone Africas financial capital. The regions stock exchange is based there. Other SA banks, including Absa, are beginning to look seriously into the African banking market. In July, Absa bought a 70% stake in Tanzanias National Bank of Commerce. Last year it bought a 26% stake in Commercial Bank of Zimbabwe. Group executive director Jean Brown says the Tanzanian purchase was PAGE 54 Financial Mail (South Africa) November 12, 1999 based on a strategic decision by Absa, which also owns a 36% stake in Namibias Bank Windhoek, to move into the rest of Africa. We decided about two years ago to move into Africa, with a primary view of providing commercial banking facilities to the growing number of SA-based companies that operate in other African countries, says Brown. Stanchart is re-entering Nigeria to focus on trade finance and cash management for multinational companies. It is also expanding its operations in Uganda and Ghana and developing new business in Cte dIvoire. As existing players seek new sources of growth and new entrants look for gaps in the market, competition will become tougher in the African market. The easy pickings enjoyed so far could become a pleasant memory. LANGUAGE: English LOAD-DATE: November 24, 1999 PAGE 55 LEVEL 1 - 10 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 Africa News Service, Inc. Africa News November 7, 1999 SECTION: NEWS, DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARY LENGTH: 287 words HEADLINE: Africa-at-Large; WTO killing Africa BYLINE: Titus W. Kakembo, The Monitor - Kampala BODY: Kampala - African leaders have been called upon to jealously protect their indigenous food crops and markets from forces of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in the forth coming negotiations in Seattle, USA. "We were pushed into liberalisation when we were not ready by WB and IMF. The results were opening our markets for cheap used vehicles, fabrics, electronics and shoes" said the minister of trade, tourism and industry Nicholas Biwott. In a speech read for him by the ministry assistant A.A.A Ekirapa, he asked the African delegation to jointly oppose the food rights and opening up their markets to global industries. This was during an ActionAid sponsored training workshop for journalists at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE) Nov 1-5. Africa is unfairly pitted against giants like USA, EU and Japan. "The African team should brace for corridor and back-room underground lobbyists. Japan alone has a team of more than 50 specialist while a country on the continent may send only 5" said a Kenya member of the WTO negotiation team Lawrence Makumba. Participants were told that through WTO indigenous crops species will be extinct because distribution of seeds will be in the control of afew multi- national corporations. The ActionAid team leader Richie Johns said Africa risks loosing its indigenous species which are resistant to diseases. "As poverty and famine continues in a majority of the populace WTO is threatening to take away the little control of food availability on the table by subsistence farmers" he said. He said there is need to review the WTO agreement and enable more access of agricultural products from Africa to EU and USA markets. LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: November 7, 1999 PAGE 56 LEVEL 1 - 11 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 Africa News Service, Inc. Africa News November 5, 1999 SECTION: NEWS, DOCUMENTS & COMMENTARY LENGTH: 4065 words HEADLINE: Africa-at-Large; Africa's Major Obstacles to Development BYLINE: Dr. Daniel Kendie, Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa) BODY: Addis Ababa - The major objective of this study is to investigate the internal and external causes of Africa's marginalization in the world economy. Abstract: Economically, since the mid-1980s, Africa has become increasingly marginalized in the world economy. In 1955 for example, the continent's share of world trade stood at 3.1%. By 1990, however, this share had fallen to 1.2%. In 1992, the combined GNP of the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa did not even equal that of the Netherlands. In 1973, Africa's debt burden was $13.1 billion. But by 1997, it had mushroomed to more than $315 billion, to the extent that the debt exceeded Africa's total GNP. Even levels of public and private assistance to Africa have considerably declined. The vacuum in assistance is being filled by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, whose support is contingent upon austere structural adjustment programmes which include wholesale privatization, removal of trade barriers, diminished protection for national industries, reduced corporate taxes, elimination of state subsidies on food, fuel, education, health and transport, devaluation of currency, and the scaling of bloated bureaucracies. The Background: Conventionally speaking, Africa, Asia, South America and some territorial pockets around these regions are referred to as the poor - the underdeveloped countries of the world, or the South. On the other hand, the nations of Europe, North America, Japan, Australia, and some others, are recognized as rich - the developed countries, or the North. We should note that, even within this grouping, there are differences in development and income. But nevertheless, the rich countries, which are already in orbit in their economic life, have accumulated such wealth that can multiply by compound interest. The poor, on the other hand, do not only lack this motor, they have not even completed early savings, let alone move on into take-off - the transition from static, pre-industrial society, to a growing industrial one. The gap between the rich nations and the poor nations has therefore been expanding, not narrowing. Aware of that, while addressing the 16th Session of the U.N. General Assembly, U.S. President John Kennedy had reminded the world that "political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty, illiteracy PAGE 57 Africa News, November 5, 1999 and diseases, and that self-determination is but a slogan, if the future holds no hope." In an attempt to reform the system of international economic relations, which holds so many disadvantages to them, the underdeveloped countries of the world made a series of demands, including: the creation of a huge capital fund from which they could receive grants or obtain low-interest loans; the establishment of the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development to help increase their export trade with the developed countries, so that they could earn more capital for development; the establishment of the International Development Association as an affiliate of the World Bank, to grant soft loans, i.e., no interest charges and fifty years to repay; and the creation of a New International Economic Order, which would replace the existing world economic system with one in which, the nations of the developing world would receive fairer treatment and higher prices for their commodities. To that end, the U.N. General Assembly designated the 1960s the first United Nations Development Decade (1960-1970), at the urging of the developing countries, and convened its first session in Geneva in 1964. The role of trade in relation to economic development was its theme, but it also examined the place of international trade in narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor. While its short-term aim was the adjustment of the market forces, its long- term aim was the rationalization of the market itself. This was to be done by way of improving the terms of international trade, and by increasing the flow of aid from the rich nations to the poor nations. The first United Nations Development Decade had aimed at enabling the less developed countries, and those dependent on the export of a small range of primary commodities, to stabilize commodity prices, and to sell more of these products at remunerative prices in expanding markets, and to extend most- favoured-nation treatment to the underdeveloped countries. Moreover, the rich countries were expected to assist the development efforts of the poor by creating conditions for the flow of capital to reach 1% of their gross national products. This, coupled with supplementary measures in international trade, was assumed to significantly improve their conditions and even to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor. With such rectifications, it was hoped that Third World countries would finance their own development plans from their earnings and domestic savings, that their national incomes will be increasing by 5% yearly by 1970, and that it will continue to expand at this annual rate thereafter. It was even anticipated that personal living standards could be doubled within twenty five to thirty years, and that by the year 2,000, we could be living in a world that has overcome poverty - i.e., a world without want. Since then, there have been a series of other UNCTAD conferences. But the possibilities of redressing historic inequities and of bridging the gap between the rich and the poor do not look bright. It was observed that the developing countries have achieved the ability to garner the votes through sheer numbers, but have failed to sway the rich nations to meet their demands, or to fund the institutions they wanted established. In this respect, over the last thirty years, three broad schools of thought have been identified. First, the dirigiste period of early 1960s. Emphasis was on growth and planning through active PAGE 58 Africa News, November 5, 1999 state involvement; (2) the distributive period of the late 1960s. This was characterized by income redistribution concerns and the basic needs approach, and (3) the neoclassical renaissance period of the 1980s, which put emphasis on free market principles and the removal of government intervention in regulating the economy. In this regard, it has been said that government actions often promote the interest of special groups: the army, landowners etc. Medium term development planning has failed in LDC'S; parasitical enterprises have been inefficient, needing costly subsidy, agriculture has been neglected. Whatever industrialization occurred was without providing due attention to efficiency; undue hostility to multinational corporations was irrational; and inward looking approach to development has been damaging. It is concluded that the free market approach is fine, but it should also accept the positive role of the state in such areas as agricultural research, the provision of extension services, and building the infrastructure etc. A more balanced, mixed economy type of approach should be more appropriate. Sub-Saharan Africa If we examine the situation in Sub-Saharan Africa today, it is a far cry from what was anticipated. While the African continent accounts for over 11% of the world's population, its share in world trade is small and has been declining, standing at 2% in 1991. If the oil exporting countries of the continent were to be excluded from the computation, the figure will be reduced to 0.9%. Between 1960 and 1973, Africa's average annual rate of economic growth was 5.3%. Between 1980 and 1983, the growth rate fell to 0.5% per year. Between 1980-1990, world trade grew at an annual rate of 6%. However, the exports of Sub-Saharan Africa declined by 2.1%. In 1960, Ghana was on par with South Korea in terms of its gross domestic product per capita. But to day, the situation is something else. The African countries were virtually self-sufficient in food some twenty- five years ago. By 1995 however, one out of every four people in Sub-Saharan Africa were homeless and jobless. Indeed, Sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural growth rates have declined from an annual average of 2.2% (1965-1973), to 1.0% (1974- 80), and 0.6% (1981-85). The situation hardly improved in subsequent years. In fact, from 1980-1992, per capita food production declined considerably leading to an increase in food aid from 1.6 million to 4.2 million tons. Average per capita gross national product was recorded as declining at a rate of 0.8% a year between 1980 and 1992. Figures for the flow of exports out of Africa, and of private investment capital into Africa, suggested also that the continent had virtually dropped out of sight as a participant in the world economy. Africa's world market share of non-oil primary produce exports fell from 7% to 4% between 1970 and 1985, while returns on investment in the continent dropped from 30.7% in the 1960s to a mere 2.5% in the 1980s. It should also be noted that the recorded gross domestic product of the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa in 1992, which was $270 billion, amounted to less than that of the Netherlands. PAGE 59 Africa News, November 5, 1999 In 1990, the continent's total exports amounted to some U.S.$70 billion - an amount that is almost equal to South Korea's exports in the same year. Even U. S exports to Africa in 1996 were a mere $11 billion, i.e., less than half of that of South Korea's $27 billion. In fact, from the mid-1950s to 1990, Sub- Saharan Africa's share of global exports fell from 3.1% to 1.2% - a decline implying annual export earning losses of equivalent to some $ 65 billion in 1990. In 1990, manufactured goods accounted for 11% of the exports of Sub-Saharan Africa. And according to the 1994 forecast of the World Bank, between 1994- 2004, the exports of the region will increase at a lower pace than those of Asia and Latin America. What is even more alarming is that between 1985 and 1990, foreign direct investment had increased by an annual average rate of 34% at the global level. However, in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa, it has remained stagnant. The total international investment that was globally generated was $300 billion. Yet, of this sum, Sub-Saharan African countries could attract only $11 billion. In 1973, Africa had a debt of $13.1 billion. Currently, the debt of the 52 Sub-Saharan African countries has reached $315 billion, mostly to the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and individual governments. Only 14% of this total is commercial debt. The debt owed to the USA is $4.5 billion. The situation has been aggravated by international transport costs, which have had a negative impact on exports and the location of manufacturing activity in Africa. African freight rates, are, in the main, considerably higher than those on similar goods originating elsewhere, and often conceal high rates of effective protection. Indeed, African net payments for transport services are very high relative to other developing countries and have increased over the last two decades. As such, a large share of foreign exchange earnings that might have otherwise been employed in productive capacity building investments is being utilized for payments to foreign transport services. Moreover, the countries of Sub-Saharan Africa spend more each year on repaying their debts than they spend on primary education and health care. For example, out of the $44 billion Africa earned from exports in 1986, it had to pay $19 billion to its creditors. In 1996, for instance, Uganda spent only $3 per person on health care, while spending $17 per person on repaying its debts. Yet, one in every five Ugandan children dies from a preventable disease before reaching the age of five. During the same period, Mozambique spent twice as much money making timely interest and principal payments on its debt as it spent on health and education. Yet, one out of four children in Mozambique dies before reaching the age of five due to infectious diseases. In Ethiopia, debt payments are four times more than what goes for public health. In nearly all of the Sub-Saharan African countries, especially in the Least Developed Countries, many people are starving, and still more are being ground into abject poverty. Children are deprived of education, medical care and nutrition. Societies are being strained to the verge of disintegration. These countries have the highest rate of illiteracy, the lowest gross domestic PAGE 60 Africa News, November 5, 1999 product, and the lowest net capital formation. They have the fewest doctors and the fewest hospital beds. The infant mortality rate is high and life expectancy is low. The greater number of them are unable to feed their populations. Where surpluses of any commodity are to be found, it is a formidable problem to get them where they are needed because the transport linkages are weak. Unemployment in urban areas has also reached unacceptable levels. What hope do these nations have for the immediate future? The prospect is very gloomy. In fact, unless there is rapid action, backed by adequate resource allocations, current trends indicate that most Sub-Saharan African economies are bound for a decade of continuing stagnation, poverty, mass misery and deprivation. The Causes of Their Poverty: Given this background, let us then raise some disturbing questions. After more than thirty five years of international effort, even if largely rhetorical, why are Sub-Saharan African countries now being described as economies in either continued "stagnation" or "regression" ? Why are they encountering a progressive deterioration in their capacities to carry out even basic functions? Why are they experiencing commodity price fluctuations, mounting debt, dwindling investment, and a diminished share of world trade? In short, what are the causes of their marginalization in the world economy? Economic development from poverty to wealth is not the property of any system, but rather, a process of cumulative social learning of the kind and type which increases the productivity of labour. This cumulative process depends more than anything else, on the proportion of resources, which are devoted to it, and on the efficiency of their use. Furthermore, international trade is usually referred to as "the engine of growth", in so far as it provides opportunities for further growth and development. In Sub-Saharan Africa, colonialism created social and economic institutions and processes. Plantation agriculture, mining, and some manufacturing were also introduced by the former colonial powers. Such commercial ventures were complemented with and accompanied by the creation of ports, railroads, and financial and commercial institutions, which did stimulate growth. However, this alone could not produce much in the way of spread effect, because growth is not the same as development. Its set of indicators includes those that measure quality of life and the extent to which development really benefits people. At the end of the day, it was discovered that political independence from colonialism had only succeeded in replacing one elite with another, which failed to meet the demands for political and economic freedom of the peoples of Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa has, therefore, been marginalized in the world economy mainly because of its structural problems, and its dependence on primary commodities and the difficulties it has been faced with for diversification into production and exports of manufactured goods. The process of globalization and growing tendencies for regionalism has also adversely affected its international position. There are indeed two fundamental problems, which may explain why these economies are either, stagnant or in regression: First, the changes necessary to bring economic progress to these countries that are largely internal, and PAGE 61 Africa News, November 5, 1999 secondly, the problems caused by factors that are external to these countries. The latter includes the impact of the international economic and political environment on them. The Internal Causes: The internal causes of the stagnation or regression of the countries of Sub- Saharan Africa include: inability to solve internal conflicts that tear at the very fabric of national unity, and which have diminished their capacity to manage domestic affairs; intra-state conflicts including border disputes that force these countries to divert scarce resources from urgently needed development projects into armaments; political instability; administrative inefficiency; inappropriate development models; unrealistic development strategies; lack of viable institutions; unreliable judiciary; the existence of governments without legitimacy;ethnicity and primordialism which interfere with the rational allocation of resources,financial,bureaucratic and political corruption; lack of transparency in public transactions and lack of accountability in public action; nepotism; financial mismanagement; insecurity of property; lack of trained people to educate and advise farmers; non- diversification of the economy; ineffective monetary and fiscal policies; lack of income distribution; adverse weather conditions, including drought, exhaustion of good soils, destruction of forests; the lack of industrial base, as well as infrastructure and capital. More to the point, numerous analysts including Robert Klitgaard, have concluded that the state in Africa has been operated to enrich national leaders, not primarily to extend the fruits of development to the general population. In many of these countries, there is also an acute need for a private sector willing to cooperate with the government in pursuit of the shared goal of industrial development. In fact, the growth of the private sector has been retarded precisely because governments have not established the type of stable legal and economic framework necessary for markets to flourish, or to attract capital, and to help influence private investors to make long term plans. The External Causes: The external causes of Sub-Saharan Africa's stagnation and marginalization include: the traumatic effects of the oil price rises; policies advocated by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund; the crushing burden of international debt and interest rates, which forces them to structure their economies in such a way so as to earn foreign exchange only to pay debts, rather than concentrate on genuine development; the lack of adequate capital flow and transfer of technology; the refusal of the rich countries to abide by the free- trade doctrine, or as the case may be, the erection of high tariff barriers or adoption of quotas to protect domestic economic interests from the competition of cheap commodities in the poor countries, are cases in point. The production of substitutes and synthetics that compete with natural products; terms and conditions of external aid; the increasing decline of aid; deterioration of the terms of trade, i.e., the amount of a given raw material they must export to get a manufactured product that keeps growing; globalization, i.e. cost reduction measures through net-working and economies of scale and production, and so on. Moreover, since the exports of most Sub-Saharan African countries do not pay for their imports, they meet service debts, which replenish their monetary reserves. If they reduce imports, there will be shortage of essential PAGE 62 Africa News, November 5, 1999 supplies, which will affect the level of economic activity and capital formation. The deterioration of the terms of trade cancels out the financing of investment plans and production, as they make a direct transfer of resources to the rich countries as a result of the deterioration in export prices. Imports of these countries have grown more rapidly than their exports, especially their imports of capital goods needed for their development. The resulting excess of foreign payments has been met by foreign loan. However, since the loan will have to be paid and in the meantime add a burden of interest charges, the problem of exporting sufficient to pay for needed imports remains unsolved. Moreover, falling commodity prices for most African agricultural and mineral exports have forced Africans to export twice as much to earn the same revenue. It should also be noted that the average cost of machinery and transport equipment that these countries have been importing - products that are necessary for their growth has been increasing year by year. The rapid expansion of various man-made substitutes such as synthetic rubber and plastics for natural materials have made their condition worse than is commonly realized. These trends indicate increasing efficiency in the industrial use of raw materials resulting from improvements in technology; increased complexity of consumer products, i.e. more manufacturing work is being applied to a given amount of raw materials; technical achievements in the processing of low grade ores and the use of substitute materials as for instance plastics for metal. The Americans, for instance, can produce practically everything they need, except coffee, and chemists may even produce a viable substitute for that. The consequence of that would be a disaster for countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, the Ivory Coast and others, the mainstay of whose economy is dependent on coffee. The technology of the advanced countries can, for example, produce a substitute for binder twine, which is only half the price of sisal. From the point of view of industrial concerns, it is economical. But for a country like Tanzania, it will be a total disaster. Thus we see synthetic fibers now competing with cotton, wool, jute and sisal. Synthetic rubber is displacing natural rubber and leather. Such trends have become serious threats to African countries, which depend on exports of natural commodities to earn foreign exchange. It diminishes the range of exports available to them. It will be unbecoming on ones part to suggest that there should not be technological changes or adjustments. However, those countries which have least economic choices, and which are least able to adjust to rapid change are making the adjustments. If Sub-Saharan African countries cannot sell their raw materials even at such low prices and buy the capital goods that they need for their development, what will be the outcome? Does it mean that they will have to begin to produce for themselves and by themselves much of the heavy engineering products, chemicals and so on, that they had hitherto counted on being able to import from the developed countries? There is no doubt that receipts from the exports of goods and services are the main source of foreign exchange for them, and which, to a great extent, determine the capacity of these countries to import the goods that they need to sustain and to expand their productive capacity. After all, the purpose of earning foreign exchange is, in the first place, to buy abroad goods and services, which cannot be produced so cheaply, or to such a high standard at PAGE 63 Africa News, November 5, 1999 home. Domestic savings are in local currency. They do not automatically buy goods and services in other lands. But when the possibilities of earning more foreign exchange are dwindling, should not these countries look for alternative strategies? Economic growth is essentially the economics of capital accumulation, investment, productivity of labour and management. External investment is necessary to provide the technical, managerial and marketing know-how that is indispensable if Africa is to produce a more diversified range of goods for international markets. Foreign investment will continue to play an important role in the growth of the economies of the African countries. However, there are two problems to consider. Foreign business invests primarily for profit. No one objects to that. But the problem comes when profits are not domestically retained and re-invested but are repatriated and invested elsewhere. How would this practice assist in the task of capital accumulation? The second problem concerns the nature of the technology of the advanced countries, which has evolved from being labour intensive into being capital intensive. How would such a technology create jobs and means of employment in Africa, when the technology is shifting into automation, computers and the self-regulating machine, which uses very little labour? to be continue next week LANGUAGE: ENGLISH LOAD-DATE: November 5, 1999 PAGE 64 LEVEL 1 - 12 OF 43 STORIES Copyright 1999 Federal Document Clearing House, Inc. FDCH Political Transcripts October 21, 1999, Thursday TYPE: COMMITTEE HEARING LENGTH: 16159 words HEADLINE: U.S. SENATOR JESSE HELMS (R-NC) HOLDS HEARING ON CHILD LABOR ISSUES AND THE ILO; WASHINGTON, D.C. COMMITTEE: SENATE FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE BODY: U.S. SENATE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS HOLDS HEARING ON THE ILO CONVENTION FOR THE ELIMINATION OF CHILD LABOR OCTOBER 21, 1999 SPEAKERS: U.S. SENATOR JESSE HELMS (R-NC), CHAIRMAN U.S. SENATOR RICHARD G. LUGAR (R-IN) U.S. SENATOR PAUL COVERDELL (R-GA) U.S. SENATOR CHARLES HAGEL (R-NE) U.S. SENATOR GORDON H. SMITH (R-OR) U.S. SENATOR ROD GRAMS (R-MN) U.S. SENATOR SAM BROWNBACK (R-KS) U.S. SENATOR CRAIG THOMAS (R-WY) U.S. SENATOR JOHN ASHCROFT (R-MO) U.S. SENATOR WILLIAM FRIST (R-TN) U.S. SENATOR JOSEPH R. BIDEN, JR. (D-DE), RANKING MEMBER U.S. SENATOR PAUL S. SARBANES (D-MD) U.S. SENATOR CHRISTOPHER J. DODD (D-CT) U.S. SENATOR JOHN F. KERRY (D-MA) U.S. SENATOR RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD (D-WI) PAGE 65 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 U.S. SENATOR PAUL DAVID WELLSTONE (D-MN) U.S. SENATOR BARBARA BOXER (D-CA) U.S. SENATOR ROBERT G. TORRICELLI (D-NJ) ALEXIS HERMAN, U.S. SECRETARY OF LABOR U.S. SENATOR THOMAS HARKIN (D-IA) JOHN SWEENEY, PRESIDENT, AFL-CIO THOMAS M.T. NILES, PRESIDENT, U.S. COUNCIL FOR INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS FRANCOISE REMINGTON, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, FORGOTTEN CHILDREN CASEY HARRELL, DUKE STUDENTS AGAINST SWEATSHOPS * HELMS: Committee will come to order. There's not a clamor for senators to be here or at any other committee meeting, but everybody's got to be two places at once. Senator Biden sent word that he will be here as soon as a matter is settled in the Judiciary Committee. And there will be other senators, I'm sure. In any case, the committee meets this morning to consider the International Labor Organization Convention on the worst forms, worst forms of child labor. The Convention was adopted unanimously on June 17, submitted to the Senate on August 5 and of course is now onto the committee's agenda this morning. And this is a fairly prompt consideration for a treaty and it's a tribute to the treaty's negotiators. Negotiators consulted regularly with members of this committee and the committee staff during negotiations and were able to ensure that the treaty tracked consistently with United States Fair Labor Standards Act. And nothing in this treaty even implies that young people will be prohibited from working on family farms, even if they are under 16 years of age or if they work in a paid capacity at age 16. Nor does the treaty hinder the ability of the United States Armed Forces to continue voluntary enlistment of students finishing their high school degrees. Instead the treaty sets basic standards that each party to the Convention must take measures to implement. The treaty defines the quote, "worst forms of child labor," quote, unquote. I do it that way to indicate that it's a part of the preamble. The treaty defines the worst form child labor as using or procuring children for: one, slavery or practices similar to slavery; two, prostitution or pornography; three, illicit activities such as drug trafficking and four, other works which by it's nature or circumstances are likely to harm the health, safety or morals of the children. PAGE 66 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 Now although most children -- most Americans will agree that anyone using children to perform these abhorrent activities should be punished to the fullest extent of the law. And as I talk about being here this morning, I've thought about I can think of several personal ways, you know, to punish them, Tom. But I guess that would be unlawful too. In any case, there are countries that continue to have thriving economic sectors that profit by using children as cheap laborers. And the reasons for turning a blind eye toward child labor can be complex, of course. In many cases, governments are corrupt and exhibit little concern for the health, safety or morals of their nation's children. As a result, families may be barely struggling to survive and perhaps need the additional income their children can provide. In other cases, countries maintain a class system and simply ignore the welfare of a whole segment of their population including, of course, the children. Now then, according to the statistics of the International Labor Organization there are some 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 engaged in economic activity in the developing countries. While close to one half of these children, they work it on a full-time basis while remaining -- the remaining one half combine work with schooling or non-economic activities. And these figures do not include children who work on a full time basis in their own parents or guardians home. About 61 percent of these children are from developing countries in Asia and 32 percent are from African countries. So it's questionable whether ratification of this or any other treaty, to be honest about it, will do much to reduce the abusive use of children in the work forces of these countries which are typically poor and unable to provide adequate education for their children. The United States is already party to a number of treaties, including the ILO Forced Labor Convention, which was ratified in 1992 and requires the abolition of forced labor of children under the age of 18. But despite this treaty, the problem persists, as I say, in the developing countries. Now then, on todays private panel are witnesses who will speak more directly to implementation of the goals highlighted by the Convention. Although I support ratification of the Convention, in all candor, I fear that it will do little to change many of the most corrupt and impoverished countries around the world. On the other hand, we must do what we can to try. I am hopeful that the witnesses today will lay out some of the policies that will engender economic and political self-interest for governments to stress the adequate education of their children rather than their full employment. Now we're going to have three panels this morning. Senator Harkin, my colleague, whom I admire and respect, requested to testify and will the first panelist. And he will be followed by the distinguished Labor Secretary, Alexis Herman, we welcome her. And the third panel will consist of distinguished witnesses; Mr. John J. Sweeney, the president of the AFL/CIO; Ambassador Thomas M.T. Niles, president of the US Council for International Business; Mr. Casey Harrell, a member of the Duke University chapter of Students Against Sweatshops and Mrs. Francoise Remington, executive director of Forgotten Children. PAGE 67 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 Senator Biden, we welcome you and you may proceed sir. BIDEN: Mr. Chairman, thank you very much for your leadership and guidance on this issue. From the bottom of my heart, I just want to thank you for the expeditious manner in which you have moved this issue. HELMS: Thank you. BIDEN: As you said, it just came to you in August, if I'm not mistaken. And was just ratified on June 17th in Geneva. And you're having this hearing today indicates your interest in and your desire to, as you say, do all we can. We may not be able to accomplish everything, but we must try. And I think that is the right attitude in which we must approach this. So again, I thank you for that. I know that I'm honored to be here with Secretary Herman and President Sweeney and others, Mr. Niles of the business community. And they will be speaking a little bit later about some of the more intricacies of this than I will. I just thought I'd just give it a broad brush stroke and get out of your way. But again, Mr. Chairman, there's going to be a meeting of the ILO governing body in November. And others will speak about this, but it would be, I think a great thing for us if we could get this out while they're there meeting. And say the United States is taking a leadership position on this. Well, Mr. Chairman, as you said, in June the ILO ratified this unanimously, the United States included. For the first time in history the world spoke with one voice in opposition to abusive and exploitative child labor. Countries from across the political and economic and religious spectrum, from Jewish to Muslim and Buddhist to Christians, came together to proclaim unequivocally that abusive and exploitative child labor is a practice which will not be tolerated and must be abolished. You know we've heard all these arguments all of the time that, well, you know, child labor is an acceptable practice because of a country's economic circumstances. Well gone is that argument. Then we heard that, well it's acceptable because of cultural practices. Well now that argument's gone. And then we heard that it was a necessary evil on the road to economic development. That argument's gone also. That's what all of these countries have basically said that we're not going to abide by those -- by those old arguments. The U.S. business community and everyone agreed on the final version. Mr. Chairman, I've been -- I have sort of made this an interest of mine. I've been working on it for the better part of a decade. And quite frankly, we have made great progress in this area. And as you indicated about child labor, we're not talking about kids working after school or on the family farm. I worked -- since I've been 10 years old, I've worked. And I bet you did too. I bet you did too. I'm not -- we're not talking about that. Quite frankly I think there's -- I think there's a benefit to kids working and knowing the responsibility of work and hard work and knowing how to get there on time and doing a good job. That's a real benefit. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about kinds that are basically ripped from their families. Many of them are chained to looms or to their business at the places they PAGE 68 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 work. They're not allowed to go to school. They're really virtually slaves, is what they are, so they're denied an education. They're denied any kind of character formation with their families in many cases. That's -- that's really what we're talking about here in the worst forms of child labor. I just thought I'd show you this and tell you a little story, Mr. Chairman. This is a picture which I actually took. Last year I was in -- I did a tour. I went -- this is in Katmandu, Nepal. I'd never been there before. But I'd heard about all the different child labor there. But see if you ask to go visit a plant, of course, by the time you get there all the kids are out the back door and they're gone, see. So I had -- two contacts had found this young man who had been a former child laborer. And he knew the guard at one of the gates of this factory on the outskirts of Katmandu. And he found out that the owner was not going to be there. And so he said if we go there at night, I can get us in. So it was a Sunday night about 7:00, 7:30 in the evening. It had just gotten dark. We got in a car, an unmarked car and we drove out to the outskirts of Katmandu and up to this plant. And the first thing that I saw was this sign outside of the gates. This is all locked up and gates and stuff. And it's in both Nepalese and in English and it says, "Child labor under the age of 14 is strictly prohibited." Well, as I said, this young man knew the guard and the guard let us in. And so we walked down this sort of back alley and down around in the back and we come in this building. And -- these are some of the pictures, I don't have them all here, of what I found. We walked in there. Kids as young as 6 and 8 years old -- mind you, this is at night. Now this is like 7:30, 8:00 at night. Hundreds of these kids in these big buildings sitting -- you can't see it here, but these kids are way back in these long lines sitting there. That's me looking over their shoulders. And these kids are working on these looms that late at night. It's dusty, you can't -- there's all this dust that comes off and stuff like that and it's kind of dirty, just dirt floors. And these kids live in barracks next to the looms. So they work. They go back to these barracks to sleep. They get up in the morning, they come back to work again. They have nothing else. No play, no family. A lot of these kids are taken away from their families. HELMS: Senator, would you (OFF-MIKE) -- later would you mind holding up those signs so they -- our visitors and others can see. And that was the first one he mentioned. And now here's the one that will grab you. BIDEN: (OFF-MIKE) my flash bulb wasn't good enough to get all the way back on that. HELMS: Yes. Well I think you did well to do that. BIDEN: And there's another kid. I kind of -- I didn't -- I couldn't speak Nepalase, but I had this other guy with me and we're talking to him. And as best as I could determine, he was 7 years old. PAGE 69 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 HELMS: Yes. BIDEN: The best I could determine in terms of age and stuff like that. HELMS: Now hold that one up if you will, Senator Biden. I think they would have an interest in that too. BIDEN: OK. Now. HELMS: Good. BIDEN: The sequel to this story is, you'll appreciate this, Mr. Chairman, we were talking to these kids. And of course they were starting to look at us, but they're doing their job. You know, they've been trained, they don't look up, they do their job. And by gosh, wouldn't you know it, they were wrong. The owner was there. He came in the back door and he was furious. And of course there was a slight confrontation there and of course we were forced to leave right away. But it was a moment of, kind of, contention, standing there. Because obviously I was on private property and that kind of thing. So I really wasn't legally there, I suppose. But I wanted to get the evidence. I wanted to see for myself. And that's the only way I could do it. Because I'd had others who have told me, well yes, if you set up the visit, they'll have all those kids out of there by the -- when you go there and you won't see them. So that was the only way I could ever actually get to see that. HELMS: Remember that was a very instructive stop and a good part of your trip, I'm sure, but I commend you for it. BIDEN: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. The other story I would just relate to you, on the same trip -- and this, this next story I'm going to relate to you is an indication of how things can work. Several years ago when I first introduced my Child Labor Protection Act to stop the importation of goods coming into this country made by child labor, I was visited by a group of Bangladeshi businessmen who are part of the garment manufacturers. BIDEN: They make shirts, a lot of shirts in Dhaka, Bangladesh. And they visited me in my office. And boy, I tell you, they were hot. I mean, they were really hot. And thankfully, they were in the United States and I wasn't in their country at that time. But they were just telling me: You don't understand, Senator Harkin, these kids, they need it for their family -- all the old arguments. You've heard them all. You know, these kids, their families, they need the money, and if they don't have it and they'll be out on the streets and they'll be prostitutes and all that kind of stuff. So we -- I listened to them and I thought, well, some of what they said might have made sense. And so I said, well, let's see if we can work together to form some kind of a group to get these kids out of these factories and into schools. Well, over a process of just a couple of years, the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers Exporters Association -- that's this group that came to see me -- the Bangladeshi government, UNICEF -- the United Nations International -- PAGE 70 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 UNICEF, and the ILO, IPEC. Is that right? IPEC. Was there someone else involved in that? Those -- all got together and decided that they would set up a procedure, a process to get these kids out of these plants. And most of them are girls. About 90 percent of these are young girls, 6-, 7-, 8-, 9-, 10-year-old girls. Well, in about three years they got about 10,000 of these kids out of the plants and into 353 schools. Now, I say schools, they're not like we may think of a school. They're one room. Many of them just had a dirt floor. But I visited them, and they got a teacher there, they're learning the language, they're learning writing, they're learning basic arithmetic and mathematics, and they're even learning English. And these are, you know, like kids, there may be 20 in this little room, but at least they're learning something and they're in these classes. Well, what the ILO did through IPEC, they provided -- or UNICEF, I forget how it all worked together -- but they provided money for the families. These young girls were making about seven bucks a month. They're working 10 to 12 hours a day, six and a half to seven days a week, depending if they got their quota or not, making seven bucks a month. So what we did is we provided to the families half of that amount of money if they would show their little badge and get it stamped that they went to school. So if they went to school and got stamped they got the money, the family got half the money. So it kind of gave them an economic incentive, they didn't have all of it taken away from the families. And then we set up an inspection procedure. In fact, I went with the ILO, they had all these plants in Dhaka, Bangladesh, laid out on a book. And I said, "How do you know that your inspection procedures, or how do you know that they don't know you're coming?" and, you know, that kind of thing. They said: Well, pick one, and whichever one you pick, that's where we'll go. So I just went down the list and I just pointed at one, I didn't know what I pointed at. OK, we know where that is, let's get in the van and let's go. Went out and did an unannounced inspection of this plant. And the owners had agreed to this. The owners had agreed that they signed up with this. We went there and I got to walk through and talk to all these people and there weren't any young girls working there -- and there had been, but now they were in school. So I'm just saying that it can work. It -- and it doesn't take much money. And it doesn't take much at all to get something like this to work. So those who say that, well, if you do this they're going to be out on the streets and they're going to be prostitutes and they're going to be criminals -- that's not necessarily true. It can work because I've seen it work. And if it can work in Bangladesh, probably the poorest country in the world, if it can work there, it can work in Latin America and Africa and a lot of other places. So, Mr. Chairman, again I thank you for doing this and for having this important hearing. I just -- I'd ask that my full statement be made a part of PAGE 71 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 the record. Obviously I diverged from it a lot, but... HELMS: Of course, without objection it will be done. HARKIN: But I just -- I just want to relate those stories to you because they're just personal events of mine. I also just might say that I visited a place in Pakistan. I have one more picture, I could show you that too. This is a picture of a young boy in Pakistan. He's 8 years old and he's making surgical equipment. (OFF-MIKE) see he's making some surgical scissors there. And he's 8 years old, and, again, no protective things, he's not in school, and that's his lot in life at 8 years of age. And, again, we're working, things are happening there to get these kids out of there an into schools. But I think with the adoption of this convention and with the United States taking a leadership position on this, I believe this is one place where the United States can really make an impact on these countries, and we can get other countries to start changing also. And I don't believe it's going to cost a lot of money, but it's going to take leadership, and I believe that's the kind of leadership that you've shown, Mr. Chairman, in moving this so expeditiously, and I congratulate you for it, I commend you for it. And I hope that we can get this thing out and hopefully -- hopefully get it passed before we leave for this year. HELMS: Thank you, Senator. HARKIN: Thank you. HELMS: And we'll be glad to have you stay with us and sit up here. HARKIN: I've got to go over to -- back to the floor, Mr. Chairman. HELMS: I see. Well, thank you for being here. We... HARKIN: Thank you. HELMS: We enjoyed it. HARKIN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. HELMS: Now we have -- honored to have the Honorable Alexis Herman, who's secretary of labor. And if she will come forward. We will stipulate at the outset that you're prepared text will be made a part of the record without objection. And since I'm the only one here, nobody will object. (LAUGHTER) You may proceed. HERMAN: Good way to run a meeting, Mr. Chairman. HELMS: Sure is. PAGE 72 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 (LAUGHTER) HERMAN: Well, Mr. Chairman, thank you so very much for inviting me to be with you to testify today in support of the ratification of the Worst Forms of the Child Labor Convention, which was unanimously adopted by the International Labor Organization this past June. Mr. Chairman, I want to you know today that I appreciate and thank you for your personal interest and attention to this convention. Let me also acknowledge the leadership of Senator Harkin as he has departed this hearing room. I also want to acknowledge and to thank this morning Tom Niles of the U.S. Council for International Business and John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO, our partners on ILO matters. Without their diligent work on this convention we would not be here today. Today, Mr. Chairman, we have a rare opportunity to take the struggle of the world's children to a new and higher level of commitment and action by ratifying Convention 182. As you have rightly pointed out, Mr. Chairman, this convention addresses the most abusive forms of child labor -- slavery, prostitution, drug trafficking, pornography -- and the worst forms that are likely to endanger the health, the safety and the morals of our children. It was carefully reviewed by a tripartite group of legal experts, chaired by the solicitor of labor, Henry Solano (ph), who is with me today. The process that they followed used ground rules endorsed by the Senate in 1988 and applied to other ILO conventions that have been ratified by the United States. Just days after it was passed, the Senate commended the ILO for its action and encouraged the president to submit this convention promptly. That was done. And now, with your advice and consent, the United States can ratify the convention and demonstrate one of our country's deepest values; and that is that every child everywhere is precious. Every country in the world should outlaw the most abusive forms of child labor. U.S. law already prohibits the worst forms of child labor as defined in this convention and ratification would not require any change in our current laws or regulations. Protecting children here and abroad is one of the administration's top priorities and it is a special priority for me as secretary of labor. So I would like to take just a moment to put the problem of abusive child labor in perspective and describe how the United States is addressing this issue around the world today. As you have pointed out, the International Labor Organization estimates that over 250 million children are working around the world. An estimated 120 million of these children in fact work full time. Today, I would like to tell you the story of just two of these children, Anna (ph) and Alfaz (ph), who have been helped by programs administered by the ILO and funded by the United States. Anna (ph) was born to a poor family in Sialkot, Pakistan. She wasn't sent to school because her family could not afford to buy her school uniforms or shoes. Before she turned 10, Anna (ph) was stitching soccer balls to contribute to PAGE 73 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 her family's income. But today Anna (ph) has new hope. A project supported by the funds approved by this Congress allowed Anna (ph) to go to school. In less than a year, she learned to read and to write in her local language and to differentiate letters also in the English alphabet. Anna (ph) plans to stay in school and Anna's (ph) younger siblings now have a shot at a brighter future, one that doesn't include stitching soccer balls to meet the family's basic needs. Alfaz (ph), an 11-year-old child living in Bangladesh, worked long hours in a garment factory. As other children went to school in the morning, he went to work. But thanks to an ILO project, Alfaz (ph) is now in school. But best of all, he too is learning now to read and to write. Anna (ph) and Alfaz (ph) represent just two of the millions of children who go to work every day when they should be going to school. Some of these children work in mines, crawling underground through small, unlit and unventilated passageways. Others, mostly girls, work long days as domestic servants and often suffer physical and emotional abuse. Some are sold as carpet weavers to repay their parents debts. In exchange for working long hours, they receive no pay. Instead, they are yelled at, slapped or beaten. Children do hard labor in rock quarries where they often have to break and carry heavy stones in the hot sun. And girls are sold into the nightmare of child prostitution. But there is hope. Over the past three (ph) years, abusive child labor has now drawn the attention of the international community. You asked earlier, Mr. Chairman, what's different and what perhaps can we expect to see in terms of different results. Well, what is different today -- and this is a very important change from a decade ago -- is that today governments and organizations are finally now acknowledging the problem. That was not true a decade ago. Today, many international organizations and governments in developing and industrialized countries and nongovernmental actors are developing and implementing strategies and initiatives to address child labor. The United States has taken the lead on a number of fronts. Over the past years, the Department of Labor's International Bureau of Labor Affairs has studied and reported on international child labor in the "By the Sweat and Toil of Children" series. The United States is also supporting direct action to improve the lives of children working around the world. Since 1995, with bipartisan congressional support, the Department of Labor has committed $37 million to support activities that address international child labor, including nearly $30 million in 1999 to the ILO's International Children Labor Fund, IPEC, which has been the most effective and innovative international program today targeting abusive child labor. IPEC projects are showing real signs of achieving real success in improving the lives of children in need and we look forward to continuing this important work with the ongoing support of this Congress. PAGE 74 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 The problem of abusive child labor demands a global solution. The work of the ILO, including the new Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, is an important contribution to that solution. As adopted, the convention is clear, concise and well focused. Representatives of the United States government, American workers and American employers played an important role in its creation. I am confident that it can be ratified not only by the United States, but by countries around the world. HERMAN: This was a very long and a very difficult process. It involved, Mr. Chairman, over two years of active negotiation on our part and consultation with your office, with this committee, to achieve the results that we have achieved to date. I believe that wide ratification is a key to eliminating the worst forms of child labor. If we are to eliminate the worst forms of child labor, we must have a core standard that is accepted and applied globally. Convention 182 gives us that standard. Mr. Chairman, the new convention speaks of eliminating the worst forms of child labor as a matter of urgency. Well, it is an urgent matter. One child working in abusive conditions is one child too many. You have recognized as much by specifically taking up consideration of this convention. Again, I thank you for your swift action and for your response. And by ratifying Convention 182, we will be able to give all of our children the 21st century that they in fact deserve. Thank you again, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me to be with you today. And I will be pleased to answer any of your questions or that of Senator Biden and Senator Wellstone before this committee. Thank you very much. HELMS: To the contrary, Madam Secretary, it is I who thanks you for coming to offer your testimony. Senator Biden has arrived and... BIDEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I understand you explained my absence, being in the Judiciary Committee. I'm happy to be here. I'll submit my statement for the record. HELMS: Very well. We have a third panel. Before we call the third panel, I want each senator to have five minutes and I don't want them to make a long speech and then ask a question when the yellow light comes on. So we will limit it to five minutes so that we can get to the next panel as well. But I think every senator's going to want to compliment you, as I certainly do. Senator Biden? BIDEN: Madam Secretary, the chairman is correct. We all appreciate the work you've done. Let me ask you one question. Assuming that we get this through the Senate, which I -- I think we can, what are the administration's plans for bringing on other nations to ratify quickly? PAGE 75 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 HERMAN: We have just recently had a meeting, senator, with Juan Samavia (ph), the director general of the ILO, to embark upon a global campaign to press for the urgent ratification of this convention. We believe given the fact that this is the first time in the history of the ILO that this convention was in fact adopted unanimously, that other countries will move to ratification. But we intend to work with the ILO to keep the issue on the front burner of the global agenda, to help with its ratification in other countries. BIDEN: I'm going to ask you another question that's awfully basic, and I apologize for being so literal. But it may help the process here in the Senate. Can you speak with us a few minutes about implementation of this treaty? I understand the administration has concluded that we don't need to make any changes in our domestic law or practices in order to comply with this treaty. Is that correct? HERMAN: That is correct. We had a tripartite body of workers and employers, headed by our own legal team as well -- Henry Solano (ph), the solicitor of labor, and we've looked very carefully at the fact that this convention is very consistent with existing U.S. law. BIDEN: Now can you give us a brief description of how your department and the Department of Justice deal with these issues? We're not the Labor Committee. It's down the hall. And I just came from the Judiciary Committee. I apologize for what may seem to be a very basic question. But this is not an everyday focus for the State Department or for our jurisdiction. So could you walk us through how this gets done in your shop? HERMAN: Basically, we work on the international level through the International Affairs Bureau at the Department of Labor. And there, we are funding projects through the ILO primarily to work with other countries and other organizations to make sure that we are not only engaging in research and documentation of the worst worms of child labor in those countries, but that we are following up with concrete programs to assist those countries to get the children out of those situations, into classrooms, into workrooms that will be more compatible with what they need as children today. BIDEN: The yellow light's not on yet, so I'm going to ask another one. What happens if the ILO determines that a nation isn't complying with its obligations under the treaty? HERMAN: The ILO has no direct enforcement authority per se. But what we do believe has happened as a result of unanimous adoption of this convention and the fact that for the first time, the ILO is also agreeing to publish a global report on what is occurring inside countries with regard to child labor, that this document we will be able to use the moral powers as well as the political powers to put the spotlight on the worst actors on the world stage today when it comes to the most abusive forms of child labor. BIDEN: But there's no actual enforcement? HERMAN: But there's no actual enforcement mechanism here. BIDEN: One question that's been raised by some of my constituents -- I think the answer is clear, but I want it for the record -- article III, section A bans, quote "compulsory recruitment of children for use in armed conflict" end PAGE 76 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 of quote. And the term "child" applies to all persons under the age of 18. Now as you know, the United States military permits voluntary enlistment for 17-year-olds with the consent of their parents. Would it -- it seems to me that this enlistment's not forced, it would not be covered. But can you tell me whether or not my understanding is correct? HERMAN: Your understanding is absolutely correct, senator. The operative language here is "force and compulsory." As you know, here in the United States, it is on a voluntary basis. BIDEN: OK. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. HELMS: Thank you, senator. The senator from Minnesota. WELLSTONE: I think Senator Feingold (inaudible) HELMS: Mr. Feingold then, no question. FEINGOLD: Thank you, Senator Wellstone. And thank you, Mr. Chairman, for calling this hearing and moving forward on this important issue. And I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today to discuss this convention. I want to recognize Senator Harkin's work on this. I unfortunately missed his remarks. I was at the same Judiciary Committee meeting that Senator Biden was. And I also want to thank Secretary Herman for her work on this. I've always been a strong supporter of labor rights and human rights standards and try to point out violations when and where they occur. And this is an especially important convention because it deals with the worst form of this kind of abuse, child labor. Every youngster involved in illegal child labor is degraded by the practice -- the children themselves, the employers who gain from the exploitation, the society whose labor market is distorted by this practice, and the consumer who unknowingly sustains injustice and exploitation when they purchase the product. In particular, I welcome today's focus on the most urgent elements of the child labor tragedy. Mr. Chairman, I'm glad you mentioned that children learning about agriculture on family farms is not the problem. The problem, though, is real. From fireworks factories in South Asia to tin mining in South America, children are working in dangerous conditions that threaten not just their development, but also their immediate safety. Debt bondage steals children's infinite possibilities and replaces them, one, with never ending obligation, and perhaps most tragically, where children are exploited through prostitution and pornography, innocence is betrayed for profit. What we're talking about is not just a waste of human potential. It is the active destruction of the next generation for the purpose of material gain. Mr. Chairman, for several years now I've served on the Subcommittee on Africa, in fact for seven years. And I know that some of the worst forms of child labor can be found on that continent. According to the ILO, 32 percent of the world's child labor force lives in Africa. Children from Mali are sold into forced labor in Cote d'Ivoire. In Tanzania, children spend their days in the mines braving hazardous conditions to recover gems and gold. In Sudan, they toil in factories. In Kenya, they labor on coffee plantations. PAGE 77 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 These are issues that concern me today and will concern me also, Mr. Chairman, in the days to come as we have a floor debate on our trade policy toward Africa, which I think is an important opportunity for us to address some of these issues as well. Sadly, several African countries are also home to child soldiers. I've seen this personally in both Angola and Liberia, and of course it is occurring in places like Sierra Leone, Uganda and Sudan. And we've seen the devastating effects of putting weapons into the hands of children, exposing them to the horrors of war and alienating them from their own societies. I'm pleased to see that this convention explicitly addresses the issue of child soldiers and mentions the need for rehabilitation programs when child labor abuses end. So I very much appreciate this hearing and I would like, if I have a second, to ask the secretary a question. Again, my thanks for your leadership. I'm wondering if there isn't some tension between the administration's support for this convention and its support for trade mechanisms, such as the African Growth and Opportunity Act that may not adequately address human rights and labor rights standards. Do you think that comprehensive trade packages should include provisions to protect against abuses like those that are actually addressed in the convention, I'd ask. HERMAN: Thank you very much, Senator Feingold, first of all for your comments and for your leadership as well on this issue. I believe very strongly that there is not tension on this issue. First of all, when we look at the question of trade today, in my view and I think I speak for the administration, certainly, in this regard, the whole question of trade today and issues like child labor and what we have to do to lift up these basic standards are not mutually exclusive issues. They really are mutually reinforcing as we look at the whole question of trade today as in fact they should be. I don't think that you would find any disagreement that the banning of the most abusive forms of child labor is something that every country should be bound to and want to work on. I said earlier that this convention is the very first time that it was ratified unanimously by ILO countries. We worked very closely with all of our international partners on this, including I might add, many of the countries in Africa. As a matter of fact, the subcommittee -- the work group in the ILO was actually chaired by one of our leaders from one of our African countries. So they were very much a part of this debate and were very committed to the objectives that are in this convention. And through our own direct action programs now, we are collaborating with African countries on specific programs on child labor. FEINGOLD: Mr. Chairman, could I ask a quick follow up? Just one -- just because I can't... HELMS: Be quick. FEINGOLD: ... because I had to ask whether or not the African Growth and Opportunity -- about the African Growth and Opportunity Act -- would you support an amendment to toughen the labor standard? PAGE 78 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 HERMAN: I -- I have been working very closely with members of the Congress to talk about the need to have more discussion on child labor as a part of our ongoing trade policies. HELMS: Very well. The senator from Minnesota. WELLSTONE: Madam Secretary, thank you for being here. And I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman, that I missed the testimony of Senator Harkin. I understand it was riveting and I really appreciate his support. And I also appreciate your support for this ILO convention and I appreciate what you had to say. WELLSTONE: I want to welcome Casey Harrell from the Duke Students Against Sweatshops. And even -- and the reason I do that is that I think the Students Against Sweatshops movement is a significant justice movement and justice organizing by students across the country. And as a college teacher, I want students who are here to know that I'm really excited about your work, and I think it's important. And I also note that just last week Nike, formerly one of the staunchest opponents of disclosure, released a complete list of factories worldwide manufacturing Duke apparel as well as for four other universities. So, for the students here, your organizing, your voice, your pressure is making a difference. Madam Secretary, this anti-sweatshop movement is fighting against these abuses, really awful labor abuses, against children as well as adults. We exchanged letters this summer about the need to improve the FLA agreement, especially to improve public disclosure and accountability. And I appreciate your prompt response to my letter, and I wonder whether you could tell us what kind of progress has been made with FLA and what you or what we can expect in the future. HERMAN: As you've just pointed out, first of all, Senator Wellstone, I think more broadly this issue today is getting the attention of government organizations, nongovernmental organizations alike, and the student movement as a part of this effort has made an enormous contribution. And I think, quite frankly, it's helping to further the work of the partnership itself. When we look at some of the specific actions that employers are engaged in our through the partnership, we're finding that the issue of transparency is becoming more and more of a practice now for more employers. That's a good thing. There are other organizations that I would point to in addition to Nike, like the Gap organization that is being much more aggressive in terms of monitoring its efforts, its subcontractors in other countries. And all of this is making a difference. This is important work in progress, and I think that we are really at the floor of these activities, and it is my expectation that as we continue to, not only to spotlight the practices that other countries and other companies are taking, but as we have other movements like the student movement that we're going to see much more direct action in the future. WELLSTONE: Well, Madam Secretary, I hope that you will actually support work of students and that you will really speak out strongly, making it clear that PAGE 79 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 we've got to improve this Fair Labor Association agreement with -- on the issues of public disclosure and accountability. There's a lot, as you well know, there's a lot of organizing. In fact, I think it's pretty exciting, for the WTO meeting coming up in Seattle. A lot of NGOs, labor -- labor's on the march organizing the unorganized. President Sweeney will be testifying before our committee today. A lot of farm activists. Do you -- is there -- can you give us a report on whether or not there's any effort to incorporate labor rights into this WTO agreement? HERMAN: There's very much an ongoing dialogue right now to make sure that the whole question of labor is going to be increasingly at the center of these issues. We were very pleased by the recent actions of the Actiput (ph) committee that has now called for a working group within the WTO with the ILO to begin to look at these issues. I will be traveling on Monday to Seattle to meet with workers there who are in the process of planning the -- many of the meetings inside the room and outside the room that will be taking place in Seattle. So I think it is an exciting time to bring these issues to the forefront of our national and international agenda. WELLSTONE: Well, I would urge you -- I'm running out of time -- I would urge you, Secretary, and I appreciate your voice, and I would urge the administration to really be bold and be strong and public in pushing for the inclusion of these labor rights, because I think people are, you know, I don't think that -- it's not as if anybody I know wants to put a wall up at our borders, but I think people are very serious about making sure that these international agreements respect child labor and the basic rights of people, you know, in the work force. So, we need you. Thank you. HERMAN: Thank you, Senator. HELMS: Madam Secretary, I'm not going to ask you any questions, I'm going to submit them. And I want you to initial the responses. Most of them can be answered in yes and no. And I need them, because I'm going to prepare a report on what my understanding of your positions are. So I will submit these in writing to you. HERMAN: I'll be happy to do that, Senator. HELMS: I know you will. Now let me say, I think I'm the only guy in the room who remembers the Great Depression. It is said or has been said that several of us who were young at that time in our national life were working in sweatshops. Well, I did sweat in working in a newspaper composing room and doing things like that. But we never could work longer than suppertime. And it's what we did back in those days. I remember at one point I was making $9 a week from the seven or eight jobs I had -- 50 cents here and 25 cents here, and it added up. But that was not sweatshop. That was good experience, and I don't want anybody to compare that time, because I think the parents were more dedicated then than maybe they are today about seeing that their children do their homework and go to bed early and get up early. I don't see that interest in a lot of the families today. PAGE 80 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 But in any case, I appreciate your coming, and it's been a joy to have you. HERMAN: Thank you very much, Senator. HELMS: Thank you, ma'am. And we will send you these questions. HERMAN: Thank you. HELMS: Now then, here comes the meat of the coconut, fellows. Panel three. Mr. John J. Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO in Washington. The Honorable Thomas M.T. Niles, president of the U.S. Council for International Business, New York City. Mr. Casey Harrell, who's already been referred to by my friend from Minnesota. He's a student at Duke University, which has a pretty good basketball team, I might add. And Mrs. Francoise Remington, who's executive director of Forgotten Children, and she lives in Arlington as I do. I welcome all of you. And we'll give you a couple of minutes to get straightened there, and I think that I want to operate on a ladies first schedule if I may. There's a roll call vote at 11:30. It always happens. So Mrs. Remington, if you will start, I will appreciate it. And now your full text will be printed in the record as if read, and that may give you time to abbreviate a little bit and ad lib a little bit. WELLSTONE (?): Mr. Chairman, can I ask a question? Just -- are we going to have to break up for the vote and come back to this panel? I'm trying to... HELMS: I'm going to send you two on and would hope that you will hurry back and then relieve me to go vote. And if I miss the vote, I'll scold you. (LAUGHTER) OK? All right, Mrs. Remington. It's nice to have you here, and thank you. WELLSTONE (?): It's happened to me before from you. HELMS: Pardon? WELLSTONE (?): It wouldn't be the first time I've got a scolding from you. HELMS: I have never scolded you in my life. (LAUGHTER) That's a terrible libel. You may proceed, ma'am. REMINGTON: Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Minority Member, distinguished members... HELMS: I believe if you pull the microphone a little bit closer it might... REMINGTON: Closer. Like this? PAGE 81 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 HELMS: We have people in the back of the room. REMINGTON: Members of the committee, thank you for giving me the opportunity to appear before you and to speak on behalf of many forgotten children. Our organization is working in India and Haiti, and for this reason my testimony will be based on our experience in those two countries. As a personal aside, my husband and I are the adoptive parents of three children from India, two of whom come from Mother Teresa. Child labor is not a new phenomenon. According to child labor activists in India, the number of working children has been increasing, especially in the export (ph) sector. Alongside this growth in child labor, an international movement for the right of children is gaining momentum to end child labor as defined in Article III of the ILO convention. My comments will mainly be on Articles V, VI and VII of the convention in light of my experience and in response to the chairman's invitation to testify. My observations are designed to assist the committee and should not be read as an appeal to slow down the ratification process. As for Article V, I have to admit that I'm puzzled about the word "employer," especially for children who work in the sex, pornography and the drug industry. I know that Father Francesca (ph) and Father Matthew, who work in the slums of Bombay and Calcutta with children in prostitution, do not make any compromise with the employer of these children. In fact, they do their utmost to stop any contact with the employer. I cannot picture the United States government making deal with pimps or drug dealers to improve the working condition of the children. Yet, these children need to be protected, and the ILO convention brings their sad fate into world light. They are not forgotten anymore. I also think that the members of the convention should be careful about consulting the owners of large factories that employ children. I will never forget the faces and deformed fingers of the little girl I saw working in the mash (ph) factory of South India. The owner knows full well that they are acting against the law of their country, and they even hire a protector to keep reporters and child labor activists away from the child laborer. Members of the convention will not want to deal with organized crime. The challenge posed by Article VI is how to implement a program in a country that doesn't have a functioning government, such as is currently the case in Haiti. Yet there is a great need for helping child workers there. The challenge is to find an appropriate mechanism to ensure that international and national funding reach working children and nongovernmental organizations. Article VII stresses the need and duty of governments to enforce or reinforce their laws against child labor. In fact, it is sadly ironical that a country like India has sound labor legislation. Application of (unintelligible) is a challenge for a country like Haiti where children who have stolen a piece of bread linger for months if not for a year in jail while young children are openly involved in prostitution at night in the street of Port au Prince without being troubled by the police. But Haiti needs help from other democracies. PAGE 82 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 Mr. Chairman, prevention program against the worst form of child labor must include the family of the child. When the child is removed from the working world, the family should not be forgotten. For example, Forgotten Children project in South India offer a loan of a cow or a goat to the poor family of a working child to compensate for the lost income of the child when he or she study. As for special (ph) with children, people who work among the poor can spot them. For example in Haiti, the missionaries of Cap-Haitian and Gonaives are very worried when they receive a mother who is dying of AIDS. They know that soon her children will be orphaned and will have nowhere to go except on the street. In conclusion, given the urgency and the magnitude of the worst form of child labor in the world today, I recommend that the Senate give its advice and consent to ratify the convention number 182 for the elimination of the worst form of child labor. Ratification will put pressure on governments who do not respect the right of children. At the same time, it is my firm belief, based on my personal experience, that the most effective way to improve the life of working children is for grassroots involvement and small projects and the use of the family in the solution. Voluntary (ph) organization and religious groups are probably more effective than government in reaching out to children at risk. The convention is merely a first step in a long process. Mr. Chairman, thank you. I brought some pictures if you want. HELMS: Thank you very much. Mr. Sweeney, you are next.. SWEENEY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman... HELMS: And we welcome you, sir. SWEENEY: ... for the opportunity to present the views of the AFL-CIO in support of United States ratification of the new ILO convention on the worst forms of child labor. Estimates indicate that around the world over 250 million children between ages five and 14 are at work, half of them full time. Millions of these children are known to perform work that is harmful to their physical, mental and emotional health, safety and moral well being. These are not children who are delivering newspapers before going to school. These are not children who are helping their parents with household chores. SWEENEY: These are children whose work might not even occur to us as such -- performing tasks we may not even think of as a job. Much of this work is invisible. It is often in the informal sector. It is dirty and dangerous and deadly. It is work which may require very little skill, yet the strength and stamina of a desperate, hungry child is enough to get it done. PAGE 83 FDCH Political Transcripts, October 21, 1999 These children are valued not because they possess unique skill or talent, but because they are cheap, docile and expendable. Children are employed in some of the world's most dangerous and degrading forms of work. They suffer from illness, injury and disease -- working long hours in terrible conditions. These are children whose families struggle every day to survive; where adults are without work; families locked in a cycle of poverty, hopelessness and despair. This is one of the genuine nightmares of our time -- one from which millions of children have not been able to escape. We have a long history of fighting child labor in this country, striving to prevent the brutal exploitation of child labor and to secure education for all children. In this way, the struggle in every nation is the same -- to provide each generation with the opportunity to learn. There is no surer way to enrich the world. We have a new opportunity -- an opportunity which calls on us all to renew this mission in all of our work. This opportunity was created when the new convention number 182 on the worst forms of child labor was adopted by unanimous consent at the ILO in June of this year. The convention calls for steps to be taken toward the effective immediate elimination of the worst forms of child labor. While I would hope that no child or adult would suffer these conditions, these standards would apply to anyone under 18 years of age, and encourage special attention to the situation of girls and children under the age of 12 -- those most vulnerable to workplace hazards and exploitation -- child labor thrives where it is least visible. The children who are forced into this work can be hard to find and they will not come looking for help from us. It is our duty to seek out and to help children who work in dangerous and degrading conditions. Ending these abhorrent practices -- child prostitution, slavery, debt bondage, pornography -- is one of the most urgent demands of our time. The sale and trafficking of children must never be permitted. Yet this practice is increasingly frequent. More young children are being forced into prostitution in hope that they will be AIDS-free. Sexual exploitation of children is an outrage which cannot be justified in any society for any reason at any time. Economic uncertainty, ignorance and desperation create the condition which drive children into such horrors. There are those who assert that child labor must be tolerated; that it can only be overcome when poverty is vanquished; that poor children have no alternatives to exploitation and abuse necessary to a nation's economic strength. We reject these arguments. We believe that economic development is based in education; that school is the best place for all children regardless of their personal social standing or their nation's economic vitality. Basic education is one of the most effective tools to lift families and communities and countries out of poverty, and yet little value is placed on education for the poorest, most vulnerable often invisible members of our societies. Education is the best alternative for those rescued and rehabilitated today, as well as for long-term prevention. Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, as you take this convention under consideration, remember that the importance of this instrument is that it