GEORGIA : BUSH ADMINISTRATION STILL CAUTIOUS
by Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON (IPS) (IPS) - As if the outgoing administration of U.S. President George W. Bush didn't already have enough on its plate, the question of whether and how to re-arm Georgia in the aftermath of its thrashing last month by Russia is moving steadily up its increasingly crowded foreign policy agenda.

Moscow has already signalled any move to provide the government of President Mikheil Saakashvili with advanced weapons that he has long sought -- including powerful hand-held anti-tank rockets and Stinger surface-to-air missiles that contributed heavily to Russia's defeat in Afghanistan nearly 20 years ago -- will significantly increase tensions with Washington, which soared to a post-Cold War high in the wake of the Russian intervention.

But, besides pledging to continue its push for Georgia's admission to NATO -- something with which Washington's European allies would have to go along -- the Bush administration has so far declined to make any promises in regard to military aid.

Indeed, even Vice President Dick Cheney, who had reportedly pushed hard within the administration for sending such advanced equipment to Georgia even before last month's war, refrained from making any promises last Thursday during his high-profile visit to Georgia's capital.

"Over time, I'm sure, people will look at what happened with the military here and what the needs are," an official who accompanied Cheney on his four-hour stay in Tbilisi told U.S. reporters on the vice president's plane. "But I think the focus for the moment is on the humanitarian and long-term economic needs."

The issue is nonetheless likely to loom large in the coming months, particularly if foreign policy plays a key role in the ongoing presidential election campaign, which moved into high gear last Friday with the end the Republican National Convention.

In his acceptance of the Republican presidential nomination last Thursday night, Sen. John McCain called for "solidarity" with Georgia in a speech that was remarkably light on foreign policy issues. From the moment that hostilities between Georgia and Russia began, McCain, who considers Saakashvili a friend and spoke frequently by phone with him during the crisis -- he once gave the Georgian leader a bullet-proof vest -- has consistently called for stronger action against Moscow, including expelling it from the Group of Eight (G-8) nations, than the administration has been willing to take.

While McCain has not explicitly endorsed filling Saakashvili's wish list, some of his key neo-conservative advisers, such as Max Boot of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), have pressed the administration to take such a course. Their appeal has been supported by two of McCain's closest Senate colleagues.

"Specifically, the Georgian military should be given the antiaircraft and antiarmor systems necessary to deter any renewed Russian aggression," wrote independent Democrat Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham, in the Wall Street Journal late last month. "We avoided giving the types of security aid that could have been used to blunt Russia's conventional onslaught. It is time for that to change," according to the two senators.

Their advice was published just as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev formally recognised the two breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states in defiance of a personal appeal for him not to do so by Bush himself.

While Bush and other top administration officials strongly denounced Medvedev's move -- Cheney called it "an illegitimate, unilateral attempt to change (Georgia's) borders by force" last Thursday -- they have so far moved relatively cautiously, ignoring the appeals for stepped-up military aid to rebuild Georgia's battered forces and upgrade its weaponry. The emphasis instead has been on the delivery of humanitarian and economic assistance.

"The first order of business should not be some sort of punishment," Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Daniel Fried told the Washington Times this week. "Russia has to decide how much it wants to isolate itself from the world. We don't want to have a bad relationship with Russia. We've never wanted that."

So far, U.S. actions have been largely limited to its pledge to push Georgia's and Ukraine's membership in NATO, to effectively shelve the process by which Russia would be admitted to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and to suspend a bilateral strategic dialogue and review a number of other bilateral military cooperation agreements.

In the immediate aftermath of the five-day war, Washington also quickly sealed a long-pending bilateral accord that would permit it to build missile defence systems in Poland. That move drew particularly harsh criticism from Moscow, which has also re-iterated its vow to strongly oppose any effort to admit Georgia and Ukraine to NATO, a military alliance which it sees as aimed at encircling and containing Russia.

Aside from those moves, however, the administration has focused on supplying humanitarian and economic assistance to Georgia -- albeit via military transport aircraft and warships in the Black Sea. In conjunction with the European Union (EU) it has also helped arrange a 750-million-dollar line of credit to help Tbilisi finance the repair of the substantial infrastructural damages it incurred in the war.

In addition, Washington pledged one billion dollars in economic and reconstruction assistance, of which more than half will be sent over the next five months. That amount would make the Caucasian nation the fourth biggest U.S. aid recipient, after Israel, Iraq, and Egypt.

The administration's relative caution, particularly with respect to military aid, appears motivated by several factors.

Increasing tensions with Moscow further, according to senior officials and independent analysts, could seriously jeopardise other top foreign policy interests, including Washington's hopes for applying additional pressure, particularly through the U.N. Security Council, on Iran to halt its nuclear programme. It could prompt Russia to suspend an agreement that permits NATO use Russian and Central Asian bases and air space to supply its troops in Afghanistan.

A more-aggressive stance could also harm relations with key European allies, such as Germany, France, and Italy, which are eager to tamp down tensions, in part due to their own heavy investments in Russia's economy and dependence on gas supplies.

U.S. officials are also reluctant to address the question of additional military aid in light of the Georgian armed forces' poor performance during the war -- the army retreated in chaos at the first contact, while all of its warships were destroyed in port -- and what some of them describe as the recklessness of Saakashvili himself in ordering the attack on Tskhinvali that triggered Russia's offensive. (END)

DEVELOPMENT : DONORS AND THE POOR AGREE AID AGENDA
by Francis Kokutse
ACCRA (IPS) (IPS) - Delegates from both developing and developed countries have adopted the Accra Agenda For Action (AAA) as a guide to improve the way aid is given and spent.

The document was adopted at the close of a three-day High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness which drew over 1,200 delegates from about 120 to the Ghanaian capital.

Under the AAA, developing countries committed to control their own futures, and donors to better policy and delivery coordination among themselves.

After some hard negotiations, both sides also pledge to make themselves accountable to each other and their citizens.

Although there were reports that the talks pitted developing countries, backed by the European Union, against leading donor nations the US and Japan, a senior U.S. spokesman played down the suggestion.

"A number of groups were very involved in the discussions and in putting forward inputs and ideas. Everyone was pitching in and working together," said Henrietta H. Fore, Director of Foreign Assistance in the State Department and USAID Administrator.

"We wanted to reflect the urgency, but we also wanted to be realistic. We wanted to set targets that we could meet," she told IPS.

Other U.S. officials pointed to what they called "cultural differences" between the U.S. and Europe -- where European countries tended to set "aspiration targets" by setting the bar high, the U.S. favoured realistic, achievable targets.

"The U.S. is very target-oriented, very results-oriented," said a U.S. official attached to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the grouping of the worlds leading donors that had called the Forum along with the World Bank.

The Accra Agenda states that governments in the developing world will take stronger leadership of their own development polices and engage with their parliaments and citizens in shaping those policies.

"Donors will support them by respecting countries priorities, investing in their human resources and institutions, making greater use of their systems to deliver aid, and increasing the predictability of aid flaws," it adds.

In addition, they agreed that "achieving development results and openly accounting for them must be at the heart of we do."

Since citizens and taxpayers of all countries expect to see the tangible results of developments, the gathered leaders promised to "demonstrate that our actions translate into positive impacts on peoples lives."

"We will be accountable to each other and to our respective parliaments and governing bodies for these outcomes."

"Without addressing these obstacles to faster progress, we will fall short of our commitments and miss opportunities to improve the livelihoods of the most vulnerable people in the world," they added.

The Agenda also agreed to deepen engagement with civil society organisations as independent development actors in their own right, as organisations whose efforts complement those of governments and the private sector.

Civil groups present at the Forum however criticized the final outcome saying it was a weak agreement characterised more by words than action.

"Even last-minute efforts by developing country ministers and their allies only ensured some marginal improvements. This aid forum was organised by the OECD, a rich-country donor club," said Rose Mensah-Kutin, executive director of NETRIGHT Ghana.

"In a year when more than one hundred million people have been pushed into poverty by rising food prices, it is scandalous that donor governments have refused to remove damaging restrictions that increase the cost of food aid," she added.

"Donors have failed to agree to reduce harmful policy conditions that undermine democratic processes and constrain country choices," said Tony Tujan of Reality of Aid, an umbrella group,

"Despite efforts by recipient countries, donors continue to impose their own structures, by-passing domestic processes. Donor are failing to meet their side of the bargain."

Ngonzi Okojo-Iweala, Ghana's minister for finance said, "the Agenda has advanced the course of what we have been talking about. It has set targets and indicators to improve upon aid." (END)

DEVELOPMENT : 'OUR VOICES HAVE BEEN HEARD'
by Interview with Letty Chiwara, UNIFEM Cross Regional Programmes Manager
ACCRA (IPS) (IPS) - As the Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness drew to a close in the Ghanaian capital, gender activists were reflecting on the way ahead.

Having successfully raised the visibility of gender equality and women's empowerment on the Accra Agenda, attention is now turning to the International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus in Doha, Qatar in November and the women are preparing to take forward their successes.

IPS Regional Director Paula Fray spoke to UNIFEM Cross Regional Programmes Manager Letty Chiwara on the road ahead.

IPS: Women's groups met to prepare their activities ahead of this High Level Forum. Why was there such a mobilisation of gender activists for Accra?

Letty Chiwara: We realised that the Paris Declaration and the Accra Agenda for Action debate have a lot of implications on funding for women's organisations and also on the way governments plan, budget and monitor gender equality results. Yet there was very little knowledge and awareness among women's activists on the whole agenda.

UNIFEM set out to increase knowledge among women's groups and activists as well as jointly strategise with them in order to ensure women's voices were heard on these issues.

We sought to mobilise local women's organisations, donor gender experts, women's ministries and UN agencies with the idea that a collective voice would help us achieve our objectives.

IPS: There have been many discussions during the three days of the HLF3. Did gender activists achieve their objective to raise women's voices?

LC: Yes, very much so. One lesson learned through this process is that the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA) has revitalised the concept of women's lobbying and the power of movements. It brings us back to the struggle of Beijing and the success we saw then. This has been a long road but I think that our voices have been heard.

Throughout the dialogues here at Accra, I have seen a thread of gender equality running throughout. The issue is being spoken about - not just by us but by other people … one delegate told me it was interesting to hear male delegates talking about gender and women's empowerment.

IPS: Are you satisfied with what has been agreed on with the AAA?

LC: We are very gratified that one of the key issues coming from the Accra Agenda is the recognition that here we are talking not only about the quality of aid but also about the quantity of aid. The AAA also recognizes the role that the Doha Conference (the International Conference on Financing for Development to Review the Implementation of the Monterrey Consensus in Doha, Qatar in November) and the African Union's Economic, Social and Cultural Council could play.

Promoting more resources for women is a critical rallying issue. So we would want to continue this momentum ahead of Doha and support women's groups and strategise around the six elements of the Monterrey Consensus.

IPS: How will you build on the momentum of the Accra Agenda for Action?

LC: Accra has given us the political leverage. Political leaders have accepted that gender equality and women's empowerment are key to achieving sustainable development results so we want to harness and take it back to countries and support those who want to take it forward.

Moving forward, our activities now would include supporting countries who want to strengthen or initiate gender responsive budgeting. We would also want to further strengthen the technical capacity and knowledge of women's organisations and ministries of women around the issue of aid effectiveness.

Accountability mechanisms were discussed at length here and UNIFEM would want to assist in setting up more participatory accountability mechanisms at country level by strengthening the expertise and capacity on monitoring and evaluation and the use of strong gender sensitive indicators – some of which have already been drawn up and were released at the women's forum ahead of the HLF.

We are recommending that countries can pick on a select number of these indicators and use them to monitor implementation and track the achievement of these. We would also continue to work with bilateral donor partners with ongoing lobbying and advocacy for more resources for gender equality and women's empowerment as well as the setting up of systems to track allocation of such resources. (END)

RIGHTS-SOMALIA : BUILDING WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP
by Sarah McGregor
BAGAMOYO (IPS) (IPS) - The moderator raps her pen on the table to hush the boisterous assembly of Somali women gathered in Bagamoyo, on the Indian Ocean coast of Tanzania. Their voices drop for a moment before the sound level rises again to a heated crescendo.

This group of 60 is being given a rare public forum to share their thoughts on the role of women in the peace process of war-ravaged Somalia, a nation without an effective central government since 1991.

Seventeen years of civil conflict, serious food shortages from frequent droughts and deepening poverty has created what the United Nations calls one of the world's worst humanitarian disasters.

Through it all, women in the largely conservative Horn of African nation have largely been prevented from voicing opposition.

"The war is being fought by men and it is men leading the politics in the country," said Zahra Mohamad, of the women's empowerment NGO Gender, Education, Empowerment and Leadership Organization (GEELO) based in Nairobi Kenya, in an interview with IPS.

"The women involved in politics are very few and their voices are not very loud. Most are struggling with daily security, daily food, daily work and they don't have time for much else," Mohamad said.

Women have been almost completely excluded from the peace and state building processes in Somalia, according to a statement from the UN International Research and Training Institute for the Advancement of Women (UN-INSTRAW).

That is slowly starting to change.

This year new efforts are being made to involve Somali women in bringing stability to the country ahead of national elections planned for 2009, which may have to be delayed because of the unstable security situation.

Two seminars bringing female members of Somalia's transitional government together with women from inside the country and the Somali diaspora took place in Italy earlier this year. Like this week's conference in Bagamoyo, they were organised by UN-INSTRAW and the Milan-based Association for the Diaspora and Peace (Associazione Diaspora e Pace -- ADEP) with funding from the Italian government. ADEP works to protect the rights of Somali immigrants in Italy and to empower women in Somalia.

"Women are the ones in charge of the households while the men go out fighting. Now, women need to find ways to build peace, influence politics... and vote in democratic elections," said Carolina Toborga, acting director of UN-INSTRAW based in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.

"What we're trying to do is help women living in Somalia to start building bridges with (women) the diaspora who have the resources to help make change inside the country and a connection to the international community."

The fact this formal dialogue had to be held outside Somali is significant. Somali women are frightened to speak out in a society characterised by pervasive gender inequality, according to Sahra (not her real name), a Somali activist living abroad.

"It's a Muslim culture where women are rarely given the right to talk over men," Sahra said. "The challenge is to empower every woman to tell her husband and brother to stay at home and stop fighting."

None of the women who traveled to Tanzania from Somalia for the meeting would agree to an interview with the media. An event organiser circulated questions and sent replies to IPS on condition of anonymity for this story.

"Somali women need to create their own political party. We don't want to repeat the mistakes of the past," one woman responded.

Almost every aspect of life for Somalis -- especially women and girls -- is steadily growing worse, said Mohamad of GEELO.

War has demolished infrastructure including classrooms and hospitals. An average of 45 women die every day in childbirth and the primary school enrolment rate for girls of 15 percent is one of the lowest in Africa, UN statistics show.

Clashes between Somalia's government forces and armed opposition groups have driven at least 1 million people from their homes, according to a report by the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre published in July. More than 3 million Somalis have sought asylum in other African nations, the Persian Gulf, Europe, Australia and North America, the UN High Commission for Refugees said.

Quality of life in one of the world's poorest nations – about half in a population of 9 million live below the poverty line of less than $1 a day -- is further deteriorating, it added. Cultural restrictions prevent some women from working in the formal economy.

In a climate of general lawlessness, rape and other forms of sexual abuse are on the rise as a deliberate conflict tactic.

Only eight percent of lawmakers in Somalia's transitional government are females, below the 12 percent gender quota enshrined in the interim national charter.

One of key aims of the internationally-sponsored dialogue for Somali women is to help implement the UN Security Council Resolution 1325, which outlines measures to improve women's role in peace-building.

Some of the steps include recruiting more female envoys and army officers, and providing services for women in conflict situations.

Activists say the Somali diaspora, which is already trying to take an active part in rebuilding the nation, must work hard to support family and friends in their homeland.

"This diaspora is starting to reinvest in Somali as a country, working on infrastructure and to discuss priorities and needs," Farhia Aidid Aden, of the Association for the Diaspora and Peace, said.

The diaspora has "resources like money, education and the mindset of democratic countries. Women in Somali are coping to survive on the local level." (END)

LATIN AMERICA : FOOD PRICE HIKES HIT POOR HARD - ECLAC
by Daniela Estrada
SANTIAGO (IPS) (IPS) - The countries of Latin America have coped relatively well so far with the rising global food and fuel prices. But the main challenge they face is to focus more attention on the plight of the poor, experts said at a seminar being held in the Chilean capital.

"The countries have responded very well and very promptly, but obviously some are facing major difficulties, like nations in Central America that are not only net food importers, but oil importers as well," Alicia Bárcena, executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), told IPS.

Bárcena avoided calling the present situation in Latin America and the Caribbean a "crisis", because ECLAC, a United Nations agency, estimates that the regional economy will grow by 4.7 percent in 2008 and by about four percent in 2009, thereby achieving seven consecutive years of growth.

However, she warned about the possible effects, particularly on the poorest segments of the population, of accelerating inflation, which has been increasing year on year.

Over the last year, the consumer price index (CPI), especially for foods, has increased by an average of 16 percent in most of the economies in the region, Bárcena said. CPIs have seen increases of between seven and 30 percent, depending on the country.

The real cost of basic products has increased by 140 percent over the last 25 quarters (six and one-quarter years) in a row, Bárcena said.

ECLAC forecasts, omitting the effects of any measures taken or planned by governments, indicate that if inflation rises by 15 percent, the poverty rate will increase by three percentage points, from 35 percent of the population in 2007 to 38 percent.

Bárcena opened the two-day seminar on "The Food and Energy Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges for Latin America and the Caribbean" last Thursday, at the ECLAC headquarters in Santiago, with a presentation on food and fuel price volatility in the region.

"One of the goals of the seminar is for countries to compare their plans and policies, and for ECLAC to help on the technical aspects to facilitate early detection of potential economic and social impacts," she said.

Nils Kastberg, the regional head of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), said he was concerned about the food and "nutritional" security of Latin American children and young people in the present inflationary context.

There are fears that chronic malnutrition (low height for age), in particular, may increase, Kastberg said.

"Food prices will continue to rise until 2015 because of the levels of supply and demand," said Máximo Torero of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), where he is head of the Markets, Trade and Institutions Division and coordinator for Latin America and the Caribbean.

"The region's immediate response to the price hikes was protectionism," Torero told IPS.

"Central America, for instance, tried to create a regional grain reserve, which has dwindled away because experience demonstrates that it can't work. It's very difficult to generate food reserves and fix a stable price," he said.

"Many countries initially instituted price controls, which are a bad idea because they are not sustainable," he said.

"Gradually, countries have implemented better policies that are more market-oriented. They have begun to lower import tariffs and reduce local taxes so that consumers can maintain their purchasing power," Torero said.

"But what is still lacking is a stronger reaction in defence of the poorest sectors. A start has been made on reactivating conditional money transfer programmes, but the value of these is not keeping up with inflation. This is where I think faster responses are needed," he said.

In Torero's view, assistance programmes must be properly targeted. "The dichotomy between the urban poor and the rural poor still exists. Governments have mainly addressed the problems of city dwellers and forgotten about those living in the countryside, where the poverty experienced by landless families, for example, may be even more extreme," he said.

"In structural terms, increasing the productivity of the agricultural sector has still not yielded much in the way of significant results," he said.

Bárcena, too, said "the most successful programmes are the most tightly focused ones, because they reach poor families directly."

"When a subsidy is applied across the board, sometimes it is the well-off who benefit most, as in the case of petrol subsidies," she said.

The head of ECLAC said "petrol is associated mainly with individual transport for people and, in a very few cases, with transporting loads over short distances," unlike diesel fuel, which "is used predominantly for public transport and the trucking industry."

Bárcena stated that Latin America and the Caribbean is the world's most unequal region in terms of wealth distribution, a fact that in her view should directly influence public policies.

"Differential energy pricing policies may have to be introduced, such as applying a sliding scale, or cross-subsidies, to fuel prices," she said.

Torero said "there is still a great deal to be done. Although price volatility has already been discussed, I think we must discuss what concrete measures need to be implemented now."

"In Latin America, the present situation is more of an opportunity than a problem, but careful attention needs to be paid to inequality, and especially to people who are poor or extremely poor. That is where the crisis is biting," he concluded. (END)