Is Turkey pulling a China regarding Darfur?

Sudanese president al-Bashir is among those in attendance at this week’s Turkey Africa Cooperation Summit being held in Istanbul. His presence has outraged many human rights activists, who feel that inviting al-Bashir signals Turkish complacency in the Darfur crisis. Among others, the New York based Human Rights Watch has called on Turkey to use the opportunity to support a court case against Bashir, who has been indicted on genocide charges by the ICC. There is little public evidence that such support has been given. 

At a private meeting, Turkish president Gul told Bashir that he should “work hard” to end the violence in Darfur, which is tantamount to telling a small child to ‘play nice’ in the sandbox, only for him to return to his previous antics as soon as no one is looking. Such requests are unlikely to shake Bashir, who has vowed never to turn any Sudanese over to the ICC, and does little in the way of ending the crisis in Darfur. 

Turkey’s human rights record is itself laden with violations, especially as regards military-civilian relations and Article 301 of its constitution which prohibits “denigrating Turkishness.” Nevertheless, the country is signatory to various human rights documents, among them the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights, and the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. As a country fervently seeking entry into the EU, it is moreover in Turkey’s interest to choose its friends and allies carefully, as any misstep may cost it that coveted EU seat.

Yet with China rising in the international arena despite its unwillingness to ‘save Darfur,’ it is not surprising that a country like Turkey might not express particular concern, either. China’s message is in many ways one of strategic and international success coupled with frequent disregard for the West and international doctrines. Under such an approach countries like China continue to gain international dominance and countries like Sudan are let off the hook. It’s a dangerous form of realist politics that the global community shouldn’t be too quick to tolerate.

China’s gender imbalance

In Monday’s Vox column Esther Duflo observes that the ramifications of China’s One Child policy are steadily beginning to be felt

Among 16-25 year olds today, there are nearly 110 boys for every 100 girls. Boys are having trouble getting married. And young men, particularly single ones, have more behavioural problems and commit more crimes than young women … Since 1998, the number of crimes has risen 13% per year on average. Seventy percent of criminals arrested are between 16 and 25 years old, and 90% are male

Concerns a that such a demographic imbalance may result in violence, economic crisis, an imminent rise of prostitution, and kidnapping are also beginning to surface. Unfortunately, it could take some fifteen years before this imbalance rights itself, likely more given that the CCP intends to continue the policy for at least another decade, with few modifications.

Turkey-Africa Cooperation Summit underway

Taking place under the theme ‘Solidarity and Partnership for a Common Future,’ the four-day event began yesterday in Istanbul. This first summit meeting is intended to allow the leaders of both sides to take stock of the progress made in various areas of development cooperation and look at the future of their relations with a view to further developing and diversifying them.

In an earlier post I noted the benefits such partnership may boast for Turkey, the most obvious being access to resources. Not surprisingly, the country is now eager to sign cooperation accords with Angola where oil reserves are around the 20 billion barrel mark. Sudan’s president Bashir is also in attendance at the Summit, likely for similar reasons.

The trade volume between Turkey and the continent allegedly rose by 140% between 2003 and 2007, and 55% in the first half of 2008. 

Turkey has declared 2008 as ‘Africa’s Year.’ Africa also had a “year” in 2006, which belonged to the Chinese, and another in 2007 which was claimed by the Indians. At this rate I’m curious to see who will claim the continent come 2009.

Chinese vino on the horizon

In an earlier post I speculated about the emergence of a booming Chinese wine market. An article a this month’s Men’s Vogue seemingly confirms these musings. Indeed,

a new crop of wineries, many of them joint ventures with Western capitalists, are now busy scouring the country’s 3.7 million square miles for those elusive terroirs…. 

The tasting notes for the new Chinese wines remain somewhat muddled, most likely because the wines are still bizarre to Western palates. Irrespective, it appears that China is flexing its muscles in more than just international politics.

The end of ‘mzungu!’ chants in Africa?

In a recent post Chris Blattman notes a change in the chants of African children. It appears that “Mzungu! Mzungu!” (’White man! White man!”) has now been replaced with “Chinese! Chinese!” A sign of the times, indeed.

The resurgence of decentralization

Decentralization has been a buzz word in the development world for quite a while, as it is believed that local governments are more accountable to their constituents than are centralized governments. This logic seems to be making a resurgence in Somalia, where Somali intellectuals and Western academics are pushing for a form of government that might be better suited to Somalia’s fluid, fragmented and decentralized society: rebuilding Somalia from the bottom-up.

It is called the building-block approach. The first blocks would be small governments at the lowest levels, in villages and towns. These would be stacked to form district and regional governments. The last step would be uniting the regional governments in a loose national federation that controlled, say, currency and the pirate-infested shoreline, but did not sideline local leaders.

While decentralization has certainly been proven effective in various African locales, it has likewise heralded in problems of resource deficiency, wasted resources and policy overlap. While decentralization may solve some of Somalia’s problems, it may equally exacerbate others.

Alignment, that really isn’t

“Harmonization” and “alignment” have been key catch-phrases in the international aid community for quite some time, gaining particular salience in 2005 with the signing of the Paris Declaration. The main idea is that multilateral and bilateral donors will somehow align their operational policies, procedures and practices with existing poverty reduction strategies (or other development frameworks) in recipient countries, thereby avoiding unnecessary overlaps and rendering aid overall more effective. This push for harmonization is especially pronounced with respect to the MDGs.

Yet in the run-up to the 2008 Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness it seems that little progress has been made towards such alignment, at least among the major multilateral aid organizations. In today’s Vox column OECD’s Helmut Reisen presents the following table:

Table 1 Unclear institutional assignment to the MDGs

Selected multilaterals working on the Millennium Development Goals
MDG / Thematic area	Main multilaterals	Other multilaterals with a role
MDG1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger	UNDP, World Bank, AfDB, AsDB, IFAD, EC, FAO, WFP	CGIAR, IADB
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education	World Bank, UNICEF, UNESCO	UNFPA, UNRWA
MDG 3: Promote gender equality and empower women	UNDP, World Bank, UNIFEM, UNICEF	UNFPA
MDG 4: Reduce child mortality	WHO, UNFPA, UNICEF	World Bank, WFP, UNRWA
MDG 5: Improve maternal health	WHO, UNFPA	World Bank, WFP
MDG 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases	UNAIDS, World Bank, WHO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF	UNIFEM
MDG 7: Ensure environmental sustainability	UN Habitat, World Bank, AsDB, UNDP	CGIAR, UNIDO
MDG 8: Develop a global partnership for development	World Bank, EU, UNDP, UNIDO, ILO, UNCTAD	UNDP
Human rights	OHCHR	UNIFEM
Conflicts and humanitarian emergencies	UNCHR, OCHA, ECHO, WFP, UNICEF, WHO	UNDP

Source: OECD Development Centre, “Financing Development: Whose Ownership?”, Paris, 2008, Chapter 2.

As Jonathan Dingel writes: “When everyone is responsible, no one is.”

The China factor in the Russo-Georgian conflict

A report in The Voice of America notes that Georgia has asked China to use its influence to push for a resolution to a territorial flare-up with Russia. According to the report, Georgia’s ambassador to China, Zaza Begashvili, made no comments on the Chinese response, but remains optimistic that:

as a member of the U.N. Security Council, [China] will express its opposition to this aggression against an independent state

As the WSJ’s Gerald Seib notes, it probably isn’t feasible to try to play China and Russia directly off against each other, as was sometimes possible when they were the two Communist behemoths during the Cold War. Nonetheless, I’m curious to see what China will do in this situation. Let’s consider the two most obvious options:

Option 1: China does not assist Georgia 

The likelier option if you ask me. As a still emerging power China is heavily dependent on its strategic partnership with Russia and isn’t about to make any move that would place that partnership in jeopardy. Furthermore, if China intends to stick to its policy of “non-interference” (which, if one considers China’s activities of the past five or so years, appears to be debunk regardless), interfering in the conflict becomes even more unlikely. While China may express its concern verbally, we all know that actions speak louder than words.

Option 2: China assists Georgia

I’m still trying to play this one out in my head, so bear with me. At present I can think of only two conditions under which any such thing would be likely. The first is China’s image in the international community, especially now during the Olympics. Then again, if China was concerned with its image, I doubt the country would be complicit in the Darfur and Zimbabwean crises, among others. Nor would it bear such an atrocious human rights record with respect to its own people. Right. Condition #1 scratched. 

Condition #2: Oil. The WSJ again reports that the conflict in Georgia is placing grave doubt on the country’s reliability as an energy corridor bringing Caspian crude to global oil markets, and sending shockwaves through the world-wide supply chain. Indeed only today BP shut down a pipeline over security fears in Georgia. It’s no secret that China is resource hungry, pursuing oil wherever it can get its hands on it. If the Chinese are to intervene (and that’s a big “if”) then I speculate that their only reason for doing so would be over oil. Indeed, China and Georgia maintain friendly relations and I doubt China would want to lose a potential oil resource. Then again, much depends on China’s relations with other key players like Iran and various African states like Angola, Nigeria and Sudan from which China derives most of its oil.

China’s newfound love of wine

There has been much debate over whether the Olympics will change China. As it stands the debate is far from over; indeed it has only begun. Inevitably, though, the Chinese are becoming a force in the international arena even, it seems, when it comes to wine. In Friday’s Slate Mike Steinberger writes: 

the balance of wine-buying power is already shifting eastward: Chinese collectors have furiously sought out one first-growth Bordeaux, Château Lafite; and Hong Kong, which recently lifted all duties on wine, is now poised to rival London and New York as a hub of the global wine trade

Moreover:

The country’s wine consumption jumped more than 50 percent during the first half of this decade and is on course to increase another 70 percent during the second half. These numbers have caught the eye of all sorts of Western wine luminaries, who have begun to take China very seriously

Is a “Made in China” wine label on the horizon?

China puts on face for the world as Olympics begin

The Olympics are underway in Beijing, with what no doubt was a spectacular opening ceremony. For the next 16 days the world (or at the very least this blogger) will sit glued to the television as the world’s top athletes battle for guts and glory. The Athenians definitely knew what they were doing. 

But does the world know what China is doing? Really? Sure everyone knows China is a Communist country and most people have some idea of what that means. China’s list of human rights violations - both with respect to its own people and others [insert African country of choice here] - is quite appalling, as is its foreign relations record quite generally, with few exceptions. But from my conversations with those not directly involved in researching China’s domestic and/or foreign relations, few fully grasp what’s at stake. 

An opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal goes some way in shedding some light on the issues, concluding with a rather optimistic tone that the Olympics may in the long term herald in a freer China. In a somewhat less optimistic fashion, Human Rights Watch argues that “the Chinese government and IOC wasted a historic opportunity for reform.” The New York-based Human Rights in China similarly issued a press release on the worsening human rights situation in China.  And in the recent edition of Foreign Affairs, Elizabeth Economy and Adam Segal write of China’s embarrassing coming-out party, set against a background of poor environmental standards, increased pressure over Sudan and its poor record of accountability and transparency - just to name a few. The list goes on and on. 

Sadly, the China the world will see for the next sixteen days is not China, per se, but China as the CCP would like for it to appear. Open. Free. Strong. Dare I say it - Liberal. Ironically, this vision may be among the few things China and its critics agree on. A crucial difference, though, is the means by which to attain it. 

Nevertheless, human rights violations aside, the Olympics promise to bring much phenomenal competition and countless spectacular performances - both on and off the fields. I, for one, am very much looking forward to it. Human rights violations aside.