Where are their rights?

IT is a sign of how callous we have become as a society when hardly any hue and cry is raised over the abusive and often unnatural treatment meted out to our children. The latter, because they are without a voice, cannot even seek redress. Our children are exposed to paedophiles (and consequently to a host of diseases including Aids) with poverty forcing many to accept money in return for sexual services. They are also victims of despicable social practices such as child marriage, an instance of which was reported in our paper on Saturday. During times of natural calamity, too, they are among the worst hit as evident in the case of Balochistan where an earthquake last week left 30,000 children homeless and exposed to dangerous illnesses such as pneumonia.

However, while it is amply clear that society has failed to protect its children, one must blame the government even more for not even attending to whatever legal obligations it has regarding its young citizens, let alone enacting a comprehensive law that would seek to shield them from all manner of social ills. As we pointed out in a recent editorial, the state is not even sure of the age at which a child ceases to be one. On the one hand, it has ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child according to which adulthood begins at 18. On the other, the Employment of Children Act states that a child is under 14 years. Meanwhile, national identity cards are issued at the age of 18.

It is time to give children a clearer status in society and to ask ourselves some tough questions. Do we bring them — and so many of them — into the world as a future safeguard against a poverty-stricken old age? Or do we look upon them as individual personalities whose need for love, care, shelter, etc goes beyond being a mere responsibility for parents, elders and the state? Indeed, together we should be cherishing this responsibility and ensuring that our children are given all their rights and more, and that they grow up into happy, well-adjusted, thinking adults who believe in giving their best to those around them. By not doing so, we are violating all laws and norms of human rights. Besides implementing existing laws and enacting new ones, there is also a need to sensitise institutions like the police and the judiciary to the vulnerability of children and to the state’s duty to provide them with relief in times of distress. Such measures would shake society out of its current stupor and contribute significantly to the welfare of children.


WHILE it is not clear to what extent the Saudi ban on issuing visas to illiterate Pakistani workers will affect remittances, it is evident that the blow will be a considerable one to our economy. Remittances from Saudi Arabia amounted to over a billion dollars in the last financial year with the Saudi embassy issuing a maximum of 1,200 work visas per day. According to reports, only a quarter of those granted visas were able to read and write. With the money — totalling billions of dollars — from expatriate labour in various countries crucial to sustaining our economy, it is evident that the labour ministry will have to reassess its performance. The ministry may pride itself on making a significant contribution to national finances through the export of Pakistani labour. But surely greater attention should be paid to basic requirements, like education, that would enhance the value of our workers in countries where there is a market for their services. After all, we have the example of other developing countries like Sri Lanka whose women are in great demand in the Gulf and other Arab countries for domestic duties. Trained by government-run centres in household duties and made aware of cultural sensitivities, they have so far proved to be assets abroad, and contribute significantly to the Sri Lankan economy — although several cases of maid abuse are now forcing Colombo to review its overseas employment policy.

No doubt our workers too toil diligently abroad. But illiteracy is the source of many ills, and according to the Saudi embassy is causing difficulties for its government. The removal of this hurdle is essential and a workforce with at least basic education requirements should be applying for overseas jobs, and not specifically in Saudi Arabia. Asking Riyadh to delay the implementation of the new rules is of little use. This hardly serves Saudi Arabia’s interests and would do little for ours in the long run. What we need are literacy programmes and better government policies and infrastructure for training that would facilitate our expatriate workers during their stint abroad. This would also encourage them to rely on government institutions and thus escape the trap that dubious recruiting agents lay for them with promises of greener pastures in foreign lands. At the same time it is necessary to strengthen forums for registering and acting on the complaints of expatriate workers, many of whom are treated shabbily in the Arab countries. Only a government that is sensitive to its workers’ needs can expect maximum output from them.


ISLAMABAD must be one of the few capital cities in the world that still lacks a basic bus system. Despite recent improvements in the city’s road network, it does not have a public transport service to match. The existing transport system comprising fragmented services provided by a medley of individually operated vans and mini-buses is inadequate. Not that there has been a dearth of apparent attempts to rehabilitate this system. The Islamabad Transport Authority, the Capital Development Authority and even the Islamabad Traffic Police have all separately tried in recent years to launch new bus services, but the disappointing results are clearly visible on the roads of Islamabad where students, office workers and the public in general continue to suffer every day. The root of Islamabad’s public transport malaise appears to lie in the absence of a single agency with comprehensive powers to deal with a wide range of transport problems and coordinate overall solutions. Jurisdiction on transport issues is divided among several agencies resulting in duplication of responsibility, undermining of accountability and resistance to change. The situation has been made worse by the lack of sufficient resources. Also complicating the situation is the lack of local regulatory frameworks in urban transport.

The recent re-introduction of the private Varan buses on the roads of the twin cities is a positive move, but this is basically a service between Islamabad and Rawalpindi. What is needed is a successful public bus system within Islamabad itself which calls for institutional reorganisation, planning and training. This is essential to meet the needs of those who do not have access to private transport. While the plan for a rail-based transit system in the twin cities, announced last year, is welcome, this is likely to take years to materialise. Without an accessible and efficient bus system, poor mobility within Islamabad will continue to hamper economic growth and improvement in the quality of life, restricting accessibility — especially of women — to jobs, education, health services and recreation.


AT a Congressional hearing this week, the mayor of Trenton cut through the weighty economic theories concerning this latest downturn and borrowed a simple message from the Beatles. “Help!” Mayor Douglas Palmer pleaded. Like mayors and governors across the country, Mr Palmer asked Congress to funnel money to city and state governments where tax revenues are plummeting and requests for aid are soaring.

The National Conference of State Legislatures has begun appealing for Congressional help with the ‘precarious’ financial status of many states. Unlike the federal government, most states and cities require balanced budgets, and the conference has estimated a $26bn shortfall for 27 states so far this year. If the economy continues its slide, that figure is surely to grow, with some estimates rising to $100bn by the next fiscal year.

If Congress and the White House can bail out bankers and insurance companies and possibly the auto industry, they should be able to help state and local governments, too. The aid could be temporary, the way it has been during past recessions.

In addition to extending unemployment benefits and food stamp programmes, which provide the biggest immediate boosts to states’ economies, one promising idea being pushed by governors is to put more federal money into projects like roads, subways, bridges, tunnels, schools and sewage plants….

Many states also need added support for Medicaid…. Investing in highways and health care is a far more effective way of stimulating the economy. With their record profits, the oil companies are the last ones the government should be helping at this point. And states won’t use federal funds for executive bonuses or corporate junkets, the way some financial firms have.

Giving money to state and local governments has its hazards, of course. Congress must resist making this next stimulus into an ugly porkfest, with money for everybody’s favourite waterworks. And it cannot become an excuse for governors and mayors to avoid making hard decisions about how to cut their own budgets.

But it is time for Congress and the White House to recognize how crucial it is to help local governments who provide services like schools and health care and police protection that cannot fall victim to this latest recession. — (Nov 1)


FALL is typically a season of changing colours on the US East Coast. As winter approaches, shiny green leaves gradually turn into an arresting array of rust, brown, red, yellow and other colours, making the landscape breathtakingly beautiful.

This year, however, a much more radical change of colour is likely to take place inside the most coveted residence of the nation, the White House, where until half a century ago the only black inmates were the maids and bartenders of the presidential household.

The likelihood of Senator Barack Obama becoming the first non-white occupant of the White House has become almost a certainty after his spectacular success against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and Senator John McCain in the race for the presidency. Arguably, he faced far greater challenges in defeating Hillary Clinton in the primaries than in his yet undecided contest against Senator McCain.

At the start of the primary campaign, Mr Obama was an underdog and the victory of Senator Clinton was being taken for granted. She enjoyed almost unequivocal support of the Democratic establishment by virtue of being the first lady for eight years and having served two terms as a senator and she was also the icon of a vibrant feminist movement in the country. The gruelling primary contest which ended in April after Hillary — with unconcealed reluctance — conceded the nomination. It left Obama a little over six months to launch his presidential campaign, while his Republican rival, McCain, had sewed up his party’s nomination much earlier.

However, it was the primaries which helped shape Obama’s campaign for the presidency. He did not allow the wounds of the long and protracted primary campaign, with the often unsubtle use of race and gender as a weapon by partisans on both sides, to fester and made strenuous, if sometimes unrewarding, efforts to win over Hillary’s committed fans.

Mr McCain, however, was no walkover either. While his age and his close association with the Bush White House and its neocon policies had largely faded his maverick image and his Vietnam heroics, he retained the advantage of his prolonged experience invoking not only his own service to the military but also of “a long line of McCains who have served the country in war and in peace”.

In spite of these odds Obama has reached so close to the White House doors. It is because of his personal charisma and compelling biography of mixed ancestry and diverse cultures. The latter has, in fact, been an impediment in getting the support of American blacks, whose traditional leaders such as Rev Jesse Jackson felt alienated from him.

But Barack Obama, who entered active politics only a little over a decade ago, showed exemplary savvy by keeping the political and demographic arithmetic in mind to reach his political goal. His historic speech in Philadelphia in March splendidly finessed the issues of race, religion and colour raised in connection with his firebrand pastor Rev Wright and succeeded in linking the race issue with that of economic deprivation.

Fortunately for Obama, the tailwinds of economic and financial crises, stemming from the bursting of the housing bubble, which affected both the whites and blacks — perhaps more of the latter — helped to give the Obama campaign a windfall which McCain had not anticipated. Less than a week before the global financial crisis unravelled and Wall Street’s invincible icons started falling like dominos, Mr McCain was continuing to parrot that the ‘fundamentals’ of the economy were strong.

Suddenly, it dawned on him that the Bush administration, whose economic policies he had consistently supported but wanted to distance himself from, was launching a mammoth bailout plan to rescue the financial markets with the economy on the verge of a meltdown.

The strategy devised by McCain’s advisers to ignore the economy and focus on other issues such as Obama’s lack of experience, his questionable patriotism and ability to defend the country against a future 9/11, and innumerable other vulnerabilities, which Fox News and Rush Limbaugh incessantly regurgitated, had to be put on the back burner.

In a sudden U-turn, Mr McCain decided to become a populist and announced the suspension of his campaign. He went back to Washington to help solve the unfolding crisis, though ended up contributing nothing to the crisis or his campaign, except a lot of embarrassment, especially at the David Letterman show.

This was Mr McCain’s second gamble. Naming Sarah Palin as his running mate had already become grist for the comedy mill given Ms Palin’s inept handling of serious questions about the economy or foreign policy. Although Palin has been a larger crowd-puller than McCain, her crowds have not been dominated by Hillary supporters.

Despite his blundering campaign, it would be premature to say that Mr McCain’s electoral goose is cooked, much less to write his political obituary. Sarah Palin has resorted to the crudest tactics that a losing campaign can undertake, including smears. Besides spreading false rumours about Obama’s birth, nationality, patriotism and political associates, the McCain campaign is using incendiary ‘robocalls’ — phone calls where a machine delivers a message — linking Obama to terrorism, infanticide, and other charges.

Obama is now being described as a socialist, rather than a liberal, who believes in big government. It is ironic that it was the Bush administration — supported both by Obama and McCain — who ‘socialised’ many of the leading banks and financial institutions during the ongoing financial crisis. The McCain campaign is also launching an intimidating counter-campaign to discourage the recently registered black and young voters from exercising their franchise, as well as attempting to exclude those whose houses have been foreclosed.

If in spite of these heavy odds, Senator Obama does make it to the White House it will indeed mean crossing a historic rubicon. Changing the colour of the president will of course not change the colour of the country. Neither will it transform the US, as McCain is wont to warn, into a socialist republic. Nor will the wars started by Bush come to an end soon.

But there is certainly a hope shared by all that the US will learn from the political and economic fiascos it has landed the world in during the last decade and will turn a new leaf in its relations with both the developed and developing world.

As president Obama will hopefully be able to correct the flagrant policy mistakes of the Bush era and may be able to address the global issues whose urgent solution demands proactive and wise statesmanship, which his predecessor woefully lacked. n

syed.naseem@aya.yale.edu


SEVENTEEN Chinese prisoners who have been held for nearly seven years in Guantanamo Bay will be informed on Monday (Nov 3) that they could spend the rest of their lives behind bars, even though they face no charges and have been told by a judge they should be freed.

No country is willing to accept them and the US justice department has now blocked moves for them to be allowed to go to the US mainland, where they had been offered a home by refugee and Christian organisations.

The men’s lawyer, Sabin Willett, wass flying to Guantanamo Bay last weekend to break the news to the men, who are members of the Uighur ethnic group seeking autonomy from China. In a blunt and angry letter to justice department lawyers, Willett spelled out what he thought of the way the men had been treated.

“After years of stalling and staying and appellate gamesmanship, you pleaded no contest — they are not enemy combatants,” Willett has written. “You have never charged them with any crime.”

Last month a federal judge ruled that the men should be freed. “They were on freedom’s doorstep,” said Willett. “The plane was at Gitmo. The stateside Lutheran refugee services and the Uighur families and Tallahassee clergy were ready to receive them.” However, the justice department appealed against the ruling and Willett claims this will put the men into a potentially endless limbo.

On Friday Willett said his clients were “saddened” by the latest events. The men, who are Muslims, were in Afghanistan in 2001 and were captured by Pakistani troops and handed over to the US. So far, more than 100 countries have been asked to take them as refugees but none have agreed. Willett blamed US authorities for incorrectly describing them as terrorists.

According to the US justice department, the men “are linked to an organisation that the state department has labelled to be a terrorist entity, and it is beside the point that the organisation is not ‘a threat to us’ because the law excluding members of such groups does not require such proof.”

Willett is also angry the defence department will not agree to let him meet his clients unless they are chained to the floor.

— The Guardian, London

__________________
Regards,
P.R.