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	Privatisation in education increases inequality by OHCHR, Education International, agencies   March 2016   Governments must not delegate responsibility of education to private sector, by Kishore Singh, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education.   It is completely unacceptable for Liberia to outsource its primary education system to a private company, said the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh. “This is unprecedented at the scale currently being proposed and violates Liberia’s legal and moral obligations,” he stressed.   Liberia’s plan is to privatise all primary and pre-primary schools over the next five years. Public funding will support services subcontracted to a private company - the Bridge International Academies.   “Public schools and their teachers, and the concept of education as a public good, are under attack,” the expert cautioned.   “Such arrangements are a blatant violation of Liberia’s international obligations under the right to education, and have no justification under Liberia’s constitution,” the Special Rapporteur stated.   “This also contradicts political commitments made by Liberia and the international community to the fourth UN Sustainable Development Goal which is on education and related targets.”   “Provision of public education of good quality is a core function of the State. Abandoning this to the commercial benefit of a private company constitutes a gross violation of the right to education,” emphasised Mr. Singh.   The human rights expert noted that “it is ironic that Liberia does not have resources to meet its core obligations to provide a free primary education to every child, but it can find huge sums of money to subcontract a private company to do so on its behalf,” he said.   “These sums could be much better spent on improving the existing system of public education and supporting the educational needs of the poor and marginalized,” suggested the Special Rapporteur.   Mr. Singh called on the Government of Liberia to approach the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) for technical assistance and capacity building, instead of entering into such partnerships with for-profit providers in education, “devoid of any legal or moral justification.”   “Before any partnership is entered into, the Government of Liberia must first put into place legislation and policies on public private partnerships in education, which among other things, protect every child’s right to education,” Mr. Singh said.   “There also needs to be an independent body or institution established to receive complaints of potential violations of the right to education that might result from this development,” he added.   The Special Rapporteur emphasised that “education is an essential public service and instead of supporting business in education, governments should increase the money they spend on public educational services to make them better.”   http://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=18506   Aug. 2015   The United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Kishore Singh, has called on all UN Member States to focus on strengthening the right to education when seeking partnerships for education.   “The importance of respecting human rights in commercial dealings is even more important when contracting out the delivery of a right, such as education,” the human rights expert stressed.   The UN Expert placed a strong emphasis on the role of Governments to protect the public interest when entering into partnerships with other stakeholders. He noted with concern the many risks which emerge from partnerships with for-profit providers, and outlined the obligations of States to establish proper laws and regulations, as well as monitoring and oversight requirements to mitigate against the risk of abuse in any partnership.   Mr. Singh urged States to seek out partners committed to the social interest in education, and those with a philanthropic spirit.   “Governments must reject arguments that without profit, no private provider will wish to open a school. Most of the finest, most famous private universities in the world are not-for-profit organizations. Partnerships must be based on meeting social responsibility in education, not the commercial interest of the private partner,” the Special Rapporteur emphasized.   “Care must be taken to ensure negotiations for public-private partnerships are fully transparent and are not kept confidential. Transparency must be the cornerstone of any dealings with private providers of education,” he added.   “While acknowledging the need for innovation in education, I urge Governments to refrain from privatizing education to meet these new goals. If education is not free, social inequality will increase,” Mr. Singh warned.   “While we witness a rapid rise of private providers, often unregulated and privileging the wealthiest sections of the population, renewed efforts are needed to reduce inequality and expand opportunities of good quality public education without exclusion.”   “Before considering any partnership with the private sector, Governments should carefully review its potential impact on the effective enjoyment of the right to education,” the expert concluded as he presented his report to the UN General Assembly.   http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/70/342   June 2015   Why World Bank praise for a profit-making education firm in Kenya was a bad idea, by Steven J. Klees, R. W. Benjamin Professor of International & Comparative Education - University of Maryland.   The president of the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim has come under fire for a speech he gave in April at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in which he pointed out the importance of investment in education in order to end extreme poverty. However, his only example was the supposed success of one private, for-profit company. Kim said:   We know that using new technology can help transform educational outcomes. For example, Bridge International Academies uses software and tablets in schools that teach over 100,000 students in Kenya and Uganda. After about two years, students’ average scores for reading and math have risen high above their public school peers. The cost per student at Bridge Academies is just $6 a month.   Bridge International Academies is a for-profit education company that has set up a network of 405 private primary schools in Kenya and seven in Uganda. It is owned by the US firm, New Globe Schools founded in 2007 to actively pursue a new education market – what some have called the “bottom billion”. There are plans to expand the model in Nigeria and India.   Kim’s statement about Bridge International Academies – which the World Bank funds through its investment arm the International Finance Corporation – troubled many people in the international education community and over 100 regional, national, and global civil society organisations released their own statement highlighting their concerns.   Kim made three points about Bridge in his speech. Those discontented with Kim’s speech suggest that each one of these points is either misleading or incorrect. His first point, that Bridge “uses software and tablets in schools” could be misinterpreted. Readers may assume that the students in Bridge had access to computers. Not at all. Barely trained, unqualified, poorly paid teachers are given a tablet to deliver and control a totally scripted curriculum to students, who do not have access to their own tablets.   Teachers in its schools are expected to all read aloud to the students, word-for-word, the content delivered on the tablet at the same time in each school every day. This teacher turned-robot barely deserves to be called education and would not be tolerated in most schools in most developed countries. The name Bridge applies to itself, school-in-a-box, is perhaps appropriate.   Kim’s second point, that Bridge student test scores “have risen high above their public school peers” appears to be the result of a study financed by Bridge International Academies itself. Kim has been severely criticised for using this source as evidence of the efficacy of the teaching model. Few respectable researchers would cite a company’s own studies as valid evidence of the efficacy of a product. Criticism by Berkeley education professor Erin Murphy-Graham of Bridge’s study has suggested its analysis of the data was misleading.   In response to these criticisms, Keith Hansen, global practices vice president at the World Bank, told The Conversation that it is “supporting a rigorous, independent impact evaluation of the Bridge program in Kenya, the first large-scale randomized controlled trial of fee-paying schools in sub-Saharan Africa”.   For many, this is much too late – Kim has already praised the system and the World Bank, via its investment arm the IFC, has already invested US$10m of taxpayers’ money in the programme. Bridge has also attracted more than US$100m from international investors, including Bill Gates, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerman, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, education company Pearson, and the UK’s Department for International Development.   Kim’s third point, that Bridge costs “just US$6 a month” is also misleading and does not reflect developing country reality.   Fees vary by grade, and $6 is the average, according to Bridge. Adding in fees for exams, uniforms, and other expenses means that costs per pupil per month can range from $9 to $13 – up to two times higher than Kim suggested. And this does not include the optional costs of breakfast and lunch, for which Bridge says it charges an additional $7.50 per month.   For many of the poor in Kenya and Uganda, such costs are out of reach, requiring more than a quarter of their income to just send one child to school. Those who do send children to private schools can be forced to make invidious choices, often only able to afford, barely, to send one child, usually a boy, and to leave their other children out. It has been estimated that the urban poor in Kenya spend between 60%-65% of their income on food. Sending a child to school for US$6 a month means taking money away from necessary expenses on food, water, and health care.   Reverse decline of public education   As I have argued elsewhere, 30 years of neo-liberal policies have often left public schools around the world over-crowded, with poorly trained teachers, few learning materials, dilapidated facilities, and not close by.   More than 120 million primary and lower-secondary school children around the world are not in school, and more than 200 million young people have not learned basic skills even if they have attended school. As Kim himself acknowledged in his speech: “Over 50% of young people in Kenya who have completed six years of schooling cannot read a simple sentence. Over 70 percent of children completing primary school in Mozambique do not have basic numeracy skills. These low achievement levels have devastating implications for when people look for jobs.”   In Kenya, parents can be charged extra fees for what is meant to be free primary education and some parents are suing the government over the issue.   It is no wonder that some parents opt out from public schools – and Bridge says that there are more than 118,000 students enrolled in its schools. However, while it is rational for some disadvantaged individuals to send their children to private schools, many disagree with a public policy that promotes privatised education, as recent criticisms make clear.   Privatisation in education increases inequality, provides no learning gains, and de-professionalises teachers. The right of children to free basic education is enshrined in numerous international agreements. While in practice there are often fees for public education, they are being challenged and eliminated around the world. Privatisation is supposed to help meet the growing education gap resulting from years of attack on the public sector, but all it does is replace an attempt to develop good public policy with the vagaries of charity or a narrow focus on profit-making.   Too often everything is about the bottom line vs the interests of children. We will not bridge the gap between the soaring rhetoric of Education for All goals, the Millennium Development Goals, and their successors and the too-dismal reality of our education efforts through privatisation.   The World Bank has been the most influential global marketeer in pushing for the privatisation of education for over three decades, based on ideology not evidence, as I and my colleagues detail in our recent research.   The World Bank’s Hansen told The Conversation that its support for Bridge was “complementary to what is offered in local school systems” and that the World Bank is “committed to working with the governments of Kenya and Uganda to help strengthen their public education systems”.   But I argue that Kim should recant his recent statement, and the World Bank should re-evaluate its ideological zeal for marketing privatisation in education.   http://educationincrisis.net/themes/privatisation http://educationincrisis.net/ http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/news_details/3949 http://globalinitiative-escr.org/advocacy/privatization-in-education-research-initiative/education-privatisation-in-liberia/ http://www.thenation.com/article/teach-for-america-has-gone-global-and-its-board-has-strange-ideas-about-what-poor-kids-need/ http://theconversation.com/why-world-bank-praise-for-a-profit-making-education-firm-in-kenya-was-a-bad-idea-42032 Visit the related web page
	European Parliament speaks out against agricultural colonialism in Africa by EurActiv, La Via Campesina, FOE, GRAIN, agencies   June 2016   European Parliament speaks out against agricultural colonialism in Africa, by Cécile Barbière. (EurActiv.fr)   Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have called on the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition to radically alter its mission. The Alliance currently pushes African countries to replicate the intensive agricultural practices employed in many developed countries. EurActiv France reports.   For a large majority of MEPs, the G7’s decision to base its programme for food security in Africa on intensive agriculture is a mistake. The European Parliament took its first official stance on the subject with the adoption of a report on the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NAFSN) on the 7th of June.   “We have already made the mistake of intensive agriculture in Europe, we should not replicate it in Africa because this model destroys family farming and reduces biodiversity,” said Mara Heubuch, a German Green MEP and rapporteur on the New Alliance.   Launched in 2012 by the countries of the G7 in partnership with ten African countries, the NAFSN has a worthy objective: to lift 50 million people out of poverty by 2050 by enabling investment in the agricultural sectors of ten African countries, including Benin, Nigeria and Ivory Coast.   But in return for increased investment, this partnership pushes its African members to implement certain political reforms that prioritise the needs of big agricultural corporations over those of small-scale farmers, which currently produce more than 70% of the world’s food.   These reforms include the liberalisation of access to farmland, the promotion of certified seeds (GMOs and hybrids) and the implementation of tax reforms to facilitate private investment in agriculture.   “Small-scale farmers across the globe use techniques that are much more sustainable and climate-friendly than big agribusiness. But the New Alliance is facilitating big agribusiness’ takeover of food systems in different African countries,” said Aisha Dowell, a food campaigner at the NGO Global Justice Now.   In the report adopted in Strasbourg, MEPs demanded that the G7 abandon its commitment to GMOs in this public-private partnership. Under the NAFSN, partner countries must agree to support “the distribution, adoption and consumption of biofortified crop varieties”.   “The report calls on the countries of the G7 to stop promoting genetically modified seeds in Africa. This is a real success,” said Heubuch.   While only three African countries (South Africa, Burkina Faso and Sudan) currently authorise the cultivation and commercialisation of GMOs, members of the New Alliance have shown an interest. Ghana and Malawi are carrying out GMO trials and Nigeria is even in the process of changing its legislation to authorise the cultivation of GMOs.   The report also highlighted the risk of land grabbing associated with the NAFSN’s strict policy on property law, which it deems necessary to protect investments.   “But in Africa, land rights are the exception, because ownership of agricultural land works according to the principles of usage and custom,” an expert source said.   “The partnership must respect the different forms of property so as not to endanger small producers,” the source added. This approach, in line with the directives of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), was backed by a large majority of MEPs.   Seed patents   Around 90% of African farmers depend on their seeds for survival. The informal sale or exchange of seeds allows farmers to keep “a degree of independence from the commercial seed sector”, the report stated, whilst offering poor farmers resilient crops at affordable prices.   “But the private sector, which is a large financial backer of the NAFSN, wants these countries to change their legislation,” the source said. This could close off a fundamental source of revenue for poor farmers, as “they would no longer be free to sell or exchange their seeds”.   While there is nothing new in the Parliament’s criticism of the NAFSN, the adoption of Heubuch’s report is the institution’s first official position statement on the partnership’s philosophy.   “If the New Alliance does not rectify the serious problems we observe, the EU should withdraw its support for the initiative,” Heubuch said.   “European countries and the EU can change things,” Heubuch added. “For example, Germany, which is in charge of the partnership with Benin, has not called for changes in legislation regarding seed ownership.”   Traditionally hostile to GMOs, France is also an outspoken critic of the NAFSN’s approach to food security. Last December, the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs said it was “aware of concerns surrounding the NAFSN and shared a number of criticisms raised by NGOs, particularly over the lack of transparency in governance and the absence of rules defining which investments to prioritise”.   http://www.euractiv.com/section/development-policy/news/european-parliament-speaks-out-against-agricultural-colonialism-in-africa/ http://www.grain.org/article/entries/5492-the-global-farmland-grab-in-2016-how-big-how-bad   June 2016   800,000 Europeans call on EU Patent Office to protect plants and animals.(Seed Freedom)   European patent laws say that patents cannot be granted on plant and animal varieties or on the conventional breeding of plants and animals. At present, the European Patent Office (EPO) is completely undermining these prohibitions. We have collected about 800,000 signatures from people all over Europe on a petition calling for politicians to take action and properly enforce EU law. On 29 June 2016, we will be handing these signatures over to the EPO. To emphasise our point and as a visible reminder, we will be carrying our favourite vegetables with us – tomatoes, cucumbers, lettuces, onions, beans, carrots and cabbage and so on. We will be sending a very clear message: Protect our vegetables from patents held by seed giants such as Bayer and Monsanto!   800,000 signatures are sending out a very clear message: We will not let the big companies take control of our daily food!   The Administrative Council of the EPO will be meeting on 29 June 2016. Its members are the delegates from the 38 contracting states of the European Patent Convention. They can stop the EPO from granting further patents on plants and animals derived from conventional breeding: This is the decision-making body for the interpretation of the current prohibitions in patent law.   Companies such as Monsanto, Bayer and Syngenta are gaining more and more control of seeds, agriculture and food. We cannot leave a few big companies to decide what can be bred, what farmers can grow, and what we will all eat in future. http://seedfreedom.info/category/latest-news/   April 2016   On April 17, The International Day of Peasant’s Struggle - millions of peasants – women and men – around the world are uniting in action to commemorate the massacre of 19 landless farmers in 1996 in Brazil and to continue the struggle for land and life.   Two decades after that despicable incident, peasants and peasant leaders continue to be assaulted and killed for defending their rights.   The killing of Honduras activist, Berta Caceres, and other peasants in Columbia, Philippines and Brazil in recent weeks and the criminalization of social protest and many other forms of human rights abuses continue.   La Via Campesina denounces all forms of injustices that affect the peasant way of life, an important heritage of the people at the service of humanity.   Constant attempts are being made to push forth an agro-business model that imposes the practice of monoculture which privatizes land and natural resources in order to increase profit, denying their appropriation by the society for common good.   It destroys biodiversity, uses more and more toxic inputs, drives peasants off their land, and forces governments and nation states to bow to its will.   Unlike many governments, which continue to build alliances with big businesses to promote profit maximisation, La Via Campesina believes the time has come to build an economy based on equity that will restore the balance between humanity and nature founded on peoples Food Sovereignty principles.   Peasants and small farmers make up half of the world’s population and grow at least 70% of our food, using less than 30% of agricultural resources.   According to the Human Rights Council Resolution A/HRC/RES/7/14 on the right to food, 80 percent of people suffering from hunger live in rural areas and 50 percent of people suffering from hunger are smallholder farmers.   Some 500 million small farms in developing countries feed nearly 2 billion people – representing one third of humanity.   Without peasants and small farmers, society would not be able to survive, the wonderful diversity of food on people’s plates would be greatly diminished, the pollution of our water and soil would increase, our countryside impoverished and there would be increasing hunger and poverty, fuelling regional and international instability.   It is hard for many people to believe that despite the crucial role of peasant farmers, so many face daily persecution.   It has been 20 years since 19 peasant men and women were murdered by security forces in Brazil’s northern state of Para whilst demonstrating for agrarian reform. The victims were part of a demonstration of 1,500 landless men and women calling for the federal appropriation of a private ranch, when 150 military police encircled and shot at the crowd.   Since then we have remembered 17 April and used it to commemorate the struggles carried out by peasant farmers, indigenous populations, fisher-folk and landless people against corporate interests, whether agribusiness, logging, mining, big dams or other mega-development projects.   We are living in two parallel worlds. The majority of the global population are producing food sustainably on small scale farms, providing for their families and local and regional markets.   On the other side, we have vast corporations, supported by many governments, intent on industrialising, globalising and controlling more of the resources, land and the food chain, regardless of whether it destroys ecosystems, pollutes our countryside, produces unhealthy societies, creates massive inequalities or forces people off their land.   And this is why on 17 April we should all stand together – farmers, growers, citizens and activists - behind those threatened for wanting to stay on their land and grow food for themselves and others. We should use this day to make it clear that we will not tolerate corporations or governments that persecute peasant or small farmers.   Instead we should wrestle back our right to real food, a vibrant countryside and peasants’ rights to farm and manage the land sustainably. This would be massively positive to society – providing safer and more sustainable rural communities, diverse and appropriate food, and resilient local economies and blooming nature.   But why not honour the people producing our food every day – through the way we eat, what we buy, our political actions and who we vote for?   http://viacampesina.org/en/index.php/actions-and-events-mainmenu-26/17-april--day-of-peasants-struggle-mainmenu-33 http://defendingpeasantrights.org/ http://www.fian.org/en/news/article/backing_up_the_struggles_of_the_rural_world/ http://newint.org/blog/2016/04/15/fighting-for-food/   February, 2016   Corporate vision of the future of food challenged by activists at UN. (Friends of the Earth)   At the opening of a three-day International symposium on agricultural biotechnologies convened by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Rome, more than 100 civil society and social movements and organizations (CSOs) issued a statement denouncing both the substance and structure of the meeting, which appears to be another attempt by multinational agribusiness to redirect the policies of the UN agency toward support for Genetically-engineered crops and livestock.   The global peasant and family farm movement, La Via Campesina, invited CSOs to sign the letter when the symposium’s agenda became public. Two of the FAO keynote speakers are known proponents of GMOs, and the agenda and side events over the three days include speakers from the Biotechnology Industry Organization (a biotech trade group in the USA), Crop Life International (the global agrochemical trade association), DuPont (one of the world’s largest biotech seed companies) and CEVA (a major veterinary medicine corporation), among others. FAO has only invited one speaker or panellist openly critical of GMOs.   Worse, one of the two speakers at the opening session is a former assistant director general of FAO who has pushed for so-called Terminator seeds (GMO seeds programmed to die at harvest time forcing farmers to purchase new seeds every growing season), in opposition to FAO’s own public statements. The second keynoter’s speech is titled, "Toward Ending the Misplaced Global Debate on Biotechnology" – suggesting that the FAO symposium should be the moment for shutting down biotech criticism.   In convening the biased symposium, FAO is bowing to industry pressure, which has intensified following international meetings on agroecology hosted by the FAO in 2014 and 2015. The agroecology meetings were a model of openness to all viewpoints, from peasants to industry. But the biotech industry apparently prefers now to have a meeting they can control. This is not the first time FAO has been drawn into this game. In 2010, FAO convened a biotechnology conference in Guadalajara, Mexico, that blocked farmers from its organizing committee, and then tried to prevent their attendance at the conference itself.   "We are alarmed that FAO is once again fronting for the same corporations, just when these companies are talking about further mergers amongst themselves, which would concentrate the commercial seeds sector in even fewer hands" the CSO statement says.   It is clear, according to the Civil Society Statement, that industry wants to use FAO to re-launch their false message that genetically engineered crops can feed the world and cool the planet, while the reality is that nothing has changed on the biotech front. GMOs don''t feed people, they are mostly planted in a handful of countries on industrial plantations for agrofuels and animal feed, they increase pesticide use, and they throw farmers off the land. Transnational biotech companies are trying to patent the planet''s bodiversity, which shows that their main interest is to make enormous profits, and not to guarantee food security or food sovereignty. The industrial food system that these companies promote is also one of the main drivers of climate change.   Confronted with the rejection of GMOs by many consumers and producers, the industry is now inventing new and possibly dangerous breeding techniques to genetically modify plants, without calling them GMOs. In doing so, they are trying to avoid current GMO regulations and trick consumers and farmers.   The agroecology activities were much closer to the way that FAO should act, the Statement points out, "as a centre for knowledge exchange, without a hidden agenda on behalf of a few." Why does FAO now limit itself again to corporate biotechnology and deny the existence of peasant technologies? FAO should support the peasant technologies, that offer the most innovative, open source, and the effective pathway to ending hunger and malnutrition.   It is time to stop pushing a narrow corporate agenda, says Civil Society. "The vast majority of the world''s farmers are peasants, and it is peasants who feed the world. We need peasant-based technologies, not corporate biotechnologies."   "It is high time that FAO puts an end to bio-piracy and to its support for genetically modified crops, which only serve to allow a handful of transnational companies to patent and to grab all the existing biodiversity," said La Via Campesina leader Guy Kastler. "On the contrary, FAO should support farmers organisations and researchers engaged in collaborative plant breeding in the service of food sovereignty and peasant agroecology”.   * The Universal Rights Network is completely opposed to any use whatsoever of Terminator Seeds, now or at any time in the future.   http://www.foei.org/news/biotechnology-un-causes-alarm http://www.grain.org/article/entries/5405-new-mega-treaty-in-the-pipeline-what-does-rcep-mean-for-farmers-seeds-in-asia http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/agroecology-case-studies Visit the related web page
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