Whenever I mention my criticisms of Bill Gates and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, I am usually met with quizzical looks, and in some instances by downright disbelief. Now I know I am not alone. Tim Schwab’s really excellent new book The Bill Gates Problem: Reckoning with the Myth of the Good Billionaire (Penguin Business, 2023) provides a detailed and rigorous account of why we all need to be concerned about the harm caused by Gates, and others like him (those I frequently refer to as The Digital Barons). It is essential reading for anyone who has received, or is considering applying for, funding from the Gates Foundation. Although the book is not without its problems, and it should be noted that the right wing (and digital) press has been far less generous than I am about it (see, for example, reviews by Ben Wright and David Enrich), it is a timely and salutary account of why Gates’ work has been so hugely problematic for “international development” and in particular for the lives of the world’s poorest and most marginalised communities.
I have long been critical of Gates, but have only occasionally written or spoken in any detail about the reasons for this. The publication of Schwab’s book provides a catalyst for me to articulate my own concerns, and compare them briefly with some of Schwab’s very apposite observations.
A problem with Microsoft
I confess that I have never particularly liked Microsoft’s products, and ever since the mid-1980s I have always purchased Apple devices and software (apart from also using Linux and Open Office). Originally, I think this was probably because I was beguiled by the slightly anarchic image of Apple’s products at that time, and because they just seemed easier and more intuitive to use. I have so often found Microsoft’s products (especially software such as Excel, Sharepoint and Teams) to be so clunky and counter-intuitive! To be fair, I increasingly now also have serious concerns over Apple’s business model, especially with respect to their environmental impact, right to repair issues, and cost, but I must be open about my early bias against Microsoft. That having been noted, I nevertheless retain some very good friends who have worked, or are indeed still working, within Microsoft.
My main criticisms of Microsoft in the 1980s and 1990s tended to be at quite an abstract level: that it seemed to be trying to create a global monopoly of operating systems and generic “office” software; that it was proprietary and “closed”; that it was too expensive for the world’s poorest to use (which is why there were so many pirated versions of its software in circulation across the world); that it was primarily a sales-led company; and that it was generating very large profits, often at the expense of those who could little afford it. These profits provided the foundation for Gates’ enormous wealth. To put this into perspective, Gates’ total net worth according to Forbes in 2023 was around $134 billion, although the actual amount he has earnt from Microsoft is impossible to calculate. According to the World Bank, only 60 countries in the world in 2022 had an annual GDP of more than this. Gates’ total wealth was about the same as the annual GDP produced by Morocco in 2022, and was more than that of countries such as Ethiopia ($127 billion) and the Slovak Republic ($115 billion), let alone the remaining 140 countries of the world who generated very much less.
At a more theoretical level, my intellectual background in Marxist theory, the Critical Theory of the Frankfurt School (especially that of Jürgen Habermas – see my The Place of Geography, 1992), my commitment to reducing global inequalities, and my concerns with the increasingly dominant power of US Imperialism (and “American Exceptionalism”) all no doubt also helped to shape my opinions about Microsoft.
In the early 2000s, I had the privilege to lead Tony Blair’s Imfundo initiative based with the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID), which was charged with creating partnerships to use ICTs for education in Africa. This brought me face to face in a very practical way with the harsh realities of the enormous inequalities that exist across the world, and how digital technologies might be used to reduce these. Microsoft’s business model did not sit well with our practice, and guided especially by my colleagues Bas Kotterink and Jason Monty we became proud advocates of Open Source “solutions” and the use of thin client Linux systems in Africa. I fondly recall the energy and enthusiasm of people such as Ed Holcroft (NetDay) and Shafika Isaacs (SchoolNet Africa) who contributed so passionately to this work, and also the commitment of private sector companies such as Cisco, Virgin and Marconi who seconded staff to work with us. Since my earliest research in rural India in the mid-1970s I had argued that “development” should be more about reducing inequalities than about increasing economic growth. My work with Imfundo convinced me even more of this “truth” (see myNo end to poverty, 2007).
Working in DFID at that time also made me acutely aware of changes taking place in the global structuring of Official Development Assistance (ODA), particularly the role of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs; see IMF and World Bank, 2001), and the Paris Declaration, (2005) and Accra Agenda for Action (2008) (see OECD). I felt that things were beginning to change, and that the global donor community was at last repositioning itself to try to work collaboratively with, and more in the interests of the world’s poorest countries. I have absolutely no doubt that many of the then senior leadership team within DFID believed in this agenda. Hence, I could not help but feel that private foundations that could do what they wanted undermined the ongoing global efforts towards responding to the real needs of poor people and countries, rather than imposing our own ideologies and practices on them. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (created in 2000 from the merger of the William H Gates Foundation formed in 1994 and the Gates Learning Foundation) was thus hugely problematic to me in its conceptualisation. Whilst I can understand the founders’ desire to do something different about poverty and try to overcome many of the long-standing problems of “aid”, it struck me that to create what seemed to be a parallel system was only going to make matters worse. From talking with colleagues at DFID working in the health sector, I also became all the more convinced of these distortions through the negative impacts of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, that had been created in 2000 with substantial support from Gates.
Meeting Bill Gates
In 2009 I had the opportunity as part of a small group of people working in the field of ICTs and development to meet with Bill Gates. I remember greatly looking forward to this opportunity to discuss some of my experiences with him, to explore why he had not yet really supported the use of digital tech in “development”, and to try to persuade him of the potential for Microsoft to use its considerable expertise to do “good” in the world through digital tech. Most of the people at the meeting seemed to be completely in awe of Gates. Perhaps my own enthusiasm at this opportunity served to fuel the sense of disillusionment and disappointement that I felt afterwards.
He was so arrogant; he did not brook any real discussion. He swiftly closed down any attempt to engage in critique. He just wanted us to accept what he said as being “the truth”. He conveyed the impression that because he had been successful in business it was only right and proper that he should know how to solve poverty. He seemed to know very little about the actuality of the lives of the world’s poor. He implied that he had a right to try to change the world in his own image because of his success and wealth. He appeared to have no comprehension at all that digital tech drives global inequalities and its use can cause immense harm. In short, I found the brief meeting to be extraordinary and disappointing.
Despite this, having heard that he was an avid reader, I remember arranging for my recent edited book on ICT4D to be sent to him in the naïve expectation that he might read it and learn something. Unsurprisingly, I never heard back…
I have often thought about this encounter, not least because it fundamentally influenced my subsequent attitudes to both him and his Foundation. At the centre of my concerns was that Bill Gates is funding development practices based primarily on his own (flawed) vision of the economic growth model, with apparently little understanding of the impacts that this has on inequality and its negative effects on the lives of many of the world’s poorest people – especially with respect to the use of digital tech. I was therefore delighted to read such similar thoughts in Tim Schwab’s critique in The Bill Gates Problem (pagination from 2023 Penguin Business edition):
The Foundation is “… an institution that thrives on the grotesque economic inequalities that govern the globe, that counts on the rest of us to be too poor or too stupid to say no to its largesse” (p.18).
“Why have we allowed Bill Gates to take so much power from us for so long”? (p.19).
“The simple fact is Bill Gates doesn’t have expertise, training, or education in most of the topics where he asserts it” (p.127).
“While Bill Gates is widely celebrated as the most generous man on earth, during his tenure as the world’s leading philanthropic donor, he has managed to nearly double his personal wealth” (p.178).
“Bill Gates’s public persona is very much wrapped up in his identity, as a businessman and then as a philanthropist. But underpinning his success, in Gates’s own mind, is his superior intelligence” and “most journalists have embraced the Gates-as-genius narrative” (p.202).
“Giving away money is not supposed to magnify the asymmetries in power that govern society, but to collapse them. And this is precisely why, in many respects, Bill Gates mght be better described as a misanthrope – if he does not hate his fellow man, then he certainly views himself as superior” (pp.242-3).
These are just a tiny sample of the content and style of Schwab’s critique, but based on my brief conversation with Bill Gates, and listening to some of Gates’ wider rhetoric, they resonate completely with my own experience and understanding. To be sure, Schwab does not sufficiently justify his own position, and has been widely criticised for his anti-capitalist stance, for his claims around neo-colonialism, for over-generalising based on scant evidence (despite the book’s 104 pages of detailed supporting notes), and above all for not proffering an alternative vision for the future. I would also add to these criticisms that the book is written very much from a USA’n perspective in which the voices of the world’s poor are largely, although not completely, absent. However, this was not his point in writing the book, which was above all else to lay bare some of the evidence and contradictions concerning Gates’ life, his business tactics, his political influence, his philanthropy and his exercise of power without accountability.
And the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Gates Foundation has been built largely on Bill Gates’ own ideology, experience and practice, and it closely reflects his own approach to business and power. I have always found it difficult to accept the comments from people I have spoken with who work in or near to the Foundation who deny this, and who claim that Gates only provides the funding and lets them get on with delivering the development. It was therefore very refreshing to read Schwab’s detailed account of the ways through which Gates does indeed influence the policies and practices of the Foundation. At the most basic level, people who are critical of the approach and style of Gates and his Foundation are unlikely to apply to work there, let alone be appointed. However, even I was surprised at the extent of Schwab’s revelations about the levels of secrecy and control that pervade the Foundation for those who are indeed employed there. A real problem for anyone wanting to find out about the Foundation is that so few people are willing to speak truthfully on the record about it, and it may be that not everything Schwab suggests is therefore recognisable to its employees, or to those who are so eager to accept its funding. However, the overall thrust of his argument again seems to accord with my own experiences and those of people I know who have worked with the Gates Foundation.
The most important issue for me is the way that the Gates Foundation seeks to provide direction, or control, over the individuals and organisations that it funds. However, it is not a sine qua non that all foundations should necessarily behave in the same way. One of the potentially valuable things about non-governmental funding (be it through foundations or charitable trusts) is that it can be a bit anarchic and its recipients need not necessarily be tied by the parameters and reporting mechanisms required through tradiutional bilateral aid systems. Mackenzie Scott (former wife of Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame), for example, has a notoriously hands-off, trust-based approach that has raised many eyebrows amongst traditional philanthropists, in part because of her aversion to micromanagement (Candid, 2023; the Chronicle of Philanthropy). Her style is very far removed from that of Bill Gates.
I have often thought that the Gates Foundation is a bit like like a virus that gets inside an organisation in which is it interested, and then seeks to control it. This comparison has always struck me as being appropriate, not least because of the Gates Foundation’s strong support for vaccines and several of the large pharmaceutical companies. I have never therefore sought funding from Gates, and one of the reasons why I resigned from my role as Chair of the Intellectual Leadership Team and Non-Executive Director of the DFID and World Bank funded EdTech Hub in 2019 was because the Gates Foundation was also about to become one of its funders. I saw the writing on the wall, and was not willing to be party to this decision.
In conclusion: please never accept funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
I have written this post for two main reasons: first to encourage others to read Tim Schwab’s accomplished book to help them make up their own minds as to whether or not Gates is indeed a “good billionaire”; and second to try to encourage anyone thinking of applying for funding from the Gates Foundation to think again. In a very practical sense, the best way to decompose and decapacitate the Gates Foundation is to refuse knowingly to accept its funding. I add the word “knowingly” because it is often difficult to tell exactly where research funding comes from. This will be difficult for many organisations and researchers because of the extent that they already rely upon the Foundation for support. But is not that itself an indication of how dangerous the Foundation actually is? The Foundation will cease to exist in its present form if no-one is willing to accept its tarnished money. Do we really want a world built in the image of Bill Gates? If not, we need to work consciously and assiduously to undermine what the Foundation is trying to do, and take apart the power structures that it has created. Above all we need to forge a new development discourse built around reducing inequalities rather than maximising economic growth.
Let me leave the last word to Tim Schwab with the closing words of his book:
Billionaire philanthropy, as practiced by someone like Gates, preys on our cultural biases to disguise its influence. It makes us believe that a billionaire’s giving away his vast fortune is an unimpeachable act of charity that must be exalted, rather than a tool of power and control that must be challenged.
I have long been troubled by the widely accepted and increasingly used terms Global South and Global North.[i] Those who wish to use them for political purposes or to highlight the factors that they claim cause inequalities across the world will of course continue doing so, but there are at least six main reasons why I find it a misleading and problematic choice of terminology. I list these below just to help explain why I don’t uses these terms, and I hope my comments may also encourage others to do likewise.
People from several different parts of the world coming together on the Equator in Kenya
Above all, the use of such terminology implies some kind of spatial causality, usually around the idea of the North exploiting the South in the present and/or the past. This strikes me as being surprisingly similar to the now widely discredited notion of environmental determinism, advocated by the likes of Ellsworth Huntington and Ellen Churchill Semple in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (for a wider discussion, see my The Place of Geography, 1992). There is not something universal about living in the North (whatever that means), or about the North itself that makes it inherently more powerful and dominant than the South.[ii]
I remain confused about why the word “Global” is at all necessary. What does it add? In 1980, the Brandt Report entitled North-South: a Programme for Survival, managed to convey very similar meaning, but much more succinctly,[iii] and indeed also drew a much more nuanced wavy line between the two regions. To be sure, there are those who want to use the term global to represent some kind of global solidarity, especially in the South, but this is more aspirational than real (see also comments on relative usage of the terms below)
In an absolute global sense, the geographical north is the northern hemisphere, and the south the southern hemisphere. Yet, there are problems with such usage to refer to per capita economic wealth and human well-being. It is often forgotten that the South Asian countries of Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, for example, are all in the northern hemisphere. Likewise, many more African countries are in the northern hemisphere than are in the southern.[iv] The rich countries of Australia and New Zealand are in contrast in the southern hemisphere.
There is also much economic poverty in the northern hemisphere and much richness in the southern. If large absolute regions are being considered it is in some ways more accurate to consider the Tropics (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn) as being economically poorer/more exploited than either of the areas to the north and the south. Such suggestions, though are dangerously close once again to falling down the slippery slope of environmental determinism.
North and South can also, though, be interpreted in a relative sense. Given that only 10-12% of the world’s population actually lives in the Southern Hemisphere, this relative approach is certainly a more realistic one to trying to grapple with the differences between states. It is nevertheless also problematic as a framework for explaining wealth differences (or indeed most other differences).
Countries or regions further north are sometimes poorer in per capita wealth then those further south and vice versa. Canada’s per capita income is less than that of the USA; Mozambique and Angola are poorer than South Africa. In the UK, the widely used term North-South divide actually refers to a poorer northern region and a richer southern one.
I’m afraid that the argument that I sometimes hear that the use of the terms is only an approximation and simplification and it doesn’t really matter if they are inaccurate holds no water with me. Using such terms reinforces inaccurate understandings of cartography and geodesy, and supports looseness of meaning and language. I wonder how many people, for example consider that India is in the Global South, and thus think it is also in the southern hemisphere? Moreover, all too frequently we read or hear comments such as “The Global North generally correlates with the Western world”.[v] If that is the case, surely “Western” would be a better term to use than Northern. But we need to remember then that everywhere Western is west of some East.
A significant problem is therefore that seeking to carve the world up into binary divisions is overly simplistic and usually harmful, for all but those who persist in using or imposing them. There are enormous differences between the continents and countries within both the so-called Global South and the Global North, and it is this rich diversity that we must cherish in multi-layered ways and understandings. Those who seek to impose an ill-fitting binary distinction generally do so in their own interests. Sometimes this is for the sake of simplicity, but as the above brief comments highlight such simplicity can be very misleading. At other times it has just become a lazy shorthand. As that well known “source of all knowledge” tells us “The Global South is a term generally used to identify countries in the regions of Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania”.[vi] Well, why not instead just use the actual geographical names Latin America, Africa, Asia and Oceania? This source goes on to comment that “Most of humanity resides in the Global South”.[vii] It is interesting to ponder what this actually means. As noted above this is certainly not true if South here is referring to the Southern Hemisphere.
In brief, this is a call for meaning, clarity and precision. If we mean that techno-capitalism domiciled in the states of the USA, Canada, the countries of Europe, the Gulf and Australia/New Zealand increasingly controls and exploits the rest of the world then let’s say so rather than couching our language in a mealy mouthed meaningless “geographical” distinction between North and South. But even this is an over-simplification of a different kind. What about China and indeed Russia? Those who really believe that there is something about being “Northern” that makes people dominant, aggressive and exploitative, and something about being “Southern” that makes them ripe for exploitation, believe on. But such dreams will not improve the lives of the world’s poorest and most marginalized wherever they are found. It is indeed a great disservice to the many rich indigenous cultures, traditions, livelihoods, and social formations to be found in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Asia and the Pacific. We must always ask ourselves in whose interest words are used. Who benefits most from the use of the terms Global North and Global South?
[i] Apparently first used by Carl Oglesby in 1969 in “Vietnamism has failed … The revolution can only be mauled, not defeated”. Commonweal, 90.
[ii] Despite this notion having been long discredited, I do think it is time that the environmental factors influencing human behaviour are revisited in a more sensitive and sensible way by geographers. The influence of day and night length variations on cultural behaviours in high latitudes is, for example, a fascinating topic of enquiry.
[iii] Two words rather than four; Brandt, W. (1980) North-South: a Programme for Wurvival; Report of the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
[iv] The equator runs through southern Somalia, Kenya, Uganda, the Congos, and Gabon.
to emphasise the long and diverse history of slavery across the world, and to highlight its differing historical expressions and complexities;
to recognise that we cannot change the past nor know the future with certainty, and can only act in the immediacy of the present; and
above all, in the light of the above, to encourage us all to do much more now to eliminate the scourge of modern slavery.
Context
It is easy to say or write that slavery is fundamentally wrong because of the loss of freedoms and violence usually[ii] associated with it. It is far more difficult, though, actually to do something constructive about eliminating slavery at the only time over which we have any control, the present.
The Black Lives Matter and associated anti-slavery protests in the UK in 2020 raised many questions (see image above). I was particularly challenged, for example, by the emphasis of those protesting on the past rather than on contemporary slavery. The majority of banners likewise seemed to highlight the wrongs of past slavery more than they did the wrongs of present slavery. My reflections here seek to grapple with why this was, and why it remains so.[iii] In the years since, there has been much more visible concern in Britain over reparations for past slavery, especially relating to the 18th and 19th centuries, than there has been real action to eliminate contemporary slavery: statues of people who had once been slave-owners have been torn down; streets have been renamed; universities, such as Manchester and Cambridge that have benefitted from donations from people who gained from the slave trade have undertaken enslavement inquiries; and institutions such as the National Trust have published reports on their links with historic slavery.
In part this is because of the overlapping interests between the Black Lives Matter movement and those protesting against slavery.[iv] However, slavery matters in its own right; it is not just a racial matter. In this piece I therefore seek to disentangle the issues of slavery and racism.[v] I want to focus primarily on slavery rather than race. I fully recognise that the two are often intertwined, and there are good reasons why people feel strongly about this intersection, but here I focus on broader issues relating specifically to slavery, and how we respond to the past. I begin with some personal reflections on the origins of my own interest in slavery, and then provide a short conceptual framework that includes a note on definitions of slavery, before highlighting what I see as some of the most difficult and problematic issues concerning slavery past, present and future. My purpose is to encourage us to shift our focus from the past about which we can change nothing, to the present where we do have the option to do something.
My interests in slavery
I have long been interested in slavery, from my days as a boy reading the Bible about the unfairness of Joseph being sold into slavery (Genesis 37) and my difficulty in trying to reconcile my own emerging moral views about slavery with some of Paul’s comments on slaves being obedient to their masters (Ephesians 6, Colossians 3, 1 Timothy 6, and Titus 2). However, I have taken a much more serious and academic interest in slavery since the mid-1970s. Three factors have been particularly important in helping to shape my current understanding of these issues.
First, my doctoral thesis in historical geography written in the second half of the 1970s focused in large part on the changing economic and social structures of medieval Midland England. I was fascinated to learn that slaves could sometimes have had better lifestyles than villeins within feudal society. In this I was heavily influenced by the writings of Marc Bloch (both his seminal La Société Féodale first published in 1939, but also in essays that have recently been collated under the title Slavery and Serfdom in the Middle Ages) and in the historical records with which I was working.
Second, some 20 years ago I encountered modern slavery in England for the first time as I sought to support someone who was trying to rescue a person who had been forced into slavery on their arrival to work in our country. This opened my eyes to the widespread existence of modern slavery in many parts of the UK, and it continues to haunt me as I continue to see such slavery within the country that I call home.
Third, my experiences working in Africa during the last 20 years have inevitably forced me to confront issues of colonial history and slavery, especially in Sierra Leone and Ghana. Despite its fraught history both as a Crown Colony until 1961 and then as an independent state since, Freetown and Sierra Leone always cause me to think about the potential for freedom in the human mind and the abolition of slavery;[vi] it is also salutary to recall that it is the home of Fourah Bay College which was founded in 1827 as the first western style university built in Sub-Saharan Africa.[vii] I like to think that there is a connection between freedom and knowledge.
Freetown, 2009
Likewise, I have many fond memories of working in Ghana. A visit to Cape Coast Castle in 2008, though, remains etched in my mind because of one very specific conversation that I had there while visiting the Castle and Dungeon. Initially the castle had been established as a small fort by the Swedish Africa Company in the middle of the 17th century, and it later became one of the most important “slave castles” along the former Gold Coast. Watching a group of European women who were very upset by what they saw, one of my close Ghanaian friends commented that he never quite understood why many Europeans became so emotionally distressed when visiting the castle. I was initially perplexed, but he went on to say that, after all, it was the African people living in the surrounding areas who had sold their awkward cousins and uncles, or people captured in conflicts as slaves to the Europeans in return for guns and other items that they wanted. Slavery had long been a way of life in the region, and had most definitely not been introduced by the Europeans. His matter of fact comments challenged much of what I had previously rather taken for granted about the Triangular trans-Atlantic slave trade.[viii] This trade was undoubtedly coercive, violent and exploitative, but its transactional character and the collaboration of African communities who were willing to sell other Africans for a price to European slavers needs to be recognised in any discussion of this particular expression of slavery.[ix]
Cape Coast Castle, 2008 (as rebuilt by the British in the 18th century)
On concepts and definitions
I have long enjoyed reading Onora O’Neill’s inspirational philosophical writings (see especially the collection of essays published as Justice Across Boundaries, 2016), and have found that many of my own ideas coincide quite closely with hers, especially around obligations, rights and justice (although I have tended to focus on the notion of “responsibilities” rather than “obligations”). In particular, she highlights the difficulties that arise in discussing the rights to compensation for actions in the distant past that are widely considered to be wrong today. Her work is well worth reading at length on this topic; I frequently return to it for clarity on these difficult issues. What follows is in part sparked by reflections on slavery in the contexts of these wider philosophical and conceptual debates. Three challenges seem particularly important.
First, no individual has any effective power over what her or his distant ancestors did in the past. If they have no power to change the past, what are their responsibilities? We might have had some influence on our own parents’ actions, and those who have known their grandparents might also have had a little influence on their lives. However, we cannot have had any actual influence on the lives and actions of those we never knew. If we have had no such influence, can we have any responsibility for their actions in the past? If we have no responsibility for those actions, why should we be criticised and condemned by others for the actions of our ancestors (individually and collectively)? These are real challenges in the context of slavery. It is not easy to clarify the logical reasons why the descendants of slave owners (and institutions they benefitted) should have received the opprobrium that has been cast on them by many of those today condemning slavery. This is regardless of how one might “judge” (itself a very problematic notion) those who were children of slave owners, but who argued vehemently for abolition in the 18th and 19th centuries, or even those who had owned slaves but then championed abolition.[x] Even John Locke, widely seen as being one of the founders of liberal democracy, has recently been savaged by historians and others because of his role in administering the British colonies in North America in the 17th century where slavery was widely practised.[xi]
Second, there are profound difficulties in “judging” the past by the standards of the present. As Hartley wrote in The Go-Between (1953), “The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”. All societies evolve and change, but they all have mechanisms through which the few rich and/or privileged extract a surplus from the many poor and exploited (Karl Marx’s modes of production remain a powerful theoretical model of such change; for Marx and Engels, slave society was the earliest form of class society). There are, though, many conundrums within the idea of “criticising” past societies, not least because our present societies have emerged from them, and would be different if they had not existed. There is nothing we can do about changing past societies. Hopefully our present societies have evolved positively and are better than those of the past, although this is by no means always so! The key thing is that we need to learn the lessons of history; we need to understand the past so that we do not make the same mistakes our ancestors made then and there (at least as “judged” by our own societies). “Now” is the only time when we can actually do anything, and the choices we make in the present need to be made in the light of the past so as to help make a better future. As Tolstoy (1903) wrote in his short essay Three Questions, “Remember then: there is only one time that is important – now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power”. Such reflections also force us to consider how future generations will perceive our own actions. How, for example, will they consider our ineffectual efforts to abolish modern slavery? Might they see our enforced addiction to digital tech as but another, les immediately brutal, form of slavery, and today’s digital barons as equivalent to the slave masters of the past?
Third, these considerations also make it important to try to define what exactly slavery is. It is, though, very problematic to provide a clear and all-encompassing definition of slavery, not least because of the ways in which the notion and practices have varied and evolved over time (and may continue to do so in the future). Two key elements are central to any definition: a lack of “freedom”, and being under the absolute control of another person. Exactly what types of freedom and control are necessary to be considered as slavery are disputed and have changed over time. One way of addressing this is to define certain practices as being indicative of slavery, as with chattel slavery (treating someone as the personal property of another), bonded labour (where someone pledges themselves to work for another to pay off a debt), or forced labour or marriage (where someone is forced in some way to work or marry against their will). Another approach has been to adopt legal definitions agreed by conventions. The 1926 UN Slavery Convention, thus defines slavery as ”the status or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching the right of ownership are exercised”. In practice, it may be best to consider a spectrum of characteristics that comprise slavery, recognising that different people may choose to include some or all of these in their definitions. “Servitude” is thus considered by some to have many of the characteristics of, but to be less severe than, “slavery”. The European Court of Human Rights (2022), for example, has recently argued that servitude “is a particularly serious form of denial of freedom”, although it should be considered as an aggravated form of forced labour, and therefore although related to slavery it is not to be confused with it. “It includes, in addition to the obligation to provide certain services to another, the obligation on the “serf” to live on the other’s property and the impossibility of changing his status”.[xii] The relationship between “slavery” and “serfdom” has, though, also evolved over time. In origin, the words “serf” and “slave” come from the same root, namely the Latin servus (meaning slave; and from which the word servitude is also derived). However, serfs and slaves have generally been seen, at least from medieval times onwards, to be rather different categories. For some, the word “serfs” is a generic term to describe the group of people originally known as coloni, or tenant farmers in the late Roman period onwards, and whose status had generally become increasingly degraded. For others, it is even broader, and is often equated with the word “peasants” to refer to the mass of people at the bottom of the emerging class system in medieval and early-modern times, but above the status of slaves.[xiii]
These three conceptual framings underlie the ensuing sections on slavery in the past, in the present and in the future.
Four important observations about past slavery are all too frequently ignored or downplayed in contemporary public discourse, but I suggest should be considered in any reasoned discussion of slavery:
First, slavery was a normal and accepted aspect of society in many parts of the world for well over six millennia, whereas the abolitionist movement in Europe only really began in the mid-18th century, less than three centuries ago.[xiv] It must have been as unthinkable for the majority of people for most of history (and indeed pre-history) to have challenged slavery as it is now for someone to try to promote slavery.
Second, slavery was practised at some time in the past in most parts of the world. Slavery existed in most ancient civilizations as in the Babylonian and Persian Empires. It was common throughout the Roman world; slaves from what is now the UK were paraded in Rome. In the early Islamic states in West and North Africa it has been estimated that about one-third of the population were slaves; in East Africa, Zanzibar was the main port for slave trading to the Arabian peninsula. Slavery was widely practised in the Pre-Columbian cultures of Middle and South America. It formed a crucial element of the Ottoman Empire; in the 17th century it is estimated that a fifth of the population of Constantinople was probably slaves. Slaves remained fundamentally important throughout the Ottoman Empire until the 19th century, notably as the much feared Janissaries (elite infantry soldiers). Slavery was widespread for centuries in China, and was only abolished in 1909. The Triangular trade between Europe, Western Africa and North America, which features so prominently in current popular discourse on slavery was thus only one example of the very widespread pattern of global slavery. It is often forgotten that between the 15th and 18th centuries white Europeans from Italy, Spain, Portugal, France and England had also been sold into slavery by North Africans. Frequently slaves were captured as a result of warfare, sometimes there were regular expeditions to capture slaves, and often people sold themselves into slavery to pay off debts. This ubiquitous character of slavery raises interesting questions about the payment of reparations. Should Italy pay England for taking slaves during the period of Roman occupation? Should Turkey pay countries in the Balkans for the devşirme (blood tax) through which Christian boys were taken to become Janissaires? Should the rulers of states in the Arabian peninsula pay reparations to the countries of eastern Africa? Should Israel pay reparations to the surrounding countries from whence their ancestors took Canaanite slaves? The usual response to such questions is “No”, on the grounds that such reparations only apply to the recent past. But when is the past recent?[xv]
Third, it must be recognised that everyone in societies where slave ownership was practised benefitted to some extent from slavery, and it is not possible just to attribute blame to slave owners or traders and their descendants.[xvi] The butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker all benefitted from the wealth gained by those who invested in estates that used slave labour. All societies, past and present, have mechanisms and legitimation systems through which the rich can exploit the poor, and can thereby afford to live “better” lives and purchase luxuries. Slavery is just one mechanism through which such surplus extraction and exploitation occurs. Indeed, life for the poor in 18th and 19th century Britain was unbelievably harsh by modern standards. However, everyone (apart from the slaves) takes a share of the trickle-down financial benefit. The elite pay architects, artists and jewellers to produce what many societies now cherish as their cultural heritage, but this enabled these craftsmen to afford to buy paints, or beer, or clothing, which in turn benefitted the brewers, merchants and clothiers. Ultimately, almost everyone in the past, and not just slave owners or institutions that received gifts derived from slave ownership, benefitted in some way from slavery. It therefore seems highly problematic to pick out certain slave owners or institutions (and their descendants) in certain societies for retribution.
Fourth, it is likely that in most cases slavery did not generally collapse purely for moral grounds, but rather also for economic ones. The ultimate reason that slavery collapsed was often because it became too expensive to obtain and maintain slaves. We like to think that it resulted exclusively from some kind of enlightened belief, or a rise of moral virtue in the 19th century, and this may indeed have helped in some cases (as with the abolitionist movement in Britain), but there is little evidence to support the argument that a sudden rise in moral concern was usually the primary reason that slavery ended. As conflicts and wars reduced in frequency, it became less easy to capture people and enslave them. Moreover, the costs of feeding slaves could become prohibitive, especially at times of rising basic staple prices. Forcing slaves to cultivate land to feed themselves was also problematic since it took land and labour away from other forms of production, and yields were in any case often not high. Most importantly, new more efficient forms of labour exploitation (such as the factory system in the 19th century) and the mechanisation of agriculture, reduced the economic benefits of slave production.
Slavery: the present
As noted in the quotation from Tolstoy cited above, the present is a very special time, because it is the only time when we have any power. How we act in the present, though, depends very much on our understanding of the past. Four problematic issues seem worthy of reflection here about how we are acting in the present with respect to slavery.
First, it must be recognised and acknowledged that slavery still exists. It was not eliminated by the abolutionist movement in the 19th century. According to the latest Global Estimates of Modern Slavery, there are about 49.6 million people living in modern slavery, mostly in forced labour and forced marriage.[xvii] Roughly a quarter of these are children. To be sure, definitions of slavery have changed over time, but these figures compare with best estimates for the number of slaves transported from Africa to the Americas of around 12.5 million.[xviii] Modern slavery is real and present at a very large scale. We can choose to do something real and practical about it. It is as violent and horrendous as are most forms of past slavery. While much current media attention and political activity focuses on black slavery, colonialism and issues around restitution and reparations, we also need to focus on the reality of modern slavery across the world and do something to bring it to an end.
Second, the timing of the sudden upswelling of interest in slavery, the recent actions taken by many people and organisations to try to atone for the past, and the vehemence of commitment of many of those campaigning for reparations and against past slavery seem in part to represent a collective failure to understand and appreciate the impact of slavery, both in the past and at present. Having learnt about slavery as a child, and written and taught about slavery through much of my career,[xix] I find it hard to believe that so many people in Britain seem to have been unaware of the impact of slavery on our economy.[xx] Why did they not protest before 2020? The apparent sudden discovery of our role in the Triangular Trade, seems in part to reflect a failure in our education system to address the complexity of history, and especially to consider slavery in a global and holistic framework. In a society increasingly dominated by scientism (science’s belief in itself) it becomes more and more important for young people to study the disciplines of history and geography which play such a crucial role in shaping their sense of time and place. A good historical understanding of slavery throughout history and across the world would also help people have a much more nuanced and sensitive approach to understanding its complexities, and the reasons why we need to respond urgently to the continued existence of modern slavery.
Third, it is always easier to criticise people who cannot respond, especially in the past, than it is to act wisely in the present. As any political leader knows, it is much easier to criticise others, than it is actually to deliver policies that have positive outcomes. In the context of slavery, it is easy to stand up and protest, it is easy to adopt slick slogans, it is easy to blame people in the past, and it is easy to post critical comments on social media. This is especially so when those who lived through those times are completely unable to respond or tell their side of the story. It is very much more difficult to change existing practices, such as modern slavery, because that takes considerable time and effort, it is tough to do, it is expensive, and it is not easy to understand what really needs to be done. However, given now is the only time when we can influence things for the better, we should surely concentrate on what we can actually do something about, rather than spend so much time bemoaning something that we can never change. We can learn from the past to change the present.
Fourth, it is difficult to justify criticising people in the past, because we were not there and have no way of knowing how we would have behaved ourselves at that time. We might like to think that we would have acted in the past in accordance with our present moral compasses (if we recognise that we have such things), but the reality is that it is highly unlikely that we would have done so. We simply have no real way of knowing what we would have done if we had been living during past epochs when slavery was rife. Perhaps our biggest fear would have been the chance of being captured and sold into slavery ourselves. If we cannot guarantee that we would have opposed slavery then, it seems difficult to justify the opprobrium that we cast on those who benefitted from slavery in the past, especially if we are doing little to prevent it in the present.
In short, the logic of the above comments seems to point to a conclusion that we should focus our attention more on trying to stop modern slavery, because we can indeed do something about this, rather than spending most of our time criticising the actions of people in the past about which we can do nothing.
Slavery: the future
Such arguments have interesting implications when slavery in the future is considered. Again, four comments seem appropriate.
First, we might be able to reduce the extent of slavery in the future if we take action to do so now, and at the very least those who do indeed believe that slavery is wrong would then be acting according to their moral principles. This in itself raises many further difficult issues. Given that slavery still exists, and has therefore probably done so ever since human “civilizations” first emerged, is it somehow a “natural” human condition? Will slavery always exist? Even if this is the case, though, those of us who believe it is wrong can nevertheless still seek to take action now to reduce its extent in the hope that this will happen in the future.
Second, how will those in the future look back and see our actions today with respect to slavery? Just as we cannot influence the past, we will not be living when those in the future think about us. At one level, this question will not really matter, because we will be long dead and the thoughts of people in the distant future can have no real influence over us. Nevertheless, many people do wish to be remembered kindly. For those who do care how history will see them, if only the near history of their children and grandchildren, taking action now at a time over which we do have some control or power, would seem to be wise (although of course many people may not wish to be wise). How will our offspring and descendants judge us most positively: for acting to reduce the slavery that does exist and we can do something about, or for merely protesting about a past over which we could never do anything to change.
Third, if we do nothing about slavery today, there is a chance that those nearest and dearest to us might be forced into slavery in the future. This may be an unlikely scenario for many reading this post, but it is at least a logical possibility. Every one of the nearly 50 million people currently in slavery has parents, and possibly grandparents who may still be alive and know them. At least some, perhaps most, of these relatives will grieve that their offspring are enslaved. By acting today, we can reduce the chances of our children and further descendants becoming enslaved.
Finally, it is worth asking what future generations may consider about the nature of freedom and slavery in our societies today? I have recently spent much time pondering this question, and writing and speaking about digital enslavement as a new mode of production. Put simply, if we cannot live without using digital tech, have we become enslaved by the owners of the companies and governments who force us to use such technologies? If we cannot spend a day, let alone a week, without using digital tech, have we not become enslaved by those who make it?[xxi] Have we not willingly become “unfree”? The new slave masters expropriate a vast surplus from our data and everything that they know about us, and we seem unable to escape from giving this to them at no charge. Indeed, we have to pay significant amounts to be connected to the internet, just so as to enable them to exploit us further. What will future generations think? Will the likes of Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Jeff Bezos also have the work of their foundations and donations castigated, their virtual statues torn down, their reputations smashed, and their children’s children hated for the actions of their ancestors?[xxii]
In conclusion
It is difficult to draw firm conclusions from the above reflections, and everyone will have somewhat differing views about them. They are intended to raise difficult questions and encourage open debate on them. I have tried to focus on slavery alone, although clearly this intersects, especially at this time in history, with other categories of contemporary interest such as race and colonialism. However, these reflections are explicitly not intended to address either of these other two categories in any detail. Slavery has existed between and within many different races; it has transcended most modes of socio-economic, political and cultural formation. It is not unique to the Triangular Trans-Atlantic slave trade. There has been a considerable amount of research done on the history of slavery and very much more that needs to be done. However, history alone is not enough. It is the moral questions that we ask, and how we use them to shape the futures of the societies in which we live that, to me, matter most.
The above arguments suggest to me that it is more important to focus on trying to reduce contemporary slavery (and its possible variants in the future) than it is only to protest about the horrors and injustices of past slavery. Both are important, and this is not to belittle the value of highlighting the undoubted injustices of slavery in the past. However, we cannot change what has happened in the past, and it is surely therefore our responsibility to past slaves that we act now, when we can, to prevent slavery continuing into the future. Protesting is the easy bit; changing the future is when the going gets really tough. Others may well feel differently, and I certainly accept that we need a sound understanding of the past if we are to act wisely in the present. I began by reflecting on my surprise at how few of the anti-slavery and anti-racism protests that I saw in 2020 and 2021 focused on modern slavery. My hope is that those who read and engage with what I have written here may turn their anger at what they cannot change into energy to reduce the extent of slavery that remains all about us today. I also hope that they will strive to maintain the perceived freedoms that so many now cherish and take for granted, and yet are in very real danger of being taken away from us through the increasingly all-pervasiveness of digital enslavement.
[i] I am immensely grateful to several friends and colleagues who took time to comment on an earlier version of this draft and have undoubtedly helped me to improve it. I know that the issues it addresses are sensitive, but I hope that this final version strikes an appropriate balance as I seek to encourage us all to refocus our attention on how we eliminate the modern slavery (and especially violence against women) that continues to exist across the world.
[ii] I have deliberately used this word here because I remain struck by the reality that the lives of some slaves in the past were in many ways better than the lives of the poorest agricultural labourers.
[iii] There were indeed some banners relating to modern slavery, but from the protests and images that I saw these were in a minority.
[iv] This was also associated with transfers of ideology and practice from the US to the rather different context of the UK.
[v] This is not in any way to downplay the horrors of the slave trade between Africa and the Americas between the 17th and 19th centuries, but it is to try to explore fundamental principles associated with slavery per se rather than racism.
[vi] See for example, Abraham Farfán and María del Pilar López-Uribe (2020) The British founding of Sierra Leone was never a ‘Province of Freedom, https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/africaatlse/2020/06/27/british-founding-sierra-leone-slave-trade/. It is also important to note here that it was actually in the UK, a colonial and later imperial power, where the abolutionist movement first gained considerable traction, initially in the late 18th century and then especially from the 1830s onwards.
[vii] The Province of Freedom in what became Sierra Leone was first settled in 1787 by formerly enslaved black people, but this early settlement collapsed, and it was not until 1792 with an influx of more than a thousand former slaves from North America that the settlement of Freetown was firmly established through the agency of the Sierra Leone Company.
[x] See for example the life of John Newton who had been a slave, a captain of slave ships, and then championed abolitionism, as well as writing the famous hymns Amazing Grace and Glorious things of Thee are spoken.
[xiii] In my own work on medieval society, I found it helpful to avoid the generic word “serf” and stick to the terms actually in use at the time, such as villeins, cottars and bordars. In very general terms, in 11th century England there were two broad groups of rural people beneath the level of knights and lords: the free peasantry (freemen and sokemen) who comprised about 12% of the population recorded in Domesday Book of 1066; and the unfree (villeins representing about 40% of the population, alongside the poorer cottars and bordars) who worked the land in return for onerous obligations and services to the Lord. Beneath them all were the slaves, comprising perhaps 10% of the population, who had no property rights and could be bought and sold.
[xiv] Although Louis X of France published a decree in 1315 declaring that any slave arriving on French soil should be declared free, the widespread rise of abolitionism is usually dated to the emergence of The Enlightenment in the mid-18th century, and the activities of the Quakers in England and North America in the latter part of that century. Interestingly, although slavery was abolished during the French revolution, Napoleon restored it in 1802 as one means to try to retain sovereignty over France’s colonies.
[xvi] I have deliberately concentrated here on slavery in a global context, and not just on the current emphasis in European and North American societies on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The horrors, misery and death associated with slavery in the context of European colonialism should not be trivialised, but at the same time their needs to be open and honest discussion about the existence of slavery in Africa long before the arrival of white Europeans.
[xviii] See https://www.slavevoyages.org/, as well as extensive other research by Franz Binder, Ernst van den Boogart, Henk den Heijer and Johannes Postma, James Pritchard, Andrea Weindl, Antonio de Almeida Mendes, Manuel Barcia Paz, Alexandre Ribeiro, David Wheat and José Capela.
[xix] especially in the context of my teaching of Marxist theory between the mid-1970s and the end of the 1990s. See also the work of the UCL Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.
[xx] There has been very substantial research on slavery in the past, and the extent to which British society and the economy were shaped by it in the 18th and 19th centuries has long been well known. See for example the work of the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery at UCL https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ which emerged from earlier funded research projects in the 2000s and 2010s, and also the useful short note by John Oldfield (2021) on abolition of the slave trade and slavery in Britain, https://www.bl.uk/restoration-18th-century-literature/articles/abolition-of-the-slave-trade-and-slavery-in-britain, which draws heavily on research dating back to the 1930s.
[xxi] Do consider using #1in7offline to promote the practice of having a day a week offline.
emphasised the substantial amount of existing research on spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency;
highlighted the lack of existing research on “spectrum environmental efficiency” (rather than just on energy);
reflected on the observation that, although 5G is widely seen as being more energy efficient, the total increase in traffic (and sensors) means that 5G systems as a whole require more energy than was the case with previous wireless generations;
emphasised the importance of future wireless generations being designed to reduce environmental harms;
outlined aspects of the future research agenda of the working group, including:
always taking environmental considerations (not just climate and energy) into our research practice;
what are environmental implications of using different parts of the spectrum?
how do different masts/antennae impact the environment?
new ways of assessing landscape impact
environmental implications of sensor network
recommendations for good practices by telecom/wireless companies – and regulators
helping develop a toolkit for the UN Partner2Connect digital coalition
how can future wireless generations minimise environmental harms?
links with DESC working group on satellites and outer space (with UNOOSA involvement);
recognised the importance of listening to and understanding alternative/indigenous knowledges about the environment (and digital tech);
noted that the WWRF is a formal partner of DESC; and
invited members of the WWRF, and especially those from the private sector, to join DESC and contribute to our future work.
It was a great pleasure to have been invited to contribute as a panellist to Session 406 of the WSIS Annual Forum on 2nd June 2022 on the theme of “Academic perspectives on WSIS and the SDGs”. This was a hybrid event, and as the picture below shows it was sadly not attended by very many people actually in Geneva! (Follow this link for my short, full presentation.)
However there was active participation online, and it was good to share some reflections on the theme. As ever, I tried to be diplomatically provocative, reflecting on my participation in the original World Summit on the Information Society in Geneva (2003) and Tunisia (2005)…
… as well as on many occasions since at the WSIS annual forums, especially when in 2019 I changed WSIS to MISS in front of my good friend Houlin Zhao the Secretary General of the ITU:
My presentation in particular emphasised the important need for the UN system to stop replicating and duplicating its efforts to use ICTs for “development” (or should this read “to serve the interests of the rich and powerful” especially the “digital barons“?); it is striking and sad, for example, that the UN Secretary General’s Roadmap for digital cooperation and Our Common Agenda make no mentions at all of the WSIS process.
My main argument was that with only eight years to go, it is essential that we start planning now for what will replace the SDGs, especially with respect to the uses of digital tech.
I did, though, also address to other themes: how academics can indeed benefit from the WSIS process (see below) as well as a short introduction to the work that we are now doing as part of the Digital-Environment System Coalition (DESC).
This is a response to my post in July 2021, which identified seven main challenges and problems facing the UN system. While it is easy to criticise, it is much more difficult to recommend and deliver change. Hence, this short piece offers a set of suggestions for fundamental reform across the UN system in response to the challenges identified in my earlier post. These are grounded in a belief that the UN needs to be smaller, leaner and fitter for purpose in serving the needs of national governments across the world. In so doing it should therefore primarily serve the interests of citizens rather than of itself and the global corporations that have subverted its high ideals.
Context
The seven main inter-related problems and challenges identified in my previous post were:
The UN largely serves the neo-liberal political interests of the USA and its allies.
The UN does not appoint the most capable and appropriate people to senior leadership positions.
There is disagreement about the size that the UN should be; should its agencies aspire to be implementers of development interventions themselves, or should they instead mainly provide guidance and good practices for governments to implement?
The SDGs have already failed, but the UN persists in their propagation primarily in its own interests, so that UN agencies can claim they are doing something worthwhile
The UN system is beset by duplication of effort, overlap, and reinvention of the wheel between agencies, between the Secretariat and the agencies, and even in larger agencies between the various silos within them.
The UN’s ambitions go well beyond the budget available to fund them.
The SDG agenda, the lack of UN funding, and the opportunistic behaviour of many global corporations mean that the private sector has been able to subvert the UN’s global governance structures in its own interest
Responses to each of these are addressed in turn, outlining potential ways in which these problems might be overcome. As with my previous post, it draws largely on my experience in working with UN agencies over the last two decades primarily on aspects associated with the use of digital technologies in international development, and it also draws comparisons with my experiences from working with a diversity of organisations within The Commonwealth.
The UN has indeed begun to recognise the importance of some of these issues, and the Secretary General’s (SG’s) recent Our Common Agenda report in 2021[i] does emphasise two important requirements with which I largely concur:
The need to renew the social contract between governments and their people (see Section II);[ii] and
The introduction of new measures to complement GDP to assist people in understanding the impacts of business activities and the true costs of economic growth.[iii]
However, much of the SG’s report is wishful thinking, highly problematic, and not grounded sufficiently in the harsh reality of the interests underlying global geopolitics and economic systems. It also clearly represents the interests of those within the UN system, and especially in the central Secretariat, as expressed succinctly in its assertion that “now is the time for a stronger, more networked and inclusive multilateral system, anchored within the United Nations” [my emphasis].[iv] The fundamental challenge is that the UN system and its leadership are part of the problem and not the solution.
Seven proposals
1. Increasing diversity and changing the power relationships within the UN
The UN and its agencies have generally sought to be broadly representative of the cultural diversity of the world’s peoples. They have also recently made important strides to increase gender diversity amongst staff. Nevertheless, huge efforts still need to be made to achieve greater diversity both among the staff and in the interests that the UN promotes. Remarkably few staff within the UN system, for example, are drawn from those with recognised disabilities, and the interests of many economically poorer or smaller countries, as well as minority ethnic groups remain under-represented. Rather than serving the rich and the powerful (as well as itself), the UN truly needs to serve all of the world’s peoples, including the stateless.
The fundamental issue here, though, is the need to change the UN’s ideological balance away from the primacy that it gives to neo-liberal democracy (in large part derived from the heavy influence of the USA and its allies), towards a recognition that there are many competing political-economic ideologies currently being promoted globally. One of the UN’s roles is to help weaker countries negotiate these ideological power struggles, and if it is allied too closely with any one of them the UN is doomed either to increasing irrelevance or failure. It must above all serve its role wisely in delivering the first paragraph of Article 1 of its founding charter: “To maintain international peace and security”.[v] This is becoming an ever more pressing issue at a time when the fortunes of the USA and its previously dominant ideology are waning and those of China are waxing.[vi] It is thus crucial for the UN to have the means whereby it can retain a level of oversight, while also serving as a neutral forum where conflict can be resolved through negotiation and mediation.
Three practical recommendations could help resolve this issue:
First the UN Security Council[vii] needs to be fundamentally restructured. Its permanent membership seems anachronistic, and at the very least France and the UK should no longer be included, perhaps to be replaced by a rotating representation from countries within the European Union.[viii] There are many options: the idea of permanent membership itself should be revisited; membership could be linked to population size, whilst also providing some guarantees for small states; the more than 50 countries that have never been members could be prioritised; and better means should be found to enforce its resolutions.
Second, new locations should be identified for the headquarters of UN agencies and the central Secretariat. It would be a massive and expensive undertaking to move the entire Secretariat from New York to an alternative location. However, this is ultimately likely to be necessary for the long-term viability of the UN system, not only for symbolic reasons, but also because of the bias that a US location causes in terms of the number of US citizens employed and also the subtle ideological influences that it creates in the minds of those working there from other countries. More realistically, there should at the very least be a substantial reduction in the overall UN presence in New York. The use of new generations of digital technologies could greatly facilitate this. As experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic have shown, it is no longer necessary to hold as many face-to-face meetings within the UN system as has heretofore been the case. A very strong argument can be made for the UN headquarters to be located in a clearly neutral country,[ix] as is already the case with those UN agencies located in Geneva. However, at the very least it would make sense for it to be situated somewhere other than in one of the major, and potentially conflicting, states such as China, the USA, Russia and India.
Third, considerably more attention and resourcing need to be given to those UN agencies concerned with reducing conflict and maintaining peace, notably the Department of Peace Operations (DPO),[x] but also those with experience of mediation, conflict reduction and peace building such as UNODA (Office for Disarmament Affairs), OHCHR (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights), UNODC (Office on Drugs and Crime), and possibly even UNOOSA (Office for Outer Space Affairs) as territorial and strategic interests of nations and corporations now spread beyond planet earth.
2. Improving the quality and diversity of the UN’s leadership and senior management
There are undoubtedly some capable and well qualified people in senior leadership positions[xi] within the UN system, but they are the exception. Far too many do not have the qualifications or experience to be able to deliver their roles effectively. There therefore needs to be a fundamental restructuring of the processes used to elect or appoint them.[xii]
At least two tensions make it difficult to resolve this issue: the perceived need to balance appropriate national representation with quality and expertise of leadership; and the varying challenges associated with election and/or appointment to senior roles. However, despite such challenges it is completely unacceptable that a UN Under-Secretary General on appointment to a new post within the UN should as recently as 2021 tweet that he was “a relatively newcomer to the field”.[xiii]
One way to resolve these issues would be for a small review and appointments office to be created to provide guidance to all entities within the UN system relating to senior leadership positions. Two of its key roles could be:
to review all short-listed or nominated applicants against the criteria required for the specific post, ensuring that they have the experience and expertise to fulfil the role; and
to serve as a search facility that could identify additional people who might be appropriate for upcoming appointments.
Where elections are the means of appointment to such positions, countries could nominate as at present, but all such nominations would be subject to approval by this review office. For both appointments and elections, the unit could also encourage specific countries to nominate one of their nationals highlighted in any of its searches. Furthermore, this would provide a mechanism whereby the unit could specifically seek to find people who would be suitable to fill appointments from under-represented communities and countries, thereby helping to respond to commitments to diversity.[xiv]
Additionally, it is very important that all UN officials once appointed should undergo regular and appropriate training so that they can improve their relevant expertise. Given the importance of mediation and consensus building, it is critically important that these should also feature prominently in all staff UN training. It would not be too much to suggest that all staff in any UN entity should be required to spend 5% of their time in various forms of training. Far too many UN officials are overly confident of their own abilities, and do not pay enough attention to the critical importance of staff training, either for themselves or for those who report to them. Just because someone has been a government Minister, for example, does not mean that they have any understanding of international diplomacy or subject matter expertise. It is essential that the UN as a whole including all of its agencies should become learning organisations, so that they are better fit for purpose. This will be a major undertaking and require a fundamental shift of thinking within many such agencies.
The UN System Staff College (UNSSC) might be a possible home for this unit, although the highly critical 2020 report by the Joint Inspection Unit[xv]does not inspire confidence that it has the capacity to do so. It would, though, be wise for the unit to be situated outside the central UN Secretariat so that it can be seen to have some independence from the highly politicised and some would say over-bloated headquarters operations. If, though, it was felt that it had to be in the Secretariat headquarters, it might be created as a division within the Office of Internal Oversight Services.
3. Towards a smaller, more focused UN
The UN has grown haphazardly and surreptitiously largely in its own interests so that it is now far too big and ambitious, but has neither the funding nor the capacity to deliver its agendas effectively. A central issue that must therefore be addressed concerns how big the UN and its agencies should be. I suggest that it is already far too big, in part as a result of the neo-liberal hegemony it has embraced. Its agencies seek to do too much by themselves. Instead its basic role should be as the servant of all member governments, empowering them to serve the best interests of their citizens. It should not be the servant of private sector corporations, as it increasingly seems to be becoming.
One of the main ways in which this could be achieved would simply be through eliminating most of the work that UN agencies do in trying to implement their own development initiatives, and replace this with a clearer focus on delivering appropriate training and support for governments so that they can deliver relevant development programmes within their our countries. Most UN agencies are neither well designed or appropriately staffed actually to implement effective on-the-ground development interventions, yet huge sums of money are wasted on attempts to implement their own development projects, and this situation has got far worse through the creation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in support of Agenda 2030 (see Section 4 below). Many other civil society organisations, bilateral and multilateral donors, foundations, and private sector enterprises are already implementing high quality development programmes. There is absolutely no need for the UN to try to do so as well. Indeed, external reviews highlight the poor quality of the development work done by many (although certainly not all) UN agencies. The UK Department for International Development’s (DFID)[xvi] Multilateral Aid review in 2016 thus noted that the organisational strengths of UNAIDS, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNOCHA, the UN Peacebuilding Fund, UN Women, and the WHO were all weak or only adequate, and this excludes the agencies that DFID was not already funding because it did not even consider it worth so doing.[xvii]
This is not to say that the UN should cease trying to improve the important humanitarian and peacebuilding initiatives in which it is already engaged. As noted above (Section 1) the UN has a crucial role to play in global peacebuilding, and it could also do much more effectively to help co-ordinate global responses to physical disasters and humanitarian crises, providing relief assistance rapidly and efficiently where needed. However, its current implementation processes need to be considerably improved, and this requires both appropriate financial resourcing and increased global commitment to deliver them. Some will, no doubt, claim that such humanitarian interventions are often caused by wider failures in “development” and therefore that the UN must also be involved in these. However, the track record of many such interventions by UN agencies is poor and the existence of so many other agencies delivering better interventions suggests that the UN should concentrate on doing what it does best, rather than proliferating failure.
There are many other ways in which the UN could reduce its size and expenditure, such as employing fewer external consultants, producing fewer reports that have little real impact, limiting the number of wasteful meetings and events that it holds, and reducing the number of staff that it employs. The bottom line, though, is that we need to move away from a large poorly co-ordinated self-important system that is far too big, to a much smaller, leaner organisation that truly delivers effectively on the needs of governments and their citizens.
4. Abandoning the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2030, and planning for a new futurefor the UN
Many of the above comments relate directly to the development agenda that the UN has embarked on, first with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and since 2015 with the SDGs. These still have their supporters, often mainly on the grounds that they are the best things we currently have to help co-ordinate global development agendas, and any criticism thereof is potentially damaging. However, the strength of criticism of the SDGs has grown considerably in recent years, reinforcing the views of those of us who were critical of them from the beginning, and were well captured by William Easterly in 2015 when he described SDGs as standing for “Senseless, Dreamy, Garbled”.[xviii]
Now is the time to recognise that the SDGs really are a failed agenda, and that, as noted in Section 3 above, the UN should replace most of its attempted practice in international development with clear, focused and high-quality support and training for governments in delivering their own interventions to improve the lives of their citizens. It will take considerable time to make this shift, but 2030 is only eight years away. We all need to be brave in acknowledging that the SDGs have failed, and start working urgently instead to create a better system that can serve the global community more fairly from 2030 onwards.
Three things are key for the success of such a new agenda: the abandonment of attempts to make neo-liberal democracy the global religion that its advocates would like to see; the replacement of the economic growth agenda with a more balanced view that places the reduction of inequalities at its heart;[xix] and a shift away from the dogma of the primacy of universal human rights to a recognition that these need to be balanced by individual and governmental responsibilities.[xx] None of these will be easy to achieve, but there are indeed at last some signs that the second of them is gaining traction. As noted in the introduction to this post, Our Common Agenda has at last signalled recognition at the highest level within the UN that there is an urgent need to redress the focus on untrammelled economic growth as a solution to poverty with one that recognises that economic growth has a propensity to cause further inequalities, and that seeks to redress this by placing primacy on redistribution and equity. This is nowhere more true than in the vast wealth accrued by the digital barons from their exploitation of the world’s poor and marginalised.
Put simply, it is time to abandon the economic growth agenda of the SDGs, and replace it with a more caring and human approach that gives primacy to redistribution, equity, and a reduction in inequalities.
5. Removing duplication, overlap and reinventing the wheel
It is widely recognised that there is enormous waste within the UN system, driven in large part by competition and a lack of co-ordination between agencies. This is further enhanced by the aspiration of senior managers to gain ever higher positions within the UN by championing their own highly visible projects, a lack of understanding about what other agencies are actually doing, and inward looking and self-serving career structures within many such agencies.
An increasingly worrying tendency in recent years, at least in the digital tech sector, has also been the growing power of the UN Secretariat and its staff in wanting to lead by creating new initiatives that overlap with other existing global initiatives, and frequently reinvent the wheel.[xxi] This is nowhere more true than in the bizarre history of the formation of the UN SG’s High-Level Panel on Digital Cooperation,[xxii] and the subsequent development of his Roadmap for Digital Cooperation in 2020.[xxiii]
Moving towards a smaller, more focused UN will require the creation of much tighter and precise mandates for its central Secretariat and each of its agencies. This in turn will require the strengthening of existing structures designed to enable effective cooperation and collaboration, not least since many of the world’s most pressing challenges require multi-sector and holistic approaches to their resolution. However, this should most certainly not be done by the UN SG setting up new initiatives within the Secretariat that frequently serve the personal interests of the senior leadership within it. One such mechanism that seems to be undervalued and insufficiently utilised is the UN System Chief Executives Board for Co-ordination (CEB) which “provides broad guidance, co-ordination and strategic direction for the UN system in the areas under the responsibility of Executive Heads. Focus is placed on inter-agency priorities and initiatives while ensuring that the independent mandates of organizations are maintained”.[xxiv] Much of its practical work is undertaken through the High-Level Committee on Programmes (HLCP),[xxv] and based on my own experience of working with this committee I have no doubt that its mechanisms can indeed lead to the production of valuable recommendations and actions.[xxvi] The challenge is that such initiatives can easily be overtaken by events, and the creation of new priorities, either by the UN SG (representing the collective interests of the Secretariat) or by individual agencies whose leaders want to drive forward their own agendas.
Another undoubted challenge is that decision making in most UN agencies is based on the collective views of their members, and ultimately these represent the interests of individual Ministers (or equivalent) in all the member countries of the world. Hence, the WHO is meant to represent the collectivity of Health Ministries, UNESCO the Education Ministries, and the ITU the Telecommunication and/or Digital Technology Ministries. Often, the lack of co-ordination at the UN level mirrors the lack of policy integration at the national level. This implies that if real progress is to be made there need to be ambitious approaches that seek to improve internal co-ordination within both national and global systems of government and governance. Unfortunately, the ambitions and aspirations of individual Ministers as much as the senior leadership of specific UN agencies therefore conspire effectively to constrain the potential for effective co-ordination systems to be put in place.
There would also be much to be gained from more effective collaboration between the UN and existing regional organisations which often have a much better understanding of regional issues than do UN agencies. Rather than competing with them or duplicating what they are already doing, it would make far more sense to pool resources and work together to achieve desirable outcomes for specific countries and groups of people.
In summary, the senior leadership of the UN system as a whole needs to give much greater attention to delivering effective co-ordination in policy and practice, but this should be done through existing mechanisms rather than by increasing the power of the UN Secretary General and his close colleagues.[xxvii]
6. Rebalancing the budget for a leaner UN
The problem of systemic funding shortages for much of the work of the UN Secretariat and its many agencies and offices is closely related to the scale of its activities. Not least, many poorer countries cannot provide sufficient resources for delivering its remit, especially when it comes to implementing development interventions. The funding arrangements for the UN Secretariat and its many funds, programmes and specialist agencies are separate, but most consist of a combinations of assessed and voluntary combinations, that enable funding countries to choose how much they support different agencies. The core budget for the UN Secretariat in 2020 was only US$ 3.1 billion,[xxviii]excluding additional donations and peacekeeping activities for which the budget is currently around twice as much.[xxix] One third of the 2019 core budget was provided by the USA (22%) and China (12%), with Japan providing 8.5%, Germany 6%, and the UK 5.4%.[xxx] The top 25 countries contribute about 88% of the total core budget. The percentage national contributions to specific UN agencies and programmes vary considerably with respect to the funding by different countries, but they do emphasise once again the striking overall power wielded by the USA. As noted above (Section 1), this is not healthy for the UN, and it is absolutely essential for many other countries to step up to the mark and fund the UN appropriately. However, the observation that they do not provide more funding could imply that they do not see sufficient value in supporting the UN system. If that is really true then fundamental restructuring of the UN and its agencies is long overdue. Having led a small intergovernmental agency, I know only too well the crucial importance of ensuring that such entities deliver on the wishes of all of their members so that funding can be guaranteed to maintain their activities. If members see no value in an agency then it should be shut down.
Two further important observations can be made about the UN’s funding situation. The first is that a smaller UN that is able to reduce the amount of duplication and overlap in its activities, as advocated above, would require less funding, and would therefore be able to live within its means more effectively. If countries are not willing to support the work of specific agencies or activities these should be closed. However, second, the most worrying trend with respect to funding is the way in which many UN agencies have instead sought to establish closer relationships with the private sector as funders of the ambitions of their leadership for expansion of their programmes and raising their own individual profiles through eye-catching initiatives. This is extremely worrying because it changes the role of UN agencies that have embarked on this approach away from being inter-governmental agencies supporting the needs of governments and their citizens, to being vehicles through which private sector corporations seek to shape global policy and implement activities across the world in their own interests of increasing market share, corporate profits and the benefit accruing to their owners and shareholders. As UNESCO states on its short private sector partnership page, “Over these last two decades, the Private sector has become an increasingly valuable partner for UNESCO – contributing its core business expertise, creativity, innovative technological solutions, social media outreach, financial and in-kind contributions to achieve shared objectives in the area of Education, Culture, the Sciences and Communication and Information”.[xxxi] There is, though, little that is innocent or altruistic about the corporate sector’s involvement in such partnerships. The UN yet again becomes diminished to being merely a vehicle that serves the interests of neo-liberalism and the free market – or to call it by a less popular name, global capitalism.
7. The restructuring of global governance and the establishment of multi-sector partnerships on a rigorous basis
The increasing embeddedness of the private sector in UN activities (Section 6) is seriously worrying since it detracts from the core role of its agencies as inter-governmental organisations. In a richly prescient argument, Jens Martens summarised the potential dangers of such partnerships some 15 years ago,[xxxii] and most of his concerns have since come to pass. Anyone in the UN who has sought to implement such partnerships since then, and has failed to read his work, as well as some of the other detailed recommendations concerning the dos and don’ts of partnership building by other authors is directly culpable for their failure.[xxxiii]
The private sector does indeed have much to contribute to effective development interventions, bringing technical knowledge, appropriate management skills, and additional specific resources, but far too often UN agencies seek to engage with the private sector primarily for the additional funding that may be provided. Most people in UN agencies have little real idea about how to forge effective partnerships with the private sector that are built on a rigorous assessment of needs and a transparent mutual benefits framework. Far too many agencies have therefore become subverted by global corporations, and are often viewed with suspicion by those in other UN agencies who have deliberately chosen to have less direct collaboration with companies.
Many UN agencies resort to the UN’s Global Compact established in 2000 as a means through which to engage with the private sector. The Compact itself is based on CEOs’ commitments to ten principles relating to Human Rights, Labour, Environment, and Anti-Corruption; with 15,268 companies having signed up, it now claims to be the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. However, it actually has rather little to say in detail about about partnership, or with the mechanisms through which effective mutually beneficial partnerships can indeed be established between companies, governments and UN agencies, in the interests of the many rather than the few.[xxxiv] Sadly, the consequent loosely defined “partnerships” that have been constructed, often subvert the UN’s governance structures and have increasingly led it to serve the interests of the rich and powerful against the poorest and most marginalised.
Unlike some of the other recommendations above, it is relatively easy to implement effective multi-sector partnerships, with much guidance having been written on the subject.[xxxv] Key success factors for development-oriented partnerships that serve the interests of the many rather than the few include
having a clear partnership framework in place from the beginning,
ensuring that civil society is also engaged (and thus also avoiding the term Public-Private Partnerships),
recognising that there is no one-size-fits-all (partnerships work best when they are attuned to local context),
establishing an appropriately skilled partnership management office,
building in scale and sustainability at the very beginning (not as an afterthought),
ensuring the continuity of participation among key individuals,
creating a clear and coherent communication strategy, and
ensuring that they are based on mutual trust, transparency, honesty and respect.
More generally, such partnerships should become less important for UN agencies if they focus more on delivering effective training for governments to be able to implement their own development interventions, rather than the UN agencies trying to deliver such interventions themselves. At present, though, I would not recommend that governments turn to most UN agencies for advice on how to craft appropriate partnerships.
In conclusion
In summary, many of the current problems facing the UN (both the Secretariat and its specialist agencies) could be resolved by:
Focusing on doing a few things well, rather than taking on too many activities and failing with most of them (recognising that this will lead to a smaller, but more effective UN);
Rejecting neo-liberalism, and instead seeking to serve as a mediator and consensus builder between the many different existing global views around political economy and development;
Improving the quality of its leadership (possibly through a specialised unit with such responsibilities), and requiring significant amounts of good quality and relevant training for all of its staff;
Accepting that the SDGs were a mistake, and starting to plan now for a new framework for the UN in 2030;
Focusing primarily on serving the needs of governments through training and advice, rather than by the UN implementing its own development interventions;
Limiting its partnerships with private sectorcompanies, but where these are essential ensuring that they are based on sound partnership mechanisms;
Developing effective co-ordination mechanisms for limiting the increasing amount of replication and duplication of effort within the UN system (which could be facilitated through enhancing the roles of the CEB and HLCP); and
Ensuring that more countries commit to funding the UN appropriately, so that no country ever provides more than 10% of its budget.
Implementing such changes will not be easy, but that is no excuse for not trying to undertake them. If progress on these agendas is not made soon, the UN and its agencies will become even less significant than they are at present, and it will forever fail to deliver the ambitious intentions laid out in the four paragraphs of Article 1 of its Charter.
Two final issues require some comment: the balance between the UN Secretariat and the UN’s specialised agencies; and the involvement of governments that are unwilling to engage peacefully and constructively. On the first of these, my close engagement in various Commonwealth organisations over the last two decades has made me very aware of a tendency for the “centre” to try to take control over as many areas as possible, even when it does not have the competence to do so and there are already existing specialised agencies capable of so doing. This clearly also applies within the UN, and particularly in the field of digital tech. Competition between entities within the UN system is both wasteful and damaging (to organisations and individuals), and must be reduced. There is little within Our Common Agenda that gives rise to the hope that the present leadership of the UN is capable of achieving this. Clarity of mandates and reducing mission creep are essential for the organisation as a whole to be effective.
Second, though, I am conscious that my arguments rely on a positive view about the role of governments in serving the real needs of their citizens. In part this is based on my experience that even within governments (in the broadest sense, including civil servants as well as politicians) that some might describe (generously) as unsavoury, I have almost always been able to find people that I can like and trust. It is these people that we need to foster and support. The private sector, with its fundamental remit of generating profit, will never be able to serve the interests of the poorest and the most marginalised. Only governments (at a structural level) and civil society organisations (generally at an individual level) have this theoretically within their remit. To achieve fairer, less unequal societies, we must therefore work primarily with governments, to help them deliver a better and safer world for all of their citizens. If princes (or governments) do not serve the interests of their citizens, I follow John Locke in maintaining that they have a right and a duty to replace them.[xxxvi]
[ii] But even this is hugely problematic, grounded as it is in traditional UN understandings of human rights, and paying insufficient attention to the responsibilities that are necessary for them to be assured.
[iii] Although highlighted as the fourth main point in the summary of Our Common Agenda, it is only treated relatively briefly in paras 38 and 39 of the report.
[iv] UN (2021) Our Common Agenda – Report of the Secretary General, New York: UN, p.4.
[viii] This could in effect be rotational among countries within the European Union, since UN membership is based on nation states rather than regional blocs.
[ix] Perhaps even somewhere like Costa Rica, which has not had any armed forces since 1949.
[x] Although this was only created in 2019 following restructuring of the UN’s peace and security operations.
[xi] For the present purposes taken to be D1, D2, ASG, USG, DSG and SG.
[xiv] I am not inclined to quota systems, which are very difficult to administer and often lead to a diminution in quality of appointments if there are insufficient people with the necessary skills. However, I appreciate that there are those who see such quotas as being the only way to achive scuh goals.
[xv] Dumitriu, P. (2020) Policies and platforms in support of learning: towards more coherence, co-ordination and convergence, Report of the Joint Inspection Unit, Geneva: United Nations.
[xix] Much of my work addresses this issue, but see in particular Unwin, T. (2017) Reclaiming Information and Communication Technologies for Development, Oxford: OUP.
[xxi] I regret that I have found it difficult to fathom out quite what the reason for this is, and whether it reflects a strong UN Secretary General (in which case he is very often wrong) or a weak one (also not exactly good) who is being manipulated by career-minded staff in the Secretariat. Perhaps he simply has too much on his plate, and is not prioritising the right things.
[xxii] This history, some of which I know about in considerable detail, remains to be told publicly by those who really know the full murky background.
[xxvii]Innovative uses of technology could effectively support the necessary decentralised co-ordination, although as yet most such consultative and collaborative systems have tended in practice to increase rather than reduce the ultimate control of those at the centre (or top) at whatever scale is being considered.
[xxxiii] See, for example, Martens continued work as Executive Director of the Global Policy Forum
[xxxiv] Much can be learnt about these from the extensive and long-established work of the World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/.
[xxxv] See, for example, some of my own work on effective multi-sector partnership building, including Unwin, T. (2005) Partnerships in Development Practice: Evidence from Multi-Stakeholder ICT4D Partnership Practice in Africa, Paris: UNESCO for the World Summit on the Information Society, Unwin, T. and Wong, A. (2012) Global Education Initiative: Retrospective on Partnerships for Education Development 2003-2011, Geneva: World Economic Forum, and Unwin, T. (2015) MultiStakeholder Partnerships in Information and Communication for Development Interventions, in International Encyclopedia of Digital Communication and Society, Chichester: Wiley, 634-44.
[xxxvi] Locke, J. (ed. by Laslett, P. (1988) Locke: Two Treatises of Government, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Now is the time to be thinking seriously about the kind of world that we wish to live in once Covid-19 has finished its rampage across Europe and North America.[i] Although its potential direct health impact in Africa and South Asia remains uncertain at the time of writing, countries within these continents have already seen dramatic disruption and much hardship as well as numerous deaths having been caused by the measures introduced by governments to restrict its spread. It is already clear that it is the poorest and most marginalised who suffer most, as witnessed, for example, by the impact of Modi’s lockdown in India on migrant workers.[ii]
This post highlights five likely global impacts that will be hastened by Covid-19, and argues that we need to use this disruption constructively to shape a better world in the future, rather than succumb to the potential and substantial damage that will be caused, especially to the lives of the world’s poorest and most marginalised. It may be that for many countries in the world, the impact of Covid-19 will be even more significant than was the impact of the 1939-45 war. Digital technologies are above all accelerators, and most of those leading the world’s major global corporations are already taking full advantage of Covid-19 to increase their reach and their profits.[iii]
The inexorable rise of China and the demise of the USA
Source: Hiram1555.com
I have written previously about the waxing of China and the waning of the USA; China is the global political-economic powerhouse of the present, not just of the future.[iv] One very significant impact of Covid-19 will be to increase the speed of this major shift in global power. Just as 1945 saw the beginning of the final end of the British Empire, so 2020 is likely to see the beginning of the end of the USA as the dominant global (imperial) power. Already, even in influential USAn publications, there is now much more frequent support for the view that the US is a failing state.[v] This transition is likely to be painful, and it will require world leaders of great wisdom to ensure that it is less violent than may well be the case.
The differences between the ways in which the USA and China have responded to Covid-19 have been marked, and have very significant implications for the political, social and economic futures of these states. Whilst little trust should be placed on the precise accuracy of reported Covid-19 mortality rate figures throughout the world, China has so far reported a loss of 3.2 people per million to the disease (as of 17 April, and thus including the 1290 uplift announced that day), whereas the USA has reported deaths of 8.38 per 100,000 (as of that date); moreover, China’s figures seem to have stabilised, whereas those for the USA continue to increase rapidly.[vi] These differences are not only very significant in human terms, but they also reflect a fundamental challenge in the relative significance of the individual and the community in US and Chinese society.
Few apart from hardline Republicans in the USA now doubt the failure of the Trump regime politically, socially, economically and culturally. This has been exacerbated by the US government’s failure to manage Covid-19 effectively (even worse than the UK government’s performance), and its insistent antagonism towards China through its deeply problematic trade-war[vii] even before the outbreak of the present coronavirus. Anti-Chinese rhetoric in the USA is but a symptom of the realisation of the country’s fundamental economic and policial weaknesses in the 21st century. President Trump’s persistent use of the term “Chinese virus” instead of Covid-19[viii] is also just a symptom of a far deeper malaise. Trump is sadly not the problem; the problem is the people and system that enabled him to come to power and in whose interests he is trying to serve (alongside his own). China seems likely to come out of the Covid-19 crisis much stronger than will the USA.[ix]
Whether people like it or not, and despite cries from the western bourgeoisie that it is unfair, and that the Chinese have lied about the extent of Covid-19 in their own country in its early stages, this is the reality. China is the dominant world power today, let alone tomorrow.
An ever more digital world
Source: Forbes.com
The digital technology sector is already the biggest winner from Covid-19. Everyone with access, knowledge and ability to pay for connectivity and digital devices has turned to digital technologies to continue with their work, maintain social contacts, and find entertainment during the lockdowns that have covered about one-third of the world’s population by mid-April.[x] Those who previously rarely used such technologies, have overnight been forced to use them for everything from buying food online, to maintaining contacts with relatives and friends.
There is little evidence that the tech sector was prepared for such a windfall in the latter part of 2019,[xi] but major corporations and start-ups alike have all sought to exploit its benefits as quickly as possible in the first few months of 2020, as testified by the plethora of announcements claiming how various technologies can win the fight against Covid-19.[xii]
One particularly problematic outcome has been the way in which digital tech champions and activists have all sought to develop new solutions to combat Covid-19. While sometimes this is indeed well intended, more often than not it is primarily so that they can benefit from funding that is made available for such activities by governments and donors, or primarily to raise the individual or corporate profile of those involved. For them, Covid-19 is a wonderful business opportunity. Sadly, many such initiatives will fail to deliver appropriate solutions, will be implemented after Covid-19 has dissipated, and on some occasions will even do more harm than good.[xiii]
There are many paradoxes and tensions in this dramatically increased role of digital technology after Covid-19. Two are of particular interest. First, many people who are self-isolating or social distancing are beginning to crave real, physical human contact, and are realising that communicating only over the Internet is insufficiently fulfilling. This might offer some hope for the future of those who still believe in the importance of non-digitally mediated human interaction, although I suspect that such concerns may only temporarily delay our demise into a world of cyborgs.[xiv] Second, despite the ultimate decline in the US economy and political power noted above, US corporations have been very well placed to benefit from the immediate impact of Covid-19, featuring in prominent initiatives such as UNESCO’s Global Education Coalition,[xv] or the coalition of pharmaceutical companies brought together by the Gates Foundation.[xvi]
Whatever the precise details, it is an absolute certainty that the dominance of digital technologies in everyone’s lives will increase very dramatically following Covid-19 and this will be exploited by those intent on reaping the profits from such expansion in their own interests.
Increasing acceptance of surveillance by states and companies: the end of privacy as we know it.
Source: Wired.com
A third, related, global impact of Covid-19 will be widely increased global acceptance of the roles of states and companies in digital surveillance. Already, before 2020, there was a growing, albeit insufficient, debate about the ethics of digital surveillance by states over issues such as crime and “terrorism”, and its implications for privacy.[xvii] However, some states, such as China, South Korea, Singapore and Israel, have already used digital technologies and big data analytics extensively and apparently successfully in monitoring and tracking the spread of Covid-19,[xviii] and other coalitions of states and the private sector are planning to encourage citizens to sign up to having fundamental aspects of what has previously been considered to be their private and personal health information made available to unknown others.[xix]
One problem with such technologies is that they require substantial numbers of people to sign up to and then use them. In more authoritarian states where governments can make such adherence obligatory by imposing severe penalties for failure to do so, they do indeed appear to be able to contribute to reduction in the spread of Covid-19 in the interests of the wider community. However, in more liberal democratic societies, which place the individual about the community in importance, it seems less likely that they will be acceptable.
Despite such concerns, the growing evidence promoted by the companies that are developing them that such digital technologies can indeed contribute to enhanced public health will serve as an important factor in breaking down public resistance to the use of surveillance technologies and big data analytics. Once again, this will ultimately serve the interest of those who already have greater political and economic power than it will the interests of the most marginalised.
Online shopping and the redesign of urban centres.
Source: Independent.co.uk
Self-isolation and social distancing have led to the dramatic emptying of towns and cities across the world. Businesses that have been unable to adapt to online trading have overnight been pushed into a critical survival situation, with governments in many of the richer countries of the world being “forced” to offer them financial bail-outs to help them weather the storm. Unfortunately, most of this money is going to be completely wasted and will merely create huge national debts for years into the future. People who rarely before used online shopping are now doing so because they believe that no other method of purchasing goods is truly safe.
The new reality will be that most people will have become so used to online shopping that they are unlikely to return in the future to traditional shopping outlets. Companies that have been unable to adjust to the new reality will fail. The character of our inner-city areas will change beyond recognition. This is a huge opportunity for the re-design of urban areas in creative, safe and innovative ways. Already, the environmental impact of a reduction in transport and pollution has been widely seen; wildlife is enjoying a bonanza; people are realising that their old working and socialising patterns may not have been as good as they once thought.[xx] Unfortunately, it is likely that this opportunity may not be fully grasped, and instead governments that lack leadership and vision will instead seek to prop up backward-looking institutions, companies and organisations, intent on preserving infrastructure and economic activities that are unfit for purpose in the post-pandemic world. Such a mentality will lead to urban decay and ghettoization, where people will fear to tread, and there is a real danger of a downward spiral of urban deprivation.
There are, though, many bright signs of innovation and creativity for those willing to do things differently. Shops and restaurants that have been able to find efficient trustworthy drivers are now offering new delivery services; students are able to draw on the plethora of online courses now available; new forms of communal activity are flourishing; and most companies are realising that they don’t actually need to spend money on huge office spaces, but can exploit their labour even more effectively by enabling them to work from home.
We must see the changes brought about by responses to Covid-19 as important opportunities to build for the future, and to create human-centred urban places that are also sensitive to the natural environments in which they are located.
Increasing global inequalities
Source: Gulfnews.com
The net outcome of the above four trends will lead inexorably to a fifth, and deeply concerning issue: the world will become an even more unequal place, where those who can adapt and survive will flourish, but where the most vulnerable and marginalised will become even more immiserated.
This is already all too visible. Migrant workers are being ostracised, and further marginalised.[xxi] In India, tens of thousands of labourers are reported to have left the cities, many of them walking home hundreds of kilometres to their villages.[xxii] In China, Africans are reported as being subjected to racist prejudice, being refused service in shops and evicted from their residences.[xxiii] In the UK, many food banks have had to close and it is reported that about 1.5. million people a day are going without food.[xxiv] The World Bank is reporting that an extra 40-50 million people across the world will be forced into poverty by Covid-19, especially in Africa.[xxv] People with disabilities have become even more forgotten and isolated.[xxvi] The list of immediate crises grows by the day.
More worrying still is that there is no certainty that these short-term impacts will immediately bounce-back once the pandemic has passed. It seems at least as likely that many of the changes will have become so entrenched that aspects of living under Covid-19 will become the new norm. Once again, those able to benefit from the changes will flourish, but the uneducated, those with disabilities, the ethnic minorities, people living in isolated areas, refugees, and women in patriarchal societies are all likely to find life much tougher in 2021 and 2022 even than they do at present. Much of this rising inequality is being caused, as noted above, by the increasing role that digital technologies are playing in people’s lives. Those who have access and can afford to use the Internet can use it for shopping, employment, entertainment, learning, and indeed most aspects of their lives. Yet only 59% of the world’s population are active Internet users.[xxvii]
Looking positively to the future.
People will respond in different ways to these likely trends over the next few years, but we will all need to learn to live together in a world where:
China is the global political economic power,
Our lives will become ever more rapidly experienced and mediated through digital technology,
Our traditional views of privacy are replaced by a world of surveillance,
Our towns and cities have completely different functions and designs, and
There is very much greater inequality in terms of opportunities and life experiences.
In dealing with these changes, it is essential to remain positive; to see Covid-19 as an opportunity to make the world a better place for everyone to live in, rather than just as a threat of further pain, misery and death, or an opportunity for a few to gain unexpected windfall opportunities to become even richer. Six elements would seem to be important in seeking to ensure that as many people as possible can indeed flourish once the immediate Covid-19 pandemic has dissipated:
First, these predictions should encourage all of us to prioritise more on enhancing the lives of the poorest and the most marginalised, than on ensuring economic growth that mainly benefits the rich and privileged. This applies at all scales, from designing national health and education services, to providing local, community level care provision.
This requires an increased focus on negotiating communal oriented initiatives and activities rather than letting the greed and selfishness of individualism continue to rule the roost.
Third, it is essential that we use this as an opportunity to regain our physical sentient humanity, and reject the aspirations of those who wish to create a world that is only experienced and mediated through digital technology. We need to regain our very real experiences of each other and the world in which we live through our tastes, smells, the sounds we hear, the touches we feel, and the sights we see.
Fourth, it seems incredibly important that we create a new global political order safely to manage a world in which China replaces the USA as the dominant global power. The emergence of new political counterbalances, at a regional level as with Europe, South Asia, Africa and Latin America seems to be a very important objective that remains to be realised. Small states that choose to remain isolated, however arrogant they are about the “Great”ness of their country, will become ever more vulnerable to the vagaries of economic, political and demographic crisis.
Fifth, we need to capitalise on the environmental impact of Covid-19 rapidly to shape a world of which we are but a part, and in which we care for and co-operate with the rich diversity of plant and animal life that enjoys the physical richness of our planet. This will require a comprehensive and rigorous evaluation of the harm caused to our world by the design and use of digital technologies.[xxviii]
Finally, we need to agree communally on the extent to which individual privacy matters, and whether we are happy to live in a world of omnipresent surveillance by companies (enabling them to reap huge profits from our selves as data) and governments (to maintain their positions of power, authority and dominance). This must not be imposed on us by powerful others. It is of paramount importance that there is widespread informed public and communal discussion about the future of surveillance in a post-Covid-19 era.
I trust that these comments will serve to provoke and challenge much accepted dogma and practice. Above all, let’s try to think of others more than we do ourselves, let’s promote the reduction of inequality over increases in economic growth, and let’s enjoy an integral, real and care-filled engagement with the non-human natural world.
[iv] See, for example, discussion in Unwin, T. (2017) Reclaiming ICT4D, Oxford: Oxford University Press. I appreciate that such arguments infuriate many people living in the USA,
[vi] Based on figures from https://coronavirus.thebaselab.com/ on 15th April 2020. For comparison, Spain had 39.74 reported deaths per 100,000, Italy 35.80, and the UK 18.96.
[ix] China’s massive long-term strategic investments across the world, not least through its 一带一路 (Belt and Road) initiative, have placed it in an extremely strong position to reap the benefits of its revitalised economy from 2021 onwards (for a good summary of this initiative written in January 2020 see https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative)
A week ago, I wrote a post about the potential of crowdsourcing and the use of hashtags for gathering enhanced data on infection rates for Covid-19. Things have moved rapidly since then as companies, civil society organisations, international organisations, academics and donors have all developed countless initiatives to try to respond. Many of these initiatives seem to be more about the profile and profits of the organisations/entities involved than they do about making a real impact on the lives of those who will suffer most from Covid-19. Yesterday, I wrote another post on my fears that donors and governments will waste huge amounts of money, time and effort on Covid-19 to little avail, since they have not yet learnt the lessons of past failures.
I still believe that crowdsourcing could have the potential, along with many other ways of gathering data, to enhance decision making at this critical time. However the dramatic increase in the number of such initiatives gives rise to huge concern. Let us learn from past experience in the use of digital technologies in development, and work together in the interests of those who are likely to suffer the most. Eight issues are paramount when designing a digital tech intervention to help reduce the impact of Covid-19, especially through crowdsourcing type initiatives:
Don’t duplicate what others are already doing
Treat privacy and security very carefully
Don’t detract from official and (hopefully) accurate information
Keep it simple
Ask questions that will be helpful to those trying to respond to the pandemic
Ensure that there are at least some questions that are the same in all surveys if there are multiple initiatives being done by different organisations
Work with a globally agreed set of terminology and hashtags (#)
Collaborate and share
Don’t duplicate what others are already doing
As the very partial list of recent initiatives at the end of this post indicates, many crowdsourcing projects have been created across the world to gather data from people about infections and behaviours relating to Covid-19. Most of these are well-intentioned, although there will also be those that are using such means unscrupulously also to gather data for other purposes. Many of these initiatives ask very similar questions. Not only is it a waste of resources to design and build several competing platforms in a country (or globally), but individual citizens will also soon get bored of responding to multiple different platforms and surveys. The value of each initiative will therefore go down, especially if there is no means of aggregating the data. Competition between companies may well be an essential element of the global capitalist system enabling the fittest to accrue huge profits, but it is inappropriate in the present circumstances where there are insufficient resources available to tackle the very immediate responses needed across the world.
Treat privacy and security very carefully
Most digital platforms claim to treat the security of their users very seriously. Yet the reality is that many fail to protect the privacy of much personal information sufficiently, especially when software is developed rapidly by people who may not prioritise this issue and cut corners in their desire to get to market as quickly as possible. Personal information about health status and location is especially sensitive. It can therefore be hugely risky for people to provide information about whether they are infected with a virus that is as easily transmitted as Covid-19, while also providing their location so that this can then be mapped and others can see it. Great care should be taken over the sort of information that is asked and the scale at which responses are expected. It is not really necessary to know the postcode/zipcode of someone, if just the county or province will do.
Don’t detract from official and (hopefully) accurate information
Use of the Internet and digital technologies have led to a plethora of false information being propagated about Covid-19. Not only is this confusing, but it can also be extremely dangerous. Please don’t – even by accident – distract people from gaining the most important and reliable information that could help save their lives. In some countries most people do not trust their governments; in others, governments may not have sufficient resources to provide the best information. In these instances, it might be possible to work with the governments to ehance their capacity to deliver wise advice. Whatever you do, try to point to the most reliable globally accepted infomation in the most appropriate languages (see below for some suggestions).
Keep it simple
Many of the crowdsourcing initiatives currently available or being planned seem to invite respondents to complete a fairly complex and detailed list of questions. Even when people are healthy it could be tough for them to do so, and this could especially be the case for the elderly or digitally inexperienced who are often the most vulnerable. Imagine what it would be like for someone who has a high fever or difficulty in breathing trying to fill it in.
Ask questions that will be helpful to those trying to respond to the pandemic
It is very difficult to ask clear and unambiguous questions. It is even more difficult to ask questions about a field that you may not know much about. Always work with people who might want to use the data that your initiative aims to generate. If you are hoping, for example, to produce data that could be helpful in modelling the pandemic, then it is essential to learn from epidemiologists and those who have much experience in modelling infectious diseases. It is also essential to ensure that the data are in a format that they can actually use. It’s all very well producing beautful maps, but if they use different co-ordinate systems or boundaries from those used by government planners they won’t be much use to policy makers.
Ensure that there are at least some questions that are the same in all surveys if there are multiple initiatives being done by different organisations
When there are many competing surveys being undertaken by different organisations about Covid-19, it is important that they have some identical questions so that these can then be aggregated or compared with the results of other initiatives. It is pointless having multiple initiatives the results of which cannot be combined or compared.
Work with a globally agreed set of terminology and hashtags (#)
The field of data analytics is becoming ever more sophisticated, but if those tackling Covid-19 are to be able readily to use social media data, it would be very helpful if there was some consistency in the use of terminology and hashtags. There remains an important user-generated element to the creation of hashtags (despite the control imposed by those who create and own social media platforms), but it would be very helpful to those working in the field if some consistency could be encouraged or even recommended by global bodies and UN agencies such as the WHO and the ITU.
Collaborate and share
Above all, in these unprecendented times, it is essential for those wishing to make a difference to do so collaboratively rather than competitively. Good practices should be shared rather than used to generate individual profit. The scale of the potential impact, especially in the weakest contexts is immense. As a recent report from the Imperial College MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis notes, without interventions Covid-19 “would have resulted in 7.0 billion infections and 40 million deaths globally this year. Mitigation strategies focussing on shielding the elderly (60% reduction in social contacts) and slowing but not interrupting transmission (40% reduction in social contacts for wider population) could reduce this burden by half, saving 20 million lives, but we predict that even in this scenario, health systems in all countries will be quickly overwhelmed. This effect is likely to be most severe in lower income settings where capacity is lowest: our mitigated scenarios lead to peak demand for critical care beds in a typical low-income setting outstripping supply by a factor of 25, in contrast to a typical high-income setting where this factor is 7. As a result, we anticipate that the true burden in low income settings pursuing mitigation strategies could be substantially higher than reflected in these estimates”.
Resources
This concluding section provides quick links to generally agreed reliable and simple recommendations relating to Covid-19 that could be included in any crowdsourcing platform (in the appropriate language), and a listing of just a few of the crowdsourcing initiatives that have recently been developed.
The following are currently three of the best sourcs for global information about Covid-19 – although I do wish that they clarified that “infections” are only “recorded infections”, and that data around deaths should be shown as “deaths per 1000 people” (or similar density measures) and depicted on choropleth maps.
The meeting was designed to set in motion all of the activities and processes for the Inception Phase of the eight-year Hub, focusing especially on
The Hub’s overall vision
The work of the three main spheres of activity
Research
Innovation, and
Engagement
The governance structure
The theory of change
The ethical and safeguarding frameworks
The communication strategy, and
The use of Agile and adaptive approaches
The Hub aims to work in partnership to “galvanise a global community in pursuit of catalytic impact, focusing on evidence so we can collectively abandon what does not work and reallocate funding and effort to what does”. Moreover, it is “committed to using rigorous evidence and innovation to improve the lives of the most marginalised”.
Above all, as the pictures below indicate, this meeting formed an essential part in helping to build the trust and good working relationships that are so essential in ensuring that this initiative, launched in June 2019, will achieve the ambitious goals that it has set.
[A similr version of this post was first published on the UNESCO Chair in ICT4D site, 1st August 2019]
It was a great honour to have been invited – a few hours beforehand – to give one of the inaugural WSIS TalkX presentations last Thursday evening as WSIS 2019 drew towards its close. Seven of us had been asked if we would like to talk about our lives in technology for around 5 minutes. I opted to go last – just before the closing cocktail party. Several colleagues had to leave before the end to get to other commitments and so they spoke first; I knew I would be remaining to enjoy the wine. Before me there were some amazing, inspirational speakers: Stephenie Rodriguez, Joel Radvanyi, Gloria Kimbwala, Ayanna T Samuels, Sebastian Behaghel and Ted Chen…
With little time to prepare it was difficult to know quite what to say. We had been asked to tell our own stories, and so I chose five images as five “scenes” around which to tell my tale. Posting the images on social media, I had hoped that people might be able to see them as I spoke…
In reality, I’m not sure that many people actually saw the pictures, and I know many were rather confused when I began and introduced myself in the persona of one of my aliases. I had, though, been introduced by the Master of Ceremonies as someone learning from the life of Hassan-i Sabbah…
To see and hear what I had to say, click on the image above (or here). Fully to understand it, though, you would need to listen to the other six talks, because I tried hard to link it to what the speakers had to say – especially, for example, about the best university in the world, and the SDGs!
The basic message is simple – if we really believe in empowering the poor and the marginalised through digital technologies we must become their servants…
It was great to be part of the DFID-funded technology for education 
It was a great honour to have been invited – a few hours beforehand – to give one of the inaugural WSIS TalkX presentations last Thursday evening as 
Tim Unwin's Blog 
