Posted on behalf of Simon Batterbury.
lawrence
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Batterbury,S <[log in to unmask]>
>> Sent: Friday, 09 March 2001 00:02
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Cc: Batterbury,S
>> Subject: RE: The Geo-ethics anti-democracy & AIDS
>>
>> I have just returned from a month in Burkina Faso, increasingly hit by
>> HIV/AIDS. There is indeed a problem, as Paul alludes. In Ouagadougou, the
>> central hospital has wards of AIDS victims and it is not uncommon to see
>> individuals in the final stages of aids related illness,shunned by the
>> community, begging on the streets (although they seemed to have been
>> rounded up and put out of sight for the African Film Festival 2 weeks
>> ago).
>> 1) A very severe problem is the potential withdrawal of US government
>> funding to condom distribution programmes under Bush. These longstanding
>> programmes (often supported with 'population control' motives, I must add)
>> have actually made a difference in this ex-socialist country for 15 years
>> (people really listen to media reports and messages). That's one up for
>> neo-liberalism. Health workers are now extremely worried about the
>> implications of reduced condom availability particularly in rural areas.
>> Other donors may emerge to replace USAID, of course, if they are forced to
>> withdraw. I attended a television event in Ouaga at which AIDS awareness
>> videos were being trialled in front of HIV infected womens groups, doctors
>> and media people, and talked to people at the SIDAII (AIDSII) project. I
>> also talked to young returnee migrants in northern villages. People seem
>> very concerned. Canadian funding is already being improved.
>> 2) Other causes of increasing infection rates are however the mass
>> xenophobia sweeping Ivory Coast, where Burkinabes have sought work on a
>> seasonal basis and made their homes for over a century. These is now
>> political turmoil and an economic downturn in IC. Infection rates are
>> higher among the migrant workers of Abidjan and the coastal plantations -
>> basically because they leave their wives at home in Burkina and sex is
>> readily available. But with up to 300 trucks a day crossing the border
>> back into Burkina bearing returning migrants forced out of Ivory Coast by
>> violence or property seizures, now is a critical time to make sure that
>> people are aware of at least basic protection measures as they are
>> re-absorbed into towns and villages. (incidentally, Abidjan was cited in
>> Robert Kaplans dreadful article in the Atlantic Monthly in 1994, 'the
>> coming arnarchy' as a worst case of ethnic violence and migrant poverty -
>> he is partially proven correct by recent events).
>> 3) Also, prostitution has risen rapidly - shockingly so - in the urban
>> areas I know best - not only Ouaga's periurban shacks , but the bars and
>> hotels of the city centre in Ouaga and the 'boites' of small towns like
>> Kongoussi are good sites of business. Prostitutes travel from Ghana
>> (moving from soft currency to hard currency, into the CFA zone pegged to
>> the french franc) but there are Burkinabes and Ivoriens as well.
>>
>> Are all of these issues pegged to the failure of the west to effect
>> resource transfers for health care and other institutions? The first might
>> be - the second and third only peripherally. Pursuing an argument that
>> sees an economic motivation behind exploitation and inequality - an an
>> economic solution to these problems - can get at some of the reasons
>> behind the AIDS crisis, but it also can blind the researcher to
>> sociocultural factors. The crisis in IC has a deepseated ethnic base -
>> only the trigger is a recent economic downturn. And is prostitution only a
>> result of financial need and money in the pocket, and not of demand (which
>> differs by ethnic group, position in the social hierarchy, and location as
>> well as wealth)?
>>
>> Were a massive resource transfer to be initiated to Burkina, I know where
>> it would go - to the 55,000 functionaries and to their leaders, and to the
>> multi-national entrepreneurial class. Not to the rural and urban poor.
>>
>> I passed Charles Taylor's villa every day in Ouaga - the Burkina regime
>> supported him and gave him asylum, despite the accusation of war crimes
>> against him in Liberia. Under the current regime with these credentials,
>> the chances of a large resource transfer being handled in an equitable
>> fashion by the state are slim.
>> And Burkina is a country that 'works' pretty well, and actually maintains
>> economic growth. Next door in Niger, everything is harder and poverty is
>> far worse.
>> What I am getting at is that
>> a) western neoliberal regimes have had unintended consequences in
>> subSaharan Africa - not all of them negative. Donor sponsored programmes
>> work. It is not a black and white issue where we can blame the Europeans
>> and North Americans.
>> b) local capacities to absorb resource transfers is limited. Just look at
>> World Bank project funding to prove that point. And we shouldn't trust
>> those in power to uphold basic rights.
>> c) explanatory chains usually lead to uncovering social, cultural,
>> political and economic factors behind events, that interpenetrate (That is
>> why I did not become an economic geographer - just a geographer).
>>
>> I would also point out that Burkina had a very ideologically driven
>> socialist revolution under Sankara in the mid 1980s. Most links with the
>> West were severed, and this provides a test case for an abrupt severing of
>> colonial ties to neoliberal western powers (even the Peace Corps were
>> banned) favoured by the hard left. Things did not get much better
>> materially in this period - even if the people gained enormous respect
>> for, and from, their errant Sankariste leader.
>>
>> That it has taken this many words to make a simple point about the need to
>> avoid simplistic analysis, testifies to the multiple layers that the
>> simplistic attribution of blame fails to address. And I am not a
>> specialist in the AIDS problem in Burkina, so I must defer to others who
>> can correct me.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Mike Kesby
>> To: [log in to unmask]
>> Sent: 3/8/01 9:25 PM
>> Subject: The Geo-ethics anti-democracy
>>
>> Statement only. Absolutely not for discussion. Do not reply to this
>> message. . . . I have no interest in what you think anyway . . . . :-)
>>
>> (sorry no hypertext links to labyrinthine web sites - mine is rather
>> small actually - although it does have a picture of me on it - just in
>> case anyone thought I was some kind of international cartel conspiracy -
>> rather than a embodied subject located in time and space)
>>
>> Re Paul's "The geo-ethics of the Holocaust"
>>
>> I do not think I would go as far as to say that Paul was LYING about his
>> interest in the fate of the millions with HIV/AIDS in the developing
>> world, I just think it was unfortunate that he seemed to USE their
>> misery as just another opportunity to repeat his, by now well known,
>> theories about the failings of western liberal democracies. How often
>> have privileged academics plundered the experience of the 'other' in
>> order to embellish their own Eurocentric intellectual preoccupations I
>> wonder.
>>
>> What Paul says about the lack of resource distribution and the west's
>> disinterest in Africa's pandemic are true enough. I just don't know how
>> much succour HIV positive Africans would take from his implied
>> conclusion 'wait till the downfall of democracy and you will be alright
>> mate'. I don't remember women ever gaining much comfort from the slogan
>> 'equal rights AFTER the revolution, for example.
>
dr. lawrence d. berg
department of geography
okanagan university college
7000 college way
vernon, b.c., V1B 2N5
canada
phone: 250/545-7291 ext. 2264
fax: 250/545-3277
email1: [log in to unmask]
email2: [log in to unmask]
www: http://www.geog.ouc.bc.ca/geog/berg/Berghome/
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