FRIENDS NEWSLETTER No. 58 May 2015 Contents Page EDITORIAL.................................................................................................................... 1 RECEPTIONS FOR FORMER OFFICIALS.............................................................. 4 CO-EDITORIAL ............................................................................................................ 5 TO TALK OF MANY THINGS .................................................................................... 7-8 The breaking of bones, by Aamir Ali ......................................................................... 7 TRIBUTE TO ABBAS AMMAR .................................................................................. 9-21 Introduction, by Jack Martin....................................................................................... 9 Dr. Ammar’s gift, by Gisela Schneider....................................................................... 10 My debt to Abbas Ammar, by Louis Emmerij........................................................... 12 Remembering Abbas Ammar, by Aamir Ali, George Kanawaty, John Sykes, Padmanabha Gopinath ....................................................................... 16-21 REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST...................................................................... 22-26 Memoirs of an ILO expert in Cyprus, by George Kanawaty.................................... 22 My first mission to Latin America, by Karl-H. Ebel ................................................. 25 Le BIT dans les années 50, par Marianne Nussbaumer .............................................. 26 GALLIMAUFRY ............................................................................................................ 27-45 The right to vote from abroad – a contentious issue of political participation and representation of expatriate citizens, by Werner Sengenberger ....................................................................................... 27 Back to Africa: in search of meaning, by Assefa Bequele ........................................ 31 Poetry of interpretation, by Jo Christiane Ledakis .................................................... 34 The menaces or benefits of technology, by Bettina Ribes Gil ................................... 37 La vie dans la banlieue est de Paris et les attentats de Charlie Hebdo, par Hiromasa Suzuki ................................................................................. 43 LETTERS TO THE EDITORS ..................................................................................... 46-49 Marianne Nussbaumer, Nirmala Kutty, Eileen M. Hinz Pocock, George Kanawaty, Charles Barbeau NAMES AND NEWS...................................................................................................... 50 Jacques Balanche, Joan Drever-Robb, David Dror, Heidrun Kaiser Hiromasa Suzuki CEUX QUI NOUS ONT QUITTES .............................................................................. 51
TO TALK OF MANY THINGS .................................................................................... 7-8
The breaking of bones, by Aamir Ali ......................................................................... 7
TRIBUTE TO ABBAS AMMAR .................................................................................. 9-21
Introduction , by Jack Martin ....................................................................................... 9 Dr. Ammar’s gift , by Gisela Schneider ....................................................................... 10 My debt to Abbas Ammar, by Louis Emmerij ........................................................... 12 Remembering Abbas Ammar, by Aamir Ali, George Kanawaty, John Sykes, Padmanabha Gopinath ....................................................................... 16-21
REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST ...................................................................... 22-26
Memoirs of an ILO expert in Cyprus, by George Kanawaty .................................... 22 My first mission to Latin America, by Karl-H. Ebel ................................................. 25 Le BIT dans les années 50, par Marianne Nussbaumer .............................................. 26
The right to vote from abroad – a contentious issue of political participation and representation of expatriate citizens, by Werner Sengenberger ....................................................................................... 27 Back to Africa: in search of meaning, by Assefa Bequele ........................................ 31 Poetry of interpretation, by Jo Christiane Ledakis .................................................... 34 The menaces or benefits of technology, by Bettina Ribes Gil ................................... 37 La vie dans la banlieue est de Paris et les attentats de Charlie Hebdo, par Hiromasa Suzuki ................................................................................. 43
LETTERS TO THE EDITORS ..................................................................................... 46-49
Marianne Nussbaumer, Nirmala Kutty, Eileen M. Hinz Pocock, George Kanawaty, Charles Barbeau
NAMES AND NEWS ...................................................................................................... 50
Jacques Balanche, Joan Drever-Robb, David Dror, Heidrun Kaiser Hiromasa Suzuki
CEUX QUI NOUS ONT QUITTES .............................................................................. 51
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EDITORIAL
There are many disadvantages to growing old. One of them is that it becomes so much more difficult to do things that one has been doing effortlessly for years. I found this out to my cost this winter when it became quite obvious to the most casual observer – even to myself – that I can no longer trust myself on skis. I was never a great skier, but I used to enjoy the exhilaration of hurtling down the slopes on a cold and sunny winter’s day. No longer. My painful attempts to descend an easy slope this winter must, to the above-mentioned casual observer, have resembled the efforts of a handicapped spider to cross a patch of sticky, wet, white paint. So it is in many aspects of my daily life.
But there are also advantages to getting old. One of them became clear to me when I was riding in a crowded Geneva tram recently and a charming young lady offered to give up her seat to me (I refused this kind offer of course – I couldn’t understand why she was offering me her seat! – but she rewarded me with a wonderful smile). People seem to be kinder and more tolerant to the elderly. Of course the elderly are always forgetting things and losing things, and that must make them terribly difficult to live with. What younger people don’t understand is that the elderly have so many more things to remember, so that their memory has to become more and more selective with age. They concentrate their efforts on remembering the really important things – i.e. things which happened a long time ago, where they have a tremendous advantage over younger people. So dear readers, you must not worry if you forget where you left the keys to your front door, or the name of one of your grandchildren. Let the young ones worry about such matters. Your job is to tell them about all the important things that happened in your life, perhaps before they were born, and which you can recall as if they happened yesterday.
Which brings me back to this Newsletter, one of whose purposes must surely be to educate the youngsters who now run the ILO about events in the history of this Organization, and about the men and women who made the ILO what it is today. For that we must rely on the memories of our readers who, if they are not yet elderly, soon will be. This issue contains several such contributions from our readers – including in particular a whole Chapter devoted to the memory of Dr. Abbas Ammar, as well as a very welcome and charming tribute from Charles Barbeau to the memory of Francis Wolf. For my part I would like to pay tribute to three remarkable former colleagues who have left us in recent months.
Bert Zoeteweij
Bert died in January this year. A brilliant economist, he had been recruited to the ILO (I believe by John Riches, then Economic Adviser) from the Central Bank of the Netherlands, and when I joined the Office he was Assistant Economic Adviser under Norton Franklin. He was also very close to Dr. Ammar (I had hoped to persuade him to contribute to the tributes to Dr. Ammar in this issue of the Newsletter, but alas it was not to be), and strongly supported him in the conception and launching of the WEP. Following the reorganization of the Office in 1964 he was appointed Deputy Chief (and some years later Chief) of the Research and Planning Department (RPD), and became deeply involved in the introduction of the system of programme planning and budgeting which still exists today (although it has no doubt undergone many changes). My association with Bert began in 1968 when I joined RPD as chief of a small Branch that assisted the Director-General in writing his reports and speeches. He provided me with invaluable advice and support in the preparation of the report on the WEP for the 1969 Conference, and he then gave me more and more responsibility in the programme planning system. We developed a very close working relationship that was to last for the next seven years.
Bert was never a very popular person in the ILO, and he became distinctly unpopular as the Chief of the Department responsible for programme planning. “It is not part of my job
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description that I should seek to be popular” he once said to me. He could be quite outspoken in his criticisms and ruthless in his analyses. He was sceptical about the value of many, if not most, ILO standards, which often brought him into open conflict with the lawyers in the Office. On one occasion Wilfred Jenks (then PDDG) was so outraged that he was prompted to accuse Bert, in a minute addressed to the Director-General, of “fouling the ILO’s nest” by suggesting that a country should not be criticised for failing to respect a Convention that it had ratified. Nevertheless, when Jenks became Director-General and was faced with enormous budgetary and financial difficulties because of the non-payment of the US contributions, he realized the importance of having a clear-minded, conscientious person like Bert in charge of programme planning. Gradually, a relationship based on mutual respect developed between the two of them.
Bert was not always an easy person to work for, but he was an excellent chief, scrupulously fair and honest. I just had to learn to develop a thick skin and not to take offence whenever he made a devastating comment on something that I had written. I learned many things from him, but what really sticks with me now, as I write these lines, is his insistence on clarity in English drafting. He could not stand vague or woolly expressions. “What does this mean?” he would ask about some obscure phrase that I had put in a draft. And when I was unable to give him a sufficiently clear or convincing reply, he would say: “Well, since you cannot define it, it may not exist”. He was right - the meaningless, unfortunate expression was deleted. And when he asked me for my views on something that he had written, as he increasingly did, I could be equally outspoken with him, and often succeeded in persuading him to tone down or change altogether an excessively vicious or negative message that he wanted to send to another Department. In spite of our differences, Bert and I complemented each other. We were a good team.
In the end, however, Bert had to pay the price for his unpopularity. When Francis Blanchard became Director-General and reorganized the Office, Bert was removed from programme planning and put in charge of a think-tank specially created for him. For Bert this was a disaster, for it meant that he no longer wielded any influence over ILO programmes or the allocation of resources. I was appointed chief of the new programme planning bureau (PROGRAM). He became an increasingly unhappy man, and before long took early retirement. We still occasionally saw each other, but although he always assured me that he did not resent my taking his place, our relationship was no longer the same. I felt very sorry about that, because he had played an important part in my life and in my career at the ILO.
Georges Spyropoulos
Voilà encore un excellent collègue pour qui j’avais beaucoup d’estime, et qui nous a quittés en décembre dernier. Georges faisait partie de l’équipe d’une petite unité – the Special Research and Reports Division (RRD) dirigé par Bob Cox – à laquelle j’étais recruté en 1960, et dont faisaient également partie des fonctionnaires qui, comme Georges, allaient tous occuper des postes importants au Bureau par la suite: Aamir Ali, Roberto Payró, Kyril Tidmarsh… et moi-même. Ils étaient tous jeunes, et moi j’étais encore plus jeune, la nouvelle recrue. Le jour de mon arrivée, je vis entrer dans mon bureau un grand bonhomme avec un grand sourire qui me dit : « Monsieur Martin, je suis Spyropoulos, et je viens vous inviter à déjeuner ». Au cours de ce déjeuner j’ai à peine pu placer un mot, mais j’ai appris beaucoup de choses sur le BIT, sur notre service, sur nos collègues, sur les personnalités des hauts fonctionnaires du Bureau, sur le Conseil d’administration, mais aussi sur lui-même, sa famille et la Grèce. C’était le premier de beaucoup de déjeuners que nous avons pris ensemble jusqu’à sa retraite.
Je crois que la seule occasion que j’ai eue de travailler directement avec Georges était pour la préparation du Rapport du Directeur général à la Conférence de 1963 sur le Programme et la Structure de l’OIT. Ce rapport était pour David Morse un défi important. C’était
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l’époque de la guerre froide et de la décolonisation. Les confrontations Est-Ouest, et l’accession à l’indépendance de nombreux pays en voie de développement qui sont devenus membres de l’OIT, ont donné lieu à des controverses, des conflits et des tensions qui menaçaient l’existence même de notre Organisation. Dans son rapport Morse devait présenter des propositions pour réformer les programmes et les structures de l’OIT afin de faire face à ces défis. C’était donc un rapport à haut risque. Plusieurs projets ont dû être préparés pour chaque chapitre, chaque phrase était examinée à la loupe. Georges et moi nous étions chargés de préparer des chapitres sur des programmes techniques, en consultation avec les Divisions techniques concernées, et nous avons dû travailler très étroitement ensemble, guidés par Bob Cox, et surveillés par le Cabinet. Georges a été d’un grand secours pour moi. Il m’a donné beaucoup de bons conseils et beaucoup d’encouragement, toujours avec ce large sourire, et c’est surtout grâce à lui que nous sommes sortis de cette épreuve sans trop de difficultés. Quant au rapport auquel nous avons contribué, la Conférence a continué ses discussions en 1964 et 1965, et elle a adopté des conclusions sur les programmes de l’OIT quelques années plus tard. Mais ce n’est que pendant les années 1980, quand Francis Blanchard était Directeur général, que des conclusions sur des réformes de structure ont été adoptées.
Par la suite, Georges et moi nous avons poursuivi des carrières bien différentes au Bureau – lui du côté des relations professionnelles, de l’Institut, des conditions du travail ; moi au Cabinet, à PROGRAM, EMPLOI, RELCONF – mais nous avons gardé le contact, et surtout l’habitude de passer un bon moment ensemble de temps en temps à l’heure du déjeuner. Quand il arrivait que lui et moi nous avions des différences d’opinion (c’était notamment le cas quand j’étais à PROGRAM, une époque de ma carrière quand j’avais des différences avec tout le monde !), il me téléphonait pour me dire: « Ecoute Jack, j’ai reçu ta note, mais je ne suis pas d’accord ; tu es libre pour déjeuner ? ». Et c’est comme cela que nos différences ont pu être résolues.
Quand Georges a pris sa retraite, j’ai perdu le contact avec lui – comme cela arrive hélas trop souvent entre retraités. Mais je garde le souvenir d’un admirable collègue – toujours aimable, toujours souriant, un grand travailleur plein de bonne volonté et de bons conseils, un homme très engagé, toujours à l’écoute de ce qui se passait autour de lui ou dans le monde.
Jimmy Dey
The name of Jimmy Dey is unlikely to appear in any history of the ILO, but he was typical of the thousands of ILO officials who have over the years quietly, discreetly, anonymously but effectively contributed to the reputation and the success of the ILO in many ways and in many fields. Until his retirement in 1975 he had been a field expert, and subsequently a Headquarters official of F/MAN. Until then I had never met or heard of Jimmy, but he came to my attention when I was in PROGRAM and looking for a consultant to help us on some project (I think it was for the writing of a manual) which required a good knowledge of ILO procedures and financial regulations. Somebody (I suspect that it was John Hunt) said that Jimmy was just the person we needed. Indeed he was. He produced exactly what we wanted well within the deadline, and then was constantly in demand for his excellent writing skills, for his management experience and above all for his reliability and other personal qualities. He died in February of this year, but it was only after his death that we learned that he had celebrated his hundredth birthday last September. Had we known that, we would, in accordance with our usual practice, have paid tribute to Jimmy and congratulated him on becoming a centenarian in the last issue of the Newsletter. Now I must do that posthumously. In doing so, let me quote this little gem from an article that he wrote for this Newsletter in 2003:
“For 9 years in the field I contributed to the Pension Fund at the P.5 level. Then I transferred to HQ for 5 years and contributed at the P.4 level. My pension was fixed at the
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P.4 level. As a true Scot I found this unfair and vowed to live until 90 in order to compensate for the neglected P.5 contributions.”
Right to the end Jimmy set himself ambitious objectives … and he achieved them!
18 March 2015 Jack Martin
RECEPTIONS FOR FORMER OFFICIALS
The dates for the 2015 receptions are:
Thursday, 28 May Thursday, 10 December N.B.: In view of the renovation work in the ILO Building, both receptions this year will take place in the ILO Restaurant, R2 North. Please note that you will once again be requested to contribute 5 Frs. towards the cost of these receptions.
15 April 2015 Jack Martin
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CO-EDITORIAL
In this edition of the Newsletter, you will find again a variety of contributions. Some address tried and tested themes (e.g. George and Karl on ILO memories). Others venture into new areas – Bettina writes about the delights and horrors of the technological revolution, Werner writes about the rights of expatriates to vote in national elections. (I encouraged Werner to write on this subject, so incensed was I at the hurdles that made it so difficult for my spouse and I to cast our votes in national elections from abroad.) Masa provides his views on demonstrations in France earlier this year (guess what, he takes a rather ILO view of the matter…). And we asked Assefa to tell about his initiative for the African child. This is an instance of rare institution-building that combines principles and skills honed at the ILO, far-sighted vision, pristine will-power and – noted by Assefa himself – considerable grace, that rare yet essential element in human endeavour.
All in all, there is a bit for everyone here, both prose and poetry, serious and otherwise. You will note that Aamir is back with us, in leaps and bounds. In the last meeting of our editorial board, he had much to say. One of his points related to the fact that this time around, we have had to face the difficulty of too much material, rather than too little. Some contributions have been put off until the next issue, while we have managed to fit in most, respecting the number of grosso modo 50 pages. This is because we cannot expect our readers to read more than 50 pages in one gulp. As a general point, he said that several shorter items are more palatable than fewer long ones.
So, in short, dear readers, please keep your contributions coming – and please keep them short, to fit about two or three pages of your Newsletter.
* * *
Two of my favourite people during my years at the ILO have just joined our ranks, having achieved “jubilación” after more than 60 years of service between the two of them. These are Duncan Campbell and Philippe Egger.
Rather than disappear gently into the night – or merely with the empty crack of a champagne bottle – they decided to leave the Office with a farewell dialogue. When asked by their interlocutor at the podium “Why a dialogue?”, one of them responded “Well, in part because I would be lonely and a little scared, up here all by myself… and besides, he is an indulgent friend.”
There was no indulgence, in terms of taking it easy in these last moments as hard-working officials, nor in pulling the punches, when it came to considering the work left undone, and where the ILO should go forward. And this was no facile admonition while they sit on the side-lines – Philippe intends to write on some of the issues he was not able to in the last many years of fonctionnaire-hood, while Duncan will be joining Cornell University in the first instance.
This was not a self-indulgent dialogue in terms of holding forth on their achievements, nor scratching each other’s backs. In going over these issues, my two friends raised some of the thorny perennial issues that our readers will recall.
• The relationship between international trade and international labour standards, and the nagging distance between theory, principles and practice. What can the ILO do for those outside the safety net of both national and international standards? They raised questions from the Preamble to the Constitution, as well as the 1947 Havana
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Conference, while recalling that the ILC will revisit the conundrum of informality in June 2015.
• How can the multilateral system reinvent itself to discuss meaningfully with practical results issues of minimum wages and collective bargaining and monetary and fiscal policy? In this respect, recent research and statements by the World Bank saying that labour market regulations are not necessarily negative for employment and economic growth, and may actually be good in some ways, were noted as a victory.
• The relationship between lawyers and economists within the house, and the role of research. In connection with the latter, the advice of Hans Singer was iterated “Research has to be policy – oriented to serve the lot of the underdog…”
• Perhaps that ultimately we are a liberal organization, since the standards we prescribe are so general that they leave room for our constituents to get their reforms more or less right or wrong. That’s where we, the members of the Office, come in, to guide them to interpret ILS based on comparative knowledge and advice on what might work better.
• The relative importance of data, how it should inform knowledge, and advice from that. One of them said in this respect “Get your hands coated with data, mix it with standards, and deliver the result to the constituents in policy advice.”
A colleague from the floor asserted that in real life, decisions were not made nor disputes settled with data and research, but rather by the balance of power. Agreeing that the room for consensus building was shrinking in today’s polarized world, one of my friends concluded by paraphrasing a remark made notorious by Bill Clinton, “It’s the political economy, stupid…”
This dialogue made me think of another panel in a meeting room of the Office, celebrating the departure of another colleague. While that took quite a different format, it was perhaps equally illuminating in terms of raising major ILO issues. I am referring to the farewell of Samir Radwan, when Jack Martin held court, Eddy Lee was the prosecutor, and Dharam Ghai was the advocate for the defence. Samir was charged with all sorts of crimes and misdemeanours, ranging from seeking to meet the basic needs of rural populations to excessive research on and application of employment statistics. Despite a spirited defence, poor Samir was found guilty and sentenced to ten years of hard labour on Decent Work Indicators or something gruelling like that. (We know that in reality poor Samir was destined, for his sins, to an even more trying sentence at the national level…)
En tout cas, bravo Philippe, bravo Duncan, and welcome to the group of merry pranksters and serious thinkers (and doers, of course) that refuse to abandon the spirit of the ILO.
24 March 2015 Zafar Shaheed
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TO TALK OF MANY THINGS
The breaking of bones
I want to tell you about my experiences of hospitals. I had not had much experience of them until very recently, except for broken bones. So should I tell you first about broken bones? And if I do, I suppose I should tell you first about my son’s ski accident and consequent broken leg. He broke the same bone as I did – well, I don’t mean the same bone, I mean not the very same bone, which of course is on my leg but not on his.
I think I’d better start again. My son was at the age of seven when we heard that a brave Indian woman (wow! That sounds like an Indian of the warrior Redskin variety) was starting classes in Hindi. Now my son, though of Indian parentage and to the manner born, speaks no Hindi (in fact if he did speak an Indian language, it would be Urdu, not Hindi. Let us not complicate the scene further, but merely pretend that Hindi and Urdu are the same).
What on earth do Hindi classes have to do with broken legs? Let me explain. Now, my son broke his leg skiing and was laid up for a few weeks; just three days after he started his Hindi classes. Any connection? I must pause here to tell you that my wife had decided to learn Hindi together with her son; however, she did not fall or break her leg. But when her son broke his leg, she naturally stayed at home to nurse it, and not go about learning ek-do-teen. That was the end of their Hindi lessons. Incidentally, my wife doesn’t ski so you see she couldn’t very well break her leg skiing, could she?
You know, I could tell you of a previous occasion when she also started to learn Hindi. Well Urdu, but for this purpose it’s the same thing; let’s keep it simple. Yes, yes, keep it simple, as I said. She had found a simple book on How to Learn Urdu, written by a British army officer, in a bookshop in London. A simple army officer. She brought it home and began the assiduous study of this worthy volume. When I came home for lunch one day, she greeted me jovially with “Tum haram zada ho!” Well I won’t translate it for my non-Urdu speaking friends, but you can have a wild guess.
I was rather deep in the study of broken legs and their treatment in hospitals. I am in hospital and being well looked after by a lot of delightful nurses and aides-soignantes. Eight o’clock two nurses come marching in. One comes to my bed and says, ‘Alors, bien dormi?’ And before you have time to tell her even the first of your troubles – and I had half-a-dozen mal dormi ready to unload on her – she is telling you what she is going to give you. ‘Eh bien, tant mieux; tant mieux,’ she begins talking to her colleague about the trouble she is having with her car. It takes her some time to retail her woes but she manages beautifully to intertwine the troubles with her car with those of serving breakfast. She is last seen walking out of the room with a final, ‘Eh bien, ça va?’
Of course, serving breakfast is quite an easy thing. There’s no need to make a song and dance about it. First of all, there is coffee. It’s not too easy getting the coffee just right. Either there’s too much chicory or there isn’t enough. Either there’s too much milk or there’s not enough. But really the trouble lies elsewhere. It is the sunlight; too much of it. You see, it is like this. The sun comes streaming in at morn; the sun burns sharply on the coffee pot. The coffee pot is, well, not exactly silver, but something that reflects sunlight like silver. Bright and burning, like dazzling silver. Did you ever know that silver could burn you?
So what do you have? Glare direct into your eyes. Glazing, glaring; blazing, blinding. What can you see? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. You hold the pot pointing somewhere in the right direction and pray to the gods there be; and close your eyes. You raise the pot and
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pour; you gradually open your streaming eyes. The cup which should have received the coffee is empty. Your first instinct is a deep sigh that a flooding has not taken place; your second is that a dreadful flooding has taken place. Not in the coffee cup, but in the tray which bears the cup.
Now the tray has a high rim all around the edge. You are lying on your back, tilted at 45 degrees so that you may continue to enjoy your sleep, and at the same time, enjoy your coffee comfortably. Ingenious, is it not? Yes, indeed; the truth is that your ingenious angle gives you a crick in the neck. And you’d better keep wide awake to take care of your coffee, or you’ll have another flood.
Now for the bread and butter. You would have thought that the bread would be already buttered; no matter, they think you are more athletic than you are. And why not? It’s at the cost of a bit – actually a bit more than a bit – of butter on my pyjamas. (You will remember that Winnie the Pooh liked a bit of butter on his bread.) And of course you’ll get some sticky jam on your neck; quite a bit of sticky jam.
The nurse had put another ingenious device round your neck. This was a sort of sticky, coloured paper neckerchief which choked you while the nurse was there and promptly fell off as soon as she left. It then stuck to all the wrong places with unremovable care. (You know, computers are wonderful things at times, but are a blessed nuisance at others. Now my super-efficient computer tells me that ‘unremovable’ is wrong and presumably should be changed. Well, you know what? I’m not going to change anything, so there!)
5 January 2014
Aamir Ali
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TRIBUTE TO ABBAS AMMAR
Introduction
by Jack Martin
Dr. Abbas Ammar was a major figure in the history of the ILO, but I suspect that few serving ILO officials today even know his name, let alone what he did. This is hardly surprising since it is now just over 40 years since he left the ILO. We have asked a few former colleagues who knew him or worked with him to give us their recollections or impressions. Their contributions will be found below. Taken together these articles give a remarkably clear picture of the man that was Abbas Ammar and the contribution that he made to the ILO during his career. If any other readers wish to add their memories, we will be glad to publish them in a future issue of this Newsletter.
Dr. Ammar was appointed Assistant Director-General of the ILO in 1954 after a distinguished academic and political career in Egypt (where he had been Minister of Social Affairs and Minister of Education). He became Deputy Director-General responsible for the technical programmes of the ILO in 1964, and was given special responsibility for the World Employment Programme in 1969. He left the ILO in 1974 and died very suddenly in December of the same year. During his 20 years in the ILO, he left his mark in all sorts of ways, but he will be chiefly remembered as the main sponsor and architect of the World Employment Programme.
Other contributors have recalled that he was a giant – physically as well as intellectually. When I first met him, as a very young official, I found him intimidating at first – a well-built man with a bald head, penetrating eyes and a powerful voice that commanded respect. He was clearly a man of authority. But it did not take long to realize that he was also a very human person. He would listen attentively to what one had to say, and would put you at your ease with a broad smile, a joke or an encouraging remark. The remarkable human characteristics of this man who wielded considerable influence and was universally respected come out clearly in the contributions that you will find below.
My recollections of Abbas Ammar date from the time when I was in David Morse’s Cabinet. Morse thought very highly of him and valued his judgement. I remember a meeting that Morse convened to consider whether or not to launch a World Employment Programme on the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the ILO. Various objections were raised to this proposal – it was felt to be too risky, too ambitious, too costly, it touched on issues, especially macro-economic issues, beyond the competence of the ILO, etc. etc. Abbas Ammar listened patiently to these objections and then proceeded to demolish them one by one, concluding with the statement that if the ILO did not take the lead in attacking the massive problems of unemployment and underemployment particularly in the developing world it would cease to be relevant, perhaps even cease to exist. It was a masterly intervention, nobody attempted to contradict him, and Morse concluded the meeting by saying something like: “Abbas has said it all”. The decision was taken and the WEP was launched. I had the job of putting together the Director-General’s report to the 1969 Conference that launched it – with the help of people like Norton Franklin, the Economic Adviser, Bert Zoeteweij and Bernard Fortin and under the wise and watchful guidance of Dr Ammar with whom the whole team had frequent meetings. The role that Abbas Ammar then played in guiding, supervising and encouraging the team that was set up to make a reality of the WEP is admirably described in the contributions of Louis Emmerij and John Sykes.
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Little did I realize at the time that some 12 years later I was to be put in charge of the Employment Department, with Abbas Ammar constantly looking over my shoulder. When I took over from Antoinette Béguin in July 1981, she said to me: “I shall be leaving Dr. Ammar with you”. She referred, of course, to his bust, which as Louis Emmerij recounts in his article, was given to him when Dr. Ammar left the Office, and which was handed down to subsequent Directors of the Employment Department for as long as the Department was directed by people who had known Dr Ammar. For the seven years that I was in that position, before handing Dr. Ammar over to Victor Tokman, hardly a day went by when I did not turn round to that bust sitting behind my chair in my office and say to him “Well, Abbas, how am I going to solve this problem?” I had never dared to call him “Abbas” while he was alive, but he did not seem to mind that I took this liberty. I found that it always helped to ask for his advice.
19 March 2015
Jack Martin
Dr. Ammar’s Gift
by Gisela Schneider
I had the privilege of working for Dr. Ammar for seven years, from 1967 until his retirement in 1974. During that period I benefitted greatly from the challenges and opportunities he gave me to improve my knowledge and understanding of the substantive issues the ILO was concerned with. Having been Minister of Education, he was a great believer in developing the full potential of everyone with whom he came into contact, including his secretaries.
As Deputy Director-General, Dr. Ammar was entitled to three secretaries and a professional assistant. For most of the time I worked in his office, Ray Dutoit was his first secretary and I was in second position. Later Barbara Shacklady also joined his office. Delia Mosiman was his professional assistant, although John Sykes also played this role for about a year (see his tribute on page 18). Elizabeth (Betsy) Johnstone, the Special Adviser on Women and Children (the precursor to the Child Labour Programme) was also attached to his office. We were his immediate “family” and he sometimes invited all of us to lunch at a restaurant or dinner at his home.
He was also very fond of the janitor in the old building who used to greet him every morning when he arrived in the office. Dr. Ammar always made it a point to stop and talk to him and enquire about his family. It seemed only natural that he, his wife and young daughter were also invited to the last dinner he offered at his home.
The way he organized the work in his office was to give each secretary an area of responsibility. Ray dealt with Official Relations, Cabinet and all matters of a political nature and looked after his schedule of appointments, as well as some personal matters. As second secretary, I was fortunate to deal with the technical departments that reported to him. It meant that I could follow the initial stages of the World Employment Programme, the organization of the employment missions and the follow-up work that later resulted in the creation of the Employment Department.
In his office we worked as a team. As the files came in, we each prepared the files that concerned our area of responsibility, read everything carefully and flagged all references. When he called us in separately to present the files, he expected us to give him a summary of the content and points for decision. He would ask questions to make sure that we had read the file carefully and to see to what extent we had understood its content. It was very good training and encouraged us to take an interest in the substantive issues the
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departments we were dealing with. Usually, he would then give us the gist of a reply, which we could draft ourselves.
When I started going to night school (Collège du Soir) in 1968, initially to improve my French, Dr. Ammar was very supportive and ensured that I could leave his office on time for the classes I had, starting at 6 p.m. He himself always worked until 7:30 p.m. and expected at least one of us to stay in the office with him, in case he needed something. We had to take turns.
He always enquired about my progress and wanted to be helpful. When I mentioned to him that I was having difficulty with mathematics, because of the gaps in my basic schooling, he asked Mr. H.A. Majid, an ADG, who had studied mathematics, to tutor me. (Mr. Majid had in fact been a Wrangler, one who had got a First Class at Cambridge). Mr. Majid was willing to help and we had a few sessions. It was difficult for him to think back to his school days, but he did explain some of the basic principles of algebra, which proved to be helpful, and I managed to scrape through.
Similarly, when I mentioned to Dr. Ammar that I needed more practice in writing in French, he asked Bernard Fortin to help. (Mr. Fortin always teased me, saying that he was “ordered” to help!) Several times a week, we would spend our lunch hour walking in the park and discussing French literature. Each time I had to write an essay, which he corrected and discussed with me. That was very helpful and I managed to pass both the written and oral exams quite well.
Once I had obtained the Maturité (with distinction), I was very tempted to go on to university, but I needed to work and there were no evening classes at the time. I mentioned to Dr. Ammar that it had always been my dream to go to university, but because of the circumstances of the war, when we had to flee from East Prussia and live in refugee camps in Denmark, my schooling was much disrupted. Although I was lucky in that I was sent to school in England for three years, I missed the opportunity to get into grammar school on my return to Germany. I had to settle for the commercial high school, which prepared me for clerical work, but did not give me access to university. When I turned 18, I joined my older sister in Canada and started working.
Four of the six years I lived in Canada, I was working in the Extension Department of the University of British Columbia. I envied the students and wanted very much to be one of them, but did not qualify. Later I continued my journeys via Asia to Geneva and the ILO. Now that I had the qualifications to enter university, I needed to find a way to fulfil my dream and yet continue to earn a living.
Dr. Ammar was very sympathetic and told me to look at the curriculum of some of the social sciences and see how many hours I would need. I chose Sociology and calculated that I could reduce attendance at the university to 20 hours a week, if I only went to the seminars where attendance was obligatory. The rest I could prepare on the basis of notes taken by friends and the recommended reading list. This arrangement worked very well and I am very grateful to Ray and Barbara for taking my place during my absences from the office. On the other hand, they did receive some compensation, because I worked late every evening to make up for the hours I was away and they could leave the office at the normal time.
However, it so happened that Ray asked to take a full year off to take care of her mother, who was terminally ill. But despite the fact that I was needed in the office, Dr. Ammar did not stop me from going to university. It showed his strong commitment to developing my potential, even at the cost of his personal inconvenience. He preferred to reduce his own demands!
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For me it was a very long working week. In addition to rushing back and forth to the university, I had a lot of seminar work and reading to do. It meant very long hours, very little sleep and no leisure. At exam time, I used up all my annual leave in the first year. In the second year, which coincided with the financial crisis, I asked for two months unpaid leave. In the last year (1974), Dr. Ammar appealed to the Director-General to grant me paid education leave in recognition of the efforts I had made so far. Thanks to his recommendation, I was granted 5 months paid leave on an exceptional basis.
Dr. Ammar announced his retirement at the March 1974 Session of the Governing Body, but stayed on until the end of June 1974, exactly the time when I had passed my final exams at the university. Before leaving, he made sure that all my efforts were not in vain. He had a talk with Louis Emmerij and persuaded him to give me a chance to prove myself as a research assistant at the professional level.
As there was no P.2 position available at the time, I was first transferred with my post until funds became available a few months later. From the start, I was doing professional work on a project dealing with youth unemployment in industrialized countries. A competition for the post was then held, but as I was already doing the work, I had no difficulty in winning it. The transition from G to P had succeeded! Two years later, I went to the field and the professional part of my career really took off.
I shall always be grateful to Dr. Ammar for the encouragement and support he gave me throughout the seven years I worked in his office. The fact that he recognized and believed in my abilities sustained my efforts throughout the long period of 8 years, when I was working and studying at the same time. It was my good fortune to have worked for someone, who inspired me and who made it possible for me to advance to a very fulfilling and rewarding career in the ILO. My only regret is that he did not live to see it.
17 February 2015
My debt to Abbas Ammar
by Louis Emmerij
I only knew Abbas Ammar for three-and-a-half years out of the less than six I spent at the ILO (1971-1976). But even though our association was limited to that brief period, it is nevertheless to him that I owe the fact that my six years with the ILO World Employment Programme were the most exciting and rewarding period of my career. And that is much more than I can say about any other person encountered during the rest of my life so far.
When the United States withheld their annual contribution to the budget of the Organization as of November 1970 a recruitment freeze was declared. Only two exceptions were made and those were for Jorge Mendez and myself who were recruited to blow life into the World Employment Programme (WEP) announced by David Morse in 1969 at the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the ILO where he received the Pope and the Nobel Prize for Peace on behalf of the ILO and launched the WEP. He resigned shortly afterwards after more than twenty years at the helm of the Organization and was succeeded by Wilfred Jenks in June 1970.
When I entered the annex at Petit Saconnex, where the relevant department was then lodged in early January 1971, I found a small group of people that were mainly taken from the Manpower Department and a budget that did not deserve that name. Neither was in any way sufficient for the human and financial needs for a programme that had to deal with a major economic and social development problem. It was clear to me from what I saw that in practice the WEP was conceived more as a manpower issue than as a major and wider development challenge. In the newly-created department there was still a branch focused
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on technical assistance projects related to manpower problems that continued to function as it had in the old Manpower Department.
So clearly the first priority was to get a substantive research programme going to clarify how a development policy could be conceived that was not only focused on growth but also on employment creation. Abbas Ammar, the Deputy Director-General responsible for the WEP, had already launched the Colombia high-level employment mission under Dudley Seers, the Director of the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex.1 It came up with useful first indications of what the major components of a more employment-intensive development policy should be. But that mission was undertaken by people who came overwhelmingly from outside the Organization and so the challenge was to get substantive people in order to build a capacity within who could discuss with and stimulate people from without.
I had a first discussion with Abbas Ammar soon after I came on board. Here was this grand seigneur from Upper Egypt, relaxed, and comfortably installed in an easy chair and who looked at me with a beautiful smile and waved me into an equally comfortable chair facing him. I was a young man then, just turned 36, but I felt an immediate contact with him as if an electric current had passed between us. We discussed the problem which I described briefly above and I only asked him whether he could agree to me starting a campaign to obtain extra-budgetary resources to build up a substantive team in the new department. He looked at me somewhat incredulously but gave his assent. This was already a courageous gesture on the part of Abbas Ammar because he knew full well that the Governing Body might take exception to outside money flowing in that could change priorities set by the regular budget under the control of that Body. On the other hand the American decision to stop funding the ILO pleaded in favour of getting outside funding.
That was an important point. Government and other donors might be more inclined to set extra funds aside to help lift an initiative like the WEP off the ground in order to save it from the light-hearted decision of a rich and powerful country that had put pressure on the Organization in order to influence it in a direction decided by it rather than by the Governing Body.
The fundraising succeeded beyond my wildest dreams. I was assisted in this by several people in the ILO. One of them was Kailas Doctor who was in those days the liaison person with what was then called the UNFPA (United Nations Fund for Population Activities) that had just come into existence. Within a couple of months it awarded the research wing of WEP more than one million (1971) dollars! Onassis is supposed to have said that the first million dollars is the most difficult hurdle. Once this is accomplished things become much easier. Thanks among others to Elie Zmirou (the multi-bi man of the ILO), the Swedish SIDA came to me and brought in another million. And then many other donors followed and we could build a really strong research branch within the department with units concentrating on population, technology, income distribution, rural development, urban informal sector, etc, etc. Together with the High Level Employment Missions, the in-house research became the driving force of the WEP.
During the fundraising drive Abbas Ammar was quietly covering me whenever necessary by receiving donors and reassuring people inside the Organization and in the Governing Body. That latter aspect became necessary because the number and quality of substantive people that we could attract thanks to the extra-budgetary resources became impressive in an Organization that was not used to doing large-scale research work. That was another important point. The Director-General and Deputy and Assistant Directors-General and indeed quite a few of the directors of other departments did not quite understand this huge expansion. But Abbas Ammar did see the importance of research in a relatively new field.
1 ILO, Toward Full Employment: A Programme for Colombia, Geneva 1970.
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He understood that you need people who are respected by outside academics and other specialists and who could speak to them on equal terms. Thus, for example, we could convince Amartya Sen to produce two important books for the WEP that contributed not only to our work but also (modestly) to him getting the Nobel Prize for economics in 1998.2
Without Abbas Ammar I would probably have left the ILO within the first 6 to 8 months because Director-General Wilfred Jenks (an international lawyer of great repute) might well have listened to the disgruntled in-house segment rather than to me. But he did listen to Abbas Ammar who was now the senior Deputy Director-General, and Abbas Ammar made it clear to him that the WEP adventure was on the rails and might well succeed, which was somewhat against expectations.
Abbas Ammar loved the people that were brought in, particularly the many young men and women. Sometimes he asked me to accompany him for lunch with the disgruntled bunch including members of the Governing Body. He would explain at some length that Louis could be a little undiplomatic or aggressive but that he was really a good man. I just sat there sipping wine and let him do the talking. I loved him.
Once during the Kenya High Level Employment Mission led by Hans Singer and Richard Jolly3 in which I participated for the duration, I asked an ILO statistician from the Regional Office in Addis Ababa to return to his base because he acted like an arrogant lazy fellow and was a danger for the harmony and atmosphere within the large mission. The man left under loud protest that I would hear from the Regional Director, etc. I never saw the lazy fellow again but when I met the Regional Director later he was nice and understanding. Abbas Ammar had done the necessary…!
I have worked in other organizations and academic institutions since my ILO life and I can say from experience that it is rare to encounter a man at the top of a bureaucracy who can think “out of the box” and back up his collaborators in sometimes awkward circumstances. I have tried to emulate his example later in life but am not sure I have been able to reach his level of insight in and comprehension of creative and sometimes difficult people.
The first preparations of the World Employment Conference that was to take place in 1976 started in 1974. Abbas Ammar was pushing hard to get the preparatory work up and running. Unfortunately he could not see this new adventure through. After Jenks’ sudden death in October 1973 and Blanchard’s election to his succession in March 1974, I submitted my resignation as Director (“Chief” as it was then called) of the Department, not because I wanted to leave but because I was of the opinion that a new DG should be free to elect his own team. Abbas Ammar convinced Blanchard not to accept it while he himself resigned later that year. Abbas Ammar, as the senior Deputy DG, had proposed to the Governing Body that he might complete Jenks’ term as Director-General for the next two years. But that was refused for reasons I do not want to go into but, as so often, had nothing to do with substantive competence or diplomatic skills. As the Grand Seigneur that he was, he resigned and died 6 months later in Khartoum, 40 years ago as I write these pages. He was brought back to Cairo in the plane of the President of Egypt.
Before he left Geneva in mid-1974 I gave a farewell dinner for him with the entire department which by then counted about 150 persons plus selected people from outside including Jef Rens, a trade union man and a legendary Deputy Director-General of the ILO
2 Amartya Sen, Employment, Technology and Development, Oxford University Press, several editions since 1975. And Poverty and Famines: an Essay on Entitlements and Deprivation, Oxford University Press, several editions. 3 ILO, Employment, Income and Equality: A Strategy for Increasing Productive Employment in Kenya, Geneva 1972.
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of the past, who came over from Belgium to bid farewell to his old friend and colleague. Little did we suspect that we would never see Abbas again. He would have been proud of the results of the World Employment Conference that launched, among other things, the basic needs development strategy.4
On one of his last days in office he called me and asked that I come and see him. We had a heart-warming discussion and at the end when he thanked me for my efforts and bid me farewell he handed me a beautiful and very heavy sculpture of his head (below). I called this half jokingly Abbas’ pyramid complex. In fact it moved me because I understood that he wanted to be with us in the continuation of our efforts for a better world. I gave it a place of choice in my office and handed it over to John Sykes when I left in September 1976. He has lived on with the WEP and its people as long as it and they existed.
December 2014
The inscription reads: To ‘The WEP Family’ with my profound affection, my warm appreciation, and my deep gratitude, Geneva, June 1974, Abbas Ammar.
(Photo courtesy Marcel Crozet, ILO.)
4 ILO, Employment, Growth, and Basic Needs: A One World Problem, Geneva 1976.
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Abbas Ammar, Jacqueline Mettral, Louis Emmerij, farewell dinner, June 1974.
(Photo courtesy Louis Emmerij)
Abbas Ammar, Dharam Ghai, Louis Emmerij and Jef Rens, farewell dinner, June 1974.
(Photo courtesy Louis Emmerij)
Remembering Abbas Ammar
An electric shock went through the meeting hall. It was Abbas Ammar and his cohorts entering at ten on the dot. It was the Seminar on Social Problems of Arab States being held in Cairo, early in 1950, with about forty or fifty delegates from various Arab countries. And wherever the Minister for Social Welfare went, he carried his electric shock with him.
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Sometime later, we learnt that Abbas Ammar was going to join the ILO shortly. It was Peter Straus’s turn to take the minutes of the weekly Rapport – we used to take them turn by turn – and Abbas Ammar was the new boy at that session. Peter came out rolling his eyes. ‘Gee!’ he said (he was an American). ‘There’s a new wind blowing around here. That new fellow Ammar sure is something. We’re sure going to see something new at our Rapports now.’
And we sure did. This was in Bolivia. Abbas Ammar was with Jef Rens on a mission to do with the Andean Indian Mission. I was on a mission with an inter-agency group to assess the Fundamental Agency Centres also in Bolivia at the same time. I found myself, to my joy, together in the same hotel as Abbas Ammar; we agreed to travel to our next stop together by ferry boat, Titicaca to Puno.
We arrived at Titicaca together in the evening and looked for our cabin. I had been taking Spanish lessons for a couple of years and thought myself quite a dab at it. I tried once or twice and got nowhere. Abbas Ammar was getting increasingly impatient. Finally, I heard a great big roar followed by a stream of vituperative Arabic; we all jumped in alarm. The cabin crew appeared from nowhere; they rushed in with our suitcases (and some others as well); refreshments, sir? Whisky, sir? Soft drinks, sir? Dinner in half an hour, sir? Would you like to see the menu, sir?
January 2015 Aamir Ali
I met Abbas Ammar only once in my life. Little did I know then the profound impact that encounter would have on my career. When I joined the ILO as an expert in 1963, Abbas Ammar was a Deputy Director-General. As an Egyptian, I knew of him as a former Minister who ran his portfolio with efficiency, firmness and integrity.
In 1970, after changing duty stations in the field four times in eight years, with all the upheaval this was having on my children’s education, having to change schools and countries so often, I informed the ILO technical department concerned, that my assignment at the time as a project manager in Tunisia was my last and that I was leaving the ILO for good to seek new pastures in Canada.
Early in 1970, I received a phone call from the UNDP Res. Rep. Dr. Ammar was in town with his wife on a three-day mission for the World Employment Programme. An official social programme had been arranged for them for two days, could I possibly entertain them for the third day? I said I would be delighted, and decided to invite them for a simple family dinner at home away from the usual formality. It was my first encounter with a giant of a man, who was so far above me in the ILO hierarchy. I found him to be a warm, courteous and an attentive listener. It was then that he asked my opinion about the management development programme of the ILO. I told him that I was leaving the ILO for good three months later. That allowed me to be blunt; furthermore I had no axe to grind with anybody. What I saw in the field during the previous eight years in various countries, and what I heard from several governments as a regional adviser, led me to confess that a good number of the so-called ILO experts were not up to par and in some cases had inferior qualifications than the counterparts they were sent to train, though perhaps possessed more experience. To put things in perspective, when countries receive a marketing expert, they expect someone who would train the nationals in market research, consumer preferences, sales promotion, advertising, channels of distribution, packaging, competitive pricing and so on. Instead, they got someone with a first University degree but with several years behind him as a salesman. Next, Dr. Ammar asked my opinion about the programme’s operations at headquarters. I simply said that I was not impressed. The discussion ended right there and then and we returned to niceties.
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I left the ILO to become a professor and Director of the Masters Programme in Business Administration (MBA) at the University of Ottawa in Canada. One morning, two years later, I received a phone call. Dr. Ammar was on the line. He said he wanted me to re-join the ILO at HQ. This came as such an unexpected call that I did not react for a minute or so. He then added, “Is this a yes or a no? The Americans have withheld their contribution to the Organization, there is a freeze on recruitment, but we are making this exception for you.” I said it was a yes. And so in 1972, I rejoined the ILO, where I was put in charge of the Management Development Programme and eight years later became the Director of the Training Department. Shortly after my arrival in Geneva, Dr. Ammar called me. He reminded me of what I had said two years earlier about what needed to be done and added, “Be tough”.
When I reflect on my career development with the ILO, it is easy to trace it to a chance encounter in Tunis, or also to the fact that in 1972 the ILO Governing Body wanted a better geographical distribution at headquarters, but all this would not have led to my return to the Organization without the steel-trap memory and determination of Abbas Ammar.
18 January 2015
George Kanawaty
The passage of time does not erase the memory of outstanding personalities with whom we come into contact in our working lives.
Dr. Abbas Ammar, who passed away prematurely at the age of 67 some 40 years ago, was one such person.
I had the great fortune of working with Dr. Ammar from 1969 until he left the Office in June 1974. It was on 15 September 1969, at Dr. Ammar’s request, that I was detached from the Office of the then Director-General, David Morse, to join his office. Mr. Morse had assigned to him responsibility for launching and implementing the World Employment Programme (WEP), which the ILO Conference of 1969 had mandated as the Organization’s major contribution to the forthcoming UN Development Decade. My function would be to assist Dr. Ammar in all aspects of the development of this ambitious programme. Initially a small team was constituted directly under him. He subsequently created the Employment Planning and Promotion Department to become both the operational arm of the WEP and the cradle of its extensive research programme. He appointed Louis Emmerij as its dynamic director and detached me from his office to become the chief administrative officer of the programme.
The launching of the WEP was an uphill task right from the beginning, for there was a certain opposition, both among some ILO constituents and in other UN organizations, to the idea that the ILO should seek to mobilize the technical and financial resources of the UN system as a whole in its pursuit of appropriate strategies for employment promotion, poverty eradication and the equitable sharing of the benefits of economic growth. There was also scepticism as to the usefulness of a large-scale research programme to underpin ILO operational activities in that field.
Dr. Ammar combatted such resistance fearlessly. He provided the WEP with both the political leadership and certain conceptual ideas which were to become cardinal features of the programme. He brought all his diplomatic skills to bear in eliciting the active support of the ILO’s tripartite constituents, of other agencies in the UN system, and of the academic world. He gave his enthusiastic and unstinting support to the department which he had created as the standard-bearer of the programme. The most visible manifestation of his holistic approach was the path-breaking series of Comprehensive Employment Strategy
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Missions to selected countries, initiated with the first mission to Colombia in 1970, and led by outstanding development specialists of those times.
It was a hyper-active but exhilarating time for the small team which assisted Dr. Ammar in those early days. He was demanding of each one of us, but he was demanding above all of himself, often working late into the evening and during weekends. We felt that we were part of his family, and indeed he treated us as such, always attentive to our needs and aspirations, and generous in his recognition of work well done. This was without doubt the most exciting period of my career in the ILO, actively engaged in a programme which galvanized the support of a wide range of ILO units at headquarters and the field, of many UN and non-governmental aid agencies, and of leading development specialists from all over the world. It was tragic indeed that Dr. Ammar died in December 1974 only a few months after leaving the office. He was not able to witness the impact which the WEP had on the conventional wisdom of development circles of the mid-1970s and beyond.
I owe it to him that I was able to participate in that great adventure. He was an inspiring leader.
22 February 2015
John Sykes
Abbas Ammar was one of the great personalities of the ILO. Understanding what he was is essential to assess what he did.
A product of the twentieth century, his personality reflected a world in transition. He embodied old values as much as new ideas.
Ammar was born in 1907, at a time when Egypt was ruled by the most imperial of proconsuls, Sir Evelyn Baring, better known in Egypt as Sir Over Bearing. He grew up in the midst of nationalist ferment, but the wider world was brought to his door as the Afrika Korps advanced on Cairo. His education and outlook mirrored those of the modernizers who later overthrew the old monarchy in 1952. And it was to the internationalist horizon of the new Egypt that he devoted his later life: in the UN, in UNESCO, and finally, in the ILO.
Ammar had a towering presence, an immense dignity of an older world, the sort which “made the waters part” before him. There was a sculptural solidity to him, both in his physical appearance, and in his attitudes and values. That was brought home to me by a bust I once saw in the Berlin Museum. It was the head of a High Priest of Ptolemaic Egypt, carved in polished sandstone. The face is of an elderly man: grave, dignified, of vast experience, supremely self-confident in himself and in his calling. His gaze, undimmed by time, conveys a natural ascendency, radiating authority without apparent effort.
The face bears a remarkable resemblance to Abbas Ammar. Its look captures the essence of his spirit.
For Ammar was a man of massive integrity: not merely in the usual sense of that word, but also in the sense of being solidly integrated in his culture and his tradition. One felt an immediate sense of confidence and respect in his presence. He gave – and received – absolute loyalty. His word was his bond. His courage and his determination were palpable.
I never worked with him, and really got to know him only during the six months he was in charge of the Office after Jenks’s death in October 1973 till Blanchard’s election in March 1974.
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It was a short but intense acquaintance, as I met him every day in my capacity as Chef de Cabinet. Initially, one sensed a cordial but careful reserve, soon replaced by extraordinary trust and mutual confidence. In spite of a hectic schedule, we had several relaxed moments. We talked of the Arab world: of the Roman province of Arabia Felix; the phenomenon of Gadaffi; and the historic traverse by Bertram Thomas of the Rub-al-Khali, the Great Arabian Desert, which occurred when Ammar was a student in Cairo. These conversations gave me my first insight into the Arab mind, and into the nature of this unusual man.
While rooted in a conservative upbringing, his deepest instincts were innovative and enquiring. A devout Muslim, religion was for him less a rigid code and more an expression of culture. As a young man, he had lived in village communities of the Nile delta and seen the effects of urban migration. He knew through direct experience the dangers of economic growth without social moorings.
I realized, too, that he was a shrewd judge of people; quick to detect both hidden motive and hidden talent. He chose his aides carefully, and then gave them free rein. He was a “big picture” man, but his command of detail was startling. There was exceptional ability to deal with very different people from diverse backgrounds. Indeed, I felt his long exposure to the West had made him more a skilled observer, rather than a participant, in its life and culture.
Those six months were a dangerous and uncertain time for the ILO. The US threat of withdrawal loomed large. The Middle East conflict had bitterly divided the membership. Cold War tensions were at their worst since the Cuban missile crisis. The sudden death of the Director General had left the staff confused and demoralized. Political campaigning for the succession had begun: there were two internal candidates, Tévoédjrè and Blanchard, and emotions ran high.
All these murky currents swirled and eddied around Ammar during those long winter months. They left him serene and detached. This was the more remarkable because Ammar wished to be confirmed for the unexpired portion of Jenks’s term. But he was too wise to harbour illusions. There was an African candidate, and age was against him. Above all, he saw that the prime concern of the GB was to negotiate a way out of the US crisis. And at that juncture, just after the Yom Kippur war, an Egyptian would hardly have been its negotiator of choice.
David Morse had appointed Ammar in 1969 to head the new World Employment Programme. It was an inspired decision. Morse knew the ILO was conservative and resistant to change, but the new Programme needed innovative thinking and fresh perspectives to succeed.
Ammar was the perfect choice. Because he was in many ways an “outsider”. Although he had been in the Office for several years, he was atypical of its culture – at the time, still very European. Yet he had the skills – and the attitude – required.
He was not a lawyer nor an economist, but an anthropologist. He had little experience of labour markets, but knew a good deal about social policy. As Minister in Egypt he had translated theory into practice. As a former academic, and as a member of the UN Secretariat at its inception, he knew how to draw on both the academic and international communities.
With this background, and ably supported by Louis Emmerij – who he surely recognized as another quintessential “outsider” and a kindred spirit – Ammar led the Programme and the ILO in new directions. His legacy is with us today.
He laid the groundwork for a wide-ranging research programme, the first of its kind in the ILO, and the first to explicitly explore the links between development strategies and productive employment. It attracted brilliant minds: Amartya Sen, K.N. Raj, Hans Singer
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and Dudley Seers. The ILO recruited new staff, and regenerated itself through a younger generation of talented economists who were to sustain it in the years to come.
All this was not easy. There was friction with other Departments, with differences of approach compounded by personalities. The GB, suspicious of research, feared diversion from more “practical” action. WEP research was criticized for being too academic. There was a clamour for “applied” research. Ammar was forthright: “There is no such thing as ‘applied research’. Research has to be just research before we know whether it can be applied or not.” I was struck by the way he handled the debate. His defence was adamantine; he did not yield an inch. But the manner remained unfailingly genial. He was emollient but unyielding.
Innovation extended to new means of action. In 1970 he launched the Colombia Employment Strategy Mission, the first of many to different parts of the world. Their premise was that there was no single silver bullet; each situation demanded specific remedies. That lesson was sadly forgotten by the international community, and resulted in the failure of the patent prescriptions of the “Washington Consensus”.
These Mission Reports were groundbreaking, and brought the ILO world-wide attention. Some were prescient. I accompanied Jenks when he presented the one on Iran to Amir Abbas Hoveyda, the Shah’s Prime Minister. The Report warned against an oil-fuelled development strategy which skewed income distribution, created unemployment and threatened the social fabric. It received a frigid reception. Within the decade, the Shah was in exile and Hoveyda was dead, victims of the Revolution.
The WEP also initiated the first of the ILO’s policy dialogues with the UN system. It led to ILO extra-budgetary funding on an unprecedented scale. This again generated disquiet in the GB which feared weakened political accountability – another institutional hurdle which Ammar successfully took in his stride.
Later, the Programme was destined to run into the headwinds of a changing international environment. Developing countries became suspicious of the “basic needs” strategy. Employment concerns were overtaken by the oil embargo and the debt crisis. Within the ILO, pressures mounted for narrowing the focus of the Programme.
But all that was after Ammar had left the scene. For many who were young in his day, it seemed that the “confident morning” which Harold Butler saw at the ILO’s inception had dawned again.
What will not change is our memory of the man, forty years after his passing. We witnessed an architectonic integrity and leadership of legendary quality. His personal conduct was a lesson in stoicism during one of the most difficult periods in the life of the ILO and in his own career. In those bleak days, he seemed to grow in stature. There was not a flicker of bitterness, not a trace of regret, as the dream of a lifetime dissolved before him. “Uncheered and undeterred, he kept on climbing the bare staircase of his duty.”
17 March 2015
Padmanabha Gopinath
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REMEMBRANCE OF THINGS PAST
Memoirs of an ILO expert in Cyprus
by George Kanawaty
In 1964, following the failure of my first ILO assignment to Cambodia as a production management expert, the ILO offered me three possible assignments, Iran, Sudan or Cyprus. I selected Cyprus. Though I had never been to the Island before, I had visions of people sitting under the tree of Idleness sipping coffee and playing backgammon. With my Egyptian background that suited me fine. To my surprise, my arrival was announced on the first page of the “Cyprus Mail”, the only English language paper on the Island. This four-page daily carried all sorts of relevant and irrelevant news and distinguished itself by its typographical errors. Once they published an article about “The British keep the flag frying (flying)” and in another article “on orders of the White Mouse (house), the FBI, etc.”
On the first weekend after arrival, I did not know what to do with myself. My wife was in Canada with the children. A Greek colleague suggested that I drive to Famagusta on the East coast, have lunch there, then drive north to the small village of Boghazi passing by Salamis. I could then take a different road to return to Nicosia, the capital. I followed that advice. Boghazi, however was a letdown. Apart from a ship at the small harbour and a few fishing boats, the tiny village boasted only one coffee shop, where I stopped for coffee. The owner brought me my “metreo” coffee and sat with me, being the only customer. He enquired about my nationality and I said Egyptian. When I came to leave, he refused to take any money and I was given a warm send off. A few days later, it transpired that, unknown to me, the ship in Baghazi was Egyptian carrying anti-aircraft missiles sent secretly by Egyptian President Nasser to Makarios, the Cypriot President. However British intelligence got wind of it and the ship was forced to turn back without unloading. During my stay on the Island, this incident was a prelude to several rumoured intelligence operations organized from Cyprus covering Middle Eastern countries.
I started my work in earnest organizing one week training programmes with follow-up of the participants in their places of work. I also offered short two- to three-day advisory services on the spot and extensive production consultancies lasting two to three months at the enterprises, all of which provided good training for my counterparts. The training programmes were always over-subscribed, and the calls for consultancy and advisory services were more than I could cope with. One day, a short period after my arrival, the ILO project manager informed me casually that he was organizing a management seminar in the Turkish separatist region and wanted me and another expert to make brief presentations in our areas of competence. My instinct told me not to go, for we were assigned to the recognized government, and it did not make sense to me to go behind their back to a part they considered as a separatist region. Besides, the border was open on the Greek side for Turkish managers to attend our training courses, if they so wished. The following day the project manager and an ILO expert headed to the Turkish area for this half-day seminar. Their presentations were preceded by a high-ranking Turkish Cypriot who gave a speech insulting and berating Makarios and his government. He spoke in Turkish, which my colleagues did not understand. The Turkish Cypriot papers gave extensive coverage to that speech and noted that it was followed by two ILO experts, giving their names. When the news reached the Greek side, the Minister of Labour hit the ceiling and asked for these gentlemen to be recalled, which was accomplished a few months later.
My work was progressing very well. Apart from training and consultancy in production management, I was asked and designed the first Industrial Estate on the Island and set the
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rules for its use; and when the Government decided to establish The Cyprus Development Bank, the newly-appointed Director and his deputy were attached to me for two months’ training in feasibility studies and diagnosing management problems in companies. Later, I was asked to join a small group working on the elaboration of the first five-year development plan for the country. I put in ten hours or more of work a day and was enjoying every minute. In those days, several companies were run in a spirit of bon enfant, while others were highly sophisticated like large construction companies, banks, telecommunications, etc. All were users of our services at the ILO-established productivity centre.
Yet, when one looks back, it is those enterprises run by self-made managers that cling most to one’s memoires. Perhaps because they are now rare to find, since many current managers have studied abroad and the situation has changed considerably since Cyprus joined the European Union.
Of these “bon enfant”-run companies, I recall three. The first was a garment-making company employing some 120 workers. On a consultancy, with my counterpart, I once faced a problem for which I could neither find the cause nor the remedy. A modest quiet girl working on a sewing machine volunteered the answer. “You will find the cause of this problem in the cutting room not here.” We pursued that lead and managed to eliminate six operations performed unnecessarily. When I relayed this to the owner, he promptly promoted the girl to a supervisor and later married her.
The second case related to the lack of standardization on the Island. This problem extended to various products from electric plugs to food recipes, where some were quoted in ounces, others in grams. It all depended on which country the importer got his products from. Each company produced its own version of, say, size 38 shirts. Some copied Italian sizes, others decided the Cypriots were more stocky and needed baggy shirts, some had longer sleeves than others, etc. On a visit to a small dress-making business, and with this problem on my mind, I asked the owner how he determined the size. He immediately called a working girl over from her sewing machine. She was well-endowed front and back. He handed her a dress, and asked her to wear it. As you can see, he said, this is size 40, she is my model.
“What if it does not fit other ladies who are size 40?” I asked.
“Re combari-mou (you my best man), all ladies when they buy dresses, they adjust them, so what is the problem?” and he added “Ti na kanete allo” (What else can we do?).
Since my arrival, the Cypriot red wine par excellence was the “1958 Othello”, produced by one of the largest wineries in Limassol. Up to 1966 we were drinking 1958 vintage, then all of a sudden, we jumped to 1966, with all the vintage years in-between gone missing. On a consulting assignment at that winery I enquired about the missing years.
“Ah that,” said the 90 year-old owner. “In 1958 we printed a large number of labels, so we kept using them until they finished, by that time we were in 1966.”
Among the archaeological finds in Cyprus, statues of Aphrodite, goddess of love, were discovered. Two rocks protruding from the sea on the south shore were called the Rocks of Aphrodite where, supposedly, she emerged from the sea. Guy de Maupassant wrote a poem entitled “Alléluia”, describing how Adonis showed up and found Aphrodite asleep on the beach; for six days he made love to her, then on the seventh day, Aphrodite opened her eyes “Eh quoi, Monsieur, vous étiez là? Alléluia”.
Perhaps this line describes how impervious Cypriot girls were to the advances of foreign men. Poor foreigners, ILO experts included, they arrived on the Island of Love dreaming of a “dolce vita” life. Some tried to inject Greek words in their conversation, but the pronunciation was heavy and often out of context. Some tried their feet at Greek dancing
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but without the sensibility and grace that went with it. Cypriots listened and watched and felt more alienated from foreigners. Luckily my Greek pronunciation was respectable, for as a Greek Orthodox, I listened for years to the church service in Greek as a kid.
There was another hazard. Desperate for an adventure on a Greek Island, several marriages broke up on Aphrodite’s rocks. These included the UN Res. Rep., a former US Economics Professor, who married a student thirty years younger. In Cyprus, she walked out on him to elope with a Swedish expert. Not to be outdone, her husband ten years after retirement showed up on the Island driving a red sports car with a woman whom he introduced to us as a Yugoslav countess. I asked a Yugoslav friend, if she was really a countess, and well known in her country.
“In Belgrade, George,” he said, “She is the city bicycle, everybody rides her.”
While Cyprus, at present, boasts world class golf courses, in 1965 only one 7-hole golf course existed, it seems that whoever designed it ran out of land after the seventh hole. That course fell now in no man’s land between the Greek and Turkish sides. No creature was allowed there except UN personnel and stray goats, which were entrusted with maintaining the greens. An enterprising Cypriot convinced me that playing golf was the in-thing to do, and promptly sold me an expensive set of clubs. I headed to that course by myself for my first practice only to discover a bunker with a Greek flag erected by the first hole. I exchanged a smile with the two soldiers there, manning machine guns. The fourth hole had a bunker and a UN flag and the soldiers there ignored my smile. I did not fare better at the seventh hole bunker with the Turkish flag. With their uneven grazing habits, the goats frustrated my efforts at hitting a straight ball. I practiced several times on that course, but the trauma of doing so in a war zone led me to abandon the game altogether several years later.
In November 1968, all UN personnel were called to a top confidential meeting at the Res. Rep.’s office who solemnly announced to us that the Turks were going to invade the Island that night or the following night. We were to keep this information confidential, put UN stickers on our doors and raise the UN flag, fill the cars with gas and the trunk with blankets, food and water. At that point someone asked a question which was on our minds. If the Turks were coming why were we not evacuated in time? The answer was that no instructions to that effect were received from New York, and with reason. It was 10 a.m. in Nicosia but only 4 a.m. in NY. The bureaucrats in NY had to be given time to wake up, sip their coffee and make decisions. I refused to evacuate or put separate insignia on my home. By that time I had spent over three years in the country, had befriended many Cypriots, and did not feel that in time of need I should be entitled to a separate treatment. I did insist that my wife and children be evacuated with the Canadians to Beirut.
The evacuation order came the following day. All UN staff and dependents were to assemble at 7 p.m. at the only airport on the Island and then proceed, under escort of the UN peacekeepers, to the British bases on the Island. The logic of assembling after sunset at the airport escaped me. One need not be a military genius to figure out that in a conflict, the airport would be the first hit especially after dark. I went to watch the evacuation scene. There were about 30 cars or more with families, while a UN soldier was going around from one car to the next to get names, addresses, next of kin information, etc. One hour behind schedule, the convoy finally moved following a UN jeep and an armoured personnel carrier; two other UN armoured carriers provided an added escort. Barely 100 metres later, everybody started beeping their horn, a car sped to the jeep leading the convoy. “You are going straight to the Turkish lines, this is not the way to the British bases”.
“Sorry,” came the answer from the Canadian officer. “I just arrived on the Island two days ago, and am kind of lost in the dark.” That car then went on to lead the jeep that led the
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convoy. That crisis was temporarily resolved when the US President Johnson sent his foreign Minister Cyrus Vance that night. The invasion took place 10 years later where 40% of the Island is now under Turkish rule.
Later that year, my assignment in Cyprus came to an end when I was named regional advisor in management for the whole of Africa, to be stationed in Addis Ababa, with a budget of $3,000 to cover travel over the whole continent for a year, but that is another story.
3 January 2014
My first mission to Latin America
by Karl-H. Ebel
Alfred Delattre’s story in the last issue reminded me of my first steps in the ILO which I joined with similar apprehensions on 2 January 1962. In order to get punctually from Germany to the Office, I had driven my old beetle into a snowdrift in the Jura during the night, was rescued and arrived exhausted at Hotel Eden around 4:00 a.m. In the morning nobody expected me at the Office. I was privileged to serve the ILO for thirty-two years in various functions, saw the world and met many remarkable people and characters. I have many precious memories. One episode is the following:
My first assignment was in the Vocational Training Branch. Sven Grabe was my boss. He had appointed me liaison officer with CINTERFOR (Centro interamericano de investigación y documentación sobre formación profesional) since at that time I was the only one in his unit who had an inkling of Spanish. In those days headquarters had some problems with this ILO offshoot in Montevideo, notably some bizarre contract and accounting practices. It was felt CINTERFOR was not playing by the rules and possibly should be abolished. Sven Grabe decided that I should have a look at the situation before an appropriate budget proposal would go to the Governing Body. This mission should also serve to assess the various ILO-assisted Latin American training institutions that cooperated with the Centre. In spring 1966 I set off as representative of the Director-General, a humble P.1 travelling first class to Montevideo. Aimé Fardet, interim Director of CINTERFOR, received me kindly but the staff looked at me with suspicion. I managed to dispel their distrust, elucidated some misunderstandings and made clear what the rules were.
With much support from our various regional offices I visited CONET in Argentina, INACAP in Chile, SENAI and SENAC in Brazil, SENATI in Peru, INCE in Venezuela and SENA in Colombia. All institutions supplied me with plenty of pertinent information and I enjoyed the typical Latin American hospitality. The result was an informative monograph.1
I remember best my trip to Colombia in rickety DC4 Avianca planes. At that time Pierre Granier was leading an ILO expert team at SENA, already then an important well-financed national institution. Its Director General was Martinez Tono, a dynamic chap with visions of grandeur. Pierre Granier, an exceptionally competent and respected Chief of Project and likeable person, thought that it was not enough to see SENA in the capital Bogotá. I should get an impression of how different training centres operated and what SENA had achieved in the country. He persuaded Martinez Tono, arranged the necessary travel authorization and financed an excursion to Medellín, Cali and Cartagena.
1 Karl Ebel, Aprendizaje para jóvenes en seis países de América Latina, CINTERFOR, 1967.
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In Medellín and Cali I saw well-equipped training centres with eager trainees. In Cartagena the director of the local training centre met me at the airport. He was somewhat ill at ease and explained that I could not meet any trainees at his centre because Cartagena was celebrating Carnival. I assured him of my full understanding. He was slightly relieved and invited me to a reception at the centre without telling me what to expect. I accepted, not wanting to be bored at my hotel. I was impressed by the quality and quantity of food and drink provided. Then the guests arrived. I was stunned. The current sixteen beauty queens from sixteen Colombian departments with their predecessors of the previous year and chaperones showed up. Out of their midst the Colombian beauty queen was to be elected the next day – an important national contest. I was surrounded by the thirty-two of the most beautiful women in Colombia. As all this was obviously to my liking, a beaming director suggested that I should come to the gala and ball at the Yacht Club following the reception. Unfortunately the story ends here. It was impossible to find a proper outfit (dinner jacket etc.) at short notice. I had to content myself with the street Carnival which was not bad but certainly did not match the lost opportunity.
My official mission was successful insofar as back in Geneva we managed, mainly with the understanding help of our Finance Department, to rectify what had gone wrong at CINTERFOR and to present an acceptable budget to the Governing Body which was passed after a bit of lobbying. CINTERFOR became a good example of institution- building by the ILO in Latin America.
28 December 2014
Le BIT dans les années 50
par Marianne Nussbaumer
Un dimanche matin, je reçois un téléphone d’une retraitée que je n’ai pas vue depuis au moins 8 ans.
« Quand est-ce que tu viens me voir, je t’ai souvent invitée »
« Je ne voyage plus beaucoup, j’ai 84 ans »
« Cela ne fait rien, tu mets un peu plus de 2 heures en train pour venir chez moi, et j’ai encore ma voiture. »
« Quel âge as-tu ? »
« 88 ans »
Et je pense y aller pour 2 ou 3 jours, nous aurons beaucoup de vieilles histoires à rafraîchir.
Le BIT était ainsi autrefois. On connaissait tout le monde, on était amis avec presque tous (à l’exception peut-être des chefs directs) et on ignorait pratiquement les grades des uns des autres. Et je vous garantis que nous passerons ces 2 à 3 jours dans la gaieté !
16 février 2015
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GALLIMAUFRY
The right to vote from abroad – a contentious issue of political participation and representation of expat riate citizens
by Werner Sengenberger
To what extent and in what way can citizens who live outside their homeland participate in the general elections of their home country or their host country? If citizens are entitled to vote from abroad, what means and methods of voting are available and what institutions and resources are in place? In what ways do national governments or embassies promote voter participation of citizens residing overseas? If expatriates are not allowed to vote on what grounds are they denied this opportunity? These are issues that affect the practice of human rights, equality of opportunity and treatment, political and social inclusion and democratic participation and representation. Obviously, the issues are of concern to active and retired staff of international organizations like the ILO.
The sources of information used in this article include a global survey of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), based in Stockholm, and the Instituto Federal Electoral of Mexico (IFE), (see “Voting from Abroad, The International IDEA Handbook, Stockholm and Mexico City, 2007). Statistical figures for countries used in this article were taken from the unified data base of IDEA, dating from year 2013. (See http://www.idea.int/elections/vfa_search.cfm). Detailed information about EU member states and some other countries is based on my own research.
External voting
IDEA defines external voting as the right of citizens that enables some or all electors of a country who live temporarily or permanently outside their home country to exercise their voting rights outside the national territory. This definition of external voting does not cover the franchise for foreigners in a host country, which is applied inter alia in New Zealand and Sweden and in the European Union where citizens of EU member countries can vote at the municipal level. External voting also does not refer to the case – widely practised for many years in Italy and now in Slovakia and Albania - where the citizens residing abroad go home to vote in their homeland. It would be defined as internal voting. External voting means that the elector casts his or her vote outside the home country.
Although external voting was already practised in the period of Emperor Augustus in ancient Rome, today it is still far from being universal in the sense of being unrestricted and/or unconditional. Yet, progress has been made during the last two decades. More countries than ever before hold democratic elections. At the same time, the occasion to cast votes from outside the country of origin has greatly increased. The volume of potential external electors has been rising nearly all over the world. According to a recent World Bank estimate, the number of expatriate citizens runs as high as 200 million worldwide. As economic, social and cultural globalization advances and labour markets are increasingly international in scope, cross-border mobility and labour migration have grown rapidly. In addition, the number of refugees and displaced persons has swollen.
Where is external voting allowed?
For 2013, the data base of IDEA lists 142 countries and territories (amounting to 66.4% out of a total of 214 countries) that allow their citizens or some groups of citizens to vote from foreign countries, while 61 countries (28.5%) do not provide this opportunity. Six
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countries had no direct elections and five countries were in transition to establishing voting rights for their expats.
The right to vote externally applies to different types of elections. According to the legal provisions prevailing in 2013, citizens in 81 countries could vote from abroad in the presidential election. In 121 countries they could take part in legislative elections, in 62 countries in referendums, and in 21 countries in sub-national elections. Nine countries, including Algeria, Belarus, Finland, France, Iceland, Ireland, Russia, Togo and the United States permitted external voting for each type of election.
Electoral systems
The process of entitlement to external voting normally requires the expat of voting age to have his or her eligibility established, to determine the electoral district in which the elector participates, and to be inscribed in the electoral register of that district.
Voting methods and procedures differ widely. Some countries offer alternative methods for voting abroad, while others limit their options to one, partly for logistical or financial reasons. The most common method of voting (practised by 102 countries) is personal voting in a diplomatic mission or a special polling station set up abroad, followed by postal voting (49 countries) and choosing a proxy to cast the vote (18 countries). Six countries (Armenia, Bahrain, Bhutan, Namibia, Switzerland and the USA) permit remote electronic voting via the Internet, personal digital assistant (PDA) or telephone. Two countries (New Zealand and Poland) allow voting by fax.
The rules concerning the qualification to stand as a candidate for external electors vary across countries as well. Some countries have strict eligibility rules for candidates. By contrast, in Germany, the restrictions on the right to vote for citizens abroad, e.g. the limit of time of staying abroad, does not apply to candidates.
Restrictions of external voting
A number of nations restrict in one way or another the entitlement for voting from abroad in national elections, or impose special requirements. New Zealand and the UK call for a minimum period of 12 months of previous residency in the home country. Germany requires a continuous minimum stay of 3 months. Others demand a declaration of the intention to return to the home country after the stay overseas. One third of the countries that allow their expats to vote grant the right exclusively to particular categories of electors, e.g. diplomatic staff, government officials and armed forces serving overseas.
On the other hand, there are countries that have made external voting compulsory, just as internal voting. Among them is Brazil where citizens who abstain from casting their votes face various kinds of sanctions.
An unspecified number of countries allow their expats to go to the polls regardless of the time period spent outside the country. Elsewhere, the entitlement to external voting depends on the time the citizen has stayed abroad. For example, the maximum years of residing outside before losing the voting right is 6 years for Australians, 15 years for UK citizens, and 19 years for Guineans. For Germans living outside the country, the current time limit of eligibility for voting in the federal elections is 25 years abroad, unless they can demonstrate that they are familiar with and directly affected by the political situation in Germany. They have to prove their links to their home country before a municipal authority, mainly by showing that despite living abroad they are active in a political party or an association in Germany. A merely passive acquaintance, for example through the exposure to German media abroad, does not suffice. This regulation was introduced by the law maker in May 2013 after a ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court. Individual German expats and also the Association of German Employees at International
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Organizations (VDBIO) have contested the newly introduced legal restrictions. They view them as discriminatory, arbitrary and anachronistic.
The restriction of the right to vote for long-standing residents abroad, as it exists in the UK and in Germany, implies that citizens of EU-member countries may be denied the entitlement to vote anywhere in national elections. Thus, for example, a German citizen living in France who is barred from voting for the German federal parliament (“Bundestag”) elections and, at the same time, is not entitled to take part in the presidential and parliamentary elections in France, cannot vote in any national election, neither in their country of residence nor in their home country. In my view, Europe which is the politically most integrated world region, needs to urgently regulate the right to external suffrage in the individual countries at the superior European level. It would correspond to the agreed harmonization of civil rights across EU-countries under the Treaty of Maastricht. For long-standing expatriates among the EU-citizens, it would be appropriate to give them the choice of casting their vote in their country of citizenship or the country of residence. These options already exist for many EU citizens for the election of the European Parliament, but not for all of them, even though Directive 93/109/EC recognizes the right to vote regardless of the member state in which they reside. At present, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Ireland, Malta and Slovakia do not allow their citizens to cast their vote in European elections from abroad. Belgium, Denmark, Greece, and Italy deny their citizens to vote if they reside outside the European Union.
Electoral districts abroad
By 2007, there were 11 countries – 4 in Africa, 3 in the Americas, and 4 in Europe – that not only allowed their citizens abroad to participate in the elections of their home country, but also enabled them to elect their own representatives to the national legislature by setting up extra-territorial voting districts.
For example, Algeria has eight seats reserved in the national parliament relating to extra-territorial districts for voters abroad. The 1990s Constitution of Mozambique established two seats for expats that correspond to two single-member electoral districts outside the country – one in Africa and one in the rest of the world. Portuguese expatriates have been represented in the House of Representatives by two deputies relating to each of the two electoral districts outside the country, one in Europe and the other one for the rest of the World. Two deputies per district are granted if at least 55,000 electors cast their vote in the district.
The constitutional reform approved in Italy in 2006 provides that Italian expatriate citizens are represented in both chambers of the Parliament – with 12 seats in the House of Representatives and 6 seats in the Senate. For both chambers, four electoral districts abroad were created: one for Europe, a second one for South America, the third for North America and Central America and the fourth one to cover Africa, Asia, Oceania and Antarctica.
France has a long tradition of external voting and external representation. As early as 1926, French administrators stationed in the occupied Rhineland could cast votes by post at the presidential elections. Since 1948, French citizens living outside their country have been represented in the Senate. As from 1983, they have been provided 12 seats. The senators are not chosen directly by the French abroad but instead by a college of 90 elected members called “Conseillers Consulaires” forming the “Assemblée des Français de l’Ėtranger” (AFE). The Conseillers on their part get elected every 6 years by the approximately 2.1 million French expats within 15 extra-territorial electoral districts (“Circonscriptions électorales”) spread all over the world. The AFE serves as interlocutor and consultant of the French community overseas, allowing it to take part in French national affairs. It advises the French government in various areas of interest of expats,
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including employment, general and vocational education and training, social security, taxes and cultural affairs. It meets in plenary at least twice a year. Moreover, for the first time in 2012, thanks to an amendment of the electoral legislation, 11 seats out of a total of 577 in the national parliament (“Assemblée Générale”) are reserved for the French citizens abroad. It makes for a second pillar of their representation. Six of the 11 electoral districts are located in Europe and the remaining five in other continents. The award winning internet journal www.lepetitjournal.com is used to provide news and promote communication among the French expatriates and between them and the government. It is also instrumental for running election campaigns.
The facility of electoral districts abroad, the opportunity of voting in embassies and consulates, and the model of two-tier representation of expats as provided in France and Italy appear to positively influence voter turnout. For example, the participation of French citizens abroad in the presidential election in 2012 was about 10 times higher, and in the parliamentary elections it was about 5 times higher, than that for German expats without such provisions. No more than 4 per cent of the Germans abroad went to the polls in the last two elections of the Federal Parliament.
The controversy over the right of external voting
There are two key arguments in favour of external voting of citizens abroad. One is geared to the full implementation of universal suffrage as a human right. International declarations, such as the 1948 Declarations of Human Rights and the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, both adopted by the UN General Assembly, and also the 1948 American Declaration of Human Rights, recognize universal, equal, free and secret suffrage as inalienable part of human rights although they do not mention external voting explicitly, while the 1990 International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of Migrant Workers does. The second argument in favour of the right and opportunity of voting by expats stresses the political participation and the overall higher voter turnout which results from it. Increasing the participation appears highly important for democratic legitimacy in view of the low average participation of voting by expats compared to that of citizens living in the home country.
The main argument put forward against the right of polling from abroad holds that the expats are not, or not sufficiently, informed about the current political situation in their home country – which sounds odd in the age of satellite and internet communication – and/or are not directly affected by the results of the election
Other objections to external voting rights refer to the lack of transparency of the external election process, the security of the election material, the difficulties of resolving electoral disputes abroad, and the extra costs associated with external voting. It appears, however, that in none of the countries that have well organized and managed external voting and proper representation do these objections hold up.
In reality, the decision to grant or to deny the right of voting from abroad is not always grounded in the respect for fundamental human rights or pragmatic financial and logistical considerations, but simply on political opportunism. Sometimes, the entitlement is made dependant on whether the government or the political parties in power believes that the votes of the citizens living outside would heighten or lessen their chances of success in the outcome of elections.
Voting from abroad is rarely a high-ranking topical issue on the national political agenda. There is a great demand for more solid expertise on external voting and on the options for its institutionalization. Lawmakers, government officials, administrators and other stakeholders often have erroneous or prejudicial perceptions of the citizens abroad. According to the IDEA institute, the political elites are not generally familiar with the
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normative arguments for and against the extension of voting rights to expats. So far, there are no common global electoral standards or guidelines for external voting.
10 February 2015
Back to Africa: in search of meaning
by Assefa Bequele
A number of friends including the editors of this Newsletter have been asking me, for quite some time, to write an article on institution building, based on my experience with The African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) which I helped found in 2003. I do so now after considerable hesitation and with a degree of unease and humility. I say so for several reasons, especially two. First, ACPF is still a work in progress. It is a young institution which is only a little over 10 years old. The second is cultural and personal. Though perfectly acceptable in western societies to speak about one’s work including one’s achievements, it is considered cheeky to do so where I come from. And despite the fact that I have spent a large part of my life in the west and straddle two cultures, I have yet to overcome the cultural inhibition imbedded in me since childhood. So, writing this piece isn’t easy: it is more of an act of Will and a commitment to honour a promise I made to my illustrious friend Jack Martin.
Grace, gratitude and Ubuntu
Why and how ACPF?
I am someone fully conscious of Grace. I am and have always been grateful for all the many little and big things in my life. I was born in one of the poorest countries in the world. Like almost all Ethiopians, I come from humble beginnings. But unlike most, I was fortunate to be sent to some of the best schools in the country and, later on, in the West. I was also aware of the great privilege to work in the ILO on such exciting subjects as employment, poverty, conditions of work, child labour, to mention only a few, and at a senior level in Geneva, Bangkok and Addis Ababa. It was little more than a lottery. And all this was thanks to the money collected from the poor in my country and the tax payers in America. I am who I am because of contributions knowingly or unknowingly made by people at extreme ends of material wealth in our one world. Given this, I could not be satisfied with a life of French wines and cheeses which I loved, or the tranquillity of the beautiful Parc des Eaux-Vives in Geneva or Hyde Park in London. Nor could I be satisfied with the accumulation of money, something one would never have enough of, anyway. The search for meaning in one’s life can only be left to rest in the experiencing of a life of engagement with one’s community, however one defines it. This is all about oneness, about service. And in Africa, there is the word Ubuntu – “I am because you are”. Hence my decision to return to Africa.
The genesis of an idea
Yes, back to Africa but to do what? Looking back, this was in some ways relatively easy to answer. First, I was fortunate to have spent the last 15 plus years of my life in the ILO mostly in the development of the ILO’s programme on child labour. For those who may not know or remember, I was, among other things, the coordinator of the Interdepartmental Project on Child Labour which the former Director-General Michel Hansenne initiated, thanks in no small part to Ali Taqi then Director of Programme, and directly overseen by Jack Martin. [A real pity the idea of multidisciplinary or interdepartmental projects on major themes which Mr. Hansenne initiated was later abandoned!] With the successful completion of that interdepartmental project, I was subsequently given the responsibility for the design, development and, later, oversight of
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the International Programme on the Elimination of Child Labour (IPEC). Later, in 1998-99, I was given the honour of shepherding, together with Michèle Jankanish, the development of the Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention. These engagements were decisive for my continued interest in children’s issues.
But there was another important substantive reason. It has been said many times but needs to be said again that Africa’s children are the most disadvantaged in the world. Children constitute as high as 50 to 60% of the population in some African countries. In 2050, two out of five children in the world, or 40%, will be African. If Africa is to profit from the demographic dividend, achieve rapid growth in economic and social development and participate effectively in the global economy, it must invest heavily on the wellbeing of its children. But children are not given the importance they deserve on the African political agenda. What was needed, I felt, was an independent policy research and advocacy centre that spoke out authoritatively and truthfully for and on behalf of Africa’s children. Hence the African Child Policy Forum (ACPF).
Theory of change
ACPF is based on a theory of change which postulates that, however important the work of the hundreds and thousands of non-governmental and civil society organizations may be, sustained change can come about only through improved and vigorous state action by way of the articulation and implementation of appropriate and effective policies. This requires greater African political commitment which can be brought about only through political pressure and advocacy by, among others, Africans themselves and African civil society. For advocacy to be credible and effective, it must be based on good research on one hand and backed by an Africa-wide movement for Africa’s children on the other. So the major pillars of ACPF’s work then became: knowledge-building; policy advocacy; partnership-building and the creation of an Africa-wide movement for children.
On the kindness of strangers
I tried to articulate these issues in a four-page concept note that I shared with Professor Jaap Doek, a dear friend and one of the most eminent authorities on child rights. He sent the concept note to a Mr. W. Meindert, a well-known risk taker and Programme Director of Plan Netherlands, who liked the concept and decided to provide a small grant as seed money for a project office. This small grant was later expanded to a scale that enabled us to launch a multi-facetted and extensive programme of work. That in brief was the way it all started. Today, ACPF is a multi-donor funded programme, though, as with most non-governmental and civil society organizations, resource shortage remains a major preoccupation and perennial challenge.
Was it worth it?
Was it? I think it was. Much has been achieved by ACPF during these years, all the more remarkable when you consider the financial and human resource difficulties and the challenging politics of institution building in Africa.
• ACPF has contributed to knowledge building and improved understanding of the state of the African child and of government efforts to advance child wellbeing. It has contributed to the identification of neglected areas of concern e.g. violence against children, birth registration, inter-country adoption, children with disabilities, child-headed households and children in prisons. It has drawn attention to new and promising policy areas of work, for example, harmonization of laws and budgetary policy.
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• ACPF has been recognized as a lead institution and indispensable partner in many international and pan-African forums, for example, those organized by the African Union, UN, UNICEF, Save the Children, Plan International, to mention just a few.
• ACPF has initiated new approaches and strategic interventions such as Children’s
Legal Protection Centres (CLPCs) to provide legal advice and representation to victims of abuse and to stimulate law and institutional reform. This innovative approach to the delivery of and access to justice has attracted considerable attention and promises replication in many African countries.
• Through its Larissa Award for outstanding contribution to the cause and wellbeing
of children in Africa – the only prize of its kind in Africa – it has tried to promote good practices and recognize outstanding work for children. Some of the winners of the Larissa Award have achieved or went on to achieve greater recognition internationally. For example the first winner of the Larissa Award, Mrs. Lotti Latrous, founder of “L’Espoir d’Adjouffou”, an organization that provides care for the disadvantaged, the sick and terminally ill, on the outskirts of Abidjan, was named Swiss Woman of the Year. And the second winner Bogalech Gebre, was later awarded the prestigious King Baudouin Prize in Belgium for her campaign to eradicate female genital mutilation (FGM).
• ACPF has carried out pioneering work on measuring and monitoring government
performance and accountability. Its extensive work on the child-friendliness of African governments reported in various issues of its flagship publication The African Report on Child Wellbeing is widely reported in the international media and known to impact on national governments. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child [and the African Committee on the Rights and Welfare of the Child] have recognized it as a model of reporting for other regions and use it regularly as reference in their review of government policies and programmes.
• Its biennial International Policy Conference on the African Child remains the
premier forum for African and international experts to interact on the state of the African child and on national and international policy experiences.
• ACPF’s contribution in institution building is of historic significance. It was at
the origin of and instrumental in the creation and development of the Africa-Wide Movement for Children (AMC), an umbrella organization of some 250 member organizations.
In short, ACPF has, within a relatively short period, become a major actor and unique African voice in the child rights area, an important source of new insights and knowledge on children in Africa, a catalyst for policy and law reform, an objective observer and monitor of government performance, a leading Pan-African forum for policy dialogue and an advocate of governmental accountability. Being the architect for an Africa-wide movement for children in Africa, it has become an independent voice for children in Africa.
Miracle is having good friends
When I first conceived the idea of a policy advocacy centre, little did I think of the long and challenging journey ahead. It was an act of faith, one that was thankfully mediated into a living reality through the kindness and generosity of many individuals and organizations. Here though, I will mention just a few, and only those known to readers of the Newsletter. Take Dharam Ghai. He was one of the first people I consulted and he immediately offered
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to make a contribution. Dharam and his wife Neela and their in-law Dr Alice Kramer gave a grant that established the Larissa Prize for outstanding work on Africa’s children.
There is then my very dear, precious Christine Cornwell. Christine was involved in every way right from the beginning – at the conceptual stage and later on in an advisory and representational capacity. It is virtually impossible to express my gratitude. My close and old time friend Vali Jamal was very much the indispensable partner. We tested ideas, refined and developed the programme together. Vali later joined me in Addis and he, along with a physical and intellectual giant of a man called Stefan van der Swalluw, worked on the intellectual and organizational foundations of the institution. For those who do not know, Vali can be a frustrating friend and colleague, but what a joy and how memorable were those days and years we spent together contemplating, framing and forming the organization.
Talking about people I cannot pass without mentioning one touching incident. One day, sitting in my office in Addis Ababa, suddenly and unexpectedly, I received a call and subsequently a letter from Raffaele de Grazia, an old colleague from my CONDI/T days, saying that he had heard about my work on children and was sending me a hundred Euros as a contribution. I had not been in touch with Raffaele since he retired and was most touched that he should do so unsolicited and unexpectedly. You might say, what is the big deal? Let me tell you this. Although the hundred Euros he sent may be good enough say for a dinner for two in a modest Swiss restaurant, it was big enough to provide full scholarships for one full year for two underprivileged poor girls in a poor part of the country! There is no such thing as a small gift or a small act of generosity, my friend. Show me love, however little, and I will take it anytime. So, thank you the Raffaeles of this world.
Dream and just do it
I should now conclude this conversation with one simple message, if I may. I loved my work and enjoyed my life with the ILO. But I was fortunate to discover subsequently a different and somewhat rewarding path. It shows, if at all evidence is needed, that there is so much out in the world that can help us meet our search for a meaningful life. So, don’t be afraid, I say. Forget about elaborate and sophisticated feasibility studies, cost-benefit analysis and all that nonsense that we economists and project planners pontificate about and that gets in the way of our imagination and aspirations. Just follow your heart, informed by commonsense and reason. I say, dare to dream. If possible, dream big. And then just go and do it.
For more information:
www.africanchildforum.org or www.africanchildinfo.net [email protected]
17 November 2014
Poetry of interpretation
by Jo Christiane Ledakis
I noticed that poems figure among the contributions published in the ILO Friends Newsletter. I thus venture to submit two poems reflective of my time at this great and beloved Organization
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The Interpreter
Soundproofed behind glass straddling a fence among camps listens reads thinks transposes speaks all in one breath.
Words stream in through ears boggle the brain pour out from lips messages deciphered retold in another tongue.
A bridge a sense-making go-between all words hers but none must remain.
A watering hose fertilizing fields of understanding clarity of purpose differently expressed.
A hummingbird hovering extracting the nectar of meaning from the chalice of each sentence transmitting the pollen of intent to the pistil hidden in the mike.
High-speed wing-flapping mind suspended in flight sense darting in and out vital veracity feather-light velocity the aerodynamic essence.
A wondrous flight seeking sweet consensus the honey of agreement inching the planet closer to its intended paradisiacal state.
A gavel sounds the hummingbird flits away from her place of belonging thirsty now for the flower of silence.
A Concert in Words
They come from all corners of the world, wearing pin-stripes, djellabas, grand boubous, turbans or kaftans, each armed with an attaché case,
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for an exchange of thoughts on how to make the world a better place, according to their views.
Their most precious possessions, carefully worded, cabinet-level approved, printed on paper with the state seal: speeches, stored in laptops, iPads, Galaxy tablets – closely guarded pearls of wisdom, styled and shined to deal with each point on the agenda,
to be delivered on behalf of an entire country, its inhabitants, in the hundreds of thousands, millions or even a billion, in wording originally conceived, maybe, in Swahili, Urdu, Farsi, Guarani, or others from the multiple range of tongues, sifted down to eight for the fateful, continents-spanning exchange.
The jugglers of their words – wonders of audition, erudition, volition, to secrecy bound, pros all – cloistered in booths at the back of the assembly hall, a fully relayed, multilingual team, connected, simultaneously tuned to resonant vocal chords and acute ears in need,
capture the speeches read out at great speed, one after another, a continuous stream, disentangle meaning from sound, put in one language, put out, in another, feed back to the assembled round threads of arguments, reasons and visions, converted from the foreign to the familiar, based on fleeting, fast-flowing dBs.
One day, the juggler-in-chief – unflagging in his belief that striving for excellence is a shared mission and munificence an ally of perfection – projected onto the assembly-room wall, in rainbow-coloured characters of eight tongues, a plea: that the jugglers, relying on the heard, and attuned to their inordinate sixth sense, as visual safeguard also receive the printed brief –
forestalling intermittent mumbling or aggravated loss of the speedometer – thus helping them achieve
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the desired translucent unison when re-stringing sequences of syllables, bent, in obeisance to syntax and grammar, on replicating the clearly stated or, on occasion, the purposely left nebulous intent.
Speeches, once shuttered out of sight in flash sticks, colour-coded plastic sleeves, are Xeroxed and sped to the jugglers, in an awakening to the delight of a well-reasoned insight – sparked by the one-field theory – that in this world, of which we all are part, instead of pondering doom, there is room to refine the art of pooling resources and creatively joining forces for one another’s cause.
Multiple webs of words, spun minute by minute, glistening with dew drops of intent, born of different perspectives, freely told, capture the rare butterfly of consensus, aflutter with the promise to prevent an earthquake of conflict in a far corner of our world.
17 December 2014
The menaces or benefits of technology
by Bettina Ribes-Gil
Introduction
“This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us.” – A Western Union internal memo dated 1876.
“ I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas Watson, Chairman IBM, 1943
Just how wrong can you be?!
Read on – this article concerns you! Gradually technology has enveloped us all in a dichotomy of pleasure and menace: on-line social network systems, smartphones, iPads, play-stations, Wi-wi, Kindles, Youtube, Whatsapps, robots, as opposed to hackers, viruses, computer crashes, “dark sites” of pornography, terrorism or sexual abuse. Unfortunately we have little choice but to join in and become involved with banks, government departments, travel services and so forth which are all now linked to operate within the Internet.
Mistrust of technology is deep-rooted ever since modern communication devices were invented. Popular science fiction literature and subsequently terror movies depicting gruesome consequences have influenced susceptible people and no new technology has
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been presented without accompanying public alarm. When telephones were widely introduced at the beginning of the 20th century, claims were made that they caused potential insanity, nervous excitability and contagious diseases, as well as prompting speech defects, lack of activity leading to obesity and brain cancer, fortunately none of which has been confirmed!
Nevertheless, as we live in this connected world today let us see what supports these dominant systems versus the menaces.
Mobile phones
Mobile phones are practically a human appendage and in this present digital era it is claimed that we live in a society of communication thanks to the ability to connect worldwide. However, we see people everywhere reliant on their mobile phone, earpiece affixed, unaware of their surroundings and resembling rambling zombies. The Walkman was the initiator in turning us into Robinson Crusoes – isolating ourselves from those around us. Face-to-face communication is declining and especially adolescents are glued to their iphones, ipads, etc. This, according to many sociologists and psychologists, risks inhibiting their personal development.
A recent study carried out in the UK unexpectedly revealed that making a call on a mobile phone only comes sixth out of a list of ten of its functions! The primary use is texting, followed by reading texts received; opening e-mails; surfing the Internet; setting the alarm, making calls (6th); sending e-mails; checking the time; using the calculator and finally consulting Facebook. In Spain eight out of ten connections from smartphones are primarily used to watch videos, access social networks and generally connect to Internet, rarely to speak.
Technological evolution is such that in Sweden it is now customary to use debit or credit cards incorporated in mobiles instead of real cash and even stall owners in street markets already have the means to accept electronic payment. Professor Niklas Arvidsson estimates that real money will no longer exist there by 2030. The way technology is galloping along at such a rapid speed, he may well be right!
Recent studies have been undertaken, especially geared towards children under 12, on the effects of the use of technology on their cognitive abilities. It is true that in this ever-evolving technical world children are able to use some electronic devices practically before learning to walk which poses the question of how much is their perception of the real world contaminated by the electronic world? Moderating children’s access to these devices using filters or insisting on offline periods is indispensable. Even the late Steve Jobs restricted his son’s use of his iPad!
Among all the applications and Whatsapps for mobile phones are the GPS controls that parents can download to keep an eye on where their children are at any given time. This app is also available for watches too! Although from a security angle this is a positive element it could eventually raise the question as to where children’s liberty starts and where parents’ concerns end, but this is an ethical area open to debate.
There is an urban myth circulating at the moment that there exists a worldwide plot by certain factions to push individualism to such a point that it will deactivate the possibility of moving people to act together and hence prevent future mass meetings and revolutions! On the other hand this is contradicted by the fact that many demonstrations are precisely set up by diverse movements using mobile phones.
Now let us look first at the advantages of the many available technological systems.
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Digital devices
It is paradoxical that although most of us miss vocal human contact and are often irritated beyond measure by the anonymous ethereal recordings “press 1 for….; press 2 for…”, it is a fact that many people would rather e-mail or text a message than pick up a telephone and actually talk to a human! Psychologists put this down to fear of an immediate contact finding it intimidating. However, it has to be acknowledged that it also allows the receiver breathing space to consider a reply before replying.
There are other devices which open up a variety of digital cultural aspects such as Kindles with capacity to download thousands of books, music and an unending fount of information and entertainment. The ongoing downsizing of these devices means they are easily carried thus their inexorable advance to use when travelling. Films and television series are now downloaded (legally or otherwise!) to phones and tablets to be viewed when and where desired. Desk calendars, alarm clocks, video cameras, as well as the television itself, run the risk of going the same way as the Walkman as technology is updated and becomes more entrenched in everyday life.
One example of the beneficial use of networks is that of the plumber who came to see some damage in our kitchen and was able to text his report to the insurance company in situ with his iphone, attaching photos, to enable immediate action to be taken to avoid a potential disaster!
Among the numerous applications available are those for the medical profession. Doctors can diagnose illnesses via computer. In spite of the positive aspects, there is conversely the possibility that a doctor when connected to a screen is less able to concentrate on the patient. It is the computer that indicates the treatment necessary from the data received. Thus it is the machine, not a human, which gives the diagnosis. However accurate this may be it can result in fewer prospects for considering other possibilities and limit further research. There is also the risk of data breaches when medical records are picked up from the Web by unauthorized “outsiders”.
It is only recently, in terms of human history, that we have the ability to share information with anyone around the globe just by pressing a key or moving a finger. Currently media reporters are able communicate global events via satellite for direct transmission. Systems such as Skype enable families and friends to keep in touch wherever they are. Video conferences are now the norm in companies worldwide, consequently trade is facilitated and vital information can be online in seconds. As many business affairs are exclusively carried out through computers, this means that a cocoa broker, for example, located in a European office surrounded by a myriad of screens full of figures, will never get to deal hands-on with the actual product! Trends in transnational trade mean that students will be ill-equipped for most professional opportunities without these indispensable digital media skills. It is indeed necessary to be prepared to fit into the world as it functions today.
With regards to past practices in the ILO, computers have certainly made life much easier. Anyone who remembers the irksome task of correcting stencils with red liquid can only agree!
Technological developments
“Ghosts in the Internet!” – is the media’s name for the Internet of Things – intelligent things, such as dustbins which are programmed to indicate when they are full (a prototype was located in Bath, UK); fridges, radiators, household appliances, self-drive vehicles, all of which are programmed at distance. Connections from smartphones or tablets enable you to have a full and accurate control over the temperature in your home whether you are there or not. Smart thermostats can adjust the level of heating, and even if expensive initially it has been found in the UK that there can be a staggering 30 per cent saving on
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bills. This leads to the prediction that the majority of users of Internet will be things and not people. The Internet is young but already in 2009 there were more non-human users than humans! It is calculated that by 2050 nearly 50,000 million things will be connected worldwide to the Web.
Technology has further enabled “intelligent” clothes to be manufactured which can check blood pressure, heart beat and many other factors to keep us alive longer.
Intelligent cities have been created with cameras and sensors being placed at traffic lights and elsewhere to monitor traffic offences, illegal parking, cleanliness of public places, delinquency etc. to solve urban problems swiftly and efficiently. The placement of these mechanisms is of course encouraged by the multinationals that benefit financially from their expensive inventions, which local authorities feel they have to have even if lacking the necessary funds.
Qualcomm. has created a surveillance application incorporated in a teddy bear that alerts parents by mobile or television if their child surreptitiously connects to Internet instead of sleeping. The connection is closed by remote control and the teddy bear programmed to say “It’s time to sleep”!
Research into whole brain emulation in producing artificial intelligence to create robots – humanoids with attributes to perform the most complicated tasks programmed and controlled by any mobile apparatus. Apparently some 400,000 are already “in service” in Japan. The term “robot” was coined in 1920 by the Czech writer Karel Capek from the Czech word robota meaning “forced labour”. There is the fear that they will become more intelligent than ourselves, but it has been asserted that it is not the robots that think more than humans, it is us who think less than them! Nevertheless, in the medical field awe-inspiring artificial limbs have been successfully fitted onto the human body, which, together with transplants and mechanical creations of internal organs heralds a robotic future. On the lighter side it is a joy to see how children enjoy playing with their robotic toys, but does this distract the child from using its own imagination?
So let us now consider the menaces.
Menaces
Artificial intelligence also controls arms of destruction such as the Brimstone missile which can distinguish between tanks, cars or buses and reaches its objectives in a designated area with no human military aid. AI also permits a Drone to make its own analysis when in flight and these are also used by the armed forces. Fortunately Drones also have a nonviolent utility for agricultural and recreation purposes. Nevertheless, it’s scary!
From a cultural angle the problem arises of illegally downloading films, books, games – piracy. In spite of the convenience of electronic books, is there not something poignant to miss out on holding a beautiful book in your hands and turning the pages? A lot of time is lost when people are linked to Twitter and Facebook, time which used to be taken up for reading. A more societal complication could arise if people were to stop buying newspapers and other literature and only rely on their screens. This would lead to job losses – printers, distributers, kiosks, a concern that perhaps should not be ignored.
For over a decade the social networks have been encouraging people to share thoughts with people they hardly know or not at all, consequently often being overwhelmed by too many friends who can become invasive. Excess of interaction can affect the memory and concentration; there is the risk of depression if excluded from any forum or when comparing other people’s successes to one’s own failures. Psychologists have observed patients who, despite their cyber-friends, experience a sensation of solitude. In a poll it was
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found that a third of Britons felt “left behind” by this ever-progressing technology which not only affects the elderly but included nearly 30 per cent of 18 to 24 year-olds who had experienced loneliness. Digital, globalized communication has a detrimental effect on genuine human interaction. When travelling, children tend to spend the time connected to their mobile devices, instead of appreciating the passing scenery. It is essential to value simple pleasures such as responsiveness to nature, the breeze, birdsong, the splendour of waves and clouds, the world around us.
The fundamental art of conversation and good communication skills are slowly drying up. The dynamics of face-to-face discussion are important to humans, thus sending a greetings card through a computer, for instance, means “someone else” is making the effort – it should be remembered that certain messages call for a corporal presence. Technology should be used as a complementary tool so we do not become over-reliant on it and therefore not lose the kind of human intimacy which can interpret feelings from facial expressions, moods, eye contact and body movements. Techno skills can be encouraged but at the same time potential dangers should be stressed.
Private space must be preserved at all costs, not each and every thought should be uploaded onto Facebook, Twitter and the other networks for the world to see. Wherever we have surfed we have left an indelible footmark – a phenomenon over which we have no control. Anything registered on Internet is available worldwide, practically forever. These sites risk promoting a spirit of exhibitionism with all the photos and intimate messages shared daily. A great deal of marketing is involved to make money – any company can click in to trace your interests and follow up. For instance, girls today want to be women too soon, pressured by video clips and tutorials on make-up and fashion encouraging them to act at being grownups before time.
We think the appliances relieve us of work and it takes some time for us to realize that it is these tools which have changed our behaviour. We spend more time “socializing” across a screen which in the long run diminishes our natural talents. It seems that some people maintain a more stable relationship with their smartphone than with their partner! If too much is left to digital devices and should they fail, then there is a problem because we have externalized part of our capacities and become reliant on them for solutions.
Do not feed the trolls is the golden rule in Internet. Trolls are those who, under the cover of anonymity or aliases, bombard sites or individuals with aggressive messages. They proffer menaces and violate the intimacy of their victims. This cyber-bullying is poison to the networks. Spam, another hazard, should also be deleted.
Hackers are another significant problem. Any electronic device can be hacked given enough specialist knowledge – our cyber world is constantly in peril. It is something we cannot avoid as all computers are linked to the Web. The invasion of privacy is rampant and whatever technicians do to counteract it, the hackers find a way round. Recently a very disquieting hack was carried out in an area where private individuals had installed security cameras to enable them to view live what was happening inside and around their own homes in their absence. This intimate footage was captured by hackers and reproduced onto a website for the world to see!
As has been tragically demonstrated, even more alarming is the use made of the Internet by terrorist organizations for recruitment, transmitting coded messages concerning planned attacks and their horrific propaganda. Globally, police are frustrated by encryption on digital devices. They can ill afford to let Internet or any communication platform become a safe haven for terrorist plots. One of Britain’s Scotland Yard terrorist experts has warned that the radicalization via Internet of vulnerable young people is an ongoing danger. The extremists use the social network in an extremely sophisticated way to recruit prospective militia.
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To illustrate that too much automization can diminish reactions and concentration is a communication issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration in 2013 to encourage more manual operations by pilots, especially on long-haul flights. One experienced airline captain alleged that due to so much reliance on automatic piloting they were forgetting how to fly an aircraft should it happen that a pilot had to suddenly change to manual mode in any impending emergency. Some recent air disasters could possibly prove to be cases in point.
Applications
Sometimes an application or website becomes popular for something other than the reason for which it was initially created. (1) A video game which enabled the player to construct a fantasy world has transformed into a tool used by the UN working with the inventors to redesign urban zones worldwide. (2) A web site to upload your CV to search for a job has been diverted by those seeking a person with a certain background in view to a relationship. The personal details gleaned from the CV guide the individual towards a suitable partner to contact. (3) In the same vein the site which originally was for people to offer a free bed in their home to backpackers, known as couchsurfing, has been misused as the best app for casual sex!
Firechat is an application that permits communication between mobile phones without requiring a connection to Internet which counteracts any censure or shutdown by authorities. It was used in Hong Kong during the “umbrella” protests in 2014. Two devices can connect up to a distance of 200 metres and the more phones that are inter-linked create a network for interchange of information or instructions in various situations. The Japanese Government has identified a positive exploitation of Firechat recommending its use in the case of catastrophes.
The Spanish Police Services have recourse to Twitter where they have well over a million followers from whom they receive many useful indications which help in solving crimes due to the collaboration from citizens worldwide.
The Inuits used to navigate their territory by wind direction, tides, currents and animal behaviour. Since they adopted GPS devices the hunters are faced with unsuspected dangers such as thin ice if they rely too much on satellite guidance which cannot gauge such consequences. Often batteries can freeze and fail so the younger Inuits, who are enthusiastic about GPS, find that they are unable to react as they are not familiar with the traditional hunting techniques.
There are several apps available which are purported to help you in your sentimental life: one that produces messages you can select to send to a loved one; another where psychologists will answer questions, 24/7, when couples are in crisis for a modest sum! Another app includes an option in which couples can discuss their problems together – by e-mail messages – instead of face-to-face!
Other apps available are useful for travelling : one imitates the noise of a male mosquito to keep the females away preventing being bitten; another with information on how to tip in different countries; the apps for finding hotels, like Airbnb (air bed plus breakfast) a web site founded in 2007 during a congress in San Francisco when hotel beds were in short supply, now used mostly by younger travellers; Blablacar, a web site originated in France for car sharing which is now available in more than a dozen countries. The “bla” indicates to the prospective driver how much you wish to talk: “bla” signifies that you hardly talk, “blabla” refers to a normal conversationalist and three “bla”s warns them of a chatterbox! Another app features individuals who offer their services as amateur tourist guides in their home locality.
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Conclusion
Literally a million miles away from the first telegraph message is the fantastic technology that has enabled Philea to land on a comet following a ten-year journey through space. In the pipeline is the project of a one-way voyage to Mars in the not too distant future. The controversial Google glasses are about to be re-commercialized. Technology is undeniably a never-ending story.
It is curious how suddenly practically everything is operated through Internet, people seem to be no longer necessary – what will happen to empathy between humans? However, humans unfailingly adapt to an ever-changing environment. New means of communication will be embraced as wholeheartedly as the telephone once was. Evolution cannot be hindered and adoption of technology develops critical reflection. Individuals will adjust and advance with time, hopefully not as servile robots. We can only surmise what will be achieved in the life-time of our grandchildren. It is indeed difficult to be a techno-sceptic nowadays and I confess to being a silver surfer myself, regularly connecting to the Internet. Even so, misgivings remain as to the final countdown!
Valencia, 23 January 2015
La vie dans la banlieue est de Paris et les attenta ts de Charlie Hebdo
par Hiromasa Suzuki
La France est encore sous le choc des attentats terroristes des 7 et 9 janvier dernier. Le fait que les auteurs des attentats étaient de nationalité française, éduqués en France et radicalisés dans les prisons pour devenir des djihadistes destructeurs crée de profonds malaises dans la société. La grande marche contre le terrorisme (Je suis Charlie) du 11 janvier à Paris et dans d’autres villes de France ne change rien à ce malaise généralisé. Maintenant, les politiques de différents bords vont sans doute discuter sur les mesures à prendre pour éviter qu’un tel acte atroce ne se répète. Il y aura beaucoup de discussions sur les écoutes téléphoniques et la surveillance dans les prisons pour que de simples délinquants ne se transforment pas en islamistes radicaux dans les prisons (comment concilier ces mesures avec les droits humanitaires ?). Il y aura des discussions sur la place de la communauté musulmane dans la société française. La laïcité, c’est-à-dire, la séparation stricte entre les religions et la sphère politique, est-elle compatible avec la croyance musulmane ? La question du port du voile à l’école a déjà fait couler beaucoup d’encre. Cependant, pour ma part, la question de fond est celle des banlieues où les immigrés sont majoritaires. C’est là que les auteurs des attentats ont grandi et où les islamistes recrutent les futurs djihadistes.
Les problèmes des banlieues pauvres ne datent pas d’hier ; on se rappelle des grandes émeutes des jeunes de banlieue en 2005 qui ont duré pendant trois semaines et qui ont provoqué plus de 10.000 voitures incendiées avec des blessés par centaines parmi les émeutiers issus de l’immigration et les membres des forces de l’ordre. De fait, les attentats récents rappellent tristement que les problèmes des banlieues sont loin d’être résolus et, hélas, restent toujours d’actualité. Mon propos ici n’est pas d’aborder ce vaste sujet des banlieues mais simplement de fournir mes observations personnelles sur les banlieues est et sud de Paris que j’ai vues ou plutôt entrevues. Pour être honnête, la ville dans laquelle nous habitons, Nogent-sur-Marne, n’est pas du tout une de ces banlieues mal famées ; elle est plutôt coquette et bourgeoise. Mais l’avantage, si l’on peut dire, est que nous sommes entourés des communes réputées comme ceintures rouges parisiennes.
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Ayant vécu longtemps à Genève et à Tokyo, le contraste entre les quartiers aisés de la capitale et ses prolongements dans l’ouest (Auteuil, Passy, Neuilly-sur-Seine) et les petites banlieues est et nord est assez choquant. Se promener simplement dans le XVIIe ou Neuilly avec leurs larges allées plantées de gros platanes et bordées de beaux immeubles a un charme indéfinissable rappelant souvent la belle époque, mais qui oserait le faire dans les banlieues est ou nord ? Il n’y a pas de boutiques élégantes ni de trottoirs bordés d’arbres. Les bâtiments sont souvent sales, tagués et mal entretenus. Puis, on a parfois un sentiment d’insécurité, du fait que dans les rues on voit des bandes de jeunes qui traînent et bavardent à haute voix en plein jour. Même si mes expériences de rencontre avec les quartiers difficiles sont très limitées, j’observe clairement le fossé qui sépare le monde des fortunés et le monde des pauvres, souvent issus de l’immigration récente. Pour être plus réaliste, il y a une classe moyenne qui forme la majorité de la population. Ces trois mondes vivent séparément sans se croiser quotidiennement. Ce n’est que dans les transports publics comme le RER (Réseau Express Régional) ou les centres commerciaux qu’on voit des gens de divers horizons. Mais attention, les beaux quartiers ont leurs centres commerciaux, tout comme les banlieues ont leurs supérettes.
Un beau jour, il y a de cela 7 ou 8 ans, nous venions d’acheter notre appartement à Nogent et nous voulions acheter des meubles pas trop chers. Nous sommes allés dans un magasin de meubles à Bondy (une commune de banlieue rouge). Quand nous sommes arrivés à la caisse, j’ai eu un choc : parmi une dizaine de clients qui faisaient la queue, il n’y en avait qu’un ou deux apparemment Français de souche, la plupart étant des Africains et des Maghrébins. J’ai bien compris que nous avions fait une intrusion dans un territoire inconnu où la majorité de la population sont des immigrés.
Cette séparation entre les quartiers riches et des quartiers pauvres m’a paru d’autant plus choquante que nous vivions à l’époque dans la banlieue est de Tokyo. Il y a bien sûr au Japon des quartiers aisés (ouest de Tokyo, comme à Paris) mais les gens aisés, la classe moyenne et les gens pauvres cohabitent dans le même quartier. Les transports publics sont les mêmes dans toutes les banlieues et il n’y a jamais de problèmes de sécurité même dans les quartiers considérés pauvres. Du fait de la construction de nouveaux ensembles de bâtiments dans les vieux quartiers, il y a de plus en plus un mixage de la population.
En France, il y a peu de mixage de population. Bien sûr, l’État a essayé de décentraliser les administrations dans les quartiers est ou ouest de Paris. Mais peu de gens aisés viennent s’installer dans ces quartiers. C’est que les conditions de vie des banlieues nord et est sont loin d’être satisfaisantes. Les gens ont souvent peur de l’atmosphère d’insécurité. Prenons l’exemple de Bondy dans le département de Seine-St-Denis. La ville est traversée par une autoroute surélevée qui coupe littéralement la ville en deux. Puis, il y a une avenue industrielle qui coupe la ville d’ouest en est. La population immigrée est de plus en plus nombreuse et visible. Des amis de ma femme qui sont originaires de cette cité jadis tranquille, ont maintenant décidé de vendre leur appartement, parce qu’ils disent que la ville n’est plus la même avec la venue progressive d’immigrés, notamment des Africains. Ils essayent de vendre leur appartement, mais son prix n’a pas du tout augmenté tandis que dans les beaux quartiers les prix immobiliers ont triplé depuis 20 ans.
Ainsi, le problème des banlieues est toujours au point mort. Paris chasse la population immigrée vers les banlieues rouges par le biais des prix exorbitants de l’immobilier parisien. Le département de Seine-St-Denis est devenu le symbole de tous les maux des banlieues pauvres. Le département compte parmi sa population 26% d’immigrés et un taux de chômage de 13% avec beaucoup de délinquance, souvent liée au trafic de drogue. 30% des jeunes y sont sans aucun diplôme, dont 40% en chômage (INSEE : Ile de France à la page. No 357, mai 2011). La déficience des transports publics y est criarde à partir du moment où on s’éloigne des stations de métro, du RER et du train (les trains sont souvent sales et peu fiables). Les écoles et lycées de ces quartiers ont une très mauvaise réputation (sécurité et niveau scolaire, en partie liée au fait que beaucoup d’élèves ne parlent pas le
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français à la maison) de sorte que peu de bons enseignants veulent venir enseigner dans ces établissements scolaires. Il en résulte que nombre de jeunes sortent du système scolaire sans le moindre diplôme et rejoignent la horde des chômeurs et des marginalisés. Pour rompre ce cercle vicieux, il faudrait mettre en œuvre une politique d’envergure de rénovation des quartiers de grands ensembles et surtout améliorer les transports (trains, tramways et routes). Mais, en ces temps de restriction budgétaire, qui peut financer de tels projets, le gouvernement, la région ou des organismes parapublics ? Je suis un peu songeur sur cette question.
Les RER A et B, qui sont les axes de transport des banlieues ouest-est et nord-sud, que j’emprunte deux fois par semaine, sont le condensé de certaines couches de la société française. Aux heures de pointe, les salariés qui vont au travail, avec un attaché-case ou un sac à dos, sont majoritaires et restent silencieux dans le train bondé. Aux heures creuses, le monde est beaucoup plus disparate : des touristes étrangers fatigués d’avoir visité Disneyland, des jeunes Noirs ou Maghrébins en groupe ou des femmes qui racontent leur vie à haute voix au téléphone. De vieilles dames retraitées serrent fort leur sac à main contre elles, comme si leurs voisins pouvaient voler leur sac. Puis des accordéonistes ou des mendiants mettent l’ambiance. Mais pourquoi les trains du Réseau Express Régional sont-ils aussi sales et les gares si mal éclairées? N’est-ce pas le signe que les gouvernements successifs et la SNCF ont toujours privilégié les TGV à la place des RER de banlieue ?
21 février 2015
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LETTERS TO THE EDITORS
Friends Newsletter No. 57
Le Newsletter est arrivé chez nous vieux retraités comme un magnifique cadeau inespéré de Noël : plein de charme, de belles photos, d’intéressants articles et de charmants souvenirs émus de collègues que nous avons connus, admirés et aimés. Un grand merci pour ces 48 pages.
Et un remerciement ému au journaliste de presque 92 ans.
16 décembre 2014 Marianne Nussbaumer
Just received Friends Newsletter No. 57, December 2014.
I am writing Mr. Ali separately. Meanwhile, would it be possible for you to let him know Nirmala liked his reminiscences the most? Mr. Ali is a remarkable personality and much admired.
How unique your thoughtfulness to publish the editorial team celebrating a ‘grand’ occasion at La Gracieuse, Lonay last September.
I send one and all good wishes for the New Year. "The team" does such a remarkable job compiling issues of FN. Thank you.
Mumbai, 7 January 2015 Nirmala Kutty
Of this and that
I am always happy to see the ILO Friends’ Newsletter in my mailbox. To be honest, usually the first thing I look at is the back page with the names of “Ceux qui nous ont quittés”.
I am somewhat relieved when I see my name is not on the list. Now this might seem an odd thing to say but you will understand when I tell you that I was strolling around Thonon-les-Bains with my husband a few years ago when we met a certain Mr. Dey, a New Zealand colleague from the Management Development Branch, who had retired from the ILO. He told us he had discovered to his absolute astonishment that HIS name was on the list together with the date of his demise. Of course it was clear there was some mistake as he was in perfectly good health at the time. So he got in touch with the Newsletter to put the record straight. Talk about tales of the unexpected!
Thank you, Jack Martin, for drawing attention to the ILO Director General’s speech at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies on 20 October 2014. I was struck with the scale of the challenges facing the ILO over the next 100 years. Mind boggling. I listened to the DG’s speech on You Tube – it was excellent and extremely interesting. As you say, the DG asked the audience how 42 million jobs can be created every year to meet demand. On the other hand, I read recently that the McKinsey Global Institute estimates that by 2020 there will be a global shortfall of 85 million high- and middle-skilled workers up from 75 million in 2012 (ILO, 2012). A McKinsey-authored paper on Education and Employment (March 2014) which covered an analysis of over
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9,000 youth, education providers and employers in nine countries (Brazil, Germany, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States) says businesses complain that they cannot find the workers they need due to a mismatch between education and employment. Some of the main problems which are causing this situation are that youth, education providers and employers do not see the issue in the same way and are travelling on different roads. Moreover, the infrastructure required to improve government performance doesn’t exist – there is a glaring absence of empirical research and no mechanisms to coordinate and monitor activity. The Daily Telegraph summed up part of the problem with a photo of an Oxford graduate pulling pints in a pub. In the meantime, unemployment may be a time bomb for world peace.
Other articles I read with great interest in Friends Newsletter No. 57 were Comment je suis entré au BIT by Alfred Delattre, La jeune fille au piano by Peter Williams, The Magic of the Institute by P. Gopinath and Want to buy a Harpsichord? by John Sykes. All very interesting so thank you.
John Sykes’ article reminded me of the time (1970s) when I was diagnosed with a slipped disc and hernia and was rushed to the Hospital Cantonal in Geneva. Unfortunately, there were no beds available in a 2nd class ward so I was placed in 3rd class where I was seen by a surgeon who told me, in a very authoritative way, that I would be operated on next morning to remove the disk which had given me problems on and off for seven years. Having been warned by my chief Darwin Bell, head of the Vocational Training Branch, to never have a disc removed (he suffered all his life because he had done just that), I declined the operation. The surgeon told me my decision was foolhardy as I would end up with a dropped foot, limping, dragging my leg along and would certainly need crutches. I listened to him politely but as soon as he had left I telephoned the hospital administration to get me out of that ward quickly. The only thing available was 1st class so I went there where I was greeted by an eminent professor. He asked me very kindly and gently what I wanted to do and I told him I will lie here in bed for a while until the disc goes back to its rightful place and then I will walk out and go home. He didn’t seem to have any problem with that. That’s fine, he said, I will give you 3 weeks and then maybe you will have the operation if you’re not up and walking. And so it was agreed.
Soon after I had a visit from Ms Norma Wagstaffe, the ILO Welfare Officer at the time, who told me that the ILO Staff Health Fund was not going to pay the extra costs for 1st class (I had no problem with that) nor did the Fund approve of me being treated in Switzerland when I lived in France! Ah, that was new. She had also brought along a form which she insisted I must sign immediately to obtain an ILO loan to cover the cost of my “extravagance” estimated in the region of CHF 10,000 by the Fund. I guess she was only trying to be helpful but I declined the loan. Well, the way I saw it was, if a girl can’t treat herself to a beautiful room, splendid view and à la carte dining when she is facing a crisis then it’s really a pretty poor show and she needs to change her bank manager urgently.
Immediately she had left, Jorge Muller, ILO Catering Expert, arrived carrying a bottle of champagne. Excellent timing! We had a jolly good time finishing off the champagne and he cheered me up no end. That’s what I admired about Jorge, he had style!
Shortly afterwards I started to realize that the medical professionals were waiting for me to raise my left foot off the floor. I had absolutely no feeling in it at the time. Occasionally I slipped out of bed to try and stand on my tippy toes to get that foot up from the floor but it was stuck firmly to the ground. I had to be quick with these attempts because after a couple of minutes the dreaded sciatica nerve pain would kick in. Meanwhile, time was marching on and I had started to think I might end up having to undergo that operation after all or face bankruptcy to meet the hospital bills or both! One day with the help of a small mirror I thought I saw my foot leave the floor very slightly but it was only three full days later before it happened again and this time my doctor was there to spot it. Success! I could
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leave the hospital. The disc had slowly but surely started to slip back into its rightful place of its own accord, pain disappeared like magic and I was walking again!
Just before I left the hospital, my handsome Belgian doctor came and sat on the side of the bed and looking deep into my eyes, he said these memorable words: “You… will… never… have… this… back… problem… again. Do you understand?” “Yes, Doctor, no, never, ever again,” I replied. “Good!” and then he was gone. Now whether he hypnotized me in those few moments or was just giving me a short lesson in positive thinking I can’t say, but I do know I have had no back aches from that day to this!
What I really want to convey with this story is the tremendous capabilities of the human body to heal itself. Sometimes a bit of patience, confidence, belief and optimism can do wonders.
Best wishes to all for 2015. May the road rise up to meet you, may the wind always be on your back.
5 January 2015 Eileen M. Hinz Pocock
Bernhard Wittich
I was deeply saddened that our friend and colleague Bernhard Wittich has departed this world. Bernhard was a valued member of our team at the Management Development Branch in Geneva joining us after several years of distinguished work in Costa Rica, Bolivia and Peru. Hard working, warm and friendly, he extended his advice and support, always in a courteous manner to all the field colleagues who showed up in his office for briefing or debriefing. He and his wife took great pleasure in welcoming friends and ILO colleagues to their home in Geneva and later on in Hersfeld in Germany. He will be greatly missed.
17 December 2014 George Kanawaty
A la mémoire de Francis Wolf
par Charles Barbeau
La mort de Francis Wolf doit maintenant remonter à une quinzaine d’années ; à l’époque, je n’ai rien su, si bien que je n’ai rien dit. Je souhaiterais pourtant, puisque l’équipe de rédaction qui dirige ce Bulletin d’une manière remarquable nous demande des témoignages sur le passé du Bureau, évoquer la mémoire de celui qui était, dans les années soixante, le conseiller juridique du BIT avant de terminer sa carrière comme sous-directeur-général.
Dans ces années lointaines, le service du conseiller juridique regroupait des juristes peu nombreux mais particulièrement brillants. Tel était notamment le cas, aux côtés de Francis Wolf, de son adjointe, Félice Morgenstern, et de Blaise Knapp qui quitta le BIT pour devenir professeur à l’Université de Genève. Sollicités en permanence, notamment pendant la Conférence ou les réunions du Conseil d’administration et des conférences régionales, le conseiller juridique et son équipe répondaient aux questions posées avec rapidité et compétence. C’est bien normal me dira-t-on. Ce qui l’était moins, c’est qu’il n’y eut jamais, à ma connaissance, de réponse très catégorique mais, toujours, une approche nuancée fondée en droit. Autrement dit, F. Wolf et ses collaborateurs n’invoquaient pas les textes (et d’abord celui de la Constitution de l’OIT) pour faire du juridisme ; ils les interprétaient avec intelligence, souplesse et surtout le souci de trouver une solution
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positive dans toute la mesure du possible. Cette conception raisonnable du droit se traduisait dans des réponses claires rédigées sans un usage abusif d’un quelconque jargon juridique.
Dans un BIT dont nombre de hauts fonctionnaires étaient souvent d’excellents juristes, tenir cette position subtile et équilibrée dans des affaires souvent qualifiées, à tort ou à raison, de « politiques » n’était pas toujours facile. C’est, pourtant, avec une humeur apparemment égale que le conseiller juridique et ses collaborateurs conduisaient leur action au milieu des écueils intérieurs et extérieurs.
Cette conception du droit s’accompagnait chez F. Wolf (peut-être la fondait-elle) d’une qualité peu commune : une vraie générosité ; il était peu enclin à juger et peu enclin à condamner. Fonctionnaire international irréprochable, F. Wolf, alsacien appartenant à une vieille famille de Strasbourg qui possédait une maison d’édition de musique classique, était en même temps un patriote. Je sais en utilisant ce mot, combien il appartient à un passé disparu et combien il est imprononçable par les princes qui nous gouvernent (dois-je préciser en France ?). D’une culture étendue, d’une grande finesse d’esprit, il fumait avec détachement de gros cigares, observant chacun de ses yeux bleu-gris clairs derrière de fines lunettes. Il faisait toujours preuve de calme, de courtoisie et de méthode. Je ne me souviens pas l’avoir entendu élever la voix ou l’avoir vu répondre avec un retard quelconque lors de l’examen d’un dossier.
Francis Wolf nous avait accueillis chaleureusement, mon épouse et moi, à notre arrivée à Genève et c’est avec la même chaleur que nous fûmes parfois reçus par Mme Wolf et lui-même dans leur grand chalet traditionnel si singulier au milieu des hauts immeubles de la ville. Plus de cinquante ans après l’avoir connu, je garde un grand souvenir de lui et lui suis reconnaissant non seulement de l’accueil réservé mais, plus encore, de l’exemple donné d’une conception éclairée du droit et d’une conception élevée et généreuse du service public.
Décembre 2014
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NAMES AND NEWS
BALANCHE, Jacques, La Ranche, F-42820 Ambierle, France.
Depuis qu’il est retraité, notre collègue Jacques Balanche a rassemblé ses souvenirs de violoniste amateur, ses réflexions sur la musique, sur la pratique de l’instrument et de nombreuses anecdotes sur les musiciens en général ou encore leurs propos.
Il vient d’en réaliser un livre sous forme privée non commerciale sous le titre « Lexique violonistique mélomaniaque ». Il l’offrira volontiers aux collègues qui en feront la demande à son adresse ci-dessus avec sept euros pour seuls frais de traitement, emballage et expédition.
[New email address. See his article under Gallimaufry.]
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CEUX QUI NOUS ONT QUITTÉS
C’est avec tristesse que nous devons signaler le décès de :
ALI, Clare (épouse d’Aamir Ali) 19 mars 2015 BADAWI, Laila (épouse d’Aboubakr Badawi) 24 février 2015 BARONI, Hubert 19 novembre 2014 BELL, Hugh Michael 14 mars 2015 BENDAHOU, Taoufik 6 avril 2015 BERNHARD, Alice (veuve de Charles Bernhard) 31 octobre 2014 BINEATI-HUBER, Frieda Lilli 7 mars 2015 BISSMANN, Heinz Michael 1 février 2015 BUIL, Henri Bernard 24 décembre 2014 CHARTIER, Marie-Antoinette 19 décembre 2014 CHATELANAZ, Alexandre (époux de Marie-Hélène Chatelanaz) 5 décembre 2014 CHOTHIA, Khorshed 5 octobre 2014 DALLEMAGNE, Simone Françoise 13 février 2015 DEY, James S.D. 4 février 2015 ECHTERMANN, Hildegard (veuve de Günther Echtermann) 26 février 2015 ERIKSSON, Edith Maria 22 novembre 2014 FARES, Emile Kizhaya 30 janvier 2015 FAVRE, Jacqueline (veuve de Jean-Jacques Favre) 2 mars 2015 FERNANDO, Anthony Earle 19 janvier 2015 FIKUS, Helena (veuve de Jan Fikus) 26 février 2015 GARRIGUE, Maurice 23 mars 2015 GISSELBAEK, Rita (veuve d’Evald Gisselbaek) 1 mars 2015 GRAF-GENSCH, Dorothea Klara 2 janvier 2015 HÄGGI, Marguerit (veuve de Fritz Häggi) 20 octobre 2014 HAMAOUI, Marie G. (veuve de Georges Hamaoui) 22 février 2015 JACOBSON, Danuta (veuve de Tadeusz Jacobson) 20 juillet 2014 KARLICEK, Jiri Georges 31 octobre 2014 KARLSSON, Birgit Maria 3 janvier 2015 LACAL ZUCO, Antonio Gregorio 21 février 2015 LARRUE, G. 21 octobre 2014 LEWY, Rudolf Eliezer 28 janvier 2015 MARTIN CEDILLO, Isabelle 18 octobre 2014 MATHIEU, Albert Léon 11 mars 2015 MORISSEAU, R. 29 janvier 2015 MULLER, Jean-François 5 janvier 2015 ORSINI, Benigno 7 janvier 2015 PARRAT, Mariette Julia 4 octobre 2014 PERRIN, Madeleine 26 décembre 2014 PERSSON, Birgit Maria 3 janvier 2015 PILATOS, Niki 4 janvier 2015 RAJ, Daniel Sunanda 13 mars 2015 REYNOLDS, Veronica Clare 10 décembre 2014 SCHENKER, Michel (époux de Clare Schenker) 28 février 2015 SEBASTIEN, Christian Alfred J. 26 novembre 2014 SIERRA VALENTI, Eduardo 20 novembre 2014 SIROUET, Michel (époux de Jacqueline Sirouet) 27 mars 2015 SMITH, Marie Doris (veuve de Percival Henry Smith) 4 février 2015 SPYROPOULOS, Georges 13 décembre 2014 SUTER, Francis 23 février 2015
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ULSHӦFER, Petra Irene 3 novembre 2014 VAILLEND, Teresa (veuve d’Emile Vaillend) 5 février 2015 VAN HAARLEM, Rijk 19 décembre 2014 VERGER, Marcelle Berthe 23 novembre 2014 VIGNY, Gisèle 7 janvier 2015 WAROLUS, Roland Raymond 10 janvier 2015 WITTICH, Bernhard Georg 26 novembre 2014 YOSHITOMI, M. 25 octobre 2014 ZOETEWEIJ, Hubertus 16 janvier 2015
Editor : Jack Martin, 30 ch. des Voirons, CH-1296 Coppet; Tel.: 022 776 53 23; e-mail: [email protected]
Honorary Editor : Aamir Ali, La Gracieuse, ch. des Vignes 14, CH-1027 Lonay.
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