Originally posted on the GBI Portal – Page 57

ACP Youth Leaders Call for Stronger Pro-Youth Agricultural Policies

White text on a green banner calling on you to use ICT to address agriculture

CTA/ARDYIS Facebook Photo

Emerging leaders in ICT for agriculture, from African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states, are calling for pro-youth policies to reduce youth unemployment. Although agriculture accounts for over 50 percent of the GNP of many ACP countries, youth involvement is very low while unemployment remains high.

The young agriculture and ICT leaders have called for “thoughtful, dynamic, multilevel and relevant policies” from governments and institutions across the block of countries to remedy the problem. They have put forward a series of recommendations that they believe will help to encourage more young people to work in agriculture. The recommendations range from curricula revisions to capacity building and financial aid, ICT proliferation to increasing the involvement of women and marginalized youth.

The group wants to see the dynamism of the agricultural sector reflected in curricula across all levels of education as well as emphasis on agri-business and technological integration. “The absence of agriculture from the curriculum, particularly at the compulsory levels of education in some ACP countries is untenable. Its broad-based and compulsory inclusion with the appropriate resources will help to motivate youth towards having a more favorable view of employment opportunities in the agricultural sector,” said ICT4D Researcher Tyrone Hall.

The requisite financial resources also need to be made available in the form of scholarships, grants, concessionary education and research loans to those under 35 who are interested in critical areas of agricultural and rural development such as agronomy, food science and technology, agricultural engineering and water management.

“The current university structure in most ACP countries favors the Arts and Social Sciences, sectors for which our economies are expanding too slowly to provide enough employment opportunities,” according to ICT developer Chris Mwangi.

Complementary capacity building is also necessary to get the most out of the sector, the group recommended. This will require training in good agricultural practices and agro-processing as well as developing ICT officer programs across the ACP group to assist young farmers master their trade. “Our collective experience shows that a critical mass of young people in ACP countries is interested in pursuing careers in the field of agriculture, but they are hamstrung by limited skills, knowledge and training opportunities. Resolving these intractable problems requires urgent attention… given the need to reduce food imports,” added Tyrone Hall.

Another recommendation is the creation of “a legible, collateral-free micro-credit environment that offers incentives tailored to the financial needs of young farmers, and ICT software developers who are focused on rural development and agriculture,” said Samantha Christie.

The establishment of regional ICT incubators over the next five years to develop contextual and efficient technological responses to agricultural problems is also critical.

Finally, the participants recommended the provision of legal structures to facilitate increased participation of the youth in ICT, particularly women, physically challenged and marginalized youth with the required skills and interest. “We forthrightly endorse the prioritization of these groups in land reform programs. We also urge ACP countries to meaningfully institutionalize youth involvement in agricultural policy making,” said the group.

We are energized and prepared to share our newly acquired and boosted skills in advanced web 2.0 tools and to support networking among youth involved in agriculture and rural development in our home countries,” said Maureen Agena.

May 31, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

The importance of building local capacity

When a large scale disaster strikes the world watches. Twitter gets flooded with reports, pictures and prayers. CNN, BBC, Sky News and Al Jazzera all break their regular programs to show us terrifying images of what is happening.

Thankfully only 2-3 large scale disasters strike every year. Depending on the magnitude and location of the disaster, the media and people loose interest within a few days or weeks. At the same time we have many medium scale disasters that happen around the world on almost a daily basis. If they strike US then we hear about them for a while, but if they happen in remote places of the world like Sri Lanka, Indonesia or Ghana then they at usually go un-noticed by most people. This is however usually not the case for the local media and the local population of the country affected.

In the last 2 years we have seen efforts being born around utilizing social media, social networks and digital volunteer groups to help deal with the explosion of information that we now get through mobile phones and social media. While these efforts are promising and do provide us with opportunities for gathering, processing, analyzing and disseminating information in ways we have not been able to do so far, then they do fall short in one important part and that is that they are not sustainable for the long-term and repeatable for the large number of disasters that occur every year.In my visits to disaster prone countries, where I have been speaking to them about the importance of preparedness, they all spoke of interest in all of these new technologies and efforts that have been getting so much attention in the press and at conferences around the world.

What they complain about is that nobody has reached out directly to them and shown them how they can make use of these tools. The reason is that we in the global humanitarian and technology community have been too focused on trying to figure out how to do things at a global scale that we have largely ignored the local perspective. Some might argue that the jet-setting trips of the leaders of the digital volunteer community to conferences around the world have been focusing on this effort, but I would like to argue that in most cases these have not necessarily resulted in more than short-term awareness building. Often these conferences have also been mainly attended by people who are not active in the disaster response community.One could also say that recent efforts of setting up crowd-maps following disasters in Pakistan, New Zealand and Japan, driven by local actors are samples of how things really work.

While I agree that great work has been done by those local actors, then I would also argue that much greater work could have been achieved if we had focused more on preparedness and building local capacity before these disasters struck. Then we could have ensured that the information gathered was actionable and relevant to the response. We could also have ensured that the response community was utilizing this new medium to the fullest.Over the last year we have put a lot of focus into building a global capacity to deal with crisis. We have established the Stand-by Volunteer Task Force, we have established connections with the global response community (UN, NGOs, Red Cross) and we have had great examples of how this effort can really provide information to the response community.A promising change to this was an effort lead by the US State Department that started last week in Indonesia under the name TechCamp Jakarta. There they brought together key people from the new technology community and some of the actors from the local response community. It was a great first step, but more is needed to follow up on this.

What we need to do is to put focus on building up local capacity in disaster prone countries, especially those in the developing world. We can then leverage the global capacity we have already built up to help support these local efforts when their capacity is overwhelmed. We can also leverage the technologies, processes and training we have already put together for these global efforts. So what is needed to build up that local capacity?

1) We need to bring together the various actors involved in disaster response in the country. This includes the government, the UN, the NGOs, etc. Often there may be existing forums that can be leveraged, but often these need to be extended to ensure inclusiveness of all the local actors.

2) We also need to bring in the local technology community. They are the ones who can help adapting the global solutions to the local needs. This includes members of the local open-source community, but also people from the private sector technology companies.

3) We also need to bring in the academic community. Students have in the past been the basis for any grass-root effort we have seen around crisis information management. Together these various actors from the different communities make up the local crisis information community.

4) We need to provide standardized & localized, on-line and in-person training to this community on how to utilize these technologies to achieve better information sharing during disasters.

5) We need to drive awareness of the potential of these efforts to the response community. Through that awareness building we can build the relationships needed between the volunteer community and the response community

6) We need to provide standardized yet flexible processes that the local community can utilize to ensure that their efforts are actually resulting in providing actionable and accurate information to the response community.

7) We need to work with the local mobile providers to establish short-codes for citizens to use for direct reporting into the systems.

8) We need to provide the local community with awareness building material (advertisements, banners, etc.) to build a volunteer community and to make citizens aware of short-codes.

9) We need to provide the local community with mentorship from the global community on establishing the community and running this effort.

10) We need to work with local web portals (newspaper, social networks, etc.) to get them to direct people towards the efforts of the local community instead of establishing their own.

11) We need to help the local community run simulation exercises where they can train their volunteers and first responders in utilizing the technologies.

12) We need funding from the donor community to help drive these efforts in 20 of the top disaster prone countries in the world.

In my discussions with the response community in Indonesia, then the recent TechCamp event generated an interest that we should leverage to pilot a local capacity building effort for one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. I know the interest within the response community is high and that the BNPB (Indonesia’s version of FEMA) would welcome better information sharing amongst the various responders. Big question is if we can leverage that interest to find donors who are willing to fund a crisis information management “revolution” one disaster prone country at a time.

May 29, 2011/by actualize

Connectivity, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Closing the Urban-Rural Digital Divide: Connectivity Success in Mongolia

A rich dynamic taking place within the telecom sector is the emerging of new, low-cost solutions more suitable for delivering cost-effective solutions to remote, low-density rural communities. Studies have shown that there is considerable untapped demand in rural areas. However, until just recently the cost of delivery relative potential revenues, has limited carriers from making the needed investments to service those living in these rural communities.

Photo Credit- Mongolian Artist

USAID’s Last Mile Initiative (LMI) undertook a number of projects to explore the potential for identifying and exploring potential solutions. One of these was the Mongolia LMI project. The project was launched in mid-2005 with an initial Assessment that explored opportunities, including holding discussions with the government and discussion private-sector firms interested in becoming involved. Discussions were also held with the World Bank who at the time was exploring an initiative to support for a universal service program and to undertake some limited rural demonstration deployments.

During this early phase the most promising approach that surfaced was to form a partnership between the Khan Bank who has approximately 300 rural banks throughout Mongolia, and Incomnet, a local ISP with a satellite network providing connectivity to a growing number soum-center branches of the rural Khan Banks. The preliminary focus was on leveraging this satellite investment by adding a community-wide extension through the deployment of community-WiFi networks, with voice services provided through a low cost Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution set. In many ways this VoIP approach served as a forerunner to the now-emerging lower-cost commercial solutions entering the marketplace.

In late November-early December of 2006, the USAID-funded team returned to Mongolia to design a workable network using Incomnet’s satellite network and to develop a detailed project plan. This design and project plan put forward an approach consisting of three key elements;

the development of a detailed business-financial plan showing financial viability of rural access,
the support of technical assistance for the deployment of wireless networks in four rural communities that would provide broadband and VoIP services off the back of Incomnet’s Dial@way satellite network, and
a modest amount of risk capital required to install these four rural community networks.

The project was executed from mid-2006 through mid-2008, with full operations beginning in mid-2007.

The implementation took place in four rural communities: 1) the Saikhan soum of the Bulgan aimag, 2) the Tsengel soum of Bayan-Ulgii aimag, 3) the Chuluut bridge of the Ondor-Ulaan soum in the Arkhangai aimag, and 4) the Tsagaannuur bagh of theTariat soum in the Arkhangai aimag.

The implementation focused predominately on providing voice services via satellite-WiFi-VoIP, with PSTN interconnection. A final phase provided Internet access by placing a limited number of PCs within each of the four communities. For the initial installation an estimated 20-30 WiFi phones were distributed across the rural communities, with more to be added based on local demand.

The Mongolia LMI provided a valuable test-bed of experience, rich with lessons in several key areas for application well beyond Mongolia, including;

Even those living in the most remote areas are capable and willing to pay for telephony services,
The satellite-WiFi-VoIP solution sets is a viable, low-cost approach for delivering voice services into these remote areas, with the added advantage that the network can also deliver broadband Internet access,
The revenue from these rural communities is sufficient to pay for the network, its operations, and interconnection cost, making these profitable business ventures even without universal service funds,
Maintaining these systems in harsh conditions is a significant challenge requiring constant attention, and
The technical & business-financial model is replicable to additional rural communities throughout Mongolia as well as other countries.

The Mongolia LMI project also positioned Incomnet, through the capacity building gained through execution of this project, to aggressively pursue subsequent roll-out of yet additional rural communities being funded in part through the World Bank and the newly established universal service fund.

In many ways the experiences in Mongolia pushed the envelop of both technology and a viable business-financial model, with the conclusion being that there are viable solutions for both. Fortunately there has been significant advancement in lower-cost technical solutions since this project was concluded, that provide even more stable and replicable rural solutions to meet the needs of rural Mongolia, as well as other remote rural communities.

May 24, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

How Large of a Role Did Social Media Play in the Arab Spring?

Did Facebook really fuel the revolutions: (Photo credit: Harvester Solution)

On May 5th at American University, a group of international scholars and Internet governance policymakers engaged in informed dialogue on current Internet issues at the Giganet conference.

One panel entitled “Revolution 2.0” featured two Middle Eastern Internet experts from Egypt and Tunisia arguing that social media was an aid in helping citizens topple the dictatorships, not it’s catalyst.

Khaled Koubba of the Arab World Internet Institute in Tunisia shared his experience in the revolution where 20,000 cyberactivists and opponents of the regime gathered in front of the Ministry of Interior on January 14, 2011.

“It is true that we used the 2.0 tools but it is not for sure that [it was] the 2.0 revolution or the Facebook revolution,” he stated, “it has been made by people who fight for their dignity, for their life…”

He acknowledged the message reiterated in the press that Twitter and Facebook were used to mobilize people and share information; but pressed that these social media tools also helped citizen’s regain confidence in their liberties, freedoms, and abilities to make change.

“Even after Ben Ali left, we are continuing even today to put pressure on the government [in] many ways using the 2.0 tools to make change to attain what we want to attain,” Khaled asserted.

He cited two controversial videos, currently circulating on Facebook, of Farhat Rajh, Tunisia’s current interior minister, speaking about some very contentious issues of the ex-ruling party and the elections to be held on July 24.

Nivien Saleh, an Egyptian and professor of International Studies in Texas, echoed Khaled’s sentiments that technology does not necessarily liberate.

It is the people who liberate themselves from an authoritarian government onto democracy. Social media is only one of the communication avenues that drive the mass outlook.

She maintained alternate forms of communication, such as strategies for non-violent resistance through targeted outreach, coupled the latent feeling of dissatisfaction, are the real central pillars for a population to mobilize change.

Professor Shaleh also questioned the future role that Internet governance will take in regulating the content of social media

“What standard [do] providers of social media such as Facebook decide [in terms of] what kind of content can make it onto their media platforms and what cannot,” she wondered outloud to the crowd.

She referenced the Khaled Said group on Facebook, where the government asked Facebook to remove disturbing pictures of the deceased Alexandrian martyr posted by activists.

“Facebook forced the activists to take the pictures down, even though [they were there] in the first place to protest and show that stuff like this actually happens,” Shaleh said.

It is blazingly clear from these two Middle Eastern scholars that this was not a Facebook revolution, it was a citizen’s revolution and social media was merely a channel to funnel change.

Please view the video below of the Giganet conference’s panel “Revolution 2.0: the Internet and the Middle East and North Africa” and the panelists viewpoints on the role that social media played in the Middle East’s uprisings:

May 23, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

World Bank Publishes Framework to Protect Mobile Money

Last week the World Bank published a new book titled “Protecting Mobile Money Against Financial Crimes: Global Policy Challenges and Solutions” which serves as a practical guideline for relevant industries and governments to regulate mobile money transfers.

Banking services on mobile phones for both domestic and international transfers in developing regions has become a huge industry. Companies and project such as Global GCASH and SmartMoney in the Philippines América Móvil in Mexico; Wizzit in South Africa; Celpay in Zambia/Tanzania/DRC; and Safaricom’s infamous M-Pesa in Kenya, have emerged with viable banking solutions for the world’s poor. According to GSMA, over 1 billion customers have access to a mobile phone but no access to formal financial services and over 80% of mobile banking services are taking place in developing markets.

However, the demand for guidance and technical assistance in creating a legal framework to make these transfers secure is equally profound. Regulatory regimes consistent with the international anti-money laundering (AML) and combating the financing of terrorism (CFT) in new mobile money phone financial services have remained vague.

Written by Pierre-Laurent Chatain, Andrew Zerzan, Wameek Noor, Najah Dannaoui and Louis de Koker, the book’s provides sensible guidance for jurisdictions and internal systems to draft regulations and guidelines in order to comply with the AML/CFT standards with the mobile money transfers. The guidelines are flexible enough for their mobile money to continue to grow.

In particular the paper aims to :

Assesses the new AML/CFT regulations and practices and their relation to mobile money;
Cultivate guidelines for drafting AML/CFT regulations that cover mobile money, and:
Provides examples of best practices within the industry to include AML/CFT in their own business models

This is a great resource for anyone in the mobile banking industry, or government agencies, who want to include the standardized measures of AML and CFT in their business models, or in their regulations, for customer’s transfers.

May 20, 2011/by actualize

Agriculture, Mobile, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Mobile Money in Afghanistan: m-Paisa

This report was released last week about the mobile money service M-Paisa in Afghanistan. It provides some intriguing insights on lending issues faced by Afghans and the mobile banking services rapidly emerging in their country.

The product branded M-Paisa in Afghanistan was initially piloted by local operator Rashon in collaboration with Vodafone, to provide microloan disbursement and repayments for MFIs as well as a person-to-person money transfers. According to the M-Paisa website they offer safe, reliable and fast access to a range of financial services including:

Person to person money transfer.
Disbursement and repayment of microfinance loans.
Airtime purchases.
Merchant payments.
Disbursement and receipt of salaries.

With low levels of fixed bank infrastructure and rising mobile penetration, it seemingly appears that the cheap and secure features prominent in mobile banking would lead to a rapid adoption of its services in Afghanistan.

However, Rashon soon found that they faced numerous consumer barriers central to the service’s overall adoption in Afghanistan. With a population of 30 million people, 36% of who live below the government defined poverty line and 74% of who are illiterate; Afghanistan is the poorest country in the world outside Africa.

Therefore, textual, mobile and financial illiteracy was one of the largest hurdles that the company had to overcome. Since consumers could not use SMS to transfer funds, Roshan developed an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system in three languages, English, Dari and Pashto.

Other issues that the authors concluded was a general distrust of financial institutions that go against the well established Hawala agent network, and a commonly established distrust of non-tangible assets. There was also a common “chicken and the egg” problem of investing in a branchless banking agent network without an adequate amount of customers—and customers less willing to try out the service—without there being a strong agent network. The authors of the report stated:

But M-paisa is caught in the tricky position that faces all services requiring network dynamics—to succeed, they must educate and nurture both consumers and agents, neither of which has much incentive to jump in first without the other being around.

The authors of the report, Jan Chipcase and Panthea Lee, traveled to Afghanistan in August 2010 to four different cities to explore traditional money and emergent mobile money practices in Afghanistan. While in the field they conducted in depth interviews of three potential mobile customers and one M-Paisa agent, their main goal being to contribute to the knowledge base of the mobile money community.

They sought to build on research such as Portfolios of the Poor, which highlighted the strategies the poorest members of societies use to manage their limited resources, as well as the sector-galvanizing discussions led by the World Bank’s consultative Group for the poor and the GSMA’s Mobile Money for the Unbanked initiative.

Throughout the author’s studies, they concluded that with the growth in mobile penetration, the trust in service providers is also beginning to surface. Brand recognition and trust in Roshan and other service providers has been gradually expanding. Concurrent with the evolution of cell phones being a staple in Western society, the authors believe that M-Paisa have a great opportunity to transform Afghan society.

Just as mobile telephony isn’t as much about the phone as it is about the conversation, mobile banking is not about the money—it’s about what the money can enable.

May 20, 2011/by actualize

Anti-corruption, Democracy & Governance, Governances, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

WB Launches “Accountability Through Public Opinion”

From CommGap

“Accountability” has become a buzzword in international development. Development actors appear to delight in announcing their intention to “promote accountability”—but it is often unclear what accountability is and how it can be promoted. This book addresses some questions that are crucial to understanding accountability and for understanding why accountability is important to improve the effectiveness of development aid. We ask: What does it mean to make governments accountable to their citizens? How do you do that? How do you create genuine demand for accountability among citizens, how do you move citizens from inertia to public action?

The main argument of this book is that accountability is a matter of public opinion. Governments will only be accountable if there are incentives for them to do so—and only an active and critical public will change the incentives of government officials to make them responsive to citizens’ demands. Accountability without public opinion is a technocratic, but not an effective solution.

In this book, more than 30 accountability practitioners and thinkers discuss the concept and its structural conditions; the relationship between accountability, information, and the media; the role of deliberation to promote accountability; and mechanisms and tools to mobilize public opinion. A number of case studies from around the world illustrate the main argument of the book: Public opinion matters and an active and critical public is the surest means to achieve accountability that will benefit the citizens in developing countries.

This book is designed for policy-makers and governance specialists working within the international development community, national governments, grassroots organizations, activists, and scholars engaged in understanding the interaction between accountability and public opinion and their role for increasing the impact of international development interventions.

May 16, 2011/by actualize

Civil Society, Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

Accessing the Public Sphere Through Mobile: Haiti

During the 1970s, missionaries would walk around the towns in Haiti distributing radios to spread the message of the church. Haitians would accept them freely—not for the religious messages, but so they could tune into the Creole news services. Forty years later, a new wireless tool allows them to access news but with one fundamental difference: now they can participate in the conversation through their mobile phone.

Last week during World Press Freedom Day in Washington D.C., the sentiment that mobile phones serve as a catalyst for a two way flow of information between governments and citizens in the developing world was continuously echoed.

For the 77% of the world’s population who own cell phones, it is like a modern printing press in the palm of their hands.

Michèle Montas (Photo Credit: Richard Patterson for NY Times)

Michèle Montas, Senior Advisor to the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Haiti, United Nations Stabilization Mission, Haiti, observed that the widespread availability of cell phones began with a heavy push from the private sector but has resulted with an increased demand from the people. “We could find them (mobiles) in the countryside, in the slums of Port au Prince, in the hands of a street market woman, in the hands of a small shop owner.” she commented.

This extensive accessibility paves the way for citizens to use mobile phones as a tool to contribute information and express their opinions to the public sphere.

Ms. Montas alluded that although cell phones aided in humanitarian assistance after the earthquakes, mobile phones have also altered the way Haitians can now lend their relevant perspectives, notably by calling into radio talk shows they play an active role in public discourse.

“There has been an explosion of meshing of media, of journalists, and of people that just want to speak out,” she stated, “If you gave them a microphone they would just speak out on the microphone, today they would do it on a cell phone.”

Mobile phones are dramatically changing the landscape of how citizens can actively access and contribute information to the public sphere; they boost the morale of citizens in societies where the voiceless can finally be heard by the majority and inform governments of what their citizens need.

Please view the video of Ms. Montas during the past World Press Freedom Day on the Panel “Accessing the Digit Benefit”:

May 12, 2011/by actualize

Humanitarian Assistance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal

The Power of Preparedness – A story from Pakistan

In my trip to Pakistan earlier this year, I learned first hand about the power of preparedness at the community level. I visited a small “displaced” village on the banks of the Indus River. I asked them if there had been any early warning system in place for the floods. What they told me was that they had listened to radios to hear news about the flooding as it made its way down south. They had also received phone calls from relatives and friends up north telling them about the scale of the flooding.

But what really caught my interest was the fact that earlier in the year, one of the local NGOs that worked as an implementation for our NetHope member had visited this village to provide disaster risk reduction training to the people. They had explained the basics of disaster preparedness by showing a video on a laptop computer.

The local NGO then told me that they could see a dramatic difference between the villages that had received the training versus the ones that had not. In the ones that had received the training, people had brought their valuables to higher ground before the flood waters started rising. They had also in some cases harvested their crops before they were ruined by the floods.

Just providing this short and simple awareness building at the local level can really make a difference in how people prepare for the floods. And technology can help in this as the story shows. It is much more effective to be able to show a video than to bring leaflets or simply speak to people. Having the ability to bring something like a laptop with a pre-loaded video allows for even remote villages to be visited.

Of course we can say that the early warning system was very limited in Pakistan, but as always people find ways if they are aware of the danger. They reach out to their friends and relatives living up-stream to form their own little advisory network.

Way too many early warning systems are based on the pre-tense that there needs to be large investment by the government and that the government needs to warn everyone.

But as social networks such as Twitter and FaceBook are showing us then it is about the community of people you know and the community you live in. We must find simple and cost-effective ways of helping people connect to those around them through the technologies they have and thereby amplify these people-based networks of early warning.

This week I will be attending the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction and I look forward to meeting people from around the world and from organizations working on preparedness activities. For updates from the conference follow the Twitter tag #gpdrr2011

May 9, 2011/by actualize

Democracy & Governance, Originally posted on the GBI Portal, Rule of Law

Ecuador’s Referendum Could Limit Press Freedoms

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa celebrates after winning the country's referendum.

Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa declared victory this past weekend on a controversial referendum for social and government reforms, clearing the path for what critics claim is an attempt to garner more power and hinder press freedoms.

On May 7, 2011, Ecuadorians voted on ten unrelated issues and the proposed referendum could drastically alter judiciary processes, restrict media ownership, outlaw casino gambling, and prohibit killing animals for entertainment.

Analysts claim that the the win is a huge boost in power for President Correa.

“Today, we made an important step toward peace, democracy and a new motherland,” he said after the first results came out.””They’ve been saying it’s totalitarian… [a word] used for a state in which things are done by force. We’re doing this democratically.”

According to a Cedatos Gallup poll only 16 percent of the respondents knew about the substance and effects of the proposals, but all ten were approved.

The restriction of media ownership is one of the most contentious issues and has drawn a large amount of criticism from Ecuadorian and international human rights activists alike.

If approved, one measure would prohibit media companies from making investments outside of their industry, preventing the formation of large private media/ entertainment conglomerates like Time-Warner or News Corporation in the United States.

The second measure would establish a council to regulate content that was deemed discriminatory, sexual, or violent. “The language of the provision appears to allow the council to unilaterally set potential penalties,” writes the Committee to Protect Journalists. “We believe that vague provision would open the door to government censorship”.

President Correa has always had a controversial relationship with the media (Photo Credit: Dolores Ochoa)

Correa’s relationship with the media had already drawn international attention. He publicly vilifies those who question his policies of bias and inaccuracy on a regular basis:

Correa told Reuters last week:

Our greatest rival in this plebiscite is not the opposition. Our biggest rivals are the media, who come up with a fresh scandal on a daily basis

Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) issued a statement condemning Correa for suing the newspaper El Universaro for slander. Correa sued the directors of the newspaper and its opinion editor Emilio Palacio in March over a column entitled “NO to the Lies,” which referred to Correa several times as a “dictator.”

He demanded a $50 million fine for El Universo executives Carlos, Cesar and Nicolas Perez and by Palacio. Correa also wants these four men to spend three years in prison as punishment.

Censorship and restrictions on media are frequent in Latin American countries, where the move from historically based dictatorships to democratic rule has resulted in a rise of media related oppression.

Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Photo Credit: The Economist

Consider Venezuela, where Hugo Chavez told cable companies last year to abandon RCTV International because it refused to air his speeches. Chavez has also refused licenses to two small TV channels and 38 radio stations — four of them the same week in March that Argentina’s University of La Plata honored him for journalistic excellence. He also prohibits Venezuelans from publishing the Bolívar-dollar exchange rate.

The effects of the hemispheric government restrictions on media was explored by Frank La Rue last week in Washington D.C. during UNESCO’s World Press Freedom Day.

Mr. La Rue, U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression, discussed how the plurality of media sources permits citizens to accurately draw conclusions on their government.

Frank La Rue, Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression

Frank La Rue, U.N. Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression

“The press is accountable to society and to the readers on what they choose they should believe in and (also) what they analyze,” he stated.

By controlling and censoring new information and communication technologies (ICTs) governments contend the Declaration of Principles of Freedom of Expression, Mr. La Rue argued. The Internet is an amazing tool for citizens to express legitimate grievances and to demand reforms, democracy and transparency.

He compared the use of ICTs and the vast reach of the Internet to public squares found in most Latin American communities known as ”la Plaza Pública”. ICT’s power and broadness can serve as a public space to encourage the facilitation of open conversation about governments—alternatively, it can be used by politicians to heighten censorship and defamation.

Mr. La Rue asserted:

I would like to remind all States that the strongest governments are those that allow democratic participation of citizens, and diverse views to be expressed openly.

President Correa’s recently approved referendum to restrict media ownership could violate the constitutional and international guarantees for press freedoms discussed by Mr. La Rue and others, disadvantaging the democratic values inherent in Ecuadorian citizens.

May 9, 2011/by actualize

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