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• Listening to Global Voices

  j_ling 12:36 am on August 20, 2010 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: collaboration (2), Global Voices (2), innovation, journalism (3), TED (2), women (3), world

  I recently attended a round­table hosted by the Asia Pacific Foun­da­tion of Canada for a 25@25 dis­cus­sion. The dis­cus­sion emerged from the 25@25 video com­pe­ti­tion as a forum for par­tic­i­pants and part­ners to share their expe­ri­ences and exam­ine future ways to engage youth in pro­mot­ing Canada-Asia relations.

  The video com­pe­ti­tion was a huge suc­cess and what I thought to be a really cre­ative way of engag­ing youth to think about issues about Canada-relations. The issues that came out of the con­test, har­ness the col­lec­tive capa­bil­ity and genius that would spur growth and research direc­tion of the foun­da­tion. Some of the themes that emerged included: Peo­ple as a resource, rep­re­sen­ta­tion in the media, self-identity and green tech­nol­ogy exchanges.

  “Capa­bil­i­ties to develop new kinds of rela­tion­ships, sense impor­tant devel­op­ments, add value and turn nascent net­worked knowl­edge into com­pelling value are becom­ing the bread and but­ter of wealth cre­ation and success.”

  - Wiki­nomics, Don Tapscott

  On a another level, it was a great learn­ing oppor­tu­nity for me to step into an area and net­work of which I was not really con­nected to, all because I stepped out of my net­work cir­cle. It reminded me a great TED video by Ethan Zuck­er­man on Lis­ten­ing to Global Voices. He spoke about how even though the web con­nects the whole world, we really end up being stuck in our own web bub­ble rather than lis­ten­ing to what the world has to share.

  So in the spirit of col­lab­o­ra­tion, here are my favourite sites on lis­ten­ing to global voices:

  1) OpenIDEO: An online plat­form where peo­ple col­lab­o­rate to design bet­ter for social good. It’s a won­der­ful dynamic resource on tack­ling global resources and I’m going to sub­mit a solu­tion to one of their prob­lems soon!

  2) World Pulse: A global net­work that broad­casts and unites women’s voices from all over to cre­ate a pow­er­ful voice for change. What I love about this is not only is it a print and web mag­a­zine but it’s also an inter­ac­tive com­mu­nity newswire, PulseWire, where women can col­lab­o­rate and con­nect to solve global problems.

  3) Global Voices: An inter­na­tional com­mu­nity of blog­gers who report on dif­fer­ent global issues with top­ics rang­ing from arts to pol­i­tics. It’s an amaz­ing resource and my fav fea­ture is the dif­fer­ent lan­guages that you can read the web­site in. (I occa­sion­ally flip the switch over to Indone­sian, just cause! And it’s so inter­est­ing to read the same arti­cle both in Eng­lish and in another language!)

  4) paper.li: This is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent than the above three plat­forms as it really is more a snap­shot of the things/links that you tweet about, but I love the cre­ative for­mat and I find it super inter­est­ing the way it picks up on the dif­fer­ent things I’m browse through online. Below is a snap­shot of what it looks like and I thought I’ll share this one just for fun!

  

  So..what global voices have you been lis­ten­ing to?

   

• Review: UBC iWeek Global Keynote Speaker- Paul Rusesabagina (Hotel Rwanda)

  j_ling 3:20 pm on April 9, 2010 | 1 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Africa (3), debate (3), Government (2), ubc (2), world

  A cou­ple weeks ago, I attended a very inter­est­ing event, one that pro­voked two thoughts:

  1) There is always, always two sides of a story and

  2) We need to use resources around us — beyond what we have at hand in order to learn

  This event was in UBC as part of the Inter­na­tional Week celebrations:

  

  To pro­vide some back­ground: (Taken from event description)

  Mr. Paul Rus­esabag­ina was the man­ager of the Sabena Hôtel des Mille Collines, and shel­tered hun­dreds of Tut­sis and mod­er­ate Hutus peo­ple for a hun­dred days using all avail­able resources to him.  His coura­geous efforts thwarted bands of geno­ci­dal mili­tia while Rwanda descended into out­right geno­cide and civil war, and was cel­e­brated in the Hol­ly­wood movie pro­duc­tion, “Hotel Rwanda”.

  A recip­i­ent of numer­ous inter­na­tional awards, includ­ing the Wal­len­berg Medal and the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom, Mr. Rus­esabag­ina is a pow­er­ful speaker with a story of hero­ism and human­ity in inhu­mane con­di­tions.  In addi­tion to his expe­ri­ences dur­ing and after the Rwan­dan geno­cide, Mr. Rus­esabag­ina will share his insights into the nature of the con­flict, the fail­ure of the West to stop it, and the chal­lenges of reconciliation.

  The event started out with a quick intro­duc­tion by Brian Sul­li­van and quickly pro­ceeded to Paul Rusesabagina’s speech itself. I won’t go into details of the speech, which was an account of his expe­ri­ences of the Rwan­dan geno­cide and what went down in Hotel Rwanda. It was incred­i­ble hear­ing his accounts first hand, but the real expe­ri­ence cam dur­ing the Q&A period. Prof. Michael Byers was the mod­er­a­tor for the session.

  Three things occured dur­ing the Q&A that took me com­pletely by surprise:

  1) There was a sub­stan­tial amount of peo­ple that are Rwan­dan geno­cide refugees that were present. I had no idea that event of this event man­aged to reach past the UBC com­mu­nity, which was impressive.

  2) The ques­tions regard­ing com­par­isons of South Africa and Rwanda’s econ­omy was very much unex­pected, con­sid­er­ing the dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal, cul­tural and eco­nomic con­di­tions of both countries.

  3) The response towards Paul Rusesabagina’s speech was cen­tered around his account­abil­ity and actions of Hotel Rwanda.

  Need­less to say, due to time con­straints, only 3–4 ques­tions were answered and the ses­sion ended. How­ever, sev­eral Rwan­dan com­mu­nity rep­re­sen­ta­tives spoke up on their ver­sion of Paul Rusesabagina’s actions, ques­tion­ing his motives, finan­cial account­abil­ity as well as alliances dur­ing the geno­cide. They had the Chan Cen­tre riv­eted with accounts of their per­sonal sto­ries of their sur­vival and encoun­ters with the military.

  I have been to numer­ous events at the Chan but this was the first one that I have ever expe­ri­enced such a strong out­come and dis­cus­sion after. Stu­dents were gath­er­ing out­side the Chan around these Rwan­dan geno­cide sur­vivors who were engag­ing in more per­sonal con­ver­sa­tion about their expe­ri­ences and there was buzz in the atmos­phere about new­found knowledge.

  My Main Take­away: Paul Rus­esabag­ina has been potrayed by Hol­ly­wood as a hero and revered for his coura­geous efforts dur­ing the geno­cide. How­ever, the dis­cus­sion at the Chan cen­ter which ques­tioned his alliances, finan­cial account­abil­ity, and actual self-preservation efforts. This  has made me realise that there are always two sides to a story, no mat­ter how well know one side is. It is our respon­si­bil­ity to always be aware of the other side.

  I leave you with a phe­nom­e­nal TED talk by Chi­ma­manda Adiechi telling the dan­ger of a sin­gle story. Because our lives and cul­tures are com­posed of many over­lap­ping stories, if we hear only a sin­gle story about another per­son or coun­try, we risk a crit­i­cal misunderstanding.

   

• Notes from an MNC: A different kind of business

  j_ling 4:33 pm on April 1, 2010 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Government (2), impact (3), world

  As a busi­ness stu­dent, the term “Multi-National Cor­po­ra­tion” has been thrown around in my under­grad career, with­out much thought on my end to their impli­ca­tions and role in soci­ety. I have always accepted them as a norm in busi­ness, my thoughts some­times inter­jected with sto­ries of MNCs over­tak­ing small and medium busi­nesses, or caus­ing polit­i­cal tur­moil (i.e. Shell in Nigeria).

  How­ever, it took a course to change my entire per­spec­tive, approach and the way I viewed MNCs as well as the longest paper I have writ­ten in my under­grad life — 2,500 words. But before I divulge into my find­ings, I must say that tak­ing poli sci courses on top of my com­merce courses has been one of my best aca­d­e­mic deci­sions in UBC. Poli sci courses have given me a phe­nom­e­nal bal­ance of the­ory and the prac­ti­cal­ism of eco­nom­ics courses and I only wish I could take more!

  So, in light of fin­ish­ing my marathon paper, I thought it would only be fit to share a sum­ma­rized ver­sion of my research and thoughts around this area (Source — Myself, 2010):

  The first real­iza­tion I had on MNCs, was the fact that their pres­ence (aside from pro­duc­tion, resource allo­ca­tion and eco­nomic impacts) has re-defined what it means to have a firm-government rela­tion­ship. The con­ven­tional “obso­lesc­ing” bar­gain­ing model for depict­ing MNC-State rela­tions is now obso­lete (Rama­nurti, 2001). Instead, mar­ket and non-market strate­giz­ing is an iter­a­tive process of resource allo­ca­tion that responds dynam­i­cally to chang­ing con­di­tions, juris­dic­tion and level of gov­ern­ment inter­ven­tion (Win­dor, 2007). Real­ity is, the suc­cess of many MNCs depends on the mar­ket per­for­mance that is tied inher­ently to rela­tion­ships with local and host gov­ern­ments. MNCs and gov­ern­ments are con­stantly in this sym­bi­otic rela­tion­ship in which the future seems to be dom­i­nated with a push and pull of poli­cies and com­pro­mise. (Model of coope­ti­tion — coop­er­a­tion and competition)

  The sec­ond real­iza­tion that I had was one sur­round­ing the def­i­n­i­tion of sov­er­eignty. It wasn’t till a year ago that I learnt of the 1648 treaty of West­phalia ( yes, I know I was a lit­tle slow to catch on..) which marked the birth of the mod­ern state and the end of uni­ver­sal medieval­ism. Since, the mod­ern state has become geo­graph­i­cal con­structs of which polit­i­cal author­ity is defined and based upon geo­graph­i­cal perime­ters (Ander­son, 1986).

  What really fas­ci­nated me was the fact that it never crossed my mind until now that MNCs could be (per­haps?) the dawn of a new def­i­n­i­tion of sov­er­eignty. This is because MNCs by the very nature of their oper­a­tions have placed a new spin on the con­cept of sov­er­eignty with their trans­fer of resources, capa­bil­ity, knowl­edge and power within and amongst dif­fer­ent firms as the pri­mary con­cerns. The issue here is that although an MNC is incor­po­rated under local law of a host coun­try, indi­cat­ing that it is sub­ject to the same respon­si­bil­i­ties as a national firm, its sub­sidiaries and affil­i­ates in other ter­ri­to­ries con­tains ele­ments of a “dou­ble per­son­al­ity” (Ver­non, 1971). MNCs have a respon­si­bil­ity to the sov­er­eign that sanc­tions its exis­tence, but as an inter­na­tional unit, each affil­i­ate may have con­flicts of inter­est than of its host country’s.

  This means that in regards to inter­nal sov­er­eignty, the emer­gence of MNCs have placed con­strains of auton­omy and con­trol on the imple­men­ta­tion of inter­nal sov­er­eignty. How­ever, in terms of exter­nal sov­er­eignty it has forced gov­ern­ments to recon­sider its con­struct of mutu­ally exclu­sive bor­ders, ter­ri­tory and geo­graph­i­cally based polit­i­cal and eco­nomic gov­er­nance (Kobrin, 1998). Hence the emer­gence of free trade agree­ments (NAFTA, ASEAN…) , bor­der agree­ments, etc.

  

  Now there’s the excit­ing part, what if the increas­ing glob­al­iza­tion, need for FDI and growth of MNCs are bring­ing upon soci­ety a new def­i­n­i­tion of what it means to be part of a state and cul­ture on an eco­nomic and polit­i­cal level? We’ve already seen the rise of third kid cul­ture kids ( myself included) and the bleed­ing of world cul­ture and lan­guages into each other. Every 14 days a lan­guage dies. By 2100, more than half of the more than 7,000 lan­guages spo­ken on Earth—many of them not yet recorded—may dis­ap­pear (National Geo­graphic, 2010).

  I really won­der the cor­re­la­tion between MNC growth, glob­al­iza­tion and cul­tures. I guess time will tell. Until then, I leave you with a thought by Susan Strange.

  A meta­mor­pho­sis is occur­ring with struc­tural change in the world econ­omy with the state becom­ing, once more as in the past, just one source of author­ity among sev­eral, with lim­ited pow­ers and resources (Strange, 1996).

   

• On Human Trafficking

  j_ling 2:00 pm on June 26, 2009 | 0 comments Permalink | Reply
  Tags: change (10), stats (5), world

  Today I’m writ­ing about some­thing a lit­tle closer to the heart: Malaysia

  Recently, the U.S. State Depart­ment in its annual Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Report 2009 (page 197) down­graded Malaysia from Tier 2 to Tier 3, black­list­ing it world­wide along with 16 other coun­ties for not enforc­ing human traf­fick­ing laws. Malaysia cur­rently joins other black­listed coun­tries such as Saudi Ara­bia, Sudan, Syria, Niger and Burma.

  Malaysia has been fac­ing con­stant scrutiny for its lack of regard of the abuse and exploita­tion of migrant work­ers and has had its rank­ing hov­er­ing between Tier 2 and 3 for the last 10 years. In 2001, it was black­listed, but improved its rank­ing to Tier 2 for the fol­low­ing years. How­ever, in 2007, it was down­graded once again to Tier 2, and in 2008, after the enact­ment of the Anti-Trafficking in Per­sons Act 2007, Malaysia regained its sta­tus as a Tier 2 country.

  Tier 3 coun­tries face pos­si­ble sanc­tions such as the with­hold­ing of non-humanitarian, non-trade related U.S. aid and fund­ing for gov­ern­ment offi­cials to par­tic­i­pate in edu­ca­tional and cul­tural exchange programs.

  As a response to the down­grade, two new divi­sions have been estab­lished under the Home Min­istry. They are the Inter­na­tional Divi­sion and the Research, Devel­op­ment and Mon­i­tor­ing Division.

  ***

  This is my HOPE to my country:

  That we would address this issue with the respect and the seri­ous­ness that it deserves — the effec­tive­ness of long-term pre­ven­tion and improve­ment requires a com­mit­ment to reforms, poli­cies and Acts.

  ***

  From the Traf­fick­ing in Per­sons Report 2009 :

  • The Inter­na­tional Labor Orga­ni­za­tion (ILO)—the United Nations agency charged with address­ing labor stan­dards, employ­ment, and social pro­tec­tion issues—estimates that there are at least 12.3 mil­lion adults and chil­dren in forced labor, bonded labor, and com­mer­cial sex­ual servi­tude at any given time.

  • Of these vic­tims, the ILO esti­mates that at least 1.39 mil­lion are vic­tims of com­mer­cial sex­ual servi­tude, both transna­tional and within coun­tries. Accord­ing to the ILO, 56 per­cent of all forced labor vic­tims are women and girls.

  

  Image from Google images: http://vietnameseworkersabroad.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/human-wrists1.jpg

  ***

  “The root causes of migra­tion and traf­fick­ing greatly over­lap. The lack of rights afforded to women serves as the pri­mary causative fac­tor at the root of both women’s migra­tions and traf­fick­ing in women…By fail­ure to pro­tect and pro­mote women’s civil, polit­i­cal, eco­nomic and social rights, gov­ern­ments cre­ate sit­u­a­tions in which traf­fick­ing flourishes.”

  Rad­hika Coomaraswamy, UN Spe­cial Rap­por­teur on Vio­lence Against Women

  ***

  Sources/Further Read­ing:

  http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=47332http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Wednesday/National/2590572/Article/index_html
  http://www.state.gov/documents/organization/123357.pdf

  photo credit: vene­tia jou­bert sarah oosterveld

  Thumb­nail pic: http://www.on-linecreative.com/library/humanity/images/human%20trafficking2.jpg