জাতীয় মাসিক মুক্তিদূত [The Monthly Muktidooth] Print / Online media

Iranian women and the Islamic Republic
Nikki R Keddie
The hunger to extend and secure their rights has long been central to the experience of Iran's women. Their response to the challenges facing them continues to evolve, says Nikki R Keddie.
(This article was first published on 24 February 2009)
The subject of women in Iran since 1979 is a large one, to write about it briefly a challenge. A theme that is relevant to the thirtieth anniversary of the revolution but also long predates it is the importance of the "two cultures" of 20th-century urban Iran regarding women: the popular-bazaar culture and the educated-elite culture; related to this is the unfortunate, but not unique, association of governmental reforms affecting women with autocratic rulers seen as tools of the United States (see "Women in the Middle East: Progress and Backlash", Current History [December 2008]).
As in most countries, the early and even later proponents of women's rights in Iran came overwhelmingly from among the elite and educated, and saw popular-class women more as students for their practical and academic classes than as colleagues. The primary advocates of unveiling (and other women's rights) were a few elite women; when Reza Shah decreed unveiling in 1936, it proved traumatic for many women.
Nikki R Keddie is professor emerita of history, UCLA. Her books include Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (Yale University Press, 2006) and Women in the Middle East: Past and Present (Princeton University Press, 2007)
The modernisation of women's rights and government activities in relation to women began under the Pahlavi shahs (r. 1925-79). This comprised the opening of education at all levels and of some professions to women; and, most dramatically under Mohammad Reza Shah, involved pressure from women's groups that resulted in votes for women and major legal reforms in the Family Protection Law (FPL) of 1967 / 1975.
The association of such measures with autocratic shahs and elites and with unquestioning imitation of the west provided fertile ground for a counter-movement in part based (as has been much conservatism in the United States) on literalist religion, which claimed that both nature and religious texts validated unequal status and rights for women. In order to express solidarity with the popular class and religious opponents of the shah, secularists and leftists joined the opposition in large numbers, and many donned chadors (see Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution [Yale University Press, 2006]).
They thought Ayatollah Khomeini would not exercise real power and that more secular leaders would win out. However, once Khomeini took power in 1979 many of the recently achieved rights for women were reversed. It is too simple to say that the FPL was abrogated and the sharia restored, but the new legal situation was indeed corrosive of the rights that women had acquired not long before.
Among openDemocracy's many articles about Iran:

Ardashir Tehrani, "Iran's presidential coup" (26 June 2005)

Fred Halliday, "Iran's revolutionary spasm" (30 June 2005)

Trita Parsi, "The Iran-Israel cold war" (28 October 2005)

Nayereh Tohidi, "Iran: regionalism, ethnicity and democracy" (28 June 2006)

Hooshang Amirahmadi, "Iran and the international community: roots of perpetual crisis" (24 November 2006)

Kamin Mohammadi, "Voices from Tehran" (31 January 2007)

Fred Halliday, "The matter with Iran" (1 March 2007)

Anoush Ehteshami, "Iran and the United States: back from the brink" (16 March 2007)

Rasool Nafisi, "Iran's cultural prison" (17 May 2007)

Nasrin Alavi, "The Iran paradox" (11 October 2007)

Omid Memarian, "Iran: prepared for the worst" (30 October 2007)

Sanam Vakil, "Iran's political shadow war" (16 July 2008)

Nasrin Alavi, "Iran: after the dawn" (2 February 2009)

Abbas Milani, "Iran's Islamic revolution: three paradoxes" (9 February 2009)

Homa Katouzian, "The Iranian revolution: beyond enigma" (February 2009)
Many popular-class women had not benefited from the Pahlavi reforms and some resented the forced changes in behaviour that they involved. Before and immediately after the 1979 revolution, western feminists were prominent in attempts to protest against Khomeini's attempts at re-veiling and limiting women's legal rights; but these women did not know enough about Iran to accommodate the views of those women who did not advocate wholesale westernisation.
The currency of rights
With regard to women's status as on other matters, the deep class division in religio-political outlook in Iran remained strong. To some degree it still does, though more women have become urbanised and educated and want more freedoms. Moreover, the very efforts of the government to involve women in defence during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), to educate girls at all levels, and (after 1989) to promote family planning and reduce births helped awaken many girls and women to new ideas.
Women also increasingly resisted reversals in women's rights. What were formerly only elite ideas about gender and women's rights spread to the popular classes, sometimes in the form of what has been called "Islamic feminism". Several women began to offer gender-egalitarian interpretations of the Qur'an and Islamic traditions in place of the dominant conservative ones.
In broad terms, the decade before Khomeini's death in 1989 was a period of strengthening Khomeinism, while 1990-2000 was a period of pragmatism and some reform under presidents Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-97) and Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), with a mix of agreement and resistance from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The restrictions on girls' and women's public behaviour and dress and on the media (including a renewed women's press) were gradually loosened, especially in the better-off neighbourhoods of big cities. Yet since about 2001, there has been a recrudescence of conservatism, enforced in the streets especially by popular-class men and their organisations; this increased after the election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency in June 2005. He represents a new generation of neo-conservatives with deep ties to the veterans of the Iran-Iraq war and the Revolutionary Guards. In response, many young elite women turned to personal and sexual means of defiance (see Nasrin Alavi, "Women in Iran: repression and resistance", 5 March 2007).
However, there also was a spread of ideas of women's rights beyond the elite, especially in the innovative campaign for a million signatures for women's legal equality which brought educated women into the homes of popular-class women to discuss their problems. The government has recently arrested several of the women prominent in this campaign; it has also, notoriously, invaded the offices of Shirin Ebadi, the Nobel-prizewinning activist for women's, children's, and human rights (see Nazila Fathi, "Shirin Ebadi and Iran's women: in the vanguard of change", October 2003).
This trend too has a longer history (see Women in the Middle East: Past and Present [Princeton University Press, 2007]). The scholars of Iranian women's history have found that even before any western impact in Iran was felt or became important, many women in the country were already politically active behind the scenes in ways outsiders failed to register. This is noted in works such as Parvin Paidar's comprehensive Women and the Political Process in Twentieth Century Iran (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Janet Afary's Sexual Politics in Modern Iran (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
The next generations
Some elite women made the mistake of not taking advantage of Iranian traditions and thinking the west had to be imitated in everything from dress to drinking. Today, many young elite women think they are imitating the west (which they know only from the media) by turning to personal and sexual means of defiance: being sexually promiscuous, partaking in drugs and drinks favoured in the west. Politically active women doubt that these behaviours can bring positive changes for women, especially as they incur the disapproval of many women as well as provoking the government and rightwing enforcers.
The current economic crisis in Iran - founded on governmental mismanagement and the fall in oil prices, and exacerbated by international sanctions - has increased popular resistance. If change is to come to Iran, economic discontent, which undermines popular support for Ahmadinejad, will be a major reason. It seems important not to encourage extreme behaviours that do not even bring happiness to those who indulge in them, and alienate many others (see Pardis Mahdavi, Passionate Uprisings: Iran's Sexual Revolution [Stanford University Press, 2009]).
Instead, women and men of all classes who want change should look outwards, in two ways. First, they should unite around a candidate for the presidential elections in June 2009 who promises to reverse the crackdowns of recent years on women, young people, strikers, and reform publications. Second, they should need to promote programmes that meet the needs of Iran's everyday and hard-pressed citizens. If they do, a new chapter in women's history in Iran too will open.

Israel’s rightward shift: a history of the present
Colin Shindler
A withered left, a fragmented right, a stagnant politics and a frozen peace compose the bleak Israeli ingredients of the search for national and regional progress, says Colin Shindler.
The general election in Israel on 10 February 2009 produced a move to the political right, likely to be capped by the formation of a new governing coalition under Binyamin Netanyahu's Likud. In the perspective of Israel's history, however, there are losers as well as winners among the established forces on this side of the spectrum - as is true (more obviously) of the left. The emerging constellation of Israeli politics has serious implications for any prospects of movement towards a settlement with the Palestinians.
Colin Shindler is professor of Israeli Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His books include A History of Modern Israel (Cambridge University Press, 2008) and The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (IB Tauris, 2005; paperback 2009).
In this respect the current intertwining of domestic and regional issues follows a consistent pattern, whereby violence in the middle east is always accompanied by an electoral move to the right in Israel. The first intifada (which began in 1987) led to the election of Yitzhak Shamir in 1988; the wave of Hamas suicide-bombings catapulted Binyamin Netanyahu into office in 1996; and the onset of the second ("al-Aqsa") intifada in 2000 persuaded the Israeli electorate to bring back Ariel Sharon from the political wilderness in 2001.
The logic has been that only the right can stand up to nihilist enemies. After the three-week conflagration in Gaza in 2008-09 - amid near-universal expectation that this is not the end of the story - virtually all the Israeli parties prepared for the election of 10 February by producing platforms of militant defiance and national resilience to entice the voters. The Israeli peace camp, undermined for years by the bombers of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, shrank into oblivion. For them and their counterparts in the Palestinian peace camp, there was no political space to enunciate a rationalist approach. Now, the Palestinian rejectionists have in effect elected the Israeli rejectionists.
A militarist storm
Indeed, the success of Avigdor Lieberman - the enfant terrible of Israeli politics, whose Yisrael Beiteinu won a record number of seats (fifteen) and seems certain to enter government alongside "Bibi" Netanyahu's Likud - marks a shift not just rightwards but to the far right. True, Israelis often endorse maverick groups as a measure of their profound irritation with their leaders - and then unceremoniously dump them in subsequent elections (the secularist Shinui and the Pensioners' Party are examples from recent times). But the advance of Lieberman is a commentary on Israeli politics' deeper stagnation - marked as it is by failed, recycled figures such as Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, tainted by incredulous tales of financial corruption, and exemplified in the moral flaws of presidents and premiers.
Also in openDemocracy on Israeli history and politics:
Stephen Howe, "Troubled links to the narrow land" (13 June 2001) Eyal Weizman, "The politics of verticality" - in eleven parts (April-May 2002) Eyal Weizman, "Ariel Sharon and the geometry of occupation" - in three parts (September 2003) Eric Silver, "Israel's political map is redrawn" (November 2005) Jim Lederman, "Ariel Sharon and Israel's unique democracy" (12 January 2006) Thomas O'Dwyer, "Slouching towards Kadima" (26 March 2006) Menachem Kellner, "Israel reverses gravity" (29 March 2006) Jim Lederman, "What Israel's election means" (4 April 2006) Laurence Louër, "Arabs in Israel: on the move" (19 April 2007) Thomas O'Dwyer, "Israel's post-heroic disaster" (30 April 2007) Avi Shlaim, "Israel at 60: the ‘iron wall' revisited" (8 May 2008) Avi Shlaim, "Israel and Gaza: rhetoric and reality" (7 January 2009) Thomas O'Dwyer, "Israel: how things fell apart" (13 February 2009)
There is also a sense of resignation that there has been no movement towards peace with the Palestinians due to the rise of Islamism. Hamas does not simply not recognise Israel, it does not recognise Israelis. There is no dialogue with the Israeli peace camp, nor - even if indirect and clandestine - with Israeli officials. For Hamas, unlike the Palestinian nationalists of Fatah, there is a theological imperative to root out the Zionist weed from hallowed ground; and it makes no distinction between Jews and Zionists.
When Hamas calls a ceasefire, it is not to secure time to be left alone to rebuild a damaged society, but to rearm with more sophisticated weapons. The range of missiles from Gaza has increased fivefold since 2001. Now Beer-Sheva University is in range. Even the Israeli left was muted over the "cruel necessity" of the Gaza operation. What, they asked, will happen if the Islamists acquire bigger and better missiles?
Even after Ariel Sharon had facilitated the evacuation of the Jewish settlers from Gaza in August 2005, the Islamists continued to fire their rockets into Israel, thus eradicating the possibility of further settlements being evacuated from the northern West Bank.
An analogy with the peace process in Northern Ireland is increasingly invoked, but often in a misleading way: for the proper comparison is not between Hamas and Sinn Fein, but between Fatah and Sinn Fein. Both the latter are nationalist movements in the end capable of being influenced by Enlightenment values in the sense of formulating a rational compromise, whether it was the Oslo accords (1993) or the Good Friday agreement (1998). Israelis see no sign of such movement within Hamas, and this has encouraged a centuries-old fatalism amongst the Jews - to batten down the hatches until the storm passes over.
A Russian odyssey
The political immobility of the period since the withdrawal from Gaza in 2005 has allowed West Bank settlements to expand and to establish new outposts. There is a growing public acceptance that any attempt to uproot the 300,000 settlers will be near impossible, even though a majority of Israelis would desire this.
This dire situation has boosted Avigdor Lieberman's party as well as many other far-right parties. The fact that Yisrael Beiteinu is ideologically closer to Binyamin Netanyahu than to Tzipi Livni underlines Bibi's claim to be the election victor, even though Livni's centrist Kadima party won a seat more. Yet the Israeli right split as well as advanced in this election - many members of Likud's natural constituency switched to Lieberman's party.
Yisrael Beiteinu's name in Hebrew translates to "Israel, Our Home" in English. This betrays its Russian immigrant origins. When the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev introduced his perestroika and glasnost policies in the second half of the 1980s, the reins restricting Jewish immigration from the USSR were loosened; with the fall of the Berlin wall in November 1989, the trickle became a flood.
In the 1990s, a million Russian immigrants came to Israel. Yasser Arafat believed that they would all settle on the West Bank, but his fear was not realised. Indeed all the Russians wanted was a modicum of normality following their Soviet experience. They did not want the uncertainty of living in the settlements. Moreover, they were also assimilated and secular - and thus rejected the immediate embrace of Israel's religious parties. Indeed, many voted for Yitzhak Rabin in 1992.
At the same time, probably 25%-30% of the immigrants were not even Jewish according to the strictures of Jewish religious law. They could be educated as Jews, fight for Israel and die for Israel, but not be buried in a Jewish cemetery. As the Russian immigrants enter their third decade in Israel, this problem has still not been solved by the rabbis, causing much anguish and annoyance.
Among openDemocracy's articles on the Gaza conflict of 2008-09: Paul Rogers, "Gaza: hope after attack" (1 January 2009) Ghassan Khatib, "Gaza: outlines of an endgame" (6 January 2009) Avi Shlaim, "Israel and Gaza: rhetoric and reality" (7 January 2009) Paul Rogers, "Gaza: the Israel-United States connection" (7 January 2009) Tarek Osman, "Egypt's dilemma: Gaza and beyond" (12 January 2009) Mary Robinson, "A crisis of dignity in Gaza" (13 January 2009) Paul Rogers, "Gaza: the wider war" (13 January 2009) Menachem Kellner, "Israel's Gaza war: five asymmetries" (14 January 2009) Khaled Hroub, "Hamas after the Gaza war" (15 January 2009) Prince Hassan of Jordan, "The failure of force: an alternative option" (16 January 2009) Paul Rogers, "After Gaza: Israel's last chance" (17 January 2009) Martin Shaw, "Israel's politics of war" (19 January 2009) Conor Gearty, "Israel, Gaza and international law" (21 January 2009) Paul Rogers, "Gaza: the war after the war" (22 January 2009) Khaled Hroub, "The ‘Arab system' after Gaza" (27 January 2009) Hugo Slim, "NGOs in Gaza: humanitarianism vs politics" (30 January 2009) Lucy Nusseibeh, "The four lessons of Gaza" (4 February 2009) Carsten Wieland, "The Gaza war and the Syria-Israel front" (5 February 2009) Prince Hassan, "Palestine's right: past as prologue" (11 February 2009)
Here, Lieberman's promise to introduce civil marriage in Israel (rather than obliging Israelis of Russian origin to travel abroad) and in addition to ease the conversion process delighted Russian Jews. It also stimulated the bitter opposition of rightwing religious parties such as Shas and HaBayit Hayehudi - which, forced to choose between their religious adherence and their political affinity, opted for the former. This schism within the rightwing camp has made Netanyahu's job of forming a broad coalition much more contentious.
The Russians - like other immigrants to Israel from countries with a history of authoritarian regimes, such as South Africa and Iraq - have tended to favour "strong leaders" to navigate them out of a political morass. Lieberman - a former refusenik from Kishinev (Moldova) who during Netanyahu's first term (1996-99) headed the prime-minister's office - fitted the role. In 1999, he effectively fragmented the first Russian immigrant party, Yisrael B'Aliyah, to form Yisrael Beiteinu. A decade on, the party retains a Russian core, but has moved far beyond this constituency to embrace the radical right, the alienated and the disillusioned.
This shift is reflected in the fact that the number-two to Lieberman on the party list in the election was Uzi Landau, an articulate and long-time member of the Likud who broke with both Sharon and Netanyahu over the question of returning territory to the Palestinians.
Landau‘s father was a member of the Irgun Zvai Leumi which fought the British during the 1940s in Mandatory Palestine, and a confidante of Menachem Begin. It took Begin nine attempts before he finally became prime minister in 1977 at the age of 64, thus ending the hegemony of the Labour party. In one sense, the prominence of Landau today outside the Likud symbolises the fragmentation of the coalition of the right assembled by Begin over many years (see A History of Modern Israel, Cambridge University Press, 2008).
A political fragmentation
Menachem Begin had emerged from the maximalist wing of Ze'ev (Vladimir) Jabotinsky's movement, but he was not (as is often wrongly stated) a Revisionist Zionist. He integrated the pragmatic liberal conservatism of Jabotinsky and the military Zionism of Abba Achimeir, a rightwing intellectual (and admirer of Benito Mussolini) in the inter-war years.
Begin won only fourteen seats in the 1949 election; but by shrewd coalition-building - first with the Liberals and then with the remnants of the David Ben-Gurion wing of the Labour party - was able to establish the Likud in 1973, and thereby win the election four years later. In government, he broadened the right through attracting the National Religious Party (who represented the religious settlers) and persuading the disaffected Moshe Dayan to leave Labour and cross the floor.
The other midwife of the Likud, Ariel Sharon, was a follower of Ben-Gurion and not Jabotinsky. His lack of ties to the idea of a "greater Israel" for purely ideological or religious reasons meant that he was able in 2005 to initiate the disengagement from Gaza and to break with the Likud to form Kadima. This splitting of the Likud unravelled Begin's painstaking work that had created a grand coalescence of the right.
The future of the Likud then seemed to be that of a minor grouping - alongside a range of other small far-right parties - led by an unpopular leader, Bibi Netanyahu. But two factors - Sharon's stroke and removal from the political scene, and the failure of his successor Ehud Olmert during the Lebanon war in July-August 2006 - allowed Netanyahu to rise once more from the political graveyard.
In this perspective, Avigdor Lieberman's success in the election of February 2009 appears to be yet another stage in the fragmentation of Menachem Begin's grand coalition. But Likud's new opponents are not part of a resurgent left or even centre, but parties still further to the right.
A diplomatic mountain
This development, apart from its impact on domestic Israeli politics, makes it even harder to envisage that after the apathy of the George W Bush years a constructive approach from Barack Obama's administration will make a real difference. While the Palestinians are split between nationalists and Islamists, the Israelis believe that the right is their salvation in difficult times - though the prospective Netanyahu government may be short-lived, especially if it comes under concerted pressure from Washington.
The new political constellation, however, may provide the impetus for Hamas to be on its best behaviour, utter soothing words and decrease its volley of missiles in order to initiate a dialogue with the United States while effectively excluding Israel from key deliberations. For their part, the Americans may hope that increased involvement on their part will prevent further outbreaks of violence. But the current political dynamics in both Israel and the Palestinian territories suggest that even this - let alone the long-term solutions needed - will be a vain hope.



THE GREAT IMMIGRATION
Russian Jews in Israel
Dina Siegel
With a Preface by Emanuel Marx
256 pages, 8 photos, 7 tables, bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-57181-968-0 Hb $80.00/£47.00 Published ( 1998)
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"An interesting and informative book ... that provides many fresh political, social, economic and ethnographic insights ... Many data are well-documented and some insights are innovative and well-considered." • Shofar
"A unique and insightful study of ethnic mobilization." • Emanuel Marx, Tel-Aviv University
More than 750,000 Russian Jews arrived in Israel between 1988 and 1996. However, this Great Immigration, as it has been called, has gone largely unnoticed in Israeli public life. Information about this significant event has been sketchy and largely characterized by stereotypes and simplistic generalizations. Based on a number of case studies, this book offers the first in-depth analysis of the life of the new Russian-Jewish immigrants and of the interaction between them and other Israeli citizens. The author explores the peculiar set of problems that the immigrants from the former Soviet Union have been facing and shows how the newcomers, by sheer number, were able to exploit their skills and capacity for political mobilization, to resist bureaucratic control and cultural assimilation. Adaptation did take place but resulted in new institutions and formations of class and leadership. The integration of such vast numbers of immigrants over a relatively short period is a considerable challenge for a society by any standards, but must certainly be considered a unique phenomenon for a relatively small country such as Israel.
Dina Siegel, originally from Kishinev in the former Soviet Union, now lives in the Netherlands. She received her MA in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Tel-Aviv University and her PhD in Cultural Anthropology from the Free University Amsterdam to which she is affiliated.
Series: Volume 11, New Directions in Anthropology

Subject: Migration Studies, Jewish Studies





World press organisations protest against Turkish fine


The World Association of Newspapers and World Editors Forum Tuesday condemned a GBP 826m (EUR 381m) fine imposed on the Dogan Media Group in Turkey, calling it a “politically motivated” response to critical reporting. In a statement, the Paris-based associations, the global organisations of the world’s press, called on Turkey to apply its tax laws fairly and transparently, to not use them as a tool to intimidate the press, and to respect international standards of freedom of expression. “We are seriously concerned that the fine may be politically motivated,” the statement said. “It follows the publication of stories by Dogan newspapers in September 2008 alleging that millions of euros unlawfully siphoned off a German charity may have gone to Turkey’s ruling party.” On 16 February, the country’s tax authorities handed down the fine for alleged tax fraud, claiming the Dogan Media Group had delayed payment of tax on a sale of shares to German publishers Axel Springer. The Dogan group denies the charges and says that it paid its taxes on time. The fine follows two other incidents suggesting political motivation: the cancellation, in November 2008, of the accreditation of seven Dogan Group reporters covering prime ministerial affairs; and the recent call by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the public not to buy Dogan Media Group newspapers. Dogan, the nation’s largest media group, publishes Hürriyet and Milliyet and owns CNN-Turk. (WAN)


Media News - Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Safety of journalists in conflict zones priority issue for Pakistani government : minister
Pakistani Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Sherry Rehman Tuesday said safety of journalists working in the conflict zones was a priority issue for government and it wanted to address it immediately. Talking to the media about government’s plans for ensuring media freedom and protection in Pakistan, the Minister said she has directed her Ministry to organize a series of workshops for journalists to provide them training and knowledge resources on safety and security, while performing their duties in conflict zones. The Minister said the government had also requested the European Union, media representative bodies and international safety institutes to help the Information Ministry with training resources and content for the planned workshops. These workshops will be free of charge and all media groups will be asked to send their nominations for registration and participation, Sherry Rehman added. (Associated Press of Pakistan)



New approach could make multinationals more accountable for harmful impacts

Some transnational corporations (TNCs) are starting to take responsibility for their harmful impacts but a lack of systematic monitoring means it is still almost impossible to tell the good from the bad, says research by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED).

The authors — Christoph Schwarte of IIED's legal subsidiary, the Foundation for International Environmental Law and Development (FIELD), and Emma Wilson of IIED — say some TNCs are shifting from recognising that they need to be more transparent about their activities to actually being accountable for their social and environmental impacts.

"TNCs have activities that stretch across national boundaries and this means they are often beyond the reach of traditional corporate control systems and so cannot be held accountable for their impacts," says Schwarte.

"Some TNCs are however starting to use grievance and redress mechanisms as new tools to mitigate conflicts with local stakeholders,” add Schwarte. “But there is little monitoring and assessment of what actually works."

The authors say that the global economic crisis can instigate a change in business practices and lead to better corporate accountability. As attempts to establish accountability top-down from the international level have so far failed, project-based mechanisms provide an opportunity for multinationals to improve their social and environmental performance.

"Grievance mechanisms could gradually change the way transnationals do business and interact with local communities," says Wilson. "This would be especially valuable in countries with weak governance structures as it could provide an useful means for settling disputes."

Schwarte and Wilson surveyed twenty-eight large TNCs to assess whether they have set up accountability mechanisms to address the social and environmental complaints of local communities.

The TNCs included oil and gas companies such as Total and BP, mining businesses (e.g. Anglo American and BHP Billiton), and corporations in the forestry (Weyerhaeuser or Stora Enso) and other business sectors.

The study showed that the establishment of independent complaint and dispute settlement mechanisms varies significantly between business sectors. The majority of companies that have gained experience in operating such mechanism usually describe them as “very useful” in solving conflicts with external stakeholders.

To date these mechanisms have only been set up in relation to specific projects. One TNC, however, is considering setting up an additional mechanism at the corporate level - with potentially global application.

“Transnational corporations increasingly see a strong business case for establishing formalised complaint and dispute settlement procedures,” says Wilson.

In addition international finance institutions (i.e. the International Finance Corporation and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) require clients that receive project finance to operate such mechanisms. “Overall however there is still a significant lack of awareness and the need for in depth research on good practice," adds Wilson.

Schwarte and Wilson published their findings in a briefing paper that can be downloaded from IIED's website.
http://www.iied.org/pubs/pdfs/17049IIED.pdf

(Sorces:EJC,Open Democracy,Media News/other and edited by Muktidooth)