Bhutan became a party to the UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) on 31 August 1981. But the situation of Bhutanese refugee women is appalling. Among the 100,000 Bhutanese refugees, around 50 per cent of the population in the refugee camps are women, most of these women are illiterate and they participate less in social activities. In the cultural sphere, the southern Bhutanese women had to bear the brunt of the government's cultural policy. The Bhutanese government forgetting its responsibility towards improving the status of women has deliberately attacked them in this campaign of ethnic cleansing. […] Southern Bhutanese women were deprived of their right to wear their dress; their ceremonial marriage necklaces were stripped off; they were made to cut their hair short. Instead, they were forced to adopt the dress and culture of the northern Bhutanese.

The women have always been the worst hit by government repression. In most cases, their husbands were imprisoned or had to flee the country for fear of persecution. The security forces plundered their homes, tortured, intimidated and raped these helpless women. There are 156 rape victims in Bhutanese refugee camps as per the records of CVICT Nepal. According to Shangri-La Without Human Rights eight women were raped to death. The following testimonies exemplify the extent to which women's rights have been violated by the Bhutanese government.

You are both a Zionist and a supporter of the Palestinians, who has branded Israel's military action in the occupied territories as ‘state terrorism’. How do you explain this dichotomy?

There is no contradiction in being a Zionist and recognizing the national rights of the Palestinians. In common perception, Zionism is synonymous with Palestinian dispossession and colonization. For me, Zionism is completely different – meaning living in a Jewish community, speaking in Hebrew, celebrating Jewish culture and holidays without fear that I shall be persecuted for my Jewishness. But it also does not mean the repression of the Palestinian people. On the contrary, since my arrival in Israel I started to struggle against discrimination of the Palestinians Arabs in Israel and against the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza strip – the Palestinian territories. Two years after my arrival in Israel I founded a students' movement called ‘Campus’, which had both Jewish and Arab students. Some of the Arabs of that movement are today members of Knesset and gained their political experience in that movement. As a Zionist, for me it was clear that if I was against the discrimination of Jews in the Diaspora I must be against the discrimination of the Arabs.

REFUGEES

The term ‘refugee’ is a term of art, i. e. a term with a content, verifiable according to principles of general international law. In ordinary usage, it has a broader, looser meaning, signifying someone in flight, who seeks to escape conditions or personal circumstances found to be intolerable. The destination is not relevant; the flight is to freedom, to safety. Likewise, the reasons for flight may be many – flight from oppression, from a threat to life or liberty, flight from prosecution; flight from deprivation, from grinding poverty; flight from war or civil strife; flight from natural disasters – earthquakes, flood, drought and famine. Implicit in the ordinary meaning of the word ‘refugee’ lies an assumption that the person concerned is worthy of being, and ought to be, assisted, and, if necessary, protected from the causes and consequences of flight. The ‘fugitive’ from justice, the person fleeing criminal prosecution for breach of the law in its ordinary and non-political aspect, is therefore often exempted from this category of refugees.

For the purposes of international law, states have further limited the concept of the refugee. For example, ‘economic refugees’ – the term is generally disfavoured – are not included. The solution to their problem, perhaps, lies more within the province of international aid and development, rather than in the institution of asylum, considered as protection of whatever duration on the territory of another state.

Introduction

In India, several mechanisms exist to provide economic and social safety nets to the economically and socially vulnerable groups. In broad terms, they are achieved through a formal or informal social security system that ensures equitable justice in society (Heller, 2003). This notion of the safety net enabled all societies to go in for the social security system. The International Labour Organization (ILO) has defined social security as ‘the protection which society provides for its members, through a series of public measures, against economic and social distress otherwise caused by the stoppage or substantial reduction of earnings resulting from sickness, maternity, employment injury, unemployment, invalidity, old age and death’ (ILO, 1942). Sir William Beveridge, father of the British social security system, defined it as, ‘security of an income to take the place of earning when they are interrupted by unemployment, sickness, or accident; to provide retirement benefits, to provide against loss of support by the death of the other person and to meet exceptional expenditure such as those connected with birth, death and marriage’ (Beveridge, 1943). According to Pierre Laroque, former president of the National Social Security Fund in France, social security represents ‘a guarantee by the whole community to all its members of the maintenance of their standard of living or at least tolerant living conditions by means of a redistribution of income based on national solidarity’ (Laroque, 1969). Leal de Araujo has viewed social security systems as ‘supplementary machineries or economic agents for redistribution of income’ (de Araujo, 1972).

The reason why we should pay attention to the issues of power, fear and ethics in studies of ‘humanitarian politics’ – a name under which a significant chunk of the international politics of war and peace goes on is because without examination of these we cannot lodge human rights and humanitarianism at the heart of a politics of justice. I wish to inquire into the entire problematic in terms of a look into the management of refugee care. In the process, I also wish to continue my inquiry into the nature of constitutionalism and legalism of the existing kind that limits our capacity to resolve conflicts and generate an ethic of care, kindness, hospitality and responsibility.

The new mix of forced and illegal population flows and the inadequate appreciation of the new phenomenon in refugee studies raises the problem of method from several angles. It is important to note the following in this context. First, studies of forced population movements have been hitherto pursued from economic and demographic angles. The link between state formation (particularly postcolonial) and population flow cannot be seen through rose-tinted glasses. Second, the notion of forced is so narrowly defined, that the structural violence permeating these societies escapes our attention, though violence and coercion are considered as benchmarks in determination of refugees.

Introduction

After a long history of dependence on a few traditional exports, followed by import substitution in the 1960s and 1970s, and a debt crisis in the early 1980s, Costa Rica launched an aggressive attempt at diversifying production and exports in 1985. The new approach to development consisted of two main elements: pursuit of free trade agreements and the attraction of foreign direct investment (FDI). Costa Rica has been remarkably successful in attracting FDI. It is the only country in Latin America where most FDI has gone to manufacturing over the last decade, and it stands out even further for its ability to attract FDI in high-tech sectors.

In this article we analyze why Costa Rica was an attractive destination for transnational corporations (MNCs), and the impact FDI has had on economic development in the country. We show that FDI in the Free Zones has had a beneficial impact primarily at the macroeconomic level, through employment and trade balance effects. At the microeconomic level, however, the impact has been rather limited as backward linkages and technological spillovers are small in both absolute and relative terms.

The limited extent of backward linkages from FDI is due to the limited potential for spillovers for part of the foreign investment as well as to the limited domestic absorptive capacity for linkages. Ultimately, we argue, the lack of a coherent long-term development strategy has hindered the ability of the country to take more advantage of high-tech FDI.

In the ten years of insurgency in the Kashmir valley and the border hill districts girdling the epicentre of conflict, more than half a million people have been displaced on both sides of the Line of Control (LOC). The exodus includes, 200,000 Kashmiri Pandits, 70,000 Kashmiri Muslims to India and 120,000 to Pakistan. From Kargil and the border districts some 35,000 people have been displaced in Pakistan and 100,000 in India.

As the guns fall silent along the LOC, after the Kargil war, the people of the border districts will return to bury their animals, rebuild their homes and replant their crops till the artillery duels across the LOC erupt again. But for the thousands of displaced Kashmiri Pandits, can there be a return home? Can there be a return to the ‘homeland’, a return to a remembered society imbued in the ethos of Kashmiriyat i.e. a common Muslim–Pandit identity constructed around a shared history, language and culture?

The mass exodus of Pandits from the valley in 1990 played into the hands of the propagandists on both sides and people who had grown up in a culture of social and economic interdependence have been communalized. The poison of communal politics has constructed negative images of the Pandit as abandoning his Muslim brethren to the guns of the Indian state and the Muslim as waiting to grab the property of his Pandit neighbour.

The post-election violence in Bangladesh (2001) specifically targeted the Hindu minority population though in a broader frame it also encompassed Awami League (AL) supporters and other progressive forces in the rural areas. The violence has largely been known to be initiated by Bangladesh National Party (BNP) supporters in various localities. The backlash after the elections was systematic and severe. Bangladeshi press has reported that attackers have entered Hindu homes, beaten family members and looted their property. Rape and abduction of women too were reported. Though these attacks were condemned by national as well as international institutions, a silencing process has also been at work both as a result of terrorising policies of the ruling party as well as the self-censoring practices of the liberal civil society. It is the roots of this silencing process, which I wish to highlight in this article, because it unpacks questions of class hegemony in the current Bangladesh state. I therefore locate the question of religious minorities in Bangladesh in the broader frame of the class discourse.

CLASS FORMATION THROUGH EXTORTION: A BACKGROUND

In the aftermath of independence, it was thought by some scholars that Bangladesh had a ruling class but it was not a hegemonic one. The reason behind this proposition was that the power base of the then AL who had an absolute majority in parliament, was predominantly petit bourgeois and the rural rich, who did not have enough control over the military–bureaucratic oligarchy traditionally controlling the ‘overdeveloped’ Pakistan state.

FDI has played a major role in Argentina's economic transformation. During the 1990s, a period of deep structural reforms largely based on the neoliberal “Washington Consensus,” Argentina was one of the main destinations for FDI among “emerging markets.” MNCs were already a major presence in the Argentine economy. With the surge in FDI during this period, the role of MNCs reached unprecedented levels. In 2003 more than 80 percent of the value-added generated by the 500 leading Argentine firms belonged to MNC affiliates.

In the view of the reformers, FDI was to play a significant role in the needed restructuring of Argentina's economy. At the macroeconomic level, FDI was to help finance current-account deficits. Since MNCs often follow long-term investment strategies and, once installed in a host country, have large sunk costs, the reformers believed FDI would be less volatile than portfolio investment and other types of international financial flows. Last but not least, FDI was supposed to contribute to investment, and therefore to economic growth and increased employment, not only directly, but also indirectly; that is, by fostering investments by local firms competing with, serving as suppliers to, or making purchases from MNCs (so-called “crowding in” effects discussed by Agosin in the Chapter Two).

At the microeconomic level, foreign firms engaging in FDI usually have ownership advantages (Dunning 1993) over local firms in the host markets where they invest.

As Alessandro Dal Lago wrote recently (‘Rogo d'Europa’, il manifesto 28-10-2005), ‘it is just the beginning’. It concerns Europe. It is only a warning. Angry desolate French males in the depressing suburbia and some city centres have vandalized public or private property, burnt thousands of cars, scorched schools and kindergartens, terrorized their neighbours, public opinion and the well meaning universalist France de souche. Triggered but not caused by the (not so) accidental death of two boys fleeing the police (as they are constantly confronted with identity checks), the violence is inevitably perceived by the mainstream protectionist discourse, unwilling to catch its political gist, as blind and irrational. Those rioters and their movement are the symptom of a very serious malaise. To one coming from the former Yugoslavia, the French events and situation is reminiscent of unpleasant recent memories, toute proportion gardée. There, like here, since the fatal series of wars (I am leaving aside their history and complex reasons) which, far from being caused by ethnicized identities, had produced them – it has become impossible to claim multiple belongings and crossed identities. […]

The ‘unexpected’ appearance of suddenly visible revolted bodies and of their direct, unmediated violent action beyond language cannot at all be received as carrying political claims within the existing public space. It is a wild demand to topple the existing hegemony and replace it with a new, a just one.

Since independence, India has followed a development policy based on large-scale creation of infrastructure and industries, all of which required acquisition of land. As it happens, a large part of our natural resources lie in the hilly and forest areas, mostly inhabited by tribals and backward castes – some of the most disadvantaged sections of the population. Following past colonial practice, land has been acquired in exercise of the principle of ‘eminent domain’, which confers upon the government the power to take over private property for public purpose. Thus, involuntary resettlement has been the unintended companion of development. […]

Displacement for marginal communities is a catastrophe: it disrupts an entire way of life. It involves a trauma, which can never be fully compensated in economic terms. This realization, along with the fact that they did not share in the fruits of the sacrifices they were called to make in the name of the nation, increase the sense of alienation of these marginalized victims of land dispossession giving rise to protest movements, holding up the development process, causing destruction to life and property and generally imposing an efficiency cost on the system.

This chapter traces the genesis of one such mass movement in the districts of North Bengal, led by the Kamtapuri People's Party (KPP) demanding a separate state of Kamtapur. The Kamtapuri movement, which has seen a recent upsurge in the Jalpaiguri, Dhupguri, Cooch Bihar, Naxalbari, Fasidewa and other neighbouring districts of North Bengal, is an ultimate outcome of the struggle for power and the associated privileges between the indigenous communities (particularly the Koch/Rajbanshi's) and the Bengali and Marwari immigrants.

Pakistan in spite of being a developing country has hosted millions of Afghan refugees since the 1970s. Although in the following paragraphs, an attempt has been made to highlight the impediments and shortfalls in Pakistan's Afghan policy, one must keep in mind that the country itself faced a lot of hard times during the Soviet occupation of neighbouring Afghanistan. With inherent problems of its own and usual dilemma faced by a developing Third World country, there was a time when Pakistan had to single-handedly support a burgeoning refugee population, with no donor aid or help coming from any quarters.

Since that time, the Pakistani government has engaged in sporadic efforts to register refugees and to provide some legal protection. In the early 1980s refugee families were issued passbooks. (The issuance of passbooks and identification documents was done according to Article 25 of Chapter 5 dealing with administrative measures in the 1951 Refugee Convention). The passbooks entitled refugees to receive assistance, and they were also used as identity documents. On a sporadic basis for a few years thereafter, the Government of Pakistan issued passbooks to newly arriving refugees for assistance purposes only. The passbooks did not provide identification for the refugees, and as such, provided no legal protection. […]

In spite of the fact that it hosts the largest of the world's refugee population for the past three decades, Pakistan is neither a party to the Refugee Convention, nor its follow-up 1967 protocol.