Word: meetness
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Africa's colonial history has left its rulers shy of external scrutiny, so an international gathering of political and business leaders in Cape Town from June 4-6 seemed to promise little more than platitudes. The annual meetings of the World Economic Forum for Africa have often conveyed the impression that Africa's only problem is its image. Rebrand the continent as a success, the message goes, and all will be well. But this year the rising cost of food, Africa's energy deficiency and its projected failure to meet the Millennium Development Goals forced a deeper conclusion: Africa...
...They're smart to do so, because, in some ways, auditing is helping to promote the very practices it purports to detect. In The China Price, Alexandra Harney describes how Chinese suppliers set up "five-star factories" whose model working conditions impress auditors, while also creating "shadow" factories to meet actual order deadlines. With a minimum of paperwork or safety codes, staffed by migrant workers who often put in 12-hour days seven days a week, these shadow factories are unregulated, but common. The craze for auditing has, paradoxically, led factory owners to create such factories. It also sops...
...Codes of conduct hammered out in corporate offices in the West can lose in translation when applied overseas. Mukhtarul Amin, managing director of Superhouse Ltd., an Indian clothes manufacturer that counts Esprit and Diesel among its clients, candidly admits that he can meet only 95% of his social responsibility commitments. Some, he says, are just too difficult, or aren't relevant to Indian society. French retailer Decathlon requires suppliers to have official documentation of workers' ages. "They don't know that a large number of Indians in rural areas have no such documents," says V. Srinivasan, a Superhouse manager...
Americans wincing over paying four dollars a gallon at the gas pump ought to meet John Gwat. The taxi driver in Cameroon's capital is paying six dollars a gallon, but in a country where the average monthly wage is about $180 - approximately one-tenth of the average American income. And like American consumers, there's precious little that Gwat and other taxi drivers here can do about the gas prices at the gas pumps. "At the end of the month about a quarter of the cars are just parked on the streets, because no one has the money...
...exile is under enormous pressure to produce results or risk losing authority over exile groups like the Tibetan Youth Congress, which advocates a more militant approach. Without some tangible proof that the Dalai's self-proclaimed "third way" is working-including, for instance, an invitation for him to meet with Chinese President Hu Jintao-frustration could also erupt in Tibet itself, they warn. The Dalai Lama himself has expressed this fear. If the talks break down, "demonstrations I think will happen," he told the French news service AFP in late May. "Serious demonstrations-not only demonstrations, but also involving violence...