"Until we have a system that guarantees rule of law and basic democratic institutions, no amount of aid or investment will benefit our people. Profits from business enterprises will merely go toward enriching a small, already very privileged elite."

Remember how good we felt when Nelson Mandela was finally released from prison? Part of that good feeling came from knowing that international pressure from average folks like us helped secure Mandela's release.

Now we have an opportunity to participate in a similar international campaign that is building momentum to force the military dictatorship in Burma to relinquish power and allow democratic forces to rule that troubled land.

The democratic movement is already in place. Although General Ne Win has ruled Burma with an iron grip since 1962, in the late 1980s grassroots opposition to military rule mounted steadily. In 1988, thousands of citizens filled the streets of the capital Rangoon and other cities calling for democratic reforms. Popular protests became so widespread the military could only put them down by killing thousands of unarmed civilians. Then, hoping to quiet dissent, the government committed a strategic blunder by agreeing to permit national elections.

In the 1990 elections, the National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, won more than 80 percent of the vote. But the military-sporting the unlikely name of SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council)-annulled the election results and placed Ms. Suu Kyi under 5 years of house arrest.

Among its many crimes the SLORC is also a major source of the heroin that is destroying lives in communities across the United States. The U.S. State Department reported in 1996 that "Burma continues to provide the bulk of the world's opium supply and is the source of over 60 percent of the heroin seized on U.S. streets."

Democratic Forces Gain Strength
A vibrant international solidarity movement, led by Burmese in exile, has been building pressure on governments and corporations to stop doing business with the SLORC. The campaign in the United States has made great strides, forcing powerful corporations such as Disney, Heineken, Eddie Bauer, Levi-Straus, Pepsico and others to stop doing business in Burma. When Pepsi officials announced their pullout in January 1997, they refused to state the exact reason for their decision. Yet who could believe that Pepsi pulling out of a profitable market had nothing to do with massive student protests at Stanford, Harvard, U.C. Berkeley and Colgate that blocked lucrative contracts for Pepsi at those schools? As the founder of the Free Burma Coalition, Zar Ni, likes to say: "When spiders unite, they can tie down a lion."

How to Get Involved
There is an easy way to add your voice to this growing human rights chorus. A key lifeline for Burma's junta is provided by oil and gas companies such as UNOCAL (based in Los Angeles) and the French transnational TOTAL. These companies bring in much-needed capital and technology for the SLORC. As the Far Eastern Economic Review of July 25, 1996 reported: "The one sector where it would be difficult, if not impossible, for Asian firms to replace Western ones, however, is oil and natural gas. That is one reason why Western activists have focused so much attention on a $1.2 billion pipeline project that will carry natural gas from the Andaman Sea to a power station in Thailand."

If we could pressure these big oil companies to pull out of Burma it would strike a major blow for justice. One of the most effective-and relatively easy-ways to accomplish this is to convince your local city council to pass a "selective purchase ordinance" stating that the city government will not purchase any goods or services from corporations doing business in Burma. The state of Massachusetts and cities such as San Francisco, Oakland, Ann Arbor, Chapel Hill, Boulder, Takoma Park and Santa Monica have passed laws barring city funds from companies profiting from doing business in Burma.

If you would like to get more information on the situation in Burma and details on how to start a campaign in your community to help isolate the SLORC, contact the Free Burma Coalition, University of Wisconsin, Dept. P, 225 N. Mills St., Madison, WI 53706; or email: zni@students.wisc.edu

Solving the Debt Crisis with Micro-Enterprise Lending
by Professor Muhammad Yunus

Professor Muhammad Yunus is the Founder and Managing Director of the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh.

There are a growing number of micro-enterprise lending programs around the world that are proving to be a powerful tool for helping people raise their families out of poverty. The Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, for example, has provided thousands of village entrepreneurs with the small amounts of capital they need to get started in self-employment ventures. The Grameen model is being replicated in dozens of other countries and is so successful it is praised by people from across the political spectrum.

Yet there is a huge obstacle confronting the hundreds of grassroots organizations trying to help the poor become entrepreneurs: where can these groups get the large amounts of start-up capital they need? Traditional lenders such as commercial banks want to lend to the wealthy, not to the poor.

Governments of rich countries are undergoing fiscal retrenchment and are cutting their foreign aid budgets. Micro-credit organizations could rely on begging from sympathetic foundations and aid agencies but the amounts would not approach what is needed to meet the widely accepted goal of reaching 100 million of the world's poorest families with micro-credit by the year 2005.

There is a potential source of funding for micro-credit, the tapping of which could also help solve another major problem. Dozens of third world countries, large and small, are burdened by foreign debt. Much of this debt was contracted by undemocratic governments and used for questionable purposes that did not benefit the majority of citizens. Interest payments on the foreign debt shift much-needed hard currency from those countries to global financial institutions. Many poor countries cannot keep up with their interest payments, let alone ever pay back the principal on their foreign debts.

The constant transfer of financial resources away from the grassroots has helped to create a large and growing underclass, numbering in the hundreds of millions. These people are either excluded from participation in the formal economy or their desperation forces them to work for mere pennies per hour. With so many people lacking access to decent jobs or credit, 'free enterprise' does not mean the freedom for everyone to be enterprising.

What if we could address this structural flaw in the global economy while at the same time raising much needed capital for micro-enterprise lending? It could work something like this. Debtor governments would pay local currency into a local Micro-Credit Fund. The fund would be run according to democratic principles; board members would be drawn from among micro-credit practitioner organizations, women's groups, academia and the philanthropic community. The involvement of government would be kept to an absolute minimum to ensure this does not become another conduit for political patronage.

The board would use the money deposited in the Micro-Credit Fund to lend capital to organizations providing credit and essential services to women and men trying to escape poverty through self-employment.

The economic multiplier effect of this micro-lending would be great because the poor spend most of their money in the local economy on basic things such as food, clothing and shelter. Putting an upper limit on the size of loans (perhaps a few hundred dollars) would tend to keep away those motivated mainly by greed because the amounts would not be attractive.

For each sum of local currency deposited into its Micro-Credit Fund, that particular government would get their foreign debt reduced by an equivalent amount of hard currency at a mutually agreed exchange rate. This would stop one of the most troublesome aspects of the debt crisis: the bleeding of hard currency from third world countries.

Obviously, some people in positions of power-who never have to hear their children crying from hunger-=-will resist this plan because of its profoundly democratic goal of shifting economic resources downward instead of upward. So establishing such a plan will require a large, transnational pressure campaign. Although this plan would need to be modified as it was debated and implemented, there are several key features that should be emphasized: (1) it would lessen the debt burden for developing countries, (2) it would provide a systemic source of funds to micro-credit groups so they would not be dependent on ad hoc fundraising and compassion from the wealthy; (3) it would stimulate economic growth at the base of societies and the benefits would trickle up.

This idea is put forward, not as a polished 'blueprint', but merely as a starting point for a much-needed debate on two crucial issues: how to solve the third world debt crisis and how to provide sufficient funding for a proven method of poverty alleviation.

Sister to Sister Convenes in Havana
This past December, 75 dynamic women from all over the U.S., Canada and Latin America came together in Havana to form Sister to Sister/Hermana A Hermana, a project of Global Exchange and the Women's International League for Peace & Freedom. The group is organizing a Women's Hemispheric Initiative for Peace and Just Relations Between the U.S. & Cuba. We have written a statement building on the Platform for Action signed at the Beijing UN World Conference on Women, in which many Sisters delegates participated. The Initiative and our plan of action were drafted in a series of meetings with the Federation of Cuban Women (FMC). Our statement shows how the U.S. government interferes with Cuba's attainment of the Beijing goals through the U.S embargo, and calls on women's organizations to lend their clout to resolving this conflict.

We will use the Initiative as a lobbying tool in two ways: first, to convince women's groups to view Cuba's sovereignty as a feminist issue, endorse the Initiative, and work against the blockade; second, to get both governments to come to the negotiating table. The strategy is timely because US-Cuba relations are at a low ebb. Sister to Sister will be sending contingents on other Cuba solidarity delegations. We will work with the FMC to promote their April 1998 International Women's Conference in Havana. If you know of women's groups who may be interested in participating, or if you would like to make a contribution toward the Sister to Sister project, please call Janet, Teresa or Deborah at Global Exchange (800) 497-1994. Deborah can also be contacted by e-mail.

Nike Protests Continue
When Nike Corporation opened its Niketown mega-store this February in San Francisco it spent millions to blanket the Bay Area with billboards, bus signs, radio spots and TV ads heralding the new store. Global Exchange spent a tiny amount of time and money organizing protests to warn consumers about the sweatshop conditions under which Nike's sneakers are produced in Indonesia. And the efficiency award goes to?-Global Exchange!

Yes, of course we're biased, but even we were surpised by how much media coverage and public support we received. We got our perspective into the San Francisco Chronicle & Examiner, the San Jose Mercury, the Oakland Tribune, many Bay Area radio stations, local affiliates of ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, and we reached national audiences via CNN and the Associated Press.

Our critique is based on the simple fact that Nike's huge profits ($680 million in 1996) and CEO Phillip Knight's wealth ($5.2 billion) are based on terrible wages and working conditions suffered by the Indonesian, Chinese and Vietnamese workers who produce Nikes. Until Nike reforms its practices they can expect us and many other groups to keep on pestering them.

The public response to our work on Nike and corporate accountability in general has been so powerful that we are now hiring a full-time organizer to carry this work forward.

Check out our NIKE campaign

Let NIKE know your thoughts!