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Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
5 May 2023 – ADB has committed to significantly increase its climate change financing. Ensuring its financing is fit for purpose requires much greater transparency, participation, and accountability. CSOs have strengths in all these areas.
This session tackled key issues on enhancing people’s access to information on how climate finance is being allocated, spent, and for what; CSOs and youth’s roles in design, implementation, and monitoring of climate finance projects; and how CSOs can constructively engage with governments and ADB to improve climate finance governance.
The event was held on the sidelines of the 56th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors.
5 May 2023 – ADB has committed to significantly increase its climate change financing. Ensuring its financing is fit for purpose requires much greater transparency, participation, and accountability. CSOs have strengths in all these areas.
This session tackled key issues on enhancing people’s access to information on how climate finance is being allocated, spent, and for what; CSOs and youth’s roles in design, implementation, and monitoring of climate finance projects; and how CSOs can constructively engage with governments and ADB to improve climate finance governance.
The event was held on the sidelines of the 56th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors.
Mingle Media TV and our Red Carpet Report team were on the red carpet for the premiere of Marvel's Captain America: Civil War at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, CA.
Marvel's Captain America: Civil War opens in U.S. theaters, May 6th
For video interviews and other Red Carpet Report coverage, please visit www.redcarpetreporttv.com and follow us on Twitter and Facebook at:
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www.youtube.com/MingleMediaTVNetwork
ABOUT Captain America: Civil War
Political pressure mounts to install a system of accountability when the actions of the Avengers lead to collateral damage. The new status quo deeply divides members of the team. Captain America (Chris Evans) believes superheroes should remain free to defend humanity without government interference. Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) sharply disagrees and supports oversight. As the debate escalates into an all-out feud, Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) must pick a side. www.CaptainAmerica.com/
Release date: May 6, 2016 (USA)
Directors: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo
Producer: Kevin Feige
Production companies: Marvel Studios, Marvel Entertainment
Follow @CaptainAmerica on Twitter and like Marvel’s Captain America on Facebook at Facebook.com/CaptainAmerica
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For more of Mingle Media TV’s Red Carpet Report coverage, please visit our website and follow us on Twitter and Facebook here:
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Throughout the month of February, the Chicago Police Accountability Task Force is hosting four community forums across the city to provide residents the opportunity to speak or submit written comments on improving the accountability, oversight and training of Chicago’s police officers.
This is photographs from Tuesday, February 2.
Hosted by Mt. Vernon Baptist Church
JLM Life Center
2622 W. Jackson Blvd.
More info: chicagopatf.org/events/
The Inspection Panel is completing 25 years in its role, as an accountability mechanism of the World Bank. As you are aware, the Bank’s failure to comply with its operating policies was seen by the entire world in the Bank’s financing with the Sardar Sarovar Dam project on River Narmada. The tenacity of massive grass-roots uprisings from our communities in the 80’s and the sustained hard work of our social movements along with our resoluteness to link it with international coalitions to question the hegemony of the Bank, subsequently led the Bank, for the first time, to commission an independent review of its project. The Independent Review Committee (Morse Committee) constituted by the Bank in 1991 to review the social and environmental costs and benefits of the dam, after years of consistent struggle by Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) and its allies led to a demand from the civil society around the globe for the creation of a grievance redressal system for project-affected communities, which ultimately pressurized the Bank to constitute the Inspection Panel in 1993. We expected this might be a crucial backstop and an opportunity for us to raise our issues of livelihoods, economic loss, displacement from our lands, alienation from natural resources, destruction of environment and threat to our biodiversity and cultural hotspots, where Bank invested in large, supposedly ‘development’ projects like mega dams, energy and other infrastructure projects. Yet, the outcome we expected rarely delivered sufficient remedy for the harm and losses people have experienced over the years.
A number of accountability mechanisms over the next couple of decades in several development finance institutions were formed following the model of World Bank, commonly known as ‘Independent Accountability Mechanisms’[IAMs]. Each year the number of complaints rise which is an indication of the increasing number of grievous projects happening around the world. While IAMs of most MDBs are advertised to provide strong and just processes, many of our experiences imply that the banks are accommodating practices which suit their own needs and their clients, which are borrowing countries and agencies, and not the people for whom the IAMs were built to serve.
Many a time, we have been disappointed by these mechanisms, since these are designed by the banks who are lending for disastrous projects in our lands. And as a result, the already existing narrow mandate of IAMs is further restricted.
In our efforts to hold the lending bank accountable, the communities are always presented with the arduous process of learning the complex formalities and detailed procedures to initially approach the IAMs and get our grievances registered. Our many years’ time and energy then is channelised into seeing through the various cycles of these complaint handling mechanisms, that our entire efforts go into this process, and often our complaint gets dropped off in midst of the procedural rules of the IAMs. People are made to wait many months to clear procedural levels and our cases with the IAMs get highly unpredictable. Further, we face intimidation and reprisals from the state and project agencies for having contacted the IAMs who themselves do not possess any authority to address the violations hurled out to us when we seek dignity, fair treatment and justice from them. There are many of us who feel a loss of morale after long years of struggling with lenders when we fail to see concrete benefits or changes in our circumstances, by which time considerable irreplaceable harm is already done to our lives, environment and livelihoods.
In this manner, our immediate and larger goal of holding banks for their failure to consult with and obtain consent from communities before devising action plans for our lands, water and forests is deflected in the pretext of problem-solving and grievance hearing offered to us in the name of IAMs.
With over 50 registered complaints sent to different IAMS from India in the past 25 years, many more left unregistered due to technical reasons and only a few got investigated, assessed and monitored at different levels, we have a baggage of mixed experiences with the IAMs. A few of the prominent cases from India apart from Narmada project are Vishnugad Pipalkoti Hydro Electric Project [WB’s IP], Tata Mega Ultra-01/Mundra and Anjar [IFC’s CAO & ADB’s CRP], India Infrastructure Fund-01/Dhenkanal District [IFC’s CAO], Allain Duhangan Hydro Power Limited-01/Himachal Pradesh [IFC’s CAO] and Mumbai Urban Transport Project (2009) [WB’s IP].
As we now know, what is being witnessed recently is an influx of approved and proposed investments majorly in energy, transport, steel, roads, urban projects, bullet trains, industrial zones/corridors, smart cities, water privatization and other mega projects in India. This has been financed from different multilateral and bilateral sources, foreign corporations, private banks as well as Export-Import Banks (ExIm Banks). It has become a brutal challenge for communities, social movements and CSOs, with lenders and governments constantly shutting their eyes and ears to us who demand accountability for their actions. A compelling and timely need has arisen among diverse groups amongst us to gather together and critically analyze the various trajectories of our engagements with accountability mechanisms of MDBs in order to bring together past 25 years’ learning, insights and reflections of various actors of this accountability process. This urging demand is also an attempt to define the collective experiences in India among our social movements, projected-affected communities and CSOs with IAMs and lending banks, especially appropriating the global political opportunity of Inspection Panel celebrating its 25 years this year.
Speakers:
Thomas Franco, Former General Secretary, AlI India Bank Officers’ Confederation
Arun Kumar, Eminent scholar, Former Professor Jawaharlal Nehru University
C.P. Chandrashekar, Economist, Professor Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Sucheta Dalal, Managing Editor, Moneylife
Soumya Dutta, National Convener, Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha
Dunu Roy, Hazards Center, New Delhi
Medha Patkar, Senior Activist, Narmada Bachao Andolan
Tani Alex, Centre for Financial Accountability
M J Vijayan, Activist and Political commentator
Joe Athialy, Centre for Financial Accountability
Anirudha Nagar, Accountability Counsel
Madhuresh Kumar, National Alliance of People’s Movements
A J Vijayan, Chairperson, Western Ghats and Coastal area Protection Forum
Meera Sanghamitra, National Aliance of People’s Movements
Vimal bhai, Matu Jan Sangathan, Uttarakhand
Daniel Adler, Senior Specialist, Compliance Advisor Ombudsman
Joe Athialy, Centre for Financial Accountability
Birgit Kuba, Operations Officer, Inspection Panel
Anuradha Munshi, Centre for Financial Accountability
Bharat Patel, General Secretary, Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan,Gujarat
Awadhesh Kumar, Srijan Lokhit Samiti
Amulya Kumar Nayak, Odisha Chas Parivesh Surekhsa Parishad, Odisha
Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Scholar
Manshi Asher, Himdhara Environment Research and Action Collective, Himachal Pradesh
5 May 2023 – ADB has committed to significantly increase its climate change financing. Ensuring its financing is fit for purpose requires much greater transparency, participation, and accountability. CSOs have strengths in all these areas.
This session tackled key issues on enhancing people’s access to information on how climate finance is being allocated, spent, and for what; CSOs and youth’s roles in design, implementation, and monitoring of climate finance projects; and how CSOs can constructively engage with governments and ADB to improve climate finance governance.
The event was held on the sidelines of the 56th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors.
Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
Prince George's County People's Coalition for Police Accountability arriving at the National Action Network JUSTICE FOR TRAYVON MARTIN 100 CITY VIGIL Rally in front of US District Court / E. Barrett Prettyman Courthouse at 333 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington DC on Saturday afternoon, 20 July 2013 by Elvert Barnes PROTEST PHOTOGRAPHY
Follow PG County ENOUGH IS ENOUGH / TRAYVON MARTIN MARCHERS from WMATA Addison Road Station on facebook at www.facebook.com/events/380212962101079/
Elvert Barnes PROTEST PHOTOGRAPHY at elvertbarnes.com/protestphotography
5 May 2023 – ADB has committed to significantly increase its climate change financing. Ensuring its financing is fit for purpose requires much greater transparency, participation, and accountability. CSOs have strengths in all these areas.
This session tackled key issues on enhancing people’s access to information on how climate finance is being allocated, spent, and for what; CSOs and youth’s roles in design, implementation, and monitoring of climate finance projects; and how CSOs can constructively engage with governments and ADB to improve climate finance governance.
The event was held on the sidelines of the 56th Annual Meeting of the ADB Board of Governors.
Country Director, Accountability Lab Mali, Moussa Kondo, appearing in the Changemaker for role-model values at the Global Education and Skills Forum 2019.
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
5 years before now, this tap at Asata, Enugu was dry.
Today, in 2010 inhabitants of this area can fetch water right from taps in their yards for their daily needs.
Photo: Copyright SPARC.
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The State Partnership for Accountability, Responsiveness and Capability (SPARC) programme is an initiative of the Nigerian and UK Governments working to improve governance and reduce poverty in Nigeria.
Find out more at www.sparc-Nigeria.com
SPARC is funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID/UK Aid)
Graffiti is art that is written, painted or drawn on a wall or other surface, usually without permission and within public view. Graffiti ranges from simple written words to elaborate wall paintings, and has existed since ancient times, with examples dating back to ancient Egypt, ancient Greece, and the Roman Empire (see also mural).
Graffiti is a controversial subject. In most countries, marking or painting property without permission is considered by property owners and civic authorities as defacement and vandalism, which is a punishable crime, citing the use of graffiti by street gangs to mark territory or to serve as an indicator of gang-related activities. Graffiti has become visualized as a growing urban "problem" for many cities in industrialized nations, spreading from the New York City subway system and Philadelphia in the early 1970s to the rest of the United States and Europe and other world regions
The term graffiti originally referred to the inscriptions, figure drawings, and such, found on the walls of ancient sepulchres or ruins, as in the Catacombs of Rome or at Pompeii. Historically, these writings were not considered vanadlism, which today is considered part of the definition of graffiti.
The only known source of the Safaitic language, an ancient form of Arabic, is from graffiti: inscriptions scratched on to the surface of rocks and boulders in the predominantly basalt desert of southern Syria, eastern Jordan and northern Saudi Arabia. Safaitic dates from the first century BC to the fourth century AD.
Some of the oldest cave paintings in the world are 40,000 year old ones found in Australia. The oldest written graffiti was found in ancient Rome around 2500 years ago. Most graffiti from the time was boasts about sexual experiences Graffiti in Ancient Rome was a form of communication, and was not considered vandalism.
Ancient tourists visiting the 5th-century citadel at Sigiriya in Sri Lanka write their names and commentary over the "mirror wall", adding up to over 1800 individual graffiti produced there between the 6th and 18th centuries. Most of the graffiti refer to the frescoes of semi-nude females found there. One reads:
Wet with cool dew drops
fragrant with perfume from the flowers
came the gentle breeze
jasmine and water lily
dance in the spring sunshine
side-long glances
of the golden-hued ladies
stab into my thoughts
heaven itself cannot take my mind
as it has been captivated by one lass
among the five hundred I have seen here.
Among the ancient political graffiti examples were Arab satirist poems. Yazid al-Himyari, an Umayyad Arab and Persian poet, was most known for writing his political poetry on the walls between Sajistan and Basra, manifesting a strong hatred towards the Umayyad regime and its walis, and people used to read and circulate them very widely.
Graffiti, known as Tacherons, were frequently scratched on Romanesque Scandinavian church walls. When Renaissance artists such as Pinturicchio, Raphael, Michelangelo, Ghirlandaio, or Filippino Lippi descended into the ruins of Nero's Domus Aurea, they carved or painted their names and returned to initiate the grottesche style of decoration.
There are also examples of graffiti occurring in American history, such as Independence Rock, a national landmark along the Oregon Trail.
Later, French soldiers carved their names on monuments during the Napoleonic campaign of Egypt in the 1790s. Lord Byron's survives on one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion in Attica, Greece.
The oldest known example of graffiti "monikers" found on traincars created by hobos and railworkers since the late 1800s. The Bozo Texino monikers were documented by filmmaker Bill Daniel in his 2005 film, Who is Bozo Texino?.
In World War II, an inscription on a wall at the fortress of Verdun was seen as an illustration of the US response twice in a generation to the wrongs of the Old World:
During World War II and for decades after, the phrase "Kilroy was here" with an accompanying illustration was widespread throughout the world, due to its use by American troops and ultimately filtering into American popular culture. Shortly after the death of Charlie Parker (nicknamed "Yardbird" or "Bird"), graffiti began appearing around New York with the words "Bird Lives".
Modern graffiti art has its origins with young people in 1960s and 70s in New York City and Philadelphia. Tags were the first form of stylised contemporary graffiti. Eventually, throw-ups and pieces evolved with the desire to create larger art. Writers used spray paint and other kind of materials to leave tags or to create images on the sides subway trains. and eventually moved into the city after the NYC metro began to buy new trains and paint over graffiti.
While the art had many advocates and appreciators—including the cultural critic Norman Mailer—others, including New York City mayor Ed Koch, considered it to be defacement of public property, and saw it as a form of public blight. The ‘taggers’ called what they did ‘writing’—though an important 1974 essay by Mailer referred to it using the term ‘graffiti.’
Contemporary graffiti style has been heavily influenced by hip hop culture and the myriad international styles derived from Philadelphia and New York City Subway graffiti; however, there are many other traditions of notable graffiti in the twentieth century. Graffiti have long appeared on building walls, in latrines, railroad boxcars, subways, and bridges.
An early graffito outside of New York or Philadelphia was the inscription in London reading "Clapton is God" in reference to the guitarist Eric Clapton. Creating the cult of the guitar hero, the phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington, north London in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall.
Films like Style Wars in the 80s depicting famous writers such as Skeme, Dondi, MinOne, and ZEPHYR reinforced graffiti's role within New York's emerging hip-hop culture. Although many officers of the New York City Police Department found this film to be controversial, Style Wars is still recognized as the most prolific film representation of what was going on within the young hip hop culture of the early 1980s. Fab 5 Freddy and Futura 2000 took hip hop graffiti to Paris and London as part of the New York City Rap Tour in 1983
Commercialization and entrance into mainstream pop culture
Main article: Commercial graffiti
With the popularity and legitimization of graffiti has come a level of commercialization. In 2001, computer giant IBM launched an advertising campaign in Chicago and San Francisco which involved people spray painting on sidewalks a peace symbol, a heart, and a penguin (Linux mascot), to represent "Peace, Love, and Linux." IBM paid Chicago and San Francisco collectively US$120,000 for punitive damages and clean-up costs.
In 2005, a similar ad campaign was launched by Sony and executed by its advertising agency in New York, Chicago, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and Miami, to market its handheld PSP gaming system. In this campaign, taking notice of the legal problems of the IBM campaign, Sony paid building owners for the rights to paint on their buildings "a collection of dizzy-eyed urban kids playing with the PSP as if it were a skateboard, a paddle, or a rocking horse".
Tristan Manco wrote that Brazil "boasts a unique and particularly rich, graffiti scene ... [earning] it an international reputation as the place to go for artistic inspiration". Graffiti "flourishes in every conceivable space in Brazil's cities". Artistic parallels "are often drawn between the energy of São Paulo today and 1970s New York". The "sprawling metropolis", of São Paulo has "become the new shrine to graffiti"; Manco alludes to "poverty and unemployment ... [and] the epic struggles and conditions of the country's marginalised peoples", and to "Brazil's chronic poverty", as the main engines that "have fuelled a vibrant graffiti culture". In world terms, Brazil has "one of the most uneven distributions of income. Laws and taxes change frequently". Such factors, Manco argues, contribute to a very fluid society, riven with those economic divisions and social tensions that underpin and feed the "folkloric vandalism and an urban sport for the disenfranchised", that is South American graffiti art.
Prominent Brazilian writers include Os Gêmeos, Boleta, Nunca, Nina, Speto, Tikka, and T.Freak. Their artistic success and involvement in commercial design ventures has highlighted divisions within the Brazilian graffiti community between adherents of the cruder transgressive form of pichação and the more conventionally artistic values of the practitioners of grafite.
Graffiti in the Middle East has emerged slowly, with taggers operating in Egypt, Lebanon, the Gulf countries like Bahrain or the United Arab Emirates, Israel, and in Iran. The major Iranian newspaper Hamshahri has published two articles on illegal writers in the city with photographic coverage of Iranian artist A1one's works on Tehran walls. Tokyo-based design magazine, PingMag, has interviewed A1one and featured photographs of his work. The Israeli West Bank barrier has become a site for graffiti, reminiscent in this sense of the Berlin Wall. Many writers in Israel come from other places around the globe, such as JUIF from Los Angeles and DEVIONE from London. The religious reference "נ נח נחמ נחמן מאומן" ("Na Nach Nachma Nachman Meuman") is commonly seen in graffiti around Israel.
Graffiti has played an important role within the street art scene in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), especially following the events of the Arab Spring of 2011 or the Sudanese Revolution of 2018/19. Graffiti is a tool of expression in the context of conflict in the region, allowing people to raise their voices politically and socially. Famous street artist Banksy has had an important effect in the street art scene in the MENA area, especially in Palestine where some of his works are located in the West Bank barrier and Bethlehem.
There are also a large number of graffiti influences in Southeast Asian countries that mostly come from modern Western culture, such as Malaysia, where graffiti have long been a common sight in Malaysia's capital city, Kuala Lumpur. Since 2010, the country has begun hosting a street festival to encourage all generations and people from all walks of life to enjoy and encourage Malaysian street culture.
The modern-day graffitists can be found with an arsenal of various materials that allow for a successful production of a piece. This includes such techniques as scribing. However, spray paint in aerosol cans is the number one medium for graffiti. From this commodity comes different styles, technique, and abilities to form master works of graffiti. Spray paint can be found at hardware and art stores and comes in virtually every color.
Stencil graffiti is created by cutting out shapes and designs in a stiff material (such as cardboard or subject folders) to form an overall design or image. The stencil is then placed on the "canvas" gently and with quick, easy strokes of the aerosol can, the image begins to appear on the intended surface.
Some of the first examples were created in 1981 by artists Blek le Rat in Paris, in 1982 by Jef Aerosol in Tours (France); by 1985 stencils had appeared in other cities including New York City, Sydney, and Melbourne, where they were documented by American photographer Charles Gatewood and Australian photographer Rennie Ellis
Tagging is the practice of someone spray-painting "their name, initial or logo onto a public surface" in a handstyle unique to the writer. Tags were the first form of modern graffiti.
Modern graffiti art often incorporates additional arts and technologies. For example, Graffiti Research Lab has encouraged the use of projected images and magnetic light-emitting diodes (throwies) as new media for graffitists. yarnbombing is another recent form of graffiti. Yarnbombers occasionally target previous graffiti for modification, which had been avoided among the majority of graffitists.
Theories on the use of graffiti by avant-garde artists have a history dating back at least to the Asger Jorn, who in 1962 painting declared in a graffiti-like gesture "the avant-garde won't give up"
Many contemporary analysts and even art critics have begun to see artistic value in some graffiti and to recognize it as a form of public art. According to many art researchers, particularly in the Netherlands and in Los Angeles, that type of public art is, in fact an effective tool of social emancipation or, in the achievement of a political goal
In times of conflict, such murals have offered a means of communication and self-expression for members of these socially, ethnically, or racially divided communities, and have proven themselves as effective tools in establishing dialog and thus, of addressing cleavages in the long run. The Berlin Wall was also extensively covered by graffiti reflecting social pressures relating to the oppressive Soviet rule over the GDR.
Many artists involved with graffiti are also concerned with the similar activity of stenciling. Essentially, this entails stenciling a print of one or more colors using spray-paint. Recognized while exhibiting and publishing several of her coloured stencils and paintings portraying the Sri Lankan Civil War and urban Britain in the early 2000s, graffitists Mathangi Arulpragasam, aka M.I.A., has also become known for integrating her imagery of political violence into her music videos for singles "Galang" and "Bucky Done Gun", and her cover art. Stickers of her artwork also often appear around places such as London in Brick Lane, stuck to lamp posts and street signs, she having become a muse for other graffitists and painters worldwide in cities including Seville.
Graffitist believes that art should be on display for everyone in the public eye or in plain sight, not hidden away in a museum or a gallery. Art should color the streets, not the inside of some building. Graffiti is a form of art that cannot be owned or bought. It does not last forever, it is temporary, yet one of a kind. It is a form of self promotion for the artist that can be displayed anywhere form sidewalks, roofs, subways, building wall, etc. Art to them is for everyone and should be showed to everyone for free.
Graffiti is a way of communicating and a way of expressing what one feels in the moment. It is both art and a functional thing that can warn people of something or inform people of something. However, graffiti is to some people a form of art, but to some a form of vandalism. And many graffitists choose to protect their identities and remain anonymous or to hinder prosecution.
With the commercialization of graffiti (and hip hop in general), in most cases, even with legally painted "graffiti" art, graffitists tend to choose anonymity. This may be attributed to various reasons or a combination of reasons. Graffiti still remains the one of four hip hop elements that is not considered "performance art" despite the image of the "singing and dancing star" that sells hip hop culture to the mainstream. Being a graphic form of art, it might also be said that many graffitists still fall in the category of the introverted archetypal artist.
Banksy is one of the world's most notorious and popular street artists who continues to remain faceless in today's society. He is known for his political, anti-war stencil art mainly in Bristol, England, but his work may be seen anywhere from Los Angeles to Palestine. In the UK, Banksy is the most recognizable icon for this cultural artistic movement and keeps his identity a secret to avoid arrest. Much of Banksy's artwork may be seen around the streets of London and surrounding suburbs, although he has painted pictures throughout the world, including the Middle East, where he has painted on Israel's controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. One depicted a hole in the wall with an idyllic beach, while another shows a mountain landscape on the other side. A number of exhibitions also have taken place since 2000, and recent works of art have fetched vast sums of money. Banksy's art is a prime example of the classic controversy: vandalism vs. art. Art supporters endorse his work distributed in urban areas as pieces of art and some councils, such as Bristol and Islington, have officially protected them, while officials of other areas have deemed his work to be vandalism and have removed it.
Pixnit is another artist who chooses to keep her identity from the general public. Her work focuses on beauty and design aspects of graffiti as opposed to Banksy's anti-government shock value. Her paintings are often of flower designs above shops and stores in her local urban area of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Some store owners endorse her work and encourage others to do similar work as well. "One of the pieces was left up above Steve's Kitchen, because it looks pretty awesome"- Erin Scott, the manager of New England Comics in Allston, Massachusetts.
Graffiti artists may become offended if photographs of their art are published in a commercial context without their permission. In March 2020, the Finnish graffiti artist Psyke expressed his displeasure at the newspaper Ilta-Sanomat publishing a photograph of a Peugeot 208 in an article about new cars, with his graffiti prominently shown on the background. The artist claims he does not want his art being used in commercial context, not even if he were to receive compensation.
Territorial graffiti marks urban neighborhoods with tags and logos to differentiate certain groups from others. These images are meant to show outsiders a stern look at whose turf is whose. The subject matter of gang-related graffiti consists of cryptic symbols and initials strictly fashioned with unique calligraphies. Gang members use graffiti to designate membership throughout the gang, to differentiate rivals and associates and, most commonly, to mark borders which are both territorial and ideological.
Graffiti has been used as a means of advertising both legally and illegally. Bronx-based TATS CRU has made a name for themselves doing legal advertising campaigns for companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Toyota, and MTV. In the UK, Covent Garden's Boxfresh used stencil images of a Zapatista revolutionary in the hopes that cross referencing would promote their store.
Smirnoff hired artists to use reverse graffiti (the use of high pressure hoses to clean dirty surfaces to leave a clean image in the surrounding dirt) to increase awareness of their product.
Graffiti often has a reputation as part of a subculture that rebels against authority, although the considerations of the practitioners often diverge and can relate to a wide range of attitudes. It can express a political practice and can form just one tool in an array of resistance techniques. One early example includes the anarcho-punk band Crass, who conducted a campaign of stenciling anti-war, anarchist, feminist, and anti-consumerist messages throughout the London Underground system during the late 1970s and early 1980s. In Amsterdam graffiti was a major part of the punk scene. The city was covered with names such as "De Zoot", "Vendex", and "Dr Rat". To document the graffiti a punk magazine was started that was called Gallery Anus. So when hip hop came to Europe in the early 1980s there was already a vibrant graffiti culture.
The student protests and general strike of May 1968 saw Paris bedecked in revolutionary, anarchistic, and situationist slogans such as L'ennui est contre-révolutionnaire ("Boredom is counterrevolutionary") and Lisez moins, vivez plus ("Read less, live more"). While not exhaustive, the graffiti gave a sense of the 'millenarian' and rebellious spirit, tempered with a good deal of verbal wit, of the strikers.
I think graffiti writing is a way of defining what our generation is like. Excuse the French, we're not a bunch of p---- artists. Traditionally artists have been considered soft and mellow people, a little bit kooky. Maybe we're a little bit more like pirates that way. We defend our territory, whatever space we steal to paint on, we defend it fiercely.
The developments of graffiti art which took place in art galleries and colleges as well as "on the street" or "underground", contributed to the resurfacing in the 1990s of a far more overtly politicized art form in the subvertising, culture jamming, or tactical media movements. These movements or styles tend to classify the artists by their relationship to their social and economic contexts, since, in most countries, graffiti art remains illegal in many forms except when using non-permanent paint. Since the 1990s with the rise of Street Art, a growing number of artists are switching to non-permanent paints and non-traditional forms of painting.
Contemporary practitioners, accordingly, have varied and often conflicting practices. Some individuals, such as Alexander Brener, have used the medium to politicize other art forms, and have used the prison sentences enforced on them as a means of further protest. The practices of anonymous groups and individuals also vary widely, and practitioners by no means always agree with each other's practices. For example, the anti-capitalist art group the Space Hijackers did a piece in 2004 about the contradiction between the capitalistic elements of Banksy and his use of political imagery.
Berlin human rights activist Irmela Mensah-Schramm has received global media attention and numerous awards for her 35-year campaign of effacing neo-Nazi and other right-wing extremist graffiti throughout Germany, often by altering hate speech in humorous ways.
In Serbian capital, Belgrade, the graffiti depicting a uniformed former general of Serb army and war criminal, convicted at ICTY for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide and ethnic cleansing in Bosnian War, Ratko Mladić, appeared in a military salute alongside the words "General, thank to your mother". Aleks Eror, Berlin-based journalist, explains how "veneration of historical and wartime figures" through street art is not a new phenomenon in the region of former Yugoslavia, and that "in most cases is firmly focused on the future, rather than retelling the past". Eror is not only analyst pointing to danger of such an expressions for the region's future. In a long expose on the subject of Bosnian genocide denial, at Balkan Diskurs magazine and multimedia platform website, Kristina Gadže and Taylor Whitsell referred to these experiences as a young generations' "cultural heritage", in which young are being exposed to celebration and affirmation of war-criminals as part of their "formal education" and "inheritance".
There are numerous examples of genocide denial through celebration and affirmation of war criminals throughout the region of Western Balkans inhabited by Serbs using this form of artistic expression. Several more of these graffiti are found in Serbian capital, and many more across Serbia and Bosnian and Herzegovinian administrative entity, Republika Srpska, which is the ethnic Serbian majority enclave. Critics point that Serbia as a state, is willing to defend the mural of convicted war criminal, and have no intention to react on cases of genocide denial, noting that Interior Minister of Serbia, Aleksandar Vulin decision to ban any gathering with an intent to remove the mural, with the deployment of riot police, sends the message of "tacit endorsement". Consequently, on 9 November 2021, Serbian heavy police in riot gear, with graffiti creators and their supporters, blocked the access to the mural to prevent human rights groups and other activists to paint over it and mark the International Day Against Fascism and Antisemitism in that way, and even arrested two civic activist for throwing eggs at the graffiti.
Graffiti may also be used as an offensive expression. This form of graffiti may be difficult to identify, as it is mostly removed by the local authority (as councils which have adopted strategies of criminalization also strive to remove graffiti quickly). Therefore, existing racist graffiti is mostly more subtle and at first sight, not easily recognized as "racist". It can then be understood only if one knows the relevant "local code" (social, historical, political, temporal, and spatial), which is seen as heteroglot and thus a 'unique set of conditions' in a cultural context.
A spatial code for example, could be that there is a certain youth group in an area that is engaging heavily in racist activities. So, for residents (knowing the local code), a graffiti containing only the name or abbreviation of this gang already is a racist expression, reminding the offended people of their gang activities. Also a graffiti is in most cases, the herald of more serious criminal activity to come. A person who does not know these gang activities would not be able to recognize the meaning of this graffiti. Also if a tag of this youth group or gang is placed on a building occupied by asylum seekers, for example, its racist character is even stronger.
By making the graffiti less explicit (as adapted to social and legal constraints), these drawings are less likely to be removed, but do not lose their threatening and offensive character.
Elsewhere, activists in Russia have used painted caricatures of local officials with their mouths as potholes, to show their anger about the poor state of the roads. In Manchester, England, a graffitists painted obscene images around potholes, which often resulted in them being repaired within 48 hours.
In the early 1980s, the first art galleries to show graffitists to the public were Fashion Moda in the Bronx, Now Gallery and Fun Gallery, both in the East Village, Manhattan.
A 2006 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum displayed graffiti as an art form that began in New York's outer boroughs and reached great heights in the early 1980s with the work of Crash, Lee, Daze, Keith Haring, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. It displayed 22 works by New York graffitists, including Crash, Daze, and Lady Pink. In an article about the exhibition in the magazine Time Out, curator Charlotta Kotik said that she hoped the exhibition would cause viewers to rethink their assumptions about graffiti.
From the 1970s onwards, Burhan Doğançay photographed urban walls all over the world; these he then archived for use as sources of inspiration for his painterly works. The project today known as "Walls of the World" grew beyond even his own expectations and comprises about 30,000 individual images. It spans a period of 40 years across five continents and 114 countries. In 1982, photographs from this project comprised a one-man exhibition titled "Les murs murmurent, ils crient, ils chantent ..." (The walls whisper, shout and sing ...) at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.
In Australia, art historians have judged some local graffiti of sufficient creative merit to rank them firmly within the arts. Oxford University Press's art history text Australian Painting 1788–2000 concludes with a long discussion of graffiti's key place within contemporary visual culture, including the work of several Australian practitioners.
Between March and April 2009, 150 artists exhibited 300 pieces of graffiti at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Spray paint has many negative environmental effects. The paint contains toxic chemicals, and the can uses volatile hydrocarbon gases to spray the paint onto a surface.
Volatile organic compound (VOC) leads to ground level ozone formation and most of graffiti related emissions are VOCs. A 2010 paper estimates 4,862 tons of VOCs were released in the United States in activities related to graffiti.
In China, Mao Zedong in the 1920s used revolutionary slogans and paintings in public places to galvanize the country's communist movement.
Based on different national conditions, many people believe that China's attitude towards Graffiti is fierce, but in fact, according to Lance Crayon in his film Spray Paint Beijing: Graffiti in the Capital of China, Graffiti is generally accepted in Beijing, with artists not seeing much police interference. Political and religiously sensitive graffiti, however, is not allowed.
In Hong Kong, Tsang Tsou Choi was known as the King of Kowloon for his calligraphy graffiti over many years, in which he claimed ownership of the area. Now some of his work is preserved officially.
In Taiwan, the government has made some concessions to graffitists. Since 2005 they have been allowed to freely display their work along some sections of riverside retaining walls in designated "Graffiti Zones". From 2007, Taipei's department of cultural affairs also began permitting graffiti on fences around major public construction sites. Department head Yong-ping Lee (李永萍) stated, "We will promote graffiti starting with the public sector, and then later in the private sector too. It's our goal to beautify the city with graffiti". The government later helped organize a graffiti contest in Ximending, a popular shopping district. graffitists caught working outside of these designated areas still face fines up to NT$6,000 under a department of environmental protection regulation. However, Taiwanese authorities can be relatively lenient, one veteran police officer stating anonymously, "Unless someone complains about vandalism, we won't get involved. We don't go after it proactively."
In 1993, after several expensive cars in Singapore were spray-painted, the police arrested a student from the Singapore American School, Michael P. Fay, questioned him, and subsequently charged him with vandalism. Fay pleaded guilty to vandalizing a car in addition to stealing road signs. Under the 1966 Vandalism Act of Singapore, originally passed to curb the spread of communist graffiti in Singapore, the court sentenced him to four months in jail, a fine of S$3,500 (US$2,233), and a caning. The New York Times ran several editorials and op-eds that condemned the punishment and called on the American public to flood the Singaporean embassy with protests. Although the Singapore government received many calls for clemency, Fay's caning took place in Singapore on 5 May 1994. Fay had originally received a sentence of six strokes of the cane, but the presiding president of Singapore, Ong Teng Cheong, agreed to reduce his caning sentence to four lashes.
In South Korea, Park Jung-soo was fined two million South Korean won by the Seoul Central District Court for spray-painting a rat on posters of the G-20 Summit a few days before the event in November 2011. Park alleged that the initial in "G-20" sounds like the Korean word for "rat", but Korean government prosecutors alleged that Park was making a derogatory statement about the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak, the host of the summit. This case led to public outcry and debate on the lack of government tolerance and in support of freedom of expression. The court ruled that the painting, "an ominous creature like a rat" amounts to "an organized criminal activity" and upheld the fine while denying the prosecution's request for imprisonment for Park.
In Europe, community cleaning squads have responded to graffiti, in some cases with reckless abandon, as when in 1992 in France a local Scout group, attempting to remove modern graffiti, damaged two prehistoric paintings of bison in the Cave of Mayrière supérieure near the French village of Bruniquel in Tarn-et-Garonne, earning them the 1992 Ig Nobel Prize in archeology.
In September 2006, the European Parliament directed the European Commission to create urban environment policies to prevent and eliminate dirt, litter, graffiti, animal excrement, and excessive noise from domestic and vehicular music systems in European cities, along with other concerns over urban life.
In Budapest, Hungary, both a city-backed movement called I Love Budapest and a special police division tackle the problem, including the provision of approved areas.
The Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 became Britain's latest anti-graffiti legislation. In August 2004, the Keep Britain Tidy campaign issued a press release calling for zero tolerance of graffiti and supporting proposals such as issuing "on the spot" fines to graffiti offenders and banning the sale of aerosol paint to anyone under the age of 16. The press release also condemned the use of graffiti images in advertising and in music videos, arguing that real-world experience of graffiti stood far removed from its often-portrayed "cool" or "edgy'" image.
To back the campaign, 123 Members of Parliament (MPs) (including then Prime Minister Tony Blair), signed a charter which stated: "Graffiti is not art, it's crime. On behalf of my constituents, I will do all I can to rid our community of this problem."
In the UK, city councils have the power to take action against the owner of any property that has been defaced under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 (as amended by the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005) or, in certain cases, the Highways Act. This is often used against owners of property that are complacent in allowing protective boards to be defaced so long as the property is not damaged.
In July 2008, a conspiracy charge was used to convict graffitists for the first time. After a three-month police surveillance operation, nine members of the DPM crew were convicted of conspiracy to commit criminal damage costing at least £1 million. Five of them received prison sentences, ranging from eighteen months to two years. The unprecedented scale of the investigation and the severity of the sentences rekindled public debate over whether graffiti should be considered art or crime.
Some councils, like those of Stroud and Loerrach, provide approved areas in the town where graffitists can showcase their talents, including underpasses, car parks, and walls that might otherwise prove a target for the "spray and run".
Graffiti Tunnel, University of Sydney at Camperdown (2009)
In an effort to reduce vandalism, many cities in Australia have designated walls or areas exclusively for use by graffitists. One early example is the "Graffiti Tunnel" located at the Camperdown Campus of the University of Sydney, which is available for use by any student at the university to tag, advertise, poster, and paint. Advocates of this idea suggest that this discourages petty vandalism yet encourages artists to take their time and produce great art, without worry of being caught or arrested for vandalism or trespassing.[108][109] Others disagree with this approach, arguing that the presence of legal graffiti walls does not demonstrably reduce illegal graffiti elsewhere. Some local government areas throughout Australia have introduced "anti-graffiti squads", who clean graffiti in the area, and such crews as BCW (Buffers Can't Win) have taken steps to keep one step ahead of local graffiti cleaners.
Many state governments have banned the sale or possession of spray paint to those under the age of 18 (age of majority). However, a number of local governments in Victoria have taken steps to recognize the cultural heritage value of some examples of graffiti, such as prominent political graffiti. Tough new graffiti laws have been introduced in Australia with fines of up to A$26,000 and two years in prison.
Melbourne is a prominent graffiti city of Australia with many of its lanes being tourist attractions, such as Hosier Lane in particular, a popular destination for photographers, wedding photography, and backdrops for corporate print advertising. The Lonely Planet travel guide cites Melbourne's street as a major attraction. All forms of graffiti, including sticker art, poster, stencil art, and wheatpasting, can be found in many places throughout the city. Prominent street art precincts include; Fitzroy, Collingwood, Northcote, Brunswick, St. Kilda, and the CBD, where stencil and sticker art is prominent. As one moves farther away from the city, mostly along suburban train lines, graffiti tags become more prominent. Many international artists such as Banksy have left their work in Melbourne and in early 2008 a perspex screen was installed to prevent a Banksy stencil art piece from being destroyed, it has survived since 2003 through the respect of local street artists avoiding posting over it, although it has recently had paint tipped over it.
In February 2008 Helen Clark, the New Zealand prime minister at that time, announced a government crackdown on tagging and other forms of graffiti vandalism, describing it as a destructive crime representing an invasion of public and private property. New legislation subsequently adopted included a ban on the sale of paint spray cans to persons under 18 and increases in maximum fines for the offence from NZ$200 to NZ$2,000 or extended community service. The issue of tagging become a widely debated one following an incident in Auckland during January 2008 in which a middle-aged property owner stabbed one of two teenage taggers to death and was subsequently convicted of manslaughter.
Graffiti databases have increased in the past decade because they allow vandalism incidents to be fully documented against an offender and help the police and prosecution charge and prosecute offenders for multiple counts of vandalism. They also provide law enforcement the ability to rapidly search for an offender's moniker or tag in a simple, effective, and comprehensive way. These systems can also help track costs of damage to a city to help allocate an anti-graffiti budget. The theory is that when an offender is caught putting up graffiti, they are not just charged with one count of vandalism; they can be held accountable for all the other damage for which they are responsible. This has two main benefits for law enforcement. One, it sends a signal to the offenders that their vandalism is being tracked. Two, a city can seek restitution from offenders for all the damage that they have committed, not merely a single incident. These systems give law enforcement personnel real-time, street-level intelligence that allows them not only to focus on the worst graffiti offenders and their damage, but also to monitor potential gang violence that is associated with the graffiti.
Many restrictions of civil gang injunctions are designed to help address and protect the physical environment and limit graffiti. Provisions of gang injunctions include things such as restricting the possession of marker pens, spray paint cans, or other sharp objects capable of defacing private or public property; spray painting, or marking with marker pens, scratching, applying stickers, or otherwise applying graffiti on any public or private property, including, but not limited to the street, alley, residences, block walls, and fences, vehicles or any other real or personal property. Some injunctions contain wording that restricts damaging or vandalizing both public and private property, including but not limited to any vehicle, light fixture, door, fence, wall, gate, window, building, street sign, utility box, telephone box, tree, or power pole.
To help address many of these issues, many local jurisdictions have set up graffiti abatement hotlines, where citizens can call in and report vandalism and have it removed. San Diego's hotline receives more than 5,000 calls per year, in addition to reporting the graffiti, callers can learn more about prevention. One of the complaints about these hotlines is the response time; there is often a lag time between a property owner calling about the graffiti and its removal. The length of delay should be a consideration for any jurisdiction planning on operating a hotline. Local jurisdictions must convince the callers that their complaint of vandalism will be a priority and cleaned off right away. If the jurisdiction does not have the resources to respond to complaints in a timely manner, the value of the hotline diminishes. Crews must be able to respond to individual service calls made to the graffiti hotline as well as focus on cleanup near schools, parks, and major intersections and transit routes to have the biggest impact. Some cities offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism. The amount of the reward is based on the information provided, and the action taken.
When police obtain search warrants in connection with a vandalism investigation, they are often seeking judicial approval to look for items such as cans of spray paint and nozzles from other kinds of aerosol sprays; etching tools, or other sharp or pointed objects, which could be used to etch or scratch glass and other hard surfaces; permanent marking pens, markers, or paint sticks; evidence of membership or affiliation with any gang or tagging crew; paraphernalia including any reference to "(tagger's name)"; any drawings, writing, objects, or graffiti depicting taggers' names, initials, logos, monikers, slogans, or any mention of tagging crew membership; and any newspaper clippings relating to graffiti crime.
Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
The Inspection Panel is completing 25 years in its role, as an accountability mechanism of the World Bank. As you are aware, the Bank’s failure to comply with its operating policies was seen by the entire world in the Bank’s financing with the Sardar Sarovar Dam project on River Narmada. The tenacity of massive grass-roots uprisings from our communities in the 80’s and the sustained hard work of our social movements along with our resoluteness to link it with international coalitions to question the hegemony of the Bank, subsequently led the Bank, for the first time, to commission an independent review of its project. The Independent Review Committee (Morse Committee) constituted by the Bank in 1991 to review the social and environmental costs and benefits of the dam, after years of consistent struggle by Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) and its allies led to a demand from the civil society around the globe for the creation of a grievance redressal system for project-affected communities, which ultimately pressurized the Bank to constitute the Inspection Panel in 1993. We expected this might be a crucial backstop and an opportunity for us to raise our issues of livelihoods, economic loss, displacement from our lands, alienation from natural resources, destruction of environment and threat to our biodiversity and cultural hotspots, where Bank invested in large, supposedly ‘development’ projects like mega dams, energy and other infrastructure projects. Yet, the outcome we expected rarely delivered sufficient remedy for the harm and losses people have experienced over the years.
A number of accountability mechanisms over the next couple of decades in several development finance institutions were formed following the model of World Bank, commonly known as ‘Independent Accountability Mechanisms’[IAMs]. Each year the number of complaints rise which is an indication of the increasing number of grievous projects happening around the world. While IAMs of most MDBs are advertised to provide strong and just processes, many of our experiences imply that the banks are accommodating practices which suit their own needs and their clients, which are borrowing countries and agencies, and not the people for whom the IAMs were built to serve.
Many a time, we have been disappointed by these mechanisms, since these are designed by the banks who are lending for disastrous projects in our lands. And as a result, the already existing narrow mandate of IAMs is further restricted.
In our efforts to hold the lending bank accountable, the communities are always presented with the arduous process of learning the complex formalities and detailed procedures to initially approach the IAMs and get our grievances registered. Our many years’ time and energy then is channelised into seeing through the various cycles of these complaint handling mechanisms, that our entire efforts go into this process, and often our complaint gets dropped off in midst of the procedural rules of the IAMs. People are made to wait many months to clear procedural levels and our cases with the IAMs get highly unpredictable. Further, we face intimidation and reprisals from the state and project agencies for having contacted the IAMs who themselves do not possess any authority to address the violations hurled out to us when we seek dignity, fair treatment and justice from them. There are many of us who feel a loss of morale after long years of struggling with lenders when we fail to see concrete benefits or changes in our circumstances, by which time considerable irreplaceable harm is already done to our lives, environment and livelihoods.
In this manner, our immediate and larger goal of holding banks for their failure to consult with and obtain consent from communities before devising action plans for our lands, water and forests is deflected in the pretext of problem-solving and grievance hearing offered to us in the name of IAMs.
With over 50 registered complaints sent to different IAMS from India in the past 25 years, many more left unregistered due to technical reasons and only a few got investigated, assessed and monitored at different levels, we have a baggage of mixed experiences with the IAMs. A few of the prominent cases from India apart from Narmada project are Vishnugad Pipalkoti Hydro Electric Project [WB’s IP], Tata Mega Ultra-01/Mundra and Anjar [IFC’s CAO & ADB’s CRP], India Infrastructure Fund-01/Dhenkanal District [IFC’s CAO], Allain Duhangan Hydro Power Limited-01/Himachal Pradesh [IFC’s CAO] and Mumbai Urban Transport Project (2009) [WB’s IP].
As we now know, what is being witnessed recently is an influx of approved and proposed investments majorly in energy, transport, steel, roads, urban projects, bullet trains, industrial zones/corridors, smart cities, water privatization and other mega projects in India. This has been financed from different multilateral and bilateral sources, foreign corporations, private banks as well as Export-Import Banks (ExIm Banks). It has become a brutal challenge for communities, social movements and CSOs, with lenders and governments constantly shutting their eyes and ears to us who demand accountability for their actions. A compelling and timely need has arisen among diverse groups amongst us to gather together and critically analyze the various trajectories of our engagements with accountability mechanisms of MDBs in order to bring together past 25 years’ learning, insights and reflections of various actors of this accountability process. This urging demand is also an attempt to define the collective experiences in India among our social movements, projected-affected communities and CSOs with IAMs and lending banks, especially appropriating the global political opportunity of Inspection Panel celebrating its 25 years this year.
Speakers:
Thomas Franco, Former General Secretary, AlI India Bank Officers’ Confederation
Arun Kumar, Eminent scholar, Former Professor Jawaharlal Nehru University
C.P. Chandrashekar, Economist, Professor Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Sucheta Dalal, Managing Editor, Moneylife
Soumya Dutta, National Convener, Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha
Dunu Roy, Hazards Center, New Delhi
Medha Patkar, Senior Activist, Narmada Bachao Andolan
Tani Alex, Centre for Financial Accountability
M J Vijayan, Activist and Political commentator
Joe Athialy, Centre for Financial Accountability
Anirudha Nagar, Accountability Counsel
Madhuresh Kumar, National Alliance of People’s Movements
A J Vijayan, Chairperson, Western Ghats and Coastal area Protection Forum
Meera Sanghamitra, National Aliance of People’s Movements
Vimal bhai, Matu Jan Sangathan, Uttarakhand
Daniel Adler, Senior Specialist, Compliance Advisor Ombudsman
Joe Athialy, Centre for Financial Accountability
Birgit Kuba, Operations Officer, Inspection Panel
Anuradha Munshi, Centre for Financial Accountability
Bharat Patel, General Secretary, Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan,Gujarat
Awadhesh Kumar, Srijan Lokhit Samiti
Amulya Kumar Nayak, Odisha Chas Parivesh Surekhsa Parishad, Odisha
Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Scholar
Manshi Asher, Himdhara Environment Research and Action Collective, Himachal Pradesh
Witness Against Torture and Amnesty International USA marched from the US Capitol to the White House on April 30, 2009 to mark the end of the first 100 days of President Obama's term and demand accountability for torture and abuse. Photo by Shawn Duffy
A las 11:00 a.m. el Martes 1o de Marzo, el Reporte “Percepciones de la Comunidad sobre la Falta de Ética Policiaca” de la Comisión del Oeste de Baltimore será presentado durante una Conferencia de Prensa organizada por la Coalición para la Justicia, Seguridad y Empleo. La emisión del reporte ocurre justo el día de las audiencias del Comité de Procesos Judiciales del Senado sobre legislación relativa a la rendición de cuentas policiaca.
Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
MONROVIA, LIBERIA: August 28, 2017 - Following Liberia’s civil war, which ended in 2003, the government accelerated long-standing policies, which granted natural resource concessions to foreign companies. Since then, land in Liberia has been in high demand from foreign and national investors, particularly for palm oil plantations, mines, and timber concessions. In 2011, Liberia joined the Open Government Partnership committing to a dialogue on land rights and mapping land concessions. Since this time, it has finished two action plans. The third one will begin after President Sirleaf or the incoming president signs it. Through ongoing collaborative efforts by civil society and the government, more and more communities are learning about their land and finding a voice in discussions and debates about how to best move forward. In 2013, The Land Rights Act was introduced. If passed, it would legally recognize communities’ rights to their land. It also establishes safeguards to reduce discrimination against women and other vulnerable groups – who are often disproportionately affected by social and cultural barriers to using and owning land. Photos by Sarah Grile.
DISCHARGE OF OIL PROHIBITED -- THE FEDERAL WATER POLLUTION CONTROL ACT PROHIBITS THE DISCHARGE OF OIL OR OILY WASTE INTO OR UPON THE NAVIGABLE WATERS OF THE UNITED STATES, OR THE WATERS OF THE CONTIGUOUS ZONE, OR WHICH MAY AFFECT NATURAL RESOURCES BELONGING TO, APPERTAINING TO, OR UNDER THE EXCLUSIVE MANAGEMENT AUTHORITY OF THE UNITED STATES, IF SUCH DISCHARGE CAUSES A FILM OR DISCOLORATION OF THE SURFACE OF THE WATER OR CAUSES A SLUDGE OR EMULSION BENEATH THE SURFACE OF THE WATER. VIOLATORS ARE SUBJECT TO SUBSTANTIAL CIVIL PENALTIES AND/OR CRIMINAL SANCTIONS INCLUDING FINES AND IMPRISONMENT.
Elections are at the core of political accountability in democracies. Through elections, politicians put their views to voters and must also inform the public of their record in office. However, elections occur periodically. It is the legislature’s role to hold the executive more regularly to account. Parliaments can guide development strategies, ensure that draft laws respect and promote human rights, evaluate budgets and the allocation of resources, amend inappropriate legislation, take up cases of abuse and misgovernment, and monitor the Government’s conduct.
© UNDP
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
So, while everyone was sweating it in here for the past month...
Peter Rodgers
Accountants Support Team
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
A joint African Union-United Nations delegation has concluded a three-day visit to South Sudan, expressing hope for “full cessation of hostilities” and a promise to “hold accountable” those who may derail the peace process.
Speaking to journalists in the capital, Juba, they said the signing of the revitalized peace agreement in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 12 September 2018 “is the starting point of the hard work,” and that their visit sought to hear from the Government, civil society, women’s organizations and others about what needed to be done immediately in support of the agreement.
“The implementation of the peace agreement is primarily a responsibility for South Sudanese,” said the Under-Secretary-General for UN Peacekeeping Operations, Jean-Pierre Lacroix. “And I think the partners of South Sudan are keen to see a few things materialize on the ground, particularly the cessation of hostilities which would be, of course, so important – a full cessation of hostilities,” he added.
African Union Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ambassador Smail Chergui, acknowledged there would be challenges ahead, but warned, “let us just take note today that everybody wants to implement that agreement faithfully and we will [hold] accountable anyone going the other route.”
During their visit, the delegation said they had a chance to see first-hand and talk to some of those who had suffered years of conflict.
“The population has suffered tremendously,” said the UN Peacekeeping chief, Lacroix, adding, “We are looking forward to further improvement in the security situation and other such positive signals that will certainly generate confidence and mobilization from the international community.”
Listing various expectations from the women she met, UN Women’s top official said women wanted to be included in the security sector reforms which would include greater participation and contribution by women in securing the country.
“They also wanted to encourage the Government to interact with them directly so that they, too, can have an opportunity to exchange directly with Government about their expectations and get additional assurance about the future which they are very excited about,” said the Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.
“They also want to make sure they take advantage of the 35% participation provision and they would put it on themselves to find the best candidates to fill in those positions,” she told journalists, adding that the women “want to go back to being economically productive citizens.”
The delegation had earlier met with various government officials, reiterating their support for the revitalized peace agreement.
“[It] was good to hear from both the UN [and AU] representatives about the commitment of the UN to support the peace process and they are waiting to see us giving important signals, milestones that prove our commitment and seriousness in implementing this agreement,” said Cabinet Affairs Minister, Martin Elia Lomuro after his closed-door meeting with the delegation, adding, “We have also heard from the African Union about their desire to participate with us in the security sector reform.”
He said the government was committed to implementing what it had signed, including the 35 per cent quota for women.
“That agreement was an agreement by all of us. They didn’t have to fight for it. They should remain calm and trust those in charge – particularly the members of the national review committee who will be ensuring that the objectives of the agreement are followed,” he said, voicing the government’s reassurance on an issue that was at the centre of the delegation’s visit.
Photo: UNMISS / Eric Kanalstein
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
The Inspection Panel is completing 25 years in its role, as an accountability mechanism of the World Bank. As you are aware, the Bank’s failure to comply with its operating policies was seen by the entire world in the Bank’s financing with the Sardar Sarovar Dam project on River Narmada. The tenacity of massive grass-roots uprisings from our communities in the 80’s and the sustained hard work of our social movements along with our resoluteness to link it with international coalitions to question the hegemony of the Bank, subsequently led the Bank, for the first time, to commission an independent review of its project. The Independent Review Committee (Morse Committee) constituted by the Bank in 1991 to review the social and environmental costs and benefits of the dam, after years of consistent struggle by Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement) and its allies led to a demand from the civil society around the globe for the creation of a grievance redressal system for project-affected communities, which ultimately pressurized the Bank to constitute the Inspection Panel in 1993. We expected this might be a crucial backstop and an opportunity for us to raise our issues of livelihoods, economic loss, displacement from our lands, alienation from natural resources, destruction of environment and threat to our biodiversity and cultural hotspots, where Bank invested in large, supposedly ‘development’ projects like mega dams, energy and other infrastructure projects. Yet, the outcome we expected rarely delivered sufficient remedy for the harm and losses people have experienced over the years.
A number of accountability mechanisms over the next couple of decades in several development finance institutions were formed following the model of World Bank, commonly known as ‘Independent Accountability Mechanisms’[IAMs]. Each year the number of complaints rise which is an indication of the increasing number of grievous projects happening around the world. While IAMs of most MDBs are advertised to provide strong and just processes, many of our experiences imply that the banks are accommodating practices which suit their own needs and their clients, which are borrowing countries and agencies, and not the people for whom the IAMs were built to serve.
Many a time, we have been disappointed by these mechanisms, since these are designed by the banks who are lending for disastrous projects in our lands. And as a result, the already existing narrow mandate of IAMs is further restricted.
In our efforts to hold the lending bank accountable, the communities are always presented with the arduous process of learning the complex formalities and detailed procedures to initially approach the IAMs and get our grievances registered. Our many years’ time and energy then is channelised into seeing through the various cycles of these complaint handling mechanisms, that our entire efforts go into this process, and often our complaint gets dropped off in midst of the procedural rules of the IAMs. People are made to wait many months to clear procedural levels and our cases with the IAMs get highly unpredictable. Further, we face intimidation and reprisals from the state and project agencies for having contacted the IAMs who themselves do not possess any authority to address the violations hurled out to us when we seek dignity, fair treatment and justice from them. There are many of us who feel a loss of morale after long years of struggling with lenders when we fail to see concrete benefits or changes in our circumstances, by which time considerable irreplaceable harm is already done to our lives, environment and livelihoods.
In this manner, our immediate and larger goal of holding banks for their failure to consult with and obtain consent from communities before devising action plans for our lands, water and forests is deflected in the pretext of problem-solving and grievance hearing offered to us in the name of IAMs.
With over 50 registered complaints sent to different IAMS from India in the past 25 years, many more left unregistered due to technical reasons and only a few got investigated, assessed and monitored at different levels, we have a baggage of mixed experiences with the IAMs. A few of the prominent cases from India apart from Narmada project are Vishnugad Pipalkoti Hydro Electric Project [WB’s IP], Tata Mega Ultra-01/Mundra and Anjar [IFC’s CAO & ADB’s CRP], India Infrastructure Fund-01/Dhenkanal District [IFC’s CAO], Allain Duhangan Hydro Power Limited-01/Himachal Pradesh [IFC’s CAO] and Mumbai Urban Transport Project (2009) [WB’s IP].
As we now know, what is being witnessed recently is an influx of approved and proposed investments majorly in energy, transport, steel, roads, urban projects, bullet trains, industrial zones/corridors, smart cities, water privatization and other mega projects in India. This has been financed from different multilateral and bilateral sources, foreign corporations, private banks as well as Export-Import Banks (ExIm Banks). It has become a brutal challenge for communities, social movements and CSOs, with lenders and governments constantly shutting their eyes and ears to us who demand accountability for their actions. A compelling and timely need has arisen among diverse groups amongst us to gather together and critically analyze the various trajectories of our engagements with accountability mechanisms of MDBs in order to bring together past 25 years’ learning, insights and reflections of various actors of this accountability process. This urging demand is also an attempt to define the collective experiences in India among our social movements, projected-affected communities and CSOs with IAMs and lending banks, especially appropriating the global political opportunity of Inspection Panel celebrating its 25 years this year.
Speakers:
Thomas Franco, Former General Secretary, AlI India Bank Officers’ Confederation
Arun Kumar, Eminent scholar, Former Professor Jawaharlal Nehru University
C.P. Chandrashekar, Economist, Professor Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University
Sucheta Dalal, Managing Editor, Moneylife
Soumya Dutta, National Convener, Bharat Jan Vigyan Jatha
Dunu Roy, Hazards Center, New Delhi
Medha Patkar, Senior Activist, Narmada Bachao Andolan
Tani Alex, Centre for Financial Accountability
M J Vijayan, Activist and Political commentator
Joe Athialy, Centre for Financial Accountability
Anirudha Nagar, Accountability Counsel
Madhuresh Kumar, National Alliance of People’s Movements
A J Vijayan, Chairperson, Western Ghats and Coastal area Protection Forum
Meera Sanghamitra, National Aliance of People’s Movements
Vimal bhai, Matu Jan Sangathan, Uttarakhand
Daniel Adler, Senior Specialist, Compliance Advisor Ombudsman
Joe Athialy, Centre for Financial Accountability
Birgit Kuba, Operations Officer, Inspection Panel
Anuradha Munshi, Centre for Financial Accountability
Bharat Patel, General Secretary, Machimar Adhikar Sangharsh Sangathan,Gujarat
Awadhesh Kumar, Srijan Lokhit Samiti
Amulya Kumar Nayak, Odisha Chas Parivesh Surekhsa Parishad, Odisha
Dr. Usha Ramanathan, Legal Scholar
Manshi Asher, Himdhara Environment Research and Action Collective, Himachal Pradesh
Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau prepares to speak at a vigil outside the London Muslim Mosque organized after four members of a Canadian Muslim family were killed in what police describe as a hate-motivated attack in London, Ontario, Canada, June 8, 2021. Nathan Denette/Pool via REUTERS
Sgt. Wayne D. Salas, a supply sergeant with the V Corps Special Troops Battalion, reviews his property turn-in paperwork before giving it to Spc. William J. Lewis, an automated logistics specialist with the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, Oct. 26, 2010, as part of the 21st's Task Force Harvest property accountability effort. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Tramel S. Garrett)
Accountability, Achievement, and Action: High School Education Reform in the New Era
Rosa Rosales, national president, League of United Latin Americans
(February 12, 2009)
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University
Op 9 juni 2017 vond in de Tweede Kamer in Den Haag de tweede editie van Accountability Hack plaats, een hackathon waar met open data de prestaties van de overheid in kaart worden gebracht. Accountability Hack is een initiatief van de Algemene Rekenkamer en de Tweede Kamer samen met het CBS en de ministeries van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Financiën en Infrastructuur en Milieu. De hackathon werd georganiseerd in samenwerking met Open State Foundation. Kijk voor meer informatie op accountabilityhack.nl/
Forum on Social Accountability Mechanisms for Food Security and Agricultural Development - Mandaluyong City, Philippines - May 18, 2010
Continuing Accountability
Kelly Greene
April 21 - May 17, 2022
Artlab Gallery
The Artlab Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition titled “Continuing Accountability” by current Indigenous Artist-In-Residence Kelly Greene. Presented in partnership with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives and the Department of Arts and Humanities, this exhibit brings together work completed by Greene over the course of her nearly thirty year artistic career.
ARTIST STATEMENT:
This exhibit is a continuation of my exhibit “Accountability” that was briefly on display at McIntosh Gallery for a week in March, 2020 before everything shut down. But “Accountability” has another meaning besides referring to the previous exhibit, as this word was and is the premise for both shows, since it encompasses the concepts of the artworks.
Some topics include alternative viewpoints of historic occurrences once viewed as celebratory by most, though now wondering when history books will be changed. And since recent revelations have been made of resulting conditions from enforced ownership, we may question how reparation can be made.
Yet despite it all, somehow Indigenous cultures, traditions, and languages are still alive. Although they’ve struggled to remain alive, the onus to pass knowledge from one generation to the next is imperative so nothing more will be lost.
Moreover, it is the responsibility all humans must now offer to care for our Earth, our Mother, who has endured much devastation especially during the past century after the industrial revolution and the rise of technological advancements. We are now in a position to make drastic changes to ensure that the future may somehow be free from the current conditions we’re experiencing, resulting from us making strides without heed of repercussions.
My hope is we’ll be able to outrun the machine we’ve created.
Kelly Greene is a multi-media artist whose work includes painting, sculpture, installation, and photography. She is of Mohawk-Oneida-Sicilian ancestry, a member of the Six Nations of the Grand River Reserve, and a descendant of the Turtle Clan.
Greene has lived in London, Ontario since 1989 where she obtained a BFA from the University of Western Ontario. She began her visual art studies at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she moved with her family when she was a child.
She has exhibited in Canada and the United States for over thirty years in solo and group exhibits, primarily at the Woodland Cultural Centre in Brantford, Ontario but also Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, B.C.; Montreal, Quebec; Ottawa, Thunder Bay, Toronto, and London, Ontario; Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Howes Cave, New York. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, and in 2012 and 2015 she was commissioned to complete two permanent outdoor installations at the Woodland Cultural Centre. She has been awarded grants from the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council and was most recently awarded the first Indigenous Artist in Residence at Western University in 2021.
Her art focuses primarily on environmental and political topics, as well as revealing stereotypes that are still prevalent towards Indigenous cultures, using ironic humour when possible. Recognizing the impact colonization has had on our Earth and the First People who have always lived on the land now known as Canada, Greene specifically refers to the Haldimand Treaty granted to the people of Six Nations, as well as the Mohawk Institute Residential School, or “Mush Hole”, where her beautiful Grandma attended in the 1920’s. Another concern is Colony Collapse Disorder, or the current plight of bees vanishing due to pesticides and monoculture. The ever-alarming condition of our planet has inspired Greene to create works that represent our Mother Earth as human, appealing to our species’ egocentricity, hoping empathy will be instilled and respect given so future generations will continue to be revived and thrive.
Artlab Gallery
JL Visual Arts Centre
Western University
London, Ontario, Canada
© 2022; Department of Visual Arts; Western University