Day 3 Basic Income As A Peacebuilding Tool - Diana Bashur

Transcript

hello um it's great to be here thank you for the invitation so um what I'll be speaking up is about uh the specific application of basic income namely um as a peacebuilding tool so I'm Diana I'm PhD candidate at the University of Vienna I'm also Secretary of the basic income Earth Network so work closely with malcol Hil who you'll meet Julio and um Sarat um so what I'll speak of about today is um firstly what I mean what is it that we're talking about when we're considering countries coming out of conflict um I'll speak about what peace building is and its challenges uh briefly about then suggest

basic income for peace uh its advantages and challenges and then uh propose the idea of creating money locally to generate a basic income so what are the specifics of a country coming out of conflict what are we looking at so first off we have widespread destruction um both physical infrastructure is destroyed but also we have human deprivation where people are coming out of trauma they live through violence um and they have a lot of of livelihoods um we also have um generate a frozen economy and this is due to um difficulty in accessing natural uh resources of the country in question and this to to VAR extents and for different

reasons uh depending on how the conflict unfolded and generally there's a lack of cash where people actually um have um their livelihoods um uh weakened and so what happens in this case is that because um people are have not enough cash basically the the supply chain the local Supply chains of kids and services are slowed down or disrupted um sometimes uh we also have uh countries um suffering from International sanctions so what this means is is that the International Community kind of closes off uh import exports in and out of the country uh and the aim is is for for this to the

sanctions to reach the autocratic regimes in questions uh but what what happens is that you know authorities always circumvent these sanctions and it ends up um actually impacting the the populations most um so the vulnerable people become U more vulnerable so this to say that we have a challenging environment where peace building um aims to build both the physical destruction but also livelihoods and uh social relations including trust between people so um what what is peace building exactly um so when a country does come out of conflict uh when when conflict stops um the international Comm community Through

the United Nations um starts investing and and and challenging Aid into the country to meet the development needs of the country uh and the aim is to decomp tensions tensions to avoid a relapse into violence um and essentially what peace building is is is in fact policies um that are designed by people you know sitting in in capitals of the global North and they have to be in to some extent in line with donor's interests and agendas in the countries in question and both now academics and and practitioners agree that peace building has had a mixed track record um at the end of the day it's a top down approach that becomes

disconnected from the local need because it's designed designed outside um it fails to achieve lasting positive effect because it has a very shortterm nature of you know meeting donor donor timelines and and uh having quick impact results and as a result the peacebuilding process can um entrench inequalities deep deepen social fragmentation and risk a relapse of the conflict so in my sense um too much is at stake for continuing peace building as is what happens today actually is that about 50% of conflicts U relapse within a 10-year period so this to say that there is um a lot of room for

improvement so uh what is the suggestion here um and and the idea is to build a basic income for peace and and here what I'm suggesting is to re restructure peace building efforts to include a basic income so not not to replace all peacebuilding programs but you know structure structure it to include a basic Kingdom as part of the project um and such a basic income would be along of what Malcolm and Sarat explained before it would be Universal unconditional regular basic and non-withdrawable now we can obviously think of some risks and challenges when we are thinking of Distributing a basic income in a country coming out of

conflict so first off our security considerations there might be diversion of funds uh you know due to local mafias or Warlords because of the weak legal system and and here we need to think carefully about a delivery mechanism that reaches the intended recipient um that's a first thing a second thing our economic considerations um for a country coming out of conflict uh we often have a lack of skilled labor force due to the brain drain uh due to the death um of as within the population we also have this International sanctions uh which I mentioned before um which prevent the import of high high value added Goods

that are needed for the relaunch of the economy inflation is also a consideration a careful calculation needs to be uh done because uh the basic income need to be within a capacity of the national production um and so if the supply cannot meet the local demand then there there will there might be a risk of inflation um reliability and funding uh is of the funding is is quite important and here we need to think of um whether an or if an Abrupt halt of the basic income if it is implemented you know what consequences will that had in a country coming out of conflict I mean it might basically read to to to unrest and so this is something um uh I mean the

stakes are couldn't be higher where people depend on this basic income to live basically um the last Point here is that uh what is the local acceptability of a universality um element of the basic income and so if we're um treating everyone equally through a policy of like a basic income will this be accepted in a country coming out of conflict and we need to think for example example depending on how a conflict unfolded um let's say a majority accuses a minority population for some atrocities would they be um willing to accept that you know this m minority would would also be eligible for this basic income without creating

problems um now of course we have advantages um a basic income can empower the individual um if people spend their basic income uh based on on the priorities they they they said for themselves this in itself is is liberating and it would it is in opposition to traditional peace building where uh it's very perspective um if people are giving cash they're allowed to only spending in certain locations or it's only only uh like the poorest of the poorest who become eligible for the basic income and so uh this can circumvent some of the challenges um of Peace building which I mentioned before um a basic income would add fuel to the

economy uh by providing a disposable income to people to meet their basic needs and here the important element is that uh it's been found through the evidence that people who don't don't have their basic needs met will if they have the opportunity to do so they spend it locally so they this in this sense they this can jump start the local supply chain um because usually what is available locally is the cheapest and so in this way we have a positive impact on livelihoods um as well as the future outlook um of people we also have an uh an important um a significant potential for for

improving social cohesion if the basic income is provided universally and in this sense uh in a country coming out of conflict it can uh increase the sense of belonging and so this is the other side of the coin of of the universality aspect so if it is accepted that everyone receives the the basic income universally um then we can have a positive perception um of the other um and so these three elements here the three advantages have been evidenced uh through Pilots uh tested in in stable but developing countries it hasn't been tested in a postconflict country yet so this would need to be uh very

IFI um so how can we provide a basic income for peace how how can we think of this um to be sort of implemented first option is to restructure peace building um to include a basic income this would involve collaboration with un agencies uh this is the route I've been working on for the last four years we have some tractions uh with one UN agency uh but so far we've been rejected by two uh donor countries the other option is circumvent International Peace building and create money locally and this can be done uh with local government or without it so let's look at some use cases uh first first set up a country um is undergoing peace

building so there is international efforts uh for for for there are is international Aid coming in so let's think of uh one side where you have money for basic income and this is actually the case of Afghanistan where um the UN country team agreed for a targeted basic income for Only Women and Children um and so they want want to channel the international Aid directly to the people to avoid uh having to fund the government so this program has been agreed to uh a year ago it hasn't started yet so the other case is where there is international Aid coming in but there is no money for a basic income so basic Inc is not on the radar of of the policym so this could be the case of

Nepal or Iraq so the are these are countries coming out of conflict um and so we can think of these cases where the government is pro basic income or the government is not really interested or against it and in either cases um one option would be to basically print money locally the government can decide to just print more of its local currency or um they can use crypto in the case of no peace building so a country is the conflict ended but the International Community is not interested in sending money in sending International aid for whatever reasons be it sanctions such as the case in Syria or

Libya to some extent um or there are no sanctions but there's not much International Aid flowing in this is the case of Lebanon and here again we can end up with the two options of the government printing more money locally or the government using crypto um to do so and um these two options here is is what I call a homegrown basic income and and and I'll I'll focus on crypto uh for for the rest of the slides um so what what could this uh look like um uh using crypto and this is really an explorative example uh with a simple illustration based on um the model of

circles um which you might be aware of which Julio would uh uh present let's it next it's basically really just inspired by by circles so we have country X and its citizens uh re they receive a basic income through um a local currency or a cryptocurrency say 10 cents uh per or 10 circles per month and they can spend it uh locally in these shops now um what's interesting here is that the system can be funded by the diaspora so citizens of eggs or people wanting to help country citizens of eggs but they're living outside of the country and they can purchase uh circles

with hard currency outside they can send these circles um to their relatives or friends or they can spend it when they're visiting X um and the the the the interesting thing is is because a countries usually countries come in Conflict are missing you know high value added Goods such as medical supplies construction material or medical technology what they could do is use these Euros uh who who fund the system to to pay for imports uh and and in this sense it you can you can grow the economy um um and and sort of push the ceiling uh of growth uh

up now what are the advantages and risk uh risks of a homegrown basic income the advantages both for printing more money locally or using crypto is that you can jump start the local economy without waiting for international Aid so you can circumvent International sanctions when these are in place and specifically the advantages of C flow is that you can start immediately in any locality and you'd be experimenting with independent governance structures and systems the risks are inflation if it's not calculated properly the risk also is that if the government of a country coming out of conflict is involved in in building this

this homegrown basic income you have an account accountability issue these governments are weak institutionally usually uh at at least and at best or at best and at least they're autocratic governments so the accountability issue here is is a question the risk in ter in terms of crypto is that you would risk more International political isolation you may be creating parallel governance systems which you need to add be carefully aware of in in a country coming out of conflict um you may risk uh reprisals by the government if it's if it's not uh done in cooperation with the government and with crypto

specifically uh we have unknown accountability and so here we need to think of what happens when the system goes down um you know who who or the value of the currency sort of for some reason that is outside the the structure uh that is built in this country changes um so what I'm proposing is to carefully pilot a basic income in a postconflict setting um Pilots would help us answering the following questions we would test different money creation systems and mechanisms we would look at what are the minimal necessary conditions for the economy for for the market to function function properly and reach the potential of a basic income

we've seen um elsewhere we would also look at the multiplier effect in the local economy at different structures so at different levels be it the village City or the country and we would also look at the social cohesion impact uh which I mentioned before so the universality aspect how how is that accepted um and this is important for for us to look into uh because we are possibly looking at a transformational policy too it can empower the individual it can improve improve their life prospects and in this sense it can strengthen people's resilience uh to resist being uh to resist not being drawn into more violence and

War um so that's about it uh thank you very much I have a forthcoming paper if anyone's interested thank you so much danana that was uh Illuminating to say the very least if there anybody with any sort of experience or theoretical questions in peacebuilding now is a great opportunity hello uh so I'm wondering uh in this slide where you explain that um this diaspora would help funding this basic income so I guess that's Pro that's one of the reasons El Salvador this experment with the with the Bitcoin because well the the the price of sending transactions to back to their country is is very high so Bitcoin will

help with this but here in this in this situ situation how can the funds then be divided equally between all the all the people in this country because you you said that um so they will send these funds to their relatives MH but that's that doesn't seem to be very equal right because not not all not all of them is have five people in diaspora so I'm wondering how could this be divided uh then equally between all the citizens so so what I the illustration actually the basic income that what di what the diaspora sends is not the basic income what is the basic income is what is created by locally by the the the

structure so every every citizens become aert becomes receives a basic income regularly on a monthly basis so the diaspora is only you know whatever people want to send but this is not the basic income itself yeah and and this is really sort of this example is just an ation something that I can think of um and you know to develop it further I would really need your help basically I'm not crypto person so I'm not an expert in that yeah know I can certainly comment further on that so yeah that would absolutely be possible so kind of in in the C Circle system um yeah there there could be there is this concept of group

currency so kind of kind of you could have a well in this conflict area you could have a yeah what we call group currency and and as as you said um the diaspora they would not kind of send money um directly to the people but instead they would kind of yeah give some liquidity or some value to the group currency so kind of the Euros are really kind of in a way backing this group currency so as long as then money is is is used locally it can stay in the in in this yeah kind of locally created money and uh and uh yeah if it if it needs to uh yeah get the goods uh that are available

only outside well it would need to kind of in a way sell the uh group currency for the hard money kind of Euros whatever and with those you would probably get Goods yeah thank you so it makes some sense thank you hi uh when you talk about uh delivering the basic income to the people especially in these countries postc conflict like if you talk about crypto you have I mean you first have to solve how would you solve that everybody has a device to use it because you know obviously that would be probably very difficult did you think about

that um so um in fact um most people have you know in the different countries that I'm considering uh you know technology is pretty pretty present uh connectivity is very present and in fact it kind of like you know the the cell phones is kind of people's uh you know gateway to the outside world so um it's it's pretty widespread yeah uh smartphones uh now what usually now happening there is actually cash transfers happening in humanitarian settings so IR refugee camps um and not only refugee camps so in countries where refugees have settled um

what is usually what is now quite quite used is the iris scan basically of of people at cash machines um so they go to a cash machine and there's an Irish scan um and people get the cash this way but um it is different but U yeah technology is quite present in fact sorry again no so yeah so this is a second question about about these these devices being present and I guess I guess from from the active con conflicts that we know that's actually true so technology is quite present but still you can count the number of people so you need some

kind of proof that someone hasn't two phones or hasn't two wallets and so there there needs to be this uh this accountability between actually existing and being one single person not being two or three so they it's not possible to get two or three incomes and it's not not possible to have zero and so have you thought about how how could this be made or this is still an open question it is an open question um but there there are different um Poss possibilities if I understand it properly from from what I've read into into the technology thank you but I'm I'm not an expert again yeah thank you do we have any more more

questions um there was a question about access to devices but is there a risk of um internet connection in these areas or like the government removing certain services or like is there a vulnerability risk there um also um internet is pretty reliable but it it is something that could be uh used as a reprisal form if if it's uh provided you know outside the government structures and if the government is not sort of interested or accepting it and you know cutting off electricity is is an option yeah I mean it's a possibility I mean so it's a risk that needs to be uh

considered and this is also in terms of you know the mechanism um of delivery is really needs to be um thought through properly um yeah but there there are absolutely different kinds of risks I may also take a stab at that um I've been in all three situations from three of your questions I got evacuated from the Burmese War it was an internal War because it was a crusade so the the military CED itself and when you have a CP C it's like the government against itself one like it's very common a structure of War but it's not a common structure of Hot War so the government took the systems down there's no broadband we I had to walk over over to a friend's house you know 72 hours we

got off from the world um devices saved everybody um they were always functional they were always charged people found a way and even today like almost a year after that war um usdc has a serious Arbitrage there so the burmes chat to the usdc is not a one for one like $1 Visa V one usdc there's almost a 1,700 Mark difference in the local currency which literally and practically saves lives so yes infrastructure is always going to be a problem but there's also Dy in the industry of decentralized science uh and decentralized wireless people are trying to build their own mesh networks from local area networks you just have to know what you're doing and the bumes revolution took a lot of their expertise from the Hong Kong

Revolution so they already had a Playbook and so in peace building I think um for example my Ukrainian friends who fled the war um they got basic income on their devices to whichever country they ran away too and that helps cuz you're not starting from scratch again because you just ran with clothes on your back and you know technology can really save lives but the layer of humanity that we add on top of it needs to be practical it needs to be logical we can't question everything and there will always be false positives like so in your case if one mother gets three wallets what's the harm it's a very small percentage of false positive you know what I mean like if that's the worst that can happen it's really not so

bad and yet you're actually it's very very fair point because you know in Africa we've seen and I I work on a fork that is built on crypto altruism and we see many people have many phones and then you know they get relief funds not through crypto through normal means they've done all the paperwork and then they use it for you know purchase of arms and ammunitions it happens malpractices happen so the question is what is the degree of false positives to actual negatives and how much of an impact can we actually measure because if you even measure 60% impact it's massive we don't have that today you anybody else have comments or personal experiences I mean those are

always helpful in this industry thank you so much for your time Dan thank you