U.S. GAO - Fair Lending: Data Limitations and the Fragmented U.S. Financial Regulatory Structure Challenge Federal Oversight and Enforcement Efforts

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GAO-09-704 July 15, 2009
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Summary The Fair Housing Act (FHA) and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA)--the "fair lending laws"--prohibit discrimination in lending. Responsibility for their oversight is shared among three enforcement agencies--the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Federal Trade Commission (FTC), and Department of Justice (DOJ)--and five depository institution regulators--the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (Federal Reserve), National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS). This report examines (1) data used by agencies and the public to detect potential violations and options to enhance the data, (2) federal oversight of lenders that are identified as at heightened risk of violating the fair lending laws, and (3) recent cases involving fair lending laws and associated enforcement challenges. GAO analyzed fair lending laws, relevant research, and interviewed agency officials, lenders, and consumer groups. GAO also reviewed 152 depository institution fair lending examination files. Depending upon file availability by regulator, GAO reviewed all relevant files or a random sample as appropriate. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) requires certain lenders to collect and publicly report data on the race, national origin, and sex of mortgage loan borrowers. Enforcement agencies and depository institution regulators use HMDA data to identify outliers--lenders that may have violated fair lending laws--and focus their investigations and examinations accordingly. But, HMDA data also have limitations; they do not include information on the credit risks of mortgage borrowers, which may limit regulators' and the public's capacity to identify lenders most likely to be engaged in discriminatory practices without first conducting labor-intensive reviews. Another data limitation is that lenders are not required to report data on the race, ethnicity, and sex of nonmortgage loan borrowers--such as small businesses, which limits oversight of such lending. While requiring lenders to report additional data would impose costs on them, particularly smaller institutions, options exist to mitigate such costs to some degree, such as limiting the reporting requirements to larger institutions. Without additional data, agencies' and regulators' capacity to identify potential lending discrimination is limited. GAO identified the following limitations in the consistency and effectiveness of fair lending oversight that are largely attributable to the fragmented U.S. financial regulatory system: (1) Federal oversight of lenders that may represent heightened risks of fair lending law violations is limited. For example, the enforcement agencies are responsible for monitoring independent mortgage lenders' compliance with the fair lending laws. Such lenders have been large originators of subprime mortgage loans in recent years and have more frequently been identified through analysis of HMDA data as outliers than depository institutions, such as banks. Depository institution regulators are more likely to assess the activities of outliers and, unlike enforcement agencies, they routinely assess the compliance of lenders that are not outliers. As a result, many fair lending violations at independent lenders may go undetected, and efforts to deter potential violations may be ineffective. (2) Although depository institution regulators' fair lending oversight efforts may be more comprehensive, the division of responsibility among multiple agencies raises questions about the consistency and effectiveness of their efforts. For example, each regulator uses a different approach to analyze HMDA data to identify outliers and examination documentation varies. Moreover, since 2005, OTS, the Federal Reserve, and FDIC have referred more than 100 lenders to DOJ for further investigations of potential fair lending violations, as required by ECOA, while OCC made one referral and NCUA none. Enforcement agencies have settled relatively few (eight) fair lending cases since 2005. Agencies identified several enforcement challenges, including the complexity of fair lending cases, difficulties in recruiting and retaining staff, and the constraints of ECOA's 2-year statute of limitations. Recommendations Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work. Director: Team: Phone: Orice Williams Brown Government Accountability Office: Financial Markets and Community Investment (202) 512-5837 Matters for Congressional Consideration Recommendation: To facilitate the capacity of federal enforcement agencies and depository institution regulators as well as independent researchers to identify lenders that may be engaged in discriminatory practices in violation of the fair lending laws, Congress may wish to consider the merits of additional data collection and reporting options. These varying options pertain to obtaining key underwriting data for mortgage loans, such as credit scores as well as LTV and DTI ratios, and personal characteristic (such as race, ethnicity and sex) and relevant underwriting data for nonmortgage loans. Status: In process Comments: When we determine what steps the Congress has taken, we will provide updated information. Recommendation: To help ensure that all potential risks for fair lending violations are thoroughly investigated and sufficient time is available to do so, Congress may wish to consider extending the statute of limitations on ECOA violations. Status: In process Comments: When we determine what steps the Congress has taken, we will provide updated information. Recommendation: As Congress debates the reform of the financial regulatory system, it may wish to take steps to help ensure that consumers are adequately protected, that laws such as the fair lending laws are comprehensive and consistently applied, and that oversight is efficient and effective. Any new structure should address gaps and inconsistencies in the oversight of independent mortgage brokers and nonbank subsidiaries, as well as address the potentially inconsistent oversight provided by depository institution regulators. Status: In process Comments: When we determine what steps the Congress has taken, we will provide updated information. Recommendations for Executive Action Recommendation: To help strengthen fair lending oversight and enforcement, DOJ, FDIC, Federal Reserve, FTC, HUD, NCUA, OCC, and OTS should work collaboratively to identify approaches to better assess the potential risk for discrimination during the preapplication phase of mortgage lending. For example, the agencies and depository institution regulators could further consider the use of testers, perhaps on a pilot basis, as well as surveys of mortgage loan borrowers and applicants or alternative means to better assess the potential risk for discrimination during this critical phase of the mortgage lending process. Agency Affected: Department of Housing and Urban Development Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Agency Affected: Department of Justice Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Agency Affected: Department of the Treasury: Office of Thrift Supervision Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Agency Affected: Department of the Treasury: Office of the Comptroller of the Currency Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Agency Affected: Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Agency Affected: Federal Reserve System Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Agency Affected: Federal Trade Commission Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information. Agency Affected: National Credit Union Administration Status: In process Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.

Attorney General Plans Reshaping of Civil Rights Division - NYTimes.com

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — Seven months after taking office, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. is reshaping the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division by pushing it back into some of the most important areas of American political life, including voting rights, housing, employment, bank lending practices and redistricting after the 2010 census.

As part of this shift, the Obama administration is planning a major revival of high-impact civil rights enforcement against policies, in areas ranging from housing to hiring, where statistics show that minorities fare disproportionately poorly. President George W. Bush’s appointees had discouraged such tactics, preferring to focus on individual cases in which there is evidence of intentional discrimination.

To bolster a unit that has been battered by heavy turnover and a scandal over politically tinged hiring under the Bush administration, the Obama White House has also proposed a hiring spree that would swell the ranks of several hundred civil rights lawyers with more than 50 additional lawyers, a significant increase for a relatively small but powerful division of the government.

The division is “getting back to doing what it has traditionally done,” Mr. Holder said in an interview. “But it’s really only a start. I think the wounds that were inflicted on this division were deep, and it will take some time for them to fully heal.”

Few agencies are more engaged in the nation’s social and cultural debates than the Civil Rights Division, which was founded in 1957 to enforce anti-discrimination laws.

The division has been at the center of a number of controversies over the decades, serving as a proxy for disputes between liberals and conservatives in matters like school busing and affirmative action. When the Nixon administration took office, it sought to delay school desegregation plans reached under former President Lyndon B. Johnson. The Reagan administration dropped the division’s policy of opposing tax-exempt status for racially discriminatory private schools. And former President Bill Clinton withdrew his first nominee to lead the division, Lani Guinier, after her writings about racial quotas were criticized.

But such dust-ups were minor when compared with sweeping changes at the division under the Bush administration, longtime career civil rights lawyers say.

Now the changes that Mr. Holder is pushing through have led some conservatives, still stinging from accusations that the Bush appointees “politicized” the unit, to start throwing the same charge back at President Obama’s team.

The agency’s critics cite the downsizing of a voter intimidation case involving the New Black Panther Party, an investigation into whether an Arizona sheriff’s enforcement of immigration laws has discriminated against Hispanics, and the recent blocking of a new rule requiring Georgia voters to prove their citizenship. (Under the Bush administration, the division had signed off on a similar law requiring Georgia voters to furnish photographic identification, rejecting criticism that legitimate minority voters are disproportionately more likely not to have driver’s licenses or passports.)

Among the critics, Hans von Spakovsky, a former key Bush-era official at the division, has accused the Obama team of “nakedly political” maneuvers.

Tracy Schmaler, a Justice Department spokeswoman, rejected such criticism, saying those cases were decided “based on the facts and the law.”

Under the Bush administration, the agency shifted away from its traditional core focus on accusations of racial discrimination, channeling resources into areas like religious discrimination and human trafficking.

Department officials are working to avoid unleashing potential controversies as they rebuild the division’s more traditional efforts on behalf of minorities.

They are not planning to dismantle the new initiatives, rather to hire enough additional lawyers to do everything. The administration’s fiscal year 2010 budget request includes an increase of about $22 million for the division, an 18 percent increase from the 2009 budget. Other changes are already apparent.

The division has filed about 10 “friend of the court” briefs in private discrimination-related lawsuits since Mr. Obama’s inauguration, a practice that had dwindled in the previous administration.

In July, moreover, the division’s acting head, Loretta King, sent a memorandum to every federal agency urging more aggressive enforcement of regulations that forbid recipients of taxpayer money from policies that have a disparate impact on minorities.

The division has also lifted Bush-era rules that some career staff members saw as micromanagement or impediments, like restrictions on internal communications and a ban on front-line career lawyers’ making recommendations on whether to approve proposed changes to election laws.

Other changes from the Bush years may be harder to roll back. The division’s downgrading of the New Black Panther Party charges, which were filed in the final days of the Bush administration, has had rippling consequences. It apparently prompted Senate Republicans to put a hold on President Obama’s nominee to lead the division as assistant attorney general for civil rights, Thomas Perez.

The delay in Mr. Perez’s arrival, in turn, is stalling plans to review section managers installed by the Bush team, including several regarded with suspicion by civil rights advocacy groups. Under federal law, top-level career officials may not be transferred to other positions for the first 120 days after a new agency head is confirmed.

Bush-era changes to the division’s permanent rank may also have lingering effects. From 2003 to 2007, Bush political appointees blocked liberals from career jobs and promotions, which they steered to fellow conservatives, whom one such official privately described as “real Americans,” a department inspector general report found. The practice, which no previous administration had done, violated civil service laws, it said.

As morale plunged among veterans, turnover accelerated. The Obama transition team’s confidential report on the division, obtained by The New York Times, says 236 civil rights lawyers left from 2003 to 2007. (The division has about 350 lawyers.)

Many of their replacements had scant civil rights experience and were graduates of lower-ranked law schools. The transition report says the era of hiring such “inexperienced or poorly qualified” lawyers — who are now themselves protected by civil service laws — has left lasting damage.

“While some of the political hires have performed competently and a number of others have left, the net effect of the politicized hiring process and the brain drain is an attorney work force largely ill-equipped to handle the complex, big-impact litigation that should comprise a significant part” of the division’s docket, the transition report said.

At the end of the Bush administration, the attorney general at the time, Michael B. Mukasey, began to make changes intended to reduce political influence over entry-level career lawyer hiring. The Civil Rights Division is now seeking to expand those changes.

It is developing a new hiring policy under which panels of career employees — not political appointees — would decide both whom to hire and to promote for positions from interns to veteran lawyers. The policy could be completed as early as this month.

“We wanted to create a very transparent policy that will stand the test of time and ensure that we hire the best and brightest,” said Mark Kappelhoff, a longtime civil rights lawyer who is the division’s acting principal deputy assistant attorney general.

Some conservatives are skeptical that such a policy will keep politics out of hiring, however. Robert Driscoll, a division political appointee from 2001 to 2003, said career civil rights lawyers are “overwhelmingly left-leaning” and will favor liberals.

“If you are the Obama administration and you allow the career staff to do all the hiring, you will get the same people you would probably get if you did it yourself,” he said. “In some ways, it’s a masterstroke by them.”

Mr. Holder has elsewhere called for social changes with civil rights overtones, like the passage of a federal hate-crimes law, the elimination of the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine and greater financing for indigent defense.

By contrast, he described his Civil Rights Division efforts as more restoration than change. The recent moves, he argued, are a return to its basic approach under presidents of both parties — despite some policy shifts between Republican and Democratic administrations — before the “sea change” and “aberration” of the Bush years.

“Of course there are going to be critics,” Mr. Holder said. But, he argued, “any objective observer” would see the recent approach as consistent with “the historical mission of the division, not straying into some kind of liberal orthodoxy. It really is just a function of enforcing the statutes.”

Recovering Opportunity

Alan Jenkins | August 17, 2009

When he signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) -- the economic stimulus package -- President Barack Obama promised it would "begin the process of restoring the economy and making America a stronger and more prosperous nation." The act invests some $787 billion in unemployment assistance, tax cuts, support to cash-strapped state governments, job creation, job training, education, and infrastructure.

Less noticed but just as important is the act's commitment to securing more equitable opportunity for all Americans. In its text and in its implementation, the act holds the potential for a transformative shift toward greater equity in our economy. But fulfilling the potential of this little-noticed mission of equal opportunity will require vigilance, activism, and innovation.

With an African American president, it is tempting to think that racial and ethnic barriers to opportunity are largely a thing of the past. More prominent in progressive circles is the idea that modern racial inequality flows almost entirely from class inequality, and therefore class-based fixes will inevitably advance racial equity. Unfortunately, research and experience prove otherwise. While we've made significant progress in our country when it comes to race relations, racial barriers to opportunity continue to hold back millions of Americans and, in so doing, hurt our economy.

Consider, for example, the exploitative sub-prime lending practices at the heart of today's economic crisis. Federal data show that African Americans and Latinos were more likely to be marketed high-interest, sub-prime loans than were similarly qualified whites, irrespective of their income. Indeed, the racial gap in sub-prime lending was greatest among higher-income borrowers. This problem has both historical and contemporary causes -- from redlining and forced segregation in the past, to the paucity of banks in minority communities and discriminatory, predatory lending practices that continue today.

Similarly, research shows that people of color still face subtle but persistent bias in job selection. Resumés with "white sounding" names like Brad and Cindy, studies show, receive more callbacks from employers than do identical resumés with "black sounding" names like Jamal and Lakisha. Whether this discrimination springs from intentional bias or subconscious stereotypes, it's clear that these practices combine with systemic barriers like under-resourced schools, inadequate public transportation, and a dearth of health-care facilities in communities of color to diminish opportunity based on race.

Other systemic factors place particular racial and ethnic groups in a disadvantaged posture that warrants a more particularized approach. Federal mismanagement of American Indian trust funds, for example, has cost the native population billions of dollars. American Indian tribes also hold a sovereign status commensurate with the 50 states under our Constitution but have seen that sovereignty persistently ignored and eroded, with devastating economic consequences. In 2007, American Indians were three times as likely as whites to live in poverty. And unemployment rates on some reservations top 80 percent.

For these and other reasons, even the socioeconomic improvements of the boom years do not reliably translate to more equitable opportunity. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in May 2007, before the current economic downturn, the unemployment rate was 3.9 percent for whites, 5.8 percent for Latinos, and 8.5 percent for African Americans. All three figures roughly doubled over the next two years, but the racial gap remained about the same. The pre-recession economy also included stark racial inequality in wages and assets. In 2007, African Americans earned only 75 cents for every dollar earned by whites, and Latinos earned only 73 cents. Families of color held just 15 cents of "wealth" (assets minus debt) for every dollar held by white families, making it profoundly more difficult for them to survive a downturn without becoming further mired in debt.

Because we are all part of an interconnected economy, the need to address these gaps in opportunity is an economic as well as a moral imperative. The United States cannot stage a full or lasting recovery without addressing these gaps. Moreover, if the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act merely restores the economy to the inadequate and unequal conditions of 2007, the nation will remain on a long-term path toward sustained economic insecurity.

How can ARRA catalyze a period of greater and more equitable opportunity? The seeds are there, but they need cultivation and care.

First, a number of provisions in ARRA invest in initiatives that have proved over the years to serve all Americans while offering communities of color more access and opportunity. For example, the act invests in improving and expanding community health centers across the country. These centers are known for providing quality care to diverse and low-income communities, addressing cultural and language differences, and controlling costs. A robust system of community health centers in inner cities and rural areas can create jobs, improve health and productivity, and lower the daunting cost of care for diverse communities. Similarly, ARRA's $2 billion to expand Head Start and Early Head Start programs supports an initiative with a track record of serving all kids well and helping, in particular, to boost the preparedness and achievement of children of color. At the same time, it will create jobs in disadvantaged communities and aid working parents who cannot afford child care.

Second, the act recognizes that different communities may require different types of investment in economic participation. It shores up tribal governments and reservation communities -- just as it aids struggling state governments -- with investments in reservation roads and bridges, public transit, housing improvement, tribal law enforcement, and efforts to end violence against women.

Third, and perhaps most significantly, the White House has explicitly directed federal agencies distributing ARRA funds to uphold established equal-opportunity, anti-discrimination, and labor protections. That's a marked departure from the Bush administration, which sought to waive those provisions in Gulf Coast rebuilding efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

This body of protections cuts across employment, housing, education, transportation, criminal justice, and environmental protection, and mandates that the benefits and burdens of federally funded projects be nondiscriminatory in practice as well as intent. It requires equal opportunity based on race, ethnicity, and, in some sectors, gender, religion, age, language ability, disability, and familial status. (Protections based on sexual orientation remain a gaping hole in existing equal-opportunity laws.)

Yet there is no certainty that the promise of an equitable recovery will be realized. Doing so requires transparency, coordination, and political will.

Watchdog groups have noted the lack of practical transparency surrounding stimulus spending. That is especially true regarding the information necessary to assess and ensure equal opportunity. Although the president promised in signing the ARRA that "the federal government will be held to new standards of transparency and accountability," spending decisions on the ground have proved very difficult for affected communities to track or participate in. The federal government's economic recovery Web site, Recovery.gov, contains some useful bits of information -- for example, the fact that $72 million has been allocated to improve public housing in Louisiana and $441 million disbursed by the Department of Transportation as of June. But it lacks the specificity, demographic, or geographic disaggregation necessary to assess the impact of ARRA investments on greater opportunity. State and municipal stimulus tracking sites vary widely in information and transparency, and few if any provide adequate data or analysis.

While the nation's equal-opportunity laws are well established, the infrastructure for monitoring and enforcing them is badly atrophied after a decade of neglect by the prior administration. And truly effective interagency coordination of those laws has been lacking since, at least, the Nixon administration. Experience shows that without monitoring, technical assistance, and rigorous enforcement, the opportunities and burdens created by ARRA projects will not be equitable. Rather, as we saw in the flawed rebuilding of the Gulf Coast, they are likely to deepen existing patterns of inequality. In doing so, they will fail to achieve the robust and lasting economic recovery that is ARRA's chief goal.

Finally, equitable implementation will require mustering significant public and political will. Contemporary barriers to equal opportunity are not well understood by the public, and few states or municipalities have a robust system for addressing them. Entrenched special interests and political influence may overtake fairness in funding decisions. And investment targeted toward disadvantaged communities may draw conservative backlash.

Despite these challenges, there are a range of things that the president, Congress, state and local officials, and civil society can do to promote a widely shared economic recovery.

The president should immediately integrate equal-opportunity monitoring and coordinated enforcement measures into the administration's stimulus implementation. An interagency task force could establish a protocol for collecting data on the distribution of funds by geography, race, gender, and other demographics, monitor projects on the ground, and provide technical assistance to federal-fund recipients to encourage their compliance. Requiring Opportunity Impact Statements from funding applicants can help to quickly select among shovel-ready projects and incorporate public input.

The White House must also greatly improve Recovery.gov by providing more project-specific and demographic data, as well as information on the equity measures attached to approved projects. And the president must use the bully pulpit, as he did so eloquently during the campaign, to explain to Americans why equal opportunity is crucial to our shared prosperity.

Congress should provide rigorous oversight of stimulus spending as it relates to equal opportunity and require regular reporting by the White House. It should also close gaps in existing law by prohibiting employment discrimination based on sexual orientation and restoring individuals' ability to challenge discriminatory policies in court.

State, municipal, and tribal governments should adopt public equal -- opportunity policies, detailing how they'll ensure equitable benefits and burdens from stimulus-funded projects. They should seek public input on spending decisions, engage community groups in implementation, and report their impact, including the facts and data behind them.

Nonprofit organizations also have an important role to play in monitoring stimulus spending, holding local governments accountable to equal-opportunity standards, providing job training and other support services, and helping to shape projects that can expand opportunity for all.

In order to be successful, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act must not only stimulate the economy but also instigate a new era of opportunity. While the law itself provides an important starting point, the hard part lies ahead.

Fighting for Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia

By Wajeha Al-Huwaider
Sunday, August 16, 2009

DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia Who is that woman who returns day after day to the border crossing, seeking to pass from Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, only to be turned away? She is me.

Who am I? A native of the city of Hufuf in eastern Saudi Arabia, where the world's best dates are grown, a 47-year-old divorced mother of two teenage sons, and an employee of the vast Saudi oil company, Saudi Aramco.

I am not a dangerous person, so why do they turn me away? Because I refuse to present a document signed by my male "guardian," giving his permission for me to travel. And why do I do that?

I possess such a document, but it is humiliating to have to produce it, and I am tired of being humiliated solely because I am a woman. So I have decided to try to leave my country without following the rules. I have urged other Saudi women to do likewise, and in recent weeks several have.

Everyone knows that women are denied rights in Saudi Arabia. And you may think that our fate is the same one that women in some other developing countries face, only a little worse. In truth, we endure a status that most Americans can scarcely imagine.

The guardianship rules are only part of a bigger system of subjugating women. Even with the permission of a guardian, a woman may not drive a car (except in some isolated rural areas and within the compounds that are home to many workers from Western countries). Obviously, there is nothing in the Koran that forbids driving. No, the reason we are not allowed to drive is that the power to transport ourselves would give men much less control over us.

So, one of my other campaigns has been for the right to drive. Last year on International Women's Day I posted a video on YouTube of myself driving a car. It was filmed by another woman sitting in the passenger's seat. I explained that many Saudi women who have lived abroad have driver's licenses from other countries and would be happy to volunteer to teach our sisters how to drive. (That way they would not have to be alone in a car with a male driving instructor, lest terrible things happen.) This video has received more than 181,000 hits.

Earlier this year, while visiting my two sons at boarding school in Virginia (I send them there because I do not want them to grow up to be typical Saudi men), I staged a demonstration in front of a car dealership in Woodbridge. I addressed a message to U.S. automakers: Saudi women want to buy your cars (and many can afford to). But first, you must support our fight for the right to drive.

Women in Saudi Arabia may not go out without an abaya, an ugly black cloak that we have to wear on top of our regular clothes. You can imagine how great that feels in 100-degree heat. Saudi men, on the other hand, always wear white. In 2006, I dressed in pink when I staged a one-person protest march. It was the anniversary of the ascent of King Abdullah to the throne. By Saudi standards, Abdullah is a liberal, but he has not done nearly enough to change our situation. So I made a simple sign: "Give women their rights."

I started in Bahrain. I had a taxi drive me to the border. After crossing to the Saudi side I pulled out my sign and marched along the causeway from the island nation to the Saudi mainland. After 20 minutes, a police car pulled up and officers arrested me. After a day of interrogation in the police station, the cops were prepared to release me. But of course they couldn't release me into my own custody. I had to phone my younger brother to come act as my guardian.

Women are not allowed to participate in sports. How could you in an abaya? When I was very young, I was a tomboy. I loved to ride a bike, which my mother allowed, although most girls are forbidden because this activity might cost them their "virginity" by rupturing the hymen. When I was 7, my teacher tied my legs and beat me with a stick when she learned that I had been playing soccer with boys. Then she made me sit at my desk all day, without going to the bathroom or getting a drink of water.

While women are forced to be entirely dependent on men, men are allowed to follow their whims. A woman can get a divorce, but only by going through a laborious legal procedure in religious court. However, a man can divorce his wife merely by saying "I divorce you" three times. Although this is an ancient practice, these days the clerical authorities are debating whether the man has to say this in person, or if a text message will suffice. Already a judge in Jiddah has approved the first case of text-message divorce. The man was in Iraq to participate in jihad.

It's also legal for men to marry girls as young as 7 and 8 years old. I have campaigned on behalf of an 8-year-old girl who was married off to a 50-year-old man. I posted a video on YouTube against child marriages, showing little girls and teenagers voicing their refusal to be child brides. The video was covered by local female writers, then picked up by CNN. This campaign terminated that marriage, and the little girl is free.

Several months ago, the Saudi minister of justice announced plans to ban child marriages, but nothing has happened. A few days ago a 70-year-old man married a 9-year-old girl in Jiddah. Her father technically sold his daughter for $4,000. The day after the wedding night, the little girl was missing. She was found by her brother in a candy shop where she used to go to buy sweets.

Then there's polygamy. Saudi men are allowed to marry as many as four wives. Polygamy has destroyed many families. In my campaigns, I often feel that I am fighting for my mom.

After she married my father, she was informed by his mother that he already had another wife. When my mother confronted him, he assured her that she was his favorite and promised to divorce the first woman. For a time my mom was happy. But after a few years, she learned that my father had taken another wife. Now, my mom was no longer the favorite.

I was luckier than many. I married for love, and my former husband still holds a place in my heart, but we are no longer together. After the attacks on America in 2001, the Saudi government was embarrassed by the role of its citizens in this violence. To try to improve our country's image, the government liberalized slightly. I had been posting comments about women's rights on various Web sites, and I was invited to write a weekly column in al Watan, the nation's largest newspaper. Then, the English-language Arab News also wanted my work.

My husband chafed at my high profile, and he complained about the demands on my time. One day he announced that he was marrying a second wife. Although he swore that I was the most important one, I had watched my mother waste her life. I demanded a divorce.

My time in the limelight lasted only a year before the Saudi censors banned me. The authorities never communicated this to me directly, but one by one the editors of each publication rejected my pieces.

There are many Saudi women whose lives are marred far more than mine. Fatima Al-Azaz, for example, was lucky enough to marry for love, but her half-brothers decided that her husband's social standing was too low, so they persuaded a religious court to divorce them. The couple cannot ignore the divorce order because here people can be whipped, imprisoned and even executed for contact with someone of the opposite sex who is not their spouse or a relative. Still, Al-Azaz tried to return to her husband. To prevent that, she was first imprisoned for nine months together with her infant, then released to a women's shelter where her movements are restricted.

Or consider the story of Jamila, a wife of a relative. The eldest of 18 children by four wives of a poor date-farmer, Jamila completed high school with outstanding grades. Soon after graduation, her father agreed to marry her to a man from the city.

Jamila traveled with her mother to the city, where she met her husband for the first time on their wedding night. He turned out to be mentally disturbed. She pleaded with her mother to take her back home. Then Jamila was pushed into a room with her new "guardian," who consummated their union forcefully, while she screamed and pled for mercy.

One of my protest-video campaigns that did not succeed was a plan to post filmed testimony by women like Jamila. We were able to make one or two videos, but I found that even with their faces hidden, most Saudi women who have suffered are afraid to speak about it publicly.

There are women who don't support our cause -- rich ones whose husbands benefit from the system, and religious ones who just don't believe in change.

Why am I different? I am not sure. Perhaps because as a Shiite (who make up 10 percent of the Saudi population) I have always been somewhat marginalized. Perhaps because my mother, unlike most others, allowed me to play soccer with the boys, and I've always felt equal to them. Perhaps because I have the security of working for Aramco, the giant government oil company which depends on its largely Western workforce and therefore functions as an enclave of relative liberalism. Perhaps because I went to college in America and got to experience a life in which women are treated as people, not property.

wajeha4@gmail.com

Wajeha Al-Huwaider, a writer and an activist, is a co-founder of the Society for Defending Women's Rights in Saudi Arabia.

Indian Actor's Questioning at Airport Draws Criticism

By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, August 16, 2009

NEW DELHI, Aug. 15 -- One of India's biggest movie stars said he was detained and questioned at Newark Liberty International Airport early Saturday, causing outrage across his home country and reigniting discussion of the hardships many Indians say they face while traveling abroad.

Shah Rukh Khan, 43, known here as the King of Bollywood, was on his way to Chicago for a parade later Saturday to mark India's Independence Day when immigration officials at Newark pulled him aside and interrogated him. The star of scores of top-grossing films was released after Indian consular officials vouched for him.

"I was really hassled -- perhaps because of my name being Khan," he said in a text message to reporters in India. "These guys just wouldn't let me through."

Khan recently finished a shoot in the United States for his upcoming film, "My Name Is Khan," which happens to be about a Muslim's harrowing experience with racial profiling. Khan told reporters that in real life he "felt angry and humiliated."

Jen Friedberg, a spokeswoman for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the airport, said the agency did not request that Khan be detained, the Associated Press reported.

A spokesman for the U.S. Bureau of Customs and Border Protection said Khan was questioned for 66 minutes as part of the agency's routine process to screen foreign travelers and was not detained, the AP reported.

The incident followed another recent example of an Indian coming under suspicion for what talk show pundits here call "flying while brown." Last month, Continental Airlines apologized to former Indian president Abdul Kalam for frisking him at the New Delhi airport.

News of Khan's detention broke on a day of national pride, marked by parades, family picnics and girls wearing bangles in green and orange -- the colors of the Indian flag. News channels aired nonstop coverage of Khan's troubles, along with reactions from Bollywood A-listers, civil rights officials and security experts, some of whom defended the questioning in a post-9/11 world.

U.S. Ambassador to India Timothy J. Roemer released a statement Saturday saying the American government was "trying to ascertain the facts of the case -- to understand what took place."

"Shah Rukh Khan, the actor and global icon, is a very welcome guest in the United States. Many Americans love his films," Roemer said.

India's information and broadcasting minister, Ambika Soni, suggested that Americans should be treated the way Khan was when they arrive in India.

"There have been too many instances like these in the U.S. concerning Indians," Soni said on television.

Actress Priyanka Chopra, a friend of Khan's, expressed on Twitter a widely held view: "Its such behavior that fuels hatred n racism. SRK's a world figure for Gods sake. GET REAL!!" But not everyone appeared upset.

Meghnad Desai, an Indian-born economist, member of Britain's House of Lords and author of books on Indian cinema and globalization, joked in an interview in New Delhi that the whole thing seemed like a publicity stunt for Khan's new film.

"The U.S. government was an inadvertent accomplice to 20th Century Fox, which is investing millions in this movie," he said.

"This was a no-no for India-U.S. relations."

Wikipedia entry - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahrukh_Khan

Cambodia: ‘AIDS Colony’ Violates Rights

July 28, 2009

The Cambodian government should urgently address dangerous conditions in a de facto AIDS colony it has created and immediately stop sending HIV-affected families there, more than 100 international HIV/AIDS and social justice organizations and experts said in a joint letter delivered on July 27, 2009 to Cambodia's prime minister and health minister.

In June 2009, the Cambodian government forcibly relocated 20 HIV-affected families living in Borei Keila, a housing development in Phnom Penh, to substandard housing at Tuol Sambo, a remote site 25 kilometers from the city. Another 20 families were moved there on July 23. The families were resettled into crude, green metal sheds that are baking hot in the daytime and lack running water and adequate sanitation. Just meters away, higher-quality brick housing is being built, with the assistance of a nonprofit group, for other homeless families slated for resettlement at Tuol Sambo. Even before the HIV-affected families were resettled at the site, local people referred to the green sheds as "the AIDS village."

"By bundling people living with HIV together into second-rate housing, far from medical facilities, support services, and jobs, the government has created a de facto AIDS colony," said Shiba Phurailatpam of the Asia-Pacific Network of People Living with HIV/AIDS. "It's hard to understand how a government that has received international recognition for its HIV-prevention efforts could so callously ignore the basic rights of people living with HIV."

Dozens of organizations and individuals based in the Asia-Pacific region signed the letter, joined by groups and individuals from many nations, ranging from Canada and the United States to India and Tanzania.

The letter stresses that conditions at Tuol Sambo do not meet minimum international standards for even temporary emergency housing. The shelters are flanked by open sewers, with only one public well for all of the relocated families. They are crowded into the poorly ventilated metal sheds, where the afternoon heat is so intense they often cannot remain in their rooms, and they fear their antiretroviral (ARV) medication will deteriorate.

"The housing conditions in Tuol Sambo pose serious health risks for families living there," said Rebecca Schleifer, health and human rights advocate at Human Rights Watch. "People living with HIV have compromised immune systems and are especially vulnerable. For them, these substandard conditions can mean a death sentence or a ticket to a hospital."

The organizations also expressed deep concern about discrimination against HIV-affected families in the screening and allocation process for on-site replacement housing being built at Borei Keila. After two years of denying eligibility to HIV-affected families for this housing, the authorities have now said that at least 11 HIV-affected families previously slated to be sent to Tuol Sambo are in fact eligible. Those families remain at Borei Keila, but are still waiting for the housing they have been promised.

Increasing property values in Cambodia's capital city have left thousands of urban poor people vulnerable to forced evictions to make way for commercial development. The development of the Borei Keila site was approved in 2003 with the understanding that the developer would build new housing on site for those displaced by the project. With few exceptions, however, the HIV-affected families thus far displaced have not even been screened for eligibility for this housing.

When living at Borei Keila, these people worked as day laborers, motorcycle taxi drivers, cleaners, and seamstresses. Now, most have no prospects of work at or near Tuol Sambo. Their economic situation is worsened by the fact that a return trip to Phnom Penh to go to work or to visit hospitals costs the equivalent of about US$5 - for families who earn only $1.50 to $3 a day.

"The Cambodian government needs to establish a fair and open process for all to receive the housing and services they need," said Kevin Moody of The Global Network of People living with HIV (GNP+). "People living with HIV - like all others - need adequate living conditions that do not threaten their health and a way to earn a livelihood, so that they can provide for themselves and their families. Grouping families affected by HIV in this way exposes them to further stigma and discrimination; steps must be taken to end this discrimination now."

The groups called on the Cambodian government to:

• Cease moving HIV-affected families to the Tuol Sambo site;
• Improve conditions at Tuol Sambo to meet minimum standards for adequate shelter, sanitation, and clean water;
• Ensure full access to quality medical services, including antiretroviral treatment, treatment of opportunistic infections, primary health care and home-based care;
• Work with relevant agencies and consult with the families already at Tuol Sambo to address immediate and long-term concerns regarding housing, health, safety, and employment, and reintegration into society in a manner that protects their rights and livelihoods; and
• Employ a transparent and fair screening process to determine eligibility for on-site housing at Borei Keila, and allow eligible families to move in immediately (including the 11 HIV-affected families already approved). For those found ineligible, authorities should provide other adequate housing.

"Living with HIV with dignity means more than just ARVs," said Aditi Sharma of the International Treatment Preparedness Coalition. "It means these families should have a healthy environment with adequate nutrition, proper sanitation and a continuum of care that addresses the social, psychological, legal, and economic consequences of living with HIV."

"The Last Resistance Generation": The Reintegration and Transformation of Freedom Fighters to Civilians in Timor-Leste

PAPER PRESENTED AT THE RMIT UNIVERSITY ‘HARII NASAUN IHA TIMOR-LESTE URBANU NO RURAL’ CONFERENCE, DILI, 8-10 JULY 2009.

Based on the research paper, ‘Forgotten Heroes or Bandidos? Timor Leste’s High Risk Youth: The long road to stability.’ [Sousa-Santos, draft, July 2009].

Contact Details: jss@sc-et.com

The Last Resistance Generation’:

The Reintegration and Transformation of Freedom Fighters to Civilians in Timor-Leste[1]

Jose Kai Lekke Sousa-Santos

The process of nationbuilding is a notoriously exclusive exercise despite the often used, but ill-exercised catch-cry ‘principle of participation’. The reality tends to be that the best intentions of the members of the international community often create an environment in which elements of the new society are often sequestered to the margins. In the case of Timor-Leste, these elements are mostly comprised of the last generation of freedom fighters to form the resistance movement and armed struggle against the Indonesian occupation. Referred to here as ‘the last resistance generation,’ this paper advances the argument that the failure to reintegrate and transform elements of this young demographic – many of whom are disenfranchised, unemployed, and poorly educated – has been a critical but not unforseen oversight of ten years of nationbuilding.

The failure to reintegrate and transform the last resistance generation is a paramount issue which continues to be, and has the potential to remain, in the worst case scenario, one of the central pillars or dynamics of instability in the process of nationbuilding and security sector reform(SSR). On the other hand, the best case scenario is that this issue will remain a fundamental socio-economic challenge to current and future leaders which will be responsible with the critical tasks of addressing the challenges of nation and statebuilding in a complex state such as Timor Leste. This paper examines the lack of a holistic approach addressing the reintegration and transformation of former informal and formal resistance groups leading to the marginalisation and disenfranchisement of this significant demographic, . This paper also highlights past and current state and international initiatives to reintegrate former recognized independence fighters into society, as well as unrecognized or uncategorized members of the resistance movement and also explores methods to positively transform, and engage this invaluable albeit potentially destabilising demographic.

A large number of these individuals and groups gained international notoriety as a consequence of the 2006 crisis. An underlying theme of this paper – in the words of one such prominent figure, “are we forgotten heroes or bandidos? And if they continue to call us bandidos, we will show them bandidos.” Unfortunately due to the attitudes sometimes shown by the international security forces, United Nations Police, and certain INGOs, the inadvertent demonization of these former heroes of the struggle for independence continues to occur and entrenches this culture of marginalisation.

Ten Years On

Timor-Leste now faces the same central predicament that most nations emerging out of war or civil strife experience: how does the state integrate those who fought or actively supported the struggle for independence and self-determination. Ten years of internationally managed or assisted initiatives, have yet to resolve this fundamental issue. Key grievances arisen from this demographic remain only partially addressed. Many of the youth who fought or were actively engaged in the struggle for independence – the last resistance generation– remain unacknowledged and are not included or able to fully participate in the economic, educational and state development accessible to many. This is mainly due to the traumatic factors which these young men and women faced during the Indonesian occupation from 1975-99. Moreover, during the ten years since the referendum, the opinions and solutions espoused by many well-meaning countries, humanitarian agencies, and international NGOs, on how to build the national security infrastructure,[2] have failed to fully take into account the historical and socio- cultural complexities. Hundreds of thousands of dollars and countless man-hours have been spent addressing the issue of security sector reform as part of the broader nationbuilding exercise – issues deemed by international stakeholders as paramount to the future stability of an emerging democracy in Timor-Leste. This paper does not advocate an across-the-board identification or solution to all these problems but rather seeks to address one of the key topics which, Timorese NGOs[3] advocating for disenfranchised youth and disaffected groups have red flagged as one of the few critical issues yet to be addressed and resolved.

The Marginalisation and Disenfranchisement of the ‘Last Resistance Generation’

Comprising what is termed here as ‘the last resistance generation,’ are a complex mix of countless remnants consisting of young former FALINTIL fighters; ritual arts groups and semi religious sects, of secret societies and clandestine youth cells incorporated into the structures of martial arts organisations. All were critical components of the resistance and independence movement which now ten years on from the referendum, continue to struggle with issues regarding cultural and national identity, deep-seated trauma, the loss associated with no longer fulfilling a vital role in society, and a fundamental sense of not belonging in mainstream civil society. The ongoing marginalisation of the last resistance generation by – and from - the process of nationbuilding underway in Timor-Leste since 1999, reflects a failure to genuinely acknowledge and address the historical role that many young Timorese played in the fight for independence, and threatens to undermine contemporary statebuilding efforts. The issue of marginalisation and disenfranchisement is by no means exclusive to this category. However, the inclusion, meaning participation and not just representation, of the last resistance generation, is of critical concern in the context of both security sector reform and national development.

The last resistance generation which played such a critical role during the final years of the struggle for independence now feel marginalised and/or discriminated against due to the lack of recognition for both their roles and involvement during the resistance leading to a loss of opportunities in education and socio-economic prosperity. A singularly common denominator – and occasionally unifying factor - amongst the majority of individuals and elements within these groups scattered throughout urban and rural Timor-Leste is the poverty of opportunity they have experienced and an overriding sense of not belonging. It is of no coincidence that a proportion within these groups are well-represented by a frequently quoted and critically important demographic fact: the largest demographic within Timor-Leste’s population is our youth and up to two-thirds of Timorese youth are either directly involved with or affiliated to martial arts, ritual arts or disaffected groups. This demographic combined – this last resistance generation – is potentially volatile as demonstrated during the 2006 crisis and presents an uncompromising security landscape which needs to be understood and engaged with by stakeholders, not demonised or further marginalised. This militaristic and often feared demographic should and could become Timor-Leste’s greatest resource.

Early DDRR Initiative

Despite early efforts in disarmament, demobilisation, reintegration and rehabilitation (DDRR) programmes, many young former FALINTIL remain at the margins of society. Over 1000 former FALINTIL fighters went through the reintegration program, but thousands of others remained dissatisfied with their treatment and the manner in which the new army had been established.[4] In 2001 this dissatisfaction led to the creation of a number of veterans’ organisations and riots in December 2002.[5] Former FALINTIL fighters under the age of 35 who do not qualify to be considered as veterans under current government legislation are to a large extent uneducated, lacking in vocational skills, and suffering from extensive post-traumatic stress disorder. For instance, young former FALINTIL fighters who were not integrated into the newly-formed defence or police forces mainly due to high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and / or the lack of educational skills, such as literacy and numeracy, are relegated to accepting menial positions in the very State that they have sacrificed so much to create.

The FALINTIL Reinsertion Assistance Program or (FRAP) developed in 2000 under the UNTAET administration attempted to assist in the social and economic reintegration into civilian society of the 1,308 guerrilla fighters not selected to join the new East Timor Defence Force. Although a package consisting of: transport to their host communities; a transitional safety net of USD$500.00 provided over a 5 month period; a reintegration package or income generating activity; training; as well as job and medical referrals, it was not a long-term solution but rather provided initial support to the former combatants and did not engage or guarantee participation in the broader nation-building process.[6]

The Alkatiri / Fretilin Government created a secretary of state for veteran’s affairs and undertook the registering of veterans with the intention of granting pensions.[7] The caveat, however, is that only 350 veterans with service of fifteen years or more will receive monthly payments of calculated at USD$407 ($100 more a month than the public service salary). Veterans who have served eight to fourteen years only become eligible to receive a pension after the age of fifty-five. For many young fighters experiencing difficulties in accessing employment, education and vocational training, feel this to be unjust and discriminatory.

The transition from combatant life to civilian is shaped by context and it is arguable that for the transition, and therefore reintegration and transformation, to have a lasting impact, the unique cultural, historical, and social fabric and context of Timor-Leste must be an integral part of any strategy that seeks to address this issue. Particularly, the role of traditional leadership and power structures within Timor Leste, which comprises of large numbers of former combatants and clandestine elements – as central figures. The difficulties regarding the identification and validification of members of the clandestine movement has meant that as of yet there have been no similar programmes or initiatives to address and support the needs of these former clandestine elements and groups.

Former key elements of the independence movement such as formal and informal clandestine groups; ritual art groups; cells and elements within martial arts groups are at risk of morphing into disenfranchised and violent armed groups, organised criminal elements, and / or guns for hire.

Trauma and A Sense of Not Belonging = Violence and Instability

One of the critical and largely unaddressed consequences of the occupation is the widespread trauma experienced by those engaged both directly and indirectly in the struggle. Severe and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder has led to the elements who have contributed to the struggle being left at a disadvantage as opposed to the youth demographic which was not involved in the struggle for independence and was able to pursue and access a semi-normal life, for example, through educational, employment, and health care opportunities. Access to opportunities has better enabled this demographic to more easily integrate into an independent Timor-Leste and thereby overcome a certain level of trauma. Those who have little or no experience beyond the jungle and minimal opportunity to develop their skills beyond that of guerrilla warfare, civil disturbances, and the instigation of instability during the occupation, now find themselves within a vacuum regarding their identity, skill-sets, and a place and means in which to contribute to a now independent Timor-Leste. The lack of opportunity and sense of not belonging compounded by post-traumatic stress disorder can manifest in deep-seated resentment which will continue to maintain the availability of these groups as a source of political and civil instability.

A Source of Instability: Alternative Security Structures

The reintegration and transformation of young resistance veterans – including both FALINTIL and clandestine - into mainstream society is an essential component of nationbuilding and the mitigation of future conflict. It is of little coincidence that a number of the martial arts and ritual arts groups involved in the 2006-07 violence have their origins in the clandestine and guerrilla movement. Strong affiliations to both of the respective national security institutions – the F-FDTL and PNTL – as well as political parties and / or economic elites further necessitates the need for a comprehensive and holistic understanding and approach to transform past security and clandestine structures into the state apparatus. Due to their moral authority and legitimacy established during the occupation, many of these groups pose a challenge – and legitimate alternative - to state authority, specifically to the security sector and administrative institutions at the local and national levels.

Where to from here?

The approach advocated in this paper is a far more holistic, comprehensive, and socially appropriate approach that challenges those involved in SSR – the Government, the United Nations, international security stakeholders and INGOs– to engage this demographic not only in discussion but also into the security sector reform and nationbuilding process itself. Programmes initiated by local Timorese NGOs such as Uma Juventude, Ba Futuru, and many others, where selected young leaders from groups such as(7-7, 5-5, 3-3, 12-12, Fitar bua Malus, PSHT, KORK, Colimau Duah Ribuh and Sagrada Familia as well as Former FALINTIL fighters under the age of 35) were given the opportunity to engage in intensive training in conflict mediation, peacebuilding, and nationbuilding techniques, after completion of the programs the majority of participants have shown their effectiveness as agents of conflict mediation and change both at the grass-roots and national levels.

Academics and practitioners alike need to think outside the box and utilise programmes such as those conducted within the region in response to conflict in Bougainville and the Solomons Islands which gave young combatants the opportunity to experience possibilities beyond the jungle.

For instance, in response to the protracted civil war in Bougainville, the New Zealand Government invited leaders from the two warring factions from Bougainville on a study-tour of New Zealand where they were able to meet with Maori representatives and discuss traditional methods of maintaining nationhood and identity within a modern democratic state.

This eventuated in a change of attitudes on the part of the leaders of these warring factions, created bonds and understanding between the leaders based on mutual experience, and opened their eyes to the possibilities and benefits of dealing with long-standing conflicts and animosity through peaceful means within cultures similar to their own. This enabled Bougainvilleans to then peaceably address the long-standing self-determination movement between the Bougainvillean people and the Papua New Guinean state.

It is critical for the future peace and stability of Timor-Leste that all stakeholders involved in security sector reform – from the Timorese Government to the United Nations and all in between – that increased engagement with the last resistance generation is prioritised as it this group who themselves hold both the answers and the key to long-term security and stability in Timor Leste.

Selected References

International Crisis Group, ‘Timor-Leste: Security Sector Reform,’ Crisis Group Asia Report No 143, 17 January 2008.

King’s College of London, ‘Independent Study of Security Force Options and Security Sector Reform for East Timor,’ The Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College, London, September 2000.

McCarthy, John, ‘Falintil Reinsertion Assistance Program (FRAP), A Final Evaluation Report,’ (USAID: Dili, East Timor), June 2002.

Rees, Edward, ‘The UN’s failure to integrate FALINTIL veterans may cause East Timor to fail,’ Online Opinion Australia, 2 September 2003

Sousa-Santos, Jose, ‘Forgotten Heroes or Bandidos? The Last Resistance Generation of Timor-Leste’ [draft research paper], July 2009.

Sydney Morning Herald, ‘East Timor at flashpoint as disillusionment sets in,’ 14 December 2002.


[1] This paper was presented at the RMIT University‘Harii Nasaun iha Timor-Leste Urbanu no Rural’ conference, Dili, 8-10 July 2009, and is based on the research paper, ‘Forgotten Heroes or Bandidos? Timor Leste’s High Risk Youth: The long road to stability.’ [Sousa-Santos, draft, July 2009].

[2] The earliest and most influential of which was the King’s College of London, ‘Independent Study of Security Force Options and Security Sector Reform for East Timor,’ The Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College, London, September 2000. For a recent critique of security sector reform initiatives, see International Crisis Group, ‘Timor-Leste: Security Sector Reform,’ Crisis Group Asia Report No 143, 17 January 2008.

[3] Such as the national NGO Uma Juventude

[4] For a critical evaluation of the Falintil Reinsertion Assistance Program, see John McCarthy, Falintil Reinsertion Assistance Program (FRAP), A Final Evaluation Report, (USAID: Dili, East Timor), June 2002.

[5] ‘East Timor at flashpoint as disillusionment sets in,’ Sydney Morning Herald, 14 December 2002.

[6] John McCarthy, Falintil Reinsertion Assistance Program (FRAP), A Final Evaluation Report, (USAID: Dili, East Timor), June 2002, ibid. See also, Edward Rees, ‘The UN’s failure to integrate FALINTIL veterans may cause East Timor to fail,’ Online Opinion Australia, 2 September 2003.

[7] International Crisis Group (2003), ‘Timor-Leste: Security Sector Reform,’ p.20.

Judge Says New York Is Unfair to Minority Firefighter Recruits

By DIANE CARDWELL

New York City used tests that discriminated against black and Hispanic applicants to the Fire Department and had little relation to firefighting, a federal judge in Brooklyn ruled on Wednesday, dealing a blow to the administration of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.

“These examinations unfairly excluded hundreds of qualified people of color from the opportunity to serve as New York City firefighters,” wrote Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, referring to two tests administered in 1999 and 2002.

The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 2007 after a federal complaint by the Vulcan Society, an association of black firefighters, led to an investigation into the Fire Department’s hiring practices.

The judge said he would determine later what remedies to require of the city. They could include payment of lost wages, retroactive seniority for some minority employees and affirmative action hiring. Noting that the court had ruled against the city in past decades in lawsuits brought over its hiring practices, Judge Garaufis wrote that even as the city’s black and Hispanic population had increased, “the overwhelmingly monochromatic composition of the F.D.N.Y. has stubbornly persisted.”

Like firefighting forces in several other big cities, New York’s has remained disproportionately white, despite pressures and efforts to diversify. According to the city’s Law Department, at the end of May, roughly 3 percent of the 11,529 firefighters were black, and about 6 percent were Hispanic. Federal census estimates put each group at roughly 27 percent of the city’s population.

“If there was any doubt that the city did have problems with its hiring process, it’s now been decided that in fact they do,” said Darius Charney of the Center for Constitutional Rights, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs. “Now it’s hard for them to argue that they in fact are not discriminating.”

But city lawyers argue that the suit covers only tests no longer in use, and that their recent efforts to integrate the department are bearing fruit.

“Through extensive and persistent outreach, the F.D.N.Y. increased the number of minorities who took and passed the firefighter exams,” Georgia Pestana, chief of the Law Department’s labor and employment division, said in a statement.

Since the city began administering a new test in January 2007, the statement noted, racial minorities now comprise 38 percent of the candidates on the passing list; 33 percent of the top 4,000 on that list, who are most likely to be offered a job; and a third of the most recent graduating class of probationary firefighters.

It is unclear how a recent United States Supreme Court decision in a case from New Haven will shape efforts to determine a remedy. In that case, the court found that white firefighters who scored well on a promotional exam on which black firefighters had fared poorly were subjected to racial discrimination when the city threw out the results. Additionally, the court found that the possibility of a lawsuit from minority firefighters was not enough to justify ignoring the test results. That will make it harder for employers to discard results in the future, even if they have a disproportionately negative effect on members of a given racial group.

Last week, when Mr. Bloomberg testified at Senate confirmation hearings for Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee — who had joined a federal appeals court decision on the New Haven case that the Supreme Court ruling reversed — he volunteered his thoughts, saying that he disagreed with New Haven’s approach.

“I really do believe that that’s a better way to solve the diversity problem, which does affect an awful lot of fire departments around this country,” he said, “rather than throwing out tests and thereby penalizing those who passed the test.”

Judge Garaufis addressed the Supreme Court decision in his ruling, arguing that the New Haven case did not raise the legal question that the New York case did: whether the city’s use of the exams “actually had a disparate impact upon black and Hispanic applicants for positions as entry-level firefighters.”

Lawyers for the city did not say whether they would appeal the decision or seek a settlement, but if the ruling holds, the city could end up paying tens of millions of dollars, Mr. Charney said. The administration faces another phase in the suit to determine whether the discrimination was intentional, which could open the door to paying damages.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they hoped that the city would negotiate, and take the opportunity to diversify the force.

“I think this has the potential to very quickly change the demographics of the Fire Department, which has been something that’s been a long time coming,” said Dana Lossia, a lawyer for the Vulcan Society. “Really what this decision says is, the exams you were using don’t pick the best-qualified people. What they really don’t do is pick the people who would best protect the city.”

Malaysia Dilutes Its System of Ethnic Preferences

By THOMAS FULLER

BANGKOK — Najib Razak, Malaysia’s prime minister, announced Tuesday a major rollback in the system of ethnic preferences that has defined the country’s political system for almost four decades.

The new policy would severely weaken a requirement that companies reserve 30 percent of their shares for ethnic Malays, the country’s dominant ethnic group.

The 30-percent rule was once considered politically untouchable, and Mr. Najib described the change in policy as a “tricky balancing act.”

Malaysia has long given ethnic Malays and members of other indigenous ethnic groups — known as bumiputra, or sons of the soil — political and economic privileges. But that system has come under strain amid growing resentment by minority groups and poorer Malays.

The government offers bumiputra discounts on houses, scholarships and other perks. But some benefits, like government contracts and stock-market allocations, have been beyond the reach of working-class Malays.

Anger among Chinese and Indians, the country’s main minority groups, over the ethnic preferences was perhaps the main reason that the opposition made large gains in elections last year that nearly dismantled the governing coalition led by Mr. Najib’s party, the United Malays National Organization.

“We want to be fair to all communities,” Mr. Najib said in a speech in Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital. “No one must feel marginalized.”

Mr. Najib’s success in rolling back the ethnic preferences will depend in large part on his ability to hold together his coalition and fend off a resurgent opposition led by Anwar Ibrahim, a former finance minister.

Mr. Anwar, who leads a diverse group of opposition parties, has promised to undo the system of ethnic preferences.

By positioning himself as a reformer, Mr. Najib, who came to power in April, appears to be calculating that he can stave off opposition advances and be seen as an agent of change.

“The world is changing quickly, and we must be ready to change with it or risk being left behind,” he said Tuesday.

The change would leave some ethnic preferences intact and come with caveats. But it would dilute one of the most important components of what is known as the New Economic Policy, introduced in 1971: the requirement that companies listing on the stock exchange sell 30 percent of their shares to ethnic Malays.

That requirement was scrapped for companies already listed on the stock exchange and reduced to 12.5 percent for initial public offerings. The requirement will remain in place for “strategic industries” like telecommunications, water, ports and energy.

Mr. Najib also said he would lower barriers for foreign investors. The government would eliminate a special vetting process for foreign companies wanting to invest in, merge or take over a Malaysian company, he said.

“The global economic crisis is amplifying the need to be a preferred investment destination,” he added.

Malaysia’s trade-dependent economy is expected to contract by 5 percent this year.