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After 29 African countries of travel, I’ve heard it all. Tribes are useless. Kenyans are violent. Tanzanians are lazy. Nigerians are criminals. South Africans are racist. The DRC is too dangerous. Where is Namibia? All from the mouth of other Africans who have never been or even dreamed of going to the countries in question. We make all these definitive statements based on information filtered through an elitist and biased lens, that is comparing the worst of Africa with the best of the US or the UK. Africans are otherised, and we play along, forgetting that we are Africans too. Then we learn to hate ourselves and fear each other simply because the narrative tells us to.

“The most potent tool in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” The potency of this tool comes from its ability to skew our thinking and shape our actions. Like a child who, seeing shadows at night and believing that they are ghosts, cannot leave his bed to relieve himself, our irrational fear of each other is forcing us to sleep in the urine of lowered expectations and mutual suspicion.

So as I reflect on the state of African youth, it occurs to me that the biggest problem facing African youth today is not a lack of opportunity, or poverty, or whatever. Our biggest problem from where I stand is our inability to see ourselves with unfiltered honesty and a raw love.

Three people recounted how a Pacific Rim official boasted that cyanide was so safe that the official was willing to drink a glass of a favorite local beverage laced with the chemical. The official, we were told, backed down when community members insisted on authentication of the cyanide. “The company thought we’re just ignorant farmers with big hats who don’t know what we’re doing,” Miguel said. “But they’re the ones who are lying.”

Along one wall is the Salvadoran version of the US Vietnam Veterans Memorial, in this case etched with the names of about 30,000 of the roughly 75,000 killed in the civil war. Thousands of them, including the dozens killed in the Lempa River massacre of 1981, were victims of massacres perpetrated by the US-backed—often US-trained—government forces and the death squads associated with them.

Anti-mining sentiment was already so strong in 2009 that both the reigning ARENA president and the successful FMLN candidate, Mauricio Funes, came out against mining during the campaign.

We pushed further, trying to understand how a technical analysis could decide a matter with such high stakes. On the one hand, we posed to Duarte, gold’s price has skyrocketed from less than $300 an ounce a decade ago to more than $1,500 an ounce today, increasing the temptation in a nation of deep poverty to consider mining. We quoted former Salvadoran finance minister and Pacific Rim economic adviser Manuel Hinds, who said, “Renouncing gold mining would be unjustifiable and globally unprecedented.” On the other hand, we quoted the head of the human rights group and Roundtable member FESPAD, Maria Silvia Guillen: “El Salvador is a small beach with a big river that runs through it. If the river dies, the entire country dies.”

While he hoped this process would produce a consensus, Duarte admitted it was more likely the government and the firm would have to lay out “the interests of the majority,” after which the two ministries would then make their policy recommendation.

Oscar Luna, a former law professor and fierce defender of human rights—for which he too has received death threats. We asked Luna if he agreed with allegations that the killings in Cabañas were “assassinations organized and protected by economic and social powers.” Luna replied with his own phrasing: “There is still a climate of impunity in this country that we are trying to end.” He is pressing El Salvador’s attorney general to conduct investigations into the “intellectual” authors of the killings.

Our interactions in Cabañas and San Salvador left us appreciative of the new democratic space that strong citizen movements and a progressive presidential victory have opened up, yet aware of the fragility and complexities that abound. The government faces an epic decision about mining, amid deep divisions and with institutions of democracy that are still quite young. As Vidalina reminded us when we parted, the “complications” are even greater than what we found in Cabañas or in San Salvador, because even if the ban’s proponents eventually win, “these decisions could still get trumped in Washington.”

The brief methodically lays out how Canada-headquartered Pacific Rim first incorporated in the Cayman Islands to escape taxes, then brazenly lobbied Salvadoran officials to shape policies to benefit the firm, and only after that failed, in 2007 reincorporated one of its subsidiaries in the United States to use CAFTA to sue El Salvador.

Dozens of human rights, environmental and fair-trade groups across North America, from U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities and the Committee in Solidarity With the People of El Salvador (CISPES) to Oxfam, Public Citizen, Mining Watch and the Institute for Policy Studies, are pressuring Pacific Rim to withdraw the case.

Keck and Sikkink (1999) identify three categories of transnational actor, motivated either by (1) instrumental goals, for example transnational corporations and banks; (2) shared causal ideas, as in scientific groups or epistemic communities; or (3) shared principled ideas or values (Keck and Sikkink 1998).

This creates a perception that TANs are inherently public-interest oriented. However, Scholte (2004) argues that the involvement of such coalitions in global policy is not necessarily benign. Such movements can also reflect coercive power structures, claim authority without representation, and may promote harmful, unhealthy, undemocratic or oppressive ideas and interests.

Walker (2012) argues that corporations are increasingly engaging in a relational approach with civil society groups, focused on building relationships over time, in ways that foster legitimacy, in order to gain access to policy arenas when needed. Bonardi and Keim (2005) note that, to prevent a policy idea that is harmful to a firm’s interests from becoming a ‘salient issue’, the firms may strategically use third parties to promote public debate and discord. To date, analyses of corporate political activities aimed at developing relationships with third parties have focused on efforts to influence national policy or individual organizations. There has been limited attention paid to the potential benefits corporations derive from relationships with transnational networks.

We began by systematically searching the website of each signatory to the letter that ICAPP sent to the WHO for information about the purpose, funding sources and relationships of each of these with other organizations. Relationships were defined as partnerships (as listed on websites and in annual reports), having collaborated on projects, or having shared personnel.

ionships identified through these documents are thus more suggestive than conclusive. Despite these limitations, we use the TTID collection to identify other ICAPP members with a history of working with, or receiving funding from, the tobacco industry. Building on the authors’ previous work, we then determined whether each ICAPP signatory was a member of the Atlas Network (Smith et al. 2017), one of the largest global networks of think tanks and a ‘strategic ally’ of the tobacco industry (PM 1999) (see below).

FCTC measures include Article 5.3, which requires parties to protect public health policies related to tobacco control from the ‘commercial and other vested interests of the tobacco industry’. Article 5.3 restricts the ability of the tobacco industry to engage directly with policy making processes. This has led TTCs to develop strategies that include third-party allies (Fooks et al. 2017). There is now substantial evidence of extensive efforts by the industry to work through front groups, think tanks and other third parties operating across jurisdictions in ways that conceal its role, improve access to policy makers, and enhance the perceived legitimacy of industry-led campaigns (McDaniel et al. 2008)

In all cases, the tobacco industry campaigned against plain packaging; it launched several legal challenges, supported local opposition, and commissioned studies arguing that plain packaging violated intellectual property rights, represented undue government interference in the economy, and increased risks of illicit tobacco trading (Chassin 2017; Cumming 2012; Hawkes 2012).

The letter – widely disseminated through social media, email lists, newsletters, websites and press releases – argued that plain packaging violates intellectual property rights, does not reduce tobacco use, limits the amount of information consumers need to make informed choices, and contributes to increases in the illicit tobacco trade.

Established as the Atlas Research Foundation in the USA in 1981 to foster new think tanks of libertarian persuasion around the world, Atlas promotes free market values among its partners through training programmes, such as its think tank MBA programme, awards and networking events.