Tribute to a visionary friend of the South

The death in August of Marc Nerfin has robbed the South of a true friend who championed its cause and articulated its concerns. In this tribute, Chakravarthi Raghavan looks back at his life and work.

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MARC Nerfin (1930-2015), a visionary thinker and activist in international development dialogue on the side of those seeking a just, equitable and sustainable world order, passed away peacefully at home in Paris on 15 August, cared for with devotion by his beloved wife, Joy Assefa.

Born in Geneva, Switzerland, he transcended his national origins and identified himself with the South, which was trying to free itself from the vestiges and shackles - mental and material - of the colonial era. He was the founder of the SUNS bulletin (now published by the Third World Network) in 1980.

While being very proud of his Swiss origins and background, Marc was truly international, transcending nations and cultures, a world citizen, speaking several languages fluently and having lived in many countries, not as an expatriate detached from the life of the locals but as someone engaged with them.

Early in his career Marc worked as a journalist in Tunisia, observing at close hand the reforms in that country in its early years of independence, when it liberated Muslim women and introduced socialist reforms in the colonial economy.

Marc was particularly impressed and enthusiastic about the reforms instituted by its then Minister for Planning Ahmed Ben Salah (who was later ousted and went into exile in Switzerland). Subsequently, Marc published in a book his interviews and conversations with Ben Salah, Entretiens Avec Ahmed Ben Salah Sur La Dynamique Socialiste Dans La Tunisie Des Annees 1960.

Marc was a staff member of the United Nations at the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) and was involved in its pioneering role in a continent emerging from a long period of colonial and racist rule. His knowledge and experience of the UN system, in particular in the field, provided insights that enabled him to play a key role in Sir Robert Jackson's A Study of the Capacity of the United Nations Development System (1969).

He was a key aide of Maurice Strong in organising the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (1971-72). When the UN decided to convene that conference, developing countries were deeply suspicious, viewing it as an effort by the North to divert the attention of the UN from its role in economic development of the developing world. After some initial hesitation, leaders of the developing world went to Stockholm for the conference, with India's Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, among the leading participants, citing ancient Indian literature to present a holistic view of the world as one community and poverty as the greatest environmental pollutant.

The conference and its experience led Marc into deeper thinking on alternative concepts of development beyond growth and integrating social and environmental dimensions, ideas that were shaped by symposia held in Founex, Switzerland (1971) and Cocoyoc, Mexico (1974).

Marc's innate sense of equity, justice and the need for an equitable world order motivated him greatly when he led a project at the Dag Hammarskjold Foundation (DH Foundation) in Uppsala, Sweden, and was the principal author of its report, What Now?: Another Development (1975).

Aimed at and for the 1975 UN General Assembly Special Session on Development and International Economic Cooperation, the report identified 10 human needs and placed them at the centre of development. It was a revolutionary idea and conceived of development beyond growth, integrating environment and equity, and envisaging inclusive growth for underdeveloped nations to 'develop' autonomously, each rooted in its own cultures and varieties. The report also identified as maldevelopment the ills of over-consumption in the North, and promoted the corrective of reducing materialist consumption in the North. These were the roots of what later emerged as the concept of 'sustainable development'.

In 1976, evolving into the role of institution builder, Marc established the International Foundation for Development Alternatives (Nyon, Switzerland), a network of progressive thinkers and home of the IFDA Dossier, an open forum for ideas about development that was published from 1978 to 1991.

Marc's own thinking on the mobilisation of civil society in national and international governance was presented in 'Neither Prince nor Merchant: Citizen' (IFDA Dossier, No. 56, November/December 1986).

At IFDA, he brought together people of varying, sometimes conflicting, viewpoints around the same table to discuss in informal settings major issues facing the world and reach mutual, if not common, understanding.

An alternative information framework

The 1975 DH Foundation report had identified 'information' and 'communication' as one of the 10 material and non-material human needs whose satisfaction was an ingredient of development. It drew attention to the ideological stranglehold the transnational corporate media and the dominant transnational news agencies, essentially the four major Western news agencies at the time, had over the Third World through the virtual monopoly of the means of communication.

Even from about the 1960s, this issue of democratisation of information (and freedom from controls by governments or commercial interests) had actively engaged the attention of communication researchers, who had formulated concepts of vertical and horizontal communication.

From its founding, the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had been studying information and communication issues as part of its work in the area of culture, but its early work was 'stamped out' in the aftermath of the Communist witch-hunt in the US Senate in the McCarthy era (in the 1950s). This was a shameful era for the UN system when its leaders failed to stand up to the witch-hunt or protect the US nationals it employed.

At the time the DH Foundation report was published, this writer was Editor-in-Chief of the Press Trust of India (PTI). When the report landed on my desk, I wrote a lengthy review article which would be picked up and published by Indian newspapers.

As part of its contribution to the 1975 UN General Assembly Special Session, the DH Foundation organised a seminar of Third World journalists, held on the sidelines of the session from 29 August to 12 September 1975, and I received an invitation to participate.

When we met at the seminar, and on that very first occasion, Marc and I found ourselves in full rapport; as he put it subsequently, 'it was as if we had both gone to school together from primary stage.'

At the seminar, the participants held discussions with high-level UN officials and with a number of key ministers and high-level representatives of UN member countries on issues related to the New International Economic Order (NIEO), and development and international economic cooperation. What struck us all in these discussions was that everyone appeared to agree conceptually on the need for an NIEO, but representatives from the developed world expressed difficulties in moving towards it due to the state of their public opinion and the need to mobilise media and public support in the North.

At the end of the seminar, the participants issued a consensus statement of conclusions which, among others, said, 'The New International Economic Order requires a new framework of world information and communications', to indicate that 'a framework for information and communication' was an integral part of a New International Economic Order.

As President of IFDA and as Vice-President of Inter Press Service (IPS), Marc provided practical support for 'alternative information for another development'. After some initial experiments, IFDA began publishing from 10 March 1980 the Special United Nations Service (SUNS) as a daily news bulletin every weekday.

Writing on 2 May 1984 on the occasion of the publication of the 1,000th issue of SUNS, which he noted was also the 20th anniversary of IPS, Marc said: 'The SUNS attempts to cover, from a Third World point of view, the North-South discussions in the United Nations and other fora and the efforts of the G77 and the Non-Aligned countries towards South-South cooperation and collective self-reliance. It is thus at the same time an alternative and a unique source of information and analysis. There is some coverage of the debate in the mainstream media but this usually reflects a western perspective. The SUNS helps its readers to form a more balanced opinion, not so much because of its own "objectivity" but principally because it expresses another point of view, seldom heard ... The SUNS intends to serve primarily G77 missions. Writing daily as it does on what is happening in Geneva, Rome, New York, Brussels and other locations, it provides G77 missions in other centres with up-to-date reports not otherwise available, thus contributing to G77 missions' mutual information.'

(From the Special United Nations Service, SUNS was later renamed the South-North Development Monitor, and its publishing responsibility taken over by the Third World Network.)

Marc was also involved, behind the scenes, in the 1987 establishment of the South Commission, chaired by Mwalimu Julius Nyerere and led by Manmohan Singh.

Marc Nerfin was a man of conviction who earned the respect of those who encountered him. His conceptualisation and commitment to 'alternative development', when that concept was still evolving, and to 'inclusive growth' and 'gender equality', when these terms were not in vogue, was truly remarkable.

Those who knew Marc personally will treasure the memory of a wise, loyal and caring friend.

Besides his widow, Joy Assefa, Marc leaves behind five children, five grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.                                    

Chakravarthi Raghavan is Editor Emeritus of the South-North Development Monitor (SUNS), from which this article is reproduced (No. 8085, 2 September 2015).

*Third World Resurgence No. 300, August 2015, pp 46-47