Africa

An amendment to Bulgaria’s education law, passed last month, bans the "propaganda, promotion, or incitement in any way, directly or indirectly, in the education system of ideas and views related to non-traditional sexual orientation and/or gender identity other than the biological one."

By Ed Holt
BRATISLAVA, Sep 4 2024 (IPS)

A law banning the portrayal of LGBT+ identities in Bulgarian educational institutions is just the latest piece of repressive legislation in a wider assault on minorities and marginalized communities across parts of Europe and Central Asia, rights groups have warned.

The law, passed in a fast-track procedure last month, is similar to legislation passed or proposed in many countries across the region in recent years that restricts LGBT+ rights. 

And while the Bulgarian law is expected to have a harmful impact on children and adolescents in the country, it is also likely to be followed by legislation aimed at repressing other groups in society, following a pattern implemented by autocratic rulers across the region, activists say.

“Often anti-LGBT laws go hand in hand with other [repressive] legislation. One will come soon after the other. What this is all about is for certain political parties to concentrate and gain ultimate power for themselves. LGBT+ people and other marginalized groups are just scapegoats,” Belinda Dear, Senior Advocacy Officer at LGBT+ organisation ILGA Europe, told IPS.

An amendment to Bulgaria’s education law, passed on August 7, 2024 with a huge majority in parliament, bans the “propaganda, promotion, or incitement in any way, directly or indirectly, in the education system of ideas and views related to non-traditional sexual orientation and/or gender identity other than the biological one”.

Kostadin Kostadinov, chairman of the far-right Vazrazhdane (Revival) party that introduced the legislation, said that “LGBT propaganda is anti-human and won’t be accepted in Bulgaria.”

Critics say the law will have a terrible impact on LGBT+ children in a country where LGBT+ people already face struggles for their rights. In its most recent Rainbow Map, which analyses the state of LGBTQ+ rights and freedoms across the continent, ILGA Europe ranked Bulgaria 38 out of 48 countries.

“The teachers we have spoken to are really afraid of what is going to happen now. We are expecting to see a sharp increase in attacks and abuse of schoolchildren over gender and sexual orientation,” Denitsa Lyubenova, Legal Program & Projects Director at Deystvie, one of Bulgaria’s largest LGBT+ organizations, told IPS.

“The law has just been passed so we cannot be sure of its specific impacts just yet, but what we know from elsewhere is that laws like this in schools will impact children and adolescents, it will increase bullying and legitimize discrimination by other students, and even teachers,” added Dear.

Like other rights campaigners, Lyubenova pointed out the similarities between the Bulgarian law and similar legislation passed in other countries in Europe and Central Asia in recent years.

So-called ‘anti-LGBT+ propaganda’ laws were passed in Hungary in 2021 and Kyrgyzstan last year. These were in turn inspired by Russian legislation passed almost a decade earlier, which has since been expanded to the entire LGBT+ community and followed by laws essentially banning any positive expression of LGBT+ people.

Reports from rights groups have shown the harmful consequences of such legislation.

But while these laws have been roundly condemned by local and international rights bodies, political parties in some countries continue to attempt to push them through.

On the same day the Bulgarian law was passed, the far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) said it was planning to put forward a bill restricting discussion and teaching of LGBT+ themes in schools at the next parliamentary session in September.

Meanwhile, in June, the ruling Georgian Dream party in Georgia proposed legislation which would, among others, outlaw any LGBT+ gatherings, ban same-sex marriages, gender transition and the adoption of children by same-sex couples.

It will also prohibit LGBT+ ‘propaganda’ in schools and broadcasters and advertisers will have to remove any content featuring same-sex relationships before broadcast, regardless of the age of the intended audience.

In both countries, the proposed legislation comes soon after the implementation of so-called ‘foreign agent laws’ which put restrictions and onerous obligations on certain NGOs which receive foreign funding. Critics say such laws can have a devastating effect on civil society, pointing to a similar law introduced in Russia in 2012 as part of a Kremlin crackdown on civil society. The legislation, which led to affected NGOs being forced to declare themselves as ‘foreign agents’ has resulted in many civil society organisations in fields from human rights to healthcare being effectively shuttered.

Campaigners say it is no coincidence that anti-LGBT+ legislation and ‘foreign agent’ laws are being introduced closely together.

“[The anti-LGBT+ legislation] is likely to be the first in a series of laws that will discriminate against not just LGBT+ people, but other marginalized groups, which are seen as a ‘problem’ by far right organizations in Bulgaria,” said Lyubenova.

“This anti-LGBT+ law came from the Revival party, which has previously put forward bills for a ‘foreign agent law’ in Bulgaria. We are expecting a bill for foreign agent legislation to be introduced to Bulgaria’s parliament soon,” she added.

In Georgia, where legislation restricting LGBT+ rights will be debated in a final reading this month in parliament, civil society activists say the government is using one law to fuel support for the other.

“Both laws are part of the same, great evil [the government is pushing],” Paata Sabelashvili, a board member with the Equality Movement NGO in Georgia, told IPS.

Dear said the passing of ‘foreign agent’ laws was part of a template used by autocratic regimes to hold onto power “by dismantling civil society, which keeps a watch on politicians”.

The other parts of the template, she said, were to also “dismantle the independence of the judiciary, and the media”. Russia, Hungary, Georgia and Slovakia regularly score poorly in international press freedom indexes, and concerns have been raised about threats to media independence in Kyrgyzstan. Meanwhile, Russia is widely seen as no longer having an independent judiciary and concerns have been raised about government influence in the judicial systems in Slovakia, Georgia and Hungary.

Governments that have introduced these laws have said they are essential to preserve their countries’ traditional values and to limit foreign regimes—usually specifically western—influencing internal politics and destabilizing the country. These claims have been repeatedly rejected by the civil society and minority groups the laws are aimed at.

Some rights campaigners see the introduction of these laws as part of a coordinated international effort to not just spread specific ideologies but also entrench autocratic regimes.

While ostensibly the introduction of such legislation are the acts of independent sovereign regimes, campaigners say the politicians behind these laws are not necessarily acting entirely on their own initiative.

Activists in Slovakia and Georgia who have spoken to IPS highlight the strongly pro-Russian sentiments expressed by governing parties in their countries, while Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban has been heavily criticized even among European Union officials for his closeness to the Kremlin and criticism of help for Ukraine since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its neighbour. Meanwhile, Russia—as it does with many other central Asian countries—and Kyrgyzstan have historic ties dating back to the Soviet Union.

“These parties [behind these laws] have links to Russia. [Pushing through this kind of legislation] is strategically coordinated; it’s very well-planned,” said Dear.

“I believe this is all part of a wider trend linked to far right governments and/or parties,” Tamar Jakeli, LGBT+ activist and Director of Tbilisi Pride in Tbilisi, Georgia, told IPS.

Forbidden Colours, a Brussels-based LGBT+ advocacy group, linked the Bulgarian law directly to the Kremlin’s repression of rights in Russia.

“It is deeply troubling to see Bulgaria adopting tactics from Russia’s anti-human rights playbook,” the group said in a statement.

Meanwhile, international and Bulgarian rights groups have called on the EU to act to force the Bulgarian government to repeal the anti-LGBT+ law, while Bulgarian civil society organisations are getting ready to fight its implementation. There have been street protests against it in the capital, Sofia, and Lyubenova said her organisation was also preparing legal challenges to the law.

“What these far-right groups are doing with this law is they are testing our ability to stand up to hateful actions. We have to challenge it,” said Lyubenova.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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A Latin American rural family. Credit: Santiago Billy / FAO

By Marco Knowles
ROME, Sep 3 2024 (IPS)

Urgent climate action is key to eradicating hunger and poverty, but climate mitigation policies can inadvertently exacerbate these issues in rural areas. Countries must design climate strategies that account for the impacts on the rural poor and that include social protection measures.

Last July, we were confronted with alarming statistics: 733 million people experienced hunger in 2023, equivalent to one in eleven people globally. In Africa it was even higher, with one in five people going hungry. Climate change is a significant driver of this crisis.

Paradoxically, well intentioned policies to combat global warming may also be a cause of hunger, particularly for small-scale farmers in poorer countries, unless these policies are accompanied by measures to curtail their socio-economic downsides.

Gradual changes in temperatures and rainfall patterns reduce returns to farming, on which poor people largely depend, and sudden events like floods and droughts devastate their crops and livestock. According to the World Bank, climate change could push as many as 135 million more people into poverty by 2030. Urgent action to curb climate change is therefore essential to the fight against poverty and hunger.

Paradoxically, well intentioned policies to combat global warming may also be a cause of hunger, particularly for small-scale farmers in poorer countries, unless these policies are accompanied by measures to curtail their socio-economic downsides

However, if we are not careful, climate mitigation efforts can undermine progress on eradicating poverty and hunger. A recent example is the European Union´s Regulation on Deforestation-free products that was introduced in June 2023. This regulation is intended to ensure that products bought and consumed in Europe do not contribute to deforestation through the expansion of agricultural land for the production of cattle, wood, cocoa, soy, palm oil or coffee.

On the one hand, reducing deforestation is essential to combating climate change and can benefit many of the 1 to 2 billion people who depend on forests for their livelihoods.

But on the other hand, the costs of these policies fall disproportionately on rural poor people that do not have the resources and capacities to comply, including those that currently rely on clearing new lands for their livelihoods – estimated to account for about a third of deforestation.

As governments of 17 countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia had forewarned, the EU’s Regulation is already having severe negative impacts among poorer people in poorer countries, in particular small-scale farmers.

Without support, they face huge challenges in complying with the complex, new procedures, and at the same time they often lack the capacities and resources to maintain or increase their agricultural production without expanding the land area under cultivation – this is even more true in a context of a changing climate change that reduces farming yields.

While progress on the climate agenda must continue at pace, the socio-economic trade-offs of climate policies for different population groups – especially the most vulnerable – need to be considered from the outset. Countries, especially those in which poverty and hunger are concentrated, need to be supported and encouraged to couple green policies with measures that enable smallholder farmers to meet new conditions or to transition to new and dignified livelihoods.

Social protection – which includes policies and programmes aimed at addressing poverty and vulnerability – can play a key role in easing these transitions. In the short-term, by providing regular cash income in compensation for any adverse social impacts of climate policies and, in the longer-term, by combining these payments with technical support, skills training and livelihood interventions that can help people to adjust to and thrive under new policy regimes.

This approach is already being implemented in several countries.

In China, a forest protection act affected approximately one million public forestry workers and 120 million rural households by reducing access to forest resources. To mitigate these impacts, public employees received assistance, such as job placement services, unemployment benefits and pension plans. As a result, two-thirds of the affected employees were either transferred to alternative jobs or retired, while 124 million households benefited from an income transfer.

In Brazil and Paraguay, social protection and complementary agricultural programmes are supporting rural households to adopt more sustainable and profitable farming practices. Paraguay’s Poverty, Reforestation, Energy and Climate Change (PROEZA) programme, provides households participating in the country’s flagship social protection scheme, Tekoporã, with technical support and additional cash. Thanks to this, small-scale farmers are adapting their agricultural practices to be more resilient to ever more frequent droughts while also increasing their production of native crops such as yerba mate.

Similarly, in Brazil, the Bolsa Verde programme provides cash payments to beneficiaries of the national social cash transfer programme, Bolsa Familia, in exchange for maintaining or restoring forests, protecting water sources, and promoting sustainable agriculture.

Governments should be encouraged and supported in introducing and scaling-up social protection measures to ensure the poorest and most vulnerable do not bear the burden of addressing the climate crisis and greening the consumption of people in wealthier parts of the world.

We must therefore prioritize an approach that pays close attention to the social as well as the environmental consequences of policies to address climate change. Social protection programmes have a critical role to play building a future that is mutually beneficial to People and Planet.

 

Marco Knowles leads the FAO´s Social Protection Team. His areas of expertise include increasing access to social protection in rural areas and in leveraging on social protection for climate action. He also has substantive experience in providing evidence-based food security policy assistance and capacity development support.

Excerpt:

Marco Knowles leads the FAO's Social Protection Team

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By Jewel Fraser
PORT-of-SPAIN, Trinidad, Sep 3 2024 (IPS)

In this IPS podcast, Inter Press Service correspondent Jewel Fraser talks with a scientist from the International Livestock Research Institute in Nairobi, Kenya.

Dr. Jean-Baka Entfellner and his colleagues are doing work they hope will encourage Africans to make greater use of the continent’s indigenous crops. They hope Africa can be helped to forgo the imported foods that are popular globally and rely more heavily on foods native to the continent, thus boosting food self-sufficiency. 

Nearly 30% of the world’s population experience food insecurity, with Africa’s population being nearly twice as likely as the global average to do so, says a recent FAO report. Could turning to local crop varieties be a solution?

Kenyan journalist Chrystal Onkeo helped to arrange this interview recording.

Music credit: https://www.fesliyanstudios.com/

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Credit: UNRWA

By James E. Jennings
ATLANTA, Georgia, Sep 3 2024 (IPS)

Most people think that Israel’s main goal in Gaza is to recover the hostages seized by HAMAS on October 7, 2023 with an announced follow-up mission to eliminate HAMAS as a threat. If you thought that, you would be wrong. Substantial evidence reveals a different strategic aim—destroying every shred of Palestinian legitimacy as a nation.

Inspite of continual pleas from the weak Biden-Harris-Blinken White House to stop bombing civilians in Gaza, Israel refuses to end the carnage. What’s going on? As usual in the Middle East, the obvious plot has at least one hidden sub-plot.

Israel’s most important strategic goal throughout the more than ten months of its senseless, horrifically devastating campaign in Gaza has been, not only to kill HAMAS militants and tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, but instead to kill the widely trumpeted “Two-State Solution.”

The ongoing carnage on the West Bank aims to destroy, not just Palestinian infrastructure or hopeless young “Lions Den” resistance, but the very idea that the Palestinians have a right to self-determination, or any legitimacy at all as a state. With most of the world decrying the genocide in Gaza, the full-blown war on cities and civilians in the West Bank has escaped scrutiny.

The most obvious proof of that is the fact that Netanyahu’s extremist Likud government continues its gratuitous bombing campaign in Gaza, and continues to refuse HAMAS’ offers for releasing hostages in return for even a temporary cease-fire. Like most American intelligence experts, Israel’s own military leaders have admitted that HAMAS cannot be completely eliminated.

Sadly, the horrific loss of life in Gaza is not at this point really about Gaza. It’s a distraction from a land grab for the West Bank of the Jordan River, what the Israelis call their very own territories of “Judea and Samaria.” Netanyahu has echoed the settlers’ claim that Israel cannot be accused of being illegal military occupiers of what is “our own land.”

One of the first shibboleths from the mouth of President Biden following HAMAS’ obscene war crimes on October 7 and just before he got on Air Force One to make humiliating obeisance to the indicted war criminal Netanyahu, was to offer the meaningless words, “Two-State Solution.”

But surely the man who had for years been Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee must have known that the “Two-State Solution” was already on its last legs and unlikely to be revived. Now Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is echoing “Genocide Joe,” not so much by offering a formula for peace as simply parroting an empty phrase.

Lesson number one in international diplomacy on the macro scale is that a regime must have legitimacy as a people group before it can achieve any kind of concrete reality as a nation. The birth of the United States is an example. The Boston Tea Party, Patrick Henry’s speech, and Paul Revere’s ride coalesced America’s popular identity.

Washington at Valley Forge and at Yorktown actually birthed the nation. Achieving legitimacy, the unquestionable right to exist as an organized political entity, is how a population or insurgent movement becomes a state.

By smashing peaceful West Bank towns with tanks and jet bombers, bulldozing their streets and tagging all Palestinians as terrorists, the native community is being robbed of its heritage as well as its current and future legitimacy. Any chance for statehood is being obliterated by Israel’s “over the top” ravages on civilian life and infrastructure in Gaza and throughout the West Bank.

Meanwhile, the political class’s pretense of being pro-peace is a sick charade. Let’s stop saying “Genocide is bad” and “Killing people is bad,” without also saying “Killing civil society is a positive evil as well,” because it kills the future of an entire people group.

James E. Jennings, PhD is President of Conscience International www.conscienceinternational.org and Executive Director of US Academics for Peace. He delivered aid to Gaza’s hospitals from 1987-2014, including during the 2009 “Cast Lead” bombing and periods of Israeli, PLO, and HAMAS control.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Credit: United Nations

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 3 2024 (IPS)

When the high-level segment of the UN General Assembly took place last September, there were several key world leaders missing in action (MIAs)—including, most importantly, leaders of the four of the five permanent members of the Security Council, the most powerful political body at the United Nations.

Only US President Joe Biden was there –while Emmanuel Macron of France, Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin of Russia and Rishi Sunak of UK skipped the UN sessions- either for personal or political reasons.

As an article in Le Monde pointed out: “Such notable absences reflect the crisis affecting UN bodies, against a backdrop of an international stage that is crumbling.”

A former diplomat Gérard Araud, a one-time French ambassador to the United Nations, said, “Multilateralism is seriously compromised in an increasingly multipolar world.”

“The absence of Security Council leaders is yet another symptom, but not the only one, of a powerless UN, caused by the war in Ukraine and the rivalry between the United States and China.”

Will history repeat itself this year when the high-level segment of the 79th session of the General Assembly begins mid-September?

With the UN remaining powerless in the context of a continuing Russian carnage in Ukraine and with over 40,000 mostly civilian killings in Gaza, is the world beginning to lose confidence in the United Nations as the world’s pre-eminent peace maker?

Asked for his comments, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters last month: “We very much hope that every Member State will be represented at the highest possible level, especially given not only what’s going on in the world today, but the fact that we have the Summit of the Future, (scheduled for September 22-23) which is critical to how this organization will function in the decades ahead.”

And these are issues that often come up in the Secretary-General’s bilateral meetings, he pointed out.

Andreas Bummel, co-founder and Executive Director of Democracy Without Borders, told IPS the highest level of participation from Member States at the general debate of the United Nations each September sends a signal that the UN is valued as the world’s most important multilateral venue.

A presence this year at the Summit of the Future is crucial. “We hope that the summit will be an opportunity for world leaders to listen to ideas and proposals of civil society which has strongly engaged with the summit process.”

Among world leaders, he pointed out, are aggressors, autocrats, dictators and mass murderers. They are neither interested in strengthening the UN and even less in what civil society has to say. If they come, they should be confronted with their crimes, said Bummel.

Meanwhile, although Yasir Arafat, the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) made it to the UN, some of the world’s authoritarian leaders, including Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Syria’s Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar al-Assad, and North Korea’s Kim il Sung and his grandson Kim Jong-un, never made it to the UN.

Dr Palitha Kohona, former Chief of the UN Treaty Section and one-time Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka to the Unted Nations told IPS: It is indeed a matter of serious concern that certain world leaders choose not to attend the Un General Assembly (UNGA).

It is understood that other matters may demand their attention at the same time, especially critical domestic issues. Some are facing elections or seeking to get reelected, he said.

“But at a time when the world, humanity itself– is confronted by a myriad of urgent challenges, many of them man-made or resulting from human actions, like the existential threat of climate change, the flood of over 160 million refugees, the indiscriminate slaughter that is happening in Gaza, the shaky progress with the SDGs, the worrying signs of an intensifying arms race, etc– the moral impact of the presence of world leaders, in particular the leaders of key powers, at the UNGA cannot be under estimated”.

The UNGA, he pointed out, is the only global forum that we have. Instead of contributing to the wishes of those who seek to denigrate this single world body that we have, and dilute its importance, which has many successes to justify its existence, we should exert ourselves to strengthen it.

This is certainly not the time to dismiss the value of the UN, declared Dr Kohona, who until recently was Sri Lanka’s Ambassador to China.

When global leaders meet at the UN, they will confront yet another year of complex crises and conflicts — as a deeply divided world watches, according to the UN Foundation.

“The UN is the only place on Earth where countries — whether big or small — have a say. The debates and conversations that will unfold during UNGA 79 will shape the solutions that can redefine our future”.

Progress hinges on leaders taking accountability and correcting course. But it also depends on people — especially young people — having a say in the decisions that will affect our future.

And the future depends on everyone’s participation — decision-makers and everyday citizens alike. It’s up to all of us to act now for people, for planet, and for our common future.

But one lingering question remains: how effective is the UN, where the 15-member Security Council, remains deadlocked reminiscent of the Cold War era?

When he addressed the UN Security Council via video-conferencing on April 2022, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine did not pull his punches when he told delegates the purposes of the UN Charter, especially Article I — to maintain international peace and security — are being blatantly violated by Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

“What is the point of all other Articles (in the UN charter)? Are you ready to close the United Nations? Do you think that the time for international law is gone?” If not, “you need to act immediately,” he told delegates.

To support peace in Ukraine, he argued, the Security Council must either remove the Russian Federation from the UN, both as an aggressor and a source of war, so it cannot block decisions made about its own war, or the Council can “dissolve yourselves altogether” if there is nothing it can do other than engage in conversation.

“Ukraine needs peace. Europe needs peace. The world needs peace,” he insisted.

Meanwhile, when the United Nations decided to locate its 39-storeyed Secretariat in New York city, the United States, as host nation, signed a “headquarters agreement” in 1947 not only ensuring diplomatic immunity to foreign diplomats but also pledging to facilitate the day-to-day activities of member states without any hindrance, including the issuance of US visas to enter the country.

But there were several instances of open violation of this agreement by successive US administrations.

The United States, which is legally obliged to respect international diplomatic norms as host country to the United Nations, has been accused of imposing unfair travel restrictions on U.N. diplomats in the country. Back in August 2000, the Russian Federation, Iraq and Cuba protested the “discriminatory” treatment, which they say targets countries that displease the U.S.

Pleading national security concerns, Washington has long placed tight restrictions on diplomats from several “unfriendly” nations, including those deemed “terrorist states,” particularly Cuba, Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, Syria and Libya. U.N. diplomats from these countries have to obtain permission from the U.S. State Department to travel outside a 25-mile radius from New York City.

When former Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, accused of war crimes, was refused a US visa to attend the high-level segment of the General Assembly sessions in September 2013, Hassan Ali, a senior Sudanese diplomat, registered a strong protest with the UN’s Legal Committee.

“The democratically-elected president of Sudan had been deprived of the opportunity to participate in the General Assembly because the host country, the United States, had denied him a visa, in violation of the U.N.-U.S. Headquarters Agreement. It was a great and deliberate violation of the Headquarters Agreement,” he said.

The refusal of a visa for the Sudanese president was also a political landmine because al-Bashir had been indicted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

But one question remained unanswered: Does the United States have a right to implicitly act on an ICC ruling when Washington is not a party to the Rome Statute that created the ICC?

When Yasser Arafat was denied a US visa to visit New York to address the United Nations back in 1988, the General Assembly defied the United States by temporarily moving the UN’s highest policy making body to Geneva– perhaps for the first time in UN history– providing a less-hostile political environment for the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Arafat, who first addressed the UN in 1974, took a swipe at Washington when he prefaced his statement by saying “it never occurred to me that my second meeting with this honorable Assembly, since 1974, would take place in the hospitable city of Geneva”.

On his 1974 visit, he avoided the hundreds of pro and anti-Arafat demonstrators outside the UN building by arriving in a helicopter which landed on the North Lawn of the UN campus adjoining the East River.

When he addressed the General Assembly, there were confusing reports whether or not Arafat carried a gun in his holster—“in a house of peace” — which was apparently not visible to delegates.

One news story said Arafat was seen “wearing his gun belt and holster and reluctantly removing his pistol before mounting the rostrum.” “Today, I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom-fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand,” he told the Assembly. But there were some delegates who denied Arafat carried a weapon.

Setting the record straight, Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary-General and head of the Department of Public Information told IPS it was discreetly agreed that Arafat would keep the holster while the gun was to be handed over to Abdelaziz Bouteflika, later Foreign Minister and President of Algeria (1999-2019).

The speech, drafted in Arabic by Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, stressed the spelling in formal Arabic of the “green branch” which the PLO Chairman still misspelled.

Incidentally, when anti-Arafat New York protesters on First Avenue shouted: “Arafat Go Home”, his supporters responded that was precisely what he wanted—a home for the Palestinians to go to.

But that dream has still not been realized—as thousands of Palestinians continue to be killed since last October by Israel, using largely American-supplied weapons.

This article contains excerpts from a book on the United Nations titled “No Comment –and Don’t Quote Me on That” authored by Thalif Deen, Senior Editor at the UN Bureau of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, and available on Amazon. The link to Amazon via the author’s website follows: https://www.rodericgrigson.com/no-comment-by-thalif-deen/

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