Africa

Malians and citizens from elsewhere in West Africa are said to be among the victims.

A Jehovah's Witness couple and their son are released following their abduction in May 2022.

Nearly 500 were killed in 2023 with hunters moving away from previous poaching hotspots.

Nigeria is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a generation, leading to nationwide protests.

Nigeria is experiencing its worst economic crisis in a generation, leading to nationwide protests.

The authorities say it happened on the same day that churchgoers were killed during morning mass.

Paleki Ayang, Gender Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa, Equality Now

By Paleki Ayang
JUBA, Feb 27 2024 (IPS)

Female genital mutilation (FGM) stands as one of the most egregious violations of human rights, particularly affecting women and girls worldwide. However, when conflict and forced displacement enter the equation, the horrors of FGM are exacerbated, creating a dire situation that demands urgent attention and action. Where instability and insecurity prevail, the prevalence of FGM often intensifies, exacerbated by factors such as displacement, poverty, and the breakdown of social systems.

On April 15, 2023, war erupted in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), plunging the country into an intense political and humanitarian crisis with unprecedented emerging needs. As of December 2023, over 7.4 million people were uprooted from their homes by the 9-month conflict, of which about half a million fled to neighboring Egypt, a country that also has similarly high records of FGM cases.

Equality Now and the Tadwein Center for Gender Studies are currently commissioning a study in Egypt among select Sudanese families in Cairo and Giza to understand the particularities of cross-border FGM, to analyze the attitude of Sudanese families in Egypt towards FGM and to assess possible changes in the practice, such as the type of cutting, and the age of girls when they are cut.

Nexus between conflict, displacement, and FGM

Although Sudan legally banned the practice of FGM in 2020, women and girls continue to face heightened risks of violence, exploitation, and abuse, including FGM. Ongoing conflict has led to the breakdown of the rule of law and governance structures in Khartoum and a few other states.

Declaring a state of emergency permits the government to prioritize security and stability over individual rights and the rule of law. In some locations with relative stability, there is selective enforcement of laws driven by social polarization, exacerbating discriminatory practices and inequalities.

Additionally, in the chaos of displacement, traditional practices may persist, perpetuating the cycle of FGM and denying women and girls agency over their bodies and futures.

The nexus between conflict, displacement, and FGM underscores the urgent need for holistic, multi-sectoral approaches that address the root causes of the practice and provide comprehensive support to affected populations.

However, it is critical to redefine how the multi-sectoral approach could roll out within the context of conflict, specifically where legal protections for women and girls are minimal or non-existent.

The usual activities undertaken by activists and civil society organizations—such as advocacy campaigns, community outreach programs, and legal reforms—may be hampered by the chaotic and unpredictable nature of conflict environments, making it challenging to mobilize support and raise awareness about the harms of FGM.

Strengthening responses to FGM during conflict and displacement

Conversations about new and innovative ways where legal frameworks and policy measures need to be strengthened to prohibit FGM must happen, and perpetrators must be held accountable for their actions, even amid conflict and displacement.

A report on Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in Humanitarian Settings in the Arab Region, published by UNFPA in 2021, discusses the challenges and barriers to addressing FGM in such contexts and offers recommendations for stakeholders involved in humanitarian response and protection efforts.

This is critical, as the prevention and response to FGM are not prioritized in humanitarian settings due to lack of funding and political will. The report underscores the importance of culturally sensitive approaches, community engagement, capacity building, and partnerships to combat FGM and support survivors in humanitarian settings effectively.

Medicalization of FGM requires urgent attention. Prior to the start of the current conflict, Sudan had the highest rate of medicalized FGM globally, accounting for 67% of cases in the country.

The collapse of healthcare systems and infrastructure brought about a different reality that necessitated changing health priorities. It could be argued that the medicalization of FGM diverts already strained resources, attention, and expertise in-country away from essential healthcare services, especially sexual and reproductive health services, including responding to conflict-related sexual violence and maternal and child health.

Women’s rights groups in Khartoum and other towns have established Emergency Response Rooms (ERRs) and other community-driven mutual aid efforts that could be used to mainstream FGM-related interventions as they respond to emerging humanitarian needs. Additionally, efforts to integrate FGM prevention and response into broader humanitarian assistance programs are essential in reaching displaced populations with life-saving interventions and support.

Engaging communities, religious leaders, and key stakeholders in the ‘new social structures’ shaped by conflict and displacement can foster much-needed dialogue, dispel myths, and promote alternative rites of passage that celebrate womanhood without resorting to harmful practices.

Despite having different priorities as displaced women and girls—such as humanitarian, livelihood, and other urgent needs— empowering them with knowledge and agency is essential in enabling them to assert their rights and resist pressures to undergo FGM.

Addressing FGM amongst Sudan’s displaced communities

Community-led initiatives to end FGM among Sudanese communities displaced from Khartoum into neighboring states or neighboring countries must take into consideration the diverse ethnic groups in Sudan—each with their distinct cultural traditions and practices relating to FGM, with some communities practicing different types of FGM. This requires an in-depth understanding of the sociocultural factors that drive it.

Although wealthier households in Sudan and people in urban areas were previously less likely to support FGM’s continuation, conflict highlights the intersectional impacts on different groups of women and girls, and forced displacement could result in the practice being carried to host countries that may lack effective legal frameworks or enforcement mechanisms to address cross-border FGM.

Considering anti-FGM interventions transcend geographical boundaries and ethnicities, they must be carefully tailored to community needs. Cross-border FGM could also be driven by a sense of struggling to maintain a cultural identity and uphold perceived social status in a new society.

Reaffirming commitments to end FGM

At the international level, concerted action is needed to address the intersecting challenges of FGM, conflict, and forced displacement. The United Nations and other multilateral organizations must prioritize the issue on the global agenda, mobilizing resources and political will to further research, support affected populations, and strengthen efforts to eradicate FGM in conflict-affected areas.

Moreover, partnerships between governments, civil society organizations, and grassroots activists remain essential in driving a collective response that transcends borders and builds solidarity among diverse stakeholders.

As Sudanese women bear the brunt of violence and displacement, women-led organizations are instrumental in fostering resilience and actively rebuilding their communities. Supporting and financing these organizations should be prioritized, as it is not only a matter of promoting rights but also a pathway to peace and stability.

As we confront the grim reality of FGM amidst conflict and forced displacement, we must reaffirm our commitment to the fundamental rights and dignity of every woman and girl. We cannot stand idly by as generations continue to suffer the devastating consequences of this harmful practice.

Now is the time for bold and decisive action guided by principles of justice, equality, and compassion. Together, we can break the chains of FGM, offering hope and healing to those who have endured untold suffering and paving the way for a future free from violence and discrimination for all.

Note: Paleki Ayang is Equality Now’s Gender Advisor for the Middle East and North Africa

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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UN Security Council in session. Credit: United Nations

By Anwarul K. Chowdhury
NEW YORK, Feb 27 2024 (IPS)

With its current cash crisis, UN’s leadership is finding itself in a helpless situation both politically and financially. The UN’s credibility has reached rock bottom.

Abusive use of veto power against global public opinion over the years, more so in recent times, have thrown spanners at all potentially meaningful efforts at the UN. Such irrational and national-interest generated actions have been ominous for the UN to undertake its Charter-mandated roles.

The General Assembly with its universal membership is so toothless that its decisions are forgotten before the those get formally printed as UN documents.

I am often asked, during ‘questions and answers’ segment following my public speaking, if I want to recommend one thing that would make the UN perform better, what would it be. My clear and emphatic answer always has been “Abolish the Veto!”

Veto is undemocratic, irrational and against the true spirit of the principle of sovereign equality enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

In an opinion piece on the IPS wire service back in March 2022, I wrote: “Believe me, the veto power influences not only the decisions of the Security Council but also all work of the UN, including importantly the choice of the Secretary-General.”

In the same opinion piece, I asserted that “I believe the abolition of veto requires a greater priority attention in the reforms process than the enlargement of the Security Council membership with additional permanent ones.

Such permanency is simply undemocratic. I also believe that the veto power is not ‘the cornerstone of the United Nations’ but in reality, its tombstone.”

With interlinkages and interconnectedness of all the matters being handled by the world body, challenges of maintaining international – my preferred expression is “global” -peace and security have become absolutely and threateningly overwhelming.

I believe increasing frequency of unilateral exercise of veto by erstwhile superpowers is a clear manifestation of that complexity. So, the global good has been set aside in the narrow political interest of the leadership in those countries.

The situation demands realistic and credible actions by the UN leadership to tackle the biggest existential crisis being faced by the UN in its nearly eight decades of existence.

We need to revisit the operational credibility of our much-cherished world body. What was needed in 1945 to be enshrined in the UN Charter is to be judged in the light of current realities.

If the Charter needs to be amended to live up to the challenges of global complexities and paralyzing intergovernmental politicization, let us do that. It is high time to focus on that direction.

Blindly treating the words of the Charter as sacrosanct may be self-defeating and irresponsible. The UN could be buried under its own rubble unless we set our house in order now.

With the 2030 deadline for SDGs knocking at the door, the call in the Bali G-20 Summit declaration for “inclusive multilateralism” is a timely alert to realise that current form of multilateralism dominated by rich and powerful countries and well-organized vested interests, on most occasions working with co-aligned objectives, cannot deliver the world we want for all.

That elitist multilateralism has failed.

Minimalistic, divisive, dismissive, and arrogant multilateralism that we are experiencing now gives honest multilateralism a bad name. Multilateralism has become a sneaky slogan under which each country is hiding their narrow self-interest to the detriment of humanity’s best interest. It is a sad reality that these days negotiators play “politicking and wordsmithing” at the cost of substance and action.

Multilateralism – as we are experiencing now – clearly shows it has lost its soul and objectivity. There is no genuine engagement, no honest desire to mutually accommodate and no willingness to rise above narrow self-interest-triggered agenda. It has become a one-way street, a mono-directional pathway for the rich and powerful. Today’s multilateralism needs redefining!

Let me conclude by asserting that, all said, I continue to hold on to my deep faith in multilateralism and, at the same time, my belief and trust in the United Nations as the most universal organization for the people and the planet is renewed and reaffirmed!

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury is the Founder of the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN (1996-2001) and Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the United Nations (2002-2007).

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Israeli missile strikes have caused widespread destruction in Gaza. Credit: World Health Organization (WHO)

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 27 2024 (IPS)

The two devastating military conflicts—Russia vs Ukraine and Israel vs Hamas—have exposed once again the stark reality that the United Nations, created 79 years ago to maintain international peace and security, has failed in its political mission – while its credibility is at stake.

Russia is accused of violating the UN charter by invading a sovereign nation state and causing hundreds and thousands of deaths over two years — with no signs of a peaceful settlement.

The accusations against Israel include war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing and the disproportionate killings of over 30,000 civilians, mostly women and children in Gaza—in retaliation for 1,200 killings by Hamas last October.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who has taken a rightful stand on the two conflicts, has been criticized by both countries, with Israel calling for his resignation while ignoring his request for a meeting or a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The Israeli government also continues to remain defiant—and rejects the demands of the world body—while it is shielded by its longstanding political, economic and military ally: the United States, one of the permanent members of the UNSC.

According to a report in the New York Times last week, the US has used its veto more than 40 times— to be precise, 48 times by some estimates– to shield Israel since the creation of the UN in 1945.

Meanwhile, China and Russia have also used their vetoes to protect their allies, including the Assad regime in Syria and the military regime in Myanmar, bringing the UNSC to a paralytic standstill.

With Russia and Israel continue to be defiant, one lingering question remains: has the UN and UNSC outlived their usefulness?

Norman Solomon, executive director, Institute for Public Accuracy and national director, RootsAction.org, told IPS the repeated U.S. vetoes of Security Council resolutions for a ceasefire in Gaza reflect a renewed moral collapse in Washington, which supplies Israel with 80 percent of its weapons imports.

“The vetoes are unconscionable moves to sustain the mass murder of Palestinian people by an Israeli government committing large-scale war crimes on a daily basis,” he said.

The leadership of the United Nations and key UN agencies have released a steady stream of data and condemnations, correctly spotlighting the murderous ongoing actions of the Israeli military in Gaza, he pointed out.

“But the U.S. government, continuing to aid and abet those actions, has purposefully immobilized the Security Council while the massive humanitarian disaster continues with U.S. arms and U.S. “diplomatic” backing,” said Solomon, author of “War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine.”

Stephen Zunes, Professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco, who has written extensively on the politics of the UNSC, told IPS over half of all U.S. vetoes have been used to shield Israel from criticism. This, in spite of the fact that each of these were under Chapter VI, not Chapter VII, so the Security Council would not have been able to enforce them anyway

“Though Russia and China have not used their veto as often, they have similarly abused this power in protecting such allies as Syria and Myanmar which–like Israel–have engaged in serious war crimes and other violations of international law.”

“Having the United Nations repeatedly blocked from being able to enforce its Charter is incredibly frustrating for those of us who believe in a rules-based international order,” he argued.

At the same time, he said, forcing leaders like Biden and Putin to block otherwise-unanimous resolutions underscores their isolation in the international community, making it clear to the world that they are effectively accomplices in illegal conduct.

“This harms their credibility internationally and therefore weakens their diplomatic influence. As a result, even unsuccessful resolutions have the potential of creating greater pressure, both internationally and domestically, for them to change their policies and eventually allow the United Nations to do its job,” declared Zunes.

Solomon said the UN’s long-standing structural inequities and emerging cold-war hostilities have pushed it into an unproductive corner of geopolitical stalemates.

“The outsized power of the Security Council and its vulnerability to vetoes from its permanent members have exerted dual leverage to marginalize most of the world on matters of war, peace and human rights”.

While the General Assembly, he argued, certainly includes representatives of many governments with hypocritical if not dirty or even bloody hands, those nearly 200 nations at least indirectly reflect the world as a whole.

Time after time, he said, the General Assembly has taken votes that justly and overwhelmingly condemned actions of the powerful. Yet to the extent that a locus of power exists at the UN, it is the Security Council that largely wields it. And the Security Council’s capacity to push for peace and human rights is undermined by the power of a single government to block such a push.

“The United States accounts for just 4 percent of the world’s population, and for Russia the figure is less than 2 percent. Even for China, the number is no more than 17 percent. Yet the governments of those countries routinely cast looming shadows over the bright promises of the United Nations,” declared Solomon.

In this power context, he noted, the new cold war can only be ominous for the UN as a world body that could help to heal the world’s wounds instead of enabling them to fester.

During the last several decades, the United States led the world in magnitude and frequency of flagrant aggression against other countries.

In this century, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other nations were subjected to U.S.-led attacks with horrific results of carnage. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago was a like-minded assertion of “might makes right,” initiating and sustaining slaughter.

While of course blocking any condemnations of their own actions, the U.S. and Russia also covered for their allies, using vetoes in the Security Council to protect them from condemnation, declared Solomon.

Meanwhile, in a statement released last week, UN Human Rights Chief Volker Türk said
Russia’s full-scale armed attack on Ukraine, a war which has entered its third year with no end in sight, continues to cause serious and widespread human rights violations, destroying lives and livelihoods.

In its latest report, the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine (HRMMU) has verified 30,457 civilian casualties since 24 February 2022 – comprising 10,582 killed and 19,875 injured, with the actual numbers likely to be significantly higher.

Millions have been displaced, thousands have lost their homes, and hundreds of medical and educational institutions have been damaged or destroyed, significantly impacting people’s rights to health and education.

“The long-term impact of this war in Ukraine will be felt for generations,” said Türk.

And, in early February, UN Under-Secretary-General and Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, said she remains horrified at the situation in the Middle East and at the unbearable loss of life in the region, with allegations of violations of international law.

She has called for a humanitarian ceasefire, full compliance with international law and prioritization of protection of civilians and for the intensification of diplomatic efforts to put an end to this crisis.

She has emphasized that “civilians should never pay the price of a conflict for which they bear no responsibility. Their most basic rights must be protected and preserved, and their humanitarian needs must be met”.

Echoing the words of the UN Secretary-General, the Special Adviser has reiterated that violations of international humanitarian law can never justify the collective punishment of the people in Gaza.

“Civilians must be protected at all times on both sides,” she said. The Special Adviser also called on all relevant actors to strengthen their resolve to find solutions to end this conflict.

“This requires first and foremost ensuring the protection of civilians and civilian infrastructures in accordance with international law. And includes the safe return of all hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza as well investigating acts of sexual violence reportedly committed in the context of the attacks of 7 October 2023 and their aftermath.,” she added.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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By Anis Chowdhury
SYDNEY, Feb 27 2024 (IPS)

Israel continues to reject calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and now readies itself for an assault on Rafah with a Ramadan deadline for the release of all hostages. It emphatically says, it will oppose any international attempt at creating a Palestinian State, regarded as an “unilateral recognition”. Its unrestrained bombings and ground assaults so far have resulted in close to 30,000 Palestinian deaths more than half of whom are women and children. they have brazenly ignored the International Court of Justice (ICJ) order to take all measures to prevent a plausible genocide. Many thousands are facing starvation and death even when the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) demanded unhindered aid flows to besieged Gaza. All these were possible due to Israel’s ‘unbounded’ impunity which emboldens it.

Anis Chowdhury

‘Unbounded’ impunity
This begins with accepting uncritically whatever Israel claims or does. Take for example, President Biden claimed that Hamas beheaded babies. Echoing a statement made that same day by a spokesperson for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he even said that he had seen “confirmed pictures of terrorists beheading children.”

President Biden did not fully retract his assertion even after the Israeli government said it could not confirm the report made by Netanyahu’s office; it was left to a White House spokesperson to walk it back. Then President Biden repeated that Hamas “were cutting babies’ heads off”, without offering any evidence. Yet he had no sympathy or condemnation that babies were dying and their bodies rotting inside Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, as Israel bombed it, shell it and cut off its essential supplies.

Israel justified its targeting of Al-Shifa claiming that it was Hamas’s command and control centre. Even when it failed to provide any credible evidence, the US claimed “confidence” in the Israeli intelligence authorities. An investigation by The Washington Post found among other things that “the rooms connected to the tunnel network discovered by the IDF showed no immediate evidence of military use by Hamas; none of the five hospital buildings identified by Hagari appeared to be connected to the tunnel network, and no evidence that the tunnels could be accessed from inside hospital wards”.

President Biden doubted Palestinian claims of the death tolls due to Israel’s “indiscriminate bombing” by his own admission. Then the White House downplays Biden’s remarks while the US continues to provide military assistance and diplomatic support, including repeated vetoes against cease-fire resolutions at the UNSC, the latest being on 21 February. The Guardian’s cartoonist, Fiona Katauskas, explained the US veto as “It’s not that we’re anti-ceasefire so much as pro-not standing up to Netanyahu”.

As of 19 February, Israel’s assault in Gaza has killed more than 29,000 Palestinians, making it one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history. Additionally, more than 69,000 Palestinians have been wounded, overwhelming the territory’s hospitals, less than half of which are even partially functioning.

All these are not sufficient to waver the US support for Israel. Thus, the US and its Western allies accept Israel’s claim that there is no “uninvolved Palestinians”. “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Israel’s Isaac Herzog said as Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate their homes.

Israel’s US-led Western allies were quick to sacrifice the most fundamental basis of justice, that is, the presumption of innocence until proven guilty when they suspended funding for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) responding to the Israeli accusation that some 10 UNRWA employees were involved in the 7 October Hamas attack. This puts the burden of proof on the accused, not on the accuser as the presumption of innocence requires to guard against “type I error” or “false positive” that an innocent is punished wrongly.

The action ignores the good work of thousands of UNRWA employees and the fact that hundreds of them sacrificed their lives in serving humanity in an extreme situation. The US and its Western allies have not restored funding even when “the allegations against staff remain murky”, and the UNRWA sacked the accused denying their fundamental right to justice, and promptly instituted an investigation.

Suspension of UNWRA funding reinforces Israel’s narrative that Palestinians deserve collective punishment as no Palestinian is innocent. It also serves Israel’s attempt to by-pass or scuttle ICJ’s order as well as the UNSC resolution to ensure uninterrupted flows of aid and essential supplies – food, fuel, water and medicine, in particular.

Expansionist Israel
The uncritical acceptance of Zionist narratives helped Israel expand its border beyond the 1947 (November) UN General Assembly Resolution 181 (II), recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish States and a Special International Regime for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings. The Arab state was to have a territory of 11,100 square kilometres (42%), the Jewish state a territory of 14,100 square kilometres (56%), while the remaining 2% – comprising the cities of Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the adjoining area—would become an international zone.

In the 1948 war Israel expanded its territory to 77% of Palestine, including a large part of Jerusalem. Over half of the Palestinian population fled or were expelled which the Palestinians call “Nakba” or “catastrophe”. The official Zionist narrative asserted that the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine before 1984) faced annihilation on the eve of the1948 war. It also portrayed the Arab side as Nazis.

However, Simha Flapan’s 1987 book, The Birth of Israel: Myths and Realities, relying on declassified Israeli documents, debunked this narrative and showed that there was no such danger. The Jewish community easily won the diplomatic battle in the UN, backed by the US, the first country to recognise Israel, and was favoured by the balance of military power on the ground. Yet, the myth of annihilation became central in driving unconditional Western support for Israel.

The 1967 Six-Day War culminated in Israel’s absorption of the whole of historical Palestine, including the West Bank (from Jordan) as well as additional territory from, Egypt (Gaza Strip and all of the Sinai Peninsula up to the east bank of the Suez Canal) and Syria (Golan Heights). By the end of the war, Israel expelled another 300,000 Palestinians from their homes, including 130,000 who were displaced in 1948, and gained territory that was three and a half times its size.

Inconsistent, but mostly supportive, policies of the US and its Western allies towards Israel’s annexations of occupied Palestinian territories and settlements violating the international law allowed Israel to absorb all of Palestine – “from the River to the Sea”. At the recent ICJ hearing on Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the US argued that Israel should not be ordered to immediately and unconditionally end occupation, while the UK sought to block the hearing. Thus, the Western powers acquiesce with Israel’s claims of Jewish people’s “historical right to Judea and Samaria” hypocritically promoting a so-called “two-state solution”.

Emboldened Israel
Unsurprisingly, the US and its Western allies did not raise concerns when on 22 September Netanyahu brandished map of Israel that included West Bank and Gaza at his UN speech. Sadly, but understandably, the lone protesters were dispossessed Palestinians. Laith Arafeh, Palestinian Ambassador to Germany, tweeted, “No greater insult to every foundational principle of the United Nations than seeing Netanyahu display before the UNGA a ‘map of Israel’ that straddles the entire land from the river to the sea, negating Palestine and its people”.

Netanyahu’s new Middle-East map was spun as ushering a “new era of peace”; but ironically in less than a month the region exploded. Knowing fully that the US and its Western allies are firmly with Israel, Netanyahu defiantly declared, “We won’t capitulate to any pressure”.

Netanyahu rejects demands for a Palestinian state, winning overwhelming backing of Israel’s parliament. The emboldened Israel’s blue-print for “day after” is a smack on the face of the US and its Western allies, exposing their deceit and hypocrisies.

Anis Chowdhury is Adjunct Professor, School of Business, Western Sydney University. He held senior United Nations positions in the area of Economic and Social Affairs in New York and Bangkok.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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The humanitarian crisis continues in Gaza as negotiators continue talks in Qatar. Credit: UNRWA/Twitter

By Naureen Hossain
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 26 2024 (IPS)

As negotiations within the UN Security Council and internationally continue, the humanitarian response to Gaza continues to be under threat.

Palestine’s representative to the UN has declared that a new resolution may be in the works, which will also include “practical measures” to ensure a humanitarian ceasefire and to withhold any support for Israel in the ongoing conflict in Gaza.

Riyad H. Mansour, the Permanent Observer to the State of Palestine, spoke to reporters last Thursday (February 22, 2024). In addition to calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, the measures would include urging countries to stop sending weapons and ammunition to Israel and implementing sanctions on them.

“The occupying authority that is defying everyone, defying international law, defying the ICJ (International Court of Justice) by refusing to implement the provisional measures that the ICJ asked… that country that behaves in that manner should face consequences in the international community, including in the General Assembly,” he said.

Mansour also stated that they would be pushing for Palestine to be admitted as a member of the United Nations, beginning with gaining support from member states before the General Assembly before bringing it to the Security Council.

“The rights of the people of Palestine must be determined by the people,” he said. “It’s only us—the Palestinian people—who will determine our right to self-determination, including our independence. We will not negotiate that principle, and we will not ask for permission from anyone to do so.”

The decision to advocate for these measures was the result of an ambassadorial-level meeting between Mansour and the members of the Arab League, which was convened in the wake of the United States’ decision to veto the Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza on February 20.

Algeria, a non-permanent member of the Council at the moment, presented the resolution for discussion on February 20. The resolution received 13 votes in favor, with only the United States’ veto and the United Kingdom abstaining. The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thompson-Green, told reporters that the United States has presented its own draft resolution, an alternative that would be “forward-leaning.” This resolution, she claimed, would include a call for a temporary ceasefire “as soon as practicable,” that would allow for the safe release of all hostages held by Hamas, and for humanitarian aid to reach Gaza.

Despite the international community’s outcry of support for a humanitarian ceasefire, this has been repeatedly undermined. Declining support for UNRWA created challenges. The allegations leveled at the organization have resulted in two separate investigations into the matter. Yet, over 17 countries, many of whom are classified as high-income countries, have suspended their funding for the organization, leaving it more vulnerable at a time when its operations are overextended. As the first major donor to pull its support, the United States set the example.

This has risked further jeopardizing UNRWA’s operations, which have been funded through to the end of February, but leave their future even more uncertain.

“UNRWA remains and is the backbone of the humanitarian work that is being done in Gaza at great cost to UNRWA staff themselves,” said Stéphane Dujarric, spokesperson for the Secretary-General.

Meanwhile, other humanitarian agencies operating in the region continue to struggle to work in unsafe conditions. The same day that the ceasefire resolution was vetoed, the World Food Programme (WFP) announced that they had been forced to halt their deliveries into North Gaza, citing security reasons. They described witnessing “unprecedented levels of desperation” and warned that the risk of famine and disease in Gaza has been confirmed, wherein the scarcity of food and safe water has already compromised the nutrition and immunity of civilians.

Speaking at the Security Council, Christopher Lockyear, Secretary-General of Doctors Without Borders, urged for a ceasefire, detailing how staff have also been caught up in the attacks, including those who have lost their lives, or been forced to evacuate nine different health facilities since October 7. He warned that the humanitarian response in Gaza was “haphazard, opportunistic,” and “entirely inadequate.”

“Calls for more humanitarian assistance have echoed across this chamber,” he said. “Yet in Gaza we have less and less each day—less space, less medicine, less food, less water, less safety.”

He also condemned the Council for delaying and preventing efforts to adopt a ceasefire resolution while civilians and aid workers continue to live in such dangerous conditions. “The consequences of casting international humanitarian law to the wind will reverberate well beyond Gaza. It will be an enduring burden on our collective conscience. This is not just political inaction—it has become political complicity.”

Meanwhile, people in Gaza live in such dire conditions. Now, nearly 30,000 Palestinians have been reported dead, the majority of whom have been women and children. As of February 23, only seven hospitals in Gaza remain operational to accommodate those who remain. The city of Rafah, which is supposedly a safe zone, now hosts more than 1 million civilians, even as hostilities rage on. With the looming warning that the Israeli military will mobilize forces into Rafah by March 12, the first day of Ramadan, if the hostages are not released, the international community now has a deadline.

The negotiations to secure a pause in the war are continuing in Qatar, following last week’s Paris talks, which a delegation from Israel attended.

There had been an understanding of the “basic contours” of a hostage deal for a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told CNN on Sunday.

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By Magnus Lovold
GENEVA, Switzerland, Feb 26 2024 (IPS)

There are moments when international treaties, long forgotten by the general public, suddenly spring back to life. Moments when glimpses of reality shine through the thick-laden bureaucracies of the United Nations and catch the attention of the world outside.

The debate that unfolded in “sub-working group on current and emerging implementation issues” of the Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) on Wednesday 21 February was such a moment.

The State of Palestine and Control Arms — a civil society coalition — had, in January, requested a debate about the impact of weapons transfers to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Never before, since the ATT’s entry into force in 2014, had there been a formal discussion about non-compliance under the treaty.

The debate would, in more ways than one, become a clash of two worlds. On the one hand, the uncompromising and bloody reality on the ground in Gaza, where nearly 30,000 civilians — including more than 10,000 children — have been killed by Israeli bombs over the past four months.

On the other, the hushed and self-possessed world of multilateral diplomacy, where drama rarely elevates beyond the occasional request for points of order.

The stakes surrounding the debate had broken through the roof when the International Court of Justice (ICJ) concluded, on 26 January, that there is a plausible risk that Israel’s actions in Gaza are violating the Genocide Convention, placing the countries that are supplying Israel with weapons — most of which are parties to the ATT, with the exception of the United States — under significant pressure.

The foreign ministers of Italy and Spain had already announced that they will no longer export weapons to Israel. Citing the ATT and the EU common position on the export of military technology and equipment, a Dutch court had ordered, on 12 February, the government of the Netherlands to stop the export of F-35 fighter jet components to Israel.

While the Dutch government announced that they would appeal the order, the ruling had, in the following weeks, taken on a life of its own, leading parliamentarians and civil society groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada and Denmark to urge their governments to stop arms transfers to Israel.

The big question, when the parties to the ATT met in Geneva last week, was how these countries would respond to allegations that they, by supplying Israel with weapons, risk complicity in genocide and other international crimes.

The ATT seeks to prevent and reduce human suffering by establishing common international standards for the transfer of conventional weapons. Specifically, the treaty prohibits countries from transferring weapons if they know, at the time of transfer, that the weapons could be used to commit international crimes.

According to Hurini Alwishewa, a legal expert at the Graduate Institute, countries involved in supplying Israel with weapons can no longer claim ignorance: “With the ICJ finding that there is a plausible claim of genocide, the knowledge requirement is clearly fulfilled, and therefore exports of arms to Israel must not be authorised”, she said at Wednesday’s meeting.
In the run-up to the meeting, there had been rumours that the arms exporting countries would simply refuse to engage on the matter. There was even speculation that some countries would seek to dodge the debate altogether by filibustering the preceding agenda items.

But ultimately, the exporting countries realised that they had no other choice than to at least try to explain themselves. A few minutes before the debate was about to start, the United Kingdom, Germany and the Netherlands could be observed wheeling their ambassadors in to the brutalist conference room at the CICG in Geneva.

Speaking from the podium, Nada Tarbush, a counsellor of Palestine’s mission to the UN who rose to prominence after a widely published speech delivered in November, was determined not to let the ambassadors’ off the hook.

“We are once again reaching out to exporting states to urge and urge them to explain their respective policies on arms exports to Israel. Particularly the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands, France, Canada, Australia, Japan, the Czech Republic, Norway, and other states that may be involved as transit states including Greece, Cyprus and Belgium“, Tarbush said, when laying out her case.

“We would be grateful to receive details of all extant arms export, transit, and brokering licenses of the supply of military and dual use items to Israel”.

The arms exporters were, however, not prepared to engage in specifics. Instead, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands both downplayed its role in supplying Israel with weapons.

“UK defence exports to Israel represent a small portion of UK arms exports”, Aiden Liddle, the ambassador of the United Kingdom, said. While he made it clear that the ICJ’s January ruling “is binding on Israel” and suggested that the United Kingdom’s export licences to Israel may be revoked “if circumstances change and we reach a different view”, Liddle did not explain how his country had initially concluded that weapons exports to Israel was in line with the ATT.

More evasively still, the Netherlands explained that “individual licenses can be granted, as long as there is no overriding risk that military goods may be misused by the end user” and stated that “applications requests for Israel have been granted in certain cases and denied in other cases”.

Like the United Kingdom, however, the Netherlands failed to lay out the details of its export licensing decisions. Nor did they explain how they had concluded that the export of F-35 fighter jet parts comes with “no overriding risk” of misuse by Israel.

Germany, in a significantly more aggressive move, took issue with the debate as such, criticising Palestine and Control Arms for attempting “to politicise the ATT process”. Instead of explaining how Germany’s export licences to Israel could be in line with international law, Ambassador Thomas Göbel offered what seemed like a full-fledged support of the manner in which Israel conducts its military operations in Gaza.

Echoing points made earlier in the debate by a representative of Israel — a signatory but not a party to the ATT — Göbel stated that “Hamas must stop its rocket attacks and refrain from using civilians as human shields and civilian infrastructure for military purposes […] For Germany, Israel’s security is not negotiable”.

The exporting countries’ attempts to justify their involvement in Israel’s military operations in Gaza were, ultimately, found wanting. Tarbush made no secret of her disappointment, accusing the exporting countries for putting “themselves in a situation of criminal liability, of immorality in a situation where double standards risk irreversibly eroding the credibility of international law and the international system built since the Second World War”.

But however incomplete, the mere fact that a debate about arms transfers to Israel could take place in the ATT is a positive step for the treaty. Too often, international treaties get caught up in their own institutional bureaucracies, resulting in a detachment from the realities that the treaties are set up to address. Since its entry into force ten years ago, the ATT has, sadly, been no exception.

Instead of criticising the State of Palestine and Control Arms for attempts to “politicise” the process, Germany and other countries supplying Israel with weapons, should see the debate as an opportunity to set a new, more reality-oriented, standard for ATT implementation.

Despite its imperfections, international law can play a key role in exposing double-standards. By offering specifics now, western states will come in a much stronger position to demand transparency from others in the future.

More importantly, history shows that countries supplying other countries with weapons have significant power to shape the conduct — and even outcomes — of military operations; to ensure that civilians are protected or, to put it bluntly, left for slaughter. Indeed, that realisation was one of the factors driving the development of the ATT in the first place.

As Israel is preparing its ground invasion of Rafah, arms exporting countries are bound to be placed under increasing pressure. On Friday 23 February, a group of 41 UN experts, citing the ATT, called for any transfer of weapons to Israel to “cease immediately”. If arms exporting countries are serious about their commitments to international law and a rules-based order, they should heed this call.

Otherwise, the Munich Security Conference’s recent assessment of world politics as a steady trajectory towards a zero-sum game could well become reality.

Source: Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert provides breaking news and analysis about international law and treaty-making, revealing the hidden diplomatic moves that shape the world.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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A selection of mostly simple food items put together in Myanmar in parcels for political prisoners, using funds raised by activists and the Burmese diaspora. Credit: Supplied to William Webb/IPS

By William Webb
CHIANGMAI, Thailand, Feb 26 2024 (IPS)

Rangoon Nights is rocking. The bar is on its feet and the cocktail shaker is shaking in abandon as the band Born In Burma starts pumping out its beat.

Except we’re not in Rangoon or Burma (officially called Myanmar), but in the northern Thai town of Chiangmai which has evolved into a hub for activists, fugitives, and those taking a break from the war tearing their country apart.

Dancing among them with a wraith-like grace is Sakura—her nom de guerre—who, like others in the bar popular with Myanmar exiles, is there both to let her hair down and to raise funds for the revolutionary movement fighting the military junta that seized power three years ago.

Sakura’s personal operation—run by a small, close-knit team—is to deliver food parcels to a few dozen political prisoners held by the regime in appalling conditions across Myanmar. More than 1,500 are documented to have died in detention by force or by neglect since the coup. Over 20,000 are known to be behind bars.

“The parcels are a message for them—that we still support you and don’t forget you,” says Sakura.

Her project evolved by accident. Sakura was in Yangon in early 2021, joining vast crowds of anti-coup protesters, when her cousin was arrested and disappeared into the prison system. Suspecting she was held in Yangon’s notorious Insein jail (built by British colonisers in the 1800s), lawyers told Sakura that if she delivered a food parcel with her cousin’s name and it was accepted at the prison, then it would signal she was indeed inside.

It worked. Sakura shared this piece of useful information on Facebook, the social media outlet favoured by the resistance, while the junta uses Telegram. Soon, she started receiving pleas for help from families of other prisoners.

Sakura’s food parcel project was born. It moved with her to Thailand in 2022 after she fled police raids on her Yangon home. “I can’t go back,” she says.

Her small but effective operation speaks volumes about the war in Myanmar—largely forgotten beyond its borders; ineffectual international institutions and humanitarian organisations; little outside aid. But juxtaposed with domestic and vibrant civil society organisations like Sakura’s that strive to make a difference, work efficiently, and give a chance for a better future.

Sakura’s parcels—assembled inside Myanmar—contain soup powder to flavour bland prison mush, instant noodles, cookies, ingredients for much-loved tea-leaf salad, anti-bacterial soap for skin diseases, soap powder for clothes, shampoo, and toothbrush and paste. Plus the all-important Premier brand of coffee mix, which acts as a form of currency among prisoners.

The team presently delivers to about 35 prisoners a month, a tiny fraction of the growing numbers that the junta is incarcerating in a prison construction boom, one of the few sectors of the economy benefiting from the civil war.

Faces of the dead. Myanmar’s non-profit Assistance Association for Political Prisoners has a museum in the Thai border town of Mae Sot documenting the identities of over 3,000 civilians killed by the military since it seized power in 2021, as well as those killed since the first post-independence coup in 1962.

Working with a total monthly budget of some 3.0 million kyat (about USD 850 at the street rate), Sakura also sends money to sustain poor families whose main breadwinners are now behind bars. One is the mother of a Yangon hotel receptionist in her 20s who was sentenced to 15 years.

“Her crime was to have donated about USD 10 to the resistance. Police seized her phone and found the payment on the app. Her mother is ill and cannot work,” explains Sakura, who learned English in a Buddhist monastery and comes from a family of farmers.

Delivering the parcels is not a typical Deliveroo operation. Funds are sent from Thailand by various means to her small team in Myanmar, who, at the risk of arrest for ‘supporting terrorism’, buy the items and pack the parcels. They are then discreetly passed to lawyers representing the prisoners, who pass them on to family members who take them on their prison visits.

Sanitary products are included for some female detainees. “Sometimes we also get special requests for clothes and underwear. My budget doesn’t always stretch,“ she says.

On the other side of Chiangmai, Sonny Swe, a well-known Myanmar entrepreneur and publisher formerly based in Yangon, reflects on the trauma of over eight years of solitary confinement in prison, from 2004 to 2013, and the importance then of family visits bringing food parcels.

“Meditation, exercise, reading” were the bedrock of his survival, he says over a hearty Burmese breakfast of mohinga fish soup in his café, Gatone’s (Baldy’s). He was held in five different prisons and the long distances from home prevented regular family visits.

“I kept telling myself, ‘I am strong, strong. I will survive. They will not break me. I will defeat them.’ But once you come out of prison, you understand the toll, the trauma. You think you are fine and strong but you are not.”

Bo Kyi, Joint Secretary of the non-profit Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), was a political prisoner for seven years and knows well the succour provided by family and friends to those incarcerated.

“Family support is very important for a political prisoner,” he says. Now 59, he was jailed from 1990–93 for demonstrating and calling for release of all political prisoners, and arrested again in 1994 for four more years. He says military intelligence tried to recruit him as an informer but he refused and, in turn, demanded freedom for all political prisoners and for the regime to enter into dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi who was then under house arrest. Leader of the elected government overthrown in the coup, she is back in prison.

Bo Kyi co-founded AAPP in the Thai border town of Mae Sot in March 2000. The organisation meticulously documents identities of political prisoners and tracks their fate, as well as civilians killed by the regime. AAPP, deemed an illegal organisation by the regime, also offers training in dealing with trauma and counselling services, assisted by Johns Hopkins University, Maryland.

As of late February, AAPP has documented the names and identities of 20,147 people it defines as political prisoners, including over 4,000 women and 300 children. Sentenced to death, so far, are 15 women and 136 men. Four were executed on July 23, 2022, including well known activist Ko Jimmy.

As of January 31 this year, it had documented 1,588 people who were “killed through force or neglect” during detention by the regime and its supporters since the coup. The actual number may be much higher. “Torture is endemic,” AAPP says. A large number of those killed in detention are in Sagaing Region, “where resistance by the people is fiercest,”  says AAPP.

They are not just statistics. Speaking of the bravery of those inside Myanmar who try to alleviate the plight of prisoners, Sakura shares the latest shocking news.

Noble Aye, a prominent human rights activist, was reportedly killed in detention along with a companion, apparently after a court hearing on February 8 in Bago Region. They had been detained at a checkpoint in Waw Township on January 20, allegedly carrying weapons and ammunition, charges that the resistance say were false.

She had been jailed twice before as a political prisoner and shared a cell with Zin Mar Aung, the current foreign affairs minister in the shadow National Unity Government set up after the coup.

As it does regularly, the regime was reported to have blamed her death in detention on an escape attempt. The family says they received information that her body was secretly cremated. Noble Aye was 49 and in bad health.

William Webb is an independent travel writer

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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Credit: Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images

By Andrew Firmin
LONDON, Feb 26 2024 (IPS)

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked its second anniversary on 24 February. And while civil society is offering an immense voluntary effort in Ukraine, in Russia activists have faced intense constraints. The suspicious death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny is part of a great wave of repression. He’s the latest in a long list of people who’ve come to a sudden end after falling out with Vladmir Putin.

Putin is paying a backhanded compliment to the importance of civil society by suppressing it through every possible means. State-directed murder is the most extreme form of repression, but Putin has many more tricks up his sleeve. One is criminalisation of protests, seen when people showed up at improvised vigils to commemorate Navalny, laying flowers at informal memorials, knowing what would happen. Police arrested hundreds and the flowers quickly vanished.

Protests & vigils after the murder of Alexei Navalny. Ongoing thread. pic.twitter.com/0TnjWjCjWB

— OVD-Info English (@ovdinfo_en) February 16, 2024

An unrelenting assault

Human rights organisation OVD-Info reports that since the start of the full-scale invasion, the authorities have detained 19,855 people at anti-war protests, brought 894 criminal cases against anti-war activists and introduced 51 new repressive laws.

Among many other Russians jailed for symbolic acts of protest, Crimean artist Bohdan Zizu was handed a 15-year sentence last June for spray-painting a building in the colours of the Ukrainian flag. In November, artist Alexandra Skochilenko was sentenced to seven years for placing information about the war on supermarket price tags. Now people helping Ukrainian refugees living in Russia are being criminalised.

The government is also making it impossible for civil society and independent media organisations to keep working. Last August, the authorities declared independent TV channel Dozhd an ‘undesirable organisation’, in effect banning it from operating in Russia and criminalising anyone who shares its content. In August, courts ordered the closure of the Sakharov Center, a human rights organisation. Through similar means the authorities have forced several other organisations out of existence or into exile.

The state has also designated numerous people and organisations as ‘foreign agents’, a classification intended to stigmatise them as associated with espionage. In November, it added the Moscow Times to the list. The government has also doubled down on its attacks on LGBTQI+ people as part of its strategy to inflame narrow nationalist sentiments. And it keeps passing laws to further tighten civic space. Putin recently approved a law that allows the government to confiscate money and other assets from people who criticise the war.

The state is criminalising journalists as well. In March, it detained Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges, sending a signal that international journalists aren’t safe. The authorities are also holding Russian-US journalist Alsu Kurmasheva of Radio Free Europe, detained while paying a family visit to Russia. Putin is likely planning to use them as leverage for a prisoner swap. State authorities have put other journalists based outside Russia on wanted lists or charged them in absentia.

Meanwhile, Putin has pardoned real criminals for joining the fight. They include one of the people jailed for organising the 2006 assassination of pioneering investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya.

It’s hard to hope for any let-up in the crackdown, at least as long as the war lasts. A non-competitive election will approve another term for Putin in March. No credible candidates are allowed to oppose him, and recently an anti-war politician who’d unexpectedly emerged to provide a focus for dissent was banned from standing. Last year the government amended laws to further restrict media coverage of the election, making it very hard to report on electoral fraud.

Weak or strong?

For a time last year Putin seemed weakened when his former ally Yevgeny Prigozhin rebelled, marching his Wagner Group mercenaries on Moscow. The two sides agreed a deal to end the dispute, and sure enough, two months later, Prigozhin died in a suspicious plane crash.

Putin has reasserted his authority. He may be gaining the upper hand in the war. Russia has greater firepower and is largely surviving attempts to isolate it financially, with repressive regimes such as China, India and Turkey picking up the slack in demand for its fossil fuels. It’s turned itself into a Soviet-style war economy, with state spending strongly focused on the military effort, although that can’t be long-term sustainable. Some of the world’s most authoritarian governments – Iran and North Korea – are also supplying weapons.

In comparison, Ukrainian forces are running out of ammunition. Support for Ukraine’s effort has come under greater strain due to political shifts in Europe and the breaking of political consensus in the USA, with Trump-affiliated Republicans working to block further military aid.

Putin may be riding high, but such is the level of state control it’s hard to get an accurate picture of how popular he is, and the election will offer no evidence. Given repression, protest levels may not tell the full story either – but some have still broken out, including those in response to Navalny’s death.

A vital current of dissent has formed around unhappiness with war losses. Last September, an independent poll suggested that support for the war was at a record low. Morale among Russian troops is reportedly poor and deserters have called on others to quit. Families of men serving in the military have held protests demanding the fighting ends.

Protesters have offered other recent moments of opposition. In November, people held a demonstration in Siberia against a local initiative to further restrict protests. In January, in Baymak in southern Russia, hundreds protested at the jailing of an activist. There’s also domestic unhappiness at high inflation.

Moments don’t make a movement, but they can offer inspiration that turns into one, and that often happens unexpectedly. Putin’s story is far from over. As with tyrants before, he’ll likely look invincible until just before he falls.

Andrew Firmin is CIVICUS Editor-in-Chief, co-director and writer for CIVICUS Lens and co-author of the State of Civil Society Report.

 

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They are fed up of inflation and austerity and want to end IMF and World Bank policies - and more stories.

Seventeen-year-old Fatimah receives vocational training at Gonidamgari Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria. Thanks to Education Cannot Wait investments, girls like Fatimah, who had never been enrolled in school, are now able to attend a flexible hybrid learning programme for out-of-school adolescent girls. Credit: ECW

By Joyce Chimbi
MAIDUGURI, Nigeria & NAIROBI , Feb 23 2024 (IPS)

Nigeria is home to 15 percent of the world’s out-of-school children. More than 7.6 million girls are not in school, and only nine percent of the poorest girls in the country are in secondary school. The Boko Haram insurgency and other armed groups fuel the out-of-school crisis in northeast Nigeria, disrupting the education of nearly two million school-age children.

Grave violations of children’s rights prevail in northeastern areas, including the abduction of thousands of children and young people; girls are enslaved and sexually exploited, and boys forced to become child soldiers. Education Cannot Wait (ECW) Executive Director Yasmine Sherif visited communities affected by the conflict and interconnected crises, witnessing first-hand the positive impact of ECW’s initial Multi-Year Resilience Programme (2021-2024).

“We visited a primary school, a transitional center for boys that fled Boko Haram areas, and one non-formal education center that provides vocational skills training. We have seen the power of holistic education to rehabilitate and reintegrate boys who have fled from Boko Haram areas back into society. ECW and partners, the national Ministry of Education, the Federal State Government, local organizations, teachers, students, and psychologists are all working hand-in-hand, leveraging education to heal children from traumatic experiences—providing them with better life prospects,” Sherif told IPS.

Yasmine Sherif, Education Cannot Wait Executive Director, speaks with students at the
ECW-supported Pompomary Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria.
Credit: ECW

Sherif met with senior government officials, including the Minister of Education, Dr. Tahir Mamman, and Borno State Governor, Prof. Babagana Umara Zulum, and aid partners, all working to ensure the right to education for boys and girls. She stressed that ECW’s expanded funding for crisis-affected girls and boys in north-east Nigeria is “an investment in a more stable, prosperous, and peaceful future for the whole region. ECW’s plans to continue providing safe, quality holistic education and learning opportunities towards protecting children and youth from exploitation—empowering them to achieve their dreams of touching humanity.”

Sherif was also accompanied by a high-level delegation from UNICEF and the governments of Germany and Norway. Germany is ECW’s leading donor with USD 366 million in total contributions, and Norway is the Fund’s fifth largest donor with total contributions of USD 131 million. Building resilient education systems is both critical and urgent for Nigeria’s crisis-impacted children.

ECW’s initial Multi-Year Resilience Programme, delivered by the Norwegian Refugee Council, Save the Children, and UNICEF, has consistently achieved its targets, and has so far reached nearly 500,000 children and adolescents with quality, holistic education in areas affected by the crisis in north-east Nigeria.

The school provides girls, boys, and adolescents with holistic education support, including the provision of learning materials, teacher training, and classroom rehabilitation.
Credit: ECW

 

Education Cannot Wait (ECW) mission delegation and strategic partners on the ground during a visit to Pompomary Primary School in Maiduguri, North-East Nigeria. The ECW-funded school provides girls, boys, and adolescents with holistic education support, including the provision of learning materials, teacher training, and classroom rehabilitation.
Credit: ECW

 

“We need additional funding to reach all two million children in north-east Nigeria and end the out-of-school crisis. Meanwhile, the rest of the world cannot wait—we have dire needs in the Middle East, the refugees in Latin America , across the Sahel region, and in the Sub-Saharan Africa region, where nine in 10 children cannot read simple sentences,” Sherif emphasizes.

“ECW appeals for additional strategic donor partners—governments, the private sector, philanthropic foundations, and high-net-worth individuals—to join our efforts in mobilizing an additional US$600 million to reach our target of US$1.5 billion for ECW, allowing our partners to reach, by 2026, a total of 20 million girls and boys in crises-affected areas of the world quality education.”

Dr. Heike Kuhn, Co-Chair of the ECW Executive Committee and Head of Education Division at Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, agrees, saying that building “resilient education systems for increased access to inclusive, quality, and lifelong learning is crucial for Nigeria, as half of its population are children and youth. Educating children means changing their lives and letting them participate in building peaceful, sustainable societies.”

Merete Lundemo, Co-Chair of the ECW Executive Committee and Special Envoy for Education in Crisis and Conflict for Norway’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also emphasized that education is a lifeline for crisis-impacted children and that education projects bring much needed relief and normalcy to children in affected areas. Welcoming strengthened cooperation with ECW to ensure that no child is left behind and that this is part of Norway’s wider engagement for children living in armed conflict.

“This joint program and the education needs and dreams of Nigeria’s crisis-impacted children align with the African Union’s call on all governments to ensure that all children access quality education, officially declaring 2024 as the ‘Year of Education.’ We must all come together with urgency and commitment to make this a reality for the poor, vulnerable children in Africa living on the margins of abject poverty, fleeing from the traumas of violent conflict and interconnected crises,” Sherif observed.

The delegation also met with survivors of conflict-related sexual violence who are co-creating a new innovative project launched by the Global Survivors Fund with funding support from ECW. The initiative provides formal and non-formal education as a form of reparation for survivors of conflict-related sexual violence and their children.The expanded funding for the planned Multi-Year Resilience Programme shall build on ECW’s USD 23.6 million investments in the north-east of Nigeria since 2018. The investments are delivered in partnership with the Ministry of Education, UN agencies, and international and local civil society partners.

With a focus on building lasting solutions applying the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, ECW investments in the north-east of Nigeria have provided children with learning materials, supported teacher training and incentives, school feeding, provided essential mental health and psychosocial support for girls and boys impacted by the conflict, and worked with national authorities to get children back to school through permanent community-based programmes.

IPS UN Bureau Report

 

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The point is, ladies and gentleman, that greed – for lack of a better word – is good. Greed is right. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms – greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge – has marked the upward surge of mankind.                                                    Gordon Gekko’s address to stockholders in Oliver Stone’s 1987 movie Wall Street
 
The world has enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone's greed.                                                                                                                Mahatma Gandhi

By Jan Lundius
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Feb 23 2024 (IPS)

At Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen there is a great painting made in 1797 by the Danish Golden Age painter Jens Juel. It depicts one of Denmark’s richest merchants at the time – Niels Ryberg, his newlywed son Johan Christian, and the son’s bride, Engelke. Johan Christian makes a gesture as though to show off the family estate. There is a strong feeling of harmony between the people and the countryside in which they are placed. The picture reflects the new interest in nature that emerged all over Europe towards the end of the 18th century. It also demonstrates how Denmark’s new, rich bourgeois wished to carry themselves in the style of the aristocracy, a social class which dominance they were infringing. Ryberg and his son appear just as distinguished as the aristocrats that used to be portrayed by Jens Juel.

Niels Ryberg sits on a bench watching the young couple with a benevolent smile, full of love. He was a successful and admired man. By his diligence, perseverance and punctuality, the Ryberg Insurance Company had quickly become on of the leading enterprises in Denmark. Ryberg began his activity by insuring the human cargo of the huge slave ship Juliane Haab, followed by several others. Eventually, Ryberg’s excellent skills for trading made his company the wealthiest in Denmark, having monopoly on the Icelandic, Faroese, Greenlandic and Finnmark trade. Ryberg was inspired by a zeal to counteract poverty and to help the poor, sick, weak and helpless in the most appropriate manner. As a landowner, Ryberg had the opportunity to work for the public good. He bought large estates, helping freeholders to build new farms, or improve the old ones by giving them free timber from the forest and stone from his brickworks He had mills and schools built, rebuilt his estates’ churches, while distributing useful books for free and paying district doctors and midwives.

He was also propagating for the abolition of slavery, though unbeknownst to the general public Niels Ryberg profited from his own private slave trade. Between 1761 and 1810 Denmark exported about 56,800 African slaves, manly to sugar plantations on their colonized West Indian islands – Saint Thomas, Saint John, and Saint Croix. An important source of income for Danish traders, but relatively small compared with the British slave traders who during the same period exported 1,385,300 chattled human beings, followed by the French with 1,381,400, the Portuguese with 1,010,400, and the Dutch with 850,000. Sugar was the prerequisite of many of the great fortunes earned by a number of the Copenhagen merchants in the 18th century, constituting between 80 and 90 percent of the value of the total Danish industrial exports in the second half of the 18th century.

In 1770, the Danish government asked Niels Ryberg to give his opinion on the Kingdom’s state of commerce. After having characterized the West Indian islands as “by far the most important branch of the Danish commerce”, he went on to call the Danish colony of St. Croix ”one of the most splendid jewels in Your Majesty’s crown”.

The extent of Ryberg’s slave trade is known to have been quite big, but was mostly hidden from Danish view. However, insurance claims for losses of human cargo indicates that he was a “packer”, filling his slave ships above their capacity, counting upon making a profit in spite of deaths among his human “merchandise”. One example – his frigate Emanuel did in 1758 force 449 slaves onboard in Guinea, but only 181 were alive when the ship arrived in the West Indies. Just before the Danish king in 1802 forbade his Danish subjects to transport enslaved people across the Atlantic Ocean, Ryberg crammed 221 people on a small brig and over 50 perished before the journey’s destination, Santiago de Cuba, was reached. The ship’s name was Engelke. Ryberg had named his last slave ship after his pretty daughter-in-law, who can be seen at Jens Juel’s charming painting.

How could a well-known, “kind-hearted” philanthropist like Niels Ryberg without any kind of remorse dedicate himself to such an incredibly cruel activity as the cross-Atlantic slave trade? One explanation might be the one that the American psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton presents in his The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Lifton developed an explanatory “model” he called “doubling” to account for the capacity of some human beings to commit atrocities in one compartment of their lives, while continuing to maintain normal social relations in their domestic sphere. A phenomenon Lifton had encountered both in interviews with former medical doctors working in concentration camps and with the state controlled euthanise programs, as well as with their surviving victims. He intended to reach an empathetic understanding of acts of extreme violence carried out by individuals who did not present symptoms of psychiatric disorder and maintained normal existences, but nevertheless were prepared to kill for a cause that conferred on their lives a sense of purpose, in spite of the tremendous suffering they instigated. An enigma that calls to mind the ongoing brutalities motivated by people like Putin and Nethanyahu, who in their private lives assumably are unaffected by the bloodshed committed on their orders.

Slavery and the underlying practice of treating human lives as commodities is indeed a moral dilemma. Nevertheless, people like the outwardly kind-hearted Niels Ryberg had no problem sacrificing their high and recognized morals for profits being made from the slave trade. The fundamental issue of the slave trade is thus not only an issue of how to better treat other human beings, but also how to more effectively bar temptations of greed. The slave trade is a prime example of how greed can shape people’s lives for the worse and change the way we approach issues of labour. Humans will always have to fight their greed and there is still much work to be done today.

Today’s slave trade is about the subjugation of vulnerable, often poor, people lacking basic protections afforded by a functioning legal system. Slavery remains a profitable business. Present day slaves are coerced to work, or to sell their bodies, or even part with their organs. It might be argued that they are not strictly chattel, or property. However, their freedom is constrained and they might be considered as being “owned” by an employer and treated as a commodity. They might be construction workers employed under “slave contracts”, girls trafficked into prostitution, or slaving in private homes.

With slavery’s global profits estimated at USD 150 billion a year, it has become a criminal industry on a par with arms and drug trafficking. The outlook is bleak. Unrelieved poverty, wars, caste discrimination and gender inequality are fertile ground for slavery. Under-regulated labour markets, where for example workers cannot form trade unions, help to enable that “wage slaves” have become embedded in the global economy. Something some of us might be pondering upon while relaxing in a luxurious, pastoral environment, like Ryberg and his kin in Jens Juel’s beautiful and tranquil painting.

Main Sources: Green-Pedersen, Svend E. (1975) “The History of the Danish Negro Slave Trade, 1733-1807. An Interim Survey Relating in Particular to its Volume, Structure, Profitability and Abolition”, in Outre-Mers. Revue d’histoire and Lifton, Robert Jay (1986) The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. New York: Basic Books.

IPS UN Bureau

 

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Macky Sall's attempt to postpone the elections has thrown Senegal into political turmoil.

By Marty Logan
Feb 23 2024 (IPS)

After interviewing a member of the Nepal organizing committee ahead of opening day, I was excited about covering my first ever World Social Forum (WSF). He suggested that at least 30,000 and as many as 50,000 activists from over 90 countries would attend the three-day event.

But day 1 disappointed me. The march through the centre of Kathmandu was large, but not the massive showing I expected to see — perhaps because police in the vehicle-clogged city centre didn’t close roads along the route, but squeezed marchers into one lane of traffic. Again, thousands crowded in front of the stage for the opening ceremony but while it was impressive, it was far from a stupendous showing.

But as I hurried to attend various workshops over the next three days I became increasingly impressed. Each session — most held in cold, dusty classrooms in a series of colleges lining a downtown road— was full, some to overflowing.

People were eager to squeeze in, to hear colleagues from across the world explain and advocate on issues that affected all of their lives in very similar ways. Between workshops the chatter of those who had finished early — or at least not late like the rest of us — floated through the open windows of classrooms.

On closing day more than 60 declarations were reportedly issued by the various ‘movements’, the thematic groups that comprise the WSF. I’m sure they assert the need for change: for peace, equality, rights and dignity — for people, nature and the planet. As usual, I support these calls.

But what I learned at my first WSF is that energy and enthusiasm for a world that looks and runs vastly differently than the often terrible one that we inhabit today has not waned among a huge number of people, young and old.

I’d hazard a guess that the ones you’re about to hear, who I recorded at the start of the Forum, would be as engaged and energetic if I had spoken with them after it ended, following hours of listening, learning, and networking about how to create a better world.

 

 

People pay their respects at the funeral of world record holder Kelvin Kiptum who died at 24.