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Category: United Nations

  • New review aims to ensure education is ‘a right’ across the Pacific

    By Jan Kohout, RNZ Pacific journalist

    A new initiative has been launched in 15 Pacific Island countries to improve educational standards.

    The Pacific Regional Inclusive Education Review was launched last week with each country having their own national surveys with the assistance of community groups, NGOs and stakeholders.

    It has has been signed by Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

    The Pacific Disability Forum comprises one of the many networks used to complete the survey, and it has roots in 21 countries.

    Its main objective is to ensure children, including those living with disabilities, access quality learning.

    The Forum’s CEO, Setareki Macanawai, said the review allowed for an understanding of the current issues within education across the region.

    “[The purpose is] to have a shared understanding, and I think this is what this review has done. It has provided a lens-key, a good starting point. A good starting point condition for us in the Pacific to then develop a shared understanding of what inclusive education should look like for us in the Pacific.”

    Making education accessible
    Macanawai also said it was hard to make education accessible in the region due to various pre-conditions.

    “There is a lot of stigma, there is a lot of discrimination broadly and generally across the Pacific in the different cultures and societies which is a pre-condition that makes it hard to create an inclusive education for all, particularly those with impairments,” he said.

    Representatives meeting to discuss inclusive education in the region.
    The biggest challenge to inclusive education in the Pacific is limited access or children living in poor housing. Image: UNICEF Pacific/2022/Temakei/RNZ Pacific

    The review is conducted by UNICEF Pacific and the Pacific Regional Inclusive Education Taskforce.

    UNICEF Pacific’s Chief of Education Programme Anna Smeby said the biggest challenge to inclusive education in the Pacific is limited access or children living in poor housing.

    “We know that challenges can be in physical access, teaching approaches and availability of extra support, and it can be in the inclusiveness of the environment which means the infrastructure, but also social and emotionally whether it is a welcoming environment,” she said.

    “Improving policy for inclusive education, building and strengthening to adapt and differentiate instruction, the resource in classroom so that they have the resources they need and improving school infrastructure, bringing inclusive education leaves us to learn from each other both the shared challenges and the promising practices.

    Vulnerable groups
    “Vulnerable groups include learners with a disability or some sort of impairment, commonly students in remote places who do not have access to full-cycle schooling and students who have missed earlier learning but also gifted and talented students that need additional support in different ways,” Smeby said.

    The collaboration between the 15 countries, regional partners, and the Pacific Inclusive Education Taskforce, supports Sustainable Development Goal 4 to achieve quality education for all and to build a pathway for all children to a productive and healthy adulthood.

    UNICEF Pacific’s Deputy Representative Roshni Basu said countries needed to include the review’s recommendations into its policies urgently.

    “UNICEF is committed to ensure that all children of our Pacific shores are able to enjoy their right to inclusive, and of course quality, education.

    I urge all countries to maximise effort and commitment to translate the review findings into concrete investments for inclusive education.”

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. 

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UN refugee body criticises ‘errors’ in asylum report backed by Braverman

    Organisation questions use of ‘illegal’ to describe asylum seekers in report calling for radical crackdown

    A report partially endorsed by the UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, calling for a radical crackdown on those seeking asylum has been criticised by a UN body for “factual and legal errors”.

    Braverman wrote the foreword to the report by the right-leaning Centre for Policy Studies that says “if necessary” Britain should change human rights laws and withdraw from the European convention on human rights in order to tackle Channel crossings by small boat.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Profile in Persecution: Fadhel Abbas Mohamed

    Updated: Fadhel Abbas Mohamed, a Bahraini citizen from the village of Nuwaidrat working in the private sector, was 19 years old when Bahraini authorities arrested him at his home at dawn on 22 November 2021, without presenting any arrest or search warrant. During his detention, he was subjected to torture, enforced disappearance, deprivation of communication with his family, and denial of visits from them. He faced death threats and physical assault, and was convicted in an unfair trial based on confessions extracted under torture. Additionally, he was deprived of access to his lawyer during the interrogation period. Currently, he is serving a ten-year prison sentence in Jau Prison. On 30 August 2023, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention published an opinion regarding the arbitrary detention of six Bahraini nationals, including Fadhel. In its opinion, the Working Group deemed their detention arbitrary and demanded their immediate and unconditional release. The Working Group called for compensation for the individuals, an investigation into the violations they endured, and holding the perpetrators accountable.

     

    On 22 November 2021, at 6:00 A.M., riot police forces and plainclothes officers conducted a raid on Fadhel’s house while he was asleep. They scaled the walls of the house, broke a window to gain entry, and commanded him to open the door. The officers searched the living room and seized his mobile phone. Subsequently, they transported him to his previous home in the Nuwaidrat village. The officers meticulously searched the house, vandalized its contents, and scattered luggage on the floor. Fadhel was then taken by bus to his uncle’s café in Nuwaidrat, as reported by his mother, who was at the time unaware of the events unfolding. During the transfer, officers on the bus assaulted Fadhel, causing him to fall to the ground and sustain an injury to his hand. Following his arrival at his uncle’s café, the officers further moved him to the Criminal Investigations Directorate (CID) building.

     

    On 23 November 2021, Fadhel called his family informing them that he was in the Central Investigation Directorate (CID). Simultaneously, the CID informed the family that they would be visiting their home. Upon their arrival, officers in civilian clothing seized the family’s only car. Officers dispersed throughout the house, and when Fadhel’s mother inquired about his whereabouts, they informed her that he was inside the car. However, when she requested to see him, their supervisor denied her request, asserting that Fadhel was not in the vehicle. Additionally, they confiscated Fadhel’s wallet. The following day, the officers agreed to the request for clothes for Fadhel but only accepted a single suit, refusing to take any hygiene products for him.

     

    During his interrogation, Fadhel endured severe beatings, threats of rape, and electric shocks. He was coerced into signing prepared confessions under the threat of death, without being allowed to read them. Moreover, he experienced enforced disappearance for eight days throughout the interrogation period, managing to contact his family only twice during this time. Visits were denied under the pretext of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he was also denied access to his lawyer. On 30 November 2021, Fadhel was presented before the Public Prosecution Unit (PPO) without the presence of his attorney. He was compelled to adhere to the confessions he had previously signed during the interrogation period, under the threat of further torture. Officers closely monitored him from behind the door within the PPO to ensure his compliance with the charges against him and to inflict torture if he resisted confessing. During this period, the PPO accused Fadhel of joining a terrorist cell known as the “AlAshtar brigades,” possessing explosive devices, weapons, and ammunition, and receiving and delivering money from the said terrorist cell.

     

    On the same day Fadhel appeared before the PPO, 30 November 2021, he was brought before a forensic pathologist. However, the doctor overlooked his hand injury and conducted only routine examinations typically performed on any detainee. The officers did not disclose to the doctor the injuries Fadhel had sustained due to torture. They compelled him to wear a black suit to conceal marks from torture and make him appear as if he were treated normally. The doctor asserted that Fadhel only had a G6PD deficiency and was not currently taking any medication.

     

    Fadhel was not brought before a judge within 48 hours after arrest, was denied access to his lawyer, and was not given adequate time and facilities to prepare for trial. Furthermore, he was unable to present evidence or challenge the evidence presented against him, and the confessions extracted from him under torture were utilized as evidence in his trial.

     

    On 15 January 2023, the court sentenced Fadhel to 10 years in prison on charges of 1) joining a terrorist group (AlAshtar brigades), 2) possessing explosive devices, weapons, and ammunition, 3) training in the use of weapons and explosives, and 4) receiving and delivering money to and from the terrorist cell. Notably, Fadhel was not present when the ruling was delivered; only his lawyer attended the proceedings. 

     

    On 15 January 2023, Fadhel appealed the ruling issued against him, and on 29 May 2023, the Court of Appeals rejected the appeal and upheld the initial ruling.

     

    The Jau Prison administration denied Fadhel’s family visits to him, limiting communication to phone calls as the sole means of interaction. Recently, all forms of communication between Fadhel and his family, including phone calls, have ceased.

     

    On 30 August 2023, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued an opinion concerning the arbitrary detention of six Bahraini nationals, including Fadhel. The Working Group deemed their detention arbitrary, citing warrantless arrests and exposure to torture, humiliation, and an unfair trial based on evidence obtained under duress. The experts called on the Bahraini government to immediately and unconditionally release the individuals, provide compensation, investigate the violations they endured, and hold the perpetrators accountable.

     

    Fadhel’s warrantless arrest, enforced disappearance, torture, unfair trial, and deprivation of communication represent a clear violation of the Convention against Torture and Other Degrading and Inhuman Treatment (CAT), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), all of which Bahrain is a party to. Thus, Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain (ADHRB) urges the Bahraini authorities to immediately and unconditionally release Fadhel. Additionally, ADHRB calls for a thorough investigation into the allegations of arbitrary detention, torture, enforced disappearance, and communication deprivation he endured in order to hold the perpetrators accountable, or at the very least conduct a fair retrial for him, leading to his release.

    The post Profile in Persecution: Fadhel Abbas Mohamed appeared first on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

    This post was originally published on Americans for Democracy & Human Rights in Bahrain.

  • 73% of the World’s Population Did Not Call for Russian Reparations to Ukraine

    On November 14, 2022, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) passed a resolution (A/ES-11/L.6) calling for Russia to pay war reparations to Ukraine:

                [The General Assembly…]

    1. Reaffirms its commitment to the sovereignty, independence, unity and territorial integrity of Ukraine and its demand that the Russian Federation immediately cease its use of force against Ukraine and that the Russian Federation immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces from the territory of Ukraine within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters;
    2. Recognizes that the Russian Federation must be held to account for any violations of international law in or against Ukraine, including its aggression in violation of the Charter of the United Nations, as well as any violations of international humanitarian law and international human rights law, and that it must bear the legal consequences of all of its internationally wrongful acts, including making reparation for the injury, including any damage, caused by such acts…

    Here was the vote:1

    93 IN FAVOR

    14 AGAINST

    73 ABSTENTION

    12 NOT VOTING

    Western media report these results as vast international support for the resolution. But measured by world population, this resolution, as well as its predecessors, was decisively rejected by the UNGA.2

    First, a minor point: the majority of the world’s countries simply did not support this resolution:

    99 NOT VOTING IN FAVOR (AGAINST, ABSTENTION or NOT VOTING)

    93 IN FAVOR

    Something much more important to notice is that UN General Assembly votes are extremely undemocratic. The UNGA consists of 193 countries representing over eight billion people, each country having a single vote, no matter the size of its population. For example, Tuvalu (population 11,792), Iceland (pop. 341,243), India (pop. 1,380,004,385) and China (pop. 1,439,323,776) each have a one vote. So voting in the UNGA is wildly disproportionate to population.

    We can correct this disproportion by ignoring the country-by-country tally and treating the result as if it were a popular referendum. Here is the tally of percentages of world population represented in the vote:

    IN FAVOR 26.94%

    AGAINST 24.36%

    ABSTENTION 44.92%

    NOT VOTING 3.78%

    Or, simpler:

    NOT VOTING IN FAVOR OF THE RESOLUTION: 73.06%

    VOTING IN FAVOR OF THE RESOLUTION: 26.94%

    By this measure, only 27% of the world’s population supported the resolution; 73% did not. This is a resounding defeat for US/NATO “soft power.” It can only be explained by global antipathy toward the US/NATO side in this war and sympathy for Russia.

    Consider that the US has long used bribes and threats to engineer UNGA votes; it controls the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank; it imposes illegal unilateral coercive measures (“sanctions”) on a quarter of the world’s population; it is prolific and virtually alone in its constant coups and destabilization campaigns against uncooperative governments around the world. So it is not surprising that the US has mustered as many votes as it has for this and previous Ukraine/Russia resolutions. What is surprising is that it could not get more.

    The UNGA’s previous resolutions condemning Russia show similarly lopsided votes. On March 2, 2002 59% of the world’s population would not support a resolution condemning Russia’s intervention on February 24. On April 7, 2022 76% of the world’s population would not support a resolution to remove Russia from its seat on the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC). On October 12, 2022 55% of the world’s population would not support a resolution rejecting the accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia regions in Ukraine. (See fn. 2.)

    To Western eyes, red with Ukraine War fever and alleged Russian atrocities, these results may surprise, but they shouldn’t. For one thing, the Western narrative about the war itself, atrocity allegations against Russia, the history of the conflict since the 2014 Maidan coup (or “revolution” in Western eyes), are not necessarily believed by the rest of the world.3 After all, Western media sources recounting Russian atrocities also report with straight faces accusations that Russia blew up the Nordstream pipelines, and that it repeatedly shelled the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant while simultaneously occupying it.

    More important, to many non-West European countries, this war is not seen in isolation from the history of North American and Western European aggression, exploitation, plunder and genocide, as shown by these quotes from opponents of the resolution speaking in the General Assembly:4

    Cuba: Will Cuba be compensated for the damage accumulated over six decades of an economic, commercial and financial blockade; the lives lost; and the illegal occupation of its national territory? What about Mexico, Viet Nam, the Pacific Islands, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria and the State of Palestine?

    Eritrea: States suffering from foreign interference, colonialism, slavery, oppression, unilateral coercive measures, illegal blockades and other internationally wrongful acts also deserve the right for remedy, reparation and justice. As national positions must be respected, the Assembly must play a positive role in ensuring the conflict in Ukraine is resolved through diplomatic efforts and means while avoiding any initiative that might further aggravate the situation on the ground and escalate tensions.

    Syria: [The draft resolution is part of a series of] unbalanced, biased and provocative resolutions pushed by the United States and its Western partners. [I]ts real objective is to pay for the increasing purchases of weapons by Ukraine. … Who will compensate my country for the destruction of the Syrian infrastructure by the so‐called international coalition?

    Nicaragua: The resolution is an example of the hypocrisy and double standards of certain countries. …. [It] ignores the painful history that imperialist countries have left behind. It does not recognize the genocide against the original peoples of countries. [Nicaragua supports its] brethren in the Caribbean and Africa that are seeking reparations for these losses…

    Rich vs. Poor/US vs. the World

    Beyond these denunciations, global rejection of the UNGA resolution has deeper implications. This war is a battle in a far older, longer war of Western European aggression against the poorer nations of the world, the vast majority of humanity. Since World War II, this global war has been largely directed by a single hegemon, the United States. Europe is only one battlefront in this larger war.

    Rich vs. Poor: Core vs. Periphery and Semi-Periphery5

    This vote falls (although imperfectly) along the global divide of “core” nations vs. nations of the “periphery” and “semi-periphery.”

    According to world-systems analysis, “core” countries are those that draw a disproportionate amount of the world’s labor surplus value through possession of monopolized and semi-monopolized high-value production processes. This production is girded by patents, copyrights, and various advantageous economic, military and political arrangements. 6 “Peripheral” and “semi-peripheral” countries, on the other hand, have many fewer of these high-value production processes and rely on the production of commodities and more generic manufactured goods.7  Samir Amin calls this absorption of the surplus value by core countries “imperialist rent” which sums it up nicely.

    In other words, the global class struggle tells in the vote on the reparations resolution: poorer countries that pay imperialist rent tended to reject the resolution, while countries that collect imperialist rent have, with near perfect discipline, supported it.8

    And by the way, Western media often give the misleading impression that China and Russia have economies comparable to the rich countries of the imperial core nations. Not so. China and Russia are peripheral or semi-peripheral countries. While the poverty of the Global South is well known, less well known is the relative poverty of both Russia and China. Nominal GDPs per capita (in US dollars) of the two countries are just fractions of that of the US: US ($69,287.5), Russia($12,172.8), China ($12,556.3). Thus the China-Russia alliance, and their alliance with the Global South generally, is an alliance of commonality.

    The global divide is also racial, since countries of the imperial core are nearly all dominated by whites while the rest are populated largely by people of color.9 This racial imbalance results from the construction of the global system over half a millenium of European colonialism, neo-colonialism and imperialism, accompanied by ideologies of white ethnic, nationalist, cultural and racial supremacy.

    US vs. The World: A Global Military Occupation

    The geography of the war is not confined to Ukraine. The US asserted that it is waging a war against Russia through Ukraine. Beyond this, the collective West, led entirely by the US, is on one side of the war, and large parts of the East and Global South are on the other, as shown by this UNGA vote plus the overwhelming lack of global support for the sanctions on Russia.

    If from a bird’s eye view we could see the surface of the whole world at once, this war and the global divisions it exposes would be obvious. The US would appear as the primary belligerent since its occupation forces cover the world.

    And the US is quite forthright about its military occupation of the globe. It officially maps the occupation into six zones of US military “command”: Northern (North America); Southern (South America); European; Central (West Asia, aka “Middle East”); Africa; U.S. Indo-Pacific (Asia, Australia and the Pacific).10

    Within each zone US military bases enforce this occupation against friend, vassal, and potential foe alike. 800 to 1,000 of these overseas military bases and installations dot the globe.11 Almost half of these bases are arrayed like a necklace, or garrote, around Russia and China.12

    Ukraine has long been a battlefront in this global occupation. Ukraine’s military integration into NATO began years before the Russian intervention of February 24, 2022. Indeed, Ukraine’s fusion with NATO has been part of the 14-nation, three-decade eastward march of US/NATO toward Russia ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

    Conclusion

    The war in Ukraine is a world war, dividing the world’s nations by wealth, core/periphery status, and race, as revealed in the vote on the November 12th reparations resolution. To prosecute the war the West sends troops, weapons, and money to Ukraine, and sanctions Russsia. Gas pipelines far from the battlefield are blown up to keep Europe under the sanctions regime.13 And the war and sanctions affect the Global South as well as the Global North.14

    The world’s historic failure to contain US aggression has produced the dead, wounded, displaced, and grief-stricken of Ukraine and Russia, and condemned hundreds of millions in the Global South to destitution and hunger. Little wonder that so many around the world see as a tragic necessity Russia’s determined resistance to the US eastward push in Europe.

    1. KEY: (X) = ABSTENTION; (—) = AGAINST; (0) = NOT VOTING. (The 93 countries voting IN FAVOR are not listed here.) The percentage of global population follows each country’s vote symbol. Algeria (X) .56; Angola (X) .42; Antigua-Barbuda (X) .00; Armenia (X) .04; Azerbaijan (0) .13; Bahamas (—) .01; Bahrain (X) .02; Bangladesh (X) 2.11; Barbados (X) .00; Belarus (—) .12; Belize (X) .01; Bhutan (X) .01; Bolivia (X) .15; Botswana (X) .03; Brazil (X) 2.73; Brunei Darussalam (X) .01; Burkina Faso (0) .27; Burundi (X) .15; Cambodia (X) .21; Cameroon (0) .34; Central African Republic (—) .06; China (—) 18.47; Congo (Republic of the Congo [Brazzaville]) (X) .07; Cuba (—) .15; Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea [North Korea] (—) .33; Democratic Republic of the Congo [DRC (Kinshasa)] (0) 1.15; Dominica (0) .00; Egypt (X) 1.31; El Salvador (X) .08; Equatorial Guinea (X) .02; Eritrea (—) .05; Eswatini (X) .01; Ethiopia (—) 1.47; Gabon (X) .03; Gambia (X) .03; Grenada (X) .00; Guinea (X) .17; Guinea-Bissau (X) .03; Guyana (X) .01; Haiti (X) .15; Honduras (X) .13; India (X) 17.7; Indonesia (X) 3.51; Iran (—) 1.08; Iraq (X) .52; Israel (X) .11; Jamaica (X) .04; Jordan (X) .13; Kazakhstan (X) .24; Kyrgyzstan (X) .08; Lao People’s Democratic Republic (X) .09; Lebanon (X) .09; Lesotho (X) .03; Libya (X) .09; Madagascar (X) .36; Malaysia (X) .42; Mali (—) .26; Mauritania (X) .06; Mauritius (X) .02; Mongolia (X) .04; Morocco (0) .47; Mozambique (X) .40; Namibia (X) .03; Nepal (X) .37; Nicaragua (—) .08; Nigeria (X) 2.64; Oman (X) .07; Pakistan (X) 2.83; Russian Federation (—) 1.87; Rwanda (X) .17; Saint Kitts-Nevis (X) .00; Saint Lucia (X) .00; Saint Vincent-Grenadines (X) .00; Sao Tome-Principe (0) .00; Saudi Arabia (X) .45; Senegal (0) .21; Serbia (X) .11; Sierra Leone (X) .10; South Africa (X) .76; South Sudan (X) .14; Sri Lanka (X) .27; Sudan (X) .56; Suriname (X) .01; Syrian Arab Republic (—) .22; Tajikistan (X) .12; Thailand (X) .90; Timor-Leste (X) .02; Tonga (0) .00; Trinidad-Tobago (X) .02; Tunisia (X) .15; Turkmenistan (0) .08; Uganda (X) .59; United Arab Emirates (X) .13; United Republic of Tanzania (0) .77; Uzbekistan (X) .43; Venezuela (0) .36; Viet Nam (X) 1.25; Yemen (X) .38; Zimbabwe (—) .19.
    2. “The UN Condemnation of Russia is Endorsed by Countries Run by the Richest, Oldest, Whitest People on Earth But Only 41% of the World’s Population” (March 28, 2022), here, here, or here; “Global Divide: 76% of Humanity (& Nearly All Poorer Nations of Color) Did Not Vote To Kick Russia Off the UN Human Rights Council” (April 25, 2022), here, here, or here; “55% of Humanity Does Not Reject the Accession to Russia of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia” (October 21, 2022), here, here, or here.
    3. See these links on the historical background of the war, the killings in Bucha, reports of rapes and viagra, Bucha and Mariupol. On international support for Russia, even Western-aligned sources not sympathetic to Russia have reported some African support for Russia: “Why are people in West Africa waving Russian flags?“; “Why Are Protestors In Ethiopia And Mali Waving Russian Flags?“
    4. The quotes are as reported by the United Nations.
    5. “The countries of the world can be divided into two major world regions: the ‘core’ and the ‘periphery.’ The core includes major world powers and the countries that contain much of the wealth of the planet. The periphery has those countries that are not reaping the benefits of global wealth and globalization.” (Colin Stief, ThoughtCo.com, 1/21/20).
    6. According to Salvatore Babones (2005), the core countries are: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong [a region of China], Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States.
    7. See Immanual Wallerstein, World-Systems Analysis: An Introduction, Duke University Press, 2004.
    8. Every core country (see fn. 7) except Israel voted IN FAVOR of the November 14th resolution.
    9. 15% of the world’s population live in “white” countries; 12% of the world’s population live in core countries; all core countries are “white” except for Japan and Singapore, which together have just 1.7% of the world’s population. See “Global Divide: 76% of Humanity (and Nearly All Poorer Nations of Color) Did Not Vote To Kick Russia Off the UN Human Rights Council” (April 25, 2022), here, here, or here.
    10. The World With Commanders’ Areas of Responsibility, Library of Congress. (See attached map of the commands).
    11. “The Pentagon’s New Generation of Secret Military Bases,” David Vine, Mother Jones (7/6/12). (And see attached map of the bases).
    12. Compare, Russia has twenty-five foreign bases and China has one.
    13. “SCOTT RITTER: Pipelines v. USA” Scott Ritter, Consortium News (10/12/22); “Can Europe Afford to Turn a Blind Eye to Evidence of a US Role in Pipeline Blasts?” Jonathan Cook, MintpressNews (10/6/22).
    14. “Russia sanctions hurt ‘bystander’ countries, South African President Ramaphosa says” Reuters (5/24/22).
    The post 73% of the World’s Population Did Not Call for Russian Reparations to Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Iran protests: UN council votes to investigate human rights abuses

    Official says country is in ‘fully fledged human rights crisis’ as fact-finding mission launched

    The UN’s human rights council has voted overwhelmingly to set up a fact-finding investigation into human rights abuses in Iran, where an estimated 300 people have been killed and 14,000 arrested since protests began 10 weeks ago.

    At a special session convened by Germany in Geneva the HRC voted by 25 to six to set up the inquiry, with 15 abstaining. The vote is regarded as a significant victory for human rights defenders, since a mechanism now exists to file evidence of abuses by the state, making the possibility of prosecutions in international courts more likely.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Will Iranian Protests Grow Into a “Nationwide Revolution” Despite Crackdown?

    The situation in Iran is “critical” as authorities tighten their crackdown on the continuing anti-government protests after the September death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of the so-called morality police. United Nations human rights officials report Iranian security forces in Kurdish cities killed dozens of protesters this week alone, with each funeral turning into a mass rally against the central government. “The defiance has been astounding,” says Middle East studies professor Nahid Siamdoust, who reported for years from Iran, including during the 2009 Green Movement, and calls the protests a “nationwide revolution.”

    TRANSCRIPT

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: We’re broadcasting live from downtown Cairo in Egypt with the Nile River flowing behind us.

    We begin today’s show in Iran, where human rights authorities say the situation has become critical, with reports of dozens of children being killed, injured and detained at recent anti-government demonstrations. The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said Tuesday that worsening repression by Iranian security forces has led to a rising number of deaths, especially in Kurdish cities. This is spokesperson Jeremy Laurence.

    JEREMY LAURENCE: Since the nationwide protests began on the 16th of September, over 300 people have been killed, including more than 40 children. Two 16-year-old boys were among six killed over the weekend. Protesters have been killed in 25 of Iran’s 31 provinces, including more than 100 in Sistan and Balochistan. Iranian official sources have also reported that a number of security forces have been killed since the start of the protests. …

    We call on the authorities to release all those detained in relation to the exercise of their rights, including the right to peaceful assembly, and to drop the charges against them. Our office also calls on the Iranian authorities to immediately impose a moratorium on the death penalty and to revoke death sentences issued for crimes not qualifying as the most serious crimes under international law.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as the BBC reports authorities have not been releasing protesters’ bodies unless their families remain silent. Some say they were pressured by security officials to go along with state media reports that their loved ones were killed by, quote, “rioters.”

    On Monday, Iran’s national soccer team declined to sing the national anthem before their opening World Cup match in a sign of support for the protests.

    AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, on Sunday, two of Iran’s most prominent actresses were arrested after they voiced support for anti-government protests and appeared in public without wearing a hijab, as required by law. Ahead of her arrest on Sunday, Hengameh Ghaziani wrote, “whatever happens, know that as always I will stand with the people of Iran. This may be my last post,” she wrote. Katayoun Riahi was also arrested and accused of acting against Iran’s authorities.

    CNN reports Iran’s security forces are using sexual assaults of male and female activists to quell the protests.

    This week, the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva is set to hold a session on the protests with witnesses and victims in attendance and will discuss a proposal to establish a fact-finding mission on the crackdown in Iran. Evidence of abuses could later be used in court.

    For more, we’re joined by Nahid Siamdoust, assistant professor in Middle East and media studies at University of Texas in Austin, former journalist who has reported across the Middle East, including Iran.

    Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Professor. If you could start off by talking about the critical situation in Iran right now and also the escalating attacks by the Iranian government on Kurdish areas?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Yes. In recent weeks, we’ve seen, especially within the Kurdish areas, Mahabad most recently, but Bukan, Sanandaj, Saqqez, in all these cities, the Kurdish people have risen up. And the people have risen up all over Iran. And the authorities are going very harshly against protesters. We see photo after photo on social media of people with, you know, tens, sometimes hundreds, of pellets in their bodies. Some of these people do not survive those shots.

    And as you already mentioned in your report, many of the people, of the protesters who are killed, are children. They’re teenagers. They’re teenagers who have taken their lives into their hands and gone into the streets to protest their living conditions, you know, the bleak future that they’re looking into, and really asking for a different future.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And could you explain specifically what is it, the relationship between Iran’s central government and Kurdistan? So many of the protests, as you’ve pointed out, too, the epicenter has been in the Kurdish region. Could you explain what the relationship between the state, following the revolution, and Kurdistan has been?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Sure. So, Kurdistan — Iran is a system of governorates, so 30 governorates and states, so to speak. And so, each state, including the Kurdish region, will have their own governors. So, the central system controls these regions via the governors that they have in these areas, and they’re oftentimes — you know, they’re always approved, of course, by the central state.

    But the people have risen up, and their religious leaders and sheikhs have spoken up in their defense. So, you know, we’ve seen one of the sheikhs in Kurdistan joining the sheikh in Balochistan in asking for an independent international body to oversee a referendum in Iran.

    And so, you know, the forces that we see, the sepahis that we see, the plainclothes officers and militia that we see in Kurdistan suppressing the uprising or the revolution there, they come from all kinds of different backgrounds, all supported by the central state, of course. And Kurdistan is very much, you know, part of Iran, and this is something that the Kurdish leaders in that region have also stated. So, you know, we have to be — when you talk about the central state and the Kurdish region, we have to be careful not to play into the regime’s own discourse of this being a separatist movement.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: No, absolutely, you’re right about that. And I wanted to say also — if you could comment, in addition, to the reports that we are seeing now, and that we said a bit in our introduction, of the systematic use of sexual violence against prisoners, principally women protesters but also men? What are you hearing about this on the ground? There have been reports, widely publicized, of attacks by security forces in public, but this is the first that we’re hearing of attacks on prisoners, protesters who have been imprisoned.

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Right. So, a couple of weeks ago, there was a video published of a woman sort of open in public being, you know, sort of touched absolutely inappropriately, and that set off conversations about what is actually happening in terms of the sexual abuse of these prisoners. And more recently, a couple days ago, there was a report by CNN with, you know, sort of women and others alleging that they’ve been sexually abused in these interrogation rooms. And we’ve seen other reports coming through on social media.

    The parents and the families of these detainees are very much pressured to keep silent, and so we don’t really have a full account of what is happening in these interrogations. And we know they are abused physically, but the nature of the sexual abuse is something that still needs to really be narrated and come to the fore.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about the defiance of the Iranian people, the women who are leading these protests, and the significance of what’s happening right now in Qatar with the Iranian soccer team refusing to sing the national anthem of Iran before the game?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Right. We’ve seen, you know, Iranians across the board, all over the nation. As you mentioned, people in 25 out of 30 states have been — have been killed. And so, this is really a nationwide revolution. And the defiance has been astounding. The courage with which people have gone into the streets week after week, despite the killings that are happening, despite the, you know, also severe injuries — it doesn’t just have to be deaths — people losing their eyes, people losing their limbs — despite all of that, they’ve risen up and are continuing to protest. And now they’ve been joined, as you mentioned in your report, by actresses, by athletes, by teachers’ unions and professors’ unions and so on.

    The Iran national team at the World Cup refused to sing the national anthem. However, they have not been fully supported by Iranians at large. It’s a very contested field. There are some among Iranians who are supporting their national team, but there are many who are not, because the national team had a visit with the conservative president, Ebrahim Raisi, right before their departure, and Iranians did not like to see their national team sort of bowing and being friendly with a president whom they see as being at the head of, you know, the repressive government — not the state, that would be the supreme leader, but leading the charge against women, not least because since he took office, he promised to bring morality to the streets. And this wave of protests that we see was not least caused by a year long of the morality police sort of upping the ante against women in public spaces. And so, the national team meeting the president did not sit well with many Iranians. And, you know, they had a historical defeat at the World Cup, losing to England.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Professor Siamdoust, you, among others, have pointed out, of course, that there have been many protests in recent years in Iran, starting, of course, with the 2009 protest, which is the time that we spoke to you on Democracy Now! But there is something, as you’ve said, qualitatively different about the protests that are now ongoing. Could you talk about what those differences are and how you see this playing out? Do you think, despite the brutality of the state response, that these protests will go on?

    NAHID SIAMDOUST: Right. In 2009, which was the biggest protest movement since the 1979 revolution, we saw masses of people coming into the streets. You know, in one of the biggest, there was perhaps 2 or 3 million people at once. But the nature of the slogans was still very much about reforming the system from within. We saw people engaging with the Islamic discourse of the government — right? — going to their rooftops and calling “Allahu akbar,” calling God to sort of bring forth that kind of Islamic morality and decency, to bring the government into a motion of reforms.

    That is no longer the case. The revolution that we see now — and there’s a lot of contestation around language, as well. There are people who say we should no longer be calling this an “uprising,” this should definitely be called a “revolution.” It’s not just a matter of semantics, I think.

    In the nature of the slogans that we see, this movement is no longer at all engaging with government discourse. There’s no reference whatsoever to Islamic, you know, sort of slogans or phrases that people had been using and the government itself had been using. People are calling for a new system. In the 2009 Green Uprising, for example, people would band together and say, “Natarsin, natarsin, ma hameh ba ham hastim!,” “Don’t be afraid. We’re all together.” And now it’s kind of filtered down to people saying, “Betarsid, betarsid, ma hameh ba ham hastim!,” “You should be afraid. You should be afraid, because we are altogether.”

    And then, when we look at the slogans, you know, the harshness of it, sort of there’s — all notion of Persian politeness or any sense of respect for authority or any of that is completely out the window. And we see this in the cuss words that are used against the supreme leader, against the Sepah. They’re ferocious. The slogans are ferocious. The movement is ferocious.

    And it’s of a different nature, because, you know, this movement is leaderless. And so, there are groups of people all across Iran popping up here and there, but there are no leaders to be put down. So the regime can’t, just like in 2009, go after the leaders of the movement and try to quell the movement through its leaders. It’s a leaderless movement. It’s a very smart movement that is sort of coming together and dissolving, and really sort of playing this strategic game, a very sort of organic strategic game against the forces.

    NERMEEN SHAIKH: Thank you so much, Professor Nahid Siamdoust, assistant professor in Middle East and media studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She’s a former journalist who has reported across the Middle East, including in Iran.

  • Event 12/6: Prof. Tendayi Achiume Speaks in Honor of Human Rights Day

    On December 6, 2022, from 12-1pm ET, please join Northeastern University School of Law, the Bringing Human Rights Home Lawyers’ Network and Program on Human Rights and the Global Economy (PHRGE) for an event featuring speaker Professor Tendayi Achiume. Professor…

    This post was originally published on Human Rights at Home Blog.

  • Land Back a Ploy?

    “UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).”
    “Urgent Call to Action: You are at Risk of Losing Your Land Rights.”

    “Dan Fumano: After debate, outgoing Vancouver council approves ‘groundbreaking’ UNDRIP strategy”
    Analysis: With Vancouver’s UNDRIP strategy approved, outgoing Mayor Kennedy Stewart said he looks forward to seeing how the city’s next council will handle key decisions.

    “The New World Order Has Officially Just Captured Vancouver, BC, Canada as It Moves Forward with United Nations Worldwide Agenda ‘UNDRIP.’“

    The post Land Back a Ploy? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Fossil Fuel Lobbyists Gather at COP27 as Climate Crisis Devastates Africa

    At the U.N. climate conference in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, we speak with prominent Ugandan climate activist Vanessa Nakate about the impact of the climate crisis on the continent of Africa. Earlier today she spoke at a COP27 event and blasted world leaders for not doing more. She describes the need for wealthy nations gathered at the U.N. climate conference, particularly the U.S., to finance loss and damage for poorer nations in the Global South. “For the current and historic emitters, they need to take responsibility for the climate crisis, and they need to pay for this crisis,” says Nakate.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman, as we broadcast live from the U.N. climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

    We look now at how the crisis is impacting Africa. We’re joined by one of the continent’s, one of the world’s most prominent climate activists, Vanessa Nakate from Kampala, Uganda. She’s the author of A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis.

    Earlier today, at an event here at the U.N. climate talks, Vanessa Nakate condemned world leaders for investing in new fossil fuel projects. She also warned the summit is being turned into a, quote, “sales and marketing conference for more pollution and more destruction and more devastation.” Vanessa Nakate joins us now.

    Welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s an honor to have you with us, Vanessa.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Thank you so much.

    AMY GOODMAN: Why don’t you continue on that theme? Now, you were at a side conference. Have you ever addressed the plenary?

    VANESSA NAKATE: No, I haven’t.

    AMY GOODMAN: Do you want to?

    VANESSA NAKATE: I would love to.

    AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what would you tell world leaders.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, I would tell world leaders that we really need to keep 1.5 degrees Celsius alive. At just 1.2 degrees Celsius, so many communities are suffering some of the worst impacts of the climate crisis. I recently made a visit to Turkana, a region in the Horn of Africa, and we are seeing the worst drought in the Horn of Africa.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is in Kenya?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Yes, in Kenya. And so many children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition. So it’s really important that our leaders keep 1.5 degrees Celsius alive.

    AMY GOODMAN: Talk about what you mean by this has become a kind of marketing extravaganza.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, apparently, we have more than 600 fossil fuel lobbyists at this COP, and yet so many communities and activists from the frontlines of the climate crisis weren’t able to make it here. There is a quote that I read recently that said, “If you’re going to discuss about malaria, do not invite the mosquitoes.” So, for me, it’s a worry that we have over 600 fossil fuel lobbyists in this place. It’s a worry for our future. It’s a worry for our planet. It’s a worry for the people.

    AMY GOODMAN: This has been described as Africa’s COP, here in northern Africa. Do you see this as Africa’s COP?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, many people, of course, are calling it an African COP. And it can only live up to that name if the climate crisis is addressed and if what is needed, what the communities from the African continent are demanding for are fulfilled. And one of those things is the Loss and Damage Finance Facility. The climate crisis is pushing so many communities beyond adaptation. You cannot adapt to starvation. You can’t adapt to extinction. And that is what is happening right now. Loss and damage is affecting so many communities. So, for me, what will make it an African COP is ensuring that there is an establishment of a Loss and Damage Finance Facility, and also supporting a just transition to renewable energy while addressing the energy poverty on the African continent.

    AMY GOODMAN: We were talking to Nnimmo Bassey, your colleague in Nigeria, who has probably gone to more COPs than you’ve lived years. But he talked about this being the lost and damaged COP. When you say “loss and damage,” it just rolls off your tongue. You have been at several of these COPs. But the rest of the world, that’s U.N. lingo. Explain exactly what you mean, the gritty facts on the ground, what loss and damage means, and who needs to pay for reparations.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, loss and damage looks like what I’ve just explained, you know, what I saw in Turkana — children, women and people suffering, having no access to water, having no access to food, and doctors referring to, you know, the cases of so many children in hospitals as “wasted” cases because of the severe acute malnutrition. Loss and damage is what we see happening in Pakistan, the flooding that left over 1,500 people dead and over 33 million people displaced. It is what is happening in Nigeria as a result of the floods. It is what has happened on the African continent, you know, with the cyclones. So, it’s really understanding the impacts of the climate crisis that are pushing communities beyond adaptation.

    AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about EACOP? You’re from Uganda. You’ve spoken out against the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, EACOP, which will run through Uganda and Tanzania. What are your concerns?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, my concerns are that, you know, fossil fuel companies, like Total, are promising —

    AMY GOODMAN: Total is the French oil company.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Yes. They are promising, you know, the people in my country, and all other investments in Africa, that they’re bringing economic progress. But we’ve seen decades of fossil fuel investments on the African continent. They haven’t brought economic progress. So my worry is that, you know, the environment and biodiversity is going to be destroyed. We are going to find ourselves in an accelerated climate crisis, and profits are going to end up in pockets of already rich people. The energy is going to be loaded onto ships, you know, and taken to Europe, and the people in Africa will still not have access to the electricity that has been promised. If the fossil fuel industry really meant that they were bringing energy on the African continent, then we wouldn’t have over 600 million people on the African continent still struggling to find access to electricity.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, you’re talking about the massive problems that Africa and other parts of the world face. But you’re also engaged in solutions at the local level. Talk about what you’re doing in Uganda?

    VANESSA NAKATE: So, in Uganda, I work with the Rise Up Movement. And what we do, we — one of the things that we do is to carry out climate education in schools and also reach out to communities to tell them about what is happening and about their role in addressing the climate crisis. But I also run a project which involves the installation of solar panels and eco-friendly cook stoves in schools in Uganda. And so far we’ve done installations in 31 schools. I started this project to help drive a transition to renewable energy in the schools in Uganda and also to carry out climate education in schools and ensure that schools have alternatives, you know, to cleaner cooking stoves and also alternatives to the energy that they can use.

    AMY GOODMAN: Wait a second. Today is November 15?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Yes.

    AMY GOODMAN: Is it true that it’s your birthday?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Yes.

    AMY GOODMAN: That it is your B-Earth day. Do you spell it B-E-A-R-T-H-D-A-Y? And you’re 26 years old?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Yes.

    AMY GOODMAN: What would you consider the greatest birthday present coming out of this COP?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, I mean —

    AMY GOODMAN: Happy birthday!

    VANESSA NAKATE: Thank you so much. Well, I mean, it would be having people and justice at the center of the negotiations. And that will look like a Loss and Damage Finance Facility. That will look like a just transition to renewable energy. You know, that will look like no new fossil fuel investments, and that is coal, oil and gas.

    AMY GOODMAN: Wait, by my calculations, let’s see, you’re 26 years old.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Yeah.

    AMY GOODMAN: And this is COP27. That means 27 years of the Conference of Parties, of the U.N. climate summit. The COP has been meeting all of your life.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Exactly. And it’s worrying that we’ve had 27 COPs now, and global temperatures continue to rise, and the climate crisis continues to accelerate, and communities continue to suffer, and our leaders continue not to do anything about it.

    AMY GOODMAN: So, let’s talk about the leaders of the countries that have historically emitted the most greenhouse gases. You have the United States, historically the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world and, per capita, one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters today; China, the largest current greenhouse gas emitter. Xi and Biden met on Monday. What do they need to do? When people say, “Why, if we’re dealing with all these problems in the United States, should we be giving money to other countries?” talk about why, and how that money should be targeted.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, I think that it’s a moral responsibility for historic emitters and also current emitters to address the climate crisis. I was able to, you know, listen to President Biden speak, and I think that we desperately needed greater leadership from President Biden and the United States. I think that the United States has a huge responsibility to not only address the climate crisis, to not only address loss and damage, but to put money to support communities that are suffering right now.

    And when we talk about this money, we need this money to be able to go to communities that need it, and for this money to go in the form of small accessible grants, not loans to add an already existing debt. So, for me, for the current and historic emitters, they need to take responsibility for the climate crisis, and they need to pay for this crisis.

    AMY GOODMAN: You know, this is an unusual COP because of the emphasis on human rights. I mean, you have Alaa Abd El-Fattah in prison among tens of thousands of Egyptians. This is taking place in Egypt, this U.N. climate summit. And you have climate justice advocates from around the world. You all joined together on Saturday, saying that you can’t separate these two issues. Talk about how that is integral for you, as well.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, I mean, our fight for climate justice is a fight for human rights. We’ve seen how the climate crisis is violating the rights of so many people across the world. And to go back to the story of Turkana, what I saw there was children struggling to find water, struggling to find food. And some of the communities that I visited, you know, beyond Uganda, that are suffering because of air pollution, these are people struggling to find access or to even breathe clean air. So, a fight for climate justice is indeed a fight for human rights. And we cannot have climate justice without ensuring that the rights of the people are protected.

    AMY GOODMAN: Final words to this global audience that is listening to everything you say?

    VANESSA NAKATE: Well, I mean, well, it’s very hard to find words to say when you know what is happening, especially in the negotiations and what is happening at the COP. But what I hope is that our leaders can inspire us with action. I hope that our leaders can inspire us with true climate leadership.

    AMY GOODMAN: Well, Vanessa Nakate, I think you’ve shown what leadership looks like.

    VANESSA NAKATE: Thank you.

    AMY GOODMAN: We thank you very much for being with us. And again, happy, happy birthday!

    VANESSA NAKATE: Thank you.

    AMY GOODMAN: Vanessa Nakate, climate justice activist, speaking to us. She usually is in Uganda. She’s the author of her memoir, A Bigger Picture: My Fight to Bring a New African Voice to the Climate Crisis.

    And that does it for our show. By the way, Juan González will be giving a speech Friday at the Columbia School of Journalism, reflecting on his 40 years of fighting for racial and social justice in journalism. It begins at 4:10 p.m. on Friday. See democracynow.org for more information.

    A very special thanks to our colleagues here in Sharm el-Sheikh, to Hany Massoud, to Sharif Abdel Kouddous, Denis Moynihan, Nermeen Shaikh. I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Surabaya’s transwomen fighting COVID-19

    In Indonesia, the government formally acknowledges only two genders, male and female. Transwomen (along with gay and lesbian individuals) are categorized under People with Social Welfare Problem or known as Penyandang Masalah Kesejahteraan Sosial (PMKS). This is based on four criteria, i.e., a) social functioning disorder, b) discrimination, c) marginalisation, and d) deviant social behaviour. Despite giving up on the legislative situation that discriminates against them, Surabaya transwomen who are members of Surabaya Transwomen Association (Perwakos) fight against it by engaging actively in public activity. This is story about them fighting Covid-19 together with East Java Regional Disaster Management Agency.

    Related

    LGBTQ+ community leaders in Indonesia: overcoming pandemic hardship

    LGBTQ+ Indonesians are driving some of the most effective community responses to the hardships of the pandemic.

    Kade Newell 23 July, 2020

    My engagement with Perwakos started years ago, during an HIV-AIDS campaign activity when I was still an undergraduate student.  I worked with them again years later, through Circle Indonesia—a local organisation based in Yogyakarta—on a USAID-funded project that focused on scaling-up integrated interventions serving populations most-at-risk to HIV transmission in Indonesia. While working on that project, I also wrote my masters thesis about transwomen’s performativity and their space in Surabaya city.

    My concern with gender diversity is founded on my long experiences working as gender specialist for development and humanitarian projects for international agencies/organisations. I face a lot of rejection when trying to raise the issue. Government officials will always refer to the abovementioned existing formal regulations on gender. Further, in daily life a recent trend in Indonesia since sees people tending to rejection everything related to LGBT issues, including trans* people. The term LGBT is indeed now notorious now in Indonesia, almost always with negative connotations. There are also a lot of persecution of non-binary people.

    Specifically, regarding disaster management—an issue that I often engage with—I presented a paper about heteronormative practice of Indonesia disaster management at the 8th Asian Graduate Forum on Southeast Asia Studies at National University of Singapore in 2013. The paper addressed the work of transwomen in Yogyakarta trying to break the stigma by engaging in disaster response activity in the aftermath of the 2010 Mt. Merapi eruption.

    This video is part of my efforts to raise concerns about how regulation of gender impacts non-binary individuals, and how they fight back against it.

    This publication was supported by an ANU Gender Institute grant which provided funds for New Mandala and Connecting Designs to run a series of workshops supporting early career academics investigating issues of gender and sexuality in Southeast Asia to develop their audio-visual research communication skills.

    The post Surabaya’s transwomen fighting COVID-19 appeared first on New Mandala.

    This post was originally published on New Mandala.

  • Independent Commission of Inquiry hears Palestinian complaints

    Members of the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry attend a press briefing at the UN headquarters in New York

    Members of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory and in Israel, Navanethem Pillay, Miloon Kothari and Chris Sidoti attend a press briefing at the United Nations headquarters in New York, U.S., October 27, 2022. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo

    On 7 November 2022 Emma Farge reported for Reuters how a Palestinian human rights group told a U.N. panel on Monday 7 November it had been subject to threats and “mafia methods” during a campaign of harassment organised by Israel to silence groups documenting alleged Israeli rights violations.

    The independent Commission of Inquiry, established by the Human Rights Council, the U.N. top human rights body, last year, plans five days of hearings which it says will be impartial and examine the allegations of both Israelis and Palestinians. Israel dismissed the process overseen by the panel as a sham while it declined comment on the specific allegations.

    In the opening session, the commission heard from representatives of Palestinian organisations shuttered by Israel in August and designated as “terrorist” entities. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/10/23/assault-by-israel-on-palestinian-human-rights-ngos/

    Shawan Jabarin, General Director of human rights group Al-Haq, denied the terrorism charge and called the closure an “arbitrary decision“, saying Israeli security forces had used “mafia methods” against it in a years-long harassment campaign. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2011/11/30/israel-refuses-to-let-hrd-shawan-jabarin-travel-to-receive-award-in-denmark/

    “They used all means, I can say. They used financial means; they used a smear campaign; they used threats,” he said, saying his office was sealed with a metal door on Aug. 18.

    Asked to detail the threats mentioned to the panel, Jabarin told Reuters after the hearing that he had received a phone call from somebody he identified as being from “Shabak”, or the Israel Security Agency, two days after the raid. They threatened him with detention, interrogation or “other means” if he continued his work, he added.

    https://www.reuters.com/world/un-hearings-probing-alleged-israeli-rights-abuses-open-geneva-2022-11-07/

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Report: US Only Paid 19 Percent of International Climate Funding Target in 2020

    The U.S. has fallen tens of billions of dollars short of paying its agreed-upon “fair share” of climate funding targets, a new report finds as world leaders undergo climate talks at the COP27 conference in Egypt this month.

    According to a new analysis by Carbon Brief, the U.S. was supposed to be paying about $40 billion of the U.S.$100 billion that wealthy countries have pledged to pay each year for climate financing in developing countries by 2020. This figure is proportional to the amount of historical emissions emitted by each country; the U.S. is a top emitter of greenhouse gasses and is responsible for about 52 percent of historical emissions by wealthy countries.

    However, the analysis of 2020 data, the closest year for which data is available, found that the U.S. paid only $7.6 billion that year into that goal. This represents only about 19 percent of its fair share.

    Other wealthy countries are also falling behind, though the U.S. is proportionately the worst offender. Canada only gave 37 percent of its fair share, the report found, while Australia gave 38 percent and the U.K. gave 76 percent. Germany, France and Japan provided more than their fair share, but their funding is in the form of loans and not grants, which are only further marginalizing recipients by making them indebted to these countries.

    Overall, only $83 billion of climate financing was given in 2020, with $60 billion coming from countries and $23 billion coming from climate funding organizations and private sources.

    Wealthy countries had agreed to the $100 billion target in 2009 in order to help poorer countries adapt climate-friendly energy sources and fund resiliency measures like infrastructure and farming.

    Wealthy countries released a roadmap in 2021 to reach the $100 billion goal by 2023, which would miss the original goal by two years. Further, research shows that $100 billion is a miniscule amount of funding compared to what is actually needed to build resiliency and keep the climate crisis in check in poorer countries.

    Analysts and advocates say that the money is crucial not just to maintain a liveable planet but also to advance climate justice.

    The failure to fund the target will be crucial to talks at COP27, which began on Sunday. Though countries in the Global South have not contributed significantly to the climate crisis, they are and will continue to be the hardest hit by the climate crisis, as they have fewer resources to respond to climate disasters like heat waves and floods.

    Countries like the U.S., meanwhile, have contributed greatly to the crisis, but continually fail to commit to action that is strong enough to meet the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius or lower; the United Nations has found that there is “no credible pathway to 1.5C in place” for the world to reach.

    The report is a show of how the U.S. is shirking its international responsibility to mitigate the climate crisis even though $40 billion is an almost negligible amount of money to spend on climate goals when compared to the hundreds of billions of dollars the U.S. spends on defense each year — much of which goes toward private defense contractors — or the trillions of dollars that the government allows the wealthy to hoard with sweeping tax cuts.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Dealing with a ‘bloody messy’ world – the urgent foreign policy challenges facing NZ

    ANALYSIS: By Alexander Gillespie, University of Waikato

    Since Jacinda Ardern described the state of world affairs as “bloody messy” earlier this year there have been few, if any, signs of improvement. Ukraine, China, nuclear proliferation and the lasting impacts of a global pandemic all present urgent, unresolved challenges.

    For a small country in an increasingly lawless world this is both dangerous and confronting.

    Without the military or economic scale to influence events directly, New Zealand relies on its voice and ability to persuade.

    But by placing its faith in a rules-based order and United Nations processes, New Zealand also has to work with — and sometimes around — highly imperfect systems. In some areas of international law and policy the machinery is failing. It’s unclear what the next best step might be.

    Given these uncertainties, then, where has New Zealand done well on the international stage, and where might it need to find a louder voice or more constructive proposals?

    Confronting Russia
    Strength and clarity have been most evident in New Zealand’s response to the Russian attack on Ukraine. There has been no hint of joining the abstainers or waverers at crucial UN votes condemning Russia’s actions.

    While it can be argued New Zealand could do more in terms of sanctions and support for the Ukrainian military, the government has made good use of the available international forums.

    Joining the International Court of Justice case against “Russia’s spurious attempt to justify its invasion under international law” and supporting the International Criminal Court investigation into possible war crimes in Ukraine are both excellent initiatives.

    Unfortunately, similar avenues have been blocked when it comes to other critical issues New Zealand has a vested interest in seeing resolved properly.

    China and human rights
    This has been especially apparent in the debate about human rights abuses in China, and allegations of genocide made by some countries over the treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.

    New Zealand and some other countries correctly avoided using the word “genocide”, which has a precise legal meaning best applied by UN experts, not domestic politicians. Instead, the government called on China to provide meaningful and unfettered access to UN and other independent observers.

    While not perfect, the visit went ahead. The eventual report by outgoing UN Human Rights Commissioner Michelle Bachelet concluded that China had committed serious human rights violations, which could amount to crimes against humanity.

    This should have forced the international community to act. Instead, 19 countries voted with China to block a debate at the UN Human Rights Council (17 wanted the debate, 11 abstained). The upshot was that China succeeded in driving the issue into a diplomatic dead-end.

    Allowing an organisation designed to protect victims to be controlled by alleged perpetrators isn’t something New Zealand should accept. The government should make it a diplomatic priority to become a member of the council, and it should use every opportunity to speak out and keep the issue in the global spotlight.

    Arms control
    Elsewhere, New Zealand’s foreign policy can arguably be found wanting — most evidently, perhaps, in the area of nuclear arms regulation.

    Advocating for the complete prohibition of all nuclear weapons, as the prime minister did at the UN in September, might be inspiring and also good domestic politics, but it doesn’t make the world safer.

    With the risk of nuclear conflagration at its highest since the Cuban missile crisis, a better immediate goal would be improving the regulation, rather than prohibition, of nuclear weapons. This would entail convincing nuclear states to take their weapons off “hair-trigger alert”.

    The other goals should be the adoption of a no-first-use policy by all nuclear powers (only China has made such a commitment so far), and a push for regional arms control in the Indo-Pacific to rein in India, Pakistan and China.

    Pandemic preparedness
    Finally, there is the danger of vital law and policy not just failing, but not even being born. This is the case with the World Health Organisation’s so-called “pandemic treaty”, designed to better prevent, prepare for and respond to the next global pandemic.

    New Zealand set out some admirable goals in its submission in April, but these have been watered down or are missing from the first working draft of the proposed agreement.

    This shouldn’t be accepted lightly given the lessons of the past two-and-a-half years. Transparency by governments, a precautionary approach and the meaningful involvement of non-state actors will be essential.

    Similarly, improved oversight of the 59 laboratories spread across 23 countries that work with the most dangerous pathogens is critical. Currently, only a quarter of these labs score highly on safety. The proposed treaty does little to demand the kind of biosecurity protocols and robust regulatory systems required to better protect present and future generations.

    As with the other urgent and difficult issues mentioned here, New Zealand’s future is directly connected to what happens elsewhere in the world. The challenge now is to keep adapting to this changing global order while being an effective voice for reason and the rule of law.The Conversation

    Dr Alexander Gillespie is professor of law, University of Waikato. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

  • COP27 Egypt: Oh, Well!  

    Dateline: November 7-18, 2022, Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Dignitaries from every country will be meeting to discuss climate change at COP27. Based upon early confirmations, 90 heads of state will attend, lending an aura of importance.

    “Climate change is the crisis of our lifetime. If we are not able to reverse the present trend that is leading to a catastrophe in the world, we will be doomed.” 1

    The Secretary-General has been beating that same drum for some time now, which prompts a thought: Should the UN stop holding annual COP  “Conference of the Parties” climate change meetings? For 30 years straight, following each COP meeting, CO2 emissions have climbed higher than the year before. That’s thirty years, or an entire generation, of failure to slow emissions by even a teeny bit. It’s starting to get embarrassing.

    For historical perspective, Global CO2 emissions in 1992, when COPs started, were just over 22 billion metric tons.  In 2021 CO2 emissions were a record high 36 billion tons or an increase of 65% since nations signed up to protect the planet from excessive greenhouse gases. This equates to thirty-years of blabbering and more blabbering with nothing to show for it, except big increases in greenhouse gases, an amazing anti-achievement!

    The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) formed at the Earth Summit in May 1992 with 178 member nations unanimously agreeing to bring CO2 emissions down to 1990 levels of 354 ppm by the year 2000.

    May 1992 CO2 @ 359.99 ppm  – UNFCCC formed

    May 2000 CO2 @ 371.82 ppm – missed the 354 target

    October 2022 CO2 @ 427.01 ppm – Oh, well!

    COP meetings are the Super Bowl of climate change but not quite as extravagant but still pretty darn plush. And, millions are expended to house (multi-star hotels) and feed (30,000 registered delegates for COP27) to annual COP two-week get-togethers, not including airfare expenses as well as CO2 exhaust fumes.

    So far, taxpayers or grants or private funding or institutional funds that support attendees have witnessed CO2 emissions increase every year ever since UNFCCC formed, never a down year. It’s been a bad investment, but offsetting that misfortune is effective PR. “Climate Change” is universally recognized.

    Meantime – The All-time Worldwide Killer is Fossil Fuels

    One seldom-noticed world statistic stands out like a sore thumb: “There are almost 10,000,000 (ten million) fossil fuel specific air pollution deaths per year.” 2 – more on Carter to follow)

    That puts fossil fuels in the all-time standings list with World War I and World War II, actually in first place. Wars end. Fossil fuel emissions do not. Why not use that statistic for more effective (compelling) PR?

    According to a 2018 study by Harvard University, University of Leicester and University College London: “More than 8 million people died in 2018 from fossil fuel pollution, significantly higher than previous research suggested.” 3

    Unfortunately, any prospects for a letup in fossil fuel-related deaths does not appear to be on the horizon, in fact, quite the opposite based upon the UN Emissions Gap Report 2022 d/d October 27, 2022, to wit: “As growing climate change impacts are experienced across the globe, the message that greenhouse gas emissions must fall is unambiguous. Yet the Emissions Gap Report 2022: The Closing Window – Climate crisis calls for rapid transformation of societies finds that the international community is failing far short of the Paris goals, with no credible pathway to 1.5°C in place. Only an urgent system-wide transformation can avoid climate disaster.”

    Alas, there is no known “urgent system-wide transformation” that “can avoid climate disaster” on the drawing boards even as the United Nations insists it’s the only way to avoid climate disaster.

    But, of course, the IPCC does not control fossil fuels, which, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA), plan nearly $1 trillion of new fossil fuel projects, oil & gas, by 2030, and the IPCC does not control coal emissions.

    According to Bloomberg, US Edition, September 21, 2022: “A year after President Xi Jinping promised China would stop building coal power plants overseas, the country has completed 14 such facilities beyond its borders and will finish another 27 soon.” The soon-to-be completed plants will emit more emissions than the Philippines or 140 million tons of CO2/yr.

    Additionally, India May Boost Coal Power Fleet By 25% By 2030 Amid Rising Demand, Bloomberg, US Edition, September 22, 2022. India’s PM claims reliable electricity supply is the nation’s priority, and thus, according to Bloomberg and COP26: He aims for net zero by 2070, not 2050. Why not make it 2170? That’s likely what’ll happen over time, assuming an excruciating pounding summer heat, like the summer of 2022, doesn’t bring on mass protests or more likely mass deaths well ahead of net zero by 2070.

    And, just for good measure: “The US government has funneled more than $9bn (£7.7bn) into oil and gas projects in Africa since it signed up to restrain global heating in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, a tally of official data shows, committing just $682m (£587m) to clean energy developments such as wind and solar over the same period.” 4

    In the face of all of that, expectations are high for COP27 in Egypt, but they’re always high before every COP. In all honesty, maybe COP meetings should be stopped in favor of an altogether different approach because whatever they are doing is clearly not working. As a practical matter, maybe scale down the meetings to much smaller delegations and omit the edit of policy measures by individual country bureaucrats or economists or fossil fuel reps and leave the fixit policy measures to scientists/engineers and establish strict enforcement by monitoring country promises of CO2 reductions, abandon voluntary country emission reductions. That has never worked!

    Of more than passing interest, people have already expressed trepidation about holding COP27 in Egypt with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisis’s massive crackdown on dissent.  It’s over-the-top excessive and whether intentional or unintentional, may serve to diminish street protests at COP27.  According to the Arabic Network for Human Rights, at least 60,000 political prisoners are held behind bars for expressing political beliefs. Amnesty International ranks Egypt as the 3rd worst country by numbers of executions. Highlighting Egypt’s troubling repressiveness, Naomi Klein referred to COP27 as the “Carceral Climate Summit.”

    In order to better understand what to expect at COP27, Dr. Peter D. Carter, director, Climate Emergency Institute and IPCC expert reviewer analyzed a major preliminary meeting to COP27 at the Bonn UN Climate Change Convention of June 2022 with insight to COP27, which Dr. Carter boldly labels: “Bad Beyond Belief”

    Following the Bonn meetings on June 16th, according to Dr. Carter: “It is my unpleasant duty and with profound sadness that I’m going to report on what happened… I’ve called it an unbelievably abysmally bad Bonn United Nations Climate Change Convention meeting.”

    Carter: “Bonn demonstrated a level of “incredible climate change denial throughout the conference.” Yet, Bonn paves the way for COP27, which brings to mind: Who listens to the Secretary-General?

    It’s even worse than the Secretary-General realizes, according to Dr. Carter: “Today there is no agreement, not even a plan, to put emissions into decline… Bonn this June 2022 was yet another international meeting that refused to stop the rapid, rampant wanton destruction of the sacred earth.”

    Accordingly, the most amazing media report by BBC that came out of Bonn: “To Bridge the 1.5C Degree Gap.” Countries agreed to a new “work stream” for this current decade. But that is one more decade following one more decade “work stream” or work program, a-work-in-progress. At the Bonn meeting, both the EU and the US said the “work stream should continue until 2030.” According to Carter: Effectively, they’ve advocated keeping on blah blah blah until 2030: “Which is definitely a delayed death sentence.”

    Rather than discussing emissions decline, Bonn has reinforced the 1.5C climate catastrophe by more climate action delay. In contrast, the world’s most eminent climate scientist James Hansen said it is scientifically impossible to limit to 1.5 degrees. Evidently, nobody at Bonn was focused on that and what to do, if anything, about it.

    Much more disturbing yet: “There are scientists supporting the 1.5C falsehood, wrongfully proclaiming there is no climate emergency. Instead they claim we can still limit to 1.5C.” (Carter)

    According to Carter, Bonn has written the future off once again. The truth: “We face global climate hell at 1.5 degree C.”  This fact was made obvious in the 6th Assessment by the IPCC itself. Hmm.

    Meanwhile according to Carter: “We are getting severe extreme weather events at an increasing rate affecting all habitable regions on the planet. These will increase over time, heat waves, droughts, forest fires, superstorms, hurricanes and cyclones, torrential rains, floods. And the heat waves, unprecedented heat waves across the Northern Hemisphere.” For example, practically all of India was only recently under an unprecedented pounding heat wave. People died.

    In spite of everything mentioned above, at the Bonn climate talks, no one could agree on what a work stream should look like. Thirty years of negotiations, and nobody knows what their recommendations for a work stream on climate action will look like. Amazingly disturbing.

    However, Bonn did discuss carbon markets under the 2015 Paris agreement Article 6, which are really only mechanism for emissions trading or what many refer to as “junk or zombie credits,” worthless credits but now approved and used for greenwashing.  In total 320 million of the credits equivalent to the annual emissions of 86 coal-fired power plants have been made available for countries to count towards climate emission reduction commitments. Hmm.

    Bottom line: “There was not a hint of putting emissions into decline at the two-week Bonn meetings. All agreements result in continued emissions.” (Carter) The inertia is shameful.

    Adding insult to injury, as part of COP negotiations, way back in 2009, rich countries agreed to provide 200 billion dollars a year to underdeveloped countries by 2020. As of today, they have failed to pay the first 200 billion. Bonn meetings ended with nothing more done about this 200B failure. Ever since 1992, major countries have stalled. This is a recurring source of distrust in the process by underdeveloped countries. A BBC headline regarding Bonn’s two-week meetings stated: “Climate Change: Bonn Talks End In Acrimony Over Compensation.”5

    Additionally, it’s hard to accept, but Bonn caved in to major emitters. China rejected any references to being labeled a “major emitter.” However, they are a major emitter. In fact, China’s emissions are double the next largest emitter, which is the US.  India, China, and Middle East all objected to any language about “major emitters,” which, in fact, was deleted.

    They also agreed to omit any emissions accounting by the UN climate secretariat for NDC or voluntary national emissions targets, even though these are, in fact, “paltry targets” which will not even come close to limiting global warming to 2C. And, what they did agree to will not even be new national emissions accounting until 2023. Only Australia promised deeper cuts.

    Alas, it’s hard to believe, but there is no plan for how countries will work out and submit their emission targets. Different countries are using different methodologies. “This is a basket case. It’s chaotic how national emissions targets are being accounted and registered with the UN.” (Carter)

    Dr. Carter: “This is absolute madness. You read thru the accounts of these meetings and you cannot believe it is true… we will not survive if these unbelievably sky-high greenhouse gases, particularly CO2 are allowed to continue to increase at the accelerating rate. We’re on a global suicide proposal.”

    Postscript: COP26/Glasgow/2021 news not covered by mainstream media: Commentary of Dr. James Hansen (Ex-NASA Climate Chief) re COP26/Glasgow: “In a memo published last December – unreported until now – Prof Hansen warned that world governments and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are severely under-estimating the speed and impact of global warming this century.” 6

    “Conventional climate models, he said, do not sufficiently account for the Earth’s paleoclimate history or ongoing observations of the climate system… Prof Hansen criticized Boris Johnson’s ‘claim that COP26 salvaged the chance to keep global warming below 1.5°C’ and that ‘we’ll look back at COP26 as the moment humanity finally got real about climate change. Describing the UK Government’s claims about the success of the COP26 as ‘unadulterated bulls**t’, his memo warned that ‘the 1.5°C global warming ceiling will be breached this decade’ and that pledges made by Johnson’s administration at COP26 will do nothing to stop the world hitting dangerous climate change.”

    Recommended: Climate Restoration, Rivertowns Books, 2022.

    1. António Guterres UN Secretary-General, BBC interview leading to COP27.
    2. Dr. Peter Carter – UN June Climate Meeting Bonn: Bad Beyond Belief
    3. “Global Mortality From Outdoor Fine Particle Pollution Generated by Fossil Fuel Combination, Environmental Research posted at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, 02/09/2021.
    4. “Two-thirds of US Money for Fossil Fuel Pours Into Africa Despite Climate Goals”, The Guardian, October 31, 2022.
    5. BBC News Science.
    6. “COP26 Pledges Will Have Catastrophic Consequences Says Ex-NASA Climate Chief”, Byline Times, February 16, 2022.
    The post COP27 Egypt: Oh, Well!   first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • UN poverty envoy tells Britain it is ‘worst time’ to bring in austerity

    Exclusive: Olivier de Schutter says cuts could violate human rights laws, calling instead for higher taxes on rich

    The United Nations’ poverty envoy has warned Rishi Sunak that unleashing a new wave of austerity in this month’s budget could violate the UK’s international human rights obligations and increase hunger and malnutrition.

    Olivier de Schutter, the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty, said he was “extremely troubled” by likely multibillion-pound spending cuts – including possible real-terms reductions in welfare payments to millions of the nation’s poorest families.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Haiti: The “Gardeners” are Coming Back to the “Jungle”

    Coups-d’etat, U.N. “humanitarian” massacres, a President assassinated by U.S.-trained, Colombian mercenaries, earthquakes, cholera… and even the “aid” of the Clinton Foundation! Now, the country ravaged by decades of natural and man-made disasters braces itself for a new “humanitarian” military invasion.

    *****

    In a recent speech, Josep Borrel, High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, explained to the world how “Europe is a garden”, while the rest of the world is a “jungle” that “could invade the garden”. This is his solution:

    …gardeners have to go to the jungle. Europeans have to be much more engaged with the rest of the world. Otherwise, the rest of the world will invade us, by different ways and means.

    In reality, racist “gardeners” have been invading the “jungle” for centuries, plundering and scheming genocidal massacres, and Haiti knows it better than most countries. Their “gardening” has also ensured that the so-called jungle remains underdeveloped.

    In another recent speech, this time at the United Nations General Assembly, Colombian president Gustavo Petro apologized to Haiti. The first leftist head of state of the South American country – also ravaged by decades of hypocritical U.S. “war on drugs”– was referring to the assassination of Jovenel Moise during a July 2021 attack, perpetrated by a group of mostly Colombian ex-soldiers. It also included 2 Haitian-Americans. The foreign gang, trained in part by the U.S. Army, posed as a team of DEA officers to gain entry to the presidential compound.

    Since then, social unrest has severely increased all over the country, and there’s an almost complete breakdown of the rule of law and many basic social services. The Haitian elite — including its U.S.-approved, de facto President, Ariel Henry — is calling for another foreign “humanitarian intervention” (a.k.a. “gardening”). Western corporate media argue that Haiti is calling for such an intervention. By “Haiti”, they mean its corrupted and U.S.-aligned political and oligarchic elite. What many people on the streets of the convulsed country really demand — besides the ousting of Henry — is that foreign forces stay the hell out of Haiti.

    Regarding Western (U.S. and vassal states) support for Henry, who already received armored vehicles, let’s read what the U.S. representative to Haiti said after renouncing his post on September 22, 2021:

    Last week, the U.S. and other embassies in Port-au-Prince issued another public statement of support for the unelected, de facto President Dr. Ariel Henry as interim leader of Haiti, and have continued to tout his ‘political agreement’ over another broader, earlier accord shepherded by civil society.

    The embassies referred to in his quote, as Canadian writer Yves Engler explains, compose the U.N.-approved Core Group, “made up of ambassadors from Germany, Brazil, Canada, Spain, the United States, France, and the European Union.” The group, he adds:

    …has heavily shaped Haitian affairs ever since American, French and Canadian troops assisted in the overthrow of the country’s elected government in 2004 and installed a United Nations occupation force.

    What President Henry, himself a suspect in the killing of Moise, intend is for a foreign military or U.N. “peace-keeping” mission to enter the country and neutralize the gangs, particularly those not armed and directed by the government itself, as they currently control parts of the country and, most importantly, many vital highways and a sequestered oil refinery. Haitian gangs kidnap people to ask for ransom money, which then finances their criminal exploits, including the illegal trafficking of arms manufactured in the U.S. They have turned Haiti into the new kidnapping capital of the world. Murder and rape are widespread as well (more detail below).

    Despite the many suspects arrested so far, the situation surrounding Moise’s killing remains obscure: there’s still no mastermind identified as responsible for ordering the assassination.

    From the Brazilian Favelas to the Haitian Shantytowns

    The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH, 2004-2017) was purportedly intended to ameliorate the chaos that overtook the country after the aftermath of the foreign coup against the first democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, which happened in February 2004, two hundred years after Haiti’s heroic independence from France. In 2004, as mentioned above, the U.S., Canada, and France collaborated in the ousting of the popular leftist politician and priest from the Fanmi Lavalas party.

    Conveniently, a group of Brazilian Army generals, many of them tied to the dictatorship that controlled their country until 1985, were placed in command of the U.N. mission, which was quickly associated with a handful of civilian massacres, particularly in the overpopulated slums of Cité Soleil, in Port-au-Prince, where around 300,000 people live in extremely precarious conditions. Cité Soleil is also where thousands of Fanmi Lavalas Party supporters live. These criminal raids resembled police and military incursions into many Sao Paulo and Rio favelas. There, under the cover of fighting criminal gangs, racist state actors killed innocent civilians, including boys, and unleashed terror over thousands of mostly black men, women, and children.

    While the Haitian massacres were occurring, as documents released through the Freedom of Information Act attest, the U.S. and its intelligence services were aware of the brutality being unleashed over Cité Soleil. On their part, the most important human rights organizations –like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the Organization of American States– “remained conspicuously disinterested and silent about the evidence”.

    Some of the pictures of the chaos and murderous actions of the MINUSTAH –comprised of soldiers from 13 countries– are too explicit to be shown here, but the reader can visit HaitiAction.net to understand the extent of the cruelty exerted by these “peace-keepers”, who didn’t care to shoot at women and children with high caliber guns, even from helicopters, another terrorist tactic used by Brazilian police and military over the favelas.

    The idea behind raiding Cité Soleil and other shantytowns around Port-au-Prince in reality was to eliminate and terrorize Aristide supporters, rightly infuriated by the 2004 brazen postcolonial coup d’etat ordained and executed by the usual “gardeners”. They demanded the return of their democratically elected President, forcefully exiled to Africa. Those demands would be a regular feature for many years after the coup.

    Only between July 8 and July 17 of this year, 209 people were murdered in Cité Soleil. Half of them were innocent bystanders, without ties to any gang, and the rest, according to the BBC, were gang members “or people with links” to them (whatever that means). Other sources refer to many of these gangs as “paramilitary forces”, a regular feature when the Western “gardeners” control a puppet third-world government immersed in violent conflict. Between January and March of this year, 225 persons were kidnapped, 58% more than during the same three months of 2021.

    The U.N. mission in Haiti was also accused of unleashing a plague of cholera by dumping infected waste into the tributary of an important river, killing more than 10,000 people. The U.N. blue helmets also stand accused of raping Haitian girls and women –or trading food for sex– leaving behind many “petit-MINUSTAH” as their abandoned offspring is often referred to.

    The Montana Accord

    Last September 29, in line with the Western “gardener” tradition, U.S. ambassador Pamela A. White said before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee, referring to Haiti, that her country must put “boots on the ground right now!”

    If history offers any kind of lesson, her declaration should be more than enough to understand that nothing good is coming toward Haiti in the next months or years of foreign occupation, now a very probable outcome as the U.N. Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution “demanding an immediate end to violence and criminal activity in Haiti and imposing sanctions on individuals and groups threatening peace and stability in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest nation — starting with a powerful gang leader.”

    The gang leader referred to is the former police officer and “G9” gang boss Jimmy Cherizier, sanctioned by the U.S. and, now, also by the U.N. Despite the presence of many other gangs and their leaders, Cherizier, linked to various human rights violations he denies, is the only one to receive such sanctions so far. He is also the gang leader calling for revolution against the Henry regime.

    The U.N. Security Council resolution (October 21) opens the door for a second resolution, already in the making by the U.S. and Mexico, to authorize a “non-U.N. International Security Assistance Mission”, which is what the “gardeners” are desperately pushing for.

    The Washington Post Editorial Board, on its part, recently stated that the Montana Accord is “the right move for Haiti”. To be clear, the boots on the ground “right now!” option, in the form of a non-U.N. security mission, doesn’t exclude the Montana Accord, an assortment of Haitian political groups that include some shady characters. In fact, they are probably meant to work together, hand in glove.

    The putative leader of the Montana Accord is Magali Comeau-Denis, Minister of Culture under Gerard Latortue, de facto President of Haiti from 2004 to 2006 (right after the coup that ousted Aristide). As Haiti Liberté reported, she was harshly criticized for starting unilateral negotiations –after the U.S. pressured her to do so– with Ariel Henry, which led to other participants leaving the Montana Accord. According to the leader of the Movement for Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity (MOLEGHAF), a revolutionary and progressive party from Port-au-Prince that left the coalition:

    MOLEGHAF agreed to sign and join the Montana Accord because we were supposed to find this ‘Haitian solution,’ without bowing to the dictates of (then U.S. Chargé d’Affaires) Kenneth Merten, (and former) U.S. State Department officer and current head of the U.N. Office in Haiti, Helen La Lime, or the French, Canadian, and U.S. Embassies.

    In other words, the accord supported by the Washington Post, a mouthpiece in the service of Western elites, marches on behind the façade of a “Haitian-led” solution but is nothing of the sort.

    Certainly, the Haitian gangs –some of them substantially supported by the Haitian government as a way to control society, and armed with guns that the U.S. seems surprisingly incapable of controlling– must be stopped. But thinking that the way to achieve this is by allowing another occupation of the country goes stubbornly (and disingenuously) against, at least, a few hundred years of recorded history. The racist and colonial mentality of the “gardeners” imply that Haiti cannot rule itself, so it must be controlled from Washington.

    The post Haiti: The “Gardeners” are Coming Back to the “Jungle” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • November 2022-December 2022 Deadlines: Calls for Inputs by UN Human Rights Mechanisms

    The following calls for inputs have been issued by UN Human Rights Mechanisms with deadlines in November-December 2022 and law professors whose practice, research, and/or scholarship touches on these topics may be interested in submission: Office of the High Commissioner…

    This post was originally published on Human Rights at Home Blog.

  • Queensland to change laws that prevented UN inspectors entering mental health wards

    Annastacia Palaszczuk says the restrictions will be removed this year to comply with Opcat treaty

    Queensland will introduce legislation that would allow United Nations officials to visit its mental health wards in a move that could leave New South Wales as the only Australian jurisdiction to refuse entry to inspectors.

    A UN anti-torture subcommittee suspended its tour of Australian detention facilities after Guardian Australia revealed Queensland refused access to some mental health facilities that hold people charged with crimes, while NSW blocked inspectors from entering all of its detention facilities.

    Sign up for our free morning newsletter and afternoon email to get your daily news roundup

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • Solution to Foreign Control Mess in Haiti is Not More Colonialism

    “The only way to save Haiti is to put it under UN control,” noted a recent Globe and Mail headline. Robert Rotberg, founding director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Program on Intrastate Conflict, demonstrates a scarcity of imagination and knowledge in making his colonialist appeal.

    Highlighting an openly colonial streak in Canadian politics, prominent voices have repeatedly promoted “protectorate” status for Haiti. In 2014 right-wing Quebec City radio host, Sylvain Bouchard, told listeners, “I would transform Haiti into a colony. The UN must colonize Haiti.” During the 2003 “Ottawa initiative on Haiti” conference to plan the ouster of elected President Jean-Bertrand Aristide US, French and Canadian officials discussed putting the country under UN trusteeship while a 2005 Canadian Military Journal article was titled “The case for international trusteeship in Haiti”.

    In a Canadianized variation of the protectorate theme, constitutional law professor Richard Albert penned a 2017 Boston Globe opinion titled “Haiti should relinquish its sovereignty”. The Boston College professor wrote, “the new Haitian Constitution should do something virtually unprecedented: renounce the power of self-governance and assign it for a term of years, say 50, to a country that can be trusted to act in Haiti’s long-term interests.” According to the Canadian law professor his native land, which Albert called “one of Haiti’s most loyal friends”, should administer the Caribbean island nation.

    In a similar vein, L’Actualité editor-in-chief, Carole Beaulieu, suggested Haiti become the eleventh Canadian province. In an article just after the 2004 coup titled “Et si on annexait Haïti?”, she wrote “Canada should annex Haiti to make it a little tropical paradise.”

    At the less sophisticated conservative end of the political spectrum André Arthur, a former member of Parliament, labeled Haiti a “hopeless” and “sexually deviant” country populated by thieves and prostitutes that should be taken over by France as in the “heyday of colonial Haiti” (“belle époque de l’Haïti colonial”). “There is no hope in Haiti until the country is placed under trusteeship”, bellowed the Quebec City radio host in 2016. “We will never dare to do it, political correctness, it would be racism to say: So you say to France: … ‘For the next thirty years, you are the owner of Haiti, put it right. Kick the asses that need to be kicked.”

    In his Globe commentary Rotberg displays a startling level of ignorance about Haitian affairs. While writing that “Haiti needs to become a ward of the United Nations”, Rotberg fails to recognize that the UN and foreign powers have dominated Haiti over the past 18 years. Haitians widely view the head of the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti (BINUH), Helen LaLime, a US diplomat, as colonial overseer. In 2019 BINUH replaced the United Nations Mission for Justice Support in Haiti (MINUJUSTH), which replaced La Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti (MINUSTAH) in 2017.

    MINUSTAH was responsible for countless abuses during its 13-year occupation, which consisted of 8,000 foreign troops and 2,000 police. After helping oust thousands of elected officials in 2004, 500 Canadian soldiers were incorporated into MINUSTAH as it backed up a coup government’s violent crackdown against pro-democracy protesters between March 2004 and May 2006. The UN force also killed dozens of civilians directly when it pacified Cité Soleil, a bastion of support for Aristide. The UN force was responsible for innumerable sexual abuses. The foreign forces had sex with minors, sodomized boys, raped young girls and left many single mothers to struggle with stigma and poverty after departing the country.

    Aside from sexual abuse and political repression, the UN’s disregard for Haitian life caused a major cholera outbreak, which left over 10,000 dead and one million sick.

    The 2004 coup and UN occupation introduced a form of multilateral colonial oversight to Haiti. The April 2004 Security Council resolution that replaced the two-month-old US, France and Canada Multinational Interim Force with MINUSTAH established the Core Group. (Unofficially, the Core Group traces its roots to the 2003 “Ottawa Initiative on Haiti” meeting where US, French, OAS and Canadian officials discussed overthrowing Haiti’s elected government and putting the country under UN trusteeship.) The Core Group, which includes representatives of the US, Canada, France, Spain, Brazil, OAS, EU and UN, periodically releases collective statements on Haitian affairs and meet among themselves and with Haitian officials. It’s a flagrantly colonial alliance. After President Jovenel Moise was killed 15 months ago, for instance, the Core Group effectively appointed Ariel Henry prime minister through a press release. Implicated in Moise’s assassination, Henry has overseen the country’s descent in chaos.

    Those calling for foreign control of Haiti ignore its loss of sovereignty since the 2004 coup. By what standards was the usurpation of Haitian sovereignty successful? By basically any metric, 18 years of US/Canada, UN, Core Group influence in Haiti has been a disaster. But imperialists don’t simply ignore the damaging impact of foreign intervention. In a stark demonstration of how power affects ideology, the more Haitian sovereignty is undercut the more forthright the calls to usurp Haitian sovereignty.

    As has been said, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”

    The post Solution to Foreign Control Mess in Haiti is Not More Colonialism first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Last Thing Haiti Needs Is Another Military Intervention

    Gélin Buteau (Haiti), Guede with Drum, ca. 1995.

    At the United Nations General Assembly on 24 September 2022, Haiti’s Foreign Minister Jean Victor Geneus admitted that his country faces a serious crisis, which he said ‘can only be solved with the effective support of our partners’. To many close observers of the situation unfolding in Haiti, the phrase ‘effective support’ sounded like Geneus was signalling that another military intervention by Western powers was imminent. Indeed, two days prior to Geneus’s comments, The Washington Post published an editorial on the situation in Haiti in which it called for ‘muscular action by outside actors’. On 15 October, the United States and Canada issued a joint statement announcing that they had sent military aircraft to Haiti to deliver weapons to Haitian security services. That same day, the United States submitted a draft resolution to the UN Security Council calling for the ‘immediate deployment of a multinational rapid action force’ into Haiti.

    Ever since the Haitian Revolution won independence from France in 1804, Haiti has faced successive waves of invasions, including a two-decade-long US occupation from 1915 to 1934, a US-backed dictatorship from 1957 to 1986, two Western-backed coups against the progressive former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide in 1991 and 2004, and a UN military intervention from 2004 to 2017. These invasions have prevented Haiti from securing its sovereignty and have prevented its people from building dignified lives. Another invasion, whether by US and Canadian troops or by UN peacekeeping forces, will only deepen the crisis. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the International Peoples’ Assembly, ALBA Movements, and the Plateforme Haïtienne de Plaidoyer pour un Développement Alternatif (‘Haitian Advocacy Platform for Alternative Development’ or PAPDA) have produced a red alert on the current situation in Haiti, which can be found below and downloaded as a PDF.

    What is happening in Haiti?

    A popular insurrection has unfolded in Haiti throughout 2022. These protests are the continuation of a cycle of resistance that began in 2016 in response to a social crisis developed by the coups in 1991 and 2004, the earthquake in 2010, and Hurricane Matthew in 2016. For more than a century, any attempt by the Haitian people to exit the neocolonial system imposed by the US military occupation (1915–34) has been met with military and economic interventions to preserve it. The structures of domination and exploitation established by that system have impoverished the Haitian people, with most of the population having no access to drinking water, health care, education, or decent housing. Of Haiti’s 11.4 million people, 4.6 million are food insecure and 70% are unemployed.

    Manuel Mathieu (Haiti), Rempart (‘Rampart’), 2018.

    The Haitian Creole word dechoukaj or ‘uprooting’ – which was first used in the pro-democracy movements of 1986 that fought against the US-backed dictatorship – has come to define the current protests. The government of Haiti, led by acting Prime Minister and President Ariel Henry, raised fuel prices during this crisis, which provoked a protest from the trade unions and deepened the movement. Henry was installed to his post in 2021 by the ‘Core Group’ (made up of six countries and led by the US, the European Union, the UN, and the Organisation of American States) after the murder of the unpopular president Jovenel Moïse. Although still unsolved, it is clear that Moïse was killed by a conspiracy that included the ruling party, drug trafficking gangs, Colombian mercenaries, and US intelligence services. The UN’s Helen La Lime told the Security Council in February that the national investigation into Moïse’s murder had stalled, a situation that has fuelled rumours and exacerbated both suspicion and mistrust within the country.

    Fritzner Lamour (Haiti), Poste Ravine Pintade, ca. 1980.

    Fritzner Lamour (Haiti), Poste Ravine Pintade, ca. 1980

    How have the forces of neocolonialism reacted?

    The United States and Canada are now arming Henry’s illegitimate government and planning military intervention in Haiti. On 15 October, the US submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations Security Council calling for the ‘immediate deployment of a multinational rapid action force’ in the country. This would be the latest chapter in over two centuries of destructive intervention by Western countries in Haiti. Since the 1804 Haitian Revolution, the forces of imperialism (including slave owners) have intervened militarily and economically against people’s movements seeking to end the neocolonial system. Most recently, these forces entered the country under the auspices of the United Nations via the UN Stabilisation Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH), which was active from 2004 to 2017. A further such intervention in the name of ‘human rights’ would only affirm the neocolonial system now managed by Ariel Henry and would be catastrophic for the Haitian people, whose movement forward is being blocked by gangs created and promoted behind the scenes by the Haitian oligarchy, supported by the Core Group, and armed by weapons from the United States.

    Saint Louis Blaise (Haiti), Généraux (‘Generals’), 1975.

    How can the world stand in solidarity with Haiti?

    Haiti’s crisis can only be solved by the Haitian people, but they must be accompanied by the immense force of international solidarity. The world can look to the examples demonstrated by the Cuban Medical Brigade, which first went to Haiti in 1998; by the Via Campesina/ALBA Movimientos brigade, which has worked with popular movements on reforestation and popular education since 2009; and by the assistance provided by the Venezuelan government, which includes discounted oil. It is imperative for those standing in solidarity with Haiti to demand, at a minimum:

    1. that France and the United States provide reparations for the theft of Haitian wealth since 1804, including the return of the gold stolen by the US in 1914. France alone owes Haiti at least $28 billion.
    2. that the United States return Navassa Island to Haiti.
    3. that the United Nations pay for the crimes committed by MINUSTAH, whose forces killed tens of thousands of Haitians, raped untold numbers of women, and introduced cholera into the country.
    4. that the Haitian people be permitted to build their own sovereign, dignified, and just political and economic framework and to create education and health systems that can meet the people’s real needs.
    5. that all progressive forces oppose the military invasion of Haiti.
    Marie-Hélène Cauvin (Haiti), Trinité (‘Trinity’), 2003.

    Marie-Hélène Cauvin (Haiti), Trinité (‘Trinity’), 2003

    The common sense demands in this red alert do not require much elaboration, but they do need to be amplified.

    Western countries will talk about this new military intervention with phrases such as ‘restoring democracy’ and ‘defending human rights’. The terms ‘democracy’ and ‘human rights’ are demeaned in these instances. This was on display at the UN General Assembly in September, when US President Joe Biden said that his government continues ‘to stand with our neighbour in Haiti’. The emptiness of these words is revealed in a new Amnesty International report that documents the racist abuse faced by Haitian asylum seekers in the United States. The US and the Core Group might stand with people like Ariel Henry and the Haitian oligarchy, but they do not stand with the Haitian people, including those who have fled to the United States.

    In 1957, the Haitian communist novelist Jacques-Stéphen Alexis published a letter to his country titled La belle amour humaine (‘Beautiful Human Love’). ‘I don’t think that the triumph of morality can happen by itself without the actions of humans’, Alexis wrote. A descendent of Jean-Jacques Dessalines, one of the revolutionaries that overthrew French rule in 1804, Alexis wrote novels to uplift the human spirit, a profound contribution to the Battle of Emotions in his country. In 1959, Alexis founded the Parti pour l’Entente Nationale (‘People’s Consensus Party’). On 2 June 1960, Alexis wrote to the US-backed dictator François ‘Papa Doc’ Duvalier to inform him that both he and his country would overcome the violence of the dictatorship. ‘As a man and as a citizen’, Alexis wrote, ‘it is inescapable to feel the inexorable march of the terrible disease, this slow death, which each day leads our people to the cemetery of nations like wounded pachyderms to the necropolis of elephants’. This march can only be halted by the people. Alexis was forced into exile in Moscow, where he participated in a meeting of international communist parties. When he arrived back in Haiti in April 1961, he was abducted in Môle-Saint-Nicolas and killed by the dictatorship shortly thereafter. In his letter to Duvalier, Alexis echoed, ‘we are the children of the future’.

    The post The Last Thing Haiti Needs Is Another Military Intervention first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • NSW’s refusal to allow UN inspectors in prisons ‘raises questions’, human rights commissioner says

    Lorraine Finlay says state government’s decision means Australia is ‘failing to live up to the promises it made to the world’

    Australia’s human rights commissioner, Lorraine Finlay, has questioned why the New South Wales government was blocking officials from the United Nations inspecting its jails if it was confident about meeting minimum standards.

    She said the NSW move could jeopardise promises made by Australia as part of the UN’s Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture (Opcat) that was ratified by the federal government under former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in 2017.

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  • UN Votes against US’ Xinjiang Proposal

    This week’s News on China in 2 minutes.

    • UN votes against US’ Xinjiang proposal
    • Xinjiang exports to more than 80 countries
    • US policy of semiconductor “chokehold”
    • China moved from 34th to 11th position in the Global Innovation Index

    The post UN Votes against US’ Xinjiang Proposal first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • After the Nong Bua Lamphu shooting, a need for grief-sensitive journalism

    In a horrifying mass shooting at a childcare center in the northeastern Thai province of Nong Bua Lamphu on October 6, at least 38 people, including 22 young children were killed. A former police officer, Panya Kamrab used his personal 9mm handgun as well as several knives in the attack that stunned and frightened the Kingdom. International and national media have descended upon the rural Uthai Sawan community for the purposes of covering the story.

    Journalists, as well as the Thai public, have raised legitimate questions that should be asked after a tragedy like this: Has rising poverty as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to a decline in mental health?  What can Thailand do about its rising gun violence? According to the University of Sydney’s School of Public Health, there are more than 10 million privately-owned guns circulating in Thailand. Thailand has 15.1 weapons per 100 people compared to just 0.3 in Singapore and 0.25 in Japan. Mass shootings are still rare, although in 2020 a soldier killed 29 people in Nakhon Ratchasima.

    While these questions facilitate dialogue on how to create better national policy and better protect children, journalists also need to ask themselves ethical questions when covering stories of trauma and times of grief: What is driving my need to ask questions? Is it the appropriate time to ask my questions? And, when approaching families of the victims, are my questions appropriate and is their grief a legitimate part of the story?

    Evidence of inappropriate, ill-considered decisions by journalists and editors are rife amid reporting on the Nong Bua Lamphu tragedy. Anna Coren, a CNN anchor and correspondent filmed inside the childcare center illegally, an action condemned by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT). Less conspicuous is the common practice of filming or photographing coffins, demonstrated on social media by Khaosod English photographing a visibly shaken mother as she left toys of her deceased son on top of his coffin, or the Southeast Asia Globe showing the bloodstained coffin of the shooter compared to that of one of the victims. Other newspapers such as The Straits Times, have shown even more graphic images, some from Reuters, such as the floor of the childcare center with blood still visible, just a day after the killings. The New York Times is also guilty of the same questionable practices. Whether the action is intentional or unintentional, careful or careless, the media need to rethink their approaches while covering delicate stories.

    There are clear ethical guidelines that suggest these decisions should not be normalised as practice. UNICEF was quick to advise the media and the general public to “refrain from posting or forwarding images and videos related to this violent incident, as this may further negatively impact children, victims’ families, and their loved ones.”  Several Thai news associations, including the National Press Council of Thailand, News Broadcasting Council of Thailand, and the Society for Online News issued statements warning the media to refrain from publishing accounts and photos that add to the suffering of relatives of the victims.


    Related


    The partisan history of police power in Thailand

    Paul Chambers looks back at the politicisation of the Royal Thai Police, before turning to the palace’s recent personalisation of authority over an institution often overshadowed by the military.

    Paul Chambers

    02 March, 2020


    IMPRESS, a UK-based media regulator, created ethical guidelines for journalists under its Standards Code, of which Section 7 under Privacy is of relevance here.

    Journalists are advised to ask “whether the person had voluntarily courted publicity on a relevant aspect of their private life” and to “take all reasonable steps not to exacerbate grief or distress through intrusive newsgathering or reporting.” Further, the Society for Professional Journalists (SPJ), under its Code of Ethics advises journalists to “balance the public need for information against potential harm or discomfort.” The SPJ advises compassion and heightened sensitivity when dealing with people who have experienced trauma.

    Trauma-sensitive and grief-sensitive journalism skills should be regularly provided by newsrooms, and are clearly lacking. Resources are readily available online, but are seldom accessed. However, what needs to be heeded is mostly an ethical awareness and an understanding of the grieving process. Some academic literature is instructive.

    In a 2013 article on social media and the expansion of death and mourning, Professors Jed Brubaker, Gillian Hayes, and Paul Dourish suggest that social media builds “an infrastructure for a new relationship with our social pasts” where “deceased friends are resituated into our everyday use” of social media applications. The grieving process is expanded from a small community of mourners, as was typical, and is greatly expanded into public and online spaces, often blurring the lines between observers and mourners.

    For some, according to the University of California at Irvine researchers, social media can be seen as intrusive to those who prefer more traditional forms of mourning. Private thoughts and memories are thrust into public spaces, often seen as an invasion of privacy. Sharing intimate, painful moments, through photos and video can exacerbate or prolong the grieving process, thereby creating an ethical dilemma for journalists. As Ann Shearer in her 1991 monograph, Survivors and the Media, noted, “the media may, by wrenching private grief into the public realm, simply underline and exacerbate [a] sense of helplessness.”

    The media can have an adverse effect on victims’ families, detailed well in a 2019 article on the impact of grief journalism by N.A. Noreham and Yvette Tinsley, two Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand researchers in an examination of the Pike River mining disaster, where 29 men were killed in 2010. Five negative impacts are chronicled, the fear and loss of physical security, stress and loss of emotional equilibrium, feelings of violation and exploitation, loss of autonomy and control, and interference with relationships and emotional recovery.

    As the authors detail, the Nong Bua Lamphu tragedy should be approached with caution as families can easily gain the perception that journalists are there to serve their own interests over that of families’ immediate concerns, namely the grieving and burial process. In the Pike River case, participants overwhelmingly objected to the media’s lack of respect, humanity and empathy. The media can also inadvertently limit the ability of families to control who has access to their loved ones, their freedom of movement, and their control over how their loved ones are remembered.

    Consider the humanity of the perpetrator’s mother, a 63-year old woman, who had to bury her son in Udon Thani province in order to avoid public anger. Making merit in hopes of her son’s soul continuing on to heaven, she expressed regret about him not talking to her before he took the lives of 38 people. While public anger is both visible and justified, increased media focus on her increases the likelihood of unjustified anger toward the mother, as well as the prolonging of her own grief. Oftentimes, the parents of perpetrators of mass violence share additional feelings of loss and guilt, combined with the pain of public anger, as evidenced by the Uvalde, Texas mother Adriana Martinez, who went through a period of shock, denial, grief, and anger over the actions of her son and as well as the reaction of the community who confronted her.

    With respect to the rights and dignity of the grieving, media requests should occur in their proper course. Journalist Jo Healey, who devised trauma reporting training for the BBC, and author of Trauma Reporting: A Journalist’s Guide to Covering Sensitive Stories notes that the families of victims will often come to journalists naturally, for a variety of different reasons: to pay tribute to loved ones, to raise awareness, to hold perpetrators or officials to account, or to appeal to the media to keep the story in the public eye. In the context of the  Nong Bua Lamphu tragedy, sensitive approaches used by veteran journalists David Rising of the Associated Press and Hathairat Phaholtap of the Isaan Record and recently for Al Jazeera are recent best practices.

    Like other instances of mass violence, the Nong Bua Lamphu story will soon be out of the media spotlight, and families will soon have the freedom to resume their lives without the burden of the media documenting their private lives. As Thailand grapples with the twin challenges of improving mental health and reducing access to firearms, news organizations must use this opportunity to educate and inform their reporters and editors on grief and trauma-sensitive approaches. The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma is an excellent resource, as is the Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute at the University of Missouri.

    In the meantime, while the victims’ families remain a part of the focus of news coverage, journalists should continue to question the reasoning of their inquiries: is it in the public interest? Would reporting your story cause harm? Can the questions be revisited at a more appropriate time? What is in the public interest does not always mean that it is necessary. Journalists can be a part of the healing process if grief-sensitive approaches are applied.

    The post After the Nong Bua Lamphu shooting, a need for grief-sensitive journalism appeared first on New Mandala.

  • Vanuatu snap election: International observers arrive for key vote

    By Hiliare Bule, RNZ News correspondent in Port Vila

    Forty nine regional and international observers have arrived in Vanuatu to monitor the running of the country’s snap election tomorrow.

    The election was triggered after the dissolution of the country’s Parliament on August 19 by President Nikenike Vurobaravu, and on the eve of a motion of no-confidence against the now caretaker prime minister Bob Loughman.

    More than 300,000 people are expected to cast their vote in the snap election.

    The Chairman of the Electoral Commission, Edward Kaltamat, has confirmed observers from Australia, China, Fiji, France, Kiribati, Melanesian Spearhead Group Secretariat, New Zealand, Pacific Islands Forum, United Kingdom and the United Nations are in the country.

    Kaltamat said their presence will provide confidence to the voters on the transparency and credibility of the election.

    The 49 observers have signed their code of conduct to guide them while they are in the field.

    Kaltamat said some of them would stay in the capital to monitor the elections in Port Vila and the Efate constituency, and some would be deployed in the islands.

    He said the observers will be briefed before being sent to the islands by aircraft.

    This is not the first time that international observers have monitored an election in Vanuatu.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • UNHRC adopts resolution to help Marshall Islands over nuclear legacy

    RNZ Pacific

    The United Nations Human Rights Council has adopted a resolution aimed at assisting the Marshall Islands to get justice in the aftermath of the United States nuclear testing.

    “We have suffered the cancer of the nuclear legacy for far too long and we need to find a way forward to a better future for our people,” says Samuel Lanwi, deputy permanent representative of the Marshall Islands to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva.

    The Marshallese people are still struggling with the health and environmental consequences of nuclear tests, including higher cancer rates.

    Many people displaced due to the tests are still unable to return home.

    The US conducted 67 US nuclear tests from 1946-1958 and a settlement was reached in 1986 with the United States, a Compact of Free Association, which fell short of addressing the extensive environmental and health damage that resulted from the tests.

    The U.S government asserts the bilateral agreement settled “all claims, past, present and future”, including nuclear compensation.

    The new text tabled by five Pacific Island states called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people, stemming from the nuclear legacy.

    It called on the UN rights chief to submit a report in September 2024 on the challenges to the enjoyment of human rights by the Marshallese people stemming from the nuclear legacy.

    The US as well as other nuclear weapons states such as Britain, India and Pakistan expressed concern about some aspects of the text but did not ask for a vote on the motion.

    Japan did not speak at the meeting.

    Runeit Dome, built by the US on Enewetak Atoll to hold radioactive waste from nuclear tests.
    Runeit Dome, built by the US on Enewetak Atoll to store radioactive waste from nuclear tests. Image: Tom Vance/RNZ

    Observers say some nuclear states fear the initiative for the Marshall Islands could open the door to other countries bringing similar issues to the rights body.

    A concrete dome on Runit Island containing radioactive waste is of concern, especially about rising sea levels as a result of climate change, according to the countries that drafted the resolution.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ. Reporting also by Kyodo News/Pacnews.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tigrayan rebels accused by survivors of killing dozens of civilians in Kobo

    Witnesses claim TPLF rebels tortured and killed in town in Amhara last month in search for supporters of Ethiopian federal forces

    Tigrayan rebel forces have killed dozens of civilians during their latest occupation of a town in the Amhara region, survivors claim, after fighting resumed last month in the northern area of Ethiopia.

    The alleged killings took place in the town of Kobo, located along the highway to the capital, Addis Ababa. Between 13-15 September, Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) fighters shot dead unarmed civilians they suspected of supporting federal forces and local militias, survivors have told the Guardian.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • UN vote to ignore human rights abuses in China leaves west in dead end

    Result not to debate its own damning report shows many states are unwilling to take sides in power struggle between China and west

    In a display of raw Chinese political power, the UN has voted to turn its back on a report written by its own human rights commissioner that accused Beijing of serious human rights abuses and possible crimes against humanity in Xinjiang province.

    The 47-strong UN human rights council meeting in Geneva voted on Thursday by 19 to 17 to reject an American-led call for a debate on the report at the next human rights council in spring. Eleven countries abstained. A simple majority was required.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • “Well of Solutions” or Problems: Why Reforming the UN is Critical

    The 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly was, in many ways, similar to the 76th session and many other previous sessions: at best, a stage for rosy rhetoric that is rarely followed by tangible action or, at worse, a mere opportunity for some world leaders to score political points against their opponents.

    This should surprise no one. For many years, the UN has been relegated to the role of either a cheerleader for the policy of great powers, or a timid protester of sociopolitical, economic or gender inequalities. Alas, as the Iraq war proved nearly thirty years ago, and as the Russia-Ukraine war is proving today, the UN seems the least effective party in bringing about global peace, equality and security for all.

    As is often the case, voices like those of Antonio Guterres – who called for “achieving and sustaining peace” – were drowned by those with the big guns and financial means to turn the Ukraine war into a long-drawn battlefield for their own strategic reasons.

    Similar to Guterres, the words of the new UN General Assembly President Csaba Kőrösi seemed least practical or, sadly, even relevant.

    “Responding to humanity’s most pressing challenges demands that we work together, and that we reinvigorate inclusive, networked and effective multilateralism and focus on that which unites us”, Kőrösi said in his speech at the opening session on Tuesday, September 20.

    Kőrösi’s frame of reference to what, at least for now, seems like wishful thinking, is his understanding that the UN was created out of the “ashes of war” with the intention of being a “well of solutions”.

    In truth, the UN Charter was signed in June 1945 to reflect an emerging new power paradigm that resulted from World War II. The UN power structure simply confirmed the gains of the victors of that war and granted the victorious countries far greater influence through their permanent membership in the UN Security Council and veto power, than the rest of the world combined.

    This was not a deviation from the historical norm. After all, the League of Nations, the predecessor of the current UN, was founded in 1920 to confirm the new geopolitical realities that resulted from World War I.

    The League of Nations was scrapped as it was deemed ‘ineffective’. This, however, was not the real reason behind its dismissal. In actuality, the League’s old structure and makeup simply did not correspond to the new power formations resulting from the Second World War, where old enemies became new friends and old friends became new enemies.

    Effectiveness had little to do with the switch from the League to the UN, as the latter hardly managed to seriously address or resolve major political issues, from Palestine, to Kashmir, to Sudan, Mali, Afghanistan, and numerous other conflicts, including today’s war in Ukraine.

    Even the hype over the UN’s role in addressing the climate change crisis, arguably the most pressing for all of humankind, has petered out quickly. Thanks to the polarization and self-serving ‘diplomacy’ generated by the Ukraine crisis, many countries that led the way in the use of clean energy are now backtracking.

    Indeed, the environmental crisis has now been moved to the back burner, to the extent that US President Joe Biden has reportedly skipped the roundtable talks on climate action, which were scheduled to take place in New York on September 21. A year ago, this would have generated much discussion and even anger among US environmentalists. Now it seems a trivial and politically inconsequential issue.

    Still, despite its many contradictions, and overall failure to deliver on its promises of peace and security, the UN continues to serve a role. For the US and its western allies, it remains a stage for their political power, which they have inherited from the legacy of WWII.

    However, for smaller countries – in Africa, the Middle East and much of the Global South – the UN gives them a voice, albeit barely audible, and grants them an occasional chance at relevance. This relevance, however, is temporary and ultimately intangible. After all, all the fiery, impassioned, and articulate speeches of all the leaders of the Global South combined hardly ever influenced outcomes, discouraged neocolonialism, economic exploitations, racism, military interventions or political meddling.

    In an open letter on September 20 addressing world leaders, over 200 humanitarian organizations, including OXFAM and Save the Children, stated that one person is likely to be dying every four seconds as a result of the “spiraling global hunger crisis”.

    This crisis is more palpable in Africa than on any other continent. Though food shortages in Africa are an ongoing challenge, many signs have already indicated that an unprecedented crisis is looming, initiated by climate change, worsened by the Covid pandemic, and further accentuated by the Ukraine war and the disruption of critical supply routes.

    Despite repeated pleas by UN organizations to prioritize Africa in terms of food shipments, the opposite became true. This begs the question: If the UN does not have the means and power to provide life-saving food to starving children, isn’t it, then, time to question the very mission, structure, and mechanisms of the world’s largest organization?

    True, there has been talking about urgent and long overdue UN reforms. Some want the UN to be reformed to reflect new democratic or economic realities, while others feel deserving of being permanent members of the UNSC. The West, of course, wants to keep the convenient power distribution in place as long as possible.

    However, for a reformed UN to serve a noble mission and to live up to its lofty promises, the new power distribution should allocate places for all, regardless of military power or economic might. Till then, the UN will remain a sad expression of the world’s existing problems, not, in the words of Kőrösi, a “well of solutions”.

    The post “Well of Solutions” or Problems: Why Reforming the UN is Critical first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Delegates from French Polynesia head to UN decolonisation committee

    RNZ Pacific

    Delegates from French Polynesia have flown to New York for the annual meeting of the UN Decolonisation Committee.

    The veteran pro-independence leader Oscar Temaru is heading his team while the French Polynesian government has sent the Equipment Minister Rene Temeharo as its spokesperson.

    The territory was reinscribed on the list on non-self-governing territories in 2013, but France refuses to accept the inscription and engage in any UN-supervised process.

    Temeharo said the inscription occurred at a time of political instability and without putting the issue to the voters.

    He said French Polynesia was not a colony as it had a democratically elected territorial government.

    Head of the French Olympic Committee Denis Massiglia and the French Polynesia Sports Minister, Rene Temeharo.
    French Polynesian cabinet minister Rene Temeharo (right) … Tahiti “is not a colony”. Image: RNZ Pacific

    France has not responded to calls to hold a referendum on independence.

    The other main French territory in the Pacific, Kanaky New Caledonia, has been on the UN Decolonisation List since 1986, which France has recognised.

    This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Venezuela’s mining region a hotbed of sex trafficking and violence, UN says

    Fact-finding mission reports brutal massacres and sexual slavery in gold-rich arc where armed gangs fight for control

    Struggling to get by amid Venezuela’s runaway inflation, widespread shortages and rampant unemployment, a young woman left the city of San Félix for the promise of a job deep in the forests of Bolívar state.

    The offer made on Facebook promised a good salary in exchange for working in a booming mining town.

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    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.