Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen. Credit: UN Photo/Kim Haughton.
by Kris Janssens (phnom penh)
Inter Press Service
PHNOM PENH, Oct 28 (IPS) – Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen walks into a diplomatic minefield these days. He supports UN resolutions against Putin but does not want to jeopardize the long-standing friendship with Russia. At the same time, he tries to be less dependent on the West, both economically and politically.
Last month, Cambodia backed the United Nations (UN) resolution condemning Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian territories. Earlier this year, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen also signed a resolution against the invasion of Ukraine. As a result, the Russian ambassador to Cambodia Anatoly Borovik posted a rather vicious message on Twitter. “It was Moscow that assisted Phnom Penh in the most difficult period in its history”, Borovik wrote to refresh Cambodia’s memory. It is a reference to the long-standing friendship between the two countries.
Turbulent 80s
This friendship goes back to the mid-1950s when Cambodia just gained independence from France and the Soviet Union supported the then king Norodom Sihanouk, who didn’t want to choose sides between the West and the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War.
But Borovik’s tweet refers to the 1980s when the Vietnamese army took control of Cambodia after having ousted Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot from power.
Boycott
The United States had not yet digested the Vietnam War and wanted this Vietnamese occupier to leave. Various Western countries supported this demand. Cambodia urgently needed emergency aid, after the devastation of the Khmer Rouge, but was boycotted. Only a limited number of countries, with the Soviet Union in the lead, tried to get food and medicines to the affected population.
“When I came to Cambodia in 1984, as a reporter for the state news agency TASS, there were also many Russian doctors, technicians, and engineers”, says Russian professor Dmitry Mosyakov about that period. Today he is head of the center for Southeast Asia at the Institute of Oriental Studies in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh. “The Soviets were very close to the Cambodians, almost like a family”, Mosyakov recalls.
Prime Minister Hun Sen
One year after Mosyakov’s arrival, in 1985, Cambodia gets a new prime minister: Hun Sen. He is a former Khmer Rouge soldier who later defected and was brought to power by the Vietnamese. Today, 37 years later, he is still in office. He rules the country with an iron fist, has opposition leaders thrown in jail, and manipulates the elections. The United States and the European Union are watching disapprovingly.
That’s why it is striking that the European lobby has been able to convince Hun Sen to support a pro-Western resolution against Russia. “This is because Cambodia is still economically dependent on the American and European markets for export. The prime minister wants to change this in due course, for example, he is currently looking at the Eurasian Economic Union, led by Russia,” says Cambodian journalist Chhengpor Aun. He writes about his country’s foreign policy for ‘Voice of America’ and ‘The Diplomat’, among others.
Ambiguous
To keep the line with Moscow open, Cambodia has only signed UN resolutions with a humanitarian undertone. “For example, Cambodia supported a declaration on the protection of civilians, but abstained when the vote to suspend the rights of Russia in the UN Rights Council was taken”, explains Chhengpor Aun.
Professor Dmitry Mosyakov deplores Cambodia’s ambiguous attitude. “It was good that our ambassador referred to the 1980s and the support Cambodia received back then,” he responds. “Right now, Russia has a good understanding with most countries in Southeast Asia. For example, the new Philippine president wants a better relationship with Moscow, we have excellent contacts with Myanmar, Vietnam, and Laos, but less with Cambodia.”
Communism
When ideological ties to communism were severed in the early 1990s, the relations between the two countries cooled down. Russian aid was reduced in a very short time and the West regained influence.
Because of this historical link, some veterans of Hun Sen’s party would rather not support UN resolutions against Putin. “This is nothing more than a sentiment from the past,” says journalist Chhengpor Aun. “In any case, the Prime Minister’s foreign policy is much more pragmatic than his authoritarian domestic policy.”
Coup de theatre
Chhengpor Aun thus refers to a major coup de theatre that awaits Cambodian politics. Hun Sen has announced that he will make his son Hun Manet prime minister next summer, albeit after the national elections. “This will be the last and most important game in Hun Sen’s long career,” Mosyakov says. “I think a lot will change with the son in power, including international relations.”
Evidently, the West disapproves of this undemocratic shift in power, but Hun Sen does not want the EU or the US to interfere in his political plans. Nevertheless, the western countries are at the table during the ASEAN summit, which traditionally takes place in November and which Cambodia is chairing this time.
Between East and West
ASEAN is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, but several major world leaders are also invited to the annual meeting. An American, a European, but also a Chinese, and a Russian delegation is expected in Phnom Penh.
“As the Khmer proverb goes, ‘merl gee, merl aing’, the Prime Minister will have to look closely at the others and at himself, to make sure he doesn’t say anything wrong,” Chhengpor Aun summarises the situation. Hun Sen will need everyone around the table to make his economic and political plans work.
In any case, history seems to be repeating itself. Just like during the Cold War, a small country like Cambodia is suddenly right in the middle between East and West.
Protesters in Washington, DC, march against the alleged killing of Uyghur Muslims. June 2022. Credit: Unsplash/Kuzzat Altay
Opinion by Mandeep S.Tiwana (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Oct 03 (IPS) – This week is a momentous one for the world’s premier human rights body. At stake is a resolution to decide whether the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva can hold a debate on a recently released UN report.
The report concludes that rights violations by China’s government in its Xinjiang region ‘may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity’.
Unsurprisingly, China’s government is doing everything in its power to scotch plans for a debate on the report’s contents. Its tactics include intimidating smaller states, spreading disinformation and politicising genuine human rights concerns – the very thing the Human Rights Council was set up to overcome.
The historic report, which affirms that the rights of Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslim population are being violated through an industrial-level programme of mass incarceration, systemic torture and sexual violence, attracted huge controversy before it was released on 31 August 2022, minutes before the end of the term of the outgoing High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet.
The report was supposedly ready in September 2021 but so great was the pressure exerted by the Chinese state that it took almost another year for it to be aired. Absurdly, the 46-page report includes a 122 page annex in the form of a rebuttal issued by China, rejecting the findings and calling into question the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
The Office of the High Commissioner has asserted that the report is based on a rigorous review of documentary evidence with its credibility assessed in accordance with standard human rights methodology. The report’s recommendations are pretty straightforward: prompt steps should be taken to release all people arbitrarily imprisoned in Xinjiang, a full legal review of national security and counter-terrorism policies should be undertaken, and an official investigation should be carried into allegations of human rights violations in camps and detention facilities.
Nevertheless, a proposed resolution to hold a debate on the report’s contents in early 2023 is facing severe headwinds. A number of states inside and outside the Human Rights Council, united by their shared history of impunity for rampant human rights abuses – such as Cuba, Egypt, Laos, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria and Venezuela – have already rallied to China’s defence in informal negotiations on the brief resolution.
What is most worrying is that China appears to be leaning on smaller states that make up the 47-member Human Rights Council by inverting arguments about politicisation of global human rights issues and projecting itself as the victim of a Western conspiracy to undermine its sovereignty.
If China were to have its way, it would be a huge setback for the Human Rights Council, which was conceived in 2006 as a representative body of states designed to overcome the flaws of ‘declining credibility and lack of professionalism’ that marred the work of the body it replaced, the UN Commission on Human Rights.
Former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his ground-breaking In Larger Freedom report, lamented that states sought membership ‘not to strengthen human rights but to protect themselves against criticism or to criticize others’.
Human Rights Council members are expected to uphold the highest standards in the protection and promotion of human rights. But our research at CIVICUS shows that eight of the Council’s 47 members have the worst possible civic space conditions for human rights defenders and their organisations to exist. In these countries – Cameroon, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Libya, Sudan, United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan – human rights are routinely abused and anyone with the temerity to speak truth to power is relentlessly persecuted.
Regimes that serially abuse human rights may be motivated to block findings of investigations being aired on the international stage, but the international community has a collective responsibility to the victims. Civil society groups are urging Human Rights Council members to stand firm on the call for a debate on the China report.
Human Rights Council member states that assert the importance of human rights and democracy in their foreign policy are expected to vote in favour. Nevertheless, the influence of regional and geo-political blocs within the Council mean that the issue will essentially be settled by the decisions of states such as Argentina, Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Honduras, India, Indonesia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico, Paraguay, Senegal, Ukraine and Qatar.
China will undoubtedly pressure these states to try to get them to oppose or abstain in any vote that seeks to advance justice for the Uyghur people.
The stakes are particularly high for China’s mercurial leader, Xi Jinping, who is seeking to anoint himself as president for a third term – after abolishing term limits in 2018 – at the Chinese Communist Party’s Congress, which begins on 16 October.
Recognition of the systematic abuses to which Xi’s administration has subjected the Uyghur people would be considered an international affront to his growing power.
If China were to prevail at the Human Rights Council, it would be another blow to the legitimacy of the UN, which is already reeling from the UN Security Council’s inability to overcome Russia’s permanent member veto to block action on the invasion of Ukraine. So much – for the UN’s reputation, and for the hope that human rights violators, however powerful, will be held to account – is resting on the vote.
Mandeep S. Tiwana, is chief programmes officer and representative to the United Nations at global civil society alliance, CIVICUS.
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 (IPS) – When the UN’s high-level meeting of world leaders concluded last week, the head count seemed lopsided: 190 speakers, including 76 Heads of State, 50 Heads of Government, 4 Vice-Presidents, 5 Deputy Prime Ministers, 48 Ministers and 7 Heads of Delegations—overwhelmingly male.
Among the 190 speakers, there were only 23 women, “a figure that represents around 10 per cent of leaders who participated this year”, according to the UN.
The President of the General Assembly Csaba K?rösi of Hungary struck a note of political consolation when he said: “But though their numbers are small, women leaders “pack a punch”, to quote former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who moderated this year’s first General Assembly Platform of Women Leaders”.
But the reaction from rights activists and civil society organizations (CSOs) was mostly negative.
Antonia Kirkland, Global Lead on Legal Equality at Equality Now told IPS “the dismal number of women leaders speaking at UNGA this year is very worrying given the regression on women’s rights in many parts of the world, including in the United States, where the UN General Assembly meets”.
There is a well-documented correlation, she said, between peace and security generally, economic development and women’s rights, which has an impact on everyone.
“The low number of female leaders speaking at UNGA is less than half the already low number of women parliamentarians worldwide (just over 26% according to IPU).”
“And as it becomes harder and harder for civil society to access the United Nations, women’s rights organizations have less of an opportunity to hold governments accountable to their legal obligations and commitments to ensure gender equality,” Kirkland declared.
The criticisms come amid longstanding complaints of how women are marginalized in the highest levels of the UN since its creation.
The male/female ratio for the Secretary-General stands at 9 vs zero. And the Presidency of the General Assembly (PGA), the highest policy-making body at the UN, is not far behind either.
The score stands at 73 men and 4 women as PGAs– even as the General Assembly elected another male candidate, as its 77th President, and who serves his one-year term beginning September 2022.
Since 1945, the only four women elected as presidents were: Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit of India (1953), Angie Brooks of Liberia (1969), Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of Bahrain (2006) and Maria Fernando Espinosa Garces of Ecuador (2018).
Meanwhile, women Heads of State and Government met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly (UNGA) High-level Week to discuss global issues in the newly created UNGA Platform of Women Leaders.
The event, under the theme of “Transformative solutions by women leaders to today’s interlinked challenges”, highlighted the fact that women’s full and effective political participation and decision-making are crucial to addressing global priorities effectively, decisively, and inclusively, according to UN Women.
With the presence of President Katalin Novák of Hungary, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh, Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir of Iceland, Prime Minister Fiam? Naomi Mata?afa of Samoa, and Prime Minister Robinah Nabbanja of Uganda, as well as Prime Minister Evelyna Wever-Croes of Aruba and Prime Minister Silveria E. Jacobs of St. Maarten, and former Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand, the event was hosted by the Office of the President of the General Assembly and UN Women, in cooperation with the Council of Women World Leaders (CWWL).
Purnima Mane, a former Deputy Executive Director of the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and UN Assistant-Secretary-General, told IPS that in June 2022, the UNGA passed a resolution commemorating the International Day of Women in Diplomacy which acknowledged the contribution of women globally at all levels of decision making who work for the achievement of sustainable development, peace and democracy.
“And yet, we recognize that women are grossly under-represented at most levels in the UN including national delegations and senior levels of the diplomatic corps.”
While women’s political representation at senior levels is on the rise in many countries over the last few years, especially women serving as heads of State, she pointed out, it still has a long way to go with only 28 of the 193 Member states having Women heads of State of government.
This low representation of women was evident in the recent UNGA session, she said.
Of the 190 speakers, 23 were women, a figure that represents around 10 per cent of the leaders who participated this year – a number that is still “woefully low”, said Mane, a former President and CEO of Pathfinder International
It is significant, she said, that many of this small group of women leaders “pack a punch” as stated by former New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark, who moderated this year’s first General Assembly Platform of Women Leaders.
At this newly launched General Assembly Platform of Women Leaders, the female heads of State of several countries like Aruba, Bangladesh, Hungary, Iceland, St. Maarten, Samoa and Uganda, addressed the group.
“Undoubtedly this comment from Former New Zealand PM Clark gives us pause to think. It is true that some of the women leaders like those of Finland and many other Member States, have caused the world to sit up and take notice of their achievements.”
Many of the countries with female leadership are making a difference at the country level, focusing on gender equity and ensuring laws and policies which foster these.
“These countries are also doing better in terms of development goals and making a difference in their region as a whole, also inspiring women around the world to recognize their potential. Imagine what the world would be like if this number of women leaders increased significantly, to the benefit of not just their countries, but also their regions and the world,” she added.
The actions these women leaders have taken speak for themselves – they are pioneering and have yielded much-needed benefits, said Mane.
“Data are plentiful to show what a difference these women leaders are making both domestically and internationally. Yet their numbers grow far too slowly”.
“While numbers do not tell the whole story, they certainly indicate the source of the problem, and the world loses out in moving faster towards development and greater equity,” she declared.
Addressing the meeting of women leaders, Sima Bahous, Executive Director of UN Women, said: “When more women lead in political and public life, everyone benefits, especially in crises”.
A new generation of girls see a possible future for themselves. Health, education, childcare, and violence against women receive greater attention and better solutions.
“We must find every possible way to amplify the assets women leaders bring. This Platform is an opportunity to do just that.”
Recent global crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate, and conflicts, have shown the positive difference women’s leadership and decision-making can make in executive positions, parliaments, and public administration, she said.
For example, the UNDP–UN Women COVID-19 Global Gender Response Tracker shows that governments with higher women’s representation in parliaments adopted a higher number of gender-sensitive policy measures in response to COVID-19, including policies aimed directly at strengthening women’s economic security.
Out of the 193 Member States of the United Nations, only 28 women serve as elected Heads of State or Government, she pointed out.
Whilst progress has been made in many countries, the global proportion of women in other levels of political office worldwide still has far to go: 21 per cent of the world’s ministers, 26 per cent of national parliamentarians, and 34 per cent of elected seats of local government.
According to a new UN report, at the current pace of progress, equal representation in parliament will not be achieved until 2062, said Bahous.
Katrín Jakobsdóttir, Prime Minister of the Republic of Iceland and Chair of the Council of Women World Leaders, said: “It is my strong belief that the world needs more women leaders and more diverse leaders, people with all kinds of backgrounds and life experiences”.
“The decisions leaders make affect all people in our societies. These decisions should be made by people who have a real and deep understanding of how most people live, of what their concerns are, and are therefore responsive to their needs.”
Just another day in the main hall of the Qamishli campus. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
by Karlos Zurutuza (qamishli, syria)
Inter Press Service
QAMISHLI, Syria, Sep 27 (IPS) – There is a main hall as well as workshops, laboratories and, of course, a cafeteria, where the half-hour break flies by amid card games and laughs. It could well be any university if it wasn’t for those men armed with assault rifles at the entrance.
This is the campus of University of Rojava in Qamishli (700 kilometres northeast of Damascus), an institution that opened its doors in October 2016, in the midst of a war that still rages on.
“Lessons in the Kurdish language are one of our hallmarks,” Rohan Mistefa, the former dean, tells IPS from an office on the second floor. Other than the language of instruction, significant differences from other Syrian universities are also visible in the curriculum.
“We got rid of subjects such as Ideology and History of the Baath Party (in power in Damascus since 1963) and replaced it with `Democratic Culture,'” explains this Kurdish woman in her mid-forties. The creation of a Department of Science for Women (Jineoloij, in Kurdish), she adds, has been another milestone.
The University of Rojava hosts around 2,000 students on three campuses. There are, however, two other active universities in Syria’s northeast: Kobani, working since 2017, and Al- Sharq in Raqqa. The latter has been operating since last year in a city that was once the capital of the Islamic State in Syria.
“Unlike the universities of Kobani and Rojava, in Raqqa they study in Arabic because the majority of citizens there are Arabs,” says Mistefa, who is today co-responsible for coordinating between the three institutions.
Mustefa has been closely linked to the institution since its inception. She helped to found the first Kurdish university in Syria in her native district of Afrin in 2015. That pioneering initiative had to close its doors in 2018: territorially disconnected from the rest of the Kurdish Syrian territories, Afrin was taken over by Ankara-backed Islamist militias. It remains under occupation to this day.
“Many people ask us why we open schools and universities in the middle of the war. I always tell them that ours is a culture of building, and not that of destroying our neighbours and their allies”, says the Kurdish woman.
Ideologues and martyrs of the Kurdish cause are also present on the walls of the University of Rojava. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
The Kurds call “Rojava” (“west”) their native land in northeast Syria. In the wake of the so-called “Arab spring” uprisings across the Middle East and North Africa in 2011, Kurds opted for what was then known as the “third way”: neither with the government nor with the opposition.
Twelve years on, the Kurdish minority in Syria coexists with Arabs and Syriacs in the so-called Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). It’s in this corner of Syria, which shares borders with both Turkey and Iraq, where such a network of universities has been built. It now rivals the institutions of the Syrian Arab Republic government.
A “titanic task”
After the opening of the first Kurdish-language schools in the history of Syria, the University of Rojava is one more step forward in a revolution that has placed education among its main values.
It consists of nine faculties that offer free academic training in various Engineering branches, as well as Medicine, Law, Educational Sciences, Administration and Finance, Journalism and, of course, Kurdish Philology.
“I chose Philology because I love writing poems in Kurdish; I am very much into folklore, literature… everything that has to do with our culture,” Tolen Kenjo, a second-year student from the neighbouring city of Hasaka tells IPS.
The 19-year old still remembers being punished at school whenever she would utter a word in her mother tongue. For more than four decades, the ban on the Kurdish language in Syria was just another chapter within an ambitious assimilation plan that also included the displacement of the country’s Kurdish population and even the deprivation of citizenship of tens of thousands of them.
The cafeteria during the half-hour break. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
Today, the university’s walls are covered with posters: climate maps, the photosynthesis cycle, quotes from the Russian classics. For the first time in Syria, all are in the Kurdish language. The corridors get crammed with students during the breaks between classes, often amid the laughter that comes from a group of students playing volleyball in the courtyard.
In the Department of English Language and Translation, we find Jihan Ayo, a Kurdish woman who has been teaching here for more than three years. Ayo is one of the more than 200,000 displaced (UN figures) who arrived from Serekaniye in 2019, when the Kurdish district was invaded by Islamist militias under Ankara´s wing.
“Turkey’s attacks or those by cells of the Islamic State are still a common currency here,” Ayo tells IPS. When it comes to lessons, she points to a “titanic task.”
Work is still underway to translate teaching materials into Kurdish — to train not only students but also those who will become their teachers. Among other things, Ayo remembers those “very tough” 18 months during which the pandemic forced lessons to be suspended.
“We tried to cope with things online; we got help from volunteer teachers from practically all over the world, but, of course, not everyone here has the means to connect to the Internet…”
She also faces a fight to gain the trust of many local citizens, towards an educational network that has no recognition outside this corner of Syria. Although the Kurdish administration administers the region, the “official” schools -those ran by Damascus- continue to function and, of course, they stick to the pre-war curriculum.
Teaching in the middle of a war has been one of the challenges faced by the Syrian Kurds. Credit: Karlos Zurutuza/IPS
“While the quality of the education received at these universities in itself is comparable to other institutions’ in the region, the lack of recognition abroad may make it impossible for the students to continue their studies outside of Syria, find employment abroad, or even have their technical knowledge recognized by companies and institutions not tied to the AANES,” the report warns.
It also claimks that the University of Rojava maintains cooperation agreements with at least eight foreign universities, including Washington State University (U.S.), Emden/Leer University of Applied Sciences (Germany) and the University of Parma (Italy)..
It´s just a ten-minute walk from the campus to the headquarters of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), the dominant political party among Kurds in Syria. From his office, PYD co-chairman Salih Muslim wanted to highlight the role of universities as “providers of necessary cadres to build and develop the places they belong to and come from.”
“Our universities are ready to cooperate and exchange experiences with all the universities and international institutions to gain more experience and they are welcome to do so,” Muslim told IPS.
Despite the lack of international recognition, academic life goes on in this corner of Syria. Noreldin Hassan arrived from Afrin after the 2018 invasion and today is about to fulfil his dream of graduating in Journalism. The 27-year-old tells IPS that his university is “working in the right direction” to achieve international recognition. However, he has chosen not to wait for a degree to begin his career, and he has been working as a reporter for eight years already .
“Getting a diploma is important, but, at the end of the day, journalists learn by sheer practice while looking for stories and covering those,” stresses the young man.
The last story he covered? One about those women forced to marry mercenaries on a Turkish payroll. The story he´d like to cover the most? No surprises here:
“The day when the Kurds of Afrin can finally go back home.”
STOCKHOLM, Sep 21 (IPS) – As world leaders gather in New York for the opening of the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly this week, the security horizon is undoubtedly dark.
From the geopolitical shockwaves of the war in Ukraine, to military spending, nutrition and food security, to our stewardship of the planet, far too many key indicators are heading in a dangerous direction.
We can, and must, turn them around. In the words of UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his 2021 report Our Common Agenda, ‘the choices we make, or fail to make, today could result in further breakdown, or a breakthrough to a greener, better, safer future’.
Making the right choices requires political will and leadership, based on the best available knowledge. That last aspect is SIPRI’s stock in trade.
A ‘watershed moment’
The theme for the 77th General Assembly session is ‘A watershed moment: transformative solutions to interlocking challenges’.
Evidence of these interlocking challenges is everywhere: the floods in Pakistan, war and insecurity afflicting every region of the world, the erosion of arms control and stagnation in disarmament, rising hunger, the economic and political turmoil that has followed the Covid-19 pandemic, and the list goes on.
These interlocking challenges share some common features. Their consequences, and often their drivers, do not respect borders or alliances. They are characterized by uncertainty and volatility. They tend to cut across traditional policy domains.
This has a clear implication: the only realistic path towards a ‘greener, better, safer future’ on this planet lies through cooperation. Countries, societies and sectors must work together to meet global challenges, put aside tensions and political polarization, and restore their faith in institutions and the rules-based international order.
Earlier this year, Secretary-General Guterres invited me to become co-Chair of his High-Level Advisory Board on Effective Multilateralism, alongside Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former president of Liberia.
The Advisory Board’s task is to come up with concrete suggestions for how to improve cooperation at the multilateral level, how we can ensure it is fit to meet the challenges of an unpredictable future and the urgently needed transition to more sustainable, peaceful societies. To accomplish this mission, we will rely heavily on science and expertise.
Addressing the crisis of the biosphere
SIPRI’s Environment of Peace report explores the most dangerous sets of interlocking challenges we face: the complex and unpredictable ways that climate change and other environmental crises are intertwining with more human-centred aspects of security.
Besides providing policy insights, the Environment of Peace report documents the indirect pathways linking climate change impacts and insecurity, and the interactions between climate, conflict and food security, thus continuing SIPRI’s contributions to working out how UN peace operations must adapt to climate change.
The biosphere crisis can only be successfully addressed through cooperation. Countries need to share green technologies and innovative solutions.
They need to agree on fair ways to share vital natural resources and settle disputes peacefully. There must be give and take; action in one society to mitigate impacts on another.
Countries also need to agree on fair ways to distribute the burdens, costs and benefits of a green transition. From South Asia to sub-Saharan Africa to Indigenous communities around the world, those most vulnerable to the impacts of the crisis of the biosphere are often those least responsible for causing it—something illustrated starkly most recently by the devastating floods in Pakistan.
There is a clear moral case for wealthier, industrialized countries to meet their climate finance commitments and to compensate the most affected countries for loss and damage. But there is also a strong security case for doing so. Localized insecurity can quickly spread.
From national security to common security
A logical response to such threats to their shared interests would be for countries to put differences aside and pull together. Instead, they have, by and large, followed a path of division and militarization.
Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine this year, that was clear. SIPRI data shows large increases in global military expenditure in the last two years, as well as in arms imports to Europe, East Asia and Oceania.
All of the nuclear-armed states are modernizing or expanding their arsenals.
At the same time, we are also seeing rapid and radical developments in weapon systems, technologies and even ways of executing a conflict.
A new, expensive and risky arms race is well under way. There is an urgent need to breathe new life into nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation and arms control.
Disappointingly, the recent 10th Review Conference of the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) ended without agreement on the way forward. However, there were signs of hope.
The conference produced much to build on in the next five-year review cycle. Notably, all of the five NPT-recognized nuclear weapon states (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) agree on the necessity of measures to reduce strategic risks.
These will be important steps. However, what is needed most of all is a shift away from the pursuit of security through military capability to investing in peace and common security. Once again, cooperation will be key.
How evidence underpins cooperation
Successful cooperation needs to be underpinned by reliable, non-partisan information and analysis. As Secretary-General Guterres declares in Our Common Agenda: ‘Now is the time to end the “infodemic” plaguing our world by defending a common, empirically backed consensus around facts, science and knowledge.’
The Secretary-General correctly characterizes ‘facts, science and knowledge’ as a public good that it is in everyone’s interest to protect. They provide valuable common ground for discussion—even when trust between the parties is lacking.
They inform effective solutions. They make it possible to verify that others are following rules and living up to commitments. They give early warning of emerging challenges and imminent dangers.
The Environment of Peace report highlights the fact that risks and uncertainty lie not just in the external challenges we face, but also in the actions taken to address them in the transition towards sustainability.
This transition needs to happen at unprecedented scale and speed, using novel solutions in an environment of uncertainty. There will inevitably be setbacks, unintended, unanticipated consequences of well-intentioned policies.
There will also be resistance, parties who need convincing that the costs justify the benefits.
To keep the transition just and peaceful will demand communication, cooperation, trust and agility to deal with unexpected risks and change course quickly to avert them.
For this, we will need to produce and disseminate even more reliable and verified information. SIPRI will continue to be a resource in this regard.
Opportunities for change
The UN General Assembly has a highly ambitious agenda for transformative change. The landmark Summit of the Future, scheduled for September 2024, has been billed as ‘the moment to agree on concrete solutions to challenges that have emerged or grown since 2015’.
The COP27—the 27th Conference of the Parties to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change—coming in November, and the much-postponed 15th Conference of the Parties of the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity in December are other important opportunities to reduce future security risks at the multilateral level.
However important intergovernmental forums like this are, the task of tackling our interconnected challenges is continuous and society-wide. Solutions need to come at the multilateral, national and subnational levels.
And they need to engage a broad range of stakeholders, from youth to Indigenous Peoples to the private sector. Reliable information and expertise must be available to guide all of this.
I am both proud and daunted to be picking up the mantle of Chair of the SIPRI Governing Board as we confront these difficult challenges ahead.
SIPRI’s core mission as a source of freely available, reliable evidence, fair-minded analysis and balanced assessment of options, as a convenor of dialogues, and as a provider of support to the formulation and implementation of international agreements and instruments remains as important as ever.
Stefan Löfven (Sweden) is Chair of the Governing Board of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
Between 2010 and 2020 the number of state-based armed conflicts roughly doubled (to 56), as did the number of conflict deaths, finds new report. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Sep 20 (IPS) – Day after day, the world’s scientific community, based on solid investigations, elaborates dozens of studies identifying the causes of the existing emergencies facing humanity. They also prepare understandable summaries and conclusions and propose feasible solutions to the current crises and ways to prevent major future risks.
Such studies are promptly submitted to politicians, both directly and through hundreds of summits, conferences, forums and meetings.
Are they just unable to read and understand these texts?
If so, they should probably be added to the shameful finding that up to 70% of children –or nearly 250 million– are illiterate, sentenced to ignorance as revealed by numerous findings, including those of the Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises.
Unpredictable risks
Meanwhile, the world is “stumbling into a new era of unpredictable risks,” while the ongoing multiple and deepening crises have “pushed 9 out of 10 countries backwards in human development.”
Both facts unveil the failure of the world’s politicians to act for people rather than announcing decisions that end up benefiting big private businesses.
“World leaders are failing to prepare for a new era of complex and often unpredictable risks to peace as profound environmental and security crises converge and intensify,” highlights SIPRI, the independent international institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament.
Its report paints a vivid picture of the escalating security crisis. For example, it notes that between 2010 and 2020 the number of state-based armed conflicts roughly doubled (to 56), as did the number of conflict deaths.
“The number of refugees and other forcibly displaced people also doubled, to 82.4 million. In 2020 the number of operationally deployed nuclear warheads increased after years of reductions, and in 2021 military spending surpassed $2 trillion for the first time ever.”
Regarding the environmental crisis, SIPRI warns that around a quarter of all species are at risk of extinction, pollinating insects are in rapid decline and soil quality is falling, while exploitation of natural resources such as forests and fish continues at unsustainable levels.
“Climate change is making extreme weather events such as storms and heatwaves more common and more intense, reducing the yield of major food crops and increasing the risk of large-scale harvest failures.”
Uncertain times, unsettled lives
For its part, the Human Development Report warns that the world is lurching from crisis to crisis, trapped in a cycle of firefighting and unable to tackle the roots of the troubles that confront the world.
The report argues that “layers of uncertainty are stacking up and interacting to unsettle life in unprecedented ways.”
Devastating impacts
The last two years have had a devastating impact for billions of people around the world, when crises like COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine hit back-to-back, and interacted with sweeping social and economic shifts, dangerous planetary changes, and massive increases in polarisation, says UNDP.
“Without a sharp change of course, we may be heading towards even more deprivations and injustices.”
For the first time in the 32 years that UNDP has been calculating it, the Human Development Index, which measures a nation’s health, education, and standard of living, has declined globally for two years in a row.
Universal reversal of human development
“The reversal is nearly universal as over 90 percent of countries registered a decline in their Human Development Index score in either 2020 or 2021 and more than 40 percent declined in both years, signalling that the crisis is still deepening for many.”
While some countries are beginning to get back on their feet,it adds, “recovery is uneven and partial, further widening inequalities in human development.” Latin America, the Caribbean, Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia have been hit particularly hard.
Scrambling
“The world is scrambling to respond to back-to-back crises. We have seen with the cost of living and energy crises that, while it is tempting to focus on quick fixes like subsidising fossil fuels, immediate relief tactics are delaying the long-term systemic changes we must make,” says Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator.
“We are collectively paralyzed in making these changes. In a world defined by uncertainty, we need a renewed sense of global solidarity to tackle our interconnected, common challenges.”
The report explores why the change needed isn’t happening and suggests there are many reasons, including how insecurity and polarisation are feeding off each other today to prevent the solidarity and collective action to tackle crisis at all levels.
Insecurity and political extremism
New calculations show, for instance, that those feeling most insecure are also more likely to hold extreme political views, it also reveals.
“Even before COVID-19 hit, we were seeing the twin paradoxes of progress with insecurity and polarisation. Today, with one-third of people worldwide feeling stressed and fewer than a third of people worldwide trusting others, we face major roadblocks to adopting policies that work for people and the planet,” says Achim Steiner.
To chart a new course, the report recommends implementing policies that focus on investment — from renewable energy to preparedness for pandemics, and insurance—including social protection— to prepare our societies for the ups and downs of an uncertain world.
Indicators of insecurity such as the number of conflicts, the number of hungry people and military expenditure are rising; so are indicators of environmental decline, climate change, biodiversity, pollution and other areas, warns SIPRI.
“In combination, the security and environmental crises are creating compound, cascading, emergent, systemic and existential risks. Without profound changes in approach by institutions of authority, risks will inevitably proliferate quickly.”
Evidence shows that politicians are capable of reading and understanding those texts elaborated by economic, financial and markets experts.
Over one year after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million people – 59 per cent of the population in Afghanistan – are dependent on international aid and emergency relief in their day-to-day lives. Credit: UNAMA/Fraidoon Poya
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Sep 06 (IPS) – Both mainstream media, international bodies and human rights defenders continue to rightly denounce the Taliban’s inhuman abuses against the Afghan people’s basic rights, in particular those of women and girls.
In doing so, they use a similar vocabulary, saying that since the Taliban “seized the power” on 15 August 2021 everything has collapsed. Shouldn’t it be more accurate to say that the power was “knowingly” “delivered” to them by the United States of America following negotiations between the two parties under Donald Trump’s administration?
Other statements talk about how the Taliban’s regime has in just a few months erased with a stroke of a pen all the “great achievements” made over 20 years of US and allies’ massive military attacks on Afghanistan’s unarmed population.
Has all this happened in just 12 months?
How come the Taliban managed in just weeks to push Afghanistan’s economy into “free fall” as defined by the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, already in December 2021 –that’s only four months since the power was handed to them?
How come that in such a relatively short time the Taliban have hurled into hunger as many as 23 million people – around 60% of the total population?
Have they in one year pushed over 6 million Afghans away to neighbouring countries like Pakistan and Iran?
Then, how come that “Over one year after the Taliban takeover, an estimated 24.4 million people – 59 per cent of the population in Afghanistan – are dependent on international aid and emergency relief in their day-to-day lives,” as stated by the International Organization for Migration (IOM)?
“Since August 2021, nearly all Afghans have plunged into poverty and the country has been facing the risk of systemic collapse,” states IOM.
Add to this the reiterated UN disparate appeals for funding to provide “lifesaving” assistance to 21 million Afghans or 50% of the whole population.
By the way: weren’t the United States who helped, funded –and armed– the Taliban “moderate” predecessors, over the 70s and 80s, to expel the Soviet Union’s troops from Afghanistan?
Weren’t the US and allies aware that the “narco lords” in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, have also been providing money and weapons to the Taliban in exchange for protection?
Operation “Enduring Freedom”
Whatever the case is, the Afghan war narrative should also remind us of other “great achievements” made during the two-decade-long “Enduring Freedom” operation launched against this country by the then US president George W. Bush and allies.
Has this Operation Enduring Freedom really brought food, health, education, safety, democracy, stability… and freedom?
Regardless of the arguments used to “justify” them, wars are also a “good” business.
Indeed new weapons have been tested; killing-drones perfected, troops casualties lessened; fully-equipped private armies made big profits as did the giant weapons industry. And the strategic concept of “war on terror” has definitely been settled.
Another under-reported war trophy
Anyway, there seem to be other under-reported “great achievements.” One of them appears to be Afghanistan’s treasure of precious mineral resources that the technology and war business needs.
Just see this: the 2019 official report: Mining Sector Roadmap, published by Afghanistan’s Ministry of Mines and Petroleum , and introduced by the then Afghan president Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, states the following, among other facts:
– Afghanistan has “extensive” mineral resources, located in every province of the country;
– Afghanistan has world-class deposits of iron, ore, copper, gold, rare-earth minerals, and a host of other natural resources… And oil and gas;
– Other minerals include aluminium, gemstones; lead, zinc, mercury; chromite; sulphur; hydrocarbons; asbestos; marble, lapis lazuli, emeralds and rubies; …
– Afghanistan holds more than a trillion dollars worth of mineral resources;
– Afghanistan “must’‘ leverage the expertise of the “private sector“ to harness the potential of its mineral sector, the official report highlights.
This Afghan government official report was published in 2019, i.e., while the United States and allies were still ruling the country.
“If the aim of the “War on Terror” had been to rid the world of the threat of terrorism, acts like illegal assassination using drones would have been counterproductive, since they create many more terrorists than they destroy,” said Scales Avery, chairman of both the Danish National Pugwash Group and the Danish Peace Academy.
“But since the real aim is to produce a state of perpetual war, thus increasing the profits of the military-industrial complex, such methods are the best imaginable. Urinating on Afghan corpses or burning the Koran or murderous night-time raids on civilian homes also help to promote the real goal, perpetual war,” said Scales Avery.
Now back to the more than a trillion dollars worth of Afghanistan’s mineral resources –those that are much required by the giant technology and other business: would it be too naive to connect the dots?
A partial view of the city of Punto Fijo, with the Cardón refinery in the background, on the Paraguaná peninsula, projected as a special economic zone overlooking the Caribbean in northwest Venezuela. CREDIT: Megaconstrucciones
by Humberto Marquez (caracas)
Inter Press Service
CARACAS, Sep 03 (IPS) – Venezuela is preparing to replicate the experience of Special Economic Zones (SEZs), a mechanism with which more than 60 countries have tried to draw investment and accelerate economic growth, while under its avowedly socialist government a “silent neoliberalism” is gaining ground.
The aim of the SEZs is “to provide special conditions to gain the economic confidence of investors from all over the world, and productive development to put an end once and for all to oil rentism,” said President Nicolás Maduro when he promulgated the Organic Law of Special Economic Zones on Jul. 20.
The SEZs, “90 percent of which are in the global developing South, are a catalyst for economic restructuring processes and go hand in hand with the expansion of the neoliberal economy,” sociologist Emiliano Terán, a researcher with the non-governmental Venezuelan Observatory of Political Ecology, told IPS.
According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad), there were 5,383 SEZs in the world in 2019 and another 508 under construction, of which 4,772 were in developing countries – 2,543 in China alone and 737 in Southeast Asia.
In Latin America and the Caribbean there were 486 – 73 in the Dominican Republic, some 150 in Central America, seven in Mexico and 39 in Colombia.
SEZs are mainly commercial, such as free ports or free trade zones, where import quotas, tariffs, customs or sales taxes are eliminated; industrial, with an emphasis on improving infrastructure available to companies; urban or mining ventures; or export processing.
Their main characteristic is that, in order to stimulate investment, especially foreign investment, there are more flexible regulations on taxes, investment requirements, employment, paperwork and procedures, access to resources and inputs, export quotas and capital repatriation.
One of the camping areas improvised by tour operators on La Tortuga, an island with no permanent population where tourist developments are being planned that are triggering environmentalist alarms, as they may severely affect the still almost pristine ecosystem of the island and its surrounding Caribbean waters. CREDIT: Jorge Muñoz/Aleteia
An eye on the environment
In Venezuela, the first five zones decreed are the arid Paraguaná Peninsula, in the northwest; Margarita Island, in the southeastern Caribbean; La Guaira and Puerto Cabello, which are the largest ports, along the central portion of the Caribbean coast; and the remote La Tortuga Island, some 200 kilometers northeast of Caracas.
Paraguaná (an area of 3,400 square kilometers) is home to a large oil refining complex, and Margarita Island (1,020 square kilometers) has for decades been a sales tax-free zone and a tourist mecca for Venezuela’s middle class.
Puerto Cabello and La Guaira are essentially ports for imports to the populated north-central part of the country, whose main exports, oil and metals, are shipped from docks in the production areas in the east and west.
Hotel complexes, airports, marinas and golf courses are being planned for La Tortuga, which covers 156 square kilometers and has no permanent population. Environmental groups warn that its waters, reefs and the island itself are home to five species of turtles, 73 species of birds and dozens of species of fish and cetaceans.
Sociologist Emiliano Terán (R) with economists Luis Crespo (C) and Carlos Lazo (L) take part in a forum at the Central University of Venezuela critical of the announced special economic zones. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS
Limited economy
“The environmental issue is a concern, but it is hard to believe that the government has the resources or the investors for the number of hotels planned for La Tortuga,” economist Luis Oliveros, a professor at the Metropolitan and Central Universities of Venezuela, told IPS.
The decreed Venezuelan SEZs “seem more like announcements than realities, and although we like the government to think of growth and development hand in hand with private investment, much more is needed. It has yet to be clarified what exactly the government is pursuing with these zones,” Oliveros said.
In Venezuela “creating SEZs has limitations, such as the sanctions (imposed by the United States and the European Union) and the need to generate macroeconomic stability and legal certainty, which are pending issues,” he added.
After seven years of sharp decline – and three years of hyperinflation – Venezuela’s annual gross domestic product, which exceeded 300 billion dollars a decade ago, now stands between 50 and 60 billion dollars, according to economists.
Oil production, the main lever of the economy and source of tax revenues, has shrunk and is starved of new investments, while the State desperately seeks income by exporting crude oil at a discount or selling gold that is extracted at the cost of great environmental damage in the southeast of the country.
Attracting investment may be an uphill struggle for SEZs that have still not been fully mapped out, considering that, for example, major companies have not knocked on the door to raise oil production – 600,000 barrels per day when a decade ago it was three million – despite the favorable signals sent by the United States.
Since March, informal contacts between Washington and Caracas, prompted by the impact of the war in Ukraine on the world energy market, have explored, without success so far, easing sanctions and other measures to bring Venezuela back to the U.S. oil market with new investments.
Juan Griego Bay in the north of Margarita Island, already half a century old as a sales tax-free zone and tourist mecca for Venezuela’s middle class, is now one of the country’s five special economic zones. CREDIT: Mipci
Neoliberal plan
In the southeast of the country, an area rich in gold, iron, diamonds, coltan and other minerals, the 112,000 square kilometer Orinoco Mining Arc (larger than Bulgaria, Cuba or Portugal) was decreed in 2016 as a “strategic development zone”, and its control and management was handed over to the armed forces.
The Mining Arc “has been a precedent for a new model promoted by the State to attract investments, but with depredation of the environment and restriction of wages and workers’ rights,” warned Luis Crespo, professor of Economics at the Central University of Venezuela, during a forum at that university.
“The special economic zones are part of a silent neoliberal adjustment plan driven forward by the government of President Maduro,” said Crespo.
The Venezuelan SEZ law – enacted by the legislature, which has been boycotted by most of the political opposition – states that its purpose is to develop a new production model, promote domestic and foreign economic activity, and diversify and increase exports.
It also aims to promote innovation, industry and technology transfer, create jobs and “ensure the environmental sustainability of production processes.”
The terminology about socialism or transition to socialism, frequent in the political discourse of the government and the ruling United Socialist Party, is absent from the legislation of the SEZs and from the repeated calls for private capital.
“The example of China is being followed, as it is by other countries, in using the SEZs as a showcase for heterodox forms of capital accumulation, in a process of progressive neoliberalization of the economy, as the oil model of production and distribution of wealth is being exhausted,” Terán said.
He added that “the SEZs cannot be seen only in terms of macroeconomic indicators,” as they become “zones of social and environmental sacrifice, with a new political geography of dispossession, and with the cheapening of labor, especially that of women workers.”
According to UNCTAD, although there are differences in SEZs from one country to another and within countries, their common features include having a clearly defined geographic area, a regulatory regime that is distinct from the rest of the economy, and special infrastructure support for the development of their activities.
A view of the border crossing between Colombia and Venezuela over the Simón Bolívar Bridge (in southwest Venezuela and northeast Colombia), when there was free transit and intense activity before the border was closed and relations between the two countries broke down. Now Caracas proposes to create a binational special economic zone in the area. CREDIT: Humberto Márquez/IPS
More politics
Venezuela’s SEZs will be guided by a council to be freely appointed by the president, each will have a single authority to be named by the president, and the decree establishing one of the zones must be considered by the legislature within 10 working days or it will be approved, without discussion.
Areas such as the SEZs, the Mining Arc or special military zones in practice modify the political-administrative division of the country, which only in theory is a federal republic with 23 states plus a capital district.
In another political move, on Aug. 23 Maduro publicly proposed to his new Colombian counterpart, leftwing President Gustavo Petro, who took office on Aug. 7, the creation of a special binational economic zone between southwestern Venezuela and northeastern Colombia.
“We are going to propose to President Petro the construction of a large economic, commercial and productive zone between the department of Norte de Santander (Colombia) and the state of Táchira (Venezuela),” Maduro said.
Diplomatic, political, commercial and transit relations between the neighboring countries have been severed since February 2019.
In Táchira, business spokespersons have expressed their support for this Andean state of 11,000 square kilometers to obtain special regimes that favor trade with the neighboring country, and their peers in Colombia are betting on a recovery of bilateral trade, which prospered until the first decade of this century.
Terán described the projected creation of the SEZs as a possible “new pact of elites in Venezuela,” after more than 20 years of acute political confrontation, but warned that “there is an alternative, because although fragmented, dispersed and with a new look, protests against these pacts have never ceased.”
ROME, Sep 01 (IPS) – With the death of Mikhail Gorbachev, the last great statesman, and an entire epoch, disappears.
I had the privilege of working with him, as deputy director of the World Political Forum, which Gorbi had founded in Turin in 2003, with a headquarters agreement with the Piedmont Region. The Forum brought together personalities from all over the world to discuss what was happening.
The greatest international protagonists, from Kohl to Mitterrand, from Jaruzelski to Oscar Arias, would discuss frankly their role and their mistakes. I will always remember an FPM in 2007, in which Gorbachev reminded those present that he had agreed in a meeting with Kohl, to withdraw support for the East German regime, in return for an assurance that NATO borders would not be moved beyond reunified Germany.
And Kohl replied, pointing to Andreotti who was present, that some were not so enthusiastic about a return to creating Europe’s greatest power, a position shared by Thatcher. Andreotti had said: ‘I love Germany so much that I prefer to have two‘. And the American delegation acknowledged this commitment, but complained that Secretary of State Baker had been overwhelmed by the hawks, who wanted to continue to enlarge NATO and squeeze Russia in a straitjacket.
Gorbi’s comment was lapidary: ‘instead of cooperating with a Russia that wanted to continue on a northern-style socialist path, you hastened to bring it down, and had Yeltsin first, who was conditionally yours‘.
But from Yeltsin was born Putin, who began to see things in a completely different way.
Gorbachev had cooperated with Reagan to eliminate the Cold War. It is amusing to see American historiography attributing the historic victory over communism and the end of the Cold War to Reagan. But without Gorbachev, the powerful but dull Soviet bureaucracy would have continued to resist, and would certainly have lost power. But the Berlin Wall would not have fallen, and the wave of freedom in socialist Europe would surely have come after Reagan’s term.
How much Gorbachev was intent, even more than Reagan, on advancing on the path of peace and disarmament, became clear after the 1986 meeting in Reykjavík. Gorbachev proposed to Reagan the total elimination of atomic weaponry. Reagan said that, because of the time difference, he would consult Washington later. When the two met the next morning,
Roberto Savio
Reagan told him that the US proposed the elimination of 40 per cent of the nuclear warheads. And Gorbachev replied to him: ‘if you can do no more, let’s start like this. But I remind you that we can now destroy the planet and humanity hundreds of times over’. Time would prove that disarming nuclear Russia was certainly in the American interest if Defence Secretary Weinberg, who went so far as to threaten resignation, had been able to look far ahead.
Yeltsin did everything he could to humiliate Gorbachev, to replace him. He stripped him of every pension, every perk: bodyguard, state car, and made him vacate the Kremlin in a matter of hours. But with Putin he became practically an enemy of the people. The propaganda against him was crude, but effective.
Gorbachev had presided over the end of the Soviet Union ‘the great tragedy’, and had believed the West. Now the USSR was encircled by NATO, and Putin saw himself obliged, in the name of history, to recover at least part of the great power that Gorbachev had squandered.
Those who had stood by Gorbachev since Yeltsin’s arrival saw how the elder statesman, who had changed the course of history, suffered deeply to see the course it was taking. Of course, the press preferred to ignore the deep corruption of the Yeltsin era, which cost the Russian people terrible sacrifices. Under Yeltsin, a team of American economists issued decrees privatising the entire Russian economy, with an immediate collapse in the value of the rouble and social services.
The average life expectancy fell back ten years in one fell swoop. I had a great impression to discover that my breakfast in the morning in the hotel cost as much as an average monthly pension. It was deeply saddening to see so many old ladies dressed in black selling their few poor belongings on the street.
At the same time, a few party officials, friends of Yeltsin, were buying up at bargain prices the large state enterprises put up for sale.
But how did they do it, in a society where there were no rich people? Giulietto Chiesa documented this in an investigation in Turin’s ‘La Stampa’.
Under American pressure, the International Monetary Fund granted an emergency loan of five billion dollars (in 1990) to stabilise the dollar. These dollars never reached the Russian Central Bank, nor did the IMF raise any questions. They were distributed among the future oligarchs, who suddenly found themselves fabulously millionaires. When Yeltsin had to leave power, he sought a successor who would guarantee him and his cronies impunity. One of his advisers introduced him to Putin, saying that he could tame the uprising in Chechnya.
And Putin agreed on one condition: that the oligarchs would never get involved in politics. One of them. Khdorkowski, did not respect the pact, and opened a front in opposition to Yeltsin. We know his fate: stripped of all property, and imprisoned. It was the only appearance of an oligarch in politics.
Gorbachev is the last statesman. With the arrival of the League in Turin, the agreement to host the World Political Forum was, to his amazement, cancelled. The Forum moved to Luxembourg and then the Italians in Rome Foundation took over some of its activities (very presciently) on environmental issues. Gorbachev’s right-hand man, Andrei Gracev, Gorbi’s spokesman in the PCUS and in the transition to democracy, a brilliant analyst, moved to Paris, where he is the point of reference for debates on Russia.
Gorbi, suffering from diabetes, experienced the war in Ukraine as a personal drama: his mother was Ukrainian. He retreated to a hospital under close supervision where he finally died. The era of statesmen is over, also the era of debates by great protagonists of history.
After Gorbachev, politicians lost the dimension of statesmen. They have gradually fallen back to the demands of electoral success, to short-time politics, to the shelving of debates of ideas, and instead turn not to reason, but to the voters’ instincts. Instincts to be aroused and conquered, even by a relentless campaign of fake news.
A school that Trump has managed to export to the world, from the constitutional vote in Chile on 4 September, to Bolsonaro, to Marcos, to Putin and, consequently, to Zelenski. And I find myself writing my bitterness, my discouragement, not only for the death of one of my mentors (as Aldo Moro was) but for an era that now seems definitively over: that of Politics with a capital P, capable of shaking up the world it encountered, with great risks and with the great goals of Peace and International Cooperation.
And to write uncomfortable truths, known by few, that will be immediately buried by hostile interventions and ridicule. Andrei was right when he said to me a short while ago on the phone: “Roberto, my mistake and yours is to have survived our era. Let us also be careful, because we will end up being a nuisance…“
Publisher of OtherNews, Italian-Argentine Roberto Savio is an economist, journalist, communication expert, political commentator, activist for social and climate justice and advocate of an anti-neoliberal global governance. He is co-founder of Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency and its President Emeritus.
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 29 (IPS) – When UN diplomats are charged with civil or criminal offenses – from traffic violations to sexual abuse — they avoid prosecution and civil law suits under cover of diplomatic immunity.
It’s a privilege exercised by diplomats worldwide—including US diplomats in overseas postings.
In the 1970s and 80s, there were diplomats from several financially-ailing member states, who were cut-off from their cash-starved home countries, and unable to pay their rents and phone and electricity bills—plus their UN membership dues.
The landlords who had bitter experiences fighting tenants over unpaid rents and damages to their apartments avoided diplomats as tenants because they were protected by diplomatic immunity and couldn’t be dragged into Small Claims Court.
So, at least in one New York City apartment building, the landlord had a sign which read: “Dogs and Diplomats Not Welcome.”
But last week it was a more serious offense—by an envoy from South Sudan, accredited to the UN, who was accused of rape, an allegation made by a neighbor in a Manhattan apartment building.
But he claimed diplomatic immunity to avoid prosecution by New York City police.
The immunity can be waived only by the country which accredited the diplomat to the UN—or in the alternative, the US could declare the diplomat persona non grata (PNG).
In international diplomacy, PNG is a status applied by a host country to foreign diplomats to remove their protection of diplomatic immunity from arrest and prosecution.
But South Sudan went one better: it recalled its ambassador.
A letter, dated August 25, from South Sudan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, says “It is with regret that our diplomat was involved in an alleged rape incident with one of New York City residents”.
“The leadership of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation took the decision to immediately recall the diplomat in question, pending a full investigation from a specialised committee. The. The diplomat in question is now back in South Sudan and has been suspended from his duties, awaiting the outcome of this investigation.”
The letter also says the Ministry of Foreign Affairs “would like to take this opportunity to reiterate the government of South Sudan’s, and indeed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ position that sexual misconduct in any shape or form is heinous end wholly unacceptable.”
“As a government, we have worked tirelessly since our inception to ensure that the rights of women and girls are protected. The Ministry of Public Service has worked with civil servants across the country to carry out sensitivity trainings”.
Beyond ratifying regional and international instruments for the protection of women and girls, the letter says, “we have also worked to receive direction from our gender and youth cluster to practically implement these instruments across the country. because it is our belief that living a life devoid of gender-based violence and indeed the threat of it, is a right for all.”
“The mandate of our foreign missions is two-fold. To both protect the interests of South Sudanese citizens abroad and to promote strong bilateral relations with our host countries. It is regretful that in this alleged instance, the latter has been jeopardized. We are committed to working closely with the relevant US authorities to take appropriate action, following the outcome of all investigations,“ says the letter, in an attempt at damage control.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and indeed the extended government of South Sudan stands with victims of pf sexual assault everywhere and is committed to continuing to safeguard all those at risk of sexual violence”, the letter adds.
Antonia Kirkland, Global Lead, Legal Equality and Access to Justice at Equality Now, told IPS: “We welcome South Sudan’s acknowledgment of the seriousness of these rape allegations against one if its UN diplomats”.
The status of an individual — regardless of whether they are a diplomat, a head of state, royalty, or a UN employee — should not be an excuse for impunity or misused to shield someone from facing justice if they have committed an act of sexual violence or other serious crime, she pointed out.
“In cases involving sexual violence, diplomatic immunity should not be invoked and allegations must be effectively investigated and prosecuted, and convicted perpetrators punished. It is also vital that victims are fully supported and receive the justice they deserve and to which they are entitled”.
“Consistent with its stated internal commitment to survivors of criminal sexual harassment by its own employees and intention to waive immunity in such cases, we hope the UN is encouraging South Sudan to cooperate closely with the US and authorities in New York to ensure the case is fully investigated,” said Kirkland.
If the findings indicate that the rape allegations are credible, South Sudan should uphold the rule of law and ensure the case goes to court, and if he is found guilty, ensure he is punished accordingly, she declared.
Asked about the accusations, UN Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters August 23: “We’re aware of this. We’ve seen the press reports. I think this is an issue having to do, as you said, — I think there had been some early misreporting on it — not with anyone who is working for the United Nations but a member of the diplomatic corps.”
“I think any alleged rape or sexual assault needs to be fully investigated. This is a particular issue between the Member State and the US Government, but we’ll keep an eye on it’, he added.
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