Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world, says UN chief.
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Mar 13 (IPS) – Islamophobia is a ‘fear, prejudice and hatred of Muslims that leads to provocation, hostility and intolerance by means of threatening, harassment, abuse, incitement and intimidation of Muslims and non-Muslims, both in the online and offline world.’
Consequently, suspicion, discrimination and ‘outright hatred’ towards Muslims have risen to “epidemic proportions.”
In fact, a recent report launched ahead of the International Day to Combat Islamophobia (15 March), warns that, motivated by institutional, ideological, political and religious hostility that transcends into structural and cultural racism, it targets the symbols and markers of being a Muslim.
This definition emphasises the link between institutional levels of Islamophobia and manifestations of such attitudes, triggered by the visibility of the victim’s perceived Muslim identity.
A threat to Western values?
This approach also interprets Islamophobia as a form of racism, whereby Islamic religion, tradition and culture are seen as a “threat” to “Western values.”
“Following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and other horrific acts of terrorism purportedly carried out in the name of Islam, institutional suspicion of Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim has escalated to epidemic proportions.”
Widespread negative representations of Islam
At the same time, “widespread negative representations of Islam, and harmful stereotypes that depict Muslims and their beliefs and culture as a threat have served to perpetuate, validate and normalise discrimination, hostility and violence towards Muslim individuals and communities.”
In addition, in States where they are in the minority, “Muslims often experience discrimination in accessing goods and services, in finding employment and in education.”
In some States they are denied citizenship or legal immigration status due to xenophobic perceptions that Muslims represent national security and terrorism threats. Muslim women are disproportionately targeted in Islamophobic hate crimes, adds the United Nations.
Islamophobic ‘hate crimes’
Studies show that the number of Islamophobic hate crimes frequently increases following events beyond the control of most Muslims, including terrorist attacks and anniversaries of such attacks.
“These trigger events illustrate how Islamophobia may attribute collective responsibility to all Muslims for the actions of a very select few, or feed upon inflammatory rhetoric.”
The UN says that many Governments have taken steps to combat Islamophobia by establishing anti-hate-crime legislation and measures to prevent and prosecute hate crimes and by conducting public awareness campaigns about Muslims and Islam designed to dispel negative myths and misconceptions.
A resolution…
The United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution sponsored by 60 Member-States of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), which designated 15 March as the International Day to Combat Islamophobia.
The resolution stresses that “terrorism and violent extremism cannot and should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization, or ethnic group.”
It calls for a global dialogue on the promotion of a culture of tolerance and peace, based on respect for human rights and for the diversity of religions and beliefs.
Marking the first International Day to Combat Islamophobia in 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out that “anti-Muslim bigotry is part of a larger trend of a resurgence in ethno-nationalism, neo-Nazism, stigma and hate speech targeting vulnerable populations including Muslims, Jews, some minority Christian communities, as well as others.”
The Strategy clearly states that hate speech incites violence and intolerance.
The devastating effect of hatred, it adds, is sadly nothing new. However, its scale and impact are now amplified by new communications technologies.
“Hate speech – including online – has become one of the most common ways of spreading divisive rhetoric on a global scale, threatening peace around the world.”
The numbers
With an estimated total of some 1.8 billion followers worldwide, Islam is the second most spread belief after Christianism (2.2 billion).
In fact, Arab countries are home to just slightly more than 1 in 4 Muslims worldwide, while Asia –in particular South and Southeast Asia– accounts for more than 60% of the world’s Muslims.
The largest Muslim population in a single country lives in Indonesia, which is home to 13% of all the world’s Muslims. Pakistan (with 12%) is the second largest Muslim-majority nation, followed by India (11%), and Bangladesh (10%).
Also the Arabs
In spite of the above, there is still a widespread perception mixing Muslims with Arabs, which extends the anti-Muslim hatred wave to all Arab or Arab-majority societies.
Whatever the case is, recent history shows that several Muslim countries have fallen victims to wars, and military occupation (Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen), while others are scenarios to stark instabilities (Libya, Tunisia, Sudan, just to mention some).
The evidence is that racism, “xenophobia and related discrimination and intolerance exist in all societies, everywhere. Racism harms not just the lives of those who endure it, but also society as a whole,” stated the UN chief.
“We all lose in a society characterised by discrimination, division, distrust, intolerance, and hate. The fight against racism is everyone’s fight…”
STOCKHOLM, Sweden, Mar 06 (IPS) – Putin’s regime recently suspended Russia’s participation in a nuclear arms agreement with Washington. After the decision Putin declared that the move was a retaliation for the US’s, France’s and Britain’s “targeting” of Russia with nuclear weapons. He was forced to take action to “preserve our country, ensure security and strategic stability”:
“the West lied about peace, but was preparing for aggression, and today it admits it openly, no longer embarrassed. And they cynically use Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia.”
Such rhetoric finds fertile ground in Latin America and Africa, which suffer from a long tradition of Western exploitation carried out under the false flag of peace keeping, democratization and progress. On 26 February, Putin added that a:
“new world is taking shape, being built only on the interests of just one country, the United States. I do not even know if such an ethnic group as the Russian people will be able to survive in the form in which it exists today.”
The statement is part of a recurrent discourse suggesting that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is an act of self-defence, an answer to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization/NATO’s expansion. In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia were added to NATO; in 2009 they were followed by Albania and Croatia, in 2017 by Montenegro and in 2020 by North Macedonia.
In 2014, after Ukraine’s corrupt president Viktor Yanukovych had been ousted, pro-Russian unrest erupted in eastern and southern parts of the country. Unmarked Russian tanks and troops moved into Crimea, taking over government buildings, strategic sites and infrastructure. Meanwhile, armed pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings in the Donbas region.
In 2014 the Donbas was the industrial heartland of Ukraine with 35 per cent of the country’s mining, 22 per cent of its manufacturing industry, providing 20 per cent of energy supply and 18 per cent of water supply. Recently vast amounts of natural gas have been detected underground.
The separatists received considerable support from Russia and Ukrainian attempts to retake separatist-held areas were unsuccessful. In October 2014, Ukraine’s new government made joining NATO a priority. Putin at once declared that the Russian involvement in Crimea and Donbas was a reaction to NATO’s threatening expansion.
Part of Putin’s discourse, repeated by influencers all over the world, is that during a summit in 1990 when Mikhail Gorbachov accepted the reunification of Germany within the framework of NATO, he was given an assurance that NATO would not expand further. The Historian Mary Elise Sarotte has recently tried to disentangle the thorny issue, underlining that no written document of the promise exists. Gorbachov later declared that:
“the topic of NATO-expansion was not discussed at all, and it wasn’t brought up in those years. was that NATO’s military structures would not advance in the sense that additional armed forces would not be deployed on the territory of the then-GDR, after German reunification. Everything that could have been and needed to be done to solidify that political obligation was done. And fulfilled.”
During a 2007 Munich Security Conference, Putin declared himself to be a stout defender of democracy, nuclear disarmament and international solidarity. Contrary to the US, which had “promised” that NATO was not going to expand beyond the borders of Germany. Putin stated that:
“unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. a situation in which countries that forbid the death penalty even for murderers and other, dangerous criminals are airily participating in military operations that are difficult to consider legitimate. And as a matter of fact, these conflicts are killing people – hundreds and thousands of civilians! As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.” I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: Against whom is this expansion intended?
The answer is beyond doubt. However, as a proverb states “Evil cannot with evil be defended.” Can Russia’s brutal attack on Ukraine actually be defended by alluding to the encroachment and support to brutal dictatorships that “democracies” like the US, France and Britain have been guilty of around the globe?
Putin repeatedly refers to “history”. He labels Ukrainian leaders as Nazis, while stating that Ukraine has always been part of Russia. Glaring exaggerations – if not outright lies.
History tells us that Russia’s past, like that of other nations, has its hidden skeletons. In 1939, the Soviet Union annexed more than 50 per cent of Polish territory. From 1939 to 1941 about one million Polish citizens were arrested, or deported; including approximately 200,000 Polish military personnel held as prisoners of war; 100,000 Polish citizens were arrested and imprisoned of whom approximately 30,000 were executed. The total loss of lives was 150 000.
On 30 November 1939 the Soviet army attacked Finland. The war ended after three months. The Soviets suffered severe losses and made little headway. To avoid more bloodshed Finland ceded 9 per cent of its territory. In spite of superior air force and heavy tanks the Soviet losses had been considerable – 168 000 dead or missing. The Finns lost 26 000 dead or missing.
In the previously independent Baltic States the Soviets had during 1940-41 carried out mass deportations. They became even more extensive after Soviet Union finally conquered the area. In March 1949, Soviet authorities organised a mass deportation of 90,000 Baltic nationals. The total number deported from 1944 to 1955 is estimated at over half a million: 124,000 from Estonia, 136,000 from Latvia, and 245,000 from Lithuania. The estimated death toll among Lithuanian deportees had between1945 and 1958 been more than 20,000, including 5,000 children.
When the Soviet Union fell apart and archives were declassified it was revealed that, between 1921 and 1953, 799,455 executions had been officially recorded. Approximately 1.7 million prisoners had died in Gulag camps, some 390,000 were reported dead during forced resettlements in the 1930s, and during the 1940s at least 400,000 persons died during deportations.
After World War II, the Soviet Union subdued several nations in Eastern Europe, introducing a political system aspiring to gain total control of all citizens and backed by an extensive, repressive apparatus.
Opposition was initially essentially liquidated, while steps towards an authoritative communism were enforced. The General Secretary of a nation’s Central Committee became the most powerful figure, while a Politburo held sway over a party machine lacking a popular foundation, since it in accordance to Leninist ideology favoured a group of three to fourteen per cent of a country’s population. Members of this exclusive group enjoyed considerable rewards, like access to shops with a selection of high-quality foreign goods, as well as special schools, holiday facilities, well-equipped housing, pensions, permission to travel abroad, and official cars with distinct license plates.
Suppression of opposition was a prerequisite for retaining power. Citizens were kept under surveillance by political police with raw power and violent persecution of dissidents. In East Germany were Stasi, Volkpolizei, and KdA, in Soviet Union the KGB, in Czechoslovakia STB and LM, in Bulgaria KDS, in Hungary AVH and Munkásörség, in Romania Securitate and GP, in Poland Ministerstwo Bezpiecze?stwa Publicznego, S?u?ba, and ZOMO. Nevertheless, people occasionally revolted.
During one day in 1953 an uprising took place in Berlin. It was violently suppressed by tanks and soldiers of the Soviet German forces. More than 150 persons were killed, or missing.
In 1956, a two day protest in Polish Poznan resulted in more than 100 deaths. About 400 tanks and 10,000 soldiers under the command of the Polish-Soviet general Popalavsky suppressed the demonstration. Among the dead was a 13-year-old boy, Romek Strzalakowski, eventually hailed as a patriotic martyr.
During two weeks in November 1956, USSR troops killed 2,500 revolting Hungarians, while 200,000 sought political refuge abroad. Some 26,000 Hungarians were put on trial by the Soviet-installed János Kádár government, of those 13,000 were imprisoned.
During the night between 20 and 21 August 1968, a period of political liberalization in Czechoslovakia came to an abrupt end when Eastern Bloc armies under Soviet command invaded Prague. The invasion comported with the Brezhnev Doctrine, compelling Eastern Bloc states to subordinate national interests to a Soviet right to intervene. A wave of emigration followed, with a total eventually reaching 300,000.
The pattern of Soviet invasions of neighbouring states has continued, for example in Georgia and Moldova. In 1991 Tjetjenia declared itself independent and in 1994, 40 000 Russian soldiers invaded the recently proclaimed Tjetjenien Republic. After a year of harsh fighting the capital Grozny was conquered, but another war erupted in 1999. The rebels were vanquished after an effective but exceedingly brutal war. Tjetjenia is now governed by a Moscow-allied clan leader.
Estimated losses of the two wars are 14 000 Russian and 16 000 Tjetjenien soldiers killed, while at least 25,000 civilians were killed and 5,000 disappeared.
One month before the Russian attack on Ukraine, Kazakhstan plunged into political unrest. At the request of President Tokayev, Russian forces headed an intergovernmental Eurasian military alliance, CSTO, which invaded the country. After “pacifying” the protests, CSTO forces evacuated the country after a month.
Considering this history, paired with the Russian destruction of Syrian and Ukrainian towns, it is somewhat difficult to consider Russia as threatened by NATO’s expansion. It is actually not so strange that Russia is feared by its neighbours and that Finland and Sweden are seeking membership in NATO.
The Swedish government is currently supporting an expansion and restoration of Sweden’s once comprehensive, but now neglected network of nuclear shelters, introducing obligatory conscription of youngsters fit for military service, and strengthening the defence of Gotland, a strategically important island located in the middle of the Baltic Sea.
After World War II, the Soviet Union usurped an enclave which actually ought to have belonged to either Poland or Lithuania – Kaliningrad, situated by the Baltic coast and equipped it with the highest density of military installations in Europe. It became headquarter of the large Russian Baltic fleet. In Kaliningrad, Russia has recently built up a formidable military presence encompassing nuclear weapons and tens of thousands of soldiers.
Not being a supporter of policies and actions United States has exercised in Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, cannot overshadow the fear that most Europeans nurture while facing the powerful giant of the East, which, admittedly, does not have an impressive record when it comes to protecting human rights.
Some sources: Putin, Vladimir (2007) Speech delivered at the MSChttp://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/copy/24034 Sarotte, Mary Elise (2022) Not One Inch: America, Russia and the Making of Post-Cold War Stalemate. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Pucci, Molly (2020) Security Empire: The Secret Police in Communist Eastern Europe. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Opinion by Noura Hamladji, Samuel Rizk (united nations)
Inter Press Service
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 03 (IPS) – There is no better environment for the expansion of violent extremist groups than a vacuum in state authority. It provides ideal conditions for these groups to prey on existing and historical grievances, fill the void with promises of financial support, access to services and attention for marginalized, neglected communities.
But, at what cost?
In sub-Saharan Africa, we are witnessing the toll. In the past decade, violence linked to the influence of global violent extremist groups like Al Qaeda and Daesh has spread swiftly across the region. In 2022, new global epicentres of terrorism were found in sub-Saharan Africa.
With thousands killed and millions displaced, this violence threatens the stability of the entire region and hinders development gains on the continent.
To better understand how violent extremist groups proliferate, and how they impact development and social cohesion, UNDP commissioned unique research to find out what gives violent extremists a foothold in particular contexts.
We looked at the Sahel, the Lake Chad Basin, DR Congo, Somalia and Northern Mozambique. What we found is that while every country – and district – has its own story, there are clear common denominators that help design relevant, coherent responses.
This new study, Dynamics of Violent Extremism in Africa: Conflict Ecosystems, Political Ecology, and the Spread of the Proto-State complements the research we have done into how and why individuals join violent extremist groups in the Journey to Extremism series.
Filling the void
As they expand in size and resources, buttressed by a link to a global ideological orientation, some violent extremist groups organize in ways akin to local government structures. They begin to compete with the state not only by monopolizing the threat/use of violence – in this case, instilling terror – but also by promising some of the most essential local services that people are aspiring to, such as a relative sense of security, sources of income and swift adjudication of disputes.
They may do so cruelly and oppressively, but even that may initially be attractive to communities weary of years of lawlessness, corruption and chaos. Indeed, the more deeply structured local violent extremist groups have evolved from raiding bands and now show many of the characteristics of a “proto-state”, typified by Daesh in Syria.
As the study findings suggest, the modus operandi of these local violent extremist groups is not centred mainly around persuading people to adopt their ideology. Instead – and often coming from the locality itself – they are grievance entrepreneurs, exploiting local development deficits, and forging alliances of convenience with other violent groups and criminal networks, like smugglers or local militias.
Even so, this does not make them one-dimensional opportunists. Their link to global networks helps to give them direction, binds them together and adds to their appeal. They are both global and local, both ideological and economic alternatives that can be appealing to people living in perceived or de facto state vacuum.
One common finding in this study is that violent extremist groups rarely appear in places well served by stable, predictable governments and governance systems. Instead, they operate where there is already poverty and instability, away from capital cities, in marginalized places where public services are thin or non-existent – all of which are often the product of local power-brokers’ interests.
The lack of trust between communities in these remote and crisis-hit areas and their government is also a common factor highlighted in the research. All too often communities suffer acute insecurity, feeling let down, targeted, and abused by the very state that should be protecting them. Violent extremist groups then plug in to fear or anger among communities and local leaders.
The first step to addressing this growing trend is to understand the political economy of violent extremist groups, and the sources of their power, with a view to halt and reverse their stranglehold on society.
The next step requires collaboration by the international community, supporting national partners not only to address the visible manifestations of the problem, but also to reverse years or decades of state fragility, exclusion and insecurity that emboldened these groups over time.
To this end, UNDP’s work on sub-national and local governance and institutions is critical – resilient, responsive, accountable, transparent, linked to national-level reforms that will have the biggest impact on violent extremist groups’ “business models.”
UNDP also works to empower local communities and local leaders towards positive and inclusive governance and improving access to basic services in under-served areas. This is the way to avoid recreating the same conditions that enabled the governance void to exist in first instance.
Gaining a foothold
It is clear that many of the conflicts which give these groups a foothold are over land and water. Desertification, climate change and poor land management have made traditional ways of life difficult in many places where land has degraded and pastures no longer support herds, nor do farms support crops.
But this need not be irreversible. With careful attention to local power politics, social relationships and trust-building, we can help communities to regenerate land and revive livelihoods – and to capture carbon in the soil in the process, offering local solutions to global problems and giving communities agency in shaping their present and future.
We call it “political ecology”, and with this approach we can simultaneously improve lives and undercut the appeal of violent extremist groups.
Also crucial to this approach is understanding how illicit funds flow around an economy, both inside a country and across borders; how power-brokers depend on and manipulate instability and corruption for greater influence; and which actors have a real interest in reform. This knowledge can help identify and interdict income sources of violent extremist groups while sustainably rebuilding local economies.
A human-centred approach
While there is a common thread of misogyny in the narrative and behaviour of violent extremist groups, women’s roles are not homogenous or predestined to victimhood. On one hand, Boko Haram has used women as suicide bombers and al Shabaab as intelligence sources, but on the other hand women form the backbone of many peacebuilding and victim support efforts, and are the engine of cross-border trade in many areas.
This very diversity makes it more important to ensure that both women and men are fully involved in our efforts, from analysis to implementation to evaluation. In the end, where does the study address our collective approach to human security, to people-centred development, justice and peace?
These conflicts, and all the horrors committed by these groups, leave deep scars, and the trauma is long-lasting. Even in contexts that are not impacted by war, political conflict or pervasive violent extremism, we are starting to understand the cost of recent lockdowns and isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, in mental health and alienation.
In conflict zones, the depth of trauma needs much more research, but we know it is severe. And people cope with it in ways that can lead to further violence, at a personal, family and community level. Sadly, that often helps to perpetuate cycles of conflict.
So, if we are to address these historical, multigenerational grievances which violent extremists can prey on, while working to heal their ongoing grief, we need to expand our capacity to provide the mental health and psycho-social support that individuals and communities need.
And if we can do so, we can demonstrate in action the positive alternatives to hatred and violence that these groups peddle.
Development first
A new approach is needed – one that first invests in understanding and complex ways in which these violent extremist groups win hearts and minds in different communities, acting as alternatives to state authority.
With this knowledge, we can work together with national and local governments to ensure a developmental, preventive, inclusive approach where people have access to the rights, goods and services they need to live prosperous lives, thus removing the power that these groups wield. Rather than helping people to get by; getting ahead, with hope and dignity, should be the goal.
Through this approach, we can improve the lives of citizens and communities across the region and turn back the tide of violence and despair. The challenge remains complex and urgent, and our collective responses must overcome by being more informed, adaptive, innovative and inclusive to promote and sustain development and peace.
Noura Hamladji is Deputy Regional Director, Regional Bureau for Africa; Samuel Rizk is Head of Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Responsive Institutions, UNDP
Note: The research study was prepared in a process co-led by the UNDP Regional Bureau for Africa (RBA) and the Crisis Bureau (CB) Conflict Prevention, Peacebuilding and Responsive Institutions (CPPRI)/Prevention of Violent Extremism (PVE) Team. The study paper was developed by lead researcher Peter Rundell and supporting researchers Olivia Lazard and Emad Badi, under the editorial direction of Noura Hamladji and Samuel Rizk, and coordination by Nika Saeedi and Nirina Kiplagat.
Israel’s separation barrier as seen from Al Ram.. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D’Amours/IPS
Opinion by Joseph Chamie (portland, usa)
Inter Press Service
PORTLAND, USA, Mar 02 (IPS) – Israel of today as a Jewish and democratic state is a contradiction of terms and as such may possibly become transformed into a genuinely democratic Israel tomorrow with justice and equality for all.
In Israel today, citizens who are not Jewish are treated differently than those who are Jewish, who benefit from certain rights and privileges. In a national opinion poll, most Jewish Israelis, about 80 percent, say Jews should get preferential treatment in Israel. Also, nearly half of Jewish Israelis say that Arab Israelis should be expelled or transferred from Israel.
In addition, several years ago Israel passed the “nation-state law”, which among other things, states that the right to exercise national self-determination in Israel is unique to the Jewish people and also established Jewish settlement as a national value. While embraced by many Jewish Israelis, the nation-state law was considered apartheid by the country’s non-Jewish population, ostensibly making them second-class citizens.
In a democratic Israel, in contrast, all Israelis irrespective of their religious affiliation would have the same rights and privileges. In such a state, justice and equality would prevail across the entire country’s population, not just for a single dominant religious group.
A democratic Israel would be similar in many respects to Western liberal democracies such as the United States. In that democracy, all religious groups, including Jewish Americans, have the same rights, privileges and equality under the law.
Most Jewish Israelis, some 75 percent across the religious spectrum, continue to believe that Israel can be a Jewish state and a democracy. In contrast, non-Jewish Israelis, including the majorities of Muslims, Christians and Druze, generally do not believe Israel can be a Jewish state and a democracy at the same time; it’s simply viewed as inconsistent.
Further complicating political, legal and human rights matters for Israelis as well as Palestinians are the new government’s recent proposals for judicial reform, which would impact the independence of the Israeli Supreme Court.
Many Israelis have gone to the streets to protest the proposed reform. Objections to the reforms are being raised by former government officials, military officers, business investors and others. Foreign allies, especially officials, Jewish leaders and journalists in America, have also expressed concerns over the proposals. In addition, the majority of Israelis, about two-thirds, oppose the proposed judicial reform.
Turning to demographics, Israel’s population stood at 9.656 million at the end of 2022. The composition of the population was 74 percent Jewish, 21 percent Arab (largely Christian and Muslims) and 5 percent others (Figure 1).
Source: Israel, Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS).
In 1948 when Israel was established, the country’s proportion Jewish was 82 percent of its population of 806 thousand. By the 1960s the proportion Jewish reached a record high of nearly 90 percent. Since that high, the proportion Jewish in Israel has been steadily declining to its current level of 74 percent.
In addition to Israel’s changing demographics, the Jewish Israeli population has not been confined to its 1948 borders. Large numbers have expanded to settlements in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Israel’s Jewish settler population in the West Bank, for example, is now estimated at more than half a million. Many of the estimated 700 thousand Jewish Israelis now living in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are motivated by their religious mission to restore historic Israel to the Jewish people.
The Jewish settler population is continuing to increase rapidly in the West Bank, which is a top priority of ultranationalist parties who oppose Palestinian statehood.
The Israeli government has also pledged to legalize wildcat outposts and increase the approval and construction of settler homes in the West Bank.
In contrast, the United Nations Security Council and much of the international community of nations, including the United States, the European Union and the United Nations, continue to support the idea of an independent Palestinian state. However, the changing demographics in the West Bank have virtually eliminated the possibility of the two-state solution.
Without the two-state solution, Jewish Israelis face a major challenge affecting their majority status, namely the possibility of the one-state solution.
The one-state solution would involve the entire Israeli and Palestinian populations now living between the Mediterranean Sea and Jordan River. In such a population numbering approximately 15 million inhabitants, the Jewish population would become a ruling minority of approximately 47 percent, a fundamental change from the sizable Jewish majority of 74 percent in Israel today (Figure 2).
Source: Times of Israel.
Even today the Israeli government is confronting human rights issues with its expansion throughout the occupied Palestinian territories. International, Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations as well as independent observers have found Israeli authorities practicing apartheid and persecution in the occupied Palestinian territories.
According to those human rights organizations, Israeli government policy is to maintain the domination by Jewish Israelis over Palestinians as well as the abuses and discriminatory policies against Palestinians living in the occupied territories.
Israel rejects those accusations, saying it is a democracy and committed to international law and open to scrutiny. The government cites security concerns and protecting the lives of Israelis for its imposition of travel and related restrictions on Palestinians, whose violence in the past included suicide bombings of Israeli cities and deadly attacks against Israelis.
Many have come to the conclusion that given the policies of the current Israeli government, a political path for Israel and an independent Palestinian state to coexist peacefully is simply wishful thinking. For some the two-state solution is effectively dead and it is simply waiting for its formal funeral.
In addition, the human cost of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been high and is rising. So far in 2023, the conflict has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 63 Palestinians and 13 Israelis.
From 2008 to 2020 the numbers of killed and injured from the conflict among Israelis and Palestinian documented by the UN were 251 and 5,590 deaths, respectively, and 5,600 and 115,000 injuries, respectively. In brief, over that time period approximately 95 percent of those killed and injured due to the conflict were Palestinians (Figure 3).
Source: UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
It is evident that the Israeli government and many Israelis would like to continue the Jewish settler expansion in the West Bank. That expansion clearly has serious consequences for the resident Palestinian population and the Israelis as well as the prospects of an independent Palestinian state.
The demise of the two-state solution and the possible one-state solution also creates a major foreign and domestic dilemma for the United States, Israel’s major political, military and economic supporter and biggest ally.
Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. foreign assistance, estimated at more than 3 billion dollars annually and more than 150 dollars cumulatively. Also, America has vetoed scores of United Nations Security Council resolutions critical of Israel, including at least 53 since 1973.
Given America’s commitment to democratic values, freedom of religious beliefs and equality of citizenship, the White House, U.S. Senators, Congressional Representatives as well as the nation’s citizens will be faced with how to respond to the absence of a possible Palestinian state and Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
In the absence of the two-state solution, it will become increasingly difficult for the United States to continue its unwavering commitment and unequivocal support in light of Israeli policies and treatment of the Palestinians. Perhaps, consistent with its values and laws, America will decide to support the one-state solution with equality of all inhabitants, regardless of religious identities.
More importantly, in the absence of a truly independent Palestinian state, Israel may slowly come to embrace the one-state solution. Eventually then, especially given the unavoidable demographic realities strikingly visible on the ground, Israel may possibly come to realize that it’s time to transform the Israel of today into a truly democratic Israel of tomorrow with justice and equality for all.
Joseph Chamie is a consulting demographer, a former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, including his recent book, “Population Levels, Trends, and Differentials”.
“A child in North Syria passing by the ruins, after the earthquake hit his town.” – Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
by Baher Kamal (madrid)
Inter Press Service
MADRID, Feb 23 (IPS) – While the world’s biggest powers and their giant private corporations continue to attach high priority to their military –and commercial– dominance, both of them being shockingly profitable, entire generations are being lost to deadly armed conflicts, devastating climate catastrophes, diseases, hunger and more imposed impoverishment.
Part I of this series of two articles focussed on the unprecedented suffering of the most innocent and helpless human beings – children– in 11 countries. But there are many more.
According to the UN Children Fund (UNICEF), hundreds of thousands of children continue to pay the highest price of a mixture of man-made brutalities, with their lives, apart from the unfolding proxy war in Ukraine, and the not yet final account of victims of the Türkiye and Syria earthquakes, which are forcing children to sleep in the streets under the rumble, amid the chilling cold.
Nigeria
Nigeria is just one of the already reported cases of 11 countries. UNICEF on 11 February 2023 appealed for 1.3 billion US dollars to stop what it calls “the ticking bomb of child malnutrition.”
The appeal is meant to help six million people severely affected by conflict, disease, and disaster in Northeast Nigeria.
“The large-scale humanitarian and protection crisis shows no sign of abating,” said Matthias Schmale, the UN Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Nigeria. “An estimated 2.4 million people are in acute need – impacted by conflict, disaster and disease – and require urgent support.”
The “ticking time bomb” of child malnutrition is escalating in Nigeria’s Northeast, with the number of children suffering from acute malnutrition projected to increase to two million in 2023, up from 1.74 million last year, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.
Already high levels of severe acute malnutrition are projected to more than double from 2022 to a projected 697,000 this year. Women and girls are the hardest hit, said Schmale.
“Over 80% of people in need of humanitarian assistance across Borno, Adamawa and Yobe states are women and children. They face increased risks of violence, abduction, rape and abuse.”
The UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide Alice Nderitu raised concerns about a worsening security situation, calling for urgent action to address conflicts and prevent “atrocity crimes.”
Urgent immediate actions must be taken now, both to address the crisis in the short-term and long-term. Credit: James Jeffrey/IPS
Horn of Africa: the suffering of over 20 million children
By the end of 2022, UNICEF warned of a funding shortfall as the region faces an unprecedented fifth consecutive failed rainy season and a poor outlook for the sixth.
The number of children suffering dire drought conditions across Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia has “more than doubled in five months,” according to UNICEF.
“Around 20.2 million children are now facing the threat of severe hunger, thirst and disease, compared to 10 million in July , as climate change, conflict, global inflation and grain shortages devastate the region.”
While collective and accelerated efforts have mitigated some of the worst impacts of what had been feared, “children in the Horn of Africa are still facing the most severe drought in more than two generations,” said UNICEF Deputy Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa Lieke van de Wiel.
“Humanitarian assistance must be continued to save lives and build the resilience of the staggering number of children and families who are being pushed to the edge – dying from hunger and disease and being displaced in search of food, water and pasture for their livestock.”
More than two million people are displaced internally because of drought.
Water insecurity has more than doubled with close to 24 million people now confronting dire water shortages.
Approximately 2.7 million children are out of school because of the drought, with an additional estimated 4 million children at risk of dropping out.
As families are driven to the edge dealing with increased stress, children face a range of protection risks – including child labour, child marriage and female genital mutilation.
Gender-based violence, including sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, is also increasing due to widespread food insecurity and displacement.
UNICEF’s 2023 emergency appeal of US$759 million to provide life-saving support to children and their families will require timely and flexible funding support, especially in the areas of education, water and sanitation, and child protection, which were ”severely underfunded” during UNICEF’s 2022 response.
An additional US$690 million is required to support long-term investments to help children and their families to recover and adapt to climate change.
Meanwhile, more unfolding tragedies for children
The above-reported suffering for the most defenceless human beings–children, does not end here. Indeed, two more major tragedies continue unfolding. Such is the case of the brutal proxy war in Ukraine and the most destructive earthquakes in Türkiye and Syria.
“A child in North Syria passing by the ruins, after the earthquake hit his town.” – Credit: Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC)
Türkiye-Syria Earthquakes
A steady flow of UN aid trucks filled with vital humanitarian relief continues to cross the border from Southern Türkiye into Northwest Syria to help communities enduring “terrible trauma” caused by the earthquake disaster, UN aid teams on 17 February 2023 reported.
As UN aid convoys continue to deliver more relief to quake-hit Northwest Syria via additional land routes from Türkiye, UN humanitarians warned that “many thousands of children have likely been killed,” while millions more vulnerable people urgently need support.
“Even without verified numbers, it’s tragically clear the number of children killed, the number of children orphaned is going to keep on rising,” on 14 February 2023 said UN Children Fund (UNICEF) spokesperson James Elder.
In Türkiye, the total number of children living in the 10 provinces before the emergency was 4.6 million, and 2.5 million in Syria.
And as the humanitarian focus shifts from rescue to recovery, eight days after the disaster, Elder warned that cases of “hypothermia and respiratory infections” were rising among youngsters, as he appealed for continued solidarity with all those affected by the emergency.
“Everyone, everywhere, needs more support, more safe water, more warmth, more shelter, more fuel, more medicines, more funding,” he said.
“Families with children are sleeping in streets, malls, mosques, schools, under bridges, staying out in the open for fear of returning to their homes.”
“Unimaginable hardship”
“The children and families of Türkiye and Syria are facing unimaginable hardship in the aftermath of these devastating earthquakes,” said UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell.
“We must do everything in our power to ensure that everyone who survived this catastrophe receives life-saving support, including safe water, sanitation, critical nutrition and health supplies, and support for children’s mental health. Not only now, but over the long term.”
The number of children killed and injured during the quakes and their aftermath has not yet been confirmed but is likely to be in the many thousands. The official total death toll has now passed 45,000.
Freezing
Many families have lost their homes and are now living in temporary shelters, “often in freezing conditions and with snow and rain adding to their suffering.” Access to safe water and sanitation is also a major concern, as are the health needs of the affected population.
Hundreds of thousands of people have seen their homes, businesses or schools damaged or destroyed while continuing attacks on critical energy infrastructure have left millions of children without sustained access to electricity, heating and water.
The list of brutalities committed against the world’s children goes on. The funds desperately needed to save their lives represent a tiny faction of all that is being spent on wars.
A return of non-alignment was evident at the March 2022 UN General Assembly special session on Ukraine. Fifty-two governments from the global south did not support western sanctions against Russia. CREDIT: Manuel Elias/UN
Opinion
Inter Press Service
Feb 17 (IPS) – An African proverb notes that “when two elephants fight, it is the grass underneath that suffers”. Many states in the global south are, therefore, seeking to avoid getting caught in the middle of any future battles between the US and China. Instead, they are calling for a renewal of the concept of non-alignment. This was an approach employed in the 1950s by newly independent countries to balance between the two ideological power blocs of east and west during the era of the Cold War
The new non-alignment stance is based on a perceived need to maintain southern sovereignty, pursue socio-economic development, and benefit from powerful external partners without having to choose sides. It also comes from historical grievances during the era of slavery, colonialism and Cold War interventionism.
These grievances include unilateral American military interventions in Grenada (1983), Panama (1989) and Iraq (2003) as well as support by the US and France for autocracies in countries like Egypt, Morocco, Chad and Saudi Arabia, when it suits their interests.
Many southern governments are particularly irked by America’s Manichaean division of the world into “good” democracies and “bad” autocracies. More recently, countries in the global south have highlighted north-south trade disputes and western hoarding of COVID-19 vaccines as reinforcing the unequal international system of “global apartheid”.
A return of non-alignment was evident at the March 2022 UN General Assembly special session on Ukraine. Fifty-two governments from the global south did not support western sanctions against Russia. This, despite Russia’s clear violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty, which southern states have historically condemned.
A month later, 82 southern states refused to back western efforts to suspend Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
These included powerful southern states such as India, Indonesia, South Africa, Ethiopia, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico.
The origins of non-alignment
In 1955, a conference was held in the Indonesian city of Bandung to regain the sovereignty of Africa and Asia from western imperial rule. The summit also sought to foster global peace, promote economic and cultural cooperation, and end racial domination. Governments attending were urged to abstain from collective defence arrangements with great powers.
Six years later, in 1961, the 120-strong Non-Aligned Movement emerged. Members were required to shun military alliances such as NATO and the Warsaw Pact, as well as bilateral security treaties with great powers.
Non-alignment advocated “positive” – not passive – neutrality. States were encouraged to contribute actively to strengthening and reforming institutions such as the UN and the World Bank.
India’s patrician prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is widely regarded to have been the intellectual “father of non-alignment”. He regarded the concept as an insurance policy against world domination by either superpower bloc or China. He also advocated nuclear disarmament.
Indonesia’s military strongman, Suharto, championed non-alignment through “regional resilience”. South-east Asian states were urged to seek autonomy and prevent external powers from intervening in the region.
Egypt’s charismatic prophet of Arab unity, Gamal Abdel Nasser, strongly backed the use of force in conducting wars of liberation in Algeria and southern Africa, buying arms and receiving aid from both east and west.
For his part, Ghana’s prophet of African unity, Kwame Nkrumah, promoted the idea of an African High Command as a common army to ward off external intervention and support Africa’s liberation.
The Non-Aligned Movement, however, suffered from the problems of trying to maintain cohesion among a large, diverse group. Many countries were clearly aligned to one or other power bloc.
By the early 1980s, the group had switched its focus from east-west geo-politics to north–south geo-economics. The Non-Aligned Movement started advocating a “new international economic order”. This envisaged technology and resources being transferred from the rich north to the global south in order to promote industrialisation.
The north, however, simply refused to support these efforts.
Latin America and south-east Asia
Most of the recent thinking and debates on non-alignment have occurred in Latin America and south-east Asia.
Most Latin American countries have refused to align with any major power. They have also ignored Washington’s warnings to avoid doing business with China. Many have embraced Chinese infrastructure, 5G technology and digital connectivity.
Bolivia, Cuba, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Many of the region’s states declined western requests to impose sanctions on Moscow. The return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president of Brazil – the largest and wealthiest country in the region – heralds the “second coming” (following his first presidency between 2003 and 2011) of a champion of global south solidarity.
For its part, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has shown that non-alignment has as much to do with geography as strategy. Singapore sanctioned Russia over the invasion of Ukraine. Indonesia condemned the intervention but rejected sanctions. Myanmar backed the invasion while Laos and Vietnam refused to condemn Moscow’s aggression.
Many ASEAN states have historically championed “declaratory non-alignment”. They have used the concept largely rhetorically while, in reality, practising a promiscuous “multi-alignment”. Singapore and the Philippines forged close military ties with the US; Myanmar with India; Vietnam with Russia, India, and the US; and Malaysia with Britain, Australia, and New Zealand.
This is also a region in which states simultaneously embrace and fear Chinese economic assistance and military cooperation. This, while seeking to avoid any external powers dominating the region or forming exclusionary military alliances.
Strong African voices are largely absent from these non-alignment debates, and are urgently needed.
Pursuing non-alignment in Africa
Africa is the world’s most insecure continent, hosting 84% of UN peacekeepers. This points to a need for a cohesive southern bloc that can produce a self-sustaining security system – Pax Africana – while promoting socio-economic development.
Uganda aims to champion this approach when it takes over the three-year rotating chair of the Non-Aligned Movement in December 2023. Strengthening the organisation into a more cohesive bloc, while fostering unity within the global south, is a major goal of its tenure.
Uganda has strong potential allies. For example, South Africa has championed “strategic non-alignment” in the Ukraine conflict, advocating a UN-negotiated solution, while refusing to sanction its BRICS ally, Russia. It has also relentlessly courted its largest bilateral trading partner, China, whose Belt and Road Initiative and BRICS bank are building infrastructure across the global south.
If a new non-alignment is to be achieved in Africa, the foreign military bases of the US, France and China – and the Russian military presence – must, however, be dismantled.
At the same time the continent should continue to support the UN-led rules-based international order, condemning unilateral interventions in both Ukraine and Iraq. Pax Africana would best be served by:
building local security capacity in close cooperation with the UN;
promoting effective regional integration; and
fencing off the continent from meddling external powers, while continuing to welcome trade and investment from both east and west.
TOKYO, Japan, Jan 18 (IPS) – The Ukraine crisis that erupted in February last year continues with no prospect for cessation. The intensified hostilities have inflicted great suffering in population centers and destroyed infrastructure facilities, compelling large numbers of civilians, including many children and women, to live in a state of constant peril.
The history of the twentieth century, which witnessed the horrors caused by two global conflicts, should have brought home the lesson that nothing is more cruel or miserable than war.
During World War II, when I was in my teens, I experienced the firebombing of Tokyo. To this day, I remember with great vividness getting separated from family members as we fled desperately through a sea of flames, and not learning that they were safe until the following day.
How many people have lost their lives or livelihoods in the ongoing crisis, how many have found their own and their family’s ways of life suddenly and irrevocably altered?
Many other countries have also been seriously impacted in the form of constrained food supplies, spiking energy prices and disrupted financial markets.
It is crucial that we find a breakthrough in order to prevent any further worsening of the conditions facing people worldwide, to say nothing of the Ukrainian people who are compelled to live with inadequate and uncertain supplies of electricity amidst a deepening winter and intensifying military conflict.
I therefore call for the urgent holding of a meeting, under UN auspices, among the foreign ministers of Russia, Ukraine and other key countries in order to reach agreement on a cessation of hostilities. I also urge that earnest discussions be undertaken toward a summit that would bring together the heads of all concerned states in order to find a path to the restoration of peace.
Together with calling for the earliest possible resolution to the Ukraine crisis, I wish to stress the crucial importance of implementing measures to prevent the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons, both in the current crisis and all future conflicts.
Nuclear rhetoric has ratcheted up, and the risk that these weapons might actually be used stands today at its highest level since the end of the Cold War. Even if no party seeks nuclear war, the reality is that, with nuclear arsenals in a continuing state of high alert, there is a considerably heightened risk of unintentional nuclear weapon use as a result of data error, unforeseen accident or confusion provoked by a cyberattack.
Along with reducing tensions with the goal of resolving the Ukraine crisis, I feel it is of paramount importance that the nuclear-weapon states initiate action to reduce nuclear risks as a means of ensuring that situations do not arise—either now or in the future—in which the possibility of nuclear weapons use looms. It was with this in mind that in July last year I issued a statement to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference in which I urged the five nuclear-weapon states to make prompt and unambiguous pledges that they would never be the first to launch a nuclear strike—the principle of “No First Use.”
Regrettably, the August NPT Review Conference was unable to reach consensus on a final document. But this in no way means that the nuclear disarmament obligations set out in Article VI of the treaty no longer pertain. As the various drafts of the final document indicate, there was widespread support for nuclear risk reduction measures such as the adoption of No First Use policies and extending negative security assurances, by which nuclear-weapon states pledge never to use nuclear weapons against states that do not possess them.
The pledge of No First Use is a measure that nuclear-weapon states can take even while maintaining for the present their current nuclear arsenals; nor does it mean that the threat of the some 13,000 nuclear warheads existing in the world today would quickly dissipate. However, what I would like to stress is that should this policy take root among nuclear-armed states, it will create an opening for removing the climate of mutual fear. This, in turn, can enable the world to change course—away from nuclear buildup premised on deterrence and toward nuclear disarmament to avert catastrophe.
Looking back, the global state of affairs during the Cold War era was characterized by a series of seemingly insoluble crises that rattled the world, spreading shockwaves of insecurity and dread. And yet humankind managed to find exit strategies and pull through.
One example of this is the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) held between the United States and the Soviet Union. Intention to hold these was announced on the day of the 1968 signing ceremony for the NPT, which had been negotiated in response to the bitter lessons of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The SALT negotiations were the first steps taken by the US and the USSR to put the brakes on the nuclear arms race based on their nuclear disarmament obligations under Article VI of the NPT.
For those involved in these talks, to impose constraints on the nuclear policies that had been developed as the exclusive prerogative of the state could not have been easy. Nonetheless, this was a decision indispensable to the survival not only of the citizens of their respective nations, but of all humankind.
Having experienced first-hand the terror of teetering on the brink of nuclear war, the people of that time brought forth historic powers of imagination and creativity. Now is the time for all countries and peoples to come together to once again unleash those creative powers and bring into being a new chapter in human history.
Opinion by Chloe Bryer – Azza Karam – Ruth Messinger – Negina Yari (new york)
Inter Press Service
NEW YORK, Jan 12 (IPS) – Can you imagine what it would be like if women were simply not allowed to step outside of their homes, let alone to work for a living? When women choose to do so, and they can afford it, then it is a matter of choice. When women mostly cannot, as is the case in Afghanistan now, not only is half the population imprisoned, but children go hungry, and communities sink deeper into poverty.
World Bank data (as incomplete as it is), indicates that the average number of female-headed households (i.e. households where women are the primary – if not the only – breadwinners), is around 25%.
What that means is, that on average, a quarter of all households around the world depend on women earning an income. Children, families, communities, and nations –depend on women’s work, to the tune of a quarter of their labour force.
Economists are still pointing to the obvious challenges of counting female labour, which often lies disproportionately on the frontiers of the formal economy, such that women continue to serve as reserve armies of labour and frontline workers during industrialization.
Economists who work to document these specificities, also point out that as soon as these frontiers expand or change, women are expelled or relegated to the shadows of the informal economy and piece-rate labour, identifying this as an all too frequent failure to recognize the importance of the kind of work many women engage in, which both keeps an economy running, and enables its expansion and growth.
The Covid-19 Pandemic should have resulted in a clear realisation that all hands are necessary on deck, with so many women actually needed as first responders–the backbone of the public health crisis – everywhere in the world.
As economies take a nosedive and the realities of recession hit many of us, all economies need to be kept running, if not to expand and grow.
And beyond these very real challenges to counting women’s work – and making that work count – there is another very critical reality: culture. Lest we think only of the vagaries of women who take over “men’s jobs” (whatever that means in today’s world), we need to stop being blind to the fact that women are needed to serve other women.
In fact, in many parts of the world, including the supposedly liberal and ‘egalitarian’ Western world, many women still prefer to receive life-saving direct services from other women – in public health, in sanitation, in all levels of education, in nutritional spaces, and many, many others.
Now let us pause a moment and consider humanitarian disaster zones, where women and girls often need to be cared for – and this can only be done by and through other women.
Then let us envision a reality one step further – let’s call it a socially conservative country, which is facing humanitarian disaster, and is heavily dependent on international organisations (governmental and non- governmental) for the necessary humanitarian support.
How is it conceivable that in such a context, women can be excluded from serving? And yet this is precisely what the Taliban have decreed on December 24, when it barred women from working in national and international NGOs. And this is after they banned women from higher education.
Many international NGOs halted their work in Afghanistan, explaining that they cannot work without their women staff – as a matter of principle, but also as a question of practical necessity. Yet, the United Nations – the premier multilateral entity – continues to see how they could compromise with the Taliban rule, for the sake of ‘the greater good – real humanitarian needs’.
Thank goodness they are letting the UN continue to work with their women employees, runs one way of thinking. We will not fail to deliver humanitarian needs, runs another UN way of thinking.
Of course, humanitarian needs are essential to human survival – and thus, should never be held hostage. But why is the United Nations being accountable for humanitarian needs only?
Meanwhile, the Taliban claim that these edicts about womens’ work and education are a matter of religious propriety, a claim which, as of this moment, is not strongly challenged by another multilateral entity – the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), encompassing 56 governments and members of the United Nations.
While individual governments have spoken out, this multilateral entity has remained relatively silent on the Islamic justice of such a decree. Is it because this multilateral religious entity sees no need to speak to humanitarian needs?
Or is it because it sees no value to hard economic realities where women’s agency plays a central role? Or perhaps it is because there is no unanimity on the Islamic justification behind such decrees?
Multilateralism is supposed to be the guarantor of all human rights and dignity, for all people, at all times. But as governmental regimes weaken, so do traditional multilateral entities heavily reliant on those governments. Time for community based transnational networks based on intergenerational, multicultural, gender sensitive leaders.
Rev Dr Chloe Bryer is Executive Director, Interfaith Center of New York; Prof Azza Karam is Secretary General, Religions for Peace; Ruth Messinger is Social Justice Consultant, Jewish Theological Seminary; and Negina Yari is Country Director, Afghans4Tomorrow
NEW YORK, Nov 10 (IPS) – We are living in a world where both our bilateral and multilateral achievements, consensuses on human rights and social justice, and our resolve to public good are being tested like never before.
Now, more than ever, we need to bring to life the values and principles of the UN Charter in every corner of the world. Due to the powers vested in its Charter and its unique international character, the UN can act on the issues confronting humanity, including:
• Maintain international peace and security
• Protect human rights
• Deliver humanitarian aid
• Promote sustainable development
• Uphold international law
Given my own personal trajectory in human rights advocacy and development cooperation, let me focus on aspects of sustainable development and consider whether we need to change and adopt any new approach to it to end extreme poverty, reduce inequalities, and rescue the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from exclusionary practices.
Development or Sustainable Development must be inclusive: In fact, inclusion at the heart of Development Cooperation. Inclusive development is the concept that every person, regardless of their identity, is instrumental in transforming their societies.
Development processes that are inclusive yield better outcomes for the communities that embark upon them. The UN was created to promote the rights and inclusion of marginalized and underrepresented populations in the development process and leads the UN’s response to addressing the needs and demands of those in in adversity and youth.
Therefore, the UN implements activities that combat stigma and discrimination, promote empowerment and inclusion of marginalized or underrepresented groups, and improve the lives of populations in high-risk situations.
It is important that we also adopt this in institutional and management settings: For example, UN Asia Network for Diversity and Inclusion (UN-ANDI) recently conducted its first survey on Racism and Racial Discrimination in five languages.
The survey was intended to capture data reflecting the Asian perspective in the UN system. It is planning to issue a report on the survey’s findings to support and address many critical issues of racism and racial discrimination. There are other networks who are addressing different elements of intersectionality including but not limited to, gender, disability, ethnicity, identity etc.
So, the world and its challenges have become much more intersectional, which calls for a robust and intersectional approach to development cooperation.
Intersectional Approach: An intersectionality lens allows us to see how social policy may affect people differently, depending on their specific set of ‘locations,’ and what unintended consequences particular policies may have on their individual lives.
By listening to the most marginalized and/or disadvantaged groups of a community, development organizations can help combat oppression at all levels of society and rebuild communities from the ground up.
Take the example of Persons with Disabilities. They are not a homogenous group, and this should be reflected in our policy advocacy and communications by considering intersectionality—the intersection of disability together with other factors, such as gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, refugee, migrant or asylum seeker status.
For example, a person with disability also has a gender identity, may come from an Indigenous group and be young, old, a migrant or live in poverty.
At the UN System, it is time to adopt an intersectional approach in our development cooperation, policy advocacy, programming, operational support, planning and budgeting. An intersectional approach considers the historical, social, and political context and recognizes the unique experience of the individual based on the intersection of all relevant grounds.
This approach allows the experience of discrimination, based on the confluence of grounds involved, to be acknowledged and remedied. Using an intersectionality lens to approach our development practice means moving beyond the use of singular categories to understand people and groups and embracing the notion of inseparable and interconnected sets of social ‘locations’ that change through time, vary across places, and act together to shape an individual’s life experience and actions.
This would go a long way to contribute to the SDGs’ Leave No One Behind principle (LNOB). The new approach calls for invigorating existing practices, making them more innovative, effective, and efficient.
Innovation: We need to think of innovative approaches and instruments to attract and channel new resources to finance our developmental aspirations, as outlined in the 2030 SDGs now more than ever.
Reliable and well-administered development financial institutions with a well-defined mandate and sound governance framework will continue to be an important vehicle to accelerate inclusive economic and social development.
They can create new channels to crowd-in the private sector. Moreover, they can play a catalytical role by generating new knowledge, convening stakeholders, and providing technical assistance to build capacity in the private and public sectors. Mutual collaboration between and across public and private sector is critical to harness the full potential of innovation and innovative approaches.
Let us not forget new media’s growing impact on both inclusive participation leveraging innovative practices.
New Media: New media, including mobile and social media, could help demystify international institutions and encourage participation. The new media is also critical to widen the breadth of accessibility for persons with disabilities or those who live in rural and/or remote, hard to reach areas.
Alongside this, there could be more regular interactions by the leadership of intergovernmental organisations with multi-stakeholders including civil society, organisations of persons with disabilities, and the media, and the creation of accessible databases of statistical and other information and knowledge on their work.
Notwithstanding the Ukraine war, work at the UN continues. The world body can and should continue to play a constructive role in both development cooperation, crisis management, peace building, and post-conflict stabilization. It should continue to focus on crises from Afghanistan to Mali and Ukraine itself.
However, it must explore new and innovative and intersectional ways to support inclusive development, climate justice and resilience, peacekeeping, and other global and regional key priorities.
Otherwise, the SDGs will not be even near to their desired destination in 2030 or beyond.
Dr. A.H. Monjurul Kabir, currently Global Policy and UN System Coordination Adviser and Team Leader for Gender Equality, Disability Inclusion, and Intersectionality at UN Women HQ in New York, is a political scientist and senior policy and legal analyst on global issues and Asia-Pacific trends.
For policy and academic purposes, he can be contacted at [email protected] and followed on twitter at mkabir2011
This article is from a blog based on a speech delivered by the author, in his personal capacity, at an event commemorating the UN’s 77th anniversary organized by UN-ANDI– a New York-based global network of like-minded Asian staff members of the UN system who strive to promote a more diverse and inclusive culture and mindset within the UN.
Colosseum at the Prayer with the Pope and the representatives of the workd’s religions. Credit: Elena L. Pasquini
by Elena Pasquini (rome)
Inter Press Service
ROME, Nov 07 (IPS) – Arms are raised, stretched out towards the sky, holding white cards with the word “peace” written in different languages. A girl, a refugee from Syria, reads the Rome’s “Appeal for peace”: “With firm conviction, we say: no more war! Let’s stop all conflicts […] Let dialogue be resumed to nullify the threat of nuclear weapons.” Pope Francis singed it in front of the people gathered at the Colosseum, holding the word “peace” in their hands, as representatives of the world’s religions did as well. Shortly before, members of those different religions gathered for prayer to invoke peace in their different traditions—a prayer that is “a cry” inside the ancient amphitheater.
“This year our prayer has become a heartfelt plea, because today peace has been gravely violated, assaulted and trampled upon, and this in Europe, on the very continent that in the last century endured the horrors of the two world wars – and we are experiencing a third. Sadly, since then, wars have continued to cause bloodshed and to impoverish the earth. Yet the situation that we are presently experiencing is particularly dramatic…”, the Pontiff warned. “We are not neutral, but allied for peace, and for that reason we invoke the ius pacis as the right of all to settle conflicts without violence,” he added.
The same “raised hands” marched for peace on Saturday in Rome when around 100.000 people from different organizations called for a ceasefire in Ukraine and in all the other armed conflicts.
The prayer with the Pope was the last act of a three-day interreligious dialogue, held at the end of October in the Italian capital and introduced by the presidents of the French and Italian republics, Emmanuel Macron and Sergio Mattarella. The first convocation was in Assisi, in 1986, willed by John Paul II. Since then, it has been promoted by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a Christian community whose fundamentals are prayer, serving the poor and marginalized, and peace. For the role it has played in mediating conflicts, it has been named the “UN of Trastevere” after the city center neighborhood where it is headquartered and where the peace agreement in Mozambique was signed thirty years ago.
Flags at the rally for peace in Rome on Saturday. Credit: Elena L. Pasquini
Leaders and believers of various religions and secular humanists have woven relationships, prayed, and confronted each other. They hand over a map drawn by many voices, too many to account for in the space of an article. “The cry for peace” meeting is also an invitation to “do”. It offers a map of concrete steps, things done and to do, best practices, imagination, with a key word: dialogue. “And dialogue does not make all reasons equal at all, it does not avoid the question of responsibility and never mistakes the aggressor with the attacked. Indeed, precisely because it knows them well, it can look for ways to stop the geometric and implacable logic of war, which is if other solution are not found”, explained Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, president of the Italian Episcopal Conference.
World scenarios are made even more worrying by the risk of nuclear escalation in the Ukrainian war—a war on the doorstep of that part of Europe that has cultivated peace inside, but that has let armed conflict flourish elsewhere. “The lack of this commitment let the war reach its borders, indeed—in some ways—penetrate within it, even in its deepest fibers,” said Agostino Giovagnoli, historian of the Community of Sant’Egidio. “Today war threatens Europe also because it threatens the alternative imagination which is at the basis of the European architecture. War, in fact, is banal: it does not consist only of a fight on the ground but it is also a form of ‘single thought,’” he added.
This “single thought” has changed the European attitude, according to Nico Piro, special correspondent and war journalist of the RAI, the Italian national public broadcasting company. “After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in Europe as in Italy, a political monobloc in favor of has emerged from right to left. It is standing out what I named ‘PUB’ , a Bellicist-Single-Thought … projects a stigma on anyone who asks for peace, on anyone who has a doubt or raises a criticism of the idea that fueling the war serves to end it ,” he said. “What has peace become then? No longer a tool to stop and prevent armed conflicts but a by-product of war.”
Yet, among the many voices that met in Rome, one word resounds, whispered and then said: kairos. The “critical moment” is now. The war in Ukraine is the “wake-up call” that must be grasped, that cannot be missed, widening our view from Europe to those never-ending conflicts all over the world. Among the many lessons from Sant’Egidio’s dialogue, two should be learned to grasp that kairos: working together daily to build peace in every single life and returning to working together as a community of states, relaunching the multilateral message.
Sant’Egidio’s interreligious dialogue “The cry for peace”. Credit: Elena L. Pasquini
“Whoever saves a single life saves the whole world,” the Talmud says. Or “an entire world” as Riccardo di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome, suggested, since every human being has the potential to create “a new, unique world.” Thus, peace means recognizing the value of each single life, in sharp contrast to the logic of war, in which “the life of the enemy is no longer life. It’s not the same. war, dehumanizes everyone a priori in the name of life,” according to Mario Marazziti, member of the Sant’Egidio community. This also happens here, in Europe, where those fleeing wars, hunger, and persecution are allowed to die at sea, “dehumanized,” reduced to numbers.
Unique are the lives to be saved, but also unique are the lives of those who save and of those who build peace by “taking care.”
Gégoire Ahongbonon has a chain in his hand. He puts it around his neck and shows the heavy metal rings to the audience. There was a man chained with that same metal, naked, tied to a tree, like many others. His only fault was a psychiatric disorder. Ahongbonon saved over 70,000 people, “sentenced to death” because they were ill. He is the founder of the Association Saint Camille de Lellis that works in five countries of sub-Saharan Africa. He asked a tough question: “Are we different from them? Are we different from this person, we? What did they do wrong? They were born like all of us.”
Saving those lives is already making peace, eradicating the roots of violence and discrimination and planting those of peace, as Mjid Noorjehan Adbul is doing in Mozambique. She is the clinical head of the network of centers for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV, opened by Sant’Egidio’s DREAM program, a program of excellence operating in 10 countries. She, a Muslim, is surprised when people ask her why she works with Catholics: “We all have the same goal,” she replies. For twenty years, she has been working to ensure health care for those who cannot afford it. In fact, she was the first one to use antiretroviral therapy in her country. “There is no peace without care,” she said, quoting Pope Francis – “care” for eradicating “the culture of waste, of indifference, of confrontation.” Ex-patients, like those “women who have experienced the stigma firsthand and put themselves at the service of other ill people,” are now helping to build a new health culture – she explained.
Saving lives, restoring hope, choosing the paths of dialogue, and designing an architecture of peaceful coexistence should also be the aim of politics. The multilateral message, legacy of the twentieth century’s “unitary tensions,” however, needs new impetus.
“Those who work for peace are realistic, not naive!” Cardinal Zuppi said. Realistic as it was Pope Bendetto XV that called for an end to the “useless slaughter” that was the First World War. He had a very clear vision of the need for a multilateral architecture, a league among nations that could guarantee lasting peace. A realistic way to design the future still seems to be the one built on a permanent, global agorà that creates space for dialogue. “No multilateralism, no survival,” argued Jeffery Sachs, a speaker at one of the fourteen forums that shaped the meeting agenda. However, the United Nations – the organization founded on the ruins of the Second World War to make the “no more war” reality – risks to be “delegitimized”. That’s something to be avoided, according to Zuppi. “… We are aware that the United Nations is a community of nations. Its every failure represents a weakening of international determination and makes us all losers,” warned Shayk Muhammad bin Abdul Karim al Issa, general secretary of the Muslim World League.
Today, however, multilateralism needs to adapt: “We need a multilateralism that is just and inclusive, with equitable representation and voice for developing countries”, said Martha Ama Akyaa Pobee, Undersecretary for Africa in the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affaris and Peace operations. “At heart of is the need to engage earlier and proactively, and not to wait react to a crisis after it has escalated”, she added. A multilateralism that does not act only after a conflict breaks out, but that is able to prevent it and to build peace also by supporting “the resilience of local communities”.
The Kairos, the right moment, is now even if there is war in Ukraine and elsewhere because peace must be built even when war is raging. “How to live now?” wonder those who have seen the destruction and the ferocity of an armed conflict, like Olga Makar, who took care of Sant’Egidio school of peace in Ukraine. “This is the question every Ukrainian asks him or herself. In those first days of war, when I felt my life was broken, I found an answer: our houses are destroyed, our cities are in ruins, but our love, our solidarity, our ability to help others, our dreams cannot be destroyed”.
Words that echo in those of Pope Francis: “Let us not be infected by the perverse rationale of war; let us not fall into the trap of hatred for the enemy. Let us once more put peace at the heart of our vision for the future, as the primary goal of our personal, social and political activity at every level. Let us defuse conflicts by the weapon of dialogue”.
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