January 12, 2013: Israeli armed forces dismantle a peaceful Palestinian sit-in in the West Bank, arresting several of the organizers. July 6, 2012: the Palestinian Authority’s security forces violently attack a peaceful demonstration against normalization with Israel in Ramallah, the West Bank. These episodes illustrate the predicament of Palestinian non-violent activists. These activists experience what… Read more »
Month: September 2015
This Week in South Sudan – Week 39
Monday 21 September SPLM/A (IO) leader Riek Machar says he will return to Juba to assume his position as First-Vice President in December. According to a recent fact-finding mission, SPLA troops killed civilians, burnt homes, looted shops and local government institutions in Central Equatoria State. Five more civilians were allegedly killed by SPLA troops following… Read more »
The Next UN Secretary-General: Everything Points Towards a Woman
The High Level week of the 70th Session of the UN General Assembly opened this week. Important issues will be debated and decisions made, which in turn will establish guidelines for the UN’s image and operations in the coming years. Next year’s election of a new Secretary-General is lurking in the background. After eight male… Read more »
War is Development in Reverse
The UN’s new Sustainable Development Goals are ready for adoption. For the first time, the UN will measure the incidence of one of the most controversial, but important, development indicators: the amount of armed conflict in the world. On 25 September this year, a UN summit will adopt the new Sustainable Development Goals. These will… Read more »
This Week in South Sudan – Week 38
Monday 14 September According to the NGO Forum, a consortium of NGOs, aid workers in South Sudan are being attacked with greater frequency. President Salva Kiir will not lead the government’s delegation to the summit of heads of state and government at the UN General Assembly in New York. According to local officials, thousands of… Read more »
How Russia and America make the same mistakes in Syria
Russia’s apparent escalation in Syria is less dramatic than it seems, but it still represents another depressing development in the ongoing nightmare of the Syrian civil war. While it appears no Russian troops are engaged in fighting, the volume of military cargo delivered from Russia to Syria by sea and air has significantly increased in… Read more »
Practical Compassion in the Age of Crisis
The news from last week was bleak. Fleeing violence and chaos in the Middle East, horrific accounts detailed the tragic fates of countless people seeking refuge in Europe. Thousands have perished along the way, and many survivors have found themselves in dangerous conditions upon arrival in Europe. Some state reactions have been appallingly inhumane, and… Read more »
We are being Put to the Test
We must both take in refugees and preserve our culture and way of living. A flood of migrants is coming to Europe. They are fleeing chaos and war. They are from all levels of society. The vast majority would have remained in their homelands if they had been able. But as a result of violence,… Read more »
Refugees are Also Migrants. And All Migrants Matter
The recent debate over word choice has taken turns that undermine humanitarian principles and cloud the view of how migration is unfolding. The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Guardian, the BBC, and others have examined the usage of ‘refugees’ versus ‘migrants’ over the past week. The general impression is that ‘migrants’ are being… Read more »
Why the ISIS Threat is Totally Overblown
One of the most remarkable phenomena of the last year is the way ISIS, the vicious insurgent group in Iraq and Syria, has captured the imagination of the public in Western countries. And as usual, officials and the media have fallen over themselves to respond with urgency. Americans had remained substantially unmoved by even worse… Read more »