Monday 13 October South Sudan’s former justice minister, John Luk Jok, warned of “disregard of the constitution.” Interparty dialogue in Tanzania between South Sudan’s political factions. UN envoy reported horrific levels of sexual violence in South Sudan, a Joint Communique with the SPLM has been sign to tackle the situation. The SPLM-in-Opposition claimed Ugandan military… Read more »
A Dangerous Census
Norway has spent NOK 40 million to help fund a census in Myanmar (Burma). The census results are at odds with previous assumptions and may increase the level of conflict in the country in the run-up to the elections in 2015. Norway must take responsibility.
Russian military keep conquering the Arctic
Guns are not quite silent in the devastated Donbass, and Putin’s order to withdraw troops from the border area is no different from his several prior zigzags in manipulating this conflict, so that no real redeployments are taking place. What is happening in this pause, is the new spike in Russian military activities in the… Read more »
Ebola: A Humanitarian Crisis or a Crisis of Humanitarian Governance?
With more than 8,000 confirmed, suspected and probable cases of Ebola and nearly 4,000 deaths, mainly in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the impact of this Ebola outbreak far surpasses all previous outbreaks registered since the disease was identified in 1976. But what type of crisis is this? Is this just another humanitarian crisis in a year unusually crowded with emergencies, or is it also a serious crisis of humanitarian governance?
Nurse receives suspected Ebola patient in MSF Ebola Treatment Centre in Sierra Leone.
Photo: Sylvain Cherkaoui / MSF
What kind of crisis is this?
In popular culture and current media coverage, Ebola is often portrayed more as a civilisational crisis than a humanitarian one: the fear-mongering and alarmist outbreak narratives, including frequent allusions to Zombies, are reminiscent of the early coverage of HIV/AIDS in the mid-1980s. The racial connotations are equally familiar but much older: the blaming of victims for their primitive food habits (bush meat), irrational customs (burial practices) and hostility to modern medical practice (including sorcery and physical attacks on health workers) has the ring of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness about it. Africa is yet again a diseased place, with ambiguous relationships between animal and man and the living and the dead.
Read more at the Humanitarian Space.
Women and Public Life in the Somali Region
Somali women are often perceived as a homogenous social group perpetually living in destitution as victims of mutilation, sexual exploitation, famine, and war. Whilst we must not ignore atrocities committed against them, it is important to demonstrate that Somali women are not passive victims, and to not disregard a history replete with stories of extraordinary women.
Fatima Jibril, Founder of Somali Horn Relief International, speaking at the Global Open Day for Women and Peace 2010. (Credits: UNIFEM)
There is a lack of awareness of the remarkable Somali women who have refused to accept patriarchy, and who have fought for women’s rights to engage actively and equally as stakeholders in Somali society. The diversity of Somali women’s experiences within society — as politicians, teachers, activists, or working in businesses or international organizations — must be widely acknowledged in our understanding of the Somali region.Read More
Gandhi’s Legacy: A Century of Peaceful Troublemakers
There are really two types of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates—elites (or elite-led institutions) and ordinary people. Elite winners generally seem to be those that are trying to forge or preserve peace. But ordinary individuals tend to be troublemakers—those that are trying to use nonviolent action to upset the status quo to bring more justice to oppressed peoples.
The 2014 laureates share much in common with Gandhi.
Photo: Wikipedia
Peace for the Next Generation
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to two people, from two countries with shared challenges. But the award raises questions: Does India have the will to abolish child labour? And can Malala Yousafzai influence Pakistani women and girl’s rights from abroad?
Child labor is a regional problem, here are young boys turning over bricks at one of the hundreds of outdoors kilns that ring Bangladesh’s capital of Dhaka. Across South Asia, boys and girls are recruited to manual labor positions in order to help provide for their families. Often, this means that they must drop out of school in order to help the family get enough money for food and shelter.
Photo: Jason Miklian, PRIO
The two candidates who were awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize are of different ages and experience. What they have in common, however, is the importance they attach to children’s, young people’s and girls’ rights, and the hope that this will contribute to a more peaceful world in the longer term. At the same time, the awarding of the prize raises two questions: whether there is the political will in India totally to abolish child labour; and what influence an activist based outside her own country can have on improving the situation of girls and women in Pakistan.
Article 9 and the East Asian Peace
World War 1 was primarily a European War. World War 2 was both European and Asian. World War 3 has not yet occurred. If it does, it will be mainly Asian.
Source: Worldatlas.com
Provided the pattern of alliances and strategic partnerships continues to look the way it does today, World War 3 will pit a Russia-supported China against a grand alliance of the United States, Japan, India, Indonesia and Australia. This grand alliance will win the war but at the prize of unimaginable destruction, even risk of a nuclear exchange.Read More
Imagine Novaya gazeta with the Nobel medal on the banner
Novaya Gazeta Cover commemorating their journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who died 7 October eight years ago.
In the past-but-still-present Soviet times, leading newspaper proudly carried a set of awards – like the Order of the Red Star – on their front pages. I can just imagine the fiercely independent Novaya gazeta sporting the Nobel medal on its banner (just above the usual political cartoon) – as an added challenge to the revival of the Soviet symbolism and propaganda.Read More
Forget the Economy – It’s Geopolitics, Putin
This reflects perfectly the pattern of Putin’s economic dirigisme. Elkin’s cartoon from Radio Liberty.
The trickle of sad and sour economic news continues to exacerbate Russia’s stagnant economic outlook, but the Kremlin authorities remain resolutely indifferent to these negative trends. Read More