Fake Syria Video

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Last week a video surfaced on YouTube which showed children being fired upon in a battleground in Syria. It shows a boy rescuing a girl from what looks like certain death. Dubbed the ‘hero boy’ video it was rapidly shared on social media and by the end of the week had been viewed millions of times. The film appeared to be a graphic depiction of a war crime – the deliberate attempt to kill non-combatant children.

VideoAs you may have seen from the news coverage, on Friday it was revealed to be a fake, shot in Malta by Norwegian director Lars Klevberg. The film project had been funded a total of  US$ 54 000 by the Norwegian Film Institute and the Audio and Visual Fund of the Arts Council Norway. Of course there is nothing remarkable in making a film about war. But deceiving millions of people by pretending that the footage is genuine is an act of, at best, gross stupidity.   Read More

Peace Processes Need Women

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International peace processes are dominated by men and men’s perspectives. In general the approaches used have changed little in many decades. The focus is invariably on bringing the conflicting parties to the negotiating table, where their claims to power and strategic positions are renegotiated and defined.

International women’s day demonstration in Monrovia, Liberia. Photo: UNMIL

Amnesties for brutal attacks on civilian populations have been the rule rather than the exception, conveying a message that the route to power is through the actual or threatened use of armed force. People who distance themselves from the use of violence and endeavour to find alternative approaches to conflict resolution are seldom invited to participate in formal peace negotiations. Currently however more and more people are calling for new thinking about approaches to international peacemaking. At a minimum we need seriously to consider the potential benefits of involving more women in peace processes.
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WWII Celebration Plans by Putin and Xi to Score Points

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Russian and Chinese presidents aim to divide US and allies, including Japan, with WWII celebration.

china-russia_2919509bWhen Chinese President Xi Jinping met Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, he stated that “Japan must look at history squarely and more towards the future.” Xi’s carefully selected words were taken from a text agreed upon in advance by the two countries’ foreign ministries. Behind the words lurk an agreement Xi has made with Russian President Vladimir Putin to jointly use the 70th anniversary in 2015 to “safeguard the outcome of the victory of World War II and post-WWII order.” The joint celebration plan aims to warn Japan against historical revision and could create difficulties for the US-Japan alliance.

Putin and Xi had already made known at their Shanghai meeting in May that Russia and China would organize joint events in a 2015 commemoration of the victory over “German fascism and Japanese militarism” with a view to “counteracting the efforts at falsifying the history and undermining the post-war world.” Implicitly this was meant as an attack on Abe’s December 2013 visit to the highly controversial Yasukuni Shrine. Putin spoke in Shanghai about the “great heroism of our peoples in World War II, “which brings Russia and China even closer.”

Read more at Yale Global, where the full text was published 13 November 2014.

This Week in South Sudan – Week 46, Part 2

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Friday 14 November UN OCHA multimedia presentation of the humanitarian aspects of the South Sudan crisis, A man-made catastrophe: A multimedia journey through South Sudan.  Officials have accused the Sudanese government of carrying out bombings in southern Blue Nile of Sudan and neighboring Maban County of South Sudan, the Sudanese army spokesman denied any involvement. Saturday… Read more »

Can Iraq be Fixed?

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Iraq’s new prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, faces the enormous task of uniting the country. But whatever the outcome, Iraq cannot be restored to how it was before the summer.

There is broad agreement that the former Iraqi prime minister, Nour al-Maliki, was a part of the problem, and that his replacement by Haider al-Abadi is a positive development. But the attacks in August, on Shia and Sunni mosques respectively, show once again that Iraq’s problems are systemic.

Kurdish Peshmerga on a T-55-Tank outside Kirkuk in Iraq. Photo: Boris Niehaus. CC BY-SA 3.0

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This Week in South Sudan – Week 46, Part 1

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Monday 10 November First UN World Food Program trucks arrived in South Sudan, marking the opening of a much needed humanitarian corridor through Sudan. Violent clashes between government forces and the SPLA-in-Opposition continue in Upper Nile, Jonglei and Unity state, despite last weekend’s rededication to the Cessation of Hostilities agreement. New report from the International… Read more »

Putin goes to China, but fails to turn his illusions into reality

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An odd man out in the APEC crowd

In a case of striking symbolism, President Vladimir Putin traveled to Beijing on the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, as if seeking reassurance against the specter of a mass public uprising. The dismantling of that icon of the Cold War signified a breakthrough in finally achieving a Europe united by the vision of freedom and democracy. But for Putin, as his past remarks suggest, it was a painfully traumatic experience that left him forever in fear of a sudden explosion of popular discontent (Gazeta.ru, November 4). The Chinese leadership shares his deep hostility to revolutions and tends to see the recent protests in Hong Kong as a manifestation of malignant Western conspiracy—much the same way that Putin saw the EuroMaidan protests in Kyiv as a coup orchestrated by the West (Moscow Echo, October 20). That said, Putin’s agenda for his meeting with President Xi Jinping and for what he hoped to accomplish at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was neither convincing nor relevant.

Read more in Eurasia Daily Monitor, November 10

Humanitarian Innovation, Humanitarian Renewal?

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The continued evolution of the humanitarian innovation concept needs a critical engagement with how this agenda interacts with previous and contemporary attempts to improve humanitarian action.

Accountability and transparency have been central to discussions of humanitarian action over the past two decades. Yet these issues appear generally to be given scant attention in the discourse around humanitarian innovation. Read More

This Week in South Sudan – Week 45, Part 2

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Friday 7 November According to the UN, South Sudanese security personnel impounded four trucks carrying peacekeeping cargo in the capital Juba, and assaulted the drivers, accusing them of transporting weapons to rebels. South Sudan’s warring parties committed to stop fighting and bring the conflict to an end without conditions, the chief mediator for IGAD said… Read more »

Journal of Eastern African Studies, Special Issue: Politics and violence in eastern Africa: the struggles of emerging states, c.1940-1990

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The newly published Special Issue of Journal of Eastern African Studies, Politics and violence in eastern Africa: the struggles of emerging states, c.1940-1990, edited by David M. Anderson and Øystein H. Rolandsen, features four articles relating to South Sudan:   1. Political violence and the emergence of the dispute over Abyei, Sudan, 1950– 1983. By… Read more »