RIGHTS: Shadow of Kosovo Hangs Over Hague Peace Appeal

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, May 7 1999 (IPS) - Diplomatic activity moved up a gear here and in Europe Friday in an effort to end the conflict in Yugoslavia while government ministers and peace activists prepared to meet in The Hague to seek an even more ambitious goal: an end to all war.

The Hague Appeal for Peace scheduled May 11-15, will bring together 12 foreign ministers as well as non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and Nobel laureates to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Czar Nicholas’s conference for peace at The Hague.

Altogether some 3,000 delegates will meet in the Dutch city against the backdrop of the turmoil in the Balkans caused by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) bombing of Yugoslavia.

The diplomatic flurry began Thursday when Russia and the seven major western industrial powers agreed on a set of principles for resolving the Kosovo conflict but all sides expected the bombings to continue – along with the Yugoslav expulsion of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian majority – for several more weeks.

These facts highlighted the dilemma for peace activists, divided between worries about NATO warfare and opposition to the ethnic cleansing of the Kosovars.

“The crisis in Kosovo only serves to underscore the need to exercise a greater number of creative diplomatic measures before resorting to the use of force in the face of humanitarian crises,” said Cora Weiss, president of the Hague Appeal for Peace (HAP).

“In any event, we don’t want any more Kosovos in the future.”

Weiss noted that three panels will convene in The Hague to discuss the Kosovo crisis, although plans have been dropped for a “moot court” to determine the legality of the NATO strikes.

Still, as Judy Collins, the US singer and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) goodwill ambassador, observed the Kosovo crisis will likely permeate much of the conference’s work because it asks a crucial question: “How do we limit these terrible wars?”

A large roster of veteran peace activists, from human rights groups to anti-landmine organisations, will discuss four broad themes to deal with answering that question: disarmament; human rights law; conflict prevention and resolution; the creation of a culture of peace.

The results of these discussions will be presented to the Millennium Assembly of the UN General Assembly, to aid that body’s debate on peace issues next year, said UN Assistant Secretary- General Gillian Sorensen.

At least part of the conference’s effort, said Stephen Lewis, deputy director of UNICEF, would be to prevent the rising tide of conflicts within states that largely targeted and victimised civilians.

“During the decade of the 1990s, we should have had a doomsday clock for civil conflict,” Lewis said, adding that any such clock would have been depicted “with its hands at one minute to midnight”.

Lewis said the document accompanying the Hague Appeal, called ‘The Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice’, was a “compelling and lucid” text that could suggest concrete steps to prevent future catastrophes like the 1994 Rwanda genocide or the Kosovo conflict.

Despite the Appeal’s large agenda, the current meeting – unlike its 1899 predecessor – will be organised and attended largely by NGOs and not governments, said Bill Pace, the HAP Secretary- General.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajid was the only prime minister scheduled to visit the Netherlands for the meeting. Top officials of the Dutch government will take part, however, as will Cabinet ministers from Albania, Jordan, Canada, Norway, Ireland, Sweden, Mexico, Lebanon and Bosnia-Hercegovina.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan will head the UN delegation attending the talks, and other invited guests include East Timorese Nobel laureate Jose Ramos Horta, Queen Noor of Jordan and South African first lady Graca Machel.

Yet equally significant are the officials who will not be in attendance – including any senior officials from the United States and Russia, the world’s two most heavily-armed powers and the main players in the diplomatic maneuvering over Kosovo.

Nor are delegates blind to the irony that they will be gathering in the capital of a NATO member state at the very moment that the 19-nation alliance is participating in air attacks on Yugoslavia, a non-NATO state.

One peace activist remarked that some participants were worried that Dutch officials may begin the meeting by lauding NATO’s actions on behalf of the Kosovars – a topic which remains controversial within the peace movement.

Ramos Horta, for example, noted bitterly last month that many of the same countries participating in the NATO operation against Yugoslavia continued to sell arms to Indonesia, which he blamed for aiding in massacres in East Timor.

“I don’t think we’re going in with naivete about the challenge before us,” Pace said. Weiss agreed, emphasising that the delegates for the Hague Appeal have come prepared to deliver “action-oriented” proposals to halt arms traffic, resolve conflicts and strengthen the enforcement of human rights.