By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Nov 13 2012 (IPS)

Start a global debate about the underlying reasons why poverty exists – and do it through cinema.

Courtesy of Bosse Lindquist

The ambitious new initiative “Why Poverty” brings together eight award-winning filmmakers and 30 emerging cinema talents to create documentaries touching on different aspects of poverty, such as gender and inequality, residential segregation, aid and trade.

From Nov. 25 to 30, the films will be aired across the globe via 62 national broadcasters, reaching 500 million people. An online conversation about the topic will follow.

Why Poverty was launched at the United Nations on Sep. 27, and is being run by the organisation Steps, based in Denmark and South Africa. The agenda is not to raise money or push for a single solution to global poverty – it is to ignite discussions about as many aspects of poverty as possible.

The Swedish filmmaker Bosse Lindquist takes on the angle of charity in his contribution, a documentary titled ”Give Us The Money”. He spoke to IPS correspondent Becky Bergdahl about the film, and its focus on the multimillionaire artists Bob Geldof and Bono, who have spent years advocating on behalf of the world’s poorest.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for the film?

A: I was invited by BBC, SVT and the other commissioning editors to have a look at charity and development. After having scouted the world of glitterati, I realised that Bob Geldof, who in many ways started celebrity involvement with the fight against poverty, was one of the few consistent long-term players.

He has been an activist ever since ’84, at first raising money for victims of starvation, then later working for system change. It soon also became clear that Bono joined him in this fight already in the 90s, and that these guys, cooperating with numerous other individuals and organisations, have achieved quite remarkable gains. And still are.

Q: Have the concerts and campaigns initiated by artists like Bono and Geldof managed to help poor people?

A: Yes. Having said this, it is also important to mention that there are no scientific studies showing exactly what impact they have had. The same goes, unfortunately, for the general impact of development aid on economic development in Africa. These are very complicated issues, depending on a multitude of factors.

Still, it is clear to me that Bono and Geldof played an important part in getting Africa’s outstanding debt to the rich world cancelled in 2005. Also, Bono and Geldof have helped President (George W.) Bush along to set up PEPFAR (the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief), and getting the rich world to fund GAVI (the Global AIDS Vaccine Initiative), two projects that together have funded a big part of the life-saving drugs that today reaches eight million HIV-infected Africans.

Q: Can a wealthy, white superstar really become a spokesperson for Africa’s poor?

A: Bono and Geldof have become adept advocates and lobbyists working for increased resources for the extremely poor in Africa, as well as for system change globally, to achieve important legislation regarding aid transparency. But spokespersons – no! This job must be done by Africans.

Q: How much of the artist-activists’ work is done for personal branding, and how much is done to help?

A: Quite a few celebrities engage in charity to enhance their own brands. I have found no proof of Bono or Bob Geldof doing this. But of course, their genuine advocacy surely is of no harm to their brands and record sales.

Q: The richest 20 percent of the world’s states consume 80 percent of the natural resources. Some people live in absolute luxury, others go hungry. Is it possible to achieve global equality – with or without the help of superstars?

A: We simply must work for a more equal and just world. Anything else would not be fair. Also, this is the only way if we want to make the world more peaceful and safe. I believe this is also is a prerequisite for making everyone team up and fight environmental hazards and global warming.

Q: And how can we achieve this?

A: The fight has to be carried out on numerous platforms. One very important fight is about enacting legislation that will counteract corruption and theft in transactions between countries with mineral or agricultural resources and buyers in the rich world.

Another huge fight is about giving every child on earth access to education. A third fight obviously is about ensuring that women have the same opportunities as men globally.

Q: What is your opinion on the concept of the “aid trap”, the theory that says that poor countries become dependent on foreign aid?

A: It is not so much the poorest countries getting dependent, it is more their government officials getting dependent. There is a corruptive element to all big cash transfers, and there is a constant danger that people will get seduced by this.

But the fact that such an “aid trap” certainly exists is no reason to stop all aid. Though it is a very strong reason to demand transparency regarding how aid is given and distributed, with inbuilt means for the recipients themselves to monitor how the money given to a country is disbursed.

Excerpt:

A small number of states in the United States have a peculiar power. As swing states, they are extremely influential in the outcome of the presidential election. As presidential candidates focus intensely on these states, some argue that this imbalance and several other factors threaten to undermine the country’s democracy.

Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll, explained to IPS what impact several aspects of America’s voting system have on elections and democracy. In addition to being in charge of America’s longest-running monitor of public opinion, he is also vice president of the National Council on Public Polls and the author of the book “Polling Matters: Why Leaders Must Listen to the Wisdom of the People”.

Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup poll. Photo courtesy of Gallup.

“It all depends on the composition of the states. They vary a lot in their culture. We have a group of Democratic states, and a group of Republican states. And we have a small group that is an even mixture of the two,” Newport told IPS. “These are the battleground states that the political campaigns are paying attention to.”

The states that are considered swing states, or states where no party has overwhelming support, can differ from election to election. This year, most political scientists and polling institutes identify nine of them: North Carolina, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, New Hampshire, Colorado, Wisconsin, Virginia and Nevada.

“They can change from time to time. But Florida and Ohio have always been considered swing states,” Newport noted.

Another state considered a swing state by some pollsters today is Pennsylvania. The state has voted for a Democratic president since 1988, but a recent poll from Susquehanna Polling & Research shows that the race between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney is tightening there.

“The two campaigns have been buying a lot of advertisement in Pennsylvania. The campaigners must think it is possible that it is becoming a swing state,” Newport explained.

Some see the presidential candidates’ intense focus on swing states as a problem that in the long run could weaken American democracy, as residents of different states are not equally encouraged to engage in politics and told to go vote with the same fervour.

“If you live in, for example, New York, which is overwhelmingly Democratic, you do not see the campaigns at all,” Newport said.

According to Newport, one way to change this problem would be switching from the current electoral college system to a direct popular vote.

Under the current electoral college system, voters in each of the 50 states, plus the District of Columbia, do not vote directly for a president. Instead, voters in each state cast ballots to select electors pledged to a presidential candidate. The electors in a state, whose numbers depend on the state’s representation in Congress, then formally elect the president.

All states except from Maine and Nebraska use a winner-take-all formula for this, so that the presidential candidate that wins a majority receives all of a state’s electoral votes. Critics argue that this system is undemocratic.

“The American public think that it would be better to switch to a direct popular vote,” Newport said. “We have done several polls, and the public always answered that we should go for a popular vote.”

If the president of the United States were elected by a direct popular vote, the population as a whole could be said to have a stronger voice. Now, a few swing states can be said to have disproportionate influence.

“For example, the campaigns are spending a lot of time in New Hampshire now. They would probably ignore New Hampshire if we would have a popular vote, since it is a small state,” Newport said. “The electoral college system would work well if the public would be evenly distributed between states. But this is not the case. We have very populated states, and less populated states.”

Switching to a direct popular vote would mean having to change the Constitution, however. “It is complex to change the Constitution. It is unlikely that it will happen – it takes too much effort,” Newport predicted.

As a result, swing states will probably continue to decide the outcome of the elections, just as Southern states will probably continue to vote Republican, while Northeast states will probably continue to vote Democrat.

“It is a historical pattern. It is just like Finland is different from Spain in Europe. The Southern states are very religious, they have had slavery, they have the highest number of black residents, they are poorer. They are totally different from the North,” Newport said.

“Politics is driven a lot by religion here, not economy. You are likely to think that poor people would vote Democrat. But here, if you are religious, you vote for the Republicans… It is an interesting system here in the U.S. It is the way they set it up years ago.”

In one night, Hurricane Sandy devastated large parts of the East Coast of the United States. But in the long run, the aftermath of the storm could have some positive effects as different religious communities learn to work side by side to tackle challenges brought on by the disaster.

“It is sometimes difficult for one faith community to come to the table and be an equal partner of discussion with other faith communities. But our experience here has been an extraordinary amount of willingness to cooperate,” Peter Gudaitis from New York Disaster Interfaith Services (NYDIS) told IPS.

NYDIS is a federation of faith-based organisations that work with disaster relief in New York City. Right now it is working in the Rockaways and on Staten Island to provide shelter and food, Gudaitis said.

“People believe that disaster relief is taken care of by the federal government and the Red Cross. But faith community response is actually the largest response to disaster – well, the largest human response, not financial,” he added.

The religious communities connected and coordinated by NYDIS represent over 80 different faith divisions. “NYDIS is the religiously most diverse emergency response organisation, and we are based in the most diverse city. We have Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, lots of different Christians,” Gudaitis said. “All faith communities participate united. Obviously, faith communities provide a sense of hope in times of crisis.”

Gudaitis noted, however, that getting different faith communities to cooperate is not always an easy task. NYDIS, established after Sep. 11, 2001, has experienced its fair share of inner conflicts.

“There is a lot of history between some faith communities. That makes it difficult for them to collaborate. One obvious example is the Jewish community and the Muslim community. Due to tensions in the Middle East, they have had a tense relationship here also.”

“But when there is a disaster in the U.S. they tend to work well together,” Gudaitis said. He added that “it is also a challenge to get some Christian communities to cooperate”. He believed that the experience after Hurricane Sandy might strengthen ties among different faith communities.

Debbie Almontaser, chair of the Muslim Consultative Network, which connects Muslim communities in New York City, had similar perspectives and experiences.

“We have gotten our student organisations to go out and volunteer now. They go to shelters, community houses, with Jewish and Christian volunteers,” Almontaser told IPS. “Sep. 11 helped galvanise interfaith cooperation. And this, for sure, is making people come out and work closely together.”

Almontaser also believed that the Muslim community in the United States can especially benefit from taking part in disaster relief. “In times of Islamophobia, seeing Muslim volunteers out there can change negative stereotypes,” Almontaser said. “This can really build bridges between people.”

The Muslim Consultative Network is currently emailing its members to find more volunteers for disaster relief work. The network is also “communicating with Muslim-based houses of worship on Staten Island to set up kitchens, food service”, Almontaser said.

“New Yorkers need to help each other now. Do unto others as you want others to do unto you. We have not had such a disaster since September 11….The time is hardest now, but there will also be long-term rebuilding required. I think we will see sustained cooperation between communities.”

Another faith-based relief organisation working hard at the moment is the Jewish Disaster Response Corps, which assists post-disaster rebuilding efforts across the United States.

“Right now we are looking to make sure that our community is doing good,” Elie Lowenfeld, the organisation’s founder and president, told IPS. “The strength that people take from faith in a time like this is invaluable.”

The Jewish Disaster Response Corps has experienced of interfaith cooperation in times of crisis before. After the outbreak of storms in the United States in April 2011, the Jewish organisation learnt to work together with the Islamic Circle of North America.

According to Lowenfeld, the experience sparked an interreligious dialogue, and helped to build bridges that hopefully will be useful in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. “We are out holding hands now,” he concluded.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers tours flooded areas in Burlington, North Dakota in June 2011. Credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers photo by Patrick Moes

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 23 2012 (IPS)

The United States endured its hottest summer in history this year, with droughts and wildfires ravaging the country. And according to a new report from the global reinsurance giant Munich Re, insurance losses related to extreme weather have nearly quadrupled in the U.S. since 1980.

So one might expect that climate change would be a hot topic in the debates being held ahead of the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 6.

But during the four nationally televised debates held so far – three presidential and one vice presidential – neither Democratic incumbent Barack Obama nor his Republican challenger Mitt Romney has even mentioned the subject of climate change.

“It is a missed opportunity to talk about one of the most serious challenges that we face,” Bob Deans, senior advisor for the Natural Resources Defence Council Action Fund, told IPS.

“According to a new survey from Texas University, 73 percent of the (U.S.) public believe that climate change is happening. In a recent Yale study, 70 percent say so. The surveys were made in September. So, what we see is that seven in 10 Americans notice this problem,” Deans said.

He cited the recent report from Munich Re, which found that natural disasters have increased more in North America than in any other region of the world since 1980. Insured losses from weather catastrophes in North America between 1980 and 2011 totaled 510 billion dollars, according to Munich Re.

This shows that climate change is just not an environmental issue – it is also a financial issue, Deans said.

“As people see the increase of extreme weather, people are getting the message that this is a serious economic issue, not just a question for tree huggers.

“Rising sea levels can mean that homes are at risk, and if your home is at risk, you cannot get a mortgage on the house. And look at the corn farmers that have not had a good crop in years. We see families that have had a farm for hundreds of years, and now they cannot do it anymore,” Deans said.

During the public debates, including one focused on U.S. foreign policy Monday evening, both Romney and Obama have mentioned the need to bring down high gasoline prices. Both were silent, however, on the question of lowering greenhouse gas emissions.

“It is becoming increasingly obvious that Obama and Romney are no different when it comes to their miscalculation that any mention of climate is a political liability,” Kyle Ash, climate campaigner at Greenpeace USA, told IPS.

“Despite recent polling showing the vast majority of the public are very concerned with climate change, both candidates prefer to pander to fossil fuel interests that invest against climate solutions,” he said.

“The biggest difference between Obama and Romney derives from the Republican campaign platform that denies climate change. However, both candidates have run administrations implementing climate pollution policies.”

Ash said that in the bigger picture, Obama and Romney risk losing votes if they keep ignoring the issue of global warming.

“Hundreds of thousands of Americans have already petitioned Obama and Romney to discuss their views on climate policy, since it is such a dire and pressing issue for the economy and even for our basic way of life,” Ash said.

In a bid to mobilise citizen action and pressure policymakers, the climate action group 350.org has launched a new campaign called Do The Math Tour, which kicks off on Nov. 7, the day after the presidential election, and involves events in 20 cities.

It has the support of celebrities such as author/activist Naomi Klein and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Desmond Tutu.

“If we are going to stand up to fossil fuel companies, we need a movement. They have all the money, so we need to try something different. This tour is designed to help grow a movement strong enough to win,” Daniel Kessler, media campaigner at 350.org, told IPS.

“It is simple math. We can burn 565 more gigatonnes of carbon and stay below two Celsius degrees of warming. Anything more than that risks catastrophe for life on Earth. The only problem? Fossil fuel corporations now have 2,795 gigatonnes in their reserves, five times the safe amount. And they are planning to burn it all, unless we rise up to stop them.”

Kessler also said that even though neither major candidate is speaking out enough about climate change, he believes there is still a clear difference between Obama and Romney.

“It looks as if (a) President Romney would be a disaster for both the environment and the climate. Romney has said that he wants to strip the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) of its authority to regulate carbon emissions, end tax credits for renewable energy, and preserve massive subsidies for oil and coal companies, who are already among the most profitable companies in the world,” Kessler said.

“President Obama’s policies are not strong enough to meet the challenge of global warming, but he has fought to protect the EPA, raised auto mileage standards, and made the single largest investment in world history in clean energy, with the stimulus.”

Neither the Obama nor the Romney campaign responded to IPS requests for comment on the issue.

But Scott McLarty, media coordinator for the Green Party, said, “The topic of climate change has been completely ignored by president Obama and Romney in the public debates.

“However, in the alternative debates, the Green Party candidate Jill Stein has spoken about climate change several times. And she will continue to talk about it,” McLarty told IPS.

Phakiso Mochochoko, representing the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), addresses the Security Council’s open debate on the promotion and strengthening of the rule of law in the maintenance of international peace and security, and the role of the ICC. Credit: UN Photo/Rick Bajornas

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 18 2012 (IPS)

Ten years after the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened its doors in The Hague, the United Nations Security Council held its first open discussion on the role of the court, with some nations reiterating complaints that its docket is highly politicised and has unfairly singled out African nations for censure.

The ICC is the only permanent international court with a mandate to prosecute individuals accused of the most heinous crimes – genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

The official seat of the court is in the Netherlands, but proceedings can take place anywhere in the world. The ICC has received complaints about alleged crimes in over a hundred countries, but investigations have only been opened into seven states so far, all of them in Africa – Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, the Central African Republic, Kenya, Libya and Cote d’Ivoire.

The ICC can either undertake an investigation on the prosecutor’s own initiative, if a case is referred to the court by the concerned states parties themselves, or if the case is referred to the court by the United Nations Security Council.

During the debate on Wednesday, representatives from several countries expressed concerns about the Security Council taking politicised decisions about which cases to refer to the Court.

The fact that the Security Council has not referred the burning case of Syria to the ICC, for example, was highlighted by representatives from a number of states.

Human rights groups have made similar critiques.

Human Rights Watch  recently sent a letter to 121 foreign ministers urging them to address the inconsistency of the Security Council’s referrals to the ICC. The letter calls for a development of a “coherent approach for referrals… to avoid double standards”.

”What I found most enlightening was the second part of the debate, with excellent interventions of non-Security Council members,” Richard Dicker, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, told IPS. “You heard again and again the same phrases repeated, a call for consistency.”

Under the ICC’s founding treaty, the Rome Statute, the Security Council shall refer a situation in any country to the ICC prosecutor if it determines that the situation amounts to a threat to international peace and security. But according to Human Rights Watch, the Council has failed to refer cases that are politically controversial, such as the situation in Gaza or Syria.

Human Rights Watch especially highlights the influence of the United States, Russia and China, all permanent veto-wielding members of the Security Council, and accuses the superpowers of going after their perceived enemies while protecting leaders of countries that they have close ties with.

”What I found lacking in the U.S. ambassador’s comment today was any firm commitment to an ICC referral on Syria,” Dicker said.

He said that even when it comes to the two cases that the Security Council has managed to refer to the ICC – Libya and Sudan – the actions of the Council have been insufficient.

For example, the Council referred the case of Libya unanimously to the ICC. But once the Muammar Gaddafi regime fell, the Security Council no longer actively supported the ICC investigation, nor did it press Libya’s new government to cooperate with the court.

”The court is just a light switch for the Security Council members to turn on and off to advance their political agenda… The Council seems to regard the ICC as a marriage of convenience,” Dicker told IPS.

Song Sang-Hyun, president of the ICC, was present at the Security Council meeting on Wednesday, as the first ICC president ever to be invited to the Council. He was obviously aware of the criticism being leveled at the Court and its relation to the Security Council.

”The ICC is a young institution… with plenty of work and progress, and still much to learn,” Sang-Hyun said.

He also expressed concern about funding, noting that “it is difficult to sustain a system” where the Security Council can refer cases to the ICC on behalf of all 193 U.N. member states while the cost of pursuing the cases is paid only by states parties to the ICC, those which have ratified the Rome Statute.

Currently, 121 nations are formal members of the ICC, 33 of them in Africa. While the African Union has advised its members not to cooperate with the ICC arrest warrant issued against Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Malian government officials recently went to The Hague to request that an investigation be opened into atrocities committed by Islamists in the country’s north.

Speaking to Women News Network, the president of the Assembly of State Parties to the Rome Statute said she is working to restore political support for the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Yes, there are concerns that there is less political enthusiasm about the court right now, and one of the reasons is quite obvious. The court is 10 years old so a lot of countries who in principle are very committed, they just take the court for granted. A lot of countries do not realise how much political support the court still needs,” said Ambassador Tiina Intelmann.

“They are forgetting that we are really in the business of trying to bring perpetrators of atrocities to justice. And it just so happens that very often the perpetrators of such crimes are people who have held or are holding high positions (in government). So, by definition, political support is necessary because these issues, besides being legal, are also political.”

The Korean Women’s Peasant Association won the 2012 Food Sovereignty Prize for its efforts on behalf of the survival of small-scale and ecologically sustainable farming in South Korea.

The announcement was made Wednesday at the fourth annual Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony in New York. In addition to its work on sustainable farming, the Korean Women’s Peasant Association(KWPA) also focuses on the consumer’s right to healthy and affordable food, decent wages and working conditions for farmers, and the right of female workers to receive the same wages as the men.

Jeomok Bak, chairperson of Korean Women’s Peasant Association, center, receives a Food Sovereignty Prize from Leticia Alanis, executive director of La Union, left, and Nancy Oritz-Surun, director of La Finca del Sur, right. Credit: Stuart Ramson/Insider Images for WhyHunger

“It is a great honour. I am really pleased that our work is being recognised,” Jeomok Bak, president of KWPA told IPS at the award ceremony. “Food is closely connected to women because women feed their families and children. The right to food is linked to women’s rights,” Bak added.

Apart from the winning organisation, three other initiatives fighting for food sovereignty were honoured at the ceremony, held at the National Museum of the American Indian and hosted by WhyHunger.

One of those initiatives, the Unified Peasant Movement of Aguan Region, did not have a representative at the event. Envoys from this Honduran association of over 2,500 landless peasants, working for the right to land in a country where governmental land grabbing for biofuel plantations is commonplace, were not allowed to leave their home country.

Instead, Lucy Paguada from Honduras Solidarity NYC, originally a Honduran citizen and now a U.S. resident, held a speech on behalf of her Honduran friends.

“We want to name those responsible for our social tragedy,” she said. “First, the United States government, for financing and training the Honduran police and army.”

Paguada went on to criticise leading politicians and landowners in Honduras, calling them “puppets of the U.S.”. She also expressed her anger at the assassination of Antonio Trejo Cabrera on September 22. The Honduran human rights lawyer, who defend the peasants movement, was gunned down after leaving a wedding south of the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa.

“He had previously denounced his killers on television,” Paguada said.

The two other initiatives being honored, National Fisheries Solidarity Movement from Sri Lanka and Coalition of Immokalee Workers from the state of Florida in the United States, were able to send representatives to the awards.

Rights for tomato workers

Lucas Benitez from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers told the audience about his movement’s struggle to improve working conditions at tomato farms in Florida. “90 percent of the tomatoes consumed in the U.S. in winter comes from Florida,” he explained. “This industry… is one of the richest and most powerful in this country.”

Despite the industry’s profits, in the past tomato pickers working in extreme heat were not provided with shade. Female employees who were sexually harassed had nowhere to go to report assaults. Working extremely long hours was standard, according to Benitez.

But the struggles of the CIW have helped to bring about a new code of conduct for the tomato industry in Florida. “Last week, we signed an agreement with Chipotle,” Benitez announced with pride, his voice strong.

The restaurant chain Chipotle Mexican Grill is a major purchaser of tomatoes in the United States and has now committed to buying the vegetables at a fair price.

Still, many fast food conglomerates and supermarkets still refuse to pay respectable prices for tomatoes, Benitez stated, and so the CIW’s work must continue. “We will not stop until we feel that we are treated with the respect that all human beings are being entitled to.”

A global dilemma

Olivier De Schutter, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, was a special guest at the Food Sovereignty Prize ceremony. He delivered a passionate speech about the meaning of food sovereignty.

The definition of the term is “the right of people to define their own food policy”, De Schutter said. The basic idea is that needs of those who produce, distribute and consume food – not the demands of markets and corporations – shall determine food policies.

“About 15 percent of the food being produced is traded across borders. It is not much,” De Schutter continued. “Yet that segment of the food system is determining all the rest to a large extent.”

“In many developing countries I see that investment goes to export agricultural products, not to the small farmers trying to feed their families. And look at how agricultural research and development is being financed. For whom? For the export market. For the large producers.”

The Belgian-born De Schutter also lashed out at his native Europe. “The European Union uses 614 million hectares (of land) annually to feed itself… 50 percent of this land that is used to satisfy the needs of the E.U. is land that is outside the Union, land in developing countries,” he said.

“Food does not go where the need is, it goes where the money is today.”

De Schutter also linked food sovereignty to climate change. “It is exactly because of climate change that we must deconcentrate food production, so that all regions are able to produce as much as they can for themselves. That is how resilience can be built.”

The event ended with a highly applauded performance by musician and activist Tom Morello, an original member of the bands Rage Against the Machine and Audioslave, who also had a few concluding words: “Some people choose between Rolls Royce and Lamborghini. Others choose between which dumpster they are going to get their food from tonight. That is a crime.”

By Walter García and Becky Bergdahl
NEW YORK, Oct 11 2012 (IPS)

Donald P. Green is a U.S. professor of political science who turns theories about hate crime upside down with his research.

Courtesy of Donald Green.

According to Green, hate crimes don’t stem from economic competition. Instead, they are rooted in a fear of the unknown – and from ideals of masculinity.

After 22 years teaching at Yale, he has been based at Columbia University in New York since 2011. IPS correspondent Becky Bergdahl sat down with Green at his office to talk about his work.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: Which groups are being targeted by extremists in the United States, and what sorts of hate crimes do they suffer?

A: Arabs and Muslims were being targeted in much greater numbers in the aftermath of 9/11 than before 9/11, but that has subsided. Some of the biggest groups being targeted today are gay men and lesbians, racial minorities, and then a broad array of different groups, including Jews and Muslims.

And people are often the subject of property attacks that are not necessarily associated with a physical confrontation. For example, swastikas painted on a Jewish cemetery, or Muslims having a stone thrown through the mosque window.

Q: Should hate crime laws be more uniform in the United States, to combat those acts of extremism?

A: Women and people with disabilities are only covered under hate crime statutes in some states. That is also true for gay men and lesbians. Some states have very broad statutes, whereas other states have what is known as “race, religion and ethnicity statutes”.

The problem that I see, especially in the case of gay men and lesbians, is that their probability of being protected is lowest where the risk of being attacked is probably the greatest. In that case, I think that having more uniformity would be useful. In the case of women, it is dicier. But the case could be made.

Q: Which are the sources of hate crimes?

A: There is going to be no single answer. My work tends to argue against those who believe that hate crime stems from economic competition. I do not find evidence that hate crimes surge in a period of economic downturn. Instead, I would argue that you get hate crimes when places, or ways of life, seem to be threatened by people perceived as outsiders.

For example, in the United States, when all-white neighbourhoods were first experiencing immigration in the 1970s and ’80s, you saw a massive surge of hate crime. Or in Germany after the unification, you saw a huge number of non-Germans come into Germany, especially into former East Germany, which had been quite homogenous. And then you saw a big surge of hate crime.

Q: I thought that living side by side would be a medicine against hatred – not the opposite.

A: In the long run it perhaps is. In the 70s and 80s, you saw this big surge of hate crime in the U.S., but as immigration became more common, those sorts of hate crimes subsided.

Q: Even if you have found no evidence for the theory that a financial crisis fuels hate crime, there is evidence that right-wing extremists are generally poorer and have lower education than the average. But the most striking statistic is that they are almost only men. There are of course also poor women with low education, but they do not tend to join extremist groups like men do. Why is it so?

A: I think that your point of gender differences helps to puncture the idea that there is pure economic motivation behind those crimes. It shows how important social reinforcement is. Men reward each other for their machismo or violence. They are more likely to engage in these kinds of behaviour, especially in small groups, whereas women are not.

And when people – well, men – are arrested for violent hate crimes, they are often surprised that they are being treated as criminals. They think of themselves as defenders of the culture.

Q: So how can we combat the growth of hate groups?

A: One thing that stands out is to clearly point out norms. Surprising to those of us who study hate crime is the infrequency of when publicly elected officials will say openly that this kind of behaviour runs counter to the laws of the United States. But I think more and more people understand that hate crime is subject to special penalties. Burning trash on someone’s lawn, that is arson. But if you are burning a cross on someone’s lawn, that is subject to stronger penalties.

In addition, the media has, through its portrayals of gay men and lesbians and interracial couples, changed the norms of what could be seen as ordinary behaviour.

Q: In Europe, many right-wing extremist groups used to be both racist and anti-gay. But all of a sudden, many of those groups now state that they respect gay rights – in contrast to Muslims. Are you familiar with this rhetoric?

A: It reminds me of how the United States during World War Two was in a tricky position vis-à-vis Nazi Germany. We were sending soldiers in segregated military units. The Germans surely noticed the irony of this, the hypocrisy of fighting Nazism with a racist set of institutions.

Q: Could an alliance against right-wing extremism, between Muslims and the gay rights movement, be possible?

A: That will obviously depend on what people who set the norms of Islam will say in the years to come. Their current norms are conservative. But I wonder whether in the future they will soften their line. It might seem inconceivable now, but my guess is that 50 years from now, we will gradually see it.

Excerpt:

By Becky Bergdahl
NEW YORK, Oct 8 2012 (IPS)

One morning, Tarun Tejpal awoke to learn that five hitmen had been arrested for having a contract to kill him. Suddenly, the life of the prominent Indian journalist and editor was turned upside down.

Tarun Tejpal. Credit: Shailendra Pandey

For the next nine years, he had to live with constant police protection.

What to do with all this time when he was not able to go outside without planning every step ahead, and having bodyguards breathing over his shoulder? Write a book, of course.

“The Story of My Assassins”, now being released in the United States, is loosely based on the murder attempt that Tejpal survived. The protagonist of the novel is an Indian news reporter who discovers that there is a price on his head. When he tries to find out who wants him dead, he unveils the ugly truth of India – the corrupt elite and the impoverished masses.

Tejpal spoke to IPS correspondent Becky Bergdahl about his portrayal of his home country and obstacles to press freedom in the world’s largest democracy.

Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: “The Story of My Assassins” came out in India in 2009, and now it is being released in North America. What do you wish Western readers will take away from the novel?

A: I hope that they get a deeper idea of the immense complexity of India. For too long, Western narratives of India have been dominated by black and white visions. Once upon a time it used to be a land of snakes, gurus and poverty. And then 15 years ago it became the new superpower, a nuclear power, the next big dominating software nation. None of these accounts is really accurate. I hope that people read the story and discover that Indian reality is infinitely more complex.

Q: The book includes vulgar language and there is a plethora of sex scenes and violence. How has the story been received in India?

A: Critically, it got a fantastic reception. It was applauded especially for portraying the truth of the underclass of India. The thing is that if a writer tries to capture reality, then he has to strive to be true to the actual language. And I am sorry, but people on the wrong side of the street do not speak in Harvard English… The job of literature is not to instruct schoolchildren.

Q: In the book there is a line saying that more than 50 years of democracy has changed nothing in India. Is that also your personal opinion?

A: It is not how I see it, it is how the narrative sees it. I think India is going through immense change. When it comes to the status of dalits, the status of women, the status of tribals, great changes have come. But it is certainly not enough. For a lot of people in India, life is still dark. There is crime, four-year-old children begging, sub-Saharan (Africa) levels of poverty… But software success, nuclear power, wealth, it is also a part of India.

Q: The conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India serves as a backdrop of your novel. And Muslim Pakistan is called “the enemy of India” in the book. Is there an end to the hatred?

A: These are street perceptions. In India, the normal man tends to see Pakistan as the enemy. In Pakistan, the normal man tends to see India as the enemy. This is a kind of bad political rhetoric that has taken root in both countries. I think people with motives keep exploiting the sentiment.

Q: According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, India is now the eighth deadliest country in the world for journalists, and the threats often come from Hindu and Muslim fundamentalists. Can you tell me about the threats that you have received?

A: There was the incident, on which the novel is based, with five hitmen being arrested for having a contract to kill me. It was very strange, I could make no sense of it. Initially it meant much discomfort, I had to live with huge police protection for nine years. But after some time, you go on living your life even if you are always surrounded by policemen.

Directly, this is the only time I felt threatened. According to the Delhi police, the ISI (the intelligence services of Pakistan) had paid these five hitmen to kill me. I was in a big battle with the government of India over an exposé of corruption at the time, so the rationale was that if something happened to me then the government would have to take the blame and it would fall.

Q: Is there real freedom of press in India?

A: I think freedom of press exists in India, and journalists continue to do a lot of uncomfortable work. Can we do more? Of course. But then there is the concern of financial well-being, as much as physical well-being. There is very little support, commercially, for this kind of work. And that often becomes a bigger challenge than the physical threat.

Excerpt:

Women's sexual and reproductive rights are at the heart of sustainable development, experts say. Credit: Fahim Siddiqi/IPS

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 2 2012 (IPS)

Gathered at the Ford Foundation in New York Monday, international luminaries, family planning experts and women’s rights activists repeatedly expressed a common sentiment: “I cannot believe that we are still having this discussion today.”

They were there to mark the launch of a new 26-member high-level task force to galvanise support behind the goals of the International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD).

That conference took place nearly two decades ago, in Cairo, Egypt in 1994. It resulted in a Programme of Action that become the guiding document for the United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA.

The Programme of Action contains four global goals. First, universal access to education for all, including women and girls. Second, reduction of infant and child mortality. Third, reduction of maternal mortality. And fourth, access to reproductive and sexual health services, including family planning.

The ICPD goals will celebrate their 20th anniversary in 2014. None have been reached so far, especially the last.

“I would not say that the goals have not been fulfilled, but that they have only been partially fulfilled. There are a number of reasons for this,” Gita Sen told IPS.

Sen is a professor of public policy at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore, and has worked on population policies for 35 years. She is a member of the new task force, and attended the conference in Cairo in 1994.

“One thing that has definitely happened in those 18 years is that there is a language of sexual and reproductive rights, which was never there before,” Sen said.

“A part of what we are seeing is that this language has scared some people in governments, some very religious people, some social conservatives, who see this as a zero-sum game,” she said.

“They think that if women are empowered, if young people get autonomy and choice, they are going to lose out in terms of their ability to control them. Which is probably true, to some extent. But in the end it is for a better life for everybody.”

According to Sen, the rise of conservatism, hindering achievement of the ICPD goals, has its roots in the United States.

“For example, the spread of evangelical conservatism in Africa is funded heavily from this country. It is funded by very rich people who are pouring their millions into very poor countries, in order to ensure that they turn their agenda away from sexual and reproductive rights, against gender equality. And with that much money pouring in it is hardly surprising that we have faced so much trouble as we do.”

Yet Sen maintains a positive attitude. “We are going to win this one. You can not keep young people and women back forever. This is not the dark ages,” she concluded.

Much remains to be done. A staggering 200 million women worldwide still lack access to effective contraception. This results in 80 million unintended pregnancies each year, with 40 million ending in unsafe abortions, many with life-threatening consequences.

And 800 women who carry out their pregnancies, wanted or unwanted, die every day in childbirth – 99 percent of them in developing countries.

“We know that our response has been inadequate,” Ishita Chaudhry, a member of the new task force and the leader of the youth organisation TYPF in India, working for sexual and reproductive rights, said at the event.

Chaudhry highlighted the importance of banning child marriage in order to achieve the ICPD goals.

Child brides, girls married before their 18th birthday, run especially high risks of unwanted pregnancy and also of abuse. And there are currently over 60 million child brides worldwide.

Chaudhry told the audience about how she grew up in a middle-class family in India, with her mother working as a teacher in the slums. When Chaudhry befriended some of her mother’s students, she was shocked to learn that the most common topic of discussion was if the girl’s parents were planning to marry them off.

“I lost some of my closest friends… They got married and their husbands wanted them to stay home to cook and clean and have babies,” Chaudhry said.

On top of that, marital rape was not considered a crime in India at the time, and it is still legal in a great number of states.

“How do you say no when your government do not recognise your right to do it?” Chaudhry asked.

One in seven women experience domestic or sexual violence in their lifetime. Up to one in four women experience abuse during pregnancy. This has ravaging consequences for the women and for their babies, and for the society as a whole.

“Women’s sexual and reproductive rights are at the heart of sustainable development,” said Tarja Halonen, a former president of Finland and co-chair of the new high-level task force.

“Pregnancy should be one of the happiest times in our life… Girls pay the price of taboos and double standards,” she said.

Crown Princess Mary of Denmark also appeared at the launch of the new task force, of which she is a member.

“We are here today because… the Cairo agenda is an unfinished agenda,” Princess Mary said.

A famous feminist slogan is that the personal is political. And Princess Mary did go on to talk about day-to-day life in the Danish royal family.

“My oldest son is soon that age when he will start to ask how babies are made. He will receive answers from us, and education in school… With knowledge comes the opportunity to make informed decisions,” she said.

According to Princess Mary, talking about sex may very well be uncomfortable. “But not talking about these issues might have a much higher price.”

The Haitian government and international agencies are ramping up their efforts to relocate the people still living in camps across Haiti after the Jan. 12, 2010 earthquake. A worker clears rubble at a construction site in Port-au-Prince on Sep. 7, 2012. Credit: UN Photo/Logan Abassi

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

Haitian Prime Minister Laurent Lamothe and representatives from more than 50 non-governmental organisations, including actor-activist Sean Penn, met in New York on Monday to present a new roadmap for humanitarian aid in the country.

“It is gonna help the NGOs, the serious NGOs, and it is gonna weed out the bad apples,” Lamothe told IPS after the meeting.

“We have a new coordination unit for NGOs that will have guidelines and standards to abide by. So there is a continous effort and push to monitor what the NGOs are doing,” he said.

The event, organised by the U.N. Development Programme, took place during the 67th session of the U.N. General Assembly. The roadmap presented at the meeting is intended to help the Haitian government to supervise the 560 NGOs registered as working in the Caribbean state.

In brief, the roadmap outlines the government’s next steps in coordinating humanitarian, development and charity-based organisations in the country. Two important steps will be the establishment of a national NGO Forum, and the establishment of a consultation process on a new NGO legislation.

The roadmap points out that the responsibility of all prioritisation of efforts shall rest in the hands of national authorities, in order to avoid fragmentation of efforts.

Poverty-stricken Haiti already received international humanitarian aid before the 7.0-magnitude earthquake that hit the country on Jan. 12, 2010. But after the disaster, which left approximately 300,000 dead and 1.5 million people homeless, Haiti has received so much funding aid through foreign NGOs that the country has been nicknamed “a republic of NGOs”.

The aid has not always been helpful. John Chaloner, representing CCO Haiti, a consortium of international NGOs operating in the country, lamented that cooperation problems between NGOs were “common and all too frequent” after the earthquake.

About two-thirds of Haiti’s budget currently comes from foreign assistance.

Rebecca Grynspan, U.N. under-secretary general and associate administrator of the United Nations Development Programme, said that the international community has to focus more on “backing national institutions” in Haiti. Grynspan called for a “transitioning from humanitarian aid”.

But Grynspan also stressed that NGOs have offered, and are still offering, vital help to Haitians, including health services, shelter, education and food aid.

These groups will continue to play a crucial role as more than two-thirds of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, and the state offers little social security.

Prime Minister Lamothe agreed with her, emphasising that according to the new roadmap, the government will have greater authority to oversee aid projects in Haiti. “It is all a question of organisation,” Lamothe said. “There was a lack of leadership before.”

Lamothe acknowledged that this will not be an easy task for the government, in office since last year. The unemployment rate in Haiti is currently over 70 percent, and over 80 percent of the economy remains informal. “We are not getting enough tax revenue,” Lamothe said, lamenting how the financial difficulties limit the government’s ambitions.

In the long run, Haiti needs to boost its own agricultural production and industry, according to Lamothe. “We do not want to continue to be known as an NGO nation,” he said. “Haiti needs to start producing and stop importing.”

Film star Sean Penn, founder of J/P HRO, an NGO operating in Haiti, said that “NGOs’ primary job is to put themselves out of business.” This is yet not possible in Haiti, he conceded, adding that, “Instead, we must create sustainability.”

Out of the 1.5 million Haitians left homeless by the earthquake, 1.1 million have been relocated. But the remaining 400,000 are still living in tents. Penn expressed special concerns about security in the camps, after numerous incidents of assault and rape.

Penn also said that “serious security issues” throughout the country are discouraging international companies from investing there and slowing down economic progress.

Still, Penn believes the outlook is positive. “Haiti is on the verge of letting us all see the fruit of our work there,” he concluded.

In 2007, Angeline Mwarusena, who lives in the Democratic Republic of Congo, was repeatedly raped by soldiers from Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). Credit: Einberger/argum/EED/IPS

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 26 2012 (IPS)

At a high-level event at the United Nations in New York on Tuesday, U.N. Women, the United Nations body for female empowerment and gender equality, called for stronger action from world leaders to prevent and punish sexual violence in conflict.

“The fact remains that women’s bodies remain a battleground, and impunity remains the norm rather than the exception,” said Michelle Bachelet, a former president of Chile and the current executive director of U.N. Women. “The experience of women during and after conflict continues to be one of violence and insecurity.”

According to Bachelet, an individual’s access to justice after a conflict is highly dependent upon that person’s gender. Compared to male victims, female victims of war crimes are less likely to see their cases taken to court and are less likely to receive reparations.

Bachelet suggested three strategies that could help begin to tackle the problem.

The first, expanding women’s participation in post-conflict recovery, “provides an opportunity for women to ensure that peace agreements, new laws and new constitutions do not reinforce the pre-existing status quo and that they advance equality and justice”, Bachelet said.

Underscoring her point is the fact that according to U.N. Women, in recent peace negotiations, women have represented less than eight percent of participants. Less than three percent of signatories to peace agreements have been women, and no woman has ever been appointed chief or lead mediator in U.N.-sponsored peace talks.

Bachelet also said that women’s organisations must be supported by the world’s governments in order to take on and address gender inequalities that “make women more vulnerable to sexual and gender-based crimes during and after conflicts”.

Finally, Bachelet said, the international community, national governments, civil society and individual actors must cooperate to secure accountability for conflict-related, gender-based crimes.

As part of an effort to tackle the issue of and reduce gender-based crimes in times of conflict, U.N. Women and the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations together have initiated “the first ever scenario-based training for military peacekeepers” to prevent sexual violence, Bachelet announced at the meeting.

“We are currently testing this training in major troop contributing countries,” Bachelet said. “Earlier this month, a first training took place in The Hague on investigating cases of sexual and gender-based violence as international crimes.”

Zainab Bangura, recently appointed Special Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, added at the meeting that “for too long, conflict-related sexual violence has been largely cost-free for those who rape women, children and men, whereas the costs have been borne by the victims”.

“Even as we ensure that survivors receive the care and services they require, we must insist that sexual violence in conflict is not inevitable, but that the consequences for the perpetrators are,” Bangura stated.

UK Foreign Secretary William Hague elaborated on what victims endure in bearing the costs of the crime, emphasising that the silence surrounding sexual assault often is even harder to break when it comes to crimes committed against men and children.

“We must break the silence if we are to achieve sustainable peace and prosperity,” Hague said. “The UK stands ready to put its full weight this agenda, as a catalyst for others to take action.”

Renowned American peace activist and feminist Jody Williams, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work on banning antipersonnel landmines, agreed with Hague.

“Survivors of sexual violence are brutalised twice – first by the perpetrators of the crimes against them, and the second time by governments that fail to apply the rule of law and ensure justice for survivors,” Williams concluded.

The side event to the 67th U.N. General Assembly was arranged by U.N. Women in cooperation with the UK Foreign Secretary, the Office of the Special-Representative of the Secretary-General on sexual violence in conflict, and the International Campaign to Stop Rape and Gender Violence in Conflict.

On the International Day of Peace, Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka visited the United Nations – and called for armed intervention against the terrorist group Boko Haram in his home country of Nigeria.

“This is a violent organisation,” Soyika told IPS. “What do you do with them? I am sorry, but you must fight them.”

On Sep. 21, 2012 the International Day of Peace was celebrated with a debate about how to build a global culture of tolerance. Invited to participate were such superstars  as actor Forest Whitaker, economist Jeffrey Sachs, and Wole Soyinka, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1986.

After his speech, Soyinka spoke to IPS about the situation in his native Nigeria, where the Islamist militant group Boko Haram is responsible for thousands of deaths and the bombings of several churches in Nigeria in recent years. The group seeks to establish sharia law in the country. Their presence is particularly strong in the north of the country.

“We have an organisation which closes down schools, shoots faculty teachers, knocks out children and turns most of the north into an educational wasteland. How can we reach the children there? We must first get rid of Boko Haram,” Soyinka lashed out.

“We have a contradiction,” he acknowledged. “How do we get rid of Boko Haram? Violence must become involved. That is a dilemma.”

Calling for armed intervention on Peace Day may certainly seem like a paradox. But Soyinka’s call for attacking Boko Haram in order to stop the group’s attacks on schools made more sense after Friday’s debate, where speaker after speaker highlighted the importance of education to enable a global culture of peace to grow.

As stipulated in the 1999 Declaration and Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace, the United Nations’ primary goal is to “create and maintain world peace” through economic, social and political agreements, and in the worst cases through military intervention.

In order for such a framework to succeed, a foundation of peace and a culture of tolerance must to be built. A cornerstone in building this culture is inculcating respect for others in children.

“The real weapon of mass destruction is ignorance,” said British-Iranian philanthropist Nasser David Khalili, one of the speakers during the event to emphasise the importance of schooling building a culture of peace. “The solution must be education.”

Another important point came from Jeffrey Sachs, professor of sustainable development at Columbia University. “As an economist it strikes me… how hunger and poverty are incendiary parts of war,” Sachs said. In the Sahel region of Mali this summer, for example, a famine sparked conflict between nomads and farmers over access to water.

Sachs drew attention to the fact that critical issues such as these receive too little attention, describing the great frustration he felt as he failed to raise money from the World Bank on behalf of Mali. “Shout Al-Qaeda, and you get millions for missiles. But try to do something preventive, and you do not get anything.”

He urged global leaders to invest in “development rather than military”. Globally, “we are spending more than 10 times more on the military than we do on development,” Sachs said. “In the U.S. the rate is 30 to one.”

U.N. Women‘s Deputy Executive Director Lakshmi Puri continued with the theme of social justice in order to achieve peace, highlighting the importance of including women in poverty eradication programmes. “Women bear the brunt of poverty,” Lakshmi said.

After her speech, Lakshmi told IPS that it is important to remember that even religious freedom has its limits, in reference to the use of religion as an excuse for acts of violence. “We believe that no religion sanctions, or in any way justifies, violations of human rights and women’s rights,” she stressed.

Film star and UNESCO goodwill ambassador Forest Whitaker concluded the event. “We must never believe that it is right to inflict pain against others, even if we do not agree with them,” he said.

By Becky Bergdahl
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 21 2012 (IPS)

Friday is not just any day – it’s the International Day of Peace. Concerts, debates and moments of silence will be held all over the planet to commemorate the ideal of global truce and tolerance.

Lilia Sales.

One person who does not celebrate Peace Day once a year but rather all year round is Lilia Maia de Morais Sales. She is vice-president of research and graduate programmes at the University of Fortaleza in Brazil, and holds a PhD in law.

In 2010, Sales designed the project “Flores do Bom Jardím”, meaning “Flowers from Bom Jardím”. The project teaches conflict mediation skills to women from a violent suburb outside the city of Fortaleza.

The Brazilian academic and activist spoke with IPS correspondent Becky Bergdahl about women’s role in peacebuilding and described how local conflict resolution can be just as complicated as international peace talks.

Q: The celebration of Sep. 21 every year is meant to promote worldwide tolerance and pacifism. Which are the biggest challenges to that goal, in your opinion?

A: Peace Day is an excellent initiative of the United Nations. But I can see at least three big challenges. First of all promoting peace requires collaborative actions among governmental and non-governmental organisations, the civil society and the private sector. Second, a broader perception of actions for peacebuilding is required, a perception that involves development, justice and environmental issues. Third, we need to be aware of the root causes of conflicts and violence.

Q: The international community has been shaken by a number of atrocious examples of hate crimes lately. Even the generally peaceful state of Norway was struck by massive terror last year. Is there any way to prevent such acts of extremism?

A: Acts of extremism can have many causes, and they must be detected in order to create effective solutions. Sometimes the cause is a clinical matter, like undiagnosed or untreated mental illness. Having said that, mental illness may be aggravated by social stressors. If you look at some cases you can see that some of the perpetrators have participated in (extremist) political debates on the Internet. What might be a way to prevent these acts of extremism is to build a more democratic society.

Q: Do women play a special role in peacebuilding? And if so, how?

A: Instead of violence, peacebuilding uses negotiation and mediation to solve conflicts. A peacebuilding process is facilitated by a third party that promotes dialogue, de-escalates hostility, and helps building consensus.

Many women are already acting as mediators, building peace in their homes, their neighbourhoods, and their workplaces. But this is only the beginning. To make a big difference in the world’s peacebuilding processes, women must conquer governmental arenas. As the number of female leaders increases, women will affect peacebuilding processes more.

Q: The International Day of Peace was established by a United Nations resolution in 1981, and the first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982. How would you describe the development when it comes to women’s role in peacebuilding since the early 1980s?

A: The world has witnessed female leaders making a big difference while negotiating peace. Among them I would like to mention Leymah Gbowee in Liberia and Michelle Bachelet in Chile. But if you study women’s participation in peace processes you notice that it is still very small. We can occasionally see women participating during negotiations, but rarely as main mediators or main negotiators.

Q: Are there any clear differences between female negotiators and their male counterparts?

A: It is very important that both sides in a negotiation share information, and studies show that women are more likely to share information than men in such situations. This means that women work in a more collaborative way, and more often get into deeper discussions, finding the issues that matter, rather than taking superficial positions.

Q: How would you describe the situation in your country, Brazil?

A: We have our first female president now, Dilma Rousseff. That is a great achievement. But we also have alarming statistics regarding violence against women, especially regarding domestic violence. That shows that somehow we still live in a barbaric and primitive world, and that we still have a long way to go before we achieve peace.

Q: You have initiated a very special project called “Flores do Bom Jardím”, that offers education for women of low socioeconomic status from the community of Bom Jardím outside the city of Fortaleza in Brazil, so that they can join the job market. You also train the women, coming from a suburb plagued by violence, in conflict resolution. Can you tell me more about the project?

A: The project was designed in 2010 as a follow-up to a federal project called “Women for Peace”. The main goal is to empower women from Bom Jardím. We offer classes in telemarketing, administration skills, hairdressing and cooking, among other things. In addition there are preparatory courses for those wishing to pursue college education.

All courses include mediation and human rights concepts. The classes are hands-on with group discussions, sharing of personal experiences, and learning through music and documentaries.

More than 500 women have participated. Now they mediate conflicts, they are joining the work market – they are becoming leaders. The testimonies from the women of Bom Jardím tell a story of a new beginning.

Q: Does local, small-scale conflict resolution, such as mediation in Bom Jardím, have anything in common with international peace mediation?

A: Yes. The community of Bom Jardím is the most violent area in Fortaleza. There are all sorts of conflicts. Conflicts in families, schools, neigbourhoods, and homicide, drug traffic and gangs. The women (that we have been teaching) have been mediating in many cases, it is like international peace mediation.

Q: Last but not least, what are your hopes for the future when it comes to peacebuilding?

A: I hope we decide that dialogue is the best way to solve conflicts. And I hope that women will be respected as leaders, and that they will lead by example.

Excerpt:

Myanmar, also known as Burma, has taken important steps towards democracy and greater respect for human rights during the last months with one exception, activists say – the situation for the Rohingya minority, which has faced an outburst of violent attacks this summer.

A Rohingya woman in a refugee camp. Credit: Rohingyarefugeebangladesh/cc by 2.0

Activists are now hoping that opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will raise awareness of the issue when she visits the U.S. this week.

“I think she has a real opportunity to influence the debate,” Elaine Pearson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch‘s Asia division, told IPS after speaking at an event about Myanmar held at Columbia University in New York City on Friday.

“She has not been raising the question enough. She has been quite vague. She is a politician now, and these issues are highly divisive. I think she has concerns about taking a stand. But it is important to speak out,” Pearson continued.

Myanmar, a former British colony, was shaken by a military coup in 1962. Since then the country has been controlled by oppressive military governments.

But after decades of military rule a new, quasi-civilian government took office in early 2011. In April this year, another step towards democracy was taken when relatively free parliamentary by-elections were held. The famous opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi won a seat in the Parliament, along with several dozen other members of her National League for Democracy (NLD).

Aung San Suu Kyi has been a uniting force of the democratic opposition in Myanmar since the late 1980s. Due to her popularity, she has spent most of the two past decades detained under house arrest. She was unable to go Norway to collect the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991. In 2010 she was released. And now she is a member of Parliament.

Pearson recently visited Myanmar on the behalf of Human Rights Watch, and says there have been positive developments in the country, such as land reform, the release of political prisoners, and newspapers reporting relatively freely on topics that were not being covered before.

“I saw progress that would have been unthinkable just 12 months ago,” Pearson said. “But progress is mainly restricted to Rangoon. For the majority of the population in Burma, the situation remains the same. And in Arakan it has gone from bad to worse.”

As IPS reported in June, clashes between the Muslim Rohingya minority and ethnic Buddhist Burmese broke out in the Arakan region in Myanmar after a story spread about a Buddhist woman being raped by three Muslim men. The violence is still going on.

“We see beheadings and stabbings between neighbours, parts of cities burnt to the ground,” Pearson said.

The Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, also invited to the event at Columbia University, expressed his deep concerns about the situation.

“There are many things to celebrate in Burma right now. But there are also difficulties,” he said, calling the persecution of the Rohingya “an enormous problem”.

Sen said mobs of ethnic Burmese are attacking the Rohingya with the help of the military. “The security forces do not secure. Instead they commit violence,” he said.

Wakar Uddin, director general of the Arakan Rohingya Union, an umbrella of 25 different associations representing the Rohingya minority around the world, agreed.

“Massive ethnic cleansing is taking place as we speak today,” he said. “It amounts to genocide.”

Uddin called for an immediate stop of the violence, but also for more long-term solutions, such as giving the Rohingya the right to citizenship in Myanmar, and an improvement of their living conditions. Uddin brought up extreme poverty, forced labour, arbitrary arrests, land confiscations, mass rape and torture as some of the most burning problems.

He said some 1.5 million Rohingyas out of a total three million are living under abysmal conditions in Myanmar. Another 1.5 million externally displaced live under very hard circumstances in neighbouring countries. Uddin urged the Burmese government to give the refugees the right of return.

T. Kumar, director of Amnesty International USA, said he was “appalled about what is happening”. Kumar was especially concerned about curfews for the Rohingya in the Arakan province. “They are locked up in villages. It is a new form of detention,” he said. “Even if they are sick, thay can not go to see the doctor… There are people dying because of the restrictions. And imagine the impact on the kids, they can not go to school.”

According to Elaine Pearson, the Burmese government is doing very little to solve the alarming situation. They have initiated a report on the sectarian violence, but Pearson deems the commission being charged with writing the report insufficient. ”There has been no accountability of the abuses committed by the state security forces. The government is not looking into the citizenship law. And I see partiality and bias of members of the commission.”

“The government has clearly failed in addressing these issues… I think there will be a long, rocky road before we see peace,” Pearson said.

Pearson was also sceptical about some peace agreements being signed between the government and ethnic guerillas in Myanmar. She expressed concerns about what she called “cease-fire capitalism”, referring to a phenomenon of the government and guerilla leaders dividing natural resources between them.“I have a concern that the ethnic minorities will loose out in all this,” Pearson said.

A stream of hope is the news that Aung San Suu Kyi will be arriving in the U.S. this week. From September 18 until October 2 she will hold a number of speeches and take part of several meetings about the situation in Myanmar.

“Aung San Suu Kyi is the person who has the moral authority to ask for a respect for basic human rights. I hope she will take a more active stance on these issues”, Pearson concluded.