Courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 10 2012 (IPS)

Among Tiokasin Ghosthorse’s childhood memories is the “reign of terror” that engulfed the Lakota native reservations from 1973 to 1976 following the 72-day indigenous occupation at Wounded Knee.

The protest culminated in an armed standoff between the federal government (the FBI, U.S. marshals, and Bureau of Indian Affairs police) and Native American communities.

Following the incident, a period of intense local surveillance by the FBI ensued.

At the time, “Many were afraid of the government and of white skin. You were victimised if you had long hair and spoke indigenous language. You were persecuted if you stood up to the government or the Bureau of Indian Affairs,” Tiokasin, a Lakota Sioux who grew up on the South Dakota Cheyenne River Reservation, told IPS.

“But the native people stood up, and the more you stood up the more the government harassed you, turned you into a militant or a terrorist.

“It was a time when we were not allowed to sing our songs, speak our language, or pray,” he said.

Tiokasin is now a presenter for the First Voices Indigenous Radio Programme at the World Broadcasting Association Inc. (WBAI) in New York City. A master of the cedar-wood flute, Tioakasin’s activism is rooted in the power of radio and the language of music.

In 1978, Native American communities were granted legal recognition of their right to exercise spiritual freedoms, in the American Indian Religious Freedom Act.

But to this day Native American spiritual practices are caught in a quagmire of oppositional claims between the government and indigenous communities.

Whilst indigenous communities lay claims to sovereignty over sacred lands and freedom to practice spiritual lifeways, the government claims legal ownership of land, crucial to its ability to exploit oil and mineral resources.

According to the 12-day research project carried out this year by the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Rights, James Anaya, government authority over land is still justified on the grounds of legislation dating back to the 1930s.

“You can carry a cross around for free but we have to go to great lengths to bury eagle feathers,” Tiokasin told IPS.

“Our way has always been looked upon in a condescending manner, it is not listened to, which is why our culture seems to be dying,” he told IPS.

At the age of 14, Tiokasin left the Cheyenne River Reservation, full of questions and seeking answers.

“Why was this other way of life on a pedestal? Why was it ‘civilised’? Why was it the new and improved way?”

For Tiokasin the answer lies in the distorted image of indigenous peoples as savage and primitive.

First voices indigenous radio

Tiokasin’s goal is to revive indigenous culture and ways of thinking and reflect an accurate representation of indigenous ways of life, where aspects of the modern and the traditional intermingle.

“Indigenous radio that I do is one of the keys to getting our story out to the bigger world,” he told IPS.

Tiokasin is critical of mainstream outlets, which “pick up what the government talks about, our diabetes and alcoholism, focusing on the symptoms rather than getting to the root of the problem.”

For Tiokasin, it is a narrow perspective that fails to ackowledge the enduring effects of imposing one culture upon another.

Whilst he draws attention to shocking statistics of poverty and unemployment, which soar above the U.S. average, he also emphasises that there is more to life on the Lakota reservations than the story of destitution.

“It’s very disheartening but yet you see people who are really digging down and making sure that the culture stays” Tiokasin told IPS.

“There are pockets of tradition and resilience out here on the reservation but not too much is being said about them or written about them,” he said.

Tiokasin makes no attempt to whitewash harsh realities. High suicide levels among the Lakota youth, and a recent phenomenon of suicide pacts, have brought a morbid cloud over reservations and tragedy into the homes of many families.

But at the same time, “You see young people in ceremony, trying to sustain traditional practices and the planting of gardens,” he said.

“You find some in remote parts of the reservation with their huts or cabins, and their gardens outside and they know they can go to certain places to pick wild food like berries, vegetables that are growing out here, they know the songs for the plants they put in their garden.

“They have two types of intelligence – one in the American society and one in traditional Lakota society. They carry on a legacy of my generation, and my mother’s generation to survive,” Tiokasin told IPS

Language of music

For Tiokasin the language of music is key to inter-cultural understanding and cultural survival.

A master of the cedar-wood flute, he has played a key role in reviving the traditional Native American instrument.

He uses his music to convey an understanding of Lakota culture, often blending contemporary European instruments and indigenous instruments.

Like the Lakota language, “The music enhances the language of our hearts,” it is about feeling, not about rationalising or thinking with our heads, he says.

In Lakota, there is no word for domination, and no word for exclusion, and the music reflects this vocabulary.

“By combining European and Indigenous instruments, we fuse two sounds together,” Tiokasin told IPS.

The instruments enter into a relationship, where neither sound is imposed upon the other, but both influence and enhance the other.

Through the echoing presence of an indigenous sound, Tiokasin seeks to “remind people through music where they really come from”.

When people hear the music, many have said “they feel something ancient in themselves,” he told IPS.

“All of us are indigenous to Mother Earth, it’s just that we’ve forgotten how to be indigenous,” he said.

For Tiokasin, the music reminds us that we have a moral responsibility to live with Mother Earth, as human beings, and not on Mother Earth, as parasites.

Reporters film Ta’Kaiya Blaney, a singer from the Silammon First Nation, whilst on location at Musqueam First Nation. Credit: Courtesy of Duncan McCue

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 6 2012 (IPS)

With the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples coming up on Thursday, native communities are increasingly using media to challenge a legacy of stereotypes.

This year’s theme, “Indigenous Media, Empowering Indigenous Voices”, takes the international stage against a backdrop of the Second International Decade for Indigenous Peoples, from 2005-2015, titled A Decade for Action and Dignity.

The conference to be held at the U.N. Aug. 9 aims to highlight the importance of indigenous media in challenging stereotypes, forging indigenous peoples’ identities, communicating with the outside world, and influencing the social and political agenda.

Drumming, dancing, drunk or dead

Stereotypical representations have long afflicted indigenous peoples, often conveying ideas of a homogonous group rooted to the past and incapable of change within nations across the globe, which continue to rely on the power to overlook indigenous rights in order to make government policy workable.

Duncan McCue, a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation in southern Ontario, has been a reporter for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation since 1998, and is keen to press upon the mainstream media the importance of addressing the stereotypical portrayals of indigenous peoples.

In his role as adjunct professor at the University of British Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism, he introduced last year an aboriginal journalism course titled Reporting in Indigenous Communities (RIIC) along with an open-source website, www.riic.ca, to instruct and facilitate fair reporting of indigenous issues.

On the RIIC website, McCue writes, “An elder once told me the only way an Indian would make it on the news is if he or she was one of the 4Ds: drumming, dancing, drunk, or dead.”

For McCue, stories that go beyond “the four D’s” and a “W” for warrior are more the exception than the rule.

“Aboriginal people are underrepresented in the news. When they are represented, it’s often through recurring frames – native-as-victim, and native-as-warrior/protester being two common examples,” McCue told IPS.

Recent coverage of the photo confirmation of the existence of “uncontacted peoples” in the South Eastern Peruvian Amazon is testament to the inclinations of the media towards sensation and spectacle when it comes to indigenous peoples.

“Here the media picked up on what was deemed to be newsworthy or attention grabbing at least in terms of the visual impact and sensational story of the confirmation of the existence of ‘uncontacted’ peoples – people naked but for red paint shooting at a plane with arrows,” Sheila Aikman, senior lecturer in education and development at the University of East Anglia, told IPS.

The exotic images have served as a news peg from which to hang stories that spotlight the challenges to the lives of the Mascho-Piro in the Alto Purus region of Peru from encroaching tourism and resource exploitation.

But Aikman, whose key research interests lie in intercultural education and the indigenous movement, is measured in her approbation of the blanket media coverage, voicing her concern that “at the same time the articles still seem to draw on the most basic of stereotyping”.

A resource for busy reporters

In his message for the media-themed International Day, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon called upon “Member States and the mainstream media to create and maintain opportunities for indigenous peoples to articulate their perspectives, priorities and aspirations.”

McCue sees initiatives like the RIIC website, open to journalists across the globe, as a starting point for improving reporting in indigenous communities.

The task of improving coverage in a market-driven industry, constrained by time and resources, and with the constant pressure to produce news that sells, presents a hefty challenge.

But McCue is optimistic, “I am convinced that offering journalists training to report in Indigenous communities can improve coverage of those communities,” he told IPS.

“I know reporters are busy. (The website) is written for reporters, by a reporter, framed from the perspective that there are inherent challenges every day in reporting news, but that we can adapt our practices and our perspectives in the newsroom to better accommodate Indigenous people we report on – and that can only improve our stories,” he told IPS.

There is also the challenge of sustaining the RIIC initiative, which was created on a shoestring budget with the support of the Knight Fellowships at Stanford University and counts on the support of First Nations partners, Squamish Nation, Tlseil-Waututh First Nation, Tsawwassen First Nation, Sto:lo Nation, Sto:lo Tribal Council and the urban Indigenous community.

“I hope www.riic.ca is the beginning, not the end of a conversation, about the ethics and practice of reporting on Indigenous peoples, and that we can find resources to continue creating a site that will encourage that conversation,” he told IPS

Giving voice to indigenous perspectives

Alongside improving reporting by non-indigenous peoples, McCue points out the need for greater access to media-based jobs for indigenous peoples in Canada.

Reflecting on his own experience, McCue told IPS, ”Things are getting better. There are more young Aboriginal journalists then when I started 14 years ago, though we’re still underrepresented.”

Pointing towards low Aboriginal enrollment numbers, McCue pressed the point that, “Journalism schools across Canada haven’t done nearly enough to encourage Aboriginal students to get into the profession.”

There are options such as the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network (APTN), launched in 1999. The first national Aboriginal Television Network in the world, it offers a nationwide media platform for First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples to share their stories.

“In Canada, APTN continues to be a strong option for Indigenous reporters who want to tell our stories,” McCue told IPS.

But there is a strong need for mainstream newsrooms to do a better job of encouraging Indigenous applicants through internships and ensuring there is extra support available in the newsrooms for young Indigenous reporters, according to McCue.

Asked about the role of media in the struggle for self-determination, McCue told IPS, “Ultimately, it is up to us as Indigenous peoples to honour our ancestors and their teachings, by living and breathing self-determination every day.

“That said, the fight for Indigenous self-determination is many-faceted, and media are a powerful tool – both our own media and mainstream media – to share our stories, promote understanding, and press for accountability of both state governments and our own Indigenous governments,” he said.

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Aug 3 2012 (IPS)

At the Yeosu World Expo 2012, the U.N. commemorated the thirtieth anniversary of the U.N. Convention of the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), highlighting efforts to quell the global scourge of piracy.

Patricia O’Brien. Credit: UN Photo/Mark Garten

With its theme of the “Living Oceans and Coast”, Expo 2012 has turned the attention of a global audience to marine issues ranging from declining fish stocks and pollution to illegal fishing and piracy.

“Piracy has existed for thousands of years. It had substantially diminished in the end of the nineteenth century and seemed to have become one of the legends of the past, gradually disappearing from criminal law legislation,” Patricia O’Brien, U.N. under secretary-general for legal affairs, said at the Expo 2012 U.N. Pavilion.

“A few decades ago, the ‘pirate phoenix’ appeared to be rising again to become a regional, if not a global scourge,” she told the audience prior to a film screening on the law of the seas.

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Isabelle de Grave, Patricia O’Brien talks about current efforts under UNCLOS and beyond to combat piracy in the Malacca Strait, which runs between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra.

Q: How serious is the threat of piracy to Asia?

A: The threat of piracy and armed robbery on board ships is of utmost importance to the U.N. and we are constantly monitoring the situation. Piracy poses a serious threat to the economies of all nations, as 80 percent of the volume of global trade is seaborne, representing 70 percent of its value, and it is expected to increase by 36 percent by 2020.

The Strait of Malacca is particularly prone to pirate attacks as one of the most important and strategic passages for maritime trade between Europe and East Asia. It supports 50 percent of the world’s oil shipments, including 80 percent of petroleum imports to Japan and the Republic of Korea among others.

Furthermore, at the regional and local levels, piracy poses a serious threat to the safety and security of seafarers and fishermen, whose means of livelihood directly depend on their ability to access specific maritime spaces and routes. Southeast Asian waters, and the many island and archipelagic states therein, are no exception. The safety of maritime circulation also bears heavily on the ability of some of these states to maintain political stability.

Q: Many fisherman impoverished by declining fish stocks turn to piracy. Will the Yeosu Project, which aims to build the capacity of emerging countries to address such issues, contribute to combating piracy?

A: The initiative taken by the Republic of Korea is commendable, and constitutes an important part of the regional and international efforts that must be undertaken by States Parties to UNCLOS and to the 1995 Agreement relating to the Conservation and Management of Straddling Fish Stocks and Highly Migratory Fish Stocks to promote the conservation of fish stocks, both within and beyond the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ, a nation’s official territorial waters).

However, the root causes of piracy do not only lie in the mismanagement of fish stocks and the depletion of resources from seas and oceans. If the trends regarding piracy off the coast of Somalia are to provide any guidance, whereby pirates have expanded their areas of operation and acquired heavier artillery, allowing them to attack larger ships further out at sea, major shipping routes such as the Strait of Malacca should continue to be monitored closely.

Although reported incidents of piracy in the Straits of Malacca and Singapore saw a 50 percent decrease between the first half of 2011 and the first half of 2012, coastal states as well as ship owners should not become complacent. Coastal States have a responsibility to adopt and implement best management practices when operating in areas with a high level of activities.

They also have to educate transiting merchant ships on their local fishing practices and procedures in order to reduce instances of transgression of fishing gear, as well as incidents where merchant ships mistake fishing vessels for pirates. Incidents of piracy will only consistently decrease if these issues are tackled simultaneously.

In this globalised economy, where a state’s economy may still be impacted by acts of piracy committed thousands of miles away, improving the socioeconomic situation of fishermen locally is no longer sufficient.

Q: How effective are UNCLOS and other regional and international initiatives in the fight against piracy?

A: The definition of the crime of piracy is contained in UNCLOS under one of the most significant sections of the Convention, (article 101 Part VII) that regulates the High Seas. States have an obligation to cooperate to the fullest possible extent in the repression of piracy and have universal jurisdiction on the high seas to seize pirate ships and aircrafts and arrest the persons and seize the property on board.

UNCLOS provisions have been subject to national implementation by many states, which have issued legislation to criminalise piracy, allowing their domestic courts to prosecute persons suspected of this crime.

For instance, concerning piracy off the coast of Somalia, over 1,100 persons have either been arrested or tried and found guilty on the basis of such legislation. And efforts are continuing, at the international and regional levels, to assist states in building the capacity to conduct effective prosecutions and enforce the sentences imposed, which will have a deterrent effect on communities where the culture of piracy is still rampant.

The Strait of Malacca benefits from a patrolling system akin to that established with the convoy participation process off the coast of Somalia that the Republic of Korea just joined.

The Malacca Straits Patrols (MSP) is comprised of the Malacca Straits Sea Patrol (MSSP), the “Eyes-in-the-Sky” (EiS) air patrols, and the Intelligence Exchange Group (IEG), which are a set of practical cooperative security measures undertaken by the four littoral States, namely Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, to ensure the security of the Strait of Malacca.

This arrangement entails conducting coordinated naval and air patrols while facilitating the sharing of information between ships and the Monitoring Action Agency. This is a very sophisticated system, which has allowed the number of piracy attacks in the Malacca Strait to drop from 38 reported incidents in 2004 to none in 2011, as per the International Maritime Bureau data.

Excerpt:

When South Korea took the initiative to integrate a development cooperation programme into this year’s World Expo, it stepped up its efforts to gain credibility as a donor on the international stage.

“The Expo is intended not only to enhance the public awareness of the dangers faced by the sea, but also to promote the need for international cooperation to turn these challenges into hopes for the future,” Ambassador Kim Sook the U.N. permanent representative of South Korea, told IPS.

The series of capacity building programmes, titled the Yeosu Project, is the first international cooperation initiative ever to accompany a World Expo, involving countries from Asia to Sub-Saharan Africa.

Greening aid

Under the banner of Green Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), the project includes programmes for developing eco-friendly marine fishing technology, improving coastal environment conservation and disaster prevention monitoring.

The Korean government plans to increase the percentage of “Green ODA” to 30 percent of its total ODA by 2020.

The East Asia Climate Partnership (EACP), set up by the Korean government in 2008 to facilitate international cooperation on climate change mitigation, currently has 20 projects underway in 10 countries.

In Mongolia, programmes numbering five in total include a water resource management project in the new town of Yarmag in Ulaanbaatar, a solid waste management project and a heating and hot water systems project.

“Such policy direction was well considered during the preparation process of the Yeosu Expo. Korea’s commitment to Green ODA will be materialised through the Yeosu Projects,” Kim told IPS

“For those developing countries keen to pursue a Green Economy path, the greening of ODA is likely to be welcome in terms of them accelerating and scaling up such ambitions,” Achim Steiner, U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) executive director, told IPS.

Gaining donor credibility

The greening initiative coincides with a concerted effort on the part of the Korean government to scale up its development cooperation programme following its recent accession to the Organisation for Overseas Cooperation and Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC) in 2010.

Mexico, Chile and South Korea are the only former developing countries to ever to have transferred into the DAC.

“As a recipient-turned-donor country, the Republic of Korea has made strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries,” Kim told IPS.

Heavily reliant on foreign aid in the 1960s, Korea propelled itself from destitution following the Korean War to its current status as the thirteenth largest economy in the world.

According to government estimates, it received 12.7 billion dollars in the post-war period.

In response to growing interest from developing countries in learning from Korea’s development experience, the Korean government established the Knowledge Sharing Programme (KSP) in 2004 with the Korea Development Institute, and the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.

For sustainable development, “Knowledge sharing is crucial. No one country has all the solutions to large scale (climate) challenges; the perspective and experience of individual nations, including traditional knowledge can, through shared programmes, and the sharing of lessons learnt, act as a catalyst for action,” Steiner told IPS

“Not least by building confidence that addressing marine and climate change issues are not insuperable but infinitely do-able,” he added.

“Building on its commitment to South-South Cooperation, Korea has become a world leader in knowledge sharing,” David Arnold, president of the Asia Foundation, non-profit organisation working towards the development of the Asia-Pacific region, told IPS.

The government has also committed to doubling its development assistance by 2015.

“I am very proud as a Korean that Korea has now become a donor country in the world from a poverty-stricken, war-devastated country.” U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said in his speech at the 2011 High Level Forum (HLF4) on Aid Effectiveness in Busan.

Tied aid, loans and MDGs

However, 75 percent of Korean ODA is tied aid, according to OECD statistics, which binds recipient countries to conditions that promote donor country products and exports.

While the DAC estimates that tying aid raises the cost of many goods, services and works by 15 to 30 percent, a U.N. study of bilateral aid to sub-Saharan Africa found that tying aid reduces the value of the aid by 25-40 percent.

Since embarking on a “Roadmap on Untying”, Korea has reduced tied aid from 98 percent in 2008 OECD statistics.

South Korean assistance to Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is also predominantly in the form of loans, which often foster dependency due to the inability of poorer countries to pay back the loan. LMICs on the other hand mostly receive grants, considered a more sustainable form of assistance.

A 2008 DAC review recognises that Korea’s emphasis on mutual cooperation “is important in understanding Korea’s thinking, and to some extent drives policy choices such as the heavy use of loans and tied aid”.

But the committee recommends that South Korea “maintains a focus on poverty reduction and contributes to the MDGs, by prioritising LDCs and low-income countries and using appropriate aid instruments”

An Asian perspective

At the HLF4 the Asian Approaches to Development Cooperation dialogue series raised the issue of “whether donor alignment around an agreed set of principles and approaches is desirable or possible” for Asian approaches, Arnold, who represented the Asia Foundations at the HLF4, told IPS.

Countries like Korea, India, China and Malaysia have been providing training and technical assistance to other countries since the 1950s.

“Beyond resources, these emerging actors bring distinctive philosophies, expertise, partners, and modalities to their cooperation,” Arnold told IPS

Arnold highlighted some key similarities in Asian approaches such as mutual benefit with partners, responding to partner country requests, shared and sustained growth and capacity development.

“Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are not often used to describe either the goals or indicators of development cooperation in Asia,” he said.

In a similar endeavour to avoid the aid-recipient dichotomy, “’Aid’ is rarely used to describe Asian cooperation partnerships and most countries do not consider themselves donors,” Arnold told IPS.

But “Asian approaches to development cooperation have mostly fallen under the radar of OECD DAC donors until recently,” he said.

Highlighting Korea’s key role in facilitating mutual North-South learning at HLF4 negotiations Arnold told IPS “Korea, as host, played a unique bridging role between donor and partner countries, between DAC and non-DAC donors, and between ‘Asian’ and ‘Western’ development partners.”

Balancing the bargaining tables of foreign aid, “Korea was instrumental in shepherding the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation and expanding the dialogue on development and aid effectiveness to include important emerging donors like China and India,” he said.

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 31 2012 (IPS)

When South Korea picked an oceans theme for the 2012 Yeosu World Expo, it became host to the largest marine-themed event in history, with the potential to make a concrete contribution to sustainable development and simultaneously buoy the Korean global image.

Ambassador Kim Sook. UN Photo/Evan Schneider

With hi-tech spectacles, such as a virtual whale that feeds on the text messages of visitors, and the emblematic “Big O” structure, which floats above Yeosu’s sparkling waters projecting a nightly multi-media show, the global exhibition does not disappoint.

But the question is can South Korea translate a captivating display of oceanic beauty and marine threats into concrete action to protect the world’s oceans and environment?

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Isabelle de Grave, Ambassador Kim Sook, permanent representative of the Republic of Korea to the United Nations, talks about what the 2012 Yeosu Expo means for South Korea, for Yeosu and for the protection of the world’s oceans. Excerpts from the interview follow.

Q: What does this year’s Expo mean to South Korea, its global image and role on the international stage?

A: The Expo is one of the most significant international events and is expected to upgrade the national brand of Korea. It serves as a good opportunity to address climate change, depletion of natural resources, and the destruction of the ecosystem, which will bring out Korea’s active role in consolidating global cooperation.
The Expo is also expected to stimulate Korea’s shipbuilding and associated ocean-related businesses, which will further strengthen its economic dynamism. In addition, being held in a relatively small city located in the southwestern part of the Korean Peninsula, the Yeosu Expo will raise awareness of the region and help diversify the images of Korea

The government of the Republic of Korea expects that the event will provide an opportunity to enhance the international community’s awareness of the function and value of the ocean and coast, to share the knowledge on the sustainable use of the ocean and coast, and to strengthen the need for cooperation in the maritime sector.

At the end of the Expo, the Yeosu Declaration will be launched, in which Korea’s strong commitment towards developing countries will be clearly reflected. As a recipient-turned-donor country, the Republic of Korea has made strenuous efforts to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries. This year’s Expo is an extension of such efforts, particularly in the field of oceans.

Q: How has the coastal town of Yeosu benefited as host to the Expo and subsequent beneficiary of an eco-friendly urban regeneration project?

A: The Korean government introduced the concept of “low-carbon green cities” and has applied it to new urban planning and urban regeneration projects since 2009. Low-carbon green cities aim to build a low energy-consuming socio-economic system that promotes environmental protection and economic growth simultaneously.
By seizing upon the Expo’s momentum, Yeosu has been transformed into a model case of the green growth project. Now Yeosu has become a low-carbon green city that promotes green growth by combining green technology, including green construction, green traffic, and new renewable energy, with smart grid and information technology.

Despite its rich marine resources, Yeosu’s poor infrastructure has restrained its potential for development. However, the improved infrastructure has helped the city to fully utilise its potential for sustainable development and to set the foundation for the future development of the entire southern coastal region.

Q: How will Expo 2012 build upon the outcomes of the Rio+20 summit on sustainable development?

A: Oceans is one of the areas with the most important outcomes in Rio+20, including an agreement to take a decision on the development of an international instrument under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to address the issue of marine biodiversity beyond areas of national jurisdiction as well as to call for the elimination of IUU (illegal, unreported and unregulated) fishing and market-distorting subsidies.

Rio+20 is not an end, but a beginning of our journey into sustainable development. To make Rio+20 an ultimate success, we have to translate our words into actions.

The theme of the Yeosu Expo, “The Living Ocean and Coast,” conceptualises the future we want for oceans, where sound preservation of oceans is essentially linked with sustainable development for humankind. I am certain that the Yeosu Expo will expedite the continued progress on international cooperation to achieve the conservation and sustainable use of oceans, seas, and coastal areas.

Q: What contribution can technological exhibits at Yeosu make to sustainable development?

A: Green technologies, which are being exhibited at the Expo are not merely token green technologies, but technologies of the future, and some of them are also popular in Korea now. Green growth seeks to achieve the dual goals of environmental sustainability and economic growth at the same time, and green technologies are the foundation upon which both of these goals can be achieved.

In January 2009, the Korean government drew up a Comprehensive Plan for the Research and Development of Green Technologies. In May 2009, a Strategy for the Development and Commercialization of Major Green Technologies was established.

The Korean government has increased investment for the Research and Development of green technologies. In 2012, about two billion dollars will be invested in order to secure original technology and ease market entry. In addition, the Korean government is making further efforts to facilitate, disseminate and commercialize green technologies.

It also endeavors to establish the foundations for green technology industries while simultaneously promoting active international cooperation.

Q: How do you view the government’s recent announcement to allow whaling for scientific research against the backdrop of the 2012 Yeosu Expo geared towards protecting the world’s oceans?

A: The Korean government understands concerns expressed by the international community on the issue of scientific whaling.
The Korean government will soon make its decision on whether to submit the proposal on scientific research whaling after thorough consultations with domestic fishermen’s associations and environmental organisations, and discussions with concerned International Whaling Commision (IWC) Member States.

Even if the Korean government decides to submit a proposal on scientific research whaling, its decision to conduct scientific research whaling in accordance with international regulations and procedures will be fully committed to the recommendations of the IWC Scientific Committee.

Excerpt:

Olympic torch arriving at Tretherras School, Newquayon. Credit: Bobchin1941/CC by 2.0

By Isabelle de Grave and Stephanie Parker
NEW YORK, Jul 21 2012 (IPS)

As the 2012 London Olympics gears up to open on Jul. 27, criticism of the longstanding partnership between the Games and sponsor McDonald’s has stolen a small portion of the limelight.

It’s not only civil society activists protesting the fast food giant this year, but local politicians.

“London won the right to host the 2012 Games with the promise to deliver a legacy of more active, healthier children across the world,” the Green Party’s Jenny Jones, who recently proposed a motion to exclude McDonald’s, Coca-Coca-Cola and others from the Games, told the 25-member Labour-dominated London Assembly.

”Yet the same International Olympic Committee that awarded the games to London persists in maintaining sponsorship deals with the purveyors of high-calorie junk that contributes to the threat of an obesity epidemic.”

The McDonald’s marketing strategy means that investment in sporting education goes hand in hand with the sale of low-priced, high-calorie fast food. In the UK, the company is offering up to 117,000 dollars to local football clubs.

“McDonald’s anticipated the criticism around its junk food 30 to 40 years ago. It spent those decades building a structure and good will to deflect criticism about the health impact of its products,” Sara Deon of Corporate Accountability International told IPS, highlighting McDonald’s sponsorship of the Games as a clear example of this.

McDonald’s has been an official sponsor of the Olympics since 1976. The company recently had its contract extended by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to 2020.

Coca-Cola has also been a partner of the games since 1926. According to Benjamin Seeley of the International Olympic Committee, the company “sponsors more than 250 physical activity and nutrition education programmes in more than 100 countries”.

The Olympics rely on such commercial partnerships for more than 40 percent of revenues, and McDonald’s and Coca-Cola are two of the leading contributors.

McDonald’s did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the quality of its food in relation to the dietary needs of adults and children, and criticism of its Olympics sponsorship.

However, physicians and nutrition advocates have also expressed concern over both companies as official sponsors, particularly in the context of rising obesity in the UK.

There have been plans to boycott McDonald’s sponsorship of the games by civil society campaigners who deem it unworthy of inheriting the prestige of the Olympics as a supplier of fat, sugar and manipulative marketing initiatives.

Ceci Charles-King, an advocate for food justice, told IPS, “I worry about the message (sponsorship) sends to children and adults. McDonald’s is hydrogen, salt and empty calories. Coca-Cola is sugar, fructose corn syrup and empty calories.”

The Academy of Royal Medical Colleges recently declared that sponsorship by the fast food giant sends the wrong message to people in the UK, which has the most overweight population in Europe with 22 percent of Britons now considered obese.

When a customer goes to the U.S. McDonald’s website to look at the nutritional value associated with “happy meals” for kids, it only shows the calorie, fat and protein intake. The webpage omits saturated fat, salt, vitamin and sugar content and the user must navigate to another section to find the information.

“The food continues to be high in sugar, fat and salt…the so-called healthier options do little for people that are seeking truly healthy options,” Deon told IPS.

Selecting an example from the menu, she said that, “The fruit and maple porridge contains more grammes of sugar than a snickers (candy bar).”

“They are little more than a vehicle to sell its bread and butter products: burgers, chips and fizzy drinks,” she added.

According to Deon, McDonald’s’ investment in programmes to promote physical activity “fall well short of the meaningful change that we need to address the epidemic of diet-related disease and McDonald’s needs to address the core issue of ending its marketing to kids.”

The McDonald’s Olympic restaurant, located in the Athlete’s Village, is the largest in the world, seating up to 1,500 people. It is expected to serve around 14,000 people a day during the Games, and will be offering free Olympic-themed happy meal toys to children.

Asked how children might avoid junk food buoyed by the positive image of the Olympics, Charles-King said it may be as simple as “(showing) the child how to cook so they can make better food choices”.

As far as athletes are concerned, Jill McDonald, UK chief executive of McDonald’s, has commented on the busy location of the restaurant in the Athlete Village, stating that athletes know more than anyone what they should be eating.

Benjamin Seeley told IPS that, “The IOC only enters into partnerships with organisations that work in accordance with the values of the Olympic movement.”

In June, the London Assembly has passed a motion calling for stricter criteria to assess suitable Olympic sponsors. New rules would exclude high-calorie food and beverage producers from sponsorship roles, ending the age-old relationship between McDonald’s and the Olympics.

This year is not the first time that Olympic sponsors have come under scrutiny. In 2008, human rights activists called for a boycott to end sponsorship of McDonald’s and other restaurants.

Food retailers are not the only sponsors to face opposition this year. Indian athletes and officials will be skipping the opening and closing ceremonies to protest Dow Chemical’s involvement with the Games. Dow is the owner of Union Carbide, whose 1984 gas leak in Bhopal, India killed more than 22,000 people and polluted soil and water sources for years to come.

Amnesty International's 'Bananafesto' condemns an arms trade less regulated than bananas. Credit: Coralie Tripier/IPS

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 2 2012 (IPS)

Talks to develop greater control of the arms trade have cast a glaring spotlight on the role of diverse countries in fuelling conflicts worldwide, offering governments a historic opportunity to rein in the flow of weapons.

After six years of negotiations, 190 governments have embarked on conclusive month-long talks beginning Monday, which could end in a legally binding Arms Trade Treaty to oversee the arms trade.

China, France, Russia, the US and the U.K. account for 88 percent of the global arms market, where small arms and ammunition alone were valued at 411 billion dollars in 2010.

A patchwork system

Currently, legally binding international standards for the arms trade are non-existent in a patchwork system with many loopholes. About half of all countries lack even basic laws on the export of small arms.

“Without an arms trade treaty, unscrupulous brokers and manufacturers can take advantage of the countries with the weakest regulatory systems. The country with the weakest laws effectively sets the standard for the rest of us.” Natalie Goldring, a senior fellow with the Security Studies Programme at Georgetown University, told IPS.

Weak laws give free rein to unscrupulous brokers such as Russian military officer Viktor Bout, currently awaiting trial in the US. Nicknamed the “merchant of death,” Bout’s deals with warlords and human rights violators crisscrossed the African continent, the Middle East and south-central Asia, according to U.N. reports.

Globally, the United States represents a gold standard in terms of diligence in export controls, including the monitoring of exports, licensing, and reporting on exports.

Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro in a Jun. 14 news conference on arms exports said his bureau ensures all military assistance “is fully in line with U.S. foreign policy”, adding, “We only allow a sale after we carefully examine issues like human rights, regional security, and nonproliferation concerns.”

However, iwatch News by the Centre for Public Integrity, a non-profit investigative news organisation, has documented numerous instances of countries receiving large U.S. arms packages and simultaneously struggling with human rights problems, including United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Israel, Djibouti, Honduras, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Bahrain.

According to the State Department’s Military Assistance Report, U.S. firearms, armoured vehicles, and items from a category that includes chemical and riot control agents like tear gas were provided to Algeria and Egypt, where the repression of democratic dissent over the past year has been manifest.

When it comes to the issue of determining whether the weapon in question is likely to fuel human rights abuses, “The U.S. is not the global leader,” Scott Stedjan, senior policy advisor for humanitarian response, Oxfam America, told IPS.

Shedding light on the paradox of tight arms controls alongside less than scrupulous arms deals, Stedjan explained, “The U.S. has a strong set of criteria they apply to all exports. However, it does not take the approach of stopping all transfers if there is a substantial risk they will be used for human rights violation. They take a totality of the circumstances approach.”

The golden rule

The Control Arms Coalition, which includes Oxfam, the Arms Control Association, and Amnesty International, has voiced concerns that this approach will factor into negotiations as one of the U.S. proposals for the treaty.

“The U.S. wants a list of factors to take into account,” Brian Wood, Amnesty International’s manager of Arms Control, Security Trade and Human Rights, told IPS. “This means you’ll have human rights and humanitarian rights, and when you’re considering an export you just take them into account, we call that ‘feel free to ignore’ because it doesn’t really mean anything”

The Control Arms Coalition has developed criteria for an Arms Trade Treaty, including the refusal to supply arms when there is a substantial risk that they will be used to violate international human rights or humanitarian law. The latter is titled “the golden rule”, crucial to the development of a strong treaty, according to the group.

Amplifying the coalition’s position, Amnesty campaigners held a banana-themed demonstration titled “Bananafesto” in Times Square Jun. 27, to raise awareness of a weapons trade less regulated than the exchange of bananas. Activists also posed in body bags outside the U.N. Monday, to mark the start of negotiations.

Keira Knightley, Kevin Spacey and British war photographer Paul Conroy, among others, have also shown their support in a letter sent to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which presses the need for a strong treaty.

But how arms exporters are to determine when there is a substantial risk that a weapon will be used to commit a serious violation of international human rights presents a challenge for negotiators. You cannot deny arms to countries that have a few isolated incidents of unlawful gun-crime, according to Wood.

Asked what constitutes a ‘serious violation’ Wood told IPS, “It could be a single massive massacre so you can’t say that violations have to be persistent… you can also look at the severity of the harm caused, as well as the persistence and the scale. Is it widespread? If (the problems) are persistent, then they are predictable,” Wood explained.

In terms of measuring the risk of human rights abuse, a key issue is stockpile security. “When exporting arms to the DRC and to Afghanistan where the state itself has partly collapsed, the stockpiles are not properly managed so you know as soon as you send weapons they will leak out to armed groups and the Taliban,” Wood told IPS.

In many ways the treaty is not merely about regulation but also about educating governments and developing expertise within arms export divisions so that they understand and can identify areas where weapons are likely to feed human rights abuses or end up in the wrong hands.

Wood described the attitude of many arms export divisions under the current system, recounting a meeting with three Italian officials. “They said to me, you see that building over there, the lawyers who know about human rights and humanitarian law that’s where they are, we here in the arms exports division we’re just the merchants of death.”

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 27 2012 (IPS)

Reducing the risks associated with chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) threats is the goal of a new multi-country initiative known as the Centres of Excellence (CoE).

The United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI), representatives of the European Union and CBRN experts are launching a joint CoE, which seeks to improve policies and unite countries across the globe against CBRN risks.

In response to increasing concerns over criminal misuse of CBRN materials and the threat of industrial catastrophe among other risks, CoEs are being set up in Kenya, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Uzbekistan and the Philippines, and will draw on input from more than 60 countries around the world.

Currently, many countries would find themselves isolated in the event of a crisis. CoEs aim to develop partnerships between regions to share the risks of CBRN incidents and improve their capacity to protect civilian populations, explained Francesco Marelli, UNICRI CBRN programme manager.

Bruno Dupré, European Diplomatic Service policy coordinator for CBRN issues, explained that the regional secretariats being established in each region seek to mobilise local communities – the judiciary, police force, and military personnel – to develop and share knowledge on specific risks and threats.

Illicit nuclear trafficking

Amid growing global concern about the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) the CoE initiative’s first two pilot projects are aimed at countering illicit nuclear trafficking and the threat of nuclear and radiological terrorism.

Since 1998, in the U.S. alone there have been more than 1,300 reported incidents of lost, stolen, or abandoned devices containing sealed radioactive sources, an average of about 250 per year, according to a January 2011 CBRN case study submitted to the European Union.

Project Geiger, a joint initiative between the international police organisation INTERPOL and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), with the aim of gathering comprehensive data on the illicit traffic in nuclear and radiological materials has also recorded more than 2,200 cases of trafficking, according to the study.

The CoE projects are aimed at mitigating the risk posed by illicit trafficking through capacity building in nuclear forensics in the Southeast Asia region. They incorporate issues such as the safe retrieval of nuclear material, measures to protect the public and management of the crime scene to allow for prosecution.

In response to questions regarding the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Syria spreading outside the country, Dupré emphasised that CoE was primarily a preventative initiative not to be confused with a permanent institution or crisis response organisation.

Whilst CoE seek to prevent crises through addressing structural issues – early warning and early assistance systems – coordinating a response to scattering weaponry in conflict situations in the Middle East and North Africa region was deemed beyond its mandate.

Toxic waste

With the threat of nuclear terrorism attracting the most widespread concerns, projects addressing other chemical, and biological concerns are slower to materialise.

The disposal of electronic waste (e-waste) has been made a priority in the Africa region, where toxic properties contained in electrical equipment, including laptops and mobile phones, present severe health hazards to those working daily to dispose of them.

CoE waste management projects in Africa are in the process of finding sponsors in order to develop the means to address e-waste issues. However, funds are lacking, according to Dupré.

A report titled “Recycling — from E-Waste to Resources,” launched Feb. 22, 2010 by the United Nations Environment Programm (UNEP), found that India, and China and countries across Latin America and Africa face the growing threat of hazardous e-waste mountains with serious consequences for the environment and public health.

The report found that countries like Senegal and Uganda can expect e-waste flows from PCs alone to increase four to eight-fold by 2020 and Kenya is estimated to generate 11,400 tonnes from refrigerators, 2,800 tonnes from televisions, 2,500 tonnes from personal computers, 500 tonnes from printers, and 150 tonnes from mobile phones.

Speaking on the subject of e-waste in Africa, Dupré told IPS, “It’s a huge issue because we don’t have enough money.”

“What we are trying to do is to find sponsors that will help us define procedures. We have a programme of waste management in Africa and we are really trying to get funds by encouraging international organisations to support waste management”

“(Waste management) is their priority much more than the issue of proliferation of terrorism,” he added.

The CoE initiative is designed to build on local assets in order that regional projects do not operate under the interests of any given donor. But it faces the challenge of securing funds to address multiple issues regardless of the attention they command on the international stage.

U.S. counterterrorism measures are under intense scrutiny from United Nations (U.N.) experts and civil rights groups declaring drone strikes illegal under current frameworks.

During the 20th Session of the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva from Jun. 18 to Jul. 6, these experts declared such measures in urgent need of greater accountability and transparency.

Targeted-killing programs, including drone strikes, are “a strongly asserted but ill-defined license to kill without accountability”, wrote former special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Philip Alston in his 2010 report to the council.

A drone launches from the deck of the USS Lassen. The legality of U.S. drone strikes is coming under increasing scrutiny and questioning. Credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery/ CC by 2.0

Two years later, strategies that the United States justifies as a necessary response to terrorism remain questionable both in legality and according to humanitarian principles.

Collateral Damage

Used by the United States in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and elsewhere, drones have quickly become the counterterrorist weapon of choice. Accompanying drone strikes is collateral damage – military terminology for civilian casualties – which has subsequently become a central issue.

Drone technology itself is not inaccurate. But targets are often imprecise, as they are based on intelligence pinpointing suspected terrorists or areas of suspicious activity. Ensuring that innocent bystanders are absent from populated areas where terrorist activity has been identified is a challenge that all airborne military operations face.

In Pakistan, many civil rights activists vehemently oppose U.S. drone attacks. Among them is former cricketer Imran Kahn, leader of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party, who believes drone attacks are illegal on the grounds that they kill innocent civilians.

At the Human Rights Council Tuesday, Christof Heyns, current special rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, called for more transparency and accountability from the United States. He urged that a framework be developed and adhered to, and pressed for accurate records of civilian deaths.

According to a recent report in the New York Times, the U.S. government’s current method for counting civilian deaths takes an exceptionally broad view of legitimate targets, deeming all males of military age to be terrorist combatants.

This methodology goes some way towards explaining the gulf between the calculations of independent media reports and official figures, which claim that civilian casualties are minimal.

An Associated Press investigation found that “the drone strikes were killing far fewer civilians than many Pakistanis are led to believe and that a significant majority of the dead were combatants”. Other reports, however, estimate hundreds of civilian casualties in the Pakistani region.

Dangerous global rules

“The United States has cobbled together its own legal framework for targeted killing, with standards that are far less stringent than the law allows,” Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told the council Wednesday.

Shamsi also took issue with the lack of transparency of military programs based on “a secret legal criteria, entirely secret evidence, and a secret process”, she said.

In defence of its policy of secrecy, the U.S. government filed a 50-page brief just before a midnight deadline, Wednesday, which stated that “whether or not the CIA has the authority to be, or is in fact, directly involved in targeted lethal operations remains classified”.

The report came in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU last year, which requested transparency on the killing of three American citizens in Yemen last year.

“The international community’s concern about the U.S. targeted killing program is continuing to grow because of the unlawfully broad authority our government asserts to kill ‘suspected terrorists’ far from any battlefield, without meaningful transparency or accountability,” Shamsi told IPS.

The lack of a legal framework allows for drone strikes to be implemented at will, in non-conflict zones and on the basis of loosely defined terrorist threats, without permission from the host nation.

“I think we’re in for very dangerous precedents that can be used by countries on all sides,” Heynes, the special rapporteur, said, voicing his concern regarding legal loopholes.

“In essence, drones cancel out national sovereignty,” Tom Engelhardt, co-author of Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050, told IPS. “The rules of the game are one country’s sovereignty trumps that of another.”

It is estimated that more than 50 nations have drones, are developing them, or are planning to buy them.

Citing a recent contributor to his blog, TomDispatch, Engelhardt described the unmanned aircraft as  “a technology that has morphed into a policy”.

Fuelling terror

In a written speech submitted to the council, John Brennan, U.S. counterterrorism chief, deemed the use of drones a legal, ethical and wise way of conducting sensitive counterterror operations.

According to Dyke Weatherington, deputy director responsible for acquisition oversight for the Department of Defence’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), “combatant commanders and warfighters place value in the inherent features of unmanned systems – especially their persistence, versatility, and reduced risk to human life.”

But disregarding national boundaries and the inability to distinguish innocent civilians from terrorists in targeted vicinities render drones a questionable means of countering terrorism.

In a report to the council Wednesday, Ben Emmerson, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, underscored the U.N. General Assembly’s consensus that counterterrorism measures that abuse human rights actually help spread terrorism.

The deaths of innocent civilians alienate communities and hand terrorists a propaganda tool that can bolster recruitment.

“Human rights abuses have all too often contributed to the grievances which cause people to make the wrong choices and to resort to terrorism,” according to the unedited document.

“The Special Rapporteur strongly believes that human rights compliant counter-terrorism measures help to prevent the recruitment of individuals to acts of terrorism.”

Heyns urged compliance with humanitarian law through “strategies applied to prevent casualties, as well as measures in place to provide prompt, thorough, effective and independent public investigation of alleged violations”.

Nevertheless, he told reporters at the council’s meeting, “I don’t think we have the full answer to the legal framework; we certainly don’t have the answer to the accountability issues.”

“When I was still at school I was abducted by the Lord’s Resistance Army, along with 139 other girls,” says Grace Akallo. “I spent seven months in captivity, but I survived, I escaped and I went back home.”

Twelve years ago, when Akallo was still a child, her life took an unexpected turn when she fell into the hands of Joseph Kony’s notoriously brutal rebel force known as the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA).

Grace Akallo. Credit: UN Photo/Eskinder Debebe

Today, she is married with a child, a masters degree and a mission in life: to give a voice to the female child soldier.

Formed in Uganda in the 1980s, and now operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the LRA remains among the most persistent perpetrators of grave violations against children, according to a recent U.N report.

“When girls are first abducted, it is the same as for boy soldiers,” Akallo told IPS. “They are beaten and mistreated, they are trained to become child soldiers, given AK-47s, and forced to kill.

“Most of the children are sent to the forefront, with the leaders behind them. Your bullets are finished? You shoot your friend in order to get more bullets. At the same time the leaders used children as shields, so that the children get shot and they survive.”

What makes a girl child soldier different is the sexual abuse that they are forced to endure, says Akallo. “Most girls were sexually abused, including me. I was lucky I did not return home with a child, or get infected with HIV or any other disease.

“Many of these girls had to give birth while in captivity, some of them had to go fighting with children on their backs, and some gave birth on the battlefield,” she said.

But the plight of the female child soldier is largely hidden from view, masked by the leaders of armed groups who refer to girl combatants as “wives” or “sisters”.

Girls are summarily awarded to male combatants, and Kony is reported to have had up to 50 girls in his immediate household at one time.

“Some are given to just one commander, and some are given to multiple men,” Akallo told IPS.

Disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration

Due to the roles that girls play, including cooking, domestic tasks, transporting provisions and sexual services, they are rendered almost invisible, under the radar of international law and disarmament initiatives.

Disarmament, Demobilisation and Reintegration (DDR) programmes have been in operation since the 1980s and the U.N launched its formal set of guidelines in 2006. But progress has been patchy, especially regarding girl soldiers.

“When you disarm somebody, you ask them to return their arms. Many of the female child soldiers do not carry arms. They are used as sex slaves and bush wives. From that point of view, I do not think that DDR has been successful,” Ugoji Adanma, founder of the Eng Aja Eze Foundation, which helps women and girls emerging from conflict, told IPS.

International law has also “dramatically excluded” female soldiers, according to Matthew Brotmann, director of international programmes and adjunct professor of law at Pace Law School, speaking at a Jun. 4 conference titled “The Incidence of the Female Child Soldier and the International Criminal Court”.

By failing to include specific gender-related definitions in legal instruments and policy guidelines, “We are forcing a square peg into a round hole,” Brottman told IPS.

“We cannot treat all victims the same regardless of gender,” he said.

In the recent trial of Congolese warlord Thomas Lubanga Dyilo, the enlistment of children as soldiers was enshrined as a war crime for the first time.

But commanders of Lubanga’s militia group, the Union of Congolese Patriots (UPC), were not held to account for allegations of rape, which raises fundamental questions about the bias of international law.

“The incidence of the female child soldier was not really taken into consideration. It was noted, but why did the prosecutors not tender the evidence of core witnesses as to the sexual violence against females? That is my concern,” Adanma told IPS.

Reconciling communities

The reintegration of female child soldiers poses one of the greatest challenges for ex-combatants and those endeavouring to protect them, from grassroots NGOs to governments and the international community.

Funding is lacking, and though donors are quick to respond in emergencies, reintegration often falls into the murky area between emergency assistance and development assistance.

“In Sierra Leone, where we worked on rehabilitation hospitals and education, to open up schools where girls could go, my message was carry the pen and not the gun,” Rima Salah, former deputy executive director of the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF, told IPS.

But the complexity of reintegrating ex-combatants defies simple solutions.

“Neither boy nor girl child soldiers are really accepted back into society, but for the girl child soldier it is (harder) when they have unwanted children,” Akallo told IPS.

“The boy child soldier can go back to school, train and develop life skills but for a girl, for her to go back to school and try and acquire life skills they have to think of their children, arrange babysitting or stay at home.

“With boys, people can forget that they used to be soldiers, but the girl soldier walks with a child, which makes her past unforgettable. The stigma stays with her,” Akallo explained.

“Personally, I struggled a lot. I was called names – ‘Kony’s wife’, ‘Kony’s prostitute’ – even the girls that I worked with would call me names.

“Social workers, and people working with girl child soldiers have to be really very strong to be able to walk with these girls in the community.”

Akallo recently founded an NGO based in northern Uganda called United Africans For Women and Children Rights that emphasises the importance of ensuring former child soldiers are accepted back into their communities.

“What we do is mostly focused on the reintegration and rehabilitation of children,” Akallo told IPS.

The NGO is currently in the process of building a community health centre and a counselling centre, which will focus on reconciling the community.

“It is very important that girl child soldiers are reintegrated into the community otherwise they are left to fend for themselves,” she said.

Looked upon as soiled, stigmatised as HIV carriers, and ostracised as mothers to children born of war, without support female ex-combatants have few doors open to them in society.

“Many female ex-combatants turn to prostitution,” she said. “They may no longer be child soldiers but they are forced to trade in their freedom once more.”

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2012 (IPS)

Unlocking women’s energies and allowing them to become drivers of change could fuel the motor of sustainable development.

The question is whether world leaders meeting at the Rio+20 summit in Brazil will squander or seize this tremendous opportunity to harness women’s full potential.

Michelle Bachelet. Credit: Courtesy of UN Women

In an interview with U.N. correspondent Isabelle de Grave ahead of Rio+20, Michelle Bachelet, head of U.N. Women, explains the vital link between gender equality and the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development.

Q: How does gender and women’s empowerment relate to sustainable development?

A: Twenty years ago, at the (first) Rio Summit, there was a unanimous agreement that sustainable development would never be realised without gender equality and that holds true today.

Gender equality and women’s empowerment are integral to the achievement of sustainable development. Gender equality is the factor which brings together the three dimensions. It determines the access that men and women have to productive resources such as land, finance, and technology, it determines the ability of individuals to take advantage of opportunities such as education and employment, and it circumscribes access to social protection and basic services.

Women farmers make up 43 percent of the agricultural labour force in developing countries and 80 percent in some parts of Africa. If women had the same access as men to agricultural resources, production would increase by 20 to 30 percent, and has the potential to reduce the number of hungry people in the world by 12 to 17 percent.

In terms of the everyday lives of women and girls, the provision of basic services, clean water, energy, housing and transportation can reduce the intense labour of women, promote dignity and enhance quality of life.

Rio+20 provides an enormous opportunity to move forward to a new development paradigm, which appreciates the integral human value of gender equality and women’s empowerment to the achievement of sustainable development.

Q: Participation and leadership is one of the key themes of the UN Women mandate. Will women’s participation in discussions held at Rio+20 be a reflection of progress in this regard?

A: We are advocating for women’s leadership and participation because we know that when you do have women discussing things and when you allow women a strong voice, this frees up space for change.

At this year’s summit there will be a high-level forum of women leaders, and a high-level event for women leaders on the subject famine. The participation of a group of female heads of state and heads of government will bring attention to the relationship between gender equality, women’s empowerment and sustainable development. In this regard we are seeing progress.

But it’s not only about participation in one particular conference that is key, it is about women’s’ participation and leadership in diverse areas, and how we are able to link this to an action plan. That action plan will be the outcome document to be agreed upon by member states at the Rio +20 summit.

Q: Debates and discussions that have taken place ahead of Rio+20 have greatly emphasised the need to streamline the development agenda, by determining the “must haves” that governments will sign up to. In this regard, what challenges do you anticipate for the promotion of gender equality, and women’s rights ahead of the summit?

A: We’ve seen very promising developments in the past few weeks of negotiations, and I’m very pleased that gender equality and women’s empowerment is reflected throughout the text to be agreed upon by member states.

There have been calls from member states to gain greater recognition of women’s rights in relation to water as well as a section on women’s health and sexual and reproductive rights. I hope these will continue and prevail so as to feature alongside women’s right to land and property.

In relation to women’s sexual and reproductive rights, there are always debates in this area. Some countries have different positions on the issue of women’s reproductive rights and health and services.

We believe you can’t isolate one part of the world’s female population. You need to include all the aspects that are essential in terms of achieving gender equality, you cannot ensure the right to participate and be an economic agent and not consider sexual and reproductive health to be important as well. We will continue working to ensure that we get out of the document the best and most comprehensive response to women’s needs.

It is also important that after Rio, when governments will be discussing a new development framework beyond 2015 and the MDGs that women are fully integrated.

I would really like to see a comprehensive sustainable development goal on gender empowerment and the inclusion of gender targets and indicators in all other goals. We believe gender equality has to be mainstreamed – taken into consideration in all areas of development – and recognised as a concrete goal in itself.

Excerpt:

Demonstration against the Assad regime in Kafranbel, Idlib, Syria on May 20, 2012. Credit: Freedom House2/CC By 2.0

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 9 2012 (IPS)

With the international community vowing to ratchet up pressure on the Syrian government, non-violent activists say they remain undeterred even as the situation seems to be deteriorate daily.

The peaceful demonstrations that marked the beginning of the Syrian uprising in February 2011 have faded into a distant past, and calls for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict now contend with a context of escalating abuses.

“Each day seems to bring new additions to the grim catalogue of atrocities: assaults against civilians; brutal human rights violations; mass arrests; and execution-style killings of whole families,” U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the General Assembly Thursday.

Following the May 25 attack on Houla, in which 108 people were killed, including 49 children, many under the age of 10, and recent reports of large-scale killings in Mazraat al-Qubeir and Kafr Zeta, the pressure has also mounted on U.N.-Arab League joint special envoy Kofi Annan.

Annan’s faltering peace plan calls for an end to violence, access for humanitarian agencies to provide relief to those in need, the release of detainees, the start of inclusive political dialogue that takes into account the aspirations of the Syrian people, and unrestricted access for the international media.

“We need support, but not in arms,” Omar al Assil, an activist in the Syrian nonviolence movement, told IPS.

“Weapons do not help anyone,” he added. “Our weapon is civil disobedience.”

Active since the dawn of the Syrian uprising, the Syrian Non-Violence Movement has endeavoured to engage a silent majority in actions of resistance and civil disobedience to mark their contempt for the regime.

Activists have staged innovative and powerful forms of resistance, largely symbolic but high risk nonetheless. These include operating speakers at a distance to voice amplified messages condemning the regime and leaking red paint into fountains.

“We turn the water red to send a message that this is the blood shed in the streets,” Assil told IPS.

These symbolic forms of protest, combined with Internet awareness campaigns and strikes, seek to unite individuals in the quest “to build a new state built on dignity, freedom, and democracy”, according to Assil.

But violence in Syria continues unabated and the non-violent movements that gathered momentum early on have become increasingly sidelined, as the Free Syrian Army (FSA) has come to symbolise a more forceful response to widespread atrocities.

Following the mass killings in Houla, rebels declared Monday they would no longer respect Annan’s proposed ceasefire, on the grounds that President Bashar al-Assad had failed to observe their deadline last Friday to lay down arms.

The escalating violence has prompted the return of 81-year-old Islamic scholar and activist Sheik Jawdat Said to the region. After six months spent giving talks in North America on nonviolence and the Arab Spring, he departed last week to help renew the non-violent movement in Syria.

As an advocate for peaceful protest against the Syrian government, he is putting himself at great risk. “I am over 80. I don’t care what they do to me,” he told National Public Radio a few days ago. “I have always lived by these principles.”

Said helped inspire young Syrian activists to peacefully challenge the regime last year through his teaching and book “The Problem of Violence in the Islamic Action”, published in 1966. He renounces all recourse to violence in the Syrian movement, including that of the FSA.

According to Amr Azm, a Syrian-born professor of Middle East history at Shawnee State University in Ohio, Said influenced the “peace wing” in Syria.
“He’s important because he’s the last of what is holding that line together,” Azm told IPS. “Everyone else has moved to the military wing.
“Peaceful protests are still an integral part of the movement,” he said. But “‘Long Live the Free Syrian Army,’ is what people are chanting in a nonviolent protest.”

Meanwhile, Annan warned at the U.N. General Assembly Thursday that the country was becoming more radicalised and urged all parties in Syria to cease violence, emphasising that “the first responsibility rests with the government,” which has only intensified its unbridled assault on civilians, shelling cities and giving government-backed militia free rein with appalling consequences.

“The violence is drastically escalating and the sectarian strife has become unavoidable with the mounting numbers of explosions, torture, and massacres in many areas in the country,” Jasmin Roman, a Syrian youth activist, told IPS.

Roman recently visited New York as a member of the United Nations Alliance of Civillisations (UNAOC) fellowship programme, which seeks to improve trust and cooperation between the Muslim world and the West.

She told IPS that amid the violence, Syrians remained resilient in their efforts to rebuild their lives within the crumbling state.

“The hyperinflation, rising unemployment, scarcity and skyrocketing prices of essential food and non-food items are exhausting the Syrians and exacerbating their struggle to afford their daily basic needs,” Roman said.

Though the media spotlights the male militant aspect of the conflict, “Throughout the uprising, women in Syria have been significantly participating and contributing at various levels, organising themselves, distributing assistance, supporting the affected families, securing funds to help people, and even providing psychosocial support to the children,” Roman told IPS.

For the moment, Syria’s future tilts in the balance, resting on the implementation Annan’ peace plan. The plan remains the centrepiece of international intervention, pushed forward by the loosely defined consensus of the international community to increase pressure on the Syrian government and threaten consequences in the event of non-compliance.

What form the escalated intervention will take is yet to be defined, but Annan is resolute in his calls for unity, “For the sake of the people who are living through this nightmare, the international community must come together and act as one.”

*With additional reporting by Mathilde Bagneres.

Irreversible environmental damage threatens to destabilise the world’s life-support systems unless urgent action is taken, according to the latest Global Environment Report (GEO-5) which looks to the Rio+20 summit as a crucial opportunity to halt this decline.

The fifth edition of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) flagship environmental report compiles three years of research on the state of the global environment, produced with the collaboration of over 600 individual experts, institutions and U.N. agencies.

The scientific evidence that the world is in deep crisis "is overwhelming", says UNEP chief Achim Steiner. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

It documents widespread changes to the planet, citing an alarming array of climatic events, unprecedented in human history, from floods and droughts to the extinction of species, sea level and temperature rise, pollution and disease.

UNEP’s report calls for urgent and decisive action just weeks before the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil when over 130 world leaders will come together to debate a defining response to the challenges facing the world.

“If current trends continue, if current patterns of production and consumption of natural resources prevail and cannot be reversed and ‘decoupled’, then governments will preside over unprecedented levels of damage and degradation,” said U.N. Under-Secretary-General and UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner.

The failure of governments across the globe to address pressing environmental concerns was spotlighted with evidence demonstrating that out of over 500 international goals agreed upon to safeguard the environment, only four show signs of progress.

These are eliminating the production and use of substances that deplete the ozone layer, removal of lead from fuel, increasing access to improved water supplies and boosting research to reduce pollution of the marine environment.

Amidst signs of progress was the sobering prediction of Matthew Billot, UNEP team leader for GEO-5, that “the world is unlikely to meet the (climate change) target” of keeping the increase in global temperatures to within two degrees C.

“The pace of destruction has only increased,” said Billot, and the planet continues along an unsustainable path, nearing and in some cases surpassing critical thresholds.

Global water withdrawals have tripled over the past 50 years and “we should be very aware of the supply of drinking water and quality, not just in arid hot countries but all over the world,” Billot told IPS.

North America emerges as the world’s biggest water consumer with the highest footprint at 2,798 cubic metres per person per year – double the average.

According to current trends, more than one in 10 people will lack access to fresh drinking water by 2015 and “fresh water availability will be far below the demand we will see by the end of the century”, said Amy Fraenkel, director of UNEP’s Regional Office for North America.

As the global population experiences overwhelming growth, measured at seven billion today and set to reach nine billion by 2050, a central question is how to sustain the planet’s expanding population in a context of scarce resources and environmental challenges.

“This is a key issue,” Fraenkel told IPS. “The solutions we provide are practical solutions that will lead us towards a greener economy,” she added, in reference to UNEP’s policy responses, which draw on current success stories, and are adapted to suit the particular environmental needs of different countries.

One success story is the upward trend in investment in renewable energy. Ontario, Canada was showcased for its feed-in tariff contracts, which are designed to accelerate investment in renewable energy and require a certain percentage of energy entering the grid to be renewable.

At a press conference Wednesday on the forthcoming Rio+20 summit, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon highlighted energy as a cornerstone of the green economy, describing it as “the golden thread that connects economic growth, social equity, and environmental sustainability”.

On this front there is still a long way to go. In North America, renewable energy initiatives are “more the exceptions than the rule”, Fraenkel told IPS, adding “the shift (to renewable energy) is certainly slower in North America than in other parts of the world”.

In terms of market share, fossil fuels continue to be the major source of energy in North America, secured by government subsidies that that shore up the market for unsustainable sources of energy.

“A clear response is the removal of perverse subsidies for fossil fuels, that are creating a market in which renewable energy just can’t compete,” Fraenkel told IPS, urging policy makers to rethink an economic philosophy geared towards endless growth, which has failed thus far to integrate the environment into policy decisions.

“The way we have treated the environment is as an afterthought, it’s a luxury for wealthy countries, it’s something to be addressed only once the economy is developed… that has been the philosophy of our Western industrialised economies,” said Fraenkel.

If there is to be an effective transition to a green economy, which facilitates sustainable development, “We have to rebut the myth that there is conflict between economic and environmental health,” Ban said in his message for World Environment Day, Jun. 5.

The environmental services sector bears this out. It now employs close to five million people, double the number of jobs from 2006-2010, with three million people in the U.S. employed in environmental goods and services, according to a new report produced by the International Labour Organisation, trade unions and UNEP.

The report concludes that a transformation to a green economy could generate 15 to 60 million jobs across the globe over the next two decades and lift tens of millions of workers out of poverty.

GEO-5 is a sobering documentation of the state of the world’s atmosphere, land, water and biodiversity, all of which are under increasing pressure from drivers of change such as population growth.

“(It) reminds world leaders and nations meeting at Rio+20 why a decisive and defining transition towards a low-carbon, resource-efficient, job-generating green economy is urgently needed,” Steiner said. “The scientific evidence, built over decades, is overwhelming and leaves little room for doubt.”

Tobacco corporations threaten public health with lawsuits against anti-tobacco legislation. Credit: Fried Dough/ CC by 2.0

By Isabelle de Grave
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 2 2012 (IPS)

Lawsuits from major tobacco corporations challenging anti-tobacco policies all over the world underscore the ever greater need for a global crackdown on tobacco use, for the sake of both public health and global development goals.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) highlighted this situation when it chose “industry interference” as the centrepiece of its anti-tobacco campaign this year for World No Tobacco Day, observed annually on May 31.

The WHO has taken a “bold stance” in a bid to stop the tobacco industry’s attempts to undercut steps to improve public health, John Stewart, senior international organiser of Corporate Accountability International (CAI), told IPS.

“Tobacco and poverty create a vicious circle, since it is the poor who smoke most and bear the brunt of the economic and disease burden of tobacco use,” said United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon in his address on World Tobacco Day.

Tobacco kills nearly 6 million people each year. It will kill up to 8 million people per year by 2030, of which more than 80 percent will live in low- and middle-income countries, according to the WHO.

Many countries have taken steps towards kicking a lethal global habit, and the Global Tobacco Treaty (formally known as the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, or FCTC) is a crucial tool in the struggle. If fully implemented, it could save more than 200 million lives, Stewart told IPS.

Ahead of global tobacco treaty meetings to be held in Seoul in November, groundbreaking policies in Australia and Uruguay have been lauded as positive steps towards reducing tobacco consumption.

Health warnings must now cover 80 percent of cigarette packages in Uruguay and each brand is permitted only one design per package. Australia has gone further still, implementing a policy of plain packaging in an attempt to de-glamorise the appeal of smoking.

In response, the tobacco firm Philip Morris International has declared the policies “excessive” and filed a lawsuit at a World Bank affiliate, seeking unspecified damages for lost profits.

“While governments and the international health community try to implement effective measures to contain tobacco use and protect the health of people, their efforts are being aggressively opposed by an industry whose products kill people,” said Ban, noting big tobacco’s aggressive attempts to derail public health initiatives.

The prospect of lengthy and expensive lawsuits threatens to become an effective deterrent to anti-tobacco policies of the type pioneered by Australia and Uruguay.

“Big Tobacco’s bullying is the single greatest threat to implementation of the Global Trade Treaty,” Stewart said.

“Marlboro Man” Awards

The Marlboro Man awards, part of CAI’s Challenging Big Tobacco campaign, are a mock celebration of governments’ failures to stand up to the tobacco industry

By buoying big tobacco’s litigation campaign, some countries, including the Netherlands, Indonesia, Honduras and Ukraine, qualify for nomination in this year’s awards.

Ukraine complained at the World Trade Organisation about Australia’s ban on branding cigarette packets, saying it violated international intellectual property laws.

Yet Ukraine doesn’t have any trade with Australia, Stewart pointed out. “It seems a pretty obvious case of the industry somehow influencing the government of the Ukraine to do their dirty work for them.”

Given the increasingly aggressive and manipulative tactics taken by big tobacco, public health policymakers and anti-tobacco campaigners have little trust in the industry.

“Public health initiatives should be focused on challenging this deadly industry,” Stewart told IPS.

“The tobacco industry presents itself as a stakeholder in public health policy. We are calling on governments to keep big tobacco out of the room when public health policy decisions are being made” he said.

But others believe in the possibilities of reining in corporate giants and challenging them face to face.

“The industry can’t be painted with one brush stroke,” said Scott Ballin, a health policy consultant and former vice president for public policy and legislative counsel at the American Heart Association.

“There is a need to think from the standpoint of what the companies could do if they wanted to – for instance, stopping the production of tobacco tainted with other products, cracking down on smuggling and raising standards,” Ballin told IPS.

From this perspective, dialogue can’t be ruled out. Ballin suggested “challeng(ing) these companies and forc(ing) them to develop the products that technology says can be developed. This will move people away from cigarettes to using low-risk products,” he said.

Targeting youth

According to CAI’s 2012 report “Cutting through the Smoke”, tobacco giants have and continue to operate a shamelessly exploitative marketing strategy in the developing world.

Faced with dropping sales in the U.S., UK and European markets, big tobacco has turned to consumers in the developing world to bolster cigarette sales.

For the past seven years British American Tobacco Nigeria (BATN) has been utilising underground parties held at secret locations in Lagos to attract hip Nigerian party goers with the allure of free fun.

At a conference organised for World No Tobacco Day, Gigi Kellett, CAI’s Challenging Big Tobacco campaign director, described the scene.

“Picture a dance floor throbbing to the beat of music, young women in sequined mini-skirts adding sparkle to the crowded throng, young men in fedoras making their way to an all-you-can-smoke-and-drink buffet, courtesy of the nation’s largest tobacco corporation: British American Tobacco Nigeria,” Kellett told reporters and policy makers.

Environmental Rights Action Nigeria, a Nigerian advocacy group dedicated to the defence of the human ecosystem in terms of human rights, has worked tirelessly to bring the Global Tobacco Treaty into force in Nigeria.

But big tobacco skirts regulation with these smoking parties, advertised online or by word of mouth, Kellett added.

These corporations’ exploitation of alternative regulatory contexts in emerging countries like Nigeria worsens the already tarnished image of the industry. It exemplifies one of several points of conflict between big tobacco and the Global Tobacco Trade Treaty.

Ballin suggested that “the best way to find a path forward is to sit down with the stakeholders”. But as tobacco companies’ underhanded marketing strategies transgress the boundaries of international law, anger and suspicion overtake the landscape, transforming it into a battlefield.

Amnesty International delivered a scathing condemnation of global and national leadership in its 2012 global human rights report on Tuesday, conveying profound disappointment in such leadership for its failure to match the determination and resilience of ordinary civilians in their resistance to repressive regimes.

Amnesty International has sharply criticised the U.N. Security Council for leadership failures, including inaction on government violence in Syria. Credit: Freedom House/ CC by 2.0

The report deemed the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council “increasingly unfit for purpose”, according to Salil Shetty, secretary-general of Amnesty International, one of the world’s most prominent non-governmental organisations (NGOs) focusing on human rights.

The report cited several areas of failure and called for a strong Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) with human rights provisions to ensure that politicians prioritise human rights over profit and power.

The veto power of the Security Council’s five permanent members, China, France, Russia, the UK and the U.S., who also happened to be among the world’s top arms suppliers, is “problematic”, said José Luis Díaz, head of office and U.N. representative at Amnesty’s U.N. office in New York.

With a single veto, these countries can put an end to proposed resolutions on international matters, regardless of other countries’ positions.

The “fragile situation” created by the momentous uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East over the past year and a half highlight the importance of global cooperation and action. The situation “could revert if the global powers don’t step up to the plate,” Díaz told IPS.

Failure to act

In the context of global decision making, “opportunistic alliances and financial opportunities” have “trumped human rights as global powers jockey for influence”, according to Shetty.

A prime example is Syria, which has continued violently cracking down on its own people without restraint. The Syrian government has been shielded by Russia’s and China’s vetoes on a Western- sponsored resolution threatening sanctions against Syria for civilian killings.

“The veto makes no sense,” Omar al Assil, an activist in the Syrian nonviolence movement, told IPS. “It makes people in Syria feel that they have been left alone to face the brutality of the regime, whilst China and Russia continue to sell arms and other countries just go on talking.”

Since the outbreak of Syrian protests in February 2011, over 9,000 people have been killed, according to U.N. estimates.

They have been targeted by weapons provided by Russia, France, Egypt and India, as documented in Amnesty’s 2005 report on arms in the Middle East and North Africa region (MENA). Russia is reportedly Syria’s biggest arms provider, while France supplied the country with more than 1.25 million dollars worth of munitions between 2005 and 2009.

Critiquing Amnesty

While a critical eye upon U.N. proceedings is not undue, the organisation NGO Monitor added a new layer to an already complex situation when on Wednesday it presented the results of its research into NGO conduct in the MENA region.

NGO Monitor concluded that organisations including Amnesty and Human Rights Watch had neglected to expose human rights violations in the decade leading up to the uprisings.

Syria again stood out as a case in point. U.N.-accredited organisations had been operating on a policy of “file and forget”, said Gerald M. Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor.

“Amnesty is the most influential NGO in the framework of the human rights council. Where was it on the issue of Syrian violation of human rights for the last decade? Criticism should begin at home, before blaming outside powers,” Steinberg told IPS.

Meanwhile, in Syria, activists have taken the promotion of peace into their own hands, with the Syrian non-violence movement rallying people in peaceful acts of resistance, even as violence rages between the Syrian army and the loose network of resistance fighters known as the Free Syrian Army.

“Our weapon is civil disobedience,” said Assil. Civil disobedience through “strikes, the delayed payment of bills, and the blocking of traffic in Damascus” is seen as a means of involving those who fear speaking out against the regime.

It sends the message to the government that Syrians will not accept the torture, killings and detention of fellow civilians.

Although the free flow of arms allows for brutal crackdowns on protests, silencing individuals critical of oppressive states, “the violence makes us more determined,” Assil continued.

“After being held in detention centres, we participate in protests the next day. It reminds us that it is no longer about reforms – we need complete change.”

The Arms Trade Treaty

The international community has attempted to restrict the transfer of arms in conflict zones including, Bahrain, Libya, Egypt, Syria and Yemen, but “arms embargoes are usually a case of ‘too little, too late’ when faced with human rights crises,” said Helen Hughes, Amnesty’s principal arms trade researcher on the 2005 report.

“The current framework is inadequate,” Erwin van der Borght, Amnesty’s Africa program director, told IPS. “An Arms Trade Treaty with a strong human rights language…would address some of the problems we are seeing today.”

Without comprehensive, legally binding international rules governing the arms trade, guns, bullets, tanks, missiles and rockets frequently end up in conflict zones and in the hands of those who commit war crimes and grave human rights abuses.

The Arms Trade Treaty has been in the making since 2006, and definitive discussions on its development are due in July of this year.

“The challenge now is that it is a strong treaty that ensures no arms are exported to countries where they might be used to commit human rights violations,” Van der Borght told IPS.

Amnesty’s report urged the international community to support grassroots struggles for justice by controlling the free flow of arms, realigning strategic interests in terms of greater global responsibility and following the lead of those whose collective moves for justice have set an example for leadership.

But by the same token, Amnesty should adhere to its own standards for global leadership through greater accountability and self-criticism.

“Protestors have shown that change is possible. They have thrown down a gauntlet demanding that governments stand up for justice, equality and dignity,” said Shetty.

“After an auspicious start, 2012 must become the year of action,” he added, and Amnesty is not exempt.

(END)