By Kerry Kennedy
WASHINGTON, Jul 9 2014 (IPS)

Visiting Bangladesh has been a lifelong dream of mine, but all that I had heard about a people who love freedom so much that they have withstood great armies, famine and intractable poverty could not prepare me for what I’ve seen in the last three days.   The Bengali patriots’ courage and endurance in the face of the Pakistani army forty years ago is the stuff of legend in our family. I remember your great uncle Teddy (Kennedy) telling us about his visit to the Calcutta refugee camps, where tens of thousands lived not in tents but in sewer pipes.

Kerry Kennedy

In a small wooden room packed with women in bright saris, we met a proud shareholder of the Grameen Bank – ­the transformative micro-lending institution founded by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammed Yunus ­– who borrowed 5,000 taka (about 80 dollars) and bought a rickshaw, and then 20,000 taka (240 dollars) and bought a cow, and then 30,000 taka (480 dollars) and bought land.

Thanks to her hard work and the Grameen Bank, she now has a house full of furniture, a field full of food, water, a working toilet and a television set. She saves 100 taka a month, and this year she will receive 100,000 taka (750 dollars) from her savings.

We met a store owner and her husband, who borrowed from Grameen to buy solar panels, which have allowed them to expand their storefront and provide light to the brick house they share with three siblings and their in-laws. “I hope we can take inspiration from the people of Bangladesh and rededicate ourselves to democracy and freedom, knowing that the price may be high, but the sacrifice is well worthwhile” – Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights

We met a young woman on a Grameen scholarship who will be the first woman in her family to go to college. She is majoring in computer science and plans to start a business in the Information Technology sector that will transform her neighbourhood.

We met ten women who sit on the board of the Grameen Bank, all borrowers. They’re angry at the government and concerned for the future of the bank. The government recently ousted Muhammed Yunus from the board of his own bank on the pretence that he had overstayed the mandatory retirement age of sixty.

Then, finding no other legal way to do so, the government cajoled the rubber-stamp Parliament to change a banking law for the specific purpose of ousting the impoverished women from the Grameen board and replacing them with ruling party toadies, who, the women fear, will transform the multibillion-dollar bank that has helped so many escape poverty into just another slush fund for kleptocrats to draw upon.

We met a dozen women, many of them lawyers, all of them leaders of NGOs that address pressing issues like indigenous rights, due process of law, violence against women, dowry battles, rape and environmental justice. Many have been arrested, and many live under daily threat. One said her husband had been “disappeared” in apparent retaliation for her work. They are scared of the nation’s security forces, which are known for kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial executions.

And yet they wake up in the morning, kiss their children and their husbands, and return to work, a daily show of quiet courage.

We met a woman who worked at the collapsed Rana Plaza sweatshop who said she never wants to work in the clothing industry again. I met another who said the same thing but, he added, “we are poor, and we must work.”

They were among a crowd lining the hallway and sitting at intake tables at the offices of the Rana Plaza Claims Administration, the non-profit group charged with addressing reparations for the victims of the Rana Plaza disaster [which left more than 1,000 dead after its collapse in April 2013].

It is an impressive operation, manned by a team of dedicated professionals in labour, law and computer science, intent on making pay-outs to every single victim for physical and psychological injuries and to the scores of dependents who lost the family breadwinner in the tragedy. They have 17 million dollars to hand out, and calculate the need will be closer to 40 million dollars, but the fund is voluntary and no law compels the brands to pay their fair share. While some have been generous, too many others have refused to participate, because no law compels them to do so.

We met Adil Rahman Khan, who has organised a team of 400-plus human rights monitors and defenders across the country to investigate and report on violations of voting rights; on crackdowns on free speech and assembly; on torture, extrajudicial execution, disappearances; and, moreover, ­on holding the government accountable for its failures to protect the freedom that the Bangladeshi people won at such great cost 40 years ago.

Adil seeks accountability in a country where 197 anti-corruption officers are presently under investigation for corruption themselves. For his actions, Adil lives under constant threat of death. Last year, after issuing a report documenting a massacre by government forces of 61 protestors, he was taken away and held without trial for 62 days in a filthy cell, ridden with bedbugs and rotten food.

And, of course, we met with my dear friend  [Muhammed] Yunus. He invited us to come to Dhaka for Social Business Day, where people from scores of countries across the globe gathered to share their designs and experiences with creating businesses which seek not profits for shareholders but solutions to problems like housing or food access.

I have always been struck by the sense of peace and joy he conveys.  But I never appreciated how incredible that was until I saw him in Bangladesh.  He is under unremitting pressure from a government that seeks to destroy all he has given his life to build. And yet he endures, and invites us to somehow find peace amidst the chaos in our lives and find our joy through service.

What an amazing place, what an amazing country.  As we in America celebrate our own Independence Day these days, I hope we can take inspiration from the people of Bangladesh and rededicate ourselves to democracy and freedom, knowing that the price may be high, but the sacrifice is well worthwhile. (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

* Kerry Kennedy is also a member of the IPS Board of Directors.

Excerpt:

The 1965 bullying incident at Michigan’s elite Cranbrook School that came to light this week has kicked off a series of conversations about bullying and about the extent to which we should hold our nation’s leaders accountable for past behaviour.

But even after Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s “If I offended” apology this week, his comment about not remembering the incident, in which classmates say he was the ringleader, troubled many people. His remark hinted at a dangerous indifference to personal freedom and human rights that we do not like to hear from our nation’s leaders, even in their teenage years.

But in the midst of this story is a broader point about the role of leadership and individual action in promoting or discouraging environments like the one described in the Washington Post on Thursday. The stories shared by the Cranbrook Class of 1965 included perpetrators, bystanders and victims of bullying, but no sign of a defender – the only sort of person with the moral courage to stand up against their peers for a greater good.

These are the people who make human rights victories possible and they represent the greatest opportunity for true leadership that most students face during these formative years.

Because, every time a student hears a sexist joke or a racial slur, every time she hears the words “faggot” or “slut” or “fatso” or “retard”, she must make a decision. Will I be a perpetrator, a victim, a bystander or a human rights defender? And each time she makes that decision on which role she will play, she is exercising a muscle.

Like any muscle, the more she uses it, the stronger it becomes. And its strength defines who she is in her school, her family, her neighbourhood, and most importantly, who she sees when she looks in the mirror.In the RFK Center’s Speak Truth to Power programme, we are working with schools across the United States and in countries like Italy, Cambodia and Sweden to turn every student into a defender. We spread this message through the life stories of human rights activists like Elie Weisel, Vaclav Havel and the Dalai Lama who risked everything to fight for a more just and equal future.

For too long, we’ve allowed ourselves to equate targeted bullying with innocent teasing, or dismissed it as pranks and ignored the torment and long-term impact that an incident like this has on young people. These impacts are felt hardest by the victims, but you need only read the accounts of remorse from the men who helped attack John Lauber as boys, or those who merely watched it happen, to realise that when no one stands up to play the role of a defender, all those involved suffer a wound.

The fact is, human rights victories are rarely won by powerful governments or well-armed militaries. More often than not, these battles are led by individuals and small groups of people determined to overcome wrong. Think King, Gandhi, Mandela.

It’s a lesson with big implications for our world, but it’s also the very essence of the leadership and compassion we all hope our children learn in school. Unfortunately for the students at the Cranbrook School in the mid-1960s, there was no such leader.

But we hope that today, resources like our Speak Truth to Power curriculum and the power of the anti-bullying movement will mean that 50 years from now, a presidential candidate will be telling us about the times they defended human rights in school, and how that itself shaped their path to leadership.

*Kerry Kennedy is the President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

(END)

Last week, in a lecture hall at the University of Illinois Chicago, 2003 Nobel Peace Laureate Shirin Ebadi took a reality many of us working in human rights know well, and drove it home with a story from her own nation, a land her government says she is no longer allowed to call home.

She reminded us that women’s rights are a gateway to democracy and to prosperity across society. She spoke about the strength of the feminist movement in Iran, a nation where more than 60 percent of college students are women, and where both men and women understand that by building women’s rights, they strike a blow against government oppression everywhere.

On Day 2 of the 12th Annual Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates, at the Women Forging Peace panel, we had the honour of hearing five leaders in human rights talk about the role of women in peace-building, including Ms. Ebadi. Together they spoke about the impact women’s groups have already had on the fight for universal freedom.

Caryl Stern, president of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, told us about a meeting she held in a refugee camp in Darfur. A group of women had requested the meeting, she was told, to talk about building their camp’s first-ever childcare centre, a solution to a string of infant injuries at the camp wells where so many mothers must spend their day pumping fresh water.

The women arrived, and she readied herself to explain that, unfortunately, the recovery mission might not have the resources to provide the bricks, build a facility, and staff the daycare.

She was shocked when the women waved her concerns aside – they had already gathered the bricks for the facility. They had already worked out a staffing schedule between themselves. And they had already calculated the resources -water in particular – that each family would have to sacrifice to create this safe refuge for their children.

All that these refugee women needed from UNICEF, it turned out, was a bit of cement to lay between the bricks of a women’s centre they had already founded.

At that moment, Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Laureate, spoke about the experience of being a female Nobel Peace Laureate. She said that in more than 110 years, only 15 women have won the award, but that they were all united around a common goal, and all eager to combine one another’s successes and lessons to build a greater movement.

These Laureates, together with leaders like those joining Ms. Williams and Ms. Ebadi during the Nobel Summit panel, are spreading a message of collaboration and achievement that every young person needs to hear.

Toward the end of our session, a teenage student from the Chicago Public Schools who studied the RFK Center‘s Speak Truth to Power curriculum had the opportunity to pose a question to the panel. She asked Ms. Ebadi her advice on balancing a desire to raise a family with the drive to change the world.

And Ms. Ebadi shared an experience that, as a mother of daughters, I understood firsthand. She said that, far from being a deterrent against action, the birth of her daughter was a driving force behind her decision to keep fighting for the future of women and for the human rights of everyone around us.

And that struck me as a message that runs throughout our events in Chicago this week. Women’s rights are not separate from human rights. Refugee rights are not separate from human rights. LGBTI rights – like the ones our Human Rights Laureate from Uganda, Frank Mugisha, is in Chicago to speak about – are not separate from human rights.

All of us are here willing to do the work to build a more equal world, one that lives up to the vision my father Robert Kennedy was speaking about when he said, “The future is not a gift; it is an achievement.”

More than ever before, women and young people are part of building that future we hope to achieve, and as Day 2 of our Summit drew to a close, I was more eager than ever to hear what we all think of next.

*Today’s post is one in a series of dispatches from Kerry Kennedy during the 12th Annual World Summit of Nobel Laureates in Chicago, Illinois.

I spent Monday morning in the library of Chicago’s Lincoln Park High School, listening to students talk about what the word “hero” means to them. This wasn’t any normal school day – in a few moments they would meet Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the father of micro-lending and 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

And these weren’t any ordinary students, for the last few months they’ve been studying human rights defenders like Professor Yunus through the RFK Center’s Speak Truth to Power curriculum, and learning to self-identify as human rights defenders themselves.

The students asked Professor Yunus, “How did you accomplish this? How did you turn Grameen Bank into a 25,000-person company with millions of borrowers, and a business model that has revolutionised the movement to end global poverty?”

And Professor Yunus shared with them an essential truth about activism: he said it didn’t begin with grand gestures or established alliances; his movement wasn’t led by a government or defended by a military.

Grameen Bank, today known around the world as the “bank of the poor”, started in the village of Jobra, Bangladesh, with a 27-dollar grant out of Professor Yunus’s own pocket, loaned to 42 women selling baskets in a market.

That conversation at Lincoln Park High School encapsulated the message we’re all gathered in Chicago to promote: we must impart to our young people an understanding that they already have the tools and opportunity to make a difference in the world today, if only they’re willing to take the first step.

Later in the afternoon, I was honoured to share my thoughts with the Summit as a whole at the University of Illinois Chicago. I spoke about the essence of moral courage, which is the willingness to stand up in the face of adversity combined with the compassion to do so on behalf of others. It’s the rarest form of courage in the adult world, but the form that faces young people every day when they see peers being bullied.

What struck me again and again throughout our first day was that I was by no means alone in feeling that this Summit is, at its heart, a message to our young people. At lunch, President Jimmy Carter said he wanted to direct his comments to youth joining us, and remind them that all the world’s religions are united in their quest to end suffering.

At our opening session, Mayor Rahm Emanuel spoke with pride about the involvement of Chicago’s public schools in this week’s events, and in the Speak Truth to Power curriculum that brought them here.

Before our first panel, 1997 Nobel Laureate Jody Williams called on the students to hear the stories of people like Professor Yunus and see themselves in his example. And President Mikhail Gorbachev reminded us all that our world is crying out for solutions, and that the leaders of today will one day have to turn the reins of our future over the next generation of revolutionaries.

But our audience this week is larger than the lucky high school students in the room with us at the University of Illinois Chicago. Fifteen area colleges are also joining our three-day conversation. We have thousands of young people tuning in to our live-cast with Scholastic.

And the Speak Truth to Power programme is spreading the stories of these human rights defenders in cities from New York and Florence to Hong Kong and Phnom Phen. In the next year, we’re working to expand the programme to classrooms in Sweden, South Africa, Canada, and Romania.

And throughout it all we will push a simple message to our young people: one person can make a difference and each of us has an obligation to try.

Dr. Yunus was right in the library at Lincoln Park High this morning; no one ever changed the world until they overcame the fear to take that first, small step away from our unequal present and toward our brighter future. And it all starts with young people.

*Today’s post is one in a series of dispatches from Kerry Kennedy during this week’s 12th Annual World Summit of Nobel Laureates in Chicago, Illinois.

Last weekend, my 14-year-old daughter, Michaela, and I were en route to Easter Sunday mass in Acapulco. We were stopped, harassed, threatened, and detained by eight soldiers in battle fatigues brandishing automatic weapons.

At first, I was merely concerned; after all, we were travelling with RFK Human Rights Award Laureate Abel Barrera and his legal team, among the brightest lawyers in Mexico. Our attorneys immediately cited four articles of the Mexican constitution that the infantry lieutenant violated.

After establishing that we were an international human rights organisation, the lieutenant responsible for the checkpoint maliciously demanded to inspect our belongings for narcotics. He raged menacingly, “I am the authority, I have the power.” At that moment, my heart stopped.

The day before I had sat in awe at the courage of José Rubio as he told us about his brother, Bonfilio, who was murdered by the Mexican military at another illegal roadblock, not unlike this one. Like tens of thousands of men and women from La Montaña, the poorest region in the poorest state of Mexico, Bonfilio had left his indigenous community intent on landing a job in the United States during the growing season.

Forty minutes after he boarded the bus on Jun. 20, 2009, infantry soldiers stopped the vehicle to search for drugs but found none; when the bus driver confronted them for the stop, they became enraged.

As the bus pulled away, the soldiers opened fire, killing Bonfilio, who had fallen asleep in the last seat. When the driver pulled to a stop, the army, seeing the corpse, decided to conduct a second search. This time, they claimed they “discovered” five bales of marijuana beneath passenger seats. They give no explanation as to how they missed the five shoebox-sized bales on the first inspection.

Over the past three years, José has been harassed and visited at home in the middle of the night by soldiers dressed in civilian clothes. He has been offered bribes, threatened with death, and pressured by family and friends who were threatened and bribed themselves, all in a campaign to get José to drop charges against the military for his brother’s wrongful death.

This is the pattern that those who seek to enforce basic human rights protections can expect in La Montaña. But, because of his extraordinary courage, José Rubio has achieved something extraordinary for his brother and his countrymen: the Rubio case is the first in which a federal court has ruled that a human rights violation committed by the military must be tried by civilian, rather than military, court.

Unfortunately, instead of accepting civilian jurisdiction, the military has appealed.

Today, Mexico faces a turning point. Will the long history of military impunity prevail? Or will the executive, judicial, and legislative branches finally live up to the promises they have made to the international community and their own citizens, and ensure that cases of military abuse of civilians are tried fairly in civilian courts?

In 2010, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights ruled in the cases of indigenous human rights defenders Inés Fernández and Valentina Rosendo, who were raped and tortured by soldiers in retaliation for their community’s activism; the court stated that Mexico must try such cases in civilian court. In response, the Supreme Court of Mexico confirmed the Inter-American Court decision.

On December 9, 2011, President Calderon, along with the Attorney General, publicly stated their support of the measures.

The Rubio case is the first time that the Supreme Court and the President have had their resolve tested, and the military appears determined to maintain the status quo and act above the law.

President Calderon should make a strong and unequivocal public statement clarifying his support for civilian jurisdiction in cases of military abuse of civilians. Furthermore, he should immediately instruct the military prosecutor to stop appealing cases on jurisdictional grounds.

Mexico’s Congress should pass pending legislation that would require all cases of military abuse against civilians to be tried under civilian jurisdiction. And the President should state that he will immediately sign the legislation into law.

The Supreme Court should deny the appeal of the military and establish binding jurisprudence that all cases of military abuse against civilian will be tried in civilian courts.

Through the Mérida Initiative, the United States has supported the Mexican military’s narco-trafficking reform efforts to the tune of $1.6 billion since 2008. We should make clear that we believe that illegal road blocks, harassment, unlawful detention, and other abuses of civilian rights undermine faith in the institution of the military and are unacceptable.

On Sunday, I experienced what few leaders in Mexico’s elite know: the fear of a military that turns its power on the very people it has vowed to protect, the rage engendered when that power is challenged, and the arbitrary nature of its wrath.

The next day, Michaela and I were able to continue with our plans to visit the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe. Our ordeal lasted about 30 minutes, but for many Mexican human rights defenders, confronting the military does not end so well. It is time to rehabilitate the reputation of the Mexican military. Ending impunity will be the first step.

*Kerry Kenndy is president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. Not for publication in México.

“Are you crazy, Fauziya?” Cecilia asked. “You want to go back to Togo?”

Cecilia Jeffrey, herself hailing from the West African country, couldn’t believe her ears. Her friend and roommate Fauziya Kassinja was confessing she was ready to end her struggle to be the first woman in U.S. history to gain political asylum because she feared female genital mutilation.

Later Cecilia walked out of the shower and showed Fauziya how she had been changed forever in an effort to convince her friend to change her mind.

Fauziya remembered that Cecilia confronted her with the possibility that the same could happen to her. “She said to me, ‘Is this what you want to go back to? Do you know what this is?’”

Fauziya confessed, “I didn’t know. It didn’t look anything like female genitalia. Nothing. It was just like the palm of my hand. And the only thing you could see was a scar, like a stitch. And just a little hole. That’s it, no lips, nothing. I said, ‘You live with this?’ And Cecilia said, ‘All my life. I cry all the time when I see it. I cry inside. I feel weak, I feel defeated.’”

Up to 140 million girls and women have had their undergarments removed, their legs spread against their will, and their genitals hacked, usually with rocks, knives, scissors, razors or other cruel instruments. Anesthesia is rare. Most victims suffer excruciating pain, hemorrhaging, complicated pregnancies and even death; often they contract HIV/AIDS and hepatitis from unsterilised tools. Survivors suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and more. Every day 8,000 girls, aged two weeks to 15 years old, are at risk of female genital mutilation or cutting (FGM/C).

Thanks to the efforts of courageous local women, backed by NGOs, governments and the United Nations, progress is being made. Thousands of communities across Africa and the Middle East have decided to end the practice.

Brave lawmakers have passed legislation making it illegal, and thanks to the advocacy efforts of many African countries and Italy, which has long been a leader in the fight against this practice, the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), and the General Assembly have made ending female genital mutilation a priority.

But efforts to curb the practice must be manifold and a lot more remains to be done.

More healthcare practitioners are needed to educate patients about the harmful effects of genital cutting. According to the U.N., those who have undergone FGM/C run a significantly greater risk of requiring a Caesarean section, episiotomy, and post-partum haemorrhaging. Both maternal and infant mortality increases for FGM mothers.

More leaders and highly respected agents of change must engage the community. These women and men carry enormous weight and their public embrace of basic rights over traditional practices matter. Religious leaders who have preached against FGM/C at Church on Sunday or the Mosque on Friday have made significant inroads into stopping the practice. There is a common belief that FGM is an important religious practice, but it is not cited in the Bible or Koran.

Communities need to collectively express a resolve to end the practice. In many communities, FGM is regarded as necessary in order to for a girl to be accepted as suitable for marriage. Communities that embrace the rights to health, dignity and bodily integrity are more successful when they publicly declare their abandonment of FGM.

Healthcare professionals must delegitimise the practice by refusing to administer the procedure in hospitals. A disturbing trend over the past several decades has been the “medicalisation of FGM.”

In response to the adverse health consequences of traditional methods, many have sought FGM in hospital or clinical settings. Healthcare workers should explain the grievous health consequences of the practice and refuse to participate.

Better media coverage could play a critical role in eliminating FGM/C. Television, radio, billboard and print media, as well as the Arts, including music, plays and more, have had a tremendously positive impact in eliminating FGM.

Making FGM/C illegal at the national level makes explicit a state’s disapproval of the practice, allows for compensation to victims and enables agents of the state to hold perpetrators accountable for violence against women.

It acts as a deterrent to practitioners and a source of legitimisation for those who seek to abandon the practice.

When my eleven-year-old daughter Cara heard Fauziya’s account, she wrote the following poem:

Female genital mutilation

Looks like it really hurts.

Ouch! Stop it!

Indeed. Let us all work together to stop it.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Kerry Kennedy is the President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

By Kerry Kennedy
NEW YORK, Mar 8 2012 (IPS)

Forty-six years ago, at a Senate subcommittee hearing on migratory labour, U.S. Senator Robert Kennedy listened in disgust as California’s Kern County Sheriff explained the arrests of peaceful picketers brought on by mounting pressure from farm owners.

Senator Kennedy responded: “I suggest you and the district attorney read the Constitution of the United States.”

Two years later, my father took time out during the crucial days before he announced his candidacy for president, to join 8,000 farm workers at Mass, where he gave the Eucharist to Cesar Chavez. With that simple and symbolic act, Chavez broke his 25-day fast, which, along with a nationwide boycott of grapes, won concessions from growers and empowered California’s farm workers.

Florida’s farm workers, however, had no such champion in 1968. And as a result, their working conditions remain much the same as they were 40 years ago – they work 10 to 14-hour days, seven days a week. They have no right to form a union, no right to a day off per week, no right to overtime pay or disability.

This is thanks in part to the legacy of Jim Crow. Dixiecrats threatened to block President Roosevelt’s Federal Labor Relations Act unless it exempted farm workers and domestic servants, who were predominantly African American. As a result, neither group received the federal protection all other workers enjoyed. Moreover, the rules varied by state, so rights won by Chavez in California had little impact on farm workers in Florida or anywhere else in the country.

Today, conditions in the fields are horrific, with little access to sanitary facilities (think of that next time you bite into a tomato) or potable water, and for women in particular, little protection from their bosses’ sexual assaults. Even minimum wage is denied, and most workers are paid by the piece, with the average rate of 50 cents for every 32 pounds of tomatoes they pick, virtually the same rate they were paid in 1980.

To earn minimum wage during the course of a 10-hour day, a worker must pick over 2.25 tonnes of tomatoes – nearly twice the amount needed more than 30 years ago when the standard rate was 40 cents. Given these statistics, it’s not surprising to learn that on average farm workers barely earn 12,000 dollars a year.

Since 1997, the work of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) has led to the successful prosecution of seven modern-day slavery operations, emancipating over 1,000 people over the last 14 years. Two additional cases are now in the courts.

On Mar. 10, 2012, I will join the CIW in Lakeland, Florida, to commemorate the anniversary of Chavez’s historic non-violent protest and remind the world that injustice of any kind will not be allowed to prevail.

As Robert Kennedy broke bread with Cesar Chavez in 1968, so allies from around the country will join members of the Immokalee Workers who are fasting at Publix Super Market headquarters, calling on the Florida-based supermarket chain to meet with CIW to address abuses in its supply chain. To date, Publix executives have declined to meet with CIW representatives and have not answered a single letter.

Faced with growing injustices, CIW has responded with a courageous and innovative initiative – the Fair Food Campaign – to bring justice to the agricultural industry. Over the past 10 years, the Coalition, which is comprised of over 4,000 Haitian, African-American, Guatemalan, Mayan, and Mexican farm workers, has achieved nine precedent-setting agreements with industry leaders to improve conditions in the workplace and empower workers to protect their rights.

These agreements include paying a penny more per pound of tomatoes picked, a no-tolerance policy for slavery in the fields, and a code of conduct developed with the farm workers.

The agreements are unprecedented because they leverage the purchasing power of the most powerful actors in agriculture to address the most vulnerable sector of the industry and some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our country. The campaign depends on the support of industry leaders, which today includes McDonalds, Taco Bell, Burger King, Subway, WholeFoods, Trader Joes, Compass Group, Sodexho, and Aramark.

Sadly, it is in their own backyard that CIW has received the most resistance, as Publix has refused to discuss abuses in its supply chain.

In 1968, Sen. Kennedy spoke of Chavez as “one of the heroic leaders of our time.” The members of CIW carry on his heroic legacy and for their tireless efforts, in 2003, three Immokalee Workers received the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award. Thus began an intensive partnership with the RFK Center that helped advance the cause of the Campaign for Fair Food in Florida and brought national attention to the indignities that we allow in our agricultural industry.

It was evident to Robert Kennedy that inaction in the face of injustice was unacceptable. Forty-six years later, we urge Publix to demonstrate the courage of conviction to uphold that principle and come to the table with CIW.

*Kerry Kennedy is the President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Excerpt:

By Kerry Kennedy
NEW YORK, Sep 26 2011 (IPS)

Last night, Wangari Maathai, the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, died. Most people think of Ms. Maathai as an environmentalist, planting trees. In reality, her environmental activism was part of a holistic approach to empowering women, advocating for democracy, and protecting the earth.

Nobel Laureate Professor Wangari Maathai with then U.S. senator Barack Obama in Nairobi, Kenya in 2006. Credit: Frederick Onyango/creative commons

Throughout Africa, as in much of the world, women are responsible for tilling the fields, deciding what to plant, nurturing the crops, and harvesting the food. They are the first to be aware of environmental damage that harms agricultural production. If the well goes dry, they are the ones who are most concerned about finding new sources of water and the ones who must walk further to fetch it.

As mothers, women are often the first to know when the food they feed their children is tainted with pollutants or impurities, because they can see it in the tears of their children and hear it in their babies’ cries.

In recognition of this, Ms. Maathai founded the “Green Belt Movement“. On Earth Day, 1977, she launched a one-woman campaign to reforest Kenya. She hoped to help stop soil erosion and to provide a source of lumber for homes and firewood for cooking. She distributed seedlings to rural women and set up an incentive system for each seedling that survived.

She encouraged farmers, 70 percent of them women, to plant protective “green belts” to stop soil erosion, provide shade, and become a source of timber and fuel.

The Green Belt Movement has planted more than 30 million trees in Africa, helping 900,000 women. The Green Belt Movement has spread throughout the world, from Africa, to the United States, to Haiti, and beyond.

It was a simple concept and it was vastly successful.

She won the Africa Prize for helping to stop hunger. The Kenyan government heralded her as one of the country’s most exemplary citizens. Newspapers and local organisations lauded her.

Her commitment was tested when President Daniel arap Moi decided to erect a 60-story skyscraper in the middle of Nairobi’s largest park. The office building was to be a monument to Moi, and plans called for the entranceway to be graced by a two-story statue of the president striding, Leninesque, into the future.

When Ms. Maathai condemned the plans, which would have paved the only green space for tens of thousands of Nairobi’s poor, officials told her to stop. When Ms. Maathai took her campaign public, security forces came to her office and home, threatening her with arrest. When she refused to be silenced, she was subjected to a harassment campaign orchestrated by the government.

Members of Parliament denounced Ms. Maathai and called her organisation “a bunch of divorcees”. The government-run newspaper questioned her past sexual activities, spread rumours that she was a lesbian, and police detained her and interrogated her, with no warrant and no charges.

Ms. Maathai then organised a demonstration of women elders in the park itself. Riot police harassed, humiliated, beat, tear gassed and arrested Ms. Maathai and her companions.

That act of defiance cost Ms. Maathai her standing with an all- powerful government, her funding, and her job. But the peaceful protest she led that day became a rallying cry for women activists, environmentalists and democracy leaders.

I had met Wangari Maathai months earlier, on a human rights mission to Kenya for the RFK Center for Human Rights, and we had become instant friends. She spoke passionately about her work with rural women, and the difficulties they faced with little income, absentee husbands, a hostile government, and few resources for food, water, and firewood. Ms. Maathai worked with them to start planting trees.

Along with a small cadre of Kenyan human rights defenders, the RFK Center demanded Ms. Maathai’s release and the prosecution of the riot police who had so brutalised peaceful protesters. More determined than ever, Ms. Maathai continued her work, using planting trees as an organising tool for women’s empowerment and political participation.

I am proud to say that Ms. Maathai was among the heroes profiled in the book I wrote about human rights defenders, “Speak Truth to Power”.

Wangari Maathai was a mighty woman, creative, fearless and full of love. We will miss her.

*Kerry Kennedy is President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice & Human Rights.

Excerpt:

By Kerry Kennedy
WASHINGTON, Aug 10 2011 (IPS)

More than a year after a private company operating in public waters retched 170 million gallons of crude and two million gallons of toxic dispersants into the Gulf of Mexico, creating an environmental catastrophe, we still lack reliable statistics on the BP oil disaster’s impact on the health of residents.

I recently spent several days travelling across the Gulf Coast region of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, speaking with fishermen, oystermen, shrimpers, restaurant workers, and neighbours about the illnesses they have suffered in the wake of this calamity.

I couldn’t help but think of the trip that my father, Robert Kennedy, made to the Mississippi Delta in 1967. That trip transformed him. He was horrified by the poverty, the children whose bellies were “swollen with hunger”; he believed we had a duty, as a nation, to relieve their suffering and soothe their pain.

He returned to Washington determined to extend food stamps to the poorest Americans, despite a cash-strapped administration and an unyielding Congress. Today, the children and grandchildren of those very same families continue to suffer from systemic governmental neglect, the debilitating heritage of communities – African-American, Vietnamese, Laotian, Native American, and poor white – marginalised by skin colour, religion, education level, income, or access to power. It is long past time for federal action.

Our delegation was hosted by RFK Human Rights Award Laureate Stephen Bradberry, executive director of the New Orleans-based Alliance Institute. Stephen has been a community organiser in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward and across the Gulf for 25 years, empowering communities to demand what is rightfully theirs.

In Jean Lafitte, Louisiana, Mayor Tim Kerner told us that he and his son were on the water throughout the disaster. He said: “I encouraged everyone in this town to put out booms and work night and day to stop that oil from destroying our community.”

But now, so many of his people are ill, he’s afraid his neighbours will say, “We wouldn’t have listened to you and kept our jobs if we knew it would kill us.”

With no access to a specialist in toxicology, Mayor Kerner is fearful that he, his son, his family, and friends will suffer long-term impacts of exposure to the toxins that will be discovered in years to come. He wants his town to be diagnosed now, so they can get the medical treatment they deserve, and avoid what might, in a few years, be a community-wide epidemic.

Our delegation met two brothers who said their families had been fishing for five generations. Both they and their family members have endured excruciating lung, skin, and digestive-tract ailments in the wake of the BP disaster. When one man’s infant grandson ran a high fever, his daughter-in-law panicked and brought the child to the emergency room. Self-employed and uninsured, he faced a bill of 2,300 dollars. With shrimp yields the lowest in memory, he wonders how he will pay.

From a community east of Coden, Alabama, the closest health care facility is more than 40 miles away. Public transportation is virtually non-existent. One resident told me: “We just can’t afford to take a day off of work, pay for gas, and then pay up to 120 dollars for a doctor’s appointment.” So people wait for the emergency room, and that is 260 dollars each visit.

In Biloxi, Mississippi, a fisherman named Kwan said he was on a cleanup crew for BP, and he and his fellow fishermen have had rashes across their bodies ever since, which itch until they bleed. In that city, the health care facility is so over-booked, it takes up to three months for a doctor’s appointment, and the same wait for a follow-up visit.

Catfish Miller, another fisherman, also worked on the clean-up crew for BP. He was denied gloves, a respirator, eyewear, or any form of protective gear. He suffered searing headaches, ear infections, sores in his nose and throat, and bleeding from every orifice in his body for months on end. He said no doctor he went to would tie his ailments to toxic poisoning.

Many of those who sought care have been belittled when they’ve mentioned BP, and dismissed as delusional or depressed.

We heard dozens of people across the region talk about similar health problems and obstacles to care. There are many reasons.

The full spectrum of chemicals used in the dispersants was made public in June 2011, only after requests consistently denied led to extensive litigation.

Few doctors in the region are willing to tie ailments to BP, or even diagnose toxic poisoning. When we visited the Jefferson County health care facility in Louisiana, Executive Director Yakima Black offered her insights.

She pointed out that local doctors generally lack access to the expertise, training, and equipment to diagnose toxic poisoning and they don’t want to be called as an expert witness in a lawsuit with BP. They are afraid of malpractice suits and will not treat patients unless they have specialty training, adding to the disincentives to diagnose.

And, with most patients self-employed and uninsured, few can afford the expensive tests and medicines necessary to show causation and obtain proper care. In addition, we heard an abundance of confusion about insurance coverage availability.

Last year, President Barack Obama pledged that Gulf residents would be “made whole”. To honour that pledge, Congress must ensure that health care is adequate, affordable, proximate and available; that health care workers are trained to diagnose, track, and treat toxic poisoning; and that the people of the Gulf are treated with respect, no matter what their background.

There is a solution. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy signed the first federal law providing community health care centres to people in need. Today, 23 million Americans depend on those centres for care. Under health care legislation passed last year, the centres would expand to include 40 million Americans, many of them in the Gulf Coast.

If Republicans in Congress don’t make real on their threat to decimate the progress that’s already been made, the people of the Gulf might stand a chance.

First responders to the 9/11 tragedy did not have to prove causation in order to get treatment, they only had to show they were in the vicinity of the terrorist attack. Similarly, the 150,000-strong cleanup crew who sacrificed themselves, and their families and neighbours who live along the Gulf Coast should not have to prove that their symptoms are caused by BP’s catastrophe, only that they were there.

When I joined the RFK Center delegation to the Gulf Coast a year ago, Alabaman Louise Bosarge cited President Obama’s reference to the resiliency of Gulf Coast residents, who have endured four natural disasters and one man-made catastrophe in five years – Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, Gustav, Ivan and now, BP. “We are resilient,” she said. “We always bounce back. Bouncing hurts.”

It’s time for us to provide the families of the Gulf Coast with the health care they deserve.

*Kerry Kennedy is president of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Excerpt:

On this day, 43 years ago, in the midst of a national struggle to make real the promises of justice and equality, we lost Robert F. Kennedy. Today, we honour his legacy when we stand with heroes who are devoted to the pursuit of justice and put their own lives on the line for others.

RFK Human Rights Award Laureate Abel Barrera Hernández is under constant death threat because he dares stand against police, military, and government officials on behalf of indigenous communities in the Mexican state of Guerrero. Despite the differences in their eras, their countries, and their languages, these two men are united by their shared, deep commitment to advancing justice and human rights.

As Attorney General, Robert Kennedy ensured that the federal government stood on the side of the Civil Rights Movement. He sent federal marshals to protect the Freedom Riders and federal troops to the University of Mississippi to assure the integration of African- American students there.

He sent in the National Guard when a white supremacist mob, 3,000 strong, surrounded First Baptist Church, shouted racial epithets and threatened to burn it to the ground while 1,000 African-American men, women, and children worshipped inside.

He did it not because it was the politically expedient thing to do. John Kennedy had won the presidency with the slimmest of margins, and RFK knew that support for civil rights might well cost his brother re-election. He did not do it because there was a precedent of the federal government supporting the Civil Rights Movement. Not since the Civil War had an attorney general aligned himself with blacks attempting to assert their rights.

He did it because it was the right thing to do.

To the best of my knowledge, there has never been a minister of justice who took a principled position in a case of this societal dimension, at the risk of endangering the re-election of a sitting president. Ditto for the brother, or campaign manager, of a head of state. Despite the dangers, he spoke truth to power and transformed our country.

Today, Mexico confronts its own social crisis, as indigenous communities, which have suffered extreme poverty, are besieged by narco-traffickers and live amid a heavy military deployment, are demanding their rights. Abel and his organisation, the Tlachinollan Center for Human Rights in the Montaña (Tlachinollan), are leading a dynamic, indigenous, civil and human rights movement near the town of Ayutla de los Libres.

Perhaps Guerrero is Mexico’s Alabama, and the town of Ayutla its Birmingham – the center of a profound struggle. Eleven Na Savi and Me’phaa indigenous persons were murdered by the Mexican Army in Ayutla 13 years ago tomorrow, Jun. 7.

In 2002, the Mexican military forces sexually tortured Ines and Valentina, two indigenous women. When heroic indigenous leaders Raul Lucas and Manuel Ponce documented and reported the abuses, they were murdered in 2009. Abel and his colleagues at Tlachinollan shut their satellite office following their murders.

Now, two years later – on Jun. 16 – Abel and his colleagues are courageously committed to reopening the Tlachinollan office in Ayutla, with a ceremony to mark the occasion.

When state and local officials defied the Constitution, Robert Kennedy brought the power of the federal government to the aid of civil rights activists. Today, we in the international community have a duty to bring the power of international law to the aid of Abel and Tlachinollan.

We must pressure Mexico to comply with the basic human rights requirements under our foreign assistance agreements, such as under the Merida Initiative, and we must stop the flow of select aid if necessary. We must pressure Mexico to abide by the orders of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, which require the implementation of protection measures for Abel and other indigenous human rights defenders in Guerrero, and the transfer of cases of abuse by the military out of military jurisdiction.

Every staff member of Tlachinollan and the indigenous human rights defenders from the Costa-Montaña region put their lives at risk so they can report abuses, denounce crimes, and find justice. Without these human rights defenders, and their accompaniment of victims and survivors, justice in Guerrero does not stand a chance.

For those of us in the United States, we must know that all of Mexico’s national reforms and all of the U.S. assistance will be futile if we don’t support the civil and human rights movement on the ground.

As Robert Kennedy said: “We must recognize the full human equality of all people – before God, before the law, and in the councils of government. We must do this not because it is economically advantageous – although it is; not because the laws of God and man command it – although they do command it; not because people in other lands wish it so. We must do it for the single and fundamental reason that it is the right thing to do.”

Kerry Kennedy is President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

By Kerry Kennedy and - -
SELMA, ALABAMA, Apr 27 2011 (IPS)

Recently, I joined some of our nationÂ’s heroes walking the trail of the civil rights movement in Alabama. No one has done more to stop hate groups in the United States over the past three decades than Morris Dees through the Southern Poverty Law Center. Morris pioneered the strategy of holding hate groups accountable through civil suits awarding damages so expensive that the defendants are forced into bankruptcy and closed. Over thirty people have gone to prison for plots to assassinate him.

Morris drove me past the State Capitol, where Jefferson Davis took the oath of office for the Confederacy. ThatÂ’s also where, as Attorney General, my father, Robert Kennedy, flew in demanding that Governor George Wallace comply with the Constitution, end segregation and allow African-American students to register at the University. The day of their meeting, April 25, 1963, Wallace removed the American flag and raised the Confederate flag from the Capitol dome. His vision of a divided America did not prevail.

We visited the Rosa Parks Museum, with its surreal reenactment of the scene on December 1, 1955, when the white bus driver demanded that Ms. Parks relinquish her seat to a white man. It was a woman, Jo Ann Robinson, who, after learning Ms. Parks had been jailed, gathered volunteers, mimeographed 35,000 handbills, and called for a boycott of the city bus system. Three days later, citizens formed the Montgomery Improvement Association and elected Dr. Martin Luther King as President. He became the moral voice of the boycott. Starting Monday morning, 90% of the black community shunned the municipal bus system. The boycott lasted for thirteen months, until a Supreme Court decision declaring segregated buses to be unconstitutional took effect.

At First Baptist Church, the Freedom Riders sought sanctuary after their mauling at the Montgomery Bus station. The Freedom Riders started out on May 5, 1961, with two small interracial groups riding interstate busses across the South. They were fighting the widespread violation of the Supreme Court ruling which banned segregated seating, restrooms and restaurants.

Consistent with GandhiÂ’s teachings, the Freedom Riders informed officials, including the FBI, of their intentions and whereabouts throughout the trip. In Alabama, the FBI informed state troopers and local police, who, in turn, called in the Ku Klux Klan. When the busses reached Montgomery, a rabble of 2,300 men, women and children, armed with chains and ax handles, were lying in wait. The police had assured the mob that the cops would not intervene until the mob had done its worst. Upon identifying himself as a federal agent sent by Robert Kennedy, John Seigenthaler was struck over the head with a lead pipe, cracking his skull and almost killing him.

Those Freedom Riders who could still walk sought sanctuary at First Baptist Church, home of the magnificent Rev. Ralph Abernathy. That afternoon, 1,000 black children, women, and men stuffed themselves in the Sanctuary, singing “We shall overcome”. At dusk, they heard the crowd of 3,000 white firebrands hurling racial epithets and taunting the out-numbered federal marshals sent to protect the church. At nightfall, the white supremacists hurled bricks at the stained glass windows, tossed Molotov cocktails through the broken glass, and overran the federal marshals. The congregation sang. In the basement, Lewis, King and Abernathy spoke to Robert Kennedy on the phone. President John Kennedy threatened to send in federal troops. Finally, the National Guard arrived and dispersed the crowd.

The next day we went to Selma. On March 7, 1963, demonstrators set out from Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma intent on marching 50 miles to Montgomery. They were protesting a murder and the denial of the right to vote. With Hosea Williams and John Lewis leading two columns of 600 marches, they confronted an impenetrable wall of Alabama state troopers, led by Major John Cloud and armed with billy clubs, bull whips and gas masks. Realizing they could neither march into the phalanx of troopers, nor, with the long lines in back of them, turn around, Lewis sent word to the demonstrators to kneel and pray.

Sixty seconds later, with demonstrators on their knees, Major Cloud barked the order, “Troopers, advance!”

As peaceful demonstrators attempted to escape, police on foot and horseback sprayed vomit-inducing tear gas, and clubbed men, women and children with abandon.

CBS interrupted its broadcast of “Trial at Nuremburg” to show scenes of the slaughter. Shocked and horrified by the brutality depicted on front pages and television screens, thousands of people from across the country and around the world swarmed to Selma in solidarity. Five months later, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.

When I asked John Lewis how he felt walking over the bridge 46 years later, he said, “Grateful.”

Looking back, I am grateful, too. Grateful for the moral courage of John Lewis and the civil rights defenders who finally made our country a true democracy. One person, one vote. Grateful for the changes that have taken place since 1963. Inspired by the women and men in our country and around the world who have devoted their lives and sometimes paid the ultimate price, for human rights. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS) (*) Kerry Kennedy, President, Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) Center for Justice and Human Rights and Honorary Chair, RFK Foundation of Europe, Onlus.

Excerpt:

By Kerry Kennedy and - -
PORT AU PRINCE, Jul 26 2010 (IPS)

Haiti’s January 2010 earthquake left more than 230,000 dead, 300,000-plus injured, 1.5 million homeless and physically leveled 28 of 29 government ministries. In response, the international community pledged 5.5 billion dollars in aid to rebuild Haiti. Today, only 10 percent of the promised funding has reached its shores.

Haitians are understandably skeptical. Nearly $1.5 billion was pledged during the last two donor conferences in 2004 and 2009, the latter after the food crisis and hurricanes Fay, Gustav, Hanna and Ike devastated their nation. Much of that money was never delivered and impacted Haitians had little say over how those dollars were spent.

The international community too often regards procurement and distribution of basic supplies as charity, but it is wrong. Access to food, water, shelter, education and healthcare are basic human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. For too long, the international community has also failed to involve local communities in the planning process or open their books so local stakeholders could see what was to be spent on which projects.

For the past eight years, the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights has been at the forefront of advocating for a rights-based approach to aid, which mandates transparency, accountability and local participation.

This week, RFK staff traveled to Haiti to assess the situation six months after the earthquake. We joined Wyclef Jean as his group, Yele Haiti, distributed water to 300 people who live in a packed tent city. Jean received our 2009 RFK Ripple of Hope Award for his bold humanitarian work that strengthens and inspires change in his native Haiti. He introduced us to community leaders, who talked passionately about the need for more food, shelter, medical care, and jobs.

We hiked to a mountaintop slum in Grand Ravine run by infamous child gangsters, a place where neither police nor UN peacekeepers dare tread. Teenagers and young men took it upon themselves to scavenge enough plywood to construct a five-room schoolhouse. There, nine unpaid and undeterred teachers tutored 500+ students in two shifts without such basic supplies as books, paper and pencils. An old shelf substituted as a makeshift chalkboard. The youth pleaded that funds be made available for school supplies, as well as a health clinic and a park for recreation.

Later, our 2002 RFK Human Rights Award laureate Loune Viaud and her team from Zanmi Lasante (Partners in Health) demonstrated the difference that committed individuals can make in ensuring the right to health is accessible to all. At the Port-au-Prince General Hospital, thanks to her intervention and in partnership with the Ministry of Health, much has improved since the chaotic days after the earthquake when the main building was uninhabitable and thousands of victims flooded the grounds and surrounding streets. Although many patients have returned to permanent structures, we still witnessed scores of kids languishing from the heat inside the pediatric tent and watched as a doctor held an X-ray up to the sun to make a reading.

Six months after the quake, the people of Haiti have a right to know who promised aid, when delivery can be expected, and what recourse they have if deadlines are not met or projects are ineffective or not delivered at all.

The international community has a duty to respect Haitians’ rights and be accountable. While the RFK Center lauds Haiti’s Interim Reconstruction Commission, the Ministry of Planning, and the UN Development Program for creating global websites that, for the first time track funds and projects to Haiti, this is only a start. These same websites must be kept current and be user friendly, with a feedback mechanism so donors can hear directly from the people whose lives are impacted. This information should be disseminated through popular media, such as radio, to let Haitians themselves know how much money has come in and how it is being spent.

Making this information available would also counter widespread criticism of the slow pace of aid delivery. For example, USAID has spent more than $1 billion in immediate humanitarian assistance over the past six months, providing potable water, high-nutrition bars and other food stuffs, tents, latrines, security and rubble removal for camps. Yet few outside USAID can monitor where that money has gone and what future projects are planned. Consequently, USAID receives little credit for its contributions. Without transparency, it can neither be praised for its successes nor held accountable for its failures.

Global leaders such as President Obama, Secretary Clinton, and USAID Administrator Shah have spoken eloquently about the need for the United States to work with the people of Haiti to build their lives and their country back better. If these words are to have true meaning six months from now, funding and transparency mechanisms will need to transform today. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Kerry Kennedy is the President and Monika Kaira Varma is the Director of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Excerpt:

By Kerry Kennedy and - -
WASHINGTON, Jul 5 2010 (IPS)

Within the next few days, the World Bank Board and International Monetary Fund Board of Directors will decide whether to forgive a significant portion of the “odious” debt of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) accumulated to a large degree during the autocratic and kleptocratic regime of President Mobutu. Bilateral donors owed significant sums will probably follow suit.

Human rights advocates, like us, are normally for debt forgiveness. Often, governments provide support to regimes for political reasons, such as the US support of Mobutu during the Cold War despite his atrocious human rights record. This debt can crush progressive policies of new governments and facilitate a neo-colonial type relation between debtor and creditor. However, forgiveness should not be given if the government is undeserving.

Since the DRC is not presently servicing its debt (neither paying interest nor principle), debt forgiveness would not mean more money for schools, health care and for the justice system. It would also send the wrong signal at this moment and should be delayed until the human rights situation in that country improves.

Less than a month ago Floribert Chebeya, the DRC’s leading human rights defender, was murdered, implicating high-level officials close to President Joseph Kabila. For twenty years Floribert courageously endured imprisonment, torture, and constant death threats as he investigated, reported on, and sought to hold Kabila and his henchmen responsible for rape, murder and untold cruelty.

We knew Floribert both as a colleague in the struggle for human rights, and, as a friend. The politicized response to his murder was to have the intelligence service handle the “investigation” as opposed to the prosecutors. It was announced that a police major and colonel had been arrested and a police general, who has been the right hand man of the President, was suspended. This political reaction to the crime has appeased the international community, but it should not suffice.

The intelligence service has no jurisdiction over this case and these “arrests” are arbitrary and the detentions related to them illegal (as are so many in DRC). At present, only the police major appears to have been transferred to the custody of the prosecutor. He is now detained in prison and has been visited by UN human rights officers to whom he claimed his innocence. The colonel supposedly is still detained at the intelligence service to which UN human rights officers have no access despite the fact that hte UN Security Council Resolutions legally mandating it. As for the police general? Clearly not charged.

The political response to a crime is not comforting. Statements made by the DRC government about high-profile cases have proven to be false in the past. Take, for example, the international effort to push the government to take seriously President Kabila’s own zero-tolerance policy for rape by government officials. A list of five officers of the government army directly implicated in rape was drawn-up over two years ago. Now, after much effort, three of the five have been detained, but charges are slow in coming. The other two reportedly are in hiding. We were specifically told that the major on this list was in South Africa. Now UN human rights officers have found him in active duty in the Mbandakar Province. He has been receiving his pay and is in a command position.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, the Belgian King Albert II, and other dignitaries were relieved to learn that the funeral for Floribert wasn’t held on the 30th of June to interfere with their participation DRC’s 50th independence celebration. Floribert would not be impressed, as one possible reason for his murder was that he was advocating that international dignitaries boycott the 50th anniversary in order to bring attention to the DRC’s extremely problematic human rights situation. This record includes, but by no means is limited to, ongoing killings, rapes and torture (which could have taken Floribert’s life) by state authorities. Most of these crimes go unpunished. Those authorities who are responsible for these policies enjoy even greater impunity.

If the boards of the World Bank and the IMF, which are made up of member states with the US having the largest vote, believe the DRC has satisfied all the conditions for reaching the completion point under the Enhanced Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) Initiative, this conclusion paves the way for a formal cancellation of the DRC’s debt. We would lament it as a missed opportunity to leverage the DRC government to end the widespread human rights violations being committed by its state agents.

For the US, as the most important board member, there is even a little known law that prevents the US from supporting debt relief when there are systematic human rights violations. In honor of Floribet and his efforts, the boards should vote to delay debt relief until Floribert’s death is independently and properly investigated, with those responsible brought to justice and the human rights situation in the DRC has improved.

For the US, as the most important board member, there is even a little known-law that prevents the US from supporting debt relief when there are systematic human rights violations. In honour of Floribert and his efforts, the boards should vote to delay debt relief until Floribert’s death is independently and properly investigated, those responsible are brought to justice, and the human rights situation in DRC has improved. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Researching, recording, and exposing grave human rights abuses committed by Zaire’s notorious dictator, Mobutu Sese Seko, Guillaume Ngefa risked his life on a daily basis. As founder and president of his country’s premier human rights organization, African Association for the Defense of Human Rights, he also monitored the bloody seizure of power by President Laurent Kabila. Ngefa is now living in exile in the Ivory Coast. Kerry Kennedy is President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Excerpt:

By Kerry Kennedy and - -
CODEN, ALABAMA, Jun 14 2010 (IPS)

When Gulf Coast resident Louise Bosarge heard President Obama refer to her community as “resilient,” her response was poetic: “We bounce back. We always bounce back. Bouncing hurts.”

Along with my daughter Mariah and a team of human rights experts from the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, I spent the last several days in Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama speaking with commercial fishermen, deck hands, restaurateurs, ecologists, farmers, service providers, marina workers, hoteliers, kids and more whose lives are directly affected by BP’s toxic tsunami swamping the Gulf Coast and wiping out the fishing and tourism industries which have been the mainstays of these communities for decades. “Oil will be all that’s left,” lamented one long-time resident. “And with the politicians in the pockets of the oil companies, there will be more pressure than ever to drill, baby, drill.”

Photographs of slime-soaked seabirds distract from the human tragedy suffocating the region. More concerned about its image than about the human beings impacted, BP has spent $50 million on an oil-slick ad campaign. Meanwhile, BP is strangling the livelihoods of the people of the gulf coast just as surely as its oil is eviscerating the ecosystems.

Eleven of us motored a small boat eight miles out from shore. Though far from shore, the water there appeared as though we had pulled up to a gargantuan gas dock, with a rainbow sheen covering the ocean, horizon to horizon. Our eyes stung, our throats closed and our heads ached despite the respirators we wore.

Our little boat came to a bird sanctuary which was surrounded by buoyant booms floating on the water to hold the oil off the island. But the oil, aided by dispersants, had slipped beneath the booms and puddled in a gooey brown ring around the once pristine land. We watched in horror as a pelican, smothered in molasses-like gunk, struggled haplessly to get a foothold on the rocky shore — spreading its wings and falling back, spreading and falling, spreading and falling. As we docked the boat, the captain said “I’ll be dreaming about that pelican tonight. I hope I’m not that pelican.”

After generations spent mastering their trade, fishermen (already underwater with loans on boats that now stand idle) fear they will have to permanently pull up their nets. BP is attempting to buy them off with promises to pay their lost salaries, but in reality BP has cynically designed a system that makes it impossible for most fishermen to successfully make claims. BP forced many of those who came forward to sign forms releasing BP from future liability. Only through public pressure has BP agreed to rescind these forced agreements.

BP’s public relations machine says it will protect the cleanup crews. However, workers were not only denied protective equipment but, after arriving for work wearing respirators, were threatened with the loss of their jobs if they chose to wear these “unnecessary” safety devices which serve only to “spread hysteria.” Workers complaining of illnesses such as headaches and breathing difficulty were told by BP that they have “food poisoning” or “heat stroke.” BP warned workers that if they wanted to be treated, they should see the BP doctors rather than county health officials.

Fishermen, residents and the American public had no say in the decision of a private company to conduct a colossal experiment of pouring billions of gallons of carcinogens into one of the most fertile fishing grounds on earth.

BP refuses to publicly disclose the litany of chemical agents so that patients and health care professionals can properly identify and treat related illnesses already being reported. Because of the virtual silence about the real health impacts of these chemicals, nothing has been done to prepare for the potential evacuation on the horizon.

Six weeks out, the economic backlash, with vast swaths of the fishable waters closed and vacation and convention cancellations rampant, is already manifesting itself in a worrisome spike in mental health concerns for persons who have lost virtually everything and fear for their future. Professionals reported significant increases in depression, which can be expected to lead to domestic violence, alcohol and drug use, and suicide.

Residents of the Gulf Coast have a clear sense of what should be done:

* Everyone send donations to the Gulf Coast Fund, which funds community organizations across the region

* BP should keep its promise and pay fair and prompt compensation to all fishermen and related business people who have suffered economic losses

* BP should immediately give a bonus to fisherman of 30 percent of the value of the catch for those who continue fishing in available waters

* The federal government should develop an evacuation plan for coastal communities which is consistent with international standards for the treatment of internally displaced people, including keeping families together, preserving voting rights and recognizing the right to return

* The federal government, through executive order, should direct a portion of the $19 billion in allocated but unspent Katrina monies to create 100,000 green and living wage jobs along the gulf coast, as called for in the Gulf Coast Civic Works Act (H.R. 2269).

It may take decades for BP to make the Gulf “whole.” In the aftermath of this oil tsunami, concrete actions that respect residents’ rights are the next steps.(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights.

Excerpt:

The disaster caused by Chevron/Texaco in the jungles of Ecuador is not a sentimental environmental cause, it is a matter of human rights, asserts Kerry Kennedy in this column.

- Claudius

But beneath the cloud cover and canopy, the jungle is a tangle of oil slicks, festering sludge, and rusted pipeline. Smokestacks sprout from the ground, spewing throat-burning fumes into the air. Wastewater from unlined pits seeps into the groundwater and flows into the rivers and streams.

This nightmarish landscape is the legacy of Texaco. Between 1964 and 1990, Texaco (which was acquired by Chevron in 2001) drilled roughly 350 wells across 2,700 square miles of Amazon rainforest. It extracted some 30 billion dollars in profits while deliberately dumping 18 billion gallons of toxic soup, known as production water ­ a mixture of oil, sulfuric acid, and other carcinogens ­ into the streams and rivers where people collect drinking water, fish, bathe and swim.

In the process, Texaco constructed over 900 oil sludge pits, many the size of Olympic swimming pools. Unlike swimming pools, these pits were unlined punctures in the earth. With no concrete to protect the surrounding soil, poison seeped into the ground water.

I had head about what has been called “Chevron’s Chernobyl in the Amazon” for years. But nothing could prepare me for the horror I witnessed during my three-day visit to Ecuador.

I held a dragonfly covered in oil in my hands, desperately and hopelessly trying to flutter its wings. I saw pig footprints in the mud next to the oily gunk, where it had eaten contaminated grass, and will soon be contaminating the children, women, and men, who in turn feed on Chevron’s waste.

I met a man who told me his two children died after swimming in contaminated water. One died within 24 hours. The other writhed in agony for six months before his poor body gave way.

I met another man whose home is just a few hundred yards from one of the pits. He has 10 children. All of them have become sick, some covered with sores. His chickens and pigs have died. Nothing grows near his home.

I saw a poisonous pit abandoned by Texaco in 1974 and never used by any other company. The pipes leading from that pit have clear liquid running from them. When I put the liquid to my nose, it smelled like gasoline. It runs directly into an adjoining stream, which is the main source of drinking water for people who live along its banks.

We heard terrifying stories of mistreatment by Texaco workers: women raped; shamans taken by helicopter to far mountain ranges to see if they could find their way back; Indians told that rubbing oil on their bald scalps would make their hair grow long and thick; and Texaco trucks that dumped oil waste on roads where people walked and suffered the burns of sticky tar in the hot sun.

This is not a matter of misty-eyed nostalgia. This is an issue of human rights ­ clear violations of the indigenous Ecuadoreans’ rights to life, security, and self-determination.

When Texaco oilmen descended from helicopters into the jungle in the early 1960s, they gifted the locals with bread, cheese, plates, and spoons. To this day, this is the only compensation any of the indigenous groups have ever received.

Never were they asked for their permission before Texaco executives negotiated a contract with Ecuadorean government officials.

Texaco knew people would die because of what they were doing, and they ignored it. At last count, 1,400 children, women, and men have died of illnesses directly attributed to Texaco’s contamination. Cancer rates in communities affected by oil activity are 30 times higher than anywhere else in the country. Other medical teams have documented elevated rates of birth defects, miscarriages, skin disease, and nerve damage.

Two nomadic groups that once inhabited the region, the Tetetes and the Sansahuari, have been wiped out. What Texaco did arguably amounts to criminally negligent homicide.

Now, the remaining indigenous peoples of the Oriente ­ the Cofán, Siona, Secoya, Kichwa and Huaorani people ­ have taken the fight to Chevron. Organized by a grassroots organization called the Frente de Defensa de la Amazonia (Amazon Defense Coalition) they are simply demanding through an unprecedented class action lawsuit that Chevron clean up its mess.

The case is now in its 16th year. Chevron (whose human rights statement reads, “We value and respect the cultures and traditions of the many communities in which we work”) has tossed up one delay after another.

Yet, the evidence of Texaco’s wrongdoing is plain for all to see. Last year, an unnamed Chevron lobbyist was quoted as saying the lesson of Ecuador is that “We can’t let little countries screw around with big companies like this ­ companies that have made big investments around the world.”

But as an American, I am appalled that a corporation from our country would treat innocent people with such disdain. We ­ consumers, investors, elected officials, journalists, activists, and citizens ­ must hold Chevron accountable for its actions, and see that justice is done.

Here in the Oriente, 45 years after Texaco first bore into the ground ­ 16 years after the Ecuadoreans began their fight for justice ­ traces of paradise are still visible. We must not allow them to vanish.

By Kerry Kennedy and - -
WASHINGTON, Sep 4 2009 (IPS)

It was deeply moving to see crowds lining the streets from Hyannis Port to Boston, from the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help to Hanscom Field, and from Andrews Air Force Base to Arlington Cemetery, -often ten deep- holding placards, waving American flags, saluting; each with her or his own story of being touched by Senator Edward KennedyÂ’s vision, spirit and love. People came because they appreciated his courageous stances on international human rights, civil rights, health care, minimum wage, support in multiple forms for the oppressed and dispossessed. And mostly because they knew he loved people–not the people, but actual, living, breathing human beings.

Uncle Teddy called every one of my cousins, each of their spouses, and their kids, 119 of us in all, on every birthday and anniversary. He regularly rented a bus and took us on trips to visit battlefields with the greatest historians in the country. He took us skiing, rafting and sailing. Every time he won a race and received a trophy, he had a replica of the trophy made and sent to every member of his crew. Teddy took our family to Poland in 1986. Lech Walesa had been organizing strikes in the Gdansk shipyards, martial law had been declared, and tension was high. We were to present the Robert Kennedy Human Rights Award to Solidarity leaders Adam Michnik and Zbigniew Bujak. The night we arrived, Teddy hosted a dinner, and it was the first time the Solidarity activists were able to communicate openly and in person. That, in and of itself, was a major victory. Formal greetings lead to intense discussions, and those in turn gave way to stories, laughter and a rousing exchange of Polish and Irish folk songs. The next morning came far too early, and I sat in awe at a conference table as Teddy dueled with General Wojciech Jaruzelski, pressing him on basic rights to form a union, free expression, democratic elections. Watching Teddy assert moral authority with such a depth of emotion and intellectual might was a breathtaking experience. I learned a lot from him on that trip about advancing the cause of human rights and loving democracy. For 30 years, Senator Kennedy was the human rights movementÂ’s strongest ally and itsÂ’ soul on Capitol Hill. When Haitian refugees were being detained and deported, he stood with us and Haitian activists like Ray Joseph to demand an end to arbitrary detentions and sham legal proceedings. Ray, whose life was literally saved by Teddy, is now HaitiÂ’s ambassador to the United States.

When asylum seekers were denied legal standing, Teddy authored and engineered the passage of the Refugee Act of 1980, helping to create a legal right to asylum. When the U.S. government turned a blind eye to South Africa’s State of Emergency and torture of young children, Teddy led the fight to pass the Anti-Apartheid Act of 1985, bringing U.S. policy into alignment with our values. Wherever freedom’s sons and daughters have been on the march for liberty –from the Soviet Gulag to the streets of Central America, from Marcos’ Philippines to the killing fields of Cambodia, Uganda, and now Darfur, Teddy was their drum major for justice. Throughout my life, strangers have told me how Teddy was there when a child was diagnosed with cancer, when a father lost a job or had a blow to his reputation, when a wedding was to be celebrated. Heraldo Munoz told me how, as a young dissident in Chile under Pinochet, one night visiting his mother’s house he heard sirens. He looked out the window and saw a military battalion blocking the street. There was no escape. He saw his two best friends having already been captured, in the back of a pick up, blind folded and manacled. He turned to his wife and said, “They are coming to take me. Just be sure to call Teddy Kennedy in Washington. He will save my life.” Today, Heraldo Munoz is the Chilean Ambassador to the United Nations. I was not expecting such a dramatic response when I asked a couple what brought them to a fundraising event for President Obama at my family’s home. They said they’d met in Washington, D.C. as college students. At the time, militants went on a rampage in Ethiopia and slaughtered every member of both of their families. The Immigration Service denied their asylum claims, saying there was no evidence that this young couple was at risk should they attempt to return home. Desperate, they went to the Senate, found Teddy’s office, told him their story, and he went to work. They received asylum, started a business, and raised a son. Their son became the field organizer for Obama in northern Virginia, and they came that night to Hickory Hill, to express their gratitude to Teddy Kennedy. I love Teddy, and I will miss him with all my heart. (IPS/COPYRIGHT IPS)

(*) Kerry Kennedy, President of the Robert F. Kennedy Foundation of Europe.

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By Kerry Kennedy and - -
NEW YORK, May 7 2007 (IPS)

McDonald\’s set a resounding example by agreeing to abide by the international human rights principles laid out by the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), writes Kerry Kennedy, author and human rights activist, and founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights. In this article, Kennedy writes that now it is time for Burger King, Subway, Walmart and others in the retail food industry to acknowledge their responsibilities and partner with the farmworkers, the victims of institutionalised human rights abuse. As Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez taught us all in America\’s first farmworkers movements, human rights enforcement cannot be left to governments and law enforcement alone. Human rights are held by all persons equally, universally, and forever. Corporations must realise these rights are indivisible and interdependent. Without these rights, slavery, poverty, and abuse will continue to taint America\’s retail food industry.

Now it is time for Burger King, Subway, Walmart and others in the retail food industry to acknowledge their responsibilities and partner with the farmworkers, the victims of institutionalised human rights abuse.

Over the past few years, this small group of farmworkers from southwest Florida has brought together major labour leaders like John Sweeney of the AFL-CIO (the largest labour union federation in the US), faith leaders like the National Council of Church’s Rev. Bob Edgar, human rights groups like the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial, and even actors like Martin Sheen and musicians Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello to support their cause. The farmworkers and their allies, known as the Alliance for Fair Food, have formed a movement for human rights, winning agreements on workers’ rights in the supply chain of major produce purchasers in the fast food industry, first with Taco Bell and now McDonald’s.

As Dolores Huerta and Cesar Chavez taught us all in America’s first farmworkers movements, human rights enforcement cannot be left to governments and law enforcement alone.

Forty-one years ago my father, Robert F. Kennedy, first encountered the human rights struggle faced by farmworkers in this country in Delano, California, at a US Senate field hearing. Cesar, Dolores, and the United Farm Workers were leading a boycott of California table grapes, forcing companies and consumers involved in the buying and selling of the fruit to see their role in continuing the cycle of poverty and abuse.

Four decades later, labour law, pay, and working conditions remain grim for farmworkers, for whom the struggle continues. Indeed it should be noted that the labour movement in the US has weakened considerably in recent decades. By the end of 2006 a mere 12% of the workforce was unionised, about half the percentage in 1979.

In 2000 the United Nations concluded that ending human rights abuses was at the centre of responsible corporate citizenship in the 21st century. The UN Global Compact and subsequent UN agreements on human rights norms require corporations to make sure they are not directly supporting human rights abuses while protecting internationally-proclaimed human rights within their supply chain and spheres of influence. McDonald’s joined 50 other global companies to sign on to the Global Compact, which they have fulfilled with April’s agreement.

The CIW’s corporate partnerships are grounded in three internationally recognised human rights principles.

First, we all share the right against slavery and forced labour. The agricultural industry in Florida, in the words of federal officials, has become “ground zero for modern day slavery.” The CIW requires its corporate partners to adopt a verifiable zero tolerance policy for modern-day slavery in their supply chain. Since 1997 it has helped prosecute six slavery cases of involuntary servitude involving over 1,000 farmworkers in Florida .

Because violations of economic and social rights often lay the foundation for forced labour, the CIW recognizes that corporations’ anti-slavery codes alone will not assure farmworkers’ freedom. Companies must also acknowledge the right of workers to economic security and to participate in assuring that companies comply with such codes.

Everyone has a human right to just working conditions, including fair wages that provide for a decent living for workers and their families. Today the average farmworker in Immokalee has a yearly income of less than USD 7,500, well below what the US government defines as the ”poverty line”. The average yearly salary in the US is 37,700. The CIW demands that farmworkers be paid a penny (USD 0.01) per pound of tomatoes picked directly for produce purchasers like McDonald’s, which effectively doubles their pay. If the entire industry made similar agreements, farmworkers and their families could overcome extreme poverty.

Finally employees and their representatives like the CIW have a right to participate with corporations in determining and implementing methods to fulfill human rights responsibilities in corporate supply chains. Internationally accepted human rights norms require companies to work with groups like the CIW to guarantee that companies and their suppliers will follow through on their responsibilities with capable, independent, and transparent operations to monitor codes of conduct that allow workers and the victims of abuse to have a voice.

Human rights are held by all persons equally, universally, and forever. Corporations must realise these rights are indivisible and interdependent. Without these rights, slavery, poverty, and abuse will continue to taint America’s retail food industry. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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By Kerry Kennedy and - -
NEW YORK, Dec 12 2006 (IPS)

Because Argentina is currently a member of the UN Security Council and has experienced the trauma caused by a military dictatorship, there is hope that it will back an immediate and binding Security Council resolution on Burma, writes Kerry Kennedy, author of \”Speak Truth to Power\” and founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Centre for Human Rights. In this article, Kennedy writes that last year during a trip to the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires, which was a prison and centre for torture during the military dictatorship, she heard government officials, survivors, and mothers of the disappeared testify how their capacity to survive often depended on their faith that they were not alone, that people on the outside cared. The author, daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, argues that just as current Argentinean leaders testified that international solidarity was crucial to their fight against the military regime, so the support of Argentina and the international community is crucial now to Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma. For the first time the Security Council is considering a resolution to charge Burma\’s military dictatorship with grave human rights violations since it took power in 1990. The poem by Ariel Dorfman, renowned Chilean author and playwright who was born in Argentina, which follows this article, can be published together or separately.

Just how close became shockingly clear to me last year during a visit to the Navy Mechanics School in Buenos Aires. Hooded prisoners were transferred from their holding cells in the attic to the torture chamber in the basement on the same staircases used by the military to go to and from their dorm rooms, the mess hall, their offices, the hospital, and the church.

First Lady Cristina Kirchner related the particularly chilling account of the evidently criminal general who brought a priest in to say Mass with torture victims on Christmas Eve, days before the same general had them drugged and thrown live from airplanes into ocean or a river. A doctor was kept on hand to stop the torture sessions prior to death, and a priest to say last rights in case the doctor made a mistake.

Upon returning to the United States, I tried to explain to my daughters the horrors that had taken place there as a military junta exterminated 5,000 civilians. How do you explain to innocents cruelty on such a scale?

The lessons learned from President and First Lady Kirchner and the survivors of the Mechanics School taught us how their capacity to survive often depended on their faith that they were not alone, that people on the outside cared. We heard the same from the endlessly brave Mothers of the Disappeared.

Despite differences in culture, history, and circumstance, I have heard similar stories from other dissidents around the world. From Chile to South Africa to Indonesia, the bravest people on earth, human rights defenders imprisoned, tortured, and threatened with death for their work, say that during their dark moments of despair, news of effective international support lifted their spirits and infused them with determination.

Today, the people of the Southeast Asian country of Burma find themselves in a similar struggle, risking their lives to call for peaceful change and national reconciliation. Their leader is Aung San Suu Kyi, the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient. She leads a political party, the National League for Democracy, which in 1990 won 82 percent of the seats in parliament in Burma’s last, ill-fated democratic election. Burma’s ruling military junta annulled the results and has ruled by country by brutal force ever since.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s imprisonment, however, is only the most visible aspect of the human rights and humanitarian nightmare in Burma. The abuses of the military junta go far beyond brutal torture, murder, and disappearances.

The regime burned down 3,000 villages in the eastern section of the country in an attempt to ethnically cleanse minorities. It is also destroying food supplies and pressing thousands of ethnic villagers into modern-day slave labour, forcing over one million refugees to flee the country. Worst yet, half a million people are barely surviving as internal refugees, almost completely beyond the reach of international aid. Human Rights Watch reports that the junta has recruited and conscripted more child soldiers than any other country in the world.

Thankfully, there is hope. Last September, the UN Security Council voted to place Burma on its permanent agenda — for the first time in history. South Africa’s Nobel Peace laureate Desmond Tutu and former Czech president Vaclav Havel launched the idea for the Security Council to address Burma. Risking their lives, the leaders of Aung San Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy, have strongly endorsed the effort.

This initiative comes after the United Nations has sadly failed Burma for too long. Over the past 14 years, 29 resolutions from the UN General Assembly and UN Commission on Human Rights have accomplished nothing. The General Assembly authorised Kofi Annan to appoint two special envoys to Burma over 10 years, while the Commission on Human Rights appointed four special rapporteurs since the early 1990s.

With each diplomatic visit, the military junta promised that it was prepared to make changes. And, after each envoy returned to New York, the junta broke those promises. Now, the regime has made more promises.

Don’t believe them. It is time for the generals to be held to account.

Thankfully, Argentina is a member of the Security Council and knows the trauma created by a ruling military junta. As a member of the Security Council, Argentina should support the proposal for an immediate, binding UN Security Council resolution on Burma.

Security Council member countries and the rest of the international community should require Burma’s generals to cease all human rights violations and hold free elections. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

———————————————- LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT

By Ariel Dorfman (*)

Don’t believe them when they show you the photo of my body, don’t believe them. Don’t believe them when they tell you the moon is the moon, if they tell you the moon is the moon, that this is my voice on tape, that this is my signature on a confession, if they say a tree is a tree don’t believe them, don’t believe anything they tell you anything they swear to anything they show you, don’t believe them.

(*) Ariel Dorfman is a renowned Chilean author and playwright who was born in Argentina.

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By Kerry Kennedy and - -
NEW YORK, Sep 19 2005 (IPS)

As international leaders gathered at the United Nations in the middle of September to address plans to eradicate global poverty, the Bush administration notified Congress that it will withhold the U.S. contribution ($34 million) to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) for the fourth consecutive year, writes Kerry Kennedy, founder of the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Human Rights. This aid provides vital services for the world\’s poorest women and girls, so why would the U.S. fail to help? Because, despite the U.S. State Department claims to the contrary, the administration asserts that the fund supports China\’s forced sterilization policy. The truth is, in order to change that policy, Washington should support the population fund, not cripple it. The U.S. government can leverage change. This is hard, because China is an important trading partner and increasingly holds more of the U.S. debt. So we also need to engage the international community. I take a back seat to no one in my horror at China\’s abuses in its one-child policy. To end them, we must support many efforts, and that includes the United Nations Population Fund. Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust, said the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. We must no longer be indifferent to what is going on in China.

This aid provides vital services for the world’s poorest women and girls, so why would the U.S. fail to help? Because, despite the U.S. State Department claims to the contrary, the administration asserts that the fund supports China’s forced sterilization policy. The truth is, in order to change that policy, Washington should support the population fund, not cripple it.

Twenty-five years ago, China began a draconian effort through a massive violation of civil rights to control its rapid population growth. The communist government was unable to meet its people’s basic needs and thought that rising unemployment, poverty and hunger might be averted if every family had only one child. Using the force, surveillance and repression of a police state, China has indeed slowed its population growth, but at a terrible cost. The U.S. now has the opportunity to induce China to let go of coercion and to embrace freedom in its population policies, just as it has let go of economic coercion to embrace free markets.

In China, a woman who defies the one-child rule can be fined, as can her family and her village. She can be beaten, ostracized or detained. Her furniture, her cow, her pig might disappear. She may face a forced abortion it doesn’t matter if she is nine days or nine months pregnant. China says that in 2002 alone there were 6.8 million abortions. Too many were because of sonograms that showed the fetus was a girl, disfavored in a culture that prefers boys.

If the woman is lucky, the abortion may be followed by forced insertion of an IUD (Intrauterine Device). If she is not so lucky, she may be forcibly sterilized. Beijing says 38% of women of childbearing age have been sterilized.

Everyone in the world has a stake in ensuring that China and all countries develop as sustainable, free societies, and that their efforts to stabilize population respect human rights.

China promised to meet its human rights obligations in 1994 when it joined 179 nations at the International Conference on Population and Development, which agreed that all individuals have the right to decide the number and spacing of their children free of coercion, and to have access to voluntary, quality family-planning services. This rights-based approach to population issues has proved to reduce abortions, delay first childbirth, reduce births and improve the chances that the children will be wanted and cared for. It’s morally right, and it works.

What can we do to move China to keep its promise?

First, we should fully back the NFPA. In China, it is the only agency promoting voluntary family planning and upholding these human rights. Just because it operates in China does not make it complicit in human rights violations, as its critics have charged. Today, in those counties in China where the Fund operates, 90% of the women are choosing their own methods of birth control, and the abortion rate has plummeted from 70% to 30%.

Second, Beijing must be made to see that meeting human needs for health, education and opportunity is the best way to slow population growth.

Third, U.S. corporations can lead. For instance, a woman who is pregnant illegally is demoted or fired in much of China, so U.S. corporations can refuse to enforce such laws in factories in their supply chain.

The U.S. government can leverage change. This is hard, because China is an important trading partner and increasingly holds more of the U.S. debt. So we also need to engage the international community.

I take a back seat to no one in my horror at China’s abuses in its one-child policy. To end them, we must support many efforts, and that includes the United Nations Population Fund. Elie Wiesel, who survived the Holocaust, said the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. We must no longer be indifferent to what is going on in China. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

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