Salvadorans Carlos Santos (left) and Fabricio Santín alongside a papier-mâché sculpture of a torture victim with a plastic bag – “la capucha” - on his head. Torture and killings by state death squads were widespread during the country's 1980-1992 civil war. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Micah Luxen
UNITED NATIONS, May 13 2014 (IPS)

Alfreda Disbarro is awaiting trial in her native Philippines, charged with the sale and possession of illegal drugs. According to her sworn affidavit, while in police custody, she was in so much pain that she couldn’t eat, had difficulty breathing and kept vomiting.

According to her same affidavit and testimony, Disbarro was arrested violently in October 2013 and taken to police headquarters where she was forced to admit her guilt via methods of torture – enduring punches to the stomach and face, blows by a club and wooden stick, fingers to the eyes, and being forced to eat a mop.“It’s virtually everywhere, in one way or another.” -- Michael Bochenek

Disbarro’s sister alerted the Commission on Human Rights. The resulting examination by a doctor reported marks of injury over her body. Disbarro remains in custody.

Amnesty International is marking the 30^th anniversary of the U.N.’s Convention Against Torture with the grim news that stories like Disbarro’s and the practice of torture is still common in many countries.

Torture, according to Amnesty, is physical or mental pain or suffering that is inflicted intentionally for a particular purpose, such as trying to obtain information or to punish a person for who he or she is or what he or she is alleged to have done.

The London-based human rights watchdog started a new campaign as a result, called Torture in 2014: 30 Years of Broken Promises.

Of the 141 countries Amnesty works with, every one reported torture or other ill-treatment in the past five years. In addition, a survey of 21,000 people from 21 countries reveals fear of torture is present in all of these, and found that the majority of people believe governments should make clear laws against torture.

“It’s virtually everywhere, in one way or another,” Michael Bochenek, Amnesty International’s senior director for law and policy, told IPS.

“There may be differences in degree – there may differences in whether a particular state has a systematic or pervasive use of torture, versus something in another country that’s more episodic. But it’s not just repressive states that use torture.”

Bochenek says the primary responsibility to end torture falls on governments, but that citizens can demand increased accountability on the part of their own government.

Torture prevention and response mechanisms include allowing lawyers into detention centres to meet with their clients and requiring judges and other court officials to open investigations when they see something that suggests torture.

In one such response, the government of Angola suspended 16 prison guards and firemen for a brutal attack on prison inmates, which was “a rare reaction to public anger from one of Africa’s most authoritarian governments,” Reuters reported in September 2013.

In a video of the incident, guards allegedly beat prisoners with sticks and laughed as the inmates lay on the floor bleeding and crying.

“We express our indignation at the acts performed by these officers,” the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

And while human rights violations are highly publicised under repressive governments in countries such as North Korea and Syria, the actions of power players such as the United States may influence worldwide norms, says Bochenek.

“That’s why the U.S. reliance on torture was so damaging during the years immediately after the attacks of Sep. 11,” he told IPS.

“Not only was this an extraordinary departure from previous practice in terms of defending or upholding in principle the prohibition on torture, but it really undermined the credibility that the United States had when it was trying to promote human rights in general, whether on torture or anything else.”

Amnesty reports that since 1984, 155 states have ratified the U.N. Convention Against Torture, at least 79 of which are still torturing. A further 40 U.N. states haven’t adopted the convention, although the global legal ban on torture binds them too.

“Everyone has the right to be free from torture,” said Bochenek.

After an unsuccessful two-year attempt to end the civil war in Syria, UN peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has decided to step down by the end of May.

On Tuesday, Secretary General Ban Ki-moon made the announcement with Brahimi by his side.

“It is with great regret that … I have decided to accept the request of Mr. Lakhdar Brahimi to relinquish his duties as Joint Special Representative of the Secretary-General and League of Arab States” said Ban.

The Secretary General went on to highlight the challenges of diplomacy in the three-year conflict in Syria between the government of Bashar al-Assad and opposition forces.

“[Brahimi] has faced almost impossible odds, with a Syrian nation, Middle Eastern region and wider international community that have been hopelessly divided in their approaches to ending the conflict,” said Ban.

Brahimi responded in turn, saying despite his resignation, he knows the crisis will end.

“It’s very sad that I leave this position and leave Syria behind in such a bad state.

“The question is only this: everybody who has responsibility and an influence in the situation has to remember that the question is how many more dead? How much more destruction is there going to be before Syria becomes again the Syria we have known – the new Syria that will be different from the Syria of the past, but it will be the Syria we have loved and admired for many, many years.”

Brahimi, who will officially leave his position on May 31, took over from former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan in August 2012.

Ban did not name a successor, saying it would take some time to find the right person.

“Mr. Brahimi has long been recognized as one of the world’s most brilliant diplomats,” said Ban. “That the objective to which he applied his extraordinary talents has proven elusive is a tragedy for the Syrian people. That his efforts have not received effective support from the United Nations body that is charged with upholding peace and security, and from countries with influence on the Syria situation, is a failure of all of us.”

A disruption of Ukraine's gas supplies would affect many other parts of Europe as well. Credit: Thierry Ehrmann/cc by 2.0

By Micah Luxen
UNITED NATIONS, May 8 2014 (IPS)

It’s springtime in Ukraine, but conflict and economic threats are bringing an early chill. During these months when the country normally stores up energy reserves for winter, access to natural gas may be Russia’s best weapon to influence Ukraine’s new government.

“Ukraine is heavily dependent on natural gas,” said Edward Chow, a senior fellow of the Energy and National Security Programme at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)."If you can’t get sufficient energy in, Ukraine collapses. Political scientists for years have been talking about failed states. You have one." -- Kent Moors

According to CSIS, 40 percent of the country’s energy consumption is natural gas, and 60 percent of that is supplied by Russia.

Under a system designed in the Soviet-era, Ukraine stores up natural gas reserves from Russia and then distributes them to Europe.

“So even though Ukraine’s natural gas needs are not very high in the summertime, if they’re not building stock in the summertime, then they will cause a winter supply crisis,” Chow told IPS. “We don’t have to wait until December to figure that out.”

In numerous disputes over debts and prices over the past decade, Russia has cut off the supply of natural gas through Ukraine – most recently for three days in January 2006 and 20 days in January 2009.

On Thursday, a spokesperson for Gazprom, the Russian state-controlled energy company, confirmed to IPS, “As of today the Ukraine has not paid its debt for the Russian gas. The April bill is overdue, no payment has been received. The outstanding gas debt of the Ukraine rose to 3.508 billion dollars.”

The company has said that unless the Ukrainian gas company Naftogaz pays its energy debt, Russia will require prepayment before distribution.

“People were pretty much freezing in 2009 in parts of Europe which are heavily dependent on Russia for gas imports,” said Chow, who predicts this crisis could last much longer.

“In terms of politics, Russia sets prices arbitrarily, but judiciously,” said Jan Svejnar, director of the Centre on Global Economic Governance at Columbia University.

“With an unwanted government in Ukraine, prices were high. With a pro-Russian government, significant discounts apply,” Svejnar told IPS.

In December 2013, Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to buy Ukrainian bonds from former president Viktor Yanukovych, which provided the funds to pay for Russian gas. When an interim government took over from Yanukovych, Putin withdrew support, cancelled the bond purchases and raised the price of gas by 80 percent.

Naftogaz hasn’t made payments demanded by Gazprom since January.

The rest of Europe, which depends on Russia for a third of its gas supply, would be affected by a supply disruption to Ukraine. The impact falls disproportionately on countries in Southeast Europe, which do not have alternative supplies. A limited supply of natural gas arrives to Western Europe through pipelines that bypass Ukraine, such as the newly constructed Nord Stream through the Baltic Sea.

Even so, experts say that Western Europe could not send a reverse-flow energy supply east. Russia’s Gazprom prohibits the resale or re-transport of natural gas from Russia.

“Gazprom has a number of ongoing agreements with the major utilities in Western Europe,” said Kent Moors, executive chair of the Global Energy Symposium, “so there are some vested interests in Western Europe that really wouldn’t like to see sanctions that would impact that ongoing trade.”

According to CSIS, if the European utilities not tied up in Russian contracts were to move natural gas from Europe in reverse mode to Ukraine, it would at best satisfy less than a third of what Ukraine needs this coming winter.

“The question is not one of leverage, it’s one of political will, and who’s willing to use it and who’s not,” said Chow, who has more than 30 years of oil industry experience, including work in Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Kent believes the countries that depend almost entirely on Russian oil, such as the Baltic states and Poland, would be more likely to take a hard line against Russia “because of the historical experience.”

Those countries that are less vulnerable, as a result of increased energy diversity, such as France, Italy and Germany, are more inclined to be soft on Russia. “So in my mind, it’s more a matter of political will than economic leverage,” he told IPS.

The CSIS’s Chow said that while Europe depends on Russia for 30 percent of its gas supply, Russia depends on Europe for 80 percent of its gas export market. “So who’s more dependent on whom?” As a result, Chow says that Russia won’t want to cut off supplies, and its own profits, through Ukraine for the long term.

Kent, who has a Ph.D. in political science, says the goal must be to get Ukraine through the next winter. “Because if you can’t get sufficient energy in, Ukraine collapses. Political scientists for years have been talking about failed states. You have one. It’s not going to be able to function. And there’s probably some elements in Russia who are simply waiting for this to happen. And then they can say, look, it’s not our fault that Kiev collapsed under its own inability to function.”

The ambassadors of Ukraine and Russia declined to comment for this article.

Every person in the world now has the opportunity to speak up at the United Nations, and already 1.8 million people have submitted their messages.

In an attempt to engage with the world’s population, a team headed by the United Nations Millennium Campaign is polling individuals across the globe and making those results available to everyone, including U.N. decision makers.

The initiative, called My World, asks global citizens to rank 16 priorities, ranging from freedom from discrimination to equality between men and women.

The results, a visual break down of priorities by demographics (for example, the priority of women over 61 in Brazil is healthcare), are also available by country via an interactive map.

“How do you make sure an indigenous woman is influencing decision making in New York?” asked World We Want Co-chair Ravi Karkara, an advisor for the U.N. Millennium Campaign on child and youth engagement. “One of the criticism of U.N. Millennium Development Goals,” which set out to end poverty by 2015, “is that they’re very top down.” This new initiative aims to be bottom up, surveying “the people who are not part of the traditional development conversation, including the poorest of the poor.”

Global Youth Advocates, such as Girl Guides and Oxfam, polls villagers, urban slum residents – the majority of which were not submitted electronically – on what matters to them.

On May 16, World We Want and U.N. Millennium Campaign will present the interactive database to the General Assembly. “When you’re sitting in the General Assembly, you don’t have time to read through thousands of pages,” said Karkara.

Instead, organizers argue decision makers can use the database to easily access the priorities of their own communities. And the data doesn’t stop there.

“This platform allows for open knowledge sharing across the world,” said Karkara. “We have no copyright. It’s data by people for people.”

The survey found that a good education is the number one priority of the global community; action taken on climate change was last on the list. As an interesting aside, Karkara’s team shared that of the respondents who cited “fast cars” as a priority, these were also more likely to prioritize protecting rivers, forests and oceans and taking action against climate change than the general public.

To maintain international peace and security is the mandate of the United Nations. But at any given time, through the bodies of the United Nations, global communities struggle to enforce their own interpretations of that mandate, in one single agenda.

The agenda, in reality, is determined by the will of the 15 member-states of the Security Council, reflecting the interests represented. As a result, the Security Council never debated the Vietnam War, the Soviet war in Afghanistan or the partitioning of India, as each of these events served the interests or involved a member of the Council.

“The Security Council can be quite selective in only picking issues that are somehow within the range of stuff they feel comfortable discussing,” said Dirk Salomons, director of the Program for Humanitarian Affairs at the School of International Public Affairs, Columbia University. “So issues like Vietnam were picked up by the General Assembly, which then spoke out in ire about what they saw as major injustices.”

In the same way, the 193-member General Assembly, whose resolutions are non-binding, is bound by no rules that determine the inclusion of any item on the agenda, says Fanny Langella, deputy spokesperson of the president of the General Assembly. Any of the member states and the Secretary-General can request items to be added to the agenda.

“The General Assembly is kind of a steam lid on top of a cauldron, where people produce a lot of hot air that goes up, with vast amounts of resolutions, which are political sentiments that obviously have no implementation value,” said Salomons, who served as executive director for the UN peacekeeping operation in Mozambique, from 1992 to 1993, in addition to a wide range of roles in the United Nations system.

With a lack of agenda guidelines, there is no guarantee international crises will be addressed by the United Nations. According to an internal review by the United Nations, in 2009, evidence suggests the government of Sri Lanka may have been involved in “the intentional shelling of civilians; the intentional shelling of hospitals; the intentional shelling of humanitarian operations; the intentional shooting of civilians; the intentional infliction of suffering on civilians.”

The same study found that “Throughout the final stages of the conflict, member states did not hold a single formal meeting on Sri Lanka, whether at the Security Council, the Human Rights Council or the General Assembly.

Unable to agree on placing Sri Lanka on its agenda, the Security Council held several ‘informal interactive dialogue’ meetings, for which there were no written records and no formal outcomes.”

The government of Sri Lanka has repeatedly denied the charges, challenged the figures in the U.N. report and declared it will not cooperate with a proposed probe by the Human Rights Council.

Taking a swipe at Western military powers accused of human rights violations and civilian killings in Iraq and Afghanistan, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa said last month that “people living in glass houses should not throw rocks at others.”

Amnesty International is one of several human rights groups that pressured the United Nations to investigate war crimes on both sides of the conflict. “During the height of gore and scandal – and you could see from the news reports what was happening, almost in real time – there was a special session of the [U.N.] Human Rights Council at that point, and Sri Lanka, through its maneuvering and its allies in the Human Rights Council, managed to turn the situation around and turn that session into one that at the end came out with a statement congratulating Sri Lanka for its victory,” said José Luis Díaz, the Amnesty International Representative at the United Nations.

In March 2014, the same group that had congratulated Sri Lanka five years earlier, voted in favour of an international investigation after the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights criticized that the Sri Lankan government’s previous investigations lacked credibility. This issue, High Commissioner Navi Pillay said, was “fundamentally a question of political will.”

“The U.N. is a reflection of the power and dynamics of the world,” said Díaz. “You can’t escape that. You have this political structure that not only makes it more difficult to focus on the very powerful, but also makes it difficult on those that are not so powerful but are shielded or protected by the very powerful.”

Externally, pressure comes from advocacy groups and the general public, who may yield a great deal of power. The resolution to investigate into possible war crimes in Sri Lanka is an example of how civil society groups, with the assistance of some countries, can affect change, says Amnesty’s Díaz.

“Groups like Amnesty International … but mostly civil society, continued to press on the need for an international investigation into what happened there – and Sri Lankans themselves kept pressing,” said Díaz.

“Finally, a political body of the U.N., the Human Rights Council, adopted a resolution, calling formally on the Sri Lankan government to conduct a credible investigation, and to bring the results to the Human Rights council. This resolution is not as strong as we would have liked, but it’s a graduated approach that they’re taking.

“That’s the kind of thing that you can achieve, short of the Security Council, through the United Nations.”

Ambassador Samantha Power, U.S. permanent representative to the United Nations, spoke about the challenges of the job to a crowded theatre Saturday, during the ‘Women in the World’ summit in New York City.

Power, who won a Pulitzer prize in 2003 for her book on American reactions to genocide, is travelling this week to Rwanda for the 20th anniversary of the genocide in that country.

“In a way for you, your career is coming full circle,” said moderator Tina Brown, founder of Women in the World. “What is the difference from being that journalist and being who you are now as you head to Rwanda?”

Power explained that as a writer for publications such as The Atlantic Monthly and The New Yorker Magazine, she met people who were desperate for her to tell their story, but in her role as ambassador, she says they’re desperate for her to find the means of helping them.

“With the hope that people [have in] the United States, and someone who has a direct line to the president, it means you don’t want to waste a minute,” said Power. “It’s high stakes when you meet the people who are depending on you.”

She remembers the demands of the position began soon after her appointment in August 2013.

Her family had just arrived in Ireland for a getaway when she received reports that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had used chemical weapons on the Syrian population.

“My challenge in that moment was not a question of, ‘do I come back, or do I not’ – that was obvious,” said Power. The challenge was taking part in timely high level meetings from a village “in the middle of nowhere” because while she needed to be with U.S. policymakers, she says she couldn’t get on a plane and lose communications from the air. A day and a half later, she flew home.

“There were television cameras at the airport in order to show that the ambassador was back, because it had been a scandal that Assad hadn’t informed me when he was going to use chemical weapons.”

For a month, Powers said she dedicated herself to the Syrian crisis, negotiating with Congress to support the use of military force and to ban Assad’s chemical weapons use.

“My son thought, ‘This is crazy. Everything has changed and I’ll never see my mother again.’ He began calling me the ambassador to the moon.” Powers said when she did come home after a month of being “an absent mother, physically and spiritually,” she told him the U.N. made a resolution and that Assad would have to give up his chemical weapons.

“And he just looked up at me and said, ‘Mommy, no more Security Council resolutions.’” Powers joked that for an ambassador and mother, it’s not lean in – it’s fall down – referring to recent advice to women by Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook.

She says the guidance from President Barack Obama, which helps her in this high pressure role, is not to make a choice between sending in the marines and doing nothing. “The point is: shine to a spotlight, bring in resources, and try to get the United Nations interested.”

Russian military forces pushed into Ukraine, because Russian President Vladimir Putin believes his own conspiracy theories. This was the hypothesis of experts from a variety of fields, who met at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) in New York Monday.

The panel, which included Richard Betts, director of SIPA’s International Security Policy programme, Jan Svejnar, former presidential candidate in the Czech Republic, Valery Kuchinsky, retired career diplomat for Ukraine, Peter Clement, former deputy director, CIA Directorate of Intelligence, and Jason Bordoff, former special assistant to President Obama, pointed to the power struggle that continues from the Cold War era.

“The question of what Putin believes or doesn’t believe is a big question,” said Betts. “I think he’s bought into his own narrative.” The SIPA director described that narrative as the West trying to sabotage Russia. “He’s surrounded by likeminded people,” said Betts, “and Putin very much reflects a KGB view of the world.”

Following the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Putin was the first head of state to offer his condolences to U.S. President George W. Bush. But, Betts said, “along the way, a lot of other things happened.”

In 2002, the U.S. withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. In 2004, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, formed in 1949 to combat the Soviet Union, expanded its membership to include former Soviet states, including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

As a result of this and Ukraine’s pro-Russian president’s fall from power, Putin is nervous, said Clement. The former CIA deputy director reasoned that the Russian military intervention of Crimea could be a land grab, a bargaining chip to guarantee Russia’s economic and political prominence in the country, or Putin’s personal legacy project.

“He’s been in power 18 years,” said Clement. “He’s the man who brought Russia back. He brought back the economy. He made Russia a force again. And he increased Russia’s land space. It’s clear he bemoans the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

“We cannot give up on the people of Somalia, even as the world is overwhelmed by crises”, was the UN’s message for the international community.

Addressing a press briefing Tuesday, John Ging, Director of Operational Division at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), spoke of the continuing efforts in the Horn of Africa.

Ging’s office reports that two million people in Somalia don’t have a secure source of food, following the 2011 famine in which 260,000 died, and the attempts of al Shabaab militants to maintain control in the country.

The conflict and the collapse of economic infrastructure leaves people impoverished, said Ging, and there’s no economy per se to get people out of that.

“The core of Somalia’s problems today, and for the last 25 years, has been conflict, and an incapacity for Somali leadership to provide the governments that the people deserve,” said Ging, who predicted that the Somali people and their own vision for the future will eventually overcome the current instability.

“I’m always humbled every time I go to Somalia, to see how in such appalling and uncivilized circumstances, people remain very civilized in their values – I’m talking about the ordinary people.
“But they’re weary – they’re weary of decades of impoverishment, of conflict, of despair, of hopelessness.”

Ging appealed for an increase in international funding, saying the OCHA has four per cent of the funding necessary to respond to hunger in Somalia.

“We cannot give up,” Ging said, pointing out that the global community has at times, such as 2011, failed those in need. “The Somali people deserve that we don’t give up, however enormous the challenge might be.”

The director said that as a humanitarian, his organization believes there are resources enough among a wealthy international community, to save lives.

By Micah Luxen
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 11 2014 (IPS)

During his last visit to the United Nations as head of the department providing relief to Palestinian refugees, Filippo Grandi spoke about the immediate challenges facing his organisation.

Grandi, who served as Commissioner General of the UN  Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) for four years, will turn his responsibilities over to Pierre Krähenbühl, who is director of Operations at the International Committee of the Red Cross, on March 29.

“I leave with mixed feelings, because it is a very difficult moment for Palestinian refugees, and in general for the region in which we operate,” said Grandi, during a press conference Tuesday.

“One crisis chases another in the public’s attention, and I think it is important – because of the responsibilities we have there – not to forget that Gaza is not doing any better than it was last year, unfortunately.”

Grandi described the challenge to alleviate poverty and to expand the donor-base for the organization, while emergency crises across the globe cry louder for resources. “Often we go to donors and say, why aren’t you giving us any more food money for Gaza – because we still distribute food to 800,000 people in Gaza – and the answer is, because those kinds of resources have gone to Syria.”

Of the five million Palestinian refugees UNWRA assists, 540,000 are based in Syria, 18,000 surrounded by fighting in Yarmouk Camp in Damascus, according to the organization.

“We estimate that 80,000 have gone to other countries, to places where it is easiest to go,” said Grandi. “I’ve often said, the Palestinians in Syria have suffered by and large the same fate as the Syrian civilians, but have had much more limited flight options.”

From September to January, and again this week, UNWRA has been unable to bring any relief to many refugees in Syria.

“We are watching what’s happening in Geneva (where Syrian peace talks are happening this week) very closely,” said Grandi. “We are hoping, praying, for at least a cessation of the most violent hostilities. Unfortunately on the ground, the situation continues to be extremely difficult and taxing, for the refugees and for those helping them, like us. We have lost 10 staff already and 21 are missing. We don’t know where they are, this is a very messy war. This happens to civilians. Unfortunately it happened to our staff as well.”