Hillary Clinton at the United Nations, March 2015. Credit: UN Photo/Evan Schneider.

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 5 2016 (IPS)

Despite their prominence on the world stage, female political leaders like Hillary Clinton and Angela Merkel are part of a tiny minority of women who have risen to the top of politics.

Women “who achieve the highest office are highly visible and extremely impressive (but) they’re still extremely rare,” Anne Marie Goetz, Professor at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University told IPS.

The recent impeachment of Brazilian President Dilma Roussef has bought the number of female heads of state and government globally back down to just 16 in the world’s almost 200 countries.

That number may go back up again in 2017, should Hillary Clinton be elected as the 45^th President of the United States.

Other prominent female political leaders include Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, President of Liberia and Theresa May, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom yet overall the world is still a long way off achieving gender balance in politics, a target which UN member states agreed to in 1995.

“Five percent women heads of government, seven percent women heads of state, 22 percent women in parliament – this is far too few,” Gabriella Borovsky, Political Participation Policy Specialist at UN Women told IPS.

“At the current rate it will take about another 50 years to achieve gender balance in parliaments.”

Even those female leaders who do rise to the top of politics continue to face significant challenges.

“Any woman who reaches these positions has tried harder and been judged more harshly than any man,” said Goetz, giving the example of Australia’s former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who she says was subjected to “quite shocking sexist interpretations.”

“It wasn’t about her ideology, it was about her gender, and I fear that this is going to happen to Hillary Clinton as well, and that it’s happening now.”

While the UN advocates for its members to seek gender equality in politics, another position that has yet to be held by a woman is the role of UN Secretary-General.

For the first time ever, several female candidates are in consideration to replace currently Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon at the beginning of 2017.

“The prospect of a female feminist UN Secretary-General and female feminist United States President is inspiring and exciting beyond belief,” said Goetz.

However, although the female candidates are considered highly qualified, informal straw polls have indicated that the 15-member UN Security Council is likely to select a male candidate.

“We are disappointed that women are not doing better,” Jean Krasno, Chair of the Campaign to elect a Woman UN Secretary-General told IPS.

However the results are perhaps unsurprising given that only one of the fifteen Security Council ambassadors is a woman, said Krasno.

“(The council) is still entrenched in this really old boys club … and we hope that in the 21^st century we’re moving away from that,” she said.

Despite the poor straw poll results, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women has reiterated the importance of a female Secretary-General describing it as an opportunity for the UN to lead by example and “make this moment count for gender equality.”

By Joaquín Roy
MIAMI, May 13 2016 (IPS)

It was no news to observers, analysts and potential voters that Hillary Clinton would seek the Democratic nomination again to run for president of the United States in November 2016. This was not a surprise. But what only a bold analyst could have speculated is that Bill Clinton’s wife would end up facing off against such unlikely rivals.

On one hand, she would face novel competition in her party from another, very different, senator. Hillary would have to present herself as the candidate who truly represented the ideals of the Democratic Party, in contrast to Bernie Sanders, who declared himself a “socialist”. Although no one expects him to defeat her in the primaries, Sanders has put up an unexpectedly strong showing.

On the other hand, even more surprising and unusual was that Hillary would go up against a one-of-a-kind Republican candidate, who has triggered much consternation and extreme comments. If Donald Trump’s nomination is confirmed in Cleveland, it will go down in U.S. history as one of the strangest political races. Voters, observers and analysts are still wondering about the reasons underlying his spectacular ascent – which Clinton should worry about, if she means to defeat him.

The Sanders phenomenon can be explained to some extent using traditional analytical methods. The ideological inclinations of the senator from Vermont are not really that new. So far it has merely been a curious case of a political leader not afraid to use terminology outside of the grasp of most citizens and voters. It is not easy to translate what is known in Europe as “social democracy” into U.S. English. “Social Democrat” or “Democratic Socialist” are terms that don’t fit into the everyday vocabulary of people in the U.S. So to simplify, he opted for “Socialist”, which in the U.S. has more radical connotations, and which popular culture has turned into a synonym for “Communist”. This is the sense in which Sanders’ positions differ from Hillary’s.

His ideas have enjoyed a warm reception among young university graduates with less employable degrees, students struggling with the high cost of tuition, women of a certain cultural level, the unemployed, victims of the recession, people who have fallen out of the already shrunken middle class, and those disenchanted with the traditional propaganda of the political parties.

The case of Trump, meanwhile, has roots that go deep, far from the superficiality indicated by the things he says. The billionaire without experience in formal politics sends out a basic message, promising to make the United States “great” again. He plans a series of confrontations abroad, and not only on the economic front. But at the same time, his foreign policy stance is reminiscent of the most extreme form of isolationism that reigned in this country just before the times of crisis and armed conflict that the United States faced in the two world wars.

Trump alludes to a mythical country that actually only exists in the memory of people in the U.S. who are nostalgic about something they themselves never experienced and which is only sustained by high-flying speeches. It is an idyllic, basically Anglo-Protestant America which reluctantly accepted the necessary waves of immigration from the rest of the world. He uses the rhetoric needed to build a national identity in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th.

Trump’s simple message focuses on calamities from outside: Companies abroad undermine U.S. industry by producing cheap merchandise that then floods the U.S. market, while undesirable undocumented immigrants steal local jobs. The remedy: high import duties and walls along the border.

As indicated in Sanders’ campaign speeches, the real enemy shared by the voters of Clinton and Trump is the rampant poverty and inequality plaguing what is still the most powerful country on earth. The citizens are losing confidence in the country and they feel let down by the lack of answers from the Washington establishment.

Hillary will have to clearly differentiate her message in the election campaign from these two visions of the United States. Sanders’ is the most grounded in reality; Trump’s is a fantasy. But both are real from an electoral standpoint.

Translated by Stephanie Wildes

Excerpt:

By Joaquín Roy
BARCELONA, Jul 14 2014 (IPS)

A few decades ago, even before the end of the Cold War and before and after Ronald Reagan’s election to the White House, analyses regularly referred to U.S. decadence. At other times, it was Europe’s turn for pessimistic descriptions, especially when it could not overcome its ambivalence over deepening integration, and above all because of the failure of its constitutional project. 

The West was in crisis. And now the pair are apparently going through a similar phase, with each one trying to outdo the other in inferiority.

The United States seems to be in the doldrums because of the apparently erratic foreign policy of President Barack Obama, who does not seem to be profiting from surmounting the legacy of George W. Bush’s actions in the Middle East.

Joaquín Roy

Obama’s agenda based on “leading from behind” is creating serious problems that would damage his re-election chances if he were eligible (which he is not).

Hillary Clinton may inherit this liability if she finally decides to run for the presidency. What is certain is that indecision in Syria, the disaster of Iraq’s disintegration and the still unsolved challenge of Russia in Ukraine, create a picture of the United States in international decline.“Both partners [Europe and the United States] are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations” – Joaquín Roy

The European Union, for its part, does not offer a more hopeful scenario, and only if it is able to strengthen its institutions following the European Parliament elections in May will it be able to overcome the generalised forecast of a problematic future.

Gripped by the rise of populism and neo-nationalism and with its economy weighed down by inequality and lack of sustained growth, the European Union is a long way from offering alternative leadership and hope for the rest of the planet, and appropriately partnering the United States to beat the global crisis.

Yet curiously, this odd couple, which can be subsumed in what is generously called the West, can pride itself on an immense capital that is a basis not only for survival, but of sustained leadership for the rest of the world.

In both cases, a systematic humanitarian tragedy reveals their mutual strength and guarantees their future survival. Dramatic, repeated migration processes produce huge human capital flows to both Europe and the United States compared with other regions.

On the one hand, thousands of Latin American teenagers are invading the United States in search of a much better future than they are leaving behind in Central America, racked by crime, poverty and inequality.

On the other hand, the shores of Italy are being bombarded by desperate migrants cast up by traffickers, resulting in shipwrecks and deaths by suffocation. Elsewhere, attempts to take the Spanish border by storm in the enclaves in Morocco have ceased to call attention as newsworthy.

What do these apparently dissimilar scenarios reveal?

Quite simply, that the strength of these partners in crisis is based on their relatively powerful magnetism for migrants.

For all the present difficulties suffered by many European countries, the prospect of life in Europe is comparatively far better than in Africa or Asia, and even Latin America, in spite of the fact that many immigrants are returning to their countries of origin.

The future and the present of the United States – as it always was in the past – remains linked to the immigration pool. Hence, U.S. sectors that oppose migration reform are not only destined to fail, they are also currently rendering poor service to their country.

Both regions, now engaged in exploring a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) agreement, are destined to surpass other world regions in terms of standard of living and future expectations.

Both partners are still the natural allies that could lead the world out of the crisis. And the future of both is welded to their role as immigration destinations.

Excerpt:

By Ignacio Ramonet
PARIS, Jul 7 2014 (IPS)

In ‘Hard Choices’, her new book about her experiences as Secretary of State during U.S. President Barack Obama’s first term (2008-2012), Hillary Clinton writes something of prime importance about Cuba – she says that late in her term in office she urged Obama to reconsider the U.S. embargo against Cuba.
“It wasn’t achieving its goals, and it was holding back our broader agenda across Latin America.”

Ignacio Ramonet

For the first time a U.S. presidential hopeful has publicly stated that the blockade imposed by Washington on the Caribbean island – for over fifty years! – is “not achieving its goals”.

In other words, the embargo has not subdued this small country in spite of the amount of unjust suffering it has caused for its population.

The essence of Hillary Clinton’s declaration is two-fold: first, it breaks the taboo on saying out loud what everyone in Washington has known for some time: that the blockade is useless.

And second, and more importantly, her statement comes at the moment when her campaign is being launched for the Democratic Party nomination to the White House; that is, she is not afraid that her affirmation – in opposition to all of Washington policies towards Cuba over the past half century – could be a handicap in the electoral battle she faces up until the elections of November 8, 2016.

If Hillary Clinton takes such an unorthodox position, it is because she is aware that public opinion on this topic in the United States has changed, and that the majority today is in favour of ending the blockade.

Indeed, a nationwide poll in February 2014 by the Atlantic Council research institute, found that 56 percent of U.S. respondents favour changing Washington’s policy towards Cuba.

Contrary to hopes that arose after U.S. President Barack Obama was elected in November 2008, Washington’s relations with Cuba have remained on ice. Just after taking office in April 2009, Obama announced at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago that the United States was seeking a “new beginning” in its relationship with Havana.

“Washington’s attitude towards Cuba is still reactionary, typical of the Cold War era which has been over for a quarter of a century. Its archaic stance is in sharp contrast to the position taken by other governments”
But he made only limited, largely symbolic, gestures, permitting Cuban Americans to visit the island and send small amounts of money to their families. Later, in 2011, he adopted further measures but these were still of limited scope: he allowed religious groups and students to travel to Cuba, authorised U.S. airports to handle charter flights to Cuba, and increased the limit on remittances Cuban Americans could send to their relatives. Not much in comparison with the huge disputes that divide the two countries.

One of their differences – the case of ‘the Cuban Five’ – has caused an international commotion. Five Cuban intelligence agents, engaged in the prevention of anti-Cuban terrorism, were detained in Florida in September 1998. They were convicted in a Cold War style political trial – a real courtroom lynching – and sentenced to long prison terms. The injustice of their treatment is clear from the fact that they had committed no acts of violence, nor spied on U.S. security secrets, but had risked their lives to prevent attacks and save human lives.

Washington is inconsistent when it claims to combat “international terrorism” yet continues to back anti-Cuban terrorist groups on its own soil. For instance, in April 2014 the Cuban authorities arrested another group of four people arriving from Florida with intent to commit attacks.

Washington’s attitude towards Cuba is still reactionary, typical of the Cold War era which has been over for a quarter of a century. Its archaic stance is in sharp contrast to the position taken by other governments.

For example, all Latin American and Caribbean states, whatever their political orientations, have recently improved relations with Cuba and denounced the blockade. This was proved in January at the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) held in Havana.

Washington was snubbed again in May at the general assembly of the Organisation of American States (OAS) in Cochabamba, Bolivia, when Latin American countries, in a fresh show of solidarity with Havana, threatened to boycott the next Summit of the Americas scheduled for 2015 in Panama if Cuba is not invited.

For its part, the European Union decided in February to abandon its so-called “common position” on relations with Cuba, imposed in 1996 by José María Aznar, the then Spanish prime minister, to “punish” Cuba by rejecting all dialogue with the island’s authorities. But the policy proved fruitless and it failed. Brussels has recognised this and has reinstated negotiations with Havana to reach agreement on political and economic cooperation.

The European Union is Cuba’s biggest foreign investor and its second most important trading partner. Reflecting this new spirit, several European ministers have already visited the island.

In contrast with Washington’s immobility, many European foreign ministries are observing with interest the changes President Raúl Castro is promoting in Cuba in the framework of “updating the economic model” and the line taken at the Sixth Congress of the Cuban Communist Party (PCC) in 2011, which are highly significant transformations of the economy and society. The recent creation of a special development zone around the port of Mariel, and the approval in March of a new foreign investment law, in particular, have excited great international interest.

The Cuban authorities see no contradiction between socialism and private enterprise. According to some estimates, private enterprise, including foreign investment, could expand to take up 40 percent of the country’s economy, while 60 percent would remain in the hands of the state and the public sector.

The goal is for the Cuban economy to be increasingly compatible with those of its major partners in the region (Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Bolivia) where public and private sectors, the state and markets coexist.

All these changes highlight by contrast the stubbornness of the U.S. Administration, painted into the corner of an ideological position dating from another era, even if, as we have seen, more voices are raised day by day in Washington to acknowledge the error of this position and the need to abandon international isolation in terms of its Cuban policy. Will President Obama listen to them? (END/IPS COLUMNIST SERVICE)

Excerpt:

By Emma Bonino
ROME, Dec 23 2013 (Columnist Service)

The past three years have been very important to scale up the movement to protect the rights and fundamental freedoms of women and girls and, particularly, to eliminate female genital mutilation worldwide.

We saw the political momentum growing and culminating December 2012 with the consensual adoption by the General Assembly of Resolution 67/146 banning female genital mutilation worldwide.

On that occasion all United Nations member states sent a strong political message about their commitment. The resolution calls upon member states to ensure effective implementation of international and regional instruments protecting women’s rights and to take all necessary measures to prohibit female genital mutilation.

The resolution was an important step forward; it is now our responsibility to ensure its effective implementation. The recent UNICEF report reminds us that despite the best efforts towards its abandonment, female genital mutilation still persists.

For this reason, during the General Assembly this year we organised a side event, together with Burkina Faso, UNFPA and UNICEF, to share specific contributions that governments and international institutions have made to the commitments undertaken with the adoption of the resolution.

Genital mutilation is only one of the manifold forms of violence women are still suffering all over the world. Just to mention the example of my own country, over 100 women have been killed in Italy this year, mostly in the context of domestic violence.

To reverse such a terrible trend, we have increased government action against crimes that victimise women. I am also very proud that Italy became the fifth member state of the Council of Europe to ratify the Istanbul Convention for preventing and combating sexual and domestic violence.

The same happened with the ratification of the Arms Trade Treaty, which introduces principles and criteria to oversee the movement of arms and to combat illegal trafficking. Such treaties contain an explicit provision on gender-based violence.

Women are the first victims of such trade. This also goes in the direction of a general change of culture leading to a gender-balanced approach in peace-building processes.

Gender-based violence was also the common denominator underlying the discussion at the high-level meeting during the General Assembly last September of the Equal Futures Partnership, the initiative launched by former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton which Italy just joined.

This is a partnership uniting nations firmly committed to closing the gender gap and to sharing experiences so that local practices can be replicated all over the world.

A less blatant but nonetheless harmful form of violence against women is the practice of early and forced marriages. We must take every opportunity to recall the importance of eradicating this practice in one generation’s time span, accelerating change in culture and traditions through a vibrant, ongoing campaign.

For this reason we also call for the inclusion of this target in the post-2015 development agenda.

A very encouraging step was the approval last month by the U.N. General Assembly’s Third Committee of a resolution aimed at achieving a ban, within the next 12 months, on early and forced marriages. This resolution – promoted by Italy and nine other countries – was co-sponsored by 109 countries and was approved by consensus.

Violence against women also encompasses trafficking and slavery. This is a particularly
painful subject for me: it is very sad and frustrating to feel helpless when hundreds of migrants, women and men and children, tragically die off the coasts of Lampedusa (in Sicily). For this reason we are insisting on a common European effort within the framework of the Mediterranean task force led by the European Commission to combat human trafficking.

This leads me to talk about the situation of women in our neighbouring countries in the Southern Mediterranean. In some of these countries the promotion of women’s rights has a long tradition.

In other cases gender issues have been promoted by those autocratic regimes which the Arab Spring swept away, as they became instrumental for them to show their modern face to Western allies while continuing to violate other human rights.

Whatever the reasons for their past promotion, we must continue monitoring to avoid any setback, like attempts to delegitimise the Personal Status Code (adopted in 1956) in Tunisia or to misapply the law imposing sanctions for female mutilation in Egypt.

For this reason we should increase our efforts in initiatives like the one undertaken by the European Union and United Nations, “Spring Forward for Women”, which includes measures to ensure effective access by women to economic and political opportunities in the Southern Mediterranean region.

On the Italian side, I would also like to mention an initiative we successfully launched last February and that we will repeat next year: Women in Diplomacy School. The school aims at giving women specific tools for their empowerment as leaders. It is open to the participation of young women from our neighbouring Mediterranean countries.

The Women in Diplomacy School is part of a wider project that Italy has launched in view of the Expo Milan 2015, the Women and Expo initiative.

Our ambitious goal is to make Expo 2015 in Milan the first “gender Expo” ever, hoping that this will serve as an example for future editions.
(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

President Barack Obama has selected Senator John Kerry as his next Secretary of State. Above, Senator Kerry in 2009. Credit: Ralph Alswang for Center for American Progress Action Fund/ CC by 2.0

By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Dec 21 2012 (IPS)

U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Massachusetts Senator John Kerry on Friday to succeed Hillary Clinton as secretary of state, calling him “the perfect choice to guide American diplomacy in the years ahead”.

But Obama offered no hints as to whom he will pick for the rest of his national security team, including replacements for Pentagon chief Leon Panetta and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director General David Petraeus (retired), who resigned abruptly last month in the wake of reports of an affair.

The White House reportedly intended to announce its picks for all three posts Friday but backed off, primarily in response to an intense campaign led by prominent neo-conservatives and leaders of the Israel lobby against the possibility of former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel as head of the Pentagon.

Hagel, who currently serves as co-chair of the president’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and like Kerry is a decorated Vietnam War veteran, has come under heavy fire for his outspoken criticism of Israeli policies and the influence of the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill.

Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential candidate, has served on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 27 years and chaired it since 2009.

In that post, he has defended the Obama administration’s policies and has occasionally carried out specific diplomatic missions on the its behalf. Where he has differed from Obama on foreign policy, he has done so privately.

In his new role, he is expected to be very much a “team player” who will faithfully carry out orders from the White House where national security adviser Tom Donilon and his deputy, Denis McDonough, are likely to continue dominating policy-making in Obama’s second term.

His nomination has been a foregone conclusion here since United Nations Ambassador Susan Rice took herself out of consideration earlier this month after Republicans accused her of misleading the public about the circumstances surrounding the attacks on the American embassy in Benghazi, in which Washington’s ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, and three other embassy officers were killed.

Rice and Kerry were reportedly the only two people being considered to succeed Clinton, whose tenure was marked by seemingly unrelenting overseas travel and a strong – if very low-profile – emphasis on building transnational partnerships on global issues, notably women’s empowerment, climate change, education, health and engagement with civil society.

Clinton is also credited with restoring the State Department’s status, in part by prioritising “smart power” over the “hard power” favoured by the Bush administration.

Kerry first burst into the public spotlight as an articulate spokesman for Vietnam Veterans Against the War. Unlike most children of patrician families who evaded the military draft in the 1960’s, Kerry enlisted in the Navy and served on so-called “Swift Boats” that patrolled the Mekong Delta in what was then South Vietnam.

He was elected to the Senate in 1984. During the 1990s he worked with Senator John McCain to help establish diplomatic ties with Hanoi, a benchmark formally achieved under the Bill Clinton administration in 1995.

Kerry acted as a loyal supporter of that administration’s foreign policy, supporting Washington’s controversial interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, albeit with some reservations. 

Under the Bush administration, Kerry voted for the resolution that gave the president the authority to invade Iraq, although like Hagel he quickly became a critic of the war. Republicans have criticised this flip but Kerry is still unlikely to encounter serious opposition from Republican senators to his confirmation next month.

His general foreign policy views largely echo Obama’s. “If there is such a thing as a Kerry Doctrine, it is a clear-eyed willingness to pursue engagement and test the intentions of other countries, even present and former enemies or difficult partners on the world stage,” wrote his biographer, Douglas Brinkley, on the foreignpolicy.com website Friday.

“Kerry – patient but quick to see opportunities – has a negotiator’s mindset,” he noted, adding that, in addition to his expertise on Southeast Asia, he has “amassed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Middle East” and “was the first senator to call for President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt to step down”.

In 2009, Kerry travelled to Damascus to meet with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad, suggesting on his return that Assad was a “reformer” who could be weaned from his alliance with Iran. He has since called for Assad to step down and supported the administration’s measures to achieve that goal.

On Iran, which is likely to hover around the top of the administration’s foreign policy agenda for the next year or longer, Kerry has strongly supported diplomatic engagement, as well as tightening economic sanctions against Tehran as pressure to curb its nuclear programme.

In introducing Kerry at the White House, Obama stressed the senator’s views about U.S. military power. “Having served with valour in Vietnam,” Obama said, “he understands that we have a responsibility to use American power wisely, especially our military power.”

That understanding could be critical with regard to both Syria and Iran in the coming months, but how much more influence Kerry will exert on the administration’s decisions than he has as the Foreign Relations Committee chair is unclear.

Whoever is chosen to head the Pentagon, however, is likely to wield more influence on decisions of war and peace. As a result, Panetta’s succession is considered particularly critical, particularly to neo-conservatives and the Israel lobby.

Hagel, a personal friend of Kerry, hails from the Republican realist tradition of former Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush, and could be expected to strongly reinforce opposition to any further U.S. military intervention in the greater Middle East.

As more of a liberal internationalist, on the other hand, Kerry may be somewhat more inclined to use military force to achieve a “greater good”, such as an end to the increasingly bloody civil war in Syria or preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons.

If Obama decides that nominating Hagel will exact too high a political price, he is likely to turn either to the current deputy defence secretary, Ashton Carter, or the former undersecretary for policy, Michele Flournoy.

Contrary to U.S. President Barack Obama’s recent foreign policy speech at the United Nations, candidates’ pronouncements during election campaigns distort US foreign policy. Some arguments defy voters’ intelligence, and incite nations who should be our allies.It is scary to hear that Russia is our biggest enemy; China must be contained; a “Red Line” be drawn on Iran’s nuclear ambitions; and Middle East be restrained – from newly gained freedoms in Egypt and Libya to Syria, Israel and Palestine. The worst is war mongering – even attempts by a foreign country to influence elections and dictate US foreign policy.

America was born, in 1776, as a symbol of equality and freedom dedicated to the higher principles of justice. For over 200 years, America has been a devout apostle of equality and freedom – defending peace, democracy, justice and human rights.

During the Berlin and Cuban missile crisis of 1962, President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev averted war realizing the devastation of wars. President Kennedy once stated, “Our hopes must be tempered with the caution of history.” He also said that “mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.”

Russia, today, is not a Stalinist Soviet Union with dictatorial powers. The Cold War is over. Putin advocates peaceful foreign policies. He abhors external pressure and advocates a multi-polar world and a bigger role for the United Nations to enhance global security. He has often said that “we do not want confrontation: we want to engage in dialogue but a dialogue that acknowledges the equality of both parties’ interests”. This could be the premise for United States to form better relations with Russia.

China holds almost $1.5 trillion of the $16 trillion US debt, and is the second largest US trading partner after Canada. It is a growing market that calls for continued diplomatic and business engagement. China’s determination to strengthen its economic and military power is unstoppable. Tensions over the disputed islands in China Sea make US uneasy about the potential for military confrontations.

Last month, while in Jakarta, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: “We will need the nations of the region to work collaboratively together to resolve disputes – without coercion, without intimidating, without threats and, certainly, without the use of force”. Sounds great.

UN also wants countries to solve those problems peacefully and not exacerbate the situation.

The Middle East is everybody’s nightmare. US supported Israel, Egypt and others for decades with billions of dollars in aid and grants every year – with enormous financial and human sacrifice. Most Arabs are ungrateful and hostile to America as we recently witnessed in Libya. Karzai has said that Afghanistan will support Pakistan in a war against the US. No money can buy peace, democracy or human rights. People need food, water, shelter, education and medicine.

The UN Security Council remains divided on Syria only because the US and NATO apparently misapplied the no-fly zone over Libya. Once bitten twice shy, and Russia has lost confidence in this mechanism. In Syria, there are two or several forces at play, and as we know Bashar Al-Assad is not the only one killing the Syrians.

It is appalling when a US presidential candidate attributes Palestinians’ forced predicament and stagnation to a lack of culture. UN has been seized with this issue for over five decades and the world knows where the problem is and who to blame.

US involvement in Middle East and South Asia has given us nothing but misery – two Arab oil embargoes; devastating wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; a horrendous 9/11; global war on terror; never-ending terrorist threats – to name a few that have cost US three trillion dollars, and lives of thousands of US soldiers.

US attacked Iraq on bogus claims of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). I was in the UN Security Council chambers when US Secretary of State Collin Powell showed those spurious movies how Iraqi President Saddam Hussein made WMD’s in the desert. US waged war without UN blessings, and we are clamoring to repeat the same mistake.

Any unilateral military action against another sovereign state is an illegitimate act of aggression that would constitute a flagrant violation of international law and the UN Charter which clearly states that the use of force is not legitimate unless authorized by the Security Council or in self-defense [after a direct attack].

Red Line or not, there is no proof that Iran has a nuclear weapon, and it has not threatened military action against Israel. If Israel wants a pre-emptive attack on Iran, and it appears that they are blustering in that direction, it should do so alone without dragging America into a catastrophic war. United States has already squandered trillions of dollars in the Middle East through two wars. Another war would further destabilize the region.

During my 25 years at the United Nations, I never saw any sincere effort by Israel to live peacefully with its neighbors. In the Middle East, only Israel has nuclear weapons and, for obvious reasons, it wants to maintain status quo.

It is inconceivable that Iran – unless suicidal – would ever attack Israel. “If Iran ever makes a nuclear weapon”, as one UN diplomat confided in me, “a nuclear Iran would have a calming effect on Israel”. That reminds me how India and Pakistan painstakingly maintain peace today.

Right now, United States and peace loving nations have a unique opportunity to end this war mongering. An international conference is scheduled, this year in Helsinki, to establish a zone free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East. This is the only way to fulfill aspirations of the people in the Middle East.

Historically, since 1974, the UN General Assembly has passed many resolutions on this issue but never adhered to. In 1991, the Madrid Peace Conference established a multinational mechanism to work on making the Middle East a nuclear weapon-free zone but was stalled in 1995 as a result of Israeli position.

Elimination of all nuclear and WMD’s from Middle East would provide common security interests of both Iran and Israel and of the entire region, and thereby other strategic interests of all major powers. United Nations can and should make it a success.

It is possible because we have done this before. All 33 states in Latin America and the Caribbean are parties to the 1967 (Tlatelolco) Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean. It has also been signed and ratified by nuclear powers US, UK, France, China, and Russia. This is the solution – today – for Middle East.

It is time for all nations to respect the UN Charter, adhere to international law, use diplomacy and peaceful means to resolve international conflicts, and work harmoniously and in partnership to establish a world order that ensures peace, justice, security and prosperity for all.

* Former Representative of UNAIDS at the United Nations.

Peruvian peasant women working in the potato fields. Credit: Milagros Salazar/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Jul 19 2012 (IPS)

The World Bank and U.S. government on Thursday each announced major new initiatives aimed at expanding knowledge on the experience of women around the world, while acknowledging that much remains to be done on filling the global “data gap” on women.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and new World Bank President Jim Yong Kim appeared together here in Washington to make the announcements at an event at which Clinton noted that the world is in the midst of a “data revolution”, in which data of all types are being created and shared at unprecedented speeds and volumes.

“But are we just collecting it for the sake of collecting it?” Clinton asked at the Washington headquarters of Gallup, a research and polling organisation.

“For too many countries, we lack reliable and regular data on even the basic facts about the lives of women and girls – facts like when they have their first child, how many hours of paid and unpaid work they do, whether they own the land they farm. And since women make up half the population, that’s like having a black hole at the centre of our data-driven universe.”

She continued: “So if we’re serious about narrowing the gender gap and helping more girls and women, then we must get serious about gathering and analysing the data that tell the tale.”

Clinton made a splash in 1995 at an international summit on Women in Beijing, where she famously stated that “Women’s rights are human rights.” Since becoming secretary of state, she has focused on making the role of women in society central in shaping U.S. aid policy.

On Thursday, she announced the creation of a new U.S. government initiative called Data 2X, which will aim at shoring up international capacity on the production and analysis of data, including training in gender-sensitive data-gathering techniques and filling gaps in gender-sensitive data.

Clinton pointed to gaps in knowledge on how economic barriers differ for women from country to country, on women’s use of the Internet, land use and property rights, and political roles at the local level.

With hundreds of billions of dollars in national policy and foreign aid resting on the details of intervention programmes around the world, such data holes could well mean the difference between success and failure on nearly the entire spectrum of development indicators.

Jim Kim also announced a major new initiative on the subject, the World Bank’s Gender Data Portal, a clearinghouse of the bank’s decades’ worth of gender-related statistics and analysis.

While Kim said the new site would be continuously updated, he also was frank on what even this trove of information is unable to offer.

“When you visit our new site, you’ll also see that there are appalling gaps in country coverage and frequency,” Kim said.

“You won’t find data on gender wage gaps in developing countries, because comparable data doesn’t exist across developing countries. You won’t find enough data measuring women’s voice and agency beyond women’s representation in national parliaments – there are bits and pieces, but the gaps are still huge.”

The World Bank’s latest signature World Development Report, for 2012, focuses on gender equality.

Kim, the first bank president with a background in science, said that report, too, “makes clear that one of the fundamental challenges for tackling all (development) issues is more and better data and evidence. Before we can solve a problem, we need to understand it. We need to be able to evaluate systematically what sorts of interventions work, which don’t, and why.”

Overlooked peacemakers

Incorrect, incomplete or missing data inevitably weakens processes of prioritisation at all levels of planning, with a broad range of consequences.

While it has largely become accepted wisdom that women are at the very heart of much of any society’s development progress, for instance, observers note one critical area in which women continue to be systematically and dangerously excluded: peacemaking, particularly in post-conflict countries.

Anne-Marie Goetz, a widely noted advisor for UNIFEM, the U.N. development fund for women, has found that less than six percent of participants in peace negotiations between 1994 and 2009 were women. Further, no woman has ever been appointed as lead negotiator for a U.N.-overseen mediation process.

At the local level, she has also found that an average of just six percent of money in post-conflict reconstruction goes for women’s issues.

“The nature of conflict has changed, but the way we do peacemaking has not,” Sanam Anderlini, a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said from the audience at Gallup on Thursday.

A civil war, Anderlini said, “atomises” a society into constituent ethnic or identity groups. Yet following the conflict, peace processes around the world typically bring together the government and the armed groups, both of which are often seen as illegitimate in the eyes of many in the country.

Meanwhile, “we systematically exclude people in the communities, people who are pro-peace, who have been active in peacemaking – women are systematically excluded,” Anderlini said.

“If 50 percent of the population who were black or Jewish or Chinese or whatever (were excluded), we’d say this is racism. But when it comes to women, we say this is ‘cultural’.”

When the issue of women and conflict is discussed, Anderlini says, most of the time the analysis revolves around the impact of conflict on women, rather than about what women have done during conflict periods.

“We have valuable case-study data, and I don’t know why we’re not applying the information we have towards our own policies,” Anderlini said.

“Are we engaging with women in Syria? We didn’t do that with Libyan women (during the war there). Consistently, our own prejudices get in the way, that and the inertia of changing the business of peacemaking – which, incredibly, is still exclusive and limited, despite being probably the most important period in a country’s history.”

Nyan Tuch in her temporary home in a camp outside of Aweil where she is living until the government provides her family with land. Credit: Jared Ferrie/IPS

By Jared Ferrie
JUBA, Jul 9 2012 (IPS)

The streets have been swept clean and lined with flags to mark the first anniversary of South Sudan’s independence. But cosmetic changes in the capital, Juba, mask deep concerns about the future of the world’s newest nation.

South Sudan’s first year of independence has been marred by violent clashes, food shortages, a refugee crisis and a faltering economy that threatens to halt development. As the nation celebrates its liberation from Sudan after a civil war that killed an estimated two million people, messages from the international community were decidedly muted.

“Looking back, the last year has clearly been a difficult one for the people of South Sudan,” Hilde Johnson, the United Nations secretary general’s special representative, told reporters in Juba on Friday, Jul. 6. “It’s been a tough start.”

In a strongly-worded statement read out at the United States embassy’s July 4 celebrations, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the country faces “significant challenges that threaten stability and prosperity.”

“Conflict and unresolved issues with Sudan and domestic inter-ethnic tensions have led to increased fighting and economic hardship, which threatens to compromise the very foundations upon which South Sudan’s future was to be built,” she said.

Much of South Sudan’s future was tied to oil. The country inherited three quarters of Sudan’s reserves when it separated, but the pipelines and processing facilities remain north of the border, along with the port that South Sudan needs to use to get its oil to market.

It was thought that the countries’ mutual interest in oil revenue would help foster a working relationship between the former civil war foes. But it has not worked out that way. Talks since independence have failed to yield an agreement on how much South Sudan should pay to ship its oil through Sudan. In late January, South Sudan shut down oil production after Sudan confiscated 815 million dollars worth of Southern crude, which it claimed was in lieu of unpaid fees.

South Sudan said it had no choice but to halt production because Sudan was “stealing” its oil. But in doing so, the government deprived itself of 98 percent of its revenue. Already greatly dependent on the international community for aid, donors are now concerned that South Sudan will now be unable to fund any development programmes or even pay public sector salaries, which could lead to civil unrest.

“We must not allow the large investments in agriculture, water, education and other services to be undone by the economic crisis and increase in conflict,” said Helen McElhinney, a policy advisor with Oxfam International. “The longer this crisis drags on, the greater the risk South Sudan’s development will slip backwards, and its vast potential will be unrealised.”

Alfred Lokuji, dean of Juba University’s Community and Rural Development Studies department, said an agreement to restart oil production would not solve South Sudan’s problems.

“Even if the oil were flowing, the fundamental problem remains – how to manage it, how to manage those resources,” he said.

Lokuji pointed out that South Sudan and Sudan split oil revenues 50-50 in the five years leading up to independence, but southerners have seen very little development. Instead, oil wealth has been squandered and stolen.

On May 3, President Salva Kiir wrote a letter to 75 former and current “senior” government officials asking them to return stolen public funds. He said that four billion dollars had been looted.

Lokuji said that the letter was unlikely to succeed in convincing people to return money lost to corruption, or to prevent officials from stealing more. He criticised the government for failing to bring charges against corrupt officials during South Sudan’s first year of independence.

“I’d say it has been a failure, a failure because we have been unable to get a hold of corruption, unable to put things in order, put institutions in order and get going,” he said.

Even as the economy stagnates after the loss of oil revenue, humanitarian needs are increasing. The number of people requiring food aid in 2012 doubled from the previous year to 2.4 million, according to the U.N. Some of those are people displaced by ethnic violence that is most pronounced in Jonglei, an eastern state bordering Ethiopia.

More than 1,000 people died in fighting between the Murle and Lou Nuer ethnic groups in Jonglei in 2011. At least 900 more died in clashes that began in late December and stretched to February, according to a May 25 report by the U.N. peacekeeping mission.

The report noted that U.N. surveillance flights had reported around 8,000 Lou Nuer marching toward Murle communities in the weeks leading up the December attacks. Despite advanced warning, “the government was slow to respond in any robust way.”

“Actions taken came too late and insufficient troops were deployed at the critical time,” the report said.

South Sudan is also struggling to cope with close to 200,000 refugees that have crossed the border from Sudan’s Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states where the Khartoum government is fighting an insurgency. On Jul. 4, U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres warned that people are arriving “dangerously malnourished” to camps where “the threat from water born disease is high.”

In addition to refugees, about 375,000 southerners have returned from Sudan since October 2010, according to the International Organization for Migration. The government has promised to provide land to them but many remain in temporary camps.

In one camp outside of Aweil, the capital of Bahr El Ghazal state, 50-year-old Nyan Tuch has been waiting almost 20 months for the government to give her family a plot of land. She lived for four decades in Sudan where she and her husband were both employed and owned a house. As the referendum on whether the south would separate loomed, tensions increased and they decided to return to their homeland.

Tuch and her husband now live in a thatched hut with a tarpaulin roof and they farm vegetables to survive. But she said she has no regrets about returning.

“I am filled with joy at one year independence it is now a country of our own,” she said. “What we are looking for is for the government to allocate our land. And we are hoping the place we have will be better than the place we left in the north because this is our place, we are proud of it.”

By Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar
MOGADISHU, Feb 23 2012 (IPS)

With an international meeting aimed at resolving the political crisis in Somalia set to take place Thursday, the local media in this East African nation is awash with scepticism, referring to the efforts as a new system of re-colonising the country.

The country has been without an effective government since 1991. The meeting, hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron, will have representatives from global organsiations and over 40 governments, including Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Britain has also invited representatives of Somalia’s Transitional Federal Government (TFG), as well as the presidents of the breakaway Somaliland, Puntland, and Galmudug, and the non-militant Islamist group Ahlu Sunnah Waljama’a (ASWJ).

But one of the country’s most influential political leaders and future presidential candidate, Omar Abdirahman Mohamed, told IPS said that Britain wanted Somalia to have a “weak administration”.

“The U.K. doesn’t want Somalia to have its military reformed and it was the sole superpower that negated the lifting of the arms embargo on Somalia. This shows that the U.K. government is totally against the formation of a stable government and powerful military in Somalia,” said Mohamed, who heads the Mogadishu-based Midnimo Political Party.

In 2008 U.K. law implemented various statutory instruments to enforce the arms embargo on Somalia. The embargo was first implemented on the country by the United Nations in 1992 after civil war broke out. It was partially lifted in 2007 to allow the importation of arms by the African Union Mission in Somalia.

“All Somalis are carefully watching the London conference and its outcome. Let the conference not be a conspiracy against the sovereignty of Somalia,” Mohamed said.

An alleged “leaked” communiqué, apparently written for release after the talks, has been circulating here, fuelling speculation in this East African nation about the negative outcome of these talks.

One controversial point on the document, which is available online, refers to allegedly passing on the functions of government to a caretaker authority until the constitutional discussions are concluded. However, the point further explains that the country’s constitution must be endorsed through a referendum or elected parliament.

The radio station Voice of the Peace said in its editorials that the U.K. was not looking for a lasting solution for Somalia.

Most newspapers including Kulmiye News and Xog-ogaal highlighted stories of locals who were concerned over Somalia becoming a colony once more.

One well-known elder, Ahmed Diriye, told local Radio Daljir he did not believe that the London conference would have positive results for Somalia. “We know that Kenya (does not have a) powerful military and that was (because of the) U.K., and I am afraid that it wants Somalia to have only a police force,” Diriye said.

The country’s President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed denied this saying media reports were “rumours and baseless propaganda” intended to mislead the views of Somalis.

Somali President Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed (c) said that the international community was committed to putting an end to the lawlessness in the country. Credit: Shafi’i Mohyaddin Abokar/IPS

“There is no cause for concern over the sovereignty of the country. I can assure the Somali people that the London conference will focus on the interest of Somalia and how the world community can help the country out of its long-existing hardships,” Ahmed said Friday.

He was speaking in Garowe, a town in the breakaway state of Puntland, where the Somali government, regional autonomies, civil society, and ASWJ met to sign a deal outlining the composition of the country’s new parliament when the transitional period ends this August.

Ahmed said that the international community was committed to putting an end to the lawlessness in Somalia.

The British Ambassador to Somalia Matt Baugh told IPS from his Nairobi office that the conference is aimed at delivering a new international approach to Somalia and would form the basis for coordinated and sustained international leadership.

He added said that while the five-hour conference would not solve all the problems in Somalia, Britain wanted it to be “the catalyst for more international engagement in Somalia and more effective Somali leadership.”

He denied local media reports that the London conference will pave the way for a colony in Somalia and said that the British government and the international community wanted to help Somalia emerge from its problems.

“There are no options for colonising Somalia,” the ambassador insisted.

“We are holding this conference now because enough is enough. The suffering during the famine was a wake up call for the international community.  It’s time to arrest Somalia’s relentless decline – and make the most of the opportunities in front of us. We have an opportunity to support a more inclusive and representative political process when the transitional period ends in August,” he said.

However, the extremist group Al-Shabaab, which recently announced a merger with international terrorist group Al-Qaeda, denounced the conference saying that it intends to destroy the existence of Islam in Somalia.

“The U.K. has already colonised many Muslim countries and it wants to have colonies in Somalia again. Christian governments and their puppets are meeting there in London and they will tell the so-called TFG something to implement in the country, but that will not really work,” Al-Shabaab’s main preacher, Sheik Fu’ad Mohamed Qalaf, told the group’s radio station on Tuesday.

Many Somalis are hopeful that the conference will bring lasting peace to their country.

“The path of reconciliation, forgiveness and tolerance is needed so the wounds of your homeland may be healed and the plight of your people may come to an end,” the Imam of Somalia’s Al-Azhar Mosque, Dr. Sheik Ahmed El Tayyeb, said of the conference.

His comments helped some change their negative views of the talks.

“The Imam knows more than we do, so from now on I am very hopeful of the London conference and I am calling all Somalis to help the government implement the conference outcomes on the ground,” Abdi Abdulle Ahmed, a former schoolteacher, told IPS.

Meanwhile, other locals have high expectations of the conference. Well-known Somali folklore dancer Ahmed Abokar Abuna said he hopes that it will bring stability to the country.

“I believe the world is now struggling to solve Somalia’s problems so that Somalis and the whole world will be rescued from the danger of terrorists who have bases in Somalia,” he told IPS while walking along the Via Liberia Road in Mogadishu. Al-Shabaab control large parts of southern Somalia and until last year controlled large portions of the country’s capital.

Sahro Moalim, a 22-year-old university student in Mogadishu, said that she had never experienced peace in Somalia and she hoped it would be an outcome of the conference.

Eyni Ahmed, a political analyst and the chairwomen of Somali Youth League, a group that aided with the disarmament of hundreds of former Al-Shabaab child soldiers, told IPS that the situation on the ground in Somalia is currently dangerous and the conference needed to find a resolution for the political turmoil.

“If it continues like this, if lawlessness and killings continue, it will have a bad impact on the country’s existence … so there will come a time when the world will say: ‘There was a country called Somalia once upon time,’” Eyni told IPS.

(END/2012)