An estimated 40 million people were living in modern slavery around the world in 2016, and women and girls are disproportionately affected. Credit: Adil Siddiqi/IPS

By Tharanga Yakupitiyage
UNITED NATIONS, Mar 19 2019 (IPS)

Modern slavery and human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries and one of the biggest human rights crises today, United Nations and government officials said.

During an event as part of the annual Commission on the Status of Women (CSW), government officials, UN human rights experts, and civil society representatives came together to discuss the staggering trends in human trafficking as well as steps forward in the fight against modern slavery.

“Given that slavery was officially abolished in the 19th century and pretty much every country in the world has outlawed it, the trends are really alarming,” Liechtenstein’s Ambassador to the UN Christian Wenaweser told IPS.

“Modern slavery is one of the defining human rights crisis of our time… it is very much an international and transnational phenomenon so we can do this together. We have to tackle it together,” he added.

An estimated 40 million people were living in modern slavery around the world in 2016, and women and girls are disproportionately affected.

According to the International Labour Organisation (ILO), 71 percent of victims of modern slavery are female.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that out of the detected trafficking victims, 49 percent are women and 23 percent are girls.

The vast majority of victims are trafficked for sexual exploitation, while others are exploited for forced labor and forced marriage.

“The gender dimensions of the practice cannot be ignored. Modern slavery and human trafficking constitutes gender-based violence against women and girls… gender inequality is a both a cause and a consequence of this phenomenon,” said Australia’s Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer.

Panelists also noted that women and girls are especially vulnerable to exploitations in situations of armed conflict.

Nadia Murad, who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and is UNODC’s Goodwill Ambassador, was among thousands of Yazidi women who were kidnapped by the Islamic State (IS).

Many are forced to be sex slaves, and reports found that IS even uses social media sites such as Facebook to sell Yazidi women as sex slaves.

While Murad was able to escape, an estimated 3,000 Yazidi women and girls are still enslaved.

In Nigeria, Boko Haram has also kidnapped women and girls for the purposes of sexual slavery and forced marriage. A report by the Henry Jackson Society found that Boko Haram members would impregnate women in order to produce the “next generation of fighters.”

“Boko Haram’s fighters do not capture people, their standard procedure was to kill the men and treat the women and children as booty to be bargained over and sold for profit,” said Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Sexual Violence in Conflict Pramila Patten.

“These examples show that trafficking and sexual violence, including sexual slavery, are not just incidental but systematic, institutionalised and strategic,” she added.

However, new international initiatives are underway to fight modern slavery and human trafficking including some by the financial sector.

“That which we walk by, we endorse. I think that’s really critical for all of us, especially in the financial sector itself that while we may not actively participate in trafficking, if we walk by or turn a blind eye…then in a sense we are endorsing it,” said the Commissioner of the Financial Sector Commission against Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Frederick Reynolds.

Ambassador Wenaweser also highlighted the role of the financial sector, stating: “Modern slavery is essentially the economic exploitation of people. You make people into a commodity and you make a lot of money, so the role of the financial institutions is really key.”

Globally, modern slavery generates 150 billion dollars annually.

In fact, one of the major drivers behind sexual trafficking is revenue.

According to the Henry Jackson Society, IS alone generated up to 30 million dollars in 2016 through abductions. As the group struggles to finance its operations due to the decrease in revenues from other sources such as oil sales and taxation, modern slavery may increase.

The Financial Sector Commission on Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking hopes to combat this illicit industry.

Also known as the Liechtenstein Initiative, the Commission is a public-private partnership that brings together leaders from the financial sector, civil society, as well as survivors to find innovative ways to end modern slavery including through anti-trafficking compliance and responsible investment.

“We have chosen this because we are a financial center…and we wanted to put the expertise of our financial centre to a positive and constructive use,” Ambassador Wenaweser told IPS.

In September 2019, the initiative will provide a roadmap with actionable steps and concrete tools for the financial sector.

While the financial sector alone cannot solve the complex issue, Reynolds noted that they are a key part of the solution and highlighted crucial actions such as the increased exchange of information between the financial sector and law enforcement.

Patten pointed to the need to address root causes of human trafficking including gender discrimination as well as the importance of a survivor-centred approach.

“[Survivors’] testimonies can inform and strengthen our responses to improve prevention…Women and girls cannot be reduced to currency in the political economy of armed conflict and terrorism. They cannot be bartered, traded, trafficked..because their sexual and reproductive rights are non negotiable,” she said.

The Global Sustainability Network ( GSN ) http://gsngoal8.com/ is pursuing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal number 8 with a special emphasis on Goal 8.7 which ‘takes immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers, and by 2025 end child labour in all its forms’.

The origins of the GSN come from the endeavours of the Joint Declaration of Religious Leaders signed on 2 December 2014. Religious leaders of various faiths, gathered to work together “to defend the dignity and freedom of the human being against the extreme forms of the globalization of indifference, such us exploitation, forced labour, prostitution, human trafficking” and so forth.

Excerpt:

The Taliban have damaged over a thousand schools in northern Pakistan since crossing over from Afghanistan in 2001, preventing scores of children, especially young girls, from receiving an education. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 12 2014 (IPS)

For girls living in northern Pakistan’s sprawling tribal regions, the struggle for education began long before that fateful day when members of the Taliban shot a 15-year-old schoolgirl in the head, and will undoubtedly continue for many years to come.

Still, the news that Malala Yousafzai – a former resident of the Swat Valley in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province – had received the Nobel Peace Prize on Oct. 10, brought renewed vigor to those battling the Taliban’s hard-line attitude towards girls’ education.

Residents here told IPS that when she survived an attempt on her life on Oct. 9, 2012, Yousafzai became an icon, a representative of the state of terror that has become a part of everyday existence here.

“We appeal to Malala to spend funds to promote education in FATA." -- Yasmeen Bibi, a 13-year-old refugee who is not attending school.
By awarding her the world’s most prestigious peace prize, experts say, the Nobel Committee is sending a strong message to all who remain trapped in zones where the sanctity of education has been subordinated to the perils of conflict.

Muhammad Shafique, a professor at the University of Peshawar, the KP province’s capital, told IPS that Yousafzai’s prize has turned a “spotlight onto the importance of education.”

“It will be a motivational force for parents to send their daughters back to school,” he added.

Since militants began crossing the Afghan-Pakistan border in 2001, following the U.S. invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, residents of these mountainous areas have endured the full force of extremist campaigns to impose strict Islamic rule over the population.

At the height of the Taliban’s rule over the Swat Valley, between 2007 and 2009, approximately 224 schools were destroyed, stripping over 100,000 children of a decent education.

It was during this period that Yousafzai, just 12 years old at the time, began recording the hardships she faced as a young girl in search of an education, writing regular reports for the Urdu service of the BBC from her hometown of Swat.

Schoolgirls in Peshawar pray for Malala Yousafzai. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

Her struggle found echo all around northern Pakistan, where hundreds of thousands of young people like herself were living in constant fear of reprisals for daring to pursue their studies.

In the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), for instance, Taliban edicts banning secular schools as a “ploy” by the West to undermine Islam have kept 50 percent of school aged children out of the classroom.

Since the decade beginning in 2004, the Taliban have damaged some 750 schools, 422 of them dedicated exclusively to girls, according to a source within the FATA directorate for education.

FATA has one of the lowest enrollment rates in the country, with just 33 percent of school-aged children receiving an education. In total, about 518,000 children in FATA are sitting idle, as per government records.

The dropout rate touched 73 percent between 2007 and 2013, as families fled from one district to another to escape the Taliban. The latest wave of displacement has seen close to one million people from North Waziristan Agency evacuating their homes since Jun. 15 and taking refuge in Bannu, an ancient city in KP.

Schoolgirls at a demonstration in Peshawar in support of Malala Yousafzai. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS.

A rapid assessment report released by the United Nations in August found that 98.7 percent of displaced girls and 97.9 percent of the boys were not receiving any kind of education in the camps.

Already nursing a miserable primary school enrollment rate of 37 percent, Bannu is on the verge of a full-blown educational crisis, with 80 percent of its school buildings now occupied by refugees.

Thus the honour bestowed upon Yousafzai has touched many thousands of people, and breathed new life into the campaign for the right to education. Since October 2012, enrollment in the Swat Valley has increased by two percent, according to Swat Education Officer Maskeen Khan.

“Now, we are expecting a huge boost after the award,” the official told IPS.

Naila Ahmed, a 10^th-grader originally hailing from North Waziristan Agency who now lives in a refugee camp in Bannu, feels her generation has been “unlucky”, forced to grow up without an education.

The situation is so dire that she views her displacement as a “blessing in disguise”, since the move to Bannu has enabled her to enroll in a private school for the first time in many years.

She is one of the fortunate ones; few parents in this militancy-infested region can afford the cost of private schooling, she says.

Thirteen-year-old Yasmeen Bibi is one of those whose parents cannot shoulder the bill for an education. “We hope that the government will make arrangements for our education,” she told IPS from her makeshift home in a refugee camp in Bannu, adding, “We appeal to Malala to spend funds to promote education in FATA.”

Her words hearken back to the time immediately following Yousafzai’s decision to flee the country, when many from the Swat Valley and its surrounding provinces felt let down by the rising star, left behind to face the Taliban’s wrath stemming from the teenager’s newfound fame.

Some agreed with the Taliban’s claim that she had “abandoned Islam for secularism” by accepting an offer to live and study in the UK.

In the last few days, however, any ill feeling towards Yousafzai, now the world’s youngest Nobel laureate, appears to have dissipated, replaced by a kind of collective euphoria at the global acknowledgement of her courage.

All throughout Swat, girls’ schools distributed free sweets on Oct. 10 and celebrated in the streets.

Yousafzai’s former classmate, Mushatari Bibi, explained that the news has been like “a ray of hope” to other girls, who take a big risk each time they leave their homes to head to school.

Some even say that the Nobel Prize, and the hope it has instilled in the population, represents a challenge to the very foundations of the Taliban’s power, since more people now feel compelled to stand up to the militants that have plagued the lives of millions for well over a decade.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

By Fredrik S. Heffermehl
OSLO, Dec 9 2013 (Columnist Service)

A March 2012 decision by the Swedish authority supervising foundations is a ticking box of dynamite under the Nobel Peace Prize. Even presented in an official, open document, the decision has not reached the general public and become the news story it actually is.

The order implies that the decision to award the 2013 Nobel to the bureaucrats enforcing the ban on chemical weapons, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), is illegal.

It is true, as the citation of OPCW mentions, that disarmament was important to Alfred Nobel. But why is it the secretive committee’s best-kept secret that Nobel´s will included a recipe for a weapons-free world?

Nobel did not believe in civilising war, reducing a weapon here and an army there; he was quite specific when, in his 1895 will, he described a prize for “the champions of peace” seeking to abolish all weapons in all nations, as an alternative to militarism and military forces. With terms like the “brotherhood of [disarmed] nations,” he used language that anyone familiar with the history of the peace movement will recognise.

Fredrik S. Heffermehl

Even though its secretary is a historian, the Norwegian Nobel Committee chooses to ignore that the kind of recipients Nobel had in mind were the Austrian baroness Bertha von Suttner, author of the bestseller “Lay Down Your Arms”, and her political friends.

In the last years of his life Nobel joined Suttner´s Society of Friends of Peace and gave substantial financial support to this Austrian society and the (still existing) International Peace Bureau, and – very important to understanding his purpose in setting up a peace prize – promised Suttner to “do something great” for her movement.

My book, “The Nobel Peace Prize: What Nobel Really Wanted”, (available in English, Chinese, Finnish, Swedish and Spanish) contains solid documentation of Nobel´s actual intentions, and shows that the Norwegian Parliament has misused the task Nobel entrusted to it: to appoint a five-member committee of persons devoted to Nobel´s peace plan.

For years, Norwegian politicians have used the prize to pursue their own ideas and purposes. Last year´s prize that went to the European Union, the 2009 prize for U.S. President Barack Obama, the 2010 prize for Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, the 2011 prize for Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf – almost all of the prizes awarded in the last two decades have failed to respect Nobel´s will.

Instead of appointing a committee dedicated to the peace ideas described in the will Parliament is, with few exceptions, using the coveted seats as a bonus to reward retired parliamentarians. In Norway attitudes have shifted away from Nobel’s aims. Politicians strongly loyal to the U.S. and NATO are obviously unsuited to manage a prize for peace by disarmament, and the members ought to resign.

After six years I have to state that my conclusions are indisputable – and they have not in fact been disputed. But it is of little consequence. Norwegian politicians behave as if they were above the law and feel confident that the courts, as well as public authorities and the media, will let them get away with their mischief.

This is clearly illustrated by the fate of a complaint I lodged with the Swedish authority that supervises foundations. The Norwegian politicians did not like the idea of being scrutinised and told the Swedish authorities to back off, since “the Nobel Committee is independent and shall take orders from no one.”

The Swedish authority responded that this view was clearly incorrect, and in its order placed the Norwegian peace prize committee under Swedish control. It further expected the Swedish Nobel Foundation to supervise in order to ensure that its Norwegian subsidiary complied with the will. A sensational decision, in my view, that so far has not received any public attention.

My research makes it clear that the Norwegian awarders have never spent much time brooding over what Nobel must have intended. The description of the mandate in the will has been entirely forgotten. The secrets of the private diaries of Gunnar Jahn, a former committee chair (serving from 1942 to 1966), a unique and most revealing crack in the tight secrecy surrounding the committee´s work, confirm this.

Entries in the diaries, published for the first time in my book, show that all of Jahn´s attempts to remind the committee of Nobel and of the purpose of the prize fell flat, and that, despite a couple of threats to resign, Jahn put up with this for 24 years.

A 2001 article by the powerful committee secretary, Geir Lundestad, confirms that the committee feels full freedom to develop its own prize and even make its own definition of “peace” – obviously unaware of the legal obligation to check Nobel´s own description of who should be recipients of his prize!

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has many opportunities that permit unopposed dissemination of a falsified version of Nobel´s visionary prize. When challenged to debate the purpose in public, in the media, they do not respond or they refuse to offer honest arguments; it is either silence or nonsense.

One can only conclude that the Norwegian awarders (Parliament and the Nobel Committee) are adamantly unwilling to respect the law and Nobel´s intentions.

This experience affects my impression of Scandinavian democracy, of its media, public debate, and the integrity of our public authorities and the rule of law. It is a paradox of sorts that these are the very values that the Nobel Committee chair, Thorbjørn Jagland, has the primary responsibility for promoting in Europe as the Secretary General of the Council of Europe.

The Norwegian government, always happy with the misuse of Nobel´s prize, is now seeking a new term for Jagland in the Council of Europe. When approached in the campaign for reelection, member countries should ask Jagland two vital questions.

First, does he acknowledge that by law a will is a binding legal instrument?

Second, what does he think about Nobel and does he understand that he intended his prize to support a new system of international relations, one without national armies?

They are not likely to hear expressions of regret. Whether Jagland continues to refuse to respond, or gives untrue answers, the member countries should draw their own conclusions.

(END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

Many more girls are going to school after the attack on Malala Yousafzai a year ago. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPS

By Ashfaq Yusufzai
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 11 2013 (IPS)

Back in Swat Valley in Pakistan where she comes from, Malala Yousafzai who had been tipped to win the Nobel peace prize this year, has not only left behind more girls in school now than there were a year ago but also large numbers of people who are now distanced – and even hostile – to her.

Spokesman for the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Shahidullah Shahid told IPS from an undisclosed location that “Malala abandoned Islam for secularism.”

The spokesman said it was students of the Jamia Hafsa madrassa in Islamabad who had shown bravery who should be considered for an award. Women students here were involved in a confrontation with government forces in 2007.

The Nobel Peace Prize this year went to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

“The Taliban will not lose an opportunity of killing Malala Yousafzai, and those found selling her book will be targeted,” he said. Malala has written a book on her experiences titled “I Am Malala”, co-authored with British journalist Christina Lamb.“People know she will not return to Swat, and therefore they don’t like Malala.” -- Mushtaq Ali, a jobless computer graduate.

But in a silent response to Taliban threats, the number of girl students at the Khushal Public School that Malala went to has risen.

“In 2009, we had a total of 450 students, which has now reached 700,” Subkhan Shah who teaches at the school told IPS. “Many parents want to educate their daughters.”

Muhammad Atif, minister for elementary education in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told IPS that 660 million dollars would have been spent on education in 2013 in the province. More attention is being given to female education, he said.

“In a special enrolment campaign we have admitted 115,000 out-of-school children to schools since Sept. 1 this year,” Atif said. “More than 60,000 were girls. We have rebuilt 650 of the 750 Taliban-damaged schools.”

“The impact we have recorded after the shooting of Malala Yousafzai is that the urge for education among girls has increased,” Swat-based education officer Mushtari Begum told IPS. “The majority of girls consider her a role model.”

Enrolment has risen from 85,650 girls in primary schools in 2010 to 126,678 in 2013, according to official information.

Malala was shot in the head at point-blank range in a school van on Oct. 9 last year. She suffered serious head injuries and was flown to Britain where she underwent four operations.

Malala rose to prominence in 2010 when she was just 12 over a blog on the Urdu site of BBC where she campaigned for education for girls. Malala wrote under a pseudonym but “it was known that Malala was the writer of the blog that had gained worldwide fame,” Zahira Shahid, principal of the Government Girls High School in Mingora in the Swat Valley, told IPS. “Since then, she has become a motivational force for local girls.”

“During those hard times when all politicians and civil society organisations were tightlipped for fear of the Taliban, Malala emerged as a champion of girls’ rights that gave strength to the oppressed women population,” Muhammad Jaffar, from the Pakistan Tehreek Insaf party led by cricketer turned politician Imran Khan, told IPS.

But he said he is taken aback by the resistance to Malala’s emergence on the international scene. “There was no celebration on Oct. 9, the day when Malala was shot, and survived.”

“The local population feels betrayed by Malala,” Ghufran Ali, a teacher at the Degree College in Swat, told IPS. “She abandoned the people of Swat, where the Taliban influence will never go.”

The incident was blown out of proportion by world media because of the interest shown by Western countries, he said.

“Malala and her two friends Shazia Ramzan and Kainat Riaz who suffered injuries in the attack have flown to the U.K. for free education but what about thousands of others who feel at a razor’s edge coming in and out of schools. People would have been jubilant over Malala had she visited local people after her recovery.”

Abdul Hakim, a shopkeeper in the main market in Swat, said that despite the campaign over a Nobel prize for her, “there are no celebrations in Swat or anywhere else in Pakistan, which means the people are not happy with her.”

“People know she will not return to Swat, and therefore they don’t like Malala,” said Mushtaq Ali, a jobless computer graduate.

“The international media has dutifully been promoting Malala because she was wounded in the Taliban attack, but was oblivious to target killings of peace committee members who were killed by the same Taliban,” he said. “Every month 10 to 15 anti-Taliban persons are killed in Swat. Malala and family are enjoying freedom thousands of miles away.”

In December last year, people came out in protest when the government named Swat Degree College after Malala. The protesters said it would put the lives of students at risk. The decision was revoked after a request from Malala.

Some were disappointed that Malala did not win the Nobel. “We have cancelled our celebrations after we heard that Malala didn’t get the prize. However, we are hopeful that she would continue her struggle for promotion of female education in Swat,” Zahid Khan, president of the Swat Teachers Association, told IPS.

Malala’s teacher Fazal Khaliq said the students of Khushal Public School were unhappy over her rejection for the prize. “She is still very young and could get the Nobel next year. Her nomination for the Nobel prize has brought us immense joy,” he said.

Leaders of the European Union (EU) will gather in Oslo this Monday to receive an increasingly controversial Nobel Peace Prize. Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor and industrialist, established the five prizes by his will in 1895 and there is a growing international awareness that his prize “for the champions of peace” does not go to the recipients Nobel had in mind.

Tomas Magnusson

There is, of course, always an element of peacemaking in people and nations getting together, talking, and making agreements, but nowhere has the EU declared a political ambition to promote the global peace order of demilitarised nations that Nobel described with unmistakable clarity in his will. Quite to the contrary, the EU has a multitude of programmes for development of arms and armies, a defence agency, battle groups and arms production and trade.

In the last weeks of November four laureates ­ the International Peace Bureau (IPB, the 1910 laureate), Desmond Tutu, Mairead Maguire and Adolfo Perez Esquivel, protested against the EU prize as unlawful, and the IPB demanded an intervention from the Swedish authorities.

Norwegian politicians are entitled to have their opinion on the EU as a contributor to “peace” and they are free to throw great parties for political friends. But they are not free to use the entrusted money and the prestige of the Nobel prizes to promote their own agendas. A will is a legally binding instrument, yet, in the last decade, the prize has become totally disconnected from Nobel’s disarmament purpose, with the allocation of prizes to Finnish politician Martti Ahtisaari (2008), U.S. president Barack Obama (2009), for democracy in China (2010) and for the EU (2012). By insisting on using their own, entirely open concept of “peace” as their criterion, Norwegian politicians have taken over the prize and use it for any purpose they like.

In the will, Nobel formulated his purpose in unmistakable terms: he wished to free the world from the scourge of militarism and wars and ensure that resources were used for the benefit of people rather than feeding the voracious appetite of arms races.

Nobel gave his peace prize to the world, wishing to foster innovative changes that would “confer the greatest benefit on mankind”. At the time Norwegian politicians were in the vanguard of a global peace order and support for the peace movement, and he believed the Norwegian Parliament would be his best help in appointing a five-member committee devoted to the promotion of his visionary peace plan.

Today this parliament, conditioned by the Cold War and an increasingly militarist Western culture, holds the direct opposite view of the one Nobel wished to support. They appear unable even to envisage the global peace plan that Nobel wished them to promote. It is a breach of the testament and the law that can no longer be tolerated when the Norwegian Parliament does not appoint protagonists of the Nobel approach to peacemaking.

Just as bad as the betrayal of Nobel and the peace movement entitled to his support is the betrayal of normal democratic practice and the rule of law. Over five years have now passed since a former vice president of the IPB, Fredrik S. Heffermehl, a Norwegian lawyer and author, rediscovered the true purpose and encouraged the Nobel Committee to immediately rethink its task and responsibility as managers of the prize. He stated that Nobel established “a peace prize, not a prize for the environment, not for economics and not for humanitarian work…Nobel endeavoured a radical change in international politics”.

Today, Heffermehl says, one thing is clear: “Today’s Norwegian Nobel awarders have reacted with direct hostility to being informed on Nobel and his actual purpose. For five years they have not once showed the least interest in Alfred Nobel and his peace vision. (…) This is made even more outrageous by the fact that the present chair of the Nobel committee is also the secretary-general of the Council of Europe and his handling of the Nobel Prize is a total affront to all principles he should promote in that capacity.”

In March 2012 Heffermehl succeeded in obtaining a direct order from the Foundations Authority of Sweden requesting the awarders to respect the description of purpose in the Nobel testament, and further ordering the Nobel Foundation to oversee all awards, including the peace prize. Still, the Norwegian Parliament and Nobel Committee continue with unabated force to reward a prize for “peace” in general and ignore the precise purpose specified in the will.

But now the IPB, one of the worlds oldest and most comprehensive peace networks, in a request to Swedish authorities on Nov. 22, have taken the first steps to protect the legitimate rights of “the champions of peace”. The IPB, which sprang from the same ideological and political roots as the Peace Prize, won its Nobel in 1910, and 13 of its leaders have received the prize over the years.

The legitimate Nobel winner should be an opponent rather than a proponent of military programmes and policies. The world spends exorbitant amounts on a busted model of security and an illusion that it can be achieved in confrontation rather than cooperation. To use the peace prize to promote the visionary peace plan of Nobel would be the best thing that could happen to the poor and unhappy of the world, to the environment, human rights, democracy, women and children, victims of war ­ everywhere, every year.

Tomas Magnusson is co-president of the International Peace Bureau.