Here’s how to handle Syria
Bashar al-Assad continues his war on the Syrian opposition, despite the presence of United Nations observers. His efforts have generated extremist reactions, including major bombings. The Syrian opposition continues to fragment, even as protesters manage to mount peaceful demonstrations in many parts of the country. The conflict is increasingly sectarian in character and has overflowed to Lebanon’s Tripoli.
There is no alternative in sight to the existing Security Council resolutions. Syria is not on the NATO summit agenda this weekend in Chicago. The Americans continue to need the Russians “on side” for nuclear talks with Iran that resume next week in Baghdad. Unilateral American action on Syria is not in the cards. Europe is preoccupied with its own financial crisis and is unable to act without American help. Qatari and Saudi weapons entering Syria are likely to increase violence and worsen sectarian tensions.
So what is to be done? Here are some ideas for the Obama administration:
- Lend wholehearted support to the Annan plan, which the United States has been badmouthing ever since the Security Council passed Resolution 2043 on Apr. 21.
- Talk with Moscow about ensuring that Russian vital interests in Syria, port access and arms sales, are protected once Bashar al-Assad is gone. The United States no longer needs to block Moscow’s access to a Mediterranean port, as it did during the Cold War. Russian arms sales to Syria are a small price to pay to bring down a regime that links Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
- Deploy civilian observers – including Americans – to Syria. The Security Council has already authorized a civilian component to the U.N. Supervisory Mission in Syria (UNSMIS). It would be too much to expect Syria to accept U.S. military observers, and the U.S. does not send its soldiers and Marines into harm’s way unarmed, as the UNSMIS observers are. But we have had good results with unarmed civilian observers in the Kosovo Verification Mission before the NATO-Yugoslavia war, when the lead observer spoke truth to power about a civilian massacre.
- Stop talk about arming the opposition. It isn’t what we should be doing or encouraging because of the likelihood it will prolong sectarian conflict; we can’t control where the weapons end up; and there is no hope that an insurgency will defeat Assad anytime soon.
- Redouble encouragement for peaceful demonstrations, which are occurring every day in Syria, and try to ensure that the U.N. observers are present for them.
- Increase the flow of non-weapons aid to the opposition inside Syria, which claims to have received precious little so far, and provide intelligence on threatening movements of Syrian security forces.
- Present overhead video of heavy weapons in use against Syrian cities at the Security Council, along with other hard evidence of Annan plan violations. Anne-Marie Slaughter has proposed a U.N. website that would post video and photographs uploaded by Syrians.
- Tighten the application of sanctions, including implementing the draconian financial sanctions already adopted for Iran against Syria as well.
When the Security Council approved the Annan plan, the United States called for “swift and meaningful consequences … should the regime continue to flout its obligations.” The best way of getting those consequences approved in the Security Council is to support full implementation of the Annan plan. Then the United States can go to the Council in mid-July, when the observer mission has to be renewed, arguing that despite its sincere efforts, Bashar al-Assad has defied the international community and needs to be taught a lesson.
PHOTO: Anti-government protesters attend the funeral of Mahmoud Al Moustafa, whom protesters said was killed by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, in Deir Al Zour, May 15, 2012. REUTERS/Handout
Let’s kick Syria out of the United Nations
The United Nations estimates that since Syria’s uprising began over a year ago, more than 9,000 Syrians have been killed. A recent assessment from Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Elliot Abrams puts the total number of Syrian refugees at almost half a million. Worse, it appears that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces are continuing to torture, imprison and kill Syrian civilians. It also seems that the recent peace plan promulgated by U.N.-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan, which Assad’s government agreed to, is dead. According to Turkey’s prime minister, Assad “is not withdrawing troops, but he is duping the international community.”
The conventional wisdom holds that the international community is out of alternatives, short of another potentially dangerous military intervention or the risky prospect of arming Syria’s rebels. Syria’s government has already thumbed its nose at sanctions and condemnations from the Arab League, Gulf Cooperation Council, European Union and various U.N. organs and individual countries. The Security Council, thanks to the vetoes of Russia and China, is also constrained to issuing awkward joint statements rather than passing binding resolutions.
But there is another option that has received surprisingly little attention.
Specifically, the United States as well as like-minded delegations in the West and Middle East should consider calling for Syria’s suspension from the U.N.’s most democratic and representative organ, the General Assembly (UNGA), where all 193 U.N. member states normally get one vote. Such an act would entail zero material costs, avoid veto authority and be a critical step toward alleviating the humanitarian nightmare unfolding in Syria.
In particular, Syria’s suspension would act to further isolate Syria’s leadership, increase the probability of high-level Syrian defections both at the U.N. and elsewhere and likely bolster the confidence of the country’s beleaguered internal opposition forces. Most important, Syria’s suspension would unambiguously express the international community’s collective disgust with the actions of Syria’s ruling government while providing a new form of leverage to compel Syria’s government to change course.
There is U.N. precedent for such drastic action, and it happened more than 30 years ago. Citing apartheid, a majority of the nine-member U.N. Credentials Committee – which confirms the credentials of U.N. delegations – and a supermajority of the General Assembly voted to suspend South Africa’s participation in the UNGA in 1974. It also just so happens that a majority of the current Credentials Committee, along with a two-thirds majority of other U.N. member states, already voted to condemn “widespread and systematic” human rights abuses in Syria during a UNGA vote in February 2012. As a result, a unique window of opportunity for suspending Syria may have opened, given that neither the Credentials Committee nor the General Assembly provides any state with veto authority. In addition, when the UNGA voted to condemn Syria in February, Russia and China – regardless of their great-power status in the U.N. – were joined only by an ultra-minority of 10 other delegations in opposing the resolution.
Still, detractors could argue that there are lots of rights violators sitting pretty in the UNGA and that suspending Syria will open the floodgates for more suspension proposals, ultimately creating chaos at Turtle Bay. While it is true there are human rights violators that can speak and vote within the UNGA on a daily basis (i.e., North Korea), none have faced the torrent of warnings, sanctions, olive branches, second chances, third chances, and regional and global condemnation that Syria has. All of this would ensure that suspending Syria is perceived as a one-off emergency measure rather than a precedent to transform the UNGA into a Survivor episode.
Kicking Syria out of the U.N. is not enough. The murderous government led by Bashar al-Assad needs to be disbanded – by force. I support invasion, regime change, and prosecution of Bashar al-Assad for crimes against humanity.
We are letting Assad win
A year into the crisis in Syria, it’s time to admit that the world is prepared to allow Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to slaughter his people. Unless force is used to back diplomacy, the international community will let Assad kill tens of thousands more than the 7,500 already lost.
We’ve seen this playbook too many times before — in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Sudan. It is time to face three brutal truths about the crisis. First, no country sees it as sufficiently in its interests to use airstrikes and eventually send forces into Syria to stop the attacks by the Syrian regime — the only way to end the current slaughter. While well intentioned and perhaps saving some lives, all the surrounding activity — summits, special envoys, humanitarian corridors, safe zones, arming the opposition, and efforts to reach a ceasefire — serves as a smokescreen for the Syrian regime to finish the job of wiping out the rebel “terrorists.” These negotiations will not work unless backed by force.
Second, the international community must not be fooled by the regime’s trick of negotiating small sideshows to end the killing. Diplomats will spend days and weeks negotiating tiny windows of breaks in the killing to evacuate the wounded. More weeks will be lost arguing about the details of humanitarian safe zones and corridors. While those steps would help save some lives and are important, they will not stop the crisis — and in fact could well prolong it by diverting attention from the need for force.
For instance, during the genocide in Darfur, the Sudanese played a very sophisticated game of talking about negotiating peace — just enough to forestall serious U.N. Security Council action — while “solving” the Darfur problem militarily. Four hundred thousand people have been killed and 2 million more pushed from their homes. Similarly, in Bosnia in the 1990s, U.S., EU, and U.N. diplomats all wasted time negotiating safe zones and ceasefires, debating arming the opposition, and securing minor concessions from the Serbs while Slobodan Milosevic cleansed the region. Watch the game of cat and mouse about access by the Red Crescent to Homs and Baba Amr — it will only come after the killing.
Third, humanitarian zones do not work well in the midst of a civil war unless backed up by a strong international force. In 1995, the United Nations sought to use its mandate to “deter attacks” on six safe areas in Bosnia and Herzegovina. While the U.N. presence no doubt saved some lives through its delivery of humanitarian assistance and by deterring some Serb attacks, ultimately an estimated 20,000 people, primarily Muslims, were killed in and around the safe areas, with the worst atrocities in Srebrenica, where more than 7,000 men were executed. Safe zones also take time to arrange. In 1994 in Rwanda, it was only after the genocide that safe zones were set up.
The regime in Syria is playing the same games — delay, resist, negotiate small steps — and finish the killing. It is time to stop kidding ourselves and face up to the fact that only the use of force will stop Assad’s assault. We can make ourselves feel better by arming the opposition and negotiating humanitarian aid workers’ access and even safe zones. But those steps will not stop the killing in the short term. It is time to marry force to diplomacy.
Now for the tough question: Who should intervene and how? Syria is vastly more complex and difficult than Libya, not only because of the strength of its regime and army but also given its alliances with Iran and Lebanon and support for Hezbollah and Hamas. That is a reason for caution and good planning, but it is no excuse for standing by and watching the slaughter. Half measures will not work.
Another Failure of our all too feeble HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, alas !
from David Rohde:
China’s newest export: Internet censorship
Yet the days of Americans piously condemning China’s “Great Firewall” and hoping for a technological silver bullet that would pierce it are over. China’s system is a potent, vast and sophisticated network of computer, legal and human censorship. The Chinese model is spreading to other authoritarian regimes. And governments worldwide, including the United States, are aggressively trying to legislate the Internet.
“There is a growing trend toward Internet censorship in a range of countries,” said Rebecca MacKinnon, a prominent online democracy advocate and author of the forthcoming book “Consent of the Networked: The Worldwide Struggle for Internet Freedom.” “The same technology that helps secure your network from attack, that actually enables you to censor your network also.”
The problem is not software or hardware developed in a secret Chinese government laboratory. Recent news reports have uncovered American and European companies selling surveillance technologies to Libya, Syria, Bahrain, Thailand and other governments that block the web and brutally suppress dissent.
While the Egyptian government’s attempt to shut down the Internet during the Tahrir Square protests drew headlines, western governments are increasingly using the web for law enforcement surveillance. In a biannual transparency report released earlier this month, Google reported a 70 percent increase in requests for content removal or user information from the American government or police in the first half of 2011. Brazil filed the most requests, followed by Germany, the U.S. and South Korea, according to The Guardian.
Western companies are also under fire. Research in Motion, the Canadian firm that produces Blackberry smartphones, acceded to demands from The United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and India for access to its users’ email messages. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an Internet free speech group, has accused Cisco of selling surveillance equipment to the Chinese government that is used for human rights abuses.
A core problem is the pursuit of the almighty online dollar. An extraordinary story in The Guardian introduced readers to Jerry Lucas, the president of TeleStrategies, a Virginia company that organizes conferences around the world where firms sell surveillance and other technologies to governments. In an interview, Lucas said companies have no ethical obligation to determine if their products are being sold to regimes that will use them to suppress dissent.
“That's just not my job to determine who's a bad country and who's a good country,” he told the reporter. “We’re a for-profit company. Our business is bringing governments together who want to buy this technology."
Here’s something more to the point. The Librarians of any municipal library are the censors and filters of their holdings and there is seldom any complaint from anyone that they exert quality control. They filter out fakes, scams, and garbage. Sometimes they can go too far and start filtering out books they find objectionable of that some patron may find objectionable. And they are very like ODC description of Google in that they will tend to stock the books most in demand. They always have limited shelf space.
Reuters allows users to report abuse, as you know. A few of my early posts were pulled and I never knew why. They weren’t obscene or off topic and didn’t violate their rules as far as I could tell. But someone may not have liked what I had to say. That was a form of petty, vote-of-one censorship, as far as I know.
Another thing Librarians can do – and I know this from personal experience – is to cull valuable or rare books when they notice them. I have seen this happen twice. Once at a university library where an antique copy of a famous French architectural book vanished and the librarian (the same man who was there when I first saw the set (with Louis XV’s imprimatur) swore he had never seen it. It happened again in the small town I live in now where a copy of “Twilight in the Forbidden City” by RF Johnston (the movie had come out) disappeared about a year after I first noticed it. The librarian also didn’t remember seeing it.
The Google search that ODC mentions – not the only search engine but the most aggressive (I am more or less self taught on the computer I have now and the Google search engine found me before I even knew it existed) always seems to find hundreds of thousands of entries. But years ago when I first got my computer, I once tried to see what pages hundreds of entries later actually contained. I found that most of them were repetitive of the first 10 to 20 pages of entries. In a way – it’s a waste of time to bother to list them. I also suspect that paid sites – or rather higher cost sites will get more traffic than less expensive web hosting sites.
When I listed my own website for my small business, I was asked to pay more for more aggressive placement. I declined because I didn’t understand much about the services and didn’t trust that the fee actually bought more exposure. A Google search couldn’t find the title pages of my web site even when I put every key word I had used for it. None of the search engines may be as immune to “bribery” as they seem. The marketing of net access is a black box to most users. The consumer of Internet content receives zero assurances about almost anything on it.
I also resent the way tool bars will attempt to take over my home page and I am not always adept at stopping them. They can be clever and sneaky. The Internet is somewhat hazardous. Pop up ads, spam, etc. can be dealt with and there are free anti-virus programs etc. that seem to work fine. I do everything I can with free-ware and seldom use paid for services or I wouldn’t bother with the machine at all. It could be come a very expensive appliance and so many of the protective services could be scams themselves.
There is a world of difference between quality control and censorship but the discussion is not making that distinction.
Young Israelis, Palestinians converge on entrepreneurship
By Ted Grossman The opinions expressed are his own.
Today at the United Nations, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas will speak for their peoples on the world stage in front of the General Assembly. Several hundred miles farther south on Capitol Hill, House Republicans have introduced legislation requiring the UN to adopt a voluntary budget model ending funding for Palestinian refugees, allowing Congress to control and allot the distribution of funds to Palestine, and cutting contributions to peacekeeping operations until management changes are made. And six thousand miles – half a world – beyond that, 44 Palestinian and Israeli students are working as business partners in the Middle East to run two entrepreneurial ventures. This summer, I witnessed an example of their cooperative spirit when the group – 20 Palestinians, 17 Israeli Jews, and 7 Israeli Arabs – came together at Babson College in Wellesley, MA for an intensive program in entrepreneurship.
The revolutions sparked during the Arab Spring show that social and political change can take root with just a handful of people. Here at Babson this summer, I have been overwhelmed by the commitment of both Palestinian and Israeli students to do what previous generations have failed to do: bring about peace in their homelands.
Despite the violence and hateful rhetoric they have endured and the deep political and cultural divides that permeate their daily existence, these 44 undergraduates agreed to participate in a seven-week program focused on developing an entrepreneurial mindset and the business skills necessary to cooperatively launch two new businesses under challenging circumstances. Studying together, learning together and living together, they initially found it challenging to establish trust and overcome apprehensions. But in a matter of days, these students were so busy with market research, supply chain dilemmas and writing business plans that they had little choice but to move beyond their emotions.
They were working toward a common goal and, in the process, they found more commonality than they had imagined. There was no “kumbaya” moment, no Disney magic, that’s certain. But through this process, I witnessed the power of entrepreneurship to serve as a bridge between disparate groups and its ability to create economic opportunity and prosperity through an integrated economy.
Entrepreneurship is forward-looking to the core. In any start-up, all involved must rise above personal differences and face the hard work success requires; the Darwinian rigors of the market don’t permit dwelling on grievances. Now, as the Israeli and Palestinian students embark on their journey as business owners, their political leaders are engaged in discussions at the UN that could have seismic ramifications on their everyday lives. The students understand that, in and of itself, this program will not create a two-state solution, nor will it bring down the fences that separate them physically or politically. They do however recognize that when a political settlement is reached and a Palestinian state is created, they will be in a privileged position to conduct business across the border because they have already developed mutually trusting and respectful relationships.
Escalating violence in Israel and Gaza, Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen’s controversial proposal and Palestine’s UN bid remind us of the fragility of the political and military situation in the Middle East. It is against this backdrop that these students launch their businesses and confront the challenges and obstacles their environment presents.
Absolutely RIGHT! What the Palestinians should be doing both on the Gaza strip and in the West Bank is cultivating hotels and farms and other opportunities to attract money and tourists and GOOD WILL! Firing missiles indiscriminately does not lead to peace. Changing their curriculums in their schools to remind their kids that Israelis are not the enemy is priority number one. This is what leads to peace – not hatred. Lets help encourage young minds from both sides to delve into the business of living vs. the business of killing.
Hope for ending hunger in our lifetimes
By Josette Sheeran The opinions expressed are her own.
I will never forget holding my newborn baby in my arms watching a television report on the 1987 famine in Ethiopia – hearing the haunting cries of babies whose hunger could not be met by their anguished mothers. Tragically, today we are seeing the same images as the worst drought in 60 years again devastates the Horn of Africa, throwing as many as 12 million into desperate hunger.
But there are hopeful signs that today’s drought need not result in the tens of thousands of deaths that we saw in earlier decades. Other than the tragic situation in South Somalia, where those in control have blocked humanitarian assistance, the drought’s impact has been blunted by advance preparation and resiliency programs. WFP, with the support of many, has been scaling up for more than six months.
Through a community adaptation program called MERET, WFP has been supporting the Ethiopian government in sustainable land management and rain catchment which has vastly increased food production and mitigated the impact of the drought. In the dry Karamoja region of northern Uganda, local communities are showing more resilience than in the 2007-2009 droughts, thanks to a new system of communal food stocks that are replenished at harvest time.
We also know more today about how proper nutrition saves lives. Maternal and child undernutrition is the underlying cause of 3.5 million deaths in children under five each year, on average, one every ten seconds. The 2008 landmark Lancet series outlined that inadequate nutrition during the first 1000 days – from conception to two years old – leads to irreversible impairments in physical and cognitive development, permanently damaging the brains and bodies of a generation.
Nutrition must begin in the womb. That is why the world has correctly emphasized the first 1000 days as the way to break the intergenerational cycle of malnutrition. As Nicholas Kristof noted in a recent column, 1.4 million child deaths could be averted each year if babies were breast-fed properly. WFP encourages exclusive breast feeding for a minimum of six months and actively supports the work of WHO and UNICEF in this critical area. After complementary feeding starts, WFP provides young children and nursing mothers with supplemental nutritional foods.
Working with food technologists WFP is deploying products like WawaMum, which is a highly fortified chickpea paste that requires no water or cooking. In a supplementary feeding programme, using WFP’s new specialized products in Pakistan, 99 percent of moderately malnourished children recovered within 12 weeks.
Part of the reason for the extreme droughts has to do with poor land management. Overgrazing and deforestation allows all the moisture to evaporate instead of being held close to the ground. You have to have that moisture pocket near the ground to have a functioning water cycle. I’ve often heard people complain about how dry their property (or wet in some cases) when they cut down all the trees providing shade around their houses. They don’t even think about the balance that exists in nature and how easily it gets disrupted.
from Bernd Debusmann:
Who is the superpower, America or Israel?
On February 18, the United States vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution on Israeli settlements in occupied Palestinian territories. The vote raises a question: Who dominates in the alliance between America and Israel?
Judging from the extent to which one partner defies the will of the other, decade after decade, the world's only superpower is the weaker partner. When push comes to shove, American presidents tend to bow to Israeli wishes. Barack Obama is no exception, or he would not have instructed his ambassador at the United Nations to vote against a policy he himself stated clearly in the summer of 2009.
"The United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop," he said in a much-lauded speech in Cairo.
Compare this with the text of the resolution that drew 14 votes in favor and died with the U.S. veto: "Israeli settlements established in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, are illegal and constitute a major obstacle to the achievement of a just, lasting and comprehensive peace."
Linguists may quibble over the difference between "illegal" and "illegitimate" but the substance of the two statements is pretty much the same. So why the veto? It followed an energetic campaign by the Israeli government and its allies in the United States to keep the issue out of the United Nations, seen by Israel as a reflexively anti-Israeli body.
Washington's ambassador at the U.N., Susan Rice, had a different explanation. Though the U.S. opposed settlements, she said, adopting that resolution would have risked hardening the positions of both sides in future negotiations. In other words, let's return to the parallel universe of the "peace process."
In that universe, American presidents make optimistic predictions detached from the realities on the ground. George W. Bush, early in 2009: "The peace agreement should happen and can happen by the end of the year." Obama, last September, held out the prospect of an agreement that would, by next year," lead to a new member of the United Nations - an independent state of Palestine, living in peace with Israel."
I really loved the Lawyer analogy; it fits. But nothing will change. Hillary is still owned by the NYC crowd, and is beholden to AIPAC. Obama needs all the domestic friends he can get, including and especially the NYC crowd. The GOP can’t antagonize its religious conservatives.
It’s not that the Israelis play good Real Politik, it’s that we play it very poorly. They haven’t had a Talleyrand in a long time, and Liberman (both ours and theirs, but in this reference theirs) is simply a corrupt old pol. Really, the problems with the U.S./Israel thing expose the real dangers of democracy. This is like some historical reading of debate in Athens.
from The Great Debate UK:
A freakonomic view of climate change
Ahead of a U.N. summit in Copenhagen next month, scepticism is growing that an agreement will be reached on a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.
The protocol set targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to be responsible for the gradual rise in the Earth's average temperature. Many scientists say that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is key to preventing climate change.
But authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argue in their new book SuperFreakonomics that humanity can take an alternative route to try and save the planet.
"If the goal is to stop warming then geo-engineering solutions are worth considering because they are far cheaper, probably much more do-able and easily reversible," Dubner told Reuters before a talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.
Analogy: a smoker is found to have an early lung cancer.It is pointless to debated whether he should either (a) stop smoking or (b) have the cancer excised.He must do both. We must Both decarbonise our economy (which will itself deliver a much wanted boost to the world economy by creating jobs in energy conservation and renewables)and sequester the excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.It’s a bit like walking along and chewing gum at the same time. Some cannot do this, but most, with a little application, find that they can.
Obama in the footsteps of George W. Bush
– Bernd Debusmann is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own. —
Words of wisdom from an American leader: “The United States must be humble and must be proud and confident of our values but humble in how we treat nations that are figuring out how to chart their own course.
“If we are an arrogant nation, they’ll view us that way but if we are a humble nation, they’ll respect us.”
President Barack Obama, the newly-minted winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, speaking about U.S. engagement with the rest of the world, including anti-American leaders? No, the exhortation for superpower humbleness came from George W. Bush when he was running for president in 2000.
Whether this was campaign rhetoric or conviction will never be known but if it was the latter, it ended eight months into Bush’s first term.
The word “humble” disappeared from Washington’s political lexicon after the Sept. 11, 2001 mass murders in New York and Washington and during the rest of Bush’s eight-year presidency, the United States came to be seen, in large parts of the world, as the epitome of superpower arrogance.
“Humble” is back in fashion. Nine months into his first term, Obama told the United Nations General Assembly he was “humbled by the responsibility that the American people have placed upon me” and determined to meet the challenge of collective action. Three weeks later, he stood in the White House Rose Garden to say he was “deeply humbled” by the Nobel Committee’s decision to give him the Peace Prize.
Anything that has anything to do with G W Bush must be HUMBLED. But the more accurate description is DESTROYED.
from The Great Debate UK:
UN resolution on women, peace and security: anniversary worth celebrating?
- Donald Steinberg, Deputy President for Policy of International Crisis Group, is a board member of the Women’s Refugee Commission and served on the UNIFEM executive director’s advisory council. The opinions expressed are his own. -
Preparations are now starting for the 10th anniversary of the passage of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. This groundbreaking resolution was passed unanimously in October 2000 to address abuses against women during armed conflict, including sexual violence and displacement, and to bring women more fully into conflict prevention and peacemaking.
Resolution 1325 was properly hailed as a road map to promote, among other steps, women’s full engagement in peace negotiations, gender balance in post-conflict governments, properly trained peacekeepers and local security forces, protection for displaced women and accountability for sexual violence. It urged the Secretary-General to bring a gender perspective to all peacekeeping operations and other UN programs, and called for greater funding for measures to protect women during armed conflict and rebuild institutions that matter to women.
The key problem with the celebration plans is that there really is not that much to celebrate. The promise of Resolution 1325 is so far largely a dream deferred. Women continue to be raped and trafficked in conflict situations with impunity, both by rebel forces and by government militaries charged with protecting them. Women peace builders still face severe legal and cultural discrimination; coupled with sexual violence and threats against them, this imposes a victimization and danger that makes even the most courageous women think twice before stepping forward.
In recent peace negotiations in Indonesia, Nepal, Somalia, Cote d’Ivoire, the Philippines and Central African Republic, not a single woman served as a negotiator, mediator, signatory or witness. Men leading peace conferences still exclude women or shunt them off to ante-rooms while “real” negotiations take place, thus producing agreements that are disconnected from ground-truth and less likely to be successful and enjoy popular support.
The absence of women’s participation still silences their voices on issues of internal displacement, trafficking in women and girls, sexual violence, abuses by security forces, maternal health care and girls’ education. Such concerns are typically given short shrift in peace processes and reconstruction efforts, and provided inadequate funding. The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) estimates that less than 6 percent of funds committed in donors conferences after peace accords are targeted in any way towards women.
The UN has failed to lead by example. The UN’s gender architecture on armed conflict is a hodgepodge, with no lead agency and no clear division of responsibilities between UNIFEM, the Special Adviser for Gender Issues, the Division for the Advancement of Women, the Commission on the Status of Women, the Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women, the Peacebuilding Commission, the Department of Peacekeeping Operations, UNDP’s Bureau of Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction (BCPR) and others.
UN Resolutions will loose all credibility unless they are enforceable.
I’d like to see more coordination between the UN, IMF and the World Bank with the aim of closing down the loop-holes which allow “off-shore” money transactions which permit despots and criminals to move masses of money into “legitimate” capital centres, which not only destabilizes the countries of the capitals origin, but also the capitals destinations. This would move the ambulance from the bottom of the cliff and possibly result in less ambulances being necessary.
Why is unilateral American action “not in the cards?” Because it is an election year. It is shameful to see the pile of bodies ten thousand high continue growing because the leaders of the world are more concerned with their next election than they are about upholding the values which they so loudly extoll. I am American, and I am ashamed.