All posts by CPNN Coordinator

About CPNN Coordinator

Dr David Adams is the coordinator of the Culture of Peace News Network. He retired in 2001 from UNESCO where he was the Director of the Unit for the International Year for the Culture of Peace, proclaimed for the Year 2000 by the United Nations General Assembly.

Geneva has become an incubation hub for citizen initiatives

TOLERANCE AND SOLIDARITY .

An article from Swiss Info

Innovative individual initiatives are sprouting up in Geneva to tackle the new challenges the city – and the world – are facing. SWI swissinfo.ch looks at three of these and the people behind them.  


B8 of Hope Presentation 2017  from B8 of Hope  on Vimeo.

Rocio Restrepo fled Colombia and arrived in Switzerland in 1999 with two university degrees and years of professional experience in her pocket. She was told her  qualifications were not  valid  and was unable to integrate into the labour market in Geneva. 

Rather than blame society, she decided to raise awareness among government agencies and companies on immigrant women who have a vast professional expertise and how they can be integrated professionally.

“I decided to go out to meet women with similar experiences (80 women in the beginning) to learn from them and then created the association Découvrir  (meaning discovery) to fight the waste of professional expertise,” Restrepo said in an interview.

The first years of the association were difficult. Découvrir did not receive any recognition from the authorities and Restrepo had to prove its relevance. The number of its members did not exceed forty in the first year.

Efforts have paid off. Today the association provides support to more than 700 women per year in several Swiss cantons.  Restrepo  says that some companies are reconsidering the conditions they set for employment, such as having the right to permanent residency (C residence permit) or Swiss nationality, which are difficult to obtain for immigrants.

The world of tomorrow, according to Restrepo, “must give all the opportunity to invest their expertise and experiences in a fair way, free from any discrimination on the grounds of gender, language, or geographical affiliation.” 

Restrepo is just one people highlighted in the latest book by Swiss writer and blogger Zahi Haddad called  ”126 Hearts Beating for International Geneva”. 

In an interview,  Haddad praised the vitality and effectiveness of civil institutions  like  Découvrir  because of their flexibility and ability to intervene quickly and leave a direct impact  on different fields.  

These initiatives not only aim to change the situations on the ground, but also seek to change mindsets and give humanity a new vision that enables it to live in harmony in the world, he said. “The importance of these approaches is increasing, especially during this exceptional moment that we are going through due to the current health crisis as a result of the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic.”

“This world that we dream of will not be achieved by changing a law here or there, but, rather  through  a fundamental change in our  perception  of things,” he added.

The  initiatives mentioned in the book  are  aimed at promoting more equitable and humane societies.

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Question for this article

Is there a renewed movement of solidarity by the new generation?

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A ‘House  of hope’ for peace 

Married couple Mehra and David Rimer founded the B8 of Hope association after a trip to Israel and Palestine in 2015. During their trip to the conflict zone, this Jewish/Muslim couple met with activists engaged in a dialogue of peace.

“We quickly discovered the presence of dozens of groups in Israel and Palestine that are struggling to spread a culture of peace, and today we support 16 NGOs on both sides,” Mehra recalled.

Some of these organisations either represent families of victims who lost their children in the conflict,or Palestinian fighters and Israeli soldiers who have laid down their arms and adopted the slogan of “joint resistance to live in peace.” 

B8 of Hope aims to “mobilise support for peace advocates from the Israelis and Palestinians who have the courage to express their convictions”, Mehra said.

“These preachers of peace believe that what has happened has happened, and if we cannot change the past, then we must live in the present with a common optimistic outlook towards the future,” she added.

From a refugee to an investor in the environment

The third project highlighted is that of  Nhat  Vuong, who came to Geneva as a refugee with his family in 1980 while he was still a baby. His family fled the war between South and North Vietnam.  Vuong  grew up in Geneva. He graduated as engineer from  the  Faculty of Business and Economics of the University of Lausanne. 

Speaking to SWI swissinfo.ch,  Vuong recalled an important moment in his life that changed his view of reality in a radical way: “After obtaining the Swiss passport in 1995, I went with my family to visit our country of origin, and for the first time I found myself faced with the tragedies of poverty, deprivation and violation of children’s rights to education and decent living. This made me realise  that we, in Switzerland, live in a bubble, and we forget during our daily life the hardships faced by other peoples.”

“This hurt me and prompted me to think about doing something to help others.” 

By chance, he came across an advertisement related to a new technology invented by a Spanish engineer that purified humid air and transformed it into drinking water.

Vuong said: “I immediately thought about helping refugees, especially as this coincided with the escalation of the conflict in Syria, and the displacement of many  Syrians to Lebanon. I was sure this machine should not remain parked in  a  garage.”

In anticipation of future water shortages worldwide, Vuong i nitiated the establishment of “Water Inception” in the form of a non-governmental organisation, and began collecting donations through participatory financing mechanisms, which enabled him to raise about CHF30,000 ($34,000). He bought the first device and installed it in a Syrian refugee camp in Tripoli, northern Lebanon. Some 500 litres of drinking water will soon be produced every day from  fresh  air. The whole process took him two years. 

Vuong is also the founder of a startup  launched in 2019 to finance his charitable projects. With a Vietnamese partner he manufactures environmentally-friendly products in Vietnam and exports them to the rest of the world.

His first product was drinking straws made from potatoes and magnesium, which could be consumed or recycled after use. Vuong also launched reusable anti-bacterial sanitary masks approved in Switzerland and now on sale in post offices. 

He believes new European Union regulations from January next year, that will prohibit the sale of all materials made of plastic and are designed for single use, will increase demand for his products.

Europe, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

Argentina: Conflicts: Positive Balance of Community Mediations

… EDUCATION FOR PEACE …

An article from Jujuy al dia (translation by CPNN)

The Provincial Director of Mediation and RAC, Gilda Romero of the Ministry of Justice, took stock of the tasks carried out during 2020, stating that in the face of the health situation, due to COVID-19, community activities were developed, through digital tools, in order to achieve the peaceful resolution of conflicts and controversies that arose during the past year.

Romero highlighted that the pandemic complicated the coexistence between neighbors and relatives and sometimes led to conflicts or disputes; “Faced with this situation, the Directorate intervened by opening spaces for dialogue between those affected, in order to reach peaceful resolutions,” she said.

She mentioned that the most recurrent conflicts were caused by actions such as annoying noises, parties or celebrations, excessive volume of music, misunderstandings, incorrect waste management, abuse of the use of common spaces, such as the occupation of another’s parking spaces, being among the most common.

(Article continued in right column)

(click here for a version in Spanish).

Question for this article:

Mediation as a tool for nonviolence and culture of peace

(Article continued from left column)

In addition, she recalled that they also carried out the “Virtual Conversation on Community Mediation” for the mediation centers of Libertador Gral. San Martín, La Mendieta, Perico, Monterrico, Humahuaca, El Carmen and Dr. Manuel Belgrano, providing virtual monitoring and advice in various cases that arose during the pandemic.

“Mediation as a body promotes good relations and cooperation between public and private institutions. They worked together with the Directorate for Children and Adolescents of the Municipality of San Salvador de Jujuy, through training “Protocol of Access to Justice for children, girls and adolescent victims of crime.” Also with the Provincial Council for Women and Gender Equality through the training “Law on Gender Violence and Gender Diversity.” Both trainings were aimed at community mediators.

Another task was the “Workshop Community Operators” which included four virtual meetings for students who are about to complete their studies at the Instituto Superior Populorum Progressio “In.Te.La.” of Libertador Gral. San Martin.

“As a member of the Federal Network of Mediation Centers of the country, I participated in the videoconference “20 years working for the culture of peace.” This was sponsored by the Undersecretary of Access to Justice, National Directorate of Mediation and Participatory Methods of Conflict Resolution Also later, the “Meeting of Mediators 2020″ held in the province of Córdoba,” she said.

In addition, the official mentioned that she participated in the virtual campaign with the slogan “Mediation as a lifestyle” and “Mediation in times of Pandemic”. This promoted through social networks, the importance of the essential values ​​of relationships social: dialogue, tolerance, respect, empathy and solidarity, as primary tools for peaceful and harmonious coexistence between neighbors and families.

“Community Mediation is the fundamental tool that works in the construction of a culture of peace, generating spaces for dialogue, peaceful agreements, consensus, reflections and experiences. It is the conflict management process that, through dialogue and consensus, manages to settle controversies from the simplest to the most complex, avoiding that the conflict goes into the judicial system”, concluded the Provincial Director of Mediation, Gilda Romero.

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, Latin America

Israel to ban human rights groups from school visits

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

An article from the Middle East Monitor

Israel’s education minister is banning groups that call the country an “apartheid state” from making schools visits to present information to students, CBS News has reported. Yoav Galant tweeted yesterday that he had instructed the ministry’s director general to “prevent the entry of organisations calling Israel ‘an apartheid state’ or demeaning Israeli soldiers from lecturing at schools.”

The move follows publication of a report last week  by the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem. The organisation branded Israel an “apartheid” state that “promotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.”

Echoing the UN’s 2017  report which concluded that Israel was practising apartheid, B’Tselem dismissed the popular misconception that it is a democracy within the Green (1949 Armistice) Line. It argued that after more than half a century of occupation, the state should be treated as a single entity guided by the core racist organising principle of “advancing and perpetuating the supremacy of one group – Jews – over another – Palestinians.”

(Article continued in the column on the right)

Question related to this article:
 
Free flow of information, How is it important for a culture of peace?

Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

Israel/Palestine, is the situation like South Africa?

(Article continued from the column on the left)

B’Tselem said that it will not be deterred by the minister’s announcement. Director-General Hagai El-Ad spoke at a school in Haifa earlier today.

“For many years we’ve exposed our students to a broad variety of opinions from across Israel’s political spectrum,” said the Hebrew Reali School. “We respect the students’ right to express their opinion and are proud of their involvement in issues at the heart of Israeli society. We hold respectful dialogues and intend to continue this tradition.”

Established in 1989 during the first intifada, B’Tselem  documents human rights abuses in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. “B’Tselem is determined to keep with its mission of documenting reality, analysing it, and making our findings known to the Israeli public and worldwide,” it insisted.

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, Mideast

Joint statement by World Future Council members and Right Livelihood Laureates : Abolish Nuclear Weapons to Assure a Sustainable Future

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

A statement from the World Future Council

Joint statement by World Future Council members and Right Livelihood Laureates on the occasions of the Entry-into-Force of the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and the 75th anniversary of UN Resolution 1 (1)
 
We, Right Livelihood Laureates and Members of the World Future Council, express deep concern about the existential threat to humanity and the planet from the 14,000 nuclear weapons possessed by nine nuclear-armed States, many of them poised for use at a moment’s notice by decision of unstable leaders or through use by accident, miscalculation or crisis escalation.


The production, deployment, testing, use and threat to use nuclear weapons violate the Right to Life and other international law, threaten current and future generations, provoke international conflicts and consume resources required to address the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change, and to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.

The very first resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, UN Res 1 (1) which was adopted by consensus on January 24, 1946, established the UN goal of the elimination of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. It is time to fulfil that goal.

On January 22, 2021, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) will enter into force making it illegal for States Parties to develop, test, produce, manufacture, acquire, possess, deploy, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons, or to assist or encourage such acts. The treaty is an important measure by the 51 non-nuclear countries who have ratified, and others who may subsequently join, to advance the abolition of nuclear weapons through national nuclear prohibition measures and international promotion.

We encourage all ratifying states to adopt comprehensive implementing measures, to include prohibition of the threat, use, production, testing, transit and financing of nuclear weapons within their territorial jurisdiction. In particular, the prohibition of nuclear weapons transit and financing, including public investments in the nuclear weapons industry, would impact considerably on the nuclear arms race and on the policies and practices of the nuclear-armed states.

In addition, we encourage the ratifying states to establish ministerial positions, public advisory committees and disarmament education funds to facilitate public education and effective policy to further advance the objective of a nuclear-weapon-free world, as has already been done, for example, in New Zealand.

The nuclear armed and allied states have said that they will not join the Treaty. As such, they will not be bound by it. However, they cannot escape their individual and collective obligations to achieve nuclear disarmament. They agreed to this in UNGA Resolution 1 (1). Most of them also agreed to this in joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Article VI of which requires them to achieve nuclear disarmament. In addition, they are bound by customary international law prohibiting the threat or use of nuclear weapons as affirmed by the International Court of Justice in 1996 and the UN Human Rights Committee in 2018.

The Entry-into-Force of the TPNW on January 22, and the 75th anniversary of UNGA Resolution 1 (1) on January 24, 2021 provide opportune occasions for non-nuclear governments and civil society to remind the nuclear armed and allied states of the illegality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons and of their nuclear disarmament obligations, and call on them to implement these immediately.

The nuclear armed and allied states claim that they require nuclear deterrence for their security. However, they have a legal obligation under the UN Charter (Article 2) to achieve security without reliance on the threat or use of force in their international relations. In addition, the UN and many regional bodies and treaty organisations, provide mechanisms for achieving security and resolving conflicts through common security approaches including diplomacy, negotiation, mediation, arbitration and adjudication – instead of through militarism and war.

And, if we have learned anything from the climate crisis, unprecedented biodiversity loss and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that militarism and weapons, including nuclear weapons, are useless in addressing the key human security issues of today and tomorrow.

The 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC), with 183 States Parties, has abolished biological weapons, and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), with 193 States Parties, has abolished chemical weapons.  It is now time to abolish the third class of weapons of mass destruction, nuclear weapons.

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Question related to this article:
 
Can we abolish all nuclear weapons?

(Continued from left column)

Measures the nuclear-armed and allied states should take include;

1. Affirm that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, stand down their nuclear forces and affirm policies never to initiate a nuclear war;

2. Replace nuclear deterrence with security frameworks based on human security and common security, including acceptance of the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice for international disputes not resolved by other means;

3. Collectively join the TPNW, or alternatively start negotiations in a series of Summits or in a UN negotiating forum on the elimination of nuclear weapons under strict and effective international verification and enforcement;

4. Cut nuclear weapons budgets, end investments in the nuclear weapons industry, and redirect these investments and budgets to support the United Nations, COVID-19 management and recovery, drastic reductions in carbon emissions to protect the climate, achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals, and public education for disarmament and the peaceful resolution of conflict; and

5. Commit to achieving the complete, global elimination of nuclear weapons no later than 2045, the 100th anniversary of the United Nations.

In this way, humanity can abolish nuclear weapons and help assure a sustainable future.

Endorsers of the Joint RLA/WFC Statement on Nuclear Abolition for a Sustainable Future

Ales Bialiatski, Belarus, Right Livelihood Laureate 2020
Alexander Likhotal, Russia, Member, World Future Council
Alexandra Wandel, Germany, Chair Management Board, World Future Council
Alice Tepper Marlin, United States of America, Right Livelihood Laureate 1990
Alyn Ware, New Zealand, Right Livelihood Laureate 2009
Anda Filip, Romania, Member, World Future Council
Anders Wijkman, Sweden, Member, World Future Council
András Biró, Hungary, Right Livelihood Laureate 1995
Andrea Reimer, Canada, Member, World Future Council
Angelina Davydova, Russia, Member, World Future Council
Angie Zelter for Trident Ploughshares, United Kingdom, Right Livelihood Laureate 2001
Anwar Fazal, Malaysia, Right Livelihood Laureate 1982
Ashok Khosla, India, Member, World Future Council
Cherie Nursalim, Indonesia, Member, World Future Council
Chico Whitaker, Brazil, Right Livelihood Laureate 2006
Fernando Rendón, for  Festival Internacional de Poesia de Medellin, Colombia, Right Livelihood Laureate 2006
Dan Ellsberg, United States of America, Right Livelihood Laureate 2006
Dipal Barua, for Grameen Shakti, Bangladesh, Right Livelihood Laureate 2007, Member, World Future Council
Frances Moore Lappé, United States, Right Livelihood Laureate 1987, Member, World Future Council
Gino Strada, Italy, Right Livelihood Laureate 2015
Hafsat Abiola, Nigeria, Member, World Future Council
Hans Herren, Switzerland, Right Livelihood Laureate 2013, Member, World Future Council
Hanumappa R. Sudarshan,India, Right Livelihood Laureate 1994
Helen Mack, Guatemala. Right Livelihood Laureate 1992
Helmy Abouleish, Egypt, Right Livelihood Laureate 2003, Member, World Future Council
Herbie Girardet, UK, Honorary Member, World Future Council
Hunter Lovins, USA, Right Livelihood Laureate 1983
Ida Kuklina for Committee of Soldiers’ Mothers of Russia, Russia, Right Livelihood Laureate 1996
Jacqueline Moudeina, Chad, Right Livelihood Laureate 2011
Jakob von Uexküll, Founder of the Right Livelihood Award and the World Future Council
Jan L McAlpine, USA, Member, World Future Council
Jean Ann Bellini for Comissão Pastoral da Terra, Brazil, Right Livelihood Laureate 1991
Juan E. Garcés, Spain, Right Livelihood Laureate 1999
Julia Marton-Lefèvre, Hungary, Member, World Future Council
Kehkashan Basu, Canada, Member, World Future Council
Khadija Ismayilova, Azerbaijan, Right Livelihood Laureate 2017
Mageswari Sangaralingam for SAM Sarawak, Malyasia, Right Livelihood Laureate 1988
Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador, Member, World Future Council
Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger, Canada, UK, Switzerland, Member, World Future Council
Martín von Hildebrand for COAMA, Colombia, Right Livelihood Laureate 1999
Maude Barlow, Canada, Right Livelihood Laureate 2005, Member, World Future Council
Neshan Gunasekera, Sri Lanka, Member, World Future Council
Nnimmo Bassey, Nigeria, Right Livelihood Laureate 2010
Ole von Uexküll, Executive Director, Right Livelihood Foundation
Paul Walker, United States of America, Right Livelihood Laureate 2013
Raul Montenegro, Argentina, Right Livelihood Laureate 2004
P K Ravindran for Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishat (KSSP), India, Right Livelihood Laureate 1996
Sam Perlo-Freeman, for the Campaign Against the Arms Trade, Right Livelihood Laureate 2012
Shrikrishna Upadhyay, Nepal, Right Livelihood Laureate 2010
Sima Samar, Afghanistan, Right Livelihood Laureate 2012
Sulak Sivaraksa, Thailand, Right Livelihood Laureate 1995
Tony Colman, UK, Member, World Future Council
Tony Rinaudo, Australia, Right Livelihood Laureate 2018
Theo van Boven, the Netherlands, Right Livelihood Laureate 1985
Walden Bello, the Philippines, Right Livelihood Laureate 2003
Wes Jackson,  United States of America, Right Livelihood Laureate 2000
Yetnebersh Nigussie, Ethiopia, Right Livelihood Laureate 2017

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, global

Spain: Movimiento por la Paz produces educational material for secondary schools on the culture of peace

. EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

An article from El Faradio (reprinted according to attributes of Creative Commons) (translation by CPNN)

The association Movimiento por la Paz, a member of the Cantabrian Coordinator of NGOs, has produced teaching material aimed especially at secondary education teaching staff with the aim of promoting a culture of peace.

The materials are part of a broader project that they have been developing through various channels (courses, training, exhibitions, social networks…) of the “five paths to peace”.

The culture of peace is made up of all the values, behaviors, attitudes, practices, feelings and beliefs that make up peace. But peace must be understood in a positive sense, as the overcoming of any type of violence, and not only as the absence of war. This is stated in Law 27/2005, of November 30, on “Promotion of Education and the Culture of Peace”.

To promote the culture of peace, tutors and teachers have two invaluable resources: a space and a group of young people with whom they can develop the commitment to build a more peaceful world. To promote this commitment, we focus on five areas: cultural diversity, gender equality, fight against poverty, care for the environment and Human Rights. The five paths to peace.

The socio-affective approach requires a coherence among the ideas, attitudes and behaviors that we want to transmit and the methodology that is used. It can be said that it is a vehicle for achieving honesty, for reviewing one’s own personal values, both for the people who facilitate the process and for the rest of the participants.

On the other hand, it invites positioning and commitment to reality, the assumption of responsibilities, to participate in the transformation of what we do not like in the world where we live.

(Click here for the original Spanish version).

Question for this article:

Where is peace education taking place?

This is easier to do in company, because it generates interaction, participation, effective communication, trust, mutual knowledge, and empathy. It is a way of working that produces collective thought, knowledge and action.

Another argument that justifies the use of this methodology is the need for an education that connects us with the emotional level. Feelings are part of cognitive processes and condition our attitudes and behaviors. Conflicts must be resolved or transformed positively on an emotional level. Feelings allow us to know more about ourselves and about other people.

The socio-affective approach is nourished by the techniques of group dynamics, but it is a free space for experimentation that allows reflection.

The objective is that through feeling, thinking and acting, we favor the creation of a citizenry that feels part of the same community, that cares about collective issues and that develops a commitment to the local and the global.

The techniques include the creation of conscious groups that develop their own decision-making processes and, therefore, reflection.

Click here for the guide with the materials

MPDL

Movimiento por la Paz -MPDL- is a Development, Humanitarian Action and Social Action organization created in 1983. It is a member of the Cantabrian Coordinator of NGOs. Currently, it has a presence inside and outside our borders with more than 200 projects.

The delegation of the NGO in Cantabria, founded in 2007, works for Human Rights and the Culture of Peace with programs of International Protection, legal advice, labor advice, volunteering and education and awareness.

Training is one of its main lines of work. They also respond to queries on topics such as the management of unemployment benefits, information on labor rights during the State of Emergency, on training resources in Cantabria, knowledge about job search routes and the preparation of the curriculum vitae.

The organization also offers advice on immigration processes, deadlines, requirements to obtain documentation, work permit, nationality or any other legal doubt that may arise, at the contact: jm.carmona@mpdl.org. They also continue to report on the rights of Domestic Workers, requirements that must be met for hiring, salaries, conditions, calculation of settlement.

And the organization is an information point for women, receiving consultations, providing care or informing about resources for women who have suffered or suffer gender violence.

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, Europe

Environmental and Farmers Organizations in Italy Stop Government Attempt to Give Green Light to GMOs and NBTs

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from Navdanya International

Twenty six farmers organisations, environmental movements and consumer associations in Italy collectively launched a powerful campaign this week, which prevented the government from passing 4 bills inspired by the agribusiness lobby. The bills were  proposed by the Minister of Agriculture, and were set to permit GMOs and other New Breeding Techniques (NBT) to enter the country.

After an intense media storm and direct public pressure placed on every single parliamentarian of  the Agriculture Commission of the Chamber, the pro GMO/NBT decrees of the Ministry of Agriculture were not passed in their original form. Instead, the bills were strongly conditioned and therefore voided of all parts concerning GMOs and NBTs, as well as of the restrictions to free exchange of seeds. The attempt behind the decrees was aimed at forcing an illegitimate opening to “old” and “new” GMOs (new being NBTs) and to deny the possibility for farmers to carry out activities such as reusing seeds, and the exchange of part of the harvest as seeds or propagation material.

“Thanks to the openness of the rapporteurs in charge of the dialogue with organic farmers’ organizations, environmental and consumer associations, and the support of the members of the Chamber’s Agriculture Committee, this attempt has been foiled for the moment.” This is the comment of the associations that started the mobilization after the Senate – instead – passed the bills during the Christmas holidays, right in  the middle of the pandemic’s upswing. Not surprisingly, the mainstream media did not report the news. Right after the Chamber’s vote,  the Agriculture Minister, Teresa Bellanova resigned, starting a political crisis in Italy. Nevertheless, the same minister, in the days before the vote, had made a last attempt to save her bills, advocating that NBTs are not GMOs. A position that was  already discharged by the Court of Justice of the European Union on July 25, 2018.

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Question for this article:

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

(Article continued from left column)

As the associations underline in their press release, “The ugly chapter of the Senate Agriculture Committee’s recommendations has been overcome. The future Minister of Agriculture will be called to respect the constraints imposed by the opinions expressed in the Chamber. For all of them, in fact, it is asked that the sentence of the European Court of Justice is respected, which established that the rules existing today for GMOs are also applied to NBTs without exceptions or derogations, as well as that all references to GMOs in the decrees under examination are removed. Therefore, confirming the nature of Italy as a GMO-free country.”

Nevertheless the corporate assault is not over. As Navdanya International detailed in a recent article – The lobby behind Italy’s opening to GMOs – following the publication of the Court of Justice’s judgment, the European Union has been subject to incessant lobbying pressure from the United States and other trading partners for NBTs to not be absorbed by the existing GMO legislation. Commenting on the multiple defeats of agribusiness, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, defined the European Court’s ruling as “regressive and untimely”, announcing the willingness of his ministry to “redouble efforts” to convince European partners to change their approach. The meeting between Sonny Perdue and the Minister of Agriculture Teresa Bellanova took place at the end of January 2020 in Rome. NBTs were not missing among the topics of the meeting. This was the Italian Minister’s stance on the subject after the meeting: “Above all, I consider the importance of the collaboration in research and innovation, with particular regard to innovative techniques of plant genomics. We are also working at European level to make a clear distinction between these techniques and transgenic genetic modification.” A position, once again, defiant of the Court of Justice’s pronouncement.

As we celebrate the success of the Italian campaign, we must still underline the fact that the danger is not over, in Italy, in Europe, or in the rest of the world. The agribusiness lobby and their political allies will not stop their attempts to appropriate farmers seeds and people’s food, but this Italian movement has shown us a way to stop them. As Vandana Shiva, president of Navdanya International, commented learning the result of the vote in the Italian Chamber: “What happened is big, not just for Italy but for the world.”

Europe, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

Cooperation and Chocolate: The Story of One Colombian Community’s Quest for Peace

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Agostino Petroni in Yes Magazine

A community in Colombia is ditching traditional capitalist models in order to build a collective future.


Volunteers of the nonprofit organization Operazione Colomba accompanying some members of the Peace Community to Mulatos village.

When it’s time for harvest, Germán Graciano Posso, a 38-year-old Colombian farmer, leaves his village, La Florencita, with a group of co-workers and heads into the hills where the cacao trees grow surrounded by a lush rainforest. Cacao pods the size of giant lemons hang off the trees’ branches: They come in various colors—green, red, and purple—but tend to turn yellow when they ripen. Posso harvests the fruits by hand, cracks them open with a machete, and collects the grape-sized seeds, which are covered in a white, squishy casing. Then he places the seeds in a wooden box where the casing undergoes a process of fermentation. Finally, Posso spreads out the seeds on a flat surface to dry in the sun. After eight days of drying, they will be ready to become chocolate.

This might seem a common agronomic practice, no different from the one conducted by other cacao growers worldwide, yet it carries a greater significance in this northwestern corner of Colombia.

Posso belongs to the Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó, a conglomerate of villages scattered in Urabá of Antioquia, one of Colombia’s deadliest areas. For more than five decades, from 1964 to 2016, a bloody internal war between the Colombian army, right-wing paramilitary groups, and FARC (the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) killed more than 200,000 people. In this war dictated by drug-traffickers’ interests (both FARC and right-wing paramilitary groups financed their fight by growing coca and trafficking cocaine), farmers were among those who paid the highest toll. Over the past half-century, the United Nations estimates, more than 7 million Colombians—in a country of 49 million—were displaced by the war.

However, resisting the relocation trend, in 1997 the San José de Aparadó farmers declared themselves a peaceful community, neutral to the conflict, and chose to stay in their territory. Their decision carried violent consequences for the community: threats, sexual assault, kidnappings, torture, forced disappearances, assassinations, and massacres. Posso himself suffered the killing of 13 family members, and in 2017, he said, he survived a murder attempt.

Two decades after its declaration of neutrality, the community still carries on its peace crusade. Despite many difficulties, they are hanging on to their collective work thanks to the precious cacao cultivation.

“This is a life project,” Posso says. “We’re not doing this only for ourselves, but also for the new generation.”

The Risks of Existence

In the ’70s, cacao production expanded around San José de Apartadó, adding to the corn and beans that were cultivated for subsistence there, and quickly became the area’s principal cash crop. In 1985, a group of farmers, supported by the leftist party Unión Patriótica, founded Balsamar Cooperative, seeking better terms for the sale of their product. They built facilities and bought trucks, paying higher prices for the cacao from the area because they could cut out intermediaries and sell the cacao directly to Luker, a Colombian chocolate company. The farmers of San José, seeing the profit, started planting more cacao trees.

The land on which the cacao trees grew didn’t just interest farmers but also paramilitary groups, the FARC, drug-traffickers, landowners, and the army. The fertile soil was great for illicit coca cultivations, and proximity to Panama made it a natural smuggling corridor to North America. In the early ’90s, the various groups started taking hold of the area and threatened social groups such as the Balsamar Cooperative.

In 1996, all of the local leaders of the Balsamar Cooperative and other social groups were either assassinated or fled for their lives. Just being in the territory was a danger: If an armed force set up a base camp close by, the opponents would often accuse the farmer who happened to live there of supporting the other group and murder them. A large proportion of the 7,000 residents of San José de Apartadó fled, which quickly reduced the community to 500. 

On March 23, 1997, Brígida Gonzáles, 69, along with the others who decided to stay, founded the Comunidad de Paz de San José de Apartadó. This “Peace Community” declared itself neutral in the conflict, pledging not to get involved in any way—from acting as informants to cultivating illicit crops—and asked to be left in peace. Anybody who was willing to comply with those rules was allowed to be part of the community.

(Article continued in right column)

Question for this article:

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

What is happening in Colombia, Is peace possible?

(Article continued from left column)

“We had already suffered more than 300 deaths, forced disappearances, and displacements,” says Gonzáles, who today is one of the community leaders. Like the rest of her community, her personal losses are many: She lost 17 relatives to the war, including two sons and three siblings, some of whom were militarized by the FARC.

The new neutrality status did not last long. A week after the declaration, members of the community were forced out by the conflict. The cacao trees were abandoned, and the forest took them back.

But San José farmers had been subsisting on that agriculture and their cacao sales: Staying away from the fields meant economic ruin. After a few years of abandonment, the community decided to go back to their land slowly.

Tending to the fields alone was too dangerous because a disappearance could easily go unnoticed, so they organized daily trips to the Peace Community in groups of 50 or 100 to take care of the cacao trees and harvest their fruits. That was the beginning of the peaceful communal effort to regain their territory. What started as protection mechanisms soon became part of a broader philosophy of life.

Building Peace Together

Gwen Burnyeat, a political anthropologist at the University of Oxford, in England, who has studied the Peace Community, says that the concept of community is a reaffirmation of how they live, work, survive, and build peace together.

“You have a really interesting solidarity economics model in which you have individual economics interacting with a kind of collective economics,” says Burnyeat, who published a book in 2018 called Chocolate, Politics and Peace-building  and produced  Chocolate of Peace, a documentary about the role of cacao in the Peace Community. Members of the Peace Community have some individual land, but most of the 150 hectares of cacao trees grow in collectively owned plots. Members gather in small groups to tend the different plots, and every Thursday they do any work the community might need, from repairing a roof to planting more cacao trees. All of the produce from the community-owned crops goes into a collective pot, and then the community decides together how to distribute the funds.

“To them, this is actually a very profound act of transcending traditional capitalist society models and building something together,” Burnyeat says.

The Peace Community is known internationally thanks to the support of nonprofit organizations such as Peace Brigades International and Operazione Colomba. And because of the outside support, the community was able to enter the Fair Trade network and sell their cacao abroad for higher prices. According to Posso, the community sells about 50 tonnes of organic cacao a year to Lush, a British cosmetic company that makes soaps and other products with their cocoa.

But according to Burnyeat, the visibility brought by the nonprofits is an advantage that few other communities have, and she believes it provides a protection mechanism that is unsustainable in the long term. Plus it’s a double-edged sword: The community openly denounces the crimes against humanity on their official website, but this visibility also increases the risk of reprisals, like in 2005, when eight community members, three of them children, were slaughtered  by a group of paramilitary and army soldiers. Since then, the community has ended any interaction with the Colombian government.

Fruits of Hope

In 2016, FARC, the revolutionary paramilitary group that had carried out the bloody war against the state for decades, signed a long-awaited peace accord with the government of former President Juan Manuel Santos. The agreement deeply polarized the country but marked a historic moment for Colombia.

However, four years later, the peace is shaky, failing those it pledged to protect: According to a 2019 report of Colombia’s Institute of Studies for Peace and Development, 700 community leaders have been murdered since 2016.

The Peace Community, in addition to suffering this new wave of violence, is also under the threat of losing their communal land from a state project of agrarian reform, according to Germán Romero, a lawyer with dhColombia, a nonprofit organization in charge of representing the community in court to seek justice for the violence they have experienced.

“We’re trying to keep the integrity of the territory,” Romero says. He says the community has survived physical extermination but might not survive the state’s project of redistribution of land. Local politicians and entrepreneurs who are against the community accuse them of having stolen the lands they cultivate, a claim Romero dismisses.

Losing the land that gives them the fruits of hope might mean the community’s end. But by continuing to harvest cacao, the community is stating, season after season, their right to live in the place they call home.

“The world is tired of war,” says Gonzáles, the community’s founder. “Why don’t they leave us in peace?”

(Thank you to Alicia Cabezudo and Azril Bacal for sending this to CPNN)

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, Latin America, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

The Africa Young Women’s Manifesto

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY .

Excerpts from the Africa Young Women’s Manifesto. [Note: the document is very heavy and takes at least 5 minutes to open.]

The Africa Young Women’s Manifesto is a political document that sets out critical issues of concern for young women of Africa and makes demands for addressing them. The Manifesto is the result of five Africa Young Women Beijing+25 Regional Barazas that convened over 1500 participants and over 30 partners with the objectives of FEM: Foster-Enable-Mobilize. [See the CPNN article on October 27 and the virtual events noted for October 30 and for November 25.]

The Manifesto therefore provides a platform of a common set of demands for the achievement of gender equality and equity as well as Agenda 2063 and Agenda 2030. It allows young women to articulate their concerns and secure a clear and unreserved commitment by the Generation Equality Forum and Action Coalitions Leadership, which blueprint will inform policies, institutional processes and intersectional programmes and measures. These demands will ensure that girls and young women are able to participate actively, equally and effectively at all levels of social, educational, economic, political, cultural, civic life and leadership as well as scientific endeavors.

(Article continued in right column)

Question for this article

Can the women of Africa lead the continent to peace?

(Article continued from left column)

The process of developing and promoting the Manifesto also built upon the experiences of young women which ensures the manifesto is owned by a broad constituency. Young women are thereby empowered to use their voices to bring more youth into this movement. Participants of the five regional consultations came from across 45 countries, namely Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Côte D’Ivoire, Comoros, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Eswatini, Egypt, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Ghana, Gambia, Kenya, Liberia, Libya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Morocco, Mauritania, Madagascar, Mauritius, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, South Africa, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Tunisia, Togo, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.

The Manifesto includes detailed sections with demands for :

* Economic Justice

* Criminalization of Gender-based Violence

* End of Gender Discrimination

* Access to Justice and Protection

* Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights

* Mental Health and Well-Being

* Inclusive, Equitable and Quality Education

* Digital Justice

* Silencing the Guns

* Intergenerational Co-Leadership

Africa, WOMEN'S EQUALITY

Pan-African Youth Network for the Culture of Peace

. TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY .

Submitted to CPNN by Jerry Bibang (translation by CPNN)

The national coordination of the Pan-African Youth Network for the Culture of Peace (PAYNCoP Gabon) organized yesterday, Wednesday, January 13, the elective general assembly of the Permanent Secretary of PAYNCoP at the pan-African level. It was Jerry Bibang, currently National Coordinator, who was elected by his peers to coordinate the activities of the Pan-African organization, which specializes in peace and security issues relating to young people.

The election took place at the Gabonese Cultural Center, located in Sotéga, in the 2nd arrondissement of the municipality of Libreville. The meeting brought together several youth organization officials as well as a representative of the UNESCO who served as election observer.

(Click here for the original French version of this article)

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:
 
Youth initiatives for a culture of peace, How can we ensure they get the attention and funding they deserve?

(continued from left column)

Following an electoral process started last week by the call for candidatures, then the selection of files, the election recorded four (4) candidates, in particular that of the association “Face à demain”, of the Network of United Nations Youth Leaders Organization (Rojalnu), the Christian Union of Youth of the Evangelical Church of Gabon (UCJEEG) and the Citizen Movement for Good Governance in Gabon (MCB2G).

At the end of the process, Jerry Bibang, the MCB2G candidate, was chosen to coordinate the action of PAYNCOP at the pan-African level. “This election is seen as a sign of confidence, a strong message that our peers convey to us: that of continuing, if not, doing better than the work started at the national level,” he explained.

This message is also in line with our ambition, which is to breathe new life into our Pan-African organization, which really needs it. The site is vast, the challenges are many and varied but we are motivated and optimistic for this new challenge which consists essentially in coordinating the action of more than thirty national coordinators, including French-speaking, English-speaking, Spanish-speaking and even Portuguese-speaking, he added.

For Franck Mays Assoume, UNESCO representative and election observer, the conduct of the electoral process was satisfactory; it was democracy and consensus that triumphed in this election. We therefore invite other organizations to follow the example of PAYNCOP Gabon.

Africa, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY

India’s Supreme Court puts controversial agricultural laws on hold amid farmers’ protests

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article from rt.com

The top court in India has decided to suspend implementation of new farm laws and form a panel to hold talks, as farmers demand that the legislation be repealed.

The court ordered the temporary stay on the controversial laws, which MPs passed in September, and is forming a committee to hear the farmers’ grievances and resolve the impasse, Chief Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde said at a hearing on Tuesday. “We have the power to make a committee and the committee can give us the report,” he said. “We will protect farmers.”


Police officers detain an activist of the youth wing of India’s main opposition Congress party during a protest against new farm laws in New Delhi, India, January 12, 2021. © Reuters / Adnan Abidi

Question for this article:

What is the relation between movements for food sovereignty and the global movement for a culture of peace?

Farmers have been clashing with police and braving increasingly cold weather to protest. They are demanding the laws be repealed, because they say the new legislation will erode a longstanding mechanism that maintains a minimum support price for crops. The government insists the laws will help modernize India’s antiquated farming system. [See CPNN December 12.]

The court’s ruling came after it heard several petitions challenging the laws, and those regarding citizens’ rights to free movement amid the protest. “These are matters of life and death. We are concerned with laws. We are concerned with lives and property of people affected by the agitation,” Bobde said. “We are trying to solve the problem in the best way. One of the powers we have is to suspend the legislation.”

An advocate for the protesters, ML Sharma, complained to the court that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had not held any discussions with the farmers or their representatives, but Bobde explained: “We cannot ask the prime minister to go. He is not a party in the case.”

Farm unions reiterated their demand for the laws to be repealed and warned the protests could be intensified. They are to hold an urgent meeting to discuss the court’s decision.

South Asia, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT