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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. View all posts by CPNN Coordinator →

Feeding the people in times of Pandemic: The Food Sovereignty Approach in Nicaragua

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

An article by Rita Jill Clark-Gollub, Erika Takeo and Avery Raimondo for the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (See original for 48 footnotes)

An array of UN agencies is predicting a global hunger pandemic triggered by COVID-19 lockdowns, with the head of the World Food Program stating that there is “a real danger that more people could potentially die from the economic impact of COVID-19 than from the virus itself.”[1] At least 10 million more Latin Americans are expected to join the 3.4 million who were already experiencing chronic food insecurity.[2] These devastating effects will be long-term, as each percentage point drop in global GDP is expected to cause 0.7 million more children to be stunted from undernutrition.[3] There are clear signs that the food shortages have already arrived, as flags indicating hunger are spotted outside homes from Colombia to the Northern Triangle of Central America,[4] while violently repressed hunger protests have occurred in places such as Honduras[5] and Chile.[6] As a street vendor in El Salvador put it, “If the virus doesn’t kill us, hunger will.”[7]

But in the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, there are no hunger flags flying. The market stalls are stocked, customers are buying, and prices are stable. Nicaraguan small farmers produce almost all the food the nation consumes, and have some left over for export. We will examine how this is possible.

Lucila Reyes of the Marlon Alvarado community, in Santa Teresa, Carazo where women play an active role in the construction of food sovereignty through peasant organizations and government programs. Shown with tomatoes grown in her agroecological garden. Photo-credit: Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers Association or ATC)]

At the June 9, 2020 launching of his Policy Brief: The Impact of COVID-19 on Food Security and Nutrition,[8] UN Secretary-General António Guterres not only called for urgent action to address this hunger crisis, but also to take the opportunity to shift towards more sustainable food systems. This transition is something that the world’s peasants have been calling for since they founded La Vía Campesina (LVC) in 1993. It is now urgent to listen to what over 200 million peasants, women farmers, indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, fisherfolk, and pastoralists have been saying about our food systems:

“The pandemic has highlighted yet another ill of countries becoming too dependent on large international food industries [and their international supply chains]. For decades, governments did little to protect small farms and food producers which were pushed out of business by these growing dysfunctional corporate giants. … They stood idle as their countries grew increasingly dependent on a few major suppliers of food who forced local producers to sell their produce at unfairly low prices so corporate executives can keep growing their profit margins.”[9]

Agribusiness is also exacerbating the world’s most pressing problems: its Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) crowd immune-stressed animals, making them susceptible to viruses that can cross over to humans;[10] its fossil fuel- and chemical-intensive practices account for at least a third of the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate change;[11] and its genetically modified seeds are known to diminish biodiversity. Moreover, in Latin American commercial food systems, it is fueling price increases during the pandemic.[12]

La Vía Campesina’s answer is food sovereignty, which is defined as “the right of people to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems.”[13] It prioritizes: 1. local agricultural production in order to feed the people; and 2. peasants’ and landless people’s access to land, water, seeds, and credit. This approach actually works in combating hunger, as peasants and smallholders produce 70-75 percent of the world’s food on less than one quarter of the world’s farmland.[14] When peasant movements partner with progressive governments, the results can be astounding, as in the case of Nicaragua.

The peasant movement in Nicaragua

The Asociación de Trabajadores del Campo (Rural Workers Association or ATC) was founded during the war to overthrow the U.S.-backed Somoza dictatorship, one year before the 1979 victory of the Sandinista People’s Revolution. It brought together peasants, both small farmers wanting to procure their own land as well as farm workers organizing for union rights. The ATC has continued to represent these groups of workers throughout its 42-year history and was one of the national organizations that founded La Vía Campesina in 1993.[15]

In the 1980s, the Nicaraguan revolutionary government launched a massive land reform program, which distributed about half the country’s arable land (5 million acres) to 120,000 peasant families. Several other peasant groups formed during that first decade of the revolution as the cooperative farming movement prospered, even coming to include the families of former contra fighters, who had been adversaries of the Sandinista government. Later, during the neoliberal administrations of 1990-2006, these groups worked to defend the gains of the revolution, sometimes including worker occupations of state farms to prevent them from being privatized. By 2006, and inspired by the 1987 Constitution that guarantees protection against hunger,[16] some 73 Nicaraguan organizations belonged to the Interest Group for Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security (GISSAN) that was advocating for a Food Sovereignty Law. Several of them helped the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) get elected back into office at the end of that year.[17]

Food Sovereignty since 2007

In the current stage of Sandinista governance that started in 2007, the strategy to increase food sovereignty by providing land has continued. Almost 140,000 land titles (some from land distributed during the 1980s land reform) were issued to small producers from 2007 to 2019. Women have particularly benefited from receiving proper titles to their land (55 percent) and 304 indigenous and Afro-descendant communities on the Caribbean coast have received collective titles. The titled area amounts to 37,842 Km2, or 31.16 percent of the national territory.[18]

Social programs that help small farmers feed themselves and their communities have imbued life in the countryside with dignity while reducing hunger. These initiatives are inspired by Augusto C. Sandino’s vision of an economy based on land-owning peasants and indigenous peoples farming in organized cooperatives—a core component of the FSLN’s Historic Program. Law 693 on Food and Nutritional Sovereignty and Security, enacted in 2009, was one of the first in Latin America to recognize the concept of food sovereignty and actually build it with government support.[19] The commitment of the FSLN government to food sovereignty has led to dozens of programs to improve the livelihoods and autonomy of small farmers while strengthening local food systems.

The signature initiative is the Hambre Cero (Zero Hunger) program which began in 2007 and provides pigs, cows, chickens, plants, seeds, and building materials to women in rural areas to diversify their production, improve the family diet, and strengthen women-led household economies.[20] By 2016, the program had benefited 150,000 families or 1 million people, increasing both their food security and the nation’s food sovereignty.[21]

Interviews completed as part of a solidarity testimonies project[22] with ATC members in the Marlon Alvarado community, many of whom are also beneficiaries of government programs, illustrate the impact of Hambre Cero. For example, one woman said:

“I have always been in social movements, since I was young. We are a group of women working here. We are united and in solidarity, all of us. …The ATC has taught us about women’s entrepreneurship… The government is encouraging us to always cultivate our land, so that we have our food. They give us citrus, they give us bananas, papaya, lemons. We just have to go harvest. We have jocote, mango. They always continue the [Hambre Cero] program so that we grow something. In our plot, we are always growing something.”

Another woman in the same community said:

“I have two male pigs, boars, for breeding: if someone else has a sow, they bring it to the boar and I get a piglet in return. For every sow they bring to the boar, I get a little pig. Or if someone says to me, ‘I have all the piglets sold; I’ll give you the money. What do you say?’ ‘Okay,’ I say. We agree.”

Additionally, the Ministry of the Family, Community, and Cooperative Economy (MEFCCA) and municipal governments organize farmers markets to improve peasant incomes while making nutritious, locally-grown food accessible to consumers, that is produced without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. The Nicaraguan Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA) works to improve and maintain the country’s genetic material by organizing community seed banks,[23] and the National Technological Institute (INATEC) provides free technical degrees in agriculture, livestock care, value-added processing, and beekeeping, to name a few.[24] A new program called NicaVida will reach 30,000 rural families with tools, fencing, water tanks, chickens, and other materials to improve family diets and household economies in the Dry Corridor[25] areas which are particularly impacted by climate change.[26]

The breadth and territorial reach of these programs keep Nicaragua’s peasants and small farmers free from dependence on global markets; their diversified production is organized to feed their families and local communities, with increasing access to seeds, water, and credit, thereby creating the conditions to achieve food sovereignty.

(Article continued on right side of page)

Question for this article:

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

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(article continued from left side of page)

A poverty and hunger fighting program targeting urban residents is Zero Usury, which is part of the national food ecosystem since it serves many who work in open-air markets. This program, administered by the MEFFCA, gives low interest loans and grants to small business owners (primarily women) and offers free entrepreneurship training, funded in part by Venezuela and other ALBA countries. Over 800,000 women have benefited from the program since 2007, which has been crucial to the success of the popular economy (self-employed workers, small farmers, family businesses, and cooperatives) which accounts for over 70 percent of employment.

Long-time activist and current presidential advisor Orlando Núñez explains the philosophy behind these programs and why they work:

“The heart of the Hambre Cero program is giving capital to peasant families. A cow is capital because she reproduces; sows, seeds, and hens reproduce. The first message is not to treat people like poor people; they are only poor because they have been impoverished. … Offering poor people a glass of milk or a slice of bread is an act of charity, not revolution. … The revolutionary thing about Hambre Cero in Nicaragua is that it treats people like economic actors. …That is the most revolutionary message of the Sandinista revolution.”[27]

The initiatives for this second phase of the Sandinista Revolution are all complemented by the grassroots work of social movements. The ATC and LVC have established a campus of the Latin American Institute of Agroecology (IALA) in Nicaragua for youth from Nicaragua and throughout the Mesoamerican and Caribbean region. The school not only imparts technical training on agro ecological production of crops and animals, but also political and ideological education so that students come to understand today’s clash between two models of agriculture: one (the agribusiness model) in which food is a business for the benefit of corporations, and another (the food sovereignty model) in which food is a human right for all. The program encourages peasants to be each other’s teachers and have agency over their own lives, reclaiming their peasant identity and culture. It is an education that focuses on staying in the countryside and producing food that stays within the local market.

Throughout the country the ATC and other peasant organizations have been organizing local workshops to train agroecological promoters, support women’s cooperatives in marketing their farm products, formalize peasants’ land titles, and prepare on-farm biofertilizers and composts. All of this supports the construction of food sovereignty.

Hunger outcomes in Nicaragua and Central America

All indications are that these programs have resulted in a better fed population in Nicaragua. In its 2019-2023 Strategic Plan for Nicaragua, the United Nations World Food Program said that “In the last decade… Nicaragua is one of the countries that has reduced hunger the most in the region,”[28] while the government reports that chronic child malnutrition dropped from 21.7 percent in 2006 to 11.1 percent in 2019 for children under 5 years of age.[29] Nicaragua was also one of the first countries to achieve Millennium Development Goal Number 1 of cutting undernutrition in half from 2.3 million in 1990-1992 to 1 million in 2014-2016, placing it among the countries of the region that had reduced hunger the most in the previous 25 years. Vitamin A deficiency among children under 5 was also eliminated.[30]

Nicaragua’s advances are reflected in the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Hunger Map.[31] Unfortunately, that map shows that neighboring Honduras and El Salvador did not achieve the Millennium Development Goal on hunger reduction, and that Guatemala did not even make progress. This stagnancy may be related to the fact that US exports to the Northern Triangle countries increased substantially since the signing of the Dominican Republic-Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR). These three countries imported about US$5.9 billion of agriculture products from the world in 2016, including beans and dairy products from Nicaragua, and corn, soybean meal, wheat, poultry, rice, and prepared foods from the US. Imports of many of these US foods increased by 100 percent or more from 2006-2016, coming to comprise about 40 percent of all food imports for these countries.[32] Unfortunately, food prices in these countries are on the rise precisely when people have less income with which to purchase food due to COVID-19 lockdowns at home and in the US, from which Central American countries receive remittances. Parts of Guatemala are already receiving half the remittances they received at this time last year.[33] Even Nicaragua’s wealthier neighbor to the south, Costa Rica, has become dependent on imported beans, rice, beef, and corn after opening the market through free trade agreements. At a recent LVC regional meeting, a Costa Rican peasant leader discussed how vulnerable the country has become, saying “COVID is stripping us bare.” Not only are grain prices rising while vegetable crops rot because they cannot reach consumers, unemployment is expected to double from 12.5 percent to 25 percent,[34] and 57 percent of Costa Ricans report having trouble making ends meet.[35] This brings major worries of increased hunger.

Food sovereignty and the pandemic in Nicaragua

Ninety percent of the food consumed in Nicaragua is produced within the national borders, 80 percent of it by peasants.[36] This includes all of the beans, corn, fruits, vegetables, honey, and dairy products, while there is sufficient surplus of beans and dairy to export. Nicaragua’s food self-sufficiency is growing precisely while other developing countries are increasingly becoming agro-exporters of a few crops (e.g. pineapples or bananas) while ever more dependent on imports to feed their populations. Rice is the only component of the basic diet that is not completely homegrown, but domestic rice production has increased from meeting 45 percent of the country’s demand in 2007 to 75 percent of demand today. The government is working with producers to bring it up to 100 percent within 5 years. Nicaragua is indeed very close to achieving food sovereignty, the true anti-hunger model, which bodes well for times of crisis such as now with the economic impacts of the pandemic and the interruption of food distribution supply chains in other countries.

In the context of the pandemic, both the government and social movement organizations are determined to take food sovereignty to the next level. For example, the government just launched a National Plan for Production focused on increasing production of basic grains to cover all internal food needs, and also guarantee the production of crops for export.[37] Food stocks are normal, prices are stable, production has continued normally since there has not been a work lockdown and most food is produced in small family units, and the rains have started for what looks to be a good planting season. Meanwhile, the Nicaraguan member organizations of LVC are launching the Agroecological Corridor, a process of territorializing agroecology based on peasant-to-peasant exchanges as a response to the threats being posed by climate change.[38] Because training of youth also must continue, coursework at LVC’s flagship Latin American Institute of Agroecology is taking place online[39] while the institute’s campus is implementing a full food production plan that includes grains, root vegetables, and animals. LVC has also launched the emergency campaign “Return to the Countryside”[40] to be adopted not just in Nicaragua, but internationally.

Other challenges to Nicaragua during the pandemic

COHA has previously reported on the Nicaraguan government’s robust response to COVID-19 within the health sphere, amidst a vigorous disinformation campaign waged against the population and government in what clearly appears to be a regime change operation funded by the US.[41] That regime change effort is no doubt partially inspired by Nicaragua’s food sovereignty policy, which threatens the dominance of US corporate agribusiness around the globe. For example, USAID has flooded food systems with Monsanto (now Bayer) GMO seeds in countries ranging from India[42] to Iraq[43] to several countries of Africa[44] and Latin America.[45] This approach could be undermined if more developing countries decide to produce their own food through agroecological practices.

USAID was one of the agencies funding opposition groups involved in a violent attempted coup in Nicaragua in 2018, as is well-documented in Live from Nicaragua: Uprising or Coup?[46] It is not surprising, then, that the representative of Cargill in Nicaragua and head of the U.S.-Nicaragua Chamber of Commerce was one of the leaders of the opposition during the attempted coup.[47] While Nicaragua does not have the oil and minerals that draw international attention to Venezuela and Bolivia, agribusiness is a hugely profitable industry and the Nicaraguan peasants are setting a powerful example by rejecting it and feeding their people to boot.

Fighting a disinformation campaign while the country faces the same pandemic that has overwhelmed much wealthier countries will certainly be challenging for Nicaragua, particularly since unilateral coercive measures illegally imposed by the US block access to aid funds. But at least her people have the comfort of knowing that there will be no death caused by hunger. In fact the food system recently withstood a formidable test during the 2018 coup attempt, when violent roadblocks held all the main roads and highways captive. Thanks to local food production and distribution systems, and clever determination to circumvent the roadblocks, people using the popular economy were still able to get food and at relatively stable prices, even when the Walmart-owned supermarket chains had empty shelves.

In an interview in late April, the leader of a peasant women’s organization was asked about Nicaragua’s handling of the coronavirus. Her concern was not as much about catching the virus as that,

“We will have food. It’s true that it is going to be hard; we will probably have a recession. But the important thing is that we have all the basic foodstuffs. We Nicaraguans are not quite 100 percent food self-sufficient. But we [in the Fundación Entre Mujeres] will do everything within our power to be as self-sufficient as we can so that the government does not need to give us aid and can give it to people who have greater needs than we have. We are taking a stance of dignity, being part of the solution.”[48]

That attitude, coupled with a commitment to agroecology and food sovereignty, is what has Monsanto/Bayer, Cargill, and their guardians at USAID worried.

June 29, 2020Latin America, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENTLatin AmericaCPNN Coordinator

Palestine Must Live: An Online Petition

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY .

A petition on AVAAZ: The World in Action

In 7 days, Israel’s Prime Minister is set to expand Israel into much of Palestine.

Palestine is recognised by the United Nations. But Israel’s government is simply taking it over, in violation of all international law.

Virtually everyone opposes this, but the question is whether anyone will do anything about it. Europe and others have the power to make Israel think twice, but they need to hear a massive demand for action from citizens first. Let’s give it to them!

(article continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

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

How can a culture of peace be established in the Middle East?

(article continued from left column)

CPNN readers are encouraged to add their names to the following petition.

To Heads of State, Foreign Ministers, and Trade Ministers:

The treatment of the Palestinian people has become a stain on the conscience of the world. It is time for the world to stand up and act, to bring sanctions on key Israeli industries until Palestinians are granted full and equal civil rights. We appeal to you for moral leadership and action to save lives.

To sign the petition, go here.

(Thank you you to Phyllis Kotite, the CPNN reporter for this article)

June 27, 2020Mideast, TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITYMideastCPNN Coordinator

USA: The Failure of Police Use of Force Policies to Meet Fundamental International Human Rights Law and Standards

. HUMAN RIGHTS . .

Introduction and Conclusion from a report by the University of Chicago Law School – International Human Rights Clinic

Introduction

This Report is being published in the midst of a long series of horrifying incidents of police abuse of power in the United States. The deaths of George Floyd, Lacquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Breonna Taylor and many others, have echoed throughout the communities of this nation and prompted protests across the country. The video and testimonies from these incidents provide grim illustrations of the power law enforcement officers have over the people they are sworn to serve and protect, and the deadly consequences when they abuse that power.

Society vests law enforcement with the responsibility to protect public safety and enforce the law when necessary. For these reasons, and these reasons only, law enforcement officers are granted the immense power to use force, including lethal force. This authority – state sanctioned violence – necessarily comes with limits and obligations to ensure those who enforce the law do not abuse it. These limits and obligations require that police use their power in a manner that protects and serves the entire community that has vested them with this privilege. The exercise of this authority also requires accountability when abuses occur. Without accountability, state sanctioned violence is nothing but the exercise of arbitrary brute force, a common tool of tyrannical and despotic governments.

Yet, as endless reports and studies have indicated, the police in the United States do not always use their power in a manner that reflects the restraint, care and humility promised to its people. The many and terrible deaths of unarmed African Americans, the targeting of poor communities and communities of color, and the absence of a mandate to protect individuals from domestic violence, all sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the United States in the name of police discretion, have scarred many and raised questions of whether the police sufficiently serve their mandate.

Even as the evidence of criminality and misconduct permeates the news, drives thousands to the streets, and garners national outrage, the exact scope and scale of lethal use of force remains unknown. The United States does not count the number of lives lost nationally due to police use of force. And police departments vary as to how and whether data on officer use of force, including the discharge of police firearms and deaths, is collected and published. This absence of comprehensive reporting and publishing of data on police use of force severely limits our ability to see the full picture and to accurately evaluate police misconduct. It also constrains our ability to identify practices and institutional mechanisms in need of reform. The failure by states and the federal government to address this lack of transparency and accountability tells its own story and is, on its own, a cause for great concern.

The human rights of people living in the United States are profoundly affected by how law enforcement officials carry out their duties. Police use of force implicates the basic rights of every individual subject to this power – the rights to life, security of person, freedom from discrimination and equal protection of the laws. These rights, established following the atrocities of World War II in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, form the cornerstone of the human rights system. The challenge of managing police power is a global one. People in every country face the difficult and complex balance between granting police the discretion and resources needed to achieve their purpose, while holding them accountable when they abuse their power in violation of the human rights of the communities they serve.

To address this global challenge, the 193 member states of the United Nations, which include the United States, have developed principles and standards to constrain, direct and ensure the proper use of lethal force. These principles – legality, necessity, proportionality and accountability – have been developed and concretized in various forms in the international system, and have been articulated in resolutions by the U.N. General Assembly, rules by committees of experts, and findings by U.N. Special Procedure Mechanisms. These principles and the rules they establish represent the best global effort to consider how police discretion and accountability can contribute to a just and humane society that respects and protects the rights of all its individuals.

In the United States, some of these principles have been adopted and articulated by our courts and law makers. However, this country lacks a comprehensive and effective national legal framework that places specific conditions on the use of force and establishes mechanisms of accountability.5 While the Constitution sets some limits on the use of force, the standards set by the Supreme Court in its case law fall woefully short of meeting the international standards, and Congress has failed to take action to fill this critical gap in federal law.6 Due to the decentralized nature of law enforcement in the United States, and the failure of national leadership to set uniform, federal standards, the main restrictions on police use of force exist at the state and local level. State law and police departmental policies provide the principles and standards on use of force and the consequences for when that authority is abused.

(Report continued in right column)

Questions for this article:

Where are police being trained in culture of peace?

(Report continued from left column)

While, in many states, legislation provides some direction on the use of force to police departments, research and data indicates that state laws have overwhelmingly failed to do so in an effective manner. In 2015, Amnesty International, USA released “Deadly Force: Police Use of Lethal Force in the United States,” evaluating state laws’ compliance with international human rights standards. Alarmingly, the report found that not a single state’s law fully complied.

This Report builds on Amnesty’s findings by examining the other main source of accountability for the use of force: police department policies. To capture a large portion of the population and a diverse set of contexts, this Report evaluates the police policies from the 20 largest cities in the United States during 2017 to 2018.7 These internal departmental policies provide the primary guidance to police officers on when and how they may use lethal force.8 They are intended as manuals for officers on how to execute their duties, written by police leadership and, for the most part, adopted by the governing police boards.9 These policies provide the substantive standards that officers are trained on and the principles that departments must operationalize. Policy violations trigger internal and sometimes external reviews and possible disciplinary measures.

While police policies vary, a use of force policy generally establishes the magnitude and nature of the threat that must exist, and the level of certainty police officers must have, to justify the use of lethal force.10 Some policies call for a gradual escalation of the use of force; some list a series of measures an officer must or should take before resorting to lethal force.11 They also prescribe what must happen after force has been used, who must be notified, and how an investigation unfolds.

This Report reviews and analyzes these policies to better understand how and whether police departments provide meaningful and effective direction to officers on the use of lethal force in a manner that respects the rights of the people they are charged to protect and serve. To evaluate use of force policies, authors developed and applied a grading system based on international law and standards on police lethal use of force. Through this evaluation, authors found that the policies in all 20 cities reviewed fail to meet international human rights law and standards. These use of force policies grant police undue discretion and insufficient guidance on when lethal force can be used, and they fail to establish strong enough accountability mechanisms.

Part I of this Report provides summary of findings and recommendations for the development of a robust mechanism to constrain police lethal use of force. Police departments across the country allow for the use of force in circumstances where there is no immediate threat to life, such as allowing exceptions for the capture of a fleeing suspect. And almost none of the city policies provide adequate oversight and accountability mechanisms.

Part II presents the international law and standards governing police use of lethal force in the United States. It highlights the four main principles derived from these standards – legality, necessity, proportionality, and accountability – and explains their application to police use of force policies.

Part III uses these four principles to analyze and grade the use of lethal force policies of the 20 largest U.S. cities. Like the laws of the 50 states, not a single policy fully complied with international human rights law and standards. In fact, some policies fell well below full compliance, for example, failing to require that lethal force only be used in response to the immediate threat of deadly force.

Ultimately, deep, structural reform of the United States’ law enforcement system is needed. The police in the United States kill more people than any of our peer nations.12 In a 24-day period in 2015, police in the United States shot more people than the police did in England and Wales in 24 years.13 By all measures, the current system is broken. As this Report demonstrates, the very laws and departmental policies that are meant to guide police officers on how to make the difficult, life and death decisions that are required of them, do not comply with human rights. Structural reform to end police killings of unarmed black and brown men and women must start in the police departments themselves with human rights-compliant use of force policies.

Conclusion

Not one of the police departments in the 20 largest cities in United States has a human rights compliant use of force policy. None of the policies are constrained by a state law that complies with human rights law and standards. And too many police departments allow the use of lethal force in response to a non-lethal threat, thereby sanctioning unnecessary and disproportionate use of force.

These policy failures have contributed to the tragic killings of unarmed black and brown men and women by police officers around the country. Ensuring police use of lethal force in the United States is constrained by international human rights law and standards requires a broad range of legal, institutional and practical measures, from a solid grounding in legislation, to a committed political and police leadership. Human rights compliant laws and police policies are an absolutely necessary component, but they alone cannot operationalize and make real the human rights law and standards embodied in the four core principles. Instead, law and policies provide the foundation on which a structure of reinforcing attitudes, practices and mechanisms must be built.

Making law and police policies more than just paper promises requires, among other things: comprehensive, effective and ongoing officer training; effective supervision and planning; robust corrective measures applied to officer misbehavior; independent and transparent investigating and reporting; disciplinary measures; and mechanisms with real independence, resources, power and will to provide accountability. Nevertheless, true structural transformation of law enforcement practices in the United States must begin with police policies that comply with international human rights law and standards.

June 27, 2020DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

“Listening as governance”, by Amartya Sen

. DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION .

An article by Amartya Sen in Sixteens

We have reason to take pride in the fact that India is the largest democracy in the world, and also the oldest in the developing world. Aside from giving everyone a voice, democracy provides many practical benefits for us. We can, however, ask whether we are making good use of it now when the country, facing a gigantic health crisis, needs it most.

[Editor’s note: Click here for Professor Sen’s recent recognition by the peace prize of the German Book Trade..

Tackling a social calamity is not like fighting a war which works best when a leader can use top-down power to order everyone to do what the leader wants — with no need for consultation. In contrast, what is needed for dealing with a social calamity is participatory governance and alert public discussion. Famine victims may be socially distant from the relatively more affluent public, and so can be other sufferers in different social calamities, but listening to public discussion makes the policy-makers understand what needs to be done. Napoleon may have been much better at commanding rather than listening, but this did not hamper his military success (except perhaps in his Russian campaign). However, for overcoming a social calamity, listening is an ever-present necessity.

This applies also to the calamity caused by a pandemic, in which some — the more affluent — may be concerned only about not getting the disease, while others have to worry also about earning an income (which may be threatened by the disease or by an anti-disease policy, such as a lockdown), and — for those away from home as migrant workers — about finding the means of getting back home. The different types of hazards from which different groups suffer have to be addressed, and this is much aided by a participatory democracy, in particular when the press is free, public discussion is unrestrained, and when governmental commands are informed by listening and consultation.

(Article continued in the column on the right)

Questions related to this article:

Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

(Article continued from the column on the left)

In the sudden crisis in India arising from the spread of COVID-19, the government has obviously been right to be concerned with rapidly stopping the spread. Social distancing as a remedy is also important and has been rightly favoured in Indian policy-making. Problems, however, arise from the fact that a single-minded pursuit of slowing the spread of the disease does not discriminate between different paths that can be taken in that pursuit, some of which could bring disaster and havoc in the lives of many millions of poor people, while others could helpfully include policies in the package that prevent such suffering.

Employment and income are basic concerns of the poor, and taking special care for preserving them whenever they are threatened is an essential requirement of policy-making. It is worth noting in this context that even starvation and famines are causally connected with inadequacy of income and the inability of the impoverished to buy food (as extensive economic studies have brought out). If a sudden lockdown prevents millions of labourers from earning an income, starvation in some scale cannot be far off. Even the US, which is often taken to be a quintessential free enterprise economy (as in many ways it indeed is), has instituted income subsidies through massive federal spending for the unemployed and the poor. In the emergence and acceptance of such socially protective measures in America, a crucial part has been played by public discussion, including advocacy from the political opposition.

In India the institutional mechanism for keeping the poor away from deprivation and destitution will have to relate to its own economic conditions, but it is not hard to consider possible protective arrangements, such as devoting more public funds for helping the poor (which gets a comparatively small allocation in the central budget as things stand), including feeding arrangements in large national scale, and drawing on the 60 million tons of rice and wheat that remain unused in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India. The ways and means of getting displaced migrant labourers back to their homes, and making arrangements for their resettlement, paying attention to their disease status and health care, are also challenging issues that call for careful listening rather than inflexible decisions without proper consultation.

Listening is central in the government’s task of preventing social calamity — hearing what the problems are, where exactly they have hit, and how they affect the victims. Rather than muzzling the media and threatening dissenters with punitive measures (and remaining politically unchallenged), governance can be greatly helped by informed public discussion. Overcoming a pandemic may look like fighting a war, but the real need is far from that.

June 21, 2020DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, South AsiaSouth AsiaCPNN Coordinator

2020 Peace Prize of German Book Trade to Amartya Sen

. DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION .

A press release from Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandeis

The German Publishers and Booksellers Association hereby awards the 2020 Peace Prize of the German Book Trade to the economist and philosopher Amartya Sen. In doing so, the association and its members have chosen to pay tribute to a pioneering scholar who has addressed issues of global justice for decades and whose work to combat social inequality in education and healthcare is as relevant today as ever. Among Sen’s most important contributions is the idea of evaluating a society’s wealth not solely based on economic growth indices, but also on the opportunities for development available to all individuals who comprise that society, in particular its weakest members.

[Editor’s note: Click here for Professor Sen’s response to the pandemic crisis.

Professor Sen carried out some of his studies in India on a bike

Throughout his work, Amartya Sen has consistently highlighted solidarity and a willingness to negotiate as essential democratic values, proving in the process that cultures need not be the source of disputes over identity. His vivid and powerful descriptions have also served to elucidate the fundamental ways in which poverty, hunger and illness are intimately linked to the absence of free and democratic structures. The »Human Development Index«, the »capabilities approach« and the notion of »missing women« are just three of his groundbreaking concepts that continue to set high standards to this day with regard to generating, preserving and evaluating equal opportunities and decent living conditions for all.

Amartya Sen’s inspiring oeuvre represents a compelling call to establish a culture of political decision-making borne by a sense of responsibility for the well-being of others, including the right to self-determination and the right to articulate one’s interests and have a say in one’s own future.

“The freedom of choice gives us the opportunity to decide what we should do.” (Amartya Sen,”The Idea of Justice”)

Biography

Amartya Kumar Sen was born on 3 November 1933 in Santiniketan, India. He is currently the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard University. For many decades, Sen’s multifaceted and award-winning scholarly work has contributed unmatched insights and impulses to a number of fields, including welfare economics, social choice theory, decision theory, studies in hunger and poverty, and development economics. As an economist-philosopher whose research areas include public health and gender studies, he has also worked tirelessly for the cause of democracy, freedom and global justice. In 1998, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economics. In 2020, Amartya Sen, one of the most important thinkers of our time, will receive the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade.

Amartya Sen was born into a family of scholars and raised in an environment steeped in tradition. He spent part of his childhood in Dhaka, the present-day capital of Bangladesh, and finished his school education in his hometown of Santiniketan. His early years were influenced by the political movement for independence that took place across India during the 1940s, which was also the time of the conflicts between Hindus and Muslims, as well as that of the great famine in Bengal in 1943.

In 1959, after having completed a B.A. in economics at Presidency College, Kolkata, Sen received his Ph.D. at Trinity College, Cambridge. He continued to devote himself to the study of philosophy in addition to economics, something that is clearly reflected in many of his later works, where issues of economic theory meet moral philosophy and ethics.

In the 1960s, Sen was a guest professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as well as at Stanford, Berkeley and Harvard. After that, he worked as a professor of economics at the University of Delhi’s Delhi School of Economics (1963–1971), the London School of Economics (1971–1977) and Oxford University (1977–1987) as Drummond Professor of Political Economy. From 1988 to 1998, he was the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor, and Professor of economics and philosophy at Harvard, after which he was appointed as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. In 2004, he returned to Harvard as the Thomas W. Lamont University Professor and Professor of Economics and Philosophy.

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Questions related to this article:

Where in the world can we find good leadership today?

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As an economist-philosopher, Amartya Sen’s thinking is shaped by the question of how social justice can be advanced for all individuals in a society. In exploring these issues, he uses economics, politics and social choice theory.

Sen first became known to a wider public in 1970 for his advancement of the theory of social choice and his analysis of the compatibility of reasoned social decisions and individual rights (»Collective Choice and Social Welfare«, 1970, Expanded Edition, 2017). In 1981, he published his most famous work, »Poverty and Famines – An Essay on Entitlement and Deprivation«. This essay showed definitively that poverty and hunger are caused not only by food shortages, but above all by problems of distribution and a lack of access and entitlements. In addition, Sen showed that famines do not break out in functioning democracies with a free press.

In the 1990s, Sen played a significant role in the development of the Human Development approach of the United Nations, including devising the Human Development Index (HDI) which is an indicator of well-being in countries around the world and takes into account factors such as health and education in addition to average income.

Sen has always worked with his conviction that the quality of an economic system should not be measured solely on the basis of its growth indices, but rather on the opportunities available to the members of society to pursue their own development as well as their freedom to lead a life they have reason to choose (»capability approach«). Among the elements necessary for achieving this, Sen shows are education, healthcare and a free and fair press, in particular. In his 1999 book »Development as Freedom«, he has called for fair sharing of rights and opportunities by women. They also contribute to eliminating global inequalities and improving overall living standards.

Years earlier, in 1990, Sen had already used the idea of “missing women” in an article titled »More Than 100 Million Women Are Missing« published in the New York Review of Books. The term refers to noticeable shortfalls in the number of women in some regions of the world in relation to what may be expected on demographic grounds. This results from neglect of young girls as well as gender-selective abortion of female foetuses, related to »boy preference«, resulting from patriarchal values.

In 2006, the philosopher Sen became involved in the “clash of cultures” debate through his book »Identity and Violence«. In it, he warned of the increasing tendency to reduce individuals to a single identifying characteristic. He described how violence and fundamentalism arise as a result of such narrow construction of identity, and how this tendency fosters conflicts, as well. As an alternative to this approach, Sen made a decisive plea for the active promotion of pluralist understanding.

In 2009, Sen published »The Idea of Justice«, which soon became a bestseller. In that book, Sen examines the theory of justice put forth by John Rawls, criticising it for its ideal-oriented assumptions, which make it unsuitable for application in practical reality. In contrast, Sen proposed a practice-oriented theory and declared democracy to be a basic requirement for social justice.

In 2013, Sen joined with fellow economist Jean Drèze for the book »An Uncertain Glory. India and its Contradictions«, in which they proposed solutions designed to foster a fairer coexistence of peoples in India. Both economists placed the focus of their analysis on the lives and needs of poor and underprivileged populations, portraying the ways in which the introduction of a democratic system influenced Indian’s economy and social fabric, but also showing how the accompanying neglect of social problems has had a serious impact on the country’s economic and political system to this day.

Amartya Sen has been the President of the Econometric Society, President of the International Economic Association, President of the Indian Economic Association and President of the American Economic Association. For two years, he was Honorary President of OXFAM and he continues to be active there as an honorary advisor. Sen is a Senior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, a Fellow of the British Academy, an Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Member of the American Philosophical Society.

Sen has received over 100 honorary doctorates and countless awards for his highly influential work, and his books have been translated into over 30 different languages. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife, the British-born economic historian Emma Georgina Rothschild, whom he married in 1991 and who is also a professor at Harvard. Amartya Sen has four children, Antara, Nandana, Indrani and Kabir.

“The terrible connection between economic poverty and comprehensive unfreedom (even the lack of freedom to live) was a profoundly shocking realization that hit my young mind with overpowering force.” (Amartya Sen in “Identity and Violence” about his childhood experience during the clashes between Hindus and Muslims in 1944).

June 19, 2020DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, globalglobalCPNN Coordinator

Time for Australia to Say ‘Indigenous Lives Matter’

… . HUMAN RIGHTS … .

An article by Pascale Hunt in The Diplomat

Anti-racism protests across Australia amassed tens of thousands of supporters over the weekend. The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a police officer in the United States on May 25 provided the catalyst for a global wave of solidarity with the black community to condemn police brutality and demand meaningful change. But neither Floyd’s murder, nor the anti-racism movement that it has sparked, should be considered surprising or spontaneous deviations from the circumstances found in local communities the world over. In Australia, the glaring issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody has become the obvious parallel drawn – 432 deaths since the Royal Commission in 1991, and not a single conviction. As in the United States, these crimes have occurred against the backdrop of centuries of structural and cultural violence.
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A rally organizer leads a march from King George Square to South Brisbane at a Black Lives Matter protest on June 6, 2020, to support the movement over the death of George Floyd in the U.S. and the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands people in custody in Australia. Credit: AP Photo/John Pye

The nature of the unequal interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within the structure of Australian society today prevents equality not only from being realized but from even being imagined. In understanding the dynamics of this reality, and if we hope to make progress toward equality and reconciliation, we should understand violence as tri-faceted in its manifestations, including not only direct (meaning physical) violence, but also structural and cultural aspects. Structural violence refers to violence that is embedded economically, socially, or legally, manifesting as unequal opportunities to realize quality of life, security, and self-actualization, whereas cultural violence is revealed in the social legitimization and justification of structural and direct violence.

The Indigenous peoples of Australia have suffered direct, structural, and cultural violence since colonization began over 200 years ago. While the exact numbers are contested, it has been estimated that there were between 300,000 and 1 million Indigenous peoples living on the Australian continent at that time, dispersed across over 200 nations – many of those lives were lost in direct combat and massacres at the time of British settlement. Today, the Indigenous peoples of Australia compose only 2 percent of the country’s population, making up a miniscule minority in their own lands – and life expectancy for Indigenous communities is some 25 percent below the rest of the Australian population. Australia has been accused of ethnic cleansing and of breaching the principles outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – according to the United Nations Convention on Genocide, Article II, assorted historical policies of child removal and forced assimilation are considered genocidal.

It was only as recently as 1967 that Indigenous Australians were recognized as citizens – and in almost all contemporary statistics, Indigenous people are in much worse circumstances than other groups in the country. One of the most shocking examples is that today, the average lifespan for Indigenous Australians is 20 years less than the non-Indigenous population, despite both groups residing in what has been called “the wealthiest country in the world.” Furthermore, it is worth noting that Indigenous identity itself never existed until the colonial event to juxtapose it – since then, Indigeneity has transformed from a colonial construct into a politicized identity, as Indigenous peoples continue to struggle for recognition of their basic rights.

It should be understood that continued suppression of Australian Indigenous peoples, appearing today in the form of structurally and culturally violent policies and attitudes, is required to maintain the security of the settler colonies’ original interest. The nature of the settler-colonial context is an example of cultural violence itself – the land was declared terra nullius, meaning “land belonging to no one,” from the outset, justifying the immediate atrocities committed as well as the subsequent dehumanizing structures that continue to characterize the settler-Indigenous relationship. The settler-colonial context in general – and the conflicts that arise from it – are distinctive in that their primary interest was, and is, in securing permanent control of the land through dispossessing native populations, achieved by suppressing the significance of Indigenous presence. In the Australian case, the significance of Indigenous people’s territorial dispossession is compounded by their deep cultural and spiritual interconnectedness with their ancestral land.

How Indigenous Australians have been affected by historically embedded structural violence is evident in that they are often required to hand over land rights in exchange for basic services that other Australians get without strings attached.

Indigenous rights that are protected in the Northern Territory Land Rights Act (1976) prevent the government and private companies from accessing rich uranium deposits – a concession that exemplifies a huge opportunity cost for the mining industry that is largely responsible for Australia’s national wealth. With this in mind, relatively recent events such as the Northern Territory intervention of 2007 – in which the government enacted a unilateral military occupation of NT communities’ land, quarantined 50 percent of Indigenous welfare payments, suspended the Racial Discrimination Act, and subjected Indigenous children to non-consensual health checks under the pretext of protecting them – can be interpreted as a strategic continuation of the original colonial-imperial agenda.

The mining industry is the biggest contributor to Australian GDP growth, and comes into direct conflict with Indigenous land rights, posing a significant struggle over the control of resources that support the maintenance of mining profits. Legislation such as the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (1976) in the Northern Territory has in some instances allowed the Indigenous community to influence development decisions – or at least share in the capital benefits – but in general, the legal, policy, and institutional environment remains hostile to Indigenous interests, heavily favoring those of mining corporations. Amendments to the Native Title Act made in 1998 imposed stricter requirements for registering Native Title claims, and simultaneously removed the “right to negotiate” from the renewal of mining leases. Not by coincidence, the NSW Office of the Environment and Heritage shows that between June 2012 and June 2013 there were over 99 applications for the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites for development purposes – all of which were approved.

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Question(s) related to this article:

Are we making progress against racism?

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Importantly, mineral development prevents and excludes Indigenous people from being on country, hunting and gathering, and carrying out rituals. Their capacity to negotiate with developers is severely undermined by government non-funding of Native Title Representative Bodies, which exist to support traditional owners in negotiations with commercial interests, leaving many Indigenous individuals and organizations with no choice but to rely on project developers for funding. This dynamic fundamentally alters the negotiating process. Ultimately, mining companies are driven by aspirations for capital accumulation that override their ostensible commitment to corporate social responsibility norms.

The media continues to facilitate the structural and cultural violence that permeates the relationship between settler and Indigenous Australians. Conventional reporting structures that rely on official sources and dualistic tug-of-war conceptions of conflict situations often ignore the root causes of conflict, the diversity and legitimacy of various stakeholders’ perspectives, and the complexity of myriad processes taking place. In the Australian media, Indigenous peoples are often portrayed as less successful in society, encouraging perceptions that this is the outcome innate group traits such as substance abuse or lack of initiative, rather than a consequence of broader structural factors and policies that prevent Indigenous peoples from realizing their goals. This effect is multiplied due to the comparative size of the Indigenous population to the rest of the country in Australia, as well as the intense concentration of media ownership in the country, which undeniably promotes elite and private interests. A feedback loop is created when culturally violent attitudes are distributed, justifying the structurally violent system, creating more circumstances that can be reported in a way that compound both. The inevitable outcome is a reinforcement of status-quo ideology, and a barrier preventing conflict comprehension and conflict resolution.

A primary obstacle to the reconciliation process in Australia is achieving acknowledgement among the wider public that the conflict is still happening. The official reconciliation process has been a mostly top-down approach, reflective of the colonial project from which the current system derives. It has failed to seriously address the injustices that have been done – primarily, the forced dispossession of land that lies at the heart of the conflict. It has been largely symbolic, emphasizing apology and forgiveness over structural and relational change – in other words, official reconciliation has failed to address the causal connection between structurally entrenched social disadvantage and the original dispossession of land that occurred. Nuanced contextualization that accounts for the historical abuses that have characterized the Indigenous-settler relationship is essential in order to understand the nature of the contemporary conflict and explore options for holistic reconciliation and conflict transformation.

Reconciliation itself has been criticized as a replacement for calls for sovereign recognition, and for characterizing historical events as “past injustices” that are unrelated to contemporary realities. While the process ostensibly aimed to address structural injustices affecting Indigenous communities, it failed to locate these structural injustices within the historical colonial context of land dispossession and the imposition of policies that continue to control Indigenous destinies. Former Prime Minister John Howard advocated a “practical reconciliation” agenda, in which policies would be implemented to target social inequalities in areas of employment, education, housing, and health – suggesting that reconciliation efforts should “focus on the future.” This discourse emphasized friendship and forgiveness – an idea that is beneficial to those seeking to reinforce a unified nation-state, but fails to recognize Indigenous calls for justice.

Since the 1960s, there have been several nonofficial political campaigns centered on the concept of land rights and self-determination of Indigenous Australians and challenging the established history of the settler society. One of the most iconic – inspired by the U.S. Civil Rights movement – was when a group of students took part in a peaceful protest known as the “Freedom Rides,” travelling around New South Wales fostering awareness about Indigenous sovereignty. These representations of the continent’s history spurred growing demands for recognition of Indigenous rights and sovereignty, directly challenging the state’s reputation as a liberal democracy, and called for the establishment of a treaty such as had been the practice in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. In 1988, the largest-ever protest for Indigenous rights occurred in Sydney during the bicentennial celebrations and aimed to raise awareness about the original custodianship of the continent. While over 20,000 Indigenous Australians congregated in solidarity and protest of the previous 200 years of treatment, their presence was ignored by media reports – which instead chose to cover the many ships gathered in Sydney Harbor for the government-sponsored Australia Day celebrations.

In recent decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the symbolic use of Indigeneity as a part of the Australian nation-building project – discounting the truth of Indigenous Australians and appropriating the country’s controversial history by establishing a false connectedness between settlers and the land, thereby weakening Indigenous claims to sovereignty. Instead of addressing the unequal relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, the government promoted a nationalistic rhetoric that preached a “unified Australia” at the expense of Indigenous voices. It was a presentation that was beneficial to the state – facilitating the mythic character of the Australian nation as the “lucky country” in a way that dismissed the perspective of the Australian Indigenous population. In effect, it masked Indigenous dissent in a cover of self-congratulatory celebrations that were aimed at allowing settler Australians and the Australian state to stand proud with their identity, at the expense of the message that 20,000 Indigenous Australians that had gathered for. There is glaring opportunity for the media to play a more effective role in acknowledging history and facilitating discussion about the context underpinning the present situation.

In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the stolen generations. The apology was greatly important for many Indigenous peoples and provided a sense of healing and symbolic justice. However, the over-emphasis on the apology in the media has allowed politicians to dodge meaningful reforms toward actual justice for Indigenous Australians. In February 2015, Rudd reflected on his apology, noting that as a country, “our achievements have been meager… the purpose of the apology was not to provide the nation a fleeting feel-good moment… it was to harness our collective energies for breaking the cycle of Indigenous disadvantage for the future.”

Permeating structural and cultural violence against Indigenous Australians has not been sufficiently addressed, and this hinders progress toward reconciliation and conflict resolution. The settler-colonial context, which manifests today in structurally violent attitudes and culturally violent policies with the media as a key player in maintaining the status quo, prioritizes national business interests that exacerbate the original injustice of Indigenous land dispossessions. A comprehensive understanding of the nature and context of the conflict, facilitated by dialogue and respect, is essential, along with an acknowledgement that the present situation is derived from the historical and contemporary denial of Indigenous rights, freedoms, and human needs.

It is understandable – given the history of structural, cultural and direct violence in Australia – that many Indigenous peoples feel that they will not have true justice until they are granted substantive land rights, sovereignty, and the ability to control their own destinies. While it may be too late in the game to turn over the extent of reparations that is deserved, the reconciliation process could undoubtedly involve more substantive, structural change that would make a real difference to the living conditions, dignity, and identities of Indigenous peoples, and contribute toward mending the broken relationship between settler Australians and the original custodians of this land.

June 18, 2020East Asia, HUMAN RIGHTSEast AsiaCPNN Coordinator

What is Juneteenth and how are people commemorating it this year?

… . HUMAN RIGHTS … .

An article from Reuters (reprinted by permission)

Juneteenth, an annual U.S. holiday on June 19, has taken on greater significance this year following nationwide protests over police brutality and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other African Americans.
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FILE PHOTO: The Emancipation Proclamation is displayed at the National Archives building in Washington, January 13, 2006. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War, formally proclaiming the freedom of all slaves held in areas still in revolt. This original document is displayed for public during four days once a year. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

WHAT IS JUNETEENTH?

Juneteenth, a portmanteau of June and 19th, also is known as Emancipation Day. It commemorates the day in 1865, after the Confederate states surrendered to end the Civil War, when a Union general arrived in Texas to inform the last group of enslaved African Americans of their freedom under President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. In 1980, Texas officially declared it a holiday. It is now recognized in 46 other states and the District of Columbia. Although in part a celebration, the day is also observed solemnly to honor those who suffered during slavery in the United States with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans over 400 years ago.

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Question(s) related to this article:

Are we making progress against racism?

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WHAT IS SIGNIFICANT THIS YEAR?

This year Juneteenth coincides with global protests against racial injustice sparked by the May 25 death of Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis police custody. It also accompanies the coronavirus outbreak, which has disproportionately affected communities of color. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump, who had already been under fire for his response to both crises, drew further criticism for scheduling a Friday re-election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has since moved it to Saturday. Tulsa is an important and especially sensitive site where a white mob massacred African-American residents in 1921. Community organizations nationwide will devote the day to discussions on policing and civil rights ahead of the November election.

[Editor’s note: Although Juneteenth is not a national holiday in the U.S. there is a move in the Congress to do this.]

HOW ARE PEOPLE MARKING THE DAY?

People will mark the 155th anniversary across the country with festive meals and gatherings. While many cities have canceled this year’s annual parades because of the pandemic, other groups have opted for virtual conferences or smaller events. In Washington, groups plan marches, protests and rallies. Amid the wave of racial justice protests, some U.S. businesses have committed to a change of policies, including recognition of the holiday. Among the companies that have announced they will recognize Juneteenth as a paid company holiday are the National Football League (here), the New York Times, and Twitter and Square.

June 18, 2020HUMAN RIGHTS, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

USA: Historian Robin D.G. Kelley: Years of Racial Justice Organizing Laid Groundwork for Today’s Uprising

EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

Excerpts from a report on Jun 11 in Democracy Now (The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org.)

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the mass uprising engulfing the U.S. and what protesters are demanding now, we go to Los Angeles, where we’re joined by Robin Kelley, professor of African American studies at UCLA. He studies social movements, author of many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. . . .

video of full report

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Kelley, I want to go back to something that you wrote immediately following Trump’s election in November 2016. You wrote that the U.S. needs a multiracial movement committed to, quote, “dismantling the oppressive regimes of racism, heteropatriarchy, empire, and class exploitation that is at the root of inequality, precarity, materialism, and violence in many forms.” You’ve just talked about how the demands of this movement are very different. Do you see what’s happening now as what you wanted to happen in November 2016?

ROBIN D.G. KELLEY: Exactly. And not only that, but what I wrote in 2016 was actually a reflection of what was already happening on the ground. So, in some respects, remember, the Movement for Black Lives put out their policy platform in August of 2016.

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Question(s) related to this article:

Are we making progress against racism?

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And one of the things we all have to acknowledge is that we’re not here by accident. You know, this is not a spontaneous response to the pandemic, and suddenly white people are waking up and saying, “Oh, wait a second, Black lives matter.” No, this is a product of enormous work, going back well before Trayvon Martin. But you think about all the organizing work, the Movement for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter, the women who organized Black Lives Matter, initiated — Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors — people like Melina Abdullah, Charlene Carruthers of Black Youth Project 100, all the scholar activists who have been working on this question — Barbara Ransby, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore — and then, before that, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Copwatch, Dignity and Power, Critical Resistance, the African American Policy Forum. These were initiatives on the ground who did all this political education, all this organizing work — We Charge Genocide, Dream Defenders, the Rising Majority, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and also groups like SURJ, you know, [Showing] Up for Racial Justice, which deals with white racism.

So you have an infrastructure in place that has been doing this work for a decade or more — more than a decade. And that’s why people are out here. That’s why people can come out into the streets and simply roll off their tongues words like “defund the police,” connect transphobia, homophobia, gender oppression, patriarchy to racial capitalism and to racial violence, connect these things in ways that I think are kind of unprecedented. But again, without the organizing work, we would not be here, you know? And I think it’s very important to even go back and acknowledge how the foundations were laid by the Combahee River Collective, by people like Barbara Smith, raised by the Third World Women’s Alliance, I mean, fighting around questions of connecting sterilization, abortion rights with racism. You know? So, these kinds of links, these connections — and also with war — are important. So, there’s a long history that got us here.

And the real question now is whether or not this can be sustained, because we know, throughout history, we’ve had revolutionary moments, after Reconstruction in the 1870s, followed by backlash and by what we can describe as American fascism. We have the sort of Second Reconstruction of the 1960s, followed by backlash, the rise of the Klan, the tamping down on the strike wave in the 1970s, neoliberalism. And now we’re facing another one. We have these forces trying to transform the world in a way that could actually bring safety and prosperity to all versus a president and a regime that asks, “What happened to Gone with the Wind? …

June 12, 2020EDUCATION FOR PEACE, HUMAN RIGHTS, North AmericaNorth AmericaCPNN Coordinator

Philippines: Women’s leadership in the time of pandemic

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY . .

An article by Ma. Lourdes Veneracion-Rallonza, Ph.D. in Business World

During this period of the pandemic, we have heard of both female and male leaders doing a great job at managing the crisis in their respective countries. However, more and more, the spotlight seems to be on the former.

For Cami Anderson who wrote in a Forbes article entitled, “Why do women make such good leaders during COVID-19,” women possess vision, inspiration, direction-setting, and creative thinking — qualities of transformational leaders. In the same vein, Michelle P. King added that “research has consistently found women tend to adopt a more transformational leadership style, which included demonstrating compassion, care, concern, respect and quality. In the context of this pandemic, women leaders were also seen as ‘other-directed’ and have ‘a sense of commitment to the common good.’”

How have women leaders in the Philippines responded to the COVID-19 crisis?

ON THE LOCAL FRONT

 According to Leta Hong Fincher, one of the key attributes of women leaders appropriately responding to the pandemic is that of early and decisive action. To a large extent, this was exemplified by Isabela City, Basilan Mayor Sitti Djalia Turabin-Hataman, one of the 11 women elected as mayors in Mindanao. When asked about strategies she used in responding to the COVID-19 crisis, she explained a five-fold approach consisting of prevention, response and management, assistance, communication and information, and data.

At the onset, prevention was the priority strategy. As early as February 2020, the Isabela City COVID-19 Task Force was established. Policies on social distancing, limitations on non-essential establishments, no angkas (riding pillion on motorcycles), curfew, and skeletal workforce systems were already implemented even before the general community quarantine (GCQ) declaration on March 25. They also set up a BalikBayani program for returning Isabelenos from Luzon and other areas with COVID-19 cases for contact tracing.

The second strategy was response and management targeting positive COVID-19 cases, should they begin to have them. According to Mayor Turabin-Hataman, they only have a Level 1 hospital catering to the entire province of Basilan. Thus, they undertook urgent actions as regards capacitation of their health workers to handle COVID-19 patients and the procurement of equipment, supplies, and medicines. They also set up a Ligtas COVID facility for the isolation of suspected COVID-19 cases and are currently preparing an identified quarantine area for the use of other Isabelenos coming back home.

Isabela City has a 52% poverty rate and many of its residents are in the informal sector. In this light, Mayor Turabin-Hataman’s third strategy was the provision for assistance. Under the GCQ, they were able to distribute assistance to 36,502 families. They also provided free delivery services for those needing essential supplies available only in Zamboanga City.

The fourth strategy revolves around communication and information that consists of having regular video messages that give updates and inform the public about preparations as well as reminders on existing policies.

And lastly, the fifth strategy focused on data. They constantly updated their data on suspect-probable-confirmed COVID-19 cases, the number of affected households and families, displaced workers, logistics (a Procurement and Inventory Committee was created), movement of people, etc. To date (as of May 9), Isabela City, Basilan has zero confirmed COVID-19 cases, zero probable, and 16 suspected cases.

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Question related to this article:

How can we work together to overcome this medical and economic crisis?

Do women have a special role to play in the peace movement?

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As a woman leader, she believes that leadership must provide a platform for people to work together and maximize their potential. She also believes in the currency of innovative approaches and foresight. And finally, the indispensability of human connection:

“Getting people to trust you. Reach out in every possible way you can and let them know what the city is going through. Tell the truth about the realities, while providing hope based on actual gains and positive projections.”

PEACEBUILDING AND PANDEMIC 

In the time of COVID-19, peace education is most relevant for communities already under conflict and strife, for individuals battling against hatred, discrimination, and division, and for children who are the most affected by this multi-layered situation.

Bai Rohaniza Sumndad-Usman leads the Teach Peace Build Peace Movement (TPBPM). In order to continue their mission of building a Culture of Peace and Resilience through Peace Education, they adopted a four-component strategy — assess, adapt and translate, technology exploration, and resources tapping and building. One of the results of their work was the launch of the #KumustaKa #PeaceInTheTimeOfCovid19 online campaign on March 30. As explained by Bai Rohaniza, this campaign consisted of “each day having themes that create opportunities for children, youth and adults to learn about finding peace with self and others in the midst of the pandemic.” Additionally, they launched the Peace in the Time of Covid-19 Campaign where they uploaded graphics, conducted live sessions, and received messages regarding how the sessions helped them find peace amidst the crisis.

Several factors influenced her and her team to think more innovatively about peace education. According to Bai Rohaniza, these were “1.) the immediate need for a strategic internet access and online or digital transition of peace education to address conflicts within self (e. g. depression and mental health), toxicity of social media and possible psychological and physical violence, which might emanate from inequity and poverty, brought about by the pandemic; 2.) possible worsening of existing conflict and context sensitivity issues in the communities we cater (directly and indirectly caused by the pandemic); 3.) positive opinions and response of the community with regard to physical, emotional and psychological impact and benefit of these strategies (from collected data survey); and 4.) available resources from the organization and partner organizations, which would help in the realization of strategies.”

Being a woman peacebuilder in the time of pandemic, Bai Rohaniza draws inspiration from her past experiences and learnings and the kind of ethos she has put together to meaningfully serve others. She said peacebuilding work has made her resilient and gain inner peace and taught her to adapt to difficult situations. But more importantly, this current crisis highlighted the humanity in her leadership.

“I am also the type of leader who values sensitivity, inclusivity, compassion and empathy with a strong practice of servant leadership combined with mindful and charismatic leadership styles on the aspect of continuing to serve, be inspired and driven by my conviction and commitment to our mission while making sure that other people’s needs are being served and a focus on the growth and wellbeing of those we serve. I am able to communicate empathetically and nurturing and guiding others towards our vision even under unfavorable circumstances and thinking of creative and innovative programs or solutions to address our challenges have been a part of my practice in serving our schools and communities. And in all of these, I consider everything as a gift from the Almighty as He is the reason behind the purpose and journey that I am in.”

Indeed, being a woman leader does not automatically and magically make one successful in dealing with a pandemic. However, as shown by the experiences of Mayor Turabin-Hataman and Bai Rohaniza, it is not really a matter of being better but rather doing things better that matter.

Ma. Lourdes Veneracion-Rallonza, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science, Ateneo de Manila University.

June 10, 2020East Asia, WOMEN'S EQUALITYEast AsiaCPNN Coordinator

Decolonising peace journalism – and putting it to work in East Africa

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An article from The Conversation (republished according to a Creative Commons Attribution / No modification license )

Conflict resolution is a recurrent theme in East Africa. This has prompted the need for innovative ways to create lasting consensus in the region as well as across the continent. One of these innovative ways is peace journalism. It can stimulate peaceful resolution of conflict by voicing different conflicting parties and issues in a balanced and objective manner. The Conversation Africa’s Julie Masiga spoke to Fredrick Ogenga about the role of peace journalism in Africa.

TV reporters prepare for a live broadcast during a strike by airline workers in Nairobi. Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images

What is peace journalism and why does it matter?

Peace journalism is evident when reporters and editors make deliberate choices in their day to to day work that create opportunities for society at large to consider and value nonviolent responses to conflict.

The approach opens the possibility of a new road map tracing the connections between journalists, their sources, the stories they cover – and the consequences of their journalism. It builds awareness of nonviolence and creativity into the practical job of everyday editing and reporting that brings different parties to the negotiating table.

However, it is a Western concept that needs decolonising in terms of orientation and applicability. African peace journalism rejects the notion that “nothing good can come out of Africa”. It seeks to challenge the negative narratives about Africa. Africans can be both authors and sources of positive narratives. This requires us to rethink our set of news values if we are to imagine a new kind of transformative journalism.

We must also be clear about what peace journalism isn’t. It is not reporting that is wholly or even primarily oriented towards peace at all costs. It does not sacrifice truth and justice for a “law and order” type of peace as defined by the state. Instead, the essential elements of this form of journalism include sensitivity, agility, caution, factual information and self-reflectivity in relation to what media practitioners put into the content of news reports and editorials.

The nature of conflicts and the degree of media freedom varies from country to country. For this reason, these elements may not be uniformly applicable. For instance, covering a civil war will differ from reporting on terrorism or political or election-related conflict. However, these elements and the values will help foster a culture of peace and nonviolent conflict resolution across the region.

The manual for media practitioners that I recently edited tries to present this vision. The publication was the outcome of a workshop of journalists and scholars in the area of conflict and peacebuilding in East Africa.
Contributing experts are of the view that sensitivity to peace and the nonviolent prevention and resolution of conflict is best captured within the conceptual framework of “peace journalism”.

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Question(s) related to this article:

African journalism and the Culture of Peace, A model for the rest of the world?

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What are the highlights of the manual?

The manual offers refreshing perspectives on peace journalism by exploring the core values of truthfulness, social justice, equity, African cultures of peace, and balanced news reporting.

The chapters cumulatively represent a rich repertoire of experiences and cases that skilfully tell the story of the connections between media and peacebuilding in East Africa.

African peace journalism is journalism with African nuances and lenses that imbibe African values and philosophies. These would mean the inclusion of Utu/Ubuntu (humanity), Harambee (collective responsibility), and Umoja (unity) as news values. The manual captures these Afrocentric views of journalism in the context of the continent’s peace and security challenges.

Here are three highlights:

* Gloria Laker explores the role of peace journalism in ending the Lord’s Resistance Army insurgency (1988-2006) in northern Uganda, drawing upon Laker’s own experience as a war reporter. 

* Duncan Omanga approaches the concept of terrorism as a form of political communication through public spectacle (and mass hysteria) and warns of the dangers of inappropriate labels in news coverage and reportage. 

* Finally, I offer a conceptual overview of a hybrid (African) peace journalism in the context of emerging terrorist threats in Kenya. I explain how this unique approach to peace journalism combines elements from Western peace journalism and African lenses in conflict-sensitive reporting. 

Our contribution to the peace journalism debate as Africans is slowly gaining popularity in the minds of ordinary people. This has been made possible through social media spaces where local content creators are taking the lead in pushing the narrative especially when it comes to contentious issues such as electoral politics. User generated content holds sway on social media.

Nevertheless, the manual has some good examples of both peace journalism and Africa peace journalism capturing cases in Kenya and Uganda. Most of these are stories are about ethnic politics, gender body politics, human rights and violent extremism.

Are there instances where the media have made conflict worse?

Yes. This was experienced in Kenya’s 2007-2008 general elections, which ended in post-election violence. It was at that point that I began exploring ways to make the media part of the solution and not the problem. Kenya’s media has often behaved ignorantly when reporting electoral politics and even violent extremism when it has manifested in terrorist attacks.

A keen observer knows well that the way the Kenyan media covered the Dusit Hotel attack in 2019 was different from the manner they reported the Westgate attack in 2013. The Westgate Mall attack coverage was much more sensationalist. The difference didn’t happen by chance. It was deliberate. The 2019 coverage was a product of extensive advocacy and training over the years on conflict sensitive journalism, which is largely the objective of the peace journalism manual.

During the 2013 general election, the Kenyan media was accused of pursuing the peace agenda at the expense of independence. Where do you draw the line?

We do not want journalists to be peace crusaders or televangelists. All we need to see is some journalism with an African lens, that speaks to Africa’s sense of agency, context and locality.

June 10, 2020Africa, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATIONAfricaCPNN Coordinator