Category Archives: Uncategorized

Upcoming Virtual Events

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

At CPNN, we are beginning to receive notices of free virtual events concerning the culture of peace. In order to inform our readership of these events, we will try an experiment: a “rolling article” about these events. We will try to update the listing every day or two, removing the events that are past (see for past events) and adding new events as they are received at our contact email address. To be included here, an event must be free and must provide a registration link. Unless otherwise indicated the events are in English.


Zoom is one of many new technologies available for virtual conferences.

Saturday, November 21, 2020, 2:00 – 4:00pm (Japan Time)

Goi Peace Foundation Forum 2020
“Creating a Better World for Future Generations”
— As always when great collective changes are needed, everything starts with a personal change, an intimate mutation:
acting on ourselves to prepare to act in the world, so that it remains liveable for us.
We then discover that acting on ourselves is, in itself, an action on the world. ― Jacques Attali
— In 2020, the world was brought to a standstill, urgently prompting humanity to re-examine our ways of living and being. What kind of life do we want to live, and what kind of future society do we want to create?
— We invite you to take a deep dive into these pressing questions, together with this year’s Goi Peace Award Laureate, Dr. Jacques Attali. He will be joined by philosopher Dr. Hiroshi Tasaka for an insightful conversation bringing together wisdom from West and East.
— Japanese-English simultaneous interpretation available.
— Sign up for free

Nov 21, 2020

The UNAC Youth Against Empire will sponsor a webinar call, “Anti-Imperialist election Response: Youth Fight Back
— Speakers will include representatives of the following organizations:
ANAKBAYAN
International Action Center
Sanctions Kill
Black Alliance for Peace
Pan-African Action Committee
CODEPINK
Minnesota Anti-War Committee
Resist US Led War
More to be announced
— Time : 4:00 PM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)
— Register here

Wednesday 25 November 2020

In commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, the African Union Office of Youth Envoy will convene the High-Level Intergenerational Dialogue to present the “Africa Young Women Beijing+25 Manifesto”
— Keynote Speaker : H.E. Mrs. Jeannette Nyiramongi Kagame – First Lady of Rwanda
— Other speakers :
— H.E. Mrs Imen Houimel – Ministry of Women, Family and Elder People – Republic of Tunisia
— H.E. Mrs. Hanna Serwaa Tetteh – Special Representative of the Secretary-General to the African Union and Head of the UN Office to the African Union
— H.E. Ms Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka – UN Women Executive Director
— H.E. Mrs Bineta Diop, AU Special Envoy on Women, Peace and Security
— Master Of Ceremony: Ms Zozibini Tunzi, Miss Universe 2019
— The event will take place at 2:00 PM GMT+3
— Interprétation disponible en Anglais, Français, Arabe et Portugais.
— Register Here; https://bit.ly/Global-IGD

Nov 28, 2020

Stop the War Coalition : Prospects for War & Peace After the US Elections
— What does the election of Joe Biden mean for UK foreign policy? On one hand the president-elect has called for an end to US support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen, yet on the other he appears committed to escalating tensions with China. All of which will have major ramifications for British foreign policy. Boris Johnson’s unveiling of a huge military spending increase seems designed to please the new US president and demonstrate that the UK remains a devoted ally.
— As Donald Trump’s tenure comes to an end are we expecting huge shifts in foreign policy or more of the same?
— Join us for this fringe session of the North West Connected conference to discuss all of this and how the anti-war movement can organise against it with:
– Richard Burgon MP
– Lindsey German
– Sarah Cundy (Manchester Momentum Vice Chair)
– Jenny Clegg (Greater Manchester Stop the War)
– Rashida Islam (Greater Manchester Stop the War)
Time : 01:00 PM in London
— Register here

Uncategorized

Past Virtual Events: October 30-November 10

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

Here are events between October 30 and November 10 that were previously listed on the CPNN page for upcoming virtual events. Unless otherwise noted the events are in English.

October 30

17:00 – 19:00 CET. Do Black Lives Matter in British History? A Conversation with Professor David Olusoga OBE. David Olusoga is a British-Nigerian historian, broadcaster and BAFTA award-winning presenter and filmmaker. His television series include Black and British: A Forgotten History, A House Through Time, Civilisations, and The Unwanted: The Secret Windrush Files. His books on colonialism and empire have won numerous accolades, including the PEN Hessell-Tiltman Prize. His latest book is Black and British: A Short Essential History. Join Aston University students and staff for a virtual conversation with Professor Olusoga. Admission is free and open to the public.
This live online event is organised and hosted by the Department of History, Languages and Translation at Aston University.

October 30

The Office of the Envoy of the African Union for Youth in collaboration with the Women, Gender and Development Directorate will organize the Baraza Beijing + 25 of the Youth of North Africa, as part of the “Beijing + 25 Mobilization of Young African Women” co-organized with the African Women Leaders Network (AWLN) Young Women Leaders Caucus and the International Youth Task Force for Beijing + 25.

October 30

Invitation: UN75 Dialogue in observance of World Cities Day
Better City, Better Life:: Valuing our Communities & Cities
Friday, October 30, 2020 3:00 PM – 5:45 PM (New York time)
Hosted by the Permanent Mission of Slovakia and the Permanent Mission of Germany to the UN, NGO Committee on Sustainable Development-NY and UN-Habitat
Our UN75 Dialogue in observance of World Cities Day: “Better City, Better Life: Valuing our Communities and Cities” will address the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on our communities and cities while strengthening our resilience to build back better. Thnt World Urban Forum – WUF10 and the UN Economist Network for the UN 75th Anniversary: Shaping the Trends of Our Time Report showed us the megatrends which shape our world. The present report focuses on five of these megatrends: climate change; demographic shifts, particularly population ageing; urbanization; the emergence of digital technologies and inequalities. While many are utilizing innovative communication platforms that allow for better engagement to strengthen the resilience of their communities and cities, through the pandemic, others without access are falling further behind. It is vitally important that we continue our focus on the SDGs and the UN2030 SD Agenda to build partnerships with Member States, UN-Habitat, national and local authorities as well as stakeholders from civil society and the private sector in order to be better prepared to achieve the inclusive, safe, resilient and healthier future we want with the UN we need – to “Leave No One Behind.”

November 2

You are invited to a follow-up webinar on Target 2045: A new rallying call for nuclear weapons elimination , which was one of the calls made in the appeal Protect People and the Planet: Appeal for a Nuclear-Weapon-Free World.. The event will take place on Monday November 2 from 10am-11:30am Eastern Time (USA). It will include presentations from:
·       H.E. Mr Magzhan Ilyassov, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Kazakhstan to the United Nations;
·       Mr Ramesh Jaura, Editor-in-Chief & Director-General, IDN-InDepth News, flagship agency of the non-profit International Press Syndicate group;
·       Mr Saber Chowdhury MP, Honorary President, Inter-Parliamentary Union. Co-President, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament;
·       Ms Vanda Proskova, Vice-Chair, PragueVision Institute for Sustainable Security. Co-chair, Abolition 2000 Youth Network.
 The presentations will be followed by comments, questions and answers from the audience. Click here for the event flyer.

November 2-6

2 – 6 November 2020, the Geneva Center for Peacebuilding is hosting a free online event called Geneva Peace Week. All week there will be talks and lectures freely available to anyone. This year, the theme of the week is “Rebuilding trust after disruption: Pathways to reset international cooperation”. It is meant to have speakers and participants from around the world, sharing learning on peacebuilding and facilitating interactive discussions. Seems to be well organized for facilitating online participation. It’s free to sign up and attendees can participate in live workshop sessions. Details on how to participate are at the following link: https://eu.eventscloud.com/website/3030/

November 5 and 12 (in Spanish)

The UNESCO CHAIR: Citizenship, Coexistence and Pluralism invites you to the conferences of:
” SCHOOL OF DEMOCRACY ”
Thursday, November 5 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Spanish time)
CONFERENCE: “THE DECADENCE OF PARLIAMENTARIANISM”
AGUSTÍN RUIZ ROBLEDO, Professor of Constitutional Law at the University of Granada.
Thursday, November 12 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. (Spanish time)
CONFERENCE: “THE RISE OF THE EXTREME RIGHT”
MIGUEL ÁNGEL SIMÓN, Doctor in Political Science and Public Administration
Free registration through the following link: https://bit.ly/37djSKi

November 7

The Peace Studies Program and the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster Universitycpresents The 20th Annual Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Nonviolence: From the Civil Rights Movement to Black Lives Matter
Reflections by Rev. James Lawson and The Hon. Jean Augustine
Saturday, November 7, 2020, 4-6pm EST
Rev. James M. Lawson Jr.
An activist, minister, and the pioneer of nonviolence in the American Civil Liberties Movement. Reverend James M. Lawson Jr. was inspired by  Gandhi’s use of nonviolence  in securing justice and peace. Dr. Martin Luther King described Rev. Lawson as “the leading theorist and strategist of nonviolence in the world.” 
The Hon. Jean Augustine
The Hon. Dr. Jean Augustine made history as the first Black woman elected to Canada’s Parliament and served from 1993-2006.  Her legislative successes include the historic Black History Month Motion. She has dedicated her life to  the pursuit of social justice.
To join the event, click on: https://youtu.be/t1uZ6gURHb0
 If you have any questions about this event, please contact Director,Centre for Peace Studies, Dr. ChandrimaChakraborty (chandri@mcmaster.ca)

Tuesday, November 10th, 2020

Join us this Tuesday 6 pm PDT, 9 pm EDT and visit with Dot Maver – who is our founding Executive Director, and co-founder of the Global Alliance for Ministries and Infrastructures of Peace, the Global Silent Minute, the National Peace Academy, and the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding. In 2004, Dot served as National Campaign Manager for Kucinich for President.
Dot’s “keynote” is “inspiring cooperation on behalf of the common good,” and she consistently delivers on that theme.
We will also hear an update from the Department of Peacebuilding Committee, and we hope to hear from YOU! Join the Conversation!!
Once again, we will be hosting our Monthly Field Call using Zoom technology. Those who download the Zoom software can join the call using video tools – seeing the speakers and being seen if you wish. Others may phone in as usual, using the number provided via email after you register.
Here is the link to Register for this Call!

Uncategorized

The growing use of weaponised drones risks destabilising global peace and security

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY .

An article from UN News

The growing use of weaponised drones risks destabilising global peace and security and creating a “drone power club” among nations, that face no effective accountability for deploying them as part of their “war on terror”, a senior UN-appointed independent rights expert said on Thursday.

At the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Agnes Callamard, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, said that more than 100 countries have military drones and more than a third are thought to possess the largest and deadliest autonomous weapons.

‘No red lines’ in drone warfare?

States who used them on the grounds of self-defence, “defined in a very elastic fashion” against purported terrorists, risked creating a situation where “there will be no red lines really”, she told journalists later.

“As more Government and non-State actors acquire armed drones and use them for targeted killing, there is a clear danger that war will come to be seen as normal rather than the opposite of peace,” Ms. Callamard said. “War is at risk of being normalized as a necessary companion to peace, and not its opposite.”

Appealing for greater regulation of the weapons, and lending her support to calls for a UN-led forum to discuss the deployment of drones specifically, the Special Rapporteur insisted that their growing use increased the danger of a “global conflagration”.

(Article continued in right column)

Question for this article:

Drones (unmanned bombers), Should they be outlawed?

(Article continued from left column)

‘Influential States’ rewriting the rules

Such a move was necessary because “a small number of rather influential States” had sought to reinterpret the law of self-defence under Article  51 of the UN Charter, she explained.

She urged UN Security Council to meet in formal session to review and debate all such self-defence claim, before recommending that the High Commissioner for Human Rights should produce an annual report on drone strikes casualties for the Human Rights Council.

There was now the “very real prospect that States may opt to ‘strategically’ eliminate high-ranking military officials outside the context of a ‘known’ war”, she explained, and that they might seek to justify the killing “on the grounds of necessity – not imminence” as the target was classified as a “terrorist who posed a potential, undefined, future threat”.

Iranian general’s chilling death

In particular, she cited the killing by drone strike in Iraq of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani on 3 January for which the United States claimed responsibility and which she insisted was a violation of the UN Charter.

“Targeted killings until very recently to drones had been limited to non-state actors,” she told journalists. Until, for the first time in January 2020, a State armed drone targeted a high-level official of a foreign State and did so on the territory of a third State.”

Drone strikes were the preferred option for “decision makers and military alike for their relative efficiency, effectiveness, adaptability, acceptability, deniability, and political gain”, the rights expert maintained.

But she noted that their benefits were as “illusory” as the “myth of a surgical strike”. 

Because of the current absence of effective oversight, it was “practically impossible to know whether a person(s) killed in a drone strike was, in fact, a lawful target”, Ms. Callamard said, adding that harm to civilian populations, including deaths, injuries and trauma, was likely largely under-reported.   

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

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, global, Uncategorized, United Nations,

English bulletin July 1, 2020

. THE STRUGGLE AGAINST RACISM .

This was a month of the reactivated struggle against racism.

It started in the United States with an uprising described as a “collective gasp for life” by the Poor People’s Campaign which continues the struggle for justice led by Martin Luther KIng, Jr. Their phrase refers to the last words of George Floyd,” choked and killed by a white police officer “viscerally reminiscent of the lynching photographs that were used to terrorize African-Americans for decades in this nation.”

Excessive force by the police, condemned by fundamental international human rights law and standards, is commonplace in the United States according to a recent study.

As described by Reuters, “tens of thousands of demonstrators amassed in Washington and other U.S. cities on Saturday [June 6] demanding an end to racism and brutality by law enforcement.” ““It feels like I get to be a part of history and a part of the group of people who are trying to change the world for everyone,” said one of the demonstrators.

Thousands took to the streets in Europeen and Asian cities demonstrating in support of the U.S. protests against police brutality, including London, Hamburg, Paris, Berlin, Brisbane, Sydney, Tokyo, Seoul and Bangkok,

The demonstrations in Australia linked the protest to the racist treatment of the aboriginal people in their country, where 432 aboriginals have died in police custody since 1991 without a single conviction. The racism is especially evident in the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites for development projects. “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.”

Central to the demonstrations has been the movement of Black Lives Matter, started in 2013 by three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi — in response to the acquittal of the murderer of 17 year old Trayvon Martin. Their project is now a member-led global network of more than 40 chapters that organize and build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes.

As described by historian Robiin D. G. Kelley, in addition to Black Lives Matter, there have been many organizing efforts that have built a base for today’s protests. “These include 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.

Kelly concludes his interview with “And the real question now is whether or not this can be sustained.”

One of the means to sustain the movement is the mobilization in many U.S. communities and organizations to celebrate Juneteenth, the anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln to put an end to slavery. It is now recognized in 47 states and the District of Columbia.

In the view of noted activist Cornel West , it is important to make the connection between U.S. violence abroad and at home. “When you sow the seeds of greed — domestically, inequality; globally, imperial tentacles, 800 military units abroad, violence and AFRICOM in Africa, supporting various regimes, dictatorial ones in Asia and so forth — there is a connection between the seeds that you sow of violence externally and internally.”

For more on the connection of racism to the culture of war, externally and internally, along with its historical roots, see this month’s blog for the culture of peace.

HUMAN RIGHTS




‘A part of history’: Calm prevails over D.C.’s biggest George Floyd protest

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION



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

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT



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

DEMOCRATIC PARTICIPATION



“Listening as governance”, by Amartya Sen
          

EDUCATION FOR PEACE



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

WOMEN’S EQUALITY



Philippines: Women’s leadership in the time of pandemic

TOLERANCE & SOLIDARITY


USA: An uprising is a collective gasp for life

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY



Film From USA: Camden’s Turn: A Story of Police Reform in Progress
Uncategorized