Category Archives: global

From Mosul to Raqqa to Mariupol, Killing Civilians is a Crime

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article by by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies in Codepink

Americans have been shocked by the death and destruction of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, filling our screens with bombed buildings and dead bodies lying in the street. But the United States and its allies have waged war in country after country for decades, carving swathes of destruction through cities, towns and villages on a far greater scale than has so far disfigured Ukraine. 


Bombed homes in Mosul  Credit: Amnesty International

As we recently reported, the U.S. and its allies have dropped over 337,000 bombs and missiles, or 46 per day, on nine countries since 2001 alone. Senior U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency officers told Newsweek that the first 24 days  of Russia’s bombing of Ukraine was less destructive than the first day of U.S. bombing in Iraq in 2003.

The U.S.-led campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria bombarded those countries with over 120,000 bombs and missiles, the heaviest bombing anywhere in decades. U.S. military officers  told Amnesty International that the U.S. assault on Raqqa in Syria was also the heaviest artillery bombardment since the Vietnam War. 

Mosul in Iraq was the largest city that the United States and its allies reduced to rubble  in that campaign, with a pre-assault population of 1.5 million. About 138,000 houses  were damaged or destroyed by bombing and artillery, and an Iraqi Kurdish intelligence report counted at least 40,000 civilians  killed.

Raqqa, which had a population of 300,000, was  gutted even more. A  UN assessment mission  reported that 70-80% of buildings were destroyed or damaged. Syrian and Kurdish forces in Raqqacounting 4,118 civilian bodies. Many more deaths remain uncounted in the rubble of Mosul and Raqqa. Without comprehensive mortality surveys, we may never know what fraction of the actual death toll these numbers represent.

The Pentagon promised to review its policies on civilian casualties in the wake of these massacres, and commissioned the Rand Corporation to conduct  a study  titled, “Understanding Civilian Harm in Raqqa and Its Implications For Future Conflicts,” which has now been made public. 

Even as the world recoils from the shocking violence in Ukraine, the premise of the Rand Corp study is that U.S. forces will continue to wage wars that involve devastating bombardments of cities and populated areas, and that they must therefore try to understand how they can do so without killing quite so many civilians.

The study runs over 100 pages, but it never comes to grips with the central problem, which is the inevitably devastating and deadly impacts of firing explosive weapons into inhabited urban areas like Mosul in Iraq, Raqqa in Syria, Mariupol in Ukraine, Sanaa in Yemen or Gaza in Palestine.  

The development of “precision weapons” has demonstrably failed to prevent these massacres. The United States unveiled its new “smart bombs” during the First Gulf War in 1990-1991. But they in fact comprised  only 7%  of the 88,000 tons of bombs it dropped on Iraq, reducing “a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society” to “a pre-industrial age nation” according to a UN survey . 

Instead of publishing actual data on the accuracy of these weapons, the Pentagon has maintained a sophisticated propaganda campaign to convey the impression that they are 100% accurate and can strike a target like a house or apartment building without harming civilians in the surrounding area. 

However, during the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003, Rob Hewson, the editor of an arms trade journal that reviews the performance of air-launched weapons, estimated that 20 to 25%  of U.S. “precision” weapons missed their targets. 

Even when they do hit their target, these weapons do not perform like space weapons in a video game. The most commonly used bombs in the U.S. arsenal are 500 lb bombs, with an explosive charge of 89 kilos of Tritonal. According to UN safety data, the blast alone from that explosive charge is 100% lethal up to a radius of 10 meters, and will break every window within 100 meters. 

That is just the blast effect. Deaths and horrific injuries are also caused by collapsing buildings and flying shrapnel and debris – concrete, metal, glass, wood etc. 

A strike is considered accurate if it lands within a “circular error probable,” usually 10 meters around the object being targeted. So in an urban area, if you take into account the “circular error probable,” the blast radius, flying debris and collapsing buildings, even a strike assessed as “accurate” is very likely to kill and injure civilians. 

U.S. officials draw a moral distinction between this “unintentional” killing and the “deliberate” killing of civilians by terrorists. But the late historian Howard Zinn challenged this distinction in letter  to the New York Times in 2007. He wrote,

“These words are misleading because they assume an action is either ‘deliberate’ or ‘unintentional.’ There is something in between, for which the word is ‘inevitable.’ If you engage in an action, like aerial bombing, in which you cannot possibly distinguish between combatants and civilians (as a former Air Force bombardier, I will attest to that), the deaths of civilians are inevitable, even if not ‘intentional.’ 

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

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Does that difference exonerate you morally? The terrorism of the suicide bomber and the terrorism of aerial bombardment are indeed morally equivalent. To say otherwise (as either side might) is to give one moral superiority over the other, and thus serve to perpetuate the horrors of our time.”

Americans are rightfully horrified when they see civilians killed by Russian bombardment in Ukraine, but they are generally not quite so horrified, and more likely to accept official justifications, when they hear that civilians are killed by U.S. forces or American weapons in Iraq, Syria, Yemen or Gaza. The Western corporate media play a key role in this, by showing us corpses in Ukraine and the wails of their loved ones, but shielding us from equally disturbing images of people killed by U.S. or allied forces.

While Western leaders are demanding that Russia be held accountable for war crimes, they have raised no such clamor to prosecute U.S. officials. Yet during the U.S. military occupation of Iraq, both the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the UN Assistance Mission to Iraq (UNAMI) documented persistent and systematic violations of the Geneva Conventions by U.S. forces, including of the 1949 Fourth Geneva Convention that protects civilians from the impacts of war and military occupation.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and human rights groups  documented systematic abuse and torture of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan, including cases in which U.S. troops tortured prisoners to death. 

Although torture was approved by U.S. officials all the way up to the White House, no officer above the rank of major was ever held accountable for a torture death in Afghanistan or Iraq. The harshest punishment handed down for torturing a prisoner to death was a five-month jail sentence, although that is a capital offense under the U.S. War Crimes Act.  

In a 2007 human rights report  that described widespread killing of civilians by U.S. occupation forces, UNAMI wrote, “Customary international humanitarian law demands that, as much as possible, military objectives must not be located within areas densely populated by civilians. The presence of individual combatants among a great number of civilians does not alter the civilian character of an area.” 

The report demanded “that all credible allegations of unlawful killings be thoroughly, promptly and impartially investigated, and appropriate action taken against military personnel found to have used excessive or indiscriminate force.”

Instead of investigating, the U.S. has actively covered up its war crimes. A tragic example  is the 2019 massacre in the Syrian town of Baghuz, where a special U.S. military operations unit dropped massive bombs on a group of mainly women and children, killing about 70. The military not only failed to acknowledge the botched attack but even bulldozed the blast site to cover it up. Only after a New York Times exposé  years later did the military even admit that the strike took place.  

So it is ironic to hear President Biden call for President Putin to face a war crimes trial, when the United States covers up its own crimes, fails to hold its own senior officials accountable for war crimes and still rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In 2020, Donald Trump went so far as to impose U.S. sanctions on the most senior ICC prosecutors for investigating U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan.

The Rand study repeatedly claims that U.S. forces have “a deeply ingrained commitment to the law of war.” But the destruction of Mosul, Raqqa and other cities and the history of U.S. disdain for the UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions and international courts tell a very different story.

We agree with the Rand report’s conclusion that, “DoD’s weak institutional learning for civilian harm issues meant that past lessons went unheeded, increasing the risks to civilians in Raqqa.” However, we take issue with the study’s failure to recognize that many of the glaring contradictions it documents are consequences of the fundamentally criminal nature of this entire operation, under the Fourth Geneva Convention and the existing laws of war. 

We reject the whole premise of this study, that U.S. forces should continue to conduct urban bombardments that inevitably kill thousands of civilians, and must therefore learn from this experience so that they will kill and maim fewer civilians the next time they destroy a city like Raqqa or Mosul.

The ugly truth behind these U.S. massacres is that the impunity senior U.S. military and civilian officials have enjoyed for past war crimes encouraged them to believe they could get away with bombing cities in Iraq and Syria to rubble, inevitably killing tens of thousands of civilians. 

They have so far been proven right, but U.S. contempt for international law and the failure of the global community to hold the United States to account are destroying the very “rules-based order” of international law that U.S. and Western leaders claim to cherish. 

As we call urgently for a ceasefire, for peace and for accountability for war crimes in Ukraine, we should say “Never Again!” to the bombardment of cities and civilian areas, whether they are in Syria, Ukraine, Yemen, Iran or anywhere else, and whether the aggressor is Russia, the United States, Israel or Saudi Arabia.

And we should never forget that the supreme war crime is war itself, the crime of aggression, because, as the judges declared at Nuremberg, it “contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” It is easy to point fingers at others, but we will not stop war until we force our own leaders to live up to the principle spelled out  by Supreme Court Justice and Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Jackson:

“If certain acts in violation of treaties are crimes, they are crimes whether the United States does them or whether Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us.”

Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. 

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.  

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, global

Transformative Peace Initiatives through TOCfE Tools

… EDUCATION FOR PEACE …

Special to CPNN from Nancy Oley

Community leaders from the United States, Singapore, Myanmar and Somalia reported on their ongoing peace projects in a session entitled “Transformative Peace Initiatives through TOCfE Tools” at the virtual TOCfE International Symposium on February 26, 2022. Presentations of the four speakers are summarized below.

Kathy Suerken is a Rotarian, President of Theory of Constraints for Education, Inc. (TOCfE) and organizer of the TOCfE International Symposium. Founded by the late Israeli physicist Eliyahu Goldratt, TOCfE is dedicated to the application of the Theory of Constraints (TOC) to education. Suerken argues that peace is not a zero-sum game in which “I win, and you lose;” it is a process. The tools and strategies of TOC are the means by which we develop a “win-win” mindset and find “win-win” solutions to conflicts, assuring that no one is harmed. Even young children have used the simple TOC thinking and communication tools to resolve conflicts and become peacemakers on the playground and in their classrooms. TOCfE is currently active in 23 countries and six continents.

The Rotary Peace Fellowship Program is a program designed for community leaders who have experience in and are committed to international peace and development. Fellows are offered financial support and are trained at international Rotary Peace Centers to carry out projects promoting peace around the world as they pursue a master’s degree or Professional Development Certificate. There are currently 1,300 Fellows working in 115 countries. Fellowships are awarded through local Rotary Clubs.

Two Peace fellows whose work is described below are using the graphical tools of TOC to prevent and resolve conflicts (win-win solutions), to logically analyze cause-effect relationships, to analyze and sequence the steps needed to achieve a goal, and to create systemic change.


Christina Cheng, Singapore Director of TOC for Education and a Rotary Peace Fellow, noted that the cost of conflict and violence is 10% of the world’s GDP or about $5 per person. Given that 9% of the world lives on less than $1.90 per day, a 3% reduction in conflict spending could fund the entire global food aid fund. Countries that ranked high on the 2021 Global Peace Index based on their safety and security, domestic and international conflict, and militarization, also ranked high on the World Happiness Report (2021) that measures life evaluations, as well as positive and negative emotions. Happiness is correlated with a sense of security, and security is correlated with physical peace. However, countries ranking high on happiness are also among the highest users of anti-depressants, suggesting that the absence of physical conflict/ war or “negative peace” is not sufficient. For a society to have “positive peace” – to be free from stress, anxiety, depression, and unresolved personal conflicts – mindsets, attitudes, systems and structures must be changed. Studies show that training in the areas of conflict resolution and problem-solving can reduce the incidence of depression in youth. So why, then, is so little time and money spent on teaching these skills in school? TOCfE provides the tools for people of all ages, races, religions, genders and cultures to analyze problems and to resolve conflicts logically without blame or anger, producing more harmonious and peaceful individuals, families and communities.

In this regard, an important application of TOC tools has been with repeat offenders. TOCfE training helps inmates recognize their negative thinking patterns by identifying the root cause of their behavior and uncovering mistaken assumptions that have led them into a downward spiral. Simple TOC peace tools have also been taught to men and women in halfway houses, military prisons, and drug rehabilitation centers.
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Question for this article:

Mediation as a tool for nonviolence and culture of peace

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Pastor Fidy Sung lang Len is Head of the Women’s Department and Christian Education Department of the Olive Baptist Church, a Committee Member in the Hakha Baptist Association (HBA) Women’s Division, a Committee Member in the HBA CE Department, and a Committee Member in the Cultural Department of Chin Association for Christian Communication.  Collectively, these groups touch roughly 35, 000 women/girls and 15, 000 children from the Hakha Chin community. According to Len, the Chin people are the smallest, poorest, and least educated minority group in war-torn Myanmar, with gender inequality, violence and abuse deeply rooted in their culture and identity.

Len has used TOC thinking process tools to help empower Chin women, despite the cultural, religious, and political obstacles to doing so. The cloud  tool was used to resolve conflicts. In Len’s work there is a conflict between the desire/want to speak out against gender inequality and the desire/want to not speak out. Each of these alternative “wants” is necessary to fulfill its associated “need”— to help others and improve the situation on the one hand, and to avoid further conflict and unhappiness on the other. The overarching goal, to have a happy and satisfying life, can be achieved by fulfilling both needs. By logically examining the assumptions underlying the suggested causal connections between wants and needs, one can find ways to satisfy the needs and provide a “win-win” solution to the conflict. Len’s analysis suggested a number of steps to be taken, among them: partner with international non-governmental organizations with knowledge of how to reduce gender inequality, work for equal education, introduce concepts of gender equity into the early curriculum, work with church leaders to correct misunderstanding of biblical teachings about gender, always include men’s voices in the discussion, speak to men with respect and sensitivity to their fears, work with respected male leaders to champion women’s equity, and emphasize that gender equity benefits both women and men.


Sharmarke Yusuf, Rotary Peace Fellow, Certified TOC Facilitator and TOC Country Director, noted that Somalia’s two-decades long armed conflict and civil war has had a psychological impact on the population, and that to be successful, any educational approach must promote inclusivity, peace, respect, non-violence and avoid blaming others. Toward this end, local teachers learned TOC critical thinking and communication tools to empower youth with coping and decision-making skills, self-understanding, and the psychological support they need to resist being manipulated by others.

As one example, Yusuf noted that early marriage prevents young Somalis, especially women, from attaining their educational goals. Using the graphical TOC cloud tool, a young couple came to understand their common goal (a happy family together), what each person needed (not to lose the relationship/continue in school), and how their wants conflicted (marry now vs. not marry now). By critically examining the assumptions underlying their conflict, they came to recognize that their common goal would be easily met if they both continued their education, a “win-win” solution.

Yusuf also outlined his efforts to prevent the radicalization of incarcerated youth using TOC tools to change the systemic factors contributing to incarceration and destructive post-release behaviors. He analyzed “what to change,” “what to change to,” and “how to cause the change.” His ongoing study includes 10 female and 10 male youth 18-32 who are school dropouts, unemployed and/or involved in conflict—- a population very vulnerable to being used for fueling conflicts, radicalization and extremist violence. The goal of the project is to engage and empower the participants to be a positive force for transformation and peace through: training in TOC communication, thinking and conflict resolution tools; “positive peace” education; employment skill building; and community volunteer activities. The number of young people participating in the interventions and their attitudes before and after the interventions are being measured. At the end of the study, he will assess participants’ integration into their community, their ability to think critically, and their success at making changes in their lives, i.e., to be agents of peace and productive community members.

(Comments on this topic may be sent to coordinator. Please indicate if you wish them to be published with this article and/or forwarded to its author.)

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, global

World Theatre Day March 27

… EDUCATION FOR PEACE …

From the website of the International Theatre Institute

World Theatre Day (WTD) was created by the International Theatre Institute (ITI) and was celebrated for the first time on 27 March 1962, the date of the opening of the “Theatre of Nations” season in Paris. Ever since, each year on that date, World Theatre Day is celebrated on a global scale.

The goals of World Theatre Day, as with International Dance Day are

° To promote the art form across the world.

° To make people aware of the value of the art form.

° To enable the dance and theatre communities to promote their work on a broad scale so that opinion leaders are aware of the value of these forms and support them.

° To enjoy the art form for its own sake.

One of the most important actions for the WTD is the circulation of the World Theatre Day International Message through which, at the invitation of the ITI, a figure of world stature shares her or his reflections on the theme of Theatre and a Culture of Peace. The first World Theatre Day International Message was written by Jean Cocteau. The message is translated into different languages and distributed widely. See www.world-theatre-day.org for more information and ideas about how to mark World Theatre Day.

Letter to the Members and Friends of ITI – a Statement for Peace and a Constructive Dialogue

Dear members and friends of the International Theatre Institute, dear fellow human beings

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Question for this article:

The theatre, How can it contribute to the culture of peace?

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In 1948, with much of Europe and the wider world in ruins at the aftermath of World War II, it was the great cultural institutions of the time that pulled the civilization out of the mire. The ITI has been founded for using the performing arts for mutual understanding and peace.

Now, the world is upside again and the International Theatre Institute must stand again as a beacon of peace and unity for its members, the performing arts, and the world as a whole.

This letter sets forth the ITI’s stance on the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the ensuing humanitarian crisis.

First, we wish all the members and friends of ITI, and the people who suffer, are safe. We ardently hope for a speedy ceasefire, and for the guns to fall silent. We wish that governments, the artists and the people are building up a respectful dialogue to solve the situation.

The Preamble to the Constitution of UNESCO declares that “since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” Since its inception, ITI has followed this tenet of UNESCO,and uses education and culture to inform, inspire and engage people everywhere to foster understanding and respect for each other. Through the international exchange of knowledge and practice in the performing arts, ITI intends to deepen mutual understanding and increase creative cooperation between all people of the performing arts.

ITI is a global alliance of people from all ethnicities, nationalities, and religious backgrounds; the commitment to the humanitarian path must always be fostered. Our extension of friendship and cultural understanding through the performing arts is needed now, more than ever. We must double our efforts to make sure all are included in our alliance, regardless of the country they hail from.

In times of war and political upheaval, it is the people who suffer most. We must work to alleviate this. As such, ITI will never punish or exclude members based on the decisions of their government. Our purpose is to overcome divisions, and to keep the lines of communication wide open between all peoples of the world.

We stand for peace and freedom!!!

Mohamed Saif Al-Afklam, President of International Theatre Institute

Tobias Biancone, Director General of ITI

3 March 2022

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, global, United Nations,

UN Women Executive Director re-ignites ambition for Generation Equality by sharing her bold vision for the future at CSW66

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY .

An article from Forum Generation Equality

On 16 March, at a high-level dialogue against the backdrop of the 66th Session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW66), UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous gathered with Action Coalition Leaders and global Generation Equality actors to reflect on the concrete progress made since the Generation Equality Forum in Paris and to share her bold vision to ensure future success.


UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous

“It is time to look towards the future and the journey ahead of us to translate the promises of Generation Equality into implementation and impact in the lives of women and girls in all their diversity around the world. We must not lose focus and the sense of urgency and partnerships that characterized the Generation Equality Forum,” said Ms. Bahous.

“You can count on my full engagement and UN Women’s leadership and support as we march forward together,” she added, re-iterating her firm commitment to prioritize action on the key next steps of the Generation Equality journey. Ms. Bahous outlined three priorities for the way forward: accountability for existing commitments and support for implementation; generating new commitments; and continuing to promote the multistakeholder and intergenerational nature of the Generation Equality, as an example of inclusive multilateralism.

The flagship event marked the culmination of a 24-hour-long Generation Equality mobilization at CSW66, filled with over thirty events led by partners around the world. The diverse events convened under the 24-hour umbrella – including dynamic sessions on the Action Coalitions, Global Alliance for Care, and the Compact on Women, Peace and Security and Humanitarian Action as well as events on strengthening partner engagement in Generation Equality co-convened by the adolescent girl groups together with Member States and others – demonstrated that the momentum of the Generation Equality agenda continues to build globally and become increasingly rooted locally.

Building ambition for Generation Equality

For the flagship event culminating the 24-hour arc, actors who have been heavily involved throughout the Generation Equality process joined Executive Director Sima Bahous in reflecting on the vision for the future, sharing their ambition for the coming years.

Acknowledging Ms. Bahous’s commitment to supporting the continuous and meaningful engagement of young people and adolescent girls, Anika Jane Dorothy, member of the former Generation Equality Youth Task Force, emphasized that the youth will continue “to mobilize, to organize and to challenge the status quo” throughout the Generation Equality journey ahead.

Monica Aleman, Senior Programme Officer at the Ford Foundation pointed to the timeliness of Generation Equality, explaining that in the current global landscape, global engagement and cooperation on gender equality action through UN structures is critical. “We cannot do this work on our own. We have to find ways to coordinate and work with others,” Aleman emphasized.

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Questions for this article

Does the UN advance equality for women?

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“We have a long voyage ahead of us to ensure a strong and permanent change,” added Élisabeth Moreno, Minister for Gender Equality, Diversity and Equal Opportunities for the Government of France. “We must continue working in a collaborative manner; only then will we achieve real progress. I strongly believe that together, we all can.”

Innovation and action

Shifting focus from the future vision to concrete progress on the ground, Action Coalition Leaders gave positive updates on the implementation of commitments made at the Generation Equality Forum in Paris.

Sofia Sprechmann Sineiro, Secretary-General of CARE International, outlined CARE’s strategy to support at least an additional 10 million women and girls to gain control over their finances and access opportunities through either creating or strengthening existing savings and loans associations. The initiative is currently being implemented across 10 African countries as a core component of CARE’s commitment as a Leader of the Action Coalition on Economic Justice and Rights.

Over 95 partners have stepped up as Leaders of the Action Coalitions and are in the process of implementing bold commitments for women and girls. Together with the Commitment Makers they have made over 2,000 commitments to drive concrete results by 2026, with 1,000 of these commitments having been made since the Forum in Paris.

Launching tools to drive accountability and progress

Ensuring transparency and mutual accountability for commitments is essential for achieving and measuring progress. The online Action Coalitions Commitments Dashboard that was unveiled at the event will play a key role in establishing this.

The Dashboard makes all commitments accessible, searchable, and visible to all. It therefore represents a key building block of the Accountability Framework that will monitor and measure progress for the next 5-years.

“If we are to truly achieve transformative change it means not only giving a seat at the table, but placing the right tools and resources in the hands of women, girls and gender-diverse people,” said Jeevika Shiv, National Youth Gender Activist for UN Women in India and MAKAAM Mahila Kisan Adhikaar Manch, as she outlined the progress made on the Accountability Framework to date.

The Framework is being developed collaboratively with a group of Action Coalition leaders and will be formally launched at the upcoming UN General Assembly in September.

“Onwards, together!”

The energizing dialogue highlighted the opportunities that the Generation Equality 5-year journey holds as an accelerator for fulfilling the promises of SDG-5 and the overall 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development through strengthened partnerships and multilateral cooperation.

In her closing remarks, Executive Director Sima Bahous reflected on the shared sense of urgency to drive progress that clearly emerged throughout the discussion and underscored the imperative of fully leveraging the Generation Equality platform as a vehicle to do so.

Rounding off the event with a message of solidarity, Moderator Maria Fernanda Espinosa, Member of the GWL Voices for Change and Inclusion, said, “for those of you that have been part of this journey, and for all of those joining us now – onwards, together!”

global, United Nations, WOMEN'S EQUALITY,

March 17: The struggle for free flow of information about the Russian war against Ukraine

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article by CPNN

Information sources about the Russian war against Ukraine are being blocked by both Russia and the West which makes the situation quite complicated. This is illustrated by many events today (March 17).


Photo of girl arrested for demonstrating in Russia against the war. Copyright Valya Egorshin/NurPhoto/picture alliance as published by Deutsche Welle

As of today, many of the sources are no longer available about opposition to the war in Russia as listed in the Google Doc of March 13. We may assume they have been blocked or withdrawn under threats by Russian authorities. We have been able to find alternative sources for 13 of them, including backup copies of sources that were blocked after March 13. The Statement of Russian peace supporters and the open letter of Russian cultural figures continue to be republished by CPNN but are no longer available from the source, Echo of Moscow, because the website has been blocked by the Russian authorities. Open letters from Russian scientists and from Russian mathematicians are republished in CPNN but no longer available from the source, TRV-Science, presumably withdrawn because of legal pressure.

Russian authorities have not (yet) blocked the opposition comments republished in CPNN from Lukoil, the largest private company in Russia, or from the leading Russian chess players republished in CPNN from championat, the Russian chess website.

An article published recently by CPNN describes how Russians are getting around censorship by using social networks, encrypted messaging and VPN servers.  For those of us not yet familiar with VPN, it stands for Virtual Private Networks. As described on the website of cybernews, while there are many ways that authorities can block VPNs, there are even more ways to bypass their blocking.

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Questions related to this article:
 
Can the peace movement help stop the war in the Ukraine?

How can we be sure to get news about peace demonstrations?

Free flow of information, How is it important for a culture of peace?

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An article yesterday in Deutsche Welle describes how Russians are taking risks to express their opposition in the face of police action that is sometimes even ridiculous. A video went viral on social media last week, showing a woman being arrested by the Russian police for holding up a small piece of paper that reads “two words.” The phrase “two words” (“два слова” in Russian) seems to hint at the forbidden slogan “no to war” (or “нет войне” in Russian). And Russian police have arrested demonstrators who protest with blank signs. A video that receive millions of views on social media, showed a woman holding a blank sign among a group of people before police officers approached her and escorted her away from the crowd. In another case, the pilot on an internal Russian flight made the following announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, here is your captain speaking. Welcome to Antalya. Thank you for flying with “Pobeda”. Also, from me personally: the war with Ukraine is a crime…”.

Two women in Canada have launched a initiative for people to telephone friends in Russia to tell them the news that is being blocked from their television reports. They are even furnished telephone numbers if someone can speak Russian and wants to call Russians whose telephone numbers have been randomly selected.

An event that reminds one of the Black Panthers who said they fought on the wrong side in Vietnam, CNN has published information from videos of interviews with Russian soldiers captured (or perhaps in some cases deserted?) in Ukraine and who go so far as to say they will return to Russia and struggle against Putin.

Finally, with regard to Russia, we recommend a very valuable analysis from the Financial Times that describes the small circle of Putin’s advisors that influence his information and decisions.

While the above information is concentrated on Russian censureship, we should not forget, as described in CPNN on January 18, that the details of Putin’s proposals for peace treaties with the West that could have prevented the war were suppressed by the Western media and only available after diligent research.

What we are seeing is really a case of cyber-warfare, as it may be said that the control of information becomes more and more an arm of the culture of war.

Europe, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, global, ,

Historic day in the campaign to beat plastic pollution: Nations commit to develop a legally binding agreement

. . SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT . .

A press release from the United Nations Environment Program

Nairobi, 02 March 2022 – Heads of State, Ministers of environment and other representatives from 175 nations endorsed a historic resolution at the UN Environment Assembly (UNEA-5) today in Nairobi to End Plastic Pollution and forge an international legally binding agreement by 2024. The resolution addresses the full lifecycle of plastic, including its production, design and disposal.


Scene from video of UNEP meeting

“Against the backdrop of geopolitical turmoil, the UN Environment Assembly shows multilateral cooperation at its best,” said the President of UNEA-5 and Norway’s Minister for Climate and the Environment, Espen Barth Eide. “Plastic pollution has grown into an epidemic. With today’s resolution we are officially on track for a cure.” 

The resolution, based on three initial draft resolutions from various nations, establishes an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), which will begin its work in 2022, with the ambition of completing a draft global legally binding agreement by the end of 2024. It is expected to present a legally binding instrument, which would reflect diverse alternatives to address the full lifecycle of plastics, the design of reusable and recyclable products and materials, and the need for enhanced international collaboration to facilitate access to technology, capacity building and scientific and technical cooperation.

The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) will convene a forum by the end of 2022 that is open to all stakeholders in conjunction with the first session of the INC, to share knowledge and best practices in different parts of the world. It will facilitate open discussions and ensure they are informed by science, reporting on progress throughout the next two years. Finally, upon completion of the INC’s work, UNEP will convene a diplomatic conference to adopt its outcome and open it for signatures.

“Today marks a triumph by planet earth over single-use plastics. This is the most significant environmental multilateral deal since the Paris accord. It is an insurance policy for this generation and future ones, so they may live with plastic and not be doomed by it.” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP.

“Let it be clear that the INC’s mandate does not grant any stakeholder a two-year pause. In parallel to negotiations over an international binding agreement, UNEP will work with any willing government and business across the value chain to shift away from single-use plastics, as well as to mobilise private finance and remove barriers to investments in research and in a new circular economy,” Andersen added.

Plastic production soared from 2 million tonnes in 1950 to 348 million tonnes in 2017, becoming a global industry valued at US$522.6 billion, and it is expected to double in capacity by 2040. The impacts of plastic production and pollution on the triple planetary crisis of climate change, nature loss and pollution are a catastrophe in the making:

Exposure to plastics can harm human health, potentially affecting fertility, hormonal, metabolic and neurological activity , and open burning of plastics contributes to air pollution .

By 2050 greenhouse gas emissions associated with plastic production, use and disposal would account for 15 per cent of allowed emissions, under the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5°C (34.7°F).

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(Click here for the article in French or here for the article in Spanish

Question for this article:

If we can connect up the planet through Internet, can’t we agree to preserve the planet?

(Article continued from the left column)

More than 800 marine and coastal species are affected by this pollution through ingestion, entanglement, and other dangers.

Some 11 million tonnes of plastic waste flow annually into oceans. This may triple by 2040.

A shift to a circular economy can reduce the volume of plastics entering oceans by over 80 per cent by 2040; reduce virgin plastic production by 55 per cent; save governments US$70 billion by 2040; reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 25 per cent; and create 700,000 additional jobs – mainly in the global south.

The historic resolution, titled “End Plastic Pollution: Towards an internationally legally binding instrument” was adopted with the conclusion of the three-day UNEA-5.2  meeting, attended by more than 3,400 in-person and 1,500 online participants from 175 UN Member States, including 79 ministers and 17 high-level officials.

The Assembly will be followed by “UNEP@50,” a two-day Special Session of the Assembly marking UNEP’s 50th anniversary where Member States are expected to address how to build a resilient and inclusive post-pandemic world.

NOTES TO EDITORS

Quote from the Government of Japan: “The resolution will clearly take us towards a future with no plastic pollution, including in the marine environment,” said Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, Japan’s Environment Minister, whose draft resolution contributed to the final resolution. “United, we can make it happen. Together, let us go forward as we start the negotiations towards a better future with no plastic pollution.”

Quote from the Government of Peru: “We appreciate the support received from the various countries during this negotiation process,” said Modesto Montoya, Peru’s Minister of Environment, whose draft resolution, proposed with the Government of Rwanda, contributed to the final resolution. “Peru will promote a new agreement that prevents and reduces plastic pollution, promotes a circular economy and addresses the full life cycle of plastics.”

Quote from the Government of Rwanda: “The world has come together act against plastic pollution – a serious threat to our planet. International partnerships will be crucial in tackling a problem that affects all of us, and the progress made at UNEA reflects this spirit of collaboration,” said Dr Jeanne d’Arc Mujawamariya, Rwanda’s Minister of Environment. “We look forward to working with the INC and are optimistic about the opportunity to create a legally binding treaty as a framework for national ambition-setting, monitoring, investment, and knowledge transfer to end plastic pollution.”

The full text of the adopted resolution

UNEP@50: A time to reflect on the past and envision the future

The 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden, was the first-ever UN conference with the word “environment” in its title. The creation of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) was one of the most visible outcomes of this conference of many firsts. UNEP was created quite simply to be the environmental conscience of the UN and the world. Activities taking place through 2022 will look at significant progress made as well as what’s ahead in decades to come.

About the UN Environment Programme (UNEP )

UNEP is the leading global voice on the environment. It provides leadership and encourages partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.

For more information, please contact:

Keisha Rukikaire, Head of News & Media, UN Environment Programme – rukikaire@un.org/


Moses Osani, Media Officer, UN Environment Programme – moses.osani@un.org/
 

global, SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT, United Nations,

Abolition 2000 Member organizations oppose Russian invasion of Ukraine

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article from Abolition 2000

Many Abolition 2000 Member organizations and networks have released statements opposing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Included below are links to some of these. A number of the statements have highlighted that the invasion is not only an act of aggression that violates the rights of Ukraine and is inflicting suffering on its people, but also that it threatens to expand to regional war, increases nuclear tensions and raises the risk of nuclear war by accident, crisis escalation or miscalculation.


Photo: Volodymyr Melnyk – Ukraine 123RF

There were also many statements released by Abolition 2000 members prior to the invasion (not included here) calling for diplomacy to resolve the conflict and prevent an outbreak of war. And there are many statements opposing the war by Russian civil society organizations, as well as from the main opposition party in Russia Yabloko party), municipal legislators, musicians, internationally recognized filmmakers, TV hosts, actors, sportspeople, and businesspeople. Click here to see a collection of these in Russian and English.

And there is an international appeal which everyone is invited to endorse Do NOT use nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict ; which was launched by Tadatoshi Akiba, former Mayor of Hiroshima and fromer President of Mayors for Peace, an affiliated network of Abolition 2000.

International organizations/networks

Youth Fusion (Youth Network of Abolition 2000): Youth Fusion’s statement on the current situation in Ukraine.
Condemns Russia’s military attack, notes increased nuclear tensions from Putin’s nuclear-capable missile test, and reminds the P5 of their statement that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.’

IALANA: Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: An Illegal War of Aggression
Highlights that Russia’s invasion is an illegal act of aggression, that leaders of an aggressor state may be individually responsible for the crime of aggression which is one of the core crimes set out in the Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court, and that Putin’s thinly veiled references to resort to nuclear weapons should other states intervene militarily are unlawful threats of force under the UN Charter and according to the 1996 International Court of Justice Advisory Opinion on nuclear weapons.

World Future Council. World Future Council condemns acts of aggression and calls for restoration of peace and international law

Condemns Russian invasion as illegal, highlights that President Putin has committed a Crime Against Peace for which he is personally accountable as Head of State, calls for non-military means to reverse the aggression as outlined in Articles 33-41 of the UN Charter, warns of the risk of regional war and nuclear war, and supports Russians, Ukrainians and others opposing the war and calling for peace.

World Federalist Movement: Statement on Ukraine.
Calls for adherence to international law as underscored in Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter and to ensure the safety and protection of all civilians.

United Religions Initiative. A Reflection on Ukraine from United Religions Initiative

Expresses concern for the he Ukrainian people, the Russian people – their families, their children, and their communities, noting that war hurts all people, and has destructive ramifications on nature and our environment.

International Peace Bureau. IPB Statement on Ukraine
Calls for a comprehensive ceasefire, the withdrawal of all troops and a return to the negotiating table. Notes that there is no military solution, only a political solution based on the principles of common security.

Parliamentarians for Global Action: PGA firmly condemns the aggressive war launched by the Russian Federation against Ukraine

Calls the invasion an illegal war of agression by the Russian Federation which involves individual criminal responsibility of the Russian leaders, and notes that this responsibility also extends the the eladers of Belarus who are complicit in the invasion. Notes that the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC) is applicable in the context of the conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine, which is a continuum from the situation of unlawful occupation of Donbass and of the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea regarding which Ukraine has accepted the jurisdiction of the ICC.Calls for a range of measures whihc could be taken to address the situation.

National/regional organizations and affiliated networks

Peace Action USA. Peace Action Condemns Russia’s Invasion Into Ukraine
Calls for an immediate and comprehensive ceasefire, the withdrawal of all troops, and a return as soon as possible to diplomatic negotiations. Calls on the US government to contribute generously to humanitarian aid programs to support displaced persons and other victims of this war.

Mayors for Peace European Section. Statement on the War in Ukraine
Urges the Russian government and perpetrators of the current escalation and territorial agression in Ukraine to put an end to hostilities, respect international law and commit to reinvigorated diplomatic efforts. Expresses solidarity with all Mayors, local governments and residents who have been suffering and will now suffer more from this war. Recalls the risk of a nuclear escalation inherent in the conflict, which would result in catastrophic humanitarian consequences not only for our shared continent but the whole world.

Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament, Japan Section. Statement at Russia’s Aggression against Ukraine.

Condemns Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Putin’s threats to possibly use nuclear weapons and his actions of putting the Russian nuclear forces on high alert. The statement laments the Russian violation of the Budapest memorandum which will have serious implications for nuclear non-proliferation.

PNND Japan Statement (English, Japanese).

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Questions related to this article:
 
Can the peace movement help stop the war in the Ukraine?

How can we be sure to get news about peace demonstrations?

(Continued from left column)

People for Nuclear Disarmament (Australia). Time for de-escalation not escalation as Putin puts nuclear forces on highest alert.

Notes the move by President Putin to put Russian nuclear forces on highest alert. Outlines how this might lead to nuclear war by miscalculation, malfunction, malware or further escalation. Calls on all nuclear weapon states to reduce risks of nuclear war by announcing no-first-use policies.

Gensuikyo (Japan). Letter of Protest to President Putin

Opposes the invasion as a criminal offence and against the UN Charter. Expresses concern at Russian threats to use nuclear weapons and recalls the P5 statement that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.

Peoples Solidarity for Participatory Democracy and 400 other South Korean NGOs (Republic of Korea). Stop the War in Ukraine! Give Peace a Chance!
Calls on Russia to stop the war and withdraw its troops. Calls on the international community to provide humanitarian support for Ukraine. Notes that all countries, including Russia and Ukraine, have interests related to security assurance, but that these interests should be achieved only by peaceful means and through diplomacy.

Project Ploughshares (Canada). Statement on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine
Calls for an immediate cease to Russian military operations in Ukraine, the unequivocally rejection by all nuclear-armed states of the threat or use of nuclear weapons, pursuit of diplomatic solutions, and the provision of humanitarian assistance by the international community.

Pax Christi USA. Statement on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine
States that the invasion of Ukraine is a direct violation of international law, and that war is always a defeat for humanity. Expresses concern about the implied threat of the use of nuclear weapons in the conflict. Calls on the U.S. Catholic community to refuse to beat the drums of war and to not support efforts to justify U.S. or NATO military action nor increase the flow of arms into the conflict. Announces Day of Prayer and Fasting for Peace in the Ukraine on March 2.

DFG-VK (German Peace Society). DFG-VK Press release Feb 24, 2022
Calls on all countries to reject Russia’s breach of international law, and the outlawing and prohibition of wars of aggression worldwide and legal consequences for those responsible. Expresses concerns at Putin’s threats to those trying to stop him that he could respond with « the likes of which have never been seen in history »;.

United Nations Association of New Zealand. UNANZ condemns Russian acts of aggression and calls for restoration of peace and international law.
Supports UN Secretary-General’s assessment that the Russian invasion “…is wrong. It is against the Charter. It is unacceptable. But it is not irreversible.” Calls on the United Nations and the international community to use all non-military means possible, particularly those outlined in Articles 33 – 41 of the UN Charter, to contain and reverse the invasion of Ukraine, and to hold President Putin criminally responsible for the act of aggression (Crime Against Peace), along with other Russian officials who are complicit.

Peace Pledge Union (UK). Peace Pledge Union condemns Russian invasion of Ukraine
Expresses solidarity with peace activists in Russiawho are challenging the actions of the Russian government and armed forces, and concern that many of them have arrested as a result. Applauds any Russian soldiers who refuse to obey orders. Affirms that militarism and war cannot be defeated with more militarism and war.

Western States Legal Foundation (USA). The Peace Movement and the Ukraine War: Where to Now?
Analyzes Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an illegal war of aggression. Calls for immediate and unconditional negotiations to end hostilities. Discusses what the war has revealed about the realities of nuclear arsenals and their uses. To address the deeper issues, calls for a global peace movement aligned with no states. Emphasizes the need to develop a better understanding of the root causes of resurgent authoritarian nationalisms, arms racing, and war.

European No to War – No to NATO network. No to nuclear war
Condemns the Russian military aggression against Ukraine, calls for the bombing to stop immediately, the withdrawal of all troops and a return to the negotiating table. Promotes common security based on the principles of the Helsinki Final Act, and an end to NATO enlargement.

Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India). Statement on Ukraine
Calls for an immediate end to the invasion and for wide-ranging peace talks covering all the relevant issues—including security guarantees for the Russian Federation, the freedom and rights of the people of Ukraine which includes the legitimate concerns of the Russian-speaking regions in Ukraine. Expresses concerns about the threats of nuclear weapons use, and about radiation from Chernobyl and possible military damage to other nuclear reactors in Ukraine.

Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. VOW Statement on Ukraine
VOW condemns all acts of war and military aggression in Ukraine and denounces any threats to use nuclear weapons. VOW urgently calls for a comprehensive ceasefire in the region, for the Government of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to immediately demilitarize and de-escalate the conflict, and to resume multilateral diplomatic negotiations based on the United Nations Charter in order to ensure lasting peace and security in Ukraine, Russia, and Eastern Europe

Quaker Peace and Service (UK). Quakers in Britain condemn attack and call for end to fighting
Condemns the Russian invasion and calls for a cessation of fighting and for all parties to observe international law, including international humanitarian law. Calls for humanitarian corridors allowing civilians to flee the fighting, and for efforts to engage in dialogue and preparing the ground for the return of people to their homes.

Mouvement de la Paix (France). Le Mouvement de la Paix condamne fermement les actes de guerre de la Russie
Condemns Russia’s acts of war and calls for action to say no to war. Calls for non-violent, political, diplomatic and negotiated solutions in the spirit of the United Nations Charter. Urges reduction in arms spending and elimination of weapons of mass destruction. Promotes common security framework in Europe as envisaged by the OSCE.

Canadian Pugwash Group (Canada). Canadian Pugwash Group Condemns the Russian Attack on Ukraine
Calls on the Russian Federation to cease all hostilities and to withdraw all its forces from the territory of Ukraine. Encourages all European countries through the OSCE to further refine a European security architecture based on the renunciation of force and resolution of disputes exclusively through peaceful means. Expresses deep concern about the indirect threat of the use of nuclear weapons invoked by the Russian President and strongly affirms that nuclear weapons should have no place in international security.

Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (USA). On the Invasion of Ukraine
Condemns the invasion of Ukraine. Holds hope that Russia will not succeed and that the wishes of Ukrainian people for peace and freedom will prevail. Includes information on ways people can give humanitatian support as well as solidarity and political support to Ukrainians in their opposition to the war.

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION, global

Puerto Rico : Educate for a Culture of Peace

. EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

An opinion piece by Dra. Matilde García Arroyo and Hilda E. Quintana in
El Vocero de Puerto Rico

In the past week we have seen many messages on social networks about the value and importance of peace. There are two messages that have impacted us and motivated us to write again about the urgent need to educate for peace. We want to share these two messages, since they invite us to reflect not only on the war in Ukraine, but on the many other wars that are taking place in the world, some not necessarily with war tanks, missiles and bullets.

One of the messages is a quote from Maria Montessori: “Everyone talks about peace, but nobody educates for peace, people educate for competition and this is the beginning of any war. When we educate to cooperate and be in solidarity with each other, that day we will be educating for peace”.

When we read the words of Montessori, we think about whether it will be possible for educational systems to begin to be modified so that we leave behind so much competition and the desire to be better than “the other”. This is not only happening among children and youth, as we see it among teachers and administrators as well. There is always that need to destroy the “other” or overshadow it so that we see ourselves better and more powerful. Do you agree with us? We leave that question for you to reflect on the quote from this great educator.

In addition, a few days later we came across a quote from Malala Yousafzai, who was shot at close range by the Taliban on her way home from school in Pakistan on October 9, 2012. This attack was in retaliation for her courageous activism for of the education of all children, and especially for that of the girls of the world who do not enjoy the same rights to education as boys. Today she is still very active fighting for peace and education.

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(Click here for the original article in Spanish.)

Question related to this article:
 
What is the best way to teach peace to children?

What is the relation between peace and education?

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These are her words that circulate through the networks these days: “If you want to end the war with another war, peace will never be achieved. The money spent on tanks, weapons and soldiers should be spent on books, pencils, schools and teachers.

Don’t you think that Malala speaks a great truth? However, today it seems that many people, not just politicians, prefer war. We see it in messages everywhere, where it is stated that “this new war” can be ended in a very simple way: by attacking the invading country. Could it be that those who are in favor of ending the war with another war do not think about the consequences of that action?

The claims for peace of many citizens in the world make us reflect on what we have failed. We fear that much begins in our homes, where competition is promoted and “you take off so I can put on” and that same message continues at school, as Montessori says. Therefore, it is imperative that we begin to reflect on our attitudes and visions about education at home and at school. We, as educators, are concerned about the role that teachers play in developing a culture of peace.

Let us remember that in 1997 the General Assembly of the United Nations Organization (UN) proclaimed the year 2000 as the Year of the Culture of Peace (MANIFESTO 2000 FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE AND NON-VIOLENCE, Encuentros-multidisciplinares.org) . To celebrate such an important occasion, a group of Nobel Prize winners drafted a manifesto that contains a series of key principles with which it is necessary for every citizen to commit himself in daily life, in the family, at work, the community, the country and the region to achieve a culture of peace. We highlight the following:

1. Practice active non-violence, rejecting violence in all its forms: physical, sexual, psychological, economic and social, in particular towards the most deprived and vulnerable such as children and adolescents.

2. Defend freedom of expression and cultural diversity, giving preference always to dialogue and listening without engaging in fanaticism, defamation and the rejection of others.

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, global

UN Women: International Women’s Day celebrates the contribution of women and girls as climate solution multipliers

. WOMEN’S EQUALITY .

A press release from UN Women

Advancing gender equality in the context of the climate crisis and disaster risk reduction is one of the greatest global challenges of the 21st century. This year’s theme for International Women’s Day (8 March), “Gender equality today for a sustainable tomorrow”, explores the ways in which women and girls are leading the charge on climate change adaptation, mitigation, and response around the world, contributing powerful leaders and change-makers to a more sustainable future for all. 

During the International Women’s Day official UN Observance, Secretary-General António Guterres emphasizes the important role of  women and girls in fighting climate change. “We need more women environment ministers, business leaders and presidents and prime ministers. They can push countries to address the climate crisis, develop green jobs and build a more just and sustainable world. We cannot emerge from the pandemic with the clock spinning backwards on gender equality.”

Women are increasingly being recognized as more vulnerable to climate change impacts than men, as they constitute the majority of the world’s poor and are more dependent on the natural resources, which climate change threatens the most. However, despite increasing evidence, there is still hesitancy in making the vital connections between gender, social equity and climate change. At the same time, progress made towards a more gender-equal world is being obstructed by multiple, interlocking and compounding crises, most recently, the ongoing aggression against Ukraine. Whatever the crisis, from conflict to climate, women and girls are affected first and worst. Without gender equality today, a sustainable future, and an equal future, remains beyond our reach.

“We have seen the impact of COVID-19 in increasing inequalities, driving poverty and violence against women and girls; and rolling back their progress in employment, health and education.  The accelerating crises of climate change and environmental degradation are disproportionately undermining the rights and wellbeing of women and girls”, said UN Women Executive Director Sima Bahous. “We have today the opportunity to put women and girls at the centre of our planning and action and to integrate gender perspectives into global and national laws and policies.  We have the opportunity to re-think, re-frame and re-allocate resources. We have the opportunity to benefit from the leadership of women and girls environmental defenders and climate activists to guide our planet’s conservation. Climate change is a threat multiplier. But women, and especially young women, are solution multipliers”.

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(Click here for a French version of this article or here for a Spanish version.)

Questions for this article

Does the UN advance equality for women?

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As exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the economic and social fallout impacted women and girls disproportionately, further challenging their ability to withstand the impacts of the climate and environment crises. The pressures of juggling work and family, coupled with school closures and job losses in female-dominated sectors meant even fewer women were participating in the workforce, with about 113 million women aged 25–54, with partners and small children, out of the workforce in 2020. 

Climate change also drives increased vulnerability to gender-based violence. Across the world, women bear a disproportionate responsibility for securing food, water and fuel, tasks that climate change makes more time-consuming and difficult. Scarcity of resources and the necessity of traveling further to obtain them may open women up to more violence including increased risk factors linked to human trafficking, child marriage or access to resources to protect them from gender-based violence.  

Women and girls are taking climate and environment action at all levels, but their voice, agency, and participation are under-supported, under-resourced, under-valued and under-recognized.

Continuing to examine the opportunities, as well as the constraints, to empower women and girls to have a voice and be equal players in decision-making related to climate change and sustainability is essential for sustainable development and greater gender equality. Solutions must integrate a gender perspective into climate, environmental and disaster risk reduction policies and programmes; promote and protect women environmental human rights defenders; build resilience of women and girls and their organizations; strengthen prevention, response and recovery from sexual and gender-based violence and improve; and invest in gender specific statistics and data to amplify the relationship between gender and climate. 

Commemoration events around the world

International Women’s Day commemoration events globally will include ministerial meetings, rallies, marches, media workshops, storytelling and content production, photo exhibits, celebrities’ engagements, and social media activations. 

UN Women offices will join the commemorations through a variety of events including inter-generational cross-thematic dialogs in Thailand, a virtual gallery  telling the stories of climate champions from Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Viet Nam, a regional over 110 Stock Exchanges  are hosting for the eighth consecutive year bell-ringing ceremonies to demonstrate their support for women’s rights and gender equality. In Abu Dhabi ADX Trading Hall, the ceremony was joined by UN Women Deputy Executive Director Anita Bhatia during her official visit to UAE.

In Photoville  in New York and at the World Expo in Dubai, the United Nations Department of Peace Operations, in collaboration with the United Nations Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, and UN Women will present the photo exhibition “In Their Hands: Women Taking Ownership of Peace”. The exhibition profiles 14 women from around the world who have mediated with armed groups, participated in peace talks, advanced political solutions and advocated for women’s rights and participation. Their stories come from the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, South Sudan, Sudan, Lebanon, Yemen and Colombia. The exhibit also profiles the local women photographers who took the photos, telling the story through their lenses.

Join the online conversation using the hashtag #IWD2022 and following @UN_Women.Download the social media package here, and for more news, assets and stories, visit UN Women’s editorial, In Focus:  International Women’s Day.

global, United Nations, WOMEN'S EQUALITY,

How the U.S. Started a Cold War with Russia and Left Ukraine to Fight It

FREE FLOW OF INFORMATION

An article by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies in the TRANSCEND Media Service

28 Feb 2022 – The defenders of Ukraine are bravely resisting Russian aggression, shaming the rest of the world and the UN Security Council for its failure to protect them. It is an encouraging sign that the Russians and Ukrainians are holding talks in Belarus that may lead to a ceasefire. All efforts must be made to bring an end to this war before the Russian war machine kills thousands more of Ukraine’s defenders and civilians, and forces hundreds of thousands more to flee.


Photo credit: CODEPINK

But there is a more insidious reality at work beneath the surface of this classic morality play, and that is the role of the United States and NATO in setting the stage for this crisis.

President Biden has called the Russian invasion “unprovoked,” but that is far from the truth. In the four days leading up to the invasion, ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) documented a dangerous increase in ceasefire violations in Eastern Ukraine, with 5,667 violations and 4,093 explosions.

Most were inside the de facto borders of the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) People’s Republics, consistent with incoming shell-fire by Ukraine government forces. With nearly 700 OSCE ceasefire monitors on the ground, it is not credible that these were all “false flag” incidents staged by separatist forces, as U.S. and British officials claimed.

Whether the shell-fire was just another escalation in the long-running civil war or the opening salvos of a new government offensive, it was certainly a provocation. But the Russian invasion has far exceeded any proportionate action to defend the DPR and LPR from those attacks, making it disproportionate and illegal.

In the larger context though, Ukraine has become an unwitting victim and proxy in the resurgent U.S. Cold War against Russia and China, in which the United States has surrounded both countries with military forces and offensive weapons, withdrawn from a whole series of arms control treaties, and refused to negotiate resolutions to rational security concerns raised by Russia.

In December 2021, after a summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, Russia submitted a draft proposal for a new mutual security treaty between Russia and NATO, with 9 articles to be negotiated. They represented a reasonable basis for a serious exchange. The most pertinent to the crisis in Ukraine was simply to agree that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a new member, which is not on the table in the foreseeable future in any case. But the Biden administration brushed off Russia’s entire proposal as a nonstarter, not even a basis for negotiations.

So why was negotiating a mutual security treaty so unacceptable that Biden was ready to risk thousands of Ukrainian lives, although not a single American life, rather than attempt to find common ground? What does that say about the relative value that Biden and his colleagues place on American versus Ukrainian lives? And what is this strange position that the United States occupies in today’s world that permits an American president to risk so many Ukrainian lives without asking Americans to share their pain and sacrifice?

The breakdown in U.S. relations with Russia and the failure of Biden’s inflexible brinkmanship precipitated this war, and yet Biden’s policy “externalizes” all the pain and suffering so that Americans can, as another wartime president once said, “go about their business” and keep shopping. America’s European allies, who must now house hundreds of thousands of refugees and face spiraling energy prices, should be wary of falling in line behind this kind of “leadership” before they, too, end up on the front line.

At the end of the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s Eastern European counterpart, was dissolved, and NATO should have been as well, since it had achieved the purpose it was built to serve. Instead, NATO has lived on as a dangerous, out-of-control military alliance dedicated mainly to expanding its sphere of operations and justifying its own existence. It has expanded from 16 countries in 1991 to a total of 30 countries today, incorporating most of Eastern Europe, at the same time as it has committed aggression, bombings of civilians and other war crimes.

(Continued in right column)

Questions related to this article:
 
Can the peace movement help stop the war in the Ukraine?

(Continued from left column)

In 1999, NATO launched an illegal war to militarily carve out an independent Kosovo from the remnants of Yugoslavia. NATO airstrikes during the Kosovo War killed hundreds of civilians, and its leading ally in the war, Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, is now on trial at The Hague for the appalling war crimes he committed under the cover of NATO bombing, including cold-blooded murders of hundreds of prisoners to sell their internal organs on the international transplant market.

Far from the North Atlantic, NATO joined the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan, and then attacked and destroyed Libya in 2011, leaving behind a failed state, a continuing refugee crisis and violence and chaos across the region.

In 1991, as part of a Soviet agreement to accept the reunification of East and West Germany, Western leaders assured their Soviet counterparts that they would not expand NATO any closer to Russia than the border of a united Germany. U.S. Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not advance “one inch” beyond the German border. The West’s broken promises are spelled out for all to see in 30 declassified documents published on the National Security Archive website.

After expanding across Eastern Europe and waging wars in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO has predictably come full circle to once again view Russia as its principal enemy. U.S. nuclear weapons are now based in five NATO countries in Europe: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey, while France and the U.K. already have their own nuclear arsenals. U.S. “missile defense” systems, which could be converted to fire offensive nuclear missiles, are based in Poland and Romania, including at a base in Poland only 100 miles from the Russian border.

Another Russian request in its December proposal was for the United States to simply rejoin the 1988 INF Treaty (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty), under which both sides agreed not to deploy short- or intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe. Trump withdrew from the treaty in 2019 on the advice of his National Security Adviser, John Bolton, who also has the scalps of the 1972 ABM Treaty, the 2015 JCPOA with Iran and the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea dangling from his gun-belt.

None of this can justify Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but the world should take Russia seriously when it says that its conditions for ending the war and returning to diplomacy are Ukrainian neutrality and disarmament. While no country can be expected to completely disarm in today’s armed-to-the-teeth world, neutrality could be a serious long-term option for Ukraine.

There are many successful precedents, like Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Finland and Costa Rica. Or take the case of Vietnam. It has a common border and serious maritime disputes with China, but Vietnam has resisted U.S. efforts to embroil it in its Cold War with China, and remains committed to its long-standing “Four Nos” policy: no military alliances; no affiliation with one country against another; no foreign military bases; and no threats or uses of force.

The world must do whatever it takes to obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine and make it stick. Maybe UN Secretary General Guterres or a UN special representative could act as a mediator, possibly with a peacekeeping role for the UN. This will not be easy – one of the still unlearned lessons of other wars is that it is easier to prevent war through serious diplomacy and a genuine commitment to peace than to end a war once it has started.

If and when there is a ceasefire, all parties must be prepared to start afresh to negotiate lasting diplomatic solutions that will allow all the people of Donbas, Ukraine, Russia, the United States and other NATO members to live in peace. Security is not a zero-sum game, and no country or group of countries can achieve lasting security by undermining the security of others.

The United States and Russia must also finally assume the responsibility that comes with stockpiling over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons, and agree on a plan to start dismantling them, in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

Lastly, as Americans condemn Russia’s aggression, it would be the epitome of hypocrisy to forget or ignore the many recent wars in which the United States and its allies have been the aggressors: in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Somalia, Palestine, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen.

We sincerely hope that Russia will end its illegal, brutal invasion of Ukraine long before it commits a fraction of the massive killing and destruction that the United States has committed in its illegal wars.
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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
 
Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

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