L’ASSOCIATION OF WORLD CITIZENS APPELLE A UN CESSEZ-LE-FEU EN LIBYE, AU RESPECT DU DROIT HUMANITAIRE INTERNATIONAL ET A L’OUVERTURE DE NÉGOCIATIONS DE BONNE FOI SUR LA FUTURE STRUCTURE CONSTITUTIONNELLE DE L’ÉTAT
L’Association of World
Citizens, réagissant aux appels à l’aide de personnes déplacées et menacées par
les bombardements dans les combats aux alentours et au cœur même de Tripoli,
appelle à un cessez-le-feu immédiat qui permît de distribuer de l’aide humanitaire,
ainsi que de sauver des vies.
Les affrontements ne donnant
pas signe de fin entre, d’un côté, le Général Khalifa Haftar à la tête de son
Armée nationale libyenne et, de l’autre, les milices locales contrôlées par le
Gouvernement, créent toutes les conditions d’une intensification des atteintes
aux lois de la guerre, en particulier d’attaques contre les civils et les
installations médicales.
L’Association of World Citizens
appelle instamment à ce que des négociations aient lieu sous l’égide de
médiateurs des Nations Unies, comme il était prévu qu’elles aient lieu du 14 au
16 avril, et à ce que ces négociations soient ouvertes à un éventail de
participants qui soit aussi large que possible. Il faut des structures
constitutionnelles nouvelles et adéquates pour assurer l’administration d’un
Etat par nature complexe et diversifié. Depuis un certain temps, notre
association met en avant l’éventualité de structures administratives de type
confédéral au sein de l’Etat.
L’Association of World
Citizens, qui s’était préoccupée de la situation des Droits Humains et de la
liberté d’expression en Libye du temps où Mu’ammar Kadhafi dirigeait le pays, demeure
préoccupée par le sort du peuple libyen depuis la mort de l’ancien leader en
2011. A présent, le temps est venu pour toutes les parties d’agir de manière
responsable pour mettre fin aux combats et entamer des négociations de bonne
foi.
THE ASSOCIATION OF WORLD CITIZENS CALLS FOR A CEASEFIRE IN LIBYA, THE RESPECT OF INTERNATIONAL HUMANITARIAN LAW AND THE START OF NEGOTIATIONS IN GOOD FAITH ON THE FUTURE CONSTITUTIONAL STRUCTURE OF THE STATE
The Association of World Citizens, responding to calls for assistance
from persons displaced and in danger of bomb attacks by the fighting in and
around Tripoli, calls for an immediate ceasefire so that humanitarian aid can
be provided, and lives saved.
Continued fighting by the forces of General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan
National Army opposed by local militias under the control of the Government is
likely to lead to increased violations of the laws of war, especially attacks
upon civilians and medical facilities.
The Association of World Citizens urges that negotiations under the
leadership of United Nations mediators, originally to be held April 14-16, be
undertaken with a range of participants as wide as possible. New and
appropriate constitutional structures are needed for the administration of a
complex and diversified State. This association has proposed the possibility of
con-federal administrative structures for the State.
The Association of World Citizens had been concerned with human rights
and freedom of expression in Libya during the time of the leadership of Mu’ammar
Gaddafi and has continued to be concerned with the fate of the people of Libya
since his death in 2011. Now is the time for responsible action by all parties
for an end to the fighting and the start of negotiations in good faith.
April 28, 1919 can be
considered as the birth of the League of Nations. The creation of the League
had been on the agenda of the Peace Conference at Versailles, just outside of
Paris, from its start in January 1919. The United States (U. S.) President, Woodrow
Wilson, was the chief champion of the League. The creation of such an
organization was discussed from the start in January, along with discussions as
to where the headquarters of the League would be set. On April 28, there was a
unanimous decision to create a League of Nations and at the same time Geneva
was chosen for its headquarters.
Woodrow Wilson
Some of the later
failings of the League were visible from the start. Defeated Germany and
revolutionary USSR were not invited to join, and the U. S. Senate turned down
the invitation. Nevertheless, the first decade of the League’s life saw a good
deal in international cooperation, especially in the fields of labor
conditions, health, social welfare, intellectual cooperation, and agriculture –
all areas that would later be continued and developed within the United Nations
(UN) system.
The first decade saw
the settlement of a number of conflicts that could have led to war. There was a
wide-spread feeling that a new era in international relations had been born.
However, the 1930s began with the conflicts which led to the end of the League.
On September 18, 1931,
Japan accused China of blowing up a Manchurian railway line over which Japan
had treaty rights. This “Mukden Incident” as it became known was
followed by the Japanese seizure of the city of Mukden and the invasion of
Manchuria. Military occupation of the region followed, and on February 18, 1932,
Japan established the puppet “State of Manchuria” (Manchukuo).
Further hostilities
between Japan and China were a real possibility. The League tried to mediate the
conflict under the leadership of Salvador De Madariaga, the Ambassador of
Republican Spain to the League. In practice, none of the Western governments
wanted to get involved in Asian conflicts, especially not at a time when they
were facing an economic depression.
Salvador De Madariaga
Nongovernmental
organization cooperation with the League of Nations was not as structured as it
would be by the UN Charter. There were a few peace groups in Geneva which did interact
informally with the League delegations – the Women’s International League for
Peace and Freedom, the International Peace Bureau, and the British Quakers were
active but were unable to speak directly in League meetings. They could only
send written appeals to the League secretariat and contact informally certain
delegations.
In reaction to the Japan-China tensions, Dr. Maude Revden, a former suffragist, one of England’s first women pastors, influenced by Mahatma Gandhi whom she had visited in India proposed “shock troops of peace” who would volunteer to place themselves between the Japanese and Chinese combatants. The proposal for the interposition of an unarmed body of civilians of both sexes between the opposing armies was brought to the Secretary General of the League of Nations, Sir Eric Drummond. Drummond replied that it was not in his constitutional power to bring the proposal before the League’s Assembly. Only governments could bring agenda items to the Assembly. Nevertheless, he released the letter to the many journalists then in Geneva as the Assembly was in session. The letter was widely reported.
An unarmed shock troop
of the League never developed, and China and much of Asia became the scene of a
Japanese-led war.
Sir Eric Drummond
The idea of an unarmed interposition force was again presented this time to the UN by world citizens shortly after the UN’s creation at the time of the 1947-48 creation of the State of Israel and the resulting armed conflict. The proposal was presented by Henry Usborne, a British MP, active in the world federalist and world citizen movement. Usborne was influenced by Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of satyagraha (a soul force) and proposed that a volunteer corps of some 10,000 unarmed people hold a two-kilometer-wide demilitarized zone between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
Jayaprakash Narayan
Somewhat later, in 1960, Salvador De Madariaga, who had ceased being the Spanish Ambassador to the League when General Franco came to power, created in 1938 the World Citizens Association from his exile in England. He developed a proposal with the Gandhian Indian Socialist Party leader Jayaprakash Narayan for UN Peace Guards, an unarmed international peace force that would be an alternative to the armed UN forces. (1) De Madariaga and Narayan held that a body of regular Peace Guards intervening with no weapons whatever, between two forces in combat or about to fight might have considerable effect.
The Peace Guards would
be authorized by the UN Member States to intervene in any conflict of any
nature when asked by one of the parties or by the Secretary-General.
Dag Hammarskjold who
was having enough problems with armed UN troops in the former Belgium Congo and
understanding the realpolitik of the UN did not act on the proposal. Thus, for
the moment, there are only armed UN troops drawn from national armies and able
to act only on a resolution of the Security Council.
Note
1) A good portrait of
Jayaprakash Narayan, a world citizen, is set out in Bimal Prasad, Gandhi, Nehru and J.P. Studies in Leadership
(Delhi, Chamakya Publications, 1985)
Narayan was also one
of the Indian leaders met by the student world federalist leaders in their 1949
stay in India. See Clare and Harris Wofford, Jr., India Afire (New York: John Day Company, 1951)
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
On
Tuesday, April 23, 2019, the United Nations (UN) Security Council voted Resolution
2467 concerning the use of rape as a weapon in times of armed conflict. This
resolution builds on an earlier resolution of June 24, 2013 which called for
the complete and immediate cessation of all acts of sexual violation by all
parties in armed conflicts. The new resolution introduced by Germany contained
two new elements, both of which were eliminated in the intense negotiations in
the four days prior to the vote of 13 in favor and two abstentions, those of
Russia and China.
The
first new element in the German proposed text concerned help to the victims of
rape. The proposed paragraph was “urges United Nations entities and donors to
provide non-discriminatory and comprehensive health services including sexual
and reproductive health, psychosocial, legal and livelihood support and other
multi-sectoral services for survivors of sexual violence, taking into account
the special needs of persons with disabilities.”
French Ambassador François Delattre
The United States (U. S). delegation objected to this paragraph claiming that “sexual and reproductive health” were code words that opened a door to abortion. Since a U. S. veto would prevent the resolution as a whole, the paragraph was eliminated. There had been four days of intense discussions among the Security Council members concerning this paragraph, with only the U. S. opposed to any form of planned parenthood action. After the resolution was passed with the health paragraph eliminated, the Permanent Representative of France, Ambassador François Delattre, spoke for many of the members saying “It is intolerable and incomprehensible that the Security Council is incapable of acknowledging that women and girls who suffered from sexual violence in conflict and who obviously didn’t choose to become pregnant should have the right to terminate their pregnancy.”
Russian Ambassador Vassily Nebenzya
The second concept of the German draft that was eliminated was the proposal to create a working group to monitor and to review progress on ending sexual violence in armed conflict. Such a working group was opposed by the diplomats of Russia and China, both of which have the veto power. Thus, for the same reason as with the U. S. opposition, the idea of a monitoring working group was dropped. Both China and Russia are opposed to any form of UN monitoring, fearing that their actions on one topic or another would be noted by a monitoring group. The Russian diplomat had to add that he was against the added administrative burden that a monitoring group would present but that Russia was against sexual violence in conflict situations.
Thus,
the new UN Security Council Resolution 2467 is weaker than it should have been
but is nevertheless a step forward in building awareness. The Association of
World Citizens (AWC) first raised the issue in the UN Commission on Human
Rights in March 2001, citing the judgment of the International Criminal
Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia which maintained that there can be no time
limitations on bringing an accused to trial. The Tribunal also reinforced the
possibility of universal jurisdiction that a person can be tried not only by
his national court but by any court claiming universal jurisdiction and where
the accused is present.
Nadia Murad, the Iraqi women’s rights activist who was raped as an ISIS/Daesh slave
The AWC again stressed the use of rape as a weapon of war in the Special Session of the Commission on Human Rights Violations in the Democratic Republic of Congo citing the findings of Meredeth Turshen and Clotilde Twagiramariya in their book What Women Do in Wartime: Gender and Conflict in Africa (London: Zed Press, 1998). They write “There are numerous types of rape. Rape is committed to boast the soldiers’ morale, to feed soldiers’ hatred of the enemy, their sense of superiority, and to keep them fighting: rape is one kind of war booty; women are raped because war intensifies men’s sense of entitlement, superiority, avidity, and social license to rape: rape is a weapon of war used to spread political terror; rape can destabilize a society and break its resistance; rape is a form of torture; gang rapes in public terrorize and silence women because they keep the civilian population functioning and are essential to its social and physical continuity; rape is used in ethnic cleansing; it is designed to drive women from their homes or destroy their possibility of reproduction within or “for” their community; genocidal rape treats women as “reproductive vessels”; to make them bear babies of the rapists’ nationality, ethnicity, race or religion, and genocidal rape aggravates women’s terror and future stigma, producing a class of outcast mothers and children – this is rape committed with consciousness of how unacceptable a raped woman is to the patriarchal community and to herself. This list combines individual and group motives with obedience to military command; in doing so, it gives a political context to violence against women, and it is this political context that needs to be incorporated in the social response to rape.”
The
Security Council resolution opens the door to civil society organizations to
build on the concepts eliminated from the governmental resolution itself. Nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) must play an ever-more active role in providing services
to rape victims with medical, psychological and socio-cultural services. In
addition, if the UN is unable to create a monitoring and review of information
working group, then such a monitoring group will have to be the task of
cooperative efforts among NGOs. It is always to be hoped that government acting
together would provide the institutions necessary to promote human dignity. But
with the failure of governments to act, our task as nongovernmental
representatives is set out for us.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of
the Association of World Citizens.
With the
administrative-political situation in Libya badly stalemated and a meeting for
negotiations to be held April 14-16 unlikely to make progress, on Thursday, April
4, 2019, General Khalifa Haftar, one of the key players in the drama decided to
start a “March on Tripoli” and to take overall power by force.
Most of the
significant buildings in Libyan cities were built by Italians during the
Fascist period, when Libya was an Italian colony. Thus, General Haftar has
patterned himself on Mussolini’s 1922 “March on Rome”. In 1922, the diplomats
of most States looked away when Mussolini marched or the diplomats took it as a
domestic affair.
In 2019, the “March
on Tripoli” has drawn more international attention and concern. The United Nations
(UN) Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres, met with Haftar a few hours before
the March began. Guterres was in Libya to facilitate the April 14-16 meeting on
which his Special Representative, Ghassan Salamé, has been working for some
time in the hope of drawing a road map for long-delayed elections. On Friday,
April 5, the UN Security Council held a closed-door emergency meeting. The
Security Council called for a halt to the March on Tripoli and the de-escalation
of the growing armed conflict.
The Security
Council recognized the real possibilities of broader armed conflict and its
consequences on the civilian population. In the recent past, the Libyan armed
factions have violated the laws of war and have a sad record of abuses against
civilians.
We will now have
to see if Khalifa Haftar is more open to international appeals than was Benito
Mussolini. My impression is that the goal of holding overall power is stronger
than the respect of international law. However, even a successful “March on
Tripoli” will not create the conditions for an administration of a culturally
and geographically-diverse country. New and appropriate constitutional
structures must be developed.
There cannot be a
return to the earlier Italian colonial structures, nor to the forms of
government at independence developed by King Idris al Sanussi which depended
largely on his role as a religious leader using religious orders, nor the
complicated pattern of “direct democracy” developed by Muammar al-Qadhafi.
The Association of World Citizens has proposed the possibility of con-federal
structures.
The post 2011
Libyan society faces large and complex issues. Resolving the institutional,
economic and political issues is urgent and cannot be settled by elections
alone. There are three distinct regions which must have some degree of
autonomy: Tripolitania and Cyrenaica both bordering the Mediterranean and
Fezzan in the southern Sahara. Within each of the three regions there are
differing and often rival tribal societies which are in practice more kinship
lines than organized tribes. (1) There are differing economic interests and
there are differing ideologies ranging from “Arab Socialism” to the
Islamist ideology of the Islamic State which has spread from its Syrian-Iraqi
base.
The situation is
critical, and the next few days may be crucial for the future of the country.
Note
1) See J. Davis. Libyan Politics, Tribes and Revolution (London: I. B. Tauris, 1987)
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
The United Nations
(UN) Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration has drawn attention
to the positive aspects of migration. However, there are also negative aspects
so that we are also concerned with migration that is not safe such as
trafficking in persons. A UN report presented to the Commission on the Status
of Women at the start of its current two-week session in New York highlighted
that human trafficking is one of the fastest growing criminal industries and
one of the biggest human rights crises today. The vast majority of victims
trafficked are for sexual exploitation, while others are exploited for forced
labor and forced marriage.
One aspect of
migration issues is the issue of the trans-frontier trafficking in persons.
Awareness has been growing, but effective remedies are slow and uncoordinated. Effective
remedies are often not accessible to victims of trafficking owing to gaps between
setting international standards, enacting national laws and then implementation
in a humane way.
The international
standards have been set out in the “United Nations Convention against
Transnational Organized Crime” and its “Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and
Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children.” The Convention
and the Protocol standards are strengthened by the “International Convention on
the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families.”
The worldwide standards have been reaffirmed by regional legal frameworks such
as the “Council of Europe Convention on Action against Trafficking in Human
Beings.”
Despite clear
international and regional standards, there is poor implementation, limited
government resources and infrastructure dedicated to the issue, a tendency to
criminalize victims and restrictive immigration policies in many countries.
Trafficking in
persons is often linked to networks trafficking in drugs and arms. Some gangs
are involved in all three; in other cases, agreements are made to specialize
and not expand into the specialty of other criminal networks.
Basically, there
are three sources of trafficking in persons. The first are refugees from armed
conflicts. Refugees are covered by the Refugee Conventions supervised by the UN
High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in the country of first asylum. Thus,
Syrian refugees are protected and helped by the UNHCR in Lebanon, but not if
they leave Lebanon. As ¼ of the population of Lebanon are now refugees from the
conflicts in Syria, the Lebanese government is increasingly placing
restrictions on Syrian’s possibility to work in Lebanon, to receive schooling,
medical services, proper housing etc. Therefore, many Syrians try to leave Lebanon
or Turkey to find a better life in Western Europe. Refugees from Iraq,
Afghanistan, Sudan follow the same pattern.
The second
category are people leaving their country for economic reasons − sometimes
called “economic refugees.” Migration for better jobs and a higher standard of
living has a long history. Poverty, ethnic and racial discrimination, and
gender-based discrimination are all factors in people seeking to change
countries. With ever-tighter immigration policies in many countries and with a
popular “backlash” against migrants in some countries, would-be migrants turn
to “passers” − individuals or groups that try to take migrants into a country,
avoiding legal controls.
A third category − or a subcategory of economic migration − is the sex trade, usually of women but also children. As a Human Rights Watch study of the Japanese “sex-entertainment” businesses notes, “There are an estimated 150,000 non-Japanese women employed in the Japanese sex industry, primarily from other Asian countries such as Thailand and the Philippines. These women are typically employed in the lower rungs of the industry either in ‘dating’ snack bars or in low-end brothels, in which customers pay for short periods of eight or fifteen minutes. Abuses are common as job brokers and employers take advantage of foreign women’s vulnerability as undocumented migrants: they cannot seek recourse from the police or other law enforcement authorities without risking deportation and potential prosecution, and they are isolated by language barriers, a lack of community, and a lack of familiarity with their surroundings.” We find similar patterns in many countries.
The scourge of
trafficking in persons will continue to grow unless strong counter measures are
taken. Basically, police and governments worldwide do not place a high priority
on the fight against trafficking unless illegal migration becomes a media
issue. Thus, real progress needs to be made through nongovernmental
organizations (NGOs) such as the Association of World Citizens. There are four
aspects to this anti-trafficking effort. The first is to help build political
will by giving accurate information to political leaders and the press. The
other three aspects depend on the efforts of the NGOs themselves. Such efforts
call for increased cooperation among NGOs and capacity building.
The second aspect
is research into the areas from which children and women are trafficked. These
are usually the poorest parts of the country and among marginalized
populations. Socio-economic and educational development projects must be
directed to these areas so that there are realistic avenues for advancement.
The third aspect
is the development of housing and of women’s shelters to ensure that persons
who have been able to leave exploitive situations have temporary housing and
other necessary services.
The fourth aspect
is psychological healing. Very often women and children who have been
trafficked into the sex trades have a disrupted or violent family and have a
poor idea of their self-worth. This is also often true of refugees from armed
conflict. Thus, it is important to create opportunities for individual and
group healing, to give a spiritual dimension to the person through teaching
meditation and yoga. There are needs for creating adult education facilities so
that people may continue a broken education cycle.
There are NGOs who are already working along these lines. Their efforts need to be encouraged and expanded.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Association of World Citizens 