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Will the UN be a Fairy Godmother for the Birth of South Sudan?

In Africa, Current Events, United Nations, World Law on July 9, 2011 at 9:46 PM

WILL THE UN BE A FAIRY GODMOTHER FOR THE BIRTH OF SOUTH SUDAN?

By René Wadlow

On July 9, 2011, South Sudan became an independent State, six months after the January referendum in which the south Sudan population voted overwhelmingly for independence. However, Sudan is not really structured to be divided in two. There are no natural dividing lines, neither physical nor social. During much of the English colonial period, southern Sudan was administered from Uganda as road communications were easier than from Khartoum, the capital in the north of the country. In fact, ‘administered’ is too strong a term. South Sudan had no real crops for export or minerals to mine, and so there was very little administration. In place of any government development activities, the Colonial Office encouraged Christian missionaries, mostly Church of England and Roman Catholic to set up schools and clinics. Thus south Sudan was ‘Christianized’ in that the educated had gone to church schools and been treated in Christian clinics. However, most people continued also to practice traditional rituals as these were considered as part of tribal life and not as the rituals of a particular religion. Thus when considering Sudan, the often-used terms of ‘Muslim’, ‘Christian’, and ‘Animist’ cover a more complex reality.

In December 2010, no less than 98.83% of South Sudanese voters chose independence at the polls.

Complexity is a term which is true for all Sudanese life — political, economic, and geographic. The failure to deal creatively with complexity has led to fighting for nearly all of its history as an independent State since 1956. On the eve of Independence, with the makeup of a new national army being the spark which set the fire, civil war broke out, basically on a North-South basis. There have been two phases to the Sudan Civil War. The first phase (1954-1972) had ended with negotiations facilitated by the All-African Conference of Churches with back up help from the World Council of Churches in Geneva.

The 1972-1982 decade was one of relative peace, but it was not used to heal the divisions or to work out forms of government, administration, and legal systems that would be acceptable to all segments of Sudanese society. International attention on Sudan had diminished once the 1972 peace agreement was signed. The warning signals that all was not well were ignored internationally. Thus in 1982, southern soldiers who had been integrated into the national army revolted, and the second phase of the civil war continued from 1983 until the end of 2004.

As a North-South peace agreement was nearly set, groups in Darfur, western Sudan, who had not been part of the North-South conflict decided that violence was the only way to get attention and to get a ‘piece of the pie’ of the natural resources, especially the oil revenue. They hoped for a short war after which they would be invited to participate in the North-South negotiations. In practice, the Darfur conflict has not been short — starting in 2003 and continuing still today, and the Darfur factions have not been invited to the North-South negotiations.

The flag of the Republic of South Sudan, originally the flag of the Sudanese People's Army/Movement (SPLAM).

Darfur (the home of the Fur) was always marginal to the politics of modern Sudan. In the 19th century, Darfur, about the size of France, was an independent Sultanate loosely related to the Ottoman Empire. It was on a major trade route from West Africa to Egypt and so populations from what is now northern Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Chad joined the older ethnic groups of the area: the Fur, Masalit, Zaghawa and the Birgit. Nomads from Libya also moved south into Darfur. As the population density was low, a style of life with mutual interaction between pastoral herdsmen and settled agriculturalists with some livestock developed. Increasingly, however, there was ever-greater competition for water and forage made scarce by environmental degradation and the spread of the desert.

France and England left Darfur as a buffer zone between the French colonial holdings — what is now Chad — and the Anglo-Egyptian controlled Sudan. French-English rivalry in West Africa had nearly led earlier to a war — the Fashoda crisis of 1898. Thus a desert buffer was of more use than its low agricultural and livestock production would provide to either European colonial power. It was only in 1916 during the First World War when French-English colonial rivalry in Africa paled in front of the common German enemy that the English annexed Darfur to the Sudan without asking anyone in Darfur or the Sudan if such a ‘marriage’ was desirable.

Darfur continued its existence as an environmentally fragile area of Sudan. It was marginal in economics but largely self-sufficient. Once Sudan was granted its independence in 1956, Darfur became politically as well as economically marginal. Darfur’s people have received less education, less health care, less development assistance and fewer government posts than any other region.

The seal of the government of the new sovereign nation.

In 2000, Darfur’s political leadership had met and wrote the Black Book which detailed the region’s systematic under-representation in national government since independence. However, at the level of the central government, the Black Book led to no steps to increase the political and economic position of Darfur. This lack of reaction convinced some in Darfur that only violent action would bring recognition and compromise as the war with the South had done.

An armed insurgency began in 2003 led by the more secular but tribal Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and the Islamist-leaning Justice and Equality Movement (JEM). Since then, there have been splits in the JEM and the SLA largely along tribal lines. These splits make negotiations with the government of Sudan all the more difficult. The interests of many people in Darfur are not represented by either the government or the insurgencies, but it is nearly impossible for other voices to be heard.

In Darfur, there is a joint African Union-UN peacekeeping mission (UNAMID), but there is no peace to keep. Although the peacekeeping force has a mission to protect populations, it is unable to do so. As Mohammed Otham noted in his UN report (A/HRC/14/41) “In Darfur, notwithstanding the general improvement in the security situation, banditry, criminal activities and intermittent military activities by the parties to the conflict have continued. In some areas, aerial bombardment and troop mobilization by the Sudanese Armed Forces have been reported. In the context of this ongoing violence, United Nations and humanitarian personnel face significant risks to their lives. A significant number of UNAMID and humanitarian staff were deliberately attacked; some were abducted and held in captivity for long periods.” The level of suffering in Darfur — people killed and displaced, the agricultural infrastructure destroyed — has been very high. The reconciliation and reconstruction of Darfur will be difficult. We must be on the lookout for possibilities to help.

This is what the new country will look like in political and administrative terms. The AWC wishes South Sudan well and looks forward to working with its government toward the protection and promotion of world law.

The UN has had Special Representatives in Darfur responsible for facilitating negotiations, but they have made little progress. Darfur will continue as part of North Sudan and should be a priority of concern.

As there are no sharp natural or cultural dividing lines between North and South Sudan, there will be non-Muslim populations left in the North and Muslim populations in the South. We must hope that there will not be the massive transfer of populations as at the independence of India and Pakistan. There are possibilities of continued conflict in the northern non-Muslim areas such as the Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan provinces. There is also a mixed population on the frontier between North and South in Abyei. It is less the fact that the population is mixed than that the area is oil-rich that has attracted international attention. The UN Security Council in resolution 1990 of 29 June 2011 decided to establish the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA).

Thus, the United Nations is present as the Fairy Godmother at the birth of South Sudan. As in the folk tales, the Fairy Godmother has some presents for the newly born as well as certain conditions and demands. The UN brings few material goods, and peacekeeping forces have been largely unable to bring peace. However, the UN has brought the present of world attention, a willingness to help and high international standards to meet. We will have to watch closely as the newborn grows.

René Wadlow is Senior Vice President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

Syria: Reforms and Mediation

In Current Events, Democracy, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa, World Law on July 3, 2011 at 6:49 PM

SYRIA: REFORMS AND MEDIATION

By René Wadlow

Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.

Studs Terkel

The situation in Syria seems to have reached a critical turning point. There is a possibility that popular protests continue as they have since mid-March and that they continue to be met by military and police violence in violation of the spirit and letter of humanitarian international law. The Syrian army and militias have responded to unarmed nonviolent demonstrations with disproportionate force. Humanitarian international law has as its base the Martens Clause named after the legal advisor of the Russian Czar at the time of the Hague Peace Conferences. The clause is included in the Preamble to the 1899 Hague Convention. It is taken up again in Article 3, common to the four Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949. The Martens Clause states that “the means that can be used to injure an enemy are not unlimited” but must meet the test of ‘proportionality’ meaning that every resort to armed force be limited to what is necessary for meeting military objectives. The shooting of unarmed demonstrators does not meet the test of proportionality.

For several months, the Syrian people have been sending a clear message to President Bashar al-Assad: The time has come for him to step aside.

However, there seems to be a real possibility of negotiations between the government led by President Bashar al-Assad and members of different opposition groups. President Assad, after two months of silence during which time demonstrations spread and repression increased on June 20 has called for a “national dialog” that could usher in changes. However, there were few specifics as to what topics such a national dialog would cover.

Many opposition leaders consider the proposal as a bid for more time during which arrests continue and over 1,000 persons have been killed in response to non-violent demonstrations. Moreover, it is not clear that the leaders of the longstanding but divided leadership of opposition groups are in control of the demonstrators. As in Tunisia and Egypt, Syrian demonstrators are young, come from an increasingly educated middle class and are influenced by the spirit of the ‘Arab Spring’ rather than by the ideology of the historic opposition groups.

As a sign that the proposal for a national dialog was real, the government allowed a meeting on June 27 in Damascus of some opposition figures. Those who met stressed that they did not claim to speak for all the demonstrators, and not all open opposition figures attended. In addition there are opposition figures in exile, and those in hiding fearful of arrest. There are also, no doubt, those who are waiting to see which way the wind blows. President Assad has spoken of starting the national dialog on July 12, but it is not clear who will attend and how representative they will be.

The savagery of the Damascus regime in suppressing dissent knows no boundaries. President Assad will resort even to heavy military force to silence his own people.

Civil society participation — religious, education, labor, women, cultural and media — is crucial to build public support for a real national dialog and to broaden constituencies for peace. A national dialog is merely the beginning of a deep reordering of the political and economic structures and relationships among elements of the society. There is a need for continual adjustments to adapt to new developments. There also needs to be quick post-agreement benefits to give people a stake in the readjustment process and to reduce the capacity of spoilers.

In some conflict situations, external mediators from the United Nations, national governments or nongovernmental organizations have played a useful role. Currently, the situation seems to have reached a stalemate when neither the government nor the protesters can resolve the crisis on their own terms. There are few signs that the government is open to external mediators, but with refugees from Syria going to Turkey, there is a real danger that the conflict will take on trans-frontier dimensions. A real national dialog could set out a framework for reforms which have been promised in the past but which never came to birth. As a result, sentiments have hardened, and trust has been lost. As external but concerned parties, we should encourage a broadly-based national dialog as a first important step on the road to reform.

René Wadlow is Senior Vice President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

Palestinian Status at the UN: Breaking the Logjam

In Conflict Resolution, Current Events, Middle East & North Africa, The Search for Peace, United Nations on June 30, 2011 at 7:44 PM

PALESTINIAN STATUS AT THE UN: BREAKING THE LOGJAM

By René Wadlow

There is a good deal of discussion in the halls of the United Nations (UN), both in New York and Geneva, concerning a possible application of full membership in the UN by the Palestinian Authority. The discussions reflect similar discussions within Foreign Ministries in the hope that there can be an agreed-upon program of action (or non-action) by September when the new General Assembly meets. Currently Palestine has observer status at the UN from a time when liberation movements were given observer status — two organizations for South Africa, one for South West Africa as Namibia was then, and for the PLO. With the changes in South Africa and Namibia, the liberation movement observer status was dropped for the three, and only the PLO remained.

In practice, there is little effective difference between observer status and full membership. Observers cannot vote, but voting in the UN has been largely replaced by ‘consensus making’. Effectiveness for all countries except for a small number of Great Powers depends on the skills of the diplomats which represent them. The Vatican has only observer status but a good deal of influence due to an effective diplomatic team. The Palestinian diplomats in Geneva have been weak, in New York somewhat stronger. The Palestinian diplomats have always been in the shadows of the representatives of the Arab States who want to play ‘Big Brother’, but with the exception of Egypt which has always had a strong core of diplomats, the Arab diplomats have rarely been more competent than the Palestinians.

Being overshadowed by the larger Arab States would probably not change even if full membership is granted, but full membership would be a symbolic victory of legitimacy and open the door to the independent use of the World Court. As Mahmoud Abbas has written “Palestine’s admission to the United Nations would pave the way for the internationalization of the conflict as a legal matter, not only a political one. It would also pave the way for us to pursue claims against Israel at the United Nations, human rights treaty bodies and the International Court of Justice.”

The Middle East came this close to peace when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993.

As of now, there are a number of variations being discussed around three possible approaches:

1)      The first approach favored by the USA, some of the Western European members of the European Union, in particular Germany, and a few others including Israel is that the issue should go away. It is felt that there are enough problems in the world, especially in the Middle East not to have a complicated procedural battle in September. This has been the ‘advice’ given to the Palestinians by the US, Canada, and some Western European States. It may be also what some of the Arab States are saying more privately. To reinforce their arguments, the US and the Western European governments have a strong card — they can cut off funding to the Palestinian Authority. The pretext would be the Hamas support or participation in a ‘unity government’ even if such a government is made of ‘non-political technocrats’. Hamas is still listed by the USA and the European Union as a ‘terrorist organization’ and so cannot receive funds from the US or EU governments. The Palestinian Authority depends largely on external financing; thus cutting off financing is an argument that carries weight — even if it is called ‘blackmail’ in other settings.

In exchange for dropping the full membership application, there would be some sort of short Israel-Palestine meeting where each side would speak of a ‘peace process’ through September when the membership issue has gone by. Such a sleight of hand will not advance real negotiations but may ‘buy time’ which is what many governments now want.

2)      There is, however, a real possibility that the Palestinian Authority will ask for full membership in September. This will depend in part on discussions among the Palestinian leadership and the views of the three key States concerning the Middle East: Egypt, Turkey, and Iran. Iran which is one of the Vice Presidents of the upcoming General Assembly will be particularly influential in procedural matters. The UN Charter states that the admission of new members “will be effected by a decision of the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council”. The Council makes its membership recommendation through a resolution; thus it must be approved by at least nine of the Council’s 15 members and not be vetoed by the one of the five permanent members. If the USA abstains — abstentions are not considered a veto — it is likely that there would be at least nine positive votes for Palestinian membership in the Security Council. Then it is most likely that the General Assembly would follow the Security Council recommendation as it has always done in the past. Thus current discussions turn around what could convince the US to abstain rather than veto. We will return to this key issue after a consideration of a third possibility.

3)      The third possibility in the case of a US veto is to move the issue to the General Assembly under what is known now as the “Uniting for Peace” mechanism. UN General Assembly resolution 377(V) of November 3, 1950, first known as ‘the Acheson Plan’ from the name of the US Secretary of State who proposed it and later renamed Uniting for Peace states that in cases where the UN Security Council fails to act to maintain international peace and security, owing to disagreement among the five permanent members, the matter shall be discussed immediately by the General Assembly. If the General Assembly is not in session, an Emergency Special Session can be called. This procedure has been used 10 times since its 1950 start. (1) As from September to December, the General Assembly will be in session, a Special Session will not have to be called. For a resolution to pass under the Uniting for Peace mechanism, there must be a 2/3 majority, meaning now 135 States if all are present and voting. However, not being present is a ‘diplomatic’ way of not having to be seen making a choice. Currently, 112 UN members recognize a Palestinian State within the pre-1967 frontiers. What cannot be analyzed is how hard the USA and some of its allies would work to prevent the 135 positive voters.

To turn back to the Security Council procedure, we can ask could there be a ‘deal’ that would satisfy no one completely but not dissatisfy any of the five permanent powers to the extent of their casting a veto. Here we can turn to precedent because at the UN everything functions by precedent. If something has been done once, one can argue that it can be done again. If it has never been done, it takes an exceptional situation and a few highly skilled diplomats to get any innovation.

A picture of the funeral of Yitzhak Rabin after he was shot dead on November 4, 1995 by an Israeli nationalist named Yigal Amir.

Thus we can turn to the 1954 period and the breaking of the ‘logjam’ on membership. During the first ‘hot round’ of the Cold War — the June 1950 to July 1953 Korean War — the Soviet Union and the USA blocked each other’s potential allies from UN membership. At the end of the Korean War, there was a host of pending membership applications on which no progress had been made. There seemed to be little possibility of moving things forward.

The 1954 membership issue was my start at looking closely at diplomatic negotiations around procedural issues at the UN. At a time when I should have spent my time chasing girls, I was a university student representative on the Executive Committee of what was then the United World Federalists in the USA. In 1955, the issue of a review conference on the UN Charter was to be placed automatically on the agenda of the General Assembly. During the 1945 negotiations that led to the creation of the UN Charter, a review conference on the Charter after 10 years was to be placed on the agenda. This was a demand of some of the smaller States at San Francisco, in particular Australia. It was expected in 1945 that such a review conference would be held and that was still the expectation in the period 1953-1954. There was a good deal of reflection on how to improve and strengthen the Charter during such a Review Conference. Universal membership was one of the demands of UN reformers, both some diplomats and activists such as those in the United World Federalists who had taken a lead on the Charter Review issue.

However, both the USA and the USSR opposed holding a Charter Review conference and brought most of their allies along with them. The result was that when the Charter Review conference came upon on the agenda, it was swept under the rug, and there has never been a review. Nevertheless, the diplomats of the USA and the USSR felt that some of the ‘steam’ for a Review Conference had to be lowered and this could be done by getting rid of ‘universal membership’ as an issue. Negotiations to break the logjam on pending applications started with the aim of making as close-to-possible balance between pro-USA, pro-USSR and neutral States entering the UN. The negotiations were carried out in 1954 and in 1955, before the debate on Charter Review, the membership logjam broke and Albania, Austria, Bulgaria, Cambodia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Laos, Libya, Nepal, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sri Lanka entered the UN. Japan should have been part of the group, but there was still the “enemy states” clause in the Charter which took more negotiations concerning Japan. Japan only came in the next year, 1956.

Dean Acheson, the U. S. Secretary of State who fathered the Uniting for Peace procedure at the United Nations.

Can there be something comparable in September? In an article “Coming in from the Cold: UN Membership Needed for the Phantom Republics”, I suggested at the time of the Georgia-Abkhazia-South Ossetia conflict that Abkhazia, Chechnya, Kosovo, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistra be given UN membership as a necessary first step for security and a lessening of tensions. I had stressed that “to find mutually acceptable forms of government in these conflicts will require political creativity (breaking out of thinking in fixed patterns) and then new forms of constitutional order such as renewed forms of federal-confederal types of government, greater popular participation in decision-making and new forms of protection of minorities. Flexibility, compromise and cooperation are the hallmarks of success when it comes to resolving such conflicts concerning independence and autonomy. There is a need for a healing of past animosities and a growth of wider loyalties and cooperation.”

Both diplomats and members of the UN secretariat as well as secretariat of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe where I had also floated the idea explained in detail why such a joint membership procedure would not happen. None the less, if we added upgrading the status of Palestine in the UN, another membership logjam might be broken. The point I have repeatedly made is that membership does not solve difficulties; it just provides a framework where serious negotiations might be carried out. The 1955 access to membership of Cambodia and Laos did not ‘solve’ the Indochina conflict. The French-led war in Vietnam was still going on, to be followed a decade later by the US-led war.

Thus, I think that a world citizen position is that full Palestinian membership in the UN will not ‘solve’ all the Israel-Palestine issues, and certainly not the issues of the wider Middle East. However UN membership will allow the Palestinians to come out from the shadows of the Arab States and to negotiate with the Israelis as equals. Such is a very modest step forward but it is worth taking.

(1)   For a useful discussion of the background to the Uniting for Peace procedure see Dean Acheson Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969, chapters 47-51)

 

René Wadlow is Senior Vice President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

Femmes en Arabie Saoudite: Quand Dieu punit la moitié du ciel

In Current Events, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa, Women's Rights, World Law on June 9, 2011 at 7:58 PM

FEMMES EN ARABIE SAOUDITE:

QUAND DIEU PUNIT LA MOITIE DU CIEL

Par Bernard Henry

 

Le 31 mai et le 1er juin derniers, à travers deux appels signés par son Officier de Presse, le Bureau de Représentation auprès de l’Office des Nations Unies à Genève de l’Association of World Citizens (AWC) a interpellé le gouvernement d’Arabie Saoudite au sujet des droits des femmes, que la monarchie saoudienne n’a jamais vraiment reconnus et dont l’absence devient de plus en plus pénalisante pour les femmes du pays.

Et pour cause – contrairement à la plupart des pays du monde, du moins ceux où il existe une religion officielle, a fortiori quand il s’agit de l’Islam, le « royaume wahhabite », ainsi nommé parce qu’il consacre la doctrine de l’Islam développée au dix-huitième siècle par Mohammed ibn Abd el-Wahhâb, lequel souhaitait ramener l’Islam à sa « pureté d’origine » et rejetait du fait toute tradition extérieure au Coran, considère son territoire tout entier comme une mosquée, prohibant en conséquence tout autre culte que le culte musulman, et encore, tel que le conçoit l’Etat saoudien uniquement.

En règle générale, l’Islam sunnite se désolidarise du wahhabisme qu’il estime sectaire et extrémiste. Ainsi des Talibans d’Afghanistan, dont l’ « Emirat islamique » ne fut reconnu que par trois pays au monde – les Emirats Arabes Unis, le Pakistan et, bien sûr, l’Arabie Saoudite, qui s’était retrouvée à ce sujet en confrontation directe avec l’Iran de Mohammed Khatami, l’Iran chiite pour lequel les Talibans étaient des « fossiles » du sunnisme.

Une minorité chiite existe toutefois en Arabie Saoudite, et parfois, comme ici, des heurts ont lieu avec la majorité wahhabite qui tolère mal l'existence sur le sol saoudien d'une communauté religieuse, même musulmane, autre que la sienne.

Que l’on n’aille pas y voir pour autant une quelconque intention de l’AWC de s’acharner contre l’Arabie Saoudite en particulier. Les droits des femmes sont l’un des sujets qui sont pour nous les plus importants en matière de Droits de l’Homme, et nous avons interpellé dans ce cadre les gouvernements de pays aussi éloignés les uns des autres, tant géographiquement que culturellement, que le Canada, le Paraguay, l’Afrique du Sud, la Guinée-Conakry, la Belgique, l’Afghanistan, l’Australie et bien d’autres encore. Mais force est de constater qu’un système saoudien bien particulier, mêlant droit et religion – et encore, religion prise dans un sens outrageusement littéral et rétrograde – ne favorise guère le changement, celui que l’on doit pourtant bien entreprendre sitôt que l’on réalise le caractère essentiel du respect des droits des femmes si l’on veut que le pays que l’on dirige puisse connaître et la paix civile et le progrès social, l’un comme l’autre étant impossibles quand les femmes sont tenues en état d’infériorité, une infériorité qui atteint aujourd’hui les confins de l’absurde et devient du fait, pour les Saoudiennes, un poids de plus en plus lourd à porter.

La première question que nous avons donc soulevée auprès des autorités saoudiennes est celle de la tutelle masculine.

Celle-ci s’applique aux femmes saoudiennes quel que soit leur âge, mais les plus touchées sont indéniablement les jeunes femmes, car elles ne peuvent prétendre étudier sans l’accord préalable d’un tuteur masculin reconnu par la loi. Par ce système, une jeune femme peut être privée d’études à tous les niveaux, y compris dans le supérieur, et si elle ne l’est pas, elle ne peut choisir sa discipline universitaire sans l’accord de son tuteur. Quand bien même il lui est généreusement accordé d’aller à l’université, des restrictions de mouvement lui sont imposées lorsqu’elle s’y trouve, des restrictions qui font que, même en cas de maladie, elle ne peut quitter les lieux. Et s’il n’y avait que les étudiantes à être visées …  Même les enseignantes, pendant les heures de cours, sont soumises à la séquestration, leurs élèves (féminines) ne pouvant elles-mêmes sortir que si un tuteur masculin ou un conducteur désigné est venu les chercher.

Une femme en Arabie Saoudite doit constamment porter le voile, ainsi qu'une longue robe noire couvrante dénommée l'abaya.

Et de toute façon, avant de rentrer chez elles, qu’ont-elles bien pu étudier ? Ce à quoi leur tuteur masculin a consenti, certes. Mais pas l’ingénierie, l’architecture ou les sciences politiques, car dans le système saoudien, qui n’est pas mixte, aucun programme universitaire public n’existe dans ces domaines pour les femmes, tous les autres n’étant offerts que dans une qualité, et en quantité, inférieure à celle dont profitent leurs homologues mâles. Cela touche tant les infrastructures, les cours étant proposés dans des bâtiments délabrés, que les équipements pédagogiques, les bibliothèques réservées aux femmes étant sous-équipées et les bibliothèques mixtes ne leur étant que d’un accès limité. Certaines universités saoudiennes vont jusqu’à ne pas s’embarrasser de telles contingences en n’admettant pas du tout les femmes dans leurs effectifs.

Alors, bien sûr, certaines envisageront d’aller étudier à l’étranger – mais alors, il faudra vraiment que leurs parents en aient les moyens. Pour celles qui devront d’abord obtenir une bourse gouvernementale, le Ministère de l’Education exigera qu’un tuteur masculin signe un formulaire d’autorisation puis accompagne l’intéressée sur place, après quoi celle-ci devra se soumettre à un suivi régulier par l’attaché culturel de l’ambassade saoudienne de sa tutelle masculine, et au moindre écart, c’est la révocation de la bourse et le retour direct en Arabie Saoudite.

Les instances des Nations Unies en charge des droits des femmes en ont déjà maintes fois fait grief à Riyad qui, pour l’instant, a toujours fait la sourde oreille. Nous l’avons nous-mêmes rappelé au Roi Abdullah, dont nous verrons bien ce qu’il en fait. Mais déjà, pour éviter que, comme toujours depuis l’an dernier, nos lettres ne nous reviennent non ouvertes car refusées par la Cour royale et les ministères saoudiens, cette fois, nous avons tout envoyé par fax …

Il n'est toutefois pas rare de voir des femmes en voile intégral ...

Il en est de même pour la seconde question que nous avons abordée, celle-là étant vraiment une question d’actualité, au sens fort du terme.

Le 22 mai dernier, une Saoudienne du nom de Manal Al-Sharif a été arrêtée au volant d’une voiture à 4H du matin, puis remise en liberté sous caution avant que la police ne revienne l’arrêter à minuit le lendemain, cette fois à son domicile. De quoi Manal Al-Sharif s’était-elle rendue coupable au volant ? D’un excès de vitesse ? De conduite en état d’ivresse ? Quel délit routier grave avait-elle bien pu commettre pour se trouver à ce point dans le collimateur des autorités ? Tout simple. Manal était au volant, à savoir qu’elle conduisait une voiture, et ça, pour une femme en Arabie Saoudite, c’est un délit. Ou plus exactement, c’est contraire à la religion …

Mais comment, me direz-vous, peut-il exister des préceptes religieux musulmans concernant la conduite automobile puisque, lorsque l’Islam est apparu au 7ème siècle, l’automobile était loin d’exister ? Ca n’a pas gêné un imam saoudien, qui a cru bon de préciser en 1990 – au demeurant année de l’arrivée massive de troupes occidentales en Arabie Saoudite suite à l’invasion du Koweït par l’Irak de Saddam Hussein, et avec lesdites troupes de femmes soldats – que selon lui, Dieu considérait qu’une femme qui conduit une voiture était une pécheresse, rien que ça.

Dans sa fatwa, édit religieux qui n’a en théorie aucune valeur juridique, mais c’est sans compter sur l’omniprésence intrusive de la doctrine wahhabite dans le droit saoudien, le Cheikh Abdel Aziz Bin Abdallah Bin Baz nous explique ainsi, à peine immodeste, ce que le dieu de l’Islam aurait dit à Mahomet si les voitures avaient existé lorsque le Coran fut révélé à ce dernier:

« […] La question de la conduite des automobiles par les femmes. Il est connu que ceci constitue une source d’indéniables vices, inter alia, la khilwa [rencontre en privé entre un homme et une femme] interdite par la loi et l’abandon du hijab. Cela concerne aussi les rencontres entre des femmes et des hommes sans que les précautions nécessaires soient prises. Cela pourrait aussi conduire à des actes haraam [impies] et c’est pourquoi ce fut interdit. La pure Chari’a interdit également les moyens qui conduisent à la commission d’actes de nature impie et considère de tels actes haraam en eux-mêmes …  Ainsi, la pure Chari’a a proscrit toutes les voies menant au vice …  La conduite automobile féminine est l’un des moyens qui mènent à cela et c’est en soi une évidence. »

Le système judiciaire saoudien ignore totalement les Droits de l'Homme. Ici, une sentence de flagellation est exécutée en public.

Le problème, c’est que, d’une part, notre imam ne nous explique en rien le lien entre ces délires et la Chari’a qu’il invoque, ni a fortiori avec le Coran, et que, d’autre part, aucun pays musulman au monde n’a repris cette interprétation arriérée et fantasmatique des textes saints, l’Arabie Saoudite étant le seul pays au monde, toutes traditions juridiques confondues, où les femmes n’aient pas le droit de conduire une voiture.

Là encore, l’ONU a donné de la voix. Le Comité sur l’Elimination de la Discrimination contre les Femmes et le Groupe de Travail du Conseil des Droits de l’Homme pour la Revue périodique universelle ont appelé à l’unisson le royaume wahhabite à mettre fin à cette pratique, jusqu’ici à nul effet pourtant. Quant à Manal Al-Sharif, elle fut finalement libérée le 30 mai …  Mais ne peut toujours pas conduire un véhicule, ni elle ni quelque Saoudienne que ce soit.

Reste à voir maintenant si le Ministre saoudien de la Justice écoutera plus volontiers l’AWC que les instances des Nations Unies, sachant que nos fax lui sont bien parvenus et espérant qu’il n’a pas donné ordre à son personnel de jeter tout de suite tout envoi portant notre emblème, à défaut de pouvoir le refuser comme une lettre.

Après sa libération, Manal Al-Sharif retrouve son fils. Son acte de bravoure a suscité l'admiration de par le monde et chez de nombreuses Saoudiennes qui s'identifient à sa cause.

Dans leur bestseller de 2010, La moitié du ciel (en anglais, Half the Sky), Nicholas Kristof et Sheryl Wudunn, grands reporters au New York Times, lauréats du Prix Pulitzer, nous parlent des fléaux qui s’abattent sur les femmes de par le monde, tels que l’esclavage sexuel, les « crimes d’honneur », les mutilations génitales et les viols. « La moitié du ciel », c’est ce que représentent selon eux les femmes, qui constituent certes, ici sur la Terre, la moitié la plus importante de l’humanité, ne serait-ce qu’en termes purement numéraires.

Or, en regardant cette Arabie Saoudite où l’homme, non tant ici l’être humain que l’individu mâle, interprète la parole de Dieu comme étant de nature uniquement punitive, le fait de naître femme étant en lui-même une offense, l’on ne peut s’empêcher de se demander si l’on n’est pas sur une terre où, pour sainte que la veuille le « Gardien des Deux Saintes Mosquées » qu’est le Roi d’Arabie Saoudite, à tout instant et en tout lieu, Dieu punit la moitié du ciel …

Que c’est avoir mal, ou trop peu, lu le Coran que de faire ainsi. Lorsque l’Arabie Saoudite soutenait l’insensé régime taliban d’Afghanistan, même les Emirats Arabes Unis et le Pakistan qui faisaient de même n’en exigeaient pas tant de leurs ressortissantes. C’est dire.

Que l’Arabie Saoudite se considère tout entière comme une mosquée, cela ne concerne pas l’AWC, trop attachée pour y trouver à redire au droit des peuples à disposer d’eux-mêmes. Que l’Etat saoudien en prenne prétexte pour violer les droits fondamentaux de son peuple, là, en revanche, nous ne pouvons l’admettre. Et a fortiori, qu’il invoque la parole divine pour opprimer les femmes¸ autant le peuple saoudien ne sera jamais notre ennemi, autant, de ce seul fait, son gouvernement peut être assuré quant à lui que, tant qu’il continuera de le faire ou de le laisser faire, il ne sera jamais notre ami. Et sachant quelle bonne écoute nous est accordée au sein de l’ONU, c’est bien dommage pour lui.

 

Bernard Henry est Officier de Presse du Bureau de Représentation auprès de l’Office des Nations Unies à Genève de l’Association of World Citizens.

Ratko Mladić: Arrest and Coming Trial – A Step Forward for World Law

In Current Events, Human Rights, International Justice, The Balkan Wars, The Search for Peace, United Nations on May 27, 2011 at 7:23 PM

RATKO MLADIĆ: ARREST AND COMING TRIAL – A STEP FORWARD FOR WORLD LAW

By René Wadlow

On May 26, 2011, President Boris Tadić of Serbia announced the arrest of General Ratko Mladić, the Yugoslav general become head of the Bosnian Serb forces of Republika Srpska. General Mladić had been charged by the War Crimes Tribunal for ex-Yugoslavia in the Hague for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes and thus should be sent from Belgrade to the Hague to stand trial shortly. General Mladić is particularly charged with commending the 1992-1995 siege of Sarajevo during which much of the city was destroyed and some 10,000 persons killed, often shot by snipers. The genocide charge arises mainly from the killing in July 1995 of some 8,000 Muslim men at Srebrenica which had been declared a neutral safe haven guarded by UN troops.

Mladić had been forced from his position in Republika Srpska after the 1995 Dayton Agreement, largely facilitated by the US envoy Richard Holbrooke. Mladić moved to Serbia and lived mostly in Belgrade, having changed his name. He was arrested at the farm of a cousin some 50 miles north of Belgrade in the Vojvodina area. His arrest and trial was one of the conditions set by the European Union for advancing with negotiations on Serbia joining the EU. Negotiations are now at a serious stage, and the arrest of Mladić was necessary to open the door further. Mladić kept out of sight, but he was not hiding. He had supporters in the Serbian army, police and in certain nationalist political circles. Thus an arrest earlier would not have been worth the political outcries and tensions an arrest might have provoked. Now, when EU membership and the economic future of the country are at stake, his arrest is not a very high price to pay.

Ratko Mladić, here as the Bosnian Serb forces' top general during the civil war in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1922-1995).

It is not really satisfaction when one sees those who have betrayed one’s proposals are finally taken down. However, there is a sense of “closure” – a recognition that karma is finally at work. I did not know Ratko Mladić but saw him a number of times in the halls of the Palais des Nations — the European Headquarters of the United Nations (UN). I was in contact with Radovan Karadžić, the political head of the Bosnian Serbs — officially Prime Minister of Republika Srpska. I had been asked to be an advisor to Karadžić on UN procedures when negotiations began in Geneva in 1992. After discussions, I turned down the offer although it would have been a possibility to be a direct participant in the negotiations.

Whatever credibility I had in the Yugoslav conflict came from being a neutral and not linked to one side, although I was generally seen as pro-Serb. My first efforts had been to help Milan Babić, the leader of the Serb enclave in Croatia called Krajina. I had Babić address the UN Commission on Human Rights in February 1991 to warn of the consequences if Yugoslavia broke up. His presentation was filmed and widely shown on Yugoslav TV. I am still convinced that had his warning been taken seriously, things might have been different. However, the Commission on Human Rights was not really equipped to deal with “early warning”, and nothing was done until fighting broke out in June 1991.

Here with then General Ratko Mladić, former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadžić.

In June, Krajina declared its independence from Croatia, calling itself the Republic of Serbian Krajina. Babić was named Prime Minister. From August to December 1991, Serbs from Krajina killed hundreds of Croats and drove some 80,000 from their homes. Ratko Mladić was the head of the Krajina forces at the time and a close co-worker with Babić.

In 1992, Babić was eased out of power by behind-the-scenes pressures by Prime Minister of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic, who wanted someone with a less independent character, at which time Mladić left Krajina and went to Bosnia where he had been born.

In 2004 Babić was sentenced to 13 years in prison for war crimes by the Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague and shortly afterwards committed suicide.

On July 11, 1995, General Ratko Mladić and his troops stormed the Bosnian Safe Haven of Srebrenica. With the most unwelcome participation of UN peacekeepers there, they secured the place for the Bosnian Serb army and took some 7,000 unarmed Bosnian civilians to their death.

In March 1992, Bosnia-Herzegovina declared its independence from Yugoslavia, and at the same time, Republika Srpska declared itself independent under the leadership of Radovan Karadžić. Many at the time questioned the wisdom of a unilateral splitting of Bosnia, but Mladić said “The existence of the Republika Srpska may be contested internationally, but the existence of its army cannot be contested. The Republika Srpska exists because we have our territory, our nation, our government and all the attributes of a state. Whether they acknowledge it or not — that’s their problem. The army is the fact.”

A month later, in April 1992, the siege of Sarajevo began with Ratko Mladić in charge of the Serb forces. The siege was to illustrate that a multi-ethnic society could not exist, Sarajevo being the Yugoslav city with the most ethnically-mixed population.

I had been in Belgrade in 1991 at the start of the Yugoslav fighting, just at the time of the fall of Vukovar, the first major battle, to see if NGOs could play any role in conflict reduction. But once the fighting had broken out there was really nothing that NGOs could do to prevent the spread of the conflict. The International Committee of the Red Cross tried, with great difficulty, to maintain some humanitarian efforts, but NGO conflict mediation was not really possible.

In September 1992, with fighting still going on, the Geneva Peace Conference on Bosnia began at the UN headquarters under the co-leadership of Lord David Owen on behalf of the EC and Mr. Cyrus Vance, former U. S. Secretary of State for the UN. Vance later withdrew, discouraged by the lack of progress and was replaced by Thorvald Stoltenberg, a former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway.

Lord David Owen, Special Representative of the European Community for Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the UN Special Envoy, former U. S. Secretary of State Cyrus Vance.

Late in 1992, as fighting was increasing and political proposals for the future of Bosnia were bogged down, David Arnott, an English Buddhist who had been working with me on Burma issues and I were the first to propose in the UN Commission on Human Rights and in a text sent to the members of the UN Security Council the creation of a number of security zones or “safe areas” within Bosnia-Herzegovina. I had been working closely with Tadeusz Mazowiecki, a former Prime Minister of Poland, who was the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on ex-Yugoslavia. In his November 1992 Report to the Commission, he had proposed the establishment of a security zone encompassing Sarajevo and its airport in order to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian supplies.

Building on this proposal, in an oral statement of December 1, 1992 to the “Special Session of the Commission on Human Rights devoted to Human Rights in Former Yugoslavia”, I stressed the need to create a larger number of safe havens and emphasized “that the declaration of protected Safe Haven Zones is an interim arrangement with a humanitarian purpose and in no way reduces the urgent and imperative need to find negotiated political solutions.”

Safe havens, called neutralized zones, are provided for in article 15 of the 4th Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949. On October 30, 1992, the International Committee of the Red Cross had proposed that “protected zones be set up for the civilian population at risk, away from combat areas. They would not be intended for the inhabitants of besieged towns for whose protection other solutions should be found, such as a cessation of hostilities.” This was basically a call for protected refugee camps while ours was for “protected cities” since ‘cessation of hostilities’ were not in the cards.

General Sir Michael Rose, the British senior military man who in 1994 served as Commander of the Bosnian segment of the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR Bosnia). When the Bosnian Serb army attacked a UN-declared Safe Haven for the first time (that was Goražde in April 1994), General Rose and his UNPROFOR troops stood idle and let the Bosnian Serbs invade the city.

Thus our proposal was not original but rather what was needed for the hour. On April 16, 1993, the UN Security Council proclaimed Srebrenica a safety zone and on May 6 added Sarajevo, Žepa, Goražde, Bihać and Tuzla to the list. Our proposal was quoted by the then Ambassador of Afghanistan, Mr. Farhadi, during the debate on safe havens.

Thus I followed with interest how the safe havens were put into place. Srebrenica had been a middle-sized town of 6,000 prior to the fighting. It had grown to over 70,000 as families left the countryside for the relative safety of the town; infrastructure, however, could not keep up.

In July 1995, the “safe havens” of Žepa and Srebrenica were taken over by the forces led by Ratko Mladić. The UN forces led by soldiers from the Netherlands did not try to resist. A month earlier in June, UN forces had been taken hostage for two weeks but finally were released. Although NATO planes were dropping bombs on Serb positions at the time, it is not clear that any NATO forces would have come to the defense of the Dutch. The UN troops stood by as Mladić separated the women and children from the men. He had his soldiers kill some 8,000 male prisoners and had their bodies put into mass graves.

General Philippe Morillon, the French peacekeeper whose efforts to protect the UN-designated Safe Havens quickly made him a living legend in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

There had been so many violations of the laws of war and human rights in the Yugoslav conflicts, that there was not much public outcry at the time, although Tadeusz Mazowiecki resigned his UN position as Special Rapporteur writing to the UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and making his letter public that his resignation was forced by the “horrendous tragedy which has beset the population of those ‘safe havens’ guaranteed by international agreement…I believe we have a certain hypocrisy as far as Bosnia is concerned when we are claiming to defend it but in fact we are abandoning it. The same goes for hypocrisy about the protection of human rights. I hope that my decision will also be understood as a protest against this hypocrisy.”

The wheels of karma turn slowly. As there is no longer anything at stake, more people today will agree that killing people who thought that they were protected in UN-proclaimed safe havens is not a good thing. There have been no new proposals for safe havens since and thus none has been created. I still think that it was a good idea at the time. Yet I share the observation of Michèle Mercier who had been for a long time part of the International Committee of the Red Cross team in former Yugoslavia “The word most frequently heard in the ranks of humanitarian workers is frustration. Their leaders are powerless to settle by themselves the problems involved with security and they have worn themselves out negotiating and renegotiating with opposite numbers of the most unlikely kind agreements that lose all their meaning before they are reached.” (1)

René Wadlow is Senior Vice-President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

(1)  Michèle Mercier Crimes Without Punishment: Humanitarian Action in Former Yugoslavia (London: Pluto Press, 1995, p. 165)

Bahrain and the Defense of Spiritual Liberty

In Current Events, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa, Religious Freedom on May 24, 2011 at 11:33 AM

BAHRAIN AND THE DEFENSE OF SPIRITUAL LIBERTY

By René Wadlow

   

In a recent May 14, 2011 Appeal to the Kingdom of Bahrain concerning the systematic destruction of mosques used by the Shi’a citizens who are currently demonstrating for greater liberty and democracy, the Appeal pointed out that the destructions of places of worship is a direct violation of the spirit but also the letter of the UN Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief.  The Declaration was proclaimed on November 25, 1981 and began “Considering that one of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations is that of the dignity and equality inherent in all human beings, and that all Member States have pledged themselves to take joint and separate action in co-operation with the Organization to promote and encourage universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all, without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”

The Declaration took nearly 20 years of difficult negotiations to draft.  Preparation of the declaration began in 1962, and the Declaration was proclaimed in November 1981.  Originally, UN negotiators had thought of drafting a single text which would have included the elimination of discrimination based on race, sex and religion.  However, there was too great a diversity of views.  It was easier to deal with the elements separately, all the more so that in the 1960s and 1970s in UN circles “race” was only the Apartheid policy of South Africa which everyone was, at least verbally, against.

Religion and belief were more difficult questions.  The defense of spiritual liberty has been one of the most persistent of struggles, and there is no area of the world that does not have its martyrs to the cause.  The struggle has often been against religious authorities who have wanted to maintain their faith within narrow limits claiming that they alone held the truth.  It is significant that the words “dogmatic”, “sectarian”, and “inquisition” — all arise from the religious vocabulary.  The stoning of the prophets and the auto-da-fe have been the answers of religious authorities — and often ordinary believers as well — to new ideas.  Today, in most parts of the world, religious organizations can no longer put heretics to death.  Now, religious organizations can only try to marginalize those who hold new ideas or to excommunicate them; the inquisition has lost its secular arm.

The Amir Mohammed Braighi mosque before destruction.

If religious organizations are no longer able to put to death heretics, the State has taken over the task of establishing orthodoxy and putting heretics to death.  Although today, governments are the prime agents of repression against the spiritual life, governments are also timidly building the defenses of spiritual liberty.

The Declaration of November 25, 1981 builds upon Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which states that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

One of the most difficult areas in drafting the Declaration concerned the rights of the child to have “access to education in the matter of religion or belief in accordance with the wishes of his parents and shall not be compelled to receive teaching on religion or belief against the wishes of his parents or legal guardians, the best interests of the child being the guiding principle.”  The Declaration went on to state that “The child shall be brought up in a spirit of understanding, tolerance, friendship among peoples, peace and universal brotherhood, respect for freedom of religion or belief of others, and in full consciousness that his energy and talents should be devoted to the services of his fellow men.”

The Amir Mohammed Braighi mosque now stands in ruins.

Despite the rather nondramatic title of the Declaration, it is a milestone on the path of spiritual liberty.  Thanks to the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief, we who work for a world of understanding and solidarity have a UN text on which to base our efforts to defend spiritual liberty.

The Kingdom of Bahrain which has received support from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the form of tanks and soldiers and from other Gulf States in the form of police, has not yet relied to the AWC Appeal.  It seems that they are preoccupied with arresting people rather than reading UN documents by which to set their standards. However the AWC will continue to remind them of the foundations of world law.

René Wadlow is Senior Vice-President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

Rio Plus 20 – UN Desert Decade

In Current Events, Environmental protection, Solidarity on May 20, 2011 at 8:30 PM

RIO PLUS 20

By René Wadlow

    

The United Nations (UN) Conference on Sustainable Development will take place in Brazil on June 4-6, 2012 to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. Thus the popular name of the upcoming conference: “Rio plus 20”. The Conference will be an opportunity to bring together all the UN-designated efforts underway or the protection and wise use of Nature. As humanity, we are at the mid-point of the UN-designated Water for Life Decade (2005-2015). We are at the start of the International Decade of Deserts and Desertification (2010-2020) and nearly halfway into the UN-designated 2011: Year of Forests.

UN-designated Years rarely make newspaper headlines, and most governments limit themselves to voting for the Year in the UN General Assembly and then go on as before. The designated Year or Decade gives some legitimacy and support to the UN and the UN Specialized Agencies which are already working on the issue. However, successful years are always the result of non-governmental organization (NGO) activities. The most successful UN-designated Year was 1975: The International Year of Women.

In 1975, there were already, worldwide, women’s organizations, often well-structured, and which were prepared to use the designation of the UN Year as a platform to present their work, to network among themselves and to reach out to new partners. Moreover, 1975 fell into a period of intense discussion in Western Europe and the USA on the role of women, on relations between women and men, and what was generally called “consciousness-raising” among women. The emphasis was on the ways – sometimes subtle and often less so – that women were hindered in their full development as persons.

Deserts have no such already-organized supporters. Thus it is more difficult to draw attention to issues of desertification and the livelihood of people living at the edge of deserts. However, there are important issues related to deserts. World citizens are making an effort to highlight the Decade as in the following essay:

   

UN DESERT DECADE

By René Wadlow

God created lands filled with water as a place for man to live; and the desert so that he can discover his soul.

  

The decade 2010 to 2020 has been designated by the UN General Assembly as The International Decade of Deserts and Desertification. It is estimated that dry lands cover approximately 40 percent of the world’s landmass. The Decade marks the efforts begun in 1977 with the UN Conference on Desertification held in Nairobi. The desertification conference was convened by the UN General Assembly in the midst of a series of catastrophic droughts in the Sudano-Sahelian region of Africa. The conference was designed to be the centerpiece of a massive worldwide attack to arrest the spread of deserts or desert-like conditions not only in Africa south of the Sahara but wherever such conditions encroached on the livelihood of those who lived in the desert or in their destructive path. The history of the conference is vividly recalled by James Walls in his book Land, Men and Sand (New York: Macmillan, 1980).

At the conference, there was a call for the mobilization of human and financial resources to hold and then push back the advancing desert. “Attack” may have been the wrong word and “mobilization” too military a metaphor for the very inadequate measures taken later in the Sudano-Sahelian area. In 2010 at the start of the Decade, there are real possibilities of famine in West and East Africa on the edges of the desert. Niger and Mali and parts of Senegal and Chad in the Sahel belt are facing the consequences of serious drought as are parts of northern Kenya and Somalia.

The most dramatic case is that of Darfur, Sudan which partakes of the Sahel drought but which also faces a war in which the conflicts between pastoralists and settled agriculturalists have become politicized. It is estimated that 300,000 have been killed since the start of the war late in 2003. Some two and a half million people have been uprooted. The agricultural infrastructure of homes, barns and wells has been deliberately destroyed. It will be difficult and costly to repair this destruction. The Darfur conflict highlights the need for a broader approach to the analysis and interpretation of active and potential armed conflicts in the Sahel region. This analysis needs to take into consideration the impact of environmental scarcity and climate variation in complex situations.

Earth is our common home, and therefore all, as world citizens, must organize to protect it. It is up to all of us concerned with ecologically-sound development to use the Decade to draw awareness to both the dangers and the promises of deserts. What is the core of the desertification process? The destruction of land that was once productive does not stem from mysterious and remorseless forces of nature but from the actions of humans. Desertification is a social phenomenon. The causes of dry land degradation include overgrazing, deforestation, agricultural mismanagement, fuel wood over-consumption, and industry and urbanization. Thus, by preventing land degradation and improving agricultural practices, action to combat desertification can lead to increased agricultural productivity and alleviate poverty. Humans are both the despoiler and the victim of the process. Increasingly, populations are eking out a livelihood on a dwindling resource, hemmed in by encroaching plantations and sedentary agriculturalists, by towns and roads. Pressure of population upon resources leads to tensions which can burst into violence as we see in Darfur and which spilled over into eastern Chad.

The Sahara (in Arabic, الصحراء الكبرى‎, "Aṣ Ṣaḥrā´ al Kubrā", "The Great Desert" in English) is the world's largest non-polar (hot) desert.

Desertification needs to be seen in a holistic way. If we see desertification only as aridity, we may miss areas of impact such as the humid tropics. We need to consider the special problems of water-logging, salinity or alkalinity of irrigation systems that destroy land each year. The value of UN-designated decades is that the process of identifying major clusters of problems, bringing the best minds to bear on them so as to have a scientific and social substratum on which common political will can be found and from which action will follow.

Desertification is a plague that upsets the traditional balance between people, their habitat, and the socio-economic systems by which they live. Because desertification disturbs a region’s natural resource base, it promotes insecurity. Insecurity leads to strife. If allowed to degenerate, strife results in inter-clan feuding, civil war, cross-border raiding and military confrontation. Yet dry land communities have great resources that can be put to fighting poverty and desertification, provided they are properly empowered and supported.

Only with a lessening of insecurity can cultivators and pastoralists living in or near deserts turn their attention to adapting traditional systems. There can be no reversion to purely traditional systems. But for insecurity to abate, a lengthy process of conciliation must begin and forms of conflict resolution strengthened. People must be encouraged to understand that diversity is a crucial element of ecologically-sound development. Judicious resource management breeds security and an improved quality of life for everyone. We can see what efforts can be made to encourage reforestation and to slow the unwanted advances of deserts.

An overview of global desertification: Now is the time to take action.

The contrast between widespread rural poverty and environmental degradation, on the one land, and the opportunities which can be created on a small scale through community empowerment, access to groundwater and sustainable land management, defines the ideals of the Decade of Deserts. The Decade is not about fighting deserts, it is about reversing land degradation trends, improving living conditions and alleviating poverty in rural dry lands. Thus, the Decade of Deserts can be a decade during which we can learn more of the lives of the people in and on the edge of the deserts.

Deserts can also have a positive image. There is a significant role in the literature and mythology of spirituality – the 40 years in the desert before entering the “Promised Land” of Israel, the 40 days in the desert before starting his mission for Jesus, the life in the desert of the early Christian church fathers. Today, there are an increasing number of spiritual retreats in the desert chosen for its silence and for the essential nature of the landscape. Thus, it is a Decade in which we can all usefully participate.

René Wadlow is Senior Vice President and Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

Painting by Lona Towsley.

Note: The UN website for the Decade is http://unddd.unccd.int

Syria: The Downward Spiral

In Current Events, Democracy, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa on April 30, 2011 at 10:45 PM

SYRIA: THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL

By René Wadlow

         

The United Nations (UN) has tried to stop the downward spiral of Syria into repression and potential chaos. It has been five weeks that what began as peaceful protests and demands for limited reforms have been increasingly met by government violence. Discussions on what the UN could do to help the Syrian people and to speed up necessary reforms started in both New York and Geneva. Governments and UN Secretariat members discussed different possibilities against the backdrop of the UN Security Council resolutions on Libya and the continued fighting there.

The representatives of China and Russia who had not blocked the resolution to use “all necessary force” to protect the civilian population in Libya but who have grown increasingly ill-at-ease with the NATO-led attacks did not want to open the door to a possible repeat over Syria. Thus all possibility of action within the Security Council was blocked with the insistence on the part of China and Russia that the situation was an internal affair of Syria and did not pose a danger to regional peace.

Thus the UN focus moved to Geneva and the UN Human Rights Council, for if events in Syria did not pose a danger to peace in the area, events were an open violation of the UN human rights standards. Syria is a party to all the major UN human rights conventions. Thus, on Friday, 29 April 2011 — when the eyes of much of the world were turned to London and a Royal wedding — in Geneva a path-making Special Session of the UN Human Rights Council was being held. A Special Session is the “highest profile” which the Council can give to a situation. It can be called on short notice, but before a Special Session is held, there are usually intense negotiations among governments. The representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also have a short time to prepare common positions and statements for a Special Session. Since NGOs speak after the governments, there is usually time for only a few statements prior to voting on the outcome resolution. However, for this Special Session, government representatives stuck to their time limits, and 16 NGOs were able to speak even if few said anything which had not already been said by governments.

Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad, posing before the Syrian flag.

The human rights situation in Syria was well set out at the start by the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Kyung-Wha Kang from Korea:

“Information gathered since mid-March points a disturbing picture: the widespread use of live fire against protesters; the arrest, detention, and disappearance of demonstrators, human rights defenders, and journalists; the torture and ill-treatment of detainees; the sharp repression of press freedoms and other means of communication; and the attacks against medical personnel, facilities and patients.

“Yet even these deplorable practices have been exceeded over the past week. According to reports, entire towns have been besieged. Tanks have been deployed and shelled densely-populated areas. The delivery of food has been impeded. Access to electricity has been cut. And transportation systems have been shut down. There have been reports of snipers firing on persons attempting to assist the injured or remove dead bodies from public areas.

“We have noted with concern that military and security officers have been among those killed. Still, the preponderance of information emerging from Syria depicts a widespread, persistent and gross disregard for basic human rights by the Syrian military and security forces. Syrian and international human rights organizations have already documented more than 450 killings and around four times that number of injuries…

“Let me conclude by emphasizing the importance of holding perpetrators of serious human rights violations accountable, and in this regard, the urgent need for an independent, impartial, effective and prompt investigation into recent events in Syria. The convening of this Special Session should not only convey to the people of Syria that the international community is aware of their plight and supports their struggle for fundamental rights and freedoms. It should affirm to people everywhere that the Human Rights Council will be resolute in ensuring justice for victims of human rights worldwide.”

As with all serious UN meetings, the decisions have been negotiated before the meeting starts. There was broad agreement that the Human Rights Council would vote the creation of a working group for an independent, impartial investigation to be named by the President of the Council after consultation. The consultations have started, but the names of the members have not yet been announced. It is unclear at this stage if Syria will allow the group to enter to carry out interviews and other investigations. The working group on the situation in Darfur was not able to enter Sudan, and Israel did not allow the working group chaired by Justice Goldstone to enter Israel. However, some countries have allowed Special Rapporteurs on country situations named by the Human Rights Council or the earlier Commission on Human Rights to visit the country in question.

Much of the debate during the Special Session concerned basic attitudes on general human rights matters over which negotiations would not lead to any compromise. There are States which do not want country-specific discussions, basically by fear that they might one day be discussed. This is the long-standing position of China and Cuba and can be taken up by others depending on the specific case. With the situation in Syria, there was a newer and more interesting balance to be found between those States who, in addition to the creation of an investigation body, wanted a condemnation of the current violations in Syria on the basis of information now available and those States which wanted “constructive dialog”. Those for constructive dialog stressed that while not opposing an investigation, felt that there was an opportunity to “engage in constructive dialog with the Syrian government”. They maintained that condemnation measures would hinder finding peaceful solutions. This group of States, largely led by Pakistan and the Russian Federation, put an emphasis on the reforms which had already taken place after the start of the demonstrations, in particular the lifting of the state of emergency, abolishing the State Security Court, the granting of citizenship to 250,000 Kurds who had been registered until then as “aliens” and the replacement of the Cabinet and some governors of provinces.

The Syrian Ambassador, Mr. Faysal Khabbas Hamoui, could have played on these calls for engagement and dialog, and he may have done so in private. In his public statements prior to the start of the debate and again just prior to the vote, his position was so “hard line” as to destroy any idea that “constructive dialog” was possible at all. He attacked the idea of having a Special Session at all and then went on to attack the protesters as agents of a foreign-led conspiracy and as extremists wanting violence. His presentation left no visible door open for dialog, and there was no call for a possible national reconciliation.

The United Nations Human Rights Council in session.

The vote on the only resolution, A/HRC/S-16/1 came with few surprises:

Votes in favor: 26.

Against 9: Bangladesh, China, Cuba, Ecuador, Gabon, Malaysia, Mauritania, Pakistan, Russian Federation.

Abstentions 7: Cameroon, Djbouti, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, Uganda, Ukraine

Left the room so they could not be counted in any category: 4: Angola, Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar

The motivations of Angola are unclear. However, given the solid structuring of power in Syria, the inter-twinning of power and wealth, the mosaic of security services, quick reforms are unlikely. As President Bashar al-Assad has said “haste comes at the expense of the quality of reforms”. There may be a possibility for external NGOs, civil society organizations in Syria and the Syrian government to discuss peaceful advances toward a more just and inclusive society. We need to keep looking for possible doors even as people are being killed on the ground.

René Wadlow is Senior Vice President and Chief Representative to  the United Nations Office in Geneva of the Association of World Citizens.

LES CITOYENS DU MONDE APPELLENT A UN CESSEZ-LE-FEU EN LIBYE ET A L’OUVERTURE DE NÉGOCIATIONS POUR UNE NOUVELLE RÉPUBLIQUE LIBYENNE

In Current Events, Democracy, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa on March 20, 2011 at 4:29 PM

LES CITOYENS DU MONDE APPELLENT A UN CESSEZ-LE-FEU EN LIBYE ET A L’OUVERTURE DE NÉGOCIATIONS POUR UNE NOUVELLE RÉPUBLIQUE LIBYENNE

(Mis à jour le 20 mars 2011)

Par René Wadlow


Le 15 mars 2011, alors que les combats concernaient encore les seuls pro- et anti-Kadhafi, dans un message au Secrétaire Général de l’ONU, Ban Ki-moon, le Professeur René Wadlow, Représentant en Chef auprès de l’Office des Nations Unies à Genève de l’Association of World Citizens (AWC), a exhorté le Secrétaire Général à prendre l’ascendant en appelant à un cessez-le-feu en Libye qui mît fin aux hostilités en cours et à l’hémorragie de réfugiés. En se prolongeant et s’intensifiant, le conflit ne fait que placer un insupportable fardeau sur des lieux de soins médicaux déjà débordés et sur l’approvisionnement visant à répondre aux besoins élémentaires de la population.

Un cessez-le-feu constituerait aussi un premier pas en direction de négociations menant à un nouvel ordre constitutionnel et à une nouvelle République libyenne dont le fondement démocratique serait des plus larges.

Depuis les Ides de Mars, la situation s’est envenimée et a pris un caractère international, avec l’adoption d’une résolution du Conseil de Sécurité de l’ONU, un Sommet consécutif à celle-ci qui s’est tenu à Paris le 19 mars et le déclenchement des frappes aériennes et maritimes françaises, britanniques et américaines en Libye.

Pendant ce temps, les combats entre Libyens se poursuivent au sol. A ce stade, il paraît impossible de dire combien de temps durera le conflit armé et quels résultats sur le court terme il produira. La véritable question est de savoir comment aboutir à une fin des combats qui ait fait l’objet d’un accord préalable, puis d’ouvrir la porte à la nécessaire restructuration constitutionnelle du pays et à la création d’une République libyenne de large fondement démocratique.

Selon l’exemple des révolutions non-violentes de Tunisie et d’Egypte, des protestations contre le fonctionnement politique et économique de la Libye ont éclaté. Plutôt que d’entamer le dialogue, les autorités libyennes ont entrepris une politique de répression, laquelle a conduit à la violence à grande échelle que nous voyons aujourd’hui, provoquant par là même un flot massif de départs de travailleurs immigrés du pays ainsi qu’un important déplacement interne de Libyens.

Un manifestant libyen exigeant le départ de Muammar Kadhafi.

Seul un cessez-le-feu permettra le début d’un traitement en profondeur des questions constitutionnelles fondamentales que le pays a affrontées depuis l’Indépendance. Lorsque celle-ci est survenue en 1951, l’autorité reposait sur le Roi Sayyid Idriss as-Sanoussi (1890-1983), dirigeant d’une importante fraternité islamique qui se montrait de longue date plus soucieuse de réformes religieuses que de la structure du gouvernement ou de la qualité de l’administration. Son gouvernement possédait quelques attributs de décentralisation et de fédéralisme, mais reposait pour beaucoup sur des confédérations tribales qui existaient depuis bien plus longtemps. (1)

Quand les officiers de l’armée menés par le Colonel Muammar Kadhafi prirent le pouvoir à l’occasion d’un coup d’Etat en septembre 1969, la discussion s’engagea pendant un cours laps de temps quant à la forme de gouvernement qu’il convenait de développer. L’idée d’un pouvoir plus centralisé faisait l’unanimité, de même que la conservation des politiques de l’ancien roi et de la Fraternité Sanoussi en matière de religion – ce qui prit le nom de néo-salafisme. Cependant, afin de ne pas mettre d’obstacles à la future unité arabe, aucune structure étatique basée sur un accord constitutionnel ne fut officiellement créée.

Sayyid Idriss as-Sanoussi, également appelé Idriss 1er, Roi de Libye de 1951 à 1969.

Le colonel Kadhafi voulait se débarrasser du gouvernement de type parlementaire et des élections visant à élire une représentation, ce au profit de comités populaires, d’un congrès du peuple et de comités révolutionnaires, tous tenus ensemble par les présomptions idéologiques de la Troisième Théorie Universelle de Kadhafi – un concept qui englobe l’anti-impérialisme, l’unité arabe, le socialisme islamique et la démocratie populaire directe. (2)

Des désaccords sur la nature de l’Etat menèrent à d’importantes divisions au sein du cercle dirigeant, notamment en 1975. Cependant, toute discussion ouverte sur la nature de l’Etat, sur la relation entre l’Etat et la société, ou encore sur la place des tribus et des fraternités religieuses, était considérée subversive, revenant à une trahison. En pratique, bien que non en théorie, le processus de décision demeurait entre les mains du colonel Kadhafi, de sa famille, de ses amis et de ses alliés tribaux. (3)

Sur le court terme, les négociations suivant un cessez-le-feu pourraient conduire à la prorogation de la structure libyenne du pouvoir concentrant celui-ci en le seul colonel Kadhafi, ainsi que ses fils et leurs alliés. Toutefois, le degré de violence constitue une indication claire de ce que la structure de l’Etat ne fonctionne pas, et que, quoi que l’on puisse lui reprocher par ailleurs, un parlement permet à certaines des exigences du peuple d’être entendues et crée des garde-fous à l’exercice du pouvoir.

Historiquement, en Libye, il existait seize tribus marabtin renommées pour leur sagesse religieuse, lesquelles servaient de médiatrices et d’arbitres au sein des structures politiques de la Libye tribale d’avant la colonisation. Cette tradition de médiation réconciliatrice existe peut-être encore, ce qui signifie que recourir aux voies traditionnelles de médiation devrait être envisagé de manière sérieuse.

Un cessez-le-feu doit être un premier pas, et l’ONU, l’institution la plus appropriée pour maintenir ensuite le cessez-le-feu tandis que les négociations constitutionnelles commenceront.

 

René Wadlow est le Premier Vice-Président et le Représentant en Chef auprès de l’Office des Nations Unies à Genève de l’Association of World Citizens.


1)      Pour une analyse utile des structures de gouvernement libyennes, voir J. Davis, Libyan Politics, Tribes and Revolution (Londres: I.B. Tauris, 1987)

2)      Voir M.M. Ayoub Islam and the Third Universal Theory: The religious thought of Muamar al Qadhafi (Londres: Kegan Paul, 1987)

3)      Voir René Lemarchand (Ed). The Green and the Black: Qadhafi’s Politics in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).

WORLD CITIZENS CALL FOR A CEASEFIRE IN LIBYA AND THE START OF NEGOTIATIONS ON A BROADLY-BASED NEW LIBYAN REPUBLIC

In Current Events, Democracy, Human Rights, Middle East & North Africa on March 17, 2011 at 10:29 PM

WORLD CITIZENS CALL FOR  A CEASEFIRE IN LIBYA AND THE START OF NEGOTIATIONS ON A BROADLY-BASED NEW LIBYAN REPUBLIC

(Updated March 20, 2011)

By René Wadlow


On March 15, 2011, when the fighting was still between pro- and anti-Qaddafi forces, in a message to United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Prof. René Wadlow, Chief Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva of the Association of World Citizens (AWC), urged the Secretary-General to take a lead in advocating a ceasefire in Libya that would halt the current fighting and the flight of refugees. Increased fighting provokes an intolerable burden upon the already-strained medical facilities as well as supplies to meet the basic needs of the population.

A ceasefire would be a first step toward negotiations that would lead to a new constitutional order and a broadly-based new Libyan Republic.

Since the ides of March, the situation has heated up and has been internationalized with a United Nations Security Council Resolution, a follow-up Summit in Paris on March 19 and the start of French, British and U. S. air and sea strikes in Libya.

Fighting among Libyans continues on the ground. How long the armed conflict will go on and with what short-term results is too early to say. The real issue is to move to an agreed-upon end to the fighting and to open the door to the necessary constitutional restructuring of the country and creation of a broadly-based new Libyan Republic.

Following the nonviolent people’s revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, protests against the political and economic functioning of Libya began. Rather than starting a dialogue, the Libyan authorities undertook a policy of repression, leading to the large-scale armed violence we see today, provoking a massive flow of foreign workers to leave the country and to the internal displacement of many Libyans.

A Libyan demonstrator demanding an end to the rule of Colonel Moammar Qaddafi.

Only a ceasefire will allow the start of dealing with the fundamental constitutional issues which have faced the country since its Independence.  At Independence in 1951, authority rested with King Sayyid Idris as Sanoussi (1890-1983), the leader of an important Islamic brotherhood who remained more concerned with religious reforms than with the structure of the government and the quality of the administration. His government had some decentralized, federalist aspects but was largely based on pre-existing tribal confederations. (1)

When the military officers led by Colonel Moammar Qaddafi took power in a coup in September 1969, there was for a short time some discussion as to the forms of government that they would develop. There was agreement on a greater centralization of power, as well as keeping to the religious policies of the former King and the Sanoussi Brotherhood — what has been called neo-salafyisme. However, in order not to put obstacles in the way of future Arab unity, no constitutionally-agreed upon State structures were officially created.

King Sayyid Idris as Sanoussi, aka Idriss the First, of Libya (reigned 1951-1969).

Colonel Qaddafi wanted to do away with parliamentary government and representational elections in favour of people’s committees, a people’s congress, and revolutionary committees, all held together by the ideological assumptions of his Third Universal Theory — a concept that embodies anti-imperialism, Arab unity, Islamic socialism and direct popular democracy. (2)

Disagreements on the nature of the State had led to important divisions among the ruling circle, especially in 1975.  However, all open discussions on the nature of the State, of the relation between State and society, of the place of the tribes and of religious brotherhoods were considered subversive — in fact treason.  In practice, but not in theory, decision-making was in the hands of Colonel Qaddafi, his family, friends and tribal allies. (3)

In the short term, negotiations after a ceasefire may lead to a continued role in the Libyan power structure of Colonel Qaddafi, his sons and allies.  However, the degree of violence is clear evidence that the  structure of the State does not function, that whatever its faults, a parliament allows some of the demands of the people to be heard and creates limits on the exercise of power.

Historically in Libya, there were sixteen marabtin tribes renowned for their religious wisdom who served as mediators and arbiters within the political structures of tribal, pre-colonial Libya. The tradition of reconciliatory mediation may still exist, and traditional avenues of mediation should be explored.

A ceasefire must be a first step, and the United Nations the most appropriate institution for maintaining a ceasefire while constitutional discussions start.

René Wadlow is Senior Vice President and Chief Representative to  the United Nations Office in Geneva of the Association of World  Citizens.


1)      For a useful analysis of Libyan governmental structures see: J. Davis Libyan Politics, Tribes and Revolution (London: I.B. Tauris, 1987)

2)      See M.M. Ayoub Islam and the Third Universal Theory: the religious thought of Muamar al Qadhafi (London: Kegan Paul, 1987)

3)      See Rene Lemarchand (Ed). The Green and the Black: Qadhafi’s Politics in Africa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988).