After the April 22 attack and death of 26 Indian tourists at Pahalgam in the Indian-administered area of Kashmir, tensions between India and Pakistan grew quickly. Pakistan was accused by India of backing the terrorists who had carried out the attack – a charge which Pakistan denied. Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the Indian military “complete operational freedom”. A combination of bellicose rhetoric, domestic pressures, and political agitation led to daily exchanges of armed fire, and the shooting down of Indian jet fighters. The frontiers between the two countries were closed and diplomats withdrawn. The dangers of escalation between the two nuclear-armed countries were obvious to many.
Fortunately, outside voices called for an immediate ceasefire: U.S. President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Antonio Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN), and some member governments of the UN Security Council which met in closed session, as well as a good number of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) involved in conflict resolution efforts such as the International Peace Bureau and the Association of World Citizens (AWC). One must now strive so that the ceasefire will hold.
The next step is to facilitate negotiations between the Indian and Pakistani governments. A first step is to create a number of confidence-building measures so that the ceasefire holds. Then there is a need to develop longer-range negotiations. There are a good number of outstanding issues, such as Kashmir, which go back to the founding of the two countries.
It may be that the current steps back from the nuclear brink will drive home the need for serious negotiations. NGOs in both India and Pakistan may help to see on what issues progress may be made. Those of us on the outside must do all we can to facilitate creative dialogue between Indians and Pakistanis.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
On April 22, 2025, four gunmen killed 26 people and injured others in the Kashmir tourist center of Pahalgam, Kashmir, India. The Resistance Front claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack, but the group is little known. Indian officials have blamed Pakistan as being behind the attackers saying that Pakistan has a fundamentally criminal disposition in its deep state membership. Pakistan is host to Islamic militants that carry out terrorist raids in India but does not necessarily control them.
As a result of the Pahalgam attack, India has closed its border crossings into Pakistan and suspended India’s 1960 Water Treaty with Pakistan. Anti-Pakistan protests have erupted in India’s capital New Delhi and in several other cities raising fears that anti-Muslim sentiment will grow in India. Pakistan responded by closing its border crossings with India and closed its air space to Indian aircraft.
In 2019, India modified the special self-governing status of Jammu and Kashmir, and security measures have been very tight since. Nevertheless, Kashmir is an important location for tourism within India. Within 48 hours, 90 percent of the tourists in Kashmir left – a blow to farmers who sold their food to tourists and to handicraft makers. The image of a young bride sitting beside her husband’s lifeless body has been viewed multiple times and is fixed into the Indian national consciousness as the symbol of the drama.
As tensions within Jammu and Kashmir have led to armed conflicts between India and Pakistan in the past, the governments of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia and Iran have offered their good offices as mediators. On April 25, Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian Foreign Minister, said that both India and Pakistan are “brother nations” and that Iran was prepared to play a mediation role.
A ‘Beating of Retreat’ ceremony in Wagha, Pakistan, just next to India, on December 5, 2010. (C) Koshy Koshy
It may be that the governments of Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, and Iran are all too involved with advancing their own political interests in world politics to be taken as neutral mediators. Nevertheless, the India-Pakistan tensions are very dangerous and may easily grow worse if steps to reduce tensions are not taken very soon.
As Citizens of the World, we are particularly called to help create a climate for negotiations in good faith and to reduce tensions. Therefore, we need to use our worldwide links in a creative way to reduce tensions. We devote ourselves to the safeguard, restoration, and construction of peace through dialogue, cooperation and reconciliation.
One approach in which World Citizens participate is called Track Two. Track One is official government-to-government diplomacy among instructed representatives of the State although there can be “back channels” and informal contacts among the representatives of governments. Track Two consists of discussions held among non-officials of conflicting parties in an effort to clarify outstanding disputes and to explore the options for resolving them in settings that are less sensitive and often less structured and with less media attention than those associated with official negotiations. Those involved in Track Two talks usually include scholars, senior journalists, former government officials and businesspeople. Depending on the aims and styles of these meetings, the profile of Track Two participants will differ.
The specific purposes of Track Two talks vary, but they are all related to reducing tensions. By informing their respective publics, participants, may indirectly contribute to the formation of new priorities and policies.
Track Two is not the end of the story for insights gained must be incorporated into the positions of government negotiators. There is a little verse by the Quaker economist Kenneth Boulding who participated in many Track Two efforts,
When Track One will not do, We have to travel on Track Two. But for results to be abiding, The Tracks must meet upon some siding.
Today, discussions among Nongovernmental Organizations with avenues of communication to Indian and Pakistani officials should begin now. Time may be in short supply.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Early April 2025, Finland’s Prime Minister announced the state’s intention to withdraw from the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of Anti-Personnel Mines, called for short the Ottawa Convention – reflecting the vital role that Canada played in its creation.
The Convention, which came into force on March 1, 1999, prohibits the use, production, stockpiling, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines. Over the decades, such anti-personnel mines have caused civilian harm, often of children, long after the hostilities have ended as they can be set off many years after they have been placed. The Convention has also advanced mine clearing operations, thus significantly reducing landmine-related harm and bolstered assistance for survivors.
As of March 2025, 165 states have ratified or acceded to the Convention. However, some major military powers including the USA, China, the Russian Federation, India, and Pakistan are still outside the treaty. Given the armed conflict in Ukraine, some states which have a land frontier with the Russian Federation have also indicated that they have started a withdrawal process: Finland with 1,340 km of frontier with the Russian Federation, Estonia with 294 km, Latvia with 284 km, Lithuania with 297 and Poland with 232 km.
In the same spirit as the Landmine Convention, a combination of progressive states such as Norway and Ireland and a combination of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) including the Association of World Citizens (AWC) worked for the creation of the Convention on Cluster Munitions which came into force in August 2010. This Convention bans the use, production, and transfer of cluster munitions and sets deadlines for stockpile destruction and clearance of contaminated land.
Landmines and explosive remnants of a war site in South Sudan (C) UNMISS
Cluster munitions are warheads that scatter scores of smaller bombs. Many of these sub-munitions fail to detonate on impact, leaving them scattered on the ground ready to kill or maim when disturbed or handled. Reports from humanitarian organizations and mine-clearing groups have shown that civilians make up the vast majority of the victims of cluster bombs, especially children attracted by their small size and often bright colors.
The issue of the indiscriminate impact of cluster bombs was raised by the representative of the Quaker United Nations (UN) Office in Geneva and by me for the Association of World Citizens, starting in 1979. (1) Many of the same NGOs active on anti-personnel mines were also active on the cluster bomb issue – a combination of disarmament and humanitarian groups.
The withdrawal of states from the Landmine Convention is a dangerous weakening of an important arms control effort. Thus, as Citizens of the World, we ask states tempted to withdraw from the Convention on Landmines to reconsider their position. We call upon the government of Canada to reaffirm its support for the Ottawa Convention.
Note
(1) See René Wadlow, “Banning Cluster Bombs: Light in the Darkness of Conflicts”, Journal of Humanitarian Medicine, Palermo, Italy, July-September 2010.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Recent violence and growing tensions along religious, ethnic and social class lines in Syria have highlighted the need to create a framework for cooperation among civil society groups. The Peacebuilding Section of the United Nations (UN) Secretariat was created because of the difficulties of creating a peaceful and just society after a period of armed conflict. It has been noted that violence often starts up again if strong measures of reconciliation and cooperative action are not undertaken as soon as the armed conflict ends. A spirit of revenge is often present, especially among those who consider themselves as victims. Thus, there needs to an interweaving of economic improvement with social reconciliation and the creation of trust among factions.
The long, multi-layered conflict in Syria from 2011 to the departure of Bashar al-Assad in December 2024 had increased tensions among groups, but the tensions were already there, clashing over values and interests. “Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation” wrote Khalil Gibran in The Garden of the Prophet thinking about his home country Lebanon, but it can also be said of neighboring Syria.
External countries had quickly stepped into the armed conflict after 2011 projecting their rivalries onto Syria and jockeying for regional preeminence. Syrian civil society members had cooperated during the efforts of mediation during the early years of the conflict. The first mediator was Mr. Kofi Annan as the joint envoy of the UN and the League of Arab States in February 2012.
Kofi Annan (C) Magyar ENSZ Társaság
Kofi Annan, a former UN Secretary General, had spent his entire career in the UN system and was a seasoned mediator. From his discussions and observations, he proposed first steps based on a ceasefire with effective UN supervision, a release of arbitrarily detained persons, increased humanitarian aid, and freedom of association within Syria. The implementation of his proposals did not follow, and he resigned his mandate on August 2, 2012.
I knew somewhat Kofi Annan and knew better some members of his staff. I also knew fairly well the Secretary General of the League of Arab States Nabil al-Araby, a longtime Ambassador of Egypt to the UN in Geneva. Thus, on behalf of the Association of World Citizens (AWC), I became involved with the armed conflict in Syria.
I had discussions with Dr. Faysal Khabbaz Hamouri, the Ambassador of Syria to the UN in Geneva, to see what issues might be negotiable and if an agenda could be fixed. I also had discussions with Syrian Nongovernmental Organization (NGO) members who had come to Geneva because of the negotiations. NGO representatives, such as I for the AWC, have no standing as official mediators but can play some role through their contacts with diplomats and UN Secretariat members. From these discussions, I came to realize how deeply divided was the Syrian community involved in the political aspects of the armed conflict. There were no public negotiations in Geneva after 2015. In September 2015, Russian military troops started their heavy support of the al-Assad government.
Today, it is difficult to know what those of us who are not Syrians and who are outside of Syria can do to help build a society of social cohesion in Syria. The wider Middle East is filled with violence and tensions among Israelis and Palestinians, in Lebanon, Yemen and Iran. We have to keep our spirits open for new possibilities of positive action.
(C) Khaled Fozan
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
The United Nations (UN) Charter begins with the promising words “We the Peoples…”. However, thereafter the peoples’ voice fades and that of governments takes over. Yet today, Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) with consultative status with the UN play an effective role in shaping global policy. Many NGOs are transnational with members in different countries and cultures. This is one of their strengths and helps the UN to serve better all peoples.
For NGOs, there is a need to look outside the framework of the existing UN system to grasp the importance of new issues. This was the case in the late 1960s when some NGOs began to raise the issue of the environment and ecological protection before these issues were on the governmental agenda for action. Today, such an issue is the increasing amount of rural productive land that is falling under the control of urban elites, sometimes urban elites in other countries. Landownership inevitably deals with the distribution of power within a society. No development project, no matter how small or how technical, is without an impact on the distribution of power. A new well dug in a village is not simply an added social service. The new well calls into question the power of those who controlled access to water prior to digging the new well.
Although in many countries there are unions of agricultural workers, peasant leagues, agricultural cooperatives, and rural credit unions, it is nevertheless generally true that rural organizations have rarely achieved the degree of national power that has been reached by industrial workers’ unions.
A Sudanese farmer harvesting sorghum plants from seeds donated by the Food and Agriculture Organization. (C) Fred Noy/UN Photo
One answer to why the rural poor stay poor is that they are rarely well organized. Especially the least powerful among the rural poor – the tenant farmers, the landless laborers, the untouchables, the members of tribal societies – are the least well organized, the most easily divided and blocked. The economic and political power structure in many countries does not encourage the active participation of small, marginal farmers and rural workers. If measures are not taken to facilitate the peaceful participation of the rural poor, it is likely that the rural poor will turn to armed violence.
It is true that nonviolent techniques have been used to organize the powerless in rural areas. One of the first actions of Mahatma Gandhi on his return to India from South Africa was to investigate and then mediate the struggle of the rural indigo pickers. Cesar Chavez was a leading advocate of nonviolence in his efforts to organize agricultural workers in the western United States. In Sri Lanka, the Sarvodaya movement has applied Buddhist values of compassion to construct a social and economic infrastructure based on a strong community spirit.
The role of the marginalized in rural areas is not a new problem but it is one that has not received the attention it deserves. NGOs can help to focus on the issue within the UN system and so advance reform measures.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
On March 18, 2025, Israeli airstrikes across the Gaza Strip killed over 400 Palestinians, including women and children, and wounding more than 500, ending a ceasefire which had begun on January 19, 2025.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu resumed the fighting pointing to Hamas’s unwillingness to release the remaining hostages. He has long insisted that attacks on the Gaza Strip would continue until Hamas is destroyed. He has indicated that the March attack was only the beginning. Some analysts see renewed combat as imminent with the conditions of life in the Gaza Strip, already bad, getting worse. Violence among Palestinians and Israeli Jewish settlers on the West Bank also seems to be growing. In such a negative atmosphere, are negotiations possible?
With no progress in government-led talks, are Track Two discussions a way to advance?
The phrase “Track Two” was coined in 1982 by Joseph Montville of the United States (U.S.) Foreign Service Institute to describe methods of diplomacy that are outside the formal diplomatic system but with people in middle-level-leadership positions who have skills of negotiation and compromise. Track Two provides a type of flexibility not available in formal governmental settings. Track Two are discussions held by non-officials of conflicting parties in an effort to clarify outstanding disputes and to explore the options for resolving them in settings that are less sensitive, less structured, and with less media attention than those associated with official negotiations. The non-officials involved usually include scholars, senior journalists, former government officials, retired military officers, and businesspeople. Depending on the aims and the styles of these meetings, the profile and expertise of Track Two participants will differ.
Joseph Montville (C) C-SPAN
With governmental negotiations at a standstill, the Association of World Citizens (AWC) has suggested the possibility of Track Two efforts to see on what issues negotiations might be possible. As an earlier AWC proposal stated,
The role of Track Two dialogues can be modest. The goal is not to change the basic views or philosophies of the participants. The goal is that the decisions of participants on crucial issues will be made with finer perceptions of the views and intentions of others.
National political leaders often have a short attention span for issues unless there are strong domestic reasons for remaining involved. Therefore, World Citizens need a longer-range vision and must be willing to take measures which do not give immediate results. However, each effort helps to build an infrastructure of people used to discussion and clear communication. For World Citizens, Track Two approaches are infused with a vision of the good society with an emphasis on human development, and a broadly-based civil society.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
On March 6, 2025, the United Nations (UN) Children’s Fund (UNICEF) warned that many children in the conflicts among militias in Sudan are at risk of rape and other forms of sexual violence which are being used as weapons of war. In November 2024, the Association of World Citizens (AWC) had highlighted that rape was being used as a weapon of war in the Sudan conflicts and that strong counter measures are needed.
“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 and force them to flee homes, families and communities; rape targets 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 the possibility of reproduction; 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 AWC first raised the issue of rape as a weapon of war in the UN Commission on Human Rights in March 2001 after the judgement of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) maintained that there can be no time limitation 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.
As Citizens of the World, we need to have a peace-building approach which asks: How does a political conflict degenerate into pervasive mass violence, generating new crises and new forms of violent conflict in the future? Even after a war ends, the effects of sexual violence continue in the form of unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted infections, discrimination and ostracizing of victims and often lasting psychological damage. Thus, we must ask how a community pulls itself out from the cycle of violence and creates new attitudes to promote human dignity and develop new institutions of conflict resolution.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
The conquest of the city of Goma, North-Kivu, a city of two million people in the Democratic Republic of Congo in November-December 2024, followed by the conquest by the same forces of Bukavu, the capital of South-Kivu in January-February 2025, a city of one million persons, has brought to attention the use of “child soldiers”, very young people mobilized to kill and destroy. The armed forces, the regular Army of the Democratic Republic of Congo, not having been paid in some time, faded away and left the fighting largely to militias organized along clanic or ethnic lines. There are real possibilities that the fighting will spread to Rwanda and Burundi, perhaps even Uganda.
The issue of child soldiers had gained attention in the ethnic-based fighting in Liberia. Young people had also been used in fighting in Colombia, South America. Child soldiers were often accused of sexual abuse, and there were difficulties in reintegrating the youth in their home villages when the fighting stopped.
Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) active in Geneva in the United Nations’ (UN’s) human rights bodies felt that action was needed on the issue of child soldiers and began to organize on the issue. In practice, what gives NGOs their influence is not what an individual NGO can do alone but what they can do collectively. “Networking” is a key method of progress. NGOs make networks which facilitate the trans-national movement of norms and information. Such networks tend to be temporary and highly personalized. However, at the UN, they are bound together in a common desire to protect the planet and advance the welfare of humanity.
In 1979 a Special Working Group on the Rights of the Child was created under the chairmanship of the Polish representative, the legal specialist Adam Lopatka. Government and NGO representatives worked together from 1979 to 1988 for one week each year in Geneva. There was a core group, including the Association of World Citizens (AWC), which worked steadily together. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross and the International Labor Organization were brought into the sessions.
The Working Group managed to come to a consensus on a final version in time for the UN General Assembly to adopt the Convention on the Rights of the Child on November 20, 1989. By creating a common legal framework of world law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child has increased levels of government accountability, bringing about legislative and institutional reforms and increasing international cooperation. As James P. Grant, then UNICEF’s Executive Director, said at the time, “Transcending its detailed provisions, the Convention on the Rights of the Child embodies the fundamental principle that the lives and the normal development of children should have first call on society’s concerns and capacities and that children should be able to depend upon that commitment in good times and bad, in normal times and in times of emergency, in times of peace and in times of war, in times of prosperity and in times of recession.”
The Convention of the Rights of the Child has an important provision banning the recruitment and use in hostilities of persons under 15 years of age. The same provision has been placed in the Rome Statute creating the International Criminal Court. These international legal standards are tools which can be used. It is difficult to reach out to the armed militias active in Congo. However, we must try, as Citizens of the World, to make world law known and put into practice.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
February 24 marks the anniversary of the start of the Russian “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine in 2022 which very quickly became a war with the large loss of life both military and civil, with the displacement of population, and a crackdown on opposition to the war. For three years, the war has continued, lap after lap. Although there were fears that the war might spread to neighboring countries, the fighting has been focused on Ukraine, and more recently on a small part of Russian territory attacked by Ukrainian forces. Can there be a realistic end to the armed conflict in sight?
On February 18, 2025, the United States (U.S.) Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, and the Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, met and discussed in part ending the armed conflict in Ukraine. They discussed a possible Putin-Trump summit that could be held in Saudi Arabia. Earlier, U.S. Army General Mark Milley had said, “There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word, not achievable through military means, and therefore, when there is an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it.”
However, the conflict is not one only between the USA and the Russian Federation; it also involves directly Ukraine. The Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has stressed strongly that the Ukraine government leadership wants to play a key role in any negotiations. Certain European countries such as France, Germany, Poland and Turkey have been involved in different ways in the conflict as well as in proposing possible avenues of negotiation to bring the conflict to an end. The bargaining process could be lengthy, but also it could be short as there is “handwriting on the wall.”
One key aspect concerns the fate of four Ukrainian areas “annexed” by Russia, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia largely controlled by Russian troops. President Putin has said, “These regions had been incorporated by the will of the people into the Russian Federation. This matter is closed forever and is no longer a matter of discussion.” However, the status of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics is at the core of what President Zelenskyy wants discussed.
(C) Homoatrox
“Made in War” is the mark of origin stamped upon nearly all States. Their size, their shape, their ethnic makeup is the result of wars. There are virtually no frontiers today that are not the results of wars: world wars, colonial struggles, annexations by victors, wars against indigenous populations. States were not created by reasonable negotiations based on ethnic or geographic characteristics. If frontiers can be modified only by the victors in wars, then there must be new imaginative transnational forms of cooperation. What is needed are not new frontiers but new states of mind.
From April 5 to 7, 2023, the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, was in China and urged that China could play a key role in bringing peace to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. President Xi Jinping had made a very general 12-point peace plan to resolve the Russia-Ukraine conflict – an indication that China is willing to play a peace-making role. China is probably the only country with the ability to influence Russian policymakers in a peaceful direction.
However, there are long historic and strategic aspects to the current armed conflict. Security crises are deeply influenced both by a sense of history and current perceptions. Thus, the Association of World Citizens (AWC) encourages the development of a renewed security architecture as was envisaged by the Helsinki Final Act and the creation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). There will be much to do to re-create an environment of trust and confidence that has been weakened by this conflict. Nongovernmental Organizations should play an active and positive role.
(C) Bernard J. Henry/AWC
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Mirjana Spoljaric, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), warned on February 6, 2025 that there is a serious erosion of respect for international humanitarian law. The ICRC is, through agreements signed with most governments, the chief agency for the respect of the Geneva Conventions, the heart of international humanitarian law.
The armed conflict in Ukraine now spreading to a part of Russia and the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians, especially in the Gaza Strip, have led to the destruction of medical and educational facilities. Civilians have been directly targeted, prisoners of war abused, and hostages taken – all violations of international humanitarian law.
To this sad record of recent abuses must now be added the situation in Goma and the eastern area of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Humanitarian law should be respected by nongovernmental militias such as the M23 in Goma, but they have never signed an agreement to respect the Geneva Conventions. There have been discussions within the ICRC and other humanitarian aid agencies as to the role of nongovernmental militias with respect to international humanitarian law. These are vital discussions as the role of nongovernmental militias has become more frequent in armed conflicts.
The Association of World Citizens (AWC) played a key role in having a coalition of armed groups fighting in Burma to sign the Geneva Conventions. The signature was deposited with the Swiss Government which is the depository power for the Conventions. The signature was considered as only “symbolic” as not involving a government. However, the signature by the militias led to an exchange of prisoners showing that it was taken seriously by the Burmese government.
The AWC has strongly supported the strengthening of international humanitarian law. International humanitarian law is a central core of the broader body of world law. The strengthening of respect for humanitarian law develops a base for the application of international law and such institutions as the World Court.
As Mirjana Spoljaric, a Swiss diplomat before she became President of the ICRC, has stressed, the world society is at a crucial moment. There is a need to reaffirm respect for humanitarian law. Unfortunately, such reaffirmation is not a high priority for most Ministries of Foreign Affairs. Thus, as the AWC has urged, most recently through its appeals of March 2022, October 2023 and October 2024, there is a real possibility for NGOs to take the lead.
Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.
Association of World Citizens 