The Official Blog of the

Archive for the ‘United Nations’ Category

BOOK REVIEW: Jerome M. Segal, “Creating the Palestinian State: A Strategy for Peace”

In Conflict Resolution, Cultural Bridges, Current Events, Middle East & North Africa, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, United Nations on August 17, 2025 at 1:10 PM

By René Wadlow

Jerome M. Segal, Creating The Palestinian State: A Strategy for Peace.

Chicago,IL: Laurence Hill Books, 1989, 177pp.

At this time when clashes among Israelis and Palestinians have been growing in intensity with an impact on neighboring countries, new attitudes and approaches are needed. Several Western European countries have announced that they will recognize a Palestinian state during the 2025 United Nations General Assembly in New York. Thus, it is useful to review an early presentation of the need for a Palestinian state.

Jerome Segal was a research scholar at the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at the University of Maryland in the USA. He writes, “My efforts have been directed towards the creation of a Palestinian state, not primarily as an end in itself, but as a component part of the two-state solution. The two-state solution is, in my estimation, the only basis for a stable peace in the Middle East… It cannot be done by the Palestinians alone… It can only occur if there is broad support from all who seek peace along the lines of the two-state solution.”

For Segal, a Palestinian state would be a state without an army, on the model of Costa Rica. A Palestinian state would work effectively to prevent terrorism and attacks against Israeli structures. It would declare that the State of Palestine offers peace to all its neighboring states and looks forward to mutual cooperation for the common good of all.

The Association of World Citizens (AWC) has been concerned with the development of appropriate constitutional structures as a vital aspect of peacebuilding. The AWC emphasis has been placed on the possibilities of con-federalism, autonomy within a decentralized state, and trans-frontier cooperation. We will continue to follow Israeli-Palestinian events closely.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

BOOK REVIEW: E.G. Vallianatos, “Fear in the Countryside: The Control of Agricultural Resources in the Poor Countries by Nonpeasant Elites”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Human Rights, Social Rights, Solidarity, United Nations, World Law on August 12, 2025 at 9:01 PM

By René Wadlow

E.G. Vallianatos, Fear in the Countryside: The Control of Agricultural Resources in the Poor Countries by Nonpeasant Elites.

Cambridge. MA: Ballenger Publishing Co. 1976, 180pp.

E.G. Vallianatos, a former member of the United Nations (UN) Secretariat, shows the connection between the lack of power and the lack of productivity. He highlights that most economic and political power in developing countries is concentrated in urban areas. Agrarian structures and access to essential resources often do not favor the majority of rural people, especially the poorest groups. Policies on development priorities and allocation of resources and services often help the politically powerful urban sector. An increasing amount of rural productive land is falling under the control of urban elites.

One answer to why the rural poor stay poor is that they rarely are well organized so as to be able to participate meaningfully in decision-making. Especially the least powerful among the rural poor – the tenant farmers, the landless laborers, members of tribal societies – are the least well organized, the most easily divided and blocked.

Social change is inevitably a challenge to the status quo. 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 the access to water prior to digging the new well.

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, thus creating fear in the countryside. Non-violent techniques have been used to organize the powerless in rural areas. One of the first efforts of Mahatma Gandhi on his return to India from South Africa was to investigate and then mediate in the struggle of the indigo pickers. Cesar Chavez in the USA was a leading advocate of non-violence in his efforts to organize agricultural workers. The Sarvodoya Movement in Sri Lanka has applied the Buddhist values of compassion to construct a social and economic infrastructure based on a strong community spirit. There is a need to study the wide range of situations and the opportunities for constructive action.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

Stronger Track Two Networks Needed

In Being a World Citizen, Conflict Resolution, NGOs, Nonviolence, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations, United States on August 5, 2025 at 5:45 PM

By René Wadlow

The continuing armed conflicts in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip, increased tensions between Mainland China and Taiwan with the lack of any formal governmental negotiations forces us to ask if more can be done on the part of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) to encourage negotiations in good faith.

Governmental efforts, bilateral or within the United Nations (UN) can be called Track One. Track One diplomacy is official government negotiations with the backup resources of government research and intelligence agencies. There can also be Track One “back channels” of informal or unofficial contacts.

Track Two diplomacy is a non-official effort usually by an NGO or an academic institution. The use of non-official mediators is also increasing as awareness grows that there is a tragic disjuncture between the UN mandate to keep peace and its inability to intervene in conflicts within a State – often confrontations between armed groups and government forces and sometimes among different armed groups.

Track Two talks are discussions held by non-officials of conflicting parties in an attempt to clarify outstanding disputes and to explore the options for resolving them in settings that are less sensitive than those associated with formal negotiations. The participants usually include scholars, senior journalists, former government officials and former military officers. They should be in close contact with national leaders and decision-makers. The purposes of Track Two talks vary, but they are all related to reducing tensions. Much depends on the caliber and dedication of the participants and their relations with governmental leadership.

Citizens of the World were involved in one of the earliest continuing Track Two efforts. In 1959 President Eisenhower asked the world citizen Norman Cousins, editor of the New York-based journal The Saturday Review of Literature, if there were some way that could be arranged to get private Soviet and United States (U.S.) citizens together to discuss U.S.-Soviet relations.

The first meeting was held at Dartmouth College and became known as the Dartmouth Conferences held in many different places in the USA. David Rockefeller, chief of the Chase Manhattan Bank, whose name as a capitalist was known by most Soviets, was one of the active participants. Rockefeller and his family had many contacts with U.S. intellectuals and scholars on whom they could call to participate in the Dartmouth meetings.

A Russian-American Conference, Dartmouth Group, October 1962 (C) Phillips Academy Archives and Special Collections, CC BY-SA 2.0

As Kenneth Boulding, a Quaker economist who often participated in Track Two efforts wrote:

“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.” (1)

Note:

1) Quoted in John W. McDonald with Noa Zanolli, The Shifting Grounds of Conflict and Peacebuilding (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008, 241 pp)

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

BOOK REVIEW: A. Fonseca Pimentel, “Democratic World Government and the United Nations”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Conflict Resolution, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations, World Law on August 5, 2025 at 7:00 AM

By René Wadlow

A. Fonseca Pimentel, Democratic World Government and the United Nations.
Brasilia, Escopa Editions, 1980, 158pp.

The United Nations (UN) was created in the spirit of world citizenship (“We the Peoples…”). The history of the UN can be seen as the development of world citizen values and world law. The world community is in a period of vast transformation being brought about by powerful economic, political, and cultural agents to cope with the challenges of growing interdependence among all peoples and the growing impact of people on the natural environment.

Structures of world law are needed to provide a framework for this transformation. The UN General Assembly has proclaimed the standards of international law such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948) which has become the world standard and guide for both regional and national human rights law. Such declarations are part of a trend of building and strengthening a world peace structure composed of world law and intergovernmental institutions which command such general acceptance that resort to world law will replace unilateral actions of States based on narrow domestic political considerations. Governments, business corporations, and transnational social movements are increasingly convinced that they all possess a stake in an orderly world society which can be endangered by the use of force.

However, as Pimentel points out, an orderly world society is not a world society without change. No rule of law is possible without sufficient methods for solving grievances.

Fonseca Pimentel was a Brazilian scholar and economist with long experience in public administration and as a UN advisor on administrative reforms. As he notes, “The dilemma facing the United Nations is to find a way to go further on the road to world citizenship.” At this time when there is armed violence in many parts of the world and consistent violations of human rights, he sets out the challenges clearly.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

BOOK REVIEW: Peter L. Wilson, “Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Conflict Resolution, Cultural Bridges, Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, International Justice, Middle East & North Africa, Modern slavery, Peacebuilding, Refugees, Religious Freedom, Solidarity, Spirituality, Syria, The Search for Peace, United Nations, War Crimes, Women's Rights, World Law on August 4, 2025 at 5:55 PM

By René Wadlow

Peter L. Wilson, Peacock Angel: The Esoteric Tradition of the Yezidis.

Rochester, VT, Inner Traditions, 2022, 272pp.

Peter Wilson, a specialist on the Middle East, has written a useful book on the religious framework of the Yezidis as seen by someone outside the Yezidi faith. A Yezidi website has been established by Yezidis living in Nebraska, USA: https://yeziditruth.org.

The yearly Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought awarded by the European Parliament was given on October 27, 2016 to Nadia Murad who is also the co-laureate of the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize. She had been taken captive by the forces of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in August 2014 and then sold into sexual slavery and forced marriage. She was able to escape with the help of a compassionate Muslim family and went to Germany as a refugee. She has become a spokesperson for the Yezidi, especially Yezidi women.

There are some 500,000 Yezidis, a Kurdish-speaking religious community living in northern Iraq. There were also some 200,000 Yezidis among the Kurds of Türkiye, but nearly all have migrated to Western Europe, primarily Germany as well as to Australia, Canada, and the USA.

There are also some Yezidi among Kurds living in Syria, Iran and Armenia. The Yezidis do not convert people. Thus, the religion continues only through birth into the community.

The structure of the Yezidi religious system is Zoroastrian, a faith born in Persia proclaiming that two great cosmic forces, that of light and good and that of darkness and evil are in constant battle. Humans are called upon to help light overcome darkness.

However, the strict dualistic thinking of Zoroastrianism was modified by another Persian prophet, Mani of Ctesiphon in the third century of the Common Era. Mani tried to create a synthesis of religious teachings that were increasingly coming into contact through travel and trade: Buddhism and Hinduism from India, Jewish and Christian thought, Hellenistic Gnostic philosophy from Egypt and Greece as well as many small belief systems.

Mani kept the Zoroastrian dualism as the most easily understood intellectual framework, though giving it a somewhat more Taoist (yin/yang) flexibility, Mani having traveled to China. He developed the idea of the progression of the soul by individual effort through reincarnation. Unfortunately, only the dualistic Zoroastrian framework is still attached to Mani’s name – Manichaeism. This is somewhat ironic as it was the Zoroastrian Magi who had him put to death as a dangerous rival.

Within the Mani-Zoroastrian framework, the Yezidi added the presence of angels who are to help humans in the constant battle for light and good, in particular Melek Tawsi, the peacock angel. Although there are angels in Islam, angels that one does not know could well be demons. Thus, the Yezidis are regularly accused of being “demon worshipers”.

The Yezidis have always been looked down upon by both their Muslim and Christian neighbors as “pagans”. The government of Saddam Hussein was opposed to the Yezidis not so much for their religious beliefs but rather because some Yezidis played important roles in the Kurdish community, seen as largely opposed to the government. The Yezidi community is still in socio-economic difficulty given the instability of the situation in Iraq.

Peter Wilson has written a useful introduction to this little-known faith.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

Opposing the Death Penalty: The Fight Goes On

In Current Events, Democracy, Human Rights, International Justice, Middle East & North Africa, NGOs, Religious Freedom, Solidarity, United Nations, World Law on July 29, 2025 at 7:45 PM

By René Wadlow

In a July 28, 2025 statement, the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, called for a moratorium on capital punishment in Iran where at least 48 persons are currently on death row. According to information gathered by the UN Human Rights Office in Geneva, at least 612 persons were reportedly executed in the first half of 2025. Minorities continue to be disproportionately affected by executions.

Religious minorities in Iran include Sunni Muslims, Christians, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, Jews, and the Gonabali Sufi community. Religious and ethnic identities in Iran often overlap.

(C) Amnesty International

Türk added, “Information received by my Office also indicates that judicial proceedings in a number of cases, often held behind closed doors, have consistently failed to meet due process and fair trial guarantees…The death penalty is incompatible with the right to life and irreconcilable with human dignity. Instead of accelerating executions, I urge Iran join the worldwide movement abolishing capital punishment starting with a moratorium on all executions.”

The Association of World Citizens has repeatedly called upon governments for a moratorium on executions with a view of abolishing the death penalty – a penalty that extensive research has shown has little or no impact on the level of crime and too often opens doors to judicial errors and injustices.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

BOOK REVIEW: Lawrence S. Wittner, “Working for Peace and Justice”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Conflict Resolution, Nonviolence, Nuclear weapons, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, United Nations, World Law on July 28, 2025 at 8:15 PM

By René Wadlow

Lawrence S. Wittner, Working for Peace and Justice

Knoxville, TN/University of Tennessee Press, 2012, 268pp.

Laurence Wittner has written a very moving account of his efforts as an activist for peace and social justice. At this present time, when such efforts are very necessary, the memoir is a guideline for concerted efforts, both the joys and the difficulties.

Wittner was largely based at the State University of New York at Albany, which is the administrative capital of New York, home of the governor, although New York City has a much larger population and is a center of economic, cultural, and political power.

In the fall of 2005, his long-time activity in the peace movement combined with his books on anti-nuclear weapons such as Struggle Against the Bomb and Toward Nuclear Abolition, both published by Stanford University Press) led to his election to the national board of Peace Action, the largest, broadly based United States (U.S.) peace organization with some 100,000 members. Thus, he writes on activities at the local level, mostly Albany, as well as at the national level with the factionalism and sectarianism that have often characterized Left movements such as democratic socialism in which Wittner was active.

Yet, as he writes, “Over the course of history, there are heartening indications that people of goodwill and determination have made headway in pulling humanity out of the nightmare of ignorance, superstition, slavery, tyranny, exploitation and militarism that has characterized the past. In my own lifetime I have seen courageous people topple dictatorships, shatter systems of racial oppression, roll back corporate domination, bring an end to unjust wars and avert a nuclear holocaust. And I am confident that efforts to extend human progress will continue.”

Progress requires organizing, persistence, and a sense of community with those with whom one is working. For Wittner, music was an important activist tool; he played the guitar and often performed songs at political meetings.

There is much to be done to create a harmonious world society, and Working for Peace and Justice sets out important paths of action.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

Thailand-Cambodia: Good Faith Negotiations Needed

In Asia, Being a World Citizen, Conflict Resolution, Current Events, NGOs, Nonviolence, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations, World Law on July 26, 2025 at 9:50 AM

THAILAND-CAMBODIA: GOOD FAITH NEGOTIATIONS NEEDED

The Association of World Citizens (AWC) expresses deep concern over the rising political tensions and military clashes between Thailand and Cambodia which has led to a large displacement of civilians from the border areas.

On July 24, 2025, Cambodian forces launched artillery attacks on civilian targets in Thai territory, and Thailand responded with airstrikes on Cambodia. Landmines have been set in the contested border areas. The AWC has long been active against the use of landmines. This escalation of Thai-Cambodian tensions risks a destabilization of both governments and societies.

Therefore, the AWC calls for an immediate ceasefire and the start of negotiations in good faith.

Prof. René Wadlow, President of the Association of World Citizens

Human Rights Education: A Vital Need

In Being a World Citizen, Human Rights, International Justice, NGOs, Nonviolence, Peacebuilding, Refugees, Religious Freedom, Social Rights, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, United Nations, World Law on July 26, 2025 at 6:30 AM

By René Wadlow

Education for human rights is a vital need in order to create a universal culture of human rights. Such a culture of human rights can be built around peoples’ needs and current struggles. A human rights culture is more than knowing and respecting the provisions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is a break in the cycle of humiliation, abuses of power and violence in which too many people are caught today. People want to know that they are in full control of their lives and that their society embodies their uniqueness as people with the full development of their personality and sense of dignity.

Knowledge requires appropriate pedagogical techniques for imparting human rights information, and therefore there is a need to train teachers at all levels of formal education in the teaching of human rights. There is a need to develop innovative material for use especially in professional training for the judiciary, law enforcement, military, medical and social work. The need to develop innovative teaching material and techniques is true for the efforts against torture especially on persons held in custody.

In addition to human rights education within formal educational institutions, an emphasis can be placed on popular education and the informal sector. There is a role for writers and anthropologists to collect stories and songs that evoke the historical memory of people about hope, respect, equality and human dignity. Likewise, the media can play an important role both in giving information and in developing respect for human rights and dignity.

Human rights education is an indispensable tool in the empowerment of peoples. Learning of human rights leads to participation, reciprocity and accountability on all levels of society. This strengthens the democratic process as persons become aware of their rights and responsibilities, of the full dimension of equal respect between women and men, and among peoples of different cultural and ethnic identities.

There is much to be done, and many can play a role. Join in this vital effort for human rights education!

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

Day of Hope

In Being a World Citizen, Nonviolence, Solidarity, Spirituality, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations on July 12, 2025 at 7:00 AM

By René Wadlow

July 12 has been set by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly as the International Day of Hope to be celebrated each year as a moment of light in dark times. Hope is a powerful force for positive change and for a brighter future. Hope is an important element in developing a culture of peace. Hope helps us to overcome the serious challenges which face the world society.

The Association of World Citizens was among those working with progressive governments so that on March 4, 2025, the UN General Assembly voted to set July 12 each year as the Day of Hope. Hope must, of course, be translated into action. However, at this time when many felt hopeless in the light of armed violence and wide-spread violations of human rights, a day devoted to hope agreed to by such a large number of countries is a sign of common efforts for progress.

Hope can be encouraged by programs in schools and cultural centers – a possibility for creative action by all of us.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.