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BOOK REVIEW: Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, “Burning Country – Syrians in Revolution and War”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Conflict Resolution, Cultural Bridges, Current Events, Democracy, Human Rights, International Justice, Middle East & North Africa, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, Syria, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations, War Crimes, World Law on September 1, 2025 at 6:00 AM

Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami, Burning Country – Syrians in Revolution and War.

London, Pluto Press, 2016, 262pp.

Although this overview of Syrian society was written before the January 2025 flight of Bashar al-Assad to Moscow and the coming to power of Ahmed al-Sharaa as “interim” President, the book is a useful guide to many of the current issues in Syria today.

As Khalil Gibran wrote in The Garden of the Prophet, thinking of his home country, Lebanon, but it can also be said of the neighboring Syria, “Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation.” The fragments, ethnic and religious to which are added deep social divisions, make common action difficult. The Druze, the Alaouites, the Kurds, all play an important role but are often fearful of each other. Some of the Alaouites have fled to Lebanon. At the same time, there is a slow return of Syrians who have been in exile in Turkey and western Europe – especially Germany.

The divisions were made deeper by the years of violent conflict against the government of Bashar al-Assad which began in March 2011 with youth-led demonstrations appealing for a Syrian republic based on equality of citizenship, the rule of law, respect for human rights, and political pluralism.

After some months of non-violent protests, members of the military deserted, taking their weapons with them. The Syrian conflict became militarized. A host of armed militias were formed, often hostile to each other.

From late 2013 to February 2014, there were negotiations for a ceasefire held at the United Nations (UN), Geneva. Representatives of the Association of World Citizens (AWC) met with the Ambassador to the UN of Syria, as well as with the representatives of different Syrian factions who had come to Geneva. Unfortunately, Syrian politics has been that of “winner takes all” with little spirit of compromise or agreed-upon steps for the public good. The AWC called for a broad coming together of individuals who believe in non-violence, equality of women and men, ecologically-sound development, and cooperative action for the common good. The need to work together for an orderly creation of the government and the development of a just and pluralistic Syrian society is still with us.

Robin Yassin-Kassab’s book is a useful guide to the forces that must come together and cooperate today.

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

BOOK REVIEW: Helen Lackner, “Yemen in Crisis: Devastating Conflict, Fragile Hope”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Conflict Resolution, Current Events, Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, Middle East & North Africa, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations, War Crimes, World Law on August 30, 2025 at 6:00 PM

By René Wadlow

Helen Lackner, Yemen in Crisis: Devastating Conflict, Fragile Hope.

London, Saqi Books, 2023, 413pp.

In this incisive analysis, Helen Lackner highlights the ongoing armed conflict which threatens the survival of the Yemeni people. An internationalized civil war which started in 2015 has caused chaos, poverty, and in many areas extreme hunger. The external intervention led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in an operation called “Desert Storm” worsened the instability and fragmentation. Efforts by the United Nations to mediate the conflict, especially by meetings in Geneva, have been frustrated by the obduracy of the warring parties.

The Association of World Citizens (AWC) has been concerned with constitutional developments in Yemen since the 2011 change of government. While the constitutional form of the state structure depends on the will of the people of Yemen (provided that they can express themselves freely), the AWC has proposed consideration of con-federal forms of government which maintain cooperation within a decentralized framework. In 2014, a committee appointed by the then President, Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, had proposed a six-region federation as the political structure for Yemen.

Until 1990, Yemen was two separate states: the People’s Democratic Yemen in the south with Aden as the capital, and the Yemen Arab Republic in the north with Sana’a as the capital. In 1990, the two united to become the Republic of Yemen.

However, the union of the two states did not create a working unity. Fairly quickly there was a fracturing of Yemen into different spheres of influence. There were struggles for power and the creation of rival militias. Although tribes remain a fundamental aspect of Yemeni society, there developed new social forces with a greater role of youth and a growth of urban life as people moved from the countryside into cities. A small educated group, often including women, started to play a larger role.

With the 2015 outbreak of armed violence, the divisions have grown. Fundamentalist Islamic groups have been created. There has been a vast destruction of infrastructure as schools, medical facilities, and shops, and small industry has been targeted for destruction. Today, the Ansar Allah Movement, often called the Houthis, controls the capital Sana’a and the port city of Hudaydah. Much of the rest of the country is under the control of microgroups. There is a large displacement of people. The rivalry for regional power between Saudi Arabia and Iran colors the situation. As Helen Lackner writes, hope for peace is fragile. There are human rights violations on a massive scale by all the parties. The 27 million Yemenis live under a dark sky.

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

Helsinki Process: Need for Renewal

In Being a World Citizen, Conflict Resolution, Current Events, Europe, Human Rights, NGOs, OSCE, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The former Soviet Union, The Search for Peace, Track II, UKRAINE, World Law on August 28, 2025 at 6:00 PM

By René Wadlow

The difficulties to begin negotiations on an end to the Russia-Ukraine armed conflict has highlighted the need for a renewal of the Helsinki process of Pan-European dialogue and action. The Helsinki process which began in 1973 led over time to the creation of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

Government leaders met in Helsinki in July 1973, sensing a need for some form of permanent discussion on European security issues beyond the ad hoc meetings among some states, which was then the current pattern. From September 1973 to July 1975, the discussion on structures and efforts to be undertaken moved to Geneva and was carried out by diplomats stationed there. Although the representatives of Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) were not asked to participate, many of us who were NGO representatives to the United Nations in Geneva knew the European diplomats involved and were able to make suggestions as to the priorities – human rights and arms control.

The foreign ministers taking part in the CSCE conference in Helsinki in 1973 (C) Pentti Koskinen

In August 1975, the Geneva discussions terminated, the government leaders met again in Helsinki and signed the Helsinki Agreement. Relatively quickly, a series of meetings on crucial topics was organized, often in Geneva. NGO representatives were invited to participate and played an important role in developing confidence-building measures.

Although there were tensions among OSCE states in the past such as the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 and the martial law crackdown in Poland, the divisions were never as strong as they are today, linked to the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The OSCE has been weakened, and some see a death sentence in a near future. Thus, there is a need for a renewal of the OSCE and a revival of the Helsinki spirit. Non-governmental organizations may have to take a lead, given the current governmental divisions.

Members of the OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission deployed in eastern Ukraine (C) OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine

In the 1980s, NGOs had played an important role in “détente from below” in creating opportunities for discussions among activists from Eastern and Western Europe. Today we must find avenues of action to meet the current complex and dangerous situation. Representatives of the Association of World Citizens have participated in meetings of the OSCE and will be active in this renewal process.

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

Gaza: Famine Spreads

In Being a World Citizen, Conflict Resolution, Current Events, Human Rights, Humanitarian Law, International Justice, Middle East & North Africa, NGOs, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, Track II, United Nations, War Crimes, World Law on August 24, 2025 at 12:30 PM

By René Wadlow

On August 22, 2025, the United Nations (UN)-related Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) highlighted that famine conditions were taking place in Gaza City and that famine is expected to spread to other parts of the Gaza Strip in the coming weeks if improvements in food supply are not made.

The IPC Report stresses that for over 90% of the children under two years old, the lack of healthy food hinders the children’s immunity and development. The scarcity also impacts pregnant and breastfeeding women, compromising the health of both mother and child. Many healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, making care for children difficult and often impossible.

(C) IPC

The IPC report comes just as the Israeli military prepares for a full-scale takeover of Gaza City, the epicenter of the famine. When the takeover begins, it will be even harder for civilians to access the food they need to survive. Many people will be forced to move, which many persons in Gaza have already done several times.

Famine in Gaza is the result of deliberate obstruction of food and life-saving aid. There are ample food supplies at the Gaza Strip frontier ready to enter. However, the Israeli authorities have not permitted sufficient aid to enter the Gaza Strip. The basic humanitarian needs of those living in the Gaza Strip are not being met.

The Association of World Citizens is among the many Nongovernmental Organizations and aid groups which have called for a radical modification of Israeli policy so that basic needs can be met. Such radical modifications will require negotiations in good faith. The IPC report is a strong addition to these calls for positive action.

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.

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.

BOOK REVIEW: Samuel Zipp, “The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Conflict Resolution, Democracy, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, United States, World Law on August 4, 2025 at 6:40 AM

By Lawrence Wittner

Samuel Zipp, The Idealist: Wendell Willkie’s Wartime Quest to Build One World.

Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020

Wendell Willkie – successful lawyer and businessman, as well as a defeated candidate for U.S. President on the Republican Party ticket in 1940 – is a largely forgotten figure today. But, as Samuel Zipp reminds us, Willkie was extremely influential during World War II, when he launched a popular campaign for “global interdependence” or, as it became known, “One World.”

In this beautifully written and well researched book, Zipp, Professor of American Studies at Brown University, points out that, unlike the conservatives and isolationists in his party, Willkie was a liberal who had backed Woodrow Wilson’s call for a League of Nations, advocated racial equality, and usually supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policy of collective security.

Indeed, with World War II well underway, he and Roosevelt hatched a plan to have Willkie embark on a worldwide goodwill tour, by aircraft, from August to October 1942. This well-publicized venture was designed to demonstrate America’s political unity in wartime, foster support for the Allied powers, and provide a source of information on governmental and public opinion abroad.

Willkie – an informal, garrulous, likeable individual with a common touch – not only had great success along these lines, but was powerfully influenced by what he saw. Appalled by imperialism and racism and impressed by the demand for freedom of colonized or subordinate people in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, Willkie returned, as Zipp notes, convinced of the need to get Americans “to see the wider world through the lens of fraternity and cooperation.” He hoped to convince them that their independence “would require a new form of interdependence with the world,” one in harmony with “global desires for an end to empire and a guarantee of self-determination.”

Back in the United States, Willkie embarked on a round of interviews, speeches, and articles along these lines, capped off by the publication of an immensely popular book, One World. With sales topping 1.6 million copies by July, some observers called it the best-selling book in U.S. history. Furthermore, that June over 100 newspapers in the United States and abroad, with a combined circulation of over seven million readers, ran an abridged version in their pages. Using his celebrity status to assail both “narrow nationalism” and “imperialism,” Willkie produced what Zipp calls “a fleeting moment,” when he “showed the country an alternative possible future.”

But the moment passed. Nationalists and imperialists began to criticize this vision, the Republican Party repudiated his leadership, and, in October 1944, Willkie – only 52 years of age – died of a heart attack. Although, after the atomic bombing of Japan, world federalist and nuclear disarmament groups adopted “One World or None” as their slogan, the idea of egalitarian global interdependence gradually lost favor, despite its occasional revival by environmentalists and others.

Even so, Zipp concludes, Willkie’s “diagnosis of the value of global interdependence has never been more prescient,” while “his warnings about the perils of racially charged ‘narrow nationalism’ have never been more indispensable.”

Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany.

BOOK REVIEW: Allen Pietrobon, “Norman Cousins: Peacemaker in the Atomic Age”

In Being a World Citizen, Book Review, Conflict Resolution, Nuclear weapons, Peacebuilding, Solidarity, The Search for Peace, World Law on July 31, 2025 at 7:00 AM

By Lawrence Wittner

Allen Pietrobon, Norman Cousins: Peacemaker in the Atomic Age.

Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022

Although Norman Cousins was a major figure in U.S. and world affairs during his lifetime (1915-1990), this is the first book-length biography of that extraordinary individual.

The book, written by Allen Pietrobon, an Assistant Professor of Global Affairs at Trinity Washington University, argues that, unlike many peace activists during the Cold War, Cousins had “an enormous impact on domestic politics and international relations.” The key to this impact, Pietrobon observes, was Cousins’s role, for 35 years, as editor of the Saturday Review, which he built into the third most popular public affairs magazine in the United States, with a circulation of 650,000. This role enabled him to have a significant impact upon public opinion and, also, to build up a network of connections with prominent individuals, including Adlai Stevenson, Nikita Khrushchev, Pope John XXIII, Albert Schweitzer, Norman Thomas, Jawaharlal Nehru, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and many more.

According to Pietrobon, the atomic bombing of Japan set the course for Cousins’s peace advocacy. That bombing, Cousins wrote in Modern Man Is Obsolete, “marked the violent death of one stage in man’s history and the beginning of another.” It meant that war, which had persisted throughout human history, finally had to be ended, for, given the advent of nuclear weapons, the alternative was global suicide. And war could only be ended, Cousins maintained, by establishing a world government.

Naturally, then, Cousins, gravitated toward aiding victims of the atomic bombing, promoting world federalism (for example, leading United World Federalists and, later, the World Federalist Association), founding and co-chairing the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE), brokering the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963, and improving East-West relations. In addition, he sought to end the wars in Vietnam and Biafra and, from 1948 to 1964, gave an estimated 2,100 speeches for peace. He also worked to assist victims of Nazi “medical experiments,” prepared speeches for U.S. presidential candidates and presidents, and from 1940 to 1964 alone, published just under 600 editorials and wrote or edited ten books.

In compiling this excellent account of Cousins’ busy and productive life, Pietrobon has drawn upon Cousins’s lengthy correspondence (located at UCLA), his extensive published writings, interviews with his daughters, and relevant manuscript materials at U.S. presidential libraries, the German Federal Archives, and Princeton University.

Although Pietrobon has done an outstanding job of pulling together many facets of Cousins’s extraordinary career and grounding them in the relevant sources, some areas would have benefited from further exploration. For example, Cousins was probably the most important figure in the history of SANE and of the U.S. branch of the world federalist movement. And yet his role in many of SANE’s internal operations―including its ordeal over the role of Communists in its ranks―is not examined. Nor, for that matter, is his presidency of the World Federalist Association from 1976 to 1990.

Overall, though, readers will learn much from this fine study of one of the most prominent figures in the 20th century peace movement.

Lawrence Wittner (http://lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany.

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.