Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 2 July 2009
• mediator blah...blah...
• By Geoff Sharp

I have posted before on Don Philbin’s masterpiece The One Minute Manager Prepares for Mediation: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Negotiation Preparation [pdf] published in vol 13 of The Harvard Negotiation Law Review and a serious piece of work.

Don is now conducting an hour long ABA teleconference and live audio webcast Deal or No Deal: Improving the Odds of Successful Mediation on Tuesday, July 14 at 1pm Eastern (12:00 PM Central/11:00 AM Mountain/10:00 AM Pacific).

• News source:
• 2 July 2009
• Settle it Now | Negotiation Blog
• By Kenneth Cloke, Mediators Beyond Borders

In December 2009, delegates from around the world will meet in Copenhagen, Denmark for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Copenhagen will provide a critical opportunity for the world’s nations to reach a comprehensive agreement before the commitments set out in the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

A recent report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change points to COP 15 as the focal point for decisive action by the world’s nations, in the effort to avoid a growing number of potentially disastrous environmental changes.

Yet a discussion of conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms is missing from the COP 15 Provisional Agenda, and the range and power of environmental mediation and similar techniques is not widely understood or agreed to by the parties who will be expected to sign the agreement that will replace the one adopted in Kyoto.

• News source:
• 29 June 2009
• Globe and Mail
• By Patrick Martin

HEBRON, West BANK - I first met Aziz Dweik in the winter of 1991-92. The man who is the speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and who was released from an Israeli prison last Tuesday, was then teaching urban geography at an-Najah University in Nablus.

He was pointed out to me as the man who spoke for Hamas in his home town of Hebron, which is why I went looking for him.

Hamas, an Arabic acronym for the Islamic Resistance Movement, was only four years old at the time, having been established at the start of the first intifada , or Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

The Muslim Brotherhood had long existed in the Palestinian territories, and Hamas was really just the Brotherhood with a new name. In those early years, it encouraged Palestinian youth, armed only with rocks, to stand up against Israeli forces in Gaza and the West Bank.

Hundreds of those youths were killed, but the world got the message: Palestinians were willing to lay down their lives in pursuit of freedom.

The impact was far greater than all the years of terrorism carried out by the many factions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

• News source:
• originally published 19 June 2009
• New York Times
• By DANIEL J. WAKIN

Wisps of mournful tunes from a cane flute mingled with the plucking, jangling arabesques of the zitherlike qanun, the oud and gentle drums. The sounds arose from a quartet of Arab musicians who call themselves the Oriental Music Ensemble as they shared a precious moment of togetherness in the Miller Theater at Columbia University in March.

Despite the cohesion implied by the word “ensemble,” these four men are rarely in the same city, much less the same room. The politics of the Middle East confine them to four separate spheres and have turned them into a living metaphor for inescapable division.

“It’s our story,” said Suhail Khoury, who plays the traditional flute, or ney, and clarinet in the group. “It’s like summing up Palestine.”

The men are a cross section of the Palestinian experience in miniature: two Muslims, a Christian and a Druse. They live in Israel, the West Bank, East Jerusalem and abroad.

• News source:
• 30 June 2009
• IRIN
• By ICRC

TEL AVIV - A new report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) paints a grim picture of life in the Gaza Strip: insufficient housing, damaged infrastructure, limited access to clean water and the discharge of raw sewage into the sea.

The report [pdf] identifies restrictions on the movement of people and goods over the past two years as one of the main causes of the crisis in Gaza.

• News source:
• 30 June 2009
• ReliefWeb
• CIIAN Press Release
• By Canadian InternationalEvan Hoffman, Executive Director, Institute of Applied Negotiation (CIIAN)

OTTAWA – The international community’s response to the need for providing election support to Guinea-Bissau was impressive. However, the success of the first round of Presidential elections does not mean that the international community can now become complacent.

• News source:

In Shakespeare’s King Henry VI, a band of plotters eager to over throw the regime notes, “The first thing we must do is kill all the lawyers.”

However, these days, newly-minted lawyers are all but killing themselves in the struggle to find jobs after graduation…

So what’s an aspiring attorney to do? Dr. Ian Pilarczyk, Associate Director of the LLM Program at The Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, notes wryly that bankruptcy law would be a good area to specialize in, as would eldercare and environmental law. He added that graduates should consider non-traditional uses of law, such as mediation rather than litigation.

• News source:
• originally published 19 June 2009
• CommonDreams
• By Stephen Zunes

The growing nonviolent insurrection in Iran against the efforts by the ruling clerics to return the ultra-conservative and increasingly autocratic incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinjead to power is growing. Whatever the outcome, it represents an exciting and massive outpouring of Iranian civil society for a more open and pluralistic society.

Ironically, defenders of Ahmadinejad’s repression are trying to blame everyone from the U.S. government to nonviolent theorist Gene Sharp to various small NGOs engaged in educational efforts on strategic nonviolent action as somehow being responsible for the popular uprising in Iran. It appears to be based upon the rather bizarre assumption that millions of Iranians would somehow be willing to pour out onto the streets in the face of violent repression by state security forces only because they have been directed to do so by people from an imperialist power which overthrew their last democratic government and subsequently propped up the tyrannical regime they installed in its place for the next quarter century.

Even putting aside the bizarre spectacle of self-proclaimed “leftists” coming to the defense of a right-wing fundamentalist autocratic like Ahmadinejad, this claim ignores several key factors…

• News source:
• 30 June 2009
• Asia Times Online
• ... highly criticized by US-based ethnic Hmong groups
• By Brian McCartan

BANGKOK - The removal of Cambodia and Laos from a United States blacklist that limits government support for US companies doing business with the two countries represents the latest strategic move by Washington to counterbalance China’s rising influence in mainland Southeast Asia. The new designation will open the way for more American investment in two of Southeast Asia’s poorest nations, both US adversaries during the Cold War era.

President Barack Obama has determined that Cambodia and Laos have both shown commitment to open markets, including through more liberal investment laws and fewer market controls, and should no longer be considered “Marxist-Leninist” countries as defined by the 1945 Export-Import Bank Act, the White House announced on June 12…

Obama’s decision was highly criticized by US-based ethnic Hmong groups, comprised of people who fled Laos after the 1975 communist takeover and claim their relatives continue to be persecuted by the authoritarian regime. Several thousand Hmong remain in a refugee camp in northern Thailand with another 158 Hmong recognized by the United Nations as refugees with real concerns for their safety if repatriated to Laos held in an immigration detention center in northeastern Thailand.

• News source:
• 29 June 2009
• marcgopin.com
• ... presidents have enormous psychological power to make people change, but only if they can trust or feel that the president is telling them absolute and simple truths
• By Marc Gopin

I continue to be haunted, almost fixated on President Obama’s simple words about the joke around the White House. It is in my opinion, a stunning formula for presidentially-led social change.

• News source:
• 29 June 2009
• Ekklesia
• By Ecumenical News International

The world is in the grip of a “virulent” new strain of anti-Semitism, says the Chief Rabbi of Orthodox Jews in Britain. Britain itself is facing an increasing number of anti-Semitic attacks, he added.

Trevor Grundy writes: Sir Jonathan Sacks made these stark statements in a recently published book Future Tense, a work that warns of the possibility of new waves of attacks on Jews because of their often perceived support for Zionism and the military activities of Israel.

Jewish leaders say the number of attacks on their 280,000-strong community in Britain, including arson attacks on synagogues and assault on Jews in the street, have reached the highest level since records started in the 1890s.

• News source:
• 29 June 2009
• Naharnet (Lebanon)

The Christian-Christian reconciliation is proceeding at a slow pace. Despite the efforts of religious and non-religious leaders to bring Christian parties together and find common grounds, the reconciliation is still at a preliminary stage.

Informed sources told An Nahar daily that discussions have failed to set up a clear reconciliation agenda and were instead concentrating on national subjects and post elections phase.

Sources close to Marada movement said secret meetings held between the different Christian parties before the June parliamentary elections were to ensure the elections took place peacefully and calmly. “These meeting have succeeded in maintaining calm among Marada and Lebanese Forces supporters who live in common villages in north Lebanon,” they added.

• News source:
• 26 June 2009
• Asia Times Online
• By Sam Campbell

PHNOM PENH - Science fiction author Philip K Dick once explained reality as “that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away”. As sensible as this may sound, it is a definition unlikely to take hold in Cambodia, where recent events have shown the government’s tendency to obstinately dismiss anything but the most convenient information.

The denials have come from the highest ranks of government to the lowest rungs of social entertainment and conscripted the judicial system to fend off criticism.

• News source:
• 28 June 2009
• Huffington Post
• By Stephen Schlesinger

Days after Sri Lanka’s government defeated its long-time foe, the Tamil Tigers, in May, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon flew into the country’s capital, Colombo, for a 24-hour visit to urge its president to open up its refugee camps to international aid groups. This was another urgent trip by Ban to a war-torn capital, as part of his regular duties as the UN’s chief representative, seeking to uphold peace and restore global comity.

But who really knew much about this latest foray into a troubled region by the UN chief? Not many. Ban, who has just marked the half-way point in his five-year term in office, has so far been unable to attract a large worldwide audience for his activities. This is due, in part, to a stylistic reasons, but also to the vagaries of UN diplomacy.

Still in his quiet way, Ban is spending more than a third of his time on the road, and has accomplished much over the past 30 months.