Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch BlogPeacemakers Trust posts news, reports or announcements of interest to people studying or working in the field of dispute resolution, conflict transformation and peacebuilding. Inclusion of an item on the media watch blog does not imply endorsement or agreement of Peacemakers Trust with views expressed by authors of posted items.
by Staff, Reuters AlertNet, 16 August 2007
NEW YORK – Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson wants mediation to resolve its dispute with the American Red Cross over the use of the red cross emblem, a lawyer for the company said on Thursday…more
Book review by Chester A. Crocker, Foreign Affairs, , July/August 2007
Statecraft: And How to Restore America’s Standing in the World. Dennis Ross. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2007, 384 pp. $26.00
…There is something profoundly ironic about American attitudes toward negotiation and diplomacy. The U.S. Constitution is founded on principles and structures that require a nonstop search for compromise and accommodation. Outside the realm of foreign and national security policy, the United States is a nation of problem solvers and negotiators. Yet, as Ross suggests, U.S. elites and the general public alike have always been a little uncomfortable when such concepts are applied to foreign policy…more
by Ridwan Max Sijabat, The Jakarta Post, 16 August 2007
JAKARTA – Despite political obstacles, the Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam provincial administration is considering establishing a truth and reconciliation committee (KKR) to settle unresolved human rights abuse cases.
“All human rights violations that occurred during bloody conflict in the past must be settled comprehensively. The establishment of a truth and reconciliation committee to achieve this mission will require a common commitment from all stake holders, including the central government,” Aceh Vice Governor Muhammad Nazar told The Jakarta Post…more
by D. Arul Rajoo, Bernama: Malaysian National New Agency, 15 August 2007
BANGKOK – Amnesty International today voiced its concern over Thailand’s Internal Security Bill which gives sweeping powers to the military with little accountability and could violate international human rights standards and further jeopardise human rights in the country…more
BANGKOK – Thailand’s military-backed government lifted a ban on the popular video-sharing website ‘YouTube’ and passed an easier printing act this week, but newly tightened computer crime laws suggest that free expression is still being stifled.
(...more)by Samuel Okiror Egadu, IWPR ReliefWeb, 8 August 2007
Kampala – More attention is needed for the treatment of severe trauma suffered by many former child soldiers recruited to militias in northern Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, DRC, according to a new study.
The report, published last week in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association, JAMA, said reconciliation efforts in countries where children have been recruited as fighters “need more help in order to break the cycle of violence in war-torn regionsâ€.
The study by German researchers found that post-traumatic stress made former child soldiers less willing to reject revenge and consider reconciliation. Their mental distress could “impose barriers to sustainable and long-term peace building”, said the study…more
by Jessica Cadesky, ReliefWeb (UNICEF), 13 August 2007
In this frontline diary, UNICEF Child Rights Advisor Jessica Cadesky describes the impact of insecurity in northwestern Central African Republic (CAR), where many villagers have fled both internal conflict and the fighting that has spilled across the border from the neighbouring Darfur region of Sudan…more
by Sean Moorhouse, AlertNet Blog, 13 August 2007
His face wet with sweat beneath his anti-blast visor, Sabah Mustapha carefully scrapes away yet another small slice of the steep hillside.
Despite being high in the Kurdish mountains of Iraq, it’s still over 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit). As if the heat and the hard physical labour weren’t enough, Sabah’s already overheated torso also has to cope with the extra burden of his body armour. Not that he would ever dream of working without it; in his years of clearing mines, he has seen their devastating effects on the human body.
Sabah is a deminer working for the Mines Advisory Group (MAG)…more
by World Health Organization (WHO), ReliefWeb, 13 August 2007
During a recent workshop in Amman, a number of Iraqi health care professionals were approached to give first-hand accounts of the challenges they face in their work. …
“Despite the poor security situation, communities are still willing to come together to help the vulnerable. On one occasion, a boy was hit by a stray bullet as he was standing in the doorway of his house. The neighbours helped transport this wounded teenager to Ibn al Nafees hospital where he was treated and saved, an indicator that in the same way that all doctors present try their utmost to fulfil their obligations and more often than not go far beyond the call of duty, communities are honouring their role of stepping into the vacuum left by the over-burdened emergency medical services.”…more
by Mark Trevelyan, Reuters, 12 August 2007
LONDON – Armies waging counter-terrorism offensives should be
forced to weigh the likely scale of civilian deaths and damage by conducting
a “human rights impact assessment” in advance, an international think-tank
proposes.
The idea from the EastWest Institute (EWI) amounts to a radical call to
transform the way in which countries apply the laws of war.
It argues in a research paper that this approach, if applied to U.S.
operations in Iraq, Russian actions in Chechnya or last year’s war between
Israel and Lebanese-based Hezbollah, could have helped avert heavy civilian
casualties that also handed propaganda victories to insurgents…more
by Stephanie Nebehay, Reuters AlertNet, 10 August 2007
GENEVA – Top military brass from nearly 60 countries ranging from Sudan to Sri Lanka have gone back to boot camp on neutral Swiss soil to brush up on the rules of war.
At the workshop, co-hosted by the Swiss army and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), high-ranking officers were reminded that their forces must refrain from harming civilians or their property during armed conflict.
The course at a Swiss army barracks aims to ensure that soldiers, police and other forces comply with international humanitarian law embodied in the 1949 Geneva Conventions.
“It’s one thing having the law but unless you can translate it into drills and procedures that troops use when on operations they won’t have much impact,” Tim Yates, an ICRC military adviser who organised the course in Geneva, told Reuters…more
by Sonja Heydeman , Radio Australia, 14 August 2007
The Khmer Krom Federation is applying international pressure to demand the return to Cambodia of defrocked monk, Tim Sakhorn. The Khmer Krom are a minority group in the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam and Cambodia. The former abbott of the Phnom Den pagoda in Cambodia went missing for a month after being defrocked in June for allegedly stirring unrest in Vietnam. He’s now facing a charge in Vietnam for entering the country illegally…more
by Susan O’Neill, The Mirror (Scarborough), 13 August 2007
The Canadian Bar Association (CBA) is calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to step in and negotiate the release of Toronto-born Omar Khadr from the American military prison in Guantanamo Bay….more
by Hiro Katsumata, Singapore, The Jakarta Post, 13 August 2007
Reflecting on 40 years of cooperation, it can be said that ASEAN has achieved a great deal. In August 1967, the foreign ministers of five Southeast Asian countries — Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines and Singapore — met in Bangkok and established a new association. At the time, their central concern was to mend fences and to build intra-regional political confidence.
In terms of this basic goal, the accomplishments of ASEAN are clear. Over the last four decades, there has been no direct military confrontation between the five countries…
Their challenge is to strike a balance between two opposing goals — the enhancement of international legitimacy and the maintenance of the unity of the association…more
by Luke Visconti, DiversityInc, 13 August 2007
In my observation, most African Americans desire and strive for equity and fair treatment, but they also have a realistic understanding of how they’ll be treated.
In my opinion, reparations are owed to African Americans because of our history of 175 years of lawful slavery before the Civil War and another roughly 100 years of legislated and legal oppression of African Americans (AKA “Jim Crow”), which continued until the civil-rights era in the late 20th century…more
by Chris Windeyer, Nunatsiaq News, 3 August 2007
“Having a summit would remind everyone that grandstanding and political rhetoric are not how you solve problems between countries.â€
Arctic nations could cut through a knot of conflicting territorial claims by opting for diplomacy instead of publicity stunts, says an expert on international law.
Michael Byers, a political scientist at University of British Columbia and director of Vancouver’s Liu Institute for Global Issues, said Canada’s coming purchase of armed Arctic patrol ships and Russia’s move to place its flag at the seabed under the North Pole are signs polar countries need to sit down and talk…more
by Is’haq Modibbo Kawu, Daily Trust (Abuja), 13 August 2007
The setting was the Paloma Hotel, in Accra, the capital city of Ghana. The date: the 26th of June, 2007. The city of Accra itself was festooned with colours; the national colours of green, gold and red, were the dominant colours around trees, in public buildings, bill boards and in miniaturized sizes in taxis and other means of public transportation. The pictures of African Heads of State also appeared on the streets. Accra is at the heart of the 50th anniversary of Ghana’s independence, and it is the host of the recent “Unity Conference” of the African Union, the AU.
But back at the conference Hall of the Paloma Hotel, journalists from local and foreign media were converging for a press briefing on one of the most topical events in Africa today, the conflict in the western Sudanese region of Darfur. The Media Foundation for West Africa is coordinating the major outing of a coalition of civil society organisations to help nudge the leaders of the African countries to become more proactive about the large scale human suffering in that part of the African continent…more
by Staff, Asian Journal, 13 August 2007
MANILA, Philippines — At the end of their four-day peace and solidarity mission, women peace activists from the Asia-Pacific region on Monday called for the resumption of peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
Calling the resumption of talks the first significant step towards resolving the so-called Basilan crisis, the International Women’s Peace and Solidarity Mission in Basilan and Mindanao said in a statement: “The importance of the resumption of talks between the two parties cannot be over-emphasized as a normalizing and stabilizing factor on the ground…more
by Staff, IRIN, 13 August 2007
KATHMANDU – Anti-landmine activists are concerned at the slowness in clearing landmines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in the country. Many civilians, including children, continue to be at risk, said Ban Landmines Campaign Nepal (NCBL) on 13 August…
A decade-long armed conflict, which killed over 14,000 people, ended with the November 2006 peace agreement between former Maoist rebels and the Nepalese government…more
Book Review by Steven W. Mosher, Washington Times, 12 August 2007
CHARM OFFENSIVE: HOW CHINA’S SOFT POWER IS TRANSFORMING THE WORLD
By Joshua Kurlantzick
Yale University Press, US$26, 306 pages
Joshua Kurlantzick has haunted the capitals of Asia, and everywhere he went he found China’s star on the rise.
Take Cambodia, for example, which suffered so much from the Maoist-inspired and Beijing-supported predations of the Khmer Rouge. Prime Minister Hun Sen used to call China “the root of all that is evil in Cambodia,” reports Mr. Kurlantzick, but now gushes that Phnom Penh’s relations with Beijing are “entering into the best stage in history.”…more
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