Peacemakers 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.
ATLANTA—As a young Jesuit, Father John Dear choose to add his own vow of nonviolence, along with the required vows of obedience, poverty and chastity.
A hero of his, Mahatma Gandhi, lived a life of 16 vows, including to “only speak the truth†and “fearlessness,†so Father John’s vows were small in comparison. It was rooted in what he jokingly called a “secret training school of nonviolence†as he studied to be a priest.
Filed under: Middle East files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 11:12 PDT
News source:
26 November 2008
Al Jazeera
Iraq’s parliamentary vote on a wide-ranging accord that would allow US troops to stay in the country for another three years has been postponed.
MPs will now vote on the pact on Thursday, after reservations by Sunnis and fierce opposition by Shia groups threatened to derail the agreement altogether.
The agreement has been subject to numerous revisions in an attempt to keep various political factions on board and push the deal through parliament with a respectable majority.
The pact now makes provision for Iraqi supervision of US forces and also meets demands for a clear exit timetable for the 150,000 American troops in Iraq.
The National University of Rwanda [NUR] is in the final stage of setting up a Civic and Peace Education course, to be made compulsory for every student at the university.
More than five million individuals around the world have sent a clear and unequivocal message to their governments to take decisive action in stopping the relentless cycle of violence against women, at the conclusion of an Internet-based United Nations campaign today.
The UN Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM) launched its Say NO to Violence against Women awareness-raising campaign last year calling on governments to make ending violence against women a top priority.
The initiative amassed more than 5 million names on its website petition, easily surpassing its original target of 1 million signatures.
Filed under: News Watch Blog — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 10:25 PDT
News source:
25 November 2008
OneWorld
By OneWorld.net Correspondents
WASHINGTON – Dozens of humanitarian aid workers were targeted and killed around the world this year. In some countries, particularly severe surges of violence have forced aid organizations to reconsider or suspend life-saving and community building operations…
Filed under: Middle East files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 10:16 PDT
News source:
25 November 2008
IMEMC
By George Rishmawi
The Joint Advocacy Initiative (JAI) manager Nidal Abu Zuluf was rejected passage through the King Hussein (aka Allenby) bridge going to Jordan, as to fly to Egypt for attending the Christian Aid partners meeting, a statement by the JAI said.
Filed under: News Watch Blog — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 10:15 PDT
News source:
24 November 2008
Los Angeles Times
By Natan Sharansky
That Barack Obama is the antithesis of George W. Bush is by now axiomatic. The president-elect is expected to change everything, from the prevailing ideology to the government’s order of priorities to the partisan atmosphere in Washington to even the mood in America.
Amid all these differences, however, there could be an important point of convergence between Bush and Obama: supporting democracy by personally meeting with and acting on behalf of democratic dissidents….
My article addresses the international legal rules for detaining “non-battlefield terrorism suspectsâ€â€”i.e., suspected terrorists not captured on a conventional battlefield or in the theater of combat. Despite the extensive literature on the rules that govern the “war on terror,†and on the treatment of detainees in particular, there continues to be significant confusion about when, and under what conditions, a state may lawfully detain non-battlefield terrorism suspects. On those questions, two broad strands of thought have emerged. One asserts that the law of armed conflict governs to permit extended detention with minimal legal process; the other claims that human-rights law applies to prohibit detention unless accompanied by the ordinary criminal process. Neither strand tracks international practice. Rather than uniformly adopting one approach or the other—the armed conflict approach or an exclusively criminal one—international actors have been groping for new options.
According to the Optional Protocol to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (on the involvement of children in armed conflict), to which the United States has been a signatory since January 23, 2003, juvenile prisoners — those under the age of 18 when their alleged crimes took place — “require special protection.†The Optional Protocol specifically recognizes “the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilitiesâ€, and requires its signatories to promote “the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.â€
In January 2003, four doctors in Guantánamo put together a fascinating document, entitled “Recommended Course of Action for Reception and Detention of Individuals Under 18 Years of Age†(PDF). This was clearly influenced by international agreements regarding the distinctions between adult and juvenile prisoners (including the Geneva Conventions, which were, in general, shredded by the administration), and it laid out, in painstaking detail, how juvenile prisoners held at Guantánamo should be treated.
Filed under: Middle East files — story spotted by Catherine Morris @ 09:00 PDT
News source:
20 November 2008
The Forward
By Nathan Guttman with reporting by Marc Perelman
WASHINGTON — The appointment of Rahm Emanuel as president-elect Barack Obama’s new chief of staff drew a wave of jubilation in Israel at the prospect of the son of an Irgun fighter running the White House, and a wave of condemnation in the Arab world for much the same reason. The Israeli press embraced him as “Obama’s Israeli,†while the Arab press derided him as an agent for the Mossad.
A close examination of Emanuel’s voting record during three terms as a Congressman from Illinois, and his involvement with Middle East issues during the Clinton administration, paints a more complex picture of the next president’s gatekeeper. Though known for close ties with the Israelis, Emanuel had never given them a free pass and has consistently supported a dovish policy toward the Israeli-Palestinian conflict….
But a closer look at Emanuel’s actions finds that he does not easily fit in as either an unconditional supporter of Israel, or one who would be willing to push for a peace agreement no matter what. “He is pro-Israel and pro-peace,†said Uri Savir, one of the chief negotiators of the Oslo peace accords.
