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.
Arn Chorn-Pond was a child in Cambodia when the Khmer Rouge came to power in 1975. Born into a family of artists and musicians, he was sent to a children’s labour camp where he escaped death by playing his flute for the camp guards…
As a Cambodian-American, he considers the festival his personal answer to the US bombing of Cambodia. “The US bombed Cambodia,” he says. “I am carpeting New York with artists.”
(...more)IN 2005 Emad Burnat was given a video camera to record the birth of his fourth son, Gibreel. It was while he dutifully chronicled the formative years of his son that Mr Burnat unexpectedly became the film-maker behind “Five Broken Cameras”, a sombre documentary about the struggle of his native West Bank village of Bil’in against Israel’s construction of the separation wall.
The film’s premiere in the Palestinian territories took place recently at the Ramallah Cultural Palace, a multimillion-dollar centre unmatched in its size and facilities in the territories. The audience featured mainly young Palestinians and foreign expatriates, a common mix in a city that has become the West Bank’s administrative capital.
(...more)Landfill Harmonic is an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Paraguay, where the musicians play instruments made from trash.
When The Water Ends: Africa’s Climate Conflicts is a 16-minute video that documents conflicts driven by climate change in Eastern Africa.
(...more)The UN Secretary-General’s good offices on Myanmar, now in their twentieth year, have been one of the longest such diplomatic efforts in the history of the organization. With Myanmar now in the midst of major political, economic, and social reforms, and questions invariably being raised about the future of those “offices,” it is an opportune time to revisit the history and achievements of the past twenty years of mediation efforts.
(...more)From Conflict to Cooperationis a lovely series of five cartoon-style booklets from Cooperatives UK which aim to help groups not only deal with conflict when it arises but also to avoid unnecessary conflict…
(...more)Documentary-maker John Pilger has returned to a subject that can’t be revived often enough: the grotesque untruth of “weapons of mass destruction”: a cloudy concept, eagerly amplified and lent credibility by credulous and submissive journalists who, after 9/11, lost their nerve en masse. Pilger’s contention is that on Afghanistan, on Iraq and on Israel and the Palestinian territories, the mainstream media simply take the official line.
(...more)A man was shot dead because he got into a fight with a shopkeeper over change for a packet of cigarettes. This was a fairly un-noteworthy incident in South Africa in the summer of 1994, at a time when the country was in the throes of giving birth to a new constitution. Both the shopkeeper and his customer lived in one of the country’s many shantytowns, and both were well-connected to two opposing factions that had split the township in two. The two factions pledged allegiance to the same dominant liberation movement, but an intense leadership struggle for local control was underway. This meant that the killing assumed local political overtones. The township was tense, with everyone anticipating revenge at the funeral since violence often broke out at these times. The police were perceived as ‘the enemy’ for their role in enforcing apartheid, so local people did not trust they would successfully deal with the situation.
Instead, the local peace committee established under the country’s National Peace Accord (NPA), sprang into action. Meetings throughout the week involved political, religious and social
organizations. There was some tough and angry talk, but eventually all participants agreed on one goal – the funeral had to be peaceful, as indeed it was.1 The local peace committee had managed
to defuse a potentially violent incident. It might also claim credit for having prevented a vicious cycle of revenge attacks.
This study explores these local peace mechanisms and particularly focuses on structures established as part of a larger peace architecture. In 1997, Lederach noted two countries where regional and local peace commissions made effective contributions to peace: Nicaragua in the late 1980s, and South Africa in the early 1990s. Subsequently, similar local peace building mechanisms have been used in several situations as diverse as FYR Macedonia, Kenya, Nepal, Sierra Leone and Serbia, as well as in Northern Ireland. The UN system has been involved in various supportive
roles in some of these countries, and is considering involvement in others. It is too early to arrive at definitive international standards on implementing these structures, but there is a
sufficient body of experience to point to some tentative guidelines – the goal of this study… full paper (pdf)
The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi
By Peter Popham
(The Experiment, 448 pp., $27.50)
Aung San Suu Kyi mania is sweeping Rangoon. The paraphernalia for sale on the streets of Rangoon now includes the hitherto banned image of Aung San Suu Kyi on posters, stickers, key rings, and baseball caps. At one store, staff are hurriedly screen-printing new t-shirts with line drawings of her face while hundreds of freshly stamped flags bearing the peacock and star logo of her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), are being hung up to dry—the shop owner is expecting a rush on sales after the NLD’s landslide victory in Burma’s by-elections earlier this month. The party won forty-three out of the forty-four seats it contested, and even snatched up all four seats available in the new capital and government stronghold of Naypyitaw. It was a staggering victory, and most people I spoke to in Rangoon attributed it to the powerful allure of the party’s world-famous chairperson, Aung San Suu Kyi.
(...more)A timely report co-released by the International Human Rights Law Clinic (IHRLC) urges Cambodia’s UN-backed tribunal to comply with international criminal justice practice and grant reparations to victims of the brutal Khmer Rouge regime….
“Victims’ Right to Remedy” calls on the court to adjust the legal interpretations that led to its rejection of nearly all reparations requests in the first Khmer Rouge trial.
(...more)Cynthia Cohen, innovative director of the film Acting Together and peacebuilding scholar/practitioner will be appearing at two Vancouver-area events. Both are free, but pre-registration is required. Details below.
UBC/Vancouver area: Peter Wall Institute event on March 21.
New Westminster area: Justice Institute of BC March 22 event.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Acting Together on the World Stage, Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict
Director Allison Lund. Producer Cynthia Cohen.
Commentators: Dr. Michelle LeBaron, UBC Faculty of Law; Professor Rena Sharon, UBC School of Music; and Professor Maureen Maloney, Public Policy, Simon Fraser University
Location: PWIAS Conference Rooms, UBC
Time: 4:00 pm – 7:00 pm
Discussion and a reception with refreshments to follow the film presentation.
To register, contact the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies at pwias.assistant[at]pwias.ubc.ca
Thursday, March 22, 2012
6:30-8:00 pm (6 pm registration)
JIBC New Westminster Campus
Fee: no cost, but registration is required
Acting Together: Join the Conversation – Free Community Event
Join us for the free screening of “Acting Together” an internationally acclaimed film, featuring artists, peace builders, and community leaders from every continent, whose rituals and theatrical works speak truth to power and support communities to mourn losses and build bridges of reconciliation.
Project Director Dr. Cynthia Cohen will lead a discussion after the screening. Registration is required for this free event. Email scsj[at]jibc.ca, or call 604.528.5608 to secure your seat.
For more information about these special events, call 604.528.5608 (toll-free 1.888.799.0801), email scsj[at]jibc.ca, or visit the event website www.jibc.ca/actingtogether.
Dr. Cynthia Cohen is director of the program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at Brandeis University’s International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. She is an internationally recognized educator, peacebuilding practitioner and researcher who focuses on the contributions of the arts to conflict transformation.
The educational documentary Acting Together on the World Stage highlights courageous and creative artists and peacebuilders working in conflict zones. It features theatrical works and rituals that reach beneath people’s defenses in respectful ways that support communities to configure new patterns of meaning and relationships. The documentary grows out of a five-year initiative of Theatre Without Borders, Brandeis University and filmmaker Allison Lund. Dynamic footage of performances, rituals, and candid interviews with artists and peacebuilders place case studies in their socio-political and cultural contexts. The documentary is designed for students, practitioners, educators, and policymakers in fields related to performance and to peace and conflict studies, and for others who believe—or who want to be convinced—that human communities have the creative capacities to transform conflict non-violently.
KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — The wildly successful viral video campaign to raise global awareness of a brutal Central Africa rebel leader is attracting criticism from Ugandans, some who said Friday that the 30-minute video misrepresents the complicated history of Africa’s longest-running conflict.
The campaign by the advocacy group Invisible Children to make militia leader Joseph Kony a household name has received enormous attention on YouTube and other Internet sites this week.
But critics here said the video glosses over a complicated history that made it possible for Kony to rise to the notoriety he has today. They also lamented that the video does not inform viewers that Kony originally was waging war against Uganda’s army, whose human rights record has been condemned as brutal by independent observers.
“There is no historical context. It’s more like a fashion thing,” said Timothy Kalyegira, a well-known social critic in Uganda who once published a newsletter called The Uganda Record.
(...more)Kroc Institute professor Larissa Fast has co-authored, edited, or contributed to 7 new reports on ways to increase the safety and security of humanitarian workers worldwide. The reports include research findings and recommendations for the humanitarian community during a time in which targeted killings, kidnappings, and attacks on aid workers are on the rise…. More, including links to reports
Munich, Germany – Would the world be more peaceful if women were in charge? A challenging new book by the Harvard University psychologist Steven Pinker says that the answer is “yes”.
In The Better Angels of Our Nature, Pinker presents data showing that human violence, while still very much with us today, has been gradually declining. Moreover, he says, “over the long sweep of history, women have been and will be a pacifying force. Traditional war is a man’s game: tribal women never band together to raid neighbouring villages.” As mothers, women have evolutionary incentives to maintain peaceful conditions in which to nurture their offspring and ensure that their genes survive into the next generation.
(...more)The Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences announced earlier this month the short list of nominees for the Canada Prizes in the Social Sciences.
Among those five short-listed for the English-language prize was the Commission’s own Dr Paulette Regan for her work on residential school history, Unsettling the Settler Within: Indian Residential Schools, Truth-telling and Reconciliation
in Canada (UBC Press).
Lois Leslie is a member of Lawyers’ Rights Watch Canada (LRWC) and is the lead drafter of a joint report by LRWC and the BC CEDAW group recently submitted to the UN Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination on “Missing and Murdered Women in BC and Canada [pdf].”
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On February 22 and 23, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination has been reviewing Canada’s compliance with its obligations under the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (ICERD). The persistent failure by Canadian governments to protect Aboriginal women and girls from discrimination and the threat of violence are a major concern of the Committee.
Forty-two years after Canada ratified ICERD, Aboriginal women and girls do not enjoy equal rights with other Canadians promised by that Convention and domestic human rights law; they experience persistent racism in many areas of their lives. The most egregious violation is the failure to be afforded equal protection of the right to life and to security of the person.
In those 42 years, hundreds of Aboriginal women and girls have gone missing or been murdered. A database established by the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) documents 582 unresolved cases of missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls, of which more than half occurred since 2000. A 2011 Statistics Canada study found that Aboriginal women were almost three times more likely than non-Aboriginal women to report having been a victim of a violent crime. (read more…)
Just over three years have passed since President Barack Obama extended a hand to the Islamic Republic of Iran in the hope of stopping its quest for nuclear weapons. Today his policy of engaging Tehran is judged by many to be a disaster. The headlines daily reinforce this conclusion: As Iran’s nuclearization drive hurtles to the point of no return, the governing mullahs plot assassination on U.S. soil and threaten American aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. A diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue remains as elusive as it was when the Obama administration first assumed power.
(...more)TED Talks In politics, it seems counterintuitive to engage in dialogue with violent groups, with radicals and terrorists, and with the states that support them. But Jonas Gahr Støre, the foreign minister of Norway, makes a compelling case for open discussion, even when values diverge …
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