Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 10 May 2013
• Irish Times
• By Gerry Moriarty

Peter Robinson and Martin McGuinness have set a target of 2023 to bring down all of Northern Ireland’s 60 so-called peace walls.

At Stormont yesterday the First Minister and Deputy First Minister outlined a range of measures to tackle sectarianism and division including toppling the North’s interface structures within 10 years.

Some peace walls of brick and steel stand up to 18ft high and may be miles long through housing areas. They were intended to protect people from violence during the troubles but remain in place 15 years after the Belfast Agreement. They were built in areas of sectarian tension in Belfast, Derry and Portadown, as well as through the playground of one primary school in north Belfast.

• News source:
• 3 May 2013
• Al-Monitor Palestine Pulse
• By Dalia Hatuqa

Amid the Western media’s obsessive search for a Palestinian Gandhi, many stories of peaceful, non-violent resistance are often overlooked. One such story is that of Budrus, a small West Bank village — dotted with ancient olive trees and cacti — lying very close to the Green Line (the internationally-recognized border separating Israel from the West Bank). In 2003, Budrus’ residents found out that Israel’s separation wall would swallow chunks of their land. It was then that the villagers decided to employ non-violent tactics to protect their trees and land.

• News source:
• 30 April 2013
• Alabama Media Group
• By Barnett Wright

BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — Arnetta Streeter Gary vividly remembers turning a corner in downtown Birmingham 50 years ago and being met by the force of water coming at her at an estimated 50 to 100 pounds per square inch.

“We had been taught that if they put the water hose  on you, to sit down and cover your face so that the pressure of the water would not hurt your eyes,” said Gary, an Ullman High School student at the time. “If we balled up into balls, then the water would not hurt as much. But that was not so. I can remember us balling up, hugging together, and the water just washing us down the street.”

Gary was one of thousands of students from Birmingham’s elementary, middle, and high schools and nearby Miles College who participated in the May 1963 demonstrations. Called Demonstration Day, or D-Day, and later dubbed the Children’s Crusade, these marches led to concessions from the city’s white power structure.

March re-enacted

On Thursday, thousands of area high school and college students will assemble at Birmingham’s historic Sixteenth Street Baptist Church–where students gathered 50 years ago–to re-enact those pivotal civil rights-era demonstrations.

Birmingham Councilman Jay Roberson said the way child marchers responded nonviolently to conflicts in 1963 is a lesson for young people today.

• News source:
• 17 April 2013
• New Matilda
• By Maria Cristobal

Since the Israeli army first occupied the West Bank in 1967, there has been a massive military presence in the area. A complex system has been developed to keep the local population under control, which extends far beyond the wall separating the West Bank from neighbouring Israel. On a daily basis, Palestinians have to negotiate a series of checkpoints, spot checks and road blocks, all under the watchful eye of the army’s surveillance towers…

Médecins Sans Frontières has been running a mental health program in the West Bank for more than 10 years. More than half of our patients are children who have directly experienced violence related to the conflict.

• News source:
• 27 March 2013
• Globe and Mail
• By KIRK MAKIN

An unreleased report commissioned by the country’s top judge is urging a radical overhaul of Canada’s family law system.

The report to Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, scheduled for release next month, calls for restructuring the family law system from the ground up, with a focus on streamlining the court process and ending a fixation on combat…

A copy of the report, obtained by The Globe and Mail, says that estranged spouses and their children are seriously damaged by the adversarial system; and that judges, lawyers and law schools must embrace a culture of mediation and settlement.

• News source:
• 22 March 2013
• Prince George Citizen
• By Mark NIELSEN

With the Family Law Act, the provincial government is hoping to deliver a change in tone when it comes to the children of couples going their separate ways.

Gone are the terms “custody” and “access” that were part of the legislation the Act replaces. Now, it’s “guardianship,” “parental responsibilities” and “parenting time” in an effort to make the issue less adversarial…

The Family Law Act came into force on Monday.

• News source:
• 18 February 2013
• CS Monitor | Editorial
• A new study shows how children display more empathy if given pro-social media to watch or play. Parents can be encouraged to demand video games and other media that teach social skills.

To cool off a hot argument, sometimes it needs to be turned upside down. That may well happen in the national dispute over media violence if enough Americans heed a new study that reverses the terms of that debate.

The study, by researchers in Seattle and published Monday in the journal Pediatrics, found that young children who are encouraged to watch TV programs that depict kindness, respect, and cooperation are more likely to express those traits than kids who watch everyday TV fare that includes fictional violence.

Two other surprising results of the study are worth noting: Low-income boys, who tend to watch the most television, benefited the most in displaying empathy after watching nonviolent shows. And many of the parents who were guided on what kind of pro-social content to watch and how to avoid violent shows asked that such advice continue even after the study.

• News source:
• 18 February 2013
• CTV
• By Donna Gordon Blankinship, AP

SEATTLE – Teaching parents to switch channels from violent shows to educational TV can improve preschoolers’ behaviour, even without getting them to watch less, a study found.

The results were modest and faded over time, but may hold promise for finding ways to help young children avoid aggressive, violent behaviour, the study authors and other doctors said.

“It’s not just about turning off the television. It’s about changing the channel. What children watch is as important as how much they watch,” said lead author Dr. Dimitri Christakis, a pediatrician and researcher at Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

The research was to be published online Monday by the journal Pediatrics.

• News source:
• originally published 20 September 2012
• Nobel Women's Initiative
• “The bloody cycle in which I live…is a vicious circle that is sustained by the choice of both sides to engage in violence. I refuse to take part in this choice.”

“The bloody cycle in which I live…is a vicious circle that is sustained by the choice of both sides to engage in violence. I refuse to take part in this choice.”

Meet Sahar Vardi. Sahar is an outspoken peace activist from Jerusalem who bravely started protesting against Israel’s treatment of the Palestinian people at a very young age.

• News source:
• 21 December 2012
• Mizana Gheezhik: Things that keep me awake.
• By Murray Sinclair

I have been watching with interest the groundswell movement known as Idle No More and the events going on around the country. Some believe its a short term response to recent legislation, but, while such may have been a trigger, I think there is much more to it than that. Its about pride.

In order for any society to function properly and to its full capacity, it must raise and educate its children so that they can answer what philosophers such as Socrates, and Plato, and our Elders, call ‘the great questions of life’. Those questions are…

• News source:
• 23 December 2012
• Ekklesia
• By Rowan Williams

A week after the horrific killings of the schoolchildren of Sandy Hook in Connecticut, most of us are still struggling to get our minds around such a nightmare. And how do we say and sing the words of this joyful season while we think of lives cut so brutally short and of the unimaginable loss and trauma suffered by parents?

Nearly 6,000 children and teenagers were killed by firearms in the USA in just two years. And we’d better not be complacent about the issues of gun and knife crime affecting young people in our own cities here. In the UK, the question is how we push back against gang culture by giving young people the acceptance and respect they deserve, so that they don’t look for it in destructive places. In the US, the question is, of course, about gun laws, one of the most polarising issues in American politics.

And there is one thing often said by defenders of the American gun laws that ought to make us think about wider questions. ‘It’s not guns that kill, it’s people.’ Well, yes, in a sense. But it makes a difference to people what weapons are at hand for them to use – and, even more, what happens to people in a climate where fear is rampant and the default response to frightening or unsettling situations or personal tensions is violence and the threat of violence. If all you have is a hammer, it’s sometimes said, everything looks like a nail. If all you have is a gun, everything looks like a target.

People use guns. But in a sense guns use people, too…

• News source:
• 17 December 2012
• Huffington Post
• What must we as a nation learn from this? What must we change, both personally and in our decisions about the public arenas of our society where this terrible tragedy occurred? How can we make our children safer?
• By Jim Wallis

Our deepest question now is whether what happed on Friday — and what has focused the attention of the entire nation — will touch the nation’s soul or just make headlines for a few days.

I think that will be up to us as parents to respond as parents. The brutal shooting of 20 six- and seven-year-old school children in their own classrooms touches all of us, and as the father of two young boys I’m especially struck by how it touches parents. From the heartbreak of the parents in Newtown to the tears in the eyes of Barack Obama as he responded — not just as the president, but also as the father of two daughters — to the faces of the first responders and reporters who are parents. I have felt the pain and seen the look on the face of every parent I have talked with since this horrendous event occurred. Virtually every mother and father in America this weekend has turned their grieving gaze on their own children, realizing how easily this could have happened to them. The emotions we’ve seen from the Newtown parents whose children survived and the feelings of utter grief for those parents whose children didn’t, have reached directly to me.

Saturday, the day after the Connecticut massacre, Joy and I went to our son Jack’s basketball game. The kids on the court were all the same ages as the children who were killed on Friday. I kept looking at them one by one, feeling how fragile their lives are.

Our first response to what happened in Newtown must be toward our own children. To be so thankful for the gift and grace they are to us. To be ever more conscious of them and what they need from us. To just enjoy them and be reminded to slowly and attentively take the time and the space to just be with them. To honor the grief of those mothers and fathers in Connecticut who have so painfully just lost their children, we must love and attend to ours in an even deeper way.

• News source:
• originally posted September 19, 2012
• Landfill Harmonic

Landfill Harmonic is an upcoming feature-length documentary about a remarkable musical orchestra in Paraguay, where the musicians play instruments made from trash.

• News source:

A Child’s View From Gaza Exhibition – Tues., Nov. 6 – Tues., Dec. 4, 2012, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (details below)

Public Reception for A Child’s View From Gaza – Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012, 7:00 p.m. (details below)

Exhibition:
Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME), Victoria Chapter, is delighted to announce the presentation in Victoria of a fascinating and heart-wrenchingly beautiful collection of drawings by children and youth from Gaza. The exhibition, A Child’s View from Gaza, features 20 drawings by children in Gaza from 5 to 14 years of age, created during the course of art therapy. The exhibition reflects the children’s perceptions of the Israeli offensive against Gaza, which took place from December 27, 2008 to January 17, 2009. Each drawing is unique in its perspective and details.

Public Reception:
CPJME is holding a public reception and viewing of A Child’s View From Gaza exhibit, at the A. Wilfrid Johns Gallery, Faculty of Education, MacLaurin Building-A Wing, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, on Thursday, Nov. 15, 2012, at 7:00 p.m.

There will be a presentation by Dr. Robert Dalton, Art Education Professor, at the University of Victoria. Dr. Dalton’s Ph.D. dissertation was focused on the theme of children’s war drawings, and since then he has studied collections of drawings from Iraq, Afghanistan and other regions of the world, where the lives of children and youth have been affected by conflict. As well, he has studied art collections where peace, a much more hopeful and uplifting topic, was the theme.

Refreshments will be served. Live Arabic music will be performed. Short film clips (The Future for Gaza’s Children-An Interview with Dr. Eyad al-Sarraj, Psychiatrist; Samouni Street; and Gaza: Did You Know?) will be shown. Guests will be invited to participate in an art activity. A Gazan/Palestinian cultural display will be on hand.

CJPME gratefully acknowledges the A. Wilfrid Johns Gallery for providing this venue.

• News source:
• GreatSchools
• Experts say that empowering bystanders to take action might be the key to stopping bullies.
• By Marian Wilde

An eighth-grader approaches a sixth-grader in a crowded girls’ locker room. The older girl says to the younger, “Those are some ugly shoes you’ve got there.” Then, in front of everyone, she takes out a permanent marker and slashes Xs on the younger girl’s shoes, ruining them. The bystanders stare and shake their heads, but do not intervene or try to discourage the bully.

Unfortunately, this passive response from bystanders is not unusual. In other words, bystanders are living up to their name by standing there and doing nothing – and this is a problem. A number of experts today say that bystanders have the power to drastically reduce bullying at schools. Their research offers tips for parents and schools on how to get bystanders to take a stand.

However, bystanders, especially children, need to be empowered to act. The majority of children won’t act for a variety of reasons, perhaps because they are afraid, confused or unsure of what to do.

• News source:
• 15 October 2012
• Globe and Mail
• Are we going to tell our children to stand up and do the right thing, or to watch in silence? How do we have a hope against bullying if so many of us are complicit bystanders?
• By CARLY WEEKS

The girl was tormented relentlessly by her classmates. Verbally and mentally abused for months, she was humiliated and traumatized, some mornings pleading with her parents not to have to go to school for another round of abuse. In some of the darkest moments, her self worth had been eroded to such a point she thought she didn’t deserve to live at all.

Amanda Todd was one of those kids. The 15-year-old girl took her life last week after months of vicious attacks and assaults at the hands of her peers. Except this story isn’t about Amanda Todd.

This story took place in 1993. And that young girl was me…

• News source:
• 10 October 2012
• Toronto Star
• By Catherine Morris

• News source:
• 10 October 2012
• New York Times
• By STEPHEN N. XENAKIS

LATE last month the American military flew a man named Omar Khadr from the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where he had been a detainee since 2002, back to Canada, the country of his birth. Mr. Khadr’s repatriation was part of an informal agreement between the two countries after his 2010 guilty plea for murdering an American soldier.

Mr. Khadr, who now sits in a maximum-security facility in Canada, was supposed to be moved out of Guantánamo in October 2011. But the Canadian government voiced concerns over his potential threat, and his transfer was delayed for another year. While he will certainly spend more time in prison, the Canadian government has yet to announce how long, or when he will be eligible for parole.

Is Omar Khadr a threat to national security? These questions, and the way his case has been handled, reveal a great deal about the way we approach national security and detainees. Some of the Guantánamo detainees, as we know, are dangerous men. Others, like Omar Khadr, are emphatically not.

I served 28 years in the United States Army and had the privilege of commanding thousands of troops as a brigadier general before I retired. I am also a psychiatrist who, as an expert on post-traumatic stress disorder and concussion, was asked to evaluate Mr. Khadr. I have spent hundreds of hours with him since 2008 and have thoroughly reviewed the findings of my colleagues as well as the interviews and reports by the prosecution’s experts. From my first involvement in this case, I have kept America’s national security interest foremost in my thinking and integrated it into my assessment as a psychiatric expert.

There was no question that Mr. Khadr suffered life-threatening injuries, as well as concussions, in a firefight that led to his capture, in 2002, at a compound in Afghanistan. He was 15 years old and had been sent there by his father to translate for Libyans training Afghan fighters on how to make improvised explosive devices.

• News source:
• 9 October 2012
• NBC News
• By Amna Nawaz and Mushtaq Yusufzai

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari ordered Tuesday that the young Pakistani activist who was seriously injured in a shooting by the Pakistani Taliban be sent abroad for medical treatment, the website for Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper reported.

Malala Yousafzai, a 14-year-old Pakistani activist who won international acclaim for her work promoting peace, and two other young girls were shot and seriously injured Tuesday, police and hospital officials said…

Malala was nominated for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011 for a blog she wrote under a pseudonym for the BBC. She also won the National Peace Prize in Pakistan, was honored with a school named after her, and quickly became an outspoken critic of the Taliban in Pakistan and a public advocate for peace.

• News source:
• originally published MArch 2012
• Myanmar Times
• By Eugene Quah

While Myanmar has many pressing needs, the process of law reform should not be rushed. Regardless of the intentions of the legislature, to make drastic changes in haste is to tempt fate and risk disaster: something as trivial as a single word out of place can have far-reaching and unintended consequences.

Better outcomes are more likely to be achieved if the government opts for unhurried transition rather than overnight transformation. The time invested in systematic planning will pay dividends in the many years to come.

In addition to attenuating the speed of change, it is important that the legislative process incorporates formal consultation procedures that enable all stakeholders to participate insofar as is practicable.