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.
Washington – On the 47th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington on Saturday, the first sight on the National Mall for thousands of marchers was a four-story art installation that displayed four images and quotations of Martin Luther King Jr.
The participants in Glenn Beck’s “Restoring Honor” rally paused as they walked toward the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. Some stopped to have pictures taken with King as the backdrop.
As recordings of King’s booming baritone filled the air, some of the Beck followers laughed and others booed…
This weekend Glenn Beck is to host a “Restoring Honor” rally at the Lincoln Memorial. While it is commendable that this rally will honor the brave men and women of our armed forces, who serve our country with phenomenal dedication, it is clear from the timing and location that the rally’s organizers present this event as also honoring the ideals and contributions of Martin Luther King Jr.
I would like to be clear about what those ideals are.
A 90-year-old Jewish peace activist won the International Peace Award from the United Nations Association of Australia.
Stella Cornelius was presented the award Aug. 13 in Sydney…
The citation stated: “The International Peace Award is made to Dr Cornelius for a lifetime of devotion to peace, conflict resolution and social justice issues; and in particular for initiating the Peace and Conflict Resolution Program of the UNAA 1973; the Conflict Resolution Network; the Media Peace Awards 1979; the Ministry for Peace Campaign 1983; the Bilateral Peace Treaties Proposal.”
BEIJING, China — A Tibetan author detained for his recent book that calls for nonviolent resistance to Chinese rule in Tibet is stuck in legal limbo, his lawyer said Friday, with police reinvestigating his case and the court having rejected his chosen legal team.
Four months after being taken into custody, the writer Tragyal remains in jail in the far western city of Xining, charged with inciting separatism. He was expected to face trial this month, but police recently told his family they were reviewing the evidence against him before sending the case to prosecutors, his lawyer said.
Archbishop Elias Chacour, who is both a Palestinian and a citizen of Israel, has told a large gathering in Edinburgh that a just and peaceful future in Israel and Palestine depends upon education.
The average age in the area he lives, said the Archbishop, is 14 years, and many young people have been deeply shaped and scarred by the history of occupation and eviction. Transformation of lives and understanding is vital, he suggested.
Chacour is the Archbishop of Akko, Haifa, Nazareth and Galilee of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church. Noted for his efforts to promote reconciliation, he is the author of two books about the experience of Palestinian people living in present-day Israel – including the best-seller Blood Brothers, which broke boundaries in the UK by being published by a major evangelical company.
We've signed the Red Cross Code of Conduct saying we don't take sides; we provide aid based on need alone, regardless of nationality, race, religion or ethnicity. We don't carry guns.
By Melanie Brooks
Two years ago last week, Shirley Case, a humanitarian and one of my close friends, was shot and killed in an ambush by the Taliban along with three other aid workers. They were returning from a field visit to one of their schools outside of Kabul, where they were providing education to children with learning disabilities…
Today is World Humanitarian Day, a day where we remember colleagues who have died while trying to help others, and raise awareness of what we do and why it is so important we continue. The day was established by the United Nations in 2008, the same year Shirley died. That was also the most dangerous year on record for aid workers; along with Shirley, more than 260 were killed, kidnapped or injured in attacks that year, making aid work more dangerous than being a UN peacekeeper.
But aid workers aren’t peacekeepers, or soldiers. We’ve signed the Red Cross Code of Conduct saying we don’t take sides; we provide aid based on need alone, regardless of nationality, race, religion or ethnicity. We don’t carry guns.
UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
"... we do not have guns or take sides."
The 2010 World Humanitarian Day project is a collaborative film shot in over 40 countries in under 9 weeks, on a shoestring budget – with the goal of showing the enormous diversity of places, faces and endeavors of humanitarian aid workers in 2010. It was filmed by humanitarian staff and freelance filmmakers from around the globe (over 50 contributors in total) with all time donated.
Thailand needs open dialogue between all stakeholders to solve the country’s “phenomenal” political polarisation, conflict resolution facilitator Adam Kahane says.
Elise Boulding, sociologist, author and co-founder of the International Peace Research Association, who died in Needham on June 24, was well known to peace researchers and activists around the world, including faculty and students at Assumption College, College of the Holy Cross, and Clark University in Worcester.
“As mother, scholar, and activist, Elise Boulding understood the wisdom of peacemaking,” according to Claire Schaeffer-Duffy, chairwoman of the Center for Nonviolent Solutions, in Worcester. “Her great gift was her ability to get others to take this wisdom seriously.”
A memorial at the Wellesley College chapel, marking Ms. Boulding’s 90th birthday, involving compatriots and admirers in New England, as well as her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, paid tribute to her many accomplishments.
Contrary to largely gloomy cultural perceptions, growing old brings some benefits, notably emotional and cognitive stability. Laura Carstensen, a Stanford social psychologist, calls this the “well-being paradox.” Although adults older than 65 face challenges to body and brain, the 70s and 80s also bring an abundance of social and emotional knowledge, qualities scientists are beginning to define as wisdom. As Carstensen and another social psychologist, Fredda Blanchard-Fields of the Georgia Institute of Technology, have shown, adults gain a toolbox of social and emotional instincts as they age. According to Blanchard-Fields, seniors acquire a feel, an enhanced sense of knowing right from wrong, and therefore a way to make sound life decisions.
Former Expo Times editor Dr Ibrahim Seaga Shaw, aka Tech, now Senior Research Fellow at the University of the West of England (UK) was among five peace research academics elected to represent the Africa region in the International Peace Research Association Governing Council (IPRA) at the organization’s biennal conference hosted by the University of Sydney between 6th and 10th July 2010…
IPRA, which has about 1400 individual members and many associate group members worldwide, is an international non-governmental organisation seeking to advance trans-disciplinary research into the conditions of sustainable peace and the causes of war and other forms of violence…
In addition to presenting two academic papers on human rights journalism, and peace journalism and education at the Sydney IPRA conference, Dr Shaw was the co-convener of the Peace Journalism Commission which brought together 26 paper presenters from internationally diverse backgrounds (Europe, Asia, Middle East, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and North America). He was also endorsed to continue in this capacity to help organise the next IPRA conference billed to take place in 2012 in Hiroshima, Japan.
By Researched and writtern by Naama Baumgarten-Sharon. Edited by Yael Stein. Translated by Shaul Vardi. English editing by Michelle Bubis.
The army uses different legal means in order to prevent demonstrations. Although most of the efforts are directed at the Palestinian organizers, some are directed at Israeli and International activists. Some foreign activists participating in the demonstration have been deported. In addition, On February 2, 2010, OC Central Command signed two orders proclaiming a closed military zone imposed on the villages of Bil’in and Ni’lin. These orders are issued for six months at a time, and apply to all the land lying between the built-up areas of the villages and the Barrier. Every Friday, between 8 AM and 8 PM, in other villages that hold demonstrations, specific orders are issued declaring the area a closed military zone.
Against the Palestinians, since the beginning of 2010, the army has used another means: renewed use of Military Order 101, which prohibits demonstrations in the occupied Territories…
Following renewal of the Order, B’Tselem is now publishing a position paper [pdf: http://www.btselem.org/Download/20100715_right_to_demonstrate_Eng.pdf] in which it provides a theoretical analysis of the Order and the restrictions it imposes on the freedom of Palestinians in Areas B and C to demonstrate, in light of Israel ’s obligation to ensure freedom of speech under international law. The position paper also compares the statutory provisions applying to Israeli citizens who demonstrate anywhere, whether inside the state or in the West Bank.
See background and other resources attached to this story
In Colombia, over two decades of conflict between the government and paramilitary groups has uprooted more than 3 million people. Today the conflict poses an even greater threat of extinction to 34 distinct Indigenous Peoples in Colombia. Among them, in the Uraba region of northwest Colombia, the Tule.
Kai Brand-Jacobsen, Director of the Department of Peace Operations (DPO) of PATRIR gives a TEDx Presentation on Peacebuilding: “Paradigm Shift from War to Peace” – exploring innovation, global challenges, and examples of peacebuilding and nonviolence. Also references the Global Alliance for Ministries and Departments of Peace, Nonviolent Peaceforce, Combatants for Peace, trainings of the International Peace and Development Training Centre (IPDTC) and many others. May be freely posted, shared, and sent out through mailing lists and web-sites for those interested.
Though their countries are rattling sabres at each other, Pittsburghers and Tehranians are only too glad to share a meal across a webchat platform.
Illah R Nourbaksh is part of a small but vibrant Iranian community in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He is a scientist. An associate professor of robotics and head of the Robotics Masters Program at the Carnegie Mellon University, to be precise. Six years ago, he took a break from the university, and led the Robotics Group at Nasa—an unlikely place for an Iranian to be nowadays.
Sohrab M Kashani is an artist based in Tehran. He was born more than a decade after Nourbaksh left Iran for the US in 1976 to study at Stanford University to become a scientist. Though born in the same city, it was unlikely that the two would ever have met or collaborated. One is an American scientist and teacher, the other an Iranian artist and curator.
But Iran’s conflict with the US has brought the two together—albeit virtually—at Conflict Kitchen, a takeout restaurant at Pittsburgh run by three artists: Jon Rubin, Jon Pena and Dawn Weleski. It is not just a restaurant, but ‘an experimental public art work’, according to Jon Rubin, assistant professor of art at Carnegie Mellon, and the man who came up with the idea of Conflict Kitchen with fellow artists Weleski and Pena.
… This series of demonstrations, and the ongoing demonstrations against expansion of the Israeli separation wall in Beit Jalla and nearby al-Walajeh are part of a growing number of nonviolent demonstrations orchestrated by popular committees and Palestinian nongovernmental committees as acts of civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation.
A surprising number of high-profile peacebuilders in the last generation have been religious figures, says Daniel Philpott of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Faith-motivated people — from Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Pope John Paul II to theologians and activists working in every major religion worldwide — have promoted the concept of reconciliation, which has shaped the politics of countries from South Africa and Guatemala to Timor-Leste and Iraq.
“The idea of reconciliation has deep roots in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and other faiths,” says Philpott, associate professor of political science and peace studies, who is directing a new research program on religion and reconciliation at the Kroc Institute.
Civil rights leader and trainer of nonviolent action, Rev. James Lawson, delivers the opening banquet keynote address talking about his experience organizing and training the Nashville lunch counter sit-in campaign.
That the military would succeed in defeating the UDD, also known as the “red shirts”, and in securing the city space occupied by many who came from rural Thailand was never in doubt. In fact, some from within the security community might regard this operation as a success given the resulted “low” number of casualties. What certainly is , however, is how the military solution chosen by the government and violent methods incorporated by some UDD leadership will shape the form of continuing political conflict in this society.
