Reporting on Conflict | Media Watch Blog

• News source:
• 1 May 2013
• Atlantic
• By Olga Khazan

We often talk about “the Islamic world,” or the “Muslim community,” but sometimes it takes being smacked with an enormous, amazing data dump to remind us that Muslims are actually an incredibly diverse group — if you can call them a group — who adhere to views that are informed by their cultural and political context as much as their religion.

For their mammoth new study about the world’s Muslims, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life interviewed more than 38,000 Muslims in 39 countries on topics ranging from morality, to politics and justice, and the relationships between the sexes.

• News source:
• 5 April 2013
• Globe and Mail
• By STEPHANIE NOLEN

From across the courtyard, an old nun was beckoning. I checked right and left; she was definitely waving at us.

And so I took my children by the hand climbed the stairs into the Missionaries of Charity Motherhouse.

I was going through Calcutta with my family not long ago and decided we would all take a quick detour to the legendary mission established by Mother Teresa…

• News source:
• 5 December 2012
• Transparency International
• Press release

A growing outcry over corrupt governments forced several leaders from office last year, but as the dust has cleared it has become apparent that the levels of bribery, abuse of power and secret dealings are still very high in many countries. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 shows corruption continues to ravage societies around the world.

Two thirds of the 176 countries ranked in the 2012 index score below 50, on a scale from 0 (perceived to be highly corrupt) to 100 (perceived to be very clean), showing that public institutions need to be more transparent, and powerful officials more accountable.

“Governments need to integrate anti-corruption actions into all public decision-making. Priorities include better rules on lobbying and political financing, making public spending and contracting more transparent and making public bodies more accountable to people,” said Huguette Labelle, the Chair of Transparency International.

“After a year of focus on corruption, we expect governments to take a tougher stance against the abuse of power. The Corruption Perceptions Index 2012 results demonstrate that societies continue to pay the high cost of corruption,” Labelle said.

• News source:
• 21 November 2012
• Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
• By Brian J. Grim

Several recent incidents have drawn international attention to laws and policies prohibiting blasphemy – remarks or actions considered to be contemptuous of God or the divine. In a highly publicized case last summer, for example, a 14-year-old Christian girl in Pakistan was arrested and detained for several weeks after she was accused of burning pages from the Quran. In neighboring India, a man reputed to be a religious skeptic is facing blasphemy charges because he claimed a statue of Jesus venerated by Mumbai’s Catholic community for its miraculous qualities is a fake. The man reportedly is staying in Europe to avoid prosecution. In Greece, a man was arrested and charged with blasphemy after he posted satirical references to an Orthodox Christian monk on Facebook.

Pakistan, India and Greece are not alone in actively pursuing blasphemy prosecutions. A new analysis by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that as of 2011 nearly half of the countries and territories in the world (47%) have laws or policies that penalize blasphemy, apostasy (abandoning one’s faith) or defamation (disparagement or criticism of particular religions or religion in general).

• News source:
• 1 October 2012
• Canberra Times
• Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN)
• By Ramesh Thakur

The two great existential challenges of our time are climate change and nuclear weapons. Between them, Russia and the United States hold 90 to 95 per cent of the world’s stockpile of nuclear weapons. Their global inventories cast a dark shadow over the Asia-Pacific with respect to deployments, doctrines and targets. In addition, Asia-Pacific has three of the world’s four non-NPT nuclear-armed states (India, Pakistan and North Korea, with Israel being the fourth). The Indian and Pakistani stockpiles are growing and China is yet to join any regime or plan to cut back its nuclear arsenal, arguing the numerical difference of its arsenal from that of Russia and the US puts it in a qualitatively different category…

[A]round 30 former leaders last year established the Asia Pacific Leadership Network for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (APLN). The advocacy group brings together former senior political, diplomatic, military, and scientific leaders from 14 countries around the region, from South Asia to East Asia and Australasia.

• News source:

Asia-Pacific Mediation Conference 2012:
Mediation and its Impact on National Legal Systems
16 and 17 November 2012
Connie Fan Multi-media Conference Room, City University of Hong Kong

The Asia-Pacific Mediation Conference 2012 is organized and hosted by the City University of Hong Kong with the support of UNCITRAL (United Nations Commission on International Trade Law). Built on the success of previous two conferences, which were held in Japan in 2010 and Korea in 2011, this year the conference will continue to promote the modernization and harmonization of the law and practice of mediation in the region and the expansion of the role of mediation and mediators both within Asia-Pacific and internationally.

The conference aims to present an informative and stimulating program offering networking and learning opportunities to new and experienced mediators, judges, arbitrators, dispute managers, lawyers, scholars, jurists and students. The objective of the conference is to provide a collegiate platform where different experiences and ideas can be shared and exchanged. We will bring together international legal scholars and experts from around the world including Australia, Cambodia, China (Mainland), Hong Kong SAR, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Macao SAR, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, United States, United Kingdom, and Vietnam to promote a better understanding of the current social, political and legal realities and how mediation law and practice has been developing over time to meet the changing needs and aspirations in the Asia-Pacific region and internationally.

Language: The Conference will be held in English. English-Chinese simultaneous interpretation is available.

Speakers:

• Luca Castellani, head of UNCITRAL-RCAP;
• Prof. Dale Bagshaw, University of South Australia;
• Mr Sum Sokhamphou, Official in Charge of Royal School of Magistracy, Royal Academy for Judicial Professions, Cambodia
• Prof. Catherine Morris, Adjunct Professor, University of Victoria, Canada
• Professor Wang Chengjie, Mediation Centers of the CCPIT, Beijing, China
• Mr Norris Yang, ADR International Limited, Hong Kong
• Ms Lin Yao, Partner, Lee & Li Attroneys at Law, Chinese Taipei
• Mr. Anil Xavier, President, Indian Institute of Arbitration & Mediation, India
• Ms Karen Mills, KarimSyah Law Firm, Jakarta, Indonesia
• Professor Nohyoung Park, College of Law, University of Korea, Korea
• Ms Bernadette C Ongoco, State Counsel, Department of Justice, Philippines
• Professor Lee Tye Beng, Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore
• Hon Justice Suresh Chandra, Judge of the Supreme Court, Sri Lanka
• Judge Vichai Ariyanuntaka, Presiding Justice of Court of Appeal, Professor of Law, Thammasat University, Bangkok, Thailand
• Mr Michael Lorenz, Lorenz & Partners, Vietnam
• Professor Neil Andrews, Professor of Civil Justice and Private Law, Faculty of Law, University of Cambridge, U.K.

Find more information

• News source:
• 15 October 2012
• Daily Times

KARACHI: Hundreds of Pakistani students and journalists remembered the US journalist, Daniel Pearl, at 11th Annual Daniel Pearl World Music Day observed in Karachi…

The musical tribute was paid under theme of ‘Harmony through humanity’. Over 350 Pakistani students and journalists celebrated the positive vision to stand up for tolerance through words and music.

• News source:
• 23 September 2012
• The Star
• The Rohingya problem in Myanmar stems from the systematic discrimination against this ethnic and religious minority.
• By Benjamin Zawacki

Much has been written lately, either empathetically or as a challenge, of Myanmar’s “Rohingya problem”. Since early June, the Rohingya have borne the brunt of communal violence, human rights violations, and an urgent humanitarian situation in Rakhine State, and face an uncertain future. But when considered more closely, is that all? What really is the problem?

The events of this year, as well as the violent events of 1978, 1992, 2001, and 2009, are attributable to systemic discrimination against the Rohingya in Myanmar. That is, to a political, social, and economic system—manifested in law, policy, and practices—designed to discriminate against this ethnic and religious minority. This system makes such direct violence against the Rohingya far more possible and likely than it would otherwise be. Further, in the eyes of the Myanmar authorities at least—as evidenced by the lack of accountability for the civilians and officials alike—discrimination also makes the violence and violations somehow justifiable. That is the problem.

• News source:
• 6 September 2012
• Jakarta Post
• By Hafid Abbas

The cloud of gross human rights violations against the Rohingya Muslims during the last few weeks that have darkened Myanmar’s sky will hinder the transformation of ASEAN into a single community of nations by 2015.

In its press release on Aug. 1, Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated that Myanmarese security forces had committed killings, rape and mass arrests against Rohingya Muslims after failing to protect both the Muslims and Arakan Buddhists during deadly sectarian violence in June.

Government restrictions on humanitarian access to the Rohingya community have left over 100,000 people displaced and in dire need of food, shelter and medical care.

However, ASEAN remains silent on this human rights violation in a part of ASEAN.

• News source:
• July/August 2012
• Atlantic
• By Steven Pinker

People have long assumed that violence is necessary for political change. Rulers never cede power voluntarily, the argument goes, so progressives have no choice but to contemplate the use of force to bring about a better world, mindful of the trade-off between a small amount of violence now and acceptance of an unjust status quo indefinitely. Terrorists invoke this trade-off to justify what would otherwise be wanton murder. Even their most vociferous condemners concede that terrorism, though highly immoral, is often efficacious.

Of course, Mohandas Gandhi, and later Martin Luther King Jr., argued the opposite—that violence, in addition to being morally heinous, is tactically counterproductive. Violent movements attract thugs and firebrands who enjoy the mayhem. Violent tactics provide a pretext for retaliation by the enemy and alienate third parties who might otherwise support the movement.

So how effective is violence? Political scientists have recently tried tallying the successes and failures of violent and nonviolent movements. The evidence is piling up that Gandhi was right—at least on average. In separate analyses, Audrey Cronin and Max Abrahms have shown that terrorist movements almost always fizzle out without achieving any of their strategic aims. Just think of the failed independence movements in Puerto Rico, Ulster, Quebec, Basque Country, Kurdistan, and Tamil Eelam. The success rate of terrorist movements is, at best, in the single digits.

• News source:
• 27 July 2012
• DAWN
• By Pushto Press

US drones continue to target Fata’s North Waziristan agency. At least 13 people were killed in a recent attack; many were injured and houses were destroyed. Hundreds of such assaults have badly disturbed normal life in the tribal regions. The area is remote and locals have to carry out rescue work on their own. The injured are taken to local healthcare centres where the minimum facilities are available.

There are conflicting reports about those who fall prey to the attacks. According to local people the victims were residents of the area and had nothing to do with terrorism. But the foreign media claimed that they were Taliban commanders.

Conflicting news reports have created doubts…. The matter can only be analysed through an impartial probe. The residents have been appealing to the government and the international community to help them as the ultimate sufferers are innocent people, particularly women, children and senior citizens.

The drones are a direct attack on the sovereignty of Pakistan and not just the public but also the government has informed US authorities that the attacks have no positive results in the ongoing ‘war on terror’; rather, they complicate the issues and affect diplomatic ties….

• News source:
• 14 July 2012
• The Nation (Pakistan)
• By M. Younas Khan

With a population of about over seven people on earth, human beings come across each other every single second. This interaction results in millions of transaction each day and billions every month. After the world transformed into a global village, these interactions – whether social, cultural, or of any type – have increased manifold, both in quantity and complexity. This enormous and complex nature of transactions in a current multicultural, multiracial and multilingual world is resulting in numerous disputes. Most of them are undoubtedly the result of misperception and communication barriers. However, in some cases the deliberate acts of fraud, forgery, cheating and misrepresentation by some people are witnessed. Every nation, in this context, is faced with a challenge to reduce these faulty interactions at first stage and settle them with a minimum cost at the second stage of adjudication.

Against this backdrop, a corrupt person does not only deprive the nation of its hard-earned income made through taxes, but also cause an additional loss to government in prosecuting him. Despite the judiciary’s hard work, today it is not possible to provide an appropriate number of courts and judges to settle countless disputes, whether between individuals, groups or organisations without a waste of precious resources. Even in the best performing countries, the courts are burdened with a huge backlog of cases. Therefore, the world is moving towards alternative ways for the settlement.

• News source:
• 12 June 2012
• Reuters
• By Katherine Baldwin

LONDON – Policies that promote gender equality, safeguards against violence and exploitation and access to healthcare make Canada the best place to be a woman among the world’s biggest economies, a global poll of experts showed on Wednesday.

Infanticide, child marriage and slavery make India the worst, the same poll concluded.

Germany, Britain, Australia and France rounded out the top five countries out of the Group of 20 in a perceptions poll of 370 gender specialists conducted by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

• News source:
• 30 May 2012
• Apostolic Prefecture of Battambang (Cambodia)
• By Fr. Mark Raper

A Letter from Fr. Mark Raper, President of the Jesuit Conference of East Asia Pacific.

Dear Friends,

Peace. Today we received news that Fr Pierre Ceyrac died early this morning in Chennai at the age of 98. Born on 4 February 1914 in Limozane, France, Pierre had one sister and 5 brothers. He entered the Society of Jesus in 1931. Being destined for India, he studied Sanskrit at the University of Paris and departed for Chennai in 1937. There in addition to the normal studies for priesthood, he studied Tamil literature. He was ordained a priest in 1945. 16 years of his life was given to AICUF (All India Catholic University Federation), which brought him to many parts of India and to deep engagements with young people.

In 1980 Pierre went to Thailand with a Caritas India team to assist the Cambodian refugees who had come in great numbers across the border as the Vietnamese army did battle with the Khmer Rouge. Pierre and several Jesuit companions, notably John Bingham and Noel Oliver, stayed on to be the founding members of a Jesuit Refugee Service program for Asia Pacific. They accompanied the Cambodian refugees until their return in 1993.

• News source:
• December 2010
• UNDP
• By Andries Odendaal

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)

• News source:
• 21 March 2012
• Globe and Mail
• By Aparita Bhandari

Looking for a Sri Lankan benefit reading series he was spearheading, Kumaran Nadesan remembered a phrase from Tamil-language news reports about the 25-year-long civil war that ravaged the island nation: Samadhana pechchu vaarthaigal, or peace talks. He wanted a word found in both Sinhalese and Tamil, the languages spoken by the two ethnic communities in conflict in Sri Lanka, and Samadhana seemed an innocuous choice.

However, the reaction from some of his Sri Lankan Tamil friends, “moderate people, who grew up in Colombo and come from privileged backgrounds,” was unexpected.

“It sounded very Sinhalese to them; they thought I was bending over backwards for the Sinhalese,” says Nadesan. “I explained to them that Samadhana is actually a Sanskrit word.”

It’s this type of mistrust that Nadesan hopes to address through the inaugural Samadhana Benefit Reading Series that kicks off in Toronto on Thursday with readings from Sri Lankan-Canadian novelists Shyam Selvadurai (Funny Boy) and Koom Kankesan (The Panic Button), and Sri Lankan-American writer Mary Anne Mohanraj (Bodies in Motion).

• News source:

From South Sudan to Sri Lanka, Guatemala to Nepal, specially trained, unarmed civilians are protecting civilians under threat and preventing violence from escalating in areas of violent conflict. Working on the basis of strict nonpartisanship and at the invitation of local civil society, these peacekeepers apply field-tested strategies that create space for local actors to transform conflicts, protect human rights defenders and others made vulnerable by the conflict, as well as supporting local violence prevention mechanisms.

They bring on-the-ground realities of violent conflicts to national, regional and international attention. Their presence provides a bridge between peacekeeping and peacebuilding.

Nonviolent Peaceforce (NP) and Peace Brigades International (PBI), two of the leaders in unarmed civilian protection, will present how peacekeeping works without guns, what lessons are being learned, and how this practice can now be brought to scale.
March 21, 2012 – 10:00 – 11:30am
U.S. Institute of Peace
2301 Constitution Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20037

More at http://www.usip.org/events/unarmed-civilian-peacekeeping-emerging-approach-civilian-protection-and-violence-prevention

• News source:
• 27 December 2011
• Foreign Policy
• By Louise Arbour

What conflict situations are most at risk of deteriorating further in 2012? When Foreign Policy asked the International Crisis Group to evaluate which manmade disasters could explode in the coming year, we put our heads together and came up with 10 crisis areas that warrant particular concern.

• News source:
• 19 December 2011
• Huffington Post
• By Tenzin Dorjee

One of the rare advantages of being born a refugee is that you become bilingual by default.

As a Tibetan educated in India and the United States, I’m often asked to interpret for Tibetan speakers at meetings, rallies and press conferences. Recently, I facilitated a brainstorming session between Nathan Freitas, technology director at the Tibet Action Institute, and Kusho Monlam, a Tibetan monk and a pioneer in the computerization of Tibetan language.

As the discussion turned to the technical methods and challenges of creating Tibetan keyboards on Android phones, my usefulness as an interpreter quickly disappeared.

• News source:
• 15 December 2011
• Epidreamiology
• By Matthew Greenall

Earlier this year I went to a meeting on sex work in the global AIDS epidemic. The purpose was to look at the current information on HIV in populations and among sex workers and assess the relationship, and to look at how effective different types of intervention and programme in reducing the risk of HIV among sex workers. Most of the best quality evidence comes from a fairly narrow set of interventions, that have been shown (or not, as the case may be) to have a direct impact on HIV transmission or acquisition. Things like vaginal microbicides, presumptive STI testing and treatment, HIV testing, peer education, and condom distribution and counselling …

Of course, for an intervention to be discussed as part of the evidence base, there has to be decent evidence – whether it is evidence of positive effects or of negative ones. So some things didn’t come up in the discussion, despite being widely implemented in the context of HIV programmes, because there is no evidence of their impact. Things like microfinance and income generating projects aimed at reducing numbers of sex workers…

But what is more alarming is the things that don’t come up in the discussion of the programme evidence base, despite there being a pretty strong association between them and HIV.  On Saturday December 17th, it is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers, and I am talking about violence.  Time and again, sex workers tell us that the criminalised nature of sex work, and in particular the role played by law enforcement agents and health care workers in committing violence and in failing to address it properly, mean that violence is one of the biggest risks they face, and is a far more immediate threat than HIV.  The epidemiological association between violence and HIV has also been documented in a number of observational studies: in Bangladesh, in Cambodia, in India and in Kenya, for instance.  Other reviews can be found here (disclosure: I wrote that one), and here.