lundi 22 septembre 2025

22 septembre 2024 Reconnaissance de la Palestine par la France

 Hier, c'était la journée internationale de la Paix.

La journée internationale de la paix est célébrée chaque année le 21 septembre. Elle est dédiée à la paix et particulièrement à l'absence de guerre, qui doit se manifester par un cessez-le-feu dans les zones de combat. Elle est observée dans de nombreux pays depuis sa création en 1981

A l’occasion de la Journée internationale qui lui est dédiée, le 21 septembre 2025, l’OIF réaffirme son engagement à promouvoir la paix.


Aujourd'hui, le président français va déclarer la reconnaissance de l'Etat de Palestine, un clin d'oeil à l'Histoire et un rappel d'une autre date , le 21/09/2014 quand la population palestinienne manifestait pour la reconnaissance de la Palestine.

Extrait de l'article : Certains habitants ont laissé éclater leur enthousiasme. Comme Nasser Abdhulhadi, propriétaire d'une pizzeria dans le centre de Ramallah, qui, derrière le drapeau palestinien géant installé à l'entrée de son échoppe, se trémousse au rythme des airs du chanteur palestinien populaire Alli el-Kafiyeh. "Aujourd'hui, mes pizzas sont aux couleurs de la Palestine", hurle-t-il.

Rappel des accords d'Oslo qui furent un échec cuisant. 

dimanche 22 septembre 2024

Journée internationale de la paix 2024

 La journée internationale de la paix/ 21/09/2024



La journée internationale de la paix est célébrée chaque année le 21 septembre. Elle est dédiée à la paix et particulièrement à l'absence de guerre, qui doit se manifester par un cessez-le-feu dans les zones de combat. Elle est observée dans de nombreux pays depuis sa création en 1981.

Depuis 3 ans, le collectif « 21 septembre » a pour but de promouvoir la journée internationale de la paix et d’encourager les initiatives ce jour là. En tant qu'écologistes, nous sommes fiers d'en faire partie et à ce titre, nous apportons notre pierre à l'édifice.


L'écologie de la paix est une approche qui cherche à concilier les enjeux environnementaux avec des valeurs de paix, de justice sociale et de solidarité. Elle repose sur l'idée que les crises environnementales, telles que le changement climatique, la déforestation, ou la pollution, sont intimement liées aux conflits sociaux, politiques et économiques.


Dans cette perspective, pour résoudre les problèmes écologiques, il est essentiel de promouvoir la paix, la coopération internationale, et des systèmes économiques et politiques qui respectent à la fois les êtres humains et la nature. Cela passe par des actions comme :


1. La promotion de la justice environnementale : Réduire les inégalités qui existent dans l'accès aux ressources naturelles et dans les impacts des dégradations environnementales, souvent plus sévères dans les pays pauvres.



2. La résolution des conflits liés aux ressources : Les tensions autour de l'accès à l'eau, aux terres arables et aux énergies fossiles sont souvent des causes de guerre. Une gestion durable et équitable des ressources naturelles peut prévenir de nombreux conflits.



3. La transition vers des modes de vie durables : Encourager des pratiques économiques et sociales qui minimisent les dommages environnementaux, tout en favorisant la cohésion sociale et la paix.




L'écologie de la paix reconnaît également que les populations les plus vulnérables sont souvent celles qui subissent le plus les conséquences des désastres écologiques, d'où l'importance de solutions inclusives et respectueuses des droits humains.


Aujourd'hui,  plus qu'hier et moins que demain, il y a une urgence absolue de se choisir  un pouvoir fort soutenu par le PEUPLE qui a la volonté de promouvoir la PAIX et surtout ne pas alimenter des conflits meurtriers qui non seulement attiseront la haine mais surtout seront la cause de drames humains et écologiques comme c'est le cas aujourd'hui avec ce qu'il se passe dans de nombreuses partie du Monde, la liste est longue mais je citerai 2 conflits majeurs actuels, la guerre entre la Russie et l'Ukraine  et la crise explosive au Moyen Orient où un peuple, le peuple palestinien est exterminé en direct sous nos yeux sans réaction sérieuse de la communauté internationale.


Alors, j'en appelle à toutes et tous pour intensifier notre combat pour la PAIX et contre la GUERRE. 


Et pour terminer mon discours, je citerai Nelson Mandela

"Pour faire la PAIX avec un ennemi, on doit travailler avec cet ennemi, et cet ennemi devient votre associé"


"La guerre n'est pas une fatalité mais la paix est une nécessité absolue si on aspire à vivre heureux " Tahar


samedi 15 avril 2023

Israel-Palestine: Tension-reduction Measures Urgently Needed





By René Wadlow

The Association of World Citizens (AWC) calls for urgently needed tension-reduction measures in the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon area.

Tensions have led to a barrage of missiles from Gaza and Lebanon and rapid Israeli missiles in return aiming at weakening Hamas and Hezbollah.

Growing tensions had led to Israeli police attacking Palestinian worshipers celebrating the holy month of Ramadan within the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound on April 5-6, 2023. The images of Israeli police firing teargas and beating worshipers were widely seen on social media outlets and other media.


Tensions in the area have been growing since the formation of the Netanyahu-led government with right-wing ministers. Government proposals for changes concerning the court system and the appointment of judges have led to strong and widespread protest demonstrations. However, Palestinian issues were not directly addressed by these demonstrations.

Tensions between Israel and Iran and Iranian-backed groups in Syria have also been growing. The dangers of further violence have been raised in the United Nations Security Council, but no positive actions were undertaken. United Nations peacekeeping forces in Lebanon are on “high alert”.

For the moment, there are no high-level public negotiations underway or planned. Thus, tension-reduction measures must be undertaken as unilateral measures by the government of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and the government of Lebanon. Such tension-reduction measures are urgently needed but may be unlikely. Thus, the AWC calls upon civil society organizations and persons of good will to consider what measures can be taken immediately and what structures may be established so that tension-reduction processes continue. This is an urgent call for creative and courageous actions.

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

jeudi 13 avril 2023

Hommage à Monseigneur Gaillot



Nous avons appris le décès de Monseigneur Jacques Gaillot ce matin. C'est avec une immense tristesse que je présente mes condoléances à sa famille et ses proches. Voici une vidéo rare d'une interview réalisée en 2009 . Libre en partage. Dans cette vidéo, il parle de son engagement vis à vis de la population palestinienne. Il a soutenu toutes les causes qu'il jugeait justes comme la lutte du peuple syrien pour sa liberté





lundi 10 avril 2023

Syria: The Start of a Long Night of Sorrow

 On 13 March 2011 in Derra, in the south of Syria, 15 teenage boys were arrested by Syrian security police

for having written hostile graffiti against President Bashar Al-Assad on a school wall. The arrests led to non-violent protests in Derra and by 15 March the protests had spread to other Syrian cities. There were social, economic and ecological conditions in the country which set the stage for such protests. Corruption, unemployment, high population growth, limited resources and a hugh budget for oversized security and military forces were main obstacles for economic reforms. There was also the spirit of the "Arab Spring" which had started earlier with the January 2011 end of the government of Ben Ali in Tunisia.

syr0001_400_01

Unlike earlier protest movements in Syria which were based on religious or ethnic, especially Kurdish, identity, the early 2011 movement stressed the unity of all the people and their demand to have recognized their dignity. Women participated actively. Social media via the INTERNET was widely used.
Fairly quickly the protesters stated to structure themselves in cities and larger towns. Protesters started to form local councils and to take up local administrative tasks. In 2011, Syria was a police state but under administrated concerning services of education, health and other public services. Rural areas were even less administrated.

There was a strong rural to urban migration, especially to larger towns. Social service needs were not met.

The government responded to these demonstrations with police and military violence. By mid-April, a peaceful demonstration in Homs was repressed with a good number of demonstrators killed or wounded. Arrests, often followed by torture, became widespread. There were 12 different branches of the security forces, and prisons were overcrowded. While there were local leaders of protests, there were no nation-wide leaders. With no identifiable leaders to arrest, the security forces arrested anyone who looked like a potential troublemaker. Due to the regime's determination to silence any opposition, Syria's political culture regressed into fear with an end to independent periodicals and intellectual forums.

By the end of 2011, the government increasingly called upon the regular military to replace the specialized security forces which were too few to deal with the spreading protests. Protesters started to carry weapons. Some of the regular military who were of the same background as the protesters started to desert and to take their weapons with them. Thus the Syrian conflict was transformed from a non-violent civil protest to a violent civil war leading to a large number of persons displaced within the country and a large number of refugees, especially to neighboring countries - Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon, but also to Western Europe.

As the conflict grew, several regional and international actors involved themselves: Russia and the USA, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Israel, Lebanon with Hezbollah as well as the Jihadist Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Efforts at mediation have been carried out nearly from the start by the Arab League, U.N.-appointed mediators, and broader U.N.-sponsored meetings in Geneva. While the mediators have made detailed proposals, none have been acted upon. There have also been a few non-governmental efforts at mediation or at least efforts to keep avenues of communication open or to widen the persons involved, especially by increasing the role of women. On behalf of the Association of World Citizens, I have been involved in some of these non-governmental efforts, but I have seen few advances. The long night of sorrow continues, but we must watch closely for a possible dawn.

***********************************

Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Yemen: Positive Action Still Needed


25 March is the anniversary date of the start of 28 days on continued bombing of Yemen in 2015 by the Saudi-Arabia-led coalition (Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Qatar, Sudan, United Arab Emirates helped by arms and "intelligence" by the U.S.A. and the U.K.). The aggression by the Saudi coalition turned what had been an internal struggle for power going on from the "Arab Spring" of 2011 into a war with regional dimensions which brought Iran into the picture. The role of Iran has been exaggerated both by the Iranian government itself and by those hostile to Iran. Nevertheless, the Iranian role is real.

Since the Association of World Citizens (AWC) had been following possible constitutional developments in Yemen after the 2011 change of government, a couple of days after the 25 March 2015 bombing, the Association of World Citizens sent to government Missions to the United Nations an AWC Appeal for four steps of conflict resolution and negotiations in good faith:
1) An immediate ceasefire ending all foreign military attacks;
2) Humanitarian assistance, especially important for hard-to-reach zones;
3) A broad national dialogue;
4) Through this dialogue, the establishment of an inclusive unity government open to constitutional changes to facilitate better the wide geographic- tribal structure of the State.

While the constitutional form of the State structures depends on the will of the people of Yemen ( if they were able to express themselves freely) the Association of World Citizens proposes consideration of con-federal forms of government which maintain cooperation within a decentralized framework. In 2014, a committee appointed by the then President, Abdu Rabbu Mansur Hadi, had proposed a six-region federation as the political structure for Yemen.

Until 1990, Yemen was two separate States: the People's Democratic of Yemen in the south with Aden as the capital, and the Yemen Arab Republic in the north with Sana'a as capital. In 1990, the two united to become the Republic of Yemen. The people in the south hoped that the union would bring the economic development which had been promised. Since, even before the Saudi-led war began, there had been very little economic and social development in the south, there started to grow strong "separatist" attitudes in the south. People of all political persuasions hoped to develop prosperity by ending unification and creating what some have started calling "South Arabia" Today, these separatist attitudes are very strong, but there is no agreement on what areas are to be included in a new southern state, and the is no unified separatist political leadership.

Very quickly after 25 March 2015, many governments saw the dangers of the conflict and the possible regional destabilization. Thus there were U.N.-sponsored negotiations held in Geneva in June 2015. The Association of World Citizens worked with other NGOs so that women should be directly involved in such negotiations. However women have not been added to any of the negotiations and are largely absent from any leadership role in the many political factions of the country. There have been U.N. mediators active in trying to get ceasefires and then negotiations. There have been some temporary ceasefires, but no progress on real negotiations.

Today, the war continues with the country's fragmentation, continued internal fighting and impoverishment leading to a disastrous humanitarian crisis. There is a glimmer of possible conflict resolution efforts due to the recent mutual recognition of Saudi Arabia and Iran under the sponsorship of the People's Republic of China. However, creating a national society of individuals willing to cooperate will not be easy. Regional divisions will not be easy to bridge. There have already been divisions within the Saudi-led Coalition. Thus, positive action is still needed. Non-governmental organizations should seek to have their voices heard.

***********************

René Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

Conscience: The Inner Voice of the Higher Self




The United Nations General Assembly has designated 5 April as the International Day of Conscience. An awakened conscience is essential to meeting the challenges which face humanity today as we move into the World Society. The great challenge which humanity faces today is to leave behind the culture of violence in which we find ourselves and move rapidly to a culture of peace and solidarity. We can achieve this historic task by casting aside our ancient national, ethnic, and social prejudices and begin to think and act as responsible Citizens of the World.

An awakened conscience makes us sensitive to hearing the inner voice that warns and encourages. We have a conscience so that we may not let ourselves be lulled to sleep by the social environment in which we find ourselves but will remain alert to truth, justice, and reason. As the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says in Article 1 "All human beings are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood."

There is a need to build networks and bridges among Companions of Conscience. Companions of Conscience create a ground for common discourse and thus a ground for common, life-affirming action. As Companions of Conscience, we take firm action to formulate effective responses to the challenges facing the emerging world society: armed conflicts, human rights violations, persistent poverty and ecological destruction. We strive to make the world a more humane dwelling place for ourselves and for future generations as we move toward a peaceful, just and ecologically-responsible future. We do not hide from ourselves the complexity of these challenges. However, we believe in the effectiveness of common action and enlightened leadership to build a culture of cooperation and solidarity. The circle of Companions of Conscience is growing world wide. Conscience-based actions are increasingly felt.



Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

lundi 13 février 2023

The Use of Child Soldiers: Children of Conflict

 


The Use of Child Soldiers: Children of Conflict

TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 13 Feb 2023

René Wadlow – TRANSCEND Media Service


12 February is the United Nations sponsored International Day Against the Use of Child Soldiers. Efforts to counter the use of persons under 18 years of age in the military began with non-governmental efforts in 1979 – which the U.N. had proclaimed as “The International Year of the Child”.

Nicolas Hulot, who later became well known in France for his reporting on ecology and the defence of the environment, had written “Ces Enfants qui souffrent” (Paris: Sipa-Press, 1978). He highlighted children dying from malnutrition, disease, and injury caused by wars and natural disasters. Hulot’s cry of conscience showed children fighting and being trained to fight in a number of countries in different parts of the world.

Child soldiers in Uganda. [Source: gulfnews.com]

Concern with the welfare of children has been an inter-governmental concern going back to the League of Nations days.  However, the use of child soldiers was rarely mentioned as the professional military prior to the Second World War had persons over 18, usually the youngest were in their 20s.  However, the German Nazi used very young men in the last days of the war to try to limit the impact of the Allied forces within Germany.  There were a number of films and books which told of their efforts.  However, attention did not carry on once the Nazi forces were defeated.

Building on the NGO efforts in 1979 during the International Year of the Child, in the period 1993-1996, there was a U.N. study on the “Impact of Armed Conflict on Children” led by Ms Graça Machel, later the wife of Nelson Mandela.  She wrote “For too long, the consequences for children have been tolerated as an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of war.  In reality, children have increasingly become targets and not incedental victims, as a result of conscious and deliberate decisions made by adults.”

As a result of the Graça Machel study in 1997, the U.N. General Assembly named Ambassador Olara A. Otunnu as Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Children and Armed Conflict.  He placed an emphasis on the moral vacuum in which all restraints have been eroded and discarded – a world in which children are no longer precious.  He wrote,

“At the heart of this growing phenomenon of mass violence and social disintegration is a crisis of values. Perhaps the most fundamental loss a society can suffer is the collapse of its own value system. Many societies exposed to protracted conflicts have seen their community values radically undermined, if not shattered altogether. This has given rise to an ethical vacuum – a setting in which international standards are ignored with impunity and where local value systems have lost their sway. Distinctions between civilians and combatants have broken down. Children, women, the elderly – all have become fair game in the single-minded struggle for power.”

Ambassador Otunnu was from Uganda which had seen more than its share of the breakdown of social norms and resulting violence such as that carried on by the Lord’s Resistance Army which systematically abducted children to be used as soldiers, porters, and sex slaves starting in 1987 but building on earlier armed movements. He was in exile and given citizenship by the Cote d’Ivoire which had appointed him Ambassador to the U.N.  During the sessions of the U.N. Committee on Human Rights, he was in Geneva, and we had long discussions.  He was very open to the spirit of Citizens of the World and the need to develop universal norms so as to move beyond an unregulated struggle for power.

Olara Otunnu wrote “Children represent the future of human civilization and the future of every society.  To permit them to be used as pawns in warfare, whether as targets or perpetrators, is to cast a shadow on the future.  From generation to generation, violence begets violence, as the abused grow up to become abusers.  Children who are thus violated carry the scars of fear and hatred in their hearts and minds.  Forced to learn to kill instead of pursuing education, the children of conflict lack the knowledge and skills needed to build their futures and the futures of their communities. For a society, the lives destroyed and the opportunities lost could have a devastating effect on its long-term stability and development.

______________________________________

René Wadlow is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. He is President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation and problem-solving in economic and social issues,

dimanche 29 janvier 2023

H.G. Wells and Human Rights

 

by Rene Wadlow
2023-01-27 08:59:32


2023 will see a year-long effort leading to 10 December 2023, the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  The effort carries the title "Dignity, Freedom and Justice for All".  Thus, it is useful to look at some of the intellectual preparations both within the League of Nations and among individual thinkers for the Universal Declaration.  One of the most widely read was that of Herbert George Wells "Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the World Citizen" which is found in his book "Phoenix: A Summary of the Inescapable Conditions of World Organization" published in 1942.  The Declaration of the Rights and Duties of the World Citizen had been translated into 10 languages and sent to 300 editors of newspapers in 48 countries.

H.G. Wells from the 1930s on was concerned with the ways the world should be organized with a world organization stronger than the League of Nations.  Such a world organization should be backed up and urged on by a strong body of public opinion linked together world-wide by the unifying bond of a common code of human rights and duties.

At the end of the First World War, H.G. Wells was a strong advocate of the League of Nations, but as time went on, he became aware of its weaknesses.  He wrote in 1939 " The League of Nations, we can all admit now, was a poor and ineffective outcome of that revolutionary proposal to banish armed conflict from the world and inaugurate a new life for mankind... Does this League of Nations contain within it the gem of any permanent federation of human effort?  Will it grow into something for which men will be ready to work for and, if necessary, fight - as hither to they have been willing to fight for their country and their own people?  There are few intimations of any such enthusiasm for the League at the present time.  The League does not even seem to know how to talk to the common man.  It has gone into official buildings, and comparatively few people in the world understand or care what it is doing there."

Thus, there was a need for a clear statement of world values that could be understood by most and that would be a common statement of the aspiration on which to build a new freedom and a new dignity.  Wells had a strong faith in international public opinion when it was not afraid to express new and radical thoughts that cut across the conventional wisdom of the day.  He wrote in 1943 "Behind the short-sighted governments that divide and mismanage human affairs, a real force for world unity and order exists and grows."

Wells hoped that the "Declaration of the Rights of the World Citizen" would become the fundamental law for mankind through the whole world - a true code of basic rights and duties which set out the acceptable shape of a just world society.

Wells set out 10 rights which combined civil liberties already common to many democratic states with economic and social rights which were often considered as aspirations but not as rights.  Thus among the 10 rights we find the Right to Participate in Government, Freedom of Thought and Worship, the Right to Knowledge, Freedom from Violence including Torture, along with the Right to Education, the Right to Medical Care, the Right to Work with Legitimate Remuneration, the Protection of Minors, Freedon of Movement about the Earth.

The drafters of the U.N. Charter in 1945 included a pledge by member states "to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in equal rights of men and women, and of nations large and small."  Much of the debate from 1946 when the U.N. Commission on Human Rights was created until December 1948 when the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was proclaimed concerned the relative place of civil liberties and of economic, social, and cultural rights.

While the text of H.G. Wells is largely forgotten today, he had the vision of the strong link between freedom of thought based on civil liberties and the need for economic dignity set out in the economic, social, and cultural rights.


Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

jeudi 29 septembre 2022

Saber Rattling With Nuclear Weapons.

 


Rattling With Nuclear Weapons.

 September 25, 2022Rene Wadlow
Featured Image: During the meeting of the Supreme Eurasian Economic Council (via videoconference). By Kremlin.ru, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons.
On 21 September, the United Nations designated Day of PeaceVladimir Putin, President of the Russian Federation in an address to the nations said:

” I am addressing you – all citizens of our country, people of different generations, ages and ethnicities, the people of our great Motherland, all who are united by the great historical Russia, soldiers, officers and volunteers who are fighting on the frontline and doing their combat duty, our brothers and sisters in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, Kherson and Zaporazhye regions and other areas that have been liberated from the neo-Nazi regime.” 

He set out the dangers facing the Federation.

“The goal of that part of the West is to weaken, divide and ultimately destroy our country.  They are saying openly now that in 1991 they managed to split up the Soviet Union and now is the time to do the same to Russia, which must be divided into numerous regions that would be at deadly feud with each other… Washington, London and Brussels are openly encouraging Kiev to move hostilities to our territory.  They openly say that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield by any means, and subsequently deprived of political, economic, cultural and any other sovereignty and ransacked.”

 
      To meet these challenges he ordered a:

” partial mobilisation in the Russian Federation to defend our Motherland and its sovereignty and territorial integrity, and to ensure the safety of our people and people in the liberated territories.”

 

 
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defense Minister, set out the details in a public statement just after Putin’s address.  The mobilization will call up men below the age of 65 who have had military service.  There are some 300,000 people in this category.
     The nuclear saber rattling followed.  Putin went on:

” I am referring to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction –  nuclear weapons against Russia… In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our peole, we will certinaly use all weapon systems available to us.  This is not a bluff.” 

He ended by saying:

“The citizens of Russia can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be defended – I repeat – by all the systems available to us.”



 
What makes the current situation more ambiguous and dangerous is that Vladimir Putin announced and confirmed by Sergei Shoigu that from 23 to 27 September 2022, there would be referendums in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and in the areas under Russian control in the Kherson and Zaporazhye regions on joining the Russian Federation.
People who are refugees in Russia from these areas will also be able to vote. A vote favorable to joining Russia is not in doubt.  Thus any future military operations by Ukraine forces in these areas could be considered by Russia as an attack on Russian territory.
     It is impossible to know to what extent the nuclear weapon saber rattling is serious, if it goes beyond a justification for the mobilization of former military – not a popular policy.  The situation calls for active efforts to decrease tensions on the part of the U.N. of national governments and of NGOs.  The next weeks may be crucial.
 
  René Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens.

President, Association of World Citizens (AWC).


dimanche 26 juin 2022

26 June: International Day Against Torture / journée internationale contre la torture

 26 June: International Day Against Torture.

by Rene Wadlow
2022-06-26 08:41:02


Torture has a bad name among the police and security agencies of most countries. Thus torture is usually called by other names.  Even violent husbands do not admit to torturing their wives.  Thus;  when NGO representatives started to raise the issue of torture in the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva in the early 1980s;  the government representatives replied that it was a very rare practice;  limited to a small number of countries and sometimes a “rogue” policeman or prison guard.
However;  NGO representatives insisted that, in fact, it was widely used by a large number of countries including those that had democratic forms of government. - Sean MacBride (1904-1988)

tort00001_400

Getting torture to be recognized as a real problem;  and then having the Commission on Human Rights create the post of Special Rapporeteur on Torture; owes much to the persistent efforts of Sean MacBride (1904-1988); at the time the former chairman of the Amnesty International Executive Committee (1961-1974) and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1974). MacBride had been the Foreign Minister of Ireland (1948-1951);  and knew how governments work.

However; He had earlier been a long-time leader of the Irish Republican Army (IRA); being the son of John MacBride; an executed leader of the 1916 Easter Rising – an attack on the Dublin Post Office. With his death John MacBride became an Irish hero of resistance.  Later Sean had spent time in prison accused of murder. He told me that he had never killed anyone;  but as the IRA Director of Intelligence he was held responsible for the murders carried out by men under his command.  Later, he also worked against the death penalty.

26 June as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

As examples of the current use of torture kept being presented by NGO representatives and as some victims of torture came to Geneva to testify; the Commission on Human Rights named a Special Rapporteur and also started to work on what became the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel; Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. The Treaty came into effect on 26 June 1987 and in1997 the UN General Assembly designated 26 June as the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture.

Independent Experts.

Human Rights treaties negotiated within the UN create what are known as “Treaty Bodies” ­ a group of persons who are considered to be “independent experts”. As the saying around Geneva goes; “some are more ‘expert’ than others, and some are more ‘independent’ than others.  Countries which have ratified a human rights convention should make a report every four or five years to the specific Treaty Body. For the Torture Treaty;  it is every four years to the 10-person expert group.

Many States are late, some very late, in meeting this obligation. There are 158 States which have ratified the Torture Convention;  but some 28 States have never bothered to file a report. States which have not ratified the treaty do not make reports.

Concluding Observations.

NGO representatives provide the experts with information in advance and suggest questions that could usefully be asked. The State usually sends representatives to Geneva for the Treaty Body discussions as the permanent Ambassador  is rarely able to answer specific questions on police and prison conditions. At the end of the discussion between the representative of a State and the experts; the experts write “concluding observations” and make recommendations.

Unfortunately; the Convention is binding only on States.  However; increasingly non-governmental armed militias;  such as ISIS in Syria and Iraq carry out torture in a systematic way. The militia’s actions can be mentioned but not examined by the Treaty Body.

While there is no sure approach to limiting the use of torture; much depends on the observations and actions of non-governmental organizations.  We need to increase our efforts; to strengthen the values which  prohibit torture, and watch closely how persons are treated by the police, prison guards and armed militias.

 ***************************

Rene Wadlow, President and a Representative to the United Nations, Geneva, of the Association of World Citizens.

dimanche 5 septembre 2021

Menace sur les minorités d'Afghanistan

 




By René Wadlow

The Association of World Citizens (AWC) is strongly concerned by possible repression against the Hazara population in Afghanistan, repression of such an extent that it could be considered genocide. While it is still too early to know what the policies and practice of the Taliban toward minorities will be now, during the past Taliban rule (1996-2001) there was systematic discrimination against the Hazara and a number of massacres.




There are some three million Hazara whose home area is in the central mountainous core of Afghanistan, but a good number have migrated to Kabul, most holding unskilled labor positions in the city. The Hazara are largely Shi’a in religion but are considered as non-Muslim heretics or infidels by the Taliban as well as by members of the Islamic State in Khorasan (ISIS-K), now also an armed presence in Afghanistan.

In the past there was a genocidal period under the rule of Abdur Rahman Khan. During the 1891-1893 period, it is estimated that 60 percent of the Hazara were killed, and many others put into slavery-like conditions.

To understand fully the concern of the AWC for the Hazara, it is useful to recall Article II of the 1948 Convention against Genocide.



In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such:


* Killing members of the group;
* Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
* Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction in whole or in part;
* Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
* Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.




There have been repeated appeals to make the 1948 Genocide Convention operative as world law. The then United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, said in an address at UNESCO on December 8, 1998 “Many thought, no doubt, that the horrors of the Second World War – the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations, the Holocaust – could not happen again. And yet they have. In Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, In Rwanda. Our time – this decade even – has shown us that man’s capacity for evil knows no limits. Genocide – the destruction of an entire people on the basis of ethnic or national origins – is now a word our out time too, a stark and haunting reminder of why our vigilance but be eternal.”

The 1948 Convention has an action article, Article VIII:


Any Contracting Party may call upon the competent organs of the United Nations to take such action under the Charter of the United Nations as they consider appropriate for the prevention and suppression of acts of genocide […]

Despite factual evidence of mass killings, some with the intent to destroy “in whole or in part”, no Contracting Party has ever called for any action under Article VIII. (1)

The criteria for mass killings to be considered genocide does not depend on the number of people killed or the percentage of the group destroyed but on the possibility of the destruction of the identity of a group. It is the identity of the Hazara and their religious base which is the key issue. Events need to be watched closely, and nongovernmental organizations must be prepared to take appropriate action.

Note
(1) For a detailed study of the 1948 Convention and subsequent normative development see: William A. Schabas, Genocide in International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2000, 624 pp.)

Prof. René Wadlow is President of the Association of World Citizens.

jeudi 26 août 2021

Simone Weil

Simone Weil, who died on 24 August 1943, was one of those warning voices writing a memo inLondon for General Charles DeGaulle’s Free French on the problems that would face France after the victory over Nazi occupation. Her memo concerning the need for humanity, non-violence, and equity was published after the War as Enracinement in French and The Need for Roots in English. The memo, too philosophical for people who were primarily concerned with the upcoming D-Day and the need to coordinate the different resistance movements within France, had little impact.

“In the day of Victory, the angel of justice strives with the demons of violence; the heart of the victor all too easily is hardened; moderation and far-seeing wisdom appear to him weakness; the excited passion of the people, often inflamed by the sacrifices and suffering they have borne, obscure the vision even of responsible persons and make them inattentive to the warning voices of humanity and equity.” - J. Naughton



No one in the Free French leadership was sure where Simone Weil fit into the different groups which had assembled in London. The Free French officials had quickly rejected her request to be sent back to France to partake in armed resistance or in helping the wounded. Simone Weil had had a short experience with armed combat as part of an anarchist brigade in Spain in the Civil War against Franco, but her poor eyesight and very fragile health had quickly put an end to her armed participation. She returned from Spain convinced of the need for non-violent action, influenced by her philosophical interest in Indian thought and the efforts of Mahatma Gandhi. She also returned from Spain as a convinced opponent of the death penalty having tried to stop her anarchist co-fighters from executing prisoners of war and Catholic priests. Her non-violence is expressed in a powerful prose-poem ‘L’Iliade: A Poem of Force, published in both French and English, first under her pen name, Emile Novis

She had begun her intellectual life as a Marxist but an anti-Stalinist one. As a young philosophy teacher, she had housed Leon Trotsky in her Paris apartment, but found Trotsky dogmatic and too willing to justify the policies of the Soviet Union even as he opposed Stalin. Simone Weil’s Marxism was embodied in no political formation and was more an ideal form based on compassion for the fate of workers than from an expression of class struggle. Simone Weil was above all indebted to the writings of Plato and her teaching was largely related to Plato and classical Greek thought. The cave from where one only sees shadows is her image of the world in which we live.

She was interested in the spiritual dimensions of religion without ever becoming a member of an organized religion. She came from an agnostic Jewish background. Her brother, André Weil who was able to leave France for the USA in 1941 was a well-known mathematician whose career was largely spent at the Institute for Advanced Studies at Princeton, New Jersey. The Institute had been created to house Albert Einstein and was home for a good number of theoretical mathematicians.

Simone Weil was interested in Taoism, Hinduism and in the person of Jesus. As she wrote, Osiris in Egypt and the Krishna of the Gita were also incarnations of the Divine. Her views of Jesus as Prince of Peace kept her outside the Catholic Church, but after her return from Spain, she started meeting with Catholic intellectuals.

The most significant of these was Gustave Thibon (1903-2001) who lived not far from where I live in Ardeche, south-central France, but I never met him. Simone Weil and her family had been able to leave Paris in 1940 for Marseille in what was then still “Unoccupied France” under the French government of Vichy. Simone Weil’s parents and brother left for the safety of the USA, but she refused to leave those suffering behind. Thus, through mutual friends in Catholic intellectual circles, she went to live in Ardeche, helped by Gustave Thibon. She left all her writings, nearly all unpublished, with Thibon when she left Ardeche to join the Free French in London. Thibon oversaw the publication of her writings and wrote perceptive introductions to many of them after her death.

Gustave Thibon was a self-taught philosopher and poet but also a wine producer, wine being the economic base of our area. Thibon had left school at 16 at the death in the First World War of his father in order to help his grandfather tend the wine vines. Thibon remained a farmer all his life, even after the Second World War when his philosophical writings became well known, and he was often asked to give talks in different European countries. Thibon understood the driving energy of Simone Weil, her constant questioning of ideas and her desire to put her ideals into practice. Thibon was part of a network of intellectual Catholics who were also concerned with the future of France after the war. Along with Thibon, the group included Louis-Joseph Lebret, a Catholic priest who played a large role in creating the cooperative movement in France and who helped draw up the first development plans for Senegal after its independence in 1960. Francois Perroux whose economic ideas set the stage for the first post-war reconstruction and planning in France was also a member of the network.

Although Thibon and the others were orthodox Roman Catholics, they were united with Simone Weil in trying to build a synthesis between philosophical thought and economic conditions, especially of the poorest and those ground down by repetitious factory work.

Simone Weil’s health, always poor, declined in London, and she died at age 34. It is only after her death that her writings in notebooks were structured into books. Her life and writings are a prime example of the effort to establish a link between society and the direction of thought.



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Rene Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens