April 2005

Features collected by TFF • Updated regularly, April 28, 2005 News out of Africa are mostly bad news – AIDS, poverty, humanitarian catastrophes, war. Burundi today is a story about a hard struggle for peace and reasons for hope. It is about rebels laying down their weapons and demobilisation and a new post-war defence force. It is about elections, power sharing, and a truth and reconciliation committee. And it is about an absolutely essential UN mission – and a world community that still does not reward those who move to peace enough. The story about the struggle for peace in Burundi has hardly been written and certainly not reached beyond the tiny circle of specialists. Of course, there are not only good news. But hugely complex and risky, the peace process is still a story of hope. It deserves to be told worldwide. If Burundi got more media attention, it...

– “Click on the above link and see what fascinating path Gudrun has created in her life. With remarkable creativity, energy and devotion she has now spearheaded a new mass movement in Sweden, Feminist Initiative – FI – that has, in less than four weeks, put the feminist issues on the Sweden’s political and media agenda in an entirely new way and put the skids under all other parties from right to left. It’s 13 years since Gudrun joined TFF as adviser and she serves today as a board member who helps us – with other strong women Associates – to integrate the feminist perspective with our work for peace. Gudrun sees TFF as another platform for global impact – her own as well as that of Feminist Initiative. We are very happy to have such a visionary fiery spirit and like-minded sister on board,” says TFF director Jan Oberg....

LONDON – Kibera, on the outskirts of Nairobi, supposedly the world’s largest slum, home to 800,000 souls, is known for its “flying toilets”. With no sewerage system the inhabitants defecate into plastic bags, which are then thrown onto nearby wasteland. How can it be, after billions of dollars of aid to Kenya, hundreds of reports on upgrading squatters’ settlements and the headquartering in Nairobi of the UN agency, Habitat, charged with urban improvement, that no one has built Kibera a sewerage system? Most of the people I approached refused to accompany me to Kibera, known as a den of dirt and iniquity. Habitat didn’t respond to my e-mails. Finally a young man, a teacher of the Koran, agreed to show me the inside track. And so I made my first visit for 25 years. It was always bad. Now despite the signs outside a couple of shops advertising “second hand...

Prior to the 2003 International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan stated that “Gender-based violence is perhaps the most shameful human rights violation. As long as it continues, we cannot claim to be making real progress towards equality, development and peace.” In this article we seek to relate the gender-based violence to the issue of human security and ideas about a new type of defence policy. (When this was written in Swedish at the time of the debate about the future of Sweden’s official defence policy, it was refused by a series of leading newspapers, right, middle and left). The Swedish edition of this article here From patriarchal exertion of power toward human security and democracy We know of no one, neither men nor women, who want war and death. 99 per cent of people on earth do not want violence in their lives...

By whom, one might humbly ask, by what circles? It is true that mainstream media often describe the ICG as prestigious or well-respected. People who are not too familiar with politics and conflicts may go for the names and public relations of an organisation, and in those terms, ICG is certain world-leading, in spite of the fact that virtually all the top names are “have-beens”. However, professionals in conflict-analysis, -resolution and peacemaking may find reasons to question the image ICG promotes of itself. In what follows, the focus is on general status and connections as well as on intellectual/research pertaining to a couple of conflicts – thus not excluding that Crisis Group may do better work elsewhere.   Non-governmental? Independent? A visit to Crisis Group’s website reveals that 40% of its funds come from governments: Agence Intergouvernementale de la francophonie, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic, Holland, Finland, France,...

We want to share with you the happy news that Jan Oberg, TFF co-founder and director has been awarded the “2005 Small Peace Prize” of the Swedish Peace Council. The Prize is instituted as “complimentary to the ‘big’ Nobel Peace Prize.” The Council is an umbrella organisation for the following members: Artists for Peace, the Iraqi Democratic Association, Association of Christian Humanism and Social Perspective, Women for Peace, Psychologists Against Nuclear Weapons, the Swedish Peace Committee, Swedish Women’s Left Association, and the Society of Friends (Quakers) plus 5 other associated NGOs. The Prize – which comes with 25.000 Swedish kronor – rewards an individual’s “courage and idealism in promoting reconciliation among groups in conflicts outside Sweden.” In its motivation, the Council emphasises the energy and creativity by which TFF’s international work is carried out; its integrated approach to research and activism based on about 100 highly competent people, all voluntarily...

LONDON – Tanzania has re-invented itself twice – the first time in 1964 after a bloody revolution had overthrown the Omani-descended Sultan who ruled the neighboring spice island of Zanzibar. Tanganyika, as it was then, persuaded the successful African-led rebels to join their island with the mainland, and Tanzania came into being. This union remains precarious because of latent Zanzibari nationalism after too many years of misrule. The second time was when Julius Nyerere, the founding father of independence, stepped down in 1985 and two successive presidents over the last twenty years have ushered in free market reforms, fundamentally altering the direction of a once moribund socialist economy. But the legacy of the Zanzibari revolution of 1964 and of Nyerere still hang over the country. Nyerere, who died four years ago, had been a teacher and he became what was in fact Tanzania’s headmaster. He was incorruptible, unpretentious but totally...

LONDON – I used to jog down the back roads of Jinja, the old cotton center laid bare by 15 years of murderous civil war. There was a dirt-covered sign pointing to a rutted road: “To the source of the Nile.” I would cut through the long grass and the sweet smell of jacaranda and frangipani, past the long abandoned Mango Café, and arrive at a sharp cleft in the hill. There, nestling below, the headwaters of the Nile burst into view. No wonder, I would think, that Winston Churchill called Uganda “the pearl of Africa, a fairy tale land”. But in mind’s eye I could see the future and now it has arrived. Two hotels have grabbed the spot. And there is a plan, well advanced, to build a dam to provide electricity for Uganda’s rushing economic development. The country’s untamed beauty, preserved by misrule and war, is being...

Nations and states, sovereignty and self-determination Relevant background links for this series here. May we recommend that you get hold of a copy of the UNDP’s, Human Development Report of 2004 with the title, Cultural Liberty in Today’s Diverse World? It’s a rich source on the problems we seek to deal with here. It informs us that the world’s nearly 200 countries include some 5,000 ethnic groups. Two-thirds of all countries have more than one ethnic or religious minority group that make up at least 10 per cent of the people. Thus, one way or another every country is a multicultural society. No less than 44 per cent of the people living in Toronto, Canada was born outside Canada. There are some 300 million indigenous people in 70 countries representing 4,000 of the world’s 6,000 languages. The Minorities at Risk project at the University of Maryland estimates that 129 groups,...

Summary: From "Only one solution" towards democracy and peace Kosovo is moving up again on the international agenda. The time to think about the framework, the alternatives and the consequences of the talks on the future status of Kosovo is now. Despite the highly unlikely possibility that Kosovo will be able to achieve in the next few months the key standards necessary to initiate the final status talks, it would be gullible to believe that these criteria will not be once again downsized, shrunk to fit the path to the status talks. Pro-Albanian lobbyists such as the International Crisis Group, Richard Holbrooke and various US members of Congress argue that "independence is the only option." However, this option can also be seen as unjust, dangerous, archaic and anti-European. The option of an "independent Kosova" implies that one of the sides (the Kosovo Albanians) would achieve its maximalist goal and that...

Summary: From “Only one solution” towards democracy and peace  Kosovo Solution Series # 10    PressInfo # 218  April 7, 2005 By Aleksandar Mitic, TFF Associate & Jan Oberg, TFF director   Kosovo is moving up again on the international agenda. The time to think about the framework, the alternatives and the consequences of the talks on the future status of Kosovo is now. Despite the highly unlikely possibility that Kosovo will be able to achieve in the next few months the key standards necessary to initiate the final status talks, it would be gullible to believe that these criteria will not be once again downsized, shrunk to fit the path to the status talks. Pro-Albanian lobbyists such as the International Crisis Group, Richard Holbrooke and various US members of Congress argue that “independence is the only option.” However, this option can also be seen as unjust, dangerous, archaic and...

For første gang i verdenshistorien har en president blitt valgt på et program om bruk av aktiv ikkevold. Abu Mazen benyttet hver eneste mulighet under valgkampanjen sin til å argumentere mot bruk av vold i kampen for et fritt Palestina. At han fikk 62 prosent av stemmene på et valgmanifest dominert av Ikkevold er en historisk hendelse, ikke bare i Palestina. Dette er unikt uansett hvilket land man studerer. Ifølge Abu Mazen har den andre intifadaen bare skapt palestinerne en dårligere situasjon for det palestinske folk. Bruken av selvmordsbombere, bilbomber, raketter og andre væpna angrep har ikke ført fram mot den overlegne krigsmaskinen til Israel. Nå er spørsmålene om han får fremganger i sin forhandlingslinje med Israel og om han på alvor vil benytte ikkevoldelige motstand i kampen mot okkupasjonen. Problemene er mange og det er vanskelig å være optimist selv om det er en åpning for flere møter på...