Archive 1986 – 2017

The Hope Flowers School is a unique institution where students receive a human-rights based education alongside the formal national curriculum. The school is located in Al-Khader, a village on the outskirts of Bethlehem. It was founded in 1984 by Hussein Issa, a Palestinian man whose family was forced to flee their home in 1948 following the violence that marked the inauguration of the State of Israel. Since 2001, the school has been run by his son Ibrahim, who continues to ensure that the 250+ pupils at the school receive peace education alongside the mandatory school curriculum. The school is open to pupils aged 4-13. Vicky S Rossi: Your father Hussein Issa was the founder of the Hope Flowers School. Was there already a precedent for a school like this? What was his motivation for setting up this kind of educational model? Ibrahim Issa: This model didn’t exist at the time in the...

The timing of the death sentence imposed on Saddam Hussein, so suspiciously convenient for Republican aspirations in the mid-term elections, will only deepen the sectarian tensions in Iraq, fanning further the flames of civil war. While President Bush predictably greeted the news as yet another ‘milestone’ in the effort of the Iraqi people ‘to replace the rule of the tyrant with the rule of law,’ a less partisan reaction would lament the timing as intensifying sectarian strife in Iraq that has by now become a civil war intertwined with a war of resistance. The American stage-managing of this judicial process in Baghdad has been evident to close observers all along. It always seemed legally dubious to initiate a criminal trial against Saddam Hussein while the American occupation was encountering such strong resistance by Saddam loyalists, especially as the US-led invasion was widely regarded throughout the world as itself embodying the...

LONDON – Can one imagine when (and if) Daniel Ortega Saavedra and his ex-revolutionary Sandinistas are swept back into office in next Sunday’s general election the late U.S. president, Ronald Reagan, saying calmly from his grave, “Here we go again”, and then, after a thoughtful pause, “So what?” It was Mr Reagan, after all, who said of the Sandinista regime, “If we ignore it will spread and become a mortal threat to the entire New World”. The Sandinistas were “just two days drive from Harlingen, Texas” and, as Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger, added,“Defending the mainland ranks above all other priorities.” Rhetoric like this cost Central America- there were also left/right civil wars in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras- hundreds of thousands of lives and left villages and towns decimated. They were unnecessary wars and the U.S. had no business supporting a small, unyielding, land-owning class against a small minority...

The Dar al-Kalima College is a Christian college in Bethlehem offering 2-year degree courses in arts, multimedia, communications and tourism related studies. Its mission statement reads: “Through establishing an institution for higher learning the Dar al-Kalima College is committed to building a culture of democracy, critical thinking and free expression, thus contributing to the strengthening of the civil society in Palestine.”Nuha Khoury is dean of the College. Vicky S Rossi: Can you explain to me the relationship between the International Center of Bethlehem (ICB) and the Dar al-Kalima College? Nuha Khoury: The International Center of Bethlehem (ICB) is a cultural institution that has been in existence for the past eleven years. In that time it has created offshoots, one of which is the Dar al-Kalima College, which is its newest creation. Now the Dar al-Kalima College is slowly developing an identity of its own: it started with only a few programmes, but...

The Center for Conflict Resolution & Reconciliation (CCRR) is a Palestinian non-governmental organisation working for the transformation of conflict within Palestinian society based on the values of peace, reconciliation, forgiveness, respect and hope. CCRR offers most of its Conflict Resolution workshops through a network of freelance trainers. CCRR cooperates with a number of other Palestinian organizations nationally and on the international level it is a working member of both the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and Pax Christi International. Vicky S Rossi: What does conflict mean to you as a Palestinian and what, in your opinion, is the relationship between conflict and peace? Noah Salameh: Conflict is part of life. It does not just exist between Palestinians and Israelis. Conflict is inherent in nature. It is all around us. It is a natural thing. With regard to peace, people might say they are working for peace, but what do they understand by...

Right to Education Campaign – Statement of Aims“The systematic obstruction of Palestinian education in the West Bank and Gaza Strip by the illegal Israeli occupation not only violates the human rights of individuals, it is an attack on the development of Palestinian society as a whole. Frequent closures of cities, hundreds of military roadblocks and the construction of the illegal Wall prevent thousands of students and teachers from reaching their schools and universities. Students are regularly subjected to intimidation, assault and arbitrary arrest by Israeli soldiers. Universities and schools have been closed down, raided and attacked by military order. The right to education is a fundamental human right and basic to human freedom. If peace is sought, then freedom, justice, education and development are necessary. It is the responsibility of governments, organizations and ordinary people to defend the universal right to education and to demand its realization.”1 Vicky S Rossi: When...

LONDON – It was the rebelling colonial subjects of Britain in America who, in their Declaration of Independence in 1776, first synthesized the best ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers of Europe. And they did that in the most inspiring prose that makes the subsequent French document of thirteen years later, the Declaration of the Rights of Man, look like a shopping list. The Americans invented the modern liberal republic. It was the Americans who took a brilliant idea, two and half thousand years old, which had briefly flourished but then faded away, and reintroduced it to the modern world – democracy. It was America that inspired the French Revolution, although as has often happened since, as Napoleon rampaged all over Europe, it came to regret what it had provoked. As one who spent a portion of his youth working on Martin Luther King’s staff during his campaign against the slums...

LONDON – The saddle on the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has more than slipped. It has become undone. For America to carry the world on this issue it has to become convincing. It has to demonstrate that what it is asking others to do it is also doing itself. Public opinion in Europe certainly, but also in much of the rest of the world, seems to have an intuitive understanding that: a) war over alleged nuclear weapons’ capability is hyprocrytical whilst the U.S. (and Britain and France) is so over-armed; b) is doubly hypocritical given the West’s long tolerance (only relatively recently curtailed) of exporting the ingredients for making weapons of mass destruction; c) is triply hypocritical given the blind eye it turned to Iraq’s use of chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds and Israel’s manufacture of a large nuclear arsenal. There is also a further point, perhaps too sophisticated...

LONDON – The atmospherics in Scotland around this week’s meeting of the main protagonists in Northern Ireland’s long civil war have been good. The IRA has given up the gun. The fundamentalist preacher and leader of hard line Protestant opinion, the Rev Ian Paisley, is prepared to sit down not just with the prime minister of Ireland, Berty Ahern, and Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain but also with Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader (and the person in the IRA leadership who counts the most). Scotland, with its long history of autonomy on legal matters (remember the Lockerbie air terrorism trial), its independent educational system (no wonder Scots dominate the Blair administration) and, most recently, an autonomous parliament with real power is a lesson in political devolution for all who fear it, whether it be in Belfast, Madrid, Kosovo, Tel Aviv or New Delhi. Just about everything, other that...

LONDON – It was the late president of France, Charles de Gaulle, who famously said, “Brazil has a great future, and it always will have.” With the first round of the Brazilian election over with the favourite to win, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, coming under increasing scrutiny for corruption – the seemingly eternal Brazilian political disease – many observers seriously wonder if Brazil can ever unlock its enormous potential. Brazil has long lived out its personal fantasy of the archetypal relaxed, tolerant and gregarious country with Copacabana beach, the samba, the carnival and a great deal of sexual freedom, but all this has come at a price – the lack of discipline in both personal and public morality. The ingrained privileges of those who have already made it, together with the manipulative corruption of the established political class, make it difficult for Brazil to engage in the economic...

Bangkok, September 25, 2006 The September 19, 2006 (9/19) coup d’etat in Thailand is a great puzzle for many. It is difficult to understand this coup not so much in terms of why it has happened, but its popularity. There were reports of people giving flowers and cold drinks to soldiers on the streets. In Chiangmai, kids would not stop bothering their teachers until they were taken to see the coup tanks. In fact, according to one recent survey, 83% of Thais nationwide are in favor of this coup. Given the positive popular reception of this coup, one wonders if there is such a thing as a “good” or “peaceful” coup?In this article, I wish to first offer an explanation why so many, both common people and noted public intellectuals, are supporting this coup. Then the moral enigma when reasons for the coup could be accepted while the coup as...

True, the situation in Burundi is not without its risks and problems. But it has gone so well this summer in Burundi. As you’ll see below, Reuters, IRIN (the source of most Reuters stories), the UN and a few others do a fine job – but their stories are not picked up around the world. To put it crudely: Start a genocide – and you get attention. Start peace and development – and you get virtually none. As if peace and a better life for more than 7 million people wasn’t worthy to report…TFF is one of the few organisations that follow and support the peace process in Burundi – through 11 fine civil society organisations in the country. You can read much more here, at our Burundi Forum.Below please find are some of the recent stories out of Burundi. Umuco.comUmuco News AgencyThe leading Burundian portal for news and comments in French and...