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Denna artikel finns också på svenska  The now suspended constitution for the European Union is bound to reappear more or less in the same form as before. There are some good ideas in it, such as those about gender equality and equal salary levels for men and women. Also, the Christian fundamentalists had to accept that the religious values are mentioned only along with the humanistic and other components in our culture, all on an equal level. However, the important introductory text or preamble is rather deficient when it comes to the historical perspective on Europe’s relations with its former colonies and its ongoing dominance and power over them, albeit in new ways. It is evident from the military aspects of this constitution that Europe has no intention to create equal rights for its former colonies but rather continue its dominance by military means, if necessary. A short criticism of...

News about the TFF network and Associate publications TFF Associates teach new online courses – December 3, 2005TRANSCEND Peace University with TFF AssociatesGaltung, Fischer, Johansen, McGoldrick, Lynch and Oberg teach various peace courses in spring 2006. See all about it here.Scilla Elworthy, TFF Associate, & Gabrielle Rifkind, September 21, 2005Hearts and Minds. Human security approaches to political violenceNew book, see more about it and download it all at the linkBurns H. WestonChild Labor and Human Rights.: Making Children MatterFrancis A. Boyle, September 22, 2005About his book “Palestine, Palestinians and International Law”Review here.Stuart ReesPassion for Peace – Exercising power creativelyKen CoatesThis prolific writer’s own books hereSpokesman’s Books in generalThe Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation – Spokesman JournalJan Øberg, 20. september 2005Freds- og konfliktpsykologi“Introduktion til psykologi” – Danmarks største psykologibog; 2. udgave nu med et kapitel af Øberg om bl.a. vold, krig, menneskets natur, civilisationspsykologi, forsoning, fred, ikkevold, magt og kvinder som en særlig...

Lund, Sweden, December 3, 2005 Our sister organisation TRANSCEND offers 33 ONLINE COURSES on a broad spectrum of peace-related issues: The Transcend Peace University, TPU: There is an introductory message from TPU Rector and TFF Associate Johan Galtung and a description of each and all of the courses. You learn about the conditions and how a course takes place online. And you can register right away! TPU employs some of the most experienced scholars of our time. The online technology gives us the opportunity to work globally together and learn from each other in new ways – and it’s so much cheaper. We are happy that TPU now employs a series of TFF Associates. Here ou see them and what course they teach: – Peaceful Conflict Transformation – Deep Culture in Conflict Culture – Economics and Peace – Mathematics and Peace JORGEN JOHANSEN – Nonviolent Tools and Philosophy DIETRICH FISCHER – Mathematics and Peace – Peace Journalism – Missed Opportunities: Iraq...

LONDON – The European Union’s new report on the status of Jerusalem may have reminded those who have forgotten what Yasser Arafat always said, “The Arab leader has not been born who will give up Jerusalem.” The EU report, besides highlighting the long Palestine preoccupation with Jerusalem, also underlines how central to Israel’s strategy of Palestinian exclusion present day Israeli policy on Jerusalem is. The report argues that the effort to establish illegal Jewish settlements in and around East Jerusalem and to use the route of its separation wall is “to seal off most of East Jerusalem, with its 230,000 Palestinian residents, from the West Bank” and to create “a de facto annexation of Palestinian land.” Poets from England’s eighteenth century William Blake to Israel’s contemporary Yehuda Amichai have sung the praises of a heavenly Jerusalem, a city without strife or rancour, war or bitterness, envy, acquisitiveness or hatred. But...

LONDON – On its submarines Britain has 48 nuclear warheads, each one eight times as powerful as the nuclear bomb that obliterated Hiroshima. In other words, Prime Minister Tony Blair theoretically could order the almost instant incineration of 384 large cities around the world. Barely anyone in parliament has mentioned it, much less debated it in the eight and a half years Blair has been in office. But recently, all of a relative sudden, Blair has promised a discussion sometime “in the life of the present parliament” because the U.S., the supplier of the Trident missiles (but not the warheads which are home-made), has made it clear that it will soon be taking a decision on replacing its own Tridents and the UK must decide in tandem what to do with its. As Blair slides gently, but not particularly gracefully, to the end of his term in office it looks...

LONDON – No one is whiter than white in Liberia. Certainly not the new president-elect, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, who at one time lent her support to Charles Taylor, Africa’s most bloodthirsty and notorious warlord. But, as one Liberian I talked to in Monrovia’s market said, “we have more than paid for our sins”. Finally after mass murder, mass rape and mass economic destruction the human spirit has shown its amazing ability to somersault and become non-violent. Not a shot has been fired during this election; barely a bad word word uttered, at least until the results came in. Somewhere the good words of the Christian book that the liberated slaves brought back with them from the United States are being recalled and remembered. It is a time for forgiveness, repentance and rebuilding. The churches, at least those still standing, are packed. But this begs the question what to do about Charles...

LONDON – The dust is beginning to settle on Zanzibar’s notorious election. Perhaps we can now look at it with a little more objectivity. Reporters flocked in, lured by the promise of rigged elections in an African tourist paradise where the smell of blood-letting mingled with the scent of cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and all the other wonderful things that the spice island grows. Moreover, the Tanzanian balloon was too tempting not to prick – an African country, which incorporated the islands of Zanzibar in 1964, is one of the continent’s success stories: politically peaceful, democratic and exhibiting consistently high rates of economic growth; surely something must be wrong. After days of journalists highlighting the run up to the election with stories and photos of mayhem and murder, intimidation and fraud, the election did take place and the ruling party, the one allied with the ruling party of the mainland, as...

Tio år har gått sedan de storskaliga massmorden på bosnienmuslimska män i den Srebrenica. Stadens namn har för alltid etsats in i samtidens kollektiva medvetande. Jag träffade och intervjuade själv hösten 1995 flyktingar från Srebrenica i den bosniska staden Tuzla, hörde deras fasansfulla berättelser. På tioårsdagen i måndags hade tiotusentals sörjande samlats i Srebrenica för att minnas det som skedde, också ledande politiker från många länder. Serbiens president Boris Tadic deltog i ceremonin och sa att “det är nödvändigt att bryta de onda cirklarna”. Tadics närvaro var viktig. Försoning efter ett krig kräver att parterna erkänner också den egna sidans brott. Det sker inte ofta. Massakern i Srebrenica inträffade den heta krigssommaren 1995, då gränser ritades om med vapenmakt. Omvärlden blev uppmärksam på det som hade hänt första gången när USA:s dåvarande utrikesminister Madeleine Albright en månad senare, den 10 augusti, i FN visade upp bilder, som påstods visa “nyligen...

LONDON – The first time I thought Muhammad Yunus, founder of the Grameen bank, deserved the Nobel Prize was twenty years ago, and I said as much in a column in the International Herald Tribune. “Away from the intrigue of Dhaka, with its street battles, armed police and brigades of international journalists something quite wonderful is happening in Bangladesh.” It was for me a road to Damascus. Saturated with covering failure in Africa, Brazil and India there I saw for the first time how the poor could almost literally lift themselves up by their own bootstraps. I recall sitting in the shade of a mango tree, not far from the Himalayan foothills, talking to my host, an ultra ebullient Italian, Sergio Apollonio, the information chief of a small Rome-based UN agency, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), who had had to twist my arm to persuade me to take...

LONDON – There are 101 small – and not so small – things that are starting to go right in Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country. But the big thing is not happening – persuading the electorate that after twenty years of gross mismanagement followed by the austere belt tightening and pruning of the democratic rule of President Olusegun Obasanjo, that their lives can be better. Obasanjo is not popular. Only if Obasanjo can turn this negative psychological state around in the coming eighteen months of his final term will Nigeria’s forward momentum into the future be secured. Otherwise his successor will be feel pressured to raid the piggy bank – where Nigeria’s bountiful oil earnings are stored for a rainy day – and buy his/her way into cheap popularity by offering to cut petrol prices, subsidize food, boost civil service employment and all the other wasteful expenditures that Obasanjo has...

LONDON – In mid 1999 only three weeks into his first term of office President Olusegun Obasanjo had to send the army into Warri, an important oil town, in the Niger delta. Around two hundred people were killed by intertribal fighting over confused land ownership. Obasanjo flew into Warri and started negotiations between the fighting groups. Six years later there is now peace between the three tribes who fought each other the most, the Ijaws, the Urhobo and the Itsekeri. He also promised to substantially increase the proportion of federal revenues going to the delta states. Nevertheless, sporadic violence has continued through the Obasanjo era, with the army and police sometimes responding viciously. Periodically, panicky articles appear in the local press quoting the oil companies – in particular Shell, by far the biggest – as fearing for the lives of their employees and threatening to shut down their oil wells....

Dear friends at BBC I am the director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF. I have just returned from Burundi where I have worked on and off since 1999. I believe it is fair to say that, so far at least, the Burundian peace process is remarkably positive and promising – while it is also true that it can still go madly wrong. With the exception of the FNL that keeps on fighting, all other movements in the bush have, as I am sure you know, gone civilian and joined the political process – president Nkurunziza being the foremost example. If the present government should engage in a full war against the FNL, it would be catastrophic for the country. Elsewhere, warlords and other military actors have been successfully disarmed by tough UN peacekeepers – such as Eastern Slavonia, Croatia in the 1990s. May I add...