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LONDON – Whoever wins the Liberian election, which now goes to a second round, will confront the question: how can Liberia avoid a resumption of politics-as-plunder? Charles Taylor, Liberia’s and Africa’s plunderer (and murderer)-in-chief, may be off the scene but the interim government that has presided over Liberia in the preparations for the recent elections has shown that raping raw material resources is deep in the sinews of Liberian politics. In March, a UN panel reported that Liberian officials had signed a secret contract with a European company that gave it a virtual monopoly to sell Liberian diamonds, even though Liberia has been banned from selling its diamonds by the UN until the UN certifies that transparent and accountable procedures are being followed. Although the two front-runners in Liberia’s presidential contest are known for their probity and integrity and doubtless will want to get on top of the problem, the...

LONDON – Even the worst of African situations can be turned around. In Liberia it has been done in two years. The descent during the 1980s and 90s was precipitous, fast and deadly. A quarter of a million people were killed by rival militias, hundreds of thousands driven across borders into refugee camps, one president tortured to death and the macabre event recorded on video, young adolescent boys dressed up in wigs and terrified the populace with random killings and, not least, the country was systematically looted almost clean by its warlord/president Charles Taylor, who became rich on the export of timber, iron ore and alluvial diamonds from neighbouring Sierra Leone. Two years ago I was here at the war’s end. Nigerian and Ghanaian peacekeeping troops lined the road from the airport, backs to the road, eyes scanning the jungle for movement. The roads were sandbagged with checkpoints, the telephone...

 En genlæsning af”BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL” Doris Kruckenberg har genlæst Doris Lessings 34 år gamle roman og ser mange forbindelsespunkter til verdens situation i dag. Kruckenberg mener at den frygt, Lessing dengang indirekte bearbejdede vedrørende menneskehedens fremtid, er blevet virkelighed. Titlen på Doris Lessings roman fra 1971 hedder på dansk: “Instruks om Nedstigning til Helvede”. Instruksen til nedstigning hentyder til et møde mellem planeterne, eller kald dem de græske/romerske guder, foranlediget af at Jupiters ældste datter Minerva – denne kloge og humanistiske måne – havde taget kontakt til Merkur/Hermes for at han, med sin autoritet som overguden Solens talerør og budbringer, skulle få gennemført, at nogle reddere blev sendt ned til jorden for at lempe den ind på et bedre spor. Denne “Briefing” i de olympiske sfærer foregår i hovedet på en professor (måske et sendebud fra oven?), der har mistet hukommelsen og på et mentalsygehus i London...

Trykt som kronik i Information i juni 2005 Vores oplevelse af tryghed rystes af voldsepisoder på gader og stræder. Og vi ønsker, at nogen handler, så vi selv og vore familier kan færdes frit og sikkert: De skyldige må findes og straffes. Retssystemet og staten sørger på ofrets vegne for, at retfærdigheden sker fyldest. Så langt så godt. Vores ærinde er ikke at nedbryde eller erstatte retssystemet. Men spørgsmålet er, om samfundet gør nok for at bryde de spiraler af hævn, gengældelse og vold, som risikerer at gøre livet endnu mere utrygt for almindelige borgere. Kan der gøres mere? Det danske forsøg med konfliktråd i straffesager blev indført for at give ofrene for kriminalitet mulighed for, gennem et møde med gerningsmanden, at få talt ud om episoden og dens konsekvenser. Vi ved, at det for mange har medført, at de igen turde færdes i det lokale miljø uden frygt for...

Oprindelig publiceret i Jyllands Posten 12. august 2005 Just hjemkommet efter en måneds ophold i udlandet har jeg haft anledning til at læse en debat i aviser og dagblade som følge af imam Abu Labans forslag om, at den drabssigtede dørmand fra café Rust på Nørrebro skal betale blodpenge til ofrets familie. Debatten synes at være gledet af sporet, og der er ingen tvivl om, at man skal holde tungen lige i munden, hvis debatten skal bringes tilbage på sporet igen. Jeg vover her forsøget. Først må nogle forudsætninger slås fast: I de fleste moderne retssamfund har staten 1. monopol på legitim voldsudøvelse, 2. uafhængige domstole tager stilling til skyld og straf og 3. politiet står for håndhævelse af lov og orden. Ordensmagten (dvs domstole og politi) varetager i straffesager forholdet mellem det offentlige og borgerne. Dvs. at ordensmagten har som sin opgave at sikre, at de love, der er...

LONDON – There are two ways of tracking down terrorists and war criminals. One we might dub the Simon Wiesenthal way, in honor of the Nazi hunter-in-chief who died on September 20th at the ripe old age of 96. The other we should dub the George W. Bush way. Wiesenthal was a stickler for legality. As The Economist obituary described him, Wiesenthal “was a clever detective with an elephantine memory”. It was this skill that enabled him to unearth war criminals wherever they were hiding, even though governments everywhere, including Western ones, were often content to let sleeping dogs lie. His greatest catch was Adolf Eichmann, the mastermind of the Holocaust. Another important catch was a former concentration camp guard notorious for shooting small children. She was living a respectable life in New York and neighbors thought her “the nicest woman on the street”. All those he uncovered were sent...

Pressmeddelande Sveriges Fredsråds utmärkelse Lilla Fredspriset har för år 2005 tilldelats Erni och Ola Friholt för deras arbete för fred och internationell rättvisa som med enastående uthållighet pågått i mer än tre decennier och utmärkts av mångsidighet och stor kringsyn. De har under lång tid arbetat mot kärnvapen i både med- och motvind, aldrig försummat Tredje Världen perspektivet i sin analys av läget i världen, och haft en klar blick för samspelet mellan lokalt och globalt arbete. Den internationella kvinnoaspekten med tyngdpunkt på fattiga kvinnors perspektiv har också varit väl artikulerad. De har tagit initiativet till biståndsprojekt och verkat som informatörer genom böcker och artiklar och föredrag runtom i Sverige samtidigt som de på Orust drivit ett sommarkafé med både lokal och internationell prägel. Erni ingår också sedan länge i redaktionsgruppen för tidskriften Vi Mänskor. Erni och Ola har mer än de flesta bidragit till att internationalisera Sverige. Priset kommer att...

LONDON – Perhaps you need to be a long-range meteorologist to understand U.S.-North Korean diplomacy on nuclear weapons. The scene changes as swiftly as the sky over the ocean on a windy, autumnal day. Small white clouds chase big dark ones. The sea, ruffled by waves, changes from green to dark blue to almost black and soon the observer is lost in the shades of color, unable to discern whether the day will turn out good or bad. One thing we should all agree on: the weather is worse than a decade ago when President Bill Clinton, aided by the intervention of former President Jimmy Carter, manage to negotiate with the late President Kim Il Sung a nuclear freeze that has probably stopped the North building a good 30 nuclear weapons; and South Korea embarked on its so-called “sunshine” policy of political reconciliation. Early in its tenure, the Bush Administration...

Bøger, tidsskriftsartikler og avisartikler om og af Gandhi på DANSK Böcker, tidskriftartiklar och tidningsartiklar om och av Gandhi på SVENSKA Bøger, tidskriftsartikler og avisartikler om og av Gandhi på NORSK Meget mere om Gandhi og ikkevold her

I. The Background of UN Reform As portrayed in the media, the issue of UN reform is often reduced in public discussion to the enlargement of the permanent membership of the Security Council to make it more representative of the power structure of states in the world as of 2005. There is no doubt that this issue has a significant substantive and symbolic importance in showing the capacity of the UN to adjust to changes in the relations among states, and especially to give states that were either defeated in World War II or situated in then colonized Third World regions a proper place at the head table of the United Nations. This persisting preoccupation also illustrates the disabling inability of the membership to agree upon a solution to the challenge of reform despite a major push in the period leading up to the millennium in 2000. These difficulties apply...

September 23, 2005 The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) held its final session betweenJune 24-27. This session was the last and most elaborate of sixteen condemnations of the Iraq War held all over the world in the last two years in Barcelona, Tokyo, Brussels, Seoul, New York, London, Mumbai and other cities. The Istanbul proceedings invoked the verdicts and relied on some of the testimony from the earlier sessions; this cumulative nature of the sessions built interest among peace activists around the world, resulting in this final session having by far the strongest international flavor with respect to scope and national identity of the participants. This cumulative process, described by organizers as “the tribunal movement,” is unique in history: Never before has a particular war produced this level of protest on a global scale – first to prevent it (the huge February 15, 2003 demonstrations, eleven million, 600 cities, eighty...

LONDON – This is the edge of tomorrow’s Europe, at least if Turkey gets its way. A desolate, mud-built, village, close up to the Syrian border, reduced to rubble by the Turkish army battling the terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), is slowly being repopulated by a brave few. The families are understandably nervous. The PKK has recently restarted its insurgency, breaking a five year truce, angry with the government’s slow delivery on its promises to allow Kurdish in the primary schools, full scale broadcasting in Kurdish and to invest in economic development. “This violence is what we don’t want”, says one man, living with his extended family under nothing more than a homemade canopy. Five minutes drive from the river Tigris that watered downstream the first of humankind’s civilizations, we engage in what seems to be almost surreal conversation. On the one hand, the grandfather, who has fathered...