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LAGOS – Already the world’s sixth largest oil producer and with large untapped, offshore oil deposits Nigeria is expecting to increase its export capacity by 50% or more within the next few years. By 2005, according to a U.S. National Intelligence Council forecast, Africa’s share of U.S. oil imports will climb from 15% to 25%, close to the current proportion coming from the Middle East. Nigeria along with Angola, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome, Cameroon and, more recently, Chad and Sudan have become crucial players in the world’s energy stakes. Yet it is not just the environmentalists, the anti-corruption and human rights activists that have become vociferous critics of the oil economy. Serious doubters can be found at the heart of government itself. In Nigeria, Ms Nedadi Usman, minister of state for finance, part of the all female team at the top of the finance ministry, tells me, “If we hadn’t...

LONDON – Graham Greene’s great novel “the Comedians”, set in the Haiti of the dictatorship of Papa Doc, gives some support to the artist’s pious hope that “a writer is not so powerless as he usually feels and a pen, as well as a silver bullet, can draw blood.” How else to explain how this half of a quite small Caribbean island gets more press than it deserves? It is, indeed, in part the legacy of Graham Greene who, as I am too, was often drawn to the island because of its idiosyncratic but rich culture and, not least, its lurid shades of darkness and light that permeate the political spectrum. Greene, whilst capturing the ugliness and horror of the Tonton Macoutes, also draws a careful portrait of the civilized and caring Dr Magiot.  However, the outside world’s fascination with the forces of darkness represented in most European and Asian cultures...

IDAH, KOGI STATE, NIGERIA – I am sitting here, my laptop open on my knee, sheltered from the baking sun by a great shade tree in this upcountry village, twelve hours drive inland from Lagos, determined before Christmas to find an answer to that elusive question that has pursued mankind down the ages: what makes for human happiness? There is a good and sensible reason to believe I might uncover the answer here- or at least some of it. The World Values Survey, an inter-university study, recently issued a report in which it found that Nigerians are the happiest people in the world. (The Americans are 16th on their list, the British 24th and the Russians the unhappiest. The survey, which has studied happiness since 1945, finds that it has not increased in Europe and North America even though the societies have become wealthier. The desire for material goods, it concludes,...

In the fall of 2001, BRC president Masao Yokota met with Professor Nur Yalman to discuss the root causes of conflict in the Middle East and long-term solutions for achieving peace in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. MY: We are now six weeks past the attacks of September 11th. Do you feel the U.S. chose the best option available when it decided to bomb Afghanistan? NY: It would have been so much easier not to start bombing. Instead, we should have brought the Islamic countries together – all of whom have condemned the attack – and had them say to the Taliban, “Okay, the time has come. Get rid of this guy, give him to us, we’re going to try him.” That would have been so much easier than bombing these poor benighted souls. Bombing will get people very angry. Also, we are really going...

DebattOrdfront, Ljugoslavien och konformismens diktatur Genom att studera de jugoslaviska krigen kan vi skapa viktiga redskap för att motarbeta andra krig och minska risken för att breda opinioner accepterar propagandans förenklade fiendebilder, skriver Sören Sommelius, med utgångspunkt i den inflammerade debatten kring Ordfront. I flera svenska tidningarhar den senaste tiden förts en debatt om de jugoslaviska sönderfallskrigen. Tidskriften Ordfront har angripits och ifrågasatts framförallt i Dagens Nyheter och Expressen. Det började i DN där Maciej Zaremba gick till attack mot en artikel, i vilken Björn Eklund i Ordfront intervjuade den amerikanska författaren Diana Johnstone om hennes för många kontroversiella bok om Jugoslavien. “Ordfront förnekar folkmord” hette det redan i Zarembas rubrik och i texten placerades Ordfront i “brunvänstern”. Diana Johnstone stämplades som en folkmördarnas advokat. På detta har följt en debatt som blivit allt svårare för icke initierade att följa. Med inkvisitorisk argumentering har Ordfront angripits i allt högre tonlägen,...

The turning of the year is a good time to look back and recall some of the momentous events and trends of 2003.  We witnessed the greatest uprising of people ever in the history of the world in protest to war. In cities large and small across the planet, ordinary people took to the streets to try to stop a US-led war against Iraq. In the end, we didn’t succeed, but our effort marked the opening of a new era of global protest against war and violence. We witnessed poets across the globe rise up and generate more than 13,000 poems in opposition to a war against Iraq. We witnessed the government of the United States ignore the people of the world, the poets and the United Nations Security Council and initiate an illegal war against Iraq in violation of the UN Charter, a war that has thus far resulted...

LONDON – The White House and Downing Street have been caught off balance- not so much by the sudden success of capturing Saddam Hussein but by something more subtle. Rather than having to gradually introduce democracy to an unwelcoming body politic in Iraq they are being paced to introduce it sooner rather than later by none other than the powerful Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali Husseini al-Sistani. So much for notions that Islam and especially the Shi’ite clergy (who hold sway in Iran’s theocracy) are unfertile ground for the ideas of the European and American Enlightenment. But the occupying powers are saying an election can’t administratively be held so quickly. At bottom this is probably an argument about can the voters be trusted rather than the mechanics of voter registration. Deep within the White House and Downing Street lurks a fear that the so-called “fundamentalists” might do rather well in an...

The “velvet revolution” in Georgia has shown that violent political systems based on the violation of human rights always collapse. There were several reasons for the “velvet revolution” that started against the government of Georgia. One of the main reasons behind the revolution was structural violence. Indirect violence has been used against the population of Georgia for quite some time and it had become the foundation of the internal-domestic policy. The human rights of all citizens of the country were violated. On the one hand, we saw the violation of human rights of the citizens of Georgia; on the other hand a corrupt government. These together created the fundamental dynamics of conflict escalation between the population and the government of Shevardnadze. The state had neither capacity nor an appropriate agenda to develop successful economic, political and social programs that could or would have satisfied the basic human needs of the...

Founders Christina Spännar and Jan Oberg have been awarded the Annual Award for Building Peace by the City of Castelnuova Magra. The ceremony will take place in Castelnuovo Magra on December 10. The Award is related to Dante Alighieri who – exiled in the land of Lunigiana, – in 1306 mediated a peace agreement between the powerful Malespina family and the Bishop Count’s diocese, after years of war. Thus, the Municipal Council of Castelnuovo Magra has written into the Preamble of the Statutes of the City “that Castelnuovo and its people are obliged to work for peace and “to learn how to become peace makers.” The Award which is given in co-operation with the Buddhist Institute of Soka Gakkai of Italy goes to personalities who have distinguished themselves in the promotion of a peace culture. The founders have asked to receive the Award on behalf of all who are related to and...

Background Christian Harleman and Jan Oberg conducted a fact-finding mission to Burundi between November 26 and December 6, 2003. (See websites about the country here). The first TFF mission took place in March 1999. Unfortunately, since then it has not been practically possible to implement the co-operation with Burundi’s Ministry of Education and Burundian NGOs that was planned at the time. The 2003 mission had three purposes. First, to do fact-finding in general about the situation and, in particular, the progress under the Arusha Peace Process. Second, to explore the possibilities for co-operation between the government and relevant NGOs on the one hand and TFF on the other, in order to develop and deepen the existing competence in fields such as conflict-understanding, reconciliation and peace-building. Finally, third, to find out whether it would be possible, in co-operation with the Swedish Rescue Services Agency (Statens Räddningsverk), to establish a health care unit that...

LONDON – Food security is the sine qua non of human existence. Without food nothing happens, no economic endeavor, no science or engineering, no music or literature, not even, in a year of famine, procreation. Since 1974, the year of the Henry Kissinger-sponsored World Food Conference, called at a time of catastrophic food shortages, there has been immense progress on the journey towards providing food for all, even though the world remains a long way from fulfilling the great ambition of the conference’s final declaration that “within a decade no child will go to bed hungry, no family will fear for its next day’s bread, and no human being’s future and capacities will be stunted by malnutrition.” Hundreds of millions of people who were suffering from malnutrition in the 1970s are now eating two square meals a day despite the rapid onward march of population growth. Yet rightly last week the...

This is to certify that the following has been agreed upon between TFF, The Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Sweden and the Burundian non-governmental organizations listed below which together form the TFF Amahoro Coalition in Burundi. Background The current situation in Burundi in general and the forthcoming peace process in particular requires an immediate burden sharing attendance by the international community both in terms of political and financial commitments and resources for capacity building in the human dimensions of conflict-resolution in a broad sense. Under this concept and after having completed a nine days fact-finding and feasibility study, TFF and the below listed organizations have come to the conclusion that the conditions exist to develop a mutually beneficial collaborative research and training agenda. Purpose The purpose of the collaboration project is to create synergy and augment the understanding and effectiveness of the Burundians regarding their role in the...