Links to Facts & Views
You want to find interesting analyses, reports, articles and papers on peace and conflict issues from around the world?
Now we do the job for you. This page provides links to a selection of the best critical and constructive materials – the essential stuff we benefit from ourselves and want to share.
Just click below at what catches your interest – read, download or send on to a friend.
Nonviolence & forgiveness, theory and action
• What to learn from the demonstrations against the WTO summit in Seattle?The problem with anti-capitalist demonstrations‘The disparate demonstrations against capitalism represented more of a general moan about life than a movement to change the world’ – writes Mich Hume in Living Marxism.
• An amazing example of non-violent action – in this case to end the sanctions against Iraq.
Voices in the Wilderness“In 1991, we opposed the Gulf War in a variety of non-violent ways. Some lived on the border between the opposing armies before and during part of the war; others traveled to Iraq immediately before and after the war. Still others filled the streets of the U.S. to decry the war. Many of us have witnessed the consequences of sanctions first hand and maintained contact with NGO’s that continually attempt to deliver relief supplies to neediest groups and individuals in Iraq. In the tradition of Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, we advocate nonviolence as a means for social change. We oppose the development, storage and use – in any country – of any weapons of mass destruction, be they nuclear, chemical, biological or economic. We advocate active development of effective nonviolent methods of social struggle.”• When did you last see 13 million demonstrating for peace in a war-torn country? They do in Columbia in October
Millions march for Colombia peace
Since 1964 more than 120.000 people have been killed…Now there is a new bout of violence, as reported by BBC.
Democracy
• You may call this a democracy deficit. That’s what will happen in supranational structures...EU drafts secrecy code to keep public in the darkPlans being drawn up by European officials would introduce sweeping new restrictions on citizens’ rights to information about EU decision-making, campaigners warn. The draft proposals are due to go before the European commission early next year – reports the Guardian and refers you to the source of detailed information: Statewatch, Secret Europe.
Militarization, New Cold War – and the EU militarization
• Yet another event in the building up of a New Cold War
Yeltsin gives US nuclear warning“Clinton allowed himself to pressurize Russia yesterday,” the Russian president told reporters in Beijing after meeting China’s leaders. “He must have forgotten for a moment what Russia is. We have a full arsenal of nuclear weapons.” The Guardian reports.• One step at a time..and keeping options open, but:
Russo-Sino Summit Marks Ascendance of ChinaThe differing media coverage reflects the fundamental difference in emphasis both nations place on the meeting. Russia appears desperate for China’s support, to demonstrate to the United States that it is still a great power. China, while maintaining some distance from Russia’s tactical concerns, is also demonstrating clearly to the United States that a Sino-Russian bloc remains an option. Yet another interesting analysis from Stratfor.
Conflict-resolution – Burundi
• One more conflict virtually forgotten350,000 in camps as Burundi war rages on
Detainees fight disease and hunger while government battles to halt rebel attacks on capital – as reported in The Guardian.• Yhis is the main problem Nelson Mandela, the new mediator of the Burundian peace process shall help solve: The majority Hutus are being uprooted from their homes in Rwanda and Burundi.Tutsi rulers try their hand at social engineering
Hundreds of thousands have been removed from their homes following violent civil wars in ethnically-divided Rwanda and Burundi earlier this decade. Since then, the governing Tutsis in both nations aggressively guard against uprisings by Hutu insurgents, while trying to rebuild their broken countries. And both nations are currently experimenting with massive displacement efforts.
Balkans, Kosovo & Yugoslavia
• Croatia’s president has died. The debate about him – and the future of Croatia after him – is in
full swing. Here is an excellent analysis, from Slate – followed by discussion:
Croatian President Franjo Tudjman. The Balkans’ (not much) lesser evil.History will remember him more accurately: “Franjo Tudjman: Not Quite as Bad as Milosevic.” Tudjman’s good fortune is that he has never been quite as nasty, stupid, and uncivilized as his brother-in-crime, Slobodan Milosevic. Tudjman shares Milosevic’s eliminationist nationalism, and he implemented it with similar brutality, using murder, war, exile, and judicial terrorism to empty Croatia of non-Croatians.• Court case in Belgrade disgusts everyone with a humanitarian outlookJails doctor and humanitarian champion
Leading human rights lawyer comments that there is no valid evidence against Dr. Brovina: “In Stalin’s times one got 10 years for nothing. Here one gets 12.”• The area of Kosovo/a’s social life making most progress is – criminalityInvasion of the Bodysnatchers
Fear of crime is taking bizarre shape in Kosovo, with rampant rumours of gangs kidnapping babies to steal their body parts. The response of UN representative Bernard Kouchner to the problem might seem to some as no less eccentric.• And prostituion on the rise too…A Prostitute’s Call – ‘We Will Take Over Kosovo’
Kosovar Albanians are used to living their lives according to a traditional moral code that – among other things – guides the conduct of women in public. The arrival of organized prostitution shows that like so much else in the tormented province, that code is in tatters. Another report from the Institute for War & Peace Reporting.• Devastating criticism of NATO’s Kosovo policy – and a comment on OSCE’s human rights reportNato’s deadly legacyWestern intervention in Serbia caused a humanitarian catastrophe and encouraged Russian militarism. Unless we are willing to come clean on Kosovo, Russia will not listen to us on Chechnya – or anything much else – says Robert Skidelsky. The author was dismissed as Conservative Treasury spokesman in the House of Lords for his opposition to Nato’s bombing campaign.
Globalisation
• Can capitalism satisfy economic human rights?
Human rights should include economic rights“Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself (herself) and of his (her) family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care…”– Article 25, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948. The US lacks far behind, according to Anuradha Mittal, writing for The progressive.
Militarism versus development
• Who cares about the world’s children?Children Live in Poverty Amidst PlentySome 1.5 trillion dollars slosh around global currency markets daily while more than 1.2 billion pe – including 600 million children – throughout the world , live on less than a dollar a day, the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Monday. Pointing to this paradox, and the growing inequities between the world’s rich and poor, UNICEF said that in 1960 the income gap between the richest one-fifth of the world’s population and the poorest was 30-1. In 1977 it was 74-1.
Disarmament – nuclear abolition
• Join this campaign to take nuclear weapons off alert at 2000 – send Friends of the Earth your signature andRead the letter to nuclear leaders
and read the European parliament passed without opposition.
