International Women’s Day should not overlook the forgotten victims of war

As the world marks International Women’s Day it is worth noting the situation of women in war zones. They are often the forgotten victims.

Many are left widowed or have husbands unemployed by the shattered economies and are forced into often exploitive employment while trying to care for children at the same time.

Crime also thrives in war zones and violence against women often goes unchallenged.

Humanitarian relief at risk

This week President al-Bashir halted the work of 13 relief organizations operating in Sudan following charges against him by the International Criminal Court accusing him of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. Without the work of these agencies millions are left at risk.

And, unfortunately, this follows a pattern of the past few years of threats to relief operations in a number of unstable countries.

Faith Smith at Washington Note:

… Sudan is a failed state; the government is unable or unwilling to provide for the basic needs of its people. For many Sudanese the relief agencies are their only source of protection and provisions; millions of Sudanese are now in an extremely vulnerable state. Al-Bashir's move is the latest in a long list of setbacks for non-governmental relief agencies. The last decade has also seen a drastic rise in attacks on aid workers as they find themselves in increasingly dangerous situations.

To carry out their relief mission, agencies must now deal with threatened authoritarian leaders, as in Sudan, or ideological battles, as in Afghanistan. In the post-9/11 world they are more often working in battlefields, amidst active fighting and conflict. Attacks on aid workers in Somalia and Afghanistan have become so prominent, agencies are pulling workers out of these areas. (NYT) Zimbabwe, Myanmar, and Somalia are just a few of the countries to ban or restrict the work of relief agencies in recent years. Rare is the autocrat who welcomes outside meddling--even in the form of humanitarian aid.

Foreign Aid workers are on the front lines in the global fight against famine, poverty, inequality, and disease. The world is a better place for the work of the Red Cross, Medecins sans Frontieres, Save the Children, and the thousands of other charities providing food, medicine, and education to those who would otherwise go without. Only a decade ago aid workers were relatively safe working in conflict-ridden areas, at the least, they weren't specifically targeted for violence as is currently the case. Now an aid worker in Sudan, Somalia, or Afghanistan is almost as likely to be attacked as military personnel. The increasingly turbulent environments in which aid workers operate is creating an existential crisis for Relief agencies.

We live in a world of "constant conflict" and those seeking to deliver humanitarian relief must adjust their mission and mode of operation to reflect this. How will they move forward? Some agencies have responded by beefing up security by hiring private security contractors to protect their operations. This could result in an escalation of attacks on aid workers as the distinction between military and civilians working in the field disappears. Some agencies have withdrawn from conflict areas; an option which runs counter to their core mission: aiding the world's most vulnerable citizens. …

****
The world, especially the developing world, needs private relief organizations to survive and thrive despite the political and violent attacks they are currently facing. They tend to be more nimble, timely, and have less political hang-ups than any other present alternative. …

Catholic Archbishop declares excommunication for those assisting nine-year-old rape victim

Archbishop Cardoso Sobrinho, a leading member of the Brazilian Catholic Church’s conservative wing, will excommunicate family and health care providers of a nine-year-old rape victim for helping her secure an abortion.

This from the BBC:

A Brazilian archbishop says all those who helped a child rape victim secure an abortion are to be excommunicated from the Catholic Church.

The girl, aged nine, who lives in the north-eastern state of Pernambuco, became pregnant with twins.

It is alleged that she had been sexually assaulted over a number of years by her stepfather.

The excommunication applies to the child's mother and the doctors involved in the procedure.
The pregnancy was terminated on Wednesday.

Abortion is only permitted in Brazil in cases of rape and where the mother's life is at risk and doctors say the girl's case met both these conditions.

Police believe that the girl at the centre of the case had been sexually abused by her step-father since she was six years old.

The fact that she was pregnant with twins was only discovered after she was taken to hospital in Pernambuco complaining of stomach pains.

Her stepfather was arrested last week, allegedly as he tried to escape to another region of the country.

He is also suspected of abusing the girl's physically handicapped older sister who is now 14.

The Catholic Church tried to intervene to prevent the abortion going ahead but the procedure was carried out on Wednesday.

Now a Church spokesman says all those involved, including the child's mother and the doctors, are to be excommunicated.

The Archbishop of Olinda and Recife, Jose Cardoso Sobrinho, told Brazil's TV Globo that the law of God was above any human law.

He said the excommunication would not apply to the child because of her age, but would affect all those who ensured the abortion was carried out.

However, doctors at the hospital said they had to take account of the welfare of the girl, and that she was so small that her uterus did not have the ability to contain one child let alone two.

While the action of the Church in opposing an abortion for a young rape victim is not unprecedented, it has attracted criticism from women's rights groups in Brazil.

There is no word as to the position of the Catholic church regarding the actions of the stepfather who raped the nine-year-old girl and her handicapped sister.

Jon Stewart rips into CNBC

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Leave it to The Daily Show on Comedy Central to get to the truth about business reporting -- at least as presented on television, particularly CNBC.

Zimbabwean refugees are stranded in South Africa after authorities close camp

South Africa has closed a refugee camp stranding thousands of Zimbabweans fleeing political repression, a collapsed economy and a cholera epidemic.

Actor Matt Damon is touring the area on behalf of Not On Our Watch, a human rights organization founded by Damon, Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Brad Pitt, David Pressman, and Jerry Weintraub to call attention to international crises and advocate for humanitarian assistance.

This from the BBC:

Thousands of Zimbabwean refugees are stranded after authorities in South Africa moved to shut a camp sheltering them in the border town of Musina.

The refugees had fled a cholera outbreak in Zimbabwe and many hoped to seek political asylum in South Africa.

The government said the refugees would be transferred to a military base, but aid officials criticised the move.

Hollywood star Matt Damon, who has just toured the camp at Musina, described the "sub-human" conditions there.

Millions of Zimbabweans have fled their country's political, economic and humanitarian crisis, with many coming to neighbouring South Africa, the continent's economic powerhouse.

The outdoor refugee camp at the Musina municipal showground is home to up to 4,000 refugees, according to medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres.

South African home affairs spokeswoman Siobhan McCarthy told AFP news agency the camp, which lies a few kilometres south of the Zimbabwe border, would be closed by Friday, saying it did not provide for the refugees' needs.

"The showground is simply not designed for people to live," she said.

"There is no water, there is no ablution facilities, there's nothing there, so people cannot live there. It has already become very unhygienic."

The official's comments about the dire conditions in the camp were confirmed by Damon.
The star of the Bourne thrillers is a founder, with other celebrities such as Brad Pitt and George Clooney, of human rights organisation Not On Our Watch.

He told the BBC's Newshour programme: "They arrive to live in these conditions that are really sub-human, they're not permitted to put up any permanent structures.

"So they're basically sleeping out under the open sky and, again, still choose not to go back to Zimbabwe."

But MSF said the asylum-seekers should have been offered humanitarian and medical support.

MSF's Rachel Cohen told the BBC's Network Africa programme: "Out of nowhere and with no explanation whatsoever the department of home affairs basically is forcing a closure of the only place in Musina where Zimbabweans are safe from arrest and deportation.

"Pregnant women, women with children and unaccompanied minors were removed from the location last night and as far as we know have nowhere to go."

Zimbabwe is in the grips of a cholera epidemic which has killed nearly 4,000 people and infected almost 87,000, as health services disintegrate amid the country's economic collapse.

ICC chief prosecutor on the charges against Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir

The International Criminal Court's chief prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, does and interview with Al Jazeera after the court issued a warrant for the arrest of Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president for crimes against humanity and war crimes.

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan charged him with crimes against humanity

Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir came to power in 1989 in Sudan when, as a colonel in the Sudanese army, he led a group of officers in a bloodless military coup who ousted the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi.

His government has been widely criticised for its role in the Darfur conflict, where ethnic cleansing towards the non-Arab population has led to death tolls between 200,000 to 400,000. In July 2008, the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, accused al-Bashir of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in Darfur. The court issued an arrest warrant for Omar al-Bashir on 4 March 2009 on counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, but ruled that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for genocide. The warrant will be delivered to the Sudanese government, which is unlikely to execute it. Al-Bashir is the first sitting head of state ever indicted by the ICC.

This from the International Herald Tribune:

Judges at the International Criminal Court ordered the arrest Wednesday of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan, charging him with war crimes and crimes against humanity for a concerted government campaign against civilians. They did not include the charge of genocide requested by the prosecutor.

In issuing the order, the three judges in The Hague brushed aside diplomatic requests for more time for peace talks and fears of a violent backlash in Sudan. They had taken more than seven months to examine the evidence.

It is the first time the court, which opened in 2002, has sought the arrest of a sitting head of state, though other international war crimes courts have issued warrants for Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia and Charles Taylor of Liberia while they were sitting presidents.

The judges charged Bashir with five counts of crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, forcible transfer, torture and rape. Two counts of war crimes were for attacks against a civilian population and for pillaging.

In their statement, they said the court did not recognize immunity for a head of state and called on all countries, including those who were members of the court and of the United Nations, to cooperate with the court.

***

The warrant is likely to complicate the international debate over how to solve the crisis in Darfur. It came despite concerns of UN diplomats, the African Union, the Arab League and some humanitarian organizations that it could renew violence in the country and put at risk the peace process in southern Sudan.

The question now is who will execute the warrant. The Hague court has no police force or military of its own, and the 24,000 or so UN peacekeepers stationed in Sudan have no mandate to detain war crimes suspects.

If Bashir travels to any of the 108 nations that are members of the court, he risks arrest, because court members will be obliged to detain him. The 80 or so countries that are not court members, including China, Russia and the United States, have no such obligation. But lawyers say those countries can arrest Bashir because several treaties state that heads of state enjoy no immunity if they are charged with genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes.

Some figures in the Sudanese government have threatened bloodshed in response to an indictment. Salah Gosh, the head of the country's intelligence service, was quoted in Sudanese press reports as calling for the "amputation of the hands and the slitting of the throats of any person who dares badmouth al-Bashir or support the International Criminal Court's allegations against him."

The moral courage of the Darfuris

Nicholas D. Kristof presents the story of Suad Ahmed, a refugee from Darfur now living in Eastern Chad. Suad saved her little sister, Halima, from a Janjaweed attack only to lose track of her later when Halima left to rescue their parents. Kristof tells her story and about the continuing slaughter in Dafur while the international community is preoccupied elsewhere in his Sunday column in the New York Times.

He writes:

The slaughter in Darfur has continued for six years largely because world leaders have been complacent and preoccupied. In the coming weeks, the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for orchestrating the killings — and that will give the world a new opportunity to end the slaughter.

But to seize that opportunity, world leaders will have to summon some of the same moral courage that Darfuris show all the time.

The American habit of self-congratulation and the temptation of optimism

Interesting commentary by Daniel Larison (via Andrew Sullivan) about optimism, responsibility, the American habit of self-congratulation, and dismissing critics for “blaming America first”:

… many of us still today remain critical of or even hostile to certain episodes in American history, because so many of these episodes derived from this habit of self-congratulation and were valorized in historical memory as part of the same habit to glorify ourselves as exceptional. Many of us are more skeptical of the ‘Good Wars’ in our past because we see plainly how the mythology of the ‘Good Wars’ covers over gross injustices and feeds into national self-righteousness that is in turn used to justify other exercises of power.

***

… If Americans have had a habit of self-congratulation, we also prefer it when our politicians flatter us. Perhaps that is an inescapable part of democratic or quasi-democratic politics. No one likes to hear that he is contributing to grave national problems, much less that he must change something about himself rather than demand action from the government on his behalf. Private irresponsibility hardly fuels demands for public probity and prudence, but instead seems to give license to reckless policies. The old stump speech boilerplate about making the government’s budget more balanced and like a household budget will still win applause, but when private indebtedness is so great it means nothing.

One of the most tired accusations is that so-and-so “blames America first,” which in a more sane world would be understood as taking responsibility for one’s own flaws. One would think that a more damning charge would be to say that someone never blames America, and so refuses to take responsibility for anything done in her, our, name, but even this use of the word blame is misguided. In fact, most of the people who “blame America first” go to great lengths to identify the flaws of America only with the parts of the country unlike theirs and only with the people on the other side of cultural and political divides. The more comprehensive the critique, the fewer people there are who want to hear it. When making a cultural critique of private habits, the resistance becomes even more fierce. The more prophetic and less convenient the warning, the less political traction it has because it unites more enemies against it. To call for self-restraint, rather than self-congratulation and self-rewarding, from everyone is necessarily to be a voice in the wilderness.

You can read his entire piece here at The American Conservative.

The Anglo-Saxon model of supervision and regulation of the financial system has failed

Promoters of the laissez-faire economics have successfully chipped away at a range of regulations and enforcement of regulations of our financial institutions over the past several years. Their argument has been that the markets will somehow self-regulate and, when things go bad, correct themselves. The assumption is that an economy is not man-made but ruled by laws of nature. It also makes negative economic impact on people as a secondary concern, if a concern at all. And, as we have witnessed with the downward spiral of economies around the world, the idea that markets will self-regulate is a real stretch. Financial institutions have been given a free hand and look where we are.

Nouriel Roubini believes the Anglo-Saxon model of supervision and regulation of the financial system has failed and needs to be addressed:

To paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime--apart from the alternatives. However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments.

There is the failure of ideas--such as the "efficient market hypothesis," which deluded its believers about the absence of market failures such as asset bubbles; the "rational expectations" paradigm that clashes with the insights of behavioral economics and finance; and the "self-regulation of markets and institutions" that clashes with the classical agency problems in corporate governance--that are themselves exacerbated in financial companies by the greater degree of asymmetric information. For example, how can a chief executive or a board monitor the risk taking of thousands of separate profit and loss accounts? Then there are the distortions of compensation paid to bankers and traders.

This crisis also shows the failure of ideas such as the one that securitization will reduce systemic risk rather than actually increase it. That risk can be properly priced when the opacity and lack of transparency of financial firms and new instruments leads to unpriceable uncertainty rather than priceable risk.

It is clear that the Anglo-Saxon model of supervision and regulation of the financial system has failed. It relied on several factors: self-regulation that, in effect, meant no regulation; market discipline that does not exist when there is euphoria and irrational exuberance; and internal risk-management models that fail because, as a former chief executive of Citigroup put it, when the music is playing, you've got to stand up and dance.

Furthermore, the self-regulation approach created rating agencies that had massive conflicts of interest and a supervisory system dependent on principles rather than rules. In effect, this light-touch regulation became regulation of the softest touch.

Thus, all the pillars of the 2004 Basel II banking accord have already failed even before being implemented. Since the pendulum had swung too much in the direction of self-regulation and the principles-based approach, we now need more binding rules on liquidity, capital, leverage, transparency, compensation and so on.

But the design of the new system should be robust enough to counter three types of problems with rules. A tendency toward "regulatory arbitrage" should be kept in mind, as bankers can find creative ways to bypass rules faster than regulators can improve them. Then there is "jurisdictional arbitrage," as financial activity may move to more lax jurisdictions. And, finally, "regulatory capture," as regulators and supervisors are often captured--via revolving doors and other mechanisms--by the financial industry. So the new rules will have to be incentive-compatible, i.e., robust enough to overcome these regulatory failures.

You can read his entire article here.

Putting gay prayers to a vote

It seems many Oklahoma legislators don't like prayers – if they are delivered by gay clergy. This from David Waters:

Oklahoma legislators demonstrated the divisive power of state-sponsored prayer last week when -- apparently for the first time there -- a routine motion to enter an opening prayer in the official record was met by opposition.

The prayer was delivered by Rev. Scott H. Jones, pastor of Cathedral of Hope in Oklahoma City. Jones paraphrased the so-called Prayer of St. Francis, asking God to give "these elected representatives of your people courage and wisdom, that they might be instruments of your peace, sowing love where there is hatred, pardon where there is injury, union in place of discord . . . "

The discord began even before Jones began to pray. In his opening remarks, he acknowledged people in the gallery -- "dear friends, my wonderful parents, and my loving partner and fiance, Michael." Jones is gay. So is state Rep. Al McAffrey, Oklahoma's only openly gay legislator, the man who invited Jones to pray and who made the motion to enter the prayer in the record.

It all was a bit much for state Rep. John Wright who objected. The prayer was then put to a vote. Sixty-four representatives voted to include the prayer, 20 voted to strike it from the record, 17 abstained -- so it's now official.

Afterward, Wright told the The Oklahoman newspaper that his motion was "not meant to be derogatory nor divisive nor in any way trying to cause diminishment of someone's sense of self-worth . . . My actions were motivated by the faith." He didn't elaborate on which faith he considered The faith, but presumably it's his.

McAffrey, a legislator for three years, said he's never heard anyone object to entering a prayer in the official record. "I'm sure that because most of Scott's congregation are gay people and Scott is gay himself, I'm sure that's the reason why there were negative votes on it," McCaffrey said.

The House's action drew a rebuke from Rev. John H. Thomas, General Minister and President of the United Church of Christ. "As the leader of Rev. Jones' denomination, I am deeply offended by the treatment he received from the legislature and dismayed by the message of intolerance it sends to the citizens of Oklahoma and beyond," Thomas said.

"It is comforting, however, to remember that our prayers are judged at the throne of grace and not in the halls of petty principalities."

If elected officials can vote on whose prayers are acceptable, will they next vote on whose faith is acceptable? The Oklahoma House's opening prayer is ceremonial. Like the House itself, shouldn't it be open to all faiths and preachers?

The issue of anti-gay bigotry aside, this is a good example of why religious observances should be avoided completely by governmental institutions. When it is easier to get a vote approving a prayer in the Oklahoma legislature than it is to get a vote approving a budget in the California legislature then something is out of whack with our system of government.

Did the Cold War end by Reagan standing tough or by offering a gesture of peace?

When Republicans tout their idol Ronald Reagan as the model for American Presidents it is only fair to ask which Reagan they had in mind. Reagan’s ideas and approach to those ideas, like those of many political leaders, changed over time. The path of the end to the Cold War did not begin with Reagan’s belligerent rhetoric during his first term as conservatives like to mythologize but during Reagan’s more reconciliatory second term.

Fred Kaplan reviews James Mann’s upcoming book on Reagan (excerpted in Vanity Fair):

When President Barack Obama starts stepping out on the world stage, trying to strike deals with foreign leaders, a chorus of Republicans and right-wing pundits will implore him to take his cues from Ronald Reagan, who—the popular history has it—brought the Soviet Union to its knees through military strength and iron will.

In anticipation of these urgings, everyone should read the excerpt in this month's Vanity Fair (online edition only) from James Mann's forthcoming book The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan, which reveals that the hard-liners' hero was, in fact, a babbling nut job who was lucky that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, a genuine reformer desperate for Western assistance, was on the receiving end. Mann also shows conclusively that, in the end, Reagan won the Cold War not by standing tough but by offering a gesture of peace.

The lesson that Obama and his team ought to take away from the tale is that Reagan should not be regarded as a model of any sort—and that his Republican champions continue to distort his true legacy.

***

At their first one-on-one talk, Gorbachev tried to talk substance, but Reagan kept telling interminable anecdotes and anti-Soviet jokes, leading Gorbachev at one point to mutter, "On boltayet yeshchyo" ("He's babbling again"). The next day, in a larger meeting that included 34 U.S. and Soviet officials, Reagan repeated the performance, causing Secretary of State George Shultz to scold him afterward. "Mr. President, that was a disaster," Shultz said. "You can't just sit there telling jokes."

The following May, in their face-to-face talks at the summit in Moscow, Reagan spent an astonishing amount of time trying to convince a clearly annoyed Gorbachev of God's existence. (The National Security Council's Soviet affairs director, Rudolf Perina, who took notes at the meeting, told Mann, "Reagan thought he could convert Gorbachev, or make him see the light.")

And yet the real dirty secret about Reagan—the one that Republicans would rather not remember or, in many cases, never knew—is that, at heart, he had no stomach for war and detested nuclear weapons. (This point was persuasively made in Paul Lettow's underappreciated 2006 book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest To Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which also noted that Reagan's top aides went to great lengths to keep his feelings on the subject under wraps.)

***

… After one of their meetings, Reagan and Gorbachev took a walk through Red Square. A reporter asked Reagan if he still believed the Soviet Union was an "evil empire." Reagan famously replied, "No, I was talking about another time and another era." The next day, at a press conference, he elaborated, marveling at the "profound changes" that Gorbachev had brought into being.

Mann writes that these comments—which were seen as an answer to Dobrynin's plea—strengthened Gorbachev's hand at the Communist Party congress a few weeks later, allowing him to argue that his next round of reforms could be passed, and further steps toward disarmament taken, without any danger.

In his first term, from 1981-85, Reagan escalated East-West tensions, spoke in bellicose rhetoric, and jacked up military spending to 30-year highs. This is the Reagan whom Republican chieftains worship and insist that all subsequent presidents emulate. But in his second term, which coincided with Gorbachev's rise to power, Reagan flipped, making dramatic diplomatic overtures to Moscow and accepting equally dramatic proposals in turn.

Few remember, but many of the Republicans who now tout Reagan's accomplishments pummeled him at the time for "betraying" his followers and their Cold War ideology.

The pressures of those first four years—combined with the spiraling collapse of the Soviet system, which Gorbachev was keen to detect—helped bring Moscow to the table. But if Reagan had kept up his hard line (or if either of Gorbachev's ailing predecessors, Yuri Andropov or Konstantin Chernenko, had lived a little longer), the tensions would only have grown fiercer.

Ultimately, it was Reagan's reversal—the softening of his rhetoric, the willingness to negotiate, the reassurance of respect that Dobrynin had requested—that opened the way to the crucial rapprochement and the Cold War's finale.

When Republicans tell Obama to act more like Ronald Reagan, a suitable response might be: "Which one?"

You can read the entire piece here.