Peace & Justice

Photo: Professor Nathaniel Aniekwu. Credit: The Alaigho Development Foundation (ADF)

The Biafra-Nigeria Civil War "Never Really Ended"

Instead, Transition to an Economic Strangulation War

Kester Kenn Klomegah Talks to Professor Nathaniel Aniekwu, Secretary of the Alaigho Development Foundation (ADF)

MOSCOW (IDN) – Fifty years after Biafran forces surrendered to the Nigerian Federal Military under the Federal Republic of Nigeria's motto of "No-victor, No-vanquished', May 30 has become an official Remembrance Day. It commemorates the memory of the Biafra war between the Government of Nigeria and the State of Biafra from July 1967 to January 1970. Underlining the importance of the armed conflict, the Alaigho Development Foundation (ADF) says: "No patriotic Igbo son or daughter can pretend that Biafra is not part of the history and indeed the major watershed in the history of the Igbo nation."

: Kester Kenn Klomegah; OPINION; 28 June 2020

Photo: Governor Tamaki (right) with U.S. Marines stationed in Okinawa (2019). Public domain | Source: Wikimedia Commons

Okinawa Governor Refuses to Host Prohibited U.S. Nuclear Missiles

By Jaya Ramachandran

GENEVA (IDN) – Governor Denny Tamaki of Okinawa district has rejected the U.S. plans to base on the island missiles capable of threatening China – apparently as part of President Donald Trump's move to challenge Beijing and upgrade the importance of Taiwan, 500 kilometres away from the island. If a plan for Okinawa to host such missiles were to develop, Tamaki said: "I can easily imagine fierce opposition from Okinawa residents."

: Jaya Ramachandran; ARMAMENTS; Nuclear Weapons; 27 June 2020

Photo: United Nations Secretary-General Mr António Guterres and Deputy Secretary-General Ms Amina Mohammed have been emphasizing the role of media in achieving SDGs. Credit: UN Photo

The Media Can Stimulate Sustainable Development in Africa

Viewpoint by Siddharth Chatterjee

The writer is the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Kenya. Follow Siddharth Chatterjee on twitter- @sidchat1. The following is his foreword to the annual publication, 'Striving for People, Planet and Peace'. The latest edition will be online in the next few days on SDGsforAll.net.

NAIROBI (IDN) – When 17-year-old high school student Darnella Fraizer filmed the last minutes of George Floyd’s life under the knee of police officer Derek Chauvin, she could not have imagined that her footage would reignite the explosive global question of racial inequality and the subsequent clamour for reforms in policing.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 26 June 2020

McDonald's and the Ongoing Indo-Chinese Conflict

Viewpoint by Manish Uprety F.R.A.S. and Jainendra Karn *

NEW DELHI (IDN) – Thomas Friedman first put forward the Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention in 1996 which claimed that no two countries that both had McDonald's had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald's.

However, life has its own logic and cannot be interpreted in binaries. The Western logic is rooted in the Greek traditions and is binary, whereas the logic in the Eastern traditions can be multi-dimensional such as the four valued Chatushkoti logic of the Vedas or Buddhism used by scholars like Patanjali and Panini, or seven valued Saptabhangi of the Jainas. It helps one get a bigger, better and richer picture of life.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 19 June 2020

Photo: Peacekeepers exemplify ‘service, sacrifice and selflessness’, in face of pandemic. Source: United Nations Peacekeping.

Why COVID-19 Offers A Chance to Transform UN Peacekeeping

Viewpoint by Charles T. Hunt and Adam Day *

LONDON (IDN | The Conversation) – United Nations Peacekeeping may be entering a period of major change. Over the past four years, there has been a steady decline in the number of peacekeepers deployed worldwide. And two of the largest peacekeeping missions in history are beginning to draw down.

These two developments hint at the fact that UN peacekeeping may appear poised to shrink further. There are a number of factors driving this. They include budgetary pressures and a contested track record. Added to this have been the more recent financial and practical challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

: Opinion Editor; OPINION; 18 June 2020

Photo: A bronze statue of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, The Long March to Freedom, at Maropeng, 480 kilometres from Johannesburg. Mandela said: "To deny people their human rights is to challenge their very humanity." Source: Wikimedia Commons. CC BY-SA 4.0

UN Senior African Officials 'Outraged' at Systemic Racism and Police Brutality

By Caroline Mwanga

NEW YORK (IDN) – Twenty-two United Nations senior African officials who hold the rank of Under-Secretary-General have in their "personal capacity" signed "Joint Reflections" on the last few weeks of protests at the killing of George Floyd in the hands of police, which they say in no uncertain terms have left them all "outraged at the injustice of racism that continues to be pervasive in our host country and across the world".

: Caroline Mwanga; THE WORLD; Africa; 17 June 2020

Photo: Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda. Credit: ICC

Human Rights Watch Supports ICC, Trump Attempts to Block Investigation of Possible U.S. War Crimes

By Lisa Vives, Global Information Network

NEW YORK (IDN) – A world court designed to investigate allegations of human rights violations has found itself in the crosshairs of the President of the United States.

A new Trump executive order threatening the court’s operations has been condemned by prominent global institutions and individuals as it appears to give cover to human rights abuses committed in the course of U.S. foreign wars while demanding accountability from foreign countries in similar circumstances.

: Global Information Network; THE WORLD; USA and Canada; 16 June 2020

The Volatile Triangular Situation in South Asia

News briefs compiled by Suresh Jaura*

TORONTO | NEW DELHI (IDN) – These news briefs deal with: the unstable situation in Afghanistan; Pakistan's continued support for the Taliban; the deployment of military tracking technology to hunt COVID-19 patients; continued India-Pak tension on the alleged role of Islamabad in terror attacks in India-administered Jammu and Kashmir; and tearing down of Hindu homes in Bhawalpur, located in the Punjab province of Pakistan. Other topics are related to India's relations with China; the U.S. offer to mediate and Pakistan's resentment over hostile U.S. comments on its ties with China.

: Suresh Jaura; THE WORLD; South Asia; 14 June 2020

Image: Legal systems of the world map. Source: Wikimedia Commons

US Abating the Slow Growth of Much-Needed World Law

Viewpoint by René Wadlow, President, Association of World Citizens

GENEVA (IDN) — "For nearly a half a century — almost as long as the United Nations has been in existence — the General Assembly has recognized the need to establish such a court to prosecute and punish persons responsible for crimes such as genocide. Many thought that the horrors of the Second World War — the camps, the cruelty, the exterminations, the Holocaust — could never happen again. And yet they have.

"In Cambodia, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Rwanda. Our time — this decade even— has shown us that man’s capacity for evil knows no limits. Genocide is now a word of our time too, a heinous reality that calls for a historic response." — Kofi Annan, UN Secretary-General from January 1997 to December 2006.

: Rene Wadlow; OPINION; 14 June 2020

Photo: Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev. Source: Kazakh Permanent Mission to the UN in New York.

Kazakhstan Concludes One Year of Transition With President Tokayev

Viewpoint by Ramesh Jaura

BERLIN | NUR-SULTAN, Kazakhstan (IDN) – On June 12, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev completed the first year of his term as President of Kazakhstan, traversing a road to multifarious reforms at home, reflecting the maturity and stable political transition in Central Asia's biggest nation-state. At the same time, he has been strengthening bilateral and multilateral relations, building on Kazakhstan's rich experience in negotiating peaceful ways out of conflictive situations.