http://www.euronews.com/nocomment/2014/03/26/protest-against-us-human-rights-violations-in-brussels/
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/video/belgium-amnesty-international-protests-against-165813722.html
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EURONEWS- AND CANADA
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UN blasts Israel, Hillel Neuer calls out hypocrisy of Russia, Sudan, Iran
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sfe4aShdsug&feature=youtu.be
ublished on 27 Mar 2014
Russia, Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Turkey attacked Israel at the U.N. Human Rights Council. UN Watch's Hillel Neuer lifted a mirror to expose their hypocrisy. March 24, 2014, Geneva.
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HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH DAILY BRIEF- 27 March 2014
Sri Lanka, Turkey, Hungary, US, Kyrgyzstan
In today's Brief: A probe into Sri Lankan war crimes; Turkey bans YouTube; the people banned from voting in Hungary; US surveillance and, separately, US drone strikes; Kyrgyzstan's potential anti-gay law.
UN established #Sri Lanka war crimes probe! 23 yes 12 No 12 Abstentions
- In a move towards justice, the UN Human Rights Council has voted today on a resolution calling for an investigation into allegations of war crimes by all sides during the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war. Rather than ensuring justice to the conflict’s victims, Sri Lanka has launched an aggressive campaign against Sri Lankans who criticize the government.
- There is now hope that victims of atrocities in #SriLanka conflict might see justice; UN calls for probe into abuses http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/03/26/un-rights-council-crucial-vote-sri-lanka-inquiry …
- Why was this vote so important? Just watch this video about the terrible abuses that happened at the end of the war.
Hungary’s national elections are on April 6, but under a new constitution brought in by the current government, some Hungarian citizens with mental or intellectual disabilities continue to be denied the right to vote.
The United States should heed calls issued by an important UN human rights body to ensure that its surveillance activities are consistent with the right to privacy, both within and outside its borders.
Trade and the crisis in Ukraine are likely to dominate the agenda during US President Barack Obama’s first official visit to Brussels. But the European Union and Nato leaders also should use the summit to press Obama on ensuring that US operations against terrorist suspects, most often carried out by drones, comply with international law.
Former Soviet Block country Kyrgyzstan introduced an anti-gay bill similar to Russia’s.
The United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva has voted today on a resolution calling for the UN’s human rights office to investigate allegations of war crimes by all sides during the final months of Sri Lanka's civil war. Colombo has not ensured justice for the victims of abuses during that conflict, and has instead launched an aggressive campaign against those Sri Lankans who criticize the government. A new report this week also documents ongoing crimes against humanity by the security forces - in particular, torture and rape and sexual violence.
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China to Strengthen Internet Security After US Spying Report
March 27, 2014 1:13 PM
reports that the U.S. government spied on a major telecommunications firm, the nation's Defense Ministry said on Thursday. Reports that the U.S. National Security Agency infiltrated servers at the headquarters of Huawei Technologies Co. “lay bare the United States's hypocrisy and despotic rule,” ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng told a briefing. “For a while now, some Americans have jabbered on and on, condemning Chinese hacking attacks,” he said. “But the truth is that this is without any basis ....
http://in.reuters.com/article/2014/03/27/china-us-cybersecurity-idINDEEA2Q07U20140327
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GERMANY...
Former NSA Director: 'Shame On Us'
Interview Conducted By Marc Hujer and Holger Stark
In a SPIEGEL interview, former NSA director Michael Hayden, 69, discusses revelations of US spying on Germany made public in documents leaked by Edward Snowden, surveillance against German leaders and tensions between Berlin and Washington.
Michael Hayden, 69, served as the director of the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005. After leaving the NSA, he served as director of the CIA from 2006 to 2009. Today he is a partner at the consulting firm Chertoff Group in Washington, DC.
ANZEIGE
SPIEGEL recently sat down with the former US Air Force general in Washington for a wide-ranging interview on revelations from the archive of former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, including allegations that the intelligence agency spied on the cell phone of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, that have been the source of significant trans-Atlantic tensions.
SPIEGEL: General Hayden, let's speak about the future of the Internet. Are you concerned?
Hayden: I am very concerned. This may be the single greatest, most destructive effect from the last 10 months of what Mr. Snowden has revealed. The Internet was begun in the United States and it is based on American technology, but it's a global activity. We in the United States feel it reflects free people, free ideas and free trade. There are countries that do not want the Internet as we know it. Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia. The Snowden revelations will now allow them to argue that we Americans want to keep a single, unitary Internet, because it just helps us spy. My fear is that the disclosures may have set a motion in progress that ends up really threatening the Internet as we know it.
SPIEGEL: It is not only the Russians and Chinese who use this argument, but also Americans like Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. He recently described the US government as a threat to the Internet.
Hayden: The more people like him say that, the more it indirectly strengthens these other arguments. The Russians and the Chinese aren't saying this to protect themselves against alleged American espionage. They are saying this because they don't like the Internet's freedom of speech. Their goal is to divide the Internet up into national domains and create barriers in cyberspace. That's the last thing Zuckerberg would want to have happen.
SPIEGEL: On the one hand, the United States promotes the Internet as a tool of freedom. On the other hand, it now appears to many people to be a tool of surveillance.
Hayden: I am quite willing to have a discussion about what my country has or has not done, but it has to be based on facts. Let me first point out that the NSA doesn't monitor what every American is doing on the Internet. The NSA doesn't check who goes to what websites. But you've got these beliefs out there now.
SPIEGEL: Your predecessor as head of the NSA, General Kenneth Minihan, compared the Internet with the invention of the atomic bomb. He said a new national effort should be dedicated to one single goal, "information superiority for America" in cyberspace. It looks like you've gotten pretty close.
Hayden: We Americans think of military doctrine and "domains" -- land, sea, air, space. As part of our military thought, we now think of cyber as a domain. Let me define air dominance for you: Air dominance is the ability of the United States to use the air domain at times and places of its own choosing while denying its use to its adversaries at times and places when it is in our legitimate national interest to do so. It's just a natural thing for him to transfer that to the cyber domain. I do not think it is a threat to world peace and commerce any more than the American Air Force is a threat to world peace and commerce.
SPIEGEL: But do you understand if people in other countries are concerned about one country trying to gain "superiority" over something transnational like the Internet?
Hayden: I certainly do, and I thoroughly understand that. Now, other countries are creating cyber commands, but we were first, public, and very forceful in our language. We are now accused of militarizing cyberspace. Around the time US Cyber Command was created, McAfee did a survey of cyber security experts around the world. One of the questions they asked of them was, "Who do you fear most in cyberspace?" The answer for the Americans was the Chinese. With the plurality of people around the world, it was the Americans.
SPIEGEL: Britain's GCHQ intelligence agency speaks of "mastering" the Internet, and in another document, NSA officials say they want to "own" the Internet. Is it time for a new approach?
Hayden: Maybe not for a new approach but certainly for a new vocabulary. We might have been a bit too dramatic in our language.
SPIEGEL: So it was just a language issue?
Hayden: No. But nations conduct espionage. Mine, too. We're very good at it. We spend a lot of money at it: more than $50 billion a year for the national effort. The problem is that since the Snowden revelations we're talking about American espionage, British espionage and Australian espionage, but not about Chinese or Russian espionage. As powerful as those three I mentioned are, they actually self-limit. They are also the most transparent. I would offer you the view that European parliamentarians now know far more about the National Security Agency than they will ever learn about their own nation's intelligence services.
SPIEGEL: Isn't there a disconnect between your country being the champion of the Internet as a symbol of freedom and the goal, as the NSA puts it, of owning the Internet?
Hayden: I wouldn't say disconnect. But there is a dissonance. During the Arab Awakening my government was actually giving money to NGOs to pass out software to citizens in Arab countries to protect their anonymity. You've got conflicting values, but a state has a legitimate interest in freedom, and a state has a legitimate interest in security.
SPIEGEL: It has been almost a year since Snowden left Hawaii. What has he changed?
Hayden: There are three or four effects. We do this, like other countries, for legitimate reasons, and it's harder to do this now with what has been made public, legitimate intelligence targets. It has become harder for American services to cooperate with friendly services with common goals. What foreign service would want to cooperate with us, given our absolute seeming inability to keep anything secret? And then it really harmed American industry, and that's why you have the Mark Zuckerbergs of the world and the Eric Schmidts of the world expressing great outrage. They aren't doing anything for the American government that other companies do not do for their host governments when they receive a lawful request, but they've been singled out, and they have been unfairly harmed by this. And finally, it has poisoned relationships between people who really are friends.
SPIEGEL: Germany for example.
Hayden: The whole question about the chancellor has made this much more difficult. Although I'm not prepared to apologize for conducting intelligence against another nation, I am prepared to apologize for embarrassing a good friend. I am prepared to apologize for the fact we couldn't keep whatever it was we may or may not have been doing secret and therefore put a good friend in a very difficult position. Shame on us. That's our fault.
SPIEGEL: We didn't hear someone apologize officially.
Hayden: I'm prepared to apologize.
SPIEGEL: Is there any good reason for conducting surveillance against Merkel's mobile phone?
Hayden: It's hard for me to answer as I'm not in the government. But leadership intentions are always a high priority, a foreign intelligence objective. In 1978, you've got US-President Carter wagging his finger at his intel people at the Camp David Accords between Egyptians and Israelis saying, "I want to know what Anwar al-Sadat and Menachem Begin think. I want to know what they think about me. I want to know what they think about each other. I want to know what in their heart of hearts they think about the agreement we've put on the table." How are you going to do that? I suspect you're going to conduct aggressive surveillance against their communications. Whether that circumstance applies to the chancellor is an entirely different question, but I would add that the chancellor's predecessor …
SPIEGEL: … Gerhard Schröder …
Hayden: … conducted a whole variety of things that were kind of inconsistent with the American view of the world, which is not claiming the American view is right. We did the Iraq war with very different points of view. His approach to Russia was very different than the American approach to Russia, and then finally, this whole Gazprom billion-euro loan guarantee also raised questions, which might be answered by this kind of activity.
SPIEGEL: Would that justify surveillance of his cell phone?
Hayden: I am not going to make that conclusion. What I am going to say, though, is that you could see circumstances like that where that might make it more rather than less attractive to do. In 2008, when President Obama was elected, he had a BlackBerry. We thought, oh God, get rid of it. He said, "No, I am going to keep it." So we did some stuff to it to make it a little more secure. We're telling the guy who was going to soon be the most powerful man in the most powerful country on Earth that if in his national capital he uses his cell phone, his BlackBerry, countless number of foreign intelligence services are going to listen to his phone calls and read his e-mails. It's just the way it is.
SPIEGEL: The Germans are more sensitive when it comes to the issue of surveillance.
Hayden: I confess that we Americans underappreciated the impact of that not just on the chancellor but on the German population, and I mean this sincerely. Perhaps we underestimated the depth of feelings that the German people -- and again, not just the chancellor, but the German people, felt about this question of privacy, given their historical circumstances compared to our historical circumstances. At the Munich Security Conference it was clear to me that Germans regard privacy the way we Americans might regard freedom of speech or religion. Perhaps we did not appreciate that enough.
SPIEGEL: Do you think the president missed the chance to inform the chancellor about the facts when he visited her in Berlin last June?
Hayden: I don't know the facts of the case, but to be perfectly candid with you and your readers, the president promised to not surveil Angela Merkel. This was not a promise in perpetuity that no head of the German government would be surveilled.
SPIEGEL: Who makes the decision to monitor Schröder's or Merkel's cell phone? Did the White House know about it?
Hayden: Our government has made it clear that the president did not know and I will simply say if the president said he didn't know, then the president did not know, period. But it is not plausible that the White House didn't know. It's not plausible that the National Security Council didn't know. But this had not been a personal decision on the part of the president.
Part 2: 'No-Spy Agreements Are Just Too Difficult'
SPIEGEL: In November 1999, you visited Germany and went to the NSA station in Bad Aibling, and afterwards you wrote a letter to the Chancellery where you assured them that you are not conducting espionage against …
Hayden: … Germany, that's right.
SPIEGEL: It could have been a wonderful friendship.
Hayden: I took as a principal position that it was worth it to me to stop collection activities in Germany -- not on Germany -- that were overhangs from the occupation and to stop that in return for entering into a very mature relationship with the German intelligence services. That was the policy we followed when I was director. We made decisions, and activities stopped -- not against Germany but from Germany, out of sensitivity to German sovereignty, in order to enable us to approach an intelligence relationship with Germany among equals.
SPIEGEL: But two years later, the surveillance of the chancellor's cell phone started. Were we Germans too naïve?
Hayden: I can neither confirm nor deny what we do or don't do, but in essence, what may or may not have been done against the chancellor is quite different from industrial strength activities being conducted from German soil. What we may or may not have started to do in 2002 affects very little the sincerity of what it is we want to do as partners with the BND (Germany's foreign intelligence service).
SPIEGEL: As a reaction, the Germans are now considering conducting counterintelligence not only against Russians, the Iranians and the Chinese, but also against NSA's and CIA's offices in Germany. Would that deepen the rift between the two countries?
Hayden: No, that's a professional reaction. That's a choice that's fully within German competence, and it in no way affects friendship between us.
SPIEGEL: Given the fact that, as you said, Americans might have underestimated the sensitivity of Germans with regards to the surveillance, don't you think it would be a valuable approach to reach a no-spy agreement with Germany?
Hayden: No-spy agreements are just too difficult. The White House made it quite clear, "No, we're not going to do no-spy agreements." It's just too hard to do, not even with the British.
SPIEGEL: How can this damaged trans-Atlantic relationship be repaired?
Hayden: I think the director of national intelligence, the director of CIA and the new director of NSA need to put Germany very early in their travel plans and meet with the German service. The areas of cooperation between us are so vast that there's plenty of work to be done in there. Let me draw this little comparison. I say, look, if this is in American interests and values and so on and this is our closest ally ever in the universe: It doesn't match always. There is so much to do in the areas where our interests and values and activities overlap that my sense is that, going forward, we should focus on that and deepen our cooperation.
SPIEGEL: You mentioned China. Would you say that China is the greatest challenge in cyberspace for America's intelligence agencies?
Hayden: What is disturbing about the Chinese is two or three things. They do connect espionage for straight-on, direct-effect industrial advantage. Second, although I think the Americans and some others are more sophisticated than the Chinese at doing this, no one is doing it on the scale that the Chinese are doing it. As a professional intelligence officer, I just stand back in awe at the depth, breadth and persistence of the Chinese espionage effort against the West and the United States, so that's a second reality. My answer to your question is a simple yes.
SPIEGEL: Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA is conducting similar operations against China. They monitor the head of state of China. They monitored a couple of universities. NSA is breaking into some Chinese companies. Isn't it hypocritical to complain and yet do similar things?
Hayden: It's only hypocritical if you had a peculiar and inaccurate way of looking at it at the beginning, and I have been quite public. I'd say, "Look, we spy. We're really good at it." There are two differences between us and the Chinese. We're actually more sophisticated, and we're self-limited. We don't do industrial espionage. I never claimed the moral high ground, you seem to be suggesting that we didn't spy. Let me play a joke on myself. I say, you know, if I had to talk to the Chinese about it, I'd go to Beijing, and I'd sit across the table, which I have done, and I would begin the conversation, "Look, you spy, we spy, but you steal the wrong stuff."
SPIEGEL: Give us a prediction about Snowden's future.
Hayden: I don't know. I think he asked for an extension of his visa. I think they will just kind of toss the ball up and keep juggling it for another year to see what happens.
SPIEGEL: Wouldn't it be better to bring him home …
Hayden: … absolutely …
SPIEGEL: … and grant him clemency?
Hayden: No. God, no. No. No. This is the single greatest hemorrhaging of legitimate American secrets in the history of this country. It is incredibly damaging, and if we give him some sort of clemency or amnesty, all we're doing is teaching the next Edward Snowden that if you do this, make sure you steal a whole bunch of stuff.Edward Snowden has given this data to all these other folks. Glenn Greenwald has got it. Laura Poitras has got it. Bart Gellman has got it. DER SPIEGEL apparently has it. I mean, this stuff is coming out beyond the control of Edward Snowden.
SPIEGEL: You've been monitored yourself on a train to New York while you spoke confidentially on the phone. A blogger overheard you and tweeted your conversations.
Hayden: My only objection was that he misrepresented what I said. If you're going to intercept somebody else's communications, get it right.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Hayden, we thank you for this interview.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/spiegel-interview-with-former-nsa-director-michael-hayden-a-960389.html
comment:
Well look at Mr. Hayden comparing cyberspace to airspace so according to mr. Hayden it is OK to violate anyones airspace in US interrest. Also pretending that US intelligence will loose capability of combating terrorism by not spying on everyone is totally false. They can still do regullar targeted surveillance with cooperation of local intelligence. For example they can cooperate with BND to thwart any attack just by monitiring critical and dangerous persons which in most cases broadcast their allegiance to some dangerous group. It is also extremely costly for US taxpayer... this kind of espionage can only be atribbuted to totalitarian regimes which USA and all five eyes are. (Seriously mr. Cameron but threaten journalist over his work???)
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White House unveils plan to end NSA's bulk collection of phone data 6:41pm GMT
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration on Thursday announced details of its plan to end the government's vast bulk collection of data about phone calls made in the United States, including new procedures to get judicial approval before asking companies for such records.
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Russian Anger Builds As NATO Activates EU Missile Shield
The Chicago Way
NATO leaders launched Sunday the first phase of a US-led missile shield for Europe, risking the wrath of Russia which has threatened to deploy rockets to EU borders in response.
A NATO official told AFP that US President Barack Obama and his allies “just decided” at a Chicago summit to put a US warship armed with interceptors in the Mediterranean and a Turkey-based radar system under NATO command in a German base.
The alliance insists the shield is not aimed at Russia and aims to knock out missiles that could be launched by enemies such as Iran, but Moscow fears that the system will also serve to neutralize its nuclear deterrent.
“Missile defense is indispensable. We are faced with real missile threats,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on the eve of the summit, adding that 30 states either have or seek ballistic missile technology.
“Against a real threat we need a real defense,” he said. The standoff has tested Russian-US relations for much of the past decade and been one of the primary issues addressed by Obama when he launched a diplomatic “reset” with Moscow in 2009.
Russian military chief General Nikolai Makarov said this month one option was for Russia to station short-range Iskander missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave near Poland, a long-running threat that has alarmed Eastern European states.
NATO had hoped that Russian President Vladimir Putin would come to Chicago, but instead he sent a lower level delegation to represent Moscow during the summit’s discussion on Afghanistan.
Putin, who returned to power after succeeding his protege Dmitry Medvedev this month, was often at odds with the previous US administration over missile defense in his first two terms of office.
“Russia is sensitive about its nuclear capability because that’s what makes it a superpower,” said Nick Witney, a London-based defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
In a bid to appease its former Cold War foe, the Western military alliance invited Russia to cooperate in the system at the last summit in November 2010 in Lisbon, but the two sides have struggled to find common ground.
“This is not a project targeted against Russia, but a project we want to push forward with Russia in the interest of Europe’s security,” said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. “And therefore the door for Russia will stay open.”
Moscow has called for joint control over the system and for NATO to sign a legally-binding guarantee that it is not aimed at Russia.
But NATO has balked at both demands, insisting on keeping two separate systems and refusing to sign a legally-binding document.
The US election also appears to have affected the pace of negotiations.
An open microphone famously caught Obama telling then president Medvedev in March that he could negotiate some concessions on the system if Russia gave him “space” until after the election this year.
The system will be deployed in four phases and become fully operational by 2018.
Spain will host four US Aegis ships at its port in Rota while Poland and Romania have agreed to host US land-based SM-3 missiles in the coming years.
The United States has tested missile defense technology for years but analysts have raised questions over whether the shield is a full-proof defense against incoming rockets from rogue states.
“They have scored successes (in tests) but it’s easier to hit things when you know something is about to come than when something is coming out of the blue,” Witney said.
“There is a huge number of technical unknowns on both sides of this equation,” Witney said, pointing out that there are also doubts over whether Iranian missiles could reach deep into Western Europe. source – Yahoo News
http://www.nowtheendbegins.com/blog/?p=10116
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UN: Rights Council Records in Spotlight at ‘Votes Count'
Source: Human Rights Watch - Wed, 26 Mar 2014 10:18 AM
Author: Human Rights Watch
Any views expressed in this article are those of the author and not of Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Facebook Like Email A new website, "Votes Count," will shed much needed light on how member countries at the United Nations Human Rights Council respond to serious violations of human rights across the globe. The website will compile, analyze and expose the positions Human Rights Council members have taken on situations of human rights violations in particular countries.
(Geneva) - A new website, "Votes Count," will shed much needed light on how member countries at the United Nations Human Rights Council respond to serious violations of human rights across the globe. The website will compile, analyze and expose the positions Human Rights Council members have taken on situations of human rights violations in particular countries.
"In the past, governments have been shielded by the distance between Geneva and their capitals, and the belief that few observers monitor the positions they take," said Julie de Rivero, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch. "But what happens in Geneva shouldn't stay in Geneva. This website gives citizens and journalists access to monitor and act on their governments' performance."
The UN Human Rights Council has the mandate to address situations of gross and systematic violations of human rights. Yet a few governments are unwilling to criticize even dire country situations, while others argue that the Council should only act with the concerned country's consent.
This website is a tool that can help anyone assess whether countries are fulfilling the Council's mandate fully and objectively.
The new website focuses on the Human Rights Council's performance in addressing human rights violations in particular countries since 2012. During that time, the Council has made considerable progress in addressing country situations, Human Rights Watch said. Among the reasons for this improvement is the leadership shown by a small number of countries including the United States and Switzerland, strengthened engagement by countries such as Nigeria and Thailand, and the consistent support for Council's action on country situations by Mexico, Brazil, and Chile, among others.
Despite this progress, the Council's response to country situations remains flawed in significant ways, Human Rights Watch said. The Council devotes little attention to some situations with severe endemic human rights problems, such as Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, and China, and responds timidly in other cases. The selectivity and double standards of member countries in their handling of situations of violations is also discussed in "Votes Count."
The website, which will be regularly updated, was created on the Silk platform. It is being launched ahead of the Council's votes on several closely watched resolutions, including on:
· Accountability for North Korea's crimes against humanity;
· The establishment of an international investigation into allegations of war crimes in Sri Lanka; and
· The use of aerial drones and human rights.
"Keeping a running tally on how countries vote at the Human Rights Council exposes hypocrisy and underperformance - but also casts light on those countries pushing for positive change," de Rivero said. "Armed with this information, those concerned about human rights can hold governments to account, and push for the Council live up to its mandate." For more information on Votes Count, please visit: http://votescount.hrw.org
http://www.trust.org/item/20140326192827-cwdoe/?source=search
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CANADA
Humanitarian aid must evolve
By Catherine Bragg, Ottawa Citizen March 26, 2014
Humanitarian aid must evolve
In this Feb. 10, 2014 photo, farmers prepare rice seedlings for planting in Calamba city, Laguna province about 70 kilometers (44 miles) south of Manila, Philippines. The aftermath of Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines has added urgency to finding a solution to a longstanding problem: less than 10 percent of farmers have crop insurance, and while its advantages are widely understood, few can afford it. Crop insurance is the least of priorities when there is often not even enough money for food. (AP Photo/Bullit Marquez)
Photograph by: Bullit Marquez , AP
Canada has always been generous whenever and wherever there are humanitarian crises, but our model of international humanitarian assistance is outdated and showing cracks.
As a country, Canada often shoulders above and beyond our expected share of the humanitarian aid burden. This is well demonstrated in the recent response to Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines or currently to the crisis in Syria. Canada has worked primarily through support for United Nations agencies (e.g. the High Commission for Refugees) and non-governmental organizations that operate internationally (e.g. Oxfam). We also deploy military assets when appropriate and requested by host countries. Starting with the Asia tsunami response in 2004-5, the Canadian government has used a matching fund program of public donation to encourage public engagement. On occasion, expedited immigration and resettlement have also been offered. International humanitarian assistance is a form of organized outside intervention, governed by a set of humanitarian principles, and Canada follows the model, crudely put, of rich countries funding international organizations to distribute aid in poor and fragile states.
In recent years, this model has shown its cracks. The UN and international humanitarian organizations are finding it more and more difficult to work in disaster countries. For example, on many occasions, they are unable to operate unless under the “cover” of another entity. In the Syrian crisis, this cover is provided by the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, by order of the government. In Burma after Cyclone Nargis, it was the Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Second, many countries in crisis would still restrict access to those who need help most because they fear compromising their sovereignty.
Third, with many current humanitarian crises involving Muslim populations (e.g. Syria or Somalia), Islamic countries such as the Gulf States or Turkey are becoming significant donors and senders of Islamic aid organizations abroad. These organizations generally do not operate within the orbit of the UN-centred humanitarian system that Canada supports. In many instances, they have a wider reach than the Canadian-funded UN agencies and international NGOs, which are seen as too Western.
If the ultimate test of effectiveness of international humanitarian assistance is whether it has maximized the chances of someone receiving help in a humanitarian disaster, Canada is not funding the most effective model.
Is there an alternative or additional model? Yes.
Study after study has shown that we under-estimate the self reliance of those caught in disasters, and that they are helped first and foremost by family, friends and neighbours long before outside intervention kicks in. It is time to shift the focus from the aid suppliers to the end-users. While self-help has always been there, technology has made it more possible and visible. It has now given us the phenomenon of enabled self-help.
Consider the following real life example. On Aug. 6, 2012, Kassy Pajarillo in Manila put out an urgent appeal on Twitter: her mother and grandmother were trapped by surging flood waters when much of the Filipino capital was flooded. Could anybody help? Within minutes, emergency responders had dispatched a military truck and her family was rescued.
In a scenario already playing out now, a “victim” of disaster does not sit and wait for UN-distributed relief goods. He/she uses his/her cellphone, texts his/her cousin in Miami or Amsterdam with the message, “Send money!” With the remittance, he/she will buy the needed goods in the periphery of the disaster zone.
The future of humanitarian assistance is in seeking approaches (e.g. remittance) and technological innovation (e.g. cell technology in disasters) from the point of view of the people and not the agencies. Canada should consider shifting its funding accordingly. If we do this successfully, Canada’s proud humanitarian traditional will continue. It will lead the way to a 21st century international humanitarian assistance model that can offer more help to those in need.
Catherine Bragg is a former director general of international humanitarian affairs in the Canadian International Development Agency (2004-2008) and former United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs (2008-2013).
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/opinion/op-ed/SOMNIA/9664289/story.html
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THROUGH IRANIAN EYES- don't be Neda, Gay, a child, union or want freedom
UN Watch Briefing
Issue 473
Top 10 Worst U.N. Decisions of 2013
1. The UN Human Rights Council elected Hezbollah supporter Jean Ziegler, founder and recipient of the Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, as a top advisor.
2. The UN General Assembly adopted 21 condemnatory resolutions against Israel, compared to 4 on the rest of the world combined.
3. The same UN General Assembly elected China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to the UN Human Rights Council. The dictatorships will take their new seats on January 1, 2014.
4. UN Human Rights Council expert Richard Falk blamed the Boston Marathon terror bombings on "the American global domination project" and "Tel Aviv." Council members praised Falk and the president defended him.
5. The UN Special Committee on Decolonization, charged with upholding fundamental human rights and opposing the subjugation of peoples, elected the murderous Syrian regime to a senior post.
6. The UN Conference on Disarmament in May 2013 made Iran its president.
7. The UN Economic and Social Council, which oversees the UN women's rights commission, elected genocidal Sudan as its vice-president.
8. The UN Human Rights Council elected slave-holding Mauritania to be its vice-president.
9. The UN chose Zimbabwe, a regime that systematically violates human rights, to host its world tourism summit.
10. UNESCO, which condemned no other country but Israel, and which was silent as Hamas bulldozed a world heritage site to make a terrorist training camp, allowed Syria to sit as a judge on UNESCO's human rights committee.
___________________________________________
Top 10 UN Watch Achievements of 2013
1. UN Watch revealed that Iran was quietly seeking a seat on the UN Human Rights Council, and shamed the regime for its despicable human rights record. Iran quickly pulled out of the race.
2. UN Watch broke its own media impact record this year with no less than 662 separate articles and broadcasts carrying our truth-telling message, including BBC, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, Le Monde and the New York Times.
3. Top UN official Richard Falk, an open supporter of Hamas, lashed out at UN Watch and urged the world body to shut down UN Watch: “The effort to discredit me is spearheaded by the spurious UN Watch. What I didn’t expect was that such Zionist tactics would be given credibility by U.S. diplomats and by the Secretary General of the UN, who attacked me personally. UN Watch complicated my task.” The American Studies Association boycotters of Israel recently invoked Falk's support, but, thanks to UN Watch's information, it backfired on them.
4. When Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan told a UN summit on tolerance that Zionism was “a crime against humanity,” UN Watch mobilized world leaders to condemn his bigotry. Shocked and angered by the global criticism of his speech, Erdogan walked back his remarks.
5. UN Watch released a 2002 video showing UN expert Jean Ziegler winning the Qaddafi Prize—which he vehemently denied for 11 years. Though nothing could stop the jackals from reelecting him to the UNHRC, this supporter of Hezbollah was exposed as a liar and a fraud, condemned by U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power as “unfit to serve,” and rebuked by the Swiss Parliament. The Wall Street Journal dedicated a special video broadcast to the story, featuring UN Watch's director.
6. Tomorrow on January 1, 2014, Israel will for the first time be admitted into one of the UN Human Rights Council's regional groups, that of the West. Through its unrelenting 20 years of advocacy—including private diplomacy, lobbying, public campaigning, legal pleadings and U.S. congressional testimony—UN Watch helped lay the groundwork to finally end this injustice.
7. UN Watch fought the nomination of terrorism-supporter Mona Seif for the world's top human rights prize. Although Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Human Rights First and the other NGO sponsors refused to cancel or even condemn her nomination—which they instead celebrated on a video, and on posters plastered all over Geneva—in the end Mona Seif failed to win the prize.
8. When the UN elected China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to the Human Rights Council, it was UN Watch who exposed the hypocrisy before the world, sparking scores of media stories. UN Watch gave leading dissidents from those regimes a global platform to denounce their oppressors. Similarly, UN Watch's annual Geneva Summit for Human Rights empowers the world's most courageous champions of human rights.
9. When a one-sided UNHRC inquiry panel told Israel to surrender the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem, UN Watch invited Nobel Peace Prize Laureate David Trimble to testify. He took the floor at the Council and said: "The United Nations and its human rights bodies should all be working with others to advance the cause of peace, not to hinder it. I regret to say that the Council displays the same selectivity that led to the abolition of the earlier Commission. I urge you to heed the criticism by successive UN secretary-generals of this council's habit of singling out only one specific country, to the exclusion of virtually everything else."
10. Just today, the Times of Israel named our famous UN interpreter report to its list of Top 10 blog posts for 2013:
UN Watch Briefing
Issue 473
Top 10 Worst U.N. Decisions of 2013
1. The UN Human Rights Council elected Hezbollah supporter Jean Ziegler, founder and recipient of the Muammar Qaddafi Human Rights Prize, as a top advisor.
2. The UN General Assembly adopted 21 condemnatory resolutions against Israel, compared to 4 on the rest of the world combined.
3. The same UN General Assembly elected China, Cuba, Russia, and Saudi Arabia to the UN Human Rights Council. The dictatorships will take their new seats on January 1, 2014.
4. UN Human Rights Council expert Richard Falk blamed the Boston Marathon terror bombings on "the American global domination project" and "Tel Aviv." Council members praised Falk and the president defended him.
5. The UN Special Committee on Decolonization, charged with upholding fundamental human rights and opposing the subjugation of peoples, elected the murderous Syrian regime to a senior post.
6. The UN Conference on Disarmament in May 2013 made Iran its president.
7. The UN Economic and Social Council, which oversees the UN women's rights commission, elected genocidal Sudan as its vice-president.
8. The UN Human Rights Council elected slave-holding Mauritania to be its vice-president.
9. The UN chose Zimbabwe, a regime that systematically violates human rights, to host its world tourism summit.
10. UNESCO, which condemned no other country but Israel, and which was silent as Hamas bulldozed a world heritage site to make a terrorist training camp, allowed Syria to sit as a judge on UNESCO's human rights committee.
http://www.unwatch.org/site/apps/nlnet/content2.aspx?c=bdKKISNqEmG&b=1314451&ct=13602189
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African women push for equality in land and resource rights
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Thu, 27 Mar 2014 01:33 PM
Source: Thomson Reuters Foundation - Thu, 27 Mar 2014 01:33 PM
Author: Elias Ntungwe NgalameMore news from our correspondents
A woman works in a plantation of rubber seedlings in San Pedro, Ivory Coast, March 9, 2012. REUTERS/Thierry Gouegnon
YAOUNDE (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Elizabeth Maimo, a 52-year-old farmer in Santa in Cameroon’s Northwest Region, has struggled since custom dictated she surrender her piece of family land in 2012 to her younger brother, a herder, who wanted more space to breed cows.
“I have been cultivating on a rented, smaller piece of land and this has reduced my yields and income by more than 50 percent,” Maimo said. “Our culture says a woman (who) will eventually be married into a different family has no right to own a piece of her father’s land.”
Maimo is just one of millions of female African farmers who are disadvantaged by cultural practices and laws that deny them equal access to land.
But African women’s rights activists are intensifying their efforts to push governments to speed up land reform processes and establish clear legislation securing women’s rights to own, access and control land and other natural resources.
According to Gregory Muluh, coordinator of the Grassfield Project, a government initiative assisting women farmers in Cameroon’s northwest, the country still has no law that protects land tenure for women.
“Even if people know that refusing women the right to own land is wrong, there is nowhere to complain, and women end up swallowing a bitter pill,” Muluh told Thomson Reuters Foundation during a visit to the Grassfield Project last year. “Instituting a legal provision to safeguard the rights of women to land ownership is imperative if we really want them to contribute fully to development.”
The African Women's Network for Community Management of Forests (REFACOF), an international NGO, believes only reforms that include legal safeguards giving women equal say in decisions made by customary and state authorities on managing land and forest resources will boost gender equality on the continent.
“We know that wherever land rights are being ignored, women are indisputably the most affected. Banding together and raising awareness of these issues is the first step toward ensuring all women’s rights are recognised,” Cécile Ndjebet, president of REFACOF, told Thomson Reuters Foundation.
KEY TO DEVELOPMENT
Ongoing land reforms in African nations such as Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia and Senegal have yet to incorporate any special protection for women, according to REFACOF.
“Globally, people are starting to understand the contributions women make to development. The importance of securing land rights for women in achieving development can therefore not be over-emphasised,” said Ndjebet, who is from Cameroon.
She called for the post-2015 development goals, which are now under discussion, to include a land rights indicator for women. “(This) would be indicative of how women’s advocacy for land rights has received critical attention,” she added.
Her group and others are pushing hard for improvements to customary land rights for African women, particularly across West and Central Africa, according to Ndjebet.
In Cameroon, for example, the Bagyeli community of Nyamabande in the East Region, an indigenous group of hunter-gatherers, has won customary rights over a large swathe of disputed land between the Campo-Ma’an National Park and the HEVECAM rubber plantation, thanks to advocacy by REFACOF, Ndjebet said.
At a conference in Yaounde, ahead of International Women’s Day on March 8, Cameroon’s minister of women’s affairs called for a collective effort by women across the continent to fight for progressive policies.
“Cameroon’s rural women, like those of other countries in Africa, are grappling with numerous challenges, including poverty, preventable diseases and the impacts of climate shifts on farming and other aspects of their daily lives. We need policy reforms that protect the rights of this vulnerable group in society - especially the right to own land and other resources,” said Catherine Abena Ondoa.
Her ministry is pushing for the passage of a new family code into law, which will enshrine the right for women to own land and other natural resources, among other things, she added.
LIBERIA PROMISE
More than 50 participants from 16 African countries meeting in Monrovia in Liberia earlier this month to discuss gender, climate and tenure issues also called for a boost in status for disenfranchised women across the continent, enabling them to own land.
Meanwhile, an online petition launched a month ago by REFACOF calls on Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf to stand by her promise - made at an event hosted by Thomson Reuters last year in the United States - that: “Women will have the full rights to own their land, like anyone else.”
REFACOF argues that such a move by Liberia would speed up reforms on women’s rights and bring positive shifts in land ownership across Africa.
“Time is running out. The reform process (in Liberia) is already underway. While the land reform ‘aims to give equal protection to the land rights of men and women’, there is still no clear legislation securing women’s rights to own, access, or control land and resources. But we can change that!” said the petition, issued on Feb. 27, which urges Johnson Sirleaf to ensure those rights are protected and safeguarded by law.
If Liberian women are granted the full right to own their land, it could propel a transition to equality across Central and West Africa, where other countries are just beginning their land reform processes, said the petition, which has almost 500 signatures.
Liberia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy notes that women are major players in the agricultural sector, making up the majority of small-holder producers and the agricultural labour force.
Women produce some 60 percent of agricultural goods and carry out 80 percent of trading activities in rural areas, but they have less access to productive inputs than men, including land, skills training, basic tools and technology, the strategy says. The situation is similar in many developing countries.
LESS THAN 10% OF LANDHOLDERS
A September 2013 report from the Thomson Reuters Foundation and the World Bank said a woman’s ability to own, inherit and control land and property is vital to her ability to access resources and participate in the economy.
“Yet many women do not have legal ownership rights to the land on which they live and work. This can increase women’s dependence on husbands and male, land-owning relatives and limit their access to credit and productive inputs,” the report said.
In Western and Central Africa, generally less than 10 percent of landholders are women, according to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation.
“For real political and social change to take place, there are three pillars that need to be addressed,” REFACOF’s Ndjebet said. “We need legislation that protects equal rights for women, mechanisms that provide for political and social equity, and a change in social and cultural perceptions of women.”
Elias Ntungwe Ngalame is an environmental writer with Cameroon's Eden Group of newspapers.
http://www.trust.org/item/20140327133313-70auw
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Peace Now legitimizes Assad at dictator-run UN parley
Published on March 26, 2014 in Syria by unwatch.
Israel’s Peace Now, represented by campaigns manager Yaniv Shacham, delivered a speech today at an international conference in Quito, Ecuador, that claims to be about peace, but which is in fact organized by a rabidly anti-Israel UN committee dominated by Syria’s Assad regime and other like-minded murderous, misogynistic and homophobic dictatorships.
Is Peace Now unaware that this latest “UN International Meeting on the Question of Palestine,” taking place today and tomorrow under the innocuous-sounding theme of “Engaging for peace – the International Year of Solidarity with the Palestinian People,” is run by the UN’s Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, whose member and observer states include the mass-murdering Syrian Arab Republic, slave-holding Mauritania, women-hating Saudi Arabia, along with tyrannies large and small such as China, Belarus, Cuba, Algeria and the Lao People’s Democratic Republic?
Is Peace Now unaware that its host committee was established in 1975 on the same day as the infamous Zionism is Racism resolution, which Kofi Annan has described as the low point of the UN’s record on anti-Semitism? That it promotes organizations like the one headed by notorious anti-Semite Mahathir Mohamad?
Is Peace Now unaware that its host committee’s year-round reports, meetings, conferences, and publications incite to hatred against Israel? That while claiming to care about human rights, its host has never once condemned the murder of Israeli civilians by rockets, bus bombings or stabbings, and instead legitimizes violence and terrorism?
Why is Peace Now legitimizing a poisonous propaganda exercise run by a syndicate of murderers and rapists?
http://blog.unwatch.org/index.php/2014/03/26/peace-now-legitmizes-assad-at-dictator-run-un-parley/
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