21st Century Vision

Civil Society

In 1999 at the World Civil Society Forum Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations said,

If the UN's global agenda is to be properly addressed, a partnership with civil society at large is not an option; it is a necessity.

The World Civil Society Forum was formed so that hundreds of civil society organizations from all around the world as well as UN representatives and specialized international organizations can strengthen international cooperation. Its aims are,

• Promoting cooperation among civil society organizations across the world and working in different fields of activity, especially with developing countries and indigenous peoples;
• Facilitating cooperation between organizations of civil society and the United Nations system, including its specialized agencies and others international organizations;
• Creating space for dialogue on the relation between the different stakeholders of the international scene, such as civil society organizations, international organizations, governments and the private sector.

It is with these aims in mind and the importance of ensuring a partnership between civil society organisations and government both nationally and globally that the Enfield & The Barnets UNA will be convening a meeting of a Local Civil Society Forum in February. We realise that political society has been devalued over the years and that its regeneration is important for democracy. One important way of doing this is by strengthening civil society organisations and creating a proper balance between those organisations and governments.

Visit the WOCSOC site ..

The UN Says Sudan Needs Urgent Support

The United Nations and its partners in the Sudan, today, appealed for 1.5 billion dollars for an urgent programme to support humanitarian, protection, recovery and development activities in the conflict-ravaged country in the year 2005.

These activities cover a multitude of sectors namely: education and training, food aid, food security and support to livelihoods, health, mine action, multisector support for return and reintegration of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees, nutrition, protection of IDPs and refugees, rehabilitation of transport infrastructure, rule of law and good governance, shelter and non-food items, water and environmental sanitation, disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of former combatants.

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UN & Intervention

The UN should be reformed to make intervention in failing states easier, a commission is set to recommend.

The BBC has reported that the panel, which has examined how the UN could respond better to global threats, also calls for the Security Council to be enlarged.

The report has been called the "biggest make-over" of the UN since 1945.

It is thought that if the UN shows greater readiness to act, unilateralism by member states would be less likely.

See full story ..

See profile of UN Security Council ..

Fallujah Napalmed?

Yesterday the following article appeared in the Sunday Mirror. If it is true then it is a very serious allegation indeed. We would like our MPs to take this matter up and respond to it so that action can be taken.

Did Tony Blair Know?

US troops are secretly using outlawed napalm gas to wipe out remaining insurgents in and around Fallujah.

News that President George W. Bush has sanctioned the use of napalm, a deadly cocktail of polystyrene and jet fuel banned by the United Nations in 1980, will stun governments around the world.

And last night Tony Blair was dragged into the row as furious Labour MPs demanded he face the Commons over it. Reports claim that innocent civilians have died in napalm attacks, which turn victims into human fireballs as the gel bonds flames to flesh.

Outraged critics have also demanded that Mr Blair threatens to withdraw British troops from Iraq unless the US abandons one of the world's most reviled weapons. Halifax Labour MP Alice Mahon said: "I am calling on Mr Blair to make an emergency statement to the Commons to explain why this is happening. It begs the question: 'Did we know about this hideous weapon's use in Iraq?'"

Since the American assault on Fallujah there have been reports of "melted" corpses, which appeared to have napalm injuries.

Last August the US was forced to admit using the gas in Iraq.

A 1980 UN convention banned the use of napalm against civilians - after pictures of a naked girl victim fleeing in Vietnam shocked the world. America, which didn't ratify the treaty, is the only country in the world still using the weapon.

Bhopal Remembered

The date September 11^th has gone down in history as one that changed the world. Of course, it was a milestone date that symbolically separated one world era from another.  Yet it is not the only date that we should consider pivotal in our total view of the world. Twenty years ago another event happened that should be also fixed on our memory. Twenty years ago saw the tragedy at Bhopal. Amnesty International has published a reminder of this on their website and they say,

More than 7,000 people died within a matter of days when toxic gases leaked from a chemical plant in Bhopal, India on the night of 2/3 December 1984. Over the last 20 years exposure to the toxins has resulted in the deaths of a further 15,000 people as well as chronic and debilitating illnesses for thousands of others for which treatment is largely ineffective.

The disaster shocked the world and raised fundamental questions about government and corporate responsibility for industrial accidents that devastate human life and local environments. Yet 20 years later, the survivors still await just compensation, adequate medical assistance and treatment, and comprehensive economic and social rehabilitation. The plant site, has still not been cleaned up. As a result, toxic wastes continue to pollute the environment and contaminate water that surrounding communities rely on.

Unfortunately no major country decided to gather a coalition of the willing to tackle the human tragedy arising from this disaster – and no concerted action took place to tackle the grimy relationship between corporations and the devastation of human life and local environments. And yet more people died as a result of this tragedy than died on September 11^th and many are still dying. Little wonder, many in the developing world question the integrity of the West and our vain proclamations of moral rectitude.

See Amnesty Report…

UN Expresses “Grave Concern” About Violation Of Children’s Rights in UK

The government's plan to put children at the heart of its election strategy had a setback last night when the United Nations voiced "grave concern" about the violation of children's rights in Britain.  Jaap Doek, chairman of the UN committee on the rights of the child, called for urgent action to stop abuses, recalling the death of two children in custody this year and asking why Britain tolerated the unnecessary jailing of juveniles.

He commended a report today from the Children's Rights Alliance for England drawing attention to slow progress in tackling youth poverty. It criticises teenage workers' low wages, the withdrawal of rights from child asylum seekers, and a discriminatory system that makes it three times more likely that young black people will be in prison than at university.

The figures are expected to be confirmed on Wednesday by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, though it will suggest the government is on course to reach its target of reducing child poverty by a quarter by the end of 2004.

See report….

See Children's Rights Alliance ...

Children's Rights - background note ...

UN Members Take A Stand

The 191-member U.N. General Assembly, the largely ignored policy-making body of the United Nations, is threatening to derail a slew of mostly Western European and U.S.-inspired resolutions condemning human rights violations.

A key committee of the assembly, which previously refused to take action on resolutions against Belarus and Sudan, took a similar stance Wednesday on another draft resolution, this time on human rights abuses in Zimbabwe, signalling what some observers call a backlash against U.S. abuse of the world body and international law. Naseer H Aruri, Professor (emeritus) of political science at the University of Massachusetts has said,

The action by the General Assembly committee highlights a political-cultural divide in a world split between those who insist on the application of the rule of law, peaceful resolution of international disputes and the universality of human rights, on one hand, and those who practise unilateralism, preventive wars and selective standards of human rights, on the other......

Claims of divine inspiration, reinforced by expansionist designs and driven by an outdated moral mission, are no longer accepted by a broad segment of a divided world that has grown tired of global autocracy and a reincarnation of old-fashioned imperialism.

Francis A. Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, told IPS,

Finally, the member states of the U.N. General Assembly are taking a stand against the administration of (U.S. President George W.) Bush and its wanton aggression, war crimes and gross human rights violations all over the world, including here in the United States where they are trying to establish a police state.

The problem is that this dispute over the role of the US in world affairs is threatening action on a wide section of human rights abuse. Yvonne Terlingen of rights group Amnesty International said her organisation is ''extremely concerned” and says,

That a key committee of the General Assembly should have determined that a human rights situation as grave as that in Sudan ''is not worthy of its consideration…… As a global body, the General Assembly must at the very least express its condemnation of human rights abuses committed by all sides to the conflict and make recommendations to stop these abuses.

What is clear is that all human rights abuses should be considered by the UN including those abuses by occupying forces in Iraq and also by the US in Guantanamo Bay. Only when there is a comprehensive approach to human rights abuse will the problem be tackled not only fairly but tackled at all.

See US Double Standards...

Also see UN Body rejects censure…

UK Should Not Rely On Torture

At a time when Tony Blair has placed terrorism and security at the heart of the next General Election Campaign, the UK government has been urged to review its policy of detaining foreign terror suspects without trial, by the United Nations Committee on Torture. It expressed concern at conditions in Belmarsh prison, south London, where suspects have been held indefinitely under the 2001 Anti-Terrorism Act.

The United Kingdom Government should make a formal undertaking that it will not rely on, or present "evidence" obtained through torture in any proceedings, the UN Committee against Torture (CAT) recommended today. Amnesty International has commented,

The Committee's conclusion on the need for a clear and definitive statement from the UK authorities that they will abide by the international ban on the introduction of 'evidence' obtained through torture is welcome.

The Government should take heed of the UN Committee on Torture’s recommendation if only to convince the world that we are not just playing the security card as a way of winning elections rather than protecting people. Human rights should always be above trivial Party political games.

See UK urged to review its terrorism laws

See full text of Amnesty International’s briefing

Chile Remembers Regime Change

President Bush’s recent trip to South America provides a valuable foreign-policy lesson for Americans. The president was greeted in Santiago, Chile, by some 30,000 angry demonstrators. But it was not only Bush’s invasion and war of aggression against Iraq that Chileans were angry about. Unlike so many Americans, the Chilean people have not fallen for the “We invaded Iraq to spread democracy” line that U.S. officials moved up to rationale number one after failing to find those infamous weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The reason? Chileans have not forgotten — and are still angry about — the U.S. government’s role in bringing about “regime change” in Chile in 1973. (Just as the Iranian people have not forgotten the U.S. government’s “regime change” in Iran in 1953.)

Chileans still remember that in the 1973 “regime change” in their country, the U.S. government played an active role in ousting their democratically elected president because he was a communist and replacing him with a brutal military dictator, Augustin Pinochet, who ended up ruling Chile for almost two decades, until 1990. Yes, you read that correctly — the U.S. government, the paragon of democracy around the world, helped to oust a man who had been democratically elected by the people of Chile and helped replace him with an unelected, military brute.

What mattered to U.S. officials was not democracy in Chile but rather the same thing that matters to them today in Iraq — the installation of a ruler, brutal or benevolent, democratically elected or not, who was friendly to the U.S. government. If that meant supporting a cruel and brutal military dictator whose forces killed, tortured, or disappeared his own people, so be it.

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Amnesty's Report On Chechnya

On the eve of its summit in The Hague with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Amnesty International presented the European Union with detailed testimonies showing that victims of human rights violations in Chechnya who complain to European institutions have been killed or "disappeared".

The Amnesty International report submitted to the EU leadership states that human rights defenders in Chechnya have been killed and others have been tortured. Many more have been harassed or intimidated. Amnesty International says there is evidence that human rights activists have been targeted by agents of the state in order to silence them.

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