The word at the UN is that there is a “commitment gap” - that is, the world's militarily most powerful countries want to see more military intervention around the world, but are reluctant to send their troops on missions run by the UN.
Each month the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operation (DPKO) publishes a list of how many troops, military observers and police each country supplies to UN operations (see following “tools” pages for latest details). Who heads the list of…
Otto Grunfeld was a teenager when he was imprisoned in a Nazi concentration for the crime of being a Jew. He spent two years living in a Jewish ghetto in Czechoslovakia before being transported to Auschwitz and later to Kaufering. During that time all other members of his immediate family were killed.
It took him fifty years to find the strength and the distance to be able to write about his war experience and the result is a slip of a book - just 100 pages. The weight of…
If ever there was a time for peace, it must surely be our troubled, traumatised own. And yet, if it were instigated, the fundamental question remains: who might benefit from this dreamt-of peace, and would any agreement resolve the underlying causes of conflict or merely satisfy the current global managers of economic and political power?
Given that this review is being written the day after 125 Iraqis were killed by US strikes in the Iraqi city of Samarra, while dozens died in…
There are many possibilities forcivilian intervention in conflicts. Today the UN, the OSCE,and even NATO, speak of the importance of civilian personnel in complexpeace-keeping missions.
Most industrialised countries have cre-ated conflict resolution budget-lines, and even the World Bank is concerned with”conflict prevention”. However, at the same time they all insist that in case ofviolence, there needs to be a military presence to protect the civilians. That hasbeen the ideology…
“Post-intervention peace operations” is the theme for this section of Peace News; an apt topic for the final edition of the paper to be co-published with War Resisters' International.
Our focus is less on classical peace-keeping, where the UN deploys a lightly armed force with the consent of the conflicting parties. Rather, while providing information on the whole contemporary peace-keeping scene, we examine in more depth the latest generation of “peace operations”, where…
What is it?
In his report to the 2000 General Assembly, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan challenged the international community to forge consensus around the so-called “right of humanitarian intervention”: the question of when, if ever, it is appropriate for states to take coercive - in particular military - action, against other states for the purpose of protecting people at risk in that other state. It was in response to that challenge that the International Commission…
Peacekeeping has changed a lot since 1956, when Lester B Pearson--then Canadian Foreign Minister--proposed that the UN send an international force to the Sinai desert to prevent fighting.
The Canadian government established the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre (PPC) in 1994. Its Peace Operations Summer Institute (POSI), which I attended, offers an overview of the whole array of peace operations, and while I was there several other courses were underway on such top-ics as humanitarianism…
There can be no peace without the unity of humankind and specific structures of inclusive social justice. That thought reflects the mature form of every major religion. Yet institutional drag across the years, usually draws most adherents of each faith tradition towards the preservation of the institution, rather than to a dynamic response to specific faithfulness in an always-changing world.
In light of that trend, the signs of the times are not propitious for the building of the…
Over the past three months there have been growing protests at the ongoing violence in Darfur.
Thousands of people from the Sudanese diaspora, pan-Africanists, and the broader peace movement have taken to the streets - particularly in the US and Britain - including in London, New York, Glasgow and Washington.
In London, demonstrations have been attracting over 500 people and have been very mobile - visiting the embassies of several African countries and the British…
April 2004 marked the tenth anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide, making this publication both timely and important. It uncovers a side of that terrible story largely hidden from public view. Shake Hands with the Devil is an intensely personal account, written by the head of the UN mission before and during the slaughter.
Informed that he was being posted to Rwanda, Lt General Dallaire remembers that the only information he had about the country was a photocopied page…
For hundreds of years Chechnya has been an itch on the underbelly of Russia - awkward to reach and irritatingly persistent. The most recent episodes of a shadowy and confused conflict are related in this autobiography of a Chechen surgeon who worked through the wars of the 1990s, armed only with a scalpel.
Khassan Baiev treated the wounded tirelessly and indiscriminately, faithful to the Hippocratic Oath to which the title refers and under which he had pledged to help anyone in need…
Contrary to its challenging title, Rethinking War and Peace has little that is new or radical to offer. It is a reasonable and readable statement of the case for war's abolition through active participation in peaceful alternatives, and anyone wholly new to the subject might find it a useful introduction. Readers of Peace News, on the other hand, will generally find themselves being told things they already know.
While there are many grounds for pessimism in the peace movement, this…
Teachers of citizenship courses who wish to explore the topic of war and peace with their students will find a new short video, War No More, invaluable.
It is suitable for year ten and year eleven students, and is accompanied by a booklet of useful background information on each of the main topics, well thought out discussion points to take up with students and lists of further sources of information. The printed information is intended for free photocopying.
Topics…
In December 1994, days after the first modern invasion of Chechnya by Russian forces, Time magazine wrote, “Unless someone backs down, Moscow's advance into Chechnya threatens to start a guerrilla war that could wreck Yeltsin's presidency or end Russian democracy.”
Yeltsin is long gone, and so now, following the recent re-election of President Putin, with the attendant, and embarrassingly muted, concerns about it perhaps not being entirely free and fair, is an ideal time to revisit…
Angola is one of the countries in the world that has been most affected by war and violence over the past four decades. The country lies devastated, its infrastructure destroyed, its citizens brutalised by four centuries of slavery, colonialism, war, bloody political conflict and corruption. The long guerrila war (since 1961) against Portuguese colonialism under the Salazar dictatorship did not even stop with independence in 1975.
Divided among three rival movements, MPLA, UNITA and…
