Mission & Justice

Shlomo Shamir; 14/8/08

The United Nations said on Thursday that it has managed to clear wide swaths of south Lebanon of half of all cluster bombs fired by Israel during the Second Lebanon War two years ago. In a report released on Thursday, the world body warned that the remaining ordnances still pose a threat to the local population, particulary in the southern Lebanon village of Kafer Sir. “We’ve managed to clean up about half of the known cluster munition strike sites in this village. We hope to have the whole village completely cleared by the end of the year,” the UN Mine Action Coordination Center of South Lebanon said on Thursday. “This whole village was covered with unexploded cluster munitions. They were on people’s rooftops, hanging from trees, even in playgrounds.”

(more…)

13/8/08

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has offered the Palestinians a peace plan giving them 93 per cent of the occupied West Bank, the Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday. The proposed border is at the heart of a broader plan that would compensate the Palestinians with the equivalent of 5.5 per cent of the West Bank adjacent to the Gaza Strip and a route connecting Gaza to the West Bank itself. But Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas would receive the land and the overland connection only once his forces retake Gaza from the Islamist Hamas movement, which seized power in the territory in June last year.

(more…)

12/8/08

Mexico City: It’s the third morning of the International AIDS Conference in Mexico City and Francesca Semoso, Deputy-Speaker of Parliament for Bougainville, is sitting on a mat at the Pacific Meeting House, yet her passion and desire to make a difference in the midst of discrimination and human rights abuses are such she can barely stay still. ‘”It is my right to be gay, or lesbian, or to enjoy same sex marriage, everywhere in the Pacific,’ she declared. “Similarly, we need to educate our youth to be responsible and practise safe sex, rather than tell them “no” and shun them,’’ she says. “Being judgmental, and curtailing discussions about sex and sexual health, is simply not helpful.’’

(more…)

Dalya Dajani; 10/8/08

Born in a small village in the heart of Wadi Araba, Musa Al Ali had been long familiar with the harsh conditions of these sun-scorched plains. Whether cultivating crops or raising livestock, it is the only life he and the tribal communities living along Jordan’s border with Israel have known for decades. But for 31-year-old Ali, it was a life whose potential had been limited despite the vastness of the landscape. “A large part of these lands have been off-limits to our communities due to landmines that were buried here a long time ago,” Ali said. “People couldn’t use the land for farming and their herds couldn’t roam freely, which is a sad plight for those who live here,” he added. Here in the Kingdom’s southern desert region, where thousands struggle to make a living, the lingering effect of a decades-old conflict have been unforgiving. The land, where nomads once roamed and herds grazed freely, had been held hostage by over 50,000 landmines planted by the Israeli army following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. These landmines had contaminated around 14 million square metres of land between the Dead Sea and Red Sea, blocking any hope of life or development. In 1994, however, Israel returned these lands after it signed a peace treaty with Jordan.

(more…)

8/8/08

Attorney-General Robert McClelland says Australia will end the “hypocrisy” of lecturing its neighbours on human rights without always setting a good example of its own. The federal government on Thursday issued a standing invitation to the United Nations Human Rights Council to visit Australia to monitor and report on human rights in the country. It is part of a broader move by Labor to re-engage Australia with the UN after a strained relationship between the former Howard government and the international body. The council has a mandate to examine, monitor, advise and publicly report on human rights situations in countries but must receive permission from the nation involved.

(more…)

Hassan Tahsin; 8/8/08

It is 40 years since the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty was opened for signing in New York on July 1, 1968. Yet it is frustrating and sad to note that the world is inching toward the brink of an apocalyptic nuclear confrontation. A recent report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency estimated that more than 25,000 nuke warheads lying in hidden arsenals across the world are awaiting orders to strike enemy targets. They apparently include vastly destructive bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles. The UN Security Council is not seemingly enthusiastic about a total ban on nuclear weapons because of the simple reason that all the five permanent members of the council stockpile the nightmarish weapons of mass destruction and keep on updating them. No member wants to cut down the size of its armory. They have also been accused of violating the NPT. To be precise, the sixth clause of the treaty that stipulates that these countries should engage in serious dialogues on the eradication of weapons.

(more…)

Geoffrey Robertson; 6/8/08

The appearance of Radovan Karadzic in The Hague dock has provided some satisfaction for victims of his Bosnian Serb regime - not only families who grieve for those it massacred but for all of us forced impotently to read of the atrocities at Sarajevo and Srebrenica, a form of wickedness never experienced in Europe since the Nazis. The big question is whether justice will be seen to be done better than in the convoluted and inconclusive trial of Slobodan Milosevic. Can the Karadzic trial be fair, expeditious and effective - and cost-effective as well? The trial will surely benefit from lessons learnt in the course of the Milosevic proceedings, when prosecutors “threw the book” at the defendant and the judges insisted that all charges against him over the three wars he waged - in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo - should be heard together.

(more…)

Nadav Shragai, 5/8/08

The Homesh First Movement is expected to announce Tuesday that settlement groups are planning to return to settlements in Gush Katif evacuated during the August 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip. The core settlement groups hope to return the minute it is acceptable from a security standpoint, explained Boaz Haetzni, one of the leaders of the movement. Haetzni told Haaretz that as soon as the Israel Defense Forces reenters the Gaza Strip, “and in our estimation the ‘big operation’ is only a matter of time, we will follow them in. We will not ask for permission from anyone. The [settlement] groups will be ready, and this evening we will start an organized sign-up for them. These core groups will do exactly what the group that reestablished Kfar Etzion did after 1967. They will return to the lands where they existed in the past, and will rebuild them,” said Haetzni.

(more…)

5/8/08

The widening gap between rich and poor in Asia’s booming economies is leaving many mothers and children behind and putting children’s lives at risk, according to a new UN report. The UN’s report on the state of Asia’s Pacific’s children, released on Tuesday, highlighted growing concerns that children in India and China continue to suffer despite their countries’ economic gains. “The divide between rich and poor is rising at a troubling rate within sub-regions of Asia Pacific, leaving vast numbers of mothers and children at risk,” the report from Unicef, the UN children’s agency, said.

(more…)

3/8/08

It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the news on AIDS is more good than bad, said the Los Angeles Times in an editorial yesterday. Excerpts: Global health advocates can come off as a pretty crabby bunch. When the United Nations released its annual report on the worldwide AIDS epidemic this week, the reaction was mostly a lot of sniping about rich countries’ slow response to the problem, or the political factors that prevent money from being spent appropriately, or anger that the US government seems more interested in fighting the disease overseas than among African Americans at home.

(more…)