Every Minute of Every Day: Structural Violence and its Victims

Structural violence is the silent culprit. There is no gunfire, no mangled corpses. And though this claims more victims than war our refusal to confront it is steadfast and unrelenting. This term refers to those mechanisms of state and human affairs that produce poverty, repression, exploitation and death as the side-effects of development. In the name of progress, we have widened the gap between rich and poor. Recent reports declare that our violated planet can no longer sustain our current population, twenty three percent (1 557 100 000 people) of whom live on less than $1.00 a day. Most people’s chance of dying of poverty is 33% greater than of dying at war, while millions of others succumb to preventable disease. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has left entire nations without a workforce. While these vast and fundamental problems rage on, we are much too - and understandably so - preoccupied with the pressing issues of nuclear threats in East Asia and the Middle East, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and that ubiquitous economic recession. I would have imagined that in the midst of such a crisis this violent system would be confronted and fearlessly reformed. And yet our attention remains diverted and has thwarted even the United Nation’s most honest and noble efforts. In 2000, this organization and other willing affiliates pronounced the Millennium Development Goals; charting out eight issues that the global community would tackle and overcome by the year 2015: to end poverty and hunger, achieve universal education, institutionalize gender equality, promote child and maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, develop sustainable environmental policies and work in a spirit of global partnership. Each of these goals is sadly always left for better days. But “tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace […] to dusty death.” It never comes. And the trouble is, that these essential violations fuel the physical violence that assaults our attention. It is a vicious cycle, and by focusing on terrorism and economic bailouts for MNCs alone we treat only the symptom of a disease that will one day consume us all. During my research about the MDGs and their progress I was intrigued by the one that has seen the least of it: maternal health. Every minute of every day a woman in the developing world dies in childbirth; the World Health Organization estimates that this adds up to more than half a million women each year. I found two blogs dealing with the same issue; one by blogger Rowan Davies who participated in the G 20 Summit as part of Oxfam’s live Voice initiative, and the other by Aman, blogging for Word Press. My comments can be found at each of the respective sites as well as below.

Comment: G 20 in Perspective

Aman,
In your brief post, you highlight a fundamental and forgotten issue. As we grow senseless in the fear of economic collapse, governments around the world are pouring money into fledgling companies, pumping hundreds of billions of dollars into corrupt and greedy hands and simply delaying the closures and bankruptcies that will surely come. We have lost touch with the real issues and the real problems. An economic system that has allowed so many women to die in childbirth is a system that Must collapse and be reborn. Post-Cold War Capitalism is dead; and this may not be a bad thing. All of this so called progress, wealth and civilization has come at the cost of billions of people around the world whose reality cannot be reconciled with the lavish lifestyles and abuses we now see highlighted on media news screens. It is unseemly for me to believe that in the same world, a football player can be offered one hundred million pounds to play while millions die of cholera in Zimbabwe, of meningitis in Darfur and so many more wonder whether they will be able to afford a meal for their children tomorrow. I had such hopes that November’s historic and evocative election would bring forth this same realization in the halls of power. Instead of investing in the developing world, creating initiatives to develop effective treatments for the diseases that ravage the African continent and develop communities by educating and training health professionals, we throw mountains of cash on financial monsters that then slap us all across the face by giving bonuses to the architects of this fiasco. I do not believe that the answer to these tremendous problems faced by people in the developing world lies in aid. Humanitarian aid serves to belittle the incredible capacity and desire of local communities to propel themselves forward. Training and educational programs, such as the ones sponsored by the UK’s Department of International Development in Rwanda efficiently provide the knowledge and services so desperately required while fomenting local industries. It is this kind of economic investment that will lift the world out of its sorry state. The unexpected blast of the dramatic downturn we are drowning in has left us deaf and dumb. I hope that enough people will have the foresight to propose and enforce policies that concern themselves with the plight of the poorest and by investing in the health and education of women, create a new world order where socioeconomic gaps are finally bridged and economics service the many and not the few.

Comment: An abbreviation a day. Maybe an acronym if you're lucky.

Rowan,
While the West is far from finished reaping the economic catastrophe we have so irresponsibly sewn in the past decade, it is, as always, the developing world that will suffer the most for our overindulgent blunders. At the G 20 summit it was clear that world leaders are concerned with the plight of developing nations, and yet it seems that their response is inevitably misguided and problematic. Instead of providing funding for microfinance organizations and local development projects, governments threw money at the International Monetary Fund, whose Structural Adjustment Programs and one-size-fits-all policy prescriptions offer mixed results at best and at worst create what Joe Stiglitz terms “beggar thyself” cycles of inescapable poverty. It seems to me that, in the efforts of helping the developing world, the G 20 should have been mindful of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals and provide more focused and directed investment to effective programs that support education and health initiatives. As you well note, the "crash in the West" will make for disastrous effects abroad. Oxfam has been particularly vocal about the need for continued aid and investment. Do you not believe, however, that Bretton Woods institutions are the wrong channels through which we should be funding our efforts to develop, educate and empower? I am a fervent proponent of more creative, grassroots efforts that remain honest, transparent and do not get immobilized by red tape and politics. Women's issues have proven particularly responsive to these initiatives. Organizations such as Kiva are beautiful because those numbers become people in whose future we are implicated. It is by renewing these bonds, or perhaps forging them for the first time, that the developed and the developing will come together to build a shared and just world. It was Michelle Obama's speech to a crowd of schoolgirls this week that I found the most grounded and promising moment of the Presidential visit to London. It is in the hands of girls and women where we must place our hopes and our trust. I am always surprised by man's inhumanity to man - that such statistics as the ones you present can exist. If this economic crisis shows us anything, it is that the models of the past are null and void. Moving forward means moving away from them and towards real and grounded solutions that put us all in closer contact with each others' humanity.

Cultural Conundrums: Preserving Traditions While Upholding Human Rights

Since the beginning of my sociopolitical awakening, I have been irrevocably swayed by the argument that seeks to preserve and extol culture in the face of vacuous homogenization and synthetic mass production. In the hard-line games of power politics, however, this notion has long been forgotten, cast aside as a “soft” issue, unimportant in the arsenal of statecraft and industrialization. Culture was the argument of the weak and marginalized idealists who dreamed of a just, diverse and representative system of governance. And so, with zero appreciation for culture and its associates, the Bush Administration launched a myopic war into Iraq. From the innumerable tragedies and immeasurable flaws that followed we can draw the poignant lesson that culture and identity politics are not only part of the conversation, but play a pivotal and crucial role in international relations. Beyond the realization that understanding a people’s history, religion, traditions and values is as serious and necessary as geopolitical strategy, the appreciation for the beauty that every culture offers is becoming widely accepted throughout global civil society. Last November I had the privilege of being invited to participate at the annual SCUSA Conference held in West Point. As students from all over the world gathered to discuss global challenges and propose innovative solutions, we met several panelists who offered their own insight in the hopes of inspiring our work in the days to come. Dr. Azzam Karam of the UNFPA spoke on this issue in particular. I must admit that her argument troubled me deeply. Culture, she said, must be absolutely, unflinchingly, and totally respected. She made the point, for example, that genital mutilations, common in many African societies, are a right of passage for pubescent girls and cannot be replaced by any other ritual. It seems that, in our well-intended desire to preserve identities and empathize, we have somehow come to guise what can be described as nothing less than an atrocity in the regalia of culture, where it becomes untouchable and unquestionable. While craft, music, food, ritual and oral tradition must not be allowed to die out but be celebrated and perpetuated, we must all nevertheless learn to be discerning and condemn those aspects of culture that do not enrich, but humiliate, persecute and murder the innocent.

In this post, I will focus on one example of the problematics of culture. On March 18 Amnesty International revealed that an estimated 1,000 people in the Gambia had been imprisoned and tortured by paramilitary “witch hunters.” Amnesty suggested that the government has been laying charges of witchcraft against opposition members, rounding them up and forcing them to drink “hallucinogenic concoctions to confess witchcraft.” While news of government sponsored witch hunts is novel (though not surprising, since President Jammeh has also claimed to have found an herbal cure for HIV/AIDS), witch hunts that target children - even babies - have been occurring in Nigeria for some time now without Western advocacy groups taking notice. This long-held belief in witchcraft or "juju" has been manipulated and transformed by fear and ignorance into a powerful weapon against human rights. West Africa is a land of rich traditions and a societal fiber so fiercely solid that it has survived in spite of brutal civil wars, military dictatorships and unrivaled poverty. People guard their history and instill values and traditions in the younger generations, that they may be passed on and never forgotten. A belief in witchcraft is not new to this region. In recent years, however, children have become victims of their communities’ fear and the scapegoats for endemic poverty, illness, death and are even blamed for causing droughts and poor harvests (see above image). In the Niger Delta region of Nigeria this has become astonishingly widespread; with an estimated 15,000 children targeted in the Akwa Ibom province alone. Many blame the arrival of fundamentalist Evangelical groups to the region for these unprecedented witch-hunts. One of the country’s wealthiest preachers, Helen Ukpabio has even produced a film End of the Wicked in which children become possessed by demonic spirits and are pictured being “inducted into covens, eating human flesh and bringing chaos and death to their families.” She has also authored a book instructing parents to look for warning signs of possession such as crying during the night, fevers and poor health which are commonplace throughout the impoverished nation. Ignorance and hunger, if fueled by fear are an explosive combination. When this is exploited by preachers who charge up to $400 dollars for performing excruciating exorcisms (over half of the country’s population lives on less than $1 a day) we have a corrupt structure of abuse that must be called into question and destroyed.

Reports of children being mutilated, burned, stabbed with nails and savagely beaten by their own parents are easy to come by. Children who are accused of witchcraft are ostracized from their communities and often have nowhere to go. “Many of those branded "child-witches" are murdered - hacked to death with machetes, poisoned, drowned, or buried alive in an attempt to drive Satan out of their soul.” In a documentary, reporters from the Guardian taped the confession of a man calling himself “the Bishop” who claimed to have killed over one hundred and ten witches (he has since been brought to trial). Last week, a seven month old girl and her ten year old sister were accused of being witches and banished from their town. Some groups like the Child Rights and Rehabilitation Network (CRARN) and Stepping Stones have created shelters for the brutalized and abandoned children whom they can find (see above image). Governments must of course be held accountable, although corrupt regimes are seldom responsive to such internationalist demands. More importantly, however, the religious institutions promoting this insidiousness must be reached and called to recant and lead believers down a truly righteous path that respects the life of children. Local religious leaders hold an authority which no distant government can counter, and therefore are the cornerstone of any coherent solution.

It is unseemly for me to imagine mothers who burn and mutilate their own infants, and fathers who douse their sons with petrol and set them aflame. It is equally difficult for me to believe that these people act out of hatred. The weight that they bear in such extreme poverty, with death looming around every bend is too much for any person to endure; and so they turn to spiritual leaders who offer them a tangible answer to their suffering, exploit their lack of education and through the unmatched fear wielded by the power of religion drive these men and women, who are themselves victims of perverse systemic violence to commit the unthinkable. Advocacy groups such as Amnesty must look beyond the ranks of government and into the quotidian realms in order to also question and shine a light on the plight of these children. Tragically, some traditional beliefs are being twisted and turned criminal, not being revered and imparted. While we must strive as determinedly as ever to preserve the things that are vanishing and uplift cultural identities against the monolith of modernity, we must also question and sound an alarm when death and destruction come in their place.

Bashir and the ICC: The Repercussions of Indictment

Last week, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Omar Hassan al-Bashir (see left), the president of Sudan, indicting him on five counts of crimes against humanity and two counts of war crimes, saliently reviving age-old questions of sovereignty, international justice and the myriad of problems that lay within the attempt to reconcile the two. Since the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648, baptizing the nation state as a sovereign entity, quests for internationalism and cooperation have been thwarted by claims of this sacrosanct and supreme law. That being said, norms of international justice changed a great deal since the aftermath of the Second World War. The precedent-setting Nuremberg and Tokyo Trials internationalized questions of justice and made it clear that the international community is morally bound to try and adjudicate when national governments fail to deal out punishments to unforgivable crimes. In the wake of such unmatched devastation, states became increasingly concerned with human rights abuses and abusers, and also evermore willing to put offenders on trial. It had become clear that when dealing with crimes of immense magnitude or grievousness one is often dealing with government leaders themselves, illuminating an important legal dilemma between justice and sovereignty: immunity. Without overcoming this formidable barrier, nothing can truly be done. In one of its most revolutionary measures, the ICC states that no incumbent or retired head of state is immune to persecution. Bashir would be the first sitting head of state to be tried for war crimes. It is unlikely however that the Sudanese government will send him to the Hague and even less probable that the UN will go into Sudan to fetch him. In the wake of this news, the government expelled all humanitarian aid organizations providing relief in the troubled Darfur region and claimed that the ICC’s action was nothing more than thinly veiled colonialism. So my question is, is it worth it? Even if he is arrested, tried and convicted, will this at all quell the violence and unrest in the Sudan? I found two blogs that address the headline, one written by George Clooney, celebrity and prominent activist for action against the genocidal regime, and another by Martha Heinemann Bixby, director of Team Darfur and blogger for the Save Darfur coalition. My comments on each of these can be found below as well as at the respective sites.

Comment: "Nothing New to Report"

After the Holocaust, the world said, “never again”. But April of 1994 passed by dripping with the blood of hundreds of thousands of Rwandans, the UN retreated in fear, Clinton twiddled his thumbs, and it had happened again. The Genocide Convention demands action and intervention in the face of systematic killing and displacement, and so we are hesitant to label Darfur as such. The truth is, we do not care enough for the troubles of a distant land that an average American would be hard-pressed to find on a map. Instead we make promises: “never again” “not on our watch” and leave the dirty, worthy work to relief organizations who must be sworn to silence in order to provide what aid they can. While Bashir’s indictment is indeed a “window of hope”, is it one that will let in the winds of change? Or will it be another illusion of light that clouds over with the grime of negligence and forgetting? The immediate repercussions of the ICC’s actions have now resulted in the expulsion of organizations whose relief makes the difference between life and death for tens of thousands. Christophe Fournier, the president of Medecins Sans Frontiers fears that this will have a “devastating and immediate effect on the population”. News of their expulsion reached MSF at the same time as a meningitis outbreak was declared at the refugee camp in Kalma.

Meanwhile, the ICC lacks an army or police force and depends on States (both party and non party to the foundational Rome Statute) to participate and apprehend the defendant. Under Security Council Resolution 1593, Sudan has the obligation to cooperate with the ICC; whether the former will enforce this remains to be seen. The UN’s most recent decision to determine whether or not Sudan’s expulsion of aid groups in itself constitutes a war crime offers some hope that the organization is committed to act, though perhaps in a limited and ultimately insufficient manner to ensure that the government reverses its criminal decision. It is a tremendous shame that the fear and abuse experienced by so many has not been enough to rally the necessary support from those of us who look on to end this genocide without questioning. Humanity’s honor and dignity can decay no further when news media are more concerned with celebrity gossip than with reporting the many tragedies that unfold daily without an audience. The ICC has taken a small step whose progress depends entirely on the political will of states and the UN. Even if Bashir is tried, I fear that little will change for the people of Darfur, and that conflict could spread throughout the vast country if regional and international organizations are not prepared to step in and provide the necessary support for peace negotiations and stabilization. With China so present and steadfastly opposed to interventions that could mitigate its ludicrous profits in Sudan and the U.S. preoccupied with its impending economic collapse, it is a fine line upon which we must walk with care and conscious of the very real repercussions any miscalculation could have on an already devastated people.

Comment: “The arc of the moral universe is very long but it bends toward justice”

Darfur is the Rwanda of our time, and yet, despite the insurmountable shame of the world bearing witness without taking the necessary action, it seems we have learned very little from it. The UN Security Council has been faced with an existential crisis between its core missions and the political will of its member states. It seems to me that with China being such a crucial player, and so shamefully siding with Khartoum in claims of sovereignty and non-interference, the Security Council will be hard pressed to issue a statement demanding and supporting the necessary action. The ICC’s decision is indeed a “game changer” as you and Fowler suggest. But, is it enough? Many are looking to Obama to also throw the American muscle behind the Court’s decision; previous administrations, however, have worked diligently to challenge the creation of the ICC and thwart its jurisdiction. Though Obama’s policy shows signs of turning in a different direction: away from American Exceptionalism and towards international justice and cooperation. Many critics do not want the ICC to hold sway over American troops, who would then be subject to prosecution should they violate the Geneva Convention and other Human Rights statutes. Even if Obama looks away from impending economic doom to voice support for the Court and its indictment of Bashir and the UN Security Council do the same and offer the corresponding support, what effect will this have on the ground when there is no will to enforce and no capacity to send the necessary manpower? The Sudanese government has already issued threats of killing and maiming any and all who support the court and undermine the government. As Fowler suggests, these threats must be countered with international assurances that “such actions will be met with swift and severe consequences”. While this is undoubtedly a worthy call, I wonder how realistic these expectations are. Who is going to intervene?

The ICC’s indictment has caused the government to protest by expelling critical humanitarian aid agencies and organizations working in severely troubled regions. The IRC reports that in the Kalma Camp of southern Darfur alone, “this will leave 91,000 people without essential medical services” while “100,000 will be without clean drinking water”. So while it is imperative that justice be dealt to the chief orchestrator of mass rape, murder and displacement, what effect will this have on the very people Bashir has persecuted? Khartoum’s genocidal policies cannot be the work of this one man alone, so if he is removed, does the abuse end? If the ICC fails to apprehend him and the matter goes no further, where does that leave the people of Darfur? This crisis will not be resolved by Bashir’s apprehension, though it is no doubt a positive step, but rather, requires massive and radical support from the UN and regional organizations; which essentially amounts to a multilateral invasion that unseats those currently in office and oversees the stabilization of effective institutions and practices. This is unsavory to everyone who would need to be involved. With Bashir indicted, fears that the peace process will stall and the fragile truce between north and south will collapse once more into civil war – all of which are consequences the structures of agency and enforcement capacity in the international community is simply not prepared to deal with. So, is it worth it?

The Post Drug War Mentality: Why Peace Begs Legalization

An incessant violence, increasingly brutal and widespread has taken hold over a beautiful and once safe country. For decades it was the beacon of stability in a tumultuous region gripped by dictatorship. But now Mexico faces collapse, threatened by drug cartels who wield more power than the fledgling government. In a recent report published by the Joint Operating Forces Command, army and intelligence officials fear that Mexico could implode into a failed state. It seems that only the potentially nuclear threat of an unstable Pakistan rivaled concerns over currently escalating cycles of violence and the government’s failure to bring stability. While many Latin American journalists have been quick to denounce these projections, pointing to Mexico's history of robust institutions and rule of law, it would be naive to pretend like the country faces anything but an existential crisis. In 2008 alone, over five thousand lives were lost to drug related violence, a number that qualifies the situation as low intensity civil war. In response to this, President Calderon has sent tens of thousands of troops to border towns such as Juarez in the hope of fighting fire with fire. This however, is not the answer; the problem is much more fundamental. For every drug lord killed there are ten ready and willing to take his (or her) place and be twice as vicious as the one who fell. The power of the cartels stems from the illicit nature of the material they traffic. To blunt the violence, the government will have to begin to seriously consider legalizing the substances that have brought so much bloodshed upon its people. Though Calderon has made a timid proposal to decriminalize possession of small amounts of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamine, he will soon be forced to take on more drastic and unpopular options.

Recent security concerns are the visible sores and symptoms of a trade that will never be irradicated or even diminished. Daily decapitations and kidnappings may hold Mexican headlines hostage today, but ten years ago they found their home in Colombia. The drug production, trafficking and related violence that had paralyzed Medellin and Bogota in the 1980s was met with brutal, and eventually successful retaliations. Stifled, it traveled north and flourished in the ample spaces provided by corruption and endemic poverty. Helped by the United States' Plan Colombia, transit points in Mexico became the hubs of production and trafficking. With “drug syndicates controlling about 8% of global GDP”, these cartels have massive amounts of capital, and have armed themselves with state of the art weaponry including submarines and rocket missiles. Rule of law has been replaced by the rule of the gun. Meanwhile, the security forces that should be protecting citizens are often indistinguishable from the drug cartels they should be fighting whether through greed or intimidation. Officers are often given the choice of “Plata o Plomo” (Silver or a Bullet) and are easily bought into complicity. Entire municipal elections are now rigged through bribery and coercion. Only last week, the police chief of Juarez was forced to resign after the local cartel threatened that one police officer would be killed every forty-eight hours until his resignation. These same organizations are suspected to be behind massive protests in the border region calling on the government to remove military forces, proving that they can pressure not only politicians but entire populations. During Independence Day celebrations in Morelia, several bombs exploded and wounded unsuspecting crowds , raising fears that a fatal nexus between organized crime and terrorism is emerging here, too. The 2004 Madrid train bombings that were linked to Al Qaeda were carried out by a Moroccan drug trafficking network. We all have much to fear from such marriages of convenience – where acts of ideological and religious terror now have boundless funding.

Targeting the demand curve of this perverse equation is wasting energy. The reality is that people use drugs - always have, always will. Freud would suggest that society necessitates intoxication. In civilization, essentially, we are unhappy, and therefore inevitably turn to drugs for fleeting comfort. This he argues is an inescapably human quality, not something that can be constrained by law and order. These substances provide individuals an outlet of relief to counter the constant oppression of civilization, which we have paradoxically constructed to deter our life-quest for fulfillment and happiness. Prohibition in the United States saw, not only no decrease in the amount of alcohol people consumed but dramatic increases in violence and organized crime. Dissatisfaction is ubiquitous, and modern liberal constructs have attempted to channel it; but prostitution, pornography and drugs have never gone away. Despite the laws we codify to cement the rigid structures of our legal rational society, there are instinctual drives that people will simply never evolve past. Controlled substances, like religion, allow us to suffer the daily wretchedness and therefore play an important social function.

I am not proposing that a society of drug addicts is desirable, merely acknowledging that drug use is as rampant as it is intractable, and must therefore lose its stigma and become accepted and, more crucially, regulated by governmental agencies. Making something illegal only increases the economic profit that can be made off its illicit trade. De-incentivize, and business will be taken out of the hands of violent gangs and into pharmacies. The movement to legalize is no longer one clung to by stoners and hippies, but must be taken somberly by the voices of peace and development, understanding that the puritanical refusal to take this on will come at the bloody cost of too many lives. Theory only supports the cold hard facts, which are: drug consumption levels do not increase in societies that legalize and control substances; the control of these substances not only provides the government with massive amounts of revenue, crucial in the midst of rising unemployment and financial collapse, but ensure that the substances provided are clean and relatively safe for consumption. Like with alcohol, careful regulation would be necessary, as it is for legal prescription medications (that can be as detrimental and addictive as illicit ones). Driving under the Influence, for example, would remain a punishable offense. From Holland to India, the world is slowly realizing that criminalizing drugs has an equal opposite effect. Illicit drugs have been the bane of Latin America’s existence; fueling corruption and retarding development, and it is time to re-conceptualize and re-prioritize our values.

The drug trade is here to stay. If production is stifled in one area it will simply flow to another. Making it illegal benefits the cartels in Mexico and Colombia, but also the Taleban in Afghanistan and Hizbollah in Lebanon. By clinging to obsolete moralities we with one hand feed the monster we are trying to defeat. The reactionary argument (spearheaded by the Catholic Church) that discounts legalization on moral grounds must reconcile itself with reality. People who get high will keep getting high. Is it not then time to relinquish the stale argument that pretends to make of society something it is not? The many decapitated heads rolled into clubs have long divorced this position from relevancy. It is now a matter of life or death. The Mexican government has no power in its current war against the cartels. The only choice it has to make is whether or not it will make the difficult decisions necessary to keep the state standing. It either legalizes the source and controls it, preserving itself, or collapses at the mercy of this boundless profit-driven violence. Institutionalized corruption must be tackled, as Calderon has attempted to do as part of his plan to democratize and make the system more transparent. In the face of such violence, however, this is simply impossible, and will not make for peaceful streets (see image above). Morality is a force for good when it propels us forward, but can become a dangerous veil that keeps us from seeing the truths that lay on the other side of it. Reality is ugly and, if indeed we are willing to examine the underbelly of this beast and confront it in the hopes of saving lives and restoring peace and security, then unsavory choices must be made.

Days after this post was first published, The Economist wrote the following article: How To Stop The Drug War

I am Diaspora; The Challenges and Consequences of Displacement

In recent weeks, the New York Times and Amnesty International have been reporting on the plight of Rohingyan refugees seeking asylum in neighboring countries. The Rohingya people live in the northern Rakhine State of Myanmar and have been effectively denied citizenship and civil rights; often subjected to forced labor and forced evictions. Myanmar itself suffers from severe underdevelopment while its people live under the constant shadow of conflict and dictatorial repression. The military junta (the State Law and Order Restoration Council) that has held power since 1978 is no stranger to human rights violations of the most egregious kind. This minority at risk has become a stateless diaspora, forced to flee their native land in panic, pleading with Bangladeshi, Thai and Malaysian officials to grant them refugee status and protection, joining so many others in the painful pages of history. The team at The Human Trafficking Project has dutifully followed this story, exploring the intermediary and often fatal role human traffickers play in the clandestine transportation of these Rohingya refugees. Upon reading this story and conducting some research on the matter, I was reminded of the Tamil minority in Sri Lanka, whose oppression lead to the creation of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam (LTTE), a terrorist organization that has been fighting for an independent Tamil homeland and found a Sri Lankan blogger from the Forgotten Diaries project who examines the heavy consequences of conflict on a fractured society. Both communities exist as less than human beings in their nation state, and are often forced to leave everything behind in the hopes of merely surviving and leading a dignified life. Happily, I found two blogs that deal with this issue from different angles, bringing unexpected nuances and questions to the very complicated issue of displaced persons. One author looks at a humanitarian crisis making headlines today, while the other examines the social repercussions of one that has been raging for decades on end. Both examine and humanize the experience of displacement.

Comment: “MPs blame human Traffickers for Rohingya”

Your post explores the overlooked role that human traffickers play in the midst of this chaotic displacement of the Rohingya from Myanmar into neighboring states. Present day repression of the Rohingya minority is only the latest development in the government’s attempt to homogenize in the hopes of strengthening their threatened power. I find that it has been helpful to contextualize this current targeting and abuse of an ethnic minority by taking a look at the government’s consistent history of such behavior in order to gain some insight as to the possible outcomes of this scenario. In the 1990s, faced with several secessionist movements in outlying areas of the country the government engaged in brutal tactics to repress and eventually co-opt various groups' attempts to secede. The SLORC went so far as to legalize opium productions fueling rebel movements so that their income be cut, thereby flooding the global market with heroin, which became the "it" drug of the decade throughout Europe. The Christian Karen group near the country’s border with Thailand has been under siege for decades. The public repression of Buddhist monks last year decidedly reveals that this government will not respond to pressure be it internal or international. Amnesty International has published a letter encouraging increased demands on Myanmar to cease its violent policy towards the Rohingya, but I would argue that this is clearly not the avenue through which consequential action will be engendered. The government views its projects of eradicating “non Burmese” elements as a road to peace and development when in reality they are little more than ethnic cleansing campaigns. The problem becomes more complicated when already impoverished countries like Bangladesh are faced with a massive influx of refugees, placing incredible strains on an economy still recovering from a cyclone that killed 140,000 last spring.

Given the complete economic degradation of these states, I would venture to say that the human trafficking element of this story will not be dealt with. However, perhaps the Rohingya will not feel the need to seek the services of such East Asian coyotes if international organizations step in to
provide the necessary space and provisions for their survival. Dhaka fears that inviting such help from the UN would threaten diplomatic relations with neighboring Myanmar. Although I believe that Amnesty’s call to respect human rights will fall on the dictatorship’s deaf ears, the call for neighbors who are party to the Land of the Sea Treaty to rescue people fleeing on flimsy rafts is an interesting way to make a potent case for regional involvement. The two hundred plus deaths of refugees forcibly deported from Thailand could not showcase this more clearly. Perhaps if Bangladesh is fearful of alienating its neighbor and trading partner, then more stable nations like India, Malaysia, and even Thailand, can ask the UNHCR for support in order to protect these people not only from their government, but from the risks of fleeing from its oppression as well. Those depraved enough to seek profit from such misery may not be thwarted by moral arguments. It is therefore crucial to ensure that those fleeing from violence are not desperate enough to fall into their hands.

Comment: “On Distrust, Suspicion and Personal Friendships: Understanding the Effects of a Socially Protracted Conflict”

Aacharya, I was both intrigued and moved by your post. What you write resonates in conflict-ridden nations around our planet, where war and alienation become the defining characteristics of life. I am reminded, for example, of Colombia where guerrilla and government have fought inconclusively for over forty years, with the ideological call to battle that urged the FARC and others forward a distant and irrelevant theme. And yet the conflict rages on unabated, claiming lives and making living unbearable. The Democratic Republic of Congo as well is under constant siege, its citizens beleaguered by almost twenty years of ethnic conflict fueled by the lucrative economic opportunities that can exist amid such chaos. People fight because it becomes more profitable than peace. People kill because of positions that have been senselessly ingrained in them, without ever really knowing why they fight at all. Children are born, grow up, and know nothing but the savagery of war.


In countries like your own when the engine behind conflict is an ethnic and/or religious divide, the consequences are, as you so aptly note, absorbed into the very social fabric of the culture. A divide is always there, as people define themselves in terms of their differences instead of their commonalities. As positions become increasingly extreme, they also become more entrenched, making negotiation and sustainable peace that much more difficult to secure. I would argue, however, that much hope is to be found in the young and future generations. Such optimism is of course contingent on the development of serious negotiations that yield satisfactory results, providing the Tamil and other minorities equal rights under the law and repealing the problematic Sinhala Only legislation. If and when such progress is made, then perhaps the secessionist cause can be slowly abandoned. An implication of the point you make in terms of social distrust, however, would become increasingly relevant in such a scenario, for peace is not something that is brokered by authorities, but can only truly flourish when it is in the hearts of the people invested in it. This is something that, indeed, takes a paradigm shift, a reconstruction of the most basic perceptions of the “self” and the “other”. The fruits of multi-track diplomacy however, teach us, that bringing children together in something as obvious as a soccer team has very positive repercussions in the long-term peace process because you have a chance to build from the ground up and create, if not unity, at least friendship and understanding in the place of suspicion and fickle bonds. I would point you to a fantastic book entitled Peacemakers in Action that shares the stories of committed and ordinary people in conflict zones that approach this difficult subject in innovative and truly moving ways, bringing beauty and hope to lands so wrecked and hearts so ravaged and renewing that driver of human spirits: hope.

Let the Children Die; The Girl Soldiers Who are Left Behind

As the once invincible structures of western capitalism verge on collapse, some industries are thriving. Human trafficking rakes in about seven billion dollars annually and continues to see healthy increases in its profits. Last week, the United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) published a report on Trafficking in Human Persons that offers some disturbing insight into this rampant phenomenon. Sexual exploitation accounts for 79% of human trafficking, though, as the UNODC report acknowledges, this may well be simply because prostitution is the only visible face of this chimera. The rest happens in the fog of war or in countries where there is neither legislation nor enforcement capacity and where social stigmas prevent victims from persecuting offenders. The recruitment of child soldiers is one of the forgotten facets of this tragedy. Even more overlooked are the cases where young girls are recruited, becoming both victim and victimizer. It is estimated that there are over 300,000 girl child soldiers throughout Europe, Africa, Latin America and East Asia.

Children of both genders are abducted, ripped away from screaming mothers or dragged away from their lifeless and violated corpses. And then they themselves are turned into ruthless killers. As induction, it is common practice to have the new arrivals kill other children who are tied helplessly to a chair. Those who refuse are used as target practice for the rest. In P.W. Singer's haunting book Children at War he records the confession of a boy, aged six, who along with his brigade tied two "women down with their legs eagle-spread and took a sharpened stick and jabbed them inside their wombs until the babies came out on the stick." This story is not exceptional. Child soldiers quickly become the most brutal fighters; violence is the only thing they know. The younger the child is, the easier it becomes to erase all sense of morality. So young, they know no fear, no wrong and are therefore often more daring and less forgiving than the adults they fight with. Such frenzy is fueled by rampant drug use.

For girls, the trauma is two fold. In battle, they too are soul-less killers. In the camps, however, they are taken as sex slaves and turned into "war wives." Should the daily violations they endure result in pregnancy, the girls are forced to abort using sticks and guns. If not, they continue to be sent into battle, with infants strapped to their back. The Tamil Tigers of Sri Lanka were the first to establish "Baby Brigades" made up of children sixteen and younger; roughly half of these forces are female. The Maoist insurgency in Nepal and the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda are also notorious for targeting young girls. In the remote instance that international peacekeeping forces intervene to remove children from conflict zones, the girls are left behind, claimed by their husbands and denied the psychological counseling they would require in order to, perhaps, reclaim their stolen humanity. Should they be lucky enough to escape the battlefield, they become ostracized members of society; even relatives will not take them back, labeling them as "unclean and promiscuous."

In unraveling this bloody Gordian knot, we are faced with a multiplicity of problems. The United Nations' Convention on the Rights of the Child, for example, is a feeble attempt to curb this supreme violation of human rights. It is however, a first step, a well-guided attempt to alleviate the ills of conflict. The United States is, shamefully, not signatory to this treaty, which seeks to remove child soldiers from conflict and attempt to rehabilitate these broken souls. Current programs lack funding and people, and though governments may be party to this agreement and refuse to enlist any soldiers under the age of eighteen, the true perpetrators are beyond their control. Heavy recruiting often happens in anti government guerrillas and militias. Recent reports find that in nine countries both government and guerrillas recruit children. Non-state actors are three times as likely to induct children into their ranks.

So, how do we control forces that are battling against everything a sitting government stands for? They will not follow any protocol imposed by UN resolutions or any other such measure. This means nothing to them. In countries that are drowning in bloodshed, where is the space to provide the necessary help, even with all the money in the world backing programs and professionals willing and capable to save the innocent? Where do you begin to rebuild when all is torn asunder, when war is the only reality? In Liberia and Sierra Leone, where child soldiers made their entrance into the global consciousness, there is some semblance of stability. But the question remains, even in peace, how do you rebuild a shattered soul? When these kids have been utterly dehumanized, when their every instinct and reflex is violent, do you risk the well-being of classmates? Do you isolate them? After years of committing unimaginable atrocities, how do you bring them back into society when many times, society refuses them? How do you counsel girls who fear coming forward as rape victims? They all become an intractable part of a vicious, demonic cycle of violence that makes true development unattainable. In places like the Democratic Republic of Congo, conflict simply sees no end. A land so rich in resources, so poor in infrastructural and human development is raped time and time again; looted so that I can write this post on my laptop computer. As long as there is war, there is rape, there is abuse, and amidst all this suffering there is precious little room for hope and progress. Every survivor is left with the ghosts of loss and guilt to lead hollow lives. How do you end such a war?

These children are in desperate need of help from local peers and elders. In many countries women's organizations are forming, encouraging victims to congregate and share their stories, so that they might at least find solace in the company of others. In Uganda, a UNICEF sponsored organization has taken root and flourished. Empowering Hands creates awareness about the plight of child soldiers and helps to deconstruct the problematic social stigma surrounding female abductees. Through dance and musical performances, they raise money to help members start small businesses, allowing many women the economic empowerment to emancipate themselves and find hope. Over two thousand former child soldiers have been saved through this program and others like it. (see bottom, right)

Child soldiering has been in vogue in the West for some time, featured in the movie Blood Diamond, in novels, and magazine articles. So perhaps a few wealthy westerners will donate money, shed a tear and then move on. But nothing changes. We have become experts at pretending to care, and yet miserably and shamefully fail to provide the necessary action. We do nothing, or just enough to ease our own conscience and then turn the other cheek. If we do not stand up for the rights and protection of children, then how can we call ourselves civilized? Stealing a child's innocence and ripping his or her human dignity to unrecognizable pieces is the most despicable act. We must take the work of effective organizations seriously and support their efforts with funding and personnel. If enough people are trained and can participate in the rehabilitation of their destroyed society, then perhaps a road for peace can be cleared out of the indiscriminate wreckage of war.

Welcome to Witness: Introducing Resources, Establishing Direction and Encouraging Action

A professor once asked me, how many people died on September 11, 2001? About three thousand, I replied. No, he said, over seventeen thousand people died that day from malnutrition. I do not, by any means, intend to mitigate the horrors of that particular day, or any other traumatic and violent event like it. Merely, I hope to excavate the tragedies that we have grown immune to and accept as the collateral damage of the status quo. In a world of informational ADD, it is solely the crises exploding into chaos that are recognized by the press and given credence, often addressed once possible solutions lie within a range of terrible and unsatisfactory options. Our planet is in its eleventh hour, its survival contingent on the choices our generations make. Ninety six percent of the conflicts raging on today are waged with small arms and light weapons that cost less than a loaf of bread. Terrorist networks and organized crime are joining forces to fund activity through illicit drug trade and credit card fraud. The earth’s lakes and rivers are turning to desert. People are hungry and homeless, while world population goes nowhere but up. The state is losing power to all of these forces, and it is therefore up to global civil society to take action. That is you. The first step towards action is knowledge. Here you will find the disregarded stories of struggling diasporas, unending warfare and genocidal practices that are the daily realities of millions around the world as my upcoming posts will show.

In order lend legitimacy to my impassioned argument I will supplement my own relevant coursework and research with current and compelling online resources ranging from personal accounts of women in conflict zones, to the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission. The work of committed NGOs such as Amnesty International and CARE will reinforce the action-focused element of this blog and provide respected and recognized information. The task of mending this broken planet cannot be undertaken faithfully without the voices and participation of the local individuals and communities most directly impacted by poverty, war, and environmental decay. To this end, I search through websites like Jeunafrique and blogs such as Forgotten Diaries. In assessing the relevance and credibility of the websites I will be looking to for guidance and support throughout my blogging ventures, I have followed the Webby Awards criteria that evaluate the content, structure and navigation, visual design, functionality, interactivity, and overall experience of a site. When searching through the blogosphere, I abide by IMSA criteria and consider who the blogger is, what type of materials he/she is referencing, whether or not the blog is established as part of an online community, if the content is covered thoroughly, how sophisticated the writing is, the currency of the posts and whether or not there is a clear bias or position that is taken. These sources and many more can be found on my Linkroll.

It is in the interest of the powerful to subjugate; and subjugation can only happen when there is silence, complicit ignorance and passivity. I am here to make some noise and hope that you, too, will fight the good fight in whatever capacity moves you in order to–finally–heal, develop, and move forward in our shared humanity.