2015년 11월 18일 수요일
2015년 11월 15일 일요일
International Conference at UM Focuses on Global Conflict Management
OXFORD, Miss. – A prestigious annual event that encourages the development of peace analysis and conflict management around the globe is meeting at the University of Mississippi’s the Inn at Ole Miss this weekend.
David Carter of Princeton University answers questions after speaking at the 49th Annual North American meeting of the Peace Science Society (International). Photo by Kevin Bain/Ole Miss Communications
The 49th Peace Science Society International Conference, which began Thursday (Nov. 12) and ends Saturday (Nov. 14), focuses on how social science theory relates to international relations. Presenters included scholars and experts from a wide variety of fields.
Representing UM as participants are Jeffery Carter, assistant professor of political science; Benjamin Jones, assistant professor of international relations; and Susan Allen, associate professor of political science.
“The Peace Science Society Annual Conference is one of the largest conferences featuring rigorous academic research on peace, violence and conflict around the world,” said Carter, one of the event’s organizers and presenters. “The University of Mississippi is honored to host the conference for the first time in this region.”
http://news.olemiss.edu/international-conference-um-focuses-global-conflict-management/
Syrian legislator praises elements of international plan to end conflict
DAMASCUS, Syria – A Syrian legislator has praised parts of an incomplete international plan for ending Syria's conflict.
Omar Ossi, who heads parliament's national reconciliation committee, told The Associated Press Sunday that the plan has many points that "run in harmony" with President Bashar Assad's position that combatting "terrorism" should be a priority.
Ossi called the plan "a victory for Syrian policy and diplomacy."
Foreign ministers of 19 nations agreed in Vienna Saturday to an ambitious yet incomplete plan that sets a Jan. 1 deadline for the start of negotiations between Assad's government and opposition groups.
Neither the Syrian government nor opposition groups were present at the talks, which brought together the main foreign backers of both sides.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/15/syrian-legislator-praises-elements-international-plan-to-end-conflict/
Muslims are not the reason for Paris attacks
MUSLIMS NOT TO BE BLAMED FOR INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT, REITERATES THE WORLD IN LIGHT OF PARIS ATTACKS [VIDEO]
Muslims are not the reason for Paris attacks, is the message that seems to pervade social media two days after the French capital had to endure one of its worst nightmares of the post-war era.
In the aftermath of Paris attacks, people all around the world and belonging to all faiths, have reiterated that the blame for growing international conflict cannot be put squarely on Muslims, or people belonging to the Islamic faith.
A day after ISIS took responsibility for the ghastly attacks on Paris, ordinary Muslims feared a backlash, fueled by Islamophobia and misinformation. However, as is often the case, racial bigotry got a slap on its face when people took to social media to express not only their solidarity with the victims of Paris attacks, but also their solidarity with Muslims.
A Facebook post from Leigh Matthews, a graphic designer from Wales, in which he urged people to restrain from condemning ordinary Muslims for the attacks, has had more than 50,000 shares. In the post, Matthews asked people not to give in to racial prejudice in harrowing times such as these. His full post reads as follows.
http://www.inquisitr.com/2567706/muslims-not-to-be-blamed-for-international-conflict-reiterates-the-world-in-light-of-paris-attacks-video/
2015년 11월 12일 목요일
2015년 11월 11일 수요일
2015년 11월 9일 월요일
Indonesia fires are a world crisis
The timing is accidental but impeccable. Just as governments are about to launch an unprecedented effort to curb global greenhouse-gas emissions, one of the biggest carbon-dioxide gushers ever known has erupted with record force. At times during the past several weeks, fires in Indonesia have released as much carbon as the entire U.S. economy, even as they have destroyed millions of acres of tropical forest, a natural carbon sink. Neighboring countries, along with economic giants such as the U.S., China and Europe, have to join forces to turn off this tap.
Indonesia, which contains the third most tropical rainforest on earth, has long suffered from devastating rates of deforestation, losing more than 15 million acres from 2000 to 2012. After a brief decline, fires have flared during this year’s dry season, fed by an El Nino weather pattern, as companies and small cultivators burn to clear land on Sumatra and Borneo. The blazes have charred more than 4 million acres of forest and farmland and spread a choking haze as far as the Philippines and Thailand.
Halting such fires — which have been an annual occurrence for more than two decades, although rarely on this scale — isn’t easy. While the Indonesian government has renewed a moratorium on clearing forests and peatlands, local officials continue to profit from looking the other way. Such enforcement problems can be overcome, however, as Brazil demonstrated when it reduced deforestation by 76 percent from 2004 to 2012. The world has good reason to help Indonesia do the same: Preserving the country’s forests and peatlands could lower global carbon emissions by half a gigaton annually by 2030.
Money isn’t the main need. In 2011, Norway set up a $1 billion fund to reward Indonesia’s efforts to save its forests. Yet only $50 million has been disbursed so far, because the Indonesian government hasn’t made enough progress against deforestation to unlock the money. The U.S. and other countries could provide technology to monitor forests more precisely, so that culprits can’t so easily escape scrutiny. More important in the long run, aid and technical assistance could help small-scale farmers raise their yields, making it unnecessary for them to clear-cut more land. After all, the pressure to burn will last only as long as it makes economic sense.
http://www.centredaily.com/2015/11/06/5002259/indonesia-fires-are-a-world-crisis.html
UK suffering 'identity crisis' on world stage: Study
LONDON: Britain is becoming "increasingly insular and self-absorbed", as revealed by its impotence in the Syria and Ukraine crises and its "ambivalence" towards the European Union, a report said on Monday.
The country should give up its obsession "with its supposed past glories" and instead seek to reinvent itself as an "enabler of cooperation" on the world stage, said the report, authored by former diplomats and leading academics.
"Sidelined in Syria, ineffective in Ukraine, unwilling in Europe, inimical on refugees. A crisis of confidence has become a crisis of identity," said the report, commissioned by the London School of Economics (LSE).
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/UK-suffering-identity-crisis-on-world-stage-Study/articleshow/49725781.cms
The country should give up its obsession "with its supposed past glories" and instead seek to reinvent itself as an "enabler of cooperation" on the world stage, said the report, authored by former diplomats and leading academics.
"Sidelined in Syria, ineffective in Ukraine, unwilling in Europe, inimical on refugees. A crisis of confidence has become a crisis of identity," said the report, commissioned by the London School of Economics (LSE).
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/UK-suffering-identity-crisis-on-world-stage-Study/articleshow/49725781.cms
Indonesia’s carbon-spewing fires becoming world crisis
The timing is accidental but impeccable. Just as governments are about to launch an unprecedented effort to curb global greenhouse-gas emissions, one of the biggest carbon-dioxide gushers ever known has erupted with record force. At times during the past several weeks, fires in Indonesia have released as much carbon as the entire U.S. economy, even as they destroyed millions of acres of tropical forest, a natural carbon sink. Neighboring countries, along with economic giants such as the U.S., China and Europe, have to join forces to turn off this tap.
Indonesia, which contains the third most tropical rainforest on earth, has long suffered from devastating rates of deforestation, losing more than 15 million acres from 2000 to 2012. After a brief decline, fires have flared during this year’s dry season, fed by an El Nino weather pattern, as companies and small cultivators burn to clear land on Sumatra and Borneo.
The blazes have charred more than 4 million acres of forest and farmland and spread a choking haze as far as the Philippines and Thailand.
While the Indonesian government has renewed a moratorium on clearing forests and peatlands, local officials continue to profit from looking the other way. Such enforcement problems can be overcome, however, as Brazil demonstrated when it reduced deforestation by 76 percent from 2004 to 2012. The world has good reason to help Indonesia do the same.
http://www.theolympian.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/article43506357.html
2015년 11월 8일 일요일
2015년 11월 5일 목요일
2015년 11월 3일 화요일
2015년 11월 2일 월요일
Kerry prodding Central Asian nations on human rights as they combat Islamic State recruitment
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan – On a tour of Central Asia, Secretary of State John Kerry is hoping to prod the former Soviet republics of the region toward greater democracy and respect for human rights even as they work to snuff out funding and recruiting by the Islamic State group that has spread to the region.
He meets with top officials from all five nations Sunday in the ancient Silk Road city of Samarkand, Uzbekistan.
Kerry began his five-day visit of the region in Kyrgyzstan on Saturday, where he met the president and foreign minister of a government that has been a bright spot for democracy in a largely autocratic area of the world. He praised recent parliamentary elections and expressed regret for the State Department's awarding of its annual Human Rights Award to an ethnic Uzbek journalist and activist serving a life sentence in prison for stirring up "ethnic hatred."
Azimzhan Askarov had devoted his life to documenting rights violations of Uzbeks in Kyrgyzstan. The honor was meant to reflect Askarov's life work, Kerry stressed, not to offend the Kyrgyz government. It responded in July by lambasting the U.S. and dissolving a 22-year-old cooperation agreement with the United States.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/11/01/kerry-prodding-central-asian-nations-on-human-rights-as-combat-islamic-state/
LGBT Voices for Equality: Kyrgyzstan
Most Americans would have a hard time finding Kyrgyzstan on a map, let alone telling you about its geopolitical environment. But those who care about human rights should take note of what’s happening there. A sweeping homophobic bill is on the verge of becoming law.
Last year members of the Kyrgyz Parliament, the Jogorku Kenesh, introduced legislation that would criminalize any public expression that could "create a positive attitude to unconventional sexual orientation." The bill emulates Russia's 2013 propaganda law, but goes even further.
People could go to jail for expressing the most basic sentiments about their own identities.
The bill has received overwhelming support from lawmakers, easily passing two of the three required legislative readings. It is unclear when the final reading will take place, but there is little chance of serious opposition. It appears that only President Almazbek Atambayev will be able stop the bill from becoming law.
The bill is already having a chilling effect on LGBT life in Kyrgyzstan. Bias-motivated violence has increased, attacks on NGOs have been documented, and incidents of police enforcing the bill, even though it is not yet law, have been reported. If President Atambayev signs the bill, there is little doubt that the situation will get much worse.
http://www.humanrightsfirst.org/blog/lgbt-voices-equality-kyrgyzstan
Canada's Arms Sales To Ukraine Opposed By Human Rights Groups
OTTAWA — Two human-rights groups have teamed up to oppose a plan by the outgoing Conservative government to allow the sale of so-called prohibited weapons to Ukraine, including automatic assault rifles and armoured vehicles.
Amnesty International Canada and Project Ploughshares have written to the Department of Foreign Affairs expressing concern about the potential consequences of adding the embattled eastern European government to the list of countries to which Canada can sell automatic firearms.
There are 39 countries on Canada's automatic firearms country control list, including Saudi Arabia, to whom General Dynamics Land Systems in London, Ont., recently sold $13 billion in armoured vehicles despite the opposition of human rights groups.
Foreign Affairs has been in the process of consulting on the Ukraine proposal since it was introduced last summer, around the time Prime Minister Stephen Harper signed a free trade agreement with the country's prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2015/11/02/human-rights-groups-team-up-to-oppose-canada-selling-arms-to-ukraine_n_8454372.html
2015년 11월 1일 일요일
New Ontario Human Rights commissioner Renu Mandhane vows aggressive approach
If there is one thing to know about Renu Mandhane, it is that, a few years ago, she was the victim of a hit-and-run accident, in which her vehicle was struck and the offending motorist’s licence plate fell off in the process.
Mandhane assumed police would trace the plate back to the driver and immediately worried why someone would flee. Maybe the driver had no immigration status and might face deportation if found out, she told Rishi Malkani, her husband.
His reaction, according to Mandhane, went something like this: “Are you kidding me? Are you on his side? He hit your car and our child was in the car and he took off?”
The story underscores the empathy and compassion friends, colleagues and family say 38-year-old Mandhane — academic, lawyer, High Park-Junction resident, mother of two young boys, front line international human rights advocate — brings to her new job as the province’s top domestic rights watchdog, chief commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission.
“It was that moment where I realized, wow, I’m hard-wired to really think about the underdog and the perspective of people who are less privileged than I am.”
Her brother, Piush Mandhane, an Edmonton pediatrician and medical researcher, says Renu “always had a sense of ethics and what is right and wrong. And she’s always been willing to stand up for what she believes in.
http://www.thestar.com/news/insight/2015/11/01/new-ontario-human-rights-commissioner-renu-mandhane-vows-aggressive-approach.html
US Secretary of State skirts human rights in Central Asia
SAMARKAND, Uzbekistan, Nov 1 — US Secretary of State John Kerry met Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov today, in a rare high-level US encounter with an autocratic ruler often criticised for his human rights record.
The two held talks in the ancient city of Samarkand on the fringes of a diplomatic gathering of Kerry and his five Central Asian counterparts aimed at reassuring them of Washington’s continued engagement in a region seen as exposed to militant Islam.
Most of the five former Soviet republics have poor human rights records, and US officials say Kerry, on his four-day trip, is urging Central Asian leaders to expand basic freedoms. But such issues are not likely to dominate his agenda.
“The United States does support the sovereignty and territorial integrity and independence of each country that’s represented here,” he said at the start of the foreign ministers’ meeting.
That message has taken on greater importance as Washington draws down its forces in Afghanistan, concerns mount about the threat to the region from Islamic State, and Russia, fresh from forays into Ukraine and Syria, reasserts its influence.
It was Kerry’s first meeting as secretary of state with Karimov, who has ruled mostly Muslim Uzbekistan for a quarter of a century.
http://www.themalaymailonline.com/world/article/us-secretary-of-state-skirts-human-rights-in-central-asia
During visit, Kerry raises human rights issue with autocratic central Asian states
SAMARKAND, UZBEKISTAN – U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday met Uzbekistan’s autocratic ruler and officials from other Central Asian states accused of being among the world’s worst human rights offenders.
But in the talks in the ancient city of Samarkand, he tempered any public criticism as he sought deeper U.S. ties with the region seen increasingly as lying in the shadow of an assertive Russia and exposed to Islamist militancy.
Kerry was in Samarkand to meet his five Central Asian counterparts and reassure them of continued U.S. engagement in the strategic region.
On the fringes of that meeting, he spoke to Uzbek President Islam Karimov, who has ruled Uzbekistan for a quarter of a century and is often criticized internationally for heading a repressive government.
It was the highest-level U.S. encounter with Karimov in years.
Most of the five former Soviet republics in Central Asia have poor human rights records, and a U.S. official insisted that Kerry, on a four-day tour of the region, has not shied away from raising the issue “robustly” behind closed doors.
But he took pains to avoid direct public criticism as he pursued security and economic concerns at the top of his agenda.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/11/02/world/kerry-meets-autocratic-uzbek-leader/#.Vjb7HNLhCGU
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