25TH Anniversary Message to the UN: Prioritize the Culture of Peace in its Leadership Agenda

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Opinion

NEW YORK, Sep 13 2024 (IPS) – This opinion piece is being published exactly on the date when twenty-five years ago today the UN took its most forward-looking stride in ensuring a peaceful planet for all of us since the signing of the Charter of the United Nations in 1945.

The UN Charter arose out of the ashes of the Second World War and the UN Declaration and the Programme of Action on a Culture of Peace emerged in the aftermath of the long-drawn Cold War.

On this very day, the United Nations adopted by consensus and without reservation a monumental document on the Culture of Peace that transcends boundaries, cultures, societies, and nations.

Arduous journey

It was an honour for me to Chair the nine-month long open-ended negotiations that led to the agreement on that historic norm-setting document which is considered as one of the most significant legacies of the United Nations that would endure generations.

I introduced the agreed text of that document (A/RES/53/243) on behalf of all Member States for adoption by the Assembly with its President Didier Opertti of Uruguay chairing the meeting. Through this landmark adoption, the General Assembly laid down humanity’s charter for the new approaching millennium.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury

This document explains, outlines, and defines everything that the international community has agreed on as the focus of the culture of peace. I would always treasure and cherish the opportunity to lead the process in its adoption and in its subsequent advocacy.

For me this has been a realization of my personal commitment to peace and my humble contribution to humanity. For more than two and a half decades, my focus has been on advancing the culture of peace and I have continued to devote considerable time, energy, and effort to do that.

It has been a long, arduous journey – a journey ridden curiously with both obstacles and indifference. Since July 1997, when I took the initiative to write to our much-loved and highly respected Secretary-General Kofi Annan to create a separate item of agenda of the General Assembly, the path and progress of the culture of peace at UN have been uneven to say the least. For being a part of this journey, I pay tribute to Bangladeshi diplomats who have been true co-travellers.

My life’s experience has taught me to value peace and equality as the essential components of our existence. They unleash the positive forces of good that are so needed for human progress. It is essential to remember that the culture of peace requires a change of our hearts, change of our mindset.

The objective of the culture of peace is the empowerment of people. We should not isolate peace as something separate. It is important to realize that the absence of peace takes away the opportunities that we need to better ourselves, to prepare ourselves, to empower ourselves to face the challenges of our lives, individually and collectively.

Transformation is the essence

The essence of the culture of peace is its message of self-transformation and its message of inclusiveness, of global solidarity, of the oneness of humanity. These elements—individual and global, individual to global—constitute the way forward for the culture of peace.

‘Transformation’ is of the most essential relevance here. The Programme of Action identifies eight specific areas which encourage actions at all levels – the individual, the family, the community, the national, the regional and, of course, the global levels.

Though the Declaration and Programme of Action is an agreement among nations, governments, civil society, media, and individuals are all identified in this document as key actors.

The culture of peace begins with each one of us – unless we are ready to integrate peace and non-violence as part of our daily existence, we cannot expect our communities, our nations, our planet to be peaceful. We should be prepared and confident in resolving the challenges of our lives in a non-aggressive manner. In today’s world, more so, the humanity’s creed should be based on inner oneness and outer diversity.

Enhancing Member States engagement

To accord an enhanced profile to the concept of the culture of peace, since 2012, successive UN General Assembly Presidents convened an annual UN High Level Forum on The Culture of Peace to provide an inclusive, participatory platform for UN Member States, civil society, media, private sector and other interested parties to exchange ideas on the implementation of the Declaration and Programme of Action.

Since 2012, when the first UN High Level Forum was convened by the President of the 66th Session of the General Assembly Ambassador Nassir Al-Nasser, the UNGA mandated this annual Forum as “an opportunity for renewing the commitments to strengthen further the global movement for the culture of peace.”

At the global level, the Global Movement for The Culture of Peace (GMCoP), a coalition of civil society organizations, have been spearheading advocacy initiatives effectively since 2011 as well as in organizing the annual High-Level Forums on The Culture of Peace convened by the President of UN General Assembly.

Peace and Culture of Peace

Many treat peace and culture of peace synonymously. When we speak of peace, we expect others namely politicians, diplomats, or other practitioners to take the initiative while when we speak of the culture of peace, we know that initial action begins with each one of us.

SDGs and the Culture of Peace

The UN General Assembly decided on the culture of peace before the Millennium Development Goals. SDGs came 15 years later. Many would recall that Goal 16 – the so-called peace goal – was almost dropped when the developing countries wanted to include a reference to the culture of peace.

A compromise excluded it so that the negotiated Goal 16 could be agreed without it. Bangladesh brought the reference to the culture of peace in Goal 4 in its target 4.7 which identified culture of peace and non-violence as well as global citizenship in educational context.

All eight areas of action in the culture of peace programme are reflected in various SDGs. I can however say with pride that the Culture of Peace would outlast the SDGs and make more deep-rooted and longer-lasting contribution to a sustainable and peaceful planet of ours when the UN observes the 30th anniversary of The Culture of Peace.

Let me end by outlining the three integrated mainstream for the coming years bolstering the global movement for the culture of peace.

Education for global citizenship

Number one: education. All educational institutions need to offer opportunities that prepare the students not only to live fulfilling lives but also to be responsible and productive citizens of the world. This should more appropriately be called “education for global citizenship”. If our minds could be likened to a computer, then education provides the software with which to “reboot” our priorities and actions for transition from force to reason, from conflict to dialogue.

Equality of women’s participation

Number two: women. As I always say emphatically –
“Without peace, development cannot be realized, without development, peace is not achievable, but without women, neither peace nor development is possible.”

Youth and children

And number three: youth and children. It is essential to recognize the empowerment of young people as a major element in building the culture of peace. Young people of today should embrace the culture of peace in a way that can not only shape their lives but can also shape the future of the world.

For this, I believe that early childhood affords a window of opportunity for us to sow the seeds of transition to the culture of peace from an early life.

Way forward

As former Secretary-General of the United Nations and Nobel Peace laureate Kofi Annan had profoundly said, “Over the years we have come to realize that it is not enough to send peacekeeping forces to separate warring parties. It is not enough to engage in peace-building efforts after societies have been ravaged by conflict. It is not enough to conduct preventive diplomacy. All of this is essential work, but we want enduring results. We need, in short, the culture of peace.”

How do we build and promote the culture of peace? To turn the culture of peace into a global, universal movement, the most crucial element that is needed is for every one of us to be a true believer in peace and non-violence. A lot can be achieved in promoting the culture of peace through individual resolve and action.

By immersing ourselves in a culture that supports and promotes peace, individual efforts will–over time–combine and unite, and peace, security and sustainability will emerge. This is the only way we shall achieve a just and sustainable peace in the world.

The culture of peace is not a quick fix. It is a movement, not a revolution.

The seed of peace exists in all of us. It must be nurtured, cared for and promoted by us all to flourish. Peace cannot be imposed from outside – it must be realized from within.

Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, is Former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh to the UN; President of the UN Security Council (2000 and 2001); Senior Special Adviser to UN General Assembly President (2011-2012) and Former Under-Secretary-General and High Representative of the UN.

IPS UN Bureau

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The Deadly US Weapons of Civilian Destruction

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Armed Conflicts, Civil Society, Democracy, Featured, Global Governance, Headlines, Human Rights, IPS UN: Inside the Glasshouse, Middle East & North Africa, Peace, TerraViva United Nations

Much of the Gaza Strip has been destroyed in the conflict. Credit: UNRWA

UNITED NATIONS, Sep 13 2024 (IPS) – As the devastating 11-month-old conflict in Gaza keeps escalating, with over 41,000 mostly civilian killings, and more than 92,000 Palestinians injured –in retaliation for the 1,200 killings inside Israel last October– the Israelis continue to defy the United States which maintains its uninterrupted flow of heavy weapons to Tel Aviv.

There are two hardcore lessons in this conflict. Perhaps Israel should realize that you cannot continue biting the hand that feeds you while the Biden administration should realize that you cannot continue to feed the mouth that bites you.

The world’s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) are categorized mostly as nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological weapons. But the US-supplied missiles and 2,000-pound bombs dropped on Gaza are best described as weapons of civilian destruction (WCDs) which have also reduced cities to rubble.

On September 11, the New York Times ran a story on the latest killings of civilians, titled “Israel Kills Gazans as its Air Power Hits a Humanitarian Zone”

The Times quoted Trevor Ball, a former US army explosive ordnance-disposal technician, as identifying a fragment found at the most recent bombing in Gaza as “the tail section of a SPICE-2000 kit, a precision guided kit used with 2,000-pound bombs.

If Israel is accused of genocide and war crimes, where does the US fit in as the major supplier of arms that are killing all these civilians?

And, on August 13, as the civilian killings continued unabated, the Biden Administration formally notified Congress of its plan to authorize the sale of a staggering list of arms to Israel including:

An $18.8 billion sale of 50 F-15 fighter jets and related equipment;
A $774 million sale of up to 32,739 120mm tank cartridges and related equipment;
A $583 million sale of Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV)s and related equipment;
A $102 million sale of 30 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and related equipment; and, A $61 million sale of 50,000 M933A1 120mm High Explosive mortar cartridges and related equipment.

In June 2024, Reuters reported that the Administration had transferred at least 14,000 MK-84 2,000-pound bombs, 6,500 500-pound bombs, 3,000 Hellfire precision-guided air-to-ground missiles, 1,000 bunker-buster bombs, 2,600 air-dropped small-diameter bombs, and other munitions.

Dr Ramzy Baroud, a journalist and Editor of The Palestine Chronicle, told IPS “for Israel to commit its genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, it requires a large and steady supply of weapons. Most of these weapons come from the United States.”

“In fact, over 11 months of Israeli genocide and following numerous reports by international organizations, we know precisely how US bunker busters and other weapons and munitions intended for mass killings have been used,” he pointed out.

Yet, despite all of this, the US continues to give Israel all the bombs and rockets necessary to inflict most deadly violence against Palestinians, including those sheltered in displacement camps, at UN schools, at hospitals, and other areas that are intended to be ‘safe zones’.

But American support for Israel cannot be confined to that of weapon supplies, Dr Baroud said, because Washington remains Israel’s strongest backer and defender at international institutions, including the UN Security Council. This blind and unconditional support has emboldened Israel to carry on with the most despicable genocide against an innocent and besieged nation.

Even Biden’s so-called ‘ceasefire proposal’ last May was supposedly communicated on behalf of Israel, then, oddly rejected also on behalf of Israel.

There can be no other interpretation of this: the genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza is carried out jointly by Israel and the United States, said Dr Baroud, a Non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA). www.ramzybaroud.net

According to a Cable News Network (CNN) report early this week US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has called for “fundamental changes” to the way Israeli forces operate in the occupied West Bank after the killing of American activist Aysenur Ezgi Eygi at a protest last week.

US President Joe Biden condemned Eygi’s killing on Wednesday. ““I am outraged and deeply saddened by the death of Aysenur Eygi,” Biden said in a statement, adding that the shooting “is totally unacceptable.”

Biden called for “full accountability” for her death after Israel “has acknowledged its responsibility.” Israel, he added, “must do more to ensure that incidents like this never happen again.”

As an old Middle East saying goes: The dogs bark but the caravan moves on.

Is this a reflection of the unrestrained power of the Israeli lobby in the US Congress, which one-time Republican US presidential candidate Pat Buchanan, called “Israeli-occupied territory”? Does this now include the White House?

Unfortunately, there will be no accountability for the killing of the American-Turkish activist, Dr Baroud pointed out. “We know this for a fact because there has never been a precedent in history in which the US has held Israel accountable for anything”.

The family of American activist Rachel Corrie, who was deliberately run over by an Israeli army bulldozer, knows exactly how frivolous the US use of language in this kind of situation can be.

The US speaks of “accountability”, “responsibility”, “full investigations”, yet ultimately accepts the Israeli narrative as the truth. More recently, the US has used similar language following the murder of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, before circling back to accepting the Israeli story that her killing was not deliberate and was not part of a larger policy to target civilians.

Infuriatingly, but still unsurprisingly, the US is using the above language at a time when over 41,000 Palestinians have been confirmed killed in Gaza, with thousands more missing and tens of thousands wounded, he said.

Not only no such accountability has been achieved or even called for, but the US continues to give Israel the very murder weapon so that it may continue its genocide against Palestinian civilians, said Dr Baroud.

Meanwhile, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres condemned the death of at least 18 people, including children, women, and six UNRWA staff, in Israeli airstrikes that hit a school serving as a shelter in Nuseirat on 11 September.

This incident raises the number of UNRWA staff killed in this conflict to 220. The IDF stated that they had targeted a command-and-control center in the compound. This incident must be independently and thoroughly investigated to ensure accountability.

The continued lack of effective protection for civilians in Gaza is unconscionable. Civilians and the infrastructure they rely on must be protected and the essential needs of civilians met. The Secretary-General calls upon all parties to refrain from using schools, shelters, or the areas around them for military purposes. All parties to the conflict have the obligation to comply with international humanitarian law at all times.

The Secretary-General also reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire and the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages. This horrific violence must stop, he declared.

According to an October 2023 report from the US State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, steadfast support for Israel’s security has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy for every U.S. Administration since the presidency of Harry S. Truman.

Since its founding in 1948, the United States has provided Israel with over $130 billion in bilateral assistance focused on addressing new and complex security threats, bridging Israel’s capability gaps through security assistance and cooperation, increasing interoperability through joint exercises, and helping Israel maintain its Qualitative Military Edge (QME).

This assistance has helped transform the Israel Defense Forces into “one of the world’s most capable, effective militaries and turned the Israeli military industry and technology sector into one of the largest exporters of military capabilities worldwide”.

Israel has also been designated as a U.S. Major Non-NATO Ally under U.S. law. This status provides foreign partners with certain benefits in the areas of defense trade and security cooperation and is a powerful symbol of their close relationship with the United States.

Thalif Deen, Senior Editor, UN Bureau, Inter Press Service (IPS) news agency, is a former Director, Foreign Military Markets at Defense Marketing Services; Senior Defense Analyst at Forecast International; military editor Middle East/Africa at Jane’s Information Group, USA; and one-time UN correspondent for Jane’s Defense Weekly, London.

IPS UN Bureau Report

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A UN 2.0 Needs Robust People’s Civil Society Participation

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Opinion

Credit: United Nations

NEW YORK, Sep 13 2024 (IPS) – A cascade of crises endangers our world. Wars conducted without rules, governance devoid of democratic principles, surge in discrimination against women and excluded groups, accelerating climate change, greed-induced environmental degradation and unconscionable economic deprivation in an age of excess are threatening to roll back decades of human progress made by the international community.

This September’s UN Summit of the Future presents a rare opportunity to address these challenges through greater participation in UN decision making. World leaders are convening later this month in New York to agree a Pact for the Future, expected to lay the blueprint for international cooperation in the 21st century.

But civil society’s efforts to ensure an outcome document fit for today’s needs are coming up against diplomatic posturing between powerful states intent on preserving the status quo.

State-centric decisions

The world has changed dramatically since the UN was established in 1945, when a large swathe of humanity was still under colonial yoke. Since then, significant strides have been made to advance democratic governance around the world. Yet decision-making processes at the UN remain stubbornly state-centric, privileging a handful of powerful states that control decisions and key appointments.

Civil society has presented the Pact of the Future’s co-facilitators, the governments of Germany and Namibia, with several innovative proposals to enable meaningful participation and people-centred decision-making at the UN. Proposals include a parliamentary assembly representative of the world’s peoples, a world citizen’s initiative to enable people to bring issues of transnational importance to the UN and the appointment of a civil society or people’s envoy to drive the UN’s outreach to communities around the world. However, these forward-looking proposals have found no traction in various drafts of the Pact, which is being criticised for lacking ambition and specificity.

It’s no surprise that diplomatic negotiations on the Pact between country representatives are being bogged down by arguments over language. As a result of diplomatic wrangling, the draft’s provisions are mostly generic and repetitive.

This is unfortunate, as civil society representatives have spent considerable time and energy over the course of the past year in engaging with Summit of the Future processes. Despite tight deadlines, civil society organisations came together at short notice to submit comprehensive recommendations on the Pact’s successive drafts. Hundreds of civil society delegates participated at considerable expense in the much-anticipated Civil Society Conference in Nairobi, designed to gather inputs to feed into the Summit outcomes.

Overall, the gains made so far have been few. These include broad commitments to reform the UN Security Council and international financial institutions. A significantly positive aspect of the Pact’s draft is a commitment to strengthen the UN’s human rights pillar; many of us in civil society rely on this to raise concerns about egregious violations. However, deep-seated tensions among member states in New York have led to the regrettable removal of references to human rights defenders, who play a crucial role in protecting and promoting human rights. This is evident in the recent Revision 3 draft of the Pact released on 27 August.

Strengthening human rights

Tellingly, the human rights pillar receives roughly five per cent of the UN’s regular budget, forcing any new initiatives to rely on underfunded voluntary contributions. This needs to change. The human rights pillar needs to be strengthened. Doing so would help make each of the three UN’s pillars – the others being peace and security and sustainable development – more strongly connected and mutually reinforcing.

To strengthen the human rights pillar, we outline five priority areas for action.

First, substantial resources should be allocated to the UN’s independent thematic and country-focused human rights experts, who enhance civil society’s impact but are forced to get by on shoestring budgets. Due to limited funding from the UN, the experts are compelled to rely on voluntary contributions to support their vital activities.

Second, an accessible and transparently managed pooled fund should be created to enable better participation by civil society in UN meetings. Many smaller civil society organisations, particularly from the global south, find it extremely challenging to cover the costs of participation in key UN arenas.

Third, accountability measures should be strengthened to ensure follow-up in cases of reprisals against people for engaging with UN human rights mechanisms. The UN’s latest reprisals report shows that reprisals have taken place against over 150 individuals in more than 30 states. This needs to be addressed immediately.

Fourth, the UN’s investigative capacities in relation to war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide should be strengthened to ensure justice for victims. The need for this has been made tragically clear by the resurgence of authoritarian rule and military dictatorships around the world, coupled with egregious rights violations in conflicts in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Myanmar, Sudan, Ukraine, Yemen and others.

Finally, the human rights pillar can be supported by ensuring implementation of the UN’s guidance note on civic space. This urges the protection of civil society personnel and human rights defenders from intimidation and reprisals, the facilitation of meaningful and safe participation in governance processes and the promotion of laws and policies to support these goals.

The role human rights defenders and civil society activists play in ensuring peaceful resolution of conflicts, addressing gender-based violence and promoting economic justice – among many other vital issues – is crucial. In calling to strengthen the human rights pillar, the Pact’s pen holders recognise the importance of human rights approaches. They must extend this recognition to include people’s and civil society participation. Failing to do so will result in a missed opportunity to create a transformative UN 2.0 that places people and rights at the centre.

Jesselina Rana is UN advisor at CIVICUS, the global civil society alliance. Mandeep Tiwana is chief of evidence and engagement at CIVICUS plus representative to the UN in New York.