Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, Georgia
As celebrations across the country marked the 150th birth anniversary of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Oct. 2, several groups demonstrated against the Mahatma.
According to a press release issued by the Organization for Minorities of India (OFMI), protestors accused Gandhi of racism and displayed placards calling him the “father of apartheid.” Other placards claimed Gandhi hated women and stated that “Gandhi was a sex offender.”
At the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center in Atlanta, Georgia, a group including several African-Americans demanded removal of the Gandhi statue placed at the center, the OFMI said.
Jerry Jones, an OFMI activist, displayed placards declaring: “No place for Gandhi in USA.” Another placard held by Jones quoted South African author Ashwin Desai, who stated, “Gandhi believed in the Aryan brotherhood. This involved whites and Indians higher up than Africans on the civilized scale.”
Demonstrators later moved to Georgia State University to protest a commemoration of Gandhi hosted by the Consulate General of India in Atlanta in collaboration with the Gandhi Foundation of USA.
Earlier, on Sept. 24, according to the OFMI press release, Jones and Nanak Singh represented the group at the Gwinnet County Board of Commissioners’ public hearing, “where they appeared to register dissent” against a proposed bust of Gandhi which the county was planning to unveil at Bryson Park, Lilburn, Georgia, Oct. 12.
“There is no way there should be statues erected commemorating a man who could not stand Africans,” the OFMI press release quoted Cheryle Renee Moses, the Democratic nominee for Georgia State Senate’s District 9 in Gwinnett County as saying. “I’m sure many other African-Americans and black folks would feel the same way once they are educated on Gandhi’s real beliefs about Africans, about black folks,” she said.
Similarly, on the West Coast, approximately 20 people blocked the Sather Gate at University of California, Berkeley, Oct. 2. Holding a large banner declaring, “150 Years of Racism: Happy Birthday, Gandhi,” they chanted slogans such as “Down with Gandhi” and delivered short speeches about why they were protesting Gandhi.
“Gandhi is used as a diplomatic weapon by the Indian State,” said Bhajan Singh, a former director of OFMI. He claimed that the Government of India has expanded its budget to finance Gandhi statues around the world, adding, “They have occupied Kashmir, they have attacked the Sikhs in Punjab, they have attacked Dalits, Christians, and they want to forcefully convert and submerge the traditional Dravidian culture of India into the pro-Aryan culture.”
Although Gandhi is widely perceived as a “Mahatma” (Great Soul) and portrayed as an icon of peace, the past several years have brought increased calls for reevaluation of his legacy. In 2014, protests erupted over a proposed statue of Gandhi in London after historian Kusoom Vadgama began a petition alleging that the Indian activist “dishonored women.” In 2018, a Gandhi statue was removed from the University of Ghana campus after students and faculty began a petition against Gandhi’s “racist identity.” An ongoing campaign against a proposed statue of Gandhi in Malawi has generated almost 4,300 signatures on a petition calling him an “ardent racist.”
“Modi’s years of building upon the false Gandhi propaganda to support the goals of India’s Hindu nationalist movement are being challenged around the world,” Arvin Valmuci of the OFMI said.
Ben Phillips is an author and activist on inequality.
Credit: United Nations
MEXICO CITY, Oct 9 2019 (IPS) – Last month 195 world leaders once again met in New York for big speeches and grand events. But on inequality, when all is said and done, more has been said than done.
Four years after governments across the world committed to fight inequality as part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, far too little has been seen in the way of government action. That’s not the verdict of critical NGOs – that’s the official assessment of UN Secretary-General António Guterres himself.
As Guterres told countries, adding only the thinnest diplomatic coating, “the shift in development pathways to generate the transformation required to meet the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030 is not yet advancing at the speed or scale required.”
Indeed, he noted, “the global landscape for Sustainable Development Goal implementation has generally deteriorated since 2015”. It is in this context that the UN has called for a “decade of delivery” following five years in which we the people have been able to feast on words whilst fasting on action.
For years, grassroots organisations have been sounding the alarm about the damage being caused by widening inequality. More recently, the formal debate on inequality shifted and the accepted mainstream normative position has become that inequality is dangerous and needs to be reduced.
The UN has also stepped up in providing coordination and advice. But governments have not shifted in recognition of the new consensus. Cynicism about whether anything will be done has taken root amongst even the most hopeful observers.
And the big headlines from this year’s UN General Assembly did very little to counter that cynicism, dominated as they were by the world’s loudest leaders, who seem to make up for an absence of substance with a surfeit of bombast.
Quietly, on the sidelines, however, another group met to plan not a communique on the stage but a series of actions at home. It was not a huge group of countries, just a dozen, but it included countries from every region of the world and every income level.
They met not because they think they have the answers, but because they are keen to learn from each other and to act. From Indonesia to Sierra Leone to Sweden to Mexico, they and others gathered in the first heads of state and government meeting of the Grand Challenge on Inequality, a new multi-stakeholder initiative to support vanguard governments, committed to tackling inequality, in finding the path by walking it.
Then, even more crucially, these same leaders mandated senior leaders and officials – the doers – to gather just after the New York meetings in Mexico City, and then in a few months in Jakarta, and onwards, to plan the implementation of a series of practical country-specific policies to narrow the gap between the runaway few and the many pushed behind.
You haven’t heard about this meeting because the leaders don’t believe that they have yet earned the right to declare themselves the leaders. Saint Francis of Assisi said “Preach the Gospel, and if you must, use words.”
In a similar spirit, the country leaders in the Grand Challenge on Inequality recognized, in the New York and in Mexico City meetings, that the power of their commitment to tackling inequality will be shown not in what they say but in what they do.
They recognized that there is no single policy that on its own can beat inequality, and so a series of complementary policies year on year is needed. They recognized that tackling inequality means taking on vested interests: that it means progressive tax and universal public services, it means protected workers and regulated corporations, it means designing policy from the bottom-up not the top-down, and it means tackling the wealth and power of the very wealthy.
As part of that, they opened themselves up to forthright challenge from grassroots social movements and trade unions, and shared what they as leaders were finding most challenging and the lessons they had learnt from their mistakes. It was, I’ll confess, something of a shock to hear leaders start off not with justifications but with self-criticism.
It was a world away from the (in)famous “Big Men Who Strode New York”. In a world saturated by the fake, to witness sincerity was disorientating.
It is early days for the pioneer governments Grand Challenge on Inequality, but, as a witness and as someone who has spent years bluntly challenging governments for their failures, here’s why it matters: social transformation doesn’t happen when people recognize that ther society is unfair – it happens when people also recognize that it can be fairer.
And that depends on people witnessing change, somewhere. Cynicism and despair are ultimately tools of the status quo. There is nothing more dangerous to those who would keep things as they are than the threat of a good example.
And, quietly, this group of countries, of leaders who do not call themselves leaders, are starting to build that good example. Oxfam have started to call this group of governments the “axis of hope”. Perhaps these governments could be more prosaically named the “axis of action”.
Grassroots organising will remain essential to help foster leaders’ determination, and to push back against the pressures that will continue to be exerted by economic elites. There is no certainty that change is coming. But there is no longer certainty that it isn’t. And the sound that accompanies this change is not the bang of fireworks. It is a quiet whirring of hard work.
UNITED NATIONS, Oct 8 2019 (IPS) – New York’s diplomatic community has continued to be enriched by a record number of women Permanent Representatives (PRUNs)—50 in all, as of October 2 – compared with about 15 to 20 back in the 1980s and early 1990s.
But the history-making number is still short of gender parity, falling far behind the 140 men who are PRUNs in the 193-member General Assembly, the highest policy-making body at the United Nations.
The remaining three women are designated Charge d’Affaires ad interim or acting heads of their respective diplomatic missions – and don’t hold the rank of PRUN.
The 50 PRUNs, who are also designated as Ambassadors, are members of an exclusive association called the “Circle of Women Ambassadors”— even as the circle has steadily kept widening.
The only other glass-shattering UN event took place in September 2014 when six of the 15 members of the UN Security Council– long monopolized by men– were women.
“It’s a little strange that it’s taken us this long,” Ambassador Sylvie Lucas of Luxembourg, was quoted as saying, more than five years ago.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told delegates last week that “no country in the world is on track to attain gender equality by 2030, and women continue to be hampered by discriminatory laws, unequal access to opportunities and protections, high levels of violence, and damaging norms and attitudes.”
So, gender parity among men and women ambassadors may be a long way off.
Ambassador Anwarul K. Chowdhury, former Permanent Representative of Bangladesh, and a one-time UN Under-Secretary-General told IPS: “To me any progress which manifests equality and representation of women’s recognized engagement is welcome.”
The fact that, at the moment, the number of women Permanent Representatives to the UN at its headquarters has reached the highest point ever is a development worthy of our attention, he said.
“However, we have a long way to go even to reach the numerical equality among 193 Member States”, said Ambassador Chowdhury, the initiator of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1325 as President of the Security Council in March 2000: a resolution that underlined the important role of women in the prevention and resolution of conflicts, and on peace negotiations and peace-building.
“In this context, I recall the Call to Action by civil society (which I proudly co-signed) for the world leaders on 25 September 2013 as they converged in New York for the General Assembly’s high level meetings urging them to take action for equality of women’s participation at all decision-making levels in four areas”, he added.
1. Appointment of a woman as the next UN Secretary-General. [reality: none out of 9 Secretaries-General in 74 years of UN history]
2. Nomination of Women as future Presidents of the General Assembly by the Regional Groups. [reality: only 4 out of 74 Presidents]
3. Election of More Women as Heads of Various UN Governing Bodies, [reality: overwhelmingly underrepresented by women]
4. Appointment by Member-states of More Women as Ambassadors to the UN in New York and Geneva. [reality: overwhelmingly underrepresented by women]
On all four points, the UN community needs to do much more to call it history-making, said Ambassador Chowdhury.
Kshenuka Senewiratne, Sri Lanka’s trailblazing ambassador– her country’s first female permanent representative (PRUN) in over 63 years– told IPS that gender empowerment has continued to advance in her home country, even as women outnumber men in many walks of life, and particularly in higher education.
She said this is also reflected in the Sri Lankan foreign service where women have dominated over men in open competitive exams.
“And it is possible the same trends continue in many developing nations— even as the UN tries to advance its 2030 Development Agenda where gender empowerment remains one of the priorities.”
But still, “I have yet to hear my colleagues here say that it was a concerted gesture of gender balance that they got posted to New York,” she declared.
Barbara Crossette, a former UN Bureau Chief for the New York Times, told IPS: “My initial thought is that this phenomenon of more powerful women in diplomacy is not unlike women rising on their own in politics and not just by inheriting leadership as widows, daughters or other kin of men, such as Indira Gandhi, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Benazir Bhutto, Chandrika Kumaratunga or Cristina Fernández de Kirchner”.
She pointed out there are now more Angela Merkels, Michelle Bachelets or Elizabeth Warrens, to name only a few.
“Women are also rising in international agencies and civil society organizations, gaining expertise in global affairs, geopolitics and armed conflict, often in uniform and wearing a peacekeeper’s beret”, said Crossette, the senior consulting editor and writer for PassBlue and the United Nations correspondent for The Nation.
Asked whether more female diplomats will aid the cause of greater gender equality, she said: “ I would say, not necessarily, unless the Secretariat and missions in the field come down harder on denigrators and abusers of women. And, as Louise Frechette (a former UN deputy Secretary-General) told me in an interview, only if member states chose the most competent, outstanding women when making nominations to fill appointments in the UN system. They should be the models”, she declared.
Reinforcing his arguments further, Ambassador Chowdhury said the political significance of this increase in the number of the women Ambassadors would be that their joint actions would draw more attention, bearing, of course, in mind that all Ambassadors to the UN act generally on the basis of instructions from their respective capitals.
“But, I believe, their coalition can join hands to focus on issues particularly those directly related to women’s empowerment and equality, like Goal 5 of SDG.”
They can also ask for greater engagement of Secretary-General’s leadership in the implementation of UNSCR 1325 on women and peace and security which has made the realization of women’s equal participation at all decision-making levels obligatory on all members of the United Nations and whose 20th anniversary is coming up in October 2020, he noted.
Realizing gender parity at the senior posts of the UN, both at headquarters and at field levels, could be another area for joint effort.
“Women Ambassadors could strategize to turn this newly gained numerical enhancement into an effective coalition to attain global objectives of women’s equality and empowerment,” he argued.
Apart from this increase in the number of women Ambassadors, another encouraging development had been that three consecutive women Ambassadors have been elected as President of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) in 2017 –from the Czech Republic, 2018, from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and 2019 from Norway.
This has improved somewhat ECOSOC’s dismal record of women Presidents, he said.
Since its beginning in 1946 and all the way upto 2003, ECOSOC’s practice of electing only men was challenged by Ambassador Marjatta Rassi of Finland as its first woman President, followed by second woman in 2009 before the successive three women Presidents – a total of 5 out of 74, said Ambassador Chowdhury.
“Given the unacceptably poor women’s representation as General Assembly and ECOSOC Presidents, women Ambassadors can continue their relentless efforts to improve gender parity in high offices,” he declared.
Meanwhile, addressing a working luncheon of the Circle of Women Ambassadors last April, the former President of the General Assembly Maria Fernanda Espinosa Garces said: “At the UN too – where we should be leading by example – only a quarter of Permanent Representatives are women. Only one of the General Assembly’s main committees is chaired by a woman. I hope that we, in this Circle, can encourage our colleagues to nominate more women to leadership positions in the General Assembly, and across the UN.”
In his annual report on “The Work of the Organization” released last week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres claimed the world body continues to make significant progress towards gender parity.
For the first time in the history of the United Nations, “we have achieved gender parity in the Senior Management Group and among Resident Coordinators, and are almost at parity among the senior leadership ranks across the Organization, well ahead of my target date of 2021.”
Rothna Begum is Senior Researcher, Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch
GENEVA, Oct 7 2019 (IPS) – After more than a decade of women’s rights activism, Iran’s Guardian Council has finally approved an amendment that would grant Iranian citizenship to the children of Iranian women married to foreign men.
The Guardian Council was the last body needed to approve this long overdue reform to Iran’s discriminatory citizenship law.
Previously, Iran’s civil code granted children and spouses of Iranian men citizenship automatically, while children born in Iran to Iranian women and foreign fathers must live in Iran at least until they are 19 before they can apply.
It is unclear how many children in Iran have Iranian mothers and foreign fathers. However, the issue has come to prominence in recent years because of tens of thousands of registered and unregistered marriages between Iranian women and Afghan men whose children are unable to obtain citizenship on an equal basis.
Rothna Begum
Research in other countries has shown that such discrimination can harm children’s access to education, health care, housing, and employment when they become adults.
The latest attempt to reform the law was inspired by Maryam Mirzakhani, a world-renowned Iranian mathematician and Fields Medal recipient who passed away from cancer in 2017. Because her husband is not Iranian, her daughter cannot obtain Iranian nationality.
In May, Iran’s Parliament finally adopted the proposed reform, but it went back and forth from the Guardian Council, a body of 12 Islamic jurists, to determine whether it is in accordance with Iran’s Constitution and Sharia (Islamic law). They approved the amendment last week.
While this is a long-awaited victory for Iranian women, the newly-amended law does not equalize access to citizenship completely. Iranian women must apply for nationality for their children, while children of Iranian men are granted nationality automatically.
Children who turn 18 can apply for nationality themselves. A security check is required in both cases.
Most concerning is that that the amended law requires the Intelligence Ministry or the Intelligence Organization of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to certify that there is no “security problem” before approving citizenship in these specific applications.
This vaguely defined provision can be used to arbitrarily disqualify applicants if they or their parents are seen as critical of the government, particularly in eastern and western border areas where cross-border marriages are more common and where authorities keep a tight grip over peaceful activism.
In a matter of weeks, Iran’s newly-amended law will finally see children of Iranian women able to apply for the same benefits that children of Iranian men have.
But Iran should remove the remaining obstacles to ensure that children of Iranian citizens, whether men or women, are granted citizenship on an equal basis. They are all, after all, Iranian children.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) seeks disclosure of files under the U.S. intelligence community’s “duty to warn” obligations, which demand officials alert folks in imminent danger. The CPJ wants to know if they knew about an assassination plot against Jamal Khashoggi. Photo by Sam McGhee on Unsplash
UNITED NATIONS, Sep 30 2019 (IPS) – A media watchdog has asked United States intelligence agencies to reveal whether they knew about an assassination plot against Jamal Khashoggi and failed to warn the Saudi journalist he was in mortal danger.
A legal brief, filed in a Washington DC district court by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), comes almost exactly one year after a Saudi hit squad butchered the renegade writer inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2.
CPJ’s advocacy manager Michael DeDora told IPS that his lawsuit against the U.S. government “asks a simple question: did the intelligence community know of yet fail to warn Jamal Khashoggi of threats to his life?”
Khashoggi, a U.S.-based Washington Post columnist, who was once a royal Saudi insider and had grown critical of the regime, was reportedly lured to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in an elaborate and brutal plot to silence him.
Khashoggi was allegedly killed, dismembered and removed from the building; his remains were never found. The CIA reportedly assessed that crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, known as MBS, had ordered the operation.
The CPJ seeks disclosure of files under the U.S. intelligence community’s “duty to warn” obligations, which demand officials alert folks in imminent danger. The brief, filed Thursday, follows the Trump administration’s rejection of a previous CPJ disclosure request.
“Nearly one year after Khashoggi’s murder, disclosure of these documents would provide transparency and help efforts to secure accountability,” DeDora told IPS in an email.
“But this lawsuit has broader implications: journalists around the world should have the security of knowing that the U.S. will not ignore threats to their lives.”
Khashoggi’s assassination sparked global outrage, blighted MBS’ global standing and undercut his ambitions to improve the kingdom’s poor human rights record and diversify its economy away from hydrocarbons.
Saudi officials, who initially said Khashoggi had left the consulate unharmed, now say he was killed in a rogue operation that did not involve the prince. A domestic Saudi trial of 11 suspects is widely viewed as a sham.
Speaking with IPS among a small group of journalists in New York this month, Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s former fiancée, explained how she was saddened by the lack of global pressure on Riyadh to come clean about the affair.
MBS has not visited Europe or the U.S. since the murder. While the prince was briefly shunned by foreign leaders, Riyadh’s long-standing diplomatic support from the U.S., Britain and others has largely resumed.
“This silence and inertia created huge disappointment on my side,” said Cengiz.
“Countries could have demonstrated a more honourable attitude instead of remaining silent, particularly the United Nations, the European Union and the five members of the U.N. Security Council.”
Cengiz was joined at an event on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly by Agnes Callamard, the U.N. rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions who investigated the killing and concluded it was a “deliberate, premeditated execution,” and called for MBS and other officials to be probed.
Callamard, a French academic, said she knew that achieving justice for Khashoggi’s murder would be an uphill struggle, given Riyadh’s deep pockets, clout in the world energy markets and powerful friends in Washington, London and elsewhere.
“This single year [since Khashoggi’s death] is just the first phase in our journey for accountability and justice. And that means that it will demand and deserve patience, resilience, and time,” said Callamard.
“Early on, I could see that justice for Jamal Khashoggi would have to be found beyond the usual path and beyond our usual understanding of accountability.”
Callamard urged the CIA to publish its files, while also calling for an FBI investigation and a public inquest in Turkey. Meanwhile, a draft U.S. law on human rights and accountability, if enacted, would unmask and sanction the culprits and send “ripple effects” towards accountability around the world.
Nobel Peace Laureate and Former President of Colombia Juan Manuel Santos, opens the summit with other Laureates onstage (David Dickstein/Prose & Comms Inc.)
MERIDA, Mexico, Sep 23 2019 (IPS) – In a world of increasing fragility and declining resources, can the world foster peace? With a looming climate crisis, is war inevitable? Will nuclear war be the final result? Are women the ultimate peace builders? How do we train and engage youth to promote peace?
These are some of the questions posed during last week’s three-day World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates in Merida, Mexico which brought together 1,200 youth and 30 Nobel Peace Laureates — individual and organizations — Juan Manuel Santos, Former President of Colombia; F.W. De Klerk, former President of South Africa; Lord David Trimble, Northern Ireland; and Lech Walesa, former President of Poland.
Women continue to claim a larger seat at the Nobel Peace table. In attendance were Rigoberta Menchu Tum for her work promoting the rights of indigenous peoples; Jody Williams, awarded for her work to eradicate landmines; Shirin Ebadi, for the struggle for women and children’s rights; Tawakkol Karman of Yemen; and Leymah Gbowee of Liberia.
A few key takeaways: Former President of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, awarded a Nobel Peace Prize for work with FARC to negotiate peace and end a brutal civil war, noted positive developments at home, but said some segments are taking steps backwards.
However, he remained steadfast in his commitment to peace: “For each terrorist blinded by hate, there are millions of youth that wish to preserve it. We are not here to say everything is fine, but we are here to leave our mark for peace.”
Discussing the social and economic dimensions of peace, Nobel Laureate Jody Williams railed on the world’s grotesque amounts of income disparity, and called for a total restructuring of the world’s socioeconomic systems.
While many citizens move to massive cities — megalopolises — to access employment, education and health care, they end up encountering racism. “How do we move forward on the common good?” she asked, noting that in America alone, 57 percent of the US disposable budget is spent on the military and weapons, while only 6 percent goes to health and education.
Nobel Laureate Lord David Trimble of Northern Ireland expressed concern over several regions in the world where conflicts continue, such as the Mideast, where there are proxy wars, as well as Iran’s moves to become a hegemonic state.
Photographic reproduction of the Nobel Peace Medal. Credit: UN Photo/John Isaac
There are dangers in the South China sea, and threats of a US-China trade war – all of it having a ripple effect, with a potential to greatly impact business and other activities.
Things are getting worse on the democracy front, according to Trimble. “It is not going as well as we would like,” he said, referring to the elections last week in Russia, where the state coerced and manufactured results, producing outcomes that were presented as democratic, but were far from it.
Highlighting the danger of technology controlled in the hands of a few mega corporations, Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarti called for democratization of tech, and added that, the world has globalized everything, but that it needed to “globalize the compassion that exists in all of us.”
Bernice King, CEO of the King Center, and the youngest daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, challenged all those who came to the summit. “ All of you have a passion to see positive change in our world. We all want peace but it has to be intentional on a daily basis,” she said. Her practical advice? Peace builders need to find an accountability partner to support them when frustrated or depressed.
King offered a message of hope: just like her father: “The only way our world is going to change, is that we have it in our hearts to be love, compassion, strength, nurturing and kindness,” she said, adding that Martin Luther King said that the children of darkness were much more determined than the children of light.
In a panel on nuclear disarmament, Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute, and UN Representative of the Permanent Secretariat of the World Summits of Nobel Peace Laureates, posed the question: “Is it legal to annihilate the future?” Because with the power of today’s nuclear weapons, they are a quick end,” he said.
Humanity has come very close to another nuclear war but has been unbelievably lucky, according to Dr. Ira Helfand, co-chair of the Physician’s for Social Responsibility’s nuclear weapons abolition committee.
“Sooner or later our luck will run out. It is no longer a question of when there will be a nuclear war, not if there will be one,” he said, adding that youth today did not understand the enormity of the threat – greater in power and numbers. Put simply, today’s nuclear weapons can annihilate the planet in short order.
In a nod to youth’s achievements, Mohamad Al Jounde was awarded the Turner Social Change Prize, and local student Saskia Niño de Rivera was given the Leave Your Mark for Peace Award.
During closing ceremonies, delegates stated that human rights are non-negotiable. The final document, the Merida Declaration states that: “As long as basic freedoms are violated and gross corruption, violence, extreme poverty, inequality, racism, modern-day slavery and trafficking of persons, discrimination, and discrimination phobias exist, there can be no true peace. We proclaim that true peace is inseparable from the achievement of true justice.”
