Historic Racism in America – George Floyd’s Remarkable Global Justice Solidarity
In the wake of ongoing protests in the United States in demand for justice in the killing of a 46-year-old black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white police officer, a social justice activist has insisted that the protests are legitimate. Jerry Locula highlights the historical racism and mistreatment of black people in America for the last four hundred years. It looks at how policing was associated with the transatlantic slave trade in the deep South; particularly, how white men were empowered to serve as vigilantes in responding to salves who escaped or attempted to escape. The article reveals that four centuries on, the culture has existed in law enforcement and the oppression has continued against black people; and that George Floyd’s case is the straw that broke the camel’s back. In his view, Jerry Locula maintains that the time has come for change in America, because enough is enough.
Conflict and resolution in Rwanda
Alphonse Nshimiyimana describes his work in his home country of Rwanda at the Center for Conflict Management funded largely by UNDP and where, understandably, there is much to be done.
Peacebuilding in Postconflict Societies
How to rebuild societies after wars in order to achieve sustainable peace has been a key question in the international community since the end of the Cold War. With numerous interventions to halt intrastate conflicts and prevent a return to war, international practitioners and academics alike have sought clear answers to how to ensure stability and peace once the guns fall silent. Peacebuilding in Postconflict Societies offers an expansive discussion of the various aspects of the peace-building process and the numerous challenges to addressing them. However, Peacebuilding still falls short of answering that key question of which policies work and under which conditions.
Survival? Your choice
Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed , Viking 2005
The Power of Timely Intervention
Michael S Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy, USIP Press, 1996
Brutal Legacy of Congo War
“There are thousands of violated ladies showing up. It’s like nothing we have ever seen anywhere in the world,” said Jo Lusi, head of a Congolese-run hospital in the eastern city of Goma that is working with the U.S.-based aid group Doctors on Call for Service.
Nagorno-Karabakh conflict: Intractable?
Finding a compromise solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict is usually considered the prerequisite for peace and cooperation in the Caucasus. The analysis of the conflict, however, shows that the mutual mistrust and animosity of Armenians and Azeris presently is so high that even the smallest concession, particularly related to the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, is unacceptable to either side. As long as those attitudes persist, no compromise can be reached. The approach, therefore, has to be reversed. In stead of pressing parties to compromise, peace-building efforts must foster regional cooperation. If a high level of regional economic and security integration in the Caucasus is achieved, the significance of the status of Nagorno-Karabakh will decrease, which in its turn will clear a path for a sustainable peace.
Measuring disarmament
Bonn International Center for Conversion, Conversion Survey 2003: Global Disarmament, Demilitarization and Demobilization, Feb 2003, pp. 180ISBN 3-8329-0135-3.
www.bicc.de
The Bonn International Center for Conversion, directed currently by Dr. Peter Croll, was founded in 1994, and, among its many activities associated with disarmament and conversion largely funded by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany, it has published the Conversion Survey 2003.
Theory and Practice for Peacemakers
At its best Contemporary Peacemaking treads the uneasy terrain between theory and practice, forging the types of links that are absolutely essential for the comparative work the editors quite clearly believe is of use for peace processes. There is much work to be done in this zone between the comfortable categorizations of unimpeded theory and the at times ad hoc sensibilities of those used to getting things done in the field with a bit of duct tape and a wire hanger.
John Darby & Roger MacGinty (eds) Contemporary Peacekeeping: Conflict, Violence & Peace Proceses, Palgrave MacMillan, 2003, pp. 296 ISBN 1-4039-0138-4 (Hardback)
There Were Nations That Stayed Away
I recently attended the Nairobi Summit, the First Review Conference of the 1997 Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on Their Destruction. There are nations that stayed away. It is a shame.