Category Archives: HUMAN RIGHTS

Plan for Campaign Nonviolence Action Week, September 19-27, 2020

…. HUMAN RIGHTS ….

From the website of Campaign Nonviolence

Every year, Campaign Nonviolence organizes a national week of action across the United States and around the world, built around the third week of September, near Sept. 21st, International Peace Day. For the last six years, we have organized an unprecedented national grassroots movements with actions in every state where people connect the dots between the issues of injustice and violence, including war, poverty, racism and environmental destruction, and hold public events, actions and marches demanding immediate positive social change.

In September, 2019, the Campaign Nonviolence National Week of Action held over 3,300 actions, events and marches across the USA and in 20 countries. This was an historic unprecedented new form of organizing in the US, and we invite you to help us build up this national week of action.

The only way positive social change has happened in the US is from bottom up, people power, grassroots movements of nonviolence, so we invite everyone to join this Campaign Nonviolence National Week of Action Sept. 19-27, 2020, as an organizing tool, to help get the movement moving, to invite people of all walks of life to take to the streets against violence and injustice, and to carry on Dr. King’s vision of what we could become—a new culture of nonviolence. Join the growing Campaign Nonviolence national week of action movement by signing up for an action, or join with others planning an event.

(Article continued in the right column)

Questions related to this article:

The post-election fightback for human rights, is it gathering force in the USA?

(Article continued from the left column)

SEE THE FULL LIST OF PLANNED ACTIONS THIS SEPTEMBER

To support these powerful forms of action, Campaign Nonviolence invites people everywhere to:

* Take the Campaign Nonviolence Pledge


* Host or attend a Nonviolence Training in preparation for your action


* Start a Nonviolence Study Group and use our newest nonviolence study guide, Engaging Nonviolence!


* Spread the word on Facebook and Twitter


* Find tools and resources for Action Week. Get the CNV action toolkit, flyers, graphics, action ideas and more! See below.


* Read the 10 Tips for Great Actions and read about some great actions ideas.


* Join action organizers around the country as we come together for the next Campaign Nonviolence National Conference ONLINE to mark the 75th anniversary or Hiroshima and Nagasaki featuring Richard Rohr, Erica Chennoweth and more!


HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

USA: Will COVID-19 Spur a Wave of Unionization?

…. HUMAN RIGHTS ….

An article by Steven Greenhouse from Dissent Magazine

Workers have been infuriated by the callous treatment they’ve received in their workplaces. Many of them recognized that the most surefire way to get their employers to provide the protection they needed was through collective action.


Protestors outside a Staten Island Amazon warehouse fulfillment center on May 1, 2020 (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

This essay is part of a special section  on the pandemic in the Summer 2020 issue.

In mid-March, someone asked me whether COVID-19 would spur a wave of unionization. My first reaction was no. How could workers possibly unionize when there was all this social distancing and people couldn’t even meet in groups? Moreover, I thought workers would be so cowed by the horrors of the pandemic that they wouldn’t give much thought to unionizing.

That response was short-sighted. I didn’t realize how furious many workers would become about the uncaring, even callous way their companies have treated them during this crisis—about the many employers that didn’t lift a finger to provide masks or hand sanitizer. Many of these irate workers recognized that the most surefire way to get their employers to provide the protection they needed was through collective action.

We’ve seen that kind of action from workers at Amazon, McDonald’s, Domino’s, Instacart, Perdue Farms, Whole Foods, and smaller grocery stores like MOM’s Organic Market in Philadelphia. Many workers have incorporated social distancing into their battles—standing six feet apart as they picketed their workplace, or using cars to block the drive-thru at their McDonald’s.

Many of these workers would no doubt vote to join a union tomorrow if they could (even though Trump’s anti-union National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] temporarily suspended all unionization elections in late March). But it remains very unclear whether all the coronavirus-inspired anger and activism will result in increased union membership. The overriding reason why it might not is an old one: when there are unionization elections in the United States, the playing field is tilted sharply in favor of corporations and against workers seeking to organize.

Kate Bronfenbrenner of Cornell University found in a study that companies often use intimidation tactics to thwart organizing drives. In her analysis, which looked at NLRB-supervised unionization elections between 1999 and 2003, 57 percent of companies threatened to close operations if workers voted to unionize, while 47 percent said they would cut wages or benefits. Bronfenbrenner also found that 34 percent illegally fired union supporters, 28 percent illegally attempted to infiltrate the union organizing committee, and 22 percent illegally used “bribes and special favors” to encourage workers to vote against the union. Another study of elections in 2016 and 2017 found that companies terminated nearly one in five rank-and-file workers who spearheaded unionization campaigns.

(Article continued in the right column)

Question(s) related to this article:

The right to form and join trade unions, Is it being respected?

(Article continued from the left column)

The federal judiciary’s conservative tilt makes unionization harder still. Not only do employers often require workers to hear anti-union consultants and watch anti-union videos, but they also have the right to prohibit union organizers from setting foot on company property, thanks to a 1992 Supreme Court ruling that exalted private property rights far above workers’ rights and concerns. Under that ruling, employers can even bar organizers from putting flyers on windshields in the employee parking lot.

During the pandemic, many employers remain as aggressive as ever in fighting unions. Amazon seems to have gone out of its way to signal that it won’t tolerate organizing efforts. The company fired Christian Smalls, who spearheaded a walkout by employees at its Staten Island warehouse who felt Amazon was doing far too little to protect them from the virus. Amazon also fired Bashir Mohamed, the lead worker-activist at a Minnesota warehouse, as well as two tech workers in Seattle who were outspoken climate campaigners and had criticized safety conditions at the warehouses. Whole Foods, an Amazon subsidiary, has created a heat map that uses twenty-five metrics, including diversity levels and number of complaints about safety, to keep tabs on which of its stores are most at risk of union activity.

On March 31, the CEO of Trader Joe’s sent an anti-union letter to all employees, while a Trader Joe’s worker in Louisville said the company fired him for airing safety concerns about COVID-19 on his Facebook page. All that came after Google fired four worker leaders who were promoting collective action and after the tech darling, Kickstarter, suddenly dismissed several members of its union organizing committee. (Kickstarter said they were not terminated for backing a union.)

The outlook for unionizing isn’t all glum. The burst of coronavirus-related walkouts and sickouts comes after the biggest wave of strikes since the 1980s: the 2018–19 #RedforEd strikes, as well as major work stoppages at General Motors, Marriott, and Stop & Shop. The public approval rating for unions has climbed to nearly its highest level in fifty years. There has also been a surge of unionization among adjunct professors, grad students, digital and print journalists, museum workers, nurses, cannabis store workers, and nonprofit employees.

Another welcome development for labor is that this year’s crop of Democratic presidential candidates put forward the most ambitious plans to rebuild unions in decades, perhaps ending a long period in which the party took labor for granted. One Democratic candidate after another seemed to realize (or acted as if they just realized) that if wage stagnation is going to end, if income inequality is going to be reduced, if the Democrats are to win back Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, then it will be vital to strengthen the labor movement. It’s hard to know whether the presumptive nominee Joe Biden means what he says about fighting hard to rebuild unions; one sure thing is that workers would benefit from a Democratic majority on the NLRB, which comes with control of the White House.

In a video of a walkout at an Amazon warehouse in Chicago, one courageous worker said, “This is not about Amazonians being lazy. We want to work. We want to work in a clean facility. We want to work where it’s going to be safe and our kids are going to be safe and our families are going to be safe. How can we be essential workers when our lives are not essential?”

She expressed an essential point: in a society where corporations are relentlessly focused on maximizing profits and productivity, collective action is by far the most effective way for workers to get employers to address their pressing needs. Most corporate executives couldn’t care less whether their employees have a voice at work. It’s up to the nation’s workers to make their employers hear their voice—loud and clear. There is no more pressing time to do this than during a horrid pandemic, when many workers have died because their companies failed to take adequate safety precautions.

Steven Greenhouse was a New York Times reporter for thirty-one years, spending his last nineteen years there as its labor and workplace reporter. He is the author of Beaten Down, Worked Up: The Past, Present, and Future of American Labor, which was published last year by Knopf and will be released in paperback in July.

HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

‘Stop Lukashenko’: Hundreds of Thousands Protest Against Belarusian Leader for Eighth Straight Day

…. HUMAN RIGHTS ….

An article from Common Dreams (licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License)

Hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered in Belarus on Sunday [August 16] for an eighth straight day of anti-government demonstrations a week after Alexander Lukashenko, who’s ruled the country since 1994, claimed victory in an election widely viewed as fraudulent.

Protesters in Minsk held signs reading “We want fair elections,” “Stop Lukashenko,” and “Stop the violence.”


 (Photo: Valery Sharifulin\TASS via Getty Images)

A pro-government rally also took place in the capital, though that crowd’s estimated size of roughly 10,000  was a fraction of the roughly 200,000 that came out for the opposition action.

(Article continued in the right column)

Questions related to this article:

How effective are mass protest marches?

(Article continued from the left column)

From Politico:
In a rambling speech to his backers, Lukashenko gave no indication he was prepared to give way. He insisted that the August 9 election—widely considered a fraudulent vote that gave him an 80 percent victory—won’t be held again.

The Associated Press reported:

During 26 years in office, Lukashenko has repressed opposition figures and independent news media. But this year, protesters fed up with the country’s declining living standards and Lukashenko’s dismissal of the coronavirus pandemic have posed the biggest challenge to his rule.

Amnesty International warned  last week that Belarusian authorities were carrying out a campaign of torture and mistreatment against the anti-government demonstrators. 

“For days the world has watched in horror as police in Belarus fire rubber bullets and tear gas, into crowds of peaceful protesters. It is now becoming increasingly clear that the bloody scenes on the streets of Belarus are just the tip of the iceberg,” Marie Struthers, Amnesty International’s director for Eastern Europe and Central Asia, said in a statement Thursday.

“Former detainees told us that detention centers have become torture chambers, where protesters are forced to lie in the dirt while police kick and beat them with truncheons. They described being stripped naked and subjected to sadistic beatings while listening to the screams of other victims,” said Struthers. “These are people whose only ‘crime’ was to take to the streets in peaceful protest.”

“What we are seeing in Belarus is a human rights catastrophe that demands urgent action,” she said.

Europe, HUMAN RIGHTS

UN Secretary-General: Tackling Inequality: A New Social Contract for a New Era

.. HUMAN RIGHTS ..

A lecture from the United Nations

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres delivered the 18th Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture virtually on Nelson Mandela International Day (18 July).

My dear friends, President Cyril Ramaphosa, excellencies, distinguished guests, friends, 
 
It is a privilege to join you in honouring Nelson Mandela, an extraordinary global leader, advocate, and role model.

I thank the Nelson Mandela Foundation for this opportunity and commend their work to keep his vision alive. And I send my deepest condolences to the Mandela family and to the Government and people of South Africa on the untimely passing of Ambassador Zindzi Mandela earlier this week. May she rest in peace. 

I was fortunate enough to meet Nelson Mandela several times. I will never forget his wisdom, determination and compassion, which shone forth in everything he said and did. 

Last August, I visited Madiba’s cell at Robben Island. I stood there, looking through the bars, humbled again by his enormous mental strength and incalculable courage. Nelson Mandela spent 27 years in prison, 18 of them at Robben island. But he never allowed this experience to define him or his life. 

Nelson Mandela rose above his jailers to liberate millions of South Africans and become a global inspiration and a modern icon. 

He devoted his life to fighting the inequality that has reached crisis proportions around the world in recent decades – and that poses a growing threat to our future. 

And so today, on Madiba’s birthday, I will talk about how we can address the many mutually reinforcing strands and layers of inequality, before they destroy our economies and societies. 

Dear friends, COVID-19 is shining a spotlight on this injustice.  

The world is in turmoil. Economies are in freefall. 

We have been brought to our knees – by a microscopic virus. 

The pandemic has demonstrated the fragility of our world. 

It has laid bare risks we have ignored for decades: inadequate health systems; gaps in social protection; structural inequalities; environmental degradation; the climate crisis.  

Entire regions that were making progress on eradicating poverty and narrowing inequality have been set back years, in a matter of months. 

The virus poses the greatest risk to the most vulnerable: those living in poverty, older people, and people with disabilities and pre-existing conditions. 

Health workers are on the front lines, with more than 4,000 infected in South Africa alone. I pay tribute to them.

In some countries, health inequalities are amplified as not just private hospitals, but businesses and even individuals are hoarding precious equipment that is urgently needed for everyone. A tragic example of inequality.

The economic fallout of the pandemic is affecting those who work in the informal economy; small and medium-size businesses; and people with caring responsibilities, who are mainly women.  

We face the deepest global recession since World War II, and the broadest collapse in incomes since 1870. 

One hundred million more people could be pushed into extreme poverty. We could see famines of historic proportions. 

COVID-19 has been likened to an x-ray, revealing fractures in the fragile skeleton of the societies we have built.  

It is exposing fallacies and falsehoods everywhere: 

The lie that free markets can deliver healthcare for all; 

The fiction that unpaid care work is not work; 

The delusion that we live in a post-racist world;

The myth that we are all in the same boat. 

Because while we are all floating on the same sea, it’s clear that some are in superyachts while others are clinging to drifting debris. 

Dear friends, Inequality defines our time. 

More than 70 per cent of the world’s people are living with rising income and wealth inequality. The 26 richest people in the world hold as much wealth as half the global population. 

But income, pay and wealth are not the only measures of inequality. People’s chances in life depend on their gender, family and ethnic background, race, whether or not they have a disability, and other factors. 

Multiple inequalities intersect and reinforce each other across the generations. The lives and expectations of millions of people are largely determined by their circumstances at birth. 

In this way, inequality works against human development – for everyone. We all suffer its consequences. 

High levels of inequality are associated with economic instability, corruption, financial crises, increased crime and poor physical and mental health.   

Discrimination, abuse and lack of access to justice define inequality for many, particularly indigenous people, migrants, refugees and minorities of all kinds. Such inequalities are a direct assault on human rights. 

Addressing inequality has therefore been a driving force throughout history for social justice, labour rights and gender equality. 

The vision and promise of the United Nations is that food, healthcare, water and sanitation, education, decent work and social security are not commodities for sale to those who can afford them, but basic human rights to which we are all entitled. 

We work to reduce inequality, every day, everywhere.

That vision is as important today as it was 75 years ago. 

It is at the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, our agreed blueprint for peace and prosperity on a healthy planet, captured in SDG 10: reduce inequality within and between countries.  

Dear friends, Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, many people around the globe understood that inequality was undermining their life chances and opportunities. 

They saw a world out of balance.   

They felt left behind.

They saw economic policies channeling resources upwards to the privileged few. 

Millions of people from all continents took to the streets to make their voices heard. 

High and rising inequalities were a common factor. 

The anger feeding two recent social movements reflects utter disillusionment with the status quo. 

Women everywhere have called time on one of the most egregious examples of gender inequality: violence perpetrated by powerful men against women who are simply trying to do their jobs. 

The anti-racism movement that has spread from the United States around the world in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing is one more sign that people have had enough: 

Enough of inequality and discrimination that treats people as criminals on the basis of their skin colour; 

Enough of the structural racism and systematic injustice that deny people their fundamental human rights. 

These movements point to two of the historic sources of inequality in our world: colonialism and patriarchy.  

The Global North, specifically my own continent of Europe, imposed colonial rule on much of the Global South for centuries, through violence and coercion.

Colonialism created vast inequality within and between countries, including the evils of the Transatlantic slave trade and the apartheid regime here in South Africa.  

After the Second World War, the creation of the United Nations was based on a new global consensus around equality and human dignity. 

A wave of decolonization swept the world. 

But let’s not fool ourselves. 

The legacy of colonialism still reverberates. 

We see this in economic and social injustice, the rise of hate crimes and xenophobia; the persistence of institutionalized racism and white supremacy.

We see this in the global trade system. Economies that were colonized are at greater risk of getting locked into the production of raw materials and low-tech goods – a new form of colonialism. 

And we see this in global power relations. 

Africa has been a double victim. First, as a target of the colonial project. Second, African countries are under-represented in the international institutions that were created after the Second World War, before most of them had won independence.   

The nations that came out on top more than seven decades ago have refused to contemplate the reforms needed to change power relations in international institutions. The composition and voting rights in the United Nations Security Council and the boards of the Bretton Woods system are a case in point.  

Inequality starts at the top: in global institutions. Addressing inequality must start by reforming them.  

And let’s not forget another great source of inequality in our world: millennia of patriarchy.

We live in a male-dominated world with a male-dominated culture. 

Everywhere, women are worse off than men, simply because they are women. Inequality and discrimination are the norm. Violence against women, including femicide, is at epidemic levels.

Globally, women are still excluded from senior positions in governments and on corporate boards. Fewer than one in ten world leaders is a woman.

Gender inequality harms everyone because it prevents us from benefitting from the intelligence and experience of all of humanity. 

This is why, as a proud feminist, I have made gender equality a top priority, and gender parity now a reality in top UN jobs. I urge leaders of all kinds to do the same.  

And I am pleased to announce that South Africa’s Siya Kolisi is our new global champion for the United Nations-European Union Spotlight Initiative, engaging other men in fighting the global scourge of violence against women and girls. 

Dear friends, Recent decades have created new tensions and trends.

Globalization and technological change have indeed fueled enormous gains in income and prosperity.

More than a billion people have moved out of extreme poverty. 

But the expansion of trade and technological progress have also contributed to an unprecedented shift in income distribution.

Between 1980 and 2016, the world’s richest 1 per cent captured 27 per cent of the total cumulative growth in income. 

Low-skilled workers face an onslaught from new technologies, automation, the offshoring of manufacturing and the demise of labour organizations. 

Tax concessions, tax avoidance and tax evasion remain widespread. Corporate tax rates have fallen.

This has reduced resources to invest in the very services that can reduce inequality: social protection, education, healthcare. 

And a new generation of inequalities goes beyond income and wealth to encompass the knowledge and skills needed to succeed in today’s world. 

Deep disparities begin before birth and define lives – and early deaths. 

(Continued in right column)

Questions for this article:

What is the legacy of Nelson Mandela for us today?

(Continued from left column)

More than 50 per cent of 20-year-olds in countries with very high human development are in higher education. In low human development countries, that figure is 3 per cent. 

Even more shocking: some 17 per cent of the children born twenty years ago in countries with low human development have already died. 

Dear friends, Looking to the future, two seismic shifts will shape the 21st century: the climate crisis, and digital transformation. Both could widen inequalities even further. 

Some of the developments in today’s tech and innovation hubs are cause for serious concern. 

The heavily male-dominated tech industry is not only missing out on half the world’s expertise and perspectives. It is also using algorithms that could further entrench gender and racial discrimination.

The digital divide reinforces social and economic divides, from literacy to healthcare, from urban to rural, from kindergarten to college.

In 2019, some 87 per cent of people in developed countries used the internet, compared with just 19 per cent in the least developed countries. 

We are in danger of a two-speed world. 

At the same time, by 2050, we estimate that accelerating climate change will affect millions of people through malnutrition, malaria and other diseases, migration, and extreme weather events. 

This creates serious threats to inter-generational equality and justice. Today’s young climate protestors are on the frontlines of the fight against inequality.  

The countries that are most affected by climate disruption did the least to contribute to global heating. 

The green economy will be a new source of prosperity and employment. But let us not forget that some people will lose their jobs, particularly in the post-industrial rustbelts of our world. 

This is why we call not only for climate action, but climate justice. 

Political leaders must raise their ambition, businesses must raise their sights, and people everywhere must raise their voices. 

There is a better way, and we must take it.

Dear friends, The corrosive effects of today’s levels of inequality are clear.

We are sometimes told a rising tide of economic growth lifts all boats.

But in reality, rising inequality sinks all boats.

Confidence in institutions and leaders is eroding. Voter turnout has fallen by a global average of 10 per cent since the beginning of the 1990s. 

People who feel marginalized are vulnerable to arguments that blame their misfortunes on others, particularly those who look or behave differently.  

But populism, nationalism, extremism, racism and scapegoating will only create new inequalities and divisions within and between communities; between countries, between ethnicities, between religions. 

Dear friends, COVID-19 is a human tragedy. But it has also created a generational opportunity. 

An opportunity to build back a more equal and sustainable world.

The response to the pandemic, and to the widespread discontent that preceded it, must be based on a New Social Contract and a New Global Deal that create equal opportunities for all and respect the rights and freedoms of all. 

This is the only way that we will meet the goals of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement and the Addis Ababa Action Agenda – agreements that address precisely the failures that are being exposed and exploited by the pandemic. 

A New Social Contract within societies will enable young people to live in dignity; will ensure women have the same prospects and opportunities as men; and will protect the sick, the vulnerable, and minorities of all kinds. 

Education and digital technology must be two great enablers and equalizers. 

As Nelson Mandela said and I quote, “Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world.” As always, Nelson Mandela said it first. 

Governments must prioritize equal access, from early learning to lifelong education. 

Neuroscience tells us that pre-school education changes the lives of individuals and brings enormous benefits to communities and societies. 

So when the richest children are seven times more likely than the poorest to attend pre-school, it is no surprise that inequality is inter-generational. 

To deliver quality education for all, we need to more than double education spending in low and middle-income countries by 2030 to $3 trillion a year.

Within a generation, all children in low- and middle-income countries could have access to quality education at all levels. 

This is possible. We just have to decide to do it. 

And as technology transforms our world, learning facts and skills is not enough. Governments need to prioritize investment in digital literacy and infrastructure. 

Learning how to learn, adapt and take on new skills will be essential. 

The digital revolution and artificial intelligence will change the nature of work, and the relationship between work, leisure and other activities, some of which we cannot even imagine today. 

The Roadmap for Digital Cooperation, launched at the United Nations last month, promotes a vision of an inclusive, sustainable digital future by connecting the remaining four billion people to the Internet by 2030. 

The United Nations has also launched ‘Giga’, an ambitious project to get every school in the world online. 

Technology can turbocharge the recovery from COVID-19 and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals.

Dear friends, Growing gaps in trust between people, institutions and leaders threaten us all. 

People want social and economic systems that work for everyone. They want their human rights and fundamental freedoms to be respected. They want a say in decisions that affect their lives. 

The New Social Contract, between Governments, people, civil society, business and more, must integrate employment, sustainable development and social protection, based on equal rights and opportunities for all. 

Labour market policies, combined with constructive dialogue between employers and labour representatives, can improve pay and working conditions. 

Labour representation is also critical to manage the challenges posed to jobs by technology and structural transformation – including the transition to a green economy. 

The Labour movement has a proud history of fighting inequality and working for the rights and dignity of all. 

The gradual integration of the informal sector into social protection frameworks is essential. 

A changing world requires a new generation of social protection policies with new safety nets including Universal Health Coverage and the possibility of a Universal Basic Income. 

Establishing minimum levels of social protection, and reversing chronic underinvestment in public services including education, healthcare, and internet access are essential. 

But this is not enough to tackle entrenched inequalities. 

We need affirmative action programmes and targeted policies to address and redress historic inequalities in gender, race or ethnicity that have been reinforced by social norms.  

Taxation has also a role In the New Social Contract. Everyone – individuals and corporations – must pay their fair share. 

In some countries, there is a place for taxes that recognize that the wealthy and well-connected have benefitted enormously from the state, and from their fellow citizens. 

Governments should also shift the tax burden from payrolls to carbon. 

Taxing carbon rather than people will increase output and employment, while reducing emissions.   

We must break the vicious cycle of corruption, which is both a cause and effect of inequality. Corruption reduces and wastes funds available for social protection; it weakens social norms and the rule of law. 

Fighting corruption depends on accountability. The greatest guarantee of accountability is a vibrant civil society, including a free, independent media and responsible social media platforms that encourage healthy debate. 

Dear friends, Let’s face the facts. The global political and economic system is not delivering on critical global public goods: public health, climate action, sustainable development, peace. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought home the tragic disconnect between self-interest and the common interest; and the huge gaps in governance structures and ethical frameworks. 

To close those gaps, and to make the New Social Contract possible, we need a New Global Deal to ensure that power, wealth and opportunities are shared more broadly and fairly at the international level.

A new model for global governance must be based on full, inclusive and equal participation in global institutions. 

Without that, we face even wider inequalities and gaps in solidarity – like those we see today in the fragmented global response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Developed countries are strongly invested in their own survival in the face of the pandemic. But they have failed to deliver enough support needed to help the developing world through these dangerous times. 

A New Global Deal, based on a fair globalization, on the rights and dignity of every human being, on living in balance with nature, on taking account of the rights of future generations, and on success measured in human rather than economic terms, is the best way to change this. 

The worldwide consultation process around the 75th anniversary of the United Nations has made clear that people want a global governance system that delivers for them.  

The developing world must have a far stronger voice in global decision-making. 

We also need a more inclusive and balanced multilateral trading system that enables developing countries to move up global value chains.  


Illicit financial flows, money-laundering and tax evasion must be prevented. A global consensus to end tax havens is essential. 

We must work together to integrate the principles of sustainable development into financial decision-making. Financial markets must be full partners in shifting the flow of resources away from the brown and the grey to the green, the sustainable and the equitable. 

Reform of the debt architecture and access to affordable credit must create fiscal space for countries to move investment in the same direction. 

Dear friends, As Nelson Mandela said: “One of the challenges of our time… is to re-instill in the consciousness of our people that sense of human solidarity, of being in the world for one another and because of and through others.”

The COVID-19 pandemic has reinforced this message more strongly than ever. 

We belong to each other. 

We stand together, or we fall apart. 

Today, in demonstrations for racial equality… in campaigns against hate speech… in the struggles of people claiming their rights and standing up for future generations… we see the beginnings of a new movement. 

This movement rejects inequality and division, and unites young people, civil society, the private sector, cities, regions and others behind policies for peace, our planet, justice and human rights for all. It is already making a difference. 

Now is the time for global leaders to decide: 

Will we succumb to chaos, division and inequality?

Or will we right the wrongs of the past and move forward together, for the good of all?

We are at breaking point. But we know which side of history we are on. 

Thank you.

(Thank you to Phyllis Kotite, the CPNN reporter for this article.)

global, HUMAN RIGHTS, United Nations,

Israeli annexation of parts of the Palestinian West Bank would break international law – UN experts call on the international community to ensure accountability 

. . HUMAN RIGHTS . .

A news article from the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights

The agreement by the new coalition Government of Israel to annex significant parts of the occupied Palestinian West Bank after 1 July would violate a cornerstone principle of international law and must be meaningfully opposed by the international community, UN experts said today. Forty-seven of the independent Special Procedures mandates appointed by the Human Rights Council issued the following statement [on June 16]:

“The annexation of occupied territory is a serious violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Geneva Conventions, and contrary to the fundamental rule affirmed many times by the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly that the acquisition of territory by war or force is inadmissible. The international community has prohibited annexation precisely because it incites wars, economic devastation, political instability, systematic human rights abuses and widespread human suffering.

Israel’s stated plans for annexation would extend sovereignty over most of the Jordan Valley and all of the more than 235 illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank. This would amount to approximately 30 percent of the West Bank. The annexation of this territory was endorsed by the American Peace to Prosperity Plan, released in late January 2020.

The United Nations has stated on many occasions that the 53-year-old Israeli occupation is the source of profound human rights violations against the Palestinian people. These violations include land confiscation, settler violence, discriminatory planning laws, the confiscation of natural resources, home demolitions, forcible population transfer, excessive use of force and torture, labour exploitation, extensive infringements of privacy rights, restrictions on the media and freedom of expression, the targeting of women activists and journalists, the detention of children, poisoning by exposure to toxic wastes, forced evictions and displacement, economic deprivation and extreme poverty, arbitrary detention, lack of freedom of movement, food insecurity, discriminatory law enforcement and the imposition of a two-tier system of disparate political, legal, social, cultural and economic rights based on ethnicity and nationality. Palestinian and Israeli human rights defenders, who peacefully bring public attention to these violations, are slandered, criminalised or labeled as terrorists. Above all, the Israeli occupation has meant the denial of the right of Palestinian self-determination.

(continued in right column)

Question related to this article:

Presenting the Palestinian side of the Middle East, Is it important for a culture of peace?

Israel/Palestine, is the situation like South Africa?

(continued from left column)

These human rights violations would only intensify after annexation. What would be left of the West Bank would be a Palestinian Bantustan, islands of disconnected land completely surrounded by Israel and with no territorial connection to the outside world. Israel has recently promised that it will maintain permanent security control between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River. Thus, the morning after annexation would be the crystallisation of an already unjust reality: two peoples living in the same space, ruled by the same state, but with profoundly unequal rights. This is a vision of a 21st century apartheid.

Twice before, Israel has annexed occupied land – East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. On both occasions, the UN Security Council immediately condemned the annexations as unlawful but took no meaningful countermeasures to oppose Israel’s actions.

Similarly, the Security Council has repeatedly criticised the Israeli settlements as a flagrant violation under international law. Yet, Israel’s defiance of these resolutions and its ongoing entrenchment of the settlements has gone unanswered by the international community.

This time must be different. The international community has solemn legal and political responsibilities to defend a rules-based international order, to oppose violations of human rights and fundamental principles of international law and to give effect to its many resolutions critical of Israel’s conduct of this protracted occupation. In particular, states have a duty not to recognise, aid or assist another state in any form of illegal activity, such as annexation or the creation of civilian settlements in occupied territory. The lessons from the past are clear: Criticism without consequences will neither forestall annexation nor end the occupation.

Accountability and an end to impunity must become an immediate priority for the international community. Available to it is a broad menu of accountability measures that have been widely and successfully applied by the UN Security Council in other international crises over the past 60 years. The accountability measures that are selected must be taken in full conformity with international law, be proportionate, effective, subject to regular review, consistent with human rights, humanitarian and refugee law, and designed to undo the annexations and bring the occupation and the conflict to a just and durable conclusion. Palestinians and Israelis deserve no less.

We express great regret about the role of the United States of America in supporting and encouraging Israel’s unlawful plans for the further annexation of occupied territory. On many occasions over the past 75 years, the United States has played an important role in the advancement of global human rights. On this occasion, it should be ardently opposing the imminent breach of a fundamental principle of international law, rather than actively abetting its violation.”

HUMAN RIGHTS, Mideast, United Nations,

USA: The Failure of Police Use of Force Policies to Meet Fundamental International Human Rights Law and Standards

. HUMAN RIGHTS . .

Introduction and Conclusion from a report by the University of Chicago Law School – International Human Rights Clinic

Introduction

This Report is being published in the midst of a long series of horrifying incidents of police abuse of power in the United States. The deaths of George Floyd, Lacquan McDonald, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Breonna Taylor and many others, have echoed throughout the communities of this nation and prompted protests across the country. The video and testimonies from these incidents provide grim illustrations of the power law enforcement officers have over the people they are sworn to serve and protect, and the deadly consequences when they abuse that power.

Society vests law enforcement with the responsibility to protect public safety and enforce the law when necessary. For these reasons, and these reasons only, law enforcement officers are granted the immense power to use force, including lethal force. This authority – state sanctioned violence – necessarily comes with limits and obligations to ensure those who enforce the law do not abuse it. These limits and obligations require that police use their power in a manner that protects and serves the entire community that has vested them with this privilege. The exercise of this authority also requires accountability when abuses occur. Without accountability, state sanctioned violence is nothing but the exercise of arbitrary brute force, a common tool of tyrannical and despotic governments.

Yet, as endless reports and studies have indicated, the police in the United States do not always use their power in a manner that reflects the restraint, care and humility promised to its people. The many and terrible deaths of unarmed African Americans, the targeting of poor communities and communities of color, and the absence of a mandate to protect individuals from domestic violence, all sanctioned by the Supreme Court of the United States in the name of police discretion, have scarred many and raised questions of whether the police sufficiently serve their mandate.

Even as the evidence of criminality and misconduct permeates the news, drives thousands to the streets, and garners national outrage, the exact scope and scale of lethal use of force remains unknown. The United States does not count the number of lives lost nationally due to police use of force. And police departments vary as to how and whether data on officer use of force, including the discharge of police firearms and deaths, is collected and published. This absence of comprehensive reporting and publishing of data on police use of force severely limits our ability to see the full picture and to accurately evaluate police misconduct. It also constrains our ability to identify practices and institutional mechanisms in need of reform. The failure by states and the federal government to address this lack of transparency and accountability tells its own story and is, on its own, a cause for great concern.

The human rights of people living in the United States are profoundly affected by how law enforcement officials carry out their duties. Police use of force implicates the basic rights of every individual subject to this power – the rights to life, security of person, freedom from discrimination and equal protection of the laws. These rights, established following the atrocities of World War II in the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, form the cornerstone of the human rights system. The challenge of managing police power is a global one. People in every country face the difficult and complex balance between granting police the discretion and resources needed to achieve their purpose, while holding them accountable when they abuse their power in violation of the human rights of the communities they serve.

To address this global challenge, the 193 member states of the United Nations, which include the United States, have developed principles and standards to constrain, direct and ensure the proper use of lethal force. These principles – legality, necessity, proportionality and accountability – have been developed and concretized in various forms in the international system, and have been articulated in resolutions by the U.N. General Assembly, rules by committees of experts, and findings by U.N. Special Procedure Mechanisms. These principles and the rules they establish represent the best global effort to consider how police discretion and accountability can contribute to a just and humane society that respects and protects the rights of all its individuals.

In the United States, some of these principles have been adopted and articulated by our courts and law makers. However, this country lacks a comprehensive and effective national legal framework that places specific conditions on the use of force and establishes mechanisms of accountability.5 While the Constitution sets some limits on the use of force, the standards set by the Supreme Court in its case law fall woefully short of meeting the international standards, and Congress has failed to take action to fill this critical gap in federal law.6 Due to the decentralized nature of law enforcement in the United States, and the failure of national leadership to set uniform, federal standards, the main restrictions on police use of force exist at the state and local level. State law and police departmental policies provide the principles and standards on use of force and the consequences for when that authority is abused.

(Report continued in right column)

Questions for this article:

Where are police being trained in culture of peace?

(Report continued from left column)

While, in many states, legislation provides some direction on the use of force to police departments, research and data indicates that state laws have overwhelmingly failed to do so in an effective manner. In 2015, Amnesty International, USA released “Deadly Force: Police Use of Lethal Force in the United States,” evaluating state laws’ compliance with international human rights standards. Alarmingly, the report found that not a single state’s law fully complied.

This Report builds on Amnesty’s findings by examining the other main source of accountability for the use of force: police department policies. To capture a large portion of the population and a diverse set of contexts, this Report evaluates the police policies from the 20 largest cities in the United States during 2017 to 2018.7 These internal departmental policies provide the primary guidance to police officers on when and how they may use lethal force.8 They are intended as manuals for officers on how to execute their duties, written by police leadership and, for the most part, adopted by the governing police boards.9 These policies provide the substantive standards that officers are trained on and the principles that departments must operationalize. Policy violations trigger internal and sometimes external reviews and possible disciplinary measures.

While police policies vary, a use of force policy generally establishes the magnitude and nature of the threat that must exist, and the level of certainty police officers must have, to justify the use of lethal force.10 Some policies call for a gradual escalation of the use of force; some list a series of measures an officer must or should take before resorting to lethal force.11 They also prescribe what must happen after force has been used, who must be notified, and how an investigation unfolds.

This Report reviews and analyzes these policies to better understand how and whether police departments provide meaningful and effective direction to officers on the use of lethal force in a manner that respects the rights of the people they are charged to protect and serve. To evaluate use of force policies, authors developed and applied a grading system based on international law and standards on police lethal use of force. Through this evaluation, authors found that the policies in all 20 cities reviewed fail to meet international human rights law and standards. These use of force policies grant police undue discretion and insufficient guidance on when lethal force can be used, and they fail to establish strong enough accountability mechanisms.

Part I of this Report provides summary of findings and recommendations for the development of a robust mechanism to constrain police lethal use of force. Police departments across the country allow for the use of force in circumstances where there is no immediate threat to life, such as allowing exceptions for the capture of a fleeing suspect. And almost none of the city policies provide adequate oversight and accountability mechanisms.

Part II presents the international law and standards governing police use of lethal force in the United States. It highlights the four main principles derived from these standards – legality, necessity, proportionality, and accountability – and explains their application to police use of force policies.

Part III uses these four principles to analyze and grade the use of lethal force policies of the 20 largest U.S. cities. Like the laws of the 50 states, not a single policy fully complied with international human rights law and standards. In fact, some policies fell well below full compliance, for example, failing to require that lethal force only be used in response to the immediate threat of deadly force.

Ultimately, deep, structural reform of the United States’ law enforcement system is needed. The police in the United States kill more people than any of our peer nations.12 In a 24-day period in 2015, police in the United States shot more people than the police did in England and Wales in 24 years.13 By all measures, the current system is broken. As this Report demonstrates, the very laws and departmental policies that are meant to guide police officers on how to make the difficult, life and death decisions that are required of them, do not comply with human rights. Structural reform to end police killings of unarmed black and brown men and women must start in the police departments themselves with human rights-compliant use of force policies.

Conclusion

Not one of the police departments in the 20 largest cities in United States has a human rights compliant use of force policy. None of the policies are constrained by a state law that complies with human rights law and standards. And too many police departments allow the use of lethal force in response to a non-lethal threat, thereby sanctioning unnecessary and disproportionate use of force.

These policy failures have contributed to the tragic killings of unarmed black and brown men and women by police officers around the country. Ensuring police use of lethal force in the United States is constrained by international human rights law and standards requires a broad range of legal, institutional and practical measures, from a solid grounding in legislation, to a committed political and police leadership. Human rights compliant laws and police policies are an absolutely necessary component, but they alone cannot operationalize and make real the human rights law and standards embodied in the four core principles. Instead, law and policies provide the foundation on which a structure of reinforcing attitudes, practices and mechanisms must be built.

Making law and police policies more than just paper promises requires, among other things: comprehensive, effective and ongoing officer training; effective supervision and planning; robust corrective measures applied to officer misbehavior; independent and transparent investigating and reporting; disciplinary measures; and mechanisms with real independence, resources, power and will to provide accountability. Nevertheless, true structural transformation of law enforcement practices in the United States must begin with police policies that comply with international human rights law and standards.

DISARMAMENT & SECURITY, HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

Time for Australia to Say ‘Indigenous Lives Matter’

… . HUMAN RIGHTS … .

An article by Pascale Hunt in The Diplomat

Anti-racism protests across Australia amassed tens of thousands of supporters over the weekend. The murder of George Floyd, a black man, by a police officer in the United States on May 25 provided the catalyst for a global wave of solidarity with the black community to condemn police brutality and demand meaningful change. But neither Floyd’s murder, nor the anti-racism movement that it has sparked, should be considered surprising or spontaneous deviations from the circumstances found in local communities the world over. In Australia, the glaring issue of Aboriginal deaths in custody has become the obvious parallel drawn – 432 deaths since the Royal Commission in 1991, and not a single conviction. As in the United States, these crimes have occurred against the backdrop of centuries of structural and cultural violence.
.


A rally organizer leads a march from King George Square to South Brisbane at a Black Lives Matter protest on June 6, 2020, to support the movement over the death of George Floyd in the U.S. and the deaths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islands people in custody in Australia. Credit: AP Photo/John Pye

The nature of the unequal interactions between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within the structure of Australian society today prevents equality not only from being realized but from even being imagined. In understanding the dynamics of this reality, and if we hope to make progress toward equality and reconciliation, we should understand violence as tri-faceted in its manifestations, including not only direct (meaning physical) violence, but also structural and cultural aspects. Structural violence refers to violence that is embedded economically, socially, or legally, manifesting as unequal opportunities to realize quality of life, security, and self-actualization, whereas cultural violence is revealed in the social legitimization and justification of structural and direct violence.

The Indigenous peoples of Australia have suffered direct, structural, and cultural violence since colonization began over 200 years ago. While the exact numbers are contested, it has been estimated that there were between 300,000 and 1 million Indigenous peoples living on the Australian continent at that time, dispersed across over 200 nations – many of those lives were lost in direct combat and massacres at the time of British settlement. Today, the Indigenous peoples of Australia compose only 2 percent of the country’s population, making up a miniscule minority in their own lands – and life expectancy for Indigenous communities is some 25 percent below the rest of the Australian population. Australia has been accused of ethnic cleansing and of breaching the principles outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples – according to the United Nations Convention on Genocide, Article II, assorted historical policies of child removal and forced assimilation are considered genocidal.

It was only as recently as 1967 that Indigenous Australians were recognized as citizens – and in almost all contemporary statistics, Indigenous people are in much worse circumstances than other groups in the country. One of the most shocking examples is that today, the average lifespan for Indigenous Australians is 20 years less than the non-Indigenous population, despite both groups residing in what has been called “the wealthiest country in the world.” Furthermore, it is worth noting that Indigenous identity itself never existed until the colonial event to juxtapose it – since then, Indigeneity has transformed from a colonial construct into a politicized identity, as Indigenous peoples continue to struggle for recognition of their basic rights.

It should be understood that continued suppression of Australian Indigenous peoples, appearing today in the form of structurally and culturally violent policies and attitudes, is required to maintain the security of the settler colonies’ original interest. The nature of the settler-colonial context is an example of cultural violence itself – the land was declared terra nullius, meaning “land belonging to no one,” from the outset, justifying the immediate atrocities committed as well as the subsequent dehumanizing structures that continue to characterize the settler-Indigenous relationship. The settler-colonial context in general – and the conflicts that arise from it – are distinctive in that their primary interest was, and is, in securing permanent control of the land through dispossessing native populations, achieved by suppressing the significance of Indigenous presence. In the Australian case, the significance of Indigenous people’s territorial dispossession is compounded by their deep cultural and spiritual interconnectedness with their ancestral land.

How Indigenous Australians have been affected by historically embedded structural violence is evident in that they are often required to hand over land rights in exchange for basic services that other Australians get without strings attached.

Indigenous rights that are protected in the Northern Territory Land Rights Act (1976) prevent the government and private companies from accessing rich uranium deposits – a concession that exemplifies a huge opportunity cost for the mining industry that is largely responsible for Australia’s national wealth. With this in mind, relatively recent events such as the Northern Territory intervention of 2007 – in which the government enacted a unilateral military occupation of NT communities’ land, quarantined 50 percent of Indigenous welfare payments, suspended the Racial Discrimination Act, and subjected Indigenous children to non-consensual health checks under the pretext of protecting them – can be interpreted as a strategic continuation of the original colonial-imperial agenda.

The mining industry is the biggest contributor to Australian GDP growth, and comes into direct conflict with Indigenous land rights, posing a significant struggle over the control of resources that support the maintenance of mining profits. Legislation such as the Aboriginal Land Rights Act (1976) in the Northern Territory has in some instances allowed the Indigenous community to influence development decisions – or at least share in the capital benefits – but in general, the legal, policy, and institutional environment remains hostile to Indigenous interests, heavily favoring those of mining corporations. Amendments to the Native Title Act made in 1998 imposed stricter requirements for registering Native Title claims, and simultaneously removed the “right to negotiate” from the renewal of mining leases. Not by coincidence, the NSW Office of the Environment and Heritage shows that between June 2012 and June 2013 there were over 99 applications for the destruction of Aboriginal heritage sites for development purposes – all of which were approved.

(Article continued in right column)

Question(s) related to this article:

Are we making progress against racism?

(Article continued from left column)

Importantly, mineral development prevents and excludes Indigenous people from being on country, hunting and gathering, and carrying out rituals. Their capacity to negotiate with developers is severely undermined by government non-funding of Native Title Representative Bodies, which exist to support traditional owners in negotiations with commercial interests, leaving many Indigenous individuals and organizations with no choice but to rely on project developers for funding. This dynamic fundamentally alters the negotiating process. Ultimately, mining companies are driven by aspirations for capital accumulation that override their ostensible commitment to corporate social responsibility norms.

The media continues to facilitate the structural and cultural violence that permeates the relationship between settler and Indigenous Australians. Conventional reporting structures that rely on official sources and dualistic tug-of-war conceptions of conflict situations often ignore the root causes of conflict, the diversity and legitimacy of various stakeholders’ perspectives, and the complexity of myriad processes taking place. In the Australian media, Indigenous peoples are often portrayed as less successful in society, encouraging perceptions that this is the outcome innate group traits such as substance abuse or lack of initiative, rather than a consequence of broader structural factors and policies that prevent Indigenous peoples from realizing their goals. This effect is multiplied due to the comparative size of the Indigenous population to the rest of the country in Australia, as well as the intense concentration of media ownership in the country, which undeniably promotes elite and private interests. A feedback loop is created when culturally violent attitudes are distributed, justifying the structurally violent system, creating more circumstances that can be reported in a way that compound both. The inevitable outcome is a reinforcement of status-quo ideology, and a barrier preventing conflict comprehension and conflict resolution.

A primary obstacle to the reconciliation process in Australia is achieving acknowledgement among the wider public that the conflict is still happening. The official reconciliation process has been a mostly top-down approach, reflective of the colonial project from which the current system derives. It has failed to seriously address the injustices that have been done – primarily, the forced dispossession of land that lies at the heart of the conflict. It has been largely symbolic, emphasizing apology and forgiveness over structural and relational change – in other words, official reconciliation has failed to address the causal connection between structurally entrenched social disadvantage and the original dispossession of land that occurred. Nuanced contextualization that accounts for the historical abuses that have characterized the Indigenous-settler relationship is essential in order to understand the nature of the contemporary conflict and explore options for holistic reconciliation and conflict transformation.

Reconciliation itself has been criticized as a replacement for calls for sovereign recognition, and for characterizing historical events as “past injustices” that are unrelated to contemporary realities. While the process ostensibly aimed to address structural injustices affecting Indigenous communities, it failed to locate these structural injustices within the historical colonial context of land dispossession and the imposition of policies that continue to control Indigenous destinies. Former Prime Minister John Howard advocated a “practical reconciliation” agenda, in which policies would be implemented to target social inequalities in areas of employment, education, housing, and health – suggesting that reconciliation efforts should “focus on the future.” This discourse emphasized friendship and forgiveness – an idea that is beneficial to those seeking to reinforce a unified nation-state, but fails to recognize Indigenous calls for justice.

Since the 1960s, there have been several nonofficial political campaigns centered on the concept of land rights and self-determination of Indigenous Australians and challenging the established history of the settler society. One of the most iconic – inspired by the U.S. Civil Rights movement – was when a group of students took part in a peaceful protest known as the “Freedom Rides,” travelling around New South Wales fostering awareness about Indigenous sovereignty. These representations of the continent’s history spurred growing demands for recognition of Indigenous rights and sovereignty, directly challenging the state’s reputation as a liberal democracy, and called for the establishment of a treaty such as had been the practice in the United States, Canada, and New Zealand. In 1988, the largest-ever protest for Indigenous rights occurred in Sydney during the bicentennial celebrations and aimed to raise awareness about the original custodianship of the continent. While over 20,000 Indigenous Australians congregated in solidarity and protest of the previous 200 years of treatment, their presence was ignored by media reports – which instead chose to cover the many ships gathered in Sydney Harbor for the government-sponsored Australia Day celebrations.

In recent decades, there has been a noticeable increase in the symbolic use of Indigeneity as a part of the Australian nation-building project – discounting the truth of Indigenous Australians and appropriating the country’s controversial history by establishing a false connectedness between settlers and the land, thereby weakening Indigenous claims to sovereignty. Instead of addressing the unequal relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, the government promoted a nationalistic rhetoric that preached a “unified Australia” at the expense of Indigenous voices. It was a presentation that was beneficial to the state – facilitating the mythic character of the Australian nation as the “lucky country” in a way that dismissed the perspective of the Australian Indigenous population. In effect, it masked Indigenous dissent in a cover of self-congratulatory celebrations that were aimed at allowing settler Australians and the Australian state to stand proud with their identity, at the expense of the message that 20,000 Indigenous Australians that had gathered for. There is glaring opportunity for the media to play a more effective role in acknowledging history and facilitating discussion about the context underpinning the present situation.

In 2008, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd formally apologized to the stolen generations. The apology was greatly important for many Indigenous peoples and provided a sense of healing and symbolic justice. However, the over-emphasis on the apology in the media has allowed politicians to dodge meaningful reforms toward actual justice for Indigenous Australians. In February 2015, Rudd reflected on his apology, noting that as a country, “our achievements have been meager… the purpose of the apology was not to provide the nation a fleeting feel-good moment… it was to harness our collective energies for breaking the cycle of Indigenous disadvantage for the future.”

Permeating structural and cultural violence against Indigenous Australians has not been sufficiently addressed, and this hinders progress toward reconciliation and conflict resolution. The settler-colonial context, which manifests today in structurally violent attitudes and culturally violent policies with the media as a key player in maintaining the status quo, prioritizes national business interests that exacerbate the original injustice of Indigenous land dispossessions. A comprehensive understanding of the nature and context of the conflict, facilitated by dialogue and respect, is essential, along with an acknowledgement that the present situation is derived from the historical and contemporary denial of Indigenous rights, freedoms, and human needs.

It is understandable – given the history of structural, cultural and direct violence in Australia – that many Indigenous peoples feel that they will not have true justice until they are granted substantive land rights, sovereignty, and the ability to control their own destinies. While it may be too late in the game to turn over the extent of reparations that is deserved, the reconciliation process could undoubtedly involve more substantive, structural change that would make a real difference to the living conditions, dignity, and identities of Indigenous peoples, and contribute toward mending the broken relationship between settler Australians and the original custodians of this land.

East Asia, HUMAN RIGHTS

What is Juneteenth and how are people commemorating it this year?

… . HUMAN RIGHTS … .

An article from Reuters (reprinted by permission)

Juneteenth, an annual U.S. holiday on June 19, has taken on greater significance this year following nationwide protests over police brutality and the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and other African Americans.
.


FILE PHOTO: The Emancipation Proclamation is displayed at the National Archives building in Washington, January 13, 2006. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, during the American Civil War, formally proclaiming the freedom of all slaves held in areas still in revolt. This original document is displayed for public during four days once a year. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas/File Photo

WHAT IS JUNETEENTH?

Juneteenth, a portmanteau of June and 19th, also is known as Emancipation Day. It commemorates the day in 1865, after the Confederate states surrendered to end the Civil War, when a Union general arrived in Texas to inform the last group of enslaved African Americans of their freedom under President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. In 1980, Texas officially declared it a holiday. It is now recognized in 46 other states and the District of Columbia. Although in part a celebration, the day is also observed solemnly to honor those who suffered during slavery in the United States with the arrival of the first enslaved Africans over 400 years ago.

(Article continued in right column)

Question(s) related to this article:

Are we making progress against racism?

(Article continued from left column)

WHAT IS SIGNIFICANT THIS YEAR?

This year Juneteenth coincides with global protests against racial injustice sparked by the May 25 death of Floyd, a black man, in Minneapolis police custody. It also accompanies the coronavirus outbreak, which has disproportionately affected communities of color. Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump, who had already been under fire for his response to both crises, drew further criticism for scheduling a Friday re-election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has since moved it to Saturday. Tulsa is an important and especially sensitive site where a white mob massacred African-American residents in 1921. Community organizations nationwide will devote the day to discussions on policing and civil rights ahead of the November election.

[Editor’s note: Although Juneteenth is not a national holiday in the U.S. there is a move in the Congress to do this.]

HOW ARE PEOPLE MARKING THE DAY?

People will mark the 155th anniversary across the country with festive meals and gatherings. While many cities have canceled this year’s annual parades because of the pandemic, other groups have opted for virtual conferences or smaller events. In Washington, groups plan marches, protests and rallies. Amid the wave of racial justice protests, some U.S. businesses have committed to a change of policies, including recognition of the holiday. Among the companies that have announced they will recognize Juneteenth as a paid company holiday are the National Football League (here), the New York Times, and Twitter and Square.

HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

USA: Historian Robin D.G. Kelley: Years of Racial Justice Organizing Laid Groundwork for Today’s Uprising

EDUCATION FOR PEACE .

Excerpts from a report on Jun 11 in Democracy Now (The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org.)

AMY GOODMAN: For more on the mass uprising engulfing the U.S. and what protesters are demanding now, we go to Los Angeles, where we’re joined by Robin Kelley, professor of African American studies at UCLA. He studies social movements, author of many books, including Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination. . . .


video of full report

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Professor Kelley, I want to go back to something that you  wrote  immediately following Trump’s election in November 2016. You wrote that the U.S. needs a multiracial movement committed to, quote, “dismantling the oppressive regimes of racism, heteropatriarchy, empire, and class exploitation that is at the root of inequality, precarity, materialism, and violence in many forms.” You’ve just talked about how the demands of this movement are very different. Do you see what’s happening now as what you wanted to happen in November 2016?

ROBIN D.G. KELLEY: Exactly. And not only that, but what I wrote in 2016 was actually a reflection of what was already happening on the ground. So, in some respects, remember, the Movement for Black Lives put out their policy platform in August of 2016.

(Article continued in right column)

Question(s) related to this article:

Are we making progress against racism?

(Article continued from left column)

And one of the things we all have to acknowledge is that we’re not here by accident. You know, this is not a spontaneous response to the pandemic, and suddenly white people are waking up and saying, “Oh, wait a second, Black lives matter.” No, this is a product of enormous work, going back well before Trayvon Martin. But you think about all the organizing work, the Movement for Black Lives, Black Lives Matter, the women who organized Black Lives Matter, initiated — Opal Tometi, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors — people like Melina Abdullah, Charlene Carruthers of Black Youth Project 100, all the scholar activists who have been working on this question — Barbara Ransby, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Ruth Wilson Gilmore — and then, before that, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Copwatch, Dignity and Power, Critical Resistance, the African American Policy Forum. These were initiatives on the ground who did all this political education, all this organizing work — We Charge Genocide, Dream Defenders, the Rising Majority, Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, and also groups like SURJ, you know, [Showing] Up for Racial Justice, which deals with white racism.

So you have an infrastructure in place that has been doing this work for a decade or more — more than a decade. And that’s why people are out here. That’s why people can come out into the streets and simply roll off their tongues words like “defund the police,” connect transphobia, homophobia, gender oppression, patriarchy to racial capitalism and to racial violence, connect these things in ways that I think are kind of unprecedented. But again, without the organizing work, we would not be here, you know? And I think it’s very important to even go back and acknowledge how the foundations were laid by the Combahee River Collective, by people like Barbara Smith, raised by the Third World Women’s Alliance, I mean, fighting around questions of connecting sterilization, abortion rights with racism. You know? So, these kinds of links, these connections — and also with war — are important. So, there’s a long history that got us here.

And the real question now is whether or not this can be sustained, because we know, throughout history, we’ve had revolutionary moments, after Reconstruction in the 1870s, followed by backlash and by what we can describe as American fascism. We have the sort of Second Reconstruction of the 1960s, followed by backlash, the rise of the Klan, the tamping down on the strike wave in the 1970s, neoliberalism. And now we’re facing another one. We have these forces trying to transform the world in a way that could actually bring safety and prosperity to all versus a president and a regime that asks, “What happened to Gone with the Wind? …

EDUCATION FOR PEACE, HUMAN RIGHTS, North America

Protests worldwide embrace Black Lives Matter movement

… . HUMAN RIGHTS … .

An article from Thomson Reuters (reprinted by permission)

Thousands of people took to the streets in European and Asian cities on Saturday [June 6], demonstrating in support of U.S. protests against police brutality.


Video of demonstrations around the world

The rolling, global protests reflect rising anger over police treatment of ethnic minorities, sparked by the May 25 killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis after a white officer detaining him knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes with fellow officers beside him.

After a largely peaceful protest in London, a few demonstrators near British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s residence threw bottles at police, and mounted officers charged push protesters back.

Earlier, more than a thousand protesters had marched past the U.S. Embassy, blocking traffic and holding placards.

Many thousands had also crowded into the square outside parliament, holding placards reading “Black Lives Matter”, ignoring government advice to avoid large gatherings due to the risk from the coronavirus.

“I have come down in support of black people who have been ill-treated for many, many, many, many years. It is time for a change,” said 39-year-old primary school teacher Aisha Pemberton.

Police in the German city of Hamburg used pepper spray on protesters and said they were ready to deploy water cannons. One officer was injured, they added.

Several hundred “hooded and aggressive people” had put officers under pressure in the city centre, police said, tweeting: “Attacks on police officers are unacceptable!”

(Article continued in right column)

Question(s) related to this article:

Are we making progress against racism?

(Article continued from left column)

In Paris the authorities banned demonstrations planned outside the U.S. Embassy and on the lawns near the Eiffel Tower.

However, several hundred protesters, some holding “Black Lives Matters” signs, gathered on Place de la Concorde, close to the Embassy. Police had installed a long barrier across the square to prevent access to the embassy, which is also close to the Elysee presidential palace.

In Berlin, demonstrators filled the central Alexanderplatz square, while there was also a protest in Warsaw.

PLACARDS AND FLAGS

In Brisbane, one of several Australian cities where rallies were held, police estimated 10,000 people joined a peaceful protest, wearing masks and holding “Black Lives Matter” placards. Many wrapped themselves in indigenous flags, calling for an end to police mistreatment of indigenous Australians.

Banners and slogans have focused not just on George Floyd but on a string of other controversies in different countries as well as mistreatment of minorities in general.

In Sydney, a last-minute court decision overruling a ban imposed because of the coronavirus allowed several thousand people to march, with a heavy police presence.

In Tokyo, marchers protested against what they said was police mistreatment of a Kurdish man who says he was stopped while driving and shoved to the ground. Organisers said they were also marching in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“I want to show that there’s racism in Japan now,” said 17-year-old high school student Wakaba, who declined to give her family name.

In Seoul, dozens of South Korean activists and foreign residents gathered, some wearing black masks with “Can’t breathe” in Korean, echoing George Floyd’s final words as he lay on the ground.

In Bangkok, activists avoided coronavirus restrictions by going online, asking for video and photos of people wearing black, raising their fists and holding signs, and explaining why they supported the Black Lives Matter movement.
Protesters were expected to gather in Washington for a huge demonstration on Saturday as demonstrations across the United States entered a 12th day.

Reporting by Reuters bureaux around the world; Writing by William Mallard and Hugh Lawson; Editing by Frances Kerry and Kevin Liffey
Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

global, HUMAN RIGHTS