COLOMBIA: Voices of Women Peace Activists Silenced

October 20, 2010 By

Global Geopolitics Viewpoints / IPS

By Helda Martínez – IPS/TerraViva

BOGOTÁ, Oct 20, 2010 (IPS) – "When we women speak out, without showing fear, we pay a high price: living with that fear," says one peace activist in Colombia. "The threats will not stop us from working for peace and social justice," says another.

Their voices echo those of the many Colombian women — peasant farmers, indigenous and black women, and mothers of victims of forced disappearance — who have mobilised for peace and to fight impunity in a country that has suffered a half-century of armed conflict between leftist guerrillas, government forces and the far-right paramilitary groups that joined the fray in the 1980s.

The best-known among them is Senator Piedad Córdoba of the Liberal Party, an Afro-Colombian feminist who was a mediator in the talks that led to the release of 14 captives held by the leftwing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

In her push for a negotiated solution to end the civil war, Córdoba works in association with non-governmental organisations like the Casa de la Mujer women’s centre and the Colombian Men and Women for Peace collective, which she founded. The collective maintains an ongoing dialogue by means of public letters with the FARC and with the second largest guerrilla group, the National Liberation Army (ELN).

"There’s no turning back from peace" and "our mission is to defeat the war" are Córdoba’s mantras. But she has paid a high price for her involvement in the peace effort: she was banned from serving in public posts for 18 years by a Sept. 27 ruling by inspector general Alejandro Ordóñez, based on charges that she collaborated with the guerrillas. However, the ruling can be appealed.

The Ruta Pacífica de las Mujeres (Women’s Peace Route) was created in 1996, describing itself as "anti-militarist and a builder of an ethic of non-violence." Its members, who range from feminist thinkers to rural workers in some 300 groups from nine regions, take part in convoys that travel through conflict zones with their message to those involved in the armed conflict.

"It is up to us to build peace," Olga Amparo Sánchez, director of Casa de la Mujer, told TerraViva. In the second half of 2009, at least 11 of the organisation’s leaders were victims of threats, harassment and physical mistreatment. Another organisation in May reported threats against 90 more women activists.

"I often receive aggressive phone calls in my position as an activist," María Arizabaleta, a member of the Ruta in the southwestern province of Valle del Cauca, told TerraViva. "In Valle we are 300,000 women strong," added Arizabaleta, who has been an activist for 60 of her 76 years.

"When we women speak out, without showing fear, we pay a high price: living with that fear," stated Pilar Tobón, a community negotiator with the Peace and Coexistence Programme of the Medellín city government, capital of the northwestern province of Antioquia.

Women activists fall victim to the paramilitaries, the guerrillas, and the armed forces.

Women and children "account for the vast majority of those adversely affected by armed conflict," states Resolution 1325 of the United Nations Security Council. The tenth anniversary of the resolution is Oct. 31.

In this South American country of 45 million people, 75 percent of those internally displaced by the civil war are women and children, according to the National Assembly for Peace. Colombia is second in the world for its proportion of internally displaced persons, who number more than four million.

From July 2002 to December 2007, the conflict claimed the lives of 1,314 women, and another 179 were forcibly disappeared. Of every 103 victims of sexual abuse in the context of the conflict, 100 are women and girls, the report states.

The U.N. Security Council "resolution is important in formal terms, because it underscores the role of women in working for peace and calls upon the armed groups to respect the rights of women," said María Eugenia Ramírez, of Mesa Mujer y Conflicto Armado (Women and Armed Conflict in Colombia).

What is missing, she told TerraViva, "is a commitment by the Colombian government to implement concrete measures, because it seems to have forgotten that it also forms part of the conflict, with its military forces."

In terms of "humanitarian law, the insurgent groups are just as responsible as the government," Ramírez added.

Esmeralda Ruiz, gender and human rights adviser at the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), said "what is urgently needed is a political commitment by the government to women’s organisations, as well as mechanisms and strategies that make their contributions to peace processes more visible. That is what the (U.N. Security Council) resolution is all about."

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2010.

This article may not be republished, broadcast, framed, or redistributed without the written permission of IPS – Inter Press Service. Republication of this material without permission from IPS, the copyright holder, constitutes a violation of United States and international copyright laws and may result in legal action.

Filed Under: Human Rights, Latin America, Report

POLITICS-US: Yes, He Could Obama Handily Takes White House

November 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Nov 4 (IPS) – In a historic victory, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has been elected the 44th president of the United States.

Obama, the first African American to be elected to the nation’s highest office, was declared the winner by all of the country’s major media networks as the polling on the West Coast of the U.S. closed Tuesday night, even as millions of votes remained to be counted throughout the country.

”A new dawn of American leadership is at hand,” Obama told a cheering crowd of about 125,000 people gathered in Chicago’s Grant Park, after the formal concession of rival John McCain.

”You understand the enormity of the challenges we face — two wars, a planet in peril, the worst financial crisis in a century,” he said. ”The road ahead will be long. Our climb will be steep. We may not get there in one year or even one term, but America — I have never been more hopeful than I am tonight that we will get there. I promise you — we as a people will get there.”
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Elections, Featured, Politics, United States

RIGHTS-COLOMBIA: Army Chief Steps Down

November 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Constanza Vieira

BOGOTA, Nov 4 (IPS) – General Mario Montoya stepped down as Colombia’s army chief, putting an end to his career Tuesday. The general is under investigation by the attorney general’s office, although he has not yet been charged.

”I have been in the service of my country for 39 years and today I can say that the journey has come to an end,” Montoya said in a brief statement to reporters.

The annual announcement of armed forces officers who are retiring is due Wednesday, and local analysts believe Montoya wanted to quit before he was forced into retirement, to preserve his image.

Montoya was widely regarded as a hero for the successful Jul. 2 operation in which the army managed to rescue former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three U.S. military contractors and 11 members of the police and military who were held hostage for years by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerrillas.
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Filed Under: Conflict, Human Rights, Justice, Latin America, Politics, Report

ECONOMY-BRAZIL: Crisis Delays Threat of ‘Venezuelan Disease’

November 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

By Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 4 (IPS) – The global financial crisis has corrected the extreme overvaluation of Brazil’s local currency, caused by the policies of its Central Bank, thus temporarily chasing away fears of “Dutch disease”, which in the developing world could well be called “Venezuelan disease”.

The change of name for this particular “economic ailment” in the countries of the developing South is based on the work of the late Celso Furtado (1920-2004), who in 1957 identified the phenomenon of “underdevelopment with abundant foreign exchange” in Venezuela, a unique case in Latin America at a time when the region’s main complaint was the lack of capital for industrial development.

The study by the economist who was the top authority on Brazilian political economy, carried out for the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), was just now published by the International Celso Furtado Centre for Development Policies, as part of the first volume of a series based on his personal archives, that includes another essay on Venezuela, written in 1974, and commentaries from other experts.

Furtado’s analysis of the “peculiarities” of the Venezuelan economy identified problems that would only be labeled “Dutch disease” two decades later, said Carlos Aguiar de Medeiros, a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, who commented on the two studies by the late economist.
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Filed Under: Economy, Latin America, Report

POLITICS-US – Racism Won’t Keep Arab Americans From Polls

November 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Habib Battah

NEW YORK, Nov 3 (IPS) – Arab Americans are expected to vote in large numbers Tuesday, despite concerns over voter intimidation and weak outreach from the presidential candidates, representatives of major community organisations say.
The Arab American Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) has set up a voter protection unit staffed by lawyers to help dispel rumours that may have prevented some from going to the polls in the past.

“As always, there will be voter intimidation,” predicted Abed Ayoub, one of five attorneys attached to the unit. Enthusiasm for the election is higher than it was in 2004, he contended, pointing to a recent ADC-sponsored event in Michigan that saw at least 500 Arab Americans register in just two days.

At the same time, the ADC has received hundreds of calls over recent months from Arab Americans who mistakenly believed they may have been ineligible to vote.

“One rumour was that if you are in foreclosure, you can’t vote,” Ayoub said. Another is the misconception that those who couldn’t read or write in English — often a problem for elderly Arab Americans — would not be allowed to use translators.

But the greatest fear is of an incident like the one at the 1999 municipal election in Hamtramck, Michigan, where dozens of dark-skinned Arab Americans were asked to take a citizenship oath before voting. The move caused many to avoid the polls for fear of embarrassment.

Even in more recent elections, a number of complaints were made to ADC, though never made public, the lawyer said. “This year we want to attack the problem before it happens,” Ayoub said.

Votes of the estimated 3.5 million Arab Americans could be pivotal, especially in swing states. And though a September poll by the Arab American Institute showed that Sen. Barack Obama was far more popular — with a 54 percent to 33 percent lead over Sen. John McCain — it also found that 20 percent of Arab Americans are not enrolled in any political party. And Arab organisations say both presidential campaigns have largely failed to recognise Arab Americans as an important voting bloc.

“Neither party has done a lot of outreach to the community,” said Lelia Al-Qatami, ADC’s communications and cultural affairs director. “Ethnic outreach is very common, but we haven’t seen any with regards to the Arab community.”

The Obama campaign briefly had a liaison to the Arab American community, she acknowledged. But the liaison, Mazen Asbahi, resigned 10 days after his appointment in early August, after the Wall Street Journal ran a story alleging that he may have had ties to a fundamentalist imam. The Arab American Institute called the Journal’s claim “vague and specious.” But the incident was just one of many that upset Arab Americans.

Many Arab Americans also felt let down by the Obama campaign this summer when two Muslim women wearing headscarves were barred from appearing seated behind the senator in a television shot at Detroit rally. And there’s been disappointment over McCain’s recent response to supporters who called Obama “an Arab”. By defending Obama as “a decent family man”, McCain drew fire from Arab American Institute director James Zogby, who issued a statement noting that Arab Americans were “also decent men and women”.

“We would have liked to have better contact from both sides [of the presidential race],” said Christina Zola, AAI communications director. “The racism on behalf of staff or supporters should have been dealt with better.”

A feeling of alienation from the two campaigns was also voiced by the Arab American Political Action Committee, which decided not to endorse either presidential candidate. And neither campaign requested an endorsement, the AAPAC said.

“Those candidates who are not willing to make the effort to request our support and pursue it respectfully are not worthy of our vote, regardless of who they are,” the AAPAC said in its Oct. 11 statement.

Both Obama and McCain have also been criticised by Ralph Nader, an Arab American of Lebanese descent and the Green Party presidential candidate. Nader challenged both McCain and Obama to visit a Muslim place of worship before Election Day, “like they [visited] churches and synagogues,” according to a statement on Nader’s campaign website.

Still, hundreds of Arab Americans are campaigning for Obama or McCain, the ADC said, while the AAI has recruited several hundred volunteers to help register Arab voters, as part of the Yalla Vote Campaign. (Yalla means “come on/let’s go” in Arabic.)

“We need to be involved in this election,” said Mohammad Al Filali, outreach director for the Islamic Center of Passaic County, New Jersey, home to one of the greatest concentrations of Arab Americans. “We cannot allow our voices to be muzzled.”

At least 100 Arab Americans registered to vote in the space of a few hours during an event to celebrate the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in early October, Al Filali said. He said the community was energised by the election, despite the perception that the word Arab has “all of a sudden become a curse” in campaign rhetoric.

Samir Issa, a software engineer who took part in the event, said he was still supporting Obama, the abrupt departure of the candidate’s Arab American liaison notwithstanding. “I lost some trust in him [Obama], but not all, because the other choice is even worse,” said Issa, 36. “He’s just trying to win, whatever the cost.”

Community involvement is another problem. The campaigns “pay closer attention to people with money,” Al Filali said. “We are new to the game of politics. We have to make ourselves known.”

Filed Under: Politics, Report, United Nations, United States

POLITICS-US: Vote-Flipping Reported on E-Voting Machines

November 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

By Matthew Cardinale

CHARLESTON, West Virginia, Nov 3 (IPS) – Several U.S. citizens reported watching their votes flip on electronic voting machines in different states during the early voting period, highlighting the continued vulnerability of “e-voting” systems, which about 50 million U.S. citizens will use on Tuesday, despite problems since as early as 2004.

Most of the voters with complaints so far have said they saw their votes flipped from the Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, to Republican Sen. John McCain, although at least three voters in Tennessee reported the reverse.

Vote-flipping has been reported so far in at least four states — Colorado, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia — out of the 31 states where early voting has taken place.

However, the reports of vote-flipping are just of the tip of the iceberg, according to Emily Levy of Velvet Revolution, a voter rights group.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Elections, News, Politics, United States

POLITICS-US: Can Naturalised Citizens Tip the Balance?

November 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

By Nuzhat Naoreen

The Korean-American civic group YKASEC says it has registered more than 26,000 people to vote since 2004.

NEW YORK, Nov 3 (IPS) – Juan Carlos Jimenez had already lived legally in the United States for nearly 40 years when he became a citizen in October, at 44. He joined hundreds of other immigrants at a New York courthouse to take his oath.

“It’s the only reason I became a citizen — to vote in this election,” said Jimenez, who was born in Colombia.

The Iraq war and the foundering economy made him want to vote for the first time.

“There’s just too much at stake now,” he said.

Issues like the war, the economy, and failed immigration reform are expected to drive many first-time immigrant voters like Jimenez to the polls this year, in greater numbers than before.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Analysis, Elections, Politics, United States

POLITICS-US: Massive Turnout Expected to Tip Vote for Obama

November 4, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites – Global Intel Net / IPS
Tuesday, November 04, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

By Jim Lobe

John McCain (left) and Barack Obama (right) have together spent more than a billion dollars on their campaigns – about 8 dollars per vote.

WASHINGTON, Nov 3 (IPS) – On the eve of Tuesday’s elections, Sen. Barack Obama and his fellow Democratic candidates appear to be on the verge of a historic victory, according to political experts attached to both major parties and the latest polling.

The latest national polling shows Obama leads by between six and 12 percentage points, with an NBC/Wall Street Journal survey conducted Sunday giving him a 51-43 percent advantage.

While the race for the White House has tightened slightly in the last several days, Republican Sen. John McCain will have to win virtually all of the remaining half-dozen “swing states” — those which are still considered too close to call — plus carry several more states that are currently considered leaning strongly toward Obama in order to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in the all-important Electoral College.
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Filed Under: Featured, Politics, United States

POLITICS-US: Two, Three, Many Grand Bargains?

November 1, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Saturday, November 01, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Analysis by Jim Lobe*

WASHINGTON, Nov 1 (IPS) – As the United States waded ever deeper into the Indochinese quagmire in the early 1960s, the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara called for ”two, three, many Vietnams” to bog down the superpower in unwinnable Third World conflicts that would drain its treasury and overstretch its military.

While today’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not quite as costly — at least as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) — as then, Guevara’s vision, echoed nearly 40 years later by Osama bin Laden, of an increasingly stressed hyperpower which now confronts its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression must weigh heavily on whichever candidate moves into the White House Jan. 20.

Indeed, even as both Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama talk about the urgency of sending thousands more troops to Afghanistan to cope with the growing Taliban threat — potentially magnified manifold by the ongoing insurgency across the border in the tribal territories of nuclear-armed Pakistan — the transition set to begin next Tuesday next Tuesday will offer the president-elect a critical window to contemplate possible exit strategies not only in southwest Asia, but westward to the Mediterranean, as well.

A series of interlocking ”grand bargains” backed by the relevant regional players as well as major global powers — aimed at pacifying Afghanistan; integrating Iran into a new regional security structure; promoting reconciliation in Iraq; and launching a credible process to negotiate a comprehensive peace between Israel and the Arab world — must offer a very tempting, if extremely challenging, prospect to any new resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
[Read more...]

Filed Under: Featured, Geopolitics, United States

BIODIVERSITY: Unraveling the Mysteries of Salmon Migration

October 31, 2008 By

Global Geopolitics Net Sites / IPS
Friday, October 31, 2008

All rights reserved, IPS – Inter Press Service, 2008.

Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada, Oct 31 (IPS) – Tiny juvenile salmon have been electronically tracked for the first time from their natal rivers in the Rocky Mountains 2,500 kilometres north to Alaska.

”We’re turning the lights on in the oceans,” enthused Jim Bolger, a marine biologist at the Vancouver Aquarium.

”It’s very exciting, with this new technology scientists can finally see how changes in the oceans are affecting fish and other species,” Bolger told IPS.

The new technology is a series of electronic acoustic receivers planted along the ocean bottom stretching 1,750 kilometres from Oregon through British Columbia and north to the Alaskan panhandle. Fish and other species have transmitters implanted and the receivers pick up their individual signals as they pass.

The transmitters or tags are now as small as an almond and can be surgically implanted in juvenile salmon less than 14 centimetres in length. As they approach, the receivers log the tag’s unique serial number, the date and time. Movement patterns of individual animals, including direction and speed, can be reconstructed using the time of detection at different receivers and other listening curtains.

”Several mysteries of fish migration and survival may soon start to unravel,” said Bolger, the executive director of what is called the Pacific Ocean Shelf Tracking (POST) Project, a part of the international Census of Marine Life

One of those mysteries is where salmon go after they leave the rivers where they are born.

To try and answer that question, researchers implanted tags in 1,000 juvenile Chinook salmon in 2006 and followed their journeys in the Columbia and Fraser Rivers using the POST receivers. Among the many studied, two tagged juveniles survived a 2,500-km trip that took more than three months — from the upper reaches of the Snake River (a tributary of the Columbia River) in Idaho, out to sea then north along the continental shelf to Alaska according to a study published this week in the journal Public Library of Science Biology,

Most surprising of all, said Bolger, was that salmon from the undammed, free-flowing Fraser River in Canada suffered the same high levels of mortality as those battling their way through the eight dams of the Columbia River system. In fact, more survived in the Columbia once distance or travel time was taken into account — and survival was greater during migration within the hydropower system than below the dammed section.

”It raises the question of unknown factors in the Fraser system that may be having an impact on the juveniles,” said Bolger, one of the co-authors of the study.

Results of previous studies on white sturgeon also surprised researchers when they learned that the big, bottom-feeding fish migrated from the Sacramento River in California to the Fraser nearly 1,000 kms north in Canada.

”We thought the Fraser sturgeon were local and that it was okay to fish them,” Bolger said. In the U.S., they are carefully regulated but no one knew they migrated into Canada.

”Wherever future research leads on those questions, the electronic and acoustic technology has demonstrated itself as a useful tool for obtaining unique scientific data of importance in a number of public policy arenas,” said David Welch of Kintama Research, Nanaimo, British Columbia who led the salmon research effort.

Similar electronic listening curtains will have been strung together along the northeast coast by the end of this year. Two others being considered are between Florida and Cuba and another between Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula and Cuba. The hope is to cover much of the world’s continental shelf one day, said Jesse Ausubel of Rockefeller University, who is a member of POST’s management board.

”We have a working technology, and it’s affordable. The hope is to have a monitoring system around the world,” Ausubel told IPS.

This type of tracking network can reveal the mysteries about where fish go and how many survive in the oceans, and can help fisheries management and conservation efforts. There are enormous controversies along the coastal zones of Africa and other places about which country ”owns” certain fish stocks, he said.

”Knowing where fish go is a key question that needs to be answered,” Ausubel said.

And knowing where species migrate, feed and breed is vital for conservation and management efforts. Within the next decade Ausubel hopes there will be an Ocean Tracking Network that covers continental shelves as well as the open ocean.

A different tracking device is needed for fish like sharks that traverse entire oceans. The open ocean tag is a like a business card — it not only identifies the specific fish, it records all sorts of data about where it has been and data from any other tagged fish that were nearby. That way when any of the fish are close enough to a floating receiver, all this information will be downloaded. For species that break the surface, the data will be transferred via satellite.

The first of these new tags will be implanted in salmon sharks near Hawaii in 2009. If all goes well, scientists will be able to determine their migration route to the Gulf of Alaska. And with salmon also tagged, there might be the first real-time study of the predator-prey interactions, Ausubel said.

”These results from North America have global implications and will be of interest in Chile, Russia, Japan, India, Ireland — indeed every nation where fish migrate between fresh and salt water,” concluded Victor Gallardo of Chile, the Census of Marine Life’s vice chair.

Filed Under: Americas, Canada, Environment, Report
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