Rebecca Buckwalter-Poza is a former Senior Editor for the Interview/Endpaper section of the Harvard International Review.
Who’s Ready for Disaster?
The first anniversary of Hurricane Katrina in the United States marked the passage of a year of minor progress and great neglect. Katrina left regions of Mississippi and Louisiana devastated in August of last year. In September 2006, as many as eighty percent of businesses approved for federal disaster relief have not received funds, and thousands remain homeless. Current AP polls show that two-thirds of Americans disapprove of US President Bush’s approach to recovery.
If the US isn’t ready for disaster, who is?
Asian nations are still recovering from the tsunami of December 2004, referred to also as the Boxing Day Tsunami, which took almost 230,000 lives. Not only immediate demands — like healthcare and sustenance — but long-term goals such as improved disaster preparation have gone unmet. A July 2006 earthquake off the coast of Java in Indonesia, which still does not have a tsunami warning system, killed over 600 and displaced tens of thousands. Ten days later an earthquake hit Jakarta. In Sri Lanka the aftermath of the tsunami and the challenges of reconstruction have been compounded by war. Allegations of misappropriation — and premature return of excess funds — keep coming. (Food for thought: Malaysian donations went to t-shirts and billboards.)
In Spring 2006, we published a piece on preventing disaster by Gilbert Burnham, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Refugee and Disaster Response. Few if any of these targets have been enacted. The toll of disaster can be estimated and broadcast in statistics: deaths, missing persons, buildings wrecked, and business lost. But casualties of poor preparation and mishandling of recovery hide within those totals. How many might be saved by the establishment of a tsunami warning system in Indonesia or by systematic review of US levees? It is no matter of funding — the US has the resources to address these goals and nations affected by the tsunami, such as Malaysia, actually returned donations — but of priorities. These casualties of neglect continue to grow long past the anniversary of one year, in the case of Katrina, or 18 months as in South Asia.
Lights, Camera, Action!
With globalization, a new wave of film is emerging from every corner of the globe. The decidedly international flavor of major new documentaries and films has implications for increasing popular interest and engagement in world affairs. One prominent example, Born Into Brothels (2004), followed the children of prostitutes in Calcutta’s red light district. It won critical prizes at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival followed by the 2004 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.
Many of the most recent Oscar winning documentaries as well as many of the nominees have been deeply, often internationally, political. In 2000, a film on the rescue of Jewish children during the Holocaust took the prize. The next year, nominees included War Photographer, about the realities of photographing war; Promises, a story about seven children affected by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; and Children Underground, about the lives of homeless Romanian children. In 2002, the US-heavy academy awarded the Oscar to Michael Moore’s Bowling for Columbine but also nominated Daughter from Danang, which followed the repercussions of the Vietnam War for the daughter of a US serviceman and Vietnamese woman from Danang, and Prisoner of Paradise, about the Nazi treatment of German-Jewish Kurt Gerron. The nominees of 2003 included Balseros, about Cubans during the Periodo Especial, and the winner, The Fog of War, about former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. It lost to Born into Brothels in 2004,but a Mongolian documentary, The Story of the Weeping Camel, made a splash nonetheless. Although 2005 was dominated by biology (March of the Penguins and Darwin’s Nightmare) and US politics (Street Fight and Enron: The Smartest Guy in the Room), the overall trend may create an impetus for popular interest and engagement in international affairs.
International human rights and international politics have crept into even mainstream dramas such as the Syriana, a film about politics and oil in the Middle East helmed by Stephen Gaghan, and The Constant Gardener, in which a British diplomat takes on pharmaceutical companies in Africa. That these films attracted not only the support of big-name producers, writers, actors, and directors but critical acclaim and an audience following may herald greater interest and awareness on the part of the public.
Marginalized minorities, not only religious and ethnic groups but women and children, have been the special beneficiaries of this trend. Children’s rights and perspective on world affairs have been a staple, as exemplified in Promises, Underground Children, and Born Into Brothels. Taboo issues, such as prostitution, are being examined by light and lens. Journalists and directors have also successfully exposed tired topics to new scrutiny, as with Prisoner of Paradise and The Fog of War. These films have facilitated an unprecedented exchange of images and ideas internationally. The promise for film as a tool for not only journalism and advocacy but for education is limitless.
What’s Wrong with the UN: “Annan Urges Immediate Halt to the Fighting in Lebanon”
The paint’s peeling, the water’s boiling, and the curtains are smoking. Which problem do you address first? None of the above. The building is on fire.
UN Secretary-General Annan’s enumeration of the serious obstacles to UN involvement in Lebanon was disturbing:
He said Israeli military operations had made it impossible for the United Nations to make any contact with an estimated 500,000 people in urgent need in southern Lebanon…In addition, he said, the existing 2,000-member United Nations peacekeeping force would no longer be able to operate if it could not bring in its own food and water within 24 hours.
These are the reasons that the UN finds it “impossible” to assist while Lebanon’s going up in flames? The best case UN response is a request for a ceasefire?
Excuse the material and financial shortcomings of the UN. Dismiss your concerns the undemocratic and ineffective Security Council. Ignore the niggling problem of non-payment of dues by key members and flagging donations. Avert your eyes from the obstacles to and influences on the creation and conclusion of committees. Pretend that the pace at which the UN proceeds in policy making and intervention is reasonable. Disregard the disregard shown by numerous member nations for the recommendations of the UN. Overlook the Oil for Food debacle. Set aside the fact that China, Saudi Arabia, and Cuba were granted seats on the Human Rights Council. The building’s on fire.
The inability or refusal of the UN to take timely and effective action in Darfur and now in Lebanon should direct focus away from single issues to the larger problem: the UN. The most basic of its goals, international dialogue and cooperation, are not being achieved. Internal strife, the dynamics between the developed and developing world in particular, has paralyzed the UN. The UN has not risen to its mission in the international community — and, despite Annan and others, can’t even pass a reform package.
The building is on fire. Will countries run or put out the flames?
A Victory for Calderon, A Defeat for Mexico
The first free election in Mexico, held in 2000, installed Vicente Fox of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). For the first time since 1910, the president came from a party other than the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI). But because Fox’s nomination was an artifact of popular — not political — support, and because he continued to favor popular over political backing, he lacked the strong partisan ties and political connections necessary to build coalitions or make policy.
Now, in 2006, Mexico’s second free election may also be destined to result in a weak presidency. Mexico has a first-past-the-post electoral system; the margin of victory is irrelevant. In this case, barring significant differences between the final count and a future recount, the victor, Felipe Calderon, also of PAN, received less than 36 percent of the vote. Although PAN gained 62 seats in the lower house and six in the upper house, giving it 35 percent of seats, Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) will still hold 30 percent of seats and PRI, 26 percent. Calderon recognized the challenge he will face without a partisan majority in the legislature, and declared his intent to forge ahead with the support of a coalition, in a July 5, 2006, interview with the Financial Times:
FT: If and when the electoral authorities pronounce you president-elect how do you intend to create a government of national unity given the deep rifts that separate the parties at the moment?
CALDERÓN: It is perfectly possible. I have 208 seats in the lower house of Congress. We have 55 senators and we need 11 more to gain the majority in the senate. I need 43 seats in the lower house. The PRI [Institutional Revolutionary Party] has 130, the PRD has more than 100. I can form a coalition government by integrating political forces, governors, legislators that want to join.
The question is, do you think the PRD wants to join a coalition government. I would hope so but there is great possibility they may not. We [the PAN] have won the biggest number of senators and members of the lower house in the history of the party.
Calderon must confront not only these issues but escalating challenges by the PRD. Although the European Union (EU) declared the vote fair, PRD has continued to contest the election. Regardless of the outcome of the challenge, the accusations of corruption and mismanagement will undermine the legitimacy of both the president-elect and Mexican democracy not only domestically but internationally.
Image Courtesy of CBS News
Update On Kuwait: Suffrage Without Seats
None of the 29 female candidates won a seat in the Kuwaiti parliamentary election yesterday despite the 57 percent female electorate. While the election did not fulfill its potential as a means of political empowerment, a victory still may be claimed in Kuwaiti women’s newfound suffrage and in their presence as a notable political force.
Kuwait: Lessons in Women’s Representation
On June 29, women will vote and stand for election in Kuwait in a full legislative election for the first time. The parliamentary election, originally scheduled for summer 2007, was rescheduled on May 21 by order of the emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmed Al Sabah, following a dispute over electoral reform.
Women have become a critical demographic in the election. Among voters, The New York Times reported, “women outnumber men among potential voters by about a third, in part because they were automatically registered while men have had to register individually.” Other contributing factors include the ineligibility of military and security forces – and, hilariously, the World Cup. The 28 female candidates — that’s 28 of 253 candidates — have made history by campainging in Kuwait’s all-male diwaniyas, councils that carry significant social and political weight.
Perhaps Kuwait will be the world’s next example of how less developed nations implementing policies to improve women’s representation can create governments more gender-equal than those of their more developed counterparts.
Nations in Latin America and the Caribbean have outstripped the United States in women’s representation for over a dozen years. Look to 1994. In Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago 15 percent or more of the ministers or members of the government were women. Even as of 2005, the US government was only 14 percent female while many Latin American nations continued to increase women’s representation.
According to the United Nations, Argentina, Cuba, and Costa Rica, have rates of women’s representation over 30 percent; St. Vincent, Nicaragua, Mexico, Grenada, and the Bahamas, over 20 percent. Representation rates in Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Trinidad and Tobago, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Suriname, hover under 20 percent but above the United States’ 14 percent. Other remarkable strides for women in the Americas this year included the election of Chile’s first female president, Michelle Bachelet.
Optimistic analysis of women’s political participation in Kuwait leads to the hope that Kuwaitis may look forward to similar development. The broader significance is for the viability and efficacy of active implementation of women’s representation through means such as quotas and automatic registration in the Middle East and internationally.
New Obstacle on the Road to Darfur
This week’s UN Security Council mission to solicit support for its peace deal failed. Instead of gaining support, the delegation met with not only opposition from Khartoum but new resistance from tribal chiefs.
As reported by BBC, the chief of the Barty tribe termed any deployment of UN peacekeeping troops to Sudan tantamount to “foreign occupation” and threatened jihad. The governor of northern Darfur told Reuters he wanted humanitarian assistance but “not troops.” Khartoum itself has made clear that the government opposes the deployment of UN troops, favoring support for African Union (AU) troops instead. But neither the AU nor Khartoum seems poised, even if given financial and material support, to make serious progress in halting the genocide. The 7,000 AU troops in the western region are currently ineffective, “under-funded and poorly equipped.” Organizing, re-training, and equipping those troops, many of which have been implicated in the genocide, is a far less productive route than sending UN troops.
While in February it seemed that the Sudanese government had begun to respond to international pressure to reign in the janjaweed, tacitly admitting governmental ties to the militia, that small step has led nowhere. President Omar al-Bashir, beyond calling the janjaweed “thieves and gangsters,” has taken little action and has not shown significant support of the UN in critical matters, such as the implementation of the peace deal. Yesterday UN delegates decided not to visit refugee camps because of the gravity of security concerns.
Internal problems, particularly the refusal of the UN investigation team to term the war crimes of Darfur genocide, have impeded UN involvement from the outset. As stated by the BBC on May 7:
Human rights groups, the US Congress and the former US Secretary of State Colin Powell all said that genocide was taking place – though a UN investigation team sent to Sudan said that while war crimes had been committed, there had been no intent to commit genocide.
Considering the limited support and resistance that has characterized the relationship between the Sudanese government and the UN, and pre-existing issues within the UN, tribal opposition has grave implications for both Sudan and UN involvement. Within Sudan, the resistance of tribal chiefs presents yet another origin of conflict. For the UN, vocal tribal opposition affects the possibility of the deployment of peacekeeping troops both by complicating the situation peacekeepers may face within Sudan and by providing more ammunition for those opposing intervention.
Image courtesy of BBC News.
The Implications of Protest in Nepal
Pro-democracy protests continue through the fifth day of King Gyanendra’s curfew. Fourteen have died. Kathmandu’s hospitals are overflowing. The US embassy has evacuated non-essential personnel while China ordered its citizens leave Nepal. Gyanendra, who dissolved Nepal’s elected government in October 2002 and took direct power in February 2005, has begun to show signs of capitulation.
The conflict between the Nepalese government and Maoist rebels, which has caused 13,000 casualties over the last decade, has waned as popular protests against the government escalate. Nepal has rallied behind pro-democracy protests, defying not only the curfew but continuing to disregard “shoot-to-kill” threats.
The opposition, led by Shobhakar Parajuli, is not satisfied with Gyanendra’s concession to reconvene parliament Friday. Protestors continue to push for legal and constitutional reforms that will abolish Nepal’s constitutional monarchy, paving the way for democracy.
While Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004 may have served as model for Nepal, the Nepalese protests may inspire protests in nations suffering under dictatorship. Dr. Stan Mukasa of Zimbabwe, for one, has held the growing impact of the protests in Nepal as a paradigm for protest that may be reproduced in his own country, Zimbabwe.
Darfur
Today the New York Times reported that the Sudanese government “reprimanded” and removed the police who conspired with the janjaweed, the militias terrorizing the Sudanese countryside, in an attack outside of Menawashei. The Times’ gentle acclaim is misplaced, jarring in light of the severe and pervasive human rights violations still occurring.
The Western media reports the actions of first-world policy-makers in discussing third-world genocide more often than it reports the act of genocide. Darfur illuminates the disparity in responses by world powers, international organizations, and media to genocide by region, by victim.
What is a reprimand to the tens of thousands of citizens chased from their homes, to those who are starving, being raped or mutilated, being killed, and being orphaned daily? Reprimands are for errant children not war criminals. Sudan polices Darfur with officers as corrupt as the attackers perpetrating the genocide. Neither Sudanese nor African Union (AU) forces in the area, totaling only 7,000 soldiers and police, have controlled the violence.
On Friday the UN Security Council voted to send additional peacekeepers to Darfur. The peacekeeping forces may be up to a year in coming despite the urgency voiced in the UN High Commission for Human Rights report on Sudan.
Bureaucracies the world over build a paper buffer between policy and action. Committees, commissions, summits, and other varieties of diplomatic tug-of-war culminate in dry reports and ineffectual rebukes, offering glimpses into a red-taped future for Darfur. Governments have neglected or, as with the Sudanese government, compounded the situation in Darfur. Worse, impotent bureaucratic acrobatics have eclipsed the genocide in the media. As the New York Times covers the declaration of the Sudanese government, the reprimand issued to the police condoning and even joining the criminals in their violent sprees, thousands die.
Over 2 million citizens are displaced; 3 million depend upon international aid. Estimates for daily mortality rates range between 1.5 and 2.5 per 10,000, depending on region. In a year, between five and nine percent of populations in some areas will succumb to illness or be killed directly.
Is the international community to be satisfied with reprimands and rebukes in the case of genocide? Is international obligation fulfilled by the commission of yet another committee or report, in a resolution to send peace-keeping troops over the course of a year?