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.
This week, the Council of Europe condemned many of its member states for complying with and even participating in illegal transportation of CIA detainees. The specific problem is the practice of renditions: a rendition is a top-secret flight carrying detainees to another country for internment or interrogation. Switzerland’s Dick Marty presented evidence that 14 countries had, in violation of international law, cooperated with the CIA in the transport of terror suspects.
The problem is not the transportation, per se–rather, the fact that such transit was clandestine, unchecked, and often for detainees with no formal charges against them. Part of Marty’s report alleges that European states turned a blind eye to illegal arrests made by the CIA on their own territory. The report, however, does not reveal the names of the countries in question.
The issue is more complicated than Europe being appalled with US actions in the name of the War on Terror. The report exposed the fact that many European nations condone highly questionable activity on the part of foreign agents. The assembly of the Council of Europe and other human rights groups like Amnesty International placed much of the blame of European countries themselves, which do not adequately oversee and regulate the conduct of foreign operatives on their own soil. Rather than being victims of US misconduct, countries that allowed renditions are labeled “partners in crime.”
The report will certainly validate much of the international community’s growing disappointment with the US War on Terror. But the US is losing something more precious than (already dwindling) public support for its tactics against terrorists. Countries once cooperative with or at least tolerant of the CIA’s renditions are now being scrutinized and held accountable for their actions. Because terrorism is an international phenomenon, stopping it requires international efforts. The CIA seems to have abused the trust of many European countries who sought to aid in this effort. In the future, the United States won’t enjoy such assistance in its counter-terrorism operations throughout Europe.
We have become immune to war, it seems. Three soldiers killed in Iraq here, fifteen casualties in East Timor there, all followed quickly by World Cup highlights on CNN, BBC, or any other television news channel. None of this affects the masses, however, only causing them to change the channel or continue eating dinner. But have we become too desensitized?
Today, Israeli soldiers, tanks, APCs, and all else stand at the edge of Gaza ready to march through all barriers in order to “rescue” one of their own, captured in a recent Palestinian raid through an underground tunnel. Secretary of State Rice, many officials of the European Union, and other top officershave urged Israel to “give diplomacy a chance” (the same phrase used by multiple officials). The only diplomacy displayed, however, has been demands by Israel for their captured soldier to be returned and demands by the Palestinians for all the imprisoned Palestinian women and children to be released from Israeli prisons. It is unlikely that either will happen, paving the way for the Israeli incursion. Many will ask, why is this any different from any other Israeli offensive? Why do I even bother commenting on this issue?
Because hundreds of people are about to die. Hundreds of lives, Israeli and Palestinian, civilian and soldier, male and female, are about to be lost. Palestinian forces, both Hamas and Abbas led are, as is reported, the most heavily armed that they have been in recent history. Additionally, an incursion such as this will unite previously disparate Palestinian forces for a singular cause. For the life of one soldier, Israelis will lose the lives of many more soldiers. For their refusal to release the captured soldier, Palestinians will lose the homes, their already weakened infrastructure, and many more lives.
I do not imply fault in my argument: I believe both sides have been equally destructive to the peace process. What I argue for is a bit more discontent among the world community. Israel will not get its soldier back, and Palestine will lose in lives whatever psychic income it believes it received. Hundreds of people will soon die, and all we can do is stand by and watch with a few simple “urgings” by world leaders. Many say that outside influence is not the answer. Apparently the world’s decision to stand by and watch the carnage does not work either.
I am appealing for human life here. Somebody must, for if we ignore death and turn our backs on the world, what a terrible people we will have become.
One of the characteristics of Beijing that foreigners will notice when they first arrive is the abundance of cranes and construction. What would otherwise be an idyllic skyline (other than the smog, of course) is polluted by often random clusters of cranes and scaffolding. The construction has been so heavy that even the taxi drivers admit that it is easy to get lost as buildings and, thus, streets are popping out of the ground. Usually, we would view all this construction with optimism. After all, heavy construction means that the economy is booming and there is an abundance of capital and investment. However, this increase in construction hasn’t been a short-term thing; it’s been happening for the past several years and now, there are worries that perhaps too much is being invested into real estate and related markets like steel.
Worries of a real estate bubble in Beijing is confirmed by trends throughout markets within China. During the Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s, China aspired to produce as much steel as Western countries. In 2000, even before this construction boom was under way, China easily realized this goal and became the number one steel producing country in the world. With heavy investment in recent years, China has easily dominated the steel market in both supply and demand. However, this trend of heavy investment is making many in the business worry that if the real estate bubble pops, demand for steel will fall like a rock, and steel prices will plummet, driving the market into the ground. If this were to happen, giants like Mittal and Arcelor would find their profits turn into debt and this would have potentially devastating effects on both the Chinese and the world economy.
In order to avoid bursting both the real estate and the steel bubbles, the Chinese government needs to begin solving one of its biggest economic problems: banking. Currently, debt-ridden Chinese banks have a tendency to create bad loans since they are freely funding every investment. Reforming the banking system into one that is more accountable would force future investors in real estate and steel to make more informed and rational decisions instead of making blind investments. If this problem isn’t solved, then all the construction in Beijing really is too much of a good thing.
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.
Romano Prodi may have triumphed in his quest to be Prime Minister of Italy, but the new challenges facing his government and Italy as a whole require more than just his trademark political acumen.
Prodi’s main challenge during his term will improving on the lackluster state of Italy’s public finances. Italy’s Debt-to-GDP ratio has risen since 2005 to 108%, with the 2006 public deficit projected to be roughly 4.1% of GDP. It has the 9th, and is one of the only OECD countries that have the dubious distinction of being in the top ten of the countries with the highest public debt-to-GDP ratios.
The problem with the dire state of Italy’s coffers is twofold. Firstly, Italy’s growth has been nothing to brag about. ING Market Analysts have estimated that quarter and quarter growth thus far in 2006 has been only about 0.6%–essentially flat. Mario Draghi, Italian Central Bank governor, has been a strong advocate for a loose monetary policy to encourage higher GDP growth. Higher growth implies higher incomes, which in turn implies higher tax revenues collected by the government.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, Italy’s entitlement programs are putting a great deal of strain on public finance. Italian social security as it stands makes it possible for people who have worked for 35 years and who are 57 years old to retire and collect full pensions from the government. In Italy, pensions take up nearly 15% of GDP. Attempts by the Berlusconi government to ease this burden by making it more difficult to retire early have raised the ire of Italian workers, making further reform more difficult. The universal healthcare program poses an even greater problem as the Italian population becomes increasingly older.
While fiscal austerity may be just what the doctor ordered, Prodi’s small margin of victory has shown that, if anything, his government will have to get used to making compromises to get what it wants. This may well stall any helpful attempts at reducing public debt in a prompt manner. As other EU nations look on, Prodi will need to make sure he picks his fights and can help Italy without hurting his political future.
This week, after months of stalemate and negotiations, three Ukrainian political parties joined together to finally form a governing coalition. The parties, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Bloc of Deputies, Viktor Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine, and Oleksandr Moroz’s Socialist Party, have a history of both cooperation and competition. Together, they helped orchestrate 2004’s Orange Revolution, during which hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians protested the results of a fraudulent presidential election and rallied behind current president Viktor Yushchenko.
The reunion of these parties seems to be considerably less auspicious and exciting than their original cooperation in the Orange Revolution. The popular consensus is that this unstable coalition simply will not last. Many Russian newspapers highlighted the tensions between the leadership of the parties and predicted that this government’s collapse was simply a matter of time.
The tension between the parties of the coalition should not be underplayed. After all, Ms. Tymoshenko was once Mr. Yushchenko’s Prime Minister, until he fired her, thus prompting her to start her own party. The coalition faces considerable and united opposition from Viktor Yanukovich (who lost the presidential election during the Orange Revolution) and his Party of Regions, which was the single largest vote getter in the last set of elections.
Yet in this climate of uncertainty and instability, there may still be a glimmer of hope. All three parties in the coalition know that they have something to lose should their government fail. Having enjoyed the euphoria of the Orange Revolution and survived the disappointment which followed it, the coalition should be able to set reasonable, if modest, goals. In sum, the leadership of the parties ought to be wiser and more experienced the second time around. The task of governing Ukraine hasn’t become easier–rather, those charged with this task just have a better idea of how to go about doing it.
“Ensure, that by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary education.” Second only to “eradicate extreme hunger and poverty”, achieving universal primary education seems high up on the UN’s list of “things to do” before the end of the next decade. And why shouldn’t it be? Education has rightly been seen as the starting point for effecting change in numerous aspects of human development, be it the eradication of extreme hunger and poverty or halting the HIV/Aids epidemic. But as Millennium Goal Number Two relates to achieving Millennium Goal Number One, merely ensuring universal primary education is hardly enough.
Let’s first establish that Millennium Goals Two through Eight are simply specific objectives along the path to achieving the grand coup, Millennium Goal Numero Uno – the eradication of extreme hunger and poverty. Ensuring environmental sustainability, reducing child mortality, combating HIV/Aids, malaria and other diseases all sound like necessary components to promoting the economic development necessary to end world hunger and poverty. But while all the millennium goals are in clear support of achieving this greater objective, it appears that goal number two falls short.
At the very least, it is the weakest link. But while I don’t advocate the casting out of what could be rightly called shoddy workmanship, Goal Number Two certainly needs some revisiting. Firstly, as far as education serves as a means to prepare youth to participate in the economic development of their countries, primary education is hardly enough. Seven years of formal education will do little to prepare the youth of the world’s poorest nations to combat the threats of poverty and hunger they will confront once having left the formal education system. In fact, even the completion of the standard twelve years of education would prove insufficient. The reality is that in most developing nations, jobs aren’t readily available even for the most qualified. And while this may be true in the developed world as well, as evidenced by Singapore’s labor market, youth in developing nations don’t even have the option of accepting positions below their qualifications.
But they can create employment opportunities of their own through the creation of businesses and entrepreneurial enterprises and in many regions have been shown to be quite good at it. In developing countries where the output of high-school and college graduates vastly outnumbers the availability of jobs in the formal wage sector, it is essential that youth be able to create employment opportunities for themselves. This requires not only that they receive more than seven years of schooling but also an education that is geared specifically towards enabling them to create sustainable entrepreneurial enterprises upon leaving. Were this educational focus to be incorporated into the current universal educational goal, not only would young people have created employment opportunities for themselves. They would have directly contributed to the economic development of their countries, helping to eradicate extreme hunger and poverty. What currently remains the weakest link in the UN’s global development model, has every potential to become its corner stone.
Being a lawyer generally does not land one at the top of the list of dangerous occupations. Members of Saddam Hussein’s defense team are the notable exception to this rule. This morning, the body of Khamis al-Obaidi was found in Baghdad. He is the third lawyer on Hussein’s defense team to have met a gruesome death since the start of the trial.
In all, eight people involved with the trial have been killed, most by Shiite militia members who storm into homes posing as police. Al-Obaidi tried to maintain some semblance of a normal life, choosing to continue living at home (with bodyguards) during the trial itself unlike other defense members who, for an understandable fear of their lives, live under constant police surveillance. The bitter irony is that Obaidi was an outspoken advocate for improved security for participants in the trial.
What is to be learned from the murder of Obaidi (beyond the most immediate fact that Iraqi defense forces are unable to adequately protect high-profile individuals)? The continued threat to members of Saddam’s defense team is unacceptable. As Hussein, a person who genuinely deserves punishment, manages to live in relative safety, lawyers who stand up for the legal process in Iraq continue to be intimidated and murdered. Yet there is also a pragmatic reason to protect the defense team members. As his lawyers are gradually killed off, Saddam’s trial is proceeding at a snail’s pace. After every death, the defense must regroup and begin what must now be an almost impossible task–finding more lawyers. Saddam and his co-defendants, in turn, begin hunger strikes and decry the entire legal system. In this melee, the actual task of conducting a trial can hardly go on.
The solution? One option is to move the trial out of Iraq entirely. This could be misinterpreted as a move to reward Hussein himself. It is exactly the opposite–doing so would likely get him convicted much faster. Rather, it is a step to protect those who most desperately need it: the Iraqis who have taken on the monumental task of exonerating him.
Here in the United States, June 20 does not blare on our national radar as a day of significance. However, in many parts of the world, today is a day that can hardly slide unnoticed. Even though the number of refugees is at a 26-year low, there is still cause for serious concern. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, there are about 20.8 million people of concern around the world. 8.4 million are refugees fleeing wars and violence, 6.6 million are internally displaced persons, 2.4 million are stateless people and 1.6 million are returnees. The rest are either asylum seekers or people of another kind of concern.
One of the biggest problems the UNHCR faces is the increase in numbers of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), people who have fled war and persecution but have not managed to cross an international border and are therefore not qualified for refugee status as per the 1951 Refugee Convention. IDPs however have the same needs as refugees—assistance, protection, necessities, sanitation and prevention of sexual crimes against them. Though the global list is endless, Southern Sudan, Chad, Darfur and Bangladesh are presently in dire need of international assistance to cater for IDPs and refugees.
In harmony with this years theme, “Keeping the flame of hope alive” , Let us reach out in our various small but significant ways to the millions of people around the world for whom this day matters most. Whether through membership in an NGO, an international relief organization, a private Foundation or a religious mission, we can all make a difference by helping to ameliorate the plight of refugees and IDPs.