Barrister Harun ur Rashid

Peace and conflict have engaged human beings from time immemorial. The wish for peace is universal and the use of force is also a manifestation of a part of human's basic attributes.
   Peace like health covers a conceptually a vast territory. In health, there are some agreed general perspectives as to what constitute a healthy body and mind. Likewise there are indicators as to what constitutes peace.
   Conflict means a struggle or class of opposing forces. Conflict like disease may come in varieties.
   For example, one is confronted with a conflicting situation almost daily. Whether to buy a vanilla or strawberry ice cream, for example, is a minor one. The dangerous variety is a conflict between states and to resolve it by use of force.
   Since use of force is a decision of human actors, their conduct and attitude play a major role. The decision to wage a war depends primarily on the ability of a leader to imagine, initiate and resolve the problem peacefully or waging a war.
   
   What is peace?
   For enduring peace, it is imperative that psychological conditions must exist in the community. This means tolerance is endured and pluralism of views are permitted. The will of majority cannot be exercised against the rights of minorities. Sir Ivor Jennings, a constitutional expert said "Tyrannical majority and recalcitrant minority destroys democracy."
   Forgiveness and reconciliation are key elements to peace. Forgiveness relates to the past while reconciliation relates to the future. Reconciliation involves not only forgiveness but a desire to share future together.
   Peace is not merely an absence of war. If there were no guns, has peace been achieved? The simple answer is no.
   Broadly defined, peace is related to social justice, because if there is no social justice peace will not prevail in the longer term. Some theorists define it as the freedom of access to individual to improve the quality of life.
   Political leaders in power must be capable of creating a just society by distributing equitably the national wealth so as to prevent social chaos and instability. National wealth must not be concentrated on a few.
   The minimum requirements for creating a just society include individual's ability to live a life of normal length, ability to express views freely and ability to improve quality of life. The Nobel Laureate Amartya Sen called it "the capability theory". The theory insists that quality of life must take into account, such factors as access to education, quality of personal relationships, and political freedom.
   Internal peace is a pre-condition to security of a state. The collapse of the mighty Soviet Union is due to internal instability, not because of any external aggression. Nepal's Maoist insurgency erupted because they could enlist support from countryside aggrieved people who did not get any dividends from Nepal's progress and prosperity. It is the deprivation of poor people that could give rise to social instability and eventually may lead to civil war.
   Peace protagonists believe there must be several pre-conditions of peace. They include (a) prevalence of liberal democracy, meaning that the elected representatives must exercise their decision-making power subject to rule of law, (b) tolerance and pluralism of views, (c) freedom of press, (d) fair and credible election and a commitment to ensuring a minimum material standard of living for all citizens.
   Furthermore all public institutions must be strengthened so as to maintain rule of law in the country. Rule of law is not merely rule by law but also to ensure accountability and transparency of decision-making, equality among citizens, equal opportunity for all, empowerment of women, decentralisation of administration to local level, participation of grassroots people in decision-making and easy access to judiciary.
   
   Conflict management
   Some theorists hold the view that conflict is a manifestation of human attributes that consist of rationality and animality. If animality gets upper hand over rationality, violence begins.
   Florentine political philosopher, Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) thought that "Men are always wicked at bottom unless they are made good by some compulsion". Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), an English political scientist and philosopher, did not also think much of goodness of human nature. He thought human beings lived in a state of conflict for self-preservation and depicted human life as "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short".
   Other social scientists, such as Locke and Rousseau did not agree with them and thought human nature basically sought cooperation to live in harmony.
   Some authors have attempted to describe the various stages of conflict. They are (a) grievance, (b) non-resolution of grievance, (c) perception of injustice, (d) emergence of conflict and (e) dispute stage. If the dispute is not resolved peacefully, violence may commence.
   In many cases, conflict may not resolve soon, but conflict management must prevail to avoid violence and use of force. Conflict management is to be distinguished from conflict resolution. Management of conflict means change of behaviour of parties in reducing tension. Management of conflict however does not remove the causes of conflict but eliminates threat to peace and ensures good behaviour.
   Peace and conflict will remain so long human beings exist. Hans Morganthau in his book "Politics Among Nations" (1967) writes: "Men do not fight because they have arms. They have arms because they deem necessary to fight".
   The writer is a former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN, Geneva.

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The G8's messy "deal" on climate change

Martin Khor

A messy compromise was struck recently on climate change to save the Group of 8 Summit from major failure.
   The leaders of the developed countries signed a Declaration that gives a target for reducing global level of Greenhouse Gas emissions, which cause global warming, by at least half by 2050.
   But it mentions only the European Union, Japan and Canada as accepting this target. The United States and Russia will only 'seriously consider' it.
   This will allow enough 'wriggle room' for the US government not to commit itself to a time-table (or at least the same time-table) for emission reduction. However, Europe, Canada and Japan have for the first time signaled a self-set target to cut their emissions.
   Before and at the Summit, there was a clash between German Chancellor Angela Merkel (who chaired the G8 Summit in Heiligendamn from 6-8 June 2007) and US President George W. Bush.
   Merkel wanted the Declaration to agree to a global target that global warming be limited to two degrees Celsius (compared to pre-industrial levels), and that global Greenhouse Gas emissions be reduced by 50 per cent by 2050. She also wanted a G8 commitment to a post-Kyoto Protocol framework within the United Nations (UN).
   Before the Summit, Bush opposed the German strategy. He was against having G8 targets, and announced his own initiative to invite 15 top emitting countries to meetings to work out a global plan based on non-binding national emission-reducing targets, outside the UN framework.
   At the Summit, the compromise worked out was that the 2 degree target was eliminated, and the 50 per cent cut in emissions was mentioned as only as something that would be considered by the US and Russia, though accepted as a target by the others.
   On the institutional framework to tackle the climate issue, the G8 had it both ways - within and outside the UN.
   The G8 countries committed to a UN process to seek a post-Kyoto framework, but also 'welcomed' the Bush initiative to host a meeting of major emitters. And there was also prominent mention of involving major developing countries in making obligations.
   Since Bush had been such a 'denier' of the climate crisis, and had seemed to oppose a UN approach, his agreement to the above compromise was hailed as 'a major step forward' by Merkel who said she can 'very well live with this compromise' while noting that 'none of these documents are binding.'
   Environmental groups like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth have decried the G8 Summit's failure to agree to the two targets.
   Moreover, the 50 per cent target agreed by some G8 countries is inadequate to meet the challenge. Many scientists now believe that if the global temperature increases by more than 2 degrees above the pre-industrial level, there would be irreversible climate changes with very adverse effects. With changes above 3 degrees, the effects would be catastrophic.
   The report of the inter-governmental panel on climate change (IPCC) in May says that to keep temperatures from rising more than 2-2.4 degrees, the Greenhouse gas concentration in the atmosphere has to be contained to 445-490 parts per million (ppm).
   For that to happen, carbon dioxide emissions must be cut by 2050 to 50-80 per cent below the year 2000 level. And to keep on track to this timetable, the emissions must peak by 2015. Thus the G8's reference to a 50 per cent cut is hardly adequate.
   Even more confusing is where the climate talks of the future will take place. The UN's Kyoto Protocol's targets end in 2012 and new commitments must be agreed to in a new protocol in the next few years.
   While the G8 seemed to agree to the primacy of action within the UN framework, its Declaration also endorses Bush's non-UN process, which is likely to be used to push the burden onto developing countries.
   That's because the UN process recognises that developing countries have per capita emissions far below the developed countries' levels, and thus the latter have to act first.
   Bush however puts the focus on a country's total (rather than per capita) emissions. Thus developing countries with big populations and thus which have higher total emissions (although still having low per capita emission levels), will now be under even more pressure to take on obligations of various sorts to reduce emissions.
   However countries like China, India and Brazil are expected to continue their strong stance that developing countries not be subjected to legally binding reduction commitments.
   Global talks on climate change are accelerating, spurred by growing evidence of climate change and its devastating effects, and by the imminent expiry of the Kyoto Protocol. The next large meeting under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change will be in Bali in early December, and negotiations will begin there on a post-Kyoto framework.
   There will also be a one-day special discussion on climate change organised by the UN in September in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.
   -Third World Network Features

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Contracting firm breaks all US
laws but US officials deny

David Phinney in Washington DC

The U.S. Justice Department is actively investigating allegations of forced labour and other abuses by the Kuwaiti contractor now rushing to complete the sprawling 592-million-dollar U.S. embassy project in Baghdad, numerous sources have revealed.
   Justice Department trial attorneys Andrew Kline and Michael J. Frank with the civil rights division have been contacting former employees of First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting and other witnesses for interviews and documents, but declined to comment on the investigation other than to say they are looking into allegations of labour trafficking.
   The two investigators are said to be looking for actual workers around the world who claim they were misled or pressured to work in Iraq against their will by the company.
   Rumours of forced labour in Iraq have plagued First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting for several years, but U.S. government officials have discounted such allegations by workers from Nepal and the Philippines in the past, even as the company continued to rack up contracts now totalling several billion dollars from the Pentagon and U.S. State Department.
   Late last year, several U.S. citizens also said they boarded separate chartered jets in Kuwait loaded with work crews from the Philippines, India, Pakistan and Africa holding boarding passes to Dubai, but the planes then flew directly to Baghdad.
   More recently, another U.S. citizen told IPS that he was told by workers from Ghana on the embassy site that they thought they would have jobs in Dubai but were then taken to work in Iraq.
   First Kuwaiti's general manager, Wadih al Absi, flatly dismisses the accusations as unfounded and false.
   "I am telling you that First Kuwaiti has never violated any visa violations or forced people to work," he said during a telephone interview last January. "In the coming months you will see that First Kuwaiti is the best company working in the Middle East."
   Since landing the Baghdad project, First Kuwaiti has won additional contracts worth roughly 200 million dollars more for embassy projects in Africa, India and Indonesia. The company also is believed to be competing for another large new U.S. embassy in Lebanon.
   Soon after the State Department awarded the Iraq embassy contract to First Kuwaiti in July 2005, thousands of low-paid migrant workers recruited from South Asia, the Philippines and other nations poured into Baghdad to begin building the gargantuan new embassy within two years time. When completed later this summer, it will be the most fortified U.S. diplomatic mission ever constructed, spanning 104 acres on the banks of the ancient Tigris River and holding more than 20 buildings. It will be comparable in size to the Vatican.
   But during First Kuwaiti's frenzied rush to the finish the project on schedule, U.S. managers and specialists involved with the project began protesting about the living and working conditions of lower-paid workers sequestered and largely unseen behind security walls bordering the embassy project inside the U.S.-controlled Green Zone.
   Among those complaints: construction crews lived in crowded quarters, ate sub-standard food, and had little medical care. When drinking water was scarce in the blistering heat, coolers were filled at the banks of the Tigris, a river rife with waterborne disease, sewage and sometimes floating bodies.
   Others questioned why First Kuwaiti held the passports of workers. Was it to keep them from escaping? Some labourers had turned up "missing" with little investigation. One U.S. citizen said labourers told him they had been misled about their job location. When recruited, they were unaware they were heading for war-torn Iraq.
   After hearing similar allegations during much of 2006, Howard J. Krongard, the State Department's inspector general, flew to Baghdad for what he describes as a "brief" review on September 15. His review was recently made public after inquires from Aljazeera about the embassy for an upcoming hour-long documentary, and he reported that the complaints had no substance.
   "Nothing came to our attention," he wrote in a nine-page memorandum posted on the State Department's Web site. More importantly, after interviewing an unstated number of workers from the Philippines, India, Nepal and Pakistan, Krongard said no evidence was found of labour smuggling, trafficking or other abuses. Krongard makes no mention of an ongoing investigation by the U.S. Justice Department of First Kuwaiti and others for such alleged practices and other matters.
   One former labour foreman at the embassy site who recently read Krongard's review called it "bullshit." Another former First Kuwaiti employee viewed it as "a whitewash."
   Had Krongard visited earlier than last September and unannounced, he may have witnessed something very different then what his memorandum relates.
   "Most of the allegations (from the U.S. citizens) were true before he arrived," claims Juvencio Lopez, who says he was a high-level project manager under the U.S. State Department over the course of two years.
   During a telephone interview, he said that protests over First Kuwaiti's bad food, abusive treatment from managers and unsafe working conditions were routine among many of the 2,700 workers during much of 2005 and 2006.
   "There were strikes and sit-downs every month," Lopez said. He left Iraq in November 2006 and is now home in San Antonio, Texas. "Sometimes there were almost riots."
   Lopez vividly recalls a First Kuwaiti security guard unholstering his 9mm handgun and walking among the squatting protestors telling them to get back to work. Had the guard fallen or workers tackled him to the ground, the gun might have gone off. Lopez said he immediately reported the incident to First Kuwaiti. "Someone could gotten killed or injured," he said.
   On another occasion, a company manager roughed up a Filipino worker, sources say. All of the other Filipinos nearby began loudly protesting as bewildered workers from other countries watched. "The workers were from 36 different countries and everyone spoke a different language," Lopez said.
   Supplementing Krongard's review, the coalition Multi-National Force inspector general in Baghdad interviewed 36 workers from seven different countries at the new embassy site in December. The MNF-IG claimed it found no evidence to indicate the presence of severe forms of labour trafficking, but did find that workers from Nepal, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka reported deceptive hiring practices by recruitment agencies in their home countries.
   They said they had been promised higher pay, shorter hours and days off. "A large majority of workers" from the Indian subcontinent incurred recruiting fees of up to one year's salary.
   Paul Chapman, a subcontractor working with First Kuwaiti, said he is also struck by the lack of interest in workers that First Kuwaiti had listed as "missing" on its company rosters. Now home in South Carolina, Chapman said seven workers from India, Pakistan and the Philippines "just disappeared."
   Fearing they may have been killed and dumped into the Tigris, he began pressing embassy officials overseeing the project to investigate. "They told me to forget about it because the workers had probably found other jobs."
   Chapman and others also claim that standard safety procedures on the project frequently went unobserved. Many worked without safety harnesses when off the ground and had no hardhats or boots. Work clothes were dirty and tattered. Those that had them had only one set of work clothes so they were rarely washed. They became dirty and tattered, causing rashes and sores.
   Some worked in sandals, others in bare feet. "They had their toes curled around the rebar like birds," Lopez remembers.
   "Every U.S. labour law was broken," charged one U.S. foreman, John Owens, who said that he never witnessed a single safety meeting. Once an Egyptian worker fell and broke his back and was sent home. No one ever heard from him again.
   "The accident might not have happened if there was a safety programme and he had known how to use a safety harness," said Owen, who left the embassy project last June.
   David Phinney is a journalist and broadcaster based in Washington, DC, whose work has appeared in The Los Angeles Times, New York Times and on ABC and PBS.
   - Inter Press Service

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Jehan Perera in Colombo

President Mahinda Rajapaksa represented the beleaguered Sri Lankan government in the human rights (HR) stronghold of Geneva. He had received an invitation to address the International Labour Organisation and the foreign governments that support it, but had also to face the international human rights watchdogs. In Geneva, the President spoke with emphasis and showing emotion that Sri Lanka faced a problem of terrorism, which other countries too have to deal with.
   "Those countries afflicted with the menace of terrorism know very well what they have to undergo. These terrorist outfits cannot be contained easily. Our Armed Forces and the Police have had to be extra smart in containing the LTTE. I want to assure you that our Armed forces and the Police are among the most disciplined in the world, and they have great respect for human rights. Any lapses on their part will be promptly investigated and corrective action taken. But I am sad to say that there has been so much of false propaganda against the Sri Lankan Armed forces and the Police that is being taken so seriously by the rest of the world," he said.
   In even the highly law-regulated societies of the first world, the war against terrorism has taken its toll as evidenced in the international debates over domestic and international laws that restrict freedoms and permit people to be detained without trial. In this context, President Rajapaksa pointed out that the eviction of three hundred out of an estimated 20,000 Tamil temporary lodgers in Colombo was not ethnic cleansing. He also spoke of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Serious Human Rights Violations, to which he had invited eminent international personalities to join in as observers, which illustrated the government's commitment to human rights.
   
   Appeal for justice
   There is no appeal for justice and understanding that is as powerful as a personal appeal that is made with sincerity. This is an arena in which President Rajapaksa has excelled in, especially with the rural populations of Sri Lanka where his promises and reassurances have had a strong resonance. In Geneva, President Rajapaksa made a strong appeal to his international detractors. What he said would have made an emotional connection, especially with the leaders of Third World nations that have, and need to take responsibility for, their fair share of human rights outrages in the course of governance.
   
   Mirror image
   What we see with our own eyes, and know through our own experiences to be the truth, is much more convincing than what others tell us. When others tell us something that is uncomfortable and, if true, we ought to do something about, we become even more resistant to accepting it. Even within Sri Lanka at present this observation holds true. Human rights abuses are happening to others, which are reported by others, and yet for many, it is as if they do not happen at all. A classic example would be the horror of child abductions and forcible child recruitment by the LTTE that has gone on for decades. But Tamil nationalists who yearn for Tamil rights have for long either denied or ignored this outrage as unproven or false or have said that the Tigers are releasing the children, while their numbers continuously mount.
   One of the upsetting features of the present government strategy to combat the LTTE has been the usage made of the Karuna group, which recruits children in the same manner as the LTTE of which it was once a part. The collaboration of the Karuna group with the Sri Lankan forces has been documented by human rights groups. There is also now plausible evidence of the involvement of other groups in addition to the Karuna group. Together they stand accused of engaging in abductions and disappearances, and also abductions for ransoms which have included Tamil businessmen and has now expanded to Muslim businessmen. The problem has become so bad that the President recently summoned a meeting with Muslim businessmen and pledged to ensure that no more such incidents take place.
   The tragedy in the present situation is that with regard to all these actions, whether they be child recruitment by the Karuna group with the tacit consent of the government, abductions and assassinations in Colombo and in the north east continue, there is a cloud of unknowing amongst the general population. The government has steadfastly denied any association with these human rights abuses. When faced with allegations by local and international human rights groups, and denials or justifications by government spokespersons, it is natural if the masses of people who lack knowledge tend to believe those they voted for.
   President Rajapaksa and his government have been foremost exponents in the art of denial which must necessarily put the seed of doubt into fair-minded persons who are also aware of their lack of all the facts to make a responsible assessment of the situation. Only a credible investigation mechanism will be able to create awareness amongst the general population as to what is happening on the ground, and provide the basis for an end to such abuses. Once the people are empowered with such knowledge, they can be relied on to put pressure on governmental leaders to reform themselves or to leave the seats of power.
   
   National institutions
   One of the hopes of those interested in ensuring that the rule of law and human rights prevail in Sri Lanka is that there will be more active international involvement in the country's affairs relating to human rights. Even the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons who were invited by the President to observe the functioning of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry into Serious Human Rights Violations have announced their desire for an international human rights monitoring mechanism to make a robust and effective contribution to the protection of human rights in the country. This recommendation of theirs is undoubtedly driven by their observations of the infirmities in the Presidential Commission of which they are a part.
   On the other hand, over the past several centuries, democratic societies have evolved a set of national institutions that could put a halt to human rights violations within their societies. These are the judicial system and courts of law and other institutions that are part of a system of checks and balances. Recently in its decision that stopped the busing out of Tamil lodgers in Colombo, the Supreme Court showed the value of having domestic institutions that have legal and moral power to check and balance the power of the government.
   The difficulty of relying on international bodies for achieving internal change in Sri Lanka has been borne out by the experience of the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons. This body was appointed by President Rajapaksa to deflect criticism that the problem of human rights abuses could not be addressed by simply appointing yet another Presidential Commission of Inquiry. Therefore, in addition to appointing a Presidential Commission to Investigate Serious Human Rights Violations, the President also appointed an 11 member group of eminent international persons to observe the workings of the Commission. This group has now written two strong statements about the difficulties they are having in working with the Commission.
   The lesson should be clear that ad hoc and temporary international mechanisms are no substitute for credible national institutions that work round the clock. In the recent history of the ethnic conflict, and in preventing a violation of human rights, no decision was better implemented than the Supreme Court's decision regarding the eviction of the Tamil lodgers in Colombo. Not only did the government immediately backtrack on its decision, it also apologized to the victims and brought those who wished to return back to Colombo.
   The recent activism by the Supreme Court points to the value of getting other debilitated national institutions back on track. Establishing independent commissions for the police, public administration, human rights and elections in terms of the non functioning 17th Amendment needs to be a national priority. The opposition and civil society need to pressurise the government to honour the constitution and establish the Constitutional Council which is empowered to make high level appointments to important state institutions. If the government continues to be unreceptive, then a resort could be made to the Supreme Court. All together, Sri Lankans in Sri Lanka would be the best check on the abuse of governmental power.

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