Sometime in early 2019 Heather Nauert, Donald Trump’s appointee for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, will go before the Senate for confirmation hearings. If confirmed, Nauert, a former Fox News correspondent with no foreign-service or direct diplomatic experience, will join a long lineup of questionable and unqualified high-profile appointments by the president.

For observers following the trajectory of the erratic governance style of the Trump administration, Nauert will inevitably be seen as the latest in a long line of unqualified individuals to have been blessed (or cursed, depending on your perspective) by Trump’s toxic spotlight. If confirmed, Nauert will join the coterie of unqualified Trumpists in high-profile positions in and out of the cabinet, including Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, Energy Secretary Rick Perry, and everyone’s all-time favorite, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Why does Trump appoint these people?

Some media attention (but perhaps not enough) has focused on speculation about the reasons why Trump surrounds himself with the glaringly unqualified and why, from an outsider’s point of view, his staffing decision making appears to be so fundamentally flawed. As the numbers of the unqualified and their destruction of the agencies they head continues to expand, the question of “why” should continue to be at the forefront of news coverage and discussion by our elected representatives.  After all, Trump’s appointees work for us, the American taxpayer, not for the president.

Is this deeply troubling pattern the result of Trump’s need to ensure the loyalty of the Republican Party by furthering the party’s decades-long dream to “starve the beast” and limit through incompetence, mismanagement, and budget and program cuts the effectiveness of government agencies—like the EPA, the Energy Department, the Consumer Protection Agency, or the Department of Education?

Or are Trump’s hiring decisions the result of a personal psychology that combines a need for self-aggrandizement and unquestioning loyalty, a terrifying dependence on the gut rather than the brain, the need to appear to be the smartest, most domineering, or most powerful person in the room, or, too often, a banal focus on whether an individual looks the part. Let us never forget (or forgive) that Vice President Mike Pence, who could succeed Trump if he were impeached or resigned, was plucked out of the Republican universe of potential running mates simply because he looked like a poster boy for the second in command.

Or is the explanation all of the above and more?  Perhaps the decades-long dream of the Republican Party to destroy or limit the effective operation of the federal government is nothing more than a conspiracy theory (although all evidence points to the contrary), and there is no back-door plan to limit the effectiveness of the federal government. Perhaps Trump’s staffing picks simply reflect a fundamental ignorance and refusal by Trump to school himself on the actual functioning of government, or a deficit of interest and lack of seriousness and respect for the responsibilities of the presidency, or the president’s inexplicable dependence on the advice of the talking heads of Fox News rather than the advice of his more schooled advisers. All such explanations should be setting off alarm bells with voters across America, no matter their party affiliation.

Qualifications: Nauert vs everybody else

But enough of speculation. Let’s return for a moment to the upcoming Senate hearing for the next unqualified appointee. I’m hoping that level-headed senators and their staffs on both sides of the aisle are doing their homework on Nauert’s lack of qualifications. I’m hoping they’ll be armed with the resumes and history of prior U.N. ambassadors. Those resumes will certainly illuminate the gulf between Nauert’s  lack of foreign-policy chops and the foreign-policy experience of most of her most recent predecessors.

My conclusion is this. The United Nations is not an organization to be taken lightly nor disrespected. America deserves a serious, experienced, and qualified ambassador to represent our interests and negotiate the most difficult of the world’s interconnected challenges. Being a quick study is not good enough. Putting on a good show after marathon coaching sessions and being a clever talking head is not good enough. In a dangerous and unsettled world, America needs an ambassador who has experience and years of grounding in the world of foreign affairs and diplomacy. America deserves more than just window dressing at the United Nations.

If you’re not yet convinced of why Nauert should not be confirmed as U.S. ambassador to the U.N., I encourage you to review the list below of her qualifications and those of some of her distinguished predecessors. Then draw your own conclusions.

Heather Nauert – Nominated by Trump

• Health-insurance consultant, Washington, D.C.
• Fox TV news anchor and presenter Fox & Friends
• ABC network correspondent
• Trump-appointed Acting Under-Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, March – October 2018
• Trump-appointed State Department spokeswoman,  April 2017 to present

Nikki Haley – Appointed by Trump

• Representative, South Carolina House of Representatives
• Governor, South Carolina

Samantha Power – Appointed by Obama

• War correspondent
• Harvard professor
• Adviser to Obama’s National Security Council
• Senior director for Multinational Affairs and Human Rights
• Pulitzer-prize–winning author

Susan Rice – Appointed by Obama

• Member, National Security Council
• Member, State Department
• Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs
• Brookings Institute Fellow
• Author of policy papers on international terrorism, peacekeeping, global effects of failed states
• Senior foreign-policy adviser for presidential campaigns of John Kerry and Barack Obama

Zalmay Khalizad – Appointed by George W. Bush

• Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation at Dept. of State
• Counselor at Center for Strategic and International Studies
• Consultant at U.S. State Department and Pentagon since 1980s
• U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan
• U.S. Ambassador to Iraq

John Negroponte – Appointed by George W. Bush

• Research fellow and lecturer – International Affairs at George Washington University, Elliot School of International Affairs, and Yale University
• Deputy Secretary of State
• First Director of National Intelligence
• U.S. Foreign Service
• U.S. Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, and Philippines
• U.S. permanent representative to U.N.
• Ambassador to Iraq

Richard Holbrooke – Appointed by Bill Clinton

• Special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan
• Assistant Secretary of State for Asia
• Assistant Secretary of State for Europe
• Ambassador to Germany
• Brokered peace agreement in Bosnia

Bill Richardson – Appointed by Bill Clinton

• Governor of New Mexico
• Secretary of Energy

Madeleine Albright – Appointed by Bill Clinton

• Secretary of State
• Member, National Security Council
• Professor, Georgetown University

Daniel Patrick Moynihan – Appointed by Gerald Ford

• Advisor to President Nixon
• Assistant Secretary of Labor
• U.S. Ambassador to India

 

 

The post Nauert: Another unqualified Trump appointee, another step backward in world affairs appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Syrians—4.8 million of them–constitute the largest segment of the current world refugee population.  But there are many other refugees —16+ million — who are not getting equal media attention. We read a lot about people fleeing the war in Syria, who are taking dangerous boat trips across the Mediterranean to Europe and hoping to settle in safer parts of the world. But, worldwide, many other men, women and children are displaced outside of their countries. They’re just as desperate and just as in need. If you’re interested in the numbers, here’s a rundown of those other refugees, with data supplied by the United Nations High Command on Refugees [UNHCR].

Definitions matter: Refugee vs. migrant

Before looking at statistics, it’s important to get the definitions right. According UNHCR, politicians, news media and people in casual conversations often don’t make the proper distinction among refugees and migrants, and that can be a problem.

Refugees are persons fleeing armed conflict or persecution. There were 21.3 million of them worldwide at the end of 2015. Their situation is often so perilous and intolerable that they cross national borders to seek safety in nearby countries, and thus become internationally recognized as “refugees” with access to assistance from States, UNHCR, and other organizations. They are so recognized precisely because it is too dangerous for them to return home, and they need sanctuary elsewhere. These are people for whom denial of asylum has potentially deadly consequences Refugees are defined and protected in international law…

…One of the most fundamental principles laid down in international law is that refugees should not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedom would be under threat.

Migrants choose to move not because of a direct threat of persecution or death, but mainly to improve their lives by finding work, or in some cases for education, family reunion, or other reasons. Unlike refugees who cannot safely return home, migrants face no such impediment to return. If they choose to return home, they will continue to receive the protection of their government.

The distinction is important, says UNHCR, because

…conflating refugees and migrants can have serious consequences for the lives and safety of refugees. Blurring the two terms takes attention away from the specific legal protections refugees require. It can undermine public support for refugees and the institution of asylum at a time when more refugees need such protection than ever before.

Who’s fleeing, where are they, and how many are there?

After Syrians, the next largest group of refugees arriving in Europe are Afghanis fleeing Taliban rule. UNHCR reports that there are 1.5 million registered Afghan refugees in Pakistan, with hundreds of thousands more unregistered living in the shadows.

350,000 Somali refugees currently live in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya, making it the largest refugee facility in the world. Some residents of Dadaab have been there for as long as nine years.

About 2,000 refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are confined by Australia on an essentially uninhabited island off its coast.

Between 200,000 and 500,000 members of Myanmar/Burma’s persecuted Rohingya minority are living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Early this year, the Bangladesh government began moving forward with a plan to move the refugees to a remote island that is underwater for much of the year.

5.2 million Palestinians are registered as refugees by the UNRWA.

Which countries are hosting the refugees?

Ten countries are taking care of more than half of the world’s 21 million refugees. The top 10 are: [in rounded numbers]

• Jordan [2.7 million]
• Turkey [2.5 million]
• Pakistan [1.5 million]
• Lebanon [1.5 million]
• Iran [980,000]
• Ethiopia [736,000]
• Kenya [550,000]
• Uganda [477,000]
• Democratic Republic of Congo [383,000]
• Chad [369,000]

UNHCR also maintains large refugee camps in India, Tanzania, Uganda, South Sudan, Mauritania, Jordan, Gaza and Ethiopia.

Personally, as a person of first-world privilege, I admit that I find these numbers unfathomable. To make the statistics relatable, I have to resort to a rather small-minded, ethnocentric comparison with cities I’ve been to:  Lebanon, for example, is hosting as many people as currently live in San Antonio, TX. If everyone living in Cleveland OH left the city, that number would equal Chad’s refugee population.

The conditions that have forced these people to run for their lives, and for the lives of their families, are as scary as they come. Can any of us sitting comfortably in front of our computers reading this imagine ourselves on the run, or living in the conditions the refugees are enduring? I can’t. I know, too, that writing about this situation isn’t much. But at the very least, we owe it to these other human beings to know that they exist and to reach beyond ourselves to try to help.

The post The other refugees we don’t hear as much about appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I can see why perhaps Donald Trump has little love for the United Nations. After all, since its inception in 1945 and his birth a year later, the United States has really not won any wars, with the possible exception of the Reagan’s “come-from-behind” victory over Grenada in 1983. If Trump was into playing blame games, he might assert that the United Nations, along with NATO, have prevented the United States from “winning again.”

According to the New York Times, Trump, while in Wausau, Wisconsin,

“also turned his attention to the United Nations, warning that it could meet a fate similar to NATO under a Trump administration. “By the way, United Nations — same thing, smaller numbers,” he said, seeming to call for a pared-down version of the intergovernmental organization.

“Where do you ever see the United Nations?” Mr. Trump continued. “Do they ever settle anything? It’s just like a political game. The United Nations — I mean the money we spend on the United Nations.”

He sounds like the late, not-so-great, Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina who loved to block payment of US dues to the UN. In Helms’ case it was because he objected to the UN distributing information on birth control. Both Helms and Trump seem to have a very petty view of the UN.

Trump likes to think big, or huge, so let’s see how the United Nations has done on the biggest of all global issues since its inception. It gets an A+, because not only did 1945 mark the establishment of the United Nations, it also was the first and only year in which nuclear weapons were used in warfare. Perhaps it’s coincidence, or perhaps it’s cause and effect, but in the era of the United Nations, the world has been spared a nuclear holocaust. While there have been dozens of wars, including big ones like Korea, Vietnam, and on-going carnage in the Middle East, no country has resorted to using nuclear bombs. There is neither a shortage of nuclear weapons around the world nor countries that are in possession of them. But they alone have been silent for the past seventy-one years.

The United Nations has also succeeded in doing what its predecessor, the League of Nations, could not do. It has played a role in preventing another world war. The League came into existence in 1920, right after World War I (then known as “The Great War”). However, the Treaty of Versailles that created both the League and dictated other terms of surrender following the war that planted the seeds for another even greater world war. In 1939, World War II exploded.

The mission of the United Nations must be seen in conjunction with the generous terms of surrender that the world, and most particularly the United Nations, placed upon Germany and Japan following the Second World War. The UN knew that fomenting hatred was what had created that war and pacifying the world was key to limiting or diminishing the presence of war.

Trump openly states that he is channeling the anger of others (and of course himself), and the distinction between anger and hatred is minimal. Trump’s criticism of the United Nations, as well as NATO, reflects several key lessons learned, and put into practice, following World War II.

1. The best way to defuse hostile feelings among nations is through kindness. The United States’ Marshall Plan for Germany is perhaps the best example of this. And Mr. Trump, the United States has never asked Germany to pay back the expenses of the Marshall Plan.
2. The fewer the number of nations that have large military forces (with nuclear weapons), the better. Following the war in the Pacific in World War II, the United States insisted that Japan spend no more than 1% of its GNP on the military. Japan has stood by that. Now Trump is suggesting that Japan and South Korea should develop nuclear weapons to protect themselves from North Korea and China.

Trump seems to have been absent the day they talked about the benefits of a Pax Americana following World War II. Yes, the U.S. has not always been the best cop, but it has been successful in minimizing the re-militarization of other major nations.

When the United Nations works best, it is when countries are willing to negotiate. Some may call that “the art of the deal.” Perhaps Trump should examine the United Nations a little more closely and learn more about “win-win” negotiations.

The post Trump applies his usual logic to the United Nations appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I just finished reading a book worth writing about in light of recent events in Africa and Iraq: Lieutenant General Romeo Dallaire’s Shake Hands With The Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Gen. Dallaire was the Force Commander of the UN Assistance Mission to Rwanda, 1993-1994, and witnessed the Rwandan Genocide firsthand.  In around 100 days, the Hutu population*, constituting a large majority of the Rwandan people, turned on the Tutsis and one another, murdering between 800,000 and 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutu sympathizers.

Gen. Dallaire attempted to implement the Arusha Peace Accords in 1993 and early 1994, aimed at ending a stalled civil war and bringing a multiracial democracy to power in Rwanda. Progress was predictably slow, undermined by Hutu nationalists and intervention from abroad. But when Hutu President Habyarimana’s plane was shot down, killing him and variety of other local leaders, the peace talks broke down completely. Hutu extremists (who are suspected to have killed Habyarimana for being too moderate) seized the opportunity to slaughter their Tutsi opponents and those perceived as too soft on Tutsis. Gen. Dallaire’s UN force was mostly cobbled together from Third World forces and generally underfunded or unused to peacekeeping operations. They were thus unable to stop the Hutu militias. Equally useless was the international community, which offered paltry humanitarian aid, sometimes allied with the genocidaires, and generally prevented Dallaire from mounting a competent defense of innocent civilians.

Why dwell on one of history’s worst massacres today? Because despite the international community’s tepid, post-Holocaust promise of “never again,” the racially charged massacrescontinue to pile up, even today. The Islamic State has committed what many are calling genocide with impunity within the caliphate’s bases of operation in Syria and Iraq. Meanwhile, Hutu-Tutsi violence has sprung up in Burundi against the backdrop of an authoritarian president’s attempts to stay in power.

What is the cause? Political scientist Kenneth Waltz once wrote of three explanations for war:  Problems within man, problems within the structure of various states, and problems within the international system of states. Of these three “images,” Waltz found the last most convincing, indicating that war’s cause is lack of a central authority in the international system. In this authority-less, or “anarchic” world, states must primarily protect their existence and interests. It was in no powerful state’s interest to help poverty-stricken and marginal Rwanda. When France finally did attempt a humanitarian intervention, the results were far from humanitarian: The French Operation Turquoise was aimed at protecting French nationals and securing the safety of France’s allies, the genocidal government.

Given that states will as a rule not intervene in cases of mass ethnic violence, preventing genocide in the current state of the world-system is impossible. However, one reform should be rather uncontroversial: States on the United Nations Security Council (and to a lesser extent, the General Assembly, which passes only nonbinding resolutions) should be barred from voting on issues pertaining to mass ethnic violence within their borders. Rwanda happened to have a seat on the Council during the genocide; This meant that its representative could lobby against intervention and generally obfuscate the situation. Gen. Dallaire remarked that because of the representative’s privileged position on the Council, the genocidaires had more information, logistics, and resources than he did, despite the fact that his force worked for the UN. Eliminating this privilege would help prevent genocidal regimes and groups from committing their atrocities without answering to the international community.

Samantha Power, now the United States’ Ambassador to the UN, once described genocide as the “problem from hell.” It is a testament to the apathy of the great powers and their international system that this hell continues unabated.

*Note:  It is possible that the Hutu and the Tutsis are not “ethnic groups,” per se, according to geneticists, but they are distinct cultural entities.

The post 20 years after Rwanda, genocide remains a “problem from Hell” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

For Literacy Day, the United Nations made an infographic looking at literacy statistics around the world. Education is listed again and again as one of the top ways to reduce poverty. Although the literacy rate has been increasing globally, it looks rather grim in some developing nations. If you’re one of the lucky 84% of the world that is literate, you should take the time to check it out.

The post Infographic: Literacy around the world appeared first on Occasional Planet.

In 1918, shortly after the end of World War I, President Woodrow Wilson proposed the founding of an international organization dedicated to fostering cooperation among nations and the crafting of peaceful resolutions to international disputes. Although the inspiration for the League of Nations, as it would become known, was homegrown in the U.S., America never became a member.

At the time, popular support for the League was robust. However, opposition to membership, particularly among Republicans in Congress led by Senate Majority Leader Henry Cabot Lodge, was shrill and effective. Opponents at the time raised the frightening specter of new, constraining foreign commitments. They successfully stoked fears of governance by international fiat, loss of freedom and sovereignty, and the diminishment of American laws.

The vocabulary of fear mongering should sound all too familiar to us. The arguments opposing the League almost one hundred years ago echo the objections today of Republicans and the conservative movement to the successor to the League—the United Nations—and the humanitarian and human-rights treaties promulgated by its member nations.

And even though statements over the years from the White House and Congress purport to share many of the goals of treaties hashed out along the East River in New York, the political will to ratify those commitments has been sorely lacking.

It was surprising then that concerning one such treaty—the Ottawa Convention (or, as it’s more popularly known, the Land Mine Treaty)—the U.S. has finally come in from the cold.

At a conference of signatories in Maputo, Mozambique [June 2014], leaders announced something that anti-land mine activists have been advocating for since passage of the Land Mine Treaty in 1999. An American observer delegation at the conference released a statement indicating that the U.S.:

…will not produce or otherwise acquire any anti-personnel land mines in the future, including to replace expiring stockpiles. The White House press office went on to clarify that “the United States is diligently pursuing solutions that would be compliant with and that would ultimately allow the United States to accede to the Ottawa Convention.

What this means is that the U.S. is now on the road to officially banning the production, stockpiling, and use of anti-personnel land mines, and to committing the country to the total destruction of its remaining stockpiles.
This announcement brings the U.S. officially in line with policies that the American government has been quietly pursuing since the 1990s. According to Human Rights Watch (HRW), the last recorded use by the U.S. of land mines was during the 1991 Gulf War. An export ban on anti-personnel land mines has been in place and enforced since 1992. Since 1997 there has been no known U.S. production of the mines. Add to that record that the U.S. has become the world’s largest contributor of financial assistance for global mine clearance and programs for victims of land-mine accidents, and the argument for not acceding to the treaty becomes almost nonexistent.

Still, this belated, official policy shift comes after fifteen years of intense pressure from determined international grassroots organizations, such as the International Campaign to Ban Landmines and HRW.

In statements pressuring the U.S. to bring its policy into line with its behavior, Steve Goose, arms director at HRW, observed that:

It is nonsensical that the U.S. has spent billions of dollars to clean up the messes caused by land mines but insists on the right to use them again in the future. Throwing money at the problem is not enough. A permanent solution is needed, and the mine ban treaty provides it.

For the past five years, the Obama administration has been parsing the treaty’s provisions. Real progress under Obama’s watch comes after the failure of the Clinton and Bush administrations to move forward on committing to a treaty that bans these indiscriminate weapons designed to kill or maim people rather than disable military machinery.

Although during his time in office President Clinton signaled that he and his administration shared the treaty’s goals, Clinton was unable to craft a workable solution to the problem of existing land mines in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea that effectively scuttled any effort at the time to accede to the treaty.

The Bush administration—ever committed to the profits of corporations such as Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Alliant, General Electric, and Motorola—proposed that the U.S. deal with the problem of the 15,000 to 20,000 innocent noncombatants who are killed or lose a limb each year to land mines not by signing the treaty but by manufacturing and stockpiling only “smart” land mines designed to self-destruct after fifteen days.

President Obama, stepping boldly away from the concept that the world is just too dangerous a place for the U.S. to give up even a single weapon in its massive arsenal—no matter how inhumane—has now committed the U.S. to joining the 161 countries that already have signed on to the treaty. This vital policy shift from the world’s largest stockpiler of anti-personnel land mines (with the number estimated at between 4 and 10 million) sends a powerful message to the thirty-one nonsignatory nations, including China, Cuba, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North and South Korea, Pakistan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Vietnam.

For the sake of the innocents whose lives and limbs are on the line, let’s hope those thirty-one get the message.

The post At long last, U.S. says it will sign the Land Mine Treaty appeared first on Occasional Planet.

International Women’s Day is  24 hours of celebration of what it means to be a woman and to promote gender equality. This year, on March 8, many took this opportunity to speak out, including UN-Secretary Under-General, Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

Dear Men and Boys of the World,

When we fought against apartheid in South Africa, which the United Nations declared a crime against humanity, the whole world took a stand. All self-respecting people—leaders of nations, religious institutions, commerce and sports—crossed the line to be on the right side of history.

The unity and purpose of the people of the world played a major role in ushering in freedom for South Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela, in whose cabinet I had the honor to serve. In Mandela, a force for good was unleashed, not just for South Africa but for all of humanity. He inspired those of us who worked with him, and countless millions around the world, to stand up for a just cause.

Now it is time to marshal the same conviction, energy and cooperation on behalf of the 3.6 billion women and girls in the world. You, the men of the 21st century, can make your mark by crossing the line united and joining women as a powerful force for gender equality. It is the right thing to do. In the words of Mandela, “for every moment we remain silent, we conspire against our women.”

This isn’t just a female cause. We have rising evidence that everyone, not just women, benefits from gender equality. Did you know that if women farmers had the same tools and fertilizer as men in agriculture, we would reduce hunger by up to 150 million people? Fortune 500 companies with the most women managers were found to deliver a 34 per cent higher return to shareholders. Discriminating against women comes at a cost to humanity and nations and denies women and girls their inalienable rights.

Yes, women are strong, bold, and brave, but men and boys also have a big role to play in ending gender inequality. It is both the right thing and the smart thing to do. It’s time to influence change in society. I know many of you desire a better world for women and girls and more than a few of you are actively working on bringing about positive changes. But there is much more to do. We need your action and your voices to be louder and to help us change some of the hardships women face.

More than 60 million girls worldwide are denied access to education. One in three women in the world is a victim of physical or sexual violence, the most humiliating and dehumanizing form of discrimination. Most of this violence happens at the hand of a partner or relative within her own home. Today two-thirds of the global illiterate population is women. If trends continue in this way, poor girls in Sub-Saharan Africa will not reach universal access to primary education until 2086.

These are your sisters, mothers, wives, partners, daughters, nieces, aunts, cousins and friends. They have hopes and beautiful dreams for themselves, their families, communities and the world. If many of their dreams were to come true, the world would be a much better place for all of humanity.

As we celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th, I issue a call to men and boys and invite you to take action wherever you are and support the SHE Imperative, a new global initiative to bring women’s issues to the forefront and effectuate change through civil engagement, corporate commitment, and policy changes worldwide.

SHE has three key components: First, make sure SHE is Secure and Safe from gender-based violence. Second: Make sure SHE has her Human rights respected, including her reproductive rights. And third: Ensure that SHE has Economic Empowerment through Education, participation and leadership.

This sounds simple, doesn’t it? Yet if we applied this imperative, the world would be a very different and far better place. SHE would enjoy equal opportunity, access to education and no longer be the face of poverty, and her gender will not decide her status and place in society.

I invite you to join me and the women and men of the world who have led many long struggles for the gender equality. In Africa, we have a saying that I want to leave with you: ‘If you go alone you go fast, but if we go together, we go far’. Let us go far together.

You can find more about the SHE initiative and ways to help atwww.heforshe.org.

Many may be thinking right now, “Wow, that was really well said. I’m so glad all this gender discrimination stuff doesn’t happen in America. No, it only happens in the backwards, impoverished, third-world countries to whom Dr. Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka was speaking.”

No. The same gender disparities exist in the United States as in practically every other country and culture.They are rooted in the same long-standing chauvinistic customs of male-dominated societies, we just hide them better. Feminism is not just a “woman’s issue.” Men can be feminists, too. f we can all work together to ensure true equality to all people, regardless of gender, race,  ethnicity, or any other immutable, biological characteristic, think of all the change we could create. Think of how much better the world could be!

For more inspirational messages to support National Women’s Month, see Melinda Gates, Hillary Clinton in America and at the UN, and the history of International Women’s Day. For more views on women’s rights, see women in the Arab World, the UN’s perspective, Women and Social Media, and the influence of politically correctness on the feminist message.

The post Gender equality: Not just a female cause appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Perhaps you haven’t noticed. Our current president is an unwavering optimist.

Whether we see Obama’s optimism as a character trait or a belief system doesn’t really matter. What does matter is recognizing that optimism has helped carry the man and the politician through the most difficult, contentious, and downright ugly political climate we’ve seen in contemporary times. Despite all the conflict and the seemingly insurmountable obstacles, Obama has remained true to his optimistic nature.

Obama’s dilemma reminds me of kids I grew up with. You may remember kids just like them. They were the ones who found themselves on the receiving end of unprovoked insults. The taunting pursued them no matter how fervently they tried to fit in. Some were targets of violent impulses of bullies out in the schoolyard. Those vulnerable kids, caught in a world they couldn’t control, learned quickly to summon every drop of courage to resist the easy way out—the feigning of illness that would have kept them home for the day or the easy escape of hiding out in bathroom stalls until recess was over.

Like those kids, Obama keeps coming back out for more because he has no other choice.

Remember, too, that Obama’s not only an optimist but also a realist and a stealthy, patient fighter to boot. The guy is not a victim. You can tell by his public demeanor that the President truly believes that each day might just be that one breakthrough day when governing with the ideological bullies in Congress will get a bit easier or a bit more productive.

Once again it seems the President is getting ready to play the optimism card. According to multiple news sources, Obama’s planning to give Senate obstructionists and conservative mudslingers a second chance to unlock their better selves and do the right thing by voting “yes” to ratify the U.N. Treaty Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

This is one international treaty that should be a no-brainer. After all, the treaty is modeled closely after our own Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that’s been improving the lives of the disabled for more than two decades.

But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking the vote is going to be any easier the second time around. Ratification was defeated one year ago in the Senate when the treaty failed by six votes to garner the necessary sixty-seven votes for two-thirds’ majority passage. Incredibly, there were senators who could not be persuaded to vote “yes” even though there was overwhelming support from mainstream disability and religious organizations, civil- and human-rights advocates, veterans groups, and lobbyists for American business interests.

Unfortunately, failure to ratify the U.N. treaty here at home speaks volumes about our poisoned political climate. It’s a sign of how callousness and disregard for the protection and rights of the less fortunate have come to dominate our public discourse and the direction of our governance. That failure is also a sign of just how far we’ve moved away from the international mainstream.

Unlike the United States, 158 countries and the European Union have ratified the U.N. treaty. That’s a clear message of optimism and those countries’ commitment to improving the lives of the more than one billion disabled around the world—eighty percent of whom live in developing nations.

And where did opposition to guaranteeing the most basic rights to disabled individuals come from in this country? Needless to say, the most vociferous objections to the treaty came from perennial pessimists on the Republican side of the aisle.  Former Republican Senator Rick Santorum summed up conservatives’ objections by whipping up a false frenzy about how the treaty would lead to a ban on home schooling in the U.S. and an increase in the number of abortions worldwide—resulting, according to Santorum’s tortured logic, from guarantees that women with disabilities gain equal access to reproductive care.

In fact, in the upside-down, nonsensical world we live in, legal scholars with no ideological agenda to push explain that the U.N. treaty would actually make it easier for the U.S. to encourage other countries to allow disabled children to be home schooled and that the language of the treaty disallows jurisdiction over any American legislation.

(Don’t forget a bit of history here. On whose watch did the concept of protecting the rights of the disabled gain steam? It was those two feisty, firebrand progressives, Pappy Bush and George W., who got the ball rolling. Remember that it was Pappy who signed the ADA into law, and it was George W.’s administration that helped draft the treaty’s language.)

Santorum and those who voted “no” to ratification failed to mention the true plight of individuals living in countries that systematically deny the disabled the most basic of human rights—privileges like birth certificates and acceptance of officially recognized names. Nor did opponents bother to talk about medical procedures commonly performed on the disabled without their consent, such as forcible sterilization and abortion, or the moral and ethical responsibility we share to protect those who cannot protect themselves.

Former Republican Attorney General Richard Thornburgh—who served under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush and is himself the father of a son with disabilities—refuted the doomsday fears about American sovereignty when he testified in favor of ratifying the U.N. treaty before the Senate in 2012. Thornburgh explained that

the reservation regarding private conduct will ensure that the U.S. will not accept any obligation except as mandated by the Constitution and the laws of the United States. . . Thus, as with our current law, religious entities, small employers, and private homes would be exempt from any new requirements.

The sad truth is that the fight over ratification of the U.N. Treaty Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is hardly an anomaly.  The U.S.A. is M.I.A. when it comes to ratifying international treaties on a whole host of issues that would protect human rights, defuse international tensions, and make the world a less dangerous place.

The list of treaties signed by one president after another—both Republican and Democratic—and left to languish in no-man’s land without ratification is long and shameful. Just take a look at treaties that were signed but never ratified by us. Take a look as well at the company we keep.

Convention on the Rights of the Child

Signed 1995. Not ratified. (Supporters of the death penalty for children and American conservatives fearing that the convention would prohibit parents from hitting their children as punishment or allowing their kids to opt out of sex education are holding up ratification of a treaty that protects children from abuse, neglect, and exploitation.)

The company we keep: Somalia.

International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights

Signed 1977. Not ratified.

Kyoto Protocol

Signed 1998. Not ratified.

Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty

Signed 1996. Not ratified.

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty

Signed and ratified 1972.  U.S. unilateral withdrawal in 2001 by President George W. Bush, citing terror threats.

Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention

Signed 1972. Ratified 1975 then rejected draft proposal in 2001.

Chemical Weapons Convention

Signed 1993. Ratified 1997 with a reservation that gives the U.S. president the right to refuse inspections on grounds of “national security.”

Mine Ban Treaty

Never signed.

The company we keep: The only member of NATO besides Turkey and the only state in the Western Hemisphere that is not a signatory.

Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court

Signed 2000 but later unsigned in order to exempt U.S. military and government personnel from the court’s jurisdiction.

Convention on Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women

Signed 1979. Not ratified.

The company we keep: The convention has been ratified by 185 countries. Iran, Sudan, Palau, and the U.S. have not signed. The U.S. is the only industrialized democracy and the only country in the Western Hemisphere that has not ratified the CEDAW.

Convention Against Enforced Disappearance

Not signed.

The convention prohibits secret detention and abduction of individuals by the state.  This would have put the U.S. in violation of an international agreement when the C.I.A. abducted individuals and incarcerated them in secret prisons.

Antarctic Treaty

Signed in 1959 by twelve countries, including the U.S.

Prohibits nuclear explosions and disposal of radioactive waste in Antarctica.

The post UN Treaty on Disability Rights: Obama says yes; so should Congress appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Plastic trash takes up so much territory in Earth’s oceans that is has been designated a “country” by the United Nations. The new “country” is called Garbage Patch. And, no, this is not a satirical story from The Onion.

According to UNESCO, the Garbage Patch to be symbolically recognized as a federal state rises in the middle of the oceans:

 It is a territory that comprises five areas of man-made rubbish scattered in the North Pacific, South Pacific, North Atlantic, South Atlantic and Indian Ocean. Land-based sources – such as agricultural run-off, discharge of nutrients and pesticides and untreated sewage including plastics – account for approximately 80% of marine pollution, globally. Marine habitats worldwide are contaminated with man-made debris.

The Garbage Patch will be recognized as a federal state with a “population” of 36,939 tons of garbage, and covering 15,915,933 square meters, an area roughly twice the size of the United States. The largest of the trash “islands”—is known variously as The Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the Eastern Pacific Garbage Patch and the Pacific Trash Vortex. It’s located between Hawaii and California, in a region called the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre.

National Geographic describes an ocean gyre as:

 …A circular ocean current formed by the Earth’s wind patterns and the forces created by the rotation of the planet. The area in the center of a gyre tends to be very calm and stable. The circular motion of the gyre draws in debris. Debris eventually makes its way into the center of the gyre, where it becomes trapped and builds up. A similar garbage patch exists in the Atlantic Ocean, in the North Atlantic Gyre.

The motion of the gyre prevents garbage and other materials from escaping. The amount of material in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch accumulates because much of it is not biodegradable. Many plastics, for instance, do not wear down; they simply break into tinier and tinier pieces.

According to How Stuff Works, 10 percent of the ocean’s plastic is made up of something called “nurdles.” And what’s that, you may ask? A nurdle is a small piece of plastic formed by photodegradation. Plastic doesn’t chemically change as it decays — it breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces over time. Nurdles act like sponges in the ocean and absorb toxins. The toxins are concentrated in the nurdle and can be detrimental to marine life.

Tidbit: The first of the Garbage Patches was discovered in 1989 by a racing boat captain, Charles Moore. Moore was sailing from Hawaii to California after competing in a yachting race. Crossing the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, Moore and his crew noticed millions of pieces of plastic surrounding his ship.

Although they’re often referred to as “islands,” that’s a  misnomer, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration [NOAA]:

There is no island of trash forming in the middle of the ocean, nor a blanket of trash that can be seen with satellite or aerial photographs. This is likely because much of the debris is small bits of floating plastic not easily seen from a boat.

To learn more about the Garbage Patch, check out this helpful quiz, at How Stuff Works.

The post Garbage Patch nation: UN declares plastic trash to be a “country” appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Apparently, the National Rifle Association isn’t content merely to enforce its no-gun-restriction marketing strategy on Americans. [Notice that I’m not calling it an ideology. It’s a marketing strategy disguised as an ideology.] Oh, no. The NRA wants to prevent limits on gun sales world-wide—as evidenced by an intense lobbying effort the gun-manufacturers’ group is making in the United Nations. Yes, you read that right: The United Nations.

At issue is the United Nations Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). According to the Washington Post, “the treaty would require countries to determine whether weapons they sell would be used to commit serious human rights violations.”

The UN has been trying to pass the ATT for years. Its provisions would cover battle tanks, artillery, combat aircraft, warships and missiles, as well as small arms and light weapons.

Human rights activists say that the ATT would reduce the trafficking of weapons, including small arms, such as the ubiquitous AK-47 assault rifle, to outlaw regimes and rebel groups engaged in atrocities against civilian populations.

The treaty is a common-sense alignment of the interests of governments, law-abiding citizens and individuals all over the world, who deserve the right to live free from harm,” says Amnesty International. “Any step toward restraining the illicit sale and transfer of weapons used to commit horrific crimes is a good move forward, and the world could use a lot more steps in the direction of ending human rights abuses.”

The NRA doesn’t like it, for all the usual reasons–the main one, unspoken of course, is that the NRA’s corporate sponsors simply want to sell as many guns as possible in a completely unregulated market. The reason quoted publicly is that “the treaty would imperil Americans’ right to bear arms.” In 2011 and 2012, Senate Republicansintroduced a resolution urging President Obama not to sign the treaty and calling on Congress to withhold funding to implement any part of it, saying it fails to “expressly recognize the … right to keep and to bear arms” and that its “vague” criteria for assessing the potential consequences of arms transfers could open up the United States to lawsuits.

That bill reflects the U.N.-conspiracy, “world-government” meme that right-wing conservatives have been serving up for as long as the United Nations has existed. Need I point out that the U.N. Charter specifically prohibits the organization from infringing on national sovereignty?  Sigh.

The NRA also contends that ATT limits what the NRA calls “civilian weapons.”  Not a valid argument, say pro-ATT advocates:

The NRA claim that there is such a thing as ‘civilian weapons’ and that these can and need to be treated differently from military weapons under the Arms Trade Treaty is—to put it politely—the gun lobby’s creativity on full display. There is no such distinction. To try to create one would render the treaty inoperative, as anyone could claim that he or she was in the business of trading ‘civilian weapons.’

The Obama administration has wavered on the treaty. In 2012, after initially backing the ATT, President Obama backed down, presumably as a result of election-year pressures. In 2013, he has once again signaled his support for the ATT.

Some supporters, such as progressive Congressman Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), like the treaty a lot—but note that it lacks enforcement powers, and want it to be even stronger. According to The Hill, advocates would like to see the current draft strengthened to:

• Ban arms transfers if exporting countries “know or should have known of a substantial risk” that the weapons would be used to violate humanitarian law;

• Establish clear standards that countries will have to use when assessing the risk that the weapons they export could be misused; and

• Create a comprehensive export-import control regime for guns and ammunition.

The NRA’s lobbying activities at the United Nations are not new. The NRA has had a lobbying presence at the UN for nearly 20 years. When the ATT was first introduced at the UN in 2006, the NRA was there to shoot it down. The NRA also successfully lobbied the Bush Administration to oppose the ATT. [That probably didn’t take a lot of arm-twisting.]

You have to wonder if the NRA sees the tide turning against it on the gun free-for-all  in the U.S., so it’s turning its attention to the wider world market, where it can sell more guns–sort of like what happened to the tobacco industry. We should also note that, while the NRA is adamantly opposed to the [false] notion that the United Nations might dictate gun-ownership policy to the United States, it’s perfectly comfortable attempting to dictate what the United Nations can and cannot do. [That particular hypocrisy is not exclusive to the NRA. of course.]

In any case, what the United Nations is calling “final negotiations” on the Arms Trade Treaty  are taking place during the third week of March 2013. The question is, who will call the shots?

The post NRA takes its “no-gun-restrictions-ever” argument to the United Nations appeared first on Occasional Planet.