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Pope recommends the UN make dental arrangements

July 7, 2009 by John Boonstra

I’m not exactly sure what to make of the Pope’s call for a “toothier” UN.  Here are the relevant grafs in his “encyclical,” which comes somewhere between an S-G statement and the papal version of a Security Council resolution, I suppose.

In the face of the unrelenting growth of global interdependence, there is a strongly felt need, even in the midst of a global recession, for a reform of the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth.

[snip]

The integral development of peoples and international cooperation require the establishment of a greater degree of international ordering, marked by subsidiarity, for the management of globalization. They also require the construction of a social order that at last conforms to the moral order, to the interconnection between moral and social spheres, and to the link between politics and the economic and civil spheres, as envisaged by the Charter of the United Nations.

I think everyone can agree that the UN needs reform, and that giving poorer countries a greater voice should be an eminent concern.  I’m not sure what he means by “family of nations;” secularly, this naturally just refers to what we often call the “international community.”  I’ll assume this is the intended effect, and that other, culture-laden issues of “family” are not implied here.

Greater “international ordering” is similarly welcomed; the encyclical seems to get that, as we say, global problems require global solutions.  But I’m less keen on involving the UN in constructing a “moral order.”  Contrary to what the encyclical claims, the term “moral” does not even make an appearance in the UN Charter, likely for the very reason that morals can be subjective, and that freedom of religion — which the Charter does uphold — precludes favoring any particular religion’s “moral order” over another.

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When truth and reconciliation get political

by John Boonstra

It’s not very surprising that Liberia’s opposition party is taking advantage of this opportunity to call for the country’s president, Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, to resign. “This opportunity” is the recent recommendation by Liberia’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) that Johnson-Sirleaf, because of her early support for the rebel group led by eventual dictator, current indicted war criminal, and recent convert to Judaism Charles Taylor, be banned for politics for 30 years.

As unsuprising as the political reaction to the TRC’s report are the facts underlying the case. When Johnson-Sirleaf was elected, she made no secret of her earlier support for Taylor. Without imputing any comparison of the justness of the two causes, think of the Robert Mugabe case in Zimbabwe. Current prime minister and political rival Morgan Tsvangirai has said that he admires Mugabe’s rise to power, qua rebel, in 1980 — but that this does not excuse the crimes committed by Mugabe’s regime since then.

Johnson-Sirleaf’s tenure, moreover, has decidedly not resembled Mugabe’s, and her support for Taylor did not involve her in the human rights abuses that characterized the dictator’s modus operandi. The TRC, then, seems to be injecting itself pretty clearly into the country’s political debate. The suggestion that a sitting president should be banned from politics can’t really be anything but political.

This may or may not be pushing the boundaries of what a truth and reconciliation commission is meant to achieve. It’s good to have the truth out there — even if everyone already knew it — if only because, as Chris Blattman reasonably argues, many in the West have a tendency to over-canonize Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf. But there’s not much that calling for a popular sitting politican to abandon office is going to do other than provide an arrow for the politically opportunistic opposition.

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Mogadishu “descending into chaos”

by Alanna Shaikh

MSF just put out a warning that the majority of the populaiton of north Mogadishu has fled as fighing escalated in the Somali capital.  They have even had to close a pediatric hospital and three health clinics in the city. 

MSF just put out a warning that the majority of the populaiton of north Mogadishu has fled as fighing escalated in the Somali capital.

 Somalia has displaced people in clusters throughout the country; 1.2 million people are now displaced. Things there are so bad and dangerous that you can find people fleeing to the same places others are fleeing from, as each family tries to calculate their best odds for safety. The capital, Mogadishu, is an example; it’s got ten years of internally displaced persons (IDPs) accumulated in camps in and around the city. Right now, people from conflict-affected villages are heading for Mogadishu even as people are leaving the city in droves. 204,000 people have been displaced from Mogadishu since May, one of the worst waves that has been seen. At the same time, about 30,000 have arrived to the city since February. Reliefweb has an excellent map of population movements.

 That was a really long introduction to possibly the only good news you will hear about Somalia for the next year. Women’s groups in Mogadishu are doing their best to help IDPs in the city. Asha Sha’ur, an activist, described in IRIN Africa how women’s groups can access IDP camps. “We have had problems but both sides to the conflict have been good at allowing us [women] to help the needy. When they see a bunch of women they don’t bother us…” Larger agencies are trying to tap into that ability to move freely and understand local context; the UN is looking for consultants from the Somali diaspora willing to do 3-6 month consultancies in-country.

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Are the Taliban Buying Children for Suicide Attacks?

by Peter Daou

This is deeply disturbing:

A top Taliban leader in Pakistan is buying and selling children for suicide bombings, Pakistani and U.S. officials said.

Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has been increasingly using the children in attacks, the officials said. A video released by Pakistan’s military shows the children training for the task.

In the video of a training camp, children can be seen killing and going through exercises.

Mehsud has been selling the children, once trained, to other Taliban officials for $6,000 to $12,000, Pakistani military officials said.

 

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The Coup Caucus

by Mark Leon Goldberg

The Weekly Standard calls it a “Coup for Democracy.” The National Review, “A Counter-Coup.” But Ciff Kincaid wins the award for most unhinged reaction to events in Honduras:

“The so-called ‘military coup’ in Honduras was a successful effort by Honduran patriots to preserve their constitutional system of government from an international alliance of communists and socialists backed by Iran,” Kincaid wrote in a column published at aim.org.

Yes, Zelaya tried to subvert national institutions to his parochial advantage. But the military deposing a duly elected national president is inimical to the principals of democracy that the Honduran military is purporting to defend.  I think Kevin Casas-Zamora said it best in a balanced piece for Brookings, “If Zelaya must be prosecuted for his hare-brained attempt to subvert the Honduran constitution, then let the courts proceed as rigorously as possible. And the same applies to the coup perpetrators. If Honduras is to have a decent future its politicians and soldiers, in equal measure, must learn that the road to democracy and development runs through the rule of law.”

UPDATE: Republican members of Congress join the fray. 

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Ramases II, rejoice

by John Boonstra

You did not have arthritis of the spine. Your reputation as a “great warrior” is intact. How do we know? Nuclear power. Specifically:

The United Nations nuclear agency is using its expertise to help archaeologists unearth millennia-old secrets, from the supposed murder of King Tutankhamun to the mysterious death of Great Pharaoh Ramesses II, from Egyptian mummies.

Huh?

Paleoradiology is a type of science using nuclear technologies – including x-rays and neutron activation analysis – to study artifacts, skeletons, mummies and fossils.

Oh. Science is pretty cool. And the IAEA is about more than just monitoring Iran’s nuclear facilities (which, though important, is actually not the only place where the agency works).

(image from flickr user mharrsch under a Creative Commons license)

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