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THE JOURNAL TEAM
Vojtech Hons Editor-in-Chief
Atholl Macpherson Senior Editor
Dalva Barrere Senior Editor
Selen Akgun Editor and Fundraising
Jihenne E. Khiari Editor and Fundraising Officer
Margritt Clouzeau Editor and Events Officer
Tereza Rasochova Editor
Anisha Hira Creative Editor
Zoe Pot Editor
Maurice Kirschbaum Editor
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @KSJournal_IAHR
Facebook: www.facebook.com/kcl.journal.hr
3
EDITOR’S NOTE
It has been six months since the first issue was published. During that period, the publication has re-ceived almost a thousand reads from forty countries of the world, ranging from the United States, Al-bania all the way to Indonesia. Our primary aim, to amplify the voices of the students from King's, has been fulfilled. For the second issue, not only the contributors have changed, so did the editorial team. Old members now had the experience, new member brought in fresh ideas. As many new student media came out this year, including Human Writes, King's Amnesty Journal and Perspectives, we decided to take a step towards differentiating ourselves from the rest. The publication you are about to read differs from what you read in June. The number of articles has been cut down, as only about 40% of received proposals was included in the final product. The sources were reviewed to a greater extent than last year, and the average length of an article was ex-tended as well. Among the writers, there are two alumni, four Masters students, one Doctorate candidate and one undergraduate. More interestingly, however, no International Relations or Politics student has been published – in fact, we have received quality material from people with rather unexpected back-ground: two Global Ethics and Human Values Students, one Medical Ethics and Law, one Education and Professional Studies and undergraduate submission from a French and Classics student. The ex-pertise of the three others obtained at War Studies department was nevertheless equally appreciat-ed. We do not expect to gain an enormous increase of reads on the second issue. In fact, it might as well be the case that less people will now read a whole article. We do believe, however, that this was the main feature of the primary aim – to amplify the students' voices. The secondary, more challenging, but in our eyes more rewarding aim, to set up a platform for arti-cles written in academic style and depth, could only be achieved on the expense of longer pieces that might present greater challenge to a person without certain factual background knowledge. We nev-ertheless believe that this transformation makes sense and that it will eventually reach the same amount of readers. It will not be long until the work on the third issue will begin. Plenty ideas that have not been imple-mented now are begging to be realised, and your participation will therefore be needed again. It will be our pleasure to receive your emails, should you wish to suggest an idea or improvement, submit an article or even become member of the journal board. The fact that you have opened this publication, however, is already most appreciated, as it gives us, the editorial team, to carry on. Have a good read! Vojtech Hons Editor-in-chief
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MULTICULTURAL CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AS PREJUDICE REDUCING PEDAGOGICAL TOOL
5
DEMOCRATIC VIOLATION - IRELAND’S ABORTION CRISIS 13
DISMANTLING THE SYRIAN CHEMICAL ARSENAL: LESSONS LEARNED 18
EU: AN IMBALANCED POLITICAL AGENDA 22
“GLOCALISATION” AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLEMENTATION
28
SHOULD WE RESPECT THE HUMAN RIGHTS OF TERRORISTS? 35
THE POLITICIZATION OF BOKO HARAM 40
JEOPARDIZED DIVERSITY - CONFESSIONAL TENSIONS IN THE AMORPHIC MIDDLE EAST
45
5
ANALYSIS OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
MULTICULTURAL CHILDREN’S LITERATURE
AS PREJUDICE REDUCING PEDAGOGICAL
TOOL
MERSEDEH GHASSEMIEH
is currently studying for a doctorate in
education and professional studies.
Prejudice can be defined as the extension
of irreverent attitudes regarding a social group
to an individual, solely by the virtue of that
individual’s perceived membership in the social
group (Stephan & Stephan, 2001). The group
categories that these impertinent feelings are
based on encompass categories such as gender,
sexuality, social class, age, ability, religion,
ethnicity, and race. Prior to the 1950s, most
scholarly works concerning prejudice focused
almost exclusively on adults (Cameron, Rutland
& Brown, 2006). However, since then, a
significant volume of scholarship on prejudice
has been investigating the etiology of prejudice
development in children (Paluck & Green,
2009). It was an astonishing finding for
psychologists and educationalists alike when
they realized that children are capable of
identifying their own and others’ gender and
ethnicity from a very young age (Cameron,
Rutland & Brown, 2006). Currently, researchers
assert that the crucial period for development
of prejudice in children is from age three
through seven, when a child notices perceptible
racial differences such as skin colour,
differentiates between them, and starts to
understand that these attributes do not change
over time (Aboud, 1988; Brown, 1995; Nesdale,
2001). During this same period, children start
showing signs of being influenced by societal
biases and they even exhibit prejudiced
attitudes towards others on the basis of gender,
race or disability (Derman, 1989).
Although within the field of
developmental social psychology, extensive
volumes of research exist that confirm that
children as young as primary school age hold
prejudiced views (Aboud, 1988; Aboud &
Amato, 2001; Brown, 1995; Hirschfeld, 1997;
Katz, 1976; Rutland, Cameron, Milne &
McGeorge, 2005), there has not been enough
research on effectiveness of pedagogical tools
or interventions in prejudice reduction in
children (Aboud & Levy, 2000; Bigler, 1999;
Oskamp, 2000). My aim for this paper is to
examine what evidence there is to support the
claim that certain types of children’s literature
can provide the means for transformative
learning to reduce prejudice, and whether it can
empower children from an early age to embrace
tolerance and acceptance. In other words, I am
intrigued to find out whether children’s
literature can be used as an intervention to
challenge and deconstruct the whole process of
‘Otherizing’ and help children realise the
common humanity.
Transformative learning:
Transformative learning, which
developed from the work of Jack Mezirow
(1991), is the process of alteration in the
premises of our thoughts, feelings, and actions;
it is a change in our frame of reference that
occurs when our beliefs are transformed,
thereby changing our entire worldview.
According to Mezirow transformative learning
is the process by which we “transform our
taken-for-granted frames of reference to make
them more inclusive, open, emotionally capable
of change, and selective so that they may
generate beliefs and opinions that will prove
more true or justified to guide
action” (Mezirow, 2000, p.8). This theory is
about understanding human’s relations and
interactions with one another and the
underlying power structures that influence
6
them.
Changing frames of references is a
crucial component of transformative learning
and happens as a result of critical reflection on
assumptions and viewpoints, and constant
redefining of the world that one inhabits.
Frames of reference are the framework of
assumptions and beliefs through which our
experiences are comprehended, signified, and
made coherent. “They selectively shape and
delimit our perception, cognition and feelings
by predisposing our intentions, beliefs,
expectations and purposes” (Mezirow, 2010,
92). ‘Habits of mind’ and ‘resulting points of
view’ are two integral dimensions of frame of
mind that I now turn to. We tend to have
particular habits of mind that are “broad,
abstract, orienting, habitual ways of thinking,
feeling and acting, influenced by assumptions
that constitute a set of codes. These codes or
canon may be cultural, social, linguistic,
educational, economic, political, psychological,
religious, aesthetic and others” (Mezirow, 2006,
p.26). Articulation of Habits of mind in a
particular point of view, which is “constellation
of belief, memory, value judgment, attitude and
feeling that shapes a particular
interpretation” (Mezirow, 2006, p.26).
Ethnic Prejudice as an example of habit of
mind and reflective points of view:
Habits of mind are rooted in historical
and social context, and are influenced by
institutional structures and practices. Ethnic
prejudice, as a tendency to regard one’s own in-
group’s normative cultural prescriptions as
superior to out-groups’ cultural norms, is an
example of habits of mind that is shaped,
moulded, and perpetuated by legal, social, and
educational policies (Bigler & Liben, 2007).
Based on a social learning approach, prejudicial
attitudes that are derived from stereotypes,
socio-cultural demarcations and categorisation
of “Others” are learned. When a child enters into
society, they are faced with already existing
processes that generate and perpetuate ethnic
categorisations and racial stigmas (Crandall &
Stangor 2005). Children are exposed to such
processes through various channels such as
family, media, school, and peer groups (Milner,
1983). Not only do children learn about the
stereotypes from their social environment but
they also learn about the emotional responses
associated with them (Katz, 1976; Vaughan,
1987).
Camicia also suggests that the
educational system is partly responsible for the
systemisation and perpetuation of prejudicial
“official” knowledge (Camicia, 2007; King,
1991). According to Camicia, treatment of
knowledge as culturally neutral in educational
curricula is a hegemonic practice that renders
students’ critical evaluation of “official”
knowledge challenging. Consequently, prejudice
is fortified, protracted, and sustained since
students are not invited to question the
perspective, source, or quality of “official”
knowledge. Depiction of Christopher Columbus
in educational curricula sheds light on the
points discussed above. When Columbus is
described as an inquisitive adventurer and
courageous explorer who “discovered” the
“New World” and established European
“settlements” there, then the explicit
mainstream message, the one that is on the
surface, easily detectable, and unambiguous, is
that Columbus was an exemplary fearless
visionary (Fanon 1963; Klein, 1985; Loewen,
1996; Love, 2011). Beneath this veneer, lies the
unspoken message that is embedded in
Eurocentrism and racism. First, by calling the
Americas the ‘New World’, not only is the
historical integrity and civilisational longevity of
the Americas prior to 1492 ignored but also the
rest of the world is considered on the periphery
of the centre that is Europe. Another message
that is also implicitly conveyed is the depiction
7
of Europeans and their ways of life as the more
advanced, civilised, and sophisticated ones that
were easily able to conquer the “New World”.
Third, by intentionally choosing the word
“settlers” instead of colonisers, there is an
attempt to distort historical consciousness of
many Europeans as they reflect on their past
(Loewen, 1996; Love 2011). Absent from these
“official” accounts are null messages, a critical
reflection on mainstream and hidden messages.
Null messages are omitted or silenced so that the
systematic structure of domination, exploitation,
and privilege could stay intact. For example, the
view that Columbus brutally subjugated the
indigenous people of America, and his actions
were derived from the European mentality of the
time that was accepting of violent conquests,
enslavement, and mass killings, is never
represented.
A subsequent point of view of
aforementioned habits of mind is a complex web
of negative beliefs, attitudes, feelings, and
judgments that one might have in regards to
people of different ethnic or racial backgrounds.
An astonishing study, conducted by Bigler and
Liben (1993) on White-Americans’ negative
assumptions about African-Americans sheds
light on this matter. They asked 75 randomly
selected White-American elementary students to
attribute positive and negative characteristics to
only Black people, only White people, or both
White and Black people (Bigler & Liben, 2013).
They discovered that more than fifty percent of
the participants stated that “only Black people”
could be bad, dirty, stupid, cruel, mean, and ugly
(Bigler & Liben, 2013). Such discriminating
points of view are also seen among educators,
which is very alarming. Villenas et al. (1999),
analyzed seven ethnographic studies in United
States in order to explore Latino schooling and
family education. These ethnographic studies of
Latino schooling are rich with personal
experiences of Latin American families residing
in the United States that reveal and expose how,
and why, ‘raced’ children are disproportionately
subjected to certain disturbing trends in the
educational system. For instance, researchers
found out that Latino students are often placed
in low-performance classrooms in which they
receive ‘dull and boring’ lessons plans, and
teachers often have low expectations for these
students. Moreover, the experiences of Latino
parents reveal how they are often ‘kept out’ of
schools and not welcomed by discouraging
treatment and general indifference of schools’
administrators to Latin American cultural bases,
notwithstanding the constant insistence in the
educational system to involve parent in their
children’s education. This level of prejudicial
thinking within the educational system is
striking and indicates the urgent need for
intervention programs intended to reduce
prejudice and racial stereotyping among
students and school officials.
Prejudice reduction through the
transformative learning process:
Transformative learning is a kind of
learning that results in significant changes in our
belief system. It is a learning that gives meaning
to our experiences in life. The transformative
learning process is comprised of three main
components: experience, critical reflection, and
reflective discourse (Mezirow, 1990). The
process begins with an experience. The next step
is a cognitive process of critically reflecting on
an underlying set of beliefs and assumptions that
influence the way in which one interprets the
experience. According to Meziro, one aspect of
critical reflection is the ‘premise reflection’,
which is evaluating the new experience
according to long-held beliefs, values, and
assumptions (Mezirow, 1990). At this stage, the
individual is assessing whether or not the new
experience is compatible with her already
8
existing belief system, or if a transformation of
mindset is necessary to accommodate the new
experience. This leads to the last stage of
transformative learning that is reflective
discourse. Reflective discourse is about
thorough understanding of the experience,
assessing new findings and arguments of
different points of view, being open to
alternative points of view or belief systems, and
finally making a judgment or adjustment at the
end of this process.
The idea that positive experience of
contact with an out-group member can reduce
prejudice is well tested and backed up by great
number of studies (Allport, 1953; Pettigrew &
Tropp, 2006). However, the Contact Hypothesis
(1954) is inherently limited due to limited
opportunities for contact and interaction among
different social groups. Restricted contact
among in-group and out-group stems from
various causes such as geography, prejudicial
and dogmatic mentalities, and state of war, to
name only a few. For example, in the United
States, an average, predominately white
neighbourhood has less than ten percent black
residents (Denton & Massey, 1991). Some
religious sects’ meditated preference to only
interact with the members of their own in-
group is another example. Places of conflict,
such as Gaza or the Korean demilitarized zone,
are the most extreme cases of segregation in
which opportunities for direct intergroup
contact is severely restricted. Yet these are
precisely the kind of environments in which
interactions among different social groups are
needed the most. Dadd (1997) argues that
imagining a positive contact with a member of
an out-group can have the same prejudice-
reducing effect as the actual participation in an
intergroup interaction (Dadd, 1997; Kosstyn,
2001). Since books are capable of creating
mental settings in which a positive contact can
be imagined, experienced, and lived; I will
discuss how children’s literatures can be used as
an intervention to reduce prejudice, in the
following section.
Extended Contact:
Extended Contact Hypothesis
emphasises the role of cross-group friendship as
an essential condition for improvement of
intergroup attitudes. Extended contact suggests
that reduced bias might result from vicarious
experiences of friendship, that is, knowledge of
in-group members having friendships with out-
group members (Wright et al., 1997). “Extended
contact effect” stems from the capacity of
individuals to “include other in the self” (Wright
et al., 59 97 ) which, in a sense, is the ability to
incorporate a member of “out-group” in one’s
own self-definition. It is fair to argue that
vicarious experiences of intergroup friendship
could be stimulated through narratives as well.
As Dadd (1997) noted, imagining a positive
contact with an out-group member produces the
same prejudice-reducing effect as the actual
contact. Since storybooks about intergroup
interaction can duplicate the actual sense of
interaction, they can be used as prejudice-
reducing intervention. Reading stories about
other ethnicities can help children to cultivate
new positive meaning schemes for them by
focusing on cross-group similarities. Vicarious
experiences of contact with out-groups
demonstrate to children that amid racial and
ethnic differences, there exist substantial
commonalties, making the “Other” less exotic,
strange, or different. Further, such experiences
invite children to critically reflect on their
already existing biased assumptions about out-
groups, such as out-group homogeneity.
Children are encouraged to compare and
contrast the new experience with their
previously held beliefs and subsequently they
assess the compatibility of the two.
9
Consequently, literatures that underline the
common humanity in individuals regardless of
their ethnicity, gender, and socio-economical
status and focus on human experiences that are
universal in nature could play a significant role
in deconstructing prejudiced and
discriminatory mentalities.
It is imperative to acknowledge that not
all types of learning can be considered as
transformational. According to Mezirow, all
learning can be considered as change but not
all change constitutes transformation
(Mezirow, 1990). Sometimes even the mere
addition of a new piece of data to our already
existing pool of information is considered
change, which is far from transformation.
Mezirow argues that learning happens through
frames of reference via four different ways. The
first, and the most common type of learning, is
expansion and elaboration of the existing
frames of reference (Brown, 2013). It involves
extending, supplementing, and modifying
present body of knowledge wherein new
information is easily accommodated with what
we already believe. Acquiring new frames of
reference constitute the second way of learning
(Brown, 2013). This occurs by getting exposed
to new perspectives and points of view that do
not challenge the underlying premises of the
existing frames of reference and can be added
to with ease. The third way of learning takes
place as a result of altering points of view
(Mezirow, 1990). This happens because
attitudes or beliefs about a certain issue are
changed after a variety of different points of
view are contemplated. For example, a positive
experience in another culture might inspire us
to critically reflect on our misapprehensions
about that specific cultural group.
Consequently, we may even alter our point of
view about that particular group and become
more tolerant or accepting of members of the
out-group. In other words, a positive
interaction with one out-group may change a
prejudicial point of view, but this does not
necessarily translate to a change in one’s
prejudicial habits of mind regarding other out-
groups. Such an occurrence requires
transformation of habits of mind, which is also
the fourth way of learning. Transformation of
habits of mind involves more in-depth learning
and “requires a questioning or challenging of
underlying assumptions and premises on
which our beliefs are based, which causes a
shift in the codes that makes up a meaning
perspective and this will consequently disturb
the related points of view” (Brown, 2013, P.29).
Since our belief systems define who we are, and
are fairly rooted in our culture, and our history
it is not an easy task to modify or change them
altogether. Yet, in order for an individual’s
habits of mind to be transformed she must
embrace experiences that would challenge her
fundamental set of beliefs and value system, no
matter how overwhelming the ordeal is.
Knowledge Construction as a prejudice
reduction intervention:
Another form of prejudice-reducing
intervention through children’s literature,
which can be used in transformative learning,
is knowledge construction (Banks, 1999;
Camicia, 2007). Knowledge construction
interventions are based on the general idea
that the value system in any given society is in
accordance with the interests of the dominant
class. That leads one to believe that knowledge
and knowledge production processes conform
to interests, views, and values of the dominant
class; “knowledge becomes part of the general
consensus of reality” (Love, 2011, p. 102). That
being said, the nature of knowledge production
and its relation vis-a -vis power structures,
necessitate development of critical-thinking
faculty in students and the adoption of a
10
questioning-stance towards handed down
knowledge. A major line of thought that has
inspired knowledge construction interventions
is Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory is
founded on the underlying premise that
prejudicial attitudes mostly continue to be
unrecognized because racism is so entrenched
in the society. Critical Race Theory invites
students to survey alternative narratives of out-
groups in order to “begin the deconstruction of
hegemonic mainstream narratives that
perpetuate social inequality” (Camicia, 2007,
p.222) In other words, “the process of
knowledge construction is simultaneously a
process of knowledge deconstruction”(Camicia,
2007, p.222). Understanding the links between
knowledge and power is at the heart of
transformative learning. According to the
transformative pedagogy, knowledge is varied,
rooted in cultures, and representative of the
value system of a society. And transformative
learning is not only about racial harmony, it’s
about inclusion as well.
Multicultural children’s literature that is
used as this form of intervention looks at the
socio-cultural processes that form our current
historical understandings from the standpoint of
the ‘Other’. The aim is to have an anti-bias and
more equitable education by giving children an
opportunity to get to know different
perspectives, through literature that is ‘against
the grain’. For instance, in subjects such as
history, students should have the opportunity to
listen to various voices recount history from a
multiple of perspectives. 1621: A New Look at
Thanksgiving (6001), by Margaret Bruchac is a
good example of such literature. In the collective
historical imagination of Americans,
Thanksgiving is a day that some courageous
peace-loving settlers showed their generosity to
a few uncivilised Indians with a turkey dinner.
However for Wampanoag people, this mythical
day is a reminder of treachery and carnage. By
taking into question what Americans regard as
historical “facts”, and by retrieving the vanished
voices of the Wampanoag people, this book
offers a different account of Americans’ shared
history. By turning the traditional curriculum
around so that students can “view concepts,
issues, events and themes from the perspective
of diverse ethnic and cultural groups” (Banks,
1999, p. 31) students develop the aptitude to
analyze discrepancies that sustain inequalities.
Banks (2002) writes, “By revealing and
articulating the inconsistency between the
democratic ideals within a society and its
practices, transformative knowledge becomes a
potential source for substantial change”(Bank,
2002, p.22). Critical reading of a story reminds
children that knowledge is never neutral and it
is derived from a person’s or a group’s
Standpoint (Love, 6455). Acknowledging this fact
compels the reader to be conscious of historical,
cultural, and social processes that produce
knowledge, construct our thoughts, and affect
the very production processes of knowledge as
well. The transformation of knowledge involves
asking different questions and re-evaluating the
‘official’ knowledge (Apple, 1990; Camicia
2007). Official knowledge demonstrates the
“elevation of mainstream narratives to the
status of being ‘truth,’ ‘normal’, or
‘natural’ (Camicia, 2007).
Hence, constant analysis of one’s position
vis-a -vis prevalent Cultural Capital and
structures of power would give rise to questions
such as; why things are the way they are, who is
the beneficiary of the status quo, and how can
we transform it to a more just and equitable
condition (Shannon, 1995; McDaniel, 2004).
Scholars such as Shannon (1995) argue that the
absence of such questions in educational
systems is mainly responsible for hegemonic
discourses of knowledge that contribute to the
11
endurance of many social injustices, ethnic
prejudices and stigmas. Shannon’s concerns are
echoed by Kohl (1995), who is apprehensive
about the rarity of books, whether fiction or
nonfiction, which scrutinise underlying socio-
economic structures of our society and the
normative values that they promote. He is in
favour of authors crafting ‘radical’ (fundamental
change provoking) stories, which attempt to
break down artificial borders that construct ‘in-
group’ and ‘out-group’ and also call for a unified
effort to tackle problems of inequality,
‘Otherising’, marginalisation, and exclusion
(Kohl 1995 P.59). Lets consider the story of
Mona in Sitti’s secret by Naomi Nye (5998). Mona
travels with her father to their ancestral village
on the west bank in Palestine to visit her
grandmother for the first time. Not knowing
Arabic makes communication difficult with her
grandmother. But soon, Mona and her Sitti are
able to overcome this obstacle, and they find
other ways to understand each other. Upon her
return to U.S, after observing Sitti’s
predicaments, she decides to write a letter to the
President of the United States of America, in
which she expresses concerns for her
grandmother and the people “on the other side
of the world.” Also, she voices her desire for
peace; “I vote for peace, my grandmother votes
with me.” And Mona concludes; “If the people of
the United States could meet Sitti, they would
like her, for sure.” A mainstream message of
Sitti’s Secrets is about bonds that the essence of
common humanity forges between individuals
despite of language barriers, cultural differences,
and national borders. However, critical reading
of Mona’s story not only reveals hidden
messages regarding the role of United States in
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also gives rise
to questions about the global structures of
power that permit the conflict to drag on for so
long. The story alludes to the fact that the
President of United States could take some
actions to ease the plight of Palestinian people
but none of them have done so in the past sixty
years. Are there any forces that prefer status quo
to an end to the conflict? Knowledge
construction intervention invites children to
question mainstream messages of “official”
knowledge, detect its hidden messages, and
critically reflect on them. By doing so, students
are incited to pursue knowledge rather than
receive it, and establish their own
understandings, rather than being on the
receiving end of normative judgments. The aim
is to assist students to liberate themselves from
installed habits of favouring institutional beliefs
and undervaluing their own thoughts and
reactions (Apol, 1998).
Moreover, multicultural children’s
literature that induce social actions in children
in forms of protesting against injustice,
questioning the power structures, and actively
participating in transforming their society into a
more inclusive and equitable one, embody
“radical” stories that Kohl has referred to. Spilled
Water (6004), a book by Sally Grindley, narrates
the story of 11-year-old Lu Si-Yan that leads a
lonely life of severe hardship as a child laborer in
a big city, in China. After she runs away from a
family that her uncle sold her to, when her father
passed away, she finds a job in a toy factory for a
trivial wage. Enduring inhuman working
conditions, she manages to “race, race, race” for
several months, working from very early
morning until late at night, until she collapses
one day. There is no happy ending to the
narrative, but by weaving real world issues of
inequality and social injustice into the fabrics of
Lu Si-Yan’s life story, it is quite possible that the
author has been successful to nurture social
imagination of 11 year olds in Europe or North
America, and has left some lingering questions
behind on their stream of consciousness. Critical
12
reading of Lu Si-Yan’s distressing
powerlessness and poverty could take into
question the footprints that high demand for
cheap toys in western countries leave on child
laborers’ lives in developing countries. What
can children of western countries do about the
plight of their counterparts in other side of the
world? Perhaps there are actions that they can
take, such as conveying their concerns and
disapproval to corporations, whose business
conducts, intentionally or unintentionally,
contribute to the practice of employing children
as laborers. These are some of the discussions
that could take place in classrooms in
conjunction with deliberate social actions in the
form of class projects.
Conclusion:
This paper discusses the possibilities of
children’s literature as an intervention for
transformative learning and prejudice
reduction. Prejudice-reducing Interventions are
intended to diminish negative attitudes toward
one social group and also dampen the ensuing
stereotypical, intolerant, and discriminatory
behaviours or feelings. In order to counter
prejudicial attitudes in children through
transformative learning, educational
curriculums need to ensure that children attain
critical understandings, proficiencies, and
dispositions for transformative learning.
Children need to be encouraged to challenge
their assumptions, examine alternative points
of view, alter previous ways of understanding,
and act on new perspectives.
The main aim of transformative
pedagogy is to include previously excluded
perspectives and silenced voices of
marginalized groups, in educational settings
(Sleeter, 1996; Love, 2011) by introducing the
literature of marginalized ethnic groups in
classrooms (Sims Bishop, 2007;
Gopalakrishnan, 2011). To do so, a critical
examination of the curriculums is necessary
since they tend to promote only the “official”
knowledge. Moreover, this examination is
essential for students’ deconstruction of
prejudicial knowledge and replacing it with
diverse perspectives. Although children’s
literatures as extended intergroup contact and
knowledge construction intervention appear
promising, a much more thorough and
comprehensive empirical assessment of
effectiveness of books as prejudice-reducing
intervention should be conducted.
13
DEMOCRATIC VIOLATION - IRELAND’S
ABORTION CRISIS
OLIVIA WILSON
is currently a second-year student of French and
Classics at King's.
The question of abortion is, and will
always be, a contentious issue. It is a question
which has been tackled by every civilisation and
which straddles every societal argument: ethical,
social, financial, religious and political. But there
are no countries which demonstrate the full
complexity of the issue like Ireland and Northern
Ireland. Over the past thirty years there have
been no fewer than 5 national referendums on
the subject yet each has offered little hope of real
legal change. However, since the death of Savita
Halappanavar in 2012, the debate has reached a
crisis point with the UN repeatedly expressing
the need for legal amendment and criticising
Ireland’s draconian legislation:
‘The Committee reiterates its previous
concern regarding the highly restrictive
circumstances under which women can
lawfully have an abortion in the state’.
Placed within the context of the rest of the
EU, abortion is only banned in one member state,
Malta, while Poland, which exercises the third
most restrictive abortion practice after Ireland,
allows abortion in cases of rape, incest, danger to
the mother and malformation of the foetus. In
every other state abortion is available for at least
ten weeks of pregnancy.
So why is Ireland’s stance so different
from the rest of Europe? Why is the issue of
abortion so contentious here?
First, we must assess the legal history of
Ireland and Northern Ireland and its vast
divergence from the path of its neighbouring
island, Great Britain. After obtaining
independence from the UK in 1922, both Ireland
and the British Northern Ireland retained the
1861 Offences against the Person Act which
states (after amendment) that any woman who
seeks an abortion ‘shall be guilty of [an offence],
and being convicted thereof shall be liable, ..., to
[imprisonment for a term not exceeding five
years]’
However, after much to-ing and fro-ing
between Fine Gael and the Labour party, in 2013
President Michael D. Higgins passed the
‘Protection of Life during Pregnancy Act’ which
states that a woman can receive abortion if her
life is at risk because of a physical illness or
suicide. It does not legalise abortion in the event
of rape or incest unless a possible risk of suicide
is present.
This blatantly contravenes the treaty of
the ‘Convention on the Elimination of all Forms
of Discrimination against Women’ adopted by
the UN in 1979. Forcing a woman to have a child
is a form of gender discrimination as men placed
in the same situation would not have to go
through the same ordeal simply due to
differences in the reproductive organs. ‘Any
distinction, exclusion or restriction’, which must
include forced conception, goes against the
terms of this treaty: a treaty which both Ireland
and the United Kingdom (including Northern
Ireland) have signed.
Even when a risk of suicide is present the
amendment is not always observed as in the case
of ‘Miss Y’ which is currently being investigated
by the Health Service Executive in Ireland. ‘Miss
Y’, a foreign national who was raped in her home
country, after coming to Ireland and discovering
that she was eight weeks pregnant, decided to
pursue abortion. After the risk of suicide was
ratified by two psychiatrists, she was delivered
of her baby via caesarean section after going on
hunger strike. In other words, the amendment
was not adhered to despite the support of the
psychiatrists after performing their invasive
examination of confirming the claimant’s risk of
14
suicide.
Indeed, Ireland’s modern history has
been punctuated by many of these pivotal cases
of violation and inequality of rights, and yet very
little seems to have changed. The slight
amendment mentioned above coincided with
two of the biggest recent Irish scandals: the
death of Savita Halappanavar and the Catholic
Church abuse scandals. These two events are
absolutely essential to an understanding of
Ireland’s difficult relationship to abortion: the
influence and authority of Christianity in
Ireland, north and south.
This influence revealed itself most
prominently in the recent case of Ms
Halappanaver. In 2012, Savita Halappanavar, an
Indian dentist, died of septicaemia and organ
failure after suffering a miscarriage having being
denied an abortion when she was 17 weeks
pregnant at University Hospital, Galway.
Halappanavar repeatedly requested an abortion,
but as her foetus still had a heartbeat, and the
patient seemed to be at no risk of death, her
pleas were denied. When she did not
understand the reason for her request’s refusal,
she was told, ‘it was the law, that this is a
Catholic country’. In the inquest, the coroner
found that the refusal of abortion and, thus,
confusion about the legality of an abortion in
this instance, was a key causal factor in the
death of the patient:
‘The investigation team is satisfied that
concern about the law, whether clear or not,
impacted on the exercise of clinical professional
judgement.’
Indeed, the consultant, in reply to the
patient and her husband’s desire to induce
labour with medication if the pregnancy was
going to terminate in inevitable miscarriage,
stated her/his lack of understanding of the Irish
law: “If there is a threat to the mothers’ life you
can terminate. If there is a potential major
hazard to the mothers’ life the law is not clear….
There are no guidelines for inevitable
miscarriages”. It was this very lack of
understanding and uncertainty of the law which
led to an ‘over-emphasis on the need not to
intervene until the foetal heart stopped together
with an under-emphasis on the need to focus
appropriate attention on monitoring for and
managing the risk of infection and sepsis in the
mother.’
This ‘under-emphasis’ on the health and
well-being of the mother points to the real
difficulty in Ireland’s management of abortion.
The mental and physical well-being of the
woman are seen as being of secondary
importance to that of a foetus as seen in the
cases of Mrs Halappanavar and ‘Miss Y’. These
cases demonstrate how both the mental and
physical well-being of Irish women is held
subordinate to that of a foetus. The Irish
government believes that the well-being of an
unconscious foetus are of a much greater
importance than the well-being of a full Irish
citizen. As Human Rights Committee chairman
Nigel Rodley said, ‘recognition of the primary
right to life of the woman has to prevail over
that of the unborn child’. Irish law treats raped
women as ‘a vessel and nothing more’.
As shown by the words of Ms
Halappanavar’s nurse, religion, abortion and
legal policy are very closely linked. In the
Republic, the Catholic Church was granted
‘special recognition’ in the Constitution of
Ireland while both the Catholic and Protestant
religions continue to play a particularly
prominent role in Northern Irish politics.
Particularly in the north, but also in the south,
the barrier between the public sphere of politics
and the private sphere of religion has, as
Professor John Brewer from Queen’s University
Belfast said, ‘collapsed’. The influence of religion
in the south waned in the 1990s due to the very
15
public scandal of the Catholic Church’s
institutional abuse of women and children.
1,500 complaints of child abuse were
documented in Church-run institutions in
Ireland in the Ryan commission while the UN
Committee on the ‘Rights of the Child and the
Committee Against Torture’ had made repeated
requests for the victims of the Magdalen
Asylums to be compensated. Yet, despite this
very public affirmation of the Church’s role in
the violation of women and children, it still
exerts an abiding influence over ‘moral’ legal
issues like abortion and divorce. Indeed,
divorce was only legalised in the Constitution of
Ireland as late as 1996 while Christianity still
has a very profound institutional role in
Northern Irish education. Religion and policy-
making are, thus, intertwined serving to create
an incredibly cloudy moral landscape from
which to create and consistently apply policies
on essentially ethical issues like abortion.
This dissolution of the public/private
sphere of religion and state in Northern Ireland
leaves it in an odd position in relation the rest
of the United Kingdom. As Alastair Campbell
famously declared, UK politics ‘[doesn’t] do
God’. Religion is rarely seen as a common agent
in British politics so where does that leave
Northern Irish/religious discussion over
abortion in its position as a country within the
non-religious climate of UK politics? Inequality:
unequal rights for British/Northern Irish
women and British/non-Northern Irish women.
This is exemplified by London’s High Court
recent decision that Northern Irish women
would not be eligible for an abortion on the
NHS if they travelled to Britain despite being
UK tax-payers.
There is an obvious question of unity
and consistency here: how can the United
Kingdom be called united if it has such varied
legal options for its residents which cause such
adversely different effects, like abortion?
The case of A & Ahor, R v Secretary of
State for Health broached this question head
on. The claimant here stated that their country
of domicile was used as a ‘personal
characteristic or status’ and that by using this
characteristic to deny her a state-funded
abortion this was an act of discrimination. She
claimed that had she been characterised as a
resident of any other UK country she would
have been eligible. However, the conclusion
drawn was that ‘there is no suggestion in the
case–law of the European Court of Human
Rights that the State is required to fund
abortion services’ and that ‘in general the NHS
should not fund services for residents of
Northern Ireland which the Northern Ireland
assembly has deliberately decided not to
legislate to provide, and which would be
unlawful if provided in Northern Ireland'.
Thus, we can see that the options for
Irish and Northern Irish women are incredibly
limited, especially for those that do not have
access to the finances needed to undergo an
abortion abroad. The Abortion Support
Network estimates that women who travel for
an abortion often spend four hundred to two
thousand pounds on travel costs, lodging and
the added burden of non-state-funded
abortions. This, therefore, creates the
additional financial barrier to abortion for Irish
women along with the trauma of travelling and,
of course, the universal feelings of confusion,
isolation, and trauma which accompany all
cases of abortion. So, again this further clarifies
the depth of the inequality for Irish women,
both in relation to other women within the EU
and men.
However, is there, in fact, a major desire
for change in both Ireland and Northern Ireland
or is this simply the desire of a small minority
of unfortunate women?
16
If we start by simply looking at the
numbers of women from Ireland who have
received abortions in England we can see that
this is no small minority. 3,679 women listed as
having an Irish address, and 802 from a
Northern Irish address, obtained abortions in
England in 2013, but the real number is thought
to be higher. The sexual health charity FPA
believes that the number of Northern Irish
women travelling to England for an abortion to
be around 2000, as many women will provide
another address to avoid social stigma or in
order to obtain a state-funded abortion.
Between 1980 and 2013 at least 158,252 Irish
woman travelled to England and Wales for
abortions and this discounts those women who
travelled to the Netherlands or elsewhere.
But what does the rest of Ireland think?
In Northern Ireland, the public case of
Sarah Ewart brought the issue of abortion in
cases of foetal abnormality to the fore of the
public consciousness. The case involved Ms
Ewart having to travel to England in order to
abort a foetus which had no chance of survival.
The abortion was proscribed in Northern
Ireland as there was no risk to the mother and,
thus, no grounds for a legal termination. The
significant media attention around this event
has sparked a public consultation on two
aspects of abortion law in Northern Ireland: in
cases of lethal abnormality, and in cases of
pregnancy as a consequence of rape or incest.
This marks an important stage in the new
emphasis on the mother and on the public’s role
in talks about abortion in Northern Ireland. It is
also a new stage in integrating the views of
women in talks concerning women’s interests.
In short, this is an important turning point in the
democratic liberty of Northern Ireland in a topic
which has traditionally united the ecclesiastical
authorities, Catholic and Protestant, and their
communities in their opposition to it. Now, the
power of the people themselves, removed from
the omnipotent moral judgement of the
Christian churches, is manifest in this
consultation’s emergence Yet, while we should
be thankful that this public consultation exists, it
does not offer women autonomy over their own
bodies: it does not offer women freedom, but
only a way out from a handful of specific
horrible situations. There is still much more to
be done.
No such public consultation has taken
place in the Republic not even over abortion in
cases of rape, incest or foetal anomaly. Yet, a
September 2014 Sunday Independent/Millward
Brown poll found that 56% of voters were in
favour of holding a referendum to repeal the
Eighth Amendment to the Constitution and 69%
approved that victims of rape should be allowed
to have an abortion. Meanwhile, an October
2014 Irish Times/Ipsos MRBI poll found that
68% were in favour of having a referendum on
whether abortion should be granted in cases of
rape or fatal foetal anomaly.
This shows that this is clearly a subject
on which a democratic majority wishes to vote.
The previous referendums on the issue in 1992
and 2002 concerned further tightening of the
abortion law, not less. In both of these
referendums the public voted against further
tightening. This is not where the problem lies
and so public authorities are still ignoring the
major issue. There is continued proof of a
consistent desire for the Irish people to vote on
this issue, not about restricting the issue still
further but making it more flexible and
pertinent to women’s and modern society’s
needs. This is, then, clearly a violation of
democratic freedom: that ‘[t]he will of the
people shall be the basis of the authority of
government’.
It is clear that the Irish people want to
liberalise the abortion system, to make it more
17
flexible to the needs of its women. Yet,
government in Ireland seems deaf to the desires
of its people. In Ireland, both in the north and
the south, there is a clear need to separate
religion and state: to distinguish between a
democracy governed by the people for the
interests of the people and that of an Ireland
run by a Church which forces policies which the
people do not want.
Public outrage and pressure at Irish
law’s treatment of its women has acted as a
catalyst for the imperfect but promising
creation of the Protection of Life during
Pregnancy act and the Northern Irish public
consultation. Yet, Fine Gael and Ireland’s Labour
Party have ruled out a referendum on abortion
and we must wait and see what Northern
Ireland’s consultation yields in January of next
year. However, with the increased pressure of
the UN’s open and vehement criticism to, and a
continued public resistance of, Ireland’s legal
situation, Ireland’s draconian abortion laws can
only concede to modernisation and
liberalisation. Thus, Ireland will, finally, begin to
make its slow, tenuous steps towards the
modern world and into a more democratic
future.
18
DISMANTLING THE SYRIAN CHEMICAL
ARSENAL: LESSONS LEARNED
FRANCESCA CAPANO
holds a Master's degree Terrorism, Security and
Society at King’s
On the 21st of August 2013 Ghoutha areas
around Damascus were attacked with chemical
weapons by the Syrian regime forces. Since the
U.S. and Russia reached an agreement for the
destruction of the Syrian chemical arsenal, the
handover of Syria’s chemical weapons has
justifiably received worldwide media attention.
After missing the deadline of April 2014 for the
final handover, the remaining 7.2% of the
chemical agents were loaded onto a Norwegian
ship in the port of Latakia on the 23rd June, from
where they were transported to the port of Gioia
Tauro in Southern Italy. As the agreement
established, once in Italian waters 600 tons of
the 1,300-ton stockpile of chemical agents were
transferred to an American vessel, the Cape Ray.
While it assumed charge of neutralizing these
agents far from Italy’s shores within 60 days, the
rest were sent to European facilities for
destruction. Having completed the operation of
transshipment without announced problems the
American ship left the port on the 2nd of July. On
the 18th of August the United States announced
that the destruction had been completed.
While international opinion has been
focused for months on Syria’s failures in
handing over its materials, little attention has
been paid to the details of the agreement. In
particular, there has been very little discussion
on the reasons behind the Italian participation
in the operation. Now that the process has been
successfully accomplished, it is worth
considering what lessons can be drawn. It
appears that for Italy this was a political choice
made from the highest levels of the foreign
ministry, in which the considerations of the local
communities were trumped by the wider
international interests of Italy’s foreign policy:
mainly that of avoiding military strikes against
Syria, and fostering diplomatic channels of
communication between the regional and
international actors involved in the Syrian crisis.
The announcement of the choice of Gioia
Tauro, as the port for transshipment of part of
the chemical materials, generated reactions of
anxiety and anger among the locals of the area.
As an attempt to reassure local communities, the
Italian Ministers for the Infrastructures and
Foreign Affairs, alongside the director-general of
the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical
Weapons (OPCW), explained to the Italian
Parliament that beyond considerations of
economic advantages for its activities brought
by the operation, Gioia Tauro is also one of the
few ports of the Mediterranean region whose
depth can welcome container-ships of such
large dimensions. However, this explanation
was not enough.
The unanswered question remained
therefore why the port of Gioia Tauro, a small
southern Italian town in the administrative
region of Calabria, was chosen. Active since
1995, the importance of the port sharply
increased in the last decade to the extent that it
is currently one of the main commercial
container terminals in the Mediterranean Sea.
As a consequence of its growing economic
importance, the port has also attracted the
attention of the local mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, to
the point that it is labeled “The Cathedral of the
Mafia”. Besides imposing bribes on the
companies working there and controlling the
process of hiring personnel, the ‘Ndrangheta has
also managed to exploit the port for its illicit
activities. 80% of the entire cocaine flow from
South America and intended to reach Europe is
believed to pass through this port. Several
investigations on the site have resulted in huge
19
seizures of cocaine and the arrests of numerous
members of the organized criminal group: one of
the last episodes on the 28th of July 2014, when
85 kilos of cocaine was seized by the Italian
officials, meant the total amount of cocaine
found in the port’s containers since the
beginning of 2014 has increased to 945 kg. The
2008 Report of the Anti-Mafia Committee of the
Italian Parliament concluded that the
‘Ndrangheta is in fact controlling the majority of
the economic activities occurring there, included
customs controls and taxes.
The United States are well-aware of both
the threatening power exercised by the
‘Ndrangheta, which is included in the FBI’s list of
the most dangerous transnational criminal
groups, and its economic influence over the port.
The Italian magazine “L’Espresso” refers to
some diplomatic American cables, made public
by Wikileaks, to explain it. As a criminal
organization that understands the economic
value of unconventional materials to make huge
profits, the most feared scenario is that
members of the group could let unconventional
materials pass undisturbed through the port and
reach its destination in the hands of terrorist or
criminal groups. The outstanding ability of the
‘Ndrangheta to corrupt officials by means of
severe threats proved to be a major asset in
gaining and successfully maintaining the control
of the port to carry out its illicit trafficking.
Consequently, the exercise of a significant
amount of pressure on the personnel of the port
makes this scenario more plausible than it
would seem.
Historically, there have been a number of
incidents on Italian soil involving Russian
nuclear materials that were supposed to reach
the Middle East in the 1990s: two plots aimed at
illicitly trafficking nuclear materials were
disrupted in 1995 and 1998. At a time when
many radioactive substances had reached
European countries, due to the low security
controls in Soviet nuclear plants and following
the collapse of the USSR, a barter exchange had
been set between the Italians and the Russians.
From this some groups of the Italian mafia
received uranium from Russian groups in
exchange for counterfeit goods. In 1998, other
members of the Italians were caught red-handed
while completing a deal involving low enriched
uranium (LEU), which was believed to originate
from a reactor in the Democratic Republic of
Congo. Finally, an investigation into toxic
residues made the picture more worrisome,
whereby the ‘Ndrangheta itself was found to be
responsible for the illicit dismantling of
radiological waste, including uranium, strontium
and ceasium, in the maritime environment of
Italy and Somalia throughout the 1980s and the
1990s.
After 9/11 a stable American presence
has been established at the port of Gioia Tauro
under the ‘Container Security Initiative’ (CSI)
project, whose aim is to control containers
directed to the United States in order to avoid
terrorists from exploiting the total control of the
‘Ndrangheta over the port to ship
unconventional weapons (WMD) or materials
usable to attack the American soil. In 2008,
40,466 shipments had been controlled by CSI
officials. However, due to the severe situation of
the organized crime at the port, the security
standards provided by the CSI appeared to be
not sufficient. In Genova, Italy, a container from
Gioia Tauro had been found transporting
Cobaltium 60, a radioactive isotope of cobaltium,
while 7 tonnes of explosives have been seized in
Gioia Tauro itself. According to the American
cables, despite strict security measures ensured
by the CSI presence, the port is still vulnerable to
becoming an entry point for dangerous
materials: it is a given that the control over the
port by the ‘Ndrangheta is total, covering both
20
legal and illegal activities. The dangerousness
of the situation led the United States to
establish a new initiative, ‘Megaport’, in 2010,
whose aim is the scan of as many containers as
possible, irrespective of their destinations, with
specially advanced detectors.
Given the high criminal record of the
area, astonishment arose after the
announcement of Gioia Tauro as the chosen
port for the transshipment of dangerous
chemical weapons. However, overlooking the
role of Italy in international politics at that time
easily clarifies the decision. The majority of
experts suggest that Italy was the only country
willing to bear the responsibility of these
operations. In particular, the very reason for
that seems to lie in international diplomacy.
Recalling the declarations of Italy’s Foreign
Minister at the time, Emma Bonino, during a
regional conference of international think tanks
in Rome in September 2013, an expert points
out that once Russia declared its intentions to
put Syrian chemical weapons under
international controls, Ms. Bonino welcomed it
as “a window of opportunity for [the success of]
diplomacy”. In fact, she had explicitly opposed
military strikes against Syria since the very
beginning and was intimately engaged in the
diplomatic process surrounding the political
agreement between the U.S., Russia and Syria
that eventually avoided such an attack.
Consequently, when events called on Italy to
grant access to a port facility crucial for the
success of the agreement, she was not in the
position to draw back.
In this sense the choice of the port for
the dismantling of the Syrian chemical weapons
can be defined as a political decision, further
facilitated by the established American
presence on the site. The air of secrecy that has
subsequently surrounded the choice of Goia
Tauro, especially in the Italian domestic setting,
seems to validate this hypothesis.
Looking at a lower level of analysis,
however, that secrecy acted as a double-edged
sword by prejudicing the relationship of trust
between the local community and the State.
The Italian central authorities should have
better engaged with the local administration
before the decision as to the port was made. It
would have facilitated a better understanding
of the local concerns and may even have helped
to better deal with the public, in the context of
an international operation that attracted
worldwide attention. Secondly, the Italian
authorities could have exploited the
opportunity to increase international – and
more importantly domestic - awareness of the
menaces faced in this region because of
widespread presence of organized crime.
According to Nicola Gratteri, the front-line anti-
mafia prosecutor of the region, secrecy is what
mostly facilitates the growth of highly
sophisticated organized crime, such as the
Mafia. The American cables also recognize that
the fight against the Calabrian Mafia needs
public and international attention. Without
complete national and international awareness,
a transnational group takes advantage of the
lack of recognition of its existence. This has
already happened in Germany, where the
authorities officially admitted the presence of
the ‘Ndrangheta only after having a feud in
their own territory in 2007, despite persistent
warnings from the Italian authorities.
The secrecy and lack of attention around
the choice of the major southern European
drug smuggling hub for handling the Syrian
chemical weapons caused the proliferation of
protests and worsened the already deep divide
between the Italian state and those local
communities. Dangerously, this divide calls to
attention the original reason of the emergence
21
and success of the Italian Mafia, which presents
itself as a provider of security where the State is
absent – albeit at great cost.
In conclusion, the episode points towards
the need for an open public debate between the
locals, the administration and the government to
engage with each other. Such a debate needs to
be carried out, especially when international
diplomacy and politics enter the domain of
sensitive territories where the organized crime
is strictly intertwined with the social fabric of
the community.
22
EU: AN IMBALANCED POLITICAL
AGENDA
YIANNIS KOURIS
is a postgraduate student at Kings College
London, undertaking MA Global Ethics and
Human Values
Introduction
The initial creation of the EU was an
attempt to unite counties, in an area that was
characterized by frequent warfare between its
nations in the past, economically. This ambitious
integration effort was enhanced gradually by a
common political framework and goals. The
current collective European unity is based on
core values such as democracy, human rights and
economic prosperity. The recent financial crisis
has led EU into a deep economic recession that
gave birth to wide range of socioeconomic
problems. The recession was viewed by some
euro-sceptics as a good enough reason to dissolve
the union or a good reason for nations to
abandon the EU. At the time of writing no nation
has left the European Union or seems likely to do
so in the near future. During the attempts of
economic recovery from the debt crisis, the
political volition of the EU nation’s leaders was at
the least potent. The preferred economic solution
was a heavy austerity programme for the
indebted nations. If this was the correct
economical remedy is beyond the scope of this
paper.
Countries such as Greece, Cyprus, Portugal
and Ireland received conditional loans (as they
could not loan in the open market at the time)
from the IMF and the EU and in exchange passed
austerity measure bills in their respective
parliaments. The ferocity of political will,
coordination and cooperation between national
governments, the IMF but more importantly the
EU was palpable. Many of these measures caused
extensive anti-austerity movements and public
protests in the region of the European South
(Greece, Portugal, and Spain) but the political
course of action at the time was set. It seems that
the political volition distribution between the
three previously mentioned core values of the EU,
namely democracy, human rights and economic
prosperity leans to favour greatly the latter. The
political integration- which has embedded in it
certain constitutional liberties- component of the
union seems to be subordinate to every respect of
the economic part.
The ferocity with which these economical
remedies were introduced and maintained during
the past few years is not present in issues
regarding the human rights and democratic
procedures violations that are increasing in the
EU area.
Violations of Human Rights in the EU
The economic recession may have a
correlation with the increased sentiment of most
forms of extreme intolerance in Europe at the
moment, but this is something to be examined
latter in this paper.
The European Union agency for
fundamental rights published a report in May
2014 presenting that 47% of the LGBT
respondents reported experiencing
discrimination or harassment in the previous
twelve months, while the same survey reports
that 21% of the Jewish respondents had
experienced anti-Semitic insults or harassments
in previous twelve months (FRA, May 2014).
Croatia is a member that was added in the
European Union amidst the financial crisis (2013)
while she was facing human rights concerns.
According to world report for the European
Union from the Human Rights Watch, stateless
Roma experience difficulties in obtaining state
services including education, social help and
health care (HRW, World Report, EU 2014).
According to the same report, an implementation
of a 2011 deinstitutionalization plan for those
with mental or intellectual disabilities progressed
slowly, with two projects targeting around 400
23
individuals launched in May, while almost 9,000
remain institutionalized (HRW, World Report,
EU 2014).
The European Roma Rights Centre and
the Human Rights League reported in January
that the French authorities forcibly evicted more
than 21.537 Romani migrants in 2013, more
than double the total for 6456 (ERRC, 6458).
While the Human Rights Watch reports that a 14
-year-old lost an eye by a flashball fired by the
French police during riots that started after the
police stopped a woman wearing a full-face veil
(HRW, World Report EU 2014). The German
Institute of Human Rights reported that the
German police is using racial profiling, an issue
picked up by Deutsce Welle in a recent article
(Naomi Conrad, 2013). These events are
indicative of the fact that even “key players” in
EU such as Germany and France are facing
human rights issues that are most likely not
directly correlated with the recent financial
crisis.
For Greece that faces the most extreme
bail out conditions in the EU, human rights
concerns are even bigger. Greece will serve as a
good example for the argument brought forth in
this article in due course. The sudden forced
closure of the public television raised serious
media freedom concerns last year and
subsequently weakened the existing
government at the time (one party out of three
departed from the government coalition).
Furthermore a NGO network recorded 104
attacks against migrants and asylum seekers by
the end of August (HRW, World Report, EU
2014). In April three superintendents shot at
200 strawberry pickers demanding unpaid
wages (Daniel Howden, 2014). While the United
Nations Human Rights expressed concerns
about the arbitrary detentions of migrants and
asylum seekers as well as their detention
conditions and their limited access to legal
assistance (UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention, January 2013). While the Convention
in the elimination of all forms of discrimination
against women, states that the financial crisis
had detrimental effects for women in all spheres
of life in Greece (CEDAW, March 2013).
The overly broad detention practice is
common also in Hungary for asylum seekers,
according to UN Working Group on Arbitrary
Detention that urge the government to take
measures to prevent arbitrary detention (UN
Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, 2013).
In September a rather extreme bill was passed
in the Hungarian parliament that criminalized
homelessness with the legal consequences
ranging from fines to prison time (Minley,
2013).
The purpose of this section of the article
is not to state one by one all the human rights
violations that occur in the euro area. If the
reader is interested there are numerous reports
by human rights NGO’s that do excellent and
thorough research on the field. Reading through
these reports one would understand that the
above mentioned cases are some isolated
examples in a long series of recent human rights
violations from the EU nations.
Rather the function of this section is to
establish that a sentiment of intolerance in its
extreme forms is increasing inside the European
Union. Human rights are experiencing a steep
negative trend in the EU area after the debt
crisis. According to an article published in the
Guardian human rights violations in EU
countries doubled in a five year period between
2007 and 2012 (Bowcott, 2012). While the
Council of Europe state in a report that the
continent is currently facing the worst human
rights crisis after the Cold War (Heibling, 2014).
This increase is further depicted in the post-
crisis legislation of various EU member states in
my view. The bill that criminalizes
homelessness in Hungary, the ban of the full-
face veil in France and the failure of legislature
24
body of Greece to pass a bill that sanctions hate
speech can function as good examples. Not
surprisingly this negative trend has not escaped
the attention of the various organisations in the
field. It seems though that it takes at the most a
back seat role in the political agenda of the EU
member state leaders and officials.
The recent rise of nationalist parties in the
EU
The recent proliferation of forms of
intolerance in the EU area can be portrayed in
the increase of political power of- extreme or
not so extreme- nationalist parties. The views of
these parties vary in respect to their extremity
but they all have some element of intolerance
present in their official political thesis. The most
notorious example of this rise is Greece’s ultra-
nationalist party Golden Dawn. In 1996, Golden
Dawn received a total of 4,537 votes in Greek
parliamentary elections, while in 2012, they
received 440,000 in the country’s May elections
(Wight, 2014).
While in Hungary, the ultra-nationalist
party Jobbik faction increased its percentage
from 16.67% in 2010 to 21% in the recent
elections in July (Sokol, 2014). According to the
same source the results indicated that the
Jobbik faction cemented its place as Hungary’s
third largest party during parliamentary
elections in July, worrying the country’s local
Jewish community (Sokol, 2014).
The recent EU elections are depicting
this recent growth of nationalist movements
and parties across the EU political landscape.
The Front National in France, the UKIP in
Britain and the Danish People’s Party in
Denmark recorded significant electoral success
(Wight, 2014). This swell of nationalist
sentiment may be argued that is correlated with
a perceived failure of the political mainstream in
the EU to rectify the adverse conditions that
resulted from the financial crisis.
I am not arguing that nationalism, in the
sense of patriotism, is something bad in itself.
Nor my argument is that aggressive ultra-
nationalist parties’ action should be equated
with other significantly less extreme nationalist
movements. Rather my argument is that to a
certain degree, an overlapping consensus on
some forms of intolerance between the
aforesaid movements exists. This consensus is
portrayed in the theses of populist nationalistic
and ultra-nationalistic rhetoric. These theses
vary from discrete xenophobia to blatant
racism, both sides of the spectrum classified as
forms of intolerance. The appeal of these forms
of intolerance to the European electoral body
can lead to a deterioration of human rights
condition- especially the rights of immigrants-
in the EU area. While in the case of extreme
aggressive nationalist chauvinism can lead to a
deterioration of the democratic system as a
whole. This augmentation of forms of
intolerance depicted across the EU area is
incompatible with the initial political aim of
unity. In any case it is opposite to any effort for
integration and stability in the EU and
compromises in some cases core values of the
union such as human rights and democratic
values. The growth of intolerant sentiment
depicted in the aforementioned surge has failed
to attract significant political volition and
competence from EU member state leaders and
officials in order to establish a less fertile
political landscape for populist (ultra)
nationalistic rhetoric.
Erosion of Democracy in the EU
The phenomenon of decrease in
democratic values has been characterized by
Paul Krugman as “a siege in
democracy” (Wheeler,2012). The loss of
democratic freedoms after the financial crisis is
evident in the democracy index published by the
intelligent unit of the Economist. Many EU
25
member states have been demoted from full
democracies to flawed democracies in the same
five year period (2007-2012) mentioned in the
violations of human rights section (Economist,
2012). The list of flawed democratic states in
the EU is not restricted- after the demotion- only
in countries that were directly affected by the
austerity measures such as Greece, Portugal and
Italy but is expanded to include even France
(Economist, 2012). According to the same
source the decline of democratic scores of EU
member states was caused by the thinning of
sovereignty and democratic accountability
linked with the effects of and remedies to the
euro zone crisis (Economist, 2012).
More precisely two EU member states
(Italy and Greece) replaced their democratically
elected leaders with technocrats in order to
efficiently implement their Economic
Adjustment Programmes (Economist, 2012).
Additionally, a wide spread deterioration in
media freedom in EU members was recorded in
the period between 2006 and 2012 (Economist,
2012). This decline is present in all countries
that were directly affected by the crisis but is
not limited to them. It is important to note that
even Germany and France experienced a
significant decline in their media freedom score.
Public polls indicate that confidence in public
institutions has declined across Europe after the
financial crisis, with the levels of public trust
being exceptionally low in the eastern area of
the continent (Economist, 2012).
The human rights condition corrosion in
the post-crisis era has produced a decline in
minority protection rights, which I believe, is
supported by the statistics in the human rights
violation section of the paper. Systematic
research conducted on the field supports that
there is an erosion of democracy in the EU
especially after the financial crisis. EU member
states and officials have not yet addressed this
important issue efficiently, while one may argue
that they currently neglect incorporating
appropriate remedies in their political schemes.
Policy implication and distribution of
political volition
It can be claimed that the bailout
conditions of EU member nations of the
European South have detrimental effects on the
human rights and democratic spheres of those
nations. Greece is a prime example for this
argument. After the bailout programme was
implemented human rights violations rapidly
increased. The first and second Economic
Adjustment Programmes of 2010 and 2012,
respectively, have provided bailout funds from
the Euro area and International Monetary Fund
(IMF) under a framework of strict
conditionality. The austerity measures imposed
have resulted in a protracted economic
recession, a sharp rise in economic inequality,
alongside the compromising of certain liberties
and constitutional rights. The crisis has, in turn,
served as a catalyst for a dramatic change in the
political landscape of Greece, including the
insipient growth of the extreme forms of
intolerance portrayed in the rights violations
mentioned above.
This argument, even though it seems
sound, is superfluous for the case I am trying to
make. Let us assume for arguments sake that it
did not have a direct effect on human rights
conditions in the euro area. The human right
violations, stated above, supported by various
reports and fines are in fact increasing. The
current increase in the forms of intolerance in
the EU zone seems to be evident and raises
concern in all relevant organizations. The
erosion of democracy in the EU is supported by
relevant research. This aspect of the EU crisis
seems to be neglected, in the collective attempts
for stability in the union. The triptych of core
values of the EU –democracy, economic
26
prosperity, human rights- translates into a
possible economic recovery that ignores all social
problems produced by the crisis. The unity and
intensity displayed for the implementation of
those policies are exclusive to economic benefit.
One may argue that the triptych is
arbitrary and the selection of values is
incorrect. Many other values could be added I
agree, but I do not think that we can exclude
democracy and human rights. The west,
including the EU, is self-proclaimed advocates
of democracy and human rights to the extent of
reaching armed conflict in order to establish
these conditions to foreign nations. Given that
these values are so important for the EU, the
lack of strong initiative by the EU is lacking an
excuse at the moment. While one could argue
that the current course of action of the EU is
favouring economic recovery in the expense of
human rights and some democratic values.
A common counterargument for this is
that it compromises a member’s nation
sovereignty. The EU cannot force rules on
national level regarding these issues. In the case
of economic recovery and in the interest of
economic integration EU certainly displayed a
force of will. If it did not force the strict
conditions for the loans, EU along with the IMF
pressured enough in order to succeed, the
implementation and maintenance of the
austerity measures. This in turn produced a
wide range of social issues that seem to
undermine the importance of democratic
procedure and established rights.
If the EU had as a sole objective the
economic stability and growth of its member
states the argument would be invalid. As I
mentioned earlier in this paper though the EU
prides itself for the core values of the union
even goes to the extent of supporting armed
conflict to establish them in certain nations.
This begs the question why the EU political
volition is distributed so unevenly in favour of
economic stability? One may extent this
question by asking is an economical doctrine so
important to be followed even if it has so
adverse consequences on core values of the EU
such as democratic procedures and human
rights?
I am not necessarily suggesting that the
EU/IMF bailout programmes are not
compatible with a wider gamut of social policies
that could benefit the areas of interest. Human
right and democratic liberties violations are
ignored though in all the agreements, bills and
reforms that was introduced in order for
countries and the EU to recover economically.
An interesting suggestion would be to have a
trade-off between economic measures and
social ones. In this case, if such policy is
accomplishable, the human rights and
democratic procedure violation will stop
spiralling out of control in the EU while possible
economic recovery could be achieved at the
same time. Surely the conditions prevailing at
the time of writing do not suggest that this
would be a potential future move.
In the case that the economic doctrine
prevailing in the EU at the moment is not
compatible with reforms that counterbalance
the adverse effects on social aspects, then the
EU should contemplate how important those
core values are. In my view their importance
call for the intense political volition,
coordination and cooperation exhibited by all
concerning parties in the economic policy
implementation. Even if adapting to the current
condition requires deviations from an economic
paradigm, in order to bring the EU nations back
to equilibrium.
A possible objection to this line of
thought is that these types of socioeconomic
issues were historically present in all regions
adversely affected by economic crises
27
irrespective of economic remedies. I admit that
there is a difficulty in establishing a robust
causal relationship between the economic
remedies and the decline in human rights and
democratic values. The culpability of EU officials
does not lie in the initial decision of
implementing these economic remedies. Rather
it lies, in my opinion, in the absence of political
initiative to collectively rectify the evident
deterioration of human rights and democratic
values. The fact that we can spot similar
tensions in seemingly alike historical situations,
does not justify political inertia in these core
areas. In other words, we cannot excuse the lack
of political initiative due to alleged inevitability
of economic crisis consequences.
Conclusions
The recent financial crisis has sent EU
into a helix of economic recession that gave
birth to wide range of socioeconomic problems.
The political will, coordination and cooperation
of all concerning parties (EU-IMF-member
states) concerning the economic recovery was
unprecedented. Partially as a result of the
financial crisis a sentiment of intolerance in its
extreme forms is increasing inside the European
Union, with many documented incidents
supporting this. In these cases political volition
to rectify these inflicted core values of the EU is
significantly less, at the least, than the intensity
of the economic policy implementation.
The critique in this article is meant to be
constructive, concerning the next collective
steps of the EU. Given that human rights and
democratic procedures are core values of the
EU, a recovery of the European Union would be
incomplete if the severe problems of these areas
where not resolved. These values are
interrelated but there is not a hierarchical
system, that I am aware of, that constitutes one
more important than the other. The call for
significant EU political will and cooperation in
these areas is urgent. An EU that would have
regained the economic stability of the past but
have lost along the way these liberties would be
short by far from the vision of European unity
and integration.
28
“GLOCALISATION” AND ITS IMPORTANCE IN
HUMAN RIGHTS IMPLEMENTATION
JASMINE ELLIOTT
is a postgraduate student completing the MA in
Global Ethics and Human Values
Why did we as students from all over the
world decide to study and live in London? As an
international student, some reasons that come
to my mind are the vast amount of educational
resources at our fingertips, the exciting diversity
at every corner and the unparalleled amount of
opportunities that are concentrated in one of the
strongest economic and political forces in the
United Kingdom and the world at large. We can
translate these sentiments to other global cities
to explain in small part why two thirds of the
European population have lived in urban spaces
since 2011 (“Cities of Tomorrow,” III). People
popularly dream of cities as beacons of
inspiration and innovation in an increasing
international world.
Yet, cities also drastically highlight the
societal issues that we currently face. Studying
the microcosm of a city gives attention to issues
like rising economic and social inequality due in
part to a lack of access to basic living needs like
affordable housing, employment, and security.
Furthermore, city governments generally have
one of the most direct hands in the provision of
social goods to the local community and could
be the most reactive source in fighting inequality
but have been ill equipped in handling this
strain of local resources. This stark reality
jarringly juxtaposes with the romantic picture of
cities mentioned above, yet they represent both
the opportunities and the obstacles that cities
have to face.
While the promotion of human rights for
the most part has been handled at the
supranational level, a strong critique of this
approach is that these international initiatives
have not necessarily trickled down to change the
daily lives of most people. As Mary Robinson,
former UN High Commissioner for Human
Rights, said when considering “the results of
fifty years of human rights mechanisms, thirty
years of multi-billion-dollar development
programmes and endless high-level rhetoric,”
the global impact of human rights initiatives has
been a “failure of implementation on a scale
which shames us all” (25). The use of the word
“implementation” is key here; it gives weight to
the idea that we should question the approach
human rights organisations and governments in
general have when trying to promote change in
the lives of their target community. Looking
towards which level of government generally
has the most direct access to people’s lives,
human rights organisations have increasingly
begun to focus how to best incorporate and
implement human rights at the local level.
Amnesty International Netherland’s recent
report, The Future of Human Rights in an Urban
World: Exploring Opportunities, Threats and
Challenges, is one of the most recent pieces of
research that emphasise cities’ potential to be
innovators in the promotion of human rights
globally or further the chasm between human
rights ideals and implementation based on how
they create local policy. Seeing cities as direct
access points to some of the most basic human
rights is important to understand how to most
effectively implement international human
rights and social justice goals locally. Ultimately,
more research and support should be given to
cities and their role as social catalysts of change
to further advance human rights worldwide.
Cities as Access Points to Human Rights
Issues
With the increasing trend of urbanisation
in major cities across the world, the idea of
glocalisation permeates the development and
marketing strategies of international business
29
and relations. Based on the Oxford English
Dictionary definition, glocalisation refers to the
connection between globalisation and
localisation with consideration as to how to
make global trends or markets work within the
context of regional or local culture. While people
are more familiar with the term glocalisation in a
business context (i.e. how international
businesses like McDonalds adapt their products
to the tastes of local preferences),
nongovernmental organisations have begun to
adopt this idea to relate to global initiatives like
human rights. “In order to be effective and
meaningful [in] a world in which by 2050 two
thirds of the world’s population lives in cities,”
human rights organisations must “anticipate”
the best strategies to further promote and
protect human rights in people’s daily lives (van
Lindert and Lettinga, 7). By incorporating a
glocal perspective into international human
rights initiatives that aim to change public
policy, human rights advocates can adapt to the
increasingly urbanised, global society and more
effectively implement human rights policies that
fit within the local context.
Furthermore, local governments can and
should take a more active role in promoting
human rights within their cities in order to
compete as an international power. Edward
Glaeser, a prominent professor of urban
economics, stresses the importance of fostering
cities as economic powers in his book, Triumph
of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us
Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier.
He argues that due to “the global decline in
transport costs” and the ability for business to
move to places to that will appeal to a
productive workforce, “attractive cities like
London also entice enterprises and
entrepreneurs by their quality of life.” (118).
While this argument is in part meant to prove
that the community and social allure of cities
will still be relevant as companies move towards
telecommunications, Glaeser’s point still relates
the economic prosperity of the city to its ability
to provide its citizens the grounds for a good life,
both in the provision of basic goods and services
and in recognition and tolerance of various
cultures and lifestyles. Making a strong
commitment to using human rights as a standard
for local policy, while valuable in its own right,
would also show a commitment to values that
would entice people to live and work there. A
city could also benefit from an international
perspective through a potentially enhanced
status or collaboration with other cities around
the world. In a report by Columbia Law School, it
is argued that local governments “could reap the
diplomatic and economic benefits” of
globalisation “by grounding policy in human
rights terms” (Kamuf Ward, 5). The exchange
among a global community of cities dedicated to
human rights could foster innovative ideas about
how to handle global problems that could garner
influence at the national and international levels.
This interplay between the local and the global is
a connection that can be reinforced by human
rights implementation, and it would be in a city’s
best interest to engage with these global issues
in order to show itself as a true international
force.
Local governments should also be a key
focus in the implementation of international
human rights issues because they are the most
direct access point to changing policies that will
affect the daily lives of their constituents. As
shown in a number of articles within the
Amnesty International Netherlands report,
issues like housing, public employment, policing,
and providing basic social needs generally fall
under the local domain of resource allocation.
Van Lindert and Lettinga summarise common
trends within these sectors in major cities that
have seen a sharp rise in inequality by
30
concluding that urbanisation “accompanied
with… non-existent or ineffective distributive
policies… has been associated with poverty and
an increasing gap…not only in terms of income
but also in social, cultural, spatial, and political
forms” (9). Social scientists and public policy
practitioners alike have commented on the stark
inequality that can be seen in the small space of
a city, and local governments in major cities, like
New York, have publically committed to work
towards lessening this divide. Gardner, in her
post “Cities Are Taking the Lead on Inequality,”
warns that the concerns over inequality that
have become overwhelming in major cities in
the United States “translate easily to a European
context” with over 70% of Europeans living in
urban areas today. She goes on to argue that a
solution should not “stymie urban regeneration
policies and investment…Rather urban leaders
must recognize that the benefits of development
are not evenly felt.” (Gardner, Cities Are Taking
the Lead on Inequality,”). It is important to note
that innovative local policies that will help the
lowest in society attain a reasonable standard of
life should go hand in hand with economic
growth and urban investment; they do not
necessarily have to compete with each other. To
further bring this warning home, Diane Abbott
MP argues for a stronger presence in
policymaking from the Mayor and the greater
city of London in issues related to immigration,
housing, health and equal educational and
economic opportunity (Abbott). She aptly titles
her lecture “A Tale of Two Cities,” which harks
back to the first line of Dickens’ novel and more
recently to the mayor of New York’s 2013
speech for his mayoral campaign kick off. This
phrase is recurring in a number of popular
pieces that focus on urban inequality as it
instantly summarises the socially segregated life
that two people can have in the same city. This
phrase evokes the idea that cities are at a
turning point. They can either continue on the
path of rising inequality and potentially
festering instability, or incorporate economic
and social inclusion in public policy to promote
growth and opportunity. If cities implemented
policies with a human rights perspective
towards economic and social standards, they
could potentially reverse the trend of inequality
and be places for innovation and collaboration
that would directly affect the lives of its
community.
Cities as Innovators of Human Rights
Implementation
The concept of incorporating human
rights at the local level and promoting the role of
cities in human rights implementation started to
gain traction in the late 1990s with the idea of
the “Human Rights City.” Van der Berg, in her
contribution to the Amnesty International
Netherlands report, outlines the growth of this
city status and methodology from the People’s
Movement for Human Rights Learning (PDHRE),
an international non-profit organisation that
aims to promote the education and
incorporation of human rights in people’s daily
lives. The goal for their initiative for the
methodology of a “human rights city” was to
create a “local learning community, including
citizens, local civil society, local governments
and professionals…with human rights as guiding
principles” (van der Berg, 13). The standard of
PDHRE’s approach to its methodology that van
der Berg highlights is a focus on education, a
steering group of community stake holders to
foster collaboration, action plans for human
rights initiatives, and evaluation of progress
with regards to these initiatives (13). PDHRE’s
approach to local human rights initiatives is a
progressive standard in the way that it focuses
on cooperation among a number of different
sectors of society and requires that cities
actively engage with the issue of how to
31
implement human rights in their community
through reflective action plans instead of solely
paying lip service to the concept. The first
established “human rights city” was Rosario,
Argentina, but there are now seventeen cities
across the world that have adapted PDHRE
methodology to human rights implementation
in countries like India, Kenya, Canada, Taiwan,
Bosnia and Brazil (“Human Rights Cities”). The
concept of a “human rights city” as presented by
PDHRE is an engaging way for cities to show a
commitment to human rights at the local level,
and its international methodology interestingly
brings in the idea of glocalisation in its ability to
adapt to a broad sweep of local cultures
spanning the globe.
While PDHRE gives a comprehensive
approach to how cities can involve themselves
in human rights implementation, cities can also
more informally declare their commitment to
various human rights initiatives and use
international human rights standards to
approach public policy. Cities like Barcelona,
San Francisco and York have taken it upon
themselves to publically commit to various
international protocols involving
discrimination, the environment and human
rights which their respective nations might not
have ratified or implemented. While these
proclamations are technically not legally
binding, these public messages for local
governments push their own agenda and “offer
an opportunity to articulate the valuable role of
state and local government in this work and to
emphasize local priorities” (Kamuf Ward, 7).
The commitment to various international
standards at the local level is a stand for local
governments to be able to go a step further than
their countries might be willing to and also
potentially influence a national push to ratify
and abide by these declarations as well. There
are also a number of examples of cities actively
incorporating a human rights perspective into
their policymaking regardless of the national
rhetoric surrounding that issue. For example,
immigration and migrants’ rights are commonly
and endlessly debated at the national level, but
major cities like New York and London have
started to take action to incorporate migrants
into the civic community. Parag Khanna, an
academic expert on global system change with a
particular interest in cities, cites how cities are
“already experimenting not only with urban
visa but also with granting undocumented
migrants some civil rights, such as the right to
participate in urban referenda, ” and through
these “open immigration policies and their
lobbying capacity,” cities could potentially have
an effect on the national debate surrounding
issues like immigration (van Lindert, 25-26).
Benjamin Barber, a political theorist known for
writing If Mayors Ruled the World and
advocating for a Global Parliament of Mayors,
also takes migrants rights as an example of how
cities can be more effective than national
governments at policymaking for multinational
or international issues. With regards to
migrants’ rights, he argues that “unlike the state
(which both condemns and ignores
[undocumented migrants]), [the city] chooses to
treat them as human beings with human rights
deserving of recognition; and as a practical
reality… which must be recognized and
addressed” (Barber, 19). Both Barber and
Khanna argue via examples related to
immigration, the environment and social
inequality for the effectiveness that a city has to
react to a global issue to which a national
government has become unresponsive. This
idea is not meant to completely undermine
power at the national level; it provides an
opportunity for the city and the nation to work
more adeptly as partners to tackle major human
rights issues that currently seem to be at a
32
standstill of implementation. Cities proactively
taking a more engaged role in an
acknowledgement and incorporation of human
rights in policymaking could be a more efficient
way in dealing with issues that impact the daily
lives of people in various communities as well as
a way to provoke change or productive
attention to certain human rights issues at the
national level.
Advancing “Glocality” in Human Rights
Implementation
To create an environment where cities
feel empowered and have the opportunity to
help take the lead on human rights initiatives
internationally, there are three areas of focus
that advocates of this perspective should
advance- education at the local level of way that
they can engage with human rights in
policymaking, strong collaboration among the
local government and communities of
constituents, and federal support for these local
initiatives. These three areas, as further outlined
in Columbia Law School’s report, Bringing
Rights Home, work in a glocal way by
encouraging the local to think globally and the
global to think locally. Taking the first focus,
advocates of local human rights implementation
should raise awareness at the international level
regarding how cities can integrate human rights
into local policy. Whether it be through working
to adapt methodologies like PDHRE’s approach
into policymaking, proclaiming a commitment to
international standards, participating in
international communities of cities that want to
collaborate on solutions for human rights issues,
or “engaging the periodic human rights treaty
reporting process to assess their own
compliance with human rights principles,” there
are a number of ways that local governments
can use policymaking to promote human rights
(Kamuf Ward, 7). Human rights advocates can
disseminate these examples and work to further
connect international standards to the local
community in their advocacy. More academic
research from a human rights perspective also
needs to be accumulated on the successes and
lessons learned from international
organisations that have taken advocacy to a
local context and from cities that are working on
solutions to combat inequality and other human
rights related issues. For example, the United
Nations Human Rights Council has started to
seriously consider local governments and their
role in human rights and, in 2013,
commissioned a report to gather evidence of
best practices and obstacles that cities face in
human rights implementation. The report is in
the process of surveying a wide variety of stake
holders related to this issue via questionnaires
that can be found on their website (“Local
Government”).
In order to be effective human rights
advocates, local governments or advocates
working in a local context need to create strong
partnerships between them and the
communities within a city. This critical
relationship between key stakeholders in the
community needs to be activated to gain the
most comprehensive picture of how various
policies can help or hurt certain communities
within the local constituency. The Joseph
Rowntree Foundation supports this idea within
the context of local authorities reaching out to
groups from different ethnicities to help reduce
poverty in their community through their recent
report, Why Ethnicity Matters for Local
Authority Action on Poverty. They emphasize that
“by understanding what community, voluntary
and faith groups are doing to tackle poverty,
local authorities can build on their efforts,
energy and ideas,” and that local officials can
“share reliable advice and information about
services and jobs” through these community
groups (Nicholl and Naidoo, 11-12). This
33
argument highlights that including stakeholders
from the community can be a means of
disseminating information and sharing progress
among various initiatives as well as a way of
developing critical debate and discussion around
policies. The evidence found in this report should
be broadened outside the realm of ethnicity
when considering human rights implementation,
and local governments or advocacy should create
committees that are as diverse and
representative as possible in order to truly
understand the local context of an issue and
provide a effective solution.
Finally, to create an environment for cities
to engage in global human rights issues, they
need to have the resources to do so. While cites
may be large, they are normally lacking in
resources and manpower to maintain basic
services within their own borders. The federal
government as the level of government that is
“ultimately responsible for ensuring [human
rights] compliance on an international level… has
a key role to play in coordinating and
facilitating… local efforts.” (Kamuf Ward, 25).
The national government should more
proactively recognize the role that cities could
play in fostering human rights and social justice
within the state and therefore help to fund locally
driven initiatives. The state should also be
considered a potential stakeholder at the local
level as well when considering what kind of
initiative to pursue. Glaeser also points out that
“a far better and more practical approach would
be for higher levels of government to distribute
funds in a way that offsets the added costs of
poverty” (259). He argues that leaving cities to
fund human rights and poverty alleviation
initiatives has historically led to a flight from the
city, reducing the ability for the city to raise
enough resources to combat these issues. Cities
should not be left on their own to combat global
trends, and a stronger partnership between the
local and the national in terms of resources could
help to relieve this restraint.
* * * * *
Through the examples of cities as direct
access points to effective human rights
implementation and as innovators in human
rights adaptation, the concept of glocalisation can
be translated to a human rights perspective and
used to sway the way international organisations
and local governments see cities’ role in
international human rights promotion. By taking
steps to foster a space where cities feel
empowered to take on global human rights
issues, cities can directly have an impact on
society within their boundaries and promote
their diplomatic status (as well as the nation’s
diplomatic status) on the international level.
While this paper focuses on how local
governments can relate to supranational human
rights standards through public policy, more
research could be done incorporating this
concept of glocalisation and human rights with
relation to the local influence of business and
corporations. Another interesting perspective
that could further be delved into would be a
glocal approach to the advances in technology
and telecommunications that have increasingly
pushed local human rights issues into the global
sphere. This paper aims to be an introduction or
summarisation of how various groups advocate
for glocal human rights in the public sphere with
the goal of being a springboard for others to
apply these concepts to other sectors of society
to promote human rights internationally.
Parag Khanna succinctly illustrates the
role of cities by calling them “the world’s
experimental laboratories and thus a metaphor
for an uncertain age…From climate change to
poverty and inequality, cities are the problem-
and the solution.” (van Lindert, 28). This quote
once again epitomises the dual face of the city as
either a beacon of prosperity and toleration or
the incubator for inequality and instability. With
34
the recent rise in global urbanism, major cities
around the world are realising that the we could
be at a historical fork in road between what face
we want to see in our cities, what we want to
allow our cities to become. To end on a more
positive note, Glaeser commits to the fortitude
and adaptability of a city by saying that “to face
these challenges, humanity needs all the strength
it can muster, and that strength resides in the
connecting corridors of dense urban
areas.” (249). By furthering the approach that
cities can actively and effectively commit to and
implement human rights at the local level, we are
taking a stand to promote the inspirational tale
of the city as a place of collaboration, protection,
and growth- the tale that inspires many of us to
come to international cities like London in the
first place.
35
SHOULD WE RESPECT THE HUMAN
RIGHTS OF TERRORISTS?
MERLIN STEWART
is studying for a MA in Intelligence and
International Security in the KCL War Studies
department, with a focus on intelligence
collection ethics and open source intelligence
There is a classic thought experiment used in interrogational torture ethics known at the ticking bomb scenario. It imagines a terrorist in the hands of the authorities, who is known to have planted a bomb that is about to go off, that will kill hundreds of innocent civilians. The authorities believe that torture is the only way to make the terrorist reveal the bomb's whereabouts in time. Should they torture the terrorist? Such a scenario is not entirely confined to the realm of thought experiments. The 2002 case of Magnus Gafgen (Bernstein, 2003) who was threatened with torture by German police in order to reveal the whereabouts of the child he had kidnapped and hidden demonstrates that the conclusion we reach here can have real-world consequences. More generally, in this age of extraordinary renditions as a tool in the War on Terror, one could argue it has never been more important for members of a society to reach a consensus on what degree of personal risk they are willing to accept in order to safeguard their society’s founding principles. It is against the ticking bomb scenario that this article will consider whether it would be right to torture such a terrorist.
In order to do this, this article first attempts to establish the definition and effectiveness of torture. It then explores the phenomenon of there being no universally agreed upon foundations on which societies build their understanding of human rights on. It discovers that not all of our supposed human rights are equally inviolable - one's actions affect which rights one is entitled to. As a result, one could argue under certain (consequentialist) conceptions of human rights, that the terrorist should be tortured to save his innocent victims. However, by following in Avishai Margalit's footsteps one finds that we need not turn to a deontological conception of human rights to find that torture is never permissible. Society must 'ring-fence' the right
not to be tortured as it ought to particularly value human dignity and autonomy. We must reluctantly accept that there is high price to be paid for striving to be a decent society.
Interrogational torture is torture conducted with the aim of coercing the subject to divulge information they are otherwise unwilling to give up. Reaching an acceptable definition of what torture itself is proves more problematic. A lack of standardisation of practice, limits or oversight makes establishing a widely acceptable practical definition of torture impossible. The problem is that torture “cannot be administered professionally, scientifically, or precisely” (Rejali, 2007, p. 576). Science has yet to find a way of accurately gauging levels of pain outside of an MRI machine and unsurprisingly, detainees being tortured are unlikely to cooperate with requests to lie still. If gauging physical pain is subjective, that is nothing compared to trying to gauge the emotional suffering the interrogator is inflicting. Many academic accounts of torture discuss the lifelong psychological scars it can leave (Cobain, 2012; Primoratz, 2011). Most thought experiments on the temporary use of graduated increases of pain till a confession is achieved1 tend not to consider these long-term effects when calculating that it is better to suffer for a short time than to die. I would offer this fact as a challenge to the arguments of those like Alan Dershowitz’s which propose that torture is an inevitability, so states might as well bring it within the law and use warrants to control it (2002). Only on wholly consequentialist grounds, where the level of pain inflicted is irrelevant if pursuit of a good outcome, could you justify legalising torture. The legalisation of inflicting certain degrees of pain is too technically problematic as it is impossible to judge those levels; with the interrogator’s zeal likely erring on the side of inflicting more pain in the hopes of a confession.2 “To think that professionalism is a guard against causing
1 See Kamm (2011, pp.7-9) for a thought experiment on the use of specifically gradated pain as being a distin-guishing feature of torture. 2 The British intelligence agencies’ interrogation policy
suggests officers “balance ‘the level of mistreatment antic-
ipated’ against ‘the operational imperative’ of seeking
information from prisoners held in foreign torture cham-
bers” (Cobain, 2012, p.306). The ethical problem here is
that the policy is an attempt to standardise a practice by
relying entirely on subjective judgement.
36
excessive pain is an illusion... torture breaks down professionalism” (Rejali, 2007, p.454). Torturing breaks down the torturer’s ability to see people as moral beings, as can be found in the account of a confessed South African apartheid-era torturer: "I can't say I am sorry because then I am lying. At that stage... [the detainee] was an object and we had to extract information out of him and we would do it to the best of our ability” (Townsend, 2005).
I am for once, entirely in agreement with Michael Ignatieff that though there is certainly a difference between physical interrogation and torture, the distinction between the two breaks down very quickly in practice.
“I accept that a slap is not the same thing
as a beating, but... I cannot see how to prevent the occasional slap deteriorating into a regular practice of beating.... I cannot see any clear way to manage coercive interrogation institutionally so that it does not degenerate into torture” (Ignatieff, 2005, p.22).
Another important point to keep in mind
during an interrogational torture debate is the highly contested presumption that torture yields reliable intelligence. Whilst being tortured, detainees are not necessarily likely to tell the truth to make the torture end; they are likely to say whatever they think the torturer wants to hear to make the torture end. Famously, torture opponents argue that tortured detainees will say the sky is green and the grass blue if that is what they think the torturer wants to hear confirmed. Former U.S. Army officer Phillip Carter suggests that there are far more cases of torture failing in this respect than succeeding: “a vast body of literature on the subject indicates that, on the contrary, coercive interrogations tend to elicit unreliable intelligence more than they do useful information” (2004). Stephen Budiansky corroborates with Carter’s account noting that many in the military “have pointed out that abusing prisoners is not simply illegal and immoral; it is also remarkably ineffective” (Budiansky, in Evans, 2007, pp.57-58). Ali Soufan, a former FBI special agent adds that it is often the case that detainees are presumed to know more than they do and so are tortured for information they simply cannot give.
One of the most contentious points about
interrogational torture for policy makers mindful of re-election is over the line where ‘justifiable’ interrogational methods end and torture begins. The line between these two is obscure at best and rests on an infinitely slippery slope of technical definitions. Both Britain and the United States, as indeed many other countries have, signed the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 5 quite clearly and empathically states “No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. The Declaration is but one example of the many such treaties banning torture these states have signed up to. Samantha Power argues the reason for doing so is that “Every regime on earth recognizes at least the need to be seen to respect human rights” (Power, 2006, p.xiiv). Consequently, the Declaration has become “the holy writ to which all pay homage, even if sometimes the homage of hypocrisy” (Henkin, in Power, 2006, p.11). While it seems clear that in reality we cannot rely on the assumption that interrogational torture is usually successful, for the purposes of our thought experiment we must presume it could be.
Human Rights are commonly held to exist and yet there are no universally held proofs for their existence. To understand why it is immoral to violate human rights we must first understand why we are said to have them at all. As a concept, human rights have existed since antiquity when the stoics proposed that nobody was naturally a slave, it was an imposed condition. Lists of our human rights are not always identical but there are some rights more commonly cited than others. These include a right to life, to liberty, to the preservation of one’s dignity, to justice, to the respect for one’s autonomy and to not be harmed in body or mind. To this list, deontologists would add Kant’s Second Formulation that no one should be treated as a means to another’s end. According to Lynn Hunt (2007, pp.81-82) the establishment of human rights as we know them today occurred largely in the 18th century when the cultural and philosophical developments of the Enlightenment saw their rapid promulgation, or the very least, widespread recognition. The French Enlightenment writer Denis Diderot wrote that the recognition of the human rights of another was based on an “interior feeling... common both to the
37
philosopher and to the man who has not reflected at all” (Hunt, 2007, p.26). Essential to this change was a shift in attitudes about one’s moral relationship to those of other social groups. People of other classes, races and religions were now understood as being as essentially human as oneself, moreover, as moral equals. Haig Khatchadourian, being a notable modern proponent of this position, claims “the only absolute human right not susceptible to being overridden is the right to be treated as a moral being...with respect... [and] not to be treated as a thing or an object” (in Banks, 2009, pp.273-274). Mutual respect for human rights forms the foundations and fabric of a society. Any act that violates human rights tears the fabric that holds together any “community through consent” (Hunt, 2007, p.31). If the states of the world today really do follow Philip Bobbitt’s market-state model in favouring opportunities for over the safety of their citizens (2008, pp.521-522), then the first duty of every state is to ensure human rights are upheld by all parties, for there can be no opportunities without their security. National security must not come at the cost of anyone’s basic human rights. A prevalent theme throughout Bobbitt’s works is a caution that the aim of the twenty-first century market-state must be to achieve the security of those rights by uniting the state’s laws with its war strategies (2008, p.529). States must fight to secure access to those opportunities not just fight for the security of its citizens.
Frances Kamm argues that our most basic human rights exist independently of recognition by anyone or from the foundations of law. There are two ways to understand these rights:
“(1) All that is needed in order to come to
have certain rights is that one be a human or (6) all this is needed in order to come to have and continue certain rights is that one be a human person. While there may be some rights that satisfy (6), most rights that are now considered human rights do not satisfy it. They only satisfy (1). For example, the right to free movement, the right not to be killed, and the right to free speech may all be forfeited in virtue of one’s conduct” (2006, p.238).
The emphasis of the fact that one’s actions
may, by their nature, necessarily forfeit one’s
previously held human rights is Kamm’s greatest contribution to this debate. There are two ways to see interrogational torture under Kamm’s model. (1) A terrorist act is immoral. Terrorists seriously violate the human rights of others in a way that is absolutely, even definitionally, unjustifiable. So much so that in addition to their losing the right to freedom and all the other rights a criminal would do, the terrorist loses the right not to be tortured. Any Human right, even the right not to be tortured may be forfeited by the degree of immorality of one’s actions. (2) A terrorist act is immoral. However, so is torture. Regardless of the terrorist’s actions, his right not to be tortured remains inviolable. This right therefore would appear to exist at a higher level of human rights than the right to freedom. The right not to be tortured would appear to be ‘ring-fenced’. It would seem certain human rights remain independently of the agent’s actions. According to (1) there are ‘mechanisms’ or formulas whereby your rights are forfeited according to your actions. I will now outline one such mechanism that is grounded in notions of fair play.
All human beings are born with certain rights which are inviolable, at the very least, inviolable without just cause. A terrorist, even though he plans to harm innocent civilians, has the human right not to be tortured per se. That is to say it would be wrong to torture a detained terrorist for medical experiments that might save other, innocent civilians. However, we may be able to torture him for information which will save the lives of those he intends to harm. Consider the following case: Terrorist T plans on violating innocent civilian C’s human right not to be killed. C cannot defend himself, he is by definition a non-combatant. The state’s role is to defend non-combatants. C is a member of the state. Ordinarily it would be wrong for the state to violate T’s right not to be tortured. However, it could be argued that T no longer has that right with respect to C. A sense of fair play suggests that if T plans to violate C’s human right to life, C should be able to violate one of T’s rights. T chose which right of C’s to violate – C’s right as an innocent civilian not to be harmed. Why should T get to choose which rights of his can or cannot be violated when he did not afford C that privilege? Ignoring arguments about proportionality and degrees of evil that might prejudice judgement, it seems there is a fair play
38
justification for using interrogational torture if it will protect C. The state must act on behalf of citizen C. The state itself is not violating T’s right not to be tortured so much as it is acting on behalf of C’s interests. T has no right not to be tortured with respect to C. Torture here is permissible.
Historically, there have been many other types of mechanisms put forwards to explain how one loses certain rights. These include loss by social consensus, by convention, by the logic of a particular ethical framework or divine law. All these mechanisms will work in accordingly different ways and it is impossible to argue one that any one is definitively correct as they are all ultimately subjective value systems. If one argues for positions (2), interrogational torture is always ethically unjustifiable as it violates certain ring-fenced rights. I am inclined towards position (2) in this instance. I believe we ought to ring-fence the right not to be tortured as we ought to particularly value human dignity and autonomy. They are the foundational qualities of a just society (Margalit, 1996, pp.281-286). States ought to incarcerate detainees in such a way that their liberty is removed but not their dignity. There is a difference between putting someone in a jail and putting them in the stocks for public humiliation. As Avishai Margalit notes, a society is only “decent” (1996, p.1) if its institutions do not humiliate. As free moral agents our moral standing depends on the conscious decisions we make. Torture breaks down the detainee’s will, violating his autonomy by causing pain so severe that his rational thought is overridden by his powerful survival instincts and so he divulges information he would otherwise choose not to. To erode the value of autonomy is to erode the value of ownership of actions, be they good or evil. The right to our own minds is absolutely essential to any non-hypocritical standard of human rights.
While it is never deontologically permissible to use torture to interrogate the terrorist, we must consider the consequentialist argument that it could be justified as the lesser of two evils. Ignatieff is notable champion of a restrained lesser evil model:
“the use of coercive force in a liberal
democracy... is regarded as a lesser evil. This particular view of democracy does not prohibit emergency suspensions of rights in times of terror.
But it imposes an obligation on government to justify such measures publicly, to submit them to judicial review, and to circumscribe them with sunset clauses so that they do not become permanent” (Ignatieff, 2004, pp.vii-viii).
Ignatieff’s emphasis one judicial
accountability is noteworthy here. If a state feels it has genuine cause to do something that would be ordinarily unjustifiable, it must explain to its citizens why a particular case was extraordinary. Even if, on the grounds of security, the judicial review is carried out in closed or limited courts that is still better than the alternative – torturers operating on the assumption they will only have to justify themselves to equally secretive superiors and only then if they fail to extract intelligence from a detainee. In an age of the Snowden revelations, attempts to hide such practices are doomed to fail; and such attempts once public will instantly dash a state’s slowly and arduously built reputation as a human rights champion.
I accept that there could be some good outcomes from interrogational torture. Furthermore, that the bad consequences of interrogational torture do not directly negate these good outcomes. However the lesser evil justification depends on an overall good outcomes and I do not believe interrogational torture brings them about. Yotman Feldman (2013) suggests we turn to Eyal Weizman for a noteworthy attack on lesser evil justifications. Weizman argues that the institutionalisation of a practice is often irreversible. It is a tragic irony that what is considered permissible in extreme cases may become common practice. “In a gradual process of legitimation, the benchmark of legitimacy shifts – what was considered immoral and excessive before is now normalised” (Yotman, 2013, p.51). The acceptation of exceptional cases as a justification for interrogational torture could lead to a retreat of our standards of morality. For those who would argue that terrorists forfeit fair treatment through the immorality of their actions, one should reply “It is the very nature of a democracy that it not only does, but should, fight with one hand tied behind its back” (Ignatieff, 2004, p.24). In short, “A society that ignores due process in responding to a terrorist attack “ends up being a rogue society bent on meting out what it thinks is justice when in fact it is simply
39
reacting out of self-interested egoistic, self-serving emotion”” (David Corlett in Banks, 2009, p.274).
What I have argued against here is the legitimisation of the use of torture as a tactic against terrorists. Against this, all the threshold deontologist need do in riposte is to simply increase the number of hypothetical victims until this probation against torture seems irresponsible. The best response I can offer for is that ticking bomb scenario itself if flawed. There can never be a scenario where torture is most effective response. There is compelling evidence that torture is not only ineffective but actually counterproductive for two reasons in particular. Firstly, it is clear that torture, especially when conducted in a routinized way, often yields unreliable information. Secondly, in the long term, state-sponsored torture will do more damage to the society than that the bomb itself.
40
THE POLITICIZATION OF BOKO HARAM
FEMI OWOLADE
is a Medical Ethics and Law Master's Student and
also an Associate of King's College (AKC)
Student.
Introduction
There is a division among scholars in the
study of terrorism on the clink between political
parties and terrorist groups. The lack of a
universal definition of terrorism has certainly
not helped. While Australian Philosopher C. A. J.
Coady suggests that there are over 100 modern
definitions of terrorism, Law Professor George
Fletcher mentions only dozens, concluding that
no one categorization of this phenomenon is
definitive. That being said, one thing that seems
to be certain is the existence of a relationship
between terrorism and politics. According to a
leading authority in the study of Terrorism-
Professor Max Abrahms- the narrow and most
simplified definition of the word states
‘terrorism is the select use of violence against
civilians for putative political gain.’ In this article,
I will explore the connection between political
parties and terrorist groups, the nature of this
connection and then attempt to apply it in
determining the relationship between Nigerian
terrorist group Boko Haram and Nigeria’s main
opposition party.
Relationship between Terrorism and Politics
The roots of modern day politicisation of
terrorism trace back to revolutionary author,
Karl Heinzen’s 1849 essay “Murder” which
produced a rationale and justification for
political killing based on the ancient idea of
tyrannicide coupled with the assertion that
government from time immemorial have used
violence against those under their control.
That said, this somewhat implicit match
seem to has evolved over the years. In their
acclaimed book on Political parties and Terrorist
groups, renowned Political Authors Leonard
Weinburg and Ami Pedauhzar concluded that
‘the notion of a common tie between terrorist
groups and political parties transcends a mere
’‘historical or political curiosity’’. A
methodological study carried out by the authors
revealed a three explicit types of association
between political parties and terrorist groups
namely by similarity of ideology, defection of
political faction or political parties directly
endorsing terrorist groups.
The authors further embarked on a
comprehensive research into ideologies and
types of relationship between terrorist groups
and political parties. Their findings revealed that
the left-wing political parties, or factions within
them give rise to terrorist groups far more
commonly than do other kinds of parties.
Early Islamism in Nigeria and the legacy of
the Sokoto Caliphate
Islamism or Political Islam is a movement
within Islam that adheres to the belief that ‘Islam
should guide social and political as well as
personal life’ Even though the spread of Islam in
the geographical space now regarded as Nigeria
date back to the 11th century, the rise of
political Islam came about much later between
1600s-1800s.
Early Islam in Nigeria was spread by both
peaceful religious and cultural means and by the
Islamic culture’s appeal to traditional Africans.
However, the early 1800s- which marked a new
era of Islam in Nigeria- saw the creation and
expansion of the Sokoto Caliphate and the
beginning of a violent spread of Islam by Jihad
(holy war).
The Sokoto Caliphate grew out of the
Jihad of Usman Dan Fodio and was the political
expression of the desire to establish a proper
Islamic society in the region of Northern Nigeria.
The year 1903 marked the end of the Caliphate
when the Sultan of Sokoto was overthrown by
British Colonial authorities. That being said, it
has been argued that the advent of Colonial rule
41
did not change the authority structure of the
Sokoto Caliphate.
According to an Historian in the field, the
system of Colonial rule shows that:
‘While the British conquerors replaced the
Sultan and those Emirs who refused to submit,
they retained the existing system of authority
and administration, which eventually became
the model for the system of indirect rule. Under
this system, the emirates were renamed “Native
Authorities” and utilised by the British as the
basic unit of local and regional administration’.
During the latter years of Colonisation,
political parties in Northern Nigeria drew
inspiration from the Sokoto Caliphate. The two
dominant parties, the conservative Northern
People’s Congress (NPC) and the radical
Northern Elements Progressive Union (NEPU),
held different views regarding the nature and
value of the aforementioned Native Authority
system. The NPC, a party formed by a band of
elitists who were also part of the Colonial native
authority system, were keen to maintain the
existing political arrangement which would
enable them to monopolise power in the region.
The NEPU, on the other hand, was characterised
by radicalism and often accused the Colonial
Native Authority system- which was at the time
reflective in NPC’s politics- of being corrupt
oppressors of the talakawas i.e. the common
people.
Even though both parties presented its
own version of the significance of the Sokoto
Caliphate on its policies, religious justifications
for Jihad expressed by Shehu Dan Fodio- the
founder of the Sokoto Caliphate- tended to be
much more detailed in NEPU’s political
discussions than what was found in the
literature of the NPC.
In the years leading to Nigeria's
independence in 1960, the ‘Talakawa’ movement
-represented by NEPU- became a symbol for
dissatisfaction with colonial rule and a radical
alternative to the NPC. Talakawa had as its
driving force a distaste for Western influence or
Moderate Islam, and planned to use politics and
religion to create a "Northern Nigerian Society of
Social Justice, Economic Prosperity and
Fairness". A study on the government of
Northern Nigeria from 1350-1950 shows that
many Talakawas (commoners) in Kano State
supported that message to demonstrate
disapproval with what they perceived as an
unrepresentative government composed of a
selected few.
It is argued that this division caused by
Colonisation’s Native authority system played a
significant role in proliferation of radical Islamic
thought among the oppressed commoners and
led to the emergence of Islamist radical group-
Boko Haram.
Boko Haram’s systematic assaults on
symbolic entities of the Nigerian State
After the election of Goodluck Ebele
Jonathan, a Christian Southerner, as the
President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in
2010, there was an increase in violent activities
by the Boko Haram sect, who began to wage war
on the new government led by President
Jonathan, who has often been criticized for
indulging in ethnic factionalism and favouring
the Ijaw ethnic group situated in Southern
Nigeria.
Before the bombing of the United Nations
building in Nigeria's capital of Abuja on August
16th 2011, the most daring activity of Boko
Haram had been the group's June 7, 2011
bombing of Abuja's police headquarters. That
attack appeared to specifically target the
Inspector General of Police, Hafiz Ringim.
On July 10, 2011, a Christian Fellowship
Church in Suleja, Niger State, in the "Middle Belt"
part of Nigeria, was bombed. The next day the
University of Maiduguri, in the Northern part of
42
Nigeria, closed on the order of the University
Authority, citing security concerns.
Boko Haram has made it known by way of
public announcements, backed by terrorist
actions which strategy is to undermine Nigerian
governmental authority. Boko Haram's video
clips -- which can be viewed on YouTube --
featuring the group's leader, Abubakar Shekau,
stress disdain for the Southern-dominated
government. Apart from video footage, the
Shekau, has underlined his anti-government
position in official statements.
Apart from countless attacks on civilians,
other attacks have been carried out showing
direct opposition to the Nigerian government. In
September 7, 2010 attack, members of Boko
Haram set free over 700 inmates from a prison
in Bauchi State. In Borno State, Boko Haram's
violence has killed approximately 800 people,
including relatives of high-ranking state officials.
In 2013, Boko Haram took control of the
local governments of Marte, Mobbar, Gubio,
Guzamala, Abadam, Kukawa, Kala-Balge and
Gamboru Ngala, in Borno State, chasing out
government officials, taken over government
buildings and imposing Sharia law.
All Progressives Congress (APC) and Boko
Haram
Following Boko Haram’s kidnapping of
276 school girls from Chibok in Borno State-
Nigeria, the terrorist group garnered
unprecedented attention from the western world
who previously knew little about its terrorism in
Nigeria. Questions alleging a link between the
opposition political party in Nigeria and Boko
Haram were forwarded by a British
Parliamentarian to the UK foreign secretary on
July 8, 2014. The questions, listed under “notices
for written answer,” were published on the
website of the UK parliament.
Questions related to Boko Haram and
asked by Parliamentarian Andrew Rosindell
follow below:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, if he will commission an
inquiry into the international support network
for Boko Haram in Nigeria and Cameroon; and if
he will make a statement. (Notice no. 204402)
“To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, what discussions (a) he
and (b) other Ministers in his Department have
had with leading members of the Nigerian
opposition party, the All Progressive Congress;
and if he will make a statement. (204401)
“To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, what assessment he has
made of the rise in Islamic terrorism in Nigeria.
(204387)
“To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and
Commonwealth Affairs, what support his
Department plans to offer to Nigeria in tackling
the threat of Boko Haram. (204388)”
The All Progressives Congress (APC),
formed on February 6, 2013 in anticipation of
the 2015 General elections, is predominantly a
left-winged party and currently serves the
leading opposition party in Nigeria. Its main
objective is to take on the biggest Political party
in Nigeria, a Christian-led Peoples Democratic
Party (PDP).
The popularity of the APC is partly linked
to the collective failures of leaders of the ruling
party (the PDP) to develop poverty-stricken
Muslim-dominated Northern states. Writing for
Chatham House on Politics and influence in
Northern Nigeria, African Scholar Dr. Leena
Hoffmann found that, “In 2010, nine of the 19
northern states had the highest levels of
unemployment in Nigeria – some as high as 40
per cent – with young northerners being
overwhelmingly more likely to be jobless.”
43
She further stated, “The worsening
challenges with poverty, youth unemployment,
poor infrastructure, illiteracy and insecurity are
inherently systemic, and a consequence of the
collective failure of leaders at all tiers of
government to properly deliver public goods and
services or to accountably manage public funds.”
These findings colour disappointing
statistics, such as the literacy rate in the
Northeastern state of Borno, the stronghold of the
Boko Haram insurgency, which is fewer than
15%.
An unprecedented number of Islamic
leaders Islamic are represented in the majority of
the APC party. Even though Nigeria is a secular
country with a Christian majority, this
disproportionate level of Islamic representation
in the party’s leadership has led many to suspect
an Islamic agenda officially unfolding in the
country.
Chief Femi Fani Kayode, a Cambridge
University-educated former Minister of Aviation
of the Federation, who was a Prominent member
of the APC, recently severed all ties with the
political party due to the its alleged involvement
with Boko Haram. In an interview on Channels TV
dated June 30 2014, Kayode compared APC’s
relationship with Boko Haram and Sinn Fein’s
relationship with the IRA.
“If you compare what is happening in Nigeria to
what happened in Ireland some years ago,” he
said, “you had Sinn Fein on the one hand and then
you had the IRA on the other. The IRA was the
armed wing of Sinn Fein and as far as I'm
concerned, Boko Haram could well be described
as the armed wing of the opposition today.”
When asked by the panellists to
substantiate these allegations, he referred to
statements credited to prominent members of
APC. He stated that General Muhammadu Buhari,
the APC’s potential Candidate in next year’s
Presidential election, who had openly attempted
to spread Sharia to all the states of the federation,
“Said just last year that Boko Haram should be
granted amnesty and treated like kids gloves.”
Speaking of Alhaji Lai Mohammad, the
official National Publicity Secretary of APC, Chief
Fani Kayode said, “he protested about and
opposed the proscription of Boko Haram by the
federal government in various newspapers on
June 10, 2013 and he described such proscription
as being unconstitutional and/or extra-
constitutional and wrong in various newspapers...
[He also] opposed the idea of Boko Haram being
labelled as a terrorist organisation by the United
States of America throughout last year. As
shameful as it is, this was his position and that of
his party.”
The Armed winged analogy referred to by
Chief Fani Kayode was used by Political scientists
Ilana Kass and Bard O'Neill to describe Hamas’s
relationship with Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigade
and Sinn Fein’s relationship with the Irish
Republican Army. The findings of the authors
revealed the endorsement example of the
political party and terrorist groups’ relationship
where the terrorist group serves as a Military
wing of the Political party. In this discreet
relationship, the terrorist group separates its
duties and operations from that of the political
party. Quoting a senior Hamas official, the
authors revealed: ‘The Izz al-Din al-Qassam
Brigade is a separate armed military wing, which
has its own leaders who do not take orders [from
Hamas] and do not tell us of their plans in
advance’.
Hamas itself was founded in 1987 as an
offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood -- founded in
1928 -- in theory, to muscle out secular
Palestinian rivals. One of the Brotherhood's
stated aims is to create a state ruled by Islamic
law [Sharia] with a worldwide slogan of "Islam is
the solution."
The Muslim Brotherhood’s philosophy of
political Islam and belief that the woes of the
Muslim world spring from a lack of Islamic
44
devotion tally with views held by the de facto
leader of the APC, General Muhammadu Buhari.
He has been vocal about the spread of Sharia
jurisprudence, which he views as an antidote to
corruption. This has been a source of discomfort
to many Christian voters, who remain anxious
that a radical Islamic agenda is unfolding in the
country.
The recent failure of Boko Haram’s
alleged ceasefire and its impact on the credibility
of President Goodluck Jonathan shows a
significant example illustrating the importance of
Boko Haram as a political force. Nigeria's general
elections are expected to be held in February and
there is every indication that the process will be
bloody if it goes ahead in the north-eastern
states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, where Boko
Haram and the APC have strongholds. It appears
unlikely that civilians there will be convinced to
cast their votes in a democratic system that is
antithetical to Boko Haram's central objective -
to introduce the Sharia Law, an objective which
has parallels with that of the Leader of the APC -
General Muhammadu Buhari.
Conclusion
The above has used the armed wing
model to establish a link between left winged
political parties and terrorist organisations.
Although the relationship between Boko Haram
and Nigeria’s left wing party, APC seem to be
implicit at this stage, APC’s victory -which could
see General Muhammadu Buhari appropriate on
his wish of spreading Sharia Law in Nigeria-
could provide some answers to the questions
tendered by Andrew Rosindell MP. The foreign
secretary’s response to those questions have
been delayed since William Hague’s resignation.
Nevertheless, the latter’s replacement –Phillip
Hammond- is mandated to formally respond to
Rosindell’s questions on behalf of the British
government. It is almost certain that Hammond’s
response will lead to an enquiry which may shed
more light on this issue.
45
JEOPARDIZED DIVERSITY - CONFESSIONAL
TENSIONS IN THE AMORPHIC MIDDLE EAST
SEBASTIAN MAIER
holds an Master’s Degree in Intelligence &
International Security from the Department of
War Studies, King's College London. He currently
works at the Embassy of Canada to Germany.
As much as the surge of the so-
called Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham well into
2014 continues to amplify the overall mayhem in
the Middle East, ISIS’s sudden emergence and
the pace at which it has been gaining ground
caught the international community off-guard.
Yet, putting the latest events into broader
historic perspective highlights a rather
continuous pattern: with the millenniums-old
mosaic of confessional diversity being
jeopardized, a subtle erosion of one of the
region’s crucial characteristics seems to be in full
swing.
To begin with, such a narrative does
indeed underscore the more recent alarming
signals implying that the Fertile Crescent,
arching from the Nile valley over northern Syria
into Mesopotamia, is being challenged by a
widening religious schism.
At the same time, two major regional
phenomena have aggravated the topical
developments in the region. Firstly, nationalism
as a concept to stipulate pan-Arab ambitions
across the region seems to have come to an end.
Secondly, Ba’athist minority rule in Hafez al-
Assad’s Syria and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
discriminated cardinally against their respective
adversely perceived Sunni or Shi’ite Muslim
population. With this in mind, the disintegration
of state entities in Iraq since 2003 and in Syria as
of 2011 provided an opportunity to those who
were formerly oppressed: in the slipstream of
the decline of state entities along the Euphrates,
the polarization at the extreme ends of the
confessional spectrum brought forth deepened
radicalism. This has dire consequences, as the
level of violence is not only creating a major rift
among Muslim communities, but it also casts a
cloud over the security of various Middle Eastern
ethno-religious minority groups.
Exodus from Iraq
On the last day of October 2010, gunmen
of a certain Sunni Islamist group under the then-
moniker Islamic State of Iraq raided Baghdad’s
Sayidat al-Nejat Syriac Catholic Cathedral and
massacred at least 58 worshippers. The
intruders demanded the release of Al Qaeda-
affiliated prisoners in Iraq and Egypt. This
incident tragically confirmed what the Synod of
Bishops for the Middle East had been bewailing
only a few days prior to the carnage that
happened in the city of Baghdad: Christian
minorities in Iraq are going through a tale of
woes, which leads an increasing number of
brethren attempting to leave their home soil --
many of whom for good. Daniel Pipes’
‘Disappearing Christians in the Middle East’ from
2001 somewhat anticipated this trend. It also
confirms the assumption that waves of
emigration are cardinally associated with the
outbreak of violence. In this context, it is equally
important to not be deceived by selective
perception -- ISIS’ killing spree does not make
halt in front of fellow Sunnis,as it was recently
shown when hundreds of the Anbar-based Sunni
Albu Nimr tribe were executed by ISIS.
To that end, looking back, particularly the
overthrow of Saddam Hussein triggered
unintended consequences. Many formerly
oppressed religious groups, among which the
Iraqi Shi’ites that make up more than half of the
country’s population, have been experiencing the
formerly denied right to a political expression
and thus gaining more political leverage. Since
then, with the deterioration of the overall
security situation, Iraq has not only been
shattered by waves of sectarian violence and anti
-government insurgency, but it has also become
46
a perilously exposed location for Iraq’s various
formerly condoned ethno-religious minority
communities. For these groups, among which
Muslim Shabaks, Turkmens, Christians and
Yazidis, that have been living largely peacefully
with Sunni Iraqis, despite there being some
ongoing discrimination prior to 2003, the
situation has undergone a profound shift in the
wake of the US-led invasion of Iraq. Systematic
attacks and threats have led over half a million
members of religious minorities to flee their
country, leaving behind parts of the countries
spiritual, cultural and linguistic heritage.
The Chaldean Christians, for instance,
who have their own patriarch based in Baghdad,
constitute the largest non-Muslim minority in
Iraq. In fact, under Saddam Hussein’s secular
despotism, the Chaldean Tariq Aziz rose to
prominence as he served as Iraq’s Foreign and
Vice-Premier Minister. Bearing in mind Hussein’s
repression and mistrust against the Shi’ites,
while for that matter openly privileging Christian
communities, this may have well driven a wedge
between the two major Muslim denominations.
It resulted in the Shi’ite resentment eventually
turning violent in the aftermath of Ba’athist rule
that ended in 2003. The same applies by and
large to the southern Mesopotamia-based
Sabean-Mandaeans community that historically
resided in and around the Basra province and
has been experiencing profound aversion, facing
the threat of extinction on Iraqi soil. This is
telling, since this minority group does not
admittedly pursue any political ambitions nor
does it seek influence in any such secular affairs.
On the other hand, however, due to the
considerable involvement in educational and
economical key positions, the numerous
examples of extortion and havoc that the
Mandaeans have suffered therefore serve as
evidence for the resentment and persecution
against minority groups.
More recently, in the summer of 2014,
another syncretic ethno-religious minority group
found itself in the midst of persecution, as
illustrated by the fate of trapped Yazidis on
Mount Sinjar, savagely pursued by ISIS militias in
northern Iraq. The Yazidis adhere to an amalgam
of Sufi influence, ancient Persian and Zoroastrian
beliefs, which many Muslims consider as
idolatry, hence devil worship. As such, unlike
Christians or Jews, they have never been
technically acknowledged with the status of a
protected dhimmi community by Islamic
jurisprudence. Although a hastily set-up and
Washington-led air campaign enabled many of
the Yazidis to escape further north towards the
Kurdish regional government territory, ISIS
continues to persecute the Yazidi community
while expanding its foothold elsewhere alike.
By tearing down parts of the Iraqi-Syrian
border, ISIS has managed to ring down the
curtain of Sykes-Picot, officially known as the
Asia Minor accord secretly concluded in 1916 by
Britain and France with the intention to divide
most parts of post-Ottoman Empire Arab lands
between the two countries. In doing so, ISIS
created a strategic pivot from which they
unleash their campaign with relative impunity.
In such an environment, there is neither
incentive nor chances for persecuted groups to
stay on there homeland.
As to the political dimension, Iraq seems
to have repeatedly been at the crossroads with
its reoccurring sectarian violence, however,
regardless which path was taken, the country
ultimately yielded to disadvantage either the
Sunni or Shi’ite communities. Against this
background, the disintegration of statehood
since 2003 and the reoccurring vacuum of power
since the US withdrawal in 2011 can still be felt
today as they augured badly for the narrowing
opportunities for interreligious dialogue, let
alone coexistence.
47
The Syrian quagmire
Daring a look into Iraq’s neighboring
country Syria, the turmoil erupting since the
beginning of the civil war in 2011 gradually
intensified and not only caused lasting trauma
upon the countries stability, but also to Syria’s
religious and ethnic composition. First and
foremost, with the so-called Arab Spring having
long turned for winter, the country has been
split between supporters of the minority Shi’ite
sect Alawite Bashar al-Assad and the largely
Sunni Muslim opposition to some extent under
the heterogeneous umbrella of the Free Syrian
Army.
Intriguingly, the Alawites make up for
merely ten percent of the country’s population
but are traditionally in charge of navigating the
countries influential political and military
apparatus since the assertion of power through
Ba’athist Hafez al-Assad in 1970. In fact, as long
as nationalist aspirations were to dominate
Syria’s agenda, Syrian Druze -- whose faith is
rooting in Shi’ite offshoot Ismailism -- mostly
based in western Syria in the vicinity of the
slopes of the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and
the outskirts of Damascus, as well as Syrian
Kurds living alongside the Turkish border,
managed to come to terms with the country’s
domestic status quo: by tacitly resigning to
Assad’s authoritarian rule, threats vis-a -vis
Syrian minority groups used to be reasonably
contained, allowing minorities some degree of
religious freedom of expression. However, recent
events have rendered the situation much more
worrisome. To give a supporting example of this
statement, the regime’s stance regarding the
multifaceted Christian community sheds light on
the country’s state of play. At the outset of the
civil war, the Syrian Christians, among which
Greek Orthodox, Melkite Greek Catholic and
Syriac Orthodox, were given the choice whether
to pledge allegiance to the regime or reject it.
Against all odds, many Syrian Christians turned
out to be less cooperative than expected.
They responded rather inconsistently with some
groups rallying around the regime’s flag, whilst
others either joined opposing forces or tried to
remain as neutral as possible.
Most Christian church leaders actually
publicly supported Assad’s policy of repression
in the early stages of the uprising. They did so in
emphasizing the relative calm and secure
environment in which they found themselves
embedded when Hafez al-Assad established
Ba’athist rule. Since then, and unlike what
happened in Iraq, a large number of Syrian
Christians were promoted into the country’s
governmental and military ranks. This may have
factored into a certain cultivation of the thought
emphasizing the freedom of faith and protection
of minority denominations that the Alawite
Assad minority government provided against the
backdrop of a Sunni majority country.
At the same time, one can just as well
depict Christian support to the Free Syrian
Army’s cause as it is heralded by anti-regime
forces with Christian leaders being prominently
represented in the National Coalition. While little
is known authoritatively about what actions are
being taken, one can assume that such Christian
advocacy strives in favour to the idea of creating
a civil and democratic Syrian state whilst at the
same time going against the brutal oppression
with which the regime has been operating
against the insurgency.
Now, between both extreme ends, there
also exists a third group of Christians avoiding to
take sides. Some churches in Damascus for
instance refused to make their facilities available
for propaganda against the revolution while by
the same token, just when the regime called up
the minorities to carry weapons for self-defence,
patriarchs advised their denomination against it.
As a consequence, the prospect of potentially
being sucked in by the Syrian spiral of violence
coupled with economic misery narrows these
48
neutral groups room for manoeuvre. Moreover,
beyond the schism with respect to al-Assad’s
regime, more radical violence occurs within rival
Islamist groups operating on Syrian soil. This
has been the case since the established foothold
of ISIS in Syria started complicating the formerly
gridlocked frontlines between regime-loyalists
and al-Assad’s foes, splintering fractious rebel
groups even more.
With more than 200,000 casualties
already and ISIS fiercely besieging Kurdish
towns alongside the Syrian-Turkish border, the
many wars in Syria appear in desperate fashion:
‘an outright victory by either side is neither a
real possibility nor a desirable prospect.’ In such
a protracted environment, there is hardly any
hope for the sandwiched minorities to endure
another winter in their war-torn country. Under
these circumstances, one can thus hardly fault
minorities for leaving their country behind. The
mass exodus that can be seen in cities like Homs,
Latakia or Aleppo thus threatens the inter-
confessional equilibrium in which Syrians,
regardless their religious affiliation, lived
together for centuries.
The Lebanese patchwork
Given the reciprocal and traditionally
intertwined relations between Syria and
Lebanon, the civil war has a profound impact on
its neighbouring country since it currently hosts
over one million Syrians that had fled their home
soil. The tiny country of Lebanon serves as a
panopticon of a unique mix of diverse religious
groups which reflects the wider sectarian
struggles and foreign interests that are
prominent throughout the whole of the Middle
East. This becomes most apparent in the later
stages of the Lebanese civil war lasting from
1975 to 1990. The internal polarization among
Lebanon’s various religious factions at that time
became visible, resulting in what William W.
Harris adequately labels as ’the heyday of
cantons and militias’. Meanwhile, the political
manipulation implied by Syrian and Israeli
presence on Lebanese soil further led to political
instability. Back then, Ba’athist Syria
traditionally considered the Cedar State,
Lebanon, as its strategic backyard, thus backing
its Shi’ite proxy Amal as well as the
establishment of Iran’s Islamic Revolution –
which inspired the creation of Hezbollah. Israel,
for its part, also tried to exert its leverage on ‘a
larger slice of the sectarian pie’ by supporting the
Lebanese Maronite Catholics and the South
Lebanese Army from the late 70’s until its
withdrawal in 2000.
In fact, the consequences of foreign
interventionism continue to resonate in Lebanon
to this date; what seems to be an afterthought of
the Syrian presence in Lebanon, the animosity
between pro- and anti-Assad factions alongside
the Sunni-Shi’ite divide extended into Lebanon
has flared up as of late. Tensions escalating
further can also be explained when considering
the country’s regionalisation. While Lebanese
Sunni Muslims form the majority of the
population from the Mediterranean coastal
region to the region near Tripoli, Sidon and the
western outskirts of the capital Beirut, the
strongholds of the country’s Shi’ite community
are located in southern Lebanon with the Beqa’a
valley that is in the immediate vicinity of the
Syrian border. Illustrating once more the tied
curse of Syria and Lebanon, the Syrian quagmire
repeatedly showed its potential to plunge
Lebanon back into unrest. The numbers speak
for themselves: three years into Syria’s civil war,
Lebanon is currently the host of more than one
million Syrian refugees, equalling approximately
one fourth of the country’s overall population.
While the Lebanese are continuously showing
remarkable generosity in stemming the burden
of the refugees, it will be increasingly difficult for
49
the country to manage the unceasing flow of
refugees across its borders.
It comes as no surprise either, that the
already fragile country has experienced a series
of exacerbating economic crises due to the Syrian
conflict. International trade, tourism and
investment have declined steeply and the public
services can not keep up with the growing
demand either the refugees or its citizens.
Particularly affected by the lack of resources to
cover demand are medical services, electricity
and water supply. As a result, with the
humanitarian situation in dire straits, the
sectarian struggle aggravates the already fragile
Lebanese political landscape. For instance, in the
winter of 2013, the country had to cope with
three major terrorist-bomb attacks, causing over
100 casualties and leaving several hundreds
injured. This series of attacks alternately hit
Shi’ite and Sunni targets, including an attack
against the Iranian embassy in the south of
Beirut, which further sparks the fear of vengeful
actions. Unlike the assault that occurred in the
northern Lebanese coastal town of Tripoli on the
23rd August 2013 and in a Hezbollah stronghold
in southern Beirut in mid-August, the 2013
Iranian embassy bombing in Beirut has proven to
be carried out by two suicide bombers. Indeed,
the Jihadi militant Abdullah Azzam Brigades took
the responsibility for the attack and heralded
further action if Iran was not to pull back out of
the conflict in Syria.
Since then, partisan suspects of radical
Sunni sheikh Ahmed al-Assir, who was
persecuted by the Lebanese Army, called on the
Sunni Lebanese to support their brothers in their
struggle on Syrian soil. The deliberately stoked
ethnic resentments suggest a kind of 'blood guilt'
which radical Lebanese Sunnis consider they
have yet to settle with the Shi’ite Hezbollah. The
latter, in return, make it no secret of the fact that
they have openly started to support the troops of
Bashar al-Assad with their own fighters. To this
effect, Hezbollah’s Secretary General Nasrallah’s
public vow of fidelity to Assad followed only a
few days after a visit to Tehran in April 2013. By
stating that Hezbollah was supposed to fight
solely Sunni extremists in their neighbouring
country, who otherwise would threaten
Lebanon’s Shi’ites and Christians, Nasrallah
justified the deployment of his troops across the
border: if the Syrian regime was to fall, it would
significantly decrease Hezbollah’s foothold in
Lebanon. Adding to this, with the Syrian conflict
spilling over, alongside the often barely marked
365 km long Lebanese-Syrian border, fighters of
various factions are already commuting more or
less freely in both directions, turning border
villages and towns into no man’s land. In these
parts of the country, violent clashes between the
Lebanese Army and fighters of Jabhat al-Nusra
and ISIS are also occurring more frequently.
The bottomline is that with the narrowly
confined size of the country, the influx of mostly
Syrian refugees, and the spill-over of the radical
elements disseminating from the Syrian Civil
War, Lebanon is sharing an immense burden of
the region’s overall conflagration. This applies
also to the half a million registered Palestinian
refugees living on Lebanese soil, al-Assad-loyal
Alawites, and syncretic Druze, despite all of
whom adhering to closed communal identities. As
such, the heavy political and economic toll is
further to the detriment of the country’s
coherence, setting the precarious conditions for
the outburst of social unrest among these various
religious camps.
Lastly, particularly the Lebanese Christian
community is prone to economic deadlock given
their traditionally strong presence in the
country’s financial and business echelons. As
such, the exodus of Christians from the country,
initially starting during the civil war that lasted
15-years until 1990, continues to date and is
likely to alter the confessional composition of the
country on the long haul as well.
50
One cannot go wrong by being pessimistic
about the Middle East
As outlined above, Middle Eastern
interfaith coexistence is seriously harmed by the
maelstrom of political break-up, economic
hardship and militant elements widening the
divisions along sectarian lines. Although regional
confessional tensions are not limited to the three
portrayed countries, the widening Sunni-Shi’ite
split and the surge of ISIS topically accentuates
the intertwined fate of Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
The sphere of influence across the Shi’ite
Crescent, ranging from Tehran over Damascus
into southern Lebanon, thereby clashes with the
Sunni surge in Syria and Iraq. This ultimately
puts forward the two countries’ historic patterns
where authoritarian persistence and foreign
influence has been deeply discriminating, at the
very least as of 2003 in Iraq and 2011 in Syria,
against their Sunni communities respectively.
With the disintegration across the region,
it becomes clear that its distinct socio-religious
contours are about to disperse. Middle Eastern
ethno-religious minority groups cannot be
hermetically protected, thus they are falling prey
to the radicalized climate. With the humanitarian
situation in decline, these groups are facing a
Hobson’s choice when being uncompromisingly
persecuted. The recent vanishing and exodus of
jeopardized groups, regardless their
denomination, shall therefore serve as a vivid
reminder that a part of the region’s integral and
fundamental identity is indeed gravely at stake. It
should be in the international community’s
interest to step up efforts to curb barbarism, and
to dare, at the helm, adamant engagement
towards all-encompassing inclusiveness and
reconciliation; otherwise the repercussions of the
amorphic Middle East are likely to resonate
beyond the region with unforeseen, but certainly
painful consequences.
51
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THE POLITICIZATION OF BOKO HARAM
FEMI OWOLADE
Aislinn Laing, "Boko Haram Leader taunts US
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