Showing posts with label war and peace. Show all posts
Showing posts with label war and peace. Show all posts

Jan 29, 2019


My op-ed in the National Post on Truth Commissions as mechanisms for addressing historical injustices, bringing justice to victims of human rights abuses, and reconciling divided nations. 

National Post
The Conversation 

As long as unresolved historic injustices continue to fester in the world, there will be a demand for truth commissions.

Unfortunately, there is no end to the need.

The goal of a truth commission — in some forms also called a truth and reconciliation commission, as it is in Canada — is to hold public hearings to establish the scale and impact of a past injustice, typically involving wide-scale human rights abuses, and make it part of the permanent, unassailable public record. Truth commissions also officially recognize victims and perpetrators in an effort to move beyond the painful past.

Over the past three decades, more than 40 countries have, like Canada, established truth commissions, including Chile, Ecuador, Ghana, Guatemala, Kenya, Liberia, Morocco, Philippines, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, South Africa and South Korea. The hope has been that restorative justice would provide greater healing than the retributive justice modelled most memorably by the Nuremberg Trials after the Second World War.

There has been a range in the effectiveness of commissions designed to resolve injustices in African and Latin American countries, typically held as those countries made transitions from civil war, colonialism or authoritarian rule.

Most recently, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission addressed historic injustices perpetrated against Canada’s Indigenous peoples through forced assimilation and other 

Its effectiveness is still being measured, with a list of 94 calls to action waiting to be fully implemented. But Canada’s experience appears to have been at least productive enough to inspire Australia and New Zealand  to come to terms with their own treatment of Indigenous peoples by exploring similar processes.

Although both countries have a long history to trying to reconcile with native peoples, recent discussions have leaned toward a Canadian-style TRC model.

South Africa set the standard

There had been other truth commissions in the 1980s and early 1990s, including Chilé’s post-Pinochet reckoning.

But the most recognizable standard became South Africa’s, when President Nelson Mandela mandated a painful and necessary Truth and Reconciliation Commission to resolve the scornful legacy of apartheid, the racist and repressive policy that had driven the African National Congress, including Mandela, to fight for reform. Their efforts resulted in widespread violence and Mandela’s own 27-year imprisonment.

Through South Africa’s publicly televised TRC proceedings, white perpetrators were required to come face-to-face with the Black families they had victimized physically, socially and economically.

There were critics, to be sure, on both sides. Some called it the “Kleenex Commission” for the emotional hearings they saw as going easy on some perpetrators who were granted amnesty after demonstrating public contrition.

Others felt it fell short of its promise — benefiting the new government by legitimizing Mandela’s ANC and letting perpetrators off the hook by allowing so many go without punishment, and failing victims who never saw adequate compensation or true justice.

Saving humanity from ‘hell’
Dag Hammarskjöld, the secretary general of the United Nations through most of the 1950s who faced criticism about the limitations of the UN, once said the UN was “not created to take mankind to heaven, but to save humanity from hell.”

Similarly, South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was not designed to take South Africa to some idyllic utopia. After a century of colonialism and apartheid, that would not have been realistic. It was designed to save South Africa, then a nuclear power, from an implosion — one that many feared would trigger a wider international war.

To the extent that the commission saved South Africa from hell, I think it was successful. Is it a low benchmark? Perhaps, but it did its work.

Since then, other truth commissions, whether they have included reconciliation or reparation mandates, have generated varying results.

Some have been used cynically as tools for governments to legitimize themselves by pretending they have dealt with painful history when they have only kicked the can down the road.

In Liberia, where I worked with a team of researchers last summer, the records of that country’s truth and reconciliation commission are not even readily available to the public. That secrecy robs Liberia of what should be the most essential benefit of confronting past injustices: permanent, public memorialization that inoculates the future against the mistakes of the past.

U.S. needs truth commission

On balance, the truth commission stands as an important tool that can and should be used around the world.

It’s painfully apparent that the United States needs a national truth commission of some kind to address hundreds of years of injustice suffered by Black Americans. There, centuries of enslavement, state-sponsored racism, denial of civil rights and ongoing economic and social disparity have yet to be addressed.

Like many, I don’t hold out hope that a U.S. commission will be established any time soon – especially not under the current administration. But I do think one is inevitable at some point, better sooner than later.

Wherever there is an ugly, unresolved injustice pulling at the fabric of a society, there is an opportunity to haul it out in public and deal with it through a truth commission.

Still, there is not yet any central body or facility that researchers, political leaders or other advocates can turn to for guidance, information and evidence. Such an entity would help them understand and compare how past commissions have worked — or failed to work — and create better outcomes for future commissions.

As the movement to expose, understand and resolve historical injustices grows, it would seem that Canada, a stable democracy with its own sorrowed history and its interest in global human rights, would make an excellent place to establish such a centre.

Do truth and reconciliation commissions heal divided nations?

1/29/2019 12:24:00 AM ,

Jan 20, 2019



“WILL THERE EVER BE PERMANENT PEACE AND EQUALITY IN THE WORLD?”

1/20/2019 12:07:00 AM ,

Sep 17, 2017



 Democracy can be a messy business. Liberal democratic reforms often bring new freedoms and allow for the opening up of civil societies. But the freedoms that come with the transition from dictatorship to democracy not only empower the oppressed and marginalized, they also allow for new forms of repressions in the forms of resurgent nationalisms, xenophobia and hate speech masquerading as free speech. For transitioning states, liberal democracy comes with the good, the bad and the ugly. The real challenge is how to manage the contradictory freedoms that democracy unleashes.

The government of Myanmar under the leadership (even if nominal) of Nobel Peace laureate and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi has been involved in the systematic ethnic cleansing of the minority Muslim Rohingya population. Under the excuse of cracking down on insurgents in the western Rakhine state, Myanmar’s military and security forces have engaged in rapes, killings and house burnings that have driven thousands of Rohingya from their homes into neighbouring Bangladesh. Human rights organisations have reported mass atrocities that match the violations which the country witnessed under decades of repressive military dictatorships.

So, here is the question: Wasn’t the transition to democracy and the ascension to power of the peace and democracy icon, Aung San Suu Kyi, supposed to usher in an era of freedom and civil liberties in Myanmar? Evidently it hasn’t. What we see in Myanmar is the classic paradox of democratic transition.

One the perverse consequences of democracy in Myanmar is that it has unleashed old antagonisms against the Rohingya Muslims, many of whom migrated to Myanmar (then Burma) when the country was ruled by the British colonists as part of greater India. Although some Rohingya were resident in the country long before colonial rule, they have largely been seen as foreigners. Separatist insurgency in the region reinforced suspicion of the Rohingya.

The interesting point here is that the military dictatorship that ruled Myanmar for much of its history keep things in check. Democratic reforms, beginning with a Constitutional referendum in 2008, unleashed long repressed grievances and animosities. Part of the result is the human tragedy that we see in the country today.

This paradox of democratic transition is evident elsewhere - in Iraq and in the Arab Spring revolutions, from Egypt to Libya. Democracy brings freedoms and opens up civil socisteies. But it also frees up repressed grievances and ignites new conflicts. Without the strong hand of dictatorships to rein these in, they can quickly engulf transitioning states which typically have weak institutions and democratic cultures. The lesson of Myanmar is not the failure of liberal democratic transition. It is a lack of recognition of, and preparedness for the powerful reactionary and exclusionary forces that are also unleased by democratic reforms.

The Paradox of Democracy in Aung San Suu Kyi’s Myanmar

9/17/2017 01:21:00 PM ,

Apr 2, 2017



As the war in Syria enters its seventh year with no immediate prospects of ending, the words of the British war poet, Wilfred Owen rings no truer. "My subject is War, and the pity of War," Owen wrote. "The Poetry is in the pity."

The pity of war in Syria is laid bare in our 24-hour media circle: 400,000 dead; 6 million people, including 2.8 million children displaced inside the war-torn country; 5 million Syrians scattered all across the Middle East and in Europe as refugees; a generation of Syrian children and youth lost to war.

Although Wilfred Owen wrote in the tumult of the First World War, his insights into the horrors and pity of war are as relevant today as they were a century ago.
Anthem for Doomed Youth
by Wilfred Owen

 What passing-bells for those who die like cattle?
     Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
     Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
     Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;
     And bugles calling them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
     Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
     The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
     And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Seven Years into the Syrian Conflict: Pondering the Pity of War

4/02/2017 01:27:00 PM

Feb 20, 2017


Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Non-Violence: Why Are we Here? Reflections on Canada and Refugees at 150

2/20/2017 08:37:00 PM

Oct 13, 2016




"The Biafran Humanitarian Crisis."

A new book by my former PhD student. Dr Arua Omaka (now lecturer at Federal University, Ndufu Alike, Ikwo, Nigeria).

The Nigeria-Biafra War been described as one of the most significant global humanitarian crisis in the post-Second World War era. Little has been written about this crisis. It has largely been forgotten even as the world deals with comparable humanitarian crisis in Syria and other parts of the world.

Dr. Omaka offers an engaging account in his book. A must-read for anyone interested in African studies and Global Peace and Conflicts studies.

Revisiting Biafra: War and Humanitarian Crisis

10/13/2016 04:14:00 PM , , ,

Jun 7, 2016

Speaking on the topic: "Truth, Justice and Reconciliation: Re-imagining Human Rights in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding" at the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Lund, Sweden
Truth, Justice and Reconciliation: Re-imagining Human Right in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding

Abstract
There is an assumed tension between human rights and peacebuilding. Although human rights advocates and conflict resolution specialists share the common aim of building stable societies based on the rule of law, they often disagree on method. Conflict resolvers are characterized as willing to compromise rights and ignore abuses in order to secure political agreement. Human rights advocates, on the other hand, are seen as idealistic and uncompromising in seeking redress for violations, even at the cost of prolonging conflict and human suffering. This tension between the principles of human rights and the pragmatics of peacebuilding is most evident in the work of national Truth and Reconciliation Commissions established in post-conflict societies. Since the establishment of the South African TRC in 1994, there has been a proliferation of TRCs as a mechanism of transitional justice. Charged with uncovering the truth about abuses, providing justice to victims and fostering national reconciliation, most TRCs have taken up human rights and peacebuilding tasks. How have TRCs sought to balance their human rights and peacebuilding mandates? Focusing on the work of TRCs in four post-conflict countries – South Africa, Rwanda, Peru and Morocco - this paper explores the relationship between human rights, justice and national reconciliation. It makes the case for a pragmatic yet principled model of Truth and Reconciliation that integrates human rights and conflict-prevention strategies.


Public Talk: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation

6/07/2016 08:28:00 AM ,

Mar 22, 2016



Recent terrorist attacks in Paris and Belgium have prompted questions about how ordinary citizens should respond to terrorism. Fear, anger, anxiety? I recently received an e-mail from a former student asking precisely this question. I have posted our redacted exchange below with her permission.

Good evening Dr. Ibhawoh,

My name is XXX and I was part of the ARTSCI 1C06 Inquiry class that you taught last year along with Dr. XXX.

I was recently prompted by a family member to sign an online petition to "Stop resettling 25,000 Syrian refugees in Canada" and was very deeply unsettled upon reading the petition goals and justification. The recent attacks in Paris have also set the internet up in flames and I find myself at a loss as to how to respond rationally to widespread fear, as petitions like this gain over 20 thousand signatures.

I realize this is quite unconventional but I was wondering if you could direct me to any reliable resources/individuals/organizations that might help me try and start to understand the complexity of the refugee crisis? I am quite upset by some of the reactionary actions that people have taken and feel altogether disoriented as to how to proceed to discuss these very important problems.

I would very much appreciate any guidance you can provide.

Sincerely,
XXX

MY RESPONSE

Hello XXX

The terrorist attacks in Paris (and Belgium) are heartbreaking but they are not isolated events. There have also been recent similar mass terrorist attacks in many other counties - Turkey, Lebanon, Pakistan, Nigeria, Malaysia, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, the list goes on. Russian and Somalian aircrafts have also been subject to terrorist attacks. Terrorism is a global problem that requires a global solution. How does the world respond to these mindless attacks on civilians? Here is what I think.

First, we should condemn them and stand firmly against all forms of terrorism. In an age of terror, we must also be vigilant and proactive about stopping those who seek to inflict pain and suffering on innocent people in the name of ideology or religion. On this question, there can be no sitting on the fence.

The other instinctive response is to take a hard line against all migrants and refugees from Syria and other conflicted countries. However, it is important to remember that most of these refugees are themselves victims of these atrocities. An estimated 250,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian conflict. A vast majority of these have been Muslims who dared to disagree with the extremist Islamist jihadists. Many of them are also women and children who have lost their husbands/fathers in the war.

Refugees from war affected regions must be carefully screened to ensure that those seeking asylum are legitimate refugees and not terrorists trying to sneak in. But we cannot shut the door on everyone who needs help, especially the children. One of the themes we discussed in our Global Challenges class is the fallacy of judging individuals by stereotypes. Rather we should strive to "fracture simplistic binaries."

We need to be careful about who we let in but we cannot and should not turn our backs on legitimate Syrian refugees. Canada has historically been a place of refugees for those fleeing wars and famine such as the Irish, Poles and Ukrainians. We have an obligation to continue with this noble tradition which has saved so many lives in the past and served our nation well.

If you would like to know more about these matters, I would suggest you subscribe to the mailing list of human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch mailing list. AI and HRW have human rights expert and researchers who think through these matters carefully before taking a position.

Best wishes
  
BI

How Should we Respond to Terrorism?

3/22/2016 12:13:00 PM ,

Jan 15, 2016


 

I have been thinking a lot about pacifism lately. In the decades since the anti-war peace movements of the 1960s and 70s, peacemaking has come to be seen as synonymous with absolute pacifism or what some describe as anarchic pacifism. Absolute pacism is the opposition to violence under any circumstance even in defense of self and others. For religious and moral reasons there will always be those who subscribe to absolute pacifism and oppose any form of violence; those who believe that war should never be conducted, even in the justified pursuit of peace. For the absolute pacifists, there can be no moral grounds which can justify resorting to war.

For the absolute pacifists who subscribes to the unconditional rejection of all forms of warfare, there are no just wars; all wars are unjust. This moral position will continue to have a place even in a dangerously conflicted world. When people think about peace movements, they invariably think about absolute pacifists and it becomes easy to dismiss the movement as idealist and utopian, even irrational, offering no real world solutions.

But pacifism covers a spectrum of views. At its most basic level, pacifism is the opposition to war and violence. In a complex and conflicted world such as ours, strategies for peacemaking need not be limited to absolute pacifism. There is a place for pragmatic pacifism.

Many of today’s pacifists are what can be described a pragmatic pacifists who subscribe to Just War theory. Pragmatic pacifists believe that domestic and international disputes can and should be resolved peacefully. If institutions of the military and instruments war must be used, they should be used as a last resort and only in defense of self and others. They reject the use of physical violence to obtain political, economic or social goals.

The pragmatic pacifist believes that if the foe is willing to egregiously hurt others, then it is justified to respond with force. True, some believe that those who subscribe to any use of force are really not pacifists at all, but that is a matter for debate.

I would suggest that peacemaking in today’s conflicted world requires a pragmatic pacifism. Within pragmatic pacifism there is room for humanitarian intervention. The foundational premise of the post-Second World war universal human rights regime, drawn from the lessons of the Holocaust, is that we can no longer allow the excuse of state sovereignty to be used to justify gross human rights violations.

No longer can oppressive dictatorships be allowed to massacre their citizens on the perverted argument that posits: “These are our own people, we can do with then whatever we want.” Universal human rights is the right to meddle in the business of other nations. Backed by the provisions of the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the emerging doctrine of the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the international community now has an obligation and the legal framework to intervene to protect victims of gross human rights violations wherever they may be.

Within these international legal frameworks, UN Peacekeeping missions involved in humanitarian interventions in conflict situations have the mandate to stop hostilities, protect civilians, restore order and enforce peace. Only when law, order and security are restored (sometimes through the use of force) can peacebuilding initiatives be put in place.

It is true that the principle of humanitarian intervention can and has been politicized, sometimes used as an pretext in big power politics to undermine the sovereignty and territorial integrity of less powerful states. But we have also seen military humanitarian intervention put to good use such as the case of NATO intervention in Kosovo and Bosnia Herzegovina in the late 1990s which stopped ethnic cleansing and an impeding genocide.

One of the great tragedies of the Rwandan Genocide was that Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian General who led the UN peacekeeping force in that country on the eve of the genocide could not convince his superiors at the UN secretariat to change the mandate of the force to allow for active military intervention to stop the genocide.

In his compelling and poignant [poin-yant] account of the Genocide, Shake Hands with the Devil, Dellaire points out that it was clear to him and his colleagues in the UN Peacekeeping force that Hutu extremists were making elaborate plans to massacre Tutsi civilians. Prompt and decisive intervention by the international community, some of simple as jamming radios stations broadcasting hate propaganda, may have prevented the genocide and saved thousands of lives. But in that case, as in the Cambodian Genocide two decades earlier, the apathy and indecisiveness of the international community allowed the massacre of a million people.

What are the guarantees that pragmatic pacifism can provide the solutions to conflict in our deeply divided world? Simply, there are no guarantees. But what are the alternatives to peace? The appeal of pragmatic pacifism is that it recognizes that just wars may sometimes be waged in self-defense or the pursuit of peace, and it yet offers the hope of avoiding the scourge and devastation of war.

The US President Ronald Regan, more pragmatist than pacifist himself, faced similar questions when he initiated nuclear disarmament talks with the Soviet Union in the1980s. He was confronted by critics and sceptics who worried that the Soviets could not be trusted to keep their own end of the agreements, and warned that disarmament talks would undermine US security and strategic geopolitical interest. In response, Reagan famously stated: “Peace is not the absence of conflict. It is the ability to cope with conflict by peaceful means.” Despite the gloomy predictions of the skeptics, Reagan pushed on with the nuclear disarmament talks, setting the tone for de-escalating US-Soviet tensions and ultimately, ending the Cold War.

It is ironic that a bi-polar Cold War world of superpowers, nuclear proliferation and the threat of mutually assured destruction now seem more stable than a fragmented unipolar world. The end of the Cold War was expected to usher an era of unmitigated world peace.

This clearly has not happened. Angry voices of war and fear have drowned out the voices of hope and peace.

Our conflicted world needs more voices of peace, now more than ever before.

A Case for Pragmatic Pacifism

1/15/2016 05:10:00 PM ,

Nov 15, 2015


In our 24 hour news media circle, it is difficult to escape the stark and often depressing reality that we live in troubled times. One gets the impression that the world is caving it around us. A combination of domestic social disruptions and global political upheavals pose serious threats to the stability of local communities, the integrity of states and a fragile international order.

In the Middle East, the promise of an Arab spring has not only failed to materialize but has, in some countries, ushered a dark age of brutality and human misery. The fall of long standing dictatorships has triggered political instability and upheaval from Libya to Yemen. In Syria, a protracted civil war rages - a situation made worse by the role of extremist groups such as Al Qaeda and ISIS. An estimated 250,000 Syrians (a quarter of a million people) have lost their lives since the start of the conflict.

We must remind ourselves that these are not just numbers. 250,000 lives is about half the entire population of my city, Hamilton. In pondering this figure I am reminded of that quote by Stalin: “The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of millions, a statistic.” It is cynical but also sadly true. At some point, we lose count and the shock value disappear. Lost lives become simply numbers.

The disheartening images of thousands of Syrian refugees streaming into Europe and living under squalid conditions reflect the international repercussions of this conflict. Who can forget the heart-wrenching image of the three-year-old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, whose little body was washed up on a beach in Turkey only a few weeks ago? His family was making a final, desperate attempt to flee the war in Syria to join relatives in Canada. Migration charities say that as many as 20,000 people may have died at sea trying to reach Europe in the last two decades.

In a sign of how troubled the Middle East has become, the Israeli-Palestinian issue, long considered the central peace and security question in the region, seem to have taken a back seat in the face of more urgent and grave threats to regional and global security.

In Ukraine, local identity politics and big-power geo-politics have triggered a civil war that threatens the post-Cold War peace and stability in Eastern Europe. In Afghanistan, Pakistan and Kashmir, Taliban militants continue a long-running insurgency that has resulted in the loss of thousands of lives.

In North Africa, the new nation of South Sudan remains embroiled in conflict and in West Africa, the militant Islamist group Boko Haram has unleashed terror and indiscriminate violence against civilians, including innocent school girls.

In Asia, the nuclear threat posed by North Korea remains unresolved while the territorial ambitions of a resurgent China raises political tensions and new security concerns in the region. From Myanmar and Thailand in Asia to Columbia in South America, states and societies remain embroiled in internal conflicts and militant insurgencies that adversely affect the daily lives of ordinary people.

Even in the relatively stable Western democracies tensions simmer just beneath the surface. In Europe irregular migration of refugees fleeing wars in the Middle East and North Africa has given rise to a resurgent xenophobia and the dawn of new right-wing extremisms. In the United States, the civil rights legacy on Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in his struggle for inclusion and against racial injustices has found new voices in the Black Lives Matters movement.

In Canada, Australia and New Zealand, indigenous people continue to struggle against the legacies of historical marginalization and for socio-economic inclusion. In Canada, the Idle No More Movement and the recently released Report of the Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission paint a picture of continued alienation and exclusion of indigenous communities that challenges the country to confront and address a historical injustice perpetrated against some citizens.

It is ironic that a bi-polar Cold War world of superpowers, nuclear proliferation and the threat of mutually assured destruction now seem far more stable than a fragmented unipolar world. The end of the Cold War was expected to usher an era of unmitigated world peace. Now, we know better. Our world remains deeply troubled and conflicted. The quest for global peace remains as relevant today as it was at the height of the Cold War.

Our Troubled and Conflicted World

11/15/2015 08:18:00 PM ,

Nov 14, 2015


The spate of terrorist attacks from Paris to Turkey, Lebanon to Nigeria demands our collective reflection on the price of peace.

The Institute for Economics and Peace, an policy think-tank, issues an annual Global Peace Index (GPI) that uses a variety of indicators to score and rank peacefulness in 162 countries around the world. In its latest report, the Institute stated that while the overall number of wars being waged around the world is declining, the world has become much less peaceful.

In fact, such peacelessness cost the global economy about thirteen hundred dollars ($1,350) per person last year. What is the value of peace? In 2012 the Institute for Economics and Peace estimated that world peace was worth $9.4 trillion. A year later, that number had grown to $9.8 trillion—or 11.3 percent of global GDP (I like to recite these numbers because they get the attention of those bean counters obsessed with quantitative measurements). Numbers and dollars signs also grabs the attention of politicians and policymakers.

So, how exactly do wars and peace decline at the same time? How can we have fewer wars, but less peace? The post-Cold War period has seen a spike in internal conflicts and civil wars, but overall conflicts between nations and state militaries are becoming less frequent. However, global peacefulness has been falling for the past seven years, and over 500 million people currently live in countries at risk for further declines in peacefulness in the short-term. 

This is principally because War is no longer the preserve of national armies and sovereign powers. Non state actors increasing have the capacity to engage in armed conflict thereby reducing overall peacefulness around the world. This takes the form of domestic terrorism, insurgencies, rebellions, revolts and uprisings.

In other words, we have fewer wars and less peace today because conflict has become democratized. It is easier today for non-state actors such as militant insurgent groups with no fixed addresses to unleash wide scale violence than at the height of the Cold War. Today, the weapons of mass destructions are not confined to state armories. They are also in the hands of terrorists, insurgents and unregulated militias who have less qualms about deploying these weapons. 

We need to think of peace not simply in terms of pressuring governments to avoid war but also in terms of good governance, mass education, economic and social reforms to address the alienations and hopelessness that drive so many young people into the hands of crazed Islamist terrorists.

What is the price of Peace?

11/14/2015 12:18:00 AM

Nov 13, 2015


Amidst the rise of Nazism in Germany in 1939 and Hitler’s aggressive militarization that foreshadowed the Second World War, Mahatma Gandhi, the pacifist leader of the non-violent movement against British rule in India wrote a letter to Adolf Hitler. It was a short and simple letter, just 12 lines; 126 words in all.

Dear Friend, Friends have been urging me to write to you for the sake of humanity. But I have resisted their request, because of the feeling that any letter from me would be an impertinence. Something tells me that I must not calculate and that I must make my appeal for whatever it may be worth. It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay the price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war, not without considerable success? Any way, I anticipate your forgiveness, if I have erred in writing to you. I remain, Your sincere friend, - Signed - M.K.Gandhi

Later in December 1940 with the outbreak of war, Gandhi sent another slightly longer letter to Hitler. In it, he once again urged Hitler to heed the appeals for peace coming from millions of voices around the world. 

He stated: “We have no doubt about your bravery or devotion to your fatherland, nor do we believe that you are the monster described by your opponents. But your own writings and pronouncements and those of your friends and admirers leave no room for doubt that many of your acts are monstrous and unbecoming of human dignity… Such are your humiliation of Czechoslovakia, the rape of Poland and the swallowing of Denmark. I am aware that your view of life regards such spoliations as virtuous acts. But we have been taught from childhood to regard them as acts degrading humanity. Hence we cannot possibly wish success to your arms.” 

Gandhi went on in the letter to explain the philosophy behind his non-violent resistance to British rule in India stating, “We have found in non-violence a force which, if organized, can without doubt match itself against a combination of all the most violent forces in the world.”

Gandhi never received an acknowledgement or reply from Hitler and it is unclear today whether his letters even reached Hitler. Some historians of the period have speculated that senior Nazi officials would have found the letter imprudent and might have been unwilling to pass it on the Fuhrer. Others theorize that Hitler would have been highly offended by Gandhi’s letters and not taken them seriously. Hitler proceeded with his war. World War II would turn out to be the deadliest military conflict in history with over 60 million people killed. 

Students and scholars of peace have long asked: Was Gandhi naïve? Did he really expect this letters to have an impact on Nazism or Hitler’s vision of the Third Reich? Were his letters to Hitler a waste of time? Did they amount to appeasement as some have suggested? 

Hindsight, they say, is 20/20 and half a century later, it is easy to speculate as to what should have been the right course of action. True, Gandhi’s letters were ineffectual. But were they a waste of time? I think not. 

As a leading moral voice of his era, Gandhi felt an obligation to his conscience and the world, to make an appeal for peace irrespective of the odds of success. Ultimately, peacemaking is about pragmatic risk-taking and Gandhi took his risks for the sake of peace. Given the unspeakable horror and brutality of terrorism and war that afflicts many countries today, our world is in depsrate need of a new generation of risk takers for peace. 

A Peacemaker's Appeal: Gandhi's Letter to Hitler

11/13/2015 11:38:00 PM

Oct 8, 2015

It is encouraging that many more people seem interested in learning about peace and what we can do as individuals to promote peace and transform conflict in our communities, our nations and our world. 

Public Talk: Global Peace and Local Action

10/08/2015 11:50:00 PM ,

Sep 20, 2015

I reflect on the possibilities and perils of peacebuilding in an uncertian and conflicted world. 

Making Impossible Peace

9/20/2015 10:16:00 PM ,

Jan 31, 2015


Winston Churchill has been written into the history books as a heroic wartime leader. His resolute stand against Nazism rallied Britain and the Allies to victory during World War II. But now, a BBC News Magazine story sheds light on his more uncertain and complicated record.

While many may condemn these revisionist accounts of Churchill’s legacies, the lesson here is that all great leaders are products of their time. In the quest for culture heroes, societies often construct one-dimensional narratives about leaders who often lived complicated lives.

We put them on a pedestal and deify them. But our heroes need not be unblemished. If anything, their failures and foibles humanize them and make them more realistic role models. We can emulate their many good sides and learn to avoid what, with hindsight, we now recognise as their not-so-good sides.

Mandela’s legacy as a peacemaker is not diminished by his armed militancy and resort to violence at a critical point in the struggle against apartheid. Gandhi’s humanism and philosophy of Ahimsa (Non-violence) is not diminished by his support for British mobilization of Indian troops during World War I. These aspects of their lives help us better appreciate the realities of the times they lived.

In the same way, drawing attention to Churchill’s racism, anti-Semitism and support for the wartime use of poison gas doesn't make him any less a great wartime leader.

In my book Imperialism and Human Rights, I argued that although Churchill was idolized in Britain and its allies, many African nationalists struggling against British colonialism during the war considered him a duplicitous and die-hard imperialist. I received a lot of flak for this claim.

Winston Churchill: Wartime hero and an Uncertain Legacy

1/31/2015 11:34:00 PM , ,


After months of fighting, Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State jihadists in Syria finally succeeded in recapturing the key town of Kobane. The Kurds defeat of the Islamic State jihadists was widely celebrated as a victory for the forces of moderation and toleration against extremists. Rightly so.

If ever there was a just war, this would appear to be one. But even in this war, there are ultimately no real winners. Everyone involved loses something – lives, dignity, relationships, hope, aspirations, community, property. This Associated Press photo of the “liberated” Kobane tells it all. It could well be a scene from the apocalypse. A remainder that in war, there are no real winners.

More photos below

War has no real winners

1/31/2015 10:29:00 PM ,

Dec 19, 2014

This Christmas marks the centenary of a remarkable event in peacemaking.

On Christmas day of 1914, amidst the ruins and devastation of the First World War, British and German infantrymen declared an unlikely truce.  In a story that has come to represent the hope and generosity of the human spirit, soldiers on both sides took a break from war to sing Christmas carols. They left their trenches to exchange pleasantries and gifts in sub-zero temperatures. By some accounts, they even took time to play a soccer match before returning to their trenches to continue the fighting and killing. For a fleeting moment, peace was possible.

As a year defined by global conflicts and social upheavals draws to a close, the holiday season provides another opportunity to reflect on the proclamation “peace on earth and goodwill to all.”

The Christmas truce of 1914 holds 3 important lessons for peacemaking in our world today.

1. Peace is always possible. Even in the darkest moments of conflict and bitterness; even in the hostile and dehumanizing trenches of warfare peace is always a possibility.

2. Peacemaking stands a better chance at the early stages of conflict. Nothing like the Christmas truce of 1914 ever happened again throughout the course of the First World War. As the war progressed, annihilation rather than fraternization came to characterize the conflict. The Christmas truce could only happen at the beginning of the war, before attitudes hardened on both sides of the conflict. As one historian notes, "This was before the poisoned gas, before aerial bombardment … By the end of 1915 both sides were far too bitter for this to happen again."

3. Ordinary people can be effective peacemakers. Peace initiative need not always be top-down; they can come from the bottom-up. The Christmas truce of 1914 was a spontaneous initiative of weary solders in the trenches who desperately wanted a break from war. Had the generals, monarchs and politicians any say in it, the truce would never have happened. After all, soldiers are supposed to be fighters not peace makers. But peacemaking cannot be the sole prerogative of politicians, statesmen and diplomats in conflict situations. The stakes in war are simply too high.

Coalitions of ordinary citizens, even common solders in war trenches, can be the engines of peace-making. Unfortunately, the truce of 1914 was short-lived. But the key lesson for all of us is that the possibilities for peace are often closer than we think.

For more on the Christmas truce see:

A handwritten letter from British soldier Gerald Blake, describing the event as perceived by a participant, one who would later be killed in action. The original letter is held at the McMaster University Library

The Christmas Truce Website

BBC: “What really happened during the Christmas Truce?”

The Forgotten Christmas Truce of 1914

Peace on Earth: Lessons from the Christmas Truce of 1914

12/19/2014 11:22:00 AM ,

Jul 25, 2014

Global security expert: Insurgencies making world more dangerous than even at height of Cold War | CTV News

The world is a more dangerous place “than even at the height of the Cold War,” when the threat of mutually assured destruction kept the world’s superpowers in check, says one historian and global security expert.
With fighting between Israel and Hamas flaring once again and adding to what seems like a growing list of conflicts around the world, the threat to global peace is more significant than ever before, says Bonny Ibhawoh of the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ont.

At the height of the Cold War in the 1960s, the United States and Soviet Union were ultimately prevented from engaging in all-out war by the threat of mutually assured destruction, Ibhawoh told CTV’s Canada AM on Thursday.

“But today we live in a world where the weapons of mass destruction are in the hands of militias, insurgencies and so there’s really no control over how these weapons are used around the world,” he said.
During the Cold War, the West had a clearly defined enemy in the Soviet Union and containing Communism was a singular goal.

Now, there are almost too many enemies, Ibhawoh says.
“Fragmented warfare, insurgencies, asymmetrical warfare: That is exactly the problem,” he said, noting that one scholar has coined the term “the democratization of the weapons of mass destruction.”
And unlike the 1960s, when a strong and vocal peace movement tried to drown out the sound of war drums with popular protest songs, activists and artists today are not writing this generation’s “Imagine” or “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

“Today we see that the voices for peace have been drowned out by the voices of extremism and the voices of intolerance and I think that makes us an even more dangerous world today,” Ibhawoh said.
What is also missing today, he says, is grassroots political activism that has the power to push world leaders to the negotiating table to solve conflicts, he said. For example, “a very vigorous grassroots activist movement” in South Africa and around the world helped end apartheid.

“That is missing today,” Ibhawoh said. “And I think that unless you begin to create a space for these kinds of grassroots activism, the prospects for peace in our world are very slim.”

World enduring 'more dangerous times' than at height of Cold War:

7/25/2014 06:29:00 PM , , ,

Apr 8, 2014





My colleague, Dr. Eugene Nshimiyimana, tells the heart-wrenching story of how he survived the Rwandan genocide. A lesson in the destructiveness of hate and the redeeming power of peace.

Rwanda's Genocide: The Solider and the Survivor

4/08/2014 03:14:00 PM , ,

 

It's been 20 years since the genocide in Rwanda. The lesson for the world is a simple one. Never again. Here, my reflections on the genocide. 

CHCH TV News

Monday marks the 20th anniversary of one of the most violent chapters in human history. The Rwandan genocide saw more than one million people massacred. Carried out by Rwanda’s ethnic Hutu’s — they targeted the country’s minority Tutsi and moderate Hutu’s — using machetes, gasoline, guns and grenades.

Dignitaries from around the world attended a ceremony in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali. Actors performed a play based on the genocide. It had some in the audience were overcome with emotion — and needed to be carried away. Many watching lost their entire families in the genocide. For the United Nations, it was an opportunity to reflect on how the world responded two decades ago. Ban-Ki Moon is the U.N. Secretary General: “Many United Nations personnel and others showed remarkable bravery but we could have done much more, we should have done much more.”

The dark chapter in human history is horrific — but is one many say should not be hidden because it can be a lesson for the rest of the world. We caution you that some of the details and images in this next story are disturbing — and not suitable for all viewers. We spoke with two people at McMaster University Monday. One of them was directly impacted by the genocide.

Beatrice Kansayisa left Rwanda to go study in Cyprus, and just in time. Twenty years ago her parents, brothers, sisters and a neice were slaughtered by Hutu’s: “I lost everybody. I could’ve been killed. I’m lucky. I heard different stories but the majority died with machetes.”

She watched on television. The one hundred day long civil war that eventually killed about one million people in Rwanda. The world did nothing — countries who had the ability to intervene had nothing to gain. But McMaster University professor Bonny Ibhawoh says twenty years after the genocide, Rwanda has had to balance justice and reconciliation. “There wasn’t really an appetite for intervening in this obscure part of Africa. No strategic interest. Rwanda has no oil. The Rwandan government has had to tread that fine line between ensuring justice is done to the victims of the genocide but creating a free world that will move the nation forward that allows for reconciliation and healing.

20 years since Rwanda genocide: Never Again

4/08/2014 02:39:00 PM , ,
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