May 27, 2012


I woke up this morning to the disturbing headline: “108 Civilians Massacred in Syria.” The story was accompanied by a photograph of rows of corpses wrapped in cloth. Some of the victims were clearly children. The rest of the story was banal in comparison: The United Nations Security Council condemns the Syrian government for its role in the massacre; Syrian officials and opposition forces trade blame over responsibility for the killings; Russia opposes stronger language for the Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government.

I get a feeling of déjà vu. We’ve seen several similar scenarios in the past few years – In Darfur, Libya, Yemen. Innocent civilians are being massacred in the thousands and the world “holds talks.” Everyone agrees that the Syrian government actions not only violate the cease-fire engineered under United Nations auspices but also jeopardize any effort at peace. Yet, there is obstinate unwillingness to take immediate concerted actions to stop the killings.

No doubt, the situation in Syria is a complicated one. The struggle to oust the Assad regime has metamorphosed into a regional battle between Sunni and Shiite nations – a proxy war, with Saudi Arian and Iran pulling the strings. But at some point people’s lives should matter more. It is time for world leaders to take decisive action to stop the killings.

American leaders facing upcoming elections are foot-dragging. The Russian and Chinese governments seem more concerned with strategic geopolitical calculations. Arab states in the region have been more hindrance than help. The Annan ‘peace’ plan has achieved little, allowing the Assad regime more time to execute its military onslaught. It is time to stop the killings.

Last year, I wrote comments below about the massacres in Libya. Help in that case came too little too late. The Story in Syria is turning out to be the same.

What will our excuse be this time?
When it happened in Auschwitz, we said we didn't know it was happening.
When it happened in Cambodia we said we were shut out by the Khmer Rouge.
When it happened in Rwanda we said we underestimated the scale of killings.
When it happened in Bosnia we said it was "ethnic cleansing," - not quite genocide - and acted hesitantly
When it happened in Darfur, we said he weren’t sure the killings merited the label.
Now, a voice cries out from Libya Syria that it's happening again before our very eyes.
What will our excuse be this time?

Time to stop the killings in Syria

5/27/2012 11:11:00 PM , ,

May 18, 2012

"A fundamental asymmetry in globalization is between capital and labour. Capital is now free to move across national frontiers; the daily flow of dollars and other major currencies runs into billions. There is no similar mobility for labour."
- Yash Ghai, Human Rights: Southern Voices (2009)

The quote for this week comes from a book I am currently reading with a graduate class. It is an edited volume titled Human Rights: Southern Voices which contains several excellent and insightful essays. One of the more persuasive essays in the volume is by the constitutional law scholar Yash Ghai. Ghai explores the value of human rights discourse as a framework for political negotiation and compromise between societies in the face of the gaping global inequalities and inequalities induced by globalization. His thoughts on the fundamental contradictions of contemporary globalization are spot-on.

Quote of the Week: A fundamental asymmetry in Globalization

5/18/2012 01:10:00 AM ,

Apr 23, 2012


The spate of teenagers committing suicides because of bullying is troubling. As a parent and teacher I have struggled hard to find an explanation for this disturbing trend. Is bullying just getting more pervasive in our culture or are today’s kids less emotionally equipped to deal with bullying? I am not sure. But whatever the reason, there is need for concerted public efforts to draw attention to the devastating impact on bulling on children, their parents and society at large.

In a bold and forceful act of advocacy, a local newspaper in Iowa devoted the entire front page of its Sunday edition to an anti-bullying editorial after a gay teen in the community committed suicide. According to news reports, relatives say 14-year-old Kenneth Weishuhn Jr. suffered intense harassment, including threatening cellphone calls and nasty comments posted online, after coming out to family and friends about a month ago. He died April 15 from what the local sheriff's office described only as a "self-inflicted injury."

There simply has to be one united message on this -- Bullying has no place in civilized society. Not in our schools, not in our homes and not in our workplaces.

Bullying is a Human Rights Violation

4/23/2012 08:35:00 AM ,

Apr 18, 2012

The editors of the Bulletin of the Canadian Historical Association invited me to do a reflection on teaching Africa in Canada. This appeared in the April 2012 edition.

***********************
“What Comes to Mind when you think about Africa?” Doing African History in the Canadian Academe

Every term, I begin teaching my undergraduate class in African History with the same question: “What images come to mind when you think about Africa?” And every year, I get pretty much the same answers: war and poverty; famines and starving children; safaris and wild animals; tribal people and exotic costumes. Sometimes, I get the odd “Nelson Mandela” or “The Lion King” (the Disney animated movie with an African theme). For the most part however, the images my students bring to class come, not from personal experiences, but straight out of the popular media.

These images sometimes prod their interest in African history. Students come to my class wanting to know more about apartheid in South Africa because they have seen the movie Invictus, or more know about the Rwandan Genocide after seeing Hotel Rwanda. But these images also pose enormous challenge for anyone teaching Africa in the Canada and many parts of the West. How do you get these students, products of the internet age and a pervasive sound bite media culture, to think about Africa beyond the ubiquitous stereotypical images and representations of the continent? It is a daunting task.

I started teaching African History over a decade ago, first in Africa and later in the United Kingdom and the United States. In these places, African history holds certain relevance. In Africa, African history is local history; in the United Kingdom it is an integral part of British imperial history; in the United States it is tied to the African-American experience. In Canada, the story is slightly different. African history does not enjoy the same interconnectedness with local history as it does in Africa, Europe or the United States. It should. One can point to several links between African and Canadian history dating back to the eighteenth century black loyalists of Nova Scotia. Still, many of my students come to my classes with very little background in African history. They may have learnt about ancient Egypt, the Pharaohs and the pyramids in High School, but chances are that they did so as part as a history of Western Civilization rather than African History.

“What Comes to Mind when you think about Africa?” Doing African History in the Canadian Academe

4/18/2012 09:36:00 PM , ,

Mar 9, 2012

Many of you would have seen the viral video "KONY2012" put out by the non-profit group Invisible Children. It is part of a campaign to make the Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony notoriously famous, raise awareness about his atrocities and facilitate his arrest for crimes against children. Although the campaign has been a hugely successful experiment in viral media and digital activism, some have raised concerns about the accuracy and effectiveness of the campaign. Here, I weigh in on the need to put the KONY12 campaign in proper context.


Watch the KONY2012 Campaign Here

Putting the KONY1212 Campaign in Context

3/09/2012 01:03:00 PM , ,

Jan 25, 2012

"...Those of you saying our politicians spend money like drunken sailors need to apologize to drunken sailors....Drunken sailors spend their own money."
-- Anonymous online comment on a news story about the penchant of politicians to be profligate with public funds.

Quote of the Week

1/25/2012 04:05:00 PM ,

Jan 21, 2012


It was Rev. Martin Luther King who stated: “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” There can be no truer statement.

Very often, the positions we take as individuals and society are shaped by today’s realities and exigencies. Our decisions are concerned with the here and now. We are less concerned about the verdict of history. We rarely ask: How will future generations judge today’s expedient decisions? Will our decisions stand the “moral test of time?”

The story of Richard and Mildred Loving is an example of why, as a society, we must consider the verdict of history in the decisions we make today.

Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, were arrested in their bedroom a few days after their marriage in 1958 for violating Virginia’s “Racial Integrity Act,” a state law banning marriages between white and non-white persons. At the time, the couple did not know that they were breaking any law. When the group of arresting police officers invaded their bedroom, the couple showed them their marriage certificate from another state, hoping that it would be a defence. It became the evidence the police needed for a criminal charge.

Richard and Mildred Loving were sentenced to one year in prison and banished from the state of Virginia for 25 years. Their legal appeal against this verdict ultimately reached the US Supreme Court which declared Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law unconstitutional. The landmark case of Loving v. Virginia marked a turning point in the civil rights movement in the United States. This was not just a legal verdict, it was a moral verdict. Fifty years later, the verdict of history is also clear. The authorities in Virginia were on the wrong side of history.

The positions that we take today on social and political issues will also be judged by future generations. Knowing this, such positions should be informed not only by the contingencies and exigencies of today but also by the key question: What will the verdict of history be? We cannot always be sure of the answer, but we must never cease to ask this question.

The Moral Verdict of History

1/21/2012 10:45:00 PM ,

Jan 19, 2012

I am teaching an undergraduate course on "Human Rights" this term and last week the topic was "Universalism vs. Cultural Relativism." As always, it was interesting to get the students' perspective on a debate that has long dominated human rights scholarship.

I began with a survey of the class of about 60 students. “How many of you here think human rights are universal?” Only 6 hands went up. “How many think that human rights are culturally relative?” 40 hands went up? “How many cannot make up their minds about this?” About 10 hands went up. Verdict: Most of my students think that human rights, despite the claim to universality, are in fact not universal. It’s a conclusion that proponents of human rights will find rather disheartening

But then, I tweaked the question a bit. “How many of you think human rights OUGHT to be universal?” 42 hands went up. “How may think human rights ought not to be universal?” Only 6 hands went up? Verdict: Although these students thought that the contemporary international human rights regime/movement is far from being universal, they nevertheless saw in it the promise and ideal of universalism. This offers some consolation. But whether this Universalist utopia can ever really be attained was the subject of another debate.

After the class, one of the students sent me the cartoon above. For him, it captured humorously but quite eloquently, the unending debate over the universality and cultural relativism of human rights.

Cultural Relativism and Human Rights: Are human rights only in the eyes of the beholder?

1/19/2012 01:46:00 PM ,

Jan 15, 2012

What qualifies to be called “Genocide”? These days, it depends on who you ask. Although the UN Genocide Convention is very clear on what constitutes genocide, controversies abound. Not every mass killing amounts to genocide and in fact, the term did not even exist before 1944 when Raphael Lemkin used it to describe Nazi policies of systematic mass murder of European Jews. Before then, Winston Churchill simply called it “a crime without a name.”

The United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948 which established “genocide” as an international crime defines genocide specifically in terms of acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a “national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” For some strange reasons, “political groups” are omitted. So, theoretically, all the members of an opposition political party in a country can be massacred by a ruling regime and it still would not amount to genocide.

“Genocide” and the politics of labeling

1/15/2012 11:04:00 PM
"I've worked in an economy that rewards someone who saves the lives of others on a battlefield with a medal, rewards a great teacher with thank-you notes from parents, but rewards those who can detect the mispricing of securities with sums reaching into the billions." – Warren Buffett

Quote of the Week

1/15/2012 06:09:00 PM
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