Peace Centre needs more support

A story about the McMaster Centre for Peace Studies published in the Hamilton Spectator

TheSpec.com - Opinions -

Peace Centre needs more support
Ray Cunnington

The Hamilton Spectator(Apr 4, 2008)

After five years of fighting, with some 4,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, and the loss of so much international prestige, it is worth recognizing the value of alternatives to destructive force.

Hamiltonians can be justly proud that McMaster was one of the first universities in Canada dedicated to the study of peace. At present, the program's first year attracts some 300 students and now leads to a combined Honours B.A.

While many people have heard about the Centre for Peace Studies, few know what goes on, still fewer are aware of the progress that is slowly being made globally in peace research and the science of conflict resolution.

At McMaster, the discipline of Peace Studies began some 25 years ago during the era of "Mutual Assured Destruction" -- the doctrine at the climax of the nuclear arms race between America and Russia.

Appalled by the inability of world leaders to halt the disaster course on which they were headed, some local academics including Hanna and Alan Newcombe, Paul Dekar and Graeme MacQueen decided it was time the university addressed the need to study peace. They realized that the content of many courses already being taught at McMaster included insights on both peace and war.

At that time many professors of physics, chemistry, engineering, social science, religion, and medicine were recognizing the pressing dangers of nuclear annihilation, so an inventory was made of the courses that might logically be brought together to design and create the new discipline of Peace Studies.

While regarding war and certain kinds of violence as problematic, it did not mean that everyone who entered the program had to be a pacifist or condemn all violence or every call to arms. In the 19 years since its inception, the passion of its instructors and associates have achieved extraordinary things with very few resources. The centre was officially established by the university in 1989.

Through its combined Honours B.A. program, its students have studied protracted wars such as in Vietnam and the Palestine/Israeli conflict as well as peace efforts sponsored by the United Nations. By helping to raise funds, the centre has sponsored the annual Bertrand Russell Peace Lectures and the Mahatma Gandhi Lecture on Non-violence.

International teams working with McMaster have studied the effects of war and sanctions on the health of children in war zones; projects which together have brought some $2 million to the university in funding for research and action on war and peacebuilding.
The centre has been able to host two internationally supported medical conferences on teaching Peace through Health.

It has also co-sponsored workshops in Afghanistan that resulted in a Peace Manual translated into both Dari and Pashto languages, and peace education being introduced into the curriculum of Afghan schools. Other McMaster teams have studied conflicts in Sri Lanka, in Gaza and in the war zones of Croatia and Serbia. A Hamilton team also visited India, studying the work of the Shanti Sena, a highly effective women's peace brigade movement started by a follower of Gandhi.

Today's students say no subject is more urgent or more relevant than Peace Studies, reporting that it gives them skills they can apply in their daily lives. Some go on to further education in the department of peace studies at Bradford University in Britain, or teacher's college, or obtain positions in governmental or non-governmental offices.

Two former students, Samantha Nutt and Eric Hoskins, founded War Child Canada, and are among the heroic ones who have made a difference in active war zones. In a world facing climate change, and shortages of oil and water, you might think that peace research would be given a high priority among world leaders. Yet, like the problem of global warming, the study of peacemaking has often been discounted or marginalized. At McMaster, because it operates out of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, the budget for Peace Studies is difficult to assess.

The centre's new director is Dr. Bonny Ibhawoh, a historian with a warm, engaging personality who brings to his job a wide experience in human rights gained on three continents. While maintaining the high academic traditions of peace studies he accepts the need for town and gown to work together.

To advance its important work the centre needs more support.
It needs public figures to call for a fully funded faculty, and local benefactors like a Michael DeGroote or a David Braley to make the major donations needed to find effective answers to age-old problems. Ordinary citizens are far ahead of their governments in wanting a world without war. With increased support the centre could truly become a leading voice in Canada for transcending conflict.

Ray Cunnington writes on peace issues. He lives in Dundas.

Peace Centre needs more support

4/07/2008 11:30:00 PM media, war and peace

Betrand Russell Peace Lectures 2008

Dr Cynthia Cockburn delivers was the 19th Betrand Russell Peace Lectures organized by the Centre for Peace Studies at McMaster University.

Betrand Russell Peace Lectures 2008

3/10/2008 12:20:00 AM education, war and peace

Imperialism and Human Rights

Bonny Ibhawoh, Imperialism and Human Rights: Colonial Discourses of Rights and Liberties in African History (State University of New Yor Pess, 2007).

Summary

2007 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

This book looks at the language of rights used by diverse interest groups in British-colonized Nigeria.In this seminal study, Bonny Ibhawoh investigates the links between European imperialism and human rights discourses in African history. Using British-colonized Nigeria as a case study, he examines how diverse interest groups within colonial society deployed the language of rights and liberties to serve varied socioeconomic and political ends. Ibhawoh challenges the linear progressivism that dominates human rights scholarship by arguing that, in the colonial African context, rights discourses were not simple monolithic or progressive narratives. They served both to insulate and legitimize power just as much as they facilitated transformative processes. Drawing extensively on archival material, this book shows how the language of rights, like that of “civilization” and “modernity,” became an important part of the discourses deployed to rationalize and legitimize empire.

“This carefully constructed and well-documented book opens a new chapter in the study of human rights and sets a high standard for others to emulate.” — CHOICE

“It is generally assumed that the present-day human rights revolution began in 1948 with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. While not taking direct issue with the importance of the UDHR, Ibhawoh very effectively shows how the language of rights had already been used (and misused) in British colonial practices in Nigeria. Fascinating and thought-provoking, this book has a great deal of relevance to the major human rights debates that are going on right now.” — Mark Gibney, author of Five Uneasy Pieces: American Ethics in a Globalized World

“In this very interesting volume, Bonny Ibhawoh shows the reader how Africans in colonial Nigeria used the British imperial discourse of rights, and merged it with their own traditional notions of rights and obligations, to negotiate their own interests against their colonial overlords. Using court documents from the time, Ibhawoh investigates property rights in land, civil and political rights, and rights in marriage and the family. Ibhawoh bridges the gap between theoretical analysis of human rights, and analysis of human rights as negotiated terrain, rooted in local struggles.” — Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Canada Research Chair in International Human Rights, Wilfrid Laurier UniversityBonny Ibhawoh is Assistant Professor of History at McMaster University, Canada.

Table Of Contents

List of Illustrations Foreword Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations

1. The Subject of Rights and the Rights of Subjects
2. Right, Liberties, and the Imperial World Order
3. Stronger than the Maxim Gun: Law, Rights, and Justice
4. Confronting State Trusteeship: Land Rights Discourses
5. Negotiating Inclusion: Social Rights Discourses
6. Citizens of the World’s Republic: Political and Civil Rights Discourses
7. The Paradox of Rights TalkNotes Bibliography Index

Imperialism and Human Rights

3/01/2008 04:04:00 PM education, human rights

Is there bood on your hands!

My talk to the Amnesty International Group at McMaster University about the blood diamond trade in Africa.

Is there bood on your hands!

2/25/2008 12:55:00 PM africa, education, human rights

Canada puts US on 'torture list'

The times seem to be changing as this BBC new story shows. Everywhere one looks, human rights seems to be in retreat...even in the great liberal democracies of the West.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7195276.stm
Canada puts US on 'torture list'

The United States has been listed as a country where prisoners are at risk of torture in a training document produced by the Canadian foreign ministry. It also classifies some US interrogation techniques as torture. The manual - part of a training course on torture awareness for diplomats - also includes Israel, China, Iran and Afghanistan on its watch list. A government spokesman said the manual did not reflect the views of Canada, which is an ally of the US and Israel.

"The training manual is not a policy document and does not reflect the views or policies of this government," said a spokesman for Foreign Minister Maxime Bernier. The manual lists US interrogation techniques such as forced nudity, isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under "definition of torture".

It also refers to the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being held. Critics say it ridicules Ottawa's claims that Omar Khadr is not being mistreated. There was no immediate response from either the US or Israel.

-----------------------------------------------
GIAZILO'S COMMENTARY

When in 2005, Amnesty International’s Secretary-General Irene Khan described the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay as “the gulag of our times,” it made headlines around the world partly because it was unusual for a powerful Western country to be at the receiving end of such strong INGO criticism of its human rights record. Such uncompromising language had traditionally been reserved for communist and Third World nations.

However, the widely reported human rights abuses associated with the U.S war on terror and in Iraq may well signal the beginning of a new era of change. Major INGOs, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch now acknowledge that human rights are in retreat worldwide and that the United States bears most responsibility for this.

Now, the Canadian government had added the US to its list of counties practicing torture. What hope is there for international human rights promotion and protection when the great liberal democracies of the West become complicit on gross human rights violations?.....

Canada puts US on 'torture list'

1/17/2008 11:45:00 PM human rights, war and peace, world

Happy New Year 2008

Happy New Year 2008!

Wishing all of God's children and men and women of goodwill everywhere a happy, healthy and prosperous 2008. One of my new year resolutions is to find more time to update my blog.

Happy New Year 2008

12/30/2007 02:57:00 PM reflections

Inventing Human Rights

Inventing Human Rights. By Lynn Hunt. New York, London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. 272pp. Index. $29.95. ISBN 0 393 06095 0.

Reviewed by

Bonny Ibhawoh

Contemporary human rights scholarship suffers from two major flaws. First, it is trapped in an intellectual tradition of linear progressivism that tends to hinder proper understanding of the nuances inherent in the idea of human rights. The trend has been to present human rights -- despite frequent setbacks and many contradictions -- as part of the saga of relentless human progress. The second flaw is the overwhelmingly presentist character of human rights scholarship, reflected in an inordinate preoccupation with the here and now.

Lynn Hunt’s Inventing Human Rights addresses both flaws. It marks an important addition to the growing body of scholarly works that seek to bring distinctly historical perspectives to the subject of human rights. Focusing on the American and French Revolutions and the Declarations they inspired, Hunt traces the impact of Enlightenment ideas on the social and political expansion of human rights. The equality, universality and naturalness of rights gained direct political expression for the first time in the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789. These developments underscore a ‘sudden crystallization of human rights claims at the end of the eighteenth century’ (p. 20).

What this book so eloquently reminds us of are the tensions and contradictions that have historically underlined ideas about human rights. Those who confidently declared rights to be universal in the eighteenth century turned out to have something much less all-inclusive in mind. They excluded those without property, slaves, women, and religious minorities from full participation in the political process. Hunt takes the position that while we should not forget these glaring restrictions placed on rights by eighteenth century men, we should not stop there. The book explores how these men, living in societies built on slavery, subordination, and seemingly natural subservience, came to imagine men (and sometimes, women) not at all like them as equals. This, the author argues, is crucial to the history of human rights.

One of the most interesting contributions of this study is the connection that it makes between changes in social attitudes and the expansion of human rights. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1991), Hunt argues that ‘imagined empathy’ served as the foundations of the social and political transformations that revolutionised the notion of human rights. The notions of bodily integrity and empathetic selfhood have histories not unlike those of human rights, to which they are intimately related (p. 30). Learning to empathize, along with new concern for the human body led to the public rejection of judicial torture that opened the path to human rights.

While most of Hunt’s argument are convincing some seem far fetched. One example is her suggestion that reading of accounts of torture had ‘physical effects that translated into brain changes and came back out as new concepts about the organisations of social and political life’ (p. 33). This claim appears to dabble into the realm of psychoanalysis that is hardly the province of the historian. Another shortcoming that some will find with this book is that it is decidedly Eurocentric. By limiting a discussion on the ‘Invention of Human Rights’ to the history of the Western world, Hunt lends credence to the construction of human rights as a something invented in the West and exported to the rest of the world. Unless used figuratively, the term ‘invention’ clearly gets in the way of a full historical understanding of the complex cross-cultural processes by which human rights ideas have evolved. It implies too one sided a happening. In all however, this book brings a welcome and refreshing perspective to human rights scholarship.

Inventing Human Rights

10/21/2007 11:31:00 PM education, history, human rights

Israel to turn away Darfur refugees

...Where else on God’s earth can the afflicted and persecuted people of Darfur fleeing genocide seek solace and refuge?

By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer

Sun Aug 19, 5:40 PM ET

JERUSALEM - Israel said Sunday it will no longer allow refugees from Darfur to stay after they sneak across the border from Egypt, drawing criticism from those who say the Jewish state is morally obliged to offer sanctuary to people fleeing mass murder. Israel has been grappling for months over how to deal with the swelling numbers of Africans, including some from Darfur, who have been crossing the porous desert border.

The number of migrants has shot up to as many as 50 a day, according to the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, apparently as word of job opportunities in Israel has spread. The rise has led to concerns that the country could face a flood of African refugees if it doesn't take a harsher stand on asylum seekers. But Israel has not turned back refugees from Darfur until now, and last month Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said a limited number would even be allowed to remain in Israel. On Sunday, a government spokesman said all new asylum seekers would be sent back to Egypt, with no exception.

"The policy of returning back anyone who enters Israel illegally will pertain to everyone, including those from Darfur," spokesman David Baker said. He offered no explanation for the change. Overnight, Israel returned 48 Africans to Egypt. An Israeli government official said Egypt had guaranteed that any Darfur refugees would not be forced to return to Sudan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release that information to the press.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit told reporters Sunday that Egypt would accept the refugees for "very pressing humanitarian reasons" but that this type of transfer "would not be repeated again." Fighting between pro-government militias and rebels in Darfur has killed more than 200,000 people and displaced 2.5 million since February 2003. Most of the displaced people remain in Darfur, but the U.N. estimates that 236,000 have fled across the border to neighboring Chad, where they live in camps. Tens of thousands of others have sought sanctuary in Egypt, which is ill-equipped to provide them with jobs and social services.

About 400 of the Darfurians who reached Egypt have driven and trekked through desert sands to cross the unfenced frontier with Israel, according to the refugees' advocates in Israel.
Israel's response to the unexpected arrivals has been mixed. Threats to expel them have clashed with sentiments inspired by the memory of Jews seeking sanctuary from the Nazis before and during World War II and being turned away. Some volunteers have helped migrants find jobs and housing.

Eytan Schwartz, an advocate for Darfur refugees in Israel, objected to any ban on the asylum seekers. "The state of Israel has to show compassion for refugees after the Jewish people was subject to persecution throughout its history," he said. The Association for Civil Rights in Israel said in a statement that it is, "Israel's moral and legal obligation to accept any refugees or asylum seekers facing life-threatening danger or infringements on their freedom."
But Ephraim Zuroff of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Center said the Jewish people could not be expected to right every wrong just because of its past. "Israel can't throw open the gates and allow unlimited access for people who are basically economic refugees," Zuroff said.
The Darfurians found sanctuary from the killings in Sudan by fleeing to Egypt, he said, but their arrival in Israel "was motivated primarily by the difficult living conditions and bleak economic prospects in that country."

That the refugees are from Sudan further complicates the matter, because Israeli law denies asylum to anyone from an enemy state. Sudan's Muslim government is hostile to Israel and has no diplomatic ties with the Jewish state. Although the case of the Darfur refugees is unusual, the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin set a precedent in 1977 when he offered asylum to nearly 400 Vietnamese boat people. Israel estimates that 2,800 people have entered the country illegally through Egypt's Sinai desert in recent years. Nearly all are from Africa, including 1,160 from Sudan. Many spent months or years in Egypt before entering Israel.

Israel has repeatedly urged Egypt to step up its surveillance of the border to prevent the illegal flow of goods and people. Egypt has responded by beefing up its efforts recently, with almost daily reports of African refugees being arrested before entering Israel. In July, Egyptian police shot and killed a Sudanese woman who was trying to cross into Israel, the first confirmed death of its kind. And earlier this month, Israeli media reported that Egyptian border guards beat to death two Sudanese men in front of Israeli soldiers. Egypt neither confirmed nor denied the incident.

Israel to turn away Darfur refugees

8/20/2007 01:12:00 AM africa, human rights, media, world

Dusk at the Lake

A quiet evening at the lake brings glorious photograph! - Cootes Paradise 2007

Dusk at the Lake

8/06/2007 11:19:00 PM arts and culture, reflections

Of Slavery, Monuments and Commemorations

The contentious issue of Reparations for Slavery seems to be engaging more and more academic interest these days as evident from the following recent publications:

- Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, “Reparations to Africa and the Group of Eminent Persons,” Cahiers d'études africaines

- Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, “Getting to Reparations: Japanese Americans and African Americans” Social Forces, 83, 2 (Dec., 2004), pp. 823-840

- Victor T. Le Vine, Commentary on "Framing Reparations Claims: Differences between the African and Jewish Social Movements for Reparations"African Studies Review - Volume 50, Number 1, April 2007, pp. 49-51

- Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, Lombardo, Anthony P. Framing Reparations Claims: Differences between the African and Jewish Social Movements for ReparationsAfrican Studies Review, 50, 1, 2007, 27-48.

- Ricardo Rene Laremont, “Jewish and Japanese American Reparations: Political Lessons for the Africana Community,” Journal of Asian American Studies - Volume 4, Number 3, October 2001, pp. 235-250

- Rhoda E. Howard-Hassmann, “Reparations to Africa and the Group of Eminent Persons,” Cahiers d'études africaines

Here is an excerpt from the last article on the list:

“There are two major precedents for reparations to Africa. They are reparations to Jews for the Holocaust, and the movement in the United States for reparations to African-Americans. The issue of reparations to Jews for the Holocaust resurfaced in international discussion in the 1990s when Jewish groups began to demand that unpaid life insurance policies on victims of the Holocaust be paid, and that monies deposited by Jews in Swiss banks before and during the Second World War be paid to survivors of murdered Jews (Barkan 2000: 3-29, 88-111; Brooks 1999: 13-81). Increasingly, African-Americans and Africans became aware that “some” people–most especially Jews–seemed to be entitled to reparations for their suffering, while others were not. That in the view of many people in the formerly colonized world, Jews had become colonial oppressors of Palestinians merely compounded the problem. In some African eyes, it appeared that “white” victims of mass atrocities were entitled to compensation, while non-white victims were not. Thus Mazrui (2002: 87) asked: “How do twelve years of Jewish hell… compare to several centuries of Black enslavement?” Abiola (1992: 910) shortened the period of Jewish suffering even further, referring to the “six-year holocaust perpetrated against Jews by Hitler”. Joseph Ndiaye, curator in 1998 of the Maison des Esclaves (House of Slaves) on the Island of Goree off Senegal, from which slaves apparently used to be shipped to the Americas, offered a similar opinion. He said: “We never stop hearing about the Holocaust, but how often do we dwell on the tragedy that took place here over 350 years; a tragedy that consumed tens of millions of lives?”

"How do twelve years of Jewish Hell compare to several centuries ofBlack enslavements."

– Ali Mazrui

I personally find no reason in comparing African slavery with the Jewish Holocaust, save for purely academic and heuristic purposes. There is something about comparing tragedies and the mentality of “My pain is greater than yours” that I find unsettling. However, Ali Mazriu's question speaks to a concern that has been frequently expressed by many Africans and Africanists. It is concern, not so much about reparations for slavery, but about the commemoration of slavery.

How many major Holocaust Museums, monuments and Memorials are there in North America? 20? 40? 50? How many major museums and memorials to the slave trade are there in North America? NONE. I know this because I teach an African Diaspora class where we focus on slave commemorations and memorials. True, there are a few monuments to commemorate slavery scattered across the US and Canada. There are also several slave exhibits in museums across the US (The Smithsonian even has one) but no single major slave museum. There is no national institution dedicated to the documentation, study, and interpretation of Slavery as there is in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
It is only now that efforts are being made to establish a National Slave Museums though the private initiative and funds of some prominent African Americans. http://www.usnationalslaverymuseum.org/home.asp

Even then, the project has been dogged with controversy. Lengthyeditorials have been written about how a slave museum is unnecessarybecause it would open up "old wounds." Others have suggested a"National African American Heritage Museum? Rather than a "SlaveMuseum." So, the question I ask is "Who is Afraid of a SlaveMuseum?" Why does Africa’s pain matter less? Issues like this are atthe heart of the reparations debate? -- An overwhelming sense thatAfrica’s pain, Africa’s experiences and Africans themselves matter lessthan others.

This is what I think this debate should really be about –- not reparations but commemoration. How and why have we remembered or failed to remember slavery in our societies? What have we done to commemorate that human tragedy and honor the memory and contributions of its teeming victims? Why do we persist in giving the unsetting impression that the pains of some matters more than those of others? Talk about the commemoration of slavery must precede any talk of reparations for slavery!

Of Slavery, Monuments and Commemorations

8/06/2007 09:58:00 PM africa, education, history, human rights, slavery