One World, Many Peaces

A Visual History of Airline Terrorism and the TSA

Source: Online Universities

The Nile Treaty, Water Security and the Future of Peace in Africa

The Nile Cooperative Framework Agreement (or Nile Treaty, under the auspices of the Nile Basin Initiative, NBI) seeks the establishment of a permanent Nile River Basin Commission through which member countries will act together to manage and develop the resources of the Nile, the world's longest river. To many who visit, the Nile and its fertile valleys are a beautiful backdrop for a cruise or vacation. But for those who live around and depend upon the river, it is that and the source of their physical survival and cultural heritage.

Formally launched in February 1999, the NBI provides an institutional mechanism, a shared vision, and a set of agreed policy guidelines to provide a basinwide framework for cooperative action, according to the Nile Basin Initiative website. The initiative's policy guidelines define the following as the primary objectives of the NBI:

•To develop the Nile Basin water resources in a sustainable and equitable way to ensure
•Prosperity, security, and peace for all its peoples
•To ensure efficient water management and the optimal use of the resources
•To ensure cooperation and joint action between the riparian countries, seeking win-win gains
•To target poverty eradication and promote economic integration
•To ensure that the program results in a move from planning to action.

The NBI's Strategic Action Program represents Nile riparian concerted approach to achieving sustainable socioeconomic development in the basin through “equitable utilization of, and benefit from, the common Nile Basin water resources.” The Strategic Action Program provides the means for translating this shared vision into concrete activities through a two-fold, complementary approach:

•Lay the groundwork for cooperative action through a regional program to build confidence and capacity throughout the basin (the Shared Vision Program)
•Pursue, simultaneously, cooperative development opportunities to realize physical investments and tangible results through sub-basin activities (Subsidiary action programs) in the Eastern Nile and the Nile Equatorial Lakes regions.

So far, five countries have signed the Nile Treaty: Ethiopia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and most recently, Kenya. However, two countries key to the viability of the whole project, Egypt and Sudan, have so far vehemently opposed the Nile Treaty on the grounds that it will detract from their economic interests in the river. 

Nonetheless, Egypt, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda belonged to the Technical Co-operation Committee for the Promotion of the Development and Environmental Protection of the Nile Basin (TECCONILE), founded in 1992, a forerunner to the NBI.

As the African population grows with the rise of industrialism, and bigger cities replacing villages, water security and agriculture will be of paramount importance. The Nile Treaty gives reason to hope that these potential conflicts will not turn violent, but no guarantee.

The Nile remains a current event after thousands of years of human dependency on it, and will create a future of peace only if humans can work their problems out before they become violent. 

Win $1000 in this Peace Writing Contest (And Make A Difference, Too)

Friends of the Arc (FOTA) is a nonprofit advocacy organization that believes that the Arc, developed by the RAND Corporation (a problematic sponsor, on which more below) and Suisman Urban Design, has the potential according to them "to ensure a viable Palestinian state and a Middle East that knows sustainable peace, prosperity, and security."

FOTA has announced a $1,000 prize for the best essay by a college or graduate student, in the form of a policy brief to President Barack Obama, on the topic of the usefulness of RAND Corporation’s Arc concept for the current Middle East peace negotiations.

According to RAND's website: "Palestine’s crumbling infrastructure presents a major challenge for a new Palestinian state. Yet it also provides an opportunity to plan for sustainable development and to avoid the environmental cost and economic inefficiencies of haphazard, unregulated urban development that might otherwise result from the need to accommodate a rapidly growing population. The Arc, RAND’s concept for developing the physical infrastructure of a Palestinian state, provides such a plan." More information about the Arc is available here.

Submissions should respond to the following prompt:

With the resumption of direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, many observers doubt that more purely political discussions will finally produce a comprehensive peace settlement; they suggest that some paradigm-changing idea is needed to break the deadlock. You have been asked to brief President Obama about the Arc project. Prepare a policy brief making the case that the Arc plan is just such a compelling idea, and that with U.S. support, it could help negotiators achieve a breakthrough for peace.

Submissions are due October 8, 2010, at 6 pm ET and should be no more than 1,000 words in length. Before crafting their submissions, participants should view the 30-minute Arc video and other resources at www.friendsofthearc.org. College and graduate students from any country are eligible to apply.

One World, Many Peaces deems it necessary to point out the RAND has close ties to the military, that the Arc project is being developed without the express consent of the Palestinian people, and that it is all-too remeniscent of the Soviet-style infrastructure development projects that brought so much of post-colonial Africa and Eastern Europe close to ruin. These could be topics for consideration for the peace writing contest.

We asked the contest's organizers how they resolve the paradox with the close military ties and this "peace" project, here is what they had to say:

"The RAND Corporation certainly has its origins in conducting studies and R&D (R&D is the origin of the name RAND) for the US Air Force.  These days, it remains a publicly funded think tank for conducting studies and performing R&D.  But, now its funding is much more diversified with over half of its funding going to topics such as health, education and development.  The Arc study was actually privately financed by philanthropists interested in how development strategies could spur peace, prosperity and security in the Middle East.  RAND, which brought on world renowned designer Doug Suisman through his urban design firm Suisman Urban Design, conducted the study to answer the questions posed by the sponsors – just as they do any other study.  RAND only conducted a study.  By charter, RAND cannot and does not advocate or implement.  As such, RAND is not “helping negotiators achieve a breakthrough for peace”.  But Friends of the Arc, which is a worldwide network of individuals who see the power of the Arc concept in inspiring peace, prosperity and security in the Middle East, is working to advocate the Arc as something that could help negotiators to a breakthrough for peace."

The winner will receive a $1,000 cash prize and will be featured on our website. FOTA reserves the right to post all essays on its website and to send one or more to President Obama. For all competition details, please visit www.friendsofthearc.org/essaycontest

International Cooperation and Local Development: A Perspective from Mali

By Genevieve Hamel

Cooperation, development and international solidarity, you know these words? You hear them everywhere, so sometimes you wonder what they really mean ... All international cooperation agencies do not work the same way, although their goal is often the same: to try to improve living conditions of the poor around the world. Easy to say! But when you see the magnitude of the task, lack of access to clean water, food or political insecurity, illiteracy, AIDS or malaria, one really wonders if the challenge is not a little too big for just non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This implies a somewhat worrying question: who actually benefits the thousands of dollars invested in this "international cooperation"?

For a dozen years, I worked in developing countries for different NGOs based inthe Canadian province of Quebec: Burkina Faso, Haiti, Senegal and most recently ... Mali. I just returned, still breathless from three weeks of work at a dizzying pace. Each time I take the opportunity to go see for myself what is happening there, how people survive and live and, more importantly, what they think of us and about “international cooperation.”

So, I find myself in Bamako, the Mali capital, as a journalist and photographer, accompanying my director-cameraman, a young intern barely 18 years old, and a logistician. The team is sent by a foundation L'OEUVRE LÉGER (www.leger.org) which funds many Malian organizations working directly with the poorest populations. We have before us 18 days to "capture" images and words that will describe the challenges and successes of this country, ranked 178th out of 182 in the Human Development Index (www.unpd.org). The ultimate goal: to produce several communication tools to raise awareness and convince Quebec to the importance of supporting a country like Mali.

From Zantiébougou to Soy, and through Sansanding Kolongo, we scoured the remotest villages, the very embodiment of all the stereotypes in our collective imagination: no running water (just a well), no electricity, small mud houses with their thatched roofs, children playing barefoot in the dirt, girls 15 years with their baby attached to the back, men in fields and under the old baobab tree. Rarely a small school or a literacy center. And when there was a health center, is still seeking a nurse or midwife. Yet everywhere, strangely, we met people more courageous, generous and optimistic than it is possible to imagine.

Through ceremonies, traditional dances, shared meals on the floor or the official speeches, it is also filming, photographing and interviewing the villagers, who have much to say about development projects in their community. To achieve this, the conditions are harsh, as you may imagine. Even under mango trees, it is between 35 and 40 degrees Celsius, the wind blows full of dust and sand, the sun makes the light too harsh, the sky too white: the devices get dirty at the speed of lightning, they "cook" in nothing less than our hands full of sweat ... But no matter. Before us, the villagers hold together while munching on some peanuts, proud that we have come far to see how they fare.

Before our Westerners’ eyes, the situation may seem catastrophic. We ask lots of questions first ... How can farmers feed a family, a whole country, with a simple wooden spade to grow huge crops, often threatened by drought? Where do women get the strength to rise before dawn to fetch water, gather shea butter, pound millet, clean the house, then go work in the fields too, or the market? Why would children go to school, knowing that they must walk over 6 miles without having eating? The more you observe, the less you smile. And we wonder, when an organization reaches a certain village, where can it start?

Most of the communities we visited have benefited from a proven approach, the so-called "local development" strategy. The history of this approach in the mid-1980s and is the result of very particular twinning between the village of Sanankoroba and that of St. Elizabeth, Quebec. The project has snowballed, and now benefits more than one hundred villages. Since 1992, the local development approach was systematized by the organization Solidarité Union Coopération (SUCO), which now receives both financial and ideological support from L'OEUVRE LÉGER. What distinguishes this type of development? Several features, but especially the placing at the project’s heart of its only possible engine of change: the community.

If there is one thing you realize very quickly when traveling in countries such as Mali, it’s that they are far from an individualistic system like ours. So if one wishes to make any change in a collective system, it cannot be achieved by attempting to impose the only model we know.

By putting communities at the hub of the whole process, the local development approach meets many goals: local ownership of objectives, greater adherence to values and culture unique to each environment, a stronger civil society. But the villages who choose to engage in this process are also choosing to sacrifice certain traditions ... The village chief loses some of his power in favor of participatory democracy, patriarchy weakens in the face of gender equity and learns to give its voice to women. Changes that may seem trivial, but are in themselves small revolutions.

Thus, the world changes a little, slowly but surely. I could give you a ton of figures, statistics on the results of all these projects. Tell you that the villagers provide their food security, they are more likely to be literate, they repay the loans and make 200% profit. It's true. That’s international development? Yes. But for me it is also all Malians who have shaken hands, who told me thank you ... and wanted one thing: that we can still “work together.”

Photo credit: Genevieve Hamel

Welcome to the World of Mega-Cities: 100 Million+ Residents, 66%+ of the Global Economy, X+ of Peace

You thought New York, Mexico City and Tokyo were big? Think again. United Nations experts on urban life have convened in Brazil to discuss a new trend that will change the way human beings live, forever, and within this generation's lifetime. They are called mega-cities, or mega-polises, or mega-regions, but they all refer to the same thing: the conglomeration of current growth cities into an urban area with 100 million inhabitants or more.

There is, of course, a lot to be said about this unprecedented phenomenon, and undoubtedly more as the inevitability of mega-cities becomes an actuality. So perhaps it is best at this time to use the words of the experts in the biannual State of the World Cities report, followed by a list of mega-cities that are in the process of emerging, also known as conurbations:

• The world's largest 40 mega-regions cover only a tiny fraction of the habitable surface of our planet and are home to fewer than 18% of the world's population [but] account for 66% of all economic activity and about 85% of technological and scientific innovation.
• Just over half the world now lives in cities but by 2050, over 70% of the world will be urban dwellers. By then, only 14% of people in rich countries will live outside cities, and 33% in poor countries.
• The more unequal that cities become, the higher the risk that economic disparities will result in social and political tension. The likelihood of urban unrest in unequal cities is high. The cities that are prospering the most are generally those that are reducing inequalities.
• The US has emerged as one of the most unequal societies with cities like New York, Chicago and Washington less equal than places like Brazzaville in Congo-Brazzaville, Managua in Nicaragua and Davao City in the Phillippines.

The biggest mega-regions, which are at the forefront of the rapid urbanisation sweeping the world, are:

• Hong Kong-Shenhzen-Guangzhou, China, home to about 120 million people;
• Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe, Japan, expected to grow to 60 million people by 2015
• Rio de Janeiro-São Paulo region with 43 million people in Brazil.

The same trend on an even larger scale is seen in fast-growing "urban corridors":

• West Africa: 600km of urbanisation linking Nigeria, Benin, Togo and Ghana, and driving the entire region's economy;
• India: From Mumbai to Dehli;
• East Asia: Four connected megalopolises and 77 separate cities of over 200,000 people each occur from Beijing to Tokyo via Pyongyang and Seoul.

Hot Off the Press-- 2009: The Year in Review from One World, Many Peaces with Antony Adolf

 

 

What was 2009 all about — or was but you didn’t hear about it? How will 2010 and beyond take shape? 2009: The Year in Review is One World, Many Peaces’ answer. Antony Adolf, author of Peace: A World History, shares the stories he covered throughout the year as “Current Events Creating the Future” — Ours.

Includes three new essays by Antony Adolf published together for the first time:

•Buyers and Buy-Nots: The New Economics of Poverty and Affluence
•Post-Islamophobia: How Cultural Integration Can Prevent Terrorism and Build Peace
•A Missile Shield by Any Other Name: Is Obama's Global Military Strategy Taking Shape in Eastern Europe?

One World, Many Peaces: The Blog and Podcast will start anew on January 5. Thank you for a great year and have a safe and happy New Year!

 

Three Places Where World War Three May Start, And Soon

Where is a Third World War most likely to be sparked? For at least a decade before World War One began, those most concerned knew that the ongoing arms race was leading to disaster, as did those who sat on the sidelines and watched Germany and Japan build up to World War Two. World policy wonks have taken a long sigh of relief after the Cold War ended some twenty years ago yesterday, but in so doing have been all too lax at identifying-- and diffusing-- actual "hotspots" that are likely to trigger a global conflict on the scale of the World Wars, or bigger if you consider the nuclear capabilities of the countries involved. Here are three possibilities.

Between India, China and Pakistan in the Kashmir Region: Tensions between India and China have flared so high in recent weeks because of China's industrial expansion into the Kashmir region that states in the area have pledged to expand the ASEAN organization into a wider, EU-like bloc to stem it. In the past year alone, China's military expenditures have quintupled those of any other country (including the U.S.), and Pakistan's internal militant and terrorist troubles make it a ticking time bomb. All three, India, China and Pakistan, have nuclear arsenals at their disposal.

Between Israel and Iran: The recent fiasco over an Iranian ship allegedly carrying arms to anti-Israeli forces in Lebanon almost made me wet my pants, and if it didn't to you then you aren't fully aware what was and is at stake. Israel is a known nuclear power without admittance, and as we all know Iran wants to be, which could very well mean it is in the same boat as Israel but with a better public relations smokescreen. With Israel's continued expansionist policy, and the Arab League states all too quiet for all too long now, something is just not right. If Hillary Clinton and company can't do something now (and the signs already aren't good), the region's near-term future looks dim.

Between North and South Korea: Just today, a North Korean and a South Korean war ship on the western sea border exchanged fire, with the North Korean ship being badly damaged. Probably without coincidence, the exchange of fire coincides with President Obama's decisions to send a special envoy to North Korea to talk about it's nuclear arsenal. To stress the point, North Korea has been in serious internal trouble (from famine to a military-first economy) since the mid-1990s, really comparable in isolation and desolation only to post-World War One Germany. As we know, that led to the rise of the democratically elected Nazi regime, and World War Two.

Any armed conflict on a considerable scale in any of these hotspots is likely to draw in allies and enemies, as was the case in both previous World Wars. The global economic weakness still well underway regardless of overly optimistic reports to the contrary is the powder keg waiting to explode, as it was for WWII. My sincerest wish, as it should be for us all, is that the individuals and groups involved in each of these situations will realize that as a current event, the future of our world is in their hands. And, if they don't, someone should take their situation out of their hands. 

Powerful Pan-European Moment in Peace History Memorialized

Picnics are far from the first events that generally come to mind when we think of key moments or turning points in the Cold War; the Bay of Pigs, atomic weapons development, the space race, and the fall of the Berlin Wall are understandably much more common. However, European leaders and participants commemorated a peaceful-picnic-turned-exciting-escape that changed the course of world history yesterday, with lessons that can still inform how nonviolent transformations can occur in any culture today.

 

In 1989, Communist Hungary's political opposition party organized a picnic in Sopronpuszta on the Austrian border in an attempt to press for more civil rights and attract closer ties with their capitalist neighbors.  Among the 10,000 people who gathered to eat, drink and be merry-- while making a powerful, peaceful political point to the world-- were about 600 East Germans who got word of the picnic and decided to join.  "Hungarians gave wings to the East Germans' desire for freedom," said German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the commemorative event. 

 

The wider Cold War context was the new era of glasnost — or openness — under reformist Soviet leader Mikail Gorbachev. Yet, 80,000 Russian troops were stationed in Hungary at the time. There was a bit of impromptu planning involved in the escape, but it was the heat of the moment, or rather the peaceableness of the moment, that provided the impetus for several of these East Germans to be inspired by a Hungarian border guard who was politically passive, letting through the border gate.  After this small group got through, the floodgate burst open.

 

The East Germans who made it across were thereafter known as "Ossies." One of them, Dirk Mennenga, remembers worrying about the sole border guard: "A young Hungarian man kept pointing the way and before we knew it we were in Austria." Today, Lt. Col. Arpad Bella, the lifetime border guard, is considered a hero by the Ossies, former Easterners and Westerners alike. Unbeknownst to all of them, however, was that the opposition leaders had already decided to let them through.The last communist leader of Hungary, Miklos Nemeth, said at the memorial that "It was a planned process on behalf of the government, but it was a transition where everyone was also seeking to secure their own future."

 

The government provided a peaceful opportunity for protest which participants made the most of, and then some. Within a month, Hungary allowed all East Germans to cross into Austria. Within three months, the Berlin Wall fell. All violent protests today, from the anti-healthcare mobs in America to the Taliban jeopardizing Afghan elections, would do well to learn from this powerful pan-European moment in peace history to create a better future.

 

See more videos at One World, Many Peaces TV.

Scenes from Central Europe Twenty Years Later

In a few months, the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union will be commemorated around the world. But perhaps nowhere other than at its epicenters will this momentous series of events be celebrated more than in Central Europe, where embodied tensions between East and West, capitalism and communism, were highest. Even for someone who did not live in or visit the stage behind the Iron Curtain while it was down, doing so now that it has been lifted is still a strong reminder of how non-violent, historically rapid changes as well as continuities can bring about lasting peaceful and prosperous results that benefit guests and hosts, residents and newcomers alike.

The medieval town center of Erfurt, for example, about a two hours drive at German Audi owners' scarily quick pace from the busy Frankfurt Airport,  was left largely intact during allied bombings and by the heavy hands of the takeover regime, eventually called the German Democratic Republic. Walking through its tight cobblestone  streets to the church at which Martin Luther was matriculated, taking a picture beside his bronze statue, is a religious experience for anyone with a smidge of revolutionary idealism, whether Christian, atheist or neither. At this point in Luther's career, there were few signs that he would go on to spearhead the Reformation, just as the populist overthrow  in 1989 was indiscernible to all but a few until it happened. Below the surface, each was waiting for an impetus to happen.

With the longest inhabited bridge in the world, spatially and temporally, a centuries-old gothic cathedral that can sends shivers down the spines of the most militant modernists, interspersed with as-if secret theatres playing avant-garde work, Erfurt can be a taken as a sign of things to come for those who stop to see its picturesque bunched up buildings which would make a city planner weep on the way to Leipzig, again a couple of hours away. The for the most part perfectly smooth highway roads, rolling hills with scattered villages separated by dense forests, are surrounded by hundreds if not thousands of renewable energy-producing wind turbines that would make Obama blush and a medieval miller stare in awe, and for those aware of the distant yet immediate connection between the two, both.

So far, there is no evidence whatsoever of the totalitarian Nazi and communist dictatorships that have defined the area, but not its inhabitants, for some sixty years before the Berlin Wall fell. The twenty years since have seemingly erased their apparent traits, if not their unapparent traces.  What there is plenty of evidence of, what can be seen even if it is not visible, heard even if it is not audible, sensed even if beyond the senses, is an awareness of the peaceable perseverance of everyday people who serve local mushroom soups and mixed grilled meat platters to hungry tourists with a smile, offer to give directions to them without being asked, and want to show them with pride what their towns and country have to offer despite and not because of their pasts. These are some of the current events creating the future of Central Europe, in many ways unimaginable two decades ago.

Culinary Protectionism and Anti-Immigration Impulses

Taste buds, it seems, can be allies of cultural integration and economic empowerment as of mutually exclusive, self-limiting policies alike. Pasta is rarely if ever the first thing to come to mind when we think of protectionism and anti-immigration impulses. Yet the city council of the Tuscan town of Lucca in Italy, a picturesque tourist hot spot for international visitors, recently announced a new initiative to crack down on immigrant-run restaurants serving non-Italian food in order to protect its culinary heritage and corner the food consumption market in its centro storico, or historic center.

Imagine the culinary landscape of North America had not a whole lot of entrepreneurial first-generation immigrants the guts, gusto and gastronomical know-how to open diners and restaurants for their communities and the new wider ones in which they came to live. Yes, that includes an implied dearth of hot dogs, pizza and hamburgers as well as sushi, curries, chop sui, tacos and foie gras. Forget tv shows like Top Chef and Hell's Kitchen. And yes, doing so was and is what allowed their children to become other types of professionals from doctors to engineers, boosting quality of life for them and their inherited countries.  Even those who stick to the proverbial meat and potatoes would lose something if all Greek-owned (or once so) diners charicatured in My Big Fat Greek Wedding had been or were to be forced to close.

The great irony in the Italian case is that many of the key ingredients used in their "native" foods were a few short centuries ago originally imports: tomatoes and potatoes from South America, and the iconic pasta from Asia thanks to Marco Polo's pioneering global voyages. The following statement by the right-wing, anti-immigration Italian politician is tantamount to a selective historical revisionism, not to say poor judgment: "This is not a battle against anything or anyone, but a defense of our culture and our agriculture... In Italy we have available 4,500 typical food products. Every one of these represents the culture and history of our country."

The targets of this culinary protectionist initiative fueled by impulses of misguided immigration reform are mostly kebab houses and Chinese restaurants. In attacking the measure, a more moderate but equally misguided official said that the measure would also unintentionally  stop high-end French restaurants from serving oysters and champagne. Thanks for the prioritization,   buddy, I'm sure foreign students touring Europe and tired of eating free leftover pasta at youth hostels will appreciate it as much as your entourage. This line of policymaking is not the same as that which seeks to safeguard traditional regionally-produced foods such as Feta cheese and local wines, but one mistaking cultural exclusion for promotion and economic limitation for preservation.

One of the cherished privileges of having lived in urban centers such as Montreal, Vancouver and Chicago was to be able to eat what was  for me exotic foods from dozens of countries for less than I could have cooked them for myself at home. Many culinary experts also contend that no food traditions are genuinely singular. I would add that to enact policies that affirm this illusion takes away from unequaled role food has, does and will continue to play in bringing members of local communities and worldwide immigrant networks together while empowering their and their children socio-economically, a vital longtime current event which has created the future in which we live.