Thursday, July 31

Worth reading

Barbara Crossette on the new UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, South African Navanethem Pillay (Globe and Mail):
After Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, she became the first non-white female justice appointed to the South African Supreme Court. A quiet, steady and focused lawyer and judge, she epitomizes the concept, so often honoured in the breach at the UN, that the talents of women are key to development. With the right tools, including better education and more reproductive health services, women can reduce poverty and slow the spread of HIV-AIDS across the global South. But women, especially in Africa and Asia, need to know their rights and find ways to raise their status in society. Judge Pillay, who understands this, will be there to support them.
Human Rights Watch's Ben Rawlence says Kenyan soldiers trained by the British military are committing crimes against civilians in an operation targeting a militia in Kenya's west (Guardian):
More than 40 people are still missing, last seen by their relatives being bundled into military trucks in the early hours. "This is how counter-insurgency is done," senior police and military officials told me. If this is how it is done in Kenya, or any other front in the fight against terrorism, then Britain should have no part in it.
David Rivkin, an official in the Reagan and Bush I administrations, and Joseph Cirincione, who heads the Ploughshares Fund, ostensibly debate whether to invade Darfur. But they're really debating US support for humanitarian intervention more broadly, since neither seems to suggest American should actually send troops to Darfur (L.A. Times). Cirincione writes:
I would argue that we have as much of a strategic interest and moral duty to stop the genocide in Darfur as we did to stop the rule of Saddam Hussein. Morally, it is clear: Hundreds of thousands of people have been slaughtered in Darfur. We should stop this massacre if we can. Strategically, it is not as direct. That region of Africa does not impact our immediate national security interests -- which is why intervention there is not popular. Indeed, intervention in Africa is rarely considered in even the worst of situations.

No comments: