*** Please help with the Big Catch Up! ***

From Never Again

Share your ideas, discussions and pieces of inspiration on the Never Again Journal.

Update: This journal is accompanied by the Never Again International blog

Darfur's protected by China

Just right now, I was checking my e-mail and I get the New York Times and at the editorial section, there was something about that the reason that there isn't an emidiate mandate for a U.N. force depolyment is because the Sudaneses president Omar Hassan al-Bashir refuses to have one, but also that China, a permanent member of the Security Council, protects him by threating to veto it. Why? Because 7% of China's oil supply comes from Sudan. Another reason for this protection is that since China has a long and shameful track record of human-rights abuse, like Tibet and wouldn't want to get involded in something that is not their buisness and concern. This has alreadly caused embarassement from people all over the world and this pisses me of completly. I'll try to sent the article to everyone so you can read it. I would like for this to be read by everyone and let me know what you think. If this isn't dealt with soon, not only will Darfurians will be slaugtered, but history will be the judge.

Ruth 8/4/06

December 21

There was a very moving report on BBC news last night about the children in Northern Uganda. Nearly all are caught up in the conflict there, whether as 'night commuters' heading to cities each night to escape abduction, or as brutalised soldiers and sex slaves who make up 80 per cent of the Lords Resistance Army. I feel that a whole generation of children there is under terrible threat of being completely dehumanised by what is happening and the approach so far has only been to try and destroy the LRA by military means, which inevitably means killing many of the children.

The UK government has just diverted £15 million from the Ugandan government to aid agenices in the North (under fairly pompous reasoning about democracy, why do they always have to get people's backs up while doing good things?) and there is renewed attention under the Responsibility to Protect agenda on the region. It seems to me that the world community has an absolute duty to protect these children from atrocity and it may be a good time to try and put pressure on all our governments and the UN to put a protection force together. If the figures are right, capturing all the children under the LRA would reduce their strength by 80% and the children in the villages should be protected from further abduction.

There are plenty of good agencies in northern Uganda working to help but they need support. This has been going on for 19 years - I think we should try and do something in 2006. It's a very difficult story to report on as it just carries on, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it any longer.

I know one of the members of the media list is in Gulu and I want to see if Never Again can offer help.

Any ideas?

ClareWhite 16:16, 21 Dec 2005 (GMT)

December 12

I went to an interesting meeting with two Quakers interested in the Responsibility to Protect agenda. We discussed how grassroots voices could be heard more at the UN and it seems that Quaker networks already have a good way of communicating between these levels. I heard that Burundi's peacekeeping mandate is to expire at the end of this month and the government does not want it to stay even though many people still feel it protects them from violence. Could it be because they see the peacekeepers as an 'occupying' force? How can the concerns of the people be heard at the decision-making level about this? ClareWhite 18:07, 12 Dec 2005 (GMT)

December 10

"The challenge facing peace education, therefore, is to think of new ways of doing politics and of building moral conventions that will generate safe action spaces for all peoples to begin solving the big problems that affect the globe" Clements (2001).

Marian

November 15

Marian attended two lectures today:

Addressing the Root Causes of Genocide given by R.N Adler Associate Professor, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia.

Preventing Deadly Conflict given by Garath Evans, CEO of International Crisis Group.

November 14

Some more thoughts from what I am reading at the moment:

"Knowledge, combined with heart and commitment, has always been a key to development, and moving away from ad hoc charitable amateurism towards lasting, longer-term solutions, and the policies needed to sustain them, will require politically aware, focused, specialised organisations that can learn, that can remember and share what they learn, and that are prepared to build on what they remember...Change is possible and...human beings, correctly mobilised, can be stronger than the inertia of the governments and other insitutions that they have created"

From: The Charitable Impulse: NGOs & Development in East and North-East Africa, Barrow and Jennings (eds.) (Currey, 2001). Marian 18:35, 14 Nov 2005 (GMT)

November 9

ClareWhite took part in a discussion group with Wimbledon Quakers about Never Again, Rwanda and why the international community has failed to stop genocide. We had a really interesting discussion, talking about lots of different examples of genocide around the world, their similarities and differences. For the second time in the day I was alerted to GPPAC and also a website called People building Peace. We were very aware of the difficulties of pre-emptive military presences providing security and the dilemma between speaking out against human rights abuses and being a part of the judgmental, hypocritical west. I hope that a consistent approach against genocide will protect all citizens, without such politics getting involved. The Friends were very kind to me and my half baked theories! ClareWhite 10:18, 10 Nov 2005 (GMT)

Just been to a very constructive meeting organised by the One World Trust all about Responsibility to Protect. We discussed what the NGO community could do to promote the parts of R2P they feel strongly about - mainly prevention of crimes against humanity - and the dangers of it being hijacked and turned into 'responsibility to intervene'.

Recklessly, I've volunteered to help out with the draft of a joint statement that would help NGOs in the UK to work out what they agree on when it comes to R2P. One thing I was told that is currently missing from the Peacebuilding Commission planning, which we might want to write to the chairs about, is reference to youth as stakeholders in peacebuilding. The meeting made me feel very strongly that a Peacebuilding Commission special interest group is worth developing if there is enough interest amongst members. ClareWhite 18:09, 9 Nov 2005 (GMT)

1 November

Thinking about evaluation of our projects. I read this article (Samoff, Reconstruction of Schooling in Africa (1993) in "Comparative Education Review") as part of my studies. One of the problems with getting funding, as we have seen from the USAID proposal structure, funders are often concerned with evaluation, measured effects of projects in relation to their specific goals. The problem comes when we are attempting projects where the goals are difficult to quantify and therefore difficult to test quantifiably. Goals which are hard to measure include those that see education as a means to “implant and nurture an inquiring and critical orientation towards the local setting and the world at large and foster the sense of curiosity that makes learning self-rewarding” or “equipping and encouraging young people to become active citizens in their society”. Measuring projects which work with these kind of aims is difficult, and therefore they often don’t get funding. We are going to have to think of ways to measure what we do (probably qualitative measures) and ways to convince funders that just because it can’t be quantitatively measured doesn’t mean that it is not important. These issues will be more important when dealing with people like USAID, DFID, EU etc than other NGOs, e.g. Barrow Cadbury etc. Marian 18:34, 1 Nov 2005 (GMT)

31 October

Went to an event called Talkback Classroom on 27/10/05 organised by the National Museum of Australia in partnership with UN Works and the Museum of Televsion and Radio. The idea is to allow school students the opportunity to interview key decision makers. This event comprised an audience of school children in New York and a panel of student interviewers as well as an audience and interviews in Australia - linked by video conferencing facilities. It worked very well. They were interviewing Shashi Tharoor Under-Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information (said to be one of the 'brilliant minds' at the UN). The interviewing students had done a lot of research and thinking into his writings and the role of the UN and the dynamics of US/UN relations. I have the contact of the director of UN Works and the producer of Talkback Classroom, Stephen Cutting, so I am going to approach them regarding setting up a US/Great Lakes Talkback Classroom Marian 20:13, 31 Oct 2005 (GMT)

The young Quakers had a gathering in Kenya last week and two of them were Rwandan! One of the British organisers has promised to put me in touch with them. Also suggested we link with the Quaker Network for the Prevention of Conflict (I think) who are mainly based in the Great Lakes too ClareWhite 17:38, 31 Oct 2005 (GMT)

18 December

I attended Q&A session with U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer of California. She is the elected official who received the most votes in an election outside of the presidency in the history of the United States, and is the highest-ranking female legislator in the United States. She also authored the Darfur Accountability Act of 2005. I was able to muster enough courage to ask her a question—amidst many questions about domestic policy, and the fact that I was by far the youngest person at the event—about U.S. involvement in genocide prevention overseas. My question was: "Given the current humanitarian crisis in Sudan—which former Secretary of State Colin Powell described as genocide—why hasn't the United States taken necessary diplomatic and military actions to end the suffering of millions of men, women and children?" Boxer responded by first motioning to me and saying "it is the young people of this nation that constantly remind us of the atrocities occurring around the world, and I feel all of us need to listen to them more often." She then explained how U.S. foreign policy is unfortunately driven by economic interests rather than ethical interests, and that the current presidential administration focuses their attention on insignificant issues such as banning gay marriage instead of expending effort on true global problems.

Later in the evening I met a member of the Darfur Action Committee at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and he told me he's interested in the work of Never Again. -- Nick 20:11, 21 Dec 2005 (GMT)