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N O 2 / J A N U AR Y 2 0 0 8

Scorching Grassroots in a Heated World

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

Not only is global warming heating us up in the literal sense of the meaning, the issue of global warming is 'hot' itself.

Editorial

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Global warming

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Human rights

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Nobel Peace Price winner Al Gore created a large amount of momentum with his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, and United Nation’s Secretary-General Ban Kimoon, has made the accomplishment of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol one of his biggest priorities. A lot of other politicians and companies joined them in environmental action. But what about grassroots civil action? Why is it often so hard to make individual choices to save the environment, and what can we do about it?

Successful threesome

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Two different worlds

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No tears left to cry

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Beer - Light or dark?

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There is recently a lot of political willingness to act on global warming and to save the environment.

Bettering or governing?

Continues on page 2 Copyright: Chris Madden

Human Rights: Justifying a Wrong with a Right The recent affair of the French NGO “L’Arche de Zoe” (Zoe’s Ark), which is accused of having attempted to kidnap children in Chad, shows how humanitarianism can lead to quite the oppo-

site of the supposedly good intentions upon which it is based. Most humanitarians claimed after this regrettable affair: Zoe’s Ark made a mistake, but the vast majority of humanitarian NGOs

throughout the world do a wonderful job, and no one should question or re-examine the concepts of humanitarianism and the universality of human rights.

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

Continues on page 3

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Tolerance by love

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A weapon of war

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Last step before hell

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Know Your Rights

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Disclaimer: This publication has been created by the interns of the United Nations Regional Information Centre in Brussels.

The views and opinions presented in this publication are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect those of the United Nations.

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EDITORIAL Winter has arrived to Brussels. Internal Voices was launched at UNRIC here in Brussels in August. That was already five months ago; time is passing by very quickly. With the dark and windy winter, life seems a bit more dull and dark.

And with all the bad things that are going on around the globe it is easy to become skeptical. It is easy to think that no matter what we do, all of us, leaders, politicians, ordinary people and celebrities, nothing is changing for the better.

That life and the world are becoming darker and no light is to be seen at the end of the tunnel. The daily news tells us that most things are turning from bad to worse; the political situation in many countries, climate change, the human rights violations, etc… It can be hard to focus on the positive things in life. Yet there are things that are moving in the right direction – although that they are no miracles. Every conference or report has positive aspects that might be harder to spot but yet can improve lives or situations. Everything that happens carries with it something bad alongside the good. More importantly, we make our own choices and can choose to take the positive aspects and develop them, even if it is easier to give up sometimes. The rainy summer of Brussels was followed by a sunny fall. Now that winter is here we are giving you a new issue of the magazine. The opportunity to share ideas, thoughts and articles with others still appeals as challenging and exciting.

Most of the interns have been replaced and with the new personalities come new interests and new insights. Yet the common point remains the same, the will to change the world. Just as spring is waiting for us some weeks down the road, we know that the world is moving toward the same goal, a lighter and better place. Until then, we keep seeing the good things that we are surrounded by, like the joy in the eyes of the children when they see snow!

Sahar Arfazadeh Roudsari Sweden/Iran

Continues from page 1.

Look for example to the European Trading Scheme (ETS) of the European Union that was launched in 2005.

With this plan the European governments put a cap on the CO2 emissions of power plants and energy-intensive factories. These plants emit more than half of the EU's CO2 emissions. The plants that emit more CO 2 than they are allowed, can buy emission quotas from the ones that do better.

Companies also become more conscious of the problems that global warming can cause for them, and of the economic advantages environmental action can give them. A new environmental industrial framework is Cradle to Cradle. It aims to create production techniques that are not only efficient but also waste free, by an ecological intelligent design. With this paradigm in mind, sports brand Nike brought out a new shoe. The shoe generates less waste, and a significant smaller amount of solvents and energy is used to produce the shoe. All the shoe's parts can be taken back by nature, or be re-used without any loss of quality.

Grassroots environmental action makes a difference too. Who does not know these dilemmas: you are in the fruit corner of the super market and you want to buy some tomatoes. You look for the organic tomatoes, but as soon as you find them your eye falls on the regular tomatoes, that are almost half the price. And you think: "Maybe organic food is not such big deal. Do these chemicals on these tomatoes really cause the world's water reserves to be polluted?" Or, it is morning and you get ready to go to work. You bought a bicycle and made yourself the promise to use it, because it is healthy and not harmful for the environment.

But it is getting colder. This morning you start doubting about taking your bicycle to work as you also have a car.

"Would the CO2 emissions from my car really melt the polar ice caps?"

It seems that the bigger the problem, the harder it is to grasp that our individual actions really make a difference.

Politicians and companies know that the decisions they make about policy and design strategy have a large and direct impact.

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

Copyright: Nordbild, www.norden.org

For an individual civilian it is harder to grasp that his choices to save the environment make a difference. This makes it easier for an individual to reason his choices for the environment away.

So, we can have environmental ideals but we start to excuse these ideals when we have the chance to put them into real action. But what can we do about it? A deep realization of the environmental problems and their consequences are necessary to put ideas of saving the environment into action. We need to be conscious that we are all part of the global environmental system and that we are causing irreparable damage to it.

Maybe the novel “Animal Dreams”, written by Barbara Kingsolver, can help us to grasp the environmental problem we have. Codi, in conversation with Loyd, a native Navajo Indian, expresses it this way: "The way they tell it to us Anglos, God put the earth here for us to use, westward-ho. Like a special little playground...But where do you go when you've pissed in every corner of your playground?"

Pieter Buikema, Netherlands

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and tyranny, between the wretched of the earth and the oppressors. In other words, human rights champions ask us to choose our side between Good and Evil.

Continues from page 1.

Many think that human rights are universal and applicable to the whole of humanity. This is quite a noble objective. However, the international system, since 1945, is based upon the concept of the sovereignty of nations. Humanitarians now claim that this concept should be ignored, and plead for a world without borders where human rights abuses should be stopped even if they are perpetrated by a sovereign government. The case of Zoe’s Ark perfectly illustrates the viewpoint of humanitarians. Indeed, humanitarians condemned the operation in Chad because the children were not really orphans, as the NGO first argued, but no one mentioned the fact that Zoe’s Ark interfered in Chadian interior affairs. In other words, if the children had been real orphans, humanitarians would have applauded the NGO. However, one should be very careful when dealing with sovereignty.

Choosing sides

Sovereignty or not?

Indeed, if the legal concept of sovereignty is abandoned, what kind of objective, unquestionable legal concept would replace it? We would more likely be confronted with a legal vacuum, where subjectivity would become the norm.

One should remember, indeed, that the concept of sovereignty, in its origin, was not supposed to jeopardise human rights, but to protect them: small, weak, “uncivilized” nations had the same sovereign rights as stronger ones, and they could invoke their sovereignty to protest against, say, an invasion or colonisation by a foreign power. But if sovereignty is gradually considered to be a major obstacle to the universalisation of human rights, what else can

Copyright: UN Photo library

prevent a strong nation from invading another, especially when it does so “in the name of human rights?”

A new ideology A more fundamental argument against universal humanitarianism is that, in many ways, it has become an ideology. The French philosopher Luc Ferry, in the book “L’Homme-Dieu ou le sens de la vie”, argues that the decline of religion in the Christian Western world and the disappearance of ideologies (both fascist and communist) which preserved the sense of things sacred within the community have obscured the question of the meaning of life. This is especially evident in an age marked by the pur-

suit of profit, wealth, fame and material well-being.

From Ferry’s perspective, human rights have become a new, Western, modern religion, a sort of substitution for the historically discredited Christianity, fascism and communism. This comparison may seem shocking, and indeed Ferry himself does not think human rights are potentially as dangerous as 20th-century ideologies.

However, he challenges the modern tendency to refer to the human rights rhetoric when considering a problem.

Just like communists used to look at the world in dialectical terms, Socialist vs. Imperialist, human rights ideologues see the world as a struggle between democracy

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

In this perspective, human rights are no longer a political struggle: they are a moral value, the highest moral value, and everything in the world should be judged in human rights terms. Thus, historical figures like Napoleon or Charles de Gaulle can now be considered criminals against humanity: the former because he rehabilitated slavery, the latter because he authorised torture in Algeria. Likewise, human rights fanatics easily classify George W. Bush, Tony Blair or Ariel Sharon in the”war criminals” category.

Thus, human rights as an ideology can lead to a certain reluctance to accept the complexity of the world, and to draw an artificial line between the oppressed and the oppressor that is integrally untrue.

Human rights fanatics do not seem to like nuances.

The members of Zoe’s Ark recently declared that they would not hesitate to repeat their operation if they were released. That is not really surprising. These human rights supporters did not behave in such a way for material profit, but because “they defended principles”. Their action proceeded from what they believed was Good, and that makes it all the more alarming.

Ilias Papageorgiou, France

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UN+ICC+EU= A Successful Threesome?

The Nuremberg trials marked a precedent in international justice. It broke the tradition of state sovereignty to try individuals after the Second World War. A recent speech from Secretary-General Ban Kimoon to the Joint United NationsInter-Parliamentary Union underlined the four pillars upon which modern international law is founded and which Nuremburg paved the way for: international human rights law, international humanitarian law, international criminal law, and international refugee law.

internal judiciary as well as the positive compliance of states with their international obligations We need a strong international legal body as well as a strong local judiciary to implement modern international law.

The UN has already started to look into the way to best realizing the strategy of building the four pillars of modern international law. Last year, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan underlined the need to develop strategies in a report submitted to the General Assembly named “Uniting our strengths: Enhanc-

Another actor critical to this would have to be the actual ICC. The Rome Statute, which founded the ICC and gave it its competences, bases its own work on those four pillar systems. Here the UN can work in tandem with an international organisation that has the power to judge and uphold the rule of law according to international standards. But there is more to it than meets the eye. Last year, the ICC’s Assembly State Parties, the equivalent to the General Assembly in UN terms, agreed to an omnibus resolution, which called for all members to help universal ratification and compliance with the Rome Statute. Here the UN can find a friend, and not a competitor, to achieve better compliance with international law.

Maybe the true catalyst to make the four pillars advance is provided by the relations that the EU actually maintains with both organisations. The EU is one of the main partners and the one upon which the ICC depends the most. But the EU is also one of biggest donors when it comes to development programs. In this case, the EU can best use its diplomatic leverage to impose the omnibus resolution more effectively as well as coordinating programs with the UN to develop the rule of law in concerned countries.

Copyright: UN Photo library

The European Union (EU), the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the United Nations (UN) have one obvious thing in common: they are independent organisations that try to create peace within their own respectable constitutional terms. These organisations that base themselves on the rule of law have a chance now to cooperate closely to achieve the rule of law internationally and nationally.

ing United Nations support for the rule of law,” to form the basis for action to ensure “freedom from want” and “freedom from fear”.

International law has always been the domain which has dealt with the relations between states. Now international law, as the Secretary-General explained, is no longer just state-based. International law touches upon the protection of the individual. This creates the need for an agenda that both develops the

The rest of the report deals with the different mechanisms for strengthening the rule of law, especially through international observance as well as developing the rule of law inside states through the UN Development Program. But, as outlined above, the UN cannot do it alone.

In the same report, the former Secretary-General saw “the need to deepen and rationalize the UN’s rule of law work, strengthen its capacities, enhance its institutional memory and coordinate more effectively within the United Nations and with outside actors.”

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

As Kofi Annan stated in his report, “I am convinced that the investment by Member States to increase the capacity of the Organization to support their efforts to uphold the rule of law will contribute significantly to peace and security.” In Nuremberg, US chief justice Robert Jackson asked for the “stay of the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of the law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.” Global justice is possible - if we want it to be.

Michael Bourguignon, Netherlands

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Saudi Arabia and Greece – Two Different Worlds?

Our social identity is very significant in the way we interact within our society. Gender is one of the most important traits of our identity. However, gender is culturally constructed and therefore the roles attributes to gender vary from culture to culture.

Fatima comes from Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia. This Islamic state is well known for the inequality between the sexes.

Greece, where I come from, is part of the European Union. It is known as the cradle of Democracy since ancient times. All Greeks, men and women, seem to share the same rights.

Looking at the two cultures (Greek and Saudi Arabian), the differences outnumber the similarities. First, women in Greece have the same rights as men.

There are no restrictions, such as on the way of dressing. Second, women are much more autonomous. They stand up for themselves and occupy all kinds of jobs. Third, in Greece a woman is usually the head of the household. Finally, men and women inherit equally.

In a discussion that I had with Fatima, she confirmed to me the prevalent idea concerning women’s oppression in her country. In Saudi Arabia women are not allowed to drive. All women, regardless of their religion, have to wear an abaya, and very often the police may stop them and force them to cover their heads with veils. Women are not permitted to smoke in public. In addition, they are not allowed to go out without a mahram, who is a male escort. If a woman is found in public with a man who is unrelated to her she may be accused of prostitution. It is very difficult for a woman to live by herself, without a husband or a family.

Some restrictions exist also for men.

For instance, they are not allowed to wear short pants. Saudi men have to wear the traditional dress in public.

However, except for these two restrictions, men are much more independent than women.

In Saudi Arabia, the head of the family is always a male. He is in charge of everything that is happening within his house. This may be due to the patriarchal system dominating the country. For example, concerning inheritance, men usually inherit more. Yet, there are also some shared roles. For example, both spouses engage in the raising of their children and both sexes have the right to be educated, although not in mixed schools (except for private institutions).

Copyright: UN Photo library

However, cultural norms are always very deeply rooted in a society and hence it is difficult to change them.

Copyright: UN Photo library

We, in the West, are quick to make judgments about the gender inequality in other parts of the words, but often ignore the inequalities in our own societies. We should not forget that women’s subordination, unfortunately, is a universal phenomenon, and that there is something to be changed everywhere.

However, do you know that some decades ago, women were also wearing veils in Greece and did not have as many rights as men. Women’s emancipation is a recent phenomenon. Although on the surface it may seem that Greek women and men are equal, I strongly believe that there is still the idea of “Man the Breadwinner and Woman the Homemaker.”

The distribution of social roles is not equal in either culture. In Saudi Arabia, I would say that this is due to the Islamic norms and values. In Greece, the attribution is more equal because it is a developed and democratic country.

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

Nada GhandourDemiri, Greece/Palestine

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When There are no More Tears to Cry Since November Somalia has started to appear again in the press as the United Nations (UN) declared it the worst inferno in the world. The reports underline the fact that the actual situation is so bad that it is worse than Darfur.

According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) close to 850,000 people have left the capital Mogadishu this year, 114,000 during the first two weeks of November alone, because of the extreme violence. Many of ho have fled have made their way to the town of Alfgooye west of the capital.

by French frigates to protect them from attacks by pirates.

In 2007, 26 ships bringing aid were attacked by pirates (three of them carrying enough food for a million people).

Moreover, the WFP declared that the operations come at the most critical moment for the Somali population, which

give more financial, logistical, and technical support to the forces of the African Union (AU). But now AU has only deployed 1,600 of the 8,000 forces planned.

Complicated background In November 2007, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-

In Alfgooye 70 improvised settlements shelter 150,000 persons living in very poor conditions and with no access to basic services. This is also the town where the UN is focusing most its work.

For example, the UNHCR's delegation visited a food center in Alfgooye, where they found at least 50 children with malnutrition, some of them so weak that they could no longer cry.

However, in November two ships carrying World Food Programme (WFP) supplies managed to get through to Somalia. They were escorted

The UN and its Member States have to act better this time around. First, it should increase the peacekeeping budget in Somalia. It is obvious that it has to give more resources to the African Union to analyze the situation on the ground and to kickstart peacekeeping operations.

Affirmative action needed

Copyright: UN Photo library

Black November In addition, in what has been described as “Black November�, Madina Mohamud Elmi a prominent peace activist in Somalia, was shot dead. Eric Laroche, humanitarian coordinator of the UN in Somalia, stated that "Somalia has lost a heroine." According to Laroche, Somalia is one of the most dangerous places for those working in the humanitarian field as no protection is offered.

The internal conflict in Somalia is the result of a combination of religious, political and clan rivalry. The anarchy and the lack of security make a political solution impossible as warlords control certain parts of the country.

has suffered some of the worst conflicts and droughts seen in years.

The UN Security Council (SC) has underlined the urgency of having a contingency plan for a peace force in Somalia. Members of the SC agreed on the necessity to

moon declared that the security situation in the country cannot be assessed and underlined the unacceptability of attacks on humanitarian workers. He stated that "sometimes they are the only hope for some people during the conflict".

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

The UN reminds me of when I played "Risk" as a child, where the established military capacity does not meet the pursued objectives.

The UN cannot be everywhere all the time, and this strains the efficiency of its peacekeeping. Somalia adds to this problem. The UN has the chance to show the world why it exists by taking more affirmative action to improve the situation. This is essential in a country where people no longer have the energy to cry.

Pau Casas Spain

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IN MY VIEW By: Michael Bourguignon

My predecessor left behind one story of the previous issue of the magazine on Belgian fries. I intend to follow his ordeal in trying to understand the originality of the Belgian culture, maybe from a different point of view, gastronomically speaking of course.

Van Wilder, a film about a student who is in his seventh year as an undergraduate surely knows how to have a drink or two. This was the plot of the movie that came out during my years at university.

Hilariously funny, and of course, just wishing that I did not end up like him! However, one thing did stick with me from that film apart from the girls, parties, jokes and the golf cart that I always wanted for getting around my campus: the journalistic genius of one journalist trying to explain the difference between light beer and dark beer.

Now, lets get to the point. Light beers. Myth has it that they are

The lighter side of dark beer sweeter an the tongue and lighter to consume. True. The extensive platter of light beers, blonde or blond, is intricate nevertheless. It has a great body and greater mousse on its head.

But the taste is rather different from the normal Carlsbergs, Fosters, Budweisers, or Heinekens. Delerium Tremens, Kastel, Het Kapittel, and Kwak are some to which we can point for the differences. With blond beer we can also find very different tastes than just sweet. Here come the triples! Because they are brewed differently, the taste is very different – so too are the after-effects. Duvel, De Koninck, Wastemalle, and Achel are still light, but the bitter taste at the beginning still persists even after having finished the drink.

So what about dark beer? The myth says its sour, bitter, a man’s drink. It is heavy and not light on the stomach at all. Despite this fact, I have grown keen on the bruin or brun beers here in Belgium. In fact, they are not sour or bitter and their taste is far from

that. They have varying flavours, but on the whole there are many that can be sweet. Take for example, the Duchesse de Bourgougne, a fine experience. It is light and moussy, but it is also a cross between sour and sweet. It must be the one beer that thrills us all, whether we like it or not. But the great taste of the Rocheforts, both its 8 and 10 degrees are great to the beer taster’s palette.

Dark beer is no longer the same in my eyes!

The truth of the matter is that in Belgium beer can not be categorised, as each one is a different encounter.

In fact, we could say that the opposite is true, and that light coloured beers are in fact the sour and heavy beers. In any case, one thing is for certain, whether it is light, dark, sweet or sour, have your pills handy for the morning after.

That is universal which I am sure Van Wilder himself could tell you.

For that I, a Dutchman, cheer: “Hurrah for Belgium!”

Development Aid: a way of Bettering or Governing Others?

Today, the word ‘development’ appears in many newspapers, journals, websites, speeches... But what do we mean by development? The word refers to the development of livelihoods by giving people more opportunities to improve their quality of life. This includes governance, infrastructure, education, economics, human rights, etc.

On the one hand development is a way to give people more choices and empower them. On the other hand there is a hidden agenda behind the stated objectives of Western development policies and projects.

Continues on page 8.

Copyright: UN photo library

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

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Continued from page 7.

Through development the West is trying to improve the living conditions of people around the globe. A popular goal is the reduction of poverty, expressed in the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.

One of the few ‘success stories’ in the developing world is Mozambique. After the devastating civil war that ended in 1992, it has maintained peace, stability and economic growth. This was mainly due to the large amount of aid provided by Western donors. This example shows how development policies and activities on the ground can have a positive outcome for populations in need. Moreover, these outcomes are intended to last, due to the sustainability element of the programmes. Consequently, development can be interpreted as a method of improvement. ´ The importance of security However, the West is trying to improve lives by imposing its own values (such as liberalism and individualism) and methods (such as capitalism, military interventions and conditionalities). In today’s world it is clear that development strategy is not purely altruistic.

Rather, it expects something back: security. This is obvious in the increasingly common statement made by many Western officials that ‘their security’ and ‘our security’ are intrinsically interconnected.

An important consequence of this overlap between aid and politics is that developers are taking sovereign decisions on behalf of underdeveloped countries. This is crucial because it seems to contradict the humanitarian aspect of development.

Development institutions and donors have to make some

Copyright: UN photo library

decisions with regard to whom they are going to provide aid as aid cannot be distributed equally in the world. Therefore these institutions will have to decide who will live and who will die – a sovereign decision. After decolonization and the Cold War, the Northern powers are dedicating a lot of time and money to nationbuilding programmes. These plans are made possible through humanitarian interventions and development programmes.

As a result, many argue that we have a new form of empire based on good intentions and the emperor is the developed West. Others have taken this view a step further by stating that this new form of governance resembles the “Native Administration” and the “indirect rule” of the colonial period. Another analogy is the one of ‘mission civilisatrice,’ according to which the liberal West acts based on the belief that Western values and ways of governing are superior to

those of the host countries.

Such views reflect skepticism about development as a form of improvement. Since imperialism and colonization are very authoritarian political regimes and they are both imposed upon populations, they completely contradict the whole development agenda presented by the liberal West.

Hence, the line between development as a way of improving and development as a way of governing is blurred.

is a dichotomy between the intentions and what actually happens on the ground. Rather than seeing development as a way of bettering lives or a way of governing others, it would be more useful to understand the ambivalent relation that connects these two characteristics. Understanding this relationship results in effective development assistance that will be more practical than value-laden.

Practical development aid Development is a complex process that involves many actors and mechanisms. In other words, in order for development to be effective many efforts are required on the governmental level, but equally important is the involvement of the local population. Rather than being mutually exclusive, the two components should complement each other. Moreover, because of the difficulty of this task, there

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

Nada Ghandour-Demiri

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Building Peace Through Poetry Rumi. Who was he and why am I telling you about him?

In the Islamic world, this 800-year old Persian poet, philosopher, spiritual master and scholar Moulana, which means our Master, is honored as one of the greatest. His influence in the Turkishand Persian-speaking parts of the world is immense. ”If you can read, you have his books on your book shelves. If you cannot read you know him by heart,” says Swedish scholar Simon Sorgenfrei.

Copyright: UNESCO

From an early age I have heard about Moulana as part of a cultural heritage that was my own. Now, years after I discovered Moulana, I have realized that his greatness is acknowledged by a much broader audience than I ever could have imagined while growing up.

Goethe honoured him in his ”WestEastern Divan”. Emerson and Friedrich Hegel were big admirers of his poetry.

Deepak Chopra arranged reading circles featuring Moulana’s poems and Chopra’s own poetry was inspired by him.

Madonna, Martin Sheer and Donna Karan have all been influenced by him artistically.

People such as Mahatma Gandhi and Dag Hammarskjöld quoted him in their speeches, and even Pope Johannes XXIII had a ceremony for him in 1958.

Yet, most people do not know anything about Moulana Jalal-ud-Din BalkhiRumi, known in the Western world as

Moulana was born on 30 September 1207. His family settled down in Konya, Anatolia (present Turkey). This town was called Rum by the Western world and that is the reason why many know him as Rumi. The life of Moulana was dedicated to preaching and he was widely recognized in his home town.

In 1244 Moulana was approached by the pilgrim Shams al-Din and this meeting changed his life. Their relationship has been described as similar to the one between Socrates and Plato. For months they discussed the divan mysteries and God until one day Shams disappeared.

Rumi was devastated and danced around the whole town, singing his poems and searching for Shams until he found him within himself and in his heart.

These dances became the foundation of the Sufi order of the Dancing Derwish.

Through a ceremony involving music and whirling dance communion with God was achieved. These sacred rituals are called “sema”. Men dress in simple, white wool, spin around and around until they reach a swirling ecstasy and thereby link to God. Moulana wrote many poems to describe his Sufi wisdom. His big collection of poems is widely known as “Masnavi”. It contained more than 30,000 double verses of poetry dedicated to the love of God.

Through these poems Moulana developed his ideas about the core of all religions, namely the eternal love of God. For him this love was more important than rituals or ceremonies and it was something that connects all creatures of the world. This discourse about eternal love and the complete human that is not bound by cultural limitations started an intercultural dialogue long before the 21st century attempts to bridge the gaps between different peoples, cultures and religions.

Still today, Moulana’s poems embrace all living creatures and contain a powerful and touching message for everyone to be part of something bigger.

The last book of the Masnavi remains unfinished since Moulana died while writing it in 1273.

800 years later, the gap between civilizations has still to be filled. Maybe spreading the message of Moulana’s universal and eternal love can help make a contribution to peace and unity among all of us.

In a world where many try to manipulate religion and differences as a reason for hatred 2007 has been named the year of Moulana by UNESCO and 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural dialogue.

Some of the celebrations for both these years have been to raise awareness about Moulana, his eternal love and the message of tolerance that it brings. Or as Shaikh Abu-Saeed Abil-Kheir, another famous Sufi poet, says: “If you are seeking closeness to the Beloved, love everyone. Whether in their presence or absence, see only their good.”

Sahar Arfazadeh Roudsari

”Love’s nationality is separate from all other religions, The lover’s religion and nationality is the Beloved (God). The lover’s cause is separated from all other causes, Love is the astrolabe of God’s mysteries.” (Moulana)

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

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Sexual violence - A weapon of war Currently an average of 40 women and girls are being raped every day in South Kivu, in the war-torn eastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, according to Claudia Rodriguez in Forced Migration Review. Of the rape victims 13% are under 14 years old, 3% die as a result of the rape and 1012% contract HIV/AIDS. The perpetrators are mainly government troops, but also foreign armed groups and an increasing number of civilians are reported to have raped women.

The United Nations states that 27,000 sexual assaults were reported in South Kivu alone, which may be just a fraction of the total number

of assaults in the whole country.

“The sexual violence in Congo is the worst in the world,” said John Holmes, the United Nations’s UnderSecretary-General for humanitarian affairs. “The sheer numbers, the wholesale brutality, the culture of impunity - it’s appalling.”

Some victims are only three years old and according to Jeffrey Gettleman of the New York Times, rapes in the DRC often have a particularly brutal nature: "Many have been so sadistically attacked from the inside out, butchered by bayonets and assaulted with chunks of wood, that their reproductive and digestive systems are beyond repair". “We don’t know why these rapes are happening, but one thing is

Copyright: UNHCR

clear,” said Dr. Mukwege, who works in South Kivu Province, “they are done to destroy women.”

Medicins Sans Frontiers reported as far back as 1994 that many women and girls were being held sex slaves, they endured group rapes and were subsequently rejected by their husbands and families. According to Katie Thomas in ‘Sexual violence: weapon of war’ ″most societies will blame, ostracise and punish women – rather than men- for sexual violence.

The woman or girl may well be disowned by her family or expelled by her community”.

According to UNICEF sexual violence against women is a weapon of war which is in many ways more effective than any kind of arms. ″Sexual violation of women erodes the fabric of a community in a way that few weapons can. Rape's damage can be devastating because of the strong communal reaction to the violation and the pain stamped on entire families. The harm inflicted in such cases on a woman by a rapist is an attack on her family and culture, as in many societies women are viewed as repositories of a community's cultural and spiritual values”.

Sexual violation of women during war is thus a way to further destabilize and disintegrate communities and societies. Men and children are sometimes forced to watch their wife and mother being raped, damaging families and family ties beyond repair. “While most violence in war is inflicted in order to

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

kill the enemy, sexual violence is usually perpetrated not only to cause physical wounding and humiliation but also to help destroy the opposing culture”, says Katie Thomas. “The damage to cultural and community life wrought by the use of sexual violence in warfare can persist for generations. Longterm psychological damage and ongoing suffering mean that such violence affects not only the immediate victim but also her children and grandchildren, family, extended family and community life”.

Rape has always been a weapon of war, soldiers are sometimes instructed to rape women by their superiors.

However, in Congo the phenomena has reached worse levels than anywhere else and the perpetrators are from all backgrounds, military and civilian. Abuse of, and violence against, women has almost become a part of life.

In DRC one of the main reasons why sexual violence is so common and is still increasing, is the fact that perpetrators are hardly ever punished for their deeds.

Also the means to fight it are simply too few. As a result sexual violence against women is spreading through communities, victimizing more and more women and girls.

Maaike Jakobsen Denmark/ Netherlands

PAGE 11

The Last Step Before Hell?

Everyone either underestimates or overestimates the UN. How many times have we heard “the UN does not work”, “why do we need the UN?” Every year I go back to visit family in the cosiness of the Mid-West in the United States’ Great Plains and, believe me, I will not even touch the subject.

But I have recently been thinking of a statement of a statement that the UnderSecretary General for Peace-keeping, Jean-Marie Guehenno, made paraphrasing Dag Hammerskjold: “I think that the UN is the last step before hell… but it prevents us from going to hell.”

Many have hesitated to give a meaning to the UN. The Charter has a plethora of definitions for the organisation. The preamble states human rights as an important cause, as well as social progress, larger freedom, tolerance, economic and social advances, and, of course, peace and security. The world has changed, but the principles have not.

Maybe the founding nations at San Francisco intended it this way. But in any case, the UN has expanded its activity in every area.

Copyright: UN photo library

Copyright: UN photo library

How and why has this system been able to work regardless of its largely unchanged structure that has lasted more than sixty years? The UN is a regulatory organisation. All it can do is to try to normalize the international relationships between states in today’s system. And to be quite frank, it has done a very good job. From the start, the UN was never intended to be a global government or to create a world federal state. Two important organs of the UN are not the ones that are beholden to the UN itself, but rather to states: the Security Council and the General Assembly. Only theyhave the power to make the real decisions in the organisation.

But as a regulatory body, the UN has seemed to quietly adapt to this restriction imposed by member states.

The organisation has moved forward and created new tools to be able to adapt to the challenges after the fall of the Berlin wall. The evolution towards the new challenges of development, and now of terrorism and environment, gave the UN a growing need to widen its programs to be able to adjust to the need of states and the new global threats.

Trying to regulate these global threats is what the UN does best. Its allocation of resources must be made smartly. But to do this smartly the UN must delegate the responsibility to member states to have effective world regulation. Outsourcing the job to member states is not a sign of weakness, but a sign of successful Internal voices No 2/ January 2008

regulation. It is a relationship that has to be entrusted in subsidiarity and complementarity. Terrorism, climate change, global development, global pandemics, migration, refugees, are all issues that do not respect borders and where the UN can do better than a state.

Without local action there can be no global solution and vice-versa. Let the musicians play their instruments but let the conductor conduct his orchestra.

International law has worked with the International Court of Justice. The Millenium Development Goals are achievable results. The UN peacekeeping forces will be the largest group of armed forces when the United States leaves Iraq. Climate change is being fought thanks to initiatives by the IPCC. These global threats are being dealt with

by UN agencies that help states assume their responsibility with regard to these different threats. Now, what if we did not have these agencies? That would be hell.

Michael Bourguignon

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2008 is the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights Go to UNRIC’s website www.knowyourrights2008.org and join the celebration by signing the declaration, meeting the UN’s special rapporteures, seeing and posting projects, spreading the word to all your friends in all the world etc. A campaign for human rights are best seen with the heart, that is why le Petit Prince has been chosen as the SpokesPrince of the campaign!

Editor: Sahar Arfazadeh Roudsari

Thank you for reading Internal Voices.

For more information about us, please visit us online at www.unric.org

Co-editors: Michael Bourguignon and Nada Ghandour-Demiri Layout and design: Åsa Dahlvik and editors Writers: Pieter Buikema, Pau Casas, Ilias Papageorgiou, Maaike Jakobsen.

Or join the UNRIC interns Facebook group to keep in touch with your fellow UNRIC alumnis.

These are some of our interns at the UNRIC in Brussels, January 2008.

Left to right: Maria Thorsnes, Daniela Costa, Karoliina Kinnunen, Maaike Jakobsen, Sara Tierno, Eleni Seriatou, Michael Bourguignon, Ilias Papageorgiou, Anna Ceolon, Sahar Arfazadeh Roudsari, Pau Casas Griera, Gabriele Corso, Edward Gregory Jones

Internal voices No 2/ January 2008