#United Nations Inter-agency Network on Human Rights

[developmentinformationday]

Human Rights as Catalysts for Sustainable Development; Leveraging a Coordinated Approach by the UN development system to Leave No One Behind.

ECOSOC-OAS Side-event; conference room 11 - United Nations Inter-agency Network on Human Rights.

Watch Human Rights as Catalysts for Sustainable Development; Leveraging a Coordinated Approach by the UN development system to Leave No One Behind!

[leftpress]

louisproyect | July 10th 2019 | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist

On their Gray Zone website, Max Blumenthal and his mini-me Ben Norton (aka Ned Borton) have just come out with a 5,600 word diatribe against the Socialism 2019 Conference in Chicago. Most people still tethered to the planet would understand that the main political questions raised by the DSA/ex-ISO conference was whether support for Democratic Party candidates is tactically permissible. Instead, the two geniuses were playing Vishinsky-like prosecuting attorneys making the case that “Socialism is now apparently brought to you by the US State Department”.

They dug up every connection that conference speakers had to inside-the-beltway NGOs and government agencies like the NED to read the DSA and ex-ISOers out of the radical movement. One would think that these two nitwits would put more energy into helping the left put together a conference that did not have such nefarious ties. I can recommend some left groups that are as unsullied as them: Workers World, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, the Socialist Equality Party, the Spartacist League and Socialist Action. These five groups have never been implicated in smoke-filled room deals with officials of the Deep State, to be sure. In fact, if all of them got together to stage a Communism 2019 Conference, they wouldn’t need to line up a Hyatt hotel. A church basement would do just fine.

To turn NED funding, or any other such body, into a litmus test as to a group’s leftist credentials is a problematic methodology. Its main problem is that it turns the nation-state into the unit of analysis rather than the social class.

For example, they excoriate the China Labour Bulletin for taking money from the NED but do not say anything about what it stands for. If you go to their website, you’ll find articles, for example, on coal mine safety in China that contains such data:

The Daping coal mine in Zhengzhou, Henan province, where 148 people died in a gas explosion on 20 October 2004, had been inspected and approved for an annual production capacity of 900,000 tonnes. In 2003, the mine produced 1.32 million tonnes of coal, and from January to September 2004 it had already produced 960,000 tonnes. Similarly, the Sunjiawan coal mine in Liaoning province, where a gas explosion killed at least 214 miners on 14 February 2005, had been approved for a production capacity of 900,000 tonnes, but its actual output in 2004 was 1.48 million tonnes. The Shenlong coal mine in Fukang county, Xinjiang province, where 83 miners died in a gas explosion on 11 July 2005, had a safe production capacity of only 30,000 tonnes, but during the first half of 2005 alone it had already produced almost 180,000 tonnes of coal.

You will find absolutely nothing about “regime change” in the CLB. It is simply one of the few voices Chinese workers have making their case. If the NED provides funding for their work, there is no stigma as long as the money comes with no-strings-attached.

The truth is that the NED and similar bodies from George Soros’s Open Foundation to Human Rights Watch will always try to take advantage of protests in every corner of the world in order to influence them. Why would anybody expect anything different? To be consistent, you’d have to condemn the student movement in Egypt in 2011 in the same way you condemn CLB. In fact, Global Research—Gray Zone’s closest relative—did exactly that. Tony Cartalucci put it this way in an article titled “The US Engineered “Arab Spring”: The NGO Raids in Egypt”:

It is hardly a speculative theory then, that the uprisings were part of an immense geopolitical campaign conceived in the West and carried out through its proxies with the assistance of disingenuous organizations including NED, NDI, IRI, and Freedom House and the stable of NGOs they maintain throughout the world. Preparations for the “Arab Spring” began not as unrest had already begun, but years before the first “fist” was raised, and within seminar rooms in D.C. and New York, US-funded training facilities in Serbia, and camps held in neighboring countries, not within the Arab World itself.

In 2008, Egyptian activists from the now infamous April 6 movement were in New York City for the inaugural Alliance of Youth Movements (AYM) summit, also known as Movements.org. There, they received training, networking opportunities, and support from AYM’s various corporate and US governmental sponsors, including the US State Department itself. The AYM 2008 summit report states that the Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman attended, as did Jared Cohen who sits on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of State. Six other State Department staff members and advisers would also attend the summit along with an immense list of corporate, media, and institutional representatives.

Can you tell the difference between Tony Cartalucci and the Gray Zone? I can’t.

Much venom is sprayed at Anand Gopal and Dan La Botz for the same kinds of reasons. Gopal is an acclaimed journalist who has made repeated trips to Syria from Turkey without Baathist approval. As with other reporters who refuse to write propaganda for the dictatorship, he had to find other ways to interview Syrians. He would crawl beneath a barbed wire fence on the border and follow painted rocks that were place there by villagers to avoid land mines. In a talk on Syria recently, Gopal argued that part of the explanation for the failure of the revolution was that the leadership were small proprietors in the local governments of rebel-controlled territory that insisted on preserving private property relations. If this book is nearly as good as his book on Afghanistan that was a Pulitzer prize runner up, it should gain widespread attention. Meanwhile, Blumenthal’s reporting on Syria is the same as Vanessa Beeley’s, just regime propaganda. At least Beeley went to Syria, even if was limited to 4-star hotels and tea parties with the dictator. Can you imagine Sidney Blumenthal’s golden boy crawling under barbed wire fences and stepping close to land mines to get a story? I can’t.

The attacks on Dan La Botz are just as apolitical. I am just as opposed to La Botz’s special pleading for the reactionary student movement in Venezuela as Blumenthal and Norton but I wouldn’t dream of smearing him as a State Department tool. In fact, this kind of attack has roots in Stalin’s demonization of his opponents who were supposedly trying to overthrow the USSR because both they and the capitalist media described him as a ruthless dictator.

In channeling Stalin, these two pinheads make sure to use the word “Trotskyite” throughout, a term that is a dead giveaway for politics that have largely died out after the collapse of the USSR and the transformation of the CPs into Eurocommunist type parties, except for the KKE in Greece that is cut from the same cloth as Gray Zone.

Looking back at the history of the radical movement, you will find many attempts to take advantage of imperialist rivalry. For Blumenthal and Norton, the only imperialist powers in the world are those in the West. China and Russia are clearly seen by them as anti-imperialist states even though the subjugation of the Uygurs and Syrians that Gray Zone defends are clearly imperialist in character. If Uygurs and Syrians are expected to pass their litmus test, it would mean suicide since the world is divided into two major geopolitical blocs. For all of their ranting against the White Helmets from receiving funding from the West, you would be hard-pressed to see how else they could have assembled a first responder team that has saved thousands of lives. Obviously, Gray Zone must believe that bombing hospitals is warranted in rebel-controlled territory since all the patients are likely carrying the dread sharia-law virus.

Fortunately, people like Roger Casement and others trying to exploit the differences between Anglo-American and German imperialism didn’t take Gray Zone type advice.

Who could blame Irish freedom fighter Roger Casement for trying to strike deals with Kaiser Wilhelm to get weapons to liberate his people? During a period of inter-imperialist rivalries, it was not considered a betrayal of socialist principles to look for such opportunities. In Roy’s case, there was the added dimension of his writing the theses on national liberation adopted by the Comintern. How could you cozy up with imperialists and then write such classic statements of Marxist policy?

This is not to speak of V.I. Lenin’s stance with respect to the same bogeymen. In “To the Finland Station”, Edmund Wilson describes the uneasy feelings that some of his comrades had that were by no means as disgusting as Gray Zone’s attack on Socialism 2019:

In the train that left the morning of April 8 there were thirty Russian exiles, including not a single Menshevik. They were accompanied by the Swiss socialist Platten, who made himself responsible for the trip, and the Polish socialist Radek. Some of the best of the comrades had been horrified by the indiscretion of Lenin in resorting to the aid of the Germans and making the trip through an enemy country. They came to the station and besieged the travelers, begging them not to go. Lenin got into the train without replying a word.

Even after Hitler took power, some nationalists continued in the same vein, the most notable among them Subhas Chandra Bose who relied on both German and Japanese support for an army that could liberate India. Despite this marriage of convenience, Bose was politically on the left and an admirer of the USSR. Indeed, Stalin’s nonaggression pact with Hitler served his policy aims well as indicated by his 1941 Kabul Thesis written just before he travelled to Germany to consult with the Nazis:

Thus we see pseudo-Leftists who through sheer cowardice avoid a conflict with Imperialism and argue in self-defence that Mr. Winston Churchill (whom we know to be the arch-Imperialist) is the greatest revolutionary going. It has become a fashion with these pseudo-Leftists to call the British Government a revolutionary force because it is fighting the Nazis and Fascists. But they conveniently forget the imperialist character of Britain’s war and also the fact that the greatest revolutionary force in the world, the Soviet Union, has entered into a solemn pact with the Nazi Government.

While some sought advantage by aligning with the axis, others found the allies more amenable to their broader goals. While he would eventually find himself locked in a deadly struggle with American imperialism, Ho Chi Minh had no problem connecting with the OSS during WWII as recounted by William Duiker in his 2000 biography “Ho Chi Minh: a Life”:

While Ho Chi Minh was in Paise attempting to revitalize the Dong Minh Hoi, a U.S. military intelligence officer arrived in Kunming to join the OSS unit there. Captain Archimedes “Al” Patti had served in the European Theater until January 1944, when he was transferred to Washington, D.C., and appointed to the Indochina desk at OSS headquarters. A man of considerable swagger and self-confidence, Patti brought to his task a strong sense of history and an abiding distrust of the French and their legacy in colonial areas. It was from the files in Washington, D.C. that he first became aware of the activities of the Vietminh Front and its mysterious leader, Ho Chi Minh.

The next day, Patti arrived at Debao airport, just north of Jingxi, and after consultation with local AGAS representatives, drove into Jingxi, where he met a Vietminh contact at a local restaurant and was driven to see Ho Chi Minh in a small village about six miles out of town. After delicately feeling out his visitor about his identity and political views, Ho described conditions inside Indochina and pointed out that his movement could provide much useful assistance and information to the Allies if it were in possession of modern weapons, ammunition, and means of communication. At the moment, Ho conceded that the movement was dependent upon a limited amount of equipment captured from the enemy. Patti avoided any commitment, but promised to explore the matter. By his own account, Patti was elated.

Right now, the biggest question facing the left is class independence, something clearly of little importance to Ben Norton who is a big Tulsi Gabbard fan. In this interview, he is positively glowing about her political growth even though she had “odious” views in the past.

Trying to stake out a position that will stand out in a crowded “anti-imperialist” left will be tough for Norton and Blumenthal. You can read the same sort of thing in Consortium News, Moon of Alabama, Mint Press, Off-Guardian, 21st Century Wire, DissidentVoice, Information Clearing House, et al. To separate themselves from the pack, my advice to the two careerists is to find some sugar daddy that can throw some money their way. Ron Unz of UNZ Review not only has deep pockets but lots of sympathy for their tilt toward Russia and Syria. That is if you can put up with his neo-Nazism.

[Read More On LeftPress.org]

[arabfanon]

Over more than a decade, the rise of the left in Latin American governance has led to remarkable advances in poverty alleviation, regional integration, and a reassertion of sovereignty and independence. The United States has been antagonistic toward the new left governments, and has concurrently pursued a bellicose foreign policy, in many cases blithely dismissive of international law.

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Jose M. Vivanco at Senate hearing in 2004. Photo by Jeremy Bigwood.So why has Human Rights Watch (HRW)—despite proclaiming itself “one of the world’s leading independent organizations” on human rights—so consistently paralleled U.S. positions and policies? This affinity for the U.S. government agenda is not limited to Latin America. In the summer of 2013, for example, when the prospect of a unilateral U.S. missile strike on Syria—a clear violation of the UN Charter—loomed large, HRW’s executive director Kenneth Roth speculated as to whether a simply “symbolic” bombing would be sufficient. “If Obama decides to strike Syria, will he settle for symbolism or do something that will help protect civilians?” he asked on Twitter. Executive director of MIT’s Center for International Studies John Tirman swiftly denounced the tweet as “possibly the most ignorant and irresponsible statement ever by a major human-rights advocate.”

1

HRW’s accommodation to U.S. policy has also extended to renditions—the illegal practice of kidnapping and transporting suspects around the planet to be interrogated and often tortured in allied countries. In early 2009, when it was reported that the newly elected Obama administration was leaving this program intact, HRW’s then Washington advocacy director Tom Malinowski argued that “under limited circumstances, there is a legitimate place” for renditions, and encouraged patience: “they want to design a system that doesn’t result in people being sent to foreign dungeons to be tortured,” he said, “but designing that system is going to take some time.”2

Similar consideration was not extended to de-facto U.S. enemy Venezuela, when, in 2012, HRW’s Americas director José Miguel Vivanco and global advocacy director Peggy Hicks wrote a letter to President Hugo Chávez arguing that his country was unfit to serve on the UN’s Human Rights Council. Councilmembers must uphold the highest standards in the promotion and protection of human rights, they maintained, but unfortunately, “Venezuela currently falls far short of acceptable standards.”3 Given HRW’s silence regarding U.S. membership in the same council, one wonders precisely what HRW’s acceptable standards are.

One underlying factor for HRW’s general conformity with U.S. policy was clarified on July 8, 2013, when Roth took to Twitter to congratulate his colleague Malinowski on his nomination to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL). Malinowski was poised to further human rights as a senior-level foreign-policy official for an administration that convenes weekly “Terror Tuesday” meetings. In these meetings, Obama and his staffers deliberate the meting out of extrajudicial drone assassinations around the planet, reportedly working from a secret “kill list” that has included several U.S. citizens and a 17-year-old girl.4

Malinowski’s entry into government was actually a re-entry. Prior to HRW, he had served as a speechwriter for Secretary of State Madeline Albright and for the White House’s National Security Council. He was also once a special assistant to President Bill Clinton—all of which he proudly listed in his HRW biography. During his Senate confirmation hearing on September 24, Malinowski promised to “deepen the bipartisan consensus for America’s defense of liberty around the world,” and assured the Foreign Relations Committee that no matter where the U.S. debate on Syria led, “the mere fact that we are having it marks our nation as exceptional.”5

That very day, Obama stood before the UN General Assembly and declared, “some may disagree, but I believe that America is exceptional.” Assuming that by “exceptional” Obama meant exceptionally benevolent, one of those who disagreed was Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, who had opened the proceedings at the same podium by excoriating Obama’s “global network of electronic espionage,” which she considered a “disrespect to national sovereignty” and a “grave violation of human rights and of civil liberties.” Rousseff contrasted Washington’s rogue behavior with her characterization of Brazil as a country that has “lived in peace with our neighbors for more than 140 years.” Brazil and its neighbors, she argued, were “democratic, pacific and respectful of international law.”6 Rousseff’s speech crystallized Latin America’s broad opposition to U.S. exceptionalism, and therefore shed light on the left’s mutually antagonistic relationship with HRW.

*

Malinowski’s background is but one example of a larger scenario. HRW’s institutional culture is shaped by its leadership’s intimate links to various arms of the U.S. government. In her HRW biography, the vice chair of HRW’s board of directors, Susan Manilow, describes herself as “a longtime friend to Bill Clinton,” and helped manage his campaign finances. (HRW once signed a letter to Clinton advocating the prosecution of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes; HRW made no case for holding Clinton accountable for NATO’s civilian-killing bombings despite concluding that they constituted “violations of international humanitarian law.”)7 Bruce Rabb, also on Human Rights Watch’s Board of Directors, advertises in his biography that he “served as staff assistant to President Richard Nixon” from 1969-70—the period in which that administration secretly and illegally carpet bombed Cambodia and Laos.8

The advisory committee for HRW’s Americas Division has even boasted the presence of a former Central Intelligence Agency official, Miguel Díaz. According to his State Department biography, Díaz served as a CIA analyst and also provided “oversight of U.S. intelligence activities in Latin America” for the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.9 As of 2012, Díaz focused, as he once did for the CIA, on Central America for the State Department’s DRL—the same bureau now to be supervised by Malinowski.

Other HRW associates have similarly questionable backgrounds: Myles Frechette, currently an advisory committee member for the Americas Division, served as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean from 1990-93, and then became U.S. Ambassador to Colombia from 1994-97. Frechette subsequently worked as the executive director of a “nonprofit” group called the North American-Peruvian Business Council, and championed the interests of his funders in front of Congress. His organization received financing from companies such as Newmont Mining, Barrick Gold, Caterpillar, Continental Airlines, J.P. Morgan, ExxonMobil, Patton Boggs, and Texaco.10

Michael Shifter, who also currently serves on HRW’s Americas advisory committee, directed the Latin America and Caribbean program for the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a quasi-governmental entity whose former acting president Allen Weinstein told The Washington Post in 1991 that “a lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”11 Shifter, as current president of a policy center called the Inter-American Dialogue, oversees $4 million a year in programming, financed in part through donations from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the embassies of Canada, Germany, Guatemala, Mexico and Spain, and corporations such as Chevron, ExxonMobil, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Boeing, and Western Union.

To be sure, not all of the organization’s leadership has been so involved in dubious political activities. Many HRW board members are simply investment bankers, like board co-chairs Joel Motley of Public Capital Advisors, LLC, and Hassan Elmasry, of Independent Franchise Partners, LLP. HRW Vice Chair John Studzinski is a senior managing director at The Blackstone Group, a private equity firm founded by Peter G. Peterson, the billionaire who has passionately sought to eviscerate Social Security and Medicare. And although Julien J. Studley, the Vice Chair of the Americas advisory committee, once served in the U.S. Army’s psychological warfare unit, he is now just another wealthy real-estate tycoon in New York.

That HRW’s advocacy reflects its institutional makeup is unremarkable. Indeed, an examination of its positions on Latin America demonstrates the group’s predictable, general conformity with U.S. interests. Consider, for example, HRW’s reaction to the death of Hugo Chávez. Within hours of his passing on March 5, 2013, HRW published an overview—“Venezuela: Chávez’s Authoritarian Legacy”—to enormous online response. In accordance with its headline’s misleading terminology, HRW never once mentioned Chávez’s democratic bona fides: Since 1998, he had triumphed in 14 of 15 elections or referenda, all of which were deemed free and fair by international monitors. Chávez’s most recent reelection boasted an 81% participation rate; former president Jimmy Carter described the voting process as “the best in the world.”12 The article neglected to cite a single positive aspect of Chávez’s tenure, under which poverty was slashed by half and infant mortality by a third.

In contrast, HRW’s August 21, 2012 statement regarding the death of Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi was decidedly more muted: “Ethiopia: Transition Should Support Human Rights Reform,” read the headline. Leslie Lefkow, HRW’s deputy Africa director, urged the country’s new leadership to “reassure Ethiopians by building on Meles’s positive legacy while reversing his government’s most pernicious policies.” Regarding a leader whose two-decade rule had none of Chávez’s democratic legitimacy (HRW itself documented Ethiopia’s repressive and unfair elections in both 2005 and 2010), the organization argued only that “Meles leaves a mixed legacy on human rights.”13 Whereas HRW omitted all mention of Chávez-era social improvements, it wrote, “Under [Meles’s] leadership the country has experienced significant, albeit uneven, economic development and progress.”

The explanation for this discrepancy is obvious: as a New York Times obituary reported, Meles was “one of the United States government’s closest African allies.” Although “widely considered one of Africa’s most repressive governments,” wrote the Times, Ethiopia “continues to receive more than $800 million in American aid each year. American officials have said that the Ethiopian military and security services are among the Central Intelligence Agency’s favorite partners.”14

*

HRW has taken its double standard to cartoonish heights throughout Latin America. At a 2009 NED Democracy Award Roundtable, José Miguel Vivanco described Cuba, not the United States, as “one of our countries in the hemisphere that is perhaps the one that has today the worst human-rights record in the region.” As evidence, he listed Cuba’s “long- and short-term detentions with no due process, physical abuse [and] surveillance”—as though these were not commonplace U.S. practices, even (ironically) at Guantánamo Bay.15 Vivanco was also quoted in late 2013, claiming at an Inter-American Dialogue event that the “gravest setbacks to freedom of association and expression in Latin America have taken place in Ecuador”—not in Colombia, the world’s most dangerous country for trade union leaders, or in Honduras, the region’s deadliest country for journalists (both, incidentally, U.S. allies).16

Latin America scholars are sounding the alarm: New York University history professor Greg Grandin recently described HRW as “Washington’s adjunct” in The Nation magazine.17 And when Vivanco publicly stated that “we did [our 2008] report because we wanted to show the world that Venezuela is not a model for anyone,” over 100 academics wrote to the HRW’s directors, lamenting the “great loss to civil society when we can no longer trust a source such as Human Rights Watch to conduct an impartial investigation and draw conclusions based on verifiable facts.”18

HRW’s deep ties to U.S. corporate and state sectors should disqualify the institution from any public pretense of independence. Such a claim is indeed untenable given the U.S.-headquartered organization’s status as a revolving door for high-level governmental bureaucrats. Stripping itself of the “independent” label would allow HRW’s findings and advocacy to be more accurately evaluated, and its biases more clearly recognized.

In Latin America, there is a widespread awareness of Washington’s ability to deflect any outside attempts to constrain its prerogative to use violence and violate international law. The past three decades alone have seen U.S. military invasions of Grenada and Panama, a campaign of international terrorism against Nicaragua, and support for coup governments in countries such as Venezuela, Haiti, Honduras, and Guatemala. If HRW is to retain credibility in the region, it must begin to extricate itself from elite spheres of U.S. decision-making and abandon its institutional internalization of U.S. exceptionalism. Implementing a clear prohibition to retaining staff and advisers who have crafted or executed U.S. foreign policy would be an important first step. At the very least, HRW can institute lengthy “cooling-off” periods—say, five years in duration—before and after its associates move between the organization and the government.

After all, HRW’s Malinowski will be directly subordinate to Secretary of State John Kerry, who conveyed the U.S. attitude toward Latin America in a way that only an administrator of a superpower could. In an April 17, 2013 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, a member of Congress asked Kerry whether the United States should prioritize “the entire region as opposed to just focusing on one country, since they seem to be trying to work together closer than ever before.” Kerry reassured him of the administration’s global vision. “Look,” he said. “The Western Hemisphere is our backyard. It is critical to us.”19

[khalilhumam]

Migrants in Asia and the Pacific at Higher Risk of COVID-19 and its Socioeconomic Fallout

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/migrants-in-asia-and-the-pacific-at-higher-risk-of-covid-19-and-its-socioeconomic-fallout/

Migrants in Asia and the Pacific at Higher Risk of COVID-19 and its Socioeconomic Fallout

Bangkok – The COVID-19 pandemic and its socio-economic fallout pose great risks to migrants in the Asia-Pacific, a new United Nations report reveals. They are more likely to be exposed to the virus, lack access to health care and other essential services, be stranded in countries without work or social protection and face rising xenophobia. However, as essential workers and remittance providers, migrants are also key to recovering better. Unlike nationals, migrants have generally not been included in social security provisions like unemployment insurance or income support. Migrants have also been disproportionately affected by border closures and lockdowns, leaving many vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. This exclusion of migrants poses major threats to their human rights and well-being. Poverty reduction efforts in the region are likely to be affected too as will the effort to build stronger, more inclusive and resilient communities.  Migrant remittances to the Asia-Pacific region, which rose from $183 billion in 2009 to $330 billion in 2019, have declined due to the COVID-19 outbreak, leaving many households of migrants without a major source of income. These findings are among the key conclusions of the Asia-Pacific Migration Report 2020, released today on International Migrants Day. The report was produced by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the Regional United Nations Network on Migration for Asia-Pacific in preparation for the first Asia-Pacific Regional Review of Implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration scheduled to take place in March 2021. The Report was drafted by ESCAP, ILO, IOM and OHCHR, with inputs from UNAIDS, UNDP, UNEP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UN-Habitat, UNHCR, UNICEF, UNODC, UN-Women and WFP. “Today, the number of international migrants, to, from and within the region, is at an all-time high. Safe, orderly and regular migration can reduce the vulnerability of migrants and societies to the negative impacts of COVID-19 and future pandemics and help build back better, more resilient communities,” said United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP Ms. Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana. “Greater regional and subregional cooperation on migration would contribute to a more effective COVID-19 response and to maximize the benefits of migration for all.” “Migrants have been at the forefront of the fight against COVID-19. On this International Migrants Day, we thank them for their contributions, and strongly advocate for a more inclusive response to the pandemic which doesn’t leave them behind, particularly now as countries around the world start massive vaccination programmes,” shared Dr. Nenette Motus, Coordinator, Regional United Nations Network for Migration for Asia and the Pacific and Regional Director, International Organization for Migration (IOM) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific. The Report shows that international migration from, to and between Asia-Pacific countries has increased over the past 30 years. The number of migrants in the region has grown from 52 million in 1990 to 65 million in 2019. Almost 107 million people from Asia and the Pacific lived outside their countries of birth in 2019 – equivalent to 2.2 per cent of the region’s total population, the largest single region of origin of migrants in the world. Most recorded migrants are migrant workers, contributing to sustainable development in countries of origin and destination. COVID-19 will continue to have an impact on people and communities on the move in the near future. Even as vaccines are approved, the Report underlines that the inclusion of migrants in vaccination programmes, including migrants in irregular situations, will be critical. The Report presents the first comprehensive assessment of the implementation of the Global Compact for Migration in the region. It provides a baseline assessment of achievements, gaps, lessons learned and remaining challenges to guide action to ensure safe, orderly and regular migration, for the benefit of all in the region.   Read the Report: https://www.unescap.org/resources/asia-pacific-migration-report-2020 View the launch event: https://youtu.be/1JyO-6z3hIc   About the Regional United Nations Network on Migration for Asia-Pacific The Regional United Nations Network on Migration for Asia and the Pacific is an inter-agency network of 15 UN agencies[1] which facilitates effective, timely and coordinated UN system-wide support to Member States in the Asia-Pacific region to support the implementation of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration through policy guidance, better understanding of migration issues, joint programmes and activities and support to follow-up and review.   For media enquiries, please contact: Ms. Kavita Sukanandan, Public Information Officer Strategic Communications and Advocacy Section, ESCAP T: (66) 2 288 1869 / E: sukanandan@un.org Mr. Itayi Virri, Senior Regional Media & Communications Officer Regional Office for Asia & the Pacific, IOM T: (66) 65 939 0934 / E: IVIRIRI@iom.int Mr. Steve Needham, Senior Communications Officer ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific T: (66) 83 606 6628 / E: needham@ilo.org Mr. Todd Pitman, Regional Public Information Officer OHCHR Regional Office T: (66) 22 88 2604 / E: todd.pitman@un.org  Ms. Shima Islam, Regional Communication Specialist UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific T: (66) 23 56 9407 / E: ssislam@unicef.org

Language English

Posted: 

Friday, December 18, 2020 - 12:08

Image: 

Region-Country: 

Afghanistan

Australia

Cambodia

India

Indonesia

Lao People’s Democratic Republic

Malaysia

Marshall Islands

Mongolia

Myanmar

Nepal

Pakistan

Papua New Guinea

Philippines

Republic of Korea

Sri Lanka

Thailand

Themes: 

COVID-19

Default: 

Multimedia: 

The Asia-Pacific Migration Report 2020 was released on International Migrants Day, 18 December 2020.

The Asia-Pacific Migration Report 2020 was released on International Migrants Day, 18 December 2020.

Press Release Type: 

Local

[justsmajorproject]

Organisations that I can contact 

HMS Trust - To connect, support, and advocate for the refugee and migrant communities. To maintain and establish stakeholder relationship. To foster participation of newcomers in the community

Asylum Seekers Support Trust - Providing emergency housing and other critical humanitarian support from a qualified social worker who gives advice and practical assistance based on assessment of individual need. ASST also advocates strongly for legal and compassionate treatment of our clients and all those who come to our shores seeking a safe and peaceful life. 

Christchurch Resettlement Services - CRS exists to support people from refugee and migrant backgrounds living in Christchurch to settle successfully in New Zealand by providing a range of professional services that build on strengths to promote wellbeing and resilience. 

Belong Aotearoa - Vision: An inclusive, connected New Zealand where newcomer communities are able to enjoy and contribute towards our collective wellbeing and prosperity.   Mission: Driving innovation to improve newcomer settlement and integration. 

 Hearts and Minds - Hearts & Minds NZ Inc. is a leading community development agency with an integrated focus on wellbeing. Inherent in Hearts & Minds is the belief that all people from every socio-economic, age, gender and ethnic demographic have a world of wonderful possibilities within them. 

ARCC - In 2005, an ethnically diverse group of resettled community leaders and their friends, supporters and relevant agencies worked to establish a collective, and powerful, community. A community to provide opportunity, empowerment, and a voice that represented not one, but all resettled communities in Auckland and New Zealand. A community that would be powerful enough to have a meaningful and positive impact for former refugees. 

RASNZ - Refugees as Survivors New Zealand (RASNZ) is New Zealand’s leading mental health and wellbeing service for people from refugee backgrounds living in Aotearoa. 

INZ - Immigration New Zealand looks after New Zealand’s immigration rules and laws, which in turn support our economic growth and strengthen our relationship with other parts of the world. We offer a range of visas to help those who can contribute to New Zealand to visit, work, study, live, or invest here. 

Refugee Council of New Zealand - The Refugee Council of New Zealand (RCNZ) is a national organisation whose purpose is to provide advice, information and assistance to asylum-seekers and refugees in New Zealand; promote a strategic response to the needs of refugees and asylum seekers; and to campaign to ensure that New Zealand meets its legal and humanitarian obligations under the 1951 United Nations Convention on Refugees. 

NZ Red Cross - New Zealand Red Cross is part of the largest humanitarian network in the world. We have more than 11,000 members and 400 staff, working to improve the lives of vulnerable people across the street and around the world. 

UNHCR - The Human Rights Council is an inter-governmental body within the United Nations system made up of 47 States responsible for the promotion and protection of all human rights around the globe.  

*blurbs taken form their websites about us

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Announcements

Conferences and workshops

Public seminar series on feminism, categorisation and forced migration, 22 January to 4 March 2020, Oxford

The Oxford University refugee studies centre organises a public lecture series, which will explore a range of topics in refugee law, politics and history with particular attention being paid to feminist and/or gendered approaches to displacement and mobility and the categorisation(s) of people as “refugees,” “citizens,” “settlers” or “migrants.” From 22 January, seminars take place on Wednesdays from 5:00-6:30pm. No registration is required. Further information on the topics of each seminar is available here.

International refugee law series seminar: Easing pressure - Uganda and the Global Compact on Refugees, 10 February 2020, London

Under its international refugee law series, the School of Advanced Study of the University of London organises a seminar on Uganda and the Global Compact on Refugees (GCR). In this presentation the Ugandan High Commissioner to the UK will speak about the context of Uganda, as one of the world's largest host countries of refugees, and of the impact that changes promoted through the GCR might have in this space. Additional information on the seminar can be found here. Please register your attendance through the booking form. 

Short course on Palestine refugees and international law, 13-14 March 2020, Istanbul

This two-day short course held at the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul places the Palestinian refugee case study within the broader context of the international human rights regime. It examines, within a human rights framework, the policies and practices of Middle Eastern states as they impinge upon Palestinian refugees. This course is, amongst others, suitable for experienced practitioners, graduate researchers and personnel of inter-governmental and nongovernmental organisations. Please submit your application through the online form. 

Executive training seminar on child protection in the migration context, 29-30 April 2020, Florence, Italy

The Executive Training Seminar, organised by the European University Institute Migration Policy Centre, will address practical child protection challenges that emerge in the context of migration across a range of contexts. It will draw on interdisciplinary tools, case studies, a rich body of research and experience spanning diverse jurisdictions. The Training Seminar will cover the international legal framework and international instruments governing migrant child protection, addressing the practical challenges that arise from eliciting and incorporating the voice and agency of children into the decision-making process that affects them. Deadline for applications is 28 March 2020. Applications should be sent through the online form available here.

Addressing statelessness in Europe: Closing protection gaps and realising everyone’s right to a nationality, 7-8 May, Alicante, Spain

The European Network on Statelessness is delighted to announce its forthcoming pan-regional conference Addressing Statelessness in Europe: Closing Protection Gaps and Realising Everyone’s Right to a Nationality. At the conference a new comparative analysis on existing law, policy and practice on statelessness in Europe, including the pressing need to improve identification and protection. The conference is intended to facilitate the sharing of information and good practices among an expected 300 participants from across Europe. The provisional programme is available here. Registrations will open mid-February. 

Final conference of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum project, 7-8 July 2020, Brighton, UK

Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Claims of Asylum (SOGICA): A European human rights challenge is a four-year project (2016-2020) funded by the European Research Council. Based in the School of Law at the University of Sussex, it aims to produce the necessary evidence base for a more just and humane asylum process for individuals seeking refuge in Europe on the basis of their sexual orientation/gender identity. The final conference aims to present the SOGICA project findings and recommendations and give a platform to academics, policy makers, practitioners, activists and refugees addressing sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) asylum in innovative ways. Registration is possible via online form until 30 April 2020. 

Calls for papers

Royal Geographical Society calls for papers for annual conference

The Royal Geographical Society’s annual international conference 2020, which takes place in London from 1 to 4 September, is held under the theme of borders, borderlands and bordering. Sessions and papers, which engage directly with this theme, as well as others focusing on all areas of geography are welcome. Further details on the conference as well as submission guidelines can be found here. Deadline for submission is 14 February 2020. 

Launch and call for papers of “Displaced Voices: A Journal of Archives, Migration and Cultural Heritage” (volume 1, issue 1)

Displaced Voices is a new online digital magazine by Living Refugee Archive launching in 2020 by the Living Refugee Archive. It aims to provide a digital platform for activists, archivists, researchers, practitioners and academics to contribute to issues pertaining to refugee and migration history; refugee and migrant rights; social justice; cultural heritage and archives.The editors invite contributions to the magazine including articles of between 1000-1500 words, reports on fieldwork in archival collections, book recommendations and reviews, and more creative pieces including (but not limited too) cartoons, photography, and poetry. Deadline for submission to the editor for the first edition is on 28th February 2020. 

Nordic Mi­gra­tion Research and Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration invite submission of research papers for joint conference

The Nordic Migration Research (NMR) and the Society for the Study of Ethnic Relations and International Migration (ETMU) invite papers for a joint conference, which will be both the 20th Nordic Migration Research conference and the 17th ETMU conference. The conference, titled Colonial/Racial Histories, National Narratives and Transnational Migration, will take place at the University of Helsinki, Finland from 12 to 14 August 2020. For detailed information about the different workshops planned please check here.

Submissions for papers or posters should include an abstract (max 2000 characters with spaces) and the names, affiliations and contact information of the presenters. The deadline for submission is 29 February 2020. For further questions you may contact the conference organisers and submit your paper here. 

Vacancies

The European Asylum Support Office is looking for a Senior Analyst

The Senior Analyst will be responsible for the day-to-day coordination of EASO’s Research Programme within the Research Sector of the Information and Analysis Unit (IAU) within the Department of Operations (DOP). Some research projects are procured to external contractors, while other projects are conducted by the staff of the sector. For further details on the position please refer to the vacancy notice here. Applications should be sent until 6 February 2020, 1pm (GMT +1) here.  

York University seeks a tenure track Assistant Professor in Diasporic Media

The Department of Communication Studies at York University invites applications for a professorial stream tenure-track appointment in Diasporic Media at the Assistant Professor level, to commence on 1 July 2020. Applicants should have an ongoing program of research and specialize in one or more of the following areas: immigrant, migrant and/or refugee experience; forced movement of populations; global, translocal and/or local diasporic media practices and/or communities; community activism; decolonial and anti-racist approaches; and/or multicultural media policy. Candidates with a social justice and equity approach are preferred. The full job description can be found here. Applications can be submitted through the online application system by 14 February 2020. 

The University of California Hastings College of the Law seeks Director of Litigation at Centre for Gender and Refugees

The Director of Litigation provides leadership and vision to the litigation work of the UC Hastings’s Center for Gender & Refugee Studies (CGRS). Litigation work includes both national and California focused matters. The position is a dynamic one that will reflect the vision and flexibility of the organization in the changing landscape of refugee rights. The position is open until filled. Please apply through the online form here. 

Refuge Point is seeking a new Director of Development

The director of development will have a strategic role within Refuge Point and will manage and work alongside a talented and passionate team. The director of development will have the opportunity to develop a 3-year fundraising plan while highlighting and taking advantage of Refuge Point’s time sensitive initiatives, like the family reunion programme or the labour mobility programme. For more details on the position check the job description here and apply through the online application form, available here. The position is open until filled. 

International Rescue Committee looking for a SAFE staff attorney based in Dallas

The SAFE (Safety & Fairness for Everyone) Staff Attorney will represent detained clients in removal and bond proceedings before Dallas Immigration Court, the Board of Immigration Appeals, and related proceedings before USCIS. The SAFE Staff Attorney will also represent those clients who are released on bond and continue to meet income eligibility requirements. Working closely with IRC Dallas leadership and immigration staff, as well as IRC’s HQ Immigration Technical Unit and a host of external partners, the SAFE Staff Attorney will assist in launching this new removal defense program area for IRC in Dallas. The detailed job description and online form for applications are available here. 

Kids in Need of Defense has several legal job openings based in New York

KIND’s New York office has new job openings, including several temporary positions to cover parental leave. Job openings include an Interim Senior Pro Bono Coordinating Attorney to provide technical assistance and training to pro bono teams who are representing unaccompanied children in New York or a Staff Attorney for the detained programme to provide representation and legal assistance to unaccompanied children who are detained in New York City. Full job descriptions and application instructions are available here. 

Grants and awards

Nominations for the 2020 Nansen Refugee Award open

The Nansen Refugee Award recognises individual, group of people or organization that has displayed extraordinary humanitarian work on behalf of refugees, displaced or stateless people. To submit a nomination please use the online form. Deadline for nominations is 9 February 2020.

[neon-mooni]

Why I boycott Autism Speaks, and you should too

Autism Speaks’ senior leadership fails to include a single autistic person. Unlike non-profits focused on intellectual disability, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy and countless other disabilities, Autism Speaks systematically excludes autistic adults from its board of directors, leadership team and other positions of senior leadership. This exclusion has been the subject of numerous discussions with and eventually protests against Autism Speaks, yet the organization persists in its refusal to allow those it purports to serve into positions of meaningful authority within its ranks. The slogan of the disability rights movement has long been, “Nothing About Us, Without Us.” Almost nine years after its founding, Autism Speaks continues to refuse to abide by this basic tenet of the mainstream disability community.

Autism Speaks has a history of supporting dangerous fringe movements that threaten the lives and safety of both the autism community and the general public. The anti-vaccine sentiments of Autism Speaks’ founders have been well documented in the mainstream media. Several of Autism Speaks’ senior leaders have resigned or been fired after founders Bob and Suzanne Wright overruled Autism Speaks’ scientific leadership in order to advance the discredited idea that autism is the result of vaccinations. Furthermore, Autism Speaks haspromoted the Judge Rotenberg Center, a Massachusetts facility under Department of Justice and FDA investigation for the use of painful electric shock against its students. The Judge Rotenberg Center’s methods have been deemed torture by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture (p. 84) and are currently the subject of efforts by the Massachusetts state government and disability rights advocates to shut the facility down. Despite this, Autism Speaks has allowed the Judge Rotenberg Center to recruit new admissions from families seeking resources at their fundraising walks. We believe this is not the type of action you anticipated when you agreed to provide support to Autism Speaks events.

Autism Speaks’ fundraising efforts pull money away from local communities, returning very little funds for the critical investments in services and supports needed by autistic people and our families. Only 4% of funds donated to Autism Speaks are reinvested in services and supports for autistic people and our families. Across the country, local communities have complained that at a time when state budget cutbacks are making investment in local disability services all the more critical, Autism Speaks fundraisers take money away from needed services in their community.  In addition, while the majority of Autism Speaks’ funding goes towards research dollars, few of those dollars have gone to the areas of most concern to autistic people and our families–services and supports, particularly for autistics reaching adulthood and aging out of the school system. According to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Inter-Agency Autism Coordinating Committee, only 1% of Autism Speaks’ research budget goes towards research on service quality and less than one-quarter of 1% goes towards research on the needs of autistic adults.

Autism Speaks’ advertising depends on offensive and outdated rhetoric of fear and pity, presenting the lives of autistic people as tragic burdens on our families and society. In its advertising, Autism Speaks has compared being autistic to being kidnapped, dying of a natural disaster, having a fatal disease, and countless other inappropriate analogies. In one of its most prominent fundraising videos,  an Autism Speaks executive stated that she had considered placing her child in the car and driving off the George Washington Bridge, going on to say that she did not do so only because she had a normal child as well. Autism Speaks advertisements have cited inaccurate statistics on elevated divorce rates for parents of autistic children and many other falsehoods designed to present the lives of autistic children and adults as little more than tragedies.

Autism Speaks’ only advisory board member on the autism spectrum, John Elder Robison, announced his resignation from the organization this month in protest of the organization comparing autistic people to kidnapping victims and claiming that our families are not living, but merely existing, due to the horror of having autistic people in their lives. In his resignation letter, he discusses his four years spent attempting to reform the organization from the inside without success, stating, “Autism Speaks says it’s the advocacy group for people with autism and their families. It’s not, despite having had many chances to become that voice.  Autism Speaks is the only major medical or mental health nonprofit whose legitimacy is constantly challenged by a large percentage of the people affected by the condition they target.”

The disability community recently celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Developmental Disabilities Assistance and Bill of Rights Act, legislation first signed into law by President John F. Kennedy in 1963. The law begins with the statement that, “disability is a natural part of the human experience that does not diminish the right of individuals with developmental disabilities to live independently, to exert control and choice over their own lives, and to fully participate in and contribute to their communities through full integration and inclusion in the economic, political, social, cultural, and educational mainstream of United States society.

Also, they released a commercial called “I am Autism”.

Here is the transcript.

“I am autism. I’m visible in your children, but if I can help it, I am invisible to you until it’s too late. I know where you live. And guess what? I live there too. I hover around all of you. I know no color barrier, no religion, no morality, no currency. I speak your language fluently. And with every voice I take away, I acquire yet another language. I work very quickly. I work faster than pediatric aids, cancer, and diabetes combined And if you’re happily married, I will make sure that your marriage fails. Your money will fall into my hands, and I will bankrupt you for my own self-gain. I don’t sleep, so I make sure you don’t either. I will make it virtually impossible for your family to easily attend a temple, birthday party, or public park without a struggle, without embarrassment, without pain. You have no cure for me. Your scientists don’t have the resources, and I relish their desperation. Your neighbors are happier to pretend that I don’t exist—of course, until it’s their child. I am autism. I have no interest in right or wrong. I derive great pleasure out of your loneliness. I will fight to take away your hope. I will plot to rob you of your children and your dreams. I will make sure that every day you wake up you will cry, wondering who will take care of my child after I die? And the truth is, I am still winning, and you are scared. And you should be. I am autism. You ignored me. That was a mistake. And to autism I say: I am a father, a mother, a grandparent, a brother, a sister. We will spend every waking hour trying to weaken you. We don’t need sleep because we will not rest until you do. Family can be much stronger than autism ever anticipated, and we will not be intimidated by you, nor will the love and strength of my community. I am a parent riding toward you, and you can push me off this horse time and time again, but I will get up, climb back on, and ride on with the message. Autism, you forget who we are. You forget who you are dealing with. You forget the spirit of mothers, and daughters, and fathers and sons. We are Qatar. We are the United Kingdom. We are the United States. We are China. We are Argentina. We are Russia. We are the Eurpoean Union. We are the United Nations. We are coming together in all climates. We call on all faiths. We search with technology and voodoo and prayer and herbs and genetic studies and a growing awareness you never anticipated. We have had challenges, but we are the best when overcoming them. We speak the only language that matters: love for our children. Our capacity to love is greater than your capacity to overwhelm. Autism is naïve. You are alone. We are a community of warriors. We have a voice. You think because some of our children cannot speak, we cannot hear them? That is autism’s weakness. You think that because my child lives behind a wall, I am afraid to knock it down with my bare hands? You have not properly been introduced to this community of parents and grandparents, of siblings and friends and schoolteachers and therapists and pediatricians and scientists. Autism, if you are not scared, you should be. When you came for my child, you forgot: you came for me. Autism, are you listening?”

If you would really like to donate to charity, then please donate to these charities instead. The Autistic Self Advocacy Network | The Association for Autistic Community | AANE | Autism Women’s Network |

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Current Affairs of Pakistan & Whole World - 2018-2019

Hi Everyone. Welcome to Current Affairs of today, 2018 & 2019. In this page, you can find out the latest Current Affairs for preparation of Government and Private Jobs, Federal Public Service Commission (FPSC) Jobs, Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) Jobs, Punjab Public Service Comission (PPSC) Jobs, National Testing Service (NTS) Jobs, Pakistan Atomic Engineering Commission (PAEC) Jobs, WAPDA Jobs, Join Pakistan Army Jobs, Join Pakistan Navy Jobs, Join Pakistan Air Force (PAF) Jobs, Admissions, Online Tests, Scholarships and many other competitive exams in Pakistan & All over the World. Current Affairs of Pakistan and All of the World 2018-2019:- ► Moody's downgrades Pakistan's banking system from stable to negative. ► PM Imran launches ‘Plant for Pakistan’ campaign in Balloki. ► US blocks UN move to condemn Israel’s decision to shut Hebron monitor mission. ► Multinational Maritime Exercise Aman-2019 begins in Karachi. ► Pakistan signs $10 bn gas pipeline agreement with Russia. ► Pakistan not to attend WTO e-commerce talks. ► S&P downgrades Pakistan's long-term credit rating to B-. ► PM Khan launches countrywide Sehat Insaf Card scheme. ► Pakistani Doctor Umar Sadat awarded prestigious ‘Hunterian Professor Award’. He become the 1st surgeon in 200 years old history of Royal College of Surgeons of England to be awarded ‘Hunterian Professor Award’ for his research work encompassing vascular surgery, bio-engineering, MRI physics and vascular medicine ► Pakistani photographer, director Madiha Aijaz passes away in Karachi (February 3). ► South Africa end Pakistan's winning streak in T20 series. ► Sana Mir becomes first Asian woman to play hundred T20Is. ► United States and Russia both abandon nuclear arms treaty (INF Treaty). ► Riffat Masood becomes Pakistan's first woman ambassador to Iran. ► PM Khan launches Pakistan Banao Certificate for overseas Pakistanis offering 6.25% profit for a three-year and 6.75% for its five-year version. ► Edotco Group — a unit of Malaysian telecoms to invest $250 million in Pakistan’s telecom infrastructure. ► Pakistan elected as Vice Chair of UN Environment’s Forum of Ministers & Environment Authorities of Asia Pacific. ► Pakistan, UAE agree to finalize MoU for safe repatriation of expats. ► Suman Pawan Bodani becomes Pakistan’s first female judge from the Hindu community. ► Pakistan scored 33 out of 100 in 2018 Corruption Perceptions Index. ► TV actor Roohi Bano passed away on Friday in Turkey after a prolonged illness. She was 67 years old. (25-01-2019) ► Pakistan announces e-visa facility for 175 nations, visa-on-arrival for 50 countries. ► PM Imran featured in 'Global Thinkers of 2019' list by Foreign Policy magazine. ► Qatar lifts ban on import of Pakistani rice. ► Pakistan successfully test-fires surface-to-surface ballistic missile ‘Nasr’. ► FIH suspends Pakistan from Pro Hockey League. ► Pakistan win Asian Junior SquashTeam Championship after defeating India in Pattaya, Thailand. ► Top French adventure travel agency Terres d’Aventure returns to Pakistan after decade. ► PML-Q's Ammar Yasir resigns as Punjab Minister for Mines and Minerals. ► Justice Asif Saeed Khosa sworn in as 26th Chief Justice of Pakistan (Jan 18). ► Pakistani journalist Asad Hashim wins AFP's Kate Webb Prize. ► Asad Majeed Khan appointed as Pakistan’s new Ambassador to the United States. ► Pakistani passport ranked fifth worst for international travel. ► Malaysia’s King Muhammad V becomes first monarch to resign before completing tenure. ► Pakistan declares 1,000 years old Panj Tirath Hindu temple as national heritage. ► Rear Admiral Muhammad Fayyaz Gilani takes over Coastal Command of Pakistan Navy. ► Justice Asif Saeed Khosa appointed chief justice of Pakistan. He will take charge as the chief justice on January 18. ► Major (retd) Geoffrey Douglas Langlands who served Pakistan since 1947 passes away (02-01-2019). ► Gilgit Baltistan hosts first-ever ice hockey match in Pakistan. ► Pakistan ranks 13th least prosperous country on Legatum Prosperity Index. ► Pakistan set to issue 'Panda bond' in Chinese currency. ► Pakistan, Britain sign Prisoner Transfer Agreement. ► Ali Jahangir Siddiqui steps down as Pakistan's envoy to US. ► Former MQM MNA Ali Raza Abidi killed in Karachi gun attack (25-Dec-2018). ► Iqbal Choudhary Centre for Natural Product Research (ICC-NPR) inaugurated in Nigeria to honour Pakistani scientist. ► SUPARCO Made in Pakistan satellite launched into space for technology evaluation. ► UAE to deposit $3 billion in State Bank of Pakistan. ► PM Imran Khan inaugurated the Islamabad National University at the PM House. ► Pakistan ranked second worst country in terms of Gender equality: WEF report ► Renowned TV actor Ali Ejaz passes away at 77 (18-Dec-2018). ► UN passes Pakistan’s resolution on right to self-determination. ► Pakistan becomes third largest country in donkey population. ► Pakistan elected as the Vice President and the Rapporteur of the Conference of Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, at COP 24 in Katowice, Poland. ► British Airways to resume flights to Pakistan after 10 years. ► Pakistan, China, Afghanistan ink MoU for cooperation against terrorism. ► Pakistan gets right to host Asia Cup in 2020. ► Australia recognises west Jerusalem as Israel's capital. ► UNGA adopts Pakistan-sponsored resolution stressing inter-religious dialogue. ► US adds Pakistan to blacklist of countries violating religious freedom. ► Ashfaq Hussain Shah elected new Pakistan Football Federation president (12 December). ► Naval chief inaugurates Pakistan Maritime Security Agency Base at Keti Bandar. ► Pakistan ranks #117 in the list of countries with the most corruption. ► Saudi Arabia increases Pakistan's quota by 5,000 for Hajj 2019. ► Telenor becomes Pakistan’s first 4.5G network . ► Yasir Shah Becomes fastest bowler to take 200 wickets breaking 82-Year-Old record held by Clarrie Grimmett from Australia. ► Azam Swati resigns as federal minister for science and technology over authority abuse allegation. ► New Zealand wins first away test series over Pakistan in 49 years. ► Pakistan’s debt and liabilities surge to Rs31 trillion. ► George H W Bush, former US president, dies aged 94 (30 Nov). ► Pakistan, Sri Lanka to co-host Emerging Teams Asia Cup 2018. ► Pakistani poet, author Fahmida Riaz passes away (21 Nov). ► Pakistan, Malaysia sign MoU to partially abolish visa requirements. ► Pakistan's Tableeghi Jamaat chief Abdul Wahab passes away. ► Jinnah Sindh Medical University Karachi won the All Pakistan Bilingual Declamation Contest held at PAF Academy Asghar Khan. ► Pakistan ranked No 1 in Facebook content censorship. ► Pakistan inaugurates first AstroTurf cricket stadium in Balochistan. ► Govt removes PTV MD Colonel (rd) Hassan Immad Mohammdi after ‘begging’ broadcast gaffe. ► Haseeb Athar takes oath as new chairman of FPSC. ► Pakistan beat New Zealand to win 11th straight T20 series. ► Fakhr-e-Alam becomes first Pakistani to circumnavigate the world. ► Pakistani-American Muhammad Saeed Sheikh receives US President’s Lifetime Achievement Award in US. ► Air Marshal Asim Zaheer appointed Vice Chief of PAF. ► Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam chief Maulana Samiul Haq assassinated in Rawalpindi. (02 Nov 2018) ► Pakistan ranked 136th in World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business Index. ► Saudi Arabia reduces visa fee for Pakistani workers. ► PM Imran Khan launches 'Pakistan Citizen Portal'. ► Pakistan ranked 8th in size of trade deficit. ► Indonesian aircraft Lion Air flight JT610 (Boeing 737 MAX 8) en route to Pangkal Pinang with 189 people on board crashed into the sea, killing all on board. ► Asian Champions Trophy: India, Pakistan declared joint winners after final called-off due to rain. ► Sri Lanka president sacks prime minister, appoints Mahinda Rajapaksa as new PM. ► Pakistan's Supreme Court reinstates ban on airing of Indian content on TV channels. ► Asma Jahangir wins 2018 UN Human Rights Prize. ► Pakistani campaigner for women empowerment Salman Sufi receives Mother Teresa Award. ► Afghan Taliban founder Mullah Baradar released by Pakistan. ► Sana Mir becomes Pakistan's first female cricketer to top ICC ODI rankings. ► Saudi Arabia agrees to give $3bn as balance of payment support and a further $3bn loan for oil imports. ► Lt Col (r) Hassan Immad appointed PTV MD. ► Pakistani doctor Prof Shahed Quraishi elected President of Royal Society of Medicine’s ENT section. ► Pak Army team wins gold in Cambrian Patrol exercise in UK. ► The World Economic Forum ranks Pakistan at 107 among 140 countries on Global Competitiveness Index. ► Pakistan ranks 164th in terms of human capital. ► Pakistan’s DG Health Dr. Assad Hafeez wins the prestigious A.T. Shousha award for excellence in Public Health by the World Health Organization. ► Inayat Ullah bags Pakistan its first medal in the 2018 Youth Olympic Games. ► China grants Pakistan status of 'Guest of Honor' at global exhibition. ► Air Vice Marshal Arshad Khan appointed as new PIA chairman. ► Justice Shaukat Siddiqui removed as Islamabad High Court judge. ► Pakistan navy quits counterpiracy Combined Task Force (CTF). ► Lt Gen Asim Munir appointed head of Pakistan’s ISI. ► Nikki Haley resigns as US ambassador to United Nations (09 October). ► Pakistan successfully conducts training launch of Ghauri Missile System. ► PM launches Clean and Green Pakistan campaign. ► Inam Butt clinches gold at World Beach Wrestling Championship. ► Pakistan ranked 7th in cervical cancer deaths. ► SaudiGulf Airlines announces direct flights to Pakistan. ► Pakistan Army to train Nigerian military on counter-terrorism techniques. ► Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad win Nobel Peace Prize for fight against sexual violence. ► Raja Maqpoon takes oath as 6th Gilgit Baltistan governor (30 September). ► Ada Jaffery becomes first Pakistani woman nominated for Madella Award. ► SBP raises key interest rate by 100bps to 8.5%. ► Pakistan, Russia sign MoU for $10b gas pipeline from Iran. ► Vietnam President Tran Dai Quang dies at 61 (September 21). ► Pakistan re-elected to IAEA board of governors for 2 years. ► Withholding tax rates on banking transactions over Rs. 50,000 a day has been increased to 0.6% for non-filers. ► Pakistani student Zahra Hussain wins top prize in Commonwealth essay competition. ► Pakistan’s first Christian advocate general Salman Talibuddin appointed in Sindh. ► Pakistan Air Force chief Mujahid Anwar Khan honoured with ‘Turkish Legion Of Merit’ award. ► Begum Kulsoom Nawaz passes away in London after battle with cancer. She was 68 (September 11). ► Canada has removed Islamabad from the list of “avoid non-essential travel” cities. ► Arif Alvi takes oath as 13th President of Pakistan (September 9). ► Leading economists Atif Mian, Asim Ijaz resign from Economic Advisory Council. ► PM Imran Khan launches 'Plant for Pakistan' campaign (September 2). ► Pakistan Temporarily closes Jalalabad Consulate in Afghanistan. ► Serena hosts 1st PAF-Serena Hotels Karakoram Marathon award ceremony. ► Pentagon cancels $300 million aid to Pakistan. ► Pakistan Air Force takes part in Radom International Airshow in Poland. ► Pakistan Army soldier Sepoy Maqbool Hussain who spent 40 years in Indian jails passes away (August 28). ► Pakistan Movement worker Ahmad Saeed Kirmani passes away (August 26). ► Justice Tahira sworn in as first woman chief justice of a Pakistani high court. ► Veteran Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar dies at 95 (August 23). ► UAE's MBF Group to build first-ever ‘medical mall’ in Pakistan. ► Imran Khan takes oath as Pakistan's 22nd Prime Minister (August 18). ► Former Indian PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee dies at 93 (August 16). ► Ali Zafar honoured with ‘Pride of Pakistan Award’ in Los Angeles. ► Pakistani healthcare startup 'Marham' selected for Google’s Demo Day Asia. ► 25 year old Sania Ashiq becomes Pakistan's youngest provincial legislator in Punjab Assembly. ► Pakistan’s first Kalash lawmaker Wazir Zada takes oath (13 August). ► Tanzeela Qambrani becomes Pakistan’s first woman lawmaker of African descent. ► Pakistan added to Emirates Islamic QuickRemit money transfer routes (13 August). ► Pakistan and Russia reached a military cooperation deal that includes sending Pakistani soldiers to Russia for training. ► Pakistan, India briefly open Munabao border after 12 years. ► Russia signs naval cooperation deal with Pakistan. ► First-ever eye bank 'The Al Shifa Trust' opens in Pakistan. ► US Congress passes bill to slash Pakistan's defence aid to $150 million. ► Polish alpine skier Andrzej Bargiel has become the first person to ski down from the summit of K2. ► Pakistan Army aviation pilots rescued Russian climber AlexanderGukov who was stuck 20,650 feet above sea level on Biafo Glacier's Latok Peak (July 31). ► Fehmida Mirza becomes first female lawmaker to have been elected 5 times on a general seat. ► Justice Tahira Safdar nominated as first female chief justice in Pakistan (July 23). ► PML-N's Hanif Abbasi jailed for life in the eight-year-old ephedrine case. ► Fakhar Zaman first Pakistani to score double century in ODIs racing to 210 not out in the fourth ODI against Zimbabwe. ► Pakistan’s tallest woman, Zainab Bibi, passes away in Faisalabad (July 19). ► Size of Pakistan’s economy is $313.13 billion, says SBP. ► Pakistan hosts spy chiefs from Russia, China, Iran. ► Iran’s top military commander arrives in Pakistan for three-day visit (July 15). ► PM inaugurates: Pak-China optic fiber cable (July 14). ► SBP raises key interest rate by 100 basis points to 7.5 percent (July 14). ► Pak Navy signs contract for acquisition of 4 MILGEM class warships from Turkey. ► Pakistan at 22 among worlds' most powerful countries. ► World’s largest aircraft Emirates A380 lands at Islamabad Airport (July 8). ► 12,570 candidates contesting for 849 NA, PA seats: ECP. ► US human trafficking report places Pakistan in tier 2. ► Pakistan Added to Global Terrorism-Financing Monitoring List (June 28). ► Three Pakistanis (Haroon Yasin, Hassan Mujtaba Zaidi) receive Queen's Young Leaders award (June 27). ► Yousaf Saleem sworn in as Pakistan’s first blind judge (June 26). ► Recep Tayyip Erdogan wins an "absolute majority" in Turkish presidential election by securing 52.5% of the vote. ► US quits UN human rights body, citing bias vs Israel (June 20). ► Pakistan elected to UN Economic and Social Council (14 June). ► Moody's changes outlook on Pakistan's rating to negative from stable. ► Pakistan to launch indigenous remote sensing satellite PakTES-1A next month. ► Pakistan to host six-nation international hockey tournament from September 2nd to 10th. ► Uzbekistan beat Pakistan in final of Street Child Football World Cup. ► The World Trade Organization dispute settlement body rules in favour of Pakistan in chemical export case. ► Pakistan's hockey hero Mansoor Ahmed passes away (12 May). ► Mahathir Mohamad sworn in as Malaysia seventh Prime Minister (10 May). ► Gen Bajwa named 68th 'most powerful' person in the world by Forbes (Xi Jinping 1st, Putin 2nd). ► Supreme Court suspends Ishaq Dar’s Senate membership (8 May). ► NA passes Transgender Persons Protection of Rights Bill 2018 (8 May). ► Alibaba purchases Pakistani ecommerce website Daraz. ► Dr Suleman Khan appointed new chief of Intelligence Bureau. ► Pakistani girl "Dania Hassan" wins US State Department's 'Emerging Young Leaders' Award. ► Pakistan's first Greenfield international airport inaugurated in Islamabad (1st May). ► British-Pakistani Sajid Javid becomes UK’s first Muslim home secretary. ► Hockey legend Mansoor Ahmed to receive Pakistan’s first mechanical heart aid. ► Pakistan ranks 139th out of 180 countries allowing press freedom. ► Seven Pakistani peacekeepers posthumously honoured with UN medal. ► Government appoints five new federal minister (Marvi Memon, Marriyum Aurangzeb, Anusha Rehman and Dr Tariq Fazal Chaudhry) and one state minister (Leila Khan). ► Pakistan announces 5.9 trillion rupee budget (27 April). ► Pakistan fail to reach Youth Olympic Qualifiers semis in Bangkok. ► India grants land ownership rights to refugees who fled Pakistan 70 years ago. ► Islamabad High Court disqualifies Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif under Article 62(1)(f) (26 April). ► 5.03m girls out of school in Punjab : Unicef. ► 1.75 million tourists visited Pakistan in 2017 : Pakistan Tourism Development Corporation. ► Pak Army Chief meets Russian Army Commander-in-Chief General Oleg Salyukov (24 April). ► Pakistan finish second at South Asian Judo Championship in Nepal. ► Pakistan appoints first-ever female diplomat Fouzia Fayyaz in Saudi Arabia. ► Pakistani-Australian engineer Usman Iftikhar wins Commonwealth Young Person of the Year award. ► Dr Umer Saif appointed chair-holder of UNESCO Chair for Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICTD). ► Pakistan to launch dollar-based savings certificates for overseas residents. ► Iran to replace US dollar with euro in financial reports. ► PTI to expel 20 lawmakers who 'sold' votes during Senate polls. ► US will place “reciprocal restrictions” on the movement of Pakistani diplomats from May 1, forcing them to stay within 40km of the city. ► PM Abbasi to attend Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM-2018) in London from April 18 to 20. ► PM Khaqan Abbasi reaches Saudi Arabia on a two-day official visit to witness a joint tri-services military exercise, ‘Gulf Shield-1’. ► Pakistan's Mohammad Inam wins first gold medal at Commonwealth Games in the 86kg wrestling competition. ► Pakistan successfully test-fires enhanced range version of Babur cruise missile (14 April). ► Pakistan secure 7th place in Commonwealth Games 2018 hockey. ► Pakistan Army cadet Sheroz Shahid wins ‘International Medal’ at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst (RMAS) UK. ► Nawaz Sharif, Jahangir Tareen disqualified for life under Article 62 (1)(f) of the Constitution. ► Senate passes bill extending Supreme Court, Peshawar High Court jurisdiction to FATA. ► Sri Lanka President Maithripala Sirisena suspends parliament until May 8. ► Algerian military transport plane (Ilyushin Il-76) crashes, killing 257 people. ► 'Pakistan ranked 54th among 84 countries on tobacco smoking'. ► Pakistan to host South Asian Football Championship in 2020. Pakistan will also host South Asian under 15 championship in 2019 and U19 girls’ championship in 2021. ► State Bank of Pakistan allowed Bank of China to establish Chinese yuan settlement setup in Pakistan. ► Pakistan trade deficit widens to $27.3 billion in nine months of Fiscal year 2018. ► Pakistani-origin Robina Shah to be appointed high sheriff of Manchester. ► The Asian Cricket Council (ACC) moved Asia Cup 2018 from India to UAE on Pakistan's request. ► Pakistan 12th biggest worldwide beneficiary of international charities: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. ► PM Abbasi arrives in China to attend three-day Boao Forum (April 8). ► State Bank of Pakistan banned Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. ► 23 countries including Pakistan takes part in Joint Gulf Shield-1 Military Drill. ► Gen Sir Nicholas Patrick Carter, Chief of General Staff (CGS) of the UK Army arrives in Pakistan on a two-day official visit (April 6). ► PM Abassi arrives in Afghanistan on one-day visit (April 6). ► South Korean former president Park Geun-hye sentenced to 24 years in jail for abuse of power. ► PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi announces simplified income tax package, amnesty scheme for foreign assets. ► China imposes 25 percent tariffs on US exports. ► Facebook: Up to 87 million users affected in Cambridge Analytica scandal. ► Pakistan win final Twenty20 against West Indies in Karachi to whitewash series 3-0. ► 139 terrorists connected to Pakistan on the United Nations Security Council sanctions list. ► UAE suspends ‘character certificate’ rule for working Pakistani workers. ► Federal cabinet declares April 6 as Kashmir Solidarity Day. ► US blocks UNSC statement on Israel's use of force on Land Day. ► Abiy Ahmed sworn in as Ethiopia's prime minister (2 April). ► Mokgweetsi Masisi sworn in as Botswana's new president (1 April). ► UNSC approves new sanctions on N.Korea. ► State Bank of Pakistan maintains policy rate unchanged at 6% for next two months (31 March). ► Pakistan Women cricket team clinch T20 series against Sri Lanka (Pakistan-2, Sri Lanka-1). ► Abdel Fattah el-Sisi wins second term as Egyptian president with 92% of vote. ► Russia expels 60 US diplomats and closed the St Petersburg consulate. ► Pakistan Navy test-fires submarine-launched cruise missile 'Babur' with a range of 450 kilometres (29 March). ► Philanthropist Dr Amjad Saqib founder of “Akhuwat”, receives Commonwealth Points of Light award. ► Pakistan Navy wins 25th National Shooting Championship in Karachi with 20 gold, 14 silver and 11 bronze medals, Pakistan Army secured the runner up position. ► Australian ball-tampering scandal: Steve Smith, David Warner banned for 12 months and Cameron Bancroft for 9 months. ► Nobel prize winner Malala Yousafzai returns to Pakistan 6 Years after she was shot by Taliban (29 March). ► Pakistan’s 1st National Forum on Philanthropy held in Islamabad (28 March). ► COAS General Bajwa arrives in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) on official visit (27 March). ► Tashkent to host international conference on Afghanistan’s peace from March 25-27. Foreign Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif will represent Pakistani delegation. ► Air Marshal Arshad Malik appointed Vice Chief of Air Staff (26 March). ► US, EU expel more than 100 Russian diplomats over over a spy (Skripal) poisoning case. ► Afghanistan defeat West Indies to win ICC World Cup 2019 Qualifying Final. ► Election Commission of Pakistan removes Farooq Sattar as convener of the Muttahida Quami Movement. ► Islamabad United defeat Peshawar Zalmi by three wickets and claim the Pakistan Super League 2018 title at the National Stadium Karachi (25 March). ► US adds seven Pakistani companies to a list of foreign entities that are subject to stringent export control measures. ► President Mamnoon Hussain conferred 58 military and 73 civil awards on people from all walks of life for their services to the country. ► US president Trump replaces McMaster with John Bolton as national security advisor. ► Sarfraz becomes youngest Pakistani cricketer to receive Sitara-e-Imtiaz. ► Pakistan, Sri Lanka sign three MoUs to enhance bilateral cooperation in the fields of youth development and training of diplomats and civil servants (23 March). ► Pakistan ranks third among countries facing water shortage. ► Pakistan acquires PakSat-MM1 communication satellite from China. ► Sherry Rehman becomes the first female Leader of the Opposition in Senate with the support of 34 members (22 March). ► Egypt Grand Mufti Sheikh Shawki Allam arrives in Pakistan on five-day visit, endorses Pakistan’s national narrative Paigham-e-Pakistan (21 March). ► Travel, tourism contributed Rs 930.9 billion to Pakistan's economy in 2017: World Travel and Tourism Council. ► Pakistan offers zero duty on 6,000 items from China. ► Sri Lanka’s president Maithripala Sirisena is set to visit Pakistan from March 22 to 24 where he will be the ‘guest of honour’ for the Pakistan Day parade. ► PPP MNA Ayaz Soomro passes away in New York at 59 (20 March). ► India most vulnerable country to climate change followed by Pakistan _ HSBC report. ► Air Chief Marshal Mujahid Anwar Khan takes over as PAF chief (19 March). ► Vladimir Putin wins re-election for fourth term. ► HEC bans 13 universities' MPhil, PhD distance learning programmes. ► DSP Investigation Multan Shahida Nasreen secured 1st position at the 7th International Women Policing Conference held in Georgia also won Medal of Valor. ► LTG Ghayur Mahmood appointed colonel commandant of Frontier Force Regiment (17 March). ► Karachi ranked 6th cheapest city in the world by Economist Intelligence Unit (Singapore most expensive city). ► PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi met with United States Vice President Mike Pence during his private visit to the US (17 March). ► Pakistan's 'net reserves stand at minus $724m': IMF (16 March). ► Air Marshal Mujahid Anwar appointed as new chief of air staff. ► Pakistan ranks 75th out of 156 countries in the 2018 World Happiness Report (Finland 1st, Burundi ranked 156). ► Mahira Khan receives international award for her Contribution to Film and Activism at the UK Asian Film Festival in London. ► Punjab Assembly unanimously passes landmark bill to regulate Sikh marriages (14 March). ► British physicist Stephen Hawking dies at 76 (14 March). ► FIFA lifts suspension on Pakistan Football Federation. ► Trump fires Rex Tillerson as secretary of state and named current CIA chief Mike Pompeo to succeed him. ► Bangladeshi passenger plane carrying 71 people crashed in Kathmandu killing at least 50 people. ► PakVitae a startup wins regional HULT prize for clean drinking water model. ► Sadiq Sanjrani elected as chairman Senate. Sanjrani secured 57 votes, while PML-N’s Raja Zafarul Haq secured 46 out of the total 103 votes (12 March). ► Saleem Mandviwalla elected deputy chairman of Senate with 54 votes (12 March). ► Chief of Air Staff Sohail Aman awarded US Legion of Merit. ► Pakistan listed 9th largest arms importer in the world by SIPRI (India 1st). ► Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has arrived in Islamabad for 3-day visit (11 March). ► Mauritius president Ameenah Gurib-Fakim to resign next week for using credit card issued by a charity to buy clothes, jewellery. ► Saudi Arabia signs deal with Britain for 48 Typhoon fighter jets. ► Pakistani physician-scientist Dr Faisal H Cheema awarded $4m for outstanding medical research on heart transplantation. ► Pakistan's abstains from voting on a UNHRC resolution against human rights violations in Syria (Resolution adopted by a vote of 29 in favor and 4 against. 14 countries including Pakistan abstained from the voting). ► Pakistan concludes Joint Naval and air Exercise 'Ribat _ 2018'. ► PM appointed Ali Jahangir Siddiqui as ambassador to US. ► British High Commission announces Asma Jahangir scholarship to the best female Chevening candidate each year. ► US offers $5m reward for info on TTP chief Mullah Fazlullah. ► Pakistan ranks eight in kidney diseases causing 20,000 deaths every year (20 million people suffer from kidney diseases). ► Pakistan's stock exchange to launch exchange-traded fund this year. ► Casualties linked to militancy and violence have dropped in Pakistan for the 3rd consecutive year, with 21% fewer fatalities in 2017 than in 2016. ► Pakistan and South Korea have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for employment of Pakistani workers. ► BlackBerry sues Facebook, WhatsApp over patent infringement.. ► First container vessel MS Tiger, under the China-Pakistan Economic Project (CPEC), arrived at Gwadar Port (7 March). ► Moroccan PhD student Nisrine El Kettani wins Miss Arab Veil 2018 award held in Cairo, Egypt. ► Pakistan, India agree to swap women, mentally challenged, above 70 prisoners (7 March). ► There are a record 2,208 billionaires in the world, according to Forbes' 2018 rich list. ► The federal cabinet has approved banning sale of loose cigarettes across the country.. ► Cabinet increases daily allowance of parliamentarians by 71%. ► Cabinet approves privatisation of PIA. ► Senate passes bill to ensure rights of transgender persons (7 March). ► Farhatullah Babar removed as PPP spokesperson. ► Google unveils newest 72-qubit quantum processor known as Bristlecone. ► PAF, PN conduct successful test of C-802 anti-ship cruise missile. ► Pakistan in talks with China to borrow $1b. ► Bollywood's veteran character actor Nargis Rabadi, popularly known as ‘Shammi Aunty’ passes away (6 March). ► Sri Lanka declares state of emergency after Buddhist-Muslim clash. ► Saudi Arabia had granted Air India permission to fly over its territory on its new routes to and from Israel. ► Pakistan PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi arrived in Nepal on a two-day visit (05 March). ► Henly & Partners Passport Index: Pakistani passport ranked fourth worst for international travel (Japan and Singapore have secured the top spot). ► COAS lays foundation stone of UAE, Swiss govt-supported desalination plant in Gwadar (4 March). ► Krishna Kumari becomes first Hindu Dalit woman senator of Pakistan. ► 9 year-old Pakistani girl Selena Khawaja (who has been titled the "Mountain Princess") has become the youngest to scale the 5,765-metre-high Quz Sar Peak in Shimshal Valley, Hunza. ► Supreme Court bans 'Chinese salt' across country, declares it 'hazardous to health'. ► PML-N wins Senate elections (PML-N 33, PPP 20, PTI 12, Independent 15). ► Ahmed Baig wins U21 category of 12th Faldo Series Asia Grand Final in Vietnam (March 3). ► One out of five women in Pakistan is part of labour force: UN report. ► PIA flight services achieves ISO 9001 certification. ► Trump to impose tariffs on steel and aluminum. ► Pakistan Armed Forces ranked 13th most powerful on Global Firepower military strength index (US, Russia and China tagged as most powerful in the world). ► PML-N candidate Dr Asad Ashraf (298 votes) defeats PTI candidate Dr Zarqa Suharwardi (38 votes) in Senate by-election. ► Short film titled Golden Ticket, directed and written by Saira Mansoor gets nominated for the Asia Peace Film Festival. ► Three member countries (Singapore, Philippines and Vietnam ) are blocking Pakistan's entry to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). ► Pakistani student, Syed Jaffar Raza, has won the gold medal at the International Math Challenge VII competition (Bangkok), beating 600 participants. ► PAF raises new JF-17 squadron at Samungli. ► Russia vetoes United Nations Security Council resolution blaming Iran for arming Yemen's Houthis. ► Kashmala Tariq sworn in as federal ombudsperson on women's harassment (27 Feb). ► Pakistani mountaineer Samina Baig appointed United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) goodwill ambassador (26 Feb). ► Shehbaz Sharif elected as acting president of PML-N. ► Ed Sheeran named world's best-selling artist of 2017. ► Pakistan measles crisis among worst in world, cases rose by more than 100 per cent in 2017, compared to previous year. ► Iranian Air Force Commander Brigadier General Hassan Shahsafi arrives in Pakistan (26 Feb). ► NOWPDP, a disability inclusion initiative, has won the prestigious Innovative Practice of 2018 global award at the United Nations (24 Feb). ► Riyadh hosts first international half-marathon. ► US to open Jerusalem embassy in May for Israel's 70th anniversary. ► Japanese scientists invent floating 'firefly' light. ► Afghan government to shut down Taliban's Qatar office. ► China proposes removal of two-term limit for president. ► Sridevi, India's first female superstar, dies . ► UN Security Council approves 30-day ceasefire. ► Pakistan to go on FATF terror financing list in June. ► PM Abbasi arrives in Turkmenistan for ground-breaking ceremony of TAPI project (February 22). ► Transparency International ranks Pakistan 117 out of 180 countries on global corruption index (Pakistan has received 32 score). ► NASA finds 95 new Exoplanets beyond our solar system using data from NASA's K2 mission. ► India doctors remove world's 'largest brain tumour' (1.8kg). ► India's 4G speed slowest (6 mbps) in the world while Singapore was on the top spot with 44 mbps. (Pakistan 14 mbps). ► Top commander of Hizbul Ahrar 'Jihadyar Mehsud' killed in clash with Afghan tribal militia. ► KPK bans sale, import, manufacture of Chinese salt. ► KPK passed a bill 'Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Marriage Functions Bill 2018' banning demand of dowries. ► Election Act case: Supreme Court bars disqualified Nawaz Sharif from heading PML-N (February 21). ► The European Union (EU) has extended Pakistan’s Generalised System of Preferences plus (GSP-Plus) status for two years (February 21). ► The United Nations children’s agency has declared Pakistan as the riskiest country for newborns. ► Balochistan government declares Bostan Industrial Estate an economic zone. ► US bid to put Pakistan on terror financing watch-list falls through after member states failed to reach consensus. ► PCB builds Pakistan’s biggest High Performance Centre (HPC) at National Stadium Karachi, in view to improved batsmen technique for foreign tours. ► Saudi Arabia to host first Arab Fashion Week, the Arab Fashion Council. ► Russia opens honourary consulate in Peshawar (February 20). ► UNDP, Japanese govt launch $3.9m project to empower more than 20,000 youths in Sindh and Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (20 February). ► Malaysian naval chief (Admiral Tan Sri Ahmad Kamarulzaman) arrives in Pakistan on an official visit (February 19). ► Pakistani Sikh Sardar Ramesh Singh Khalsa wins humanitarian award at World Sikh Awards held in Canada (19 February). ► Foreign Minister Khawaja Asif to leave for official visit to Russia (February 18). ► Imran Khan ties the knot for third time with Bushra Maneka. ► Afghan institute, Metallica win Polar Music Prize, often called music's 'Nobel Prize'. ► Pakistan borrows $500 million from ICBC China. ► The Iran Aseman Airlines ATR-72 crashes into mountain, killing all 66 people aboard (February 18). ► Pakistan turns down cheaper loan offer from Japan. ► Pakistani social entrepreneur and philanthropist Zain Ashraf has been conferred the 2018 Commonwealth Youth Award. ► COAS Qamar Bajwa arrives in Germany to attend Munich Security Conference (Feb 17). ► Pakistan to send troops to Saudi Arabia on 'training and advice mission. ► Actor Matloobur Rehman, famous for his character of Zakoota Jinn passes away in Lahore (February 16). ► Ethiopia declares state of emergency after Hailemariam Desalegn, the country's prime minister, resigned. ► Each Pakistani owes Rs 130,000 : State Bank of Pakistan. ► PAKISTAN POST, NBP sign MoU to boost digital financial services. ► Cyril Ramaphosa, elected South Africa’s new president. ► Jacob Zuma resigns as president of South Africa. ► COAS General Qamar Javed Bajwa arrived in Kabul to attend the Chief of Defence Conference (13 February). ► US pushes motion to put Pakistan on global terrorist-financing watchlist. ► Pakistani government bans Jamat-ud-Dawa head Hafiz Saeed and take over assets of Hafiz Saeed's JuD, and FIF. ► PML-N’s Iqbal Shah defeated PTI’s Ali Tareen Khan with margin of 27,000 votes in the hotly contested Lodhran NA-154 by-polls. (PML-N 113,542 votes _ PTI 85,933 votes) ► Pakistani leading rights activist, Asma Jehangir, dies at 66 (11 February). ► Pakistan’s veteran TV actor Qazi Wajid dies at 87 (11 February). ► World's tallest hotel (Gevora Hotel by the Al Attar Group (1,167 feet)) opens in Dubai. ► Saudi Arabia accepts one-time raise in Pakistan’s Hajj quota which will enable a total of 184,210 Pakistanis to perform the pilgrimage this year. ► India stops 200 Hindu pilgrims from coming to Pakistan. ► The Middle East’s first Hindu stone temple will be constructed in Abu Dhabi by 2020. ► Russian plane (Saratov Airlines) crash kills all 71 people on board. ► Pak-Saudi naval exercise Nasem al Bahr commences in Saudi Arabia (10 February). ► 9th Karachi Literature Festival started in Karachi (9 February). ► 11 Pakistani exhibitors participate in Ambiente Fair to be held from February 9-13 in Frankfurt, Germany. ► Pakistan joins International Socca Federation ahead of mini-football World Cup (9 February). ► Pakistani delegation attends Al-Quds Al-Sharif OIC Youth Capital 2018 in Palestine. ► Jordan's King Abdullah II arrives in Pakistan on two-day visit (8th February). ► World's first passenger drone makes maiden public flight in China. ► Bangladesh ex-PM Khaleda Zia jailed for five years in corruption case. ► Maldives sends out envoys to 'friendly nations' of China, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia. ► Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU) has been ranked among the top 100 universities of Asia. ► 144 nomination forms submitted against 52 seats for Senate elections. ► The Sindh High Court (SHC) removes regulatory duty from over 350 goods. ► Bermuda has become the first country in the world to roll back same-sex marriage laws. ► Veteran journalist Siddiq Baloch passed away in Karachi (6 February). ► The Maldives president Abdulla Yameen declared a State of Emergency. �� PM Abbasi inaugurates Golen Gol Hydropower project in Chitral. ► Adelaide Strikers claimed their first Big Bash League title after defeating Hobart Hurricanes by 25 runs. ► Top UN court awards Costa Rica territory claimed by Nicaragua. ► India outplay Australia to win Under-19 World Cup. ► Karachi ranked number two in marijuana-consuming cities in the world. ► The hajj quota for Pakistan for the year 2018 remains the same at 179,210. ► COAS Gen Bajwa meets Saudi crown prince in Riyadh (February 2). ► Pakistan’s annual inflation climbed to 4.4 per cent in January from 3.7pc in the same month last year. ► Pakistan claimed the third position at the ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup 2018. ► Nehal Hashmi sentenced to one month jail time and has been barred from holding public office for next five years in contempt of court case. ► Muhammad Aurangzeb appointed as HBL president and CEO. ► Sindh Minister for Planning and Development Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani, was found shot dead with his wife Fariha Razaque in his house in Karachi (Feb 1). ► Pakistan Launches Application "Surfsafe" to Combat Cyberextremism. ► Supreme Court orders removal of Siddiqul Farooq as Evacuee Trust Property Board (ETPB) chief. ► India beat Pakistan by 203 runs to Enter ICC U-19 World Cup Final 2018. ► Afghanistan Interior Minister and spy chief visit Pakistan (31 January 2018). ► UAE has launched a trade complaint at the World Trade Organisation to challenge Pakistan’s duties on biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) film, used in food packaging. ► French climber Elisabeth Revol rescued from Nanga Parbat by Polish mountaineers. ► India and Pakistan Extend Thar Rail Link for three more years that connects Jodhpur in Rajasthan with the Karachi. ► Babar Azam tops ICC T20I batting rankings. ► Pakistan, China jointly host first international exhibition Gwadar Expo (January 29). ► US lifts ban on refugees from 11 countries. ► Pakistan tops ICC T20 ranking after defeating New Zealand. ► At $19.3 billion, Pakistan ranks fifth in the world that receives the most remittances every year (India $72 billion, followed by China ($64 billion). ► Roger Federer Defeats Marin Cilic to win Record-Tying Sixth Australian Open championship. ► PM Abbasi inaugurates DigiSkills programme which aims at training one million youth through online modules. ► Indian origin 10-year-old boy Mehul Garg beats Einstein, Hawking IQ scores. ► After 152 years, 'Super Blue Blood Moon' to light up skies on January 31. ► Pakistani cardiologist, Jaffar Khan, has won the British Cardiovascular Intervention Society’s prestigious 2018 Young Investigators Award. ► Jalal-ud-Din appointed head of Pakistan women's selection committee. ► Usman Akhtar Bajwa appointed new CDA chief. ► Dubai sets world record with biggest cup of karak chai. ► The State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) raised its main policy interest rate by 25 basis points to 6 percent. ► Fitch revised Pakistan's B rating outlook to negative from stable. ► Indonesian President Joko Widodo to visit Pakistan on January 26. ► Former LHC judge Asghar Haider appointed as NAB prosecutor general. ► PIA Islamabad-New York flights discontinued after Rs 1.2bn loss. ► Pakistan win second T20 against New Zealand. ► Pakistan ranked at 47th in the Inclusive Development Index (IDI) 2018 of the World Economic Forum. ► The USA, Congress passes funding bill, ends three-day government shutdown. ► Pakistani student (Muhammad Haider Khan) bagged the highest marks in Syllabus D Mathematics in the Cambridge Examinations. ► PM Shahid Khaqan Abbasi to attend World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland, from 24-25 January 2018. ► Shah Rukh Khan receives human rights award at WEF (World Economic Forum). ► Pakistan Environmental Protection Agency launches digital environmental atlas. ► World XI beats Pakistan 5-1 in first hockey match. ► Government shutdown in the United States over immigration. ► India beats Pakistan by 2 wickets to claim Blind Cricket World Cup title at Sharjah Cricket Stadium. ► Over 1.8 million cases pending in Pakistan’s courts. ► New Zealand became The 11th country to send a rocket into Orbit. ► Pakistani nuclear scientist and former chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission Dr. Ishfaq Ahmed passed away at the age of 87. ► Pakistan allows visa on arrival for group tourists from 24 countries. ► Pakistan’s Interior Ministry has ordered the closure of the offices of Radio Mashaal. ► US set to overtake Saudi Arabia as world’s number two oil producer: IEA. ► Three students of the space science department at Institute of Space Technology (IST) in Islamabad have received international acclaim for their research on super-massive black holes and galaxy collisions in space. ► India test-fires Agni-V intercontinental ballistic missile. ► Hasan Ali wins ICC Emerging Cricketer of the Year award. ► Microsoft tops Thomson Reuters top 100 global tech leaders list. ► Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Pakistan drops massive 71.5% in Dec. ► Election Commission of Pakistan (ECP) cancels enlistment of 284 political parties. ► PIA bans use of social media for its employees. ► PML-Q’s Mir Abdul Quddus Bizenjo sworn in as Balochistan CM (13 January 2018). ► New Zealand beat Pakistan in 3rd ODI to clinch series. ► National Assembly passes bill to bring FATA under SC, PHC jurisdiction. ► World Bank puts $250m policy loan for Pakistan on hold. ► Ecuador grants citizenship to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. ► FIFA World Cup Trophy to come to Pakistan on February 3. ► The British Backpacker Society ranked Pakistan number one adventure travel destination. ► Sanaullah Zehri resigns as Balochistan CM to thwart political crisis. ► Sindhiyani Tehreek activist Zahida Shaikh passes away (8 January). ► Sikhs ban Indian diplomats from entering Gurdwaras across US. ► Indian court jails powerful politician Lalu Prasad for embezzling funds. ► America suspends entire security aid to Pakistan. ► PAF's first native and youngest commander-in-chief Air Marshal Asghar Khan passes away at the age of 96 (5 January). ► Renowned chef and media personality Zubaida Tariq passed away (5 January). ► Supreme Court slaps complete ban on unlicensed mining in K-P. ► Punjab University Vice Chancellor Zaffar Mueen Nasar resigned from his post, apparently over the issue of the university land. ► US places Pakistan, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan on a special watch list 'for severe violations of religious freedom'. ► Cotton production up by 7.2pc. ► Afghan refugees granted sixth extension for their stay in Pakistan. ► Pakistan Navy successfully test fires cruise missile Harba. ► Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono to visit Pakistan (January 3). ► Pakistan Air Force inaugurates new air base – PAF Bholari. ► Pakistan, India exchange lists of nuclear installations. ► SBP decides to cut import requirement of cash dollars to 35pc against export of foreign currencies. ► Pakistan, India NSAs hold secret dialogue in Thailand. ► Palestine recalls envoy for sharing stage with Hafiz Saeed. ► Polish team arrives in Pakistan to conquer K2 in winter. Read the full article

[govpubsfinds]

This presentation of case studies reflects three years’ of work from the Task Force on Indigenous Women in response to the recommendations of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. As the chair of the Inter-Agency Network on Women and Gender Equality writes in the introduction,

“The case studies show that indigenous women have succeeded in building on the victories of other human rights movements and are moving forward with the conviction that development can be theirs without sacrificing dignity, human rights and justice” (p.iv).  

United Nations. Department of Economic Social Affairs, Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, & Inter-Agency Network on Women Gender Equality. (2007). Indigenous women and the United Nations system : Good practices and lessons learned. New York: United Nations. Full text via the United Nations. 

[phgq]

Proactive approach continues vs. VAWC: PNP

#PHnews: Proactive approach continues vs. VAWC: PNP

MANILA – Despite the implementation of the community quarantine protocols against the coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), the Philippine National Police–Women and Children Protection Center (PNP-WCPC) said it continues to be proactive in acting on complaints against harassment and other forms of violence against women and children (VAWC).

In a statement on Tuesday, Brig. Gen. Alessandro Abella, WCPC chief, said they have conducted 5,049 investigations, 3,628 arrests, and 3,462 inquest proceedings, since the start of the quarantine period in the country.

He added that a directive was issued to all women and children protection desks reminding them to exert their best efforts "to investigate, assist complainants to avail of remedies, and adopt measures that would allow complainants to safely report abuses during these times".

"All lower units of the PNP were directed to continuously undertake proactive measures to protect women and children not only from contracting Covid-19 virus, but also against all forms of abuse, exploitation, and violence in this challenging situation," Abella said. Abella recognized the challenges of their investigators during the public health emergency crisis.

Some of the challenges are suspended filing of complaints pending preliminary investigation, limited and cautionary movements due to the pandemic, and initial lack of knowledge on the procedure of online filing of temporary remedies before the courts.

Another challenge is the shortage of logistics because of the closure of establishments and unavailability of public transport, Abella added.

"Needless to say, we understand that these challenges are not be made as excuses by our WCPDs to be remiss in their duties. Be that as it may, we would not turn a blind eye to those who have been neglectful and incompetent in their responsibilities," Abella said.

PNP chief, Gen. Archie Gamboa, earlier ordered a crackdown against cybercriminals especially those targeting women and children.

He said that this is part of the PNP's Online Sexual Abuse and Exploitation of Children (OASEC).

Aside from this, the PNP is providing strong law enforcement support to the Inter-Agency Council Against Trafficking, and the Inter-Agency Council Against Child Pornography (IACACP) along with the Department of Justice (DOJ), Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG), National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), Commission on Human Rights (CHR), and other concerned agencies to strengthen the fight against child exploitation and abuse of women.

“I am operationalizing the ONE NETWORK project under the Directorate for Information and Communication Technology Management (DICTM). This will establish network connections from the National Headquarters to 17 Police Regional Offices nationwide,” Gamboa said.

It is the main highway where the audio, video, and data communication of the PNP will pass through, making it easier to transfer information and track down cybercriminals.

“Further to this, we continue to strengthen our coordination with our foreign counterparts in the field of international law enforcement to track these suspects of child exploitation online who are usually foreigners in different parts of the world,” Gamboa said.

Data from the PNP showed that VAWC cases from March 17 to June 4 decreased to 3,699, a 44.7-percent drop from 6,689 cases recorded from January 1 to March 16.

“Even with the numbers going down, we cannot ease in our pursuit of these lawless elements. The PNP is fully prepared to go after them using technology, with One Network linking information, reports, and data,” Gamboa added.

Along with the CHR and DOJ, the PNP through the WCPC urged the public to report any form of online sexual exploitation and human trafficking thru (02) 1343 or at the WCPC Hotline: 0919-777-7377 or (02) 8723-0401 local 5261. You may chat them on Messenger: @wcpcpnp. (PNA)

***

References:

* Philippine News Agency. "Proactive approach continues vs. VAWC: PNP." Philippine News Agency. https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1105987 (accessed June 16, 2020 at 05:40PM UTC+14).

* Philippine News Agency. "Proactive approach continues vs. VAWC: PNP." Archive Today. https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1105987 (archived).

[khalilhumam]

International efforts to counter violent extremism under President Trump: A case study in dysfunction and incoherence

New Post has been published on http://khalilhumam.com/international-efforts-to-counter-violent-extremism-under-president-trump-a-case-study-in-dysfunction-and-incoherence/

International efforts to counter violent extremism under President Trump: A case study in dysfunction and incoherence

By Eric Rosand Following President Trump’s election, the consensus was that his anti-immigrant and Islamophobic rhetoric would significantly alter the trajectory of U.S. “countering violent extremism” (CVE) approaches both at home and abroad. That trajectory had started to gain momentum during the last years of the Obama administration, particularly following the emergence of ISIS as a global phenomenon in 2014. The approach recognized that battlefield successes alone would not prevent the group’s growth or re-emergence, and that more attention was needed on the drivers — and not just the manifestations — of terrorist violence, both in the Middle East and beyond. Nearly four years into the Trump administration, what is its record on international CVE efforts? Much ink has already been spilled regarding the Trump-era approach to violent extremism at home, in light of the rise in white supremacist violence and accusations that the president has fanned the flames. In the meantime, the administration’s international CVE efforts have largely escaped scrutiny. There, the record is uneven at best — characterized by a lack of consistent leadership, strategy, coordination, coherence, and prioritization, as well as ad hoc decisions by individual political appointees rather than by a concerted effort to dismantle the Obama-era international CVE agenda.

A scattered approach

On the one hand, a cadre of dedicated civil servants across the U.S. government, who believed in CVE and were committed to its preservation, managed to convince the White House to include many of its key principles, albeit not the term “CVE,” in the 2018 National Strategy for Counterterrorism. In fact, rather than dismissing the preventative approach that formed a core part of CVE, the document called for its strengthening. It committed the United States to lead efforts to create a “global [terrorism] prevention architecture with the help of civil society, private partners, and the technology industry” to thwart terrorist radicalization and recruitment,” underscoring that “prevention works. It can save lives.” Yet, it does not appear that the administration made any effort to operationalize this call, apart from the occasional mention by State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) officials. Instead, the White House preferred to focus on the need to eradicate terrorists and the ideology it believes fuels them. At the same time, the Trump administration turned a blind eye to regimes such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia that use specious counterterrorism arguments to crack down on political opponents and independent civil society. Meanwhile, while the State Department’s counterterrorism funding has withstood the department’s budget cuts during the Trump era, funding for international CVE efforts have declined dramatically during this period. It was reduced by more than 50% from President Obama’s last budget request ($174 million) to President Trump’s FY21 request ($70 million). Further, Trump appointees shelved the first-ever joint State Department-USAID CVE strategy the Obama administration rolled out in 2016. Such a framework started to connect CVE’s disparate, diplomatic, programming, and research dimensions and sought to ensure the various regional and thematic bureaus across these two agencies — not to mention U.S. embassies around the globe — were promoting a consistent, coherent, and data-driven CVE vision. However, the Trump team never replaced the strategy with one of its own, likely believing it did not merit such attention at the top. As a result, different bureaus continued to support CVE projects from Bosnia to Bangladesh, Kenya to Kazakhstan, and Tunisia to Trinidad and Tobago, but not within the framework of a coherent (let alone single) strategy. So there was no longer an agreed strategy in place to coordinate, and the Obama-era international CVE mechanism — which brought together representatives of State, USAID, and inter-agency stakeholders to coordinate implementation and routinely assess progress and resource allocations — has atrophied. In fact, the department’s inspector general recently found that CVE funds across the department were not adequately coordinated or spent with goals of countering violent extremism. The Bureau of Counterterrorism removed “CVE” from its title, signaling its de-prioritization of the issue. It refuses to even use the term “violent extremism” when engaging with foreign counterparts on how to crack down the global rise of what various other U.S. government entities refer to as “racially or ethnically motived violent extremism.” Instead, the bureau uses “racially or ethnically motivated terrorism,” despite the confusion this sows with foreign partners who are also engaging with U.S. domestic agencies. Moreover, the bureau embraced outdated approaches to addressing violent extremism that emphasize ideology, religion, and counter-messaging that are more line with the views of authoritarian and other repressive regimes than those of its longstanding democratic allies. The priority has been, as the State Department’s Counterterrorism Coordinator has said, “to counter the underlying ideas that give rise to [extremist violence]” and to “engage in a contest of ideas.” This means, for example, working closely with Saudi authorities “to develop new capabilities to ‘monitor and counter extremist messaging,’” including through the Saudi-run Global Center for Combatting Extremist Ideology. Likewise, administration officials have lauded the work of the Mohammad VI Institute for Training of Imams in Morocco, which focuses on delivering a “moderate religious curriculum to create community religious leaders that disrupt Islamist ideology [and] promoting authentic voices that are committed to pluralism and human rights, and that can speak credibly to those at risk of buying into terrorist ideology.” These approaches all but ignore research showing that the more relevant drivers of extremist violence often involve how governments treat their citizens: human rights abuses, governance deficits, inequality, marginalization, and exclusion. The bureau’s narrow view of CVE has hindered its ability to contribute to the growing movement within the United Nations, the World Bank and other development institutions, and the donor community to view CVE as part of a wider conflict and violence prevention effort that examines drivers and goes beyond the heavily securitized post-9/11 approach.

A better way

The need for a new approach to violent extremist threats around the globe motivated the work of the 2019 U.S. Institute of Peace Task Force on Extremism in Fragile States. Some of the task force’s recommendations were included in the bipartisan Global Fragility Act (GFA), signed into law last December. These initiatives, which complement multilateral efforts within the U.N. and World Bank, focus attention on the critical role the State Department needs to play in implementing them. However, State Department counterterrorism officials have shown little appetite for participating in GFA implementation discussions — asserting that the counterterrorism bureau doesn’t do “prevention” and preferring to charge ahead with its own, narrowly-scoped strategy. But this approach is at odds with the one that career professionals at USAID developed when they updated the agency’s 2011 CVE policy this year. The update was part of a concerted effort to learn lessons from international CVE efforts over the past decade and deepen the agency’s involvement in those efforts. Former USAID Administrator Mark Green signed off on the new policy just before resigning in April 2020, which had backing from the National Security Council staff: It integrates its CVE efforts into wider conflict and violence prevention efforts and emphasizes the importance of local partner capacity-building to address threats and build resilience within their communities. However, recently-appointed Trump ideologues within the agency — who favor a more narrow focus on “radical Islamic extremism” and are trying to reduce and reorient the agency’s CVE and wider conflict prevention work — so far have prevented its public release. They have also stymied continued USAID involvement in the international CVE community of practice for development actors it helped launch in 2016. This highlights the all-too-familiar gap during the Trump administration between the government professionals who are eager to learn the lessons of counterterrorism and CVE work, and the political appointees who sometimes brandish anti-Muslim rhetoric instead. Yet, there are two important areas where the government professionals seemed to prevail. The first is in continued support for the international CVE architecture, much of which was developed during President Obama’s tenure. Despite the current administration’s skepticism and even disdain for multilateralism, U.S. funding support for and diplomatic engagement in a range of multilateral CVE institutions — such as the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund and Strong Cities Network, which continue to receive strong support from U.S. allies and partners — has remained steady. The second is the administration’s commitment to help countries develop what are often community-led programs to support the rehabilitation and reintegration of ISIS family members returning from detention camps in northeast Syria and those looking to exit terrorist groups. Few would have imagined this kind of support from an administration whose leader proposed killing terrorists’ family members during the 2016 campaign.

Slapdash results

The overall Trump administration record on international CVE remains checkered at best. However, anti-Muslim rhetoric did not give way to a coordinated policy change across government. There never was any directive from the White House, let alone the secretary of state, to systematically undo the international CVE efforts and dismantle global CVE architecture that was largely the brainchild of the previous administration. Instead, most of the damage resulted from ad hoc decisions taken by individual Trump appointees. These scattered decisions — many of which have left the United States out of step with an international CVE agenda that has broad support from U.S. allies, the U.N., and other multilateral bodies — can and should be reversed or ignored if President Trump is voted out of office in November.

[iasshikshalove]

C.A Dated On 11-07-2019

C.A Dated On 11-07-2019 GS-2 Witness Protection Scheme What does it aims? Witness Protection Scheme, 2018 provides for protection of witnesses based on the threat assessment and protection measures inter alia include protection/change of identity of witnesses, their relocation, installation of security devices at the residence of witnesses, usage of specially designed Court rooms, etc. Details:  The Scheme provides for three categories of witness as per threat perception: Category 'A': Where the threat extends to life of witness or his family members, during investigation/trial or thereafter. Category 'B': Where the threat extends to safety, reputation or property of the witness or his family members, during the investigation/trial or thereafter. Category 'C': Where the threat is moderate and extends to harassment or intimidation of the witness or his family member's, reputation or property, during the investigation/trial or thereafter.  The Scheme provides for a State Witness Protection Fund for meeting the expenses of the scheme. This fund shall be operated by the Department/Ministry of Home under State/UT Government and shall comprise of the following: i. Budgetary allocation made in the Annual Budget by the State Government; ii. Receipt of amount of costs imposed/ ordered to be deposited by the courts/tribunals in the Witness Protection Fund; iii. Donations/ contributions from Philanthropist/ Charitable Institutions/ Organizations and individuals permitted by the Government. C.A Dated On 11-07-2019 iv. Funds contributed under Corporate Social Responsibility. Background: The Hon‟ble Supreme Court of India in its Judgment dated 05.12.2018 in Writ Petition (Criminal) No. 156 of 2016 has endorsed the Scheme. As per Article 141/142 of the Constitution, the Witness Protection Scheme, 2018 endorsed in the said Judgment of the Supreme Court is binding on all Courts within the territory of India and enforceable in all States and Union Territories. The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill 2019 Why in news? The Union Cabinet chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the proposal to introduce The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019. The Bill will be introduced in the ensuing Session of Parliament. The Bill provides a mechanism for their social, economic and educational empowerment. Impact  The Bill will benefit a large number of transgender persons, mitigate the stigma, discrimination and abuse against this marginalized section and bring them into the mainstream of society.  This will lead to inclusiveness and will make the transgender persons productive members of the society. Background C.A Dated On 11-07-2019  Transgender community is among one of the most marginalized communities in the country because they don‟t fit into the stereotypical categories of gender of „men‟ or „women‟.  Consequently, they face problems ranging from social exclusion to discrimination, lack of education facilities, unemployment, lack of medical facilities. Salient features of the Bill:  The Clauses 21 and 22 of Chapter V aim to reserve 2% of seats in primary, secondary and higher education institutions funded by the government, and in government jobs.  The Clause 24 for Chapter V mandates formation of special employment exchanges for transgender people.  The Chapter VII details the formation of national and state-levels commission for transgender people.  The Chapter VIII details the formation of special transgender rights courts.  The Clause 11 of Chapter II specifies the right of a transgender child to a home and imposes conditions for foster care.  The Chapter IX details the offenses and penalties. The maximum penalty for hate speech against transgender people in 1 year imprisonment with fine The Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill Why in News? The Union Cabinet has approved the Inter-State River Water Disputes (Amendment) Bill, 2019 that will help adjudicate disputes relating to waters of inter-State rivers and river valleys. A version of this bill was first introduced in the Lok Sabha in 2017 but subsequently lapsed. Salient features of the Bill:  The Bill seeks to amend the Inter State River Water Disputes Act, 1956 to streamline the adjudication of inter-state river water disputes.  A key feature of the bill is the constitution of a single tribunal with different Benches, and the setting of strict timelines for adjudication.  There are about a dozen tribunals that now exist to resolve disputes among States on sharing water from rivers common to them. C.A Dated On 11-07-2019  The standalone tribunal so envisaged will have a permanent establishment and permanent office space and infrastructure so as to obviate with the need to set up a separate Tribunal for each water dispute, a time consuming process.  The Bill also proposes a Dispute Resolution Committee set up by the Central Government for amicably resolving inter-State water disputes within 18 months. Any dispute that cannot be settled by negotiations would be referred to the tribunal for its adjudication.  The dispute so referred to the tribunal shall be assigned by the chairperson of the tribunal to a Bench of the tribunal for adjudication. The Bill can also affect the composition of the members of various tribunals, and has a provision to have a technical expert as the head of the tribunal. Currently all tribunals are staffed by members of the judiciary, nominated by the Chief Justice. Commonwealth Foreign Affairs Ministers Meet Why in News? India has called upon the Commonwealth to speed up the process of readmission of Maldives as a member country. Background:  Maldives withdrew from the Commonwealth during the tenure of previous President Abdullah Yameen in 2016 after the Commonwealth expressed serious concern about the deteriorating human rights situation in the country.  The new government of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih was elected after a democratic wave that fought the rule of President Yameen. About Commonwealth:  The Commonwealth of Nations, normally known as the Commonwealth, is a political association of 53 member states, nearly all of them former territories of the British Empire.  The chief institutions of the organisation are the Commonwealth Secretariat, which focuses on intergovernmental aspects, and the C.A Dated On 11-07-2019 Commonwealth Foundation, which focuses on non-governmental relations between member states.  The Commonwealth dates back to the first half of the 20th century with the decolonisation of the British Empire through increased self-governance of its territories. It was originally created as the British Commonwealth of Nations through the Balfour Declaration at the 1926 Imperial Conference, and formalised by the United Kingdom through the Statute of Westminster in 1931.  The current Commonwealth of Nations was formally constituted by the London Declaration in 1949, which modernised the community, and established the member states as "free and equal". The human symbol of this free association is the Head of the Commonwealth, currently Queen Elizabeth II, and the 2018 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting appointed Charles, Prince of Wales to be her designated successor, although the position is not technically hereditary. The Queen is the head of state of 16 member states, known as the Commonwealth realms, while 32 other members are republics and five others have different monarchs. GS-3 Steps Taken to Stop Terror Financing: Why in News? The Government has taken various steps to combat terror financing in the country, which inter alia, include:- i) Strengthening of the provisions in the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 to combat terror financing. ii) A Terror Funding and Fake Currency Cell (TFFC) has been constituted in National Investigation Agency (NIA) to conduct focused investigation of terror funding and fake currency cases. C.A Dated On 11-07-2019 iii) Since Fake Indian Currency Notes (FICN) network is one of the channels of terror financing in India, FICN Coordination Group (FCORD) is been formed by the MHA to share intelligence/information among security agencies of the states/centre to counter the problem of circulation of fake currency notes. iv) The withdrawal of legal tender status of Specified Bank Notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1000 denomination led to instant extinguishment of high quality fake Indian currency notes of these denominations. V) Since illegally held cash forms a large chunk of terrorist funding, most of the cash held with the terrorists turned worthless. What is terror financing?  The financing of terrorism involves providing finance or financial support to individual terrorists or non-state actors.  Some countries maintain a list of terrorist organizations and have money laundering laws, which are also used to combat providing finance for those organizations.  The FATF Blacklist (the NCCT list) mechanism was used to coerce countries to bring about change.  A 2008 FATF report on terrorism financing noted the importance of links between financial tools and wider counter-terrorist activity to combat terrorist financing. Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019 Why in News? The Union Cabinet, chaired by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi has approved the banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019. It will replace the banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Ordinance, 2019. The banning of Unregulated Deposit Schemes Bill, 2019 will replace the Ordinance promulgated on 21st February, 2019, which will otherwise cease to operate after six weeks after reassembly of Parliament. C.A Dated On 11-07-2019 Impact  The Bill will help tackle the menace of illicit deposit taking activities in the country, which at present are exploiting regulatory gaps and lack of strict administrative measures to dupe poor and gullible people of their hard-earned savings. Background  The banning of Unregulated Deposit Scheme Bill, 2018 was considered by the Lok Sabha in its sitting held on 13th February, 2019 and after discussion, the same was passed, as amended through the proposed official amendments, as the banning of Unregulated Deposit Scheme Bill, 2019.  However, before the same could be considered and passed in the Rajya Sabha, the Rajya Sabha was adjourned sine die on the same day. About the Bill: The Bill provides for a mechanism to ban unregulated deposit schemes and protect the interests of depositors. It also seeks to amend three laws, including the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 and the Securities and Exchange Board of India Act, 1992. · Unregulated deposit scheme: A deposit-taking scheme is defined as unregulated if it is not registered with the regulators listed in the Bill. · Competent Authority: The Bill provides for the appointment of one or more government officers, not below the rank of Secretary to the state or central government, as the Competent Authority. The Competent Authority may: (i) provisionally attach the property of the deposit taker, as well as all deposits received, (ii) summon and examine any person it considers necessary for the purpose of obtaining evidence, and (iii) order the production of records and evidence. The Competent Authority will have powers similar to those vested in a civil court. C.A Dated On 11-07-2019 · Designated Courts: The Bill provides for the constitution of one or more Designated Courts in specified areas. This Court will be headed by a judge not below the rank of a district and sessions judge, or additional district and sessions judge. Offences and penalties: The Bill defines three types of offences, and penalties related to them. These offences are: (i) running (advertising, promoting, operating or accepting money for) unregulated deposit schemes, (ii) fraudulently defaulting on regulated deposit schemes, and (iii) wrongfully inducing depositors to invest in unregulated deposit schemes by willingly falsifying facts. Repeated offenders under the Bill will be punishable with imprisonment between five to 10 years, along with a fine ranging from 10 lakh to five crore rupees. C.A Dated On 11-07-2019 Plastic Pollution: Why in News? More than 300 women will join a round-the-world voyage launching in October to highlight the devastating impact of plastic pollution in the oceans and conduct scientific research into the escalating crisis. Why is it needed?  Millions of tonnes of plastic, from food packaging to fishing gear enters the sea each year, leading some marine experts to warn that there could be more plastic than fish in our oceans by 2050. About the voyage:  The two-year all-female voyage comprises scientists, teachers, filmmakers, product designers, photographers and athletes.  It is organised by eXXpedition, a non-profit focusing on marine pollution - will collect samples from some of the planet‟s most important and diverse marine environments to build a picture of the state of the seas.  The 38,000 nautical mile trip will cover the Arctic, the Galapagos Islands, the South Pacific islands and central ocean areas where plastic accumulates because of circulating currents. Need of the hour:  There‟s a misconception that there are islands of plastic out there that you can see, but it‟s more like a soup.  It‟s fine fragments and the solution was to “turn off the tap” on land and stop the plastic entering the sea in the first place.  The research will focus on identifying the types of plastic and finding tailored solutions.  “There‟s not one silver bullet solution. We need to be working from every sector, from every angle. “We need design of new materials, we need policy change, we need education, we need the arts to be shifting mindsets, we need engineers.  The only way we are going to solve it is by all working together. C.A Dated On 11-07-2019

[aichls]

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[courtneytincher]

Snowden Is More Toxic Now Than He Was in 2013

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The interviews that National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden has been giving before Tuesday’s launch of his memoir, “Permanent Record,” show that he’d rather be granted asylum in France or Germany than in Russia, where he’s been living for the last six years. It’s easy to see why — and also why it’s not going to happen. Snowden told France Inter radio that he’d applied for asylum in France back in 2013 and that he’d still like President Emmanuel Macron to grant it. “The saddest thing is that the only place where an American whistle-blower can speak isn’t in Europe, but here,” Snowden said, speaking from Russia. To the German daily Die Welt, Snowden said that he understood why Germany wouldn’t take him in 2013. “Obama was responsible for this injustice; he would have taken it personally if Germany had granted me asylum back then,” he said. “But from a long-term point of view, Germany and Europe would have helped the U.S. if I’d received political asylum.”To keep the hope alive that a Western country would accept him someday, Snowden says he has kept intentionally aloof in Russia. “I try to keep a distance between myself and Russian society, and this is completely intentional,” he told the German weekly Der Spiegel. Snowden also insists that the only time he was approached by an officer of the FSB, the Russian domestic intelligence service, he cut the meeting short to avoid the emergence of an edited, damaging recording. “I think what explains the fact that the Russian government didn't hang me upside down by my ankles and beat me with a shock prod until secrets came out was because everyone in the world was paying attention to it,” Snowden told Der Spiegel. “And they didn't know what to do.”This could have been a believable claim in 2013. President Vladimir Putin’s regime was still experimenting with propaganda directed at the West. The Russia Today TV and internet channel, initially meant as a window on Russia for the rest of the world, had only turned into a full-fledged information-war weapon some three years before. Russia-based troll farm operators were still trying to work out effective ways of abusing the social networks. Putin could have been happy enough to show off Snowden as proof that true freedom of speech existed in Russia, not in the U.S. (Putin has denied on many occasions that Russian intelligence has debriefed Snowden). Snowden describes himself, sarcastically, as the “one bright spot on their human rights record” and asked, rhetorically, “Why would they give that up?”Given how aware he is of his supposed propaganda value, I can see why he sometimes directly echoes the Kremlin line, as in the Spiegel interview:Russia is responsible for a lot of negative activity in the world, you can say that right and fairly. Did Russia interfere with elections? Almost certainly. But does the United States interfere in elections? Of course. They've been doing it for the last 50 years.I doubt, however, that this kind of thing buys him a trouble-free existence in Russia these days, even if it did in 2013.The Russian propaganda machine has become more cynically accomplished, and Snowden’s value to it has all but expired. His attempts to distance himself from the Putin regime have turned him into more of a liability than an asset for the Kremlin.During Snowden’s stay in Russia, the country has proceeded at a brisk pace down the zero-privacy path that Snowden deplores. It has adopted tough laws demanding that telecommunications and internet services collect, store and share with the government oodles of private information, including the content of communications. Moscow has become one of the world’s most surveilled cities with 11.7 cameras per 1,000 people (in Europe, only London is ahead), and this year, it’s launching a major citywide face-recognition project.Earlier this month, blogger Vladislav Sinitsa was sentenced to five years in prison for suggesting online that the children of riot cops who cruelly beat up protesters should be targeted by way of retaliation; he wasn’t accused of plotting anything of the kind in the real world, and a tweet was his only crime.The Russian leadership is convinced that it’s engaged in an information war with the U.S., and it’s actively preparing for the eventuality that the U.S. might shut off its internet segment from the rest of the global computer network.In a country like this, it’s hard to imagine that a former U.S. spy can somehow live a normal life unmolested by the intelligence services. Snowden rents a Moscow apartment, goes out regularly with his wife (whom he married in Moscow), somehow makes enough money for a reasonably comfortable existence. Even if the FSB really didn’t make a second approach after a first abortive meeting in 2013, I don’t see what could have kept it away afterward. Even if, for some reason, it has given up on seeking consultations about the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency, whose spy tools have been stolen in recent years and used by Russian intelligence services, I find it unimaginable that the Russian intelligence community isn’t closely monitoring Snowden’s activities. I believe in the purity of Snowden’s motives. But I don’t believe in Putin’s enduring respect for them, much less in the FSB’s ability to ignore someone like Snowden on its home turf.European countries should have acted in 2013, granting Snowden asylum when he asked for it. Perhaps (although it’s still unlikely) it would have done so had Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, been president. But now, after six years of mysteriously surviving Russia’s steadily growing siege mentality, Snowden is more toxic to any potential country of refuge than he was six years ago.Snowden says that though he’d rather be elsewhere, he’s making plans based on being stuck in Russia for the foreseeable future. He’s right, and unfortunately, such a future is especially risky if he’s really refusing to cooperate with the Russian spy services.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

from Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The interviews that National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden has been giving before Tuesday’s launch of his memoir, “Permanent Record,” show that he’d rather be granted asylum in France or Germany than in Russia, where he’s been living for the last six years. It’s easy to see why — and also why it’s not going to happen. Snowden told France Inter radio that he’d applied for asylum in France back in 2013 and that he’d still like President Emmanuel Macron to grant it. “The saddest thing is that the only place where an American whistle-blower can speak isn’t in Europe, but here,” Snowden said, speaking from Russia. To the German daily Die Welt, Snowden said that he understood why Germany wouldn’t take him in 2013. “Obama was responsible for this injustice; he would have taken it personally if Germany had granted me asylum back then,” he said. “But from a long-term point of view, Germany and Europe would have helped the U.S. if I’d received political asylum.”To keep the hope alive that a Western country would accept him someday, Snowden says he has kept intentionally aloof in Russia. “I try to keep a distance between myself and Russian society, and this is completely intentional,” he told the German weekly Der Spiegel. Snowden also insists that the only time he was approached by an officer of the FSB, the Russian domestic intelligence service, he cut the meeting short to avoid the emergence of an edited, damaging recording. “I think what explains the fact that the Russian government didn't hang me upside down by my ankles and beat me with a shock prod until secrets came out was because everyone in the world was paying attention to it,” Snowden told Der Spiegel. “And they didn't know what to do.”This could have been a believable claim in 2013. President Vladimir Putin’s regime was still experimenting with propaganda directed at the West. The Russia Today TV and internet channel, initially meant as a window on Russia for the rest of the world, had only turned into a full-fledged information-war weapon some three years before. Russia-based troll farm operators were still trying to work out effective ways of abusing the social networks. Putin could have been happy enough to show off Snowden as proof that true freedom of speech existed in Russia, not in the U.S. (Putin has denied on many occasions that Russian intelligence has debriefed Snowden). Snowden describes himself, sarcastically, as the “one bright spot on their human rights record” and asked, rhetorically, “Why would they give that up?”Given how aware he is of his supposed propaganda value, I can see why he sometimes directly echoes the Kremlin line, as in the Spiegel interview:Russia is responsible for a lot of negative activity in the world, you can say that right and fairly. Did Russia interfere with elections? Almost certainly. But does the United States interfere in elections? Of course. They've been doing it for the last 50 years.I doubt, however, that this kind of thing buys him a trouble-free existence in Russia these days, even if it did in 2013.The Russian propaganda machine has become more cynically accomplished, and Snowden’s value to it has all but expired. His attempts to distance himself from the Putin regime have turned him into more of a liability than an asset for the Kremlin.During Snowden’s stay in Russia, the country has proceeded at a brisk pace down the zero-privacy path that Snowden deplores. It has adopted tough laws demanding that telecommunications and internet services collect, store and share with the government oodles of private information, including the content of communications. Moscow has become one of the world’s most surveilled cities with 11.7 cameras per 1,000 people (in Europe, only London is ahead), and this year, it’s launching a major citywide face-recognition project.Earlier this month, blogger Vladislav Sinitsa was sentenced to five years in prison for suggesting online that the children of riot cops who cruelly beat up protesters should be targeted by way of retaliation; he wasn’t accused of plotting anything of the kind in the real world, and a tweet was his only crime.The Russian leadership is convinced that it’s engaged in an information war with the U.S., and it’s actively preparing for the eventuality that the U.S. might shut off its internet segment from the rest of the global computer network.In a country like this, it’s hard to imagine that a former U.S. spy can somehow live a normal life unmolested by the intelligence services. Snowden rents a Moscow apartment, goes out regularly with his wife (whom he married in Moscow), somehow makes enough money for a reasonably comfortable existence. Even if the FSB really didn’t make a second approach after a first abortive meeting in 2013, I don’t see what could have kept it away afterward. Even if, for some reason, it has given up on seeking consultations about the NSA and the Central Intelligence Agency, whose spy tools have been stolen in recent years and used by Russian intelligence services, I find it unimaginable that the Russian intelligence community isn’t closely monitoring Snowden’s activities. I believe in the purity of Snowden’s motives. But I don’t believe in Putin’s enduring respect for them, much less in the FSB’s ability to ignore someone like Snowden on its home turf.European countries should have acted in 2013, granting Snowden asylum when he asked for it. Perhaps (although it’s still unlikely) it would have done so had Donald Trump, not Barack Obama, been president. But now, after six years of mysteriously surviving Russia’s steadily growing siege mentality, Snowden is more toxic to any potential country of refuge than he was six years ago.Snowden says that though he’d rather be elsewhere, he’s making plans based on being stuck in Russia for the foreseeable future. He’s right, and unfortunately, such a future is especially risky if he’s really refusing to cooperate with the Russian spy services.To contact the author of this story: Leonid Bershidsky at lbershidsky@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Jonathan Landman at jlandman4@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion's Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion website Slon.ru.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

September 17, 2019 at 07:00AM via IFTTT

[whittlebaggett8]

Japan’s Peacebuilding Prowess: The Case of Marawi City

It is time for a new brand name of diplomacy for Japan’s new era. Rebuilding Marawi in the Philippines is a fantastic spot to get started.

By Mark Manantan and Dahlia Simangan for The Diplomat

June 01, 2019

The Reiwa era ushers in an opportunity for Japan to mirror and refashion its posture in regional and global politics — together with sensitive areas these as peacebuilding. Marawi City in the Philippines could be the most strategic place to commence.

Peace aspirations have educated Japanese international policy in the write-up-Chilly War time period. Though the pacifist doctrine has constrained Japan’s armed forces participation in the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations, it has permitted Japan to discover other avenues to training its peacekeeping role in disrupted states through noncoercive indicates. It has circumvented the constraints of pacifism and located its peacebuilding niche by changing its noncombatant assets as vital actors in infrastructure construction. The Japan Self-Protection Forces (JSDF) engineering models have been instrumental in offering schooling and training to other troop-contributing nations around the world, as effectively as increasing the preparedness for unexpected emergency reaction. In 2016, Tokyo made a slight but significant revision, making it possible for the JSDF to accomplish “rush-and-rescue” operations for personnel doing the job in risky predicaments. Japan’s emphasis on the human stability factor of peacebuilding proven it as significantly less interventionist and extra aligned to the local sensibilities of conflict-afflicted communities.

Tokyo’s job has been particularly obvious in the Philippines. Japan was the prime service provider of abroad progress help (ODA) to the Southeast Asian point out in 2018. It is dependable for $5.98 billion or 41 % of the Philippines’ ODA portfolio. At the rear of Japan are the Planet Lender, the Asian Development Financial institution, the United States, and South Korea, which have also been supporting peace endeavours in Mindanao.

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Peace in Mindanao has been elusive for decades. Amidst the negotiations for the regulation that later developed the Bangsamoro Autonomous Location in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), an armed confrontation erupted concerning the federal government troops and Islamic Point out (IS) militants in the Islamic Town of Marawi in Could 2017. The Marawi siege lasted for 5 months, claimed the life of 920 militants, 165 troopers, and 47 civilians, and forcibly displaced 360,000 people today (even though these numbers are probably incomplete).

The rehabilitation of Marawi town is a very important ingredient of peace in Mindanao. President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial legislation in excess of the total island of Mindanao at the outbreak of the Marawi siege. The stalled rehabilitation and the slow return of the refugees run the chance of reigniting violent extremism and inciting one more round of conflict. With reviews of the IS militants’ regrouping and recruitment actions, the Philippine governing administration requirements to act promptly to avert the extremist groups from capitalizing on these sources of community discontent.

Even so, authorities-led rehabilitation has been gradual. In June 2017, the Inter-Agency Undertaking Force for the Recovery, Reconstruction, and Rehabilitation of Marawi Metropolis, also regarded as Undertaking Force Bangon Marawi (TFBM), was made. Nevertheless, it took above a year for the TFBM to get started performing on the floor. People of Marawi have criticized the absence of community session all through the scheduling stage and the authorities’ failure to acquire consent for the demolition and clearing of their residences and enterprises.

In the aftermath of Marawi’s liberation, Japan instantly pledged to take part in humanitarian and peacebuilding endeavours. Japan’s most recent contribution is 2 billion yen (about $18 million) truly worth of enhancement support to assemble transcentral roads together with arterial sections spanning 20.8 kilometers. This fourth set up of a growth assist package provides Japan’s full contribution to Marawi’s reconstruction to $36 million.

Japan’s assistance is channeled by means of the Japan Intercontinental Cooperation Agency’s (JICA’s) two-pronged peacebuilding approach: the immediate provision and restoration of fundamental social providers and the disbursement of improvement support for long-phrase rehabilitation and reconstruction of socioeconomic infrastructures. For instance, the Japan Fund for Poverty Reduction (JFPR) delivers emergency employment although improving upon livelihood aid for the internally displaced individuals (IDPs) of the Marawi siege.

Other overseas governments have also supplied specialized support and financial aid to Marawi metropolis. The U.S. authorities pledged about $15 million worthy of of foreign assist support and sent two Cessna C-208 plane. Australia also pledged $20 million geared towards little one protection and counseling expert services amid IDPs. As of November 2018, the Philippine governing administration has obtained a total of $670 million in the kind of concessional financing and grants from various governments and multilateral businesses.

The Chinese federal government has also donated about $1.5 million for relief functions. This contribution, on the other hand, sits uncomfortably in the developing anti-Chinese sentiment in the Philippines.

China’s presence in the disputed West Philippine Sea, the influx of Chinese international staff, and Chinese nationals who are misbehaving in the place additional lifted public distrust toward China. Duterte recently broke away from his regular professional-China stance, but it is nonetheless to be witnessed if his rhetoric will be translated into Manila’s international policy.

Anti-Chinese sentiment also echoes in Marawi city. In spite of phone calls for a regionally led rebuilding procedure, the federal government chose the Chinese-led Bangon Marawi Consortium (BMC) for the job. Two of the BMC corporations have been beforehand debarred by the Environment Lender because of to fraudulent procedures, like the falsification of files. The BMC was inevitably disqualified right after failing to furnish evidence of economical capability. These controversies did not prevent the Philippine federal government from tapping yet another Chinese-led group, PowerChina, to guide the reconstruction of the metropolis. These plans are nonetheless to come into fruition whilst the ground zero of the Marawi siege continues to be inaccessible to the community.

Neighborhood voices are generally silenced in superior-degree and prime-down diplomatic peacebuilding efforts, as the situation of Marawi’s rebuilding has demonstrated so far, and this is in which Japan has the probable to fill the hole.

Japan’s trustworthiness in infrastructure development is the core of its peacebuilding diplomacy. Central to Japan’s unparalleled observe history in infrastructure growth is not only its technical know-how but also its readiness to incorporate local views. Japan has been collaborating closely with neighborhood stakeholders to ensure that area issues are thought of all over the peacebuilding procedure.

Japan’s skill to transfer abilities beneath its engineering forte in rebuilding war-torn metropolitan areas and municipalities is a notable peacebuilding diplomacy trait. It underpins the human relationship component of the general peacebuilding mission. Japan’s local engagement, by usually means of its large specialized abilities and instruction of neighborhood associates, cultivates belief and goodwill that are important in acquiring neighborhood possession and sustainability of peace.

Japan’s peacebuilding diplomacy is one of its untapped sources of smooth power. What is missing amongst Japanese policymakers and diplomats, however, is a coherent technique that highlights Japan’s robust and special peacebuilding contributions. Adopting these kinds of a technique could amplify the achievements and increase the alternatives from Japan’s peacebuilding diplomacy.

The dawn of the Reiwa era is a fitting moment for Japan to perform a deep soul-exploring of its global peacebuilding role. Japan has the assets to produce a powerful narrative that leverages on the multiparty and networked views of its localized peacebuilding attempts. By discovering and enhancing its one of a kind model of peacebuilding diplomacy, Japan gains one more important gentle power asset — a remarkably indispensable diplomatic arsenal to form its external surroundings in a pretty unstable geopolitical backdrop.

Dahlia Simangan is an Assistant Professor of Peace Studies at Hiroshima University. She conducts study on challenges associated to publish-conflict rebuilding processes.

Mark Manantan is a investigation fellow at the Centre for Southeast Asian Scientific tests in Taipei. He is also the founder of Bryman Media.

The views expressed in this short article are private.

The post Japan’s Peacebuilding Prowess: The Case of Marawi City appeared first on Defence Online.

from WordPress https://defenceonline.com/2019/05/31/japans-peacebuilding-prowess-the-case-of-marawi-city/

[harryandmeghan0-blog]

The Royal Wedding Received Triple the Media Coverage of Yemen in 2018 - Antiwar.com

New Post has been published on https://harryandmeghan.xyz/the-royal-wedding-received-triple-the-media-coverage-of-yemen-in-2018-antiwar-com/

The Royal Wedding Received Triple the Media Coverage of Yemen in 2018 - Antiwar.com

The ongoing war in Yemen, called the world’s “worst humanitarian disaster” by the United Nations and independent aid agencies since early last year, received a grand combined total of 20 minutes of coverage on the ABC, NBC, and CBS weekday evening news programs in 2018.

That compared to a total of 71 minutes that the three major networks devoted to the British royal wedding and a combined total of 100 minutes dedicated to the rescue of a dozen young cave explorers from flooding in Thailand, according to the latest annual compilation by the authoritative Tyndall Report.

By contrast, the brutal murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in September received a total of 116 minutes of coverage by the three networks, making it one of the very few foreign-based stories to make it into the top 20 most-covered network news events in 2018.

Although the Thai cave rescue was clearly a dramatic, emotional, and easily accessible story of the kind that lends itself very well to television news, the number of lives at stake were a tiny fraction of those estimated to have been killed in Yemen (50,000-80,000 combatants and noncombatants), not to mention the deaths of well over 100,000 more civilians, including at least 80,000 children under the age of five who have succumbed to malnutrition or disease.

Some 360,000 children there are currently suffering from severe acute malnutrition, while some 20 million Yemenis are unable to “reliably feed themselves or their families [and] almost 10 million are just one step away from famine,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said this week. The latter figure amounts to nearly half the population of the Arab world’s poorest nation.

Falling Foreign Coverage

Overall, the lack of coverage of the Yemen disaster is symptomatic of negative trends regarding foreign news coverage by the major networks, which together remain the biggest single source of international news in the United States. An average of more than 22 million households tune into the nightly newscasts, or about four times the number of those that watch any of the three major cable channels – Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN – on a given evening.

Indeed, this year’s Tyndall Report found that network coverage from overseas fell to the lowest point since its publisher, Andrew Tyndall, began systematically tracking and coding the three weeknight newscasts in 1988. Altogether, foreign datelines accounted for only 7.5% of all the news generated by those programs (1,092 minutes out of 14,354 minutes) in 2018. (Each half-hour newscast contains an average of roughly 22 minutes of news content.)

“Foreign bureaus have never been so little used,” noted Tyndall in his latest report. “2018 marked a general abdication of the traditional role of the nightly newscasts, which used to provide a daily summary of major national and international news developments,” he told LobeLog in an email.

“Of particular note,” he added, “the top 30 foreign news stories [covered by the three networks’ newscasts] contained no mention of the two major western hemisphere elections – in Brazil and Mexico – and none of the major crisis in Europe; namely Brexit.”

Moreover, he wrote in his email,

the overarching international crisis facing the globe as a whole – climate change – was little covered as such, although its symptoms such as wildfires and hurricanes were presented prominently. These symptoms were confined to their domestic occurrence, however, rather than the manifestations of climate change on a global scale.

I am very pessimistic about the nightly newscasts reforming themselves and ever reverting to their traditional global mission.

Precisely because of its unparalleled reach and the influence of its major sponsors (compared to cable news advertisers), network news has always been designed to appeal to the greatest number of viewers. In important ways, the network news agenda – as shallow, superficial, sensationalistic, and increasingly inward as it is – reveals how Americans see and understand events and trends overseas.

What Did and Didn’t Get Attention

The single most network-covered story of the year, according to Tyndall’s tally was the nomination and confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at 426 minutes, followed by the ongoing probes into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election (332 minutes).

Three of the next four biggest stories involved extreme weather and its consequences – the California wildfires (242), severe winter weather (234), and Hurricane Florence in the Carolinas (203). Hurricane Michael in Florida was the eleventh biggest story (134 minutes). But, as in past years, these reports, totaling over 800 minutes, were focused almost exclusively on the anticipation and immediate impact of these events rather than the possible relationship between them and climate change.

Aside from the Russian investigations, North Korean-U.S. summitry was the top foreign-policy story, clocking in at 212 minutes, making it the year’s fifth-biggest story overall. The detention of migrant children (189) ranked seventh, tied with the Parkland High School mass shooting in Florida, which was followed in turn by coverage of school safety and violence prevention more generally (184). The prosecution of President Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, (164) ranked tenth, the winding down of the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria (133) ranked twelfth, followed by coverage of the flu season (130) and accusations of partisan bias by the FBI and Khashoggi’s assassination (116 minutes each). Police killings of civilians and the federal budget and deficit (112 each), followed by the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics (111), the Facebook controversy (107), and coverage of the Christmas holiday season (105), rounded out the top 20.

As for foreign stories, all things Russia-related – including the alleged election interference (332), U.S.-Russia diplomacy including the Helsinki summit (92); Russian-British diplomacy and the poisoning of the Russian ex-spy (54); and US-Russian spy-related events (23) – led the pack with a total of 501 minutes, or a little over three percent of total nightly newscasts.

Immigration-related coverage accounted for nearly the same amount of coverage (493 minutes). It included the detention of migrant children (189), border restrictions and “the wall” (96), immigration reform more generally (75), Central American migrants and caravans (50), DACA Dreamers seeking permanent status (36), crackdowns on undocumented immigrants and deportations (27), and asylum-seekers (20).

The Koreas were the top foreign-policy story: In addition to the 212 minutes devoted to the summit between Trump and Kim, inter-Korean diplomacy accounted for 48 minutes, and North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile programs for another 42 minutes, bringing the total to just over 300 minutes (or about two percent of total programming), not counting the 111 minutes on the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang.

The Syrian civil war and Trump’s (now-modified) decision to withdraw U.S. troops were the next most-covered foreign-related stories (133), followed by Khashoggi’s assassination (116), the cave rescue in Thailand (100), the royal wedding (71), ongoing fighting in Afghanistan (54), U.S.-China trade frictions (52), and steel and aluminum import tariffs (37).

The Israel-Palestinian conflict, NATO-US diplomacy (notably Trump’s trip to Brussels), and the Iran nuclear deal, including Washington’s withdrawal from it, each earned a grand total of 29 minutes of coverage by the three networks, while the earthquake in Indonesia (26) and the eruption of the volcano in Guatemala (23) gained more than Yemen’s 20 minutes in the network spotlight, one minute more than was devoted to Trump’s quick visit to London and the Lion Air jet crash (19 minutes each).

Hopes among various humanitarian, human-rights, and peace groups that the media’s strong focus on Khashoggi’s killing would draw greater public attention to the catastrophic toll suffered by the civilian population during the four-year-old Saudi-led campaign against Houthi rebels and their allies in Yemen seem to have been disappointed, according to Tyndall’s findings. Of the total 20 minutes devoted to Yemen in 2018, 13 minutes preceded the Saudi journalist’s death and only seven minutes followed it. The relatively greater (but still pathetic) amount of attention before the September assassination came mostly as a result of dire warnings issued by the UN earlier in the spring. (Of the 20 minutes, CBS accounted for 11, while NBC and ABC split the remainder.)

The lack of media attention to Yemen post-Khashoggi, however, did not translate into congressional indifference. Motivated in major part by a campaign led by the Post itself (as well as other print media), Congress expressed its anger by taking up a series of resolutions that have gained momentum this year to curb US support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen.

America’s Worldview

If the network evening news provides as good a measure as any of how Americans perceive the world outside US borders, it’s not a great picture. As noted by Tyndall himself, South America and sub-Saharan Africa, with a combined population of nearly two billion, simply failed to register in the news. The rise of authoritarian movements in Europe also appeared to draw a blank, as did South and Southeast Asia (apart from the cave rescue).

And, despite the multi-trillion-dollar commitment by the United States to stabilizing and securing the Middle East region over the last two decades, there wasn’t much evidence of its existence on network television besides the last throes of the campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and the Khashoggi killing. Iraq, to which Washington has sent well over a million troops since the 2003 invasion, didn’t even make the top 30 foreign stories in 2018.

Both Israel and Iran can probably take some satisfaction from their relatively small media footprint last year. The increasingly bellicose fulminations from Trump, Bolton, and Pompeo against Tehran are unlikely to get much popular backing – let alone public enthusiasm for a new military conflict in the Middle East – in the absence of far more intense (and negative) coverage of the kind that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been getting since the Khashoggi murder.

Israel, too, can be happy with its relative obscurity. Despite the hundreds of casualties inflicted by Israeli bullets on Palestinian demonstrators along the Gaza border last year, coverage of Israel-Palestine actually fell by nearly 50 percent, from the 42 minutes the networks devoted to the conflict in 2017, which was already a record low, to a mere 29, according to Tyndall’s calculations over the previous 30 years.

Jim Lobe served for some 30 years as the Washington DC bureau chief for Inter Press Service and is best known for his coverage of US foreign policy and the influence of the neoconservative movement. He is the currator for LobeLog.

Read more by Jim Lobe

Source: https://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2019/03/08/the-royal-wedding-received-triple-the-media-coverage-of-yemen-in-2018/