Rene Wadlow's blog

Although Pan-Islamic and Pan-Arab movements have not been “federalist” in the sense that federalism is usually analysed, Pan-Islamic movements have been an effort to organize political community across State boundaries.

There is growing interest in the role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) within the United Nations system in the making and the implementation of policies at the international level. This interest is reflected in a number of path-making studies, such as: P.

He rejects the ritual and breaks the rules of the game. He discovers once more his suppressed identity and dignity. He gives his freedom a concrete significance. His revolt is an attempt to live within the truth.” (Vaclav Havel)

Vaclav Havel (1936-2011), the former president of the Czech Republic, who moved to another dimension on December 18th, had analyzed that:

I was recently in Vietnam to give a series of talks at the University of Hanoi on ecologically-sound development and poverty reduction, in light of the Earth Summit organized by the United Nations to be held June 2012 in Rio. The conference is popularly called “Rio plus 20” as it will be held 20 years after the first Rio conference on sustainable development.

Arnaud Desjardins (1925-2011) was a leading figure in introducing the broader French public to the philosophies and religious practices of Asia. His films devoted to Tibetan Buddhist leaders, Indian religious teachers, Japanese Zen philosophers, and Afghan Sufis were widely shown on French television in the 1960s and early 1970s, when such topics were largely unknown among non-specialists.

There was so much violence around the birth of Bangladesh in 1971 and the subsequent India-Pakistan war that nonviolent actions are largely overlooked.  Operation Omega, however, was an important activity and set out principles that were later developed by others as humanitarian intervention and the Right to Protect.

October 2nd is the U.N.-designated International Day of Nonviolence [or “Non-violence”] – chosen as it is the anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi and is marked by seminars held during the U.N. General Assembly. This year, much of the General Assembly’s attention is focused on the Middle East.

In a recent book on peacebuilding, Thania Paffenholz sets out functions that non-governmental organizations can carry out in situations of violent conflict: protection, monitoring, advocacy, public communication, in-group socialization, social cohesion, intermediation, facilitation, and service delivery [1]. In practice, some of these functions overlap, or more than one can be carried out at the same time by the same organization. Nevertheless, a function-analytical framework can be useful for a choice of activities and for building awareness of the ways different functions interact among each other. Thus it would be useful to analyse different experiences of peacebuilding done by the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR, in the U.S.) and see what lessons can be learned. For an example of the monitoring of a cease-fire agreement and facilitating communication among parties it is useful to look at IFOR and the Nagaland Peace Mission.

As the psychologist Ronald Fisher has written, “One of the most serious global problems facing the world as it lurches into the new millennium is how to manage destructive and protracted conflict between groups with differing identities who are interacting within the same political system.”

Such conflict management needs skilled leadership within all organized segments of society. Diana Francis’s 2002 book, People, Peace and Power: Conflict Transformation in Action (Pluto Press, 2002) is devoted to helping to develop such skilled leadership. Francis is past-president of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation (IFOR) and active in nonviolence training workshops. [Ed.: Francis’s latest book is From Pacification to Peacebuilding, reviewed in Fellowship magazine earlier this year.]

On 9 July 2011, Sudan became two separate States as South Sudan was created six months after the 8 January referendum in which the voters of southern Sudan voted overwhelmingly to create a separate State.  The creation of South Sudan is a cause of neither joy nor sorrow but needs to be accompanied by our prayers as the history of Sudan since its independence from England in 1956 has been one of violence and of missed opportunities for reconciliation and cooperation.  The rare occasions when there was no massive fighting going on — basically the 10 years from the Addis Agreement of 1972 to 1982 when the North-South civil war started again, and the 2005-2010 period after the most recent peace accord — were not used to develop cooperative structures nor to develop a socio-economic system that would facilitate integration.  The conflict in Darfur, western Sudan, which started in 2003 continues and was not an example that showed the government’s willingness to compromise or to meet the socio-economic demands of marginalized groups for a fair share of the national resources.