Berta Cáceres (1973-2016)

Ilisu (Turkey) . . . Three Gorges (China) . . . Glen Canyon (United States) . . . Itaipu (Brazil/Paraguay) . . . Sardar Sarovar (India). These are some of modern history's most controversial dam projects. Each one promised electrical power, flood control, water for irrigation, and more. But each one also threatened to destroy human communities, wildlife habitats, cultural artifacts, and more.

Add to the list Agua Zarca (Honduras), a planned series of four large dams on the Río Gualcarque. On Thursday the river lost one of its most determined defenders, Berta Cáceres. In a town called "Hope" (La Esperanza), Ms. Cáceres was assassinated by armed men who invaded her home as she slept.

Cáceres was the co-founder of an organization called the Council of Indigenous Peoples of Honduras (Copinh). A member of the Lenca ethnic group--the largest in Honduras--Cáceres led Copinh through years of protests against the plan to dam a river the Lenca deemed sacred. At times, Copinh filed legal challenges and lobbied the government to try to prevent the dams from being built. At other times, protesters physically blocked construction crews from gaining access to work sites. The efforts Cáceres made to try to stop the project gained international recognition last year when she was awarded the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize. 

Ms. Cáceres, who was 44 at the time of her death, had four children. She had been threatened with rape and death, she had been followed, and several of her supporters had been killed. No suspects had ever been arrested for the killings or for the threats. After a visit in December 2013, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights noted "a complete absence of the most basic measures to address reports of grave human rights violations in the region." As in Nigeria, Ecuador, Sudan, and Myanmar where oil interests colluded with corrupt governments to violate the rights of indigenous peoples, those supporting the Agua Zarca project in Honduras appear to have turned the government against its own people. Regardless of who actually killed Berta Cáceres, the Honduran government bears responsibility for its failure to protect her and for its failure to pursue justice in the cases of the other peaceful protesters who have been murdered.

For more on the work done by Cáceres and Copinh in an effort to stop the construction of dams on the Río Gualcarque, watch this brief video portrait from the page dedicated to Cáceres on the Goldman Environmental Prize website.

Parità

 

On Saturday, Italy's new prime minister, Matteo Renzi, went with his cabinet to the Quirinale for the traditional meeting of the new government with the president of the Republic. Although one of the ministers is obscured by Renzi, something unprecedented in Italian politics is readily apparent in the photo above: the sixteen ministers in Renzi's government are equally divided between women and men.

While women occupy two of the positions traditionally "reserved" for women in gender-inclusive governments (the ministries of health and education), in the Renzi government they also occupy the ministries of foreign affairs and defense. Federica Mogherini replaces Emma Bonino as the only female foreign minister among G8 states while Roberta Pinotti joins Ursula von der Leyen of Germany as the only two female defense ministers in the group.

Mogherini, incidentally, blogs at BlogMog (in Italian, of course).

Empowering Women

There is probably no organization that has done more to disentangle American Protestantism from its unholy alliance with the Republican Party than the Sojourners Community founded in the 1970s by Jim Wallis. Social justice has been the touchstone of the organization and its widely read publications including Sojourners magazine and the God's Politics blog.

Today the blog features a story by Pepperdine alumna Deborah Whang. "Justice Starts with Empowering Women in the Developing World" addresses issues that Deborah has been passionate about at least since her days as an undergraduate. It's an interesting and compelling piece--and well worth reading, especially with International Women's Day coming up later this week.

Malala

We know all too well that many of the world's religions--including Christianity--have oppressed women. They have perpetuated for centuries the myth of masculine superiority that supports patriarchy in its multiple manifestations. So yesterday when a woman--a Methodist minister--stood before the congregation where Sandy and I were worshiping and prayed for the recovery of Malala Yousafzai, my heart was warmed.

If you don't know Malala Yousafzai's story, here's the brief version:

Yousafzai was born and raised in Pakistan's Swat Valley, a region in the northwestern part of the country adjoining Afghanistan. Taliban fighters from Afghanistan have streamed into the region since the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001. Control of the Swat Valley has passed back and forth between the Taliban and the Pakistani military. A large portion of the American "drone war" has been waged in the Swat Valley against Afghan Taliban leaders who have taken refuge there.

In 2009, when Yousafzai was eleven, the Taliban ordered the closing of schools offering education to girls, including Yousafzai's school, a private school operated by her father. She responded by blogging for the BBC about life under the Taliban. That same year, a New York Times documentary (available here) featured Yousafzai and her father. With resistance to Taliban control of the Swat Valley increasing, many girls (including Yousafzai) returned to school, although many female-only schools had already been destroyed.

Last week, on October 9, while Yousafzai was returning home from school, a Taliban gunman boarded her school bus, called her out by name, and shot her in the head and neck. She survived and was taken to a military hospital in Peshawar in critical condition. A Taliban spokesman has stated that if she lives, she will be targeted again. 

Today Yousafzai was flown to England for treatment at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, a hospital where many British soldiers wounded in Afghanistan have been treated.

Joining the millions of Pakistanis who are praying for Malala could be a good step toward exorcising the demons of patriarchy in both Islam and Christianity.

The London Olympics . . . and Gender

Whether legal or cultural, gender barriers--almost all of which cause women to be left out or otherwise disadvantaged, in case that needs to be said--remain all too common in the modern world.  My own university has never had a female president or provost; my college within the university has never been led by a female dean.  The United States, Mexico, France (etc., etc.) and 52 of the 53 countries on the African continent have never had a female president.  In spite of the remaining barriers, not just in education and politics but in business, the arts, religion, and many other fields, progress is occurring.  In this year that just happens to mark the fortieth anniversary of the adoption of Title IX, there will be more women than men representing the United States in the London Olympics.  That has never happened before.  And in the upcoming Olympic Games, every single country participating will do so with both female and male athletes.  That, too, has never happened before.

Three countries--Qatar, Brunei, and Saudi Arabia--had to overcome their long traditions of gender discrimination in order ensure that every team participating in the London Olympics has both male and female representatives.  Ironically (given what I said about my university), a Pepperdine student, Sarah Attar, will be half of the female contingent on Saudi Arabia's Olympic team.  A member of the women's track team at Pepperdine, Attar will compete at 800 meters in London.

Attar was born and raised in California but has both U.S. and Saudi Arabian citizenship.  Given the limited opportunities for women in sports in Saudi Arabia, going outside the Kingdom to find Attar or someone like her was one of the few options for bringing a woman onto the Saudi Arabian Olympic team.  (The other woman on the Saudi Arabian team, Wodjan Ali Seraj Abdulrahim Shahrkhani, is from Saudi Arabia and will compete in judo.)

As this essay by Eman Al Nafjan points out, terrible discrimination against women persists in Saudi Arabia; giving in to the International Olympic Committee's threat to bar Saudi Arabia from participating in the Olympics hardly qualifies as a magnanimous gesture on the part of the royal family.  Nevertheless, from small beginnings great things sometimes emerge.  Just ask the 269 women on the U.S. team, most of whom are beneficiaries of a law called Title IX.

Free to Travel . . . and Return

Nobel laureate and opposition political leader Aung San Suu Kyi left Myanmar yesterday for the first time since 1988.  She arrived in Bangkok intending to visit Burmese refugees in Thailand but apparently neglected to inform Thai officials of her plans.

Before her departure from Yangon, Suu Kyi met with Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh to discuss Myanmar's ongoing political transition.  Singh delivered an invitation for Suu Kyi to deliver the next Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Lecture.  The Times of India noted that the meeting represented a "course correction" for India's government, which had previously opted to deal with the military regime in Myanmar that had repeatedly confined Suu Kyi to house arrest while suppressing the country's pro-democracy movement.

Suu Kyi plans to travel to the U.K., Norway, Switzerland, and Ireland next month.  She will  address Parliament in the U.K., receive her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Norway, address the International Labor Organization in Switzerland, and meet with Bono in Ireland.

A Short Film for International Women's Day

Via the World Bank and the One Day on Earth organization's 11.11.11 project:

Women, Power, and Peace

In 1998, Francis Fukuyama argued in an article for Foreign Affairs that, as women gain access to power across the world, the world is becoming a more peaceful place.  The "democratic peace," Fukuyama suggested, may in fact be a consequence of the feminization of politics.  He noted that "developed democracies . . . tend to be more feminized than authoritarian states, in terms of expansion of franchise and participation in political decision-making.  It should therefore surprise no one that the historically unprecedented shift in the sexual basis of politics should lead to a change in international relations."

Today, in a column published online by Aljazeera, Harvard professor and former assistant secretary of defense Joseph Nye considers whether a world run by women would be a more peaceful place.  Harvard psychologist Stephen Pinker, he notes, has argued in a recent book (Better Angels of Our Nature) that "over the long sweep of human history, women have been and will be a pacifying force."  Nye, endorsing this view, suggests that the connection between women and peace may be due in part to differences between women and men in leadership style:  "Women's non-hierarchical style and relational skills fit a leadership need in the new world of knowledge-based organisations and groups that men, on average, are less well prepared to meet."

Notwithstanding the potential advantages that women bring to the table as leaders, there remains a large gender gap when it comes to access to power in the political, economic, and social realms.  Women today hold only 5 percent of the world's top corporate positions.  Over the course of the 20th century, just 27 of 1,941 rulers of independent states were female.  Often, when women have been in positions of power, they  have been forced to adopt more masculine leadership styles (and foreign policies).  (Think Margaret Thatcher, currently being portrayed by Meryl Streep in Iron Lady.)

Progress has occurred at a glacial pace, but when we look at certain benchmarks in the not-too-distant past we can find reason for optimism.  In 1900, no country in the world allowed women to run for elective office at the national level.  Jeannette Rankin, the first woman elected to Congress in the United States, was elected in 1916.  (She remains the only woman ever elected to Congress from Montana.)  Today, wherever men can vote, women have won the right to vote as well (with women's suffrage in Saudi Arabia coming in 2015).

The future, in all likelihood, belongs to women.  And that is probably a good thing for all of us.

Presidents in Prison

Former Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega is being flown from Paris to Panama today, leaving a French prison for a twenty-year prison sentence back home.  For the last twenty-two years, since his capture by the U.S. military forces that invaded Panama in what was called Operation Just Cause, Noriega has been imprisoned--first in the United States where he was convicted on charges of drug trafficking, money laundering, and racketeering, then in France where he was convicted for money laundering.  In Panama, Noriega has been convicted on various human rights charges stemming from murders of political opponents committed during the six years he ruled Panama.

Noriega is not the only former leader in prison.  Former Liberian president Charles Taylor has been incarcerated at The Hague since 2006 when he was surrendered to the Special Court for Sierra Leone by the Liberian government headed by President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the first democratically elected female leader in Africa.  (Sirleaf was one of three women awarded the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday in Stockholm.)  Taylor is awaiting the Court's verdict in his trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by forces under his control in Sierra Leone's civil war.

Former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo was turned over to the International Criminal Court by the new government of Ivory Coast two weeks ago.  He is now awaiting trial in The Hague.

Hosni Mubarak, the Egyptian president ousted by protesters earlier this year, is on trial on a variety of charges including corruption and ordering the killing of protesters.  Due to health problems, including stomach cancer, the 83-year-old Mubarak has been detained in a military hospital in Cairo.  His trial, currently on hold, is scheduled to resume on December 28.

Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the former president of Tunisia who was ousted in the first wave of the Arab Spring protests, has thus far avoided prison.  However, he has been convicted in absentia of corruption and drug possession.  He and his wife escaped during Tunisia's revolution to Saudi Arabia where they remain in spite of a Tunisian extradition request.

On Wednesday of last week, former Israeli president Moshe Katsav entered prison to begin serving a seven-year sentence for rape.  (The presidency in Israel, it should be noted, is a largely ceremonial office.)  Although Katsav maintains his innocence, his conviction was affirmed by a three-judge panel of Israel's Supreme Court.

Current president of Sudan Omar al-Bashir is currently under indictment by the International Criminal Court. for crimes related to the Darfur genocide.  He, however, remains in office.

Of course, the imprisonment of former leaders is not always a good thing.  In October, former Ukrainian prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison on a charge of abuse of office.  Ms. Tymoshenko denounced the verdict, which observers outside Ukraine have widely criticized as having been politically motivated.

Aung San Suu Kyi Released

Burmese political dissident and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been released from house arrest. Daw Suu, as she is called by her supporters in Burma, has been confined since May 30, 2003.

Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton

Nicholas Kristof writes in today's New York Times about an issue ("The Dynastic Question") that has troubled me. Here's his comparative politics angle on Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy:

We Americans snicker patronizingly as "democratic" Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Singapore, India and Argentina hand over power to a wife or child of a former leader. Yet I can’t find any example of even the most rinky-dink "democracy" confining power continuously for seven terms over 28 years to four people from two families. (And that's not counting George H.W. Bush's eight years as vice president.)

On the other hand, at least the countries Kristof mentions--except for Singapore--have had female presidents or prime ministers. The United States lags behind much of the world in this respect.

The Prosecutor Speaks

In this brief interview on the Foreign Policy website, Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, discusses the prospects for bringing five of Serbia's most wanted fugitives, including Ratko Mladić and Radovan Karadžić, to justice before the tribunal is phased out.

Another Year

Reports out of Myanmar indicate that the military junta there has extended Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest for another year. Suu Kyi, recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, has been under house arrest continuously for four years and for twelve of the last seventeen years.

Jerry Falwell (1933-2007)

What if Ann Coulter, the mistress of hate-filled invective, carried with her whatever credibility comes from being the minister of a suburban mega-church?

Jerry Falwell, founder of the Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia and of the Moral Majority, died yesterday in his office at Liberty University. In death as in life, Falwell was a polarizing figure. In fact, I've read comments that can only be described as "fighting words" from pacifists who have felt compelled to respond to the news of Falwell's death.

But why is Falwell's passing being noted here--on an IR blog?

I could point to Falwell's support for the repressive right-wing government in El Salvador during the 1980s or his opposition to sanctions against the South African apartheid regime. I could also point to his noxious comments in the aftermath of 9/11. Instead, I want to focus on his attitude toward women and its impact on U.S. human rights policy.

Let's start with an instructive contrast: Two Southern Baptists--Jerry Falwell and Jimmy Carter--came to prominence in the United States at about the same time. The two men differed on almost everything--including women's rights.

President Carter supported the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution. His administration signed the 1979 Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW). He appointed more women and minorities to federal courts than all of the presidents who preceded him combined.

Falwell, on the other hand, was a misogynist.

In 1989, Falwell said,

I listen to feminists and all these radical gals. . . . These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men; that's their problem.

Truly a Coulter-esque comment.

Falwell was a consistent opponent of equal rights for women. Key Republican leaders, including Senator Jesse Helms, later the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, were encouraged by the support they received from Falwell's Moral Majority to steadfastly oppose ratification of CEDAW.

It would be a gross over-simplification to say that Falwell was responsible for the failure--right down to the present day--of the United States to ratify CEDAW, but religiously based opposition to feminism in all its forms (including the very basic form of support for gender equality) is part of what he has left us. James Dobson and Focus on the Family (along with its political arm, the Family Research Council) carry Falwell's misogynistic mantle today. Falwell may no longer have the ear of Republican senators and presidents, but Dobson does and he follow's Falwell's script.

It will be difficult for the United States to reclaim a position of leadership on human rights until CEDAW and the Convention on the Rights of the Child are ratified. And it will be difficult for that to happen until the Christian Right understands that Falwell and his successors have been wrong about women's rights.

Twenty-one Problems; Solutions Included

Foreign Policy has asked twenty-one experts to suggest one thing that would make the world a better place. In response, Joseph S. Nye, Jr. addresses anti-Americanism, Jeffrey D. Sachs considers global poverty, and Lt. Gen. William E. Odom takes on nuclear proliferation--to name just a seventh of the experts and their issues.

See the complete collection here.

Comfort Women: Why Now?

Why is the issue of the Japanese military's use of "comfort women" roiling Asian politics over sixty years after World War II ended? Foreign Policy gets answers from Columbia University's Gerald Curtis in this installment of "Seven Questions."

On Fundamentalisms

James Carroll offers a critique of all types of fundamentalism in this column published yesterday in the Boston Globe.

After defining fundamentalism and noting its troublesome effects, Carroll considers his own faith's version of the tendency. Noting Pope Benedict's recent "Apostolic Exhortation" and its assertion that certain values are "not negotiable," Carroll writes that "culture consists precisely in negotiation of values, and change in how values are understood is part of life. Moral reasoning is not mere obedience, but lively interaction among principles, situations, and the 'human limitations' referred to in the 1993 Vatican statement," which condemned religious fundamentalism.

Consider some of the values that good people might consider "not negotiable." Consider opposition to abortion or the defense of marriage as an exclusively heterosexual union. Or consider the promotion of democracy or of free-market economic principles. Consider support for human rights or opposition to all forms of war.

Steadfast defense of a principle without regard to circumstances--"mere obedience"--is easy. It absolves the one engaged in such a defense of the need to think about contexts or consequences. On the other hand, recognizing that values may come into conflict or that ends and means are both important--engaging, that is, in "moral reasoning"--is more difficult because it entails responsibility. It forbids the excuse that is so common among those who do evil without even realizing it: "I was just following orders."

International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day, a day that commemorates a number of significant events in history that occurred in March, including several associated with the labor movement in the United States. (For example, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, in which over 140 female workers were killed, occurred on March 25, 1911.) In honor of International Women's Day, I've decided to describe briefly the contributions of one woman associated with the American labor movement, Mary Harris Jones (1830-1930).

One of the most important labor advocates in American history, "Mother Jones" began as an organizer for the Chicago chapter of the Knights of Labor in 1871 soon after losing all her possessions in the Great Chicago Fire. (Just four years earlier, Jones had lost her husband and four young children in a yellow fever epidemic in Tennessee.) From 1871 until the end of her life almost sixty years later, Jones was a part of every significant strike in the United States.

Jones was especially concerned with conditions in which coal miners were forced to worked. In fact, her work with the United Mine Workers earned her the nickname "the Miners' Angel." In 1898, Jones founded the Social Democratic Party. Seven years later, she helped to established the Industrial Workers of the World.

Jones liked to tell audiences, "I'm not a humanitarian, I'm a hell-raiser." She was indeed a hell-raiser, but she raised hell on behalf of those who were victims of economic exploitation.

Losing Power

"It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts."

--Aung San Suu Kyi

Abe and "Comfort Women"

From 1937, when Japan invaded Manchuria, to the end of the Pacific War in 1945, somewhere between 100,000 and 200,000 women were forced into prostitution by the Japanese Imperial Army. So-called "comfort houses" were established throughout Asia, from Sakhalin Island to the Dutch East Indies and beyond. Wherever the Japanese military went, "comfort women" were "recruited" to serve the sexual desires of soldiers. Toward the end of the war, when most Japanese forces were withdrawn to the home islands, even Japanese women were forced to become military base prostitutes.

In 1993, not long after official documents detailing the Japanese military's role in procuring "comfort women" were unearthed, Japan issued a formal apology to the women involved and established a victims' compensation fund supported by private donations. Today, however, Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe began to reverse his nation's progress toward the acceptance of responsibility for the terrible crimes perpetrated against tens of thousands of women. Abe said, "The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion."

Signs of the Japanese shift in policy were on display last month as government ministers reacted negatively to hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives on Japanese sex slavery during World War II. The nationalist tendencies of the Abe government seem destined to harm relations with Japan's East Asian neighbors and the United States as well.