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(8/4/06 17:48) Reply
Crimes Against Humanity
Michael HarrisFri, August 4, 2006
By MICHAEL HARRIS
The Human Rights Commissioner of the United Nations and former Supreme Court of Canada justice looked like a witch there on Page 13, right down to the pointy hat -- or was that a dunce cap? I still don't understand why the letter K straddled the top of her dubious chapeau. Any ideas?
The accompanying article by Toronto criminal lawyer Eddie Greenspan argued that Ms. Arbour, also a former war crimes prosecutor, had exceeded her mandate by having the audacity to suggest that war crimes may be being committed in southern Lebanon by Israel.
After three weeks of all-out war against its neighbour, Israel's "self-defence" has left 900 dead, 3,000 injured, 1 million homeless and a country in ruins. The dead include hundreds of children, eight Canadians, and four unarmed UN observers who begged a dozen times not to be killed before they were blown to bits by a "precision" bomb dropped on their well-known post by the Israeli air force.
Mr. Greenspan is entitled to call that self-defence if he wants to, just as Louise Arbour can conclude it might rise to the level of war crimes. But what no one can successfully pull off, including the learned criminal lawyer, is to make that argument by an appeal to international law. Here's the skinny folks: There is no international law on this dear, dirty planet. Everyone is too busy violating it whenever it suits their interests.
For example, Mr. Greenspan rightly notes that Article 58 of Protocol One of the Geneva Convention stipulates that parties to a conflict must not locate military objectives in populated areas. Hezbollah has done that and is therefore in breach of international law. Agreed.
[My city has a "Super Base" within the City limits of a 1 million plus community, including the longest runway in the Commonwealth, the only place where the Space Shuttle can land safely outside the United States. I bet your cities have military installations in or very near them too, just like the "terrorists" do.] Agreed.
But Protocol One also says this: "In order to ensure respect for and protection of the civilian population and civilian objects, the Parties to the conflict shall at all times distinguish between the civilian population and combatants and between civilian objects and military objectives and accordingly shall direct their operation only against military objectives."
Both sides are clearly in breach.
Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention equally prohibits "collective punishment and likewise all measures of intimidation" against a civilian population. Article 147 forbids "extensive destruction not justified by military necessity."
It is difficult to see how bombing Beirut Airport, blowing up bridges, roads, and ambulances and killing hundreds of civilians does not leave Israel in breach as well -- just as Hezbollah is in breach for rocket attacks on civilian targets in northern Israel.
Mr. Greenspan notes that Hezbollah crossed an internationally recognized border to attack an Israeli patrol in Israel. That is a clear violation of international law, which was why back in 1985 the UN passed a resolution "vigorously" condemning Israel for violating Tunisian sovereignty to attack the then headquarters of the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Did that act justify Tunisia bombing Tel Aviv Airport?
Mr. Greenspan had nothing to say about a lot of international law being breached by Israel, from deporting Palestinians from the occupied territories and building settlements on other people's land to failing to protect innocent civilians from slaughter in Sabra and Shattilla refugee camps while eastern Beirut was under Israeli military occupation.
Israel is by no means alone in embracing only those parts of international law that support its actions while rejecting all others. In addition to the usual suspects, Iraq, Iran, China, and North Korea, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia have many a dark smudge on the resume when it comes to breaking international law at will or supporting those who do because they are allies of the moment.
While no citizen is above the domestic law of his country, powerful states routinely place themselves above international law. I think Louise Arbour may understand a deeper truth than Eddie Greenspan's one-sided advocacy. We will never subdue the Muslim world by force, only radicalize it.
As the body count climbs in Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon, [and Afghanistan] Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's evil star continues to rise.
-------------------------------------------------------------------Author, broadcaster and investigative journalist Michael Harris can be heard weekdays 1-3 p.m. on 580 CFRA. His e-mail address is mharris@cfra.com
Letters to the editor should be sent to feedback@ott.sunpub.com.
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Publisher Rick Gibbons; Editor-in-chief Mike Therien
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(8/30/06 15:46) Reply
Crimes Against Humanity
Updated: 1 hour, 44 minutes ago
UNITED NATIONS - The U.N. humanitarian chief on Wednesday accused Israel of “shocking” and “completely immoral” behavior for dropping large numbers of cluster bombs on Lebanon when a cease-fire in its war with Hezbollah was in sight.
Jan Egeland said Israel had either made a “terribly wrong decision” or had “started thinking afterwards.” The remarks were unusually harsh even for Egeland, who often ignores an unwritten rule that U.N. officials should not criticize member states too severely.
“What’s shocking and I would say, to me, completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict, when we knew there would be a resolution,” Jan Egeland said at a news conference.
An unusual number of cluster bombs used in the war did not detonate on impact, possibly because they were old, Egeland said. Usually 10 percent to 15 percent of the bomblets fail to explode immediately. According to some estimates, up to 70 percent of the Israeli bomblets failed to explode on impact.
Civilians returning to their homes in southern Lebanon are experiencing “massive problems,” as a result of these unexploded munitions, Egeland said.
‘Every day people are maimed’
Approximately 250,000 Lebanese, of the 1 million displaced, cannot move back into their homes, many because of unexploded munitions.
“Every day people are maimed, wounded and are killed by these ordnance,” Egeland said.
U.N. and human rights organizations said Wednesday that 13 people, including three children, had been killed between the Aug. 14 cease-fire and Tuesday, and 46 people had been wounded.
“Every day we have to revise our count of what the scope of the problem is,” said Chris Clark, program manager of the U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center in southern Lebanon. “We just don’t know how big the problem is, only that it is huge at the moment and getting bigger every day.”
Human Rights Watch researchers have said the density of cluster bombs in southern Lebanon was higher than in any place they had seen.
Egeland urged countries that sold cluster bombs to the Israelis, including the United States, to have “serious talks with Israel.”
The U.N. Mine Action Coordination Center, which has so far assessed 85 percent of the bombed areas in Lebanon, has identified 379 bomb strike areas that are contaminated with as many as 100,000 unexploded bomblets.
Egeland said about 750,000 people had managed to return home, which he called “remarkable.”
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(8/30/06 15:56) Reply
Re: Crimes Against Humanity
"Civilians will die disproportionately again, not only during the war, but after the war as well. [This] should not have happened."
Egeland called the use of cluster bombs a "disproportionate response" to the Hezbollah rockets fired into Israel.
"I said very clearly that the response was excessive and disproportionate.
What's shocking and I would say completely immoral is that 90 percent of the cluster bomb strikes occurred in the last 72 hours of the conflict when we knew there would be a resolution, when we knew there would be an end," he said.
"I hope the U.S. will talk to the Israelis on that, because it is an outrage that we have 100,000 bombs among where children, women, shopkeepers and farmers are now going to tread," Egeland said, adding that he had not been able to get an explanation from the Israelis so far.
Earlier this week, the U.S. State Department opened an investigation into whether Israel misused U.S.-made cluster bombs in Lebanon during the bloody offensive, which claimed the lives of more than 1,200 Lebanese civilians and left southern Lebanon in ruins.
Earlier Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert rejected demands from visiting UN chief Kofi Annan that Israel immediately lift its air and sea blockade of Lebanon and pull out its forces from the south once 5,000 peacekeepers deploy there, the Associated Press reported.
At a joint press conference in Ramallah, Annan said that more than 200 Palestinians had been killed since Israel launched its bloody offensive in the Gaza Strip two months ago.
The UN chief also urged Israel to lift its closure of the Gaza Strip and open crossing points there.
The creation of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel is the key to solving the problems in this troubled region," Annan said.
"The suffering of the Palestinian people must not be forgotten while we strive to bring peace to Lebanon," he added.
There will be no lasting peace in the Middle East until Israel ends its occupation and a Palestinian state is created.
"Continued occupation of the Arab and Palestinian territories will not achieve peace," he said.
Security and stability can be attained only by guaranteeing the return of legal rights to the Palestinian people, implementing the resolutions of international legality, establishing an independent and sovereign Palestinian state with east Jerusalem as its capital and resolving the issue of Palestinian refugees.
Edited by: XSha Tell at: 8/30/06 15:57
Norway leads the way withIceland as No. 2, followed by Australia, Ireland, Sweden, Canada, Japan and the United States.
The gap between the richest and poorest countries in the world is growing, as human development in sub-Saharan Africa stagnates and progress in other regions accelerates, according to the pioneering UNDP Human Development Index (HDI), released today as part of the 2006 Human Development Report, Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis.
After a costly setback in human development in the first half of the 1990s, Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) have recovered strongly, and progress since 1990 in East and South Asia continues to accelerate. But sub-Saharan Africa shows no sign of improving, principally because of the devastating effect of HIV/AIDS on life expectancy.
The Index analyses 2004 statistics from 175 UN member countries along with Hong Kong (Special Administrative Region, China), and the occupied Palestinian territories.
The HDI rankings this year do not include 17 UN member nations, among them Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia, due to insufficient data.
Introduced with the first Human Development Report (HDR) in 1990, the HDI assesses the state of human development through life expectancy; adult literacy and enrolment at the primary, secondary and tertiary level; and income, based on the most recent reliable data from UN partners and other official sources.
The HDI statistics reveal that life expectancy in sub-Saharan Africa is actually lower today than it was three decades ago.
In the 31 countries at the bottom of the list, 28 of which are in sub-Saharan Africa, a person can hope to live on average only 46 years, or 32 years less than the average life expectancy in countries of advanced human development, with 20 years slashed off life expectancy due to HIV/AIDS, according to the authors.
Less visible though equally disturbing has been the significant impact of HIV/AIDS on the lifespan of women in the same region. Due to the feminization of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, in Botswana, Lesotho, South Africa and Swaziland the life expectancy of women will be two years less than that of men in the five year period between 2005 and 2010; between 1990 and 1995, by contrast, women in those countries lived on average seven years longer than men.
The countries at the top and bottom of the rankings in the 2006 HDR are unchanged from the 2005 HDR; Norway ranks highest, while Niger is last of the countries for which sufficient information is available. People in Norway are more than 40 times wealthier than people in Niger and they live almost twice as long. They also enjoy near-universal enrollment in primary, secondary and tertiary education, compared with an enrollment rate of 21 percent in Niger.
Figures in the 2006 Report make clear the entrenched inequality across the globe:
The combined income of the 500 richest people in the world now exceeds that of the poorest 416 million people, for example.
One of the central human-development challenges ahead, the authors stress, is to diminish tolerance for the extreme inequalities that have characterized globalization since the early 1990s, and to ensure that the rising tide of prosperity extends opportunities for the many, and not just the privileged few.
The 10.8 million child deaths in 2004 bear testimony to inequality in the most fundamental human challenge—staying alive, says the Report. "Being born on the wrong street in the global village carries with it a large risk in terms of survival prospects," write the authors, who note that only three sub-Saharan African countries will reach the goal of cutting overall rates of child mortality by two-thirds by 2015. Reaching that goal on time would save the lives of 4.4 million children who will otherwise die that year.
"Globalization has given rise to a protracted debate over trends in global income distribution, but we sometimes lose sight of the sheer depth of inequality—and of how greater equity could dramatically accelerate poverty reduction," said Kevin Watkins, head of UNDP's Human Development Report Office.
This year's HDI also provides a snapshot of the disparities between income groups within countries. Children born into the poorest 20 percent of households in Indonesia, for example, are four times more likely to die before their fifth birthday than children born into the richest 20 percent of families, says the Report. In Nicaragua and Peru, approximately 40 percent of child deaths occur in the poorest 20 percent of households.
In Bolivia, the richest 20 percent of people rank in the upper echelons of human development, alongside Poland, while the poorest 20 percent equate to the average HDI for Pakistan. Poland and Pakistan are separated by 97 places on the global HDI ranking, illustrating how the vast inequality within countries can mask the true extent of human development.
The same trend is found in affluent countries, says the 2006 Report.
While the richest 20 percent of the United States population tops the list of human-development achievements, alongside Norway, the poorest in the United States quintile ranks considerably lower—slightly below the HDI for Argentina and on par with Cuba.
"People are the real wealth of nations," said Watkins. "That simple truth is sometimes forgotten. Mesmerized by the rise and fall of national incomes as measured by GDP, we tend to equate human welfare with material wealth. But the ultimate yardstick for measuring progress is people's quality of life," he stressed.
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