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John Boonstra

Bringing Pakistan’s displaced home — voluntarily

It's encouraging to see that John Holmes, the UN's humanitarian coordinator, understands one of the most fundamental principles of dealing with situations of mass displacement: that returns must be voluntary. If returns are forced, it means that people don't yet feel safe returning to their homes, and the resettlement can effectively act as renewed displacement.

Discussing Pakistan's plan to begin returns for some of the more than two million displaced by last month's army offensive, Holmes was adamant:

"We have been clear to the government, and the humanitarian community has in general, that this has got to be voluntary and the government say they accept that.

"Obviously they want to encourage people to go back, but we need to be very careful that it is a proper process, that it is voluntary, that the conditions are right when they get there, the basic services as well as security," he said.

The only awkward part was his admission that he is -- understandably -- "a bit uncomfortable" with the fact that the same army that conducted the military operation will also be leading the return program.

And in case anyone thought that returning two million people to their homes was going to be easy -- it's also going to cost billions of dollars in reconstruction. In two months, donors have met less than half of the UN's rather modest appeal for $542 million.

(image from flickr user Al Jazeera English under a Creative Commons license)

Flooding in Benin

The West African nation of Benin deals with flooding every rainy season, but this year it is bad enough to declare a national emergency and require UN help.

"Thousands of people fleeing floodwaters are living with precarious food security, [staying with] family and in public places," Interior Minister Armand Zinzindohoue said, in a statement reported by the U.N. Integrated Regional Information Network (IRIN).

Flood victims are in dire need of water, food, medicine, mosquito nets and clothing, Zinzindohoue said.

Multiple UN agencies -- the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the World Health Organization, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, and the UN Children's Fund -- are all working to ensure that the needs of affected Beninese are met, but tens of millions of dollars are still needed.

Babylon besieged!

Well, okay, actually just damaged.  But it is (mostly) because of war.

American troops and contractors in Iraq inflicted serious damage on the archaeological site of Babylon in Iraq, driving heavy machinery over once-sacred paths, bulldozing hilltops and digging trenches through the terrain, Unesco experts said Thursday. “The use of Babylon as a military base was a grave encroachment on this internationally known archaeological site,” said a report that the United Nations cultural agency presented in Paris.

This is what the Hanging Gardens of Babylon looked like before the American occupation 2500 years ago.  It's a shame that one of the original Seven Wonders of the World still isn't able to be recognized as a World Heritage site.  Saddam carving his name into some of the buildings also didn't help.

(image from flickr user Carla216 under a Creative Commons license)

Obama at major emitters meeting

POTUS' statement at L'Aquila:

He said the U.S. - with its "much larger carbon footprint per capita" - now means to lead by example.

"The United States has sometimes fallen short of meeting our responsibilities," Obama said. "Let me be clear, those days are over."

And he prodded others to follow.

The question is, which comes first, the prodding or the emissions reductions?

ICC in Kenya?

Former S-G Kofi Annan, who mediated the post-election crisis in Kenya in early 2008, has passed on a secret envelope to Luis Moreno-Ocampo, the Chief Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. Inside this envelope are names of those responsible for the shocking violence that swept across Kenya, with frightening ethnic undertones, after the contentious election.

Moreno-Ocampo, of course, is no stranger to such lists of names. In the case of Sudan, he went to the very top of the list. Top Kenyan officials are likely not included in this envelope, but Reuters reports that the names of two ministers "probably" are included (which seems just about inevitable, given that Kenya's Cabinet has something around four or five dozen members).

Will the ICC open up investigations in Kenya? Well, that depends. For one, the ICC only has jurisdiction over those most horrific of crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide. But if some instigators of the violence in Kenya did in fact pursue a strategy targeting particular ethnic groups, the ICC's mandate may indeed apply.

Second, the ICC will only be able to operate in Kenya if the Kenyan justice system falls short of trying these alleged crimes. And this seems to be the primary purpose of the handover of the envelope -- spurring Kenyan authorities to create an adequate tribunal system. While I admire Moreno-Ocampo's tenacity in this regard, I don't think his critics will be greatly comforted by the bravado of this statement:

The ICC's Moreno-Ocampo told Reuters this week it may take Kenya about a year to establish a tribunal if it agrees to do so in principle. "If Kenya cannot do it, I will do it. There will be no impunity," he said.

One beneficiary of the financial crisis

Organized crime.

Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, said that until the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the banking system "has been very active and clean," forcing organized crime to return to cash transactions.

"That was basically the situation until the financial crisis, which started as a liquidity problem, an unwillingness of banks to (engage in) inter-banking transactions," Costa said. "So you have on the one hand a supply, resources, cash from organized crime and you have banks very (that are) illiquid and striving for cash. Well, that is really license for organized crime to penetrate into the financial system."

And as with much of the rest of the economy, this dynamic is profiting the few at the expense of the many. Costa made his rather canny financial analysis during the launch of a program bringing multiple UN agencies together to combat West Africa's rampant trafficking problems, which span from drugs to toxic wastes (?!?). The UN's political, economic, and peacekeeping offices are all involved in the effort, which is placing an emphasis on the post-conflict issues that trouble much of the region.

On the plus side, it does seem that the "cocaine iceberg" of trafficking from West Africa to Europe is shrinking.

Turkey to raise Uighur issue at Security Council?

The violence between ethnic Uighurs and Han Chinese that Alanna has blogged about may find its way to the Security Council. Via Ambassador at Large:

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan announced today at a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting that he wants the issue of violence in Xinjiang discussed at the Security Council.

The Turks, currently non-permanent members of the Council and serving as President of the Council for the month of July, are usually reticent of [sic] bringing issues of internal ethnic unrest within states to the Council because of their domestic issues with the Kurds.

Erdogan may want to bring the matter up because many Turks see Uighurs as Turkic-speaking cousins, but the violence does happen to be occurring during Turkish presidency of the Council. And it's a good sign if countries are willing to talk about issues as they exist, without fearing the implications for "their own" similar issues, such as the status of Turkish Kurds, which should be addressed, but in its own different forum.

At any rate, don't expect the Chinese, who of course wield a veto, to be too keen to discuss the matter.

Bravery award of the day

Goes to Sudanese truckers:

They risk being robbed or kidnapped, but Sudan's truckers still deliver food aid to thousands displaced by conflict in Darfur, where banditry is often overshadowed by the fighting between army and rebels.

Banditry, it's worth pointing out, is actually a much more common, and possibly even more pernicious, problem for those in Darfur struggling to live on food aid.  The WFP provides this aid for almost four million Darfurians.  And it's mostly Sudanese truckers who deliver it.

Easterly’s pessimism on the MDGs

It's not surprising that William Easterly has pronounced the Millennium Development Goals dead.  S-G Ban Ki-moon himself cautions that "progress has been too slow for most of the targets to be met by 2015."  What might be more surprising is that Easterly calls the activism surrounding the MDGs "a success in global consciousness-raising."  Yet not without flaws -- his post on the subject concentrates on the inability of the MDG movement to identify an appropriate target, reason, and policy prescription (the WHO, WHY, and WHAT, in Easterly's terms) for their activism.

Some of Easterly's points are certainly well made -- it is difficult, for instance, to pinpoint an actor to blame for the MDGs' struggles, or who needs to be galvanized to action, when 189 countries have signed on to the agreement.  But how could the MDGs have emerged in any other way, least of all without attracting the label of "colonialism" had they been prerogatives solely of the developing world?  The MDGs were set up to be difficult to achieve -- that they set specific goals should not be reason to qualify the campaign to reach them as a failure "on its own terms."

Furthermore, the MDGs have not been utter failures.  They have achieved tangible benefits for millions of human beings, in alleviating poverty, reducing disease, increasing access to education, improving women's health.  That they have not reached their intended milestones, or that the global economic crisis has put a further damper in their prospects, is not a reason to abandon them.  So while their certainly is reason to investigate aid agencies, and to ensure that funds all reach the poor whom they are supposed to reach, I disagree with Easterly that we shouldn't "waste any more effort" in pushing countries to meet their commitments by 2015 and in coming as close to achieving the MDGs as possible.  To fall short of that would be unfair both to the poor and to our own principles.