The legacy of WWII should not be forgotten

September 1st of 2009 marked the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, more specifically, the German invasion of Poland. Besides the usual commemorative ceremonies taking place in Europe, a discussion of WWII’s lasting impact on Europe is being discussed throughout the European press.

For a 20-something such as myself, the idea of the “lasting impact” of WWII at first glance seemed almost ridiculous, at least not worthy of mention outside of history circles. Though my grandparents were directly caught up in the war, the world their generation lived in is essentially inconceivable to me. I simply can not imagine an unstable Western Europe, in which Western European nations were not friendly working together politically and economically. To me, Europe is a collective whole and always has been. I can’t even imagine European nations without the Euro.  Thinking of Germany split in two is difficult (unless of course I’m looking at the physical remnants of the split while in Berlin).

The meaning of WWII today, as discussed in the press, is different for each European country, the obvious influencing factors being geography – Eastern versus Western Europe – and political power – Axis versus Allies. An opinion article from the Austrian newspaper Die Presse complains of Austria’s half-true WWII legacy as perpetrator only, despite the fact that just as in Germany, many Austrians were wholeheartedly against Hitler and the Nazis. The British “The Times” talks about the lasting Polish-British friendship, and Estonian daily Eesti Paevaleh writes about how recent fall of the iron curtain, a direct product of WWII, really was.

But perhaps one of the most important, lasting impacts of WWII today still has not been adequately addressed. It is an issue that is seen in conflicts all over the world today.

WWII was the first modern-day war in which civilian deaths outweighed soldier-deaths; 60 percent of the 70 million victims were civilians. This fact has had far-reaching impact on the way warfare has been conducted since, and by extent how it is monitored, today.

After WWII the first-ever war tribunal was created, and over twenty military officers were convicted of war crimes. The Nuremberg Trials produced the principles of the Nuremberg Trial, laws which aim to govern international law. But the more lasting impact that came out of the trials was the establishment of an International Criminal Court and the Geneva Convention of 1949, which is arguably the most important document that limits and aims to control the abuses of war.

While the Geneva Convention is still used today and the ICC still exists, the mandate of both of these is extremely limited and essentially ineffective today. The issue of the ICC’s sovereignty over nations has stalled the Court’s ability to legally monitor war crimes and prosecute perpetrators.  For example, after the ICC indicted Sudan’s President Omar Hassan Ahmad al-Bashir, the court was met with a condescending laugh from Bashir and politicized opposition from several other nations about the jurisdiction of the ICC. Though 194 nations ratified the Geneva Convention, the laws are violated in most conflicts today. There is also the added problem of enforcing these rules, many of which require years of post-conflict research in order to determine if and exactly how these laws were breached.

But the fact remains, since World War II civilians have increasingly been targeted by governments involved in conflicts. From the genocides of Rwanda and Darfur, the internal conflicts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sri Lanka and to the international wars of Bosnia and the Persian Gulf, a disproportionate number of victims in armed conflicts are civilians, and a startling number of these victims are women and children.

This is where the legacy of WWII lies, and this is where we can not afford to let that legacy be forgotten.

Civilians suffer as war continues in the Democratic Republic of Congo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFrDkg2c8JM

The war in the Democratic Republic of Congo still rages on. Reports vary, but an estimated 3 to 5 million people have been killed by war-related causes, including disease and hunger. According to the BBC 47 percent of victims are children, even though they represent only 19 percent of the population. About 1.4 million people are internally displaced and 340,000 are refugees in neighboring countries. Oxfam reports that killings, torture and rape have increased since a UN-backed military operation against rebels launched in January.

There is no end in sight of the war, and innocent civilians bear the brunt of it all. MSF and other NGO’s are the only hope for people to carry on their lives. Check out MSF’s Condition Critical to better understand the conflict. Or check out more videos of MSF’s aid work here.

Patent laws make access to generic medicine too difficult

On July 7th, an Indian court rejected a patent claim by drug-maker Novartis for a cancer drug it developed. The Indian court said that the drug was not unique enough to warrant its own patent; however, the importance of this case is not the reasons for its outcome, but its impact on the world’s supply of cheap, generic drugs.

India is one of the major generic drug producers in the world, supplying cheap and generic drugs for malaria, TB and HIV/AIDS to donor countries who use the drugs to combat these diseases in third world countries where impoverished citizens are too poor to afford healthcare. Donor government agencies, such as USAID, and Non-Governmental Organizations, such as Doctors Without Borders, depend on generic drugs in order to afford the cost of providing basic health-care to people whose government can not or will not supply even basic services. Yet the ability of pharmaceutical companies to make generic drugs for third world consumption has become increasingly difficult due to patent laws that are driven by profit.

The World Trade Organization relegates trade laws between international borders, including intellectual property rights. Protecting property rights is important and has become even more so in today’s fast-paced and globalized world. The WTO should regulate patents, along with physical product moving across borders. However, if the WTO wants to regulate internationally, the organization needs to take all countries’ needs into consideration, not just Western nations. They also need to look past profit-driven answers.

In 1995 the WTO passed the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), which enforces a minimum standard for protecting and enforcing global property rights. One of the most important aspects of TRIPS, at least in terms of global health, is that patents last a minimum of 20 years. When a patent is granted to a company, no other company can duplicate that same product or process for those 20 years. This essentially means that the company has a state-sanctioned monopoly on that product and can effectively set whatever price they want for it.

This is bad news for developing countries’ ability to access medicine. Poor people in third world countries rely on donor governments and organizations for these medicines. On average generic drugs cut the cost in half. The high cost of original drugs is particularly disconcerting now during the current economic crisis. First world governments’ pledges for international development donations have plateaued or decreased, and aid organizations are seeing a decrease in donations. Many aid agencies have stopped taking new patients because of a prediction that they won’t be able to continue treatment in the long-run. Patients with HIV, which requires a “cocktail” treatment involving three different drugs, may not be able to continue into the third phase of treatment.

Though patents are important to protect intellectual property, pharmaceutical companies should not be lumped in with all other types of physical or creative products. Medicine is a necessity, and it is simply immoral to restrict access to it on the basis of profit. If the WTO wants to regulate trade laws universally, then countries within the WTO should also pledge to make access to life-saving medecines universal.

Source – “HIV/AIDS treatment in developing countries: the battle for long-term survival has just begun.” Doctors Without Borders’ Campaign for Access to Essential Medicines. July 2009.

The worth of the ICC

On June 11, Reuters reported that four aid agencies were allowed by Khartoum to reenter Sudan with new names and new logos. These aid agencies, along with nine others, had been expelled from the country by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir a day after the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for his arrest for various war crimes and crimes against humanity. Essentially, al-Bashir and other officials in his government scoffed at the warrant and do not recognize its validity. International opinion is mixed. According to a report by Dr. Parveen Parmar, an International Emergency Medicine Fellow of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, most Western countries, including the United States, France and the U.K. all support the indictment. The African Union expressed some concerns that the indictment would further destablizie the region. Other African and Middle Eastern countries have condemned the decision as politically motivated and judgmental against Africa.

Saudi Arabia has called the indictment “a polit-
icized decision” that will “not lead to the stability of Sudan or
solve the Darfur issue.” The president of Senegal worried that
the ICC has become a body to “judge Africans.” Several Arab
and African governments accuse the ICC of a double stan-
dard, citing its failure to prosecute alleged war crimes by
Israel against Arabs, or by the United States in Iraq and
Afghanistan.

(Parmar, “Global Correspondent: Aid to Darfur Threatened After ICC Actions” in the AMA Journal, Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness, March 23, 2009)

This particular circumstance raises a very legitimate and difficult question concerning aid groups and international humanitarian law. It is often extremely challenging for international aid groups to decide whether or not to speak up against war crimes and crimes against humanity. If they do, they risk being perceived as taking sides, which often leads to expulsion by or conflict from the “host” country where aid is badly needed. On the other hand, when grave and apprehensible crimes are taking place against civilians by their own governments, how can one sit idly by, especially if that information is not necessarily known by the international community?

The good thing about international aid agencies today, is their number. Independent aid agencies choose how they want to assess and respond to a conflict, and that includes whether or not they voice their opinion. It has always been a policy of Doctors Without Borders (MSF) to speak up against governments or groups that are perpetrating war crimes or crimes against humanity. But MSF has done this often with the result of being expelled from countries. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the longest-existing international aid organization, does not speak up during any type of conflicts. The ICRC has the ability to say that they are the first to enter a conflict zone and the last to leave – and this is no exaggeration.

The fact that Sudan expelled aid agencies after the ICC issued a warrant for the president’s arrest, shows how difficult this situation can be. It’s important that Sudan is finally letting a few aid agencies return to the country. But the question of how important and effective the ICC can be is once again questioned. For the international community, do the lives and livelihoods of civilians or does holding the perpetrators accountable have more value? The short-term and long-term answers may not be the same. In addition, the future of the ICC rests on the outcome of al-Bashir’s warrant. As Parmar wrote, “If civilian lives will be put at risk, then there may be pressure to withhold [future ICC] indictments against leaders who may restrict the delivery of humanitarian aid.”

Shell’s given up on alternatives

Oil company Shell announced at a press conference last week that it has given up on investing in wind, solar and hydrogen energy because these sectors have not been profitable. The company plans to continue with some wind projects in the US but has eliminated wind projects in Europe. The company will focus its renewable energy involvement in biofuels.

The company has been called shameless by some in the media for choosing profits over moral imperatives. But it should not be much of a surprise when a Big Oil company operates only in its best interests. Bottom line, Shell is sticking to oil because it is much cheaper than any other energy option. Another factor to Shell’s decision, and what has environmentalists fuming, is that climate change and the environment, which used to be hot topics in the media, have been replaced by the economic crisis. Being financially stable in an ailing economy is more important now to average Americans. Environmental issues in the news have taken a backseat to unemployment, housing foreclosures, lay-offs and big banking scandals. This is what Shell is taking advantage of. Oil companies are looking to be profitable first, which also includes marketing and the face the company puts on for consumers.  If greening the environment is only a trend to citizens, so will the interest that companies have for the issue.

A must-read profile piece

Naturally, a profile piece that I found so impressive comes from The New Yorker. It may not just be the writing, though David Grann never leaves me bored (and it’s a very long piece). The story, “The Chameleon,” is about a con artist, who didn’t con for money. He would “become” a fictional child to find love and a belonging, or so the piece suggests. But, as you’ll find it out, he took it a bit far by “accidentally” impersonating a real American teenager, who had gone missing three years earlier. Strangely enough, the family took him in for such a significant time that authorities began to wonder if the family wasn’t purposely trying to believe the con artist in order to hide something. It’s certainly a strange story and a thrilling read. It’s the type of psychological story I love most: a writer who tries to get inside the head of another person who may never be understood. Give yourself a good chunk of time and enjoy!

Belgish identity crisis in us all

The European Union has been having an identity crisis lately. It can’t decide who it should let in (is Turkey in Europe or Asia?), how united it should be (remember Ireland’s no vote to the Lisbon Treaty) and even how to go about voting. Europeans are at odds as to which direction the union should go.

Within this EU frame comes another question of identity and international relations brought up in Belgium, a country on the brink of a split. In the North of Belgium is an area called Flanders, made up primarily of wealthy, Flemish-speaking Belgish. This area of the country comprises 65 percent of its national GDP. In the South is Wallonia, the French-speaking, poorer area of the country.

The conflict has grown due to financial differences. In July, several government representatives began calling for Flanders to have more financial autonomy, which soon led into the argument that Flanders should separate from Wallonia. Since then, no decisions have been made because no one can agree on how to solve the problem.

The source of the problem is not only financial. Rather, the underlying problem and the reason Belgiums can not agree on the next step is deeply rooted in cultural differences. It’s not because Belgium is split into a wealthy Northern region and a poor Southern region, but rather that the citizens in the Northern region are Flemish and the Southern French. And both group maintain a strong sense of pride over their heritage. Check out from this article and this article from the New York Times for additional background information.

This doesn’t have political and social ramifications only for Belgium and France but for the entire EU. The further breakdown of European countries has been occuring for the last several decades, such as with the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Yugoslavia and Bosnia and most recently Kosovo and Serbia. It’s a trend that Ian Burama, professor for human rights at Bard College in New York, says will have negative effects on the EU.

Writing in The Guardian Burama said, “Many Basques would like to break away from Spain, as would many Catalans. Corsicans would love to be rid of France, and many Scots of Britain. … No doubt some of these peoples would be able to survive perfectly well on their own. But history does seem to suggest that the cumulative effect of states falling apart is seldom positive. … Nation-states were often formed in the 18th and 19th centuries to promote common interests that transcended cultural, ethnic, linguistic, or religious differences. … The problem now is that interests are no longer the same, or even held in common.

Burama puts part of the blame on EU shoulders. Because the EU actively promotes regional interests within a larger nation-transcending framework, the authority of national governments is weakened. The existence of the larger EU, which brings with it economic and political protection, allows regional governing bodies that are based on cultural identity to believe that they can flourish independently of a national government. If you’re Scotland, why be part of the U.K. when you are part of the EU?

“The fate of Belgium should interest all Europeans, especially those who wish the Union well. For what is happening in Belgium now could end up happening on a continental scale,” Burama wrote. “Without having intended it, the EU now seems to be encouraging the very forces that postwar European unity was designed to contain.”

This argument is part of the question of how large can one’s own identity become in such a globalized world? Can someone think of themselves as only a European – not Italian, Welsh or Catalonian – and still feel a sense of self-importance within a strong cultural identity? Enough of a sense of self-worth to operate appropriately within the politcal and global realm?

The question goes back to an idea of basic psychology, humans need to feel tha they belong to a group. This is true in mundane, everyday situations, which is why we join sports and activity groups and have a common set of friends, but this is also a determining factor in a more broad sense, which links to religion, politics and race. In order to unite each other, people need a “them” or a group of “others” that can not be part of the unity because they are different. This border between us and them is almost always subconscious. Throughout history it is often imperceptible, especially to outsiders, however, most often or perhaps most notably are the divisions along obvious, physical factors, such as race, gender and religion.

The way people and nations divide and unite themselves along this “us” and “them” line has changed significantly with economic and cultural globalization. Distance is no longer as important, and most people have multiple cultural identites, starting with the local and including trans-national, such as an European or Christian identity. But one thing that I would argue that will never change are these divisions along race, religious and, now, historical backgrounds. Though one can argue that the world is continually becoming closer in cultural values and norms and political idealogies, these subconscious and inherent feelings within people – the need to feel as a part of a group – will always divide people.

Can black journalists cover Obama?

This question is certainly interesting from a journalistic perspective, but at the same time the question seems invalid. Jeff Winbush, a freelance journalist, writes that he is a black man first and a journalist last, and so he supports Obama first rather than maintaining complete objectivity as a journalist. But there are two arguments that I propose that makes this question obsolete.

First, as Winbush notes in his article, a journalist can never be completely objective, which applies to white journalists covering white politicians as well. Some black journalists support Obama, and their support may show in their writing. But just as many white journalists support McCain and other presidential candidates in the past, yet the question of their objectivity, especially along the lines of race, is never brought into question.

The second argument is that not all black journalists or black citizens support Obama. African Americans do not simply align their presidential convictions on race alone, just as all women didn’t automatically support Hilary Clinton because she was a woman. During political races, many factors for one person’s decision come into play, not least of which is one’s political ideals. All African Americans are not democrats and are not, therefore, automatically Obama supporters.

The question of whether black journalists can cover Obama is a fairly ridiculous concept, especially when asked so broadly. Journalists’ integrity she be evaluated on an individual basis only, not by race, gender, religion, etc.

McCain funds Viagra, not birth control

McCain has repeatedly voted against covering birth control like other prescription medicines. This essentially means McCain would rather have Viagra and other erection, baby-making pills be more affordable than birth control.

The Nation Blogger Katha Pollitt reports that in early June, McCain yet again voted against a bill that would have required health insurance companies to cover birth control if they covered any type of prescription medications at all, such as Viagra. When asked about it, McCain said that he didn’t know enough about the issue and that he couldn’t even remember casting the vote because he’s cast hundreds of votes in his lifetime (You can watch his response on YouTube).

His answer is ridiculous for numerous reasons. First, casting hundreds of votes doesn’t excuse any Congress member from being ill-informed about an issue that he or she will vote on and therefore impact, in this case thousands, of Americans. Second, birth control isn’t just about sex and pregnancy but also about serious health issues that can involve serious health risks to women.  And finally, McCain has voted against allowing coverage of birth control every time, which is decades now.

The availability and affordability of birth control is also about women’s rights and when medicines like Viagra are covered it also becomes an issue of equal rights.  Additionally, birth control can help tackle problems like unwanted pregnancies, unsafe abortions and population control in areas where families can not afford children. Half a million women die during childbirth every year, according to the United Nations.

Of course, that has less to do with McCain’s vote for the US health care system, but the domestic issue is just as important. Perhaps Pollitt puts it best when she wrote in her blog,  “This is not a trivial issue. There’s the basic unfairness of not covering these essential, even life-saving drugs and devices, so fundamental to women’s health and well-being, and the added insult of denying coverage while men are lavished with cut-rate erections.”

Great WP article

I really enjoyed this article by war photographer Warren Zinn, who was embedded in Iraq for almost two years. He tells his story about a famous photograph that he took of a U.S. army soldier and wonders if his photo had anything to do with the soldiers death recently in the U.S.